By my fourth or fifth beer I’m complaining loudly to all who care to listen that Turai is undoubtedly the worst city in the west.
“I tell you, I’ve been in Orcish hovels that were more civilised than this place. The next time the city authorities need me to bail them out of a crisis they can forget it. Let them look somewhere else.”
The beer doesn’t lighten my mood. Even a substantial helping of Tanrose’s stew can’t cheer me up. As the tavern starts to fill up with dock workers coming off their afternoon shift at the warehouses, I grab another beer and head upstairs. I used to be a Senior Investigator at the Palace with a nice villa in Thamlin. Now I live in two rooms above a tavern. It doesn’t make me feel good about my life. Makri lives in another room along the corridor. I bump into her as she emerges. She’s changed into her chainmail bikini in readiness for her shift as a waitress.
“Cheered up any?” she asks.
“No.”
“Strange. Eight or nine beers usually does it. What’s eating you? You’ve been criticised in court before. Now I think about it, weren’t you criticised in the Senate only last year?”
“Yes. I’ve been lambasted by the best of them. Do you realise that I’m in exactly the same position I was when you arrived in this city a couple of years ago?”
“Drunk?”
“No. I mean broke. Without a coin to my name. Dependent on Gurd for ale on credit till some degenerate walks through my door asking me to investigate some case which will no doubt involve me risking my life for a lousy thirty gurans a day. It’s not right. Look what I’ve done for this city. Fought in the wars, held back the Niojans and repelled the Orcish hordes. Did anyone pin a medal on me for that? Forget it. And who was it saved our necks when Horm the Dead tried to wipe out Turai with his Eight-Mile Terror Spell? Me. Only this winter I got a Turanian elected head of the Sorcerers Guild practically single-handed.”
“I helped with that.”
“A little. Which doesn’t alter the fact that I deserve a lot more than being stuck in this foul tavern. I ought to be employed by the Palace.”
“You were employed by the Palace. They bounced you out for being drunk.”
“That only goes to prove my point. There’s no gratitude. I tell you, if that useless Deputy Consul Cicerius comes down here again begging for help I’m sending him away with a dragon’s tooth up his nose. To hell with them all.”
“It’s not fair,” says Makri.
“You’re damn right it’s not fair.”
“I don’t see why I have to take this examination. I’m so busy waiting tables I hardly have time to study.”
I glare at Makri with loathing. As far as I can see, if a person who’s part Elf, part Orc and part Human decides to slaughter her captors, escape to civilisation, then sign up for college, she’s only got herself to blame for her problems. She could have remained a gladiator. Makri was good at that. Undefeated champion. She’s just about the most savage fighter ever seen in the west, and slaughtering people is her speciality. But Guild College is a foolish enterprise requiring long hours of study in rhetoric, philosophy, mathematics and God knows what else. No wonder she’s stressed. The woman—and I use the term loosely—is next door to insane at the best of times; a result, I imagine, of having mixed blood, pointy ears and a general tendency to believe that all of life’s difficulties can be solved with violence.
Makri departs downstairs. I take my beer to my room, slam the door, and clear some junk off the couch. I’ve had enough of this. Poverty is getting me down. I need a plan. There must be a way for a talented man to get ahead in this city. I finish my beer. After a while I drag a bottle of klee out of a drawer and start in on it. The klee burns my throat as it goes down. Finest quality, distilled in the hills. The sun streams in, through the holes in the curtains. My room is hotter than Orcish hell. No one can think in heat like this. I guess I’m just going to finish my days in Twelve Seas broke, angry and unlamented. I finish the klee, toss the bottle in the bin, and fall asleep.
[Contents]
Chapter Two
I’m dreaming about the time I won a beer-drinking contest down in Abelesi. Seven opponents, and every one of them unconscious on the floor while I was still demanding more ale, and quickly. One of my finest moments. I’m rudely awakened by someone shaking my arm. I leap to my feet and make a grab for my sword.
“It’s me,” says Makri.
I’m angry at the invasion.
“How often do I have to tell you to stay out of my room!” I yell at her. “I swear if you walk in here uninvited again I’ll run you through.”
“You couldn’t run me through if I had both arms tied behind my back, you fat ox,” retorts Makri, never one to smooth over a disagreement.
“One of these days I’m going to break you in half, you skinny troll-lover.”
I notice that Makri is not alone.
“You remember Dandelion?”
My heart sinks. It plummets. Even in a city full of strange characters, Dandelion stands out as a particularly odd young woman. She hired me on a case last year, and while I admit this worked out all right in the end, the whole affair didn’t endear her to me. Dandelion is weird. Not barbaric like Makri or ethereal like the Elves. Just weird. Not least among the things I dislike about her is her habit of walking around with bare feet, something I’m utterly unable to account for. In a city full of refuse-strewn streets, it defies common sense. You’re liable to step on a dead rat, or maybe worse. Besides this she wears a long skirt covered with patterns from the zodiac, and spouts rubbish about communing with nature. She hired me on behalf of the talking dolphins in the bay, which was probably to be expected.
“What do you want?” I grunt. “The talking dolphins having problems again?”
The dolphins don’t actually speak Turanian. Just a lot of strange whistles. I saw Dandelion communicating with them but I’m half convinced she was making it up as she went along.
Dandelion tries to smile, but she seems nervous. With my sword in my hand I guess I don’t put people at ease. I sheathe it, just in case the woman has anything useful to say. Now I think about it, she did pay me with several valuable antique coins, and I’m not in a position to turn away paying clients no matter how peculiar they might be.
“Dandelion has a warning for you,” says Makri.
Makri’s keeping a straight face but I sense she’s secretly amused. Springing Dandelion on me when I’m sleeping off ten beers is probably her idea of an excellent joke.
“A warning? From the dolphins?”
Dandelion shakes her head.
“Not from the dolphins. Though they’re still very grateful for your assistance. You should visit them some time.”
“Next time I need to commune with nature I’ll get right down to the beach. What’s the warning?”
“You’re about to be involved in terrible bloodshed.”
Dandelion gazes at me. I gaze back at her. There’s a brief silence, interrupted only by the cries of the hawkers outside. At the foot of the steps leading down from my outer door to the street there’s an ongoing dispute over territory between a woman who sells fish and a man who’s set up a stall for sharpening blades. They’ve been screaming at each other all week. Life in Twelve Seas is never peaceful.
“Terrible bloodshed? Is that it?”
Dandelion nods. I hunt around for my klee. It’s finished.
“I’m an Investigator. I’m always surrounded by bloodshed. Comes with the territory. People round here just don’t like being investigated.”
“You don’t understand,” says Dandelion. “I don’t mean a little violence. Or even a few deaths. I mean many, many deaths, more deaths than you can count. An orgy of blood-letting such as you’ve never encountered before.”