2

 .l

It was raining in Braavos. It was always raining in Braavos. At one time that had been a selling point. Braavos, the foggy swamp where no fire-breathing flying lizards will kill you and enslave your entire family and force them into volcanic mines! I was reluctant to admit it was a decent pitch. As I walked along the canal trying to step over the puddles that dotted the stone path the amulet I was holding twitched. The movement was a little stronger than the last time, the closer it got to the turn of the tides the stronger my tracking spell got. At the moment they changed I could have found anything, but that one moment of clarity was drowned out by the rest of the day's slow moving water grounding out my spells. I was close though, the item, a shipment of silk stolen off of a quay was on this island. I turned to the slight man who'd been following me as I tramped all over Braavos "We're near. If you want to get any of your buddies, now's the time." The guard of the silk's nominal owner nodded but didn't make a move. "Your boss hired me to find the cargo, aren't you going to get it back?"

"There's no need Dresden." It was the first time the man spoke in half an hour. My old shtick back home of being irritating chatty didn't really fly here, especially when none of my well timed quips and jokes were anything anyone had ever heard of. Well except Maggie but as she was raised in Mexico until she was eight I assumed her pop culture knowledge base was a little less than mine. The short man turned from staring at the canal back to me. "We knew where the silk went from the beginning."

"This was a test." stating the obvious was one conversational gambit that still worked.

"Just so" The slight man began to walk back the way we came. "We were aware of your claims and spoke to some of your previous clients. Your reputation is well founded but it is said that sorcery is a sword without a hilt. We wanted to see if it was true yours was safe to grasp."

"And are you satisfied?" I might have been irritated once at being challenged. Here in this world where I was the only thing keeping my daughter safe I was willing to swallow a lot of my pride.

"Indeed Dresden." He handed me an oiled envelope. "You'll find a draft on our account inside, my employers will contact you for further work if its needed." With that the man resumed his silence as we continued to walk towards the residential part of the city.

"Who are your employers and how will I know them?"

"They are a consortium of trading houses and merchants, anyone from our group will pay half in advance from the same account on the draft you're holding."

"Good enough for me then." Honestly I was relieved, I'd have worked for the local mafia as long as they paid on time. I had kept my abilities limited, people only knew I could find anything in the city as long as they had a part of it. Finding people seemed like a dangerous skill to admit having, helping identify thieves and possible murderers for the city based on their loot was as far as I would go. For Maggie's sake I wouldn't make any enemies. A trading firm was much more palatable though, the Iron Bank wouldn't admit to having an account for criminals, at least until they had enough wealth they could join the upper classes.

Staying useful to everyone and not a threat to anyone was a fine line to walk, thugs had tried to shake me down a few times, one nice thing about the canals everywhere was that I could throw the mooks around a lot harder without worrying about the first law. My coat had saved me from at least one stabbing although I didn't think that had to do with my work and the threat of my little ball of sunshine had prevented any of the local talent from trying anything. After two years of struggle I was finally feeling like things had gone back to the way they were in Chicago, I even had my same ad: "Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties or Other Entertainment"

Past the whole medieval Venice/Holland thing going on the only real change was my family. I'd lost all of my friends in the event that had transported Maggie and I here, but I did see the Red Court die as we left so I was hopeful that they had survived. I worried for them, but having Maggie here made her my first priority beyond finding a way back.

The guard split off as we reached the island I lived on, he had further to go towards the harbor. I could feel the wards on my house as soon as I stepped off the bridge, living with Maggie had given me a threshold immensely stronger than my old burned apartment and I had spared nothing on the defenses. I often wished Bob had come with us just so he could see the work I had done without him. For the first six months I hadn't let Maggie out of my sight but now with the wards, the locks, and the help of the wives and families in the neighborhood I felt confident enough to leave her for part of the day.

Two years in it wasn't as big a shock to see her. She still had Susan's complexion even in the perpetually cool, cloudy and rainy Braavosi weather and she was beginning to look almost coltish from the height she got from me. I could see her with her friends, she had adapted marvelously from her suburban life to being kidnapped by vampires and then thrown into a fantasy world with a man claiming to be her long lost father. She spoke the numerous languages of Braavos with fluency I couldn't match, I had learned some Braavosi but the so called common tongue of the Andals was much closer to English and I used that whenever possible. We had both learned to read, her almost embarrassingly quicker than I but I'd made too many friends in books to be illiterate. "Papa" she cried on seeing me "did you find it?"

I smiled as I shouted back "Of course, that's why you get to hang around all day and have fun while I crawl in the mud!" She laughed, the other fathers on the island told me I was lucky to still be in the stage where I was my daughter's hero. I knew I didn't deserve it but that didn't stop me from loving it.

She ran back towards her friends, they were giggling about something, apparently gossip was universal. I lowered the wards as I walked up to our house, the first room going in was where I met clients, behind that was the start of the house, a two story stone building that backed onto a shared courtyard. It was larger than my apartment had been and while lacking many comforts it was a home. The bedrooms and my lab were upstairs, I had replicated Little Chicago and I had the start of a library. Maggie had recently shown her first signs of magic and I wanted to ensure that all the magic I knew and the laws were preserved in case anything happened to me.

I wasn't too worried. Braavos was a peaceful and strong city, unlike the kingdom across the sea or the other free cities there were no hereditary nobles. In many ways Braavos was the best city to land in. Finding lost items was more lucrative here than in Chicago, I had a healthy amount saved in the Iron Bank and even owned a partial share in a trading cog who's captain owed me for finding his stolen cargo. It wasn't America or the twenty first century, but it was home and had my family. Things certainly could be worse.

2.

My lab was a mess. In Chicago sharing the space with Molly had led to some clutter but nothing like here. I missed my three ring binders full of notes, all of the materials for spells and potions and most of all Bob. I'd say I was a fairly well educated and skilled wizard but compared to Bob's knowledge of the obscure and esoteric I was an apprentice again. Here I had several tables covered in parchment, the notes of all the magic I was trying to preserve for Maggie. The heavy wooden tables were scorched in places, she shared my affinity for fire and brutish magic and I was happier for it. Training her was the opposite of Molly, if I'd given her the beaded bracelet Molly had struggled with she'd have blown it up. Maggie wouldn't have the temptation to mess with her friends' heads though and her talents would allow her to follow in my footsteps as a detective if she wanted. Of course I hoped to be around for a long time coming but planning for the worst never hurt anyone.

The lab overlooked the canal along the long side of the island, Maggie and her friends weren't visible but I wasn't worried, no one would let anything happen here. It had taken a year of constant work but I'd managed to acquire our current home on an island of the upper middle class. There were houses of silversmiths, bankers and the families of ship captains along with extremely visible and regular guard patrols. It was probably the safest part of the city given that the true upper class had an obsession with dueling to the death that the more mercantile citizens disdained. The neighbors were friendly people, I had told them a version of the truth, that Maggie and I were stranded here in the same accident that had killed her mother. They had reacted with an extremely polite lack of curiosity which I was grateful for. Life was good, one of the silversmiths was even collaborating with me on the development of a small printing press. I wasn't in any position to go all Connecticut Yankee on Braavos but I felt I could advance things in some small ways. My GED hadn't focused too much on Medieval Europe but Braavos seemed like it was on the verge of when the Renaissance should show up. If in the future the Dresden-Koren press was lauded as the spur to literacy like Gutenberg I wouldn't complain.

There were other projects I was working on, maintaining my model of Braavos was a constant struggle and I was working on a world map by buying the charts of sailors whenever I saw them. Essos, the continent I lived on, was dominated by the free cities which were founded by or against the fallen dragon empire. There was a massive river, comparable to the Amazon or Mississippi back home into the interior, a vast plain called the Dothraki sea. Mongol like horseman roamed the grasslands occasionally raiding and sacking the cities surrounding it. Braavos was safe from their deprivations though, apparently they feared salt water.

Across the narrow sea was Westeros, the sunset lands. They had just finished a civil war when Maggie and I had arrived, apparently caused by a mad inbred king. It sounded like a feudal dystopia and I was glad we had landed where we were rather than in some Hundred Years wars type struggle.

My main magical project past detective work was enchantment. I had been able to create objects that I could use and power for years but I wanted to make something like a Warden's sword. An object that anyone could use without their own magic. My results after six months of hard work were rudimentary, I finally understood the difficulty Luccio must have had after switching bodies. I'd taken a month to make a rope that couldn't be broken by any load applied but that was the highpoint. I wouldn't be making Durandal anytime soon.

Despite my failures in item creation, finding lost things was my principal source of income and we lived well on it. Maggie had everything she needed and most of what she wanted, while I had enough to play around and try to improve my magic. My reputation was solid in the city, improved by the last job and I felt that my efforts with the smiths would allow me, or possibly Maggie if they were slow, to see the technology of the world we left behind. While I would go back to Chicago if I could Braavos was much better than I'd feared the consequences of the Winter Mantle would be.

Naturally this introspection was ruined by a knock on the door below. Looking out the window I saw a well dressed man who looked deeply uncomfortable on the edge of the canal. Using my carefully honed deductive skills I surmised he was a potential client. I was tempted to ignore him and call it a day but the mercenary instincts honed over a desperate year of taking every job to provide for Maggie stopped me. I hurried down the stairs and went to the front to greet the man.

"Harry Dresden, I am Noho Dimittis. I would like to hire your services." Noho wore the dark colors typical of the somber city and based on his hands worked in an office.

"Come in" I told him, "and have a seat." He did and I moved around to sit at my desk. "So Dimittis, what can I do for you."

He leaned forward "It is said that you can find anything if you are given a small part of it. Is this true?"

"Mostly, there are limits, but if you tell me what you're looking for I'll tell you if I can be of any use."

Noho sat for a moment, seemingly trying to decide if the particulars were worth sharing. Eventually he made up his mind and put a small bag on the desk, "I represent a firm that had a vault plundered, but not completely. The thieves missed these coins."

I reached for the bag glancing up at Noho to see if he minded, he didn't, and I slid the coins out. There was nothing special about them, square iron coins of the type commonly found in Braavos, minted and backed by the ferrous obsessed Iron Bank. I rolled one of the coins between my fingers as I thought, it was something my Dad had taught me when I was young and traveling with him as a stage magician. It was also good therapy for my burned hand which Noho had seemed to have just noticed and was staring at queasily. I saw his discomfort and stopped, I had gotten used to the appearance but it was horrifying on the first glance. It was getting better thanks to the miracle of magic but Noho probably wouldn't appreciate seeing it even in another ten years.

"I may be able to locate the rest of the coins from the vault with these but I make no promises." I looked out at the canal, the water was almost at its highest and the time for a tracking spell that had an incredibly weak link was approaching. I scooped up the bag and stood. "If you wait here for two bells" Braavos used a naval time-keeping scheme as befitted a city founded by sailors, "I'll either have results or I won't be able to help you."

Noho nodded as I began to walk towards the back and the stairs. "If my daughter comes in, tell her I'm working and to find something to stay busy with" I called back as I went up the stairs, if he replied I didn't catch it as I began to focus on the problem.

Coins from a vault were not very similar thaumaturgically speaking. I could certainly use the coin to find other coins that were near but if I tried that blindly Little Braavos would just show me the famous vaults of the Iron Bank where the largest concentration of coins in the city was. Or so I assumed, some merchant prince might have chests full but either way it wouldn't work very well. Instead I had to use the bag of coins, to try to feel out their common past and from that where the rest was. It was a delicate spell and I wasn't altogether sure it would work especially with all of the water in the city. I tied the bag of coins to a lanyard hanging over the city model, washed myself briefly to try to remove any other influences I'd picked up wandering and waited.

The moment the tides changed was detectable, not like sunrise or sunset in their rigid demarcation but a softer feeling, perhaps a drawn out note rather than a percussive pulse. It was that moment I was waiting for, when all of the water in Braavos was still, magically speaking, for my tracking spell. It was coming up, when I felt it I muttered my spell and fed power into the model and the coins. Somewhat to my surprise the bag of coins spun towards an island. I looked at it, trying to think of the area. It was a nice place, more upscale than my island with villas and larger houses. I had even seen a few trees there which were a mark of extreme wealth on the rocky islands. Knowing which island the rest of the coins were on was probably enough, if Noho and I left now we could make there well before sunset and get a more precise location.

I went back to my office, Noho had been reading something from a ledger and making notes and looked up as he saw me. "Good news" I said "I've narrowed it down to one island, if you come with me now we can find the house they're in. That's as far as I'll go though, if you want retrieval you'd better find some other help."

We went out, I grabbed one of the wives watching the children and asked her to keep an eye on Maggie, she agreed. Noho had gotten the attention of a gondolier in the meantime, we boarded it as the man gave my size a dismayed look. Noho was a true Braavosi, other than asking the price if we found the coins he was somber and silent. The only color in the grey city was of its Bravos, young men with nothing better to do than drink and fight for outrageous reasons. They reminded me of the Sidhe courts in a way, minor slights became feuds that turned bloody all behind a polite facade. None were out though, it was still early afternoon and they were all likely sleeping off their hangovers.

We reached the island, Noho paid the man as I focused on the bag of coins. It swayed down along the shoreline and we followed it until we reached a palatial home with a red door. Noho reacted for the first time in our trip showing slight surprise. "Well Dresden your reputation is deserved. It's amusing the thieves stayed here but you could not have known in advance who they were. You'll have your payment and the thanks of the Iron Bank."

I was shocked, I knew that I was becoming well known especially after the little test this morning but this was something else. The Iron Bank was reputed to have toppled kings and ruined princes, it was the driving force of the city and probably owned half of it. It wasn't anywhere near as powerful as some I'd worked for though, so I kept my poker face. "It was a pleasure to assist. I didn't realize you had actually had individual vaults, I thought it was all kept in your ledgers." as I nodded towards his heavy satchel.

"Most are, like your own for instance" he replied. "Some clients prefer more physical proof that their riches are present, this vault belonged to one of them."

"Well keep up the good work then, I hope you recover the rest of the account." Noho handed me a draft, and I managed to grab another boat. Something about pushing someone six and a half feet tall around seemed to make the gondoliers annoyed. As the ride ended I tipped the gasping man, the tide was against us the whole way, and went home a second time. I lit the stove as Maggie came back in laughing, we had dinner, spent an hour playing with fire and meditation, I sent her to bed as I began to set the wards for the night. It had been a good day, two cases two successes and very real proof I was moving up in the world. Naturally the next morning Noho was back at the door with friends.