Dropping the meat pie, she retreated, hearing the conversation kick in again in sharp whispers behind her. She orbited out of the range of a ham-handed swat at her backside and pointed to a bleary red-haired drinker two tables up who had clearly had enough. She announced his bar tab, padding it for a tip, and left him to sort through his change as she wound her way back to the bar. She stepped neatly out of the way of Big Minx, who was herself loaded with a heavy tray for the Ilsig party in the back room.
A firm hand grabbed a good section of her posterior, squeezing a full cheek. She wheeled, smacking the offending paw away, the worn smile on her face turning suddenly feral. She let out a string of curses sufficient to blister the tattered wallpaper and spun back out into the main aisle, heading for the bar, still snarling a blue streak.
Two steps later the floor opened up beneath her feet in a wide hole, perfectly circular. The pit within glowed with the light of burning embers, and smoke billowed upward in an acrid puff. Everyone in the Vulgar Unicorn who could look up did.
Little Minx had enough time to hurl one more epithet, then plunged straight into hell.
I’m in hell, thought Heliz Yunz.
The Linguist of Lirt blinked and tried to force himself awake as the merchant continued to elaborate on the wide variety of stock that had been broken, lost, or obviously stolen from his most recent caravan. Heliz bridled against the fact that he should be researching but instead was parked in the marketplace writing letters for padpols and the cost of paper. Across the way, a street conjurer cadged for loose change by presenting wilted flowers out of thin air and appearing to drive nails through her hands—simple tricks that would fool no child over five. Yet the street conjurer was doing better business than Heliz.
Indeed, Heliz looked like an object of pity as opposed to commerce. His hair was a black bowl-cut tilted at a slight but noticeable angle, the result of self-inflicted barbering. His faded and patched robe was now even more faded and patched than it had been when he had arrived at this godsforsaken town, and of the thirty silver buttons that once closed it, not a single one remained—all had been replaced with wooden disks.
In truth, Heliz had a newer robe, no fancier than the one he wore but of similar cut and more contiguous material, given to him by the youth called Lone as payment, but felt that the merchants he had to deal with deserved no better than pure poverty-stricken Heliz Yunz. They prattled their petty concerns into the ears of a man who was no mere scribe, but a true researcher, a man who sought out the words of power that created the universe itself, and had mastered a few such words along the way: A verb that softened the earth for plowing. An adjective that created a small flame. A turn of phrase that would ease a lamb’s birth.
And a particular noun that was very, very powerful indeed. No, these merchants and mendicants had no idea of the true power of such words.
This particular merchant, a weasel-faced Rankan, was no better or worse than the rest of Heliz’s clients. Just from the cadence of his voice Heliz could tell what claims were valid and which were false. There was a catch in his throat just before declaring some crate of his had gone missing, a slight vagueness in the description of the damage to a particular piece of statuary. Heliz had no doubt the missing crate was resting comfortably in the merchant’s back room, and from the way the merchant circumspectly described it, the damaged statue itself was of an extremely erotic nature.
Through it all, Heliz felt the heavy lump of bronze in his breast pocket of his worn and over-patched robe. He would rather turn his attention to the tablet than to Weasel-face, but the current path of his life led in this less-appetizing direction.
A shadow appeared at the corner of his eye, a shadow both large and dull. Heliz didn’t need to know who it was and had no desire to show that he recognized it. Instead he narrowed his eyes and tried to look like he was listening more intently to the Rankan merchant. Perhaps the bulky shadow would take the hint.
The shadow did not, but Weasel-face, suddenly aware he had an audience, did. The Rankan stopped, stumbled over a word or two, and finished up his dictation with a crusty demand for reimbursement from the letter’s recipient that Heliz had no doubt would be ignored. A few coins ransomed the official-looking letter from the Heliz’s hands, and the merchant was gone.
The linguist-turned-scribe sighed deeply, gathering his strength. The monotonous drone of the merchant had left him more tired and petty than normal. He tried to remember a time when he didn’t feel so, but he came up empty.
He looked at the looming shadow and tried to conjure a suitably nasty greeting. Nothing came to mind, so he settled on, “What are you doing here, besides chasing away my clientele?”
Lumm the staver cleared his throat and said, “It looked like he was wrapping up. I didn’t want to intrude.”
Heliz managed another hopefully obvious sigh. “He was wrapping up because the weight of your shadow was enough to drive him away. It’s hard to prevaricate effectively when a barrel-maker’s shade is resting athwart one’s shoulder blades.”
Lumm didn’t respond. Heliz wondered what words the big man was having trouble with.
The linguist took advantage of the silence to press on. He shook his head. “Bad enough I have to sit here in the marketplace, in the blistering sun like some relic of a bygone age, writing letters for any fool that passes by because I have to get you a new house.”
“A new business,” said Lumm quietly. “You destroyed the old one. I mean, it was destroyed because you were there.”
“A new house that includes space for a business,” snapped Heliz. “One that has a hearth large enough for small iron-smithing, a source of water for shaping the staves, an anvil, of course, and all manner of space for storage of staves, hoops, and finished barrels. No, it’s not bad enough that I beach myself on this barren expanse to pay off a debt of my life (not that I forget such things, I want you to know), but now you come into what can laughingly be called my place of business and scare away my patrons, patrons I need to pay for the new house with the et cetera and so forth. So forgive my effrontery when I ask, what are you doing here?”
The side of the large man’s mouth twitched, and Heliz knew the cooper was trying to phrase a response in a manner that would prevent, or at least minimize another tirade. For a brief moment, a moment shorter than the orgasm of a moth, he felt sympathy for Lumm. To be saddled with a set of slow thought processes and trapped in a ponderous form would be more than Heliz could bear. That was another breed of hell entirely.
But the moment, like the moth, came and went Heliz scowled at the barrel-maker.
“There’s a problem,” said the cooper at last.
Heliz grunted. “Linking verb, missing the proper pronoun. Not ‘I have a problem,’ nor ‘You have a problem,’ nor even ‘We have a problem.’ Merely a recognition that a problem exists. You’re next going to tell me what the problem is and why it is going to become my problem.”
“I was at the Vulgar Unicorn last night,” said Lumm.
“And you didn’t come home before I left this morning,” noted the linguist. “Not that I am your mother. I thought you could not get blotto on rot-gut ale and cabinet wine, but I am no barfly and have been wrong on such matters before.”
“I was consoling …” The cooper’s words failed him, and he reddened. Then he shook his head and said, “Let me start at the beginning.”