Reunion (Moved Up a Day at Crima La's Request)
I had the room shifted next door.
I took the seat of honor. Maximus stood before the table, and IS-1 held the door.
In front of them, Seo Heegon and the officers of the Nammun Gang—six men in all—knelt on the floor stripped to their underwear, shaking. Their faces were a mess of blood and blue-black bruises. A few had shoulders wrenched out or arms broken, and they clutched the ruined limbs as they trembled.
Bloody spit kept running from the corner of Seo Heegon's mouth. Too many teeth had been smashed out of him, and his lips were split as well; he had no way to stop the flow.
I took out a bottle of water, drank, and asked.
"So. That's all of it?"
"Y-yes. Yes, sir. I've told you everything. Everything I know. All of it."
Even as he spoke, his eyes kept flicking toward Maximus.
These men had felt it in their own flesh—arms snapped bare-handed, shoulders torn loose, teeth pulled. Whatever pride they'd had was gone. One underling who had still resisted took a slap from both of Maximus's palms and was bleeding from his ears. He couldn't hear a thing, so he was frantically copying whatever the other officers did.
He had meant to hold out even then. The moment he watched fingers slide in and rip a living eye from its socket, he let go of everything.
"So that's how it is."
The shape of it was simple enough. A provincial councilor had been coveting the land I bought for a long time. The moment he learned I'd gotten there first, he hired gangsters to take it back. The man he hired had tried to skim a spoonful for himself. And that was how we'd arrived here.
"Right. Then you've had a call from that bastard, too."
"Yes. It's all recorded on my phone. There. Up there."
I opened the phone he indicated. In the call log sat a number saved under the name Councilor Hong Seokho.
"All right. Here."
I tossed him the phone. He caught it in a daze and stared at me, lost.
"Call him. That bastard."
"What? Right now?"
"Yeah. Or would you rather call him from the road to hell?"
Seo Heegon dialed at once.
"Ah, Councilor Hong. It's me. Seo. I've got the contract. Come collect it yourself. Now. No—there's something I need to say in person, so come here. I'll leave the back door open. Understood."
A short while later, one more naked body had been added to the room.
The man who had proclaimed himself a three-term provincial councilor turned docile the instant Maximus's fingers pulled five of his front teeth, and he stripped without another word.
And so everyone involved was gathered in one place.
Calling Councilor Hong had been the right move. Thanks to him, I finally knew exactly what the land under contract was going to become.
Two subway lines. A tram. A metropolitan transfer hub. Built around them, a commercial district and a massive housing development—a mini new city planned for no fewer than fifty thousand households. On top of that, a subcontracting industrial complex tied to nearby Oseong Electronics.
"Easier to talk with everyone in one place. It's late, so let's finish this."
I'd considered selling the lot of them as slaves, then changed my mind. The councilor was already past sixty; he'd fetch scrap prices. The boss and his officers were all well into middle age.
A suitable product came to mind.
I drew a packet of pills from the magic pouch.
"Feed these to your boys. You take some too."
"What? What are they?"
"Don't know? Pills that make you feel good."
"I—yes."
"Sell them to ordinary people and I'll come tear your limbs off. Split them among yourselves. Share nicely."
At Seo Heegon's order, the gangsters divided the pills and swallowed them.
A little later, everyone but Councilor Hong was riding the drug—giggling, bodies gone loose and swaying.
The club's shutters were already down. The customers were long gone.
I left the swaying men where they were and walked out with only Hong, the one who still looked useful.
I found gasoline in a corner and had IS-1 spread it evenly across the floor, all the way out to the stairs at the back door.
Before I closed the door, I took a long pull on the cigarette between my lips and flicked it inside.
I turned to Councilor Hong.
"Know your place. When I call, you answer."
I shook the phone I'd taken off Seo Heegon, turned my back, returned to the car, and drove out of the alley.
The next morning, the news was noisy with the fire that had broken out overnight in Suwon.
Nothing strange in the coverage yet.
Even if there were, it wouldn't matter. Last night's CCTV would be my alibi. Just in case, I meant to hook up extra storage and keep yesterday's footage in two copies, then three.
The redundancy itself might look odd. On the other hand, Earth's laws and its public authority have a way of going completely limp before a solid alibi.
It had come close to turning ugly, but the contract itself closed cleanly.
The apartment sold when it needed to. I took the proceeds, borrowed against the land, and paid the balance.
I had 978 pyeong of land—a little over three thousand square meters.
For once, I sat down and put my assets in order.
On Earth, liquid holdings came to 18.51 million euros, 2.5 million dollars, and 170 million won. The euros and the won had shrunk considerably. In their place I had real estate to spare: a vineyard estate in Rome, a villa in Istanbul, and the Alexandria villa in Egypt—three properties overseas. One thirteen-unit villa building, my own residence included, and 978 pyeong of farmland. If unsold stock counted as an asset, there was also 290 kilograms of drugs, wholesale value four million euros.
Extend the tally into the world of Gaia, and the big items alone were 12,201 gold coins and the 610 slaves I'd left with Marco to sell. That had been the figure when Marco set out; how much it had grown since, I couldn't say. Even those holdings were worth close to a hundred billion won.
The numbers put me in a good mood every time I ran them. The new plan, though, was going to need a great deal more money.
A lord in the other world. A building owner on Earth.
If I was going to build, I wanted something large enough to be a landmark for the district. I'd already heard the city plan. No reason to pinch the investment.
What I needed now was capital. Construction these days ran six or seven million won a pyeong. On a simple basis of ten thousand pyeong, that was sixty to seventy billion won in building costs.
The land was secured. Time to earn the construction money in earnest.
Marco would handle his end well enough. I couldn't sit idle either.
The hour felt about right. I looked up flights again.
Time to cross back to Cairo.
I returned to Cairo, took the Humvee, and headed for Trimalia. I went straight to the House of Nobles. Fortunately, I was able to meet Viscount Baran.
"The results of the review you submitted last time are in. Your identity has been confirmed, so the fief should be approved. How much have you prepared for the purchase?"
I put on a pained voice on purpose.
"I asked everyone I could, but I wasn't able to gather much. It comes to about 9,180 gold."
"I see. I put in a word on your behalf. The palace seems inclined to meet you at that price."
"Thank you, Viscount. I won't forget this kindness."
"Yes, yes. Once you're established, you must come see me. You know this world. It's a small one."
"Of course."
"You will, however, have to assemble the people of the fief yourself. Here—this is the map. You see the village marked at the center. I'm told some two hundred households live there. There ought to be a number of slash-and-burn farmers besides. Gather them, and you'll have something of a population. You'll need soldiers to do it, though. Have you prepared for that?"
"Yes. We have a few retainers. We operate a trading company together, and there's a mercenary company under contract with it. I intend to make use of them."
"Good. That's fortunate. Do your best, then. When will the ten percent deposit be ready?"
"I can pay that at once."
"Then deposit it with the bursar for now. The instrument of transfer will go up to His Majesty for approval. When the balance is paid in full, they'll return the sealed instrument to you. Take it to the village and receive the people of the fief. Go through the local headman and it should be simple enough."
He was unexpectedly kind. From Viscount Baran's side of it, of course, there was no reason to refuse—a baron was about to come in under him. Privately, he was already thinking of handing me the House of Nobles' scut work later on.
The preparations for becoming a lord were finished. All that remained was to wait for Marco to arrive.
I had no intention of wasting the time. I meant to hunt, and hunt diligently.
To become a lord—and a building owner.
I drove the Humvee northeast.
The idea of a border was weaker here than on Earth. Watching an entire frontier demanded a staggering number of troops and the resources to keep them in the field, so the standing common sense was to leave the line open and, when an enemy invaded, mass the troops held in reserve and fight a battle of forces.
Which meant that by passing through the world of Gaia, a man could move simply enough into another country on Earth. Without leaving a record of the crossing.
I came out at Damascus.
From the intelligence I'd gathered, I had been making maps in the spare hours. The locations of the IS branches confirmed so far.
I had IS-1 rent a bus outright. If the merchandise wasn't to spoil in transit, I needed at least that much preparation.
Humvee and bus, I left Damascus behind.
Two months after Marco and I had gone our separate ways, we met again.
In that time he had crossed the east of the Europa continent, passed through the Zahed Empire and the Drail Kingdom, and arrived here in Trimalia.
It was good to see a familiar face after so long. Marco's expression, though, held more shock than welcome.
"Guildmaster—what is all this?"
"These? I got restless waiting for you, so I put in the legwork and scraped them together."
"All of them?"
Startled, Marco stared at the people lined up before his eyes. A thousand of them, easily. Most were solid men between their twenties and their forties.
"What's left after I sold some along the way."
"These are the leftovers?"
After I'd returned to Cairo and crossed into the other world, I had gone through Syria hitting IS branches. Raid one site, pull the information out of it, learn the next. In that fashion I had hit more than thirty garrisons, training camps, and branch offices.
I hadn't confirmed it precisely. By now, though, IS in Syria was probably close to scorched earth.
"You're hardly one to talk. The slaves I sent with you are nowhere to be seen, and I'm looking at faces I've never met. You've been busy."
"Ah. Yes. Well, there were some results. Here are the accounts."
"Good. What's the total?"
"From the five thousand gold you entrusted to me when I left, after the buying and selling of slaves along the way, the present balance is 15,980 gold, with an inventory of 355."
"I knew if it was you, you'd pull it off."
I laughed, threw an arm around his shoulder, and we went into the tent.
The money to pay the balance had arrived, and so had the slaves to open the fief. It was time to start playing lord in earnest.