Rick Cook - The Wizardry Consulted

Anna hugged him and started to cry into his shirt pocket. "Hey, it’s okay," Wiz protested and tried to move her away. "It’s all right."

"Well, My Lord," Anna said with a smile and a sniffle. "I’d best go and finish in the kitchen."

"Yes, do that." Before Moira catches you hanging all over me and turns us both into toads.

"Smart," Widder Hackett said at last. "If she owns the house I’ll be able to advise the poor child. And she’ll need it, married to that empty-headed popinjay."

"That’s kind of what I was thinking," Wiz said. That and I don’t want to find out if the ghost stays with the owner if he leaves the house.

Malkin was gone for a long time doing Malkin-ish things. The principal one of those things was a visit to her fence to turn the last of her swag into gold. Since One-Eyed Nicolai didn’t open for business until after dark, she took her dinner at a dingy little food stall in the Bog Side. On the way home she was diverted by a couple of opportunities to ply her trade and ended up returning with more loot than she left with, plus the gold from the fence, and coming in quite late to boot.

Thus it was that Malkin was sneaking up the back stairs with her latest acquisitions when a looming shadow blocked her way.

Jerry, who was wide-awake after the day’s nap, had been net surfing on Wiz’s workstation. He had taken a break to stretch his legs-and see if there was anything to eat in the kitchen. He wasn’t expecting to meet anyone on the stairs and he nearly stepped on Malkin before he could stop. As it was he half-stumbled, half-fell into her and they ended up clinging to each other to keep from falling completely downstairs.

"Oh, hello," Jerry said mildly, releasing his hold on the girl.

"Hello yourself," said Malkin, looking up at him. Not only was she one stair lower on the stairway, but even on the level Jerry overtopped her by perhaps half a head. "Let’s see, you’re the one called Jerry, right?"

"That’s me."

"And you’re a wizard too?"

"Well, a programmer but around here it pretty much comes to the same thing." Between the darkness in the stairwell and Malkin’s dark clothing Jerry couldn’t see much of his new acquaintance, but the combination of dark hair working its way out from under the knit cap, the pale, fair skin and lithe figure he had wrapped his arms around to keep from falling all made a very favorable impression.

"I was just taking a break," he explained. "From work on the computer, ah, workstation, I mean." It occurred to Jerry he was babbling, but if he shut up she might just pass him by on the stairs. "I do that a lot. Work, you know. Besides I’m kind of a night person," he explained. "I do most of my best work then."

Malkin smiled up at him. "I know just what you mean. I’m that way myself."

Somehow the big programmer and the tall thief ended up sitting side by side on the stairs, talking. Somehow it was getting light outside before they reached a stopping place in their conversation and went their separate ways.

It is possible they were overheard. But Danny was sleeping in the front parlor and Wiz and Moira were far too occupied to hear anything. If Bal-Simba heard he gave no sign. Widder Hackett didn’t talk about it and Bobo just looked smug.

It was barely dawn, but Wiz was already up and packing to go. He was taking clothes out of the wardrobe, folding them more or less neatly and putting them in a thing he persisted in thinking of as a duffel bag, even if it was made out of sueded leather rather than canvas. There wasn’t much besides a few clothes. He hadn’t accumulated many possessions in his time here, just as he hadn’t grown particularly attached to the place.

There was a shadow at the window, as if a cloud had passed before the rising sun. But a cloud doesn’t usually send the early risers in the street running and screaming. Nor does a cloud rattle the windowpanes.

Shirt still in hand, Wiz went to the window. There was a dragon settling daintily into the square, oblivious to the townsfolk scattering like a herd of terrified sheep. He didn’t have to be told it was Wurm.

"Leaving, Wizard?" the dragon’s voice came in his head.

"Yes, now that I’m free of your damned geas."

Wurm waddled across the square until his head was just outside Wiz’s room. It was a small square and Wurm was a large dragon, so it was only a few steps.

Wiz watched him come. He discovered he wasn’t intimidated by dragons any more, but he was awfully tired of them.

"You had solved the problem so I would have removed that anyway."

"Big of you," Wiz said and turned back to his packing.

The dragon cocked an enormous golden eye at Wiz through the window.

"You have not claimed your fee."

Wiz put a stack of shirts into his pack and hissed in irritation as one of them slid onto the floor. "I’m not interested in a fee," he said stooping down to pick up the shirt.

Wurm raised an enormous eyebrow. "If you are not paid how do you expect to remain in business?"

"I’m out of business as of right now," Wiz told him. "The next time I feel the urge to do this I’ll take up a more honest branch of the profession, like television evangelism."

"Nevertheless, you are entitled to payment."

"The only payment I want is a little peace and quiet, like about fifty years worth. I don’t want ghosts screeching in my ear, I don’t want to have to worry about the cops busting down my door because of my housemate’s hobbies, I don’t want to have to put up with a bunch of quarrelsome children masquerading as politicians." He threw the shirt into the bag and it promptly slid out again. "And most of all, I don’t want to have to deal with dragons."

"That is a rather large reward indeed," Wurm said. "Even for a task such as you have performed."

Wiz stuffed the shirt into the bag again, more carefully this time, and turned to face the dragon. "You knew this, didn’t you? You knew the new magic was spreading to the north and you knew that with it humans could beat the dragons."

"Let us just say I found the probabilities inopportune," Wurm said lazily.

"So you went right to the source of the new magic and kidnapped me to fix things before they got out of hand."

"And you fixed them. That is vindication enough, I think."

Wiz opened his mouth to protest and then closed it again. Dragons being cold-blooded in more ways than one, nothing else was likely to matter to Wurm, least of all the danger Wiz had been in.

"So you dragged me in here against my will to help the humans with their dragon problem."

"I prefer to think of it as dragons having a human problem," Wurm said.

"Well, why didn’t you just tell me that?"

Wurm’s "voice" was coldly amused. "Would you have bent all your skill to protecting dragons from humans? Even under geas?"

There was enough truth in that that Wiz didn’t have a reply, so he changed the subject. "By the way, what are you going to do?"

"I? Oh, you mean dragonkind. We will solve our own problem-now that we agree it is a problem." The dragon sounded amused. "That is the essence of consulting, is it not? To, ah, ’borrow someone’s watch and tell him what time it is’?"

Wiz wondered where the dragon had heard that. He had an uneasy feeling Wurm had heard, and knew, a lot more than he was telling.

"Goodbye Wizard. I do not think we will meet again, but I predict you will have an extremely interesting future." With that Wurm turned sinuously, took three running steps and launched himself into the air with a beat of wings that rattled the windows and made the shutters bang against the walls.