Danio told me more about the Triam Drana, and they sounded like an interesting bunch. I wanted to get to know them better. Be acquainted.

Headquartered in the heart of the slums, the Triam Drana were the most powerful gang in the red light district, and they had influence everywhere. From what Danio said, they ran everything. Brothels and casinos alike. They controlled the local police force. They even owned a few of the local banks. I doubted most of this because if they were really that powerful, I would've known about them from a previous life, but that didn't mean they couldn't be useful.

They weren't the big boys, but they were the almost big boys, and that meant they were perfect for my purposes. I needed to find an easy way to sell love potions to the brothels, and the Triam Drana was my ticket to pulling off this idea.

I couldn't send Danio around to every brothel to sell potions, after all. Even if that worked initially, the idea was that I'd monopolize the market entirely, and one kid couldn't make that happen for me. The Triam Drana? They'd work and, if I played my cards right, they'd grow along with my pocketbook. By the time I needed the big boys, I'll have elevated them to that status myself.

If I wasn't careful, though, I could end up more involved with their business than I wanted to be. I didn't want to be part of the Triam Drana. That'd be stifling. Boring. I needed them to want a certain amount of distance from me yet still be eager to run part of my business for me. There was really only one way to accomplish that, wasn't there?

The clothes I bought when I arrived in Brugge were back at the hotel, so I made my way across town in the dead of night. Brugge was a relatively large city in comparison to where I'd lived so far in this world, and it was energizing to see a place so alive at night, even if it was still ridiculously warm.

Since I didn't want to be seen leaving the hotel in another outfit, I left out of the window in my room. The alleys were narrow enough that it was easy to jump from building to building and from one rooftop to another I'd also done my fair share of hanging off buildings during my time as a royal assassin.

Not my favorite activity, but whatever's necessary, right?

I'd just have to remember to return to the hotel the way I came, though sometimes I had to remind myself I didn't have to be quite so cautious in this world. There were no cameras or photographs. Pictures were all drawn by hand or by magic, but always from the imagination. And in this world, word against word was really just a matter of who had a higher social status.

The forgotten third son of a foreign duke? In my world, that meant nothing. In this world, it meant everything. Forgotten or not. Third son or not. My word was gold.

Now to make the word of Trygve Teigen gold as well.

The Triam Drana headquarters was a bigger place than I'd thought. Like all the other buildings, it was layers upon layers of dirt that made its probably once sun-bleached white walls look a sickly gray. There were bars over the windows on the first floor, but nearly all of the windows had a pane or two broken anyway.

From a taller abandoned building a few blocks away, I watched the back entrance first for any sign of activity. My perception strained against the distance, which was annoying. I wanted to know how many people came and went from their HQ. I wanted an idea whether their boss was there. I needed to see who I was dealing with.

But after an hour of nothing, I watched the front entrance instead. Unfortunately, it seemed only a few people visited, which meant this was no headquarters at all. A front for it. Very interesting. That meant their boss was probably somewhere ridiculously difficult to find or hiding somewhere in plain sight. For a group like this, that'd be in a brothel or a casino.

My perception wasn't picking up more than a handful of people inside the building. One of them had to know where their boss was, so I found my way to the back entrance they never seemed to use. The lock was easy to pick.

It was dark inside. I could hear voices. I crept forward and saw a man sleeping on a chair. Seemed like he was supposed to be keeping a watch. When I got closer, I noticed the door beside him led into what looked like some kind of jail. A familiar dark feeling twisted in me. Jails always made me remember what it was that landed me in one in the first place.

There were three cells. One was occupied by a man who looked like he had been beaten half to death. He was unconscious. Another was empty. The last cell held a woman. She was awake and crying for her brother loudly enough to provide a nice cover for my approach. The man didn't wake up. Snapping his neck was quite easy.

The woman started screaming when she saw me. She was caked in dirt, skin and clothes and hair looking like she hadn't been allowed to wash in months. People were truly disgusting to each other.

I put a finger to my lips and dangled the key to her cell in front of her. That silenced her immediately. As I unlocked the door for her, I said, "I won't kill you if you leave without speaking even one word."

She nodded furiously, and once I opened the door for her, she made a run of it. Thankfully, she ran in the right direction. I checked the man in the other cell. His pulse was so weak that I wasn't sure if a healing potion would do much for him, but I'd brought plenty. I forced one bottle down his throat and left another nearby.

Back to the man who'd supposed to be keeping watch. I stripped the man of his clothes, and because he was bigger than me, they fit well enough over the clothes I'd worn here. Using my perception, I headed toward the people talking in the distance. Up a staircase. to the right. A dim light and a cloud of cigar smoke spilled into the hall.

I approached the door slowly. Beneath their chittering and chortling, I could hear cards shuffling, coins clinking together. They were too distracted to notice me walk into the room but could've also been that I'd always been good at masking my presence when on the prowl. I drew one of my daggers and stabbed one in the chest.

He keeled forward over the table as I stabbed another and then the third. The last one was struggling to rise to his feet, probably to try to defend himself. So I stabbed him in the leg, clean through to the seat of his chair. Now he was stuck.

"Good evening," I greeted him. "Where's your boss? I just want to talk."

"Don't know," he said. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"It's stupid to lie. Can we not do this? I just want to know where he is, and I don't want to wait. I have a good business offer for him. So where is he? Tell me and I might actually let you live."

Sweat dripped down the side of his face and glistened on his upper lip. He sputtered, "Kashana Casino." The man held his hands up. "You won't kill me, right?"

"Wow," I said. I couldn't help it. How worthless was this one? I slipped one of my smaller knives under his chin. "Seems like I need to do your boss a favor here for giving them up so easily."

"Please, please, I'm begging you!"

Feeling his life drain from him in my hands was satisfying. This feeling would never get old, would it?

Now time to find Kashana Casino and pay this poor fool's boss a visit.

[Notice]

Congratulations! You have completed the first part of your Quest [Meet the Triam Drana Boss]. Your reward will be calculated after you complete the entire Quest.