After I finish my venison pie, I load up with a few of Tanrose's pastries and buy another beer to take upstairs.
"You're drinking too much," says Tanrose.
"Needed a hobby after my wife left."
"You took it up as a hobby long before that."
I can't deny it.
I have two rooms at the Avenging Axe, one for sleeping and one for working. The workroom has an outside door with steps down to the street outside so clients can visit without coming up through the tavern. I'm planning to sleep the afternoon away but before I can settle down a frantic banging comes at the door. I open it and a young man rushes in, bouncing off me and ending up in the middle of the room looking scared and confused.
"They're going to hang me!" he cries. "Don't let them do it!"
"What? Who?"
"I didn't kill him! It's a lie! Help me!"
I glare at him. My rooms are in their usual mess and he's not helping any. He's in a real state and for a long time I can't make head nor tail of what he's saying. Eventually I have to fling him in a chair and tell him to start talking sense or get the hell out of my office. He quietens down, but keeps glancing anxiously at the door, as if he's expecting his pursuers to burst in any second.
I walk over to the door and mutter the few short sentences that make up the standard locking spell. It's a common minor spell and you don't have to be particularly skilled in magic to perform it, but the young man seems reassured.
"Now, tell me what's going on. I'm too hot to stand around guessing. Who are you, who's after you, and why?"
"The Guards! They say I killed Drantaax!"
"Drantaax? The sculptor?"
He nods.
Drantaax is a well-known man in Turai. Best sculptor in town. One of the best anywhere. Well respected for his work, even by the aristocracy, who generally look down on artisans. His statues decorate many of Turai's temples, and even the Royal Palace.
"Drantaax was murdered last night. But I didn't do it!"
"Why would anybody think you did? And who are you anyway?"
"I'm Grosex, Drantaax's apprentice. I was working with him last night. We're busy finishing off the new statue of Saint Quatinius for the Shrine. We've been working on it for days . . . but now he's dead. He was stabbed in the back."
"Where were you at the time?"
He was next door. He came through to the workroom and found Drantaax lying dead with a knife in his back. Then Drantaax's wife Calia arrived and starting screaming.
"Calia called the Guard. All the time she was shouting at me, saying I'd stabbed him. But I didn't."
He hangs his head. He's running on nervous energy and it's making him ill. I offer him a thazis stick. Thazis, a mild narcotic, is still illegal but everyone uses it—well, everyone in Twelve Seas anyway. As he inhales the smoke his features relax.
I demand more details. I frown when I learn that instead of waiting for the Guards he fled the scene. And he mentions the interesting fact that the knife sticking in Drantaax belonged to him. I raise an eyebrow. It's not exactly hard to understand why everyone might think he did it. He's spent the night hiding in alleyways, wondering what to do, and now he's here, trying to hire a detective who, frankly, is not too keen to be hired. I'm still too hot, I don't need the work, and for all I know he's guilty as hell.
He looks pathetic. Even though I'm hardened to most things in Turai, I almost feel sorry for him.
There's more banging on my door.
"Open up, it's the Guard."
I recognise the voice. It's Tholius. As Prefect of Twelve Seas he's in charge of the Civil Guard in the area. Naturally enough he despises me. Guards don't like Private Investigators. It's odd that the Prefect himself is here. Normally he'd consider himself too important to get out on the streets and do police work.
I ignore the banging. It doesn't go away.
"Thraxas, open up. I know Grosex is in there."
"No one here but me."
"That's not what our Sorcerer says."
I glance at Grosex. If the Guards reckon the case is important enough to track him with an official Sorcerer he's certainly in bad trouble.
I'm still deciding what to do when the matter is taken out of my hands. The door groans as the Prefect orders his men to break it down. It's not much of a door, and my locking spell is not much of a spell. To my extreme annoyance it caves in under the weight of heavy Guards' boots and they flood in to my rooms.
I explode with anger. "What the hell do you think you're doing, smashing your way into my rooms? You can't break your way in here without a warrant!"
Prefect Tholius waves a warrant in my face and brushes past me. It's probably not filled in properly, but I don't bother arguing.
"One false move out of him—arrest him," he orders his Guards.
He confronts young Grosex. The apprentice, worn out from worry and still dressed in his dust-covered work tunic, cowers before the yellow-edged official toga of the Prefect.
"You're in serious trouble," rasps Tholius, grabbing Grosex roughly by his tunic. "Why did you kill the sculptor?"
The apprentice hopelessly protests his innocence. Prefect Tholius sneers, then shoves him into the waiting arms of two large Guards.
"Take him away. If he tries to run, kill him. And as for you, Thraxas . . ." He turns on me. "Don't dare interfere with the law again. If I so much as hear a rumour you're involved in this case I'll be down on you like a bad spell."
He turns to go, but halts at the ruined door.
"Feel free to file a claim for compensation from the authorities," he says, laughing. Any such claim would have to go to the Prefect for authorisation.
After bagging his suspect and insulting me the Prefect is as happy as an Elf in a tree and walks off smiling. The Guards depart, dragging young Grosex with them. My last sight of him, he's being hauled down the stairs into a covered Guard wagon, still pathetically protesting his innocence.
I shut what's left of my door. I finish the rest of my beer, then head downstairs to see Makri.
"I'm working," I tell her. "Got a case."
"Since when?"
"Since Prefect Tholius smashed down my door and dragged a client of mine away to prison. I didn't want to work, but I am now angrier than a wounded dragon and I will consequently move heaven, earth and the three moons in order to demonstrate to Tholius that I am not a man to be treated in this way. I'm off to investigate. See you later."
I march out into Quintessence Street with my sword at my hip and grim feelings in my heart. When I was Senior Investigator at the Palace people used to treat me with respect. I've fallen a long way since then but I'm damned if I'm going to let some petty tyrant like Prefect Tholius walk all over me.
It's hotter than Orcish hell out here and the stink of fish from the harbour market hangs thick in the air. I have to pick my way over mounds of rubble around the site of some new construction where the old houses were destroyed in the riots. In their place a contractor is raising new blocks of tenements on either side of the narrow street. Four storeys is the legal maximum in Turai but they'll probably go higher. More profit for the builders and slum landlords. And Tholius. Prefects oversee the building in their area and Tholius rakes in a fair amount in bribes by turning a blind eye to things. Perks of his job. Most Prefects are the same. So are the Praetors. Corruption goes a long way up in this city. The building contractors themselves are in league with the Brotherhood, the criminal organisation that runs the south of the city. They have to be. You can't do much around here unless the Brotherhood is involved.
There are two Civil Guard stations in Turai. The main one nearby is commanded by Prefect Tholius and a smaller one down by the docks is under the charge of Captain Rallee. I know him well, but he resolutely refuses to allow any of his men to pass on any information to me. I also have a contact at the main station, Guardsman Jevox, who's not above passing me the odd fragment of information since I got his father off a rap a few years back, but I can't risk running into the Prefect again so soon. Tholius doesn't spend too much time here—most often he's lounging around in some brothel or bar in Kushni, spending the gurans he's extorted—but he might well still be around, questioning poor Grosex.
The matter is decided when Guardsman Jevox comes out of the station and makes a frantic warning face as he sees me. I step out of sight around the corner. Peering round, I catch sight of Tholius and two Guards leading Grosex in handcuffs into a covered wagon. They drive off, with Jevox forming part of the horse escort. My official enquiries will have to wait. Which brings me swiftly to some unofficial ones. I walk on, ignoring the beggars. There's too many of them to do anything else.
At the end of Quintessence Street I turn into Tranquillity Lane, a miserable and filthy little alleyway full of prostitutes and dwa addicts. The prostitutes ignore me. The dwa addicts hold out their hands, begging. Since dwa, a powerful drug, swept the city a few years back there are more and more addicts loitering on the streets, making Twelve Seas a dangerous place to walk around after dark—or at any time, really.
Some way along Tranquillity Lane is the Mermaid, a tavern so disreputable that no one with any sense, breeding or dignity would go within a mile of the place. I seem to end up here often. Kerk, an informer of mine, can usually be found here, slumped at a table or lying on the floor if the dwa has got to him. Kerk deals dwa to support his habit and comes across much useful information, which he sells, also to support his habit.
I find him outside the tavern, lying on the sun-baked earth. There's an empty flagon of ale by his feet and the air around him has the distinctive aroma of burning dwa.
I nudge him awake with my foot. He stares up at me with his large eyes, eyes that suggest that somewhere along the line there's Elvish blood in his family, which wouldn't be all that strange. Elves visiting the cities of men are not above romantic liaisons with the prostitutes that work here. The Southern Islands of the Elves are paradise on earth, but they're short on prostitution. I guess the young Elves have to satisfy their urges somehow.
"What do you want?" mumbles Kerk.
"You know anything about Drantaax?"
He holds out his hand automatically. I drop a small coin into his palm, a tenth of a guran.
"Sculptor. Got killed last night."
"You know anything else?"
"Stabbed by his apprentice. So they say."
By the expression in his eyes I guess he knows a little more. I drop another coin into his palm.
"The apprentice was sleeping with his wife."
"Is that rumoured or certified fact?"
"Rumour. But a strong one."
The sun beats down. In the narrow confines of Tranquillity Lane it is close to unbearable. I've marched over deserts that were cooler than this. Kerk knows nothing else but says he'll keep his ear to the ground. I give him another coin and he hauls himself to his feet, now having sufficient money to buy some dwa.
I turn and leave. Not much news from Kerk, but interesting enough. Always makes things more interesting when the apprentice is sleeping with the master's wife. Unfortunately it also makes it more likely that Grosex did kill him, which is something I don't want to be true, though I've no real reason for holding him to be innocent, apart from a vague feeling that he wasn't lying. And my intense dislike of Prefect Tholius.
Stals, the small black birds that infest the city, sit brooding in the heat along the walls of the alley. They rise in the air, squawking, as they are disturbed by a stone tossed by a youth wearing the yellow bandanna which marks him out as a member of the Koolu Kings, the local youth gang. He picks up another stone.
"Toss that in my direction, kid, and I'll ram it down your throat then rot your guts with a spell."
He backs off. Being an Investigator, I'm not exactly popular with the Koolu Kings, but they know not to mess with me. When I'm on a case on a hot day like this I'm not a man to laugh and joke with.
He sneers as I walk past. I sneer back. Kids. They used to steal fruit from the market till dwa swept the city. Now they rob people at knifepoint to buy drugs. Turai is going to hell, and quickly. If the population doesn't just riot, steal and drug its way to extinction then King Lamachus of Nioj will sweep down from the north and wipe us off the face off the earth. All he needs is an excuse, and not a particularly good one at that.
Having at least made a little progress I decide to call back in at the Avenging Axe before heading off to see what I can find out at Drantaax's studio. If I've got a whole day's investigating in front of me I need a beer, and maybe some food. It's also in my mind that I should check a few spells in my books. I freely admit that I'm not much of a Sorcerer these days—I even find it too tiring to carry the standard protection spell around in my head—but I am still able to work a trick or two. It annoyed the hell out of me that Prefect Tholius was able to waltz in and arrest Grosex right under my nose. Very bad for my reputation, if my clients get dragged away like that.
I'm preoccupied with dodging the rubble in the street outside so it takes me a second or two to focus on the figure that greets me as I walk into the tavern. I'm used to fairly strange spectacles on the streets of Turai: chanting pilgrims, hulking northern Barbarians, the occasional green-clad Elf. Closer to home, Makri herself is an exotic sight with her red-bronze skin bulging out of her chainmail bikini. Furthermore she has recently had her nose pierced with a ring, a very unusual sight in this city, and one that I strongly disapprove of. It was done for her by Palax and Kaby, a pair of travelling buskers and musicians who are an even more colourful young pair, with their hair dyed bright colours, their clothes even brighter and multiple facial piercings to boot. But it doesn't prepare me for the sight of a young woman in bare feet—a ridiculously dangerous thing to do given the state of the streets—wearing a long skirt dyed with the signs of the zodiac and a garland of flowers woven into her hair.
I blink stupidly as she stands in front of me. I can't think of any reason she would not be wearing shoes.
"Hey, Thraxas," says Makri, appearing with a tray. "This is Dandelion. She wants to hire you."
Before I have time to object that no one can possibly be called Dandelion she takes my hand, stares deeply into my eyes and pronounces that's she's sure she's come to the right man.
"I can tell you have a sympathetic soul."
Makri is sniggering somewhere in the background.
"You want to hire me?"
"Yes. On behalf of the dolphins."
"The dolphins?"
"The dolphins that live in the bay."
"The ones that can talk to humans," chips in Makri.
I grunt. It's said that the dolphins can talk. Personally, I find it hard to believe.
"They sing as well," adds Dandelion, brightly.
I'm struggling to keep my temper under control.
"I'm a busy man. Is there any point in this wildlife lecture?"
"Why, yes. The dolphins are in terrible trouble. Someone has stolen their healing stone. They want to hire you to get it back."
"Their healing stone?"
"That's right. It's very precious to them. It fell from the sky."
Dandelion smiles sweetly. I abandon all efforts to keep my temper.
"Will you move out the way, please? I'm a busy man and I'm working on a case. A real case. A murder. I've got no time to stand here and listen to some fool with flowers in her hair ramble on about dolphins and a healing stone that fell from the sky. Now, excuse me."
I brush my way past. Dandelion leaps in front of me.
"But you must help them!"
"Find another Investigator."
"The dolphins want you. They've agreed that you're in tune with them at a very deep level."
It's as much as I can do to avoid slapping her. Makri, I note, is finding the whole thing highly amusing. Fine. Let her go and help the dolphins. I have a murder to investigate. I march up the stairs, not even stopping for my beer. I need something stronger and hunt out a bottle of klee, the spirit distilled locally in the hills outside the city. After my recent successes I've bought a better brand than I could normally afford. It still burns my throat as it goes down. I shake my head, and take another drink. Talking dolphins indeed. I've enough problems with Orcs, Elves and Humans. The fish can look after themselves.