In the darkness inside the commoner district, there was a single brothel different from the rest. This one had a red roof and had become more like a paper hell than a whorehouse. In my black attire, I strolled through the main hallway of ‘The Red Baron’, nodded towards the woman behind the counter and walked past her.
A few seconds later, I was already downstairs in a completely empty cellar. One wall still had a gaping hole in it, but there wasn’t much to hide anyway at this point. Only a few gems and a bit of jewellery remained from our first heist, meaning we were basically living from day to day at this point.
Sighing loudly about my misfortune, I turned around on my heels and ascended the stair once more. Heading left, I walked past the woman once more and took the stairs upwards. More papers were laid in the hallway, neatly stacked onto the walls. Closing my eyes, I thankfully couldn’t hear the expected noises of this place, which was honestly the best thing happening to me that night. Still, a bit worried about what I would find, I followed the advice of my ears and opened the third door on the left.
Unexpectedly, I didn´t open the door to a bedroom, but rather to a room filled with even more documents. Tom sat on a desk, his head resting on it while the whore sat on the edge of the plate.
“Whore.” I said, nodding towards her.
“Slut.” The whore answered, smiling towards me mischievously.
“I´m so done with life …” Tom muttered as he noticed my presence.
“The whore is looking good though.” I said, pointing towards the whore who neither looked stressed nor unhealthy.
“Yeah, because there is enough to eat for her.” I raised my eyebrow, looking at the whore who nodded quietly.
“Oh, you found out?” I asked Tom swiftly afterwards. Him finding out about her real race wasn’t entirely surprising considering how often she turned into me when they did that kind of stuff.
“It is pretty hard not to … why do I need to know the two worst monsters in the capital city? One is working me to death, and the other one is wringing whatever is left out of me.” Oh, my poor Tom. Too bad he decided this for himself.
“Should I kill her for you?” I asked, my hand already reaching towards the dagger on my thigh.
“Are you insane? Do you know how many operations I need to micromanage because we chose not to have middle management?” He asked, marginally distressed about his work-life balance.
“One? Two?” I asked slowly. “Three?”
“All of them! I have a 180 hour week!” He admitted, to which I opened my eyes wide.
“You know time magic?” I asked, already thinking about the possibilities of this … which weren’t too many to be honest.
“I wish …” He said, even though he never understood what time magic could do for real.
“Anyways, how far have we progressed?” I asked, looking towards Tom who finally lifted up his head.
“Why do you want me to summarize everything?” He asked, which was a valid question. Everyone in this room should know what was happening, but I did have my doubts about one person in particular.
“So that the slowest of us knows what´s going on?” I said and grinned happily towards the whore who glared back at me furiously.
“I´ll do it.” She said and walked towards me until I had to look up to smile at her brightly. “Everything is basically ready, the only things we are missing are a few more guards and hundreds of criminals on our side.”
“It is great that you admit I have two weeks to do whatever I want!” I said, smiling brightly. Tom stared at me in horror because someone still had to run this shitshow … which would be him.
“Lucinda …” Tom muttered, instantly understanding I wasn’t going to help.
“Hehe ~ have a great night you two. Is there any bed I can sleep in without getting syphilis?” I asked the whore whose expression got even darker.
“… you are leaving us alone with this shit?” She asked, nearly bursting out in anger.
“I have other stuff to do? And besides, I am your boss. You are supposed to work hard so that I can buy another house.” I claimed and laughed devilishly.
“I haven’t been paid yet.” She claimed while staring down at me.
“Ten out of ten Lucindas don’t give a damn.” I giggled loudly, turned around and strolled out of the room happily. “Have a lot of fun you two.”
Even though they still protested loudly as I left the room, I couldn’t care less. I wouldn’t sit by idly either after all. I had yet to achieve true perfection in my plans, and thus, I retrieved my compass and map as I strolled out of the brothel, pulled my hood deeper and tried to remember the way I needed to take two weeks from then on … which was honestly way more complicated than expected. I somehow needed to get from the treasure chamber out of the eastern slums as fast as possible, and scouting out all possible routes was a horrendous task.
For example, I didn´t know if I could shorten my travel time if I went through the backyards of a few noble mansions or not, and that needed time to test out. Additionally, I was sure I would set off some sort of alarm, and so I needed to find the fastest way out of the royal palace as well … which meant remembering everything based on a blueprint we got.
I was good at most things, but spatial representation was surely not one of my strengths. The blueprints were naturally on paper, making it incredibly hard for me to figure out which stair led where but even then I refused to ask for help from the whore or Tom.
And so, I spent most of my time during these two weeks piecing the puzzle in my head together in a room I rented near the red light district, ignoring the demonstrations outside the window that asked for fairer ruling while we threw money on the streets, stolen from the rich during the night. And oh, boy, did we steal. I doubted there was any unjust noble who didn´t have his house raided for valuable, no matter if he was at home or not. Near the end of the first week though, the D’Antonio crime family couldn’t sell as much anymore. There were simply no buyers left and so, we threw the noble´s valuables under the eyes of the guards onto a packed marketplace one day … that was fun.
