Duty Bound

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Hells, this is alarming,” Rhi said from the back room.

  Zenia hurried through after her and almost bumped into her back. A high window on the alley-side wall let in light, and it was brighter than the front room. She could easily see a desk, chair, shelves, and bulletin boards on one side and a small forge taking up most of the rest of the space. It was the bulletin boards that Rhi stared at.

  “What did you find?” As far as Zenia could tell, the inner room was as undisturbed as the outer, with no signs of a skirmish or a hasty departure.

  Rhi leaned forward, pulled a tack out of a piece of paper, and handed it to Zenia. “That.”

  “A picture of a dwarf?”

  Someone had sketched a bearded dwarf on the paper. It might have been Master Grindmor, though the artist hadn’t been overly blessed with ability, so it was hard to tell.

  “That’s Grindmor, I think, and there’s a heart around the picture.”

  “So?”

  Zenia checked the back and found a poem. A love poem from what she could decipher. It had been written using a combination of dwarven and Korvish, switching mid-line depending on the demands of rhyme and meter. Since dwarven words tended to be a couple of feet long, she imagined finding good rhymes in that language was difficult.

  “It looks like she has an admirer,” Zenia said. It was signed Dorbok Minehafter. Was that the dwarf they’d bumped into outside? Or another admirer? “You find something suspicious about it?”

  Zenia had seen jilted lovers involved in revenge crimes, but it was early to assume this Minehafter was involved. Unless he was someone who had seen Cutter getting close to Grindmor and had acted out of jealousy.

  “I didn’t say it was suspicious. I said it was alarming. Who falls in love with a bearded woman?”

  “Bearded men, I suppose.” Zenia drew out her notebook and wrote Minehafter’s name down. It wouldn’t hurt to look him up and see if he lived in the city. If nothing else, he might know Grindmor’s usual haunts around the capital, places they could check for information.

  “Are these love letters?” Rhi pulled a box full of letters and envelopes, some opened and some not, from a shelf.

  “Probably receipts or copies of invoices. She does run a business.”

  Rhi lifted a page. “This one is in Korvish. Mostly. An Ode to an Artist of Unparalleled Renown. Doesn’t sound like an invoice.”

  “The work of Minehafter?”

  “No, this is signed by someone else. Rockcrusher. Another dwarf, presumably.” Rhi flipped through the letters. “He’s written several times. So have others. By the founders, Zenia. There must be twenty different dwarves that have sent her love letters or poems. This one sent a schematic of a… mandoline?”

  “A vegetable slicer?”

  “Yes, with a giant flyer and all manner of gears. According to the notes, it slices, dices, and juliennes. I guess nothing says love like kitchen tools.”

  Zenia left Rhi to root through the love letters and poked into the desk drawers, looking for more concrete clues. She found the invoices and receipts she’d expected, along with an accounting book with tidy rows of columns. It didn’t take her long to deduce that the business was profitable, and Grindmor didn’t seem to owe anyone any money. They didn’t find any blackmail threats among the letters or any crossly written messages by spurned lovers. They also didn’t find any clues to suggest that Grindmor had returned the affections of any of the admirers, unless it was significant that the drawing had been pinned up instead of in the box with the letters and poems.

  “I don’t think there’s anything here that’s going to help us.” Reluctantly, Zenia stepped away from the desk.

  Rhi returned the love letters to the shelf. “Just proof that Master Grindmor has far more allure to dwarves than she does to humans.”

  “How can you be positive human men don’t find her alluring?”

  “I know what men like.” Rhi patted her backside.

  “A woman with a big bo?”

  “Exactly.”

  Zenia formed thoughts in her mind and tried to ask the dragon tear if there was any magic in the office beyond the booby traps it had disarmed. Powerful artifacts one might kidnap a person for? Hidden cubbies that held arcane secrets? Magical maps leading to distant treasures?

  The dragon tear pulsed once against her skin, conveying a negative.

  Too bad.

  Zenia headed for the exit. “Let’s finish visiting people on our list of informants before going back to the castle.”

  She’d hoped she would be able to take clues about Grindmor’s disappearance back with her. She hadn’t yet been given the assignment to search for the master carver, but she believed it would land on her desk soon, if it hadn’t already. Master Grindmor was an important person that many people in the city relied upon. Nobody else could carve dragon tears the way she could.

  Zenia wished she could have solved the mystery of her disappearance preemptively since she still felt she had to prove herself to their new king. Rhi might be the junior agent, but Zenia had only been on the job a week longer and felt she’d bumbled the way to solving her first case. She dearly wanted to once again have an employer consider her invaluable.

  4

  As soon as Jev reached the castle that afternoon, a page accosted him and escorted him to Targyon’s office, saying only that the king had been looking for him that morning and wanted to see him as soon as he arrived. That made Jev feel delinquent in his duties for coming in late.

  He thought Targyon would understand that he’d needed to talk to anyone who might have information about Cutter, but he could have invited Hydal and the others to see him in Alderoth Castle rather than Dharrow Castle. He also could have come in sooner instead of staying after the meeting to play horses and knights with his cousin’s children, Drayon and Teeks. But Teeks, in particular, had taken to Jev and constantly asked for stories about the “noble battles” he’d engaged in during the war. Even if they weren’t his children, Jev would have felt bad not making time for them, the way his father had so rarely made time for him when he’d been a boy. One day, Drayon and Teeks would likely work for the estate—and for him after his father passed—in some capacity or another, and he wanted to have a good relationship with them. With all the people he would one day be responsible for. He didn’t want to be some distant hard-to-approach liege lord.

  Jev hoped Targyon wouldn’t think him derelict in his duties here. A part of him wondered if he’d made a mistake by accepting this job, but he had obligations to his king and the kingdom too. That was an oath he’d sworn at fifteen, during his Ceremony of Manhood, and he’d sworn it again when Targyon took the throne.

  He wondered what it would be like not to have any obligations to anyone. As he passed into Targyon’s outer office, he wiped the wistful expression off his face and reminded himself that he had been awarded a very good life because of the position he’d been born into. It wasn’t seemly to complain, even to oneself. The Code of Honor spoke of selfless sacrifice as the noblest of all qualities a zyndar should strive for, and strive for it, he would.

  As soon as the secretary knocked on the inner door, two men who had been exchanging parting words with Targyon walked out. They were both zyndar primes and nodded polite greetings at Jev, but after speaking to Hydal, Jev couldn’t help but wonder if every zyndar he passed now believed him a schemer with his hooks in Targyon.

  “Come in, Jev.” Targyon paced in front of his desk instead of sitting behind it.

  Seeing him agitated made Jev feel guilty all over again for coming in late.

  “Sorry, I wasn’t here earlier, Sire. I was at Dharrow Castle. I didn’t realize you needed to see me today.”

  “Family business?” Targyon stopped and pushed his fingers through his hair. Judging by its disarray, he’d been doing that often today. At least he had mostly recovered from the flu that had laid him low earlier in the week. The one hint that he might still be tired and napping often were the slippe
rs he wore instead of his usual boots.

  “In a manner of speaking. My father has threatened to arrange a marriage for me if I don’t find myself a suitable zyndari lady by the end of summer.”

  “Ah. My condolences. Though maybe that’s easier than propositioning women and being rejected.” A fleeting grimace crossed Targyon’s face.

  Jev assumed any propositioning he’d done had been before the coronation and likely before he’d joined the war effort.

  “It’s worth risking rejection to find someone you love. Uhm, Sire. Did you know that Cutter is missing?”

  “Cutter? I know Master Grindmor is missing. That’s what I called you here about.”

  “You want the agents to look for her?” Jev guessed.

  “I want the agents to find her. Soon.”

  “You think she’s in danger?”

  “I don’t know, but having her missing could start… an incident.”

  “With whom? The dwarven embassy?” Jev didn’t know where in the city the dwarven embassy was, but since the elves had one, he assumed the dwarves did too.

  “Them, too, I suppose, but I was thinking of Preskabroto, the most predominant and most powerful dwarven nation. In the hope of fostering goodwill between our nations, I sectioned off some royal land in the city and offered it to any industrious dwarves that were willing to relocate here. Free land essentially, with the only stipulation being that they would set up shop and sell to the people of Korvann. Kor’s subjects would have access to superior dwarven workmanship, the crown would have more businesses to collect taxes from, and it would foster racial diversity, something that the capital and kingdom as a whole have been sorely lacking in the last generation or so.”

  Jev nodded. “It sounds like a good idea.”

  “I thought so. Good for the economy, good for foreign relations. That was before a prominent dwarf—not just prominent here but prominent among her own people too—went missing. I fear the dwarves who have accepted my offer will not be pleased to hear this when they arrive.”

  “How many are coming?” Jev was surprised Targyon had managed to set this in motion so quickly. He must have sent off the offer before he’d officially been crowned. Though surprised, Jev was pleased that Targyon was already working toward the good of the city and the kingdom.

  “Five hundred.”

  Jev stared. “Five hundred?”

  “On a big dwarven steamship that’s due to dock in a few days.” Targyon pushed his hand through his hair again. “When I made the offer to King Bladrocknor, I thought he’d put up a poster in his city and that maybe a handful of dwarves would trickle in each year for the next few years…”

  “Do you have enough royal land to accommodate that many?”

  “Oh, yes. The Alderoths own a large portion of the city. There should be plenty, and I offered them a couple of old mines in the royal mountain forests too. I didn’t realize it would be such an enticing offer to so many.”

  “Hm, a new opportunity for them, perhaps? Cutter has mentioned that his home city is heavily populated and full of master craftsmen and women, so it can be difficult for dwarves to get work. Especially if they have any kind of impairment. That’s why he left.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  Jev well remembered when Cutter had first ambled into Gryphon Company’s camp, offering to carve for the soldiers or repair watches and the like for a small fee. He’d been traveling solo across the war-torn continent and barely making a living. A zyndar officer had needed a rifle repaired, and Jev had been so impressed with the quality of the work and the speed in which Cutter had done it that he’d offered him a job on the spot. Cutter had accepted and often said he appreciated that the soldiers didn’t assume he wouldn’t be good at his work because he lacked one hand. Jev hadn’t expected Cutter to go into battle alongside his people, but he’d taken his job—and the new friendships he quickly made—seriously. Jev owed him for his loyalty and the way he’d often risked his life for the company.

  “Yes,” Jev said. “I imagine others of his kind have felt the same way.”

  “Five hundred others, apparently. Jev, I need you and Zenia to find Master Grindmor before the dwarven ship arrives.”

  “Yes, Sire. We’ll find her. I’m sure Cutter knows where she is.”

  “That would be reassuring if you hadn’t opened by saying he’s missing too.”

  “I know, Sire, but at least if they’re missing together, we won’t have to divert our resources to search for them separately.” Jev decided not to ask Targyon if he would have minded Jev using his resources to search for a simple visitor to the city. He didn’t think Targyon would object since he’d known Cutter for two years. “Did you already tell Zenia?”

  “No, Zyndar Garlok reported that she and Rhi Lin had gone out for cocktails and to play chips early this morning.” Targyon’s lips twisted. “Which I assumed to mean they were doing work in the city.”

  “Ah, that’s likely. I’ve yet to see Zenia consume more than a sip of anything alcoholic. She seemed unimpressed by the fine elven wine I offered her.”

  Targyon arched his eyebrows. “After hours, I assume.”

  “Yes, Sire. I don’t ply women with wine when we’re both supposed to be working.”

  Targyon’s expression grew difficult to read. Jev hoped he wouldn’t object to his two Crown Agent captains dating each other. Not that they were now. Jev regretted bringing it up. Or alluding to it. Whatever he had done.

  “Glad to hear it,” Targyon said.

  “I’ll find her and let her know we’re officially on assignment. Oh, do you have any objection to me hiring Hydal from the company?”

  “Not at all. Is he willing? I wonder if he’d come up and play a game of Castles and Knights with me.”

  Jev remembered the two playing out in the Taziira forests on a makeshift board using rocks instead of sculpted figurines. “After he’s done snooping on our fellow zyndar, I imagine so. Apparently, I need an agent attending social gatherings and collecting the latest gossip from zyndar and zyndari lips.”

  “Yes, that would be a good idea. If you want him to be useful, he should be a secret agent, not someone with a desk at the castle.”

  Jev nodded, realizing he should have thought of that. If people knew Hydal worked for him, they wouldn’t gossip about him around the man.

  “Good point, Sire. I did promise to introduce him to Rhi, but then I’ll shimmy him out of the castle.”

  “Rhi? The monk?”

  “The monk who is even now fantasizing about you in your silk pajamas.”

  “I hardly think that’s true.” Targyon scoffed, but his cheeks turned slightly pink. That would teach him to avoid mention of the odd feel of his lush new royal wardrobe in front of ladies. “You’re dismissed, Jev.”

  Jev bowed politely and strode out, wondering if it was early enough in the day to visit the clockmaker’s shop Hydal had mentioned. He also wondered where Zenia and Rhi were now. He wanted to let Zenia know about their new assignment.

  Deciding to check the agents’ office in the basement first, he headed in that direction. He was at the intersection of one of the broad hallways on the main floor when the call of a woman made him pause.

  “Jev?” the familiar voice asked, sounding surprised.

  He was surprised too. By the founders, he hadn’t heard that voice in ten years.

  Jev swallowed and turned to face Naysha, his former fiancée and presently another man’s wife. She was walking down the hallway, escorted by a guard. Judging by the way the guard pointed at Jev, they had been looking for him.

  For some silly reason, his heart started hammering against his rib cage. His armpits pricked, breaking out in a sweat. He felt like the teenage boy he’d been when he first fell in love with her, years before he’d managed to convince her that she, two years his senior, found his attention flattering and loved him back.

  “Hello, Naysha.” Jev hoped his voice sounded casual.

  Did he st
ill have feelings for her? He didn’t know. He’d spied on her a few days earlier—her and her three children—but only so he would know she was doing all right. He hadn’t knocked on her door, hadn’t wanted to interfere in her life.

  Logically, he shouldn’t want anything to do with her ever again. Even if he could understand her not waiting for him, it still rankled that it had taken less than a year before she’d married someone else. Presumably far less than that before she’d started seeing that Grift Myloron and finding comfort in his arms. How true could her love have been if she’d gotten over Jev and forgotten the promise they made to each other so quickly?

  Logic didn’t keep sweat from slithering down his spine as she approached, smiling the smile that had made his heart flutter long ago. It didn’t have quite the same effect now, but she hadn’t lost any of her beauty. She was a little plumper and more motherly, but she’d been but a wisp when they had been together. The padded hips and bosom looked good on her.

  “Hello, Jev,” she said quietly, drawing close. She stopped at arm’s length and slanted her escort a pointed look.

  “Zyndari,” the guard rumbled politely and retreated back down the hallway.

  Jev didn’t think the man would normally have let a random woman, even a zyndari woman, roam the castle hallways unattended, but Naysha had a regal I-belong-here bearing. It was also possible the guard assumed that if she was in a Crown Agent’s company, she was being watched.

  “It’s good to see you,” Jev offered inanely. He had no idea what to say, nor any idea what she wanted.

  Likely not to tell him that her husband was odious and she was leaving him.

  She lifted a hand, as if to take his, but ended up threading her fingers together in front of her instead. “I’d heard most of the men who went off to war returned this month. I wasn’t sure if you were among them until Grift mentioned reading in the paper that you’d been appointed to an office by the new king.”

  “That is true.”

  “I was glad to hear that you’re alive and well. I wish… I guess I can’t be surprised that you didn’t come to see me.” She looked down at her clasped hands.