Chương 286: Ginger Batting

I did steal his address book, which was well-stocked with mana warriors who were available to hire, and I was sorely tempted to swipe his ledgers and land deeds because those would be really valuable to me, but I decided not to. If you loot too aggressively, the guards tend to view a scene like this as "burglary gone wrong", which is a particularly difficult sort of murder charge to beat.

People who decide justice in this city have particularly strong feelings about someone breaking into their house to steal stuff and then killing them. A particularly potent fear of theirs. Anyway, I got rid of the assassins who had gathered to kill me, after they took plenty of booze and easily-fenced knickknacks. I wasn't worried about those, that's just the kind of stuff that sticky-fingered opportunists steal. As long as none of the real valuables are gone, I should be fine.

I sat in the front entry and waited for the guards to come running. They were surprisingly amenable to a cogent explanation. I sat calmly, requested their commanding officer, and got a decent little panel of high-ranking guard officers to chat with about this. They had enough informants and sources that they already knew all about Lydpel's very indiscreet threats against me. Apparently, he was even more vocal about this than I already knew about.

I would call it the worst-kept secret, except that he was deliberately trying to bait me out. Well, either me or the Debt Collector.

"Honestly, we're probably lucky that you responded first," said one of the guard lieutenants. They were sitting with me in the dead man's dining room, with their helmets on the table.

"That other guy doesn't leave much behind. He makes an example out of people." I shrugged.

"I rather felt like I was making an example here. I had to, right? Do you know what happens to a ducal heir that lets people start thinking that death threats and assassination contracts are acceptable?"

"Nothing good, I should think," said the senior inspector, tossing her helmet in the air, over and over like tossing around a ball. It turned a single revolution on each arc, slapping back down into her hand before she tossed it again.

"Obviously we do frown on this. But we did not have a strong enough case to prosecute him. Now you've taken care of that. And this situation is easy enough to record as self-defense." The captain laughed.

"Rather more proactive than most self-defense, but there's precedent. Normally we don't allow someone to break into someone else's home and kill them in self-defense, but the man had been rather obvious about representing an ongoing threat to your life." We all walked out together, and Lydpel's steward locked up behind us. I invited them to lunch, they declined it would be improper. The captain hung back a bit to linger as his colleagues walked away. He darted his eyes around.

"I kept a piece of that chair," he said conspiratorially.

"From your duel at the ceremony." I laughed and offered to sign it. We chatted and he said he'd bring it with him next time I was at one of his crime scenes. He turned and headed off after his fellows, to where the guard's wagon was parked on the corner to take him back to his barracks headquarters. Is this really what it's like to be on top of the wheel? Is this what it's like to have the corruption and injustice of Hearstcliff working on my side?

I know that last year I couldn't have gotten out of a parking ticket without paying a fortune and jumping through hoops. Today, it's common knowledge that I can get away with murder. That's giving me complicated feelings. Sure, I've taken a pass for some pretty egregious outrages already. Beating down military officers in front of their troops. Threatening royalty to their face. Suspected of several murders that never got confirmed. Some really questionable self-defense charges.

I helped kidnap a girl out of her classroom yesterday. And I was able to virtually steal a ducal succession right in the open. Killing a guy who had publicly threatened to murder me was in its own class but not by much. But, it's still corruption. It's still injustice and bad governance.

I was profiting from it, and I was using this power for ends that were either very positive or long-term investments in the future, and what I was doing was necessary, but I remain conflicted by the fact that it's still exploitative and unscrupulous. I don't mind the privileges but I wish there was a more wholesome system behind them. I watched the guardsmen leave, and even with all this said I was struck by how friendly and easy the process had been.

Usually I at least have to mention the High Council or the consensus of the Houses before I can get law enforcement to step back off my toes. These guys were glad to be letting me off the hook. If I had to guess? It's all about that chair. The local military garrison exchanges a lot of personnel with the city guard, these senior officers might have been some of the ones that I scored major points with by beating down Major Fudlosa.

I have been deliberately currying goodwill among the military forces, this may have spilled over into local law enforcement. Usually unintended consequences work against me, but not always. Well, it was lunch time, but the steward at the dead man's house had locked the door with no subtlety at all, so I was not going to be poaching from his dining room like everyone else had.

The nearest takeaway stall was selling some street food I'd never heard of before, a sort of spiced bread curled into a cone, filled with chutney and some breaded cubes of diced chicken. Apparently it was a common vendor food in Fidiange called ginger batting, but damn if I'd ever heard heard of it. I carried my experimental lunch with me a few steps through a portal and back to the school, munching as I walked. Through the entryway to the student center and across the dining hall, which was already quite full.

I was running rather late, most everyone else had already gotten served and sat down. I found my friends and moved to sit with them. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Afternoon ladies," I said, taking the empty seat.

"What did I miss?" Vancy looked at my ginger batting, which I was eating like an ice-cream cone by necessity.

"Where did you get that?"

"Um, Pinewheel street. Corner of Clipaway. Apparently it's called a ginger batting, it's from Fidiange."

"Ginger- oh, hah," Rinnie snickered.

"And he probably told you those breaded bits are chicken, didn't he?"

"Yes," I said.

"Why? What are they really?" Rinnie looked at me, thought some stuff through in her head, and decided to lie to me.

"... chicken," she said. I chose to believe the comforting lie rather than ask what I've actually been tricked into eating. Vancy looked a bit alarmed.

"Natalie! You shouldn't be walking around the city alone right now! Someone has hired assassins to kill you!"

"Took care of it, just now," I said, and took a bite. Elica gave me a hard glance.

"What do you mean you 'took care of it'?" Larianne clacked her claws against the table.

"She means that she went and killed the guy that's behind it. What else could she do?" Elica's face twisted with distaste. Can't blame her. Now that I'm paying attention, this tastes less and less like chicken. She set her fork down.

"Tell me you were civilized about this and hired someone rather than doing your own dirty work like some beggar."

"Nope," I said.

"I actually used my bare hands." I waggled my manicured fingers at her. Not a spot of blood on them. Well, I used my hands and sorcery. Channeled essence for strength and stability. But the business end was my hands. While Elica heaved her disappointment in a big, long-suffering sigh, Vancy framed a new question.

"So, why did he do it, really? He had to know that you're, pardon me saying so, dangerous." Her brows were knitted together and her fingers laced nervously.

"Well, from his perspective he had to," I said.

"Lydpel had built his stock on taking big risks and never letting anything stand in his way. So as soon as I became someone that was in his way, who he could not remove safely, he had to start finding unsafe ways to remove me. Anyway, it turned out he had a whole ambush set up and his assassin threats were just a way to get me to rush at him." Elica quirked a smile.

"And did you know better than to rush straight into an ambush?"

"That's a very loaded question," I protested.

"With many unflattering assumptions built in! But, no, I charged straight in." Larianne traced the wood grain on the table with her talon-like nails.

"As should have been expected. You seem quite capable of subterfuge and patience when you are at a remove from violence, but once you get personal you are remarkably direct." Well, I'm glad she thinks so, because honestly that's an impression I'm working to cultivate. This was actually a part of my thought process when I was deciding how to deal with the Lydpel situation. As usual, I'm trying to accomplish multiple things at once. So while I did want to get rid of a threat to myself, that was only part of it.

Another part is to preserve my reputation: every hour that he was alive helped secure the perception that I can be threatened safely with no repercussions. Another part is that I needed to create some more distance between myself and the Debt Collector: if he shows up to solve all my problems for me, then his crimes are more easily linked to me. But also, I kind of want to lock in the public perception that if Natalie Harigold wants to kill someone, it happens fast and violent and unambiguous.

After all, the girl that explodes blackmailers and burns magisters and stabs people for threatening assassination can't be the same girl that arranged a complicated plot to kidnap and kill the princess and then reveal that murder in such a way as to score serious political clout. Every time I do something obviously hasty and direct it adds another layer of doubt onto any associations with complex plots.

"He's probably lucky he got you," Elica said.

"I actually thought he was trying to draw the Debt Collector out." Yeah, he probably was. After all, apparently now there's a bounty on the Collector.

"What debt collector?" Vancy asked. Larianne set down her glass.

"Oh, it's someone that works with the Duskare assassins to keep their clients honest." Vancy's eyes got wide.

"House Duskare has assassins?!" I chuckled.

"Sometimes it's like a whole other world, isn't it?" I said to Larianne. She turned to Vancy.

"I'll go into detail later. For now, I'll give you the short version. Duskare has so many assassins."

"Wow." I leaned in on Larianne. Not really for privacy but just for the impression of it.

"By the way, speaking of all the violence I've been up to lately. I've stumbled onto the contact information for about two dozen recently-unemployed mana warriors who are willing to work cheap. One of whom I think will work just for booze."

"I'll see that information gets to the relevant parties," Larianne said smoothly. Meaning her uncle the marquis.

"Kind of a windfall," I said.

"Getting so many powerful warriors at the same time, all needing work." Elica used her fork and knife to cut her pasta into bite-sized pieces like some kind of heathen. While she cut noodles down to forkfuls, she said, "Not really all that surprising. The market has been glutted lately. There have always been more mana-capable people than weapons to go around. Equipment limitations were what kept them restricted, and that restriction was what made them expensive to hire.

But now that the market is flooded with so many new mana weapons, armors and accessories, it's pushed down the whole market."

"I didn't think you followed those things," I said to her. If I stop thinking about what Rinnie said, this ginger batting is actually pretty good. I won't be going back for more.

"Normally, no, but Brunbling and Greifir are the main sellers for this new supply," she pointed out.

"Lots of the other earls are involved in this." Oh, right. Uchislowi, the monster-filled jungle that was being dismantled. The paladins of Greifir and the rangers of Brunbling had been hard at work these past few months, cutting paths through the trees, wiping out dens and strongholds. Looking back, it does seem like more and more mana weapons I've seen have been nailmonkey claws, centaur skulls, skywhale leather and fumefox hides. Also torcs, circlets, buckles and bracers made from them.

A quarter of the weapons brandished against me an hour ago had been nailmonkeys. Adding just a quarter more to the supply would definitely impact the employment market pretty hard. This was not something that happened before. The game devs never gave Nathan the opportunity to offer the jungle's secrets to an alliance of two houses, so nobody ever made appreciable progress against its territory. Pushing the story further from Nathan's version, that's good. This is saving the world.

I would rather that it didn't create so many more mana warriors that are actually dangerous to me. Hopefully the rest of the contenders for the revolt will back off now that Ervhsez Lydpel is gone. I should hope that finding out that I can murder them with impunity would discourage them from acting out. I really hope that there's not that many people here that would force me to kill them if they don't have to. That would be disappointing.