“No,” Semiramis said, at the same time Midas shook his head.

“That’s a lot of bad blood,” I said. “It closes doors for the future.”

“I’d rather close doors than kill someone without putting him on trial.”

I nodded.

The suggestion had been off-the-wall, but it seemed to have shifted the tenor of the conversation to be less combative. There was a pensive, tense pause.

I pulled off my mask and pulled my hood back away from my head. “Give us the Old Man, let us talk to him, let us test him and try to break the connections or force him to give them up. If the concern is that we’ll keep him and use him, you can send us a trusted representative to see what our setup is. How villains are being disappeared, imprisoned, whatever we end up doing. But we loop you in, you come away with a lot of information and a bit of clout, because from that point on, anyone here that wants to deal with us is pushed to act through you.”

“I’d agree to that,” Semiramis said. Because she wanted power and influence, she wanted control—it had motivated her hiring of Big Picture.

Even Prancer was nodding. He had his own motivations, wanting a footprint. Influence in any form would translate to people joining his corner world or supporting it.

Little Midas was the sticking point.

“I don’t like it,” Little Midas said.

“You don’t like anything,” Tattletale told him. “Except the easy, immediate solution.”

“I’m a greedy man, Undersider. When I want something I want it now.”

He touched the air and turned that air into something solid, a wispy statue that looked like it was made of a thousand hair-thin gold wires. The shape was of a woman’s face, upper chest, and breast. He gripped it by the neck and chin, hard, as it continued to form, then made it dissipate with a wave of the hand a moment later.

I was fifty percent sure he’d screwed up a part of his model at the shoulder, made it too triangular.

“Can you ‘not like it’ in a way that sees you nodding, accepting it, and us being more willing to work with you on something else later?” Prancer asked. “Any answer besides ‘yes’ is going to cost, probably start a fight.”

I saw Midas pause, stuck on the fence. I saw Tattletale open her mouth, and I elbowed her.

“Finders keepers,” I said. “Isn’t that a rule among the greedy? I spotted him, I found him. He’s mine.”

Midas made a sound that might have been a chuckle, muffled by his mask. He nodded, the molded beard at the faceplate of his helmet clinking against his golden breastplate.

“Bring him,” Semiramis said.

At the same time, Tattletale gestured to Snuff.

The Old Man was walked our way, while Little Midas’s people approached him, their words hushed and angry, while Little Midas was calm.

“You’ll cooperate?” I asked the Old Man.