by Dante King
I turned to Odette. “Are you ready to hit us with this cunning plan of yours then? From the little that you said back at the Cock and Bull, it sounds like you want to go fishing for sharks with Cecilia flopping about at the end of your line like a baby seal.”
Odette nodded. “You ‘ave, as usual, summed up the proposed scheme with eloquence and color,” she said drily.
“So, there’s a little bit more to it than that?” I asked in mock disbelief.
“A little bit more to it,” Odette said. Her face split into an abstruse smile, the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes deepening, her white teeth flashing, her dragon tail flicking from side to side behind her head. “But only a little.”
I wanted to know what this beautiful and enigmatic gypsy dragonkin Death Mage had in store for Cecilia, a girl I had come to care for.
“Go on,” I said, narrowing my eyes as an eddying swirl of dust suddenly whipped around us and rustled my new desert garb.
“As Mortimer mentioned at the inn,” Odette said, “we ‘ave little ‘ope of just bumping into Ratfink the Thief ‘ere at the market. It is simply too busy, too full of goods, people and things, and too big.”
“Ah,” I said. I had started smelling what Odette was cooking. “Instead of being the moth flying blindly toward the flame, you’re hoping to make us the flame that draws the moth in?”
Odette smiled widely again. “Just so.”
“I have never heard an ambush described in such pretty language,” Mortimer said. “It makes the whole business even more beautiful than it usually is.”
I held up a stern hand. “That’s enough cray-cray Tom Cruise weirdness out of you, Mort,” I said brusquely. “Let Odette finish.”
“I am banking on the Thief having eyes and ears spread through the market—all the large and important criminal organizations and gangs do,” Odette said. “The beautiful Cecilia here will simply walk through the Luminous Bazaar wearing this.”
Odette reached into the seemingly bottomless folds of her skirts and pulled out a velvet-covered box. It reminded me of the items you’d see in the swanky jewellers shops, and I could already imagine the plush white, padded lining inside.
What I could not have imagined was what the box contained.
It was a necklace, but a necklace of such shimmering, divine quality that it made the $200 million A Heritage in Bloom necklace back on Earth look like something you might fish out of one those claw crane arcade machines.
Cecilia held her hand to her mouth and gasped. “You want me to flaunt that here? Are you sure, Odette?”
I knew then, with Cecilia being a wealthy aristocrat, that this was clearly an expensive bit of bling. Cecilia had been practically born rolling in jewels, eating caviar garnished with white truffles and sprinkled with saffron, and sleeping on mattresses stuffed with money and topped with the fur of endangered animals. If an aristocrat of her high birth was blown away, this glitzy bit of neckwear was probably rarer than hen’s teeth.
The necklace was a confection of pink diamonds, jadeites, and one diamond the size of a plum in the center. They were all strung together by a linked chain of smaller diamonds and emeralds. It was obscene, it was incredible, it was captivating. It was, quite simply, the most expensive-looking thing that I had ever seen. It held my eyes and made them start to water.
“That’s nice,” Mortimer said.
That’s one way to put it, I thought.
“Cecilia wears this,” I said, “and you think that word will get to Ratfink the Thief? He’ll think there’s some clueless blonde strolling about with enough diamonds strung about her throat to buy the entire market eighty-five times over? Is that it?”
“In a nutshell, yes,” Odette said. “The beauty is that this necklace is not just valuable in and of itself, it is also powerfully magical too. Any enchanted detector will pick this up a mile away, which means that we shouldn’t ‘ave long to wait until one of the Peculator Gang finds out about it.”
“What good is that though?” I asked. “We need the big chief, don’t we?”
“That is exactly why I received ‘eadmaster Chaosbane’s permission to borrow this item from the Mazarian Academy vaults,” Odette said immediately. “When Ratfink the Thief ‘ears about this, ‘e will not trust any other member of ‘is gang to relieve Cecilia of this necklace. ‘e will come ‘imself.”
“Odette,” Mortimer said, “it seems to me that the possibility of this girl being inhumed is quite high. If not likely.”
“Inhumed?” I asked.
Mortimer drew his finger across his throat and gave Cecilia an apologetic look.
“I don’t think you need to worry too much about Cecilia, Mortimer,” I said, before Cecilia could unleash her indignation as only the very wealthy and well-bred can. “I’ve fought next to her plenty of times, and she’s hardly what you’d call a damsel in distress.”
“Even so,” Mortimer replied civilly, “these are bad men. Bad and greedy men who will be eager to disencumber Miss Chillgrave of this treasure.”
“Yes, but she’s not going to be alone, is she?” I retorted. “You and I, not to mention Odette, will be watching the area around her. Watching her back.” I winked at Cecilia and said, “There are few things more enjoyable than watching her rear, I’ve found.”
Cecilia punched me in the arm, but looked pleased at the compliment nonetheless.
“And, presumably, you two know what this fucking Ratfink McRatface looks like?” I said.
“Absolutely,” Odette replied.
Mortimer Chaosbane nodded his head.
“Well then,” I said, pulling my cowl down a little lower over my head, “if Odette thinks that this is the best way to locate Ratfink, then we should push ahead and do it. We’re on the clock, remember? If we let Ratfink slip away or take our time looking for him, then we’ll be under even more pressure when it comes to the Priestess Entswhistle.”
“I’m in Justin’s corner,” Cecilia said. “The risk is worth it and, like he said, you three will have my back.”
Odette looked from Cecilia to me and her smile widened. “My my,” she said, “no wonder the two of you proved so formidable in the Exhibition Matches.”
She stepped forward and looped the sparkling necklace over Cecilia’s blonde head. The plethora of precious jewels glittered like ice and fire around her slender throat before she tucked it quickly out of sight.
“Yes, ‘ide it for now,” Odette said, tucking a raven curl behind her ear. “Only take it out when we are in the ’eart of the bazaar. That is the place known to be in Ratfink’s control. There’s little point pulling out the jam prematurely and inviting more wasps to the picnic than you need. I shall let you know when to do it.”
Mortimer looked up at the flawless azure sky and the sun that sat in it like a malevolent burning eye. “I’d advise that we get going as soon as possible. We are inviting enough trouble onto ourselves as it is. It will be a deal dicier if we’re still here after night has fallen.”
“Agreed,” Odette said. “Follow me.”
The dragonkin Death Mage turned with a whirling of skirts and set off along a dusty alley that led from the portal stones that we had just come through.
“What’s that noise?” Cecilia asked as we walked along the alleyway, our booted feet crunching on the arid earth.
I cocked my head and listened. There was a dull rumble and hum, like the mother of all beehives waking up. I realized that the sound had been there the whole time, playing in the background, only I hadn’t noticed it until Cecilia pointed it out.
“That is the sound of Avalonian commerce,” Mortimer said, from where he strode quietly along at the back of the line, humming softly to himself.
“That,” Odette said from her place at the front of our quartet, “is the Luminous Bazaar.”
We walked for only five minutes or so, switching backward and forward down a maze of gleaming white alleyways flanked by limestone buildings that wouldn’t have looked out of p
lace in medieval Turkey, before we emerged out into the light.
“The portal stones that we came through are one of four that are situated at each corner of the bazaar,” Odette said. “The fifth is the busiest, and is found in the very ‘eart of this great organism.”
“Whoa,” I said, my eyes wide as they surveyed the environment we had just emerged out into.
“Whoa,” Cecilia agreed.
“Oh look, daggers,” said Mortimer, indicating a stall right in front of us, the wall of which was hung with row upon row of gleaming knives.
The Luminous Bazaar was, genuinely, like nothing that I had ever seen before. It was vast.
We were standing at the top of a set of the steps that led down to the floor of the massive market. Ahead of us and above, a ceiling of individual multi-colored canvas sheets stirred and flapped in the wind.
“It’s under cover?” I said, pointlessly.
“Of course,” Odette said. “People couldn’t trade under the baking sun of this land for more than a few minutes if it wasn’t for the moving ceiling of the Luminous Market. The canvas roof is kept in the best of repairs, because without it the market could not exist.”
The bazaar was a riot of color. Compared with the plainness of the white buildings outside, the Luminous Bazaar hit the retinas like a paintball.
Even in the relative cool under the fluttering canvas roof I could feel sweat trickling down the back of my neck. A breeze outside lifted some of the kaleidoscopic sheets, and a hot wind made its way into the bazaar. I squinted against the hot gust. It was like walking through a giant goddamn hair-dryer.
Men and women and children of all races were swarming every which way; yelling and gesticulating, hugging and scolding, customers and vendors bartering with each other as if their very lives depended on it. Almost all of them were dressed in flowing robes—mint green, saffron yellow, Ferrari red, Persian blue—with light shoes instead of the heavy boots that we wore.
I’d kill for a pair of flip-flops right now myself, I thought, and my magical cloak kindly obliged.
From our slight vantagepoint, I could see stalls stretching in all directions. At a glance, I concluded that Odette had not been overstating things when she’d said that you could buy anything and everything here.
There were mounds of spices taller than me outside one booth, the vendor doling out portions of bright yellow, green, red, orange, and lilac powder with a scoop to his legions of customers, all the while declaiming that he had the cheapest blister root, the most fragrant bunches of candied dill, the highest quality paberaway powder anywhere in Avalonia.
Another trader, a young woman wrapped from crown to toes in green robes, with only a slot cut out for her mouth and eyes, sat sewing a shoe, a cigarette stuck between her invisible lips, and blue smoke curling about her head.
Two old men showed a crowd sheets of levitating marble. A halfling tried to snare foot traffic by letting her adorable tame lemur jump onto people’s shoulders, then tow them by the hand back to her stall that was stuffed with cages of all different colored imps.
Steam and smoke rose from hosts of stalls and carts; restaurants offering everything from roasted quails to stewed basilisk tongues, skewers of unidentifiable vegetables to curried wolverine.
“All right,” I said after I’d finished gawking. “Odette. Let’s get this over and done with. Lead the way. When we get to Peculator territory, sing out. We’ll fall back and let Cecilia draw those moths in.”
Odette nodded. “It won’t take us long to reach the area that is Ratfink’s stronghold, but, might I suggest, that we keep a low profile until we reach it.”
“Why are you looking at me while you say that?” I asked in feigned outrage, drawing my hood up around my face even more.
Odette led us down the steps and into the Luminous Bazaar.
Damn me, but I had never been in a more spirited, energetic, vibrant, and vital place in all my life. It was like the human spirit—not to mention the spirit of centaurs, dwarves, elves, fairies, gnolls, trolls, and an abundance of other magical beings—had been concentrated down here, so that it was at its rawest and most potent form.
It was life distilled.
The hot wind blew the scent of roasting and grilling meats, herbs and spices uncounted, candied fruits and sugared flowers, dried fish, and pungent Ifrit coffee all around us in intoxicating gusts. The noise, laughter, curses, and confusion pummeled at our ears.
However, as incredible as all these sights, smells, and sounds were, I was intent on keeping my head on a swivel. I didn’t want to be ambushed before we had a chance to spring our own trap, but if there was anyone watching us among this tumult of shopping and bartering, then I couldn’t see them.
We wove through the tightly packed throngs of shoppers. I quickly concluded that you attracted far less trader attention if you simply walked on by, rather than politely declining the myriad offers for a new robe. Apparently, in the Luminous Market, even the word “no” was an invitation to the guy who’d tossed a small rug into your chest to start up a conversation.
I ducked under the arms of a woman who attempted to loop a braid of purple garlic bulbs around my neck, stepped around a group of elderly gentleman who’d sat down for a coffee in the middle of the thoroughfare, and dodged a cart of boxes filled with crystal balls pushed by a burly minotaur.
“Watch where you’re fucking treading, pal,” the Minotaur said as he passed by with his load of goods.
Cecilia patted me on the back and kissed me lightly on the neck. “Don’t take it personally, darling,” she said. “Minotaurs can be awful grouches.”
I let loose a noise that might have been a sigh of wonder or a laugh of disbelief. “I remember when minotaurs were something that you faced in Might and Magic,” I said to myself and followed on behind her and Odette.
It wasn’t long before Odette pulled up in the lee of a stall selling potions and elixirs and motioned for us to draw near.
“Beyond that spice and fruit stall starts the territory that is most usually attributed to Ratfink the Thief,” Odette motioned with a nod.
I ran my eye over the area, but as far as I could see, it looked indistinguishable from any other section of the market that we had passed through.
There was a flash of flame to my right. A merchant wearing robes of dusty red slaved over a grill, flipping skewers with some sort of lizard pronged on the end of them. There was a beautiful magenta and eggplant plumed bird sitting on his shoulder.
“Is that a phoenix?” I asked Odette in a low voice.
“Yes, it is,” she said, “and that man was the very merchant that my sources told me to look out for. He is a spy for Ratfink the Thief. He and his phoenix watch this side of Ratfink’s domain.”
I turned and pulled Cecilia closer to me. “I guess that’s your cue. Time to channel that inner runway model that every girl is said to have inside of them and strut your stuff!”
Cecilia pulled the necklace out of the collar of her shirt and displayed it carefully around her throat. It glinted and glittered across her chest like a money shot from the Silver Surfer.
This Ratfink bastard isn’t going to be able to resist this, I thought. Shit, even I’m half tempted to steal the fucking thing.
“Is there anything specific I should be doing?” Cecilia asked Odette.
“No, it’s imperative that you do not act or look in any way suspicious,” the dragonkin woman said. “Just act naturally. Look around the bazaar. Do not worry about where you’re going or where we are.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Don’t worry about what the hell we‘re up to. We’ll be watching you every step of the way.”
Cecilia nodded, raised her imperious head and stepped out of the stall that we had been hiding in.
“All right,” Odette said, as she watched Cecilia merge into the crowd, “the three of us just need to do as she does. Browse. Look. But always keep her within your sights.” She turned to me. “Mortimer and I know wha
t Ratfink looks like. One of us will warn you when he’s within range.”
I nodded and watched Odette melt seamlessly into the crowd. I chanced a glance over at Mortimer, but the third of the Chaosbane trio had already vanished.
“All right, Justin,” I said to myself. “Don’t fuck this up. It’s not your ass on the line here, so much as Cecilia’s. Everyone loves fishing—the anglers get the sport, the fish get fed—except the bait.”
And so, a slow and patient dance played out in the Luminous Bazaar, with Cecilia Chillgrave at the center of it.
Chapter Thirteen
It felt like Mortimer, Odette, and I were part of those intricate models of the solar system; all the planets fixed on spinning, moving circles of metal and revolving around the sun at different speeds and at different distances. Only, in this model, Cecilia was the sun and, along with the three planets that were me, Odette, and Mortimer, there was a fourth unseen planet: Ratfink the Thief.
In the end though, I didn’t even need the sudden tap on my shoulder and the fresh, minty breath of Mortimer in my ear to know that the leader of the Peculator gang had swum into our ken.
I was watching Cecilia and her surrounds from behind a cart filled with an assortment of little hand-carved wooden pentagrams and other magical symbols, when the crowd around her—which had been fairly consistent in its closeness—began to break up and move away. This was happening toward her rear, the milling crush of patrons moving away like ice pushed aside by an ice-breaker.
From where I was standing, my immediate view was obscured by the cart I was using as cover and also by a large stall advertising whole roasted crocotta—a large canine beast, as far as I could guess by the charred skeletons hanging from the racks.