Some days later.

"That’s the third wave. They’ve finished their assessments."

Leon sat inside the courtyard and smiled to himself.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

The gangs controlling the eastern wing of Davos were more organized than a single glance suggested.

They hadn’t come in blind on the first night, hadn’t sent anyone over the wall with a knife and an optimistic attitude. What they had done instead was more measured, a slow read of the situation, each step designed to answer a specific question before committing to the next one.

The first move came in the morning after arrival.

A beggar at the front gate. Disheveled, harmless looking, the kind of person you wave away without thinking. His hands were gone before he finished his approach, a sword moving faster than the eye bothered to track, and the screaming that followed him down the street carried further than anyone planned.

Word traveled fast in Davos.

After that, Arian and Ember took turns at the gate. Fully armed. No pretense of anything casual about their posture. Anyone coming close enough to read the situation walked away with a clear picture.

The gangs took note and moved to the next question.

On the fourth day a level three mage showed up.

He didn’t attack. Didn’t posture. Just settled near a tree at a comfortable distance and passed the time casting minor spells, playing with the children running around the street, his whole presence radiating the specific ease of someone who had nothing to prove and knew it.

It was a message.

Politely delivered. Clearly understood.

They had level three if they wanted to push it.

Leon’s response came that night.

Two figures stepped out from the courtyard to replace Arian at the gate.

Corpse guardians. Disfigured, covered in black armor that didn’t catch light the way normal metal did, standing with the particular stillness of things that didn’t breathe unless they were told to.

Both of them radiating the energy of level three mages.

The street outside the gate got very quiet very fast.

That brought the courtyard’s visible count to five level three fighters, plus whatever Leon still had behind his hands that hadn’t been shown yet. The gangs ran the numbers, weighed the cost against the potential return, and came to the conclusion that any reasonable organization comes to when the math stops working in their favor.

The assessment ended.

They retreated.

No further optimism about a physical confrontation.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Meanwhile, inside the courtyard.

Leon sat across from a man in his late twenties dressed in a clean traditional worker’s outfit, the kind of clothes that said professional without saying wealthy. His posture was straight, his hands strong, the particular build of someone who had done real physical work for years before graduating to whatever this was.

There was a noble quality to how he carried himself that had nothing to do with birth.

"I need a carriage. Luxurious, with materials as sturdy as stone." Leon looked at him steadily. "Use it to take Arian and Ember shopping for the materials on my list."

"Yes, young master." The man bowed deeply, came back up, dusted the front of his clothes with one sharp motion, and turned to leave with the energy of someone who had already started working before they cleared the door.

Derrick.

He had been sourced quickly and arrived with good references and better instincts. Leon hadn’t needed to explain the same thing twice to him yet.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

At the same time Leon stood up, walked out of the courtyard, and flew to the roof.

There was a man sitting up there.

Cup of alcohol in hand, legs crossed, completely unbothered by Leon’s arrival, the kind of stillness that comes from knowing you are the most dangerous thing in any room you choose to enter and having lived inside that fact long enough that it stopped requiring any outward demonstration.

Level four.

A great mage, radiating it without effort, the energy sitting around him the way heat sits around something that has been burning for a long time.

He had been there since before Leon came up.

"Sit, friend." He didn’t look over. Just gestured to the space across from him.

Leon walked to the other side and sat down.

"Since you’re a young talent on his way up," the man began, his voice controlled, the tone of someone who had done this kind of conversation enough times to have a preferred structure for it, "we won’t ask for much."

He had been brought in specifically for this.

For targets like Leon, the standard approach didn’t apply. Scare tactics required the other party to be scared. Beggar at the gate, level three mage in the street, corpse guardians stepping out at night, all of that was language these organizations spoke fluently, but it was language designed for people who needed convincing.

Leon had not appeared to need convincing about anything since he arrived.

So they moved to negotiation.

The model was straightforward. If you ran a business, the gang protected it for a monthly fee. If you simply lived behind a door, they posted eyes around your address and made sure no one else decided to be a problem. In a city without functional guards, without any structure above the gangs themselves, you didn’t really have the option of opting out.

You patronized them or you dealt with the consequences of not patronizing them.

That was Davos.

"First." Leon smiled with a slight edge to it. "Introduce yourself. I don’t have time for all of this."

Levi slithered out of his robes as he said it, moving up onto his shoulder and settling there, its head resting at a comfortable angle, watching the man across from them with the particular attention of a creature that had absorbed enough of Leon’s personality to recognize a performance when it saw one.

The man blinked.

Just once.

The smile on his face stayed but something shifted behind it, a quick recalibration, the kind that happens when you’ve assessed a situation and the situation stops matching your assessment mid-sentence.

Leon’s group was strong. That had been established. But strong in what sense? Five level three fighters and a handful of unknown resources was respectable for a private group. It wasn’t a great mage. What was this person’s actual read of the gap between them?

Was he genuinely not registering it?

"Oh." Leon’s expression shifted into something that looked almost apologetic. "I apologize for the rudeness. It’s just that as a great mage, you’re not that intimidating to me."

He said it lightly.

Then a pressure appeared.

Formless. Not aggressive, not a declaration of war. Just present for a moment, touching every surface of the roof, settling against the man’s chest with the specific weight of something that knew exactly how much force it was applying and had chosen this much deliberately.

It dispersed quickly.

Clean and controlled.

The message had already landed.

"I’ll pay one thousand gold every month." Leon looked at him directly. "You post guards around my courtyard around the clock. I don’t mind the gang activity in the city. That’s your business." He paused once. "But if you think for a single moment that you have power over me, I will kill your entire family. And those men you have sitting in the dark right now will be hung from the east wall."

He said it the way he said most things.

Casually. Without heat. Like he was describing a natural consequence rather than making a threat.

He was usually reserved.

But in situations where the dominance was absolute and he didn’t need to manage anyone’s perception of him carefully, Leon occasionally liked to let the ceiling show.

The man with the cup of alcohol sat across from him and said nothing for a moment.

The cup stayed in his hand but he wasn’t drinking from it anymore.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​