Muscle’s nerve broke.
“Here, you have it.” Now that he’d made the decision, he could hardly get the crumpled paper out from behind his eyepatch fast enough, out of his hands, out of his possession. “Take it. Take it.”
“I shall indeed,” said the stranger, doing so. “My considerable thanks to you.”
“’S all right.” Muscle resisted the urge to touch his forelock. “Any time.”
The stranger turned as if to leave, then turned back. “Oh, just one more thing.”
“Whassat?”
“I’m sure you’ll understand.”
And Muscle did understand. This was going to go way beyond the loss of a couple of fingers.
“I didn’t get a chance to have a proper look at it,” he babbled, “and even if I had I wouldn’t tell nobody, honest!”
“Safety first, I’m afraid,” said the stranger. “No hard feelings, eh?”
There was the vicious whoooosh a diving hawk makes, followed an instant later by the noise a sack of potatoes makes when you drop it onto soggy, rotting planks – assuming the sack of potatoes has a wooden leg, that is.
The only public clock in Darkwater, the one on the tower of Darkwater Jail, began to strike midnight. The clock was the most unreliable timekeeper in the whole of the Toxic Archipelago, perhaps even the whole of Sagaria, so it was not uncommon for midnight to start chiming long after daybreak, but tonight, for once, the clock was more or less on the mark.
The little stranger murmured, “Moments to spare,” as he rolled Muscle’s body over the edge of the dock, just as Muscle had rolled Brains’s body over not long before. There was a very similar sucking splash. The stranger liked to keep up his steady average of a murder a day, so Muscle had died just in the nick of time.
“One more port of call,” said the stranger to the unhearing night as he ducked away once more behind the crates, “and then I should be almost done . . .”
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
It was one of those exquisite days when all of Sagaria seems tranquil and at peace. A grassy hillock dappled by sunlight, in the midst of a vast meadow where blades of grass and golden buttercups sway majestically in the symphonic whispers of the wind. The soothing, barely audible buzz of small insects going about their rituals. Birdsong in the air. High in the sky, one or two fluffy clouds chasing each other.
Bliss.
And then …
A mighty explosion ripped the air.
Daffodils and grass flattened for tens of yards around the little hill.
Insects plummeted to the ground, struck stone-dead midflight.
Billows of noxious green-brown gas spread across the meadow.
The little fluffy clouds fled for the safety of the horizon, where their mommies might be waiting to comfort them.
Birdsong came to an abrupt, strangulated halt.
Death stalked.
“That’s better,” said Growgarth, shifting his rear to make himself more comfortable. The worg sat on a shattered rock atop the meadow’s central hillock. He grinned, displaying a mouthful of pointy teeth. A lot of pointy teeth. A look of sheer content spread itself across his broad, warty face. He was very proud of those warts, which had won the admiration of lady worgs for many miles around. Lady worgs were disturbingly difficult to tell apart from male ones, but still their praise counted for something.
Growgarth glanced down at his hand, which looked like a clenched boxing glove, only wartier. A lot wartier. The fist held the splintered remains of the spruce branch with which he’d been about to scratch his behind. He threw the wreckage aside. This was the life.
Worgs aren’t pretty – at least, not to human eyes. If you said they looked like trolls, you’d soon start hearing from trolls’ lawyers. Worgs are a lot uglier than trolls. And nastier, definitely nastier. People who’ve seen a worg before they’ve had their supper end up not eating it. They may never sleep a whole night through again, and if they do, they may wish they hadn’t.
Out of the pocket of his filthy loincloth Growgarth pulled a dead rat. Half a dead rat, to be precise. He’d eaten the other half a few weeks ago and then decided the rest needed to be kept a while longer until it reached the appropriately delicious state of decay.
He held the mangled corpse to his nose (don’t even ask about his nose) and took a deep breath.
Just right.
Into his mouth the half-rat went, the last bit to go being the tail, which wriggled like a withered worm before vanishing between his warty lips.
Growgarth shut his eyes the better to enjoy the flavor.
A voice spoke behind him. “I’m here.”
The worg’s eyes sprang open in astonishment. How could anyone have approached the hillock on which he sat without him having noticed? It would have been difficult enough before, when the ground was carpeted in long grass and tall flowers, but now that it had been seared to a flat, smoking waste? No way.
Yet, somehow, his visitor had achieved the impossible.
This visitor often did. Growgarth knew him from the days of yore.
“Oh hello dhere,” said the worg, affecting nonchalance. He didn’t turn round to look at the newcomer, partly in hopes of impressing him, partly because in his surprise he had a rat bone stuck between his front teeth, but mostly because he didn’t want to see the newcomer’s eyes. Growgarth was maybe four times as tall and four times beefier – and many, many times wartier – than the man behind him, but looking into those dead, distant eyes always shrank him. Even Growgarth was glad he hadn’t gazed upon what those eyes must have gazed upon during their owner’s long and ruthless life.
“I bin expectin’ you,” the worg continued, lying through his teeth – and, as noted, he had plenty of those to lie through. “I bin sayin’ to meself, ‘Wunner what’s bin happnin’ to me ol’ pal Ter—’”
“Don’t,” hissed the voice, “say my name.”
Growgarth gulped at the threat that lurked behind the newcomer’s words, but he tried to keep his own voice as casual as before. “Oh, calm down, willya? Ain’t nobuddy here but us.”
“That’s what you think. You didn’t see me coming, did you, you great oaf? Don’t bother lying to me. So how’re you so sure there aren’t others hiding out there?”
Because you’d have seen them if there were, Growgarth wanted to say, but he kept his silence.
“We don’t know who might be watching,” the visitor went on. It was odd to hear the worry in his voice. Growgarth had never known him to sound anything but icily confident before. “I don’t like meeting you in person like this. There could always be somebody spying on us – somebody, or something.”
Growgarth looked around him. “Yeah. Right.”
For a few moments silence hung between them, except for a strange sound not dissimilar to distant thunder. The half-rat was sitting less easily in Growgarth’s stomach than he’d expected.
“You have it for me?” said the other at last.
“I promised, di’n’ I?” The worg made no movement.
Over his shoulder something flew, something that landed on the blackened ground in front of him with a muffled chink. A leather purse.
“Your payment,” whispered the seemingly disembodied voice.
Without quite knowing how he’d got there, Growgarth was on his knees on the ground, ripping open the purse with his clawed fingers, spilling the gold coins out. Counting them was beyond him, but there seemed to be the right number: lots.
For long seconds he slavered eagerly, drooling on the little heap of treasure.
“Ahem,” said his black-clad visitor.
Growgarth looked up at him for the first time. The worg’s vision was colored red with avarice. He could hardly see the visitor’s eyes through the crimson haze.
“My purchase,” the visitor explained.
“Oh.
Ah. Yah. The fing.”
Once more the worg dug in his loincloth pocket and his hand emerged clutching a crumpled sheet of brownish paper. There was a smear of very old rat blood on it, but this didn’t seem to concern the stranger in black, who seized the paper from Growgarth’s warty grasp. He scanned it for a brief moment, then tucked it away somewhere in his long cloak.
“Pleasure doin’ bizniss wit’ you, I’s sure,” said Growgarth, hoping the other would take this as his cue to leave. “Any time dere’s sumpin’ else you wanna buy …”
The visitor clapped his forepaws, like a small boy whose birthday party is just about to begin. “Business is over,” he said brightly. “Now the socialization can begin!”
“Soshio . . .?”
“The socialization.”
“Oh, yeah. Dat.”
“The fun.”
“You got sumpin’ to eat?”
“The bonding, my good fellow. The companionable sharing of the fruits of the day. Soon it’ll be time for sunset, and it looks like it’ll be a pretty one, no? What do you say we watch it together, side-by-side, discussing matters of little consequence, just getting to know each other better?”
Growgarth did not know very many things, but one of them was that he was sure that under no circumstances did he want to get to know his visitor any better.
“Duh,” he said expressively.
“Good, then that’s settled.” The visitor moved as if to join him on the rock, then paused, pointing.
“Oh, look, you’ve dropped a couple.”
“Wha?”
“A couple of the coins.”
Growgarth’s eyes searched. There was a definite shortage of hiding places left on the hillock. “Can’t see ’em.”
“But I can. Just there.”
Still Growgarth could see no glint of gold. On the other hand, as one of the few wise sages of worg mythology so prophetically remarked, gold is gold. Growgarth got down on his knees again and started beating the ground with the flats of his hands, hoping to find the errant coins by touch if he couldn’t do so by sight.
There was a click behind him. Then another.
Suddenly Growgarth felt like you do when the fuse has burned the whole way down but your firecracker hasn’t gone off. You know it’s idiotic to pick the firecracker up, because it’ll probably, with your lousy luck, explode in your hand, but you go ahead and do it anyway because there’s nothing more frustrating than a dud firecracker. His movements becoming slower and less certain, he kept patting the ground in front of him.
There’s a counting song that’s popular among worg children. It’s a very short song, for obvious reasons. It started running through Growgarth’s head.
One’s for my gulp as I bite off your head …
But there had been two clicks, not one.
Two’s for barrels on shotgun – it shoots you, you’re …
He couldn’t remember the end of the line. But there’s a lot o truth in dem ol’ countin’ songs, he thought.
Then the word came to him.
Ah.
Before the echoes of the two loud bangs had fully died down, the visitor in the long black cloak, his gun safely stowed away once more among its folds, was leaning over the lifeless worg to retrieve his coinage.
“Sorry about this, old chap, but you’ll understand I have a business to run. Bottom line and all that.”
Unlike Growgarth, the visitor was extremely good at counting. Once he’d satisfied himself that all the coins were present and accounted for, he carefully retied the drawstring on the leather purse. It too vanished into the folds of his cloak, where it sat alongside the scrap of brown paper he’d so desperately needed to possess.
Standing on top of the huge corpse, the killer looked sharply all around him. There was no sign of life anywhere in the blasted meadow.
He whistled quietly to himself as he trotted down the side of the hillock and began making his way with deceptive speed toward the distant, dark line of trees.
“As for the last piece,” the stranger murmured to himself. “I think it’s time I visited an old friend …”
1 Unsuitable Questions
Knock, knock. Sylvester Lemmington didn’t bother answering. He recognized the knock and knew who the visitor was: his boss, Celadon, the Chief Archivist and Librarian. When Celadon knocked on a door, he entered. There was no point telling him to do so because he was going to anyway. At least, that was what Sylvester had decided not long after he’d got the job as Junior Archivist and Translator of Ancient Tongues, and he’d never seen any reason to change his attitude since.
He welcomed the interruption. He’d been working long and hard on his translation of The Great Exodus: The Third Attempt, and his eyes were tired and beginning to show a tendency to cross – a tendency which is very disturbing if you’re a lemming. He could do with the break. He set down his goose-quill pen in its holder, being careful not to drip any ink, and removed the reading glasses from his whiskery nose.
“Good evening, Sylvester,” said Celadon, pushing the door open with his frail shoulder. Grayed and bent, the Chief Archivist always looked as if the slightest puff of wind could blow him away like thistledown. He was dressed as usual in a plain, ratty muslin robe that matched the color of his fur and beard. His arms were full of yellowing scrolls that seemed to be of similar vintage to his robe. He peered around through thick spectacles for somewhere to put the scrolls down. Sylvester put his arms defensively out in front of him, shielding his desk, which was already quite full enough.
“I hope I’m not distracting you from your work,” Celadon continued, a trace of waspishness entering his voice. He hefted the scrolls as if to communicate that Sylvester was being exceptionally selfish and inconsiderate.
Sylvester didn’t care. He knew that if Celadon put those scrolls down he’d forget them when he left, and then tomorrow Sylvester would have to waste time making sure the old lemming got them back.
“I’ve nearly finished the translation of The Great Exodus,” he said truthfully. “And,” he added, not so truthfully, making a show of scrutinizing the parchment in front of him, “I’m not sure this ink’s quite dry yet.”
“Hmmf,” said Celadon skeptically, but then his face brightened and his whiskers began trembling with delight. “That’s excellent news that the translation’s almost done, young fellow. I knew I’d entrusted the task to the right person. You’ve worked very quickly and diligently on this. I shall make sure your superiors are informed.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Sylvester politely. “But, er, you are my superior.”
“Oh, quite right, quite right. Thank you for reminding me. This is the most important piece of work you’ve done for us, Sylvester. There are so few scholars nowadays who’ve taken the trouble to learn the ancient tongues our forefathers used, and you must surely be the youngest – the last of the line perhaps, although I do hope not. Why don’t you marry and have a few children you can teach the old languages to, eh, my lad?”
Sylvester blushed under his fur. “I haven’t yet met the right girl.” This was another lie. He had met the right girl – or, at least, so he thought most of the time. The trouble was that she didn’t always seem entirely convinced he was the right guy.
Yet.
✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿
“You’ll be Chief Archivist yourself one of these days,” said Celadon, risking dropping the scrolls to wag a finger at him. “You tell any girl that, and she’ll leap gratefully into your arms, mark my words.”
Sylvester tried not to roll his eyes. Sure. Chief Archivist. Try boasting about that to the average young lemming of the female persuasion and she’d be fast asleep before you’d finished saying the word “archivist.” What the girls today wanted in their males were brawny muscles, fearlessness, and preferably a strong dose of stupidity. The role of bookish lemmings like himsel
f was to watch from the sidelines as the girls swooned over these paragons of virility.
“I can see you don’t believe me,” said Celadon, reading his expression well, “but one day you will. If nothing else, you’ll be able to tell the world that you’re the translator of one of the most important historic documents of all, The Great Exodus.”
“Third Attempt,” added Sylvester automatically.
“Indeed. The Great Exodus: The Third Attempt. Now everyone will be able to read it and find out for themselves what our roots are.”
“True,” said Sylvester, looking down at his own neat script on the parchment. He wasn’t going to be the one to tell the Chief Archivist that there was barely a lemming left who cared about their people’s roots.
“You don’t know where you’re heading if you don’t know where you’ve come from,” said Celadon.
“If you say so, sir.”
“And this invaluable document tells us so much about where we’ve come from.”
“Um,” said Sylvester, but Celadon didn’t notice.
“You see,” the old lemming carried on, getting into the spirit of his own oratory, “we lemmings of Foxglove may well be the last lemmings of all, but we’re a proud species, dear boy, and we’re destined for greatness.” He began to make a sweeping gesture with his arm to the sleepy town of Foxglove beyond the window, then realized he was about to drop the scrolls. Clutching them hurriedly, he instead nodded his head toward the outside world. “The great spirit Lhaeminguas himself said we are destined for all-encompassing glory, when he wrote in … in … a very long time ago, anyway.”
“In the year 362,” said Sylvester quietly.
“I was just about to say that. 362. You have a remarkable memory, young Sylvester. Nothing escapes you, eh?”
Sylvester bowed his head modestly. “Thank you, sir. I know how lucky I was to be born with a memory as retentive as mine. Not everyone’s so fortunate.”
“It’s a rare and wonderful gift.”
The Tides of Avarice Page 2