“Okay,” I said, “I get it. I’ve got no choice. I’ll do what you want, I’m not an idiot. So what kind of insurance does Skargool have, anyway?”
“Life,” he said, “Of course.”
“Don’t you have ways of knowing whether he’s still alive?”
He turned up one corner of his mouth in what might have been a smile, or maybe just a nervous tic. “Omnipotence is not one of our patron’s virtues. These things take time and energy, and attention.” He got to his feet.
“Just one more question,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Who took out the insurance, and when?”
He gave me the tic again. “The wife,” he said, “of course. One month ago.”
“Right,” I said. “How will I get in touch with you?”
“I will be in touch with you. Good day.” The door closed behind him. I opened the desk drawer and took out the flask, then decided to just hit my head against the wall for a few minutes. I turned around, and while I looked for a spot on the wall that didn’t already have a dent the door creaked open behind me again.
“What now?” I said, but this time the man who’d come in was different.
With a shapeless cap pulled low enough over his face to rest on the bridge of his nose, and a generally squat frame, the guy looked like no further than second cousin away from a giant toad. “Da time ta see de boose is now,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “da boose.” I forgot about the flask and followed after him out the door.
We wound around local streets, heading generally back toward the docks, and finally entered a shuttered house where we descended to the basement. Beneath an old rug was an iron grate. The guy rolled up the edge of the rug, being careful not to disturb a slender thread that ran from one frayed corner off into the darkness. Then he turned his back, did something behind him in the gloom, and waited. Running water gurgled below the grate, gradually growing fainter. Finally the grate clanged and squeaked open. The edge of a ladder was revealed, leading down into a big pipe that I hoped wasn’t the sewer.
A concealed mechanism drained the last swirls of water away as we reached the base of the ladder. Next to the ladder a section of the stone facing wall had opened, revealing a crawlway. Bending low, I followed the guy into the wall, through several ascending turns thick with slime and algae, and up out of the garbage into a small torchlit anteroom. Three other exits led down through the floor or into the walls in a similar manner as the one we’d entered through. Four men got up from a table and pushed me against the wall. One of them frisked me, two others kept their hands on their swords, and the final one nervously slapped a large cudgel against his palm. They didn’t find anything; as I kept finding reasons to reiterate I wasn’t an idiot. The thugs moved aside and one grunted, tilting his head in the direction of a wall tapestry. I moved the tapestry aside and went through the concealed door behind it.
The new room had walnut wall-panels, a bookcase filled with leather-bound volumes, and a large desk with a man seated next to it. The man was wearing a dressing gown embroidered with dragons and other mythical beasts and on his nose he had a pair of spectacles, through which he was studying a ledger-book. He looked mild-mannered enough, and he could be, but generally he wasn’t: this wasn’t the first time we’d met. The boss looked up at me, over the tops of the spectacles, and said, “Sit down. What’s on your mind?”
“Its not a what,” I said, sitting. “It’s a who. Edrik Skargool. Somebody kidnapped him, but it doesn’t sound like you.”
“Hah,” he said. “The kid has a lip.” He leafed through his book, alternately watching me over his glasses and glancing down into the book. “Skargool. Here he is.” The boss read for a moment. “He’s rich, yeah, but it’s mostly property, not a lot of cash. He pays his protection dues regular, no trouble there. Kidnap rating’s low, so you’re right, hah, why should I take him out? Stupid. Whoever did it, stupid. Some people got no business sense.” His eyes looked up at me again. “Like to know your own ratings, hah?”
“Sure, except I’m sure it would cost me more than I’m worth to find out. I’m sure you know that, too.”
“Hah,” he said noncommittally.
“Anyway, that’s beside the point,” I said. “The one thing I do need is this. You have anything on somebody called The Creeping Sword?”
“The what? Creeping Sword? You got to be kidding. What idiot kind of name is that?”
I passed him the kidnap note.
“Creeps,” he said, studying it. “Some punk. Punks all over the place. Whole damn town is crawlin’ with punks.” He glowered at the note, then glowered at me, and then spun the note back at me like a throwing star. Then, for good measure, as I ducked out of the way and let the note chew itself into the back of my chair, he grabbed his ledger book and hurled it across the room. It was big, and heavy for a book, and made a loud thud against the stone wall. The guards from the room outside the tapestry suddenly appeared and began to drag me out the rest of the way out of my chair. “Civil wars,” the boss yelled, glowering now at everyone in sight. “I hate ‘em. Bad for business. Lousy for everybody. What?”
I had been gargling at him, hoping he would remember me before the boys actually started carving. The boss stared at me for a second, then said, “Forget about him, he’s all right. Put him down.”
They dropped me back across the chair and filed out. I sat up, worked my shoulder around a bit, and worked the kidnap note out of the wood of the chair as I worked on steadying my breathing. “Thanks,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, which from him passed for an apology. “So I’ve got a job too you can come along and help. You know Kriglag?”
“I’ve heard of him, never met him.” Kriglag ran the wharf rackets.
“He’s a dope. He thinks he’s gonna work with this new Venerance, what’s-his-name, cooperate with all these fresh mercenaries, end up fencing their loot maybe, I don’t know what all. Maybe he’s a big enough idiot to work with somebody who’d call himself a Creeping Sword.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m gonna take him out,” the boss said. “I’m gonna take him out tonight. You want to be there?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I do. Thanks again.”
“You’re with Netoo.” He jerked his head at the tapestry. I went through it and told the boys I was with Netoo. I followed the one with the cudgel through another tapestry and down a hall.
There were thirty of us, more or less, divided in four teams. I strolled around the assembly room, asking the usual questions, until we moved out.
Night had fallen by the time the first two teams sloshed off into the sewers; sometimes I think more activity and commerce in Roosing Oolvaya takes place in the sewers than overhead in the streets. Nevertheless, the bunch of us under Netoo headed into the streets with the sorcerer. She was up in the front, next to Netoo, helices of fine blue lines making gloves around her gesturing hands as she walked. The blue shapes left a slowly fading trail behind her in the air.
The clamor of some riot a neighborhood or so to the north came intermittently to us through the tangled alleys. There was no sign of the Guard, though, and I wondered if the boss had managed to convince somebody to concentrate on other areas for this particular evening. A tendril of river fog curled around a building ahead of us and up our street. We entered the fog, and Netoo stopped the team to confer with the magician.
The magician gestured a few times, almost lost from my view in the fog, cocked her head to listen to nothing, and nodded. Netoo motioned us on. We crept one block, exiting and then reentering the fog, turned right, and moved down an alley. Netoo touched the shoulder of a man holding a bow. The man fitted an arrow and shot. The arrow turned into a shadow and disappeared into the mist. This was followed half-a-second later by a soft clunk and rattle, and then the thunk of a falling body. The magician nodded again and whispered to Netoo. “Around the next corner,” Netoo said. “The house with hanging plants. All ready? Okay, go.”