Chasing the Dragon (15 page)

"I can be persuasive," Alto said with more than a hint of menace in his tone.

Carson grimaced and nodded, verifying Alto's claim.

"And you might need to be," Mordrim said without batting an eye at the implication. "That won't encourage them to meet us though, will it?
"

"Oh, I get it!" Garrick blurted out.

Mordrim snorted. "Seems your father didn't use you as a club to train his dogs after all."

Garrick glared at the dwarf but couldn't respond before Alto spoke.

"Take us there," Alto said. "Tell them whatever you need to. I don't care."

Mordrim rubbed his hands together and nodded. "All right, let's be off then. To the Foreign District!"

Mordrim led them down the main streets of the city, pausing only when they saw a group of city guards. With Alto, Carson, and Karthor's exploits at the palace explained, they didn't want to risk any trouble. With the infrequent stops and winding path around the palace, it took them over an hour to make their way through the crowded streets.

The Foreign quarter was separated from the rest of the city by a wall with a large gate in it. Guards manned the gate but they paid little attention to anyone entering or leaving the district. The traffic thinned considerably inside the Foreign District, allowing them to more easily see the various houses and shops.

At one time, many of them looked to have been very impressive. Outlandish designs and materials had been used on a few of the larger buildings and shops, but now they were faded and falling into disrepair. Smaller residences were made of the mixture of sand and mud. In many buildings, holes and cracks littered the walls.

"People live in these?" Garrick asked.

"Beats a cave or a tree limb," Carson opined.

Garrick glanced at the ranger and nodded. "Even the least of my people has the help of his clan to provide a place to lay his head."

"These are outsiders," Mordrim reminded them with a touch of bitterness in his tone. "People the royals need, but don't like. They're different. Dwarves, elves, splisskin, ogres, and more."

"Ogres?" Garrick growled.

"Not many, but a few. Hard to beat an ogre when you need a strong back for labor."

Garrick
snorted. "I've put my strength against theirs and survived."

"Well
, you're a bit of an ogre yourself," Patrina reminded him. "Now let Mordrim take us to his contact."

Garrick scowled but fell silent and trudged along with them.

Mordrim took them into a couple of shops before he found one that focused on selling metal wares, from weapons and armor to trinkets and jewelry. He walked up to rap his metal-clad knuckles against a counter hard. Someone coughed and swore behind the counter, and then picked themselves up from where they'd been napping on the floor.

The dwarf behind the counter climbed up onto a stool and peered over his large nose at them. "Snord's Armory, what can I do for you?"

"Snord, you blind old fool, don't you recognize me?"

The dwarf squinted and peered at Mordrim,
and then grinned wide enough to show a gold tooth. "Mordrim? Heard you'd gone north to stay?"

"I did. But business brought me back down here."

"Who are the tall folk?" Snord asked as he eyed up Mordrim's companions.

"Friends of mine from the north. Trustworthy friends," Mordrim
said. He glanced at them all and held Garrick's gaze the longest.

If the barbarian received the message
, he showed no sign of it.

"Sounds like you're up to something special," Snord said. "Something fun?"

"Not much fun to be had," Mordrim admitted. "Unless it's putting some uppity humans in their place."

Snord grinned again. "Sounds like fun to me. It's been a few years, but let me find my kit and I'll join you!"

Mordrim held out his hands and waved them. "Snord! No, wait. That's not what I need from you." The dwarf turned and glanced around the shop, making sure no one else was present. "I need to get word to the Shadows. Some special business I need to do."

"Special business?" Snord frowned. "What kind of special?"

"Need some people to disappear," Mordrim said.

Snord's bushy eyebrows pushed together. "Disappear?"

"Yeah, now you see them, now you don't? Disappear."

Snord frowned. "What kind of people? You know I'll help if I can, but there are some things I don't know nothing about and don't want to be involved in."

Mordrim turned his head to look at his friends standing around him. He turned back to Snord and raised one of his own eyebrows to let the man interpret what he wished.

"Oh! That kind of disappear! I thought you meant the permanent kind
." Snord chuckled and looked the companions over. "They're all armed and don't look to be slaving. All right, I'll put the word out. Head on over to the Deadtroll Inn and somebody will stop by. Unless it's me—then I'm just looking for a drink with an old friend."

Mordrim chuckled and clapped the countertop. "A fine day to you, old friend. Hurry over
. I'll buy that drink."

"You're damn right you will
! Business is slow these days!"

Mordrim chuckled and led his friends back out of the sh
op. Once the door was shut, the dwarf set a new course for the tavern. Alto kept his questions to himself until they entered and found a table near a wall.

"Disappear?" Alto questioned once they'd sat down.

Mordrim grinned. "That's the plan, isn't it? We're going to make some people disappear and get our own disappeared people back."

Patrina frowned. "Mordrim, what sort of work did you do when you lived down here?"

"I was a smith, my lady."

"I know that, and you're a fine one at that."

The dwarf nodded his head to show his thanks. "Got tired of the heavy taxes on what I made. Our mines are surrounded by Shazamir, forcing us to deal with them as our only customers. The prices aren't fair and most of my kin live poor because of it. I reckoned it was time that we found some new lands. Then I started paying attention to the stories told to children about where some of us came from. The mines in the north. That's when I knew I had to try something different."

"So who is Snord?" Alto asked.

"Snord can't see worth a damn anymore," Mordrim said. "But he still thinks he's got the eyes and body of a dwarf fifty years younger. He's a little addled too, I think. But he has connections to smuggle and sell things without the Shazamir knowing a thing about it."

"How is that going to help us find these Stalkers?" Garrick asked.

"Snord? He won't. It'll be whoever he puts us in touch with who can help us out. Whether they want to or not."

"I'm guessing, 'not'," Alto said.

Mordrim grinned. "That's when it gets fun."

Alto was about to chuckle when he spotted someone moving between tables. He stood up just as the short figure stepped through a door and disappeared. His friends rose with him, each looking to see what had bothered him. Alto waited a moment and then shook his head and sat back down. The others followed suit, releasing their grips on their weapons.

"Sorry, thought I saw somebody I knew," Alto said.

Mordrim's eyes narrowed. "Who? Somebody from the palace?"

Alto sighed. He shook his head. "No, it was nothing, I'm sure."

"Who did you think you saw?" Patrina asked, reaching over and taking his hand to give it a squeeze.

Alto smiled as a little color came to his cheeks. "Bonky."

Patrina's eyes widened. "Thork's
assistant?"

"That stupid goblin?" Mordrim muttered.

Alto nodded to both of them.

"There are some goblins here," Mordrim admitted. "Not that they do much, mind you. They don't even make good beggars
. People kick 'em out of the way."

"That must have been it then," Alto said. "He looked familiar, but there was nothing odd about him."

"Odd?" Patrina asked.

"Yeah, stripes on his skin. Dots. Rainbow
-colored hair. The things that Thork's potions do to him."

Patrina laughed and nodded. She remembered her last encounter with Thork. He'd turned Bonky pitch black thanks to a bad reaction to a new potion and the sun. "Probably not then," she agreed.

Alto nodded but couldn't stop himself from looking around. Was Thork nearby, just waiting for them to find him so he could help? They needed it, this time as much as ever.

Chapter 15

While they waited
, they ate a heavily spiced stew sparsely filled with fish and snake. Hard bread accompanied the bowls of stew, turning the dining experience into a workout for their mouths. Garrick and Mordrim washed their dinner down with ale while the others stuck with water. Unlike the nicer inn they'd been kicked out of, the Deadtroll Inn had only warm ale.

A few hours passed and Alto was fighting the urge to get up and try something else. He wasn't sure what else, other than looking for beggars or trying to catch a pickpocket in the act, but he felt anything would be better than wasting more time waiting. He turned to Patrina to voice his thoughts when he noticed that a man had approached the table without anyone's notice and was quietly speaking with Mordrim.

Alto nudged Patrina and nodded, earning a startled gasp from her. The man looked up at them and offered a smile that didn't reach his dark gray eyes. He turned his attention back to Mordrim and, after a few more quiet exchanges, he stood up and slipped away back through the crowded common room.

"What was that?" Patrina hissed.

"That," Mordrim paused to finish the last of the ale in his cup, "was the man who's going to arrange for us to be smuggled up the Khalalid River."

"What? Why?" Alto asked.

"Because I told him that's what we needed," Mordrim said. "We're not really going to do it. It just gives us a chance to get him alone so we can ask him some real questions."

"Oh
." Alto sat back in his chair. He smiled a moment later. The dwarf's plan was working. "So what do we do now?"

"Now we head to the
River District to meet them," Mordrim said.

"That's a long walk from here," Alto said.

"Now imagine what it's like if you've got short legs!" Garrick teased.

Mordrim shook his head. "I told them we'd be leaving the northman behind."

"You did what?" Garrick balked.

The dwarf chuckled and rose up. "Let's go, boys and
lady. We've a boat to catch that we don't need." The others rose and followed the dwarf, with Garrick staring after them and muttering as he brought up the rear.

The trip south through the city was faster thanks to the reduced traffic of the waning day and the few guard patrols in the city's eastern streets. Mordrim hesitated when they entered the River District
and then spotted some of the landmarks he'd been told to look for. He led them through the streets until they came to a shipping company. The door into the office was shut but Mordrim led them around the back of the building.

Two doors awaited them, one large enough for a wagon to fit through and a second sized for a man. Mordrim rapped on the smaller door, waited a count of three,
and then knocked again. After several seconds passed, the door opened and the same man glanced outside. The street had a few stragglers on it but nobody paid them any attention. He motioned them in.

Once they'd all entered
, the man shut the door behind them. He turned to them and focused on Mordrim. "Can't figure out why a dwarf would want to smuggle a group of humans up the Khalalid. Been trying to figure that out since I left earlier."

"Does it matter?" Alto asked. "As long as we pay, our business is our own."

The gray-eyed man looked at Alto and smirked. "I suppose it is, at that. What are you willing to pay?"

"Name your price
. I'll let you know if it's too much," Alto said. He turned and glanced around, taking in the details of the warehouse as his eyes adjusted. He still couldn't see in the darker shadows but at least a lantern was sitting on a table nearby. The room had no windows to the outside, just the two doors he knew of and a third on a far wall. Two wagons, one covered and one open, rested in the warehouse, as well as several wooden crates and chests.

The man shrugged. "Let's see
. There's six of you—five thousand gold."

Alto's eyes widened. He had no intention of going on a boat ride, let alone paying that much for one. He chuckled as he shook his head. His laugh came to a stop as he stared at the man. "I have a better deal for you."

The smuggler raised an eyebrow. "Let's hear it."

Alto let his hand fall to his sword.
"You tell me what I need to know and I'll leave you alive. You'll be bound and gagged until someone finds you, but alive."