It's not exactly a dossier, per se, but this is my contribution for the week. My prompt was
, which is fitting, because this is a bit of a leap.
I want to take a moment to thank our good friend Raven, who was kind enough to loan me one of his wonderful characters for use in this piece.
I make it a habit to not trust people who aren’t me. As such, there were only two people on Nuwar who had a key to my room.
One was an old flame by the name of Xana. She was a real fox, with legs so long they should have been against the Ordinances, and a tail that used to twitch whenever I scratched beneath her chin. She and I had once enjoyed each other’s company, and, for a time, I had even begun to entertain the notion that she might make an honest hound of me, which was why I had given her a copy of my key.
That had turned out to be a mistake. When Xana left, she took my wallet along with my dignity.
Usually, I have a better nose for trouble than that. My name’s Donagut, and I’m a Detector. I make my living by knowing who not to trust.
But what can I say? Xana just had a way of getting under my skin.
The second key I’d given to Captain Nallry – just in case of an emergency – and that, so far, had proven to be the much better decision. Because, while my erstwhile employer with the city's Enforcers didn’t exactly match Xana when it came to charm, he also didn’t match her when it came to lying, or stealing, or throwing plates.
Nallry and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but at least he’d never broken my dinnerware – or my heart.
So, when I heard a key turning in my lock before dawn had even broken over the dark, decency-starved city, I had a feeling it wasn’t Xana at my door, come to offer me an apology, or my money back.
The door opened, and a pair of booted feet stepped inside.
“I’ve been knocking for the past five minutes,” Nallry’s gruff voice said as he closed the door behind him.
“I know,” I said. “I was trying very hard to ignore you, and you weren’t making it easy.”
As I spoke, I lifted one ear up – it was my way of acknowledging the Captain’s presence. But I declined to open my eyes, or to roll over from the spot on the floor where – if the throbbing in my head and the flask in my paw were anything to go by – I had passed out the night before.
Nallry walked over to stand next to me. Even with my eyes closed, I could tell that he’d done it from the sound of his footsteps moving across the room. I could also tell from the feeling of his boot nudging me in the ribs.
“What’s eating you?” he asked.
“Besides fleas?”
Nallry grunted.
“I don’t know why I bother asking. It would take a prybar to get a straight answer out of you.”
“You’re on the right track, but you’ve got the wrong bar,” I said. “I respond much better to bars of the long, wooden variety – preferably with bottles behind them.”
I tried to unscrew the cap on my flask, only to feel Nallry pull it out of my paw.
“Are you sober enough to work?” he asked.
Acting against the vehement protests of my howling headache, I opened my eyes, and glanced up at the Captain.
“That depends,” I said. “Did you came here to introduce me to your twin brother? Because, if not, then I might be seeing double.”
Nallry grunted again, and shook his head. Then he walked over to my kitchen counter, and poured a glass of water.
“Here,” he said, pressing the glass into my paw.
“Try checking the bottom shelf,” I said, trying to swat the glass away. “I should have something darker down there.”
“Dammit, Donagut, this is serious,” Nallry said. “I need your help.”
That caught my attention. Because, while I knew that I was twice the Detector of any one of Nallry’s Enforcers, modesty usually prevented me from calling attention to that fact – or, if not exactly modesty, then at least my deeply-held instinct for self-preservation. And while Nallry knew that I was a damn sight better at catching criminals than any of the jumped-up flatfoots at his disposal, pride and professionalism generally prevented him from admitting as much.
So, for Nallry to come straight out, and to tell me that he needed my help? Well, that meant that, whatever it was that had drawn the Captain to my flea-ridden neighborhood before the break of dawn, it was no laughing matter.
Against my own better judgment, I took the water that Nallry had offered me, and I lapped it up. Then I ordered my eyes to uncross, and my head to stop pounding, and I managed to at least make it up onto all fours.
“Where’s the body?” I asked, figuring that I’d cut to the chase.
“In back of a hovel, down by the docks. Or what’s left of the body, anyway.”
I stood up – a choice which I immediately regretted – and scratched behind one ear.
“What do you mean, what’s left of the body?” I asked.
“It’s the damndest thing,” Nallry said. As he spoke, he closed his eyes, and he kneaded his already-wrinkled forehead. “We found what we’re pretty sure is the body of a young merfolk, only…”
“Only what?” I stopped scratching. “The longer it takes you to finish that sentence, Nall, the less I’m liking where this is headed.”
“Only, the thing is…” I could hear Nallry swallow. “The thing is, she’s got no skin.”
As soon as the words left Nallry’s mouth, I felt my throat go dry, and I found myself desperately wishing that the glass I was holding contained something stronger than Great City water.
“What else did you find?” I asked, trying my damndest not to sound like I already knew the answer.
“That’s the other thing,” Nallry said. “Next to the body, we found what I would swear is a snakeskin. Except it can’t be.” Nallry looked me in the eyes. “Because, if it is, then it’s from something bigger than any snake I’ve ever seen.”
I emptied the water glass.
Then I took my flask back from Nallry – he didn’t try to stop me this time – and I emptied that, too.
Then I got my coat.
“Show me,” I said.
* * *
One of the Enforcers had at least had the decency to cover the poor merfolk with a clean, white sheet, so Nallry had to lift up one corner before I could take a look.
From the way that her body was positioned on the floor, it almost looked as if the victim had simply lain down and gone to sleep. There were no outward signs of violence, no visible clues as to what had happened to her.
Except, of course, for the somewhat unavoidable fact that she had no skin.
The best tanner in Nuwar couldn’t have done a more thorough job, I thought with a shudder.
Looking down, I had to fight back a sense of morbid fascination as I stared at the merfolk’s lean musculature – that’s what a lifetime of swimming will get you, I suppose. It was just strange, seeing another once-living creature reduced to an anatomy lesson. No spirit, no spark, no trace of life left in her glassy eyes. Just sinew, and muscle, and bone.
But it was the smell that eventually broke me from my morbid reverie. Nallry and I were standing in a ramshackle hovel down by the dockyards, where the smell of death had mixed liberally with the scent of rotting fish. It was a toxic combination, and, eventually, I had to turn my head away, and cover my sensitive nose, just to keep from getting sick.
Covering my mouth with one paw, I waved the other in Nallry’s direction, in an effort to signal that I’d seen all I needed to see.
“Have you ever come across anything like this?” Nallry asked, as he lowered the sheet back down.
“No,” I told him.
Now, as a rule, I make an effort not to lie to Nallry. He’s a tough boss, and he’s got a short temper, but he’s a decent enough man, and I respect him enough to want to be honest with him whenever I can. At most, I try to limit myself to telling him three lies a day.
Mentally, I crossed-off one of those lies.
“I figured this had to be magic-related somehow,” Nallry said, taking a step back from the body, and pinching his own nose as he did, so that his voice took on an odd, nasal quality. “So I had the forensic mages sweep the whole place. But they tell me that they didn’t detect any spell remnants.” The captain glanced up at me, and I could see that he was concerned. “What do you think?” he asked. “Is this some sort of magic ritual? Or is it some sort of sick joke?”
“I don’t know, Nall,” I said, putting a mental strike through lie number two. “Who’s to say it has to be one or the other? Who’s to say it can’t be both?”
“I don’t think I like that answer.”
“Neither do I.” I scratched behind my ear, and found myself deeply regretting not having had the presence of mind to bring a fully-loaded flask with me. “Show me this snake skin?”
“That’s over here,” Nallry said, leading me through a sagging door out into the alleyway behind the hovel. “We found it coiled-up next to the body, but we had to take it outside in order to try to see how big it was.”
Nallry gestured down at the grime-crusted pavement, where a sheath of shimmering, scaly skin ran the entire length of the alley.
“As you can see,” he said, nudging the empty skin with the tip of his boot, “we ran out of street before we got it unrolled all the way.”
I bent down and ran one of my paws over the snakeskin. It was covered with white and gold scales arranged in a diamond pattern, and it felt smooth as silk but strong as armor. Getting even closer, I inhaled a snoutful of the skin’s scent, and what I smelled erased any doubts that might still have been lingering in the back of my mind.
“Have you ever seen anything like that before?” Nallry asked me.
“Can’t say as I have, Captain,” I replied, and this time, at least, it wasn’t a lie.
The Captain of the Enforcers rubbed at his eyes with both hands, before giving his head a disbelieving shake.
“Whatever this is,” he said, “it’s the strangest thing I’ve seen in a long, long time. And, whenever strange things start happening around here, somehow you always seem to be the one with the answers. So how about you start sharing?”
“It’s a strange world, Nallry,” I said. “Strange things happen. Sometimes, they even baffle me.”
Which, while it was something of an evasion, at least had the virtue of being true.
“Come on, Donagut, throw me a bone. You’re telling me that you really don’t know anything?”
I gave Nallry a pat on the back.
“I’ll check my files,” I said.
“Try not to fall into a bottle before you get the chance to do your reading.”
“I’ll come by your office tomorrow,” I said, “and let you know what I find.”
That statement was, at worst, a half-truth. So, as Nallry and I parted ways, I decided that I still had one lie left in reserve.
* * *
I’ve always had a natural talent for paperwork. It’s one of my gifts. Whatever you might want to know, if someone, somewhere has written it down? I can sniff it out.
But, in this particular case, I didn’t have to sift through a multiverse of paper to find the file that I was looking for. Because I already knew where it was. It was sitting in my desk, at the very bottom of the bottommost drawer.
I had put it there specifically so that I wouldn’t have to look at it.
When I got back to my room sometime later that morning, the first thing I did was bolt and bar the door, so that even Nallry with his key couldn’t get in. The second thing I did was interrogate the bottle of whiskey that I found lying half-drunk on my bed. Once I’d gotten all the answers out of the bottle that I could, I sat down behind my desk, took a deep breath, and fished Iskara’s dossier out from the bottom drawer.
The folder I kept her file in was black. The file I kept inside it was blacker still.
Everything I really knew about Iskara fit on a single sheet of paper. I knew it all by heart.
But I read it again anyway.
Name: “Iskara.”
(Beneath that entry, I’d scribbled a note: “Probably not her real name, but it suits her. Just hearing it feels like a knife sliding down your skin.”)
I kept reading.
Age: “Unknown.”
Plane of origin: “Unknown.”
Appearance: “Why bother describing it? It’ll have changed by the time you read this.”
I shook my head. Sometimes, I hate being right.
Notes: “Iskara is a skinshifter, but, unlike your typical ‘shifter, she can’t shapechange at will. In order to change her appearance, she has to shed her old skin, then kill the person who she wants to become, so that she can ‘wear’ that person’s skin.
“Or maybe she doesn’t really have to do any of that. Maybe she just likes killing.
“In the end, it doesn’t much matter. Either way, she’s dangerous.”
I shuddered, and I double-checked the bottle next to me, just to be sure it was still empty. It was.
Just once, I would like to meet a bottle with a sense of initiative.
At the very bottom of the page, I had added one final note:
“Iskara could charm the fleas off a hound. She likes to talk, and she knows just what to say. She’s clever, she’s persuasive, and she will make you want to trust her.
“Don’t trust her.”
For good measure, I had underlined “don’t trust her” three times.
I slipped the file back inside the black folder, I set the folder back down atop my desk, and I had just resolved to fortify myself with another helping or two of liquid courage when I heard a knocking at my door.
“No one’s home,” I said, and I hoped that, just once, that line might work.
“Enforcers,” came an overeager voice from the other side of the door. “Nallry sent me. I have a message for you.”
After a sufficiently-long pause for the appearance of judicious consideration, I stood up and crossed over to the door, which, after a quick de-bolting and de-barring, I opened.
A young human woman was standing at attention in the hallway outside. She was good-looking, with smooth skin, and sharp eyes, and she was wearing the dark red uniform of an Enforcer Lieutenant. As soon as she saw me, she clicked her heels together, and offered me a crisp salute.
“I have a message for you from the Captain,” she said.
I shook my head, and, as the scent of death filled my nostrils, I could feel the hairs on my tail standing on end.
“How about we just skip past the games?” I said. “You can change your look, but you can’t change your smell.”
A moment passed in silence. Then a smile that made my blood run cold crept across the face of the woman in the Enforcer’s uniform. Her posture relaxed, the pretense of formality gone. But her eyes stayed sharp. I could feel them cutting into me.
“You know me too well,” Iskara said. She arched one eyebrow as she spoke, and leaned slightly forward. “Come on, now – aren’t you going to invite an old friend in?”
I stepped off to one side, and held the door open for her as she slipped in past me.
It was either that, or fight her right then and there. And, as a rule, I make an effort not to pick fights that I can’t be sure of winning. I find that I live much longer that way.
“Is this really where you live?” Iskara asked, putting her hands on her hips as she surveyed the meager extent of my rented accommodations. “You’ve almost got me feeling sorry for you.”
“They say there’s a first time for everything.”
Iskara smirked.
“Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?” she asked.
“Afraid we’re fresh out.”
“If that’s true, then there really is a first time for everything.” As she spoke, Iskara practically slithered across my room, where she perched herself on the corner of my bed. She patted the spot next to her. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
“I’ll pass,” I said. “I hear that too much sitting is bad for your health.”
“Suit yourself.” Somehow, she did not sound too disappointed.
“I was wondering whether I’d find you, or whether you’d find me,” I said. “I was hoping that it would be the former, if only for reasons of professional pride.” I shrugged, and I scratched at an itch I didn’t really have. “But, then, I suppose you always did like to make the first move.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“There’s the understatement of the year.”
I took a step or two in Iskara’s direction, trying to keep between her and my desk without being too obvious about it.
“I was expecting to see you dressed as a merfolk,” I said. “I take it you didn’t like the fit?”
“Didn’t much care for it, no,” the skinshifter said. “At first, she really did look like she’d be fun to try on, what with those fins, and all that muscle. But, once I was inside her? She itched. Her skin got so dry, I felt like I was going to go crazy if I didn’t just dive in the river. And have you seen the river in this city? No thank you.” Iskara grinned, and she stretched her arms above her head. “So I slipped into something a little more comfortable. I like humans, you know? They’re soft, and familiar, if a bit predictable.”
“Once you’ve worn one, you’ve worn them all?”
Iskara winked. “Something like that,” she said.
“Can I take all this to mean that Nallry’s going to be short one Lieutenant at roll call tomorrow morning, and that there’s another body somewhere nearby?”
“Yes, although this one is well-hidden. Not like the first one – I had to leave that one where your Captain Nallry was sure of finding it.”
“Because, when he did, you knew he’d call me,” I said. “And, after that, you followed me back here.”
“Like I said, you know me too well.”
“Now that’s something we can both agree on.”
I decided that I did want a drink after all, so I walked over to the kitchen and found an unopened bottle in one of my cabinets. I filled two glasses – one a little bit fuller than the other – and I offered one to Iskara, keeping the little-bit-fuller one for myself.
“Your previous skin scared Nallry half to death,” I said. “Who did you have to kill to get that?”
“Now that was a fun skin to wear,” Iskara said, looking momentarily wistful as she sipped her drink. “She was the biggest naga I’ve ever seen, and her scales just felt wonderful.” Iskara seemed to shiver at the memory, which sent a very different sort of shiver running down my spine. “Do you know, they actually worshipped her as a goddess on her plane?”
“And, what, godhood didn’t suit you, so you decided to come here to Nuwar, so that you could both terrorize the locale populace and ruin my day?” I drained my drink, before pouring myself a second.
“Don’t get me wrong, it was fun for a while, watching all those priests try to unpack the theological implications of seeing their goddess devour about half of their order. But, after a while, all that groveling and supplicating started to bore me.” Iskara took another sip from her drink. “So I figured I’d stop by and catch up with an old friend.”
“We’re not friends, Iskara. And you can’t stay here on Nuwar.”
“Or what? You’ll turn me into the Enforcers?”
“Something like.”
“And here I was thinking that we might do a little work together. Pick right back up where we left off. That was the most fun I’ve had in a while.”
“Iskara, you’re a killer, and I’m a Detector,” I said. I walked across to the bed and snatched the unfinished drink out of the skinshifter’s hand, which earned me a dirty look in reply. “We don’t work together.”
“We did before.”
“That was a special case. It will never happen again.”
“Never say never,” Iskara said.
“A good rule in principle. But, in this case, I’ll make an exception.”
Iskara stretched again, and she just smiled. I glanced across the room at my desk. The black file folder was lying open on the desktop, with Iskara’s dossier staring right up at me.
She must have read the file while I’d turned my back to pour the drinks, I realized. That was an unwelcome reminder of just how fast she could be – and how quiet.
Iskara must have followed my gaze, because she smiled even wider, before shooting me a sharp-eyed glance.
“You certainly know how to hurt a girl’s feelings,” she said. “After all we’ve been through, that was the best you could find to say about me?”
“That’s the toned-down version,” I said. “You should read my journal. In the entries about you, the word ‘psychotic’ features prominently.”
I walked across the room and opened the door. Holding one arm up, I gestured for Iskara to leave.
“Don’t think that I don’t appreciate the chance to catch up on old times,” I said, “but I think it’s time you gave Nuwar the slip, before the real Enforcers show up. After all, if they come while you’re still here, I know you’re liable to make quite the mess, and, if that happens, then my landlord’s liable to complain. Besides, I seem to recall that the two of us made a deal the last time we parted ways: I wouldn’t come looking for you, and you wouldn’t come looking for me. That was a healthy arrangement for the both of us, and I think we both ought to stick to it.” With my raised paw, I indicated to the open door. “Give my regards to the multiverse, won’t you? Try not to kill too much of it.”
The skinshifter made a show out of sighing a long-suffering sigh, before she stood up and walked towards the door. When she reached the threshold, though, she paused, and she ran a finger through the fur on my chest.
“It gets cold where I’m headed next,” she said. “Maybe I ought to put on something a little warmer?”
“You’re welcome to try,” I said, “but I can promise you it won’t end well. Even assuming that I don’t manage to kill you? Well, If you thought that merfolk was itchy? Try fleas.”
Iskara just clicked her tongue at me, and she smiled one last time.
“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “I remember what it was like when I was filling-in for your partner. His was one of the worst skins it has ever been my displeasure to wear – and at least he used to groom.” Iskara glanced back at me, and gave the state of my hide an appraising look. “Frankly,” she said, “I don’t know how you stand it.”
“Years of practice,” I said. “The drinking helps, too.”
“So long, Donagut,” Iskara said. “If you ever need your partner back? Well, you know how to find me. Just follow your nose.”
Then she walked out my door, and she was gone. But, just to be sure, I turned the bolt and replaced the bar.
Walking back over to my desk, I picked up Iskara’s dossier one last time.
I added a fourth underline beneath “don’t trust her.”
Then I returned the folder to the bottom of my desk, I poured myself another drink, and I started crafting my third lie to Nallry.
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