A Year Later

We still miss you. Hope you're somewhere with the Food Network and a really, really good grocery store.

Ode to the Gizmonic Institute

So this is my farewell to a fleet in a game that I've recently given up. The fleet is named (as the nerd-wise amongst you have already guessed) after the "evil" institute that sends Joel into space to watch an endless stream of bad movies...thus Mystery Science Theater 3000. The game is the somewhat misnomered Star Pirates (misnomered because the action all takes place in an imaginary future wholly around a single star--Sol. I don't blame them, though. "Planet Pirates" sounds pretty lame.).

I whipped this up as a tribute to the awesome folks with whom I played the game in my last days of active play.

Back in Cthonic Days
Before the Gizmonic Craze
Science was just banging rocks
But with the Institute
No mind shall be destitute
Because Gizmo-science rocks

It isn't the monkeys
Or lab-coated flunkies
That make Gizmonic shine
Not even the chili
(Or saber-toothed lilies)
Or remnants of Frankenstein

The science is blinding
And research is finding
That G knows its way 'round beakers
So listen right close
And I'll give you a dose
Of Science from over-amped speakers

(instrumental bridge)

Space without Gizmonic?
What's gin without tonic?
Not a place I'd like to be!
So when donning fleet tags
Or waving the war flags
You'd better make mine a "G"

The instrumental bridge is full of loud electric guitars and half a dozen monkeys going crazy with crowbars and brake drums. Also, beat-boxing.

Dinadan Noir XI: Work

I had a bad feeling when I headed home from the Wench. Fleshless skulls aren’t open books, but there’d been something in Vinnie’s attitude that seemed…off. Wasn’t much to go on, but I hadn’t gotten where I was by ignoring hunches. I slowed my walk and made some thinking faces. Then it clicked. He’d said “Goodbye.” Not “see ya next time, goat,” or “come back when you’ve solved that breathing problem.” Just “goodbye.”

So I was almost expecting the knife that flew out of the shadows as I stepped into my front yard. Lucky I spent some time on the wrong end of a knife-throwing act. Caught the knife, by the handle even.

It was dark, but I could tell the would-be hitman was only a bit bigger than I was, and that he’d already gotten another sharp implement into his hands. I shouted “Discursus!”

In the time it took him to decide if it was a spell or just inanity, I’d chucked the knife right back at him. Sunk about four inches of blade into his right shoulder. He dropped the knife he’d been readying and drew a rapier. For my part, I reached dramatically to my hip and drew…nothing. When I wasn’t pretending to be a bravo, I hardly ever carried a dagger, let alone a real sword. My crossbow and Drak were inside, with a complicated lock and an assassin between them and me.

Not that I needed them.

The ball of glue formed with a flick of my mind, and swelled as I hurled it at the hitman. It wasn’t enough to stop him cold, but it was enough to slow him down.

“You’re getting blood on my lawn. Popular songs to the contrary, it’s not good for the grass.”

He was game, I’ll give him that. He kept his mouth shut and kept coming, probably figuring that his only way out of this was to finish the job he’d already botched. If he’d gotten me with that first knife, he might have pulled it off. I hit him with more glue, rattled his brains with a sonic blast or two, and—once, when he got too close—a pretty passable left hook. It was the punch that dropped him. This surprised me.

“Come on, man, I’m a long way from a professional pugilist.”

He lay there, bleeding and gasping. Wholly human beneath the the hood, with spittle in his whiskers and eyes going glassy.

“Ah. Playing with poison will get you into trouble.” I pulled out the theriac I kept on my person for just such moments. “You’d like some of this, yes? Before whatever nastiness you put on that knife finishes you?” The hitman managed a nod. Good, tougher than he looked. I dumped some more conjured glue on him, then flexed the small bit of biomancy I knew to put some color back in his cheeks.

“Note that I haven’t done anything about the poison yet.” Another nod. “Now, I’m not sure how the Family deals with botched ‘work,’ but I’m willing to bet that you’re a little worried about that, even if I let you live.” I did my best imitation of a menacing grin, the effect probably lost in the bad light. “I’m not going to ask you to tell me who put the hit out, or how you knew I’d be here tonight. Vinnie will have some ‘splaining to do.” I thought for a moment, tossing the theriac from hand to hand. “I’m guessing it was Toth, maybe through McKay. Doesn’t much matter whose gold at this point. You tell them I want a meeting. All the Borales uncles. A little private performance by the Storyteller. It’ll be worth their while. A good chance for them to finish the job you couldn’t if they don’t like what I have to say, a chance for me to settle things if I can manage my most winsome. And in the meantime, they get to take in a show. They get, oh, one bodyguard apiece. And I’ll bring a stage manager. Just to keep everybody honest. The greencoats’ll stay home, the muscle will stay home, and we can have a chat.”

“They’ll never buy it.” Huh. Maybe I overdid it with the biomancy.

“Tell you what—what is it you call yourself?”

“Talto.”

“Talto, then. I’ve worked up a pretty hefty folder on the Borales Family in the last few weeks. Enough to make a few murder charges stick, and probably a pretty good case against some of the smuggling operations. That’ll be part of the stakes. If they don’t show, it goes straight to Radisgad’s desk. If I don’t walk out, it goes straight to Radisgad’s desk. They either play my game or I invite the Sentinels in. And you know how touchy Old Man Radisgad gets when somebody starts messing with his own. Clear?”

He nodded, looking pale again. “There’s a back room at the Den, down by the fighting pits. I’m sure you know it. I’ll have it reserved for the sixth hour in three days. Horrible acoustics, but best bouncers in the ‘Verse, discreet ownership, and neutral turf. I’ll be waiting.”

I mixed the theriac, then, poured it down his throat. “I’m going inside now. The glue won’t last too much longer. As soon as you can, get the hell off my lawn. And make sure you get that message across.”

Dinadan Noir X: Word on the Street

Vinnie Twofingers liked to style himself a booking agent. That was how I’d met him, years earlier. Turned out he booked mostly private parties. Very private. One performer and—most of the time—an audience of one. I wasn’t interested in that kind of business, but Vinnie was an amiable sort for a walking corpse, and he’d managed to hook me up with one or two legit, non-horizontal gigs. I’d swing by every once in a while to see if any of the girls he represented were interested in becoming proper bards. It got Vinnie a finder’s fee, it got the guild promising members, and it got me the warm fuzzies of a quiet good deed. Vinnie also made it a point to know as much as he could about every shady deal that happened on Crypt. His girls kept him well-informed, and he made a tidy profit as an information broker when it suited him. I was happy to find him in his office. There were too many gaps in Damini’s story. She’d told me what she knew, but she was still just a cobbler with good ears and more-than-healthy ambition.

“Vinnie! How’s it going?”

“Dinadan Whistler. What an unexpected pleasure.” It was always a little disconcerting to hear his whiskey-soaked baritone coming out of an empty skull, but that was Crypt for you. “Is it time for you to steal away my girls again?”

I shook my head. “Come on, Vinnie, you’ve got better sources than that.”

“Humor me. I want to hear you say it, mostly so I can charge you like a real client.”

“Alright, alright. Vinnie, I need some information.”

He spun his chair and kicked his feet onto the desk. “Nice shoes, yeah? Pretty cobbler girl over on Biotite made ‘em for me. That’s real Soselian crocodile. Shame, though…that shop got closed down. Little bit of a scuffle. I even heard—and you won’t believe this—that some handsome devil of a satyr bravo was involved.”

I grinned. “The way I hear it, he was there, but the mess happened without him starting it.”

I had to imagine his grin. Skulls aren’t the most expressive things. “Do tell.”

“The way I hear it, Aagren had a hole in his chest when the satyr got there, and it was Whale Oil McKay and some local cousins who tore the place up.”

The skeleton made a satisfied noise. “And pieces fall into place. This satyr bravo, he wouldn’t happen to have been looking for Aagren in regards to an off-world murder, would he?”

“He might have been. I hear he’s a bit of a fool for a good cause.”

“You heard right, Dinadan. Damn fool’s got a Gifted One’s luck, good and bad.”

“So what am I in for this time, Vinnie? Aagren was up to something, that much I know.”

“More than something, and more than you know. What’s in it for me to fill you in?”

“I double your finder’s fee next time I swing by for the usual, and I put in a good word for you with the local greencoats.”

“You really think you’ve got that sort of sway?”

I nodded. “Where there are words, there’s a way. I can make good on it. It’ll keep them from checking out the gigs you book too close.”

“There’s a war coming, Din. Borales looks vulnerable and Gero’s feeling itchy. Most of the low-level folks are going mum, so I can’t give you much for specifics, but I know where things are headed. Coin’s flowing to every over-muscled teamster willing to crack heads. There’s a lot of traffic through Ferral’s. He’s even gone and taken on an extra apprentice to keep up with demand. Borales is looking awfully defensive. Lots of loyalty money floating around, but the uncles there seem to be looking at each other rather than this way. If Gero orders a move, Borales is going to crumble. Makes me think it might be a ‘when,’ not an ‘if.’ But I am not in the business of speculating.”

“Where’s Aagren fit?”

“Now that, my friend,” Vinnie said, “is the million gold question. Nobody’s quite sure, and knowing that you didn’t snuff him, that doesn’t exactly clear things up. Word on the street is that you did for him, and the locals showed up too late to stop it. But if McKay was there, well…that makes it clear as mud, ‘ey?”

“McKay works for Upal Toth, yeah?”

Vinnie nodded. “More or less. They’re both uncles, mind you. But McKay’s the muscle. He don’t have to take orders from Toth, but he does. Him and his bully boys, they do most of the protection work. But that don’t explain why he was in Igneous looking for everybody’s favorite dead squidface.”

“Or why anybody’d go after his mistress. Isn’t that usually off limits?”

“Sort of. Bad form, but Family manners get frayed when things get tense like this. Snuffing a mistress is a quick way to send a message.”

“So who wanted to send Aagren a message, and what was it?”

Vinnie’s suit made his skeletal shrug look almost human. “Can’t say, Din-din.”

“Whoever did for her was just muscle. I saw it right after it happened. Real mess. But Aagren was serious work. Serious magic…telemancy at the least. I don’t know how you put a hole that big in somebody’s chest, and I don’t know how you make blood into words.”

“Wait a minute. The blood did stuff?” He was interested now. “What’d it say?”

I smirked. “What’s it worth to you?”

He was caught. “By itself, not much, but it’d help me answer your questions. Might make me forget you said you’d double your finder’s fee.”

“It said ‘think twice.’”

“All scripty and flowy?”

I nodded.

“Oh, Dinadan, that is one hell of a tidbit. One hell of a tidbit. Been a long time since anybody’s seen that. Likely you weren’t the audience he expected.” Vinnie chuckled softly. “No, not at all.”

“The audience -who- expected?”

“Gero. Gero did for Aagren. Personally. When he was on his way up, his enemies ended up dead like that all the time. He liked doing things with their blood. Pretty clever bit of magic, that, and intimidating as hell to make statements literally from the blood of them what stand in your way.”
I wondered just how long Vinnie had been around. “Aagren must’ve gotten the bloodsucker pretty riled.”

“Yeah, yeah. He must have. Dunno how, though. You find that out, you maybe solve your puzzle.”

“Somebody wanted it hid. When I went back, the blood was cleaned up. Sort of. Enough that there was no way to find any words in it.”

“Yeah. Probably wanted to make it look like you could’ve done it. None of the Igneous crew would’ve touched that. So an independent or your friend McKay. Wanted the murk to stay murky…that’d be my guess.”

“You got anything else you can tell me?”

“Not much. Stay out of Borales if you can, reckless goat. I give it a week before it boils over and bodies start turning up. Gero, he might wait, let the uncles there whittle each other down. But if his ire’s up enough to take a personal hand in things…well, I’m glad I’m me an’ not you.”
I flipped him a platinum coin for form’s sake. He caught it with a muted clink in the two fingers of his left hand, easily, and made it disappear. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks, Vinnie.”

“Any time. Goodbye, Dinadan.”

Dinadan Noir IX: Back and There Again

The cobbler’s shop was closed. The whole storefront was a wreck. The broken door had been boarded carefully, but the job on the shattered window was haphazard at best. I poked my head in. Bloodstains, scorch marks, a gold tooth, two dozen pairs of ruined shoes, broken racks, a solid slab of worktable broken in two. Nothing much to salvage, but I wanted a closer look… I flew up to the roof, and sure enough, nobody’d bothered to secure the trap door. Carefully, I headed down.

Somebody’d gotten rid of Aagren’s corpse. Moreover, they’d gone to the trouble of half-cleaning the bloodstains. There wasn’t a damn trace of the words that had been there. I filed that away before moving into the shop proper. It looked even worse from inside. The acid had chewed up the walls but good, enough to make me leery of spending too long in the place. A few boxes of materials had been broken open and looted. Something nagged at me, though. I kept looking without knowing precisely what I expected to find.

All of the tools were gone, even the ones that wouldn’t be worth a plug copper.

So Damini had come back here after all. That was a good thing. It meant that I was at least on the right track. Which meant that I’d figured the girl out a little. Which meant that maybe… Bah. Down that path lies naught but trouble. Dames’ll do that to you. If things were as ugly as I was starting to think they were, I couldn’t be mooncalfing over sculpted limbs, fathomless eyes, and midnight hair. Except I clearly was.

Whatever the reasons, I needed to find her. She was the only lead on Aagren I had left. In theory, anyway, I was still trying to figure out who’d killed Arbonne. I had a suspicion Gilgal was going to call me in sooner rather than later, and it was always better to show up with something substantial. The man’s probably the least bluffable being in the Retroverse. Going in and telling him “I’ve gotten involved in some sort of messy Family business on Crypt, and I’m not sure how” would not fly. Like I said, I needed to find Damini. And if I didn’t think Ishtar was enjoying the confusion, I’d have asked the goddess to help keep my head clear when I found her.

For all her ambition, Damini did not, as far as I knew, have ready access to magic. Which meant that she was probably still on Crypt. So. Your shop is wrecked, you have for some reason passed up stealing things from somebody who knocked you out and tied you up, you’ve got your trade tools, a bit of cash, and that’s it. Where do you go?

She was in the third bar I checked, and she didn’t say a thing when I sat down at her table and poured myself a shot. I sniffed at it. “You know, Damini, mushroom spirits are bad for your health.” I downed the shot.

“Prob’ly.”

The bottle was opaque, but it was pretty light. “How much of this have you had?”

“Too much. Not enough.”

A beautiful, drunken woman, and she had to go and be morose. “So, as you can see, you didn’t manage to get me killed.”

“Shove it, Dinadan. You’re all…Gifted…and…stuff. Wouldn’ta mattered anyway.”

“It might have made me forget you.”

“Really? You come chasin’ after me ‘cuz you wanted to forget me?”

It bugged me that she was right. “You didn’t take anything.”

“Not true!” She swayed a little. “I took yer wine. Tashty.”

I sighed, leaned back, and pondered getting a good drunk going myself. “I’m sorry about your shop.”

“My shop! It wash all I had. Least I got my tools. But no shop.”

“You’ve got a keen grasp of the obvious.” It was sharper than I’d meant it to be.

“Shut up, ya lecherous goat!” I was surprised she managed “lecherous” in her state.

“I had you knocked out and tied up, you know.”

“I know. I woulda stayed, maybe. But I had to pee.”

In vino veritas, and all that. “Look, Damini…”

“You wanna kiss me?”

“Of course I do. You’re beautiful. But—”

“Then kissh me!” she took a pull on the bottle. “Or drag me back to your goat cave an’ we can do more’n kish!”

“I’m sorry about your shop.”

“You said that already.”

“I’m stalling.”

“Oh. Maybe you should havva drink!”

I sighed. My higher nature picked the damnedest times to kick in. “Let’s see if we can’t sober you up a bit.”

“I don’t wanna be shober! Why d’you think I’m drinkin’?”

“Come on, Damini. Let’s get you out of here.” I stood up and took her arm. She half-fell out of her chair.

“Alright. Alright. I’ll come with you, mister bard goat man. Not like I got anythin' better t'do.”

She puked all over the moment I got her out to the street. We ducked into an alley and I held that magnificent hair and made sympathetic noises while she puked some more. I was really starting to hate the smell of mushroom spirits.

[—*—]

“I havva headache.” Damini groaned, but didn’t open her eyes.

“Color me shocked. You drank most of a bottle of mushroom spirits all by your lonesome.”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“That, lady, is the story of my life. Drink this.”

“What is it?” She got herself to a sitting position but didn’t open her eyes.

“Water. And a bit of mint. Your breath is atrocious.”

She sipped it and opened her eyes a bit. “Could be worse. Where are we?”

“Welstar, not far from the village I grew up in. I figured we could both use a change of scenery.”

“It’s really…green.”

“You been to Welstar before?”

She started to shake her head, then thought better of it. “Nope. Get to Raji every month or so to do some trading. Other than that, it’s all solid stone and magelight.”

“You could, you know, come back. It’s not like you-got exiled.”

“Back? I just told you I never been here before. Crypt is where I live. Where I’m from.” She squinted. “It’s too bright here. Way too bright. I don’t know how people live with the sun in their faces all the time.”

“You’re hung over. Of course it’s bright.”

I’m not convinced I’ll ever be able to reproduce the noise she made. “I know th’difference between hangover bright and bright-bright, bright boy. Th’grass is nice, though.”

I kept myself from watching her lay back on said grass. “Damini, I need you to come clean with me. How much do you know about what’s going on with the Family right now?”

“You didn’t bring me here to…frolic?”

“Pff. You’re still almost as green as the grass, and I spent the big part of an hour watching you empty your stomach. And people keep ending up dead. I need to figure out what’s going on, and you’re the best lead I’ve got at the moment.”

“Ain’t much of a detective, then.”

“Limited resources. And when I started, this was just about a murder.”

“Aagren’s fishy tart?”

“Yeah. Came to me before she bit it, knowing somebody was after her. Eight hours later, she’s dead.”

“Aagren was royal pissed about that.”

“He say anything?”

“Look, Dinadan, I was just a shopgirl, y’know? Aagren came and went and kept me paid. I kept my ears shut. Part of the deal.”

“Sure. But unless people came in through the roof, you saw ‘em, yeah? Traffic pick up much lately?”

She thought about it for a minute. “Not the normal stuff. Errand boys, muscle…that didn’t change at all. But messengers. Hmm. Yeah. Lots of messengers. That dwarf, McKay, he showed up once. Real short talk, no raised voices. An’ he went right back out.”

“Wait. That was Whale Oil McKay?”

“Aye. That mean something?”

“Maybe. Makes me glad we cut out when we did. Dangerous fellow, at least by reputation.”

“He weren’t the one who sprayed my shop down with acid.”

“True. I’m guessing that was somebody local.”

“Why’d any of the locals come after me?”

“They weren’t after you.”

“Oh.” She sighed. “Oh, yeah.”

“Sorry.”

“So what’re you going to do?”

“About what?”

“Me.”

My turn to sigh. “What do you want?”

“Something better, same as anyone else.”

“You still wanna go to work for the Family?”

“Family and shoes are what I know.”

“I don’t think it’s safe for you to go back to Crypt. Not like I’m the only one who’s got questions for you. I can put you up somewhere nice in Abarack, if you want. Keep it quiet.”

“You gonna come visit?”

“Eventually. But I’ve got other folks I need to talk to. And not in dark warehouses.”

Dinadan Noir VIII: Firefight

I dunno how I keep ending up in dark warehouses, waiting for something shady to go down. But it seems to be a professional obligation. There I was, huddled up against the wall of an Igneous storehouse, feeling keenly that I was one of the few living souls on that blasted chunk of rock. The whole thing reeked of a set-up, but the warehouse smelled more like mushroom spirits. The fumes were doing pleasant things to my head.

Not for the first time, I wondered why I’d even gotten into this mess. Arbonne had been pretty, for sure, but crustaceans were hardly my delicacy of choice. The murder was ugly, yeah, but I’d seen a Gifted One’s share of death, and furthermore there were proper sentinels on the case. The smart thing would have been to hand the statue over to the Guild and let Carnely or Foil or somebody else sort it out. But sometimes smart doesn’t cut it. Or something. So here I was, idiotically loitering in a warehouse I’d broken into on the advice of a pretty girl who’d drugged my drink. Somebody was going to show up, probably with murder in mind, and I was betting that I could not only survive, but get some information out of the experience.

Might’ve been the fumes, but I was having a pretty good time.

There’s only so much a goat can do in the adventuring line of work, and while it’s plenty dangerous, there’s seldom anything personal about it. Fight the bad guys, take their stuff, wash, rinse, repeat. The detective business is more like a game. The problem with Family business is that I wasn’t too keen on the rules. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was playing with Damini, either, but I wasn’t about to leave that table, either. Like I said, good times.

He showed up without me noticing him. One point for the baddy. But I spotted him before he got close. I could tell he was packing heat; a flame fundamental flickered in his left hand.
Pyromancers I can deal with. But pyromantic alchemists in a warehouse full of combustibles? Fool’s odds. Especially when said alchemist is gnome who’s been singed clean of hair and looks just as happy to be roasted as to do the roasting.

“Evening, master gnome. You here for the conference?”

“Tell Aagren we’re sorry he couldn’t make it!” he cackled, and loosed a ray of fire. Hit me, too. Hurt like a bitch, but I didn’t go down that easy.

“Damn, don’t you know how hard it is to get the smell of burnt hair out of silk?” I coughed, ducking behind a pillar. I was glad that stone was so abundant on Crypt. I wouldn’t have trusted the kind of rickety wooden supports they used just about everywhere else. Regardless, the gnome sent more fire roping towards me. The pillar started to get warm.

“I don’t suppose,” I shouted over the crackle, “that you’d be so kind as to tell me what this is about?”

Nobody appreciates refined conversation anymore. I pulled out my panpipes and ducked out long enough to send a sonic burst his way. The fire stopped, but I lost sight of him when I dashed for new cover, screeching as I went. Now, the kind of screech I make when I want to hurt somebody, it makes fingers on a slate sound like the mellowest elven lute. Glass shattered, wood splintered, and somewhere, my keen ears picked up a distinct groan. The smell of spirits got stronger. Broken glass, spilled liquor, fire, and me with burns all over my chest. This was getting better all the time. I took advantage of the lull to do a quick patch job on the burns, fortified myself with a bit of bardic magic, then poked my head out.

There he was.

I sent some nasty noise his way to encourage him to keep his head down as I fished an intact bottle out of a broken crate. Because I was enjoying myself, I took a swig. Gods, it was nasty. The dwarves who moved to Welstar, now they make some damn fine ale. Limit their resources to mushrooms, and this was the swill you got. Strong enough to knock out a titan, foul enough to make a slaad retch. Put some fire in the belly, though. Of a sort more pleasant than the stuff the gnome was throwing at me. Again. Time to chalk this little foray up as a loss. I came out from behind the pillar with panpipes whistling destruction. When the gnome caught his footing and threw more fire at me, I threw the bottle at him.

It broke satisfyingly at his feet. More satisfyingly, the volatile stuff splashed all over the gnome and promptly ignited. I’d expected him to stop throwing fire when that happened. Alas, poor alchemist…his aim just got real bad. He sent fiery rays all over the place. Isolated fires were about to become a conflagration was about to become an explosion. That was my cue.

“There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home…”

[—*—]

I didn’t spend long at the Wench…just enough time to finish mending my burns and find a clean shirt. Damini had plenty to answer for, and I hoofed it back to my place in a hurry.
She’d slipped the ropes…cut them, actually. I wondered if she’d hidden a blade in her hair or some such. There wasn’t anything missing, though, not even the hideous monkey statue Arbonne had given me. I checked thoroughly, even the few hidey holes that I kept. She hadn’t taken a damn thing.

Check that. She’d taken the firewine, curse her black heart. Now I was really going to have to find her.

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?”