When they found me, I was passed out in a blind alley behind Myrenia’s place in Dusk Street. I’d been heading for my rented room and stopped to clear my spinning head, but that last tankard of Myrenia’s Essenian brandy had gotten the best of me. I’d curled up in a corner between two cozy stone walls instead and closed my eyes.
“Get up, Madoc.” Jabiir punctuated his command with a kick to my ribs. Amani have big, businesslike feet. With claws.
“Back off, Jabiir!” I came to my feet in one well-practiced motion, nearly wrenching my arms from their sockets as I reached behind my back for my swords. Gone. Pawned to a baraka banker with an eye for fine Kaiator steel. In the absence of two razor edges to do my talking, I settled for “Ow!”
“We’ve got orders to give you more and better, human.” That was Nirix, Jabiir’s partner in crime enforcement; a black-haired high elf packing a bow as tall as she was. As near as I could tell, she hated humans only marginally more than everyone else. “Praedo wants to see you.”
This was not good news. Praedo held notes that far exceeded the value of anything I still owned, including the fistful of federation medals I’d been awarded before I put military life behind me and embarked on a career of heavy drinking, far from anyone or anything I cared about. That he had sent Jabiir after me meant that however paltry the amount might be to a man of his means, he was serious about getting it back. That he’d sent Nirix implied that if push came to shove, he might be fine with taking it out of my corpse…