“Very well, Wroclaw.” Max leaned on a stone windowsill across the staircase and watched shadows creep up the hills. One hill had gone into total eclipse by the time a figure bounded down the stairs toward him, running one hand through its hair. “The Great Karlini, I presume,” Max said, “and if you don’t tell me what’s up very quickly I’ll turn you into a carp and eat you, raw.”
“Oh, good, Max, it is you,” said the Great Karlini, pushing hair out of his eyes. “Haddo is certainly faithful, but his eyesight isn’t quite perfect and we’re never too sure what he’ll bring back.”
“That robe needs to be washed.”
Karlini looked down and started, apparently noticing the cluster of fresh stains for the first time. “Good old Max,” he said. “How do I manage without you?”
“That depends on what you’ve gotten yourself into this time.”
Karlini dropped an arm across Max’s shoulders and led him down the stairs. “So, Max, how have you been?”
Max stopped. “That’s it,” he said. “I’m out of here. See you later.”
“Max, now don’t -”
Max crossed his arms. “Look, Karlini, you get me dragged all the way out here, ruining a perfectly good if somewhat arid caravan trip, and then you won’t tell me why. Haddo won’t talk, Wroclaw won’t talk, you won’t talk. You know what that says to me? What that says to me is that you want me to do something that probably involves human sacrifice, and I bet we both know who’s the relevant human.”
Karlini sat down next to him on the stair. “Don’t glower at me like that, Max. It’s not that bad, but it is a long story. Actually, it’s not that long a story, but it’s sort of -”
“Karlini.”
“All right, all right. You noticed the castle?”
“Yeah, sure. Looks like a nice place.”
“Well … it’s okay.”
“So, what’s wrong with it? It have rats? Things?”
“It’s not what it has,” Karlini said, “it’s what it does. It moves.”
“Moves.”
“Not like earthquakes, I mean, or settling ground. I mean you wake up in the morning and the whole castle’s jumped somewhere else. It’s been here for almost two weeks, but before that, it was bounce, bounce, bounce. Just enough time to get an idea where we are, and then, poof!, another hemisphere. Last month we spent six days somewhere around the North Pole. We almost froze. I’m just waiting for this thing to head for the open ocean.”
“I assume we’ll get to the real point when you tell me why you can’t get rid of the place. You got a problem with the landlord?”
Karlini looked suspiciously at Max. “You sure you haven’t heard about this before?” Max shook his head, no. Karlini sighed. “Well, that’s the problem, all right. It won’t let me get rid of it. I can’t even walk out the door.”
2. THE CREEPING SWORD
At the same time Haddo was flying Max toward Karlini’s castle I was sitting at my desk minding my own business, the major thought on my mind being whether I’d be able to afford to eat after the day after tomorrow. There was no way I would have known about Max and Haddo at that point, of course, but I wouldn’t have cared anyway since I’d never heard of Haddo or Max or Karlini. Food was the issue, and realizing it was already past the middle of the day and I hadn’t had a customer in a week, and wondering how hungry I’d have to get before I’d be walking the streets looking for odd jobs and manual labor. Then someone knocked on the door. I put the half-drained flask I had been nursing in a drawer and said, “Come in.”
A woman came in. “My husband has been kidnapped,” she said, and that meant all of a sudden things were looking up.
Her husband had a large warehouse on the docks and a fleet of barges on the river. He hadn’t come home the previous night. According to her, he had always come home before. A note had appeared under the door in the morning. She passed it over to me.
Payment of 20,000 gold zalous will cause the return of Edrik Skargool. He is not hurt, yet search will cause death. More instructions will forthcome.
“Huh,” I said. The style was stilted, making me think of someone who was trying to sound educated without the benefit of actually having an education. On the other hand, the words were spelled right and the penmanship was neat. Still, I didn’t have to look too closely to find the major unusual detail. The medium was a sheet of burnished copper, and the words had apparently been etched into it with fire.
“Do you have any idea who this Creeping Sword is?” I asked.
“Certainly not, of course not,” she said. “That is your job, isn’t it?”
I made a noncommittal sort of hrrumphy sound and let her start talking again. She had gone to the police, such as they were. With the current political situation, the police weren’t about to investigate anything, unless the order came as a command from the Guard. So she’d gone to the Guard. The Guard was having too much fun enforcing martial law to worry about another kidnapping. The only kidnappings they were interested in were the ones they were doing themselves. I hoped for Skargool’s sake they weren’t the ones who had picked him up. I wasn’t about to fight the Guard for him, even if she paid me a lot, and I didn’t think anyone else would be prepared to either. “Will you find him?” she asked.
“I’ll do my best,” I said, “under the circumstances. That’s my job.”
She made an unhappy face at me. Sometimes that was a good tactic - I’m a man, and like any man I’ll turn gooey under the right circumstances - but it wasn’t going to work on me this time. I already didn’t like her. “If I pay you good money and give you my trust,” she said, “I would expect that you would at least be willing to guarantee -”
I had been leaning back in my chair. Now I let the chair fall forward so the two front legs hit the beam floor with a sharp “thud”, and pointed a finger at her for further emphasis. “Look, lady,” I said. “Roosing Oolvaya is a big city. There must be fifty thousand people here. Any day of the week a bunch of them disappear and never get found. Now we’re sitting with a dead Venerance, the son who probably knocked him off is in charge, and mercenaries are running around the streets giving orders to the rest of the normal Guard. You think the mess out there doesn’t make the usual mess worse? Well, it does, lady, a lot worse. People are getting rounded up, people are getting executed, and people are getting kicked into the sewers just for being in the wrong place. Not criminals, not only political folks, just people, you understand that? In this kind of situation, a lot of old grudges find themselves getting settled, a lot of nastiness pops up. It’s rough out there.”
“But,” she said, still pouting, “but what should I do, then?”
“If you hire me, I’ll find your husband if he’s findable. Are you hiring me?”
“Yes, yes, of course I am, even if -”
“Then get ready to pay this Sword person.”
“But 20,000 zalous! How could I -”
“I’ll get you the money back if I can.”
“But can’t you bargain with -”
“You might reflect,” I said, “on the fact that money can generally take more wear and tear than husbands can.”
She shut up. I asked questions, but none of the answers were helpful. She didn’t know of any disgruntled employees. The list of business enemies was short; she said her husband had a reputation as a straight dealer. They had no children.
“Who gets everything if he dies?” I said.
“Why, I’m not sure. I really don’t know.”
I had yelled down for a messenger earlier, after the scent of work had floated in with her, and the messenger now returned with Turbot. Turbot was in more-or-less the same line of work as me, whatever that was, and we used each other as backup man when things were happening. He was glad to have something to do that might pay, at least as glad as me. As the wife was leaving in Turbot’s custody she paused and looked back.