Thraxas - The Complete Series (51 page)

“Try it,” says Tanrose.

I sigh. If Tanrose can’t come up with anything better than that then the situation is probably hopeless.

Makri bursts through the front door.

“Great rhetoric class,” she exclaims to the cook, then sees me at the bar. She walks past muttering about needing to air the place to get rid of the bad smell.

“To hell with this,” I grunt, and storm out the front entrance, none too pleased at the task in front of me. Baxos the flower seller has plied his trade on the corner of Quintessence Street for thirty years without benefit of custom from me. When I rolled up a few months ago looking for flowers for Makri, it practically caused a riot. This time it’s just as bad.

“Hey, Rox,” he calls over to the fish vendor. “Thraxas is buying flowers again.”

“Still got his lady friend, has he?” yells back Rox, loud enough for the entire street to hear.

“That’s the way to do it, Thraxas!” screams Birix, one of Twelve Seas’ busiest prostitutes.

“He’s a real gentleman!” screams her companion, to the amusement of the workers atop the nearest building, who start adding a few ripe comments of their own.

I hurry home. I know this isn’t going to work again. I will have some harsh words for Tanrose when Makri tries to stuff the flowers down my throat. I storm into the Avenging Axe where Makri is telling Tanrose about her class. I ram the flowers into her hand without saying anything and march around the bar where I bang my fist on the counter and shout for a beer and a large glass of klee. As an apology I admit it lacks a certain grace.

Almost immediately I am tapped on the shoulder. It’s Makri. She embraces me, bursts into tears, then runs out of the room. Remembering events last time I’m fairly sure this is a good sign, but I check with Tanrose just in case.

“Does that mean it’s all right now?”

“Of course.”

It all seems very strange to me.

“You know, Tanrose, I find this very peculiar. What the hell is so great about a bunch of flowers?”

“Lots of things, if you spent a large chunk of your life in an Orcish gladiator slave pit. Not many flowers there, I imagine. Makri’s probably never been given a present before.”

I suppose not.

“You think it would’ve worked with my wife?”

“It certainly wouldn’t have hurt. Didn’t you ever give her flowers?”

“Of course not. I didn’t know I was supposed to. I wish I’d known you when I was younger, Tanrose. Might have made everything a lot easier.”

I take my beer and a fresh portion of stew and slump at my favourite table, wondering about the mysterious ways of women. I reckon it’s not really my fault I was never any good with them. They never taught us anything about the subject at Sorcerer’s school.

T
hings return to normal, which is to say it carries on being hot. The street outside is full of building workers and I abandon all thoughts of work for the rest of the summer.
The Renowned and Truthful Chronicle of All the World’s Events
carries story after story about the affair of the gold-filled statue and I get treated generously enough in the coverage, which is always good for business.

I manage to grab a piece of the reward for the recovery of the King’s gold, though it’s far from my fair share. By the time the Guards, lawyers, Praetor’s clerks and sundry other city officials have taken their cut, there’s not much left for the man who actually located it. I have to make a strong plea to Deputy Consul Cicerius to get even that.

We’re sitting in the back yard where Palax and Kaby are playing a flute and a mandolin. The tavern has now emptied of visitors. Dandelion has gone back to live on the beach and Soolanis has returned to Thamlin, drinking less and organising a rich persons’ branch of the Association of Gentlewomen, according to Makri.

“Was it Ixial or Tresius who started the whole thing off?”

“I don’t really know. Once it was all over it was hard to say. Hard to say who did what, or who was worse. When I started off as an Investigator I thought every case would have a crime at the beginning and a solution at the end, but often it doesn’t seem to be like that. Just a bunch of people going around, all behaving worse than each other, so in the end even they don’t know exactly who did what. Still, I’d say they all got what was coming to them, especially Grosex.”

He was hanged last week. I didn’t bother attending. Calia is back in Pashish, missing Ixial more than Drantaax, I expect. At least she has Drantaax’s valuable statues to see her through her old age.

“You know, I didn’t even get paid by any of these people? Apart from the dolphins, of course. All that chasing round in the magic space and risking death at the hands of Sarin the Merciless for no remuneration. I must be slipping. I’ll never get out of Twelve Seas at this rate.”

“This’ll help,” says Makri, taking something out of the purse round her neck. It’s a golden finger. “I broke it off the statue when we came back from the magic space,” she explains. “I thought we were due some sort of reward. I’ll halve it with you.”

“Smart thinking.”

I look at the golden finger. Half of that will make a nice packet of gurans. I’m not doing so badly really. A few nice cases over the winter, maybe some lucrative work from the Transport Guild or even the Honourable Association of Merchants, and I might yet make it out of Twelve Seas. If summer here is hell, winter’s not much better. And in the Hot Rainy Season, which comes up in about a month, the streets turn to rivers and beggars drown in front of your eyes. I can hardly bear to think about it.

I don’t have to think about it right now. I pick up a “Happy Guildsman” jumbo-sized tankard of ale from the bar and lie back in the shade. Listening to Palax and Kaby playing music, I forget all about monks, killers and gangsters, and go to sleep.

BUSINESS AS USUAL, DURING ALTERCATIONS

“So, what are you going to do when they take your license away?” Makri asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “What are you going to do when you fail at the College?”

“I don’t know.”

A light tap comes on the outside door. In walks the dark-clad figure of Hanama. I fumble desperately for my sword. Hanama is number three in the Assassins Guild. The last time I saw her, she tossed a dart into the Chief Abbot of a temple of warrior monks, sending him off to paradise rather more quickly than he had anticipated.

“Relax, Investigator,” she says, in her soft voice. “Had I been here on business, I would not have knocked.”

I glare at her, sword now firmly in hand. “Then what do you want?”

“I’ve come to visit Makri.”

Hanama looks at Makri. Makri looks puzzled but gets to her feet and they go off to Makri’s room. Strange. I’ve never know Assassins to do much in the way of socializing.

The door crashes open. I whirl to face this new intruder. It’s Sarija, wife of my former client, the late Senator Mursius. She trips and falls. She’s wet through. Her face is drawn, with a yellowish hue. And she reeks of the narcotic dwa, easily discernible even among the multitudinous unpleasant odours from the street outside.

“I’m hiring you to find out who killed my husband,” she says, then passes out in my arms. I dump her on the couch. I walk over to the door, close it, mutter my locking spell, then barricade it with a chair.

I notice there’s an envelope pushed under the door. When did that arrive? I tear it open and read the message:
You’ll be dead before the end of the rainy season
, it says.

“I will be if things go on like this,” I mutter, and throw it in the bin.

D
EATH AND
T
HRAXAS

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Thraxas at the Races
copyright © 1999 by Martin Scott;
Thraxas and the Elvish Isles
copyright © 2000. Published by permission of Little, Brown U.K.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Book

Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-8850-4

Cover art by Tom Kidd

First U.S. printing, September 2004

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
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New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH
Typeset by Bell Road Press, Sherwood, OR
Printed in the United States of America