bronze skin above his armour, below the ends of his red hair, beckoned. If only I reached out now and in one thrust shoved the blade into his flesh...
But I could not. I didn't know where his portal was. Even if I managed to kill him—if he didn't spin, back-fist me in the face, pull the knife out of the nape of his neck and bludgeon me to death with one of the nearby computers—his remains would never reach Xynk, and Xynk might create a new Dogor, an identical clone who would continue where the old Dogor left off, solving nothing. I owed it to myself and to Olaf Brandywine to do this right.
Carefully, I took the knife by the blade and held the handle out for Dogor to take.
"Keep it," he said. "You may find it useful."
At ten past twelve I joined Dogor in crouching by the door. I pretended to hear something.
"What do you hear?"
I told him in detail about the snatches of conversation that I was supposedly hearing, making sure to prevent him from reaching for the door handle until the time was exactly a quarter after twelve.
The clock struck. "Let's make sure to be quiet and careful until we know just what the situation is, for who knows what waits for us on the other side," I said.
Dogor pulled his axe loose from the straps on the back of his armour. "Naturally."
I took a deep breath. And when I opened the door, we passed undetected onto the main floor of the store.
Wayne was behind the counter, looking suitably nefarious in shiny leather dress shoes, black jeans and a black hoodie that was at least two sizes too big for him. The hood covered most of his face. I wished I'd indicated in my email that he should be talking on the phone or pretending to speak with an invisible conspirator, even written a basic script for him to follow, but this would have to suffice. When he saw us, he stiffened but kept on fiddling with the papers laid out on the counter in front of him. Beside me, I could feel the increased pressure that Dogor's hands were exerting on the handle of his axe.
Now my job was to keep those hands from killing anyone for five whole minutes until my thesis sponsor arrived.
"He appears to be alone," Dogor murmured. His voice was so deep he sounded like a mangled audio conversion whose treble had been cut and bass multiplied by ten.
"Yes, or they might be invisible," I said.
I could only imagine how Wayne's heart was beating, because mine was veering into dubstep.
"Once we overpower him, we will take him into the back room from which we emerged. I will sever one of his limbs. The blood loss will weaken him. If he loses too much blood, we will tie the nub to prevent proper circulation and keep him alive," Dogor murmured.
"Which limb?" I asked. It seemed like a practical question.
But before Dogor could answer, a horn honked. I craned my neck to get a better view of the front door.
Wayne sprinted.
Dogor lunged forward.
I saw Wayne pull open the front door.
I saw Dogor fly through the air.
I saw the door close, and Wayne was gone, and Dogor swung his axe at empty space before landing with a thud that made every loose piece of hardware bounce.
Tires squealed.
By the time Dogor managed to open the front door—he had to put down his axe and use both hands, like a kid—the car was gone.
I exhaled and for a few seconds thought about the best way to defend myself in case Dogor turned on me, but he didn't. He growled in disappointment, then retrieved his axe and started going through the papers Wayne had left behind. "We were close, John Grousewater. Victory was within our grasp."
"But it slipped away."
"For now."
Dogor was oddly collected. He passed some of the papers to me. "What do you make of these? Are they useful?"
"They seem to be lists of names," I improvised. In actuality they were invoices.
"Accomplices?"
That would put them on Dogor's radar and I wasn't about to risk more lives than I had to. "Victims, most likely. See here?" I pointed to a random dollar amount next to a name. If Dogor had bought breakfast in this world, I assumed he was familiar with Canadian dollars. He nodded. "I believe these are records of how much money the Hooded Rat Brotherhood has stolen."
"They have been known to steal," he agreed. He put the papers down and started going through the cupboards below the counter instead. "And the Amulet of Vermillion, do you believe it may still be here?"
I pretended to help with the search. "I have my doubts."
"I, as well."
"If it ever was here, Wayne most likely took it with him when he fled, and now that the Hooded Rat Brotherhood knows we've infiltrated this place, it's unlikely they'll ever keep it here in the future."
"That is a logical conclusion, John Grousewater," Dogor said. "However, I meant that I have my doubts about the very existence of the Amulet of Vermillion."
Maybe Olaf Brandywine was wrong. Maybe Dogor could be reasoned with. I needed to try. "Do you mean that if the Hooded Rat Brotherhood had wanted to destroy Xynk, they would have done it already?"
Dogor shot me a look. "I mean that the Amulet of Vermillion is a deception. I would not have thought that in the past, but ever since my suspicions of Verbamor began, I have considered the possibility that the Amulet itself may be a decoy meant to confuse naive adventurers. If Verbamor wishes to stay in power by frightening the inhabitants of Xynk into obedience, he needs the Hooded Rat Brotherhood to exist. That is why he engages adventurers such as you, John Grousewater, to seek the Amulet rather than to destroy the Hooded Rat Brotherhood directly. It is sly, if it is the truth."
"And you want to destroy the Hooded Rat Brotherhood to force Verbamor off the throne?"
"I wish to end all that endangers Xynk. That is all. The identity of the man who sits on the throne does not interest me, so long as he rules justly and not by fear. Ever since I can remember, Xynk has lived under an executioner's blade and that is much too long a time to tremble."
"But if I've been recruited by Verbamor and you're now acting on the belief that Verbamor is fostering the existence of the Hooded Rat Brotherhood..."
Dogor sighed and took a cross-legged seat on the floor. "Do you know what happened to the last three adventurers who agreed to find the Amulet of Vermillion?" he asked. "I didn't help them, and they vanished. This was long ago, before Olaf Brandywine locked me in that forsaken box. Well, when he's trapped in a box for years, a dwarf gets to thinking, and he thinks that maybe he's not got it all as figured out as he thinks he does. So when I was in this box, that's when I started to suspect Verbamor of collusion, and it's also when I decided that the next adventurer who came to Xynk, I was going to trust, because, you know, John Grousewater, I've never trusted anyone in my life. I've known men to be loyal and I've intimidated men into loyalty, but that's not trust. You're the first one. I don't know you, you don't know me, but our paths cross, and even though they are not perfectly aligned you strike me as a good and honourable man. You've a history to you, a known one. So that if Verbamor offers you a quest and while solving that quest you realize that the path of good diverges from the path of success, you will diverge with it. What else have I? Tell me. All my years of failure are a lesson, and that lesson is that maybe one dwarf can't do it alone. But a dwarf and an adventurer—now there's a duo to be reckoned with."
The left side of my head started beating up the right side. Dogor's speech had left me emotional. I had glimpsed his perspective. At the same time, I had just witnessed his attempt to end Wayne's life. Wayne hadn't done anything wrong. Wayne was my best friend.
I offered Dogor my hand and helped him up.
He must have weighed a ton.
"Perhaps it's best to lick our wounds for the rest of the day, and put our heads together again in the morning," I said.
"You make much sense, my friend."
He slung his axe across his back and made for the front door. Waving, he opened it and exited to the street. I waited for a while—just long enough to hear someone
yell "Freak!" and someone else say "It ain't fucking Halloween yet, you weirdo."—then I slapped my cheeks with both hands, gathered my wits, and ran out through the back of the store, ready to follow Dogor to wherever it was that he came from.
Because trailing an armour-clad, three-foot tall dwarf through the streets of an ordinary Canadian city proved easy, once I had Dogor in my sights I wasn't in danger of losing him. He shuffled along with his head down, his axe bobbing rhythmically against his body, and I stayed at a safe distance behind. People generally steered clear. A police car drove by without a reaction. A homeless woman asked him for money. Kids rode by on bicycles, calling out for Tyrion Lannister, but there wasn't much of a resemblance. As I walked, I took in the sight of my city and my people, and I wondered how much I would give, what I would do, to keep them safe. If Canada called on me to fight its enemies, would I take up arms? I liked my homeland and my way of life. I don't know if I would be willing to die for it, but I'd probably be willing to kill for it, and in a twisted way that no sane person would ever believe, that was exactly what Dogor had devoted his entire life to. I believed him when he said he didn't enjoy killing. He seemed sincere in his belief that he was carrying out his duty. The trouble was, so did the whackos on the evening news, the ones whose dead bodies crying mothers dug up and carried through the streets, ululating, after their beloved, fundamentally devout sons had detonated themselves in crowded restaurants at peak business hours. But what