My first thought was, of course, of Raven. That guy didn’t care about anything other than getting paid and showing off. He gave us all a bad name simply by being around.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Sarge said. “Hate to tell you this, Duke, but Raven is onboard now too. Seems he got a little alleyway visit himself. Unlike you, it took a little convincing, but the message finally got through.”
Will wonders never cease? I wouldn’t have thought anything was tough enough to beat a message into that swelled cranium of Raven’s. Then I remembered some of the strong-arms that were with Ivar when we first met, and decided that maybe there was after all. I didn’t smile as I thought of Raven getting that lesson. Honest.
“Thanks for the warning, Sarge. Today I’m busy, but tomorrow I’ll be back. I guess I’ll have to take a look at what else I can do with myself…”
Lilly and I were enjoying a nice lunch together when I mentioned what Sarge told me.
“I can see that,” she said. “The world is changing, Duke. Maybe the day of the Nuisance Man is passing. Any thought to what you’d do then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe become a Brownie keeper or something.”
She smiled.
“You’re already that, and you do it for free. Because you’re a good person.”
“Shhhh!” I said. “Not so loud. I have a reputation.”
Lilly is great to hang out with. She always makes me feel better about myself.
As I walked home after our lunch date, my mind kept going back to that story that Sarge showed me. It kept eating at me. I couldn’t imagine how terrified that kid must have been, being carried into the sky like that, not to mention his mother. Rich or not, your kid is still your kid.
I hate it when things happen to kids. It’s bad enough that they have to grow up and deal with all the garbage that adults have to. For a while, let them be kids.
I tried to put the story down as a one-off, one of those mysteries that wouldn’t ever be solved and wouldn’t be repeated. But over my years as a Nuisance Man, I’ve learned to trust my hunches, and I was having one now that told me this wouldn’t be the end of it. I started acting like Sarge and picking up the newssheets every day, scanning through them to see if there were any more stories of kids suddenly being grabbed from above.
There weren’t, but I did find something else, buried way toward the bottom, where stories like this always are.
Capital City is a wonderful place. It has art, culture, restaurants, and anything else you could want. Since His Majesty opened the borders, we also have a rich diversity of other races, with all of the problems and benefits that come with that. In my experience, the benefits have far outweighed the problems.
But like any city, we have our darker sides too. Capital City is a wonderful place, if you have the means to support yourself. I’ve made decent money as a Nuisance Man, and Lilly does well as a member of the Watch. But there are those who don’t, and they are often overlooked.
Some of them have heart-breaking stories of loss, or unfortunate events out of their control that ruined their lives. Some have problems with drinking too much ale or wine, or even using Sniff or other drugs. Regardless, they all end up on the streets, living in the alleys, begging for a spare ingol or offering to work for food. Mostly, they get ignored.
Not that I’m a crusader for the homeless. I do the same thing as everyone else. Say no when I’m asked for money, walk by someone begging without a second glance, and think that they should all go get jobs. But when you really stop and think about it, you realize that it’s a much bigger, harder problem than that, which is why we don’t stop to think about it too often.
All this was brought to mind when I saw the story at the bottom of the newssheet. An officer of the Watch came across a body in an alley, a vagrant known to frequent the area. In and of itself, that wasn’t unusual, bodies turn up all the time. But this one wasn’t only dead, he was partially eaten. And there was a witness.
Another homeless man, identified as Crumbley Bob, was in the alley when his friend was attacked. Now, Crumbley Bob was known to the Watch, and they didn’t exactly consider him a credible witness. Several of us Nuisance Men had run into him at various times, and if nothing else, he was amusing.
If you believed him, Crumbley was there for the most important events in Capital City history, including the founding of the city, the building of the Palace, the birth, (and conception!), of the current King, and even the ending of the city in a fiery holocaust. If there was a crime, Crumbley saw it, especially if there was a reward.
So it was with a grain of salt that I read what Crumbley had sworn to. Most of it was gibberish, but one thing stood out. He said that his friend had been attacked from above, by a winged shape that came down out of the darkness. That piqued my interest.
I’m not a detective, and have no desire to be one. I don’t have that kind of mind to search for clues and put the pieces together and solve the caper. I’m a simple Nuisance Man. Put a problem in front of me and I’ll shoot it. With the right name to put to it, I’ll end the problem quickly. That’s how I liked to work, but there was something about that image of the little kid being hauled into the air that wouldn’t let me go.
I did the only thing I could think of. I went to see Crumbley Bob.
He wasn’t hard to find, if you were looking for him. He stayed in the same vicinity, between the docks and one of the more popular touristy areas with lots of inns and restaurants, where he could panhandle from out-of-towners.
I purposely went later in the day, so that he’d be back in his usual area and looking for a place to bed down for the night. I located him in an alley, gathering together a pile of rubbish to make a sort of nest for himself, and squatted down near him.
“Hello, Bob,” I said.
He looked me up and down.
“It’s Lord Bob, of Blissvania, if you please.”
“Of course, my apologies. Hail, Lord Bob! May I ask your Eminence a question or two?”
Bob drew himself up with a haughty expression and sniffed.
“You may.”
With Crumbley, it was best to play along with him.
“I read in the newssheets that your Grace was witness to a murder yesterday. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about that.”
Crumbley Bob deflated, and drew back into his nest.
“No,” he said quietly. “Old Bob doesn’t want to talk about that.”
That was interesting. I never saw Crumbley change personas like that, or to refer to himself as Old Bob.
“Bob, I want to help. I want to find whatever killed your friend, before it kills someone else.”
Crumbley refused to look at me. He fiddled with a button on his shirt, mumbling under his breath. He looked around the alley, doing everything to avoid looking at me.
“Okay,” I said. “If you can’t tell me, then you can’t. I’ll come back tomorrow. Maybe we can talk then.”
I rose and started to walk away when he suddenly said, “It came from the sky. Dropped right down on Old Fred. Old Fred didn’t do nothing to no one. He shouldn’t have been killed like that.”
When I turned back, I saw that Bob wasn’t speaking directly to me. He was still looking around aimlessly, but every time he turned his gaze toward the sky, he’d flinch, and drop it quickly.
“What was it, Bob?” I asked. “What killed Old Fred? Can you tell me? Because I think it tried to get a little kid too.”
“Shhh. Quiet. If we’re quiet, maybe it won’t hear, and come back.”
“It’s not here now, Bob. It’s alright. But what was it?”
“Old Bob never seen it before. And Old Bob don’t want to see it again. It was black, black as night. It dropped from above, with its big wings folded tight, and fell right on Old Fred. Old Bob was scared and wanted to run, but he couldn’t. His legs wouldn’t work right, so he hid, and put his hands over his ears. But Old Bob could still hear Old Fred screaming, and then the other
noises. The wet noises…”
There were tears streaming down Crumbley Bob’s face as he said this, and he kept glancing at the sky, and lifting his arms as if to ward off a blow from above. My heart broke to see it. Crumbley was harmless, and his stories were fun to listen to. I didn’t want anything to happen to him.
“Come on, Bob,” I said, reaching down to him. “I’m going to take you somewhere safe.”
For the first time Crumbley looked at me.
“Safe?” he said. “Old Bob can be away from the sky? So it can’t get Old Bob like it did Old Fred?”
I nodded and helped him to his feet. We gathered his few belongings and I walked with him to Father Magnus’.
I think of Father Magnus as an anomaly in our city. There are a host of gods that get worshipped here, and a lot of them have their temples. Some of these are small, simple buildings where a few people get together and do whatever it is that they do. Then, some have bigger buildings, where more people gather.
Father Magnus was a priest of what he called the “Good God”. They believed that their god was good, all the time. He fought the Good Fight against the Evil One, who was apparently responsible for all the bad in the world. I bring this up, and say that Magnus was an anomaly because unlike some others, he actually practiced what he preached. Simply put, Father Magnus was the most decent person, human or otherwise, that I ever met.
His temple was good size, and stood out in the neighborhood that it was located in. It was a stone structure, with a bell tower that soared into the sky. Magnus told me once that in older days they believed that getting the bells as close to the Good God as they could would bring more blessings to them. Now, it was mostly unused, the bells having fallen into disrepair years ago from lack of funds, and never fixed.
Father Magnus didn’t need the bells. If there was a Good God, he was surely watching Magnus and taking notes for how to behave himself.
All of which was why I brought Crumbley Bob to him. He couldn’t stay here forever, but Magnus would take him in for the night, see that he was fed, cleaned up, and kept safe for a little while. For how long depended on how much money was available.
“Hi Father,” I said when Magnus greeted us at the door.
“Duke!” he said, smiling. “It’s been a long time. How is your dear mother?”
“She’s gone, Father. Twelve years now.”
His face fell.
“Oh, I am sorry. She was a lovely lady. But what can I do for you?”
That was Father Magnus. I hadn’t seen the man in years, yet he still asked me about my mother, and what he could do for me. In my experience, questions like that were usually followed up with a statement about what I could for them, but not with Magnus. He either genuinely cared, or he was the world’s greatest con artist.
“Well, it’s not me actually,” I said. “It’s Bob here. He’s been having a rough time of it the last couple of days, and I thought that maybe you could help him.”
“Of course. He’ll be welcome here for as long as he wants.”
See? No questions, no hesitations. Just “sure, come on in”. Who does that?
“Thanks Father,” I said. “I’ll check up on him in a couple of days. In the meantime, I’ve got to take care of something.”
“It’s not a problem, Duke. Thank you for bringing him to us.”
I made a donation on my way out. A pretty large one too. I felt like it was literally the least I could do.
Over the next several days, more reports of people being attacked began coming in. There was no rhyme or reason for them, no pattern. It seemed that anyone was vulnerable. It always happened in the evening, or the dead of night, or early morning. Whenever the sun was down and it was hard to see. The attacks occurred all over the city, in the rich areas and the poor, to tourists and residents, and human and non-human alike.
Most of the time, the victim was left behind, as with Old Fred, partially eaten. To my dismay, there were stories of children being taken off into the sky, never to be heard from again. Mothers started keeping their children inside at all times, and the streets of Capital City were becoming more and more deserted at night.
Nothing was showing up on the Nuisance Board. Everyone was too preoccupied with the terror that was gripping the city to be bothered with local nuisances. Everyone was on edge. Neither Sarge nor Lilly had anything that they could tell me. They knew the Watch was working on it, but that there were no leads. Lilly was called in, along with other necromancers, to try to speak with some of the deceased victims, but their souls wouldn’t, or couldn’t, say much, other than to scream.
We took what comfort we could in each other, which was more than a lot of people had.
One morning I was awakened well before noon, by an insistent pounding on my front door. I opened it to the sight of a messenger boy holding out a rolled scroll for me.
It was a summons to the watchhouse, for a special project that required my services. It was signed by Lord Wellingsly, the High Commander of the City Watch.
I was never before summoned to the watchhouse for anything, let alone by such a high muckety-muck. Obviously, I would answer the invitation. There were some people that you simply didn’t say “no” to, and since Lord Wellingsly was cousin to His Majesty, he fit neatly into that category.
When I arrived, a few other Nuisance Men had beaten me there, and were standing around, waiting.
“Hey, Sarge,” I said.
“Duke,” he replied, as if nothing in the world was unusual. “Cool your heels. His Lordship will be here shortly, I’m sure.”
“What’s this about?”
“The attacks, I imagine. But he hasn’t confided in me quite yet, Duke. I’m still waiting for my seat on his council.”
I took the hint and moved off to wait, surveying my fellow Nuisance Men as I did so. Of course, Raven had to be one of them. He stood off to the side, aloof and distant as he always was. We hadn’t spoken since the affair with the witch’s broom, but considering how that ended, that wasn’t surprising. I nodded to him as I passed, and he ignored me as he would an insect. That’s Raven for you, but I was learning to not let it get to me.
The other two gathered there were known to me, although I never had much call to actually associate with them. They were siblings, twins to be more exact. Jasco and Filene Sweeny had deadly reputations, and well deserved from what I understood. They fought as a team, always, and had honed their craft to a razor edge. They were even more coordinated and better matched than Adrian and I were when he was around. There weren’t many nuisances that got away from them.
While I was thinking this, I was suddenly poked on the shoulder, hard enough that it almost made my knees buckle. I was grinning as I turned around. Only one person had a poke like that, and when I first saw it used, it changed the course of my life.
“MM!” I cried. “I thought you were retired!”
The man facing me was huge. Thus, the MM, which stood for Man Mountain, which was the name he was known by. He was a barbarian from outside the walls of our city, who came here seeking fame and fortune and won both by being one of the best Nuisance Men of all time. It was watching him dispatch a particularly unpleasant goblin that inspired me to pursue him into a witches tavern, and a new career for myself.
“I am,” he replied, “but they called me in for this. I guess you young pups aren’t quite up to the task.”
I smiled, truly glad that he was here. He had aged, and his long hair was now gray. He had a bit of a gut on him, but he was still huge and his arms still looked like they could break me in two with nothing but a flex. While everyone still called him Man Mountain, I knew him as Bjorn, the son of a farmer. He was no more from a barbarian tribe than I was, but the story was good PR, and he enjoyed it.
We made small talk while we waited for Lord Wellingsly to show and tell us exactly what it was that we were doing there. Before long, there was the noise of a carriage pulling up outside, and his Lordship walked through the door,
flanked by a couple of officious looking aides, and followed by several high-ranking Watch officers.
“Thank you all for coming,” he said. “We’ll get started in a moment. We’re waiting for one more.”
I looked around again, and to be honest, I couldn’t think of who else he’d be waiting for. While there were plenty of Nuisance Men in the city, the best were here already. I wasn’t sure if this was to be a competition of sorts, but if so, no one that I knew of had any realistic chance of besting any one of us already in the room.
That was when the dwarf walked in. It took a moment for it to register, but he was there in an official capacity, as a Nuisance Man. My mind flashed back to that day in the alley, with Ivar telling me that they had a Board of their own. My suspicion was that this was one of those who worked off of that Board.
“Ah, there you are, Brindar,” the Lord said. “Please, come in and we’ll get this started.”
Brindar looked at us, head high as he entered. There was nothing unusual about him, for a dwarf. He was short and stocky, but with a sense of great strength about him. He wore a chain mail vest, and carried a massive, double-headed axe strapped to his back. That axe drew my eye. Runes and symbols were etched into its blade, and I was sure that it must be an Ultimate Weapon of some sort.
“Now, gentleman,” Lord Wellingsly said, “I’m sure you’re aware why I’ve summoned you all here. The city faces a crisis and we need your assistance in dealing with it.”
“Of course, you do,” Raven sneered.
Lord Wellingsly ignored him and continued.
“These foul murders must be stopped, and we are counting on you to do it. Whatever it is that is committing the act has been more than the Watch, as noble as they are, has been able to handle. You all possess, shall we say, unique abilities. Therefore, you are being conscripted to aid the city in its time of need.”
Raven spoke up again.
“I work alone, and I certainly don’t work with any sub-human.”
Brindar glared at that, and began to reach over his shoulder, but MM stopped him with a gentle hand.
Duke Grandfather- The Whole Story Page 23
