The warehouse, usually a place of grim industry, hummed with a different, sharper energy. The news of the city watch's heightened activity on the docks had spread, and the Vipers were moving with the coordinated urgency of a kicked hornet's nest.
It wasn't chaotic; it was chillingly efficient. Karl stood near the Baron's desk, issuing quiet, rapid-fire orders to a stream of men coming and going.
"Find the harbormaster. Remind him his son's tuition payment is due next week. He needs to assure the watch captain it was a simple paperwork error, a miss-logged crate."
A wiry man nodded and hurried out.
"Rudel," Karl's voice cut through the murmur. "Take two men to the Rusty Nail. Anyone from the Sea Serpent crew in there gets a free bottle of our best, courtesy of a 'grateful merchant'. Their memories of last night should get fuzzier by the hour."
Rudel shot a venomous look towards Lutz's closet before stomping off to comply.
Lutz felt a cold knot in his stomach. This was the fallout. This was the "fire" Karl had spoken of. He wasn't just seeing a gang; he was seeing a shadow government, one that operated on bribes, favors, and implied threats. The Baron himself remained at his desk, a mountain of calm, occasionally nodding at Karl's directives or scribbling a note. He was the general, and Karl was the master strategist deploying their assets.
After what felt like an hour, the flow of men slowed. Karl approached the closet, his expression unreadable. He didn't open the door fully, just spoke through the gap.
"The watch captain will be enjoying a very fine, very expensive dinner tonight with a… concerned citizen who will vouch for our legitimate operations," Karl said, his voice low. "The incident is being reclassified as suspected stowaways. A problem of the past." His eyes pinned Lutz. "The Baron doesn't like spending political capital to clean up messes. Remember that. Get some sleep. Your real work starts tomorrow."
"Noted. I'll try to make my future disasters more fiscally responsible." Lutz joked.
The door clicked shut. The lock turned.
Lutz slid down the wall onto his mattress. The "real work". The words hung in the dark. He had thought the theft was the real work. Now he understood it was just an audition. The real work was the endless, dirty business of being a cog in this machine. The relief of survival was quickly being replaced by the dread of assimilation.
The sound of the lock turning jolted him awake. It was morning, a gray light filtering through the cracks in the warehouse walls. A different Viper, a grizzled man with a scarred lip named Gerhart, grunted at him. "Up. Food's on. The Baron wants to see you after."
The main floor of the warehouse had been transformed. Crates were pushed aside to make space for a long, rough-hewn table where two dozen Vipers were already eating a Spartan breakfast of thick, gray porridge and hard bread. The air was thick with the smell of food and unwashed bodies.
A few eyes followed Lutz as Gerhart pointed him to an empty spot on a bench. The atmosphere was not friendly, but it was no longer openly hostile. He was being tolerated. He received a wooden bowl of the lukewarm porridge. It was bland and lumpy, but it was food. Andrei's sensibilities recoiled, but Lutz's stomach growled with a primal appreciation.
Lutz took his bowl of porridge and sat. The men nearby, a mix of grizzled older thugs and leaner, hungry-looking young men, fell silent for a moment, their conversations dying as he sat down. He was the new fish, the talk of the warehouse.
A hulking man with a broken nose to his right elbowed his neighbor. "Look, Jens. It's the Baron's new pet. The one who can read." His tone was thick with mockery.
Jens, a weaselly-looking man, smirked. "Heard ye caused quite the stir down at the docks, bookworm. Got the whole city watch dancing and all.
Lutz kept his eyes on his porridge, "Just did what I was told," he muttered, shoveling a spoonful of the bland mush into his mouth.
"See? Polite," Broken-Nose laughed. "Maybe we should get 'im to write our demands for us. Use fancy words when we're shakin' down the shopkeeps."
A few men down the table chuckled. This was a test. Lutz knew he couldn't show weakness, but outright defiance would be suicide. He looked up, meeting Broken-Nose's gaze, but kept his voice even, playing on the only fact they knew. "Fancy words didn't get that crate off the Sea Serpent," he said.
The chuckling stopped. Jens narrowed his eyes. "Lucky, that's what it was."
"Luck's a skill in our line of work," a new voice said. It came from an older Viper across the table, a man with a calm demeanor and eyes that had seen too much. His name was Henrik. He was sharpening a knife with a slow, rhythmic scrape of stone on steel. "The Baron don't suffer fools, lucky or not. If you're here, you're useful. For now." He didn't look up from his task, but his words carried a weight that silenced the others. It was a subtle, unexpected defense—not born of kindness, but of a simple acknowledgment of the gang's ruthless pragmatism.
Just then, a shadow fell over the table. Gerhart stood there, his presence sucking the air from the space. He glared down at Lutz. "Enjoying the meal, rat? Better make it last. Gonna need them muscles to carry all the coin you're gonna sweet-talk out of the deadbeats today." He leaned in, his voice a low growl meant only for Lutz. "But if yer pretty words fail, don't worry. I'll be right there to finish the conversation."
He moved on without waiting for a reply, leaving a tangible tension in his wake. The brief moment of respite was over. The older Viper across the table finally looked up, meeting Lutz's eyes for the first time. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible shrug, as if to say, "This is your life now. Get used to it."
He ate in silence, listening. The conversations were a low rumble about mundane things—a dice game lost, a woman at a tavern, complaints about the cold.
"And then I hit him so hard he saw his ancestors!" A Viper said to another.
'Must have been a short conversation' Lutz muttered under his breath.
This was their normal. This was the daily life of the men he was now bound to. He was an outsider, but he was inside the walls.
After the meal, Gerhart jerked his head. "Baron's waiting."
The Baron's office felt different in the daylight. Less a den of shadows, more a functional command post.
"Sit, Fischer," the Baron said, not looking up from a ledger. Lutz sat in the hard chair opposite the desk. The Baron finished his notation, set down his pen, and folded his hands. His flint-like eyes assessed Lutz.
"The ledgers you acquired have proven… interesting," the Baron began, his tone neutral. "They contain certain financial indiscretions of a intisian merchant consortium. This is leverage. Leverage is more valuable than gold because it begets more gold." He leaned forward slightly. "Karl believes you have a talent for persuasion that goes beyond Rudel's or Gerhart's method of breaking kneecaps. I hope, for your sake, he is correct."
Lutz said nothing, just held the Baron's gaze.
"Your debt is a mountain," the Baron continued. "You will begin shoveling it away, one shovelful at a time. Gerhart will take you today. You will assist him in collecting payments from those who are… reluctant. Your job is to talk. To convince them that paying the Vipers is easier than the alternative. You will be polite. You will be reasonable. You will make them see the light of their own self-interest." This should increase our revenue as a broken neck means one less head paying. A cold smile touched his lips. "If you cannot, Gerhart will show them the darkness. Do you understand your role?"
Lutz understood perfectly. He was to be the friendly face on the extortion racket. The good cop to Gerhart's bad cop. It was a different kind of con, one that targeted desperation instead of greed.
"I understand," Lutz said.
"Good." The Baron picked up his pen, a clear dismissal. "Do not disappoint me."
As Lutz stood to leave, the Baron added one last thing, his voice casual yet deadly. "And Fischer? The next time you are given a task, the cleanup should not cost more than the prize."
The message was clear. Last night's success had been tarnished by the trouble it caused. His margin for error was zero.
Gerhart was waiting for him by the main door, hefting a heavy truncheon. "Ready to go earn your keep, talker?" he grunted.
Lutz nodded, pulling on his threadbare jacket. He followed Gerhart out into the pale morning light of Indaw Harbor, leaving the warehouse behind. His classroom was now the grim streets of the city, and his lesson was in the art of coercion.
The air outside was bracingly cold, a sharp contrast to the stuffy, masculine heat of the warehouse. Gerhart led the way, not with Rudel's aggressive stomp, but with the weary plod of a man walking a beat he'd walked a thousand times before. He didn't speak, and Lutz was content to follow in silence, his mind racing.
His role was clear: the talker. The reasonable one. It was a con, just like any other, but the stakes were different. This wasn't about tricking someone out of their coin purse; it was about systematically breaking their will. Andrei's conscience prickled, a ghost of outrage. Lutz's instincts smothered it. This was survival. Every collected debt was a shovelful of dirt off the mountain burying him.
Their first stop was a narrow tailor's shop squeezed between a chandler and a tavern. A bell tinkled as they entered. The place smelled of wool and sizing. An elderly tailor looked up from his work, and the blood drained from his face the moment he saw Gerhart. The fear was immediate, palpable.
"Master Gerhart," the tailor stammered, setting down his needle. "I… business has been slow. The cold keeps people from ordering new coats."
Gerhart leaned against the doorframe, blocking the exit, and crossed his massive arms. He said nothing, just nodded at Lutz. The stage was set.
Lutz stepped forward, offering a small, conciliatory smile that felt like a grotesque mask. "We understand, sir," he began, his voice calm, reasonable. Andrei's knowledge of language was being weaponized for empathy. "Times are difficult for everyone. But the Vipers' protection… it's a service rendered. It ensures your windows stay intact, your deliveries arrive. It's a business expense, like your thread." He gestured to the spools on the counter. "Surely, a partial payment? To show good faith?"
He was offering a ladder out of the pit. The tailor's eyes darted from Lutz's deceptively friendly face to Gerhart's stony silence. He was being given a choice, and they both knew it was no choice at all.
"I… I have a little from a repair job yesterday," the tailor whispered, defeated. He fumbled beneath the counter and produced a few small coins.
Lutz collected them, his fingers barely touching the man's trembling hand. "Thank you. This will be noted. We'll be back in a fortnight." He turned and walked out, Gerhart falling in behind him. As the door closed, Lutz heard a soft, choked sob from inside the shop.
The coins felt heavy and dirty in his palm. He quickly remembered the currency of this new world. The heavy gold coins were Marks, each stamped with a war-hammer, everyone on the street called them "Hammers." These were for merchants and nobles.
The silver coins in his palm were Schillings, though in the mouth of a dockworker or a tailor, they were "Shields." Ten Shields to a Hammer. This was the currency of daily life: a week's wages, a crate of goods, a Viper's protection payment.
Then there were the small, brown Pfenninge. A hundred of these copper bits made a single Shield. They bought you a loaf of bread or a mug of the cheapest ale. The handful of coins the tailor had given him was a pittance, barely a few Shields' worth. It was the coin of desperation. He handed them to Gerhart without a word.
"Hmph," Gerhart grunted, pocketing the coins. "Faster than usual. Maybe the Baron's right. Talk is cheap." It wasn't praise, just a statement of efficiency.
The next few stops blurred into a grim parade of human anxiety. A baker who paid with a loaf of bread added to the coins. A washerwoman who pleaded with tears in her eyes until Lutz's calm, relentless logic wore her down. With each success, Lutz felt a part of himself hardening. He was learning the anatomy of fear, how to apply precisely the right pressure to make people give up what they cherished most.
It was outside a struggling cobbler's shop that things shifted. The cobbler, a large man with the strong hands of his trade, was not cowed. He stood in his doorway, glaring at Gerhart.
"I paid you last month," the cobbler said, his voice firm. "Business is bad. I have nothing for you. The Vipers can wait."
Gerhart's hand tightened on his truncheon. This was the moment Lutz had been dreading. The moment the talk ended.
Lutz stepped forward, his heart hammering. "I understand. It's a vicious cycle. No money for you, no money for us, no money for the guy who breaks your windows... we're all suffering together, really."
The cobbler did not take the threat lightly, he stood on the ground near Lutz's feet. "I'm not bargaining with a Viper's leash. Get off my property."
Gerhart moved. He was fast for a man his size. He shoved Lutz aside and swung the truncheon in a short, brutal arc into the cobbler's gut. The man doubled over with a sickening grunt, collapsing to his knees, gasping for air.
"Now," Gerhart said, his voice flat as he loomed over the wheezing man. "Let's talk about what you do have."
Lutz stood frozen, watching. The line had been crossed. He hadn't just facilitated the threat; he had been present for the violence. He was no longer just the talker; he was part of the act. The cobbler, choking on the street, was a stark lesson. This was the reality behind the reasonable words. This was the cost of shoveling away his debt.
As they walked away, the cobbler's coins now in Gerhart's pocket, the older man glanced at Lutz's pale face.
"See? They understand reason." Gerhart said.
"Oh, he's very reasonable now. I think you've completely converted him to our way of thinking. We should send a missionary." Lutz answered with an incredulous expression .
He joked to cope with what he had just experienced, he remembered the cobbler's defiant eyes, and then the look of shock and agony. He had passed another test today, deeper and darker than the one on the Sea Serpent. He was learning the family business. And it was making him sick.