Published at 3rd of August 2024 7:50 am

Book 2 Chapter 39: I Always Appreciate a Good Performance

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Dantes arrived at the Cruel Lady in the early morning, finding it surprisingly busy for that time of day with a few men and a woman leaving quickly with their faces covered by large hats, and a shameless man walking ahead of him and even holding the door and telling him good morning as he moved toward Glass who welcomed him with a smack to the face, and a spit to his eye before sending him to the room across from her. He complied with a smile.

Dantes watched with an amused expression.

“You want me to wipe that look off your face, Cornelius?” asked the powerful dwarven woman.

“I don’t know that I would enjoy your methods all that much.”

“Oh? You certainly enjoyed it when I raked your back with my nails.”

“Yes, it was a good performance. I always appreciate a good performance.”

She smiled and nodded her head back toward the hall behind her. “Dosia is waiting for you.”

Dantes nodded and walked back into the hall and into Dosia’s room. She didn’t greet him with a whip crack and threats this time, but instead walked toward him wearing a thin black robe and holding a glass of wine out to him. He found himself a little disappointed, but took the glass.

He smelled the wine, but detected nothing wrong, and sensed nothing organic within it, aside from the obvious. It was early for a drink, but Dosia was likely at the end of her day rather than the start of it, and he didn’t want to be rude so he took a long sip, and sat on a long lounging couch, putting his feet on a nearby table as he did so.

“So, how are things going?”

She sat at the other end of the couch and took a long sip of her own drink. He watched her hands as she did so. Unlike most whores he’d known, her hands were powerful and thickly callused from her work with whips and ropes, but she held the wine glass delicately by the stem with perfect grace.

“Danglars doesn’t suspect anything. I’ve been dosing him at the end of the sessions when we share a glass of wine. He has been saying… strange things about his mother during sessions, even more than usual.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, he’s been insisting on more… elaborate punishments, and during them he often calls her name and asks forgiveness. He apparently hired a priest from the church of the many gods to cleanse his house and office because he believes he’s being haunted.”

Dantes nodded along as she spoke. “It sounds like everything is having its desired effect. My client is very happy." He took a pouch of gold and a fresh jar of ground and dried Prosa and placed it on the table in front of him. “He’s been able to take great advantage of Danglars in court and on committee meetings. There’s a bonus in there for you.”

She lifted the coin pouch and weighed it in her hands. “Any chance your client wants to book a session? He clearly has the funds.”

Dantes smiled. “Who's to say he’s not already one of your clients?”

She raised her eyebrow and Dantes stood, finishing the wine.

“I have other business in the city… though I could be convinced to put it off if you’ve changed your mind about more vanilla services?”

She smiled. “I’m afraid not.”

He shrugged. “You don’t get what you don’t ask for. I’ll see you at our next appointment.”

She nodded. “Glass is going to give you shit for taking so little time.”

“I think my pride can take that.” He flattened the creases in his jacket and walked out of the room.

“Oh, I didn’t take you for a minute man, Corny,” said Glass as he walked out.

Dantes smiled at her. “Sometimes you just need a quick beating before you have a meeting, you understand.”

“No, but I have clients with similar needs. See you next week… maybe you’ll pay me a visit too?”

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“It’ll be hard not to.” He stepped out and onto the street. Glass was a natural manipulator, she could probably work any brothel with that kind of talent, but her build would turn off clients at most establishments. Dantes didn’t mind women who looked as if they could break him in half, but many did. He drew his coat tightly around himself to brace against the morning chill and began to walk toward the Guild District.

It was much easier to navigate to the Hell’s Forgotten Mercenary Company and the small underground arena they had now that he’d traveled there before.

“This is dangerous,” sent Jacopo as Dantes danced around some men carrying lumber to a nearby carpenter.

“Everything we do is dangerous.”

“You are marked prey now. Mondego’s people are looking for you, which means they’re looking for your associates again too. When a snake eats the freshly born, it waits in the nest for the mother to return so that it can eat again.”

“Vera deserves an explanation from me, and I want to make sure that she’s okay. Mondego’s men still stick primarily to midtown and the docks. A few may make their way over to the guild district, but this is a different finger’s territory, he’d need permission to do any real damage. It is a risk, but one I think we can manage.”

Jacopo scurried into a different pocket where he found the remains of the bread Dantes had been eating for breakfast, and took it for himself.

“You are like my cousin. He would always take the meat from the traps the kobolds would leave, thinking he understood how to avoid them when they clasped down. Until once he took a piece from a trap that simply exploded. I still remember nibbling on a piece of his ear after it was over.”

“Does losing my arm not reset things a bit? I feel like that was my version of having the trap spring.”

“No.”

“That’s what I figured too.”

Dantes reached the entrance to the underground arena and saw two rough looking guards out front. He approached it directly, and was stopped by the larger of the two of them who held out his hand in front of him shaking his head without a word.

Dantes thought through a number of options to get by them. Changing the wood on his arm to make it appear as if he had a brand that matched the mercs so he could feign comradery, bribery, and even quick and simple violence. In the end he just moved on, became a roach with Jacopo. As a roach he realized that his wooden arm had shrank two, though now it was two arms rather than just one. He willed it to shift, and it did, but there were limited application at roach size for it. He and Jacopo slipped around the guards and into the building before shifting back to themselves on the staircase and making their way down.

Even at the top of the steps he could hear a commotion as well as the sound of impacts breaking against each other. As he descended he got a better look. There were roughly thirty rough looking customers all leaning in and screaming down at the pit. A man was taking bets in the corner, and another serving foul smelling booze that wouldn’t have been out of place in the Underprison.

In the pit itself were a dozen men and women, wielding blunted swords, clubs, or just their fists, engaged in a melee. There were at least three people down already, only one of them conscious and clutching his leg which appeared to be facing the wrong direction. Dantes recognized only one of the brawlers, Vampa, who stood with no weapons but the hand-wraps around his knuckles.

A man with a blunted greatsword approached him, swinging his blade quickly downward. Vampa dodged, scooping up sand and bone from the ground and throwing it into the man's face. The man resisted moving his hands to his eyes and made several more blind swings in Vampa’s direction, but Vampa got under his guard and punched him in the kidneys with such force that even from where Dantes stood he could hear the impact like a wet towel hitting the deck of a ship. The man crumpled and Vampa stepped forward to the next one.

A woman with a thin club in each hand began raining down quick blows on Vampa, hitting him with such speed that it almost seemed as if she was wielding six clubs rather than two. Vampa stoically endured the barrage, keeping his arms up as he waited for an opening. His left arm seemed to dip for a moment, and the woman sent a stick forward with a powerful swing. Vampa cooly moved his body forward to take the strike on the center of his forehead, robbing the blow of its momentum, then he quickly sent a jab at her face followed by a combo of light blows that almost mimicked her own strikes, but while hers hadn’t moved Vampa and inch, his caused her whole body to shift with each blow until the last one swept her completely off of her feet and she fell to the ground.

The last three standing quickly decided that Vampa was the real threat and closed in on him at once. He stayed on the defensive. One tried to sweep at his legs with a staff and he lifted one leg over it, letting it hit his other leg, he then pivoted, throwing the staff from the man’s hand. The second man threw a wide right hook and he ducked under it before bringing his own fist up and under the man’s chin.

While one man retrieved his staff, the last of them lunged at Vampa with a blunted sword and shield. Vampa made no noise, but his nostrils flared as he slammed a fist into the center of the man’s shield causing it to splinter and knocking the man to the ground. He stood up quickly and swung his sword at Vampa’s head, but he grabbed the man’s wrist mid-motion, disarmed him, and threw him in one smooth motion that saw him tumbling across the arena.

The last man swung with his staff, and quicker than Dantes could blink, Vampa's sword struck out, somehow even faster than his fists, and deflected it before smashing it into the side of his head with the flat of the blade, causing him to crumple to his knees. Vampa’s face had been almost expressionless throughout the battle, but at the end he looked at the sword in his hand and scowled a bit, letting it fall onto the ground, kicking up a puff of sand as it landed.

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