A Fistful of Elven Gold

by Alex Stewart

  “Drago.” Wethers returned his attention to the bounty hunter, pausing just long enough to pick up one of the tankards Hob had plunked on the table, and raise it in salute. “Just wanted to say thanks for getting the job done so neat. Bit more than we expected, to be honest, but you never do things by halves, do you?” He drank appreciatively, nailing Drago with his eyes as he lowered the mug. “But we’re not paying extra.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask,” Drago said, relaxing a little now that he knew what Wethers wanted to talk to him about. “You got what we agreed on. Fallowfield off your backs.” He tilted his own mug. Hob had got the good stuff out for Wethers, and he intended to savor as much of it as he could. “I’ll be round for my fee later on. The one we shook hands on.” He’d already done better than he’d expected anyhow, acquiring the additional purses along the way, and anything more would be greedy. Not to mention giving people the impression that he was willing to kill for money—a rumor which would attract the attention of potential clients it wasn’t always good to disappoint.

  “Glad to hear it.” Wethers nodded approvingly, and dropped his voice to a confidential murmur which could be clearly heard in the farthest corner of the taproom. “Did you really chew his arm off?”

  “It was all there when I left him,” Drago said, uncomfortably aware of the listening ears.

  “Thought so,” Wethers said, with a faint air of disappointment. “Not really your style. ‘Drago’s neater than that,’ I said. ‘If we’d wanted someone to go at him like a troll at a sheep we’d have got that nutter Torvin instead.’” He paused, taking a slurp of ale. “You heard about Torvin?”

  “I heard he’s dead,” Drago replied, more interested in the plate of fish pie Hob had just slid onto the table in front of him than the fate of a professional rival he’d have crossed the street to avoid if he’d still been alive.

  “Only himself to blame if you ask me.” Wethers leaned in to pick up his own plate, balanced it on his knee, and continued to talk round a mouthful of pie. “Going on about some big money contract he’d just landed. Pillock.”

  “You said it, Mr. Wethers,” Hob agreed, popping up to refresh their tankards. “Flashing all that cash around. Bound to attract attention.”

  “You saw him do that?” Drago asked, keeping his voice casual, a job made easier by the plug of half-masticated pie in his mouth. He still wasn’t all that interested, but Raegan’s parting admonition was still fresh in his mind, and he’d probably sleep a little easier if at least one of the sudden flurry of deaths among his fellow bounty hunters turned out to be nothing more than an over-enthusiastic robbery. And if one, why not all three? Stranger things had happened. In a place like Fairhaven, stranger things tended to happen on a daily basis, particularly around the districts frequented by mages. At any event, it wouldn’t hurt to be able to pass on a bit of information to Raegan, if there was some here to be had; the captain could have been a lot less understanding about the Fallowfield episode when all was said and done, and banking a bit of goodwill for later was never a bad idea where the watch was concerned.

  Hob nodded. “He was in here a few days back, spending like money was going out of fashion. You know how Torvin was with a bit in his purse.” Drago forced an encouraging noise past the obstructing pie, nodded, and the landlord went on. “Every time he collected a bounty, he drank it as fast as he could.”

  “And he’d just collected one?” Drago asked, after a convulsive swallow.

  “That’s what I thought at first.” Hob shook his head. “But he said it was just a down payment. When he brought in the head he was going to be rich.”

  “The head?” Drago echoed. That sounded more like outright assassination than the kind of job he preferred to take.

  “That’s what he said,” Hob confirmed.

  “He did,” Wethers agreed, stepping in to dispel any doubts Drago might have had about him knowing everything that went on in the Wharfside. Drago was pretty sure he didn’t really, but the big man’s reputation and position in the community relied strongly on fostering the impression that he did: an impression Drago was quite happy to help reinforce. The Tradesman’s Association needed someone like him on a fairly regular basis, and Wethers was known to prefer dealing with people he felt well-disposed to. “Not just in here, either.”

  “Where else?” Drago asked, directing his question to the chairman, keeping his tone casual, and injecting just the right amount of implied flattery. “I suppose if anyone around here knows, it’d be you.”

  “Not wrong there, my old mate,” Wethers agreed. His brow furrowed, in a pantomime of recollection. “He was shooting his mouth off in The Blind Watchman, The Strumpet, and The Mucky Duck.” The last two of which were actually called The Lady Grace, after a long-forgotten noblewoman who’d led a dull and blameless life entirely devoted to charitable works before being posthumously endowed with prodigious cleavage by an overly imaginative sign painter, and The White Swan, whose once-apposite sign had been weathered over the years to match its current nickname. All hostelries Drago was familiar with, and in which it was indeed unwise to flaunt it if you’d got it. “Flashing the cash in there, too.” He paused for a moment before adding another derisory “pillock,” presumably in case Drago had missed the first one. Then his voice softened, taking on a more thoughtful air. “Them other two, though, they were more careful.”

  “Other two?” Drago asked, concealing a sudden surge of interest behind the same blandly casual tone.

  Wethers nodded, pleased to believe himself better informed than a professional investigator. “Leofric and that loony elven bint. Clarice something? You know, easy on the eye, but bloody dangerous. Be like shagging a lamia, that one.”

  “Caris Silverthorn?” Drago prompted, and Wethers nodded. “They were both spending too?”

  “They were.” Wethers drained his tankard, and glanced round for a refill. Hob scuttled over, recharged the tankard, and hovered hopefully around Drago’s until the bounty hunter waved him away. The more he heard, the more he wanted a clear head. “But not in bars. Not so much, anyway. Mainly on supplies.”

  “What sort of supplies?” Drago asked, without bothering to ask how he knew. Wethers was acquainted with every storekeeper in the district, and not a few beyond.

  “Dried food, bedrolls, that kind of thing. Planning a trip where there aren’t many inns, by the look of it. Or none they wanted to be seen in, anyway.”

  “Together?” Drago asked, already sure of the answer. Leofric and Silverthorn had detested one another, to the point where weapons had been drawn on more than one occasion, and only the swift intervention of the watch (and, on one occasion, a passing mage, with highly entertaining results for everyone in the immediate vicinity except the would-be duelists) had forestalled a clash unlikely to have ended without at least one of them bleeding out on the rancid cobbles of the street.

  “You’re having a laugh, aren’t you?” Wethers chased the last piece of piecrust from his plate, and followed it with the dregs of his ale. “Good as always, Hob. Give that to the lads in the kitchen.” He flicked another coin in the landlord’s general direction, which Hob snatched out of the air with typically sharp gnomish reflexes, and returned his attention to Drago. “They’d have killed each other before they got outside the walls.”

  “Good point,” Drago said, as though he hadn’t already thought of that himself. But if they hadn’t been working together, Leofric and Silverthorn might still have been after the same target. There wasn’t exactly a shortage of bounties to be collected within the city limits, and neither had shown much inclination to go wandering off into the wilderness before. And if they’d both been hunting the same scofflaw, then perhaps the third dead bounty hunter had too. “What about Torvin?”

  “What about him?” Wethers stood, already turning his face toward the door.

  “Was he buying the same sort of stuff?”

  “Not that I heard.” Wethers shrugged, no doubt coming to the same concl
usion. “But he was never very big on planning ahead, was he?”

  “No, he wasn’t,” Drago agreed, lapsing into a thoughtful silence for several minutes, before it dawned on him that Wethers had left him with the bill for both their meals.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “There is that, I suppose.”

  “Thought I’d find you here,” Raegan said, casting a shadow across Drago as he emerged from the Tradesman’s Association hall, his purse now comfortably heavier. He’d added the cost of his meal with Wethers to his list of expenses, which the Association’s treasurer had paid without complaint, and, struck by happy inspiration, gone on to charge them for a complete set of new clothes to replace the ones soused in blood and filth by Fallowfield’s messy demise. He’d still get the old ones cleaned, of course, and probably drink the difference, but you never knew—a pair of completely watertight boots would be a welcome novelty for a start.

  So musing, he’d failed to notice the bulky watchman’s approach, which, for someone of Raegan’s stature, was a pretty neat trick—and dangerous for someone in Drago’s profession, where a moment’s inattention could be his last. Particularly if someone really was targeting the bounty hunters of Fairhaven.

  “You thought right,” Drago replied, hoping to sound as though the watch captain’s approach hadn’t startled him, and suspecting that he didn’t. But Raegan was in no mood for casual banter.

  “We’ve found another one,” he said, without preamble.

  “And your first thought was to check on me,” Drago said. “I’m touched.” Then another thought struck him. “Unless I’m a suspect. How many people do you think I can kill in less than a day?”

  Raegan shook his head. “Don’t joke about it. I’ve been cleaning up after you for so long I might start to take you seriously.”

  Drago glanced down the street, to where the effigy of a felon dangling from the gallows marked the welcoming location of The Dancing Footpad, and dismissed the fleeting thought of Hob’s ale. Business like this was best discussed in the open, on the move, away from prying ears. “Who was it this time?”

  “Jerron the Heron.” Another cold-blooded killer, whose tall, thin build had contributed both to his nickname, and the sudden demise of several people incautious enough to have used it in his hearing.

  “Let me guess,” Drago said, turning away from the Footpad and the Tradesman’s hall toward the nearest market place, where the babble of competing voices would mask their own from any potential eavesdroppers. As the mismatched pair came into view, a quiver of alarm swept through the petty criminals happily plying their trades among the shoppers and stallholders thronging the space between the booths, provoking a small exodus through the rest of the avenues and alleyways leading into the square. Drago found it uncannily reminiscent of walking into a cellar full of rats with a lit torch, and watching them scatter, which in turn provoked a smile of nostalgia for the innocent pursuits of his childhood. “You’ve ruled out suicide, I take it.”

  “Pretty much,” Raegan agreed. “Unless he stabbed himself in the back, cut his own throat from behind with a different knife, and gave them both to a friend to take away.”

  “Neat trick if you can do it,” Drago conceded. “Was he planning a trip out of town, by any chance?”

  “How do you know that?” Raegan glanced sharply down at his diminutive companion. “He had a ticket on him for a riverboat, heading up the Geltwash yesterday on the evening tide. Skipper didn’t wait, obviously, so we can’t ask him why.”

  Drago shrugged. “Lucky guess. Caris and Leofric were both buying supplies for a long trip, and the chances they were working together are about as good as mine of being the next archmage. So I’m thinking someone with a lot of money to spend wants someone up the river dead, badly enough to be hedging their bets. And the someone upriver is equally determined not to be dead, and getting their retaliation in first.”

  “And you know about Caris and Leofric’s plans how, exactly?” Raegan asked, pausing to stare meaningfully at a braver or more foolhardy cutpurse who’d stayed behind when his fellows fled, silently daring him to ply his trade anywhere in the immediate vicinity: a challenge the felon wisely declined, finding the apples on a nearby stall suddenly of overwhelming interest.

  “I asked around,” Drago said ingenuously, “like I said I would.” No point in admitting the information had more or less fallen into his lap. Not if he expected a future favor in return. “And Torvin had taken a big down payment too, on what sounded like an assassination, although of course he’d been drinking it instead of getting on with the job.”

  “Sounds like Torvin,” Raegan agreed. “Any idea who either of these someones might be?”

  “Not a clue,” Drago admitted, with a shrug. “But it might give you something to go on.”

  “Then again, it might not,” Raegan said, scowling. That sort of money meant influence, and both of them knew it. Push too hard, and the guilds or the nobility might start pushing back. If it had anything to do with either, of course.

  Drago considered that. Both groups were powerful, and certainly not above resorting to those sorts of methods if the stakes were high enough and they thought they could get away with it. On the other hand, Fairhaven gossip was as ubiquitous as the smell; any dispute serious enough to have provoked a guild or noble family into hiring assassins would have been the talk of every tavern in the city. “My guess would be someone from out of town, here on business. Taking the chance to put out a contract before they go home.”

  “Unless that’s the business they came here on in the first place.” Raegan shrugged, his attention momentarily diverted by the aroma from a hot sausage stall, and paused to dig a couple of coins out of his purse. “You hungry?”

  “I’m a gnome,” Drago said, playing up to the partially deserved reputation of his species. To tell the truth, he wasn’t feeling particularly peckish at the moment, but would be later, and he might as well put later off for as long as possible. Free food was free food, after all. “What do you think?”

  “I think I owe you for the information,” Raegan said, “and I haven’t had my dinner yet.” He exchanged the coins for a couple of snacks, and swapped pleasantries with the stall holder for a moment or two, mentally filing every piece of local gossip for future digestion. Then he resumed walking, at his former leisurely pace, which allowed Drago to keep up by striding out briskly without having to break into a trot.

  “If it’s someone from outside the city, they won’t be that easy to find,” Drago said, resuming their interrupted conversation.

  “You’re telling me.” Raegan led the way out of the market square and down to the riverside. “Outsiders are always a pain in the arse.” The tide was high, lapping against the pilings of the wharves lining the embankment, and the air was as fresh as it ever got in Fairhaven. At low tide a thin strip of stinking mud would be adding its own distinctive aroma to the general background smell, and Drago gave thanks for small mercies.

  Finding a vacant berth between two moored vessels, Raegan seated himself on one of the mooring bollards to eat his impromptu lunch, which brought his face down more or less to the level of Drago’s. The gnome remained standing, chewing the gristly meat inside its slightly stale bun, and nodded in agreement.

  “So you’re going to need a way in,” he said. If whoever had been hiring the bounty hunters really was from out of town, and had the sense to be discreet about their activities, the City Watch’s network of informers, or the smaller informal ones maintained by people like him, would be unlikely to hear about it.

  Raegan nodded, chewing thoughtfully. “If you’ve got any ideas, I’d be happy to hear them,” he said, without visible enthusiasm or expectation.

  Drago nodded again, and swallowed the last of his sausage. “I just might,” he said. “But it’s going to cost you.”

  “You sure about that?” Wethers asked, sounding as surprised as he ever did. Drago nodded, looking around the chairman’s private office, which fe
lt a little cramped even at the best of times: almost half the floor area was occupied by an ornately carved wooden desk, perpetually unsullied by paperwork, across which Wethers liked to lean impressively toward petitioners, or someone who’d inconvenienced a member of the Association in some way and been “invited in for a little chat about it.” Though no one would deny he could read and write well enough if he had to, both processes were conducted in a methodical, painstaking manner accompanied by the drawn-out vocalization of the words in a muttered undertone. Fortunately Wethers had been easily persuaded that a man in his position should delegate any paperwork beyond the occasional scrawled signature to the underlings paid to deal with that sort of thing, which left him free to concentrate on the looming at which he undoubtedly excelled. Currently the room felt positively crowded, as, in addition to Drago, Wethers and the desk, it was also occupied by Captain Raegan, who, under most circumstances, could happily have filled most of it alone.

  “Yes.” Drago peered over the desk, the polished surface of which was almost level with his nose.

  “But it’s not true.” Wethers’s eyebrows converged in a puzzled frown, which Drago knew of old. He wavered in his seat as though contemplating looming for a bit, before returning to the vertical, no doubt concluding that there wasn’t much point with someone as short as Drago in front of him. “And who’s going to believe it anyway? They all know you around here.”

  “That’s not the point,” Raegan put in. “The people we want to hear it aren’t local.”

  The chairman’s eyebrows began to resemble a pair of mating caterpillars. “Them Temple District pillocks? Even they’re not that thick.”

  “Not even from Fairhaven, we think,” Raegan explained patiently, and Wethers’s face cleared with dawning comprehension.

  “Oh, you mean forriners. Yeah, they’ll fall for anything.”