The Dragon's Eye

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My office was over a bakery in the middle of city near the wall on the south side, the clapboard sign with its open staring eye creaking gently in the breeze from the river. 'The Dragons Eye'. Why I named it? Because my mother used to tell me stories of Dragons who could see everything it wanted to with its magical eyes. Never meet any Dragon nor do i want to. But I liked the name so it stuck.

A man was waiting outside my door at the top of the stairs. "You are examining the disappearance of Mr. Fredrick Shumack?" he said.

"What's it to you if I am?" I said, unlocking the door.

He followed me into the office.

"I represent the State Mutual Monetary Carriers."

Oh, no, I thought. "Monetary Carriers?"

"Yes indeed. Mr. Shumack has a substantial policy, amounting to perhaps 140,000 sheatles."

I lowered myself gingerly into my chair. "Bonded Monetary Carriers?"

"Yes, of course, bonded. Certainly."

Carriers, dammit, Carriers. This was real trouble. I'd never worked a Carriers case before, and I didn't want to start now. Look at it this way, a lawyer who'd once shared a bottle with me had explained things. When you can ride for an hour and get to a new place where there's a totally new set of laws and jurisdiction, when people disappear without a trace all the time, either because they're dead or just because they want to disappear, when you need to buy a policy in one city and know it'll be recognized someplace else, you've got to have one key thing. You've got to have some widespread authority nobody's going to argue with.

Monetary Carriers was a contract with one of the Lords for money and this Shumack has a lot of money which was yet to be paid. Maybe he was not the 'good guy' everyone thought he was.

The tweedy man crossed his legs. "Unfortunately, our organization is understaffed and - " (he gave a delicate cough) "chronically overworked, so it is our policy to rely on local assistance for claims investigation whenever possible."

"Now wait a minute," I said. "Let's clear a few things here. I -"

"I apologize if I have not made myself clear." With his faded tweed cloak and his slack pale face, he could have been any nameless functionary buried in a bureaucrat's coat. His voice, though, had the uncompromising tone of someone who always got his way, on his own terms. Even if he wasn't dangerous himself, he had to have big-time friends. "Whenever an investigation is in progress," he told me, "we employ its findings."

"Come on, at least you've got to pay a royalty on - "

"No. Consider the effort a tax on your business practice. You may also consider it a licensing test. We expect any investigator to comply with our own standards for proof-of-claim."

"Standards?" I said. "What do you mean your standards? I have been in this job like I - "

"Then you will have no difficulties," he said, "will you. A causal chain or other validator of legitimacy must be demonstrated. Cases of fraud or collusion are punishable, both on the part of the beneficiaries and the investigator."

I'd never seen one of these policies, of course, but that wasn't going to be any excuse. If you got noticed by the Lords, You may aswel go and meet your loved ones. It may turn to be last time you saw them in this life. I'd always heard that the best thing to do was keep your mouth shut and do whatever they wanted, and hope they'd forget about you when you were finished. But what would it take to get finished?

"What if this, ah, investigator can't come up with a definite solution? Sometimes nobody can tie up all the pieces, no matter how good they are."

"Ah," he said."Hmm. Indeterminate cases are not desirable. With proper validation and under special circumstances, they may be, ahem, reluctantly accepted. Quite reluctantly."

"Okay," I said, "I get it. I've got no choice. I'll do what you want, I'm not an idiot. So what kind of Monetary Carrier does Shumack have, anyway?"

"Life" he said, "Of course."

Shit, this meant that if this Shumack guy did not return the money, he will be dead.

"Don't you have ways of knowing whether he's still alive?"

He turned up one corner of his mouth in what might have been a smile, or maybe just a nervous tic. "Searching spells is not one of our patron's virtues. These things take time and energy, and attention." He got to his feet.

"Just one more question," I said.

"Yes?"

"Who took out the Monetary Carrier, and when?"

He gave me the tic again. "The wife," he said, "of course. One year ago."

"Right," I said. "How will I get in touch with you?"

"I will be in touch with you. Good day." The door closed behind him. I opened the desk drawer and took out the unfinished flask, then decided to just hit my head against the wall for a few minutes. I turned around, and while I looked for a spot on the wall that didn't already have a dent the door creaked open behind me again.

"What now?" I said, but this time the man who'd come in was different.

With a cap pulled low enough over his face to rest on the bridge of his nose, and a generally squat frame, the guy looked like no further than second cousin away from a giant toad. "Da time ta see de boose is now," he said.

"Yeah," I said, "da boose." I forgot about the flask and followed after him out the door.

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We wound around local streets, heading generally back toward the docks, and finally entered a shuttered house where we descended to the basement. Beneath an old rug was an iron grate. The guy rolled up the edge of the rug, being careful not to disturb a slender thread that ran from one frayed corner off into the wall. Then he turned his back, did something behind him in the shade, and waited. Running water gurgled below the grate, gradually growing fainter. Finally the grate clanged and squeaked open. The edge of a ladder was revealed, leading down into a big pipe that I hoped wasn't the sewer. A concealed mechanism drained the last swirls of water away as we reached the base of the ladder. Next to the ladder a section of the stone facing wall had opened, revealing a crawlway. Bending low, I followed the guy into the wall, through several ascending turns thick with slime and algae, and up out of the garbage into a small torch lit room.

Three other exits led down through the floor or into the walls in a similar manner as the one we'd entered through. Four men got up from a table and pushed me against the wall. One of them frisked me, two others kept their hands on their swords, and the final one nervously slapped a large cudgel against his palm. They didn't find anything; as I kept finding reasons to reiterate I wasn't an idiot. The thugs moved aside and one grunted, tilting his head in the direction of a wall tapestry. I moved the tapestry aside and went through the concealed door behind it.

The new room had walnut wall-panels, a bookcase filled with leather1 bound volumes, and a large desk with a man seated next to it. The man was wearing a dressing gown embroidered with ghouls and other dark beasts and on his nose he had a pair of spectacles, through which he was studying a ledger-book. He looked mild-mannered enough, and he could be, but generally he wasn't: this wasn't the first time we'd met.

The boss looked up at me, over the tops of the spectacles, and said, "Sit down. What's on your mind?"

"It's not a what," I said, sitting. "It's a who. Fredrick Shumack. Somebody kidnapped him, but it doesn't sound like you."

"Hah," he said. "The kid has a lip." He leafed through his book, alternately watching me over his glasses and glancing down into the book. "Shumack. Here he is." The boss read for a moment. "He's rich, yeah, but it's mostly property, not a lot of cash. He pays his protection dues regular, no trouble there. Kidnap rating's low, so you're right, hah, why should I take him out? Stupid. Whoever did it, stupid. Some people got no business sense." His eyes looked up at me again. "Like to know your own ratings, hah?"

"Sure, except I'm sure it would cost me more than I'm worth to find out. I'm sure you know that, too."

"Hah" he said noncommittally.

"Anyway, that's beside the point," I said. "The one thing I do need is this. You have anything on somebody called The Dark Raven?"

"The what? Dark Raven? You got to be kidding. What are they doing here? It's our turf. Why are they coming in our yard".

I passed him the kidnap note.

"Creeps," he said, studying it. " Punk. Punks all over the place. Whole damn town is crawling with punks."

He glowered at the note, then glowered at me, and then spun the note back at me like a throwing star. Then, for good measure, as I ducked out of the way and let the note chew itself into the back of my chair, he grabbed his ledger book and hurled it across the room. It was big, and heavy for a book, and made a loud thud against the stone wall.

The guards from the room outside the tapestry suddenly appeared and began to drag me out the rest of the way out of my chair. "Turf Wars," the boss yelled, glowering now at everyone in sight. "I hate em. Bad for business. Lousy for everybody. What?"

I had been gargling at him, hoping he would remember me before the boys actually started carving me up. The boss stared at me for a second, then said, "Forget about him, he's all right. Put him down."

They dropped me back across the chair and filed out. I sat up, worked my shoulder around a bit, and worked the kidnap note out of the wood of the chair as I worked on steadying my breathing. "Thanks," I said.

"Yeah," he said which from him passed for an apology. "The Ravens are nasty people. More nasty than us. They don't strike here. It's our yard. No one does that. Bastards!"

"So you think these Ravens kidnapped Shumack and are now holding him for ransom". This job was getting shittier every minute.

Waving his hand, the Boss dismissed my idea "Nah, can't be. We had an arrangement. They don't fuck our property, we do not fuck theirs"

"So you mean that these Dark Ravens did not kidnap Shumack", I asked.

Without removing his eyes from his ledge book, the Boss stated "That's for you to find out". Returning to his chair, the Boss sat down and looked at me" I've got a job you can come along and help. You know Taiza?"

"I've heard of him, never met him." Taiza ran the jetty rackets.

"He's a dope. He thinks he's gonna work with this new king, what's his- name, cooperate with all these fresh mercenaries, end up fencing their loot maybe, I don't know what all. Maybe he's a big enough idiot to work with the Dark Ravens."

"I'm listening."

"I'm gonna take him out," the boss said. "I'm gonna take him out tonight. You want to be there?"

"Yeah," I said,"I do. Thanks again."

"You're with Netoro." He jerked his head at the tapestry. I went through it and told the boys I was with Netero. I followed the one with the cudgel through another tapestry and down a hall.

There were thirty of us, more or less, divided in four teams. I strolled around the assembly room, asking the usual questions, until we moved out. Night had fallen by the time the first two teams sloshed off into the sewers; sometimes I think more activity and commerce in Rantio Ovaran takes place in the sewers than overhead in the streets.

Nevertheless, the bunch of us were under Netero headed into the streets with the sorcerer. She was up in the front, next to Netero, helices of fine blue lines making gloves around her gesturing hands as she walked. The blue shapes left a slowly fading trail behind her in the air. The clamor of some riot a neighborhood or so to the north came intermittently to us through the tangled alleys. There was no sign of the Guard, though, and I wondered if the boss had managed to convince somebody to concentrate on other areas for this particular evening. A tendril of river fog curled around a building ahead of us and up our street.

We entered the fog, and Netero stopped the team to confer with the magician. The magician gestured a few times, almost lost from my view in the fog, cocked her head to listen to nothing, and nodded. Netero motioned us on. We crept one block, exiting and then reentering the fog, turned right, and moved down an alley. Netero touched the shoulder of a man holding a bow. The man fitted an arrow and shot. The arrow turned into a shadow and disappeared into the mist. This was followed half-a-second later by a soft clunk and rattle, and then the thunk of a falling body. The magician nodded again and whispered to Netero. "Around the next corner," Netero said. "The house with hanging plancards. All ready? Okay, go."

We spread out and padded quickly around the corner. Shadows dark against the light mist flitted over the rooftops from other directions. They hit the roof as we hit the front. Steel abruptly clashed. I paused to let my teammates do their thing, then charged through the crowd and hit the door shoulder-first. The door burst easily open onto a courtyard with other forms already struggling there. I charged through them too, aiming for the inner door.

Shouts of "No mercy for traitors" and "Death to the usurper!", our attempt to disguise our origin by implicating local malcontents, came from behind, above, and below, indicating that the sewer teams had reappeared as well. I grappled with the inner door and it sprang open.

A robed functionary scuttled past down the interior hall, looking frantically in my direction. I grabbed him by the collar and said, "The Dark Raven."

"I know nothing," the man said, trying to faint, so I hit him over the head with the flat of my sword. It went like that for awhile. Then I found Taiza. Taken totally unprepared and with all his escape routes cut off, Taiza was trying to make the best of a hopeless situation. He was drunk. I wedged myself into the closet with him and dragged him to his feet. Jugs rolled off his chest and shattered on the floor.

"Taiza!" I said.

"Hwazigah?" he said, eyelids sagging.

"The Dark Raven, Taiza. The Dark Raven!" I said, yelling it into his ear.

"A bad, a bad guy," Taiza said, and started to snore. I shook him. Then I broke the neck off a jug he'd apparently missed in the confusion and poured the contents over his head. Taiza opened his eyes and said, "Wha?"

I put the tip of my award where his crossed eyes could focus on it. "The Dark Raven, Taiza."

"Gemmy outa here."

"Tell me about the Dark Raven."

"You get me outta here first."

I slapped him across the jaw. "Tell me why I should bother," I said. Taiza's head was clearing. "Dark Raven, yeah. This guy from upriver someplace. Told me he was with the Dark Raven's. Now he works solo. Had this idea. He'd make cash and a good-guy image at the same time, snatching rich rats"

Maybe his head wasn't that clear after all. "Rich rats?"

"Rich scum." Taiza paused to cough for breath. "Guys with lots of dough who got it by being scum. People nobody would miss, be glad to see them go"

"So he came to you. What did you tell him?"

"I'm no pence," Taiza said. "I did not tell him anything".

"Where did he go?"

"I dunno. He was supposed to come back when he had results."

"Anybody else know about it?"

Taiza smirked and breathed a foul breath in my face.

"My partner," he said.

I rested the edge of my sword along his throat. "Who?"

Taiza kept smirking. "Get me out of here or you'll never know."

I hesitated. Then, with a chorus of "No collaboration!" a bunch of my new friends burst into the room behind us. Taiza looked over my shoulder at them, glanced back at me, and lunged toward my blade. I couldn't believe a survivor type like Taiza would go so far as to impale himself, but just in case I pulled the sword out of his reach. "You're a sap," he yelled at me as they dragged him away.

I spent a few minutes with his ledgers. Taiza kept records so lousy you couldn't figure out a thing, which surely meant, from his perspective, they were some pretty fancy accounting. Still, I was able to tell that he'd done a lot of business moving hot goods, goods that had started out in warehouses on the jetty. I couldn't find out which warehouses, but I made a list of the stuff. One of Netero's people arrived to take charge of the books, so I wiped off my sword and went home.

A messenger woke me in the middle of the night with a note from Gaizi.

New message received.

Ransom drop tonight.

Gazi, always maniacally brief, apparently had things under control. I went back to sleep.

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I spend the next morning running down the list of business rivals Shumack's wife had given me. None of them had anything bad to say about him, and none of them seemed to have anything to hide. None of them had missed any of the hot warehouse goods Taiza had entered in his ledger books, either. It wasn't until I was finishing up with the fourth name on my list that I suddenly wised up. I asked the guy for his own rundown of Shumack's competitors.

The names he gave weren't on my list.

Their stories were even more interesting than the ones from the list of Shumack's wife. They knew Shumack better. They knew him well enough to know he'd been getting upset. He seemed to be in lot of trouble about money. He needed money. That was strange. If a man who apparently had no money to return to the Lords than why would someone kidnap him? He may have no money to give them as ransom.

Surely the so called Dark Raven gang ex gang member would know about it before he kidnapped Shumack.

One thing which really interested me was the stories of some of his oldest competitors. During his youth, Fredrick Shumack was infamous for his cut throat mentality. He stirred a lot of trouble in his home town. Some say he escaped from there before the Lord of that place killed him for laundering money. Maybe he deserved to be kidnapped after all.

Then I wasted a few hours talking to fireneedle dealers. The fireneedle had been a fav item a few seasons before. After the initial enthusiasm, people realized that the needles wore out much too fast to be of real use, and in any case weren't good for anything besides graffiti. They would write on walls, metal, pavement, indeed on anything but paper and parchment. Paper and parchment they would ignite. Flashy but impractical, and occasionally downright dangerous.

One minor sorcerer was still making the things, selling some out of the stall in front of his home and a few others to local merchants. Demand had settled down to maybe a dozen pens a month, so he was able to tell me quickly where each one of them had gone.

The second merchant he sent me to was a hit.

"I didn't see his face. A hooded man. He was never alone. Always with another one. Maybe his wife considering its size" She sneered at me and tried to sell me a fish.

The guy had bought the pen three days before, which fit.

______________________________________________

I went back to the jetty to hunt up Assan. When I found him, I wished I hadn't looked. In close I could see the grayish peeling skin and a rotten stench emitting from his corpse. Assan was dead for a long time - at least a day. A saber pierced through his rib cage pinning him to the wooden columns of the jetty. Somebody had gotten his fingers around Assan's throat. The marks of the fingers remained, and something sharp on one of the fingers had torn open his carotid. Damn kid, warned him he was going to get caught. Didn't listen.

As I gazed down at Assan I became aware of another man gazing down next to me. It was the representative of the Overan Mutual Monetary Carriers.

"You are making progress?" he asked.

"Absolutely," I said to Assan. "Lots of progress."

"Will we get paid?"

"Without knowing the exact terms of Shumack's policy, I don't know. You might."