Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

sleep at nights, he just counted the ways it could all go suddenly and horribly and violently wrong when Rose was around.
    Brett Random trudged unhappily down narrow lanes, knocked on hidden doors, and reluctantly led the way into windowless rooms with dramatically low lighting, where he introduced Finn Durandal to locksmiths, forgers, computer hackers, burglars, muscle and guns for hire, and all the other secret people a Golden Age didn't like to admit still existed. A lot of them wouldn't have been in for Brett Random, but they were all fascinated to meet a legendary Paragon gone bad. Most didn't believe it at first, but you only had to be in Finn's presence for a while, to hear his calm awful voice, and see the fey light in his eyes, to know this was no trick, no con. And somehow none of these alleged twilight people could bring themselves to say no to the charming, dangerous, tainted Paragon as he murmured his needs and requirements, and promised them rewards almost beyond belief.
    Evil always knows evil, when it meets it face to face.
    Finn was particularly pleased to meet a certain Mr. Sylvester; a faded actor of a certain ape, who with the decline of his career had embraced computer hacking and character assassination with equal satisfaction. Mr. Sylvester was an absolute master at breaking into even the best guarded of files, adding a damning line or two, and then leaving, with no trace to show he had ever been there. He could destroy a reputation with just the right planted word, here and there, and could change or corrupt the whole meaning of a phrase just by meddling with the emphasis. After all, a half truth can be so much more damning than a total lie ... Many a ruined life, and many a suicide, had been traced to Mr. Sylvester; but only by those in the know. Finn talked with Mr. Sylvester for over an hour, while Brett waited in the corridor outside and failed utterly to make small talk with Rose Constantine.
    The agents provocateurs had their own squalid little cafe, The Outcry, where they lounged around all day when they weren't working, drinking bad coffee, and swapping the tales they could tell only each other. For the right price, they would infiltrate any march or meeting or organization, and guarantee to bring it all crashing down to ruin and disgrace. No one was safe from them, and some had been known to boast they could start a fight in an empty room. They were much in demand, and very well paid, but the nature of their profession, and the many enemies they'd made, demanded an anonymity that they found particularly irksome. What use was craft and skill and accomplishment if you couldn't boast about it afterwards? They were all heartily sick of each other's company, so they took to Finn Durandal immediately, as he sat and listened patiently while they all but fell over themselves detailing all the appalling things they could do for him, for the right price.
    In the end, Finn offered a sum that made Brett's eyes bulge, as a down-payment for a series of actions yet to be detailed, and all the agents present agreed to abjure all other assignments and hold themselves ready for his call. Brett was so astonished he actually took Finn by the arm and insisted on talking privately with him. Finn sighed and agreed, and allowed Brett to lead him away while the agents chatted animatedly with each other. Finn had promised them a real test of their skills, and they did so love a challenge. Brett pulled Finn into a private booth, and the Durandal immediately pulled his arm free.
    "Don't touch me, Brett. I don't like to be touched."
    "You must be touched in the head, to be putting up the kind of money you've been offering them!" Brett said angrily, too outraged even to be respectful. "And you didn't need to hire them all, dammit! Jesus, you could at least have let me negotiate . . ."
    "I'm touched by your concern, Brett, but you don't know what I'm planning," Finn said calmly. "I may
    have need of all of these people, or I may not. I'm not sure, yet. But either way, I don't want any of them free to work against me. And anyway; money doesn't matter to me."
    "Don't blaspheme," Brett said automatically. "And keep your voice down, or they'll double the price on general principle. Are you really so rich you can just throw it away?"
    "I've always had money," said Finn. "I made a lot of it in my early days. It was just another way of proving I was the best. Another way of keeping score with my . . . contemporaries. But