by Hugo Huesca
“This is our destination,” Katalyn told the others. “I’d like to promise you there is no danger here, but it’d be a lie.” She made sure all her knives slid easily in and out of their scabbards. “If you go inside, have it be of your own volition.”
Alder gulped loudly. “Can we stay outside?”
“Sure,” Katalyn said. “Someone has to stand guard over the merchandise. Has to be someone strong, and intimidating, or the good folk may decide to slit your throat and steal the cart.” She made for the fence and opened it while gesturing at the entrance. “What do you think, Alder, are you up to stand watch?”
Alder gulped again, looked around, and turned to Kes with a nervous smile.
The mercenary sighed, checked her sword like Katalyn had, and rested her back against the cart. “Try not to get killed without me,” she said.
Ed, Alder, and Kat headed inside.
17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE SMUGGLERS
That reinforced door was the most solid part of the house. As Ed got closer, he saw a small slit open and close in the middle of it. Katalyn reached the door first and knocked three times.
“Oscor!” she called. “It’s Katalyn. Open up!” She knocked another two times. “I brought you some business.”
She stepped away. Nothing happened for a bit, but she seemed not to care, and even flashed Ed a reassuring smile. But she couldn’t hide the slight tremor in her hands.
“Whoever is inside,” Ed asked her in a whisper. “Do you think we can take them?”
“Men with eight hundred experience points can get killed by people with a quarter of that,” Katalyn told him. “An inch of steel through the heart cares very little for your talent choice… in most cases.” She raised her fist toward the door, clearly unsure if she should knock again. “Oscor and his ilk may not have much in the way of experience points, but they make up for it with sheer meanness.”
Ed scowled and steeled himself. He couldn’t avoid being unnerved by the hostile, unfamiliar slums. So he used the adrenaline to his benefit: to sharpen his senses, to make his body be ready for a fight at a moment’s notice. To expect anything.
He opened his mouth to say something reassuring to Katalyn, but the Thief flashed him another smile. She had a strange glint in her eye. “Isn’t it exciting? This is why I love this damn city. Never gets boring!”
Ed closed his mouth. There was a grinding of iron and the door opened.
There was a crossbow aimed straight at them. Ed almost activated his reflexes out of instinct, but caught himself in time, because Katalyn’s body language hadn’t changed.
“Hey, Oscor,” she said, raising her arms up and showing her empty palms. “Long time no see. Have you lost weight?”
“Hey, Katalyn,” the owner of the crossbow said. “I thought I told you I didn’t want to see you around here again.”
Oscor was a dwarf, almost as wide as he was tall, with powerful arms that looked capable of wrestling a bull. He was dressed in battered rags and mismatching pieces of armor: iron, leather, and chain-mail. His long black beard was unkempt and badly covered an array of burn scars around half his face. His right eye was milky gray and had a long scar crossing it. He reeked of sweat and moldy cheese.
His crossbow was aimed at Katalyn, but he didn’t seem worried about Ed and Alder’s presence. Ed realized why very quickly: the crossbow carried a sort of mechanized loader at the end of it, made of pulleys and small springs.
He can probably put a bolt through each of us in a second or two, should he want to, Ed decided. At this distance, he’d barely have time to use his reflexes, and he definitely couldn’t save Katalyn if Oscor shot her first.
“Surely you can’t still be angry about losing that card game,” Katalyn said, exuding smiles and harmlessness in a way that would’ve made a Bard proud. “It was all a big misunderstanding, anyway. Right?”
The dwarf’s grim complexion darkened as his face squinted in fury. “A misunderstanding, you say?” His crossbow swiveled left and right. Next to Ed, Alder followed the movement like he was hypnotized by it. “You and that bitch Pris cheated on Deckers—you didn’t even give us our money back!” The crossbow stopped right in front of Ed, which he considered a very unwelcome development. “And now you bring strange mercenaries to my home! You should be ashamed of yourself, Katalyn! There’s too much of your father left in you, I’d say. Perhaps I should get it out with a bolt to your guts!”
Katalyn’s harmless smile was replaced by a dark, dangerous scowl, which made Ed sure a fight was inevitable. You could’ve started it when the crossbow wasn’t aimed at my chest. He tensed his legs, ready to dodge out of the line of fire.
But the scowl passed. Katalyn shrugged and shook her head. “Look, I’m sorry you think I cheated at cards. Truth be told, I’m a Thief, so really, what did you expect?” Oscor grunted something nasty, but she went on. “Trust me, I wouldn’t be back if I didn’t have a good reason. These strange men? They’re entrepreneurs, Oscor.” Her hands made a flourish like “entrepreneurs” was a sort of magic word. Judging from Oscor’s pensive expression, maybe it was. “They’re here in Undercity with a very lucrative business opportunity. The kind of opportunity where you don’t have to pay taxes, isn’t that right?” She glanced at Alder, who had the highest Charisma.
For a second, Alder just stood there, scared and very out of place. Ed repressed a grimace and tried to behave as if he had utter confidence in the Bard’s skills.
Alder straightened his shoulders and transformed, in front of Ed’s very eyes, almost as if by the effects of an illusion spell. His trembling lips became a disdainful scowl, a raised eyebrow gave him a confident, arrogant air, and he threw the dwarf a glance-over so nasty that any high school drama queen would’ve turned green with envy. “Lucrative is the right word, Miss Locksmith. But I must admit, this man does not seem capable enough to handle an operation of the scale we have in mind.” He turned to Katalyn as if the crossbow wasn’t even there, then made a disdainful gesture at the house and the dwarf’s clothes. “He looks more fit for the loony bin than for distributing our product.”
Oscor grunted, his face darkening again. But Katalyn smiled apologetically at Alder as if she wanted to reassure him. “Oscor is famous in the right circles for knowing all the right people. He’s the right man for the job—” her eyes darted to the dwarf “—if he wants to take it.”
“Hm.” The crossbow faltered at a middle point between Alder and Katalyn, as if Oscor couldn’t decide who to shoot first. In the end, he settled for no one. He lowered the crossbow and stepped to the side. “Come in. Let’s talk.”
Katalyn nodded, like she had expected this result from the very beginning, and went inside without waiting for Alder or Ed. The two of them exchanged a worried glance. It’s too late to change our minds, Ed thought. He stepped into the darkness.
ED HAD NEVER BEEN inside a drug den before, but there’s a first time for everything. He followed Oscor and Katalyn through a carpeted corridor where furniture lay trashed and forgotten. The few remaining curtains that still covered the walls were marred by burns and slashes, and were half-eaten by moths.
They passed through several door-less rooms, and Ed caught glimpses of the house’s inhabitants. Gnomes in tattered robes slept in straw bunks with bone syringes and other paraphernalia strewn next to them. Dwarves with vacant stares watched Ed pass. The rooms were put together without rhyme or reason, and they had been added at different points in time, Ed suspected, by either Oscor or one of his friends. One small chamber had its roof caved in, and no one had bothered to fix it, so the debris just lay there, with the black sky above pouring through the opening like a flood.
“What is this place?” whispered Alder. Ed remembered that the Bard had grown up in Elaitra—as close to an idyllic place as there was in Ivalis. A pair of rats hurried next to them without fear and headed for distant stairs.
“Don’t be quick to judge, master merchant,” said
Oscor without turning to look at them. “This is a refuge. The only place most of my good friends can call home.” He headed for the warm light of a fireplace and brought them to a circular chamber with a sturdy table at the middle.
Straw sofas and other mismatched furniture—Ed realized they had to have been stolen from different places—lay at random spots. Dwarves with beards as unkempt as Oscor’s watched him arrive. Unlike the junkies near the house’s entrance, their eyes were keen, and their arms as muscled and strong as Oscor’s. Everyone was armed, either with knives, or short swords, or axes. All in all, there were six dwarves and three gnomes, lightly armored. The gnomes were smaller than the dwarves, slender, with inquisitive faces and eyes that protruded a tad too far over their long noses.
“At ease, everyone,” called Oscor. Hands that had been reaching for the handle of their weapons now discreetly relaxed, but not entirely. “Very well, Katalyn, master merchants,” he said as he pulled out a small wooden chair from under the table and plopped down. He let a sigh as he did so, like the effort of walking had exhausted him. “Convince us.”
Katalyn whispered a greeting to a few of the people there. To Ed’s surprise, some returned the greeting and seemed genuinely pleased to see her, but no one dared speak aloud with Oscor’s smoldering glare on them.
The Thief sat on a sturdy chair made to fit dwarven buttocks, did her best to get comfortable, and started talking. She told Oscor about the four barrels, and about how Ed and “his company” could make many more if these sold. She handed him her flask so he could taste the product, which he did with a neutral expression.
As she talked, Ed took measure of the situation. It looked like their lives were in Oscor’s hands, because they were severely outnumbered. It didn’t please him one bit, feeling so vulnerable. His mind tried to come up with an escape plan, in case everything went to shit. One that hopefully didn’t involve using his Evil Eye or Dark magic.
No way we can take them all, not even with Kes here, he thought, while Katalyn proposed distribution routes and suggested the amount they’d have to spend in bribes. The space is too confined, and we don’t know the house’s layout. Our best bet is to have Alder use his bardic utterance to run away as fast as we can and maybe set something on fire on our way out. He glanced at the fireplace, which was too far away to be of any use. His smoke bomb would have to do, instead, as a distraction.
“See? My friends here can compete with the Brewers,” Katalyn was saying.
“I’m not so sure. Their booze can’t be cheaper than the Brewers Guild’s,” said Oscor, scratching a chin invisible under thick strands of beard. “Because they buy the wheat from the Treasury at a discount, and the Treasury gets it for free from the villagers, as a tax for use of the land.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Katalyn said. “We still beat them on price, because we don’t have to pay one coin to the Treasury for every two we make.”
Oscor grumbled to himself. He stared at Katalyn’s flask, then took another sip. “It’s decent. Good, even. A bit too tame for my taste, but then again, everything tastes tame in this forsaken human country.” He put the flask down. “This whole deal itches me the wrong way, though. You feel me, Katalyn? If it’s true your friends here can bypass the walls, that’s good. But hiding the barrels, once the Treasury sniffs something is afoul, is going to be expensive. We’d have to move a massive amount of booze into the city to make up for it.”
Alder intervened, still wearing his arrogant mask. “I assure you, we can do massive.”
Oscor’s lip twitched, and a nervous whispering extended through the chamber. “That worries me, too. A mysterious Heiligian Bard and an adventurer from gods-know-where.” He pointed at Ed. “Claiming you can magically do what smugglers all over Starevos and Lotia haven’t been able to. That’s suspicious, I’d say. Very suspicious.”
Those hands are inching back toward their weapons again, Ed noticed. Oscor caught him staring, because the dwarf pounded the table, hard, to get everyone’s attention.
“The way I see it, you’re either fools, or something far nastier than the kind of people me and my friends are used to dealing with,” Oscor said. He made no move for the crossbow, but it was close at hand on the table, still loaded and ready to fire. It worked better, as a statement, than any word could have. “If you’re fools, it’d be idiotic to follow you once the Brewers Guild is annoyed enough to drive you out of business—you’d break, and bring us down with you. And—” Oscor leaned over the table low enough that his beard smoldered under the heat of a nearby candle “—if you’re the nastier sort of folk… well… it may be better to deal with you now and save ourselves the trouble.”
One of the gnomes already had her weapon drawn. It was a rapier, excellent for disemboweling taller enemies.
“Oscor—” Katalyn started, but, to Ed, it was clear that the dwarf had reached a decision.
Next to Ed, Alder was sweating. His confidence seemed to melt out of him. “Now, now,” he said. “Let’s not do something hasty.”
Ed’s heart was beating so fast he could barely hear his friend’s voice. He knew he had to do something.
But what? All his talents were for ending a fight, not preventing it. He couldn’t use minor order to make Oscor trust them—it went so far beyond the spell’s ruling that he held little doubt about what the result would be. A mouth opening up in the sky, and suddenly Lavy, Klek, and all the others back in the Haunt won’t be able to remember me…
The worst part, the part that was driving him insane, was that he had no idea what the stats of Oscor’s friends were. He had spent all his life on Earth without relying on character sheets, but a month and a half in Ivalis, and now he couldn’t live without his Evil Eye.
An inch of steel through the heart kills almost anyone, no matter how much experience they have. Katalyn’s words resonated inside his head, but it was Nicolai he saw, standing over Lyndis’ body.
“Twenty,” Ed stated, staring at the gnome with the rapier.
Oscor’s hand was open over his crossbow, ready to snatch it up at a moment’s notice. “What did you say?” he asked Ed.
Ed ignored him and examined a dwarf close to the gnome. He focused on a spot just above his forehead, like he had seen most Ivalians do. “Fifteen, at most.” He nodded to himself. “That’s thirty-five so far. Not bad. Not bad at all…” He turned to the next dwarf.
“Oy!” Oscor faced Alder, who was staring at Ed with the same confused expression as everyone else there. “What’s your friend doing?”
“Trust me,” Alder said, “I’ve asked myself that far too many times lately…”
“Too scrawny,” Ed said, examining a second gnome, who blinked and caressed his knife, unsure of what do make of Ed’s words. “Ten. Forty-five total… that’s a new talent, right there.” Ed licked his lips with satisfaction. “My build could use something to augment Agility, to combo with my improved reflexes… I’ll have to talk with Kes about adding it to training—”
“Are you…” Oscor’s gray eye was trembling madly in his eye socket, and his nose flared like that of an angry bull. “Are you counting how many experience points we’re worth?”
Ed dismissed the idea with a gesture of his hand. “Actually, I’m counting how many points you’re going to give me.” He added five points for the smallest gnome in the group. “If my Bard and Katalyn survive, I’ll probably earn less, because they’ll take their share of points, but it’s still going to send me well over the four hundreds. Not bad for a day’s work, I think.” He stared at Oscor in the eye, using all his willpower to keep a straight, uninterested face. It was like being back in the Haunt’s meeting chamber, facing the villagers, trying to convince them that it was in their best self-interest to leave. Except this time, he had to do it without his Evil Eye, just by his words alone. “Twenty-five, I’d say—if I start with you. Otherwise… twenty?”
“I’m worth at least forty!” Oscor’s fist hit the table with enough force to spill Kataly
n’s flask. His companions jumped at the noise, and one of them almost stabbed himself with his own ax.
“Not to me,” said Ed. “I keep killing assholes worth a bunch of points and Objectivity keeps granting me tiny fractions of their total. Seems like I’m not taking enough risks.” He scratched his chin, and then very slowly put his left hand behind his back. “Maybe if I take you on one-armed that’ll give me more?”
The nervous whispering in the room became excited, like the buzz of a bee hive. Fear and anger were impossible to distinguish, so Ed had to hope he was reading the room correctly.
He and Oscor just stared at each other. Ed didn’t dare look at anyone else, for fear of breaking the effect he had created. The temptation to glance at Alder or Katalyn was almost irresistible…
“You’re fucking bluffing,” Oscor told him.
“My build is very point intensive,” Ed said. “Talents for fighting, talents for magic, talents for buffing my allies. Sometimes I feel like I’m all over the place, but somehow it keeps working, because I keep winning.”
“Oscor…” one of the other dwarves muttered. Oscor shushed him. A bead of sweat came down next to his blind eye.
Ed could almost read his thoughts. The dwarf’s eyes were focused at a spot right above Ed’s forehead. The Dungeon Lord knew the only combat talent the dwarf could see was improved reflexes.
The question you’re wondering is, Ed thought, what else do I have in my character sheet? And are you willing to risk not knowing?
Oscor’s other fist smashed the table, which made Alder, and a few others, shriek in surprise. Then the dwarf guffawed, cleaned his nose with his finger, and smirked at Ed. “Fucking adventurers. I swear to my ancestors, you’re all sick in the head.” He turned to face the gnome with the rapier. “Can you believe this guy, Mathis? Coming to our house like it’s a dungeon, and he’s about to clear it!” The gnome didn’t find it funny at all. He stared at Ed with a mixture of fear and anger. Oscor laughed again. “You’d only find shitty loot if you managed to put your sword where your mouth is, adventurer. Hah!”