Ch 49 Meet my friends Part 1

"W-What are you doing? Don't come near me!" Darrio warned Jon while swiftly retrieving his hand from beside the vibrating knife stuck in the table, "You won't be able to get away with this. I am telling you." he said with a fierce expression, "Do you even know who I am?" as Jon came around the table but the tremor in the banker's voice gave him away, "Just one shout from me will have guards swarming this place and you will be done for—"

"Do it, then," Jon interrupted Darrio with a shrug while leisurely taking a seat beside the knife on the table right in front of the banker.

"W-What?" Darrio creaked out incredulously, thinking that he had heard wrong, but the Northerner sitting in his face didin't react, as if he didn't care about his threat to call the guards at all, "You!— I am not joking. I will do it."

"I know."

"G-Guards," Darrio tried but only managed an embarrassing high-pitch squeak that didn't reach very far, "GUARDS!!" he tried once again with a proper shout but the madman didn't even flinch and maintained his poker face which made his stomach fall to the ground.

"Everyone knows that Bravoos is a place where information is almost as valuable as gold." Jon said in a calm conversational tone after the banker had finished with his futile shouts, "So of course, they are going to make sure that their information stays only theirs... and to that effect when this Bank was made they made sure that rooms were as sound proof as they could them." Darrio had a shocked expression on his face as if thinking how the hell does this outsider know about this when even most of the people working here didn't, "And sadly for you the only guard who could have heard you is right now sitting on a privy and he probably won't be coming out any time soon... So basically you're stuck with me," Jon finished with a smile.

The Iron Bank was supposed to be one of the most secure places in the world. They have guards around every single corridor and room in the establishment. And not to mention the strict surveillance they have at the gates and how they never let anyone, no matter who they are, carry any sort of weapon into the premises not even a little fork.

But somehow this man from Westeros managed to find a loophole and not only feed his guard a laxative but also find a way to smuggle a bag of knife inside.

"W-What do you want from me?" Darrio finally asked with a gulp, his false bravado having completely left him, "If all you want from me is for me to lower your taxes then there was no need to go so far, I would have— Argh! No! Don't kill me!" Dario flinched and ducked in terror when he saw Jon suddenly jerk the knife out of the table surface.

"Ah! You're mistaken," Jon said with an amused smile at the man almost pissing his pants, "I was just a bit hungry and wanted to have an apple. I can... can't I?" he asked while taking one from the fruit basket nearby.

"O-Of course," Darrio replied hesitatingly while thinking, 'As if I am in any position to deny you'.

Jon nodded his head and rubbed the red apple on his shirt before he started slowly and skilfully peeling it. Darrio peeked at the man calmly skimming the apple and slowly lowered his guarded hands as he was sure that the man didn't intend to kill him... At least for the moment.

"W-What do you do you want from me?" he tried once again after a minute when he saw that the man was completely focused on the apple and was ignoring him, "Because if it's money then you didn't have to—"

"Oh! No, No, No!" Jon shook his head with a smile, "I am not here for the pennies you have in your account. What do you have like 150-something thousand in there..." Darrio involuntarily nodded his head with his eyes completely wide at the eerily accurate amount, "Yeah I wouldn't do this much work for so little..."

Darrio would have normally felt offended at the way the man was belittling his life savings but he wasn't in any position at the moment so he kept all that out of his expression, "Then what—"

"What I want from you is... You!" Jon said while pointing towards the banker with a smile.

"M-Me!" Darrio squeaked involuntarily while pointing at himself with a dumbfounded look on his face.

Jon nodded with an earnest expression on his face which immediately sent the banker's mind down the wrong path as he looked at the dashing young man with gray eyes telling him that he wanted him. Fortunately (or maybe, Unfortunately) Jon explained himself before he could misunderstand.

"Yes, I want you," Jon nodded while putting a slice of apple in his mouth, "To be exact, I want you to be my helper, my spy, my subordinate, my... pawn. I want you to obey every single order of mine, whenever I ask you to do something, you will set everything aside to do it... you'll work for me, you'll steal for me, you'll kill for me—Basically, you'll... live for me."

"Are you kidding me? You—" Darrio's indignant retort almost instantly died in his throat as he looked at Jon's raised eyebrow and remembered the situation that he was in, "I-I mean Yes! I will be your puppet. I will do whatever you want me to do, Sir," his tone quickly changed to a fawning one but... 'Like hell, I will obey you, You Barbarian! The moment you step out of this room, I'll call the guards and have them capture you for me. I'll drag you through the streets. I'll skin, I'll flay, I will torture you until you're begging me for death, You Bastard!!!' he screamed internally but the only thing visible on his face was an awkward smile.

"You know... I can almost hear the thought jumping inside your head," Jon said with an amused smile on his face, "But don't worry I am a very persuasive guy. I assure you that by the time I leave this room not only will you agree to it... you'll almost beg me to be my puppet," he said those absurd words with such eerily calm eyes that it immediately sent a shiver down Darrio's spine.

"W-What are you going to do?" Darrio asked in an alarmed tone as his mind started conjuring all kinds of tortures this madman could inflict on him to "persuade" him.

"Oh, No! Don't make that face. I am not going to do anything bad to you," Jon assured with a nonchalant wave of his hand, "I am just going to tell you some of my secrets and explain to you what I am and why it would be in your best interest to follow me..."

"What... you are?" Darrio parroted with a puzzled expression, wondering what he was talking about.

"Exactly!" Jon nodded his head as if agreeing with him, "Hmm...Now, where to start... Ah! That would be a good place," he mumbled to himself before looking at the banker, "Tell me, What do you think about magic or sorcery... Do you think it exists?"

"Magic?" he mouthed with a weird expression on his face.

Jon asked because he knew that sorcery was a little-known force in this world. How much you believed in it was heavily dependent on where you were. In Westeros, particularly the Citadel, most people doubt its very existence. It has been so long since magic was truly potent that most understanding of it only lives on in superstition and rituals of questionable validity.

Only in a few places like Quarth does magic still remain a potent force, particularly in House of the Undying where the enigmatic warlocks were said to possess great powers. Not to mention the even more mysterious blood mages, spell singers, necromancers and many more that are said to gather and practice their arts in the lands by the Jade Sea and Asshai by the Shadow.

"Yes, Magic!" Jon nodded while explaining, "You know, like in those stories about witches and priestesses who can control flames or are said to be able to sacrifice blood and life to summon shadowy creatures to act as their assassins. Not to mention the ones said to possess the ability to divine the future by looking into flames or those who give you a prophecy about if you're going to have golden children just by taking a little bit of your blood... Have you heard about them? Do you think they are real?"

"Umm...No." Darrio answered awkwardly, trying to guess where this madman was going with this. 'Was he perhaps trying to tell him that he was a witch,' he scoffed in his heart.

"No? Hmm... That makes this a bit difficult," Jon said with a troubled face before his eyes suddenly lit up, "Oh! I know! What about something close by like those from the House of Black and White? You must surely believe in them, right? After all, the mightiest assassins in the world, Faceless Man, are trained there. And they obviously have magical powers given to them by their Many-Faced God, which enables them to take on any face that they wish to, whether it be an old smallfolk man, a woman or even a lord."

"Yes... I-I mean Maybe,"

Of course, Darrio knew about them, there's no one living in Bravoos who wouldn't know about them, but the number of people who actually went in and knew what happened inside would be very few. He was also one of those who only knew what he did about them from the stories he had been told as a child and the only thing that stayed in his mind was the repeated warning from adults about never going anywhere near that place unless you want to give up your life.

Even the Iron Bank had a policy of staying out of the temple's way, and it was one of the few places in Bavoos where the Bank had no control. Even though the temple was near them, the bank was very rarely known to use their services as it was well known how costly they were and that it was almost always way cheaper to just hire normal assassins and if it was someone well protected and in a prominent position... then it was still better for them to fund their opposition.

"Well... just like you guys have your mysterious assassins we have legends of our own in the North. Legends like the Children of the Forest, Giants, Mammoths, Direwolves, Ice Spiders, Ice Eagles, and much more. And... I am also someone from those Legends," Jon finished with a straight face.

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