Rick Cook - The Wizardry Consulted

"Ah yes, Councilor, I believe we met this morning."

Dieter jerked a nod. "We did. And now that the rest of those ninnies aren’t around we can talk seriously."

Wiz put on his blandest expression and nodded. One thing consultants never had to search for was the political factions in an organization. Sooner or later they came searching for you. Usually sooner.

"I’m sorry I can’t offer you a seat," Wiz said, "but you see-"

Dieter cut him off. "What you can offer me is your support, since just now you seem to have the council’s favor." He eyed Wiz. "I’m a plain man, Wizard, and plain-spoken. We can do a lot together, you and I. And I can do a lot for you."

"You mean you can help me with dragons?"

"Dragons," the councilor snorted. "What do I care about dragons? I’m a practical man and we both know there’s nothing you can do about them, eh? No, what I’m interested in is revenues. Do you realize this city hasn’t had a revenue increase in near a generation? There’s all sort of projects, wonderful projects, just stalled because there’s no revenue. Why, there’s streets, and fountains, and bridges. All just crying out to be built. And they’ve gone crying for years because of lack of revenues."

"What do you expect me to do about that? I’m an expert on dragons."

Dieter waved that away. "Tell them you need more money to fight the dragons, that’s what. They already agreed to pay you a tenth of the city’s revenues. Tell them you need more, and now."

"They’ll only pay me if-when-I succeed."

"And you know what they’ll do to you if you don’t succeed, eh?" The Councilman leaned close and glared up at Wiz. "Well, let me tell you, you won’t succeed without my help. I have weight on the council and me and my followers, we want those revenues increased."

Wiz wondered how much of those revenues would wind up in the pockets of the councilor and his cronies. Considering what the guy was like he decided a better question would be how much of the money would make it past those pockets.

"Now, I’m not a greedy man, Wizard," Dieter continued in what was obviously supposed to be a placating tone. "When the money flows there’ll be help for those as helped us. Sort of finder’s fees, you might say."

"It certainly sounds like a worthwhile program. What seems to be the obstacle?"

"The mayor’s the obstacle, him and that Rolf who’s behind him. All they ever do is cry about ’tax burdens’ and ’fiscal responsibility.’ " The little man snorted. " ’Fiscal responsibility.’ What about our responsibility to them as support us I’d like to know?"

Wiz nodded. "It sounds as if you have a very strong case. I can assure you I’ll give the matter serious consideration."

"You’ll give the matter more than that if you want to stay off The Rock," Dieter said. "I’ll be watching you, Wizard. And I’m a man who remembers his enemies as well as his friends."

After his visitor left Wiz spent the next several minutes working the front door back and forth to free up the rusted hinges. The hinges squeaked and groaned in protest and that suited his mood perfectly.

"The runt leave?" Malkin asked when she breezed back in a bit later, her arms loaded with cleaning supplies.

"He’s gone. Did you pay for all this stuff?"

"Charged it to the council," she said, dropping everything in the middle of the hall. "Someone will be around later with bedding and stuff. What did the little rat want anyway?"

"My help in raising taxes."

"Figures. Of the whole money-gouging lot Dieter’s about the worst." She paused and considered. "Well, anyways the most obnoxious."

"That’s a problem for another day," Wiz said as he stooped to pick up a broom. As he stood back up he saw the flash of gold in Malkin’s hand. "What’s that?"

"Oh, something I picked up in the market," she said breezily, holding up an ornate gold ring with a big green stone. "Do you like it?"

"I thought I told you not to steal anything."

"You told me to pay for the cleaning stuff. And I did-leastways I charged it all legal-like. But this," she said, popping the ring down her bodice, "isn’t cleaning stuff."

Tomorrow, Wiz told himself. I’ll worry about this tomorrow. "Come on, let’s try to make this place habitable."

Malkin turned out to be a surprisingly hard worker. She obviously didn’t know much more about house cleaning than Wiz did, but she went at it with a will and before long dust was flying in all directions. In a little less than two hours they had the front hall and two of the upstairs bedrooms more or less clean.

"Woof! You don’t have any spell to clean this place, do you?" Malkin said as she plopped down on the stair beside Wiz to take a break.

"Not really. Well, I do know one, but it takes everything out of the room." And sends it off in all directions with roughly the velocity of machine gun bullets. He remembered the time in the ruined City of Night when he and the others had hacked the spell together to move rubble and how they’d ended up cowering in the dirt from the resulting barrage of missiles. That reminded him of Jerry, Danny and most of all Moira, and sent a pang through him.

"You all right?" Malkin asked, catching his mood.

"Yeah, I’m fine." He focused his attention on her. "Tell me about this widow who used to live here."

"Widder Hackett?" Malkin chuckled. "She was a salty one, even for a witch. She had a tongue, that one. If you so much as sat down on her stoop she’d come flying out waving a broom and chase you off. Always complaining about dirt and such, she was." The girl looked around the house and shook her head. "What she’d think if she could see this place now! We could clean and polish until the end of time and we’d never get it back to what it was."

"I’ll settle for getting it to where it’s habitable," Wiz said. "Let’s do some more on the upstairs and then knock off for dinner."

"Let’s knock off for dinner and then do some more upstairs," Malkin countered. "It’s near evening and I haven’t eaten today."

"Now that you mention it…"

Malkin looked at him. "Well?" she said finally.

"Well what?"

"Well aren’t you going to magic us up food?"

"I’m not very good at that-unless the kitchen’s got a microwave?"

Malkin snorted. "Fine wizard you are. I don’t suppose you can cook either."

"I do all right," Wiz said defensively.

Malkin snorted again. "I know what that means, coming from a man. Look here then, I’ll go back to the market and get a few things-charge a few things," she amended hastily before Wiz could say anything, "and I’ll cook tonight. I don’t want food poisoning on top of everything else today. But tomorrow you do the cooking. Now help me get this miserable door open so I can get back to the miserable market before the last of the miserable stalls closes."

With Malkin’s help he tugged the door open again and he watched her as she disappeared down the street. Then he leaned against the door and pushed it to again as the hinges protested like souls in mortal agony.

The door, Wiz thought. I’ve got to do something about that damned door.

Wiz went down the worn stone steps into the kitchen. It had to be the kitchen, he decided, because private houses don’t usually come equipped with torture chambers.