by Alex Stewart
Drago permitted himself a faint smile. “About as well as you are, I suppose.”
“Then we need to talk properly,” Graymane said, his demeanor suddenly becoming businesslike. “Somewhere we can be candid with one another.” He looked round, pointedly taking in the line of gnomes emptying their barrows, and the elven soldiers, who both seemed equally surprised at the sight of an elf and a gnome engaged in conversation. “Make sure we’re not at cross purposes.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Drago conceded. Clearly Graymane wasn’t about to buy his story about having travelled to the mine to look for work, and perhaps he should put his cards on the table. If the elf really was there to look for an agent of Gorash that would put them on the same side, more or less, and he might have information that Drago could use. On the other hand, Graymane didn’t know he’d overheard his conversation with the elven officers the previous evening, so he could hardly come flat out and ask him. “When and where?”
“Midnight, top of the slope,” Graymane said, with a wintery smile of his own. “Where you were eavesdropping last night. No one should see us up there.”
“You spotted me,” Drago pointed out.
Graymane shook his head. “Didn’t see a thing. But I’ve got ears.”
“Then how did you know it was me?” Drago said, a little too quickly, still angry with himself at falling into so simple a trap. Even more so, given the number of times he’d used variations of it to cozen felons into admitting their guilt without meaning to.
“I didn’t,” Graymane said, “until now. But it seemed the most likely guess.” He turned away, and Drago felt a sudden pang of unexpected sympathy for the alchemist. “See you at midnight.”
“What did he want?” Della asked, appearing suddenly at Drago’s elbow, her words punctuated by a rattle of falling stone as she emptied her barrow onto the pile of rocks below.
“Nothing much,” Drago said. “He just recognized me from yesterday.”
“I’m not surprised,” Della said. “You were definitely making an impression, fighting off those bandits like that. Surprised one of the lofties noticed you, though.”
“I don’t think that one misses much,” Drago said as casually as he could, watching the elf diminish into the distance, his gray cloak rippling in the breeze.
“And Clovis will be missing us,” Della said, hoisting the handle of her barrow. “Those rocks won’t shift themselves, you know.”
“Good point,” Drago agreed, grateful for the change of subject, and shoving his own into motion. He wouldn’t want to get sacked for idling just when he was on the point of making some progress.
Della grinned. “Race you back,” she said.
Needless to say Della won the challenge easily; by the time Drago returned to the cavern, she was plying her shovel with an easy rhythm, and her barrow was already a quarter full. His empty one had been a little easier to control than before, even on the rubble-choked quarry floor, and Drago had been beginning to wonder if he was getting the hang of it at last; until he saw the progress his co-workers had made in his absence.
“You’ll need to be a lot quicker than that,” Clovis admonished, glancing down from the upper gallery, but his tone was light rather than serious. “Loads more to shift before we can take a break.”
“I’d better get to it, then,” Drago said, lifting his shovel. Della, he noticed, was scooping up a succession of smaller pieces, which probably accounted for the rapidity with which she was filling her barrow. He tried to follow suit, but after a couple of shovelfuls ran up against one of the larger rocks, and dropped the tool to seize hold of his pick. A swift blow was enough to shatter the stone, and he swapped the tool in his hands for the shovel again.
“Break them all up first,” Della suggested, with a grin. “Or enough for a full load, at least,” she added, as another cascade of raw material crashed down next to them.
“Good idea,” Drago said, wondering why that hadn’t occurred to him to begin with. Now she’d pointed it out it seemed obvious, and he lost no time in adopting the technique himself. Sure enough, he found himself filling his barrow far more quickly, and by the end of the shift he even found he was taking less time than he had that morning to make the run to the ore heap and back.
“Not bad,” Clovis said, as he returned his tools to the shed that evening. “We’ll make a miner of you yet.” He smiled as he said it, though, and Drago realized it was merely a pleasantry rather than an accurate summation of his potential.
“Glad to hear it.” The last time he’d felt as tired as this he’d just fought a drunken troll to a standstill, and he couldn’t be sure whether his muscles had ached even more on that occasion than they did now. The work hadn’t seemed particularly taxing while he’d been engaged in it, but it had been repetitive, gradually sapping his strength in tiny increments. Gritty dust was everywhere, coating his face and clothing, working its way into places he’d only dimly been aware he possessed until they started itching, and his eyes smarted. No doubt he’d get used to that too, if he stayed here long enough, but right now the prospect of facing a goblin bandit who’d ordered his murder seemed far more appealing.
“Right. Let’s get you cleaned up and fed.” Della wiped her name from the chalkboard, and returned her tools to the storage racks. She grinned at Clovis. “Coming?”
“I’ll catch you later,” the young supervisor said, already engrossed in making notes on a handheld slate. “Got to get these figures to the boss first.”
“Course you do,” Della said with a cheery wave, turning to follow the rest of their shift out of the door and back toward the ramps leading up to the burrows at the lip of the quarry. As they left the shed, she turned to Drago. “Not that she’ll even notice. But he likes to do a proper job.”
Drago expected her to lead him straight back to the mess hall, but she turned aside at the first tunnel entrance they came to on reaching the burrows. Most of the gnomes returning from the mines were heading that way, so he wasn’t surprised to find the passageway wider and higher than he was used to. What was a surprise was the sound of running water echoing all around them, which seemed to be growing louder the deeper into the burrow they went.
“You can clean off in here,” Della said, leading the way through an archway in one of the walls. A shelf had been neatly carved along one side of a long, narrow chamber, at which gnomes stood, hiding almost its entire length from view. As Drago and Della insinuated themselves into a gap, Drago realized that a channel had been gouged out in the gently sloping surface, along which a steady stream of water flowed; everyone was washing with great diligence, the thin stream gradually turning darker as it carried the accumulated grime of a score or more faces and pairs of hands away through a small, neatly carved arch.
Drago needed no further urging, plunging his face into the cold, reasonably clear water, feeling the grit dislodging from his skin under the gentle pressure of the current. He emerged spluttering, shaking the excess moisture from his face. “That feels better.”
“You look better, too,” Della said, pulling a handful of hair over her shoulder and wringing it out. Without its coating of rock dust, it was glossier than Drago had realized, a rich chestnut brown, almost the same color as her eyes. She began to braid it. “Feel like getting something to eat now?”
“What do you think?” Drago said. The hours of hard physical labor had left him famished, and the sooner he got to the mess hall the better, so far as he was concerned.
Della nodded. “We can wait a while if you’re not hungry. I’ll show you some more of the burrow instead.” His dismay must have shown on his face, because she laughed loudly, and punched him lightly on the arm. “Gotcha.”
“You certainly did,” Drago said, as they emerged into the corridor again. It was less crowded now, fewer gnomes arriving to clean up, and most of the ones he could see were hurrying deeper into the burrow. He indicated another archway as they passed it. “What’s in here?”
“B
aths,” Della told him. “But if you want to use them now, you can go in on your own. I don’t know you that well yet.”
“Food works for me,” Drago told her, taken aback, and Della grinned again.
“Food it is, then,” she agreed.
The rest of the evening passed more quickly than Drago realized; Della turned out to be pleasant company, and, rather more surprisingly, seemed to enjoy his in equal measure. A substantial meal was followed by several drinks, during which time Clovis joined them, his chin still stained with gravy from his hastily eaten supper. After that, Della introduced Drago to some of the dice players he’d seen on the previous evening, and he hardly lost anything; Della, on the other hand, ended the night several shillings up, which seemed to put her in an even better mood.
“You must have brought me luck,” she said, as they turned away from the table. “What do you want to do now?”
Drago yawned, a sudden jaw-cracker which took him completely by surprise. “Go to bed, I suppose,” he said.
Della’s eyebrows rose, and she regarded him appraisingly. “You don’t waste much time, do you?” she said. “Are all city boys that direct?”
Drago felt as though the floor had suddenly collapsed under him. “I didn’t mean—” he began, before he realized she was laughing again.
“I know, but I couldn’t resist. Your face!” She cracked up, Clovis joining in with his own hoots of merriment, and after a moment of indignation Drago saw the funny side too and began chuckling himself. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had anything to laugh about in earnest, and intended to make the most of it. “Not that you aren’t interesting, and I’ve seen worse looking, but—nah. Can’t see it, can you?”
For some reason, Drago found the question disconcerting. There were gnomish women in Fairhaven, of course, and the delvings where his relatives lived, and he’d had his fair share of romantic entanglements with a few of them—not to mention the odd human or goblin along the way—but his vocation wasn’t exactly conducive to maintaining a long-term relationship. The thing was, under most other circumstances, Della would have been exactly the kind of woman who’d arouse his interest: astute, self-confident, and, if he was honest, not bad looking either under the patina of grime endemic to her occupation. But he was here with a purpose, to ensure his own survival, and couldn’t afford to be distracted. So he simply shook his head. “No. Guess you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right,” Della said, although she didn’t seem all that happy about it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“That’ll be the day.”
Despite the urge to sleep which had almost overwhelmed him, Drago forced himself to stay awake in his room until it was time for his rendezvous with Graymane. He wasn’t exactly sure what the elf would do if he fell asleep and missed their meeting, but at the very least he’d lose the chance of gaining some useful information. At the worst, Graymane might consider him a suspect rather than a potential ally, and from what he’d seen and heard already, antagonizing the elf was unlikely to end well.
So, in spite of the siren call of his mattress, he remained sitting on the hard chair, carefully cleaning the blade of his sword. The familiar routine and the scent of the clove oil were soothing, and when he returned it to the scabbard with a satisfying click! he felt more alert again than he would have done after taking a brief nap.
After a moment’s consideration, he added the weapon to his belt. Not that he expected to need it, but the familiar weight was comforting, and for the first time he realized how strange he’d felt without it. He didn’t expect to meet many people this late at night, and after Clovis’s enthusiastic description of his martial prowess he was quite sure that pretty much everyone around here knew he habitually carried a blade in any case. After a moment’s consideration he draped a blanket around his shoulders, which more or less concealed it, and which he felt he could plausibly claim to have donned as protection from the chill night air.
In the event he need hardly have bothered; the few people he met in the passageways leading to the outside were busy with concerns of their own, and hardly gave him a glance as he passed by. Before long he was standing on the slope leading up to the top of the quarry, and glancing round to get his bearings. Everything seemed much the same as it had the night before: the vast hole of the quarry falling away into the darkness, the stars tinting everything with their faint blue radiance, and the campfires of the elven garrison delineating the lip of the cliff edge with their flickering orange glow.
Drago glanced up the slope. Sure enough, a darker patch of shadow clung to the rock face, more or less where he’d been standing the night before listening to Graymane castigate Oaktwig and his subordinates. To any elves peering over the edge it would have been invisible, but to Drago’s gnomish night vision the silhouette of a cloaked elf stood out clearly against the wall of stone.
“You’re late,” Graymane greeted him, and Drago shook his head, forgetting for a moment that the elf probably couldn’t see the gesture.
“You were early,” he countered, and Graymane’s mouth twitched in a momentary smile he probably didn’t realize was visible to the gnome.
“I often am,” he said evenly. “I don’t like surprises.” He paused for a moment, to let his words sink in. “You were a surprise.”
“So were you.” Drago had decided to be as honest as he needed to be, but that didn’t mean he had to tell Graymane everything at once, or even at all. “You’re here to look for Gorash’s people, right?”
Graymane nodded. “You heard as much last night. What are you doing here?”
“I’m a bounty hunter from Fairhaven,” Drago said. “An elf who said he was working for your king hired me to find and kill Gorash.” Which was entirely true: no need to mention the qualms he still felt about killing in cold blood, and the doubts he still harbored about his ability to do so.
“Then we have a problem,” Graymane said evenly. “What you heard me telling Oaktwig was only partially true. My orders are to find the traitor, have them lead me to Gorash, and kill him. I can hardly do that if you’ve got to him first.”
“I could say the same,” Drago pointed out, in a reasonable tone, which he hoped would be enough to mask the sudden surge of relief he felt. If Graymane carried out the assassination his conscience would remain clear, and he’d still get the bandit chief’s killers off his back. True, he wouldn’t get the balance of his fee from Greenleaf, but that seemed a very minor consideration under the circumstances.
“You could,” Graymane agreed. His hand was hovering close to his sword, but his posture was still relaxed, showing no inclination to draw it. If he did, of course, the advantage in the dark would be entirely with Drago, so the gnome kept his own hand away from his hilt as well. There was no telling how much Graymane could actually make out in the stars’ weak glimmer, and he didn’t want to make any moves that could be mistaken for threatening. “So what do you propose?”
“We work together,” Drago said. “Pool information, find Gorash. Split the bounty between us.”
“That might work,” Graymane said, in a tone which clearly indicated that he didn’t think it would, “except for one minor detail. I’m not after a bounty.”
“Oh,” Drago said, as a verbal placeholder, while he tried to think of something else to say that wouldn’t seem trite or obvious. Then he decided he might as well be, under the circumstances. “What are you after him for, then?”
“I swore an oath,” Graymane said, as matter-of-factly as if he was commenting on the weather, “to avenge the murder of my queen, on her brother’s behalf. And I can’t let anyone stand in the way of that.”
“No, I suppose you can’t,” Drago said. He’d never had much use for oaths himself, preferring hard cash as a motivator, but in his experience the people who did took them very seriously. Particularly elves, for some reason. “Fine, then, when we catch up with him, you do the honors. I’ll watch your back and keep the fleas off. Should be en
ough bounty on some of his followers to make it worth my while.”
“There should indeed,” Graymane agreed, after a moment’s consideration. Then he stuck out his hand. “We’re agreed, then. I kill Gorash, anyone standing between us is yours.”
“Sounds good to me,” Drago agreed, shaking the proffered hand. He hesitated a moment. “So what’s our next move?” Despite cooperating with the Fairhaven City Watch from time to time, he’d never gone into an equal partnership with a fellow bounty hunter before, and wasn’t quite sure how their collaboration was supposed to work. Although technically, as Graymane wasn’t in it for the money, he supposed he wasn’t really a bounty hunter either. “I’ve never worked with a partner before.”
“Neither have I,” Graymane admitted. “So I guess we’ll just have to make it up as we go along.”
Drago thought for a moment. “I suppose this informant you’re looking for will be the key,” he said. “Find them, and hope they’ll lead us to Gorash.” He hesitated. “I don’t suppose you know who it is yet?”
“I’m narrowing it down,” Graymane said, in a tone which clearly meant not even close. “But if they hold their nerve, it could be a long time before they reveal themselves. They’re hardly going to contact the bandits about a supply convoy knowing I’m watching. Why take the risk?”
“Because they have some information that can’t wait,” Drago said, with a distinct sensation of déjà vu; it had been offering to act as bait which had got him into this mess in the first place. Ironic if it was the key to getting him out of it too. “Like the fact that a bounty hunter’s arrived in camp, on his way to take out Gorash. His people in Fairhaven must have sent word they’ve lost track of me by now, and that’s probably got them rattled. If his spy here picks up my trail, they just might break cover to warn him.”
“It’s possible,” Graymane conceded. “But they might just decide to kill you instead, without waiting for orders.”
