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But if wanting to know lets you be known, then simply knowing let you find out who <span class="mu-i">wants</span>. Don't look for the thing itself, Riv. Look for the people looking for something. Follow the way the Wind blows, through the streets of the city, the structure it shapes in the wagging of different tongues.
Someone is buying up Shards, at premium price. The Legion is offering a premium on salvage service, for contracts out East. All the grand Masks are busy with glorious work, from entertaining Senators to daring deeds in the Circuits. The Slicerats have been expanding aggressively.
And all these things combined lets one know that no whispertrade in the Red Market right now admits that the city is also infected with a case of the Quiet Professional. They don't belong to any of the eight tolerated mercenary groups. And the Slicerats don't admit they have them up their sleeve, even when they offer cold coins to hotheads and firebrands and promise a new kind of gang and a way to kill the world's ills.
The Professionals are good, but they're not ghosts. If you act, you're acted upon. If no one admits soldiers stalk the streets then listen for something else. Of all the vanadian companies setting up in the city these days in their gold-rush to exploit a new market, which one is bringing in extra clerks, at night, from heavy ships? Perhaps . . . One that ships to Ratport?
Oh, easy. Same company that took that contract to refurbish some of the lost urban landscape in the Eastern slums. The Twin Shores Consortium, fresh out of the distant Vanadian capital. They're a construction and mining company, lots of engineers and tool specialists. They've been taking meetings with Rinik. They would be. The Slicerats supplies a lot of their local labour pool. And the meetings? They're attended by quiet, stoic clerks who stand oh so <span class="mu-i">very</span> straight.
And there it is - something so rare as a conspiracy.
Rinik's moving up in the world. But he pays good coin to keep it quiet, buying the Wind. Coin he gets because a Vanadian merchant-group is providing vast funds in exchange for local guides, willing hands and contacts. Rebuilding the city, bit by bit. Humanitarian work, really.
Rinik's been busy.
He has been meeting with Senators, and Cestipherion and Luperni representatives. And this Twin Shores consortium too. What's a Rat do to arrange a high meeting with a merchant magnate? Some say he's interested in running for office, making friends in high places. Coin buys a political campaign. Would a merchant-magnate from a distant republic be interested in donating to the cause of a local politican? Perhaps one who will, in turn, allow a few non-standard imports, perhaps offer some advice on matters of literature? Ensure a steady flow of government contracts, for years to come.
Little rats, gnawing at the wall.
>Everyone can claim 3 Bits and 14 Coins, from sharing information with the Red Market.
>We have a lead for a new dance - [Twin Shores Consortium]
