Chapter 1

A Pint at the Place Where They Met Last

The thing nobody tells you about having a hobgoblin contractually bound to your service is that you can’t make plans. Well—you can make them, I suppose. But following through is going to be difficult, because you’ll find that he’s smeared bacon grease in the underwear you put on after showering, and now you have to shower again and resign yourself to being late. (I pride myself on punctuality, but when the choices are to be late or to be on time and sit down with greasy bacon bollocks, the schedule’s going out the window.)

The reason nobody told me about the thing with hobgoblins is that nobody has them in their service anymore, and I was learning why almost daily.

Hobgoblins were expected to take the piss out of their employers a little bit; there had to be a downside to employing them, or else everyone would want a teleporting errand boy. The problem was that a little bit was very subjective, and Buck Foi and I had vastly different ideas about what it meant. Buck wanted to become a legend among his kind and make service to humans common again, so he approached all of his duties—including piss-taking—with the idea that it had to be legendary. It did mean that he did what I asked him to do infallibly, albeit with much complaining. But it also meant that I could never, ever relax, because he was always planning how best to mess with me next.

I’d demanded that he must be creative and nondestructive in his piss-taking, in the hopes that my property would survive and perhaps it would slow him down. He was proving to be more creative than I’d anticipated. And largely nondestructive, I must admit, save for that pair of ruined underwear.

Though I feared he might be destroying himself. He’d been drinking an awful lot and had recently discovered that hobgoblins could get high on capsaicin, the chemical that provided the heat in any pepper you’d care to name. He’d never enjoyed a curry in all his many years or he’d have learned it earlier, but a trip to a Mexican restaurant in Philadelphia revealed this one weird trick to get a hobgoblin smashed. Between salsa chugging and whisky guzzling, he was often off his nut. As he was now, giggling at his prank until he fell over, all too easily.

[You need to cut back on the bottle, Buck,] I told him, or rather typed into my text-to-speech app. [I’m getting worried. There has to be some reason you’re doing this to yourself. Should I make an appointment with a therapist?]

“Wot? Naw. Wait, are ye serious? Naw, I know what’s in ma heid. I mean, everybody’s staring at their future and wonderin’ if their past is gonnay be a good show or a laugh, in’t they? There’s no need to state the obvious to a stranger.”

That was not anything close to the sort of answer I expected. [Are you saying you’re worried about your legacy and that’s driving you to drink?]

“Naw. Yes? Naw! Well, maybe.”

[We’ll talk more later since I have to go, but in the meantime, consider the possibility that your legacy might become “drunken sot” and whether you have any power to ensure that doesn’t happen.]

He scrunched up his face in annoyance. “God’s grundle, ol’ man, can ye be any more of a wet grey sock?”

[I’m being a friend to you now. If you don’t have any power to stop, we’ll approach it differently.]

“Are ye ordering me tae stop?”

[No, I’m ordering you to think about it. Be self-aware and honest about what you’re doing. We’ll come back to it.]

He might well be in the grips of alcoholism already, but his answer—a bit vague—hinted that he had a trunk of feelings to unpack and he was drinking to avoid doing that work. If I could get him to begin, there was a chance he’d realize he could simply leave the booze out. That might be considered foolish optimism by some, but it was born out of personal experience. In the aftermath of Josephine’s death, I gulped down way too much whisky, making the same mistake countless others had, thinking that I could drown my grief in alcohol. But three straight blackout nights had me feeling worse, not better, and the grief was still fresh and relentlessly pummeled my spirit. I had to try something different. It hurt, feeling so raw and bereft with nothing to dull the pain, but I didn’t touch a drop for a year and came out the other side confident that I could manage myself. After that I only drank socially, never getting drunk again. I wanted Buck to have the chance to fix it himself, but if he couldn’t, I’d help—or get him help—as needed.

I left him cursing and shut the door to my flat, because I did have a meeting to attend. He’d think about it for sure, though, and I would no longer take clean underwear for granted but consider them the sweet blessing that formed the basis of all my prosperity. Look at the two of us: growing.

The meeting was thankfully the informal kind, and my lateness would be excused. I had hoped to have a long, full weekend after my return from Australia to work on the problem of my twin curses, but an unexpected text came through Friday morning before I could fully dedicate myself to research.

Al! Saxon here. I’m back. New number. Fancy a pint this evening at the place we last met?

Saxon Codpiece, returned already from his self-imposed exile? I’d expected another month of radio silence at the least, since he’d mentioned that he may have accessed some government files in addition to doing some highly illegal hacking for me. I gave it a think before agreeing.

Friday night, the pubs would be crowded full of the young, drunk, and horny, though if we went early enough people shouldn’t be too sloppy. Once in a while a young woman would take in my cashmere topcoat and impeccable tidiness and flirt with me, briefly, before realizing I was not the sugar daddy she was looking for. Those ephemeral interludes weren’t bothersome in themselves, but more than once they had spurred a young man nearby to challenge me, since he had already decided the young woman was his and therefore she could not flirt with whomever she chose. It never ended well for the young man, but neither did it end well for me, as it robbed the evening of any meager pleasure I might have wrung out of it. But the place we’d last met, the German Bier Halle, was more about the food and beer than hookups. It should be safe.

Sure. Seven? I asked him. The reply was immediate.
Stonking, mate. See you then.

Having been thus derailed, catching up with the minutiae of the printshop consumed my day, and I resigned myself to working on my curses over the weekend. There was plenty to do, since both Nadia and I, as well as Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite, had been absent, and the latter wasn’t to return until Monday.

Since Saxon was a wanted man, it behooved me to be circumspect, so when the hour arrived, I donned my bowler hat painted with the black Sigil of Swallowed Light, which disabled cameras, and I took my cane, a carbon-steel number, which was a weapon that a man in his sixties could carry around in plain sight and not cause comment. I didn’t expect to need it, but one never knew.

On my way down to the street, I made sure to check my coat pocket for the particular fountain pen and sigil supplies I’d brought from the office, because I knew that Saxon would want a certain sigil in payment for any service he rendered me. Not that I required his services at the moment: It was simply best to be prepared. I was relieved to find everything in place, including the sigils I called my “official ID” and some others that I took with me wherever I went. Buck wasn’t supposed to mess with my inks and sigils, because they kept us safe and paying the bills—it was a red line he couldn’t cross. I worried he would cross it anyway.

The red line I wasn’t supposed to cross with him was to mention his former name: Gag Badhump. He never spoke of his family—I didn’t even know if they were alive—and I wondered if that might have something to do with his frequent inebriation. It was something to pursue, if I could manage it discreetly.

A few minutes’ brisk walk brought me to the Bier Halle on Gordon Street, a green-awninged affair that proclaimed in punny white letters that it’ll all end in biers! This was the place where we last met, before Saxon scarpered off to lay low. The entrance was a staircase leading down to the underground establishment, and it occurred to me that, more often than not, Saxon preferred to meet me in subterranean digs.

He was easy enough to find, since he was taller than nearly everyone, even while sitting, and he waved at me from a corner booth. I removed my coat, folded it over my left arm, and joined him.

“Awright, Al?” he said, offering a hand to shake. I nodded and shook hands, taking him in. He was dressed smartly in what looked like tailored business attire of light browns and blues, and that was unusual enough that I wagged a finger up and down and raised an eyebrow. “Oh, this? Bit different from ma anarchist kit, eh? Yeah. I’m rebranding. It’s why I wanted a chin wag.”