Thraxas - The Complete Series (27 page)

I toss the news-sheet away. Let the Civil Guard sort it out. That’s what it’s paid for.

The door slams open and two unfamiliar characters walk in. Fighting men, but not the normal mercenaries we get round here on their way to join up with the King’s forces. The pair of them march up to the bar and order beer. Gurd pours them a couple of tankards and they make for a table to rest from the heat.

The taller of the two, a rough-looking individual with closely cropped hair and a weatherbeaten face, halts as he passes my chair. He stares at me. I glance back casually. I recognise him. I was hoping he wouldn’t recognise me. It would have made my life easier. Under the table, my hand slides automatically towards the pommel of my sword.

“Thraxas,” he says, spitting out the word.

“Have we met?” I enquire.

“You know damn well we met. I spent five years on a prison galley because of you.”

“Because of me? I didn’t force you to rob that Elvish Ambassador.”

I suppose I did gather the evidence to put him away. He draws his sword with well-practised ease. His companion follows his lead and with no further discussion they leap towards me with murder in their eyes.

I’m out of my chair fast. I may be forty-three years old and have a fat belly, but I can still move when I have to. The first attacker slashes at me but I parry and riposte to send him hurtling backwards with blood spurting from his chest before whirling round to face the other assailant.

The other assailant is already lying dead. In less time than it took me to dispatch my opponent Makri has grabbed her sword from its place of concealment behind the bar, leaped into the fray and slain him.

“Thanks, Makri.”

Gurd now has his old axe in his hands and looks disappointed there is no one left for him.

“Getting slow,” he mutters.

“What was that about?” asks Makri.

“They robbed an Elvish Ambassador to the Imperial Palace. Took his money when he was lying drunk in a brothel in Kushni. Civil Guards couldn’t find them but I tracked them down. About five years back. They must have only got off the prison ship a couple of months ago.”

And now they’re dead. Every time I put someone away they swear to get me, but they never usually carry out their threat. Just my bad luck this pair happened to walk into the Avenging Axe. Or their bad luck, I suppose.

I frisk the corpses from habit, with no results. Nothing linking them to any of the City’s criminal gangs. Probably they were just enjoying their freedom before embarking on a life of crime again. I’d rather not have had to kill them but I don’t care too much. Next time they were convicted of anything they’d have been hanged anyway. One of them has a purse hanging round his neck but it’s empty. Not even a coin. Their next robbery wouldn’t have been too far away.

Blood oozes over the floor.

“I’ll deal with this mess,” says Makri, returning her sword to its hiding place, where it rests alongside her spare axe and a few knives and throwing stars. Makri likes weapons.

She mops up the blood then bends down to pick up the empty purse that I’ve discarded on the floor.

“Nice embroidery,” she says. “I could do with a new one.”

She puts it round her neck. Seven years in the Orc gladiator pits has left Makri fairly immune to the effects of death. No qualms about putting a dead man’s purse round her neck, provided it’s handsomely embroidered.

Gurd and I drag the bodies outside. No one takes much notice. Corpses on the street are not an especially unusual sight in Twelve Seas. Most people are too busy scratching a living to pay them much attention.

I grab a passing child and slip him a coin to take a message to the Civil Guards informing them of what has happened. They won’t be too bothered about the affair either but as I’m a licensed Investigator, it pays to keep on the right side of the law.

Back inside Makri has cleaned up the floor and is polishing the bar. I get myself another beer and sit down to rest. It’s getting hotter by the minute. The bar starts to fill up. The city suffered riots recently and, as much damage remains in the streets, much construction is going on to repair it. Come lunchtime the tavern is full of workers seeking refreshment from their morning shifts on the scaffolding. It’s good business for Gurd. Good business for Tanrose as well, who makes and sells the food in the tavern. She’s a fine cook and I purchase one of her large venison pies for lunch. With plenty of money left after my last case I’ve sworn to survive the rest of the burning hot summer without working. This morning’s fighting came too close to work for my liking.

“What was an Elvish Ambassador doing drunk in a brothel in Kushni?” enquires Makri, later.

“Enjoying himself. His Elf Lord called him back to the Southern Islands right afterwards in disgrace and it was all hushed up here in the city. The King never likes anything that might damage our relations with the Elves.”

I order myself another beer and wonder if I should have another venison pie. Unexpected activity tends to give me a powerful appetite.

“Everything gives you a powerful appetite,” says Makri, grinning, as she carries on cleaning the tables.

A
fter I finish my venison pie, I load up with a few of Tanrose’s pastries and buy another beer to take upstairs.

“You’re drinking too much,” says Tanrose.

“Needed a hobby after my wife left.”

“You took it up as a hobby long before that.”

I can’t deny it.

I have two rooms at the Avenging Axe, one for sleeping and one for working. The workroom has an outside door with steps down to the street outside so clients can visit without coming up through the tavern. I’m planning to sleep the afternoon away but before I can settle down a frantic banging comes at the door. I open it and a young man rushes in, bouncing off me and ending up in the middle of the room looking scared and confused.

“They’re going to hang me!” he cries. “Don’t let them do it!”

“What? Who?”

“I didn’t kill him! It’s a lie! Help me!”

I glare at him. My rooms are in their usual mess and he’s not helping any. He’s in a real state and for a long time I can’t make head nor tail of what he’s saying. Eventually I have to fling him in a chair and tell him to start talking sense or get the hell out of my office. He quietens down, but keeps glancing anxiously at the door, as if he’s expecting his pursuers to burst in any second.

I walk over to the door and mutter the few short sentences that make up the standard locking spell. It’s a common minor spell and you don’t have to be particularly skilled in magic to perform it, but the young man seems reassured.

“Now, tell me what’s going on. I’m too hot to stand around guessing. Who are you, who’s after you, and why?”

“The Guards! They say I killed Drantaax!”

“Drantaax? The sculptor?”

He nods.

Drantaax is a well-known man in Turai. Best sculptor in town. One of the best anywhere. Well respected for his work, even by the aristocracy, who generally look down on artisans. His statues decorate many of Turai’s temples, and even the Royal Palace.

“Drantaax was murdered last night. But I didn’t do it!”

“Why would anybody think you did? And who are you anyway?”

“I’m Grosex, Drantaax’s apprentice. I was working with him last night. We’re busy finishing off the new statue of Saint Quatinius for the Shrine. We’ve been working on it for days … but now he’s dead. He was stabbed in the back.”

“Where were you at the time?”

He was next door. He came through to the workroom and found Drantaax lying dead with a knife in his back. Then Drantaax’s wife Calia arrived and starting screaming.

“Calia called the Guard. All the time she was shouting at me, saying I’d stabbed him. But I didn’t.”

He hangs his head. He’s running on nervous energy and it’s making him ill. I offer him a thazis stick. Thazis, a mild narcotic, is still illegal but everyone uses it—well, everyone in Twelve Seas anyway. As he inhales the smoke his features relax.

I demand more details. I frown when I learn that instead of waiting for the Guards he fled the scene. And he mentions the interesting fact that the knife sticking in Drantaax belonged to him. I raise an eyebrow. It’s not exactly hard to understand why everyone might think he did it. He’s spent the night hiding in alleyways, wondering what to do, and now he’s here, trying to hire a detective who, frankly, is not too keen to be hired. I’m still too hot, I don’t need the work, and for all I know he’s guilty as hell.

He looks pathetic. Even though I’m hardened to most things in Turai, I almost feel sorry for him.

There’s more banging on my door.

“Open up, it’s the Guard.”

I recognise the voice. It’s Tholius. As Prefect of Twelve Seas he’s in charge of the Civil Guard in the area. Naturally enough he despises me. Guards don’t like Private Investigators. It’s odd that the Prefect himself is here. Normally he’d consider himself too important to get out on the streets and do police work.

I ignore the banging. It doesn’t go away.

“Thraxas, open up. I know Grosex is in there.”

“No one here but me.”

“That’s not what our Sorcerer says.”

I glance at Grosex. If the Guards reckon the case is important enough to track him with an official Sorcerer he’s certainly in bad trouble.

I’m still deciding what to do when the matter is taken out of my hands. The door groans as the Prefect orders his men to break it down. It’s not much of a door, and my locking spell is not much of a spell. To my extreme annoyance it caves in under the weight of heavy Guards’ boots and they flood in to my rooms.

I explode with anger. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, smashing your way into my rooms? You can’t break your way in here without a warrant!”

Prefect Tholius waves a warrant in my face and brushes past me. It’s probably not filled in properly, but I don’t bother arguing.

“One false move out of him—arrest him,” he orders his Guards.

He confronts young Grosex. The apprentice, worn out from worry and still dressed in his dust-covered work tunic, cowers before the yellow-edged official toga of the Prefect.

“You’re in serious trouble,” rasps Tholius, grabbing Grosex roughly by his tunic. “Why did you kill the sculptor?”

The apprentice hopelessly protests his innocence. Prefect Tholius sneers, then shoves him into the waiting arms of two large Guards.

“Take him away. If he tries to run, kill him. And as for you, Thraxas…” He turns on me. “Don’t dare interfere with the law again. If I so much as hear a rumour you’re involved in this case I’ll be down on you like a bad spell.”

He turns to go, but halts at the ruined door.

“Feel free to file a claim for compensation from the authorities,” he says, laughing. Any such claim would have to go to the Prefect for authorisation.

After bagging his suspect and insulting me the Prefect is as happy as an Elf in a tree and walks off smiling. The Guards depart, dragging young Grosex with them. My last sight of him, he’s being hauled down the stairs into a covered Guard wagon, still pathetically protesting his innocence.

I shut what’s left of my door. I finish the rest of my beer, then head downstairs to see Makri.

“I’m working,” I tell her. “Got a case.”

“Since when?”

“Since Prefect Tholius smashed down my door and dragged a client of mine away to prison. I didn’t want to work, but I am now angrier than a wounded dragon and I will consequently move heaven, earth and the three moons in order to demonstrate to Tholius that I am not a man to be treated in this way. I’m off to investigate. See you later.”

I march out into Quintessence Street with my sword at my hip and grim feelings in my heart. When I was Senior Investigator at the Palace people used to treat me with respect. I’ve fallen a long way since then but I’m damned if I’m going to let some petty tyrant like Prefect Tholius walk all over me.

It’s hotter than Orcish hell out here and the stink of fish from the harbour market hangs thick in the air. I have to pick my way over mounds of rubble around the site of some new construction where the old houses were destroyed in the riots. In their place a contractor is raising new blocks of tenements on either side of the narrow street. Four storeys is the legal maximum in Turai but they’ll probably go higher. More profit for the builders and slum landlords. And Tholius. Prefects oversee the building in their area and Tholius rakes in a fair amount in bribes by turning a blind eye to things. Perks of his job. Most Prefects are the same. So are the Praetors. Corruption goes a long way up in this city. The building contractors themselves are in league with the Brotherhood, the criminal organisation that runs the south of the city. They have to be. You can’t do much around here unless the Brotherhood is involved.

There are two Civil Guard stations in Turai. The main one nearby is commanded by Prefect Tholius and a smaller one down by the docks is under the charge of Captain Rallee. I know him well, but he resolutely refuses to allow any of his men to pass on any information to me. I also have a contact at the main station, Guardsman Jevox, who’s not above passing me the odd fragment of information since I got his father off a rap a few years back, but I can’t risk running into the Prefect again so soon. Tholius doesn’t spend too much time here—most often he’s lounging around in some brothel or bar in Kushni, spending the gurans he’s extorted—but he might well still be around, questioning poor Grosex.