We roomed in what could hardly be classified as a room. It was a converted stable attached to the inn. It was not elegant, which was why we spent a lot of time in the common room. We took it because it was the only place the grolls could quarter comfortably.
That night we retreated there earlier than usual, none of us being in the mood for the jostle of the evening trade, when all the neighbors came to guzzle and swap lies. Besides, I wanted to get an early start in the morning.
I still had to turn the carriage in and pick up mounts.
The rest of our outfitting we had managed to get in whenever we were not off chasing chimeras.
It looked like a quiet evening. Not even Dojango felt much like talking. He had a hangover and Morley wouldn’t let him near any hair of the dog.
Breeds just don’t handle their alcohol well.
A subtle change in the roar from the common room caught my ear, though I couldn’t pin down exactly what it was. Morley caught it, too. He cocked an ear, frowned. “Dojango, see what’s happening.”
Dojango went out. He was back in about four blinks. “Six guys rousting the innkeeper. They want you and Garrett, actually. They look plenty bad, too, Morley.”
Morley grunted. Then he grumbled and growled and snarled and barked in grollish. Doris and Marsha sat down on either side of the door, several feet away. Dojango came over and got behind Morley. Morley told me, “Let’s get as far from the door as we can. Give them plenty of room to come in if they come.”
The grolls’ skins began changing color. They faded into the landscape.
“I didn’t know they could do that.”
“They don’t brag about it. Ready, Dojango?”
“I need a drink, actually. I need one bad, actually.”
“You’ll be all right.”
Ka-boom! The door exploded inward and a couple of Saucerhead Tharpe types came mincing after it. Their fearless leader followed. A rear guard of three more muscle wads came in after him. The storm troops spread out so the boss could eyeball us from between them.
He stopped.
He didn’t like what he saw.
We were waiting for him.
Morley said a few words. Doris and Marsha growled back. Our guests looked around. One of them said, “Oh, shit.”
Morley smiled at the head invader and asked, “Shall we go ahead with it, then?”
“Uh . . . we just dropped in to deliver a message.”
“How thoughtful,” I said. “What was it, so long you each had to memorize a whole word? And don’t you guys find all that wood and iron a little encumbering?”
“The streets aren’t safe at night.”
“I’ll bet they aren’t. It isn’t that safe inside some places, either.”
“Don’t overdo it,” Morley told me.
“What’s the message?”
“I doubt there’s much point my delivering it, considering the circumstances.”
“But I insist. Here I am visiting a strange city, where I didn’t think I knew anyone, and someone is sending me greetings. It’s exciting, and I’m curious. Dojango, go get a keg and some mugs so we can entertain properly.”
Dojango gave our visitors a wide berth leaving. They did nothing after he left. I guess the shift in odds wasn’t encouraging.
I rescued a small philter packet from my duffel.”What was that message again?”
The voice seemed small for the man when he said,”Get out of Full Harbor. If I have cause to get in touch with you again, you’re dead.”
“That’s not what I’d call neighborly. And he doesn’t bother to say who he is or why he’s concerned for my health. Or even if I’ve done something to offend.”
He began to simmer despite the situation. Morley was right. A slice too much.
Dojango came with the keg and mugs.
“Tap it. Friend, I’d like to talk to a man so interested in me he’d send you around. Just to find out why, if nothing else. Who sent you?”
He set his jaw. I’d expected that. I opened the packet I’d gotten and tapped bits of its contents into the heads of the beers Dojango drew. “This is a harmless spice guaranteed to put an elephant out for ten hours and a man for twenty-four.” I gestured.
Dojango got hold of his nerve and took a mug to a man near one of the grolls. The thug refused to take it. Morley barked something. Marsha—or Doris—snagged man and mug and put the contents of one inside the other with less trouble than a mother getting milk down a toddler. Then he stripped the thug to the altogether and tossed him out our only window.
If the man had any sense at all, he would get himself hidden fast, before the drug took hold. Folks in Full Harbor have very strong feelings about public nudity. Caught, he could end up spending the rest of his life in the Cantard mines.
The rest of the muscle decided it was time to go. The other groll held the door until his brother came to help. After things settled down, I asked, “Who sent you?”
“You’re a dead man.”
“A thought which will comfort and warm you during those long nights in the mines.” I gave Dojango another mug. This time the other groll took a turn feeding baby. “I keep going till I get that name. You’re last. If I have to do you, you get a short dose. Just enough to make you forget who and where you are, but not enough to put you down so you don’t go wandering into trouble.”
“For heaven’s sake, Switz,” one of the thugs said as I handed Dojango another mug. “We aren’t getting paid enough for this. He’s got us by the balls.”
“Shut up.”
Another said, “You ain’t going to see me in no mines.”
“Shut up. It can be fixed.”
“Bull. You know damned well he wouldn’t bother. He’d say we deserved it. He don’t have that kind of pull, anyway.”
“Shut up.”
One of the grolls snagged the loudest complainer.
“Wait a goddamned minute!” he yelled at me. “It was Zeck Zack that sent us.”
I was startled. I made use of my reaction. “Who the hell is Zeck Zack?”
Fearless leader groaned.
Morley gestured. The grolls put our man down but did not turn him loose. I said, “We won’t be sending the rest of you after all. But I’m still going to need you sleeping. Set yourselves down someplace comfortable. We’ll serve up the brew.”
The leader said,”You’re dead meat, Trask.”
“I bet I’ll last longer than you,” the other thug replied.
While they bickered I got everything settled. I got the three to drink their beer. We settled back for a listen to our songbird.
“One thing,” he said. “The first guy you threw out. He’s my brother. You get him back in here or I don’t say nothing.”
“Morley?”
Morley sent Dojango and Doris.
Trask was able to tell us almost nothing we didn’t already know. He had no idea why Zeck Zack wanted us thumped and run out of town. He had not seen the centaur. Only Switz saw or heard from Zeck Zack. He didn’t know if the centaur was in town or not. Probably not, because he almost never was.
I asked a lot of questions and got almost nothing more. Zeck Zack shielded his infantry from troublesome knowledge about himself.
“You kept your part of the bargain, with one proviso that benefited your brother.” The brother was back inside and redressed, sloppily. “So I’ll keep mine, with a proviso that will benefit me. Dojango is going to tie you up just tightly enough so it will take you a couple of hours to get loose. When you do, take your brother and get lost.”
Dojango did the honors. He had been sneaking some off the keg and was getting braver by the minute.
“Not bad for improvisation,” Morley said.
“Yeah. Thought so myself.”
“What now?”
“We strip the other three and dump them where they’re sure to get got, then we go see a centaur named Zeck Zack.”
Morley didn’t like it, but he went along. He was making top money and staying out of the hands of his creditors, and what more could a guy want? Cabbages and cattail hearts?
Morley led the way down the old path from the cemetery to the house. I knew the trail but he had the night eyes. Each fifty paces he stopped and asked the darkness, “Hornbuckle?”
He didn’t get an answer until we neared the waking radius of the peafowl.
I was amazed by the grails. For all their height and mass, they moved through the woods with more stealth than a human.
“Sit,” Morley said when tittering answered him at last.
We sat.
Diminutive forms pranced around and among us. Morley gave each a piece of sugar candy, the most certain bribe there is. They wanted more. He promised it. If . . . They scattered to do our scouting for us.
I’ll bet Morley hated himself. He certainly looked disgusted as he tucked the rest of the candy inside his shirt.
I asked, “Can we trust them?”
“Not much. But they want the rest of the candy. I don’t plan to run out till we’re on our way again.”
After that we stayed quiet, waiting. I got itchy between the shoulder blades, that feeling you get when someone is watching. Or you think someone is.
That scalawag Hornbuckle flipped Morley a mock salute.
“How many?”
“Four. Two humans. Very nervous. One centaur. Worried and grumpy. One other. They’re awaiting a report from someone and that someone is late. Sugar?”
“Not yet. Are there wardspells? Alarms? Booby traps? Dangerous guard animals?”
“None.”
“Any reason for us to fear?”
“They are wicked creatures. All.”
“Silence the peafowl so we can pass.”
“Sugar?”
“All the sugar I have when we come out.”
“You might not get out.”
“Why not?”
Titter. “They are wicked creatures. Very wicked. Especially one.”
“All right.” Morley took out his candy. “One piece for you. A half piece for each of your friends. The rest if we come out. Tell me the best way to get to them.”
Their boy Switz did it to us, so we did it to them.
Kaboom! One groll after another went through the huge double doors of the ballroom. Then Morley. Then me. Then Dojango to guard our rear.
It was thoughtful of them to have waited in the only room where the grolls would have space to maneuver. The ceilings were eighteen feet high.
They scattered like squeaking mice when the cat pounces.
Doris and Marsha each snagged a man. Morley streaked between them, pursuing a shadowy something that crashed through a window at the far end of the ballroom.
Where the hell was the centaur?
There he was, a one-critter cavalry charge. I managed a leg whip that tangled some fetlocks or forelocks or whatever they’re called. It was a sin, what his hooves did to the carpets and flooring.
Impetus flung me against something made of mahogany or teak, very hard and very immovable. I practiced exhaling a bushel more air than any human being normally inhales. Somebody was hollering.
“Help, Morley! I got him, Morley! Help!”
I staggered to my feet.
Dojango had him all right.
Zeck Zack was about average for his tribe, about the size of a small pony. He was not built to carry a hundred thirty pounds of Dojango on his back. His problem was complicated by Dojango having his arms and legs wrapped around his skinny chest. He couldn’t breathe. He staggered around, banging into things, then went down on his knees.
I got a choke rope on him, pried Dojango loose, then looked around.
The grolls had their men subdued. Morley was coming back from the window empty-handed and looking puzzled.
I caught my breath, straightened my clothing, and led Zeck Zack into a better light, where Morley patted him down for hardware and other lethal surprises. The centaur remained glassy-eyed.
“What happened?” I asked Morley.
“I don’t know. I got there three seconds after it went through the glass. And there was nothing. Not a sign of it.”
“What was it?”
“I can’t even tell you that. I never got a good look.”
The grolls brought the two men over and plunked them down on the floor. They were in a playful mood after events at the inn. They had plucked these birds, too.
“Did you see me, Morley?” Dojango bubbled. “Did you see me? I mean, actually, I took the damned thing down. Did you see me, Morley?”
“Yes. I saw. Shut up, Dojango.”
Morley seemed troubled.
He kept looking toward the broken window.
“Well, you’ve got him, Garrett. Are you going to do something with him?”
“Yeah. All right.” I looked at Zeck Zack. “I have a problem, Mr. Zeck.” Centaurs stick their family names up front, figuring their antecedents are more important. “People keep trying to whip me and I can’t figure out why.”
Zeck Zack had nothing to say. He’d heard me, though.
“All right. I’m going to tell you a story. Then you can tell me one. If I like yours we can part as friends.”
Still no reaction. I had a feeling Zeck Zack was tough, and had been through the narrow passage before. He was cool enough. He would do what had to be done.
“Once upon a time up north a guy died. He left everything to a gal he knew when he was in the army. His father hired me to come find her and see if she wanted the legacy. A simple job. A kind I do all the time. Only this time I get people ambushing me and sending thugs to work me over, and nobody anywhere giving me a straight answer. So you might say I’m a little fussed.”
I gave him a chance to comment. He did not. I hadn’t thought he would.
“People are trying to push me. So now I’m pushing back. I’m asking questions. I want answers. What’s with this woman Kayean that’s worth knocking heads?”
He had nothing to say.
“What’s in this to die for? Are you ready to die for it?”
I got a reaction that time. Just a flicker around the eyes. He didn’t think I looked the killer type. But he didn’t know me so couldn’t be sure.
“He’s starting to listen, Garrett,” Morley said. “But we ought to convene this somewhere else. The one that got away could bring reinforcements.”
“I have faith in sugar as an alarm potential. You know anything about centaurs? I’ve never dealt with one.”
“A little. They’re vain, avaricious, mean in most senses of the word, miserly. Overall, not much to recommend. Did I mention that most of them are thieves and liars?”
“Where are their pressure points?”
“Did I mention cowardly? You’re on the right track with that rope. Strangle him slowly. He’ll come across.”
“I don’t want to do it the hard way. Nobody’s been hurt yet. I’d rather talk, work something out where we could get off each other’s backs, and get on with finding the woman. I’m tired of this job. Too many people are interested in us and I don’t know why.”
Zeck Zack sort of nibbled at the bait. He spoke for the first time, piping. I almost laughed at his voice. “Can you prove you’re what you say you are? If you were nothing more, there would be no difficulty between us.”
A wedge!
Morley told Dojango, “Tie up those guys so Doris and Marsha can have their hands free.” One of the two was the greeter who had thought we were hilarious gagsters. He looked the worse for wear.
The grolls helped form a circle around Zeck Zack once they were free of their baby-sitting chores. I handed over every piece of documentation I had. He examined it all minutely. Meanwhile, Morley got antsy.
Zeck Zack said, “This is all silly enough to be true. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. For the moment.”
Morley said, “Garrett, we’re running out of time. Choke him.”
“That would do you no good,” Zeck Zack said. “I might tell you many interesting things but I would tell you nothing of value. My position is exposed. Therefore, I am allowed to know nothing of importance. However, I do know one thing of value to you. If you are what you say you are.”
I waited.
“I know someone who knows someone who could bring you face-to-face with the woman.”
“Yeah?”
“Did I mention treacherous?” Morley asked.
“One more test, of sorts,” Zeck Zack said. “I will recite a list of names, phrases, places. You tell me if you know or have heard of them. I have an ear for the truth.”
I’ve lied successfully to men who thought that. Many times. “Go ahead.”
I scored a mere one half on this one. The same half I scored on the army list. Zeck Zack was amazed by what he heard with his ear for the truth. “You could just be what you say.” He gave me a squint-eyed look. “Yes. It might even make sense . . . I think I know what is happening. It should be put to the test.”
He did some thinking. The rest of us did some waiting, Morley with very poor grace.
Zeck Zack asked,”Where can I leave you a message?”
I used my best raised eyebrow.
“Not trusting me, you will, of course, remove from your present lodgings. I will not possess sufficient manpower to locate you again quickly. I am going to attempt to arrange for you to see the woman and complete your mission. If I am successful, I must be able to get that word to you.”
I had a strong feeling he meant to do just what he said, though not out of any inclination to make my life easier. He had motives I couldn’t fathom. Everyone but me seemed to have shadowed motives.
“The innkeeper where we’re staying now. We’ll leave him feeling kindly toward us.” I removed the choke rope. “I’m going to play a hunch, a long shot, and take a chance on you, centaur. Maybe because I’m getting desperate. If you’ve been bullshitting me to get your behind out of a bind, or if you’re planning on taking another crack at me, you have a problem.”
“Indeed I do. As I said, I am exposed. And vulnerable, as you have demonstrated tonight.”
I thought I would leave everything on that very unsatisfactory note.
Morley, who had been eager to evacuate some time ago, now jumped all over me for wasting half a night.
“Come on, Morley. It’s time to go.”
We sat on a patch of grass not far from the witch’s house, surrounded by little folk stoned on sugar. Only a couple were sober enough to titter occasionally.
Morley had turned from argumentative to reflective. “You know what made it interesting, Garrett? That list. Sixteen items. But six of them were the same thing: a name, translated into six different languages. Curious. Especially because it isn’t a name either of us recognizes in any of its forms.”
“What was that?”
He rattled off a jawbreaker. “I’d give you the Karentine, but it wouldn’t make any sense.”
“Try it anyway. Karentine is all I speak.”
“There’re two possible translations. Dawn of Night’s Mercy. Or Dawn of Night’s Madness.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I told you it wouldn’t.”
“What language uses the same word for mercy and madness?”
“Dark elfin.”
“Oh,” I glanced toward the centaur’s house. Not a thing had happened since our departure. I looked at the witch’s place. A light burned in an upper-story window. It hadn’t been burning when we’d come down the path. “Why don’t you guys head on up to the cemetery? I’ll catch up in a few minutes. There’s something I want to check out.”
I expected Morley to give me an argument. He didn’t. He just grunted, got to his feet, got the triplets moving, and vanished into the night.
Somebody small with a man-sized grin had passed out leaning against me. I tilted him over gently, patted his shoulder when he mumbled something, rose, and headed for the house. I prowled around looking into windows.
“I’m up here, Private Garrett.”
“Good. I was hoping to see you. But I was a little leery of waking you.” I couldn’t see her.
She laughed. Her laughter was mostly merriment, but it also carried a trace of mockery. She didn’t believe me. But she knew I didn’t expect her to.
“How can I help you, Private Garrett?”
“You could start by not calling me Private Garrett. I’m out of the Marines. I’d just as soon forget them. Then you can tell me if you know anything about somebody named Dawn of Night’s Mercy or Dawn of Night’s Madness.”
She was silent so long I feared she had deserted me. Then she threw down the dark elvish gobblewhat Morley had used, applying a distinctly interrogative inflection.
“That’s right.”
“Gobblewhat is not a person, Mr. Garrett. It is a prophecy, and an unpleasant one from your point of view. The name Gobblewhat is dark elfin, but the prophecy is not. It is an echo, a rumor, an aspiration, out of a deeper night.”
Being what she was, she naturally stoked the drama on her declamation, then clammed up, leaving her answer obscure.
I tried asking questions. That was a waste of time. She was done talking about gobblewhat. She closed the subject by saying, “That was spur of the moment. What did you really want?”
There was no point playing games. “Are you still in business? I’d like to buy a few of your special tools.”
She ripped off a first-class witch’s cackle. It was hilarious. I grinned. The peafowl even got into the act, though their mirth was confused and sleepy. “Go around to the front door,” she told me. “You’ll find it unlocked.”
When I rejoined Morley and the triplets, I carried five tiny, folded pieces of paper. I had hidden each carefully. Each bore a potent and potentially useful spell. I was still repeating the witch’s instructions to myself. Basically, all I had to remember was to unfold the papers at the appropriate moment, though a couple required a whispered word at the right time.
Morley said, “So. You survived the trail. I was about to go looking for you. What now?”
“We go back and get what sleep we can. Then early tomorrow we hit the road for Fort Caprice.”
“I thought you were going to let the centaur do the finding for you.”
“Contrary to the false notion formed earlier, I don’t trust him to do anything. If he comes through, fine. Meantime, I go on looking. He expects us to hide from him. I can’t think of a better place than out in the Cantard. Two birds, one stone.”
Morley was as thrilled as I might have expected. “I had to ask, didn’t I?”
Fort Caprice was a bust.
It was four days out of Full Harbor, pushing hard all the way, shielded every step by more luck than any five fools deserved. Not only did we not encounter one of our own Karentine patrols, but we didn’t fall in with Venageti rangers or representatives of any of the nonhuman races of the Cantard, most of which are at least marginally involved in the war. Their loyalties shift like a chameleon’s color, according to where they think the most profit lies.
Fort Caprice was not in the heart of the caldron, though. The richest silver country lay a hundred miles farther south.
Major Kayeth Kronk proved to be brevet-Colonel Kronk now, at the tender age of twenty-six. I did not remind him that we had met before, though I’m sure he remembered me before we reached the end of our short interview. I told him I was looking for his sister Kayean, and told him why. And he told me that he didn’t have a sister Kayean.
And that was all he would say about it. When I kept after him he got stubborn. Then he got mad and had a couple of soldiers show me the street.
We poked around among the hangers-on Fort Caprice had acquired—like fleas, ticks, and worms to a hound—and found out nothing more interesting than which men were watering their wine and which women would send you away with something you hadn’t had when you arrived. So we made the four-day journey back to Full Harbor, with fool’s luck cleansing the way ahead of us again.
It was a lovely time to visit the Cantard.
I hoped the centaur would come through so I wouldn’t have to do it again.
That would be tempting fate a bit too far We were out of Full Harbor nine days, all told.
The major from the military city hall was waiting at the gate through the Narrows Wall. There was nothing magical about it once I realized that without sorcery, a trip to Fort Caprice takes a predictable amount of time. He cut me out of my herd.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“Zip. Zero. Zilch. What can I do for you?”
“I have another list of names.”
“And getting my reaction is important enough for you to lay in wait for me out here?”
“Maybe.”
“Fire away.”
He did.
I knew five of the twelve names this time. Father Mike. Father Rhyne. Sair Lojda. Martello Quinn and Aben Kurts, of Denny’s old crowd. I admitted knowing the latter two only as friends of a friend, saying I thought they were in shipping. Then I asked, “What ties this together? What’s up?”
“All these people, and three more for whom we have no names, have died or disappeared during the last eleven days. I’m certain you would recognize more if you saw them. Imelo Clark was a guard at the civil city hall. Egan Rust was a clerk there. You interviewed them. I was not sure you had any connection with Kurts and Quinn, but since you did, then I assume there’s also one with Laught and the three unknowns, all of whom seem to have come off a yacht from TunFaire.”
“What the hell are you trying to say?”
“Don’t get your hackles up, Garrett. You’re safe. You were out of town during the excitement. In fact, the only time I place you or yours near anyone at a critical time is Father Rhyne. I’m satisfied your associate found him dead.”
I didn’t say anything. My thoughts were pounding off in twenty directions. What the hell was going on?
“It seems apparent that, in most of these cases, someone is cleaning up after you. It’s a wonder you haven’t been turned invisible yourself.”
Thoughtlessly, I admitted, “It’s been tried a couple times.”
He wanted details. He demanded details. I gave him some without mentioning centaurs or dead men or much else that would do him any real good. He thought it was crafty of us, setting the one group up for a career in the mines.
He observed, “I have a feeling that there are a lot of things you wouldn’t tell me no matter how nicely I ask. Like where the others from TunFaire fit in.”
“I wouldn’t be even a little shy about telling you that if I knew. What’s the story on them, anyway?”
Kurts and Quinn had died the evening we left Full Harbor. They had been found in an alley on the far south side. At first it had looked like they had fallen foul of robbers. Laught—identified because his name and that of the yacht were stitched on the inside of his jumper—died later that night in the graveyard where Kayean and I had played when we were kids. At almost the same time a tremendous explosion and fire had consumed the yacht. No one knew how many had died in that. The unburned remains of the yacht had sunk. It was a miracle the whole waterfront hadn’t gone up.
“That’s pretty rough stuff,” I said. “The stakes must be big. I don’t want to sound dumb or impertinent, but what’s your interest? Seems to me it’s a civil problem, gaudy as it is.”
“Full Harbor’s reason for existing is military. Anything gaudy could effect the city’s military situation. Garrett, I’m convinced you know things I want to know. But I’m not going to press you. When you feel like baring your soul, drop in. And I’ll trade you the name of the man she married. Meantime, I’ll just use you as a stalking horse.”
“Yeah.” I waved bye-bye, but my heart was not in it. I was pondering that equine-derived chestnut.
Morley and the triplets joined me. “Who was that?” Morley asked. I told him. He asked, “He have anything interesting to say?”
I told him all that, too.
“Gang warfare and vampires,” he mused. “What a city.”
“Vampires?”
“Several people claim they were attacked this week. It’s all the talk. You know how those stories get going. People will see vampires in every shadow for a month.”
We slept at the same inn. We couldn’t be safer elsewhere, and the quarters were the best available for grolls.
The innkeeper had five messages for me. They were from Zeck Zack, had come at a rate of one daily, and had become increasingly strident. I got the impression he wanted to see me.
“Tomorrow is soon enough,” I told Morley. “Tonight I’m going to lay around and ruminate and drink beer to get the Cantard dust out of my throat. I’m not much closer to the woman but I’m starting to see the outlines of the other stuff. Except for Vasco and his crowd, I don’t think it has anything to do with silver. I think three or four conspiracies with completely alien or only marginally overlapping goals have collided here, maybe with the woman being the link. I don’t think I’m the only one going around wondering, Who the hell are those guys? What do they want?”
I let it go there. Morley could chew on it if he wanted. I snuggled up with my beer and tried to let my mind go blank.
Some might say I did not have to work very hard.
Zeck Zack turned up next day. He got righteous with me.
“Do I work for you?” I asked.
He looked around. A lot of unfriendly faces were turned his way. Centaurs are not popular, which is probably why Zeck Zack spent so little time at his city house. He desisted, though he kept simmering. He handed me a sealed letter. “Your instructions are in there. You are to come alone.”
“Have you been smoking weed?”
“What?”
“I don’t go anywhere alone. People have been dying around this town. Four of them right out around your place.”
“You will go alone or they will not let you see her.”
“Then I’ll find her my own way.”
Morley walked in then, coming back from grazing. He slapped Zeck Zack across the rump, a familiarity and indignity that almost sent him into paroxysms. Morley said, “There was another vampire thing last night, Garrett. Sounded like the real article.”
“Remind me to wear my high-collar shirt when I go barhopping tonight.” His pursed lips told me he had something more on his mind but wouldn’t say what until I got rid of the centaur.
I told Zeck Zack, “You see? It’s dangerous to wander the streets alone.”
“I will put it to them. They are going to be very irritated with both of us. They have gone to a great deal of trouble to make the woman available. But, perhaps, for that reason they will accede to your petition.”
I did my eyebrow trick. My petition? “Right. Check it out. You know where to find me.”
He extended a hand. “The instructions? They will have to be changed.”
I gave them back. He left, giving me a couple of dark looks.
“He wanted me to come to the meet all by myself, on the lonesome,” I told Morley. “Just me face-to-face with ‘them,’ whoever ‘they’ are.”
“Whoever, they have him peeing down his leg. And he has a reputation for being a tough bastard.”
“I noticed he had a case of nerves. What’s up?”
“The place is being watched. Somebody followed me out and back. I didn’t give it a good scout because I didn’t want them to know they’d been made, but I spotted two more. I figured that’s iceberg.”
“Damn! The works. A whole crew. And now they know I’m dealing with Zeck Zack.”
“Spilled milk. Who do you figure for it?”
“That army bastard. I don’t know why. Vasco or the striped-sail crowd wouldn’t have the resources. The centaur doesn’t need to know every breath we take. He hopes he has us on the hook.”
“Maybe the major needs a closer look.”
“Maybe. Though I don’t even know his name. And I’d rather not. I’d just as soon get on with the job I’m getting paid to do.”
Morley nodded. “It’s getting thick. I find myself looking forward to the trip home—in my more insane, impatient moments.”
I slouched in my seat. “I guess we spend the day on in-and-out, getting a scout on how many and how good they are. We can make like we’re getting ready for another trip out of town. We can eat the food on the way home if the meet goes down and I get what I need.”
“We’ll have to work a way for all of us to shake them, too.”
“Yeah. This thing couldn’t get any more complicated if you hired three wizards to knot it up.”
I was wrong, of course. It could get more complicated. And it did.
Morley, the triplets, and I spent the day running the bird dogs, and scoped out both daytime and nighttime routines for shaking them, though it looked like there would be at least twenty of them on us around the clock. It isn’t hard to shake watchers when you know they’re around, especially in a city as crazy as Full Harbor.
Morley had gone out for supper. I was having mine with Dojango in the common room. His brothers were in our quarters, where they felt more comfortable.
Dojango wasn’t a bad sort to pass the time with, if you made allowances. He knew more crude stories than anyone I’d ever met, though he didn’t deliver them very well. Actually.
Further complication waltzed through the door.
“Saucerhead Tharpe!” I groaned.
“And Spiney Prevallet,” Dojango said of the guy who was the last of the four to enter. “Doris! Marsha!” He could put a snap in his voice when he wanted. It carried over the common-room noise.
The two in the middle need no introduction. My old flames, Tinnie and Rose. Tinnie stomped past Saucerhead, who was giving the grolls the once-over and not liking what he saw. I said, “I see the Venageti didn’t get you. And I thought their sailors had an unfailing eye for the finest.”
She halted in a widespread stance within slapping range, but her fists settled on her hips. “You’re a brass-balled son-of-a-bitch, Garrett. You know that?”
“Yeah. I’ve heard that talk, too. And it’s true, so don’t think you can flatter me. Have a nice trip? How long you been in town?” I kept one eye on Rose who looked as vicious as an entire pack of wolves circling in for the kill. Saucerhead and Spiney, with better sense and no emotional investment, put their hands in their pockets and kept them there. “Had supper yet? Sit down. My treat. It isn’t the Unicorn Gambit, but the food sticks to your ribs.”
“You . . . ! You . . . !” Tinnie stammered. “Don’t you sit there and act like you didn’t do anything. Don’t treat me like one of your flapping old army buddies, you bastard.” The fire was fading from her eyes. She had become conscious of the silence surrounding us, of all the staring eyes and knowing smirks.
“You’re not being very ladylike,” I noted. “Sit down, my one true love. Let me ply you with food and spirits.”
“Bought with Uncle Willard’s money?”
“Of course. It’s a legitimate business expense.” A smile flirted with her lips despite her determination to be angry. She plopped into the chair Morley usually inhabited.
“Dojango, would you scare up enough seats for the rest of our guests?”
He looked at me like I was crazy, but he did it. “You’re lucky you got here when you did. An hour from now this place will be standing room only. Hello, Saucerhead. I paid your fee against your account at Morley’s place. All right?”
“Yeah. Sure. That’s what I wanted. How you doing, Garrett?” He was embarrassed to be seen in the company of two real live women. What was it going to do to his reputation?
“Not so good. I’ve fallen right into the middle of the damnedest thing I ever saw.”
Civilized behavior begets civilized behavior. Rose decided to play the game and was the perfect lady as Dojango held her chair. “Rose,” I said. “You’re looking lovelier than ever.”
“It must be the sea air. And a change of diet.”
I looked at Tinnie. “Not roots and berries, I hope.”
Tinnie winked.
I faced Spiney Prevallet. “Mr. Prevallet. I’ve heard of you but don’t think we’ve ever met.”
“Garrett. No, we haven’t. I’ve heard of you, too.” And that was all he had to say for the evening. It was enough to set my teeth on edge. His voice was neutral but as cold as the bottom side of a coffin.
If Morley and Saucerhead are the best at what they do, Spiney Prevallet is crowding them. And he’s said to be less squeamish and less choosy about the jobs he takes.
The landlord himself came to take orders. Men like him have a sixth sense. He wanted to size up the trouble before it happened. I smiled at him a lot.
“You’ve had trouble?” Rose asked. She sounded hopeful.
“A little. More, you’d say I’ve been trouble. Everybody I talk to turns up dead.”
That got their attention. I gave them an edited and censored account of my adventures. Somehow, I forgot to mention Zeck Zack.
I was still talking and wondering how to get rid of them, in case the centaur showed, when Morley walked in.
He never batted an eye. He walked up behind Rose, who had her back to the door, and trailed his fingertips lightly up the side of her neck. “A miracle. I would have sworn the pirates would have—”
Tinnie cut in. “Garrett already used that line. Only with him it was Venageti sailors.”
“Then add plagiarism to his list of sins.” Morley placed a small box on the table before me. “That four-legged wonder of a cook sent you this kelp salad. Since you’ve already eaten, maybe you should save it for a snack.”
I peeked despite his warning. Kelp salad, all right. “He gave it to you?”
“To bring over. He knew we had company and didn’t want to intrude.”
“I don’t have much use for kelp, but since he went to all the trouble . . . ”
Morley kept stroking Rose’s neck and shoulders. He nodded once to Tinnie, ignored Spiney and Saucerhead completely. If, as I suspected, the kelp concealed Zeck Zack’s instructions for making the meet, we had a problem. I expect that had Morley’s undivided attention.
“Did you bribe Master Arbanos somehow?” I asked Tinnie.
“That little water rat? He did exactly what you told him to. He handed us over to Uncle Willard personally.”
“I’m sorry I missed that.”
“You’re going to get your chance to take part in a reenactment.”
“How did you manage—”
Rose said,”Our good Uncle Lester bestowed a small legacy on each of us.”
“I see.” Women with their own money do tend to get independent, don’t they?
That box of salad sat there staring at me, begging to be opened, and I hadn’t one idea how to get rid of them.
“Why are you here, Tinnie? Rose I understand. A hundred thousand marks makes for a big greed.” Morley was over talking to the grolls, now. I hoped his mind was more fertile than mine.
“I have a grudge to settle with a certain bastard who had me tied up and shipped like a sack of turnips.”
“After he had the brass-balled gall to get you out of the hands of kidnappers. What can you do with a churl like that?” I countered.
She had the grace to redden.
Morley came over and begged Dojango for his seat, which was next to Rose. With bad grace Dojango gave way and joined his brothers.
I saw it then, and Morley knew when I knew. He gave me the ghost of a smile and went to work charming Rose.
Dojango ducked through the door to our quarters.
Five minutes later I developed an irresistible need for the loo. I grabbed my box and promised to be right back. I trickled fingers through Tinnie’s hair. She slapped my hand but it was only a pat.
Dojango was waiting. “Out the window. Night course. Morley says you’d better read your instructions and dump them down the loo first.”
I had that much sense. I didn’t figure he needed reminding, though. “Who’s next?”
“Morley. He comes to see why you’re taking so long. He’s worried. Then Doris goes, then me. Marsha stalls and distracts them by keeping them from getting through the door.”
“Sounds good. If it works.”
I ambled up the lane toward the Orthodox cemetery, where we were to meet at the Kronk family plot. Convenient, that. Zeck Zack or his messenger was supposed to take us to the meet from another plot just two hundred yards away, come midnight.
I reached the place where the first man to arrive was supposed to lie in the weeds for anybody following the rest. “Morley? I’m clean.”
Dojango came out of the darkness, not Morley. “What took so long?”
“I had more tails than an uighur. All pros. Took awhile to shake them. Where’s Morley?”
“Pushing sugar.”
“Doris and Marsha?”
“At the plot. They just got here, too. They almost forgot. They were having fun trotting around town watching the humans huff and puff trying to keep up.”
“The ladies?”
“You and Morley better forget those two and take up kicking beehives.”
“Mad, huh?”
“Furious, actually.”
Morley came back from his pandering. “Just in time, Garrett. Let’s go check something out.” He marched off through the graveyard.
His destination proved to be a decrepit mausoleum. He examined its door. I couldn’t see what he saw. He grunted. “Hunh. Maybe they knew what they were talking about. Marsha. Open it up.”
The groll obliged. There was no sound of seals breaking. There was almost no sound at all. Curious in a door that should have been unmoved for generations.
Then the stench rolled out.
I considered a crack about ducking the stampeding buzzards, but desisted. Death is no joke.
“We need a light, Morley,” Dojango said.
“I figured we would. I borrowed a lucifer stone from my bitty buddy Hornbuckle.” He removed it from its protective sack. It was a young one, burning bright.
I didn’t want to go inside, but I did. I stayed only as long as I could hold my breath, which was long enough to get an education. It was pretty bad, but I did recognize what was left of Father Mike, the Sair, and the clerk from the civil city hall. I had no idea who the others were.
Marsha closed it up. We walked to the Kronk plot in silence. Finally, Morley said,”Somebody’s garbage dump.”
“Who put them there?”
“Soldiers. I quote Hornbuckle: ‘Soldiers without livery.’ ”
“I see.” I saw a great deal. It had nothing to do with finding Kayean, but a lot to do with a nameless major.
Morley said,”On no evidence at all I’ll bet you fifty marks your major was part of the outfit that liberated the church the day your girlfriend’s father died.”
“No bet. Not even at ten to one.”
A man in the major’s position wouldn’t quietly dispose of the top Venageti agent in his territory. Not when he could bring him in and harvest all sorts of rewards. Not unless that agent could name some very interesting names, like maybe that of an agent even better placed than he.
“Investigators from TunFaire, you had to say. He thinks we’re the King’s men and we’re looking for him. What other reason for the interest in people named Kronk?”
“Or the Emperor’s men.” I shook my head. “My poor sweet, silly Kayean. She had to make the worst choices in fathers and husbands.”
Morley frowned. “Husbands? You don’t even know who he is.”
“I don’t have to to know he’s somebody Zeck Zack and his bosses want to keep us away from. It can’t be her. There’s no evidence that she’s anything but a woman carrying on a profitable correspondence with an old flame.”
Morley grunted. “What about your major?”
“You know me. I’d rather negotiate, like with the centaur. Or I just let them ride and hope for the best, like with Vasco and his bunch. I’ve only killed two men since I got out of the Marines, and one of them was by accident. But I think somebody is going to have to chop the head off this snake before it crushes us all.”
We scouted the terrain thoroughly. There was no sign the centaur planned anything cagey, but that wasn’t especially reassuring.
Zeck Zack came for us himself, which said something about his relationship to the shadow folk behind him. “You’re early,” he accused.
“So are you.”
“I told them I needed time to scout you for treachery. In truth, I wanted time to talk.”
“You trust us, then?”
“As much as one dares, given the circumstances. Your claims received independent corroboration from persons who had no wish to further your mission.”
“Who?”
“I believe they called themselves Quinn and Kurts.”
So. I had to reorganize my notions about who had done what to whom that bloody night.
“Mr. Garrett, I’ve gone to a great deal of trouble on your behalf. For myself as well, I admit, for it could mean my neck if the knowledge of the movement of certain letters reached the wrong persons. But still, on your behalf I have saved your lives by convincing them that the surest way to handle you is to let you get your affidavit. You might also note the removal of two deadly enemies, which improves your odds.”
“You want something.”
“Sir?”
“Besides me not mentioning any letters—a subject I wouldn’t mind chatting about, just to satisfy my curiosity—there must be something else. Call it a hunch.”
“Yes. I might as well be direct. There is so little time.”
“So?”
“In my youth I was guilty of, shall we say, a mortal indiscretion. A certain gentleman acquired proofs sufficient to place me in extreme jeopardy should they come to the attention of either my employers or the Karentine military. He used the threat to compel me to perform tasks that only worsen my chances of living to old age. The whereabouts of the evidence is known only to him. He does not allow me to get anywhere near him. You, however, could walk right up to him.”
“I get the picture.” I had no intention of skragging anybody for him, but I played the game out. I wanted him to stay my buddy. “Who?”
He wanted to get cagey.
“Come on. I don’t agree to anything till I hear a name.”
He had made up his mind to tell me if I pressed. He did. “A priest named Sair Lojda. At the Orthodox church at—”
“I know him.” Morley and I exchanged glances. So the centaur didn’t know that the Sair had gone invisible. Far be it from me to respect a dead villain so much I failed to profit from him. “You’ve got a deal, buddy. He’s dead meat right now. If I see the woman, get what I want, and leave in one piece, I’ll show you the body before the sun comes up.”
“Pact?”
“Pact and sworn.”
“Good. Let’s go. They’ll be getting impatient.”
Zeck Zack led us down the trail to his house. The peacocks raised twelve kinds of hell. “I’m going to roast the lot someday,” the centaur said. “Every damn night they wake me up with that whooping.”
He took us in through the tradesman’s entrance Kayean used to sneak out. Then it was through servants’ corridors to the front antechamber.
“Dark as hell in here,” Morley complained. “What have you got against light, centaur?”
If it was bad for him and the triplets, it was worse for Zeck Zack and me. We had no night eyes at all.
There was a ghost of light in the antechamber. It leaked in from the ballroom. It was just enough to betray the form of a man awaiting us.
The centaur said, “At this point you must shed all your weapons. Indeed, everything you’re carrying that is made of metal. Past this point you may go armed only with the weapons given you by nature.”
I started shucking. I could smell the end of the chase. I would give Zeck Zack the benefit of the doubt.
“Damn, it’s cold in here,” Dojango muttered.
He was right. And here I’d thought my teeth were chattering because I had to go in there armed only with the weapons given me by nature. I announced, “I’m ready.”
Zeck Zack said, “Step up and let the man double-check, Mr. Garrett.” He made no apologies.
I stepped forward. A pasty face the color of grubs appeared before me for a moment. Eyes of no color stared into mine. They were filled with an old hopelessness.
He patted me down smoothly and efficiently. Professionally. He did only one thing unprofessional.
He slipped something into my pocket.
It was done slickly. He touched me just heavily enough to make sure I noticed. Then he went to frisk Morley.
One lone candle illuminated the ballroom. It sat, with a quill and inkwell, on an otherwise barren table at the chamber’s geographical center. The table was four feet wide and eight feet long, long side toward me. Two chairs faced one another across it. I went and stood behind the one on my side, dropped my credentials and all the legal stuff on the table. Shivering, I shoved my hands into my pockets and waited.
I hadn’t imagined anything. I palmed a folded piece of paper.
I checked the disposition of my troops. Morley was to my left, my weak side, two steps out and one back. Dojango was the same to my right. The grolls were behind me. Morley’s nose twitched and pointed three times. Three beings shared the room with us, all in front.
One came floating out of the darkness.
She was beautiful. And something else. Ethereal, a poet might have said. Spooky is good enough for me.
She moved so lightly she seemed to float. Her gown whispered around her. Gauzy and voluminous, it was as white as any white ever was. Her skin was so colorless it almost matched her apparel. Her hair was the blond called platinum. Her eyes were ice blue and without expression, except they narrowed as she neared the light, as though it was too bright. Her lips were a thin wound vaguely purpled by the cold. She wore no makeup.
“You’re Kayean Kronk?” I asked when she halted behind her chair.
She inclined her head in a barely perceptible nod.
“Let’s sit, then. Let’s get it over with.”
She pulled her chair back and drifted into it.
I glanced at Morley and Dojango as I settled. They were staring into the darkness, as rigid and fierce as trained wolves on point. I didn’t know Dojango had it in him.
I looked across the table. She waited, her hands folded.
I gave her the whole thing, Denny dying, leaving his bundle, her having to come to TunFaire with me if she wanted to claim the legacy, or having to execute a sworn and sealed affidavit that would renounce and abjure, in perpetuity, all claims upon the estate of Denny Tate.
While I tried to talk what Morley called dirty-lawyer talk I shuffled and referred to my papers and used that to cover unfolding the thing that had been deposited in my pocket. It was a note of course.
It said:
Come take her out. Soon. Please. While there is still a chance for her redemption.
I shivered and tried to convince myself that it was the cold.
I read on, and under the guise of jotting notes jotted a note:
Open the enclosure only in her presence. Do so elsewhere and all hope dies.
I folded in one of the charms I had obtained from the Old Witch. Hands-at-the-door had not removed those, if he had detected them at all. I got the paper into a pocket and concentrated on concentrating on that spooky woman.
I tried to sound incredulous. “Are you honestly rejecting one hundred thousand marks? Less fees, of course. In silver!”
A ghost of a hint of revulsion feather-touched her eyes as she nodded. It was the only emotion she betrayed during the interview.
“Very well. I won’t pretend to understand, but I’ll draw up the affidavit.” I began scratching slowly on a piece of paper. “One of my associates will witness my signature. One of your companions will have to witness yours.”
Again she nodded.
I completed the thing, signed. “Morley. I need your chop.”
He came and gave me it. He was still as taut as a drawn bowstring.
I pushed the paper, ink, and pen across. “Is that satisfactory?”
She considered the paper just long enough, then nodded, collected everything, floated up, and drifted away into the darkness.
I put my papers and such together, rose, waited behind my chair. Soon enough the apparition drifted back. She placed the signed affidavit on the table, just beside the candle. Thus there was no possibility of physical contact, as there might be if she offered it to me directly. I gathered it up and tucked it away.
“I thank you for your time and courtesy, madame. I will trouble you no more.” I headed for the anteroom.
I noted that neither Morley, Dojango, nor the grolls turned around to retreat. There are times when not having night eyes can be a blessing.
Slipping my counternote to my correspondent was easy. Zeck Zack was so anxious to get us out of his house, and so eager to get himself out, too, that he was blind. In half a minute he was fussing unmercifully, trying to get us moving down the dark halls before we had recovered half of our hardware.
The peafowl carried on like wild dogs had them surrounded and help would come only if they yelled loud enough to rattle the clouds. I sympathized. Lately I felt the same way. But if I yelled, they would know where I was and start closing in.
As we approached the witch’s house, the air quivered. A cackle fluttered down like gaunt, soggy snow-flakes. Out of everywhere and nowhere, she asked, “Did you enjoy your taste of the prophecy, Mr. Garrett?” More soggy cackle.
Morley and the boys might not have heard. Zeck Zack glanced at the house, puzzled. I just put my head down and marched, not wanting to think about it.
The centaur was determined to stick with us. I expected him to press on the matter of Sair Lojda, and he didn’t disappoint me. He started in halfway to the graveyard. I told him, “Wait,” and refused to listen.
Morley picked the spot to squat, the one we had used before keeping our date with Zeck Zack. Morley sat down. So did I. Morley said, “We need to talk.”
“Yeah.”
Zeck Zack grumbled, “This is where you tell me how sorry you are, can’t keep your half of the bargain?”
“No,” Morley said. “We can deliver on that fast enough to make your head spin. The problem is, you didn’t deliver.”
I looked at Morley. He explained, “You gave her the paper upside down. She didn’t turn it. She couldn’t read. It’s reasonable to assume that your Kayean could.”
“She could. You’re right. That wasn’t her. Didn’t begin to resemble her. They just plain didn’t know I knew her.”
Zeck Zack looked upset. I didn’t bother to ask. I did say, “One question, old horse. When you bought that house, was it your idea, theirs, or the priest’s?”
“The priest’s.”
“One cycle of coincidence unmasked. Did he find what he was afraid might be hidden there?”
“No.”
“Did you? I’m sure you looked.”
He was regaining his balance. He grinned. “I took that place apart. I needed some back leverage.”
“I can take that as a no?”
“Right.”
“Garrett,” Morley said, “is that paper going to satisfy you? It’ll get you your ten percent.”
“That’s not what I said I’d do. I haven’t found her yet.”
He grunted. I couldn’t be sure in that light, but thought he seemed relieved and pleased. “Then we have plans to make, things to do, and our butts to cover.” He rose. “Your pal there jacked us around, but maybe he didn’t have any choice. I say we deliver our half. Maybe he’ll suffer a fit of gratitude. Come on.”
There was an edge to his voice I didn’t like.
I’m not sure Zeck Zack followed Morley. Maybe he just didn’t want to go back down to that house. Or maybe he thought he would get to watch the priest die.
Morley hiked straight to the mausoleum we’d visited earlier. “Open it up, Marsha.” Marsha obliged.
Zeck Zack noted the little giveaway details that said the tomb was in use. “You already did it? Before . . . you dumped him here?”
Morley gave him the lucifer stone. “See for yourself. Pardon us if we don’t join you. We’ve been in there once already tonight. We don’t have your iron stomach.”
Their gazes locked. Right then Zeck Zack would have murdered him cheerfully. The odds didn’t favor him. He spun, raised the stone, stamped inside.
Morley said something in grollish.
Marsha slammed the door.
“Morley!”
“A little night trading, I told you the first time I reported on him. Like a little innocent smuggling, I thought. What do you want to bet he procures for them?”
I had known Morley a long time, though not well. I’d seen him angry, but never out of control. And never eaten up with hatred.
“You know what we walked into down there, don’t you, Garrett?”
“I know.” And Father Rhyne’s last message and Kayean’s excommunication made sense. Of a sort. So did the attacks and rumors of attacks.
Morley calmed down. “Something had to be done. He could have trotted straight down there and told them we weren’t taken in. He’ll be all right for a while. We already know he has a strong stomach. We can turn him loose later, if you want. Anyway, a few days in there might incline him to tell us how to find her.”
“I’ll know how to reach her soon enough.” Though Morley gave me the fisheye, I didn’t elucidate.
“You sure you know what you’re doing? There wasn’t anything in your deal about digging her out of a nest of the night people.”
“I know.” I knew only too well. And I am cursed with an imagination capable of conjuring up the worst possibilities.
“If we blow it and get taken, me and the triplets are just dead. We don’t have enough human blood to be any use to them. But you . . . ”
“I said I know, Morley. Back off. We have the major to worry about. He knows we were in touch with the centaur. I expect he knows the priest was blackmailing Zeck Zack. With the priest gone that leverage is gone. So are we. Meaning we might have learned something that made us run for cover. He’s going to tear this town apart. He’s going to have guys sitting on every way out. We can’t stay here. When the sun comes up the sextons will start planting the day’s crop of stiffs. They’ll wonder what we’re doing hanging around. We can’t go back to the inn. Everybody will be watching that.”
“Don’t get yourself in an uproar. We’ve got the woods to hide in. We’ve got ourselves a night trader who knows ways to get people and things in and out of town. I say let’s worry about our friends of the nest and let your major worry about himself.”
Morley had a point of sorts, though he didn’t realize it. The more the major scurried around looking for us, the more likely he was to draw the attention of superiors who might want to know what was going on. And few if any of the men he commanded would be Venageti operatives. Their suspicions dared not be aroused.
He had to juggle carefully.
I wakened to an itchy nose, tittering, and the harumph-harumph of grollish laughter. I opened my eyes. Something brown and fuzzy waved in my face. Behind it was one of the little folk, seated in the crotch of a bush. I controlled my temper and got my forequarters upright, leaning against a tree. I was stiff and sore from sleeping on the ground.
No doubt Morley would argue that it was good for me.
“Where the hell are Morley and Dojango?”
The only answer I got was some big grollish grins and titters from the undergrowth.
“All right. Be that way.”
“Sugar?” A tiny voice piped.
“If I’d had any, you would have swiped it while I was sleeping.”
“With those great beasties watching over you?” the one in the bush asked.
I didn’t feel like arguing. Morning is always too early for anything but self-pity, and even that’s usually too much trouble. “Is there anyone in or around the centaur’s house?” You have to strive for precision with those folk. “Human or otherwise?”
“Sugar?”
“No sugar.”
“Bye, now.”
So. No pay, no play. Little mercenaries. I considered going down and burglarizing the centaur’s kitchen. But I wasn’t hungry enough to bet that Zeck Zack’s masters had done the rational thing and gotten the hell out the minute my affidavit and I departed. Besides, I didn’t feel like getting up and doing anything.
I sat there trying to reconcile the Kayean who dwelt among the nightmares with the Kayean I had known. I shuffled through what I remembered from her letters to Denny. Nothing there but the occasional hint that she was not happy. Never a word about her whereabouts or circumstances. She hadn’t been proud of herself.
No sense worrying about it. That would give me nothing but a headache and the heebie-jeebies. She could explain when I got to her.
Morley showed up around noon, staggering under a load of junk. “What’s all that?” I demanded. “You planning an invasion? Where’s Dojango? What the hell have you been up to?”
“Taking bids on your butt from Vasco, Rose, and your major. It was hot going till they got up to a quarter mark. Here.” He dumped half his load beside me. I noted a sack that looked like it might contain comestibles. I hit it first.
“What is all this stuff?”
“Raw materials. For the arsenal we’ll need if we’re going into a nest after your lady. They’d smell metal hardware ten miles off. You any good at flaking stone arrow points?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”
He looked exasperated. “Didn’t they teach you anything practical in that Marine Corps of yours?”
“Three thousand ways to kill Venageti. I’m a tool user, not a toolmaker.”
“I guess the load falls on Doris and Marsha again.” He gobbled grollish, and gave the big guys a bunch of stuff. Two minutes later, snarling and rumbling, they were chipping out arrowheads with a touch as delicate as a mouse’s. They were good, and they were fast.
Morley said, “They’re put out. They say it’s dwarf’s work. They want to know why they can’t just make themselves some ten-foot clubs and go in and break skulls. Grolls are slow sometimes.”
I could whittle a bit so I set to making myself a sword from an ironwood lath. It’s a good hard wood that will almost take an edge, but won’t hold one the way steel will. So I gave myself only one. The backstroke side I channeled and set with waste from the arrowhead flaking. That gave me a vicious tool.
Time rolled by. I shed my troubles in my concentration on my craftsmanship.
“Have mercy, Garrett!” Morley snapped. “Do you really have to put in the blood gutters?”
I looked at the thing in my hand. I sure was doing it up purple. I tried it for balance. “Close. Needs a little more work. A little more polish to lessen the drag during the cut.”
“And you call me bloodthirsty.”
“I’d rather carry a saber.”
“Come off it. One time we’re going to use this stuff. Finish it up. I cut some bolts, there. Fletch them and sharpen them. I’ll harden and poison the tips when I’m done here.” He was removing metal parts from crossbows and replacing them. The reworked weapons wouldn’t hold up, but, like he said, it was just the one raid.
“Old Man Tate is going to pee blue vinegar over the expenses. Why poison? It won’t do you any good.” I dragged bolts, glue, feathers, and thread together and started in.
“Because not everybody we meet is going to be immune.”
True. The bloodslaves would fight ferociously to defend their chances of someday joining the order of masters.
“You know anything about the nests in the Cantard, Garrett?”
“Who knows anything about any of them anywhere?”
“True. They wouldn’t survive. But?”
“There are rumors. Because of the military situation, they don’t have to be as circumspect in the Cantard. Plenty of easy prey, too. Nobody misses a soldier here or there. The nests are supposed to be bigger than usual because of that. When I was stationed down here, there were supposed to be six nests. That got reduced when some Karentine agents snatched a Venageti warlord’s daughter and let it out that she had been carried off to a nest. The warlord forgot everything else, went off to the rescue, found the nest and cleansed it, and got himself killed for his trouble. While his army was busy hunting night people, one of ours was sneaking up behind them. And that’s all I know. Except to guess that they’re happy to see so much silver leaving this part of the world.”
“They would know everything about silver, wouldn’t they?”
“They would know everything about what everyone was doing, that’s for sure. Which explains how Kayean was able to make Denny rich.”
Silver is as poisonous to the night people as cobra venom is to humans. It kills them fast and makes it stick. Not much else does. Other metals bother them to a lesser degree.
“Speaking of sneaks,” Morley said.
Dojango appeared, burdened with poles and bow-staves and whatnot. He was tipsy. He said, “It’s set for tomorrow night.”
“How much did you have?” Morley demanded.
“Don’t worry, cousin. I came here clean. Actually. They’ll have the horses and gear waiting at an abandoned mill they said is three miles up something called North Creek. They said they’d only wait one night. They said they would take the animals and stuff out tomorrow morning and bring them back the next day if we don’t show. They seemed a little nervous about being out in the countryside, actually.”
“Guess we’ll have to resurrect our centaur. Sit down and start turning those dowels into arrows. Garrett. You know this North Creek?”
“Yes.” I was tempted to ask who he thought was in charge, but kept my mouth shut. Morley had taken care of things that needed doing.
Dojango started making arrows. “Some interesting news started going around just before I came back up. About the time we were taking a peek into that tomb last night, Glory Mooncalled, unsupported, actually, attacked Indigo Springs.”
“Indigo Springs?” I asked. “That’s a hundred miles farther south than the army’s ever gone. And he tried it without wizards?”
Dojango smirked. “He not only tried it, he pulled it off, actually. Caught them sleeping. Killed Warlord Shomatzo-Zha and his whole staff in the first assault, then wiped out half their army. The rest ran off into the desert barefoot, wearing nothing but their nightshirts.”
“Good hunting for the night people,” Morley grumbled.
“And unicorns, centaur slavers, wild dogs, hippogriffs, and any other kind of critter that wants a piece of them,” Dojango added. “This is going to mean problems, Morley. If we have to spend much time out there.”
“How come?”
“If it’s true, it’s an unprecedented disaster for Venageti arms. When Glory Mooncalled changed sides, he swore vengeance on five warlords. For years he’s been waltzing them around the Cantard, making fools of them. Now he’s struck deep into traditionally safe territory and stomped one of the five the way I’d stomp a bug.”
“So?”
“So the Venageti are going to start flailing around like a boxer with blood in his eyes, hoping they hit something. Karentine forces will begin to move, trying to take advantage. Every nonhuman tribe in the Cantard will be out trying to profit from the confusion. In a week it’ll be so hairy it’ll be worth your life to squat to poop if you don’t have somebody to stand guard.”
“Then we’d better move fast, hadn’t we?” Morley asked.
A sentiment with which I agreed wholeheartedly. But my sneak to the bloodslave guarding the things in Zeck Zack’s ballroom had paid no dividends yet and I doubted that my revelation would come for days—if at all.
Zeck Zack was as cooperative as a centaur could be after his sojourn with the dead. He didn’t balk until having led us from the city via an underwall smugglers tunnel, he discovered that he had been enlisted in our enterprise for the duration.
Morley was in a puckish mood.
“But sir, surely you see all your caterwauling is without foundation. If you will reflect seriously you cannot help but confess the rectitude of our position. If we were to release you, as you so unreasonably insist, you would dash back through the tunnel and instantly set about wreaking evil upon us, imagining us to be the authors of your ill fortune rather than assuming that onus yourself, as is the fact.”
I had arrayed my army in squad diamond, with a groll out front, another behind, Dojango on the right and Morley on the left. Night-blind, I marched at the heart of the formation, ready to rush to any quarter suddenly threatened. Zeck Zack stumbled along between Morley and me.
It wasn’t long before the centaur surrendered to the inevitable. He betrayed a hitherto sequestered facet of character and began arguing with Morley in the same florid language and overblown, overly polite formulations.
The men who had brought our horses and gear were thrilled to see us. Our advent meant they couldn’t just take everything back and sell it again. Nor, they decided after eyeballing the grolls, could they murder us and do the same.
We parted ways immediately upon delivery. They were of the school that maintains wandering around at night could get you killed. We kept moving on the hypothesis that the wise man puts ground between himself and people who want to kill him.
Not a lot of ground. Those horses had heard of me and just to make trouble they insisted that the sensible thing to do was stay put.
Nobody was out to kill them. Nobody behind them, anyway.
Their attitude didn’t improve when the sun rose and they found themselves headed into the Cantard.
Morley accused me of anthropomorphizing and exaggerating the natural reluctance of dumb beasts to go into unfamiliar territory.
It just goes to show they had him fooled. They’re crafty in their malice, unicorns under the skin.
Having had no revelation, I set a course due west. Thither lay the most barren territory in the Karentine end of the Cantard, the desert of colorful buttes and mesas people in TunFaire picture when they think of the Cantard. I decided to head there because it seemed a logical place for the night people to have established a nest. It was so inhospitable as to be repugnant to most races. There were no discovered resources to bring exploiters with their guardians. Ample prey existed close by—especially when there were Zeck Zacks to do the rounding up.
Our second day out Morley began to suspect that I was not sure of my course. He went to work on the centaur.
“There’s no point to it, Morley,” I said. “They wouldn’t be stupid enough to trust him.”
Doris grumbled something from behind us. I could now tell the grolls apart. I had made them wear different hats.
“What?” I asked.
“He says there’s a dog following us.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Trouble?”
“Probably. We’ll have to ambush it to find out. Watch for a place where the wind is toward us.”
Three possibilities suggested themselves. The dog could be a domestic stray seeking human company. Damned unlikely. It could be an outcast from a wild pack. That meant rabies. Or, most unpleasant and most likely, it could be an outrunner scouting for game.
Marsha found a likely bunch of boulders on the lower slope of the butte we were rounding. He headed up a steep, twisting alley between, into shadows and clicky echoes. Morley, Dojango, and I dismounted and followed, rehearsing the balky animals in the vulgates of several languages.
“What did I tell you about horses, Morley?”
Doris hunkered between rocks and started blending in.
“Keep going, Morley. They’re sight as well as scent hunters. It’ll need to see movement.”
Morley grumbled. Marsha grumbled back, surly, but continued climbing. A bit later there was one brief squeal of doggie outrage from below, canceled by a meaty smack.
The horses were not reluctant going downhill. Lazy monsters.
Doris had squashed the mongrel good. He stood over it grinning as though he had conquered an entire army troop.
“Yech!” I said “Looks like a rat run over by a wagon. Lucky he missed its head.” I squatted, examined ears. “Well, damn!”
“What?” Morley asked.
“It was an outrunner. A trained outrunner. See the holes through the ears? Punched there by unicorn teeth. There’s a hunting party somewhere within a few miles of us. They’ll track the dog when he doesn’t turn up. That means we have to leave enough nasty surprises to discourage them, because we aren’t going to outrun them if they take our scent.”
“How many?”
“One adult male and all the females of his harem that aren’t too pregnant or cluttered up with young. Maybe some adolescent females that haven’t run away yet. Anywhere from six to a dozen. If they do catch up, concentrate on the dominant female. The male won’t get involved. He leaves the hunting and heavy stuff to the womenfolk. He saves himself for giving orders, mounting females, killing his male offspring if they stray from their mothers, and trying to kidnap the most attractive females from other harems.”
“Sounds like a sensible arrangement.”
“Somehow, I figured you’d feel that way.”
“Wouldn’t killing the boss break up the harem?”
“The way I hear, if that happened they’d just keep coming till they were dead or we all were.”
“That is true,” Zeck Zack said. “A most despicable beast, the unicorn. Nature’s most bankrupt experiment. But one day my folk will complete their extermination . . . ” He shut up, having recalled that the rest of us held a different view of the identity of nature’s most bankrupt experiment.
We hurried on. After a while Zeck Zack resumed talking so he could explain some of the nastier devices his folk used to booby-trap their backtrails. Some were quite gruesomely ingenious.
He had contributed nothing but carping before. His sudden helpfulness suggested the proximity of unicorns scared the tailfeathers off him.
After pausing at a brackish stream to water and gather firewood, we scrambled up several hundred feet of scree around the knees of a monster monolith of a butte and made camp in a pocket that couldn’t be approached in silence by a mouse. The view was excellent. None of us, with our varied eyes, or even with the spyglass, could see anything moving in the twilight.
We settled down to a small, sheltered fire. Being in the mood myself, we broached one of the baby kegs and passed it around. It held only enough for a good draft each for me, Zeck Zack, Dojango, and sips for the grolls. “Yech!” was my assessment. “Drinking that was the second mistake I’ve made in this life.”
“I won’t be so forward as to ask what the other might have been,” Morley said, “suspecting it might have been being born.” He smirked. “I presume beer jostled on the back of a pack animal in the hot sun loses something.”
“You might say. What possessed you, Dojango?”
“A slick-talking salesman.”
We sat around the fire after eating, mostly watching it die down, occasionally assaying a story or a joke, but largely tossing out notions about how we might deal with the unicorns if it came to that. I didn’t contribute much. I’d begun to fret about my revelation.
Something must have gone wrong. There had been time for them to reach the nest, I felt. Had the bloodslave betrayed himself? Had he been found out?
Without him prospects were poor. We could wander the Cantard looking until we were old men.
At some point I would have to admit defeat and head north with my false affidavit. I supposed we’d give up when our stores were depleted to just enough for the overland journey to Taelreef, the friendly port nearest us after Full Harbor. Going back into the shadow of the major’s claw seemed plain foolhardy from there in the desert.
One of the grolls was telling Morley a story. Morley kept snickering. I ignored them and began drowsing.
“Hey. Garrett. You got to hear this story Doris just told me. It’ll tear you up.”
I scowled and opened my eyes. The fire had died to sullen red coals casting little useful light. Even so, I could see that Morley’s words didn’t fit his expression. “Another one of those long-winded shaggy-dog fables about how the fox tricked the bear out of berries, then ate them and got the runs and diarrheaed himself to death?” That had been the most accessible of the grollish stories so far, and even it had lacked a clear point or moral.
“No. You’ll get this one right away. And even if you don’t, laugh a lot so you don’t hurt his feelings.”
“If we must, we must.”
“We must.” He moved over beside me. In a low voice, he said, “It starts out like this. We’re being watched by two of the night people. Laugh.”
I managed, without looking around. Sometimes I do all right.
Doris called something to Marsha, who responded with hearty grollish laughter. It sounded like they had bet on my response and Marsha had won.
“Doris and Marsha are going to jump them. Maybe they can handle them, maybe they can’t. Don’t look around. When I’m done telling the story, we’re going to get up and walk toward Doris. Chuckle and nod.”
“I think I can manage without the stage directions.” I chuckled and nodded.
“When Doris moves, you follow him and do whatever needs doing. I’ll go with Marsha.”
“Dojango?” I slapped my knee and guffawed.
“He watches the centaur.”
Zeck Zack had backed himself into a tight place where nothing could come at him from behind. His legs were folded under him; his chin rested upon his folded arms; he appeared to be sound asleep.
“Ready?” Morley asked.
I put on my hero face that said I was a fearless old vampire killer from way back. “Lead on, my man. I’m right behind you.”
“Big laugh.”
I hee-hawed like it was the one about the bride who didn’t know the bird had to be cleaned before it went into the roaster. Morley pasted a grin on and rose. I did so too, and tried shaking some of the stiffness out of my legs. We walked toward Doris.
Doris and Marsha moved with astonishing swiftness. I had run only two steps when I glimpsed a dark flutter among the rocks. Doris hit it. A great thrashing and flailing started. Another broke out behind me. I didn’t look back.
When I got there, Doris had the vampire in a fierce bear hug, facing away from him. Sinews popped and crackled. Strong as he was, the groll was having trouble keeping the hold. Blood leaked from talon slashes on his hide. The blood smell maddened the vampire further. His fangs ripped the air an inch from the groll’s arm.
Let that devil sink one and Doris was done for. It would inject a soporific venom capable of felling a mastodon.
I stood with a knife in one hand and silver half mark in the other, wondering what to do. Whenever a foot flailed out at me, I tried to cut the tendon above the heel.
Suddenly there was a flicker of light. Dojango was feeding the fire.
Doris pushed the vampire’s ankles between his knees. I flung forward, trying to drive my blade into one of the devil’s knees, to hobble it. It twisted half an inch. My point hit bone and cut downward through flesh harder than summer sausage.
A wound to the bone, a foot long, and when I was done about three drops of liquid leaked out. The vampire loosed one flat, shrill keen of pain and rage. Its eyes burned down at me, trying to catch mine with their deadly hypnotic gaze.
I slammed the half mark into the wound before it could start healing.
It was done so quickly, deftly, and instinctively that even now it amazes me.
The vampire froze for many seconds. Then dead lips peeled back and loosed a howl that terrified the stones and must have been audible twenty miles away; immortality betrayed. I clamped both hands on the wound to keep the coin in place. The night beast bent back like a man in the last throes of tetanus, hissed, gurgled, shook so violently we barely held on.
The flesh beneath my hands began to soften. Around the coin it turned to jelly. It oozed between my fingers.
Doris threw the thing down. The fire painted his great green face in light and shadow patches of hatred. The vampire lay among the rocks, still hissing, clawing at its leg. It was a very strong one. The poison should have finished it sooner. But they’re all strong, or they couldn’t be what they are.
Doris snagged a boulder twice as long as me and smashed the thing’s head.
For several seconds I watched flesh turn to jelly and slide off bones. Then, as though the vampire’s end was a signal, my revelation came.
I knew a direction.
When daylight came . . .
If daylight came. Morley and Marsha were embattled still. Doris was on his way to help. He collected his ten-foot club as he went. I shook all over and went to help myself.
Somehow, as we approached, the second vampire broke loose. It hit the ground, then hurled itself through the air in one of those hundred-foot bounds that have led the ignorant to believe they can fly.
The leap brought it straight toward me.
I don’t think it was intentional. I think it jumped blind, with the fire in its eyes. But he saw me as he came. His mouth opened, his fangs gleamed, his eyes flared, his claws reached . . .
“He” or “it”? It had been male when it was alive. It could still sire its own kind. But did it deserve . . . ?
Doris’s club met him with a solid whump! The vampire arced right back the way he had come and fell at Marsha’s feet. Marsha bounced a boulder off him before he could move—if he could have moved.
I didn’t go on. I headed for the fire and another of those skunky kegs and hopefully some unsober reflection.
Dojango was shaking worse than I was, but he was on the job, feeding the fire with one hand, keeping a crossbow aimed at Zeck Zack with the other. He didn’t look up to see who or what was coming toward him.
Another twenty-mile shriek shredded the fabric of the night.
“I make it twelve,” I said. “One lame. If I stare through this glass anymore, my eye is going to fall out.”
Morley took the spyglass, studied the unicorns playing around the water course and pretending they didn’t know we were nearby.
Morley handed the glass to Dojango. He told Zeck Zack, “One of your traps worked.”
The centaur wasn’t talking to us this morning.
I retreated to higher ground, a better view, and contemplation of last night’s revelation, which remained with me.
It amounted to a direction, a line on which Kayean and I were points. The trouble was, the line ran through me, so I had no certain idea which of the two ways pointed toward Kayean and which ran away.
The Old Witch hadn’t mentioned that problem.
I favored going southeast. That would put the nest nearer Full Harbor and the roads toward the war zone. It also put a large, promising mesa astride the line.
“Hey,” I called down. “Somebody bring me the glass.”
Morley came grumbling up. “Who was your butt boy yesterday?”
“A genie. But somebody threw his beer keg on the fire last night.” I trained the glass on the mesa, asked, “What took you so long with that thing last night?”
“I was trying to get it to talk. It was a new one, barely up from being a bloodslave. Not born to the blood. I thought it might crack. Hey! The stallion and two of the mares are taking off.”
So they were. They headed up our back trail at a grand gallop. The other unicorns moved out of sight behind the scruffy trees lining the watercourse. I swung the glass. “Did you learn anything we can use?”
“Nothing you’d find interesting. What is it?”
“Somebody coming right up our back trail. Too far to tell for sure, but it looks like a big party.”
He took the glass. “Fortune, thou toothless, grinning bitch. Here we are treed by unicorns and there—I’d give you odds—comes your major friend.”
“No bet till they’re close enough to show faces.”
“You want a sure thing, don’t you?”
“I’ve never had a gambling debt hanging over my head.”
He scowled and returned the glass.
The male unicorn was back. He and the trained dogs lurked behind the living screen bordering the creek, waiting for us to make a break. The females had moved to a tributary dry wash a mile away.
Answering a question, I told Morley, “They’ll jump out and try to panic the horses, which isn’t hard unless the horses are well trained. If they succeed, they’ll pick off a few, eat the horses where they fall, and carry the riders back to those who missed out on the hunt. If the horsemen regroup and come back at them, they’ll just scatter and wait. People aren’t going to bother carrying off dead horses.”
“They ought to be close enough to see something.”
I raised the glass. The riders were close enough to pick individuals from the dust but not close enough to distinguish features. “I’d guess fifteen horsemen and two wagons. See what you think.”
He watched awhile, grunted. “They ride like soldiers. Looks like we trade bad trouble for worse. At least they seem to know where they’re going.”
“I know where I’m going, too. That mesa.”
“Back the way we traveled for an entire day? When were you struck by this marvelous revelation?”
I ignored him. He didn’t need to know.
The riders passed the female unicorns’ hiding place. “Going to hit them from behind.” I took the glass back. “Well. What do you know. Did you check that lead wagon?”
“No.”
“Can you think of two women who might be roaming the Cantard with Saucerhead Tharpe?”
“What? Give me that damned thing.” He looked. “That stupid bitch. Hell. Your pal Vasco and his boys are there, too. Regular reunion of the Garrett Appreciation Society. Looks like they’re prisoners. I count ten soldiers and one officer.”
My turn at the glass showed me he was right. “That’s my Major No-Name. This puts me in a moral bind.”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t let those women get hurt.”
“The hell. They asked for it. What would they do if they were up here and you were down there?”
I didn’t get to answer that one. The unicorns burst out of the dry wash. At first it seemed their strategy was perfect. The soldiers’ horses darted every direction. Then suddenly they were all facing the rush. The soldiers held leveled lances.
The groups crashed together. The unicorns broke first, running for the wash. One soldier and two horses were down. The unicorns had lost no one, but they had collected the majority of wounds.
An arrow smacked into the shoulder of the slowest. She stumbled, went down on her knees. Before she could rise, soldiers with lances overtook her. Major No-Name called something taunting. He sent five men to plink arrows into the wash. Angered, the unicorns came roaring out. In another brief mix-up, another soldier, another unicorn, and two more horses died. No-Name held his ground and mocked the attackers. The soldiers who lost their mounts took replacements from their prisoners.
“He do have a hate for unicorns, I think,” Morley said.
“Here comes the boss female after orders.”
“I’m going back down. Give me the high sign if he tells her to take the dogs with her,”
“Will do.”
The major was expecting a fight. He made a makeshift fort of his wagons and baggage off his pack animals, put all the extra animals inside the barricade, armed his prisoners, and had them wait on the wagons. I wondered what he told them.
The male unicorn was either stupid or had lost a favorite. They do become mercurial when that happens.
I signaled Morley. I thought I knew what he had in mind. I didn’t like it but I could see no alternative.
So. The dogs went howling toward the major’s group. The unicorns charged behind. A fine, merry dust-up got started.
The male unicorn didn’t want to watch. Morley proved that by racing from the foot of the scree to the watercourse unchallenged.
Zeck Zack was after him before he was halfway across. There is nothing on four legs faster—in the short run—than a motivated centaur.
The unicorn heard hoofbeats. He popped up to see what was happening.
It was too late. Zeck Zack was all over him, and showed us he had handled a unicorn one-on-one in younger days. It didn’t last long.
All the while I was bounding down the slope. It was move-out time.
Everything and everyone was ready when I got down. I scrambled aboard my horse. For once we agreed on absolutely everything. We were a team with a single mind. That mind said, “Make tracks.”
I got out ahead of the crowd so I could lead by example. I steered around the base of the butte so we were headed east again, until we reached a point where I could see the battleground. That journey took an hour and a half.
We halted. I raised the spyglass. Nothing moved except the vultures. From that lower angle of vision it was hard to tell how great the disaster had been. I could distinguish one wagon on its side. A vulture perched on a wheel.
“Somebody ought to take a closer look,” I said, staring at Zeck Zack.
He nodded. Without comment he borrowed a couple of javelins and trotted off. The morning had wrought marvelous changes in him. “He might be back in the army,” I told Morley. Dotes just grunted. I added, “Don’t forget, somebody thought enough of him to get him Karentine citizenship.”
“It isn’t what you were, it’s what you are, Garrett. And that creature is the worst kind of night trader. The kind that sells your kind to them.”
Yeah.
Zeck Zack circled the mess a few times, closing in, then he raised a javelin and beckoned, knowing I had the glass on him.
“Let’s go.”
It was grisly. The dogs were all dead. So were most of the unicorns and a dozen horses. But there was not a human cadaver to be seen.
“They went on,” the centaur said.
I told Morley, “For a Venageti he sure sticks tight to Karentine field doctrine. Challenge unicorns when you can. Carry away your dead. Poison the flesh of the animals you leave behind.” Every dead animal had been cut dozens of times. Each cut was stained a royal blue where crystalline poison had been rubbed into the wound.
No one was going to profit from dead army animals.
I counted eight slain unicorns. They had kept at it until the dominant female had been killed. The survivors would be in bad shape.
Unicorns in that part of the Cantard would seek easier prey for a while.
I raised the glass and searched the base of the butte. There they were, looking back at us.
“See them?” Morley asked.
“Yeah. Burying their dead. Can’t make out anybody special except Saucerhead.”
Zeck Zack took a cue from that and galloped off toward the butte shadow where the major was returning the earth’s children to her.
“Trying to ingratiate himself,” Morley said. “So you’ll be a little loose on the rein when the time comes.”
“When do you figure he’ll run?”
“When we start into the nest. We won’t dare waste time chasing him. And with us keeping them busy, his chance of making it would be good. This is his country and he can still pick them up and put them down when he wants.”
I watched Dojango for a minute. He was collecting souvenirs. He had cut the dew claws off a unicorn, had knocked out some of its razor teeth, and was trying to figure how to take its horn. That would bring fifty marks bounty in Full Harbor and more as a curio in TunFaire.
“What are you going to do about it?” Morley asked.
“Let him run. I won’t have any more use for him.”
Zeck Zack came prancing back. He reported that four soldiers and the major had survived, and four other men as well. I knew about Saucerhead. One of the others sounded like Vasco. The remaining two could have been anybody.
“Survived don’t mean unscathed, either,” the centaur said. “They got cut up pretty good.”
“What about the women?”
“Not much scathing there. A little frayed around the edges, as anyone would be after that.”
Morley muttered, “Bet we can thank that dope Saucerhead for that.”
Zeck Zack went right on. “One of them kept screaming at me to tell you she going to crack your eggs, fry them, and feed them to the unicorns. When the boss soldier tried to shut her up, she bit him and gave him a knee in his eggs.”
“My lovely little Rose. What a wonderful wife she’ll make some poor sod. Well. Let’s go.” I urged my mount to face east. Our unity had begun to unravel.
“She does bounce back, doesn’t she?” Morley said in a tone that sounded suspiciously like admiration. “You just going to ride off?”
“Yes. The major isn’t going to make prisoners of anybody again. That’s going to turn into a three-way marriage of convenience that’ll be as rowdy as those marriages get. But they’ll take care of each other. Do you think you could get Doris and Marsha to pull a wagon? We might have a use for it.”
The one wagon was not damaged, just overturned and lacking a team.
“It’s army. We wouldn’t want to get caught with it.”
“We won’t.”
He spoke to the grolls. They responded in what sounded like impolite terms. He told me, “They want to collect unicorn horns. Those could be more use than any wagon. Stick one of them in the heart with a horn and it’s all over, sure as silver. And they can’t smell horns coming.”
“Deal, then. Wagon for horns. Those people back there are going to be burying and bickering for a long time.”
The grolls took the deal. Crash! Down went the wagon onto its wheels. The grolls scampered from unicorn to unicorn, perhaps dreaming of buying a brewery.
A pair of adolescent females, outraged by the trophy taking and not too badly injured, charged out of the wash. It was disconcerting, watching the absent-minded way the grolls clubbed them to death.
We didn’t try for the nest mesa that day. I wanted to go in early, when they had settled for the day, not late when they were about to awaken. Once they were soundly asleep, while the sun was high, it was almost impossible to wake them. Even the elder bloodslaves would have trouble responding.
So legend went.
We got out of sight of our pursuers, then went to work hiding our trail and laying false scents. Zeck Zack worked hard making himself useful. He knew all the tricks. He even had the grolls hand-carry the wagon two miles off to leave false wheel marks.
We set up for the night atop the corpse of a small butte not more than two miles from the face of the nest mesa. My head throbbed with the nearness of Kayean. From that vantage I could see most of the scrap facing the mesa and our back-trail.
“No fire tonight,” Zeck Zack said as I crouched behind the spy glass trying to tell what kind of luck the major was having. “Also scatter a little and stay near the stones that got the hottest during the day. That is how they find their prey from a distance. Through their warmth. It would be wise, too, to keep too much metal from accumulating in one place.”
“You wouldn’t give them a holler, would you? To score a few points?”
“I’ve never been known for an inclination toward suicide. I am known to be quick-tempered, rash, foolish, sometimes even stupid. But not suicidal. I enjoy the good things in life too much.” Wearing a distant look, he echoed himself, “Too much.”
“You might remember that the major wants you as much as he wants me. Your blackmailing priest was a buddy of his and you know it,” I added.
“He has to get out of the Cantard before he can cause me any grief. He has to get through tonight. Last night he was too strong for them. Tonight he won’t be. Especially if they haven’t fed for a while. And they have not. The two who came to Full Harbor could not restrain themselves, though their attacks put them at great risk.”
“Why would they spot him more quickly than us?”
“Eleven humans are easier to find than one.”
“Oh.” The day was getting on toward failing. Those who were tracking us were having no luck and seemed now to be more interested in settling for the night.
“There.” The centaur pointed. A darkness was rising from the mesa face.
I shifted the glass. “Bats. A billion bats.” And coming up from a point right on the line through my head, my mystical connection with Kayean.
Morley came in from scouting around. For a city boy he caught on fast. I repeated the centaur’s advice. He gave Zeck Zack the fish eye, then nodded curtly. “Makes sense. Don’t sleep too soundly tonight, Garrett.”
Right. With us here on the lip of it, I’d be lucky to get the old forty winks. You never admit it to the guys you’re with, but you get scared. Damned scared. And this time there might be a bigger stake than just death. I could be dead and have to keep walking.
If you ask me, the difference between a hero and a coward is that a hero finds some damnfool way to con himself into going ahead instead of doing the sensible thing.
They never did give me much credit for sense.
I did sleep, because a hand shaking my shoulder woke me up. Morley.
I heard it before he told me. A hell of a row over by the foot of the mesa. Gods, how I had wanted to run over and warn them when they had chosen to camp less than a mile from the gate to the nest. But, like Zeck Zack, I am not renowned for my suicidal tendencies.
As Morley said, the women were at little risk, and they were the only ones we had to give a damn about. Still, I had a soft spot for Saucerhead Tharpe. Saucerhead was implausibly romantic. He deserved preservation as the last of a knightly breed.
I got up where I could see just as the last of two campfires yonder died. Not two minutes after that the screaming and banging stopped. And about two minutes after that somebody finally said something. Dojango: “Guess we don’t have to worry about the army anymore.”
No. I guess not.
Nobody got any more sleep. I stared at the stars and wondered about the size of certain mouths, and about how much Rose, Vasco, and the major had yakked it up among themselves. Between them they had enough to work out what I meant to do. Did they have guts enough to stay buttoned up on the chance I might get them out?
“Going to have to be careful work over there tomorrow,” Morley said sometime in the wee hours. He didn’t have to ask if I was awake. He knew. Just as I knew that he and the others were awake and hanging onto something silver.
We started the crossing two hours later than I’d originally planned. That gave the sun two more hours to get up and glare at the gate to the nest. Two more hours for the night people to sink more deeply into slumber. Two more hours for us to prepare and two more hours for us to get crazier with fear. Every instinct screamed, “Get out of there!”
Morley spent that time rechecking every damned thing we would carry: flares, fire bombs, spears, crossbows, swords, knives, unicorn horns—the list was endless. I watched the gate through the spyglass, looked for secondary outlets, and helped the triplets polish off the last few kegs of beer. Zeck Zack mapped a convoluted route across that would be out of sight of spying eyes. The grolls, once the beer was gone, amused themselves by bringing enough water to do the horses for a couple of days. Dojango rigged up hitches they could pull if we didn’t come back. Not much was said. The few lame jokes that were told got roll-on-the-ground laughs. Anything to ease the tension.
Morley distributed the lethal instruments and flares and rehearsed everyone on using them. We packed it all up, filled canteens, drank too much water, and finally the sun was high enough to suit me. “Let’s go.”
Morley muttered, “Wish I knew if they knew we were coming. Then we might not have to leave all the metal hardware. Especially the silver.”
He was talking to no one but himself. My own contribution to nonconversation was, “I haven’t been so loaded down with junk since we landed on Malgar Island.” I’d been scared witless that day, too. Now those Venageti looked like friendly puppies.
The centaur’s route took us to the wasted camp. He knew we wanted to know.
We had an idea, of course. We’d watched the vultures circle for hours.
We heard them squabbling first. Then we heard the flies. Out on the Cantard those sidefliers of death get so thick they sound like swarms of bees.
Then we pushed between boulders and saw it.
I guess it was no more gruesome than any other massacre. But the bodies were so badly torn by attackers, vultures, wild dogs, and whatnot, that we had to count heads to find out that only four of the major’s party had been left for the carrion eaters. Two pasty-skinned, black-clad bloodslaves had been left too, but they remained untouched. Even the flies and ants shunned them.
Nobody said anything. None of the dead could be identified; there was nothing to say. We went on, fear perhaps tempered by the rage that makes men hunt down the maneater, be it wolf, rogue tiger, or one of them.
Nearer the gate we spread out, Morley and I flanking the hole and doing a cautious scout for surprises. Nothing seemed untoward. We assembled closer to the cave. Bat reek rolled over us. There was no sign of vampires, but I had a bit of red hair twisted around my finger. It had come off a thorn bush nearby.
Morley and I went in first, each with a sword and unicorn horn. Dojango followed with flares and fire bombs. The grolls backed him with spears and crossbows. Zeck Zack was rear guard because we expected him to turn ghost on us anyway. He wouldn’t have to stumble over anybody when he decided to leave.
We would change up on weapons and tactics if we reached the nest proper.
I gave a signal. We all closed our eyes, excepting the centaur. He counted a hundred silently, snake-hissed. Eyes barely cracked, we mouse-footed into the mouth of hell.
We advanced a few steps, stopped, listened. Morley and I knelt to let the triplets have more freedom to support us. We continued in that fashion. The deeper we sank into the darkness, the more frequently we paused.
By right of better eyes Dojango should have been in my place. But Morley feared his nerves weren’t up to it. I agreed. Dojango had buckled down and tightened up a lot, but he wasn’t ready for the front line.
Gods, the stench in that hole!
The first hundred feet weren’t too bad. The floor was level and clean. The ceiling was high. There was daylight at our backs. And there was no sign that anyone was waiting for us.
Then the floor dropped and turned right. The ceiling lowered until the grolls had to duck-walk. The darkness tightened and filled with the rustle and flutter of bats disturbed. Within a few yards we were saturated with the filth that was the source of the stench. The air grew chill.
Zeck Zack hissed.
We stopped. I was amazed that he could move so quietly on hooved feet. I’d assumed he was hell-bent for wherever already.
The hiss was the only sound. The centaur handed something forward. It gleamed through Dojango’s fingers as he passed it.
It was the lucifer stone Morley had given the centaur before shutting him in that tomb.
An iron chill dragged its claws up my back. By the stone’s light I saw Morley entertaining the same question: was the centaur announcing payback time? Burying us here would solve several of his problems.
I watched Morley struggle with the urge to kill Zeck Zack. He put it down. Barely. He gave me the stone because I had poorer eyes. I folded it into my right hand, under my fingers, against the grip of my wooden sword. I could lift a finger or two and leak light when I needed it.
Onward. Already the sun, freedom, and fresh air seemed a thousand years and miles behind us. Progress slowed as we examined every cranny for ambushers.
It looked like a dried-out corpse. Mouth open. Eye sockets empty. Hair gray and wild. One buzzard claw came reaching out of a crack at me. I fell away, throwing a wild backhand stroke with the stone-set edge of my sword. Bone parted like dry sticks.
The thing that had pushed those old bones leaped out.
A groll’s spear drove through it. Dull eyes stared into mine as it pitched forward onto the unicorn horn I raised to meet it. Cold, stale, awful breath washed my face. Again I saw that look I had seen on that butte about a century ago: immortality betrayed.
It tried to sink fangs into my throat. They weren’t yet well developed. Its disease was not far advanced.
I was terrified anyway.
A Dojango toe connected with its head.
I grabbed the lucifer stone and got up. Neither old bones nor the bloodslave did. But brothers of the latter had come for the party, too.
They had no weapons but tooth, claw, ferocity, and a conviction of invincibility. None of that did them any good.
Morley and I held them. Dojango retreated behind his brothers and lit a flare. The night people made little squeaks and pawed at their eyes. A moment later it was over.
There were only four of them, plus somebody who had been dead for years. It had seemed like a battalion.
Morley and I inspected each other for wounds. He had one shallow gash but waved off attention. He wasn’t human enough to have to worry.
The enemy had been met. He had been overcome in the opening encounter. Our nerve solidified. Our fear came under control. Dojango was proud of himself. He had proven he could think despite his terror.
We regained our breath and went on. Without the centaur Zeck Zack. There was no telling when he had deserted. Probably during the excitement, when he was sure no one would notice him going.
Behind us, the flare burned out. The bats began to settle down. The air grew colder.
The second bunch were more difficult than the first, though they were no more successful. They were bloodslaves farther along the scarlet path, harder to kill, but as vulnerable to blinding and more sensitive to the power of the unicorn horn. They did make us work up a sweat.
The third bunch was bad.
They let us know we were near the nest. They were bloodslaves who had slipped past all the perils of snares and pitfalls and were so far advanced in the disease that they were on the verge of joining the masters. Which meant they were almost as fast and strong and deadly as the two we had destroyed on the butte. After we skewered one with a horn it was almost impossible to touch the other three, even with them flare-blind. In the darkness where they dwelt, they had little use for sight. They ignored their pain and used their ears.
One got past me and Morley. The grolls pinned him with their spears, then finished him with unicorn horns. Dojango’s fear-fevered arm gave us the other two. He hit them with fire bombs. We finished them while they thrashed in the flames and screamed.
“And that’s it for the element of surprise,” Morley said. “If ever there was one.”
“Yeah.”
They were the first words spoken since our entry underground, save a soft grollish curse from Doris on breaking a unicorn horn pinning a bloodslave.
The fires died. We readied ourselves. “Not far now,” I guessed. Morley grunted. “The odds have got to be better,” I said. Morley grunted again. Some conversationalist. He looked odd in the glow of lucifer stone. Was he going to flake out?
He got himself organized inside, stepped forward, whacking the flat of his sword with his horn and listening to the echo. After about fifty steps there was no echo.
I let light leak between my fingers.
No cave wall. No ceiling. “Dojango. Give Doris a flare.”
The groll knew what to do. They threw for height and distance.
We were on the platform overlooking a floor about forty feet below. Man-made stairs ran down a widening sweep. Below, nearly a hundred . . . creatures . . . faced us and started screaming, pawing at their eyes. The dozen or so in white made me think of maggots on a dead dog.
Marsha snapped a spear down the stairs. It hit a youngster who had been rushing up when the flare ignited. He tumbled.
“How do you figure chewing it now that you’ve bitten it off?” Morley asked. He shivered in the cold.
“Sure won’t do any good to change our minds. We have to keep pushing, keep them panicked.”
He growled at the grolls. I looked out along the line that began in my head, and saw a half-dozen women in white, some leading children born to the blood. I couldn’t pick her out.
Morley seemed to be looking for someone, too.
“There they are.” Dojango indicated cages to one side. A score of prisoners stared at us, most of them forlornly.
The flare was almost out, but the grolls had shed and opened their packs and were pasting the crowd with fire bombs. Dojango was assembling a powerful lamp. Morley and I snatched bows and scattered arrows wherever it looked like the panic was fading.
I told Morley, “Like the pregnant lady told her guy, it’s time we took steps.” I started down the stair, again armed with sword and unicorn horn, straining against the weight of my pack of lethal confections. Morley elected the same weapons and snuggled his pack a little tighter. Dojango chose to bear horn and crossbow. His pack was empty, so he left it. The grolls shrugged their packs back on but didn’t arm themselves with anything but their clubs, which they had dragged in through all the difficulties of the entry cave, tied to their belts and trailing like fat, stiff tails.
“Prisoners first?” Morley asked.
“I wouldn’t. Even if they could be trusted they’d get in the way. Straight ahead. Where the women are going. That will be where the masters hole up.”
We reached the cavern floor. The grolls went ahead, swinging their clubs. Muttering to himself, Morley minced around an ankle-deep pool of filth. He flicked a toe at a night creature. Some were trying to fight back now.
Tinnie and Rose added shrieks to the uproar. In a free second I saluted them with my sword. They didn’t appreciate the gesture.
Morley kicked a human thighbone out of his path. “You ever wondered what bloodslaves feed on while the disease is running its course?”
“No. And I don’t want you to tell me.”
We climbed toward the gap through which the females had fled. It was a hole maybe four feet tall and three wide. It was clogged with bloodslaves trying to reach the protection of their masters.
The grolls hammered them with all the passion of miners who’d hit a gravel reef.
“And you wanted to bring mules,” Morley crowed.
Dojango’s crossbow thunked, creaked, thunked again as he sniped at a hero with designs on the lamp we had left at the entrance.
The night people began to press in. Not good. Armed or not, there is only so much that can be done against such numbers.
I still had a few tricks folded up my sleeves and tucked into my boots, but I wanted to hoard those as long as I could.
The grolls opened the hole.
Morley spoke to them. They threw once-human trash aside and wriggled through. I followed with the lucifer stone. Morley came last.
Nothing tried coming through after us.
“Well. We made it to the heart of the nest. Just like the heroes in the old stories. Only that was the hard part for them. The hard part is just beginning for us.”
The brides of blood had ranged themselves before the stone biers of their lovers, who had not awakened. There were fifteen of them. In only four had the disease run its full course. One of those I had faced across a table in Full Harbor, in a house where I had loved another in whom the disease was only a few years along and still reversible. Beside her stood a man whose face betrayed him as he who had passed me a note. She shuddered when she met my gaze, slipped her hand into his.
Well. Did you ever want to cry?
From the hole behind us Dojango said, “They’ve got the lamp. And the fires are out. Don’t look like they’re up for breaking in here, though.”
“Figure we got troubles enough already. She here, Garrett?”
“Yeah.”
“Cut her out of the herd and let’s get on with it.”
I beckoned Kayean.
She came, eyes downcast, towing the man. The other brides, and the eight or so bloodslaves with them, hissed and shuffled.
The tip of Morley’s unicorn horn intercepted Kayean’s man and rested on his throat. “Where is he, Clement?”
“Kill him here, Dotes. Don’t take him back.”
“If I don’t take him back, they’ll kill me. Where is he?”
Which was all very interesting.
What the hell was going on?
“Back there.” The bloodslaves pointed past the brides. “Hiding with the children. You won’t get him out without waking the masters.” He stared at me, eyes filled with appeal. “Take her out. Before they wake up.”
An excellent suggestion, and one I would have loved to have put into effect. Except that, though unspoken, we had come in knowing that if we went out again we would be leaving them dead behind us.
It had less to do with emotion than necessity. If we left them alive, they would be after us as soon as the sun went down. There would be no outrunning them. And they dared not let us go. They would have the Karentine army all over them as soon as we reported the location of the nest.
“We need to talk, Morley.”
“Later. Come out of there, Valentine.”
Something stirred, hissed, back among the biers. The hissing formed words, but just barely. “Come get me.”
I said, “Folks, things are going to get nasty in a minute. Some are going to die the real death. You don’t want it to be you, I’m taking volunteers to sneak out to the big cavern. We pull this off, you can migrate to another nest.” And if we didn’t we would be their midnight snack.
After a few seconds one of the newer females started toward us, eyes downcast. Most male bloodslaves become what they are by choice. Few women do. They are selected and collected for the masters by night traders like Zeck Zack.
One of the old females objected. She tried to stop the deserter.
Dojango’s bolt hit her square in the forehead, driving four inches into her brain,
She fell and flopped around. The bolt wasn’t enough to kill her, but plenty to scramble her mind.
I let the volunteer through. “Anybody else?”
The old females looked at the fallen one, listened to the creak of the crossbow rewinding, hissed back and forth, and decided to leave us to the mercy of their masters. One by one, the crowd departed. The little ones too.
They have no loyalty to one another at all.
“Kill that thing,” Morley snapped. He repeated himself in grollish.
Marsha thumped the flopping woman till she stopped.
“Valentine. Come out.”
Hissing again. I raised the lucifer stone overhead so I could look at this creature who so interested Morley Dotes.
Then a lot came together.
I knew that face. Valentine Permanos.
Six years back the kingpin’s chief lieutenant, one Valentine Permanos, and his brother Clement had vanished with half the kingpin’s fortune. There had been rumors about them running to Full Harbor. Morley would have to come across with more numbers to make it all add up, but I saw enough of the edges to relax with my allies.
“Let’s do it, Garrett,” Dotes said, getting a two-handed grip on his unicorn horn.
Valentine Permanos began shaking one of the still forms.
His face was a horror. They say the swiftness of the disease’s progress depends a great deal on the will of its victim. This one was much farther gone than his brother. He wanted to become one of them.
I recalled old rumors that he had been dying a slow death when he scooted on the kingpin.
Morley drove his horn straight into the heart of the first vampire he reached. So did I. The body shuddered. Its eyes opened for a moment and filled with that look of betrayal, then glazed over.
Morley did another one. So did I. He got a third. I lined one up. Morley cursed. “Dojango. Throw me another horn.”
“That’s a hundred marks, Morley. What’s wrong with the one you got, actually?”
“It’s stuck in his goddamn ribs! Now throw me another horn.”
I moved to my fourth victim. My shakes were going away. Six more after this one. Over the hump. We would be headed out in a few minutes.
I drove the horn down.
With no warning, the one Valentine was shaking flung itself toward me.
I twisted away. Dojango’s hasty bolt ripped its face open. Morley whacked it with his horn. The ceiling was so low the grolls had to stay on their knees. Still, Doris managed to bounce his club off the vampire’s chest.
The monster leaped back from whence it had come, eyes burning, amazed, hissing something we weren’t meant to understand. I noted the huge ruby pendant it wore, then grabbed Morley’s shoulder and kept him from pursuing it. “Get back here! Now!” I backed up. “That’s the bloodmaster himself. Touch me. Everybody touch me.”
“What the hell?”
“Do it!” Hands clasped onto me. “Close your eyes.” I palmed a sweaty slip from my sleeve, ripped it open. I counted to ten, expecting claws and fangs to rip me with each beat.
I opened my eyes.
They were all up now. They had their hands to their temples and their maws open in soundless screams. They swayed back and forth with the madness.
“Two minutes!” I yelled. “Less than two minutes to finish it! Let’s go!”
I admit I did less than charge headlong. I didn’t completely trust the Old Witch’s magic. And the bloodmaster looked like he was less than incapacitated.
It was gruesome work, work in which I take no pride even though it was them we slaughtered and threw behind us so the grolls could hammer their heads to pulp. We didn’t get through it easily, either, for even in their two minutes of madness, they knew they were being attacked. I picked up a dozen shallow claw gashes that would require careful attention later. Morley nearly got his throat ripped out because, out of some weird nobility, he tried to leave the bloodmaster for me.
Groll clubs hammered that old monster’s skull, and not a second too soon. Dojango was yelling about goings-on in the big cavern, where the crowd had decided to get involved after all. Morley was busy trying to get his prisoner sewed up. I yelled at the grolls to turn around, then threw Kayean and her guy out of the way so they wouldn’t get stomped. Doris chucked Dojango back, started stabbing with his club, driving the bloodslaves back.
I heard a sharp whine, turned.
Morley was pulling a unicorn’s horn out of Clement’s chest.
I snarled, “That wasn’t necessary.” I glanced at Kayean, wondering if she was going to go now. She sank down beside Clement and held his hand again. I faced the hole, shucked my pack, and pitched a few fire bombs past the grolls. That drove the bloodslaves back.
“Let’s go!” I ordered. I glanced back. Morley was on his way, dragging his prisoner. Kayean was rising reluctantly, her face as cool as the death she’d nearly become. But Dojango . . .
“Damn you, Dojango, what the hell are you doing?”
“Hey, Garrett. You know what a genuine blood-master’s bloodstone is worth? Look at this sucker. It must be three or four thousand years old.”
Three or four thousand years. For that long the monster had preyed upon humanity. I hoped they had a special place for him where they stoked the fires especially hot.
I dove through the hole behind the grolls and scattered the rest of my fire bombs and arced a couple of flares into the crowd. The screaming picked up again. I dropped to one knee, wooden sword ready, while the grolls flailed around with unprecedented fury.
A hand dropped onto my shoulder. I glanced up into sad, gentle, possibly forgiving eyes.
Morley plopped pack and prisoner on the other side of me and started flinging his bombs. I heard Dojango’s crossbow thunk. Morley asked, “What the hell did you do in there, Garrett?”
“Later.”
“I know sorcery when I smell it. What else do you have up your sleeve?”
“Let’s free the prisoners and start hiking.” The denizens of the pit had faded back, but they were gathering before the steps of the tunnel to the world. They had not given up. If they stopped us, their way of life would remain secure. They could wait until one of their born-to-the-blood children was old enough and tough enough to make himself bloodmaster.
An arrow arced down out of the gloom and thunked into Marsha’s shoulder. Someone had gotten to the gear we had left at the entrance to the cavern. What was merely a nuisance to a hide-thick groll could be lethal to the rest of us.
“Move it!” I snarled. “Your meat up top, Dojango.” Rose and Tinnie howled like an alley full of cat fights. We pushed over to the cages. Most of the captives were as colorless as their captors. The night people didn’t drain them quickly, like a spider. Most were too far gone to realize what was happening. I was surprised they were even alive. As somebody had said, the Cantard had been too quiet for the hunting to be good. “Hello, Saucerhead.” I ignored the women’s cage. “Are you going to be as stubborn as usual? I don’t want to leave you here.”
Give it to Saucerhead. Not much brains but plenty of spunk. He worked up a grin. “No problem, Garrett. I’m unemployed. I got fired on account of I couldn’t keep us from getting into this fix.”
He had enough wounds to show he’d damned well tried. He was blue with the cold, the arctic chill I’d hardly noticed in my frenzy to get in and get out.
“You’re free to take a job, then. Consider yourself on retainer.”
“You got it, Garrett.”
“How about you, Vasco? Still think you can get rich by stopping me? Look here. This is Denny’s girl. How much longer you figure she would have been good? A year? Maybe. If you were lucky. All your buddies died for nothing.”
“Don’t preach at me, Garrett. Don’t push. Just get me out of here. I’ll bury my own dead.” His teeth chattered.
“How about you, Spiney?”
“I never had any quarrel with you, Garrett. I got none now.”
“Good enough.” There were two Karentine soldiers in with them. They were the worse for wear, too. I didn’t think it worth my time to ask if they would give me any grief.
Meantime, Morley chatted up the ladies. They were in a separate cage. Rose was ready to deliver the moon if we would just get her out. Me was the word I heard, not us. Lovable, thoughtful, family-oriented Rose. Tinnie behaved with as much decorum as the circumstances allowed. I decided to give her a closer look if we ever got out of there.
“Think we ought to turn them loose?” Morley asked.
“Up to you. They might slow us down.”
It takes longer to tell than it took to happen. Even so, Dojango decided he’d had enough. “You guys quit jacking around or my brothers and I walk without you.” He had the bloodstone and several unicorn horns, and though he was feeling wealthy, he was also worried about living to enjoy his gains.
His crossbow thunked. An instant later an arrow hissed overhead.
“He’s got a point, Morley.”
Morley spoke to the grolls. They opened all the cages with a few well-placed club strokes. Over Dojango’s protests, Morley and I passed out unicorn horns. The grolls tossed our last few flares onto the steps and we headed for freedom.
Freedom was a coy bitch.
Our first charge looked like it would carry through. But they swarmed, threw everything at us, utterly determined to keep the secret of the nest. And I mean threw everything: filth, bones, rocks, themselves. And some were almost as tough as their masters. We lost every one of the older prisoners who had tagged along. They were unarmed and as slow as men in a syrup bath.
One of the soldiers fell. Vasco took a wound but managed to keep his feet. I collected another assortment of scratches. Saucerhead went down and had trouble getting up. When Doris grabbed him and started carrying him, the monsters swarmed all over him. I thought he was a goner for sure. When I saw he was still alive, I had to overcome self-disgust for momentarily wishing he’d died so we wouldn’t have to drag him out.
Then the night people fell back and were silent. I wondered why, noting there were only about thirty of them left willing to fight. Then I noticed that the last two flares were about to die.
In moments they would have us in their element: darkness.
Time, then, for another one from up my sleeve. One I had expected to have to use earlier than this. “Everybody get in close, here. Leave something sharp-pointed out, face uphill, and close your eyes.”
There were those who wanted to ask questions and those who wanted to argue. I lied, “Those who don’t do what I say are going to end up blind.”
Morley snapped orders in grollish. The triplets did what I wanted. That damned Doris was up and lugging Saucerhead again.
The last flare died.
Rustle and scrape as the night people began moving.
This one was actually in my boot, not up my sleeve. I said, “Close your eyes!” and ripped the paper open.
A blast of sulfurous air overrode the stench of the cavern. Light slammed through my eyelids. Night people shrieked. I counted to ten slowly. “Eyes open. Let’s move.” The enveloping light had waned to a tolerable glare. The Old Witch had said it was good for several hours. The light was much like that of the sun. The night people found it excruciating. If they didn’t get out of it quickly, it would destroy what served them as sanity.
We went up the steps. I ripped rags off a fallen bloodslave, threw them over Kayean to shield her from the light. She was already in pain. Morley and Dojango wanted to stop and play with the bows we had left.
“Get out while you can!” I snarled. “Our luck has been too damned fantastic already. Let’s not push it.”
Marsha grabbed Dojango and started dragging. Everybody else started hiking. When he saw he would have to play alone, Morley grabbed his booty and joined the retreat.
There was no respite. The tunnel was one place the night people could escape the light. And once free of its maddening influence they became rabid, terrible enemies again.
Nevertheless, we outran them to the mouth of the world.
“What the hell is this stuff?” Morley growled as we struggled through the webbing or netting or wire that had materialized in the mouth of the cave during our time below.
“How the hell should I know? Just get through it.” I was fussing over Kayean. She hadn’t spoken a word yet. But she was whining like a baby. At first I thought it was fear of going out into a world she hadn’t seen in years. Then I realized it was because the tangle we were in was wire and the metal’s touch hurt.
Who put it there?
My money was on Zeck Zack. But where had he gotten the wire? And what did its presence mean to us?
We broke out. It was broiling, summer hot out there.
“Midnight,” Morley groaned. “We were down there longer than I thought.”
“Keep moving. Lots to do yet.”
We were halfway down to the desert floor when the screaming started behind us. There was pain in it, but it was mostly frustration and rage.
Dojango gasped. “They say those things can recover from almost anything. You think any of the masters will come around?”
I told the truth. “I don’t know. We’ll tell the army first chance we get.”
We hustled across to our camp. There was a three-quarter moon, so the going was quick, though Kayean kept whimpering at the brightness. So did Morley’s prisoners. As we climbed to our camp, Dotes said, “We’ll have to pack them in moist earth and wrap them up good to protect them from the sun.”
“We have to do some talking, too.”
“I suppose so.”
“What happened to the major? Tinnie, do you know?”
She was sticking as close to me as Kayean was. “The one who arrested us? I don’t know. I guess he got killed when the vampires attacked.”
“Vasco. Did you see what happened to him?”
“I was too busy.”
“Anybody?”
Rose said, “I thought I saw them carry him away. But maybe I was wrong. He wasn’t in the cages when you showed up.”
“Maybe they ate him,” Dojango suggested.
“We have the right number of bodies,” Morley said. Then he gave me a sudden, odd look, as though he suspected me of knowing something I hadn’t shared.
I did, but I hadn’t shared it only because it had hit me just minutes before. I whispered, “That name that kept turning up on those have-you-heard-of lists. The one I’d heard but couldn’t remember? I remembered.”
“And?”
“A legendary Venageti agent. Supposedly a shape-shifter. Also supposedly caught and killed. But if he was, why are some folks—with Venageti connections—so interested in him?”
“I don’t know and I don’t think I want to know. All I’m interested in now is moving myself from this godforsaken here to there where I can sit down to my first healthy meal in a month. But I suppose we have to protect ourselves. You think we rescued him?”
“There’s a chance.”
“Which one?”
“Take your pick.”
“Not the women?”
“No. One would know the other had changed. I’d vote for someone about his size.”
“Always assuming he’s still with us.”
“Always assuming that.”
We were pleasantly surprised to find our camp as we had left it, unplundered and the horses uneaten and patiently waiting. Morley sent Marsha off for a load of moist earth. He assumed the job of sentinel. The rest of us doctored one another. When I was satisfied that I wouldn’t succumb to the disease through my wounds, I hunted for Dotes. He was perched on a boulder contemplating the desert between our camp and the mesa. He said, “You haven’t said a word to her.”
“I’ll talk to her when she wants to talk. For now I’m satisfied with her letting me bring her out after what you did to Clement. It’s time you explained the latest moves in Morley’s Game.”
“I suppose. Otherwise you’ll badger me incessantly. You knew that six years ago the kingpin’s number one walked with half his plunder.”
“Old news. I also heard that he and his brother ran off to Full Harbor.”
“It took them a couple of years to find that out. The kingpin sent some men down. They must have stirred things up the same way we did. Something happened to them. They only got one report back. It said Valentine wasn’t in Full Harbor anymore, and that after a fast romance, his brother had married a local girl named Kronk. She had gone off with her husband when he followed his brother wherever.”
“Then you knew all along who she married.”
“Yeah. But telling you wouldn’t have helped you find her. His trail was already covered.”
I controlled my anger. “So the kingpin sent you down here.”
“Not exactly. I volunteered. When you asked me to join up with you, it was like the answer to a virgin’s prayer. An honest-to-god miracle. The kingpin was ready to list my name with those sleeping among the fishes. It was an out. I went and told him the story and said I would get Valentine if we could call it even. He bought it. He wants Valentine a lot worse than he ever wanted me. So I went ahead and hooked up with you, betting the longest odds I ever played, hoping you could find the woman and she would have lasted longer with Clement than she did with you or your buddy.”
For a while we stared at the desert. Shapes moved there, but none came our way. They didn’t have the fully developed senses of their masters. Finally, Morley started talking again.
“I didn’t have the foggiest where it was going till we walked into that place of Zeck Zack’s and found those vampires waiting. Then it clicked. The evidence was there all along. I knew Valentine back when. He was dying a slow death and he had no more conscience than a shark. For him it was the logical way to dodge death. He probably took the money in case he needed to buy his way in. Knowing him, he probably figured on being bloodmaster within fifty years.”
“So. The loose ends begin to come together. But there’s still one big one hanging out. Who were the people on that ship with the striped sail? What were they doing? Why were they interested in us?”
I had an idea and I thought Morley’s confessions lent it strong circumstantial support. But I meant to reserve that. It might prove useful. I wasn’t convinced that those people were out of the game.
“Why take Valentine back?” I asked.
“For the kingpin’s peace of mind. And mine. I don’t want him doubting for a minute.”
I glanced out at the desert. “What are they doing?” Those who had come out of the nest behind us were scampering around like blind mice.
“I don’t know. But I’ll give you another loose end. Zeck Zack.”
“Not much we can do about him.”
“I should have cut his throat.’”
“And you criticize me for what red meat does to me?”
“Marsha’s back. Let’s pack our prizes.”
“What are we going to feed them?”
“Let them get hungry. They’ll eat what we give them.” He dropped off his boulder. “Where do we go now?”
“Back to Full Harbor. Take a peek through the centaur’s tunnel. See how much excitement there is about us. I hate to leave our stuff if we don’t have to. Buying new would stretch the budget too far.”
“That innkeeper probably sold everything already.”
“We’ll see. Keep a watch on our friends. Just in case the major is with us.” I had a couple tricks up my sleeve yet, one of which would probably give me the major, but I didn’t want to use them if I didn’t have to. Magics of the sort I had gotten from the Old Witch were too precious to squander.
We packed our prizes, as Morley dubbed them, in the earth Marsha brought, wet them down, bundled them up, and loaded them on the wagon. Tired though we were, I wanted to be traveling with first light.
Before I folded my blanket over Kayean’s face, she met my gaze directly for the first time and rewarded me with a feeble smile.
The nineteen-year-old Marine was still alive. He could be touched.
Vasco and Saucerhead also went into the wagon, with a moderately carved-up soldier on the driver’s seat. Doris insisted he was capable of helping Marsha pull. Fine. Let him if he wanted. Let him bleed to death. I wasn’t his mother.
Mrs. Garrett taught her boys never to argue with grolls.
We put the women on horseback. Everyone else would walk, like it or not.
We were ready to head out when Morley summoned me to his boulder. “Bring the spyglass.”
When I got there I heard it. It came from the direction of the cave. I trained the glass. There was barely enough light. “The ones who came out can’t get back inside.”
“Oh, my. Isn’t that sad.” Then he muttered something else, and pointed.
“Oh, my twice or thrice,” I said. “I guess this means we slip out the back door.”
“Yep. Papa’s coming home. Jodie goes out the window and keeps moving fast. It won’t take him long to figure we got out again.”
I could hear them now as well as see them. “I never saw so many in one mob before. He must have rounded up his whole tribe.” I guessed there were at least five hundred centaurs. Their advance was a movement of precision to be envied by any cavalry commander. They changed directions and formations as easily and quickly as a flock of birds, and with no more apparent signaling.
“Let’s not sit here talking about it while they just prance up and grab us.”
“Good thinking.” We got moving.
Zeck Zack and his people didn’t interfere with us at all, though I’m certain their scouts knew where we were. We hastened eastward as fast as we could hoof it, with me sort of hanging around the rear, staring at backs, wondering which, if any, was the major.
News of Glory Mooncalled’s adventure had reached every cranny of the Cantard. The land was coming to life. Three times we went into hiding while soldiers passed. They were all headed south. The smallest lot were Venageti rangers. No telling what they were up to when they heard and decided to head home. I didn’t care as long as they didn’t want to include me in their game of kings.
Morley and I both watched our companions more closely than we did the rangers. The major, if he was with us, didn’t give himself away. Not that I expected him to, but I wasn’t missing any chances.
We kept on until everyone was stumbling, and kept on still. What Zeck Zack might want to do with us we had no idea, but he had no cause to be friendly. And there were the other perils of the Cantard, which Glory Mooncalled had conjured to life like a shower livens the plants of the desert. It seemed we couldn’t go five miles without some sort of alarm. The nights were more friendly than the days.
We reached the abandoned mill without falling into misfortune. I began to feel optimistic. “We’ll rest here a day or two,” I announced.
Some of my comrades by circumstance wanted to argue. I told them, “Take it up with the grolls. If you can whip them, go do what you want.” I wasn’t feeling a bit democratic.
The only would-be sneak-off was Rose.
I had to give the little witch credit for being stubborn and determined. No matter what, she was going to keep after Denny’s legacy until she got it. She worked on Morley, but he had reached a state where he had nothing on his mind but watercress sandwiches. She worked on Saucerhead, but he had signed on with my squad and the gods themselves couldn’t have moved him until I released him. She worked on Vasco, but he was completely introspective, interested only in going home. She worked on Spiney Prevallet, but he said he’d had his fill of pie in the sky by and by and told her to go to hell.
She decided to take the future by the horns herself.
I caught her with a sharpened piece of firewood trying to decide the best place to stick it into the bundle containing Kayean. I’m afraid I lost my temper. I sprawled her across my lap and applied the stick to her posterior.
Morley said, “You should have left her with her spiritual family.”
She gave him a look to sear steel.
I think his remark hurt her more than the spanking, though a person of her temperament was the sort to turn the thrashing into a grudge worth nursing for years. It sent her off to sit alone and reweave her skein of self-justification. Come the next night, while we were waiting for Dojango to come back with a report on our standing in the city, she decided to go her own way.
Morley reported her defection. “Shall we let her go?”
“I guess not. Chances are she’d get herself enslaved or killed, and I have an obligation to her family. We know she won’t learn from experience, so there’s no point letting her suffer for education’s sake. And if she did get through, she’d just set us up for something unpleasant.”
Tinnie was sitting beside me, her shoulder half an inch from mine. We’d been rehashing those things men and women talk about when they have other things on their minds.
“You really ought to ditch her, Garrett.” Morley sighed.
Tinnie said, “His conscience wouldn’t let him. And neither would yours, Morley Dotes.”
He laughed. “Conscience? What conscience? I’m too sophisticated to have one and Garrett is too simple.”
I said, “Go get her, Morley. And put hobbles on her.”
Once he had gone, Tinnie asked, “Would he really let her . . . ?”
“Pay him no nevermind, Red. We talk that way. But it’s just talk.”
Rose was not fighting when Marsha lugged her back into the circle of light cast by our fire. The fight was out of her. Morley came to report, “She ran into something out there. We scared it off. She won’t say what it was, but you might consider a double watch and maybe a prayer for Dojango.”
“Right.” I took care of it and resumed my seat, considering Rose across the fire, feeling moody.
Tinnie touched my arm and said, “Garrett, when we get home . . . ”
“If we get home is soon enough to talk about when we get home.” It came out more curt than I’d intended. She fell into a silence as sullen as my own.
Dojango waited until afternoon to return. His report was exactly what I wanted to hear. Nobody in Full Harbor was the least interested in a band of nosies from TunFaire. Nothing unusual had taken place while we were away. All the talk was about Glory Mooncalled and the epic dust-up taking shape down south. Our things were still at the inn, being preserved by an innkeeper who felt kindly disposed because we had left him the clothing and possessions of those thugs we’d thrown into the streets mother-naked.
“Or so he says,” Dojango editorialized. “Actually.”
“We’ll watch him. Let’s get it packed up. I want to hit that tunnel as soon after dark as we can. Did you make the other arrangements?”
“No trouble. They’ll be delivered to the back door of the inn. They should be waiting when we get there.”
“What about shipping complications?”
“Shouldn’t be any, actually. It’s done all the time. Every ship headed north carries a few for families that can afford it. Strictly routine, actually.”
“Good. Morley. One problem left, and tonight would be the time for it to make itself apparent.” We wandered away from the others slowly, keeping our backs toward them.
“You have any candidate in mind?” he asked.
“Pressed, I’d have to call Vasco’s name. But he’s the only one I know well enough to know he’s not acting normal. And he’s got good enough reasons.”
“You have a move in mind? A test?”
“Right after we come out of the tunnel. I want Dojango, Marsha, and Saucerhead to go through first. You and me and Doris will bring up the rear. If we load the rest down with what has to be carried, they’ll be surrounded and have their hands full when it happens.”
“You could go to work for the kingpin, scheming like that.”
“I’ve got to bring it off before it’s any good. This isn’t some stupid kid we can pluck like some ripe pear. He’s going to have moves and plans of his own.”
“We wouldn’t have it any other way, would we?”
We ventured back. During the afternoon’s course we passed the word on the night’s festivities. Though some were not pleased with my dispositions, they were all realistic enough to understand that I would put people I trusted most where they would do the most good.
That was the disposition we assumed when we broke camp, except for having the grolls take turns pulling the wagon. I told Saucerhead he could ride until we neared the wall, but he insisted that he had healed enough to hike. Vasco and the wounded soldier also hoofed it, saying they wanted to keep loose. Morley and I trudged along eating everybody’s dust.
A time or two I moved up to make sure Kayean’s wrappings were holding. After the second check I dropped back and said, “I’ve noticed you haven’t done anything to keep your prize from starving.”
Kayean threw up almost everything I gave her. When I unwrapped her, I had to make certain her hands and feet were bound. I had clipped her claws first chance after we had come out of the nest. She still had her teeth and the hunger was upon her, though when she was rational she was game enough in battling the disease.
“You also notice he’s gone into the long sleep that gets them when they’re starving. He’ll last till we make TunFaire. And that’s all I need.”
Much as I disliked the deed itself, I now suspected that Morley had done the best thing by killing Clement. Clement’s death had freed Kayean.
Without a word having been exchanged I somehow understood that she had marched through the doorway to hell only because that was the pathway her husband had taken and she was a wither-thou-goest kind of lady. For his part, I think Clement made his move sixty percent out of conscience and remorse, forty percent out of spite. Kayean wasn’t wearing white because she was his bride. One of the masters had taken her from him.
I hoped she hadn’t been forced to bear one of their soulless brats. I didn’t believe any woman could recover from that.
It all went perfectly, with rescuees carrying our prizes into the tunnel. It was spacious enough for the wagon, but I didn’t want to be found roaming the streets with army property I couldn’t explain having. We could hire something on the other side.
Morley and I were fifty feet from the tunnel’s end, with Doris behind us, when it happened.
Up ahead Marsha started booming his lungs out.
“Damn it!” Morley swore. He translated, “Ambush. Nine men, one woman. Striped-sail bunch. They must have made Dojango while he was in town.”
“I wanted to hold on to this forever,” I said, dipping into a boot. “Grab on to me. Tell Doris, too.”
Beyond the tunnel’s end Rose started yelling. “Garrett! Help! Morley!”
Morley muttered, “Shut up, you stupid bitch.”
“Stupid? She figures she just solved her whole problem for nothing.”
Rose’s yelling stopped with a smack so loud we heard it back in the tunnel.
“Against the wall,” I said. They held onto me. I ripped the paper spell open. Two seconds later four guys with swords galloped into the tunnel, ready for anything. They looked around and didn’t find it.
One yelled, “Ain’t nothing in here.”
I didn’t hear the reply. They withdrew.
“What now?” Morley breathed.
“As long as we move slowly and don’t make any noise or any sudden moves, they won’t see us or know where we are. We’ll slide out and see what’s going on.”
What was going on was that the two thugs I knew from the striped-sail ship, with a woman who appeared to be in charge, and seven other men, had my folks lined up against a wall in the storage basement where the tunnel began. Marsha they kept contained with a ballista almost as heavy as a field piece.
In half a minute their questions made it obvious they were after a specific person, but didn’t mind trampling a few others along the way. My folks just looked at them, baffled, except Rose, who put on a great crying act. I gathered that Tinnie’s was the hand that had reddened her cheek.
“Well?” Morley whispered. “We can take them if Doris gets that ballista.”
“We don’t need any blood in it. We’ll bluff. You go over there and yell for everybody to freeze when Doris busts up the ballista. I’ll put a knife to the lady’s throat. Take these.” I gave him a couple of throwing stars from my collection of un-Garrett-like weapons.
He needed no further explanation. He told Doris what to do. We parted. I drifted toward the lady commander, no doubt the woman about whom Master Arbanos had been so dubious. Dojango had begun yammering at her, explaining that everyone else in the several parties that had gone out of the city had been killed by unicorns or vampires.
“What the hell was that?” asked one of the men at the ballista, whirling around. “Skipper, is this place haunted?”
A ballista went up in the air and shattered against the joists supporting the floor above.
Morley yelled, “Everybody freeze!”
I laid the edge of my knife on the woman’s throat and whispered, “This is your friendly spook. Don’t even breathe fast. Good. Now, I suggest you have your boys put down their tools.”
Doris pounded three or four men out of sheer youthful exuberance. Morley tripped and head-kicked Ugly One when he took a notion to turn on me.
The lady gave the order. And added, “You’re interfering with royal business. I’ll have your—”
“Not at all. I have a damned good idea what you’re looking for and I’ll be happy to help you find it. I just don’t want my people getting chewed up while you’re getting your man. Do you have some way to pick him out of a crowd?”
“Pick who out?” Oh, she wanted to play coy.
“Are you the only person ever born with a brain? This is your stalking horse talking. I figured your crowd out a month ago,” I lied. I backed her up a careful five steps and in plain voice vented the moment’s inspiration. “I also figured out that Big One there is on the other side. He tried to kill me in Leifmold, which would have just ruined your whole scheme.”
Big One started moving toward the nearest weapon.
Two throwing stars hit him, followed in an instant by a grollish fist.
The woman said, “That explains one hell of a lot. I thought we were snakebit. All right. What do you want, Garrett?”
“For me and mine to be left the hell alone. Take your man if you can pick him out. I’m all for that because I don’t like what he’s got planned for me. Hell. I’ll narrow it down for you. I’ve been working on it. I know who he’s not. If he’s anybody. He could have been killed out there. A lot of men were.”
I gave orders. The women, Saucerhead, Dojango, and Marsha, the latter three lugging Kayean and Valentine, moved to one side. I said, “Do your shopping among what’s left.”
“Will you let me go?”
“Why not? You don’t seem to be a suicidal lady.”
“You’re going to find out if you call me lady one more time.”
Morley snickered. “You’ve made a friend for life, Garrett.”
What she had to say to him does not bear repetition. She asked me, “What’s in those bundles?”
“What I came after.” I turned her loose.
Morley was flickering around the edges because of too many hasty movements. So was Doris. I had stayed slow, though, so I figured I was still good. I tiptoed after the woman who was not a lady.
She examined the crop, dipped a hand into a pocket, brought out an amulet built around a piece of amber with an insect embedded.
Spiney Prevallet went from somnolent indifference to explosive fury so suddenly I would have been astounded if I’d had time. He knocked the amulet away with one hand and seized the woman’s throat with the other.
I pricked the wrist of that hand with my knife, sliced his cheek, then got back out of the way because that—pardon the expression—lady was going to work.
I found a part of me glad the villain had not been Vasco.
Spiney ran for it. The woman snagged her amulet and raced after him. Her minions—those still upright—did nothing because they weren’t sure what we would let them do.
“Fade,” Morley suggested.
“Yes.”
Dojango was many things, some of them things I didn’t like, but he was not stupid. The moment he saw some folks preoccupied, he started getting other people out of there.
Spiney tried for the exit himself and ran head-on into a grollish fist. The woman jumped him immediately, forced the amulet into his mouth while he was still groggy.
He began to change.
I have heard that a shapeshifter has no true shape of its own. That it does not even have a sex as we know it, but just splits into unequal masses when it comes time to reproduce. I don’t know.
Spiney changed into the major, then into a character who looked vaguely piratical, then into a woman vaguely familiar, apparently regressing through identities assumed in the past.
Everyone else was out. I wasn’t curious enough to stay and see the ultimate form the Venageti agent assumed. I had no reason to presume any excess of good will on the part of the striped-sail people.
It was a dawn-threatening hour when we reached the inn. I had let the soldiers go their ways, betting they would be so happy to get back alive that they’d cause no immediate grief. Morley and I had an argument. He thought we should have fed them to the striped-sail gang, who would have kept them busy answering questions while we got out of town.
A brief interview with the innkeeper confirmed my suspicions in that direction. He had kept our quarters open and had maintained our gear intact at the behest of the striped-sail crowd, who had hoped we would come back so they could catch our trail again. Which they had done with Dojango’s visit.
I slept like the dead for five hours, then went out looking for transportation home. My luck was limited. I went back and announced, “First ship with room enough for all of us doesn’t leave till day after tomorrow. The Glory Mooncalled situation has the fainter-hearted civilians heading north. The scow I did find is a garbage pail, but the next best chance means waiting more than a week.” I did not mention that even this sleaziest of transports had stretched my remaining expense money to its limit. We’d all get hungry if it was a very long passage home.
I sat beside Morley. “I’ll never take another job that takes me out of TunFaire, even if there’s a hundred thousand in it for me.”
“Speaking of money, when are we going to get paid? It’s not critical to me because I didn’t sign on for the pay. But the triplets did and they’re starting to wonder.”
“It’ll have to wait till I can corner Tate and gouge him again. I committed what I had left to getting us home.”
“They’re trusting you, Garrett. Don’t disappoint them.”
“You know me better. I’ll get my money out of Tate, one way or another, and you guys will get yours. Dojango! Where are those boxes?” He’d just come in. “You didn’t drink up that money I gave you, did you?”
“Actually, I just came to tell you they’re here, on a wagon out back. The landlord is having a fit that they might upset his customers if we bring them inside.”
Morley grumbled, “I’ll go have a fit of dancing on his head.”
We put our prizes into their caskets that night. They were the standard, cheap shipper coffins folks from up north bought to bring their sons home from the war. Dojango admitted that he had gotten some drinking done. He had gotten a buy on the coffins because the long quiet spell in the Cantard had caused a depression in the Full Harbor casket industry.
I was irritated but didn’t press.
After dark I took my prize out and got her cleaned up before I installed her in her coffin. Tinnie helped with the trickier parts and Kayean wasn’t too much trouble. She didn’t do any screaming.
I wondered what sorcery went into the creation of those white gowns. Kayean’s refused to be damaged and soil would not cling.
Morley was less fastidious. He put some fresh dirt in the other box, unwrapped his prize, dumped it in, began nailing the lid down. He had to ask Marsha’s help when the pounding wakened Valentine and he started screaming and trying to break out.
We’d just gotten him quieted down and the landlord off our backs again when Zeck Zack came calling.
The centaur came alone and started out friendly enough. He pranced in, looked us over, asked, “Did you bring her out, Mr. Garrett?”
“Yes.”
“May I see her? I haven’t seen her since she followed her idiot husband into shadow. Her and her damned twisted sense of what is right. I should have stopped her somehow.”
“Might have been nice.”
Morley and Saucerhead gave him ferocious scowls. Tharpe didn’t know him at all. I feared there would be sparks. But he disarmed them by saying, “I never laid a hand on her and I never would. Despite my reputation. And not just because her father was a friend of mine.”
As Morley had observed before, another one.
I opened the casket. She was sleeping. The centaur looked for a while, then backed off. “That’s enough. Close it. Can she be cured, Mr. Garrett?”
“I think we reached her in time. She fought it all the way. I think she’s got enough left.”
“Good. Then we can get down to business. Someone among you took something from the nest that rightfully belongs to my people.”
That drew some puzzled looks.
“The bloodmaster’s amulet. His symbol of power. The nest’s bloodstone.”
I don’t know who started laughing first.
He gathered his dignity like a cloak. “Gentlemen, I went through years of hell and humiliation in order to find that gateway so my folk could cleanse that nest and gain enough booty and bounty money to migrate out of the Cantard. You can have your two bloodslaves. One of them I owe, and the other isn’t worth enough to make a difference. But everything else in that hole is mine!”
We exchanged looks. Dojango was getting nervous. I didn’t want to start anything, but I wasn’t going to tolerate the centaur’s tone, either. “You’ve got more balls than brains if you think you can walk in here talking like that. You could get yourself hurt.”
“I don’t have any swords hanging over my head now, Mr. Garrett. And I have friends in town who will be happy to help me recover my property.”
“Now that’s an interesting coincidence,” I said. “Just yesterday I made a new friend, a lady down from TunFaire rounding up the Venageti priest’s friends. I wasn’t going to mention your name.”
He stared at me a moment, decided my bluff needed calling. “Go ahead. Meantime, get that bloodstone out to my place before sundown tomorrow or find Kayean a new guardian.”
“He’s insane,” Morley said. “You should have let me kill him when I wanted to. It’s going to be trickier doing it here.”
Zeck Zack said, “A large group of my friends are waiting in the street. They’d rather not disturb anything in such a public place, but they will come in if I’m not out in a reasonable time.”
“Go on,” I said. “Get out. Before I call your bluff.”
He went, but left an admonition to get the bloodstone to him by next sundown. Or else.
Dojango asked, “You’re not going to give it to him, are you, Garrett?”
Morley snarled, “We’re going to give it to him, all right. Only it ain’t going to be what he wants.”
I said, “Take it easy, Morley. Think. He’s trying to set us up.”
“I know. And it’s going to be a shame to abort his scheme because it’s a wowser for a creature as mentally handicapped as a centaur. We’ve got plenty of time. Let’s get some sleep and worry about it tomorrow.”
I woke up very late, and what dragged me from dreamland was Saucerhead Tharpe and the grolls stomping in. I popped up. I’d been left alone with the women and Vasco. I checked myself for knife wounds.
“Where’re Morley and Dojango? What have you guys been up to?”
“Around somewhere,” Saucerhead said in his slow way. “I think Morley said something about getting something decent to eat. We took the coffins and most of our stuff down to the ship so we’d be ready to go tomorrow morning.”
I grumbled a bit and went for a breakfast of my own. I didn’t worry much until afternoon rolled around and still there was no sign of Morley or Dojango. I started fisheying Saucerhead, who had something on his conscience and was doing a poor job of hiding it. Then I found the bodies.
Actually, they weren’t bodies. They were Kayean and Valentine, bundled up and concealed under some odds and ends and junk and straw left from when the place had been a stable. Then I knew what Morley had done.
Saucerhead looked relieved. He told me, “He said just sit tight and pretend they’re around somewhere if anybody asks.”
Two minutes later I noticed that my last paper spell fold was missing. I couldn’t guess what Morley planned to do with it since there was no way he could know what would happen when he opened it. I tried fifty lines of reasoning but fixed on none of them. There was no predicting a darkelfin breed like Morley.
When afternoon gave way to evening I started prowling. The grolls got restless, too, and might have gone off if they hadn’t the strictest of orders. My game of tease with Tinnie lost its savor. Rose got nervous because everyone else was, though she didn’t know what was going on. Only Saucerhead was able to relax. I have to fight the temptation to say that it was because he wasn’t smart enough.
Nothing happened until just before midnight, when one of Zeck Zack’s “friends” came to chide us for not having delivered. I told him, “We’re right here waiting whenever he wants a piece of us. Tell him he’d better bring a box lunch because it’s going to take awhile to get the job done.”
The messenger departed a little flustered.
I wondered how the centaur’s nerves were doing, out in the graveyard or wherever he was planning to take us when we tried sneaking up on him. I was willing to bet he’d planned for every contingency but us sitting tight. I hoped Morley hadn’t walked into any of his plans.
Two hours later the handful of people left in the common room began buzzing. I went to find out why. Rumors were flying about a large fire out in the Narrows Hills. One of the mansions there.
Morley’s opening move, I presumed.
There was nothing more for another three hours, then Dojango stumbled in, wounded, pale, barking in grollish. He flopped down as Doris and Marsha stamped out.
“Well?” I demanded.
“They’re going to pick up the coffins.”
I looked him over. Tinnie helped. She had a fair touch with wounds.
“That all you have to tell me?”
“Morley sent me back ’cause I got hurt, actually. He’s still out there working them. If that critter gets out of this alive, it sure won’t be on the cheap.” And that was all he would say.
Awhile later the grolls came tramping back in with the coffins. The landlord was right behind them raising hell about our bunch stomping back and forth through the common room during quiet hours. “I’m never leaving TunFaire again,” I promised myself once more, and snarled. “Quit your bitching. You’ve made a bundle because of us, playing all the sides, and we’ll be out of your hair in an hour anyway. Do us all a favor and make yourself disappear.”
I looked so nasty he had no trouble getting the hint.
We refilled and sealed the coffins and gathered what remained of our possessions. For Tinnie and Rose and Vasco and Saucerhead Tharpe that meant no work at all. Their adventures had left them with nothing but the clothing on their backs. I wondered if I ought to put a burr under Dojango’s saddle, recalling how meticulously he had gone over the ruins of their last encampment, salvaging coins and jewelry the night people had discarded. I decided the wiser course was to keep everyone dependent upon my charity.
We marched out to the sighs of the landlord and his crew.
We reached and boarded our ship without suffering misadventure.
Time passed. The tide turned. The sailors prepared to cast off. And still there was no sign of Morley.
“Where the hell is he, Dojango?”
“He said don’t worry. He said go ahead. He said don’t hold up anything on his account.” Dojango said it, but he didn’t feel it. He wanted to do something.
I didn’t believe it. Morley Dotes wouldn’t sacrifice himself for anyone.
“Here he comes,” Saucerhead said. The deck crew was paying out the last lines, fore and aft.
He was coming for sure, in that sort of wild sprint only elfin can manage. Zeck Zack was thirty yards behind and gaining fast.
“Perfect,” Dojango whispered.
Perfect, like hell. Morley wasn’t going to make it without help. I looked around for a weapon and couldn’t find anything.
“Now!” Dojango said. And, “Actually!”
The striped-sail woman and her crew materialized from amid the freight on the pier. They all carried ready crossbows. Morley whipped past. Zeck Zack skidded to a halt, stood there shuddering. Morley leaped from the pier to the ship, teeth glistening in a grin.
“Is this the one?” the woman called.
“The very one, darling,” Morley gasped.
The gang closed in on the centaur.
“You damned fool!” I yelled at Morley. “You could have been killed.”
“But, if you’ll notice, I wasn’t.”
The passage north was slower than it had been going south. The winds were less friendly. But it was almost as eventless. There was a spot of trouble one night when Rose tried pushing Kayean over the side, but she collected only bruises for her trouble. There were no encounters with pirates, privateers, Venageti, or even Karentine naval vessels. We made Leifmold and I almost believed the gods had decided to lay off me for a while.
Rose’s assault on Kayean was due to my lack of foresight.
I was taking her out of her box at night, giving her the chance to breathe real air and face the real light of the stars. Foodwise I had gotten her to where she could keep down small amounts of lightly browned chicken flesh. I’d left her on deck to fetch some, and had gotten into an argument with Tinnie, who felt I should be apportioning my time somewhat differently. Rose made her move and took her lumps in my absence. I found out what was happening only when one of the ship’s night watch told me Rose needed saving.
I got there in time, though Kayean almost crossed the line and surrendered to the hunger. Rose crawled away, into the comforting arms of a Morley getting back to his cynical ways.
I calmed and fed Kayean and we sat in the starlight awhile, watching the wake luminesce and the flying fish leap. She finally spoke. “Where are you taking me?”
Her words were barely intelligible. Down in the nests, it is said, they don’t allow their brides to talk. She was rusty.
No one had told her what was going on. I’d just snatched her and dragged her along, giving her as much control of her destiny as she’d had while she was in the pit.
So I told her the story, and I wound up saying, “I think you ought to grab it. Denny wanted you to have it, and right now it’s the only thing you’ve got going in this whole world.”
She gave me a look that took me back in time. I had to take her down and put her away before I did something foolish. I returned to the deck to watch the sea unscramble my brain.
Morley came out of the darkness and settled beside me. After a while, he said, “I have a statistic I want you to consider, Garrett. Of all the guys who have loved her, only one is still alive.” Then he was gone. The superstitious half-breed.
Later I took advantage of Tinnie’s conciliatory mood to lay my haunts for a while.
Fate had us overhaul Binkey’s Sequin running up the Leifmold channel and I cut a deal with Master Arbanos even before we made the quay. He was vastly amused to see me saddled with Rose and Tinnie again.
We laid over three days in Leifmold, waiting for Master Arbanos to offload a cargo of army supplies and take on twenty-five tons of smoked cod. Morley split his time between getting fat eating green leafies and keeping Rose too busy to get into trouble. The triplets sold one of their unicorn horns and went on a toot. I think Vasco spent his time thinking about doing himself in. The rest of us just waited, with me lending a thought or ten to my routine once we reached TunFaire.
I still had to get myself and my associates paid.
We tied up at Sequin’s place on the TunFaire waterfront late in the afternoon, which pleased me to no end. Eager as we were to escape the smell of fish and visit old haunts, there were things Morley and I had to get done before our return became known. Keeping control until sunset was less difficult because it was only for a short time.
After hard dark fell, we all trooped off and slithered around the city’s back ways to the back door of Morley’s place, where everyone and everything, willing and unwilling, went into temporary hiding. I sneaked off to get some advice from the Dead Man while Morley worried about how he was going to consummate his arrangement with the kingpin.
He had asked Saucerhead and me to be his bodyguards when the meet went down, for which he would “gladly pay your standard fees—as soon as Garrett delivers me my wages for the last couple of months.” I figured he had delivered above and beyond the call, if mainly to save his own hide, and I could do him a favor in return. Saucerhead signed on because he’ll do any damned fool thing as long as he’s getting paid.
I swear I did not know what he was going to pull.
The Dead Man acted like I’d just stepped out half an hour ago and had just given him time to work into a comfortable snooze before I came clanging and banging. After having fulfilled his reputation for being cranky, he asked for my story. For five hours I gave it to him. He didn’t interrupt often as he didn’t need more information for anything. He thought my precautions against getting stiffed by Willard Tate would prove needless, but supposed they would hurt nothing. We talked tough at each other a little while I cleaned up around there, then I hightailed it back to Morley’s to grab thirteen winks before I walked into the Tates’ den.
News from the Cantard was all the talk when I got back. You miss a lot when you’re traveling.
It seemed that when all the armies and half armies and whatnots had turned up at Indigo Springs for the big soirée that would determine who kept the water hole, Glory Mooncalled was gone. Without a trace except a friendly note to the Venageti warlords on his list.
I liked the guy’s style.
I was grinning when I went to work on the Tate gate by dawn’s early light. “I’ll get a little of my own back here.”
A sleepy apprentice finally opened up. He was too addled to recognize me.
“How’s the arm? Looks good. I need to see the old man.”
“It’s you!”
“I think so. Last time I looked it was world-famous me, back with the goods from the wars.”
He dashed away, which is something people don’t ordinarily do, yelling all the way. I closed the gate behind me and waited.
I have to admit that Willard Tate was a lot sharper at that hour than I will ever be. By the time the kid led me in, there were steaming cups of tea set out. His first words were, “Sit down. Breakfast will be ready in ten minutes.” He looked at me expectantly.
I set my accounts down beside my tea, got comfortable, took me a sip, and said, “I’ve got her. Tinnie and Rose, too. If you want them.”
That old man was downright spooky. He glanced at what I’d placed on the table, considered my choice of words, gave a nod that said he understood the situation, and asked, “What is she like?”
“Like nothing you ever imagined. Like nothing I ever dreamed, either, even in a nightmare.”
He reached for the accounts. “May I?”
I pushed them toward him.
“Tell me about it while I’m looking at these.”
The version I gave him was more tightly edited than the one the Dead Man had gotten, but I didn’t leave out anything he needed to know. To say he was surprised would be putting it mildly. To say he took it all well would be understating. The short version took two hours and skirted the worst behavior of females surnamed Tate. I think he caught wind of what I left out, though.
When I finished, he said, “I’ve checked and you have a reputation for being honest with your expenses. Bizarre and substantial as these are, I suppose they’re justified. Considering.”
“The advance covered almost everything but salaries,” I informed him. “Between us we’re maybe a hundred out of pocket, mainly because of the cost of bringing the girls home.”
Tate grunted, shoved the accounts back. “You’ll have the balance before you leave.”
“And my executor’s fees?”
“That’s in the hands of the probate. When can I expect delivery?”
“Tonight. But very late. Probably after midnight. I have to help Morley with something first.” Morley’s business had gotten lost in the editing.
“All right. I guess it will have to do.” Then he let me in on why he was being so understanding. “Would you be interested in taking another job? After you’ve recuperated from this one?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“You know the major portion of our business is army boots. The most expensive component of a boot is sole leather. Army specs require thunder-lizard hide for soles. We have our own contract hunters and tanners, trustworthy men all. I thought. But of late the shipments have been short.”
I saw where he was going and shut him out. I had turned out to be crazy enough to go into the Cantard, but I will never be the screaming sort of psychotic who goes into thunder-lizard country. Besides, I’d made myself a promise never to leave TunFaire again and I never break a promise to myself without my self’s prior permission.
I let him talk. When he ran dry I said I would give it a think and got the hell out with my expense money, knowing I would shriek a big “No!” the second I had my executor’s fees in hand.
Morley had set his meet on wooded creekside ground at the boundary between the real world and the high city of the dukes and barons and stormwardens and whatnot. It was a place often employed for such encounters. Any uproar, as might be caused by treachery, would bring an army of high city protectors down on everyone.
Over the years the formula and etiquette of a “brookside” have become fixed. As proposer, Morley set the time of the meet and the size of each party. He picked an hour after sundown and four people. It would take four of us to lug Valentine’s coffin. Dojango, Saucerhead, and I would back him.
The kingpin, on agreeing, got to pick which end of brookside was his, and could come early if he wanted, to check the grounds for signs of treachery. Morley was not permitted an early survey.
The kingpin agreed to meet. An hour after sunset I was helping carry a coffin uphill, into a situation that seemed to me to be of no special value to either of the principals. The kingpin’s reputation said he was good for his word. If he’d made promises to Morley, he would keep them. I couldn’t understand why he had agreed to the meet—unless his hatred for Valentine had overcome his good sense.
Morley Dotes was a tough and tricky independent, known to be in need of money, and TunFaire boasted a dozen men willing to pay large sums for the kingpin’s life.
We went up with Morley and Dojango in front, me and Saucerhead in back, so we bigger guys got most of the weight. We parked the coffin carefully. Morley stayed beside it. The rest of us fell back ten steps and kept our hands in plain sight.
After a while a shadow left the poplars opposite us and came over to Morley. “He’s in the box?”
“Yes.”
“Open it.”
Morley lifted the lid carefully from the foot end.
“Looks like it could be him. Hard to tell in this light.”
Morley slammed the lid shut. “Go get a torch, then.” He kicked the coffin. “This guy isn’t going anywhere.”
The kingpin’s man went away. I hoped Saucerhead and I were back far enough not to be recognized. I was getting a bad, bad feeling.
There was some talk in the woods. Then somebody struck a spark. A torch flared.
Saucerhead said, “Let’s get out of here, Garrett,” and began backing up. I noted that Dojango had already vanished. Morley was easing away from the coffin. I drifted with Saucerhead, got myself behind a nice bush. Tharpe kept going. Morley held up about five feet from my side of the box.
The kingpin and his troops marched up. “Open it,” said the boss of bosses. One of his boys got the job done.
“Gods. He looks weird,” another said.
The kingpin asked, “What did you do to him, Dotes?”
Morley replied, “Nothing. He did it to himself.”
“Right.” The kingpin tossed Morley a bag. Major gold, from the sound when it hit Morley’s hand. “We’re quits, Dotes.” And then the boss of bosses just had to do it. He just had to bend down for a closer look.
“You’re right,” Morley said. “You’re absolutely right.”
A bone white arm shot up. Unclipped claws closed in the flesh of an exposed throat. A fanged mouth rose to feed, the smell of blood bringing the fever on the monster so powerfully it could think of nothing for the hunger.
The kingpin’s bodyguards started to do their jobs.
I started to make tracks.
Morley passed me before I’d gone a hundred yards. He was chuckling, which made me even angrier.
We had one hell of a blowout about it, and it might have gotten violent if Saucerhead hadn’t been there agreeing with everything I said.
It was the talk of the morning, the vampire found surrounded by four dead men, feeding, so gorged it couldn’t defend itself when the uphill protectors arrived. They hacked it to pieces, then burned the pieces and coffin on the spot. They threw the victims into the fire, too, just to make certain the infection didn’t spread.
We were in the clear. But that didn’t alter my attitude toward Morley.
Meanwhile . . .
Meanwhile I made a delivery of females to the Tate compound, as fine-looking a set as ever I have seen. A pity they had so many nonvisual defects between them—though I meant to see Tinnie again.
Tate at the gate, mate. Actually, as Dojango would say, Tates at the gates, mates. About fifteen of them, including the old man himself. Such huggings and kissings and tear-sheddings and backpattings. “I am amazed, Red,” I said when a lull in the action gave me a chance to get a word in to Tinnie. “You’d think they were glad to see you guys.” Tinnie was getting two-thirds of the attention, but that left plenty for Rose.
Only the old man remained aloof. When the crest of the storm passed, he forced his way to me and asked, “Where is she, Mr. Garrett?”
“On the wagon.”
He looked. He saw nothing but the box. “You’ve got her in a coffin?s”
“Did you pay any attention at all last night? She can’t go wandering around in her condition.”
“All right. All right.” Suddenly he was a very nervous, irresolute little man.
“Come on, Pop. You’re doing all right. Get some muscle to do something useful. You did get a place ready?”
“Yes.” Now he was my old aunt, wringing hands. Kayean had become an important bridge to the son he had lost.
When you looked at it up close, you kind of had to feel for Rose, the living child whose return he hadn’t bothered to acknowledge. Maybe she thought if she got her hands on all that money he would notice her.
“Don’t expect a lot, Pop. She can’t do much but sit and stare at things nobody else sees. And probably just as well.” He didn’t know about Kayean and me before Kayean and Denny. I was not the boy to clue him, but I did admit, “I’ve got an emotional investment here, too. I want you to know something. You try any fanciness, you treat this woman less than perfectly, and you won’t have to worry about boot soles and thunder-lizard hides anymore.”
I got a little too intense. He backed off and gave me the look you give the nut on the corner preaching that pixies are the secret masters and if we don’t do something they’re going to run off with our sisters and daughters. Then he formed a crew of cousins and apprentices and got the coffin moving.
He had done a room, all right. Nary a window, and as light-proof as you could get. One very pale, consecrated candle burned on a mantel over a fireplace before a large mirror. A very black, very huge, very fat, very wrinkled and very old woman sat to one side, the tools of her trade on a table beside her. I recognized her. The Mojo Woman. Mama Doll. TunFaire’s leading authority on the diseases of the undead.
Maybe I owed somebody an apology.
A couple of the boys got in ahead with sawhorses. The pallbearers deposited the coffin. Mama Doll moved her bulk like it was all the work in the universe. First this part of her, then that, then another, got under way, like the sailing of a ship of a thousand parts. Before anyone could mess with the coffin lid, she slapped a hand down right above where Kayean’s would be folded over her heart. She rolled her eyes and mumbled to herself for a minute, then backed away and nodded.
While the boys unfixed the lid, she grabbed protective amulets from the table. A big lead-up to a big anticlimax. When they lifted the lid, Kayean did nothing but keep on sleeping.
I had to go shake her to wake her up.
It was evident Kayean was in control and safe to be near.
“Out!” Willard Tate ordered. “Everybody get out!”
Relatives and apprentices hurried. Mama Doll moved at her usual lugubrious drift. Garrett stayed where he was.
The boss turned on me. “Out!”
“Move me, Pop.”
“I can call the boys.”
“I can break both your legs before they get here.”
“That’s enough,” Kayean said, her voice little more than a whisper. She touched my arm. “Wait outside.” A ghost of a smile touched her lips, light as a moth’s kiss. “I can break his legs if he asks for it.” Her touch was slightly heavier, her voice softer. “Thank you for still caring.”
And the boy Marine was alive again.
Only two things you can do in a situation like that. Be a goof or get the hell out.
I got.
There was light outside when Tate left. He was a wrung-out, exhausted old man. He found me blocking his path. In a hurried mumble meant to get it over, he told me things.
Kayean was going to stay where she was for a while. Part of her inheritance would be used to buy a home and part invested to create a living so she would be free of worries when Mama Doll declared her cured. Of the rest of the fortune she wanted ten thousand given to Vasco and the remainder divided among Denny’s other heirs.
So Rose would make out after all.
“She is in and of the family, Mr. Garrett, by virtue of my son’s love for her. You need not be concerned for her. We Tates take care of our own.”
“I guess you’re all right, Mr. Tate. Thanks.” I stepped aside.
He limped off to his bed.
She was lying on the bed, cold and corpselike in the light of the lonesome candle. But at least she was in a proper bed and not laid out in that goddamned coffin. I collected the room’s only chair and positioned it silently.
I stared at her for a long time, wrestling with the kid Marine. I touched her hair, which had begun to show a hint of color. When I could stand no more, I rose, bent, and brushed those cold lips with mine for the last time.
I headed for the door.
I heard a sigh. When I glanced back, she said, “Good-bye, Garrett.” And smiled a real smile.
I never slowed down.
I went and wrapped myself around a barrel of beer.
Each year, on the anniversary of the day I brought her out of the nest, a courier brings a package. The gift is never niggardly.
I know where she lives. I never go up that way.
The probate coughed up my fees four days after I delivered Denny Tate’s heir. I got in touch with Tinnie. The redhead and I did some celebrating. She was along when I went to visit the Dead Man.
She invited herself and she made it stick. Redheads are stubborn witches.
She looked at his place and said, “It’s a dump, Garrett.”
“It’s his home.”
“It’s still a dump. How do you feel?”
“Almost broke. And kind of good about myself.”
“Smug self-satisfaction, I’d call it.”
“Come on. Try your witchcraft on him. See how far it gets you.”
He woke up the way he always wakes up. Cranky. Garrett. Again. I demand that you cease your infernal pestering. Then he noticed Tinnie. What is that creature doing here? He has no use whatsoever for females of any age or species, an attitude I find too parochial. But there’s no convincing him, and I doubt there would be even if he was still alive.
I tolerate too much from you, Garrett. I reap the gall-ridden harvest of my indulgence.
“You’re going to have to indulge me a lot more now, Old Bones. Or you might find yourself camped in the street. You’re talking to your new landlord here.”
After half a minute, he asked, You bought this place? You spent the money from the Tate business on it?
Ah. That genius still worked. “Yes. Call it an investment in my future. The pestering has just begun.”
For the first time in our acquaintance I had caught him without a comeback. The silence stretched.
I started the housekeeping while he stewed.