Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

”Please, Mr. Sherman, do not assume from the cadaver on your floor that I am somehow incapable of choosing the more... mutually beneficial road,” Laedio said, sliding his chair a few inches to the right, away from the slowly widening pool of blood. ”Well, mutually beneficial for everyone except this fellow here.”

He gestured lazily toward the corpse, as if discussing a spilled cup rather than a man whose life had ended moments before.

”Now,” he continued, tapping a finger against the table, ”given my name and reputation, I trust you have at least an outline of why I am here?

Yes? It is not, after all, an enigma that strains the imagination. You are criminal.”

Sherman made no attempt at denial. The shoemaker stood trembling, pale, and hollow-eyed.

Laedio nodded approvingly.”Good. I am grateful you aren’t insulting both our time and my intelligence by denying. And luck smiles on you today, Mr. Sherman. You should be very glad it is I sitting across this table. Had the legions been stationed in the capital, you would by now be missing your nails, your teeth, and perhaps half your sanity.”

He leaned in, lowering his voice to a conversational tone.”I assure you, you would have died dangling from a chain with soiled pants. I’ve witnessed their methods. Remarkable efficiency. Unpleasant artistry.But like any, it has his critics and lovers.” He gave a theatrical shiver. ”Fortunately for you, I am, when circumstances permit as they do now,a man who prefers gentler methods.”

Gentler, of course, only meant necessary. His preferred methods were simply unavailable at the moment.

There was a reason the place wasn’t currently shaking under the boots of the city guard. A reason no helmets glinted outside the windows, no ram shattered the door. For five long months they had raided hideouts, smashed workshops, flipped tables and cupboards, only to discover that the noise of their arrival gave the people hiding below ample time to flee through tunnels too numerous and too cleverly concealed.

This time, there would be no warning.No footsteps pounding overhead.No shouted orders.No clatter of armored men moving furniture.

Silence was their only advantage. And so here he sat, composed and deliberate, spinning conversation atop a corpse to buy exactly that.

He would not allow the mistake of last month or the month before, to repeat itself.

Not when they still had no confirmation of how many tunnels lay beneath, or where they led. Not when even the spies who had made it inside could only guess at the complete layout.

Everything depended on quiet.Quiet, and a terrified man willing to cooperate.

That was why he was here.And why Sherman still breathed.

”Now then,” Laedio began, tilting his head as though listening for something beneath the floorboards, ”I presume given the refreshing absence of shouting that those below cannot hear us particularly well?”

To his pleasure, Sherman gave a shaky nod.

”Wonderful.’’ he smiled. ”As I mentioned, this does not need to end with you screaming on a rack while the men we’re hunting vanish into the wind. Neither of us desires that outcome.” He placed his cup down with gentle precision. ”So I will ask a few simple questions.”

He cleared his throat softly.

”Do you have anyone close to you currently being held hostage?”

The reaction was immediate; the man’s breath hitched like a mule struck across the ribs.

”Y–yes. My son, my lord.”

”That is why you’re working for them?”

A miserable nod.

Tricky indeed...

”I am well aware of their methods,” Laedio went on, voice smooth as oiled stone. ”During raids we often found rooms where children and women were kept. The criminals set to guard them, of course, usually abandoned ship long before we breached the door. The hostages were taken into custody.”

A flicker of fragile hope crossed Sherman’s eyes.

”Of course,” Laedio added delicately, ”they were relatives of criminals. So the gallows awaited them as well.A noble reason I fear doesn’t make a crime more noble.”

The hope curdled instantly. Sherman’s knees nearly buckled.

”M–my son is innocent,” he croaked.

”Please, Mr. Sherman,” Laedio said, reaching forward just enough to make the man flinch, only to pluck his own cup from the table with a look of pleasant surprise. ”Who would be foolish enough to think the hostages are guilty? They are collateral. Yet their fathers and husbands were accomplices in crimes, ugly ones. Slave trading, for example. Illegal, as you know, since the majority of those trafficked were Yarzat folk.”

He swirled the cider in his cup.”But your situation is even worse. Counterfeiting the royal sigil... ah. A simple hanging is optimistic. For some, the Wheel is far more fitting.”

The man’s color drained so completely he looked carved from wax.No one wanted the Wheel.

”Now,” Laedio continued softly, ”such endings can be avoided, for your son, for your entire household, and for you. Your cooperation in the fulfillment of my duty, that is, the apprehension of the Crown’s enemies, I assure you, will not be met with punishment but instead with reward.”

He took a refined sip.

”You will have a full pardon. Your family untouched. A sum of coin for your bravery today. Your shop left to prosper.” His smile thinned. ”Provided you are cooperative.”

But he saw it, the hesitation, the doubt flickering like a dying candle.

”How do I know,” Sherman whispered, ”you will save my child before it is too late?”

Laedio set his cup aside with a click that seemed far too loud in the small room.

”Mr. Sherman,” he said quietly, ”do you know why I was given my nickname?”

”I do.”

”One does not earn it simply by performing his duty. Tell me what is my duty?”

”You... you were tasked with uprooting thieves and criminals from the city.”

A one-cheeked smile tugged at Laedio’s mouth.

”The prince himself could not have phrased it better. But the title I bear that is not awarded for merely showing up to work. The things I’ve achieved were not reached through half-measures. I place my entire being into the hunt.”

He leaned back not in leisure, but with the posture of a man listening to some private music.

”If there is any reason for my existence, it is that of catching rats.”

His voice softened further, strangely intimate.

”I do not sleep when I know they crawl under my nose. I cannot eat when I sense their tunnels shifting beneath the streets. I cannot breathe comfortably so long as one of them slips through my fingers.”

”And I have not slept well in months, Mr. Sherman.”

Laedio said it almost conversationally, as though commenting on the weather.

”I am growing... fed up,” he continued, fingers drumming lightly on the arm of his chair. ”Fed up with this infestation I scrape away day after day. Fed up with the endless tunnels, the endless dens, the endless procession of vermin that scuttle just out of reach.” He inhaled slow, as though tasting the memory. ”Fed up with catching them one by one instead of parading the whole brood to the gallows where they belong, before the very eyes of the people they’ve ruined.”

His gaze drifted toward the corpse on the floor, and his lips barely twitched.

”And I am growing exceedingly annoyed, Mr. Sherman, that you, willingly or not are sheltering those enemies of the Crown, and yet you sit here refusing to extend a hand toward the very man trying to pluck your child out of the wolf’s mouth.”

Sherman swallowed, but Laedio didn’t let him speak.He leaned forward a fraction, voice lowering into a softness far more threatening than any bellow.

”I do not care about innocence,” he murmured. ”I do not care whether some children cling to a splinter of wood while their limbs are broken.I do not care if you and your family perish” His eyes didn’t blink. ”All I care is catching rats.And you are in the way of that.

I have offered you a lifeline,” Laedio went on. ”I have promised to save your child. I have promised a pardon for you and for every soul bound to your name. And yet here I sit, waiting. Waiting, Mr. Sherman... when I should be doing my duty.”

Tap

He tapped his fingernail once against the cup of cider.

”Are you a rat perhaps Mr. Sherman? I am one step away from giving the order for my men to search this place themselves. And if they do if they overturn every plank and stone and go crashing down there like a river breaking its banks, well...” He gave a polite shrug. ”Whether the choice is theirs or mine, the Wheel will be waiting for you.”

Sherman let out a strangled sound, half-gasp, half-plea.

”And you will die,” Laedio whispered. ”You will die not knowing if the rats below will dispose of your child once they realize his father’s value has... diminished.”

He paused, letting the image bloom fully in the man’s mind.

”We have found children’s bodies in the sewers before.” He said it with clinical detachment, as though reciting an inventory. ”I do not care if we find a few more.Did I make my point?”

Sherman broke then. His breath hitched; his face twisted; tears coursed down, leaving pale streaks on his blood-spattered cheeks. He sank back, a man unmade.

Laedio leaned toward him with the composure of a priest hearing confession.

”Then I will say this only once more.”His voice was level, almost gentle.”Point me the way. Allow me to uphold my moniker. Let me do what I exist to do.”

His eyes gleamed with a feverish, sleepless intensity.

”Are you willing to cooperate, Mr. Sherman?Your son’s life is in your hands alone.”