"Stop her!" Ersatz's voice rang out.
Ella and I spun on our heels. It took me a moment to figure out what was wrong, since it seemed as though the lights had gone out. The crystal was gone!
"After her!" Ersatz shouted. The blue eyes reflected in his shimmering blade were wide with anger.
"How'd she get out of here?" I demanded.
"The green wench!"
"What green wench? Where'd she go? How'd she get out?"
"Up there, caitiff," Ersatz said. I followed the direction his eyes were pointing, up the wall to the single window in the room, twenty feet above the floor. Its small wing casements were open, and the light muslin curtains fluttered in the breeze. It didn't look big enough for anyone to have entered that way, but clearly someone had. "She slipped down like a wraith. It was the work of a moment to smother Kelsa in a cloth to still her outburst, then up again, all without making a sound!"
I may not have my magik at the moment, but I can sense when it's been used. This was not a hit and run. It was a surgical invasion, quick, precise and disturbing nothing more than it had to. This was a professional theft.
"Is anything else missing?" I asked Ella.
"Well, I don't think so," the Orion said, peering around with her big, glowing eyes. "There shouldn't be. This is exactly what she predicted, after all."
"She did? She predicted this?"
"Oh, yes. She said she'd probably be stolen before she could finish telling you the prophecy about the Golden Hoard," Ella said. "And that's exactly what happened! I'm so pleased!"
She wasn't going to be any help. I ignored her and surveyed the room for clues.
"Did you leave that window open, Ella?" I asked.
"Why, no. It's so difficult to reach. I rarely use it. On the outside, it's a sheer drop of thirty feet to the ground. My goodness, this is exciting!"
"Exciting?" I asked.
"Was it locked?" Ersatz asked.
"Forget that," I told him. Any good thief worth his salt, or in this case, hers, wouldn't be stopped by a little latch. Come on." I grabbed him up and ran out. The chances of spotting the thief were vanishingly minute, but I had to try. Ella's voice rang behind me.
"Kelsa told me that there would be some slight hiccup when the two of you met again, but I had no idea it would be now!"
I jogged down the steps of the whitewashed house and around the corner into the alley that the window overlooked. As Ella has said, it was a steep wall with no handholds in sight. That would be no problem for a professional. Whoever it had been must have run off over the adjacent rooftops, which were so nearby that anyone could have made the jump unassisted by magik.
"Have after her at once, Aahz!" Ersatz demanded. "Wrest Kelsa from her grasp! I must know my fate!"
"Forget it, Bub," I said.
"What?"
I peered around, hoping to spot something that would give me a clue.
"I know a few professional second-story operators. They only work alone after dark. Usually during daylight they've got at least one lookout, maybe some hired muscle close by. I'm not going to dive into a trap. We're going to take this nice and easy."
"But she will be far away by now! Possibly in another dimension."
I met the sharp blue eyes on the blade. "If she could have magiked in and out without coming in the window, she would have. Nobody takes chances like that unnecessarily, and not for free, either. Speaking of which..." I opened my hand, as if about to let Ersatz fall in the gutter in front of Ella's house.
"Anything!" the sword said. "I will offer you a further reward, good Aahz."
I grinned. "Nice to see we're on the same page. All right. Let's see what we're dealing with. You're the sole eye-witness to the crime. Describe our perp. She's green. What else?"
"A well-shaped wench, or so many of my wielders would have described her. Tight garments, and yet they did not restrict the movement of her limbs, of which there were only four' two arms, affixed at shoulders to an upright torso on either side of the base of the neck, and two legs, affixed likewise, to the bottom of said torso. Musculature endoskeletal..."
"Cut to the chase! What dimension does she come from?"
"Oh, that. Well, then, good friend, she hails from that most fascinating of places, where dimorphism is of an extreme, in inverse character to many species for whom the female is the larger of the two in order to better conceive and carry offspring, a comparison that is something apposite in this case since the females are readily fond of mating..."
"What is she?" I bellowed, my voice ringing in the quiet street.
"A Trollop," Ersatz said. "A most limber one, like many of her species. A denizen of Trollia.. .why do you break into a smile? Is that good news?"
"Did I ever tell you," I said, unable to keep the glee off my face, "that I don't believe in coincidences?"
Chapter 3
IT TOOK A while to search out the local hostelries that served demons, but with a few threats and a couple of small coins to help spur memories, I got the names and locations of ones where a Trollop might hang out, if she had just finished a successful job and hadn't left Ori yet.
'Demon' doesn't mean 'terrifying monster from hell' as it does to races in backwater places where advanced magik and science are unknown—all right, it doesn't ALWAYS mean that. It's simply a shorthand way of saying 'dimensional traveler,' like myself and countless others who have the means of hopping in between locales at will. That's not to say that when we land in some places we're not considered to be terrifying monsters from hell. Some of the uncomplimentary descriptions I've heard of my kind have been enough at times to make me lose my temper, and anyone you ask will tell you that doesn't happen too often. That is, if they know what's good for them.
The inns where we tend to congregate have a few things in common, such as a magikal link to the Bank of Zoorik, off-dimension newspapers, a host of mercenaries and other be-ings-for-hire, and a hot grapevine where gossip, rumors and job offers are mixed up with the local news. They're not always friendly or comfortable places.
The first demon bar I visited had all the charm of the waiting room in the Bucharest airport. No one was there but a couple of loudly-dressed Imps hanging over a table in the corner drinking up the proceeds from the day's sale of snake oil to the locals. The second had just been raided by the Perrt Constabulary to haul away a drunken Ogre and the angry Salamander he'd ticked off. There wasn't anything left to sit on. All the furniture was smashed or burned, and the Orion proprietor was curled into a furry fetal ball in the corner behind the ruined counter.
We struck lucky, as I could have guessed, in hostelry number three. Even though the lights were pretty low I could see that the place was crowded. Hardly an Orion was in sight except for the bartender and the barmaids who swished their abundantly furry tails playfully around the patrons. Conversations, furtive or fueled by alcohol, were going on in every part of the big room. I walked in with Ersatz displayed in plain sight on my hip, golden hilt and gems glinting. I nodded to a couple of Deveels playing Dragon Poker, and cleared my throat.
"Yo, bartender," I called. "A table for me and my sword."
The elderly tabby Orion polishing bowls and glasses glanced around, then nodded toward a rickety two-top in the corner near the stairs. Every eye in the room followed me as I sauntered over and plopped myself down in a chair. Within moments, I felt a saucy tickle at the fringe of my right ear.
"Surprise," a voice breathed. "Is that a hand-and-a-half in that scabbard, or are you just glad to see me?"
A pair of lips planted themselves firmly on mine. When I could breathe again, I gasped out, "Tananda."
My old associate and even older friend backed away and smiled at me. "In the flesh, tiger."
"This is she," Ersatz said, "down to garments she was wearing when she sailed down the cord in Ella's study."