“Why do you call me back to this realm of mortality?” he asked. His voice boomed and echoed from the walls of the chamber.
“Oh, stop the histrionics,” Lilly said. “You’re not impressing anyone. We need to ask you a couple of questions, and then you can go back to whatever you were doing.”
Maxwell looked out of sorts at this.
“Be that way,” he said, in a more normal, yet hollow sounding, voice. “What do you want?”
“Why did Sarge pay you a visit?” I asked.
Maxwell noticed me for the first time. He looked me up and down and turned away.
“I don’t have to answer him,” he said to Lilly. “He’s not the one who summoned me. I don’t even think he’s a necromancer.”
“He’s not,” Lilly said. “But you do have to answer me. Now, we can do this the hard way, or the easy one. If you don’t answer his questions, I’ll have to ask them again. If you don’t answer me, you know what happens. Wouldn’t it be easier and quicker to cooperate?”
He looked a little deflated at that and turned back to me.
“Fine,” he said. “Ask away. What was it again?”
I repeated the question and Maxwell considered.
“Huh,” he said, after a moment. “Is that who that was? I had no idea. Just some oaf barging in on me. Gave me quite a start I have to say.”
“You didn’t know him?”
“Never seen him before. And I didn’t pay much attention to him when I did see him. I was feeling funny. Think it was something I ate. Next thing I know, I’m waking up and walking around without my body.”
“Wait,” Lilly said, “so Sarge didn’t scare you bad enough that you died from it?”
“Hell no! What was he going to do to me? I’m an old man! Or I was, I mean. I’ve been around long enough to know when I’m in danger, and that man wasn’t any danger to me.”
Lilly and I looked across the circle at each other. Sarge wasn’t responsible. That was good news to us, but given his mood, I didn’t know that Sarge would believe it. We needed more.
“Does the name Cladius Moore mean anything to you?” I asked.
Maxwell started wheezing and coughing. It took me a moment to realize that he was laughing. Considering that he was dead, and had no need to breathe, it must have been a habit left over from when he was living.
“That jackass!” he finally said. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. Don’t tell me he’s involved!”
“That’s who sent Sarge after you,” I said. “Any idea why?”
“Sure. He’s an ass,” Maxwell replied with glee. “Couldn’t stand to lose, that one. That’s why it was such fun to beat him.”
“At what?” Lilly asked.
“Everything! Cladius was a competitor of mine, and I use that term loosely. I beat him at business, I beat him at life, and I beat him at love. Whatever he had, it was because I decided I didn’t want it.”
He chortled some more, and I glimpsed the unpleasant man Maxwell must have been in life.
“This was revenge, plain and simple,” I said to Lilly. “Only Maxwell here cheated him, again, by starting to die before Sarge ever came through his door.”
“Hey,” Maxwell protested. “I didn’t cheat anyone out of anything! Not so that you could prove it anyway!”
He started laughing again, which led to another coughing and wheezing fit.
“When’s the last time you saw Cladius?” Lilly asked him.
“Years ago. The day of my wedding. I made sure he was there. You can bet your bottom ruble on that.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You married the woman that he loved.”
“I surely did,” he crowed. “She was a looker too! Not good for much else, but for a while, she was fun to look at. Then she got old.”
“You’re a real charmer Max,” Lilly said.
“Huh. Believe in love if you want, Miss Necromancer. I can’t tell you not to be a fool.”
We both had enough of Maxwell Frothington, so Lilly cast the spell to banish him.
“I hope you sent him somewhere unpleasant,” I said.
“I wish I could have. But it doesn’t work that way. I can call them up and dismiss them, but judgment is left to someone else.”
We went back to the watchhouse to tell Sarge what we discovered. A lot of the crowd was gone, now that the excitement was over and there was no sign of the prisoner being paraded in front of them. Several watchmen were on guard, loitering near the door, but they passed Lilly and I through with no questions. Even Private Smithfield barely glanced at us as we went back to Sarge’s cell.
We told him what we learned, and to our surprise, Sarge looked relieved.
“Thank the gods,” he said. “At least there’s that.”
“So we can get you out of here,” Lilly said. “I’m a sworn officer of the Watch, and the word of a shade being controlled by a necromancer is binding by law. You’re innocent.”
“Innocent of killing Maxwell, sure,” Sarge said. “I’ll still be kicked out of the Watch though. Those tokens weren’t exactly legal even when we used them. To honor one now is strictly against the rules. But at least I know that I didn’t kill an innocent man.”
“Why’d you use it then, Sarge?” I asked him. “If you knew that this was a possible outcome, why do it?”
“Because I owe Cladius Moore my life. Look, this all happened a long time ago, back when the Watch was still a pretty new idea and there weren’t that many of us. Someone came up with the idea of using these tokens. They were old coins that we would scratch an initial on with a knife. Nothing special, except for what they represented. We needed help out there. We were vastly outnumbered. So, if someone helped us, we’d give them one of these coins and they could ask us for a favor.
“It worked pretty well too. We’d have someone tell us where the guy who mugged some old lady was. We’d give them a token, arrest the mugger, and later on help the guy who helped us when he got picked up for being drunk or something.
“One day, I’m out walking my beat. I see a guy shaking down this woman, with her kid standing right there watching. I’m not going to let that happen, no way. I intervene, and me and the mugger start tangling. All of a sudden, I hear someone yell, ‘Look out!’ and I get run into.
“Turns out, there was another mugger, but I didn’t see him. When his partner and I started fighting, he moved in, with a knife in his hand. Cladius happened to be walking by and saw what was happening, and what was about to happen to me. He jumped in, took the knife for me. It wasn’t serious, but he got a good cut right across his belly.
“Now I was angry, and the two muggers went down fast. Even in the early days, the Watch taught you how to fight. I tended to Cladius, helped him stop the blood, got him on his feet, and gave him a token, even though he insisted that he didn’t want it. He said he did what anyone would have. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that most people would have walked on by.
“Anyway, he wasn’t hurt, so he went on his way. He even took the dagger that the mugger used to show his girlfriend. I remember that because it seemed so weird and kind of, I don’t know, sweet, at the same time. It was almost like he was proud of it. I guess maybe he had the right to be.
“That’s the last I ever saw him. I tried to keep tabs on him through the years. I know he hit some hard times, but he never called in that token. Not until two days ago anyway. He showed up here, and looked horrible. He said that life had kicked him around for years and used that Maxwell creep to do it. He had enough and wanted to see Maxwell squirm, just once.
“I knew it was wrong. Hell, I shouldn’t have done it. But my mind kept going back to that good man who saved some stupid young watchman, and I thought, what could it hurt? I never expected Maxwell to die. I thought I’d put a scare into him, make him wet himself and tell Cladius. Give him one good day, anyway, as a small payment for all the ones he gave me.”
That was the story, and it explained a lot. Lilly and I couldn’t figur
e out why Sarge was willing to risk his career for the sake of some stupid token, but now we knew. I couldn’t say that I blamed him either. He looked at it as minimal risk, to be able to pay back someone he thought he owed his whole life to. I could understand that.
Later on, Lilly and I sat and talked it over. We were both very down that Sarge would no longer be in the Watch. I hoped that maybe it would be overlooked, but Lilly assured me that the powers above would see him gone. Maxwell’s death, and Sarge’s involvement in it, had gone high profile enough that it was an embarrassment, and if word got out about the tokens, they’d have fake ones showing up all over the place. Sarge would go, for sure.
“I wish there was some way that we could make it never have happened,” I said. “Sarge is too good a man to end up like this.”
Lilly looked at me with astonishment for a minute, and started laughing.
“Duke! You’re a genius!”
She leaned over and kissed me hard, then stood up and grabbed my hand.
“Come on,” she said.
It seems like I get dragged around a lot by Lilly. I don’t even question it anymore, because every time it’s happened, it’s led to something good.
We ended up back at the watchhouse, but instead of going down to the necromancers’ area, she opened a door along the corridor behind the desk. There were a set of stairs leading up, and she took them at a run, still tugging me along.
At the top, she opened the door and I was in a totally new area of the watchhouse, with the look and feel of a library. There were shelves lining the halls, filled with books and oddities of all types. Doors opened between them to other rooms, containing more books, and tables with liquids bubbling away in glass containers.
“What is this place?” I asked Lilly.
“This is where the wizards work,” she said, looking around. “The other wizards I mean.”
I shifted uncomfortably. Like I’ve mentioned before, I don’t know the first thing about magic and it confounds me. I only recently started to accept that Lilly really, truly was capable of using the stuff. Before that, I tried to gloss over it in my mind. But here, there was evidence of it everywhere, close up and personal.
“Wait here,” Lilly said, and letting go of my hand, walked quickly down the hallway and disappeared through a door.
I loitered there, trying to look as if I belonged, while also trying not to stare at some of the odder things that were to be seen. Occasionally, a wizard would walk by and look at me curiously, but would continue on to wherever they were going. Apparently, I didn’t look like enough of a threat to worry them.
After a few minutes, Lilly popped out of the doorway she disappeared into and called to me. I followed her into a room where a tall, elderly man waited for us.
“Duke,” Lilly said, “this is Gulston, a colleague of mine.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” the wizard said. “Lilly has told me the dilemma that Sarge faces and I’d be delighted to help. Now, if you would…stand over there.”
I looked at Lilly, unsure of what was going on.
“Oh,” she said. “I should have mentioned. Gulston specializes in temporal magic.”
“Temporal magic?”
“Yes, temporal magic.”
I was beginning to feel a little dense.
“Lilly,” I said, “I feel like I ask you this an awful lot, but what exactly is going on?”
“You said it before, Duke. We have to make it like it never happened. So, you’re going to stop Cladius from saving Sarge.”
“Ummm…how?”
“Gulston is going to send you back in time, to right before Sarge stops that mugging. I’m not sure exactly how you’ll handle it, but I’m sure you’ll figure out something.”
“Wait, he’s going to send me back in time? Can’t that mess up all sorts of things?”
“No no,” Gulston cut in. “You’ll only have a short time before the spell brings you back to the present. As long as you’ve only done the one thing, it should be fine. Now, stand over here please…”
“Should be fine?” I said. “That doesn’t sound reassuring.”
“Stop being a baby, Duke,” Lilly said. “Do you want to help Sarge or not?”
“Of course I do, but…”
“But what?”
“What if I change things and lose you?”
Lilly smiled at me, reached up and kissed me.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “That’s not going to happen. I wouldn’t risk that either. Oh, by the way, don’t let Cladius keep that dagger. I have a theory about it.”
With that, I took my place where the wizard indicated and waited. He did many of the same things Lilly did when casting a spell, waving his hands, speaking in a weird voice, and I started to feel dizzy, and the world reeled around me.
The last thing I heard was Gulston say was, “I wonder where he’ll return to?”
I was opening my mouth to protest this, when the world stopped turning and I found myself standing on a street corner. I looked around, getting my bearings and hoping that everything in my own time would turn out okay.
There was a sudden commotion across the street and turning, I saw Sarge as a young man. There was no mistaking him. He had the same build and the same face with far fewer miles on it. He also had the same no-nonsense attitude, and with a resolute look on his face, started approaching a man who was accosting a woman. There was a young boy standing behind her, looking scared and worried. I saw immediately why Sarge would get involved, even if he wasn’t a watchman.
Sarge yelled and approached at a run. The mugger turned around, saw Sarge coming and stepped forward to meet him. I would have thought the mugger brave at least, if I didn’t know what I did. I looked around and sure enough, there was the other man, who had been leaning against a wall, moving toward Sarge. Then I saw the young man, walking on my side of the street, taking notice of the action, his eyes on the second mugger and the knife that was in his hand.
That had to Cladius. Everyone else on the street passed the action with their heads down and their eyes averted. Cladius took off at a run toward the second mugger, and I needed to move too. I hoped that I could help the woman myself, knowing about the second man, and prevent Sarge from being involved, but Gulston put me too close in time to the action. Now, the only thing I could do was to prevent Cladius from getting involved too much.
I caught up with him, knocked him aside and threw myself at the man coming up behind Sarge. I took him down fast, and kicked the dagger out of his hand. Remembering Lilly’s words, I picked it up and stuck it under my cloak, out of sight. It felt ugly when I touched it, like it was unclean and full of evil, but that only made me more determined to keep it from Cladius.
Cladius ran up and jumped on the second mugger before he could get up. I turned around, but Sarge already had the first man down and out, and was consoling the woman and her child. After a moment, they left, shaken but relieved, and Sarge turned around to us.
“Thanks for the help,” he said.
“No problem,” I said. “Glad to help the Watch when I can.”
“Same here,” Cladius said, still sitting on the mugger.
Sarge reached down and hauled the mugger to his feet. He shoved him against the wall and told him to stay put or he’d knock him out the same as his friend. The mugger paled, and stayed where he was.
“You two saved me a knock on the head,” Sarge said.
He didn’t see the dagger that the second man held, and I wasn’t about to say anything. Cladius didn’t either, which I believe was out of sheer modesty.
“Let me give you guys something in case you ever need help,” Sarge said.
“Nope,” I said, taking the lead and hoping Cladius would follow. “You do enough for others. Glad to help.”
“You sure?” Sarge said.
I nodded and he turned to Cladius.
“Well, how about you then?”
“Nah,” Cladius said, smiling and looking at the mugge
r against the wall. “Now I’ve got a good story to tell my girl. That’ll be enough.”
Sarge shook his head.
“I wish more people were like the two of you.”
“Glad to help,” I repeated, shook his hand, nodded to Cladius and walked away. The world was starting to take on a faintly fuzzy appearance and I didn’t have much time before the spell wore off and I returned to my own time. I didn’t want Sarge to remember me years later, and disappearing in front of his face wouldn’t help that.
I turned the corner, stepped into an alley and the world started to tilt and spin. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I was home.
Not only back in my own time, or at least what I assumed was my own time, but home, in my house. The spell returned me here, rather than the watchhouse. I pulled the dagger out of my cloak and dropped it on the table, glad to be rid of it. I would ask Lilly to look at it as soon as I could.
Speaking of Lilly, she was nowhere around, which wasn’t surprising. I didn’t think I was gone long, so I was sure that she was still at the watchhouse. Rather than go there and risk missing her, I poured myself a mug of ale and waited.
Sure enough, Lilly came in before I could start any serious work on my second mug.
“Hey Duke,” she said, walking in.
“Hey yourself. It worked!”
“Great. What worked?”
“What do you mean ‘what worked?’ The spell. I stopped Cladius from saving Sarge. He’s not going to be kicked out of the Watch.”
Lilly looked at me like I was crazy.
“What are you talking about? I just saw Sarge when I left. He’s fine. Did you hit your head or something?”
I stared at her in disbelief and it occurred to me. I changed the past so that Sarge never gave Cladius a token, which meant Cladius never called it in, so Sarge never confronted Maxwell. Sooo…Sarge was never in trouble. But that meant that Lilly wouldn’t have Gulston send me back in time. Then Cladius would have saved Sarge…
I hate magic. It makes my head hurt.
I decided it was better to let it lie, and to know that I helped out a friend.
“Hey,” I said, changing the subject. “Take a look at this, will you?”
Duke Grandfather- The Whole Story Page 13
