Sweet Silver Blues

by Glen Cook

  “Sit down, Pop,” I said. “I’m working on it already.”

  He plopped onto another bag of onions, giving Morley a curt nod. Master Arbanos winced but kept his yap shut.

  “Here’s the lay,” I said. “We’ve got to make the trade.”

  Tate sputtered but nodded, then wheezed, “If it was just Rose, I’d be tempted to tell them to go to hell.”

  “Right. Look, I put the papers and whatnot in a box and moved them out of your place so those clowns wouldn’t get them when they broke in. I didn’t figure them for this. Anyway, what we have to do now is set the exchange up in such a way that we get the women back in one piece. I think I can do that, but you’ll have to trust me on it.”

  Tate started sputtering again.

  Morley said, “He’s the expert, Mr. Tate. Permit him to exercise his expertise.” His tone was more diplomatic than what I usually manage.

  “I’m listening.” Tate glared at me.

  “Master Arbanos. What time are we going to take off tomorrow?”

  “Five minutes after the seventh hour.”

  “Right. Mr. Tate, you go over to the Iron . . . ” I snapped my fingers at the kid.

  “Iron Goblin,” he said.

  “The Iron Goblin. Tell whoever meets you there that he’s to deliver the women here at five after the seventh hour tomorrow morning. Or no deal. I’ll tell them where they can get the papers when the women look like they’ll get back to their own people okay. In fact, if Master Arbanos will provide me pen and paper, I’ll write the instructions.”

  Tate wanted to argue. He always wanted to argue. The old goat would disagree if you said the sky was blue. I let him simmer while I scratched a note. Master Arbanos was going to get rich selling me favors.

  “Just pretend you’re me,” I told Tate when I finished. I folded the note and handed it to him. “Don’t argue with them. Tell them that’s it, take it or leave it.”

  “But—

  “They’ll take it. They won’t expect me to trust them. They would know I’d try to set up something so they can’t mess us around. And they’ll check around about me. They’ll find out that I’ve done a couple of these things before and held up my end every time.”

  That was true. As far as it went. But this time a snatch and switch was not the whole story. This time the snatch was part of something bigger.

  I was starting to take things personally, too.

  Tate got his spleen out, and yakked his fear into submission, then took my note and marched off. We got the kid cleaned up and bandaged and sent him home.

  17

  Vasco didn’t want to play the game my way, though he brought the women when he came to argue. He came on time, too, which told me that he would do it my way if I didn’t bend.

  He left Rose and Tinnie fifty feet up the dock, guarded by a half-dozen men, and marched aboard. “Still in there pitching to get your throat cut, aren’t you?” I asked.

  His lips tightened but he refused to be baited. The sergeants teach you to control your temper, down in the Cantard. He looked around, did not see anything to disturb him.

  He should have been disturbed. It had been all I could do to restrain Morley, who wanted to bushwack the bunch and leave them floating in the river.

  “Before you start,” I told Vasco, “you’d better realize that I’ve got no special need for those women. I don’t have any for Denny’s papers, either. Which is why I’ll make the trade.”

  “Where are the papers, Garrett?”

  “Where are the women?”

  “Right there. You can’t see . . . ?”

  “I don’t see them on the boat. You don’t get squat till I think it’s too late for you to screw me over.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know. You haven’t shown a lot of sense so far.”

  “You won’t needle me into doing something stupid, Garrett.”

  “I don’t have to. You do fine without me. Get those women over here.” Master Arbanos was ready to cast off.

  “What guarantee do I have that you’re not cheating us?”

  I ticked off points. “One: I always play these things straight. You know my reputation. Two: I don’t need the papers for anything. Three: I know who you are, so I don’t have to mess with you now. I can come for your head whenever I want it.”

  “Keep talking tough, Garrett. You’ll get burned.”

  “Maybe you’ll send Barbera after me?”

  His mouth tightened even more. He jerked around, jumped to the wharf, gestured at his goons. They released the women. I waved them towardSequin.

  They came forward slowly. I guess they thought blood would fly any second.

  Vasco stopped a few steps from the edge of the wharf. “So where are the papers, Garrett?”

  I didn’t have anything to say. He was still between me and the women. I just sort of looked around like a bored sightseer.

  That’s when I spotted the two guys from Morley’s place, Big One and Ugly One. Not together, but both hanging around, relaxed, just part of the crowd eye-balling the goings-on.

  I backed up a couple of steps like I was giving the gals room to jump aboard. I whispered down to Morley, who was crouched between onion sacks, “Take a peek at the guy sitting on the cotton bales.”

  “Give, Garrett,” Vasco said.

  I ignored him. The women had a few yards to go yet. Even Rose’s sour face had begun to show some hope.

  Master Arbanos began letting lines go.

  Morley whispered, “I see him. What about him?”

  “Who is he?”

  “How the hell should I know? I never saw him before.”

  “I did. Once. The other night. Hanging around with the big guy over there leaning against those navy pork barrels.” I started to tell him where and when, then decided it might be wise to save a little something for my old age.

  “I don’t know him, either,” Morley said.

  “Give, Garrett.” Vasco had just about decided I was going to cheat him. He started after the women.

  “Run!” I yelled at them. And to Vasco, “They’re in a box in an abandoned house on the Way of the Harlequin, half a block west of Wizard’s Reach.”

  “It’s your ass if they aren’t, Garrett.”

  “Anytime you think you can take a piece of it, Vasco. Anytime.”

  The boat began to drift away from the wharf. The women took my advice, sprinted and jumped. A delectable bundle of goodies plopped into my arms. Morley popped up and caught Rose, making suitable purrs at the advent of unexpected treasures. I tossed him a sneer.

  Vasco trotted away, barking orders at his troops.

  I couldn’t restrain a chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?” Tinnie asked. She made no effort to peel herself from me. I thought about pushing her away—sometime next week.

  “Just imagining what might happen when they try to collect those papers.”

  “You mean you lied to them?”

  The wharf was fifteen feet away now. Ugly One got down off the cotton bales. He paid us no special attention. And I had trouble paying him any, either. Tinnie would not hold still.

  “Oh, no. I told him the truth. I just didn’t tell him all of it.”

  “Amateurs,” Morley said, taking a break from Rose, who was doing to him what Tinnie was to me. “They had any professional smarts at all, they’d know that’s the Dead Man’s place. Slick, Garrett. Remind me not to get on your wrong side. You’re so slick you’d slide uphill.”

  I glanced at the two men on the wharf and wondered.

  “I told you I was going with you, Garrett,” Rose crowed, as if she had planned the whole thing. She got over her frights fast.

  “You might think,” I told her. “You might think.” I figured to have Master Arbanos put in a mile or two down and get shut of those females.

  Damn! That Tinnie was merciless.

  I decided I liked her.

  About then old man Tate came charging out th
e dock, too late for anything but the bye-bye. “Master Arbanos, where are you going to put in so we can get rid of these women?” I figured I’d yell the news across to Tate.

  “Leifmold.”

  Leifmold. All the way down to the coast.

  He would not relent. He was deaf to offers of money on this. He had a reputation, a schedule, and a tide, and he would waste none of them for any puny bribe I could pay.

  Rose grinned wickedly while I argued.

  Tinnie’s smile was more promising.

  18

  The trouble with that damned boat was that there was no privacy. You started a little hand-holding and ear blowing and there was Doris or Marsha or Dojango or some damned crewman exercising his eyes. It nearly drove Morley and me crazy. Rose seemed plenty willing to be friendly with him. Of course, he had the authentic golden touch.

  I guess eating your vegetables is good for something.

  Leifmold was not that long a journey. The first chance I got I pulled Morley aside and asked, “How are we going to ditch those two?”

  “Bad choice of words, Garrett. Though I understand your frustration. Does our principal have reliable associates in Leifmold?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “I never had any reason to ask.”

  “Too bad. Now we have to try to charm it out of those girls.” He did not sound optimistic.

  Rose laughed at us when we tried to get some word out of her. Tinnie just pretended she was deaf.

  Morley and I went off to the stern and brooded together alone.

  “Can’t do it, Garrett,” he grumbled after a while.

  “Uhm,” I grunted.

  “No way.”

  “Uhm.”

  “Skirts in the Cantard. Worse than poison, what I hear. We go in there with women, we’re dead. Guaranteed.”

  “I know. But we can’t just run off on them, either.”

  He gave me a look. “If it wasn’t poor business sense in this case, I’d say you were too romantic. Baggage is baggage. There isn’t anything any one of them is sitting on that you can’t get from another one.”

  There was a lot of traffic on the river, most of it taking advantage of the tide. And most of it faster than Binkey’s Sequin. But there was one gaudy yachtlike vessel back upstream that seemed to have us on a leash. “I don’t know how a guy with your attitude has your luck.”

  The yacht boasted a sail of red and yellow stripes. It had sleek lines. It smelled of wealth, which meant power. It could have passed us easily, but it just hung back.

  “They want to be treated that way, Garrett. If you don’t treat them like rats, they have to admit that they’re responsible for their own behavior. And you know women. They never want to admit they get a kick out of messing around.”

  “How about trying this angle—if Master Arbanos is willing.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We tie them up just before we make port. He hides them out while he’s loading and unloading, then he takes them back to TunFaire. Just part of the cargo.”

  “Sounds good to me. When you talk to him, ask about that boat with the striped sail.”

  I had wondered if he’d noticed.

  Master Arbanos held me up. The man was a buccaneer. But I was between a rock and a hard place, and he knew it. I paid. In the end it all came out of Tate’s pocket, anyway.

  I asked about the striped sail ship.

  He looked at me like I was a moron. “Sorry, I forget you are not a riverman. That is Typhoon, personal vessel of Stormlord Thunderhead. Everyone on the river knows it. It runs to Leifmold and back all the time, showing the Stormlord’s colors.”

  “Oh my, oh my, oh my,” I murmured.

  “The Stormlord never sails her himself. She is just for show. Her master is a bitch cartha with the temper and moral of an alley cat. She has had trouble with everyone on the river. Some say she will strike the striped sail and hoist the black one by night.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That some think she turn river pirate when no one is looking.”

  “Is it just talk? Or is there something to it?” Bless me, but wouldn’t it be my kind of luck to be aboard a barge pirates were stalking. The gods have a fellow especially assigned to complicate my life.

  “Who knows? There are pirate. I have seen their leaving.”

  “And?” He wanted coaxing.

  “They don’t leave any witness. Which is why I never accept any cargo they find attractive.”

  Little wheels and gears clicked in my mind, like the works in a waterclock. A clock running a little slow, perhaps. What sort of cargo might attract a pirate working from a vessel belonging to one of the Stormlords? What was this whole business about?

  Silver. Sweet silver. The fuel of the engines of sorcery.

  One more complication?

  Why the hell not? Every other angle had been covered, hadn’t it?

  I gave Master Arbanos a generous portion of the metal sugar. He assured me my will would be carried out where the women were concerned. They would be treated like royalty, and onSequin’s return to TunFaire he would deliver them to old man Tate personally.

  I could ask for nothing more.

  Master Arbanos’ crewfolk—all of them his relatives—moved the night before we were due to reach Leifmold. They caught the gals asleep.

  Such caterwauling and cursing! I never. Rose I expected to be less than polite, but Tinnie I’d had pegged as at least half a lady. She turned out to be the louder of the two.

  At least that went off without hitches.

  The sea lay on our left. Leifmold climbed steep hills a mile to our right. We were waiting to pick up a pilot, whose expertise would be needed ifBinkey’s Sequin was to negotiate the traps laid for Venageti raiders. Morley was loafing in the bows. “Come here,” he said, beckoning languorously. He was nibbling a raw potato stolen from the cargo. I gave it a disgusted look.

  “Not bad if you sprinkle a little salt on,” he said.

  “And good for you, no doubt.”

  “Of course. Take a gander round the harbor there.”

  I did. And saw what he meant.

  The striped-sail yacht was warping into a dock. She had passed us in the night and had pulled rank to get the first available pilot. “Needs keeping an eye on,” I admitted.

  “You read that guy Denny’s papers. Did he mention Stormlord Thunderhead anywhere?”

  “No. But a couple other wizards got memorialized. I’m willing to look for an indirect connection.” When you consider the possibility of wizards being involved in anything, the smart thing to do is to assume the worst.

  So chances were striped sail had nothing to do with us. But I would take the paranoid approach on the off chance.

  The women raised all kinds of holler when we tied up, but nobody paid them any mind. Morley and Doris and Marsha and I went off looking for one of several coasters recommended to us by Master Arbanos. Morley left Dojango to watch the Stormlord’s yacht. No one there ought to recognize him even if they were up to no good.

  Our luck was in. We found a ship calledThe Gilded Lady planning to put out next morning. Her master was amenable to our buying passage. Morley started looking grey around the edges.

  “You handled the river all right.”

  “No waves on the river, Garrett. Lots of waves along the coast, and the ship running parallel to them.” His eyes bugged. “Let’s not talk about it. Let’s find someplace to put up, then get out on the town. There’s a place down here even better than mine—don’t you ever tell anybody I admitted that—that you’ve really got to try.”

  “I’m not in a roots and nuts mood, Morley. Looking a long voyage in the eye, I need something with more body.”

  “Body? Don’t you care what you’re doing to your body? I promise, you’ll like this place. Give you a little something different. All that red meat is going to kill you, anyway.”

  “We did red meat the other day,
Morley. But since you bring up self-abuse, let’s do some calculating. Who is more likely to die young? Me eating what I want or you messing around with other guys’ women?”

  “You’re talking apples and oranges now, buddy.”

  “I’m talking dead is what I’m talking.”

  He did not have a rejoinder for fifteen seconds. Then he said only, “I’ll die happy.”

  “So will I, Morley. And without hunks of nut stuck between my teeth.”

  “I give up,” he said. “Go ahead. Commit slow suicide by poisoning yourself.”

  “That was my plan.” A tavern sign caught my eye. It had been a dry trip down the river. “I’m going to tip a few.”

  Doris and Marsha recognized a beer joint when they saw one, too. They grunted back and forth. Morley started trading gibberish with them.

  Oh, my. Did all the triplets have an alcohol problem?

  I said, “As soon as we find a place for the night somebody better check on Dojango. At least so he knows where to find us.”

  Morley reached a compromise with Doris and Marsha. “They can have one bucket each. That’s all.”

  “Bucket?”

  “They’re big boys, Garrett.”

  “So I noticed.” We marched into the tavern. It was early yet, so there was no crowd. Still, a silence fell and grew so deep I knew we had walked in where we were not wanted.

  I’ve never let that stop me. I tossed a coin on the bar. “A mug of brew for me and a bucket apiece for the big boys. And my buddy here will have whatever you can stomp out of a parsnip.”

  Cold-eyed stare. “We don’t serve their kind.”

  “Well, now, they don’t speak Karent very well. So when you look at them there, they’re still smiling. But

  I don’t think they’ll keep on smiling if I have to translate that for them. You know how grolls are when they get mad.”

  He thought about arguing. He might have had there been forty or fifty more people to back his play. But Doris and Marsha had begun to get the drift. Their smiles vanished and their faces grew mottled.

  “We want beer,” I said. “Not your women.”

  He did not laugh. He headed for the tap. Not many people are fool enough to make a groll mad.