by Frank Tuttle
Darla regarded me with confusion for a long moment. Father Foon looked on, uncertain, and I could see him weigh the worth of having his soldiers strike us down where we stood.
I heard a shout, from outside. A shout and a flash of dim light.
Then there were torches. Torches, and voices, and Evis, and his men, all his men, quiet halfdead and panting, soaked humans alike.
“I am not dead,” said Darla. She spoke slowly and carefully. “They did not hurt me.” Evis moved to stand at her side, and then I heard Mama wheezing and slogging through the mud, heard her cry out Darla’s name.
“They took me. Held me here. But I am alive, Markhat. Whatever that thing is in your hand, whatever you thought you had to have-you don’t need it anymore. I’m alive. You’re alive. It’s over. We can go home now.”
I knew what she was saying. I understood it. But I also knew she had died, I remembered that too, remembered that her blood still flecked my desk, remembered telling the huldra my name, my secret birth name, that no one save my dead mother ever knew.
“Boy,” said Mama. She had my missing boot, wrested from the mud, and I remember thinking what an odd thing it was for her to have. She was bawling, hair slicked with rain, tiny Hog eyes sparkling and red in Evis’s torchlight. “Boy, listen to her, she ain’t dead, never was.”
The huldra spoke again. It showed me again my grief, my anger, my need to take the world by the throat and throttle it until every last bit of life fled it, my need to raise up a wall of flames and burn all that I hated to powder and ash.
Two worlds. Darla dead, Darla alive. One was a lie. But I could see both, feel both, experience both-and the huldra, it knew my name.
I looked, and I saw Mama and my boot, Evis and his men, and Father Foon backed into a corner. But there was no Darla.
There never was, whispered the huldra.
She is dead.
Make them pay.
I felt myself begin to change again, felt myself begin to rise into the night, to join the shadows in that high cold place where words flocked and fled.
Darla stood on tip-toe, I am told, and took my face in her hands and despite the pain of my lips on hers, she kissed me.
She kissed me, and there was no lie in it. And in an instant all the dark magics and the rage and the lust for vengeance cowered, overshadowed by a much older magic that smelled of perfume and was warm and yielding in my arms.
I do remember crushing the huldra. I do remember hearing it scream.
And then both worlds broke apart, truth and lies swept apart in a loud and rushing flood, and I tumbled along with both as the darkness closed swiftly over my head.
Chapter Fourteen
And now, it is summer.
Flowers bloom out of cracks in the sidewalks. Mama’s window box is a wild green shower of straggly looking herbs. It rains all the damned time, the days are hot and my back has been aching ever since that night I walked with the huldra.
I sat at my desk, nursing another cup of Mama’s foul black tea. I would pour the stuff out, back in the alley, but I must admit it does help with the dreams. If I skip a day of Mama’s tea, I walk Rannit in my dreams all that night. I walk with my head just below the clouds and a dry rustling voice whispering nonsense words singsong in the back of my mind.
Maybe the tea does other things too. For the longest time, Three-leg Cat arched his back and hissed when I came in the room. Now he’ll sit on my desk, purr and let me scratch his battle-scarred head, just like the old days.
A loaf of bread steamed on my desk, another gift from the grateful Hoobins. Bread and a pair of clean white long-sleeved shirts with fancy pearl buttons up the front and the button-down collar that Martha herself created. Elegance, as Martha named the dress-shop, was doing well. The pair of shirts she’d given me would cost fifty half-crowns, at any haberdasher’s on Bathways.
Martha had even smiled at me, for the very first time, when they’d dropped the bundles off earlier that day. Smiled, and said hello, and hadn’t rushed out of the room like I’d sprouted bright yellow fangs and big black bat wings.
Maybe it’s true, about Hoobin women and the Sight. And, if so, maybe she could see that the huldra was leaking slowly out of my soul.
I try not to think about the huldra, these days. I try not to entertain my suspicion that Mama didn’t get it from some nameless backstreet mojo man. I try not to ponder her mission that day we thought Darla had died, try not to weigh the likelihood that the name she had sworn never to share was that of Encorla Hisvin.
It made sense. Maybe I was still seeing things, in that strange sideways fashion the huldra showed me, that rainy night of the new moon. Because I could see how Encorla might find it amusing to toss such a powerful object in the midst of what must have been, from his perspective, such a petty squabble.
No, I decided, that wasn’t the only way I knew. I thought back to that night, back to the strange memories that had risen up like windblown dust before me. While I’d walked, I’d somehow become Encorla, or something equally monstrous. Or, more likely, he or it had nearly consumed me.
Had I not broken the huldra-had I embraced the dark-I believe it would have been Encorla Hisvin who would have walked out of that warehouse that night. He and he alone-Markhat just another whirlwind memory, just another anguished cry troubling Hisvin’s dark dreams.
I shuddered, yanked my thoughts back to the present and nibbled at the warm bread and sipped the bitter tea.
Mama would be back soon, with a fresh batch of the foul stuff. I knew she’d linger, hovering over me, fussing and griping and bossing, but watching with those piercing Hog eyes all the while.
Watching to see if the darkness had truly left me. Watching to see if I’d been tainted beyond the reach of tea and herbs and whatever simple magics she was slipping past my door.
Evis stops by too, doing much the same thing, though he brings middling good beer and sets Mama to fretting because we sit up and smoke expensive cigars and watch the dark get thicker. Mama thinks he’s a bad influence. Like we’ll set out at any minute to steal apples off market-stands and taunt passing ogres by dropping our pants and shouting out rude words.
I laughed out loud at the thought of it. Evis has no evil in his soul, save the same tired old evils all men bear. He’d met the huldra’s gaze dead on and not flinched. He even tells a good joke, when none of the lads are around.
Evis did, on occasion, keep me informed as to the progress of Miss Cant, the sobbing halfdead we’d rescued from the warehouse. The Avalante physicians, and I was still trying to become accustomed to the idea of halfdead doctors, were actually doing her good. She was talking again. She could speak a few words, and she no longer tore off the clothes in which they dressed her. Some days she seemed to remember who she’d been.
We’d made a toast, to that.
Remembrance, for the good and the bad.
Darla doesn’t like to talk about the men who had snatched her from her home, or the halfdead who had toyed with her. She does know they had been instructed to kill her, not hold her. The halfdead, never ones for unquestioning obedience of authority, had decided instead to keep her alive and on the warehouse menu when another of the captives died the day of the new moon.
I had no proof, would never have proof, but I was sure I already knew who had given the order to kidnap Darla and slaughter her.
I was sure of the who, but still unsure of the why. To drive me to take the huldra, which conveniently turned up in Mama’s possession right after Darla appeared to be dead? To make damned sure I drove headlong into that nest of halfdead, no matter the consequences?
Because it spiced up an otherwise dreary Thursday?
I never put a name to the corpse hurled at my door.
She might have been a poor soul who had died at the hands of her halfdead captors and thus indirectly saved Darla. She might have been a maid or a streetwalker, caught out after Curfew once too often. Or she might have been an acquaintance of Hisvin, who
had, like so many others, eventually failed to amuse. That tattoo on her back, though, had convinced me the dead body was Darla-to me that smacked more of a creature known as the Corpsemaster than of a gaggle of blood-mad halfdead. Such attention to fine detail seemed a bit beyond their ken.
There had been no survivors among the priests or the halfdead. And the one other person who might have the answers is not the kind of person you ask them of.
Mama banged on my door and barged through, more hot tea emitting steam from the pot in her rag-shielded hands.
“Brung you some more.”
“Thanks. I was just wishing I had something to dip Three-Leg in, his fleas are back.”
Mama thunked the pot down and scowled. “You need to be drinkin’ all this. Today. My sageroot came in and this is full of it.”
I grimaced. “Sageroot? Isn’t that poisonous?”
“Nah, not if’n it’s dried before it’s boiled.” Mama sniffed. “Best drink it hot too.”
I sighed. “You really think this is helping, Mama?”
“I reckon it is,” she said. She sat heavily in my client’s chair. “Cat don’t run from you. Miss Darla don’t see them things in your eyes. Mostly, though, you’re nearly as big a smart-ass as you was before that night.”
I nodded.
“I see that Halfdead friend of yours was around last night.”
“We had a couple of beers.”
Mama frowned. “He ever say how that poor woman is?”
I told Mama what I knew about Miss Cant. She seemed pleased, though not pleased enough to credit Evis with even faint praise.
Someone called Mama’s name from the street, and Mama bade me goodbye with a final stern admonition to drink the pot dry.
I drained the cup, started to pour a new one, heard Mama’s door shut and thought the better of it. The tea needed to cool anyway, and the sun was bright outside, and I decided a walk in the light would do me good-especially if it happened to lead to Darla’s fresh painted door.
Chapter Fifteen
The sun was bright. I squinted and tried not to look too hard at the shadows the bright sun cast. When I did glance their way, I saw movement in them, hints of form and substance that made no sense at all in the light, but were poetry and magic when considered in the dark.
I wished I had gulped down that last cup of Mama’s tea but I settled for whistling instead. Rannit bustled all around me, stinking, cursing, working and drinking all at once all around me.
Ogres passed, and each and every one dipped their gaze at me, as they had since that night. Darla said I’d attained some odd standing in the ogre community by saving the Hoogas the night we rescued Martha. I still don’t recall doing any such thing, but a town full of well-intentioned ogres is not a situation I wish to question.
I was halfway to Darla’s when I heard the first screams.
Screams and then shouts of warning and then a sudden rush of pedestrians towards doors and the slamming thereof. Within seconds the street was cleared, and I knew without seeing what was responsible for that.
A moment passed, and then the black carriage rolled into view, cloud of flies buzzing, the stench of it reaching and quickly engulfing me.
A much fresher corpse sat atop the rig, cracking a whip at empty air before he brought the conveyance to a halt at my feet.
The cloud of fat bluebottle flies still buzzed and worked. The stench of ripe decay so close to the conveyance was overpowering. I fought off a round of retching, clamped my jaw shut and pulled myself up and inside.
The same red-haired dead woman lolled there, swollen and limp. Her features were melting, like black wax, and when she spoke, it was a barely intelligible gobbling.
“Bravo, goodman,” it said. Flies rushed in and out of its mouth. “I congratulate you on your victory.”
I nodded. I’d dreaded this moment, knowing it was coming, knowing I’d have to decide how much to reveal of what I had seen, that night I walked. “Do you?” I said. “Seems to me that you might have been more pleased had things gone the other way. Too many people lived. Except your pet in the turtle shell.”
The dead woman burbled and spat. Maggots fell from her mouth and writhed in her lap. It took me a moment to work out her exhalations as laughter.
“Whatever are you talking about? And in such tones! Why, I’ve half a mind to take offense.”
I grunted. The smell was palpable, and there were dark, thick stains, busy with flies, all over the upholstery.
“Not that I don’t appreciate good theatre,” I said, surprising myself. “But the smell and the flies detract from the conversation.”
Instantly, the buzzing flies and the stench of a decaying human body vanished.
I took a breath and forced myself to meet the dead woman’s milk-white eyes. Things moved in the corners. She grinned with teeth going crooked in soft black gums.
“You could have wiped out the whole nest without any of this. You could have just spoken a few words, waved your hand about. Poof, no more half-dead blood cult. No more dead women.”
The corpse nodded amiably.
“True,” she burbled. “Though your appraisal of the situation is as yet incomplete. There were other players, other allegiances, other actors involved. My direct participation would very probably have resulted in the loss of far more lives. Innocent lives, I believe you would call them, although in my experience innocence is neither common nor particularly precious.” The dead woman waved a black hand in dismissal. “Too, it would have been so tedious.”
“Can’t have that,” I said. A bloated eyebrow raised.
“Would it matter, if I told you that another sorcerer of my stature was involved? Would it matter if you were to learn that the intention was to plunge Rannit into chaos and bloodshed, on a scale that would quickly dwarf the very worst years of the War? Would it matter if I told you that the huldra wasn’t mine, that your mistrust of me is misplaced as well as dangerously impertinent?”
“Are you telling me any of that?
“Perhaps yes, perhaps no. As you can imagine, the situation is rather too delicate for open discussion, even now.”
I let a moment pass. Then I shrugged to hide a deep breath. “You ought to do something about Oddling,” I said. “The walls are going to collapse any day now, leaning like that.”
Silence. Just a beat, but for that beat, the flies didn’t buzz and the carriage didn’t clatter and the world might as well have been shut behind a thick, tight door.
I wondered if Hisvin would speak or merely strike me down.
“You are a man of surprising resources, goodman Markhat,” said the corpse, without a hint of bubbling or slurring. “I congratulate you. Few have proven so amusing, or dared so much in my presence. I assume you have mentioned Oddling to your friends at Avalante?
“Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. It’s one of those delicate situations you mentioned. For both of us.”
I hadn’t said a word concerning my vision of Oddling to Evis really. But I hid my thoughts, forced a smile. Knowing the resting place of a thing like Hisvin was a secret whole Houses would fight to the death for.
The dead woman laughed, the sound of it wet and choking.
“I like you, goodman,” it said. “No one else dares speak so plain to me. I find it refreshing.”
She put her dead hand on my knee and squeezed.
“This time.”
I managed a nod.
“So we’re done. There won’t be any more new-moon vampire picnics. My clients got their sister back. I got my fee.”
“We are done. Peace and tranquility are restored. Good has triumphed, and evil has been, I am told, dismembered and then burned.”
The carriage clattered on.
“I trust Miss Tomas is recovered from her adventures?” asked the corpse.
“Stop the cab,” I said. “Stop it right now.”
“Of course,” said the corpse. The dead cab man cracked his whip at horses that weren’t there. At once, the
carriage began to slow.
“I owe you. I owe you twice, from the War. But if you ever mention Darla’s name again I’ll make a little trip up to Oddling. I’ll come and I’ll break down your door, and I’ll gut you dead. You hear me? Dead. No coming back.”
The dead woman laughed. Her lips trailed black ropes of thick fluid and her withered black tongue writhed and worked.
“Oh well spoken,” she said. “I expected no less.”
I opened the door, and I was out.
The carriage glided away, flies and stench and screams in its wake.
I marched the opposite way, all the way to Darla’s door. She was there and safe, baking a pie, a spot of flour on the end of her nose. She took me in without a single questioning word.
We are “walking out”, as Mama calls it. Mama is always pestering me to buy Darla fireflowers on Sweetheart Days or take her shopping at lunch. Any day now I expect Mama will start pointing out houses in the neighborhood that would be just perfect for a nice young couple starting out.
I sighed, put my feet on my desk, laced my fingers behind my head. One thing at a time Mama. I won’t be walking any aisles until I can stop walking Rannit at night with my head halfway to the clouds and murder and flames in my heart.
Things the huldra had showed me come back to me sometimes. I’ll look at the light streaming through the clouds, and I’ll briefly see a way to hurl lightning. A candle will flicker, just so, and I’ll see tiny, scurrying manikins, darting away from the wavering light, but each at my beck and call if I could just remember those long, strange words.
Three-leg Cat leaped suddenly into my lap, and I spilled hot tea. Three-leg scampered away hissing, and I rose cussing. Then Mama’s shadow fell over my door.
“Boy,” she said, turning my latch. “You in there?”
I mopped tea, took a deep breath, thought about Mama’s question. Am I? Was I? Will I be?
Another shadow joined Mama’s. This one was tall and slender.
“Are you alone in there, Markhat?” asked Darla, and I could hear the impish grin she wore in her tone, though I could see only shadows through my cheap and bubbled glass.
