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IX
My apartment was gone. The whole building had been
reduced to a heap of charred logs, lying, twisted on top of each other.
The building, structurally, was the same as it had been more than half a
millennium, when it was built by human hands in the old Stormwind.
Boards and beams had been swapped out as they grew old and brittle, but
its pointed façade, its angular charm, was the same. Now it was nothing
but a broken sculpture, static chaos, caught in the moment for ever.
I’d avoided the mobs, sneaking past them even in
the noon-day shadows, watching them: some were haphazard clumps of
madmen and madwomen, testing the waters, learning the survival game in
the brave new world they’d woken up in this morning. Others were
organized squads of cult soldiers. One squad had been Scarlet. They
would not be happy with me for deserting, and I’d backtracked in a
panic, taking a side street, and, quite without meaning to, ended up on
my street.
I stood on the street in front of the building,
glad that I had taken Ajax and my mace when I’d left the night before.
My most important possessions were hitched up in my backpack, sitting
exposed on my back. Still, I missed my tiny apartment. There was no
place I could call home in this City any more, and I felt suddenly lost
again. Time to move on.
I hadn’t wanted to move on, though. I’d lived ten
years of my short life on the run, and I’d wanted to settle down for a
while. Three years in Storm City hadn’t been enough.
To my left, along the street, in front of the
north-western corner of the building, there was a small, black shape on
the ground. It was a tiny burned body. It was missing an arm, but
clutched in the other one was a tiny kitchen knife. It had been burned
beyond recognition, but I didn’t need to see its features to recognize
it. I choked up, suddenly, and knelt, saying a silent prayer. I guess
that settles my rent debt, I thought.
* * *
I needed to find Fang. I knew there was no way I
could find my way back to Katy M and the campsite, somewhere in the
middle of the woods south of the City, but I knew where Fang had been
last. I hoped against hope that he was still holed up in the little room
in the mountain, writing letters for the Law.
* * *
The bridge to North End had been destroyed. The sun
had passed its apex, and shadows were beginning to stretch backwards
from their assigned objects. The destruction had continued from Old Town
east to the Northshire Stream. The bridge’s substructure remained,
jutting a foot or so out over the stream, ending abruptly with a series
of jagged hack marks. On the far side, it remained as well: not a bridge
any more, but a short, horizontal wall keeping swimmers in the water and
out of North End. Spiked logs had been set in the bank below the bridge.
The affluent had protected their own, I thought.
There was a small breech in the far bank’s
fortifications some ways downstream, small enough for a scruffy, horned
cat to slip through. I slipped into the water (concentrating, keeping my
cat mind’s overwhelming distaste at getting wet from deterring me) and
swam across. There might have been guards watching, but a skinny lion
didn’t attract any notice, and I made it up without incident.
The waterfront was a maze of fortifications, which
I painstakingly snuck through. Out the other side, though, into North
End proper, was startlingly normal. People bustled about on their
errands, and the small number of shops in the district were doing a brisk
business. The prevailing winds had blown ash from Old Town and points
south away from the district. The sun shown brilliantly.
* * *
Half an hour and some searching later – it had been
night the last time I was here – I stood before the gates of the Argent
Dawn mansion. Its crystal glass dome glittered at the top of its four
tall stories. The white columns rising around the front door were nearly
blinding to look at. The ghost gatekeeper recognized me, and bowed
stiffly before waving the gate open. I sprinted up the driveway and
around to the mansion’s shadowed east side, to the small servant’s door
I’d passed through the previous night. I pulled myself together, and
knocked three times.
The door creaked open after a moment, and I stepped
inside. The orc cooks were in the kitchen. The smell of roast quail had
been replaced with the stinging smell of carbon, and one aproned orc
was yelling at another aproned orc whose puffy white hat was somewhat
shorter.
“It’s burned! It’s needed upstairs in two minutes
and now it’s burned!” he shouted.
“The word is burnt,” muttered the other orc
sullenly, dabbing at a terribly burnt roast bird of some kind, in a vain
attempt to rescue it.
“You burned it!” said the first, his face twisting
in what seemed to me to be unnecessary rage. “You burned it, it’s been
burned! It’s burned!”
“Burnt,” said the other, sullenly.
The third orc was across the room from the others.
He glanced at me sideways, and it seemed to me that he was checking me
over. He glanced back down at what he was doing. “Both are acceptable,”
he said quietly, to the others. I had passed inspection, I thought.
Maybe he remembered me.
I made my way up the spiral staircase and down the long hallway
into the mountain. The door was where it had been before, and there was
a crack of light under it. I eased it open slowly. Fang sat at his desk,
glancing at the wall in front of him and scrawling away at a parchment.
He didn’t flinch.
“Hey,” I said, hesitantly. Now what?
“Hey,” he said, not looking up.
It was awkward. Last time I’d seen him, I’d been a
bear.
“I’m sorry about…” I paused. “The thing. With the
attacking you.”
“It’s cool,” he said. “Sorry about the whole
stringing you along thing. Come in, close the door.”
“M said you did it on purpose.” I came in and
closed the door. There was only one bed in the room now.
“I did,” he said, looking up. “We needed you.
You’re a curious kinda bull. I got the job done.”
I huffed, but it was half a laugh. “Yeah,” I said.
There was a pause. Fang finished scribbling his
fine calligraphy, bit the letter, and turned around in his chair.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in the woods somewhere?” he said.
I nodded. “I heard about the riots.”
“So you run towards them,” he said. “Most people
packed up and left last night. You should’ve seen the road east.”
“Is it all going to plan?” I said, a little
caustically. “All the burning and the dying? They killed my landlord. I
really liked him.”
Fang shrugged. “You want to change the world, you
have to break a few eggs. Sorry about your landlord.”
Fair enough, I thought. Still. Poor little guy.
“So,” he continued. “We should get you back with
your party.” He stood up.
“How?” I said. I realized that I had come back here
hoping that he knew how to summon people. Fat chance, I thought.
“I'm told,” he said, “that when you left, they came
back here.”
“Oh!” I said. “That’s easy, then.”
He opened the door, and looked up at me. He had a
murlocky impish look on his face. “You’ll get to be there when you start
your journey this time.” He turned and walked into the hallway. I
sighed.
We walked farther along the corridor, deeper into
the mountain than I’d been before, until we came to another plain,
wooden door. Fang knocked sharply on it, and Katy M’s voice growled,
“Come in,” from the other side of it. We did so.
She was sitting in a small, wooden chair against
the wall of the small, plain bedroom, holding a parchment letter, which
might have been the one Madoran had given her at our campsite. She
waved it at Fang. “First moment alone I’ve had to sit and read since I
got it,” she said.
“He delivered it faithfully?” said the Murloc. M
nodded. It was the same letter, then. “Funny that I could have just told
you myself,” he said. He sighed, then glanced sideways at me. “How much
did you tell Horse?”
“Everything I knew at the time,” she said, waving
the letter again. I must be back out of the loop, I thought.
“Everything?” laughed Fang. He looked at me again.
“You must like her a whole lot more than you like me right now.”
I grunted. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how much to
hold it against him: as infuriatingly vague as he’d been, Fang had quite
cleverly gotten me out of Storm City before it fell to chaos.
“Well,” he continued. “Horse, I should say this
much more, at least, for now. The dwarf you met last night, Prince
Madoran, for all his playfulness,” (“and drunkenness,” added M) “is one
of the smartest and most honorable people I know. Trust his intentions.”
“For all that, though,” growled M, “he is not an
agent of the Law, nor does he understand it like you do.”
“I guess you did tell him everything,” muttered
Fang.
“You’ve done so thus far,” the tauren continued,
unfazed, “so please continue to be judicious about what you reveal to
him.”
I nodded. “So don’t tell him about the Law.”
“I should say not,” said Fang, as though having to
agree to the most obvious, most basic statement he’d ever heard.
“What about the quest?” I said. “The book? You were
supposed to tell me more about what this is all about.”
“And I was going to, as well,” he said, smiling
just a little, “but we were interrupted about half way through by a big
rabid bear.” Damnit, I thought. “M will fill you in once you’ve dropped
the dwarf off at his city. Well,” he said loudly, looking at the bull,
“about time you two were heading out, don’t you think?”
“I suppose so,” she growled.
Madoran the Dwarf had his own room as well, a bit
down the hall from Katy M’s. Fang knocked, and a gruff “Door’s open!”
came from inside. Fang pushed in.
“Hello, Prince Madoran,” he said, and bowed. M and
I filed in after. The dwarf was sprawled on his bed, in nothing but his
britches, reading a book.
“Horse!” Madoran said gruffly. “You ran off on us!”
I could almost hear M’s teeth grinding next to me. It was at his urgings
that I had done so. “Welcome back, anyway.” I nodded.
“Our esteemed host informed me that he needed us out
as soon as Horse returned,” Fang said deferentially to the half-naked
dwarf.
“Ah, he won’ mind if we take our time. You two have
quite a journey ahead of you,” said Madoran, nodding at the other tauren
and myself, “an you should get some extra feather bed time!” He sat up
on his bed anyway, and began shuffling around in his backpack for
clothes. We bowed out.
* * *
No more than twenty minutes later, the four of us
stood in the stone passageway. Katy M, Prince Madoran and I had our
traveling clothes on, with our backpacks cinched up under our cloaks.
Fang had provided me with one of his to replace my lost one; it was
purple, and short, and I thought it looked ridiculous on me.
“This is how I would have had it last time,” said
Fang, bowing slightly to me. I grimaced, slightly embarrassed, before I
remembered that Madoran thought we’d been attacked by forces unknown. I
nodded.
“Maybe this time will be for real,” said the dwarf
gruffly, “as we’re all present and in our heads!”
“And we’re traveling lighter,” M growled lightly.
“I’ve got half as much beef to carry.”
“I get it!” I said, a little louder than I meant
to. “Let’s just go.”
Fang grinned. “So much for fond farewells.”
“Keep in touch,” said M to Fang.
“Damn right,” said Fang. “I’m sure I’ll be tracking
you down as soon as I get lonely.” He winked. The two mismatched agents
of the Law embraced.
I shook his hand. “Thanks, I think,” I said. “I
guess you got me out of town just in time.”
“You have no idea.” The Murloc smiled. “You’re
welcome. Madoran, give my regards to your mother.” Madoran bowed. The
other bull, the dwarf, and I, turned away, towards the center of the
mountain.
X
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