Chaos Trims My Beard: A Fantasy Noir, page 5
I nodded, smiled, and waved back. Crum'Reck and Crum'Sel made good food even with spoiled fish. Stopping by for some on my way back sounded appetizing if I wasn't fired or incarcerated.
A group of dwarves in robes and armor, glittering and covered in jewels, walked towards me on the opposite side of the bridge. No one else wore armor. Ever. A lot of metal, even magically hammered metal, didn't stop the other guy from throwing lightning. But if there are two intangible things you can't take from a true dwarf, they're opulence and tradition. One of the gaudily dressed dwarves noticed me and we locked eyes. His face brightened and he smiled but then something about me must of looked off because he turned towards his companions and started muttering while shaking his hand in my direction.
Dwarves were a rare sight in cities, especially ones where the type of riches my mother's people liked to wallow in congregated so far above the actual ground. I'd seen two dwarves, seemingly perfect strangers until that moment, pass each other on a bridge and strike up a conversation like they were drinking buddies. The one time I had cared to watch the meeting play out long enough, they'd taken turns feeling each other's beards and then wandered towards the nearest pub to become actual drinking buddies. This dwarf had seen the human in me even from forty yards away and reacted as such. That pissed me off and I kept walking.
As the bridges passed under my feet, my eyes kept landing on ratmen. The little creatures roamed in force, and I kept spotting them on the edges of my vision. They were small like the Unabashed and gun-toting detective I’d met earlier and these ratmen always huddled in groups of three or four, slinking out from behind benches and planters to pick up trash or a dropped coin. Few of the other pedestrians paid attention to them, and the ratmen never made moves to interact with anyone. They weren't overrunning the place—humans and elves still dominated the bridge-going demographic—but if I looked hard enough I was willing to bet that I could have laid eyes on one at any point on my walk.
Maybe they were like hats in that you don't really notice how many people wear hats until one throws open your door and points a gun at your face. Looking for something to notice other than ratmen, I saw a group of ogres and orcs working on a damaged part of a bridge, sweating under New Sketlin's glare. The metal and stone of their work area sat blackened and twisted, and the crew grunted and cursed as they tried to wrench the spellsteel back into shape. Four officers in the sharp blue and white linens of the New Sketlin Police Bureau stood in a fan around the jobsite. I toyed with the idea of asking one of them if they knew Venrick the Unabashed, Internal Affairs detective and door busting enthusiast. Blue sparks trailed from a few of the officer's knuckles, and their faces, exclusively human and elf, were a collection of grim lines. Their moods were somewhere between aggressive and arresting and I decided against opening my mouth. The damaged area they were guarding looked to be the victim of an explosion or a large and enthusiastically applied fireball. I thought of the guy I might have killed and remembered his fiery silhouette framed against the nighttime brightness of New Sketlin through an open door. My neck muscles twitched and my left side hurt. I rubbed at the injured spot and muttered, "You're welcome," to no one in particular.
As I passed the work crew and their guard I let my mind turn to playing with what I knew about magerock and spellsteel. It was more willful self-distraction on my part. Both materials advertised resilience to the point of invulnerability, and at least one was supposed to stop magic dead in its tracks. The bridge damage made no sense short of a flock of hopters crashing into the same spot repeatedly. I gave in further to a bit of dwarven absentmindedness and wondered about potential alloys of spellsteel; maybe the city was saving money on the real stuff by mixing it with cheap iron and passing it off.
A meaty hand slapped me on the injured shoulder and my mind jolted away from hypothetical metallurgy. My wound bloomed with pain all over again and I felt the dull throb of my heartbeat. I turned on the hand's owner, angry protests and grunts of pain both fighting to get though my mouth first. My response ended up somewhere between a growl and a curse. I faced my assailant, eye to flabby torso. Jaery's voice boomed down to me. "You look hurt."
I nodded and rubbed my shoulder while stepping back to give myself a more tenable position from which to talk to the big guy. Red and yellow blisters dotted Jaery's face and arms. The weeping, swelling burns got larger and more pervasive towards the center of his body. He wore a very loose, thin tunic and I could see the outlines of a dozen different bandages against his skin. His pants, the same shapeless and colorless fabric as his shirt, probably hid more wounds and dressings. I looked at him closer while trying not to stare. Blue sparks dribbled out from a few of the undressed burns on his face and arms. Something twitched inside of me. Leaking dust meant heavy damage. "You look worse," I said.
He nodded. "Been in yet?" he said, flicking his hand towards the catering company's office a few dozen yards down the bridge.
I shook my head. "You?"
"No. Figured I might be done there."
Behind him stood a trio of equally imposing hybrids, Jaery's family. The oldest one was clearly female, but that's where the certainty stopped. Her face and body took from ogres and orcs and something with tusks and fur I couldn't even guess at. The kids were even more of a blend. I'd had dinner and drinks at their place a few times. "Bring 'em down for support?" I asked Jaery, bobbing my head in their direction.
"Yeah, something like it. Caryl saw the burns and said she didn't trust me to walk alone." He laughed and there wasn't any humor behind it. I felt for the guy but I didn't say anything. Our biggest bouncer writhing and screaming on the ground probably hadn't done much for the company's image, and the sight of his injuries wouldn't sit beneficially in the memories of his kids. Still, I wouldn't bring it up; we didn't talk about stuff like that.
Jaery rubbed the back of his head with his less-burned hand. "So, uh, people said you got him."
"Yeah. Kind of." I tugged on my beard.
He nodded and winced when a patch of burn on his neck frayed open. Puss tinged with blue sparks dribbled from the wound. "Bag of tricks?"
"Coin to the back. Poof, ash." I made a little raining motion with my fingers.
"Brutal way to go," he said scratching his neck. "Know what work you're going for next?"
I shook my head. "I'm thinking happy thoughts." Nothing of the sort was transpiring in my head, but I didn't want to get into how much unemployment would suck.
"Yeah, man. Got the kids back there, you know. Need to do something or the mate will kill me." Jaery looked past me and his eyes glazed over, but he didn't turn his head towards his family.
After a few seconds of letting the guy stare I cleared my throat. "Wanna get this done?" I asked.
"Yeah."
We walked towards the office and Jaery reached out to touch his kids on the shoulders as we moved by. I nodded at his mate. She didn't look happy in general, and less so to see me. She was mad at what had happened to Jaery and very likely stressed out about her family’s long-term financial plan, and I didn’t begrudge her the curtness. I let my mind turn towards my own future, specifically that of the next few minutes. When we got inside, the catering managers would probably split us up straight away and make one of us wait in the front room while the other one got taken in the back and dressed down for a bit. Then they'd hand over a final paycheck and it would be a decent number of hours short. That first guy to get fired would shuffle out with mumbled profanity on his breath and then it would be the other guy's turn.
The room we would get fired in would be too small for Jaery to feel like anyone was taking him seriously, but when I went in the desk would be too tall and the chairs too short for me to look like anything other than a talking head. The mid-level manager would nod and mumble and apologize and there'd be a few projected pictures of his family or pets or whatever hanging around, and maybe some dumb table top fountain or potted bamboo shoot that represented peace and tranquility along with some other office crap.
I'd been fired more than a couple times. It usually played out that way.
5
We walked the curve of the bridge together in silence until it met the tower that housed our office and ran flush against it for most of the building's length. Jaery's family had taken a seat at a spellsteel table that looked like it had grown straight out of the surface of the walkway, and Caryl was busy keeping the kids from running around and frightening the non-hybrids. The catering office entrance was a small iron door with the name "Banquets and Such" engraved on its face, and was framed by two open windows. Other similar doors ran down the length of the tower leading to businesses or studios that I'd never taken the time to look at. Jaery opened the door and my fingers brushed against my pouch before we walked in.
The main room of the catering company's office held some desks and a few chairs against the wall closest to the door we come through. A couple of employees that I recognized stood in line at the payroll desk and a few more sat around chatting. There'd been the low murmur of office talk when we'd walked in but as people recognized us, it died. The payroll girl's hand hung steady in mid air, a pay stub dangling from her fingers. The ogre reaching for it had paused too, one of his heads staring directly at his envelope and the other locked straight at me. No one moved or spoke as Jaery shuffled in behind me and closed the door with a clang. After a few stretched out seconds, the ogre head turned back and he took his check. The rest of the people that I'd known and worked with for years started shuffling their feet or messing around with stuff in their pockets. The girl at the payroll desk had a little dust crystal device—a few smoky blue rocks bound together by some magic or magnetism in a form that looked somewhat shaped to the curve of her face—hovering against her cheek. She thumbed it and mumbled something into the crystal nearest her mouth and the whole thing got a little brighter. Her ear crystal lit up and pulsed briefly with a response. A transceiver, and a fancy one at that. Not something that Banquets and Such was in the habit of providing for its mid-level works.
"You gonna sit?" I asked Jaery while staring at our coworkers.
"I'll stand."
I found a chair near one of the windows and took a seat. People who worked this job usually treated it as just that; a job, a way to make some coin. The rare enthusiastic employee—sometimes an elf or a human or an overly sociable dwarf—saw it as an opportunity to rub elbows with the city's most influential and went about their work with infectious glee. None of that verve was currently on display. It wasn't worth getting mad at our coworkers for ignoring us. If I had to guess, there had been rumors, angry bosses, and tense calls swirling about the office all morning. Still, I'd gotten well and truly drunk with some of these people, and we'd suffered in the completion of some terrible and mundane tasks side by side.
Any guy who mucks out the latrine pit after an ogre mound rally with you at least is obliged to give up a nod of solidarity.
"Some party last night, huh?" I asked the room, forcing my voice up to guaranteed audible levels. The few people still looking at me stared at their feet and the girl at the payroll desk turned her nose up with her fingers back on the transceiver. After another minute of us getting ignored, the door to the back office opened in a not-gentle fashion.
Urg'Thwack-Thunk the bartender and personnel manager stood just inside the small room. He pointed at Jaery and both heads said "You."
I didn't offer any words of support to Jaery, not in front of everyone. Guys who bounced the rich and famous out of parties didn't need their buddies calling out well wishes. For his part, Jaery didn't make any effort to control his steps and all several hundred pounds of him rattled desks and nerves as he clomped across the room.
I sat with my arms crossed as my friend stepped beyond Urg and into the office. As Urg turned to close the door, I saw a glow of golden light, not as radiant as it had been on the dance floor but still unmistakable. The viscount was here, and beyond him I caught a glimpse of another figure, gray and unidentifiable.
The anticipation of getting fired by the ogre that routinely stole money from me sparked a slow angry burn in my head, but it was something I could deal with and overall wasn't entirely unexpected. Aglowe being there changed things and I didn't envy Jaery going in blind like he did. As I tried to think out Aglowe's presence and why he'd be here for a routine firing, I felt something like hands close around my wrists. A hint of panic ran through my chest and head.
The invisible fingers gripped me hard and my skin ached as it pressed downward onto the arms of my chair. With Jaery gone, I was the only one sitting in the chairs on this side of the door, and no one stood around me. Some bastard had magic on me and I couldn't move.
Showing up might have earned me the privilege of not getting to leave.
My eyes flitted from person to person in the room. Between the girl at the payroll desk and the people waiting to get paid, there were seven humans and elves present. Nobody's fingers glowed blue as far as I could see, but a frustrating number of them had their hands in their pockets. Panic tried to stake out a more permanent spot in my mind but I forced it out. The invisible fingers wrapped around my arms. The chair I was bound to felt strong and unyielding, and that was notable for a cheap piece of office furniture, but it didn't creak or bend as I pressed against it. After a few seconds, I decided that wiggling and grunting in the corner wasn't going to get me anything but stared at. I kept my face blank and looked around again.
The sounds from the manager's office made for a nice backdrop to my imprisonment. Urg and Jaery both had the kind of voices where they'd be whispering and you could still make out the words two walls over, and they weren't whispering. After a few deep rapid exchanges, a high singing tone cut off the bouncer and bartender. Aglowe's ringing pitch didn't carry specifics nearly as well, but he sounded upset. I did not look forward to my turn in front of him, especially given that he'd seemingly gone to the expense of bringing someone along to keep me under containment. There really wasn't any other explanation I could scrounge up.
Aglowe stopped his rant as quickly as he'd started it and the office fell silent. A few of the people who'd been in to get their pay shot me dirty looks as they made for the door. I started to wish I'd called some people and gotten a handle on the situation I was walking into, and maybe I would have had a better idea of what all the negativity was about. Or it could have just been because I killed a guy while on the clock.
It took a while—too long—for it to occur to me that everyone in the room could have been in on this low-key ambush that we'd walked into.
A guy with check in hand passed me on his way to the door. "Hey, you wanna help me out here?" I asked.
He acted like he didn't hear me and opened the door just a gust of wind blew into the office. The force of the blast swung the iron door all the way back on its hinges and it crashed into the wall. The guy's paycheck flew out of his hands and fluttered outside and he ran after it. Another blast of wind came through and, based off of the colorful and vivid language that blossomed outside, the guy's check was gone. Maybe he deserved, it, maybe he didn't. With him departed, there were still six people with the inherent magical ability and requisite line of sight on me to keep me restrained.
The door still swung on its hinges and nobody did the courtesy of shutting it. The girl at the payroll desk sighed at me as though not closing the door myself was the final bullet point she needed to consider me a total waste of life. I shrugged at her. "I’m a bit tied up," I said. She didn't think it was funny.
With a flick of her hand, one that flashed blue with the expenditure of dust, the girl shut the door and I marked her off of my list of potential captors. Angry tones started up again in the office and I went back to figuring out how I could get out of here. I mean, I'd walked in here willingly but now that there was someone who considered me worth restraining, I very much wanted to leave. Panic made a third shot at taking up residency in my thoughts and I willed it to go sit in a corner. Looking around, I tried to—finally—take full stock of my situation.
There was a desk near me currently unmanned but covered with a spread of unbound invoices, scheduling paperwork, and a few folders. The mess didn't strike me as odd, but I'd just seen a heavy iron door get blown in and five feet away a mishmash of scatterable documentation didn't seem to have suffered as much as a rustle. It was curious, but I didn't know enough about what mages could actually do with wind, or maybe the local breezes were being very selective today. The rest of the office looked like I'd expect, mostly empty desks and some filing cabinets spread around. The desks themselves were cheap and unremarkable, just square rectangles of wood that ran all the way to the floor. I guessed that someone could be hiding under one, peaking out and putting magic on me, but there were a good dozen desks in the room, and I didn't have an angle on the underside of any of them.
Jaery's meeting continued. After a few more minutes, the rest of the people who'd shown up for their checks had gotten them and left. The binds on my arms did not release and I finally allowed myself to get a bit nervous. The girl at the payroll desk leafed through some papers, both of her hands visible and not glowing. Aglowe still stood behind a closed door yelling at my friend.
A breeze brushed against the side of my neck and I immediately wanted to scratch at the exposed skin. At least my itch distracted me for a moment from what might be very real peril. My arms stayed locked to my chair and the annoying sensation in my neck grew. I rubbed my cheek on my shoulder. It didn't really work and when I looked up the payroll girl rolled her eyes at me. "Why are you doing this?" I asked her.
She held her finger up to her lips and very subtly pointed towards the back of the main office. There wasn't malice in her eyes, and I only got more confused.
