Dragons & Dwarves

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “You just told me that there were ties into the city government. What makes you think the local cops aren’t involved?”

  “Are you saying Maelgwyn Caledvwlch is dirty?”

  “Good Lord—do you even remember how you met him?”

  Yeah, I did. It wasn’t really a comforting thought. To an extent, Caledvwlch’s actions in the mess around the Aloeus murder weren’t his fault, they were proxy actions for a crooked cop he’d pledged fealty to—but the law in this country doesn’t make those kind of distinctions and the reason Caledvwlch wasn’t in jail right now was primarily due to the DA’s shallow investigation, and to the fact that, in the end, he handed the Rayburn administration the least politically damaging scapegoat conveniently dead and unable to testify.

  I could say for sure that the elf played by the rules, but those rules were the ones he brought over from the other side of the Portal.

  “What did you talk to him about?”

  I don’t know if I was relieved or not when I heard sirens approaching.

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  One of the Feds searching my apartment stationed himself by the window and looked down at the street.

  “What is it?” Blackstone asked him.

  “Locals, looks like half the SPU.”

  “Shit.” Blackstone looked at me accusingly.

  I shrugged.

  Blackstone shook his head. “Maxwell, you’re either neck-deep in this, or you’re incredibly stupid.”

  I didn’t give him the satisfaction of telling him that those weren’t necessarily mutually exclusive options.

  Blackstone turned and walked over to the door of my apartment, just in time to confront a contingent of Cleveland police officers, Commander Caledvwlch in the lead. The elf towered over Blackstone, half his face obscured by the top of the doorframe.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure?” Blackstone said.

  “There is an ongoing murder investigation.” Caledvwlch’s voice was impassive as ever. “I am here to take Mr. Maxwell downtown for questioning.”

  “Mr. Maxwell is a material witness in a federal investigation.”

  “It seems we have a bureaucratic impasse, then.” Caledvwlch pulled a cell phone out of one of the baggy folds in his suit jacket. “I will have to consult with the judge who issued the warrant.”

  “Actually,” Blackstone said, “I think we’re done here.” He waved at his men, who started filing out of my apartment. He glanced back at me before he left. “I’ll be in touch.”

  I’m sure.

  Caledvwlch folded his way into the remains of my apartment, followed by a pair of police officers. He looked at me with his shiny metallic eyes and said, “It puzzles me that men create rules only so they can twist them out of shape.”

  “I will admit that feudal fealty is a little simpler.”

  “I have a warrant,” Caledvwlch said.

  I sighed. “So you are taking me in?”

  “Only to make a statement.” He handed me a sheet of paper from within his voluminous jacket. It wasn’t an arrest warrant.

  “You’re looking for the letter?”

  “Any correspondence that might have come from Mr. Ossian Parthalán.”

  “I’m afraid Blackstone beat you to it.”

  He nodded, and I suspected that he wasn’t surprised at all. “If you would come with me and make a statement to that effect?”

  He led me toward the door, and the other cops stayed in my condo. “What are they for?”

  “Simply making sure that your fallible human memory hasn’t forgotten anything.” The two cops picked up right where the Feds left off.

  I’d known Caledvwlch for a couple of years, and if you’d asked me to predict what his office would look like, I would have probably envisioned something as austere, sterile, and functional as an operating theater in a Trappist monastery.

  I guess I was a little off the mark.

  He sat me in one corner while he folded himself behind a desk that seemed a little small for him. The first detail I noted was that all the furniture was wood, very little metal at all.

  It made sense. Elves reacted badly to iron, not just in elemental form, but alloys to a certain extent. I don’t know the medical or magical basis for it. But, while elves only seemed to be injured by iron that broke through the skin, every one I’ve seen was wary of being exposed to the metal.

  And, apparently, Caledvwlch wasn’t a fan of IKEA. The desk and the chairs were rich antique hardwood. The kind of furniture that graced a policeman’s office of Eliot Ness’ vintage. On the polished mahogany of his desk sat a trio of bonsai trees in brightly colored ceramic pots. In one, a figurine of a Taoist monk sat on a rock grinning at some private joke.

  On the walls I saw an eclectic collection of art, mostly Asian landscapes in ink washes.

  “Mr. Maxwell.”

  I turned back to face him. “You wanted a statement?”

  “You keep appearing in our investigation. It is time I had a clear picture of why.”

  I shrugged. “I think we’re investigating the same thing?”

  “If that is the case, I would be interested in exactly how the dwarven enterprise of Magetech is involved.” Caledvwlch chewed the word with some visible distaste. I couldn’t help thinking that it was for my benefit.

  “You have something against Magetech?”

  Caledvwlch spread his hands across the desk. “The dwarves are a noble race whose passage here was as perilous as our own. In the end, each of us chooses the paths we take. What connection exists between the dwarf Ossian Parthalán and the company Magetech?”

  “I don’t know. I was investigating Councilman Mazurich.”

  “And the material that Ossian Parthalán sent to you?”

  “Salt.”

  Caledvwlch nodded, as if that was the answer he expected.

  “Shall we review everything that happened since you received Ossian Parthalán’s phone call?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IT was well after midnight before I was completely disentangled from the legal system, tired, unenlightened, and more than a little annoyed. I generally don’t like being leaned on.

  Right now, though, I was walking out of the Justice Center and just wanted to get home.

  It had started snowing while I’d been sequestered with Caledvwich. The snow muffled sound. While the bars and clubs were just getting into gear a few blocks away, where I was the night was—for a moment—dead quiet. It was eerie the way the snow swirled around. And briefly, framed by the silence, I saw a reptilian silhouette eclipse the upper part of the Terminal Tower.

  Somewhere, a traffic light changed, and the silence was broken as cars shot by on the street in front of me, throwing slush at me and at each other.

  We had only thirty dragons or so in the Greater Cleveland area. I wondered which one I’d just glimpsed. They’d been keeping a low profile, especially since the Feds took over the Portal. They were a set of creatures that made the Feds really nervous—and while they had rights, they only had them under Ohio state law.

  Most of them had comfortably integrated themselves into the local economy, and—as powerful as they were—I doubted any of them wanted to be a test case for some sort of Fed crackdown. I was sort of surprised to see one flying downtown, even this late at night.

  I turned my attention to the street and looked for a taxi.

  I was lucky; one had started slowing down and pulling over, even before I started waving at it. I figured I must have looked forlorn and a little lost.

  The Justice Center was probably a good place to pick up fares, with people being processed out of the system at all hours, so I didn’t think much of it as I opened the door and slid into the back of the cab.

  “Shaker Square, please,” I told the driver as I leaned back in the seat. The cabbie had the heat somewhere in the high eighties, and the snow that had dusted my clothes melted instantly, soak
ing me through. I wiped my forehead, unsure if I was wiping sweat or melted snow off my face.

  Now Shaker Square is pretty much due east of downtown, which happened to be the direction the cab had been traveling down Superior to begin with when it picked me up. I didn’t think much when the driver took a right turn right after Public Square. There were a number of ways to get there, and I had enough cash on me that I wasn’t that concerned about being gouged.

  It was the second right, immediately after that one, that made me suspicious.

  “Hey? I said Shaker Square—where’re you going?”

  That’s when I glanced at the hack license. “Samanish Thégharin,” next to a picture of a broad, full-bearded face. Dwarven.

  The cab continued turning, circling the Soldiers and Sailors’ Monument in the shadow of the Terminal Tower, until we ended up westbound on Superior.

  “Do you mind telling me what’s going on?” By this point there was no possible route that would explain where we were going. My cabbie had a destination of his own in mind. This was not encouraging given the profile of Ossian Parthalán’s kinsman that Reggie had given me.

  “Look, why don’t you let me out, I’ll take the bus.”

  Mr. Thégharin ignored me, as if he couldn’t hear me at all behind the Plexiglas partition. I reached for the door, but the handles were absent. I apparently was going wherever Mr. Thégharin wanted.

  I thought about smashing one of the windows to make my escape, but there were some scary-looking glyphs etched in the glass, and I didn’t relish finding out what they did the hard way.

  Before I worked up enough panic to make the attempt, the Detroit-Superior Bridge loomed up in front of us. A mass of concrete and blue steel arcing over the Flats whose far end was hidden by layers of blowing snow.

  Instead of crossing the bridge, my dwarf swerved right. If he kept to the street, he’d head down to the Flats, but he pulled over toward a forest of orange barrels and blinking sawhorses. It seemed as if he’d plow right into the construction barriers, but barely visible shadows emerged from the blowing snow to move the barriers aside and let the taxi pass.

  I glanced behind me and saw the same barriers quickly replaced behind us. Then a tunnel swallowed us in darkness.

  The Detroit-Superior Bridge was a Depression-era project, built when the city still had streetcars, so it was built with two levels. The upper deck was designed for automobile traffic, the lower deck for the streetcar traffic. The lower level was shut up and mothballed when Cleveland got rid of its streetcar system. Despite a long series of proposals, and one major renovation, the lower deck remained closed for several decades.

  It wasn’t until recently, with the rise of tourism, that any plans for using the space reached the construction phase. The Regional Transit Authority planned to expand its existing light-rail line from the East Side and downtown, moving west toward Lakewood and Rocky River.

  The western link would cross the Flats using the existing lower deck of the bridge. All of which was still five to ten years in the future.

  But construction had already started. And, as was the case for about half of construction work in this town, a dwarven company had gotten the contract.

  The cab rolled through a dark tunnel, past two sets of floor-to-ceiling chain-link fences that opened of their own accord. We passed pallets of rebar, concrete block, PVC pipe, and other items less identifiable to me.

  Past the second gate, we pulled out onto the deck proper. It was a vast space, dotted by pillars marching off into the darkness. The far end was too distant for the headlights to make out, so it felt as if the half-finished railroad tracks marched off forever.

  The cab rolled slowly down the center, between two pairs of tracks. Through concrete arches on either side, I could see the swirling snow obscuring the view of the Flats and the city.

  Ahead of us, a group was waiting. A ring of squat figures was picked out in the taxi’s headlights. They were dressed uniformly, as if they had all walked off the same job site. They wore brown coveralls, streaked with grime, heavy steel-toed boots, thick leather gloves, and hard hats. When they parted to let the taxi roll into the center of their circle, I saw that they all wore face masks or respirators.

  I hoped the masks were more for anonymity’s sake, rather than because of toxic particulate matter in the air.

  The taxi came to a stop in the center of the circle, and the passenger door popped open for me. I didn’t need a cue from my driver, Mr. Thégharin, to know what was expected of me. Despite my contrary streak, I am not completely self-destructive. I hadn’t time to count, but there was a ring of about twenty dwarves circling this taxi. And, given the reputation they had for strength and martial ability—back home they didn’t just make swords, after all—I doubted I could overpower any one of them.

  Whatever was going on, I had a much better chance of talking my way out of it.

  I stepped out of the taxi, and closed the door behind me. The taxi moved quickly enough that it almost knocked me over. It was through the circle, and the circle had closed behind it all before I had completely regained my equilibrium.

  The glow from the headlights receded as the taxi continued on its journey toward the west side of the Cuyahoga. As the artificial light receded, it allowed my eyes to register the flickering orange light of candles surrounding me. Heavy black candles as thick as my forearm, and about half again as long, placed around the inner circumference of the ring of dwarves surrounding me.

  I turned slowly until I faced the odd dwarf out. This guy was dressed the same, but he wasn’t part of the group ringing me. He was bent over, backing around the inner circumference of the circle, chanting something quiet and guttural to himself as he poured something white out of a small canvas bag. He was completing a circle that separated me from the others, and he was just now walking across the space where the taxi had left.

  I glanced behind me and saw that he had already passed the half of the circle where the taxi had entered.

  The bastard has good timing.

  I walked toward the one spot where the circle was incomplete. I didn’t know a lot about magic, but I knew breaking a circle was a bad thing. If I wanted out of this, I needed to step out before this little ritual was completed.

  The dwarf in the ring directly in front of me reached for his tool belt and took out a small mini-sledge and hefted it while looking at me. I stopped, looked around at my four-and-a-half-foot-tall audience, and asked, “Someone tell me what is going on here.”

  The only audible answer was the continued chant of the dwarf pouring the circle, who took a few steps across my path to complete it.

  The hair rose on my arms and the back of my neck. I could smell the energy released into the air.

  Like hell dwarves don’t do magic.

  A solid blue arc whipped around the perimeter of the circle, close enough that the force threw me backward. I stumbled and fell on my ass, roughly in the center of the circle. All around me, the air crackled as arcs leaped up from the circle, forming a blue hemisphere of energy about twenty feet in diameter—ending just short of the ceiling above me.

  My pulse raced. I couldn’t see this ending well.

  “Mr. Maxwell,” spoke a vaguely familiar voice.

  I lowered my gaze to confront the dwarf who had completed the circle. Apparently, he was on my side of the circle when he finished. He took off his mask and I could recognize him.

  “Teaghue Parthalán.”

  He walked toward me, his face grim. “Abandon the path you follow, Mr. Maxwell.”

  I pushed myself upright. We both now stood on a disk of concrete that seemed to hover in a universe of hazy blue. Nothing was visible beyond the barrier.

  “Exactly what path is that?” I tried to keep my voice from shaking, and I wiped my palms on my trousers. I was still apprehensive, but the fact that Teaghue decided to talk to me was a little reassuring.

  “The path the former brother of my clan had mind to set you on.” br />
  “It happens to be my job,” I told him. It was my ornery streak speaking, and I counted it a victory of self-preservation that I didn’t say the first five things that came to mind.

  Teaghue shook his head and I had the odd impression that, wholly by accident, I had actually said the right thing. “You believe we do this lightly? But it has come to this. We must ask you to cease, for your sake as much as ours.”

  His attitude was not quite what I had expected.

  “Is this a threat?”

  The creases in Teaghue’s face made his expression deep and impenetrable. His voice was cold. “It is a warning. A warning undertaken at great risk and no little expense. Ossian’s misstep has drawn too much attention already. Should you suffer the same fate, the resulting chaos would be impossible to undo.”

  “Who killed Ossian?”

  Teaghue stepped back and shook his head. “Do not ask that question.”

  I stepped forward. “Why?”

  “You will draw his attention.”

  “Who?”

  I was leaning over to talk to him, and with no warning, Teaghue struck me. His leatherwork glove hit the side of my face hard enough to knock me over. I fell back, spitting blood and cradling a broken lip.

  “Do not ask that question!” Teaghue was obviously pissed, but there was an undercurrent there, one of very deep fear. I began to understand something—the dwarves were shilling for someone. It wasn’t the dwarves who killed off Ossian, it was the Mr. Big who was running things. Ossian’s attempt at contacting me made sense then; he wasn’t turning against his clan so much as trying to get at Mr. Big.

  I rubbed my mouth and looked at Teaghue. “If you tell me what’s going on, I might be able to help.”

  Teaghue just shook his head.

  I kept prodding. “Ossian must have thought so . . .”

  “Ossian was a fool. Mazurich was a fool.” Teaghue stepped up to me and grabbed my collar, and for the first time since we started the dialogue, I feared for my life. “And you are a fool, Mr. Maxwell. There are forces here you cannot contain and you would loose them on you and yours. The clans chose their path long ago, and turning back now would only destroy everything. Leave the authors of the Thesarch in the shadows.”