by Dante King
I moved to my right for a better line of sight on Cecilia, but I was accosted by an extremely persistent and aggressive salesman. The little chap, who looked to be part dwarf, part gods-knew-what, was yanking and pulling at my arm so I would follow him into his silver shop.
“Come now, sir, come now,” the annoying little excrescence was saying, “a man like you must surely have a special lady in his life—or man, of course, sir—and what special someone does not like silver, eh? Solstice is always just around the corner and you’re really going to want to take a look at some of the samples I’ve got in the rear of my shop, sir. Very nice. Very special. Very genuine. The silver was mined in the far deserts of the Uncharmed Flatlands, you know. Many consider that to be the twelfth best spot in Avalonia in which one can mine silver, sir. The twelfth! Can you imagine the look on your pretty woman’s—or man’s—face, sir, when you tell them that, eh?”
“Mortimer,” I said, tugging futilely at my sleeve in an attempt to wrest it from the little stall owner, “I’ve never been a patient shopper. Can you deal with this dude—firmly, but not terminally, please.”
The little stall wonder looked about, puzzled.
“Who’s Mort—” he began.
The silver water jug came down on the back of the small man’s head with a hollow spa-doing, and the irksome chap keeled over with a soft sigh.
“Thanks,” I said. “Now let’s get out there.”
We slipped out into the little plaza that looked to have emptied by about fifty percent, the milling shoppers squeezing themselves off down other alleys and aisles.
A tall, gangly man was reaching out a hand toward Cecilia’s back, while she pretended to peer at a bunch of toads in jars.
“That’s him. That’s your man,” Mortimer breathed in my ear, then was gone from my side, evaporating into the crowd.
It was safe to say that Ratfink the Thief was most certainly not the kind of guy I had pictured in my head.
He was dressed in loose trousers and a hooded tunic of soft gray—with the hood down—and the Jesus sandals that had come back into fashion for some reason back on Earth and were now being sold by the likes of Versace and Prada for eight-hundred dollars a pop. On his head balanced a fez-like hat. His skin was the color of caramel, and he was rocking one of the most elaborate mustaches I had ever seen. It would have had hipsters the world over creaming in their Wrangler Stranglers.
His raised hand came down and—
—tapped Cecilia gently on the shoulder.
As I moved round a knot of chattering women exclaiming over the price of pears, I managed to catch Ratfink’s words as Cecilia turned. She looked genuinely surprised.
“Miss, I cannot help but notice that exquisite necklace that you are wearing this afternoon,” he said, in a voice that was pure snake-oil. “Though, of course, it would be barely a trifle without you to flaunt it.”
Cecilia seemed at a loss for words. It seemed that she too had not been expecting this smooth, well-dressed operator to appear. She, like me, had probably been waiting for a scarred-up, crooked-backed motherfucker with gold teeth and eyes like bits of coal, and a voice like a razorblade dipped in honey.
She had obviously been taken aback by this charismatic and dapper switchblade of a fellow.
“I, uh... ” she said.
“You are clearly a woman of fine and sensible tastes,” Ratfink continued. “If you’d allow me to take you back to my shop, perhaps I could recommend a bracelet or a ring to complement this piece?”
It seemed incredible that this man—though obviously a greasy and manipulative chancer—should have done anything so severe as to be murdered in the middle of a highly public bazaar.
Could his rap sheet have got it wrong? Or Odette, for that matter?
As I stepped through a gap in a gaggle of young men swapping cigarettes and stories, I managed to catch a glimpse of Ratfink’s smiling eyes.
And it was there that I saw the evil that Odette had warned me of.
The little plaza within this part of the Luminous Bazaar was most definitely thinning out as far as shoppers went. Perhaps they had seen Ratfink accost a woman like this before. Perhaps they had seen what came next if she did not agree to go with him?
Not today, I thought. And not with Cecilia.
Odette stepped out from between a pair of racks displaying bundles of spare broomstick twigs as I got within spell-shooting distance of Ratfink.
Cecilia’s eyes flickered over Ratfink’s shoulder, and the tall man suddenly stopped in his smooth sales patter and straightened slightly.
Without turning, he said, in a much more dangerous, but no less suave voice, “Ah, so this is, as the layman would say, a set-up?”
He spun slowly on his heel. His face was as unreadable as that of Mortimer’s, though the madness that I had seen flash in his eyes only a few moments before was burning quietly away in the depths of his mismatched blue and brown eyes.
“And you would be?” he asked, his gaze flicking like the point of a rapier from Odette to myself.
“Bad news for you, bud,” I growled, keeping my eyes fixed on the whip-thin man and willing Cecilia to get clear so I could turn him into something that closely resembled pulled-pork.
Odette was looking as dangerous and sexy as I had ever seen her. Her shawl was cast back, and her wild raven curls were freed. Her eyes shone with the light of impending violence, narrowed to gleaming slits in the mass of dark eye shadow.
“You’re like a magpie, Ratfink the Thief,” she purred. “Can’t resist a bauble, eh?”
A ripple of annoyance flowed across Ratfink’s features. The face that had a moment ago been amiable and vaguely handsome changed subtly, taking on a darker, more twisted hue.
“Can we not remain civilized and talk this out?” he asked, in a winningly persuasive voice.
“That piece of abstract art that you call a face,” I said. “Shut it.”
“We are all men and women of business here, surely,” Ratfink said. “Let us discuss what it is I can do for you.”
There was a strobing flash of purple light off to my right, a shriek, then the body of a goblin fell through one of the canvas roof flaps and smashed down onto a recently vacated food stall. Sparks erupted as the little creature landed on the large grill and sent the coals flying. Within a second or two, he was alight, his clothes kindled by the white-hot coals.
I noticed that the corpse’s legs had been neatly severed, and he had only cauterized stumps. In his clawed hand was a rather nasty-looking crossbow.
I glanced to my right and saw Mortimer slide out from behind a partition.
“Sniper,” he mouthed.
Ratfink and I locked gazes. My blue eyes against his brown and blue.
The thief’s hand twitched.
I took the initiative and fired a Blazing Bolt straight at Ratfink as Cecilia threw herself over a table of neatly presented paper weights and knives.
The last of the die-hard shoppers fled screaming.
Ratfink cartwheeled sideways with the athleticism of a ninja, extended his hand, and fired a blast of concentrated wind straight at me.
My Blazing Bolt missed the slippery son of a bitch by a fraction and exploded the stall behind him, sending pottery and crockery scything out in a cloud of finely-painted shrapnel.
I was picked up by Ratfink’s wind spell and thrown unceremoniously into the air, crashing through two glass cabinets containing an assortment of shrunken heads. I landed heavily on a pile of furs and used the momentum to do a backward roll that brought me to my feet again.
That’s right, I remembered, the fucker’s a Wind Mage.
I saw, as he backed away, that Ratfink’s face had completely changed now. The intricate mustache now looked more Waluigi than Poirot, and he resembled more and more the ratty figure that I had pictured in my head when I had first heard the name.
Odette conjured her bone spear and threw it with pinpoint accuracy at the retreating figure of the thief, but Ratfink made twisti
ng motions with his fingers and sent the projectile spinning away toward Cecilia. My Frost Mage girlfriend just managed to duck back behind the table, which she had thrown herself over a moment before, to avoid being spitted. The spear thunked into a pile of expensive vellum and stuck there, quivering.
Of course, Ratfink would have been just another piece of dead meat in the bazaar if it hadn’t been imperative that I be the one to kill him. Mortimer was circling the fight like a hyena. His dark eyes flicked around, making sure that none of Ratfink’s henchmen were lurking about.
The addition of Ratfink’s gang members was something we would likely have to deal with soon enough, because in the next moment, the chief thief had put his fingers to his lips and blown a long, high-pitched whistle.
And like rats out of a sewer, a dozen henchmen came streaming out of the aisles surrounding the little plaza we were fighting in.
Odette stuck one wood elf with her spear, twisted it, and relieved the thief of his innards. As the elf screamed in panic and scrambled to collect the guts falling like wet rope from his abdomen, Odette rolled over his back and threw the spear into the side of a witch who was running toward Cecilia. Once the dragonkin had divested herself of this weapon, she stood looking around for the next enemy.
She did not see the halfling drop from one of the canvas roof sheets behind her, but I did.
As the halfling Peculator raised his hand to smite her with some spell or other, I sent the most accurate Fireball of my life—golf ball-sized, but packed with as much potency as I could muster—shooting like a bullet over Odette’s shoulder.
The projectile punched through the halfling’s throat and blew chunks of spine across a nice yellow dress on display behind him. The Peculator fell dead at once.
Odette looked behind her, turned to see me, and nodded in thanks. Then she ran to help Cecilia.
Cecilia conjured her own Icicle Spear and started laying about her with savage abandon. Her beautiful face was contorted with battle fury, and she cried out with glee as she swept her blade across the back of a foe’s leg, hamstringing him.
Mortimer negotiated the battle like a very polite, very lethal ghost. As more Peculators appeared from wherever they had been hiding, he went through them like a hot scythe through butter sculptures, mowing them down with a combination of homicidal hand-to-hand combat skills and ruinously effective Chaos Magic. His face remained impassive as he made one Fire Elemental burst into shreds of shadow, while vanishing the head off another elf who had sprinted out to join the fight.
I witnessed all this out of my periphery though, because I only had eyes for Ratfink the Thief.
Ratfink saw me watching him and sent another whirlwind in my direction. The wind ripped clothes and maps and rugs and paintings out of shops and stalls. Mounds of spice burst apart and the air was turned suddenly to the color of ochre. One of the Peculators screamed as he was hit full in the face by a burst of powered dragon’s breath chilli, and he began to bleed out of his ears and nose.
I used my Metamorphosis spell and felt the Gemstone Elemental transformation take place over my body; felt the armor plates harden across my body. The extra weight and strength helped me to keep my feet as the rushing wind pounded me. My eyes were protected by a translucent film. I gritted my teeth and hunkered down as the wind raged about me and miscellaneous bits of wood and debris struck at me.
And then it was over.
Spices settled, drifting to the floor like fine, multicolored snow.
The tinkle of glass was the only sound for a few heartbeats.
Then, through the misty destruction, I saw Ratfink stalking toward me. I didn’t think he could see through the hazy orange air, but he must have known that his spell had smacked right into me. He probably thought I was dead.
There’s one lesson he’s not going to have the time to learn, I thought.
Off to one side, I could see the remains of a fallen cabinet, crammed full of knives and daggers of all descriptions. It was lying by its side, glass front all busted up.
Ratfink continued to walk toward me, while I stayed hunched over, feigning injury.
“Oh deary, deary me,” the articulate thief said, as he drew nearer. “What a great effort that was. How unfortunate that you had the temerity to try and kill me on my ground.”
You can forget Sun Tzu, the best advice that I ever received, when it came to fighting in Avalonia, was from Hollywood. I couldn’t remember the film—I was sure there had been many—but it basically amounted to this: let the enemy gas on as much as he likes. Let him blow smoke up his own ass until the cows come home and, before long, you would have handed him enough rope for him to hang himself.
Egos. They’re a killer.
Ratfink was jawing away to himself—giving me the whole, you’re shit and I’m the greatest treatment—when I used my Telekinesis spell to throw the whole busted-ass cabinet, with all its extremely sharp cutlery right at him with my mind.
He had no warning. He had no chance.
About fifty daggers flashed toward him, along with the remnants of the heavy wooden cabinet. Some hit him with their pommels—which probably would have pissed him off if it hadn’t been for all the other ones that stuck him with their pointy, terminal ends. Daggers punched into his thighs, shins, and shoulders. Knives slipped under his armpit, through his cheeks, into his ear canal and clean through his neck.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen anyone deader.
Then, the cabinet hit him, driving the knives deeper and flinging his ragged, perforated corpse into a great pile of dates.
I let out a sigh of relief and released the Metamorphosis spell, returning myself to normal.
Off to my left, Odette hunkered down behind a potter’s stall. I ran over to her, but before I could quite reach her, I was forced into cover in the stall over from her by a Storm Mage firing thin lightning bolts at the pair of us.
I fired a Storm Bolt back, blowing a chunk out of a sculpture of a Yeti made entirely of white chocolate. I looked down and saw the second diamond skull on the bracelet that Odette had given me fill with pale gray smoke.
“Right,” I yelled to Odette, “that skinny fucker’s picked his last pocket. Now, how the hell do we get out of here?”
A vase, struck by a thin tendril of lightning, shattered over Odette’s head, showering her gorgeous dark curls with bone china. She motioned for me to run to where she was hiding. At the same time, she held a glowing hand out to the stall that had been selling the whole roast crocotta carcasses.
Almost immediately, the charred skeletal carcasses of the roasted canines—four of them in all—shook themselves and tore free of the hooks that held them over the coals. The undead canines all made a beeline for the Peculators that were hemming us in.
One of the crocottas, despite the handicap of having blobs of pale jelly where its eyeballs should have been, almost instantly leapt on one of the late Ratfink’s men, bore him to the ground, and started savaging him. Entrails and blood flew through the air as the beast shook the luckless goblin in its jaws, cutting its gurgling shrieks off almost before they could begin.
“Oh, you are nasty,” I said happily to Odette as I threw myself into cover next to her. “One for the vegans, huh?”
Odette turned and kissed me full on the mouth. It was one of the most passionate kisses that I had ever experienced, full and hot-blooded and filled with spice. It was how I imagined it might be like making out with Cara Delevingne.
After what might have been days, we parted. The noise of the battle flowed back. I blinked and said, a little breathlessly, “What was that for?”
“For saving my life,” Odette said.
I came within an ace of saying, “It’s all in a day’s work”, but was saved from having to kick my own ass by a Fireball that flew over our heads and blew a hole through the rear of the stall we were hiding in.
“Let’s save the back-slapping and ass-patting for if we get out of here alive, yeah?” I said.
Odette nodded and grinned at me.
“There’ll be more than back-slapping and ass-patting, Mr. Mauler,” she said purred. “Now, follow me.”
She sprinted through the hole that the wayward Fireball had just created, and I followed. We boosted down a number of aisles, going deeper into the maze that was the Luminous Bazaar. I heard feet flapping along behind us and turned to see Mortimer and Cecilia right on our heels. Where they had come from I had no idea, but I suspected Mortimer was almost as adept at getting out of trouble as he was getting into it.
Without warning, we burst out into an open space. There was sunlight here, blazing down on a ring of portal stones. Without any unnecessary chat, we threw ourselves into the center of the ring, and Odette activated the spell that would take us back to Nevermoor.
Chapter Fourteen
We spent the evening back at the Cock and Bull Inn and then stayed the night. Even though we were only a quarter of an hour’s walk away from my fraternity house, Odette seemed to think that it made more sense for me to stay at the inn with her and Mortimer. Apparently, I had to stay focused for this final assassination mission, and it wouldn’t serve any of us if I got distracted by my fraternity brothers.
“I ‘ave three rooms reserved,” the dragonkin Death Mage told me, “so I suggest we eat, drink and—”
“Make merry?” I suggested.
Odette laughed huskily. “I was going to say sleep, but you do whatever you fancy, Mr. Mauler, you deserve it after today’s work.”
I sighed. “I probably should give the grog a rest tonight. After all, we have to secure the final soul.”
“I wouldn’t worry about giving it a rest. Enjoy yourself. In fact, I am going to ‘andle some things before morning, one of which is a potion from Madame Xel that we shall need tomorrow. With such a potion, you can imbibe as much as you like.”
“The potion sounds great, but you’re not hanging around?”
“Afraid not,” she replied.
I nodded, a little disappointed. “What time do you want to leave tomorrow?” I asked.
Odette considered this. She narrowed her eyes until they were slits in her heavily eye-shadowed face.
