The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 756: Make An Example

As the sun went down, Dominic retired early for the evening, at Amie’s request.

"What is this that I hear about you sending the Assassin’s Guild after a local mafia?" She whispered once they were alone on the upper floors of the Castle.

"Oh, right. Some guy tried to shake me down, so I paid them to make a point with a hundred corpses. The rate was reasonable."

Amie sighed. "You realize the chaos that this is going to cause, right?"

"It shouldn’t be that bad. The Lords will assume it was their rivals. Their rivals will take a day to realize that it was us, and then nobody will come to our door asking to tax all our trade again."

"You could have just sent him on his way."

"I did."

Amie shook her head. The man hadn’t made it all the way out of the castle, he was dead in the back of his carriage before it even made it to the gates. It just took a bit of time before anyone noticed.

"The Assassin’s Guild is good friends with the Duskblade Sect, and they cleared the mission with us, in case we had prior claim. The Sect Leader said it was fine, as you’d already paid and delegated the task to them.

So, they think that they’ve made a new friend in the high Nobility, and you’ve given them the perfect opportunity to eliminate a group that was troubling many others, but not enough to take paid action."

"That sounds like a win-win scenario."

"Until bodies start showing up in every town in western Cygnia."

"I could have done it myself if that would have been more palatable to the public. He really was too arrogant."

Amie retired to her room to send messages to the Sect Leader, and Dominic went to bed.

Movement in the room woke him, and his keen eyesight spotted the flash of metal as someone moved through the darkness. They were moving to stand behind the curtain, not to immediately attack, which confused him for a second.

Was this someone moving to guard him?

But then he saw his Royal Guard shift on the balcony outside the window, and felt a pulse of magic before the figure collapsed.

"Your Grace. This is the third tonight. I believe that you might have angered that organization more than expected." Benedict whispered, aware that Dominic was awake.

"Should we send someone to deal with it?"

"It’s already done. Amie had the Duskblade Sect send a team into town to deal with any of their ranking members that the Assassin’s Guild didn’t get. Your bounty should be enough to wipe out all of their full members, leaving only the common goons and debt collectors, who will move on to a new employer."

Dominic nodded. "Let me know if we need to make any adjustments."

"I doubt it. Once their enemies realize what happened, they will move to take over the territories. Whether they’re smart enough to give Wistover goods a pass on their turf is questionable, but I suspect that we won’t have issues.

The Thieves’ Guild is on our side, I am informed."

"Wonderful. Keep a close watch, and we will leave right after breakfast."

The Royal Guard nodded, and Dominic lay back down, unable to sleep now that his danger senses had been triggered.

There were still a few hours to breakfast, and there was no point in just laying there, so he started making notes on all the requests that he had received. He was making a map of all the under served regions, so that Rill could work on the distribution network.

Normally, those places didn’t need much from the Guild, but while they couldn’t afford much, they still wanted some of the basics that Wistover was selling.

So, they didn’t get priority on the routes, and by the time that the caravans got to them, all the good stuff was gone.

A few words from Dominic were enough to fix the issue. The caravans would just take the opposite route to their usual, going to the rural areas first instead of the city. It would take them longer to empty the caravan that way, but they would do it, and the core route was the same.

That was the distinct advantage to being someone with influence.

Yet, that was not what anyone was going to remember about Dominic’s visit to Castle City.

Not this time.

By the time that the morning meal was served, the first reports from the city were already rolling in. An entire Mafia Family was wiped out overnight. Not just in the city, but their associates in the Baronies, and small towns as well.

At first, there was no sign as to what caused the disturbance. But when the Castle City Guard got to the Family’s Manor house, a large estate on the edge of the Noble District, the bodies were lined up in a perfect row on the front lawn.

Not just the Mafia goons and their bosses, everyone who was on the property.

The Assassin’s Guild had even taken out the prostitute that one of the employees had brought back for the evening. But that was not what concerned the guard.

No, what worried them the most was that someone had kept count, and a single sheet of paper with one hundred tally marks on it was tacked to the front door, while the bodies of the servants and the prostitute had a single gold coin placed in their mouth.

Alms for the family, for those caught in the crossfire.

A hallmark of the Assassin’s Guild.

They hadn’t taken it out of their pay, it had come from the vaults of the Mafia. Vaults that had been thoroughly plundered. But nobody would mistake this for anything else,

When they found the carriage, still with the minor Nobleman who had come to the event inside, rumours began to spread through the Castle.

The Mafia had offended the Butcher of Wistover, and had vanished overnight.

Two hours later, all mentions of the Assassin’s Guild had stopped.

The only thing that anyone in town was talking about was the rumour that a major family in the city had vanished overnight, just because they had offended Dominic.

That rumour was helped along by the other Families who were taking over their territory, but letting everyone think that they had nothing to do with it was the perfect camouflage.

And it kept the City Guard from counting the bodies too closely.