Terror Nine   - Gold

There is one problem with Fancy.

Well, maybe not the man himself, other than his sense of fashion and what he’s chosen to do for a living. The problem is this meeting place. It’s open, and any of a dozen people could be listening in.

I’m not exactly trying to be stealthy, but a bit of subtlety wouldn’t go amiss.

“So, girl, how can the most handsome man in the room, any room, help you?”

I blink and stare at Fancy. “You’re not that handsome,” I say.

Fancy laughs, head tilting back with a roar. “Oh, that stings!”

“From the mouths of babes,” the one woman on a lounge chair to the side says. “How is your immeasurable pride ever going to recover, Fancy-dear?”

The man chuckles and shakes his head, still in a good mood. “Maybe I’ll convince the girl’s parents to go harder on the belt?”

“You’ve obviously never raised a child,” the woman says. She gestures to a man nearby and he opens a small leather satchel, pulls out a large silver spoon, and a brown glass bottle which he carefully pours into the spoon. “Speaking of bitterness.”

“Unfortunately, I’m not here to see your, um, beautiful visage, Mister Fancy,” I say.

“Oh?” he asks. “Well, my taste in girls does call for them to be a bit older, I’m afraid.”

“Uh,” I say. My core roils, disgust coming to the surface far easier than it usually does. This place is bad enough, but Fancy is just... he’s just setting off every alarm in my head at once.

One of Fancy’s hangers-on leans forwards and whispers something into his ears, the man’s eyes never leaving me. A mage, I recognize from the very thin bluish veins over his hands and around his too-gaunt face.

Fancy’s eyebrows rise, and he eyes me up and down. “You’re a mage, little girl?” he asks.

“I am,” I say.

“And, pray tell, what sort of magic did you just use?” His tone is light, the kind of childish voice that people use when talking to kids and animals. It’s condescending.

“I didn’t cast any spells,” I admit. “That was just my core shifting.”

“Pink, right?” he asks, his attention back to the mage next to him. “I’m not a man of books. What’s pink magic, Siverus?”

Siverus smiles, and it’s a greasy, oily sort of smile. “Disgust, Lord Fancy. The Dark magic.”

I can feel the mood shifting a little, some of the hangers-on holding back smiles, and that one woman in the nice robes laughing aloud even as she waves her spoon around. “Oh, that stings, doesn’t it, Fancy? Some laudanum for the pain?”

I glare at them all. “I’m not here to use any magic,” I say. “I’m here for information.”

Fancy seems a little less amicable. I think inadvertently insulting him put me on his bad side. Or maybe it’s just the way I got his... companions to laugh at him that’s annoying him. Either way, it’s making things harder than they need to be. “What exactly are you here for, girlie?”

“Information,” I repeat. “I need to know a few things, and I’ve been told that you’re a reliable source of answers.”

“Oh, how serious-sounding,” he says. “What do you need to know?”

I nod. Finally, I’m getting somewhere. “I need to know what happened to the Dark Temple,” I say.

“It burned down,” he replies with a shrug. “That one was free!”

“I had noticed,” I say. “I’m mostly curious about

who

burnt it down.”

“Ah, now that’s an interesting question,” Fancy says as he leans forward. There’s a glimmer of something in his eyes. A skill? Or maybe just a whole lot of curiosity. “Perhaps I could tell you that much. What’s the knowledge worth to you, little miss? Your month’s allowance of billon?”

“Maybe,” I say. “It depends on whether or not you can answer.”

“I can,” he says. There’s no uncertainty there, and I’m inclined to agree. “I wonder why a little lost lamb like yourself wants to know.”

“What’s the knowledge worth to you?” I ask.

He slumps back into his throne with a groan. “Oh, she’s learning fast! The Three save me from precocious girls.” His entourage join in the laughter until he sits up straighter. “Is that all you want to know, little miss?”

“No, there’s more. I’d like to know

why

the temple was burned down, too. And for that matter, what happened to Javier Juárez.”

“That’s not a name I thought I would hear from you,” he said. “A relation of yours?”

“I think my relations are my own business.”

“Oh, come now, I’m curious.”

I hesitate. “For your month’s allowance of billon, I’ll say.”

“Sassy brat,” he fires back, but it’s venomless. “Well, I am a businessman, and I take all business, whether from the old and decrepit”—he gestures to the older lady in the lounge chair who promptly replies by showing him her thumb sticking out between her index and middle-finger—“or, of course, from the terribly young. Now, my information does not come cheap. It is of the highest quality, after all.”

“Can you answer all three questions, then?” I ask.

Fancy nods magnanimously. “I can. Can you afford to pay?”

“I think I can, yes,” I reply.

He smacks his hands together in a loud, cheerful clap. “Then we have all we need to conduct business! Ten gold, little miss, and I will answer any and all questions you may have of me.”

Ten gold? I’m not really sure how much gold is really worth. It’s hard to keep track of things, and in the books I’ve read, its value is never quite the same. I can remember reading about an assassination carried out for one gold coin, and a kingly ransom of a thousand, but that doesn’t really help.

Worse, the value of gold and silver and billon fluctuate a bunch, even in relation to each other. Is one gold worth a hundred silver, or just eighty? How much is bread worth?

“You seem conflicted,” Fancy says. The chuckles from his companions leads me to believe that the price is on the high end. “Tell you what. I also trade in favours. A small job, a little bit of work, and you’ll have all the answers you need.”

“No, that’s fine,” I say. I start rooting inside my cloak, some of my little friends moving around so that they’re not in the way.

“Ah now, the work isn’t so hard,” Fancy says.

“What? Oh no, I just don’t have time for side-quests. Here.” I quickly count out ten coins, then hold them out towards Fancy. “Ten gold, and you’ll answer any question I have, right? I do hope you intend to answer them truthfully.”

Fancy looks at me, then at the gold. He’s gobsmacked, at least for a few seconds. His grin returns.” How surprising! Come, follow me; I think you’ve paid for a little bit of privacy.”

I step back as Fancy bounces off his throne, then sweeps past, his cape billowing out behind him.

Turning, I try to share a look with Felix, who is being very quiet, but her head is down and she doesn't have eyes to share a look with besides. “I guess we follow him,” I mutter.

Fancy brings us to a large office adjacent to the main room. It seems to double as a bedroom of sorts, with a bed tucked away in the corner next to a window with what looks like a movable board before it.

The desk is plain wood, undecorated, and there are books on a little shelf that catch my eye until I realize that they’re probably just accounting ledgers. It’s all very underwhelming, though the wardrobe overflowing in one corner is very, very colourful.

Fancy spins around in the middle of the room, then gestures over my head. The mage, Siverus, closes the door. “Alright. Are you really some noble brat who doesn’t know the value of gold?” he asks. “Or is this something else?”

“I’m not a brat,” I say.

“But you don’t deny being noble? You do know that we’ve kidnapped nobles before, right? No, no, don’t worry. We don’t make a habit of kidnapping children. It’s bad business, gets all the snobby sorts riled up, and I’m not that kind of monster.”

“I really do just want some questions answered,” I say.

“And you’re willing to pay enough gold to buy a nice house in the North Quarter for that?” he asks.

“Yes.” Oops?

“In that case,” he says with an expansive gesture. “Ask away!”

I nod. Finally. “Tell me what happened to the Dark temple, who burned it down, who ordered it burned down, the reactions of the local nobility to it, and any big changes in the way the other temples are acting. I also need to know everything you have on Javier Juárez, his operation, and, most importantly, the whereabouts of his last shipment destined to the Land of Monsters.”

“That’s a lot of questions about the Dark Goddess’ business,” Fancy says.

“I thought you had answers, not more questions.”

He grins. “I do. Now, from the top...”

***