A Fistful of Elven Gold

by Alex Stewart

  “Hm.” The elf looked him up and down, comparing their relative statures. Drago waited for a disparaging remark about his height, but Greenleaf simply nodded again. “Fair enough. What do you know about the Lost Queen?”

  “She’s still missing,” Drago said, “which means she’s dead by now. Couldn’t tell you how, or who did it, because I couldn’t care less.” He watched the elf for a reaction, but saw nothing beyond a simple nod of agreement.

  “That’s pretty much all anybody knows,” Greenleaf conceded, “at least this far from the Marches. But we know who did it, and the king wants revenge.”

  “Hasn’t he got an army for that sort of thing?” Drago asked. “Or people like you?”

  “Yes, and yes,” Greenleaf agreed, his tone becoming more businesslike. “But neither can get the job done in this instance.”

  “Then I don’t see what I could do,” Drago said, becoming interested in spite of himself. He pulled up a stool, and sat down.

  “I’ll need to sketch in a bit of background,” Greenleaf said. “About the history of the Marches, and how the queen was killed.” He stiffened, at a faint sound in the passageway outside, and his hand went to the hilt of his sword.

  Drago smiled. It had taken even less time than he’d expected. He raised his voice. “Come in, Mrs. Cravatt.”

  The door opened, revealing his landlady, holding a tray with a couple of grubby tankards on it. She smiled, mainly at Greenleaf, and walked in.

  “I thought you might be in need of some refreshment,” she said, throttling every vowel to within an inch of its life.

  “Very thoughtful,” Greenleaf said, taking the nearest, and keeping it well away from his face.

  “Mrs. Cravatt always takes a keen interest in the welfare of her tenants,” Drago assured him, straight-faced, “especially when they have guests.”

  “The hospitality of the citizens of Fairhaven is legendary,” Greenleaf said, in similar tones, although Drago suspected that he meant in the sense of entirely without foundation. “Thank you for your consideration.”

  “Indeed.” Since the remaining tankard showed no sign of being moved in his direction without prompting, Drago stood up and helped himself to it. Mrs. Cravatt flinched a little, suddenly reminded of his presence, but failed to drop the tray as he’d half expected. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Mr. Greenleaf and I have a lot to discuss.”

  “Of course.” His landlady looked at him as though she would like to consider his neck another vowel, and beat a dignified retreat from the room.

  “If you wouldn’t mind leaving the door open?” Greenleaf asked, as she passed through it. “I’m finding it a little stuffy in here.”

  “Of course.” She descended the stairs, a faintly peeved sniff echoing back from the landing below.

  “Now.” Greenleaf placed his tankard, untouched, on the night stand. “Where were we?”

  Drago drank and swallowed. “You were about to give me a history lesson,” he said.

  X X X

  “You have to understand,” Greenleaf began, “that the Sylvan Marches is a prosperous place. And that means we have enemies. Especially in the Barrens.”

  “You’ve lost me already,” Drago admitted. “Which barons? Did one of them assassinate the queen?”

  Greenleaf sighed, almost inaudibly. “The Barrens are a place,” he explained. “A wilderness area on our southern borders. Infested with bandits, who raid pretty much at will.”

  Drago nodded, to show he was keeping up, and took a gulp of his ale. Mrs. Cravatt had got the good stuff out for their distinguished visitor, or at least the best she could afford, and he meant to make the most of it. “And they killed the queen.”

  “I’m coming to that.” Greenleaf sighed again, took a sip of his own ale, and hastily put down the mug. “The bandits are goblins, with no love lost for elves. It’s not just raiding for loot or supplies with them, it’s sheer wanton destruction as often as not.”

  “I see.” Drago didn’t really. In his experience goblins didn’t bear the elves any particular malice—no more than anyone else did, anyway. “It’s a blood feud kind of thing.” He took a thoughtful sip. “What do they think their grievance is?”

  Greenleaf looked at him appraisingly. “You’re quick on the uptake,” he conceded. “They claim the Barrens are rightfully theirs, although they’ve been a province of the Marches for nearly a century.”

  “And before that?” Drago asked.

  Greenleaf shrugged. “They were just there. The old king sent a few troops in to tidy the borders up a bit, and they’ve been ours ever since.”

  “I see.” At least Drago thought he did. Minor kingdoms were like that, grabbing whatever territories they could, before their neighbors had the same idea. “And the people already living there were fine with that?”

  “Pretty much,” Greenleaf said. “They didn’t fight for long, anyway, and even then it was only the goblins. There were already a few elvish settlers there, and they were happy enough to be part of a civilized country again.”

  “Hm.” Drago took a couple of thoughtful swallows. “Any humans or gnomes about?”

  “Not back then,” Greenleaf said. “But gnomes started moving in to work the mines after they opened, about twenty years ago.”

  “Mines?” Drago asked. That made sense. Gnomes were natural burrowers, with an innate affinity for tunnels and caves, and in high demand for jobs requiring skill with a shovel. Most of the ones outside cities like Fairhaven, where all kinds of species lived and worked together, still preferred to dwell in underground warrens of quite staggering complexity. Drago had visited the nearest a couple of times at the behest of relatives, but found it an unsettling experience, where his unease at not being able to see the sky for days at a time was seen as charmingly eccentric or faintly pitiable, depending on whom he was talking to. “What kind?”

  “Gold,” Greenleaf said, underlining the gravity of the revelation with a second sip of ale, which he quite clearly immediately regretted. “The vein was discovered by accident, when a hunter missed the boar he was aiming at, and went to retrieve the arrow. He pulled it out of the ground, and noticed a fleck of something shining on the head.”

  “And after that, the goblins decided they wanted their country back,” Drago finished.

  “Pretty much,” Greenleaf agreed. “The bandits became more organized, the garrisons were strengthened, and the fighting’s been going on for a couple of decades. The army holds the mines and the larger villages, but the Barrens are impossible to hold down completely; the terrain’s too broken for large scale troop movements, and the goblins just fade into the hillsides after every raid.”

  “I’m beginning to see your problem,” Drago said. “But surely the occasional skirmish with bandits is just a mild inconvenience with a mine full of gold at stake.”

  “To begin with,” Greenleaf conceded. “But then they started to get more organized, more sophisticated in their tactics and planning.”

  “They found a leader,” Drago concluded.

  “They did.” Greenleaf nodded seriously. “And a very effective one. Gorash Grover. Heard of him?”

  Drago shook his head. “Don’t think so.” But then the only interest Fairhaven had in the Sylvan Marches, or any of the other upstream kingdoms come to that, was the amount of trade coming down the river. Parochial gossip didn’t travel as well as timber or wine.

  Greenleaf smiled thinly. “Then take my word for it, he’s extremely effective. Not just a good general, but an orator, a rabble-rouser. His followers would cheerfully die for him.” He glanced sardonically at Drago’s shirt, still seeping blood into its bowl of water. “In fact, three of them just did.”

  “The ones who were after you,” Drago said.

  Greenleaf shook his head. “Not quite. They were after whoever I was going to meet.” He nodded affably in Drago’s direction. “It seems your reputation precedes you, Master Appleroot. None of the others were attacked until after our business h
ad been concluded.”

  Drago felt a faint chill between his shoulder blades, where the target he’d imagined back in The Dancing Footpad had been centered. It was unlikely that Gorash would have had a mere trio of operatives opposing Greenleaf and his friends in a city the size of Fairhaven. He’d have to watch his step even more carefully than he’d anticipated until this affair was over.

  “It still hasn’t been,” he said. He probably had more than enough information for Raegan by now, but his own curiosity was beginning to take over. “How did Gorash assassinate the queen? Seems like a pretty neat trick for a backwoods bandit.”

  Greenleaf shrugged. “Treachery, of course. And, possibly, her own naivety.”

  Drago nodded. “Not an ideal trait in a monarch. What happened, exactly?”

  “Well,” Greenleaf began, with the air of someone about to commence a long story, “the king died. Not Lamiel, obviously. His father. Ariella, the present king’s older sister, inherited the throne. To everyone’s relief, especially her brother’s.”

  “No argument over the succession, then?” Drago asked. Not that he cared, but he had a nasty suspicious mind, a definite asset in his profession, and it wouldn’t be the first time someone committed sororicide to grab a crown. Having a notorious bandit around to take the blame would only make that easier.

  “None at all. Lamiel stepped up, but his heart’s not really in it; he much preferred being the spare to the heir, where he had time to patronize the arts, that sort of thing, instead of making all the big decisions. If you ask me, no one misses his sister more than he does.”

  “Right.” Either that was true, or Greenleaf genuinely believed it. Either way, it seemed the bandits were definitely to blame for his sister’s demise. “So, we’re back to my original question. How did she die?”

  Greenleaf shrugged. “Quickly, one hopes. But with these savages, one never can tell.” He sighed. “Everyone advised her against it, but when a queen makes up her mind, what can you do?”

  Drago hid his impatience behind the draining of his tankard. “Made up her mind to do what?”

  “Negotiate. Try and make peace with the goblins. She offered Gorash safe conduct, a face-to-face meeting on neutral ground.”

  “And the moment they’re alone together . . .” Drago mimed an extravagant throat-slitting.

  Greenleaf shook his head, with a faint trace of puzzlement. “That’s just the thing. It seemed to be working at first. They were a bit wary of one another to begin with, but they seemed to be getting on well enough. That meeting led to others, and after a few months there was even a draft treaty prepared. The queen travelled to the Barrens to sign it, and that was the last anyone ever saw of her.”

  “So you can’t be sure she’s actually dead?” Drago asked.

  “We’re sure.” Greenleaf’s voice was grim. “Her escorts were ambushed almost as soon as they crossed the border. No one else knew they were coming. Just Gorash and his rabble.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Drago said slowly. “You want me to travel to the Barrens, find a seasoned guerilla fighter who’s known every inch of the terrain since he was a child, and has a small army of ruthless killers who idolize him standing between the two of us, and kill him in retaliation for murdering your queen.”

  “That about sums it up,” Greenleaf agreed, pushing his tankard of ale across to the gnome. “So, what do you think?”

  Drago’s laughter was so loud, it disturbed the watchmen in the street outside.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “They’ve got magic, and they’re not afraid to use it.”

  “And he really seemed surprised when I turned him down,” Drago finished, concluding his narrative and a herring sausage in a bun at almost exactly the same moment.

  Raegan nodded. “Not something he’s used to, I imagine.” He glanced around the bustling marketplace, relieved to find that none of the shoppers or stallholders surrounding them seemed to be listening. “But I’d keep watching your back for a while if I were you. At least until Gorash’s people get the message.”

  Drago shrugged, his attention caught by a clothing stall, and stopped to browse through a pile of gnome-sized shirts. He’d visited a cordwainer’s shop earlier that morning, with a couple of coins from the purse Greenleaf had given him, and walked out with the new boots he’d been promising himself. They were comfortable, and dry, and made everything else he owned seem a great deal shabbier than they had before donning the new footgear. But he could afford a few new clothes now, especially with the fee Raegan had channeled through the Tradesman’s Association, so that was a problem easily solved. “I’m sure they’ll find out soon enough,” he said.

  “Maybe.” Raegan seemed less sure, but then he had a lot on his mind. The city council wouldn’t be at all happy to hear that the parochial squabbles of a petty kingdom leagues up the river were spilling over onto the streets of Fairhaven, and the watch would be expected to clean up the mess. True, that would be a problem for his colleagues all over the city, but as he was the one drawing attention to it, he’d probably be expected to propose a solution too: if only for the councilors to ignore it, and come up with a less effective strategy themselves. “But I’d feel a lot happier if you’d take this.”

  “Take what?” Drago paused for a moment, to debate payment with the stall holder, and exchange a few coppers for a shirt that looked as if it might fit. Raegan waited patiently for him to finish, before handing over a small leather bag, containing something about the size and shape of a plum stone. Knowing better than to open it, Drago slipped the bag into his pocket.

  “You were right about the shadow-weaving charms those goblins had last night—too common to get us anywhere. But our sorcerers knocked up some counter-charms for the lads on the beat, in case they run into any more skulking about.” Raegan shrugged. “That one seems to have fallen into my pocket, and I only need one, so . . .”

  “Thanks.” Drago nodded his appreciation. “But I don’t suppose I’ll come to much harm today. Other than terminal boredom.”

  “We need your statement,” Raegan reminded him. “Anything you can remember that might help us work out how many troublemakers the Marches have dumped on us.”

  “Fair enough.” Drago sighed, accepting the inevitable, and led the way toward the watch house.

  As he’d expected, the interview was long and exhaustive, stretching well into the afternoon. Something he hadn’t expected, however, was that it took place in Raegan’s private office, away from the bustle of the main watch house where Waggoner had interviewed him before, and was conducted by the captain himself as well as his deputy. Two other people were squeezed into the relatively small space, besides Raegan and Waggoner: a corpulent goblin whose uniform and additional trappings clearly identified him as one of the magical support staff, and a human woman whose clothing marked her out as a member of the nobility, and who said very little in a manner the watchmen clearly found faintly unnerving. Drago hadn’t recognized the name she gave, but assumed it wasn’t her real one anyway; if she wasn’t actually a member of the city council she was undoubtedly there to report back to them, and he knew they preferred to maintain the polite fiction that information only reached them through official channels.

  To his private amusement, his diminutive stature meant that he was the only person there who didn’t feel uncomfortable in the overcrowded room; perched on the stool someone had found for him, he was almost level with the faces of everyone else present, an interesting novelty in itself. Raegan had given up his seat behind the desk for the silent woman, who had introduced herself as Lady Selina something or other, and promptly bagged the only other chair for himself; Waggoner and Vethik, the goblin mage, were perched on slightly lower stools, though apparently less comfortably than Drago, judging by the amount of fidgeting they both did.

  “You’re sure there’s nothing else you can tell us?” Waggoner asked at last, laying down his pen with an air of faint relief, and cracking his knuckles. He�
�d been a good deal more polite than he had while taking Drago’s statement about Fallowfield’s death; though how much of that was due to his having witnessed the fight with the goblin assassins himself, and being certain that this time at least the gnome had nothing to hide, and how much was about trying to favorably impress the agent of the council, Drago wasn’t sure. Come to that, he didn’t particularly care, either.

  “Nothing springs to mind,” Drago agreed. He made a brief show of careful ratiocination, then shook his head. “Nope. That’s it.”

  “It’s a shame you turned Master Greenleaf down so firmly,” Lady Selina said, her tone of mild disappointment more appropriate to the discovery of a crease in a favorite pair of gloves. “If you’d accepted his commission, you might have discovered more about his network.”

  “With respect, your Ladyship, I beg to differ.” Raegan sounded distinctly uncomfortable with the formal language, used to expressing himself in a far more direct manner. “He seems to have made it pretty clear that Drago would only be dealing with him.”

  “True.” Selina inclined her head. “But Master Appleroot seems admirably resourceful. I’m sure he could have picked up more information than Greenleaf intended to reveal.”

  “If he didn’t just end up feeding the fish,” Waggoner said, forthright as always. “The Marchers’d top him the minute they realized he was reporting back to us.”

  “Assuming Gorash’s lot didn’t get to him first,” Raegan added, his own formality beginning to slip.

  “I think that would be a risk worth taking,” Selina said.

  “Well, I don’t,” Drago put in, a little more vehemently than he’d intended. “I nearly got killed just because Greenleaf was talking to me, and I’m not about to stick my neck out any further.” The official line was that the elf had approached him with a bounty offer, like any other client, which was all the council needed to know. The trap he’d helped the watchmen to lay, with Wethers’s help, wasn’t something Lady Selina needed to hear about—although he couldn’t help suspecting that she was already pretty sure of what had really been going on.