Faded Steel Heat gf-9

by Glen Cook

  I didn't expect any help. Cynical in my old age, I figured Gresser was in on it somehow, around the edge.

  "They might grab one of the catering vans."

  "The which?"

  "The specialty baked goods, the pastries and sweetmeats, all come in from outside. The delivery vehicles are in the back court. The kitchen help brings stuff in so we can replace what the guests consume."

  "Mr. Gresser, I take back every wicked thought I ever had about you. I'll put in a good word with Mr. Weider."

  "That might help. But what can I do about being shorthanded?"

  "Have everybody use two hands instead of one? I don't know. It's your area of expertise."

  Alyx tugged my sleeve. "Garrett, they might be taking Tom away right now."

  I let myself be led away.

  Alyx told me, "You looked like you needed rescuing."

  "I don't know—"

  "Sometimes you just have to be rude."

  "My mom insisted on good manners toward everyone."

  "This way." Alyx's manners were good only when that wasn't inconvenient.

  Her route wasn't very direct. I spied Tinnie in the distance, headed our way. Would Alyx be trying to avoid her? I waved when the blond wouldn't notice. Tinnie waved back. So did a handsome woman much older than me who seemed thrilled because she'd caught the eye of such a good-looking fellow.

  Alyx said sometimes you got to be rude to rescue yourself but I can't, especially when I'm near a beautiful woman.

  38

  "I thought you were worried about Tom." At the moment Alyx just wanted to be friends. Good friends, right here, right now. My well-known unshakable resolve was wobbling like gelatin and my capacious capacity for withstanding torture was approaching its limit. If I didn't get out of that unused pantry fast, I was going to become the closest friend Alyx had.

  That pantry had missed spring cleaning for years. I started sneezing. Then Alyx started. I staggered into the passageway outside.

  Tinnie materialized, coming from the rear of the house, whither we had been headed. "There you are. I was beginning to think you got lost."

  "We're looking for Tom," Alyx said from behind me, not the least embarrassed. She was surprisingly presentable considering what she'd been trying to do seconds ago. "Those men took him from his room. Garrett stopped them once but they sneaked up behind us and got Tom away again. Manvil says they couldn't have gotten out of the house yet so we were looking in all the out-of-the-way places, only Mr. Gresser said maybe they could've—"

  Tinnie wasn't fooled. Her glance said we were going to talk later. She asked, "Why would they want your brother?"

  Alyx shrugged, reverting to the shy, naive child she used to be, pulling it around her like a cloak of invisibility. I wondered if she hadn't been faking when she was younger. Old Man Weider might not be as much in control as he thought.

  He for sure fooled himself about Kittyjo, back when. Kittyjo had been more determined than Alyx. And in those days there were fewer interruptions.

  I wasn't eager to renew our acquaintance. Kittyjo was a little past neurotic. She was one of those people who hide it well initially.

  I said, "Gresser might've been right about the vans. There's so much dust around here we'd know right away if anybody got dragged through."

  Alyx snapped, "Somebody is going to explain how come it built up like this, too."

  It was a short way to a rear exit. Tinnie had to have come in through it to have approached from the direction she had. "You see anything out there, Red?" I opened the door and leaned outside.

  "Exactly what you see right now."

  What I saw was two cook's helpers lugging trays. None of the wagons were big enough to require more than one horse. "Let's look them over."

  Alyx announced, "I'm not getting horse dukey all over my new shoes."

  "Tate's best shoes, too, I would hope." Moments ago she was willing to get anything all over her new dress. I didn't mention it. That would be "different."

  Tinnie wondered, "Why don't you go back to the ballroom, Alyx? Ty can't handle it all forever. And Nicks is in no mood to carry him."

  Alyx didn't want to entertain. Alyx didn't want to do anything that Alyx didn't want to do. Alyx had to do some growing up yet. But that was something else she wouldn't want to do.

  I stepped into the yard while the ladies chatted.

  There were five wagons. I dismissed two right away. They couldn't carry anybody away. I considered the others. Maybe one would tell me it was more than it pretended.

  They were all seedy. That don't mean much today. You don't see anything new anymore. I can't recall the last time I saw a building under construction. Before I went to war. Maybe when I was a kid.

  People fix what they can and make do with the rest.

  I checked the dray animals. The great villains of this world, horses, have most humans fooled. The bad guys' animal might be as blackhearted as its masters and give itself away.

  One was sound asleep. A second was trying to get there. The beast between those two, though, watched me sidelong from under lowered lashes with way too much malevolent interest. A gelding, it had a notion to get even by avenging its disappointment on me. And, cautious though I am around those monsters, I got a step too close. It snapped at me. I dodged nimbly, suffering only the loss of a few decorative buttons from my left sleeve.

  "You're the one," I grumped. "Got to be the one." The beast wore hobbles. That said plenty. Dray animals don't usually need hobbling. Not in the city.

  It watched as I moved to check its wagon, showing me big, ugly horse teeth in a huge equine sneer.

  "Why not just snooze in the traces like your pals?"

  Another horsey sneer, filled with contempt for all old-timers and their slave mentalities.

  The wagon's side was made to fold out and lift up. It was secured by a wooden pin on a leather thong. I pulled the pin, grabbed a pair of thoughtfully placed handles, and lifted.

  Somebody whacked my bean with a gunnysack full of horseshoes. I fluttered down into the darkness like a spinning maple seed. I don't recall hitting bottom. Or the cobblestones, whichever came first.

  39

  I groaned and cracked an eyelid. Couldn't be morning already, could it? Damn! Not another hangover. There'd been too many of those lately.

  An angel drifted into view. She whispered. I didn't understand but I had some good ideas about what I wanted her to say. I'd take her up on it just as soon as I learned how to breathe again.

  I mumbled, "I must've died and gone to heaven." That's the way things went in my mother's religion.

  The angel continued talking. I began to catch her words. "Don't feed me any of your mouth manure, Garrett. I've known you too long."

  "Oh. It's the other place. I always suspected you demons were gorgeous redheaded wenches. Or maybe the other way around."

  "Flattery will get you everywhere, Garrett."

  "Promises, promises. What hit me?" I patted the top of my bean. I found no unusual number of soft spots. "Couldn't have been a bird taking target practice." Unless maybe it was my bird.

  "I don't know. When I finally talked Alyx into letting up on you I came out and found you right there. A man was getting set to hit you again. I yelled. The kitchen help came out so he ran away."

  "What about the wagon?"

  "Which wagon?"

  "The one that was sitting here. I was just going to check it out when that chunk of sky bounced off my noggin." There was no reason she should have noticed that particular wagon. "I think we've got a problem." A big problem, if my fears were on the mark.

  I managed a feeble, shuffling jog to the tradesman's gate. I recognized the sleepy guard only by subspecies. Very big, very strong, very stupid. Gate-crashers wouldn't get past him, no sir. "Did a wagon just leave?"

  He checked me from beneath brows like overhanging cliffs. I was startled by the fact that they were hairless. "Who're you?" he growled, disgruntled because his nap had been inte
rrupted.

  "Name's Garrett. Chief of Security for the Weider breweries." So I exaggerated a little. Couldn't hurt.

  It didn't. "Oh. Yeah. I heard about you. Yeah. The Simon the Pieman wagon went out. That's cute, ain't it?"

  "What's cute?"

  "The name. Like how it rhymes. Kind of cute and catchy, ain't it?"

  "Sure. I get you. Nifty. Keen. Next question. How come you let it go? Didn't you hear we had bad guys in the house and we didn't want them to leave?"

  "No." The man looked baffled. "I ain't seen nobody but that driver since I come on. The bakers and stuff was already here."

  "Oh, hell," I said, without much volume or any real feeling. "All right. But don't let anyone else leave till you hear from me. All right? How many bad guys went out with that wagon?"

  "I told you. Just the guy driving." He was beginning to resent my attention.

  I grunted. I hadn't thought that all my bad boys would clear off that easily. They had a mission.

  I turned to stomp away.

  Tinnie caught my arm. She looked up with big fake moon eyes. "You're so forceful, Mr. Garrett." Her pearly whites looked particularly wicked in the torchlight.

  "What I am is irritated. I had stitches on my head the other day. I ought to wear an iron hat. Maybe one of those ugly-officer things with the big spike on top. I bet I could get one of those cheap these days."

  "They'd just hit you somewhere else. Then you might get hurt."

  "You always see the bright side, darling."

  "I try. You could find some other way to waste your life. I bet there're all kinds of careers where you don't have to deal with people who try to break your bones."

  Oh-oh. "I'd better see the old man again. Tom might've been on that wagon."

  Oh, did she give me a scary look. What a lowlife, subject-changing sewer rat that Garrett is!

  Some things we'll never resolve.

  40

  I didn't think before I burst into Weider's study. I'd never encountered any reason to excuse myself around the Weider place before, little time though I spent there.

  I plunged into a silence so sudden it was like the stillness after a thunderclap. Numerous pairs of eyes measured me. Marengo North English appeared to be conducting a summit of the chiefs of every nut group in TunFaire. Every rightsist nut group. I didn't see any democrats or round-earthers.

  Belinda sat slightly behind North English and to his right, partially shadowed. The flicker of the fire in the fireplace lent her face a diabolic cast. Even that freecorps psycho thug Bondurant Altoona appeared to be intimidated.

  Until you experienced it you wouldn't believe that a woman this young and attractive could come across so threatening. But no one in that room doubted her capacity for launching major mayhem.

  I glanced around. "Where's Max?" Cool. Like I butted in on these things all the time. "It's critical."

  I could manage without him. But his son was in deep sludge. He ought to know. He needed a say.

  After a startled moment North English pasted on his paternalistic smile, told me, "Max just stepped out to confer with Manvil. Gentlemen. This is the Garrett fellow Miss Contague recommended. Mr. Garrett, won't you join us now that you're here? I'm sure Max will return directly."

  I engaged in a brief internal debate, decided I ought to find out what gave. It was too late to run that wagon down now, anyway. It could be anywhere in any direction.

  I moved a couple of steps into the room, studied the men studying me. A prime lot of political blackguards. Not one was in any danger from the nonhuman side of the community. Those who weren't wealthy, like Arnes Mingle and Bondurant Altoona, had large bands of armed rowdies at their beck. Cynical me, I wondered if The Call wasn't just a device meant to separate my nonhuman countrymen from their wealth and community standing.

  North English said, "Garrett, these gentlemen and I, though separated by points of doctrine, all reside in the same ideological camp. Inasmuch as we were all here we thought it might be provident to pool our thoughts concerning these puzzles that have arisen."

  Why tell me?

  "We've discovered that none of us is responsible for the attempts to embarrass the Weiders. Max may not support our views but he's a friend to every man here." Before I could suppress my cynicism and respond, he continued, "Earlier you observed that none of us can be sure we know about everything happening in our organizations. That's true. But we're agreed that none of us would ever turn on Max."

  Belinda's nod was barely perceptible. She had witnessed the discussion.

  North English forged ahead. "You said the villains responsible call themselves Black Dragon Valsung." That was not a question so I didn't respond. "None of us knows of any such group. Nor of a Colonel Norton. We've agreed to start looking into that immediately. The group could give our movement a bad name."

  I kept my expression bland. "They aren't imaginary," I said. "Several are in the house right now. I came to tell Max that they've kidnapped his son Tom."

  Murmurs. "Looney" and "mad" stood out. They knew about Tom.

  I offered a sketch of my collisions with Carter, Trace, and the guys in the stable. I avoided sounding antipathetic toward rightsist philosophy.

  Weider and a bodyguard blew into the room. The sounds of the revels below came with them. The festivities were in full swing.

  "Garrett! Damn! There you are! We found Tom."

  "How did you know?"

  "Alyx. He's all right. He was wandering around in the kitchen, getting in everybody's way."

  I frowned, stared at Weider. He was so obviously relieved.

  I wasn't. Something wasn't right.

  Something hadn't been right from the beginning but I couldn't pin it down. "Are Ty and Kittyjo all right?"

  "Ty's still holding court. I haven't seen Kittyjo. She's sneaking around like a commando. Nobody sees her for more than a few seconds at a time."

  Why did somebody knock me over the head?

  Gilbey pushed through the doorway. He had Tom Weider in tow. Tinnie was a few steps behind them. Gilbey said, "I have him under control now, Max. I'll take him upstairs. Luke will stay with him."

  Something odd... "When did he change clothes?"

  Everyone stared at me. I said, "He was wearing different clothes a little while ago."

  For an instant Tom raised his eyes to look at me, something he'd never done before. It was so fleeting I wasn't sure he'd actually done it. Might've been just a twitch.

  "You sure?"

  "Yes." And Alyx could back me up.

  "I'll check it out when we get upstairs," Gilbey said.

  I started to leave so I could help him. I was sure the baddies were still around and still had plans. Marengo North English said, "Would you stay with us a moment more, Mr. Garrett?"

  How could I resist when he offered the honorific to a man of my low station?

  41

  I shut the door behind Weider reluctantly. Old Max left me a meaningful look as he departed. I turned to the assembled barons of bug-fuckery. They stared like they expected me to begin belching green fire. I stared like I expected them to spout something incredibly bigoted and stupid. Finally, North English said, "Max tells me that you're very good at what you do."

  "I try hard, anyway."

  "He also insists that you're sympathetic to our goals."

  Remotely. "I believe I've mentioned that myself." I inclined my head slightly so I couldn't be convicted when times changed later.

  "Then why haven't you joined one of the rights groups?"

  "I'm not a joiner. Unless you count the Marine Corps. And I wasn't offered my preference that time. When I do have a choice I make my own. That's why I'm in the racket I'm in. It lets me be my own boss."

  "Exactly."

  "Huh?" Often I hide my razor wits so guys like North English will underestimate me.

  This wasn't one of those times.

  "You appear to be the perfect man to winkle out the truth about these Black Dragon pe
ople."

  Why not? I was working for everybody but the Crown Prince of Venageta already. Maybe I could get in with Black Dragon, convince Carter and Trace that I regretted my past transgressions and they ought to hire me to find out what that guy Garrett was up to. I knew a guy once, Pokey Pigotta, who used so many disguises and aliases that he did get hired to investigate himself.

  "Garrett?"

  "Uh? Oh. Yeah. Sounds good, we can work out the financial details. I've got some bones to pick with those guys." I caressed the back of my head. I've been getting bopped way too often lately.

  "Financial details?"

  "Even us idealists don't get much nutritional value out of serving a righteous cause."

  North English scowled and muttered. He was a notorious skinflint.

  Bondurant Altoona suggested, "Pay the man and get on with it. You pinch sceats till the King squeals but put out his ransom in silver for—"

  "You're right, of course!" North English barked, silencing Altoona. "It would be petty of me to quibble over a few coppers." He yanked a purse from inside his waistband, tossed it at me.

  I snatched it out of the air deftly. A few coppers, eh? I started to tuck the bag into an inside pocket of my waistcoat.

  North English squawked. The Goddamn Parrot would have complimented him on his accent. His companions grinned. It didn't look like he had many close friends among his own kind. He grouched, "I expect you to take only what you need to compensate yourself for your labors."

  "A guy's got to try." The grins got bigger when I opened the purse.

  My eyes got bigger, too. What I'd assumed to be a rich man's walking-around sack of coppers, which might include a silver piece or two in case he ran into something really exciting, turned out to be all silver salted with a few pieces of gold. Swiftly I calculated ten days' fees and likely expenses, tripled them and applied my special unpleasant crackpot counter-discount. North English didn't see what I took but he danced like a kid with a desperate need to pee. Silver still isn't cheap, despite our triumph in the Cantard.

  There were whispers among the others, some intentionally loud. Bets were laid as to whether or not North English would follow through.