Dragon Precinct (12 page)

“Yes, of course,” Rommett said distractedly. “Whatever you need. Bertram!”

The secretary poked his head out the door, but refused to step through it. “S-sir?”

“You are to help these two lieutenants in whatever way necessary. This simply
cannot
be allowed to continue.”

“Especially,” Danthres said with a vicious grin, “since the Lord and Lady no doubt made you personally responsible for the safety of Brother Genero and his friends. Or did you volunteer to be responsible? That would be even worse,” she added thoughtfully.

“Please, Lieutenants,” Rommett said as if Danthres had not spoken, “use whatever resources you need. Bertram here will aid you.” The chamberlain turned around and walked back through the double doors, muttering, “This sort of thing
cannot
be permitted to happen.”

Bertram oozed out from the doorway just as Rommett closed the doors behind him with a resounding thud.

“Er,” Bertram said in a small voice, “shall I bring you to Brother Genero’s chambers first, or to General Ubàrlig’s?”

“Neither,” Danthres said before Torin had a chance to answer. “Bring them and the barbarian to Sergeant Jonas in the eastern wing.” She turned and left the hallway. Torin ran to catch up to her. Before he could ask, she said, “I want to talk to them on
our
terms this time, in
our
interrogation rooms.”

As soon as they entered the squadroom, Osric emerged from his office. “Do you have good news for me?”

“Not yet,” Torin said honestly, “but soon. We have some leads, and we’re about to interrogate Genero, Ubàrlig, and Bogg.”

Osric sputtered, “You’re what? If Rommett finds out—”

“We have Rommett’s full support,” Danthres said a little too smugly.

“It seems,” Torin added, “that the halflings’ being killed on the streets of Cliff’s End while they were supposed to be under the protection of the castle has Sir Rommett a bit unsettled.”

“He’s now our best friend in Flingaria,” Danthres said.

At that, Osric actually smiled. “Good work. Keep me posted.” Then he retreated to his office.

“Was that a smile?” Danthres asked.

“I believe it was, yes.”

They passed Jonas on the way to their desk. He was shuffling parchments, as usual. “You two seen Dru or Hawk?”

Torin shook his head. “We just arrived ourselves. Why?”

“Someone in Dragon thinks they got a lead on their rapist.”

“Wouldn’t they have gone off shift by now?” Danthres asked.

Jonas shook his head. “They haven’t checked out yet. Which is their tough shit, since they’re not as lucky as some regarding overtime requests.”

“Not everyone is fortunate enough to be us,” Danthres said. “In a few minutes, a pale stringbean of a man will be bringing in a dwarf, a barbarian, and a Temisan priest. Put one in each room.”

The sergeant nodded absently and continued shuffling his parchments.
It’s a good thing I know Jonas,
Torin thought with amusement,
since an objective observer would think he was ignoring us.

To Danthres, he said, “You’re in a good mood.”

“After the way this day has gone, I’m looking forward to this.”

“And you enjoyed sticking it to Rommett.”

“Damn right. Especially after having to actually treat Hobart with something resembling respect.”

“Hobart’s not that bad.”

“No, he’s worse. But he gave us what we need. We just need to pull it together. And that’s where our three friends will come in.”

Torin was grateful to finally be using their own interrogation rooms instead of the ones at the precincts, or side rooms in the Dog and Duck. They were much better suited to the task: lit only by a single lantern, and containing three chairs and one small table. Rooms with little light and many shadows tended to make people nervous, and nervous people tended to be on the chatty side. Torin doubted that such simplistic techniques would work on combat veterans like these three, but he saw no reason not to take advantage of every possibility.

When Jonas informed them that each of the threesome had been placed in a room, Torin and Danthres then spent the next half an hour sitting at their desk comparing notes on what they were told by the witnesses at all three murders. It wasn’t anything they hadn’t discussed already at great length, but sometimes this sort of review bore fruit. It didn’t in this case, but it did serve the dual purpose of having everything fresh in their minds, and also to frustrate their three witnesses by making them wait in a poorly lit room doing nothing for half an hour.

They decided to speak with Bogg first.

“ ’Bout time!” he thundered as soon as they opened the door. The barbarian stood a full head taller than Danthres and his shoulders alone were twice as wide. He wore only a loincloth and a back scabbard for his sword. The scabbard was currently empty, as only the Guard was allowed to roam the halls of the castle armed. This relieved Torin, as he recalled the barbarian’s sword as being almost as tall as Bogg himself. His comparative lack of clothing left his bronzed, heavily scarred skin on display for all to see, as well as the thick muscles in his chest, arms, and legs.

Bogg also smelled considerably better than he had two days ago. Torin suspected that the Lord and Lady insisted that Bogg make use of the castle’s bathing facilities whether he wanted to or not.

“ ’Nother minute, an’ I was gonna break down the door. Then I was gonna break some heads. Then I was gonna get
mad
.”

“Our apologies,” Torin said gently, “but I’m afraid we had some paperwork to deal with, you understand.”

“I don’t understand shit. I just wanna know what I’m doin’ in here.”

“You do know that we’re investigating the murders of—”

“Gan an’ Olthar, yeah I know. So what?”

“And of Mari and Nari.”

“Say what?”

“Mari and Nari,” Torin said. “The halfling twins.”

“Yeah, I
know
who they are, shitbrain. You mean t’tell me they’re dead, too?”

“Yes,” Torin said gravely. “They were killed at Jorbin’s Way this morning.”

Bogg slammed a massive fist onto the table, leaving a fist-sized impression in the wood and several splinters in the fist in question. Bogg didn’t seem to notice the latter. “Who did it?”

“That’s what we’re trying—” Torin started.

“ ’Cause I’m tellin’ ya right now, I’m gonna kill ’em. I’m gonna kill ’em with my bare hands. None’a this turn-the-other-cheek crap that Genero’s always spoutin’, or justice instead’a revenge like Olthar usedta say. And I sure as shit ain’t gonna settle for just cuttin’ the guy’s ear off, like that dumb kid outside’a town. Naw, I’m gonna grab ’em by the neck and then I’m gonna squeeze—”

“We’re hoping it doesn’t come to that,” Torin said quickly.

“You know,” Danthres said suddenly, “it’s funny.”

Bogg’s face contorted and he raised his fists to chest level. “Funny? You think this is
funny,
you ugly bitch?”

“I’m not referring to the murder of your friends,” she said in an unusually conciliatory manner.

“Good thing. ’Cause if you were makin’ fun’a me—”

“I would never do that,” Danthres lied. “No, I was talking about you.”

That seemed to confuse Bogg; his fists lowered to his hips. “What about me?”

“Well, it’s interesting to me. Brightblade was one of the great human heroes. In an odd sort of way, so was lothSirhans. And Ubàrlig has certainly made a name for himself, as has Brother Genero, if for no other reason than the uniqueness of one of his calling being at the forefront of Flingarian history.”

Torin picked up the thread. “And then there’s you. Until we met following Brightblade’s murder, I had no idea who you were. The songs don’t mention Bogg.”

“I don’t care about that kinda thing. Shit, neither did Mari or Nari.”

Danthres shrugged. “They’re halfling grifters—they live their lives in the shadows. Too much of the spotlight makes it harder for them to function. But not you. You’re a lot more blunt.”

Bogg moved menacingly toward Danthres. “What’re you tryin’ t’say t’me?”

Unsurprisingly, Danthres refused to be menaced. Boneen had magicked the entire castle so that no acts of person-on-person violence could be committed within its walls, so the detectives had nothing to fear from their interview subjects. “I’m not
trying
to say anything—but we have often found that you can sometimes trace the perpetrator of the crime to who has actual motivation to commit it.”

“I have heard many songs sung about the heroism of Gan Brightblade and the bravery of Olthar lothSirhans,” Torin added, “yet nothing about Bogg the Barbarian.”

“Yeah, you
said
that already, redbeard,” Bogg said, turning his bulk toward Torin, his fists poised as if to throw the mightiest punch imaginable, “an’ you know what? I don’t give a shit! Let Gan an’ Olthar an’ them have their shitty songs and their shitty painted women.
Real
men step up when it matters—an’ that includes those two! Out there, we were the
best!
An’ I’m gonna strangle whoever did this shit with my bare hands, you hear me? Bare hands!”

Danthres laughed.

“What’s so funny, bitch?”

She shook her head. “You really expect me to believe that you’re not jealous of them?”

“They was my best friends! We been through hell an’ back t’gether, an’ we
always
come out smellin’ like roses, an’ when I get my hands on that damned shit-sucking wizard, I’m gonna cave his head in!”

Finally,
Torin thought. “What wizard?”

Bogg’s expression suddenly changed to that of a small child who’d been caught with his hand in a jar of sweets. “Well, uh, stands t’reason, right? Gotta be a wizard doin’ this. I mean, you guys’d’ve nailed the bastard by now otherwise, right?”

Torin leaned back in his chair. This was his favorite part of the interview process. All the bluster had flown from the barbarian’s tone. His massive hands, which had been clenched into bludgeonlike fists, were now open, and his gestures, which had, consciously or not, been calculated to be as menacing as possible, now were more like flails.

“Actually,” Danthres said, “the M.E. detected no magic whatsoever. So it can’t possibly be a wizard.”

“Which leads us to wonder who is responsible if not a member of the mage community,” Torin said.

“Whaddaya mean no magic?” Bogg’s eyes went wide at that. “That ain’t possible. ’Sides, Genero said—” He cut himself off.

Leaning forward again, Torin said, “What did Genero say?”

“Nothin’,” Bogg said in a quiet voice. “Never mind. Look, you got anythin’ else t’ask me? ’Cause I’m gettin’ tired’a this.”

“That’s too bad,” Danthres said, “because we’ve only just begun. What wizard are you talking about?”

“I dunno—some wizard. Like I said, stands t’reason, right? Look, why you houndin’ me for? I’m the guy whose friends’re dead.”

“Yes,” Danthres said, “and you and your remaining friends have been withholding information from us—information that might have allowed us to find the killer and prevent more murders from occurring. Instead, we’ve been chasing our tails for days while you’re treated to the luxury of this castle.”

Now Bogg’s bluster returned. “You say that like it’s
good
. I hate this shithole.
Real
men don’t sleep on silk with a stone roof overhead—gimme the great outdoors any night. It makes it easier to get to the fight.”

“What fight?” Torin asked. “Whose head did you want to cave in, Bogg?”

Bogg stared at Torin, then stared at Danthres, then thought better of it and went back to staring at Torin. “Hell with it,” he finally said, now staring down at the floor. “I’m sick’a this shit anyhow. Genero said it was the right thing to do, but he don’t know everythin’, and neither does that bitch-queen of a goddess of his.” He looked back up at Torin. “Chalmraik.”

“Chalmraik’s dead,” Danthres said. “Try again.”

Bogg actually laughed at that. “Yeah, that’s just what I said to Genero. But Temisa gave ’im one’a those visions’a hers. She don’t give ’im visions all that often, but in all’a years I known Genero—an’ we go
way
back—she ain’t never given him a wrong one. Found
that
out the hard way.”

As he said that, he absently rubbed one of the scars on his side. Torin wondered what the story behind that was, but didn’t wish to get sidetracked, and so instead asked, “What did this vision entail?”

“That Chalmraik was still kickin’, and was holed up on some island out on the Garamin. Genero gathered us all up at Velessa, then we came here t’get a boat.”

Again, Torin leaned back. The other boot had
finally
dropped. He also remembered Danthres telling him earlier about Horran’s story of the two self-styled heroes who literally fell all over themselves in the Docklands yesterday morning, trying to commission a ship to fight a revived Chalmraik on some island in the Garamin.
This is starting to pull together.
“Any particular resason why you all kept this from us?”

Bogg snorted. “Genero. He said you guys couldn’t handle Chalmraik, an’ that tellin’ ya’d just putcha in danger.”

“
Did
he, now?” Danthres said in a dull monotone, indicating that she was as aggravated as Torin himself felt. Neither of them particularly appreciated civilians presuming to tell them how to do their jobs—or not do them, as the case may be.

“So you gonna let us go beat his head in, or what?”

Torin stood up. “Or what, for the time being, I’m afraid. We need to go deal with some other matters. Wait here, please.”

The fists came back. “I don’t
wanna
wait here, I wanna—”

Danthres walked up to him. Though she was tall for a woman, he still towered over her. That didn’t stop her from looking up at his ugly face and saying, “What you want is of no interest to us, barbarian. Right now, I’m not convinced that you haven’t been lying to us about Chalmraik and that
you’re
the guilty one. Now you can either sit here or sit in the hole, it makes no difference to me.”