Chapter 233 — Amber's Old Friends
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 3
Anton's heart tightened at once, and a nervous look came over his face as he turned to Amber. "Boss, stealing from a noble's mint gets you hanged!"
Amber immediately shot the scar-faced, bald brute a savage glare. "Are you really asking to have your chest smashed with a boulder?! The kind where I hoist you up and use you to smash rocks!"
Anton instantly shrank back his neck and dared not make a sound.
Clearly, what Amber said was more than likely true.
Their boss, gone missing for years, had actually gotten herself in with that founding hero, become the personal bodyguard of some great noble—a tale too fantastical to be true, and yet it had truly happened.
"Go on and discuss it among yourselves," Amber said with a wave of her hand, quietly pushing the money on the bar to a more conspicuous spot. "But let me be clear: money's a fine thing, but it isn't so easy to earn. The duke doesn't want to hire a bunch of thugs and scoundrels to ruin his reputation. So whoever takes the money has to first come with me to the Cecil territory, learn the rules and laws there, and only then will it be time for proper work. And anyone who can't learn the rules..."
Amber trailed off, merely sweeping a glance around the room laden with implicit threat, making everyone's neck shrink involuntarily.
In truth, there would be no terrible punishment. According to Gao Song, those simple rules and regulations could be learned by even a fool with a month or two of training—and even those who couldn't learn them would have them beaten into their heads after a few rounds. But Amber knew that before her was a pack of rotten goods that even boiling water couldn't scald into shape. Perhaps one day they might learn rules, laws, and morals on the straight path—but before that, they had to be driven onto that path with the two whips of reward and punishment.
And that implicit threat, while it struck the tavern-goers dumb with fear, also gave them a more concrete sense:
Nothing good falls from the sky. Only when a thing carries a certain risk does it have any chance of being real.
Dealing with nobles was dangerous—everyone who lived in the back alleys knew that. But their boss seemed able to shield them...
And that founding hero's reputation seemed quite good, too...
They just didn't know what a great noble would want with a pack of local thugs, crooks, thieves, and swindlers—but how bad could the worst be? Surely he wouldn't be driving a ragtag bunch like them onto a battlefield to fight, or to drive off magical beasts?
As the tavern came alive with noise once more, Anton quietly sidled up beside Amber. The scar-faced brute lowered his voice, unable to hide his curiosity. "Boss, how... how on earth did you get in with a big shot like that?"
"Oh, it was nothing much," Amber said with a careless wave. "I pried open his coffin and woke him up."
Anton: "...Huh?!"
Amber lifted the half-finished mug of cheap ale before her, brought it to her lips, and sighed. "Ah, so that's the lesson—when you're stealing, never let the victim catch you at it, or one wrong step and you've landed yourself in the pot... Bah, just pour me a cup of water instead. You'd be better off mixing ale into water than whatever this is—what in the world did you cut it with?"
"Actually, this is the very ratio of water to ale you set down back then..." Anton said, caught between laughter and tears. "Never mind. I'll go pour you a cup of water."
"Forget it, forget it—I'll make do with this," Amber said with a shake of her head, looking down at the frothing swill with a helpless laugh. "Human or elf, we're all the same—creatures only too ready to drown ourselves in comfort..."