“Please don’t try to draw any attention to us,” Alain said, admonishing Vera for lingering around a stall in the street. The scent of bread had drawn her over, but stopping for bread was the opposite of what we wanted to do. While Javier had been stealthy in his endeavors, having snagged a page out of Lord Montare’s accounting book, that didn’t meant it wouldn’t be easy to connect the missing page back to the group that had inquired about his thoughts about the recent activity in the city.

“But it smells so good,” Vera said, downcast as she walked away from the vendor. “The stuff we have back home doesn’t smell nearly as good as this.”

“I’ll buy you some of that bread when we’re done working,” Alain compromised. Vera’s smile was attention drawing in its own right, but it wasn’t right to crush her spirits any further.

“Where are we going though?” I asked. Skulking aimlessly was yet another way to draw one’s attention, if one was watching for us. Walking with purpose was more authentic.

“Just around the corner,” Alain said, patience running dry. I swallowed any further concerns and waited until we arrived in front of a tavern, The Horse and Pony Show.

It looked like a thriving business, the doors constantly churning out people while a steady throng continued into the establishment in the gaps of activity. “This is the place?”

“Oh hush, Perry. No more words until we’re done, alright?”

I felt my cheeks grow heated, resolving to say nothing ever again until he recanted and begged for me to speak. We filtered in through the crowd, Alain taking us to the bartender.

“What can I do for you?” he said. He was a lanky fellow, long and skinny, wisps of a red beard coating his chin. His auburn skin made it even harder to see the faint hairs flitting about his cheeks, blue eyes staring at the filthy pewter mug in his hands.

“We’re here for a close shave. All off the top, keep my edges neat,” Alain said. The bartender’s eyes flashed in recognition, and he pulled up the plank dividing his dominion from the rest of the pub. He walked out in front of the slab and lifted open a panel on the floor, motioning for us to continue forward, down the stairs that followed into the depths. His body was positioned in front of our departure, a practiced means of ensuring only those who knew about the place would retain the knowledge of it.

Alain continued to lead us further down into a replica of the bar above, albeit with a hardier crowd. The ones down here looked like they had seen at least one fight before, each sporting various scars on their exposed skin. This was truly a different clientèle, a place for those who hadn’t felt like they belonged in the above world. Some of them even wore their second tier attributes, revealing that the brunt of the population was filled with predator souls. That wasn’t to say there weren’t other prey souls present. Just fewer visibly so.

They spoke openly amongst each other, no conflict brewing unlike the other bar Vera and I had dined in. Only a sense of camaraderie and loss, hiding from the new paradigm plaguing Malagost city. Those that wished to hide before as opposed to being stared at with heightened expectations, others wishing to reclaim the valor and honor that was now denied to them. Their shared misery made them bedfellows in this downstairs den, coming together like how the city above claimed to have done.

As there was a bartender above, the one below had one too, sitting with a wall of spirits behind him. He looked like the one upstairs, as though they could be brothers. Was probably easier to keep this sort of secret in the family, I reckoned. Only thing that makes it worse is if there’s a leak. Then you have brother against brother once again.

Alain made his way over, evidently ready to replicate his prior feat in leading us into this lower level.

“Uh, do you know where the black market informant is?” he asked, staring down at the bar, unable to meet the bartender’s eyes. A simultaneous smack of mine, Vera and Mia’s foreheads resounded throughout the space, Javier having the good grace to refrain from reflecting his own embarrassment. If the other patrons weren’t so fixated on their own conversations, I was sure that we would have had the room’s full attention upon us.

The bartender rolled his eyes and pointed off to the corner of the room where a woman sat a table, flanked by a standing man, all attention sliding off of his body like droplets from the sky. She had dark hair and a cold face, framing steely grey eyes that pierced through everything they looked at. She wore practical attire meant for moving. Atop sat a tailored grey leather shirt and below form fitting black pants. Her attire said business and her attitude reinforced that no one would find pleasure there. “Hello Javier, Alain, Perry, Mia, Vera. What brings you to me this very day?”

She had addressed us each in turn, no name failing to meet the person it was intended for. I felt my jaw drop, shocked that she knew who we were. I thought we had done quite well at remaining incognito during our time in Malagost. She read my expression with a wry glance, raising her left eyebrow. “Oh come now. You didn’t think making a ruckus outside of Lord Montare’s mansion would go unnoticed? Some of us have to pay attention for a living.”

“But what made us worth remembering?” I asked, feeling my heart plunge deep within my body, body abuzz with fear. I had to know how much she knew. How much we were doomed.

“You discussed walking on down to my place of work. Come on, Perry. Try and keep up. Alain here knows what you came here for, someone with information. Why would an information broker not be aware of your presence in her own home? That’s a freebie, mind you. Only because it was so obvious. Don’t expect any other free transactions.”

She drummed her nails over the wooden table, humming a soft tune to herself. “Well? Aren’t you going to ask your questions?”

Alain glared at me, his unstated message for me to stop talking like how he had requested before bubbling up to the front of my memory. My cheeks blazed red and my lips glued shut. I couldn’t help but agree. Whatever I said, if not properly thought out, could only cause us more harm.

“We want to know more about Lord Montare’s dealings. Who was he working with? Who was the backer that funded his operations in Malagost? Do you recognize this name?” Alain panted, passion overwhelming him, the mere act of asking drawing a heavy toll. He had brandished the stolen document for the information broker’s appraisal.

The information broker sighed, motioning for us to come closer with one of her perfectly cut nails, snagging the document with her other hand. “You know you’re asking some big questions, especially in front of a larger public. I thought you understood caution, but I may have overestimated you. My mistake. I should have known better given your earlier performance outside of the manor.”

She studied her hands, treating them as though they were the most important thing in the room, fixated on the curvature of her fingers over our frozen faces. “I can get you answers, although I’ll have to have my men study this document first, but what do you have to pay for it? Money? Favors? Secrets?”

Javier winced. “I’m afraid anything of the secretive sort I would be able to pay with… isn’t quite for sale. I’m sure you’ve already gathered some second-hand information just from observing us, let alone our inquiries into the town. I take it that doesn’t count as payment then?”

“What you freely give in your negligence doesn’t count. You’re right when you’re right, Javier.”

“As for money and favors… something tells me the price you’d want us to pay for either of those would be far too high. I’m amenable to favors, but those have to be vetted. I can’t afford to give you total freedom to choose.”

The information broker sighed, before slamming her hands on the table. “You seriously came this woefully unprepared to my dominion and thought that begging me for answers would just make me give them out of the kindness of my heart? I should have you thrown out and barred from this establishment. I guarantee I would never see you again, no matter how much you tried to find me. This is a grave insult to request so much and offer so little with so many riders attached.” Her words were scathing, colder than any barb Mia had ever inflicted.

“Miss… did I ever catch your name?”

“No, you did not,” she replied, refusing to deign to answer. I stifled a smirk, the situation all too familiar.

“Well miss, you’ve clearly got something in mind. What do you want from us? What token do we have that is suitable, if our lack of secrets won’t suffice, if our coin is insufficient, if you can’t have our total freedom? What is it that you need so that you can tell us what we need to know?”

“I thought you’d never ask. Maybe you’re not as stupid as you’ve presented yourself, Javier. Come along. You may call me Mistress, in the interim. Better that than ‘Miss’.” She rose from her seat, her guard following her as she mader her way to the opposite wall of the establishment.

“What you’re going to have to do is fight for the information you want,” she said, the crowd in the bar watching her every step.

“You don’t look quite like the fighting sort,” Vera interjected.

“You’re not wrong there, young Vera.” She rapped on the wall, a panel sliding open revealing a pair of eyes. “That’s why we’re going to the arena.”

“The arena?” Alain asked. Evidently his information gathering had fallen short after hearing of the Mistress.

The panel shut close and the door slid back, revealing a man on a stool and a stairway behind him. We trickled after the Mistress down the depths, leaving me to wonder how much money was behind this operation. How deep did it all go? A dim noise got louder the further down we went, a heavy rumbling broken by our steps and the Mistress’s words.

“It’s something that we came up with. It helps deal with the pent up rage of our fair citizens. You go into the arena, you fight, whoever is left standing is the winner. Standard arena fare. People can bet on the outcomes and make their pockets richer.”

We exited out into a large room, pews surrounding a circle covered in a cage of metal. The rumbling had resolved into cheers and groans, patrons swinging about mugs of drink, sloshing liquid onto the cold floor. Two bodies were in the center of the room, although I couldn’t focus on them, distracted by the greater attention the Mistress had gathered.

“So why do you want us to fight your people then?” Mia asked, ever one to go for the throat.

“I’m the hostess, Amelia. New entertainment goes far. Your blood will be a welcome sight for the arena.”

I didn’t like the thought of my blood spilling out onto the ground for all to see, but we had a job to do, didn’t we? I fought spike feeders. I’d fought people before. I couldn’t balk at the threat of violence.

“This is non-lethal, right?” I asked. I couldn’t let Alain’s demands for my silence restrain me from needing to know the answers.

“Perry, we’re trying to run a business, not a slaughterhouse. I’m not saying you won’t get hurt, but I am saying we’re in the business of not having our fighters die. We don’t have the best medical care around, but our fighters are commanded to fight non-lethally, lest they be killed in retribution. We take the arena very seriously.”

“I don’t think we can decline then. We need to know, Mistress. Just tell us what we need to do,” Javier said.