fool's mate

[e3ccfb]

cw: implied child abuse, implied/attempted trafficking, violence resulting in death

The Fool’s mate is the fastest checkmate in chess delivered after the fewest possible moves from the game’s starting position.

There really hadn’t been any reason for Rook to believe this meeting wouldn’t end just like any other.

Indeed, it seemed fit to begin just like any other: the boss and his right-hand-man on one side of the game board that is Mr. Vespertine’s private office; and today’s hapless client, a Midlander this time, positioned just opposite, his hands wringing and his posture meek, as though making himself appear as pathetic as possible might somehow alter his fate. Such is the typical state of affairs for those who find themselves overdue on their debts to the House Vespertine; one might even go so far as to call it routine.

Somewhat less routine is said client bringing along a second — usually a spouse or some other family member to vouch on their behalf, to beg mercy or engage in similarly useless overtures. But that routine never includes what’s happening right now: the accompaniment of a child — a young boy, surely no more than ten summers in age — clinging fearfully to the client’s side.

Rook’s immediate instinct is uncharitable, at best: that the kid’s been brought here as a human shield, that surely even someone like Vespertine will treat him with leniency once he sees that the man has mouths to feed, that surely he won’t get violent in front of (what Rook assumes to be) the man’s own son. Either of these would be a foolish, perhaps even grave miscalculation on its own... But Rook observes more closely in the tense few moments of silence that follow the man and his (?) child’s entry through the office door, and a different story seems to unfold before his sharp, appraising eye; in the office’s dim light, he can just make out a raised swelling on the boy’s left cheek, still red, not yet bloomed into an obvious bruise.

From the very edge of his periphery, without turning his head, Rook casts a downward glance to his employer — to Mr. Vespertine, seated behind his desk in what appears to be perfect nonchalance. But he knows the tells, barely perceivable as they might be to any other eye; he sees the very slight twitch in one leporine ear, the tension held in his hands and the corners of his lips, that each herald the oncoming front of a dangerously tempestuous mood.

“Mr. Weild.” (He can hear the tell in Vespertine’s voice: sweet like nightshade, sharp like acid.) “Do you mind telling me why you’ve brought a child to our appointment?”

“Uh! W-Well!” The man stammers, as though he somehow failed to anticipate exactly this outcome. “D-Don’t worry, Mr. Vespertine, h-he’s not going to be any trouble at all!! In fact—”

He takes hold of the boy’s shoulders with a visibly rough grip, forcing him to stand more directly in front of him — to make him more useful, more obvious as a shield. From the corner of his eye, Rook sees Vespertine’s ear twitch again, but his expression hasn’t yet changed.

“I-I know I’ve been coming up short on coin for my repayments, a-and my investments haven’t come through just yet, but— But!! I-I’ve heard around town, you, er, you accept c-collateral as well, isn’t that right? S-So, that’s what I have here for you: collateral!”

Weild claps his hands against the terrified child’s shoulders, the sound of the impact ringing out through the otherwise deafening silence, and the temperature in the room seems to drop. Vespertine’s ears aren’t just twitching anymore; they’ve gone all but completely flat.

“My wife’s son! H-He’s a good, strong lad, you know, f-for his age, and sharp as a tack, y-you’ll see for yourself! Good for whatever task you might want to put him to, I-I’m sure! And if not, then, er, I-I’m quite sure he’ll fetch an excellent price for you on—”

“Mr. Weild.”

Vespertine cuts swiftly, cleanly through the man’s pathetic stammering, and he shifts his posture to lean forward in his seat, both hands lacing together and coming to rest on the surface of his desk as his smile sharpens even further.

“To begin with, I must disabuse you of precisely one notion: that anyone who enters a contract with my firm, such as yourself, can simply renegotiate the terms of their repayment without first consulting with me directly. Do you understand?” His eyes narrow, but his expression remains otherwise unchanged. “Your ‘collateral’ is as good as worthless to me, and I find it frankly quite galling that you would even consider being so presumptuous with our agreement.”

“I-I—” Weild’s demeanor takes an expected turn, transforming in an instant to floundering, fawning, fearful appeasement, and so the routine clicks back into place. “M-My apologies, Mr. Vespertine, I-I didn’t mean to— I, I would NEVER intend to—”

“Secondly.” Vespertine’s head tilts to one side, his ears twitching forward, his smile taking on a quality that could almost appear to be beaming to anyone who doesn’t know him well enough to know that this man does not beam. “I seem to recall, when the terms of our agreement were first being arranged, you claimed to have needed all that gil just to pay for your wife’s treatments at Frondale’s Phrontistery. Wasn’t that right?”

“Er... W-Well, yes, but...”

“And yet!” His voice takes on a cheerful lilt. “And yet. I’ve been very reliably informed that you’ve been making quite a few appearances at the Gold Saucer — by the racing counter in Chocobo Square, no less — flashing all that gil at your every opportunity. Isn’t that right?”

The man pales, shocked into silence for all of a moment before he begins to stammer again.

“Th-That was— L-Look, how else was I supposed to— I mean, I-I don’t mean to— H-How did you—”

“I have quite the variety of sources, Mr. Weild.” That almost-beaming, almost-sweet smile on Vespertine’s face doesn’t dim in the slightest as he continues on. “Including those who happen to be directly in my employ, and who also happen to have the fucking eyes to see when one of my clients is wasting my money by acting so obviously like a good-for-nothing gods-damned idiot.”

“S-Sir, Mr. Vespertine, sir, I-I really didn’t mean to—”

“Not that you need to worry about any of that now, of course.”

Vespertine turns his head, then, to meet Rook’s sidelong gaze, his smile sweetening even further.

“Rook, my dear, if you would be so kind.”

It isn’t an endearment so much as a signal, one that Rook has been waiting for since the excuses first began to fall from Weild’s mouth, and his only reply is a silent nod; he steps away from Vespertine’s side with a smooth, unhurried gait, and crosses the room to the office door.

“Now.” Vespertine’s posture relaxes as he leans back in his seat once more, returning to that perfect picture of nonchalance. “Let me be perfectly clear: I don’t actually care what you spend my money on, so long as it wasn’t delineated in the terms of our contract. I am a businessman before anything else, and an honest one, at that. If it’s not in the contract, then it’s out of my purview. Do you understand?”

Rook turns the lock on the door handle, and slips a length of silk from his back pocket before deftly tying it into a knot. Weild, even from behind, almost seems to be relieved by Vespertine’s words; obviously, he doesn’t understand at all.

“S-So, then, you’ll—”

“Don’t interrupt me.” Vespertine raises a hand, his words and expression both briefly sharpening before he glides right back into that saccharine lilt. “I’ll ask again, and this time the question is rhetorical: do you understand? That the only reason I’m bringing this up now is so your precious ‘collateral’ can see just how worthless you really are before I put you out with the trash.”

A flick of a gaze, a nearly imperceptible nod of the head, and Rook takes his cue: in a single swift, fluid motion, he wraps the garrote in his hands around Weild’s neck, pulling fast and forcing one knee into the bend of his back to leverage as much force as he can into the crush of his throat.

Weild tries to fight back, of course — he tries to scream, to shout, to kick at Rook’s legs, to claw at his hands and arms and the knotted silk at his throat — but, of course, it was already too late for him the moment Rook locked the door, if not long before that. Rook holds fast, utterly unswayed by what little strength the man can muster, and it isn’t long at all until those fighting limbs begin to fall slack, until they cease to move altogether.

Only then does Rook release his hold, stepping back to let the man’s corpse drop gracelessly to the floor. Vespertine heaves a long-suffering sigh, tension visibly bleeding from his shoulders as he stands and comes around to the front of his desk...which is precisely when his gaze falls upon the child — the boy, the wife’s son or whatever, having evidently fallen to the ground at some point during the struggle, who now sits in a sprawl while staring right back up at the two of them, his eyes wide with terror.

Oh. Right, the kid. Rook glances to his boss for guidance, only to see that the saccharine smile on Vespertine’s face has already twisted into a venomous scowl.

“What the fuck are you still doing here?” There is nothing approaching kindness or mercy in the way Vespertine speaks to the boy; his words are as ice instead, laced with bitter venom and dripping with antipathy. “Get out. Now, before I change my mind.”

It’s an empty threat, and Rook knows that all too well — but even an adult would be hard-pressed to call that sort of bluff, much less a child as young as this one. Panic impedes the boy’s escape, but it doesn’t stop him; he scrambles to his feet, stumbles to the door, fumbles with the lock, and then, finally, he flees.

Vespertine lets out another sigh, somehow even more long-suffering than the last, and leans back against his desk as he pulls a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. The cigarette has barely come to rest between his lips before Rook reflexively steps in with a light.

“Sir.”

Those leporine ears swivel back as Vespertine takes a deep pull from his cigarette, the lit end flaring bright as it burns down to ash. “What?” comes his snapped reply, mingled with a cloud of smoke.

“Are you sure that was...wise?” Rook casts a brief glance back to the office door, still swinging on its hinges, if only by the slightest amount, from the momentum of the boy’s escape. “Just, letting the kid...go, I mean. Like that.”

Vespertine clicks his tongue in obvious annoyance before he flicks ash onto the body on the ground. “Who gives a shit? Like he’s really gonna come back here with some Brass Blades or whatever the fuck.”

“Perhaps not, but...”

“And even if he does,” he continues, gesturing pointedly with the cigarette in his hand. “It’s not like we have to do anything but tell them the truth: that the guy tried to hand over some fucking kid as payment for services previously rendered, and that we put him out of his fucking misery for even trying it. You got that?”

Rook’s lips press into a thin line as he considers the possibilities. If he really wanted to, it would be a simple task to point out that the full circumstances of what just happened are a fair bit more complicated than that... But it’s not a fight he has the energy to go picking now.

“Whatever you say, boss.”

“That’s fucking right.”

He takes another long drag from that cigarette, then, sighs out another plume of smoke, and drops it directly onto Weild’s corpse before grinding it to ash beneath his heel.

“Get some of the others and get this guy out of here before he stinks up the place.” Vespertine tosses his hair over one shoulder, and for the first time since that man walked into his office, the casual, nonchalant air of his demeanor feels wholly genuine, even though he’s clearly still annoyed. “Shit, he’s already beginning to reek.”

“What should we do with him?”

“Drop him in the Sagolii or something, I don’t give a fuck.”

Vespertine stares back down at the body on the floor, and that nonchalant air begins to waver as the look in his eyes turns to one of pure venom.

“Scum like him doesn’t deserve the cleansing of flame. Let the worms take him, instead.”

Words like ice, bitter as oleander, all but spitting forth from Vespertine’s lips — and then, as if turning on the head of a pin, his nonchalance snaps right back into place.

“And then you can bring me back some of that U tribe incense. Got it?”

Not that the turn is in any way unexpected. If anything, it’s almost like they’ve fallen right back into their routine.

Rook glances back to Vespertine, gaze flicking up and down before it lands on his left hand — fingers flexing as though he’s already craving another cigarette, the dappled white whorl of burned flesh just barely visible where the back of his glove doesn’t quite meet the end of his coat sleeve.

“Understood, sir.”

There’s no reason not to return to business as usual, of course. Vespertine pats Rook on his upper arm, his touch lingering, and smiles every bit as sweetly as before.

“That’s what I like to hear.”