Sixteenth Race

Ian

The town was called Konstantowa. It was a sleepy sort of place, deep in cow country. Just the kind of place that might welcome extra veterinary expertise without asking too many questions about why a big city vet with an unusual specialty wanted to move there.

The vet in question's name was Cokiry, and I'd spent a painstaking, frustrating month's work tracking him down. His expensive and very private clinic in Bromberg had quietly closed in April, which was presumably when he'd first got wind of Soot's appearance in the Imperial League. The building had been emptied and many of the clinic's bureaucratic and financial traces scrubbed.

But Cokiry was licensed to register newly-bred and wild-caught dragons, one of only three vets in Pomerania with that privilege. If he'd retired, those records would have had to have been turned over to one of his similarly-licensed colleagues for safe-keeping. Since it was one of those records in particular that was at stake, he hadn't done so, and that meant he had to keep operating as a vet somewhere.

I'd had to scour municipal files across northeastern Occidens to find new vets opening in the right time-frame. There'd been a lot, but I was sure I'd found my man. Unfortunately, as I sat in my rented car in the falling night a hundred yards up the road from the modest building that housed the Onsou Veterinary Surgery, I wasn't quite the first to do so.

When I'd landed at the airport, I'd been careful to choose an inconspicuously out-of-fashion car for my rental. The Nosa Costra men clearly didn't care to be inconspicuous. Their glossy black sedan sat squarely across the entrance to the surgery's parking lot, tinted windows raised. It wasn't hard to work out their plan; when Cokiry left work, he'd be unable to leave the lot by car, and could be grabbed and bundled into their vehicle.

The question was what I was going to do about it. If my job was just to confirm that Soot was a Nosa Costra-raised dragon, stolen by Phoebe Tenryuu, the presence of the car ahead was probably job done. But at this point it didn't take much reading between the lines of what Lachlan had said to me to understand that he had some reason to protect Tenryuu. That meant keeping Cokiry's records, and therefore Cokiry himself, out of the mafia's hands.

I'm no fighter, and I'm certainly not a tactician. I was outnumbered, and the guys I needed to outmanoeuvre were parked between me and my goal. Their car was bigger and heavier than mine, so I probably couldn't meaningfully shunt it out of the way. I couldn't even see into the car park to watch for Cokiry trying to leave his practice.

A flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye was all the warning I got before the door of my car was yanked open. A hand the size of a pint tankard seized the front of my shirt and hauled me out, dumping me harshly onto the tarmac. My head bounced off the doorframe hard enough to make my teeth click.

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Standing over me was a familiar rectangular face with a scar on its cheek. He recognised me as quickly as I him. In that wonderful, rich voice, he said, "You were told to stay away from this, boy."

I made a show of rubbing my head, trying to buy time, but eventually all I could do was shrug. He responded by reaching down one-handed and pulling me upright, pinned back against the car. My lower back creaked under the pose. Nothing about his posture suggested he was worried about anyone interfering, even though we were in the middle of a public road and it wasn't that late in the evening.

He said, "Who are you working for really?"

"I dunno." I did my best to look embarrassed by what was, after all, the truth.

Crack. That was the feeling as his enormous fist slammed into my flank. A rib, probably, from the screaming fire now freezing up towards my armpit. I'd barely even seen him move, no chance at all to so much as get my arm in the way of the punch.

He treated me to a bleak, mirthless smile and waited. I gritted my teeth, knowing I had no answer that would satisfy him. "He's five-eight, five-nine, maybe a hundred'n'sixty pounds. Could be twenty-five, could be forty with good skincare. Grey-brown hair, green eyes. Glasses. Lot of jewellery, wears mostly white, kinda older cuts. Heels."

"Name." The mafioso still had me pressed back against the car, left hand lightly on my right collarbone. From up the road, by the vet practice, there was a burst of shouting and then a car engine roared.

"Lachlan." I saw the look in his eye. "That's all I know, I swear! He paid ca-" my voice turned to a wheeze of pain as he pressed two fingers of his free hand onto my broken ribs. My vision filled with glittery noise, but I managed not to make the mistake of trying to breathe in until he was done.

He let me recover. Probably the last chance I'd get. "I swear it, bruv, that's all I know."

"Then you're no use to us." He released me and reflexively I slumped forward, a fresh stab of pain burning up my side.

He hit me roundhouse between the cheekbone and the temple, the impact registering more as a solid bone-on-bone sound than pain, sending me stumbling and toppling headlong, back to the tarmac, out beyond the front bumper of my ride. I landed with my arm under those injured ribs, too breathless to scream.

I was going to die. He probably wouldn't shoot me, though I was sure he'd be armed. There was no need for him to risk a gunshot in a quiet town like that. He could kick me to death in maybe three, four more blows. I heard more than saw him take a step closer to stand over me.

The first kick went into my gut like a sledgehammer. There was a horrifying, thick, liquid sensation like stepping in cowpat, except I was the cowpat, followed by a pain like the worst trapped wind you've ever had, and something worse, hotter, narrower, like an overloaded wire. I couldn't protect myself, even a faint attempt to move tore at my waist. I tried to breathe and spluttered through nausea-drenched saliva.

Dimly I saw his leg swing back again, but the crunch that followed came too early. My vision blanked grey as I twisted in reflex, but now there was violence somewhere above me, heavy blows like someone taking a baseball bat to a punchbag. Then, with the sound of a metal crusher, something landed on top of the car. I heard glass shattering, springs snapping.

Consciousness was quickly leaving me. The last thing I saw was a trouser leg, the ankle visible under its cuff gleaming red-painted metal.