The Stranger's Magic: The Labyrinths of Echo: Book Three (45 page)

“On top of all that, the fellow is still alive,” I said. “Or maybe I’m just out of shape.”

“We’ll know very soon.” Kofa grabbed me by my shoulders and forged ahead. “You’re losing your concentration, boy. If your client is alive, he could be biding his
time looking for some amusement, like shooting a Baboom or throwing daggers. Some people have very unusual hobbies.”

“But he’s supposed to be lying unconscious somewhere by now,” I said.

“There are people, and there are people,” said Kofa. “Oh, crap!”

The next thing I knew my colleague was lying on the ground and cursing. The primary topic of his tirade was fecal matter, which was mentioned in a number of very intricate combinations with
other words. The bad influence of General Boboota was unmistakable. Prolonged exposure to his personality left no one untouched.

I couldn’t stop running even if I had wanted to. The trace was pulling me so hard it felt like I was rolling downhill, not running. As a result, I crashed into Kofa, who was already
pulling himself up off the ground.

Now we both ended up on the ground. Of course, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to crush my long-suffering elbow again. It hurt so bad my arm felt like it had exploded. It was now my turn
in this contest for the best expletive of the season. Baffled, Kofa fell silent and listened.

“How do you spell that?” he said. “And the one just before it?”

“Ask Lonli-Lokli,” I said, embarrassed. The pain subsided a little, and I cheered up. “During our mission in Kettari, he drew up a list of profanities from my distant homeland.
I had to get pretty drunk to muster enough courage to explain some of them to him.”

“Oh, dear,” said Kofa. “Well, I guess I’ll have to bother Sir Shurf about it some day. In any case, thanks for taking my mind off the pain in my foot that I just
dislocated. It worked like a charm.”

“We’re having the time of our life today, you and I,” I said. “On top of that, I lost the trace when we were all topsy-turvy.”

“What’s ‘sitturvy’?” he said absently. “And what do you need that trace for now?”

“Life goes on,” I said. “I mean, I also hurt myself when I fell, but it’s not the end of the world. Let’s get cracking!”

“Haven’t you figured out what I tripped over yet?” said Kofa. “Or did you think I went temporarily blind?”

“I’ll be darned!” I said, laughing. “You tripped over our pretty boy? But of course, he’s wearing the sinning cloak! Still, I don’t see him. Do
you?”

“I don’t need to see him. I can feel him. The fellow is indeed unconscious, just as you suspected. I think if you stood on his trace a little longer, he’d be dead all right.
He’s lucky that you and I are such fast runners. Let me take the cloak off him. Behold!” said Kofa, now waving Anday’s grandfather’s gray cloak in front of my nose.

“Not much to behold,” I said. “He’s lying facedown, and his ass doesn’t look that much different from any other ass, especially considering the amount of clothing he’s wearing.”

“You’re the expert,” said Kofa. “Now we can finally go back to Headquarters. I already sent them a call. An amobiler is on the way and should be here in a quarter of an
hour.”

“That’s an outrage!” I said. “I would’ve gotten here in less than three minutes.”

“You are an unbelievable boaster, Sir Max. Your driving skills are indisputable, but do we have to hear you brag about it at every turn?”

“True,” I said. “But if I didn’t blow my own horn, I’d be a disgustingly perfect human being. This way I have one harmless shortcoming, and everyone’s happy .
. . Wait a second, my foot is hurting now, too. The right one. Strange, because I only remember hitting my elbow.”

“I think it’s still mine,” said Kofa. “You took my pain because my foot almost has stopped hurting. It’s very kind of you, but I suspect you did it without
realizing it.”

“I did?” I said. “You can take your pain back anytime. I didn’t mean to take yours. I’ve got my own.”

The company amobiler arrived very quickly. I looked at the driver with appreciation: I liked guys who drove fast, plus I was getting cold. Echo has very mild winters, but when you are sitting on
the ground on the bank of a river with streams of hard-earned sweat trickling down your back, your body starts to protest.

We loaded our still immobile quarry into the back seat, squeezed ourselves into the amobiler, and headed off to the House by the Bridge. At last.

I was sitting in the back seat next to the captive, an old man with an utterly unexceptional face.

“Do you know him, Kofa?” I said.

“No. But it makes no difference. Sooner or later he’ll come to and tell us everything. If not us, then Juffin. Although you can always resort to one of the Lethal Spheres.”

“I can try,” I said. “But first I need to do something about my elbow and sit in an armchair with a cup of hot kamra—get warm, relax, and recall that life is great.
Because now I’m afraid one of my Lethal Spheres would actually kill this fellow. He really ruined a perfectly good night for us.”

When we were pulling up to Headquarters, something hard and cold poked me in the side. I groped around trying to catch hold of the object and . . . cut myself. I jumped out of my seat in a
flash, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on top of my captive, holding his wrists in a deadly grip. I had no idea I was capable of such a lightning-quick reaction. Fortunately, the fellow
was an even worse fighter than I was, and he wasn’t in his best form now. As a result, the knife, with its long thin blade, ended up in my possession.

“What’s going on back there?” said Kofa, turning around.

“Nothing now,” I said, “But a second ago he tried to stab me.” I gave my captive a stern look. “What’s with the showing off, buddy? You can hardly lift a
finger, and I could’ve spat venom at you out of fear. Or are you okay with that?”

He closed his eyes and didn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell whether he was too exhausted to talk or just despised me—the human heart is a mystery, at least some of the
time.

I moved my left hand along the side of his body—another trick from the arsenal of Shurf Lonli-Lokli, who had been coaching me in Applied Magic. Our prisoner disappeared in between my left
thumb and index finger—a much safer place for someone with his temperament.

“You should have done that long time ago,” said Kofa.

“Yes, but sensible thoughts come to me with the sluggish gait characteristic of a royal persona,” I said. “Want me to help you to the office?”

“Don’t push it, boy. You think I can’t cross the hallway on my own? Someone would have to tear off my head, at the very least, before I was that incapacitated.”

Kofa was limping, but that didn’t affect the speed at which he moved. He was the first to run into the office and fall into my favorite armchair. The silent struggle for the right to plant
our backsides in it had been going on between us almost since my first day here. I must admit that Kofa was leading with a huge advantage in this sport.

“I already sent a call to the Glutton,” he said in the tone of a magnanimous victor. “Madam Zizinda’s cook on duty is much worse than Madam Zizinda herself, but much
better than the others. Shouldn’t we lock up our prisoner?”

“Nah, let’s leave him where he is, in my palm. He doesn’t bother me, and actually it makes me feel better this way. What if he has some unknown methods of escape up his sleeve?
Just thinking about trying to stand on his trace again makes me sick. Besides, I’m going to interrogate him soon.”

“Just admit that you’ve forgotten all about him, and now you’re too lazy to unstick your backside from the chair to go anywhere . . . Then again, you have every right to
be.”

When the long-awaited tray from the Glutton appeared on the desk, I fell upon the food with gusto. Ten minutes later, I was feeling great. I was warm, a scrumptious cookie was melting in my
mouth, and even the dull pain in my elbow seemed almost pleasant. The ache didn’t bother me so much as it testified to the fact that I was alive. It added a new note to the symphony of
familiar sensations. I poured myself more kamra, pulled out a cigarette from where I had stashed it in the Mantle of Death, and noticed with satisfaction that Kofa was also in a benign good
humor.

“Now I can commence the interrogation,” I said, yawning. “I can’t get any more good-humored than this. I feel like I could pour him some kamra—if he behaves
himself, that is. You’re probably also curious to know what he has to say.”

“Well,” said Kofa, yawning even wider, “frankly, the case is as clear as it can be to me, save a few details.”

“Is it?” I said. “Care to enlighten me? Because to me nothing is clear.”

“Here’s what I think. This pretty boy has something to do with the glorious Order of Green Moons, as did the gentlemen who stole the chest from the basement of your friend’s
house. Our late janitor, who, as it turned out, could go down the Dark Path, was likely their former colleague, as well. The Order of Green Moons was the only Order that taught its apprentices the
art of the Dark Path. Their Grand Magician, Mener Gusot, was crazy about that trick.” Kofa yawned again and began filling his pipe. I gave him a pleading look. The cruel sadist didn’t
say a word for another three minutes. Then, when he lit up his pipe, he continued. “As I understand it, our hero had a personal score to settle with Magician Nuflin himself, or the entire
Order of the Seven-Leaf Clover. He was doomed to fail from the start, though. The Ukumbian cloak is a neat little thing, but it’s only good for tricking regular folks. Perhaps it’s even
good enough for tricking us Secret Investigators, but he didn’t manage to pull that off, either.

“His plan was solid. First a thief appears in this office, someone no one pays any attention to. Then he doesn’t just steal the cloak outright; he switches it for another one just
like it, which gives our conspirators a great deal of extra time. The poor fellow then takes the cloak to the meeting point, where he meets with No-Nose Misa’s dagger.

“Technically, this is where we are supposed to lose all the leads, but we’re lucky, because you can follow the trace of a dead man. Still, the man who’s sitting in your palm
now was cautious enough to send a kid to Misa instead of coming for the cloak himself.”

“Speaking of the kid,” I said, “I’d feel much better if we found him, too.”

“You think so?” said Kofa. “I think you’re being overzealous, but if it’ll help you sleep better, in the morning I can send Melamori to the house of No-Nose Misa.
She can step on the kid’s trace and bring him over here. I don’t think he’s so evil that I should let you step on his trace.”

“Right. But I still don’t understand how he knew that we had the cloak. And when did he have the time to make an exact replica of it? You’d need to have—or at least look
at—the original, right?”

“Right,” said Kofa. “I’m sure he knew Zekka Moddorok very well. To find out about what happened to Zekka was as easy as pie: he only had to visit Zekka’s
inconsolable mother or even just spot a policeman’s face in the window—this would tell any smart person that the magic cloak had been repossessed by the people in the House by the
Bridge—and then take measures. I personally think that the copy had been produced a few days prior and was intended to fool Zekka. I could be wrong, but we can always ask. Weren’t you
going to interrogate him?”

“Didn’t someone just say everything was clear to him and that he wasn’t interested?” I said.

“No, you must have misheard,” said Kofa, batting his eyelids.

I didn’t make a fuss and accepted his excuse. I gave my fist a vigorous shake, and the body of my prisoner crashed onto the floor. I still hadn’t learned to do this trick with due
finesse.

The old gentleman, in a splendid colorful looxi and bright-red turban, tried to get up. The expression that he made was . . . Well, you should’ve been there, as they say. I could feel for
the guy. He already had enough reasons to hate me for the rest of his life, and this fall might have been the last straw. I hastened to snap the fingers of my left hand. A ball of bright-green
light headed toward the wrinkled forehead of the old man. To my surprise, he flung both his hands in front of him and mumbled something. The little fireball slowed down, as though apologizing,
before his invisible shield. It looked as though it hesitated to enter his body without a formal invitation from him.