Makells, they were wiped out in the Eight Years’ War. Anyway, he tried to impress these sons of dukes by throwing money around. Lavish parties, gambling, renting out entire brothels. It didn’t help that his own father died while he was still young. Of course, our family was soon in poverty. My father took his own life. So at the age of nineteen, I took control of a house on the brink of ruin. I had a good head for business, but I saw it as beneath me. Like many who have no reason for pride, that very lack of reason for it made me the prouder.
“But certain realities have a way of making themselves felt, and debt is one of them. Not surprisingly, one of my father’s debtors had a way that I could make ‘easy money.’ I started working for the Sa’kagé. The man who recruited me was the Trematir. If he’d been better at his job, he would have only gotten me deeper and deeper in the Sa’kagé’s debt, but I soon found out that I understood men and money and the ways they work together better than he did. Strangely enough, I had fewer qualms.
“I put my money into whatever made money. Specialty brothels to cater to any appetite, no matter how depraved. I started gambling dens and brought in experts from around the world to help me better separate my patrons from their money. I funded spice expeditions and bribed guards not to investigate the cargo. When one of my businesses was threatened, I had bashers take care of the problem. The first time they went too far and accidentally killed a man, I was shocked, but he wasn’t someone I liked, and it was for my family, and I didn’t have to see it, so that made it palatable. When I clashed with the Trematir, it was an easy decision to hire Durzo. I was naive enough that I didn’t realize he went to the Shinga immediately to get permission first. They gave it to him, and I became the Sa’kagé Master of Coin.”
Kylar was hearing every word, but he couldn’t believe it. This couldn’t be the Count Drake he had grown up with. Rimbold Drake had been on the Nine?
“I traveled a lot, setting up businesses in other countries with fairly good success, and it was then I had my horrible revelation. Of course, I didn’t see the horror in it at the time. I could only see my own brilliance. In four years, I had paid off my family’s debts, but now, I saw a way to make real money. I sold the Sa’kagé on the idea. It took us ten years, but we got our people in place and we legalized slavery. It was introduced in a limited form, of course. For convicts and the utterly destitute. People who couldn’t care for themselves, we said. Our brothels filled with slave girls whom we no longer had to pay to work. We started the Death Games—another of my bright ideas—and they became a sensation, an obsession. We built the arena, charged the admission, monopolized the food and wine sold, ran the gambling, sometimes stacked the odds. We made money faster than we’d ever imagined possible. I hired Durzo so often that we became friends. Even he wouldn’t take all the jobs I offered. He always had his own code. He’d take jobs on the people who were trying take my business for themselves, but if I wanted someone dead who was just trying to stop me, I had to hire Anders Gurka or Scarred Wrable or Jonus Severing or Hu Gibbet.
“You have to understand with all this, I never considered myself a bad person. I didn’t like the Death Games. I never watched, never went in the holds of the slave galleys where men lived and died chained to their oars, never visited the baby farms that sometimes became child brothels, never visited the scenes of Blint’s work. I just said words, and money poured in like rain. The funny thing was, I wasn’t even ambitious. I was richer than anyone in the kingdom with the exception of some upper nobility, the Shinga, and the king, and I was comfortable with that. I just couldn’t stand incompetence. Otherwise, I’m sure the Shinga would have killed me. But she didn’t have to, because I wasn’t a threat, and Durzo told her that.” The count shook his head. “I’m rambling, sorry, but I don’t