In the Jorwood District, Fors woke up to find herself face-down on her desk, a trail of drool across the two lines she'd managed to write before falling asleep.
"Oh no — when did I nod off?"
She sat bolt upright, cradled her head in both hands, and groaned. "Completely done for. There's no way I'm making this week's deadline. What was I thinking, starting a new project? I'll never be able to fill this plot hole in a million years."
She stewed for a good while, then sighed. "Right. First things first — a cigarette."
She blew out a long, satisfied puff of smoke and let her gaze drift over the clock on the wall. She blinked. "It's this late, and Hugh still isn't back?"
It happened several times a week, and every time it made her anxious and tense. What Hugh did for a living was not, by any reasonable measure, a safe occupation.
Tap tap tap.
Familiar footsteps came from the doorway. Fors jumped up and rushed over, just in time to see Hugh push the door open and step inside. "You're finally home!"
"You're still up?"
Fors lifted her chin. "Well — obviously, I was up working. I was writing all night."
"..."
Hugh gave her an odd look. "You might want to wipe the drool off your face first."
Hugh went to the washroom and splashed her face with water. She stood there, staring blankly at the little tuft of hair sticking straight up on her head in the mirror, still not entirely back in the real world after what had just happened.
Lady Natasha had simply walked into the Zmange Gang's den, one-hitting dozens of members in turn with what appeared to be nothing more than a stick, dragged the gang's boss out of his bed, and killed him. Then she'd produced a contract and forced the survivors to sign it — anyone who refused died on the spot.
After which she announced, as casually as one might mention the weather: from this moment forward, Hugh Dilcha was the new boss of the Zmange Gang.
To make the consequences of breaking the contract clear to the Highlanders present, she had two of them try their luck attacking Hugh — and both men were strangled to death by their own shadows.
These Highlanders were rowdy folk on a good day, some of them genuinely not the sharpest tools in the shed, but they weren't stupid. One look at that nightmarish display and every last trace of defiance evaporated. They dropped to their knees one after another, pledging their loyalty to Hugh as their new boss with great reverence.
The whole affair had been absurdly, almost comically breezy — and yet it left Hugh with a bone-deep understanding of just how fragile these men, who swaggered and terrorised ordinary people every day, truly were against a powerful Beyonder.
Which raised a question.
Why did the Loen authorities simply leave these people to their own devices? Weren't they aware of all the harm the gangs caused? Didn't they know how many ordinary lives had been broken under the heel of gang rule? Didn't they see that the chaos in the East District and the Docklands was entirely a product of the gangs proliferating unchecked?
And then, another question: what Sequence was Lady Natasha?
"Hey!"
Fors gave Hugh a light tap on the shoulder. "Earth to Hugh."
"I... I'm still turning tonight over in my head." Hugh had no intention of hiding anything from her closest friend — Fors could be spectacularly lazy, but her mind was sharper for it.
"Quite a night, was it?"
"You know the Zmange Gang?"
"!!!"
Fors's smile vanished entirely. "The Highland thugs from the East District? You ran into them tonight? We're moving out. Right now."
Hugh grabbed her arm. "Wait — hear me out. I know you won't believe this, but... I'm the Zmange Gang's new boss."
"???"
Fors stared at her, dazed. "Am I the one still asleep, or are you?"
"It's true, Fors!"
Hugh's small face was dead serious. "Here's what happened..."
Ten minutes later, Fors stumbled backward and collapsed onto the sofa. "...Give me a moment."
She pinched her forehead and wrestled with it for a long while. She finally raised her head and said hollowly: "I still don't quite believe it. I don't even dare write this in my novels."
"I'll prove it."
The next day.
At the Zmange Gang's headquarters, dozens of broad-shouldered Highlanders stood in two lines and bellowed as one at the figure who was barely half their height: "Good morning, Boss!"
Hugh spread her hands: "...There you have it."
Fors stared for a long moment. "Reality really is stranger than fiction."
The Highlanders roared in unison once more: "Good morning, Second Boss!"
"..."
The Realm of Chaos.
Vincent and Bernadette opened another "cross-dimensional call."
After hearing her account, Vincent's head was full of question marks. "Wait — why, though?"
"Why what?"
"Why did you decide to make Hugh a gang boss?"
I was rather counting on Hugh to get into the Loen Intelligence Bureau and help me build a network of contacts. She's gone from 'law enforcement' to 'organised crime' — how did we end up here?
"At the time, I was mainly thinking about whether I could use buying and selling lives as a way to act out the Shadow Merchant."
Bernadette said evenly, "Based on what you laid out before, a Shadow Merchant leans more toward being a crooked dealer — rigging transactions to tilt things in their own favour and pocket more than their fair share."
"So — does strong-arming a deal count? And does strong-arming people's lives count?"
Vincent was quiet for a moment. "And the result?"
"The potion did stir, but not noticeably. So that direction is probably wrong." Bernadette frowned. "Which means the acting method is going to be considerably harder to nail down..."
She asked, "Do you have any better ideas?"
"Not any solid ideas yet, but I think I've worked out some principles for acting."
Vincent shook his head and said, "Yesterday I went down to Knockturn Alley and completed a few transactions with some Dark wizards, trying a range of approaches."
"In the end, I found that the potion reacted most strongly when the other party genuinely believed they had gotten the better end of the deal — while in reality, the exact opposite was true."
"To sum it up: I need to rig the transaction so that I walk away with the greater gain, but the other party not only doesn't notice — they come away with the feeling that they won."
Bernadette nodded. "That fits the 'shadow' prefix well enough. Tomorrow during the signing with the Hall family, I'll give it a try. But — what's your next move for the acting?"
"Still working on it."
Vincent wasn't being fully honest here.
Because he did, in fact, already have an idea: well, who better to test it on than our dear, ever-impoverished Mr. Fool? The Tarot Club, as it currently stood, was essentially a trading platform. Deals could be struck with the other members — or with the Fool himself. If he could engineer a situation where Klein genuinely believed he'd come out ahead, while Vincent was the one who'd truly cleaned up, the Shadow Merchant potion might digest on the spot.
"One more thing to catch you up on," Bernadette continued. "I've been to that ancestral tomb with Stephen."
"Did you find anything?"
"It's a Fourth Epoch burial chamber from the Quaternary Period..." She paused. "Have you actually read any books about our world's history?"
"Of course. During our second exchange I went and dug up history books from your world — I wanted a general picture of things. The best way to understand a new world is always to start with its history."
Bernadette accepted this and continued: "In the tomb we encountered an evil spirit that had been manipulating the corpse of that Attorney Delin. He appeared to be quite clearly rational and lucid. He claimed the tomb was built by the Blood Emperor Tudor during the Fourth Epoch, that he was Tudor's most trusted household retainer, that he died in the tomb thousands of years ago and has been trapped there ever since — and he wants us to release him."
Vincent was surprised. "So Stephen is a descendant of Emperor Tudor?"
"If the evil spirit isn't lying."
Hmm.
Something stirred in Vincent's memory — certain plot points from the original Lord of the Mysteries: Backlund, underground tomb, evil spirit, a connection to the Blood Emperor Tudor...
This sounded very much like Medici. But the evil spirit claimed to be Tudor's household retainer.
"Are you thinking of releasing him?"
Bernadette's brow creased. "I'm considering it. He says my father once visited the underground tomb, and that he'll only tell me what my father did there and why — after he's freed."
"How would he know who your father is? He's been sealed in that tomb since the Fourth Epoch."
"Because of the Card of Blasphemy."
She gave a detailed account of what had happened.
Confirmed. That evil spirit is Medici.
What a smooth-talking creature — says different things to different people.
To be continued…
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