Castes Book 1: The Prestige, Page 3

  Chapter III

  Since Owen had been ordered not to report for work the next day, he decided to head over to Blubber Belly’s Dragonwater and spend some time with his drinking mates. Of course, this sparked off another argument with Esmerelda. This time, they were fresh after a night’s sleep and the kids were at school. The argument escalated into violence which, in a dwarf relationship, is synonymous with foreplay. This time, she hit him first. By the time the whole thing was settled and Owen had headed off to the pub, they were both relatively content.

  Blubber Belly’s was a little hole in the wall just off the pier, but it attracted dock workers and machinists both. With dock worker dwarves and machinist dwarves always at odds with each other, things could sometimes get very interesting at Blubber Belly’s. There were furious competitions between them during work hours and after. One could happen upon an axe throwing contest at almost all times of the day. At night, when it was too dark to throw axes without a reasonable amount of safety, they wrestled. Dockworkers generally bested machinists at wrestling. Machinists were much better axe throwers. When it came to drinking competitions, there was a remarkable balance.

  As a cop, Owen rarely got involved in competitions. To begin with, he came from oilers, which were the bane of dwarf laborers to begin with. That he had disdained the labor industry and gone into law enforcement was just yet another obstacle he had had to overcome. The machinists asked him just once to participate in an axe throwing competition. They’d given him over to the dockworkers, who hadn’t even wanted him. He spit on both of them and competed by himself. He out-threw the lot of them.

  After besting the machinists in axe throwing, the dockworkers of course laughed about it. So the machinists had challenged the dockworkers to challenge Owen in wrestling. Owen refused. It had been too long since he’d gotten involved in out and out wrestling. But, of course, his honor was at stake so he stripped off his shirt, puffed out his hairy dwarf chest, and wrestled the shit out of four dockworkers before they conceded. What they still didn’t understand was that he’d undergone hand to hand training in the police academy and had learned techniques that the average dwarf not only had never heard of, but would have shunned as dishonorable had they been educated in them.

  Their loss.

  On that Friday, Owen dressed himself in a pair of jeans and a sweater and took himself into the city. He was well known in the machine district and stopped many times to say hello to friends and inquire about the state of affairs. Dwarves complained about wages and work conditions. They complained about pensions and health benefits. They complained about the government and they complained about the weather. They dumped it all on Owen as if the police force had any jurisdiction over these things. He laughed and complained back.

  At just half past noon, he finally arrived at Blubber Belly’s. The pub had been opened by an ancient dwarf some thirteen decades before. He had eventually passed it on to his grandson, who still ran it to that very day. Seamus Seamus (yes, that was really his name), was short even for a dwarf. He stood only four feet two inches tall and walked with a limp. The limp had come as the result of a hunting accident seventy years before. For a dwarf, he was gaunt, with sunken cheeks and muscles that barely rivaled those of a well toned human. The average man still couldn’t knock him down with a lead pipe, but almost any dwarf could bowl him over with a strong breath. Still, as a barman, he gave dwarves one of their great loves in life. He didn’t take backtalk from anyone and commanded the respect the owner of a pub deserves.

  Seamus hadn’t done much with the pub in the last forty or fifty years. The stools were old. The bar was chipped and scratched. The tables wobbled. The television set, though, was state of the art. That was one thing on which the patrons insisted. They wanted to see television in gigantic living color. So he’d mounted a 58 inch flat screen and had cable installed. He even had a Blu-Ray player.

  The usual crowd was sitting at the bar when Owen walked in. He was amazed that some of these dwarves were in there whenever he showed up no matter what time of day. There was Brian, the machinist who went from job to job because even the union leaders hated him. There was Stewart, who was smarter than the men that designed the machines and yet refused to try and get a job as an engineer. There was Peter, the drunken iron worker who’d managed to get his foot chewed off by a press long before Owen had even been born. He sat in Seamus’ bar almost twenty four hours a day. Seamus fed him booze and pub swill for nothing most days because the other customers liked to hear the stories Peter had to tell.

  The leader of the pack, though, was Caesar MacGregor. Caesar was a dock worker by trade, but didn’t seem to work much. The others deferred to him and some even regarded him with fear. Owen wasn’t stupid. He knew that Caesar was involved in some form of organized crime. Still, Caesar was pleasant and careful with what he said. As far as Owen knew there had never been an investigation against him. He himself had thought about trying to bust Caesar a couple of times, but he was too unsure of the outcome. For one thing, even if he did manage to collect enough evidence to collar Caesar, someone else would take the credit. He would be ostracized from the district because, though he had been forced to arrest dwarves before, going out of his way to do so would have broken just about every unwritten dwarf law there was. And, finally, and probably most importantly, he and Caesar were friends. So he didn’t dig too deep.

  Caesar was sitting at the bar talking with a dwarf Owen had never seen before. He looked up as the bell on the door tinkled and saw Owen. A smile spread across his face, but there was something behind it. Turning back to his conversation partner, he whispered something. The dwarf hopped off the barstool and left, glancing surreptitiously at Owen as he did so. Owen didn’t pay him any mind, sitting himself down just where the other dwarf had been and ordering a pint of bitter.

  “Partners in crime?” Owen asked as Seamus delivered his drink.

  “Oh ho!” Caesar cried. His accent was all New York. “And to what do we owe the pleasure of the law visiting us in the middle of the day? Surely, you haven’t been fired for hunting elves?”

  Owen frowned. “Not fired. Not yet.”

  “Well,” Caesar said, nudging Owen with his elbow. “There’s always work for a good strong dwarf like you. You just let me know.”

  “I don’t think so. There’s better work waiting tables at Smiles and Sunshine.”

  Caesar laughed. “At least then you’d be able to grow a decent dwarf’s beard!”

  That one almost went too far. It meant a lot when one dwarf made a negative comment about another dwarf’s beard. In the twenty first century, dwarf beards were normally short anyway. The style of long braided beards had gone out in the industrial age. But Owen’s was shorter than most. Because of police regulations, he had kept it so. But it always bothered him and he did not like to have it thrown back in his face.

  Caesar and Owen spent almost twenty minutes exchanging insults. The others in the bar listened and smiled, sometimes laughing, usually at those comments that were the least funny. Dwarves were not known for their sense of humor.

  Finally, they settled into real conversation. Owen ordered his second drink and their voices dropped to a more conversational volume. Caesar pretended not to pretend to be a criminal and Owen pretended not to pretend that he knew.

  “Will you really lose your job?” Caesar asked.

  Owen shook his head. “My record’s too clean. Besides, I didn’t shoot the elf. It was Anton.”

  Caesar looked contemplative. “Anton. I know that guy. What’s his partner’s name? Something human…religious.”

  “Church.”

  “That’s it!”

  “They’re going to make my life miserable, though,” Owen said. “Even more than usual.”

  Caesar shook his head sadly. “Owen, I don’t know how you do it. You’re smart and strong. You should be master of yourself, instead of
working for humans.”

  “I don’t work for humans,” Owen said. “I work for the people.”

  Caesar laughed out loud and the other patrons turned thinking that there was going to be another contest of insults. But Caesar dropped his voice again when he answered. “Save that idealistic garbage for your superiors. You’re a cop. The law protects elves first, humans second, animals third, and dwarves last.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Bah!” Caesar ordered a drink and Seamus had it on the bar almost immediately. After taking a long pull, he said. “One day, Owen, they’re going to scapegoat you. They’ll destroy your family and then use you to make it even harder for the rest of us to get by.”

  Owen glared at him. “Don’t do that, Caesar. Don’t make it about you. I’m just one dwarf and nothing I ever do is going to impact the dwarves as a whole.”

  “Suit yourself.” Caesar shrugged. “All it takes is one dwarf to start a revolution.”

  “Yeah, well you let me know when you’ve done that.”

  “Oh, you’ll know,” Caesar chuckled.

  Owen looked at him, about to reply, but never got the chance. The phone in his pocket buzzed. Pulling it out, he looked at the text message and saw that it was a summons. The message told him to report to an address that was not headquarters.

  Caesar was looking over his shoulder. “That’s by City Hall. It’s the Council Building I think.”

  Sure enough, two seconds later, the phone buzzed again and a second message came through with a signature. Owen had indeed been summoned to the Council Building.

  “Why would I have to report there?” Owen mused out loud.

  “Isn’t that where they used to hang dwarves back in the thirties?”

  Owen grimaced, putting away his phone. He reached out for his drink and then thought better of it. Sliding it over to Caesar, he told him to finish it.

  “See you later,” he said, getting off of the stool.

  “Yeah,” Caesar answered, but when Owen had left the bar and the door had closed behind him, Caesar followed up with, “Yeah, you will.”