Thraxas - The Complete Series

by Martin Scott

  “And what,” asks Lisutaris, turning to Makri, “is the idea of kissing Horm the Dead?”

  “I didn’t kiss him. He kissed me.”

  “I didn’t see you putting up much of a struggle.”

  Makri looks embarrassed again.

  “He took me by surprise.”

  Lisutaris fails to look convinced.

  “I was expecting you to punch him.”

  “I tried that already,” says Makri. “It didn’t seem to put him off.”

  Lisutaris frowns.

  “I can see he’s quite good looking in a pale, high cheekboned sort of way, Makri, but really you ought to be careful. You don’t want to go around getting involved with someone like Horm. You know it’s rumoured he’s already been dead?”

  “Thraxas mentioned it,” mutters Makri, and starts inhaling deeply from the water pipe, not wishing to discuss it any further.

  “Well, he’s gone now,” continues Lisutaris. “I scanned the gardens. If he comes back I recommend staying well clear of him.”

  “He offered Makri a position as captain of his armies,” I tell her.

  “Really?”

  “Could we just stop talking about this now?” says Makri crossly.

  We let the matter drop. I suppose if some insane sorcerer takes a shine to Makri it’s not really her fault, though it might not happen if she could learn to dress properly. A man like Horm, living out in the wastelands, he’s bound to be affected when he hits the city and the first thing he runs into is Makri in her chainmail bikini.

  I leave Makri and Lisutaris fuelling up with thazis before they go off to enjoy the rest of the ball. I’ve had enough excitement and decide to head home. In the hallway of the house I run into Deputy Consul Cicerius.

  “You are Thraxas, I believe,” he says acidly.

  “I am. But about the mask, it was the only one I could find in a hurry—”

  “I am not concerned with your grotesque likeness of me. I am concerned with your treatment of Princess Du-Akai.”

  Here it comes. Thraxas heads for prison ship.

  “She tells me that she was assailed in the gardens by a unicorn and you rescued her. Is this true?”

  The Princess is suffering from some very garbled memories.

  “Yes, it’s true. But I don’t want to make too much of it. It was very dangerous but anyone would have done the same.”

  “Nonetheless, it was a spirited action. Some of Lisutaris’s entertainments have been far too adventurous. I am furious that our royal princess was endangered.”

  The Deputy Consul is one of the city’s strongest supporters of the royal family. He’s really grateful to me.

  “Do you think I could have my Investigator’s licence back?” I ask.

  “Yes,” says Cicerius. “I will arrange it.”

  “Can you have the charge of throwing away my shield dropped?”

  “Unfortunately not. That must go through its due process. You were mistaken about Praetor Capatius. It was not he who initiated the charge. It was Professor Toarius. He was endeavouring to prevent you from investigating his son.”

  “That figures. You know his son’s a dwa addict who’s heading for trouble?”

  Cicerius declines to comment. As I leave him he’s looking on with distaste at some dancing girls who are probably Senator’s daughters, but aren’t behaving appropriately. Or maybe they are behaving appropriately. Senators’ daughters are notoriously corrupt.

  Next afternoon I’m sitting downstairs in the Avenging Axe. Gurd is beside me at the table, laboriously writing a letter to Tanrose. He’s finding it difficult.

  “I’ve never written a letter before.”

  “It’ll be fine. Put in more compliments. Tell her that Thraxas is getting thin.”

  “She won’t believe that.”

  I encourage Gurd to get on with repairing his relationship with the cook. Neither of us can carry on without her.

  I’m fairly satisfied with events. Most things worked out well enough. I did good service, for which Lisutaris is grateful, and the Deputy Consul is back on my side. The only bad thing is that I’m still faced with a charge of cowardice dating back seventeen years. I wonder if Professor Toarius will pursue it, now his son has been exposed. He wanted to prevent me from investigating, but now that the truth has come out about his son’s behaviour anyway, perhaps he’ll drop it. I sigh. Dwa addicts. They lose all responsibility. Prepared to steal five gurans from a locker or one of the most valuable items in the city. It makes no difference to them.

  I’m keeping an eye on the next table, where young Moxalan, surrounded by onlookers, is working things out on sheets of paper. Calculating how many deaths actually occurred as a result of the case of the missing pendant is a tricky business. There were fatalities all over the city, many of which could be ascribed, directly or indirectly, to the pendants.

  The front door flies open and Makri strides dramatically into the room. She flings her bag on the floor, drags her tunic over her head and throws it at the wall, then starts parading round in her chainmail bikini, arms aloft, a look of triumph on her face. I’ve never seen her behave quite like this. It must be something she learned to do in the gladiator pits after slaughtering her enemies.

  Makri marches round the room, arms still in the air, grinning arrogantly, so that people start applauding even though they don’t know what for.

  “Makri!” she says eventually. “Number one chariot at examinations!”

  “You passed?”

  “Passed? ‘Passed’ doesn’t do my performance justice. I set new standards. Never has a class been declaimed to in such an authoritative manner. The students were awestruck. When I finished my speech they stood up and cheered.”

  Gurd grins. Dandelion, still in residence, brings Makri a beer to celebrate. I congratulate her warmly.

  “Well done. I knew you’d pass.”

  “It was a triumph,” she enthuses. “Not even Professor Toarius could say a word against it. I tell you, I was great. And all this on no sleep. You know I spent the whole night dancing at the ball? It was the social event of the season. Lisutaris has been widely complimented. I walked from her house to college this morning and did my examination. I’m now sailing into my final year as top student. Incidentally, word got round about Barius. No one now thinks I’m a thief.”

  A good day all round. And it might get better. Moxalan is ready to make his announcement.

  “With the help of my fellow adjudicators,” he announces, “I proclaim that the final death total in the case of Thraxas and the missing pendant is sixty-three.”

  There are groans from all round the room. No one seems to have picked this total. Moxalan’s eye glints greedily.

  “No winners at sixty-three? Then we move on to the reduced-odds winner for closest bet. Anyone with sixty-two? No? Sixty-one? Sixty?”

  “Me!” yells Makri, leaping to her feet once more. “I have sixty.” She retrieves her bag from the floor and hunts for her ticket.

  “I’m not happy at this,” complains Parax the shoemaker. “She had inside information.”

  Many suspicious eyes are turned on me. I splutter in protest.

  “Makri had no inside information from me. I have remained aloof from the entire contest, thinking it to be in the poorest of taste. I am disgusted with all of you and will now retire upstairs to forget I ever met any of you.”

  I leave with dignity, and beer.

  A while later Makri appears upstairs, still on a high after her examination triumph. She starts counting out her bag of money, splitting it three ways for herself, Lisutaris and me.

  “Twenty to one, not bad. We lost a lot of stake money on our first bets but we’ve still got a good profit. This will get me started at college next year. That was a good wager, Thraxas. You picked sixty, it was well worked out.”

  “I’m sharp as an Elf’s ear. Incidentally, did you tell Lisutaris last week that she shouldn’t invite me to her ball because I really didn’t like t
hat sort of thing?”

  “No,” says Makri, sharply. “Why would you think that?”

  “Investigator’s intuition.”

  “Well your intuition is quite mistaken. It’s not all you make it out to be, you know. Here, take this pile of money. It’ll make you feel better.”

  THRAXAS AT WAR

  This 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.

  Copyright © 2003 by Martin Scott. Published by permission of Orbit (Time Warner Books UK).

  A Baen Book

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN 10: 1-4165-2050-3

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4165-2050-4

  Cover art by Tom Kidd

  First U.S. printing, February 2006

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Printed in the United States of America

  Thraxas at War

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  IF YOU’RE DOWN ON YOUR LUCK IN TURAI, AND IT’S HOLIDAY TOO…

  In the enchanted city of Turai, the royal family is corrupt, the politicians can be bought, and the civil guards have better things to do than guard. Being rather fat as well as more interested in his next mug of beer than the pursuit of justice, Thraxas may look unprepossessing, but if you’re in trouble in Turai this portly private eye is probably your only hope. At least, in normal times…

  But this time, the entire city is in trouble. Years ago, the Orcs attacked Turai, and came frighteningly close to victory. Since then, the Orcs’s usual internecine squabbles and feuds have kept them too divided to be a serious menace. But now a new charismatic leader has united the Orc legions under his banner and they are preparing to march on Turai.

  Thraxas may have been a valiant hero in the last Orc War (at least that’s the way he tells it), but he’s intent on keeping his head down this time. Unfortunately for his preferences, he has had to take on an investigation at the war ministry. There are suspicions of treachery within the city government itself and a Senior Councilor has been murdered. And this last case may take the cake, because that’s just what the murder weapon seems to be…

  Chapter One

  I’m sitting at the bar in the Avenging Axe, a beer in one hand and a thazis stick in the other, trying to decide whether to have a glass of klee with my next beer. It’s a difficult decision. There’s a bottle of klee upstairs in my office. I could wait till I get there. But there’s nothing quite like a glass of klee washed down by a flagon of Gurd’s freshly drawn ale. Having examined my options for a while, studied the problem using the full weight of my experience, I decide on the klee. And another ale while I’m at it.

  Dandelion, the idiot barmaid, looks as if she might be about to make some comment as to the wisdom of embarking on an ambitious drinking programme so early in the afternoon. I direct a stern glance in her direction. The last thing I need is a lecture about my drinking from Dandelion, a young woman who, while not working behind the bar, is generally to be found on the beach, talking to dolphins.

  I frown. This tavern is really going downhill. It’s bad enough having to put up with Makri and her moods without having to endure Dandelion’s own particular brand of foolish behaviour. Worse, there’s still no sign of Tanrose, the tavern’s cook, coming back. I haven’t had a decent meal for weeks. Life just gets worse.

  Gurd, owner of the Avenging Axe and my oldest friend, sits down next to me. I’m about to launch into a complaint about the deteriorating quality of his barmaids but I bite back the words.

  “No work, Thraxas?”

  I shake my head.

  “Things aren’t so good. And you know why.”

  “The investigation?”

  I nod. A few months back I was accused of cowardice in the face of the enemy. Throwing my shield away on the field of battle. This allegation, relating to the Battle of Sanasa, which took place around seventeen years ago, is so completely without foundation that it should never have been brought to court. Not when the man being accused has fought bravely for his city. Unfortunately Turai isn’t a city that rewards a man for his past valour. Rather, it’s a place that seeks to drag an honest man down, allowing advancement to the rich and corrupt at the expense of the poor but upright.

  “Business has really gone downhill.”

  “No one believes it, Thraxas.”

  “Maybe not, but these things are lethal for a man’s reputation. I’m tainted. I’m beginning to regret not killing Vadinex when he made the allegation. Would have got it over with quickly.”

  “And you’d be a fugitive by now,” points out Gurd.

  Vadinex fought at the Battle of Sanasa. Why he’s now come up with this false accusation is something about which I’m still not certain.

  I’ve spent the past weeks gathering evidence to defend myself in court. Plenty of men still living in Turai were at the Battle of Sanasa but it’s not been easy finding many who were close at hand when the alleged events took place. Even for a professional Investigator like myself some of my old comrades took a lot of finding. It meant a lot of uncomfortable trudging round the city in the hot rainy season. Having found a few old comrades, I’m reasonably confident I’ll win the case. Unless my enemies do a lot of serious bribery, which is always possible in this city. If that happens I’ll kill my accuser and leave town. It’s not like Turai is such a great place to live anyway.

  I’d have run into money problems by now had it not been for a rather successful series of visits to the chariot races at the Stadium Superbius. I picked the winner of the Turas memorial race and went through the card very successfully, ending the week’s racing with an extremely healthy profit and my reputation as a gambler somewhat restored after last year’s debacle. But the races last year were fixed, of course. Everyone knows that Thraxas never makes losses like that in normal circumstances.

  The tavern door flies open. An assortment of foul Orcish oaths heralds the arrival of Makri. The uttering of Orcish oaths is both taboo and illegal in Turai but Makri, in times of stress, tends to revert to the language of her youth. As she grew up in an Orcish gladiator pit, she has a wide variety of Orcish bad language to choose from.

  Gurd frowns at her. Dandelion looks pained. Makri ignores them both.

  “You know someone just insulted me in the street? I was minding my own business and then for no reason this man said, ‘There goes that skinny Orc.’ ”

  Makri reaches over and takes a thazis stick from me, igniting it from a candle and inhaling deeply.

  “I hate this place,” she says.

  Makri is one quarter Orc. In a city where everyone hates Orcs, it can lead to trouble. Most people in Twelve Seas are used to her by now but she still runs into occasional hostility on the streets. Neither Gurd nor I take the trouble to ask what happened after the man insulted her. We already know.

  “So aren’t you going to ask what happened?” demands Makri.

  I take a sip of my beer.

  “Let me see. A stranger calls you a skinny Orc while you’re walking down Quintessence Street. Now what could your response possibly be? You chuckle merrily and walk on? You congratulate h
im on a fine turn of phrase? No, don’t tell me, I’ve got it. You punched him to the ground, then told him at sword point that if he ever bothered you again you’d kill him without mercy?”

  Makri looks disappointed.

  “Something like that,” she says. “But you spoiled my story.”

  Makri lapses into silence. These past few weeks she hasn’t been any more cheerful than me. Not just because of the Hot Rainy Season and her aversion to the continual downpour. Even now, when we’ve reached Autumn, one of the brief periods when climate in Turai could be considered pleasant, she’s not happy. This summer was one of the high points of her life, when she scored top marks at the Guild College and sailed into her final year of study as number one student, but after the elation of that faded she got to remembering that her first romantic encounter seemed to have come to an untimely end. This encounter featured a young Elf on the Isle of Avula; a young Elf who has since neglected to get in touch with her. Avula is some weeks’ sail from Turai, but, as Makri says, he could have sent a message. So Makri has spent the past month being about as miserable as a Niojan whore, much to the distress of the customers in the tavern.

  There was a time when the sight of Makri, struggling to remain in her tiny chainmail bikini while bringing a tray of drinks, was enough to cheer up the most downhearted local dock worker. Makri’s figure—unmatched, it’s reckoned, in the entire city-state—was of such renown as to make people forget their prejudices against her. As old Parax the shoemaker says, you can’t hold a little Orcish blood against a girl with a physique like that. And there have been plenty more comments in a similar vein, not just from Parax. But even the finest physique can’t compensate for a waitress who bangs your drink on the table and looks like she’ll knock your head off given the slightest excuse. When dockers, sailmakers and the like come to the Avenging Axe after a hard day’s work, they’re looking for a little light relaxation, and when Makri’s angry, it’s hard to relax.

  She tosses a small bag in my direction. It contains various pastries from Morixa’s bakery. Morixa took over the place from her mother Minarixa last year, after Minarixa unfortunately partook of too much dwa; a deadly mistake. The drug has claimed a lot of lives in this city. Most of them I don’t care about but I miss my favourite baker. Morixa doesn’t quite have her mother’s skill at the pastry oven, but to give her her due, she’s been improving recently. Which is a relief for me. The food in the Avenging Axe has suffered a sad decline in recent months. Without the bakery to keep me going I’d be in a sorry state. I’m a man with plenty of girth to maintain.