Chapter 97: Damian

Chapter 97: Chapter 97: Damian

The Rusty Nail was empty at noon.

The music was off. The chairs were up on the tables. The bartender had been paid to take the day off, and the iron door at the top of the stairs, which Evelyn had broken weeks ago, had been replaced with a new one.

Donald walked down the stairs alone, his gold mask on and his left arm out of the sling. The Abyssal Impact gauntlet sat under his sleeve with a full chamber. He had spent the morning letting it charge.

He wasn’t really alone. Sylvia was in the shadow under the bar. Nyx was asleep in a broken light fixture on the ceiling. And Evelyn was sitting on the roof of the building across the street with Starfall across her knees, close enough to come through the wall in two seconds.

Damian was sitting in the same corner booth where Silas the broker used to sit. He had a glass of water in front of him and a leather tube for documents on the seat beside him. He wore the gray coat Sylvia had described. His hands were flat on the table where Donald could see them.

He didn’t stand.

"Investor," he said.

"Damian."

Donald sat down across from him.

[Valuation Eye]

[Target: Damian]

[Class: Shadow Mage (A-Rank)]

[Level: 57]

[Status: Calm on the surface. Fear: High. No hostile spells active.]

[Note: Target is telling the truth about his intent to bargain.]

[Arcane Reading]

The shadows around Damian were still. There was no spell ready in them. Nothing was hidden under the table.

"You can stop checking," Damian said. "I know you have a way to see. Sterling never worked out what it was. Neither did I. But I watched you find my snare in the arena from fifty feet away." He turned his glass a quarter turn. "I am not here to fight. I would lose."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I am out of employers." Damian said it plainly, the way he said everything. "Sterling is in a cell. Vane is hiding in a cellar somewhere in Aldmere, waiting for the Association to find him. Dragonheart’s accounts are frozen. Every man I ever worked for is ruined, and every one of them was ruined by you."

"So you want to work for me."

"I want to work for the one man in this country nobody seems able to beat." Damian looked at the gold mask for a long moment. "And I want something else first. Something only you can give."

"Go on."

Damian took a breath. For the first time, his hands moved. He laid them closer together on the table.

"Three days ago, a woman came to my room in Sector 5. She knew my name, my real name, which no one living knows. She knew what I had done for Sterling, for Vane, all of it. She told me her master had need of a man who knew secrets. She said her master was a King."

Donald said nothing.

"I told her no," Damian said. "She smiled at me and said that nobody tells her master no for long. That those who refuse him wake up one morning agreeing with him, and never remember changing their minds." He looked down at his water. "Her master’s name is Dantalion."

[Valuation Eye]

[Note: Target is telling the truth.]

"You want protection," Donald said.

"I want your title," Damian said. "The one you were given in the Capital. It’s in the Association registry now. Breaker of Chains. Your Guild’s members can’t be bound by contract, by compulsion, or by suppression. If I am a member of your Guild, Dantalion can’t put his hands inside my head." He paused. "I would very much like to keep my own head, Investor."

Donald leaned back.

It was a fair price. It was also a large one. Damian had spent years doing Sterling’s dirtiest work. He had set the snare in the arena. He had come into Donald’s penthouse to kill him.

"What do I get?" Donald asked.

Damian picked up the leather tube and slid it across the table.

"The Crown Archive. Every floor. Every ward. Every guard rotation. And one thing that isn’t written in the plans, which I’ll tell you for free, as proof I mean what I say."

Donald opened the tube and pulled out the top sheet. It was a clean, careful drawing of a building seven floors deep. Each floor had notes in Damian’s small handwriting.

"The Archive door is sealed by seven Council locks," Damian said. "Everyone knows that. What people don’t know is that the Council opens it together once a month, to file new sealed papers. They call it the Ceremony of Seals. For twenty minutes, all seven locks are open at once." He tapped the drawing. "The next Ceremony is nine days from today."

Nine days. The resonance counter would be near 73% by then. There would still be time to turn the anchor.

"And one of the seats is empty now," Damian added. "Dragonheart’s. The Council hasn’t named a replacement. So for the first time in thirty years, the Ceremony will be held with only six Masters in the room. One lock will be opened by a clerk instead of a Guild Master." He looked up. "Clerks are easier to frighten than Guild Masters."

Under the bar, the shadow shifted slightly. Sylvia was listening.

Donald set the plans down.

"There’s something else," he said. "My eye says you’re telling the truth. It also says you’re afraid of something other than Dantalion."

Damian was quiet for a moment.

"You’re good," he said. Then: "Helena Cross. The woman you took from Weller Street."

"What about her?"

"Her husband died in a gate breach at her laboratory three years ago. The breach was classified as an accident." Damian’s voice didn’t change, but he stopped looking at Donald. "I wrote that report. Vane asked Sterling for a favor, and Sterling gave him me. There was no breach. There was a Dragonheart strike team, and when they were done, there was a report to write. I wrote it."

The room was very quiet.

"And the watcher outside her window," Donald said.

"Mine. Vane wanted to know if she was still writing. I kept watching after Vane fell because I didn’t know what else to do with her." Damian finally looked up. "If I’m going to work under your roof, she is going to find out what I did. Better she finds out from me. That’s my condition, not yours."

[Valuation Eye]

[Note: Target is telling the truth.]

Donald thought about it for a long time.

He thought about Helena turning her wedding ring with her thumb. He thought about the anchor in the basement, and thirty days, and seven locks.

"Here’s my offer," he said. "You get a TIG contract. You’re a recognized member as of today. That puts you under Breaker of Chains."

Damian let out a breath he’d been holding.

"You work for Aris Thorne," Donald went on. "Not for me, not for Evelyn. Aris. You give her everything you have on every Guild Master and politician in this city, and she decides what we do with it. Sylvia will be in your shadow whenever she likes, and you won’t know when. If you lie to me once, the contract ends, and Evelyn finds out where you live."

"Agreed," Damian said.

"And you tell Helena the truth yourself. Today."

Damian’s jaw tightened. Then he nodded once.

"Today," he said.

Donald took out his tablet and opened a standard TIG employment contract. He turned it toward Damian. Damian read every line, then pressed his thumb to the screen.

[New Guild Member Registered: Damian (A-Rank Shadow Mage).]

[Title Effect Applied: Breaker of Chains.]

[Damian is now immune to contracts, forced loyalty, and suppression.]

Damian closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, something in his shoulders had loosened.

"Thank you," he said.

Donald stood and picked up the leather tube.

"One more thing," Damian said, as Donald turned to leave. "You got three invitations to Aldmere yesterday. I’d guess you’re leaning toward the Marchmont Bank, because its rooms overlook Council Square."

Donald stopped.

"Don’t take it," Damian said. "Marchmont isn’t an investment house. It’s a front. Its board answers to the Council’s First Seat, and the First Seat hasn’t answered to the Council for years." He picked up his glass of water at last. "He answers to a King. The one who buys men instead of reading them."

"Paimon," Donald said.

Damian drank and set the glass down.

"Take Ashford Holdings instead," he said. "Their offices are two streets farther from the Square. But nobody at Ashford is trying to kill you."