Downtown Druid

It was almost time. He could feel it in his bones, and his branches. All of his moves had paid off, all of his plans had been carried out, and his contingencies were mapped. He’d stripped Mondego piece by piece, and now with him at his lowest, he’d finally end him. Admittedly, it wasn’t as low as Mondego had brought him, and that did bother him. There were some plans he’d had that involved getting him sent to the Pit, but whatever luck, whatever armor, he seemed to gain from his greedmark seemed to make a complete and utter loss like that an impossibility. The only way to overcome it was some kind of push, and if he was going to make that kind of push, he needed to take his life too. He was just waiting for an opening, some small window with his men distracted or him leaving his manor to go to the club. If nothing appeared naturally by the end of the week, he was going to make an opening.

He sat tying another small bag of gunpowder with an ignition stone inside of it and placing it to the side. He had about fifty, which would probably be all he needed, but it wasn’t like he wouldn’t find a use for any extras. A pigeon landed on his shoulder with a letter smelling of drake-tears, Mercedes. He’d left a few birds with standing orders to bring him any letters she wrote him so he could focus elsewhere. He had her tailed when she left the manor, but when she wasn’t active inside he couldn’t spare the attention. He fed the bird and scratched the top of its head as he removed the note from his leg.

Dantes,

I am leaving. I don’t know where I stand with you and I presume you feel the same about me, but I want you to come with me. Leave Mondego with the rope you’ve given him and I promise you he will hang himself. We can build a new life. Everything bad that has ever happened to us has happened in this city. We can leave all of that behind. Between the two of us, we can rule anywhere we land. Meet me at the docks or let me go, that’s all I ask.

• Mercedes

Dantes tossed the letter aside, he hated the smell of drake-tears. She didn’t provide a location because she knew he’d be watching where she went anyway. He flitted through the eyes of the rats and roaches he had watching the Manor and saw a woman wearing a simple black cloak. She slipped out of a second story window, and slid down the shingles in total silence. She then leapt down, and disappeared. Dantes shifted through the perspective of dozens of vermin until he found her again in an alley a block away making her way to the docks. He set some pigeons and rats to track her. He wasn’t sure how she’d gotten out of the manor. An enchantment of some kind? Some ability she’d picked up? He’d need to be careful. She had a deal of her own and with what Godfrey had been capable of it was possible that it manifested differently than just the cursed luck he’d seen so far.

Dantes moved quickly, cycling through the wands in his hand as he threw on his coat and slid his gun into his belt. He then put his new bronze dagger forged from copper coins into its sheath at his waist as well as a far more practical steel dagger in his sleeve.

Jacopo leapt off a nearby tree and landed on his shoulder.

“We hunt the female?”

Dantes nodded, with just a second of hesitation.

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