by Lon Prater
It was a calculated risk though. One he had to take, regardless of the rewards … or lack thereof. For the first time in his life he was passing on his dirt for free. It was probably for the best that he not appear greedy to Hyrannia. Her icy formal manner was already giving him the chills.
“So, you want me to dispose of both the Governor and the Wisdom, and put a stop to the slave trade. How do I profit?” Her stare reminded Grevien of when he was small and too scared to visit the outhouse at night because of witches and monsters. Everyone knew there were no witches anymore. Monsters were still around; they just wore expensive suits nowadays.
Grevien looked at the cadre of elfin bullyboys lining the walls pretending not to listen. “Honorable Mistress, you are influential, you can get the right sort of people into those positions. Ones that will keep things as they’ve always been in New Promise.” He wanted to say more, but thought wiser of it.
That cold merciless smile pierced him. “And what do you get out of it?”
“All I want is to stop the slave trade. No one deserves that end.”
She cackled at him. It jangled his nerves even more. She can have me disappear just as quick as N’brotok could, and she knows it.
“So you come to Hyrannia su’Dresil to fight injustice!” One of the hoods nearest to Grevien twitched, and others were fidgeting. Grevien wondered if she made them as uncomfortable as she was making him.
“Yes, Honorable Mistress,” Grevien answered, looking at his reflection in the polished boroba table. The luster of the black wood made his face and hands look sooty, but he refused to feel dirty for what he was doing.
“And you offer su’Dresil the chance to have even more power in New Promise. Why su’Dresil?”
It was a good question, and Grevien was hoping that he had the right answer. He resisted the urge to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Showing weakness before those hard unblinking eyes would be like the Jitian wereshark hunters throwing butcher scraps into the sea.
“Because only two in New Promise tried to stand against Shadwell’s plan to legalize paganism, and I can’t stand the One Wagers.” Hyrannia’s eyebrows rose just enough to betray surprise that he knew of that meeting.
“You don’t like pagans?” She asked. The innocent tone did not conceal the menace.
Grevien answered carefully. “I don’t like change, Honorable Mistress.”
“But you would change the leaders of our province’s two most stabilizing institutions?”
“If they are allowed to continue, things will change for the worse,” Grevien said. At that she dismissed him.
He laid low for two days, until Piglet dropped by with a message from one of the su’Dresil toughs. He also brought an early edition of the paper. Large letters screamed out the disappearance of the governor and two of his staff. The article said nothing about the Wisdom. Piglet shut his bar down for the night and followed Grevien out to the top of a rat’s nest of a warehouse at the edge of town.
They sat there in the dirty night smog, back to its usual foulness courtesy of the failed metalworker’s strike. They pulled down their facecloths long enough to gulp black ale from a large flask they passed between them. Occasionally one would kick out at an approaching rodent. Grevien could feel the pistol pressing into him like a boil about to burst. He hadn’t needed to use it, and for that he was glad. Maybe Fthalgnim would buy it back.
It was closer to morning than midnight when the Kreshti Advancer tied up to the dock. The ship’s painted master was surprised to see that the ogre waiting for him was not N’brotok.
He was even more surprised to see a pair of elves with shotguns jerking N’brotok, a female ogre, and an unkempt human in a ragged suit, which might have once been called well tailored, out of the idling delivery truck by their chains. Piglet snorted, spurting black ale onto his leathery pouchbelly. “The only thing missing is that ugly little Sparker bastard,” he said.
Down on the boat, they saw the trio shoved into the cargo hold. The captain didn’t seem to care who he bought: he just fastened the oaken lid down and locked it. The ogre who had turned the three over suddenly grabbed one of the Kreshti’s tattooed arms and twisted it around with a sickening, audible pop. The pair on the roof looked away with distaste as the ogre’s meaty fists began thudding into the captain.
Grevien grunted. This was worse than the simple murder he had proposed. Hyrannia was removing the governor and ending the slave trade in her own efficient, pitiless way. He pulled his facecloth away for a moment and choked down a deep breath of the gritty New Promise air. Hair of the dog, he thought to himself. He’d never be able to wash all the dirt away. It was inside him; it always would be.
He pulled out the uncomfortable pistol and laid it on the cluttered rooftop. “Hyrannia chose not to remove the Wisdom. She has him under her thumb now. She’ll use him to get the ban on paganism back in force.” Grevien took a swig from the flask and passed it back to Piglet. “Guess she’s a traditionalist at heart. Makes more money keeping the pagan chapels tangled up in her web.”
Below, the ogre was holding the captain by his neck and telling him in a loud harsh voice never to return to New Promise. The captain gurgled agreement, dislocated arm dangling limply at his side.
Piglet was thoughtful for a moment. “You got Hyrannia to stop the slave trade, but the thugs are still running New Promise. In the process you set religious freedom in this city back thirty years or more. Hope you’re proud of yourself,” he said mockingly.
They heard a jingle as Hyrannia’s ogre carried the chest of Kreshti gold off of the creaking ship. Grevien sighed. “I just wish I got paid better for it.”
Piglet tucked the flask under one furry arm and fished a little penknife out of his pouchbelly. He dug some grit from beneath his black nails. “You know the old saying: money’s what makes things happen,” he said.
“That’s where you’re wrong, my friend….” the stocky human let his voice trail off. Piglet pointed his pug muzzle out at the wake from the smuggler’s ship. Grevien waited to finish until the thick industrial haze swallowed the craft entirely.
“Dirt,” he said, the toe of one crusted boot connecting with a snarling rat. “That’s what makes things happen.”
Piglet cocked his head at the human and held the flask out. Grevien grabbed it with one hand, pulling aside his soot-streaked facecloth with the other.
“No matter what you do, or why you do it, some of it always sticks to you. You can never scrub it away.”
The gnoll returned the knife to his pouch, satisfied with his nails.
Grevien picked the pistol back up, letting it hang loosely in his hand. “The best you can do is keep moving it out of sight so you never really notice how filthy everything is.”
He shoved the pistol into a pocket, then gulped more black ale without tasting it. “But it’s always there. The dirt finds its way inside you; becomes a part of you. No matter how clean you try to convince yourself you are.”
They drank there on the debris-strewn rooftop in silence. When the flask held nothing but vapors, and the sun’s red edge first peeked over the horizon, the pair wound their way back through the deserted streets toward Eastside.
By then, most of the grime had grudgingly settled out of the New Promise air. Even so, they kept their facecloths pulled up; a new day would bring with it new dirt.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lon Prater lives on the Gulf Coast with his amazingly patient wife and their two delightful daughters. Between work and play, he writes obsessively about things that could never happen and edits Neverary.com, a webzine for other people with the same compulsion. His writing has been printed in Borderlands 5 and published in various other venues online.
Don’t Miss the Next New Promise Story
MURDER IN NEW PROMISE
Coming in May 2004
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