Kuthor growled. “You been difficult man to find, McCord. Grubs Daily is very eager to see you.”
“He is? I had no idea. How nice.”
Then the door to the café swung open and Zlothor Pogg stepped out carrying two cartons of squirming food.
Zlothor soon turned his eyes to where his brother was staring. The questioning frown on his sallow, pock-marked face quickly turned into a hideous smile.
“Blake McCord!” he cried. “By the Gods! Where you find him, Kuthor?”
Kuthor shrugged. “He just here. Walking across street.”
“Yeah, and I was just on my way to…the thing…with the…thing, you know? So, why don’t I leave you to your breakfast and I’ll take myself over to Grub’s later. How’s that sound?”
But Kuthor was already dragging a pulse pistol from the holster on his belt. “No. You come with us now.”
“Yeah. Sure. I’d really like to but…”
“Now!”
Blake held up both his hands as if in surrender. “Okay. Okay. But before we go, could I ask you both something…?”
Kuthor’s lip curled. “What?”
“Is that a stone giant behind you?”
Immediately, both the orcs lurched around, tensing at the prospect that one of their most feared enemies was strolling down a Mirian street in broad daylight. Kuthor even raised his pulse pistol. Which was just enough of a distraction Blake needed.
Before the orcs could turn back, Blake was already sprinting away. He threw himself into the press of morning commuters and shoppers who jostled aside letting out indignant cries. But at least he had bought himself some shelter. Behind him another cry went up, this one full of rage and disbelief. Not that Blake looked back. Despite his burning side, he powered on, managing to force his way through the knot of resistant bodies. Soon he emerged on the other side of the market square and came to a breathless stop, scanning the area, and desperately weighing up his options.
There weren’t that many. Cutting through onto Billick Road would leave him exposed. And he didn’t want to throw himself into the Dials, a maze of alleyways that could just as easily take him into a dead end. Another shout echoed through the throng behind him. Blake chanced a look over his shoulder and could see the crowd of people moving frenetically, as if they were trying to stumble out of the way in each direction.
“Damn it…”
Blake bolted to his right. He reasoned he could head down the steps toward the canal and cut through the Old Gardens that would bring him to the back of Otto’s bar. If Otto let him in, Blake hoped he could hide in the bar keep’s secret lock-up where he kept all that illegal elven wine. Even if the orcs forced their way onto the premises, they would be unlikely to find him. At least, that was the plan. First, he would have to get there. And with his ribs making it almost impossible to breathe, he wasn’t too thrilled about his chances of outrunning a couple of relentless orcs.
Then he saw the courier.
It was a kobold. A squat, long-limbed, goblin-like creature trying to force a helmet over its quivering ears before it hopped on a hover cycle. The bike had already been powered up, drawing its energy from a sun-stone battery. It was just starting to lift off the ground when Blake took his chance. He shouldered his way past a man carrying an armful of bags, pushed the kobold aside causing him to drop his helmet, and Blake leapt into the hover cycle seat. Just in time, too. The Pogg Brothers emerged through the crowds on the edge of the market square.
The kobold yammered something in its guttural language. Blake ignored it as he twisted his fingers around the accelerator, the bike giving a powerful kick. And with a satisfying rasp, he surged away, barely missing an advancing mono-truck that blared its horn. Nor was that the only thing Blake avoided by a hair’s breadth. For as he swung into the traffic, a nearby dwarf was struck by a jag of crackling blue lightning and collapsed to the ground. Blake, startled, threw a look over his shoulder. Behind him, he saw Kuthor Pogg with his arm raised, his pulse pistol smoking with tendrils of expelled energy. Blake turned back and kicked the cycle onto greater speed, slipping behind a grumbling dust wagon.
Lodged in the slip stream of the noisy truck, Blake wondered if the Pogg Brothers had their own transport waiting nearby. Not that it mattered much. He had a good measure of this area of town and pretty much knew all the short cuts. All he would need to do is take a few side-roads, doubling back if necessary, and he was confident the orcs wouldn’t be able to find him. It was just good luck he had been able to jack a cycle. With his ribs still throbbing and his head still aching, he wouldn’t have given himself good odds to outrun the Pogg Brothers on foot.
Even so, Blake knew this was just a temporary reprieve. Grubs Daily had obviously run out of patience. How long, Blake wondered, could he hope to avoid paying his debts before those two bruisers finally caught up with him? And once again his thoughts drifted to the bottle the elf had given him, still sitting on his desk in the office. It was certainly a valuable commodity. Maybe Grubs would accept it as a down payment in lieu of the credits? Except, Grubs Daily was a homunculus: a genetic mutation born from the experimental sludge created on the shadowy moon of Xoros. There was no way of telling whether the healing waters would be of use to him, even if he had anything wrong with him to heal. Besides, within the next day or so the waters would be useless to anyone anyway. It didn’t seem like a viable idea.
Backing off the dust wagon, Blake drifted the cycle into the left lane. Up ahead he saw the turning for Dulo Street. By his reckoning, if he peeled off in that direction, he could make a few convoluted turns before doubling back and taking the main road up to Qualen’s. There was no point in returning to the hanger quite yet. He also knew he would have to come up with some idea of what to do about the money. The Pogg Brothers would come knocking again pretty soon, especially after all this craziness, and when they did…
A figure jumped out in front of him.
Blake’s mind had been so preoccupied, he saw it too late. And by that time, he had no chance to duck out of the way. A huge, veined arm swung across the windshield and swept him clean off the bike’s seat. The blow was like being struck by a tree branch. Blake felt another flash of agony sweep across his body, heightened by the wounds he had already suffered. He hit the ground hard, sprawling in the gutter. The bike snaked out from underneath him, smashing into a nearby wall.
Blake groaned. He couldn’t move as thin skewers of pain like hot pokers drove their way into his back, ribs, and head. Blaring horns and the hiss of traffic seemed muted and distant. Then, slowly, he returned to his senses and became aware of the crunching of approaching footsteps. Blinking into the hazy sunlight, Blake stared up as two ugly orc faces leered over him.
“You shouldn’t have run,” Zlothor Pogg informed him matter-of-factly. “You were stupid to run.”
“And now you come with us,” Kuthor added, unhooking a pair of manacles from his belt. The two orcs then reached down to haul Blake to his feet.
FOUR
1
The two orcs did have a transport. It was an ostentatious, twin-turbo street rider with paddle fins and mermaid-skin interior. Inside it smelt of orc-sweat, fried food, and something vinegary that Blake could not place, but was probably best left a mystery. The orcs had slung him on the back seat with his hands fastened behind his back and a hood over his head. Blake wondered if this was finally the end of the line for him as the transport rocked back and forth. Vague pulses of light penetrated the thin weave of the material clinging to his face. Zlothor and Kuthor chatted together in their guttural language, laughing every now and again. A discordant, frenetic music reminiscent of Old Earth thrash metal pounded through the sound system. Blake hoped it wasn’t a long journey. And for once, his prayers were answered. After about twenty minutes, the music cut out, and Blake heard doors opening and closing. Then he was dragged out of the transport, grimacing in pain.
They led him blindly up some steps. There was a rush of neutral air and the hubbu
b of the road gave way to a muted silence. Their feet whispered across carpet before a single, pure bell note hailed what must have been an elevator, metal doors rattling open. And after suffering the pungent, rotten fruit smell of his captors in an enclosed space for a couple of minutes, he was shoved in the back, almost falling onto his knees. His gasps dwindled into the eaves of a cavernous space. Finally, the hood was dragged from his head.
Blake took a deep breath, sweaty hair plastered to his forehead, eyes adjusting to the light. He tried to keep his nerves in check. After all, while he had never been in this room before, he knew where he had come to. Grubs Daily’s Inner Sanctum. And that did not bode well at all.
Up until this point, Blake’s only dealings with Grubs had been at a small and discrete eatery over on Gadd Street. That was how you did business with the homunculus in the beginning: over a plate of roc egg or through Zlothor and Kuthor if Grubs was too busy. But to be brought up here, in this high-ceilinged chamber lined with Terevellian briarwood panels and thick with shadows thrown from a roaring fire set in dwarfish black marble, it suggested Grubs had finally had enough.
Zlothor and Kuthor peeled away without a word. They retreated to a long sofa onto which they dropped and lounged casually. Blake, already beading with sweat in the warm room, turned his attention to a huge green granite desk with gleaming ink wells. There was a large raptor-like skull that might have once belonged to a griffin. It blocked Blake’s view of whoever was sitting behind it, for there was most definitely someone there. Blake could see a plume of acrid, blue smoke crawling into the air. There was also the faint sound of scratching: the sound of pen scrawling on paper. A few moments past. Blake clenched his teeth, trying to ignore the pain in his ribs, his hands already numb from the manacles. Then the scratching stopped, and a faint humming took over. Blake straightened slightly in anticipation, cringing at the effort.
The lev chair slipped out from behind the desk glacially, hardly disturbing the fibres of one of the wendigo rugs as it passed over it. The chair, like everything else in the room, had been hand fashioned from natural materials, in this case most probably the ivory from a sea serpent skull. Blake recognised the faint, sparkling sheen it gave off. It was very expensive and very illegal, most probably sourced from the Uturo black market. But then, Grubs Daily, the occupant of the chair, had long had a fascination with exotic flora and fauna. Maybe it was because he was considered a non-sanctioned being, according to the Ranger Patrol? Blake thought. This made it extremely difficult for him to travel through the System. If caught without a suitable permit, the chances were high he would end-up in a FPA Med Lab and picked over by a bunch of Patrol scientists trying to fathom the techniques used to bring him into being in the first place. Necro-Chemistry had been outlawed for decades. As a result, and with some irony, the small, blue-skinned, golden-eyed little being, sucking on a fat cigar, was probably the most unique thing in the room.
“Blake McCord,” Grubs Daily rasped as he plucked the cigar from his mouth. The lev chair came to a halt a few feet away. “Long time no see.”
“How you doing, Grubs?” Blake forced a smile. Sweat was dripping in his eyes but he had no means of wiping it away.
“I’m doing fine, Blake, actually. Extremely good, thanks for asking. Although, it looks like the same can’t be said for you, old friend. Had an argument with a bugbear, have you?”
“Ogre.”
A veneer of sympathy surfaced on the homunculus’s face. “Ooh. Ogre, huh? They can be a handful. But at least you’re in one piece, eh?”
“More or less.”
“Good. Good.” Grubs put the cigar back in his mouth. “Of course,” he said, chewing on the end, “you’ve always been a bit of a glutton for punishment, eh? For instance, wouldn’t it have been easier if you’d simply accepted my invitation over here and not given my boys a merry chase halfway across town? They radioed in that you’d been a handful, and that doesn’t make sense. You’re not getting any younger, Blake. That body of yours can only take so much.”
Blake turned slightly, aware of the Pogg Brothers sitting behind him. “I thought they could use the exercise.”
One of the orcs growled, and Grubs smiled. “Hmm, maybe you’re right. It benefits me to keep my employers sharp, eh? You probably did them a service. However, you have been a difficult man to track down these last few weeks. Every time Zlothor or Kuthor have swung by your hanger, you’ve been out. And I’ve left repeated messages for you to contact me.”
“Yeah. Well. I’ve been busy.”
“Then I’m pleased for you. I was under the impression things were a little quiet on the tourism front.”
Blake licked his lips. “Well…actually, Grubs…”
But the homunculus raised his little hand and Blake stopped in mid-sentence. “Save it. Please. Truth is, Blake old son, I’m really not interested in how times are tough for you and that work has all but dried up. I hear that sort of stuff all the time. Folks standing in your exact same position, giving me all the boring ins-and-outs of how their business is in the process of a transition. Or how the economy has made things tough for them, but with the assurance that all they need is a little more time to put things back on track. As if I’m interested. And, really, Blake, I’m not interested in the least. It wouldn’t matter to me if a meteorite had dropped on their business in some unfortunate freak accident. You understand?”
“Sure.”
“So, let’s not beat around the prayer bush, eh? Where’s my money?” the creature raised his hairless eyebrows. “After all, you’ve had those shiny new permits for some standard months now. And our arrangement was simple, was it not? You pay me my fee for obtaining them every month, and you enjoy the benefits of travel to Ilmaris without being put in a prison tank. I take it you’ve had no problems with the permits?”
Blake shook his head.
“I thought not. Scientific permits are extremely difficult to come by. You’re about the only human, save for ranger patrols, that’s travelling to the planet these days. I would’ve thought tours into those regions would’ve been extremely lucrative.”
“It was. For a while. But…”
Grubs held up his hand again. “I told you. I don’t want to hear your sob stories. I just want my money. It’s been two months.” He blew out a cloud of smoke. “So, where is it?”
“I…” Blake gave a small shrug. “I haven’t got it.”
Grubs pursed his lips. “That’s very distressing to hear, old son.”
“I mean…I haven’t got it yet.”
“Not yet?” Grubs cocked his head. “How so?”
“I mean…” Blake’s shoulders sagged. He couldn’t believe he was going to say it. “I mean…I can get it. In a few days.”
“Oh really? Got a big contract on the horizon, have you? You owe me two months, but you need to pay for this month too.”
“I understand. And I’ll have your money. In a week. Tops.”
Grubs flicked his golden eyes across to the couch where the Pogg Brothers were watching the proceedings with interest. All it would take was a signal from the homunculus and his henchmen would bundle Blake away into one of the connecting rooms from which he would likely never emerge. Grubs sniffed and his eyes slipped back to Blake.
“And how exactly do you intend to get me my money, hmm?”
“I thought you didn’t want to know my business.”
The creature smiled, showing neat little, yellow teeth. “Quite so, my friend, quite so. But does obtaining me my money mean you’ll be leaving town?”
“It looks that way.”
“Then that’s not ideal, is it?”
“I know. But it’s either that or you’re out of pocket, and I wouldn’t want that to happen, Grubs. You’ve been very good to me.”
Grubs hesitated, chewing on his cigar. He eyed Blake closely.
“Look…” Blake waded into the silence. “I’ve always paid up in the past, haven’t I? This is just a temporary setback. I’ll hav
e your money in a week. I guarantee it. Otherwise, you can do whatever you want with me.”
“That was my plan anyway,” the homunculus murmured. Behind him, Blake was aware of the Pogg Brothers shifting, almost eagerly. Then Grubs took a breath and said, “Of course, if you skip off without paying, you know I have the means to track you down. I’ll spend twice what you owe me just for the satisfaction of seeing your head on a spike.”
“I’ve heard enough stories to know that’s true.”
“I expect you have.” The homunculus ruminated for a few more seconds as Blake could hear the leather of the couch the Pogg Brothers were sitting in creaking. Doubtless they were probably itching to get their claws on him. It must have been a disappointment, therefore, when Grubs Daily dragged his cigar from his mouth again and said—much to Blake’s relief—“Alright. I’ll give you your week. But don’t let me down, Blake. I’m very fond of you, you know.”
“You are?”
“Of course! You’re one of my favourite customers.” The homunculus swung his chair about and started to drift back to his desk. “Okay, boys. You can take Mr McCord back to his hanger. And be gentle with him. I wouldn’t want anything untoward happening to him along the way.”
2
Blake stood in the street, rubbing his wrists. The Pogg Brothers’ transport screamed away, litter fluttering into the air. Blake watched it go before facing the shutters to his hanger, unable to remember the last time he had felt so bruised, battered, and exhausted. Still, he would have happily borne such hardships if it meant he could forgo making the decision he realised he was being forced into. Once again, memories of Kaylen screwed their way into his mind. He saw her, as he always did, standing in the green, rolling fields at the back of their old property on Terevell. She was looking at him sadly. His skin felt raw and his heart leaden.
Opening the shutters, Blake stepped into the hanger. Skreet appeared at the top of the steps leading into the Clipper.
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