Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy and Other Stories (59 page)

“How do you know they ain’t warriors?”

“No dwarf warrior is capture by orcs. Never. We say is better to die in battle than cook in the pots. If what you bought was more than bones, you bought no warriors.”

“You said, ‘we.’ You saying you’re a warrior?”

“I am what you see. Maybe ask yourself this question. How come a dwarf ain’t got no beard. And how do a dwarf like me know about the gladiator stables in Amorr?”

The slaver’s eyes narrowed. “You saying you supply them, or you saying you fought there your own self?”

Lodi smiled grimly and leaned forward so that his bulbous nose nearly touched the man’s much narrower one. “I am saying you take the silver in the bag.”

The slaver sat back and swallowed hard. He was not a coward, but neither did he appear to harbor any desire to see if Lodi was bluffing. He stared at Lodi for a long moment, then reached forward and took the cotton sack.

“All right, dwarf. They’re yourn.”

“One thing more. If you find yourself any more of my people in the future, you bring them here, and you receive seven silvers for each. Iron Mountain silvers.”

The slaver raised his eyebrows. “Seven silvers a dwarf, no questions asked?”

“No questions,” Lodi confirmed. “But I hear you be taking them yourself, my axe take your head.”

The man grinned sourly.

“I ain’t no fool, dwarf. I sees you’re a serious man. I’ll keep my eyes open. Any interest in other breeds, or you just want dwarves? There’s no shortage of goblins and orcs about, and I even heard tell an elf was brought in about a month ago.”

Lodi’s first reaction was to shrug off the news, but then he reconsidered. The elves would pay well to get one of their own back, enough gold to finance his operations for many months. Especially, he mused, in the unlikely case that the elf was a high one from Elebrion. “No need for goblins and orcs. But you tell me where to find elf, I give you that fifteen silvers you want.”

“So elves are worth more, even to a dwarf?” The slaver laughed. “Done, dwarf. But you’ll pay me when I bring the news. I ain’t helping you fetch nothing. That’s all on you. Meet me here in a week’s time. If there’s an elf about the city, I’ll know by then. Where you want your dwarves?”

“Bring them to the Axe and Pick before nightfall,” Lodi told him, giving him the name of one of the five city inns that catered to a dwarven clientele. He would have liked to leave this horribly bright stinking Man city and return to the underground comforts of Iron Mountain on the morrow, but once he had Arnor Tallsmith’s son and the lad’s three friends safely in hand, he could afford to be patient. A week was a small price to pay for the gold that an elf might bring. “I come here in seven days. If there is news, I pay the silver. If there is none, I pay nothing.”

He rose from the crudely hewn bench and stalked away toward the door, leaving his jar of piss water for the slaver. It was hard to say which of the two he found the less palatable.

• • •

The Merry Widow was moderately less dreadful than Nicolas was expecting, but if it wasn’t an establishment that catered to the gutter, neither was it one that could be expected to accommodate the more esoteric tastes of the sort for which he was searching.

It was located in the southwestern district, surrounded by cheap taverns, one-room offices rented to the nominal professionals who operated outside of the guild structure, and other brothels. It wasn’t in the worst part of the district, but Nicolas had absolutely no expectation that he would find what he was seeking. Still, he had seen longer odds pay off before, and if nothing else, establishing a reputation as an inveterate whore chaser would be useful in providing him with an excuse to ask the sort of questions he needed to ask of nearly anyone.

And if he was honest with himself, it had been more than two months since the last time he’d had a woman. For once, duty and desire were in perfect alignment.

There were five girls lounging about the poorly lit room. One was an alarmingly thin blonde girl. There were also three brunettes of varying sizes and a pretty young woman with red hair whose more refined features suggested she might be a noble’s by-blow. He signaled the madam, a thickset woman with large breasts who might have been attractive ten years ago. Her suspicious mien tended to belie the sign outside. A widow she might be, but merry she was not.

“What a captivating collection you have here, madam. Is this the complete set?”

“Aye, my lord,” she replied. His disappointment must have showed in his voice, as she responded a little stiffly. “My girls are young, and they’re clean. Ye’ll have no complaints, of that ye can be sure.”

“I mean no offense, madam. The red-haired one, in particular, is lovely. But I was wondering if you might be keeping anything more exotic on hand for those whose tastes have become, shall we say, a little jaded over time.”

The woman eyed him suspiciously. “Ye won’t be hurting any of my girls, captain. No one got enough coin for that, not even the Bankers Guild. And if ye’re looking for boys, ye’d best go elsewhere. I don’t hold with no abomination.”

Nicolas shook his head. “I fear you misunderstand me, madam. I spoke with a friend earlier, and he happened to suggest that in establishments of a certain refinement, there were occasionally…unusual experiences to be had.”

“Unusual experiences?” The madam’s eyes, set deep in her fleshy face, widened with disbelief. “Ye want to stick it in a gobbo or something?”

Nicolas managed to suppress the laughter that threatened to erupt from him, but it was a close-run thing. He had no doubts that this was not the place for which he was searching. The woman’s vulgar bewilderment was sufficiently convincing testimony, as far as he was concerned.

“No, madam, I most certainly do not wish to befoul anything by sticking it in a goblin, least of all my sword. However, I should like to inquire if your little redhead there might be amenable to a private
tête-à-tête
.”

“Ye don’t have nothing strange in mind?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary, I assure you.” He held up five copper coins.

The madam adroitly relieved him of them.

“All right, then. Ye’ll find that what Dalérie misses in exotics, she makes up for with her enthusiasm.”

“Indeed.”

The girl, responding to an unseen signal from her owner, stepped forward and met Nicolas’s eyes. Her eyes were green and served as a pleasing complement to her hair. She smiled with what appeared to be honest pride that she had been the first girl chosen tonight. That, or she was simply pleased that Nicolas was not a fat old man with rotting teeth.

Nicolas took her slender, unpainted hand and made a mock-bow over it. To his surprise, the wry gesture made the young whore blush.

“
Enchantée, mademoiselle
. Shall we dance?”

• • •

The slaver was already sitting at the same wooden bench as before when Lodi entered the shabby tavern a week later. Except for the fact that he had only one jar of ale instead of two in front of him, he looked as if he might have been sitting there since Lodi had left. No, Lodi saw as he approached the man, the slaver’s grungy vest showed that he had received a bloody nose at some point since their last meeting.

But he had news. Lodi could see it in the avaricious gleam in the slaver’s eyes. Lodi slipped the pouch of the fifteen promised silvers from his pocket and placed it on the table, then sat down facing the man.

“Where?”

The slaver grinned and reached out for the pouch, but drew his hand away when Lodi lifted a finger.

“You tell me first.”

“I heard tell that a man from Orontis called Jericas Servilio caught hisself an elf girl not far from the lands of the tree elves. Sold her to Quadras Aetias.” He leaned back and nodded knowingly, as if he expected Lodi to recognize the names.

“Who is Aetias?”

“You ain’t heard of him? He’s the richest whoremonger in Malkan. Runs at least three brothels that I knows of. Has a couple taverns too. I ain’t never been to one, though—too rich for my blood. All cats is grey in the dark, hey?”

Only if you’re blind as a man. Lodi shrugged. “If you like cats, maybe. You say he have three brothels. Where do he keep the elf?”

“Don’t know. But my guess is the Golden Rose. That’s the swankiest whorehouse in the city. It’s where the bloods and the bankers go. Aetias didn’t pay Servilio no twenty gold bears just to trick her out for coppers in one of his taverns.”

Lodi silently pushed the pouch toward the slaver, who winked at him and scooped it up.

“Looks like I got my price, after all, dwarf. And since I wouldn’t mind collecting if I runs across more of yourn, let me give you a piece of advice. You got what you came here for, right? So leave the elf be. You can threaten folks like me if you like, but a rich man like Quadras Aetias is too big for you to touch. Cross him, and he’ll put a bounty on your head faster’n you can dig yesself a hole.”

Lodi frowned, then held out his hand. The man might be a slaver, but he wasn’t a bad man as such. He’d treated young Tallsmith and his friends well, according to them, and the warning was well-intentioned. It was also beside the point, however, as Lodi already had a rudimentary plan in mind.

“For the advice, I thanks you, Man. Fare you well.”

“Likewise, dwarf. And do me a favor…if Aetias catches you, don’t you be telling him it was me who put you on to him.”

For the first time in their brief acquaintance, the dwarf found himself warming to the man. “I tell no one nothing,” he promised sincerely. “But no fears. No Man can catch a dwarf once he go underground.”

• • •

Nicolas had known more scintillating conversations at sieges than the one in which he now found himself trapped. In fact, he mused, as the merchant Jervais continued to fret about the likelihood that their plans would go awry, there had been sieges he enjoyed more than this dreadful Malkanian party. Hosted by one of the city’s leading importers, the wine was mediocre, the music was off-key, the women were dressed in drab fashions that had been out-of-date for two years in Lutèce, and his companion was tedious in the extreme.

“What if they’re caught? What if they name names?”

“They’re not going to be caught. I will see to it.”

“But you can’t be certain. How can you be certain? And what if Aetias doesn’t come?”

“He’ll be here. No banker of his magnitude and habits would snub one of his most important clients.”

His only satisfaction in listening to his nominal employer concoct yet another disastrous scenario, this time one in which the two street assassins he’d hired earlier that afternoon turned out to be agents of the present Duc, was knowing that the fat little man’s interminable tongue would soon be stilled forever. It was hard fortune for the man’s wife, he supposed, but any regrets Nicolas might have had about the need to silence the man permanently vanished as Jervais continued to regale him with nonsensical predictions of doom and gloom.

It was strange, Nicolas thought, how often a man worries about everything except the actual threat at hand. We jump at shadows in the distance and somehow manage to miss the beast right at our feet. He ran a finger over the blade hidden in his right sleeve. Swords had been forbidden by the host’s guards, but the three knives he had secreted about his person would be more than sufficient for his purposes tonight.

“There is Quadras Aetias now,” Nicolas said. “You see, it all goes according to plan. When he moves near the window over there, go and greet him. Take off the white scarf, and let the red one show. Don’t make a theatrical production out of it. Our friends will see. They are watching.”

Sweating despite the cool evening breeze that entered through the open windows, Jervais reluctantly complied. Nicolas eyed the two killers to make sure they’d seen the signal that the target was in sight. The woman, wearing the purple dress Jervais had given her earlier that day, appeared to be occupied with fending off the advances of a red-faced innkeeper, but Nicolas could see she was keeping an eye on both Aetias and Jervais.

The other assassin was roaming through the crowd in the white tunic of the slaves holding a plate of pastries on his shoulder; Nicolas had no idea where he’d gotten either the tunic or the pastries, but he guessed Quadras Aetias would find himself short one male slave tomorrow.

Aetias greeted a tall, handsome couple who appeared to be married, called over a slave, and gracefully offered the woman a goblet of wine. Pleasantries were exchanged, and then Aetias continued to circulate, finally approaching the open window on the western side of the room that Nicolas had told the killers would be their escape route.

He’d lied, of course. There would be no escape. Not for them.

“Go,” Nicolas hissed at Jervais, but the merchant was too frightened to hear him. “They are ready. Go, damn you. Do it now!”

Jervais looked at him, his eyes pleading to be relieved of his duty, but Nicolas simply put his hand on Jervais’s plump side, spun him around, and gave him an inobtrusive but firm push in the back. His shoulders slumped with defeat, Jervais approached Quadras Aetias as if he were a convicted criminal walking toward the gallows. Nicolas followed two steps back, as any good bodyguard would.

The banker greeted the shorter merchant with a tolerant, if condescending welcome, and they had barely begun the conventional formalities when Nicolas sensed a sudden movement behind him and whirled around to meet it.

With the woman’s speed slightly handicapped by her dress, she was three steps behind the male killer. Both had their daggers out but were holding them low, where they could not easily be seen, although one woman cried out in alarm as the man pushed past her.

“Ware, my lords—assassins!” Nicolas shouted.

With the precision born of many hours of practice, the sleeve knife slid into his hand as he stepped behind the man rushing past him.

Moving perpendicular to the man’s own movement, he grabbed the man’s chin with his left hand and drew his blade across the exposed throat with his right as he used his weight and momentum to take the man off his feet.