Jonathan Strahan - Swords & Dark Magic - The New Sword and Sorcery

He was red-haired, blue-eyed, handsome, energetic. He had the look of wealth about him. But there was something else about him, or so it seemed to Ghambivole Zwoll: the smirking set of his mouth, the overly rakish slant of his hat that cried scoundrel, wastrel, idler .

No matter. Ghambivole Zwoll had dealt with plenty of those in his time. So long as they paid their bills on time, Ghambivole Zwoll had no concern with his clients’ moral failings.

The proud lordling struck a lofty pose, his hand resting on the gleaming hilt of the sword that hung from a broad beribboned baldric at his side, and boomed, “I will have a love potion, if you please. To snare the heart of a lady of the highest birth! And I mean to spare no expense.”

Ghambivole Zwoll masked his joy with a calm, businesslike demeanor. He stared up—and up and up and up, for the new client was very tall indeed and Vroons are diminutive beings, knee-high at best to humans—and said judiciously, “Yes, yes, of course. We offer such compounds at every level of efficacy and potency.” He reached for a writing tablet. “Your name, please?”

He expected some fanciful pseudonym. Instead his visitor said grandly, “I am the Marquis Mirl Meldelleran, fourth son of the third son of the Count of Canzilaine.”

“Indeed,” said Ghambivole Zwoll, a little stunned, for the Count of Canzilaine was one of the wealthiest and most influential men of Castle Mount. He looked across the room toward the towering figure of Shostik-Willeron, standing against the far wall. The Su-Suheris appeared to be displaying mixed emotions, his optimistic right-hand head glittering with pleasure at the prospect of a hefty fee but the left-hand head, which disliked such high-born fops as this, glowering in distaste. The Vroon shot him a quick, bright-eyed glance to let him know that he would handle this client without interference. “I’ll need to know the details of your requirements, of course.”

“Details?”

“The goal you hope to achieve—whether it be only a seduction and light romance, or something deeper, leading, even, perhaps to a marriage. And some information about the lady’s age and physical appearance, her approximate height and weight, you understand, so that we may calculate the proper dosage.” He risked letting the intense blaze of his yellow eyes meet the blander gaze of the marquis. As tactfully as he could he said, “You will, I hope, be forthcoming about these matters, or it may be difficult to fulfill your needs. She is young, I take it?”

“Of course. Eighteen.”

“Ah. Eighteen.” The Vroon delicately looked away. “And of limited sexual experience, perhaps?—I have no wish to pry, you understand, but in order to calculate—”

“Yes,” said the Marquis Mirl Meldelleran. “I hold nothing back from you. She is a virgin of the purest purity.”

“Ah,” said Ghambivole Zwoll.

“And moves in the highest circles at court. She is in fact the Lady Alesarda of Muldemar, of whose beauty and wit you undoubtedly have heard report.”

That was jolting news. Ghambivole Zwoll fought to hide any show of the concern that that lady’s name had awakened in him, but he was unable to fight back a complex, anguished writhing of his innumerable tentacles. “The Lady—Alesarda—of Muldemar,” the Vroon said slowly. “Ah. Ah.” His partner was glaring furiously at him now from his station in the corner shadows, the wary left-hand head glowering with wrath and even the normally cheerful right one showing alarm. “I have heard the name—she is, I believe, of royal lineage?”

“Sixth in descent from the Pontifex Prestimion himself.”

“Ah. Ah. Ah.” Ghambivole Zwoll saw that they were getting into exceedingly deep waters. He wished the marquis had kept the lady’s identity to himself. But business was business, and the shop’s exchequer was distressingly low. To mask his uncertainties he scribbled notes for quite some time; and then, looking up at last, said with a cheeriness he certainly did not feel, “We will have what you need in one week’s time. The fee will be—ah—”

Quickly, almost desperately, he reckoned the highest price he thought the traffic would bear, and then doubled it, expecting to be haggled with. “Twenty royals.”

“Twenty,” said the marquis impassively. “So be it.”

Ghambivole wondered what the response would have been if he had said thirty. Or fifty. It had been so long since he had had a client of the marquis’s station that he had forgotten that such people were utterly indifferent to cost. Well, too late now.

“Will a deposit of five cause any difficulties, do you think?”

“Hardly.” Mirl Meldelleran drew a thick, glossy coin from his purse and dropped it on Ghambivole Zwoll’s desk. The Vroon swept it quickly toward him with a trembling tentacle. “One week,” said the Marquis Mirl Meldelleran. “The results, I assume, are guaranteed?”

“Of course,” said Ghambivole Zwoll.

“This is madness,” said Shostik-Willeron, the moment the door of the stall had closed behind the Marquis Mirl Meldelleran and they were alone again. “We will be ruined! A virgin princess of Prestimion’s line, one who moves in the highest circles at court, and you propose to fling her into the bed of the fourth son of a third son?”

“Twenty royals,” Ghambivole Zwoll said. “Do you know what our gross revenue for the past three months has been? Hardly one third as much. I expected him to bargain me down, and I would have settled for ten, or even five. Or three or two. But twenty— twenty! —”

“The risk is tremendous. The sellers of the potion will be traced.”

“What of it? We are not the ones who will debauch the young princess.”

“But it’s an abomination, Ghambivole!” The words were coming from the right-hand head, and that gave Ghambivole Zwoll pause, for the right-hand head always brimmed with enthusiasm and exuberance, while it was the other, the dominant left head, that was ever urging caution. “We’ll be whipped! We’ll be flayed!”

“We are only purveyors, nothing more. We are protected by the mercantile laws. What we sell is legal, and what he plans to use it for is legal too, however deplorable. The girl is of age.”

“So he says.”

“If he’s lied to me about it, the sin is his. Do you think I would dare to ask the grandson of the Count of Canzilaine for an affidavit?”

“But even so, Ghambivole—”

“Twenty royals, Shostik-Willeron.”

They argued over it another fifteen minutes. But in the end the Vroon won, as he knew he would. He was the senior partner; this was his shop, and had been in his family four generations; and he was the only one of the two who had any real skill at wizardry. Shostik-Willeron’s sole contribution to the partnership had been capital, not any great knowledge of the art; and if the shop failed, the Su-Suheris would lose that capital. They were in no position to turn away such lucrative business, chancy though it might be.

The partners were an oddly assorted pair. Like all the Su-Suheris race, Shostik-Willeron was tall and slender, with a pallid body tapering upward to a narrow forking neck a foot in length, atop which sprouted a pair of hairless, vastly elongated heads, each of which had an independent mind and identity. Ghambivole Zwoll could hardly have looked more different: a tiny person, barely reaching as high as his partner’s shins, fragile and insubstantial of body, with a host of flexible rubbery limbs and a small head, out of which jutted a sharp hook of a beak, above which were two huge yellow eyes with horizontal black stripes to serve as pupils. There were times when the Vroon barely avoided being trampled by Shostik-Willeron as they moved about their cramped little emporium.