Cicero: Part 2: Veer's story 

Figures and estimates raced through Veer’s mind as he entered Farq’s office, [i]the market on ‘Demon Blood’ had just skyrocketed to over 115%, we needed to sell our stocks as soon as possible! The evidence and information needed by the ‘Rotfaces’ had just been destroyed; if they weren’t willing to pay the price they wouldn’t own the prize.[/i]

He looked up from his notes; his brow furrowed in deep concentration, to find Farq leant across his chair like a cat stretched out on his favorite rug. The black leather back of his chair faced him, revealing only the rippled layers of flesh which made up his arms. The gorged manager made no attempt to neither greet his steward nor even accept his presence in the room; never diverging his eyes from the hundreds of TV screens that were constantly ran by a back-up generator. Not even the recent power cut had depraved him of his obsessive lifestyle. These screens were placed in a large semi-sphere around his control chair; the only light came from these constant windows of electronic life, hiding the tangle of wires that spread across the floor, ceiling and walls like a messy mass of webs.

The small goblin steward slowly shuffled around the chair to enter his master’s line of sight; he watched as sweat and grease slide down his huge unnatural belly, only adding to Veer's discomfort.

“Sir I have some information.” He muttered quietly through the thick silence of the room which felt as heavy as the sickening heat that Farq kept his room in. Only silence answered Veer’s question, in a market of powerful information, the great only expected the best. Veer’s half-hearted intervention wouldn’t spark any interest in his employer.
“Two mercenaries were killed last evening while hunting down a snatcher.” Veer muttered in a hurried, stuttering tone as if each word was stumbling over the last in an attempt to escape from his tiny mouth. The goblin behemoth’s small, inset, beady eyes didn’t dither from the television screens as he greedily devoured the scenes reflected in his pupils.

“Four fathers, three daughters, eight sons and a parrot were killed last night.” This he said in his resigned, lazy and indifferent tone as if he were letting out a drawn out sigh.

“But sir…” Veer replied quickly and carefully before being cut off by his obese master.

“Get some more mercenaries for the whore house, use CCTV footage to find the snatcher and kill the bastard. Do I really have to teach you how to do your job, Dop?” 

[i]Dop being the name of the last steward, Farq doesn’t know and doesn’t care…[/i]

“The ‘Rotfaces’ didn’t buy the information did they? I knew they wouldn’t, the price was too high…knowledge is power and power is worth so much these days.” Farq guessed in his same lazy tone, he often rambled on about the importance of information, in his younger days he was apparently a great spy-master however food and wine had turned his mind to saw dust; all that was left was a broken and slothful reminder of a past glory.

“Sir, what I really wanted to tell you is…” The steward’s outpour of words was interrupted once again, a normal occurrence but one that filled Veer with loathing.

“Leave me be Dop.”

“The two mercenaries were killed by an individual of ‘High Interest’.” Veer almost shouted in exertion, the sentence being uttered in little over a couple of seconds. The silence of the room suddenly grew deeper and anything that the manager had been doing before stopped immediately. His attention was captured.

The goblin drew out a remote control from his jacket’s pocket with practiced ease, flicking one of Farq’s central TV screens to a Police record. The record was almost empty but for a few reports and an alias. 

“Cicero…” Farq said in that lazy, drawn out voice, now tinged with a hint of curiosity.

“An outsider, accepted into all Nyctari meetings of importance, snatched a whore just to speak Spanish and share a rooftop sunset, killed two mercenaries single handedly and sent their bodies back to their families…with considerable amounts of money.” Veer replied a small but growing, grin of pride crept across his face like a devious and sly spider. 

[i]And this spider has a fat, juicy fly caught in his web.[/i]

“Odd…” The hint of curiosity fading from Farq’s voice as he spoke in leisurely tones.

[i]The fly has untangled himself from this web of interest, what he doesn’t suspect is a multi-layered trap.[/i]

Farq kept his level of indifference and disinterest, “Make sure you gather info on him, send me the details, I’m sure some third rate villain will want his story…”

“Unfortunately, we have very limited video of the man, we have not been able to trace him to any sort of accommodation and he only appeared at all in the last few months. A ghost…”

[i]Caught…[/i]

Farq’s eyesbrows had lifted and his very presence seemed to shift uncomfortably in his chair however it wasn’t a shuffle of trepidation, rather of nervous excitement. A voyage into a sea Farq’s weathered sea galley hadn’t experienced in a very long time, discovery. “A ghost, hmm…” He stroked his chin, the first time he had moved his arms today, Veer guessed. “What breed of outsider is it?”

Veer raised his notes in swift and readied movements, already he had accounted for his master’s questioning. “I accumulated some rumours and suggestions from various sources and compiled their notes into a list of likely races from highest to lowest claimed. My figures point towards Vampire, then in descending order, Undead, Elf and finally Mermaid.”

“Mermaid...? Actually don’t answer that, I can’t believe I let myself forget that the majority of the population are bumbling fools. I would like to keep an eye on Mr… Cicero; as long as he’s in the ‘red light district’ we can track him with Protector’s network of cameras.”

“Sir, shall I make contact with any of the other networks for additional information?” Veer intervened meekly before being shunned by his manager who now spoke with a faster and more fluid cadence.

“No we don’t want to alert anyone else on this individual, we have found a diamond in the rough.” He smiled with an almost unnaturally sized grin for his flabby face that turned his mouth into a sea of creases surrounding a disgusting yellow toothed smile. Veer could almost taste his master’s self satisfaction and he hated it, never did he recognize any of his employee’s work in his schemes; to him it was all a decadent and hedonistic game, while for most everyone else it was their livelihood. 

“Of course sir.” He replied submissively, bowing and leaving the grotty chamber behind him.

A bell called through the silence, beckoning the steward to the front desk of the establishment. Quickly the small, lithe goblin ran smoothly and efficiently, following the instinctual steps he took every day to reach the reception in the fastest manner. Arriving politely and on time, the goblin nodded his head towards the customer in silent greet and trilled his usual phrase. “Welcome to Protector, the finest security establishment in the district…” however his list of titles finished there as he finally spotted his guest, causing him to stop in astonishment and interest at the same time. The man who stood before him was tall by human standards, around six feet, a trench coat sat comfortably on his shoulders with the collar pulled up against some intangible rain. His face was shrouded by a thin, light silk black hood, but underneath its dark veil his eyes bored into Veer’s like a lighthouse’s remote warning; cold and distant. Veer smiled through rows of needles in his calculating and duplicitous way, identifying the visitors instantly.

“Mr. Cicero, how can Protector help you on this fine day…?”