by Tom Holt
“Home,” said Ms. White. “It’s been a blast, but I want to go back now.”
“No you don’t,” George said. He moved very fast, for a fat man. He took a long stride forward, reached out his left hand and caught hold of her throat. He was much stronger than he looked. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re in trouble, you are.”
With his other hand he grabbed her shoulder and spun her round. She tried a backwards kick, but apparently he’d anticipated that. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she yelled. “What did I do?”
She heard him chuckle. “What did you do? Well, let’s see. Using my portal to trade useless junk for gold, how about that? Very smart idea. We had no idea you could use it like that. In fact, it’s impossible.”
“Is it?”
“According to the tech people, yes. The gold should’ve come through as a sort of powdery grey dust, something to do with molecular randomisation, that’s why we never bothered trying. But when you did it, it worked.”
“Clever old me,” said Ms. White. “Will you let go of me, please? You’re hurting me.”
“Three issues, basically,” George went on, squeezing a trifle harder. “One, suddenly flooding the market with huge amounts of gold isn’t very smart right now, it’s sent the bullion price plummeting just when we want it to go the other way. So, you’re out of the import-export business, capisce?”
Ms. White sighed. “It’s gone a bit pear-shaped at this end, too. That’s why I’m getting out.”
“Which brings me on to issue two. You told your chum with all the useless junk about YouSpace. That’s a breach of your non-disclosure agreement.”
“What agreement? I don’t remember signing anything?”
“Always read the small print,” George said gravely. “By using the YouSpace portal you are deemed to have agreed to the terms and conditions, and so on and so forth.”
“Ah. Sorry.”
“No problem. By a weird coincidence, the money your pal paid into your Swiss bank account is exactly the amount of the penalty clause in the agreement, less thirty-seven cents. You owe me thirty-seven cents. No rush.”
Ah well. All that money. Still. “All right,” she said. “Now will you let go of me? I just want to go home and pretend all of this never happened.”
“Issue three,” said George. “Now you probably didn’t mean to do it, and if so, no hard feelings, I quite understand, accidents will happen. But since you’ve been here, putting ideas into people’s heads, you’ve jeopardised my whole business operation. And that’s not nice.”
“Me? What did I do?”
George sighed down the back of her neck. “How about introducing King Drain to the idea of an industrialised free market economy, when I specifically want him staying pig-ignorant until I’ve got him thrown out of his stupid tunnels? This could be a real setback for me, and I really don’t want the aggravation.”
“Say that again,” said Ms. White. “You want Drain to leave the Dwarvenhold?”
“You bet I do,” said George. “So I can market it as an exciting new development of executive pieds-sous-terre with unlimited storage capacity for connoisseurs of fine wines. Come on, you’re not stupid. How far do you think the Dutch would’ve got with buying Manhattan Island for twenty bucks’ worth of shiny beads if the locals had known about supply and demand and market forces? You’re buggering up my entire strategy, and I’m not standing for it.”
Ms. White breathed out slowly through her nose. “Well, I’m most desperately sorry for any inconvenience,” she said. “But it’s done now. You’ll just have to build your wine cellars somewhere else. I know, what about the goblins? They’ve got loads of tunnels.”
“Not any more,” said George, and she could picture the grin on his face. “I had my lawyer serve notice to quit on ’em about an hour ago.”
“Notice to quit? Look, no offence, but you don’t know these people. If you seriously think—”
“And they’ve gone,” George said. “No fuss. Good as gold about it, they were. You see, when I do things I don’t muck about.”
“They’ve gone?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“You told the Dark Lord to sling his hook and—” Suddenly she felt very cold. “Fine,” she said. “I won’t ask you how you managed that.”
“Very sensible. I think you’ll find,” George went on, “that when I ask people to do things, they do them. So, when I ask you to do a little favour for me, in return for which you get to go home, and maybe even keep some of that money we were talking about a minute ago—”
“Ah.”
“Thought you’d be interested. And better still, you’ll get to go where you can spend it. Or you can stay here. Entirely up to you.”
“This little favour.”
She felt George yawn. “Kill King Drain for me, there’s a good girl,” he said. “Nice easy job, you can bung something nasty in his soup, you being his cook. Nobody’ll ever know it was you, and even if they do find out, you’ll be somewhere over the doughnut by then and they won’t be able to touch you for it. And once that idiot Drain’s out of the way, I can have my wine cellars and everybody will be happy.” His eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a problem with that.”
She made an effort and kept her voice normal. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t kill people.”
“Oh, come on.” George was grinning at her. “All right, you can keep all the money. There, you’ve driven your hard bargain, you get what you want and so do I.” He paused, looking at her like an entomologist who’s just found a hitherto unknown species of beetle swimming in his soup. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yup.”
“Silly girl. Actually, it’s probably my fault, for not making myself clear enough. It’s him or you. Either you kill him for me like I asked, or you’re stuck here, for ever and ever. Do you understand?”
“I won’t do it. Sorry.”
George sighed. “You’re being completely unreasonable, you know that? I mean, what’s it to you, one way or another? You’re not going to get caught, you won’t get in any trouble—and that’s the main reason why people don’t kill other people, isn’t it? I can absolutely guarantee. No awkward legal repercussions whatsoever.”
“No.”
“You’re weird, you know that? Inconsistent, that’s the word. I know about you. You’re the girl who’ll do anything for money. Including but not limited to screwing up an entire society.”
“Now just a—”
“For money,” George went on. “For the sake of a few dollars you happily fucked up the economy and social structure of tens of thousands of dwarves who never did you any harm, and because of your greed there’s going to be conflict and breakdowns and quite possibly civil war, just because you wanted them to buy a load of useless junk so you could take your profit and get out. Let me tell you something. I got twelve economists with Harvard degrees working for me, and you know what? Compared to what you just did, one harmless little murder is nothing. Besides,” he went on, gently, “you won’t have to see him die or anything icky like that. Just give him the soup and piss off out of it. What difference will it actually make, in the long run? If you don’t scrag him, one of his own lot will, sooner or later, it’s their way. It’s deeply ingrained in their culture, which is ancient and just as valid as anybody else’s, which isn’t actually saying very much, trust me, I read books. Or if the dwarves don’t do him, the goblins will, and they’ll turn his skull into a fucking tankard. It doesn’t matter,” George said, smiling. “Nothing you do here matters, it’s not real, it’s not your reality. It’s time you went home, my girl. And an eight-figure bank balance wouldn’t be so bad, either.”
She looked at him, as though into a mirror, and drew a deep breath. “Guards!”
“You stupid cow.” He hit her so hard she fell over, then stepped back towards the doughnut. “I was wrong. You belong here, with the savages. So fucking long.”
He
turned to face the doughnut. Ms. White scrambled to her feet and grabbed the nearest moveable object, which happened to be one half of the mirror she’d slipped into her pocket a little earlier, which had broken when she fell. She threw it at him, just as he started to dematerialise, and the jagged leading edge reached the back of his neck and passed through it. Then the doughnut vanished, leaving a plain unmarked wall. There was no crash of breaking glass, and no splinters on the floor.
She stared at the wall for a full ten seconds. I don’t kill people, she’d told him. And maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, and unless she could get back to her own reality and check out the obituaries she had no way of knowing which.
Big unless.
She thought about that. If she’d killed him, he wouldn’t have had a chance to revoke her YouSpace access, so if she made another doughnut, she’d be able to get home clear and be rather rich, though with a very, very remote possibility of twenty years to life for murder, or, to be precise, aggravated pesticide. If she hadn’t killed him, chances were that she could spend the rest of her life making patisserie and gazing through it, and achieve nothing more useful than a reputation for eccentricity; she’d be stuck here, with the dwarves, who would shortly be evicted to make room for a great many bottles of vintage claret by the man she’d just tried to kill, after declaring passionately her total rejection of manslaughter. Nuts, she thought. This is just not my day.
BOOK FIVE
The Agony and the Orcstacy
The High Elf narrowed his eyes. “You come in what?”
In front of him, the tree-dappled, faintly green sunlight of Elvenhome glinted on twenty thousand crudely made but efficient spear points. “Peace,” said Mordak. “No, really.”
Behind the High Elf, twenty thousand marshmallornwood bows creaked ominously, objecting to being held at full draw for well in excess of the recommended time limit. He frowned. “You know what,” he said, “I don’t believe you.”
Mordak sighed. “You talk to him,” he said, then realised that the space just behind his right shoulder where Tinituviel should have been was in fact empty. He felt a tiny twinge of disappointment, which didn’t last long. These were, after all, her people. Oh well. He took a deep breath. “We don’t want war,” he said.
“Yes, you do.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Yes, you do. You’re goblins.”
Mordak conceded the point with a slight gesture. “Yes, all right. But right now we don’t want war, because it’d be bloody stupid. Which is why,” he went on patiently, “we come in peace.”
Directly behind the High Elf, the captain of the archers cleared his throat meaningfully. The High Elf ignored him. “Why should I believe anything you say?” he said.
Ah, Mordak thought. Dialogue. “Because,” he said, “if you don’t, you have two choices. Either you give the order to shoot, and thereby launch an unprovoked attack and start a war, for which you’ll get roasted alive in the op-ed columns of every newspaper in Elvenhome.”
“Or?”
“You don’t give the order, and in about five seconds the fingers of all those archers directly behind you are going to give way under the strain, and future generations of giants will use your back as a hairbrush.”
The High Elf thought about that for roughly one second, then gave the order to stand down. Twenty thousand archers relaxed their bows and stuck their right hands in their mouths.
“Now, then,” said Mordak.
The High Elf was staring. In front of him, twenty thousand goblins no longer directly threatened by an arrow storm hadn’t moved a muscle. “Go on,” he said.
“We come,” Mordak said, “in peace.”
“Yes, you said that. Why?”
Mordak relaxed, just a little. “Good question,” he said. “Basically, we just got thrown out of our home.”
The High Elf’s eyes widened. “Who by?”
“None of your beeswax. But there it is. We’re now homeless refugees, and we’re appealing to you for political asylum and humanitarian aid. And what’s more, we’re asking you nicely.”
The High Elf seemed to see a distant mountaintop, wreathed in mist and crowned with snow—the moral high ground, and he wasn’t on it. “Why?” he repeated.
Mordak grinned. “Because you lot are probably stupid enough to give it to us. And right now we need food and somewhere to sleep. And what we don’t need is a bloody great battle where three-quarters of us get killed, along with three-quarters of you. Not right now. Later, maybe. Right now, it’d be—” He paused, trying to remember that favourite word of Tinituviel’s. “Counter-productive.”
“Let me get this straight,” the High Elf said slowly. “You people are immigrants?”
Mordak nodded. “And as a wise man once said, immigration is the sincerest form of flattery. He went on to say, it’s the hallmark of a civilised society that where people live and work shouldn’t be dictated by the quirks of geography and the lottery of birth. Nice line, that. Snappy.”
The High Elf was caught between a smirk and a frown. “What I actually said,” he replied, “is, where Elves live and work. There’s a difference.”
“No, it was people,” Mordak said. “I’m pretty sure of that.”
The High Elf snapped his fingers and a stately Elf all in white stepped forward, holding a huge book bound in red and green. He opened it and found the place. Wherever the High Elf goes, the Keeper of his press cuttings is never more than a footstep away.
“Where Elves live and work,” the High Elf repeated. “You aren’t Elves. Now, go away.”
Mordak breathed out through his nose. “Fair enough,” he said. “I wouldn’t have fallen for a line like that without a lobotomy, so I guess it was a bit rich to expect you to, even if you are a pointy-eared halfwit. Let’s start again.” He stopped. He couldn’t think what to say. “We surrender.”
The High Elf stared at him. “You what?”
“We give in. You win. We are your prisoners, at your mercy. Oh, for crying out loud, don’t just stand there looking like a sprig of holly. Do you accept our surrender, or do we have to bash you up a bit first?”
The High Elf opened and closed his mouth a few times, but nothing came out. Then he said, “There’s a catch.”
“Define catch,” Mordak replied. “Of course, there’s the Gluvien Convention on prisoners’ rights, which you lot are always banging on about, under which you’ve got to feed us and give us somewhere to sleep and respect our cultural diversity and all that guff, but obviously you know more about that than we do, because you wrote it, so clearly I can’t be using it to pull a fast one, since you’d see that coming a mile off. Well? How about it?”
The serried ranks of goblins were starting to mutter. Mordak spun round and glared at them and they immediately fell silent, but the High Elf got the point. Mordak was in control of his horrible tribe for the moment, but moments are transitory. “Deal,” said the High Elf.
“Say again?”
“I said, we have a deal. Now, tell your people to throw down their weapons, right now.”
Mordak gave him a reproachful look. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought you said we had a deal.”
“I did. Now, the weapons, on the floor, stat.”
Mordak sighed. “We just talked about that,” he said. “Respecting our cultural diversity. It’s a fundamental part of goblin culture to be so heavily armed you’re in danger of falling over backwards, at all times, no exceptions, it’s the rules. But we promise faithfully not to use them. Scout’s honour.”
The High Elf’s head was starting to hurt. “Look,” he said, “this is stupid. Why don’t you tell me what you really want, and then we can talk about it like rational creatures?”
Mordak beamed at him. “There, now,” he said. “I knew we could sort things out, once I’d dragged you down to my level. Let’s do that. In peace and quiet. Over there, without all this lot earwigging.”
Then Mordak told the High Elf everything;
about the eviction notice, and the two strange humans with the small box, and the Vickers weapon, and various other things he reckoned the Elf had a right to know. And when he’d finished, the Elf gazed at him with a horrified expression on his face and said, “You’re joking.”
Mordak sighed. “Oddly enough, no. I’m deadly serious. And unless you want those bastards turning up on your doorstep and throwing you out the same way they did to us, I suggest you think of something. Quickly.”
“Yes, of course,” the Elf said gravely. “What?”
It had been a long day and Mordak had been very patient. “I don’t bloody well know, do I? You’re the intellectual, you tell me.”
The Elf thought for a very long time. “We’re screwed,” he said.
Mordak looked at him. “That’s it?”
“I think so.”
“Truly is it said, go not to the Elves for answers, since they’re about as much use as a custard wall. Oh well. Thanks ever so much for your time.”
“What we need,” said the Elf, “is someone we can ask.”
“Genius. Who?”
The Elf thought some more, so hard that the points of his ears started to curl inwards. “A lawyer,” he said. “We need a good lawyer.”
“That’s a start,” Mordak conceded. “All right, who’s the very best lawyer in Elvenhome?”
The High Elf frowned. “Actually,” he said, “that would be me.”
“Ah.”
“Sorry.”
“No matter. Look,” Mordak said, “I know it’s a long shot, but if you’re the best Elf lawyer there is, have you got any lawyers who aren’t Elves?”
“No, of course not.” The Elf hesitated. “No, I tell a lie. There’s a human. I’m sure I heard someone say there’s a law firm that employs a human junior assistant. Name’s on the tip of my—” He sighed and called over the Keeper of the Book. “Human lawyer,” he said.
“There was one,” the Keeper replied. “Until quite recently. They had to let him go.”
“Excuse me,” Mordak said. “Do you happen to know why?”