Updated_PerilInTheOldCountry_SamHooker_EbookFormatting_Nook

by Peril in the Old Country (retail) (epub)

  “No,” said Willie, shaking his head. “I’ve never lived in a house that needed fixing or furnituring before. That’s not how fancy houses work.”

  “You’ve always lived in your father’s house, Willie,” said Nan.

  “Right, and it’s never needed fixing!” Willie rolled his eyes, exasperated for having to explain every minute detail of his point. Then he paused, and his head shot up like a deer who’d heard anything at all, or possibly not.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, waving a finger as a smarmy grin set up shop on his face. “Did Nipsy and the boys put you up to this?”

  “Who’s Nipsy?” asked Roman.

  “Right,” said Willie. “I’ll play along. Oh, look at the dreadful hovel that I’m expected to live in! Oh, woe is me! I suppose it’s just the four of us here, and there’s nobody hiding … behind … here!” He clop-clopped to the other side of the little fountain as quickly as his high-heeled shoes would carry him.

  “A-ha!” he exclaimed, to nothing and no one. He was crestfallen for a moment before he spied a little tree on the other side of the patchy brown lawn.

  “Oh, sneaky.” He pointed to the tree.

  “There’s no one there,” said Sloot. “That tree is far too small for anyone to―”

  “Ah-ha!” exclaimed Willie, jumping to the other side of the tree. He seemed genuinely perplexed again.

  Roman and Sloot made eye contact. Roman raised an eyebrow in a vague “what’s with him” sort of way, to which Sloot rolled his eyes and wondered how long he could keep this up.

  Willie’s hands went to his hips, bringing a nearly imperceptible groan from Sloot. He wasn’t particularly keen to fight Willie. Aside from his vicious-looking heels, Willie was his boss. Win or lose, Sloot would lose in the end.

  “I think the joke’s gone far enough.” Willie moved forward with a bouncy little walk that couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a saunter or a swagger when it grew up. “In fact, I’m starting to think Nipsy might not even be here.”

  “There’s no one else here,” said Sloot. “I’ve already told you that.”

  “But that was just for show.” Willie was nearly pleading now. It was apparent that he wasn’t accustomed to being made to wait for things.

  “No, it wasn’t. There’s really no one else here.”

  “Why are you here then? And where’s the real house?”

  “I’m Sloot. Sloot Peril, remember? I’m your financier, and this is your house. Your real house.”

  Willie stared at Sloot for a long time. His brow furrowed over panicked eyes. His thin upper lip curled up over his teeth. His face nearly broke into the full-on despair of a tearful tantrum before it relaxed completely, as though he’d forgotten where he was. Then his eyes narrowed, and his greasy smile took the stage once again for an encore.

  “Nearly had me there,” he said, wagging his finger.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, Willie,” said Nan, the last vestiges of her patience having found something better to do. “No one’s playing a prank on you! This is your house, it’s just not finished yet!”

  Willie stared at her wide-eyed for a moment, then turned his vacant stare back to Sloot. Having absolutely no idea what else he could have done, Sloot returned the stare with equal or lesser enthusiasm.

  Willie’s smile returned for an encore, along with its finger-wagging backup dancer.

  “Almost had me again,” said Willie. “I’ve got to keep my eye on you.”

  “Er, Willie,” said Sloot, desperate for a change of topic, “this is Roman. I’ve hired him to be your valet.”

  “Oh,” Willie’s face lit up, “I know about valets! Some of the other boys at the club have them. You follow me around, hold my cape, and fight other valets when I get into disagreements with other boys.”

  Roman shrugged. “I suppose I could fight a child’s valet for you, if that’s what you wanted.”

  “I think he means gentlemen when he says boys,” said Sloot. “Willie is a member of a hunting club, isn’t that right?”

  Willie nodded.

  “No place for a six-year-old boy,” Nan grumbled. “You should have some friends your own age, Willie.”

  “Willie has a friend at the club who’s six years old?” Roman looked puzzled.

  “It’s a long story,” said Sloot.

  “All right,” said Roman. “Anyway, you want me to follow you around now?”

  “That’d be great,” said Willie, with a toothy grin. “Oh! You can follow me to the library! Sir Wallace Scoffington is signing copies of his new book today. He’s my hero, you know.”

  “Oh, Willie, please don’t go to the library!” Nan was hugging Willie the way that certain very large snakes in very large jungles hug very large mammals, who then go to sleep. “It’s a dangerous place, and that Sir Wallace is a bad influence on you!”

  “The library? Dangerous?” Sloot had spent a significant portion of his youth in the library. In his experience, as long as one didn’t cross the battle-hardened librarians with the giant hammers, it was one of the safest places in the city.

  “But I have to go,” said Willie. “Sir Wallace!”

  “Perhaps when you’re older.”

  “He’s what, forty?” asked Roman.

  “He’s six years old!”

  “I’m curious,” said Sloot before Roman had another chance to weigh in, “how old will Willie be on his birthday next month?”

  “I’ll be―”

  “I’d like Nan to work it out if you don’t mind, sir.”

  “He’ll be six,” said Nan.

  “No, I won’t!”

  “That’s enough backtalk,” said Nan. “Now if you’ll all excuse me, I need to get Willie off to school.”

  “We’ll handle that.” Roman gave Sloot a wink and a nudge.

  “Yes,” said Sloot. “Yes, we can do that.”

  “All right then.” Nan pushed Willie’s head down to the height it would have been if he were six, then bent low and kissed his forehead. Then she put her hands on her knees and crouched a bit.

  “Now you be good for Mister Peril, understand?”

  “Yes, Nan,” Willie replied with a dejected lilt.

  “Off to school with you, little man! I’ll have your snack waiting when you get home.”

  “And where will that be? Here, or at the real house?”

  “Both,” said Nan. “Now off with you.”

  Willie said a swear word. Sloot heard a faint “pop” from inside the house, and the cackle of a goblin eager to set up a new congress.

  “Oh, Willie,” said Nan, “I’d just gotten them all swept out!” She grabbed her broom and started stomping back into the house.

  People in the Old Country avoid swearing in or near their houses to keep the goblins out. This is how hiking was invented, as a means of getting oneself a fair distance from town when one had significant swearing to do.

  Willie’s head bobbed from side to side in a sulk as he stomped through the gate, staring down at the ground. Sloot and Roman followed him along the cobbled avenue that wound its way past several statues of prominent statesmen who’d served in the Salzstadt legislature over the years. One such was Karl “The Stalker” Heringskraft, whose string of barehanded strangulations was overlooked for nearly thirty years, in deference to his passionate crusading for the well-being of incredibly wealthy aristocrats. It wasn’t until he accidentally strangled one of them that he was swiftly brought to Old Country justice.

  “It’s not fair,” said Willie after a few blocks. “I’m a big boy now, I shouldn’t have to go to school anymore.”

  Roman gave Sloot an incredulous look. Sloot shrugged.

  “Well, today’s your lucky day,” said Roman. “You never have to go to school, as long as you’re with your pals Roman and Sloot!”

  �
�Really?” Willie looked hopefully toward Sloot, who looked to Roman, whose bug eyes got even buggier as he nodded to Sloot knowingly.

  “Of course,” said Sloot. Though Willie wasn’t the brightest, sending him to school would have been ridiculous. Still, he wasn’t the brightest …

  “Let’s go to the library,” said Roman, “like you wanted. You still want to go to the library, Willie?”

  “Last one there’s a Carpathian savage!” Willie took off running at a full sprint, his high-heeled shoes failing to slow him in the slightest.

  “Well, he won’t be wrong about that, eh?” Roman elbowed Sloot’s ribs.

  “I suppose not,” said Sloot, who hung his head and lamented everything that his life had become. “Why’re you so keen to get him to the library?”

  “I’m not,” said Roman, his expression suddenly turning serious. “I’m keen to gain his trust, and so are you, Mister Peril.”

  “Willie’s part of your secret plan, then?”

  Roman’s enormous eyes narrowed to the size of a normal person’s. “I suppose you might be ready to know a thing or two about the plan. So, yes. He’s a part of it.”

  They started walking in the direction Willie had run, regardless of the fact that it didn’t lead toward the library.

  “Look, if you’d rather leave me out of this business altogether―”

  “Looking for a way out of the intelligence service, are you?”

  “Yes!” said Sloot. “I thought I’d been clear about that from the beginning!”

  “You won’t like what happens to deserters.”

  “Is it anything like what happens to disloyalists here? Because that’s particularly nasty on its own.”

  “Worse,” said Roman. “Well, mostly the same, standing in the stocks and being pelted with rotten vegetables. Only in Carpathia, the vegetables are soaked in whiskey and lit first.”

  ***

  The Library of Salzstadt was more than just a grand old building that housed countless thousands of books. It was also a tax haven for the Hapsgalt family. Granted, the tax laws had largely been hand-written by Constantin Hapsgalt and his forefathers to favor those whose fortunes defied counting, but that didn’t mean that the Hapsgalts were frivolous. They did everything within their power to ensure that they never parted with a penny more than necessary.

  Poor people would always be poor, after all. How offensive it would be indeed, to think that their problems could be solved simply by throwing money at them!

  Most of the great libraries of the world did not feature golden fountains with swans in them, nor did they enforce dress codes. Nor, for that matter, were they under the totalitarian auspices of Imelda Lilellien, who had only accepted the position of Head Librarian after being told by the Domnitor himself, long may he reign, that her tactics were far too violent for the battlefield. She relented because cold wars weren’t her speed anyway, and what’s the use of being Field Marshall of His Excellency’s Armies if you never get any blood on you?

  Imelda’s portrait was hung in the foyer. Sloot must have seen it thousands of times, but only just noticed the ring on her left forefinger: two silver snakes coiled around a black stone. Exactly like the ones everyone had been clinking against their glasses at Gildedhearth. It couldn’t be a coincidence. How were they all connected?

  “There he is!” Willie shouted. He was promptly shushed by one of the hulking librarians who was wandering around with a massive warhammer. These weren’t the sort of librarians who could help one find a book, nor could many of them do a stellar job of reading one. One would want the other sort of librarian for that.

  Of course, they were far too busy working whatever eldritch rites were necessary to keep all of that printed knowledge in check. While we’d all like to believe that the ideas in books simply sit there on the shelves, waiting to be read in their own contexts, the librarians know what danger looms in the silence of the stacks. Ideas are prone to leakage, and anything that leaks can pool. Some particularly nasty goblins have arisen from the commingling of ideas that were better kept to themselves.

  The big librarians with no necks were hired to keep order among the patrons because the proper librarians had bigger things to worry about; plus, when the proper librarians did deign to shush people themselves, it was infinitely more harrowing. Better to be menaced by a thug with a hammer than shushed by a librarian who’d spent years mastering shushery.

  Sir Wallace Scoffington was seated at a table, signing copies of his books for a long line of mostly older women. He smiled at them with what must have been a charming gleam in the eyes of anyone with sufficient cataracts to miss it altogether.

  Finally, after nearly an hour of Sloot’s practically having to restrain Willie into politely standing in line, they reached the front.

  “And who shall I make it out to?” Sir Wallace’s smile fell a bit as he looked up at Willie, who was clearly not his target demographic.

  “Willie— Wilhelm Hapsgalt, if you please, Sir Wallace. I’m your biggest admirer!”

  “I genuinely hope that that’s not true,” said Sir Wallace, chuckling to himself. Sloot thought he looked ridiculous in his light brown ensemble with the kerchief around his neck, but it did fit the persona. He was thin and aging, his long, blond hair caught up in a ponytail with a few intentionally wild strands hanging out.

  “Wait,” said Sir Wallace, his quill hovering over the book. “You did say Willie Hapsgalt, didn’t you?”

  “I did, yeah. But sign it to Wilhelm please, I’d like it to seem more grown-up.”

  Sir Wallace looked up at Willie for the first time, his face a kettle of amusement on the brink of boiling over.

  “I’ve had letters from a Willie Hapsgalt, but I assumed that you were much … much younger.”

  “My boyish charm,” said Willie with a smirk. “That’s what Nan calls it. She says it’ll make all the girls swoon when I get older.”

  Sloot stood rigid, desperate to suppress the mortified groan that so desperately wanted to declare to all within earshot “we’re not with him, please limit the scope of your derision to the bucktoothed manchild.” Unfortunately for Sloot and his chagrin, that manchild was his livelihood and, even more unfortunately, the basis of his career and reputation.

  “I remember your last letter,” said Sir Wallace. “I can recite it from memory. It read, and I quote: ‘Your great. Love, Willie.’ I know the whole your and you’re business can be tricky, but how old are you?”

  “I’m a bit confused on that point, actually.” Nan’s nuttery had seen to that. “But the important thing is that you got my letter! Where did it reach you? On the veldt? In the jungle?”

  “On my credenza,” said Sir Wallace. “Listen, you seem like a nice fellow―”

  “I’m glad you think so,” said Willie, “because I’d very much like to be an explorer like you when I grow up!”

  Sloot’s composure was fighting for its life. His chagrin had the upper hand now, and he was near fainting from the exertion. Abstention from guffaws was sweaty work.

  “Really,” said Sir Wallace, who was in the throes of losing a similar battle with his decorum. His next exhalation was as likely as not to be accompanied by a hoot or a cackle. “And when do you think that might be?”

  ***

  “It could have been worse,” said Roman later, over drinks at the pub.

  “I don’t see how.” Sloot took one of the beers that the barmaid had brought for him and placed it under his chair. That was the bargain with the goblins in this particular establishment: for half your libations, the stool under you kept all of its legs. The bartender liked his stools, so pints were only sold in pairs.

  “It could have been a simple disaster from which we profited nothing.”

  “Oh right,” said Sloot, “at least Willie got a book autographed by his hero who, coincidentally, laughed in h
is face!”

  “Willie was none the wiser,” said Roman. “But that wasn’t the profit.”

  “I’ll bite,” said Sloot. “What did we gain from that?”

  Roman looked left and right, then leaned in and motioned for Sloot to do the same. “Willie wants to be an explorer.”

  “An explorer? What good is that? He may as well have said he wants to be the Domnitor himself, long may he reign, for all his chances of succeeding. Does he know anything about exploration? I imagine it involves tying knots. I had to manage his shoelaces for him three times today!”

  “You’re not wrong for doubting his ability,” said Roman, “but you’re overlooking the most important bit.”

  “Which is?”

  “The test! Willie’s got to prove his worth, or we’re both out of a job. And we need to stay close to Willie for the secret mission!”

  “Oh, right,” said Sloot. “In all of the embarrassment, I’d forgotten about all of the treason and heresy I’ve got to commit.”

  “Keep your voice down! Willie’s got enough money to turn just about anything into a success, but he’s also got the attention span of a goblin with a machete. We just need for him to focus on something—anything—long enough to throw a pile of money at it.”

  Sloot’s face brightened in realization. “We only need him to impress his father.”

  “He’s never done that before, so I imagine that’s a pretty low bar.”

  “It’s practically lying on the ground.”

  “So we carry out an expedition to just about anywhere―”

  “And the job’s as good as done!”

  “Now you’re getting it,” said Roman with a wink. “Then Willie’s so grateful to us for making him look good that getting him to help with the secret mission is no trouble at all!” He waved to the barmaid for four more beers.

  “One thing at a time,” said Sloot. “What’s the expedition, then?”

  “Somewhere outside the city.” Suddenly Roman’s eyes went wide, even for him. “We’ll take him to Nordheim! It’s perfect!”

  “Nordheim?” Sloot knew little about Nordheim, other than it was north of Carpathia and full of Vikings. He reckoned it could only be worse if it were south of itself and full of Carpathians, but Carpathia had that position filled.