Silco sat quietly in his private room.
He had naturally left a great deal of wealth behind in Zaun, and it was that money that allowed him to enjoy the rest of his life in prison in relative comfort.
What was interesting was that no matter where he withdrew money from, it would all get cleaned out again within half a day at most.
Silco did not even need to think to know who was giving those orders behind the scenes.
That was part of the deal too, of course. The kind of thing neither side would ever say out loud, but both understood perfectly well.
It had to be Caleb.
As he unfolded today's newspaper, Silco raised a brow.
Then he suddenly burst into loud laughter.
...
"Achoo!" Caleb sneezed hard.
"Did I catch a cold?" He frowned in annoyance.
That did not make sense. He had been bundled up tight inside his sleeping bag last night.
There were no cigarettes, so he made do with the last dying warmth of the campfire. There was no tea either, so hot water would have to do.
Caleb lifted his cup and opened the thing Katarina had brought him the night before.
It was the newspaper.
She looked like an ice queen, but she was actually pretty thoughtful.
Satisfied, Caleb blew across the rim of the cup and kept reading.
"Pff—"
The spray of water that shot out of his mouth landed right on the last glowing bits of the fire, putting them out with a sharp hiss.
"What?" Kai'Sa leaned in curiously and looked at the giant headline on the front page.
"Piltover tycoon's estate wrecked, culprit leaves signature and remains at large."
"Heh... pfft..." Caleb clamped a hand over his leaking mouth and hurriedly turned aside to spit out the water.
With that giant grinning monkey graffiti left at the scene, he could guess exactly who had done it without even thinking.
"You're so wasteful..."
Kai'Sa's small face scrunched up into a frown.
Ever since returning from the Void, she had become especially sensitive about wasting resources.
Caleb did vaguely remember the estate that had been hit. That family had done plenty of rotten things, all while relying on their money to stay untouchable.
Unlike the Ferros family, who knew how to keep their real strength hidden and quietly stay rich, that bunch really seemed to think being born into money made them better than everyone else.
The Council could not really touch them either, since everything they did stayed just inside the lines of the law, or at least slipped neatly through the gaps.
Most likely, this was now just one more step on the road of cooperation between Piltover and Zaun.
And as for where the family fortune had gone, there was no need to guess.
Those people would still survive on the humanitarian aid provided through the Council's government, but if they wanted to keep strutting around like they were untouchable, that was going to be a lot harder now.
From the very beginning, Caleb had never intended to force Piltover and Zaun into equality by playing the saint.
The simplest way to make Piltover take Zaun seriously was to make Zaun's destructive potential impossible to ignore.
By all rights, even if Caleb was walking around with a Hextech Gemstone of unknown origin, the people of the upper city still would have looked down on Zaun.
After all, the bridge uprising had already set a precedent, and Vander had abandoned resistance because he did not want to see more people die.
Caleb, meanwhile, had forced the upper city to look down into the undercity by convincing the Council.
He subdued Mundo, took down Urgot twice, brought Zac to his side, and with Heimerdinger's help, gave Zaun a new lease on life.
There were even people in Piltover who claimed they had seen Janna, that ancient spirit who had watched over the twin cities since ages past, appear before Caleb in person.
By that point, the Pilties could no longer get away with spitting out slurs like "gutter trash."
When the Black Mist came, the upper city performed far worse than Zaun, by a wide margin.
And Zaun did not need to condemn every person in Piltover as guilty, or demand that Piltover repay everything it had stolen all at once.
There was still plenty of time. Piltover would pay it back little by little.
At that point, the exploiters and the exploited had finally been forced to sit at the same table. And now, with Zaun producing talent after talent, it was Piltover that had begun to fall behind.
Once he had accomplished that much, there was no reason to keep overcorrecting.
From here on out, most of the work could be left to Viktor and the others.
Of course, Caleb still planned to head back every now and then and enjoy a little vacation.
Coming back to himself, Caleb kept flipping through the paper.
The rest of it was mostly the usual stuff, things like "Seraphine concert earns rave reviews" and "Zaun's Firelights reform proves a huge success."
The only thing truly worth paying attention to was Singed.
As the top mind in chemtech between the twin cities, Caleb still could not get a solid read on him.
So before leaving, he had specifically told Ekko that if Singed tried anything strange, there was no need to be polite, just hit him hard and deal with it.
That job was perfect for Ekko, of all people.
Caleb also had no idea whether Warwick had told Vi the truth about who he really was yet.
He casually tossed the newspaper aside. The thin sheets drifted gently down on the wind.
Out here in a place like this, there was no point pretending to care about littering.
The paper fibers and the ink would break down soon enough anyway.
"So, you're done reading?"
Katarina sat down across from Caleb with open impatience, a dagger spinning through her fingers.
"What information are you going to tell me?"
"I think you mean, what information are you going to trade me for."
Caleb corrected her patiently.
If she thought one newspaper was enough to buy real intelligence, she was dreaming.
"With the resources of House Du Couteau, anything we can get, I'll tell you."
Katarina gritted her teeth as she said it.
Her younger sister took more after their mother, the sort who was clearly meant to become a politician someday.
Katarina was more like her father, someone born to command bloodshed.
If paying this price brought her one step closer to becoming the Sinister Blade she dreamed of being, then it was worth it.
"Tell Swain to keep an eye on the lands to the south. And another thing, a king is about to awaken."
After hearing Caleb's so-called intelligence, Katarina gave him a look of pure contempt.
"That's your intelligence?"
She was obviously dissatisfied.
Those two lines sounded like the kind of thing people said when they were making things up on the spot. The empire only had four directions to begin with.
And a king was about to awaken?
"Jarvan the First, maybe? His crown's still hanging off Sion's face like a piece of scrap metal."
Katarina recited a well-known Noxian saying, supposedly one from General Darius himself.
"Kings make you kneel with inherited power. Noxus makes you stand again."
"Go back and tell Swain. He'll understand."
Caleb had no intention of explaining any further.
Katarina was simply not on that level.
After all, even Ambessa had dealt with him only as an equal. Caleb had no intention of giving Katarina special treatment just because she was pretty.
"Are you done talking? Then let's move!"
Sivir had slept terribly the night before, barely managing a moment of real rest.
She was nothing like Caleb, who could sleep through anything, or Kai'Sa and Yuumi, who stayed close to him without the slightest concern.
In this group, almost everyone could pose a lethal threat to her.
Thankfully, the night had passed without incident.
She still had no idea how Caleb had earned Azir's trust to the point that he and Kai'Sa had been sent with her to track down that arcane entity.
Katarina was not headed the same way as they were. After less than twenty minutes of walking, her figure had already vanished from the warped horizon.
"So how much longer until we find that..."
Caleb got halfway through the question and stalled out.
"Skaarash," Sivir supplied, and for once, that gave her a little confidence.
"But that creature's hide is painted with sacred markings for protection, and its horns are hung with totems and charms."
"They're violent and hard to tame, but in Shurima, owning a skaarash is a sign of prosperity."
Listening to Sivir go on and on, Caleb had to admit she really did have a knack for being a guide.
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