Chapter 4-99: Special Deliveries (2/2)

They all cheered when the trio were done, and then all but Gunter hurried back to their jobs. The fact that Master Vrune was positioned nicely to watch the show, and they’d left a space so he could, escaped nobody, but nobody dared to say anything about it, either.

“Hey, Shiv.” Sama plucked up the clipboard with the invoice before Gunter could grab it, ran her finger down the list item by item, then handed it to Gunter with a nod. The senior dwarf apprentice quickly signed and thumb-stamped it, heading off to write her a check. “What got you riding along with these two brutes?” Sama hooked a thumb at the two brothers coming up beaming, tusks and fangs all on display.

Shiv still wasn’t used to dealing with someone who was probably more dangerous than she was, but Sama was so blunt most of the time it impressed even dwarves just how fearlessly outspoken she could be... and how much verbal abuse she could take without batting an eye, or changing her beliefs.

That, and her ability to knock heads, earned a lot of respect from the dwarves and their kind, and even Shiv had to respect that.

“Well, since you’re here, listen up.” The boys leaned over eagerly, Shiv despite herself. They listened closely as Sama described what she had found a few miles over thataway, and where it had led to.

The smiles on the boys’ faces had completely fallen away by the time she finished.

Shiv’s nostrils flaring was her only sign of emotion, but anyone who knew her knew it was a danger sign.

“They’ll be finding a new cook, and probably a new drug soon enough. You know Klitza?” Shiv nodded shortly. The rogue werewolf hacker was another one of the random oddballs who tended to collect in the Blakhamar orbit. “She’s got the phones. If you can think of a cute way to reverse track the distribution network from them, I’m of the opinion they might have a serious case of overindulging in their personal products. But...” I said sharply, “don’t go up the chain. You don’t have the Div Wards to stop them from tracking you.”

Shiv looked away, calculating. “I have someone I can call,” she said shortly. Her empty black eyes looked at her brothers. “You didn’t hear nuthin.”

The guileless expressions of complete idiots settled over the faces of both of them with the ease of long practice. “Huh? What sexy woman say, Moho?” Grik asked, pointing dumbly.

“She needs to repeat it for us slow-witted buffoons, dear brother mine,” the towering ogryn rumbled softly. “Something about acetylic acid and headaches, I think.”

“Oh.” Grik nodded his thick neck in agreement, and beamed again. Sama gave them eight canines, and the two almost swooned. “Lessons tonight?” he confirmed again.

“It IS Monday, isn’t it?” Sama said, rolling her eyes again. Grik chuckled and clenched his hands, and was shooed away with Mohono by Shiv’s stare.

“What else?” Shiv asked calmly.

“They called the phone, Klitza set up a false message, and traced it to 2143 Compton. If you could find out if there’s an Imprusar borrowing the place...”

Shiv blinked slowly. “It shouldn’t be difficult to find out who their lawn service is.”

Rich Powered could clean up their houses every day with a couple minutes and castings of Prestidigitation, and do the same for their pool with Purify Water Cantrips. But a big lawn? Nobody was going to walk around and snip three-meter radius circles end on end and mow their own lawn. Plus, it lost that nice lined look that came from having a proper mower do the job.

Lawn service crews were not Imprusar. Nobody that low in income or with such a menial job would dare to set foot in a church of Imprus.

Shiv knew a lot of people, many of them shady or with dangerous backgrounds. Even her family didn’t know where she spent all her time, or what she did with it. But she never brought that work home, ever.

It still brought her in contact with a lot of people, and it gave her a certain reputation.

Shiv’s sense of justice hovered somewhere around the level of the dirt on the soles of her boots. However, she took threats to her family, even implied ones at the fringes like the shit the Imprusar were pulling, with lethal seriousness.

Whoever this Imprusar was, he thought he was being sneaky and ruthless in pressing forwards the racist, elitist creed of his church.

Sama wanted to take him down for the vile shit he was pulling off. Shiv just thought he was a goddamn fool sticking his head down where he shouldn’t have, and it was going to get chopped off.

“Do you want me to arrange for his disappearance?” she asked flatly.

Sama considered that, and slowly shook her head. “This is a religious war; their doctrine is targeting all of us. If that’s the case, we might as well send a message to the faithful, right?”

Shiv considered that without a change in expression. “That sounds reasonable,” she said after a minute. “What kind of a message?”

“One of the things they were spiking the meth with was Apop. You know what that does to urukhar, right?” There was a glitter deep in Shiv’s eyes. She nodded, barely. Sama went on, “Actually it does that to just about anything sapient, if enough of it is pumped into their veins.”

Shiv considered Sama in a dark light. “I like it. Where do we let him wander?”

“I’m thinking one of their Sunday services could use a little livening up.”