21

Morley was in my sitting room when I arrived. He had his feet up on my writing table. “You’re getting old, Garrett, you can’t take one long night anymore.”

“Huh?” I was right on top of things. We investigator types have minds like steel traps. We’re always ready with a snappy comeback.

“Heard your speech to the troops, shucking them so you can make with the snores.”

“My second long night in a row. How’d you get in? Thought we had the place buttoned up.”

“You might. Trick is, walk in before the buttoning starts. You went off chasing the walking dead. I just strolled around front and let myself in. Poked around the house some, came up here when the troll woman started rattling pots and pans.”

“Oh.” I got the feeling my repartee lacked something tonight. Or this morning. The first ghost light of dawn tickled the windows.

“I looked through the kitchen. The things you people eat. The sacrifices I make.”

I didn’t ask. Cook favored basic country cooking, heavy stuff, meat and gravy and biscuits. Lots of grease. Though Morley might have liked what she’d had for lunch my first meal here.

He was saying he planned to stay around. He went a little farther. “I figure you can use a ghost to balance off theirs.”

“Huh?” I wasn’t making a comeback.

“I’ll haunt the place. Roam around where they’re not looking, doing things you’d do if you weren’t busy keeping them calmed down.”

That made sense. I had a list of a hundred things I wanted to do, like look for hidden passageways and sneak into people’s rooms to snoop. I hadn’t had time for them and probably wouldn’t because somebody would be in my pocket constantly.

“Thanks, Morley. I owe you one.”

“Not yet. Not quite. But we’re getting up close to even.”

He meant for a couple of tricks he’d pulled on me back when. The worst was having me help carry a coffin with a vampire in it he’d given a guy he didn’t like. He hadn’t warned me for the good reason that, if I’d known, I wouldn’t have helped. I hadn’t known till the vampire jumped up.

I’d been a little put out.

He’d been paying me back with little favors ever since.

He said, “Fill me in so I won’t go reinventing the wheel.”

I got myself a handkerchief first. “This cold feels like it’ll turn bad. My head’s starting to feel like the proverbial wool pack.”

“Diet,” he told me. “You eat right, you don’t get colds. Look at me. Never had a cold in my life.”

“Maybe.” Elves don’t get colds. I gave him the full account as I would’ve given it to the Dead Man. I kept an eye on him, watching for giveaways. He finds ways to profit when he weasels his way in to help me. I’d watched him enough to recognize that moment when he grabs onto something.

The obvious way here would be to recruit a gang to loot the place. That would be easy. Not so easy would be eluding an excited and bloodthirsty upper class afterward. Not that that would intimidate him much.

They might not have much use for General Stantnor, but as a class they couldn’t tolerate the precedent. Every stormwarden, firelord, sorcerer, necromancer, whatnot, would join in to pass out the exemplary torments.

“We have three separate things going, then,” Morley said. “Thievery. Slow murder, maybe. Mass murder. You have the wheels turning on the thievery. So forget that. The General . . . The thing to do is let me and a doctor look at him. On the other killer, the only thing you can do is keep talking to people. Eliminating suspects.”

“Go teach grandma to suck eggs, Morley. This is my business.”

“I know. Don’t be so touchy. I’m just thinking out loud.”

“You agree Dellwood and Peters look unlikely?”

“Sure. They all do. The old man is bedridden and probably couldn’t be fixed up with a motive anyway.”

I hadn’t considered the General.

“The Kaid character is too old for the pace and not strong enough to shove these other guys around.”

“Maybe. Sneakiness is the killer’s trademark, though. An old man would be sneaky.”

“Sure. Then there’s the Wayne character, who plans to marry money. So who does that leave if everybody else is honest?”

“Chain.” Obnoxious, argumentive, overweight Chain, to whom I’d taken an instant dislike.

“And the daughter. And the outside possibility. Not to mention maybe somebody who went away but didn’t disappear because he’d been murdered.”

“Wait. Wait. Wait. What’s that?”

“You have four men who rode off into the sunset, right? Snake Bradon’s presumptive necromancy recalled three. Where’s the other one? Which one was he? What were the will provisions regarding those men?”

I didn’t recall. One had gotten cut out, I’d heard that. But if somebody was good for a share even if he wasn’t around, and everybody thought he was gone, or dead now, he’d be in great shape to do dirty deeds, then turn up for the reading of the will.

“Whoever got Hawkes headed for the house here.”

“You lost the trail.”

True. “If it was somebody who isn’t on the inside, he wouldn’t know about the General burning the will.”

“Yes. He might keep on keeping on.”

True again. “Somebody tried giving me the ax.”

“There’s that. But it could be related to your other problems.”

“Morley, trying to puzzle it out will drive me crazy. I don’t want to bother.”

He gave me a look something short of a sneer. “Good thinking. You’re goofy enough now.”

I said, “Look, at this point what I do is just bull around and try to make things happen. When the bad boys get nervous, they do something to give themselves away.”

Morley chuckled. “You have style, Garrett. Like a water buffalo. What good will bulling around do if your villain was Tyler?”

“Not much,” I admitted.

“What about the cook? If she’s been around four hundred years, she might think the family owes her a fatter chunk than the old man was going to give her.”

I’d considered that in light of the fact that the non-human races don’t think like us and trolls are pretty basic. Somebody gets in a troll’s way, the troll flattens him.

“Cook’s time is accounted for when Hawkes got it. Not to mention, if she was on a horse and her weight didn’t kill it, it would leave tracks a foot deep.”

“It was an idea. How’s she look for poisoning the old man?”

I shrugged. “She’s got means and opportunity but I come up short on motive. She raised him from a pup. I’d think there’d be some love of a sort.”

He snorted. “You’re right. We’re not going to reason it out. Sleep on it. I’ll go haunt.”

“Don’t walk into the bedroom,” I warned him. “I have an ax rigged to carve sneaky visitors.” I’d decided to go back to the featherbed. The floor in the dressing room was too hard. Maybe I’d move later, like I’d been thinking.

Morley nodded. Then he flashed a grin. “Wish there was your usual compliment of honeys in this one. That would make it a lot more interesting.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

22

It seemed I’d just drifted off when somebody started pounding on the door—though the light through the window said otherwise. I cursed whomever and rolled over. I’m not at my best when wakened prematurely.

In the process of rolling I cracked my eyes. What I saw didn’t register. It was impossible. I wriggled into the down, the old hound searching for perfect comfort.

I sat up like I’d gotten a pin in the sitter.

The blonde smiled faintly as she drifted out my bedroom door. I didn’t even yell, I just gaped.

She’d been sitting on the edge of the bed looking at me. She’d gotten in without getting carved up. I checked the booby trap. It sat there looking back, loaded and ready to splash blood over half a county if some villain should cooperate and trip it. Just sitting here waiting, boss.

And the door was open.

It hadn’t worked.

That gave me the spine chills. Suppose it hadn’t been my lovely midnight admirer? Suppose it had been somebody with a special gift? I imagined being stuck to the bed like a bug with a pin through him.

By the time I got through the supposes and lumbered out of the bedroom, the blonde was gone. Without having used the hall door, where some obnoxious fellow was pounding away, trying to get my attention. He’d gotten my goat already.

I collected my head-knocker and went to see who wanted me up at such an unreasonable hour—whatever hour it was.

“Dellwood. What’s happened now?”

“Sir? Oh. Nothing’s happened. You were supposed to see the General this morning, sir.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I was too busy snoring to remember. Missed breakfast, didn’t I? Hell. I needed to diet anyway. Give me ten minutes to get presentable.”

He looked at me like he thought it might take me a year longer than that. “Yes sir. I’ll meet you there, sir.”

“Great.”

I’m getting old. It took more than ten minutes. It was twenty before I started hoofing it across the loft to the old man’s wing. I wondered about the blonde. I wondered about Morley. I wondered why I didn’t just go home. These people were nuts. Whatever I did, I wasn’t going to strike any blow for truth and justice. Ought to fade away and come back in a year, see how things stood then.

I was in a great mood.

Dellwood was waiting in the hallway outside the General’s door. He let me in. The preliminaries followed routine. Dellwood went out. Kaid followed after making sure the fire was the size and heat of the one that’s going to end the world. I sweated. The General suggested, “Sit down.”

I sat. “Did Dellwood bring you up to date?”

“The events of the night? He did. Do you have any idea what happened? Or why?”

“Yes. Surprisingly.” I told him about Snake’s whisper, our date, how I’d found him. “Dellwood suggested the cord might have come from this room.”

“Kef sidhe? Yes. I have one. Inherited from my grandfather. He collided with the cult around the turn of the century, when he was a young lieutenant sent to battle the crime rings on the waterfront. They were bad back then. One of the nonhuman crime lords had imported some sidhe killers. The cord should be there with the whips and such.”

I checked. “Not here now.” I wasn’t racked with amazement. Neither was he. “Who could have gotten it?”

“Anyone. Anytime. I haven’t paid attention to it in years.”

“Who knew what it was?”

“Everybody’s heard me maunder on about my grandfather’s adventures. And about the adventures of every other Stantnor who ever was. Since my son’s death there’s been no future to look to. So I relive the glories of the past.”

“I understand, sir. He was a good officer.”

He brightened. “You served under him?”

Careful, Garrett. Or you’ll spend your stay having the old boy bend your ear. “No sir. But I knew men who did. They spoke well of him. That says plenty.” Considering how enlisted men discuss their officers.

“Indeed.” He knew. He drifted off to another time, when everyone was happier—or at least he remembered them being happier. The mind is a great instrument for redesigning history.

He came back suddenly. Apparently the past wasn’t all roses either. “A disastrous night. Talk to me about those dead men.”

I gave him my theory about Snake having raised them.

“Possible,” he said. “Entirely possible. Invisible Black was the sort of bitch who’d think it an amusing practical joke to arm an untutored Marine with the weapons to accomplish something like that.”

The name meant nothing to me except that another sorceress had adopted a ridiculous handle. Her real name was probably Henrietta Sledge.

“Have you nothing positive to report, Mr. Garrett?”

“Not yet.”

“Any suspects?”

“No sir. Everybody. I’m having trouble making sense of the situation. I don’t know the people well enough yet.”

He looked at me like he was thinking I should be living up to one of those Corps mottos like “The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a minute longer.”

“What will you do now?”

“Poke around. Talk to people till I get hold of something. Shake it. I had one thought during the night. The man who’s been picking the rest off could be one who apparently left you—if he thought he could turn up for the reading of your will.”

“No sir. Each man executed an agreement when he joined me in retirement. To remain eligible he’d have to remain here.”

I lost some respect for him there. He’d bribed them and indentured them so he wouldn’t be alone. He was no philanthropist. His motives were completely selfish.

General Stantnor was a mask. Behind it was someone who wasn’t very nice.

I wouldn’t call it an epiphany but it was an intuition that felt true. This was a mean-spirited old man in a carefully crafted disguise.

I examined him more closely. His color wasn’t good this morning. His respite was over. He was on the road to hell again.

I reminded myself it wasn’t my place to judge.

Then I reminded myself that when I remind myself, what I’m doing is looking for justification.

Someone knocked. That saved me confusion and stole the General’s opportunity to get righteous.

I’d sensed that coming.

“Enter.”

Dellwood opened the door. “There’s a Mr. Tharpe to see Mr. Garrett.”

The General looked at me. I told him. “That’s the man I had trying to trace certain items.”

“Bring him up, Dellwood.”

Dellwood closed the door. I asked, “Here?”

“Is he likely to report something you don’t want me to hear?”

“No. It just seemed an inconvenience to you.”

“Not at all.”

Hell. He was fishing for entertainment again. He didn’t care what Saucerhead had to tell me, much. He just didn’t want to be alone.

“Mr. Garrett, could I impose on you to build the fire a little?”

Damn. I was hoping he wouldn’t notice it was down to a volcanic level. I wondered if Kaid had a full-time job just hauling in fuel.

Saucerhead arrived lugging a bag. In his paw it seemed small. He hulks like a cave bear. Dellwood seemed a little intimidated. The old man was impressed. He cracked, “Cook sees him, she’ll fall in love.” That was the first I’d heard him try for humor. “That’ll be all, Dellwood.” Dellwood got out.

Saucerhead wiped his brow and said, “Why don’t you open a goddamned window? Who’s the old prune, Garrett?”

“The principal. Be nice.”

“Right.”

“What’s up?” I was surprised he’d make a trip out, considering what he was getting paid.

“I maybe found some of the stuff.” He dumped the sack on the writing table. Silver candlesticks. They wouldn’t have been remarkable if silver hadn’t become important lately.

“General?” I asked. “This your stuff?”

“Look on their bases. If they belong to the family, there’ll be a seahorse chop beside the smith’s.”

I looked. Little sea critters. “We have a lead, looks like. What’s the story, Saucerhead?”

Saucerhead has a kind of pipsqueak voice when he’s just making conversation. Doesn’t go with his size at all. He said, “I was jawing with some guys at Morley’s last night, bitching about the job. Looked like it wasn’t going anywhere. Talking about this and that, you know how it is. Then this one guy asks did I think there might be a reward for the stuff. I didn’t know, you never told Morley if there was or not, so I said maybe and did he know something?”

“To make a long story short?”

“He knew some fences I didn’t. Outside guys. So this morning I go to check them. First one I hit, he has the sticks. We talk a little, I threaten a little, he blusters a little, I make mention of how I know he don’t have a connection with the kingpin and I happen to know Chodo personal, would he like me to arrange an introduction? All of a sudden he’s eager to help. He loans me the sticks. I promise to bring them back.”

Which meant he would and, if the General tried to grab them, Saucerhead would walk through him and the rest of the house. He keeps his promises.

“Got you. Can the fence finger the thief?”

“He don’t know squat. Bought the stuff wholesale from somebody out in the country. He’ll sell the wholesaler’s name.”

“Did you follow that, General?”

“I believe so. This dealer in stolen goods bought the candlesticks from another dealer closer to home, here. For a price he’ll sell the man out.”

“That’s it.”

“Go beat it out of him.”

“It doesn’t work that way, General. He offered a straight deal. We should follow through on those terms.”

“Deal with criminals as though they were honorable men?”

“You have all your life, with those bandits off the Hill. But let’s not argue. We have a lead. We could settle the theft problem today. Saucerhead. How much does he want?”

I was thinking long-term now. An unconnected fence? He’d need friends. He could be nurtured and stroked on the head and maybe become a good source someday. If he stayed alive. People aren’t scared of fences the way they’re scared of Morley Dotes or Chodo Contague.

Saucerhead named a price that was pleasantly low. “It’s a bargain, General. Go with it. How much more are you willing to lose to avoid spending a few marks?”

“Collect from Dellwood. He handles the household monies.”

That sounded like a cue for me to get away from a place where I was uncomfortable. “I’ll take care of this, sir.”

Maybe Stantnor sensed my discomfort. He didn’t protest. But there was a glimmer of hurt in his eyes.

I’d never seen it in an old person before, but I’m not around them much. I’d seen it in children, the pain when an adult doesn’t have time to be bothered with them.

That hit me in the spot where I think of myself as one of the good guys. Guilt. Its lack is something I envy Morley. Morley never feels guilty. Morley does what he wants or has to do and is puzzled by the behavior of those of us who had mothers. Where does it come from, that niggling little nasty?

23

Saucerhead said, “That old boy didn’t look good, Garrett. What’s he got?”

“I don’t know. You’re going to help me find out.”

“Say what?”

“Dellwood, the General said give my friend enough to cover some upcoming expenses. How much do you need, Saucerhead?” Hand him a chance to make his trip worth the trouble.

He didn’t bite. Not very big. “Twenty. The guy tries to jack me up, I’ll pull his ears off.” He would. And wrap them with a bow.

“Get the name, then get the guy. Right? But find a doctor somewhere and bring him out here, too.”

“A doctor? You lost me somewhere, Garrett. What you want a doctor for?”

“To look at the old man. He’s got a thing about croakers. Only way to get one close is fool him. So you do that. All right?”

“You’re paying the freight.”

“Hurry all you can.”

“Right.” He was supposed to be too simple for sarcasm but I smelled a load there.

Dellwood gave him twenty marks. He left. I went to the front door, watched him head out in a buggy he’d probably rented from Playmate, a mutual friend. I grumbled about his expenses. The old man had given me a nice advance but I hadn’t counted on quite so many expenses.

Dellwood joined me. “May I ask what that was all about, sir?”

“You can ask. Don’t mean I’ll tell you. Part of the job. You going to tell the General I’m sneaking a doctor in on him?”

He gave it a think. “No sir. It’s appropriate. Except for yesterday he’s been sinking fast. He’s pretending to bear up today, but last night is gnawing at him, too. If there’s a way . . . Let me know if I can aid in the deception.”

“I will. I have a lot to do today.” Like what? Not that much specific. “I’ll let you know before Tharpe gets back.”

“Very well, sir.”

We parted. I went upstairs to see if Morley was in the suite. He’d have a part to play. As I reached the top balcony I spied my friend in white across the way. I waved. She surprised me by waving back.

Morley wasn’t there. Just like him, not to be handy when I needed him. Thoughtless of him. I grabbed my coat and headed out.

The blonde was still there. She wasn’t watching for me. I decided to take one more crack at sneaking up on her. Slipped up to the loft, across, went down.

Ha! Still there!

Only . . . My imagination had run away with me. This wasn’t my blonde. This was Jennifer wearing white and not the same white the blonde wore. She smiled kind of sadly as I approached her. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Life.” She leaned her elbows on the rail. I joined her, leaving a few feet between us. Below, our hero remained locked in mortal combat with the dragon. Chain passed without giving them a glance. I knew how the knight felt. Us heroes like to be applauded for our efforts.

I answered Jennifer with one of those “Uhm?” noises that mean you’ll listen if your companion wants to share her troubles.

“Am I ugly, Garrett?”

I glanced at her. No. She wasn’t. “Not hardly.” I’ve known several equally gorgeous women who were more insecure about their looks than your less-than-average-looking ladies. “The guy who didn’t notice would have to be dead.”

“Thanks.” Trace of a smile, trace of warmth. She moved maybe three inches closer. “That helps.” Half a minute. “But nobody does notice. Even that I’m female.”

How do you tell a woman it isn’t her looks, it’s her inside? That, nice as she looks, she feels like a black widow spider?

You don’t. You fib a little to avoid the cruelty and hate.

Even standing close, with her radiating a need to be wanted, I couldn’t find any interest inside me.

I began to worry about me.

“You don’t notice me.”

“I notice you plenty.” Only somebody with very skewed standards, like maybe a ratman, would call her hard on the eyes. “But I’m taken.” That’s always an out.

“Oh.” That infinite sorrow again. That’s what it was. Sorrow. Sorrow that stretched back to the dawn of her days. An abyss that could gobble the world. “What’s her name?”

“Tinnie. Tinnie Tate.”

“Is she attractive?”

“Yes.” The redhead is in the same class as Jennifer. That is, the howl-at-the-moon class. But we have our problems, one of which is that we aren’t going anywhere. Sort of a can’t-live-with-and-can’t-live-without arrangement, neither of us with enough confidence to risk commitment.

I might have, with Maya . . . Or maybe she just said she was going to marry me so often that I accepted the possibility. I wondered what she was doing. Wondered if I was supposed to track her down. Wondered if she’d ever be back.

“You’re awful thoughtful, Garrett.”

“Tinnie does that to me. And this place . . . This house . . . ”

“Don’t be apologetic. I live here. I know. It’s a sad place. A ghost town all by itself, haunted by might-have-beens. Some of us live in the past and the rest live for a future that’ll never come. And Cook, who lives in another world, is the rock that holds us together.”

She wasn’t so much talking to me as putting feelings into words.

“There’s a road down front, Garrett. Less than half a mile away. Its other end is TunFaire, Karenta, the world. I haven’t been past the front gate since I was fourteen.”

“How old are you now?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Who’s holding you here?”

“Nobody but me. I’m afraid. Everything I imagine I want is out there. And I’m afraid to go see it. When I was fourteen, Cook took me to the city for the summer fair. I wanted so badly to go. It’s the only time I’ve ever been off the estate. It terrified me.”

Odd. Most beautiful women don’t have much trouble coping because they’ve had attention all their lives.

“I know my future. And it frightens me, too.”

I looked at her, thinking she meant Wayne. I’d be disturbed, too, if I were the object of such plans.

“I’ll stay here, in the heart of my fortress, and turn into a crazy old woman while the house crumbles around me and Cook. I’ll never find nerve enough to hire the workmen to put it right. Strangers scare me.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“It has to. My destiny was laid down the week I was born. If my mother had survived . . . But she probably wouldn’t have changed things. She was a strange woman herself, from what I hear. Daughter of a firelord and a stormwarden, raised in an environment almost as cold as mine, betrothed to my father by arrangement between his parents and hers. They never met before their wedding day. My father loved her, though. What happened really hurt him. He never mentions her. He won’t talk about her. But he has her picture in his bedroom. Sometimes he just lies there and stares at it for hours.”

What do you say when somebody tells you something like that? You can’t kiss it and make it better. Not much you can do. Or say. I said, “I’m going to take a walk. Why don’t you get a wrap and come along?”

“How cold is it?”

“Not too bad.” Winter was just blustering and fussing, bluffing, too cowardly to jump in there and bully the world. Which was fine with me. Winter isn’t my favorite season.

“All right.” She pushed away from the rail and walked to the stairs, down, headed for her own suite. I tagged along, which was fine till we neared her door. Then she got nervous. She didn’t want me inside.

Fine. For now her fortress would remain inviolate. I retreated halfway down the hall.

If I’d had doubts about her lack of social skills, they disappeared when she returned in less than a minute. I’ve never known a woman who didn’t spend half an hour changing her shoes. She’d done that and had donned a very sensible, military-type winter coat that, surprisingly, was flattering because it centered attention on her face. And that face made me wince because such beauty was shut up here, wasted. Such beauty, like a great painting, should be out for all to appreciate.

We went downstairs and through that hall between the Stantnor forebears, all of whom noted our passing with grave disapproval. So did Wayne, who maybe thought I was trying to beat his time.

It wasn’t as mild as I’d promised. The wind had picked up since Saucerhead’s departure. It had a good bite but Jennifer didn’t notice. We descended the steps. I set course along the path that Chain, Peters, Tyler and I had taken last night.

I asked, “Would you like to see the city? If you could do it without too much discomfort?” I had in mind turning Saucerhead loose on her. He has a knack for making women comfortable—though his taste runs to gals about five feet short.

“It’s too late. If you’re trying to save me.”

I didn’t say anything to that. My attention was on last night’s trail.

“I saw something strange today,” Jennifer said, shifting subject radically. “A man I don’t know. I went up where you found me looking for him, but he wasn’t there anymore.”

Morley. Had to be. “Maybe my blonde’s boyfriend.”

She glanced at me sharply, the first time she’d looked up since we’d left the house. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No. Of a situation, maybe. I see a woman, over and over. Nobody else sees her. At least, nobody admits she’s there. But now you’re seeing ghosts, too.”

“I saw him, Garrett.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t.”

“But you don’t believe me.”

“I don’t believe or disbelieve. The first rule of my business is keep an open mind.” The second is remember that everybody lies to you.

That seemed to satisfy her. She didn’t speak again for a while.

We came to the place where Tyler died. Tyler wasn’t there. Neither was the draug. I walked around trying to discover what had happened. I couldn’t. I hoped Peters and the others had collected them. I’d have to find out.

The wind was biting, the grass was brown, the sky was gray, and the brooding Stantnor place loomed like a thunderhead of despair. I glanced at the orchard, all those bare arms reaching for the sky. Spring would come for the trees but not for the Stantnors.

“Do you dance?” I asked. Maybe we could force gaiety into the place at swords’ points.

She managed a joke. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

“Hey! We’re making headway. Next thing you’ll be smiling.”

She didn’t respond for half a minute, then bushwhacked me again. “I’m a virgin, Garrett.”

Not exactly a surprise. It figured. But why tell me?

“The other day when you caught me in your stuff, I thought you were the man who would change that. But you aren’t, are you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Peters warned me—”

“That I have a reputation? Maybe. But the way this is, it wouldn’t be right. It has to be right, Jennifer.” Carefully, carefully, Garrett. Hell hath no fury, and all that. “You shouldn’t want to do it just because you don’t want to be a virgin. You should do it because that’s what you want to do. Because you’re with someone special and you want to share something special.”

“I can get preached at by Cook.”

“Sorry. Just trying to tell you how I think. You’re a lovely woman. One of the most beautiful I’ve ever met. The kind men like me only dream about. I’d take you up on it in a second, if I was a guy who could just use a woman and discard her like a gnawed bone, and not care how much she hurts.”

That seemed to help.

Believe me, all that analysis and nimble-footing had me real nervous, prancing around a lot of mixed feelings.

“I think I understand. It’s actually kind of nice.”

“That’s me. Mr. Nice Guy. Talk myself out of the winner’s circle every time.”

She gave me a look.

“Sorry. You’re not used to my brand of wit.”

I was following the backtrails of the draugs slowly now, climbing a gentle slope toward the family cemetery. Jennifer seemed too preoccupied to notice. After we’d walked another fifty yards, she stopped. “Would you do one thing for me?”

“Sure. Even what we were talking about, if it ever becomes right.”

Strained little smile. “Touch me.”

“Huh?” I was back into my trick bag of brilliant repartee.

“Touch me.”

What the hell? I reached out, touched her shoulder. She raised her hand, grabbed mine, moved it to her cheek. I rested my fingers there gently. She had the silkiest skin I’d ever touched.

She started shaking. I mean shaking bad. Tears filled her eyes. She turned away, embarrassed or frightened. After a while she turned back and we started walking again. As we reached the low rail fence around the cemetery, she said, “That was almost as much.”

“What?”

“Nobody ever touched me before. Ever. Not since I was old enough to remember. Cook did, I guess, when I had to be changed and burped and all those things you do with babies.”

I stopped dead, faced that grim old mansion. No wonder it was so goddamned bleak. I faced her. “Come here.”

“What?”

“Just come here.” When she stepped closer, I pulled her into a hug. She went as rigid as an iron post. I held her a moment, then turned loose. “Maybe it’s not too late to start. Everybody’s got to touch sometime. You’re not human if you don’t.” I understand what she wanted when she wanted to stop being a virgin. Sex had nothing to do with it. She might not realize it consciously but she thought sex was the price she had to pay for what she needed.

How many times has Morley told me I’m a sucker for cripples and strays? More than I like to remember. And he’s right—if you call wanting to ease pain being a sucker.

I stepped over the cemetery fence, held her hand as she followed. She caught the hem of her dress, which wasn’t exactly designed for a stroll in the country. She cursed softly. I helped her keep her balance while she worked it loose, looking around as she did so. My gaze fell on a tombstone less aged than most, as simple a marker as there was there. Just a small slab of granite with a name: Eleanor Stantnor. Not even a date.

Jennifer stepped over to it. “My mother.”

That was all? That was the resting place of the woman whose death had warped so many lives and turned the Stantnor place into the house of graydom? I would’ve thought he’d built her a temple . . . Of course. The house had become her mausoleum, her memorial. The house of broken dreams.

Jennifer shuddered and moved closer. I put my arm around her. We had a biting cold wind, a gray day, and a graveyard. I needed to be close to somebody, too.

I said, “I’ve reconsidered. Somewhat. Spend the night with me tonight.” I didn’t explain. I didn’t say anything more. She didn’t say anything, either, neither in protest, shock, or accusation. She stiffened just the slightest, the only sign she’d heard me.

It was an impulse, almost, kicked up by that part of me that hates to see people hurting.

Maybe there’s such a thing as karma. Our good deeds get their reward. A small thing, but if I’d overcome that impulse, I’d probably be dead.

24

We stood looking at the tombstone. I asked, “Do you know much about your mother?”

“Only what I told you, which is all Cook ever told me. Father won’t say anything. He fired everybody after she died, except Cook. There wasn’t anyone else to tell me.”

“What about your grandparents?”

“I don’t know anything about them. My grandfather Stantnor died when I was a baby. My grandmother Stantnor went when my father was a boy. I don’t know who they were on my mother’s side except that they were a stormwarden and a firelord. Cook won’t tell me who they were. I think something bad happened to them and she doesn’t want me to know.”

Ting! A little bell rang inside my head.

A favorite pastime of our ruling class is plotting to snatch the throne. Though we haven’t lately, sometimes we go through periods when we change kings like underwear. We had three in one year, once.

There’d been a big brouhaha when I was eight, maybe seven. About the time Jennifer had been born. An assassination attempt had gone awry and had been so blackhearted at its core that the would-be victim had gotten so righteously pissed off, he’d made a clean sweep. Not a bit of forgive-and-forget. Necks got stretched. Heads and bodies went their separate ways. Arms and legs got hauled around the kingdom and buried individually beneath crossroads. Great estates got confiscated. It hadn’t been a good time to be related to the conspirators, however remotely.

From my neighborhood it had been great fun, watching the ruling class chase its tail and get it caught in a door. Or some such mixed metaphor. When those things come up, everybody on the outside hopes that crowd will wipe themselves out. But they never do. They just select out the least competent schemers.

Shouldn’t be hard to find out who her grandparents had been. “Would you want to know?” I asked. “Is it important to you?”

“It’s not important. It wouldn’t change my life. I don’t know if I care anymore.” After some silence, “I used to dream about them when I was little. They were going to come take me home to their palace. I was really a princess. They’d sent me and my mother here to hide us from their enemies, only something happened. Maybe they’d forgotten where they’d hidden us. I don’t know. I never figured out why they never came. I just pretended that they would, someday.”

A common childhood mind game. But, “It could be true, Jennifer. Things were unsettled politically in those days. It’s possible the marriage was arranged to put your mother out of harm’s way. With your grandparents dead, your father might have been the only one left who knew who your mother was.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. I was young but I remember those days. Some people tried to kill the King. They blew it. He went crazy. A lot of people died, including some who had nothing to do with the plot.” Sometimes you tell the white lie. Wouldn’t hurt to leave her the option of believing her grandparents had been innocents caught in the storm.

She laughed without humor. “Wouldn’t that be something? If my kid’s daydreams were true?”

“Do you still not care?” I could find out about her grandparents without doing much but poke through some old records. Worth the effort if it would brighten her life.

“I think I do care.”

“I’ll find out, then.” I started moving again. She followed, caught up in her thoughts, paying no attention, while I got back onto the trail of the draugs. We were almost to the road before she realized we were still headed away from the house. She might not have noticed then if we hadn’t gotten into some cockleburs.

“Where are you going?” She sounded almost panicky. There was a touch of wildness in her eyes. She looked around like she’d suddenly wakened in enemy territory. Only the peaks of the house were visible above the hummock where the cemetery lay. Once we reached the road, those would be out of sight.

“I’m backtracking the thing that came to the house last night.” I was backtracking all three, really. There were three trails smashed through the weeds. But there were no return trails. That left me a little uneasy. We’d only disposed of two. “I think it came from the swamp that’s supposed to be up ahead there.”

“No. I want to go back.” She looked around like she expected something to jump out at us. And maybe something could. Those draugs hadn’t behaved like story draugs. Who was to say they weren’t immune to daylight? And I wasn’t equipped to handle them. It hadn’t occurred to me to bring any heavy weaponry.

Still, I wasn’t particularly nervous. Without the dark to mask them, they couldn’t sneak up on us.

“Nothing to worry about. We’ll be all right.”

“I’m going back. If you want to go out there . . . ” She said “out there” like I was headed for another world. “If you want, you go ahead.”

“You win. You seen one swamp, you’ve seen them all. And I got a plenty good look in the islands.”

She’d already started walking. I had to trot to catch up. She looked relieved. “It’s almost lunchtime, anyway.”

It was. And I still had to find Morley and rehearse him for Saucerhead’s return. “I should thank you. I’ve missed so many meals, I’m light-headed.”

We went straight to the kitchen. We ate. The others eyed us curiously. Everyone knew we’d gone for a walk. Each invested that with his own special significance. Nobody mentioned it, though Wayne looked like he had a few words he wanted to say.

As Peters was about to leave I asked, “Where can I catch you later?”

“The stable. I’m trying to catch up for Snake.” He didn’t look pleased. That kind of work wouldn’t thrill me, either.

“I’ll be out. Need to ask you something.”

He nodded and went his way. I ingratiated myself by helping Cook for a while. She didn’t say much with Jennifer there, fumbling around. Cook never said much with a third party present. Made me wonder.

I hoped Jennifer wasn’t going to attach herself permanently. But it did seem that way.

I’d just been kind to a stray. But pups run to where the kindness is. My own fault. A sucker, as Morley says.

I had to see him soon or adjust my scheme for the afternoon. I told Cook I’d be back to help later, then headed upstairs, hoping Morley would be in my suite. Jennifer tagged along till it was obvious where I was headed. Then she chickened out. Afraid of a guy with my reputation.

I said good-bye and kept a straight face till I’d let myself in.

No Morley. No sign of Morley. Curious.

It made me uneasy. Morley is an odd bird but he’d make an effort to stay in touch.

I had a bad moment imagining him dead in some hidden place, ambushed. Not a pleasant thought, a friend getting offed for helping with something that wasn’t his concern. But Morley was too much a pro to get taken that way. The mistakes he makes aren’t those kind. When he buys it, it will be because an irate husband appears unexpectedly while he’s in no position to react.

I took a quick guess at how long it would be till Saucerhead returned, decided I’d have to manage without Morley. Black Pete would have to carry the load.

I shrugged into my coat and headed for the stable, making sure my telltales were in position.

I kept an eye out for my blonde sweetheart, but the only person I saw was Kaid on the fourth-floor balcony west scoping out how to haunt the place after his own death.

Kaid was close to the old man. I ought to spend some time with him. He might give me a lead on who might want the General out.

25

I shoved my head into the stables, didn’t spot Peters. A couple of horses grinned at me like they thought their hour had come. “Think what you want,” I told them. “Plot and plan and scheme. I’ve got an arrangement. The General can pay me in horseflesh. Horses that aggravate me are going to end up at the tannery.”

I don’t know why I said that. Pure bull, of course. They wouldn’t believe it, anyway. Wish I understood why horses bring out the silliness in me.

“Peters? You here?” Not seeing him right away worried me. I’d had enough guys turn up dead.

“Here.” From the far end.

It was dark in there. I moved warily, even assuming Peters wasn’t one of the villains.

I found him at the nether end, all right, hard at it with a pitchfork. He grumbled, “That damned Snake must have been playing with his paint set all the time. He hadn’t cleaned out in months. Look at this mess.”

I looked. I wrinkled my nose. Peters was tossing manure and soiled straw into a spreader wagon. “I’m no expert but isn’t this the wrong time of year to spread manure?”

“You got me. All I know is, it’s got to be cleaned out and this’s the wagon you haul it in.” He mumbled some rakledly rikkenfratzes and colorful commentary on Snake Bradon’s ancestors, then added, “I have enough to do without this. What’s up, Garrett? And why don’t you grab a fork and help while you’re resting?”

I grabbed a fork but I wasn’t much help. I was always lucky, even in the Marines, and never had to learn the practical side of keeping horses. “What’s up is, I’ve found the fence who bought the stolen stuff. One of my associates will bring him out this afternoon.”

He stopped pitching. He stared long enough to start me wondering if maybe he wasn’t less than thrilled. He said, “So you are doing something after all. I was starting to think you were a drone. That the only effort you were putting out was trying to get Jennifer to put out.”

“Nope. Not interested. Not my type.” I guess there was an edge to my voice. He dropped it.

“You just wanted to give me the news?”

“No. I need your help. My associate is bringing a doctor, too.”

“And you want me to distract the old man while this croaker gets a look at him?”

“I want you to go down the road and meet them, explain to the doc so he don’t get himself booted before he gets a look. Not that I have any hopes he can tell much without laying hands on.”

Peters grunted and started throwing horse hockey, “When are they coming?”

I tried guessing an optimum turnaround time. With Saucerhead there wouldn’t be many delays. He’d just grab them by the collar and drag them. “I’d think two more hours. If we can, I’d like to get the fence in without anybody seeing him. So we can spring him on whoever.”

He grunted again. “You’re slacking.” We tossed. He said, “I’ll manage. I’ll have to see the old man first. Always something around here.”

I told him, “I have hopes for this.”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe it’ll start things unravelling. If it goes right, we could get it tied up by tonight.”

“You always were too optimistic.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I don’t. You’re not dealing with your average idiots. These guys aren’t going to rattle. They aren’t going to panic. Watch your back.”

“I intend to.”

He put his fork down. “You go ahead. I’m going to go clean up.”

I watched him walk toward the open doorway, grinned. Those ears stuck out like the handles of jugs.

I tossed about three more forksful and quit. Mama Garrett didn’t raise her boy to be a stable hand.

I’d gone a dozen steps toward the house when I had a thought. I turned back and invited myself into Snake Bradon’s den. I fiddled around for five minutes getting a lamp going. Snake wasn’t there anymore. I wondered what they’d done with him. Nobody had done any digging in the cemetery.

Damn! I’d meant to ask Peters about Tyler and the draug!

I missed the Dead Man’s nagging. I just wasn’t alert enough. Getting too turned inward or something. Not paying close enough attention. I didn’t do that when I had the Dead Man to tell me what to do. I went down the list, by the numbers.

All right. I would. I’d failed to meet Snake in time. That didn’t mean Bradon couldn’t still tell me something, as the Dead Man would remind me. They could all tell me things, want to or not, if I concentrated. So let’s start here, now, Garrett.

I did the things I’d done when we’d found Snake. I didn’t learn anything this time, either. But I did pay attention to the paint-splashed worktable. I hadn’t before. I hadn’t considered that side of Snake at all.

Cook said he’d had tremendous artistic talent. Someone else said he might have painted the sorceress Invisible Black. Here, there, there’d been remarks to the effect that he remained an active artist. That side of the man didn’t fit the rest of the Bradon image, to my mind. Artists sponge off the lords of the Hill. However good they are, they can’t make a living doing what they do. I hadn’t considered Bradon an artist because he hadn’t fallen into the groove.

That table was evidence he’d worked plenty. But where were the results? The table wasn’t his product.

I started a thorough search, working outward from the center of Snake Bradon’s life. I found nothing interesting in his room except squirreled stuff for making paints. I recalled that he’d been messy when we were checking what had happened to Hawkes. He’d been working on something recently.

There was a fifteen-by-twenty tack room next to Snake’s hole. The place had been torn apart.

I just stood there, surprised. Somebody was worried about Snake after he was gone? My, my. And Garrett hadn’t been smart enough to get to it first.

If the searcher found something, he did a fine job of getting rid of it. There was nothing there now but a scatter of brushes, some broken underfoot. I wondered if Bradon’s hobby had been a secret. One of those kind everybody knows but nobody mentions. Painting pictures wasn’t a manly, Marine sort of thing to do. He might not have shared with the others.

I was having a little trouble making sense of these people. Again. Still.

I paused to wonder where I’d have hidden something if I’d been Snake. As the searcher probably had, knowing him better.

Brilliant thinker that I am, I came up with a big nothing.

Nothing for it, then. A general search. Every nook and cranny. Whoever had gone before me wouldn’t have had a lot of time. He’d have to be seen places when he was supposed to be. Hell. Maybe he’d done his hunting before Morley and I came along last night. Or maybe while he was supposed to be loading manure?

Whatever, there was a chance he hadn’t found anything.

If anything existed.

I did a quick tour of the ground level. Nothing caught my eye. I felt the imminence of the confrontation with the thief and kept getting more hurried, somehow hoping to have an extra dart when the showdown came.

I climbed into the hayloft, perched on a bale and muttered, “What the hell am I looking for, anyway?” Paintings? He’d painted, obviously. And the product wasn’t in evidence. But what could paintings tell me if I found them?

I shrugged, got up, looked around. Snake had gotten a damned good hay supply in, considering. All neatly bailed, too. From what I recalled the country boys saying back when, that wasn’t common. Ordinary folks filled their lofts with loose hay.

“Ha!” A story recalled. A guy in the outfit, Tulsa something, hell of an archer, did our sniping. Farm kid. Poor background. Died on that island. But he used to laugh about games he’d played with the daughters of the lord of a nearby manor. They’d done it in a secret room they’d built in the hayloft of the lord’s main barn.

I raised my lamp high and stared at all that hay, too much for the state of the place. Might that pile be hollow? I muttered, “That has to be it.”

I poked around the outside, trying to guess how Bradon would have gotten inside. Elimination left me three good spots to find entrances. I set the lamp on a beam and went to work.

I moved maybe ten bales before I decided I’d tried the wrong place first. I went to the next spot, moved another ten bales and felt foolish. Looked like I’d outfoxed myself again.

My activities drew the attention of the natives. Three ugly cats joined me, including an evil old calico. Me moving the bales got the mice stirring. The cats were snacking. They worked as a team, not something cats usually do, as far as I know. When I’d turn a bale, one would jump into the vacated spot to scare mice toward the others. At one point the calico had one mouse under each forepaw and another in her mouth.

“See?” I told them. “I’m not all bad.”

One more try.

Third time was the charm, as they say. I tipped a few bales. Cats flew around. And, behold! A three-foot-high, eighteen-inch-wide hollow, black as a priest’s heart, ran back into the pile. I got the lamp. I asked the cats, “One of you want to run in there and let me know what’s up? No? I didn’t think so.”

I got down on hands and knees and crawled.

26

It smelled in there. Not too bad a smell, but a strong one of moldy hay. It didn’t do my cold any good. My nose ran like a fountain.

There was a room inside the hay, larger than I’d expected. Snake had spanned it with planks to support the bales on top. It was maybe six feet wide and ten feet long. His paintings were there, along with other treasures, mostly what we’d consider trivial or trash. Junk from the war, mostly. And medals. Snake had accumulated him a potful of medals, proudly displayed on a tattered Karentine banner against the narrow end wall.

I couldn’t help feeling for the guy. A hero had come to this. A life for his country, for this.

And our rulers wonder why Glory Mooncalled is a folk hero.

Both side walls were lined with paintings, none of them framed, all just leaning there, stacked three and four deep. They were every bit as good as Cook said they could be. Better, maybe. I’m no expert but they looked like the product of a driven genius.

They weren’t cheerful paintings. They were the spawn of darkness, visions of hell. One caught my eye immediately and hit me like a blow in the gut. It was a swamp. Maybe not the swamp that became my home away from home during my stint, but a place just as horrible. And that painting was no simple, brooding landscape faintly touched with the dark side. Swamp things swarmed there the way they seemed after they’d driven you mad for months. Mosquitos the size of hornets, eyes that watched from the dark, stagnant water. Human bones.

In the foreground was a hanged man. The scavengers had been at him. A dark bird perched on his shoulder, pecked his face. Something about the way he hung left you certain he’d hanged himself rather than go on.

A couple of guys in the company had killed themselves when they couldn’t take it anymore.

Gods. I felt like I could fall into that painting and tumble right back through time.

I turned it around. It got to me that much.

Shaking, I went down the row on that side, then up the other. No other piece had the personal impact that one did but the same genius drove them. They’d have as much power for the right viewer.

“He was crazy,” I murmured.

I couldn’t hear anything well but it seemed the horses below were restless.

I went around again, checking the paintings behind the ones displayed.

Most seemed less maniacal, more illustrative, yet there was no doubt they portrayed places beheld by the same eye that had interpreted the war in the others. One I recognized as a view of Full Harbor contorted into a hellish dreamscape, more proof that Snake had put his memories or haunts onto his canvases.

Snake hadn’t been just a painter of places. The first portrait I encountered was of Jennifer, I’d guess, at the time the General had come home. She was indefinably younger and maybe more beautiful—yet interpreted by mad eyes.

I studied it hard but couldn’t figure it out. Yet Snake had done something with Jennifer that gave me the creeps.

There were portraits of the others, too. Kaid looked old and tired and worn out and you got the feeling that death was watching over his shoulder. The General had some of the creepiness that illuminated Jennifer and something of the fox about him. Chain looked plain mean. Wayne looked like a greedy burgher. I got it! Part of it. Part of the interpretation was how Bradon had clothed them. That was the crude statement. But there were the faces, too, painted like the man had been able to read the bones and souls beneath.

There was a later portrait of Jennifer, crueler than the first but with the lady more beautiful. Then a couple of guys I hadn’t met, presumably among the missing. Then one of Dellwood that reminded me of a basset hound. I guess Snake saying he was a faithful old dog without a soul or mind of his own. Then one of Peters, either a failure for the artist or observer. I couldn’t read anything into it. Then one of Cook that must have been romantic excess because she came off like a saint, like a mother to the world. Then still another of Jennifer, almost repulsive in its portrayal of the dualities, beauty and horror.

Once I got over being startled, I examined it more closely. Part of the effect came at a subconscious level, almost. I don’t know how he did it but he’d painted two faces, one over the other, the outer one of blinding beauty and the other the skull face of death. You didn’t see that one without staring long and hard.

The horses were excited downstairs. I wondered why but was preoccupied with the magic—yeah, the sorcery—of Snake Bradon’s artistry.

If it was a sin that Jennifer’s beauty should be hidden, it was the crime of the century that Bradon’s paintings should go unseen, certain to fall victim to mold and moisture.

Before I left Jennifer, I vowed I’d find some way to bring the paintings out. Snake Bradon wouldn’t go unremembered.

Had he been in love with Jennifer? She was the only subject he’d painted more than once, excepting a scene that looked like a before and after of a nonhuman holy place that had had the misfortune to stumble into the middle of a human battle. The later painting reeked of defilement by the corpses and ravens and bones. It felt like a parable of the world.

I blew my nose, hit the motherlode. Before it watered up again, I caught a whiff of a new odor. What? I shrugged and went on.

“Damn! Ah, damn my eyes!” That was no curse, friends. That was a squeal of triumph.

Snake had painted my lady in white. He had caught her as the incarnation of beauty—yet she, too, had some of the creepiness he’d put into his portraits of Jennifer.

She was in a wind, running, frightened. A darkness lay behind her. You knew it was in pursuit, yet you could not define what it was. The harder you looked the harder it was to tell it was there. The woman looked right into your eyes. The artist’s eyes. Her right hand was just starting the motion of reaching out for help. Her eyes said she knew the person she was looking at knew what was behind her.

It transfixed me. It had the impact of the swamp painting. And this time I couldn’t figure out why, because this one couldn’t be explained in terms of my own past.

I blew my nose again. I got another whiff of that odor. This time I recognized it.

Smoke!

The damned stable was on fire! No wonder the horses were excited!

I scrambled out of there, to the edge of the loft.

Flames roared at the end where Peters had been working. The animals had gotten out and run. I heard shouting outside. The heat was savage.

I wasn’t trapped—yet. If I moved fast I could get clear.

I knew the mileage Morley would get out of the gesture as I dove into the hole leading to Snake’s cache. He’d be on me for a year, risking my life over some daubs on canvas.

I slapped a dozen of those daub-hickeys into a pile as big as I could manage and dragged them out. The fire was spreading fast. Flames were almost to me when I burst out. The heat beat at me. I felt my eyebrows curl, my eyes dry out. I staggered away. The flames came after me.

“Damned fool,” I muttered to myself. The heat seared the back of my neck. Now my eyes watered, nearly blinding me. My chances were slim enough without the damned paintings.

I couldn’t let them go. They were that important. They were worth risking a life. Part of me already mourned those I’d had to leave behind.

The fire had spread below faster than it had up top. It was ahead of me now, at the end where Snake had lived. I wasn’t going to get out that way.

I could see daylight through cracks between the vertical boards that formed the outside wail, rough-cut timber that had shrunk with the years till some of the gaps were half an inch wide. It was like looking through the bars at the gates of hell. From the inside. That close. And so far.

As panic closed in, I threw myself that way.

The stable was old and damned near falling down, and, if it was half as rotten as it looked, I might be able to bust out. I hit the wall with my shoulder, low. Both creaked. Neither broke but I figured the wall had the edge. I got down on my back and shot my feet out. One board gave an inch. That gave me hope and maybe some manic strength. I let fly again. An eight-inch-wide board tilted outward, then fell away under its own weight. Mad as I was, I flipped Bradon’s paintings out before trying to make the hole wide enough for me.

The smoke almost overcame me first, but I made it. I jumped.

I lay around panting a while, vaguely aware that I was out there alone, away from the hollering on the other side of the barn. I climbed a fencepost and got myself upright, looked around, counted limbs to make sure I hadn’t left any behind. I was still alone. I gathered my priceless salvage.

If there are gods, they agreed with me about those paintings. They hadn’t been damaged. I got them together, limped over to the cow barn, hid them in the hayloft. My fuddled sense of humor told me that was appropriate. Then I stumbled back around the far side of the stable.

The whole gang was running around like chickens, doing the hopeless, bringing buckets of water from the wellhouse. Only the General and Peters were absent.

“Garrett!” Jennifer squealed. “What happened?”

I’m such a handsome devil, they just go to pieces when they see me. “I was taking a nap in there,” I lied.

She got a little pale.

I gave her my heroic grin. “Not to worry. I just busted through a wall and here I am.” A coughing jag hit me. Great timing. Damned smoke. “Can’t stop the true of heart.”

“You could’ve been killed.”

“I could have. But I wasn’t. Too light on my feet.”

Kaid said, “Somebody tried to kill you, boy,” as he staggered past with a five-gallon bucket.

I looked at the growing inferno. That hadn’t occurred to me, though it should have.

No. You don’t kill somebody by setting a barn on fire. Too easy for him to get away. Maybe you start a fire to flush him out, but . . . That wouldn’t have worked here. Too many witnesses.

Even in my fuzzy state, it was obvious the arsonist had wanted to get rid of the stable and whatever contents he’d been unable to find during a hasty search.

Wonderful. Snake’s information had escaped me again.

Even Cook was out lugging water. But no Peters. I worked up a case of the suspicions before I recalled why he wasn’t around.

Hell. Saucerhead was overdue. I said, “You guys are wasting your time. Just keep it from jumping to the other buildings.”

“What the hell you think we’re doing, dipshit?” Chain growled. “If you’re not going to help, get the hell out of the way.”

Which was just the advice I needed. “I’m going inside to treat these burns.” I had a few but didn’t know how bad they were. Not too bad, I hoped. I didn’t need them distracting me. The cold was bad enough.

I stumbled away. The others didn’t pay any attention.

27

I walked straight through to the front of the house, past the dueling champions and all the dead Stantnors. I’d been in that stable longer than I’d thought. Saucerhead was way overdue unless I’d guessed badly about how long it would take to recruit a doctor and jump a couple of fences through hoops.

I stepped out the front door. My burns, not bad, made their presence felt. I hoped that doctor would have something for the sting.

Nothing in sight. “Saucerhead, what’s holding you up? How long does it take to twist a guy’s arm?”

A few raindrops hit the steps leading to the porch. I glanced at the sky. Old slabs of lead again. I wondered if the Stantnor place ever had any other kind. It was getting to me.

The wind was rising. That wouldn’t do the firefighters any good. Maybe their best hope was that the rain wouldn’t play around.

It did become a steady fall. Not quite a downpour, but it should help. I guess that took fifteen minutes to develop. The wind started gusting, throwing water onto the porch. I started to retreat. A coach came out of the rain.

That damned Saucerhead. Now it was a hired coach.

It pulled up. People tumbled out. Peters galloped up the steps, followed by a tall, distinguished character whom I presumed to be the doctor. A weasely little character followed him, then Saucerhead and Morley Dotes. I asked Morley, “Where the hell you been? I been trying to find you all morning.”

He gave me a funny look. “Home taking care of business.”

Saucerhead interrupted, “Let’s do it, Garret. This here is Doc Stones.” He indicated the weasely guy. Which goes to show you what it’s worth, judging by appearances. “He’ll get an arm and leg off you for this. That’s your fence there. We got an agreement. No names.”

“Fine with me. As long as he points a finger. Peters. Let’s get upstairs.”

Peters wore a puzzled look. “What’s happening?”

“Somebody tried to burn the stable down. With me inside. Let’s go. Doc, you got anything to take the sting out of burns?”

We moved inside as I asked. Saucerhead asked me, “You want to give him the other arm and leg?”

“What took you so damned long, anyway?” Peters led the way, headed for the stairs.

“Morley. He fooled around finding a doc he thought would look like a fence’s partner.”

That made sense. “Yeah. I guess I can appreciate that. Morley, I thought you were going to prowl around the house, do the stuff I don’t have time to do because I’ve got to be on stage all the time.”

He looked at me funny again, like I was maybe talking too much. So did Peters. Dotes said, “I did what I could, Garrett. But I have a business to run and not a whole lot of time to spend working on the cuff.”

“But I heard you come in and go out a couple times.”

He stopped. “I roamed around an hour after you hit the sack, didn’t find squat, decided I better get back and see if Wedge had robbed me while my back was turned. I didn’t go back to your room.”

I shuddered. The old cold rats pranced up and down my back. “You didn’t?”

“No.”

“Oh, my. But I’d swear I even saw you once.”

“It wasn’t me.”

I was sure. I’d gotten up to use the chamberpot. I’d even grumbled a hello and gotten something growled in return. I told him that.

“It wasn’t me, Garrett. I went home.” Dotes said it in a flat, disturbed voice.

“I’ll take your word for it.” My voice was just as flat. “So who was it?”

“Shape-changer?”

I’d run into one of those before. I didn’t want to do that again. “How? Changers have to kill the people they mimic. Then they absorb their souls, or whatever. And even then they can’t always fool people who knew them.”

“Yes. And this one had me pat?”

“I was pretty damned tired. There was only one lamp burning. And I just walked through, not paying that much attention. But I’d have sworn it was you.”

“I don’t like this. It makes me nervous, Garrett. Real nervous.”

Me too, yeah boy. All we needed was some villain prancing around able to pretend he was somebody else. That would complicate things real good.

Morley was just concerned about Morley Dotes, not everything else. He had troubles enough in life without having somebody else running around doing dirty deeds in his name and face.

I had a broader perspective on it. If somebody here could fake Morley, he could fake me or anybody else, any time. So none of us could ever be sure who we were dealing with. Which undermined the roots of reality. Some fun coming up.

Morley suggested, “You’d better get out while you still can.”

I was tempted. Tempted like I’ve never been tempted before. But, “I can’t. I took the job. If I quit because it’s getting tough, it won’t be that long before I find some good reason to drop another one. That happens a couple times and I won’t get work at all.”

He politely refrained from mentioning the fact that I spend most of my energy avoiding work. “Figured you’d say something like that. So. Let’s get on with it. I want out of here even if you don’t.” He started up the final flight of stairs. “You drink much milk, Garrett?”

“No. Beer.”

“I sort of figured.”

“Why?” The others watched us like we were a road show.

“Not sure what it is about milk. But it’s good for the teeth and bones and brain. A man who drinks milk always has a healthy sense of self-preservation. Beer guzzlers get increasingly feeble in that area.”

He was dressing up a cautionary message as one of his crackpot dietary theories. That way it was easier to tell me he was afraid I was in way over my head.

Peters said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Garrett. I don’t much care. But I do think we ought to get on with it.” He stared at the glass at the rear of the house. The glow from the burning stable shone through. He looked like he wanted to rush off and get involved.

“Right. Go get the old man set.” I stared at the firelight while the rest moved toward the General’s suite.

“Garrett!”

“Coming.”

I caught a glimpse of the blonde across the way, behind a pillar. She smiled and looked like she might wave back if I started it.

I growled and headed down the hall.

Her portrait was one I’d saved from the flames. I’d bring it in and ask some questions. And I was, by damn, going to get some answers.

I was getting tired of being nice.

28

Peters moved on into the deeps of the old man’s suite. The rest of us waited in the study. I killed time by tossing logs on the fire and exchanging puzzled glances with Morley. Each of us wondered how much the other was pulling his leg.

The General arrived, bundled as though for an expedition to the Arctic. He looked at the fire, at me stirring it around so I could get a few more logs on, beamed approval. “Thank you, Mr. Garrett. Thoughtful of you.” He surveyed the crowd. “Who are these people?”

“Mr. Morley Dotes, restaurateur and an associate of mine.” Morley gave him a nod.

“Indeed?” The old man seemed startled, like maybe he knew the name. He looked at me hard, reconsidering his estimate of me.

I said, “You’ve met Mr. Tharpe. The other gentlemen prefer to remain anonymous, but they’ve agreed to point out your thief.”

“Oh.” A hollow sound, that. Faced by the imminence, he wasn’t that anxious to know. I recalled his instructions: don’t let him evade the truth. He asked, “Where are the others?”

I told Peters to get them. He didn’t move till the General agreed. I said, “They’re out trying to contain a fire somebody set in the stable.”

“A fire? Arson?” He was confused.

The doc and Morley studied him intently.

“Yes, sir. Near as I can figure, whoever killed Bradon was afraid something in the stable could connect him with the murder. The place had been searched. Whoever did it probably thought he didn’t have time to do it right so he took second best.”

“Oh.” Again that hollow sound.

I walked over to the door, peeked out. Nothing out there. “Saucerhead, want to warn us when the mob comes?”

He grunted, came over. I whispered, “Did you rehearse those two?”

He grunted again. He didn’t have time to explain. I had to trust his judgment. “General, shall I take the position I did last time? Mr. Tharpe and Mr. Dotes can hold the door.”

“I suppose. I suppose.” As the fire grew and threw more light, I saw that his color was as bad as it had been the other day.

I took my place. A few minutes later Saucerhead announced, “People coming.”

“Let them in but don’t let them back out.”

“Check.”

The doctor retreated into a corner. So did the fence. Morley moved to the side of the door opposite Saucerhead.

They came in looking tired and wary and dispirited. They looked at Morley and Saucerhead like they all thought they’d been caught doing something. Even Peters, and he knew what was happening.

The General said, “Mr. Garrett has some news.”

Mr. Garrett looked at the fence. So did Mr. Tharpe, glowering like the man wouldn’t get out of the house alive if he didn’t point a finger.

He didn’t have to. The bad boy gave himself away.

I said, “Somebody’s been stealing doodads from around here, about twenty thousand marks’ worth. The General wanted to know who. Now we know that, Dellwood. I’m curious why.”

He took it pretty well. Maybe he’d figured that being found out was inevitable. “To meet household expenses. There was no other way to raise the money.”

The General sputtered through a bad case of not wanting to face the truth. He ranted. His people kept blank faces but I got the feeling their sympathies didn’t lie with their employer.

For one second I entertained the possibility that they all wanted to do him in.

Dellwood persisted, “The General provides funds suitable for maintaining a household of ten at the time he left for the Cantard. He won’t believe that prices have risen since then. Not one copper has gone into my pocket. Not one has been spent needlessly. Our suppliers refused to extend further credit.”

Must be hell to be rich and broke.

The General managed, “You might have told me instead of subjecting me to this humiliation.”

“I told you repeatedly, sir. For two years I told you. You had your eyes firmly fixed on the past. You refused to believe that times have changed. I had the choice of doing what I did or allowing you to be hounded by creditors. I chose to shield you. I’ll collect my things now.” He turned to the door.

Saucerhead and Morley blocked his way. I asked, “General?”

The old man didn’t say anything.

“For what it’s worth, sir, I believe he’s telling the truth.”

“Are you calling me a miser?”

“I said nothing of the sort. But you do have that reputation.” I was piqued. I’ve never gone out of my way to cuddle up to a client—of the male persuasion, anyway.

He sputtered some more.

Then he had one of his fits.

For a moment I thought it was a ploy. The others did, too. Maybe he’d cried wolf a few times. Everybody just looked till it was over. Then they all moved in, tripping over each other. I gave Saucerhead the signal to turn the fence loose.

Dellwood led the charge. Nobody hung back. Which did not bode well for my hope that breaking one of the cases within the case would start everything unravelling.

“Back off,” I told them. “Give him some air.” He was past the worst. “Saucerhead, let Dellwood go, too.”

Dellwood managed his exit with considerable dignity. I reflected on the fact that my pay, and Saucerhead’s, and everyone else’s, was likely being financed by his efforts. I glanced at Cook. She’d told me the old man didn’t have a pot to pee in. Here he was, living on his principal without even realizing it.

Was some other helpful soul trying to salvage the estate by hurrying an incompetent, tightwad manager to his reward?

The General got himself under control. “I shan’t thank you for what you’ve done, Mr. Garrett, though I asked for it. Dellwood. Where’s Dellwood?”

“He’s gone, sir.”

“Get him back. He can’t leave. What’ll I do without him?”

“I have no thoughts on the subject, General. I think we’ve accomplished all we can here.”

“Good. Yes. You’re right. Leave me. But get Dellwood back here.”

“Everybody out. Peters, you’d better stay. Kaid? Morley, Saucerhead, I want to talk to you.” I scooted out first.

29

I caught Dellwood in his quarters. He hadn’t bothered to close his door. He was stuffing things into bags. “Come to make sure I don’t take the family jewels?”

“I came to tell you the old man wants you to stay.”

“I’ve spent most of my life attending his wants. Enough is enough. It’ll be a relief being my own man.” He lied. “A man’s loyalty will only stretch so far.”

“You’re upset. You did what you had to do and it brought you trouble. Nobody holds it against you. Not even me.”

“Bull. He’ll hold it against me the rest of his life. That’s the kind of man he is. Whatever my reasons, I rubbed his nose in something. He doesn’t forgive, no matter who was right.”

“But—”

“I know him. Give me credit for that.”

I did. “You walk, you lose everything.”

“The bequest never meant much to me. I’m not poor, Mr. Garrett. I had few expenses while I was in service. I saved my money and I invested it well. I don’t need his bequest to survive.”

“Your choice.” I didn’t move.

He stopped throwing things into bags and looked at me. “What?”

“The General didn’t just hire me to find out who was kyping the family trophies. He also wanted me to find out who’s trying to kill him.”

He sneered. “Kill him? Nobody’s trying to kill him. That’s just his imagination at work.”

“So was theft when I arrived. Except to you. He was right about that and I think he’s right about this.”

“Bull. Who’d profit?”

“Good question. I don’t think the estate has anything to do with it. I can’t supply another motive, though. Yet.” I looked at him expectantly. He didn’t say anything.

“Any friction with anybody? Any time, ever?”

“I can’t give you what you want, Mr. Garrett. We’ve all had our troubles with the General—none of them the kind you kill over. Matters of discipline, that’s all.”

“None of these people are inclined to hold grudges?”

“Chain. He’s a big, stupid farm boy gone to fat at the hips and between the ears. He can hold a grudge forever, but he’s never had one against the General. If you’ll excuse me, sir?”

“Not yet. You’ve known this moment was coming since I got here, haven’t you?”

“I wasn’t surprised you found me out. I was startled that you found the man who bought from me. Will that be all?”

“No. Who killed Hawkes and Snake?”

“I wouldn’t know. I expect you’ll find out. You’re a first-class finder-outer.”

“It’s what I do. You didn’t perchance try to discourage me when you decided I could cause you trouble, did you?”

“Sir?”

“There have been three attempts on my life since I arrived. I wondered if you’d thought you could cover your tracks—”

“That’s not my way. I made it through a Marine career without killing anyone. I have no intention of starting now. I told you, I have nothing to lose here.”

Maybe. And maybe he was just a convincing liar.

I shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you did wrong and I don’t feel that proud of rooting you out.”

“I bear you no ill will. You were only the agency by which the inevitable arrived. But I would like to get on the road before dark.”

“You won’t reconsider? I don’t think the old man will last without you.”

“Kaid can handle him. He should’ve been all along, anyway.”

“Do you know who the blonde woman is?” He had nothing to lose by telling me now.

“A figment of your imagination, I suspect. There’s no blonde woman here. No one but you has seen her.”

“Bradon did. He painted her portrait.”

That stopped him cold. “He did?”

“He did.”

He believed me. He didn’t get much push behind his “Snake was crazy.”

I was pretty sure he knew nothing about any blonde. Which made her that much more interesting an enigma.

I moved out of the doorway, indicating he was free to go. I said, “You can’t tell me anything that might keep somebody else from getting killed?”

“No. I’d tell you if I could.”

He picked up his bags. I suggested, “Catch a ride with my associates when they go.”

He wanted to tell me to go to hell. He didn’t. “Thank you.” It was raining and those bags were heavy.

I asked, “One more thing. What happened to Tyler and the draug from out front?”

“Ask Peters. I don’t know. My duties confined me to the house.”

“The draug that tried to get in the back isn’t accounted for. It didn’t go back to the swamp. Where could it hide out during the day?” Assuming, like story draugs, that it didn’t dare hazard daylight.

“In the outbuildings. I really must go, Mr. Garrett.”

“All right. Thanks for talking to me.”

He headed out, back stick-straight, unapologetic. He’d done what had to be done. He wasn’t ashamed. He wasn’t going to be talked out of leaving, either.

Another one down, I reflected.

Now there were six heirs. The cut for the minority people was up near a half million apiece.

Morley, Saucerhead, and the doctor awaited me beside the fountain. I didn’t approach in any hurry. I was trying to figure out how to launch a draug hunt.

Cook came out as Dellwood headed for the front door. They went into the entry hall arguing. She didn’t want him to go, either.

30

I joined Morley and the others. “What’s the verdict?”

Morley shrugged. “He didn’t shake enough or have trouble enough talking for it to be what I thought. He show any of those symptoms earlier?”

“Some shaking. No real trouble talking. What about the fit?”

“I don’t know. Ask the doc.”

I did. He said, “I don’t quite know. I should’ve had a closer look and a chance to interview the patient. But from where I stood it looked like you need an exorcist more than a doctor.”

“A what?”

Morley was as startled as I was. I’d never seen his eyes bug before. The remark had caught him from the blind side.

“An exorcist. A demonologist. Maybe a necromancer. Possibly all three. Though the first step should be a physical exam to make sure I’m not imagining things.”

“Start over. You’ve got me all turned around.”

“Between us, Mr. Dotes and I have a comprehensive knowledge of poisons. We know of none that produce the combination of symptoms the man shows. Not without affecting him more dramatically, physically, leaving him unable to control his speech and extremities—if he stayed alive at all. Disease is more probable than poison. Who knows what he brought home? I spent eight years down there. I saw a lot of strange diseases, though nothing quite like this. Is he taking any medication?”

“Are you kidding? He’d die first.” I had a thought. “How about malaria?” I’d been one lucky Marine. I’d never contracted malaria. “Or some kind of yellow fever?”

“I thought of that. A virulent strain of malaria, with massive quinine treatments, might produce most of the symptoms he shows. Tainted medication might account for the rest. But you said he’d die before accepting medication. I really must know his medical history before I hazard a guess.”

“Why that business about an exorcist?”

“My chief suspicion lies in the supernatural realm. Several varieties of malign spirit could produce the symptoms we see. My advice would be to examine his past. You might find something there to explain what’s happening. You might also look for an origin in unfriendly witchcraft. An enemy may have sent a spirit against him.”

Black Pete showed up in time to catch most of the discussion. I asked, “You make anything of that? The General have enemies who’d off him that way?”

He shook his head. “The answer is here, Garrett. I’m sure. He doesn’t have enemies who’d want to kill him. The worst ones he does have are the kind who’d send somebody like your friend.” He twitched a hand toward Morley.

“There’s no sorcerer around here. Unless you count Bradon, who’s gone. Doctor, could an amateur necromancer have sicked something on him, say accidentally, that would stick after the spirit-master died?”

“An amateur? I doubt it. Somebody really potent, maybe. If they stuck around themselves, as a ghost. Hatred is the usual force animating spirits that devour a man from within. And I mean hatred strong enough to bend the laws of nature. Hatred that wants its object to suffer for all eternity. But I’m no expert. Which is why I suggested a demonologist, an exorcist, a necromancer. You must discover the nature of the spirit, then banish it. Or raise it up, find out what animates its hatred and appease it.”

Peters said, “This is crazy, Garrett. The General never made that kind of enemy.”

“We’re talking possibilities. The doc says the whole thing could be physical. He needs to do a hands-on physical exam. And he needs a detailed medical history. What’re the chances?”

He looked at me, at the doctor, glanced at Morley and Saucerhead. “Better than you think.” His voice turned hard. “The old bastard can only threaten so much. We don’t have to give him a choice. I’ll be back in five minutes.” He strode toward the kitchen.

Morley settled on the fountain surround, in the shadow of the dragon’s wing. “Now what?”

“Let’s wait. He’ll talk to Cook. If she goes along, you’ll get to look at Stantnor.” Cook might not be mother to the world but she was queen of the Stantnor household. “Doctor. Can you suggest any experts who might help?”

“Let’s see if we get to examine the patient. If I find no physical cause, I’ll provide referrals. They won’t come cheaply, though.”

“Does anybody but me?”

Morley had a big yuk. “This is the man who paid cash for a house with the take from one case.”

“And for every one of those, I have fifty where I give Saucerhead half my fee to get them to pay up. You know anything about the art world?”

“That’s a change of subject. I know something about everything. I need to. What do you need?”

“Say I discovered an unknown painter genius whose work deserves display. Who would I see to get things moving?”

He shrugged, grinned. “Got me. Now if you had some hot old masters I could help. I know people who know morally flexible collectors. If you have something like you’re talking about, you should see your friend with the brewery.”

“Weider?”

“He’s got fingers in all the cultural pies. Honorary director of this and that. He has the contacts. You don’t have some old masters, do you?” He glanced around. I’m sure he’d been inventorying potential plunder.

“You won’t find anything here but portraits of old guys with whiskers who scowl a lot, all painted by people you never heard of.”

“I noticed the welcoming committee. I wondered how long it takes the Stantnors to train their young not to smile.”

“Might be hereditary. I’ve never seen Jennifer do more than fake it.”

“Your buddy’s coming.”

Peters was coming from the kitchen under a full spread of sail. I knew what he’d say before he said it. He said it anyway. “We don’t give the old man a vote.”

“He’ll cut you out of his will.”

“Ask me if I give a damn. Let’s go.” But he hung back, gave me a look that said he wanted a private word. I let the others move upstairs a flight.

“What?”

“That crack about the will. In all the excitement I plain forgot to tell you before. The copy the General burned wasn’t the only one. He always made two of every document. Sometimes three.”

“Oh?” Interesting. That meant nothing had changed, if the killer knew. “How many are there?”

“One for sure. He gave it to me to give to you. Like you asked. I put it in my quarters, then got distracted till I was talking to Cook and she said the same thing you did, about getting cut out.”

“It wasn’t that important to you?”

“No. I did you a favor, then forgot to carry through. Till it hit me what that copy could mean.”

“It could mean the killer won’t back off. If he knows about it. Who knows?”

“Dellwood and Kaid. They were there. And everybody else knows the General made copies of documents.”

“Where’d you put it? Give me your key. I’ll grab it now. You go ahead and get after the old man.”

He gave me a nasty look. I knew what he was thinking. I wanted to toss his quarters. I told him, “I don’t think you’ve got anything to hide.”

“You’re a bastard, Garrett. Put me in a spot where I’m damned whatever I do.”

“You do have something to hide?”

He glared. “No!”

“Then get it yourself. I’ll take your word.” I recalled the fire, for which he could have been responsible. I hung in there, taking a chance on my guts. “But hurry.”

He gave me the key. “In the drawer of my writing table.”

Cook came rumbling up, the stair shuddering to her tread. “We going to do this?” she demanded. “Or we going to gossip?”

Smart woman, Cook. The old man couldn’t dismiss her. If she went in and sat on him, all he could do was cuss and take it. “Thanks,” I told her.

She gave me half a sneer. “What for? He’s my baby, ain’t he?”

“Yeah.” I watched them hurry to overtake the others. The General would be in the worst tactical position of his life. He couldn’t do anything to Morley, Saucerhead, the doc, or Cook. And he’d be damned stupid if he did anything about Peters. If he ran Black Pete off, he’d be damned near out of help. He had to think survival in more than personal terms. He had to think about keeping the estate in shape.

I suspected its value was dropping fast.

I fingered Peters’s key, glanced around. I had the feeling I was being watched, but I saw nobody. My blonde again, I thought. I wondered where the others were. At work, presumably.

A vampirous spirit, eh? On top of draugs? What a lovely place to live.

31

Something wasnt right. Black Pete’s door wasn’t locked. He wasn’t the sloppy type.

It worked before, so I grabbed a shield and stormed inside. And didn’t find anything this time, either.

The damned place was haunted by practical jokers. I tossed the shield against the doorframe, put up my head-knocker, went to the writing table. The room was a mirror image of my sitting room. I sat down at an identical table.

I guess I heard a sole scuff the carpet. I started to turn, to duck. That’s all I did, started.

Something hit me like a monument falling. I saw shooting stars. I think I howled. I lurched forward. My face met the tabletop. It wasn’t a friendly meeting.

It’s pretty hard to knock somebody out. You either don’t hit hard enough, in which case your victim gets after you, or you hit him too hard and he croaks. If you have any idea what you’re doing, you don’t bash him up top the head. Unless you want to smash his skull.

This blow was aimed at my skull. I moved that much. It hit the side of my neck and bounced off my shoulder. It didn’t put me out—not more than ninety-nine percent. It paralyzed me. For half a minute I was vaguely aware of a shape in motion. Then the lights went out.

Got to stay away from the hard stuff, I thought as I came around. Getting too old for it. The hangover isn’t worth it.

I thought I was slumped over my desk at home. The truth dawned as I tried to get up. I saw unfamiliar surroundings. My head spun. I fell, banged my jaw off the edge of the table, curled up on the floor, and dumped Cook’s lunch. When I tried to move, the heaves started again.

Sometime during the fun somebody ran past, headed for the door. All I saw was a flash of brown. I didn’t much care.

Concussion, I thought. That scared me. I’d seen guys with their brains scrambled after getting hit on the head. I’d seen them paralyzed. I’d seen them go to sleep and never wake up.

Got to stay awake, Garrett. Got to stay awake. That’s what the docs say. Get up, Garrett. To hell with the heaves. Take charge, Garrett. Make the flesh obey the will.

Trouble was, there wasn’t much will left.

After a while I got my knees under me and crawled to the door. I fell down a few times during the trek. But the exercise did me good. I arrived so chipper, I was afraid I wasn’t going to die. I worked up so much ambition that I swung the door open and moved out a yard before I collapsed and passed out again.

Gentle, delicate fingers slid lightly over my face, feeling my features the way a blind woman once did. I’d turned over somehow. I cracked one eyelid a millionth of an inch.

My sweetheart in white had come to succor me. At least she looked concerned. Her lips moved but I didn’t hear anything.

Panic. I’d heard of guys who’d lost their hearing, too.

She jumped away. Not that she needed to. I was in no shape to run down a brigand snail. More, Black Pete’s door had closed on my legs. I was caught like a mouse. I managed a feeble “Don’t go. Please.”

The investigative mind was at work. It wanted to know.

She came back. She settled onto her knees, resumed massaging my head. “Are you badly hurt?” Her voice was the ghost of a whisper. She sounded concerned. She looked concerned.

“Only in my heart. You keep running away.” We investigator types are tough. We keep our eye on the prime objective. “You’re the loveliest woman I’ve ever seen.”

That put a light in her eyes. Strange how women like to be told they’re pretty. Strange like a rock falling when you drop it. She even smiled for a hundredth of a second.

“Who are you?” I thought about telling her I loved her, but that seemed premature. I’d give it ten more minutes.

She didn’t tell me. She just massaged my forehead and temples and sang something so softly I couldn’t make out the words.

Who was I to question the will of the gods? I closed my eyes and let it happen.

The song got a little louder. A lullaby. A hush-my-love kind of thing. Fine by me. The hell with business. This was the life.

Something brushed my lips, light as falling eiderdown, warm. I cracked my eye. She was an inch away, smiling.

Yeah.

Then everything drained out of her face. She jumped up and fled. Bam! Before I overcame inertia and turned my head, she was gone.

Feet pounded up the hallway, businesslike, then hurriedly. “Garrett! What happened?” Peters dropped to his knees. He wasn’t nearly as attractive as his predecessor.

I managed to croak, “Somebody in your room. Bopped me on my bean.”

He jumped up and shoved inside. I had smarts enough left to drag my legs out before the door closed. That’s all I did. Seemed like a good day’s work.

Peters bounded out. “They tore the place apart.” He had something in his hand. “Here’s the will. What else could they have been after?”

“Probably was that.”

He scowled at me. “Did you have to puke all over?”

“Yeah. A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”

“Why didn’t he get it, if that’s what he wanted?”

“I fell over the desk. He couldn’t get at it without moving me and maybe having me wake up. Lit out when I did start coming to. Who could have heard us talking?”

“Couldn’t have been Cook or Kaid. They were upstairs with the old man. Wayne’s out burying Snake, Hawkes, and Tyler.”

I let him help me into a sitting position. “Where were they?”

“In the wellhouse. It’s cooler in there. What difference does that make?”

“That leaves Chain, doesn’t it? Or Dellwood, if he doubled back.”

“Chain’s supposed to be out keeping an eye on what’s left of the fire and trying to salvage something from the stable.”

“Wasn’t any ghost. And it wasn’t a draug. Did we find the third draug?”

“Nobody’s had time to look.”

“He’ll find us, then.” I lifted a hand. He helped me up. Between him and the wall, they managed to keep me upright. “What was the verdict on the old man?” My head hurt so much, I no longer felt my burns. The old silver lining.

“They were looking for you to tell you.”

“You tell me.”

“He fired me and Kaid, too. We told him to go to hell, we’re not going anywhere.”

“I guess you aren’t going to tell me.”

“I don’t want to say it. Not something that’s easy to believe.”

That told me enough. But I let him help me downstairs, to the fountain, where I perched on the fountain surround and tried to work out which way was up till Morley and the others showed. I said, “I take it that I’m shopping for a demonologist.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Morley said. “I didn’t do it.”

“You look spooked.”

“Spooks spook me, Garrett. Even a vampire or a werewolf, I can do something about. I can’t get ahold of a spook.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t want to believe we had a haunt here. I wasn’t quite ready to buy it. It would be easier to swallow without a legacy at stake. It wouldn’t be the first fake ghost used to cover a little bloodletting.

It sure wasn’t any spook who offed Hawkes and Bradon. No spook tried to trap me, ax me, burn me, knock a hole in my head.

Everybody stood around looking at me like I was in charge. So I said, “My head’s killing me.” And, “Morley, you want to stay over tonight? Give me a hand?”

“I was afraid you’d ask.”

Just his sweet-natured way of saying yes.

“Cash money,” I promised.

“How are you going to get cash when that old man doesn’t have any?”

I didn’t tell him I’d grabbed it off going in, though the expenses had about devoured their allowance. “I’ll figure something. How’d he take it?”

“He wasn’t pleased. To put it mildly.”

I looked at the doctor. “You couldn’t find a physical cause?” Oh, please. Please?

The weasel shook his head. “Not saying it isn’t something I don’t recognize. Or a combination. But bring in a demonologist. Hell, I’ll send one. Eliminate the mysterious first. If there’s no supernatural cause, send for me. Be an interesting challenge.”

Morley grinned slyly. “You two work it right, you could have careers here. Him trying to root out an unknown disease and you trying to find a killer who’s smarter than you are.”

I grumbled, “My part’s easy. I just stay alive till there’s only one suspect left.” My head was killing me. That didn’t do wonders for my temper. “Doc, you got something for a headache?”

“What happened?”

I told him.

He insisted on examining me and offering the usual advice about concussions. Maybe he wasn’t a pure thief. I have a low opinion of professionals, notably doctors and lawyers, supported by experience.

He gave me a dose of the old standby, syrup heavily laced with nasty-tasting stuff boiled out of the inner bark of willow branches. With that perking in my stomach I decided to get on with getting on. “Peters, it’ll be suppertime soon. These guys might be hungry. Square it with Cook, if they want to eat. I’m going to drop in on the General.”

Peters grunted, asked if anybody wanted supper. Saucerhead and the doctor were all for that. And Morley was staying anyway.

As I climbed the stairs, I recalled that I’d told Dellwood he should ride into town in the coach. Was he out there waiting, freezing with the coachman?

It was still raining. I felt for Wayne and Chain, too. Though Chain not so much. I had him. All I needed to do was push him into a box and put a bow on him.

“Throw him out,” Stantnor rasped at Kaid, when I invited myself in.

Kaid eyed me. “I don’t believe he’ll let me, sir.” He said it with a straight face. There was a twinkle in his eye. He turned to the fire to hide a smile.

I asked, “Did you hear the diagnosis, General?”

“Mr. Garrett. I didn’t employ you to interfere in my life. I employed you to find a thief.”

“And a killer. And a would-be killer who wants your scalp. And that implies that part of the job is to keep you alive. And to do that I need to know how they’re trying to kill you. The assumption was poison. The assumption was wrong.”

He appeared surprised. Maybe they hadn’t told him. Maybe he’d become so obnoxious, they’d just walked.

“Mr. Dotes is an expert on poisons. Likewise the doctor, who’s also an expert on tropical diseases.” Could it hurt to exaggerate? “They say you’re not being poisoned, unless it’s a poison so exotic they’ve never heard of it. And you’re not suffering from any known disease, though the doctor says you’re anemic and jaundiced. Have you had malaria, General?”

I think he was secretly touched that people cared enough to look out for him in spite of himself. “Yes. Hard to avoid it in the islands.”

“Bad?”

“No.”

“You taking quinine on the sly? The doctor says impure quinine might explain some of your problems.”

“No! I won’t . . . ” He suffered one of his spasms. Was it his heart?

It was a minor one. He’d begun to recover before Kaid reached him. He croaked, “No, Mr. Garrett. No medication. I’d refuse if it was offered.”

“I thought so. But I had to make sure before I tell you what they think.”

“Which is?” He was coming back fast.

“You’re haunted.”

“Eh?” That blindsided him. He looked at Kaid. Kaid just looked baffled.

“Your problem is supernatural. Your enemy is a ghost. Or somebody who can send a spirit against you. Peters says you don’t have that kind of enemies. The doctor says look at your past for somebody.”

I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but his color worsened dramatically. He damned near turned gray.

There was something. Some dark past moment unknown to anyone else, so dreadful someone might reach out from the grave to restore the balance. Hell, a place like the Stantnor shack wouldn’t be complete without a horror in its past, without a curse.

“We’d better talk about it,” I said. “We’ll have to hire experts.” I gave Kaid a meaningful look. The old man wouldn’t want to confess ancient evils in front of a crowd. “A demonologist. An exorcist. Possibly a medium or necromancer to communicate with the spirit.” Kaid was as thick as a brick. He didn’t move.

The General said nothing till he was sure he’d say only what he wanted to be heard. And that was, “Get out, Garrett.”

“When you’re ready to talk, then.”

“Get out. Leave me alone. Hell, get out of my house. Get out of my life . . . ”

He had another fit. This was a big one. Kaid yelled, “Get that doctor up here!” His expression lacked any forgiveness for having gotten the old man so excited.

Strange people, every one.

32

I joined Cook in the kitchen. We were alone. “Can you use a hand?”

“Come to try sweet-talking me out of something, eh? I see right through you, boy. You ought to know by now I don’t run my mouth. I don’t tell nobody nothing that ain’t none of their business.”

“Of course.” I rolled up my sleeves, eyed the heap of dirty stuff distastefully. Not much I hate more than washing dishes. But I stole a pot of hot water off the stove, prepared a sink, put more water on to heat, dug in. Ten minutes of silence passed. I waited till I felt her curiosity becoming palpable.

“You were up there when they looked at the General. What did you think?”

“I think that croaker is as crooked as the General says.” She didn’t sound convinced. She sounded worried.

“Know what he thinks is wrong?”

“I know what he said. He’s crazy if he believes it. Ain’t no haunts around here.”

“Three draugs.”

She grunted. There lay the core of her doubt. If those draugs hadn’t come, she wouldn’t have given the doctor’s idea a glance.

“People keep telling me, the General doesn’t have enemies of the killing kind. And there’s no incentive here for anyone to hurry him along, despite the size of the estate.”

“What’ll be left after he lets it wither. I swear, his damnfool sickness has infected the whole place.” Her voice was weak. She wasn’t the woman she’d been.

Things were going on inside her head. She had no attention to spare.

“If nobody from today wants to kill him, to torment him with slow death and the hell between when he passes, who in his past might? My gut feeling is, it goes back to before his move to the Cantard.”

She grunted and threw utensils around and didn’t say anything.

“What happened? The only trauma I know of is his wife’s death. Could that have something to do with it? Her parents . . . Jennifer says she thinks they were a firelord and stormwarden but she doesn’t know who. Is this a legacy from them? A delayed curse?”

She still didn’t have squat to say.

“Were they involved in the Blue cabal that went after Kenrick III?”

“You put a lot together out of nothing, boy.”

“That’s what I do. I get paid for it. I think the grandparents were involved. I think Jennifer’s mother came here partly to hide from reprisals if the plot failed. Lucky her. It did. And Kenrick devoured everyone remotely related to it. I wonder if the doctor who administered an incorrect drug was on the royal payroll. Maybe Jennifer survived only because he couldn’t murder a newborn.”

“You do put it together.”

I kept quiet, hoping she’d fill the vacuum.

I washed, set stuff out to dry. There was enough work for me to make me a new career when I got tired of the old one. I was tempted.

“The missus’s mother called herself Charon Light. Her daddy was Nightmare Blue.”

“One fun-loving guy.” Nightmare Blue had put the Blue plot together. He’d been as mean-spirited and vicious as they came. The story was that only the threatened defection of key conspirators forced him to confine his scheme to the King. He’d wanted to scrub Kenrick’s whole house. The bad blood between the men stemmed from a mysterious childhood incident.

Charon Light, supposedly, was as innocent as a wife could be. She’d apparently been ignorant of the plot till the last hours. There was reason to suspect she’d been responsible for its failure, in the penultimate moment warning the King.

We’ll never know—unless someone raises the dead to ask. None of those people survived. I doubt anybody would try. Raising a sorcerer is a fool’s game—unless you’re a more powerful sorcerer.

“Eleanor’s mother brought her here to hide her?”

Cook grunted, having second thoughts about talking. She kept her peace for a few minutes. I got more hot water.

“Her mother brought her. In the middle of the night, it was. A devil’s own night, thunder and lightning and the wind howling like all the lost souls. She was some distant relative of the Stantnors’ was Charon Light. Don’t recall her born name. Something Fen. She brought the child in so frightened, she wet herself. As bad as Jennifer, she was, never been out of her own house before. Such a pretty young thing, too.”

“Like Jennifer.”

“She was more retiring than Jenny. Jenny can work herself up. She’s an actress, our Jenny. She puts on a role like a dress, that child. Not young mistress Eleanor. Scared of her own shadow, that one.”

I grunted this time.

“The old General and Charon Light, they worked it out right here in this kitchen. I was here, serving tea. They’d marry the child to young Will, in name only, so she’d be safe. This was only a couple days before the storm broke. Kenrick couldn’t do nothing to upset the old General. He was the only rock between Karenta and defeat in the Cantard in those days.”

The war hadn’t meant much to me back then. My father had been dead for years, killed down there, and I wasn’t old enough to worry about going. But I did recall that, at about that time, Karenta’s fortunes had been at low ebb and there’d been talk about the elder Stantnor being the only man who could handle the Venageti of the day.

“You want the benefit of my suspicion, I think Charon Light was going to deal. Going to sell the plot for immunity. I don’t know if that’s how she went. She didn’t survive.”

I told her, “I’m starting to get confused. I thought Jennifer was born about then. And she had an older brother.”

“Half brother. His mother was the General’s first wife. Have-to wedding when he was sixteen. Daughter of a serving woman. But you don’t need to know that.”

“I need to know everything if I’m going to make sense of what’s happening. Hidden things kill. What happened to the first wife?”

“They stayed married till the boy was old enough for tutors and nannies. Then he put her aside. The old General sent the family away.”

“Hard feelings involved?”

“Plenty. But the old General bought them off. He reminded young Will every day. Especially if he spent a night out wenching. A terror, he was, when he was a lad. Obsessed, you might say.” She didn’t sound like she’d thought him an amusing rake. He didn’t sound like somebody I’d have liked.

For fifteen minutes I tried to get her to tell me more. I got only enough to guess the young Stantnor was a crude ass, a driven philanderer whose life had gained direction and meaning only after his permanent move to the Cantard.

“So he wasn’t a nice guy. Who from those days hated him enough to—”

“No.” There was no equivocation there. “That’s life, Garrett. The hurt don’t hang on. Everybody does stupid things when they’re young.”

Some don’t ever stop.

“Everybody grows out of them. You don’t laugh at them when you look back, but you don’t take a killing grudge to your grave, neither.”

I don’t know. The Stantnors seemed pretty skewed. If that extended to their circle, someone in contact might hold a grudge over something normal people would call bad luck.

“Then you tell me. Who’s haunting him?”

She stopped working, looked at me. She’d remembered something she hadn’t thought about in years. For a moment she teetered on the brink of telling me. Then she shook her head. Her face closed down. “No. It wasn’t that way.”

“What wasn’t?”

“Nothing. Some cruel gossip. Nothing to do with us today.”

“You’d better tell me. It might have some bearing.”

“I don’t repeat no lies about no one. Wouldn’t have nothing to do with this, nohow.”

I got my third pot of hot water. I was tearing them up. I bet she hadn’t seen so many clean dishes in years. I’m good for something. Can’t keep people from killing each other, but I’m a wiz at washing dishes. Might be time to consider a career change.

After a while, she said, “What goes around comes around. He sure fell for Missus Eleanor. She was his goddess.”

We all want what we’re not supposed to have. I tried an encouraging grunt. When that didn’t get any response I tried a direct question. She said, “I think I done talked too much already. I think I done said things I shouldn’t have said to no outsider.”

I doubted that. I thought she’d weighed every word and had told me exactly what she wanted me to know. She’d give me another ration when she thought I was ready.

“I hope you know what you’re doing. I’d bet there’re things in your head that could save lives.”

Maybe I pressed a touch too hard there. She didn’t have to be told what she already knew. She resented it. She gave me a dirty look and clammed up till dinnertime. Then she only growled and gave orders.