The man sits at the table alternately
sipping from a glass of steaming tea and a glass of водка, his
hood pulled up around his head, only a long sharp nose visible in the
shadows. On the table in front of him are the tools of his trade, a
small scale, a sharp knife and many packets of oiled paper filled with
sticky globs of opium or the fragrant mix of hallucinogens known
locally as 'petal'. Two tiny glass vials were off to the side, next
to a purse fat with coins. Drawing deeply from his glass of водка
his voice oddly smooth he begins to speak. ”Now, the truth is Toms
was a piece of shit, beat his kids, prolly killed his old lady, a
drunk, a drug addict, thief, blasphemer, and he smelled. But he were
my partner, and while I always expected him to stab me in the back
one day, a partner is a partner, an somebody got to pay for killin'
him.” He slits open one of the packets and takes a glob of opium on
the point of his knife and heats it in the candle flame, as it
bubbles he puts the blade under his nose and inhales deeply of the
smoke.from the smouldering globule. He leans forward, even his nose
vanishing into the shadows inside his hood, his voice even softer now
as he draws the words slowly out. “So we did our business with the
Littletown boys, ya know some of their women look like miniature
people, I wonder... anyway, these clowns that hang out out Dirty
Frank's are slinkin' aroun' stickin' their little elf noses and
pointy ears into our business, so we grab one of them and tie him up,
an' I goes out the window onto the roof to wait for Toms' signal,
when I hears an awful growlin' racket from the bushes across the
street followed by a scream. So this gets the coppers runnin' from
all directions, so I drop down into the barn to get the hell out of
there with the goods an' who do I see sneaky Petin' down the street?
The elf bitch with the bear, that's who!” A long silence ensues, the hooded man
nods further forward from the drug, seeming to sleep when suddenly he
starts up, the candle flame briefly lighting the eyes, deep in the
hood the color of a winter sky filled with snow. Slurring slightly he
continues. “So, I walks out to where my horse is tied up and head
for the Woodsman's Wench to wait for Toms, figurin' I got the dope,
so they can't really arrest him for nuthin'. Well, a couple hours
pass when a gaggle of assholes come into the bar, they was already
pretty drunk, so it was easy to hear what they was sayin'. Seems
there was a guy murdered at the Crooked House in his bed, only it
wasn't the guy who rented the room, a-and there was another guy
murdered as if by a wild animal or a werewolf in the bushes across
from the Crooked house .” He sips from the tea and gulps from the
водка and begins fiddling with another packet. “So, any
sum'bi'ch can add three an' three and come up with five, the guy in
the room that was killed mus' 'ave been Dmitri, the hired thug
watchin' the nosey elf, in my room, by the way, an' the guy murdered
in the street must'a been Toms!” He repeats the ritual with the
opium and the knife and lapses into a long silence again. Just as he seemed to be finally asleep,
he starts again and begins to speak, the words falling out singly and
heavy sounding in the smoky room “So – it – mus – be - the –
elf – bitch - with – the – bear.” He pauses for several
moments then slides the two vials and the purse across the table.
“So, these are yours, but if you want the other purse and these,”
indicating the packets “You kill them both and bring me the bear's
head as proof. I tried to hire the Littletown mob to kill the witch,
but they screwed it up and got three of their's killed right on the
street by the Riga wall. They had passed a couple of 'blind Bob' coins
to the wall guards and the fuckin' Wizard punk 'Eganasshole' or
whatever his stupid elf name is set them on fire. If you kill him too
there will be a bonus in it for you. So, you have some work to do an'
I got product to move, so you can find them over to Dirty Frank's or
stickin' their noses into somebody elses ass, good luck an' спокойной
ночи.”
