by Frank Tuttle
Evis pondered that.
“Merely dumping powder onto the bluffs wouldn’t work,” he said. “But powder inserted into shafts drilled into the bluff-faces…”
A nagging thought struck me. “Of course, if that was such a good idea, Hisvin would have already done it.”
Evis lifted an eyebrow. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Because if her plans to block the bluffs became known, our foes might take steps to secure the bluffs before we arrive.”
“Looks like they’d do that anyway.”
“Not if they believe Rannit is drawing all its efforts toward a confrontation at the city walls. And not if by some miracle they are oblivious to the extent to which the Corpsemaster has mastered the art of explosive manufacture.”
“That’s a lot of ifs.”
“And not enough beers.” He produced another pair of bottles from the bucket, and glared at his map as though he could force it to surrender and save us all a world of trouble. “Tell me more about these bluffs. Are they limestone or granite?”
By midnight, the bucket was empty.
But our map was covered in scribbles and scrawls.
It was late when Evis kicked me out so he could run downstairs and convince his bosses that spending a fortune now to blow up a pair of cliff faces might save them several fortunes in the days to come. So late that I didn’t bother asking to see Gertriss, who I hoped was asleep in a big soft bed.
I went home, once again in a shiny black Avalante carriage. Curfew had fallen hours before, leaving the streets quiet and the windows dark. A crescent moon peeped between high, fast-moving wisps of clouds, not quite bright enough to cast any shadows.
I heard the sound of hammers in the distance, and knew why they were falling, why the men were working. I wondered how many hammer-blows of hard work would be undone by a single cannon firing. Then I imagined eight thousand cannons firing upon Rannit, and I envied the Moon her station so far above our troubles.
I had the carriage drop me five blocks from home. I waited until it was gone before I broke from my place in a deep well of shadows and began to walk.
On foot, the street was not nearly as silent. I heard the odd voice raised inside the shuttered buildings about me. Somewhere near, a trio of drunken Curfew-breaking revelers hooted and barked in song. A lonesome tomcat cried out, and went unanswered, and I wondered if Three-leg was ever coming home.
Two blocks from home, I stopped, watching and listening. If anyone was following me they were wearing felt-soled boots. I let the silence linger, and then I crossed the empty street and ducked into another pool of shadow.
Ahead was old man Eaton’s barber pole. The red spiral was long gone, wiped away by the sun and the rain and Eaton’s legendary miser’s fist.
The wind shifted. On it rode the stink of Mama’s hex-brew.
I’d dabbed the barber’s pole earlier. Which meant someone with murder in his heart had passed this way since then, headed for my door.
I took a moment to rearrange certain accoutrements. Toadsticker found his way into my right hand. The brass knuckles slipped around the knuckles of my left. My knife moved from my boot to Sticker’s empty scabbard. I buttoned up my dark coat and pushed my hat down and worked my way from shadow to shadow, heading home.
I finally hit Cambrit. I peered around a corner long enough to see my door. It wasn’t aflame. There was no one on the street, no one lurking in any spot I would’ve chosen to lurk.
But I smelled the stink, strong and steady, and I knew damned well he was out there.
So I waited.
You’d be surprised how hard just waiting can be. Especially when you’re waiting for trouble. After a while, the urge to charge in and do something, do anything, becomes almost unbearable.
I’d seen that urge get too many men killed during the War.
I made myself comfortable. I shifted my weight from knee to knee. I concentrated on my breathing. I let time pass, let it act as my silent ally.
An hour passed.
Another.
Finally, right after the tired moon set, my hidden friend gave in to impatience.
He’d been hiding in the narrow alley beside Mr. Bull’s place. That alone showed he wasn’t bright. That’s a dead end, a shallow three-walled coffin with no way out.
He was a big man. Ogre big, nearly. Tall and thick, with long hair tied back in a ponytail. His boots were loud on the quiet street. He huffed as he walked.
He reached my door. He put an ear to it, listened, tried the knob.
I started moving myself, using the shadows, watching my feet.
He put a massive paw on my door and pushed. When that didn’t work, he put his shoulder against it and pushed again.
I saw the frame give a tiny bit.
He withdrew, took a pair of steps back, and then hurled himself at my door, shoulder-first. It gave way, and he rushed into the sudden inky darkness.
There was the sound of heavy things falling, and a muffled cry, and then silence.
I darted to stand beside my splintered door and dared a quick look inside.
It was dark, but I saw the boot-soles upright on my floor, and heard a faint moaning.
I darted across for a better look. My man was down, his head buried under a pile of loose bricks and jagged stones, and I didn’t think he was faking an injury.
Finding loose, broken bricks in Rannit is easy. Earlier in the day, I’d gathered quite a stack. Rigging them to fall if visitors failed to reach up and tug on a rope beside the door wasn’t as easy as picking up brickbats, but it had certainly been worth the effort.
My visitor stirred. Bricks slid and fell. He was even bigger up close. I pushed what was left of my poor door shut and grabbed the length of stout rope I’d wisely left tacked to the wall. I hog-tied him before he could do much more than wiggle.
Then I lit a couple of lamps, shoved my desk out of the way, and sat on my chair, close enough to give him a good thump on the back of his head with Toadsticker, should the need suddenly arise.
He just watched me, his eyes wary. He didn’t bluster or beg or threaten.
His clothes were shabby and worn, but they were city clothes from Rannit, and if his boots had ever seen the quaint pastoral beauty of Pot Lockney they didn’t bear the marks of the journey.
“Local boy,” I said. I let Toadsticker glimmer a bit in the lamplight. “Out to make a little extra money, are we?”
He spoke then. He was apparently displeased with my hospitality and my parentage.
“Tsk tsk.” I interrupted his narrative with a friendly swat. “That’s no way to talk. Not when I’m holding a sword. Think what might happen if I took offense.”
He shut up.
It was only then I noticed he didn’t stink of Mama’s brew.
I sat up straight. I’d smelled it outside. So if I wasn’t smelling it here, that meant my trap hadn’t managed to snare all the Markhat-haters in the neighborhood.
“You’re not alone.” I twirled Toadsticker as though winding up for a blow.
“Wait. Wait. He paid me. Said he wanted you pounded good before he came inside.”
“Pounded good. I see. Was slipping a knife between my ribs also part of the deal?”
“Mister, I said I’d give you a beating. I didn’t say nothing about killing. You can ask around. That ain’t my line.”
“I’ll let the Watch do the asking.” He paled a bit at that. “You got a name?”
“Mills. They call me Grist.”
“I’ve heard of you. Fists for hire. Glad you had your little accident before you found me napping.”
I had heard the name. Never in connection with a killing. Which didn’t mean he was really Mills, or that Mills never killed. “Now, about the man who paid you. An out of towner?”
He frowned, wondering how much I knew, and what lies he might dare tell. “Some hayseed from a farming village. Pots Locked or Pig Valley or some such damned place. He never gave a name and I never asked. Hell, mister, I took a ha
lf a crown and said I’d beat you down. I didn’t come in for murder. Ask around. I do beatings, but I never killed a man.”
“Half a crown. With another half a crown to come?”
He tried to nod. “As I was leaving. That was the deal.”
“So if I look in your pocket I’ll find half a crown.”
“All right. All right. Twenty-five jerks. But that’s the truth, I swear it.”
“This hayseed. Where did you meet him?”
“The docks. A guy knew a guy who heard somebody wanted somebody beat.”
“And what does he look like?”
“Short. Bald. Fat. Missing teeth. Smelled like pig shit.”
I shook my head in mock dismay. Toadsticker gleamed in the faint light.
“That’s everyone down at the docks. Not good enough. Too bad for you.”
I didn’t have to raise the sword.
“No! Wait, all right, wait. I followed him after we talked. He’s staying at a place called the Bargewright. Room on the ground floor. Mister, I’m telling the truth.”
I kept my face impassive. “You followed him? Why?”
He made frantic gobbling noises until I nudged him with steel.
“Because they promise half up front and the other half afterward and sometimes the only money they’ve got is the first half. I need to know where to look if they short me. That’s the truth.”
I sighed and took Toadsticker away.
“I’m going to leave the money in your pockets. I figure it’ll take you about an hour to work past those knots. When you’re done, what are you going to do, exactly?”
“Leave. Leave and never come back.”
“Do you have plans that involve you running down to the docks and paying a visit to the Bargewright?”
“No. No. Mister, I’ll leave here and go home and you’ll never see me again.”
I rose. “Tell you what. Clean up this mess and I won’t come looking for you.”
“Anything you say. I promise.”
“Right. I’m leaving. If you’re still here when I get back I’m either giving you to the Watch or feeding you to the halfdead, depending on the hour. You didn’t see a cat around, did you?”
“A what?”
“Never mind.” I stepped around him, shoved my desk back in its place, and wrestled my ruined door open.
“Try not to bleed on my floor, will you? The maid gets squeamish.”
I yanked the door shut before he could reply.
The street was still quiet. No trace of hex-stink lingered. But I knew where the stinker was headed, and I intended to meet him there.
Chapter Thirteen
There’s no way to get a cab in Rannit after Curfew. But a man in a hurry with a pocketful of coin can get a horse and saddle, if he manages to rouse Mr. Flemmons out of his bed without beating down his door in the process.
I managed it. Which meant I not only had the advantage granted by an intimate knowledge of Rannit’s highways and byways but the added speed of four talented hooves. The saddle rubbed my ass raw, and I drew the stares of a couple of halfdead out on the prowl, but I made it to the Docks unpunctured and well in advance of any short, fat hayseeds fleeing Cambrit on foot.
I helped myself to a barn near the Bargewright and made sure my mighty steed Rosie had water and hay. Then I made my way down the pitch-dark street toward the flickering candlelit windows of the Bargewright.
Places like the Bargewright cater to lumberjacks and cattle ranchers and everyone else who has reason to float cargo down the Brown but lacks the funds to end their journey downtown in the clean inns. No, the Bargewright had a leaky roof and thin walls and, if they supplied anything with generosity, it was the cheap booze and the day-old stew.
I walked around the place to find all the doors. Turned out there was only one that wasn’t chained and locked, and it was the front door, so I grinned and ambled inside.
The common room was dim and smoky. A fire that wanted tending was smoldering in a crumbling fireplace. Flies buzzed about, feasting on pools of spilled beer and the remains of abandoned meals.
There were three men and two women scattered about the room when I opened the door. By the time I’d taken two steps inside, they were gone.
“Wise choice.” I took a moment and dabbed the doorframe with Mama’s hex goo. I loosened my coat. I poked up the fire before I choked on the smoke.
Then I turned a chair so that it faced the door and I waited to surprise my out-of-town friend.
I figured a fat man, on foot, would need a good forty-five minutes to make it from Cambrit to the docks, even at a steady run.
An hour and half passed, banged out by the Big Bell’s smaller sibling, before I heard boots and heavy breathing outside.
A man dove inside and slammed the door behind him.
His beady little eyes were wild. His bald, round head was bathed in sweat and streaked with dirt. He was gasping for air and trying to mouth words but couldn’t get them out at first. He stank of hex-brew and to a lesser extent of pig manure.
He saw me. But whatever he’d seen outside was occupying all his mind.
“Vampires,” he managed to gasp. “Outside. Chasing.”
“Well, you can relax. They won’t beat down the door. Curfew says you’re fair game if they catch you outdoors, but once you cross a threshold the chase is done.”
He gobbled air and regarded me with eyes going wary.
I pushed my hat back.
“Of course, there’s no telling who might be waiting for you inside, is there?”
He knew, then. I’m sure he’d seen me before, even followed me. While he stood there panting and sweating, it dawned on him who I was, and I watched his little brain piece together the events he knew must have led me here, and what that meant for his next few moments.
I had him. I had him, and he knew it. He had nowhere to run. Halfdead behind and finders before. I braced myself for the begging and the denials.
The last thing I expected that fat turnip-herder to do was open the door and charge back into the dark.
But that’s just what he did.
I leaped to my feet and charged after him.
I didn’t even hear him scream. I saw a blur of movement, black shadows whipping within blacker shadows, and as I drew Toadsticker the fat man’s body slumped to the street and a pair of halfdead were suddenly standing before me.
Their mouths were red and wet. Their dead pale eyes were fixed upon me.
“I’m with Avalante,” I said. I tapped my silver House pin. “Evis Prestley is a friend of mine.”
“The finder,” said one.
“How amusing,” said the other. A trickle of blood ran down his chin. “Was that a friend of yours?”
“Hardly. He tried to kill me earlier. I was hoping to ask him why.”
“Apologies.”
“Regrets.”
I didn’t like the way they kept smiling.
“Evis is, in fact, a very good friend of mine.”
They laughed high, hissing laughs before turning and gliding away.
I went to the fat man’s side, felt for a pulse at his neck.
I felt no beating of a heart. When I pulled my hand away, it was wet.
I cussed a bit and turned him over and searched him for pockets and papers. I found a key, a last meal in the form of a half-eaten biscuit he had probably consumed in that alley across from my place, a couple of copper coins, and a short length of wood carved with what felt like mystical symbols.
I cleaned my hand on his shirt and left him for the dead wagons. He no longer stank of Mama’s hex-brew. I guess that departed with his heartbeat.
An ogre passed, pulling an empty cart. He sent the dead man flying up onto the sidewalk with a single casual kick.
Hell of a way to end a life.
The dead man’s room was much like his corpse—it reeked of body odor, and the only thing that could cleanse it now was a hot fire.
I used Toadsticker’s point
to move clothing and suspect bits of trash around. He hadn’t come to Rannit with anything except a burlap bag and an extra pair of boots, but he’d somehow managed to collect quite a few articles of used clothing, most of them filthy and probably housing legions of lice and fleas. What he intended to do with a load of filthy clothes is not something I’ll ponder.
I didn’t see the tiny chest of drawers at first. It was stuck in a corner and covered with rags. But Toadsticker’s point found it, and I scraped the debris away and there it was—three legs and leaning, but sporting three closed drawers.
The bottom two were empty. The top one held a sweat-stained paper envelope. Inside were two folded sheets of Army-issue yellow paper, and scrawled on one was my name, my address and a largely inaccurate map of Rannit and the Docks. Gertriss was mentioned as well, though listed as living at my place.
Scrawled below her name was the notation Get her first.
The next page was a map. It was drawn in a different ink and with a different hand. It started at a point north of Mama’s hereditary village of Pot Lockney and then wandered through the Northwoods to a point just south of Prince. Then it led straight to Rannit via the Brown.
No names, no brief but informative narration of dastardly plots, no hastily scrawled confessions by the hex-caster.
I folded it all and stuffed it in my jacket pocket and spent a few minutes poking around to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. I hadn’t, so I locked the door behind me, left the key in the lock and tipped my hat to the lady in the next room who peeped out at me through her door.
“You know him?” I asked.
She slammed her door shut and locked it.
I tossed the dead man’s wand into the dying fire and watched it for a moment. It burned just fine. Whatever power it might have held was as dead as its last owner.
