Greyboar did not, it seemed, share his agent’s concern. He shrugged his shoulders, like an avalanche.
“Why bother? Plenty of room in the trade. Besides, who cares what some pedant says in a scholarly journal? No offense, sirrah”—this to Zulkeh—”but it’s precious few of my customers who ever say they’ve been referred by the latest issue of the Journal of this or the Annals of that.”
“To be sure,” agreed the mage. “We scholars tend to settle our disputes in a—physically, at least—less energetic manner.”
“Still—” began Ignace, but he was interrupted by Shelyid.
“You mean you kill people for a living? That’s awful!”
Reactions to this unexpected comment varied. Magrit chuckled, the salamander smirked, Greyboar looked aggrieved. But the wizard and the agent Ignace were alike in the look of outrage and indignation which sat upon their respective faces.
“Bah!” oathed Zulkeh. “Wherefore am I plagued with such a dolt of an apprentice?”
“Shut your mouth, you nasty little dwarf!” was Ignace’s less rhetorical comment.
“Know, Shelyid,” spoke the mage sternly, wagging his finger in the gnome’s face, “that this upstanding gentleman is a respected practitioner of an honorable profession whose origins date back to the time of antiquity. How could you be such a lackwit as to confuse him for a common murderer?”
“But he kills—”
“Bah!” oathed the wizard. “He does not kill—if I may use your crude expression for a moment—anyone. He strangles them. Is this not so, sirrah?”—This latter to Greyboar. “Have you ever once resorted to any method of termination other than the prescribed placement of thumbs and fingers about the weasand and the ensuing application of pressure?”
“Nope,” came Greyboar’s reply. “Well, on occasion I’ve used garroting tools—rope, cord, piano wire and such—”
The wizard waved airily. “Those are recognized the world over as legitimate extensions of the art.”
“—and, of course, I’ve often found it necessary to break bones, shred limbs, mangle bodies—but only with respect to secondary persons, bodyguards and the like, who interpose themselves between me and the completion of the job. The job itself is always done with legitimate fingerwork. I’m quite a stickler on this point.”
The wizard nodded his approval. “Precisely so! The maiming, mangling and mortification of secondary persons in the course of a strangler’s assignment are, of course, hallowed by tradition.”
But the impudent dwarf was still not satisfied. “I don’t care how he does it! He’s still killing people for a living! They are dead when you’re done with all this fancy choking and stuff, aren’t they?” he asked the strangler. And a bizarre sight it was, the little gnome staring up at the person of the chokester, who loomed above him like a buffalo pondering a fieldmouse.
“Aren’t they?” demanded Shelyid again. “Dead, I mean?”
The strangler coughed delicately. “Well, yes,” he said. “Actually, that’s rather the point of the whole thing.”
Ignace came between the chokester and Shelyid. “We don’t have to take this crap, Greyboar!” he shrilled. He shoved himself up against the dwarf, glaring down at Shelyid—not, let it be said for the record, by such a great height, for the agent barely escaped being a dwarf in his own right.
“Look, shrimp,” snarled Ignace, “just shut your nasty little mouth! I warned you already! Who’re you, anyway, to question the great Greyboar? A ridiculous dwarf! Ugly as sin, and hairier than a miniature musk ox! You need to learn some manners!”
And so saying, Ignace placed his hand on Shelyid’s face and with a shove sent the dwarf sprawling onto the floor. Not satisfied with this indignity, the peppery little agent scurried across the room and stood over Shelyid. He drew a knife and made a great show of testing its edge on his thumb.
“Ignace!” came Greyboar’s voice.
“I’ll take care of this, big guy!” exclaimed Ignace, waving away the strangler, who was not, as it happens, moving to his assistance.
“See this knife, runt?” demanded Ignace. “Sharp as a razor! Any more crap out of you, and I’ll cut off your tongue!”
“I say!” spoke Zulkeh. “I must protest, most vigorously, this uncouth threat to the person of my apprentice! Desist, sirrah! I insist! I admit that Shelyid has behaved badly here, but there is no—”