The liquor was gone, the words laid bare on the polished mahogany desk between them like spilled ink. The comfortable silence that had followed their pact now felt charged, the weight of their shared secrets making the air thick. Gene shifted in his chair, the initial euphoria of the partnership giving way to the practical, daunting reality of what came next.
"Alright," Gene said, slapping his legs and pushing himself to his feet with a soft grunt. The movement was deliberately casual, an attempt to reclaim some of his usual rhythm. "I'll be going now. Need to figure out how to move my entire... 'practice'..." he gestured vaguely, encompassing the chaos of his old office, "...and get all this mess ready." He nodded towards the spare room, his new domain.
"Right," Lutz replied, his voice neutral. He remained seated behind the desk, observing. The persona of James Morgan was still absent; this was Lutz Fischer, schemer and survivor.
As Gene reached the office door, his hand hovering over the brass knob, Lutz's voice cut through the quiet.
"Gene."
Gene turned his back to Lutz, before slowly turning around. The look on Lutz's face was no longer one of shared commiseration.
"Be careful," Lutz began, his gaze unwavering. "Don't be stupid. This world... it's not just a playground with primitive laws. It's a meat grinder. There are things that want to kill you just around the corner, and they don't need a reason."
He leaned forward slightly, the desk lamp casting shadows that deepened the lines of his face. "I managed to recognize your advertisement and find you. And I believe I've shown you I'm trustworthy." He let the word hang there, not as a boast, but as a simple, stark fact. He had shared the story of his noose, his killings. That was a currency of trust you couldn't counterfeit.
"But that doesn't mean everyone is going to be," he continued, his voice dropping a fraction. "This world is wicked. It grinds you down. Even I... I did a lot of things I'm not proud of just to see the next sunrise. So there might be people out there who are much, much worse. People who enjoy the grinding. You should stop showing any signs of being a transmigrator. The jokes, the references. Bury them. Just in case."
The warning was clear and chilling. Their uniqueness was a vulnerability, a scent that could draw predators they couldn't even imagine.
Lutz's eyes, which had held a flicker of camaraderie, now seemed to look right through him, measuring him against some internal standard.
"Also," Lutz said, the word a sharp punctuation. "I've been honest with you. But that doesn't mean I'm not looking at you."
Gene instantly understood. I see you. I know what you are. I've told you my truths, and that gives me the right to watch you, always. It was the law of the jungle, articulated with calm precision.
"Don't do anything dumb," Lutz concluded, "and we'll be good."
Gene looked at him, and for a moment, the full, terrifying reality of his situation crashed down on him. Lutz's honesty wasn't a weakness; it was a demonstration of strength, a way of saying, This is what I am. Can you stand it?
He gulped, the sound audible in the quiet room. The sarcastic retort, the deflecting joke, died on his lips. There was no room for it here. This was the core, the unvarnished truth beneath the yellow suits and the corporate facade.
"Right," Gene managed, the word coming out tighter than he intended. He gave a short, sharp nod, an acknowledgment and a submission all in one. "See you later, James."
The masks were back on.
Lutz gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod in return. "See you around, Gene."
Gene turned and opened the door, stepping out into the general office. The sound of Ms. Vance's pen scratching in a ledger and Thomas sorting files was a welcome return to mundane reality. He didn't look back. He walked through the reception area and out onto Weaver's Lane, the cool evening air feeling like a baptism.
Lutz watched him go, listening to the retreating footsteps and the final click of the main door. He remained at his desk for a long time, the empty glasses standing as silent witnesses.
He let out a dry laugh.
"Heh... I sounded a whole lot like the Baron there, so this is what it takes for people to respect you..."
'It's okay, I'm just scaring him off so he doesn't go out of his way to do something dumb, It's for the safety of the both of us.'
It was necessary. Gene was a brilliant, unpredictable fellow.
The two days that followed the pact between the Swindler and the Lawyer were a study in contrasting methodologies, a synchronized dance of creation and forgery set to the quiet rhythm of a city oblivious to the gears now turning within it.
For Gene, the move was less a relocation and more an act of shedding a skin. His office in the Kogman Quarter had been a chrysalis of grime and desperation; the new room at The Northern Star was his emergence. He arrived on the first morning with a single, battered leather suitcase containing his most vital tools: a handful of key law books, a bottle of decent whiskey, and a locked metal box filled with the falsified documents that constituted his own existence.
The room was still barren, but now it hummed with potential. He'd acquired a desk—a large, scarred, but solid oak thing purchased from a second-hand dealer for a pittance. It wasn't imposing like Lutz's, but it had character, its nicks and stains whispering of a thousand past deals, both honest and otherwise. He positioned it to face the door, a power move he'd learned long ago. A client should always be walking into your domain.
But before he could even think about furnishing further, he had a job to do. Lutz's directive was clear: The Northern Star needed a past.
He spread out a blank ledger on the new-old desk, uncorked his whiskey bottle, for inspiration, he told himself, and got to work. His mind became a factory of plausible fiction.
He started with the basics. Using his knowledge of Feysacian trade routes and port regulations, he began inventing a corporate history. He didn't just create transactions; he created a narrative. The Northern Star, under his pen, became a discreet, family-run operation that had been quietly facilitating specialized imports for years.
Entry, 14th of January, 1350: Commission received for the procurement and discreet shipment of 50 units of Toussanti clockwork components for one "M. de Winter." Payment: 15 Hammers, 7 Shields. A small, elegant job. The kind a reputable but quiet firm would handle.
Entry, 3rd of March, 1350: Facilitated the export of Lenburg agricultural schematics to a Balam-based consortium. Brokerage fee: 8 Hammers. This suggested international reach and a trustworthiness with sensitive intellectual property.
He crafted a personality for the company. The handwriting in the ledger changed subtly over the invented timeline, starting with a more florid, old-fashioned script (the "founder") and evolving into the cleaner, more efficient hand of a successor (the "current management," i.e., James Morgan). He used different inks, smudged a few entries realistically, and even "lost" a page, creating the perfect, imperfect record of a real business.
His methods were, as Lutz had anticipated, dubious in the extreme. He spent an afternoon in the public records office, not researching, but observing. He noted the types of paper used, the official stamps, the fading patterns of ink on documents from two and three years ago. Then, in the back room of a print shop whose owner asked no questions, he had a custom stamp made. It wasn't a perfect replica of any official seal—that would be too risky—but it was convincingly archaic and authoritative-looking, the kind of stamp a small, independent port authority or a guild might use.
He used this stamp to "authenticate" false bills of lading and customs forms he created, backdating them to support his ledger entries. He invented shipping manifests for vessels that had indeed sailed those routes, burying his fictional cargoes amidst their real ones. He was not just writing history; he was weaving his lies into the very fabric of the documented world.
"This ain't fraud," he muttered to himself with a grin, admiring a perfectly forged certificate of origin for a shipment of "Balam fire-spices" that had never existed. "This is... historical restoration. With a speculative fiction twist, hehe."
By the end of the second day, the spare room was still mostly empty, but the desk was a organized chaos of creative paperwork. The Northern Star Import & Export Co. now had two years of operational history, a list of past clients, all invented, with plausible names, and a trail of paperwork that would withstand anything but the most dedicated, forensic investigation. It was a masterpiece of legal and logistical world-building. Gene leaned back, exhausted but exhilarated, and poured himself a victory drink.
While Gene built a past out of paper and ink, Lutz fortified his future with the same elements. He took the two days for himself, a deliberate pause in the relentless action that had defined his life since arriving in this world. The role of James Morgan was reduced to a few necessary appearances—signing a document Ms. Vance placed before him with a flourish, nodding approvingly at Thomas's filing system, giving a vague but encouraging wave to Pip.
His true focus was in the study of 17 Vesper Lane.
The gas lamp's light illuminated the three books he had bought from Gordon, which had become his holy texts. He had already conquered The Tongue of Titans. The primordial, guttural language of the Jotun was no longer a mystery. The words feeling like stones grinding together in his mind. This was crucial, as his next focus was The Verdant Crucible.
This book on advanced alchemy and arcane botany was dense, its concepts locked away behind a barrier of complex terminology and symbolic recipes. He spent hours cross-referencing, his notes sprawling across the workbench.
He wasn't just reading; he was experimenting. Using carefully measured common reagents bought from a Katheryne's apothecary, he practiced the fundamental principles.
Alongside his alchemical studies, he delved into A Primer on the Esoteric. He realized that Yevgeny most likely had found him through divination, this was because he hadn't yet know how to hide his spiritual footprint from a scene. He realized it was surprisingly easy to perform a low-level disruption that would throw off most weak divinations, utilizing a ritualistic silver dagger and certain powders to disperse the spiritual footprint at a location. His eyes often drifted to the safe, where the Crystallized Weeping Eye and the Dark Horn sat side-by-side, two pieces of the same sinister puzzle.
He also didn't neglect his own pathway. He practiced his Swindler abilities with a focused intensity. He tested Mental Disruption on himself, staring at a single Gold Hammer and then, for a moment, make it appear to be a Copper Pfennige.
He also thought about the Swindler's acting. Taking from his limited experience and what he felt with Filip.
Principle 1: Different folk, different words. It seemed simple, but it was important, Filip had been someone who didn't care so much about business and monetary gain, he was an idealist, someone who dreamed of being important beyond money, being someone with achievements that would be engraved in history. A true Swindler must learn to stroke the ego of all the different types of people that exist in the world, using the correct words, terms, dreams and fantasies for each of them.
Principle 2: Make them think they won. This too seemed like common sense, but not so much, you could always make a swindle that would be evident after some time, avoiding the consequences by disappearing, but that was product of a lack of skill and foresight, a true swindler never needs to run away or answer for his crimes, because their victims never think they've been swindled in the first place.
The two days of relative peace were a strategic investment. One man looked backward, constructing a fictitious history with brilliant, amoral creativity. The other looked forward, deciphering the rules of the arcane and power with cold, scholarly determination.