Dwarves and gnomes seemed to get along the worst of anyone, and peace was maintained primarily because the two races studiously ignored one another. Genocidal warfare from two centuries past had left its mark on both races. The quickest way to insult a member of one species was to suggest he actually might be a part of the other, and a few bloody incidents had persuaded all but the drunkest of men to avoid such comments.
The elves, as a rule, tended to remain isolated, which usually suited the other races. It wasn’t that elves were hostile to foreigners – not exactly anyway – they just tended to ignore the presence of non-elves and preferred to act like they didn’t exist. It was disconcerting to walk through a woodlands city where the entire population looked right through you. Not that Danner had ever actually visited one of their magnificent cities, but going through the elven sector of Marash was more than enough for him.
Dwarves and men usually maintained a steady relationship of trade, since men were almost completely dependent upon the stocky halflings[10] for their mechanical needs. No human could ever hope to duplicate the quality of the dwarven smiths, nor the cunningness required to create their marvels of technology. Craftsmen from Merishank tried, but the all-human nation spent too much of its time at war to devote the necessary energy toward innovation.
Men were always more than happy to trade with the gnomes, for the short, wiry demi-humans were a race of tinkers and constantly required a supply of raw materials they couldn’t take the time away from their projects to gather for themselves. It was a lucrative trade, suffering only when a local gnomish population was decimated after the periodic explosions that generally resulted from their misbegotten experiments. Danner spared a thought and a faint smile for Faldergash’s own recent explosion.
It was said that dwarves built for a purpose, while gnomes looked for a purpose for what they built.
A scuffle at the door behind him drew Danner’s attention, and he shook his head at the sight of a pair of guards detaining a denarae who was trying to force his way into the building. The struggling man was human in every respect except for his skin color, which was a dark shade of gray. Danner wasn’t sure what the denarae had been trying to do, and he started to turn away when he suddenly caught sight of an object in the man’s hands.
“Bomb!” he cried, throwing himself behind the statue he’d so recently been criticizing. A heartbeat later, a small explosion tore through the doorway of the building, killing both the denarae and the guards who had been struggling with him. Debris slid past where Danner crouched, and he shuddered as a gray-skinned finger rolled by, trailing thick, red blood.
For a dozen heavy breaths, Danner remained crouched behind the statue, staring at anything but the fragment of inhuman flesh. He slowly stood and glanced toward the doorway, then turned away from the carnage there. Already guards were hurrying into the room from a dozen different directions, all shouting conflicting orders. At last an officer arrived and brought order to the chaos. Danner answered a few questions, then took his leave, claiming the need to get on with his work. The officer released him without undue suspicion, though he informed Danner he might be questioned again for more details of the incident.
Danner made the appropriate assurances then walked to the elevators. Despite the recent trauma, Danner suffered his usual flash of ironic humor at seeing a device originally invented by dwarves being used in the Coalition’s headquarters. Hypocrisy was often amusing.
Ignoring the shouts and clamoring noises behind him, Danner pulled down the voice tube and hollered for a cage. He had only a few seconds to wait before a heavy rumbling filled the air, followed soon after by the appearance of the elevator cage. The cage nearly passed him by, but the operator howled into a tube for it to stop, and Danner only had to step down a foot or so to climb in. The sallow-eyed man inside pulled a sturdy gate across the front, then asked Danner what floor he was going to.
“I’m on the fourth floor, Alex, same as always,” he replied, suddenly feeling tired.
“Fourth floor, yes sir, right away, sir,” the operator replied drably, ignoring Danner’s comment. He bellowed into his tube again, and moments later the cage rumbled into motion, this time ascending the shaft that led from the top floor down to the second basement. Danner suspected there was at least one level below that, but if so it was certainly off-limits to him, and therefore he wasn’t even to know of its existence. The Coalition was often paranoid about such things and with good reason. The attack of only a few moments before was certainly evidence of that.
Danner sighed and waited for the cage to reach its destination. No, there wasn’t much hope for peace among the races of the world. At least, not without an act of God.
Chapter 2
A man’s greatest strength comes from observation.
- Elven Proverb
- 1 -
Danner sighed as he stepped back out into the streets of Marash. There had been no opportunities for him to line his pockets with excess money; in fact he’d had to use most of the small wealth he’d gained on the streets earlier to fill in a suspicious gap in his accounting. Usually he didn’t leave such noticeable deletions, and it bothered him that he’d overlooked this one. But then his late hours the day before had been nearly as boring as this day had been, and the lack of mental stimulation had likely just been too much of a drain on him.
Worse than merely working, though, was the interrogation he’d undergone when word was passed that he’d witnessed the denarae terrorist attack on the first floor. Official after official had questioned him extensively, both to accurately detail the experience as well as to probe for any possible involvement on Danner’s part. Finally satisfied, they’d released him to do his work, condemning him to boredom for the day.
Danner’s position as second undersecretary to the executive vice secretary of the chairman of trade was a surprisingly useful job, despite the strange nature of its conception. In the early days of the Coalition, there had been but one secretary for the chairman of each department. But at some point the chairman had decided he needed two secretaries for his work, and soon afterwards, each secretary suddenly required an entire staff of their own to assist them in their demanding jobs. The system had progressed from there, until less than a dozen years ago the first man had occupied the position that Danner now held.
Danner was never explicitly told what had happened to his predecessor, but when he was hired he heard muted grumblings about nepotism and incompetence, and the vice secretary had informed him he would not be allowed to bring in his own staff. Danner had no objections to this, especially since his first attempts at embezzlement. An assistant would be but one more pair of eyes to avoid in his criminal endeavors, a worry he most certainly did not need.
Of all the things about his position, though, what surprised Danner the most was that it was actually a useful post, as were all of those above his. The executive vice secretary did, in fact, have a full day’s work ahead of him each day, as did his first undersecretary and their collective boss, the vice secretary. Work was not simply passed down the ranks unnecessarily, and the entire operation actually seemed to work with some degree of efficiency. Not enough to prevent Danner’s minor changes in bookkeeping from going unnoticed, of course, but he was nevertheless impressed by its effective use of personnel.
Normally, Danner left work with a few spare coins in his pockets, enough to purchase fresh food on his way home. But the day’s lack of opportunity left him with only enough for a loaf of bread – from the money he’d acquired on his way into work – and the streets were too sparsely populated for Danner to feel comfortable picking pockets. Instead, he decided to stop at his father’s home to borrow food or cash; or both, if business was good and generosity was in the air. Danner grimaced, knowing his father would likely not be generous enough to completely refill his depleted larder. The sandwiches he’d made that afternoon for Faldergash and himself had consumed the last of their bread, which left little in the way of real food in th
eir small house. Faldergash would no doubt subsist on whatever happened to be edible, but Danner at least demanded a pretense of flavor in what he ate.
Danner crossed four heavily trafficked streets, avoided two men loudly handing out what appeared to be unsolicited invitations to a religious study group, then pointedly moved to the other side of the street to avoid a gnomish booth that was set up on the next street corner. Such displays were strangely common in the city, despite the high mortality rate associated with their presence. Many gnomish inventions involved either sharp metallic blades or intense heat, usually to produce steam, and these tended to be the most lethal when they almost inevitably exploded. Quite often a gnome’s booth would prove to be perfectly safe to passersby, but Danner always found it prudent to give them a wide berth.
The gnomes safely behind him, Danner walked another block, then slipped into a narrow crack between two buildings. To anyone watching him, Danner would have simply disappeared. Even should someone follow him, the route he followed through twisting alleys was impossible for someone not intimately familiar with it. This entrance to his father’s home was well hidden, as befitted the den of one of the city’s most notorious thieves.
- 2 -
“Halt,” a voice said. The tones were soft, but left no doubt in Danner’s mind that the voice was to be obeyed. He stopped and lifted his hands obligingly, fingers spread, knowing that this would be the next action required of him.
“Turn around slowly,” the voice continued.
Danner did as he was told, wondering why he was still forced to undergo this ritual every time he wanted to pay a call on his father. But he supposed every thief had to be paranoid, and the more successful you were the more careful you had to be. Part of the ritual was to give him a chance to cue the watchers with secret signals if he was leading someone into the hideout under duress, but that had always seemed an unnecessary precaution to Danner.
“Declare yourself,” the soft voice said once Danner had completed his revolution.
“Oh, for San’s sake, El’Maran,” Danner said in exasperation, “you know very well who I am.” With that, Danner took a step forward toward the door he knew was hidden in the shadows before him.
Before he’d taken a second step, he found a thin-bladed knife resting tip-first against his throat. Behind the knife was the grim face of an elf; one who, beneath the black balaclava that concealed most of his face, Danner knew possessed only one ear, the left one. The lack of an ear was a mark of shame of some sort, or so Danner had gathered from a few reluctant comments. The elf had often acted as his babysitter when Danner was much smaller, before he’d been thrown out on the streets to make his own way, and most of Danner’s weapons training and finer thieving skills had come at the elf’s instruction. Danner had a healthy respect for Maran’s skills, and he knew the elf was capable of skinning him alive with his eyes shut. Danner was at best an average height for a human, so he was even with the black-clad elf and had a clear view of his all-too dangerous eyes.
“Declare yourself,” the elf repeated.
“Satan’s teeth, Maran,” [11] Danner muttered, then continued in a louder voice, “I am Danner de’Valderat, son of Hoil de’Valderat.” Danner did his best to ignore the blade against his throat. He didn’t think Maran would knowingly draw his blood, but when the elf’s eyes were this grim…
“You may pass,” Maran said, removing the knife. The ritual completed, the elf’s face suddenly relaxed and Danner thought he almost saw a smile twitch beneath the cloth hood. “You must stop doing that, Danner,” Maran said softly. “I may not always be on duty, and you cannot trust a human not to slip and slit your throat.”
“Maran, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a human,” Danner pointed out.
“Only on the outside, to’vala,”[12] the one-eared elf said. “Of any human I know, your father included, you above all possess the lightness and careful touch of the elf. Did I not know better, I might have guessed you to be of mixed blood.”
Danner was genuinely surprised and pleased by this comment. For an elf to allow any sort of favorable comparison between his people and another race was like a dwarf being pleased his daughter was marrying a gnome – the next best thing to an absolute impossibility.
Danner cleared his throat uncomfortably and looked expectantly over Maran’s shoulder toward the door.
“You can go in, using the regular door,” Maran said, responding to the unasked question. “Your father is expecting you.”
“Thanks,” Danner replied, stepping around the elf. “And don’t worry, I’d only try a stunt like that if I recognized your voice in the challenge.”
Maran shook his head.
“Still, it is always better to be cautious, to’vala,” he said, his voice still characteristically soft. “Being careful rarely kills anyone, but being careless has brought down kings and nations.”
That said, Maran melted into the shadows and soon it was beyond Danner’s ability to distinguish the elf from the blackness around him. In silence, Danner turned back and walked the few steps to the main doorway. He slipped into his father’s home.
- 3 -
Danner squinted in the suddenly bright light and cursed himself for not remembering to shield his eyes. Flames erupted the instant he entered the room, momentarily blinding him. As accustomed as he was to his father’s precautions, Danner had often thought this a trifle excessive. The main room was reasonably well-lit, but elven magic[13] caused a brief flare of light whenever someone entered the room, which overrode anyone’s eyes that had become accustomed to the heavy shadows of the narrow corridor outside. This gave everyone inside a good, long look at whoever the newcomer might be, and allowed ample opportunity to hide any items – or faces – better left unseen.
“My boy,” a voice boomed. Danner blinked repeatedly to clear his vision, and managed to rid himself of the reddish glare just as his father engulfed him in an embrace. Danner rolled his eyes and immediately reached for his small pouch, beating his father’s hand by a heartbeat. The assembled men in the room smiled knowingly.
“Easy, dad,” Danner said. “You know that never works.”
“Not since you were seven anyway,” his father replied, not in the least put off by his son’s comment. In fact, he smiled with affectionate pride as he reached out to ruffle his son’s hair. “How are you, boy?”
Danner’s father was a giant of a man, possessing a size that was surpassed only by his speed. His reflexes and dexterous fingers were those of a man much less massive, but his immense strength was perfectly in proportion with his size. There was little definition of his muscles, but there was also little in the way of fat on him. Danner wondered idly, and not for the first time, how he’d somehow missed most of his father’s physical traits.
The two of them were similar of feature, and both possessed straight, dark hair, but there the physical similarity ended. Where Danner’s father was tall, Danner could charitably be called average in height. Danner was narrow of build, while his father bordered on gigantic, and thus Danner possessed none of his father’s infamous strength. In fact the only thing besides his face that he’d gotten from his father was his speed. Danner was the only human he knew of that was actually faster than his father, both in running and in simple reflexes, and in the latter the difference was a matter of splitting hairs. Only an elf would prove faster, and Maran had once indicated that only a handful of elves could surpass Danner or his father.
Setting aside their physical nature, Danner and Hoil de’Valderat began to appear more as father and son. Danner had inherited some of his father’s keen sense of reading – and preying upon – human nature, as well as his father’s sense of humor, albeit in a less boisterous form. There were times growing up when Danner had doubted that the man he called father had really birthed him – everyone who knew their family, however, firmly assured him that he was Hoil’s son. There was to be no doubt there.
“I’m doing all right, dad,” Danner replied.
“Work was a little slow today, though.”
“Bah! Work,” his father snorted his opinion of such a pastime. “Only living man in this family who does honest work.”
Of course, Danner and his father were the only living men in their family, so the statement didn’t carry much weight with the young thief. Danner sighed.
“Yeah, but the majority of it isn’t honest, and…”
“…that makes it okay,” they finished in unison, completing their long-standing disagreement over the subject. It wasn’t until Danner had taken home a hundred gold pieces from one uniquely spectacular haul that he’d been able to convince his father that his taking a job was a worthwhile cover for his clandestine efforts of earning money. They had finally agreed to disagree, although Danner secretly suspected his father was considerably proud of his son’s success as an embezzling thief.
“Alright, boy, so what brings you by here then?” his father asked. “You don’t come by to see me for purely social visits anymore…”
“I’ve never come to see you for strictly social visits, dad, you know that,” Danner commented lightly.
“…so I’m assuming you’re out of food again,” his father continued, glowering at the interruption.
“A deduction worthy of the deron’dala,”[14] Danner said dryly.
The barb hit home and Danner’s father scowled as he tried to bring his fist down to thump his son on the head. Danner had been ready for just such a move, though, and he easily ducked the blow and disappeared behind his father, quickly lifting a small purse from his belt. Hoil whirled about before Danner could investigate the larger pouch on his other hip.
The game would have continued longer, but a surreptitious knock on the wall from outside brought all activity within the room to a silent halt. For those who might have missed the quiet warning, a previously concealed light had also been uncovered, providing a visual cue to those inside that someone was approaching, and Danner knew that a similar signal had been made when he’d made his own approach. Hoil’s hidden guards provided ample warning of any guests.
Hunting The Three (The Barrier War) Page 3
