The Dragon's Eye

"When will I know?"

"Tonight," I said, "sounds like a good bet."

He inclined his head at me and stepped away. Since I was already in the area, I stopped in to see Azur, the manager at Shumack Cargo. The man was without his fist-sized sharp-jeweled ring.

"Had some trouble, I see," I said to him. One of his eyes was red and purple and swollen shut, and his knuckles were scraped raw. He looked as if he got dressed in a hurry.

"With the Centurions" said Azur. "Hounding me, they were, mercenaries hounding me, me with a reputation in this city."

"Right. Mrs. Shumack got another note this morning, did you hear?"

"Good news that must be good news. My friend's return must be near. The two of us, Shumack and me, like brothers."

"So you said," I said. "I'm going to make the ransom drop tonight."

"I must know the outcome as soon as possible."

"As long as you mention it, you can hear it direct. Drop by Shumack's house tonight around midnight."

"Midnight. I surely will be there." Azur smiled.

"What happened to your ring?" I asked.

"What ring?" Azur asked. Seeing his face he did seemed he did not know which ring I was talking about.

"The mammoth sized ring, did they take it"

"Oh that, yeah, nasty buggers"

I nodded and left. "Be there at midnight" I said as I rounded the corner.

_________________________________________________

I went to Shumack's myself and settled accounts with his wife. She was holding up remarkably well under the strain, tried flirting with me, more seriously this time, and everything.

I took Gazi aside and discussed things with him, and then he took his sword and left.

I had never seen that morning's note, so I examined it to pass the time. It was fireneedle on iron again. When I compared it to the first one, though, the script was slightly different. I showed it to Mrs. Shumack.

"You ever see this handwriting before?" I asked her.

She held it close to her face and studied it carefully, then looked up at me, her clear blue eyes wide and guileless. "No, no, I'm certain I've never seen this before," she said. "Is it important?"

"Not really," I said.

At dusk a messenger arrived with the last note. The messenger didn't know anything, he'd just been handed the note on a street corner with an pence coin, and after handing it over he scurried quickly off into the dark without even asking for a tip.

The note read:

Pack the money in two sacks. At eight the detective will take the

sacks and walk to the corner of Avenue of the Fifth Great Flood and

Brewer Street. He will come alone.

The intersection was in a shabby section of the jetty district. We prepared the loot, and at eight I left the house. Tacked to a wall at Fifth Great and Brewer was a folded cloth. Inside the cloth was another copper plate. The inscription told me to go to the Haal Traders jetty, which was about a three-minute walk away. At the jetty, yet another note instructed me to go down a ladder and put the sacks into a dinghy moored at the base. It was about time to put the sacks down somewhere; twenty thousand shettles could get pretty heavy on you.

The note also suggested I wait at the bottom of the ladder for the next half-hour or so. I put the bags in the boat; a cable tied to the boat drew tight and pulled the boat away into the shadows under the jetty next door.

When I decided I'd rested long enough I climbed the ladder and went back to Shumack's house. As soon as I walked through the door Shumack's wife pounced. I'd had trouble dragging a useful word out of her for two days, and now she'd finally decided to talk.

"Did you give them the money? Where's the money now, didn't you get it back? Where's my husband? What -?"

"Shut up," I told her. "I only want to say the whole thing once, and I'm not going to say it until everybody's here."

"Where's my husband?"

"He's coming." I said as I brushed passed her into her house.

She was dumb folded. Rushing past me into the street she started scanning left and right. Not finding her husband anywhere she returned and sneered at me "Where is he?".

"He will come". I knew her and her husband too well by now, not that there was that much to know. The manager Tamazin Azur arrived followed shortly after by Gazi. He gave me a very slight nod and sat down by the door.

"Now will you tell me -" said Shumack's wife.

"Not yet," I said. "That's not everybody."

"My husband. Right?" cried out Mrs Shumack.

"You will see" was all I told and turned back towards the door. I was in no mood to answer any of their questions, any more.

The wife and Azur both started. "What are you talking about?" Azur said.

"What I said," I said. "We're waiting for somebody else."

Mrs. Shumack looked around nervously, at everything and everybody except Azur. Exactly at midnight, several minutes later, there was a final knock on the door. It was the guy from the Carriers Company.

I stood up and started to talk. "Shumack's not dead," I said, mostly addressing his wife. " Shumack was not kidnapped by The Dark Raven,"

Turning my attention back to the couple, "Mr. Shumack, care to remove your disguise. " staring at Azur "Your times up"

Both of them were shocked. "What are you -" said Azur

Cutting his rambling "Please Mr. Shumack, we know who you are so will you show your true self or do I have to make my friend do it for you then - " I was referring to Gazi. He was a wizard and a good one too. Why he did shitty jobs like me - I didn't know nor did I care.

Returning my attention to the latest visitor "Azur, here is none other than Fredrick Shumack. It was just there trick so that they did not have to return you the money". Nodding to my friend Gazi I gave him the signal. With a few incantations, Whoosh! The place where Azur was sitting few moments ago, a very naked Fredrick Shumack was sitted with no ounce of cloth on his body. Why didn't I do that before - not sure enough. Can't go on making people naked with magic, can we?. And I wanted to show it to Mr. Monetary Carrier here the real truth. Who knows - a little good repute among them could go a long way.

Shumack made a sudden lunge out of the couch.

"Stay," the insurance agent said.

Shumack stayed. His hand had frozen in the air, and one foot was raised. I nodded at Gazi. He went and pushed him back onto the sofa. Shumack was breathing, and his eyes were darting frantically, but otherwise he didn't move at all.

Gazi sat down too.

"Taiza ran the jetty," I continued, "and one of the things he did not know was that a lot of hot merchandise ran under his nose. A lot of the merchandise was stuff that under piles of oats in Shumacks warehouse. Unable to pay for his dues, he sold his crew to the pirates and was waiting for his Taiza to come and collect the remaining loot from his warehouse. But he wised up and decided to sell the hot goods someone else for a larger profit. To escape with the loot unnoticed without paying the Carriers, Shumack and his wife invented the kidnapping story to through Carriers off the trail. The Monetary policy being for Life which meant if Shumack disappeared or died, he no longer needed to pay, so this was the plan both of them set up to escape the Lord's wraith. They could escape to some other place with Shumack taking the identity of Azur and start a new life with all the profit of the loot"

"Poor Assan found out so Shumack killed him. Azur got suspicious so Shumack killed him aswel. Gazi found Azur's body in the sewer beneath his home, with his ring. When i went to meet Azur, Shumack got dressed as Azur and framed a story of having been attacked by Centurions. I asked around and found that no Centurions were seen near the place for close to a month. So he was lying and the sword which killed Assan did not belong to the Centurions as it did not have their emblem on in. Hence his story was a fake "

"Satisfied?" I said.

"What about the Dark Ravens?" asked the Carrier

"Just a cover story to blame the kidnapping on someone else while both of them could escape from before anyone knew what happened, Shumack and his wife were the ones who bought the fireneedles fron the wizard and came up with a story that they belonged to the Dark Ravens gang. Satisfied now?"

"Eminently," he said. He pointed a finger at Shumack and then at Shumack's wife. Balls of flame materialized and consumed them. Then his form lit up in a quick flash followed by a column of billowing smoke. When vision returned a few seconds later he was gone, apparently dematerialized into the vapor. I think only I noticed the catch on the front door as it snapped shut, and the small puff of cold outside air. That was all right with me; I figure everybody's entitled to their tricks of the trade.

"Who was that?" said Gazi.

"Either a magician working for the Carriers," I said, "or some Lord, slumming."

Hopefully he wasn't a Lord, and if he was I hoped I'd done well enough by him so now he'd leave me alone. As it turned out later, I'd done too well for my own good, but I still didn't think I'd had a choice.

We split the ransom money, which Gazi had stashed outside after he'd recovered it from the hiding place he'd found when he'd tailed Azur or Shumack in disguise of Azur, from the ransom pickup spot earlier, and went home.

It had been a lousy case. I'd sort of liked Assan. Poor kid had to die for the greed of these assholes.

*****

Thanks guys for reading. I am thinking of writing a sequel, but it will depend on how this story is received by the readers. If it is well received then maybe...

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