Episode 34 - Pied Piper 1

Three days passed.
The three remaining Gang Lords and their organizations disappeared into the shadows, one by one.

The Gang Lords had pressed Count Carloz hard for a punitive force to be dispatched — but the Maritime Kingdom's council voted it down, leaving them with nothing more than rebuilding the City Guard station and reinforcing their numbers.

Separately, Kaftin's bounty poster — now at four hundred gold — spread across the entire Maritime Kingdom.

The result was chaos of a kind Pink Rose Street, a run-of-the-mill slum district near the kingdom's new royal capital of Tiding Point City, had never seen before.

Mercenaries, assassins, and bounty hunters with names known across the kingdom came flooding in from every direction.

"Hey! You there!"
"Ah — me?"
"Yeah, you! Your hair color's strange — come here a minute."
"I-I have somewhere to be right now..."
"I'm asking nicely. You want to be dragged over here?"
"Ngh..."

They were combing the streets, scanning every passerby — and the moment anyone's appearance came even slightly close to Kaftin's description on the wanted poster, they would close in and start trouble.

As for Kaftin himself — he was sitting in an alley in the tourist district, huddled under a pile of rags, playing the part of a vagrant.

"Hey mister... looks like you're doing well for yourself. How about dropping a few bron for me?"
"Tch... filthy! Get away from me!"
"Mm... stingy man."

Completely at ease in the role, muttering complaints about business being slow, he pushed himself up and moved on.

He picked up a branch from beside him, used it as a walking stick, and set off with a limp — favoring his right ankle as though it had been injured.

No one on the street paid a vagrant any mind.
They were everywhere, and to most people, they were nothing more than an eyesore — vermin on the pavement.
Kaftin had recognized that fact, and was using it.

Bump.

His shoulder caught a man passing beside him, and he stumbled into a theatrical fall.

"Oww..."
"God — filthy! Who told you to walk in the middle of the road?!"
"Oh dear, I'm so sorry..."
"Damn it! You've got dirt on my clothes!"

He kept his head down and took a quick glance at the man's attire — bounty hunter or mercenary, at a guess.
Well-maintained leather armor and vest, two shortswords at the hip.
Nothing good would come of getting tangled up with that type.

"I'm terribly sorry..."
"Tch..."

He bowed several times and slipped away.
His destination was an older inn building on the edge of the tourist district.

He made his way quietly up to the top floor — the fifth — opened a room door, and found Conquere inside, waving at him.

"Good to see you. Everything alright?"
[Yes. All fine.]

She had learned sign language from the textbooks Kaftin had written out for her and was putting it to use now.
Her signing was still slow, but simple conversation was manageable — and the charcoal had been reduced to occasional use.

"And Whispermere...?"
[She went out. Said she had something to do.]
"Hm... something to do..."

Whispermere had been moving constantly these past few days.
Bizeth, to his credit, had not retaliated against her for her resignation — but there had been a condition attached: she was to brief her successor and hand everything over properly.

That would take at least a week of continued coming and going, which meant Kaftin — who had decided to move with her — hadn't been able to leave the district yet either.

He sipped at his tea for a while, then got up and opened the window, looking down at the street below.
The ordinary shops had long since closed for the day, but the street was still busy with people moving through it.

Most of them were after his head. That should have been unsettling — but Kaftin was watching it all with something that looked like amusement.

"This has gotten interesting... so this is what she was talking about."

It had been within his anticipated range of outcomes — but he hadn't expected things to develop quite this quickly.
And yet he felt no sense of difficulty. No unease.
His mind was already laying out the blueprint for what came next, running through possibility after possibility, fitting the pieces into place.

As Whispermere had said — this district needed a new absolute authority.
The balance of power that the Gang Lords had maintained through their dominance had collapsed, and every variety of criminal was crawling out of the cracks.

Whether they lived or died was no concern of his — but there was more than enough value in taking hold of this place if it meant easy access to what he wanted.

"I wonder how that search is coming along."

He had already set things in motion.
In the process of handing over her work, Whispermere had been directed to mobilize the full intelligence network and track down specific individuals — people who had once been at odds with the Gang Lords, or who had carved out a place deep in the underworld that no one dared approach.

Serial killers. Kidnappers. Con artists. Cult leaders.
Profession and charges didn't matter. He was looking for the dangerous ones.

"I'm back..."
"Oh, welcome."

Whispermere came through the door without bothering to hide how tired she was.
Kaftin held out a cup of tea and smiled.

"So. How's it going?"
"It's a lot... I have to get everything transferred within a week..."
"Sounds about right."
"And — I found someone matching what you described."
"Oh? You managed to look into that on top of everything else?"
"Not exactly. The truth is... he's already one of our organization's informants. Extremely difficult to deal with, and dangerous — we only make contact rarely..."
"Heheheh... even better. Where can I find him?"

She let out a slow breath at the interest in his eyes, and pointed a finger at the floor.

"The Underground."
"......!"

The Underground.

Kaftin had learned about it recently through Whispermere — a city that had formed in the sewer network beneath the royal capital, the underworld's answer to a capital city of its own.
Its defining feature was a direct connection to the Maritime Kingdom's royal dungeon.

The worst of the worst, imprisoned in the deepest levels, had dug tunnels in search of escape and broken through into a subterranean cavity — which had, over time, grown into a city. Naturally, the population consisted almost entirely of violent criminals who had escaped from that dungeon, along with the predatory criminals who had followed them down to prey on them in turn.

Any ordinary person who walked in would be stripped of everything they owned within five seconds, left naked, violated by a crowd, and found hanging upside down dead in the city square before they knew what had happened.

"Quite the neighborhood to be living in."
"Well — he is the descendant of a dungeon prisoner."
"......"

Known commonly as the Pied Piper.

Long ago, when the Maritime Kingdom had been suffering under a plague brought by a rat infestation, a man had appeared without warning and declared he could drive every rat away — for a substantial fee.

The people, desperate, promised the reward and begged him to do it. The man said nothing, only took out his pipe and began to play.

Whether the rats were charmed by the music or compelled by some other magic, they followed him — every last one — and threw themselves into the sea.

When it was over, he returned and demanded his payment — but the people and officials, devastated by the plague, told him they had nothing to give, and asked him to come back in a few years.

The man announced that he would take something else in place of money, and began to play again.

That day, every child in the city followed him and was never seen again.
The outraged populace branded him a dark sorcerer and gave chase — but he was never found.

That was the story passed down about him.
The reality was that after ten years of pursuit, he was eventually captured and executed.

What had become of the children he had taken — that answer died with him, his confession never obtained.
Instead, people had to be satisfied with imprisoning his own children in the dungeon.

And one of those descendants — that was the person Whispermere had mentioned.

"An interesting story... so this one's an informant?"
"Yes. And a dangerous person. Extremely."
"Why? Does he lure children away with a pipe?"
"...He can command thousands of wild rats like an extension of his own body."
"......!"

Any ordinary person hearing that would have gone pale and shaken their head.
Kaftin's eyes lit up. He clicked his tongue in appreciation.

"That's exactly who I need...! I have to bring him in — he fits every condition I had in mind."
"Conditions...? He's dangerous, yes, but..."

She looked uncertain. Kaftin shook his head.

"Hfheh. Simply dangerous isn't enough. What I want is something that overturns the fundamental paradigm of how organizations work."
"Para... digm?"
"Right. When people hear the words 'underworld organization,' what do they picture? Big men in black coats, yes?"
"Well... yes. The Gang Lords' people were exactly that."

Whispermere nodded, and Kaftin wagged a finger.

"Which is precisely why I don't want that. My organization — to start with — will take as few humans as possible."
"Pardon?"
"Non-humans. Animals, demi-races — that's who I want at the core. That's the direction I want you looking in from now on."
"Why would you—"

Before she could finish, he grabbed her arm and pushed her back against the wall — and broke into a smile that dripped madness from every edge, voice dropping to something close to a whisper.

"Humans, unless they're well and truly broken, can't escape the bounds of what it means to be human. Ethics put the brakes on committing acts against basic decency..."
"......?!"
"Yes — harming their own kind pricks the conscience. And the ones who are broken enough not to care — those are the ones who are hard to control."

He clicked his tongue, pressed one hand against the wall, and raised the other — fingers twitching, barely containing something.

"But what about demi-races and animals — the ones who've been oppressed by humans their whole lives? The stray dogs kicked by passersby everywhere you walk, the sewer rats skulking in the drains, the crows circling on the rooftops..."
"......!!"
"There are no lines for them to cross. Give the order, and they'll carry out a massacre with joy in their hearts — no ethics, no hesitation. And animals have low intelligence, which means all you need is obedience — once you have that, anything becomes possible."

He spread his arms wide and looked out into the space before him, giving voice for the first time to what lay at the heart of his ambition — or his madness.

"The world's first animal crime syndicate — of the animals, for the animals, unto the animals...! The birds in the sky and the rats in the sewers watching and listening to every enemy's movement, day and night — packs of wild dogs closing in and tearing targets apart alive — a single command enough to turn an entire village into a banquet hall and make it disappear...!"

He clenched the hand he had spread wide into a fist and brought it in front of Whispermere's face.

"Thousands, tens of thousands — hundreds of millions of them — my new arms and legs, and I will fill this world to the brim with screams of terror and horror...!"
"......!"

In that moment, Whispermere felt genuine regret for the first time.

The seed of ambition she had planted in him, carelessly, at their very first meeting — it was sprouting now, in the worst possible form.

The fear settled over her that she herself might have provided the spark for a sea of blood beyond all imagining — one whose scale she had no way to predict.

—To be continued—