Gathering of the Titans: The Tol Chronicles Book 2 (2 page)

Forced rebuilding does offer some opportunity for improvement of, or correction of flaws in, previous architectural designs. His Majesty Aspet had essentially opened the Royal Treasury for the reconstruction effort, so the Royal Engineering Corps after consultation with former tenants and local officials were able to go about restoration efforts carefully and methodically. For every building restored or rebuilt, a comprehensive historical profile was assembled, along with suggestions for changes in the new version and desired additional features. The cost estimates were then compared with the final idealized structure and compromises were made when necessary to keep the project within budget.

Once construction began, it proceeded in most cases fairly rapidly. Virtually every construction firm and team in Tragacanth, a small number from Galanga, and even a select few from as far away as Lardonica, were fully engaged in the effort. The highways, carriage lines, and ports thrummed with activity around the clock. While the vile attacks by Namni and Pyfox were horrific in terms of loss of life and property, they were good for the Tragacanthan economy and by extension the economy of Esmia in general.

As with most any large-scale undertaking, there were setbacks. One of these was the discovery, during excavation for a new high- rise building foundation and basement on the extreme eastern edge of Fenurian, of the dome of what appeared to be a gigantic mausoleum. The architectural style of the structure did not match that of any known civilization, past or present; it was therefore deemed of highest cultural significance and all work halted.

At length it was decided to relocate the high-rise entirely and designate the plot where the dome was found an Ancestors’ Graveyard. Archaeologists were afraid to penetrate the dome for fear of offending the race whose ancestors were buried here. The only alternative for scholarly study was to excavate all the way down to the entrance. It was not known on which side of the structure this entrance would be located, and there simply was not enough money available given the current climate to fund such a significant dig. So the mystery, for now, remained.

The construction effort in Tragacanth was conducted on a grand scale: so grand, in fact, that laborers from all over N’plork jumped at the opportunity to join in. The tremendous influx of temporary workers took its toll on the limited number of Border Permeability Reduction agents. While the vast majority of people coming in were honest, hard-working folks who just wanted to better the lives of themselves and their families by taking advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, there were enough ne’er-do- wells and slackers, and unfortunately a small number of predatory opportunists, that edict enforcement had to double their shifts in some areas to deal with the ones who got past BPR.

One of the least savory of all these opportunist immigrants was a half-ogre who went by the sobriquet ‘Sticker.’ He was, as the moniker suggests, rather adept with and fond of the use of weapons with sharp points. He kept half a dozen on his person at all times and reveled in their cleaning, polishing, and display to any and all. He being no fool, however, the knives were cleverly concealed when any of the edict enforcement persuasion was about: except on the very rare occasions when one of those was his target. This generally was followed by an immediate and hasty relocation to less hazardous climes.

It was one of these bloody encounters that triggered Sticker’s visit to Tragacanth, in fact. He had until recently kept residence in the balmy southern port city of Prilzondra in Asmagon. After a tête-à-tête turned sour with a beach cop on the take, Sticker buried a 20cm planar concave blade between his opponent’s shoulders. Whether the cop lived or died, Sticker did not know, or care. What he
did
know was that hanging around would be bad for his health in either case, so he and his close associates jumped aboard a tramp freighter headed up the coast and hopped off again at Qoplebarq, the last port of call before the freighter turned east for Zilond in Spleroste.

From Qoplebarq they made their way at last across the breadth of Tragacanth to the outskirts of Fenurian, where enormous tent and skid-cabin settlements had sprung up to house the workers virtually rebuilding the city from the ground up.

“Whatta we doin’ in this dump, boss?” asked one of Sticker’s henches: Dross, a kobold.

“We gotta raise some cash for a scheme I got worked up.”

“What kind of dough you think we can score in a place like this?”

“Calamity brings recovery, my friend, and recovery means money. Tons of it, all flowing in at once and so difficult to track. All we have to do is put ourselves in the path of that money and pick off a bit here and there. Not enough at a time to raise any alarms. After a while it will add up.”

“What we gonna do with all that dough?” asked his other lackey, a hobgoblin named Slag.

“We are going to use it to buy some...equipment that will net us a very large haul. The largest ever, in fact. It will enable us to steal a very well-loaded armored dray.”

“An armored dray heist! I ain’t been in on one o’ them in years!”

“Ah, but the money in the dray is only a side benefit,” said Sticker.

“I ain’t following. We gonna sell the dray to somebody for even more or somethin’?” asked Dross.

“No, no. I will be placing something else in the dray for safekeeping that we will ransom for a staggering sum. Enough to allow us all to retire in luxury.”

“What are you going t’ hork that’s worth that much dough?”

“Not what,
who
. A cop, by the name of Tol.”

“Why would anybody pay that much for a
cop
?”

“He also happens to be a Knight of the Crimson and, more germane, the king’s brother.”

“We’re going to
snatch
the king’s brother? Ain’t that a little risky?” asked Slag.

“All enterprises of true worth involve a modicum of risk. The risk here is yet small in comparison with the payoff.”

“You got somethin’ in partic’lar against this cop?”

“Oh, yes. His interference cost me the best operation I ever ran. It was in South Sebacea, Goblinopolis. I had an outfit that repaired betting machines in casinos: all types. We set them up in a special way such that they would only jackpot when someone carrying a tiny transponder pulled the handle or whatnot. The best tech I had—the one who came up with the idea for and built the transponders—was a gnome named Buzzy. That little smekker could build anything. If it involved technology he did it, and did it well. He didn’t ask no questions, neither: just did his job.”

Dross shrugged, “So what went south, boss?”

“As time went on, I paid Buzzy better and better, ‘cause he was raking in the dough for me right and left. Some nights we’d bring in 50K. I guess I paid him too well, though, because somewhere along the line he developed an expensive drug habit. I think it was lickin’ some smekkin’ toadstools or whatever they do down in those Lardonican border towns. Anyways, one day he got totally stoned on his little gnomish butt and wandered into a casino we didn’t have a contract with. He had one of the transponder sets with him and tried to force open a machine so’s he could stick the coin slot trigger in there and collect. Of course they caught him and called the cops. This Tol smekker shows up and not only collars Buzzy, but figures out my whole scheme in, like, twenty minutes. I had to drop everything and run for the border toot sweet. Buzzy got six years; out in three, but somehow he got cleaned up in the joint and went to a polytechnic after he got sprung. He’s a smekkin’ engineer in one of those secret factories in the mountains, last I heard.”

“How you gonna get this Tol in the right place to snatch ‘im?”

“I’m still workin’ on it. By the time we scrape enough cash together here, I’ll have it all mapped out.”

“So, what’s the scam gonna be?” asked Slag, who had wandered off to proposition some nearby females without success and just limped back up.

“Well, you see those supply drays comin’ in?” answered Sticker, “They are crammed full of valuable commodities that will fetch a tidy sum on the black market.”

“I ain’t seen no black market here, boss.”

“We’re about to start one. We do that by buying off one of the drivers to drop his load in a place more...convenient for our purposes. I leased a small warehouse over there about a kilometer. Once we get a steady supplier, we’ll expand into larger quarters and start raking in some serious dough.”

“You sure this’ll work, boss?” asked Dross a little doubtfully.

“Of course it will work. I’ve set up this identical operation after two major sea storms in Lardonica and a wildfire I started myself that burned a sizable swath of the southern coast of Asmagon. Nothin’ to it, once you get your rhythm.”

He put his arms around the henches’ shoulders, “There’s a world of meaningful profit waitin’ for us here, my friends. Let us now reap that which we did not sow.”

in which Tol and Selpla discover one another in depth

The cherish-fruit wine was delicious. Most everything about that evening was delicious, to be perfectly honest, and what wasn’t delicious was intriguing. The intriguing part was that Selpla actually
did
have some additional information on Morianella—information that seemed to corroborate part of what Plåk had told them.

“I came across this small collection of copies of manuscripts pulled up in a chest by some deep-sea fishermen dredging the sea floor for slime rays: you know, the kind they use to make industrial adhesives,” she said, as they curled up together on the sofa in her parlor.

“I heard tell that in Litria—mostly Grosyem, I think—they cut the eye stalks and fin warts off those things and eat them with seaweed,” Tol interjected, “Charge a ridiculous amount of money for them, too. I’d rather snack on my own fried toe fungus,”

Selpla wrinkled her nose. “I don’t find either very appetizing. Anyway, these manuscripts were apparently ledgers and journals from the government offices in Morianella. One of them, which I have a second-generation copy of here, actually has the minutes of a meeting taken by the city council, or whatever they called themselves, shortly before the disaster. I had an ancient languages scholar translate it to Goblish for me; that’s the part written in red.”

Tol held sheets up in the light and read out loud. “Archmage contracted to remove harbor debris asked for a score of days to accomplish, due to safety concerns. Council inquired if any quicker methods existed, as two large vessels were on their way from Spleroste and would have to wait offshore for an unacceptable period if the clearing took that long. Council voted seven to two to approve faster procedure, with understanding that it posed more risk.”

He laid the papers on a table. “Wow. Looks like things did go down the way Plåk said. I guess I’ll have to downgrade his case file from murder to unintentional people-slaughter.”

“That will be a great relief to him after nine hundred years, no doubt.”

They both laughed.

“Nine hundred years,” Tol continued after a moment’s silence, “It’s always amazed me that he remembers anything at all from that long ago. I’ve only lived five percent that long and my brain is already so full of memories I don’t think there’s room for much more.”

Selpla got that look on her face all males, no matter the species, innately recognize. “I hope you have room for at least one more,” she said in a low, husky voice while pulling her pretty laced chemise over her head. “I’ll try my best to make it worth the storage space.”

Tol picked her up by the waist and carried her effortlessly over to the strategically-positioned daybed nearby. “I’ve already evicted some useless stuff about my first-grade teacher’s bad fashion sense to make room.”

The next morning found Tol still there. After breakfast they both decided that if this was to go on any longer they’d better do the ‘getting to know you’ thing and be done with it.

“I’ll start, I guess,” Selpla announced over the rim of her cup, “As you probably are already aware, being a detective and all, my father is a wealthy architect named Erminian. He designed a lot of the larger buildings in Goblinopolis, Cladimil, and Dresmak, not to mention Xovcastra in Asmagon, Erolossma and Woklopen in Solemadrina, Zilond in Spleroste, Yiks Island in Frespiola, Rebrugge in Hividz, and a bunch more. He even designed the newest wing of the Royal Complex for your brother.”

“Ah yes, the ‘Aspet loves Tragacanth’ wing. It’s got dioramas of historical events, famous places, busts and paintings of famous people, and so on. It’s sort of secondary schola history class all in one shot. Or so he tells me. I haven’t actually been there.”

“I heard there’s a diorama devoted to you shutting down Namni and Pyfox, too.”

“Really? Who would want to see that? All I did was smash an ugly statue that deserved to die.”

“Apparently it was heroic enough to get you knighted. Must have been pretty significant.”

“You were there, too. How heroic did it appear to you?”

“I couldn’t really see much over Kurg and Lom.”

“Oh, well,” Tol shrugged, “Those are the breaks. So, how did you get from spoiled rich kid to celebrity reporter?”

“I have three brothers, all older: Ikren, Fatuhl, and Basik. All three of them became architects—graduated from Tropsalla Technical College, up the street. They’re spread out all over the world now: Ovinis, Rublosq, and Spleroste, respectively, last I heard: all doing their thing quite successfully.”

“You didn’t feel the urge to design buildings, eh?”

“I tried my hand at it, believe it or not. I am just not the architect type. My buildings looked like something that might spring up out of the cesspool in The Effluent: oddly-shaped and probably impossible to build.”

“I’d be willing to bet you’re better at that sort of thing than
I
am. I can’t draw a straight line with
two
rulers.”

She giggled. “Straight lines played no part in my designs, I can promise you. So anyway, I was the black woolbeast of the family in several ways. I was the only female, as my mother died when I was four; I was the only non-architect; and I was not at all a good student, whereas my brothers were Dean’s List all the way. I did attend universitas on and off for years—I went through most of the majors in the catalog, in fact—but I think it broke my father’s heart when I finally decided to take my degree in journalism at Loca Arts Institute instead of mathematics or one of the sciences at Tropsalla Tech. He did pay for my college, true, but my graduation party was nothing like the ones my brothers got. There are a lot of architects in my father’s contact database; not so many journalists.”