Chapter Text
Fisk lost track of the days following his alliance with Darrin. The young lord kept him busy with messages and errands. Some he understood - a commission for a lighter chair was one he appreciated, and he knew that the nobility wouldn’t respect Darrin if he couldn’t show up in new and fashionable clothes every time he went out. Such a waste.
Fortunately, those occasions were only when Aurelia deemed them to be. Darrin never left aside from that, instead spending his days writing frantically. Some of the letters he sent out were answered, and Fisk’s runs were most often to a certain legal firm that appeared to service the nobility and to the merchant’s guild. A few were to certain mercenaries, but none of them ever came back to help protect Darrin, so Fisk was unsure what that was for.
He was also sent almost daily to Darrin’s cousins to see if there was any word to bring back from them or from Aurelia. He learned the layout of the city swiftly, and the running kept him tired enough not to question the young lord too closely.
It wasn’t so much that he didn’t notice Darrin seeming to grow even thinner and paler than he’d been to begin with, however.
“Just what is in all of these?” Fisk asked gruffly one morning, looking over the parchment and ink and burnt out candles. As far as he could see, Darrin hadn’t even retired to bed the night before. It was difficult to tell, given that the young lord did not make a habit of making his bed and had yet to demand that Fisk take on that kind of servant work.
The sharp mismatched eyes that lifted to meet Fisk’s burned with a feverish energy that worried him. “Many different things. Numbers don’t lie, and other things can be predicted if you can see far enough back to find a pattern.”
Darrin leaned back with a thump and exhaled in a frustrated hiss. “I need more information to be what I want to be. I have enough for some moves, but those are limited. I need eyes and ears, and you’re busy enough as it is.”
“What do you need to know?”
“Everything. If Lord Gregoir leaves his home on a day when there are no parties, I want to know. If the Vertian household is going through so many servants they are hiring on a daily basis, I want to know. If someone visits Lord Vovlan in the middle of the night, I want to know, and if I can find out who all the better. Information is power, every bit as much as money.”
Fisk glanced down at the pile of letters that now awaited delivery. “Is that what the mercenaries are for?”
Darrin scoffed. “Hardly. I’d be overpaying if I hired them for that. No, I have them on three different jobs at the moment. Two retrievals and one reinforcement.”
Fisk considered for a moment if he should ask more. Darrin seemed to be willing enough to speak for the moment, but how far could he push it?
As though reading his mind, Darrin chuckled. “You’ll find out soon enough when they return. I doubt I’ll be able to hide what they report from you if you’re determined to find out.”
“You should rest,” Fisk finally admonished. “And get some sun.”
“I can’t be seen outside,” Darrin said briskly. “Not yet. I have work to do. I can rest when we have our own place and you aren’t my only guard.”
“You keep saying this is a long game,” Fisk persisted, ignoring the way Darrin seemed to have so easily slipped into thinking of the two of them as long term allies. That was for the best, Fisk knew logically, even if he was less secure in their shared future. He didn’t like being the one thinking like a manipulator. He shook the thought away. He had no plans to betray the young lord at the moment, after all. “You can’t exhaust yourself so soon if that’s the case.”
“Ugh.” Darrin rolled his eyes like a teenager receiving orders from a parent. “Fine. I will rest until you get back, alright? I’m expecting that first mercenary group back within the next week or so, anyway. Then we’ll have an opportunity. We should have enough gold…”
Darrin had taken more money than Fisk would have thought possible, and though a great deal had been spent it was still several times more than what Fisk had managed to scrape together before starting this adventure.
“What could possibly be that expensive?” He balked.
“A manor.”
Fisk startled. He wasn’t sure what some of the nobles’ houses went for, but he was certain that even what they had wouldn’t buy the smallest townhouse in the area.
Darrin smirked, apparently satisfied with dumbfounding a servant. “The mercenaries are bringing leverage. It will be large, and you’ll need to rent a wagon to bring it where I wish it to go. When they return, come back for me and we’ll go pick it up together.”
The young man enjoyed being sneaky and mysterious entirely too much. Fisk knew already that Darrin would not be telling him more, and contented himself with the promise that Darrin would rest.
* * *
If Fisk had to hear one more comment about the half-man and his goon he’d be tempted to do something reckless. He found it hard to believe that it could be worse without the blonde viper that had agreed to work with them. The girl treated Darrin nearly as poorly as the others when people weren’t watching, taking her cut and running off as soon as she was able. Even her ‘endearment’ for him seemed skin deep. If Darrin noticed, he didn’t do anything about it.
The young man deserved better than this. It wasn’t his fault he was marked and couldn’t walk, he’d found ways to make himself more useful than this whole mansion of nobles put together. Fisk shook his head as he moved to fetch the refreshments Aurelia had requested. Big as he was, his servant’s uniform seemed to render him invisible except for the odd haughty sniff or comment and no one had yet tried to stop him from doing anything.
“I heard you found another illusionist. I’m surprised at you, after how poor of an investment the last one turned out to be.” Fisk heard the words from a couple of gentlemen lingering near the punch but kept his eyes on what he was doing.
“Some of these mages have no drive to stay alive, no fighting instinct,” an older man sighed. “I fancy myself a good judge of that, but every now and then the universe seems determined to prove one wrong. Still, I would have thought multicolor eyes like that would have been a good indicator he’d have decent power. Ah, well, past is past. The pit masters say this one is much more cooperative.”
Fisk froze, working to keep his breathing and face steady. What were the odds of there being more than one illusionist with multicolor eyes brought into the pit in the last year? Not good, he’d wager. So this man, this vile specimen of humanity, had been the one who’d bought his brother Nathan and subjected him to the pit. The thought brought bile to Fisk’s throat, and he didn’t hear the next few things that were said. When he came back to himself, he remembered that he was supposed to be fetching a drink, and hurried to complete the task before he could attract attention.
“Finally!” the spoiled brat groused when Fisk came back, snatching her glass ungratefully.
Fisk waited until her attention seemed to be elsewhere, then bent low over Darrin to whisper quietly in his ear. “That older man next to the drinks table - who is he?”
“I’m not quite certain.” Darrin frowned. “Starlet, who is the elderly gentleman talking to Lord Eretes?”
She made a noise dangerously close to gagging. “Lord Claudius. Your rival in love.”
“Truly?” Darrin murmured with some interest, glancing that way again. “Your grandfather appears to have chosen the one man I could reasonably compete with.”
“Hmm, yes, such a difficult choice. The one that would hopefully die within a few years or the one that doesn’t smell of liniment.”
“I’d plan on at least a decade with that one, Starlet. His family has a record of living annoyingly long lives and being very healthy right up to the end. He might outlive me.” Darrin appeared to have lost interest now, instead observing something across the room with the faintest of smiles.
“What a lovely thought,” the girl muttered. “What are you looking at now?”
“Do you think your friend Lady Yara is the type to have an affair?”
“Absolutely, her husband is certainly always having one,” the lady’s eyes immediately sought out the one Darrin mentioned, clearly interested but experienced at hiding it.
And just like that, the two of them were otherwise occupied. Fisk was not so easily distracted, however, and he kept a discreet eye on the older gentleman throughout the evening. His heart burned for some form of justice, but this wasn’t the time or place.
It was odd to look at such a man with this much hatred. Fisk had always been taught to be mindful of the elderly, to treat them with respect and dignity and kindness. This one, however, was responsible for the horrific deaths of the very people that had taught him that, and likely many more besides. He deserved the executioner’s blade, or worse, yet here the man was, flaunting impossible wealth and power with no consequences whatsoever.
Thoughts of his family and the injustice of it all circled his mind throughout the evening, prompting Darrin to hiss at him more than once and to cut their stay short. The girl didn’t seem too disappointed, but as she had the last few times she insisted on counting the take herself. What was the girl even using it for? She ought to have everything she needed handed to her on a silver platter already.
“Alright,” Darrin said sternly out the window to Fisk’s driver’s seat when she was gone. “What is wrong with you?”
Fisk glanced around before answering in a lowered voice. “Lord Claudius.”
“Yes, he’s an absolute prat and a terrible person. So are most of the people in these parties. What of it?”
“He… owned… my brother.”
“I see.” Darrin went quiet for a moment. “We don’t have the leverage to take him down. Not yet. Give me two years.”
Fisk twisted to look through the window with growing outrage. “Two years?” He hissed. “The man responsible for my brother’s death is walking around as though the world is his, and you want me to sit and wait for two years? He might die naturally before he ever sees any punishment for what he did.”
Darrin pulled himself closer to that window. “He is a powerful man with the favor of the king. There is nothing I can do, and nothing you can do. Yet. If you try something you will get caught, and if you get caught you will die. Wait.”
Fisk didn’t answer, just snapped the reins and got them moving. Darrin sat back and left off the topic, though throughout the rest of the evening after they got back to their rooms he kept glancing Fisk’s way warily and gave him tasks to keep him busy.
The same held true of the day that followed, but Fisk still found time to learn which of the many elaborate mansions belonged to Lord Claudius. He found his way into an establishment that sold a strong liquor common among the lower classes and made a separate purchase of a hooded lantern elsewhere.
Darrin looked up each time he returned, glanced over him and gave him more letters to deliver or purchase requests. Fisk, while far from being a perfect servant, was more than capable of doing this. The mindlessness of the tasks gave him time to plan, though that was certainly not Darrin’s intention.
Fisk wasn’t stupid enough to do anything out of the ordinary, but Darrin still looked suspicious when Fisk retired for the night. He hesitated to climb out the window when he heard the patter of rain, but eventually decided that the downpour could help conceal him if he had to run. He tucked the bottles into his belt and carried the lantern in his hand. That would be enough to wreak all the destruction he wanted.
There were guards. Of course there were guards, but they were hunched against the rain and clearly miserable. Stealth wasn’t Fisk’s forte, but after all the muscle-ups with the Sunshiners he had no problem whatsoever with pulling himself over the stone portion of the wall when he got up the courage to risk being seen.
Luck both was and was not on his side. He came down roughly ten feet behind the nearest guard, but the sharp crack of a breaking branch further down kept attention away from him. Once he was past the perimeter, he thought the rest should be relatively easy.
He found the kitchen gardens and forced the servant’s door. He hadn’t intended to come inside - too much risk of being seen - but the rain meant it would be difficult to light the makeshift torches. Now, in the darkest time of the night when even the cooks slept, it was the work of a moment to light the rags he’d stuffed under the cork and throw it crashing against the bottles of the wine cellar. A second quickly followed the first, setting the room well and truly aflame. The other two he lit and stepped outside to throw through upper windows.
Fisk turned and ran after that, a scream sounding behind him from whoever had come to investigate the shattering of glass.
“Hey!” One of the guards shouted, too close for comfort. The man barreled into Fisk, but Fisk threw him off easily enough.
“Oof, he’s a big one,” he heard another man grumble as he vaulted up and over the wall.
If he’d hoped that his agility and hasty retreat was enough, he was to be disappointed. He heard when another guard dropped down behind him, and started to run at full speed. He kept his cursing inside his head, saving his breath as the footsteps continued to follow him through several turns.
He had to lose them, and in the meantime he couldn’t lead them towards where he and Darrin were staying. So far he doubted that his pursuers had anything besides his size to go off of to try to identify him, and it needed to stay that way. He was far from the only blacksmith or guard of his size in Sarthe, after all.
He skidded down an alley, looking for a favorable corner. That wasn’t difficult, and when he slid to a stop and turned to face his pursuer, he took him completely by surprise. One swift hit to the side of the man’s head sent him ricocheting against the wall and slumping to the ground, and let Fisk slip away without being followed.
He returned the way he’d left, trying not to mutter a curse as he dripped over the hard wooden floor and hurried to close the window. He heard nothing from the main room of the suite, but the light still flickered under the door. If Fisk was lucky, Darrin hadn’t even noticed that he was gone. He debated going and trying to usher the younger man to sleep, but ultimately decided against it. There was no way the observant noble would miss Fisk’s wet hair, and then he might ask questions that Fisk didn’t want to answer.