I remained lost to the glass until an enthusiastic peal of laughter broke toward my right. I forcibly shook myself back into reality and there she was, laughing at me from behind her desk.
The princess and I didn’t say anything while the master skiptrace continued her laughter. She wasn’t a wholly intimidating person, being just a touch taller than either myself or Ariadne. While she wore a well-decorated suit and business-woman-like bun to the seminar, now she sported black leather and her dark-purple-almost-black hair was pulled back in a severe braid. The barest hint of her soldier-and-speared-dragon tattoo could be seen on the left side of her neck.
She sat behind a huge, real-wood desk that seemed to take up much of the room. It, like everything else about Ascalon, was sturdy and powerful. It didn’t quite dwarf the master skiptrace that sat in its seat, but I knew if I sat behind it, I’d look like a toddler.
At the moment, I very much felt like a toddler.
“I’d forgotten how much I’ve missed your sparkling innocence, Marcie,” Silene grinned once she’d finished laughing. My cheeks got hot and probably very red, but I accepted her hug when she walked over to me. “I’m glad you’re here, sprite! What happened to your nose?”
“I ran into somebody’s elbow,” I said, finally matching Silene’s grin. “This is Ariadne King, my pilot.”
“Pleasure, Miss King,” the master skiptrace greeted Ariadne with a handshake. The princess remained quiet. “What brings you this way, dear ladies?”
“I’m actually here to cash this in,” I said, holding up the I.O.U. Silene nodded in understanding and took the card. She rounded to the other side of her table and gestured to two empty chairs for Ariadne and me.
“That’s very quick. I’d only heard about that…” she broke off and glanced from the princess to myself, “…charming fellow’s de-licensing a few weeks ago. I suppose you two need help with your first official case?”
Silene pointed directly to my still-broken nose and Ariadne’s bruised cheek. I pursed my lips in a measure of irritation. Of course, I was dealing with one of the best skiptraces. Silene could connect random pieces of information into a whole far faster than anyone else, correctly guessing where even the most well-hidden and unpredictable criminals might be hiding.
“Yes,” I confessed, still trying to determine just how much of the story I was ready to admit. “We need help tracking down a couple of criminals and dragging them back to Dinium.”
“What kind of help are you looking for?” Silene asked, beginning to take notes.
“Information, mostly,” I said. “The information we got from our lawyer was incomplete, to say the least.”
“We can definitely do that,” Silene scribbled a few notes and then looked both of us over carefully. “Are you sure you want to use the favor card up so soon?”
“We’re kind of out of options,” Ariadne finally piped up. “The job turned out to be a lot bigger than we originally thought and Marcie and I are kind of bumbling idiots when it comes to skiptracing.”
I punched the princess in the arm with a great measure of force.
“Who gave you the assignment?” the master skiptrace asked.
“Aristotle Simon of Aristotle & Sons,” I said. “It wasn’t his fault, he thought he was just sending us after a debtor but—”
“There turned out to be two of them and they’re both major creeps,” the princess cut in, shooting me an I-dare-you-to-hit-me-again glance. Silene just nodded at the information.
“I’ve heard Aristotle’s a fair enough lawyer, for all the contradictions that implies,” the master skiptrace said, rubbing her fingers together in thought. “If that’s what you want to use the card for, I do owe you one for taking that menace off the skiptrace market. Kohinoor!”
The speaking mountain stuck his head inside the door with little hesitation.
“Yes ma’am?” Kohinoor asked.
“Talk to the Librarian, we need information on…” Silene looked toward me.
“Ottoman and Setesh Lee, they’re twins or clones or something,” I said, and the master skiptrace’s eyebrows shot up a little as she wrote down the names.
“Any information on Ottoman and Setesh Lee,” Silene said. The speaking mountain nodded solemnly and ducked back into the hallway.
“Thank you,” I said sincerely, standing up as if to leave.
“What else do you need, Marcie?” the master skiptrace/mind reader asked me pointedly. I swallowed. Watching Setesh almost murder his own twin/clone offhandedly had been giving me the willies ever since. I wasn’t at all convinced that Ariadne and I could capture the Lees by ourselves a second time, let alone capture them now that they had friends.
“Ahh…I might need a few thugs,” I said, tapping my fingers uncertainly on her desk, suddenly feeling like I was on the spot.
Which I was, according to Silene’s face.
“You demand a lot, Marcie,” the master skiptrace said, with a smile covering some expression I couldn’t read, but hoped was amusement.
I didn’t say anything, trying to reinforce my statement through silence and bravery. It didn’t seem to be making a difference, but it was the best option I had - other than running out the door and fleeing Ascalon altogether, I suppose.
“All right, give me until tomorrow. I’ll get you what I can,” she said, handing me one of her business cards. “That’s for your employer. Tell him I can help keep his criminal information pool more complete for a meager fee.”
I thanked the master of Ascalon and started toward the door.
“Marcie,” Silene said in a serious tone once my hand hit the doorknob. “Always let the thugs in the door first. That’s what they signed up for.”
I nodded.
That should be no problem at all.
• • •
The princess and I bid Kohinoor goodbye as we headed back to the Olds V city center. All of our clothing had been on the Lilstar, which was hopefully still at Carlion unless our two captives-turned-captors had decided to keep it. Given the way they had treated Ariadne, I doubted either had the expertise to actually pilot the ship. Besides, Set indicated they’d had a hideout in the Olds. Which Old and what city, I didn’t know. Hopefully Silene’s information would point us in at least a general direction.
I mulled all of these things over as Ariadne and I got a cheap meal of grits and lichen chips. Then we headed to the nearest and cheapest hotel. I had suggested that we go find one of those sleeping pod companies that rent out bed-sized chambers for overnight travelers who didn’t really need an entire room, but Ariadne made a good case for having our own bathroom.
We arrived at Ascalon the next day to an even more sickly Kohinoor and an appreciable pile of information regarding Ottoman and Setesh Lee. While Silene couldn’t help us sift through all of it, she did lend us one of the miniature castle’s many conference rooms to plan our attack and brief our new crew of thugs.
“I’ll have your thugs together in a minute, Marcie,” Kohinoor sniffled as he led Ariadne and me to the conference room.
“Thank you, Kohinoor,” I said, trying to be polite but also anxious to get into the four sizable file folders that sat on the conference room’s huge desk. Ariadne wasted no time cracking open one of the files. Kohinoor was overcome with a sneezing fit and disappeared from the doorway.
I closed the door behind him and turned to Ariadne.
Judging from her face, we were a little more than screwed.
“Ohhh…” she moaned, looking sick as she read one of the files. In fact, I almost reached for a bucket to hand her. “Oh—”
“Yeah, yeah I got it,” I said, picking up what looked like Ottoman’s file. I barely made it through the entire thing without muttering the serious cuss word that was floating around my mind. If this was only Ottoman’s rap sheet, I would have hated to see Set’s. These guys made homicide look like a hobby.
I hoped and prayed Silene let us borrow a lot of thugs.
“Marcie.”
Ariadne emphasized her words with hand gestures. “These guys take psycho to a complete and entire new level. I’m not certain they can be measured in normal psychological, um, measuring things!”
“Breathe,” I told the princess. She complied after a moment. “We will have several professional thugs who will be going through the doors before us. We should be able to handle these sick idiots.”
Ariadne said nothing, but seemed to tap out the phrase “this is a bad idea” on the table with her very judgmental albeit nervous fingers.
“Even if we catch them, why should we work for someone who can’t even get their information straight?” the princess said, looking me in the eye for a direct answer.
“Silene said she’d keep Aristotle’s records up-to-date,” I answered almost too easily, gathering fistfuls of paper as if to show her proof this would work. “She has the good stuff, too. I’ve found a whole list of hotels and motels the Lees have stayed at, including one just before they left for Myrkheim. We can start there.”
“And if the good lawyer doesn’t or can’t take her up on the offer?” Ariadne challenged.
“Then I’ll find a skiptracing job somewhere else. Maybe Silene will hire me,” I sort of muttered the last part, glancing warily at the door. I didn’t want to seem desperate in having a job on top of being desperate for my first real mission as a skiptrace to succeed.
“What if I just hire you for my parcel business? You should be able to pay me off in a couple of years,” the princess said.
“There is no way your parcel business will make enough for me to pay you off before retiring age. If we really want to be debt-free in any sort of reasonable timeframe, we’ll need both the skiptracing and the parcel business,” I said without challenging Ariadne. She chewed her lip thoughtfully.
“Fine,” she finally relented.
I gave the shuffled papers on the solid table a quick scan, hoping I hadn’t missed anything important. If the motel didn’t pan out, the other options included a diner they’d been at recently and a couple of other hotels and apartments of varying degrees of reputability. A few stores and one shady doctor’s office were added to the mix as well. I wrote down the most important addresses and a few more for good measure. It seemed that, when the twins/clones were in town, they hopped from place to place, never settling down. Of course, they spent more of their time off-world. I didn’t want to think about how easily they could be halfway to Proxima by now.
“Where do we go from here?” Ariadne asked, looking over the papers.
“This says the Lees like to hang out at a motel in Olds II, Criley’s Motel and Spa. I think we should start there first,” I said, plucking a sheet of paper out of its pile and waving it in the air.
“I’d rather we head back to Carlion and pick up the Lilstar,” Ariadne said, moving to rest her head in her hands. I couldn’t see her face for all her curls, but I surmised it had shifted from worried to stressed.
I chewed the inside of my lip thoughtfully. At the moment, retaking the Lilstar was less of a priority. I doubted the Lees trashed the ship out of spite. More than likely, they would have fled Carlion with their friends to Olds II where they could better hide from the authorities. The priority was still tracking down the Lees, and I knew Ariadne wouldn’t like that.
“I’m sure she is fine,” I said, trying to be somewhat comforting. “You have contacts at Carlion, yes? Why don’t you give them a call?”
Ariadne looked at me for a long minute before sighing in a resigned manner.
“I suppose that would work,” she agreed. I patted her shoulder.
Just as I was starting to get comfortable into my mind, the door to the conference room burst open and in came five very punctual thugs.
Seventeen
“Hey, younglings, when do we head out?” A stocky, red-headed thug stormed into the conference room and nearly yelled in my face. He stood, arms crossed, in defiance of me.
I slammed my hands into the table as hard as I could before meeting his gaze.
“You will address me as ‘boss’ or ‘Miss Dunn.’ This is my operation,” I growled, not letting go of the big man’s stare. He seemed to want to snarl at me, maybe even take a swing. The rest of the thugs filed in behind him, watching with interest.
The red-head started to open his mouth before he was slapped unceremoniously upside his head. I looked at the slapper in surprise to see it was the ghoul-lady from earlier. She looked at the red-head with what could only be described as contempt.
“Shhh, you ape,” the ghoul-lady said in a hushed tone as the red-head attempted to glare her into submission. Of course it didn’t work. How could one scare a ghost, anyway?
“Need introductions, Marcie?” Kohinoor said, sticking his head into the conference room.
“No, I think we will do just fine,” I said, looking over each of the thugs carefully and pointedly. “Now that you all know my name, how about you give me yours?”
The ghoul-lady actually smirked slightly.
“I am Alyx,” she said, presenting a long, pale, and well-manicured hand. “The flame-haired idiot here is Addie; that is Skirm, Griffin, and Cabochon.”
The ghoul-lady proceeded to point toward a tall, malnourished-looking man with a big hat, a well-dressed man that would have looked better in a board room than as a thug in a skiptrace’s office, and a man with ebony eyes who bore Silene’s dragon-slayer-and-slayed crest on his neck. I gave each of them the slightest nod and gestured for them all to sit down. I continued to stand, however.
“What’s the plan, boss?” the hatted guy called Skirm asked, letting the last word roll easily off his tongue. I gave him a mental nod of gratitude and turned back to the rest of the thugs, trying to look at each of them with what I’d hoped was confidence.
“Here are the targets,” I said, passing around the Lees’ files for the thugs to look at. None of them reacted as strongly as Silene or Fredericks at the Lees’ name, which wasn’t surprising; these were hired thugs, their purpose was to not be surprised by the bad guys.
“The plan is to travel directly to Olds II by train where we will investigate a number of locations that the Lees have been known to frequent over the past two or three years. Here are the list of addresses we will be investigating, in order of frequency that the Lees visited, and the route we will take once we enter Olds II,” I said, passing around papers with the information on it. All of the thugs looked over the papers carefully except Addie, who was seated far away from Alyx.
“Question,” Skirm said once the paper with the addresses reached him, “are we going to split up into teams to save time searching the addresses?”
“No,” I said, “These guys are way too dangerous for that. I need everybody together to take them down.”
The ebony-eyed guy called Cabochon jumped in.
“We are trained to take down the toughest quarries. We can handle these guys,” he said, getting a nod from Addie. The red-head hadn’t been looking at me the entire meeting.
“The files on Ottoman and Set leave out three important things Miss King and I learned while tracking them down,” I said. “Firstly, Ottoman has venom sacs implanted in his mouth that can eat through organic structures and, in high enough doses, can probably eat through human skin. Second, they have an unknown number of friends. And third, they’re both complete psychopaths and druggies. All of this means I’m not going to split up the group into teams until I absolutely have to. Any more questions?”
There was a great deal of silence in the room, which I preferred over protests or taunts.
“Alright, I’ll ask one: what resources does anyone have for transportation?” I asked.
“I get discounts at the Nor’easter Country Train Station,” Griffin offered after an uncertain silence.
“Okay, you get the tickets, we’ll refund you. Is everything clear? Good, we will meet at the Nor’easter Country Train Station tomorrow morning at 0800 sharp. Dismissed.” I said finally.
With littl
e hesitation, all of the thugs got up and meandered out the door.
“Ow…” I moaned, holding my palms that were still stinging from my display of power. I could even see a few minute bruises starting to form from the table’s rough surface.
“Well, I’m impressed,” Ariadne said, leaning on the table to face me. I glanced at her to see if that was a sarcastic remark or an honest one. I decided both was an acceptable answer.
Ariadne and I snaked our way outside Ascalon to head back to the hotel a few hours later. I, of course, couldn’t take Silene’s information out of the building, but I made copies of all the relevant data. Actually, I even made copies of my copies, as if to overcompensate for my lack of real skiptracing experience by organizing. It was an okay strategy, but it didn’t actually make me more qualified.
At least the meeting seemed to go okay.
“Eh, not bad,” a thin voice startled me as I reached the end of the main hall. Skirm suddenly materialized in front of me, opening the door and, with a flourish, gestured Ariadne and me out into the afternoon light.
“What wasn’t bad?” I demanded as the thug caught up.
“You and your backbone,” Skirm said, looking toward the mostly empty road. “I don’t think I’ll have any trouble following your lead.”
“I didn’t say anything especially leadership-like,” I challenged.
“You could have been as silent as the grave, Miss Dunn, and that’s all I would have needed.” Skirm waved down a cab before winking at me. “Taking Addie head-on. Plus the great skiptrace Silene of Ascalon likes you.”
“You’re easily impressed,” I commented, noting that Ariadne was staying very far out of the conversation.
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