Chapter 113: You Can’t Go In With Four

The Dungeon Management Hall took up the whole of one side of a square, and it was the loudest building Theo had been inside since Meteor City.

Four hundred people, maybe more. Guild banners hung down the pillars in two long rows, and under every banner there was a table, and at every table somebody was arguing about a split. The floor was flagstone worn into dips by boots. Somewhere on the left a man was shouting numbers off a board and a clerk was shouting them back at him wrong on purpose.

Theo stood inside the doors for a moment and let it wash over him.

’Okay. This is basically the Meteor City on a festival day.’

He liked it immediately, and then he made himself stop liking it and pay attention.

At the far end of the hall there was a stone counter with six clerks behind it and a rope line in front of it, and Theo joined the back of the rope line like anybody else.

He had thought about the other thing on the ride in.

’It’d be safer for me to not use Sky’s Husband, since it’s up there on the First Floor’s Leaderboard.’

Although, Theo knew not using the name meant losing the perks that came with such high reputation. But it didn’t come close to jeopardizing his appearance and coming into the limelight. He wouldn’t want Estea’s stepmother to recognize him for example.

’So I’m Theo. Just Theo.’

He got to the counter after twenty minutes.

The clerk was a woman with ink to the second knuckle and a queue behind him she could feel.

"Name."

"Theo."

"Full."

"Theolyne."

She wrote it, and then she stopped, and looked at the line where the reputation ought to have gone, and looked back up at him.

"You have no standing here."

"I’ve got a rank card."

"A rank card is only used to ascertain your potential, it’s nothing between us Towerians, you can give that to the guilds and Factions, sir, it will not get you a Dungeon."

She turned the ledger round and tapped it twice with the nib without inking the page, which was a thing she had clearly done four thousand times.

"Standing is name. Name is what a Hall will insure. You have four hundred people in this room who will not walk past a door with an unnamed man behind them, and I would not either."

’...Right. Fair.’

"What can an unnamed man get?"

"Tier F. Tier E if a registered party signs for you." She was already reaching for the next form. "And you cannot enter any Dungeon at any Tier with fewer than five. Hall rule. It is not negotiable."

Theo leaned on the counter.

"Then how does a man with no standing find four people who’ll sign with him?"

The clerk looked at him for the first time, properly, and there was something almost like pity in it.

"He doesn’t. That is the whole of the system, sir. Next."

He came away from the counter with a Tier F chit in his hand and no party, and he was still turning the thing over when the four of them came at him from three directions.

They were good at it. He gave them that afterwards.

One took the space in front, one drifted in behind on the left, and two stood off at a lazy angle where a man’s eyes go when he is looking for a way out. Nobody touched him. Nobody said anything loud enough for the counter to hear.

The one in front had a shaved head and a leather half-gorget and a smile with a lot of use left in it.

"Friend. You look stuck."

"I’m managing."

"You’re stuck. Let me guess you need four more bodies to get a dungeon?" He put two fingers on the chit in Theo’s hand, not taking it, just resting them there. "Harl. I run finding. Forty gold and you walk out of here with four people."

’Forty Gold. One gold is basically, close to a thousand dollars, so this bastard is asking me for forty thousand dollars just to find people for me?’

Theo kept his face where it was.

"And if the four names don’t turn up?"

"They always turn up."

"That isn’t what I asked."

Harl’s smile did not move but everything behind it did.

The one on the left came in a half step, which was the whole of the argument, and the hall went on being loud all around them and not one of the four hundred looked over.

’They do this in the open, in the middle of a Hall with six clerks in it, which means the clerks know.’

Theo let his weight come off his heels.

He was going to break the man’s wrist. He had already picked the wrist, and the angle, and the piece of floor he was going to put him on, and he had decided he would do it slowly enough that it looked like an accident to anyone at the counter.

Then the hall went quiet.

It did not go quiet all at once. It went quiet in a wave that started at the doors and came down the length of the room like a hand smoothing a cloth, table by table, banner by banner, and Harl’s fingers came off the chit before Theo had worked out what was happening.

A man had come in.

He was tall, and he came up the middle of the floor as though the floor had been put there for him, and his hair was maroon and long enough to sit on his collar, and he had two swords crossed at the small of his back with the grips standing out either side of him.

Behind him was three women.

Harl was already talking, and his voice had gone up a full tone.

"Donzo. Donzo, we were only—"

Donzo did not stop walking. He came past Harl close enough to move the air and Harl went backwards into his own man, and Donzo turned round on the spot with his arms out wide like a host.

"Was somebody selling my friend a party?"

Nobody answered him.

"Was somebody selling my friend a party," Donzo repeated, delighted, "in my Hall, on a Tuesday?"

Harl left. All four of them left, and they did it without turning their backs, and it took them a very long time to reach the doors.

Theo stood there with a Tier F chit in his hand.

’I did not need that, and now I’m going to have to be grateful about it!’

Donzo turned to him with the whole of his attention at once, which was its own kind of pressure, and put out a hand.

"Donzo. You’re new."

"Theo. And thanks for saving me.

Donzo raised his gaze.

"Saving you? I’m pretty sure, I saved those fools."

’...’

Theo shook the hand politely and still repeated.

"Thank you still, I guess."

Donzo laughed, once, and it was a good laugh, wide open and completely without warmth in the eyes above it, and he did not let go of the hand for a beat longer than he needed to.

"I’ve got three. I need five." He tipped his head back at the women without looking at them. "What do you say, we could challenge a dungeon together?"

Theo let the Genesis Eyes come open.

He kept his face doing the polite thing while the ache came up behind his sockets, and he read the three of them one at a time over Donzo’s shoulder.

[Target: Human — female, 24]

[Realm: Mundane — Middle Stage]

[Condition: Chronic exhaustion. Two ribs healed badly. Untreated.]

[Note: Elevated stress response. Source is within four feet.]

[Target: Human — female, 19]

[Realm: Mundane — Early Stage]

[Condition: Malnourished]

[Note: Elevated stress response. Source is within four feet.]

[Target: Human — female, 22]

[Realm: Mundane — Middle Stage]

[Condition: Fractured left hand, set without a splint]

[Note: Elevated stress response. Source is within four feet.]

Theo’s thumb went still on the chit.

’Source is within four feet. All three of them. Same line, same wording.’

The nineteen-year-old had a face on her that was doing a great deal of work, bright and open and pointed at Theo, and behind it the panel was telling him her pulse.

Then he read Donzo.

[Target: Human — male, 31]

[Realm: Enhanced — Middle Stage]

[Affinity: Fire — High]

[Note: Genesis Eyes has detected a records discrepancy]

[Note: This Climber has registered eleven parties in nineteen months]

’Eleven parties in nineteen months, and he’s standing here with three.’

Theo shut the eyes and put the ache away and smiled at the man like an idiot who had just been rescued.

"What Tier are you running?"

"C."

Somebody at the nearest table put a cup down.

’A Tier C Dungeon should be pretty right, I’m still in the Mundane Realm and only looking forward to something that will help me test my abilities. This definitely will be a hassle.’

’...Okay. Then let’s go and find out what he is recruiting.’

Theo put the chit in his coat.

"I’m in."

Donzo’s eyebrows went up, and for half a second something genuinely surprised crossed the man’s face, and Theo filed that away too.

"You didn’t ask about the split."

"You didn’t offer one."

That got the laugh again.

"I like you, Theo." Donzo clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to move him. "Gate opens at six tomorrow. Eat something first, the ones who don’t always regret it."

He walked off up the hall, and the noise came back in behind him table by table the way it had gone out.

The three women went after him.

The one with the badly set hand came past Theo last, and she did not look at him, and she did not slow down, and as she went by she said four words at the floor without moving her mouth very much at all.

"Don’t come to the gate."