An old fragment I wrote circa '06.
It's the dawn of the second century of the End of the World, and everyone's settling in for the long haul. News from the other Nexi is intermittent, and always bad. Times are hard, but they've always been hard on the Southstone.
Dawn, with a sky the bleak colour of brushed aluminium, is also bad news. I'm not sleeping - never got the hang of it - just resting glassily on the edge of consciousness, my hand still grimly gripping the neck of an empty bottle. Red Death "Finest" Malt Liquor, dubious quotemarks right there on the label - the kind of drink they call Elfshot, seeing how it kills you painfully, by inches.
Rent due the day after tomorrow, the Kid's wages at the end of the week. Last square meal was the start of the week, last client the month before. Time to tighten the belt another notch, and look for something that'll put a few brassmarks in the kitty. Same old, same old.
There's a chink of light through the sagging blinds, sending a ray of cold sunlight into my eyes, slowly brightening. I lick dry, sour lips and listen to the Kid fumbling with her keys, letting herself into the outer office.
Must be eight already. Time to start work. I drop the bottle at my feet, out of sight behind the desk, and reach out stiff arms to straighten the ragged blotter. As an afterthought, I turn the phone a few degrees towards me too, so I look ready to answer it.
The only call we ever took was a wrong number from a guy trying to reach Mistress Erin's House of Correction. I gave him the number for the police commissioner and hung up.
The Kid opens the door and puts her face round it. Even in a city of monsters, the Kid's quite something. Her face is long, bruise-black and leathery, same as the rest of her; the only feature on it is her mouth, wide and lipless and stuffed with needle teeth. She can probably talk, but a maw like that can't wrap round any language they speak round here - we get by with pointing and waving and writing on the tiny slate hanging on a lanyard round her long, dark neck.
"Morning, Kid." When your voice sounds like an accident with a box of rocks, and your face looks like a teaching aid for palmists, it's mostly impossible for people to tell that it was another late night with drink for company. The Kid nods, raises three fingers, and retreats to the outer office. Best secretary I ever had.
I rub at the inner corners of my eyes with a rough finger, and look through my desk drawers for something to do. Empty. Empty. Gun. Bottle — empty.
I haul out the gun, a heavy dwarven sidearm. It's antique, a relic from the Four Golden Summers, the period of mad invention between the old Dwarven States deregulating their foundries and the New Dwarven States closing the Eaststone's borders. I juggle its weight in one hand, feeling my wrist creak, remembering the last time I fired it. It wasn't long after the last time I could afford bullets. I should try to clean the rust off sometime.
Exactly three minutes after the Kid disappeared, she reappears carrying a solid steel tray, one of a set that a dead relative left to my parents. Hell if I know how I ended up with it. There are three things on the tray, at least two more than usual, so I frown and pay attention.
The steaming pot of coffee sub, I expected. We haven't had coffee since the Year of Five Wars, and the price isn't likely to come down again, ever. The biggest trade these days is in substitutes, imitations of the things people will never have again. You can judge a person by the kind of coffee sub they serve; we're not reduced to boiled sawdust with magical taste hoodoo, but we've come close. It's one of the bitter ironies of the End that hoodoo sawdust is the sub that probably tastes most like real coffee.
If I'm honest, I was never enough of a private eye to justify a secretary, but the Kid needed a job, I've got my pride, and there never was another dame that would stick with it. Most just left, though a couple tried to reform me first. The Kid just types like a dervish, and she always knows when to trot out a hot pot of sub. Taken together, that probably makes up the most important part of the business.
So, pot of coffee sub, check. The other things are more interesting; a letter and a small black box made of waxed paper, sealed with a strip of red meltstuff. The kind that elves use to run stuff from faery lord to prick-eared faery lord, so not even their envelopes have to touch the hands of the hoi polloi.
It could mean money, but it definitely means trouble.
I pour a cup of sub and drink it slowly, looking at the letter and the black box, trying to decide which I should open first. The letter doesn't look anything special; like nearly every other letter sent on the Southstone, it's cheap paper from Founder's Mills, the thin, coarse stuff made from reed pulp and recycled meltstuff. The envelope is blank except for the delivery marks and handling franks, sealed with a fingerwipe of sixpin black melt. Doesn't look special; could be anything.
Even though we don't get much in the way of mail, I'd hardly suspect anything if it hadn't showed up today. But at the very same time as an elfmail black box? It's a there-ain't-no-such-thing-as-a-coincidence. The only question is, does it matter what order I open them? Will the trouble be just as bad, either way?
It's a stupid question.
I pick up my letter-opener, hesitate a moment, and reach for the hidden drawer in the desk's footwell, shallow but wide. I run my fingers over lockpicks and the bone shiv I made in the ice jungle gulags north of Jagbad, back when there was a Jagbad and ice jungles, and wrap my hand around the other letter-opener.
It wasn't always a letter-opener. Too old, too vicious. Probably closer kin to the shiv than any civilised knife. It's heavy, real heavy, and the metalwork's good. Good enough to be dwarven, but I've never heard of the dwarves making wizard-killers, which this knife sure as hell is. It cuts magic as if magic was something you could touch. You only have to see one man's face taken off by an enchanted letter to see why I keep it.
I slit open the letter, carefully. Far as I can tell, there's just a piece of paper in the envelope, folded once, so I use the tip of the knife to slide it out onto the desk and lift the upper half.
It's about what you'd expect. Unsigned. Says I shouldn't accept whatever the elves have sent. It's phrased as a faint threat, so it's not from the usual kind I deal with. They don't have the imagination to threaten faintly, need things spelled out.
It makes me powerfully curious what's in the black paper box. I'm a small-time rummager through other people's dirty linen; any right-minded elf would cross the street to avoid so much as looking at me. Yet here it is, elfmail; and somebody knew ahead of time that it was coming, thought it important enough to warn me off it.
I'm in two minds which letter-opener to use. If it was likely to kill me, why threaten me to keep me from opening it? What if it's magic but benign, and I damage it? On the other hand, I like my face attached to my head. I split the seal with the wizard-killer, very carefully, and lift the lid with the point of the knife.
Nothing in there but another envelope. I tip the box on its side and tease the contents out, still not touching anything with my hands. I use the point of my mundane letter-opener to hold this envelope still, incise carefully with the wizard-killer's razor point, and slide out another single sheet of paper.
The similarities between the letters ends there.
The elven envelope and letter are on Founder's paper, but not the cheap stuff. Smooth, crisp and warm white; the letter paper is watermarked faintly, with a traditional elvish design. I measure the paper size against my thumb; same ratio of width to height as the other letter, obscure magical geometry of the paper-maker's art, but a different size. I pick up the threat letter again, measure it against my blotter; it's standard sized, Fish scrip, like just about every letter I've written or received in my life. The elven letter isn't.
There's probably a wealth of information right there, historical and magical allusions coded into the choice of paper size. Too bad I don't have an elven education. The watermark's a dead end too; traditional, I know that much. The aurelian axe, symbol of elven might. I'm liking this less and less, but I prise the folded sheet open with the wizard-killer's point.
Yeah, it's bad news.
"Kid," I call, and rumble my way through the coughing fit it provokes. "Hey, Kid."
The rattle of the typewriter in the outer office stops, and she cracks the door to peer in at me.
"You like elves?" I say. She shakes her head, corners of her mouth wrinkling like she'd like to snarl. "Smart Kid." I rummage in my desk again, in case a full bottle somehow materialised since earlier. "You might want to take an early lunch. There's one coming here at ten."
The Kid makes a noise like a yappy dog with tuberculosis.
"Might be a job in it for us." I pick the letter up, sure now that there's nothing worse than words on it, and stuff it back in the envelope. That goes back in the box, the threat letter with it, and the whole lot away in my desk. "We need the money."
She gurgles.
"Yeah, we need it that bad."
I'm not sure she believes me, but it's kinda hard to tell what the Kid thinks.