“Yeah, no kidding, that’s what people say. Can you imagine that? Stole a Rap Sheet! One of the real Joe relics!” He pursed his lips, frowned, pretended to be thinking idle thoughts. “What are there—five Rap Sheets, total, in the whole world? Maybe six?” He shook his head mournfully. Wipe, wipe. “But that’s what people say.” Wipe, wipe, wipe. “Among other things.”
“What else?” I grumbled.
Leuwen wasn’t even trying to keep his grin under control anymore.
“Well, people’re saying that whoever snuck into the embassy and took the Rap Sheet must’ve had some real bruiser along with ’em. On account of what happened to all those elite-type embassy guards. Broken necks, snapped spines, crushed windpipes—even say one of ’em had his spine tore out and that same spine used to garrote another. Can you imagine that?”
I was glaring into my mug.
Wipewipewipewipewipewipe.
“Now, who could do such terrible things?”
By rights, the ale should have started boiling by now, just from my glare alone. It was one of the many problems with having the world’s greatest professional strangler as my client. He couldn’t stop showing off.
One glance at Leuwen’s wicked smile told me there was no point in trying to act dumb. Leuwen knew what it said on Greyboar’s business card as well as I did:
GREYBOAR—Strangleure Extraordinaire
“Have Thumbs, Will Travel”
Customized Asphyxiations
No Gullet Too Big, No Weasand Too Small
My Motto: Satisfaction Garroteed, or
The Choke’s on Me!
Leuwen was now in full steam:
“Yeah, that’s what people say. Whoever stole the Rap Sheet—and thereby pissed off the world’s most powerful empire so bad they up and invaded not only Prygg but three other sovereign nations of Grotum—also managed to get away with it—and thereby also pissed off the Church and sent the whole Inquisition into a frenzy—and even seem to have dropped out of sight entirely and are wandering around loose with one of the real Joe relics—thereby plunking themselves right smack in the middle of all that Joe business, which is the worst business anybody can possibly get mixed up in, on account of sooner or later God Himself is bound to come down on them like a ton of bricks.”
Wipewipewipewipewipe. Wipewipe. Wipe, wipe. Wipe.
“Who knows?” I asked glumly.
Leuwen shrugged. “Nobody actually knows, Ignace. Cheer up. It’s not all that bad, really. The authorities are too stupid to figure it out, and the lowlifes what aren’t too stupid to figure it out won’t really believe it on account of”—here his face grew solemn and serious—”no lowlife in his right mind is going to believe for one minute that Greyboar would have been stupid enough to get himself mixed up in such a mess. Much less you.”
I relaxed, slightly. Only slightly, however, because I could see the next—yeah.
“So why did you get mixed up in it?” he asked quietly. “More of Greyboar’s philosophy? Wasn’t it enough he got you chased out of New Sfinctr with that foolishness?”
“Wasn’t philosophy,” I grumbled. “Worse. Gwendolyn.”
“Ah.” Wipewipewipe. “Ah.”
I scowled at the bar top. “What was I supposed to say? No—we wouldn’t do it?”
Scowl, scowl, scowl. “You know with a Rap Sheet in Grotum, Gwendolyn’s as good as dead. Every porker in the land’s been looking for her for years. The damned thing’s a Joe relic. Most powerful magic there is. They’d find her in a heartbeat. Then—chop, chop, chop.”
The bar top was suddenly subjected to a vigorous cleansing. “Ah.”
“Can’t you say anything else?” I demanded crossly.
He shrugged his fat shoulders. “What’s to say, Ignace? Gwendolyn’s family. Only family Greyboar’s got left, now. For that matter, she’s the only family you’ve got left. After your parents all died when you were youngsters—their mom and your pop—the three of you brought each other up. Like your own little miniature clan.”
He chuckled. Leuwen’s chuckles were kind of a signature piece. Large, rolling, heavy—and somehow very dry at the same time.
“And just as fierce in your feuding as any clan of Groutch legend, too! God, the three of you were ferocious, if anybody messed with any of you. Even you, tiny as you were. I still laugh, now and then, thinking about that time old Stinky Gerrin started pawing at Gwendolyn when she got off work at the packinghouse after her first day on the job. What was she then? Twelve? Maybe thirteen?”
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