Martin Scott - Thraxas at the races

Outside rain pours down and thunder rumbles overhead. I notice a Sorcerer walking towards us, easily identifiable by his rainbow cloak. He’s a large man with a weighty-looking staff in his hand. He stops in front of me and pulls back his hood revealing a pair of steely eyes and a square jaw line. My heart sinks. It’s Glixius Dragon Killer. I thought he’d left town.

“I’m going to kill you, Thraxas,” he says, in his deep voice.

“What, right now? Or some other time when you’ve got nothing better to do?”

Glixius fixes me with his steely gaze for a second or two, then turns and marches off without another word.

Makri is shielding her eyes with her hand as if trying to pick out something on the horizon.

“What are you doing?”

“Seeing where the next deadly enemy is coming from.”

“Very funny. Rittius and now Glixius. Some day.”

Glixius Dragon Killer is a powerful Sorcerer associated with the Society of Friends, Turai’s second major criminal organisation. Funnily enough, I did him a very bad turn this summer as well. It was a big summer for doing bad turns to powerful people. I foiled his plot to steal Red Elvish Cloth. I punched him in the face too, as I recall, though he was all out of magic at the time.

There isn’t a landus to be found anywhere so we trudge home through the rain. I’m gloomier than ever. What a day. The state fines me all my money and two deadly enemies threaten me.

“It wouldn’t be so bad if I ever made any profit out of this investigating business.”

“You do,” points out Makri. “But you spend most of it on beer and gamble the rest away.”

Makri is a very hard worker. She works shifts as a barmaid at the Avenging Axe to pay for her classes at the Guild College. She’s not above occasionally pointing out to me the error of my ways. Not that Makri doesn’t have her share of faults. I strongly suspect that she’s been experimenting with dwa, the powerful drug that has half the city in its grip, though she always denies it.

“Give me a turn with the magic dry cloak,” she says.

“No chance,” I reply. “I need it more than you. If I’m about to get attacked by Palace Security and a deadly Sorcerer, I need to be comfortable.”

I wrap myself tighter in the magic dry cloak. Makri makes a face. It’s odd. In her short life she’s fought and defeated practically every kind of beast and warrior known and she will charge an impossible force of enemies without the slightest qualm, but she really detests getting wet.

“Damn this rain. At least it was dry in the gladiator slave pits,” she grumbles. “I hate this Hot Rainy Season. How can it be hot as Orcish hell and wet as a Mermaid’s blanket at the same time?”

She pulls her thin cloak over her vast mane of hair. If she’s trying to make me feel guilty she’s wasting her time. I didn’t spend all that time studying sorcery to learn how to make a magic dry cloak just to hand it over to the first person that asks.

“Where are we going?” asks Makri, as I take a diversion down a series of twisting alleyways.

“I’m calling in at Honest Mox’s.”

“Honest Mox the bookie? But the Stadium Superbius is shut in the rainy season.”

“There’s a race meeting in Juval. It’s dry there at this time of year.”

Juval is a small nation, another member of the League of City-States to which Turai belongs. It’s a couple of hundred miles southeast of Turai. Makri wonders how I can bet on chariot races so far away. I explain to her that the bookmakers here band together to pay a Sorcerer to transmit messages to another Sorcerer at the race track in Juval. He sends up the runners and the prices and afterwards transmits the results. It’s not an uncommon practice among gamblers in Turai to bet on these races. Makri is impressed, though somewhat surprised to find Sorcerers engaged in such practices.

“I thought they all concerned themselves with higher callings.”

“Well, mainly young Apprentices take the work. The Sorcerers Guild doesn’t really approve but, hey, it’s good practice for sending messages, which is handy in wartime.”

“Haven’t you lost enough recently?”

“That’s why I have to win it back. I have an emergency supply for just this situation.”

Mox the bookmaker is, as ever, pleased to see me. He’s chalked the runners in the next race in Juval up on a board. I study the form.

“How do you know the Sorcerers transmit everything honestly?” asks Makri.

I admit that this can be a worry. Race Sorcerers have been known to be dishonest, but it’s a risk I’m prepared to take. I’ve never had any trouble with the meeting in Juval. It’s a small track, usually with only four chariots in each race. I can’t see anything beating the favourite, a fine chariot from Samsarina called Glorious Warrior. It’s only even money so I place twenty gurans on it.

“You’re wasting your money,” sniffs Makri.

“Oh, yes? You won’t say that when I pick up my twenty gurans winnings tomorrow.”

[Contents]

Chapter Two

We trudge on down Moon and Stars Boulevard till we reach Twelve Seas. Around the law courts the rain was bouncing off the statues of past kings and heroes of Turai, running down the marble pavements into the well-maintained gutters. In the smarter parts of Turai public utilities such as drainage are a marvel of engineering. Not so in Twelve Seas. Here the downpour turns the dirt streets to mud. After ten days of rain the place looks pretty bad. Another twenty to go. Twelve Seas is hell in the Hot Rainy Season.

“My shift starts in two minutes and I’m wet as a Mermaid’s blanket,” complains Makri, and hurries off to change.

I climb the outside stairs leading directly from Quintessence Street into my office above the tavern. There’s a sign outside my door: Finest Sorcerous Investigator in the City of Turai . The rain is starting to peel off the paint where it flaked in the burning summer sun. Sorcerous Investigator. Big joke. I studied as an Apprentice but that was a long time ago. Now my powers are of the lowest grade, mere tricks compared with the skills of Turai’s great Wizards.

I should do something about that sign. It looks cheap. I’m probably the cheapest Sorcerous Investigator in the whole of Turai but there’s no need to brag about it. I’m forty-three, overweight, without ambition, prone to prolonged bouts of drinking and I take on the sort of case the Civil Guards won’t help with for the sort of client that can’t afford one of the high-class Investigators uptown. I charge ten gurans a day plus expenses which is never going to make me rich.

Things were looking up. This summer I solved a couple of important cases, earned myself a fair bit of reward money, improved my reputation in certain important circles. With a bit of luck I might have made it out of Twelve Seas back into proper society again. Now that I’ve been dragged through the courts on a charge of assaulting an official of the King, I’m back at square one. No money, and no reputation.

The atmosphere is cloying. The Hot Rainy Season is unbearable. It’s like a steam bath out there. If it wasn’t for my magic dry cloak I don’t think I could cope. As my magic is so poor nowadays, I can generally only carry one or two spells around at a time. Usually I take a sleep spell, which is highly effective in rendering opponents unconscious, and maybe something like a loud explosion to cause a diversion. The days when I could work invisibility and levitation are long gone. Right now my entire sorcerous ability is concentrated on keeping dry. If I happen to meet five or six opponents at once I’ll just have to rely on my sword.

My office is a mess. I kick some junk under the table, grab a beer from the supply in the sink and drop down on the couch muttering a few oaths about the unfairness of life. I fought for this damned city in the last Orc Wars. Helped throw back the savage horde that threatened to overwhelm us from the east. Not to mention the sterling service I gave the city in the war before that, with Nioj, when our enemies from the north swept through the mountain passes and damn near threw us all into the sea. And is anyone grateful? No chance. To hell with them all.