The oven door swung wide. Damp, rye heat bil­lowed from with­in. Knot­ty hands slid a wood­en peel into the depths, pro­duced a gold and crack­ly loaf. The sweat­ing bak­er set it on a rack, delved back for anoth­er. Twelve more joined it, steam­ing from slits in their crusty flesh.

Near­by, a bell chimed. A stamp­ing of worn boots tracked snow onto the warm tiles of the bak­ery. The bak­er set down his peel, round­ed the cor­ner to his counter.

There, framed by a frosty street­side win­dow, stood a raggedy fel­low in a blue coat. His cheeks were bit­ten red by wind; his eyes dim and drear as the win­ter morn­ing.

“Top o’ it,” said the bak­er, nod­ding. * 

The man gave a chap-lip smile. “And the rest yer­self.”

He perused the counter and shelves, piled high with fresh, flakey loaves, buns, and bis­cuits. A gum­my air of warm grain per­vad­ed the stock. Slow, he turned a pair of worn sil­ver coins in his hand.

“What can I do ye?” said the bak­er, paw­ing a ker­chief to his brow. “Got some curd in from the good goat­mice down the lane, today, and a bit of red wine, too.”

The blue fel­low tongued a split lip, con­sid­er­ing. Behind, the door chimed. A woman in a bowler hat entered, brush­ing snow from her cape. She flicked an eye to the fel­low, con­sid­ered him briefly, began perus­ing the bread and wine at a dis­tance. 

“How much’re those?” said the man, point­ing, glanc­ing to the bak­er.

“A pen­ny half,” replied the bak­er.

“And those?”

“A ha’pen­ny.”

“Aye.” Scarred hands gripped the coins. “Can you do me a heel o’ sour and bit o’ the curd for a pen­ny?”

“Aye.”

As the bak­er bun­dled his sale in brown paper, the behat­ted woman set a bot­tle of wine and two loaves on the counter, wait­ed. The man in blue watched, mas­saged his hands. They quiv­ered only slight­ly.

“There,” said the bak­er, hand­ing over the bun­dle. A dot of sil­ver met his palm. “Methanks.” They nod­ded. The bell chimed. The man in blue stepped into the snow and ear­ly morn­ing dim.

Flakes and chim­neysmoke drift­ed down the white and nar­row lane. Few folk tra­versed the troughs worn in deep snow. As he shuf­fled, the man unwrapped his pack­age, tore off half the mea­ger hunk of bread, and a bit of curd. He chewed, eyes half shut against the wind, clutched his col­lar closed. 

“Hey!”

He turned. Behind him, under a street­lamp, a white glove flashed above a bowler hat, waiv­ing. He raised an eye­brow. The woman approached, grip­ping a mar­ket bag, scuf­fling snow. 

“Par­don, good Mas­ter.” She extend­ed a hand. The man took it, uncer­tain­ly. “Petre Port­gart, of Sil­ton. I could­n’t help but notice your coat.” 

The fel­low swal­lowed hasti­ly, shook. “Alfred Dole, Win­dour. I–”

“Are you army?”

“Uh, aye. I was.” Dole’s gaze flicked to the brass but­tons, some miss­ing, on his coat.

“I thought so. You’ve the look of a sol­dier. Wound­ed?

“Ah, no. Dis­charged. Did­n’t fit in.”

“A shame. No pen­sion, then?”

Dole grum­bled. “No.”

“A right shame. The Crown should sup­port the peo­ple.” Port­gart shuf­fled her feet in the snow. “The rea­son I ask, Mas­ter Dole, is that I won­dered if you’re look­ing for more work of a sol­dier­ing sort.”

“Maybe. Who with?”

“My employ­er, Tiber and Fel­lowes,” said Port­gart. “Is always in need of good folk like you.”

“The bank?”

“Quite. I’d like to offer you a job, on T&F’s behalf.”

“Doin’ whot?”

Port­gart hand­ed him a pam­phlet. It showed an inked image of armed and armored folk fer­ry­ing gold from a ruin in a hilly land. Above the image was inked a slo­gan in bold plate. “A land of plen­ty,” mouthed Dole, sound­ing out the block let­ters.

“Ven­tur­ing. A trade of great reward, for those who are good at it. Sol­diers, Mas­ter Dole, tend to be very good indeed.”

“Got to trav­el?”

“Indeed. To the rich East­ern fron­tier.”

“Good. Hate it ‘ere” said Dole.

“Sol­diers hired by Tiber and Fel­lowes are known to achieve stand­ing four with­in a year,” said Port­gart, rub­bing her gloved hands.

“Whot’s standin’ four?”

“A full-per­cent share of prof­its from a giv­en ven­ture.”

“How much’s that?”

“Usu­al­ly it’s in excess of five hun­dred pounds, for a raid, not includ­ing ben­e­fits.” **

“A good year’s salary.”

“That’s a week’s earn­ings.”

Dole’s eyes went wide. “Where do I sign on?”

Port­gart grinned, hand­ed him a card. “Take this and show it to the desk at the con­sor­tium. They’ll help you from there, includ­ing a coach.”

Dole took it, nod­ded, shook her hand again. “Methanks, Mas­ter Port­gart.”

“Thank me again when you’re stand­ing four.”

Dole grinned, began to turn away, card raised in a sort of wave. “Mas­ter Dole!” said the woman. “One more thing!”

Dole looked inquis­i­tive. Port­gart hand­ed him the mar­ket bag heavy with bread and wine. “Com­pli­ments of T&F.” She smiled. “The first of many ben­e­fits.”

Fat, hard snowflakes pat­tered on the plate glass. Frac­tals of gold leaf pat­terned the pane’s cor­ners like clutch­es of frost. Breath cloud­ed the pris­tine, chill crys­tal.

Grub­by fin­gers pressed to the win­dow­pane, fol­lowed by a snub nose. Stoat mar­veled at the dark­en­ing moun­tain view with­out. Sharp peaks and black-green val­leys striped with snow. 

“Stoat,” decried a high voice from her shoul­der. A mouse perched there, cling­ing to a broad white lock in her sable hair. “Get your mitts off the glass. You’re leav­ing marks the size of oranges.”

Stoat rolled her eyes, pulled away from the floor-length glass. “Is this what I get for giv­ing your lit­tle pork-arse a ride, eh?” † she said. The mouse har­rumphed, looked to the third in their par­ty, a rag­woman. “She’s a men­ace, Lilé.”

“Let a lass mar­vel, Nils,” said Lilé, near the hearth. She lay upon a chaise lounge, stretched her gan­g­ly, green silk-wrapped limbs. She fixed Stoat with amused, blood­shot eyes nes­tled in cloth.

“Quite a ben­e­fit, this place,” said Stoat. “I’ve rare seen such glass out­side of the Isles.” She looked about, took in the peaked pine ceil­ing, the vel­vet fur­nish­ings, the beds and their pressed sheets. “Nor such fin­ery. And so high up. How do you think they lift­ed it all up to the shal­lot?”

“Chalet,” cor­rect­ed Lilé. “Belviriners are quite used to build­ing in the moun­tains, mon amour.” ††

“Real­ly, Stoat,” said the mouse, wrig­gling his nose. “For a would-be sophis­ti­cate, your class falls quite short, out­side of Fir­lund.”

Stoat made a face and pat­ted the mouse. He cringed. She scold­ed him, mock seri­ous. “Now, now, Nils. I’ve got no want to be a snob. I just like snob­by things.”

Nils huffed pitchi­ly. “That might explain why you’re wear­ing bloody leathers in a Teljor resort.” 

By the fire, Lilé rolled her eyes. “Lads, let’s not squab­ble now,” she mum­bled. They ignored her.

“Mark of our trade, mate. Wear them with pride,” said Stoat.

“ ‘Mark of our trade,’ ” scoffed the mouse. “The mark of our trade is a remark­ably short life expectan­cy, Stoat.”

“And a good deal of ben­e­fits, if you get good at it,” said Stoat, ges­tur­ing about. 

“So, you’re say­ing we’re on a lux­u­ry hol­i­day because we got good?” A wicked glit­ter entered Nils’ red eyes. “Where­as Gar is dead because he did­n’t?” 

At this, Stoat’s face fell. By the hearth, Lilé flinched. She watched the two uncer­tain­ty. 

“Come off it, Nils. You know I would­n’t mean that,” said Stoat, soft­ly. Nils hunched on her shoul­der, qui­et, fur­ry face inscrutable. Breath flick­ered in his round body. His long whiskers twitched.

Even­tu­al­ly, he clapped a con­cil­ia­to­ry paw on her oth­er shoul­der. “Of course not. Nor would I.” He gave a sigh. “We’ve all known the risks.”

Stoat nod­ded, smiled thin­ly. “Aye.”

Lilé rose, crossed to the pair. She placed a wrapped hand on Stoat’s free shoul­der. “Come” she said. “Let’s for­get for a while.”

“Aye,” said Stoat. “Let’s just see what end of ben­e­fits we can find.”

Standing

Banks are in the busi­ness of get­ting peo­ple to do dan­ger­ous things. There’s a lot of gold in deep and dan­ger­ous places, and banks need cut­ters to delve and get it out. In pay­ment, banks promise a share of the gold to be retrieved. ‡ Such promis­es of wealth form the greedy back­bone of the ven­tur­ing pay scale. 

Cut­ters can only be tempt­ed by mea­gre slices of wealth for so long, how­ev­er. Giv­en time and expo­sure to gold, their tastes grow rich­er, their wants more exot­ic. Whether they desire del­i­ca­cies and lav­ish lodg­ings; supe­ri­or arms and armor; or sub­stances to dope a fray­ing mind, cut­ters oft-inevitably require a raise. Banks are more than pleased to com­ply. ‡‡

To sat­is­fy their greedy cut­ters, banks employ a lev­eled sys­tem of “stand­ing.” The high­er a cut­ter’s stand­ing with­in a ven­tur­ing firm, the greater their earned ben­e­fits. Stand­ing is increased only by suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing ven­tures for the bank.

Ben­e­fits, depend­ing on the offer­ing firm, may vary. Usu­al­ly, ear­ly stand­ing tiers include hous­ing and trans­porta­tion ben­e­fits. Oth­ers, some resup­ply and arma­ment bonus­es, espe­cial­ly with­in raids. The great­est ben­e­fits include fund­ed hol­i­days at bank-asso­ci­at­ed lux­u­ry loca­tions. Every stand­ing lev­el also car­ries access to greater cuts of the ven­tur­ing yield. 

As an exam­ple, the stand­ing and ben­e­fit pro­gres­sion of the most notable North­ern bank may be found below.

Tiber & Fellowes

While sys­tems of stand­ing and ben­e­fits vary between firms, Tiber and Fel­lowes’ is cer­tain­ly the indus­try mod­el.

T&F award new stand­ing lev­els as cut­ters com­plete ven­tures. They track this via a point sys­tem attached to the cut­ter’s ven­tur­ing license. Inte­ri­or pages, much like pass­ports, are devot­ed to stamps denot­ing com­plet­ed ven­tures and asso­ci­at­ed banks. Such records are also kept by the banks, for cross-check­ing pur­pos­es.

Point val­ues for com­plet­ed ven­ture are deter­mined on a bank’s assay of the ven­ture to be com­plet­ed. Small ruins and non-ancient jobs, such as debt col­lec­tion, are worth only a sin­gle point. More sub­stan­tial, riski­er ‚more valu­able tombs are worth two. Raids, where­in a major­i­ty of par­tic­i­pat­ing cut­ters will die, are worth 4. Banks will often tempt folk to par­tic­i­pate in raids with the prospect of imme­di­ate­ly becom­ing stand­ing two.

Stand­ing lev­els dif­fer­en­ti­ate between stan­dard and raid pay­outs. Raids, which are sel­dom com­plet­ed by a sin­gle team of cut­ters, pro­duce such pro­found wealth that small­er shares are grant­ed. These are still sub­stan­tial.

Share per­cent­ages appear low, at a glance. How­ev­er, these per­cent­ages account for the total val­ue of a cleared ven­ture site, not just portable loot. Fur­ni­ture, exot­ic build­ing mate­ri­als, stat­ues, and sim­i­lar are assessed post-raid for the site’s full val­ue, and it is this fig­ure that is used to deter­mine final share payouts—usually two weeks post-com­ple­tion.

Most ven­ture con­tracts, espe­cial­ly those involv­ing high-stand­ing cut­ters, will con­tain a clause defin­ing what portable loot may be abscond­ed with with­out penal­ty. “Allowed porta­bles” with­in this def­i­n­i­tion are usu­al­ly not count­ed against a cut­ter’s share.

• Stand­ing 0: Pre-approved loan avail­able up to 2 crowns at 25% APR. Stan­dard share: Dis­cre­tionary. Raid share: min. 0.2% .
• Stand­ing 1: (1 point) Ver­i­fied T&F cut­ter stamp. Pri­or­i­ty signup for ven­tures. Pre-approved for £100 loan at 20% APR. Stan­dard share: min. 3%. Raid share: min. 0.6% .
• Stand­ing 2: (4 points) Com­pli­men­ta­ry food and hous­ing pro­vid­ed between ven­tures, usu­al­ly at board­ing house or hos­tel. Pre-approved for £200 loan at 18% APR. Stan­dard share: min. 6%. Raid share: min. 0.8% .
• Stand­ing 3: (8 points) Trans­port by coach or train pro­vid­ed to and from ven­ture site (when avail­able.) Spon­sored access to local pur­vey­ors. Half-share death ben­e­fits paid to next of kin upon death in ser­vice. Pre-approved for £300 loan at 14% APR. Stan­dard share: Min 9%. Raid share: 1% .
• Stand­ing 4: (12 points) Com­pli­men­ta­ry stay and ser­vice in T&F-associated lux­u­ry loca­tions after every 3 points. Full-share death ben­e­fits paid to next of kin. Pre-approved for £400 loan at 12% APR. Stan­dard share: Min 9%. Raid share: 2%.
• Stand­ing 5: (24 points) Com­pli­men­ta­ry invites and all-inclu­sive atten­dance at T&F balls and events. § Option­al pen­sion at 30+ points. Stan­dard share: Min 12%. Raid share: 3%.

Promis­es of even­tu­al, lav­ish reward are oft bandied by gos­sip­ing, hope­ful cut­ters and preda­to­ry, entic­ing recruiters: Tales of com­fort­able cut­ters, retired in the peace­ful coun­try. Sto­ries of tomb-raid­ing stars, now ascend­ed as rich and envi­able élites. Myths of wise cut­ters who some­how played the bank at their own deli­cious­ly entrap­ping game.

Rarely will a cut­ter bestowed with such suc­cess and wealth been seen, though. Cut­ters in ser­vice to the banks of the Coast, whether over years, months, or a sin­gle, fate­ful ven­ture, most often meet not fame, wealth, and com­fort; but debt, insan­i­ty, and a mis­er­able end.

A cut­ter is not a crea­ture dis­suad­ed by the specter of an awful end, though. Their very trade is based on the brav­ing of dan­ger in exchange for gold.

To a them, no dan­ger at all is too daunt­ing, if attached to a suf­fi­cient promise of wealth.

⁂