The Good Guys Chronicles Box Set 2 Read online

  “I suppose I am, yes.”

  “Then I can push it up to,” he flipped through his ledger, “ten.”

  “Thirty to ten? And how many of these are tier one?”

  “One.”

  “Tier two?”

  “None.”

  “The rest?”

  “Four are unranked, five are bottom tier.”

  “This does not inspire overwhelming confidence from me.”

  “Ah, but I have yet to tell you the good news.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Being that you are a man of the world, I assume you have no qualms with the use of magic.”

  “None.”

  “Then I have been authorized to offer you the employment of more wizards from the Magic Circle.”

  “Wizards.”

  “Yes. A geomancer might be the most useful thing for a man building a city. Or an enchanter. There are plenty of uses for magic.”

  “You don’t mind magic?”

  “Oh, I think it is a way to open yourself up to possession by Outsiders and how you will face the most vile of outcomes. Any use of magic is beyond evil, and those who practice it are an abomination.”

  “But—“

  “You will not be in Osterstadt, and I have no qualms with you becoming the lunch of abominations as long as those abominations are well away from me.”

  “Okay, well, I’m glad we’re finally to the honesty stage of things. Bring on the mages. How many can you get me?”

  “How many can you handle?”

  “All of them.”

  “Four then.”

  “I mean, I was supposed to have thirty people and now I’m down to fourteen. Not sure that’s quite fair.”

  “As much as I might like to give you more, there is a hard limit as to what’s available. In this case, four wizards that meet your requirements.”

  “Is there a fifth just hanging around? Maybe that doesn’t meet exactly what I need?”

  Nutresh frowned, and he pulled out a small notebook. He scribbled a few lines, and then he waited.

  It was awkward.

  “Got a family?” I asked.

  “I do,” he replied.

  “Wife and kids?”

  “Yes, two girls.”

  “I bet they are precious things.”

  “They certainly were. But they have reached a certain age where—“

  His attention snapped back to the small notebook, and he read over something.

  “It appears there is a warmage who is technically available.”

  “Done.”

  “Do you understand the requirements for keeping a warmage?”

  “Sure.”

  Neuters eyed me warily, and I could almost hear the argument raging in his head. On the one hand, he didn’t really want to have to pay for the warmage. Whatever that might be. On the other hand, he relished the opportunity to get rid of any and all mages from the city.

  Thankfully, for me, fear won out.

  “Deal. Two geomancers, one enchanter, one hydromancer, and one warmage. 15 total workers. Am I missing anything?”

  “That seems to be what is available to you, yes.”

  “Quick question: what exactly am I getting?”

  “You are receiving their contracts and debts.”

  “Even from the wizards?”

  “Yes. Mister Bottes feels as I do about magic, and he is eager to rid the city of casters where he can. In this case, he is willing to buy the wizards’ debt and transfer it to you.”

  He pulled some pieces of parchment out of a pile, and rubbed them against the pages of the ledger, somehow transferring the writing from the ledger onto the parchment. Then, he piled them all together, wrapped a bit of ribbon around it, and set it to one side. He did a little more writing, then handed me a piece of parchment with a list of names.

  I looked over them, as if that would give me some sort of useful information. But it was just names — nothing leapt off the page.

  Nutresh busied himself scribbling on a piece of parchment, his face tensed up in concentration. He stopped, leaned back in his chair, and looked over what he’d written. Then he pulled a small clipboard from below his desk, did some more writing, and presented it to me.

  It was a bill.

  “The fuck is this?” I asked.

  “What you owe for the workers,” he said, both surprised at my tone and like I was an idiot for not realizing.

  “What I owe?”

  “Yes, this is the debt you are purchasing from Mr. Bottes. Though, it is at quite a reduced rate. Incredibly so, to the point where I asked Mr. Bottes if he was indeed serious about what he was offering. For some of these, especially the wizards, you are getting their debt for silvers on the gold and—”

  “Eight thousand gold?”

  “Eight thousand one hundred and fifty one gold. And sixty five silver, but I thought it prudent just to round that down.”

  “Yeah. This was not how I thought the favor was going to work.”

  “If you do not wish the wizards to be part of your group, that number could drop dramatically.”

  I looked at the number, and I thought about things. Mainly I thought about Bottes, about the man and his methodology. What was he doing and why was he doing it? He’d seemed genuinely interested in helping me out, but could his desires have changed? Had he been able to contact Nutresh while I’d been off fighting? Had he found out that Valamir, perhaps the next emperor, was out for my blood? There were a whole host of questions, and no real answers. To compound things, I had little idea of the amount of gold I had on me. More specifically, the amount of gold I had which had been minted by the Empire. I could imagine the exchange rates on Ancient Dungeon gold wouldn’t be in my favor.

  “Kick two wizards off the list,” I said. “I’ll take the warmage, one geomancer, and one enchanter.”

  “You wish to leave yourself without a hydromancer?”

  “How much is the hydromancer?”

  “One thousand, eight hundred gold.”

  “The enchanter?”

  “Let me see,” he flipped through papers, and I had the distinct impression he was pulling these numbers out of his ass. “One thousand gold.”

  “Minor question,” I said. “you want me to count out eight thousand coins in here?”

  “No,” he said with a shake of his head and a bit of a smile at how dumb I was. He opened a cabinet, and struggled to get a scale on the desk. “This is an Imperially-sanctioned coin scale.”

  “I’ve used one of these scales before,” I said. “So, tell you what, let’s see what I got. I’d imagine it’s somewhat less than what I need.”

  I pulled out the chest, thumping it on the floor.

  It’s always a bit fun to see the reaction from someone who wasn’t expecting magic. Nutresh, being that he hated magic, shot back to the wall behind his desk and stood there, eyes wide, fear radiating out from him.

  Popping open the chest, I looked at a ton of coins. Obviously not an actual ton, but, well, a lot of coins. I started scooping them out of the chest and into the scale. Nutresh slowly got over himself, and sat back down.

  Once we got to a thousand coins, he held up a hand, and grabbed a leather bag. He poured the coins from the scale into the bag, and then we resumed.

  Another thousand.

  And another.

  The chest was starting to look a bit low.

  Four thousand.

  Five.

  Six.

  Seven.

  And that was basically it.

  “Seven thousand and change,” I said. “What’s that get me?”

  “I can only give you one of the two geomancers,” Nutresh said, looking over his numbers, “but that will give you everyone else.”

  I scooped up the coins in the bottom of the chest and put them back into my bag.

  “Keep the chest,” I said. Which you know, I suppose was apt being that Bottes had been the one who’d given me the chest in the first plac
e.

  Nutresh didn’t seem overly pleased with my generosity.

  “If you wait outside, I can gather your workers from here, and you can take them whither you will,” Nutresh said. “That said, you will need to fetch your casters yourself. They are the last five names on the list and they are quartered in the Magic Circle.”

  I sighed.

  “It has been an absolute pleasure dealing with you today,” I said through clinched teeth and a force smile.

  I snatched the papers from the desk, and I stalked out of the office.

  Chapter 17

  Standing in the lobby, I decided I needed to figure out what exactly I had in terms of loot in the bag. I’d been spending gold like it didn’t matter. To a certain extent, it didn’t — for whatever reason, it didn’t seem like it was that hard to get gold in this world, and if I needed to get more, it looked like I just needed to go kill some monsters, which were certainly in ready supply almost anywhere. It did make me think of something: that stupid wyrm I’d taken a ride inside of. That dead monster had a lair full of treasure, and I felt reasonably confident I’d be able to get back there. I put it on my mental to do later list. Which then caused this:

  Congratulations! You’ve completed a QUEST!

  For the Hoard

  After killing an ancient wyrm, you took all its treasure. That’s not stealing, right? It’s finding loot!

  Reward for success: 5,000 xp, treasure

  I accepted the quest, and then I thought a moment, and I flipped through the menus quickly until I found what I’d been looking for, a quest log.

  There were a few incomplete quests on the list. And I’d just added one to it. Just as I was reading over the list, though, Nutresh came into the lobby leading a group of downtrodden, deeply unhappy people. As we had discussed, there were ten of them.

  “Here you are,” Nutresh said. “Your workers. Now, leave the property.”

  “Always a pleasure,” I said, “asshole.”

  Nutresh gave me a sick smile, and he walked back to his office.

  I gave a smile and wave, then said, “Let’s do as he says because this place is depressing as hell.”

  No one said anything, so I just walked out of the building. All ten followed.

  Outside, the sun was shining, just not where we were. The group of ten gathered around me, and I took a moment to look over them. Five were humans. All men. Two were dwarves: one male and one female. Then there were the three non-humans. One was shorter than the dwarves, and quite a bit like a badger, with black fur and white stripes down its face. Not a skunk, since there wasn’t a tail like that and the striping was different. Plus this one was wearing clothes and giving me a curious look. One was a big dude covered in scales with massive arms and legs. Oh, and four eyes. Four yellow eyes across the front of his face, almost like a spider’s. Except they had pupils and stuff. He had a wide mouth and little ears sticking out of his big round head. He was easily a foot and a half taller than me, and his arms reached nearly down to his ankles. And the last one was a hot chick with two fluffy fox tails. I felt awkward about that, given how Mister Paul had said something about kitsune girls, and if I had to make a guess, I’d have said this was a kitsune girl.

  “So, I’m Montana Coggeshall,” I said. “I guess I own your contracts and debts and stuff from Bottes, and, yeah.”

  They all just looked at me like I was an idiot.

  “Thing is,” I continued, really just talking while I was thinking, “this whole rigamarole makes me uncomfortable. So I’m going to just say that your debts are forgiven. You guys don’t owe me a thing. You want to come work with me? Great, I’d love it.”

  “What is it you want us to do?” one of the dwarves asked.

  “Build a city,” I said. “We are going out into the wilds to make a home.”

  “And we owe you nothing?” one of the humans, a tall man with jet black hair, asked.

  “Nope.”

  “You are a fool.”

  The man walked away. There was a bit of light laughter from the other humans, and a second later, there was only one human remaining.

  “Okay,” I said, “that’s a bit shitty, but whatever. If you don’t want to work with me, leave now. No harm, no foul.”

  “If we work for you,” the fox-girl started, “will you pay us?”

  “Of course. And, I won’t charge you rent. I will keep you as safe as I can, feed you as much as I can, and house you for, I don’t know, a long while.”

  “For free?” the girl asked.

  “Yeah. You get paid gold, get room and board. No debts. No weird contracts. No bizarre bullshit like what goes on here.”

  The remaining six looked at each other.

  “Where is this place?” the female dwarf asked.

  “A ways east of here, bit north,” I said.

  “Can we bring our families?”

  “Yes.”

  The dwarfess smiled, and said, “I am with you then.”

  “And you shall have my axe,” the male dwarf said.

  I tilted my head, trying to think if I’d really heard the dwarf correctly, and I thought about saying something, but I figured, the less said about that particular phrase the better. I probably didn’t hear him right.

  “Glad to have you aboard,” I said. “Is your family nearby?”

  The dwarves both nodded, and I started to wonder if they were a couple.

  “Okay, well, meet me out front of the Imperial House at noon.”

  They two dwarves nodded, and darted off.

  “Rest of you?” I asked.

  “I will do it,” the fox-girl said, “if you promise to give me the opportunity to prove who I really am.”

  “That’s a rather vague promise to make, but sure. Fine.”

  “I have no family.”

  “You are still welcome. Any business you need to finish up with in the city, handle it now. Meet me—”

  “I understand,” she said, and walked off.

  “Next,” I said, looking at the three remaining.

  “Do you take offense to non-humans,” the badger-looking thing said.

  “All are welcome and encouraged,” I said. I quickly added, “I have non-humans among my hirð.”

  The giant dude stepped forward, and as he was closer, I got a better look at his scales. They seemed, well, very hard but also, maybe, stone? It was tough to say, but I’d venture that the guy didn’t need much in the way of bonus armor. He also had a pair of goggles on top of his head, two brass ovals that were wide enough that he’d be able to have them cover two eyes each.

  “You are coming with?” I asked.

  He nodded, and hoisted his big sack up onto his back. That’s when I noticed he had smaller, more delicate arms underneath his big giant arms, and the smaller arms were tightening the pack straps around his giant ones.

  “Hey,” I said, pointing, oblivious to how horrible I was being, “that’s really cool.”

  The big dude frowned, and I caught up.

  “I am so sorry,” I said. “Just, I’m sorry. I should not have said that.”

  He shrugged, and I worried he was just going with the flow and giving up on things. His little arms got a pipe out of a pouch on his belt, and started packing a bowl while his big arms just sort of hung there.

  The badger looked around the dude, but then the last human opened his dumb mouth.

  “You take the woch, and I am out,” he said, lip raised in a sneer at the big dude, I guess called a Woch. Though, given the angle, it also could have been at the badger-type.

  “Who is the woch?” I asked.

  The human pointed to the big dude.

  I was right. The woch looked down at his feet, obviously thinking I was about to dismiss him.

  “I am top tier,” the human said. “Pretty much the only chance you have for your city to be a thing—”

  “Yeah, I’ll take the woch,” I said, “and you can fuck right off, tier one.”

  “Wait, what?” t
he human bigot was confused. “You realize I am one of the best—”

  “You’re a bigot, hoss. If you want to come, learn that humans aren’t the be-all and end-all, that other races are boss as well, then I’m happy to oblige. But if you’re just going to be a piece of shit, you can stay here and do that. Osterstadt seems like the perfect place for pieces of shit.”

  The man was flabbergasted and stared at me for a minute before stomping away, muttering to himself.

  Badger dude gave me a smile.

  “You are a fool,” the badger said. “The man that walked off is a legendary carpenter.”

  “He’s a legendary asshole.”

  The badger threw his head back and laughed. “You might be okay,” he said. “Let’s build a city.”

  Chapter 18

  While I’d wanted to head to the Magic Circle and finish up with the whole gathering workers part of the day, by the time I’d gotten out to the main road and knew vaguely where I was, it was a little too close to noon to go get lost looking for the Magic Circle. Plus, with the woch and the badger dude were moving along with me, I figured it was pretty important that I change directions and head towards the Imperial House.

  “Any chance you know where the Imperial House is?” I asked as soon as I’d come to accept that I was lost.

  The woch pointed.

  “Great, thanks,” I said.

  The badger was talking to the woch, but it seemed like mostly inane prattle really. Things about how the city was different than when he came, how he hadn’t been getting jobs, how big the debt had been, how there was an excellent dumpling vendor three streets over. That sort of thing.

  Coming around a corner, I saw the Imperial house, and I saw my three dudes standing together, leaning against a wall in the shade. It wasn’t super hot in the sun, but there was a warmth to it, and the humidity was rising. Made me think a storm had to be on the way.

  I raised a hand and waved.

  Ragnar waved back.

  “You are kidding me,” the badger dude said. “Are those lutra?”

  “They are

  “Well, fuck.”

  “You got a problem?”

  “It is said the only true friend of the lutra are the fleas they carry. They are betrayers and—”