Chapter 316: What Comes After Strength II
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"You," he said to one of the front-line men. "Read the ledger on the desk."
The man blinked once, then turned his head toward Mira’s work table. The ledger sat half-open a good distance away, the writing too small for normal eyes to read from there.
The transformed man narrowed his new red eyes.
Then startled.
He actually leaned back a fraction and said, "I can."
Mira, who had been watching all this with increasing awareness that she was now standing inside history whether she wanted to or not, lowered her gaze toward the ledger automatically as if protecting the page from being seen better.
"What can you read?" Sekhmet asked.
The man swallowed, focused again, and slowly recited the upper line of entries. Not perfectly. But close enough to prove the point.
Sekhmet turned to another.
"You. Go to the door. Tell me how many people are waiting outside without stepping through it."
That man obeyed immediately. He stopped before the closed entrance, head tilting slightly as his hearing stretched into the street beyond.
Then he answered.
"Thirty-two in the immediate line. More farther back. Two wagons. One beast cart. Four smell armed enough to matter."
Interesting.
That last part mattered too.
Bat Bat looked impressed despite herself. "That is very nosy."
No one answered her.
Sekhmet’s gaze shifted to Raka. "How is the hunger?"
Raka answered honestly.
"Present."
"How strong."
"Manageable," he said. Then after half a beat, "For now."
Not denial. Not melodrama.
Better.
Sekhmet nodded once. "You will not test your control on innocent people."
Raka’s mouth moved faintly. "Disappointing, but understood."
That got a few rough smiles from his men.
Sekhmet’s own expression did not change.
"You and your men will feed on criminals."
That sharpened the room again.
Now they were listening for work, not only power.
Sekhmet went on.
"You know this city. You know its lower paths. You know who deserves to vanish and who merely deserves to be beaten." His eyes moved over the whole force. "You will catch the worst of the worst. Not beggars. Not debt fools. Not boys trying to act older than they are. Real criminals. Predators. Killers. Those who feed on the weak already."
That line sat correctly with them.
These men were lower-market stock, yes, but they knew distinctions. Criminals hated being treated as though all crime were equal. Many of them held their own brutal hierarchies. Men who robbed caravans and stabbed rivals did not necessarily love the men who sold children, preyed on women, broke workers for fun, or ran the ugliest corners of contract flesh markets. Null was ugly. Even ugliness had layers.
Sekhmet continued.
"You will take them alive when possible. Keep them as food." His tone cooled by a degree. "Do not waste them quickly. Use them."
A few of the men exchanged looks.
That part interested them.
Resource management. Blood livestock. Human prey sorted into feeding stock. Ugly, yes. Practical, more importantly.
Raka spoke for them.
"The worst of the worst."
"Yes."
"Alive if possible."
"Yes."
"As food."
"Yes."
Raka considered that for one second and then nodded. "That works."
Of course it worked.
It was the kind of order lower men preferred: ugly, simple, and profitable in three directions at once. They would feed. The city would lose its worst parasites. And Raka’s people would gain hidden reserves under their own control while still remaining under Sekhmet’s hand.
Mira watched Raka accept that logic without flinching and felt, not for the first time in her life, that morality in lower cities was not a ladder but a swamp. Still. Even she had to admit the order made ugly sense.
Sekhmet continued.
"You will not feed openly."
Raka nodded.
"You will not let the city connect disappearances to the Dawn house."
Another nod.
"You will not reveal your identity without my permission."
That one got a slight shift through the men because now they understood more clearly what they had become part of. There was structure above them. Limits. Not a random spread.
Raka’s good eye stayed on Sekhmet’s face. "And if some are too useful to waste."
Sekhmet considered that.
"Then you bring them to me first."
Raka liked that answer.
It meant room for future growth without lowering the center of authority.
Sekhmet looked over them again and then, because it mattered that they understood the next line properly, said, "Power is not freedom from discipline. It is only a more expensive form of obedience."
That one went deeper.
Some of the younger men straightened instinctively.
A few older ones smiled without warmth.
Raka simply inclined his head once.
He understood it best of all.
Mira did too.
That was why her eyes had not left Sekhmet since the transformation ended.
She had thought, once, that she understood the shape of his ambition. A useful young man. Dangerous. Gifted. Rich. Worth attaching business to. Worth helping if it brought profit and future leverage.
That assessment had become laughably small now.
He was not collecting employees.
He was building tiers.
House. Blood. Underground force. Auction structure. Beasts. The twins. Lily. Bat Bat. The sealed half-gods.
Now Raka’s men.
And she —Mira— had made a neat little worker’s contract like a cautious fool trying to trade at the edge of a storm instead of stepping into it before others claimed the better place.
The thought returned harder this time.
"I need to talk to him. Not later. Today."
Before she watched one more person become more under his hand while she stood holding ledgers and self-restraint like they were shields.
Sekhmet turned then, not toward her first, but toward the newly made first lesser vampire—the one who had come with Raka through the night.
"You."
The man straightened instantly.
"You followed orders."
"Yes, Master."
"Good."
That one word visibly steadied something in the man’s face. Praise, or what passed for it under Sekhmet’s standards, mattered more when it came that rarely.
Raka looked at the first lesser vampire again with a different eye now. Not suspicion. Not exactly. A kind of rough acknowledgment.