The call for Sabav, evening prayers, rings out through the jail. Sabam, Sabap, Sabav. Three prayer calls a day. Gets me down. Still, we get off lightly in Turai. In Nioj they have six. I kneel down to pray in case some jailer is spying on me; there's no sense in giving the authorities another excuse to hold me here. Perhaps it isn't such a bad idea, because I'm released shortly afterwards. God may now be on my side. More likely the Princess pulled some strings. Captain Rallee is most displeased. He can't understand how a guy like me can still have any influence in this town.
"Who you working for, the Royal Family?" he grumbles, as a Sorcerer mutters the spell to let me out the front gates. "You watch yourself, Thraxas. The Prefect's got his eye on you. You try putting anything over on him and he'll be down on you like a bad spell."
I smile graciously in reply, and climb into a landus heading for Twelve Seas. I stop off at the public baths, wash off the stink of prison, grab a beer and food at the Avenging Axe and head off out.
"Where have you been?" asks Makri as I'm leaving.
"In prison."
"Oh," says Makri. "I thought maybe you were hiding from the Brotherhood."
I glare at her. "And why did you think that?"
"Because you can't pay your gambling debts."
I am outraged to learn that Makri knows about this too.
"Does everyone in Twelve Seas have to stick their noses into my personal affairs? It's high time people around here started minding their own damned business."
With which I storm out into the street. A beggar sticks a withered hand in my direction.
"Get a job," I bark at him. It makes me feel slightly better.
It's dark by the time I reach Attilan's house. It's risky returning so soon but it has to be done. In the time between my discovery in the garden and my arrest, I threw the box under a bush and I need it back. No one seems to be around, apart from a young Pontifex hurrying home after a hard day's praying. I wish I could make myself invisible but the invisibility spell is way too complicated for me. Trusting to luck, I haul myself over the fence, scramble through the garden and dive beneath the bush. The box isn't there. Someone beat me to it. Two minutes later I'm back over the fence and hurrying south, not pleased at the way things are going.
Horse traffic is banned in the city after dark. The night is still hot and it's a tiring walk. When I reach Pashish I decide to drop in on Astrath Triple Moon. I've promised Makri I'll ask him if he can help her. More to the point, I need a beer.
Pashish, just north of Twelve Seas, is another poor suburb, though relatively crime-free. Its narrow tene- mented streets comprise mainly the dwellings of harbour workers and other manual labourers. It's an unlikely place to find a Sorcerer, but Astrath Triple Moon is somewhat of an outcast among his kind, thanks to certain allegations a few years back when he was the official Sorcerer at the Stadium Superbius, with responsibility for ensuring that all chariot races and suchlike were run fairly, without outside sorcerous interference. Certain powerful Senators felt that their chariots weren't getting a fair deal, leading to a Praetor's investigation accusing Astrath Triple Moon of taking bribes.
Astrath employed me to dig up evidence on his behalf. He was, in fact, as guilty as hell but I managed to cloud the issue enough for him to escape prosecution or expulsion from the Sorcerers Guild. This allowed him to remain in the city—no Sorcerer expelled from the Guild is allowed to practise here—but the stigma attached to his name thereafter forced him to leave his high-class practice in Truth is Beauty Lane. He ended up in straitened circumstances with a small practice in Pashish ministering to the humble needs of the local population.
Astrath is still a powerful Sorcerer. As always he is pleased to see me. Not many men of my learning and culture visit him these days. He pours me a beer and I down it in one. He pours me another.
"Hot as Orcish hell out there," I say, emptying the glass.
He pours me a third. He's not a bad guy for a Sorcerer. I dump my cloak and bag on the floor among the astrolabes, charts, test tubes, herbs, potions and books that form the standard paraphernalia of a working Sorcerer.
I ask him about the spell, describing it as best as I can remember.
"That's a rare item," says Astrath Triple Moon, stroking his beard. "As far as I know, no Human Sorcerer has ever concocted a successful spell for putting a dragon to sleep. The best we've come up with is some temporary distraction."
He's right. I know from painful experience. My platoon faced a dragon in the last Orc Wars, and I tried my sleep spell, full strength. I had more power in my spells then but the dragon hardly blinked. Still, we killed it in the end.
"Do the Orcs have a spell like that?"
"They might," replies Astrath Triple Moon. "After all, they have more experience with dragons than us. And their Sorcerers work on a different system. Weaker in some ways, stronger in others. It wouldn't surprise me if they've mastered dragoncraft enough to put one to sleep. I wouldn't have thought they'd let a spell like that out of their hands though. There's always Horm, of course."
"Horm the Dead?"
I suppress a shudder. You can forget to include me in anything involving Horm the Dead. He's not the only mad renegade Sorcerer in the world but he's one of the most powerful and, by all accounts, by far the most frightening.
"You ever have any dealings with him?"
Astrath strokes his beard.
"Not really. But a few members of the Sorcerers Guild have encountered him in the course of their travels and they told me stories about him. That was back when I could still go to Sorcerers Guild meetings of course. Takes dwa and flies, apparently."
"So do a lot of people."
"No, he really can fly. So they say anyway. And rides dragons."
"I thought only Orcs could ride dragons."
"Horm is half Orc," says Astrath. "And he spends his time in the Wastelands working out ways to combine Orc and Human magic. Last we heard he was working on a spell to send a whole city mad. The Eight-Mile Terror, he called it. So we were told anyway. Of course, you can't trust informants from the Wastelands, but it worried the Guild enough to start work on some counterspell. Horm the Dead doesn't much care for Humans."
"I can't see why he'd have any involvement in this spell the Princess had though."
"Neither can I," admits Astrath Triple Moon. "And from what you can remember of the spell, it doesn't really sound like his work. More likely it was stolen from an Orcish Sorcerer. Or maybe their Ambassadors brought it here just in case the dragon decided to go mad and start burning the city."
I should hurry home and work this one out. After another beer, a little klee, and a portion of beef from Astrath's servant, I do just that. I sit in my shabby room and mull it over. What would a Niojan diplomat be doing with an Orcish spell? Trying to sell it perhaps? A valuable item, certainly, which any government would pay well for, but how did he get it? How did the Princess learn of it and why did she want it? And where is it now? Who removed it from Attilan's garden?
Faced with so many questions, I go downstairs for a beer. Makri comes over to my table and I tell her about the case. She's a sensible woman, often good for talking things over with, providing she's not haranguing me about helping her get into the Imperial University.
"I don't think Attilan was ever on diplomatic duty in the Orcish lands, but its possible he's come across the Orcish diplomats at our Palace. They don't show themselves in public but they must meet other Ambassadors sometimes."
"Maybe he didn't steal it," suggests Makri. "Maybe they gave it to him."
"Seems unlikely, Makri. Niojans are all swines, but they don't like Orcs any more than we do. And even if he was working with them, what was he doing with that spell? And why is the Princess involved? She sent me to find it. How did she know he had it? And what did she want it for?"
"Maybe the dragons in the King's zoo make her nervous."
"Could be. Dragons would upset anyone."
"I fought one once," says Makri.
"What?"
"I fought one. In the Orcish slave arena."
"On your own?"
"No, there were ten of us. Big fight to entertain the Orc Lords. We beat it, though I was the only one left alive at the end. Tough skin. My sword wouldn't go through it. I had to stab it in the eyes."
I stare at her. I'm not sure if she's telling the truth or not. When the twenty-year-old Makri arrived in Turai a year ago after escaping from the Orcish gladiator slave pits, she was a hardened fighter but unused to the ways of civilisation. That is to say, she didn't tell lies. After a year in the Avenging Axe, surrounded by notable embroiderers of the truth like Gurd and myself, she's learned the art.
"I fought a dragon too, back in the Orc Wars," I say, which is true, though rather beside the point. I just don't like Makri to think she's the only one round here who's done any serious fighting.
Some customers call for beer. Makri ignores them.
"I hope you're not going to get Princess Du-Akai into trouble," she says.
"Why?"
"Because if you do a good job for the Princess she'll be grateful and you could ask her to use her influence to get me into the University."
The standard degree course at the Imperial University features rhetoric, philosophy, logic, mathematics, architecture, religion and literature. Why the hell Makri wants to learn all that is beyond me.
"Also," adds the young Barbarian, "I heard that Du-Akai is sympathetic to the Association of Gentlewomen."
"Where did you hear that?"
"At a meeting."
I stare at her. I'd no idea Makri was going to Association of Gentlewomen meetings.
"Don't come crying to me if you all get arrested for illegal gatherings."
"I won't."
I consider consulting the kuriya pool for some answers but decide against it. I don't know enough exact dates and places for the things I'd like to know, so a good connection with the past would be almost impossible. Anyway I've hardly any of the black liquid left and I can't afford any more. Sorcerous Investigator. Big joke. I can't even afford the basics.
"Get a job," says Makri.
"Very funny. You want to play some niarit after your shift?"
Makri nods. She tells me she saw some Elves today, travelling up from the docks on horseback with an escort of Civil Guardsmen.
"Probably some deputation from the Elf Lord who sent the Red Elvish Cloth. I don't imagine they're very happy it's gone missing."
Makri grunts. The whole subject of Elves is troubling to her. Basically, her Orcish blood appals them. Makri pretends not to care, but really she does. She won't admit it, but I've seen her looking almost longingly at some of the young Elves who pass through Twelve Seas.
She adjusts her bikini and gets back to work, taking orders from thirsty late-night drinkers. This includes me and it's around two in the morning by the time I stumble upstairs.
Sitting on my grubby couch is Princess Du-Akai.
"I let myself in," she says. "I didn't want to come into the tavern."
"Feel free to visit any time," I grunt, with less politeness than would be normal towards the third in line to the throne. I'm not particularly pleased to find anyone, even a Royal Princess, in my rooms uninvited. It gives me the strong suspicion she might have been searching them.
"Did you get the box?"
I shake my head. "I went back for it. Someone must have seen me hide it. It's gone."
"I must have those letters!"
I stare at the Princess. For the first time she looks uncomfortable. Good. I decide to give it to her straight.
"There weren't any letters, Princess. Your box was there in Attilan's safe all right. Nice box. Very fine inlay. No letters though. Just an Orc spell for putting a dragon to sleep."
"How dare you examine the contents!"
"Welcome to the real world. And how dare you send me on a case with false information. Thanks to you, Princess, I'm up to my neck in the murder of a Niojan diplomat. Sure, you used your influence to get me out of prison but that's not going to prevent the Consul pinning the murder on me if no one better comes along. So I'd suggest you start telling me the truth."
We stare at each other for a while. Princess Du-Akai shows no inclination to start telling the truth.
"Do you know who killed Attilan?" I demand.
"No."
"Did you?"
She's shocked. She denies it.
"Why did you want me to get that spell? Where did it come from? And why was it in your box?"
The Princess clams up. She makes to leave. I'm mad as hell. Anytime I'm thrown in a cell I at least like to know the reason. I say a few less than complimentary things to her. She tosses a small purse on the table and tells me our business relationship is ended.
"Don't slam the door when you leave."
She slams the door. I count the money. Thirty gurans. Three days' pay. Not bad. Another four hundred and seventy and the Brotherhood will be off my back. I wish I knew what it had all been about. I drink some more beer. It feels too hot to go to bed. I fall asleep on my couch.