Chapter Three-Hundred Sixty-Four (Patreon)

Zorro and Cappy want my attention.  When two Spymasters say you should hear something, you should probably listen.  It’s a little weird getting him into the secret war room, with Onyx carrying a little planter with a bit of his mycelia and a mushroom sticking out of it.  He doesn’t need to be all in one piece to function?  That’s kinda terrifying.

Still, that’s terrifying that’s on my side, so I don’t worry about it… though I do make a note to have Queen and Thing sweep the area to make sure there’s no spores once we’re done.  Inviting him over is one thing, but I don’t need him moving in.  Anyway, he and Zorro sit at the table, with Onyx and Teemo translating.

Zorro starts us off with yips and grunts, which Teemo dutifully translates.  “Apparently, the welcome for Tarl and Yvonne’s party spooked the Earl and the thieves both.  If I had to guess, the Earl had never seen something like that, and the thieves were reminded of the fight with Hullbreak.  Either way, Zorro says the Earl was extra observant when he snuck out last night, always looking around like he thought he was being followed.  He was, of course, but he never saw Zorro or any of the other foxes.  Zorro tracked him to the guild and had to leave the inside to Cappy.”

All three scions turn their attention to Cappy’s planter, and I wonder how he actually communicates.  I don’t see any movement, or detect anything else for that matter.  However he does it, Onyx soon translates.

“He says the Earl and the mistress thief were both unnerved, and were trying to decide if their plan would still work.  Unfortunately, they didn’t say specifically what the plan was.  It sounded like some kind of attack, but the two were familiar enough with the details that they never voiced them.  They also mentioned trying to bring in some mercenaries or other thieves or something from outside, using other ratkin, spiderkin, and antkin to try to blame the attack on and frame the enclaves or even you.”

Teemo frowns at that as I consider the new information.  Blaming me for an attack would only make it harder to get at my resources.  Getting me reclassified as murderous would basically cut off normal delving, if they could manage to make it stick, which I seriously doubt.  But if we assume it goes to his plan, why snuff me out?

First, he thinks I’m stupid, so he might not be aiming for an actual murderous classification.  He’s also a world-class sleezeball, and I could see him trying to convince poor stupid Thedeim that he talked with the Dungeoneers to not get me labeled as murderous, but I’ll have to listen to his advice or they might change their minds.  And if he’s not going for that angle… he still might win by letting me starve.

He has connections for some of the herbs and mythril, and keeping in mind his sleezeballness, having the resources is only half of the deal, at most.  He also has people who will owe him, people he’ll have leverage on.  I have to imagine even he’d think it’s too much to utterly monopolize those industries elsewhere, but there’s probably a lot more raw production with like a huge herb plantation and a gigantic mine than I could make.  I’m maybe at cottage industry scale, but he could be looking at proper industrial scale.

So of course he’s trying to make a no-lose situation for himself.  If he can trick a stupid dungeon, he gets even more stuff.  If he can’t, he blames it for a disaster and eliminates a threat to his monopoly.  It all hinges on pinning some kind of attack on me.  But why at the Hold?

Teemo Voices my thoughts.  “If it’s just an attack, why focus on the hold?  It’s out of the way, without many people to attack.  If he wanted something like that, why not try to make it look like the Boss is attacking the town itself?”

The silence stretches for a few seconds before Zorro yips.  “He says the townsfolk wouldn’t buy it.  Even if they somehow were able to make it look like a sudden wave of hostile expeditions, the people in general would think the attack was from somewhere else,” translates Teemo, before adding his own two cents.

“And that’s not even counting the rapid counterattack you’d bring down on something like that.  But the Hold has a lot of people from outside.  Most of them still haven’t done a single delve.  If there was some kind of attack, they’d probably believe it was us.”

“And then they’d leave and spread the word of how dangerous or at least unstable you are,” adds Onyx unhappily.

“Hmm… maybe.  But with the army parked outside the Hold right now, it’ll be hard for them to stage anything like that,” muses Teemo, and he’s right.  With the army there, any kind of direct attack should be easily stopped, right?  Mercenaries aren’t going to take a huge paycheck if it means not only do they actually need to fight the army, but probably need to get a lot of themselves killed to sell the illusion.

“We’re still missing something,” admits Teemo with a sigh.  “A normal attack just isn’t an option with the army there, but Cappy didn’t hear them making any big changes, right?”

He looks to the mushroom for an answer and soon nods.  “Right, no changes, aside from bringing in a few kin from outside.  So they have some way to get around the army.”

“Could the Earl order them inside the Hold as a defensive maneuver?” asks Onyx, and Teemo shrugs.

“He could try, but I dunno if they’d listen to him.  If there was a counter army approaching, maybe, but I seriously doubt the Earl could pull something like that without the Boss noticing.  Even with that Toja lady leading the thieves, I don’t think they have the numbers to force the army to take a defensive position in the Hold, especially if it means potentially leaving the town to fend for itself.”

We need to get more information.  Frustratingly, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to passively get it, though.  Even with Cappy listening in, we only know vaguely of an attack, but we don’t know what it’ll be.

…I think we need to try to bring in Tupul.  He may be on the bottom of the totem pole, but he’s our only path to try to infiltrate the thieves and be able to actually ask questions.  It’ll be a longshot, though, and risky to boot.  There’s a lot of secrets we could potentially filter through him into the guild to try to get him the clout to be read in on the actual plan.  Which means we’ll probably need to talk with Freddie and Rhonda, maybe Rezlar, too.

“That’s risky, Boss.”

I know, but I think we’re running out of safe options.  With the status quo, they’re not going to talk about their plan, because everyone who needs to know already knows.  But if we can elevate Tupul, they’ll need to tell him to ensure their asset is safe.  If they think he has an in with Rezlar, they wouldn’t want to risk something happening to him in the attack.  Though even that’s a longshot.  They already have access to the Earl, so Rezlar may be redundant to try to bait them with.

Teemo folds his arms, thinking, as Onyx speaks up.

“What’s he thinking?”

“Oh, sorry.  He wants to try to get Tupul some extra pull in the guild so he can be let in on whatever the plan is.  The problem is in trying to get the information they’d actually be interested in.  He was thinking of trying to bait them with Rezlar, if he’s open to it, but considering they already are working with the Earl, they might not even be interested.”

Everyone frowns as they think that over, before gasping and looking at Cappy.

What’d he say?

Teemo frowns deeply as he chews over whatever the fungus said, and soon translates.  “He suggested Rezlar might be the target, not the town itself.”

That… that’s… it makes a twisted sort of sense.  A big attack just isn’t an option, but an assassination?  That’d be a lot easier to blame on me with a few out-of-town kin.  It’d also give the Earl the option of either acting like it happened without my knowledge, and so get me under his thumb with him offering guidance, or be a fine excuse to get me declared murderous.  And with Rezlar gone, he could easily step in and either take over directly, or put someone loyal to him in the mayor’s seat.

Is the Earl enough of a slimebag to sacrifice his son for his ambitions?  I’d like to think not… but Rezlar doesn’t have a high opinion of him, and I get the feeling Miller likes him even less.  For ambitious people, even family can be seen as mere tools.

Teemo, see if Freddie and Rhonda can get Tupul to come on another delve.  We need to see if he’s willing to be a triple agent.  We also need to ask Rezlar if he’s willing to be our bait to get more information.  We need to be careful about how we let him and Miller know about our suspicion and our plan to confirm it.

Rezlar would probably say yes, but if we don’t break it to Miller just right, the Earl and the guild will probably vanish like Hoffa.