A Fistful of Elven Gold

by Alex Stewart

  “Friends?” Just like the evening in Naught’s Landing, Clearspring seemed to be overriding the effects of intoxication by sheer willpower—a knack Drago was beginning to envy her. The streets of a strange town, close to the de facto fiefdom of someone who wanted him dead, was no place to suddenly discover that his reaction time was reduced, and his sense of balance mildly impaired, but he was beginning to suspect that both of these were precisely the case. “Never seen any of them before in my life.”

  Drago didn’t quite know how to respond to that, so he didn’t, opting instead for “Which way back to the wharf?”

  “Stick with me,” Clearspring advised, confirming his original guess by shaping each word with exaggerated care. She seemed steady enough on her feet, though, so Drago fell in beside her, lengthening his stride a little to keep up with her leisurely stroll. “I know a short cut.”

  “Good.” The sooner they got back to the boat, the better, he thought. The shadows were thickening, and although they couldn’t conceal much from his gnomish night vision, it was possible Gorash’s agents here had access to the kind of shadow-weaving charms their counterparts in Fairhaven had been using. He should have asked Raegan or Vethik for a few of the counter-charms before he left.

  Well, it was too late to worry about that. He’d just have to keep his eyes open, and hope for the best.

  Almost as soon as the thought had crossed his mind, Clearspring headed down a dark alleyway between a couple of nondescript buildings, both shops of some kind, although with the shutters closed there was no clue as to what either of them sold. Names were written above the barred windows, but neither meant anything to him. The elf was striding out with confidence, despite the darkness between the walls, which must have been all but impenetrable to her. Drago could make out the usual detritus which seemed to spontaneously generate in the less travelled corners of most towns and cities, but nothing seemed to threaten any consequences worse than having to wipe their boots.

  “Are you sure you know where—” he began, then fell silent as they came out into an area he thought he recognized from his earlier peregrinations. Tall warehouses stood all around them, men, elves and goblins still delivering and removing boxes, bundles and barrels on handcarts, or loading horse-drawn wagons, by the light of flaring sconces. A little farther down the street, and they could cut through to the waterfront.

  “Course I do. Should be able to find my way back to my own sodding boat.” Clearspring wove her way through the dense crush of constantly moving bodies and obstacles as though she were a windblown leaf surrounded by mist; Drago, with reflexes honed by a lifetime of passing unscathed through the streets of Fairhaven, followed with equal ease. In fact he even pulled a little way ahead of her, turning down a narrow passage between a couple of warehouses a pace or two before she did.

  There were no lights here at all, the tall, windowless sides of the huge timber buildings looming on either side of them, making the narrow passageway seem even more constricted than it was. Still able to see as well as he ever did in the dark, Drago strode out confidently, until a clatter and a string of profanity behind him made him glance back. Clearspring was clutching her shin, and swearing with a vigor and fluency only possible to someone who spent their life on the water bawling at underlings. “Slow down, you sawn-off troll shagger! We can’t all see in the pox-rotting dark!”

  “Sorry,” Drago said, almost meaning it. Wrapped up in his own thoughts, he had momentarily forgotten that the elf couldn’t see in the dark as well as he could. Or at all, really. “It’s not far. River’s just at the end here.” He could see it already, beyond the lip of the wharf onto which the warehouses faced, the surface writhing smooth and glossy in the faint glow of starlight seeping through the cloud overhead like a tub full of eels in the fish market back home. The thought made him feel uneasy.

  “So you say,” Clearspring grumbled. Then she turned her head, listening. “What’s that?”

  “Quiet,” Drago said in an urgent undertone, fully prepared for an argument, but Clearspring was quick on the uptake, even inebriated, and didn’t challenge the point. “Someone’s coming.”

  “Who?” She matched his quiet tone, drawing a knife from somewhere beneath her shirt. Drago kept his hand hovering close to the hilt of his sword, but didn’t take hold of it quite yet, content to wait and see what happened. Whoever was lurking further down the passageway wouldn’t have the advantage he did in the dark, unless it was another gnome, and they seemed too tall for that.

  “Goblins,” he whispered after a moment. “Three of them.”

  “What are they up to?” Clearspring murmured, and Drago shrugged, before remembering she couldn’t see him.

  “Can’t tell yet. But they don’t want to attract any attention, that’s for sure.” All three of them were swathed in the same dark cloaks his would-be assassins had worn when they’d jumped him outside his lodgings, rendering them effectively invisible in the gloom of the narrow passageway, but at least these ones didn’t seem to be employing sorcery. If they were Gorash’s agents at all, of course. For all he knew they were innocent warehouse workers, sneaking off to relieve themselves down the nearest alley, or avoid some particularly onerous job until it had been given to someone else.

  A metallic clink echoed in the night air, followed by shushing sounds from whomever of the trio was their leader. Crowbars appeared in their hands, followed a moment later by a muffled thudding and a splintering of wood, as they began to lever planks out of the wall nearest to where they stood.

  “What’s that?” Clearspring asked again, even more quietly than before. “What are they doing?”

  “Breaking in,” Drago whispered. He took hold of her arm, and began to urge her away, back in the direction they’d come. “I suggest we take the scenic route back to the boat.” He wasn’t being paid to protect whatever the thieves were after, and didn’t see any point in confronting them. They might have some information he could use to help track down the bandit chief, but there wasn’t any real reason to suspect that either—if Birch Glade really was a miniature analog of Fairhaven, there would be plenty of gainfully employed thieves around the docks with no allegiance to anyone or anything beyond their own purses and a handful of associates.

  “Works for me,” Clearspring agreed, slipping the dagger away in whatever recess of her clothing it had come from, much to Drago’s silent relief. The idea of being next to someone waving a lethal weapon around while she couldn’t see what she was doing with it was far from appealing. With his help, she made it back to the lit and bustling area without getting entangled in any more obstacles along the way, which suited Drago fine. The thieves were probably armed, and if they realized they’d been spotted, might have come after them. Not that it would have been a problem if they had; in the dark of the narrow passageway the advantage would have been entirely his, but he was a long way from Greta’s laundry, and he wanted to keep his shirts as unsullied as possible.

  “That must have been the shortest quickie on record,” one of the dock workers greeted them as they emerged onto the street, grinning ribaldly as he spoke. He was a short man as humans went, about Clearspring’s height, but broad with it, his arms bulging with muscle as he manhandled a laden handcart past the mouth of the passageway. He must have spotted them entering the gap between the buildings a couple of minutes before, and drawn the obvious but erroneous conclusion from their emergence at the same end. He nodded at Drago. “In more ways than one.”

  Drago hastily let go of the elf’s arm, but fortunately Clearspring seemed to see the funny side, leering at the docker in a conspiratorial fashion.

  “It’s true what they say,” she assured him, with the kind of straight face a professional card player would have sold their soul to acquire. “It’s not the size, it’s what you do with it that counts.”

  “Take your word for it, love.” The docker picked up the handles of his barrow, and moved off, chuckling.

  “Sorry about that,” Drago sai
d, wondering why he was apologizing.

  Clearspring shrugged. “Not your fault,” she said. “And he didn’t mean anything by it. Just banter.” She looked pensive for a moment. “If I thought he was really impugning my honor, I’d just have killed him.” Another momentary pause, then a bark of laughter. “Oh, your face. If I’d realized you were that easy to wind up, I’d have had a lot more fun this trip.”

  “Nice one,” Drago said, adopting an easygoing smile. In truth, the brief conversation had disturbed him. The docker would remember them now, and when the warehouse theft was discovered, the local watch would want a word with an elf and a gnome seen leaving the scene together. Possibly even consider them suspects, rather than witnesses. Either way, the resulting attention was far too likely to attract the notice of Gorash’s people. He just had to hope that the Rippling Light would have resumed its journey by then.

  Which reminded him. He glanced back down the passageway, just in time to see the last of the burglars slipping in through the hole they’d made in the wall. Everything seemed quiet and empty down there, and it briefly occurred to him that they could probably get back to the boat that way after all now, just slipping past the hole while the thieves were occupied. But on the other hand, why take the risk? It wasn’t as if Clearspring was about to cast off before morning anyway, so they weren’t in that much of a hurry to return. In fact . . .

  “Is there anywhere around here we can get another drink?” he asked. “I think I could do with one after that.”

  “Most sensible thing you’ve said all evening,” Clearspring agreed.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Does anyone know who this elf is?”

  Docksides being the kind of places they were, it didn’t take long to find an open bar not far from the waterfront. Though a good deal less prepossessing than the establishment they’d spent most of the evening in, the beer was passable, and they served basic but wholesome food which Drago took full advantage of, to Clearspring’s evident amusement.

  “I’m surprised you’ve got room for any food, after all that ale you’ve taken aboard,” she said.

  Drago shrugged, and continued ploughing his way through a plate of bread, cheese, and pickles. “Easy come, easy go,” he said, having just returned from a trip outside to jettison what felt like the larger part of his cargo. The food should soak up most of the rest, and the tankard or two by which he’d topped it up. The near encounter with the warehouse thieves had been a salutary lesson in not letting his guard down, and he wasn’t going to ignore it. “You know what they say,” he said, his voice slightly muffled, “you don’t buy ale, you just rent it.”

  Clearspring laughed. “True enough,” she said. “Are you about done?”

  “I am.” Drago chewed and swallowed the last of his food, and chased it down with the dregs of his drink. As he hopped off the stool he’d been sitting on, he felt more centered and sure of himself, as sober and alert as he’d ever been. “Are you?”

  “I guess.” The elf stood too, swaying slightly for a moment before regaining her own balance, as sure-footed as if the floor had been the deck of her riverboat. Drago supposed that it didn’t really matter whether the subtle shifts underfoot she was compensating for were real or subjective, if you did it as instinctively as that.

  The watering hole had been crowded when they entered it, and was even more so now as they wove their way through an influx of off-duty stevedores celebrating the end of their shift, so they became separated on their way to the door. Drago, having had a great deal more practice at making his way through masses of intervening bodies, and a natural ability to take advantage of whichever smaller gaps opened up around him, reached the entrance first, and paused outside waiting for Clearspring to catch up with him. The street seemed busier than he remembered it, people running past the tavern with grim, purposeful expressions, or, just as often, excited and curious ones.

  “What’s going on?” Clearspring asked, elbowing her way into the open air a moment later.

  Drago shrugged. “Haven’t a clue.”

  “There’s a fire,” a passing goblin called back, evidently having overheard the exchange. “Along the waterfront.”

  “Where?” Clearspring called after her, but by that point the goblin had vanished among the scurrying throng. The elf’s face became grim, any lingering trace of intoxication vanishing at once. “If it’s anywhere near my boat—”

  “Go,” Drago said. If she started running, he’d never be able to keep up with her, so there didn’t seem any point in even trying. “I’ll see you back at the wharf.”

  “Damn right you will,” Clearspring said, sprinting away in the same direction that the crowd was flowing. In a moment Drago had lost sight of her, and set out to follow, walking quickly among the hurrying humans, goblins and elves. He had to keep his wits about him, as few of them thought to look down, and he was forced to dodge out of the way of the most preoccupied with irritating frequency.

  “Make way!” a peremptory voice bellowed, and the crowd flowed aside to let a party of watchmen through, double-timing it with buckets and axes in their hands, the sergeant in charge yelling encouragement to her subordinates.

  With so much commotion going on around him it took Drago a moment or two to orient himself, and when he did, he was taken aback to realize he was approaching the front of the warehouse he’d seen the thieves breaking into earlier that evening. Smoke was billowing out of it, spinning away across the harbor toward the distant lantern lights of the logging camps on the opposite bank. That was a blessing, at least; if the prevailing wind had been in any other direction, the entire town would already have been at risk from drifting sparks. As it was, the watchmen swiftly organized the most able-bodied among the milling onlookers into an efficient pair of bucket chains, one passing pails of water toward the combusting building, while the other conveyed the empties back to the edge of the dock to be refilled. All along the wharf edge, boats were putting out into the middle of the river, as far from danger as possible; Drago narrowed his eyes against the stinging smoke, thinking for a moment that he could see the Rippling Light among them, her hastily slipped cables still trailing in the water, then the choking cloud drifted across him and he lost sight of everything until the wind shifted again.

  “It’s not going to be enough,” one of the watchmen said, and the sergeant nodded in agreement, her eyes narrowed against the drifting smoke.

  “That’s well alight,” she confirmed, as the first orange flames began licking around the door frame. A dull roaring sound began to make itself heard over the bleating of the crowd. “We’ll need a damn sight more than buckets to put this one out.” She turned, and began bellowing to the watchman at the head of the bucket chain. “Leave it, Gengiz, it’s got too strong a hold. Start wetting down the neighboring ones!”

  “Right, Sarge!” the burly goblin called back, and began hurling water against the side of the adjacent structure, from which steam immediately arose in response. Drago began to edge away. This wasn’t boding well. He glanced inside the warehouse, through the open door, and was immediately reminded of the oven in the baker’s shop in the next street to Mrs. Cravatt’s. Though without the appetizing smell. Barring a miracle, it would only be a matter of time before the flames spread along the entire row of warehouses.

  “Make way! Wizard coming through!” a fresh voice yelled, aiming for impressively authoritative, and missing in the direction of squeaky with excitement, before petering out in a paroxysm of coughing courtesy of a lungful of smoke. Drago turned. A young human with streaming eyes, in a scholastic robe which almost fitted him, was picking his way through the crowd. A few of the locals laughed, nudging each other in the ribs, clearly anticipating some unexpected additional entertainment.

  “Sod off, Aris, I haven’t got time for any of your cock-ups now. Things are bad enough already.” The sergeant turned away, the young sorcerer already dismissed from her mind. He glared at her back, then started rummaging in his satchel reg
ardless.

  Better and better. Drago started looking for a way out of here, but the steadily growing crowd was hemming him in more tightly than ever.

  “Who’s in charge here?” A well-dressed elf, whose supercilious air and the muttered imprecations of many among the onlookers marked him out as a Marcher, elbowed his way through the bucket gang, and strutted toward the sergeant.

  She returned a look of almost equal disdain, which was only emphasized by the professional politeness of her words. “That would be me.” A fractional pause before the “Sir,” which protocol demanded. “Sergeant Dickson of the Dock Watch.” Another pause. “And you are?”

  “Cloverbell Fennel. I own this building.”

  Dickson nodded. “Then I suggest you let us get on with our jobs, if you want any of it left standing.”

  “What I want, sergeant, is for you to arrest the arsonist responsible!” Fennel glared at her as though she were a kitchen maid who’d just let his morning infusion grow cold. “Right now!”

  “Right now, I’m more concerned with preventing the rest of the docks from going up in flames.” Dickson’s voice was calm, reasonable, and, to Drago’s ears at least, freighted with a menace the elf seemed deaf to. “If we find any evidence of arson, and if that doesn’t point to an attempt to defraud debtors, we’ll no doubt have time to discuss your suspicions. After we’ve got the bloody fire out. And anybody getting in my way while I do that is going to see the inside of a cell for obstructing the watch and endangering the public. Are we clear?” Another fractional pause. “Sir?”

  “Oh, I think we’re clear all right. We all know the authorities in this maggot-ridden midden are hand in glove with the bandits from the Barrens, don’t we? Getting your bribes to look the other way while the king’s goods are stolen or destroyed.”