Lieutenant Arkham: Elves and Bullets (17 page)

“Millions?” I repeat and raise an eyebrow. Blowing millions on two people in a few years is substantial in itself. Not incredible though, to be honest. I caress the alcohol again with my lips and produce a soft slurping noise.

“And if the exiled elf had a child?”

Beron’s expression becomes more animated when he puts the pieces together, following the thread of my questions.

“The hare in the alleyway was a pregnant exile then?” He hits the nail on the head with keen interest, leaving the cigar stub to languish in the ashtray.

“Yeah.”

“Dammit. Ugly business. And odd.”

“What do you mean,
odd
?”

“Assassinating the child of an elf is quite a feat, sonny.”

I can tell there’s more to it.

“Explain.”

“Years ago,” he begins, while he strokes his beard, fixing the middle distance with his gaze, “at a certain point during one of the schism wars, a couple that had been disowned by the… erm, Geno’Atheron dynasty, I think… yes, definitely, Geno’Atheron… had a baby. It caused quite a stir at the time, because people were convinced that elves were practically semi-Gods, so the idea that people who had been expulsed from their own circle could be blessed by a progeny disconcerted everybody. On the other hand, the time was right to break down the walls of superstition. Anyway, all hell broke loose which, along with the unrest produced by religious conflicts, threatened to split the family down the middle.”

“In what way?” I ask while he breaks off to neck yet another glassful.

“There were two schools of thought within the dynasty: some thought that the little girl (little girl? What little girl?) was a tangible sign of the mistake made when the dynasty disowned the couple, and not only that it was wrong, but that they should have actually welcomed them back into the fold; the hardliners, on the other hand, actually accused the parents of having made a pact with the demons. There were a lot of duels between family members.”

“How come you remember something so well that took place centuries ago?”

“Try and understand, kid, at the time the idea that an elvish dynasty could split was pure science fiction. I mean, it would have been if science fiction had existed back then. For the first time, you could see a serious crack in one of the towers in Nectropis.”

I smiled a sinister smile. Obviously, Professor Tubgorne had not always been a teacher. The agreement between the titchy people and the asses, undoubtedly the basis of the modern-day Federation, is still relatively recent in the lives of dwarves of a certain age. There’s a reason why, even today, elderly dwarves use the expression ‘like elves and dwarves’ to mean two things which don’t mix.

“Bet you had a right old time during those years.”

“Oho, you can say that again!” He mimes the blow of a hammer by suddenly dropping his fist.

A hearty laugh.

“What happened in the end?”

“They were reintegrated, but the ‘quasi feud’ was a harsh blow to the dynasty. At that time there weren’t as many asses, and this internal fight had the power to wipe out the Geno’Atherons. The patriarch, who, naturally was a—“

“… hardliner…” I guess, making the dwarf smile.

“… hardliner, exactly. He challenged the current ruler, Shelmerina, to a duel when he found out his faction had mustered under the banners and troops were on the march towards the City to depose him. They’ve made a couple of films about this part of history, though if you ask me, they don’t portray it properly. Anyway,
measured swords and sorceries
is what storytellers used to say, the patriarch was lying in his own blood. A taboo had been broken: the survivors of the apocalypse could die, or even better, they could be killed. It was a disaster for the pointy-eared people, the beginning of the process which led to the agreement. As for the main characters in the story, Shelmerina had no difficulty in regaining his power after this demonstration of power and took the baby under his wing. But the backlash for the Genos was utterly devastating. They used to be the most prominent dynasty before all this business, in fact their spire is the third-highest. Today they hold a miserable five percent of Nexus, and they’re no better than servants to the Feltus.”

He shakes his head, there’s a hint of disbelief in his voice.

I take a minute to take in this new information. A newborn hare can destroy a whole dynasty, great news. Imagine what a half-elf could do. Excellent, Arkham, really. Fantastic. Next time you could go to into the abyss and spit on the devil, what do you think? My headache is thumping on my right temple, barging in like a gatecrasher at a wedding reception.

Beron’s still staring into the middle distance stroking his beard and muttering his favourite slogan, ‘ugly business, ugly business’. He’s clearly feeling the effects of Salamander Breath, but he’d sooner go to bed with an ogre than admit it.

“I’ve come to a damned dead end, once again. All I’ve found out is that this case is even more likely to kill me.”

“Ugly business.” It’s like a beep confirming his presence.

“I’ve got an idea that you’re not going to like.”

He turns around slowly, his eyes are watery from lack of sleep.

“Nooo. How unusual.”

“At the Academy they said there was a renegade from Ecatomb here in the city…”

“
Not again.
Necromancy got you expelled, may the Hammer straighten you out, but you
still
insist. Nothing good will ever come out of that trap, and you should know that better than
anybody
.”

“Beron, not another sermon, do me a favour. The expulsion was what it was. Come on, you know full well that all students carry out experiments. Others got told off and no more than that.”

“You’re right, but you knew you should have been careful, that they were on to you! You, a human, one of the most gifted bastards in recent years, with a scholarship…”

“You don’t need to remind me what happened, okay? Thank you. I’m fine now, I lead a different life and I’m happy all the same, okay?”

I’m lying through my teeth and Beron knows it. His face darkens.

“I know it’s a stupid idea. I know it only too well. But I’m in the shit and I don’t know what else to do.”

Luckily the professor isn’t the type to suggest coming off the case in order to save my arse, otherwise I’d have to come up with a plausible explanation for my insistent suicide attempts. Tubgorne is wrestling with his conscience.

“I don’t know how to contact Screech, but I do know who to ask. Maybe you’ve met him, Dasson, he did alchemy. He was a few years younger than you. Brilliant. He got the Archmagus in just six years after he left the Academy, he invented a formula for producing rejuvenating potions in under six months. Yes, very smart, a but strange mind you. Following the Archmagus he virtually stopped working, he’s enjoying his patent, like I did with mine. He’s got a villa at the top.” He points upwards.

“Of course nowadays the money’s a lot different for patents.”

“Why, did you want a house at the top?”

“I think you’re going to get into a whole new load of trouble, sonny.”

“I know, Beron.”

“Okay.” He gives up. “I’ll give him a ring to let him know you want to see him. When do you think you’ll go?”

I get up from the sofa, careful not to crack my head on the ceiling.

“Okay,” he repeats, with a sigh, “okay.”

Screech. At the Academy nobody knew for sure exactly who he was or why he had that name. A kind of urban legend. Once I was in the Federal Guard I found out it was based on truth. Somewhere, amongst the levels precluded from the law, a Lich is nesting in the middle of a vast web of contacts. Although he himself has never been identified, now and again I and other colleagues stumble upon something which is linked to his organisation. As a non-dead creature, Screech is, himself, an outlaw. Nevertheless, he’s a very different type of gangster from ogres or humans.

In short, he’s a priest.

Ecatomb is, according to one of the few opinions shared by the masses, evil, like evil could be in the real world. Real evil. The history of its origins are still largely unknown, but if you want to believe what the necromancers themselves say about the subject, it all started before the apocalypse, when a coven of great wizards secretly founded the first Lich circle. They believed, just as their contemporary descendants reaffirm, that the afterworld vanished along with the Gods, despite the fact that they hide from the world whether it is based on simple philosophical reasoning or if they also have tangible proof. This, and only this world exists, therefore continuing to stay here is the only thing that really counts. Why or how far are meaningless questions. There are two sacraments in their religion, pact and consecration. When someone enters the cult, they sign a pact by means of one of the most powerful magic rituals known and, from that moment, the devotee knows that at the moment of death he will turn into a non-dead. Just like any pact with the devil there’s a catch: you know you’ll come back, but you don’t know what as. Only those who, during their life span, have achieved sufficient temporal power will enter the ranks of necromancers and receive consecration just after death. As a typology the non-dead are varied and strictly pyramidal, the subordinates permanently shackled to the will of the Lich who administered the pact. A similar wager on the shoulders of every devotee naturally transforms Ecatomb society into a nightmare. For instance, murder is viewed as straightforward pecuniary damage, less serious in fact than the potential crime of tax evasion if the murder is hidden from the state. It goes without saying that it is possible to declare a murder without incriminating oneself; it’s up to the injured party to demonstrate who the culprit is. As bizarre as they are, Ecatomb laws are followed to the letter, and the justice system is the best in the world. The Lichs are not directly involved in the economy or local government, those are battle grounds for the living. They are quite simply
the state
and
the church
, in a single package.

However, unlike the masses, I don’t think Ecatomb is evil because of cruelty of blasphemy. I’m not religious, but I don’t have pre-conceived ideas. Maybe some strange god does exist, who for some strange reason does not reveal himself, but the Lichs could be right. Of course, they claim that the abyss, where I occasionally cast an eye, is merely the avant-garde of nothing, and the spectres who live there are simply the dying echo of the tuning-fork of existence, frankly speaking I find this hard to believe. The thing is, rather than be a slave for ever I’d prefer to disappear completely and end it all. Do they really want to try and make us believe that they aren’t the same ones who decide who boards their boat and who stays on their knees? I refuse to place my eternity in the hands of a corpse. And that’s final. And then, come on: an eternity with a dried-up dick? It’s worse than nothing even when things are going well.

Once they become a Lich, the lucky deceased has to do one thing only: exist forever. What’s even odder is that destroying a Lich is the most serious crime in the Eburn Code, but only if it’s committed by a peer. A living being who destroys a Lich immediately earns himself his place and all the non-dead shackled to his will. Yet nothing stops a Lich from indirectly helping a living being in this endeavour, or to explicitly get him to eliminate a rival. So, even after the consecration, the only guarantee of survival is the power they manage to hold on to in their wizened hands. What’s more, I suspect that if there really was an ‘after’, once you become a non-dead, they wouldn’t accept you anymore, so you have no choice but to linger.

Dasson’s house is, in fact, an enviable villa with its own garden sheltered by the southern edge, on the Sixteenth. Perhaps, from up here during the clearest hours of daylight you could even see the sea. The City can also be a nice place to live, if you can afford to experience it in the right way. The dose I snort before belting my raincoat and ringing the doorbell is just enough to keep me on my feet, so I double it. It’s definitely colder on the upper levels, this gives the affluent residents an excellent excuse to flaunt their fur coats all year round. A female voice welcomes me when I identify myself on the entryphone, under the indifferent gaze of a security camera. The front garden is a simple lawn, cut short, with a few trees and a long table under the protective cover of a gazebo. Obviously an area devoted to outdoor parties, it looks as though it could easily accommodate thirty or so guests at once. At the doorway of this two-story house, a pleasant-looking maid is waiting for me, she forces herself to smile despite the fact that she is visibly suffering due to the harsh nights high up. Inside, the house is just as luxurious as that belonging to the mummies the day before. Probably, at a rough guess the old bag’s furniture was more valuable than the pieces here, but these furnishings, with their modern design and the airy spaces, create a feeling of vibrant energy, much more appealing than the oppressive weight of period wood, crystal and antique crusts.

Dasson greets me in shorts and a shirt in his games room, heated to sauna conditions, where a weapon is hanging in the vitreous stasis of paused, imprisoned within a wall-mounted screen of heroic proportions. Maybe erotic, for its owner. Pandaesque bags under his eyes, he sticks his hand out.

“It’s a real pleasure to meet you,” he says in a perky tone, but with thinly-veiled fatigue, while I shake it. “I heard a lot about you during my first years at the Academy, and Master Tubgorne holds you in very high regard.”

“Beron is very fond of me, he always overdoes it…”

“Don’t be so modest! Can we dispense with formalities, Mr Arkham?”

“Of course.”

“Praise the Lords, I hate social formalities. Especially between old schoolmates. Let’s sit down and have a drink, then we can chat a little.”

Dasson moves the pad off the leather sofa and starts rolling himself a cigarette, holding the filter between his lips. Judging by the look in his eyes, I bet that when there isn’t a cop in the house he spices up the tobacco with a personal specialty of dubious legal status.