The Gaming Outpost

My job is to make friends with people in cafe’s, and coffehouses, bars and berliners (where you can get those wonderful tasty slabs of dough with sugar on them), askanwalks and aeteries. No, I’m not that Kind of person, who sells carnal favors; I’m someone much worse. I’m your new best friend.

I stepped over a drunken addboard man to get into the tiny aeterie. He told the world in lurid red letters on a white background of cheap board laying on his chest that ‘ladies love a lord’.

Inside the dingy aeterie, I flashed a high sign to one of the waitresses, in the manner of the High L. It does not mean ‘luzer’ here. It means ‘Lords Party’.

She came over to me, her face carefully expressionless, as she took my order for eggs, over easy, and ham well-fried. I tried to drawl as I did it, in a perfectly affected manner that would have a true aristo biting his lip to keep from crying out in laughter. We suck-ups, and wanna-bes have to be cossetted by our masters for the nonce.

I sat there, crossing my legs, as did all fashionable men, and looked fixedly into the air. Almost ready to leave after five minutes with no food, and a greasy sort of man, almost more round than tall, and not very tall, slide into the chair across my tiny square table.

“I have a message for y’know.”
“No, I don’t, my good man.”
He looked about, and I smiled dumbly at him.
“I got a load of vote cards. Heard they was paying big money for em.”

I slammed my fist into the lout’s nose, spilling blood everywhere. He fell back and I leapt to my feet in song singing the rousing battle chorus of …

“For I am a Republican!” As he gaped at me in total dismay.

My pleasant daydream ended, and I managed to twitch my lips in something that almost resembled a smile. Thankfully members of the Lords Party were not required to be socially ept. Being an arrogant snothead was practically a resume builder. A total lack of empathy helped as well.

“Do go on, my good man. You have these boxes…how many?”
“Oh, twenty or thirty, all full.”
I translated that to five, and mostly full with one mostly empty. Still in a tight vote in the city-state of Zimpar, about three thousand votes was nothing to sneer at.
“And I have lists of the dead from local hospitals.”
“Very…” I almost said ‘enterprising’ but the ideal Lord lackey aspired to indolence. “Clever.” Clever was good.

It was much harder for the voting rights bureau to disprove a dead man’s vote than one made up out of nothing. In practise the voting rights bureau did not even bother. With half their members of the Lords Party, and hence dedicated to prevaricationg, not paying waiters tips, and boffing the help, and well, cheating at anything whether cards or horses or voting, and the ever present subtext that if the voting rights bureau ever did their job right, a mob would come and burn down the building, I did not blame them.

I let loose a low whistle, just loud enough to annoy the working men in the room. They gave me a hairy eyeball, but no one wants to offend an obvious member of the Lord’s Party. You might find your applications for licenses to work held up in some government office, or the Mob baying at your window at two in the morning.

It was the veritable problem. Few people honestly wanted the Lords back in power, but everyone was afraid of them. Well, except for me. I am a verser, an interdimensional traveller, and I’d seen aristocrats who made these punks seem like punks. After you’ve been chased across Romania by Count Vlad Dracul and Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the local Lord’s Party aristos look like children playing at the adult’s table.

And yes, I killed both of them. But that was in another universe.

“Show me.” I urged him. He naturally refused as I expected.
“But someone could have stolen them from you.” I said, and was amused how humans are. A thief steals, and then is outraged when someone thieves from him.
I made a deal to talk later, and left. Five minutes later, he came out and flagged a carriage down.

I sat in my sukey, behind my non-descript horse, and clucked. We set out with a clop. I followed him all the way back to his lair which turned out to be a small earthen cave under the city wall.

Having assured himself of their presence, he went out to get a drink. I let him go, and when he was gone, I slipped back into his cave. Seven boxes of vote cards waited for me.

I could destroy them, but that would do little good. Not sure what to do, I paced in proper Lordly style up and down the hedge row next to the road.
Then I have it. The daring Republican operative smacks his hand into his fist. And a beautiful lady runs up to him, crying his name…

I shook my head to purge the daydreams, and got to work. The thing to do in many operations is to help the target defend himself from outside opponents.
Even or especially if those outside opponents do not really exist.

I wrote various bits on a few select papers. And then I backed off, and went to the Cafe’ Roundtable where I had agreed to meet him. I went through two cups of tea before he showed up, with the boxes intact.
I seemed excited, and then went through the boxes to find the errors I had already made.
“Oh no.” He said.
“Oh yes,” Said I. “Those dastardly Republican operatives are on to your plan. only if he is alarmed at my blatant signs of forgery would he trash these and seek more. Those I would let him find, and follow him until he met with a real Lord’s Party operative who would be no doubl quite advanced, And then I would follow the operative.

My only problem was that one of the many voices in tonight’s bars would be sourting with genuwine enthusiasm about wht a bunch of thieves and cheaters we Republcians were. Ideally, I’d find a way to betray my new friend, cheat him, have his friendly supervisor in villainy followed, and still have him blaming the Lord’s Party for my misdeeds.

But I am not so clever.

I waited, made friends of strangers, tasted various threads to see what they meant, and worked to stifle sentiment in favor the Return of the Aristocrats who had governed Zempar for hundreds of years, and to blossom the love of the City Council, who were just men, elected every two years. In order to do so, I had to use methods hated by the City Council, so much so, that I have a bounty on my head, from my own side.

The City Council believes in goodness triumphing, and they refuse ‘to condone your illegal and unethical techniques. You are fired.’ They had said that two nights ago, and my reply had been to drop seven traitors on their front doorstep in chains later that first night.

I don’t fit into the world I want to save. I’m lower than scum. But the good and virtuous Councillors on the City Council need me. They don’t understand how dirty the Lord’s Party will fight. So I will save the Republican’s and they will spit on me.