Brizogia took an obnoxiously long sip from her drink. It was barely coffee — a cup of hot milk with a shot of espresso and four spoonfuls of sugar.

  “Putting all pleasantries aside, I believe I’ve made myself abundantly clear in our past communications — as limited as they have been. To my knowledge, you have been an independent for the full duration of your short, if rather eventful stay in my city. You stand only to gain by working for the Silversword Agency…” Brizogia said. She intoned the word independent with the same tone one would use for a venereal disease, and made no effort to conceal her own sense of superiority. This wasn’t a conversation between equals in her eyes.

  As she listened, Krahe tossed a beetle-like bean into her mouth and crushed it between her molars. She waited for a few seconds after Brizogia was done speaking, letting the silence settle. She conjured a cigarette, but didn’t light it, testing Brizogia’s reaction to its presence.

  “I’ve heard a great deal of nothing. Unless you have a concrete offer — hell, an example contract — we can end our dealings here and now,” Krahe said.

  With a smug look on her face, Brizogia reached under her coat and brought out exactly what Krahe had described — a paper contract.

  “Feel free to take your time reading through it. I trust that you will find the terms satisfactory,” Brizogia said.

  And, at a glance, the terms did seem good. Great, even. But as it always was, the actual body of the text was filled with particular legalese designed to open up holes and enable one side to screw the other in every way conceivable. In fact, the contract barely even described what it was about, just vaguely denoting the signee as being an independent contractor and that having signed the contract was a condition for being employed by Brizogia. Not even the Silversword Agency proper — Brizogia specifically. Moreover, the paper was enchanted in multiple ways.

  “People fall for this?” Krahe asked, allowing herself to express a measure of disdain as she looked at Brizogia over the paper’s edge.

  Brizogia, being in the middle of another obnoxiously long sip, didn’t respond verbally. She sputtered, putting on one hell of a show of a faked spit-take, glaring daggers at Krahe.

  “How dare-” she began an offended spiel. Krahe sighed, and lit her cigarette. That, for some reason, disturbed Brizogia enough that she fell silent, now paying attention to the smoke that trailed from its glowing ember.

  “Alright, look. It’s been fun making your hirelings look like morons, it really has been,” she said, drawing half the cigarette down in one go. With her free hand, she tossed Brizogia’s contract into the air and shredded it to bits with three consecutive, weak casts of Lasher. “But I don’t have time to play this game. Not with you. I know this is about the raid, you’d have to take me for a braindead moron to expect otherwise. I don’t care why, if it’s just the principle of it, the property damage, or because you’re involved with the same people Semzar was involved with. Right now, it doesn’t matter. You want to take a swing, take your swing. But you better not miss. You better kill me in one shot.”

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  Krahe stared the Silversword administrator down for a good ten seconds, the ember of her cigarette slowly climbing up. The whole time, she had her mental trigger tensed and ready to go, but no attack came. Not yet. She could see the sparks in Brizogia’s eyes, the cogs turning behind them. The woman twitched, like she was suppressing an errant wave of shivers.

  “No? Don’t want to move past politics to any other means? Then back off. I didn’t have to be as polite as I was when you set stalkers against me and I magnanimously chose not to smear them across the fucking cobbles. I even went so far as to simply counteract your meddling with my paperwork, rather than find you and drag you out of your house by that stapled-on wig of yours. I will be upfront with you: Get the fuck out of my way, or you’ll be next. I am being exceptionally reasonable here.”

  In a huff, Brizogia got out of her seat, smashing her half-empty cup on the ground.

  “I- I will ruin you. You will never work in this city again! I will have your bank accounts frozen, your funds confiscated, you will be found guilty of every form of fraud under the sun. No agency will take you,” she seethed.

  “And?” Krahe raised an eyebrow.

  “And…” Brizogia started, but didn’t get to continue.

  Krahe chortled. She stuck her mind’s hands into the tar bubbling in her gut and started digging, allowing herself to speak whatever felt the best on her tongue, regardless of how true it was.

  “Really. Freezing my nonexistent bank accounts? Getting me refused by what agencies, the ones I haven’t so much as glanced in the direction of since I’ve come here? I’ve been living with the full expectation of going up against the whole system, and I get some literal-who she-worm with too much money and not one tenth the sense to wield it properly. What a disappointment, you are. Nothing you can do hasn’t been tried against me before. You could bring the church down on my head and they wouldn’t catch me. You saw what I did to the Hashems and you thought you could dance with me? Please.”

  Brizogia wrung her hands together, anger flickering in her eyes.

  “You think yourself untouchable? I’ve dealt with jumped-up outlaws such as you. You will never know peace in my city! If you know what is good for you, you will…”

  “...Kill yourself,” Krahe interrupted with a completely serious tone.

  “Wh- huh?” Brizogia stuttered, caught off-guard.

  “If you know what is good for you, you will either leave me in peace and drop this matter permanently, or you will kill yourself. You’ll find it preferable to the alternative. You think a simple raid was the breadth of what I can do? I’d say I can dig up a mountain of dirt on anyone, but with you and your agency, I just need to walk around and the filth of your practices sticks to my shoes like dogshit. Killing you would be the easy way out. I’m pleading with you here: Fuck with me, and I’ll burn the whole Silversword Agency down around you.”

  It was all rumors. Overheard conversations and complaints, a bad reputation kept barely under the surface by wide-reaching PR and damage-control programs. Half-baked and hair-thin as coverups went, but there was one key aspect of the Silverswords that made everyone turn a blind eye: They did their jobs.

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