Dragon Removal Service Page 10

  Hubward took a step back. His eyes widened.

  "Man-of-Arms! I didn't expect to see you here," Hubward said with a grin. He approached the creature.

  Two of the creature's arms bulged with muscle from beneath its stained white apron. It had cut a flap to allow its nose an unobstructed smell of the room. The rest of the green creature's arms—there were eight in all, and some sprouted where its head ought to be—lay feebly at its side, unmoving. Each of the dead arms had a metal clasp around the wrist, made of gold.

  "It's me, Hubward. You might not remember me, but I put on that play for your son's birthday. The one about the arm-wrestler."

  Man-of-Arms gestured wildly, clashing the hatchet against the ruler. He did remember. And he was still angry.

  Hubward grimaced. "Well I did apologize. How was I supposed to know that was a real cake."

  Man-of-Arms dropped the weapon and the ruler with a clang. He sniffed at Hubward, theatrically, then banged his two free hands on the table. This meant: I remember. The other six arms swayed, but did not move. The golden handcuffs on each wrist sparked, emitting large wisps of magic. A dozen smaller magitrons, tiny particles of magic, pinged around the room in sprays of silver and magenta.

  "Okay, calm down, that was like, two years ago," Hubward said. "What have you been up to?"

  Man-of-Arms slapped his chest, his belly, his butt. Then he put his hand in his armpit, and made a farting sound.

  "Sounds great. Glad you had nice weather. I did think she was the one for you, so yes, I'm very happy for you both."

  Fart-fart-fart. Man-of-Arms made the armpit-fart sound three times, then waggled his fingers at Hubward.

  "Me? Oh, not too much," Hubward said. "My team of magical assassins is all dead now and I'm avenging their deaths by chasing the Sorcerer. You know. Same old thing. Oh, and I'm writing a play."

  Man-of-Arms slapped his palms together, then flicked a massive, pancake-sized booger at Hubward. It squished against the door behind him.

  "Weirdly, no. It's not about magical assassins. My play is a murder mystery. It's about lemons."

  Fart-booger-fart-fart, Man-of-Arms said. He made a lassoing motion.

  "Well, a biography could work," Hubward replied. "But I'm bored with magic. Magic doesn't sell. Who wants to hear about a young orphan boy discovering magic? Nobody. Nobody would want that. But murders are hot right now. Mistaken identities. Rainy rooftops. The big reveal at the end. It's hot, you know?"

  Man-of-Arms tried to make a motion that meant "exasperated". But the arm he needed to express it was not moving. So he flicked another massive booger at Hubward. This time, the pancake-sized booger stuck to Hubward's chest with a thwack. There were several nose hairs bristling out of it, like arrows.

  "Well yeah, I guess it is the same thing," Hubward said, quickly. He brushed the booger from his chest, but it stuck to his hand like a glove. "Anyway, have you seen the Sorcerer? I'm due for some avenging."

  Booger-bellyslap-booger-honk—

  Surprisingly, Man-of-Arms said he had seen the Sorcerer. He saw the Sorcerer a lot. Because the Sorcerer was here, in the factory, almost every day. The Sorcerer worked here, but Man-of-Arms couldn't explain what job the Sorcerer did. And unfortunately, almost everybody in the burgh worked here.

  "Ah, so it's not the Alewife, or StickyBritches?" Hubward asked. He'd followed them yesterday to Lake Pepsid, and neither had come to the factory. "And nobody on the houseboat is the Sorcerer I guess."

  Man-of-Arms slapped the table, then slapped his belly.

  He put a hand in his armpit. Fa-fart-faaaart.

  "Right. We can't be sure," Hubward answered.

  If only Hubward knew what the Sorcerer looked like! It was weird to admit, but despite all the years of training—his team had been trained by the Sorcerer before turning against him—Hubward had never seen the Sorcerer. The Sorcerer was always wearing the magical armor, so you couldn't describe him. If it was a him. The Sorcerer could have been a her. Or even, an it. And since Man-of-Arms could only smell/hear, and not see . . . this was going to take a while to describe.

  A half hour later, Hubward was growing weary of interpreting the gestures. His face was sticky with flicked boogers, but that was how these things communicated. Who was he to judge?

  "Okay, so the Sorcerer smells horrible, like sulfur or bad smoke is that right?"

  Man-of-Arms made an impatient, armpit-fart noise.

  "Okay not sulfur to you, but sulfur to me," Hubward said.

  ShoulderSlap-booger-honk-stomp.

  "So the Sorcerer is a fat man? No. A woman with—No. A pregnant man? No, of course not. It's hard to understand you with only two hands. If you'd just let me chop off your arms—"

  Man-of-Arms growled at him. Hubward wondered how a creature without a mouth growled. Perhaps he sniffled in a menacing way.

  "Okay, just a suggestion, calm down. Maybe you like golden handcuffs and being stuck in a lab with weird, inky, one-shade-darker-than-black liquid burning down the side of your cauldron. It's your life. I won't cut your arms off without permission. I was just offering to help."

  Man-of-Arms started to respond.

  But then, from behind the closed door, Hubward heard muffled voices.

  Man-of-Arms gestured wildly for Hubward to hide.

  He slipped behind a large pile of cake-covered mesh, then became very still. He was the camouflage expert. Hubward knew how to hide.

  Jaroo entered the lab, his socks squishy and black. Menja and Frenja, the two large guards with Seer-Slip blindfolds, came in just behind him.

  "Octo, we're moving you, now. You-Know-When's orders," Jaroo said.

  From this position, Hubward could not see Man-of-Arms' reply.

  Jaroo looked around, eyes narrowed in suspicion. "For your own protection of course Octo-Arm. The strangers on the houseboat are starting to investigate. We can't let them know about our . . . work. Unless . . . you want me to free your other arms. Is that what you want? To be divided?"

  Man-of-Arms banged on the table twice. That meant: No! Please No!

  Hubward watched as Jaroo clasped another golden handcuff around one of Man-of-Arms' wrists.

  Then Jaroo removed a different golden handcuff, and put it on his own wrist. In a shaky voice, he said, "Frenja, Menja, gather up his notebooks. We'll put him in the Deep Place."

  Frenja spoke, or maybe it was Menja. "What is it saying?" They had such high girlish voices for large women.

  Jaroo answered. "He says he's working hard, and all is in readiness. Then he just repeated it. 'All is in readiness, the magic has been prepared.'"

  Hubward flipped his hair down, so he could scan the room. Magitrons sparked from Jaroo's hand.

  Was Jaroo the Sorcerer in disguise? He'd been at the docks the day the dragon crashed. And Jaroo was always sneaking about. Hubward's heart thudded in his chest.

  "I will tell You-Know-When," Jaroo said. "You-Know-When was most concerned about the magic."

  Hubward heard a symphony of banging, honking, armpit-fart-noises.

  "Now what is it saying?" asked Frenja.

  "He says he's worried that it will hurt the strangers in the burgh," Jaroo said. He flexed his fingers, as if they were stiff. The golden handcuff vibrated around his wrist.

  "What strangers?" Menja asked.

  "The Outfit," Jaroo laughed. "Rattbone, Gulchima and the rest. Well, we have to test it on someone. We're paying them good money after all. Why not try to get our money's worth?"

  Jaroo snapped his fingers and a small magical flame blossomed in his open palm. "Maybe our little test won't hurt them."

  He grinned, evilly. "But maybe, it will."

  "That last one was an exaggeration. You knew I was joking, right? What really happened was that I learned love was the strongest magic of all.

  Not quite strong enough to save any of the loyal soldiers who fought and died alongside us, but still pretty strong. Since I had all the love—just about everybody loves the chosen one—I
was perfectly safe.

  I think I learned that love really is powerful, as long as you're important enough. The dead loyal soldiers should have brought more love with them to the battlefield. That would have stopped the giants from crushing them with those big boulders. Probably."

  -The Collected Lies of Gulchima Brixby

  (22/100: Preposterous!)

  Chapter 18: Gulchima Sells Haunted Wood

  Gulchima was feeling good. Almost great. She'd taken on this magic problem step by step and things were going well, though not exactly in alphabetical order.

  Lady Keyhide liked her, and Jaroo was in the doghouse (they'd been marked on her plan as "K" and "J"). The geyser ghosts were gone (that was "G"). And now she was looking at the haunted woods (that was "H").

  So G and H, and, J and K, were handled. All that was missing was an "I", as in "I don't know how to deal with the dead dragon". Maybe that was cheating. Maybe that should be under D.

  Hubward was late, and if she was paying him (Did he work for her? Or was he a volunteer? Or a paid playmate?), Gulchima decided she would dock his pay for lateness. After a half hour of waiting, Gulchima realized he wasn't coming, and she didn't mind. Her face still hurt from fake smiling at Lady Keyhide anyway.

  Gulchima entered the haunted woods alone. On Uncle Rattbone's advice—which was as flexible as cement socks—Gulchima had agreed to contract this task out to a man named Soltanabad. She wouldn't have to do any adventuring here. She'd just pay someone and they would remove the problem. That's what subcontracting was all about.

  As she walked across the carpet of needles, Gulchima heard the snaps of branches and the thumps of axes on wood. But she saw no smoke. That was a problem. According to the contract, the haunted woods had to be burned.

  Mostly, burned.

  All around her, Soltanabad's crew crawled likes bees in a hive, chopping wood, spraying safe paths, dropping the valuable lumber and piling up the slash for burning. It sounded like progress. But where was the smoke?

  There had to be smoke. Sure most of the cursed wood was going to be resold in another town, but the people of Bayadev couldn't know that. Soltanabad had to burn some of it, to make it believable.

  And the smoke made people like Jaroo stay indoors. That was the best way to build anything. Without an audience.

  Gulchima stumbled over a vine. A few feet away, she saw an unkempt chubby-cheeked boy standing on the side of the path, waving at her. He flipped his hair out of his eyes, and started to say "Gulchima! I have to warn you about—"

  From a tree above her, a feller yelled, "Look out Hub!"

  The boy spun around.

  The first thing she noticed was the boy's orange cork boots, which jittered and tap-danced a few inches above the forest floor. His boots were easy to notice, but the rest of him proved more difficult to describe, because he was being eaten by a giant glowing red plant.

  "Hubward!" Gulchima yelled.

  Hubward had only been working for her for a few seconds, and she'd already killed him. How annoying!

  She ran toward him, toward the giant pulsing plant mouth that was trying to swallow him. She needed fire. She needed an axe. She needed—

  A plant's tendril snaked around her boots, almost tugging her off her feet. Gulchima already had her bone knife in her hand and she slashed at it, scraping the back of her hand on a thorn.

  Brown syrupy liquid spurted from the plant's tendril, and she tore her leg free.

  She looked up. Hubward was still being eaten, and only the bottom of his boots were now visible. It looked like he was struggling mightily against the attacking plant, but if it closed its mouth around him, he'd be—fertilizer.

  Gulchima jumped forward, then struck at the plant's mouth with her knife. It had teeth made of thorns. The blade of her knife bounced off the glowing red plant. It left only a scratch.

  Gulchima felt herself lifted up into the air and pulled back. But it wasn't the plant that held her. It was a man.

  A heavily accented voice said, "Stop girl-boss. Latewise arrive. My workers take care. I am tree-boss. Soltanabad."

  She continued struggling, but looked up at the man pinning her in place, Soltanabad. He had one knitted eyebrow, and several gold teeth.

  "That's Hubward. He works for me," Gulchima gasped.

  "Not," Soltanabad replied. "Is my cousin's son, Hubek. Curious boy. Always mischief. Now? Not as much for a while."

  Talking to Soltanabad was a linguistic adventure, Uncle Rattbone had warned her. It was as if the man continued to speak his native language, but used Aestii words so Gulchima could understand him.

  "What? Is he going to die?" Gulchima asked. "That plant is eating him . . . we have to rescue him."

  Soltanabad laughed, then frowned. "Maybe. We see. Everyone dies, girl-boss. I say this morning, 'Hubek stay on path'. He say, 'blah-blah'. Then he go off path. Now he is zorged." He pinched his fingers. "Small zorg. Tiny. Very painful. Boy filled with maple syrup now. Not die. Definite-Probably."

  "What?" Gulchima asked. Her mind caught up to the conversation. That wasn't Hubward being eaten. Soltanabad knew what to do. And, though her heart thudded in her chest, she couldn't save that boy anyway. "What is that plant?"

  Soltanabad gestured to two workers who had appeared at a run. Both sprayed the pulsing red plant mouth with bags of glacier water, and it withdrew, icy and shuddering, into the forest. The boy, Hubek, was covered with an orange dripping fluid, but otherwise unharmed. His face and neck looked abnormally swollen. His legs were the size of tree trunks. His clothing had split.

  Soltanabad let her go. He wore the same style of sleeved chiton, leggings, and broad brimmed hat as the rest of his workers—though his brim was much wider, and he favored bright purple cork-covered boots. He adjusted his hat.

  "Plant is Chomp Maple. Delicious. Dangerous. Bothways."

  "What are you going to do to that boy?" Gulchima asked. It wasn't Hubward. But the boy was swollen to three times his normal size!

  "We drain him," Soltanabad said, flashing his gold teeth. "Sell syrup for small profit only. Is problem. But is ant-problem to bear. Yes? We make money so is okay. Boy live. Not sleep because infected. But live. Lots of syrup in his bottom. Little syrup in his top." He scowled. "Face syrup no good. Bottom syrup is best. Maple tubs, we say them. Favorite brands to buy. Maple tubs. Good on pancakes."

  The boy, Hubek rippled when he walked, like he was already full of maple syrup. The two workers escorted him back to their camp.

  Soltanabad rubbed his hands together, and smiled. "Very strong infected. Lots of syrup from him! Maybe big profit after all!" He looked sideways at Gulchima, then adjusted his smile. "Use wrong words. Very sorry at boy. Big Sorry. I show you work girl-boss. You gladwise with eyes."

  Gladwise with eyes. That meant she'd like what she'd see. And the boy, Hubek, he would be okay. Alive, anyway. He'd be tapped and the maple syrup could be drained.

  Soltanabad gestured for her to follow him through the woods.

  "How goes it?" Gulchima asked. She walked on the safe path, careful to keep well within the damp needles.

  A tree fell a foot from him, but Soltanabad did not seem to hear it.

  "The time passes, and trees pass, groundwise," Soltanabad said.

  "Groundwise," Gulchima agreed. "I see the trees are dropping. But no smoke. You need to burn some of the trees. What if Jaroo's guards come in here?"

  Soltanabad grinned broadly. "Stepwise? Into the cursed woods? They don't follow the path, and when later?" He clapped his hands. "Zorged. No problem, no problem. They stay outside."

  Gulchima parsed these sentences, and after a few seconds the meaning arose: They stay outside because they do not know the path. Very smart.

  Gulchima looked around the woods. She only made six-percent on the deal, but it was worth it to have someone else handle this task. Gulchima had no interest in this side of the business. Timber removal was just a form of extreme landscaping. And there were things in here. Gulchima did
n't want to be Zorged.

  "Stepwise is good," Gulchima said. "But you need to burn some at least. Put up smoke. Otherwise . . . ."

  It was all a cover. They burned the slash and only the non-merchantable trees. But it had to look like they burned the whole cursed wood, so the burghers knew they were getting their money's worth. That had been Uncle Rattbone's idea too. It was a good one.

  Soltanabad gestured to the fallen trees. "Good wood. Here, here, here. I have many family helpers all these evenings. I must take all that." He looked perplexed, then corrected himself. "That's my this."

  "Smoke," Gulchima repeated. "Put up some smoke, so the burghers can't see you. No one can know you're reselling this cursed wood."

  "Cursed?" Soltanabad waved this away. "Once we cut it, the cursed fly out, into the air, poof. Needwise, all the wood. Not enough wars near wood. All plains and horses now, even desert. Why fight over sand? Not enough cursing of woods, so I have time of roughness. We use magic of smoke. Samething, samething."

  Gulchima didn't have time for this. She had a dragon to take care of, plus a million other things. She looked around. Even with the Sorcerer lost in some vortex, these cursed woods could grow back their power. Gulchima heard their whisperings.

  "I need smoke in the air right now," Gulchima said. "I need some progress. One of the rich burghers lost her grandson here."

  Soltanabad shrugged. "It is cursed wood, what did he think would happen? The name is in the name."

  Gulchima's brain interpreted: They called it cursed for a reason.

  "Okay," Gulchima said. She chewed her lower lip. "Then it's a problem of finances, I see that. You mobilized a lot of people out here, and there's not enough work, right?"

  "Yes, now you see. Clearwise, with eyes."

  "So reduce your cut, and I'll do the same. I'll reduce my take to three-percent. You leave more trees for the burn pile, and make more profit. For the honor."