Dinadan Noir VII: Goofballs

We were halfway through the bottle of scotch before I got around to asking her name.

“Damini. Just Damini. An’ who’re you, mister bravo?”

“Dinadan Whistler.”

“The Dinadan Whistler?”

“You’ve heard of me, then?”

Her wicked grin was enough to inspire some thoroughly wicked thoughts. “An’ if I say no, what then?”

“Well, then, I’ll have to make sure you know exactly who I am.” Did I mention we’d been drinking for a while?

Damini threw her head back and laughed. Her hair shone and her chest quivered and I didn’t really care if she thought I was funny, as long as she kept laughing and grinning. We were in one of the little booths at the back of a run-down tavern in Nineveh. As much as the city was a haven for entertainment of every sort (including the kind that kept a few discreet local biomancers very busy), most folks ended up at the Wench or the Comedy Club. This place was frequented by the down and out, the people who wanted a steady flow of cheap booze more than scintillating surroundings. I knew Luc, though, and he usually kept a few bottles of good stuff around for when I stopped by. I took a professional interest in Nineveh’s pub life, and I’d loaned Luc money a couple of times when things got tight. Worked out well for both of us—I got a quiet place to go when I wanted to do serious drinking, and he got (besides the money) the vague air of respectability that went with having a celebrity as a regular.

Somewhere along the way, we’d given up on glasses and started passing the bottle back and forth. I took a swig and asked, “How’d you end up a cobbler on Crypt, anyway?”

“Family business, really. And family-family, not Family. Not at first. Granddad pissed off some magistrate in Keystone and got himself exiled. I guess proper-wise, he was s’posed t’end up on Perdow, but he weren’t fond of that empty sky. ‘No,’ he used to say, ‘If I got to be in the dark all the time, might as well see somethin’ other than nothin’ up overhead.’ There aren’t many of us living folk on Crypt, mind you, but there are some. Those idiots in Utopia, they need shoes. Mama was a Utopian, but she hadn’t patience enough for trying to coax stones into growing. So she ran off to the city an’ married Papa, an’ then they had me. No sons, so Papa taught me the trade. An’ he were the one that got us our connections. Not much work on our end—just keep the shop running and don’t pay attention to what went down in back. Meant we never had to worry about bad spells in business.” She took a long pull at the bottle. “This is good stuff.”

“Yeah, yeah. Luc saves it for me.” I didn’t bother asking how she’d come to be running the shop.

“I’ve got some older bottles back at my tower, though. And some Soselian firewine. People try and pay me in booze all the time.”

“An’ you let them?” She passed the bottle back.

“Aye! Why not? The adventuring life keeps my coffers full. The occasional gig keeps my liquor cabinet full.”

“An’ your bed, what keeps that full?” She leaned toward me and lowered her voice. Her curves were subtle, but the bad lighting did sorcery on her already magical face.

I took a swim in her eyes for a while. “Wit, charm, and high standards.”

“High standards?”

I nodded. “Funny, but the scarcer folk think something is, the more they want it. High standards and a bit of mystery go a long ways.”

“I am,” she declared, her voice getting even lower, “interested in solving mysteries.”

“Well, as a sentinel, I know a thing or three about that. Maybe you should come over to my place and we can talk shop.”

She laughed again, and I knew I was well and truly in trouble.

[—*—]

I awoke to the noise of somebody rummaging through the mess in my room, cursing under her breath. There was a distinctive edge to my headache. “You drugged me.” I pretended I could ignore it and sat up.

Damini shrieked. A little. She did not, however, put down the notebooks in her hands. “That should have kept you out until morning.”

“My liver gets a lot of practice.”

I should have known better than to let her get the drinks when we got back to my place. We’d taken the walk from Nineveh to my place slow, with plenty of laughing and the casual touching that hints at far more thorough contact later on. We’d gone up to my room, I’d sent Damini over to the liquor cabinet, and she’d come back with the firewine…things got blurry…and then came the waking and the headache.

“So, Damini, what’s your game?”

“Look, I like you. I wasn’t faking that. But a girl’s got needs.”

“I think you said the same thing when we got in the door.”

“Those, too. But with Aagren croaked an’ my shop wrecked, I need more than a roll in the hay, even with you.”

I was on my feet by then, angry and still a little drunk. “So you thought you’d find something here, something you could sell or something you could take back to the Family.”

“Information’s worth a bunch, Dinadan. You know that better’n most, I guess. I get the right bit of information, an’ I’m set. New shop, new whatever. Might even take up proper employment with ‘em.”

“You’d work for the Family?”

“Why in hells not?” She was still a little drunk, too. “I can handle a knife real good, an’ I can keep books clean or dirty. An’ I can make a better pair of loafers than any soul, livin’ or dead, on that whole blasted rock!”

“The retirement plan is less than ideal.”

“So? You’re a bard, yeah? You know livin’ like a bonfire’s better than livin’ like a candle.”

I couldn’t much argue with that. “I don’t think joining the family as a granddaughter is exactly living like a bonfire.”

She shrugged. Beautifully. I was annoyed that I still wanted her. Then she dropped the notebooks. “Look, Dinadan, I couldn’t make sense of your mess in a tortle’s tenday. I got nothing. What say we just pretend this ain’t happened? You’re good at pretending, yeah?”
“Pretending gets a bard jobs and a sentinel killed. I can’t just let you go.”

Her sigh wasn’t musical, but even her exasperation was attractive. “Look, Aagren had a meeting. Tomorrow night, Igneous time. Makes it pretty soon, now. Something to do with Borales. I know where it will be.”

“I’m not Aagren, and I can’t much imagine that his messy end isn’t all over the streets by now.”

“Yeah, but Aagren’s got buttonmen. Or did, anyway. Time like this, his organization’s gotta make like nothing’s wrong, yeah?”

I snorted. “Hard to do that when your boss is dead. Like as not this ‘meeting’ is just an excuse for a dustup or a snuff job.”

“So? You’re quick an’ clever. You can make something of it.”

“I don’t trust you further than I can throw you. And I’m not about to throw you.”

“Look, it’s just business.”

“Just business, huh? So is this.” The spell wasn’t a quick one, but by the time she realized that my rambling soliloquy was more than words, she was already out. I tied her up, not tight enough to hurt her, but tight enough to keep her in the chair. She woke up as I finished, wriggled a few times, and sighed.

“You shouldn’t ought to be like this. Gentleman gets a gal’s permission before he ties her up.”

“And a lady,” I answered, “doesn’t drug her host’s drink. So let’s not play at being lady and gentleman. Tell me where this meeting’s going down. I’ll check it out, then come back and we’ll figure out what happens next.”

Damini blew hair out of her eyes. “Simon and Simon Fine Warehousing. Stupid name, I know, but they’ve got a big red sign out front. It’s on second, north of Amphibole. Hard place to miss.”

She tested her bonds again, and I almost let her go. “Be careful, Dinadan.”

“Concerned for my welfare all of a sudden?”

She shook her head. “Somebody’s gotta show up to to untie me, yeah?”