Hard Times in Dragon City

by Matt Forbeck

  I shrugged. “Probably,” I said. “But don’t think I’d testify to that in a court of law.”

  Nit threw up his hands in a helpless gesture, then scooped up the empty glass. “I’ll be right back with something more, ah —”

  “Legal?” I said.

  He frowned at me. He didn’t appreciate the humor in front of a guard. “Sure.”

  “You’ll want to stick around for this,” Yabair said. “I’m arresting Mr. Gibson here for the murder of a young halfling in your daughter’s apartment.”

  Nit dropped the glass in ginned-up surprise, and it shattered on the tile floor. “Max! How could you?” He glanced at the shards scattered throughout the alcove. “I’ll just go get a broom for that.”

  Yabair put a hand on his shoulder to stop Nit as he tried to slip past him. “It can wait until my business here is over.”

  “You’re not going to arrest me,” I said to Yabair. “You know I had nothing to do with Stubby’s murder.”

  He raised his eyebrows at me. “So you admit to being there?”

  “Sure,” I said, as noncommittal as if I was confessing to having been at the Quill last night. “I was looking for Moira. I found her jilted lover dead in her bed.”

  “You left a crime scene before you could be questioned.”

  “I got tired of waiting for you.” I picked up my fork and speared a bit of beef off my plate. I stuffed it into my mouth and chewed it while I stared at him. “Your response time sucks.”

  “You know the law about these things all too well,” Yabair said. “It’s your duty as a citizen to remain put until the Guard has released you.”

  “I was hungry.” I chewed on another piece of beef. “And I knew you’d find me when you were ready.”

  He cocked his head at me. “How could you be so sure?”

  I gestured toward the chair across the table from me. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  Yabair stood there and glared at me. I wasn’t sure if he was going to accept my invitation to join me or slam my head down on the table and then haul me out of the restaurant in handcuffs.

  He let loose a deep sigh and sat, his shoulders slumped inside of his crisp uniform. For someone who’d never aged a day in the many years I’d known him, I have to say I’d never seen him look so old.

  “Don’t play any more games with me, Gibson,” he said. “I am not in the mood for it.”

  “Sure. If you quit pretending that you think I’m a suspect in these murders just so you can get some leverage on me.”

  He considered this for a moment, then gave me a reluctant nod of assent. “Done.”

  I put my fork down and swallowed the food in my mouth. “All right. I went to Moira’s place after I left the Stronghold. I found Stubby’s corpse there. I didn’t touch it. Well, all right, I closed his eyes.”

  “Why do you people do that?” Yabair said.

  “Mess with a crime scene?”

  “Close the eyes of the dead. Don’t you want them to see what lies ahead of them?”

  “It’s out of respect. Makes them look less dead. Like they’re sleeping.”

  “But they’re beyond caring, aren’t they?”

  “It’s not for them, then, is it?” I grunted. “If you want to discuss cross-cultural differences, I can have Nit bring you a drink.”

  He gave me a sanguine gesture to continue with my story.

  “I decided to poke around the apartment to see if Moira was there. I looked into her office —”

  He held up a hand to cut me off. “Which is guarded by one nasty set of charms. My mages are still working at disarming them. How did you manage it?”

  “I’ve known Moira for a long time. She trusts me.”

  “Ah. Go on.”

  “As I entered the office, an orc dressed all in black attacked me.”

  “With a sword.”

  I nodded.

  “So you believe that’s our killer?”

  “I’d say there’s a lot of evidence for that.”

  “And how did you survive your encounter with this vicious professional?”

  I leaned back in my chair and let my wand show in its holster. “I was ready for him.”

  “But not that ready, correct? He did get away.”

  “Not before I gave him a good zap.”

  Yabair stroked his smooth chin, evaluating my tale. I waited him out.

  “So you mean to tell me you think this is an orc of the Black Hand? From your description, at least, that would seem to fit.”

  I hadn’t thought of that, but I supposed it made sense. I didn’t like the implications though. I’d always thought of the Black Hand as more of a myth than anything else.

  They were supposedly a group of well-trained orc soldiers in the service of the Ruler of the Dead, the all-powerful necromancer who controlled the undead creatures who scratched and howled outside the massive wall that protected Dragon City. Legend had it that the Ruler of the Dead trained them personally in the art of taking lives with a single blow, which fit with our killer’s skill set. I’d been all around this part of the world, though, and I’d never seen one of them or heard anything more than a furtive whisper about them.

  “Or someone who wants us to think he is,” I said. “That’s not quite the same thing.”

  “It might as well be for our purposes.” Yabair pursed his lips. “If the Ruler of the Dead is involved with this for real, though, that puts it all in a different perspective. The Dragon Emperor will wish to be informed.”

  I smirked at that. “You go ahead and get your boss’s wings in a bunch over this if you like. I’ll track the bastard down either way.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” I leaned forward and looked into Yabair’s steely eyes. “Moira was at the Gütmann’s last night.”

  “Are you saying she saw the killer?”

  I appreciated him not pretending that he thought she’d had any part in the murders. I suppose after I let go a juicy piece of information that like that he thought he ought to do me a small kindness. I just didn’t plan on getting used to it.

  “Maybe. I don’t know if she was there before, during, or after the murder. One thing’s clear though. The killer wants her dead. Maybe she’s mixed up in something with the Gütmanns that went bad. Maybe he wants something she has. Either way, I find Moira, and it all becomes clear, right?”

  He didn’t appear convinced. “I find it’s rarely that simple. And where do you suppose you might be able to find her?”

  I leaned back in my chair and smiled. “I have some ideas.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I wish I hadn’t been lying to Yabair like that, but I didn’t want him rushing off to get the Emperor involved if I could help it. Once the Dragon focused his attention on this situation, people would die for sure.

  I’d rarely seen the Emperor in person, but he had a solid reputation for not having any patience with the problems of lesser beings — in other words, anyone else besides him. If he felt it would be simpler to just slaughter everyone involved to make sure that the Ruler of the Dead didn’t get her hands on whatever she was after, then we’d have a bloodbath on our hands, and there was no telling how many innocents would be caught up in it.

  Gerte alone had been plenty.

  Once Yabair left, I polished off the rest of my meal and fortified myself with another glass of dragonfire. Nit had been listening from around the corner the entire time, and when I got ready to leave, he accosted me, a dark look on his face.

  “I know you can’t promise me anything, Max,” he said. “Just tell me you’ll do your best to bring my little girl home alive.”

  I reached down and gave Nit a squeeze on the shoulder. “I’ll do my damnedest.”

  At least I knew I wasn’t lying to him.

  “You have any idea where she might be?” I asked.

  He gave me a sad shrug. “She doesn’t come around here but once a week or so, an
d only then for a free meal. She’s got a safe house or three scattered about the city, I think, but she never tells me anything about them. Do you know where they are?”

  “No. One thing she was always smart about was that kind of long-term security. It was the short-term decisions that generally fouled her up.”

  I tossed a few coins on the table and headed for the door. “Try not to worry too much,” I said as I left. “She’s probably holed up somewhere safe. The only trick is making sure I get to her before that orc assassin does.”

  “You really think he’s part of the Black Hand?”

  “No, but I barely believe in the Dragon Emperor either, so what do I know?”

  That got a laugh out of him, and I left on that note.

  I considered heading back to the Gütmann place to look for clues. When Yabair had given me the guided, grisly tour this morning, though, I hadn’t seen any indication that Moira had been there at all, ever. Nor had I seen anything to make me suspect the killer had been a member of the Black Hand. The world’s greatest detective I wasn’t.

  By now, Yabair’s team of forensic mages would have been over the place with a halfling’s toe comb. Even if the Guard was willing to let me in to poke around again, I doubted there was anything useful I could learn there. If Yabair discovered something, he’d share it with me in his own time. I hoped.

  I figured I’d start with Moira’s regular haunts and see if I could turn up any sign of her. I’d already been to her home and her parents’ restaurant and come up empty. I suppose I could have tried talking with her mother or her siblings, but I knew a lot of them blamed me by association for the kind of life Moira had fallen into. True or not, I didn’t think any of them would be particularly eager to chat with me.

  Of course, I could have gone back to the source and asked Bellezza a few pointed questions about what she’d been doing with Moira lately and why she’d sent her to the Gütmann place last night. I didn’t suspect she’d be forthcoming about that though. I knew she was hiding something, but until I had a bit more knowledge on my side to use as leverage, I didn’t think I’d be able to pry it out of her.

  That left the Quill, so that’s where I went.

  The Quill had been the place where we — by which I mean the old treasure-hunting crew Moira and I ran with — had hung out before we’d even launched our first venture. We’d sat there for countless hours jabbering about our plans for the future, and we’d even met a number of our members there during our late-night planning sessions.

  Once we’d come back from our first job, the Quill became the place to which we retired to lick our wounds. We’d kept up that tradition over the years, and even now — when none of us had set foot in a tomb for a decade — we still met there to commiserate over the messes we’d made of our lives since, and to share in our triumphs whenever they came along. We didn’t all spend every night there, of course. For some of us it was more local than it was for others. Still, we gathered there after the important occasions: weddings, the birth of a child, even the rare funeral. And we had established a tradition of everyone — well, everyone but Bellezza — showing up on the anniversary of Anders Gütmann’s death to raise a glass in his honor and remember what bastards we all were for not bringing him home.

  When I got there, it was the middle of the afternoon, and the place stood mostly empty. Thumper — a stout human with a neat-trimmed beard, and my favorite bartender in the world — stood there behind the bar, though, steady as the tides. He waved at me as I walked in.

  “What’ll you have?” he asked as I bellied up to the bar.

  “Anything new?” I was always on the lookout for something fresh to whet my palette. I’d had my fill of dragonfire at Nit’s place.

  He grinned at me and held up a proud finger. “Got just the thing,” he said. “Brew that came in from the Old Country last week.”

  A moment later, he set a cool mug of ale in front of me. I gave it an appraising sip and smiled in approval.

  “So,” he said, “what brings you here this time of day?” he asked. “You usually don’t make it down this way until closer to sunset.”

  That was Thumper’s greatest trait as a bartender: his memory. He knew the patterns of his customers the way an astronomer knew the movement of the stars. That’s why he could bring me a drink I’d never had before, and why he knew that me darkening his door at this time of day meant something was off.

  It’s also why I had some hope he might be able to help me out.

  “Seen Moira lately?” I said.

  Thumper gave me a rueful shake of his head. “I figured you’d be around to ask me that sooner or later.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Is that a yes or a no?” I asked.

  Thumper shrugged. “Yeah, she was in here last night. I figured you might show up at any minute yourself.”

  “How’s that?” The Quill was one of my favorite joints in the city, but I wasn’t in there every night.

  “She had someone with her I hadn’t seen in a long while. Your old friend Bellezza.”

  I closed my eyes and put my head in my hands. I should have guessed. Ever since the crew had given up on venturing into the wild, Bellezza had been too concerned about her position in elf society to risk being seen with most of us.

  There was no way she’d have a halfling with a reputation like Moira’s come meet her in her family’s ancestral home. It was high enough up the mountain that I got a nosebleed just thinking about it. Even so, if it had happened I would have been able to hear her parents and grandparents screaming about the scandal all the way down here.

  “Did you two used to have a thing?” Thumper flashed me a wicked grin.

  I waved off the implication. “That’s ancient history.”

  “That the thing about elves, my friend. To them ancient history is just like yesterday.”

  He moved on then to tend to the few other customers in the bar. The Quill wasn’t choosy about its clientele, which was one of the reasons the crew had settled upon it as our hangout. It was one of the few places in the city where you could find people of all races and social strata rubbing shoulders and sharing drinks with each other.

  The other people in the place at the moment included a well-dressed orc woman chatting with a lady dwarf, a squeaky little goblin getting drunk with a halfling, and a pair of people I knew on sight. I picked up my beer and wandered over to their table.

  “You mind if I join you?”

  Cindra and Kells looked up at me, surprised at first. Then honest, warm smiles spread across their faces. “Not at all, Max.” Kells gestured to an open chair across from him and next to Cindra. “It’s been too long.”

  “It’s only been a few weeks, tops,” Cindra said, admonishing her husband. He gave her a sheepish grin.

  Cindra was a blonde woman with a pert nose and a perfect smile. She was also one of the best shots with a rifle I’d ever seen. We’d been lucky to have her on our side, and she’d saved my life more times than I cared to count.

  Kells had started to go gray at the temples of his dark, curly hair. He wasn’t nearly as warm as his wife with strangers, but he knew me well enough to drop his guard. He’d been the crew’s armorer, keeping us fully stocked with enchanted ammunition during our expeditions, and he’d done a great job at it. It had also given him lots of excuses to chat with Cindra all the time, and that had turned out better for him than I would have hoped possible.

  “What are you two doing here?” I asked.

  Cindra reached over and took Kells’s hand. “Just sneaking away for a late lunch while the kids are still in school,” she said. “It’s one of the little guilty pleasures that comes with being a parent.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at that. Of all of us, Kells and Cindra had come out of the whole experience the best. Not only had they found their fortune, they’d found each other. They’d put away as much of their money as they could, and they used it to start a family and have three of the cutest childr
en I knew.

  “So how’s tricks?” Kells said. “We’re not in the game anymore. We have to live through you vicariously.”

  I wanted to tell them about the Gütmanns, but I didn’t know if I had the heart to do it. It was such horrible news, and they were so happy at the moment. I led with something else.

  “Have you seen Moira lately?”

  They looked at each other and then shook their heads. “Not since the last time we saw you, at least,” Cindra said. “We don’t get out of our home as much as we used to.”

  “Is she in some kind of trouble?” said Kells.

  I grunted. “When is she not?”

  Kells laughed at that, but Cindra could tell I was covering something. “How serious is it?”

  I grimaced and took a belt of my beer before I answered. “Deadly.”

  “She didn’t kill anyone, did she?” Kells said.

  Cindra smacked him in the arm, and he flinched away from her. “You know her better than that, don’t you?” She turned to me and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “No,” I said. “But someone else did. An orc assassin. He murdered the Gütmanns.”

  Cindra paled at that and put her hand to her mouth to cover her horrified gasp.

  “What?” Kells looked like I’d punched him in the gut. “All of them?”

  I gave them both a grim nod.

  “What does this have to do with Moira?” Cindra said.

  “She was at the Gütmanns last night. She may have seen something. The Imperial Dragon’s Guard is on the hunt for her.”

  “And you want to make sure you find her first,” said Kells.

  I nodded.

  “Well, count us in,” Kells said. “Just let us know what we can do.”

  I knew, of course, that there was no way I could get them involved in any of this, no matter how willing they might be. I could tell from the falsity of Cindra’s smile that she agreed with me. It was one thing for us to run around like idiots and take our lives in our own hands when we were younger, but they had responsibilities now. I wouldn’t dare to risk orphaning their kids.