by Frank Tuttle
“Then why the Hell did I pull Rainy off the street yesterday? Why did he spend a whole damned night—a whole night, Mr. Sprang—out with the vampires, after Curfew? Why?”
“You’re lyin’. Rainy ain’t in Rannit. I brung Gerlat and Polter.”
“I am not lying. Rainy is here. And alive, thanks to me and Miss Gertriss and Mama Hog. It’s a miracle he survived one night. He’d not have lived through another. And you tell me you didn’t bring him?”
“I ain’t fool enough to bring a child on a man’s errand.”
Gertriss stepped up beside me. “He’s telling the truth, Boss. About Rainy. He didn’t bring him.”
Mr. Sprang glared at Gertriss, but she neither looked away nor stepped back.
“I don’t need no help from you, you—”
“Remember what I said about insulting my partner.”
He clamped his mouth shut.
“We just saved your son’s life. We’re offering to pay you out and send you home. Seems like you owe me a favor, Mr. Sprang. But you hate me even more for that, don’t you?”
“I’d kill you where you stand, if’n it wasn’t for my boys.”
“Does that make sense to you? Does it?”
“Mama took a hex off Rainy,” said Gertriss. “A hex cast to make him hate Mr. Markhat and I.”
“Same hex is riding you,” I added. “Think about it, Mr. Sprang. That day we met. You and your boys pulled blades on me without even knowing for sure who I was. Have you ever done anything like that before?”
“Your woman. She kilt my kin.”
“She’s nobody’s woman but her own. So you were close to Harald Suthom? You loved him like a son? Bounced him on your knee as a baby?”
“He was kin.”
“What color eyes did he have?”
The eldest Sprang hesitated.
“You don’t even know. You don’t know because it never mattered much to you. And it never mattered much because Harald Suthom was a two-bit, lousy sonofabitch, and you know it. So you think about this, Mr. Sprang. You think long and hard about who might have hexed you and your grown sons here and little Rainy too. Because they almost got Rainy killed.”
“I ain’t believing a word of this.”
I shrugged. “I don’t really care what you believe. I told you the truth. Whether you believe or not is another matter. Now, are you willing to sign these papers and get out of Rannit and stay out of Rannit? Will you take Rainy and go home and leave Gertriss and I alone?”
Polter moaned softly. In the distance, an echoed scream rose and fell and died.
“We’ll go,” he said, at last. “Just let us go our way. And we’ll let you go yours.”
“Gertriss?”
Gertriss stared.
“I don’t think he’s lying, Boss. They’ll go home.”
“Then let’s get this done. And you better listen good, Mr. Sprang. Because if I ever see you in Rannit again, you’ll wish the Watch was there. Because I’ll kill you myself and feed you to the ogres. Understand?”
He didn’t speak. But he did lower his eyes and nod.
I woke up the guard. “Fetch an officer,” I said. “We got some papers to sign.”
He grumbled and rose and went.
The Sprangs slumped against the wall and muttered amongst themselves. None of it sounded threatening.
“Think the Old Ruth is stronger than the hex?”
Gertriss frowned and considered that.
“Maybe,” she said at last. “Depends on who cast it.”
“You know of any witch women back home who might have that kind of skill?”
Gertriss shook her head. “Old Granny Gint could probably turn them all into blue-jays if she wanted to. But she wouldn’t. She’s dead set against any kind of black hex.”
I grunted. “Any kin to Harald Suthom or this lot?”
“None. She’s not responsible, Boss. I’m sure of that.”
“Then we’ve got ourselves a stray wand-waver.”
She didn’t reply. I didn’t blame her.
Freeing the Sprangs took maybe five minutes. Papers were signed by myself and Gertriss and passed between the bars and the Sprangs scrawled their marks. The clerk read the terms of the release aloud in a rapid-fire sing-song that escaped everyone in the room, but we nodded and raised our right hands and spoke the oath that bound us to the terms and set the Sprang clan free.
They didn’t release the Sprangs at once, nor did they allow us to mingle. So while they were led away, still in rusty shackles, Gertriss and I hurried back up toward the street and a cab.
The Sprangs were coming to Mama’s to pick up Rainy, and the Hoogas still had orders to pound them on sight. Since the family Sprang didn’t appear to need another beating, we arrived first, and I kept the Hoogas handy, but asked them to refrain from any violence unless the Sprangs started it.
They didn’t. No one spoke. I’d thrown a couple of coppers into the mix, which allowed the Sprangs to hire a wagon for their trip out of town. Polter was stretched out flat in the back of it, still moaning. His color wasn’t good, and a trickle of blood leaked from his ears. Mama just shrugged as she dribbled her anti-hex potion on him and then looked away.
Rainy didn’t even recognize me. He ran past me and grabbed his father’s waist and hung on.
“Now git.”
Mama spoke those words, and they were the only words spoken the whole time.
They got. The Hoogas watched the wagon roll out of sight, and then they sagged a bit. Mama gave them hash and I gave them coin. Then they shambled away, heading back to whatever it is ogres do when they have a pawful of money.
“You’re sure the Sprangs are heading home?”
“That they is, boy. Ain’t nobody could hex them back here again. Not today, anyways. They’s beat, and they’s hurt, and they is stupid but they ain’t crazy. Go on and do your business. We’ll be safe.” Mama looked suddenly grim. “’Leastways ’til I knows what I’m dealing with.”
A bath did wonders for my aroma, if not my spirits.
I lingered a long time in that hot copper tub. Steam wafted off me. Soap worked its homespun magic. Mr. Waters doesn’t allow clients to bring in beer, but one must have followed me from home because there it was, in my right hand.
I bathed and sipped beer and allowed myself the luxury of not pondering the events of the night and the day. I’d been assaulted. I’d had myself arrested for the murder of a little man with four legs. I’d been freed.
And someone in Pot Lockney might be hexing the whole village to come after my head while I lay there bathing.
I had no doubt Hisvin could not only discern the identity of the person who had hexed the Sprangs but probably also make them appear with a flash, caught up struggling in whatever dead hand Hisvin happened to be wearing at the moment.
Which would leave me even further in Hisvin’s debt.
I took a long draught of beer. No. That wasn’t going to happen. The moment I let the Corpsemaster fight my battles, that was the moment I became just another shuffling body in her legion of shuffling bodies.
I put my beer down on the floor and sank beneath the water. I could hear muffled sounds, under there—the tap of blind Mr. Waters’ stick, the sound of distant voices, a peal of sudden thunder. But it was muffled and distant and, best of all, no problem of mine.
I stayed down there in the warm, wet deep until I needed air. When I rose, sputtering and dripping, Mr. Waters was there.
“You got company, Mr. Markhat.” He tapped my tub with his stick. “Fancy carriage. Driver’s name is Halbert. Something about a meetin’ up to Avalante.”
I pushed back my hair and found my beer and drained it.
“Tell him I’ll be right there. And thanks. The water was extra hot, just like I like it.”
“Well, Mr. Markhat, you was extra fragrant.” He laughed. “I knows the smell of a jailhouse, I do. Thought you might appreciate a true hot bath.”
“It’s a perilous life I lead.” I stoo
d and a towel was placed in my hand.
“Your clothes are hangin’ up,” said Mr. Waters. He tapped his way toward another customer. “I’ll tell the cab-man directly.”
I dried and dressed. My stomach reminded me I’d skipped Mama’s offer of supper. I consoled myself with the thought that I’d soon be dining, even if it was with the dead.
“I still cannot believe you had yourself arrested.” Evis took in a long draw of his freshly lit cigar. “You’re a piece of work, Markhat.”
“Not to split hairs, but Gertriss swore out the warrant.” I leaned back in Evis’s good leather chair and didn’t quite dare to put my boots on the edge of his desk. “I stood right there and listened to her do it. Even signed as a witness.”
“They didn’t catch on that their witness was also their murderer?”
I shrugged. “It was late in the day. I knew I could rely on the never failing vigilance of our officers of the Court.”
“What would you have done if Lethway hadn’t tried to carve you up? What if he’d had things to say?”
“If he’d had things to say he had plenty of time to say them. Too, I checked downtown and found out he pays the taxes on the Troll’s Den. Meet after Curfew, alone, in a place he controls? I knew he was planning something inhospitable.”
Evis chuckled. We had dined—or at least I had, while Evis had sipped something dark and thick from a crystal goblet. I’d opted for the chicken and the peas and the muffins, and I’d cleared two full plates. Avalante’s kitchens might belong to the halfdead, but there was no denying their skill with poultry.
My cigar was smooth and soothing. Evis’s office was dark and deliciously cool. The only light came from a few distant candles and the sporadic glimmering of the sorcerous doo-dads he collected and kept behind glass in the enormous curio cabinets that lined two walls of his inner sanctum.
I emulated Evis’s puffing and we let the silence linger for a bit.
“So, how much was the fine?”
“Two crowns.” I winced at the memory. “The Court is loathe to be made a fool of.”
Evis shook his head. “It was six crowns before we intervened, you know.”
“You intervened? When?”
“You think someone wearing an Avalante brooch can get pulled in for murder and we don’t know it? Tsk, tsk. I wasn’t even surprised when they told me it was you.”
“So why did I spend the night in Number 19, then?”
“For all I knew you wanted to be in there. Relax. I was coming down myself, had Gertriss not sprung you.”
“I’m touched.”
“You should be.” Evis produced a match and scratched it and made a flame. The end of his cigar glowed red, and he pulled air through it. “So. You’ve made an enemy of the Lethways. You’re sure he meant to kill you?”
“He wasn’t going to lift a finger, himself. But yes. His associates were out for blood, never mind the new rugs. They didn’t intend for me to leave there alive.”
Evis clasped his pale fingers behind the back of his head and frowned.
“Why, I wonder? You don’t know where this Carris is, or who took him. Odds are you won’t ever know. Seems a bit heavy-handed. ”
“Thanks for your confidence in my deductive abilities.”
“You’re welcome. But kill you, for daring to ask questions? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Nothing about this makes any sense.” I told Evis about the Sprangs and the Old Ruth. He puffed away, his white eyes closed, while I laid it out.
“I don’t believe in coincidences, pal. Are you sure there’s no connection between these hillbillies and the Lethways and the Fields?”
“Let’s see. A rich mining magnate from Rannit. A bunch of hick pig farmers from a village so poor they can’t afford dirt for their floors. A middling-successful baker with a headstrong daughter who hasn’t been any farther East than Grant Avenue. No. I don’t think there’s any way all that is part of the same mess.”
Evis shrugged.
“You should have had the hicks tailed,” said Evis after a while. “In case their wand-waving friend met them on the road out of town.”
“Ha. I did in fact do that very thing. The Sprangs spoke to no one. No one spoke to them. They were last seen hauling Polter aboard a leather convoy, bound for Vicks.”
Mama had actually arranged that, without my knowledge, using her ragtag army of street urchins as tails. They’d followed the Sprangs well out of town before turning back to report to Mama and claim their bounty of biscuits and ham.
“You know you could always call on certain persons of high rank and standing for help,” Evis said. “She isn’t going to like hearing that renegade spell-casters are taking swipes at her officers.”
“No. Not yet.” I thought about that. “Not ever.”
Evis smiled a toothy smile. “Always the optimist,” he said. “But you might as well face it. We’re in deep with Hisvin, whether we like it or not.”
“I don’t like it one bit.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re officers in her army now. Why not take advantage of the privileges of rank, since we’re forced to endure the burdens?”
“Have you asked her for favors?”
“Nope. Doesn’t mean I won’t. More beer?”
“Always.”
Evis grinned behind his hand. “So, what’s next? Do you go after this missing groom, or do you try and trick your wand-waver into showing himself?”
“Both. Mama is brewing up something she swears will let me track the hex caster. And I’m going to talk to Lethway again too. Just he and I, this time. Somewhere public and crowded.”
“Good idea. He’ll be thrilled to sit and drink with you. Now then. Tell me what’s really got you worried.”
I’d had too much beer and not enough sleep. “Say again?”
“Darla. You’ve told her, have you not?”
“Not in so many words.”
Evis let out a hissing sigh.
“Angels, Markhat, I’ve been dead for ten years. Why is it I know more about women than you?”
“This is good beer.”
Evis stretched, yawning. He forgot to cover his mouth. I concentrated on my beer until he was done.
“Keeping some late hours?”
“House Avalante never sleeps,” he replied. “Things are already happening, Markhat. Iron stocks have gone up so far and so fast people are going to suspect the Army is buying ore as fast as they can mine it. And work has already started on the old walls, making them ready for cannon emplacements.”
I frowned. I hadn’t heard a word.
Evis guessed my thoughts. “It’s just whispering, here and there,” he said. “But give it another week. People will see things being prepared, and there won’t be any denying the Regent is getting ready for something.”
I consulted the bottom of my beer bottle.
“We hear Prince has bought up a hundred and fifty barges. Wouldn’t that be a smart way to bring a few thousand cannon down the Brown?”
“So it’s really going to happen.”
“Looks that way. The other Houses are beginning to hunker down. You’d better wrap this Lethway business up soon. The day is coming when you may have to close shop for a while.”
I cussed, took one last blessed draw from Evis’s good cigar, and stood.
“Thanks for the beer and the company.”
“Don’t mention it. Old Hammer the cook likes it when he sees a couple of empty plates. I think Darla would at least feed you on a regular basis, Markhat. Something else to think about.”
I found my hat. “Talk to you later, Evis.”
“That’s Captain Prestley, if you please.”
The door opened silently as I reached for it. A pale, silent figure bade me follow.
I followed. I didn’t need his mostly-shuttered lantern. I knew the way by heart.
In fact, I reflected, the lightless halls of Avalante were far more familiar than Rannit was turning out to be.
Post-Curfew traffic was heavy. Most were black House carriages, bearing their thirsty halfdead passengers to and fro in search of the unwary, the unwise and the just plain stupid.
But most of the traffic was Army. There were cabs and wagons and huge eight-wheeled lumber barges, some loaded with bricks or tarp-covered masses that could have been cannons or catapults or nude statues of the Regent.
All rattled and rushed through the night, safe from the predations of the Houses as long as they were uniformed and going about the Regent’s business.
I understood now how the preparations for war were going at least in part unnoticed by the law-abiding citizens of Rannit. The army was working at night, using the Curfew as a cover. I was sure the soldiers themselves weren’t doing much talking, on pain of long months in the brig or worse.
On a whim, I asked the driver to take a side trip toward Seward, where the longest section of Rannit’s Old Kingdom wall still stood.
He replied with a cheery “Yes, sir” and away we sped, bumping over cobbles and trash.
I watched through my window. Most of Rannit was dark and sleeping. Lights shone here and there, though, and from a few windows figures watched us pass.
We crossed the weatherworn remains of the Old Bazaar and wound our way through the narrows streets of Crike. Crike was awake, if hopelessly drunk. Fires danced in vacant lots, surrounded by huddled figures who shouted and drank and wobbled in the shadows.
Three dark carriages followed us into Crike, but did not emerge. Which meant a few of the careless revelers would be found by the dead wagons in the morning, drained and still.
Emerging from Crike onto Seward was akin to leaving the land of night for that of day.
Oil-lamps lined the street. Huge magelamps, borne by wagons, were parked at regular intervals along the old wall, aimed up so that the top was bathed in lights. Men hurried up and down ladders, bearing tools. A ramp of oak timbers allowed wheelbarrows and small wagons to be driven to the top of the wall.
Hammers fell. Men shouted. A team of ogres hooted as they pulled a pallet of bricks up the ramp, one powerful ogre yank at a time.
My driver whistled. “What is that?”
