The [Barkeep’s] eyebrows lifted ever so slightly at Maggie’s last name, but his professional smile never slipped.

  “Just a moment, please.” He said and left to walk into what I presumed was the kitchen. “Jules! Cover the front. I’m taking a group to see Tia!”

  The [Barkeep] led us through a door at the back of the bar and into a long hallway lined on either side with densely packed doors. Boots, muddy and clean, sat in front of every door and more often than not, there was a jacket hung from the hooks beside it. The numbers on the doors told me that this was the Hall’s dorms. It was larger than I thought it would be, with at least fifty doors on either side, but the [Barkeep] skipped it entirely. He led us past another door to a hallway with only fifteen doors on either side.

  He ushered us into a bare bones office and told us to sit on either of the two couches across from one another. A small desk made from the same wood as the rest of the building, bare of any keepsakes, sat in the office’s position of power.

  “Mistress Tia will be with you shortly.” The [Barkeep] said as he left.

  With nothing else to do, I picked the larger of the two couches and sat down, my pack at my feet.

  “Don’t worry guys, Tia can be a little harsh but she’s good people.” Maggie said and sat down next to Mika on the opposite couch.

  Those were the last words spoken for the next five minutes. Like a mantle of lead, the more time passed, the more the silence weighed on us. Every couple of minutes, someone would open their mouth to speak, but no one ever did. Maggie name dropping herself put everyone on edge, including Maggie, who despite being so outgoing normally hadn’t even opened her mouth once.

  Nora was the first one of us to get bored with the silence, and she opened her bag to take out a small wooden ball. On the side was a stylized rooster, so worn and time faded that little else remained besides an outline. Nora mimed throwing it to Ellen for a while before Mika noticed and elbowed her to get her attention.

  It took a couple hesitant cycles throwing the ball back and forth before everyone accepted we were doing this and played along. We wound up tossing the ball around for twenty minutes.

  None of us spoke, content to play in the silence the office demanded of its guests. By the time Mistress Tia arrived, I felt more relaxed than I had when we were first ushered into the room. Mika noticed the doorknob turn and the ball quickly got passed back to Nora, who stuffed it back into her bag before Mistress Tia could open the door.

  Mistress Tia was an older woman, with her grey hair pulled back into a messy bun. She had the build of a [Warrior], but her frame bespoke strength lost to the ravages of time. Elders who wore their age proudly were rare in my experience. Usually elders fought tooth and nail to keep the youthful looks granted to them by advancing their Tiers. The fact Elder Tia didn’t did nothing to diminish the genuine sense of authority she carried herself with.

  Elder Tia didn’t carry herself the way people whose authority came from social or economic power did. There was no posturing to the way she moved, no fa?ade of strength. Elder Tia moved with the surety and command of space that came only through superior might.

  She ignored us as she entered the room to walk behind her desk and sit down. Leaning back in her chair, a sigh escaped her lips and only then did she look at us. More specifically, at Maggie. The rest of us might as well not have existed for how much she acknowledged our presence.

  “Maggie, how’s Frank?” She asked, her tone that of a kindly aunt.

  “Last I spoke to him, he seemed busier than usual, but other than that, he’s been good.” Maggie’s posture said she was relaxed, but he spoke with more formality than I was used to hearing.

  “And what about you? Last I saw you, you were knee high to a dwarf.” Elder Tia’s smile as she said that told me it was a joke.

  Maggie looked a little embarrassed, but returned the smile.

  “I’ve been good, really good, actually. Aunt Tia, I’d like to introduce you to my flagship party.” Maggie said and swept her hand to us.

  Tia’s eyes shifted from Maggie to us at a glacial pace. The small smile that’d formed when she spoke to her niece dropped as she took in each of us. She spent several seconds on each of us, never making eye contact. Instead, the Elder gave us all a detailed once over and moved on.

  When she was done, her eyes moved back to Maggie, who’d grown increasingly tense as time dragged on.

  “We’ll see.” Elder Tia said, tone flat and cold, like the cooling of a fresh corpse. And Maggie almost suppressed her wince.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “How much do you kids know about crime in the empire?” The Elder asked.

  “It’s crime? How much more is there?” Ellen asked.

  “Granted, as a concept, crime is pretty uniform.” Tia said was a slight smirk. “But how much do you know about how it’s run?”

  Tia received looks of confusion from everyone in the room except Maggie, who still looked like she was trying to untense her shoulders.

  “Nothing.” I said. I had vague ideas that there was some organized aspect to it. But everything I’d ever learned about crime in Teles came from the adventure novels I grew up with.

  Tia’s smirk widened, and she looked over at Maggie. The steel in her gazed softened just for a second to fondness, before she looked back at us with iron once more.

  “I’m only telling you this because if I didn’t, Maggie would just tell you after you’ve left. It’s an open secret amongst those of us with power that the royal family uses their bastards to set up criminal families that will actually pay taxes.”

  “They’ve done it for centuries.” Maggie interjected. “They’ve got a monopoly on crime; no new organization survives without backing from the crown.”

  “Why go through all that effort?” I asked.

  While rare, crime did happen in the Cult. The punishment for any offense was exile into the depths of the forest. Combined with the number of social programs offered to our disadvantaged, there was maybe one crime every six months.

  “Crime will always exist. And if it’ll always be there, then the royals want a piece.”

  “If they’re going to sanction it, why not just make it legal, then?” Mika asked.

  “Like I said.” The Elder said, a hint of impatience in her voice. “No matter the laws, crime will always exist. Even if it’s just taboos against cultural laws. Rather than having an uncontrolled criminal element, why not take control?

  “Not to mention if the royals were ever stupid enough to legalize all their crimes, it’d be a slap in the face to the nobility. They’d have a civil war on their hands before sundown.”

  “So royal bastards are in control of crime. What do they think of their role in this?” Ellen asked, a pensive frown on her face.

  “They don’t have much of a choice but to be content.” Tia seemed happy to leave it there, but Maggie interjected again.

  “There were a couple of uprisings when the royals first put the idea into practice. A few bastards tried to take back what they thought was rightfully theirs. In response, the royals purged all the bloodlines that rebelled and branded every other bastard, then and since, with a hereditary rune that forces obedience to the main family.”

  “Nasty piece of magic, that.” Elder Tia said. Her disgust palpable.

  “So why are bounties a thing then if the crown sanctions all crime? Wouldn’t they want to protect their own?”

  That’s why we were here. Tia was Dustreach’s Bounty Master, an admin position that oversaw the collection and distributions of all bounties in the province. Maggie found one she thought was around our skill level and used her connection with Tia to reserve it.

  “The families accept pretty much whoever wants to join. Not much point in forming these houses if all the regular folk get rejected and start organizations of their own. Ninety-eight percent of all bounties are for people outside the bloodlines. Family members almost never get bounties. The ones who do are uniformly scape goats for a higher member of the family.”

  “I guess ours is part of the ninety-eight, then?” Nora asked.

  “It is. There’s a small group of kids calling themselves the Ivory Band that’ve set up in the grain district for a couple months now. They should be weak enough for you four to handle. If Maggie’s chosen wisely.”

  Elder Tia’s meant her words to cut at us, and she took some of the sting out of them for Maggie with a loving smile in her direction.

  “Where did the information come from? Why would the families provide the Guild with the Tier of this Ivory Band? They’re just handing the Guild an opportunity to train their young.” I asked.

  “Who do you think cleared enough crime for the royals’ scheme to work? The bounty system is our payment for clearing their way. Any killings have to be done through the bounty system. Only if we fail, do they get a chance to off their own.” The elder said.

  “So, the Ivory Band?” Ellen asked, as I mulled over what Tia said.

  It made some amount of sense and I could see why they instituted it as payment. At the low end, the bounty system allowed the Guild to train their apprentices. At the other end of the scale, stories about killing [Bandit Lords] made excellent legends.

  Yet, I couldn’t see why the families would adhere to that. It provided too much opportunity for the target to learn of their bounty and slip away. Better to slit their throat and be done. The only reason I could come up with was that it must be those runes the elder told us about that forced the families to adhere. Maybe there was even a ‘no running’ clause.

  “They’re a bunch of street rats organized by this kid named Greg Hardbuckle. They call themselves the Ivory Band because they want to hide in the Ivory Sisterhood’s skirt. It was a good call mostly, kept anyone from stomping them out haphazard.

  “They messed up a few weeks back and killed Mrs. Farfield’s kid. Woman owns half the bakeries and grain silos in the city. She’s put up a stink about killing them since.”

  “Why hasn’t she just killed them herself?” I asked.

  If Mrs. Farfield was as influential as she sounded, she had to be at least Tier 3 and could crush any member of the Ivory Band on stats alone. Granted, a Tier 1 could fight back against a Tier 3, but it took generational amounts of skill and skills to do so.

  “I’m sure she came close.” The elder said and suppressed a smile. “But she’d be a pariah if she did.”

  “Why? Even if she’s attacking down, she has just cause.”

  Attacking down was taboo, or at least frowned upon in every culture I knew of. However, in the forest, you could petition Ylena or one of her daughters for the right to do so. If they believed you had just cause, they issued a writ of execution and the aggrieved allowed to kill them. Even then, so long as you were only a Tier above a person, you could attack down at will.

  The only thing forbidden was the murder or assault of the unawakened. Anyone caught attacking the unawakened had their limbs amputated and what remained of them we exiled to the heart of the forest.

  “Progressive place you’re from, I take it. She’d be seen as a child killer, no matter how just her cause is. A woman centuries old will find it hard to shake a reputation for killing teenagers.”

  “How’d they set up a gang in the first place? A couple of Tier 1 and 2s shouldn’t be able to establish a significant presence anywhere.” Mika asked.

  “Oh, they haven’t. Before they screwed themselves, they stuck to pick-pocketing rackets and distributing narcotics to other kids in the slums. They’d be a complete non-factor if they hadn’t killed Farfield’s kid. Hells, the Sisterhood or the Southward family might have even recruited them. Now that Farfield’s kicking up a fuss, they’ve become a nuisance to the real criminals. Hence the bounty.”

  Nora was about to ask something else, but the elder stared her down.

  “Enough questions. Here’s the details. Bounty’s really only for Hardbuckle and his three lieutenants. Trevor, Tina, and John. You can grab the rest of the rats, but only those four are worth any real money.”

  “How much?” Nora asked.

  “One gold piece each for the four. Has to be dead, though. The rest are only worth eight copper a piece but you can bring them in either way. Farfield doesn’t care if they’re dead.”

  “So, four gold for Hardbuckle and his people. How many rats does her have?” Ellen asked

  “Not sure.” The elder shrugged, a secretive smile on her sun worn face. “But kids like Hardbuckle have a hard time controlling more than fifty.”

  “When can we get started?” Nora asked.

  “Whenever you want. Maggie’s got the bounty reserved, so no one else will steal it from under your nose.”

  “Thank you, aunt Tia. It was nice to see you.” Maggie said. Her shoulders were almost at her ears and she’d braced herself like she expected to be punched. “We’ve been on the road for a week and I, for one, want to get some rest before we get started.”

  That was when the elder’s Aura slammed down on us.