Fergal stood at the edge of the platform, jaw clenched, watching the small army of Repossessors spill forth like floodwater from the pipes around them.

The sound of their boots echoed hollow and steady. All of them moved in rhythm, like parts of a great, rusted machine—and at the heart of it was Lorcawn walking calmly, confidently, as if he were descending a cathedral aisle to meet the congregation he planned to gut.

Fergal's fingers curled into fists.

Lorcawn's gaze cut straight through him.

"I wonder if you even want your sister's arm back anymore." Lorcawn gave a small, mirthless smile. "I know very well that you despise me. Any Bharnish can smell the plot of revenge on you, but a sharp little hate in your chest is quite alright, since it keeps you strong, alert, and on the edge to fight for me… but going against my order is going a bit too far, no? Is this how you envisioned your revenge going down?"

Fergal's lips curled behind his leather patchwork mask.

He didn't answer because it was true.

This was not how he'd envisioned his revenge.

When Lorcawn had first risen to Palm, he had ripped apart the old Repossessors and reshaped them in his image. No more reluctant mercy. Reborn as who he truly wanted to be, Lorcawn restructured the entire hierarchy of the gang, appointed four new Fingers, and all the while, Fergal had endured—done the bare minimum necessary to stay a Finger—and waited. He'd waited for sickness. For age. Anything that would make Lorcawn drop his guard just long enough for a blade between the ribs.

But this was not the battlefield Fergal would've chosen.

He couldn't win. Not right here. Not right now. Not with Lorcawn surrounded by four of the Five Fingers and a small army loyal only to him. Even if Fergal dashed in now, he wouldn't make it five steps before getting intercepted by the Fingers, and positional disadvantage aside, he was completely alone.

He was…

…

He turned slowly when he felt a tap to his shoulder.

Blindfolded Gloam stood behind him, giving him a small nod. The rest of his assistants—Toneless, Tongueless, Aether, and Flay—all nodded as well, fanning out behind him as though to say they had his back.

Fergal gulped. A small warmth stirred behind his ribs, unfamiliar and unwelcome, but… it was there.

… Right.

He hadn't asked for allies. He may not have had any plans for them when he first began enacting his plan of vengeance, but one way or another, he found five who shared his hatred.

Perhaps it was fate that led them to him.

Perhaps it was fate that led him to them.

But that's a story for another time.

So he exhaled slowly, steadily, and drank in the air that stank of rust and rot and bloody anticipation.

He squared his shoulders, stepped forward, and narrowed his eyes at the advancing army.

If today was the day, then so be—

"Wait a second, everyone."

Just as Fergal and his five assistants were about to leap forward—muscles coiled, death in their eyes—a hand swept in front of them like a silk curtain. Gael, with his cane twirling and coat swaying, stepped between Fergal and Lorcawn, as if the entire pond were his parlor and this little mutiny a passing inconvenience.

Everyone froze. The Repossessors halted mid-step. The Fingers narrowed their eyes. Even Fergal paused, tilting his head in confusion as Gael flashed a thick bottle from somewhere on his back.

The glass was stained, the label barely legible, but the number glared back clear as sin: 78%.

So Gael tilted his head back and drank like a saint dying of thirst, downing the clear liquid in a single, obscene swallow.

When it was gone, he exhaled with a theatrical sigh, and then hurled the bottle off the platform.

"... All right," he muttered, as if to himself. "Let's do this."

Before Fergal could ask what in the ten hells he meant, he turned and bolted straight towards the edge of the platform. Not away. Up. In a single nimble bound, he vaulted onto the rusted railings that barely held the walkway together.

Steel was drawn. A hundred or so Repossessors were suddenly ready to charge in again, muscles snapping into readiness, but Gael clicked his heels together and sent an ear-shattering screech rippling outwards. Everyone winced. Even Fergal staggered, clutching his ears, and a moment of disorientation was all the time the Plagueplain Doctor needed to pull out a single brass key and dangle it over the edge of the platform.

"Let's all calm the fuck down," he said sweetly, grinning from Lorcawn to the Fingers in no particular order. "Now, I've been told that this little darling unlocks the central command chamber that governs the floodgates, pressure valves, and arterial flow of every pipeline and channel under Blightmarch. Therefore, if any of you limb-robbing cretins so much as blink in my direction, I'm gonna let go. I bet none of you can catch it as it goes."

He dangled the key a little lower.

"And down it shall fall—plop!—into that swirling stew of piss and nightmares we so fondly call a 'sewer'. And from there?" He cackled, wobbling back and forth on the railings. "Oh, the key's gonna go down into the deep veins, down where even the Gulchers shit themselves before entering. The Ancient Gulch Pipelines."

That name hung like a curse. The Fingers scowled. Even Lorcawn stiffened. Of course Gael would invoke that place. Even Fergal—hardened as he was—didn't like thinking about what slept in those depths. The Ancient Gulch Pipelines ran like an abyss beneath the already abyssal Gulch Pipelines, and whatever machines and rot and monsters that lay in them hadn't been seen in generations.

Suffice it to say, if the key were to be sucked down there, nobody—not even the Gulchers—would ever be able to get it back.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"...So." Gael grinned. "Drop your weapons now, or you can go chase the key through the mouths of the dead."

For a good while, nobody dared make a single move.

Then Lorcawn clicked his tongue—the sound echoing like a pistol shot—and one by one, the small army of Repossessors dropped their weapons. Blades and axes and saws hit the metal walkways and grated iron, making Fergal exhale tensely through his teeth.

Gael simply grinned wider.

"All right," he said softly. "Now we can talk business."

Lorcawn didn't answer right away, but he slid his brass tube mask down—slowly, deliberately—and revealed the twisted flesh of his lower jaw. A patchwork of melted scar tissue and ink-black veins. The scars didn't twitch when he spoke, but his eyes gleamed with the faintest of amusement.

"What sort of business, doctor?"

Gael gave a little bow, one hand on his chest, the other still twirling his cane. "Oh, nothing much. I'm a humble doctor with small dreams and even smaller hands, but let me propose a trinity, since I do adore threes."

Fergal kept his stance solid, watching every motion, every twitch of Lorcawn's fingers. The Repossessors hadn't moved, but they were wound tight, like the jaws of a waiting bear trap.

If they were to move while Gael was speaking…

"One," Gael began, lifting a single finger. "All individuals connected to the Heartcord Clinic are to be allowed safe passage back to the surface. No steel, no sabotage, no stalking. From this day forth, you will not involve us in any more of your delightful, official Repossessor business, and I ask this not as a Plagueplain Doctor, but as a mere doctor of the Heartcord Clinic."

Lorcawn narrowed his eyes, but didn't interrupt.

"Two," Gael said, lifting a second finger. "You will banish Fergal and his five charming goons from the gang. Cast them out. And while you're in such a charitable mood, perhaps hand over that little arm you were talking about? You know the one. Whose arm is that? Fergal's sister?"

Fergal's throat tightened.

"Three," Gael finished, lifting the last finger. "You'll open the pipeline under the Heartcord Clinic, and you'll keep it open. We want steady Gulch water. Do all of that, and I'll give you the key." Then he waved his cane around, gesturing vaguely to the rest of the Repossessors. "I guess I can also keep healing your sorry soldiers if they stumble into my clinic, but no more free checkups. They'll have to pay fifty percent of my usual fee for consultations. Medicine, like madness, must be earned."

Silence rippled out across the pond of steel platforms.

Then Gael tilted his head, and the wicked, crescent-moon grin that curled under the beak of his mask made everyone grimace.

"Surely, our little clinic isn't worth nearly as much as all of the Gulch water under Blightmarch?" he taunted. "Or do you just like me so much that you can't bear to part ways with me for all future businesses?"

In response to that, Lorcawn immediately gave a flat, humorless smile.

"Of course not. In the long term, Gulch water's worth more than a hundred clinics. Far, far more than anything your little hovel could produce in ten years." He paused, then gave a slow nod. "So sure. I'll agree. Hand the key over."

The Palm stepped forward alone, boots scraping across rusted metal, but Gael clicked his tongue sharply and wagged his cane again like a scolding schoolmaster. "Ah-ah. Not so fast."

Lorcawn stopped mid-step. A single eye twitched. "What is it now?"

But Gael tilted his head, almost dreamily, and craned his ear to the sky.

"... Do you hear that?"

For a moment, no one moved. Then all of them looked up, following Gael's gaze, and they watched as a pair of shadows burst onto an overhead bridge through one of the upper pipes.

Evelyn and Liorin immediately waved frantically down at Gael.

"We brought help like you asked!" Evelyn called.

Then, more figures emerged from the pipe behind them. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them dressed in tailored coats and velvet cloaks stood at the edge of every overhead pipe surrounding the sewage pond, their polished masks gleaming like porcelain under the flickering industrial lantern lights.

The Rot Merchants.

And there, walking out right after the two children, was Juno. Her hands were clasped before her as she gazed down on all of them with something that could've been boredom—or scrutiny sharpened to a scalpel.

Fergal could never tell.

But when she spoke, her voice rang clearly across the air.

"We have simply been summoned to observe as a neutral party," Juno declared. "I, the Ladybug, am here to watch a bargain to be struck between Lorcawn of the Repossessors and Gael of the Heartcord Clinic. Should the deal be cut and broken, we—whose creed remains 'Wealth Above All, and Make No Lie'—shall mark the offenders as oathbreakers."

Then, she tilted her chin towards Lorcawn.

"And I assume a man like you knows what being an oathbreaker means?"

The silence that followed was dense and heavy.

But finally, Lorcawn exhaled through his nose, his eyes narrowing as he gave Gael a subtle glare.

"How nice of you to get an arbiter down here to watch our bargain being struck," he said. "How in all the rusted hells did you get the Ladybug down here?"

Gael gave a slow shrug, casual as a drunk asking for directions. "I offered them a slightly better offer than the one I offered you: ten percent of my usual fees for all Rot Merchants visiting my clinic. Ten percent to be checked up on by a Plagueplain Doctor? That's too much of a steal to resist. Now, shall we?"

Lorcawn stood in silence for a breath.

Then another.

His gaze never left Gael, but his hand moved.

With a slow, deliberate motion, he reached over his shoulder, peeled away a strip of cloth, and ripped off the palest arm on his back.

Fergal's breath hitched as Lorcawn tossed it over. The arm arced through the air, spinning once, twice, before falling into Fergal's outstretched hands like a dead bird.

The weight of it sank into his palms. He drew the arm in immediately, clutching it to his chest.

This was hers.

"... The Repossessors won't involve the Heartcord Clinic in any official business anymore," Lorcawn said dryly, his eyes sliding to Gael. "Now, uphold your end of the bargain."

Gael twirled the key once between his fingers and let out a lazy hum. "Of course, of course. I'll stomach a gang that hacks off limbs before I risk irking the money-peddlers—and I did promise Juno I wouldn't interfere in these pipeline matters as a 'Plagueplain' Doctor—so take your key and mind your oaths. I'd rather not have to fight you down here as a Raven."

With that, he lobbed the brass key through the air. It spun, flashed once in the gloom, and landed cleanly in Lorcawn's hand.

Lorcawn stared at it for a moment. He turned it once in his palm, metal glinting dull gold under the overhead pipe-light as if he was measuring its weight—as if he was confirming it was real.

Once he seemed satisfied with it, he turned around without another word.

The Repossessors responded immediately. They picked up their weapons, gave one last tense look to the Rot Merchants surrounding them from above, and one by one, the gangsters filed back into the tunnels they'd emerged from.

Most likely, they were heading straight for the central command chamber.

At the same time, Gael dropped from the rail with a thud and landed lightly beside Maeve. He caught her elbow before she could tip again, steadied her with one arm, and tapped the cane twice against the metal floor.

"Well," he said, voice smooth and almost cheery, "I'll be following our dear limb man and his brood back to the control chamber. Someone's gotta operate it and make sure the clinic gets its share of the undercity's finest bacteria-rich water." With that, he tilted his head at Cara, then up at Evelyn, Liorin, and back at Fergal and his five silent shadows. "The rest of you, go back to the surface. Don't dilly-dally around here anymore."

As everyone but Fergal nodded curtly, Gael looked up one more time, and his gaze met Juno's.

After a long moment, she gave him a single, measured nod as though to say 'you owe me another'. Then, it was her turn to leave. Her Rot Merchants followed, coats whispering, cotton-lined shoes soft as velvet thunder as they vanished into the high tunnels.

Once the gangsters were out, the men and ladies and children of the Heartcord Clinic started shuffling as well. Cara beckoned Liorin and Evelyn to come down so they could follow her back up to the surface, while Gael and Maeve stuck to each other—they had to—as they followed the Repossessors up to the central control chamber.

But Fergal didn't move.

He stayed where he stood.

His arms were wrapped tightly around the severed limb—his sister's arm—and its weight was more real than anything he'd felt all year.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.