Jinx On The Divide (24 page)

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"What's going on down there?" asked Goodbody. "It's as though someone's been lighting dozens of tiny fires."

Outside the largest cave was a wooden board. The name turpsik had been crossed out and replaced by cudweed's stud farm. fire-breathers for every occasion. Squill's

own fire-breather was lying curled up nearby, next to a very handsome female. The female was incubating some eggs. When Scoffit looked more closely, she could see that there were fire-breathers dotted all over the valley, most of them quite young. Squill, Catchfly, Pepperwort, and a japegrin Scoffit didn't recognize were sitting on a log, eating supper. A female japegrin -- who bore a strong resemblance to Squill -- was ladling something into bowls. It was a nice domestic scene, and no one looked as though they were going anywhere in a hurry.

Scoffit flew in a little closer. No one was looking up at the sky; they were all too busy eating. She wanted to overhear some of the conversation, if at all possible.

"That's Squill," hissed Goodbody. "Do be careful."

"I know," said Scoffit. "But I don't intend to run any unnecessary risks. I'm going to use those trees as cover."

Squill seemed a lot more relaxed than the last time Scoffit had seen him, and it was strange to recall that this was the japegrin who had threatened to pluck her if she didn't deliver the lamp to K'Faddle & Offspring for refurbishing. She dropped a little lower -- and then she really
was
hidden behind the trees, but close enough to eavesdrop.

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"I think it's the right decision, Dad," said the female.

"You haven't met him, Cudweed," said Squill to the unknown japegrin. "I'm not talking about a local dignitary here. If Snakeweed intends to take over, retirement looks like far and away the best option."

"I think you're making a mistake," said Cudweed, who, presumably, was Squill's son-in-law.

"He didn't look awfully well to me," interjected Pepperwort. "Maybe he won't last very long."

"/ wouldn't just resign," said Cudweed.

"No, you'd fight it out and get turned to stone for your pains," said the female. "Just plain stupid, you are." She turned to Squill. "Move in whenever you like, Dad. We'll get one of the caves refurbished. We're going to be rich when those wild fire-breather eggs hatch."

"Wild fire-breather eggs?" said Squill, alarmed. "Is that female a wild one?"

"Isn't she beautiful?" said Squill's daughter.

Squill choked on his fertle juice.

One of the young fire-breathers suddenly spotted Scoffit. It roared defiantly, then thought better of it and ran to its mother.

Scoffit didn't hang around any longer. She didn't fancy being barbecued in midair.

The weekly meeting of the Yergud town council took place in the old ballroom of the hotel. All the guilds were

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represented -- and all of them, apart from the restaurant group, were now under japegrin control -- even the fishing industry, which had once been the sole preserve of the one-eyes.

The door that led directly to Squill's office opened -- but instead of Squill's portly personage, a different japegrin emerged. This one was thin and sharp-faced, and he looked confident and clever. "Fellow beings," he said, with a smile.

A couple of guild representatives looked quizzically at each other, and a couple of others scratched their ginger heads and looked as though they were trying very hard to remember something that had just slipped their minds.

"Fellow beings," repeated the stranger. "I bring you news that concerns your thane, Squill."

A murmur ran around the room.

"Certain ...
irregularities ...
have come to light. Squill has resigned."

The murmur grew in volume. The japegrin held up his hand for silence. There was something very commanding about him, despite the slenderness of his stature. Silence fell.

"His deputy has appointed me acting thane in his place."

"And just who the gaping gill slits are you?" demanded someone.

"I know who he is!" called out the restaurant rep, who was the only lickit there. "Snakeweed!"

A ripple of laughter ran around the conference room, which rapidly turned to guffaws and near-hysteria.

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"You can't reverse a spinning-wheel hex," spluttered a fishmonger, with tears running down his face.

"Trust a lickit to come up with a crazy idea like that!"

"Brains made of sugar!"

The acting thane held up his hand for silence, and the laughter petered out to a few snickers and a giggle. "I grant you there's a resemblance," said the japegrin. "A strong resemblance. And why not? My name is Snakeroot, and I am Snakeweed's brother."

"Snakeweed didn't have a brother!" shouted the lickit. "I know, I read his biography:
Snakeweed, a Study in Selfishness.
He was an only child, doted on by his mother and then abandoned when she decided she'd rather have a pet cutthroat!"

"That book was a pack of lies," said Snakeweed. "Cheap publicity for the Castle of Myths and Legends. Now then. Squill wasn't the best thane ever, was he? Took rather a lot of your profits in taxes. And what improvements have you seen to Yergud as a result?"

The council members looked at one another. Then they looked back at the acting thane.

"I want to know what's been going on," said Snakeweed. "I want to know where your money's been going. And then I want to do something about it."

Someone started to clap, then another and another. A moment later, the place was in an uproar, and the cheering reached ear-shattering proportions.

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"He put a super-tax on fish over a certain weight," shouted someone.

"Diverted the geothermal water from my greenhouse to heat his fire-breather stables. Fire-breathers don't
need heat."

The complaints went on for some considerable time, with Snakeweed asking for the occasional bit of clarification, and the audience only too willing to grant it.

"Spent far too much on trying to find a soft icing," ventured the restaurant rep.

"Spent far too much on kitchen staff
altogether"
sniped someone.

"The soft icing's a good point, actually," said Snakeweed. "Using community funds for personal projects."

"He's spent loads on security for one of his quarries. No one knows why."

"Which quarry?" asked Snakeweed.

"The southwest one."

"Has he struck gold, do you know?"

"He wouldn't tell us if he had, now would he?" laughed an airline rep, who had taken Snakeweed's radical invention of advertising to his heart a couple of years before. He had easy-flap embroidered on his hat in silver letters, on the front of his tunic, and printed all over his stationery. Business had boomed ever since.

"It seems to me," said Snakeweed, "that I need to investigate this first. If it turns out to be a
source
of income, rather than a drain on it, we'll all be better off. Oh, incidentally --

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before we break up for drinks and snacks -- there was an incident a couple of days ago. Rumor has it that a powerword was used. Anyone know anything about it, or notice anything strange?"

"My wand snapped," said someone. "It was a cheap one, though."

The meeting broke up for fertle juice and mushroom tartlets. This was unusual; Squill never gave anything away, not even a drink of water and a cracker. Snakeweed asked for the export records for all eight of the Yergud quarries, and flicked through them. When he came to the sixth sheet of paper, he stopped. "This quarry ceased production two moons ago," he said. "The others have been sending stone to Tiratattle on a regular -- and very profitable -- basis. What's been going on?"

The japegrin shrugged. "Don't know. That's the quarry with the high security, though."

"Do you have any decent fire-breathers in the stables?"

"Squill took the best one, but we do have others."

"Get one saddled. I'm going to investigate this matter myself."

The only fire-breather that was fed and rested was a young one. It was a bit skittish, but Snakeweed was clearly an experienced pilot, and the stable hand had no qualms about letting him take it. The southwest quarry was the farthest

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one from Yergud, but the young fire-breather was fit and lively, and they were there before moonrise.

As it went into its landing glide, a couple of japegrins came running out of the sentry station, wands at the ready. Snakeweed ordered the fire-breather to let out its jets of identification flame -- but either it had forgotten the correct code or it wasn't allowed to land there, which was odd. The perimeter barricade was featherproof, but it wasn't scaleproof. One of the japegrins fired his wand, and the fire-breather took some imaginative evasive action.

Snakeweed had to struggle to keep his seat, but he managed it. He leaned right out of the saddle and disarmed both japegrins with a wave of his wand and a hex rhyme. One of them collapsed to the ground immediately. Snakeweed dismounted and faced the other japegrin with a slight smile on his face. "You haven't checked your scrying bowl recently, have you?" he said, polishing his wand on his sleeve. "If you had, you'd know that my name's Snakeroot, and I'm now officially the acting thane. I'm here to find out what's been going on. Why production has stopped. Well?"

"Squill ordered it," said the japegrin.

"And why, exactly, would he do that?"

"Because of what we found."

"And what
did
you find?"

"I don't know. I'm not senior enough. It's top secret."

"Not to me, it isn't," said Snakeweed dangerously.

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"It's something they found in the mine."

"Mine? What mine? I thought this was a quarry."

"It was, to begin with. Here." The japegrin took a torch from the wall, ignited it with a wave of his hand, and gave it to Snakeweed. He then took a second one for himself, and lit that as well. Snakeweed sneezed as the smell of burning pitch cleared his sinuses, and he followed the japegrin to what appeared to be an elevator shaft.

"Coming up!" yelled someone from below. It was an odd sort of voice, as penetrating as a skewer, hoarse and high-pitched at the same time with a rising intonation that made everything sound like a rhetorical question, shouted in a high wind.

After a moment or two, a metal cage started to clank its way upward, accompanied by a worrying smell of rust and a tuneful selection of grating sounds and screeches. There were no magic carpets employed as elevators here. They couldn't be trusted to keep quiet about issues they felt should be common knowledge, because they all had an
Integrity
thread in their warp.

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***

14

***

The sun set before Nimby reached the Divide, so the party decided to stop for the night at the Pink Harpoon. Fuzzy said she'd perch on the roof. "But before I get my head under my wing, Felix," she said, "you've got a little job to do."

"Job? What job?"

"The jinx box," Betony reminded him. "You've got to drop it down a spitfire fissure."

"Oh," said Felix. He wasn't looking forward to it one bit, which was, perhaps, why he kept forgetting about it. Or maybe the jinx box had a hand in the forgetting -- if
hand
was the right word for a receptacle. It certainly had uncanny powers -- would it really allow itself to be destroyed without a struggle? And besides that, the jinx box knew so much.... It knew things, perhaps, that Felix would like to know, things that, once the box was destroyed, would be gone forever.

"This place is a dump," said Rhino, poking the cross-eyed fish sign with his finger. It swung back and forth, creaking

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protestingly -- then it parted company with its bracket and fell into the snow with a soft plop. He laughed.

"I can't do it tonight, can I?" said Felix. "There isn't one of those fumarole things here."

"There's a geyser around the back, though," Fuzzy pointed out. "The inn does all its laundry in the pool. The water's actually boiling at one end. That should do the trick."

"Sounds kind of chancy. Ironclaw specifically said spitfire
fissure."

"Oh, just get
on
with it, Felix," said Betony.

Felix took the jinx box out of his pocket. This time its coloring was more subtle: pink-and-gray toadstools. The curve of its lid actually
felt
like a mushroom cap -- soft yet resilient, smooth yet slightly sticky, leather pretending to be velvet. He wanted to hold it close and stroke it -- and, at the same time, he wanted to throw it as far away from him as he could.

Betony looked at it with distaste. "They're poisonous, those toadstools," she said.

Somehow, Felix wasn't surprised.

"While you're throwing it away, I'll go inside to reserve some rooms and order some food," said Rhino.

"Coward," muttered Felix. But he said it under his breath, so that no one could hear. He walked around to the back of the inn, and Betony, loyal and supportive as ever, followed. Fuzzy watched them from the roof.

The pool steamed like a Turkish bath, blinding them now and then with clouds of vapor and then clearing once more.