10 – Aftermath by Asprin, Robert

“A lot of people are trying to learn more about that, Hanse. It appears to be fact, aye. Be careful, should you chance to be out after dark.”

Hanse laughed aloud. After a few moments Strick’s big mustache twitched in his small smile.

“I’m sure I’d be interested in your impressions of Firaqa, Hanse, and how you fared there. But I do have some visitors waiting, downstairs.”

“You’ll be interested in hearing a few things, all right.” Hanse assured him. “Do these names mean much to you; Thuvarandis, and Corstic, and Arcala?”

Strick blinked. Slowly, he sat. He gazed expectantly across his desk at the younger man. The names of those three men meant plenty to him, as Hanse had assumed.

Briefly, he outlined his activities and adventures in Firaqa. He ended the abbreviated narrative with the ghastly happenings in the wizard’s manse, and the outcome.

Strick sat staring. “He is dead?”

“Very.”

Strick slapped the blue-draped desk he called his worktable. “Dead! About time! You’ve rendered Firaqa a great service then, Hanse. That was a genuinely wicked man.”

“That,” Hanse said in a voice dry as the desert, “I know.” After a silent moment he said, “And you’ve rendered good service in Sanctuary, too. Just a pair of do-gooders to each other’s towns, aren’t we!”

“Urn.” Strick made muttering noises about having to go back and forth from his fancy villa every day, ending with “I’m a man of the people who’d rather live in town.”

“Why, I can help you with that,” Hanse assured him, all wide-eyed. “Be happy to accept the villa as a gift, Strick.” With a wry smile, Strick asked who owned the Vulgar Unicorn. At last Hanse let his wiry form slide down into the chair across the desk from the master of white spells. “Old Earrings’ You’ve asked me something I know. Unless the place has changed hands since I left, the owner’s the physician Nadeesh, on the Street of Goldsmiths. Can’t miss him. He wears moonstones.” Hanse held up two fingers. “Two. Earrings. Stones black as a tax collector’s heart.”