In Your Dreams (57 page)

‘What way?' Ricky said. ‘Don't worry about it. Jump in, before you drown standing up.'

All right
, Paul thought,
might as well.
He didn't like getting wet, though whether he could get any wetter was a moot point, even if he jumped in the sea. He opened the door, moved an axe and a medium-sized can of SlayMore off the seat, and climbed in.

Ricky drove the way he'd have expected, so Paul spent most of the journey with his eyes shut and his fingernails dug into the web of the seat belt. ‘It's all right,' he heard Ricky say eventually. ‘We're here, you can come out now.'

‘Wbbl,' Paul replied. ‘I mean, are we? Good. Um, thanks for the lift.'

Ricky grinned. ‘It wasn't that bad, was it?'

‘No, it was fine,' Paul muttered. ‘Any faster and we'd have arrived before we left, but—'

‘You sound like my mother. What's the time? The clock in this thing doesn't work.'

Not surprised
, Paul thought;
and if you don't know why, ask Einstein.
‘Five past seven,' he said.

‘Fine. Come and have a drink. I know this nice little pub just round the corner.'

Paul hesitated for a moment; he wasn't really in the mood for any of Ricky's dragon-hunting stories, but he could use a drink that he didn't have to pay for. ‘All right,' he said. ‘It's not the Three Tiles, is it? Because they have live jazz on Tuesdays, and—'

‘Not the Three Tiles,' Ricky confirmed. ‘Follow me.'

Ricky's idea of a nice little pub turned out to be a hidden door in the side of a disused warehouse, where you had to knock three times and ask for Chalky; whereupon bolts graunched and hinges creaked, and a tiny little man in a leather jacket with spiked studs on the cuffs let them through. It was at this point that Paul realised that he didn't know all that much about Mr Wurmtoter, and maybe he'd have been better off going home and having a cup of tea. But he followed Ricky down a long corridor and through another small door, and found himself in, for want of a better description—

‘Here we are,' Ricky said. ‘What'll you have?'

—A mead-hall, complete with high rafters, long tables and benches, rush-strewn floor, a long fireplace running the length of the room, and smoke you could carve. ‘Not many in tonight,' Ricky commented, and that was probably just as well, since everyone in the place was shaggy-bearded, mail-clad and armed to the teeth, and as soon as Paul walked into the light they all turned and stared at him. Ricky was networking like a radio station and most of the people he nodded to nodded back, though some of them muttered and turned their backs. They sat down at the end of a bench, and a large red-headed woman slopped down a huge jug and two horns in front of them. ‘What is this place?' Paul whispered.

‘Valhalla,' Ricky replied.

‘Oh,' Paul said. ‘Sort of a theme pub, you mean?'

‘No,' Ricky said. ‘Drink up. The regulars tend to get a bit tense if they see someone not drinking.'

The whatever-it-was in the jug tasted rank, but slightly less alcoholic than ginger-beer shandy. ‘I thought you had to be dead or something,' Paul said.

‘That's right,' Ricky replied, wiping his mouth ostentatiously on his sleeve. ‘At least, you've got to have died in battle, which of course you have. I can put you up for membership if you like.'

‘Thanks,' Paul said, with all the sincerity of a cabinet minister. ‘So, um, you must've—?'

Ricky nodded. ‘Technically, anyway,' he said, ‘breaking into the Underworld to steal the three-headed hound of Hell counts as dying, though they had to refer it to the membership committee. I think it's nice to have somewhere you can get away from the usual crowd.'

Paul drank some more of the whatever-it-was. The taste sort of grew on you, like verdigris on copper.

‘Actually,' Ricky went on, ‘I wanted to have a chat about a couple of things. Mostly, I guess, to say thanks. You were a great help; the business with Judy, and so on.'

‘That's all right,' Paul mumbled, somewhat flustered. ‘I'm just glad someone thinks I did the right thing.'

Ricky frowned. ‘You haven't exactly made yourself popular at the office, I grant you,' he said. ‘I can see that it must be a bit confusing for you, since you're still pretty new to the business.'

‘I'm getting the idea,' Paul replied. ‘Gradually. Benny Shumway explained a bit about it earlier today. It just takes some getting used to, really.'

‘You could say that,' Ricky said, grinning. ‘I've been in the trade – well, a good many years now, anyway, and I still don't know all the rules. You just have to do the best you can, and try and see it from their point of view wherever possible. Take Judy, for instance. Very good example, in fact. On the one hand, she's a total menace; on the other hand, she makes an obscene amount of money for the firm. Obviously, when it comes to the crunch, you have to take a view. From my standpoint, it's fairly clear-cut. If she has her way and the Fey wipe out the human race and take its place, in the long run it's going to have serious repercussions on my corner of the market. Humans need heroes; the Fey don't. They don't use money, hence no banks; no banks, no large accumulations of wealth, therefore no dragons; and dragons make up a good forty per cent of my workload. Sure, by reprofiling and maximising returns I could make up maybe half the shortfall in other areas, such as vampires and the Evil Overlord sector, but it still means a shortfall, and if I don't meet my target come the year-end partners' meeting, I'm going to have some explaining to do. So, basically, one of us had to go, her or me. It's a pity,' he added wistfully. ‘She had a stunning client portfolio in entertainment and politics, and we're bound to lose a fair slice of that regardless of who we get to replace her. Still, it's a hard old world, and you can't make omelettes without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, as we say in the trade.'

Just a moment
, Paul wanted to say;
all that stuff, fighting the Fey, losing Sophie, dying, and it was all just office politics?
He wanted to say it rather a lot, but he knew instinctively that Ricky wouldn't understand what he was making such a fuss about. ‘Oh well,' he said, and refilled his horn from the jug, which was still full to overflowing. Time to change the subject, before he said something he shouldn't. Ricky might have turned out to be no better than the rest of them, but an indebted bastard is rather more use than a resentful one, and offending his only ally on the letterhead probably wasn't a good idea. ‘Funny thing happened earlier,' he said. ‘Mr Tanner's mum asked me to be her baby's godfather.'

‘Is that right?' Ricky turned and looked at him. ‘Congratulations. That's quite an honour. It's well worth keeping in with that crowd, especially in our line of work.'

‘Really?'

‘Oh yes.' Ricky nodded gravely. ‘Not much in the way of dragons, of course, but they do get a lot of pest trouble – cave trolls, gnomes, gremlins and so forth. Nice little filler jobs you can do when things are quiet. And from time to time they have wars, border disputes and so forth. A good goblin war can mean serious billable hours, especially if the other side's got in outside help too. Of course, Dennis has got the goblin sector pretty well in his pocket, being family and all, but it never hurts to have contacts of your own.'

‘I see,' Paul sighed. A couple of tables down, two very large men had started bashing each other with axes. Their armour seemed to be standing up to the blows, and they were laughing. Probably the local equivalent of a friendly game of darts. ‘It's good about Benny Shumway and Mo—' He stopped abruptly, unable to remember whether Ricky – the real Ricky, not Judy in disguise – knew about that yet. Fortunately, Ricky smiled.

‘Yes, I think so,' he said. ‘They'll be good for each other, I think, and if he can find some way of turning her back, that'll be a nice bonus. Though at times I get the impression she's happier as she is. She was a very difficult teenager. Being a car's been mostly a positive experience for her, I think.'

‘Right,' Paul said vaguely, and stood up. ‘Well, thanks for the drink. I think I'll go home now.'

Ricky nodded. ‘I might stay on for a bit,' he said. ‘Never hurts to be seen, you know. Oh, before you go, I've got something for you.'

Paul hesitated, and sat down again. ‘Really?' he said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

‘Here.' Ricky delved into his inside pocket and took out what appeared to be a small silver paperknife. He tapped it three times against the edge of the table, and it grew into a full-sized sword, complete with scabbard. ‘If you're going to stay in the pest-control sector you'll need one of these,' he said, ‘and to be honest, I never did get on with it, so you might as well have it.'

‘Um,' Paul said. He took it reluctantly, as though it was liable to bite. ‘Thanks.'

‘Her name is Skofnung,' Ricky went on. ‘Used to belong to King Hrolf Kraki. Go on, take a closer look. Rather a nice pattern, I think.'

Well, you have to be polite; so Paul gripped the scabbard with his left hand and pulled the blade out an inch or so. To his surprise, it wasn't bright and shiny; the edges were dark brown, with intricate patterns of silver specks and whorls, and the middle was a sort of sea blue. ‘Damascus steel,' Ricky explained, or at least Paul guessed it was meant as an explanation. ‘You never find two the same, which makes it easier, of course.'

All right
, Paul thought,
I'll ask.
‘Makes what easier?'

Ricky narrowed his eyes. ‘Finding her, of course,' he said; then, ‘I forgot, you obviously don't know. It's a living sword, right?'

‘Is it?' Somehow, Paul got the impression that the sword hadn't liked him saying that. ‘I mean right, yes. Obviously.'

Ricky laughed. ‘A living sword,' he said, ‘is special because it has a life of its own – which is good, because it knows what it's doing when in use, so you don't have to. But it does mean you have to find its other half before it's much good for anything, and,' he added, grimacing slightly, ‘I have to admit, I never did find her. And without the other half, of course, it's pretty much useless.'

Paul managed not to sigh, though he really didn't feel in the mood for any more of this sort of thing. ‘Other half,' he said.

‘That's right. A living sword has a human counterpart, and once you find – oh, excuse me,' Ricky said suddenly, and Paul noticed that a huge, ferocious-looking warrior type was standing by the door and waving. ‘Bloke I need to see about something. Look, you hang on to the sword for now, and I'll explain another time. See you at the office tomorrow,' he added, and hurried across the room, leaving Paul sitting bemusedly with a large sword on the table in front of him.

Hesitantly, he picked it up; it was painfully heavy, and he couldn't imagine being able to do anything useful with it, except maybe weigh down an extremely large pile of paper. He considered just leaving it there, but Ricky might notice and be offended. Then he remembered; he picked it up and nudged the side of the table with it three times. At once it shrank – it was like holding a live fish – until it was paperknifesized again. Paul looked at it.
Oh well
, he said to himself,
more junk. Screwdrivers and scout badges and bits of coloured glass, and now this. I'll have to get myself a garden shed to keep it all in
. Still, it was the thought that counted. Presumably.

He managed to find his way out of Valhalla without getting stabbed, walked slowly home and let himself into the flat. It was dark and very quiet, and empty. When he switched on the light, he saw empty spaces where things had been; Sophie must have been there, picked up her stuff and gone. She'd hardly taken anything, but the gaps left seemed huge, unchartable, like the Atlantic before Columbus.

Well
, Paul thought,
here I am.

He found an old shoebox to keep the magic bits and pieces in, sellotaped the lid shut and stuck it on top of the wardrobe, where he wouldn't have to look at it. Then he brushed his teeth, hung up his suit, got into his pyjamas and went to bed.