Spell of Catastrophe | Page 5

my mind being whether I'd be able to afford to eat after the day after
tomorrow. There was no way I would have known about Max and
Haddo at that point, of course, but I wouldn't have cared anyway since
I'd never heard of Haddo or Max or Karlini. Food was the issue, and
realizing it was already past the middle of the day and I hadn't had a
customer in a week, and wondering how hungry I'd have to get before
I'd be walking the streets looking for odd jobs and manual labor. Then
someone knocked on the door. I put the half-drained flask I had been
nursing in a drawer and said, "Come in."
A woman came in. "My husband has been kidnapped," she said, and
that meant all of a sudden things were looking up.
Her husband had a large warehouse on the docks and a fleet of barges
on the river. He hadn't come home the previous night. According to her,
he had always come home before. A note had appeared under the door
in the morning. She passed it over to me.
Payment of 20,000 gold zalous will cause the return of Edrik Skargool.
He is not hurt, yet search will cause death. More instructions will
forthcome.
The Creeping Sword
"Huh," I said. The style was stilted, making me think of someone who
was trying to sound educated without the benefit of actually having an
education. On the other hand, the words were spelled right and the
penmanship was neat. Still, I didn't have to look too closely to find the
major unusual detail. The medium was a sheet of burnished copper, and
the words had apparently been etched into it with fire.
"Do you have any idea who this Creeping Sword is?" I asked.
"Certainly not, of course not," she said. "That is your job, isn't it?"
I made a noncommittal sort of hrrumphy sound and let her start talking

again. She had gone to the police, such as they were. With the current
political situation, the police weren't about to investigate anything,
unless the order came as a command from the Guard. So she'd gone to
the Guard. The Guard was having too much fun enforcing martial law
to worry about another kidnapping. The only kidnappings they were
interested in were the ones they were doing themselves. I hoped for
Skargool's sake they weren't the ones who had picked him up. I wasn't
about to fight the Guard for him, even if she paid me a lot, and I didn't
think anyone else would be prepared to either. "Will you find him?" she
asked.
"I'll do my best," I said, "under the circumstances. That's my job."
She made an unhappy face at me. Sometimes that was a good tactic -
I'm a man, and like any man I'll turn gooey under the right
circumstances - but it wasn't going to work on me this time. I already
didn't like her. "If I pay you good money and give you my trust," she
said, "I would expect that you would at least be willing to guarantee -"
I had been leaning back in my chair. Now I let the chair fall forward so
the two front legs hit the beam floor with a sharp "thud", and pointed a
finger at her for further emphasis. "Look, lady," I said. "Roosing
Oolvaya is a big city. There must be fifty thousand people here. Any
day of the week a bunch of them disappear and never get found. Now
we're sitting with a dead Venerance, the son who probably knocked
him off is in charge, and mercenaries are running around the streets
giving orders to the rest of the normal Guard. You think the mess out
there doesn't make the usual mess worse? Well, it does, lady, a lot
worse. People are getting rounded up, people are getting executed, and
people are getting kicked into the sewers just for being in the wrong
place. Not criminals, not only political folks, just people, you
understand that? In this kind of situation, a lot of old grudges find
themselves getting settled, a lot of nastiness pops up. It's rough out
there."
"But," she said, still pouting, "but what should I do, then?"
"If you hire me, I'll find your husband if he's findable. Are you hiring

me?"
"Yes, yes, of course I am, even if -"
"Then get ready to pay this Sword person."
"But 20,000 zalous! How could I -"
"I'll get you the money back if I can."
"But can't you bargain with -"
"You might reflect," I said, "on the fact that money can generally take
more wear and tear than husbands can."
She shut up. I asked questions, but none of the answers were helpful.
She didn't