Mark Del Franco - Uncertain Allies

Banjo perused the leather goods, sorting through belts, straps, and harnesses studded with steel nubs and spikes. He tested the tensile strength of a strip of leather. “What do you think? Buckles or snaps?”

“You can go tighter with buckles, but you can get out of snaps faster.”

Bemused, he arched an eyebrow. “Really? Do tell.”

“I’ve been a few places, seen a few things.” The fey had few sexual hang-ups. When they weren’t at war with each other, they threw themselves into pleasures of the mind and body without the same taboos and restrictions so many humans had. I had been to my share of parties. Having said that, dwarves could be prudes, but only in comparison to other fey.

Banjo pressed his lower lip out in consideration and picked up a matching set of cuffs and collar. The kobold finished her sale and escorted the customer out the door. She called over her shoulder. “I’m going on break. You got ten minutes. Don’t steal shit.”

Banjo continued looking at harnesses. “I wonder if they do custom work.”

“Yeah, they do,” I said. He glanced at me. “So, I’ve heard. What’s with the cloak and dagger, Banjo?”

He replaced the harness and crossed his arms. “People seen with you tend to end up in the hospital or the morgue.”

“That’s a little exaggeration,” I said.

He cocked an eye at me, then went back to browsing. “What do you want, Grey?”

“I was wondering if you had heard about this blue essence that’s been tearing up the neighborhood,” I said.

He pursed his lips. “Heard about it. Seen it, too.”

“And?”

He shrugged. “Why ask me?”

I followed him around the end of an aisle. “You’re the closest thing I have to a connection down there. You guys aren’t the friendliest bunch.”

He strolled along the aisle and picked up a rather large box that contained a lifelike facsimile of an unexpected body part. “Depends on how you define friendly. For instance, I don’t have to be here, ya know? I don’t have to tell you that someone’s looking for seers and scryers simply because some elf queen sent you down here, right?”

“You’re absolutely right. What else might you not want to tell me about seers and scryers?”

He pulled out a pair of half-glasses to read the back of the box. “Someone’s offering big money to talk to any dwarf who has been here for the last century.”

“Why dwarves?”

He replaced the box and picked up something I didn’t recognize. It had its own remote and lots of buttons. I tried to read the label over his shoulder. “Resonance. Dwarves have been here a long time.”

“Come again?”

He cocked his head at me. “You used to scry, right? You got better at it, didn’t you? At least until you got all screwed up?”

I did my best not to feel insulted. “Sure.”

He nodded once sharply. “It wasn’t only skill. Scrying’s about time, and spending time in one place attunes your ability to the time of that place, makes your scry better. Don’t they teach you anything in those druid camps you guys go to?”

They didn’t teach me that. Dwarves and druids had a long history of competition over who were better at predicting the future. “So, whoever is looking for dwarves wants to have as clear a picture of the future as possible?”

Banjo winked. “Now you got it.”

“But that’s what everybody wants,” I said.

“Yeah, but not everyone has the cash to pay for the real deal,” he said.

Contrary to popular belief—or hope—scrying wasn’t an exact science. Seeing the future was about possibilities. The best scryers—who were few and far between—knew how to read the consensus of their visions and turn possibilities into probabilities. They weren’t exact, but they were better than most everyone else. “So someone has a lot of money to spend.”

“That’s the rumor,” he said.

Banjo was one of the best scryers in the city. “You biting?”

“Nah. Money like that is dangerous. Bad things happen to you if the payer doesn’t like what they hear,” he said.

“Wait a sec—that dwarf that ended up dead the other night—did he take the bait?”

“Could be. He was a long-timer. Not very talented, though. Maybe that’s why he ended up dead,” he said.

“Or maybe whoever killed him didn’t want what he knew going anywhere else,” I said.

“Well, that strategy might backfire. Dwarves are used to being taken advantage of, and when they are, they disappear. Notice many around lately?”

“Are you saying this blue essence is related?” I asked.

“I’m saying not everyone missing is lost. Know what I’m saying?”

“Is that why you didn’t come into Yggy’s?” I asked.

Banjo made a cutting gesture. “Nah. That place feels bad lately. Too many refugees from bars that burned down or something. It’s not the same.”

“It’s Yggy’s. It’s never the same,” I said.

He picked up a large bottle of massage oil and dropped a few bills on the counter. “Yeah, well, change isn’t always good.”

I grabbed lunch at the Waybread the next afternoon. The place was cheap and didn’t attract many locals, which was fine by me. From the size of the lunch crowd, though, the restaurant wasn’t attracting much of anyone. Between the police clampdown and the media scaring the public about the Weird, neighborhood businesses were suffering.

As I ate a burger, I mulled over the conversation with Banjo. While it was obvious that he had concerns about being seen in public, Yggy’s had always had a strange collection of patrons. Banjo’s not wanting to be seen there said more about him not wanting to be seen at all than it did about the bar. On the other hand, he knew this blue essence seemed to be targeting dwarves, so I couldn’t say I blamed him for being cautious.

Dwarves always looped me back to Eorla. The clans were secretive, had their own rules, and, like Banjo, were not keen on talking to Celts. Eorla had asked me to check out the blue essence. It stood to reason she might know more than she said. We were friends but not always confidantes.

I left the Waybread with a satisfying bloat in my stomach. I didn’t get nearly the gym time I should, but hiking everywhere I needed to go helped. The Rowes Wharf Hotel made for a good jaunt to work off some grease. When I entered the lobby, a cluster of Eorla’s house guards surrounded me. They said nothing, maintained a discreet distance, and escorted me to her meeting room. The extra security hinted that something more was going on. When the guards left, Rand let me into the room.

Eorla rose from her worktable and kissed me on each cheek. “Thank you for coming.”

“After what you did, how could I not? You left the Guildhouse so quickly, I didn’t have a chance to thank you properly,” I said.

She made a dismissive gesture. “When you are privy to political scandal, it’s easy to make investigations go away.”

“Still, you didn’t have to do it. Why did you?” I asked.

“Ryan macGoren needed to see that I have my resources. Besides, what he attempted to do to you was wrong, never mind everything else,” she said.

“Maeve might not take kindly to your helping me.”

She shrugged with a smile. “All the better. My sources tell me that she is already nervous about me.”

I inhaled and held the breath a moment. “Eorla, I have to be blunt. If you’re going to ask me to leave Bergin Vize alone, I can’t promise that.”

She nodded. “Ryan called me to that meeting to hear his bribe. I think he truly expected you to take the deal. There was no downside for you. By formally committing you to apprehending Bergin, he thought he would drive a wedge between us.”