The Mister Trophy Read Online Free PDF Page A

shouldn’t grin at people they like. “Yes,” he said. “Magic.”
    “Isn’t that a no-no?”
    “It was,” he said. “Then. But no longer. Nor ever again.”
    I gulped. “You would have won.”
    “Yes.”
    “You could win now.”
    “We are not at war,” he said. “Nor do we wish to be.”
    Down the tunnel rang a crack of distant baby thunder. Mister Chin guffawed.
    “Booby traps?” I asked. Mister Smith nodded.
    “One of many,” he said. “Laid days ago, waiting, watching, gathering strength. My Clan knows the ways of the caves, of the winding dark places, of the hidden things that crave blood. It shall be, as you say, a long night. For some. Shall we sit?”
    I kicked trash and bones out of the way and sat. The Misters folded their knees backwards and made themselves at home.
    Hours passed. Bells rang. Distant shrieks echoed down the dark tunnels. Booms and bangs followed, now distant, now close. Once light flared, and Mister Chin loosed a volley of bubbles from his claw, and shortly thereafter dozens of voices cried out, whether in agony or fear I could not tell.
    But the voices fell silent, and aside from the now-constant rumbles of echoed Troll blasts we were left alone.
    Just after the fourth bell, we heard furtive footsteps, the telltale tinkle of metal on stone. The Misters rose, Mister Chin’s hands suddenly full of bubbling Troll magics.
    A rat the size of a bullmastiff dog rounded the corner. The skeletal human arm it bore in its jaws still wore a dangling length of silver bracelet. Mister Jones growled. Rat feet made fast pitter-patters back into the dark.
    The Watch sounded the fifth hour, and soon after that little slants of sunlight crept past trash-choked storm drain grates. Between Mister Chin’s night stick and the sun, the sewers grew bright, like some civil-minded giant had lifted the streets to air the place out.
    The sixth bell sounded, and traffic noise began. The Curfew was lifted; the day had begun; the night people were yawning in their holes, too sleepy to hunt that crafty Markhat any more today.
    “We made it,” I announced. “Hurray for us.” I rose. My knees and back popped so loud Mister Jones asked me if I were injured.
    I offered Mister Chin the night stick. “Keep it,” he said. “We have another night to face.”
    “Thank you,” I said, and meant it. Our own wand-wavers were never so free with their treats. “Shall we go back to my office and see what’s left?”
    Mister Smith rose. “We shall,” he said.
    We went. Three mighty Trolls and one stiff, sleepy human, all bathed in sewer-stuff, a bevy of barking dogs trailing us just for the fun of it. It wasn’t quite an Armistice Day parade, but we had almost as many oglers.
    We rounded the corner at Cambrit.
    I’d had callers in the night. They’d ripped my door off its hinges, stepped right in and made a mess visible from nearly a block away. Watchmen buzzed in and out of the hole in the wall like fat blue bees. Mama Hog waddled around among them, waving her fingers in various faces and snatching pens and the like—my pens, mind you—out of pockets and paws.
    Mama Hog spotted us. “Get over here,” she bellowed, “before they steal everything that ain’t broke.”
    Heads turned my way. Mister Smith chose that moment to yawn.
    Trolls yawn like tigers roar.
    Only two Watchmen were there by the time the Misters and I strolled on down the street.
    The oldest Watchman, a gray-headed sergeant named Fleetcab with a scar all down the left side of his face, stood in Mister Smith’s shadow and tried to pretend that he had dealings with Trolls every day. “Somebody tore your place up, Markhat,” he said. “Any idea who that was?”
    “My maid gets these spells,” I said. “Last week she set fire to my favorite ottoman. I’ll have a talk with her, I promise.”
    He grunted. His partner, a skinny kid of maybe twenty, stepped forward. “Could it have anything to do with your new associates, Mister