It's in the dark of the night, when houses are shuttered and the streets crawl alive. Ben has selected a special few, the devoted cherry-picked out of the loyal, and they wear hoods and masks beneath this electric city light.

At his side are Iaves and Meg, the two who always remain, the two who can be trusted above all else, who must be kept close for a little longer, so they are all on the same page.

Because Ben can see the path ahead of them, and it is dark and splintered.

Everything feels like preparation now, like he must place his pieces carefully on this board. Build up their reserves so that when he leaves they stand strong.

Because he must leave.

The glow of warm and cool hues flickers across his face as they pass storefronts, simmering bars, and other, unsavory places. They are winding down familiar roads, down to familiar skullduggery.

He doesn't like this, leaning so heavily on the Brothers of Wren, but with Grimes going dark, Ben needs to rearrange his board.

He spots the pair at the corner of The Hanged Man, their reedy twin figures casting tall shadows on the sidewalk as they linger, cloaked and hooded, beneath the towering lamp post. For a moment, Ben's gaze shifts behind them, toward the bar, but he knows the shadowy corner of The Hanged Man will be deserted, just as the narrow rooms of the Open Arms will lie empty of anyone he might care to know. It's a flicker of fingers, a quick signal, and the others follow as he crosses the street.

The Brothers of Wren nod when he approaches, acknowledging in their singularly nonverbal way, his familiar face.

"Gentlemen," he says in greeting, halting and sparing the empty stretches of the streets to either side a long glance. "What do we have this evening?"

They don't move for a moment, and then one, his thin arm shifting slowly, reaches into his cloak and pulls out a small knife.

"Jarles resistant," he mutters in that low, gravelly mumble of theirs, and Ben takes the thing, balancing it above his fingers.

"Hm," he murmurs, and he tosses it in the air toward one of his masked men. The slight Solveig man throws out a hand, grasping with Skill, but the knife does not even shudder and its point buries into the ground with a thud.

"Clever," Ben admits, reaching down and picking up the blade, "but no different than any other metal sword against most Keesark soldiers."

"Not the Protector," the other brother says.

Ben's brows twitch, and he allows a small, amused nod of acknowledgement.

"Just in case," he agrees, and he twirls the thing between his fingers, testing its weight, its balance, before handing it back to Meg. "Is that all?"

"We have a new oil shipment."

"How much? We'll pay."

"Double," one of them says and Ben bares his teeth again in something like a smile.

"A rip-off," Iaves mutters from behind and he makes sure to raise his voice enough so the brothers can hear it.

"Resources are dwindling," one answers, his expression nonplussed as his lanky shoulders shrug. "There is a war going on. Procuring supplies has become costly."

"Faraday," Ben calls, and the stout, masked man lumbers forward. "How much was oil going for in Thalassa before it fell?"

"Forty per barrel."

Ben raises his eyebrows at the brothers.

"I'll raise you a ten for our Jarles-occupied inconvenience and leave it at that."

They don't immediately answer, their faces placid and unmoving, and then one of them cracks, just slightly enough to say: "Fine."

"Excellent," Ben answers. "I have something a little more aggressive I'd like to talk to you about."

Neither says anything to this, but he senses their curiosity.

"We plan on... escalating things here a bit, and need the backing to bolster our efforts," Ben says carefully. "We need a dedicated supply line focused on more... aggressive resource gathering."

The brothers exchange silent glances before fixing on him once more. This is not in the realm of usual requests—not the way the game is played in these seedy corners of the world.

"We sell what we have to whoever gives us the best price," a brother tells Ben.

"You do," Iaves agrees. "For now."

"Gentlemen," Ben says, and he lets his hands spread out in front of him conciliatorily as he steps forward. "You said it yourself: we have a war on our hands. Several, if you count what's happening here. Resources are becoming scarce and difficult to obtain. We'll pay you, but I'll do you one better: we'll pay you and I will give you helping hands. Resourceful people who won't be looking to skim off the supplies when you're not looking. Armed people who will ensure your transfers go much... smoother."

One of the brothers crosses his arms.

"What are you paying?"

"Market price," Ben answers. "With, of course, a slight discount to compensate for our helping hands, but I have other ambitions that might interest you."

Ben reaches into his coat pocket and withdraws a pouch with shifting, gray powder inside.

"Stay with me," he says as he presses the pouch into their hands, "and I will give you much more than clever little trinkets."

Stuttered moonlight filtering through iron bars, flickering down over them like flashes of light as they pass; these are the tiny details that flash through his mind as they move through the underground labyrinth. They can hear the echoes of people above filtering down here, whispers in the shadowy dark, but this is nothing but white noise to Ben as they go. He has the knife in his hands, running his fingers along it as they walk. He's weighing it, weighing the vague plan he has built around it, flipping through the stores of information, the detail of faces, in the back of his mind.

"Davelin found him," Meg tells him, and the flipping stops, tucked away as Ben turns to the Solveig man.

Underneath the hard concrete of the street Davelin has pulled his mask off, half, Ben knows, to see better, but also half because even these few measures below ground have set a cold sweat across his forehead, have robbed his lungs of full breath. Being here skims too close to the memory of being captured under earth and root, beneath a pale, dead tree in the heart of Solveig, with his fellow Smith-callers. Davelin is gray in the moonlight but offers him a half-smile now, wan and twitching underneath all the heavy weight of the earth above him.

"You've done well," Ben tells him, not because he thinks his praise should mean much to the Solveig man, but because Davelin needs it. Needs the reassurance.

His trust had been hard to earn; convincing him he has Ben's has been even harder.

Feuilles and all his kind did a number on you, Ben thinks privately, the familiar acid pull of disgust twitching across his face, as they always do to the people who frighten them.

The Protector will learn that too, he thinks then. Ben had warned him, but the Smith-caller had made his choice.

As is his right, Ben tells himself again. As it will be his right to bear the consequences.

"Has he said anything?" Ben asks Meg now, because there are more pressing riddles to focus on than a man who moves against his own interest, who holds up a system that would tear him down. 

"No."

"Have you pressed very hard?"

"Not too much. I thought you would want to talk to him."

Ben nods. She's right; he always prefers to do these things.

What a difference would it have made, his mind wonders, not for the first time, if I had taken Serfigue. If I had been the one to crack him...

Now they are walking toward another puzzle he will need to solve.

Or break.

When they reach the door Ben pauses, turning to Iaves. The Beast-caller nods, gesturing at the others and they continue down to the latest hideout.

It's just him and Meg now, and she raises her brows as he sets a hand on the doorknob.

"Stay outside for now," he says.

"Alright," she answers, leaning up against the wall, picking at her nails. "Don't get too carried away."

It is dark inside the room, dim and dank in a way that does not completely hide forms, but obscures them in gray shadow. Ben can pick the man out, but his figure is blurred and difficult to understand in the darkness. Ben reaches into his coat pocket and approaches the oil lamp.

"Perhaps this would be better if we had some light," he says casually and he strikes the match.

The small, stone cellar flickers into view, as does the withered creature in front of him. The man is blind, his wide eyes a milky white, but Ben has the strangest feeling he is watching as Ben sits down in front of him.

The man's head tilts to the side, as if catching the whisper of something in his ear, and then his elbows set on the table and his hands slowly move up, the black fingers pressing together so that he seems to peer at Ben over their tent.

"Ah," he murmurs. "It is you."

They sit in silence for a moment; the man seemingly at ease, Ben searching his expression, eyes narrowed.

"You know who I am," Ben states finally.

"I have heard whispers," the man answers, voice reedy in this gloom. "It seemed inevitable that we should meet. You have many ambitions, and the resolve to pay their terrible price."

"A resolve," he adds delicately, "that you have already exercised."

In the air between them a phantom bowstring thrums in release; a catch of breath shivers as the arrow finds its mark.

"You know what I'm here for then," Ben says, thinking there's no point to pretense now.

The man nods, blank eyes fluttering closed. "You must know that I do not have it."

"But you know who does."

Those white eyes slide open again.

"Do you really believe the young Master Ruben would tell me?" the old man asks. "Do you really think I would want to know?"

"I think," Ben answers evenly, "that even if you don't know who has it, you know who else might know."

It's a quiet thing, so quiet that, for a minute, Ben doesn't quite register that it's a laugh.

"Your new world will be made of blood and bones," the old man says, and there is no fear in his expression now, no terror at the knowing that has dawned on him, "and nothing green will grow there."

"Funny," Ben answers, and his hand tightens on the knife, "I rather planned on keeping all the soil and earth."

And somehow, those white eyes catch Ben's and flit directly to the blade held between his hands. Balder eases back, old bones settling against cold stone, but the old creature does not seem to diminish; if anything, he is greater. It is then that Ben knows his choice; that the time for comfortable conversation has closed.

"Do what you will," Balder says, "but mark this: you take this path and I know not where the blood will go; so much should be shed the ground will not contain it."

A/N: Ben moves in closer to the Pang Sing bow and no one is happy about it. When will he not be the worst? Never.

Hiiiiiiiii everyone. How are we? Cozy? Overstuffed? Betrayed by the happiest place on earth, Target, and nursing a swollen leg? Me too. I fought an off-roading (really, more an on-roading) battle with a Target shopping cart and lost. Badly. And now there is a bag of frozen peas resting on an impressively large lump on my shin which is threatening to turn a whole variety of interesting colors. I should have seen it coming. Target is a power beyond powers. One does not simply trifle with its carts.

(I'm overheating and sleepy. *jazz hands*)

Chapter notes: We first meet Balder way, way back in Paragon's "Fort Morgalth" chapter, he had the important distinction, you might remember, of giving Allayria the key to Lethinor. Wonder if he's regretting that right now... Ben also remembers a few other Paragon friends in this chapter: Serfigue who got the "fun" end of the Spirit-Skilling stick in "The Interview," and the Brothers of Wren, who slide shadily onto the scene in "The Name Game." Caj remembers Ben's attempts at coercion in Partisan's "The House in the Twinkling Light," and Ben frees Davelin and the other Solveig Smith-callers in "The Hunted and the Hunter."