27 August 2006

1c: Bait and Switch

The Keshir Wood, Atharinshire, 3 Alana 1507 AC, continued.
(First: Prologue: Some Days Previous: 1b: Fire on a Winter's Day)

Even professionals tend to panic a bit when their beard is on fire.

And he did. He really did. Running in circles, screaming and shouting. I still couldn't see him with my eyes, but in my mind I could see him capering about. And I could hear him. The shroud only muffled the screaming a bit.

And that was my first hint that something was wrong. The shroud was still in place, about two seconds longer than I would have expected someone in the midst of panic to manage.

I heard two grunts, from my left and my right. Tezhla must have been watching my lips for the word that touched off this cheery beacon of burning hair. I never saw him arm himself with the two small crossbows, and from the sounds of things, neither had our uninvited observers.

That just left The Man with the Patchy Shroud behind me. I spun on my heels, already imagining the glyph for a formula that would immobilize him.

He was gone. Neither my eyeballs nor the sense conveyed to me by my earlier invocation could see him any longer, nor any trail suggesting where he might have gone.

Insert swearing here.

Tezhla took off past me into the woods. If there was a trace to be found, he'd find it.

I spun around again and completed the immobility glamour using Crispy Face as a target. He'd just recovered enough wits to contemplate running screaming into the woods looking for a snow bank to bury his face in. I took care of that, as well, dousing the flame. I was going to need to have a chat with this fellow in a moment, and it's notoriously hard to get a coherent sentence out of someone who's on fire.

I looked in on the two henchwomen at whom Tezhla had targeted his crossbows. His aim was impeccable, as always. This was a mixed blessing in this case, because both of the erstwhile spies now had quarrels sprouting from their left eyes, thus rendering them both less attractive and less talkative.

That left me alone with Crispy Face. Tezhla would spend ten or fifteen minutes trying to track down the real ringleader. I was pretty sure he wouldn't find anything - not because I doubt his skill but because I was now pretty sure we'd been duped.

There were constructs I could invoke that would immobilise any living thing for a mile radius, but these woods were teeming with life, and with legitimate (and quasi-legitimate) hunters and trappers and foresters and the like. I didn't relish having to explain why I had seen fit to bring the daily grind of a mile's worth of the King's Forest to a grinding halt. The bodies would be easy to explain, by comparison.

I wandered up to where Crispy Face was standing, frozen mid-panic. Now that I saw him up close, it was doubly obvious that this was not the professional in the bunch. There was no hint of power in him, and not many hints of intelligence. He seemed to be of the paler-skinned variety of Iri that I was usually mistaken for, but his hands were darker, suggesting perhaps that he spent his days in a tannery or a dyer's. His face, of course, was rather ugly with burns, right now, but I planned to take care of that in a moment.

I adjusted the structure of the immobility spell a bit, releasing his control over his head and neck so that we could more easily converse.

Of course, he immediately resumed screaming.

I smacked him across the teeth - the sort of smack that seems to be universally functional to all sentient life forms (at least, the three major groups I've encountered in my own lifetime) for cutting through hysterics.

It served the purpose, although only just barely. He was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The tips of his slightly pointed ears were flushed, and he was baring his teeth - also pointier than a human's would be - in a grimace that was an instinctive holdover, a reaction to both fear and pain. Somewhere in the back of his brain was a lingering bit of tissue that desperately wanted to hiss or growl or something, but all the poor sap could manage in practice was a whimper.

"Okay," I said to him. "This is how it's going to work, and I'll keep it simple. You're in pain, because I set your beard on fire. I set your beard on fire because you were spying on me and my friend and that made me cranky. I'm going to ask you some questions. If you answer truthfully the first time I ask, the pain will get better; if you don't, it will get worse. If you answer all my questions truthfully the first time, you'll be completely healed. You'll still have to grow your beard back the itchy way, but your skin won't be scarred and the pain will be gone. If you refuse to answer me at all, or you lie to me consistently, I'll set you on fire again and leave you here to light the road tonight. Do you understand?"

Now, before you wonder how a mild mannered programmer became so heartlessly willing to incinerate someone whose offence was really relatively minor, let me take a page from Mr. Goldman and assure you that Crispy Face does not get eaten by the eels at this time. If he'd been uncooperative, I'd have left him his burns, but I would have made up some convenient excuse to not actually set him on fire again.

Yes, I realise this is morally ambiguous.

He nodded his understanding, quite vigorously.

"Good. I prefer it when people can get along. Let's start simple: who are you?"

"Kraz."

"That's it? Just...Kraz?"

"Kraz."

He was telling the truth. I'm sure there was a sad story behind his lack of a family name, or even a name with two syllables, but it wasn't what I was here for. I began engaging a healing routine, which immediately alleviated some of his pain and improved the state of his burns. I focused on the area around his lips to encourage clear speech.

"Where are you from?"

"North of the City. Tola."

More healing, less pain. "I thought that might be it. You have the hands of a tanner. Am I right?"

He seemed inordinately pleased that I'd recognised his trade. It might have been the first time the poor guy had ever really been noticed in any detail. He nodded proudly, and I applied more energy to the healing structure I had wrapped around his face.

At this point, I was starting to feel downright foolish. Even without trying to read him, I had already gotten enough just off his surface thoughts to know that this guy just a dupe. I decided to make it easy on him.

"Let me guess: someone showed up at the tannery with a bag of coin and said he'd pay people to stand near the road leading south out of the city and watch a particular spot for him."

Kraz looked a bit nervous at this point, but he nodded. "Except it wasn't the tannery, it was the pub. That's where he picked up the other two, too. I didn't see anything wrong with it, and a guy needs some extra coin sometimes, y'know? He didn't even say he was watching for anything special. He just told us to watch this spot and try to remember what we saw as clearly as we could. I don't know what good it would have done him. I didn't understand what I saw, so I don't think I could have described it for him."

Guileless honesty. The perfect short-term henchman, in many ways. You could even let this sort get captured, because he really didn't know anything. At all. About anything.

I finished healing him. "You wouldn't have had to. He would have picked it out of your brain. Four observers, four different angles. The fourth guy was your employer, I assume?"

"No, but he was with him."

"It's too much, I imagine, to hope you ever got names for them?"

"Nope. Not for the women, neither. He hired us, stuffed us in a cart, the other guy rattled us down here and perched us in the woods and told us to watch."

I sighed and let the immobility glamour go, as well. He stretched cautiously. He was kind-of thick, but he realised that sudden moves would be a bad idea. "Sometime later, I will ask you to describe the men as best you can. How much did he pay you?"

"A silver."

I nodded. That was more money than this guy was likely to see in a year, and never all at once. Which also made me a bit suspicious. "May I see it?"

Kraz wasn't too happy about that idea, but he realised I could immobilise him again with a twitch, and we'd just made friends, sort-of, so he nervously reached into a pouch at his belt and handed me the coin.

Thought so. A fake.

"I have very bad news for you, Kraz, and I realise you've got no reason to believe me, but you probably want to at least think about it. This coin is copper with a bit of paint. You try to spend this in the city and what I did to your beard will seem pleasant by comparison to what will happen to you. His Majesty's Justiciar has no sense of humour about bogus coin."

His eyes glazed a bit as he contemplated the horror of it all. This morning he'd been a rich man for a day of easy work. Now he'd had his face roasted off and was returned to penury. He was not so far gone in contemplating his new-found misery, however, that he didn't jump a bit as Tezhla came back, swearing sulfurously. The Noliri's fur was bristled, his ears erect, and his nostrils flaring, as he stomped down the one hill, across the road, and up the other to where we were standing. When he paused for breath, however, I cut him short. "You done yet?"

He glared. "Not really, but I can be convinced to pretend otherwise for a few minutes while we figure out what we're doing with him." He nodded at Kraz.

"That's easy. He's coming with us, at least into the city."

Tezhla narrowed his eyes at me - not quite a glare, but close. I touched the sword and aimed a thought at it, and the translation glamour was dispelled. When Tezhla responded, it was in a language few others in either world spoke - Esperanto. I'd learned it years ago because...well, because I'm a geek, and it's a geeky thing to do. I'd taught it to Tezhla for just such occasions. Of course, few of you, dear readers, speak it or read it, either, I expect, so I'll translate here.

"I suppose cutting him loose would be a bit harsh. I assume he's just a patsy?"

"Yup. So were your target-practice dummies over yonder. We turn him loose out here and he'll be dead by morning, one way or the other. "

"Don't expect me to feel guilty. Spying's a job for professionals, dammit."

"Wasn't saying you should feel guilty. I was saying we've been thoroughly had."

"I'd noticed. Of course, he could merely be playing the fool and counting on our pity to get close to us."

"Thought of that. I skimmed him. Either he's good enough to hide the slightest hint of nefarious intent from his surface thoughts, in which case he's earned a peek and I want to keep my eye on him anyway; or else he really is a walking cheese sandwich."

"And of course, you always prefer the simplest explanation. And you're correct to do so infuriatingly often. All right. We take him with us. Then what?"

"Dunno. Maybe we hand him to the reeve; maybe we hire him ourselves. He's proven he can follow instructions, and he looks muscular enough to take on any number of menial tasks you and I dislike."

Tezhla nodded with a bit of a stern face. This was not directed at me, but was the beginning of characterisation. Tezhla made an excellent bad cop. "Do we camp for the night, or would you like to light our way?"

Tezhla raised a good point. The fight and its aftermath had neatly prevented us from making the city before nightfall. It wasn't full dark, yet, but it would be soon. Too soon. "We'll never make the city before the gates close, and inn outside the south gates is nasty."

"Tsk. So squeamish. You'll sleep on the ground under a pitched sheet, but you won't sleep in a drafty, buggy inn?"

"I don't have to pay to sleep on the ground."

"Good point. OK."

At this point, I touched the sword again, and the translation glamour resumed. To Kraz, I said, "Are you any good at pitching tents?"

"Yeah, I suppose."

"Good. You'll find canvas and poles and stuff in my friends' packs. Don't get any ideas. Just pitch the tent."

Without question or argument, Kraz went about his work. Tezhla watched him like a hawk while I pretended to ignore him. When the work was done - and quite competently, too - I told him, "Wrap up in your cloak and go to sleep. You've had a long day. We'll take care of keeping watch. When we go into the city in the morning, you're coming with us. Do you understand?"

He nodded vigorously, and seemed grateful that he'd get a chance to sleep off what was probably the worst day of his life. I had a feeling I'd just hired myself my first henchman for the upcoming mission.

I told Tezhla to nap now, as well. To me, it was only an hour or so since I'd woken up, and I had a lot to think about already. There was a great deal already afoot that I was going to have to catch up on quickly.

But for now, the winter evening was still and dark, the snow faintly luminescent, the sky clear and filled with stars. Two of the three small moons were overhead, bouncing additional light off the snow. I could, once again, soak up the illusion of serenity, at least until morning.

I was going to need it.

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