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v4.1 16 June 2002 - merger to single HTML file for PRC conversion
Bam! Bam! Bam!
It sounded like someone was knocking with a sledgehammer. I rolled over and cracked a bloodshot eye. I couldn’t see a figure through the window, but that wasn’t surprising. I could barely make out the lettering on the grimy glass:
GARRETT
INVESTIGATOR
CONFIDENTIAL AGENT
I had blown my wad buying the glass and wound up being my own painter.
The window was as dirty as last week’s dishwater, but not filthy enough to block out the piercing morning light. The damned sun wasn’t up yet! And I’d been out till the second watch barhopping while I followed a guy who might lead me to a guy who might know where I could find a guy. All this led to was a pounding headache.
“Go away!” I growled. “Not available.”
Bam! Bam! Bam!
“Go to hell away!” I yelled. It left my head feeling like an egg that had just bounced off the edge of a frying pan. I wondered if I ought to feel the back to see if the yolk was leaking, but it seemed like too much work. I’d just go ahead and die.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
I have a little trouble with my temper, especially when I have a hangover. I was halfway to the door with two feet of lead-weighted truncheon before sense penetrated the scrambled yolk.
When they are that insistent, it’s somebody from up the hill with a summons to do work too sticky to lay on their own boys. Or it’s somebody from down the hill with the word that you’re stepping on the wrong toes.
In the latter case the truncheon might be useful.
I yanked the door open.
For a moment I didn’t see the woman. She barely came up to my chest. I eyeballed the three guys behind her. They were lugging enough steel to outfit their own army, but I wouldn’t have been shy about wading in. Two of them were about fifteen years old and the other was about a hundred and five.
“We’re invaded by dwarfs,” I moaned. None of them was taller than the woman.
“Are you Garrett?” She looked disappointed in what she saw.
“No. Two doors down. Good-bye.” Slam! Two doors down was a night-working ratman who made a hobby of getting on my nerves. I figured it was his turn in the barrel.
I stumbled toward bed with the vague suspicion that I had seen those people before.
I wriggled around like an old dog. When you’re hung over there is no way to get comfortable, feather bed or creek bed. Just as I was getting reacquainted with being horizontal again, Bam! Bam! Bam!
I told myself I wouldn’t move. They would take the hint.
They didn’t. It sounded like the entire room was about to cave in. I was not going to get any more sleep.
I got up again—gingerly—and drank a quart of water. I chased it with skunky beer and clung to my temper precariously.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
“I don’t make a habit of busting female heads,” I told the tiny woman when I opened the door again. “But in your case I think I can make an exception.”
She was not impressed. “Dad wants to see you, Garrett.”
“Say, that’s wonderful. That explains a gang of runts trying to break my door down. What does the gnome king want?”
The old codger said, “Rose, it’s obvious this isn’t a convenient time for Mr. Garrett. We’ve waited three days. A few more hours won’t make any difference.”
Rose? I should know a Rose from somewhere. But where?
“Mr. Garrett, I’m Lester Tate. And I want to apologize—on Rose’s behalf—for bothering you at this hour. She’s a headstrong child, and having been overindulged by my brother all her life, she’s blind to any desires but her own.” He spoke in the soft, tired voice of a man who spends a lot of time arguing with a whirlwind.
“Lester Tate?” I asked. “Like in Denny Tate’s uncle Lester?”
“Yes.”
“It’s beginning to come back. The family picnic at Elephant Rocks three years ago. I came with Denny.” Maybe I had laundered my memory because Rose had been an unspeakably nasty wench that day. “Maybe it was all the hardware that made me forget your faces.” Denny Tate and I went back about eight years, but I hadn’t seen him in months. “So how is Denny?” I asked, maybe a little guilty.
“Dead!” barked sweet sister Rose.
Denny Tate and I were heroes of the Cantard Wars. That means we did our five years and got out alive. A lot of guys don’t.
We went in about the same time, were barracked less than twenty miles apart, but never met till later, here in TunFaire, eight hundred miles from the fighting. He was light cavalry out of Fort Must. I was Fleet Marines, mostly aboard the Imperial Kimmswick out of Full Harbor. I fought in the islands. Denny rode over most of the Cantard, chasing or running away from the Venageti. We both made sergeant before we got out.
It was a nasty war. It still is. I like it better now that it’s much farther away.
Denny saw more of the worst than I did. The fighting at sea and in the islands was sideshow stuff. Neither we nor the Venageti wasted wizards on it. All the flash and fury of sorcery got saved for the struggle on the mainland.
Anyway, we’d both survived our five, and had done part of them in the same general area, and that had given us something in common when we met. It was good enough till we got to know one another.
“So that’s why you’re a walking arsenal. What is it? A vendetta? Maybe you’d better get inside.”
Rose cackled like a hen laying a square egg.
Uncle Lester laughed too, but it was a laugh of a different breed. “Shut up, Rosie. I’m sorry, Mr. Garrett. The weapons are here to feed Rosie’s hunger for drama. She believes we don’t dare enter this neighborhood unarmed lest the local thugs ravish her.”
It was not a good dawn for me. Few of them are. Without thinking, I cracked, “The thugs in my neighborhood have some taste. She doesn’t have to worry.” Blame it on the hangover.
Uncle Lester grinned. Rose looked at me like I was dog flop she wanted off her shoe.
I tried to gloss over with business. “Who did it? What can I do about it?”
“Nobody did it,” Rose told me. “He fell off a horse and busted his head, his neck, and about ten other bones.”
“Hard to believe a skilled horseman could go that way.”
“It happened in broad daylight on a busy street. There’s no doubt that it was an accident.”
“Then what do you need me for? Especially before the sun is up?”
“That’s for Dad to tell,” Rose said. The shrew had a lot of anger in her, anger that was there before I gave her cause. “Bringing you in on it was his idea, not mine.”
I knew Denny’s old man modestly. Well enough to use his first name if I was the kind of snotnose who calls his friends’ parent by name instead of Mister. He ran a very successful cobbler’s business. He, Denny, and two journeyman handled the custom and commercial trade. Uncle Lester and a dozen apprentices made boots under an open-end deal with the army. The war had been good to Denny’s dad.
They do say it is an ill wind indeed that blows no one any good
Well, I was awake. Hair of the dog and scintillating conversation had reduced the pounding in my head to the tramp of ten thousand legions. Still there was a nagging guilt about not having made time to see Denny before the old gal in black climbed on his back. I decided to find out why the old man needed somebody in my line of work when there wasn’t a doubt about how Denny checked out.
“Let me get myself put together and we’ll be on our way.”
Rose grinned wickedly. I realized I’d fed her a murderous straight line.
I didn’t stick around to hear her pounce on it.
Willard Tate was no bigger than the rest of his tribe. A gnome. He was bald on top with tasseled gray hair to his shoulders on the sides and longer in the back. He was bent over his workbench, tapping tiny brass nails into the heel of a woman’s shoe. Clearly he was at the top of his trade. He wore square TanHageen spectacles and they don’t come cheap.
He was engrossed in his work. Recalling his state since his wife died, I figured he was working off grief.
“Mr. Tate?” He knew I was there. I had cooled my heels for twenty minutes while they told him.
He drove one more nail with a single perfect tap, looked at me over his cheaters. “Mr. Garrett. They tell me you made mock of our size.”
“I get nasty when somebody drags me out before the sun comes up.”
“That’s Rose. If she has to see you in, she’ll see you in the hard way. I made a bad job of her. Keep her in mind as you rear your own children.”
I said nothing. You tell somebody you look forward to blindness more eagerly than to having kids, you don’t win any friends. Those that don’t think you’re lying think you’re crazy.
“Do you have a problem with short people, Mr. Garrett?”
About six flip answers never saw the air. He was dead serious. “Not really. Denny wouldn’t have been my buddy if I did. Why? Is it important?”
“In a sideways sort of way. Did you ever wonder why the Tates are so small?”
I had never dwelled on it. “No.”
“It’s the blood. The taint of elvish. On both sides, several generations before my time. Keep that in mind. It will help you understand later.”
I wasn’t surprised. I’d suspected it before, the way Denny got along with animals. Plenty of people have the taint, yet most cover it up. There is a lot of prejudice against the half elfin.
My hangover had improved, but not much. I had no patience. “Can we get to the point, Mr. Tate? You want me to do a job, or what?”
“I want you to find someone.” He rose from his bench and shed his leather apron. “Come with me.”
I went. He took me into the Tate secret world, the compound behind the manufactory. Denny never did that.
“You’ve been doing all right for yourself,” I said. We entered a formal garden, the existence of which I’d never suspected.
“We manage.”
I should manage so good. “Where are we headed?”
“Denny’s apartment.”
Buildings stood shoulder to shoulder around the garden. From the street they looked like one continuous featureless warehouse. From the garden I could not imagine how I’d ever thought that. These houses were as fine as anything up the hill. They simply didn’t face the street and make temptingly dangerous statements.
I wondered if they killed the workmen when the job was done. “The whole Tate tribe lives here?”
“Yes.”
“Not much privacy.”
“Too much, I think. We all have our own apartments. Some have street-side doors. Denny’s does.” Tate’s tone said “This is a Significant Fact.”
My curiosity was definitely growing. Tate’s whole attitude indicated indignation at Denny’s having had secrets from his old man.
He took me to Denny’s place. The air inside was stuffy and warm, the way closed places get in summer. Nothing had changed since the one time Denny had invited me in—through the street-side door—except that Denny wasn’t there. That made a lot of difference.
The place was as plain and neat as a new cheap coffin. Denny had been a man of ascetic habits. He’d never hinted at the comforts enjoyed by his family.
“It’s in the basement.”
“What is?”
“What I want you to see before I start explaining.” He collected a lantern and lit it with a long match, which he kept burning.
Moments later we were in a basement as spotless as the ground floor. Old Man Tate and his match went around lighting lamps. I made like a cat too lazy to lick his own paws and just hung around with my mouth open.
Tate wore a small, smug smile when he faced me again. “Well?”
The cat that had my tongue could have fought a couple weights heavier than a snow leopard.
The only place you even hear about that much precious metal lying around is in stories about dragon hoards.
Actually, when my mind started working, I saw it wasn’t so much after all. Just more than I’d ever imagined I would see in one place. A few hundred robbers working double shifts for four or five years might pile up as much.
“Where . . . ? How . . . ?”
“I don’t know most of the answers myself, Mr. Garrett. My knowledge is limited to the notes Denny left. They were all written to himself. He knew what he was talking about. There is enough to fill in the outlines, though. I expect you’ll want to read everything before you start.”
I nodded but did not hear him. My friend Denny, the shoemaker. With a basement full of silver. Denny, whose only mention of money had been about the share he had taken when his regiment had overwhelmed a Venageti treasure caravan fleeing the defeat at Jordan Wells.
“How much?” I croaked. I was not getting any better. The little guy that sits in the back row inside my head started catcalling me. I never thought wealth could have so much impact upon me.
“Sixty thousand marks in Karentine coined silver. The equivalent of eighteen thousand marks in coined silver of other states. Eight hundred four-ounce bars. Six hundred twenty-three eight-ounce bars. Forty-four one-pound bars. One hundred ten pounds in larger bars. Just under one thousand coined goldmarks. There’s some billet tin and copper, too. A nice amount, but it doesn’t count for much compared with the silver.”
“Not unless a couple copper sceats would make the difference between eating and starvation. How did he do it? Don’t tell me making ballroom slippers for fat duchesses. Nobody gets rich . . . working.” I almost said “honestly.”
“Trading in metals.” Tate gave me a don’t-be-stupid look. “Playing the changes in the shifting exchange rate between gold and silver. Buying silver when it was cheap against gold, selling it when gold was cheap against silver. He started with his prize money from the army. He switched back and forth at the best points in the cycle. That’s what I meant when I said keep the elvish blood in mind. We people of elvish ancestry have a feel for silver.”
“You’re stereotyping yourself, Pop.”
“You understand what I’ve said? How he came by it? I don’t want you to think it’s dishonest wealth.”
“I understand.” That did not make me think it was necessarily honest.
Anyone with a knack for reading the shifts could get rich the same way. Silver goes up and down violently according to the army’s fortunes in the Cantard. As long as we are plagued by sorcerers, there will be an incredible demand for the metal.
Ninety percent of the world’s silver is mined in the Cantard. Under all the excuses and historical claims, the mines are what the war is all about. Maybe if we could rid the world of magicians and their hunger for the mystic metal, peace and prosperity would break out all over.
“Well?” Tate asked.
“Well what?”
“Will you do the job for us?”
Good question, I thought.
I looked at Tate and saw a momentary idiot, a fool trying to twist me into doing something he feared I’d turn my back on if I knew the whole story. “Pop, would you make shoes if you didn’t know the size? If you hadn’t even seen the person who was going to wear them? Without knowing anything about getting paid? I’ve been real patient on account of you being Denny’s old man. But I’m not going to play games.”
He hemmed and hawed.
“Come on, Pop. Open the poke. Shake it out. Let’s see if the little porker oinks or meows.”
His expression became pained, almost pleading. “I’m just trying to do right by my son. Trying to carry out his last wishes.”
“We’ll put up a statue. When does the clam open up? Or do I go home and finish sleeping off this hangover?” Why do they always do this? They bring you in to handle a problem, then lie about it or hide it from you. But they never stop screaming for results.
“You’ve got to understand—”
“Mr. Tate, I don’t have to understand anything except exactly what is going on. Why don’t you start from the beginning, tell me what you know, what you want, and why you need me. And don’t leave anything out. If I take the job and find out you have, I’ll get extremely angry. I’m not a very nice man when I get angry.”
“Have you had your breakfast, Mr. Garrett? Of course not. Rose wakened you and brought you straight here. Why don’t we do that while I order my thoughts?”
“Because there’s nothing guaranteed to make me madder quicker than a stall.”
He went red in the face. He was not used to backtalk.
“You talk or I walk. This is my life you’re wasting.”
“Damn it, a man can’t . . . ”
I started toward the stairs.
“All right. Stop.”
I paused, waited.
“After Denny died, I came here and found all this,” Tate said. “And I found a will. A registered will.”
Most people don’t bother to register, but that didn’t amount to anything remarkable. “So?”
“So in the will he names you and me his executors.”
“That damned sawed-off little runt! I’d break his neck for him if he hadn’t already done it himself. That’s it? All the shuffle-footing and coy looks is because he rung in an outsider?”
“Hardly. It’s the terms of the will that are embarrassing.”
“Yeah? He tell everybody what he thought of them?”
“In a way. He left everything but our executor’s fees to someone none of us ever heard of.”
I laughed. That was Denny. “So? He made the money. It’s his to give away.”
“I don’t deny that. And I don’t mind, believe it or not. But for Rose’s sake . . . ”
“You know what he thought about her? Want me to tell you?”
“She is his sister.”
“Not that he had any choice about it. The nicest thing he ever said about her was, ‘She’s a useless, lazy, whining, conniving freeloader.’ The word bitch came up a few times, too.”
“But—”
“Never mind. I don’t want to hear it. So what you want is for me to find this mysterious heir, eh? And then what?” They want you to do some crazy things sometimes. I could guess why Denny registered his will. A Rose with thorns.
“Just tell her the bequest is here for the claiming. Get a statement of intent we can file with the registry probate. Already they’re harassing us about showing them that we’re doing something to execute the terms of the will.”
That figured. I knew those jackasses. Before the brewery gave me the consulting job, I did investigations for them, free-lance, to make ends meet. “You said ‘her.’ This heir is a woman?” Denny never mentioned knowing any women all the time I knew him. I had him figured for a complete asexual.
“Yes. An old girlfriend, from when he was in the army. He never fell out of love, it seems, and they never stopped writing letters, even though she married somebody else. You’ll find your best leads in those letters. You were in the Cantard, too, so you’ll know the places she talks about.”
“The Cantard?”
“That’s where she is, yes. Where are you going?”
“I’ve been to the Cantard once. I didn’t get a choice that time. This time I do. Find yourself another patsy, Mr. Tate.”
“Mr. Garrett, you’re one of the executors. And I’m too old to make that trip.”
“Won’t hold a shot of legal water, Pop. An executor don’t have to do squat if he didn’t say he would and sign to do it up front. Good-bye.”
“Mr. Garrett, the law allows the executors to draw up to ten percent of the value of an estate to recompense themselves and to cover their expenses. Denny’s estate will go on the up side of a hundred thousand marks.”
That was a stopper. Something to make me think. For about two winks. “Five thousand ain’t to die for, Pop. And I don’t have anybody to leave it to.”
“Ten thousand, Mr. Garrett. I’ll leave you my side. I don’t want it.”
I admit I hesitated first. “No.”
“I’ll pay your expenses out of my own purse. That makes it ten thousand clear.”
I stayed clammed. Was the old coot in training for a devil’s job?
“What will it take, Mr. Garrett?”
“How come you’re so hot to find this frail?”
“I want to meet her, Mr. Garrett. I want to see the sort of woman capable of making a monkey of my son. Name your price.”
“Even rich don’t do you any good if the wild dogs of the Cantard are cracking your bones to get at the marrow.”
“Name your price, Mr. Garrett. I am an old man who has lost the son he expected to follow him. I am a wealthy man with no more need to cling to wealth. I am a determined man. I will see this woman. So again I say, name your price.”
I should have known better. Hell, I did know better. I’d been saying so for ten minutes. “Give me a thousand on account. I’ll look over the stuff Denny left and do some poking around at this end, just to see if it’s feasible. I’ll let you know what I decide.”
I went back down the stairs and pulled up a chair behind the desk where Denny’s letters and notes were piled.
“I have to get back to work,” Tate called. “I’ll have Rose bring you some breakfast.”
As I listened to Tale’s tiny footsteps fade away, I couldn’t help but weigh the possibility of dear Rose slipping something poisonous into my food. I sighed and turned to my work, hoping this next meal wouldn’t be my last.
The first thing I did was look for the stuff Denny’s family had missed. Misers always have something they think they have to hide. A basement like that, plain as it looked, had a thousand crannies where things could be squirreled away.
Just as I spotted it a little dirt fell from the under-flooring overhead. I cocked an ear. Not a sound. Somebody was doing a passable job of cat-footing around up there.
I had my feet on Denny’s desk and was expanding my literary horizons when Rose and my griddle cakes sneaked on stage. I checked her over the top of the first page of a letter that somehow had a quality of déjà vu. But I didn’t pay much attention. The smell of griddle cakes with wild honey, tea, hen’s eggs, hot buttered bread, and steamed boodleberry preserves was a bit distracting to a man in my condition.
Rose was distracting, too. She was smiling.
Snakes smile that way before they strike.
When her sort smile you had better check over your shoulder for a guy with a knife.
She placed the tray before me, still smiling. “Here’s a little of everything we had in the kitchen. I hope you’ll find something to suit.”
When they’re nice to you, you had better get your back against a wall.
“Your feet hurt?”
“No.” She gave me a puzzled look. “What makes you ask that?”
“The look on your face. It has to be pain.”
Not a flicker of response, except, “So the old man talked you into it, did he?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Into what?”
“Finding that woman of Denny’s.” Plenty of vitriol pent up behind that smile.
“Nope. I told him I’d go over Denny’s papers and look around town a little. I would tell him what I thought. That’s all.”
“You’re going to do it. How much did he offer you to find her?”
I put my best blank cardplaying face and stared into the starved ice marbles of her eyes. I don’t believe that stuff about windows of the soul. I’ve seen too many lying eyes. But beyond hers lay nothing but shatter-sharp flint and frosty iron.
“I’ll give you twenty percent if you don’t find her. Twenty-five if you find her dead.”
Blank-faced, I started on my breakfast. There was ham and sausage, too. The tea was so good I drained half the pot before I touched anything else.
“I could be very generous,” she said, turning sideways, posing to show what she had.
She had the equipment. All of it, and plenty of it. A prime little package, but a package filled with rot. “Denny said that you like small women.”
Some better than others, I thought. “I make a point of trying not to be cruel to people, Rose. The best I can do here is speak plain and say I’m not interested.”
She took rejection well. She ignored it. “I’m going with you, you know.”
“With me? Where?”
“To the Cantard.”
“I’ve got a flash for you, lady. I’m not doing any dirty work for you, and you aren’t crossing the street with me. I do thank you for bringing breakfast. I need it, and appreciate it. Now go away and let me see if there’s any reason I should be fool enough to get into this at all.”
“I’m a stubborn woman, Garrett. I usually get what I want. If you won’t help me, you’d better walk away from the whole thing. People who get in my way get hurt.”
“Unless you’re out of here by the time I finish this cup of tea you’re going over my knee and getting what your old man should have given you while you were still young enough to have some sense pounded into you.”
She retreated to the stairway. “I’ll claim you raped me.”
I grinned. Last refuge of the female scoundrel. “I’m not rich like you, but I can afford a truthsayer. Go ahead. Let’s see how your dad takes losing two kids in one week.”
She started upstairs. End of that game.
I went back and dug the dark package from the shadow between two floor joists anchored on the outside foundation. It was not hidden. Every space along that wall was stuffed. But the wrapping of this bundle was a cavalry saddle blanket. Denny’s service meant a lot to him. He kept every memento. What he would wrap in his saddle blanket would be important too.
I dropped my seabag into the harbor as I strutted down the gangway the day I mustered out. Tells you how thrilled I was with the life of a Royal Marine.
The bundle contained a stack of military maps of the Cantard, most ours, a few Venageti. Both kinds are dangerous to have. You could get arrested for spying. The people who ask questions for the court don’t stop till you confess.
With the maps were overlays of skin scraped transparently thin and several slim, expensive, bound journals.
I took the lot to Denny’s desk.
Each of the overlays examined a critical battle of the past six years. The names of captains, commanders, and outfits were noted. One journal examined each battle commander by commander and unit by unit.
What the hell? Denny wasn’t any war buff.
Reading gave me a glimmer, though. For instance, the table of royal officers:
1: Count Agar: Impulsive. Overly aggressive. Prone to act on inadequate intelligence.
9: Margrave Leon: Timid. Wants sure thing before offering battle. Easily rattled during engagement.
14: Viscount Noah: Vacillator. Excessively ferocious when engaged. A spendthrift of men and material.
22: Glory Mooncalled: Best all-around commander under Karentine colors. Excellent tactician. Able to train slowest and most uninspired men. Handicapped by low birth, mercenary status, and role in Seigod Mutiny while serving Venageti side. Weakness is a consuming hatred of Venageti warlords.
There was a Venageti list, too, and an analysis of potential matches and mismatches. If you were in the business of shuffling gold and silver, it would be handy to know who would control the silver mines a few months down the road. Denny had been serious about trying to outguess fortune.
I smelted an old dead carp, though. Denny drew forty-eight marks prize money and mustering-out pay. You don’t turn forty-eight marks into a hundred thousand without cutting corners.
Denny’s business log contained some hints.
Note from V: An agent of Stormlord Atto inquired the cost of 50 pd silver. First tremor of preparation for new offensive?
Z reported verbally: Harrow made port with 200 pd silver in ballast. Must sell before Mooncalled takes Freemantle.
Harrow southbound with 1000 pd granulated inside hollowed ballast billets. Biggest deal yet. Pray for fair weather.
Letter from K. Warlord Ironlock, 20,000 men, 3 firelords of the Eastern Circle, Third Rite, ordered to Lare. Attack through the Bled? Viscount Blush defending. Buy coined silver.
V, Z, and several others could be the cavalry cronies Denny hung out with. There were hints it was a tight group operation. But K was no old army buddy.
I turned to the heir and lover’s letters last, about the time a cousin dropped in to ask what 1 wanted for lunch.
“Whatever the rest of you are having. With a quart of beer. And tell old man Tate I need him.”
That was when I started the letters. That’s when the guy in the cheap seats decided I was going back to the Cantard. The rest of me fought the valiant fight for a long time.
“You look like you saw a ghost,” Tate said.
I looked up from the letter I’d been staring at for five minutes. “What? Oh. Yeah. Almost. Mr. Tate, you told me it was honest money.”
He did not say anything. He had suspected it was something shady.
“You had any unusual visitors? Sudden old friends of Denny’s asking questions?”
“No.”
“You will. Soon. There’s too much here for them to let it go. Be careful.”
“What do you mean?”
It seemed an honest question. So maybe he did not know the world well enough to read what Denny had written. I laid it out for him.
He did not believe me.
“Doesn’t matter what either of us thinks. The point is, so far I’m interested enough to keep on. I’ll need that thousand. There are going to be heavy expenses from the start. And a box. I need a big box.”
“I’ll have Lester bring the money from the office. Why do you want a box?”
“To pack all this stuff.”
“No.”
“Say what?”
“You’re not taking it out of here.”
“I’m taking it or I’m taking me away. You want me to do a job, you let me do it. My way.”
“Mr. Garrett . . . ”
“Pop, you’re paying for results, not the right to mess with me. Get me a box, then go pound nails in a shoe. I don’t have time for whining and games.”
He hadn’t recovered from what I had said about Denny. He did not have any fight left. He took off.
The funny thing was he left me feeling guilty, like I had been giving him a hard time just to puff up my own ego. I didn’t need that guilt. So I ended up giving in and just letting everything go the way Tate wanted.
Strange how you can manipulate yourself when somebody outside can’t.
I leaned back and watched dust fall from the underflooring as a pair of sneaky feet stole after Tate.
I was still that way when the cousin brought lunch and beer. I was busy inhaling that when Uncle Lester appeared with a fat moneybag and a big wicker chest. I finished my beer in one long draft, belched against the back of my wrist, asked, “What do you think about all this, Uncle Lester?”
He shrugged. “Ain’t my place to say.”
“How’s that?”
“Eh?”
It began to sound like hogs-at-the-trough time—all grunts and snorts. “Did you read any of this stuff?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Care to comment?”
“Looked like Denny was dipping his toes in the shadows. You could tell that better than me.”
“He was. And he was an amateur. A damned lucky amateur. You ever have any hints that he was into anything?”
“Nope. Unless you count that woman’s letters. Them writing back and forth like that all this time seemed a mite odd to me. Ain’t natural.”
“Yes?”
“The boy was kin, and he’s dead, and you don’t want to speak ill of either one. But he was a bit strange, that boy. Always a loner ’fore he went off to the war. I’d bet that woman is the only one he ever had. If he had her. He didn’t look at one after he got back.”
“Maybe he crossed?”
Lester snorted and gave me his best look of disgust, like I didn’t know about the Tates and the elves back when—though the cartha are the interspecies rage these days.
“Just asking. I didn’t think so. He seemed to be a guy who just wasn’t interested. I’ve been in brag sessions when he was around. He never had a story to tell.”
Lester smirked. “Listened polite like, way you might if’n I started telling stories about when I was a kid.”
He had me.
It is not often Garrett gets caught with nothing to say.
He grinned. “On that note I’ll be goin’.”
I grunted at his stern. Then I leaned back and closed my eyes and surrendered to the haunt that had me so distracted. To the coincidence so long the devils themselves must have pulled it in.
Kayean Kronk.
Maybe Denny could spend all those years in love with a memory. I gave it three hard ones before I broke the spell.
There was only one thing to do. Go see the Dead Man.
He’s called the Dead Man because they killed him four hundred years ago. But he is neither dead nor a man. He is a Loghyr, and they don’t die just because somebody sticks a bunch of knives into them. Their bodies go through the motions—cooling out, rigor mortis, lividity—but they do not corrupt. Not at any rate mere humans can detect. Loghyr bones have been found in the ruins on Khatar Island; they are very similar to a human’s when they are dry.
“Hey, Old Bones. Don’t look like the diet is working.” The Dead Man is four hundred fifty pounds of mean, a little ragged around the edges, where the moths and mice and ants have gotten to him. He was parked in a chair in a dark room in a house that pretended to be both abandoned and haunted. He smelled. The corruption process is slow, but it goes on. “You need a bath, too.”
A psychic chill set me shivering. He was sleeping. He isn’t easy to get along with at his best, and he’s at his worst when newly awakened.
I am not sleeping. I am meditating.
The thoughts hammered at my brain.
“Guess it’s all a matter of perspective.”
The psychic chill became physical. My breath clouded and my shoe buckles frosted over. I hurried with a little propitiations that are necessary when dealing with the Dead Man. The freshly cut flowers went into the big crystal bowl on the filthy old table before him. Then I lit candles. His sense of humor insists there be thirteen of them, all black, burning while he is in consultation.
To my knowledge he is the only Loghyr ever to allow his genius to be commercialized.
He does not need the candlelight to see visitors or flowers. But he likes to pretend that he does.
Aha! I see you now. Garrett. You pestilence. Can’t you leave me alone? Every other day you’re in here, worse than the moths and mice.
“It’s been five months, Chuckles. And from the looks of this place you’ve been meditating the whole time.”
A mouse that had been hiding beneath his oversized chair made a break for it. The Dead Man snatched it with his mind and sent it flying out of the house. Moths exploded away from him. He was incapable of doing malicious harm to bugs, who wanted to eat him, but could make life unholy hell for people with the effrontery to ask him to work.
“You have to work sometime,” I told him. “Even a dead man has to pay the rent. And you need somebody to give you a bath and clean the place up. Not to mention getting the vermin out again.”
A big, shiny black spider crawled out of one piglike nostril on the end of his ten-inch trunk. It did not like my looks. It ducked back inside.
Cheap flowers.
They were not. I had given him absolutely no legitimate cause for complaint. He couldn’t banish me because he didn’t want to work. I knew the state of his finances. His landlord had come to me about his last month’s rent.
Must not be much of a client you have, Garrett. You sneaking around after cheating wives again?
“You know better.” I was out of all that, thanks to him.
How much?
“You owe me for a month’s rent already.”
You have the smug, content look of a man whose expenses have been guaranteed.
“So?”
How much can you soak your client before he squawks?
“I don’t know.”
Enough, I think, the way you look. Which is like a man who has a good fix on the pot at the end of the rainbow. Start reading.
“What?”
Stop playing the idiot, Garrett. You’re too old. You dragged that crate of stuff here so you could bore me. That is the worst of being dead, Garrett. It is damned boring. You cannot do anything.
“Loghyr don’t do anything when they’re alive.”
Read, Garrett. Your welcome is wearing thin.
I won. Sort of. He listened while I gave him every word, showed him every map. A smooth, professional report. I stumbled only twice, once over the name Kayean, once when he set a squeaking mouse whizzing playfully around my head. It took a couple of hours and I got very dry. But I’d prepared for that, having been through it before.
As I downed a long draft of beer, my head rang to, Very thorough. As far as it goes. What did you leave out?
“Nothing. You got the whole show.”
You are lying, Garrett. And not very convincingly. Though perhaps you are lying more to yourself than to me. You tripped on the woman’s name. It has meaning to you.
Well, if you will lie to your best friend, you will lie to yourself. The Dead Man doesn’t tell any tales. “It has meaning.”
Continue.
“I knew a Kayean Kronk when I was in the Cantard. Her father was one of the Syndics of Port Fell. I was nineteen when I met her. She was seventeen. I fell hard. I thought she did too. But the campaign in the islands came up and I only got to see her maybe two days a month because we spent most of our time at sea. After about six months of that she started getting cool. Then I came in and there was a very kind letter asking me not to come see her, she was in love, the usual sort of thing. I never saw her again. I heard she was going with a cavalryman, and her father disliked him even more than he had disliked me. That was the last I heard of her till today.
“I had a rocky few years after that. It hit me pretty hard.”
End of confession.
A long silence.
Your friend never mentioned that woman’s name?
“He never mentioned a woman.”
An odd coincidence, and a long one, but not impossible. It would be illuminating to know if he was aware of the identity of the woman’s previous lover. How did you meet?
“We met in a tavern where veterans hung out. We had liked one another. Not one detail I could recall implied that he had knowledge of me through a third party. I don’t think he was the kind of guy who could stay around somebody who had been his lover’s lover. I’d bet his whole fortune that he didn’t realize that I was the Marine she’d been seeing.”
You may be betting it. You realize that the amount of money involved is going to have a lot of people interested in this business?
“That’s why I came to you. I need your advice.”
My main advice you would ignore.
“What’s that?”
Leave it alone. Stick with the brewery work. This could get you killed. Especially on the Cantard end. Some very dangerous people have to be involved there, if only peripherally.
“How so?”
Who did the woman marry? the Dead Man countered.
“I don’t know. Why? Do you think it’s important?”
I will hazard to opine that it may become the crux of the affair.
“Why?”
It is evident from the woman’s letters that she has access to information very restricted in nature and extremely dangerous to possess. She passed along data not only on the present movements and future plans of your armies, but on those of the Venageti as well. The implication is that she is in a unique position. Among you humans, females are not permitted to assume the responsibilities of such a position as a career. Thus, the further implication that she is mated to a man in such a position.
The Dead Man’s mind speech has all the nuance of verbal communication—once you learn to do without gestures and facial expressions. He was crowing. “I could have figured that out soon enough.”
About the time someone cut your throat. You count upon your ability to bluff or battle your way through obstacles, rather than thinking your way around them. It is a failing common to your race. All of you seem to believe that exercising your minds is shameful or painful, and prefer instead to snatch up a sword at the first hint of . . .
He was off on his favorite crusade. Soon he would begin the paeans to the infinite superiority of Loghyr reasoning and logic and wisdom. I shut him out.
That can be done if he is distracted by musing upon his own magnificence, if you’re subtle and don’t draw attention to what you’re doing. I hid behind my beer and counted silently. Having heard it all before, I knew how long he needed to get it out of his system.
Garrett!
So I miscalculated by a few seconds. He probably cheated. He knew me pretty well, too. But he was abnormally mellow. He employed none of his usual childish devices. Maybe I had given him enough to crack the boredom of being dead.
“Yes?”
Pay attention. I asked if you are determined to go ahead with this.
“I’m not sure.”
Your body calls your mouth a liar. I have this advice for you, inasmuch as you mean to go ahead despite all reason. Do not go this one alone. And do not permit emotion to get in the way of your usually strong instinct for your own best interest. Whatever else this woman may be or may have been, she is not the girl you loved when she was seventeen. No more are you that callow Marine of nineteen. If ever, for a minute, you allow yourself to believe that those days can be restored, you are lost. They are dead. Take it from an expert on being dead. There is no way to get your health back. You live on memories of what was and fancies about what might have been. Both can be deadly to the man who loses sight of the demarcation between them and reality.
“End of speech?”
End of speech. Were you listening?
“I was listening.”
Did you hear me?
“I heard.”
It is well. You are a pestilence upon my waning centuries, Garrett, but you keep me amused. I do not want to lose you yet. Be careful in the Cantard. You will not have me there to lift you out of the consequences of your folly. It grates, but I fear I would miss you, insolence, disobedience, and all.
Which was about the nicest thing he ever said to me. I had to get out before we started getting maudlin.
I made a beer run before going back to give him his bath and his place a bit of cleanup.
It was past suppertime when I left the Dead Man’s place. The shadows were long and indigo. The sky was turning colors you usually see only in elvish portraiture. It had been a long day, and there was a lot of it yet to go.
The first order of business would be to see the Dead Man’s landlord and get him a few months ahead on his rent.
I’ll buy the place for him if I ever make the big strike, though he could do that for himself if he wanted. It would, however, take several months of concentrated work for him to earn enough money. The very thought sends him into psychic spasms.
Next step would be to look up Morley Dotes, which I’d had in mind even before the Dead Man admonished me against following my usual lone-wolf course. He was right. The Cantard is no place to go alone.
A massive hand hurtled out of an alley mouth, snagged my arm, and yanked.
Sometimes the city isn’t so safe either.
I slammed into a wall and slid away from a fist I sensed more than I saw. I threw a feeble right that was just a distractor while I unloaded a girlish shin kick. The mountain of muscle and gristle before me waltzed back far enough for me to take in its true dimensions. They were awesome.
“Saucerhead Tharpe.”
“Hey, Garrett. Man. If I’d knowed it was you, I’d never have taken this job.”
“Shucks. I bet you say that to all the boys.”
“Aw. Don’t be that way, Garrett. We all got to make it the best way we know how.”
I caught a glimpse of a familiar short person watching from across the street.
I dragged out a fat purse containing part of the largesse her uncle had bestowed upon me earlier.
“Hey. Come on, Garrett. You know you can’t bribe me to lay off. I’m really sorry this’s got to be you and me. But I got paid for the job. Where would I be if it got around that I could be bought off? I’d be out of work. I’m very, very, sorry, Garrett. But I got to do what I got paid to do.”
I had expected no luck, but it had seemed worth a try.
I said, “I’d be the last guy to ask you to welsh on a deal, Saucerhead.”
“Gee. I’m glad. I was scared you wouldn’t understand.”
“I want you to do a job for me, Saucerhead. There’s five marks in it.”
“Yeah. I’d feel a whole lot better about this if I could do something for you. What is it?”
“That woman across the street. The one that sicced you onto me. When we’re done here I want you to take her down to the Bazaar, strip her down naked, bend her over your lap, and give her thirty good whacks on the backside. Then turn her loose and let her walk home.”
“Naked?”
“Naked.”
“She wouldn’t get out of the Bazaar, Garrett.”
“There’s another five in it if she gets home all right. But without finding out you’re looking out for her.”
Saucerhead grinned. “It’s a deal, Garrett.” He stuck out a palm the size of a snowshoe. I dropped five marks into it.
Saucerhead’s hand dipped into a pocket. I hit him up side the head with the purse. I put everything I had behind it. Then I ran like hell for two steps.
He gave Rose her money’s worth, fulfilling his contract to the letter.
I tried to defend myself, of course, and actually did pretty well. Not many hang in there a whole minute against Saucerhead Tharpe. I even gave him one he might have remembered for the next ten minutes.
Always thoughtful, is Saucerhead Tharpe. After he put my lights out he tucked my purse underneath me, just in case somebody came along before I woke up. Then he went along to the next job on his agenda.
I hurt everywhere. I had about two acres of bruises. Saucerhead had found places to hit that I didn’t know I had. All body and soul wanted was to go lay up for a week. But mind knew it was time to find Morley Dotes. Not even Saucerhead Tharpe would have messed with me if I’d had Morley Dotes along.
Morley is the best at rough and tumble. And, by his own admission, the best at most everything else. Some people would like him and Saucerhead to square off, just to see how it would come out. But neither of them will swat a fly without getting paid first. And Saucerhead isn’t dumb enough to take a job on Morley. Nor is Morley vain enough to contract on Saucerhead. Neither cares much about who might come out best. Which says something about their professionalism.
The obvious place to look for Morley was a place called Morley’s Joy House.
The name is one of his bad jokes. It is a hangout for the elfin, the cartha, and breeds. The fare is vegetarian and nonalcoholic. The entertainment is so impenetrable and dull that the existence of a dead Loghyr might be exciting by contrast. But Morley’s kind of people enjoy it.
The place went silent when I stepped inside. I ignored an arsenal’s worth of death-looks as I limped to the alleged bar. Morley’s barman gave me the once-over. He grinned, revealing pointy darkelf teeth. “You have a knack for making people mad at you, Garrett.”
“You ought to see the other guy.”
“I did. He came in for some sprouts. Wasn’t a scratch on him.”
Conversations picked up behind me. The barman was being as friendly as darkelves ever are. That made me a marginally acceptable lower life-form, presence tolerated. Like that of a beer-drinking dog in a human tavern.
“Word’s around already, huh?”
“Everybody who ever cared about you one way or the other already knows the whole story. Slick the way you evened things up.”
“Yeah. That’s out, too? How’d it go?”
“She made it home. I figure that’s one quail that won’t ever mess with you again, Garrett.” He cackled in that way they have that gives you chills and makes you wonder if you will ever wake up from the nightmare. “Next time she’ll get somebody to cut your throat.”
The possibility had occurred to me. I’d made a mental note to rummage up some of my more interesting gimmicks and armaments. In the general course of business I find being fast on my feet protection enough, so I load myself down with hardware only in special cases.
This case looked like it was getting pretty special.
The Dead Man had warned me.
“Where’s Morley?”
“Up.” He pointed. “He’s busy.”
I headed for the stairs.
The barkeep opened his mouth to yell at me, then thought about it. That might start a riot. In his friendly voice he said, “Hey, Garrett, you owe us five marks.”
I turned around and gave him the fisheye.
“Saucerhead said you’d knock it off his tab.”
“A grin like that ought to be bronzed and saved for posterity.”
It got bigger.
“That big goof isn’t as dumb as he looks, is he?” I dug down carefully, my back to the crowd. No point in showing what I was carrying and having the boys who were high on lettuce getting fancy ideas.
“Nope.”
I flipped the five coins and headed upstairs before he could get back to trying to stop me.
I hammered on Morley’s private door. No response. I pounded again, rattling hinges.
“Go away, Garrett. I’m busy.”
I shoved through the door, which was not locked. Somebody’s wife squealed and dove into another room, a fistful of clothing trailing. Otherwise, I caught nothing but a flash of fancy tail. It was not one I recognized.
Morley did his best to look elf-haughty in nothing but his socks and a snarl. He could not bring it off, despite being half darkelf.
“Your timing is lousy as usual, Garrett. Not to mention your manners.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“Magic.”
“Magic, my ruddy red. You have trouble making food disappear. If you call that silage you eat food.”
“Ah-ah. Watch your mouth. You owe me one apology already.”
“I don’t apologize. My mother makes excuses for me. How did you know it was me?”
“Voice tube from the bar. You look awful, boy. Saucerhead must have sold that gal his top of the line. What did you do to her?”
“Wouldn’t lie, cheat, and steal for her. And turned her down when she tried to bribe me with the big bribe.”
He laughed. “You never learn. Next time diddle the gal and walk. She’ll sit around wondering what went wrong instead of sending cutthroats after you.” His grin vanished. “What do you want, Garrett?”
“I’ve got a job offer for you.”
“Not something foolish involving Saucerhead Tharpe, I hope.”
“No. I’ve got a job I need some backup on. I can thank Saucerhead for reminding me that if I don’t get it soon my health might suffer.”
“What’s in it?”
“For me, ten percent of a hundred thousand marks, plus expenses. You’re expenses.”
He whistled soundlessly, his pucker bringing his dark hatchet features to even more of a point. “What do we have to do? Take out one of the Venageti warlords?”
“You’re closer than you think. I have to go into the Cantard and find a woman who just inherited on the up side of a hundred thou. I have to talk her into either coming here to claim it or waiving her claim in favor of whoever is next in line.”
“That doesn’t sound so tough. Except for the part about the Cantard.”
“There are some people around who might feel that the money was not the deceased’s to bequeath. There are some in the deceased’s family who feel a strong reluctance to let so large a fortune go to a stranger. There is the possibility of similar difficulties on the legatee’s end. It’s possible her relationship with the legatee was, shall we say, imprudent.”
“I love it when you talk dirty, Garrett. And I love what money does to you humans. It’s the only thing that saves you from being totally tedious.”
I did not have anything to say to that. People do get silly about money.
“I take it your principal has his own ax to grind in this, or he’d be with the keep-it-in-the-family faction.”
“Could be.”
“Is he as nebulous as you are?”
“Could be. You interested?”
“Could be.”
I winced.
He grinned. “Suppose I just follow you around for a while? You’re a chatty sort of fellow. I’ll let you know when you’ve said enough to let me make up my mind.”
“Oh, happy day! The pleasure of his company without having to pay for it. All right.”
“Who said anything about not paying for it?”
“I did. No play, no pay.”
“You got an attitude problem, Garrett. All right. What are you going to do now?”
“Go wrap myself around a couple of pounds of steak.”
He turned up his nose. “All that red meat is why you people have such a peculiar odor. Where should I meet you?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Matter of some unfinished business,” he said evenly.
I glanced at the door to the other room. “I see. I’ll be back.”
Morley had pecked around the edges till I’d about lost the restored good humor brought on by beer and a fully belly. “You have a basic character flaw, Garrett. I think it’s a self-image problem. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred will say any damned fool thing that pops into their heads and not worry about how other folks will see it. With you every damned word is a contract with the gods.”
I scowled up the street. There were lights inside my place.
“You can talk without feeling you’ve committed something, Garrett. Hell, you should do like me. Believe every word you say like it was godsmouth when you say it, then forget it in the morning. The appearance of sincerity counts for more than actual truthfulness. People only need to believe for a few minutes at a time. They know the name of the game. You take that lady I was with tonight. Am I in love with her? Is she in love with me? Not bloody likely. She wouldn’t be seen in public with me. But I still had to say all the words.”
I don’t know how he got onto that. He rambles. I ignored it, mostly. “You on the payroll or not?”
He looked at my place. “Company?”
“Looks like.”
“Could it be friendly?”
“My friends have better manners.”
“I thought you’d admit you don’t have any friends. Are you going in?”
“Yes. You behind me or not?”
“Temporarily, anyway. My cash position isn’t what it should be. I’ve suffered several financial setbacks lately.”
“D’Guni races again.”
“You want to get rich quick, Garrett? Come down to the pond and see how I lay my bets. Then bet the other way. No matter what bug I pick, it zips out to the middle, then skitters in circles while the plodders head straight for the other bank. Either that or it gets eaten.”
“The race is not always to the swift.” Only elves would bet on the near-random results of water-spider races. “Ready?”
“Go ahead.”
The door was unlocked. How thoughtful. There were four of them. Two sat on my bed. The other two occupied my only two chairs. I recognized three as cavalry veterans from Denny’s crowd. The one called Vasco might be the V of Denny’s notes. They were trying to look tough.
I guess they were tough, inside their heads. They had survived the Cantard. But they did not have the tough look that comes from growing up on the streets.
“Come on in, guys,” I said. “Make yourselves at home. Fix yourselves a drink. My place is your place.”
Vasco said, “See if he’s armed, Quinn.”
“He’s armed,” Morley said behind me. “Take my word for it.”
One of my guests chuckled. “Look, Vee. A darko breed in man’s clothing.”
“Amateurs,” Morley said.
“Amateurs,” I agreed. “But the pros all start out as amateurs.”
“Some have to learn their business the hard way.”
What he meant was, anybody on the shady side of the law who knew what they were doing should know who he was.
Vasco made a gesture that restrained the character with the intemperate mouth. He said, “I figure you have some idea why we’re here, Garrett. But there’re a couple points I want to make sure you understand.”
“Amateurs,” I said again. “Pros know when to take their losses.”
“That money didn’t belong to Denny, Garrett. Not more than a third of it, anyway.”
“Pros don’t put all their eggs in one basket. And they don’t put the basket where they can’t get at it. If I was you boys I’d find a new line of business. Without Denny’s contacts your old one is going to turn into a crapshoot.”
Vasco winced. I knew too much. “We’ve got that angle covered, Garrett. All we need to do is get hold of Denny’s papers and study up on his style. There weren’t any secret codes or anything. The other end doesn’t have to know that he’s gone.”
Might be workable at that. Maybe they were not so dumb after all.
Those records and notes and letters might be a silver mine.
“What did you do with them, Garrett?”
“So we get to the crux, eh?”
“Yes. I’ll lay it out. We can take the loss on the silver if we get the papers and you stay away from the Cantard end. We ain’t going to like it, but we can take it. My recommendation to you is, pocket your retainer and walk. Next best thing, if you think you have to make a show, is leave town for a while, then come back and say you couldn’t find her. Or fake up a waiver and forge her chop.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “A practical solution to all our problems.”
They looked relieved.
“Trouble is, when I got out of the Marines I decided I wasn’t going to let anybody else run my life ever again. You guys were in the army. You know how it is.”
It stunned them momentarily. Then Vasco said, “You look like you’ve had a bad day already, Garrett. I wouldn’t want to give a man bruises on his bruises. Maybe you could reassess your position.”
“You had your say. I made my position clear. You’d better be leaving. I’m not usually this tolerant of uninvited guests.”
Vasco sighed. My old drill sergeant used to sigh that way when a recruit was particularly stubborn about learning. “Quinn, watch the breed.”
I set myself. I’d picked my first move already.
“Stand aside, Garrett.” That same sound of exasperation filled Morley’s voice. “It’s time for a little of that old elfin magic.”
“Vee?”
“Take him, Quinn.”
When Morley goes into action he seems to grow about six extra limbs. He uses them all so fast you hardly see them move. And when he isn’t kicking or punching he’s biting, head-butting, hip-jugging, or knee-dropping.
He opened by leaping up and giving Quinn the heels of both feet, bap! bap! right between the eyes. He flew to another victim without touching down. Quinn folded his cards and went to dreamland.
Vasco came after me.
I learned that you do not duke it out with a guy almost as good as you are when your whole body is stiff and sore from the last whipping you took.
He got me into a clinch that turned into a giant bear hug on the floor. He kept trying to bang his forehead off my temple. I got my teeth into his ear and chomped. That discouraged him. He threw himself away from me. From flat on my back I flicked out a heel and clipped him at the base of the skull. He went wobbly.
I jumped up, seized the moment by the scruff of the neck and seat of the pants, and ran him out the door to the accompaniment of appropriate old-time remarks about seedy little army types who failed to acknowledge the natural superiority of their overlords, the Marines.
A great glassy crash sent me hurtling back inside to help Morley.
He had polished off his share. He was eyeballing Quinn. “Grab the other end and help me throw him out.”
“You broke my window.”
“I’m charging you double rate for this one, Garrett. You provoked them.”
“I’m not paying you squat. You threw somebody out my window.”
“You never heard a word I said about truth and sincerity. You had a perfect chance to close it all down when Vee suggested you take the retainer and run. But no! Bad Garrett has got Morley Dotes behind him. He can run his mouth like a fool and provoke them all to hell.”
“I would have said the same thing if you weren’t here.”
He cocked his head and looked at me like a bird looking at a new kind of bug. “Death wish. Suicidal tendencies. Know what causes that, Garrett? Diet. That’s right. Your meat-heavy human diet. You need more roughage. You don’t get enough roughage, your bowels tighten up. When your bowels tighten up you get these dangerous, self-destructive mood swings . . . ”
“Somebody is going to get his bowels loosened up. You had to go and throw somebody through my window, didn’t you?”
“Will you quit with the damned window?”
“You know how much that window cost? You got any idea?”
“Not a candle to what this job is going to cost you if you don’t stop complaining. All right! Next time I’ll ask them pretty please to go out the door like nice little boys. Come on. Let’s run it off.”
“Run? Run where? Why?”
“To work off this nervous energy. To get rid of the combat juices flowing inside us. Five miles ought to do it.”
“I’ll tell you how far I’m running. I’m running all the way over there to my bed. Then I’m not moving except to breathe.”
“You’re kidding. The shape you’re in? If you don’t stretch those muscles, then cool them out right, you’re going to wake up so stiff you won’t be able to move.”
“Tell you what. You run my five miles for me. I’ll consider forgiving you for the window.” I crashed onto the bed. “I could use about a gallon of ice-cold beer.”
Morley didn’t answer me. He was gone.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Morning is wonderful. Its only drawback is that it comes at such an inconvenient time of day. A time when the early birds of the world are aflame with their mission of bringing the joys of dawn-watching to the nations. And to me in particular.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Two mornings running. I wondered if I had offered unwitting insult to the Seven Grand Devils of Modrel.
I went through all the usual cursing and threatening. None of it helped.
Morley would crow when he saw me. I was as stiff as he wanted. It took me three minutes to put my feet over the side and sit up.
The first thing I saw was a mottled green face half a yard wide staring through the broken window. I said something intelligent like, “Gleep!”
The face grinned.
It was a groll, a hybrid of human, troll, and the Beast That Talks that is never named in polite company. I grinned back. Grolls are slow of wit and often quick of temper.
Its giant toad mouth opened and spilled some of that hair-raising bass which is their excuse for speech. I did not catch what it said. It was not meant for me, anyway.
The banging on the door stopped.
“Hello yourself,” I croaked, and dragged myself up onto my feet. I figured I’d better open up before his patience went and he let himself in through the wall.
There was another one outside the door. It looked exactly like the other one—Big, wide, and ugly. I guessed it would stand twenty feet high in its socks—if it ever wore socks. It didn’t wear much else, except a loincloth, a utility belt, and an empty pack harness.
The loincloth did not do much to preserve modesty.
So from here on I have to call them both He with a capital H. Mules would go gibbous with envy.
Both grolls noted my amazement and grinned. That’s the sense of humor such creatures have.
“I’d invite you in if you’d fit,” I said. One is polite to grolls at all times, irrespective of one’s prejudices. Otherwise one finds oneself reassessing one’s attitude while being squished between warty green toes.
A short one stepped around the big one. “I expect I’ll fit,” he said. “And I could use a drink, actually.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Dojango is the name, actually. These are my brothers, Marsha and Doris.”
“Brothers?”
“We’re triplets, actually.” He responded to my unspoken question, “But with different mothers, actually.”
Triplets with different mothers. Right. I didn’t ask. Making sense out of the things human folks tell me is brain strain enough.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Morley Dotes sent us, actually.”
“What the hell for? Actually?” One of the big grolls growled at me. I used my fingers to sculpt a friendly smile.
“To help in the Cantard.”
The villain himself, Morley Dotes, had sneaked on stage. “So you decided you want the job, eh?”
“At the moment there are certain advantages, where my creditors are concerned, to my being both employed and being out of town,” Morley replied.
“And you thought you’d gather all your friends under the umbrella of that advantage? Like maybe my principal wouldn’t think of putting a bottom in my expense pot?”
“If you would use half that vaunted detective brain of yours, you would bless my vision.”
“It’s too early in the morning for me to remember my name. Enlighten me, O Illustrious One.”
“Consider mules.”
“Mules? What the hell do mules have to do with it?”
“We’re going into the Cantard. No one will risk loaning or renting us mounts or pack animals. We’ll have to buy. On the other hand, wages for Doris and Marsha will run about what it would cost for a brace of good mules. And they can carry twice the load twice as long. And they’re a hell of a lot more use in a fight.”
That made sense. Good sense. But . . . “What about friend Dojango?”
Morley sighed. “Yes. Dojango Roze. Well, Garrett, they won’t break up the set.”
I do believe I scowled. “You sticking me with deadwood?”
“Dojango can lift a blade. He can sniff out water and find firewood. He can understand Doris and Marsha. If you keep an eye on him, he can cook an edible meal without burning anything too badly.”
“I’m trying not to slobber in anticipation.” I scanned the triplets who had different mothers. They grinned groll good fellowship. They figured Morley had sold me.
Dotes said, “Keep Dojango away from the juice and he’ll do all right.”
Everyone knows breeds cannot handle their booze. Dojango’s grin became apologetic.
“How much is this road show going to burn me?”
Morley tossed out an outrageous figure. I slammed the door and went back to bed. He had one of the big triplets lift him so he could yell numbers through the broken window. I faked a mean snore till some interesting integers began rattling around behind me. In fact, Morley was so pliable I began wondering how bad his creditor situation was. I did not need more complications than I already had.
“It’s your diet that makes you so stubborn, you know that, don’t you, Garrett? All that red meat filled with the juices stirred by the terror of the murdered beast, and you never exercising so you sweat them out of your own body.”
“I figured it was something like that, Morley. That, too much beer, and not enough green, leafy veggies.”
“Cattails, Garrett. The white hearts down near the roots of the young plant, diced into a tossed salad. Not only tasty, but informed with an almost mystical capacity for lightening the burden of guilt lying upon the carnivore’s soul.”
“Horsepucky.” When I was in the Marines we raided an island where the Venageti promptly cut us off from our ships and drove us into a swamp. Cattails were a mainstay of our diet till the fortunes of war shifted. I don’t recall them doing anything remarkable for the temperaments of our sergeants and corporals, who seemed carnivorous enough to eat their own young. Rather the opposite, in a geometric progression.
I know we all took it out on the Venageti when the time came.
Maybe I did not start eating cattails young enough. “Morley, I did a job for a professor at the university one time. He was always spouting who-cares facts. Like one time when he said there are two hundred forty-eight different kinds of fruits, vegetables, greens, and tubers that people eat. Hogs will only eat two hundred forty-six of those. They won’t touch green peppers and they won’t touch cattail hearts. Which goes to show you that hogs have more sense than people.”
“No point trying to salvage you, is there? You’re determined to suicide the slow way. Are the boys hired?”
“They’re hired.” I hoped I would not be sorry.
“How soon can we leave?”
“You in a hurry, Morley? You need to get out of town fast? That why you’re being so agreeable about going into the Cantard?”
Dotes shrugged.
A shrug was answer enough.
Considering Morley’s talents and reputation, it would take somebody heavy to have enough clout to scare him. In my mind somebodies that heavy narrowed down to a crowd of one. The big guy himself. The kingpin. “Since when is Kolchak into bug racing, Morley?”
He popped down out of the window. His voice lingered behind him. “You’re too damned smart for your own good, Garrett. It’s going to catch up with you someday. I’ll be in touch. Come on, you lummoxes. Dojango! Put that back. Doris!” He sounded like a muleteer trying to get a wagon started.
I went back to bed thinking I’d better use some of Tate’s money to get a new window put in. Maybe a flashy piece with my name leaded in colors.
This old universe hasn’t got one notion of the meaning of the word mercy where I’m concerned. I just got to snoozing when the door began shivering like a drumhead again.
“Going to have to do something about this,” I muttered as I hit the floor. “Like maybe move and not tell anybody.”
I opened up and found uncle Lester and the boys outside. “You guys decide to forget the whole thing, I hope?” I noticed that two of the kids had gotten into something rough. They showed plenty of bruises and bandages and one had an arm in a sling. “What happened?”
“Unfriendly visitors. Willard wants to talk to you about it.”
“All right. I’m on my way.” I took just long enough to make myself presentable, gulp some water, and pick up the lead-weighted head-thumper.
Willard Tate was in a state. He waited, wringing his hands. All my life I have heard that expression. Except for a maiden aunt whose every breath was an act of high drama, I’d never seen it before.
“What happened?” Uncle Lester was a clam. Maybe he was afraid if I knew too much I’d turn around.
Tate pumped my hand with both of his. “Thank you for coming. Thank you. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“What happened?” I asked again as he clung to my hand with one of his and dragged me like a stubborn child. Uncle Lester and the boys tagged along. I spotted a pale-faced Rose watching as we crossed the garden, headed for Denny’s apartment.
Tate did not tell me. He showed me.
The place was a wreck. The apprentices were still cleaning up. Several of them wore bandages and bruises. Some wise soul had barred entry from the street by nailing boards across the doorframe.
Tate pointed.
The body lay in the middle of the room, belly down, one hand stretched toward the door.
“What happened?” I asked again.
Third time was a charm.
“It happened around midnight. I had the boys in watching, just in case, because you made me nervous the way you talked. Five men broke through the street door. The boys were smart. Odie came and woke everybody up. The others hid and let the burglars go downstairs. So we ambushed them when they tried to leave.
“We just wanted to capture them. But they panicked and started a fight, and they weren’t shy about trying to hurt us. And now we’re stuck with that.”
I knelt to look at the dead man’s face. He had started to puff up already. But I could still see the cuts and scrapes he had picked up flying through the window at my place.
“Did they get away with anything?”
“I did a count,” Uncle Lester said. “The gold and silver is all there.”
“They weren’t after gold or silver.”
“Huh?” All the Tates are brilliant. But they hide their light under a bushel. Maybe it’s a business reflex.
“They were looking for Denny’s papers. His letters to the woman. I took care of hiding most everything, but there could have been something I overlooked. Those papers might be worth more than any amount of metal they could haul out of here.”
Old Man Tate looked dumbfounded, so I told him about my little chat with Denny’s partners. He did not want to believe me. “But that’s—”
“Trading with the enemy when you take the costume off it and look it straight in the face.”
“I know my son, Mr. Garrett. Denny wouldn’t betray Karenta.”
“Did you hear me say anything about treason?” I thought it, though. Mainly in the context of what happened to folks foolish enough to get caught trading with the Venageti. I have no moral reservations about that. The war is a struggle between two gangs of nobles and wizards trying to grab control of mines likely to give their possessors near mastery of the world. Their motives are no higher than those displayed in squabbles between street gangs right here in TunFaire.
Being Karentine, I would prefer the gang running my country to win. I love being with a winner. Everybody does. But it doesn’t hurt my feelings if somebody besides the lords makes a little profit from the squabble. I explained that to Tate.
“The problem is, the connection is still alive,” I said. “And some pretty tough boys want to keep it that way. Meaning they don’t want you and me meddling. Do you follow me?”
“And they want Denny’s papers and letters and whatnots so they can keep contact with the woman?”
“You catch on fast, Pop. They’ll let their claim to the metals go for the papers. And Denny will live on forever in letters he never wrote.”
He thought about it. There was a part of him that wanted to grab the big score while it was there for the grabbing. But there was a part of him that was crazy stubborn, too. Maybe if he had been a little poorer . . . But somewhere along the way he had made up his mind and set it in concrete. Changed circumstances would not budge him. “I will meet this woman, Mr. Garrett.”
“It’s your neck,” I said. And tried to time a meaningful pause. “And your family’s. That could be one of the boys on the floor, attracting flies.”
I got to him that time. He puffed up. His face got red. His eyes bugged out, which is a sight in the half elfin. His mouth opened. He began to shake.
But he did not let it get hold of him. Somehow, he turned it off. After half a minute, he said, “You’re right, Mr. Garrett. And it’s a risk due more consideration than I have given it. If, as you say, those men were army friends of Denny’s who survived the Cantard, it’s damned lucky several of the boys weren’t killed instead of that poor fellow.”
“Like you said, they panicked. They just wanted to get away. But next time they’ll be looking for trouble.”
“You’re sure there’ll be a next time? Coming so close to getting caught already?”
“You don’t seem to understand the stakes, Mr. Tate. In eight years Denny and those guys built a handful of prize money into a hundred thousand marks.” Plus whatever fun they took along the way, but I did not mention that. The old boy did not need all his illusions stripped. “Think what they could have done with another eight years and that kind of capital.”
Gotten into a crunch, probably. Too much wealth draws attention—though I suppose Denny knew that and planned accordingly.
“Perhaps I do not, Mr. Garrett. I’m only a shoemaker. My interest is fathers and sons and a family tradition that goes back more generations than can be counted. A tradition that died with Denny.”
He was an exasperating old coot. I think he understood plenty. He just didn’t give a damn anymore.
“You’re certain they will return, then?”
“Breathing fire, Pop.”
“Then it behooves me to take steps.”
“The step you ought to take is to come to an accommodation.”
“Not with those swine. They—and that woman—seduced my son away . . . ”
I shut him out and gave my whole attention to the basement. As far as I could tell, nothing had changed. It seemed likely, then, that they had found nothing I might have missed. “Huh? I’m sorry. I missed that.”
He gave me a look that said he knew why. But you could not get him to talk nasty at spear’s point. “I asked if you knew someone I could retain as a guard for the premises.”
“No.” I did know someone. Me. But I was up to my nostrils with long cold lonely nights waiting for something that never happened, or that was really lethal when it did. “Wait.” A thought. “Maybe I do. The people who are supposed to make the trip to the Cantard with me. I could do us both a favor by parking them here.” Morley, too, if it put him out of the heat.
Tate looked startled. “You’re going to go? You sounded so dead set against it.”
“I’m still against it. I think it’s about as smart as raiding a roc’s nest. I don’t even see any point to it. But I told you I’d look into it. I haven’t really made up my mind yet either way.”
He smiled. He grinned. I was afraid he would try to slap me on the back and maybe loosen one of my kidneys. But he restrained himself. A very restrained kind of guy, old man Tate.
He got very serious.
“What can you do about that man’s body, Mr. Garrett?”
I figured we were going to get to that. “Nothing.”
“What?”
“Nothing. He’s not my problem.”
The old boy gulped air. Then the sly merchant came tippy-toeing forward. “You want to hold me up for a bonus? All right. How much?”
“Don’t bother. You don’t have enough. I’m not putting a finger on that stiff. It’s not my responsibility, and I don’t do that kind of work. My advice is, call the magistrates and let them handle it. You’ll be clear. He was killed during a break-in.”
“No. I don’t want anyone nosing into family business.”
“Then have your boys take him and dump him in the river or an alley somewhere down the hill.” There are bodies in the river most mornings. In the alleys, too. Unless they were someone important, they caused little comment.
Tate saw that he could not reach me through my lust for wealth. He gave that up. “You go ahead here, then. Send those men here as soon as you can. I have work to do. Keep me posted.” He ducked out.
I poked around and wondered if the evil gleam in Tate’s eye meant he thought he could put the corpse off on Morley and the triplets.
The flooring did its dust drop. I had noticed it several times before Tate left. I figured my sweetheart Rose was eavesdropping again. I ignored her.
Look as I might, I could not find anything missing. I settled back to give the whole business a think. It was obese with potential trouble. And I was getting near the point where I had to make a real decision.
The local end of it would take care of itself. There was nothing to investigate at this end. At the other end . . .
I did not want to think about that end yet. It would be unpleasant no matter how smooth it went. It would be unpleasant just traveling to and revisiting the Cantard.
A door opened and shut overhead. A moment later women began talking. The one with the quarrelsome voice had to be Rose. I wondered who the other one was.
A delightful aroma preceded her down the basement stairs. She proved to be a fiery little redhead with long straight hair, jade-green eyes, a few freckles, and high, firm breasts that thrust boldly against a ruffled silk blouse. There was nothing between that blouse and her but my daydreams.
“Where have they been hiding you?” I asked, jumping up to take the tray she carried. “Who are you?”
“I’m Tinnie. And you’re Garrett. And the last time you saw me I was just a spindle-legged kid.” She looked me right in the eye and grinned. Her teeth looked sharp and white. I wanted to stick out a hand and let her take a bite.
“Could still be on spindles for all a guy can tell from that skirt.” It fell to her ankles.
Her grin got sassy. “You could get lucky and get a look sometime. You never know.”
My kind of luck came down the stairs right then. “Tinnie! You’ve done your job. Get out.”
We ignored Rose. I asked, “You’re not Denny’s sister, are you? He never mentioned you.”
“Cousin. They don’t talk about me. I’m the one who causes trouble.”
“Oh? I thought Rose took care of that.”
“Rose is just obnoxious. That doesn’t bother them. I do things that embarrass them. Rose just makes people mad or disgusted. I make the neighbors whisper behind their hands.”
Rose simmered and reddened. Tinnie winked at me. “See you later, Garrett.”
Yeah. I wish. That little bit was enough woman to make a man sit up and howl at the moon. She had a sway as she sashayed past Rose and started up the stairs.
When you got down to it and ignored the personality of a black widow spider, Rose was not something the dogs barked at either. She was another small package with its contents all in the right places, and only prime materials had been used.
Rose could move with a sway that promised fireworks—if she wanted. But her fireworks were the kind that blow up in a man’s face.
We eyed each other like a couple of tomcats about to square off. We both decided what she had in mind wouldn’t work any better this time. She got flustered because she didn’t know what else to do.
“Ought to have a backup plan when you jump in on something,” I told her. “Like Saucerhead Tharpe.”
“You’re right, Garrett. Damn you, anyhow. How did you get so old being as stubborn as you are?”
“By guessing right most of the time. You wouldn’t be a bad kid if there was room for anyone else in your world.”
For a few seconds, there, I got the feeling she wished there was someone else in her world. Then she said, “Too bad we couldn’t have met under other circumstances.”
“Yeah,” I said, not feeling it. She would be trouble no matter what the circumstances. That was how she was made.
“We don’t have any common ground at all, do we?”
“Not very much. Not unless you had some feeling for your brother. I was fond of Denny. How about you?’
I had touched something. At last.
“It isn’t fair. Him dying like that. He was about the nicest guy I ever knew. Even if he was my brother. That Cantard bitch—”
“Easy!” I snapped it, which gave me away enough to make her gawk and wonder.
“What’s in this for you, Garrett? Besides a chance to line your pockets? Nobody goes to the Cantard without more reason than money.”
I thought about Morley Dotes when she said that. I thought about me. I wondered about me. Garrett, tough guy. Can’t reach him. No emotional handles. But I was on the brink of doing something no moron in his right mind would do.
Like old man Tate, I wanted to see this woman who could put a halter on Denny.
Rose and I traded stares. She decided I wasn’t going to give her a thing. “Be careful, Garrett. Don’t get yourself hurt. Look me up when this is over.”
“It wouldn’t work, Rose.”
“It could be fun giving it a look.”
She sashayed up the stairs.
She did look good from that perspective. Maybe . . .
Seconds after the door slammed, while common sense was fighting for its life, a copper-wreathed face peeped at me from the head of the stairs. “Don’t even think about it, Garrett. I wouldn’t love you anymore.”
Then Tinnie vanished, too.
I gulped some air and said “Duh!” a few times, then got my dogs under me and went galumphing off on the trail.
She was gone when I got upstairs. I was alone with the dead guy. Denny’s friend. There was no sign of Rose or Tinnie when I looked into the garden. I closed the door and took a quick look through the dead guy’s pockets.
Some vulture had beat me to it. There wasn’t a thing left.
Old Man Tate got the body out somehow. Dropped it in the river, I guess. I didn’t ask, and didn’t hear a thing about it. A lot of people never heard from again take that one last swim.
I got Morley and the triplets installed at Denny’s place. Morley thought it was a great idea. That being the case, I spent the evening hanging around his place, nicked by dagger looks from the breeds, hoping I would catch a flash to illuminate his eagerness to join a fool’s quest.
I didn’t catch anything brighter than candlelight.
All I found out was that I wasn’t the only guy watching.
You get a sixth sense after enough years. Mine pegged two heavyweights in the first fifteen minutes. One was human and looked like he could give Saucerhead a fight. The other was so ugly, and stayed in his shadowed corner so deep, that I couldn’t tell what he was. A breed for sure, probably with some troll and kobold in him, but more than that. He was as wide as he was tall. His face had been rearranged several times, probably for the better.
The bartender knew I had something going with Morley. He stayed civil. I asked about the men I had picked out.
“Don’t know them. The ugly one was in here last night. First time. Sat in that corner all night nursing a beer he brought with him. I would’ve thrown him out if he hadn’t bought a meal.”
“That would’ve been a show to see.” I took a pint of the water that passed for beer there and tipped him to take the sting out of the crack. “Think they’re the kingpin’s boys?”
“Not unless they’re from out of town.”
That was what I thought. I didn’t recognize them either, but they looked like trouble on the hoof.
Well, no skin off my nose. As long as they were not interested in me.
I gave it up at Morley’s place after the pint. There were better places to put an ear to the ground. I went and hung out in some of them. I didn’t find out a thing.
Curious.
I headed for my place wondering if the glazier had gotten started yet. I felt no shame at all charging the replacement window to Tate.
The new window was in place and lettered as pretty as a blonde in her birthday suit. But I strolled by without admiring it, putting a slouch in my shoulders and a shuffle in my walk.
Maybe I wouldn’t go home after all.
There were problems. One was that somebody was waiting in the breezeway beside the ratman’s; even without seeing the glow of his pipe I could smell the weed he was smoking. The other was that there was somebody waiting inside. Whoever that was had all the lamps burning, using up oil at a rate to curdle my liver.
I knew a heavy weed smoker. Another friend of Denny’s. Another old soldier, name of Barbera, who smoked so much that most of the time he didn’t know if he was in this world or the next. A pathetic case, he was always in trouble because folks could talk him into anything. He had been one of Denny’s charities.
No doubt Denny’s other pals thought it would be a giggle to hop him up and sic him on me.
I faded into a shadow down the block and took a seat against a wall that needed tuckpointing. The view of my place was as scenic as a garbage dump.
A lot of nothing happened for a long time. Unless you count the flares as my lurker lighted up, or the passing of drunks so far gone they were unafraid of the nighted streets. Only after we started getting some aromatic moonlight did anything interesting happen. And that was just a couple guys checking in with the weed man.
They passed me by without seeing me. But I got a look at them.
Vasco and Quinn, my old pals.
So they meant to do me dirty, eh?
I didn’t move, though I thought about knocking some heads. I was beginning to wonder about that lamplight. Vasco and Quinn had made no effort to talk to whomever was inside. So maybe that whomever wasn’t one of them.
Who, then?
My friend the ratman came home from his shift at the graveyard, drunk as usual. In my less charitable moments I’ve wished he would get lost in one of the graves he digs.
He shuffled up to my new window, glanced inside.
Whatever he saw, it was interesting. He watched for a minute. When he moved on he cast furtive looks around. He didn’t see anyone watching. That must have given him courage. He slipped over and tried the door.
It opened.
Barbera came blazing out of the shadows. He climbed all over the ratman. When he had him pounded down to about three feet high, he took off, headed my way.
A little message for me from Denny’s pals. Misdelivered.
I reckoned they needed an answer.
I stepped out of the shadows as Barbera lumbered past. He caught me from the corner of his eye. I said, “Hi, there,” and smacked his ear with my sap as his eyes grew big and he tried to turn.
He did not go down. But his knees got wobbly and his eyes glazed. I kicked him low, punched him high with my left, bounced the sap off his forehead.
He wobbled a little more.
They need a lot of pounding when they’re hopped.
I gave him all he needed, and then some, and when he no longer knew what planet he was on, I snagged the seat of his pants and walked him into an alley, where I gave him a few more taps with my sap. Then I took his pouch of weed. A while later I paid a half-dwarf half-goblin wino to deliver it to Vasco with the word that he had not gotten his money’s worth.
That taken care of, it was time to see about my intruder.
I didn’t do any seeing. When I got back to where I could see my place, a troop of Tates were going inside, stepping over the groaning ratman like he was something that fell behind the horse. In a moment they marched back out with an angry Tinnie.
So there you go. Exactly my kind of luck. If I found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I’d break my leg running toward it and have to lie there watching some other clown walk away with it while I did my groaning.
I let the street clear. Then I went and got a bucket of beer and locked myself inside. Nobody disturbed me.
I’d planned to surprise everybody by showing up at the Tate place at the crack of dawn, ready to travel. But I had a dream about Loghyr bones.
Maybe it was the beer. That beer was green. But I knew better than to ignore it. It could be a summons from the Dead Man.
The worst thing about going out in the morning is that the sun is there. It slaps you right in the eyes. When you go back inside you can’t see squat.
Squat was what I saw when I went into the Dead Man’s place. It was as dark as a crypt in there.
About time, Garrett. Did you come via Khaphé?
“That wasn’t a dream, eh?”
No.
“What do you want?”
I do not have the resources to follow all your adventures from afar. If you want my help and advice, you have to report to me occasionally.
I figured that was as near as he would get to saying he owed me. I would take what I was given. “What do you need?”
Details of what you have seen and learned since your last visit.
So I gave it to him, without leaving anything out.
He pondered awhile. Buy yourself some poison rings, Garrett. Carry a boot knife.
That was not the advice I expected. “Why?”
Are you known for such things?
“No.”
Do the unexpected.
“I hiked all the way over here for that?”
It is the best I can do given the information you make available.
Make it my fault. Just like him. I did him a few odd jobs, cleaned the place up some, and burned some sulfur candles to make the vermin’s lungs more robust. I wondered what Morley thought about breathing air. It’s kind of hard to inhale green, leafy vegetables.
Then I took the Dead Man’s advice. I stocked up on lethal hardware. I even picked up a few sneaky-petes I recalled from my Marine days. Let them come after me now, I thought. I’m ready for anything.
Horses. They are one of the little unpleasantnesses to be endured during any lengthy journey. Unless you want to walk. Morley Dotes had high praise for that sort of exercise, which meant it hurt. Personally, I have very little interest in voluntarily inflicting pain or discomfort upon myself.
I went to an outfitter I knew, a black giant they called Playmate. He was human, but must have had a little mixed blood somewhere. He stood nine feet tall. The color-impregnated clan scars on his cheeks gave him a ferocious look, but he was a sweetheart, as gentle as a human being could be.
Those gruesome features brightened when he spotted me crossing the yard of his place. He came at me with arms spread wide, grinning like I was going to rig out a battalion. I ducked his hug. He could crush you in his enthusiasm. Had he possessed the killer instinct, he would have made one hell of a professional wrestler.
I had done him some good on a skip trace awhile back. My getting the guy to pay up saved Playmate from bankruptcy. So he owed some good fortune to me, but this greeting was not that much more warm than what he gave strangers who wandered in off the street.
“What can we do for you, Garrett? Name it and it’s yours. On me. Long as you need it.”
“I need a couple of horses and camping gear for five for three or four months.”
“You got it. Going out to try your hand at trapping? Business that bad?”
“I have a job. It’s taking me out of town.”
“Three, four months is a far piece out and back. Where you going?” He was headed for his stable, where a whole clan of four-legged assassins awaited my advent with malice bubbling in their blood.
“The Cantard.”
Horses and I do not get along. I can ride, but just barely, when I have to. I’m a city boy and never saw much need to hang around with beasts that have it in for me.
Playmate slowed down. He gave me one of those looks you save for your crazy cousin when he says something totally stupid. “The Cantard? Garrett, you’re a great man, and I have complete faith in you. If any civilian could get into and out of the Cantard alive, it would be you. But I’m not so confident of my animals.”
“I don’t want you to give me anything, Playmate. I’ll buy what I need. No risk to you.”
“Don’t give me that tone of voice, Garrett.”
What tone? I didn’t intend the guy any grief.
We entered the digs of their satanic majesties the horses. Twenty pairs of big brown evil eyes turned my way. I could almost hear them sizing me up in their secret language, plotting misery.
“This is Thunderbolt,” Playmate said, indicating a big black stallion with wicked teeth. “A spirited animal. Partly battle-trained.”
“No.”
Playmate shrugged, moved on to a roan. “How about Hurricane, here? Fast and smart and a little unpredictable. Like you. You should get along great. Complementary personalities.”
“No. And no Storm, no Fury, no nothing with a fire-breathing name to live up to. I want an old mare on her last legs with a name like Daffodil and a temperament to match.”
“That’s disgusting, Garrett. Are you a man or a mouse?”
“Squeak. Me and horses don’t get along. The last time I rode one he tricked me by turning around while I was getting on. Then he stood there laughing at me behind my back.”
“Horses don’t laugh, Garrett. They’re very serious creatures.”
“You hang around me, you’ll see them laugh.”
“If you have a problem with animals, why make the trip overland? Catch a river barge down to Leifmold, then take a coaster south. It would save you six hundred hard miles.”
Why not? It never occurred to me, that’s why not. Sometimes you stumble into a rut so deep you can’t see over the edges. I didn’t want to go to the Cantard, really, so I’d developed the habit of thinking about getting in and out fast. The quickest way from one place to another is usually the shortest. The shortest haul from TunFaire to the Cantard is straight overland.
A ham of a hand slapped me on the back. “Garrett, you look like a man who’s just had a religious revelation.”
“I have. And the first saint of my new church is going to be Saint Playmate.”
“As long as the job don’t call for a martyr.”
“Have faith, my friend. And make lots of donations. That’s all this church will ask.”
“Most of them only ask for the offerings. I tell you I almost started my own church once?”
“No.”
“I was scoping it out when I thought I was going to lose the stable. I figure a man my size, tricked up in the right outfit, would make a hell of a prophet. And in a city as god-ridden as TunFaire, people are always looking for something novel.”
“Wouldn’t have thought you so cynical.”
“Me? Cynical? Perish the thought. Come back when you need a horse, Garrett.”
Morley and the triplets were sitting around looking smug when I showed up at the Tate place with my travel bag on my shoulder. “You guys earned your keep? Or are you just in practice for the next time the Grinning Death comes through?”
Morley stopped gnawing a carrot long enough to say, “We thumped some heads this morning, Garrett.”
Doris bobbed his head and chortled something in dialect. Morley said, “He just claimed he broke twenty heads himself. He’s exaggerating. There weren’t more than fifteen guys involved. I recognized some of them. Second-raters. Whoever hired them was trying to get by on the cheap. He got what he paid for.”
I wondered if any of them had recognized Morley. “Did they get away with anything?”
“A lot of bruises and a few fractures.”
“I mean anything physical.”
“That isn’t physical enough for you?”
“Damn it, you know what I mean.”
“Testy in the morning, aren’t we? You didn’t pay a bit of attention when I explained about fiber.”
“Morley!”
“No. Nothing.”
“Thank you.”
“What’s in the bag?”
“My travel gear. We’re headed out.”
“Today?”
“You have some reason to hang around?”
“Not really. You just caught me by surprise.”
That was the idea. “The arrangements are made. You guys are ready to go. We’ll head for the boat from here and hide out there till we pull out.”
“Boat? What are you talking, boat?”
Morley was ghost-spooked pale. The triplets looked green around the gills, which was something for Doris and Marsha, who were a lovely shade of pale lime to begin.
“Boat?” Morley croaked again.
“Boat. We’ll barge down to Leifmold, then catch a coaster headed south. We’ll stay with it as far as we can. Then we’ll put ashore and finish what we have to overland.”
“We mix with water worse than oil does, Garrett.”
“Nonsense. All the great navigators were elvish.”
“All the great navigators were crazy. I get seasick watching the water-spider races. Which may explain why I can’t bet them worth squat.”
“Probably not enough starch in your diet.”
He looked at me with hurt puppy eyes. “Let’s take it overland, Garrett.”
“Not on your life. I don’t get along with horses.”
“So we walk. The triplets can carry—”
“Who’s paying the wages, Morley?”
He did nothing but scowl.
“Right. The boss says we take boats as far as we can, then we do it the hard way. You have your boys pick up and pack up. We head out in fifteen minutes.”
I went and hunted up Pop Tate and told him I’d be doing the job and would be leaving the city shortly. We dickered awhile about expense money. To end up with what I wanted I had to give him what he wanted, a pretty complete outline of my plans.
I could change them, of course.
I don’t like letting people in on everything. It subverts my reputation for being unpredictable.
The river barge Binkey’s Sequin reminded me of a shopkeeper’s wife. She was middle-aged, middle class, a little run down, a little overweight, extremely stubborn and set in her ways, needing masterful coaxing and cajoling to get her to give her loving best, but also faithful and warm and unsinkably optimistic in her care for her children. Morley hated her at first sight. He prefers them sleek, lean, taut, and fast.
Master Arbanos, her skipper, was an oversize gnome of that ethnic minority the ignorant sometimes confuse with hobgoblins (though any idiot knows hobgoblins don’t come out in the daytime because the sunlight would broil their eyeballs). After he got us settled in what, with a smile of self-mockery, he called the cabin, he pulled me aside and told me, “We won’t be able to sail till morning. Hope that don’t throw you off schedule.”
“No.” But being naturally nosy and suspicious, I wanted to know why.
“Cargo’s late. Best part, that is. Twenty-five cask of the TunFaire Gold, that they don’t trust nobody but me and my brother to get down the river unbruised.”
TunFaire Gold is a premium wine with a reputation for traveling poorly.
“So here I sit,” he complained, “with eight ton of potato, two ton of onion, three ton of pig-iron billet, and forty hogshead of navy salt pork turning to mold while I wait for them to baby that spoiled grape juice down from TagEnd. If I didn’t get paid more for hauling that than the rest put together, I’d tell them what to do with their TunFaire Gold poison! You bet I would.”
Cargo manifests. How thoroughly exciting. “No problem for us. As long as we get there in a reasonable amount of time.”
“Oh, won’t be no problem with that. We’ll get there almost the same time we would have.”
“We will? Why?”
“We’ll be going out with the tide, with an extra five knot of current running where the river is usually slowest. I just thought you might be in a hurry to move at this end, what with the way your friends are keeping out of sight down with the codfish smell. The way I hear tell, you landsider don’t favor fish odor too much.”
I had not mentioned the stench, being the naturally courteous guy that I am. But, “Now that you bring it up . . . ”
“What?”
“Wait.”
One of the Tate cousins or nephews was limping down the dock, checking ships with mad eyes. He was covered with dried blood. People stepped out of his way and stared after him.
He spotted me, staggered faster. I went to meet him.
“Mr. Garrett! They got Tinnie and Rose! They said if we don’t give them Denny’s papers—”
He collapsed. I caught him, lifted him up, and carried him aboard Binkey’s Sequin. Master Arbanos gave me an appalled look. Before he started complaining, I tossed him a couple of marks. His personality shifted like a wolfman’s under a full moon. You would have thought he was the boy’s mother.
A draft of brandy bubbling in the gut got the kid into a state to tell his tale.
Rose and Tinnie, as was their custom, had gone out to do the afternoon marketing. Lester and the usual cousins and nephews and some kitchen help had accompanied them, again as was customary. When they were returning with the servants and two boys lugging vegetables and whatnot, disaster had struck, in the form of Vasco and a half-dozen thugs.
“They grabbed Rose and Tinnie before we could drop the groceries and get our weapons out. Uncle Lester was the only one who was able . . . They killed him, Mr. Garrett.”
“You all do them any damage?” The kid wouldn’t have been in such bad shape if they hadn’t tried. I needed to know how much blood was in it to tell if the women had a chance.
“Some,” he admitted. “I don’t think we killed anybody. We had to back off first. That’s when they said we could have them back if we gave them Denny’s letters and notebooks and stuff.”
Well, they had no real reason to commit murder. The blood was balanced. One of their lot for Uncle Lester. A trade could be made. The problem was, they would find out I was headed south if I had much to do with the exchange.
I grinned.
“Sounds bad to me,” Morley said.
“Thought you were staying out of sight.” I wondered how long he had been sitting on that sack of onions listening. Not that he had heard anything he shouldn’t.
He shrugged.
“They tell you where to get in touch?” I asked the kid.
“Yes. The Iron—”
Old Man Tate himself materialized. I thought he never left the family compound. He stormed aboard, shaking all over. He was winded from his hike and so damned mad he couldn’t do anything but sputter.
“Sit down, Pop,” I said. “I’m working on it already.”
He plopped onto another bag of onions, giving Morley a curt nod. Master Arbanos winced but kept his yap shut.
“Here’s the lay,” I said. “We’ve got to make the trade.”
Tate sputtered but nodded, then wheezed, “If it was just Rose, I’d be tempted to tell them to go to hell.”
“Right. Look, I put the papers and whatnot in a box and moved them out of your place so those clowns wouldn’t get them when they broke in. I didn’t figure them for this. Anyway, what we have to do now is set the exchange up in such a way that we get the women back in one piece. I think I can do that, but you’ll have to trust me on it.”
Tate started sputtering again.
Morley said, “He’s the expert, Mr. Tate. Permit him to exercise his expertise.” His tone was more diplomatic than what I usually manage.
“I’m listening.” Tate glared at me.
“Master Arbanos. What time are we going to take off tomorrow?”
“Five minutes after the seventh hour.”
“Right. Mr. Tate, you go over to the Iron . . . ” I snapped my fingers at the kid.
“Iron Goblin,” he said.
“The Iron Goblin. Tell whoever meets you there that he’s to deliver the women here at five after the seventh hour tomorrow morning. Or no deal. I’ll tell them where they can get the papers when the women look like they’ll get back to their own people okay. In fact, if Master Arbanos will provide me pen and paper, I’ll write the instructions.”
Tate wanted to argue. He always wanted to argue. The old goat would disagree if you said the sky was blue. I let him simmer while I scratched a note. Master Arbanos was going to get rich selling me favors.
“Just pretend you’re me,” I told Tate when I finished. I folded the note and handed it to him. “Don’t argue with them. Tell them that’s it, take it or leave it.”
“But—
“They’ll take it. They won’t expect me to trust them. They would know I’d try to set up something so they can’t mess us around. And they’ll check around about me. They’ll find out that I’ve done a couple of these things before and held up my end every time.”
That was true. As far as it went. But this time a snatch and switch was not the whole story. This time the snatch was part of something bigger.
I was starting to take things personally, too.
Tate got his spleen out, and yakked his fear into submission, then took my note and marched off. We got the kid cleaned up and bandaged and sent him home.
Vasco didn’t want to play the game my way, though he brought the women when he came to argue. He came on time, too, which told me that he would do it my way if I didn’t bend.
He left Rose and Tinnie fifty feet up the dock, guarded by a half-dozen men, and marched aboard. “Still in there pitching to get your throat cut, aren’t you?” I asked.
His lips tightened but he refused to be baited. The sergeants teach you to control your temper, down in the Cantard. He looked around, did not see anything to disturb him.
He should have been disturbed. It had been all I could do to restrain Morley, who wanted to bushwack the bunch and leave them floating in the river.
“Before you start,” I told Vasco, “you’d better realize that I’ve got no special need for those women. I don’t have any for Denny’s papers, either. Which is why I’ll make the trade.”
“Where are the papers, Garrett?”
“Where are the women?”
“Right there. You can’t see . . . ?”
“I don’t see them on the boat. You don’t get squat till I think it’s too late for you to screw me over.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. You haven’t shown a lot of sense so far.”
“You won’t needle me into doing something stupid, Garrett.”
“I don’t have to. You do fine without me. Get those women over here.” Master Arbanos was ready to cast off.
“What guarantee do I have that you’re not cheating us?”
I ticked off points. “One: I always play these things straight. You know my reputation. Two: I don’t need the papers for anything. Three: I know who you are, so I don’t have to mess with you now. I can come for your head whenever I want it.”
“Keep talking tough, Garrett. You’ll get burned.”
“Maybe you’ll send Barbera after me?”
His mouth tightened even more. He jerked around, jumped to the wharf, gestured at his goons. They released the women. I waved them toward Sequin.
They came forward slowly. I guess they thought blood would fly any second.
Vasco stopped a few steps from the edge of the wharf. “So where are the papers, Garrett?”
I didn’t have anything to say. He was still between me and the women. I just sort of looked around like a bored sightseer.
That’s when I spotted the two guys from Morley’s place, Big One and Ugly One. Not together, but both hanging around, relaxed, just part of the crowd eye-balling the goings-on.
I backed up a couple of steps like I was giving the gals room to jump aboard. I whispered down to Morley, who was crouched between onion sacks, “Take a peek at the guy sitting on the cotton bales.”
“Give, Garrett,” Vasco said.
I ignored him. The women had a few yards to go yet. Even Rose’s sour face had begun to show some hope.
Master Arbanos began letting lines go.
Morley whispered, “I see him. What about him?”
“Who is he?”
“How the hell should I know? I never saw him before.”
“I did. Once. The other night. Hanging around with the big guy over there leaning against those navy pork barrels.” I started to tell him where and when, then decided it might be wise to save a little something for my old age.
“I don’t know him, either,” Morley said.
“Give, Garrett.” Vasco had just about decided I was going to cheat him. He started after the women.
“Run!” I yelled at them. And to Vasco, “They’re in a box in an abandoned house on the Way of the Harlequin, half a block west of Wizard’s Reach.”
“It’s your ass if they aren’t, Garrett.”
“Anytime you think you can take a piece of it, Vasco. Anytime.”
The boat began to drift away from the wharf. The women took my advice, sprinted and jumped. A delectable bundle of goodies plopped into my arms. Morley popped up and caught Rose, making suitable purrs at the advent of unexpected treasures. I tossed him a sneer.
Vasco trotted away, barking orders at his troops.
I couldn’t restrain a chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” Tinnie asked. She made no effort to peel herself from me. I thought about pushing her away—sometime next week.
“Just imagining what might happen when they try to collect those papers.”
“You mean you lied to them?”
The wharf was fifteen feet away now. Ugly One got down off the cotton bales. He paid us no special attention. And I had trouble paying him any, either. Tinnie would not hold still.
“Oh, no. I told him the truth. I just didn’t tell him all of it.”
“Amateurs,” Morley said, taking a break from Rose, who was doing to him what Tinnie was to me. “They had any professional smarts at all, they’d know that’s the Dead Man’s place. Slick, Garrett. Remind me not to get on your wrong side. You’re so slick you’d slide uphill.”
I glanced at the two men on the wharf and wondered.
“I told you I was going with you, Garrett,” Rose crowed, as if she had planned the whole thing. She got over her frights fast.
“You might think,” I told her. “You might think.” I figured to have Master Arbanos put in a mile or two down and get shut of those females.
Damn! That Tinnie was merciless.
I decided I liked her.
About then old man Tate came charging out the dock, too late for anything but the bye-bye. “Master Arbanos, where are you going to put in so we can get rid of these women?” I figured I’d yell the news across to Tate.
“Leifmold.”
Leifmold. All the way down to the coast.
He would not relent. He was deaf to offers of money on this. He had a reputation, a schedule, and a tide, and he would waste none of them for any puny bribe I could pay.
Rose grinned wickedly while I argued.
Tinnie’s smile was more promising.
The trouble with that damned boat was that there was no privacy. You started a little hand-holding and ear blowing and there was Doris or Marsha or Dojango or some damned crewman exercising his eyes. It nearly drove Morley and me crazy. Rose seemed plenty willing to be friendly with him. Of course, he had the authentic golden touch.
I guess eating your vegetables is good for something.
Leifmold was not that long a journey. The first chance I got I pulled Morley aside and asked, “How are we going to ditch those two?”
“Bad choice of words, Garrett. Though I understand your frustration. Does our principal have reliable associates in Leifmold?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“I never had any reason to ask.”
“Too bad. Now we have to try to charm it out of those girls.” He did not sound optimistic.
Rose laughed at us when we tried to get some word out of her. Tinnie just pretended she was deaf.
Morley and I went off to the stern and brooded together alone.
“Can’t do it, Garrett,” he grumbled after a while.
“Uhm,” I grunted.
“No way.”
“Uhm.”
“Skirts in the Cantard. Worse than poison, what I hear. We go in there with women, we’re dead. Guaranteed.”
“I know. But we can’t just run off on them, either.”
He gave me a look. “If it wasn’t poor business sense in this case, I’d say you were too romantic. Baggage is baggage. There isn’t anything any one of them is sitting on that you can’t get from another one.”
There was a lot of traffic on the river, most of it taking advantage of the tide. And most of it faster than Binkey’s Sequin. But there was one gaudy yachtlike vessel back upstream that seemed to have us on a leash. “I don’t know how a guy with your attitude has your luck.”
The yacht boasted a sail of red and yellow stripes. It had sleek lines. It smelled of wealth, which meant power. It could have passed us easily, but it just hung back.
“They want to be treated that way, Garrett. If you don’t treat them like rats, they have to admit that they’re responsible for their own behavior. And you know women. They never want to admit they get a kick out of messing around.”
“How about trying this angle—if Master Arbanos is willing.”
“I’m listening.”
“We tie them up just before we make port. He hides them out while he’s loading and unloading, then he takes them back to TunFaire. Just part of the cargo.”
“Sounds good to me. When you talk to him, ask about that boat with the striped sail.”
I had wondered if he’d noticed.
Master Arbanos held me up. The man was a buccaneer. But I was between a rock and a hard place, and he knew it. I paid. In the end it all came out of Tate’s pocket, anyway.
I asked about the striped sail ship.
He looked at me like I was a moron. “Sorry, I forget you are not a riverman. That is Typhoon, personal vessel of Stormlord Thunderhead. Everyone on the river knows it. It runs to Leifmold and back all the time, showing the Stormlord’s colors.”
“Oh my, oh my, oh my,” I murmured.
“The Stormlord never sails her himself. She is just for show. Her master is a bitch cartha with the temper and moral of an alley cat. She has had trouble with everyone on the river. Some say she will strike the striped sail and hoist the black one by night.”
“What does that mean?”
“That some think she turn river pirate when no one is looking.”
“Is it just talk? Or is there something to it?” Bless me, but wouldn’t it be my kind of luck to be aboard a barge pirates were stalking. The gods have a fellow especially assigned to complicate my life.
“Who knows? There are pirate. I have seen their leaving.”
“And?” He wanted coaxing.
“They don’t leave any witness. Which is why I never accept any cargo they find attractive.”
Little wheels and gears clicked in my mind, like the works in a waterclock. A clock running a little slow, perhaps. What sort of cargo might attract a pirate working from a vessel belonging to one of the Stormlords? What was this whole business about?
Silver. Sweet silver. The fuel of the engines of sorcery.
One more complication?
Why the hell not? Every other angle had been covered, hadn’t it?
I gave Master Arbanos a generous portion of the metal sugar. He assured me my will would be carried out where the women were concerned. They would be treated like royalty, and on Sequin’s return to TunFaire he would deliver them to old man Tate personally.
I could ask for nothing more.
Master Arbanos’ crewfolk—all of them his relatives—moved the night before we were due to reach Leifmold. They caught the gals asleep.
Such caterwauling and cursing! I never. Rose I expected to be less than polite, but Tinnie I’d had pegged as at least half a lady. She turned out to be the louder of the two.
At least that went off without hitches.
The sea lay on our left. Leifmold climbed steep hills a mile to our right. We were waiting to pick up a pilot, whose expertise would be needed if Binkey’s Sequin was to negotiate the traps laid for Venageti raiders. Morley was loafing in the bows. “Come here,” he said, beckoning languorously. He was nibbling a raw potato stolen from the cargo. I gave it a disgusted look.
“Not bad if you sprinkle a little salt on,” he said.
“And good for you, no doubt.”
“Of course. Take a gander round the harbor there.”
I did. And saw what he meant.
The striped-sail yacht was warping into a dock. She had passed us in the night and had pulled rank to get the first available pilot. “Needs keeping an eye on,” I admitted.
“You read that guy Denny’s papers. Did he mention Stormlord Thunderhead anywhere?”
“No. But a couple other wizards got memorialized. I’m willing to look for an indirect connection.” When you consider the possibility of wizards being involved in anything, the smart thing to do is to assume the worst.
So chances were striped sail had nothing to do with us. But I would take the paranoid approach on the off chance.
The women raised all kinds of holler when we tied up, but nobody paid them any mind. Morley and Doris and Marsha and I went off looking for one of several coasters recommended to us by Master Arbanos. Morley left Dojango to watch the Stormlord’s yacht. No one there ought to recognize him even if they were up to no good.
Our luck was in. We found a ship called The Gilded Lady planning to put out next morning. Her master was amenable to our buying passage. Morley started looking grey around the edges.
“You handled the river all right.”
“No waves on the river, Garrett. Lots of waves along the coast, and the ship running parallel to them.” His eyes bugged. “Let’s not talk about it. Let’s find someplace to put up, then get out on the town. There’s a place down here even better than mine—don’t you ever tell anybody I admitted that—that you’ve really got to try.”
“I’m not in a roots and nuts mood, Morley. Looking a long voyage in the eye, I need something with more body.”
“Body? Don’t you care what you’re doing to your body? I promise, you’ll like this place. Give you a little something different. All that red meat is going to kill you, anyway.”
“We did red meat the other day, Morley. But since you bring up self-abuse, let’s do some calculating. Who is more likely to die young? Me eating what I want or you messing around with other guys’ women?”
“You’re talking apples and oranges now, buddy.”
“I’m talking dead is what I’m talking.”
He did not have a rejoinder for fifteen seconds. Then he said only, “I’ll die happy.”
“So will I, Morley. And without hunks of nut stuck between my teeth.”
“I give up,” he said. “Go ahead. Commit slow suicide by poisoning yourself.”
“That was my plan.” A tavern sign caught my eye. It had been a dry trip down the river. “I’m going to tip a few.”
Doris and Marsha recognized a beer joint when they saw one, too. They grunted back and forth. Morley started trading gibberish with them.
Oh, my. Did all the triplets have an alcohol problem?
I said, “As soon as we find a place for the night somebody better check on Dojango. At least so he knows where to find us.”
Morley reached a compromise with Doris and Marsha. “They can have one bucket each. That’s all.”
“Bucket?”
“They’re big boys, Garrett.”
“So I noticed.” We marched into the tavern. It was early yet, so there was no crowd. Still, a silence fell and grew so deep I knew we had walked in where we were not wanted.
I’ve never let that stop me. I tossed a coin on the bar. “A mug of brew for me and a bucket apiece for the big boys. And my buddy here will have whatever you can stomp out of a parsnip.”
Cold-eyed stare. “We don’t serve their kind.”
“Well, now, they don’t speak Karent very well. So when you look at them there, they’re still smiling. But I don’t think they’ll keep on smiling if I have to translate that for them. You know how grolls are when they get mad.”
He thought about arguing. He might have had there been forty or fifty more people to back his play. But Doris and Marsha had begun to get the drift. Their smiles vanished and their faces grew mottled.
“We want beer,” I said. “Not your women.”
He did not laugh. He headed for the tap. Not many people are fool enough to make a groll mad.
They do get mean.
“Not bad beer,” I said, quaffing my third while Doris and Marsha nursed their milk pails. “And serving it up didn’t break one bone, did it?”
The barman wasn’t interested in bantering.
Most of his regulars had deserted him.
We followed their example.
About fifty sullen men had gathered outside. Their mood looked ugly. I told Morley, “I ought to pay closer attention to what neighborhood I’m in.”
“I like the way you think, Garrett.”
Half a brick thrown by somebody named Anonymous arced toward us. It had some arm behind it. Doris—or maybe it was Marsha—stabbed a paw out and snagged it. He looked it over for a second. Then he squeezed it and let the powder dribble between his fingers.
That impressed me, but not the mob.
So he snapped off the timber from which the tavern’s sign hung. He stripped the sign off and flailed the timber around like a switch.
That got the message across. The mob began to evaporate.
Morley asked, “Could a mule do that?”
“No.”
We were more circumspect in selecting a place to spend the night.
“So where the hell is he?” I demanded. There wasn’t a shadow of Dojango.
Morley looked bleak. He had been looking bleak for a while. I thought maybe I should buy him a bunch of carrots or something. He muttered, “Guess we’ll have to scout the alleys and taverns.”
“I’m going to take a gander at that ship. Catch me on the pier when you find him.”
Morley said something to the two remaining triplets. They grunted and moved out. I marched on down to where I could get a look at that striped-sail ship.
There wasn’t much to see, a few men lugging things off, then lugging other things on. It wasn’t hard to understand why Dojango bugged out. Watching is boring work. It takes a patient guy to lurk for a living.
A man came out on the rear deck, leaned on the rail, hawked, spat into the harbor.
“Interesting.” He was Big One from Morley’s place and the pier.
He began scanning the waterfront almost as if he had heard me. Then he shrugged and went into a cabin.
Curious.
Maybe Dojango would have stayed on the job if he had seen that guy before.
I lazed in the shade, wishing I had a keg to nurse and wondering what was taking Morley so long. Nothing else happened except that the stevedores finished loading and unloading.
I heard a soft scuff behind me. Maybe at last . . .
But when I looked I saw Big One. He was not in a friendly mood.
I dropped off the bale where I’d been loafing. Did this call for lethal instruments?
He walked right up and wacked the bale with a short club. No accusations. No questions. Nothing but business. I leaned out of the way and let him have one in the gut.
It did as much good as gut-punching a barrel of salt pork.
That club was meant to scramble my brains, I feared. I hauled out a knife.
I did not get to use it. The cavalry arrived in the guise of Doris or Marsha. The groll picked Big One up by one arm and held him out like a doll. A slow grin spread over his green face. Then he casually heaved him over the bales into the harbor.
Big One never made a sound.
They would have heard me cussing fifty miles away.
Doris—or Marsha, as the case may have been—beckoned me to follow. I did, grumbling. “I could have handled him.” Probably about like I had handled Saucerhead, by pounding my body off his club till it broke.
This case was doing wonders for my self-esteem.
Dojango was not falling-down-drunk. He was climb-ing-the-walls-and-howling-at-the-moon-drunk. Marsha kept him under control while Doris explained what happened on the waterfront. Or Doris did while Marsha did. I passed my thoughts afterward.
“Bad business,” Morley said. His sense of humor had deserted him.
Bad business indeed. But I had gone up against wizards before. You can handle them if your footwork is deft. They have more handles than your ordinary street tbug. The big thing is, they’re all as crooked as a hen’s hind leg. They are in the middle of every stew of corruption. But they go for a squeaky-clean public image. It’s smart to keep some tarnish in your trick bag and be ready to spread it around.
“We’ll be out of here tomorrow. Our worries will be over.”
“Our worries will be over about the time I learn to handicap the D’Gumi races.”
“Meaning never?”
“Or maybe a little longer.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if we ought not to reexamine your diet, Morley. Such unrelenting pessimism must have some deficiency at its base.”
“The only deficiencies bothering me are of good luck, financial wherewithal, and female companionship.”
“I thought you and Rose—
“As you said, she wants something for nothing. She had a chance at a once-in-a-lifetime experience and she tried to sell herself to me! As if she had something special. As if a woman with her attitudes could ever develop whatever talent she did have. I’ll never understand you people. What you do to your women . . . ”
“What I do to them isn’t any different than what you do to yours. Rose’s problems are hers. I do get tired of hearing folks blame their faults on everybody else.”
“Whoa, Garrett. Come on down off your stump.”
“Sorry. I was just thinking how I was going to spend tomorrow.”
“Say what?”
“Listening to Dojango groan and moan and heave his guts over the side while he blames his drinking problem on his mother or somebody.”
Morley grinned.
Dojango gripped the rail and made an awful noise as he sacrificed to the gods of the sea. A soft whimper followed.
“What did I say?” I asked.
We were twenty feet from the quayside.
Morley was a little green himself. His trouble was all anticipation. The ship wasn’t even noticeably rolling.
The ship’s master approached. He had time for us now that the vessel was turning toward the channel. He said, “I spoke to the harbor master this morning. The war situation is quiet. We’re clear all the way to Full Harbor if you want to stay with the ship that far.”
“Of course we do.”
Morley groaned. Dojango whimpered something about throwing himself overboard and ending it all. I grinned and set to dickering for the extra passage.
Halfway out of the channel the groll portion of the triplets began gabbling at Morley. When we went to see what they wanted, we found we were overhauling Binkey’s Sequin. The Tate girls were out on deck. They spotted us as we slid past on the starboard side.
“I get the feeling they’re upset about something,” Morley said. He smiled and waved.
“Women have no sense of proportion,” I said. I grinned and waved, too. “Wag a little tail at you and you’re supposed to eat out of their hands.” I looked at Tinnie and wondered if it might be worth it.
They blistered the air. I wondered if my personal sacrifices could be parlayed into a bonus from old man Tate.
We swooped past Sequin and dashed for the mouth of the channel. Master Arbanos’ vessel was a dark lump in the distance as we began our turn to the south.
“I’ll be damned!”
It was a morning for meeting old friends. A river scow entering the Leifmold channel carried Vasco and his buddies. “That damned Dead Man,” I muttered. “He could have banged them around a little, at least.”
They hadn’t spotted us. I got everybody out of sight so it would stay that way.
I had counted on the Dead Man to stall them longer than he had. Now I worried. Had they done something I would regret?
“Keep an eye on these pirates,” Morley grumped. “They might murder us while we’re laying in the scuppers puking our guts out.” The ship had completed her turn. She was rolling in the offshore swell.
Morley had no call to worry. The ship’s crew treated us perfectly. The journey was almost without event. Once, the Stormlord’s striped sail passed us, wallowing and struggling through seas she was not designed to face. She did not seem interested in us, and was not to be seen in the harbor at our first port of call.
Once we saw a royal man-of-war farther out, and another time a masterhead lookout yelled down that he had a Venageti sail in sight. Nothing came of either sighting. We entered Full Harbor eight days after departing Leifmold. No striped sail was to be seen there, either.
For once I felt a little optimistic.
“We’re here,” Morley growled the next morning. “What now?” He had stoked up on biscuits baked with lard and served with greasy gravy. It was the nearest he could get to a vegetarian breakfast.
“Now I try to pick up the woman’s trail. Her family should still be here. They ought to know something.”
It sounded too simple even to me. But sometimes things go your way. It would be sweet if I could find her at her dad’s place, make my pitch, and head out with her yea or nay.
Full Harbor had changed and not changed. New buildings. New naval facilities. New streets laid out after the cleanup from the big Venageti attack three years ago. Same old whores and stews and pawnshops and overpriced inns and tailors preying on the loneliness of young sailors and Marines far from home and in the shadow of death. The gods know I wasted enough of my own time and pay in places like that. Reformers keep talking about shutting them down. They won’t. The boys would have nothing left to fill their time.
I expected commentary from Morley Dotes. He disappointed me in a pleasant way. “You humans are a despair, that this is the best a soldier can expect.”
Maybe it was his human side talking.
We are the only race that goes in for war habitually, in a big way. The others, especially the elves and dwarfs, have the occasional brawl, but seldom more often than once a generation, and then usually only a single battle, not much sorcery, winner take all.
Plenty of them get in on our doings as auxiliaries. They can be useful but are unreliable. They have no concept of discipline.
“You’re right. Let’s find ourselves a base, then get to work.”
We drew plenty of stares, being civilians, and them being what they were. I didn’t like the attention. Mine is a business where I don’t want to be remembered.
We found a place that would accept civs and breeds without devouring the income of ten years. It was about as sleazy as a place could get. I bribed the owner to keep alcohol away from the triplets, then Morley and I hit the streets.
Full Harbor, on the map, looks something like a lobster’s head lying between its arms. The city proper, and its naval facilities, sits at the end of a fortified neck of land. The arms reach out and shield the bay from the worst storm-driven seas. The city’s location makes it very defensible. The Venageti have managed to penetrate it only twice, each time losing the entire force committed. The farther you get from the waterfront and naval facilities, the more “civilized” the city becomes. There are some low, wooded hills just inside the neck of the peninsula, right behind the Narrows Wall. They harbor the homes of the city’s well-to-do.
No lords reside in the city. They refuse to risk themselves or their properties where the Venageti might show up with the unpredictable suddenness of a tropical storm.
They’re funny that way—plenty willing to trek all over the Cantard risking themselves for glory and personal gain, but . . .
I don’t understand them any more than I understand frogs. But I’m handicapped by my low birth.
Kayean’s father had been one of the Syndics who dwelt in the hills, with a wife, four servants, and eight kids. Kayean was the oldest.
Memories returned, bringing a certain nostalgia, as I guided the rented carriage up and down pacific lanes.
“What’re you looking all moony-eyed about?” Morley demanded. We had left the triplets at the inn, an action the wisdom of which I still doubted, though Morley assured me he had not left a farthing between them.
“Remembering when. Young love. First love. Right here in these hills.” I had not filled him in on every little detail. A bodyguard did not need to know all the sordid angles.
“I’m a bit of a nostalgic romantic myself, but I never figured you for one, Garrett.”
“Me? The knight in rusty armor always clanking out to rescue undeserving maidens or to do battle with the dragons of some lunatic’s imagination? I don’t qualify?”
“You see? Romantic images. Though why should you mind working for nuts if they have money to spend? You can milk a man with an obsession like a spider milks a fly.”
“I don’t work that way.”
“I know. You really want to rescue maidens and champion underdogs and lost causes—as long as you get enough grease to keep the joints in the armor from freezing up.”
“I like a beer sometimes, too.”
“You’ve got no ambition, Garrett. That’s what’s wrong with you.”
“You could write a book about all the things you’ve found wrong with me, Morley.”
“I’d rather write one about the things that are right. It’d be a lot less work. Just a short little fable. ‘He’s kind to his mother. Doesn’t beat his wife. His kids never have to go in the snow barefoot.’ ”
“Sarky today, aren’t we?”
“I’m off my feed. How much longer are we going to be looking for the ghosts of might-have-been?”
Not only sarky but a little too perceptive. I supposed I might as well confess. “I’m not being romantic. I’m lost.”
“Lost? I thought you said you knew these parts like the back of your hand.”
“I did. But things have changed. All the trees and bushes and stuff that were landmarks have grown or been cut down or—”
“Then we’ll just have to ask somebody, won’t we? Yo!” he shouted at a gardener clipping a hedge. “What’s the name of the guy we’re looking for, Garrett?” The gardener stopped working and gave us the fisheye. He looked like a real friendly type. Poison you with his smile.
“Klaus Kronk.” The first name was pronounced claws with a soft sibilant, but Morley took it for a nickname.
He climbed down and approached the gardener. “Tell me, my good fellow, where can we find the Syndic Claws Kronk?”
The good fellow gave him a puzzled look that turned into a sneer. “Let’s see the color of your metal, darko.”
Morley calmly picked him up and chucked him over his hedge, hopped over after him and tossed him back, thumped on him a little, twisted limbs and made him groan, then said, “Tell me, my good fellow, where can we find the Syndic Claws Kronk?” He wasn’t even breathing hard.
The gardener decided that at least one of us was a psychopath. He stammered directions.
“Thank you,” Morley said. “You have been most gracious and helpful. In token of my appreciation I hope you will accept this small gratuity.” He dropped a couple of coins into the man’s palm, closed his fingers over them, then rejoined me aboard our conveyance. “Take the first left and go all the way to the top of the hill.”
I glanced back at the gardener, still seated beside the lane. A glint of mischief sparked in his swelling eyes.
“You think it’s wise to make enemies out here, Morley?”
“We won’t get any comebacks from him. He thinks I’m crazy.”
“I can’t imagine why anybody would think that about you, Morley.”
We had only one turn left to make. A cemetery flanked both sides of the road. “You know where you are now?” Morley asked. “A landmark like this ought to be plenty memorable.”
“More memorable than you know. I think our gardener friend got us. We’ll see in a minute.” I turned between the red granite pillars that flanked the entrance to the Kronk family plot.
“He’s dead?”
“We’re about to find out.”
He was. His was the last name incised in the stone of the obelisk in the center of the plot. “Got it during the last Venageti incursion, judging from the date,” I said. “Fits what I remember about him, too. He would get out and howl for Karenta.”
“What do we do now?”
“I guess we look for the rest of the family. He’s the only one who’s established residence here.”
He lifted one eyebrow.
“I can find my way from here. Kayean and I used to walk up here at night to, uh . . . ”
“In a graveyard?”
“Nothing like tombstones to remind you how little time you have for the finer things in life.”
“You humans are weird, Garrett. If you want an aphrodisiac, there’s one that the sidhe tribes of the Benecel river basin make from the roots of something like a potato plant. It’ll keep your soldier at attention for hours. Not only that, but when you use it you’re guaranteed there’s no way you’re going to become a papa.”
Vegetarian sexual aids? Some people take good things too far.
Starting from the cemetery I was able to find the Kronk place with only one miscue. From the lane the place next door looked more like the one I remembered than the correct one. We were partway up the flagstones when I spied the peacock cages under the magnolias.
“About turn and march,” I said. “One house shy of our mark.” I recalled how, if Kayean was not very careful sneaking in and out, those peafowl would raise six kinds of hell and there went the evening if it happened on the sneak-out side. Her old man knew what was going on but was never quick enough to catch her. She had been fast on her feet.
I explained that to Morley as we retreated to the lane.
“How the hell did a slob like you ever meet a quail living in a place like this?”
“I met her at a party for bachelor officers the admiral put on. All the most eligible young ladies of Full Harbor were there.”
He gave me an overly dramatic look of disbelief.
I confessed, “I was there waiting tables.”
“It must have been animal magnetism and the air of danger and forbidden fruit surrounding an affair with a member of the lower classes.” He said it deadpan. I could not decide whether I should be irritated or not.
“Whatever it was, it was the greatest thing that had happened in my young life. Hasn’t been much since to eclipse it, either.”
“Like I said, a romantic.” And there he let it lay.
“Lot of changes since I was here,” I said. “The place has been completely done over.”
“You sure it’s the right one?”
“Yeah.” All the memories assured me that it was. We had walked these grounds under the watchful chaperonage of a patient and loving mother who had seen the whole romance as a phase and would not have believed her eyes if she had walked in on us in the cemetery.
Morley took my word for it.
We were still fifty feet from the door when a man in livery stepped outside and came to meet us. “He don’t look like he’s glad we dropped by.”
Morley grunted. “He don’t look like your average houseboy, either.”
He didn’t. He looked like a Saucerhead Tharpe who was past his prime but still plenty dangerous. The way he fisheyed us said that, fancy clothes or not, we were not fooling him.
“Can I help you gents?”
I’d decided to go at it straight ahead, almost honest, and hope for the best. “I don’t know. We’re down from TunFaire looking for Klaus Kronk.”
That seemed to take him from the blind side. He said, “And just when I thought I’d heard all the gags there was.”
“We just a little bit ago found out he was dead.”
“So what are you doing here instead of heading back where you came from if the guy you want is croaked?”
“The only reason I wanted to talk to him was to find out how I could get in touch with his oldest daughter. I know she’s married, but I don’t know who to. I thought maybe her mother or any others of the family who were still around might be able to point me in the right direction. Any of them here?”
He looked like it was getting too complicated for him. “You must be talking about the people who used to live here. They moved out a couple years ago.”
The changes all seemed recent enough to support his statement. “You have any idea where she is?”
“Why the hell should I? I didn’t even know her name till you told me.”
“Thank you for your time and courtesy. We’ll have to trace her some other way.”
“What you want this machuska for, anyway?”
While I considered his question, Morley said, “Throw it in the pond and see which way the frogs jump.”
“We represent the executors of an estate of which she is the principal legatee.”
“I love it when you talk dirty lawyer,” Morley said. He told our new buddy, “She inherited a bundle.” In a ventriloquist’s whisper, he told me, “Hit him with the number so we can see how big his eyes get.”
“It looks like around a hundred thousand marks, less executors’ fees.”
His eyes did not get big. He didn’t even bat one. Instead he muttered, “I thought I heard every gag there was,” again.
So I repeated myself for him. “Thanks for your time and courtesy.” I headed for the lane.
“Next stop?” Morley asked.
“We ask at the houses on either side. The people who lived there knew the family. They might give us something.”
“If they’re not gone, too. What did you think of that guy?”
“I’ll try not to form an opinion till I’ve talked to a few more people.”
We had a less belligerent but no more informative interview at the next house down the lane. The people there had only been in the place a year and all they knew about the Kronks was that Klaus was killed during the last Venageti invasion.
“You make anything of that?” I asked as we turned the rig around and headed for the peacock place.
“Of what?”
“He said Kronk was killed during the Venageti thing. Not by the Venageti.”
“An imprecision due entirely to laziness, no doubt.”
“Probably. But that’s the kind of detail you keep an ear out for. Sometimes they add up to a picture people don’t know they’re giving you, like brush strokes add up to a painting.”
The peacocks raised thirteen kinds of hell when they discovered us. They crowed like they hadn’t had anything to holler about for years.
“My god,” I murmured. “She hasn’t changed a bit.”
“She was always old and ugly?” Morley asked, staring at the woman who observed our approach from a balcony on the side of the house.
“Hasn’t even changed her clothes. Careful with her. She’s some kind of half-hulder witch.”
A little man in a green suit and red stocking cap raced across our path cackling something in a language I didn’t understand. Morley grabbed a rock and started to throw it. I stopped him. “What’re you doing?”
“They’re vermin, Garrett. Maybe they run on their hind legs and make noises that sound like speech, but they’re as much vermin as any rat.” But he let the rock drop.
I have definite feelings about rats, even the kind that walk on their hind legs and talk and do socially useful things like dig graves. I understood Morley’s mood if not his particular prejudice.
The Old Witch—I never heard her called anything else—grinned down at us. Hers was a classic gap-toothed grin. She looked like every witch from every witch story you’ve ever heard. There was no shaking my certainty that it was deliberate.
A mad cackle floated down. The peafowl answered as though to one of their own.
“Spooky,” Morley said.
“That’s her image. Her game. She’s harmless.”
“So you say.”
“That was the word on her when I was here before. Crazy as a gnome on weed, but harmless.”
“Nobody who harbors those little vipers is harmless. Or blameless. You let them skulk around your garden, they breed like rabbits, and first thing you know they’ve driven all the decent folk away with their malicious tricks.”
We were up under the balcony now. I forbore mentioning his earlier response to a gardener’s bigotry. It wouldn’t have done any good. Folks always believe their own racism is the result of divine inspiration, incontestably valid.
My dislike for rat people is, of course, the exception to the rule of irrationality underlying such patterns of belief.
The Old Witch cackled again, and the peafowl took up the chorus once more. She called down, “He was murdered, you know.”
“Who was?” I asked.
“The man you were looking for, Private Garrett. Syndic Klaus. They think no one knows. But they are wrong. They were seen. Weren’t they, my little pretties?”
“How did you . . . ?”
“You think you and that girl could sneak through here night after night, running to that cemetery to slake your lusts, without the little people noticing? They tell me everything, they do. And I never forget a name or a face.”
“Did I say they were vermin?” Morley demanded. “Lurking in the shadows of tombstones watching you. And probably laughing their little black hearts out because there is no sight more ridiculous than people coupling.”
Maybe I reddened a little, but otherwise I ignored him. “Who killed him?” I asked. “And why?”
“We could name some names, couldn’t we, my little pretties? But to what purpose? There is no point now.”
“Could you at least tell me why he was killed?”
“He found out something that was not healthy for him to know.” She cackled again. The peafowl cheered her on. It was a great joke. “Didn’t he, my little pretties? Didn’t he?”
“What might that have been?”
The laughter left her face and eyes. “You won’t be hearing it from me. Maybe that machuska Kayean knows. Ask her when you find her. Or maybe she doesn’t. I don’t know. And I don’t care.”
That was the second time that day I’d heard Kayean called machuska, and only the second time I’d heard the word since I had gotten out of the Marines and the Cantard. It was a particularly spiteful bit of Venageti gutter slang labeling a human woman who has congress with members of other species. A word like our own kobold-knocker is a like nickname.
“Can you tell me where she is?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“Could you tell me where I might find some of her family?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they all went to join her. Maybe they went somewhere to escape their shame.” She cackled but she didn’t put much heart into it. The peafowl didn’t, either. Their feeble response was pure charity.
“Is there any way you can help me?”
“I can give you some advice.”
I waited.
“Watch out who you play with among the headstones. Especially if you do find Kayean. She might show you one with her name on it.”
“Time to get out of here,” I told Morley. “In case it’s catching.”
He agreed. I thanked the Old Witch. We backed away in spite of her efforts to cling to our company.
“Was that worth it?” Morley asked.
“Absolutely.”
A little fellow in green and red jumped into our path. He removed his cap and bowed, then rewarded Morley with a grandiloquent obscene gesture. He raced into the bushes giggling.
This time I didn’t interfere with Morley’s rock throwing. Lurk behind tombstones, would they?
The giggles ended with an abrupt “Yipe!”
“I hope I broke his skull,” Morley growled. “What’re we going to do now?”
“Go back to the inn and eat. Check on the triplets. Guzzle some beer. Think. Spend the afternoon trying to turn something up in parish or civil records.”
“Like what?”
“Like who she married if she was married here. She was a good Orthodox girl. She would have wanted the whole fancy, formal show. It might be easier to trace her through her husband if we knew his name.”
“I don’t want to be negative, Garrett, but I have a feeling the girl you knew and are looking for isn’t the woman we’re going to find.”
I had the same sad feeling.
“Where the hell are they?” Morley roared at the innkeeper.
“How the hell should I know?” the man roared right back, obviously used to rough trade. “You said don’t give them anything to drink. You didn’t say nothing about nursemaiding them or keeping them off the streets. If you ask me, they looked like they was growed up enough to go out and play by themselves.”
“He’s right, Morley. Calm down.” I didn’t want him getting so stirred up he’d need to run ten miles to work it off. I had a feeling it would be smart if we stuck together as much as we could. Assuming the Old Witch knew what she was yakking about, somewhere there was a killer who might get unnerved by our poking around.
I repeated myself. “Calm down and think about it. You know them. What are they likely to be doing?”
“Anything,” he grumbled. “That’s why I’m not calm.” But he took my advice and sprawled in a chair across the table. “I’ve got to find some decent food. Or something female. You see what’s happening to me.”
I didn’t get a chance to put in my farthing’s worth. Dojango came ambling in looking like a rooster on parade. He had his hands shoved into his pockets, his shoulders thrown back, and he was strutting.
“Calmly,” I cautioned Morley.
Doris and Marsha each had a hide with the look of old, scuffed shoes, but they were grinning too. Strutting was too much for them. The ceiling was only twelve feet high.
Morley did very well. He asked, “What’s up, Dojango?”
“We went out and got in a fight with about twenty sailors. Cleaned up the streets with them.”
“Calmly,” I told Morley, hanging on to his shoulder.
From the looks of Dojango, compared to his brothers, his part in the fight must have been mostly supervisory.
Morley suggested, “Maybe you’d better tell it from the beginning. Like start with what made you go out there in the first place.”
“Oh. We were going down to watch the harbor in case anybody interesting came in. Like the guys on that striped-sail ship or the ones that snatched Garrett’s girlfriends, or even the girls themselves.”
Morley had the good grace to look abashed. “And?”
“We were headed back here when we ran into the sailors.”
Doris—or maybe Marsha—rumbled something. Morley translated. “He says they called them bad names.” He kept a straight face. “So. Besides making the streets safe from marauding, name-calling sailors, did you accomplish anything?”
“We saw the striped-sail ship come in. One guy—the one Marsha threw in the drink in Leifmold—got off. He hired a ricksha. We figured we would be too obvious if we tried to follow him, so we didn’t try. But we did get close enough to hear him tell the ricksha man to take him to the civil city hall.”
Full Harbor has two competing administrations, one civil, one military. Their feuding helps keep city life interesting.
“Good work,” Morley grouched.
“Worth a beer?” Dojango asked.
Morley looked at me. I shrugged. They were his problem. He said, “All right.”
“How about two?”
“What is this? A damned auction?”
Morley and I mounted the rig. He asked, “Where to now, peerless investigator?”
“I figured on hitting the civil city hall next, but Dojango changed my mind. I don’t want to run into that guy again if I can help it.”
“Your caution is commendable if a bit out of character. Keep an eye peeled for a decent place to eat.”
“Get up,” I told the horses. “Keep an eye out for a pasture where Morley can graze.”
I don’t understand it. We went into the church and there was nothing going on. Every day seems like a holy day of obligation for the Orthodox from what I’ve seen.
A priest in his twenties with a face that did not yet need shaving asked us, “How may I help you gentlemen?” He was unsettled. We weren’t ten feet inside the door, but already we had betrayed ourselves as heathen. We had overlooked some genuflection or something.
Earlier I’d decided to deal straight with the church—without telling everything, of course. I told the priest I was trying to locate the former Kayean Kronk, of his parish, because she had a very large legacy pending in TunFaire. “I thought somebody who works here, or your records, might help me trace her. Can we talk to your boss?”
He winced before he said, “I’ll tell him you’re here and why. I’ll ask if he’ll see you.”
Morley barely waited until the kid was out of earshot. “If you want to get along with these people, you should at least try to fake the cant.”
“How do you do that when you don’t have the foggiest what it is?”
“I thought you said you and the gal used to come here for services.”
“I’m not a religious guy. I slept through them most of the time. The Venageti must not have made it this far during the invasion.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Look at all the gold and silver. There aren’t any Orthodox among the Venageti. They would have stripped the place and sent the plunder out on the first courier boat.”
The priest came hustling back. “Sair Lojda will give you five minutes to argue your case.” As we followed him, he added, “The Sair is accustomed to dealing with unbelievers, but even from them he expects the honor and deference due his rank.”
“I’ll be sure not to slap him on the back and ask if he wants a beer,” I said.
The Sair was the first to ask for my credentials. I made my pitch while he examined them. He did not give us the full five minutes allotted. He interrupted me. “You will have to see Father Rhyne. He was the Kronk family confessor and spiritual adviser. Mike, take these gentlemen to Father Rhyne.”
“What are you grinning about?” I asked Morley as soon as we were out of the presence.
“When was the last time you had a priest take less than three hours even to tell you to have a nice day?”
“Oh.”
“He was a dried-up little peckerwood, wasn’t he?”
“Watch your tongue, Morley.”
He was right. The Sair’s face had reminded me of a half-spoiled peach that had dried in the desert for six months.
Father Rhyne was a bit remarkable, too. He was about five feet tall, almost as wide, bald as a buzzard’s egg, but had enough hair from the ears down to reforest fifty desert craniums. He was naked to the waist and appeared to be doing exercises. I have never seen anyone with so much brush on his face and body.
“Couple of minutes more, men,” he said. He went on, sweating puddles.
“All right. Throw me a towel, Mike. Trying to shed a few stone,” he told us. “What can I do for you?”
I sang my song again, complete with all the choruses. I wondered if I would run out of bottles of beer on the wall before I picked up Kayean’s trail.
He thought for a minute, then said, “Mike, would you get the gentlemen some refreshments? Beer will do for me.”
“Me too,” I chirped.
“Ah. Another connoisseur. A gentleman after my own heart.”
Morley grumbled something about brewing being an unconscionable waste of grains that could be stone-ground and baked into high-fiber breads that would give thousands the bulk they desperately needed in their diets.
Father Mike and Father Rhyne both looked at him like he was mad. I didn’t contradict their suppositions. I told Father Mike, “See if you can’t track down a rutabaga. If it doesn’t put up too fierce a fight, squeeze it for a pint of blood and bring that to him.”
“A glass of cold spring water will be sufficient,” Morley said. Coldly. Sufficiently. I decided not to ride him so hard.
Once our guide stepped out, Father Rhyne confessed, “I wanted Mike out of the way for a while. He has a tendency to gossip. You don’t want this spread around any more than need be. So you’re looking for Kayean Kronk. Why here?”
“The Kronks were a religious family. This was their parish. I know she was married some time ago, but I don’t even know her husband’s name. It would have been in keeping with her character to have had a big parochial wedding. If she did, and it was here, then the groom’s name would be on record.”
“She was not married in the church. Not this parish or any other.” There was something very odd and ominous about the way he said that.
“Is there any chance you could give me a useful lead or two, either toward her or a member of her family who might be willing to help?”
He eyed me a full half a minute. “You seem like an honest enough fellow, if not entirely forthright. But I expect our trades are a little alike in that respect. You satisfied the Sair, who has the eye of a buzzard when it comes to judging character. I’ll help however I can as long as I don’t have to violate the sanctity of the confessional.”
“All right. How can you help me?”
“I don’t know. I can’t tell you where to find her.”
“Is that privileged knowledge?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“What about the name of the guy she married?”
“I can’t tell you that, either.”
“Privilege? Or don’t know?”
“Six of one, half dozen of the other.”
“All right. I’ll worry about getting a dozen out of that later. Can you tell me where I can get in touch with any of her family?”
“No.” Before I could ask he raised a staying hand and said, “Ignorance, not privilege. The last I heard of any of the Kronks was about two years ago. Her brother Kayeth had been decorated and brevetted major of cavalry for his part in the victory at Latigo Wells.”
Morley stirred just the slightest. Yes, another cavalryman. It might or might not mean something. Kayeth was younger than Kayean, which meant he was younger than Denny and me, which meant their periods of service might not have overlapped at all.
Idiot! They didn’t need to overlap for them to have met if Denny was her lover after me.
“Do you recall what unit he was with?”
“No.”
“No matter. That should be easy to find out. When was the last time you saw Kayean?”
He had to think about that. I figured he was having trouble remembering I was wrong. He was debating proprieties. He gave me an exact-to-the-minute time and date slightly more than six years ago, and added, “That is when she ceased to exist in the eyes of the church.”
“Huh?”
Morley said, “He means she was excommunicated, Garrett.”
Father Rhyne nodded.
“What for?”
“The reasons for excommunication are revealed only to the soul to be banished from grace.”
“Wait a minute.” I was confused. “Are we talking about the same woman?”
“Take it easy, Garrett,” Morley said. “Excommunication don’t necessarily mean she turned into some kind of religious desperado. They do you in because you won’t let them extort your whole fortune. Or, if you’re a woman, because you won’t come across.”
That was a deliberate provocation. Father Rhyne took it better than I expected. “I have heard that sort of thing happens up north. Not here. This is a church militant, here in this archdiocese. The priest who tried that would find himself staked like a vampire. The reasons for Kayean’s excommunication were valid within the laws of the church.”
I stepped in before Morley rendered his opinion of laws that judged him to be without a soul and therefore beyond the protection of its golden rules. “That’s not really the sort of information that’s likely to help me, Father. Unless the reasons for her excommunication have some bearing on where she is now.”
Father Rhyne shook his head, but with just enough hesitance to show he was not sure.
“My job, and my only job, is to find the woman so I can tell her she has inherited a hundred thousand marks. Once I tell her, I’m supposed to ask if she wants it. If she does, I’m supposed to escort her to TunFaire because she has to claim it in person. If she doesn’t want it, I have to get a legal deposition to that effect so that others down the list can benefit from the legacy. That’s it. That’s all.”
“Nevertheless, you have a personal interest.”
Glass Door Garrett, that is what they call me. See right through me. “The guy who died was a good friend of mine. I want to see what kind of woman would get him to leave her everything when he hadn’t even seen her for seven years.”
A twitch of a smile worked one corner of Rhyne’s mouth. I stopped, confused. Morley said, “In the shadows behind the tombstones.”
That did it. Of course. Rhyne had been Kayean’s confessor. He’d never say a word, but he remembered sins confessed that included a Marine named Garrett.
“All right. We know where we stand. We know what my job is. I’ve asked the questions I think are pertinent—and a few that weren’t and some that were probably impertinent—and I think you’ve answered me fairly. Can you think of anything you could volunteer that might be helpful?”
“Hang on a second, Garrett,” Morley said. He drifted to the door as soundlessly as a cloud and jerked it open. Father Mike almost fell over.
I’d wondered what had been keeping him.
“Ah! That beer at last!” Father Rhyne had on a big, jovial host’s grin, but his eyes were not smiling. “Just put the tray down and go about your duties, Mike. I’ll talk to you later.”
Father Mike went out looking like he hoped later would never come.
Rhyne chose to pretend that nothing untoward had happened. He poured beer from a monster of a pitcher into enormous earthenware mugs. Morley’s water was in a blown-glass tankard of equal size. I’d barely taken my first sip before Father Rhyne parted from his mug and said, “Ahh!” He wiped his mouth with the fur on the back of his forearm, then belched like a young thunderhead. He poured himself a pint chaser.
Before he hoisted it, he said, “What information can I volunteer? I can tell you that you won’t find her in Full Harbor. I can tell you to walk very carefully because I can infer, without absolute certitude, that there might be people who wouldn’t want you to find her. I can tell you not to look for the image that lives in your memory because you will never find her.”
I finished my brew. “Thank you. Good beer.”
“We make it ourselves. Will there be anything more?”
“No . . . Well, something from off the wall. I’ve heard her father was murdered. Any comment?”
He got a very evasive look. “It’s possible.”
His expression told he would clamp his jaws on that cryptic statement. I returned my mug to the tray. Morley followed my lead. He had downed enough water to show he appreciated the stuff in quantities too small to rock a boat. We headed for the door. I said, “Thanks for everything.”
“Sure. If you do find her, tell her we haven’t stopped loving her, even if we can’t forgive her. That might help.”
Our gazes locked. And I knew that fat little hairball did not mean “we” at all. I also knew the whole thing was as chaste and courtly as any perfect knight’s affection for his lady in an old roman. “I’ll do that, Father.”
“Another one,” Morley said when we got outside. “I’ve got to meet this woman.” There was not an ounce of sarcasm in his tone.
“Are we making any headway?” Morley asked as we climbed aboard the rented rig.
“Oh, yes. We’ve eliminated some legwork, like making the rounds of every Orthodox parish in Full Harbor. We’ve added a visit to the army office at the military city hall to see if they will help us locate Major Kayeth Kronk.”
I did not look forward to that. They’d probably assume we were Venageti spies.
“What now?”
“We can try that. We can try the civil city hall, too, though I don’t think we’d get much there. Or we could go back to the inn and I could lay around staring at the ceiling and wondering what a sensible young woman can do to get herself excommunicated.”
“That doesn’t sound productive. And butting heads with the army, even to get them to tell us to get out and leave them alone, is likely to be an all-day job.”
“The civil city hall it is, then.”
We were headed up the steps when a voice roared, “Hey! You two.”
We stopped, turned. Near the rig stood a city employee, the type who carries weapons and is supposed to protect citizens from their neighbors’ villainies, but who spends most of his time force-feeding his purse and sparing the reputations of the wealthy and powerful. “This yours?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t leave it here. We don’t want no horse apples tracked all over the hall.”
Despite his friendly way of putting it, his position had merit. I marched down the steps. “Have you a suggestion what I can do with it?”
He did not know who we were. We had come in a fancy rig. We were well dressed. Morley looked a bit like a bodyguard. I wore a look of cherubic innocence. A suspicion slithered through his slow wit. I had handed him that straight line so he would stick his foot in his mouth. Then I would choke him on it.
“We usually ask visitors to leave their conveyances in the courtyard behind the hall, sir. I could move it back there for you, if you like.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you. I’d appreciate that very much.” I dug out a tip about one and a half times the going rate for such a task. Enough to impress, not enough to arouse resentment or suspicion.
“Thank you, sir.”
We watched him drive into a narrow passageway between one end of the hall and the city jail.
“Slick, Garrett.”
“What?”
“You should have been a con man. You sold him using nothing but intonation, bearing, and gesture. Slick.”
“It was an experiment. If he’d had two ounces of brain to rub together, it wouldn’t have worked.”
“If he had two ounces of brain he’d be making an honest living.”
I think Morley’s attitude toward so-called civil servants is as cynical as mine.
The next public employee we encountered—on a more than which-way-do-we-go? basis—had two ounces of brains. Just barely.
I was digging through what passed for vital statistics in Full Harbor and finding that four of the Kronk children were not listed at all. Morley, in pursuit of an inspiration of his own, dug through the property plats and brought one over. He sat on the floor reading it.
Two-Ounces appeared out of nowhere and bellowed, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Research,” I replied in my reasonable voice.
“Get the hell out of here!”
“Why?” Reasonable again, of course.
That got him for a moment. Both ounces went stumbling after something with more authority than a bottom-rung city flunky’s “because I said so.”
Morley dealt himself a hand. “These are public records legally open to public inspection.”
That left Two-Ounces armed only with bluster because he didn’t know for sure. “I’m going to call some guards and have you wise guys thrown out on your asses.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Morley closed the plat book. “No need for a scene. The matter can wait till after you’ve explained to the judge tomorrow morning.”
“Judge? What judge?”
“The judge who’s going to ask you why a couple of honest investigators like ourselves, sent down from TunFaire, can’t look at documents any vagrant off the streets of Full Harbor has a right to see.” He went off to return his plat book.
Two-Ounces stared at me while I neatened up after myself. I think he saw nothing but potential disaster. There is no man so insecure as a bottom-level functionary in a sinecure he has held for a long time. He’s done nothing for so long that nothing is all he can do. The prospect of unemployment is a mortal terror.
“Ready?” Morley asked, returning.
“When you are.”
“Let’s go. See you in the morning, friend.”
The man turned slowly to watch us go, his face still drained. But the poison had begun to creep into his eyes. It was the hatred and power greed that make vicious liars out of people who tell you they’re public servants.
“How’d I do?” Morley asked as we pushed out the front door. He was grinning
“Not bad. Maybe one slice too much ham.”
He wanted to debate but I cut him short. “You learn anything?”
“Not unless you care that the house was sold by Madame Kronk, a decent interval after the date on that memorial obelisk, to a character with the unlikely name of Zeck Zack, for what seems like a reasonable market price. You ever heard of him?”
“No.”
“You find out anything?”
“Only that the civil city administration keeps pretty loose track of who’s dying and being born.”
“Oh. So with those Kronks being prominent, imagine what they’ve got on ordinary, real folks.”
I shrugged. “You leave no stone unturned till you find a trail. Where’s that clown who took the carriage?”
“Probably at the nearest swill pit guzzling your tip.”
“Then we’ll just get it ourselves. We’re big boys. We can handle it.” We turned into the alley between the hall and the jail. It was clean for a city alley—probably because of where it was—but gloomy because of the hour.
Morley said,”We could probably find a judge we could bribe to back us with that guy.”
“I don’t think old man Tate would buy it when it showed up on my expense sheet.”
A large somebody stepped out of the wall a dozen feet ahead. His appearance was vague in that light. Morley said, “Behind you,” let out a screech, and flung himself through the air.
I whirled, ducking. Just in time. A club whipped the air where my head had been. I gave the guy a kick in the root of his fantasies, then clipped him on the cheek as he bent to pray. Behind him was a guy who was more surprised than me. I jumped and grabbed his arm, tried giving him a knee. He tried to pull a knife while he stared over my shoulder, a big wad of fear in his eyes.
I figured Morley was about finished behind me.
My man tried to knee me and I tried to knee him again and sometime during our dance he decided he really ought to get the hell out of there. He twisted away and started hiking.
I was satisfied. I turned to check behind me.
Morley’s man was out. Morley himself was bent double, holding up a wall, puking his guts out. His man must have gotten in a good one.
My first was down, thrashing and twitching and making disgusting handsaw noises. The light was too poor to be sure, but I thought his color looked bad.
“What did you do to him?” Morley croaked.
“Kicked him.”
“Maybe he swallowed his tongue.” Morley went down on one knee. He moved gingerly.
The guy finished up with one wild convulsion, then he was done. Literally.
Morley trailed fingertips over the corpse’s cheek. One of my rings had cut him. The cut had a nasty color.
I looked at my hand.
So did Morley.
The poison chamber on one of the rings had been torn open by the force of the blow.
“We’ll have to get rid of him,” Morley said.
“Fast. Before somebody stumbles in here.”
“I’ll get the rig. You drag them to the side so they don’t get run over.” He ran away as fast as he could.
I wondered if I would see him again. It might be in his interest to find a back way out and just keep on going.
He returned but it seemed like he’d been gone for about twenty hours. He tied off the traces and clambered into the back of the rig. “Hoist him up here.”
I hoisted. Morley pulled. When the cadaver was in, Morley set it up with its back against the driver’s seat.
“People will see him.”
“You just worry about driving. I’ll handle this. I’ve done it before.”
I had done my share of driving that day. Horses and I can enjoy an armed truce while they are in harness. But this was too grand an opportunity for that devil tribe to revert to the war rules. “You’d better handle the traces.”
“I’ll be busy back here. Get moving before somebody comes or the other one wakes up.”
I climbed up and took the traces.
“We’re just a bunch of guys out on the town. Don’t hurry. But get us out of this section fast.”
“Make up your mind!” I snapped. But I knew what he meant.
At first Morley sat back with his arm around his buddy slurring some song so thickly that Garrett could only understand about every third word. Later he started cussing the corpse out, telling him what a fool damned no-good he was for getting blasted before the sun even went down. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, what am I going to tell your old lady, how’re we supposed to have any fun dragging you around? You ought to be ashamed.”
Later still, once we were in an area where a bunch of drunks in a carriage were as unusual as eggs under a hen, Morley stopped rambling and asked, “Who were those guys, Garrett? Any idea?”
“No.”
“Think it was a robbery?”
“You know better. The place, the timing, the behavior of that clerk, the disappearance of the guard from out front, all say it wasn’t.”
“Off the striped-sail ship? One of them went to the hall.”
“I doubt it. Only a local could set up something like that so fast. We’ve obviously stepped on a toe somewhere.”
“Why?”
“My guess is it was a warning whipping, a Saucerhead job. Pound us around awhile, then tell us to take the next boat home. But we blew up in their hands.”
“That’s what I figure. Then the real questions are who sent them and why do we make him nervous?”
“Him?”
“I don’t think we need to count the Old Witch. Do you?”
“No. Nor the church people, probably. I guess we’ll have to find out who Zeck Zack is.”
“Too bad we can’t ask this guy here.”
“You checked him?”
“Dry as a bone. It’s time we started thinking about how to break up the party.”
“We can’t dump him in the drink here. After dark Marines watch the shores like hawks in case Venageti agents try to sneak in. They never catch anybody, but that doesn’t stop them.” I did my share of watching in my time. I was very young and very serious about it.
My successors would be just as young and just as serious.
Morley said,”Find the busiest, sleaziest cathouse you can. We go in drunk with him between us. We find a dark corner in the waiting room, squat, order drinks for three, tell the madam not to bother our buddy because he’s dead drunk, take our turns at the trade, then get out. They won’t bother him till the crowd thins out because they’ll want to roll him. By then they’ll have forgotten us and he’ll be their problem.”
“Suppose we run into somebody who knows him?”
“There are risks in everything. If we dump him here in an alley, whoever sent him will know what happened. My way he’ll have to wonder. That was blockshaush in the ring, wasn’t it?” He used the elvish name for the poison. On our side of the line we call it black sauce.
“Yes.”
“Good. By the time his boss finds him it’ll be too late for even a master wizard to tell he was poisoned.” He sounded very thoughtful. I knew what he was thinking. He was wondering what other uncharacteristic surprises I had in store. He was thinking I was tight with the Dead Man, and that was probably why I was carrying poison. He was wondering just how much and what kind of advice the Dead Man had given me.
I figured a little worry would do him good. It might take his mind off his stomach for a while.
We ditched our friend Morley’s way. I expected tribes of his buddies to swarm, but it came off smooth. The guy’s boss would never really know what had happened.
Who was his boss? Why did he want to discourage me from doing my job?
I packed a lunch, knowing it would be a long day of runaround at the military city hall. Because they would not let Morley in, I told him to go find out what he could about Zeck Zack. The triplets I sent to watch incoming harbor traffic again.
“But be careful,” I told Dojango. “They might decide to take you in to ask if you’re Venageti spies.”
“Actually, that possibility occurred to us yesterday,” Dojango told me. “We’ve lived on the fringes of the law long enough to know when we’re pushing our luck.”
Maybe so. Maybe so.
I hefted my picnic basket and went to work.
First there was a clerk, then a senior clerk, then various sergeants followed by a couple of lieutenants who gave me to a captain who admitted he did not think I would have much luck before he dropped me in the lap of a major. One and all checked my bona fides before sending me on. Sometimes twice.
I kept a smile on my mug, stayed polite, and kept my tongue on a tight rein. I could play the game.
I figured I would earn every mark I would gouge from Tate for that day. Besides, it was all part of the plan.
Outlast the bastards.
The major was halfway human, and he even looked like he might have a sense of humor. He apologized for the shuffle and I offered to share my lunch.
“You packed a lunch?”
“Sure. I’ve dealt with the army before. If it was something complicated, I would have brought a blanket and an overnight bag. You get in the craw of the system and stay there, disturbing routine, somebody is going to go out on a limb, take a chance, tell you what you want to know or make a decision to throw you out, just to get you out from under foot. I get paid exorbitantly for letting people give me the runaround, so I don’t mind.”
For a moment I thought I had misjudged him. He was not pleased. Knee-jerk response. Give him credit. He gave it a think before he came back. “You’re a cynic, aren’t you?”
“Occupational hazard. The people I meet leave my faith in human nature mostly negative.”
“Right. Let’s try again, with the understanding that I’ll be the man who ends your quest with an answer or by having you booted out. You want?”
“Some way of getting in touch with Major Kayeth Kronk, cavalryman, the only one of the woman’s family of whom I have been able to catch wind. I want to ask if he knows where I can get in touch with his sister. The simple, obvious thing for the army to do is tell me he’s out at Fort Whatever. I’d go interview him. But it won’t work that way. The army will act on the perfectly reasonable assumption that the entire Venageti War Council has been holding its collective breath for years, waiting to discover the major’s whereabouts. So any communications will have to be managed the hard way.”
“You are a cynic.”
“I’m also right. Not so?”
“Probably. What’s your hard way?”
“I write him a long letter explaining the situation and asking him to meet me here or, if that’s impossible, to respond to a list of questions. The weakness of the method is that I end up having to trust the army both to deliver the letter and to get the reply back to me. My cynical side tells me that that’s too much to expect.”
He looked at me from a face of stone. He knew I was setting him up for something and was trying to figure out how I was boxing him in. “That’s probably the best you’ll get. If that. It isn’t the army’s problem. But we do help with family matters where we can.”
“Any help I get will be appreciated. Even if it isn’t much help.”
He had not figured any angles yet, which might mean that he did not know how a headquarters really worked. “I’ll check with my boss. You check with me tomorrow morning. Just to be safe, bring your letter with you, unsealed but ready to go.”
That took care of the aboveboard.
I figured I’d been around long enough—and had explained my problem to enough people—for the word to have spread throughout the headquarters. So I thanked the major, shook his hand, and said I would be heading back to my inn. Did he want to keep the rest of the lunch?
No.
I dawdled through hallways. I loitered in corners. Finally, he found me. He being the first staffer to convince himself that I was not a Venageti agent, and therefore safe, and therefore maybe he could pick up a small gratuity by telling me where I could find the man I wanted.
That had been the whole point of taking the runaround.
“Fort Caprice?” I asked back. He nodded. I crossed his palm with silver. We both got out of there.
I went off disappointed. Major Kronk did not, at least now, belong to the same outfit that Denny and his buddies had.
Dojango and his brothers got back to the inn before I did. When I arrived they were eating like they meant to use up my expense money before the end of the week.
Dojango reported,”Nothing to report, actually. Nothing came in today. But we did bribe a piermaster to let us go down there mornings and wait for the rest of our family to arrive. Quite a coup, I thought, actually.”
“Quite a coup,” I agreed. I forbore asking where they had gotten the wherewithal to grease a piermaster. Nothing about those boys was going to surprise me anymore.
And I have yet to report half their tricks.
Morley wandered in an hour after I did. “Any luck, Garrett?”
“I found out where her brother is stationed. You?”
“Some.”
“Zeck Zack?”
“An interesting character. Nothing secretive about him, supposedly. Everybody knows him. Nothing obvious to connect him with your Kronk people. He’s a centaur, an auxiliary veteran who was given citizenship for his service. He’s some sort of middleman between the centaur tribes and the merchants of Full Harbor. The darkest rumor about him is that he indulges in a little night trading. He likes to play with human women. The bigger and fatter, the better.”
“Can’t hang a guy for that,” I said, demonstrating my vast tolerance.
“Lucky me.”
As proven by the prevalence of accidents like Morley and his buddies, cross-race contact is a sport too popular for us to go lynching the players.
Morley went on,”He does own the house, but he’s never there because he’s never in the city.”
“But there’s more.”
“Oh?”
“You have a gleam in your eye.”
“Probably because I finally found a decent place to eat and got a wholesome meal inside me.”
“No. It’s more an ‘I know something you don’t’ kind of gleam.”
“You’ve got me.” But he sat on it till I threatened to take him for a boat ride.
“All right. Yesterday somebody decided we were too snoopy and deserved a thumping. Had those guys on to us before we started. We bumped a sore tooth somewhere. Unless our friends from the striped-sail ship were behind it.”
“Or Vasco is in town without us knowing it,” I added.
“That too. But I thought I’d start with the folks we’d talked to. The down-lane neighbor and Old Witch: no chance. The guy at Zeck Zack’s: surly as hell, no help, maybe, but I couldn’t be sure. I bribed the vermin to keep an eye on the place. So?”
“Come on! You went to the church?”
“I asked around before I dropped in. You remember what you said about the gold and silver?”
“Yes.”
“That church was inside Venageti lines for thirteen days. Afterward, the Sair was praised for talking the Venageti into sparing the church. Then he and his flock talked the army into releasing a hundred twenty prisoners of war as a counter gesture. Everyone thinks he’s a great man, full of compassion for the enemies of his church.”
I already knew, but he wanted me to ask. So I did. “But you know different, eh? What do you know, Morley?”
“A third of those soldiers he sent home, all supposedly common infantry, were Venageti officers who could have been ransomed or put to the question. They surrendered at the church after exchanging uniforms with dead soldiers. At the order of the chief Venageti undercover agent in Full Harbor.”
“The Sair?”
“You got it.”
“You go on like you were there.”
“I talked to somebody who was.”
I raised an eyebrow. I do that very well. It’s one of my outstanding talents.
“I took Father Mike for a walk. After I assured him that I have no interest in politics, and would not use what he told me against him, he told me about it. He’s the old boy’s helper.”
“Are all the priests in on it?”
“Just the two. The old boy sent the others to safety when the Venageti began closing in. I guess you can figure why.”
“Fewer witnesses. So the old boy sicced the dogs on us because he thought we might dig something up on him.”
“No.”
“Wait a minute . . . ”
“Father Mike was very positive.”
“Who, then, if you eliminate everybody?”
“Always room for another player in the game. I didn’t get to talk to the hairy priest. Nor to anybody the others mentioned us to, and everybody admitted they did, though they couldn’t remember to who—except that crazy witch. And at her place we had the vermin listening in. There’s no telling who they reported to.”
“Yeah.” This needed some thought. “You’ve still got the gleam in your eye. You must have gotten around like a bolt of lightning.”
“Us breeds can move when we need to. Hybrid vigor.”
“So?”
“Your friend Kronk died at that church the day it was liberated. Father Mike was vague about details. Kronk was one of the dozen partisans the Venageti took prisoner. Father Mike didn’t think he knew about him and the Sair, but he could have. He doesn’t think Kronk was killed while the Venageti were still in control. The body wasn’t found till six hours after the army moved in. But two others died at the same time. I have the names of the surviving prisoners if you decide to go howling off down that path.”
“That’s not what I’m here to do. But give me the names and we’ll keep them in mind. In case we keep stumbling over some of them. I see the gleam has gone out. Does that mean the well is dry?”
“Yes. What now?”
“Now I write a long letter to Major Kronk for another major’s benefit, while all this information simmers.”
“Marinates, you mean. I’m sure you’ll soak your brain in a few gallons of beer.”
I did not feel up to repartee. Too much to digest. “Tomorrow morning I see my major. Then we do a few more interviews. If we don’t strike something hot, the day after we’re off into the Cantard.”
“Maybe we can bribe a priest to pray for a break,” Morley said. “I’m here, but I’m not thrilled about going out there.”
“And I am?”
There were breaks. They were mixed to say the least.
I went to see my major right after I breakfasted, three eggs gently fried in the grease of a half pound of bacon slowly cooked to a crisp, a mountain of griddle cakes on the side, heavily buttered and buried in strawberry jam. Morley was despondent. He began holding a wake for my health.
He went out when I did, on the trail of roots and berries, barks and grasses, that would hold still long enough for him to prey upon them.
The triplets headed for the waterfront to wait for their relatives. I sincerely hoped they had none anywhere. I figured my luck was running so hot a platoon would descend on me like orphans left on the church steps.
I didn’t have to wait long or put up with much before I was told I could see the major. My outlook began to improve.
The major took my message after a rudimentary greeting, checked it for messages to the Venageti War Council, said,”This looks acceptable. It will go out in the next courier pouch headed the right direction.”
“Not going to test for invisible ink?”
He gave me one of those good hard stares they practice in front of the mirror when they’re shavetails. I let it slide off. “You’re cocky today, aren’t you?”
“It’s a personality defect. I spent five years on the inside of the service. It’s hard to take it seriously when it doesn’t have a noose around your neck.”
“Do you really care if your letter gets delivered?”
I didn’t tell him I never expected it to get beyond the nearest trash receptacle. He gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder and said, “Don’t bother us anymore. We’ll let you know when there’s an answer.” I couldn’t tell him I’d brought it in only for form’s sake.
But he could figure that out for himself.
“I see that you don’t care about this letter. Someone on the staff obviously took pity and told you. For a suitably warm expression of gratitude.”
I remained silent.
“I see,” he said. “I thought so. You needn’t be surprised. Not only can a few of us think, there’re some—mostly majors and colonels—who can figure out how to lace their own boots in the morning. But I won’t ask you about it if you’ll answer a few questions about something else.”
“Why?”
“Say I’m looking for a fresh viewpoint on something.”
“Shoot.”
“I’ll start with a list of names. When you hear one you know, tell me what you know about him or her.”
“That’s all?”
“For now.”
“Go ahead.”
I scored three and a half out of maybe thirty. One was Zeck Zack. One was a Venageti commander my outfit had fought in the islands who later participated in the attack upon Full Harbor. The third was a dwarfish sharpie who had been executed for misappropriation, fraud, and profiteering, which basically meant he had gotten caught stealing from the army without paying kickbacks to the right officers. The half was a name I knew I had heard somewhere sometime but could not remember where or when or in connection with what. As far as I knew Zeck Zack was the only character there who was still alive.
I lied about recognizing one more name, that of a man who had been imprisoned with Klaus Kronk the day he had died.
“Is that all?” I could see no connection among the names on the list. Maybe there was none, really. Or maybe it would have been obvious to someone who knew who the hell all those people were.
“Just about. You seem to be what you pretend. You’ve been doing a lot of poking around. Have you stumbled across anything that might interest a man in my position?” He assumed I knew what his position was. I did, now.
“No,” I lied. I had figured to do my patriotic duty by reporting the Sair. Sometime after arriving I had made an unconscious decision to pass.
“Would you consider doing a little work for Karenta while you’re doing the job you have already? Wouldn’t cost you much time and shouldn’t take you out of your way.”
“No.”
He looked like he wanted to argue.
“I did my so-called patriotic chore,” I declared. “Five years of my life making sure their gang of thieves didn’t get one up on our gang of thieves. There is no way I’m getting onto that treadmill again.”
A thought occurred to me. That happens occasionally. He saw it spark.
“Yes?”
“I might work a trade.” I had the priest to sell. “If you tell me where to find Kayean Kronk.”
“I can’t.”
“Oh?”
“I never heard of her till you came in yesterday. She’s no one who’s ever interested this office.”
“I guess that’s that, then. Thanks for your time and courtesy.” I headed for the door.
“Garrett. Drop by when you get back from Fort . . . ” He glared at me like I’d almost tricked him into revealing the Emperor’s secret name. “Drop by when you get back. We may have a story or two to swap.”
“All right.”
I got out before he decided to look at me a little closer.
It was too nice a morning just to head for the inn to pick up Morley so we could visit the civil city hall again. It seemed a day made for lying around sniffing a clean seabreeze. I headed for the waterfront.
The triplets probably needed help watching for their relatives, anyway. They would be so hard to spot.
I found them doing exactly what I planned to do, sprawled in the sun atop a mountain of army grain sacks awaiting transport to the forts in the Cantard. I’d never have spotted them from the harbor side. I clambered up with a cold keg under my arm. I sent it around once before I asked, “How’s it going, Dojango? Any sign of the family?”
The keg was half weight by the time it got back to me. I took a good long guzzle before I passed it on.
“Actually, Garrett, your timing is perfect. Come here.” He drew on the keg before he moved.
They had shifted a few sacks so they formed a parapet of sorts. They could watch from concealment yet could claim the shifted sacks made pillows for the grolls if anybody asked.
“Some of your cousins, I think.”
“Actually.”
A ragged old coaster lay about thirty feet in the lee of the only pier space available. Lee was the very operative word. The ship was taking the breeze on her beam. About fifty guys were pulling on hawsers, trying to haul her in.
She was not coming.
In fact, she was winning the tug-of-war.
“Why don’t I go trade this empty in on a full keg?” Dojango asked.
“Yeah. Why don’t you?” I gave him some money.
A guy could work up a powerful thirst watching that much grunting and cursing and sweating and yelling for help.
The ship was interesting because Vasco, Quinn, and some other old friends were stomping around her deck in a storm of frustration.
I thought about canceling Fort Caprice and just watching them instead, on the chance they would lead me to Kayean. I looked at that from a couple of angles, then rejected it. They had not come to Full Harbor to see Kayean. They had come to keep me from seeing her.
I studied the striped-sail for a while. It seemed deserted except for the short and wide thing, who was napping in the shade cast by the low sterncastle. Dojango arrived with the keg. We soon had another dead soldier. Dojango ventured the suggestion that we send for reinforcements again.
“I sadly fear we have to go to work. Do your cousins know your brothers?”
“Not by sight, actually. But they must know you’re traveling with grolls.”
“They aren’t the only grolls in the world.” I stripped down while I explained what I wanted to do.
“I think it’s insane, actually. But it might be fun to watch.” His part would be to observe and guard the valuables.
“Tell the boys.”
Below, a gust caught the coaster. She heeled. Men yelled. Four or five went into the water.
“They know what to do.”
“Let’s go.” I tumbled down the front of the pile. Doris and Marsha tumbled after me, grinning their great goofy groll grins. They trotted to the ends of a couple of hawsers and started heaving. I grabbed another. I wish I could say my strength made the difference.
That coaster fought like a granddaddy trout, but in she came.
Vasco and Quinn must have gotten my stage directions. They spotted me as the dock hands started swarming around Doris and Marsha, trying to slap their backs. Somebody yelled. I faked big eyes as men came leaping onto the wharf.
I lit out.
I did not see Dojango atop the sack pile as I raced past. That meant nothing had changed at the striped-sail ship. I whipped that way with a herd of boots pounding behind me.
Hard right turn onto the yacht’s gangway.
Short, Wide, and Hideous opened his eyes and hit his feet. I made the deck before he could head me off. Then he spotted the pack behind me.
He stopped.
I did not. I pulled straight ahead and dove over the far rail. I groaned on the way down.
The water was so slimy I’d be lucky if I didn’t bounce.
We joined up again back at the inn. After I ordered a keg to celebrate, Dojango told me what he had seen.
Vasco, Quinn, and four others had chased me. That I did not need to be told. They had started up the gangway when they had spotted Short, Wide, and Hideous. They had stopped dead. Then they had scattered like roaches surprised by a sudden light.
“They didn’t even go back to their boat for their stuff,” Dojango said. He laughed and drew himself another beer.
“What about the guy on the yacht? What did he do?”
“He ran inside.”
“And?”
“And nothing, actually. Nothing happened at all.”
“Something will,” I prophesied.
We killed the keg while we waited for Morley.
Morley was a long time showing. When he did, I knew he had not been running from anything—unless it was himself. He wasn’t scared of anything else.
“A little trot to settle your meal?” I asked.
“Started out that way. I came back here, you weren’t in yet, so I thought I’d get in five or ten miles while I had time. I’ve gotten out of training since we left TunFaire.”
He seemed a little pallid for Morley Dotes. “Something happen? You get yourself into trouble?”
“Not exactly. Let me catch my breath. Tell me what you did.”
I did. He seemed mildly amused by my gambit on the waterfront.
“Your turn,” I said.
“First a conclusion, then two sets of facts which may support it. My conclusion is, you’re in over your head, Garrett. We keep cutting the trails of people with big clout. And they’re starting to notice.”
“And the facts?”
“My run took me out near the Narrows. I decided to see if my tribute to the vermin had earned me anything but scorn. Wonder of wonders, they had something. Zeck Zack is back in town. He arrived early this morning. The comings and goings started an hour later. I gave them a bonus and told them to keep an eye on him.”
“One set of facts, Morley. How about the set that has you spooked?”
He did not argue, which was proof enough that he was nervous.
“I decided to drop in on Father Rhyne. I figured I’d go in the back way so I wouldn’t inconvenience anybody, what with a rowdy service going on in the main hall.”
He was stalling getting to the point, which meant it was something that did not please him.
“He came up dead, Garrett. Sitting at his writing table, dead as a man can get, still not cold.”
“Killed?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see any wounds, but that leaves plenty of room.”
Plenty of room for sorcery or poison.
“He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who drops dead coincidentally after people come around asking questions that only he can answer. Especially when you consider the fact that his boss and Father Mike have turned ghost.”
He meant they had vanished. “When?”
“Sometime after breakfast. The prune was at first services. Father Mike was at breakfast. When I mentioned to somebody that Father Rhyne didn’t look too healthy neither of them could be found. Nobody saw them leave.”
“Maybe they decided they couldn’t trust you not to be a tattletale.”
“Maybe. Father Rhyne did try to leave a message, however he died. I don’t know who he meant it for, but since you’re looking for a married woman, I grabbed it.”
He gave me a wad of paper. I smoothed it out on the table. There were just two words on it, printed big in a very shaky hand.
“Blood wedding? What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, Garrett. I do know this. Rhyne was number four. They’re dropping like flies around us.”
He was right. Four deaths. Three of them on the manslaughter level: the burglar in Denny’s apartment, Uncle Lester, and the thug from the alley beside the civil city hall. And now one unexplained. “It does seem that way.”
“Any change in plans?”
“No. Let’s go see the boys at city hall.”
Inspired by a silver memory-jostle, the guard outside frankly admitted that he had been paid to disappear for an hour. He gave us an excellent description of an ordinary guy who could have been right there on the street with us. I suspected he was the guy who had gotten away in the alley.
The clerk was not pleased to see us. In fact, he tried to take a sudden, unauthorized leave of absence. Morley was on him like a wolf on a rabbit. We took the committee into the records room to confer.
He claimed almost as much ignorance as the guard. But he said they had come to see him again awhile after we busted up the ambush to ask about us. The clerk said they talked it over and decided we were not the people they had expected, confederates of a man who had been there earlier. They had jumped the wrong people.
So who the hell were we?
The words investigators from TunFaire had done nothing to cheer them up.
We turned him loose, then, and headed for the inn.
“He wasn’t coming across with everything,” I said.
“He’s on somebody’s pad. He’s more scared of them than he ever could be of us.”