Spell of Catastrophe | Page 7

of the guys down here. That's what I do, I keep an eye out." Glinko was a spotter for one of the thief-gangs. "Skargool's a right guy, pays good, he's good to the workers, you know? Half the guys around want to work for him. Then a couple of weeks ago a lot of bad talk started. A ship of his was late, see, and all of a sudden there's talk like Skargool might have sold the crew to the slavers. That's how it started. Last I saw him was two days ago. He was walking home. He didn't look good. He looked real depressed. Now today he's missing, it's all around the street."
"Okay." I gave him the ool. He said he'd nose around for me and check in later. He went back to the street, and I slipped out the other end of the alley.
I tried a few more bars without much more luck and ended up at the Grumpy Gullet. Civil unrest or no, Slipron was there, at his usual table in the back. I handed him the kidnap note Skargool's wife had given me.
Slipron screwed a lens into one eye, Oolvayan glass in a bone housing, and scrutinized the engraving, rubbing the copper plate between two fingers. Then he tapped the plate with a fingernail and swiveled the lens up at me. "It's worthless, of course, excepting perhaps only the metal itself."
Slipron being the best fence in Roosing Oolvaya, his comment meant he could move the thing for a profit and was willing to bargain, but selling it was not what I had in mind at the moment. I told him so.
"Ah," Slipron said. "Well. This engraving is not professional work." He rested a finger across the inscribed wards and closed his eyes. The letters around his finger swam briefly. He brought the plate up to his face and sniffed. "A firepen. Definitely a firepen."
The tapster was passing with a tray of foaming mugs, and I snagged a full one for Slipron. He handed me back the ransom note. "I know of Edrik Skargool, and I consider him a good man," Slipron said. "I also note the line of this letter that reads 'Search will cause death'."
"I figure they're talking about search by sorcery," I said. If an anti-search spell had been set up around Skargool, any finder probe keyed to him would set up feedback in the protector field, feedback that might be enough to fry him. Whether the Creeping Sword had the facility or the money to get a spell like that was another matter. I thought it was a bluff. Even if it was a bluff and a sorcerous search might find Skargool, hiring a magician to run a decent search would cost a lot more than my own time. If it wasn't a bluff, and the magician wasn't good enough to avoid or neutralize the no-search field, that would be it for Skargool.
Of course, I wouldn't hire a magician. I wouldn't even go near magic unless it grabbed me by the neck and forced my nose into it. Magic is more trouble than it's worth. It messes up everybody's life. It had messed up my own life enough in the past to give me more of an education than I'd ever wanted. No, all this case needed was legwork, and legwork I know.
Slipron said. "What if they don't care what kind of search it is, and they Sword people spot you looking for him?"
"Give me a little credit," I said. "This is my job, and I know what I'm doing. I know how to be careful."
Slipron looked doubtful. A chair scraped next to us, and a gust of garlic announced the arrival of Gag the Hairless. The name went back to the time when the bladder of gas Gag had been using to blow open the strongbox aboard a barge had blown up in his hand instead. His hair had grown back around the flash-burn scars, but a name is a name. "The word's out you're looking for a snatcher," Gag said.
"Sure," I said, "why not? Have you got one?"
"Who knows?" Gag said. "This town's so crowded this week, you can't keep anybody straight."
I tossed him an ool. Fortunately for me, Skargool's wife was paying expenses. Gag flagged the barmaid. The barmaid brought him a bottle, which Gag upended, wiping green froth off his mustache. He burped, and said, "Okay, now," leaning forward on one elbow. "A guy hears lots of things. You don't always know what to think, you know what I mean? This guy Skargool, one day you hear one thing, then you hear something else. One day everybody wants to work for him, the next day you hear he's flogging his crews."
Slipron, whose attention had apparently wandered off to another