Dragon Precinct (6 page)

“Wizards don’t die, ever’body knows
that,”
the other said. “I heard he was on some island somewheres.”

“So did these two shitbrains,” Horran said. “And they
both
—not one, but both—fell for the Runes of Tyrac scam.”

“Looks like an epidemic of heroism,” Danthres muttered.

“Yeah, I heard about Brightblade when I brought the two morons in,” said Horran. “You and Lieutenant ban Wyvald caught that one?”

Danthres nodded. “The good news is we get unlimited overtime, and we plan to take every advantage.”

Horran laughed. “No wonder you were so late comin’ in.”

One infant whispered to the other one, “Maybe she can make enough to buy a new face.”

No doubt the guard made the comment secure in the knowledge that no one could possibly have heard him aside from his friend. Danthres debated whether or not it was worth pursuing—she had been in a bad mood all day because of this damned murder, but the overtime revelation had improved it a bit.

Oh, why not?
“Did you say something, child?”

The infant’s face went whiter than a vampire’s. “Uh, n-no, Lieutenant, not a—not a thing. Really. Honest.”

“Good. Because if you
had
said what I thought I heard you clearly say, it would be
you
requiring a new face, not me.”

Urgoss then came over with the four flagons, which were now filled with the house ale. “On the tab?” he said.

“Of course.” Aside from Grovis—who usually went straight back home to Mommy and Daddy’s mansion in Unicorn when the shift ended, no doubt to regale the family with exaggerated tales of his exploits over brandy and cigars—all the lieutenants on their shift came to the Chain virtually every night, so Urgoss was more than happy to let them build up a tab, to be paid on the first day of the new month, which was payday.

She curled her fingers through two flagon handles each and gingerly lifted them off the wooden bar. Inclining her head at Horran, and ignoring the other two, she walked slowly toward the back.

“ ’Ey, look, Tresyllione’s fin’ly here!”

Lord and Lady, no.
She kept walking toward her table even as she knew she would be stopped by the body attached to the drunken, slurred voice.

Sure enough, the oversized head, overweight body, misshapen face, and patchy curled hair of Nulti interposed itself between Danthres and her destination. She was amazed to see that he had actually gained more weight since she saw him last, his protuberant belly looking like it was about to burst through his leather armor. As it was, the goblin emblem on the chest looked a bit stretched.

“Sergeant Markon finally let you back on his shift, Nulti?”

“ ’Ey, I
earned
m’way back t’days, Tresyllione. Don’t need to go suckin’ off the boss t’get a promotion.”

“The way you drool, Nulti, sucking off the boss would get you a demotion.”

To Danthres’s amusement, Nulti actually ran his bread-loaf-sized forearm across his mouth at that. “ ’Ey, lissen, got a bet goin’ with m’buddies over ’ere.” He indicated a table, where half a dozen foot soldiers from Goblin were sitting, drinking, laughing, probably at her expense, and watching their conversation. She didn’t know any of them—they had probably signed up after her promotion to lieutenant. Besides, they looked young and stupid, and hadn’t yet acquired the hard edge that patrolling Goblin gave you after a few years.

“Nulti, I don’t have—” she started, attempting to push past the oaf, but his portly frame blocked the only path to her table.

“See, ev’yone knows fr’m lookin’ atcher shit-ugly face ’atcher half-elf. What we got to bettin’ ’bout is what th’other half is. Me, I say it’s troll. Other guys, ’ey say it’s dwarf. So we wantcha t’settle’a bet.”

Then Nulti let out a long, loud guffaw, which was echoed by his fellows.

The rest of the tavern started to grow quiet.

Danthres sighed. Nulti had been riding her since she signed up. Few women joined the Guard, and those that did generally had some kind of formal combat training and experience. Danthres had none of the former, and the latter consisted primarily of brawls with people who took offense at Danthres’s face, personality, or both. To make matters worse, the boss was Captain Brisban, a veteran of the elven wars who hated elves and thought women had
no
place in the Guard, prior experience notwithstanding. So instead of a simple beat to walk in Unicorn, she was instead posted to the sewer that was Goblin Precinct, no doubt in the hopes of her washing out quickly. Danthres took pride in the fact that she dashed those hopes rather handily.

Nulti wasn’t the only one to give her a constant stream of shit, but he was the loudest and second most obnoxious after Brisban himself. But, over a decade later, Brisban was dead, Danthres was promoted to the castle, and Nulti was still stuck in Goblin. He was insufficiently competent to be promoted, insufficiently incompetent to be fired, and his corruption was so run-of-the-mill and low-stakes that he wasn’t worth the effort to investigate.

I really don’t want to start a fight tonight,
she thought.

“Well, c’mon, Tresyllione, which is it? Got me three coppers ridin’ on ya bein’ troll—that’s ’cause’a your disposition—but Afrak over ’ere, ’e says ’at it’s dwarf on account’a hearin’ that you suck in bed. Dunno who’e coulda heard
’at
from, seein’ as how no one sane’d sleep with y’anyhow, and—”

Whatever Nulti was going to say next was lost as Danthres upended all four flagons of ale onto his huge, round head. His random patches of curly hair straightened, and ale dripped off his flat face, his big ears, and his small nose into his big mouth, which was hanging open.

Now the Chain filled with laughter, loudest of all coming from Nulti’s own fellows.

Nulti continued to stand in place, his mouth hanging open, though he did blink twice.

Danthres turned around and noticed that Urgoss wasn’t laughing. Then again, he never did, but he was probably already calculating the cost of the damage that the impending fight would inflict, which he’d bill to Osric, and which Osric would bill to her and Nulti.
I’ll probably wind up paying him most of my overtime money.

“Half-breed
bitch!”

Not even needing to turn back around to see what Nulti was doing, Danthres knew that the oaf was now charging at her, ready to throw a punch. So she ducked down into a crouch. Nulti stumbled, his intended target having all but disappeared, his girth causing him to fall forward—onto her. Danthres held up her hands, catching him at the chest, his great weight pressing down on her. She was able to support his weight, however, and then straightened to an upright position, throwing Nulti backward. His weight and drunken clumsiness combined to make that upright pose a temporary one, and he fell all the way over, back-first into one of the empty chairs, his head colliding with the table, knocking over several drinks. He then sat there, sprawled and unmoving, a combination of drool and ale dripping out of his still-hanging-open mouth.

One of the people sitting at that table, whose wine was now on the floor, asked, “Is he dead?”

“We can only hope,” Danthres said.

Torin, who, she now noticed, was standing nearby, along with Dru and Hawk, added, “But he only hit his head, so it wasn’t like any vital organs were harmed.” Then he grinned. “I’m hurt. You gave him my drink.”

“You’ll get over it.” She turned to the bar. “Four more, please, Urgoss, and refill these people’s drinks on me.”

“Thanks,” said the wine-drinker, a young guard from Unicorn. “For what it’s worth, I like the way you look. It’s—exotic.” He even waggled his eyebrows for effect.

“Oh, for Wiate’s sake, Manfred,” one of his comrades, also from Unicorn, said, “not again. Didn’t you get in enough trouble after what happened at the stable?”

Oh Lord and Lady, not another thrill-seeker.
One of the reasons why Danthres had chosen Torin as an occasional lover was because he was fond of
her
. The only people who had expressed any interest in her physically were those who were attracted by her status as a half-breed. Half-elves who were permitted to live past the age of one day were rare this far north—indeed, Danthres had seen plenty of mass graves of half-breed infants in the nearby elven lands before she came to Cliff’s End—and she had dealt with more than her share of those who wanted, as one propositioner had put it, “the half-elf experience.”

That particular man soon learned that “the half-elf experience” consisted primarily of broken bones in his sword arm and a smashed nose.

Suddenly, the air in the Chain was weighing her down.
I need to get out of here.
She turned to Torin. “I’m leaving. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Of course,” Torin said with a nod. Danthres was grateful that he didn’t raise a fuss that she was rescinding her earlier invite, but after all this, the last thing she wanted to do was take Torin home. Even though she knew Torin would never treat it as such, his sleeping with her tonight would feel like nothing more than a sympathy fuck, and she simply couldn’t stand that on top of everything else.

“ ’Scuse me, but, uh—”

Danthres looked over at the entrance to see a guard from Dragon standing in the doorway. “Yes?”

He pointed at the dripping, prone form of Nulti. “That ain’t Lieutenant ban Wyvald, is it?”

“Hardly,” Torin said. “I am.”

“Good. So you’re Lieutenant Tresyllione. You both gotta come with me.”

“We’re off until sunup,” Danthres said. “Can’t this wait?”

“ ’Fraid not, ma’am. Got a directive when we came on from Cap’n Osric sayin’ that to find you two if something happened related to the Brightblade murder, an’ Sergeant Kel takes them directives serious, ma’am.”

Running the words
unlimited overtime
through her head like a mantra, Danthres asked, “What happened?”

“Another body at the Dog and Duck, ma’am.”

The dead body this time was Olthar lothSirhans, the elf. Torin knew his story by heart—most everyone who lived under King Marcus and Queen Marta’s rule did. The nephew of the Elf Queen, Olthar was one of the heroes of the elven wars for betraying his aunt, which led to the humans’ victory. Without that sacrifice, it was quite likely that they’d all be speaking the elven tongue right now.

During his interview of Olthar following Brightblade’s murder, Torin was made quickly aware that the elf knew the importance of his role in that war, and that it made him above such petty concerns as answering questions about the death of one of his comrades. The uncharitable side of Torin thought that Olthar’s death was on his own head for being uncooperative.

The crime scene was more or less the equivalent of the last one: Olthar’s lodgings, in Room 13. This room was the mirror image of Brightblade’s—the desk on the north side instead of the south, the bed against the west wall rather than the east, and so on.

The other primary difference was the location of the body. Where Brightblade had fallen in the middle of the floor, the elf was seated, slumped over onto the desk, a quill in his left hand. His head—which, like Brightblade’s, was at an off angle from the rest of his body—rested on a piece of parchment. Torin peered in to see impeccable handwriting, in the flourish-heavy script of the eastern elves.

He looked over at his partner. “I don’t suppose you know Ra-Telvish?”

“Speak, yes—read, no. Literacy wasn’t exactly a prime concern when I was a child, and by the time I was old enough to teach myself, I stuck with Common.” She joined Torin at the table. “No finger marks on
his
neck, either. And the quill is near the end of a character.” She frowned. “I do know this much—that’s the middle of a word.
Vrasheth,
I think, or maybe
vranth
. Something like that—in any case, he was caught off-guard in midsentence.”

“Just like Brightblade.” Torin sighed. “It looks like it isn’t just a single murder—someone’s targeting this entire group.” He turned to the guard standing in the doorway. “Who found the body?”

“Dwarf,” the guard said.

He turned to Danthres. “I think we both should talk to him.”

Danthres nodded. “Definitely.” She looked over at the guard. “Where is he?”

“Who?”

Closing her eyes and sighing, Danthres said, “The dwarf.”

“Oh. Next door. His room.”

“Someone
is
watching him, I hope?” Torin asked.

The guard nodded.

“Good. Any word on when the M.E. will arrive?”

The guard shrugged.

Danthres stared at Torin. “He didn’t even send a mage-bird?”

“Well, it’s the middle of the night. We’ll be lucky if he even shows up.” Then he grinned. “Three coppers says he isn’t here until sunup.”

Snorting, Danthres said, “No bet. I’ll be stunned if he’s here before midday tomorrow. Come on, let’s talk to the dwarf.”

Ubàrlig was staying in Room 14, which had the same design as Brightblade’s. The dwarf, however, had added some personal touches, even though it was only supposed to be a short stay. His Fjorm axe was now hanging from one wall, and several poorly sculpted figurines of dwarves in assorted bizarre positions were festooned about the desk and on the nightstand beside the basin.

The dwarf himself sat on the floor next to the bed, mending a hole in his tunic. Tall by the standards of his race, Ubàrlig still only came up to Torin’s chest. His hairline had receded to the back of his head, but he still grew his light brown hair well past shoulder length in the back, with a beard of equivalent length in the same hue. His nose was small, but with a bulbous tip, and his blue eyes of surprisingly good humor for a war veteran of his years.

“Good evening, General,” Torin said formally as the guard let him into the room. “I’m sorry we have to speak again so soon under such horrible circumstances.”

“That’s okay, Lieutenant.” Ubàrlig rose from the floor. “I was just doing something with my hands.” He set the tunic down on the bed.

Torin looked at the figures. “I would think you’d be sculpting to do that.”