Nozzle’s opinion on the subject-which he delivered sprawled on the dirt floor-started with “What the,” included a “you” or three, and indelicately named some of my delicate parts before going on to suggestions that might have made me blush if I hadn’t done everything on his list at least twice, not to mention a couple already this morning.
I looked at Pimple. “Why am I about to deep-fry your partner?”
Pimple blanched. “I–I dunno…”
I cocked my head at him, and his whole face lit up as somebody in the vast whistling darkness of his empty head finally managed to strike a match. “Ma’am!” he almost shouted. “I don’t know, ma’am!”
I looked at Nozzle. “So. What was it you said should have improbable varieties of sex with unlikely parts of my anatomy?”
“Uh, I… uh, I forget. Uh, ma’am.”
I pointed at a bench against the far wall. “Sit.”
Nozzle decided the better part of valor was to glue his butt to the bench.
I took a minute to look over what was left of the old man’s left hand fingertips. There wasn’t much. I’d have to get more local money from Jace and buy the poor old bastard some healing, since my own particular talents run mostly in the opposite direction. “Who told you it was a good idea to start with the pliers?”
Nozzle went paler. “I just thought-”
“You thought. Really. As in thinking. Wow.” I shook my head. “Listen, chucklebrain, you know who Tezzeret is, right?”
“Uh, well, sure I do. Uh, ma’am.”
“So you understand what your future is gonna look like if he slips our noose here?”
“Uh… what?”
I tried to say it slow enough that even these two could understand. “You two ass-clowns are, right now, the guys who maimed Tezzeret’s father… unless, maybe, the old man goes into shock. And dies. Then you’ll be the guys who tortured Tezzeret’s father to death. With me now?”
Both skull bangers’ eyes went round as soup plates.
“One of your bitches outside must have some kind of bandages and first-aid crap, in case one of you nancies stubs a toe or something. Go get it, then come back in here and fix his goddamn hand.”
Nozzle jumped up like he’d been shot from a bow and bolted for the door.
I beckoned Pimple over. “Forget about answers, all right? When I say work him, you work him. If I want him maimed, I’ll say maim him. If I want him dead, what do you think I’ll do?”
“Uh… you’ll say kill him?”
“No, dumbass. I’ll kill all three of you and pretend I was never here.”
Idiots. But you can’t do everything yourself. If you could, all these brain-dead bastards would’ve starved a long time ago.
Nozzle got back with the first-aid stuff. The geezer was bleeding from eight or ten places, not just his hands and mouth but an ear and his crotch, so it took a little time there to get the shackles off, and get him cleaned up, bandaged, and straightened out at the table. I had Nozzle bring him a cup of water, but he didn’t seem too interested in drinking until I pulled my flask, at which point he lit up and his mouth started twisting like a hooker’s hammock. I let him take a swallow that made his eyes cross. Cross more. Tezzeret told me once that alcohol’s a luxury item on Esper-not enough surplus fermentable starches. It looked to me like an opening.
“You like that?” I said, weighing the flask in my hand. “Want some more?”
“Garn,” he said sullenly, which I took to be the local term for “Quit pulling my leg” or “Get the hell out of town” or something. “Garnen git. I sezafore whuddize godda say.”
I should’ve bought a damn phrase book; I’d freeze my naked ass to a glacier before I’d ask Pimple and Nozzle to translate, so I went with my best guess. “I’m not even asking, geeze. Want another hit, help yourself.”
He squinted sidelong at the flask. “Etz pizen.”
“Well, sure.” I took a whack myself, just to be neighborly. “If it weren’t poison, it wouldn’t be any fun.”
Given enough time, even this wetbrain geezer could calculate that if I wanted him hurt or dead, I didn’t need to booze him up to do it. “Arright,” he said, taking the flask from my hand. “I thanks ye.”
“You’re welcome. Go ahead and kill it if you want. Because I think I believe you.”
Pimple snorted and opened his mouth to object. I shut him up with a look.
“It’s a shame, though,” I said. “If you had been able to give us Tezzeret, we’d be long gone by now. Since you can’t, I guess we’re staying.”
I got up and headed for the door. “Pimple. Don’t let him get bored.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you,” I said to Nozzle, “if I see those pliers in your hands, I’ll start using them on your hands. Got it?”
He nodded vigorously. “Ma’am.”
Time to check in with the boss. I left them to their work and went outside.
Outside? Yeah, tell me another. Outside is where you can see sky. Not here. Nothing to see here except rock, seawater, and poor stupid bastards without enough brains to know their lives suck.
Being poor sucks. I know it sucks. I don’t need to be reminded.
Especially since being poor could still happen to me, if we didn’t smoke Tezzeret in a tenth of a damn hurry. Who would have guessed that stuck-up fancy-pants sonofabitch would turn out to be so damn hard to kill?
Jace should have let me handle the bastard in the first place. Get it done proper.
Still, though, I might have trouble against three em-scorps myself. Some, anyway. Wish I could have been here to see the look on his face when they were chasing him bare-ass naked right through the middle of his hometown.
I did a so-so job of being inconspicuous while I walked the perimeter. Too good a job, and not even Tezzeret would know I was there; too bad a job and he’d know I was showing myself on purpose. But I walked the walk nice and slow, all the way around, and nobody took a shot at me. Even though I’m a plus-size target.
Not that I was really expecting anybody to try me. Hanging myself out there was mostly just for fun. Gave me something to do while I waited.
There’s lots of things I’m good at. Waiting’s not one of them.
Say what you want about the Conflux and this Planes War going on all over Alara; one thing it’s good for is turning out bucketloads of combat-trained mages. I had eight of them in camouflaged blinds in a double-diamond setup, where at least two had eyeballs on every approach, and each of the eight was in sight of at least two of his mates. And I had another six of the local skull bangers primed and ready to tangle with anything on two legs, because you never know when you might need somebody to do something stupid. Like put a sword to Tezzeret. My skull-banger reserve was lying flat on the highest point in the neighborhood, which happened to be the top of the geezer’s hovel.
In this toilet, that probably makes him some kind of nobility.
I had four of Jace’s summoning stones out there, too, loaded with all kinds of Jumbo Economy Nasties that Tezzeret would never know were there until way too late. In any given five seconds, I could put critters on the ground that’d make those em-scorps look cuddly as kittens. I had the place tagged and bagged eight ways from Gruulsday, signed and sealed and stamped and shipped, but I was starting to get the feeling that somehow I wasn’t going to deliver. Something had already gone wrong.
It wasn’t just a hunch. I’d had time enough to get everything together, and enough time left over to get bored. It just didn’t scan.
Tezzeret’s a methodical sonofabitch, but there’s not one slow bone in his body. The Tezzeret I knew would’ve hit me like a thunderbolt while I was still trying to separate spellers from choppers. Even coming back from the sort-of dead without that frappin’ arm of his wouldn’t change him that much.
So either something fatal had gone wrong for him-which meant we’d be waiting till the wrong side of forever-or else he got here, grabbed the skinny with both hands and then bailed like the Giant Brain bastard he is. Either way, it wasn’t good news.
We’d missed him. Somehow.