Spell of Catastrophe | Page 7

clean himself off. The coin interested him.

Coins always interested him. Coins interest most of us. "Who cares
about mud anyway?" he said. "What do you need?"
"The Creeping Sword," I said.
"The who?"
"That's what I want to know. This Sword kidnapped a businessman."
"Skargool?" Glinko said.
"Yeah," I said, "that's right. Tell me about it."
"You going to give me that?" he said, meaning the ool.
"You going to give me a reason to?"
He glanced around the street, then slipped around the corner of the bar
into a narrow alley. The street had only been about three times the
width of the alley, but except for us the alley was empty. "I know
Skargool," Glinko said in a low voice, "I know most 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