“If I need to I can drop my name.” Dijornos shrugged. “I can’t imagine I don’t still have some pull among the guilds that are left from my days.”
“Which will put the Inquisition on your trail like that.” Speranza snapped her fingers. “What a great idea!”
“Hey!” Cagna snapped. “It cuts both ways. Don’t you crap on his idea either, lady.”
Dijornos shot her a surprised look.
But Chase was watching Speranza and saw how her eyes narrowed, just a bit, before she smiled in a too-kindly matter.
Chase turned back to Dijornos. “It is a point, though,” Chase said. “You’re a lot more memorable than Speranza because you have a past. You were the Butcher. That’s not easily forgotten, and it does mean that word will spread quickly once you resurface. Do you have a way to deal with that?”
“If I do have to drop it, and that’s an if, I’ll make sure it’s to people who won’t pass it on,” Dijornos folded his arms.
Chase thought for a bit, then nodded to Bastien. “Can you back him up on this?”
“I don’t need backup,” Dijornos shrugged. “Forty-seven levels of Mercenary means not sweating the small stuff.”
“It’s not that,” Chase said. “It’s because he’s got a curse.”
“What’s this now?” Dijornos stopped, and considered the big Wrestler again.
“We think the Inquisition put them on him when they grabbed Thomasi, but we’re not sure,” Chase explained. “He was cursed with Obscurity and Poverty. I managed to lift the Curse of Poverty, but it took a few tries. When we looked into Obscurity, though... we decided to let that one lie, for now.”
“People tend to forget who I am,” Bastien explained. “Once they’re away from me for a while, I fade out of their memories. It explains why my career tanked after Circus Venturi split up. Why no matter how hard I worked or how good my shows are, I couldn’t get anywhere.”
“It also means that he can help you talk with people, with less risk of getting recognized by the Inquisition,” Chase pointed out. “Think of him as a go-between.” And somebody who can maybe get the job done without putting more deaths on my conscience, Chase thought to herself. “He’s also worked for casinos and some shady sorts before, so he’s no stranger to the underworld.”
“Wait,” Speranza said, considering The Muscle Wizaard with new eyes. “You were with Circus Venturi? You’re THAT Wrestler?”
“I was the only one Circus Venturi had,” Bastien nodded. His spectacles twinkled in the candlelight.
“Oh! Thomasi spoke of you often! I’d love to hear more about you, and him, and the circus. We can maybe have dinner and talk it over?” Speranza’s smile warmed the room.
Bastien’s face twisted in surprise. “Oh. Er, yeah, sure. I don’t see a problem with that—”
“Anyway,” Cagna growled, and Chase caught a dark tone in her voice. “I work best alone. With your permission I’ll try to figure out what the state of the city is, who’s in charge, and what’s going on.”
“Done,” Chase nodded. “I’m going to spend the day on divinations, and minding the house. If need be I can come and back any of you up. But until then I suppose it’s just me and Yubai...” her voice trailed off.
Yubai wasn’t in the room.
That’s right, he’d left, hadn’t he? Back when Speranza entered?
“Hey,” Chase said. “Where did Yubai go?”
“I thought he had to go to the bathroom or something,” Renny replied. “He looked like he was in a real hurry.”
“He hurried out,” Cagna said slowly, “after we started talking about markets. And selling food.”
“Oh. Oh no!” Speranza said, jumping to her feet. “That stupid bot!”
“Stupid what?” Chase said, as Speranza hurried out to the foyer.
But Chase never got her answer, as her horrified eyes took in the panda paw-print trail across the wreckage on the floor.
And the wide open door, leading out into the sooty streets.
CHAPTER 7: FOR WANT OF A COIN
“Give me a quest to find him!” Dijornos bellowed.
“What? You’re trying to milk experience out of us at a time like this?” Cagna glared at him.
“No! I have skills for this! Give me a quest and offer coin. Fast!”
Surprisingly, it was Speranza that defended him. “He’s telling the truth. Do it.”
Chase considered it for a second, then nodded. “Give me a moment. I’ve never done this before. Not all the way, anyway.”
But she knew how it went. Chase had been taught of quests.
Quests were only really used in desperation, magical contracts that allowed you to trade away precious experience and treasure to otherwise untrustworthy people. They were magical oaths, that could cost you years of hard work if you were incautious.
And all it took was a brief moment of meditation or holding a thought too long to set them in motion.
Like the other halven children, she had been taught to form them, to call quests into being, and then promptly told to leave them alone and why. They traded away your hard-earned experience and money, usually for trifles. People would take advantage of you if you used them too often!
But like the rest of the teens her age, she had played with calling them into being.
Quest activate, Chase thought, and watched a string of numbers float by in her vision. It ended with a flashing pair of letters, light dancing from one to the other. Y and N.
Yes, Chase thought...
...and the room became a lot less visible, as an illusion, an overlay of four rectangular outlines filled with glowing words; words like ‘participation’, ‘details,’ ‘reward,’ and ‘completion criteria.’
Participation would only let itself be filled with one of two words at first; public or private. She chose private, and a flickering line danced until she stared at Dijornos. Then it filled with his name.
The rest of the outlines required a little more thought to fill, and after what seemed like an eternity but was probably only half a minute, she was done.
“Here you go,” she said, and thought yes, and the outlines were replaced with glowing letters hanging between herself and Dijornos.
YOU HAVE OFFERED DIJORNOS A PRIVATE QUEST!
TITLE: YOU SAVE YUBAI
DETAILS: FIND AND SAFELY RETRIEVE YUBAI GOLD
REWARD: 100 EXPERIENCE AND 1 SILVER
COMPLETION: GET YUBAI GOLD TO CHASE BERRYMORE AND SEE HER FOR REWARD
DO YOU ACCEPT THIS QUEST? Y/N?
Dijornos turned his head, reading it. His brow furrowed as he went. “What? That’s all? You’re cheap, girl. I know you’re loaded, why are you lowballing this?”
“If you need money for something, just ask us and tell us what it’s for,” Chase said. “This is just a formality. But if you don’t think your skills are good enough, that’s fine. We have other options. Cagna, can you—”
“Yes!” Dijornos interrupted, and the words faded away. “I’ll do it, fine, whatever.”
The quest disappeared, and Chase felt... different. Like someone had jabbed her with a pin, only painlessly. The feeling of experience lost, the feeling that I was warned about. Gods, now I’m offering people quests. This is about as far from home as I can get.
And oddly enough, the thought cheered her a bit.
“Let’s do this!” Dijornos sneered. “Form Party! Invite All! Everybody get in if you want buffs!”
You have been invited to Dijornos’ party!
You are already in a party!
“Yes,” Speranza said, and then looked confused. She opened her mouth, but Dijornos beat her to it.
“What? Oh come on, get out of your party and into mine. Or add us into yours. Here, Disband party, whatever.”
“Whoa, slow down, I... all right, I suppose it cuts both ways,” Chase decided. “Invite Dijornos, Invite Speranza.”
There was the possibility that he had ulterior motives here. But it would also let h
er get a peek at his levels, and Speranza’s for that matter. That was too good a chance to pass up. And if he was on the level about his skills, it would help with the emergency.
The second they were in, he ran out the door. “Good! Follow me! Forced March, Do the Job, Follow the Dotted Line.”
Chase hurried to her feet...
...and almost jumped into the wall, as she hopped straight up. All of a sudden her body was light, so very light, and she had no idea why.
No idea until words appeared right in front of her;
Dijornos’ Noblesse Oblige buffs you!
STR+28
Then, glowing shapes materialized on the floor, heading straight out the door.
“This is the dotted line?” Chase asked, confused.
“It’s a Mercenary thing,” Cagna put her hand on Chase’s shoulder, steadying her. “No time to talk, hothead’s on the move! Let’s go!”
“I’ve got her,” Bastien said, and scooped Chase up, settling her into her usual spot on his shoulders. “C’mon!”
Then they were on the streets, and following the glowing path before them. Out into those ash-choked streets, past coals still glowing in charred remnants of houses, hunting for the lost player.
At least, the others were.
Chase knew her perception was decent, but Cagna and Renny’s senses were far better. So instead, she called up her party screen and took a peek at her two uncertain allies.
Dijornos
Human 21HP 701
Guildmaster 12SAN 331
Mercenary 47STA 479
Ruler 28MOX 335
Smith 12FOR 395
Chase’s mouth felt dry, as the numbers hammered the truth of it home. They dwarfed her own, illustrated the fact that if Dijornos wanted them dead, then he could very likely make that happen in short order. The least of his pools was higher than the best of her own.
And then, dreading what she would see, she took a look at Speranza.
Speranza
Human 15HP 285 (295)
Bard 30SAN 244 (254)
Courtier 17STA 592 (602)
Grifter 8MOX 585 (595)
Jeweler 6FOR 426 (436)
Model 20
Siren 7
Tailor 15
That was... still a bit distressing, and those were big numbers, but nothing as horrifying as that ‘47’ by Dijornos’ Mercenary levels.
But Chase knew that Speranza’s ability, that one trick she did have, was just as deadly or worse than anything Dijornos could bring to bear. All he could do was kill them. Speranza... Speranza could change them forever. And though her levels and pools were less than Dijornos’ own, they were still greater than what Chase and her friends had garnered so far.
Depression gave way to determination. “So far,” Chase muttered to herself and coughed a bit as she inhaled a bit too much sooty air.
“There!” Cagna called.
Plants lay strewn across the ground. Long sticks of bamboo, wildflowers, bunches of herbs without rhyme or reason to them. The dotted line went right past them, and Chase heard shouting in the distance. Unfamiliar voices, and one very familiar one shouting “No!” over and over again.
But the streets were passing quickly, very quickly. Forced March, Chase knew. The Mercenary skill greatly increased the group’s speed. She’d encountered it before, and it was one of the reasons that she’d agreed to Dijornos’ idea.
The ash cleared as they ran, and despite her worry for Yubai, Chase found her gaze straying to the surroundings.
This was... had been a piazza. Just a square spot between houses and buildings, with a statue in the center. The statue had been destroyed by some long-gone calamity, showing only two stone sandals and some rusted metal rods poking out from what remained of the ankles. Some ancient gnomish mechanism, perhaps.
The rest of the piazza was a shambles, too, but it looked more recent and somewhat deliberate. Wood and cloth and carts and barrels and other random things you’d find on a street had been shaped into two barricades, blocking the northern and eastern parts of the thoroughfare.
And then there were the gallows.
Nailed together with scrap wood and multiple lengths of rope from clearly different sources, they hung heavy with rotting fruit, bodies twisting and swaying in the wind. Some had signs around their stretched necks... LADRO read one, declaring its corpse to be a thief. STUPRATORE was another, declaring him to be a sexual violator. UOVA DI PRODURRA was a third, and there Chase’s knowledge of the old tongue failed her. Something about camping and eggs?
The gallows were gruesome enough, but of far more interest were the living figures below them. A gang of about a dozen grim-faced people wearing masks pulled up over their noses and mouths.
And in the middle of them, squirming and trying to break free of the arms around him, was Yubai.
It didn’t take a genius to look from him to the open noose and figure out what the group had planned.
“Okay,” Chase said, tapping Bastien on the head. “I think—”
And then she was grabbing for his hair as he jerked to a stop, nearly sending her flying off his shoulders. She managed... barely.
“All right,” Dijornos said, as she collected herself. He’d stopped, she realized, and the whole group had nearly piled up behind him. “There’s only like two guys in that mob that are in the double digits, and the highest is twelve. Easy peasy. Figure we use our ranged attackers to take out the ones holding panda bot, then I’ll charge in to mop up while he runs to safety—”
“Hold on!” Chase insisted, sliding down from The Muscle Wizaard’s shoulders. “We might be able to solve this without a fight! Besides, they’ve spotted us.” She pointed at the group, who had left off hauling the poor merchant to the gallows and were drawing weapons.
“Talk. Sure. Except my quest doesn’t say anything about that, now does it?” Dijornos grinned an ugly grin, and pulled a broken plank from a nearby trash heap. “I’m thinking it’s time for a board meeting.”
“You would,” Speranza snorted. “If you will all plug your ears, I’ll have them working for us in a matter of seconds.”
“No!” Chase protested, as the distant executioners hustled themselves, and Yubai, behind a pile of crates. “Look, they’re just people, okay? That one’s wearing a grocer’s apron!”
“Yeah, and he’s got a crowbar, and Yubai’s skull ain’t that sturdy,” Dijornos said. But he hesitated. “Look. If you don’t have my back here, I can’t guarantee fuzzlebutt’s safety. Are you behind me or not?”
“Not,” Cagna said. “Try words first, words are free. If that fails, you can give’em splinters.”
Chase closed her mouth. Cagna had summed things up nicely. “I’ll do it,” she said, pushing forward. “If I succeed then you can walk him over to me. That’ll count for the quest, you’ll be fine.” The dynamic was shifting, with the players in the group. Their charisma made it hard not to follow them, hard to try to keep the initiative. In time... in time it would cause problems, Chase knew.
Better to do everything she could to delay that, no matter how small.
And so, she crossed the square, noting the other shapes in the dust far off to the sides, feeling the eyes upon her from countless windows as she passed the worn stone buildings. She watched the would-be executioners tense up as she approached, read their fear in their stances.
In all her life, Chase had never inspired such fear, and she didn’t quite know how it made her feel. But there was no time to dwell on it. The group she was approaching all had weapons, and Yubai was right in the middle of them. If this went wrong, he would probably die. And he might be able to come back, perhaps. But that wasn’t something Chase wanted to test.
“Hello there!” she said as she got within fifty feet of them. “Our friend seems to have upset you. What did he do wrong?”
“You’re with this stugat?” The man with the grocer apron jerked his mask down his face. He had the bushie
st mustache Chase had ever seen. “You steal our food and try to sell us weeds? What the hell is your problem?”
“Signore, we’ve stolen nothing. Our Merchant friend just decided to run off without his bodyguard, and get an early start on business.”
“Don’t try to fool us!” a large woman shouted. Her skirts were tied up around her legs, and tucked into big heavy boots, and she wore thick canvas gloves that were stained with unknowable things. “We find our storehouse bare and the very next day some stranger shows up to try and gouge money out of us? Cazza! Cazza I say!”
“On my honor as a farmer’s daughter, we arrived in town just this morning. We were in Setsofbaggage last night, staying with Signore Giuliani at the Olive Inn.”
That made a few of the group lean in to each other and mutter.
Chase continued. “I am sorry to hear you were robbed, but we are not robbers. Come now, would your thief really be foolish enough to return to a place he’d stolen from, with such warnings on display?” she waved a hand to the gallows.
More mutterings, but the grocer set his jaw. “The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime!”
“That old saying’s for murderers,” Chase snorted.
“It’s also completely a myth!” Cagna shouted.
“Look, can you tell me what happened?” Chase spread her hands. “This is obviously a mistake all around, and we might be able to help.”
“Why would you?” Skirts-in-boots said, suspiciously.
“Why wouldn’t we?” Chase stared. “We aren’t staying far from here. If there’s a thief about they might steal our food too!”
The grocer shared a glance with the large woman. “What guarantee do we have this isn’t a trick?”
“What have you got to lose?” Chase shrugged. “My friend over there isn’t guilty, but even if he was, hanging him won’t bring you back any food. Working with us might.”
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