by Glen Cook
Babeltausque considered the hands, saw nothing to suggest that the man was anything but a publican. “Reach over here. Both hands.”
The wizard took hold. Startled, the barkeep tried to pull away. He could not. Babeltausque smiled an ugly little smile. “Tell me about Colonel Gales.”
The publican’s gaze darted, possibly looking for help that would not come.
Wolf surveyed the bar. He said, “Erik, take the front door. Don’t let anybody in. Purlef, you make sure we get no surprises from the back.”
Babeltausque said, “Excellent, Mr. Wolf. Should there be an actual rescue attempt, take one villain for questioning. Barkeep. You must know more about the disappearance of the Queen’s man Gales than you admitted to Mr. Wolf earlier. I want to hear the rest now.”
The publican kept shaking his head, never making clear what he was denying. But Babeltausque did reach a disappointed conclusion.
The man truly knew nothing useful and lacked interesting suspicions as well.
Babeltausque let go. “That first crown is for your trouble and discomfort.” He produced another. “The drinks will be on this. Top us all off. Mr. Wolf, I was wrong. This gentleman knows less than we do.”
“Shit!”
“Include me in that sentiment.”
“Still a dead end.”
“Perhaps.” Babeltausque turned back to the bartender, who had filled all the mugs and now stood there shaking. “You recall the night in question? The drunk put on a show.”
“He pissed himself.”
“He did. Were any of your current clientele in here that night?”
The bartender started to shrug, flexed the fingers of his right hand, thought better of playing dumb. “The one in the back, there, I don’t think I ever seen before tonight. He was drowned drunk when he got here. His whole crew was. They ordered up all them pitchers and was working them hard when, all of a sudden, like a flock of pigeons, they up and swooped out. I guess they couldn’t get him woke up to go.”
Babeltausque had a feeling. “That would have been when?”
“Maybe ten minutes before you showed.”
About the time they exited Castle Krief. Interesting. “I see. How many were there?”
The barkeep looked back at the sleeping man’s table. “I see six pitchers. Each one ordered one. So five of them left.”
“How about these two?”
“They was probably here that night. They’re here every night. I don’t know where they get the money.”
“Mr. Wolf, please investigate the gentleman back there. I’ll talk to these two. Erik, Purlef, please remain alert. I’m sure we’re being watched. Someone else would have tried to come buy a drink by now, otherwise.”
Babeltausque had just planted himself with the drunks when Wolf said, “Sorcerer, I need you here.”
Though irked, Babeltausque got up and went. “What?”
Wolf got a fist full of hair, tilted the drunk’s head back.
“I see.”
“Looks like death on a stick.”
“Let me ask a few more questions.”
Babeltausque returned to the publican. “Did you recognize any of the men who came in with that fellow?”
Headshake. “I’m pretty sure they was from out of town. Maybe from Sedlmayr, out that way, the way they rolled their Rs.”
“I see. Thank you. Fill me up, please. This is actually rather a pleasant brew. You add just a pinch of ground rail bark, yes? Mr. Wolf? Erik? Purlef? Do you need topped up? No? And I thought I would be the lightweight. Sir. Tell me. Did yon fellow’s friends do any drinking themselves?”
“Like they wanted to float their kidneys. Like they wanted to get every pitcher empty in record time.”
“Excellent. You have been most helpful. Another crown for your trouble.”
As he settled down with the drunks Babeltausque realized he was enjoying himself. He could not recall the last time life was just plain fun.
He collected himself, grasped the near hand of the man to his right. The drunk started as though shocked. His eyes opened. He sat up straight. He gulped air, took a long drink, began muttering a prayer. He had been present the night of the kidnapping. He remembered the show. He was unaware that anything had happened to the drunk after he left the Twisted Wrench, nor did he know that Gales was anything but what he had pretended.
He had to labor through a half minute of grueling thought before he could name the current monarch—and then fell short by one.
The second man was the brother-in-law of the first. His wife had forced him to take that night off. He knew nothing at all.
The sorcerer announced, “We won’t get anything more here. Lead the way home, Mr. Wolf. Purlef, you and Erik support our new friend, there. I’ll follow along with a few spells readied.”
He watched Wolf calculate and conclude that those instructions made sense for a passage through potentially hostile territory.
Babeltausque turned to the publican. “In a few minutes someone will come in asking about us.” He produced a bronze medal with turquoise inlays. It weighed a good six ounces. “Give this to the man who appears to be in charge. And this paper should go to a companion who seems dim and doesn’t say much. And this crown is me buying them drinks, however much they want.” He rubbed the crown over the medallion and paper. “Don’t touch these again except to hand them over.”
Wolf asked, “You’re going to pull their noses?”
“I am going to grab hold and yank till they squeal.” He told the publican, “Expect the men of the garrison to come back, soon. Mr. Wolf. After you.”
The bartender watched them go, unsure if he should be pleased or terrified.
It was not every day that a wizard tramped through an ordinary man’s life. When one did excitement usually followed.
Flustered, hastily dressed, Inger rushed into Babeltausque’s quarters. She found Dr. Wachtel examining Josiah Gales. The wizard and Nathan Wolf watched, murmuring. The old doctor had been dragged out of bed. He was sleepwalking through his task.
Wolf told her, “They left him at the place where they kidnapped him. That makes no sense to me but I’m sure they had a reason.”
Babeltausque said, “I hope this doesn’t sound self-important, Majesty, but I believe that reason was me. They thought I might trace Gales, even if they killed him, so they just gave him up. I expect they had no more use for him, anyway.”
“Could you have traced him?”
“I could have. I had his belongings to give me a scent.”
“Doctor, what’s his situation?”
“He’s dirty, dried out, and weak from lack of exercise. He wasn’t tortured or starved, though good nutrition was neglected. I see no reason why he shouldn’t recover completely, physically. Mentally, we’ll have to wait and see.”
“Could there be problems?”
“I don’t know. At the moment he is drunk and drugged. He tries to talk but makes no sense. He may be hallucinating.”
Inger stared at Gales. He was filthy but did not look bad otherwise. “Nathan, Babeltausque, thank you. You’ve made an excellent start. Come with me. Let’s talk about what comes next. Doctor, my apologies for your having been dragged out of bed.”
“It comes with the calling, dear.” He did not look up from cleansing a wrist abrasion.
Inger went to a small room no longer in use. She looked for eavesdroppers, checking the passageway behind one wall. “There must be more to this than you said.”
Babeltausque responded, “They knew we were coming. They knew who was coming. That should be instructive. They know what we’re going to do as soon as we decide to do it.”
“Nathan?”
“I’m impressed with the wizard now that he’s out of the shadow of your cousin. There’s a lot more to him than I imagined.”
Babeltausque puffed up a little. “Thank you, Mr. Wolf. Your Majesty, I left those people with messages of my own. I’m hoping they’re stupid. If you will indulge me, t
hen, I need to get back to work.”
“Doing?”
“Following up. This isn’t over because we recovered Colonel Gales. Unless you want those people free to go on about their mischief.”
“No! Get on with it. And I’ll pray that your luck continues.”
Chames Marks dipped a cup into the pail of beer. The girl followed suit. He said, “You’re too young for that, Haida.”
“I need it. The way that man looked at me! Wearing that sweet smile…”
“There might be a monster behind the merry eyes?”
“I really wanted to bring him here so Arnulf could work on him.”
They were in the back of a butcher shop. Arnulf Black was the proprietor. Haida was under the mistaken notion that Black disposed of people Chames did not like.
“I’ll see to it that you don’t run into him again.”
“I don’t think he was looking at me. I think he saw a fantasy girl.”
“Probably true. Get the chessboard. We’ll play while we wait for Brom.” Chames smiled. It was not hard to distract Haida if he engaged her intellect.
She played him tough. He could not shut his mind down.
The back door rattled suddenly, frantically. Chames rose. “Something’s gone wrong. Slide out the other way. Go to the shop. Wait there. No lights.”
Rattle again, accompanied by hoarse, worried whispers.
Marks opened the door. Three men tumbled in, one bleeding from wounds on his face and hands. “Shut that, Edam. All of you, take a deep breath. Calm down. Then somebody tell me where Madden is and what went wrong.”
Edam locked the door. “It went just like you said till we went inside the Wrench. We never got a chance to ask questions. The barkeep saw us and said, ‘You would be the ones.’ He started filling mugs. ‘On the gents that just left,’ he says.”
“I see. Well. I didn’t expect them to taunt me back. Go on. Then what?”
“So we drinks our beers. Minter says how Hartaway was gonna be browned off on account of he was following them others and gonna miss out. So then the barkeep asks do we want to top up, the guy from the castle paid for plenty. We says, yes sir, thank you very much, sir, since it’s on somebody else. The barkeep tops us up, then he hands Madden this big-ass bronze medal with some kind of blue stones set in it. Then he gives Minter a folded piece of paper. Madden goes, ‘What’s all this, then?’ The bartender goes, ‘I don’t know. The guy running that bunch said give it to the guy running your bunch. He said give the note to the guy that looked the stupidest.’”
“And?”
“So Madden is looking at that medal and we’re looking over each other’s shoulders. The barkeep is on the other side of the bar, trying to see, too. Madden touches one of them blue stones. And, Bang! The medallion explodes.”
“It tore him all up,” said the man who was bleeding. “Took both of his eyes, blew off the hand he was holding it in, and ripped out the side of his throat. He had it in his left hand, like this, maybe a foot from his face. I had to pick pieces of his fingers off’n me.”
Edam said, “The blast got the barkeep, too. His face was messed up.”
“I get the picture.” Better than did they. The barkeep was not part of the plot. “You still have that note, Minter?”
“I sure do, boss. I never even looked at it.”
Where would be the point? The man could not read. “Lucky you.”
Minter went pale behind his shrapnel wounds. “You think…?”
“Unless that note is just a bit of mockery we may have only minutes to live. Give it here. And hope some ‘Neener neener!’ is all it is.” Marks took the note. “All right. Everybody out. Find Hartaway, then get out of town. Right now if they didn’t shut the gates tonight.”
The gates did get left open more often than not, depending on how far the guards’ pay was in arrears.
“What about my face and hands?” Minter asked.
“The wounds aren’t dangerous. Clean them up once you’re twenty miles out of town.”
“Oh. Yeah. Shit. Let’s get the flock out of here, troops.”
Marks shut the door behind the three. It was a shame about Madden. But he could do nothing about that, now.
Madden being the victim might actually have been good luck. The others were good men, but stupid. Madden would have carried nothing to connect him with anyone else.
He pushed the folded paper over beside the chess set, stared at it. He felt no obvious danger but had little feel for sorcery. He used his belt knife to prod the paper.
Nothing happened.
He sniffed.
Nothing.
He used two butcher knives to unfold the sheet. How long did he have? A while, probably. With Gales in hand those men would report to the Queen first. After that they would try to track the tracer spell sure to be attached to the note.
Clever, evil bastards. Kill the only man smart enough to be in charge and the stupid ones would run straight to their control carrying a tracker spell.
Never touching the paper with his fingers, Chames spread the note. Which was blank. Presumably the tracer was inscribed in invisible ink.
He held the sheet with one knife and smoothed it out with the back of the other. The note convulsed suddenly and said, “Boo!”
Time to go.
“I doubt that we’ll catch anyone,” said Babeltausque, watching soldiers load the dead man into a cart. Poor old Wachtel would have to get out of bed again.
“We need to try,” Wolf replied.
“Of course we do. For our own sakes as well as the Queen’s. If we fail her we fail ourselves.”
Wolf grunted, unhappy with that truth.
Rumor had an angry Kristen ready to come out of hiding, hell-bent on revenge for the murders of her best-loved companions.
The sorcerer told the soldiers managing the corpse, “Take him to my workroom after Wachtel says he’s really dead. I’ll see what he can tell me.”
The soldiers looked uncomfortable.
Let them think he could conjure the shades of the dead. Let that notion gain currency. There were spies in Castle Krief. Fear might make them reveal themselves.
Wolf asked, “Can you still detect that charm?”
“I can. It’s down that way, probably less than three blocks.”
“Think they figured out what it is?”
“I hope so.”
Wolf said, “You puzzle me, man. Maybe even scare me a little.”
Babeltausque whispered, “I’m starting to scare myself.”
Wolf laughed but only from nerves.
Babeltausque said, “Let’s go find our operative.”
Five minutes later he, Wolf, and a half-dozen Itaskian soldiers arrived outside a butcher shop. Babeltausque said, “There’s no one in there now but this is where the tracer ended up.”
“Should we go in?” the Itaskian noncom asked.
“Sure. Front and back, with someone watching the windows. Be careful. Something clever may be going on.”
The sorcerer was confident that he would not find anything useful. The butcher himself would, surely, be clueless. Still, the effort had to be made. There was no excuse for not seeing if the villains had not left some trivial clue that might lead to their downfall.
Babeltausque asked Wolf, “What do you know about the night the treasury monies vanished?”
“Nothing new. The movements of the principals are common knowledge, subject to hearsay distortion.”
Babeltausque grumbled, “Common knowledge. They were supposed to hide the treasure in a preplanned place but didn’t because events got in the way. Then they died in the riots.”
“All apparently true. Prataxis and Mundwiller showed up for their own funerals.”
“Nathan. A joke. How unlike you. Tell me, do you have any sense that we’re being watched?”
“Somebody must be keeping track. I would be.”
“So would I.” Babeltausque wished he owned the skills needed to fix the villa
ins.
The senior noncom called, “We’re in, sirs. The place is empty except for one unhappy pig.”
Babeltausque muttered, “We’re all comics tonight.” He went to meet the pig. “Stinks in here.”
Wolf said, “Rotten meat and blood. Even the cleanest butcher shop smells. And this one isn’t the cleanest. Hello, pig. Wasn’t your lucky day, was it?”
The noncom called, “Somebody was here in back not so long ago.”
Babeltausque joined him. “Everyone freeze. I may be able to… Well!” His ugly face split in a huge grin. The noncom was pointing. “I should be able to guess the movements of anyone who was here during the last two hours.”
He shut his eyes and tried to slip into the state that would let him read the memories of the air. He could not push past the excitement caused by the presence of that partial pail of beer.
He hoped to see that girl again. She was a tad ripe, but beggars can’t be… He had not indulged in a long time.
Oh, the potential he had seen in those big, beautiful eyes!
Oh, the wonder—after she gave up the villains for whom she had bought the beer!
Sigh. “Mr. Wolf, we need to leave this place. We’ll touch it no more than we have already. We’ll go back and concentrate on the missing treasury.” Babeltausque winked when only Wolf could see.
Nathan Wolf showed him a raised eyebrow but said nothing.
The sorcerer got heads together with the noncom managing the soldiers. He wished he could throw an arm across the man’s shoulders in comradely fashion. He did not, not because the man would be repelled but because he was too tall. Babeltausque murmured instructions behind his hand so a clever spy could not read his lips.
The noncom nodded, indicated two men, took off.
Wolf asked, “What was that?”
“Royal charity.” He scanned the surrounding night but could not find the watcher.
Chames Marks eased back from the dormer vent in the attic over the apothecary shop. That man knew he was being watched. Best not tempt fate. He had shown unexpected abilities already, as a thinker and a magic user.
The sorcerer had not been distracted by the return of Colonel Gales and he had left the butcher shop looking like he had gotten a concrete lead.
Marks could not imagine what had gone wrong. He had done this his whole adult life. He did not make mistakes. That was why he was still alive. Minter had brought the tracker spell but he had been ready for that.
