Only Villains Do That

My intended blitzkrieg didn’t go the way I’d planned, but in a different way than how things usually didn’t go the way I planned.

I was regrettably accustomed to my efforts falling flat or blowing up in my face, but having something more or less work out but just take forever was… Well, actually, that was pretty much how my early campaign in Cat Alley had gone down, but this felt more visceral somehow. My intention had been to sweep through the bandit camps ringing Gwyllthean’s western border in a rush; based on the distances involved and how long I knew it took to walk from North Watch to the city, I’d figured it would take two days, tops.

Well, in the end, it went smoothly enough, but that left me in control of the final bandit encampment far to the southwest a week after we set out from Caer Yviredh.

Sneak up on a bandit camp, ambush and neutralize them with our unconventional weaponry and stealth tactics, then showtime. Identify and purge the undesirables, then reassign the remainder: I rarely kept more than one or two along with the small groups I left to take over their territory, brought one or two with me, and sent any remaining back to North Watch. Clan Olumnach had stripped their numbers so much that none of the remaining gangs had more than six members, some as few as three. Then we took and divvied up what was useful from their supplies, provided them with any necessities from our own, and abandoned the campsites, leaving the new Seiji-aligned gangs to begin a patrol of their territory. With the guidance of whichever bandit my core group had absorbed, we would then locate the next camp. Rinse and repeat.

With the gwynnek riders making a constant circuit—at a steady enough pace not to over-tire the beasts or riders, but still constant—we stayed in contact with the previously overtaken gangs, the field command post I’d sent Goose to establish in Auron’s old campsite near the waystation, and North Watch itself. It felt like painfully delayed contact to me, with my recent memories of the internet, but everyone with me seemed impressed by how quick our communications were. Rather than a loose and barely-controlled collection of criminals as Clan Olumnach had arranged them, I had made these groups part of a single organization, keeping in touch and moving as one.

Turns out, setting up and maintaining something like that is neither easy nor fast.

If only the delays were my worst problem.

I could not renege on the promise of vengeance to my core followers; I had made it too central to what bound them to me, and I was too reliant on their support to risk it. While I preferred to think that none of my girls would lay a false accusation against some random man out of spite, Aster had quietly warned me that in the aftermath of the battle of Cat Alley we had several burgeoning misandrists in the ranks. I couldn’t entirely blame them, especially because all of this was my own fault. I had maliciously unleashed feminism on this country in much the same way the Yviredhs had been sponsoring bandits: barely understanding what that was or how it worked and with no plan at all to control it, and now people were getting hurt.

Not every gang required blood to be spilled. Two of the smaller ones were all-female already; those took one look at my assembled forces and clamored to join up faster than I could explain what they were joining up for. Of the rest, a couple had no members identified by any of my followers as problems.

But there was still vengeance to dispense. I learned that Freebie Guy and the Strangler weren’t isolated cases; several more idiots sealed their own doom because when accused of the beating, rape, and/or murder of prostitutes they seemed nonplussed that this was even worth talking about. In a sick way, the bone-deep rottenness of this country was helping to save my own conscience. Even when the abusers didn’t blithely out themselves, they had often made enough of a pattern that multiple voices were raised against them, usually even among their own comrades. Not always, though.

Four more times that week I cut down men based on nothing but the tenuous evidence of an accusation.

Because that was what I needed to do to stay in control.

It was getting harder and harder to sleep. I let myself hope that would be easier back in my bed in North Watch, but the hard dirt and khora roots we camped on were not actually the problem.

A week after setting out from Caer Yviredh, I stood at the end of a trail of corpses, mentally exhausted and fully reliant on pure showmanship to keep up a good face for the troops. We’d had an unbroken string of easy victories and totally secured the ground needed for the next stage. Conquest was complete. It would’ve been nice if I could have felt good about it.

Aster and Nazralind joined me a short distance from the last camp, as requested; there was a nice little spot the bandits had been using as a lookout point from which we could watch our people sorting and packing everything without being directly in earshot.

“Ladies,” I said pensively, “I believe I have fucked up.”

“What makes you think so, Lord Seiji?” Aster said, her innocently solicitous tone giving away the game.

Thanks to my own cultural biases it had taken me a long time to catch on (and in the end I’d needed Biribo to point it out), but once I did the pattern was inescapable: Fflyr sarcasm looked a lot like Japanese politeness. It turned out that when a lowborn was being vague, refusing to come out and openly voice something critical, they were making fun of me. I guess that made sense in a culture where talking back to your superiors could get you killed, especially if they were being moronic, which they often were.

I gave her a flat look, getting a bland smile in reply.

“Nazralind,” I said, breaking eye contact with Aster after a moment, “do you know of any democratic countries near Fflyr Dlemathlys?”

“Democratic countries?” Her eyebrows shot upward. “What, you mean like beast tribes?”

“Um… Why was that your first thought?”

She shrugged. “Well, because a nation-sized democracy is fairy tale nonsense. I believe smaller tribal cultures sometimes organize themselves that way. The beastfolk, for example. I’ve read that orc tribes are like that, too, but the nearest orcs are way over on the other side of the Lancor Empire.”

“What is a democracy?” Aster demanded.

“Government by popular vote,” I explained. “People elect their leaders and usually set policy by public agreement.”

Now it was her turn to raise her eyebrows. “That sounds like a pretty good idea to me.”

“It sounds that way, yes,” said Nazralind, “but in practice that stops working if you have more than a hundred or so people to govern. Actual leadership is impossible since it takes so long to get anything done, and democracies aren’t so much prone to corruption as inherently riddled with it.”

“Well, that does sound pretty nasty,” Aster murmured. “I’d hate to live in a corrupt country with bad leadership.”

Was she being spicier than usual today, or had I just failed to notice how much of her commentary was full of underhanded jabs? To judge by her expression, Naz had caught that last one, too.

“Governing is a skill,” she tried to explain. “That’s why none of us know anything about it; skills take training and practice, and innate talent helps. You don’t want every peasant helping to set national policy for the same reason you wouldn’t ask a baker to shoe your horse.”

Aster gave her a very bland smile and I hastily interjected before she could say whatever she was about to.

“I asked because I was hoping there were native Ephemeral examples of societies transitioning into democracies, but I guess not.”

“Transitioning?” Naz wrinkled her nose. “Governments transition all the time, usually through coup, conquest, or usurpation. As for democracies…no, I’ve never heard of such a thing. The nearest analogue would be the few small republics scattered about, mostly governed by coalitions of noble houses or merchant syndicates. Even those rarely grow to be anything bigger than a city-state. What brought this on, Lord Seiji?”

“On Earth, most nations are democratic,” I said. Both of them looked surprised, and Nazralind also skeptical. “Well…at least in theory. And most of the stable ones transitioned from authoritarian to democratic rule slowly. Many of the successful states in the modern era still have figurehead monarchies but are actually governed democratically, including Japan. There have also been a lot of violent revolutions overthrowing tyrants to establish democratic governments, and those…usually fail, especially if they succeed.”

“Well, of course they do,” Nazralind said, shrugging again. Aster gave her another even look.

“Because,” I continued, “as you pointed out, governance is a skill. It reliably leads to disaster if the people trying to govern don’t know how to do anything but slaughter their enemies.”

Both of them shifted to look down at the camp and our people working there, expressions clearing.

“Ah,” Aster said softly.

“Yeah, so, I fucked up,” I said, following their gaze. “Every step seemed like the only step I could take at the time, but right now I’m looking at the start of a pattern I recognize from lots of history, and it ends in fire and blood and nothing remotely constructive. I have to fix this before it gets any further out of hand, and I’ve got absolutely no fucking clue how to do that.”

“You could…ask the Yviredhs?” Nazralind suggested with a hesitance which didn’t suggest that she believed deeply in her own proposal. “They do govern a fief.”

“Are they really an example worth emulating?” Aster asked pointedly. “They’re nice enough people, but…come on.”

“Recognizing the problem is a start, boss,” Biribo chimed in. “You need to find somebody to teach you how to rule. There are options; now you know to look for them as opportunities come up. But is that the most important thing to be thinking about right this second?”

“Once again, the flying sass lizard speaks truth,” I sighed. “All right, ladies, this is where we part ways. Don’t make that face at me, Aster, you’re coming with me! But it’ll be just the two of us heading into the Gutters. I want to try to keep this quiet until we get the lay of the land. Nazralind, I’m putting you in charge of my forces here.”

“Hai!” she acknowledged.

It’d been a week and I still wasn’t used to that. After my awkward revelation about the goddesses, hearing it from people who were clearly not Japanese was still making me a little twitchy, but I had decided not to discourage the practice. If nothing else, it was succinct.

“Retrace our steps and rendezvous at Caer Yviredh. I want you to join and take charge of the group there, with whatever sized force you judge won’t attract undue attention. Send the rest of our people to join Goose at the central camp up north; I’ll return to collect everybody when I’ve sussed out the situation in Gwyllthean and finalized a plan.”

“Hai!” Yeah, it was gonna take me a while longer to get used to that.

“Your secondary objective is to keep an eye on and maintain relations with Clan Yviredh. I feel like they’ll be less inclined to ponder turning on us if we have an armed presence near them, but at the same time I don’t want to antagonize them directly. You’re the person for that job, Naz; nobody else would be as good at managing highborn. You seemed to be getting along well with the younger Yviredhs, so keep that up.”

“Lady Avelit, yes,” she said with a doubtful frown. “I’m not sure Lord Ediver would be as amenable to my influence.”

“Nazralind,” I said patiently, “you are an unrealistically beautiful woman, and he’s a teenage boy. It will not be hard. Just try not to give the poor kid an aneurysm or piss off his mother too much.”

“I’m not sure I agree,” Aster said sweetly. “It will definitely be hard. Don’t ask the boy to stand up in a hurry.”

Biribo cackled so hard he lost some buoyancy and Nazralind blushed, for once having no comeback. For the most part she and the other ladies were fitting in well with the group, but I had noticed that most of them were having trouble getting comfortable with the off-color humor which was inevitably popular in an organization of mostly former sex workers.

“Thanks for that, Aster,” I said, shooting her my best Aster Look. “All right, let’s not waste any more time screwing around; gods only know what Olumnach’s been doing to the Gutters for the last two weeks. I want to make a quick address to the team and then we need to head out. After that, it’s in your hands, Nazralind.”

“Hai!”

Fucking hell, I was creating monsters left and right.

The Gutters were still quieter than I remembered. People there didn’t have the luxury of not going to work just because they were recently traumatized and afraid for their lives, but even a week and change after the pogrom the place was noticeably subdued. At least that made our passage through it uneventful as Aster led me to the destination I’d asked for.

It was a public house called the Short Stack, which I privately thought was a little too on the nose, but also pretty much in character for goblins. From the outside, it was a lowborn-built structure like any other, which was to say it looked like anything from an illustration of medieval Europe except in a melange of pastel colors because the Gutters was built of akorthist bricks and blocks and akorshil planks and beams. Inside, though, I got my first real look at goblin culture.

To my surprise, it was pretty cool.

I had to chide myself for succumbing to Fflyr stereotypes in having assumed goblins would live surrounded by squalor and filth. The pub’s main room was as clean as any izakaya I’d ever visited, and more so than a lot of the places in Cat Alley. What impressed me most was that it had a sense of style unlike anything I’d seen in Dlemathlys. Or anywhere, really. Every centimeter of the exposed akorshil wall panels were covered in painted murals, clearly done by multiple artists and showing a variety of styles from realistic landscapes to abstract shapes to several pieces of word art that resembled graffiti I’d seen on Earth. In fact, looking around, I observed a tall rack of shelves full of paints and brushes in one corner. The sign hung on it was lettered in extravagant calligraphy, laying out the fees for buying paints, renting brushes, and the rules concerning what patrons were and were not allowed to paint in the room.

It was my first real glimpse of actual goblin culture, and it showed me I had badly underestimated them through sheer lack of interest in learning more. Whatever else they were, the goblins of Dount were so into art that there was money to be made by letting them paint the walls.

The rest of the pub showed the same sensibilities. The asauthec wall torches were in sconces backed by little mosaics of broken colored glass, apparently from bottles, which caused a sparkling effect that was dazzling and quite pretty. From the ceiling were strung streamers of beads and what looked like tinsel made of dried khora fronds, not serving any apparent purpose but just hung because it looked nifty. Bead curtains hung over the windows and doors, some merely colorful but one arranged to make a geometric design which reminded me of Native American blankets I’d seen pictures of, and the one hanging over the doorway behind the bar displaying an actual landscape of Gwyllthean’s walls, with the domes and spires of the middle ring rising above them and the elaborate shape of Caer Aelthwyn looming over all. The akorshil brickwork of the chimney above the hearth was covered by a mosaic of broken glass shards depicting an improbably voluptuous goblin woman striking a pose. I guess a bar was still a bar, after all.

“Damn,” I said appreciatively, pausing in the door to just take it all in.

The room took me in, as well. It wasn’t very full at this hour of the early afternoon, but a dozen goblins scattered around various tables paused in whatever they were doing to turn and stare at myself and Aster. This was a Fflyr-built structure originally so the actual building was human-sized, but all the furniture in here was meant for goblins. Even the bar had a kind of dais lining it, with short steps leading up to a ledge with short stools on that so the clientele could sit at the bar and be able to see over it. All these red eyes in all these green faces were blank and carefully neutral. Not hostile or welcoming, just wary.

About what I’d expected.

Taking just a second to get my bearings and let myself be seen, I strode across the room to the bar. To actually get up to it I had to lean forward awkwardly on one knee on the steps, as actually standing on that would’ve bonked my head into the ceiling. Aster hovered behind me in silence and the bartender, a young goblin woman with her black hair dyed with red streaks and gathered up into a bun approached me, putting on a cheerful customer service smile. Unlike Mindzi, who favored slinky dresses of apparently unique design, this girl was in a goblin-sized version of those open-necked short robes Fflyr women all wore with a tight shirt underneath it, complete with the obligatory length of ribbon mummifying her waist from bust to hips.

“Well, hey there, tall dark and exotic,” she said cheerfully. “You sure you know where you are? Not that I’ll turn down honest coin, but if you didn’t notice you ain’t exactly the target clientele of this establishment.”

“Oh, I’m in the right place, don’t worry,” I replied, grinning back. “Do you have rooms for rent?”

“Yup.” The goblin raised her eyebrows but wasn’t surprised enough to be thrown off her business game. “All the doors and ceilings are human-sized, but we’ve only got goblin furniture. So I can rent you a room, but not a bed, of any of what you’d usually expect in a room.”

“Well, how about some extra blankets and pillows? The floor won’t kill me, so long as it’s padded.”

“That we can do. Extra services mean extra charges, you understand.”

“Aw, c’mon.” I put on my own best grin, the one I’d used on girls at the clubs I’d performed in back in Tokyo. “Meet me halfway, here. I should really ask for a discount for not being able to use the bed. Doesn’t that all cancel out?”

She matched my grin and didn’t budge an iota. “Giving you extra linens means we gotta do extra washing, champ. And you knew what kinda place this was when you walked in here. Even if you didn’t, I just told you myself, out loud.”

It wasn’t worth pushing. “Well, when you put it that way, fair enough. Just the room then, with the additional bedding.”

“How long you stayin’?”

“Just through the night. I might leave earlier, but I won’t need it past dawn.”

“All righty then,” the barmaid said cheerfully. “Though we won’t kick ya out at the crack of dawn; long as you’re gone or paid for the next night by noonish, we’re all good.”

“Won’t be an issue. What else can I get here?”

“Well, it’s an inn. The public room serves booze and food; not much is cooked at the moment but if you wander down around dinner time there’ll be plenty. I can even bring something up to ya, if you want, and if there’s a decent tip in it for me.” Her roguish grin faded by several degrees. “Just to be clear, the front girls will come to your door, but not past it. I do not come with the room. That ain’t up for negotiation.”

I thought about Cat Alley, about Donon, and about what kind of human man probably wandered into this place.

“Furthest thing from my mind,” I said, making my smile as bland and reassuring as I could manage, which I’m afraid might not have worked because that expression is not part of my customary repertoire. “Not that you aren’t pretty, but I’m not…in need.”

The barmaid’s red eyes darted past me to give Aster the once-over, then she winked. “I’ll bet.”

“Also,” I said hastily before Aster could register an opinion, “I need to get a message to somebody in the tunnels. His name’s Maugro, I assume you know him?”

“A goblin? This may surprise you to learn, buddy, but in fact we do not all know each other.”

This was delivered in such an earnest deadpan that I honestly couldn’t tell whether she was being sarcastic or had had to explain this fact to people in seriousness often enough to not care anymore. Knowing what I did about Fflyr Dlemathlys, I’d have believed either.

“I mean, Maugro’s business brings him to the surface often enough, I figured you’d be familiar with him just from working here. Can I get somebody to send a message?”

She lifted her hands off the bar counter to shrug, her expression a masterpiece of mild-mannered bemusement. “Dunno where you’re from, stranger, but around here taverns don’t tend to double as courier offices. If you know your friend’s address, you can probably get an actual messenger service to send somebody? Or go yourself.”

“Right, but it’s down in the tunnels.”

“Ah, yeah.” She nodded, looking sympathetic. “And I know how you humans feel about going down there. Sorry, man, can’t help ya.”

“I’m not asking for a favor.” I matched her calm, noncommittal smile to the best of my ability. “Two silver halos to carry a message.”

The amount made her hesitate, an expression flicking across her face which convinced me I was being deliberately stonewalled and wasn’t just barking up the wrong khora. Then the bland smile was back, accompanied by another shrug.

“Must be important for you to be so generous, champ. You could try asking any bystander with tunnel business, but I really can’t recommend handing that kinda coin over to a stranger without some assurances. ‘Specially since, like I mentioned, this ain’t a messenger service here.”

“Well, of course. Payment on delivery.”

“Oh, sure,” she said, deadpan serious again. “You’ll promise the moon glazed with sour sauce for a job, and will totally pay up once it’s all done. And I’ll believe that, because my mom squirted me out this morning.”

“Ew,” Aster muttered.

“How about this,” I countered, keeping my tone and face affable. “Maugro will pay it, on my say-so. And since the message is just that I want him to meet Lord Seiji here, he can collect it from me when he does. I am that confident that he’ll vouch for my trustworthiness.”

“Did this Maugro tell you this was the place to get in touch with him?” she asked sardonically.

“Well, no.”

“Well, there ya go.” Again the shrug, this time accompanied by another shark-toothed grin.

I turned to look behind me at the common room, where two thirds of the goblins present had silently vanished while we’d been talking. One fellow I caught in the act of slipping out the door; he froze like a deer in the headlights, staring wide-eyed at me as if afraid of what I might do. I just turned back to the barmaid with a shrug.

“Well, my mistake. Worth a shot. I guess just the room then.”

“And the blankets,” Aster prompted.

“And the blankets, yes.”

“Pleasure doin’ business, handsome.” The barmaid’s countenance turned sunny as if on command. “That’s seven black discs or equivalent!”

Obviously, the first thing we did was secure the room. Thanks to Biribo’s ability to sense the details of physical surroundings and nearby people, all the spyholes were easily found. We plugged them all with slimes. Then we dragged the dresser over to block off the hidden entrance along one wall, and moved the bed so that one leg was pinning down the trapdoor concealed by the rug—and since we couldn’t use the furniture anyway, piled the chairs and table on the bed for extra weight. As a final bit of emphasis, I opened the room’s sole window and dropped a slime out of it, giving no sign I knew it had landed directly on the goblin crouched there trying to listen. He was good, didn’t fall off or even yell, but clearly got the message and made himself scarce before I switched to sharp implements.

“How did you know this place would be so full of peepholes?” Aster demanded as soon as Biribo assured us we had a modicum of privacy. “For that matter, why the hell is it full of peepholes?”

“Same way I knew I could get in touch with Maugro here. You said this is the place where the King’s Guild always starts its raids on the tunnels when they make them, right? Well, the Fflyr up here might believe goblins are too dense or desperate to move away from a location that gets raided all the time, but you and I have seen firsthand that they’re way too smart for that, unless they’re doing it deliberately.”

“You think it’s…a front?” She frowned in consternation, clearly having never considered the possibility.

“I don’t know much about goblin culture, but it’s at the very least a place under a lot of eyes down there. Anything we let slip in here will make its way into the tunnels faster than we could get back to our usual contact point. Even if that girl didn’t want to take my offer, somebody out there will seize on the opportunity to make some money. And if they don’t, odds are good Maugro will find out anyway, considering what business he’s in and how good he apparently is at it.”

“Are you sure he can actually do that fast enough to make a difference?” Aster’s frown had not abated. “We know his actual headquarters is way out…you know where.”

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while, actually,” I said, sitting down on the low bed next to the pile of chairs. “Considering how fast he’s kept abreast of our own movements, for example. I dunno what they’ve got going on down in this tunnels, but somehow the goblins are passing information at least as quickly as the Fflyr could do it overland. At the very least they’re clearly a lot more organized than anybody up here suspects, and I bet they’ve also got some kind of efficient travel system. It’s not like they can build a subway, but I wonder… Well, I’ll just have to wonder. They don’t want people poking into their business and I don’t particularly wanna rile them up. Suffice it to say, yes, I am confident he’ll get the message and join us in time to give me a solid rundown on the situation in the Gutters—and particularly, the gang movements that nobody else could lay out for us.”

“I dunno,” she said doubtfully. “I mean, I follow your reasoning, but it seems like a lot to hang on—”

“Heads up,” Biribo muttered, turning to stare at the room’s door. Aster cut off, following his gaze.

A second later there came a knock.

“One person,” Biribo said in a low voice right next to my ear, “no lurkers, no obvious weapons. Doesn’t look like an ambush.”

I nodded and he slithered unpleasantly down into my coat.

“Oh, come on,” Aster protested. “Even if you were right, we’ve been up here all of half an hour! There’s no way—that’s just the girl from the bar with more blankets or something.”

“It is not the girl from the bar,” said a muffled voice from right outside. “Open up, Lord Seiji. You wanted to talk, so let’s talk.”

Muffled or not, it was definitely a female voice. Well, Maugro was a busy goblin; maybe he’d sent Mindzi. I gave Aster my smuggest grin as I crossed to the door and pulled it open to greet our visitor.

The sight wiped it from my face.

“Uh…oh. Wrong goblin.”