COLD COPPER TEARS

Glen Cook

A SIGNET BOOK

 NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

 

 

THERE THREE GUYS WALKING ON AIR-all of them in old-time armor. As they started throwing thunderbolts, I headed for the safety of the manor. I hit the doorway and skidded to a halt. Something far worse than three guys in armor was tearing its way in through the roof, going at it like the place was made of paper. A big, shiny, ugly, purplish-black face like that of a fangy gorilla glared through the hole. Then it started ripping the hole bigger.

It dropped through the hole, landed at the far end of the pool room, fifty feet away. It was twelve feet tall, had six arms, and might have been a monster straight off one of those temple coins that had suddenly been appearing around town. It wavered as though I was seeing it through an intense heat shimmer. Or as if it didn't know if it wanted to be a six-armed gorilla or something even uglier.

And then my time for peaceful observing ran out, as the thing suddenly roared and charged straight for me. . . .

 

 

 

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SIGNET, SIGNET CLASSIC, MENTOR, ONYX, PLUME, MERIDIAN and NAL BOOKS are published by NAL PENGUIN INC., 1633 Broadway, New York, New York 10019First Printing, October, 1988 123456789PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

1

Maybe it was time. I was restless. We were getting on toward the dog days, when my body gets terminally lazy but my nerves shriek that it's time to do something—a cruel combination. So far sloth was ahead by a nose.

I'm Garrett—low thirties, six-feet-two, two hundred pounds, ginger hair, ex-Marine—all-around fun guy. For a price I'll find things or get the boogies off your back. I'm no genius. I get the job done by being too stubborn to quit. My favorite sport is female and my favorite food is beer. I work out of the house I own on Macunado Street, halfway between the Hill and waterfront in TunFaire's midtown.

I was sharing a liquid lunch with my friend Playmate, talking religion, when a visitor wakened my sporting nature.

She was blonde and tall with skin like the finest satin I'd ever seen. She wore a hint of unusual scent and a smile that said she saw through everything and Garrett was one big piece of crystal. She looked scared but she wasn't spooked.

"I think I'm in love," I told Playmate as old Dean showed her into my coffin of an office.

"Third time this week." He drained his mug. "Don't mention it to Tinnie." He stood up. And stood up. And stood up. He's nine feet tall. "Some of us got to work." He waltzed with Dean and the blonde, trying to get to the hall.

"Later." We'd had a good time snickering about the scandals sweeping TunFaire's religion industry. Playmate had considered a flyer in that racket once but I had managed to collect a debt owed him, and the cash had kept him alive in the stable business.

I looked at the blonde. She looked at me. I liked what I saw. She had mixed feelings. The horses don't shy when I pass, but over the years I've been pounded around enough for my face to develop a certain amount of character.

She kept smiling that secret smile. It made me want to look over my shoulder to see what was gaining on me.

Dean avoided my eye and did a fast fade, pretending he had to make sure Playmate didn't forget to close the front door behind him. Dean wasn't supposed to let anybody in. They might want me to work. The blonde must have charmed his socks off.

"I'm Garrett. Sit." She wouldn't have to work to charm the wardrobe off me. She had that something that goes beyond beauty, beyond style—an aura, a presence. She was the kind of woman who leaves eunuchs weeping and priests cursing their vows.

She planted herself in Playmate's chair but didn't offer a name. The impact was wearing off. I began to see the chill behind the gorgeous mask. I wondered if anybody was home.

"Tea? Brandy? Miss? … Or Dean might find a spot of TunFaire Gold if we sweet-talk him.”

"You don't remember me, do you?”

"No. Should I?”

The man who could forget her was already dead. But I left the remark unspoken. A chill had dropped over me, and the chill had no sense of humor.

"It's been a while, Garrett. Last time I saw you I was nine and you were going off to the Marines.”

My memory for nines isn't what it is for twenties. No bells rang, though that was more years ago than I want to remember; I've tried to forget the five in the Marines ever since.

"We lived next door, third floor. I had a crush on you. You hardly noticed me. I'd have died if you did.”

"Sorry.”

She shrugged. "My name is Jill Craight.”

She looked like a Jill, complete with amber eyes that ought to smolder but looked out of arctic wastes instead. But she wasn't any Jill I ever knew, nine years old or not.

Any other Jill, and I would have come back with a suggestion about making up for lost time. But the cold over there was getting to me. My restraint will get me a pat on the head next time I go to confession. If I ever go. Last time was when I was about nine. "You got over me while I was gone. I didn't see you on the pier when I came home.”

I'd made up my mind about her. She had stoked the fire to get past Dean, but it was out now. She was a user. It was time she stopped decorating that chair and distracting its owner from his lunch. "You didn't just drop by to talk about the old days on Peach Street.''

"Pyme Street," she corrected. "I may be in trouble. I may need help.”

"People who come here usually do." Something told me not to shove her out the door yet. I looked her over again. That was no chore.

She wasn't a flashy dresser. Her clothes were conservative but costly, tailored with an eye to wear. That implied money but didn't guarantee it. In my part of town some people wear their whole estate. "Tell me about it.”

"Our place burned when I was twelve." That should have rung a bell, but didn't till later. "My parents were killed. I tried staying with an uncle. We didn't get along. I ran away. The streets aren't kind to a girl without a family.”

They aren't. That would be when the iceberg formed. Nothing would touch her, or get close to her, or hurt her, ever again. But what did yesterday have to do with why she was here today?

People come to me because they feel disaster breathing down their necks. Maybe just getting through the door makes them feel safe. Maybe they don't want to go back out again. Whatever the reason, they stall, talking about anything but what's bothering them. "I imagine.”

"I was lucky. I had looks and half a brain. I used them to make connections. Things worked out. These days I'm an actress.”

That could mean anything or nothing, a catchall behind which women pursue uncomfortable ways of keeping body and soul together.

I grunted encouragement. Garrett is nothing if not encouraging.

Dean peeked in to make sure I hadn't gone rabid. I tapped my mug. "More lunch." It looked like a long siege.

"I've made some important friends, Mr. Garrett. They like me because I know how to listen and I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

I had a notion she was the kind of actress who gives the same service as a street girl but gets paid better because she smiles and sighs while she's working.

We do what we have to do. I know some good people in that line. Not many, but some. There aren't that many good people in any line.

Dean brought my beer and a whistle-wetter for my guest. He'd been eavesdropping and had begun to suspect he'd made a mistake. She turned on the heat when she thanked him. He went out glowing. I took a drink and said, "So what are we sneaking up on here?”

The glaciers reformed behind her eyes. "One of my friends left me with something for safekeeping. It was a small casket." She made hand gestures indicating a box a foot deep, as wide, and eighteen inches long. "I have no idea what's in it. I don't want to know. Now he's disappeared. And since I've had that casket there have been three attempts to break into my apartment." Bam. Like a candle snuffed, she stopped. She had said something she shouldn't have. She had to think before she went on.

I smelted a herd of rats. "Got any idea what you want?”

"Someone is watching me. I want it stopped. I don't have to put up with that kind of thing anymore.'' There was some passion there, some heat, but all for some other guy.

"Then you think it could happen again. You think somebody's after that casket? Or could they be after you?”

What she thought was that she shouldn't have mentioned the casket. She ran it around inside her head before she said, "Either one.”

"And you want me to stop it?”

She gave me a regal nod. The snow queen was back in charge. "Do you know what it's like to come home and find out that someone's been tearing through your stuff?”

A minute ago they were just trying to get in.

"A little like you've been raped, only it doesn't hurt as much when you sit down," I replied. "Give me a retainer. Tell me where you live. I'll see what I can do.”

She handed me a small coin purse while she told me how to find her place. It was only six blocks away. I looked in the purse. I don't think my eyes bugged, but she had that little smile on again when I looked up.

She'd decided she could run me around like a trained mutt.

She got up. "Thank you." She headed for the front door. I got up and stumbled over myself trying to get there to see her out, but Dean had been lying in ambush to make sure he got the honors. I left him to them.

 

2

Dean shut the door. He faced it for a moment before he turned to face me, wearing a foolish look.

I asked, "You fall in love? At your age?" He knew I wasn't looking for clients. He was supposed to discourage them at the door. And this sweet ice with the tall tales and long legs and nonsense problem and sack of gold that was ten times what a retainer ought to be looked like a client I especially didn't want. "That one is trouble on the hoof.”

"I'm sorry, Mr. Garrett." He gave me feeble excuses that only proved a man is never too old.

"Dean, go to Mr. Pigotta's. Tell him he's invited to supper. You'll be fixing his favorites if he gets balky." Pokey Pigotta never turned down a free meal in his life. I gave Dean my best glower, which struck him like rain off a turtle.

You just can't get good help.

I retired to my desk to think.

Life was good.

I'd had a couple of rough ones recently and I'd not only gotten out alive, but also managed to turn a fat profit. I didn't owe anybody. I didn't need to work. I've always thought it sensible not to work if you're not hungry. You don't see wild animals working when they're not hungry, so why not just fiddle around and put away a few beers and worry about getting ready for winter when winter comes?

My trouble was that word was out that Garrett could handle the tough ones. Lately every fool with an imaginary twitch has been knocking on my door. And when they look like Jill Craight and know how to turn on the heat, they have no trouble getting past my first line of defense. My second line is more feeble than my first. That's me. And I'm a born sucker.

I've been poor and I've been poorer, and the practical side of me has learned one truth: money runs out. No matter how well I did yesterday, the money will run out tomorrow.

What do you do when you don't want to work and you don't want to go hungry? When you were born you didn't have the sense to pick rich parents.

Some guys become priests.

Me, I'm trying to get into subcontracting, the wave of the future.

When they get past Dean and they fish me with their tales of woe, I figure I ought to be able to give the work to somebody else and scrape twenty percent off the top. That should keep the wolf away for a while, save me exercise, and put some money in the hands of my friends.

For tail and trace jobs I could call on Pokey Pigotta. He's good at that. For bodyguard stuff there was Saucerhead Tharpe, half the size of a mammoth and twice as stubborn. If something hairy turned up I could yell for Morley Dotes. Morley is a bone breaker and life-taker.

This Craight thing smelled. Damn it, it reeked! Why give me that business about being a neighbor when she was a kid? Why drop it at the first sign I doubted her? Why back off so fast on the high heat and shift to the ice maiden?

There was one answer I didn't like at all.

She might be a psycho.

People who get into a fix where they think I'm their only out are unpredictable. Add weird. But when you've been at the game awhile you think you get a feel for types.

Jill Craight didn't fit.

For a second I wondered if that wasn't because she was an actress who had done her homework and had decided to grab my curiosities with both hands. I can be had that way sometimes.

The clever, cutesy ones are the worst.

I could go two ways here: lie back and forget Jill Craight until I gave her to Pokey, or walk across the hall and consult my live-in charity case.

That woman had given me the jimjams. I was restless. The Dead Man it was, then. After all, he's a self-proclaimed genius.

They call him the Dead Man. He's dead, but he's not a man. He's a Loghyr, and somebody stuck him with a knife about four hundred years ago. He weighs almost five hundred pounds, and his four-century fast hasn't helped him lose an ounce.

Loghyr flesh dies as easily as yours or mine, but the Loghyr spirit is more reluctant. It can hang around for a thousand years, hoping for a cure, getting more ill-tempered by the minute. If Loghyr flesh corrupts it may do so faster than granite, but not much.

My dead Loghyr's hobby is sleeping. He's so dedicated he'll do nothing else for months.

He's supposed to earn his keep by applying his genius to my cases. He does, sometimes, but he has a deeper philosophical aversion to gainful employment than I do. He'll bust his butt to shirk the smallest chore. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

He was asleep when I dropped in—much to my chagrin, but little to my surprise. He'd been at it for three weeks, taking up the biggest room in the house.

"Hey, Old Bones! Wake up! I need the benefit of your lightning intelligence." The best way to get anything out of him is to appeal to his vanity. But the first task is waking him, and the second is getting him to pay attention.

He wasn't having any today.

"That's all right," I told the mountain of cheesy flesh. "I love you despite yourself.”

The place was a mess. Dean hates cleaning the Dead Man's room, and I hadn't kept after him so he'd let it slide.

If I didn't watch it the bugs and mice got in. They liked to snack on the Dead Man. He could handle them when he was awake, but he wouldn't stay awake anymore.

He was ugly enough on his own, without getting eaten.

I puttered around, sweeping and dusting and stomping, singing a medley of bawdy hymns I learned in the Marines. He didn't wake up, the stubborn hunk of lard.

If he wasn't going to play, neither was I. I packed it up. I reloaded my mug with beer and went out to the stoop to watch the endless and ever-changing panorama of TunFaire life.

Macunado Street was busy. People and dwarfs and elves hurried to arcane destinations, to clandestine rendezvous. A troll couple strolled past, kids so infatuated they had eyes for nothing but one another's warts and carbuncles. Ogres and leprechauns hastened to assignations. More dwarfs scurried by, dependably industrious. A fairy messenger more beautiful than my recent visitor cussed like a sailor as she battled a stubborn head wind. A brownie youth gang, chukos, way off their turf, played whistle past the graveyard, probably praying the local Travelers would not come out. A giant, obviously an up-country rube, gawked at everything. He had fantastic peripheral vision. He almost batted the head off a pixie who tried to pick his pocket.

I saw half-breeds of every sort. TunFaire is a cosmopolitan, sometimes tolerant, always venturesome city. For those with that turn of mind, it's interesting to speculate on the mechanics of how some of their parents managed to conceive them. If you're of a scientific mind and want to take your data from direct observation, you can visit the Tenderloin. They'll show you anything down there as long as you come across with the money.

My street was always a carnival, like TunFaire itself. But it's all darkness grinning behind a party mask.

TunFaire and I have a ferocious love-hate relationship that comes of us both being too damned stubborn to change.

 

3

When they built Pokey Pigotta they used only leftover angles and extra long parts, then forgot to give him a coat of paint. He was so pallid that, after dark, people sometimes took him for one of the undead. He had no meat on him and his gangly limbs were everywhere, but he was tough and smart and one of the best at what he did. And he had an appetite like a whale-shark. Whenever we have him over he eats everything but the woodwork. Maybe it's the only time he gets to eat real cooking.

Dean is good for that. Sometimes I claim it's the only reason I keep him on. Sometimes I believe what I say.

We hadn't had a strange face in for a while, which spurred Dean to one of his better efforts. That and the fact that Pokey can lay it on with a shovel when he wants and Dean is addicted to everybody's flattery but mine.

Pokey leaned back and patted his stomach, drenched Dean with a bucket of bullhooly, belched, and looked at me. "So let's have it, Garrett.”

I lifted an eyebrow. It's one of my best tricks. I'm working on my ear-wiggling. I know the ladies will love that.

"You took on a client you want to farm out," Pokey went on without waiting. "Good-looking woman with style, I'd guess, or she wouldn't have gotten past Dean. And if she had, you wouldn't have listened to her.”

Had he been listening at the keyhole? "Regular deductive genius isn't he, Dean?”

"If you say so, sir.”

"I don't. He was probably hanging around trying to beg crumbs from our castoffs." I told Pokey the story. All I left out was the size of the retainer. He didn't need to know that.

"Sounds like she's running a game," Pokey agreed. "You said Jill Craight?”

"That's the name she gave. You know it?”

"Seems like I should. Can't put a finger on why." He used his pinkie to scratch the inside of his ear. "Couldn't have been important.”

Dean produced a peach cobbler, something he'd never do without company present. It was hot. He buried it in whipped cream. Then he served tea. Pokey went to work like he wanted to store up fat for the next ice age.

Afterwards we leaned back, and Pokey lighted one of those savage little black stink sticks he favors, then went to catching me up on the news. I hadn't been out of the house for days. Dean hadn't kept me posted. He hoped silence would drive me out. He never says so but he worries when I'm not working.

"The big news is Glory Mooncalled did it again.”

"What now?" Glory Mooncalled and the war in the Cantard are special interests around my house. When he's awake the Dead Man makes a hobby of trying to predict the unpredictable, the mercenary Mooncalled.

"He ambushed Fire lord Sedge at Rapistan Sands. Ever heard of it?”

"No." That was no surprise. Glory Mooncalled was operating farther into the Venageti Cantard than any Karentine before him. "He took Sedge out?" It was a safe guess; his ambushes had yet to fail.

"Thoroughly. How many left on his list?”

"Not many. Maybe three." Mooncalled had begun his war on the Venageti side. The Venageti War Council had managed to tick him off so bad he'd come over to Karenta vowing to collect their heads. He'd been picking them off ever since.

He's become a folk hero for us ordinary slobs and a big pain in the patoot for the ruling class, though he's winning their war. His easy victories have shown them to be the incompetents we've always known they are.

Pokey said, "What happens when he's done and all of a sudden we don't have a war for the first time since before any of us were born?”

The Dead Man had an answer. I didn't think it would go over with Pokey. I changed the subject. "What's the latest on the temple scandals?" Playmate had tried to give me the scoop but his heart hadn't been in it. The scandals weren't the circus for him they were for me. His religious side was embarrassed by the antics of our self-anointed spiritual shepherds.

"Nothing new. Plenty of finger-pointing. Lot of 'I was framed.' On the retail level it's still at the swinging-drunks-in the-tavern stage.”

For now. It would turn grim if Prester Legate Warden Agire and his Terrell Relics didn't turn up.

Agire was one of the top ten priests of the squabbling family of sects we lump together as Orthodox. His title Prester indicated his standing in the hierarchy, at about the level of a duke. Legate was an imperial appointment, supposedly plenipotentiary, in reality powerless. The imperial court persists and postures at Costain but has had no power for two hundred years. It survives as a useful political fiction. Warden is the title that matters. It means he's the one man in the world entrusted with guardianship of the Terrell Relics.

Agire and the Relics had disappeared.

I don't know what the Relics are. Maybe nobody but the Warden does anymore. He's the only one who ever sees them. Whatever, they're holy and precious not only to the Orthodox factions but to the Church, the Eremitics, the Scottites, the Canonics, the Cynics, the Ascetics, the Renunciates, and several Hanite creeds for whom Terrell is only a minor prophet or even an emissary of the archenemy. The bottom line is that they're important to almost all the thousand and one cults with followings in TunFaire.

Agire and the Relics had vanished. Everyone assumed the worst. But something was wrong. Nobody claimed responsibility. Nobody crowed over having gotten hold of the Relics. That baffled everybody. Possession of the Relics is a clear claim for the favor of the gods.

In the meantime, the whispering war of revelation had intensified. Priests of various rites had begun whittling away at rivals by betraying their venalities, corruptions, and sins. It had begun as border-incident stuff, little priests excoriating one another for drunkenness, for selling indulgences, for letting their hands roam during the confessional.

The fun had spread like fire in a tenement block. Now a day was incomplete without its disclosure about this or that bishop or prester or whatnot having fathered a child on his sister, having poisoned his predecessor, or having embezzled a fortune to buy his male mistress a forty-eight-room cabin in the country.

Most of the stories were true. There was so much real dirt, fabrication wasn't necessary—which satisfied my cynical side right down to its bunions. Reputations were getting reaped in windrows, and it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys.

Pokey was bored by the whole business. If he had a weakness it was his narrowness. His work was his life. He could talk technique or case histories forever. Otherwise, only food held his attention.

I wondered what he did with his money. He lived in a scruffy one-room walk-up although he worked all the time, sometimes on several projects at once. When clients didn't find him, he went looking. He even went after things—deadly things—just to satisfy his own curiosity.

Whatever, he didn't feel like yakking up old news. His belly was full. I'd tantalized him with a wicked aroma. He wanted to get hunting.

I helped him puff Dean's ego, then walked him to the door. I sat down on the stoop to watch him out of sight.

4

The descending sun played arsonist among high, distant clouds. There was a light breeze. The temperature was perfect. It was a time to just lean back and feel content. Not many of those times fell my way.

I yelled for beer, then settled in to watch Nature redecorate the ceiling of the world. I didn't pay attention to the street. The little man was there on the stoop, making himself at home, passing me the big copper bucket of beer he'd brought, before I noticed him.

Up to no good? What else? But the beer was Weider's best lager. I don't get it that often.

He was a teeny dink, all wrinkled and gray, with a cant to his eyes and a yellow of tooth that suggested a big dollop of nonhuman blood. I didn't know him. That was all right. There are a lot of people I don't know, but I wondered if he was one of the ones I wanted to keep on not knowing.

"Thanks. Good beer.”

"Mr. Weider said you'd appreciate it.”

I'd done a job for Weider, rooting out an in-house theft ring without getting his guilty children too dirty. To discourage a relapse the old man kept me on retainer. I wander around the brewery when I have nothing better to do. I make people nervous there. Considering what he'd been losing, I'm cheap insurance. The retainer isn't much.

"He tell you to see me?”

The dink took the bucket back, sipped like an expert. "I'm unfamiliar with many facets of the secular world, Mr. Garrett. Mr. Weider is face-to-face with it every day. He said you were the man I need. Provided, as he put it, I can pry you off your dead ass.”

That sounded like Weider. "He's more achievement oriented than I am." And how. He started out with nothing; now he's TunFaire's biggest brewer and has fingers in twenty other pies.

"So I gather.”

We passed the bucket back and forth.

He said, "I looked you over. You seem perfect for my needs. But the factors that make you right make it hard to recruit you. I have no way to appeal to you.”

It was a mellow evening. I was too lazy to move. I had nothing else on my mind but a couple of oddballs down the way who were dead ringers for a couple of oddballs who were hanging around last time I came out. "You bought the beer, friend. Speak your piece.”

"I'd expected that courtesy. Trouble is, once I tell you the cat will be out of the bag.”

"I don't gossip about business. That's bad for business.”

"Mr. Weider did praise your discretion.”

"He's got reason.”

We went back and forth with the beer. The sun ambled on. The little guy held a conference with himself to see if his trouble was really that bad.

It was worse, probably. Usually they're going down for the third time when they ask for help—and then they want to sneak up on it like a virgin.

"My name is Magnus Peridont.”

I didn't wilt. I didn't gasp or faint. He was disappointed. I said, "Magnus? Nobody in real life is named Magnus. That's a handle they stick on some guy who's been dead so long everybody's forgotten what a horse's ass he was.”

"You've never heard of me?”

It was one of those names you ought to know. It had turned up on a loo wall somewhere, or something. "Doesn't ring any bells.”

"My father thought I was destined for greatness. I'm sure I was a disappointment. I'm also known as Magister Peridont and Peridontu, Altodeoria Prin-ceps.”

"I hear a distant campanile." A Magister is that rarest of all fabulous beasts, a sorcerer sanctioned by the Church. The other title was a relic of antiquity. It meant something like he was a Prince of the City of God. There was a bunk in heawn with his name on it, guaranteed. The bosses of the Church had-made him a saint before he croaked.

A thousand years ago that would have made his a dyed-in-the-wool, hair-shirt-wearing, pillar-sitting holy man. These days it probably meant he scared the crap out of everybody and they wanted to buy him off with baubles.

I asked, "Would Grand Inquisitor and Malevechea fit in there somewhere?”

"I have been called those things.”

"I'm getting a fix on you." That Peridont was one scary son-of-a-bitch. Luckily, we live in a world where the Church is always one gasp short of being a dead issue. It claims maybe ten percent of Karenta's human population and none of the nonhuman. It says only humans have souls and other races are just clever animals capable of aping human speech and manners. That makes the Church real popular with the clever animals.

"You're dismayed," he said.

"Not exactly. Say I have philosophical problems with some of the Church's tenets." Elfish civilization antedates ours by millennia. "I didn't know Mr. Wei-der was a member.”

"Not in good standing. Call him lapsed. He was born to the faith. He spoke to me as a favor to his wife. She's one of our lay sisters.”

I remembered her, a fat old woman with a mustache, always in black, with a face like she had a mouth full of lemons. "I see.”

Now that I knew who he was, we were on equal ground. Now he needed leading around to the point. "You're out of uniform.”

"I'm not making an official representation.”

"Under the table? Or personal?”

'' Some of both. With permission.”

Permission? Him? I waited.

"My reputation is greatly exaggerated, Mr. Garrett. I've encouraged that for its psychological impact.”

I grunted and waited. He didn't look old enough to have done all the evil laid at his doorstep.

He said, "Are you aware of the tribulations besetting our Orthodox cousins?”

"I haven't been so entertained since my mother took me to the circus.”

"You've put a finger on the crux, Mr. Garrett. The mess has become a popular entertainment. There are no heretics more deserving of Hano's justice than the Orthodox. But no one views these events as a scourging. And that fills me with dread.”

"Uhm?”

"Already the rabble have begun to step forward with revelations just to keep the pot boiling. I fear the day when the Orthodox vein plays out and they seek new lodes.”

Ah. "You think the church might be next?" That wouldn't break my heart.

"Possibly. Despite my vigilance, some will stumble into sin. But no, my concern isn't for the Church, it's for Faith itself. Every revelation slashes Belief with a brutal razor. Already some who never questioned have begun to wonder if all religion isn't just a shell game perpetrated by societies of con men who milk the gullible.”

He looked me in the eye and smiled, then passed the beer. That could have been a quote. And he knew it. He had done his homework.

"You have my attention." I suddenly knew how Pokey felt when he took a job just to satisfy his own curiosity.

He smiled again. "I'm convinced there's more here than a scandal gone brushfire. This is being orchestrated. There's a malign force bent on savaging Faith. I think a rock needs to be lifted and that social scorpion revealed.”

"Interesting and interestinger. I'm surprised by your secular way of stating it.”

He smiled again. The Grand Inquisitor was a happy runt. "The diabolical provenance of the attack is beyond question. What interests me are the identities, resources, goals, and whatnot of the Adversary's mun- dane adjuncts. All that can be defined in secular terms, like a street robbery.”

And a robbery could, no doubt, be defined in sectarian cant.

The runt seemed awfully reasonable for a supposed raving fanatic. I guess the first talent a priest develops is acting ability. "So you want to hire me to root out the jokers putting the wood to the Orthodox priesthoods.”

"Not exactly. Though I have hopes that their unmasking will be a by-product.”

"You just zigged when I zagged.”

"Subtlety and credibility, Mr. Garrett. If I hire you to find conspirators and you unearth them, even I couldn't be completely sure you hadn't cooked the evidence. On the other hand, if I hire a known skeptic to search for Warden Agire and the Terrell Relics and in the course of the hunt he kicks some villains out of the weeds. …”

I took a long drink of his beer. "I admire your thinking.”

"You'll take it on, then?”

"No. I can't see getting in a mess just for money. But you know how to pique a guy's curiosity. And you know how to scheme a scheme.”

"I'm prepared to pay well. With an outstanding bonus for recovery of the Relics.”

"I'll bet.”

The Great Schism between Orthodoxy and its main offshoot happened a thousand years ago. The Ecumenical Council of Pyme tried to patch things up. The marriage didn't last. The Orthodox snatched the Relics in the settlement. The Church has been trying to snatch them back ever since.

"I won't press you, Mr. Garrett. You were the best man for the job, but for that reason the least likely to take it. I have other options. Thank you for your time. Have a nice evening. Should you have a change of heart, contact me at the Chattaree." He and his bucket marched off into the dusk.

I was impressed with the little guy. He could be a gentleman when he wanted. You don't see that much in people accustomed to power. And he was one of the most feared men in TunFaire, within his sphere. A holy terror.

 

5

Dean stepped outside. "I've finished up, Mr. Garrett. I'll be going home if there's nothing else.”

He always talks like that when he wants something. Right now he hoped I'd have that something else. He lives with a platoon of spinster nieces who make him crazy.

One of the legacies of the war in the Cantard is a surplus of women. For decades Karenta's youth have gone south to capture the silver mines and for decades half of them haven't come back. It makes it nice for us unattached survivor types, but hell on parents with daughters to support.

"I was sitting here thinking it would be a nice evening for a walk.”

"That it would be, Mr. Garrett." When the Dead Man is sleeping somebody always stays in to bolt the door and wait for whoever is out. When the Dead Man is awake we have no security problems.

"You think it's too early to see Tinnie?" Tinnie Tate and I have a tempestuous friendship. She's the one they had in mind when they set the specs for redhead stereotypes, only they toned them down because nobody would believe the truth.

You might call Tinnie changeable. One week I can't run her off with a stick, the next I'm tops on her hate list. I haven't figured out the whys and wherefores.

I was listed this week. Past the peak and dropping but still in the top ten.

"It's too early.”

I thought so, too.

Dean is in a bind where Tinnie is concerned. He likes her. She's beautiful, smart, quick, more square with the world than I'll ever be. He thinks she's good for me. (I don't dare risk his opinion on the flip-flop issue.) But he has all those nieces in desperate need of husbands and half a dozen have standards low enough to covet a prince like me, squeaky armor and all.

"I could go see how the girls are.”

He brightened, checked to see if I was teasing, and was set to call my bluff when he realized that would put me there while he was here, unable to defend their supposed virtues. He imagined me in there like a bull shoulder-deep in clover, like they couldn't possibly have sense enough to look out for themselves. "I wouldn't recommend that, Mr. Garrett. They've been especially troublesome lately.”

It was all a matter of perspective. They hadn't troubled me. When I first took Dean on, they did. They kept me up to my ears in cookery, trying to fatten me up for the kill.

"Perhaps I should just go, Mr. Garrett. Perhaps you should wait another day or two, then go apologize to Miss Tate.”

"I got no philosophical problem with apologizing, Dean, but I like to know why I'm doing it.”

He chuckled, pulled on the mantle of worldly-wise old warrior passing his wisdom along. "Apologize for being a man. That always works.”

He had a point. Except I have a flair for getting sarcastic.

"I'll just stroll over to Morley's, quaff me a few celery tonics.”

Dean pruned up. His opinion of Morley Dotes is so low it has to look up at snakes' bellies.

We all have rogues in our circles, maybe just so we can tell ourselves, "What a good boy am I.”

Actually, I like Morley. Despite himself. He takes some getting used to but he's all right, in his way. I just keep reminding myself that he's part dark elf and has different values. Sometimes, very different values. Always malleable values. Everything is situational for Morley.

"I won't be out long," I promised. "I just need to work off some restlessness.”

Dean grinned. He figured I was getting bored with loafing and we'd see some excitement pretty soon.

I hoped not.

 

6

It isn't a long walk to Morley's place, but it is a walk over the border into another world. The neighborhood hasn't acquired a name like so many others, but it is a distinct region. Maybe call it the Safety Zone. Members of all species mix there without much friction—though humans have to put in overtime to be acceptable.

There was a little light still in the air. The clouds out west hadn't quite burned out. It wasn't yet time for the predators to hit the streets. I was no more than normally wary.

But when the kid stepped into my path I knew I had trouble. Big trouble. It was something about the way he moved.

I didn't think. I reacted.

I gave him a high kick he wasn't expecting. My toe snapped in under his chin. I felt a bone break. He squealed and ran backwards, arms flapping as he tried to keep his balance. A hitching post jumped in his way and gored him from behind. He spun around and went down, losing his knife as he fell.

I slid toward the nearest building.

Another came at me from what had been behind. He was an odd one, kid-sized but clad in a cast-off army work uniform. He was an albino. He had a nasty big knife. He stopped eight feet away, awaiting reinforcements.

There were at least three more, two across the street and one back up the way, standing lookout.

I took off my belt and snapped it at the albino's eyes. That didn't scare him but did give me time to frisk the building.

The buildings around there were a week short of foiling down. I had no trouble finding a loose, broken brick. I pulled it out and let fly. I guessed right and he ducked into it. I got him square in the forehead, then jumped him while his knees were watery, took his knife, grabbed him by the hair, and flung him toward the two coming across the street. They dodged. He sprawled.

I screeched like a banshee. That stopped the two. I feinted left, right, came back to fake a cut at the knife hand of the guy with the blade I'd taken, then snapped my belt at his eyes. He saved himself by jumping back.

He fell over the albino. I shrieked again and flung myself through the air. It never hurts to have them think you're crazy. I landed with both knees on the guy's chest, heard ribs crack. He squealed. I bounced away as the other came at me.

He stopped when he saw I was ready. I sidestepped and kicked the albino in the head. That's me, Fairplay Garrett. At least I was going to get out alive. I looked around. Broken Jaw had taken a hike, leaving his knife. The lookout had opted for discretion.

"Just you and me now, Shorty." He was no kid. None of them were, really. I should have seen it sooner. Kids that size aren't out roaming the streets of TunFaire, they're in the army. They keep taking them younger and younger.

They were dark-elf breeds, half elf, half human, outcasts from both tribes. The mix is volatile: amoral, asocial, unpredictable, sometimes crazy. Bad.

Like Morley, who'd managed to live long enough to learn to fake it.

My short friend wasn't impressed by the fact that he was alone against somebody bigger. That's another problem with darko breeds. Some don't have sense enough to be scared.

I went back for my brick.

He shifted stance, held his knife like it was a two-handed sword. I teased him with the belt and tried to guess what he'd do when I let the brick fly. He was deciding to come at me when I did.

I went around and head-kicked the others to make sure they stayed down.

That got Shorty pissed. He came. I threw the brick. He dodged. But I hadn't gone for the head or body. I'd gone for the foot I'd hoped he'd push off from. The part of him that would be last to move.

I got his toes. He yelped. I went in after him, belt, knife and feet.

He held me off.

Hell, we could dance all night. I'd done what I needed to do. How fast could he chase me on a bad foot?

I looked at the two guys down and heard my Marine sergeants: "You don't leave a live enemy behind you.”

No doubt cutting their throats would have been a boon to civilization. But that wasn't my style.

I collected dropped knives.

Shorty figured I was going to pull out. "Next time you're dead.”

"Better not be a next time, chuko. Because I don't give second chances.”

He laughed.

One of us was crazy.

I went away with a chill between my shoulders. What the hell was all that? They hadn't been out to rob me. They'd been out to bust me up. Or kill me.

Why? I didn't know them.

There are people who don't have much use for me, but I couldn't think of any who would go that far. Not all of a sudden, now. It was lightning out of a clear blue sky.

 

7

It never fails. When I step through the doorway into Morley's place, the joint goes dead and everybody stares. They ought to be used to me by now. But I have this reputation for thinking I'm on the side of the angels and a lot of those guys are anything but.

I saw Saucerhead Tharpe at his usual table, so I headed that way. He was alone and had a spare chair.

Before the noise level rose, a voice said, "I'll be damned! Garrett!" Whip crack with the name.

What do you know? Morley himself was working the bar, helping dispense the carrot, celery, and turnip juice. I'd never seen that before. I wondered if he watered their drinks after they'd had three or four.

Dotes jerked his head toward the stairs. I said, "How you doing?" to Saucerhead and sailed on by. He grunted and went on massacring a salad big enough to founder three ponies. But he was the size of three ponies and their mothers, too.

Morley hit the stairs behind me. "Office?" I asked.

"Yes.”

I went up and in. "Things have changed." It looked less like the waiting room in a bordello, maybe because the inevitable lovely was absent. Morley, relaxing at home, always had something handy.

"I'm trying to change myself by changing my environment." That was Morley sounding like Morley the vegetarian crackpot and devotee of obscure gurus. "What the hell are you up to, Garrett?" That was Morley the thug.

"Hey! How come the ice? I get antsy and walk down here to maybe tip a rhubarb brew with Saucerhead and I-”

"Right. You just decide to show up looking like the losing mutt at a dogfight." He shoved me in front of a mirror.

The left side of my face was pancaked with blood. "Hell! I thought I ducked." The short guy had gotten me while we were dancing, somehow. I still didn't feel the cut. Some sharp knife.

"What happened?”

"Some of your crazy cousins jumped me. Chukos." I showed him the three knives. They were identical, with eight-inch blades and yellowed ivory grips into which small black stylized bats had been inset.

"Custom," he said.

"Custom," I agreed.

He picked up the speaking tube connecting with his barmen. "Send me Puddle and Slade. And invite Tharpe if he's interested." He smothered the tube, looked at me. "What are you into now, Garrett?”

"Nothing. I'm on vacation. Why? You looking for another chance to kite me and get out from under your gambling debts?'' I realized it was the wrong thing to say before I finished saying it. Morley was worried. When Morley Dotes worries about me it's time to shut my yap and listen.

"Maybe I deserve that." His cohorts Puddle and Slade came in. Puddle I'd met before. He was a big, sloppy fat guy with flesh sagging in gross rolls. He was as strong as a mammoth, smart as a rock, cruel as a cat, quick as a cobra, and completely loyal to Morley. Slade was new. He could have been Morley's brother. Short by human standards, he had the same slim, darkly handsome looks, was graceful in motion, and was totally self-confident. He, like Morley, was a flashy dresser, though Morley had toned it down considerably tonight.

Morley said, "I've managed not to put a bet down for a month, Garrett. With my willpower and a little help from my friends.”

Morley had a bad problem with gambling. Twice he's used me to get out from under debts of lethal scale, which has been a cause of friction.

Morley's vegetarian bar and restaurant and thug hangout is more hobby and cover than career. What he really does is bust kneecaps and break heads, freelance. Which is why he has his Puddles and Slades around.

Saucerhead came in. He nodded to everybody and dropped into a chair. It creaked. He didn't say anything. He doesn't talk much.

Saucerhead's line splits the difference between mine and Morley's. He'll pound somebody for a fee but he won't kill for money. He does mostly bodyguard and escort work. If he's really short he'll do collections. But never assassinations.

"Right, then," Morley said, with the players in place. "Garrett, you've saved me a trip. I was going to drop by your place after we closed.”

"Why?'' They looked at me like I was a freak-show exhibit instead of a broken-down, self-employed ex-Marine.

"You sure you don't have something going?" "Nothing. Come on. What gives?" "Sadler dropped by. He had a message for the trade from the kingpin." The kingpin is Chodo Contague, emperor of TunFaire's underworld. He is a very bad man. Sadler is one of his lieutenants and a worse man. "Someone wants your head, Garrett. The kingpin is putting out word that whoever tries for it will answer to him.”

"Come on, Morley.”

"Sure. He's as drifty as a fairy girl on weed. He's obsessed with honor and favors and debts and balances. He thinks he owes you big and he's by damned going to keep you alive to collect. If I was you I'd never do it, so I'd always have him behind me like my own pet banshee.”

I didn't want a guardian angel. "That's only good for as long as he stays alive." Kingpins have a way of dying almost as frequently as Karenta's kings.

"Gives you a vested interest in his health, don't it?”

"One hand washes the other," Saucerhead rumbled. "You really don't got nothing shaking?" "Nothing. Zero. Zip. I've only had two prospects in the last ten days. I turned them both down. I'm not working. I don't want to work. It's too much like work. I'm perfectly happy just sitting around watching everybody else work.''

Morley and Saucerhead made faces. Morley worked as much as he could because he thought it was good for him. Saucerhead worked all the time because he had to feed his huge body. Morley asked, "What about those prospects?" "Good-looking blonde this afternoon. Probably a class hooker. Had somebody harassing her and wanted it stopped. I gave it to Pokey Pigotta. Just before I came down here, an old guy who wanted me to find something he thought was lost. Now he's looking for somebody else.”

Morley frowned. He looked at the others and found no inspiration there. He picked up the three chuko knives, handed one to Puddle, one to Slade, and tossed the other to Saucerhead, who said, "Chuko knife.”

Morley said, "Garrett had an encounter on his way down here. We don't usually see gangs in the neighborhood. They know better. Tell us about it, Garrett." My feelings were hurt. Nobody was impressed by the fact that I'd taken away three knives. I told it all. Saucerhead said, "I gotta remember that brick-on- the-toes trick.”

Morley looked at Puddle. Puddle said, "Snowball.”

Morley nodded. "That's the albino, Garrett. A total crazy. Boss of a gang called the Vampires. He halfway thinks he's a vampire. The one you left standing sounds like Doc, the brains of the gang. He's crazier than Snowball. Won't back down from anything. And him a bleeder. I hope you had sense enough to finish it while you could.”

He looked at me and knew I hadn't.

"They're crazies, Garrett. A big gang. As long as Snowball is alive they'll keep coming. You embarrassed him." He got out pen, ink, paper, and started writing. "Puddle. Take two men and see if there's still anyone around out there.”

"Sure, boss." A real genius, Puddle. I wondered who tied his shoes.

Morley scribbled. "The Vampires were way off their turf, Garrett. They come from North Reservoir Hill. Priam Street. West Bacon. Around there.”

I understood. They hadn't come south on a lark. I hadn't been a target of opportunity.

I got that chill between my shoulders again.

Morley sanded what he'd written, folded it, dashed something on the outside, then handed it to Slade. Slade looked at it, nodded, and walked out. Morley said, "If I was you, Garrett, I'd go home and bar my doors and sit tight with the Dead Man.”

"Probably a good idea.”

We both knew I wouldn't. What if word got around that Garrett could be pushed?

Morley said, "I don't keep up with street gangs. There're too many of them. But the Vampires have been making a name. Getting ambitious. Snowball wants to be top chuko, captain of captains . . . Excuse me.”

His speaking tube was making noises. He picked it up. "I'm listening." He held it to his ear. Then, "Send him up." He looked at me. "You leave a broad trail. Pokey Pigotta is here looking for you.”

 

8

Pokey wandered in looking like a living skeleton. Morley said, "Plant yourself, Pokey," and gave him that look he gives when he's planning a new diet for someone. Part of Morley believes there's no problem that can't be solved by upping your intake of green leafies and fiber. He was certain we could achieve peace in our time if we could just get everybody to stop eating red meat. I asked, "You looking for me?" "Yes. I have to give you your money back. I can't do the job.”

Pokey refusing work? "How come?" "Got a better offer to do something that's more interesting, and I can't handle both jobs. You want to farm it out to Saucerhead? I'll give you what I got. For nothing.”

"You're a prince. You doing anything, Saucer-head?" He wasn't the best man for the job but what could I do? Pokey had set me up.

"Give me the skinny," Saucerhead said. "I ain't buying no pig in a poke." He was suspicious because Pokey wanted out.

I gave him what I'd given Pokey, word for word. Pokey gave me my retainer, said, "I cased the area but didn't make contact with the principal. The building is being watched, front and rear, by nonprofessionals. I assume the principal is their target, though the building contains nine other apartments. There's a caretaker who lives in the basement. The tenants are all single women. The watchers left when it got dark. They went to the Blue Bottle, where they share a third-floor room as Smith and Smith. Once it was apparent they were off duty and were not going to be replaced, I went home. I found my new client waiting.”

Pokey described Smith and Smith, who sounded like your basic nondescript working stiffs.

"I can handle it, Garrett," Saucerhead said. "If you don't want to keep it for yourself.”

I handed him the retainer. "Take care of the woman.”

Pokey said, "That takes care of my business. I'd better go. I want to get an early start.”

Morley grunted a farewell. He was changing. He ached to give Pokey some wholesome dietary advice, for his own good, but he bit his tongue.

What the hell? The world wouldn't be half as interesting if Morley changed that much.

When just the two of us were left, he looked at me. "You're really not into anything?”

"Promise. Cross my heart.”

"I never saw anyone like you, Garrett. I don't know anybody else who could have chukos come all the way from the North End to whack him for taking a walk.”

That bothered me, too. It looked like I'd have to go to work whether I liked it or not. And it would be a double not. I make a lousy client. "Maybe they heard where I was headed.”

"What?”

"They might have gotten carried away by compassion for my stomach.”

"Stuff it, Garrett. I don't need the aggravation.”

"Testy, eh? Maybe cold turkey on everything isn't the way to go.”

"Maybe not.”

Puddle lurched in before we got going good. "Nothing but blood spots, Morley.”

"Didn't think there would be. Thanks for going." Morley looked at me. "When are you going to learn? Now Snowball has his ego tied up in it.”

"Maybe if I'd known who he was and his reputation—”

"Crap! That hasn't got anything to do with giving him a second chance. You going to ask for references? Even Snowball probably has a mother who loves him.

That won't keep him from setting your balls on fire if he gets the chance. I'm amazed that you've stayed alive as long as you have.”

He had a point. The world sure as hell doesn't care about one man's moral parameters. But I have to live with myself, too. "Might be because I have friends who look out for me. Come on downstairs. My treat.”

"I'll pass. Buy yourself one. Carrot juice. Carrots are good for your eyes. You could stand to be a little more clear-sighted. Eat some fish, too. It's supposed to be brain food.''

9

I got a drink, but I did it after I got home, after I sent Dean off and got the place locked up. I drew a pitcher off the keg in the cold well, took it to the office, put my feet up and tried to brainstorm.

I had a tempest in a beer mug.

I came up with no angles at all.

I considered a connection with Jill Craight's visit. I considered one with the holy terror. If the connection was there, nothing betrayed it.

In any case, Snowball's bunch would have started from the North End before Peridont reached my place.

I reflected on old cases, trying to recall individuals who might be vindictive enough to want me smoked. There could be some out there, but I couldn't come up with any names.

What if Snowball had simply picked the wrong target? Suppose he was after somebody else?

Pure reason liked that hypothesis. Intuition screamed, "Bullshit!”

Somebody wanted me dead. And I didn't have a notion why, let alone who.

Maybe the Dead Man could spot a fact I'd overlooked. I wandered across the hall. No good. He was out of it. I worked off some nervous energy cleaning, then went back to the office to settle down and think it all through again.

I was still there when Dean pounded on the door in the morning. I was so stiff it was a task getting down the hall to the door. Morley wasn't all wrong when he talked about me abusing myself. I'm not seventeen anymore. The body won't stay in tune by itself. I pinched a few pounds of muscle that had drifted south. I needed to get more selective about my loafing.

I would start exercising first thing tomorrow. I didn't feel up to it today. My schedule was full, anyway.

I went upstairs and napped in a real bed while Dean started in the kitchen. He woke me when he had breakfast ready.

"You sure you're all right?" he asked when he brought my hotcakes. I hadn't told him much. "You look like hell.”

"Thanks. You're one of Nature's great beauties yourself. '' I knew what he meant. But I have to ride him or he thinks I don't appreciate him. "You should've seen the other guys.”

"I expect it's just as well I didn't." Someone rapped at the door. "I'll get it.”

I grunted around a mouthful of hotcakes smothered in blueberry preserves.

Our visitor was Jill Craight. Dean brought her into the kitchen. Remarkable. She really had him whammied.

She didn't have as much impact this morning. She hadn't fixed herself up for it. She looked like she'd had a bad night. And she was spoiling for a fight.

"Good morning,  Miss  Craight.  Won't you join me?”

She sat. She took tea when Dean offered it but declined anything more substantial. She had fire in her eyes. Too bad it wasn't for me. "I had a visit from a man named Waldo Tharpe.”

"Saucerhead? Good man. Though sometimes his manners lack polish.”

"His manners were adequate. He told me he was supposed to find out who was giving me trouble. He told me you sent him.”

"I did. Anybody ever tell you you're beautiful when you're mad?”

"Men tell me I'm beautiful whatever my mood. It's bullshit. Why did you send that man? I hired you.”

"You brought me a situation you didn't like. I sent somebody to take care of it. Where's your problem?”

"I hired you.”

"And only I will do?”

She nodded.

"That's great for the ego, but—”

"I didn't pay for some second-rate unknown.”

"Interesting. Considering Saucerhead is probably better known than I am." I looked her hard in the eye for a dozen seconds, until she shifted her attention to Dean. "I wonder what your real game is," I said softly.

She jerked her attention back to me.

"First you tried to con me. Then you gave me way too much money. If you wanted to buy a man to impress somebody, anybody who knows me will know Saucerhead. And be more intimidated by him. I'm a pussycat. Finally, and dearest to my heart, not five hours after you saw me, somebody tried to kill me.”

Her eyes got big. I had to remind myself she'd said she was an actress.

"It was a cold-blooded ambush, Jill. Five men, plus whoever did the watching and running messages. A major effort.”

Her eyes got bigger.

"You know an albino half-breed chuko called Snowball?”

She shook her head. It was a very impressive head. She was beautiful when she was frightened.

"How about a street gang called the Vampires?”

She shook her pretty head.

I had obviously recovered from my unpleasant night, because I was starting to pant. I slapped myself down. "What do you know? Anything? How about why you want to play me for a sucker. Or has that slipped your mind, too?”

She got mad again. But she swallowed her anger. She'd decided to clam.

I got up. "Come with me." Sometimes a good surprise loosens them up.

I took her into the Dead Man's room. Her response was cliché. "Yuk! That's gross!" But that was it.

I fished her retainer out from under the Dead Man's chair, which is the safest place in TunFaire. "I'll hang onto some of this, for Saucerhead's time and my aggravation." I took a couple coins in a gesture mainly symbolic, and handed the rest to her.

She eyed that purse like it was a snake. "What are you doing?”

"You're unhappy. I'm giving your money back and getting out of your life.”

"But …" She went into a huddle with herself. While the committee was in conference I sneered at the Dead Man. Brought one right in here with you, Chuckles.

I was trying to get two birds with one big hunk of alum.

There's no prod more effective than bringing a woman into the house. The prettier the gal the more heated the reaction. Jill Craight could set the house afire. If he was sandbagging he wouldn't be able to keep it up.

Damn him. He didn't do a thing. And I'd been halfway sure he was hiding out from the rent collector.

"Mr. Garrett?”

"Yeah?”

"I'm scared. I made a promise. I can't tell you any more till I know who I have to be afraid of. Take this back. I want you. But if you can't do the job I'll take what I can get.”

She was scared. If she'd been five feet tall and baby-faced, my protective instincts would have been inflamed. But she was damned near tall enough to look me in the eye and had no knack for playing helpless. You looked at her and you wanted to get into mischief with her, but you didn't have much inclination to take care of her. You knew she could take care of herself.

"If it wasn't for last night I'd give in about now, Jill. But somebody tried to whack me. Finding out who and why and talking him out of trying again is going to occupy my time. So Saucerhead is what you get.”

"If I must, I must.”

"You must." I put her retainer back under the Dead Man. "Now that we're done yelling at each other and we're all friends again, why don't you come by for dinner? Dean's culinary skills don't get much exercise.”

She opened her mouth to turn me down, but inclination ran head-on into her instinct for self-preservation.

She didn't have to be nice to me. That wasn't a condition here. But I'm not so nice a guy I wouldn't let her find that out for herself. "It would have to be late," she said. "I do have to work.”

"Pick your time. Tell Dean. Give him an idea what you'd like. It'll be better than anything you've had for awhile.”

She smiled. "All right." I think that was the first genuine smile she'd shown me. She marched off to the kitchen.

I paused, leaned against the door frame, and sneered at the Dead Man. I had my ulterior motives for wining and dining Jill Craight—beyond those I'd been born with. She still might stir old Chuckles up. I'm also a great believer in synchronicity.

It was a lead-pipe cinch that, because I'd made a date, Tinnie would suffer a miraculous remission from the sulks. Somebody from the Tate place would come to let me know before Jill went home.

Jill came back. "Dean is a nice man.”

Was the implication that I was not? "Tricky, too. You got to watch him. Especially if you're not married. A great ambassador for the institution of marriage, Dean is.”

"But he's not married himself.”

A quick vixen, friend Jill. How much had she pried out of him? "Not married and never has been. But that doesn't slow him down. Come on. I'll walk you home.”

"You sure you can spare the time?”

"It's on my way," I lied. I figured I could use a chat with Saucerhead.

 

10

Tharpe fell in on Jill's far side before we'd walked a hundred yards. She was startled. I chuckled. "Get used to it.”

That didn't excite her. It was one more hint that things were going on that she didn't want known.

I still had her pegged for a working girl, if a class model of same.

"Anything interesting going on?" I asked Saucer-head.

"Nope.”

"Smith and Smith watching the place again?”

"Yeah. Pokey was right. They're amateurs. They look like a couple of farmers. Want me to grab one and tie him in knots till he talks?”

"Not yet. Just keep an eye on them. See who they report to.”

Saucerhead grunted. "There's somebody watching your place, too. I spotted them while I was waiting.”

I wasn't surprised. "Chukos?”

He shrugged. "Could be. They was young. But they wasn't showing colors.”

"They wouldn't be if they were Vampires." I live in Travelers' territory, just inside their frontier with the Sisters of Doom.

We walked on. As we approached Jill's place I tried to talk us inside for a look around. She wouldn't have it. In fact, she didn't want to be seen with us in her own neighborhood. She probably thought we'd lower property values.

Saucerhead and I wandered around so I could get a look at Smith and Smith. They did look like farmers. They certainly didn't look dangerous, but I didn't spend much time worrying about them. That was Saucerhead's job.

I jogged a block out of my way going home, stopping at a tenement so decayed derelicts shunned it. I went around the side, down to a cellar door. Standing a foot deep in trash, I knocked. The door almost collapsed.

It opened an inch. An eye looked at me from brisket level. "Garrett," I said. "I want to talk to Maya." I flashed a piece of silver. The door shut.

Now a little game, a stall just to show me who ran things here.

The door opened. A girl of thirteen wearing nothing but a potato sack—probably stolen with the potatoes still inside—and a lot of dirt stood there. The sack was so frayed one ripening rosebud peeked out. She caught my glance and sneered.

"Love your hair, kid." It might have been blonde. Who could tell? It hadn't been washed in recent generations.

From inside I heard, "Cut the comedy, Garrett. You want to talk to me get your butt in here.”

I stepped into the citadel of the Sisters of Doom, TunFaire's only all-human, all-female street gang.

There were five girls there, the oldest sneaking up on eighteen. Four of the five shared the urchin's hairdresser and tailor. Maya wore real clothing and was better groomed, but not much. She was eighteen going on forty, war chief of a gang claiming two hundred "soldiers." She was so emotionally sliced up you never knew which way she would jump.

Most of the Sisters were emotional casualties. They'd all suffered severe abuse, and a murmur of defiance had driven them into the Doom's never-never land. That hung, precariously and eternally, at right angles to reality, between childhood as it should have been and the adulthood of the untormented. They'd never recover from their wounds. Most of the girls would die of them. But the Doom gave them a fortress into which they could retreat and from which they could strike back, which left them better off than the tortured thousands who went through the hell without support.

Maya had suffered more than most. I met her when she was nine, when her stepfather offered to share her if I'd buy him some wine. I'd declined to the crackle of his breaking bones.

She was a lot better now. She was normal most of the time. She could talk to me. Sometimes she came to the house to cadge a meal. She liked Dean. Old Dean was every girl's ideal uncle.

"Well, Garrett? What the hell you want?" She had an audience. "Let's see the color of your money.”

I tossed her a coin. "Faith offering," I told her. "I want to swap information.”

"Come ahead. I'll tell you to go to hell when you get on my nerves.”

If she took a fit, I could go out looking like chopped meat. Those girls could be vicious. Castration was a favorite sport.

"You know the Vampires? Run by an albino darko called Snowball and a crazy bleeder named Doc? North End.”

"I've heard of them. They're all crazy, not just Doc. I don't know them. Word is, Doc and Snowball are getting ambitious, trying to rent muscle and recruit soldiers from other gangs.”

"Somebody might take exception.”

"I know. Snowball and Doc are too old for the street but not old enough to know they can't trespass.”

It's a classic cycle. And sometimes the young ones pull it off. About once a century.

Today's kingpin was a street kid. But that organization recruited him from a gang and promoted him from within.

"The Doom have any relationship with the Vampires?" The girls prefer being called the Doom. They think it has a nicer ring than the Sisters or the Sisterhood.

"All take and no give, Garrett. I don't like that.”

"If you're running with the Vampires I don't have anything to give you.”

She gave me the fish eye.

"Snowball and Doc tried, to take me out," I said.

"What the hell were you doing in the North End?”

"I wasn't, sweetie. I was on Warhawks' turf. War-hawks have a treaty with the Vampires?”

"No need. No contact. Same with the Doom." She shifted. "You're sneaking up on something, Garrett. Get to the point.”

"There are a couple guys watching my house. I'd guess chukos. Probably Vampires, considering last night.”

She thought about that. "A genuine hit? You're sure?”

"I'm sure, Maya.”

"Your place is on Travelers' ground." "You're starting to get it. Trouble is, I don't have any friends with the Travelers since Mick and Slick got caught in the sweep.”

The relationships between the races have become terribly complex, them being all mixed together but each owning its own princes and chiefs and quirky root cultures. TunFaire is a human city. Human law prevails in all civil matters. A plethora of treaties have established that entering a city voluntarily constitutes acceptance of the prevailing law. In TunFaire a crime in human law remains a crime when committed by anyone else, even when the behavior is acceptable among the perpetrator's people.

Treaties deny Karenta the power to conscript persons of nonhuman blood, nonhuman being defined as anybody of quarter blood or more who wants to revoke his human rights and privileges forever. Lately, though, the press gangs had been grabbing anybody who couldn't produce a parent or grandparent on the spot. That's what happened to the captains of the Travelers, though they were breeds.

Maya said, "So you want a couple of chukos off your back.”

"No. I want you to know they're there. If they bother me I'll just knock their heads together.”

She looked at me hard.

Maya has a byzantine mind. Whatever she does she has a motive behind her surface motive. She isn't yet wise enough to know that not everyone thinks that way.

"There're a couple of farmer types staying at the Blue Bottle, using the names Smith and Smith. If somebody was to run a Murphy on them and it was to turn out that they had documents, I'd be interested in buying them." That was spur of the moment but would satisfy Maya's need for a hidden motive.

It couldn't be that I just wanted to see how she was doing. That would mean somebody cared. She couldn't handle that.

I paused at the door. "Dean says he's whomping up something special for supper. And a lot of it." Then I got out.

I hit the street and stopped to count my limbs. They were all there, but they were shaky. Maybe they have more sense than my head does. They know every time I go in there I run the chance of becoming fish bait.

 

11

Dean was waiting to open the door. He looked rattled. "What happened?”

"That man Crask came.”

Oh. Crask was a professional killer. "What did he want? What did he say?”

"He didn't say anything. He doesn't have to.”

He doesn't. Crask radiates menace like a skunk radiates a bad smell.

"He brought this.”

Dean gave me a piece of heavy paper folded into an envelope. It was a quarter-inch thick. I bounced it on my hand. "Something metal. Draw me a pitcher." As he headed for the kitchen I told him, "Maya might turn up tonight. See that she eats something and slip her a bar of soap. Don't let her steal anything you're going to miss.”

I went into the office, sat, placed Crask's envelope on the desk, my name facing me, and left it alone until Dean brought that golden draft from the fountain of youth. He poured me a mug. I drained it.

He poured again and said, "You're going to get more than you bargained for if you keep trying to do something for those kids.”

"They need a friend in the grown-up world, Dean. They need to see there's somebody decent out there, that the world isn't all shadow-eat-shadow and the prizes go to the guys who're the hardest and nastiest.”

He faked surprise. "It isn't that way?”

"Not yet. Not completely. A few of us are trying to fight a rearguard action by doing a good deed here and there.”

He gave me one of his rare sincere smiles and headed for the kitchen. Maya would eat better than Jill and I if she bothered to show.

Dean approved of my efforts. He just wanted to remind me that my most likely reward would be a broken head and a broken heart.

I wasn't going to get into heaven or hell letting Crask's present lie there. I broke the kingpin's wax seal.

Someone had wrapped two pieces of card stock tied together with string. I cut the string. Inside I found a tuft of colorless hair and four coins. The coins were glued to one card. One coin was gold, one was copper, and two were silver. They were of identical size, about half an inch in diameter, and looked alike except for the metal. Three were shiny new. One of the silver pieces was so worn its designs were barely perceptible. All four were temple coinage.

Old style characters, a language not Karentine, a date not Royal, apparent religious symbology, lack of the King's bust on the obverse, were all giveaways. Crown coinage always shows the King and brags on him. Commercial coinage shouts the wonders of the coiner's goods or services.

Karentine law lets anyone coin money. Every other kingdom makes minting a state monopoly because seigniorage—the difference between the intrinsic metal value of a coin and its monetary value—is a profit that accrues to the state. The Karentine Crown, though, gets its cuts. It requires private minters to buy their planchets, or blanks, from the Royal Mint, costs payable in fine metal of a weight equal to that of the alloy planchets. There's more state profit in not having to make dies and pay workmen to do the striking.

The system works most of the time and when it doesn't, people get roasted alive, even if they're Princes of the Church or officials of the Mint who are cousins of the King. The foundation of Karentine prosperity is the reliability of Karenta's coinage. Karenta is corrupt to the bone but will permit no tampering with the instrument of corruption.

I gave the gold piece the most attention. I'd never seen private gold. It was too expensive just to puff an organizational ego.

I picked up the top piece of card stock and read the terse note, "See the man," followed by a fish symbol, a bear symbol, and a street name that constituted an address. Few people can read so they figure out where they are by reference to commonly understood symbols.

Crask wanted me to see somebody. This provocative little package was supposed to provide useful hints.

If Crask was dishing out hints, that meant Chodo Contague was serving up suggestions. Crask didn't take a deep breath without Chodo telling him. I decided to check it out. There was no point getting Chodo miffed.

The address would be way up north. Of course. I needed a long hike.

I didn't have anything going until Jill arrived. And I'd been telling myself I needed exercise.

North End, eh?

I went upstairs and rummaged through my tool locker, selected brass knucks, a couple of knives, and my favorite eighteen-inch, lead-weighted head-knocker. I tucked everything out of sight, then went down and told Dean I'd be out for a few hours.

 

12

Most of us are in worse physical shape than we like to think, let alone admit. I'm used to that being more the other guy's problem than mine. But by the time I covered the six miles to the North End, I felt it in my calves and the fronts of my thighs. This was the body that had carried me through weeks of full-pack marches when I was a Marine?

It wasn't. This body was older and it had been beaten up and banged around more than its share since.

The neighborhood was elfin and elfin-breed, which means it was tidy and orderly in an obsessive fashion. This was a neighborhood where elfish wives whitened stonework with acids and reddened brickwork with dyes once a week. When it rained the gutters ran with color. Here the men tended trees as though they were minor deities and trimmed their tiny patches of lawn with scissors, one blade of grass at a time. You had to wonder if their private lives were as ordered and passionless and sterile.

How had this environment, with its rigid rectitude, produced Snowball and the Vampires?

I turned into Black Cross Lane, a narrow two-blocker in the shadow of Reservoir Hill. I looked for the fish and bear and stray Vampires.

It was quiet. Way too quiet. Elfish women should have been out sweeping the streets or walks or doing something to stave off the entropy devouring the rest of the city. Worse, the silence smelled like an old one, in place because something unimaginably awful had happened and the street remained paralyzed by shock. My advent had not caused it. Even in this neighborhood there would have been folks getting out of the way if I was headed into an ambush.

I have such comforting thoughts.

I found the place, a four-story gray tenement in fine repair. The front door stood open. I went up the stoop. The silence within was deeper than that which haunted the street.

This was the heart of it, the headwater from which the treacle of dread flowed.

What was I supposed to do?

Do what I do, I guessed. Snoop.

I stepped inside figuring I'd work my way to the top floor. I didn't need to. The first apartment door stood open a crack. I knocked. Nobody answered but I heard a thud inside. I gave the door a push. "Yo! Anybody home?”

Frantic thumping sounded from another room. I proceeded with extreme caution. Others had been there before me. The room had been stripped by locusts.

There was a smell in the air, faint yet, but one you never mistake. I knew what I'd find in the next room. It was worse than I thought it could be. There were five of them, expertly tied into wooden chairs. One had tipped himself over. He was doing the thumping, trying to attract attention. The others would attract nothing but flies ever again.

Someone had placed a loop of copper wire, attached to a stick, around each of their necks, then had twisted the loops tight. The killers had taken their time.

I recognized everybody—Snowball, Doc, the other two who had tried to whack me. The live one was the kid who had stood lookout. They were efficient that way, Crask and Sadler.

It was a little gift for Garrett from Chodo Contague, an interest installment on his debt. The wig, against the day I called in the nut.

What do you think at a moment like that, surrounded by people snuffed as casually as you would stomp a roach, without anger, malice, or remorse? It's scary because it's death without fire behind it, as impersonal as accidental drowning. Squish! Game's over.

The wire loop is Sadler's signature.

I could see Slade giving Sadler the message Morley had written. I could see Sadler telling Chodo. I could see Chodo getting so worked up he might adjust the blanket covering his lap. "So take care of it," Chodo might say, like he'd say, "Throw out that fish that's starting to smell." And Sadler would take care of it. And Crask would bring me a few coins and a lock of a dead man's hair.

That was death in the big city.

Did Doc and Snowball and the others have anyone to mourn them?

I was getting nowhere standing around feeling sorry for guys who'd had it coming. Crask wouldn't have made a trip across town if he hadn't thought I'd find something interesting here.

I guessed I'd get it from the one they'd left alive.

I sat him up facing the wall. I hadn't let him see me yet. I walked around and leaned against the wall, looked him in the eye.

He remembered me.

I said, "Been your lucky day so far, hasn't it?" He'd survived Crask and Sadler and those opportunists who had taken everything that wasn't nailed down. I waited until his eyes told me he knew his luck had run out. Then I abandoned him.

I scrounged around until I found a water jug in a second-floor apartment. The locusts hadn't gone that high, fearing they'd get cut off. I checked the street before going back to my man. It was still quiet out there.

I showed the chuko the jug. "Water. Thought you might be dry.”

He wasted a little moisture on tears.

I cut his gag off, gave him a sip, then backed off to prop up the wall. "I think you have things to tell me. Tell me right, tell me straight, tell me everything, maybe I'll let you go. They make sure you heard everything during the interviews?" Clever euphemism, Garrett.

He nodded. He was about as terrified as he could get.

"Start at the beginning.”

His idea of the beginning antedated mine. He started with Snowball taking over the building by dumping his human mother in the street. She had inherited it from his father, whose family had owned it since the first elfish migrated to TunFaire. The entire neighborhood had been elfish for generations, which was why it was in such good shape.

"I'm more interested in the part of history where the Vampires got interested in me.”

"Can I have another drink?”

"As soon as you've earned it.”

He sighed. "A man came yesterday morning. A priest. Said his name was Brother Jerce. He wanted Snow to do some work. He was a front guy, like, you know? He wouldn't say who sent him. But he brought enough money so Snow's eyes bugged and he said the Vampires would do whatever he wanted. Even when Doc tried to talk him out of it. He never went against Doc's advice before. And look what that got him.”

"Yeah, look." I knew what it got him. I wanted to know what he did to get it.

The priest wanted the Vampires to keep tabs on me and a priest called Magister Peridont. If Peridont came to see me, the Vampires were supposed to make me disappear. Permanently. For which they would get a fat bonus.

Snowball took it because it made him feel big-time. He didn't care that much about the money. He wanted to be more than a prince of the streets.

"Doc kept trying to tell him that takes time. That you can't go making a name without the big organization noticing you. But Snow wouldn't back down even after word hit the streets that the kingpin was saying lay off a guy named Garrett. He was so crazy he wasn't scared of nothing. Hell. None of us was scared enough.”

He had that right. They were too young. You have to put a little age on before you really understand when to be afraid. I gave him a small drink. "Better? Good. Tell me about the priest. Brother Jerce. What religion was he?”

"I don't know. He didn't say. And you know how priests are. They all dress the same in those brown things.”

He had that right, too. You had to get close and know what to look for to tell Orthodox from Church from Redemptionist from several dozen so-called heretical splinter cults. Not to mention that Brother Jerce's whole show could have been cover.

I asked myself if any man could have been dumb enough—or confident enough—to have given these punks his right name and have paid them in the private coin of his own temple. Maybe it was just my dim opinion of priests, but I decided it was possible. Especially if Brother Jerce was new to all this. After all, how often does a job get botched up as thoroughly as the Vampires had done? I should have been dead and nobody the wiser.

I asked many more questions. I didn't get anything useful until I took out the coins Crask brought me. "Was all the payoff money like this?”

"The money I seen was. Temple stuff. Even gold. But Snow didn't make a show. I bet he lied about how much he got paid.”

No doubt. I hit him with the big question. "Why did this priest want me hit?”

"I don't know, man.”

"Nobody asked?”

"Nobody cared. What difference did it make?”

Apparently no difference if smoking somebody is just business. "I guess that's it, then, kid." I took out a knife.

"No, man! Don't! I gave it to you straight! Come on!”

He thought I was going to kill him.

Morley would say he had the right idea. Morley would tell me the guy would haunt me if I didn't, and that damned Morley is right more often than not. But you have to do what you think is right.

I wondered if surviving this mess would scare the kid off the road to hell. Probably not. The type can't see danger until it's gnawing their legs.

I moved toward him. He started crying. I swear, if he'd called for his mother … I cut the cord holding his right arm and walked out. It would be up to him whether he got loose or stayed and died.

I stepped out into another gorgeous evening.

I marveled at my surroundings. Once I got out of Black Cross Lane I saw elfish women sweeping and washing their stoops and walks and the streets in front of their buildings. I saw their men folk manicuring greenery. It was the evening ritual.

The elfish do have their dark underside. They have little tolerance for breed offspring. Poor kids.

 

13

It was thoroughly dark before I got home. I spotted several shooting stars, supposed by some diviners to be good omens and by others the opposite. One gaudy show-off broke up into lesser streaks.

Dean let me in. "Damn, that smells good," I said.

"It will be," he promised. He smiled. "I'll bring you a beer. Did you learn anything useful?''

"I don't know." What was this? He wasn't himself. "What are you up to?”

He gave me his kicked-puppy look. I think he practices it. "Nothing.”

"What happened while I was gone?”

"Nothing. Except Maya came. In fact, she just left. When you knocked.”

I grunted. She had obviously been working on Dean. "You'd better count the silver.”

"Mr. Garrett!”

"Right. Any sign of Miss Craight?" Walking home I'd decided she wouldn't show. What was in it for her? I was pretty sure she was a gal who didn't take a deep breath without calculating her return on investment. Such a shame; all that beauty wasted.

"Not yet. She did say it would be a late dinner.”

How late was late? "I'm going to freshen up." I went upstairs. A wash would help clean the body, but it couldn't do anything for the stains on my soul.

Jill was there when I came back down. She had charmed old Dean again. He was letting her set the table. Unprecedented.

They were gossiping like old friends.

I said, "I hope that's not me you're ripping.”

Jill turned.  "Hi, Garrett. Nope. You aren't that lucky." She smiled. There wasn't any more heat in it than in a forest fire. "Had a good day?”

"The best. Business was marvelous. And I talked to my friend. He apologized for the trouble he'd caused me. He hadn't expected it. He's taken care of it. I won't be bothered again.”

"That's nice." I checked her over. I tried not to be too obvious. She could set dead men panting. Her fear had gone. "I'm glad for you. But poor Saucerhead will be brokenhearted.”

Dean gave me a disappointed scowl. Couldn't I get my mind off that for five minutes?

Are you kidding? I'm not dead yet. But I took his hint. It wouldn't be worth the trouble, anyway, just to get turned down. Sour grapes.

She got along with him better than she did with me. For us it was one of those things where nobody could think of anything to say.

Garrett tongue-tied around a gorgeous blonde? That did wonders for my self-esteem. But Dean's ducks were so good they made up for the lack of crisp repartee.

The main trouble was that Jill Craight wasn't about to tell me anything about Jill Craight. Not about her now, not about her then. She was slick, changing the subject or just sliding away from it so smoothly I didn't realize what she was doing until she'd done it several times.

Giving up on her left me only one area of expertise where I could talk extensively: Garrett. And a little bit of Garrett goes a long way.

I guess the high point was the wine she'd brought. It was an import. It was almost good.

To me wine is just so much spoiled fruit juice. It all tastes the same, with rare exceptions. This was the rarest. It was as good as the famous TunFaire Gold, which meant I drank most of my gobletful without sneaking off to wash the taste out of my mouth with a slug of beer. The ice maiden was on holiday, but this thing wasn't going anywhere. I figured as soon as dessert was over we ought to put it out of its misery.

Jill was more a lady than I thought. She got us through the difficulties. We helped Dean clear the dead soldiers, then I walked her home.

We'd gone less than a block when I missed something you can't miss if he's in the neighborhood. "What's happened to Saucerhead?" It wasn't like him to wander off.

"I let him go. I don't need him now. My friend straightened things out.”

"I see." Especially why she was willing to let me walk her home.

I didn't say much after that. I watched for shooting stars but the gods had closed the show. We said good night outside her apartment building, a refurbished tenement. Jill did not ask me in for a nightcap and I made no attempt to fish an invite. She gave me a sisterly peck on the cheek. "Thanks, Garrett." She marched inside. She never looked back.

I considered the newly risen moon with misdirected animosity. I muttered, "Sometimes you have nothing at all in common." Not even a language where the words mean the same things.

I turned toward home and almost fell over Maya.

 

14

She'd come out of nowhere. I hadn't heard a sound. She laughed.

"What were you doing with that woman, Garrett?" She sounded like Tinnie asking the same question. What was this?

"We had dinner. You object?”

"I might. You never took me to dinner.”

I grinned. "I didn't take her, either. She came to the house." I'd call her bluff. "You want me to take you someplace classy? The Iron Liar? You got it. But get yourself a bath, comb your hair, put on something a little more formal." I chuckled. I could just picture the Liar if Maya walked in. They'd scatter like roaches in sudden light.

"You're making fun of me.”

"No. Maybe going at it the long way around, telling you to think about growing up." I hoped she wouldn't be one chuko who fought that.

She sat down on somebody's steps. The moonlight was in her face. She was pretty under the grime. She could even be a heart stopper if she wanted to be. First she'd have to come to terms with her past and decide she wanted to attack the future. If she kept drifting she'd be another burned-out whore living off garbage in fifteen years, brutalized by anyone who wanted to bother, protected by no one.

I sat down beside her. She seemed to want to talk. I didn't say anything. I'd said enough to make her defensive.

"Nobody watching your place anymore, Garrett. Vampires or anybody else.”

"Probably pulled out when they heard about Snowball and Doc.”

"Uhm?”

"The kingpin had them put to sleep.”

She didn't say anything while that sank in. Then, "Why?”

"Chodo doesn't like people who don't listen. He put it out to lay off me and they didn't.”

"Why would he look out for you?”

"He thinks he owes me.”

"You get to meet a lot of people, don't you?”

"Sometimes. Usually they turn out to be the kind I wish I didn't know. There are some bad people in this world.”

She was quiet for a while. She had something on her mind. "I met some of those today, Garrett.”

"Oh?”

"Those guys you said to run a Murphy on. I used Clea because she can get a statue excited. They almost killed her." She got graphic with her account of the torture of a thirteen-year-old.

"I'm sorry, Maya. I had no idea they were . . . What can I do?”

"Nothing. We take care of our own.”

I had a bad feeling. "And the two Smiths?" The Doom wouldn't have been kind.

She mulled over how much to admit. "We were going to cut them, Garrett." That was a mark of the Doom. "Only somebody already did it.”

"What?”

"Both of them. Somebody took all their business oaf. They'll have to squat like women.”

This was getting weird. They don't make eunuchs anymore, even as a criminal punishment.

"So we just broke their legs.”

"Remind me not to get on the bad side of the Doom. Did you find out anything?”

"Garrett, if those guys weren't walking around they wouldn't exist. They didn't have anything but their clothes. You should see the woman at the Blue Bottle. A cow.”

"Weirder and weirder, Maya. What do you think?”

"I don't, Garrett. You do that." "Eh?”

"You said do a Murphy on two guys watching that place. Tonight you go strolling over there with Tawny Dawn Gill, she gives you a peck on the cheek, I figure you're working for her and you know what's doing.”

"I didn't even know that name. She told me it was Jill Craight. You know her?”

"She was in the Doom when they took me in. Never told the truth when a lie would do. Had a different name every week. Toni Baccarat. Willi Gold. Brandy Diamond. Cinnamon Steele. Hester Podegill. That's the only one that sounded dumb enough to be real. She lied all the time about who her family was and the famous people she knew and all the stuff she'd done. She mostly hung out with the younger girls because everybody else had her figured out and wouldn't listen to her shit.”

"Hold on. Hester Podegill?”

"Yeah. One of her thousand and one names." She looked at me odd.

There were Podegills off in a back room of my mind. Neighbors in the old days. Bunch of daughters. A couple of them turned up pregnant at thirteen. I began to recall the talk and the way people had shunned the parents . . . Third floor, that's where they'd lived. And the little one, a blonde named Hester, would have been about ten when I left for the Marines.

But the Podegills were dead.

The only letter my brother wrote in his life he wrote to tell me how the Podegills died in a fire. The tragedy really broke him up. He'd had it bad for one of the girls.

That letter had taken two years to catch up to me. By the time it did my brother had been in the Cantard a year himself. He's still down there. Like a lot of others, he won't be coming home.

Maya asked, "That name mean something to you, Garrett?”

"It reminded me of my brother. I haven't thought about him for a long time.”

"I didn't know you had one.”

"I don't now. He was killed at Flat Hat Mesa. Ask me sometime and I'll show you the medal they gave my mother. She put it in a box with the ones for her father, her two brothers, and my father. My father got it when I was four and Mikey was two. I used to be able to remember Dad's face if I tried hard. I can't anymore.”

She was quiet for a few seconds. "I never thought about you having a family. Where's your mom now?”

"Gone. After they gave her Mikey's medal she just gave up. Nothing to live for anymore.”

"But you—”

"There's another medal in that box. It has my name on it. The Marines delivered it four days before the Army delivered Mikey's.”

"Why? You weren't dead.”

"They thought I was. My outfit was on an island the Venageti invaded. They claimed they killed us all. Actually, we were out in a swamp, living on cattails and bugs and crocodile eggs while we picked them off. Mom was gone before the news got back after Karenta recaptured the island.”

"That's sad. I'm sorry. It isn't fair.”

"Life isn't fair, Maya. I've learned to live with it. Mostly, I don't think about it. I don't let it shape me or drive me.”

She grunted. I was getting preachy and she was getting ready to respond the way kids always do. We'd been sitting there no more than ten minutes but it seemed a lot longer.

"Somebody's coming," she said coldly.

 

15

Somebody was Jill Craight looking like she'd seen a zombie and his seven brothers. She would have run past us if I hadn't said, "Jill?”

She squeaked and jumped. Then she recognized me. "Garrett. I was coming to see you. I didn't know where else to turn." Her voice squeaked. She looked at Maya but didn't recognize her.

"What's the trouble?”

Jill gulped air. "There's . . . There are dead men in my apartment. Three of them. What should I do?”

I got up. "Let's go look.”

Maya bounced up and invited herself along. Jill was too rattled to care. I figured she'd be safer tagging along than wandering around alone.

Near the door to Jill's building I spied something I'd missed when the light was poorer—blood. The women didn't notice.

I found more spots inside, small, nothing to grab the attention if you weren't looking. I noted that the building was in better shape than its contemporaries.

Lamps on the landings lighted the stairs. I caught sounds of life as we stole to the second-floor landing, first a woman's laughter sudden as the shattering of a glass, then sounds of a woman either having one heck of a good time or fighting a bad bellyache.

There were four doors down the second-floor hall from which the sounds came. There had been four on the first. The apartments couldn't be big, sound not much retarded. How come the place wasn't an overturned anthill if three guys had gotten killed?

Because Jill lived higher on the hog. Her floor was class, only two larger apartments. "Who lives across the way?”

Jill pushed her door open. "Nobody right now. It's empty.”

"Wait." I wanted to go in first just to be sure. I checked the door. The lock was designed to keep the honest folks out. Anyone with a little know-how could get past it.

So somebody with no knowledge had used a wrecking bar for a key. And nobody had heard that?

People do tend to mind their own business.

The room appeared untouched. It was a lot classier than a Jill Craight could afford. I'd seen less luxury in places on the Hill.

Jill Craight had a sugar daddy. Or she had something heavy on somebody with a lot to lose, which could be an explanation for somebody watching and trying to get in. Maybe she had a piece of deadly physical evidence.

A trail of blood led to a door standing two inches ajar. It opened on a room eight-feet by eight, jammed with stuff. That's all you could call it. Stuff. Jill was a pack rat.

Sprawled amid the plunder was a body, blond, middle twenties, still marked by that weathered look you pick up in the Cantard. He might have been handsome. Now he just looked surprised and uncomfortable. And very dead.

"Know who he was?" I asked.

Jill said, "No." Maya shook her head. I frowned. Maya let go of the silver doohickey she was about to pocket.

"I'd guess he walked in on somebody who was digging through your stuff and both of them were surprised." I stepped over the dead man to a door.

The room beyond was where Jill slept and maybe paid her rent. It had that look.

There were two more stiffs in there, and blood all over, like somebody lugged in buckets and threw it around. It looked like several men had chased the guy from the walk-in while more had headed him off at the bedroom door, which opened on a hallway. Both bodies were near the door.

Maybe if you're a Crask, or Sadler, or even Morley Dotes, you get so the red messes don't touch you. It took me a minute to get my brain moving, judging the splash patterns and the way things were kicked around. I went over to eyeball the dead men.

I don't know how long it was. A while. Jill touched my arm. "Garret? Are you all right?" There wasn't any ice in her eyes. For a moment the woman behind the masks looked out, humanly concerned.

"I'm all right." As all right as I could be looking at a guy I'd had over to supper less than thirty hours ago.

What the hell was Pokey doing in Jill's apartment in the first place, let alone getting himself killed there? He'd given the job to Saucerhead and Jill had fired Tharpe before he'd gotten started.

I went to the bed, picked a clean spot, and sat down. I had some thinking to do.

Pokey had been less of a close friend than a professional acquaintance I respected. And he hadn't been working for me when he'd gotten it. I didn't owe him. But something got me on a level where there isn't any common sense.

I wanted whoever had done it.

Maya spoke for the first time. "Garrett," was all she said but her tone told me it was important.

She was in the walk-in, squatting by the dead man. I joined her. Jill stayed in the doorway, paying attention to Maya for the first time. She did not look happy.

"What?”

"Pull his pants down.”

"Say what?”

"Just do it, Garrett.”

Maya was too serious to answer with a wisecrack. I did it, turning a pretty shade of pink. "Hunh?”

He'd been surgically and thoroughly desexed. He'd healed but the scar tissue was still a virulent purple. It had been done since his return from the Cantard.

I scrunched up like I had spiders stomping on my naked skin.

Jill said, "That's sick.”

I agreed. I agreed just a whole hell of a lot. That mess of scars gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I didn't want to, but I went and checked the other one.

He was older. His scars had lost their color long ago.

I went back to my place on the bed. After a while, I told Jill, "You can't stay here. Somebody will come to clean up.”

"You think I could stay here with this? Are you crazy?''

"You got anywhere to go?”

"No.”

I sighed. It figured. "What about your friend?”

"I don't know how to get a hold of him. He finds me.”

Of course he would. Nobody's husband wanted his mistress turning up on his doorstep. Had he given her his real name? "Put together what you'll need for a few days." Now I had to make a choice. I wanted to track the guys who had gotten away. They'd left a bloody trail. But somebody ought to walk Jill over to my place.

I glanced at Maya, looking bad in her colors. She said, "No way, Garrett. I'm sticking with you.”

Hell, it was bad enough having the ones my own age read my mind. Now kids were going to start, too?

Jill said, "I can make it from here to your place, Garrett.”

I didn't argue. She wasn't high on my list of favorite people. "You have a lantern around here?”

She told me where to find one.

 

16

It was quiet out, but it wasn't trouble quiet. There just wasn't anybody around.

It was after midnight but that doesn't make much difference most places. The day people go to bed, then the goblins and kobolds and ratmen and whatnot come out to do the night work. I guess it just wasn't their kind of neighborhood.

I opened the lantern's shutter and looked for blood spots. They got harder to see as they dried.

Maya asked, "How come all the lights in her place, Garrett? She must have had twenty lamps burning.”

"You got me." It had been bright in there. I hadn't paid attention, though. "Guess they wanted to see what they were doing.”

"She done pretty good since she left the Doom.”

"If you say so." Was she going to chatter at me all night?

"You don't think so?”

"Is that your goal in life? To have some guy keep you in an apartment full of dead men? Those guys came with whatever is going on in her life.”

She had to think about that. I finally got some quiet.

It didn't last. "You notice she had real glass windows in that fancy sitting room?”

"Yeah." That I'd noticed. Real glass is expensive. I know. I've had to replace a few panes. Those had impressed me.

"The other apartment had them, too.”

"Yeah. So?”

"So somebody was watching us from there when we left.”

"Oh?" Interesting. "What did he look like?”

"I couldn't even tell if it was a he. All I saw was a face. It was only there for a second. Plain luck I saw it.”

I grunted, not giving her my complete attention. The trail was getting harder to follow, like maybe the guy doing the bleeding had had most of the juice squeezed out. The going was getting slower.

The trail led into an alley so narrow a horseman would lose his knees if he tried to get through. It was not an inviting place. I shone the light in but couldn't see anything.

"You're not gong in there, are you?”

"Sure I am." I fished out my brass knuckles. I hadn't brought my favorite head-knocker. It hadn't seemed appropriate dress for a dinner date.

"Is that smart?”

"No. Smart would be to throw you in first and see what eats you." Either Maya had begun to wear or I was getting crabby. "How come you're following me around, anyway?”

"So I can learn the trade. So I can find out what kind of man you are. You put on a good show but nobody is that decent. There's something weird about you. I want to find out what it is.”

Maya was wearing real thin. Weird! No woman had called me that before. "Why's that?”

"I'm thinking about marrying you.”

"Hoo!" I went into that alley without throwing rocks first. There was nothing in there that scared me now.

I found the dead guy ten paces into the darkness. Somebody had set him down with his back against a building, had made him comfortable, then had gone on, presumably to get help. He'd bled to death there.

I squatted, checked him out. Maya held the lantern.

He was still dead. He didn't have anything to tell me. I figured he was even less happy about the situation than I was. But he wasn't complaining.

I took the lantern and moved on.

There was more blood, but not much.

Poke had put him up a hell of a fight.

The trail petered out in the next street. I gave it my best look but couldn't take it any farther.

Maya asked, "What're you going to do now?”

"Hire a specialist." I started walking. She caught up. I asked, "Doesn't any of this bother you?" She'd stayed cooler than Jill Craight.

"I've been on the street five years, Garrett. Only things that bother me are the ones people try to do to me.”

She wasn't that tough, but she was getting there. And that was a shame.

 

17

Sometimes it seems Morley's place never closes. It does, but only during those hours of the dawn and morning when only the most twisted are up and about. Noon to first light the place serves its strange clientele.

It had thinned out, but forty pairs of eyes watched us from the entrance to the serving counter, eyes more puzzled than hostile.

Wedge was behind the counter. Of all Morley's henchmen he's the most courteous. "Evening, Garrett." He nodded to Maya. "Miss." Just as though she didn't look like death on a stick and smell like it, too.

"Morley still up?”

"He's got company." The way he said it told me the company wasn't business.

"That resolution didn't last long.”

Wedge flashed me a smile. "Were you in the pool?”

"No." They would, that bunch.

Wedge went to the speaking tube, talked and listened, talked and listened, then came back. "He'll be a while. Said have dinner while you wait. On the house.”

Ugh.

Maya said, "That sounds great," before I could turn him down. "I could eat a horse.”

I grumbled, "You won't eat one here. Horseweed, horse fennel, horseradish, horse clover, yeah, but . . .”

Wedge yelled into the back for two specials, then leaned on the counter. "What you need, Garrett? Maybe I can save you some time.”

I glanced at Maya. She smiled. She knew damned well Wedge was being nice because I had a woman along.

How do they get that way so young?

"I need a stalker, Wedge. A good one. I'm trying to track a guy.”

"Cold trail?”

"Not very. And he was bleeding. But it's getting colder.”

"Back in a few. I know what you need." He went into the kitchen. Another human-elf breed took his place. He was younger. He plunked a couple of platters on the counter, tossed up some utensils, looked at Maya like he wondered if it was catching, and went to the end of the counter to take somebody's order.

"That one's no prince," Maya told me. "But the old guy was all right." She eyed her platter.

The special looked like fried grass on a bed of blanched maggots, covered in a slime sauce filled with toadstool chunks and tiny bits of black fur. I muttered, "No wonder vegetarians are so nasty.”

Maya assaulted her meal. When she stopped to catch her breath she said, "This ain't bad, Garrett.”

I'd begun nibbling the mushrooms out of mine. She was right. But I wasn't going to admit it out loud, in front of witnesses. I muttered, "Wedge is no prince, either. He takes people out on the river, ties rocks to their feet, dumps them in, and tells them he'll race them back to shore. Tells them he'll turn them loose if they beat him. I hear some of them paddle like hell all the way to the bottom.”

She checked to see if I was joking. She saw I wasn't. Well, maybe I'd exaggerated a little, but Wedge wasn't nice people. Morley Dotes didn't have nice people working for him.

She was reading my mind again. "Aren't there any decent people anymore?”

"Sure. We just don't run into many.”

"Name two," she challenged.

"Dean. Friend of mine named Tinnie Tate. Her uncle Willard. Friend of mine called Playmate.”

"All right.”

"Not to mention I have a fair opinion of myself.”

"You would. I said all right, Garrett. Forget I asked. You going to finish that? I'll take it.”

I pushed my platter over. Where was she putting it?

Wedge came back with the sleaziest ratman I'd ever seen. He had a lot of the old blood: long whiskers, a long snoot, patches of fur, a four-foot tail. He'd be a descendant of one of the less successful experimental strains of two centuries back, when the life magic’s were the rage and anybody who could diddle up a spell was trying to create new forms. None of those sorcerers are remembered today but their creations are with us still. They'd been inordinately fond of messing with rats.

I pride myself on my open mind and freedom from prejudice, but I've always found room to exclude rat-people. I can't help it. I don't like them and none of them have done anything to improve my opinion.

Wedge told me, "This is Shote, Garrett. As good a stalker as you'll find. And he's available.”

I nodded to Shote and tried to shelve the prejudice. "Wedge tell you what I need?”

Shote nodded. "Forrow sssomebody whosss breeding.”

I grinned. None of those guys were going to do any breeding. "Basically, I've got a solid starting point. Shouldn't be hard.”

"Two marks frat fee, I take you to the end of the track. Arr I do is track. No fighting. No pottering. No nothing else.”

"That's fine with me." I dug out two marks silver.

Morley arrived. He leaned on the counter beside me. He looked at Maya. "Picking them a little young, aren't you?”

"This is Maya, my self-appointed assistant and understudy. Maya, the famous Morley Dotes.”

"Charmed." She eyed him. "He a friend of yours, Garrett?" She'd know the name.

"Sometimes.”

"You going to invite him to the wedding?”

She had set me up and cut me off at the knees.

Morley had to ask. "What wedding?”

"Him and me," Maya said. "I decided I'm going to marry him.”

Morley grinned. "I'll be there. Wouldn't miss it for a barge loaded with gold." I've seen toads with straighter faces than he had on.

I bet they heard my teeth grind all the way to the waterfront.

"Maya Garrett?" Morley said. "It does have a ring." He looked at the ratman. "Shote. How you doing? I thought you didn't have anything going, Garrett." He was having a hell of a time keeping from laughing.

"I didn't. Now I do. Somebody offend Pokey Pigotta. I want to ask them why.”

That took the grin off his clock. "You taking it personal?" He thinks I take everything personal.

"I don't know. Pokey was all right, but he wasn't really a friend. I just want to know why he turned up dead where he did.”

Morley waited for me to tell him where and when. I disappointed him. I asked Shote, "Are you ready? Let's go.”

Maya downed the rest of my celery drink and pushed away from the counter. She grinned at me.

Morley asked, "Mind if I tag along?”

"Not at all." He'd be useful if we walked into something.

 

18

I expected the dead man's friends would have collected him, but when we reached that death-trap alley, there he was, taking it easy, like a drunk sleeping it off.

"They left this one where he croaked," I said. "At least one more was bleeding when they left.”

The ratman grunted and started sniffing around.

"Morley, I want to show you something." I had Maya hold the lantern while I pantsed the dead guy.

"What are you, some kind of pervert?" Morley asked.

"Just take a look. Ever seen anything like this?”

Morley looked for a long time. Then he shuddered and shook his head. "No. I've never seen anything like that. That's sick. Crazy sick. How did you know? What have you gotten yourself into?”

"This is the fifth one today. All cut bald." I didn't go into detail.

Morley said, "Why would anybody let somebody do that?”

"There are a lot of crazies in this world, old buddy.”

"I didn't think there was anybody that crazy.”

"That's because you think with yours.”

"Ha! The pot calling the kettle black.”

"If you're ready?" The ratman sounded offended.

"Whenever you are," I told him.

"One man went on from here. He was wounded, as you surmised." Put me in my place. He led off, dropping to all fours so his legs folded up like a grasshopper's hind legs. That hurt just to see but didn't bother him. He snuffled and muttered and scooted along, growling at Maya to douse the damned light.

The trail turned south, headed across town a mile, a mile and a half into a better part of the city, not wealthy like the Hill and the neighborhoods clinging to its skirts, but definitely middle-class.

I began to get the feeling I'd missed something important. I suspected I knew something I didn't know I knew. I tried going over everything.

I should know better than to force it. That never works. Thinking just confuses me.

The stalk turned out to be a giant anticlimax. We caught our quarry in another alleyway. "Dead as a wedge," Shote announced. "Been gone a couple of hours.”

"He was alone?" Morley asked.

"Did I tell you he was alone? I told you he was alone. He was alone.”

"Touchy, touchy.”

Maya searched the body. I hadn't done that with the others, except cursorily. I expect it would have been a waste of time. Maya didn't find anything.

Morley said, "I didn't know old Pokey had it in him. He was always a talker. He could bullshit his way out of anything.”

"I don't think he had time to talk.”

Maya asked, "What do we do now, Garrett?”

"I don't know." My inclination was to go home and sleep. We'd hit a dead end here. "We could keep going the way we were headed, see if we run into anything that bites.”

Morley said, "There's nothing ahead but the Dead Zone, the Dream Quarter, and the Slough of Despond." Those were vulgar names for the diplomatic community, the area where TunFaire's religions maintain their principal temples, and the tight island where the city maintains two workhouses and a jail, a madhouse, and a branch of the Bledsoe charity hospital. The Slough is surrounded by a high curtain wall, not to keep anyone in or out but to mask the interior so as not to offend the eyes of passersby headed for the Dead Zone or the Dream Quarter.

There was a lot more to the South End, including industry, fairgrounds, shipyards, acres and acres of graveyards, and most of the Karentine Army's city facilities. But I thought I caught what Morley meant.

There was a chance our dead madmen had originated in one of those three areas. I'd be hard put to decide which was the craziest.

I said, "Whoever sent those guys might be wondering what happened to them. I'm going back where Pokey got it and see if anybody turns up.”

Maya thought that was a good idea. Morley shrugged. "I've had a long day. I'm going to get some sleep. I'd be interested in hearing if you find something, Garrett. Want to head back, Shote?”

The ratman grunted.

I had a thought. That happens. So do lunar eclipses. "Wait up. I want you to look at something. Everybody." I took out my coin card. "Shine the light on this, Maya.”

"Temple coinage," Morley said. "Can't tell what temple.”

Maya and Shote couldn't tell me anything, either.

Morley asked, "It have anything to do with this?”

"No. These have to do with who sicced Snowball on me. Whoever hired him paid him in these.”

Morley pruned his lips. "Check the Royal Assay. They're supposed to keep samples of private coinages.”

That was a good idea. I wished I'd thought of it. I thanked him and said good night.

 

19

Maya and I had a quiet walk back. Maybe she was as worn out as I was. I didn't try to make conversation.

I tried to stay alert. It was late for chukos but I was crossing town with the war chief of the Doom, showing her colors, asking for trouble if she was spotted.

Trouble didn't find us. We saw mostly ratpeople sweeping streets, clearing trash, scrounging, stealing whatever wasn't nailed down. I have to admit they contribute, mainly by doing work no one else wants. They are industrious.

I went back to the steps where Maya and I had been sitting when Jill brought the bad news. The moon had moved along. The place was no longer in the light. Jill's building was. I watched.

Maya helped. She seemed disinclined to head for her lair. After a while, she said, "The Vampires were really trying to kill you?”

"Sure seemed like it." I shrugged. "Doesn't matter now.”

"Huh? That Snowball is crazy. He'll try again.”

Was she kidding? "No he won't. He really is dead, Maya.”

The look she gave me.

After that we didn't talk much.

I ran out of patience. Weariness will do that. "I'm going over there. See what happened while we were roaming.”

Maya followed me. She moved like she was worn out. At eighteen? After only these few hours? Hell, I was the old-timer here.

We had no trouble getting in the street door, same as before. That implied the place had heavyweight protection, something to check on, though it would lead back to Chodo if the women were what I thought. If the place was his and he found out who sent those men, somebody was in for hard times. Chodo's enforcers go after their jobs with the gusto and arrogance of tax collectors. They don't stop coming and they don't leave you anywhere to hide.

The place was quiet. The keepers had gone home to less winsome company. The kept were asleep, visions of presents prancing in their pretty heads.

We went up slowly, carefully. Earlier there had been lamps to light the way, but now they were dark. I figured the caretaker had extinguished them but I wasn't going to dance into an ambush because it seemed unlikely.

We reached Jill's door. I listened. Nothing. I pushed the door. It swung inward, as it should, quietly. I stuck my head inside.

All but two lamps had burned out, and those wouldn't be with us long. I saw no evidence that we weren't alone. "See if you can find some oil." While she looked I checked the corpses. They hadn't walked away.

I came back to find Maya filling lamps. "Long as we're here I'm going to toss the place. Those guys were looking for something and they didn't find it.”

"How do you figure?" She got a couple of refills burning.

"They didn't have anything when we found them. And we accounted for all of them. So whatever it was it's here or wasn't here to begin with." I thought. I hoped.

"Oh.”

"I'll do this room first so we can get the lights out. Keep an eye on the street. Anyone comes, holler.”

I ripped the room apart. Jill would be pissed if she found out. I wouldn't tell her. Let her think the bad boys did it.

I demolished furnishings. I looked for secret hiding places. I didn't find doodly squat. And Maya didn't see anything in the street.

"Darken the room so nobody will see the lights and wonder. Stay back a few feet so the moonlight doesn't hit your face." I recalled the face she'd seen in the window of a supposedly empty apartment. Maybe we'd take a look in there, too.

"All right.”

"Getting tired?" She sounded it.

"Yes.”

"I'll hurry.”

"If you're going to do it, do it right. I'll stay awake.”

I hoped so. I didn't need a surprise like the one Pokey got.

I did the walk-in next. All I found out was that Jill couldn't get rid of anything. There are two kinds-sentimentalists who keep everything for what it meant, and the ex-poor, who keep everything as a hedge against revenant poverty. I pegged Jill for the latter.

I hit the kitchen next. All I learned there was that Jill didn't eat at home. In fact, as I went along, despite the heap of stuff in the walk-in, I began to suspect that Jill didn't really live there, but just kept stuff there and met someone there.

I stalled doing the bedroom until I'd drawn blanks everywhere else. I didn't want to keep climbing over Pokey, reminded that life is chancy for guys like us. It might be enough to rattle me into getting a job.

I didn't like it but I went at it, doing a fast round first, in case something turned up the easy way.

It didn't. I hadn't counted on it, anyway. The only thing that comes easy is trouble.

I went after it the hard way.

Still nothing.

Well, Jill hadn't struck me as stupid. She'd had plenty of storm warnings.

I wondered if she'd carried whatever it was over to my place. I hadn't watched her pack. Sure she had, if it had been here and was portable.

Had I just wasted a couple of hours I could have spent sleeping?

I made only one find of more than passing interest.

A small chest of drawers stood beside the bed. It was an expensive piece. The top drawer was just two inches deep. Jill had used it to dump small change. There had to be a pound of copper in there. Junk money to her, probably, though there were characters on the street who would take her head off for less.

I sat on the bed, pulled the drawer into my lap, and stirred its contents. The coins weren't all copper. Maybe one in twenty was a silver tenth mark.

The mix was eclectic, new and old, royal and private, as you'd expect of general change. Should I let Maya know the rainbow ended here?

Whoa! A perfect, mint-condition brother of the copper coin on the card in my pocket. A gem of the min-ter's art. I fished it out.

It meant nothing, of course. . . .

"Garrett!" Maya called.

I shoved the drawer into the chest and headed for the front room. "What you got?”

"Take a look.”

I looked. Six men moved around the street below, furtive, studiously ignoring the building while they talked.

Maya asked, "How do we get out?”

"We don't. Keep watching. I'll be across the hall. Let me know when they come inside." I got a lamp, scurried across the hall, knelt, and got to work with a skinny knife.

I had the door open when Maya arrived. "Four are coming in.”

I doused the lamp and moved forward into darkness, assuming the layout to reflect that of Jill's apartment, going slowly so I wouldn't get bushwhacked by rogue furniture.

I'd gone about eight feet when somebody knocked me ass over appetite. I never saw him, just heard his feet and Maya's squeak as he pushed past her. I fought off a man-eating chair with fourteen arms and legs. "Close the door. Quietly.”

She did. "What do we do now?”

"Sit tight and hope they don't break in here. You carrying?”

"My knife.”

They always have that. For chukos the knife is who they are. Without it they're just civilians.

"You get a look at that guy?”

"Not really. He was bald. He was carrying something. A corner of it hit me in the tit. I thought I'd scream.”

"Don't talk like that.”

"What'd I say?”

"You know . . . Ssh!" They were in the hall. They were trying to be quiet but had invaded unfamiliar territory in the dark.

Maya whispered, "He had a funny nose, too.”

"Funny how?”

"Big and bent. Like it was broken or something.”

"Sshh.”

We waited. After a while I sent Maya to watch from the window, in case they left without us hearing them. I got into ambush near the door in case they decided to drop in. I wondered what had become of the guy who had run out. If he'd been one of them we'd have had company by now. And if he'd run into them there would have been some kind of uproar.

It was a long wait. The sky had begun to show some color when Maya said, "They're leaving.”

I went and watched. The two biggest men each carried one of the lighter corpses. The other two carried the heavier corpse. The whole bunch got out of there fast.

I figured the smart thing would be to follow their example. So of course I took my dead lamp across the hall to see if I couldn't get it lit.

I was so long Maya was in a panic when I got back. "They cleaned the place up so it looks like nothing happened.”

"Why would they do that?”

"You tell me and we'll both know.”

"You going to follow those guys?”

"No.”

"But—”

"There are six of them and one of me and they're going to be looking for trouble. They're real nervous right now, I guarantee you. I've been there. If they've got the sense the gods gave a duck they'll get rid of those bodies fast, then scatter. And anyway, I'm so tired I couldn't not walk into something. The best thing we can do is get some sleep.”

"You're just going to drop it?" There was a peculiar edge to her voice.

"What's it matter to you?”

"How am I going to learn?”

"You don't have an audience here, Maya." That proved how tired I was.

She took it like a slap in the face. She didn't have anything to say after that.

I glanced around a minute later. Maya wasn't with me anymore.

I suffered a twinge of self-disgust. I hadn't needed to stomp all over her. She'd had enough of that from the rest of the world.

 

20

I slept past noon. When I stumbled into the kitchen I found Jill Craight with Dean, the two of them chattering like old girlfriends who'd been out of touch for years. Jill asked brightly,  "What did you find out last night?”

Dean looked expectant. I hadn't told him anything when he'd let me in. I'd growled and snorted and stamped hooves some and gone to bed. Anything he knew he'd gotten from Jill.

"A whole bunch of nothing," I grumbled. I plopped into a chair. It barked back at me. "That damned Pokey put up too damned good a fight. Both guys that got out croaked before they got wherever they were headed.”

Dean filled my teacup. "Mr. Garrett is a little ragged before he's had breakfast.”

I folded my lips back in a snarl.

"Don't work so hard at it, Garrett," Jill said. "I know you're a wolf.”

"Ouch.”

She laughed. That surprised me. Snow queens can't have a sense of humor. That's in the rule book somewhere.

She said,  "So they're all dead.  That mean it's over?”

"No. They didn't find what they were after. But you deal with that however you want. It's your problem.”

Dean brought me a platter piled with rewarmed biscuits, a pot of honey, butter, apple juice, and more tea. Just a morning snack for the boss. But the boss's houseguest had eaten better than the king had this morning.

Jill looked at me. "You said Pokey did too well. Who is Pokey?”

I had stepped right in that time. I would have to be more careful not to put that foot in my mouth. "Pokey Pigotta. The skinny dead man in your apartment. He was in the same business as me, more or less. You paid him, he found things out, took care of things for you. He was the best at what he did, but his luck ran out.”

"You knew him?”

"There aren't a lot of us in this racket. We know each other.”

Dean looked at me weird. He didn't give me away.

She thought a bit. "You couldn't guess who might have sent him, could you?”

I did have a notion and planned to check it out. "No.”

"Looks like I'll have to try to hire you again. I can't live like this.”

"You ever tried running through the woods in the dark?”

"No. Why?”

"You do, you keep smashing your face against things you can't see. Running in the dark can shorten your life. I don't run in the dark.”

She got the message. There was no way I'd work for her if she wouldn't tell me what was going on. "I have a prior commitment, anyway.”

"What's that?”

"Somebody tried to kill me. I want to find out who.”

She didn't try to con me out of that.

I told her, "Get Saucerhead Tharpe. He's no investigative genius but he'll keep you safe. You thought about what might've happened if you'd been home when those guys dropped in?”

I could see that she had. She was worried.

"Get a hold of Saucerhead." I got up. I told her how to find Tharpe. "Dean, on the off chance Maya turns up, tell her I apologize for running my mouth. For a minute I forgot she wasn't a civilian.”

Dean's face pruned up and I knew he was going to say something I didn't want to hear. "Mr. Garrett?" There it was. Hard proof. Bad news, bad news. "Miss Tate was here this morning.”

"Yes?”

He wilted. "I . . . Uh . . .”

"What did she say?”

"Well, I … Uh … Actually, Jill . . . Miss Craight answered the door. Miss Tate left before I could explain.”

That was my gal Tinnie. She kept her gorgeous figure through vigorous exercise jumping to conclusions.

"Thanks." I wasted a raised eyebrow on him. "I'm going out." I did. I stood on the front stoop and wondered what else could go wrong.

I figured I had two choices. I could go to the Royal Assay Office to check the provenance of the temple coinage or I could go to the Dream Quarter after Magister Peridont and the answer to a question that had nagged me since I'd found Pokey.

Or I could find Tinnie. But right now hunting thunder lizards held more appeal.

The Assay Office seemed of more immediate interest, yet … I took out the coin I'd swiped from Jill's drawer. I flipped it. Well. The Grand Inquisitor it was.

I started walking. Though I shuffled along and might have looked preoccupied, I was reasonably alert. I noticed, for example, that the sky was overcast and a chill breeze was as busy as a litter of kittens tumbling leaves and trash. There wasn't much else to notice as far as I could see.

 

21

Chattaree, the Church's citadel-cum-cathedral, sits at the hub of the Dream Quarter. I looked it over from across the avenue. How many millions of marks did it take to erect that limestone monstrosity? How many more to keep it up?

In a city where you see uglies as a matter of course, artisans had had to stretch to make Chattaree hideous. Ten thousand fabulous beasties snarl and roar from the cathedral's exterior—supposedly to keep Sin at bay. The Church has that neatly personified in a platoon of nasty minor demons. Maybe the uglies work. They gave me the creeps as I started across to the cathedral steps.

There are forty of those. Each has a name and they surround the cathedral completely. It looks like somebody started to build a pyramid and suffered a change of heart a third of the way through the project. The cathedral itself starts thirty feet above street level, all soaring spires covered with curlicues and ugly boys. The steps are uneven in width and height to make running difficult for unfriendly people in a hurry to drop in. There was a time when rivalries between sects were less restrained.

The dungeons where Magister Peridont reputedly had his fun were supposed to exist as catacombs worm holed into the foundations beneath the steps.

Halfway up I met an old priest. He smiled and nodded benevolently, one of those guys who are what priests are supposed to be, and as a consequence, remain at the foot of the episcopal ladder throughout their lives.

"Excuse me, Father," I said. "Can you tell me how to find Magister Peridont?”

He seemed disappointed. He studied me and saw I wasn't one of the faithful. That left him perplexed. "Are you sure, my son?”

"I'm sure. He invited me over, but I've never been here before. I don't know my way around.”

He looked at me funny again. I guess people don't come prancing in looking for Malevechea every day. He gave me a lot of near-gibberish Church cant. Boiled down, it told me I should ask the guy on guard duty inside the cathedral door.

"Thanks, Father.”

"For nothing, my son. Have a pleasant day.”

I clambered to door level and surveyed the Dream Quarter. The Church's nearest neighbor was also its most bitter competitor. The sprawling grounds of the Orthodox basilica and bastion began a hundred yards to the west. Its domes and towers looked somber behind surrounding trees. People came and went at the minority temple but nothing moved over there. It was as silent as a place under siege. I guess the scandals were bad for business.

I stepped in out of the gloom, found the guard and woke him up. He didn't like that. He liked it even less when I told him what I wanted.

"What do you want him for?”

"About twenty minutes.”

He didn't get it, which was why he had a guard's job. He wasn't smart enough for anything else. He wasn't your everyday parish priest. He was a no-neck kind of guy who probably should have been a wrestler. His frown threatened to fold a mountain range in the center of his forehead. He deduced that I was poking fun and didn't like it.

I told him, "Me and the Magister are old war buddies. Tell him Garrett is here.”

A second mountain range rose atop the first. An old buddy of Malevechea? He knew he'd better be careful until he got the go-ahead to stomp me. "I'll tell him you're here. You keep an eye out. Don't let nobody carry nothing off.'' He looked at me like he wondered if maybe I might plunder the altars.

It was not a bad idea if you could get away with it. You'd need a train of wagons to haul the goodies away.

He was gone a while. I hung around beaming at passersby. The regulars did a double take and frowned, but went about their business when I told them, "New on the job. Don't mind me." A dumb smiled helped.

The guard came back looking perplexed. His world was tilting. He'd expected Peridont to tell him to bounce me down all forty steps. "You're supposed to come with me.”

I followed him, surprised that it had been so simple. I trod warily. When it's easy you don't go barefoot because there's always a snake in the grass.

I didn't see any prisoners. I didn't hear any wails of despair. But the ways we followed were narrow and dark and damp and rat-haunted and sure would have made nice dungeons. Hell, I was disappointed.

No-Neck brought me to a cadaverous, bald, hooknosed character about fifty years old. "This is the guy. Garrett.”

Hawk nose gave me the fish eye. "Very well. I'll take charge. Return to your post." His voice was a heavy, breathy rasp, like somebody had smashed his voice box for him. It's hard to describe how creepy it was, but it gave me the feeling he was the guy who had all the fun tightening the thumbscrews.

He gave me the evil eye. "Why do you want to see the Magister?”

"Why do you want to know?”

That caught him off balance, like what I wanted really wasn't any of his business.

He looked away, got himself under control, grabbed papers off his escritoire. "Come with me, please.”

He led me through a maze of passages. I tried to picture him as the guy who'd run over me and Maya last night. He had no hair and a weird nose but was about a foot too tall. He tapped on a door. "Sampson, Magister. I've brought the man Garrett.”

"Show him in.”

He did. Behind the door lay a chamber twenty feet by twenty and cheerful for a place that was buried. Magister Peridont didn't have ascetic tastes, either. "Doing all right for yourself, I see.”

Hawk nose pursed his lips, handed over his papers, bowed toward Peridont, and hurried out, closing up behind me.

I waited. Peridont didn't say anything. I told him, "That Sampson is a creep.”

Peridont put the papers on a table twelve feet long and four wide. They vanished in the litter already there. "Sampson has social disabilities. But he makes up for that. So. You've reconsidered?”

"Possibly. I'll need some information before I make up my mind. It may have become personal.”

That puzzled him. He studied me. I was doing a boggle on everybody today. It's all in knowing how, I guess. "Let's have the questions, then. I want you on the team.”

I never trust guys who want to be my pal. They always want something I don't want to give.

I showed him the coins. "You recognize these?”

He placed the card on his table, put on bifocals as he sat down. He stared for half a minute and took his cheaters off. "No, I don't. Sorry. Do these have a bearing on our business?”

"Not that I know of. I thought you might know who put them out. They're temple coinage.”

"Sorry. That's strange, isn't it? I should." He perched those bifocals on the tip of his nose and eyed the coins again. He handed me the card. "Curious.”

I'd tried. "More to the point. Did you hire somebody else when I turned you down?”

He poked at that question before he admitted he had.

"It wouldn't have been Pokey Pigotta, would it? Wesley Pigotta?”

He wouldn't answer that one.

"It's a small field. I know everybody. They know me. Pokey would have suited your requirements. And he took on a new client right after I turned you down.”

"Is this important?”

"If you did hire Pokey, you're short a hired hand. He got himself killed last night.”

His start and pallor answered my question.

"So. A big setback?”

"Yes. Tell me about it. When, where, how, who. And why you know about it.”

"When: last night after dark sometime. Where: an apartment on Shindlow Street. I can't tell you who. Four men were involved. None survived. I know about it because the person who found the bodies asked me what to do about them.”

He grunted, thought. I waited. He asked, "That's why you came? Pigotta's death?”

"Yes." That was partly true.

"He was a friend?”

"An acquaintance. We respected each other but kept our distance. We knew we might butt heads someday.”

"I don't quite see your interest.”

"Somebody tried to kill me, too. Me and Pokey both doesn't read coincidence to me. I talk to you and somebody tries to off me. You hire Pokey, he gets it. I wonder why but even more I wonder who. I want to cool him down. If that helps you, so be it.”

"Excellent. By all means, if the people responsible for Pigotta's death tried to kill you too.”

"So who did it?”

"I don't follow you, Mr. Garrett.”

"Come on. If somebody wants in your way bad enough to kill anybody you talk to, you ought to know who. There can't be so many you can't pick somebody out of the crowd.”

"Unfortunately, I can't. When I tried to hire you I told you I think there's a concerted effort to discredit Faith, but I don't have one iota of evidence that points in any particular direction.”

I gave him my eyebrow trick in its sarcastic mode. He wasn't impressed. I'll have to learn to wiggle my ears. "If you want me to find somebody or something—like the Warden and his Relics—you'll have to give me somewhere to start. I can't just yell 'Where the hell are you?' Finding somebody is like picking apart an old sweater. You just keep pulling loose threads till everything comes apart. But you have to have the loose threads. What did you give Pokey? Why was he where he was when he got killed?”

Peridont got up. He prowled. He lived on another plane. He was deaf to anything he didn't want to hear. Or was he? "I'm disturbed, Mr. Garrett. Being outside this you miss the more troublesome implications. And they, I regret, tie my hands and seal my lips. For the moment.”

"Oh?" I gave my talented eyebrow one last chance.

He missed it again. "I want your help, Mr. Garrett. Very much. But what you've told me puts matters into a new perspective. Contrary to popular imagining I'm not a law unto myself. I'm one tree in a forest of hierarchy.”

"A tall tree.”

He smiled. "Yes. A tall one. But only one. I'll have to consult my peers and ask for a policy decision. Bear with me a few hours. If they want to pursue this I'll give you the information at my disposal. Whatever the decision, I'll be in touch. I'll see you're compensated for what you've already done.”

How very thoughtful of him. How did such a nice guy get such a nasty reputation?

He was being nice because he wanted something he couldn't get by tossing me into a cell and pulling my nails. I said, "I have to get moving on my own hunt.”

"I'll get in touch at your home. Before you go—”

I interrupted. "The name Jill Craight mean anything to you?”

"No. Should it?”

"I don't know. Pokey died in an apartment occupied by a Jill Craight.”

"I see. Would you hold on a minute?" He opened a cabinet. "I don't want to lose another man. I want you to take something as a hedge against the kind of surprises that got Pigotta." He pawed around amongst several hundred small bottles and phials, selected three.

He placed those on the table, three colorful soldiers all in a row: royal blue, ruby, and emerald. Each bottle was two inches tall. Each had a cork stopper. He said, "The ultimate product of my art. Use the blue where maximum confusion would benefit you. Use the green where death is your only other out. Break the bottles or just unstop them. That doesn't matter.”

He took a deep breath, lifted the red bottle carefully. "This is the heavyweight. Be careful. It's deadly. Throw it against a hard surface at least fifty feet away. You don't want to be any closer. Run if you have the chance. Got that?”

I nodded.

"Be careful. Twenty years from now I want to tip one with you and reminisce about the bad old days.”

"Careful is my middle name, Magister." I put the bottles away gingerly, where I could grab them in a hurry. Garrett never argues with a gift horse. I can always deal it to the glue works.

I sneaked a peek at his cabinet. What could those other bottles do? They came in every color. "Thanks. I can find my way out." I shot my final question as I neared the door. "You ever hear of a cult that cuts its members? Takes all their equipment, not just their testicles?”

He blanched. I mean, he really turned white. For a second I thought his hair would change. But he showed no other reaction. He lied, "No. That's grisly. Is it important?”

Lie to me, I'll lie to you. "No. It came up in a bull session the other night. The weather was pretty drunk out. Somebody heard something like that from somebody who heard something about it from somebody else. You know how that goes. You can't trace the source.”

"Yes. Good day, Mr. Garrett." Suddenly he wanted me out of there.

"Good day, Magister.”

I closed the door behind me. Smiling Sampson was right there to make sure I had no trouble finding the street.

 

22

A drizzle had started. The breeze had freshened. I put my head down and walked into it, grumbling. I wouldn't be out in this if the world would learn to leave me alone. How thoughtless of it.

Head down with not much going on inside—some would say that's the normal state of my bean—I trudged toward that small district beyond the Hill where both city and Crown maintain their civil offices. I hoped the Royal Assay people could tell me what Peridont wouldn't.

He had recognized the coins.

I didn't believe much of what he'd told me—though some of it might have been true. I disbelieved only selectively. I took nothing at face. Everywhere I turned religion popped up, and that's a game of masks and deceits and illusions if ever there was one.

My course took me within a block of the Blue Bottle, where curiosities Smith and Smith had holed up. Wouldn't hurt to stop by, see what Maya had missed.

The place didn't look promising. There'd been no upkeep done in my lifetime. But it was a cut above places where all you got for your copper was a place on a rope that would support you while you slept standing up.

It was the sort of place frequented by the poor and the lowest-order bad boys. The people who operated it wouldn't be eager to talk. I'd have to use my wits to get anything.

Not always the best hope with me.

The interior delivered the promise of the outside. I stepped into a dingy common room inhabited only by a flock of three winebirds hard at their trade. Some invisible force had pushed them to the extremities of the room. One was educating himself in a continuous muttered monotone. I couldn't make out one word in five but he seemed to be engaged in a furious debate on social issues. His opponent wasn't apparent and seemed to have a hard time making himself heard.

I didn't see anybody who looked like a proprietor. Nobody responded to the bell over the door. "Yo! Anybody home?”

That didn't bring any customer-conscious landlord charging in from his toils in the kitchen. But one of the silent drunks detached himself from his chair and reeled toward me. "Wha'cha need? Room?”

"Looking for a couple of my pals, Smith and Smith, supposed to be staying here.”

He leaned against the serving counter, bathed me in fumes and knotted his face into a ruddy prune. "Uh. Oh. Third floor. Door at the end." He didn't work up much disappointment over the fact that I wasn't going to put money in his pocket.

"Thanks, pal." I gave him a couple of coppers. "Have one on me.”

He looked at the coins like he couldn't figure out what they were. While he pondered the mystery I went upstairs. Carefully. The way those steps creaked and sagged it was only a matter of hours until one collapsed.

I wasn't disappointed by the third floor, either. It was more like a half story—five rooms under the eaves, two to either side of a claustrophobically narrow hall and one at the end. Two of the side rooms didn't have a hanging to ensure privacy. One still had a door that hung on one hinge, immobile. My destination was a door that wouldn't close because of a warp in the floor. The Smiths weren't home. Surprise, surprise. I hadn't expected them to be after their encounter with the Doom. I pushed inside.

Whatever plot or conspiracy or outfit the Smiths were with, it was miserly. They'd slept on blankets on the floor. And they hadn't had a change of clothing to leave behind.

I started going over the room anyway. You never know when something minute will make everything fall together.

I was on my knees looking into the canyons between floorboards when the hallway floor creaked. I looked over my shoulder.

The woman looked like the Dead Man's wife. There was enough of her to make four women with some to spare. How had she gotten that close without raising a roar? How had the stairway survived? Why was the building standing? It was top-heavy enough to tip over.

"What the hell you doing, boy?”

She was spoiling for a fight and there wouldn't be any getting around it. "Why do you ask?”

"Because I want to know, shithead.”

So it don't always work.

She was carrying a club, a real man-sized head-buster. I pitied the guy who got hit when she got her weight behind it.

It looked like I might get a chance to practice my self-pity if I didn't use those wits I'd been daydreaming about. "Who the hell are you? What the hell are you doing sticking your face in my room?''

When you don't have space to dazzle them with your footwork you try baffling them with bullshit.

"Your room? What the hell you yelling, boy? This room belongs to two guys named Smith.”

"The guy I paid said take this room. I did what he told me. You got a problem with that you take it up with the management.”

She glared at me. "That goddamned Blake up to his old tricks, eh?" Then she yelled, "I am the management, shithead! You been conned by a wino. Now get your ass out of here. And don't come whining to me for your money back.”

What a dreamboat.

She turned around and stomped away. I held onto the floor. If the building went I could ride it down. She kept grumbling. "I'm going to kill that sonofa-bitch this time.”

What a sweetheart. It was a good thing she didn't get physical, because I don't think I could have taken her.

I did some more quick looking, but when the yelling started downstairs I figured it was time I made my getaway.

Then I spotted something.

It was a copper coin all the way down in a crack. I whipped out a knife and started digging.

There was no reason to believe the coin had been lost by the Smiths. It could have been there for a hundred years.

It could have been. But I never believed that for a second.

Maybe I wished hard enough. That scrungy little hunk of copper was the brother of those I'd collected already.

Click. Click. Click. Pieces started falling together. Everything was part of the same puzzle, except, improbably, Magister Peridont. Improbably because he'd lied. He knew something about what was going on even if he wasn't involved himself.

It was time to go.

 

23

Big Momma was in full cry when I hit the bottom of the stairs. She was after the drunk I'd tipped. He dodged her with the nimbleness of long practice. She took a mighty swing as I arrived, but missed him. Her club smashed a bite out of a table. She yowled and cursed the day she'd married him.

The muttering drunk paid no attention. Maybe he was a regular and had seen it all before. The other drunk had disappeared. I thought he'd set a good example.

I slid toward the door.

Big Momma spotted me. She whooped. "You son-ofabitch! You lying sonofabitch!" She headed my way like a galleon under full sail.

I'm not a fool every time. I got the hell out of there. The drunken husband must have zigged when he should have zagged. He came flying through the doorway, ass over appetite, and lay panting and puking in the drizzle. The woman did some yelling but didn't come out for the kill. When she quieted down I went to see how the guy was.

He had scrapes and a bloody nose and needed throwing into a river but he'd survive. "Come on." I offered him a hand up.

He took it, got up, teetered, looked at me with eyes that wouldn't focus. "You really done it to me, man." "Yeah. Sorry about that. I didn't know your personal situation was so bad.”

He shrugged. "Once she calms down she'll beg me to come back. A lot of women don't got any husband at all." "That's true.”

"And I don't cheat on her or beat her.”

Somehow I couldn't picture him as a wife-beater. Not with that wife.

He asked, "What the hell were you trying to do, anyway?''

"Find out something about those guys Smith and Smith. Some friends of theirs killed a buddy of mine. Come on. Let's go somewhere out of the wet.”

"Why should I believe anything you tell me after the stories you told already?" His speech wasn't that clear but that's what he wanted to say.

He was unhappy with me but that didn't keep him from tagging along. He muttered, "I need to get cleaned up.”

So he wasn't all the way gone to wine. Yet. There's a point beyond which they just don't care.

I led him to a place a couple blocks away, as seedy as his own. It was a little more densely populated-five guys had gotten there ahead of us—but the ambience was the same: gloom laden with despair.

The operator was more businesslike. A frail ancient slattern, she was on us before we got through the doorway. She made faces at my newfound friend.

"We need something to eat," I told her. "Beer for me and tea for my buddy. You got someplace he can clean himself up?'' A flash of silver stilled her protests.

"Follow me," she told him. To me, "Take that table there.”

"Sure. Thanks." I let them get out of the room before I went to the door for a peek outside. I hadn't imagined anything. Mumbles had followed us. He was doing his routine against a wall down the street. I suppose he was talking about the weather.

If he'd taken a notion to keep an eye on me he wouldn't be going anywhere. I could handle him when I wanted. I planted myself at the appointed table and waited for my beer. The prospect of the kind of food such places served depressed me.

My pal didn't look much better when he came back but he did smell sweeter. That was improvement enough for me. "You look better," I lied.

"Bullshit." He dropped into a chair, slouched way down. The old woman brought beer and tea. He gripped his mug with both hands and looked at me. "So what do you want, pal?”

"I want to know about Smith and Smith.”

"Not much to tell. Them wasn't their real names.”

"No! Do tell. How long did they stay there?”

"They first come two weeks ago. Some old guy come with them. Paid for them to stay, room and board, for a month. He was a cold fish. Eyes like a basilisk. They wasn't none of them from TunFaire.”

That got my attention. "How do you figure?”

"Their accents, man. More like KroenStat or CyderBen, somewhere out there, only not quite. Wasn't one I ever heard before. But it was like some. You get what I'm saying?”

"Yeah." I got it. Sometimes I catch on real fast. "That man who came with them. Did he have a name? What was he like?”

"I told you what he was like. Cold, man. Like a lifetaker. He didn't exactly encourage you to ask questions. One of the Smiths called him Brother Jersey.”

"Jerce?”

"Yeah. That's it.”

Well, well. The very boy who hired Snowball and Doc. That coin from up there maybe didn't prove anything but this did. "Any idea how I could find him? He's got to be the guy who had my friend killed.”

"Nope. He said he'd come around again if Smith and Smith had to stay more than a month.”

"What about them? Anything on them?”

"You kidding? They never said three words. Didn't socialize. Ate in their room. Mostly they was out.”

I nibbled at him this way and that while we ate a chicken and dumpling mess that wasn't half bad. I couldn't get anything else until I showed him my coin collection.

He barely glanced at them. "Sure. That's the kind that Brother Jersey used to pay the rent. I noticed on account of most all of them was new. You don't see a bunch of new all together at once.”

You don't. It was a dumb move, calling attention that way.  Except Jerce probably figured Smith and Smith would never get made.

"Thanks." I paid up.

"Been a help?”

"Some.'' I gave him a silver tenth mark for his trouble. "Don't spend it all in one place.”

He ordered wine before I got to the door.

I went out thinking I had to bone up on my geography. KroenStat and CyderBen are out west and west-northwest, good Karentine cities but a far piece overland. I'd never been out that way. I didn't know much about the region.

I also thought about asking Jill Craight a few more questions. She was in the center of the action. She knew a lot more than she'd admitted.

Mumbles was on the job. I'd make it easy for him to stick if he wanted—if he wasn't following my drunken buddy or wasn't there by absurd coincidence. I didn't care if I was followed.

 

24

I was followed.

The drizzle tapered off to nothing most of my walk. But as I neared the Royal Assay Office the sky opened up. I ducked inside grinning, leaving Mumbles to deal with it.

Considering the size of Karenta as a kingdom and considering TunFaire's significance as largest city and chief commercial center, the Assay Office was a shabby little disappointment. It was about nine feet wide, with no windows. A service counter stood athwart it six feet inside. There was no one behind that. The walls were hidden behind glass plates fronting cases that contained samples of coins both current and obsolete. Two antique chairs and a lot of dust completed the decor.

No one came out though a bell had rung as I entered.

I studied the specimens.

After a while somebody decided I wouldn't go away.

The guy who came out was a scarecrow, in his seventies or eighties, as tall as me but weighing half as much. He was thoroughly put out by my insistence on being served. He wheezed, "We close in half an hour.”

"I shouldn't need ten minutes. I need information on an unfamiliar coinage.”

"What? What do you think this is?”

"The Royal Assay Office. The place you go when you wonder if somebody is slipping you bad money." I figured I could develop a dislike for that old man fast. I restrained myself. You can't get a lot of leverage on minions of the state. I showed him my card. "These look like temple coinage but I don't recognize them. Nobody I know does, either. And I can't find them in the samples here.”

He'd been primed to give me a hard time but the gold coin caught his eye. "Temple emission, eh? Gold?" He took the card, gave the coins a once-over. "Temple, all right. And I've never seen anything like them. And 1 been here sixty years." He came around the counter and eyeballed the coins on one section of wall, shook his head, snorted, and muttered, "I know better than to think I'd forget." He hobbled around the counter again to get a scale and some weights then took the gold coin off the card and weighed it. He grunted, took it off the scale, gouged it to make sure it was gold all the way through. Then he fiddled with a couple other tests I figured were meant to check the alloy.

I studied the specimens quietly, careful not to attract attention. Nowhere did I spy a design akin to the eight-legged fabulous beasties on those coins. Real creepies, they looked like.

"The coins appear to be genuine," the old man said. He shook his head. "It's been a while since I was stumped. Are there many circulating?”

"Those are all I've seen but I hear there's a lot more." I recalled my drunk's remark about accents. "Could they be from out of town?”

He examined the gold piece's edge. "This has a TunFaire reeding pattern." He thought a moment. "But if they're old, say from a treasure, that wouldn't mean anything. Reeding patterns and city marks weren't standardized until a hundred fifty years ago.”

Hell, practically the night before last. But I didn't say that out loud. The old boy was caught up in the mystery. He'd already worked past his half hour. I decided not to break his concentration.

"There'll be something in the records in back.”

I bet on his professional curiosity and followed him. He didn't object though I'm sure I broke all kinds of rules by passing the counter.

He said, "You'd think the specimens out there would be enough to cover every inquiry, wouldn't you? But at least once a week I get somebody who has coins that aren't on display. Usually it's just new coinage from out of town and I haven't gotten my specimens mounted. For the rest we have records which cover every emission since the empire adopted the Karentine mark.”

Hostility certainly fades when you get somebody cranked up on their favorite thing.

"I've been at this so long that most of the time I can take one look and tell you what you need to know. Hell. It's been five years since I had to look anything up.”

So, he was excited by the challenge. I'd brought novelty into his life.

The room we entered was twenty feet deep. Both side walls, to brisket level, boasted cabinets containing drawers three-quarters of an inch high. They contained older and less common specimens, I presumed. Above the cabinets, to the ten-foot ceiling, were bookshelves filled with the biggest books I've ever seen. Each was eighteen inches tall and six inches thick, bound in brown leather, with embossed gold lettering.

The back wall, except for a doorway into another room, was covered with shelves bearing the tools and chemicals an assayer needed. I hadn't realized there was so much to the business.

A narrow table and reading stand occupied the middle of the room.

The old man said, "I suppose we should start with the simple and work toward the obscure." He hauled out a book entitled Karentine Mark Standard Coinages: Common Reeding Patterns: TunFaire Types I, II, III.

I said, "I'm impressed. I didn't realize there was so much to know.”

"The Karentine mark has a five-hundred-year history, as commercial league coinage, as city standard, then as the imperial standard, and now as the Royal. From the beginning it's been permissible for anyone to mint his own coins because it began as a private standard meant to guarantee value.”

"Why not start with my coins?”

"Because they don't tell us much." He snagged a shiny new five-mark silver piece. "Just in. One of one thousand struck to commemorate Karentine victories during the summer campaign. The obverse. We have a bust of the King. We have a date below. We have an inscription across the top which gives us the King's name and titles. At the toe of the bust we have a mark which tells us who designed and executed the engraving for the die, in this case Claddio Winsch. Here, behind the bust, we have a bunch of grapes, which is the TunFaire city mark.”

He placed my gold coin beside the five-mark piece. "Instead of a bust we have squiggles that might be a spider or octopus. We have a date, but this is temple coinage so we don't know its referent. There are no designer's or engraver's marks. The city mark looks like a fish and probably isn't a city mark at all but an identifier for the temple where the coin was struck. The top inscription isn't Karentine, it's Faharhan. It reads, 'And He Shall Reign Triumphant.' " "Who?”

He shrugged. "It doesn't say. Temple coinage is meant for use by the faithful. They already know who." He stood the coins on edge. "TunFaire Type Three reeding on the five-mark piece. Used by the Royal Mint since the turn of the century. Type One on the gold. All Type One means is that the reeding device was manufactured before marking standards were fixed. Minting equipment is expensive. The standardization law lets coiners use their equipment until it wears out. Some of the old stuff is still around.”

I was intrigued but also beginning to feel out of my depth. "Why city identification by marks and reeding both?”

"Because the same dies are used to strike copper, silver, and gold but copper coins and small fractional silver aren't reeded. Only the more valuable coins get clipped, shaved, or filed.”

I got that part. The little lines on the edge of coins are added so alterations will be obvious. Without them the smart guys can take a little weight off every coin they touch, then sell the accumulated scrap.

The human capacity for mischief is boundless. I once knew a guy with a touch so fine he could drill into the edge of a gold coin, hollow out a quarter of it, fill the hollow with lead, then plug the drill hole undetectably.

They executed him for a rape he didn't commit. I guess you'd call that karma.

The old man turned the coins face down and went on about the markings on their reverses. They told us nothing about the provenance of my coins either.

"Do you read?" he asked.

"Yes." Most people don't.

"Good. Those books over there all have to do with temple coinage. Use your own judgment. See if you can luck onto something. We'll start from the ends and see what we can uncover.”

"All right." I took down a book on Orthodox emissions just to see how it was organized.

The top of each page had an illustration of both sides of a coin from a rubbing of the original, lovingly and delicately inked. Below was everything anyone could possibly want to know about the coin: number of dies in the designs, the date each went into service, the date each was taken out and destroyed, dates of repairs and reengravings on each, quantities of each kind of coin struck. There was even a statement about whether or not there were known counterfeits.

I had a plethora of information available to me for which I could see little practical use. But the purpose of the Assay operation is partly symbolic. It is the visible avatar of Karenta's commitment to sound, reliable money, a commitment which has persisted since before the establishment of a Karentine state. Our philosophical forebears were merchants. Our coinage is the most trusted in our end of the world, despite the absurdities of its production.

I spent an hour dipping into books and finding nothing useful. The old man, who knew what he was doing, moved from the general to the particular, one reference after another, narrowing the hunt by process of elimination. He came to the wall I was working, scanned titles, brought a ladder from a corner, went up, and brushed a century's worth of dust off the spines of some books on the top shelf. He brought one down, placed it in his work table, flipped pages.

"And here we are." He grinned, revealing bad teeth.

And there we were, yes. There were only two examples listed, one of which matched the coins I had except for the date. "Check the date," I said.

It had to be important. Because according to the book these coins had last been struck a hundred seventy-seven years ago. And if you added one hundred seventy-six to the date pictured you got the date on the gold piece I'd brought in.

"Curious." The old man compared coin to picture while I tried to read around his hands.

My type of coin had been minted in TunFaire for only a few years. The other, older type had been minted in Carathca . . . Ah! Carathca! The stuff of legend. Dark legend. Carathca, the last nonhuman city destroyed in these parts, and the only one to have been brought low since the Karentine kings had displaced the emperors.

Those old kings must have had good reason to reduce Carathca but I couldn't recall what it was, only that it had been a bitter struggle.

Here was one more good reason to waken the Dead Man. He remembered those days. For the rest of us they're an echo, the substance of stories poorly recalled and seldom understood.

The old man grunted, turned away from the table, pulled down another book. When he moved away I got my first clear look at the name of the outfit that had produced the coins. The Temple of Hammon.

Never heard of it.

The TunFaire branch was down as a charitable order. There was no other information except the location of the order's temple. Nothing else was of interest to the Assay Office.

I hadn't found the gold at the end of the rainbow but it had given me leads enough to keep me busy-particularly if I could smoke the Dead Man out.

I said, "I want to thank you for your trouble. How about I treat you to supper? You have time?”

Frowning, he looked up. "No. No. That's not necessary. Just doing my job. Glad you came in. There aren't many challenges anymore.”

"But?" His tone and stance told me he was going to hit me with something I wouldn't like.

"There's an edict on the books concerning this emission. Still in force. It was ordered pulled from circulation and melted down. Brian the Third. Not to mention that there's no license been given to produce the ones you brought in.”

"Are you sneaking up on telling me I can't keep my money?”

"It's the law." He wouldn't meet my eye.

Right. "Me and the law will go round and round, then." "I'll provide you with a promissory note you can redeem—”

"How young do I look?”

"What?”

"I wondered if I look young enough to be dumb enough to accept a promissory note from a Crown agent.”

"Sir!”

"You pay out good money when somebody brings you scrap or bullion. You can come up with coins to replace those four.”

He scowled, caught on his own hook.

"Or I can take them and walk out and you won't have anything left to show anybody." I had a feeling they'd constitute a professional coup when he showed them to his superiors.

He weighed everything, grunted irritably, then stamped off through the rear door. He came back with one gold mark, two silver marks, and a copper, all new and of the Royal mintage. I told him, "Thank you.”

"Did you notice," he asked as I turned to go, "that the worn specimen is an original?”

I paused. He was right. I hadn't noticed. I grunted and headed out, wondering if that, too, had been part of the message I was supposed to get.

I didn't want to go anywhere near the kingpin but I was starting to suspect I'd have to. He might know what was going on.

 

25

It had turned dark. The rains had gone. My pal Mumbles hadn't. He was right where I'd left him, soggy, and shivering in the breeze. It was cold. A freeze before dawn wouldn't be a surprise.

I passed within two feet of him. "Miserable weather, isn't it?" I wish there'd been more light, the better to appreciate his panic.

He decided I was just being friendly, that I hadn't made him. He gave me a head start, then tagged along. He wasn't very good.

I wondered what to do with him. I couldn't see him as a threat. And he couldn't report on me while he was on my trail—if he wasn't just a drunk who liked to follow people.

I thought about going back to the Blue Bottle to check him out but couldn't bring myself to go nose to nose with Big Momma again. I thought about giving him the shake, then reversing our roles. But I was tired and cold and hungry and fed up with walking around alone in a city where some strange people were taking too much interest in me. I needed to go somewhere where I could get warm, get fed, and not have to worry about watching my back.

Home and Morley's place recommended themselves. The food would be better at home. But at Morley's I could work while I loafed. If I played it right I could get my job on Mumbles done for me. The disadvantage was the food.

It was the same old story. The crowd—down a little because of the weather—went silent and stared when I stepped inside. But there was a difference. I got the feeling that this time I wasn't just a wolf from another pack nosing around, I was one of the sheep.

Saucerhead was at his usual table. I invited myself to join him and nodded politely to the cutie with him. He has a way of attracting tiny women who become fervently devoted.

"I take it Jill Craight didn't get in touch.”

He wasn't pleased by my intrusion. The story of my life. "Was she supposed to?”

"I recommended it." I had the feeling he was surprised to see me. "She needs protection.”

"She didn't.”

"Too bad. Excuse me. Morley beckons." I nodded to his lady friend and headed for Dotes, who had come to the foot of the stairs.

Morley looked surprised to see me, too. And he was troubled, which wasn't a good sign. About the only time Morley worries is when he has his ass in a sling. He hissed, "Get your butt upstairs quick.”

I went past him. He backed up the stair behind me.

Strange.

He slammed his office door and barred it. "You trying to start a riot, coming around here?”

"I thought some supper would be nice.”

"Don't be flip.”

"I'm not. What gives?”

He gave me the fish eye. "You don't know?”

"No. I don't. I've been busy chasing a two-hundred-year-old phantom charity. Here's your chance. What gives?”

"It's a marvel you survive. It really is." He shook his head.

"Come on. Stop trying to show how cute you are. Tell me what's got your piles aching.”

"There's a bounty out on you, Garrett. A thousand marks in gold for the man who hands over your head.''

I gave him a hard look. He has the dark-elfin sense of humor.

He meant it.

"You walk into this place, Garrett, you jump into a snake pit where the only two cobras that won't eat you are me and Tharpe.”

And I wasn't so sure about Morley Dotes. A thousand in gold can put a hell of a strain on a friendship. That's more than most people can imagine.

"Who?" I asked.

"He calls himself Brother Jerce". Staying at the Rose and Dolphin in the North End, where he'll take delivery anytime.”

"That's dumb. Suppose I just waltzed in to take him out first?”

"Want to try? Think about it.”

There'd be a platoon of smart boys hanging around figuring I might try that.

"I see what you mean. That old boy must be worried I'll get next to him somehow.”

"You still not working on something that's going to get you killed anyway?”

"I'm working now. For myself. Trying to find out who wants to kill me. And why.”

"Now you know who." He chuckled.

"Highly amusing, Morley." I dragged one of my copper temple coins out. I hadn't shown them all at the Assay Office. I sketched what I'd learned. Then, "Carathca was a dark-elfin city. Know anything about it? This thing seems to go back there.”

"Why should I know anything more about Carathca than you do about FellDorhst? That's ancient times, Garrett. Nobody cares. This thing keeps yelling religion. Find your answers in the Dream Quarter." He studied the coin. "Doesn't say anything to me. Maybe you ought to have a skull session with the Dead Man.”

"I'd love to. If I could get him to take a twenty-minute break from his crusade against consciousness.”

Someone pounded on the door. Morley looked startled, then concerned. He indicated a corner. "What is it?”

"Puddle, boss.”

Morley opened a large cabinet. It was the household arsenal, containing weapons enough to arm a Marine platoon. He tossed me a small crossbow and quarrels, selected a javelin for himself. "Who's with you, Puddle?”

"Just me, boss." Puddle sounded confused. But life itself confuses Puddle.

Morley lifted the bar and jumped back. "Come ahead.”

Puddle came in, looked at the waiting death, asked, "What'd I do, boss?”

"Nothing, Puddle. You did fine. Close the door and bar it, then fix yourself a drink." Morley replaced the weapons, closed (he cabinet, and settled into his chair. "So what do you have for me, Puddle?”

Puddle gave me the fish eye, but decided it was all right to talk in front of me. "Word just came that Chodo put a two-thousand-mark bounty on that guy who put the thousand on Garrett.”

Morley laughed.

Great. "It isn't funny." Here was a chance for the daring to make a truly outrageous hit by selling my head to Brother Jerce, then taking his and selling it to Chodo.

Morley laughed again, said, "It is funny. The auction is on. And this Brother Jerce would have to be awful naive to think he could outbid the kingpin.”

TunFaire is full of people who want to do favors for Chodo.

Puddle said, "Chodo says he'll give two hundred a head for anybody who even talks about laying a hand on Garrett. Three if you bring him in alive so he can feed him to his lizards.”

My guardian angel. Instead of using guard dogs he has a horde of carnivorous thunder lizards that will attack anything that moves. He favors them because they dispose of bodies, bones and all,

"What a turnaround!" Morley crowed. "Suddenly you've got everybody in TunFaire looking out for you.”

Wrong. "Suddenly I've got everyone watching me. Period. And getting underfoot, maybe, while they wait for somebody to take a crack at me so they can snag him and collect on him.”

He saw it. "Yeah. Maybe you'd be better off if everybody thought you were dead.”

"What I should do, if I had any sense, is say the hell with it all and go see old man Weider about a full-time job at the brewery." I got myself a drink uninvited. Morley doesn't indulge but he keeps a stock for guests. I thought. Then I told Morley about Mumbles and how I'd like to know a little more about him, only I'd had about all I could take for one day and just wanted to go home and get some sleep.

Morley said, "I'll put a tag on him, see where he goes." He seemed a little remote since Puddle's advent, which is how he gets when he's thinking about pulling something slick. I didn't see how he could make things worse so I didn't really care.

"It should be safe now. I'm heading out." I no longer wanted what I'd gone there to find. The quiet and loneliness of home had more appeal.

"I understand," Morley said. "Keep Dean over and have him wait up. I'll get word to you. Puddle, send me Slade.”

"Thanks, Morley.”

Things had changed downstairs. Word was out. I didn't like the way they looked at me now any more than I'd liked their looks before.

I went out into the night and stood a few minutes in the cold letting my eyes adjust. Then I headed for home. As I passed Mumbles I said, "There you are again. Have a nice evening.”

 

26

I strolled into Macunado Street daydreaming about a pound of rare steak, a gallon of cold beer, a snuggly warm bed, and a respite from mystery. I should have remembered my luck doesn't run that way.

The pill-brain microdeity whose mission is to mess with my life was on the job.

There was a crowd in front of the house. Floating in the air around it were a half-dozen bright globules of fire. What the hell?

I was running slow in the gray matter. It took me a minute to realize what had happened.

Some fans of mine had decided to firebomb my house. The Dead Man had sensed the danger and wakened, catching the bombs on the fly and juggling them now, to the consternation of bombers and witnesses.

I pushed through. The bombers were still there, rigid as statues, faces contorted into shapes as ugly as the gargoyles on Chattaree. They were alive and aware and as frightened as men can be. I stepped in front of one. "How you doing? Not so good, eh? Don't worry. It'll turn out all right.”

The bombs began to sputter. "I have to go inside. Wait right here. We'll chat when I get back." I knew he'd be thrilled.

Dean opened the door a crack. "Mr. Garrett!" Yeah. Right. I shouldn't be playing with these guys. "See you in a couple." I trotted up the steps. Dean let me in, slammed the door, secured all the bolts. "What's going on, Mr. Garrett?" "I kind of hoped you'd tell me." He looked at me like I was off my nut. He probably wasn't far wrong. "So let's see what Chuckles has to tell us." I wouldn't need to bust my butt and theirs if I could get the Dead Man to read their minds. It would save everyone a lot of trouble—except for him.

I went into the room. Dean waited outside. He won't go in unless he has what he considers a compelling reason. "I'll keep an eye on those brigands, Mr. Garrett.”

"You do that." I faced the Dead Man. "So, Old Bones. You will wake up to save your own skin. Now I know how to get your attention. Light a fire under you.”

Garrett, you plague upon my final hours, what have you brought down upon my house this time ?

"Nothing." It was going to be one of those discussions.

Then why are those maniacs pitching bombs at me?

"Those boys outside? Hell. They don't even know about you. They're just having fun trying to burn my house.”

Garrett!

"I don't have the slightest idea. You want to know, poke around in their brains.”

I have. And I have found a fog. They did it because they were told to do it. They believe they need no other reason than the will of the Master. They were joyful because they had been entrusted with a task that would please him.

"Now we're cooking. The Master? Who is he? Where do I find him?”

I can answer neither question. It may not be possible. I do not exaggerate when I tell you it is their express and certain belief that the Master they serve has neither form nor substance and manifests himself only where and when he chooses, in any of a hundred forms.

"He's like a ghost or spirit or something?" I wasn't going to say the word god.

He is a bad dream that has been dreamed by so many so intensely that he has gained a life of his own. He exists because will and belief compel him to exist.

"Woo-oo! We're getting weird here.”

Why did you stir these madmen up, Garrett? "I didn't stir anybody, Chuckles. They stirred me. Out of the blue, for no reason, somebody has been trying to send me off. Crazy stuff has been happening all over. Especially in the Dream Quarter. Maybe I ought to catch you up on the news.”

I am supremely uninterested in your squalid little slithering's through the muck and stench of this cesspit city, Garrett. Save it to impress the tarts you drag under my nose to harass me.

So, he was crabbed about Jill.  He doesn't like women much. Having one in the house will set him off every time. Tough.

"So we're going to go straight from the snooze stage to the sulks, eh? Saves us time on courtesy and catching up on the latest adventures of Glory Mooncalled. We'll just wake up and act like a cranky three-year-old.”

Don't vex me, Garrett.

"The gods forefend! Me be vexatious? With my angelic disposition?" I didn't like this.

We go at it tooth and claw but it's always a game. There was a dark undercurrent of hostility this time. This wasn't play. I wondered if he was moving into some new and darker phase of being dead. Nobody knows much about dead Loghyrs, or even much about live ones for that matter since both kinds are so damned rare.

You have had the benefit of my wisdom and instruction long enough to stand on your own legs now, Garrett. There is no justification for your incessant pestering.

"There isn't any for your freeloading, either, but you do it." My temper was shorter than I'd thought. "The Stormwarden Raver Styx wanted to buy you a while back. She made a damned good offer. Maybe I shouldn't have been so damned sentimental.”

I stepped out then, before the foolishness got out of hand. I looked for Dean. He was watching the street. The firebombs had burned out. With no entertainment to be had the crowd had dispersed. But the bombers were still there, rigid as lawn ornaments. "Help me carry one of those guys in so I can ask him what he was doing." I opened the door.

"Are you sure that's wise?" No Mr. Garrett anymore. He'd stopped being scared.

"No. I'm never sure of anything. Come on … Damn his infantile soul. Look at that.”

The Dead Man had turned loose. The bombers were running like frightened mice.

Even in my anger I didn't really think he'd let go out of spite. He's long on argument but he's also long on sense. My guess was he'd hoped I could track them to their hideout. Which meant he hadn't taken a close enough look at me.

I couldn't fault the reasoning but I couldn't carry it off, either. I didn't have any energy left. Too much activity, not enough rest.

I shrugged. "The hell with them. I'll settle up with them pretty soon, anyway." Garrett whistling in the dark. "Ask Miss Craight to come to my office. Then bring me a pitcher of beer. Then cook supper. Bring it when it's ready. She knows what's going on. It's time to squeeze a little blood out of that stone. Why the hell do you keep shaking your head?''

"Jill left shortly after you did. She said to tell you she was sorry for the trouble she'd caused you. She hoped your retainer would make up for it. Before you ask, yes, she sounded like she wouldn't be back. She left a note. I put it on your desk.”

"Beer and dinner, then, and I'll question the note." Nothing was going to stay still long enough for me to grab it.

I went to the office, planted myself, put my feet up, and waited until I had beer before I opened Jill's note.

Garrett:

I really did have a crush on you. But things happened and that little girl's heart petrified. She is only a bittersweet memory, cold copper tears. But thank you for caring.

Hester P.

I leaned back, closed my eyes, and considered the snow queen.

The little girl wasn't dead yet. She was hiding, way back somewhere, afraid of the dark, letting Jill Craight take care of the business of staying alive. The little girl wrote that note. Jill Craight wouldn't have been able. I don't think she'd have thought of it.

With a few beers inside, then a decent supper stacked in on top, Garrett turns halfway human. I asked Dean to stay late again. Over more beer I told him the whole story, not because he needed to know but because I knew the Dead Man would be listening. If he wouldn't take my news direct he'd get it this way.

I'd try to talk to him in the morning, when I was rested and feeling civil and he'd had a chance to contemplate his sins.

I set a record falling asleep.

 

27

I didn't set any record staying asleep, though I did get in four hours of industrial-weight log-sawing before Dean interceded. "Hunh? Wha'zat? Go way." Other highly intellectual remarks followed. I don't wake easily.

"Mr. Dotes is here," Dean told me. "You'd better see him. It's important.”

"It's always important. Whoever it is or whatever it is, it's always more important than whatever I want to do.”

"If that's the way you feel, sir. Pleasant dreams.”

Of course it was important if Morley had bestirred himself enough to come over personally. But that didn't touch off any fires of enthusiasm.

It just isn't good to ask me to do more than one thing at a time. And right then sleeping was the skill I was honing.

Dean came back after only a flirtation with retreat. "Get up you lazy slob!”

He knows how to get me started—just get me mad enough to want to brain him.

His technique is somewhat like the way I get the Dead Man started.

Rather than endure his harassment I got me up and halfway dressed and headed downstairs.

Dean had Morley settled in the kitchen, where he was drinking tea and commiserating with the old man over the trouble he was having getting his gaggle of nieces decently—or even indecently—married and out of his house. Dean nattered on about how they were driving him crazy. I think he has some notion that someday I'll feel guilty enough to take one of them off his hands.

I suggested, "Why not sell them?”

"What?”

"They've got some good years on them yet. And they're all good cooks. I know a guy might give fifty marks apiece. He sells brides to the guys who hunt and trap up in thunder lizard country.”

"Your sense of humor leaves something to be desired, Mr. Garrett." He used his admonitory "Mister.”

"You're right. I'm not at my best lately. Not getting enough rest, I think.”

"You can relax now," Morley told me. "Your nemesis, Jerce, got excited and lost his head a while ago.”

The way he made a joke of it I suspected he'd had something to do with that.

It is his line and he's the best there is. And two thousand is enough to get his attention.

Maybe I should have been grateful. But grateful doesn't come easy for most people and my mood was too black to make me the rare exception. I kept it bottled up. I kept most of my sour in there with it, too, though. I didn't need to hand out more excuses for folks to get ticked off at Garrett. So I just hinted. "I wonder what he could have told me.”

Morley scowled. "What difference does that make? He's a closeout. You can get on with your life without watching over your shoulder.''

"Want to bet?”

He gave me an ugly look.

"Sorry. Bad choice of words. What I mean is, he wasn't the source. He was an agent of the source. Unless his getting killed is enough to scare them off, we'll both hear from them again. I don't have the faintest idea what they're up to, but they're serious about it and they're not worried about the costs or consequences.”

Morley wanted to disagree but had no facts. He was wishful thinking and he knew it.

I asked, "What became of the guy who was following me?”

"I put Puddle, Wedge, and Slade on him. They followed him following you here. He tried to talk to some men who were part of the excitement. They decided to each take one and see what happened.”

I know my Morley Dotes. He was stretching it out because he didn't want to get to the bad news. "So what happened?”

"Puddle and Wedge lost their men. Slade hasn't reported back yet.”

So the big news was that there was no news. "Odd. Those guys strike me as amateurs.”

Morley shrugged. "Even an amateur is hard to stay with one-on-one.”

True. A decent tail job needs at least four men.

Somebody pounded on the front door. I told Dean, "I'd better," and wondered what it was now. I'd just started wondering how I could ease Morley out and now somebody else wanted in. Jill, I figured, after some thinking about being a walking target.

I peeked before I opened up.

There were no gorgeous blondes on Garrett's stoop this time, panting for protection. This was an ugly, little old Magister who was very unhappy.

I opened up and checked to make sure nobody would come speeding in behind him. "Come in. I'd given up on you." Actually, I'd forgotten he'd said he'd be coming.

He pushed inside. "Those morons! Those shortsighted fools! They force me—me!—to sneak out in the dark, like a thief, because they're too scared to let me out on my own.”

What the hell? At least he wasn't mad at me. I guided him into my office, planted him in the good chair, got some lights burning, and asked, "Can I get you something to drink?”

"Brandy. In a jar. I haven't gotten blotted since I was in the seminary. If ever there was an appropriate time, it's now.”

"I'll find something." I hustled into the kitchen. Dean and Morley had heard enough to keep them quiet.

Dean had drawn my pitcher and was digging for a bottle of brandy. Morley tried to look like he'd explode if I didn't whisper a name. I didn't. He stayed in one piece. I grabbed everything and headed for my office.

We got comfortable. Peridont poured himself some brandy, sipped, looked surprised. "Not bad.”

"I thought you'd appreciate it." I wet my whistle. "I gather things aren't going well.”

"To understate. My brothers in God are cowards. I presented my information and suspicions and instead of responding vigorously, with the full power of the Church, they've chosen to turn their backs and hope the whole thing fades. They've withdrawn permission for me to employ you. They've enjoined me from telling you anything. They've done their damnedest to sew me up, to tie my hands, to shut my mouth, knowing I can't possibly disregard canon law after having spent a career enforcing it.”

"In other words you came over to tell me to forget it instead of to point me in the right direction.”

He smiled. The nasty man of legend shone through. "Not quite. They overlooked a possibility. They didn't rape away my rights as a private person.”

I tried my eyebrow trick. This time it worked.

"Mr. Garrett, they failed to overrule my right to, say, employ an investigator to look into the death of Wesley Pigotta. I give you that as your express brief. Whatever else you stir up, well, that's beyond my control.”

I smiled back. "You think as sneaky as a lawyer. I like that. In this case." I put the smile away. "How blind do I have to fly?”

"Almost completely. They sewed me up on that. You already know enough to realize you have to be careful. You're well grounded in the basic information. You'll have to develop from that. Once you flush the villains we can put our heads together again. My brethren might be moved by an opportunity for a quick resolution.”

I don't like that kind of game. But I smiled and pretended. I wanted to stay on good terms with him. He could be helpful even while playing mental chess to get around telling me anything. "All right. I'll play along." That had been my intention no matter what he wanted. "Is there anything you can give me?”

He took a long pull of brandy. He was serious about getting ripped. He grinned and tossed a bag of money my way. A big bag. "My own money. Not Church money." He sobered a little. "The only thing I can tell you is that the woman who occupied the apartment where Pigotta died was my mistress. I knew her as Donna Soldat. I think that was a false name. She was a difficult woman. Though I kept her in style she had other lovers. One of those men may have been why Pigotta went there that night.”

I asked him some standard questions about his relationship with Jill and got some ordinary, sleazy answers. They embarrassed the hell out of him.

"I'm sure this is all more amusing than sordid to you, Mr. Garrett. I'm sure you see worse every day.”

Right.

"For me it was a traumatic surrender to my sinful side." He took a long pull of brandy. He was drinking straight from the bottle now. "I've always suffered from a weakness for female flesh.”

"Don't we all.”

He scowled. "That wasn't a problem when I was younger. If I visited a prostitute and she found me out, she'd laugh. Priests are their best customers. But if I were found out now I could be destroyed.”

I understood. It was not that it would make him a better or worse person, but it would be a tool that could be used to bludgeon him.

"I wrestle the demon within but in the end I always lose, so discreet women are a must. Donna was a godsend. Whatever her faults, she kept her mouth shut.”

She did that. "Did she know who you were?”

"Yes.”

"That's a lot of power to hand a working girl.”

"It was accidental. And she never abused it.”

Maybe. "How did you meet her?”

"She was an actress. Working in a playhouse on Old Shipway. I saw her. I wanted her. She led me on a long chase but persistence paid off.''

For both of them. But I didn't say that.

"I moved her into that place barely three months ago. It was less dangerous to visit her there. Those were three happy months, Mr. Garrett. And now all this.”

He finished the brandy. He looked the sort to become a maudlin drunk. I didn't need that. I had no time to feel sorry for anybody but me. It was time to start easing him toward the door. "How should I get in touch?”

"Don't try. I'll find a way to see you." Suddenly, he was as ready to leave as I was to have him go. The beer had me too sleepy to concentrate. He started toward the door. "Good luck, Mr. Garrett. And thank you for a fine brandy, though I cheapened it by swilling it like bottom-grade wine.”

I got him out the front door, locked up, and hurried back to see how many marks could be stuffed into a bag a little bigger than my clenched fist.

Morley invited himself in as I got started. "What was that, Garrett? He was weird.”

"A client who prefers to remain anonymous.”

He didn't like that. Like everybody else, he thought I should make an exception and trust his discretion.

"I don't want to seem impolite, Morley. But I haven't been getting much sleep.”

"I can take a hint, Garrett. Let me say good night to the old man.”

"Go ahead.”

A minute later, as I took the money to the Dead Man's room, I overheard him giving Dean advice about how to adjust my diet so I wouldn't be tired and cranky all the time.

Good old Morley, looking out for my well-being behind my back. If Dean started trying to feed me salads and bean curd, I'd strangle them both.