Free The Mister Trophy by Frank Tuttle Page A

ours,” he said. “Return it. With apologies. At once.”
    “And you think they’ll just pry it off the wall and hand it to me?”
    The Troll’s toothy grin got wider. “Most assuredly yes.”
    I shook my head. “Do you know who and what the Haverlocks are, Walking Stone?”
    “I know they are rich. And powerful.”
    “There’s only one way to be rich and powerful in Rannit these days,” I said. “The Haverlocks are night people. Half-dead. Vampires.”
    The Troll’s eyes narrowed. “You know this as fact, Finder?”
    “I haven’t been bitten by a Haverlock personally, no,” I said. “But they own a mansion in the Heights and they wear a lot of black and they don’t get much sun. Also, old man Haverlock showed up as a hero right after the War and he hasn’t gotten any older.”
    The Troll made grumbles. “I thought your people hated and feared such creatures.”
    “We did. Then they won the War for us and promised to behave.”
    “And have they?” asked the Troll. “Behaved?”
    “They stay in their houses from sunup to sundown. We stay in ours after curfew. They don’t break into our bedrooms at night and we don’t spend our lunch breaks putting stakes between their ribs. It’s worked so far.”
    “And after sundown—on what do they feed?”
    “The brave,” I said, rising. “The brave, the stupid and maybe the occasional wandering Troll.”
    “Will you accept my offer?” said the Troll.
    “Why me?” I asked. “Why not just go yourself? The Haverlocks are a lot more likely to play nice with a mighty Troll warrior than a third-rate Finder from the wrong side of the river.”
    “If I were to go to Haverlock and see the bones of my kin decorating a wall, Finder,” said the Troll, “I would be honor-bound to slay all of the Haverlocks and a certain number of their kin. That would be—” the translator halted, struggling for words “—time consuming.”
    Then it erupted in Trollish laughter, which sounds like thunder with a head cold. Eddie hastily took his peeking blue eye elsewhere. I pulled out a pair of jerks—more than I owed Eddie for my drinks, but my presence had cost the man business—and slammed them down on the table. “All right,” I said, rising. “It’s still daylight. I’ll go to Haverlock and contrive to poke around. You won’t owe me if I come up empty.”
    The Troll blinked, which is the Troll way of nodding in agreement.
    “And I’ll need another name for you, Walking Stone,” I said. “Melodious though yours is, I can’t pronounce it without a tight boot and a mud-hole.”
    The Troll rose, knees bending in that backwards flex that looks awkward until you see one make a thirty-foot leap. “You may call me Mister Smith,” said the Troll, to a deep bass rumble I took to be chuckling. “Mister Bill Smith.”
    “Pleased to meet you, Mister Smith,” I said. I even threw in courtly bow, just to dispel those rumors about Markhats and bad manners. The Troll responded with another chuckle. I dodged tables, grabbed my coat and opened the door. “After you.”
    A pair of Watchmen trotted through the open door. They saw Mister Smith, executed a pair of perfectly timed about-faces, and were back out on the street before the Troll could grace them with a toothy Troll smile.
    “Thanks for stopping by, boys,” I said to their rapidly vanishing backs. “Where would we be without law and order?”
    Mister Smith ducked under the door and I followed in his wake. Artifice Street—nobody calls it the Street of the Artificers anymore but old folks and the Historic Preservation Society—was empty. No nibble vendors, no ladies of the afternoon, no dark-eyed bands of teenage vampire wannabees out to break the Curfew and maybe get just dead enough to live forever. I frowned and froze.
    Mister Smith’s head swiveled my way. “Is something amiss, Finder?” he said.
    “Something cleared the street, Mister Smith,” I said. “Could it be you brought friends