by Lon Prater
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Scrybe Press
www.scrybepress.com
Copyright ©2004 by Lon Prater
First published by Scrybe Press, 2004
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NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Scrybe Press Publication
Published by Scrybe Press
Massena, NY 13662
www.scrybepress.com
First Edition April 2004
ISBN 0-9748340-6-8
Dedication:
This story is dedicated to Angie. Thank you for always believing in me, and for cleaning up more than your share of my messes.
Grevien Derleth lay in an aching, sopping heap at the end of a rain soaked New Promise alley. U’buru, the swarthy ogress, had done some of her best work on his ribs and chest. Just breathing was reminder enough not to get involved in politics of any sort, particularly where Governor Shadwell didn’t want you.
Politics. Gang warfare by another name. Grevien snorted into the mud without thinking. He felt it speckle the only clean part of his face. Why shouldn’t he be dirty? Everything and everyone in New Promise was. That’s the way it had always been and that’s the way it needed to be.
Dirt was his bread and butter. There was always someone willing to buy good dirt, and Grevien made a decent living finding little secrets out and then selling them off to the highest bidder.
He forced his body into a wobbly crouch. Nothing broken at least. He straightened up, grunting involuntarily. Maybe a cracked rib or two. He’d lived through worse: the island province had a bottomless supply of worse.
New Promise rarely lived up to its name for the hordes of settlers still arriving every week by steamboat, clipper, and zeppelin. All speaking races were welcome, according to the late Duke of Phrydd’s charter: humans, elves, orcs, ogres, gnomes and their goblin relations, dwarves—any race touched by the Undying Spark of Awareness. Which basically meant any member of a speaking race who would pledge to renounce the old gods and embrace the enlightened philosophy of the Undying Spark instead.
The problems began when the settlers got to New Promise, forgot their pledge, and unpacked their old prejudices and pagan gods along with their bags. God worship was the only crime punishable by exile from the province. Naturally, hidden chapels and shrines thrived in New Promise, secreted behind legitimate businesses like rats in the walls.
It was strange the way it worked out. Being illegal had forced the pagan churches to ally themselves with local crime families for protection. The gangs also had their grubby fingers in every level of the province’s government.
When the Sages of the Undying Spark tried to get this pagan banished or that chapel closed down, the deciding factor was often which crime boss was the church’s patron. And of course, which official down at the Magistrate’s Hall that boss happened to have in his or her back pocket.
But corruption was just the beginning of the problems in New Promise. The Enlightened Duke’s open immigration policy had the city overcrowded; full of hungry people with little hope of finding work. There were rumors of a slave trade, folks going missing and ending their days chained in the coalmines of the savage Kresht. The Industry Council rarely met anymore because of the threat of assassination by One Wagers and their union cronies.
Factory chimneys hadn’t stopped filling the skies with noxious gasses and soot, though. Every day a thick haze lay over most of New Promise from mid-morning till late in the night.
It was nearly midnight now. The rain had left the muggy air as clean as it would ever be. Grevien didn’t bother pulling the mud soaked facecloth up over his nose and mouth.
Walking more steadily now, the stocky man made his way to the open end of the alleyway. A motorcar splashed him as it passed. Sighing, Grevien composed himself as best he could. He sauntered toward Piglet’s, adopting a street-tough strut that gave no indication of his pain. He hoped it would keep away the muggers and young thugs common to Eastside.
Piglet was a greasy undersized gnoll, replete with matted gray fur and dry blue-black scabrous skin on his face, hands, and protruding pouchbelly. He ran a grimy workman’s bar at the edge of town near the slaughterhouse. On the best of days, his patrons brought in with them all the smells of their work: the stink of livestock, the cloying odors of blood, urine and feces, and over it all, the sweat of a hard day’s work.
On the worst of days, a table full of goblins would order klg thut, a strong smelling casserole of mixed organ meats, rotten eggs, and spoiled cabbages, making the bar’s air damn near unbreathable.
Tonight there were no goblins in evidence. Four gnomes, bulb nosed and warty, were playing a complicated game of Queens with a gap-toothed ogre. Gnomes were almost universally One Wagers, adherents of the newly fashionable idea that all workers should get the same pay regardless of what they did for a living. Something about that concept appealed to the gnomish need for uniformity and combined efforts. It was a safe bet they were working together to swindle as much as possible from the unsuspecting ogre.
Besides the card game, there were only a few other customers, regulars hard at work pickling their innards with the house version of Pinsar black ale. Traditionally, the drink calls for the seed of Pinsar black grass and other hard to get ingredients.
Piglet saw no need to serve the real thing. He bought regular tallgrass seed from the mill. After brewing it with a random selection of other common ingredients, he dyed the concoction with cheap boroba tar until it as black as an orc’s tongue.
Grevien couldn’t stand the taste of it, but that didn’t stop him from indulging. It had a strong enough kick that after a gulp or two you couldn’t taste it anyway. Besides, Piglet was a good friend, one with good connections. That went a long way in New Promise.
Piglet greeted him boisterously, going against the subdued grain of the little crowd’s mood. One of the gnomes looked up muttering then tossed another Dwarven Trust note into the pile of bills and coins in the center of the table.
“Who invited the mud golem?” Piglet asked, eyeballing Grevien’s filthy duds. For a gnoll, he was pretty easy to understand. Most gnolls sounded like dogs lapping up water when they tried to speak in the Trader’s Tongue. Maybe he was easier to understand because his pug muzzle was so much shorter than the norm for his race. That—along with the two triangular peaks of ear-shaped hair on the top of his head—contributed to the piggish appearance that had earned him his nickname.
Grevien ignored Piglet’s attempt at humor. He maneuvered himself gingerly onto a stool at the lonely end of the bar and reached his empty hand out as if there were already a drink there for him. Piglet got the message and fetched him a wooden mug full of foul black ale.
After a pull long enough to numb the ache in his ribs, Grevien wiped a few stray droplets from his chin with the cleanest part of his sleeve he could find. He looked straight into Piglet’s little round eyes. “The governor’s ogre sends her love,” he said softly.
Piglet’s muzzle twitched. His round eyes narrowed to crescent shaped slivers. Across the room, voices rose as the ogre lost yet another hand. All four gnomes appeared to be genuinely mystified at his run of bad luck.
&n
bsp; Piglet looked around the bar for eavesdroppers before leaning in so close that Grevien could smell the sour beetles on his breath. “What’d you find out?” the gnoll whispered.
Grevien took another long pull on his drink before explaining in clipped sentences how he had followed Del Feyklin, the gnomish leader of the One Wagers, from his ritzy Northside apartment (complete with a new lifting platform for those too well off to use stairs) out to the meeting at the boot factory with Hyrannia su’Dresil, the matron of the elfin su’Dresil crime organization. He had been jumped by Shadwell’s eight foot enforcer, U’buru, while he was trying to find a window with better acoustics. Not satisfied with just a good clunk on the head, she had apparently continued drubbing his unconscious body, then left him there in the mud like yesterday’s lunch.
Piglet made the sound gnolls make when they are astonished, a kind of tongue rolling sigh. “If that big mophandler was there, you know the governor wasn’t far away,” he said.
Grevien nodded in agreement. “I didn’t see him. Don’t think he was there to kiss babies. My bet is no one was supposed to know he was even there.”
Piglet considered that for a moment. “So what do the governor, Hyrannia su’Dresil, and the One Wagers have to talk about?”
Grevien noted Piglet’s unconscious shiver at the mention of Hyrannia su’Dresil. It hadn’t been smart to try spying on her in the first place. If even half the stories of her coldhearted fierceness were true, Grevien was lucky that the governor’s ogre had found him first. But he had learned a thing or two as a wide-eyed Sparker initiate, before he dropped out. In Sage Waidlai’s Movement of Value class he had picked up this jewel: the greater the risk, the greater the reward.
Grevien tossed back the last of his black ale and shrugged. “I don’t know, but I bet one of the Sages would open me an expense account at the Dwarven Trust to find out.”
Piglet hissed, pulling his blue-black lips back in what passed for a gnollish scowl. “More likely, they’ll just torture you until they find out what they want. You can’t trust a Sage, Derleth, you should know that.”
“You gotta know how to talk to them, my friend,” he replied. Or know the right one to talk to.
“You’ll never catch me talking to those godless red-robed bastards!” Piglet said, loud enough to momentarily turn a few heads. On the Eastside, outbursts like his were much more regular—and usually more explicit—than they ever were over in the merchant’s district.
Under the letter of the law, making a statement hostile to the Undying Spark was enough to earn a fine or have your business license revoked. But none of the Enlightened ever visited Piglet’s establishment.
Grevien chuckled. “Their money spends as well as anyone’s.” He inclined his head, gesturing as the wide-faced ogre stalked out of the bar, broke and angry. Piglet scurried over to collect from the gnomes before they disappeared as well. He dropped the coins they grudgingly offered into the flap of his pouchbelly.
Grevien fished in his coin purse, thankful U’buru hadn’t robbed him as well. He pulled out the smallest of his remaining coins, a silver ducat. He left it on the bar, waved at Piglet, and shambled out into the murky New Promise night.
How good it would feel to remove his dirty clothes and clean himself up, he thought, walking briskly to the attic room he rented from Widow Dunnich. He’d filch another one of her healing tonics tonight, and after a few hours of rest his body would show no trace of U’buru’s handiwork.
Grevien had slept till past midday, as was his custom, and didn’t make it into the merchant’s district until the clock tower (sponsored by the One Wagers, so that all workers would know when they were being worked too long) had struck five bells. He’d already polished off a warm beer and an apple purchased from a vendor’s cart. With any luck, Sage Waidlai might treat him to dinner while he made his proposition.
As he turned onto the street that would lead him to the Rationarium, headquarters of the Undying Spark clergy, he nearly ran into three initiates, their scarlet trimmed white robes reminding Grevien of himself more than a few years ago. They were talking excitedly to each other and holding a newspaper between them.
He raised a bushy eyebrow at the headline and waited.
He knew it wouldn’t be long. Sure enough, five minutes later a harried orc in bookkeeper’s spectacles dropped his yellow sheet to the cobbled road. Grevien snatched it up. You could always count on an orc to leave their trash wherever they were when they were done with it.
He parked himself on one of the green painted benches scattered throughout the center of town. Don’t find these over on Eastside. The headline read: GUV TO SPARKERS: PAGANS DESERVE TOLERANCE. It went on to describe Shadwell’s historic departure from the late Duke of Phryyd’s charter by legalizing all forms of worship. There was the predictable negative response from the spiritual leader of the Undying Spark, Wisdom Errisi, and other information about when the new laws would become effective.
Grevien chewed on a thumbnail while he read and reread the article, sure there had to be a connection with the governor’s presence at the warehouse last night. But what was it, and how could he profit from it?
Del and Hyrannia were supposedly meeting to discuss an important shared interest. That was the wisp of rumor that had started him following the gnome nearly a week ago. He knew better than to try following the Hyrannia. The Age of Mages might be over, but no doubt her fertile, predatory imagination would come up with something that would leave him wishing for an old fashioned curse instead.
Something big was going down; maybe something big enough that a guy who knew a little about it could scrape a few crumbs of the pie into his pocket. And what a dirt pie this would be: start with One Wagers and elfin black marketeers. Toss in the Governor and mix well. It practically made itself.
The only way Shadwell would be there is if he were invited, or if he had called the meeting himself. Depending on what the meeting was about either one was plausible.
Grevien’s mind was working overtime, crunching all the what-ifs together in hopes of coming out with a lead worth following. If Shadwell risked meeting with the two of them it had to be about money, maybe even extortion money. Were the One Wagers and su’Dresil blackmailing the governor? Did that explain the sudden abandonment of the Enlightened Duke’s statutes against pagan worship?
No, su’Dresil had nothing to gain from legalizing all of the tiny worship sites throughout town. If anything, it would cripple lucrative fencing and smuggling operations, as well as take away from the business of ‘protecting’ the churches from police interference. The One Wagers would have even less interest in the official sanction of paganism. They rejected all forms of worship—even the psuedo-mystical rationalism of the Undying Spark—as superstition, and therefore an instrument of worker suppression.
Grevien shook his head. The governor’s decision didn’t make any sense. In one stroke he had alienated the Undying Spark, the One Wagers, and virtually every criminal organization in New Promise. The only ones to benefit from the decree were the pagans themselves. The benefits weren’t even anything tangible, just the freedom to worship as they had been, but openly.
It was nothing short of political suicide.
Unless an idealistic pagan had something really juicy on the governor, then it might make sense.
Maybe the governor was just letting Feyklin and Hyrannia know what he planned to do, was being forced to do. Oh, to have been a fly on that wall instead of an ogre maiden’s boxing dummy. He was just going to have to dig a little deeper to get to the dirt was all. Nothing else for it.
He got up, folded the paper so that the cover story was still showing, and walked along the road toward the Rationarium, careful to stay out of the way of motorcars, horse drawn buggies, and pickpockets.
Squatting majestically on enough land to serve a commercial farm, the Rationarium was the largest building in New Promise. It was also the only one to possess a dome, which was plated in gold.
To
Grevien, the gleaming dome looked too flashy and ornamental for a building otherwise built to present a cool, mathematical face to the public. All along the roofline there were large sculptures of persons of various races engaging in acts of craftsmanship and art.
He chuckled. Not a single statesman in the bunch, not even the Enlightened Duke.
Grevien stepped through the enormous Dusk Door, opened just a few days ago. The Dawn Door would remain closed until spring. Both it and the middle door, the Door of the Devoted, were securely locked with stoutly crafted padlocks of hardened orcish steel. The Door of the Devoted, open only two days a year, was popularly held to bring blessings to those who passed through it.
He remembered his days as a student at the Rationarium; back then he had bought in to the myth. He never missed walking through the Door of the Devoted: once every spring, once every autumn, based on calculations of the earth’s exact position in its circuit around the sun.
It amazed Grevien that the Astronometry sages could tell so much from their telescopes and calculations. That was what had drawn him as a youth to become an initiate. But after memorizing all kinds of information he mostly had little use for, he had dropped out. Somehow he still managed to do well for himself with other types of information.
Like a ghost from the past, Sage Waidlai, still chubby for an elf, seemed to be waiting for him as he stepped across the threshold. Momentarily dwarfed by the thick bronze door Grevien looked up, admiring the coiled symbols of the First Equation inlaid in shiny blackstone. They still fascinated him, even after all these years.
The First Equation began in the center of the dome and formed a dizzying clockwise spiral that ended precisely at the bottom of the dome’s perfect North. It was supposed to be an equation disproving all gods. Grevien had left the Rationarium before he had learned even a tenth of the mathematical symbols and functions necessary to decipher it.
He wondered how many of the Sages could actually comprehend it. As his eyes followed the circling mystery on the ceiling, Sage Waidlai walked up without a word. Saying nothing, his old mentor grabbed Grevien by the elbow as if he were still a schoolboy, leading him toward one of the many small exits from the busy architectural beauty of the entry chamber. From previous experience he knew they were walking toward the Council members’ offices.
