The first thing I did was pull back the masks they were wearing to see their faces. All three of them had the same hairstyle, long on top and shaved on the sides. I hadn’t actually expected to recognize the rissians. I just wanted to see their faces precisely because they had tried to hide them. My jaw just about dropped off my face and rolled down the alley when I found I recognized two of them. They were the two adventurers I’d walked past in the stairwell and then again when I went to use the bathroom before breakfast.

My mind racing with overcharged MP, I put the pieces together pretty quick. They were tired, all of them were tired. I’d actually woken them up when I walked past them. They must have been staking out my floor, waiting for me to leave. They’d also known things about me they shouldn’t have: my name, that the fistful of gold I’d tried to throw at them was only a fraction of what I was carrying on me, and that I had an aunt they could use to lure me into a dark alley. It seemed more likely that they’d gotten lucky that clandestine meetings were exactly the kind of thing my “aunt” would arrange than that they actually knew about my connection to Brookie.

Someone had told them about me. Possibly even sold them the information about who I was and how much money I had on me. I needed to find out if they were just the common thugs they seemed to be, or were secretly members of the Skinners Brookie had warned me about. He’d said their members could pretend to be anyone, so why not a criminal? I went through their pockets. All I found were some coins and a few pieces of fish jerky. It didn’t tell me much, but I appreciated the reverse mugging. After recovering all the coins I’d tried to throw as a distraction, my overlay updated my new currency total as I filled my pockets with their spare change.

11,034 Crosses, 1 penny >>> 11,151 Crosses, 2 pennies

I also took their knives. They didn’t have any other weapons on them. I was about to quit searching them, when I realized it might be worth checking to see if they were wearing any of those Adventurer Guild medallions. They were. Wooden ones, like mine. All three of them. So… some Adventurers literally were criminals. Nice to know. I stuck the medallions in my back pocket. I figured it might be worth tracking down their lockers later to see if they had anything stored away in them. It would take me three separate trips to the locker room to avoid suspicion or tripping their alarm system, but it might be worthwhile.

Only when I was sure there was nothing more of value on any of the three men did I use my Skill to feel out the remaining lifeforce remaining in each of them. The first one I’d drained felt the strongest, so I slapped him hard across the face. He was the man with the oversized nose and flat lips I’d passed in the stairwell. It took three more slaps to finally dredge him out of the unnatural slumber my Skill had dropped him into. When his eyes fluttered open, I pressed his own knife against his neck hard enough to let him know it would be pointless to try struggling.

“Who do you work for?” I demanded. “How long have you been following me?”

The rissian’s eyes darted around. He saw me and his unconscious comrades. He tried to sit up, ignoring the empty bluff the knife at his throat was, but lucky for me, he didn’t have the strength to force me off him.

“Answer the question,” I told him. “Or I’ll show you what one of your ‘stabbin’s’ feels like.”

“Think I ain’t been stabbed before, boy?” he groaned.

He saw through my bravado, but I kept the knife at his throat, anyway. “Yeah, well, twitch too much and maybe I cut you by accident.”

He reached a hand up to my arm and tried to push it away, but once again, I was able to overpower him. “What… did you do… to me?” he panted. “I feel… so weak.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Just answer the question. Who do you work for?”

“You weren’t… s’posed to have… a useful Skill,” he said. “Easy… job.”

“Yeah, sure,” I agreed. “And now this ‘easy job’ has a knife at your throat. Tell me who told you about me. I’m not asking again. I’ll just put you back to sleep and wake one of the others.”

“I ain’t telling you a cursin’ thing,” the man said. “Use that knife if yer gonna, boy.”

“I will,” I said.

The man gave a weak chuckle. “No, you won’t.” He tried to push himself up again. This time he almost started to overpower me, so I siphoned out just a single point more of MP from him. That took the fight out of him.

The knife clearly wasn’t working, so I stuffed it under the band of my pants with the others. It’s not like I needed it to control him, so if it wasn’t going to work as an intimidation tool, it was useless to me. If I wanted to get information out of him, I needed to try something else. “Fine,” I said. “If you won’t talk, then I’ll just have to turn you in to the authorities. I saw some city watchmen not far away. What do you think they’ll do if I tell them about the three idiots who tried to mug me?”

The man laughed weakly. “Go ahead. Try it. When we tell them you used black magic on us, it’s you they’ll be arresting. Not us. Mugging? Ha! We’ll be heroes for getting’ you off the street.”

He was right. I hadn’t been thinking. The one thing I knew about rissian culture so far was that black magic—Skills that dealt in death—were incredibly illegal. Ferrith had made sure to impress upon me just how serious a crime it was to possess a black magic Skill. Or even to be suspected of possessing one. These weren’t three muggers… they were three witnesses.

“What’s the matter?” the witness asked. “You scared? Gonna piss yer pants now? Just now realizin’ how twisted we’ve got ya’? Don’t worry. Me and the boys will keep our mouths shut. For them Marks you got in yer pocket.”

Great. Now I was being blackmailed. “I suppose you’ll be back in a week for more money?” I asked. I let out a sigh. It was obvious how this was going to go.

“Don’t worry, kid. You can afford it. Beats a beheadin’.”

“You’re not too bright, are you?” I asked the guy.

“What? Just cause you got the drop on us with that Skill don’t mean you won.”

“It’s like you want me to kill you,” I said. “You’re not giving me any choice.”

He barked a laugh. “Boy, if you had it in you to kill, I wouldn’ta woken up. Just pay fer our silence like a good little dearie and that’ll be the end of it. We ain’t gonna turn you in to nobody long as the money keeps comin’.”

I thought about that. Was I prepared to murder in cold blood? No. Not even slightly. But was I ready to put my life in the hands of three criminals? Also no. There was no winning. They’d blackmail me for hush money for the rest of my life. And it would be the rest of my life, because as soon as the Kaladorian authorities found out what my Skill could do, they’d chop off my head, or whatever other medieval thing they did to criminals around here.

But maybe… maybe if I didn’t have to use a knife, it would be easier. I thought about that. Putting a man to sleep hadn’t been difficult. What difference would it make to just make them sleep a little more? It was the most logical solution to my problem. Blackmail wasn’t without its risks. Even with the best of intentions, I’d be leaving three more people in the world that knew my secret, and two was probably already two too many. They’d attacked me. I’d defended myself. In a way, it was justified.

“Well?” the rissian mugger demanded. “What’s it gonna be? Don’t think I won’t turn you in if you say you won’t pay. They’ll prob’ly give me some of yer money just fer getting’ you off the streets. It ain’t no skin off my back whether you live or die.”

I shook my head. “Yeah, that was probably not the right thing to say,” I told the guy. I reached a hand for him. He seemed to realize what I intended a moment too late. His eyes went wide, and he tried to scoot away from me in the mud.