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“Jimmy. Jimmy Brown.”
I touched a hand to his forehead again. He didn’t try to avoid it—he obviously knew enough about pixies to understand I’d just order him to be still anyway.
“Jimmy Brown, you will head straight home once we release you, and you will never take a job that involves me or my brother or indeed any other pixie. Understood?”
“Yes, but it’s not like I ever actually know if the job involves a pixie.”
I half smiled. He did have a point. “Then you will always ask, and if they can’t or won’t tell you, you won’t take the job.”
“Well fuck, that’s just mean. It’s not as if there’s a ton of work up here for subcontractors, you know?”
“Not my problem. Besides, it’s better to be restricted than dead.”
“Pixies can’t kill. There’s that whole curse thing you have happening.”
“There’s an exception to that—”
“There always fucking is,” he cut in sourly.
I smiled, pushed to my feet, and moved on. The one Lugh had kicked had stopped writhing, but his expression remained pained—no surprise given the bruised nuts and the broken jaw. The latter meant he probably wouldn’t be able to talk even if he did know something, so I simply repeated the orders I’d given the chatty man.
Lugh returned, and he didn’t look happy. “The witch has gone.”
I grimaced. “I’m not entirely surprised. The crack on the head would probably have curtailed much of his ability to produce weather magic.”
“Don’t suppose our prisoner knew his name?”
“It’s Johnson or Jackson. I’m thinking he’s probably not from around these parts.”
Besides, weather witches were rare enough that they generally were in high demand and their services were appropriately priced, especially when it came to out-of-the-way places like this. Whoever had hired this one obviously had money to burn.
We questioned the other two men but basically got the same answers Jimmy had given. It was pointless keeping them here—aside from the fact they had no choice but to leave, it was too damn miserable for any of us to stay up here longer than necessary.
As Lugh began releasing them, Holgan returned.
“I take it you didn’t capture your friend?” Lugh said.
“Oh, I got the bastard,” Holgan growled, “but he couldn’t give me much information because he wasn’t told much. But I know who hired him—Biran Gratham—and we can go question him if you’re still feeling up to it by the time we hike back down.”
“Is there any point?” I asked. “Won’t your friend have already sent Gratham a warning?”
“He gave me his oath that he hasn’t and wouldn’t, and no dwarf would dare break his word.” Holgan sniffed. “It’ll probably take us three hours to get back down now that the weather has eased some, but we should be leaving now, just in case those bastards you released say something.”
“They won’t,” I said. “Trust me on that.”
He studied me shrewdly for a second, then nodded. We hadn’t told him we were pixies, but gossip got around surprisingly quickly in wilder regions of the world.
Which made me wonder why the chatty man and his friends hadn’t been aware of exactly who they’d been attacking. Or maybe it was simply a case of him not putting two and two together. And we had been very careful to ensure the sword was always hidden.
We gathered the rest of our gear, strapped the sword onto Lugh’s pack, and then headed down. It was far easier to walk down than it had been to walk up, but that wasn’t saying much, given I was also closer to exhaustion. By the time we reached the visitors’ center at the base of the mountain, the worst of the storm had passed, although the drizzle that remained continued to make the day unpleasant.
Holgan opened his four-wheel drive and motioned us to get in. I’d barely done so when he was reversing out and heading off. Dwarves were slow to anger, but you didn’t want to be around them when they were. I suspected Gratham was about to find that out.
We headed for his office first. While the chatty man had insisted the contractor was probably home tucked in front of the fire, it was a working week for most people, and it hadn’t yet neared five.
Holgan wound his way through the relatively quiet streets, then turned into one that was mixed use, the various residences and shops interspersed with each other. Gratham’s building stood between a fish-and-chip shop and a sports bar, with a laneway running along one side. It was an unpainted four-story stone building that housed his shop on the ground floor and what appeared to be apartments above, and it was rather ratty-looking compared to some of the other buildings in the street.
I seriously hoped itwasn’tratty. I’d already had more than enough encounters with the beady-eyed little bastards over the last few weeks to last me a lifetime.
