Duke Grandfather- The Whole Story

by James Maxstadt

  Right before I left, I saw an older dwarf go to the building and knock on the door. Wulfonson answered it, the two talked and then went back inside together. Curious, I stayed to watch. A few moments later and the dwarf reappeared, a battle axe and jeweled cup in hand. Before long, there was a line of people waiting their turn.

  I’d be damned. Wulfonson was giving all their stuff back to them.

  “He’s crazy,” Sarge said when I told him what Wulfonson said to me. “The Watch investigates these things before the notice gets posted. That’s how it works.”

  “Yeah, but do they really do it?” I asked. “The guys who are supposed to?”

  “I don’t know what your problem is suddenly, but I don’t have time to argue this with you. You don’t like the system, find something else to do.”

  “I’m not saying that. I just…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. He made me think. That’s all.”

  “First time for everything.”

  Sarge turned back to his newssheet, which was the thing that was obviously taking his time. I liked the man, I really did, but I was starting to get tired of him ignoring and disparaging me. I opened my mouth to say so when the door slammed open and a young man ran in.

  “Is this the Watch?” he panted.

  Sarge looked at him with the same expression he gave me most of the time. “What do you think, kid? Do I look like the Queen of Shambar?”

  “Here,” the young man said, and held out a piece of paper, folded over. His hand was trembling badly.

  Sarge took it, opened it and read it, his face first growing pale, but then turning an angry red. He dropped the paper, stormed from around the counter and grabbed the young man.

  “Where did you get this?” he yelled into his face. “You think this is some sort of game?”

  He shook the kid so badly that there was no way he could have answered. I picked the note up off the desk, wondering what possibly could have disturbed him so badly. There, in shaky, crabbed handwriting was written:

  you’ll never see me come for you

  but you’ll be over when i do

  my knife strikes fast, and cuts so deep

  all your loves and friends will weep

  you cannot stop me, so please don’t try

  it’s simply time for you all to die

  yours truly,

  the hidden knife

  In the time that it took me to read this, Sarge had pushed the kid into the wall and was slamming him against it, demanding answers.

  “Sarge!” I yelled, but he either didn’t hear me, or didn’t pay any attention to me. I did the unthinkable and grabbed his arm. “Sarge! You have to let him talk if you want answers!”

  He tried to shrug me off, but as tough as Sarge was, he wasn’t Wulfonson. I held on, and after a moment, he stopped shaking the kid, glanced at me, and then dropped his hands.

  “Talk,” he said, in a quieter tone of voice.

  “I don’t know anything,” the kid said through his sniffles. “I was walking along, minding my own business, when I got grabbed. Next thing I know, I’m up against a wall in an alley and there’s this…guy? I guess? He’s all in black. His hands, his face, everything. And he pushes this paper at me and sort of hisses, really cold like, that I was to take it here and give it to the first watchman I saw. I did it because he scared me really bad. I was sure he was going to kill me!”

  “Where?” Sarge asked him. “What alley exactly?”

  The kid pointed. “Right out there, two blocks over. I came straight here.”

  “Take me there, right now.”

  The kid took off running, with Sarge and I hot on his heels. We dashed through the streets and people made way at Sarge’s yell and the look on his face. Moments later, the kid skidded to a halt and pointed.

  “There. That one.”

  “Let’s go,” Sarge said, but the kid was already on his way. Only he was headed in the opposite direction.

  “No way!” he yelled. “I’m not going back in there!”

  Sarge started after him, but I grabbed him again. “Come on! That guy wanted the Watch in that alley for a reason. Don’t you think you should find out why?”

  He stopped, glaring after the fleeing kid for a second, but then turned and stalked toward the alley. I followed.

  It was a typical Capital City alley, the type that I used all the time to get places quicker and that the buildings on either side of it used for trash or deliveries. There were wooden crates and boxes strewn about, as well as a barrel with broken staves. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it.

  Then, I saw them. About halfway down the alley, sticking out from behind a stack of old crates, two boots stuck out. I nudged Sarge and we made our way to them.

  The boots belonged to another watchman. This one was a veteran, someone with some years on him, and that hard look that comes from keeping the peace in a place like this for years on end.

  He was gone already. The front of him was sliced up like the one who had stumbled into the Horn of the Unicorn.

  Sarge knelt by him and closed his eyes.

  “Go back to the watchhouse,” he said to me quietly. “Tell them to come quickly. I’ll stay with him.”

  I stayed away from the watchhouse for a couple of days after that. The pall of death hung over it, and I didn’t want to intrude on their grief. Watchmen were killed before, of course. It was a dangerous job that they did, no less so than being a Nuisance Man, but this was different. Someone was purposely targeting them, and taunting them about it.

  Plus, the necromancers would be back out. I didn’t know if they knew a way of contacting the dead watchman or not, but they would be making anyone even remotely suspicious very uncomfortable. And since I had now been in the vicinity of two of the deaths, it was much more prudent to stay out of the way.

  But life in the city went on as it always did. Most people had no idea that two watchmen had been brutally murdered over the last couple of days, in a gruesome fashion.

  Then, it happened again, only this time, the mocking note was sent to the newssheets. It read:

  first was one, then two, now three

  left in a place that you can’t see

  my knife bit hard, my knife bit sweet

  one less dog to walk the street

  my reign goes on, my work not done

  but is it work, when it’s such fun?

  yours truly,

  the hidden knife

  The implication was clear. Another watchman had been killed, but this time, the killer hid the body away, taunting the Watch that one of their own was out there somewhere. And that he wasn’t done. If anything, he was stepping up the pace.

  I felt like I needed to do something, as I’m sure a lot of us who worked with the Watch did. If this happened at any other time, there would have been a whole host of Nuisance Men out on the streets, looking for the slain watchman, and trying to hunt down this Hidden Knife character.

  But as it was, the Nuisance Men had disappeared, off after the promise of riches and fame. They had been gone for a long time now, and I was beginning to feel that they weren’t coming back.

  The next day, I thought that maybe it was time to go see that Lord Pennywithers myself, and see if I could find out where the rest were.

  “No, that wouldn’t be a good idea.” The buzzing was back in my head.

  “Oh, you. I thought you were gone.”

  “Not yet. Besides, who do you think stopped the floating eye from getting control of you?”

  “Great. Thanks, I guess. Still pretty annoying having a voice in my head that no one else can hear.”

  “Maybe so. But don’t go see Lord Pennywithers. Not yet.”

  I knew better than to argue at this point. If I pushed the issue, something would happen that would prevent me from going anyway, and it would probably be something that was horribly unpleasant for me. “What then?” I asked.

  “Follow your instinct. You have go
od ones. Maybe going to the watchhouse and seeing if you can help is the way to go.”

  I was thinking that anyway. My job took me back and forth across the city a lot, plus I grew up here. Maybe I’d notice something the Watch hadn’t.

  A short while later, I walked in the door.

  “Hey, Sarge,” I said, but my voice was quieter than it usually was. The place had a tenseness to it, like the air right before a thunderstorm, heavy and pregnant with the possibility of sudden violence.

  “No nuisances,” Sarge growled. “The program is suspended for now.”

  I nodded. “Makes sense. That’s not why I’m here though.”

  His baleful stare told me that he didn’t really care why I was there, but I pressed on nevertheless.

  “I want to help. I’ve been over the city a lot, so maybe I can help find your guy.”

  Sarge’s eyes narrowed for a second, then his face relaxed and he sighed. “Yeah. Okay. I don’t know what it is, Grandfather, but I’ll trust you on this. We haven’t found him yet, and everyone is going crazy about it. The wizards and necromancers are doing everything they can to locate him, but nothing. Not even with the tracker spell that gets put into all badges.”

  Tracker spell? I had no idea about that, but it made sense.

  “And they think that means?”

  “I’m not privy to their inner thoughts, if that’s what you’re asking. But word is that they’re nervous, thinking that something is here that’s more powerful than all of them put together.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. What would that even look like? It’s not like every wizard and necromancer in the city worked for the Watch, and there were the occasional ones who were independent, but the Crown made employment with them so attractive and lucrative that most of them ended up there. What could possibly be strong enough to stymie all of that?

  Who knew? Certainly not I. I hated magic, and things like this were exactly why.

  “I’ll look around, ask questions.”

  “Do that,” Sarge said. He turned back to his newssheet. I glanced down at it. It was open to the poem that had been sent in. The one that they printed yesterday. Sarge wasn’t reading the newssheet, he was poring over that verse, over and over, trying to find a clue.

  I walked, and walked, and when I got tired of doing that, I walked some more. I questioned people and paid for information that went nowhere. Most people were helpful if they could be, sympathetic if they couldn’t. There was the occasional hard-ass who seemed to feel that the Watch was finally getting what was coming to it, but they quickly scuttled off when my hand moved to my sword hilt.

  With what was going on, I had no patience or tolerance for that.

  Finally, I stopped in a tavern for an ale, taking a seat near the back of the room.

  “Can’t you do something,” I muttered, keeping my eyes on the few other patrons. The place was run-down, and the ale wasn’t very good. I had seen it a hundred times, a tavern that fell on hard times, and would soon either shut its doors for good, or be sold off to someone else.

  “We can’t,” the voice came back, along with the buzzing.

  So, it was there, listening in.

  “Why not?”

  “We just can’t.”

  “What if he had a family? Kids? A pretty, young wife waiting at home, hoping that her missing husband isn’t the one from the poem.”

  “We….we can’t.” For the first time, I heard what sounded like emotion in the voice.

  “Then I’ll keep looking on my own.” I glared at the mug of crappy ale on the table. I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t even going to finish it.

  I got up and stormed out of the tavern. I would walk down every alley in this city until I found the watchman. I wasn’t sure when it happened, or why, but this was very personal to me. I hated that somebody, some thing, was doing this to someone trying to do their job. And what I said to the voice wasn’t lip service. The thought of someone waiting vainly for their loved one to come back ate at me.

  It was when I turned to the left that it hit me. It was almost like with the dogs all over again, but without the feeling of innate wrongness. My vision went blurry and the world kind of swam around me. I closed my eyes for a second, but when I opened them, the same thing happened.

  I put my hands up to my eyes and turned. The feeling was gone, as I looked across the street. I looked to the left, and the blurriness returned. The same to the right. But straight ahead, everything was clear.

  I walked across the street and went left, the same way that I was going to go upon exiting the tavern. This time, there was no blurring of my vision, no feeling of dizziness. But when I turned back, there it was.

  I was being led by something, and my money was on whatever the voice in my head was, hedging what they were allowed to do, whatever that meant.

  At every corner or choice of ways, I turned until my path was clear. Sometimes, I was lucky and my first guess was the correct one. I learned quickly to trust that, as any attempt to deviate from my preordained route left me feeling dizzy.

  I walked a long way. All the way to the East Gate district, the area of the city named for a defunct gate that led through the walls on the east side. East Gate was going through a minor revitalization, with a lot of humans moving here and setting up shop. Some of it was in response to not wanting to live with the other races, and there was a strong “pro-human” sentiment in the area. I couldn’t really blame them. Some of these people had seen their home values plummet due to the His Majesty’s proclamation.

  My guide let me to an old house, still abandoned and boarded up. I sized up the door at the top of a crumbling stoop before I went in. Looking elsewhere and seeing the world swim, told me that I pretty much had no choice.

  I carefully climbed the steps, watching out for weak spots and pushed the door. It opened with a creak that echoed loudly in the stillness within. Dust coated the floor, but leading through it were two lines, like the type that would be made if someone was being dragged.

  I swallowed, my throat suddenly thick, and that old adage of being careful what you wished for sprang into my mind. I didn’t want to see this. I really didn’t.

  He was even worse than the other two. The Hidden Knife had not only stepped up his pace, but he upped the ferocity, too. I did what I could to arrange him in a more dignified manner, knowing that I was probably breaking all sorts of rules in doing so.

  The dizziness was gone, so I was free to make my own way back to the watchhouse and tell Sarge what I found.

  While they said they were grateful, the Watch also greeted my news with a good amount of suspicion. I couldn’t blame them. There were three murders and I was the one to find all three of the bodies. Even I thought it looked bad.

  But it would have been even worse to tell them about the voice in my head. I was fairly certain that some enterprising, young wizard would do everything he could to crack open my skull to see what was in there.

  I sat in the same room as when they questioned Rachel, Bethany, and me. Another wizard was there, an older guy who radiated power like he was made of the stuff. He watched me sternly, occasionally putting his hand to my forehead while I spoke, frowning the entire time.

  “His mind is clouded,” he said to the Watch captain doing the questioning. “But not by him. There is something else there.”

  “But he could be the one doing it, right?”

  The wizard considered me while I started sweating. This wasn’t something I had considered. Sarge knew me, but his authority ran out quickly at these levels. If this captain decided that I was their number one suspect, I was staying there until they caught the real killer, whenever that was. Or, until he killed again, which was a thought that I liked even less.

  “No,” the wizard finally said. “Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with this. This man simply wanted to help.”

  The captain’s mouth twisted.

  “You sure about that?”

  The wizard raised h
is eyebrow.

  “Alright,” the captain said. Then to me, “You can go. And thanks.”

  I nodded, my heart still hammering in my chest but starting to calm down. I didn’t even stop at Sarge’s desk on my way out, rap my knuckles on the counter or anything.

  Even Jessup couldn’t keep up with me that night. But no matter how much ale I drank, or how fuzzy it made me feel, the image of the watchman in that house and my close call with the Watch wouldn’t leave me. Finally, Jessup hired a passing troll to carry me home and made sure I was securely inside.

  I didn’t want to go back to the watchhouse, but I needed to. Ignoring my pounding head and eyes that felt like they were full of sand, I made my way there. The feeling of doom still hung over the place.

  “Hey, Sarge,” I said, not expecting an answer.

  “Duke.”

  My jaw bounced off the floor. He not only responded, but used my actual name.

  “Anything new?” I tried to project professional confidence in my voice. I wasn’t sure that it worked, since I was feeling anything but.

  “Not yet, but I’m sure it’s going to happen. Got a question for you, though.”

  “Shoot.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “Find him, I’m guessing you mean. I don’t suppose you’d believe it was pure, dumb luck.”

  “From you?” he said. “Yeah, I might be willing to buy that. But not in this case.”

  I considered telling him about my mysterious voice. On the one hand, I was pretty sure that he was going to think I was an absolute nut-case. But on the other, this was too important. And if coming clean meant he would share more information with me, which in turn meant I could help…did I really have a choice?

  “You’re not going to believe this,” I said, “but here goes.”

  I told him about the voice, how it showed up out of the blue and how it led me to the dead watchman. I also told him what the wizard said yesterday, but left out the part about the unicorn. One crazy sounding statement a day was enough, for now.

  “Good to know,” he said, then turned his attention back to his newssheet.