What mattered most in business?
Talent, of course. Talent in management, talent in technology and production. What the players had done to those pulling the strings behind the scenes was cut the ground out from under them, tearing away their foundations.
Under the players' onslaught, those malicious, so-called big shots of Ankandela had almost no means of fighting back.
When they instinctively tried to do something, they discovered there was nothing they could do.
Use underworld methods? Ankandela's slums had been razed. The Beggars' Guild, which had once done their dirty work, along with all the other gangs of thugs and desperate criminals, had either been killed or captured and sent to Bich Town, where they would mine sulfur until they died.
The occasional lucky few who had escaped the encirclement in the chaos had been scared witless by the players' ruthless slaughter. They had long since fled Ankandela by whatever means they could find.
Use legitimate channels?
That was impossible too.
They had once been able to throw their weight around in Ankandela because they were nobles, or fronts maintained by nobles. Now that the nobles and esteemed assemblymen had been kicked out, they had lost their former influence as well.
So much so that even when they wanted to make peace, they could find no one to carry the message... The only person who could get in touch with Little Knife was Marlow, but having only just defected, how could he dare speak up for them now?
Even though the people suffering heavy losses included members of his own family, and even his father, Marlow spent all day hiding in the barracks, playing dead. Nothing could persuade him to leave.
That left the men who had originally wanted to threaten Little Knife in a hopeless bind. Now they