Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Intrigue

Ahead of them spilling up the staircase were the jumping lights of candles and lanterns, quite a number of candles and lanterns at that, and as they descended, a large fireplace came into view as well across the room, its piled wood in full roar. Karlini had given up trying to seriously figure out what Haddo had led him into, but he’d expected perhaps a small room illuminated by a single low candle in the middle of a table, with various dimly glimpsed beings arranged around it making secret signs and behaving in an obstinately enigmatic manner. Instead, the sprawling basement room that greeted them was clearly a tavern, or more properly an establishment of cosmopolitan iniquities, and by the looks of it quite a flourishing one indeed. It was plainly not, though, a place particularly catering to humans, of which species Karlini found himself to be the sole member in attendance.

For the most part, the major nonhuman breeds differed only in size, skin color, number of joints, and facial features from what humans liked to think of as the norm. Nevertheless, there wasn’t usually a lot of social mixing. For the most part, the nonhumans congregated in their own districts when they were in cities. Whether this happened under their own pure volition or because of pressure from the human citizens (or directly from the coercive power of the cities themselves) was for most purposes a moot point; as long as they were out of sight, people were happier overall. The happiness of the nonhumans was a matter few people troubled themselves with. To be more precise, Karlini reminded himself, not much else about nonhumans troubled people either. People as a whole couldn’t care less about what the nonhumans did in their part of a city, or what they did when they weren’t in cities, for that matter. Well, okay, that was a gross generalization, but then lumping all individual differences in a common pot was the kind of thing people are good at. Shaa had told him he thought there was a significant case of societal myopia at work, if not outright amnesia, but then Shaa had always held himself to be a social critic.

Ahead of them, a party of stout, waist-high folks with the generally rough-and-tumble air of roustabouts were gathered singing off-key choral rounds around the hearth; they turned to look Haddo and Karlini over as they came down the stairs, and a few other assorted patrons raised their heads to eye the two of them as well. Karlini found himself trading stares with the large purple eyes of a white-furred face topped by a coordinating lilac beret; a thin rope of glowing smoke wound upward from the cigarette perched in an ivory holder in the red-lipped mouth. Karlini held her stare long enough to demonstrate his security of character but not long enough to mean anything by it, and then swung his gaze around the room with a feeling of relief. He’d found the proportions and the color scheme of her face vaguely distressing, but she was a far sight better than the out-and-out distasteful looks of her companions around the table. One had something more than vaguely snakish about him, and the one with his leathery arm around the smoker’s shoulders, well … Karlini’s foot came down on something more solid than the thick but slippery stair risers, and he realized they had reached the main part of the floor.

Haddo twisted his way off to the left, Karlini carefully threading along with him. The bartender, a thick-set humanoid about three feet taller than Karlini and perhaps twice his bulk, watched their progress with pursed lips, or more correctly watched Haddo’s approach and ignored Karlini altogether. The guy took a final appraising look at Haddo, then disappeared into the stockroom behind the bar. Karlini noticed that the center portion of the bar was set at a comfortable height for the average-sized human, which seemed to be around the average for the folks around the room as well: the left end of the bar, though, had a series of risers set along the floor, and the right end had a trench dug down into the ground beneath the uprooted planking. Haddo sauntered up onto the middle part of the short-beings’ section and turned to look over the crowd again. Karlini edged next to him and whispered, “Did we really have to come here? I mean, Haddo, this bar stuff is such a cliché.”

“For you to meet is someone,” said Haddo, peering into the murk of the far corner of the room. “To meet, go must where one is.”

“I haven’t been in a place like this since, well, since the time I met you.”

Haddo mumbled something unintelligible. The bartender reemerged from the storeroom, ducking beneath the door sill at the back of the bar with a wooden crate the size of a valise under his arm. He set the crate down in front of Haddo, took a firm hold on the lid, and worked it back and forth. Nails let loose with drawn-out squeaks. Setting the lid aside, the bartender probed around in the crate with a hand that seemed almost as large as the interior itself. Wood shavings spilled out on the bar. Then, with a grunt of triumph, he withdrew a cylindrical parcel wrapped in fuzzy cloth. Haddo straightened. “Imri naj?” he said.

The bartender tugged loose a corner of the cloth and flashed Haddo a glimpse within. Karlini, off at a different angle, got an impression of dark heavy glass containing the sparkle of active lightning. Haddo reached inside his cloak after his purse, but the bartender held out his other hand, palm raised toward Haddo’s chest. “Your name Haddo?” he said.

“Haddo am I,” Haddo said.

“Then it’s paid for,” said the bartender.

Haddo paused a second, then shrugged, took the intoxicant, hopped off the riser, and headed for a table.

Karlini looked at the bartender, who ignored him and turned away. He took two long steps and caught up with Haddo. “Why didn’t you order something for me?” said Karlini.

“Not would like your system the menu.” Haddo said. A path was opening in front of them as Haddo weaved his way through the room. A being about Karlini’s height whose features were concealed by the hood of a forest green cloak was walking from one table to another with a foaming mug protruding from his sleeve, his head swiveling loosely about. Then he caught sight of the form of Haddo bearing down on him with Karlini at his heels, abruptly straightened, and reeled back out of the way. Behind him and off to the back, Karlini spotted the empty table Haddo evidently had in mind as his destination. Another table of patrons turned away, sniffing the air as though something noxious was drifting toward them. Haddo bent his path and headed in their direction.

Karlini grabbed Haddo’s shoulder and leaned over him. “Uh. Haddo?” he whispered in as surreptitious a voice as he could manage under the circumstances, “Don’t you think it would be better if I waited outside? I don’t want to set anything off, but these folks seem kind of jittery with me around.”

“Not are they because of you upset,” Haddo told him. He shot another glance at the table of supercilious gnomes, said, “On you, all feh !” in their general direction, turned his shoulder on them. and scuttled again toward the empty table and its beckoning chairs. As they reached the back, Karlini noticed that he had been holding his breath. “Inhale you can,” said Haddo dryly, having noticed it too.

Karlini wedged himself into the chair behind the table and found himself mashed up against the wall. Had the Haddo he knew changed places in the dark with a ringer? Their table was back toward one corner of the room; the room’s main illumination spilling from the hearth was shadowed by the stone side of the fireplace itself where it protruded into the room. Mounted on the stone front of the fireplace next to the fire was a dartboard; a small humanoid creature with bare furry feet and a nasty attitude was standing five paces back from it on top of a table, preparing to launch. He threw and hit the board, threw and hit, causing the few hangers-on to murmur approvingly. A smirk appeared on the short guy’s button-nosed face and he said, in a cloyingly high-pitched squeak clearly audible across the intervening patrons, “You bums think that was good? Well, watch this .” He threw again, underhand this time. The fletching on the short dart grazed the pointy ear of the elvish-looking fellow slouched in his chair at the front of the table, and as the elvish guy shot out an arm to grab the furry-footed one by the throat, the dart went corkscrewing off-course into the fire. The thrower started to backpedal out of the way but put his foot into a tray of salad. The salad promptly shot out from under him. He landed back-first on a pitcher of ale, which smashed, and then hit one corner of the table going down as the elvish guy hit the other side of the table on his way up; the table, predictably, flipped, and all of them went sliding to the floor. “Do you usually hang out with these kind of folks?” Karlini asked Haddo, still keeping his voice low. “Why are we here, really?”