Dragon Soup, page 4
“Thank you very much for making me see,” he said again. He clutched his letter to his chest and went up the stairs to his room.
Chapter 5
Back when he lived with Atreyo, Perrin used to be happy and confident. He’d known how to run the trading business. He’d known how to approach buyers and sellers, he’d organise a mean dinner in their spacious dining room, and he’d take notes, write them up, make up contracts for the legal people and accountants to check, and many other things.
He’d been in the shadows, because Atreyo was just such a flamboyant, colourful person in all the ways Perrin was not, but he’d never been stupid. In fact, now that he stopped to think about it, he ran most of the day-to-day operation of the business, he had sought to expand their activities, or exhorted Atreyo to bring in some of his influential contacts.
Atreyo might have provided the flair and show, but Perrin had made sure that the deals were completed.
He was just… numb from his loss, and tired of arguing with Atreyo’s family over the will.
The discussion with Dorella returned some of his earlier resilience.
Upstairs in his room, he pulled out a book he’d salvaged from the house and he’d been saving for an unspecified special day in the future, because he’d never have the money to buy pretty books like that again.
He opened it on the first page, grabbed his pen and ink. He needed to shake the ink vigorously, because the dye had settled in a dense layer at the bottom, but when it was all nice and dark brown again, he dipped the pen in and wrote A Plan For Making Life Worth Living Again and then he drew some dots for things he would need to do.
His first item was:
Get Inheritance
He let his shoulders slump. That wasn’t going to be easy.
He might argue that he’d worked for no pay, but he’d need an informed lawyer to argue his response.
And those were not cheap.
He had already counted all his money many times over, and, strangely enough, the act of counting it never seemed to increase the amount he had.
Inspector Carbin had assured the recruits that magic money fell under the category Strictly Prohibited Goods, but if he had any right now, he’d sure as hell use it.
Once he had the inheritance, he’d be able to pay. But lawyers weren’t crazy and didn’t work for nothing. He knew a few lawyers, but Perrin doubted they would want to represent him facing the Dianello family. That would guarantee that the lawyers would never work for the family again. And the rich citizens of Tamba were few, and they were extremely protective of one another.
He had about two months to find someone and to prepare the case. The Dianello family would probably use one of the well-established lawyers so Perrin would need to hire someone who was good, because hiring someone who was not up to the task would be worse than doing it himself.
But who could he trust enough with sensitive personal information, and who would be hungry for the money?
A rival?
The Dianello family had plenty of rivals, but they were not active in politics and had no obvious, powerful enemies. They bent the rules just as much as all the other rich families, but they were not particularly bad at breaking them or dodging them.
Besides, Perrin didn’t think it was a good idea for him to become involved in politics.
He might try to find a younger lawyer who was still trying to prove themselves. Someone who wanted to build up a career and who was keen on getting some good cases on the board.
But where to find someone like that in just two months?
He would have to prepare to do it himself. And that would not be much fun.
So he picked up the book again. What if he didn’t win the court case?
Well, if he represented himself, he wouldn’t have any costs other than time, but if he won nothing, he would not have the money to start a new life. He would have to work. Like most other people.
And it was not that working depressed him. He didn’t mind working. It was that he didn’t get paid anywhere near enough to come close to rebuilding his former comfortable life. Would he still be living in the room above the tea shop in his old age? That was starting to look likely.
But if he forgot about the will, and asked to be paid for the more than fifteen years of work he had done for the Dianello family, that would amount to a decent stack of money, wouldn’t it? If he went to court and won the rights to the house, there was also no guarantee that the Dianello family would let it rest. He might face court cases for the rest of his life.
So he put some brackets around the first line and then on another line he wrote, Get paid for work rendered.
That was an option. He should write an official-looking letter and send an invoice for the work rendered for the Dianello family business, with the notification that he would be happy to drop the claims to the house in return for being paid for his years of service. That kind of made sense in a weird way. They had never liked Atreyo’s relationship with him, so now he gave them what they wanted. He’d only ever been an employee, after all.
He didn’t like it. But he didn’t have the energy for endless fights.
Was he being a coward? He didn’t like the idea of going to court. In his experience, court cases were full of protracted days of nonsense. He didn’t have time for that. He needed to pay his bills.
Right. That was something he could do. Next, when he was out shopping, he would drop by a place where they sold nice paper and if he had a bit of money, he might have a stamp made with his name to make it look more official.
Then on the next line in his book, he wrote, Increase earnings.
He needed to increase his salary if he ever wanted to move to a place of his own.
There were two options: he could do better in his work, or try to find other work.
Of the two, making it through his probation was probably the best option. He needed to impress his superiors.
Inspector Carbin didn’t like him very much. She probably wondered why he, at his age, needed to do this work, and why he wouldn’t stick to the job she gave him.
Sure, they were meant to inspect, but not investigate shady characters, only to look for illegal magic. They weren’t even really supposed to find magic, just look like they were trying to find it and that would discourage the blatant misuse of it.
So if he believed that the shady stranger was up to something with asking for dragon soup and giving a waitress a tip of two gold coins, then he needed to either prove that this was indeed about magic—or let it rest.
But the entire episode was shady. And investigating shady people was a task for the investigators across the hallway. That sounded like a much more useful—and better-paid—job than going around the inns to find petty magic.
Could he perhaps get a promotion? Not immediately, of course, but say within a year or so?
Promotions required networks, and that was Atreyo’s part of the business. Perrin was not terribly good at networks. Cliques and popularity contests were not his thing. He’d never liked the kids at his school in the town of Ferentia further inland along the river, where he grew up. Those were the kids of the well-off people in town, and even those were country bumpkins compared to the well-off citizens here in Tamba. Nobody would consider him an important part of their network, someone just waiting to be given a better job when an opportunity arose.
But he could try to talk his way up into a better-paying job.
He wanted to make a list of his current colleagues at the Bureau but remembered the names of only three. That was a very poor effort. When he worked with Atreyo, he always remembered loads of names and faces of people who were important to the business. He’d remember what they bought and what they liked and Atreyo would comment on how Perrin was his “life saver”. That ability had always served him well, so he needed to do better. It was that he hadn’t treated being a magic inspector as a serious career choice. Just a step up to something else. Well, there might not be anything else.
All right, that gave him a few things to do.
He wrote, Do my job really well and underneath that, he added, Impress Inspector Carbin. And, Make contacts.
He shut the book and cut some fruit for the magic sniffers. Looking after them fell under the category of doing his job really well.
In the introduction to his job, a man from the Bureau had spoken to the new recruits about how to care for the creatures.
They came, he said, from the mountains of Solania, where they lived in burrows close to dragon lairs. They’d learned to sniff magic because when a dragon was hungry, the magic sniffers were likely to be on the menu, so they needed to watch out.
But they liked living close to the dragon because it meant warmth in these cold and hostile mountains.
Not all magic sniffers had the ability to sniff magic, the man had said, and in each colony or family group, only the top-ranked animal developed this ability, which was why the breeders raised their animals in solitary cages, so that they all developed the ability.
Both of Perrin’s animals were running around in the cage, pushing their noses against the bars. They would get to the corner, raise themselves on their hind legs, look out, then drop back on all four legs and run to the other corner of the cage and do the same.
As he cut up the fruit and put it into the bowls, one for each animal, he wondered about the instructions he received with the magic sniffers to always keep the animals separate. He had been looking after them for a couple of weeks now, and they had never once shown any sign that they wanted to fight, like clawing and snarling at each other through the bars of the cage.
Would they be lonely, like he was? Would they not much rather curl up next to each other when they slept?
He put the bowls in the cages and watched as the animals attacked the food. They would pick up a piece of fruit in their little paws and munch from it with a very satisfying smacking sound while sitting on their hind legs.
So, the animals needed names, right?
He opened his book on a new page.
The animals were different. One of them was bushy and its fur was thick and glossy, dark brown on the back and a little reddish on the belly, where it was very fluffy. It had little white tips on the top of its ears.
The other one was still wearing the jacket, which was starting to look dirty. He should make a new one so that he could clean this one. He still had some felt. The animal’s fur was much lighter in colour and it was messy, falling out in clumps. If only he could figure out why this was happening. He didn’t think he had mistreated the animals at all. In fact, this particular animal looked quite healthy if you ignored the fur. Maybe it had some sort of skin disease. He might have to investigate that later, or ask people at the markets who had pets.
He drew the two animals and since they were both males, he decided to give them male names.
Yaro for the dark animal, and the other one, the scruffy one, needed a stronger male name, hoping that it would shed its skin ailment and become healthy like the other one. He named it Fergus.
Chapter 6
It was barely two days later that a new inn opened in the city, right next to The Happy Dragon where all Perrin’s troubles had started. He saw the sign go up, while he walked past on the way to an inspection.
The new place was going to be called Traveller’s Rest. A sign outside promised, amongst other things,
The best cuisine from all the realms, quick and friendly service and the utmost attention to make sure your meal, whether simple or elaborate, is the best you’ve ever eaten.
During that day, whenever Perrin walked past, two young kids who would barely scratch sixteen years of age stood outside, doling out morsels to the passing public, while people were still painting and setting up the dining room.
It was busy in the streets of Tamba because the attendants of the Dressmaker’s Fair had started arriving in earnest. They travelled in groups, either from the harbour or the train or coach terminal, and lugged huge packs and trolleys of wares to the town hall, the primary venue of the fair, and then to their accommodation. Word went that there was not a single room to be found within the boundaries of the city. Dorella even hired out a second room: a tiny hole-in-the-wall barely big enough for a bed opposite Perrin’s room. Apparently it was a room for small children, but, lacking children, Dorella found a guest to occupy it: A very tall man who wore a grey cloak and hat of the same colour, who looked like he impersonated a wraith, especially when Perrin first met him in the dark corridor.
The only thing he lacked was the pulsing red eyes. What a creep, and definitely a magician from the realms. Solania, he guessed, because Solania was the source of the most troublesome magic.
In the following days, neither Perrin nor the visitor spent much time in their rooms.
It grew busy at work, because of the fair, but also because the mayoral election was in the week after the fair, and apparently, according to rumour, Inspector Carbin had been told by the existing mayor—and her boss—that he wanted all wayward magic to be out of the way.
Whose idea it was to hold these two events so close together was anyone’s guess.
Nobody expected the current mayor, Tarlo Firello, to be unseated. He did a reasonably competent job. Even so, apparently, the Bureau’s inspectors would be busy patrolling the kitchens at election events.
But first the Dressmaker’s Fair.
Increasingly, groups of strangely clad visitors roamed the streets looking for somewhere to eat or places to get drunk and make a nuisance of themselves. And Perrin, still shaken from his earlier experience with the wizard, did his utmost best not to get into the way of people wanting to make a nuisance of themselves. Those people, he understood, were the responsibility of the town guards, whether they used magic for their nuisance-making or not.
One had to stick to the rules about territorial boundaries for each service because woe betide the public servant who stepped outside those boundaries.
Bah.
When the new inn’s dining room opened the next day, it was packed. The day after that, people even lined up in the street.
“That new place is amazing,” one of Perrin’s colleagues was telling a group of inspectors in the large office room.
It was late afternoon, and, like the other inspectors, Perrin had returned from his inspections and he sat at his desk, writing up his inspection reports.
“It’s on my list of places to visit,” said Perrin’s colleague across the aisle. “It’s the wife’s birthday soon and I might just take her there for a surprise.”
And here was Perrin thinking that the man was going to do an inspection of the new place.
“If you want to get a table, you better book ahead,” said a colleague behind Perrin.
“Surely it won’t be so busy after all these dressmakers have left town?” Perrin said.
They all looked at him. He didn’t often say anything.
They gave him some suspicious glances—yes, Perrin made sure not to put the cage on the desk, and yes, Fergus was wearing a differently coloured jacket today because he had made a new one last night so that he could wash the other one.
The man nodded. “Probably. We’ll be a lot less busy, too. They might even drop their meal prices.”
Perrin had to admit to getting curious. He wondered whether anyone had been for an inspection yet and because he was keen to look like he wanted to do his job well, he went to ask Inspector Carbin.
She eyed him from behind her desk.
“Every new establishment gets put on the schedule,” she said.
“Have you put it on the schedule?”
She flicked up her eyebrows. “Why are you asking? Are you so keen for the free meal they might give you?”
“No, no, not at all!”
She chuckled. “I would say I could see your motives. Someone will get that job when the name of the place comes up in the inspection schedule. We’ll deal with it after the Dressmaker’s Fair.”
Perrin went back to his desk.
Well, that was a spectacular failure of judgement. Now she thought he was just in it for his own benefit.
Why couldn’t he say or do anything right anymore?
While he sat there, he glanced at the shelf where the big book of notes about unusual observations still stood in the same place where he had left it after writing about the wizard. He wondered if anyone had looked at it. He’d barely seen the door to the investigator’s office open, let alone noticed anyone from that office walk across the hall to collect the tome.
So when he left to go home, he pulled the book out and inserted a piece of paper in between the cover and the first page. When the book opened, those pages bent up, away from the cover, and a piece of paper in that spot would certainly shift.
When Perrin walked past the new place the next morning, the queue was even longer than it had been the previous day. For breakfast? The food had to be incredibly amazing.
The diners were not all out-of-town visitors, either. He spotted some locals both in the queue and the dining room.
In comparison, The Happy Dragon was not half as busy. Sure, there were a few people having breakfast, and they were all visitors, because locals had breakfast at home.
Looking into the Traveller’s Rest’s dining room, he spotted something else: a familiar person coming out of the kitchen: Laeticia, the serving girl who had attended his table.
She wasn’t wearing a serving or cook’s apron. She stood behind a table and was writing on a sheet—bookings?
Well, that was certainly interesting. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn that she was the manager of the place.
He arrived at the Bureau to pick up his inspection schedule, but another surprise awaited him here.
Normally, the schedules would lay waiting for the day’s inspections on a table just inside the big room, but the table was empty.
