by Glen Cook
Tharpe said, “Control her, Jon Salvation.” Laughing. “Garrett ain’t under no wooden chair, dead or alive.”
His suggestion that somebody could control her set Winger off all over again. She raved and slammed off to the back of the place.
“She drinks a bit,” Tharpe explained. “Jon, we better watch her, just so things that don’t belong to her don’t accidentally fall into her pockets.”
My luck stayed in. Sort of.
I fell out of the chimney as I tried to lean down for a peek. That was the bad news. The good news was, nobody saw but Tinnie. Who kept her mouth shut when I held my fingers to my lips. I passed the note. And got back out of sight before Winger lumbered in to investigate.
Tinnie said, “I knocked over these andiron things. Trying to get this down off the shelf. It’s a note from Garrett. In case somebody comes looking for him.”
“What’s it say?” Winger smelled a rat.
Tinnie read it out loud.
“That say what she says, Jon Salvation?”
The little guy reported, “Word for word.”
“You’d a thunk that asshole White woulda learned. Whadda we do now?” Tinnie said, “How about we go back to Garrett’s place?”
“Something’s rotten here.”
Saucerhead observed, “You don’t have hardly no flaws, darling Winger, but one teensy little problem you do got is, you think everybody’s head is just as twisted as yours.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means most people don’t have an angle when they tell you what they think.”
“Oh, bullshit! You ain’t that naive, are you?”
That was the last I heard. The street door closed behind them. A puff of cold hit me. Air did go up that chimney.
I waited. Winger was the sort who might pop back in, too.
I went down. They’d left lamps burning. I’d thought Tinnie had better sense.
Ah. Of course she did. Including enough to realize I’d need to see what I was doing.
79
Despite problems getting a schnockered Teacher down the chimney, I almost caught Tinnie and the others, heading home. And that despite the weather. Which hadn’t turned as awful as I’d feared. Yet. Just cold and slick.
I brought White along. He needed some special Dead Man work to get his mind right. I took Teacher straight to His Nibs. Oh, my! We are in a mood, are we not?
“Yes, we are. It’s time to quit fooling around. Hi, sweetie.” I gave Tinnie a hug and a peck and ignored everybody else.
I stipulate that I was remiss where Mr. Temisk was concerned. However, I was preparing Deacon Osgood and had no attention to spare.
Half a minute later I knew the treasures at the lawyer’s weren’t part of his scheme. He hadn’t been aware of them.
I expected more of you at Spellsinger Dire Cabochon’s home. However, Osgood cleverly hustled you through and so did his own cause no harm.
I didn’t get to pursue that. Somebody started hammering on the front door. With amazing enthusiasm.
That is Mr. Scithe. On behalf of Colonel Block, who became suspicious of the results of his earlier visit. Allow him to enter. But only him.
I went to the door. It was late. Dean was asleep. I didn’t have him and his crossbow to back me. But Saucerhead and Winger came to watch. They were enough to keep out the unwanted — except for a high-velocity pixie who surprised us all.
No matter. The kitchen door was closed.
I told Scithe, “You ought to demand a raise, the hours you’re working.”
“My wife agrees. But I do got a job. Plenty don’t. You could mention it to the Colonel, though.”
“I will. What’s his problem now?”
“You visited the Hill today.”
I didn’t deny it. What was the point? “So?”
“So after you left, a gang of ratpeople stripped the place.”
“After I left. Right. No doubt being watched every minute.” I glared at the Dead Man. That inanimate hunk of dead flesh managed to radiate false innocence combined with smugness.
“Enough to know you didn’t carry anything away personally.”
A fib. Everybody but Osgood carried something out of Dire Cabochon’s forty-room hovel. “I don’t do that sort of thing.”
“You hang out with ratfolk.”
My resident ratperson had turned invisible during my trek to the door. The Dead Man seemed more radiant than ever. “That was the scheme, was it?”
“Excuse me?” Scithe didn’t understand that I was snapping at my sidekick.
“His scheme. To try to blame me. He’s always doing that. And he never gets me.”
“I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.” Scithe wasn’t quite focused. Tinnie Tate was in the room. And she’d smiled. At him. He mumbled, “There was a body in there.”
“Sir?”
“Come on. An old woman. Dead. In a chair.”
“I saw her,” Tinnie volunteered. “I went there with Garrett.”
That left Scithe with mixed emotions.
“He’s like a four-year-old. Needs constant supervision.”
That turned the situation around. Sort of. When the Tinnie weather let up momentarily, Scithe asked, “Where were you all afternoon and tonight?”
“I don’t see where you got any need to know, but the fact is, I was trying to get a line on those guys your boss claims I’m hiding. Chodo and his tame lawyer.”
He didn’t believe me. Oh, wound me to the heart. But he had hopes Tinnie could tell him more about the dead Spellsinger, so he didn’t press.
He didn’t quite try to make a date. Probably because he remembered mentioning his wife.
Somehow, without getting many questions answered, Scithe became satisfied that he’d learned what he’d come to find out.
I let him out. Where his grumbling henchmen waited in the cold and the falling snow. Tinnie tagged along, smug as she could possibly get.
She’d begun to notice her power.
There was a crash in the kitchen.
“That damned Mel! How the hell did she get in there?”
With Singe, of course. That’s where Singe had gone while I was letting Scithe in.
I opened up again. Snow was coming down in big, slow chunks. I told Melondie’s tribe to come drag her home.
One of my less inspired ideas.
The brawl made so much racket Dean woke up and came down to restore order in the kitchen. The mess was worse than after the thunder incident.
I threw up my hands and fled to the Dead Man’s room. Singe tagged along, evidently summoned. She retrieved the cashbox and ledger, made entries, then paid Winger and Saucerhead for helping try to find me.
I didn’t say a thing till after they left. Along with the pixie swarm, still squabbling, Melondie Kadare not alone in betraying signs of alcohol poisoning.
Sweetly, I asked, “Do we have a magic cashbox now? Always money inside when we open it, however much we spend on made-up jobs for our friends?” I spoke to Singe but eyeballed my sidekick. “Or did we pawn something?”
Chuckles ignored me. Of course. And Singe shrugged, indifferent to another incomprehensible moral outburst. “We had a windfall.”
I started to get all righteous. His Nibs cut me off.
Would you feel more comfortable if the A-Laf cult’s resources went to Director Relway? When their bad behavior depleted our resources? That is your alternate option.
It had been a cruelly long day. And the residual effect of the samsom weed really had kicked in. “I’m going to bed.”
80
We had an easy ten days. More or less. Morley came by when the weather permitted, mostly to remind me that I faced a reckoning.
The repair and replacement of his front door had been a unique experience. The Palms had been forced to suspend business for days while the place aired out.
“My man Junker Mulclar is your proper modern vegetarian gentleman, ain’t he?”
“You muttered something under your breath, sir?”
“Browmschmuzzit!”
John Stretch was in and out. He seemed willing to make himself at home.
Equally frequently, Penny Dreadful, having conquered her terror of the Dead Man, visited the Luck. Without offering to take them away. She meant to open a temple — real soon now — as soon as she found the right place. I had my eye on Bittegurn Brittigarn’s dump.
I hung around the Tate homestead plenty. Too much. Tinnie’s male relatives made that obvious by their attitudes, though they never failed to be polite.
Business is business.
Deacon Osgood and the surviving lovers of A-Laf escaped custody. Bribery was suspected. They decided to end their mission to this fractious city.
I wished those boys devilspeed on their journey home, and foul weather all the way.
The unseasonable weather seldom let up. Before long it would be seasonal.
Colonel Block’s people, and Relway’s Runners, never ceased to be underfoot. Block was sure TunFaire would mend its evil ways if only he could catch good old ever-loving blue-eyed Garrett with his hand in the cookie jar.
My friend Linda Lee at the Royal Library knew the whereabouts and provenance of lots of special books. And she knew what books had gone missing from the King’s Collection and private libraries over the past dozen years.
Using Winger and Saucerhead, because they couldn’t read the messages they carried, I informed certain collectors that a cache of purloined tomes had surfaced during an unrelated investigation. It was possible some of their treasures were part of the hoard.
Harvester Temisk’s memoirs, detailed though they were, recorded only the dates when he’d added to his collection. Neither sources nor the name of his specialist provider was mentioned. Nor did I get many opportunities to revisit Temisk’s place. Good guys and bad alike kept right on watching it. Teacher and the Sculdytes were gone, but others still had designs on Chodo, his mouthpiece, and his designated heiress.
Finding people and things is what I do. Usually by being hired to, but finding is at the root of the Garrett reputation. After ten days, nineteen of twenty-four bibliophiles had made generous arrangements for recovering their treasures.
The others would come around.
Collectors are that way.
Teacher White stayed with us four days. He left with his mind washed clean and his heart set on a career as a knife sharpener. Playmate accepted him as a part-time apprentice. Play honestly believes there’s good in everybody. Excepting maybe me. He’ll make a great Godshouter someday. If I don’t get him killed.
Old Bones didn’t go back to sleep.
His uncharacteristic taste for the real world made me suspicious. Deeply, abidingly suspicious.
81
I’d just completed the successful reunion of several books with one Senishaw Cyondreh, the past-her-prime spouse of a grimly named habitue of the Hill. The woman had an eye so hungry I’d nearly run for it, shrieking. Once I’d gotten my hands on the ransom. Reward. Finder’s fee. If I ever dealt with her again, I’d drag a squadron of eunuch bodyguards along.
I’d peeked inside before I turned the books over. They were what are called pillow books. Blistering. I blushed when we made the exchange.
There was something different about the old homestead. I sensed it when I spotted the odd coach among the abandoned goat carts. Having suffered a similar dyspepsia on occasion recently, I thought about heading on over to Tinnie’s place. But I was carrying the take from the pillow book swap.
There are villains out there who can smell noble metals.
I took a glim at the weird coach before I went inside.
It had been fabricated of some silvery metal, then painted wood grain with paint I didn’t recognize. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Distraction arose. Silverman, riding a donkey cart and surrounded by younger men afoot, all cast from the same mold, appeared. The youngsters carried cudgels. A Tin Whistle tagged along behind, curious.
“Ah. Garrett,” Silverman said, reining in. “I’ve completed the commission. Executed to a much finer standard than the original specifications. Tough to do even after I determined how the spells were written.”
“Why aren’t I surprised?”
Silverman straightened his bent back enough to meet my eye. He wasn’t accustomed to sarcasm or back talk. He was an artist. And the old man of his clan.
“That forced us a little over on costs.”
“Of course it did. So let’s you and me just go inside and see what my partner thinks.” Old Bones would sort the thief out.
I ended up carrying a heavy sack because two of the young guys were helping Silverman get to the door.
The Dead Man, of course, knew we were coming. Singe opened up as we arrived.
“Who’s here?” I whispered. In case it was somebody who didn’t need to know about Silverman.
“Morley Dotes and a girlfriend.”
A shiver hit me. I had no chance to pay attention. Silverman banged into me from behind. I moved on, to the Dead Man’s room. Where a shadow of all night falling lay in ambush.
I squeaked in dismay.
A grinning dark elf occupied my chair, sipping my tea, while one of his sky-elf ladies occupied another and appeared to be in deep communion with the Dead Man. It wasn’t the skinny, almost sexless woman that dismayed me, though.
My ancient nemesis, Mr. Big, best known as the Goddamn Parrot, was snoozing on her left shoulder.
Please pay Silverman another twelve gold florins.
Rattled, I managed only, “They don’t make florins no more. Haven’t done since the New Kingdom came in.”
Morley saw my horror over the clown bird. He indulged in a grin of delicious enjoyment.
Then give him the current equivalent. Exasperation. They did not change the weights, just the names. Correct?
“Not exactly. They’re called sovereigns. The closest.”
Pay the man.
“But-”
The workman is worthy of his hire. Silverman is an artist. He took his commission well beyond what I asked of him. He is an intuitive genius. Pay him.
I didn’t know if I could. Twelve florins translate to thirteen royal sovereigns.
Singe handled the payout. I couldn’t bring myself to face my cashbox. Thirteen sovereigns is more than most people earn in a year. More than some of my acquaintances will come by during their entire ambition-challenged lives.
“Will you stop hyperventilating?” she whispered, smacking me between the eyes with the biggest word she’d ever spoken. “We are quite sound financially. Now.”
Her assurances were no help. I glanced at the sleeping parrot. That thing might wake up any second. Which possibility drove me straight out to the kitchen. I tossed off two quick mugs of Weider’s Select Dark. Less distressed, I went back to confront my terrors.
My best pal kept right on grinning like a shit-eating dog.
Silverman was just leaving. He told me, “I need a little head start. I’ll meet you there.”
His boys were lugging the same sacks I’d just helped haul in. He had no trouble getting around under the weight of all that gold.
I wanted to demand, “You’re not even gonna keep what we paid for? After he robbed us?” But Old Bones leaped into my head before I could.
Please accompany Mr. Dotes. It is now within our capacity to place a satisfactory capstone on this affair.
Morley kept right on smirking. Enjoying watching me anticipating the hammer’s fall.
I accompanied Mr. Dotes. Leaving the house last, just to make sure the Goddamn Parrot didn’t accidentally get left behind.
Garrett. You are forgetting the cats. Take the cats.
I wasn’t forgetting anything. It hadn’t occurred to me that there was any need to drag a herd of critters along. Why would it?
“Hang on,” I told everybody. “I got t
o get something.”
I found the Luck all piled into their traveling bucket, bright-eyed and ready to roll. Creepy little things. They weren’t kittens at all. That was just a disguise.
I took them outside. Their bucket went into Silverman’s cart once I caught up. He wasn’t wasting any time.
At some point Penny Dreadful, attached herself to the parade. She was careful not to get inside my grabbing radius. I wondered if Tinnie or Belinda was to blame, or if she was still just that untrusting of the world.
Morley followed along behind, he and his friend in the strange metal coach drawn by the two-horse team that caused snickers all along the way.
No one out there seemed interested in us, otherwise. In particular, we were invisible to the city employees loafing around Macunado Street.
Half an hour later I knew where we were headed. Because we were there.
The scaffolding was gone. The bad boys from Ymber had finished their work, doing good despite themselves. The Bledsoe’s masonry hadn’t been in such good shape for ages.
I eyeballed the brickwork. Even work that hadn’t been done last time was now complete. Had the Dead Man gone so far as to compel Deacon Osgood to finish his charity work before letting him go home?
Evidently.
Scary.
Morley dismounted. He announced, “I’m up.”
“What?” Morley was... he knew what was going on when I didn’t.
Me and my second banana needed to have us one long talk.
By the time I ambled inside, the little shit had his old friend Ellie Jacques, the volunteer, cooing and starry-eyed — right in front of, and without offending, his sky-elf friend.
Silverman knew what was going on, too. He and his boys followed Penny Dreadful into the deep gloom of the hospital, headed for the stairs. Penny, two-handed, bowlegged, hauled the bucket of cats hanging in front of her.
I hustled to catch up.
Chodo and Harvester Temisk occupied a suite. They shared it with Belinda. There were guards outside, Saucerhead’s acquaintances Orion and June. I felt my purse being squeezed again. I whimpered softly.
