by Frank Tuttle
I smiled back. The babbling brook made happy noises, so I spoke over them.
“Good afternoon,” I said. “I know I’m coming at a bad time, but it’s important that I speak to Natalie, right away.”
The blonde’s smile vanished. My heart skipped a beat.
“Oh no. Is this about the floral arrangements? Don’t tell me they’re really out of blue fireflowers.”
I nodded gravely. “They say they may be able to get some in time, but they won’t be royal blue-more an azure. Oh, and there’s a problem with the seating too. Could you help-”
I didn’t have to finish, which is a good thing, because I’d run out of lies to spin. But it had worked-the blonde raised a finger, yanked at something, and then raised a speaking tube to her lips and spoke urgently into it.
“Please have a seat, Mr. Simmons. Natalie will be right with you.”
I smiled. It was genuine. She smiled back, and it was too.
“Thank you, Miss…” I said. I inserted a careful, questioning silence after the Miss.
“Miss Hawthorne,” she replied. “Miss April Hawthorne.”
I winked and took a leather-bound chair close to the indoor brook. I could have dipped my toes in the stream, were I inclined to part with my shoes.
There were murals on the walls. All depicted the company’s more famous exploits during the War. None were half as interesting as the way Miss Hawthorne looked at me with that impish little half-smile.
We’d done a lot of not talking, Miss Hawthorne and I, before I heard feet upon a distant stair and a polished oak door opened, and a second young woman stepped into the room.
I stood. My smile was broad and civil.
“Good afternoon, Miss Mays,” I said.
“April? Where is Mr. Simmons?”
I took the waybill from my pocket and unfolded it. Miss Mays looked from April to me and to the waybill and the blood drained out of her face.
“Mr. Simmons sends his regrets. But I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say anyway. Shall we sit?”
The girl was terrified. She didn’t know my face, but she knew damned well what that waybill meant, and she knew she’d sent her three henchmen into something that had gone horribly wrong.
She knew I was trouble. But here I was, smiling and offering to sit down more or less in public. She wavered between bolting back upstairs or screaming for help, but she finally hid her look of shock and took a seat beside me.
April looked on, confused. I reassured her with a grin and a nod and folded the waybill and sat down myself, turning to face Miss Mays.
She was all of eighteen. She was brown-haired and blue-eyed and pretty. Maybe not so experienced at not talking as Miss Hawthorne, but give her credit, she was looking me in the eye and she wasn’t tearing up or biting her lip to keep it from trembling.
“You know who I am,” I said. I was whispering, barely audible above the helpful babbling brook. “Markhat. The finder. I wanted to come around myself and thank you for sending Argis and Wert and Florint around to see me.”
She swallowed, but wisely said nothing.
“Now, I have to think that your father doesn’t know you’re using his employees as unskilled labor,” I said. “And I also have to think he’s not going to be happy when they don’t show up for work again.”
She blinked at that. I kept smiling.
“So, what’s the occasion, Miss? A wedding?”
“What?”
“Miss Hawthorne there mentioned a floral arrangement. You’re wearing an engagement ring. I assume you’re getting married?”
She struggled to keep her voice level. “In just a few days. On St. Ontis Day.”
I nodded. “A fine choice. My congratulations. Now then, what is it about my waybill that led you to send you friends out to greet me?”
I let her stew a moment.
I sighed. “You’re in over your head, Miss. You sent three of Father’s best to issue a beat-down to a licensed finder. They’re among the missing. What if I file a complaint with the Watch? What if I hire a lawyer and file a suit? Be a shame to postpone the wedding, wouldn’t it? Especially for something so deliciously scandalous. Why, I’ll bet dear old Father doesn’t have a clue what you’ve been up to. Does he?”
“Are they dead?”
“You don’t get to ask any questions until you’ve answered mine. Next time I ask it will be down at the Watchhouse on the Square. And after that, you won’t have time to worry about the scarcity of blue fireflowers, Miss. Last chance.”
Her eyes blazed. But she weighed her options.
“There’s only one person who might be looking for Marris Sellway,” she said, so low I could barely hear her. “If you’re his man, screw you. Go get the Watch. Go get a lawyer. Go get them and go to Hell.”
She stood up. I had to admire the way she saw a world of hurt coming but spit in its eye anyway.
“April,” she said. “Call Father.”
I shook my head. “Whoa, young lady. You’ve got me all wrong. I was hired by an old woman named Granny Knot. She brought me a bagful of money and said she wanted it to go to Marris Sellway. That’s who I’m working for. That’s what I was hired to do. That, and nothing else.”
“April. Wait.”
“I’m telling the truth, Miss. I’m not out to hurt anyone. Not you.” I went out on that limb made famous in the proverb. “And not your mother.”
Her face fell. I was right.
“Why don’t you go by Doris anymore?”
“Because of him,” she replied.
“Him?”
Natalie, formerly Doris, glanced furtively around. “He started the fires on Cawling. And I’m sure he killed my father. And if you’re working for him now, and you tell him who we are and where we are, he’ll kill us both. Mother and me.”
“Nobody is going to kill anybody, Miss. And look, this is going to sound crazy, but the man I’m supposedly working for is dead.”
“Dead?”
I sighed. “Like I said, it sounds crazy. A spook doctor came to me. Claimed she came on behalf of a ghost.”
Natalie laughed. It wasn’t a normal laugh, but a release of pent-up terror, and April gave us both the eye from across the room.
“Was this man’s name Gorvis, Miss?”
She shook her head. “He called himself Connors back then. But he liked to brag that he was wanted, so that probably wasn’t his name.” She shivered. “I know they said Father died in that riot, but I never believed it. Father wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t have gotten in the middle of a thing like that.”
I nodded. “A few questions. First, why did you turn Wert and the boys loose on me?”
She bit her lip. “My wedding is next week. I don’t want…my fiancee doesn’t know- When I saw that waybill, well… I thought maybe you’d go away, if…”
“If I got a good beating and a stern warning.”
“Are they…?”
“They’re fine. Not a bruise on them. They’ll be back around looking sheepish in a day or two, I promise.” At least I hoped so. Though I doubted any of Owenstall’s boys would just beat them for the sport of it. “Your mother know about any of this?”
She shook her head an emphatic no. “She thinks I’ve forgotten all about Cawling Street,” she said. “It makes her happy, believing that. So I let her. But. I’ve always known that…man would show back up, Mr. Markhat. I’ve been watching.”
She was pretty. Dark-haired and fair-featured. Her eyes looked older than eighteen, and I guess maybe they were, at least in experience.
“All right. Miss. Like I said, I’m not here to bring you or your family any grief. I’m not going to tell anyone that we’ve spoken, tell anyone your name. It may be that I need to talk to you again. If that’s true, I’ll come back here. I won’t ask you to meet me anywhere else. Got it?”
She nodded.
“Now comes the tough part. I need to know exactly what happened back on Cawling Street. I need as much detail
as you can remember. Especially about the man Connors.”
Her face went pale.
“April,” she said. “Could you send for a pitcher of tea and two glasses?”
And then she put her hands in her lap and took me back to Cawling Street.
It was still bright and sunny when I left Stig River’s offices and set back out for home. Normally, I’d have been smiling.
But Natalie’s recounting had erased any vestige of a smile.
Connors or Gorvis, by any name, was a monstrous piece of work. He’d set his eyes on Marris Sellway, and from that moment no one in the family had known any peace.
Natalie was convinced Connors had stabbed her father. If her story about Connors showing up the next day and catching her in a headlock and whispering a description of her father’s death throes in her ear was true, I was willing to believe it too.
Connors even had the Bloods cowed. He paid no protection. They gave him wide berth and showed him complete deference, though outnumbering him an easy twenty to one.
According to Natalie, Connors had gone house-to-house, kicking in doors and searching for Marris, after she hid from him one day. And when he hadn’t found her, he simply started setting fires.
And still, no one had raised a hand against him.
I stomped my way out of the shiny, new business district and took a wandering route towards home.
The man had burned an entire street nearly to the ground. Not once, but twice. And no one could work up the courage to steal up behind him with a brick in hand?
Marris had finally fled with Doris, literally hiding in the rolling clouds of smoke from the second fire. Homeless and penniless, she had somehow avoided the fate that would usually have resulted from such a flight. Instead, she’d taken on another name, found work, found a husband, found a life.
Until now.
I thought about the nature of a man willing to burn down dozens of homes just to make a point to a woman who’d spurned his every advance. I thought about what kind of monster could murder a kid’s father one day and brag about it to the grieving child the next.
Mostly, though, I thought about being used by such a man under the pretense of speaking from beyond the grave.
I wasn’t sure where Granny Knot fit into all this. Maybe she was out and out feeding me the whole line of bull and was being paid for her troubles. Maybe she was somehow being duped into thinking she was speaking with a dead man.
But either way, I’d nearly led a monster to an innocent woman’s door.
It was the bag of coin, of course. I’d been so distracted by that I hadn’t focused on anything else. And that, I decided, was planned as well. I was supposed to be convinced Connors was dead, simply because I couldn’t imagine someone alive letting that much coin slip out of their hands.
At the corner of Maddon and Vent, I paused. Right would lead me to Granny Knot’s. Left would lead me back home.
I squinted at the sun and estimated my walking times. I decided I could just make it home, and then head to Granny’s. I was feeling distinctly unarmed, and while most of the time I don’t feel a need to haul around the implements of mayhem, that afternoon was shaping up to be different.
So left I went, at a brisk pace.
Dead man or not, somebody was going to feel the weighted end of my head-knocker, and bloody well soon.
I was trying to decide whether Granny was duped or dastard when I marched onto Cambrit and passed Mama’s and saw the carriage pulled up right at my door.
I slowed, put my hands in my pockets, lapsed into an amble. I was half-fearing Mama would pop out and shriek my name, but I heard voices inside and knew she had a client.
The carriage was new. It was fancy, too, with rubber-covered wheels and bright steel springs and a shine that would do a funeral wagon proud. And there, on the back, was the logo of the Stig River Runners.
I came up even with the cab, peeked inside. A woman sat there, about my age, clad in an uptown hoop skirt and a hat that someone had festooned with gauze and flowers.
She glared at me and yanked the curtains shut before tapping on the roof of the cab.
“We might as well go, Summers,” she said. “Make the block one more time.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You looking for Markhat, the finder?” I asked.
“None of your damned business,” said Summers. He even swatted the air a foot in front of my face with his whip.
I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
And the cab pulled away.
I waved and waited until it was out of sight before unlocking my door.
Three-leg Cat was on my desk, complaining about his feeding arrangements. I poured him out some dry food in my room in the back, found places for my Army knife and short head knocker, and settled back, waiting for the cab to make the block.
It didn’t take long. I heard it pull back to the curb outside, heard the door open, heard dainty boots scrape the sidewalk.
And then came the knock.
I rose and opened the door. The woman frowned at me.
“Please, come in,” I said, to her. “Summers, you’ll wait there.”
She stood there for a moment.
“I’m Markhat. The finder. Won’t you come in?”
“You are a very rude man, Mr. Markhat.”
I nodded. “My mother weeps herself to sleep some nights. I have a chair. Please sit in it.”
She came in. Summers glared at me over his shoulder, so I gave him a cheery wave as I shut the door.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Your name is Eva Mays. These days, anyway. Not so many years ago it was Marris Sellway. Your daughter Natalie is getting married next week. Natalie is a prettier name than Doris. And that paper in your hand is one of my waybills. Any of that right?”
She paled. I realized I was being an ass.
“Calm down, Mrs. Mays. I’m occasionally rude, but I’m not a villain. I have no intention of revealing your past to anyone. I especially won’t be mentioning Cawling Street to a thug named Connors.”
She gulped air. Whatever story she’d concocted on her way over here was falling apart before her eyes.
“I was hired to find a Miss Marris Sellway under the pretense of handing her a large sum in pre-War coins. But I’ll tell you plain, Mrs. Mays, that I don’t plan on fulfilling my charge. If this Connors character is trying to find out where you are and who you are, he won’t be doing it through me. I quit.”
She gave up trying to come up with a workable lie.
“Connors is dead,” she said, after a moment. Her voice still shook. “He died six months ago.”
I shook my head. “Maybe that’s what he wants people to think. But if that’s true, then I was hired by his ghost. And I’m not a big believer in ghosts with bags of crowns.”
She looked for words but failed to find them. I gave her a moment.
Mrs. Mays, aka Marris Sellway, was pretty enough, in a slightly overfed way. Her daughter had her eyes and nose. I assumed the chin and the widow’s peak were her father’s.
Mrs. Mays wore more rings than a pirate and that necklace alone would send a mere three hundred crowns back into its bag in abject shame.
I laid it all out for her, from Granny Knot to Owenstall. I did fail to mention her daughter’s attempt to have me beaten, or our talk downtown. No need to drag any family secrets out into the sun.
“So, here you are. I’ve found you. And if I have, he can too.”
She shook her head. “He’s dead. I’m sure of it.”
I nodded, made sure my voice was soft. “Unless you killed him yourself, Mrs. Mays, I don’t think you can be absolutely sure of anything.”
She shook. She had to bite her lip for a moment.
“I saw the body. I watched them put it in the ground.”
“This is important, Mrs. Mays. Where did the burial take place?”
“One of the poverty cemeteries. Elfend? Elways? Elfway. Yes. I remember.”
“And th
e name on the wardstone?”
“Gorvis.” She spat the word, as though it reeked of something foul. “Bastard.”
A literal shiver went down my spine.
In my tiny room behind my office, Three-leg Cat began to spit and hiss and then make that throaty feline growl he only made when feral dogs were outside.
I didn’t hear any dogs.
The air got cold. Mrs. Mays’s eyes got wide. Her breath steamed as though we were standing outside at Yule.
I didn’t see anything. There was Mrs. Mays, in my chair. There was my desk, a slew of crumbs from my breakfast thrown into sudden high relief by the slanting afternoon sun. There was me, my door, the door behind me. But the woman seated across from me was going pale. Her eyes were wide, and she was seeing something behind me that I know just wasn’t there.
Mrs. Mays leaped to her feet. I did the same.
And then her hands flew to her throat, and I could see and hear her choking.
I rushed around the desk and took her by her shoulders. Her mouth was open and working, but she couldn’t make a sound. I took her hands in mine and pried them away from her neck, but she continued to shake and stare and wordlessly beg for help.
My right hand darted into my pocket. I felt Mama’s hex bag, and I took it out and I yanked the yellow yarn from around the neck of it, and I shook the contents of the bag right out on her fruit-encrusted hat.
She screamed. She screamed and backed herself hard into a corner, and she kept screaming.
The glass pane set in my door shattered, sending slivers of glass tinkling out onto the street.
Three-leg Cat went berserk. Summers yelled something incomprehensible, and I heard him land heavily on the street and then charge my door. Mama Hog yelled from her door, and I heard it slam just as Summers barged in to my office, a shortsword in one hand and his pony whip in the other.
He took one look at Mrs. Mays and took a slice at me with his blade. If he’d served in the Army, it hadn’t been with the infantry, because he dived in with a clumsy overhanded swing aimed more or less at the top of my favorite head. I grabbed my chair and let him have the legs of it hard in his gut. His blade clattered off the high chair back, and I shoved and swept his legs out from under him and sat down hard on his fool back.
