by Alex Stewart
“I’m not aware of any such arrangement,” Dickson said, not even pretending to add the honorific anymore. “Are you saying the contents of this warehouse belong to the king of the Marches?”
A few of the crowd began to sing the song Drago had heard earlier in the tavern, although the roar of the fire made it hard to hear them. Flames were visible on the roof of the warehouse now, and the bucket gangs redoubled their efforts to damp down the neighboring buildings, although the wisps of smoke rising from the blackening woodwork indicated they were buying scant time at best. More of the crowd were joining in the firefighting efforts, but from where Drago was standing, it looked ultimately futile. All his survival instincts were urging him to get away as swiftly as possible, but the conversation he was overhearing was just too good to walk away from. Perhaps Fennel had some pertinent information about the bandits, which he was definitely not going to be willing to share with a wandering gnome.
“Not personally,” Fennel snapped, as though trying to explain the color of the sky to a particularly obtuse child. “It’s a consignment of supplies to his troops. Boots and winter clothing for the garrison in the Barrens.” Without which their ability to mount effective patrols once the year waned, and the cold mountain winds began to bite in earnest, would be severely impaired. It seemed the trio of goblins Drago had seen breaking in earlier had been Gorash’s agents after all.
He glanced around, hoping to catch sight of them in the crowd, though what he’d do if he actually saw them wasn’t entirely clear to him. He could hardly hope to follow them back to the Barrens undetected, but he supposed that if they were living locally he might be able to track them as far as their lodgings at least. If he kept them under observation after that he might be able to glean some information on the bandit chief’s whereabouts, or even corner one of them to ask a few questions directly, but that was an even more tenuous hope, and would raise the risk of exposure to much higher levels than he was comfortable with. So perhaps it was fortunate that he didn’t spot any of them after all.
“Stand back!” Aris the mage had completed his enchantment, holding up the small leather bag in which he’d combined the essence of his spell. The spectators not actively engaged in fighting the fire edged away from him, a little nervously. “I’m starting the invocation!”
Dickson spun on her heel, the elf forgotten, and strode toward him, her face grimly set, her hand held out for the charm. “I’m warning you, Aris, if you don’t knock this off right now—”
But before she could grab the tiny object, Aris threw it, with surprising strength and accuracy, straight into the heart of the inferno, and began chanting something under his breath.
“That does it, you scrawny little cantrip monger, you’re nicked!” She grabbed the young mage by the collar, almost hoisting him off his feet. “Now pipe down!”
But Aris continued to chant, his eyes apparently focused on something invisible in the far distance. Dickson shook him like a terrier with a rat, but it didn’t seem to make much difference; Aris’s mind was no longer connected to his physical body, or so it seemed, concerned only with focusing his will through whatever charm he’d created.
Drago felt a puff of wind on his cheek, a cool caress cutting through the furnace heat of the blazing warehouse. From where he was standing, there didn’t seem any point in trying to stop Aris from doing whatever it was he was trying to do; despite the best efforts of the bucket wielders, the warehouses on either side of the burning one were beginning to smolder, and looked liable to burst into flame at any minute. But then he didn’t live here; it sounded as though Dickson knew the young mage well enough to be wary of the results of his attempts at spell casting. And not without reason, if the muttering and apprehensive glances among the onlookers were anything to go by.
The wind was definitely picking up now, tugging at his hair and clothing. The crowd began to back away, the flames engulfing Fennel’s warehouse flickering and flaring in the strengthening gusts. The firefighters nearest the conflagration dropped their buckets, retreating to a safer distance.
“What are you up to, you little snot?” Dickson demanded, but Aris just kept on chanting, and after a moment she simply dropped him, turning her mind to the immediate demands of public safety. If she couldn’t shut him up, and break the spell, she’d just have to make sure no one got hurt by it. Drago supposed she could simply have cut the young man’s throat, and shut the spell down that way, but a course of action that drastic would need far more justification than the (apparently) widespread belief that he was a congenital screw-up. “Everyone get back! Far as you can!” Instructions, which, to be fair, few of the people present seemed to need.
Drago backed away among the slowest of the onlookers, unable to tear his eyes away from the spectacle, making instinctively for the edge of the dock. If things went badly wrong he could always jump into the water: though he was an indifferent swimmer by Fairhaven standards, gnomes not being particularly noted for their buoyancy, he could manage well enough if the alternative was a messy and painful death. Something was definitely happening in and around the burning warehouse, the smoke and flames swirling around it in a circular vortex, drawing them up and away from the buildings on either side.
“Bugger me, Sarge, he’s actually doing it,” the goblin watchman muttered, and Dickson nodded, her face a picture of astonishment.
“You’re right. He really is.” Her voice rose in a yell of encouragement. “Come on, Aris! You can do it!” Then she turned back to her subordinate, shaking her head. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
“A—ris! A—ris!” The crowd took up the chant. The young mage showed no sign of having heard them, but the vortex of burning air around the warehouse seemed to increase in strength, rising higher, and narrowing, drawing the flames up, out, and into the air. A couple of loose boards ripped away from the roof and joined them, incinerating in an instant as they met the hovering flames. Now the entire conflagration seemed to be dancing and whirling above the town, like a sullen and miniature sun, more and more of the structure of the warehouse tearing loose and flying up to be engulfed by the furnace heat it contained.
“Stop him!” Fennel strode across to the two watchmen, and grabbed Dickson by the upper arm. “He’s destroying the entire building!”
“And saving the rest of them,” Dickson said. She put her other hand over the elf’s, breaking his grip, and twisting his wrist away from her arm in what Drago recognized with quiet professional appreciation as an extremely painful lock. “And you’re under arrest for assaulting an officer.”
“Take your hands off me!” The elf drew himself up to his full height, bristling with indignation. “Have you any idea who I am?”
“Hang on a minute.” Dickson drew in her breath, and turned to the nearest section of the crowd, who were edging a little closer again now the worst of the danger seemed past. “Does anyone know who this elf is?” she bellowed. “He seems to have forgotten!” She waited for the laughter and catcalls to die down, before turning back to the goblin watchman. “What a surprise, nobody does.” She shoved the fuming elf in her subordinate’s direction. “Here, take him in and make up some charges, before I forget I’m a lady and do something he regrets.”
“My pleasure, ma’am.” The goblin saluted smartly, grabbed Fennel by the arm and marched him off, still loudly protesting, much to the amusement of the bystanders.
Drago returned his attention to the swirling vortex of flame overhead, which by now was lighting the entire town in what might have passed for the warm light of dawn. Far out on the river the fleeing boats bobbed, basking in its glow, riding at anchor or simply drifting with the current, their crews preferring to make for the safety of the far bank without the effort of quanting or raising sail. Again, he tried to make out the Rippling Light, but at this distance there was little to distinguish one vessel from another.
A loud crack! from the direction of the warehouse snatched his attention back to the magical conflagra
tion, just in time to see a substantial wall section break loose and whirl up into the levitating furnace, where it combusted immediately. Oohs and aahs rose from the crowd.
The end was clearly near now, the battered structure disintegrating faster and faster, each fresh piece flying upward to be immolated. Soon the site was completely clear, only the wide expanse of packed and slightly scorched earth standing between its neighbors showing any sign at all that a building had once stood there.
With no fresh fuel to sustain it, the levitating furnace eventually flickered and died, the preternatural wind which had borne it aloft dwindling away to nothing. An expectant hush fell.
“Heads!” Dickson bellowed, ducking an instant before a rain of ash descended, pattering into the river and covering everyone present in a patina of charcoal. Drago spat out a gob of blackened sputum.
“Did it work?” Aris asked, looking dazed, and a little surprised to find himself sitting down. He blinked twice, and staggered to his feet, only to be almost knocked off them again by a hearty slap on the back from the watch sergeant.
“It worked.” Dickson looked almost as surprised as he did, but the tone of congratulation in her voice was sincere enough. “Well done, lad.”
“I’m just glad I could help.” Aris nodded, taking in the devastation around him with a fair simulacrum of professional detachment, although Drago could see elation bubbling just below the surface of his studiedly sober demeanor. “Could have got a bit nasty otherwise.” He coughed. “Sorry. Throat’s a bit dry.”
“That shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” Dickson said, with a wry glance at the crowd, which was swarming in to offer congratulations of its own now the danger was past, cheering loudly and chanting the young mage’s name with undiminished enthusiasm. “Looks like you won’t have to pay for a drink in this town for at least a year.”
“A—ris! A—ris!” Ignoring the mage’s token protestations, the crowd scooped him up and carried him shoulder high in the direction of the nearest tavern.
Which seemed like a good idea to Drago as well. His throat was still lined with ash, and another ale or two seemed just the right thing to help shift it.
After all, it would take Clearspring and Greel a while yet to return to the wharf, so he had plenty of time before he could rejoin the boat: he might as well spend it wisely.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“That’d be a first.”
The Rippling Light was later leaving the wharf the next morning than Clearspring had intended. Drago didn’t find that particularly surprising, as she and Greel had spent half the previous night on the river and slept correspondingly late, but the main reason was that Hannie took even longer than usual to find the boat, which, like most of the others, hadn’t returned to the berth she’d cast off from in the general exodus.
“What’s the idea of shifting moorings on me?” she demanded, only partly mollified by the bacon bap Greel handed her as she passed the galley. He, Clearspring and Drago had already finished theirs, and been ready for departure for some time. Now they all glanced at one another in silent astonishment. “Thought it was funny, did you?”
“So you really haven’t heard?” Greel asked, pausing on his way to loose the forrard mooring line.
Clearspring looked up from the aft one, already coiling it. “You can eat that at the tiller. We’ve already lost enough time as it is.”
“Haven’t heard what?” Hannie slouched over to the stern, managing to sound sulky even with her voice muffled by bread and pig flesh. Hung over, Drago decided. Quite badly, by her usual standards.
“See if you can guess,” Greel said, with a wave at the void between buildings where Fennel’s warehouse no longer stood.
Hannie stared vacantly at the waterfront for a moment, chewing with bovine placidity, and shook her head. “Nope. Not getting it.”
“That’d be a first,” Greel muttered, beginning to hoist the sail. The Rippling Light caught the breeze, began to pick up speed, and her steerswoman abruptly became a great deal more conscious of her duties.
“There was a fire last night,” Drago said. “A big one. All the boats had to cast off in case it spread.”
“Can’t see much damage,” Hannie said, glancing briefly back at the wharf for the last time, before returning her attention permanently to the river ahead. “Fire that big would have leveled it.”
“Local spell-chucker put it out,” Clearspring said. “Took down the building to do it, but saved the rest.” A faintly vindictive grin flickered across her face. “Luckily the stuff inside belonged to Stargleam, so everybody’s happy.”
Drago thought of Cloverbell Fennel, who most certainly hadn’t been. “Everybody?” he asked, in a tone of playful skepticism which had often proved surprisingly effective in getting people to tell him things they hadn’t meant to.
“Everybody who counts,” Clearspring said. “Birch Glade might have a lot of stuff coming through it on the way to the Marches, but they only deal with the Marchers for the money. Lot of folk there have relatives in the Barrens, if you get my drift.”
Drago nodded. Perhaps he should have got off the boat there after all, and tried to pick up a lead on Gorash using his usual methods. The closer he got to the Barrens, the more unlikely his chances of ever being able to successfully pass for a miner were beginning to seem to him. It might have taken some time, but if, as Clearspring seemed to be hinting, there really were substantial numbers of sympathizers among the locals, he was fairly sure he would have found something before too long.
On the other hand, the news of the failure of the goblin warlord’s agents to kill him back in Fairhaven must be making its way upriver by now, no more than a day or two behind the Rippling Light, probably trailed by follow-up reports about his disappearance. The sudden arrival of a single gnome in Birch Glade, asking questions, would be bound to attract potentially lethal attention there too.
No, the only way he was going to get to the Barrens without painting a target on his back was to do his best to look like a gnome who’d been going there anyway.
“You think that was Gorash’s people we saw?” he asked, trying to sound surprised.
“You say you saw.” Clearspring smiled thinly. “It was dark. No one had lights. I didn’t see a thing.”
“Didn’t see all that much myself,” Drago agreed untruthfully. “But it’s still lucky we left before the watch got around to asking us any questions.”
“That wasn’t luck,” Clearspring said, “that was good timing.” She shrugged. “Besides, why would they care? Nobody local lost anything.”
“Not sure the guy who owned the warehouse would see it like that,” Drago said, picturing Fennel’s face as he’d watched the building burn, and failing to feel much in the way of sympathy either.
Clearspring spat over the rail, and watched the result with evident approval. “He’s not local,” she said, “he’s a Marcher who bought the place with Stargleam’s money, and gets his orders direct from the palace. You really think they’re going to leave military supplies in the hands of a local civilian?”
Drago hadn’t actually thought about that, but it made sense now that she’d pointed it out. Something else didn’t, though. “Why leave the stuff in Birch Glade anyway?” he asked. “Why not take it straight up the river to the Marches?”
Clearspring laughed. “They thought they were being clever,” she said. “Ship the stuff in small batches, so no one could estimate the strength of the troops it was for, then consolidate it for final delivery. Never occurred to them that their enemies would work out what they were up to, and wait till it was all in one place. Probably didn’t even bother to leave a guard.”
Drago rather hoped they hadn’t; he could still taste the ash that had descended on him when Aris’s spell had run its course, and the thought that a portion of it might once have been part of a person was vaguely disquieting.
“When did you work it out?” he asked, more to distract himself from the idea of having inge
sted an accidental fragment of elf than because he was particularly interested in the answer.
Clearspring shook her head. “I didn’t,” she said. “I just kept my ears open. Half the town knew what was going on. No wonder Gorash decided to do something about it.”
“Seems like a risky thing to do, though,” Drago said, starting to lay out the fishing gear with a confidence he wouldn’t have believed a week before. Clearspring watched his practiced handling of it with a grudging nod of approval. “Like Hannie said, that fire would have taken out half the waterfront if some local charm-lobber hadn’t turned up. Might even have spread into the town itself. That would have lost him a lot of friends.”
Clearspring shook her head. “Just because they sing songs about him being a noble-hearted hero, it doesn’t actually make him one you know. He’d probably cut your throat just to see how sharp the blade is.” She sighed. “Anyway, most of the folk around here would only have blamed Stargleam for having his stuff there in the first place.”
“Even though they were happy to take his money?” Drago finished baiting the hooks, and trailed the line over the side, absently licking the congealed fish blood from his fingers as he did so.
“Way of the world.” Clearspring hesitated, seeming uncharacteristically lost for words for a moment, then went on in a rush. “Listen, you’ve been a lot less trouble than I thought you’d be, so how about I save you a little? Forget the mines. Skip the whole Marches, and I’ll take you on up to the Delvings instead. No extra fare.”
“You’d do that?” Drago said, trying to sound as though he was considering the offer, which had blindsided him completely. It was tempting, there was no denying that, but he really had no desire to visit the land of his ancestors. He was too used to the cosmopolitan nature of Fairhaven to feel comfortable with the idea of being surrounded almost entirely by gnomes for the rest of his life, and although he was sure the caverns there were much more spacious than the burrows he knew closer to home they were sure to be correspondingly more crowded. Besides, if he accepted, he’d still be looking over his shoulder for Gorash’s assassins for the foreseeable future, and he was already getting tired of that. Not just Gorash’s either; as soon as the Marchers discovered he was reneging on their contract, they’d be sending someone after him too. “Getting worried you’ll have to pay for your own drinks after you drop me off?”