The Tides of Avarice (2 page)

“I can't hear nuffink,” said Brains, his voice no more than a whisper.

High above them, the clouds shifted and momentarily permitted a ray of light from a single bright star to pierce through to ground level, where, unnoticed by Brains, it glinted for an instant off the blade that suddenly materialized in Muscle's hand. As his mother had always said fondly to him before he'd sold her to a slaver from far Bojingle, “Just 'cause your head is filled with solid muscle, darlin', don't mean you can't have brains too.”

“Lemme have another look at that map,” said Muscle.

Stupidly, Brains handed the scrap over.

The blade seemed to hiss as it darted through the air. It certainly squelched a bit as it sank to the hilt in Brains' flesh.

Aside from that, there was no sound, not even the slap of seaweed, as Muscle adroitly caught the slumping body of his erstwhile friend and lowered it to the slimy wooden dock. It took him scarcely a moment to rummage through the numerous pockets of the dead man's coat and transfer their contents to his own. Then he rolled the corpse over once, twice, and watched as it vanished with a gentle sound of squeezed jello into the black depths.

He tucked the map for safekeeping behind his eyepatch, then rubbed his hands together in satisfaction at a job well done. The future beckoned brightly. No quiet country pub for him, although the bevies of buxom babes bit had been a good idea, one that he noted for future reference, and …

“The ocean tells no tales,” said a soft, sinister voice behind him.

Muscle almost jumped out of his shoes. “Whassat?”

There was no reply.

“Who goes there? Show your face, or by Davy Jones I'll …”

Muscle wasn't certain exactly what it was he could do, but he hoped the dangling sentence sounded sufficiently threatening. Maybe there hadn't really been a voice at all; maybe it had been just a trick of his ears.

“Only a local resident out for an evening stroll,” claimed the voice improbably.

Straining his single eye to penetrate the darkness, Muscle watched as a small, slight figure, moving with the predatory silence of a weasel, slipped out from behind a stack of disintegrating crates.

“Good evening,” said the stranger. “Beautiful night, isn't it?”

Muscle struggled for words. This was no local out for a postprandial constitutional. All the locals who thought it was a bright idea to go out for postprandial constitutionals around here had been murdered long ago by opportunists like Muscle. He knew exactly who this was. His heart sank into his boots and, albeit rebelliously, stayed there.

This was – could be none other than – him.

“C-can't c-complain,” Muscle finally managed to stammer.

“Oh, good. Then you won't be complaining about handing it over. Hm?”

“Handing what over?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean.”

Muscle gave a laugh, a sort of oh-that-silly-old-thing laugh intended to display sophisticated nonchalance. Instead, it sounded as if he'd just swallowed some bilgewater and it had gone down the wrong way.

“You stowed it away behind your eyepatch,” explained the stranger, as if Muscle might have carelessly forgotten.

“'S my 'nheritance.”

The stranger looked startled. It was not an expression that fitted easily on his countenance. You could sense that he wasn't startled very often.

“Your what?” he said.

“'Nheritance. Was given to me by my ol' buddy just before he passed away. His last wish was that I should have it. Leastwise, his second-last wish. His very last wish was to be buried at sea.” Muscle gestured with his thumb toward the harbor. “Wot I just done.”

The stranger snickered incredulously. “I really do think you should give me that map, inheritance or not.”

Muscle had been threatened during his lifetime more often than anyone could have counted, and by people who were more powerful and more terrifying than anyone could have described, and always he'd stood up courageously against such threats, even though, here and there, they'd cost him an eye, a leg, and numerous scars and amputations that fortunately were hidden by his clothing. If the stranger had threatened him, Muscle would undoubtedly have resigned himself to losing an ear or a few fingers, perhaps, but he'd have been defiant. Yet the quiet, insinuating suggestion the stranger had offered …

Muscle's nerve broke.

“Here, you have it.” Now that he'd made the decision, he could hardly get the crumpled paper out from behind his eyepatch fast enough, out of his hands, out of his possession. “Take it. Take it.”

“I shall indeed,” said the stranger, doing so. “My considerable thanks to you.”

“'S all right.” Muscle resisted the urge to touch his forelock. “Any time.”

The stranger turned as if to leave, then turned back. “Oh, just one more thing.”

“Whassat?”

“I'm sure you'll understand.”

And Muscle did understand. This was going to go way beyond the loss of a couple of fingers.

“I didn't get a chance to have a proper look at it,” he babbled, “and even if I had I wouldn't tell nobody, honest!”

“Safety first, I'm afraid,” said the stranger. “No hard feelings, eh?”

There was the vicious whoooosh a diving hawk makes, followed an instant later by the noise a sack of potatoes makes when you drop it onto soggy, rotting planks – assuming the sack of potatoes has a wooden leg, that is.

The only public clock in Darkwater, the one on the tower of Darkwater Jail, began to strike midnight. The clock was the most unreliable timekeeper in the whole of the Toxic Archipelago, perhaps even the whole of Sagaria, so it was not uncommon for midnight to start chiming long after daybreak, but tonight, for once, the clock was more or less on the mark.

The little stranger murmured, “Moments to spare,” as he rolled Muscle's body over the edge of the dock, just as Muscle had rolled Brains's body over not long before. There was a very similar sucking splash. The stranger liked to keep up his steady average of a murder a day, so Muscle had died just in the nick of time.

“One more port of call,” said the stranger to the unhearing night as he ducked away once more behind the crates, “and then I should be almost done . . .”

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿

It was one of those exquisite days when all of Sagaria seems tranquil and at peace. A grassy hillock dappled by sunlight, in the midst of a vast meadow where blades of grass and golden buttercups sway majestically in the symphonic whispers of the wind. The soothing, barely audible buzz of small insects going about their rituals. Birdsong in the air. High in the sky, one or two fluffy clouds chasing each other.

Bliss.

And then …

A mighty explosion ripped the air.

Daffodils and grass flattened for tens of yards around the little hill.

Insects plummeted to the ground, struck stone-dead midflight.

Billows of noxious green-brown gas spread across the meadow.

The little fluffy clouds fled for the safety of the horizon, where their mommies might be waiting to comfort them.

Birdsong came to an abrupt, strangulated halt.

Death stalked.

“That's better,” said Growgarth, shifting his rear to make himself more comfortable. The worg sat on a shattered rock atop the meadow's central hillock. He grinned, displaying a mouthful of pointy teeth. A lot of pointy teeth. A look of sheer content spread itself across his broad, warty face. He was very proud of those warts, which had won the admiration of lady worgs for many miles around. Lady worgs were disturbingly difficult to tell apart from male ones, but still their praise counted for something.

Growgarth glanced down at his hand, which looked like a clenched boxing glove, only wartier. A lot wartier. The fist held the splintered remains of the spruce branch with which he'd been about to scratch his behind. He threw the wreckage aside. This was the life.

Worgs aren't pretty – at least, not to human eyes. If you said they looked like trolls, you'd soon start hearing from trolls' lawyers. Worgs are a lot uglier than trolls. And nastier, definitely nastier. People who've seen a worg before they've had their supper end up not eating it. They may never sleep a whole night through again, and if they do, they may wish they hadn't.

Out of the pocket of his filthy loincloth Growgarth pulled a dead rat. Half a dead rat, to be precise. He'd eaten the other half a few weeks ago and then decided the rest needed to be kept a while longer until it reached the appropriately delicious state of decay.

He held the mangled corpse to his nose (don't even ask about his nose) and took a deep breath.

Just right.

Into his mouth the half-rat went, the last bit to go being the tail, which wriggled like a withered worm before vanishing between his warty lips.

Growgarth shut his eyes the better to enjoy the flavor.

A voice spoke behind him. “I'm here.”

The worg's eyes sprang open in astonishment. How could anyone have approached the hillock on which he sat without him having noticed? It would have been difficult enough before, when the ground was carpeted in long grass and tall flowers, but now that it had been seared to a flat, smoking waste? No way.

Yet, somehow, his visitor had achieved the impossible.

This visitor often did. Growgarth knew him from the days of yore.

“Oh hello dhere,” said the worg, affecting nonchalance. He didn't turn round to look at the newcomer, partly in hopes of impressing him, partly because in his surprise he had a rat bone stuck between his front teeth, but mostly because he didn't want to see the newcomer's eyes. Growgarth was maybe four times as tall and four times beefier – and many, many times wartier – than the man behind him, but looking into those dead, distant eyes always shrank him. Even Growgarth was glad he hadn't gazed upon what those eyes must have gazed upon during their owner's long and ruthless life.

“I bin expectin' you,” the worg continued, lying through his teeth – and, as noted, he had plenty of those to lie through. “I bin sayin' to meself, ‘Wunner what's bin happnin' to me ol' pal Ter—'”

“Don't,” hissed the voice, “say my name.”

Growgarth gulped at the threat that lurked behind the newcomer's words, but he tried to keep his own voice as casual as before. “Oh, calm down, willya? Ain't nobuddy here but us.”

“That's what you think. You didn't see me coming, did you, you great oaf? Don't bother lying to me. So how're you so sure there aren't others hiding out there?”

Because you'd have seen them if there were, Growgarth wanted to say, but he kept his silence.

“We don't know who might be watching,” the visitor went on. It was odd to hear the worry in his voice. Growgarth had never known him to sound anything but icily confident before. “I don't like meeting you in person like this. There could always be somebody spying on us – somebody, or something.”

Growgarth looked around him. “Yeah. Right.”

For a few moments silence hung between them, except for a strange sound not dissimilar to distant thunder. The half-rat was sitting less easily in Growgarth's stomach than he'd expected.

“You have it for me?” said the other at last.

“I promised, di'n' I?” The worg made no movement.

Over his shoulder something flew, something that landed on the blackened ground in front of him with a muffled chink. A leather purse.

“Your payment,” whispered the seemingly disembodied voice.

Without quite knowing how he'd got there, Growgarth was on his knees on the ground, ripping open the purse with his clawed fingers, spilling the gold coins out. Counting them was beyond him, but there seemed to be the right number: lots.

For long seconds he slavered eagerly, drooling on the little heap of treasure.

“Ahem,” said his black-clad visitor.

Growgarth looked up at him for the first time. The worg's vision was colored red with avarice. He could hardly see the visitor's eyes through the crimson haze.

“My purchase,” the visitor explained.

“Oh. Ah. Yah. The fing.”

Once more the worg dug in his loincloth pocket and his hand emerged clutching a crumpled sheet of brownish paper. There was a smear of very old rat blood on it, but this didn't seem to concern the stranger in black, who seized the paper from Growgarth's warty grasp. He scanned it for a brief moment, then tucked it away somewhere in his long cloak.

“Pleasure doin' bizniss wit' you, I's sure,” said Growgarth, hoping the other would take this as his cue to leave. “Any time dere's sumpin' else you wanna buy …”

The visitor clapped his forepaws, like a small boy whose birthday party is just about to begin. “Business is over,” he said brightly. “Now the socialization can begin!”

“Soshio . . .?”

“The socialization.”

“Oh, yeah. Dat.”

“The fun.”

“You got sumpin' to eat?”

“The bonding, my good fellow. The companionable sharing of the fruits of the day. Soon it'll be time for sunset, and it looks like it'll be a pretty one, no? What do you say we watch it together, side-by-side, discussing matters of little consequence, just getting to know each other better?”

Growgarth did not know very many things, but one of them was that he was sure that under no circumstances did he want to get to know his visitor any better.

“Duh,” he said expressively.

“Good, then that's settled.” The visitor moved as if to join him on the rock, then paused, pointing.

“Oh, look, you've dropped a couple.”

“Wha?”

“A couple of the coins.”

Growgarth's eyes searched. There was a definite shortage of hiding places left on the hillock. “Can't see 'em.”

“But I can. Just there.”

Still Growgarth could see no glint of gold. On the other hand, as one of the few wise sages of worg mythology so prophetically remarked, gold is gold. Growgarth got down on his knees again and started beating the ground with the flats of his hands, hoping to find the errant coins by touch if he couldn't do so by sight.