The Broken Bell

by Frank Tuttle

  The sorcerer laughed. He was a small man. A hood hid most of his face. He kept his hands hidden as well.

  “Tend to your patient, Doctor,” he said softly. “We wouldn’t him to expire before the appointed hour.”

  I could either walk by them to reach Carris, or choose the other side of the table. I decided Doctor Hammonds feared neither man nor sorcerer and brushed past them both, muttering to myself as I walked.

  I knelt beside Carris, put my hand beneath his right wrist and felt for a pulse.

  His skin was warm. His heart was beating. His left hand was wrapped in a bloody, filthy rag. I pulled a corner of the rag away and found the stump of a recently removed forefinger.

  I grunted, moved my hand across his chest, feeling for broken ribs the same way I’d seen our field surgeons do.

  “This hood,” I snapped. “I’m going to remove it.”

  I gritted my teeth, grabbed the bottom of it, and yanked.

  Carris screamed. Fresh blood poured from the wound where his right ear had been.

  I turned and glared at leather pants and his sorcerer companion.

  “This is infected.”

  Neither responded with so much as a shrug. I didn’t like the way leather pants, who I was sure was Japeth Stricken, was staring at me. His expression was that of a man who has just seen a face he knows and is trying to match it with a name he cannot quite remember.

  I opened the bag. The sorcerer’s hands never moved.

  I reached inside it, grabbed a vial at random, and gave its label a cursory glance. Extract of o.ander, it said. Good as any, I thought.

  I opened it, poured some on a clean white cloth, and held it close to Lethway’s missing ear.

  “This is going to hurt,” I said.

  He met my eyes. I wasn’t sure how much he was hearing or if he understood any of it. Blood was trickling from both corners of his mouth and his nose was obviously broken and his face was one solid bruise.

  I dabbed the cloth on the wound.

  He spat blood but didn’t cry out.

  “Surprised,” he managed to croak out, after a few tries. “Surprised. The old man. Paid for a doctor.”

  “Your mother is footing the bill.” I was only playing the role of a doctor, but the more I saw of the kid, the less I liked. His color was bad. I could feel the heat of a fever rising off his skin.

  “Your fiancée sends her regards,” I added as I dabbed.

  Damned if he didn’t try to smile.

  “That will suffice,” said the sorcerer. “As you can see, Doctor, the young man is both alive and largely intact. Time for you to go.”

  “He is barely alive and missing an ear and at least one finger.” I turned and gave the sorcerer a good hard doctor’s glare. “And he has a fever, which could easily kill him within the hour unless I am allowed to continue my treatment.”

  I’d seen one thing I recognized in my borrowed doctor’s bag. Cincee. A good-sized jar of it, in white powder form. Introduced just two years into the War, I’d seen it stop infections and fevers dead in their tracks. Two spoonfuls dissolved in a cupful of water, that’s all it took to make the difference between life and death.

  But I never got the chance to mix it. Leather pants had been gone from Rannit for a good long time, and as far as I know we’d never met. But something in his dark mind clicked.

  “You’re no damned doctor,” he said. His sword made a quiet hissing sound as he drew it from its scabbard. “You’re the finder.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  Upstairs, shouts rang out. I heard the pop-pop-pop of crossbow bolts embedding themselves in timbers, and more shouts, and I wondered whether Lethway or Pratt had decided to start the party a few minutes ahead of midnight.

  Stricken cussed and pointed his sword at me. “Keep him alive until I’m done,” he said to the wand-waver.

  Then he whirled and charged up the stairs.

  The sorcerer lifted his arms and let his sleeves fall down to reveal his hands. Neither was empty. His right held a short plain wand, and in his left was a jawless skull. The skull was human, but too small to be from an adult. A dim green light shone from its childish eye sockets, and I caught a snatch of a high, airy whisper issuing from it.

  The wand-waved glared. He didn’t threaten. He didn’t feel that he needed to.

  Above, thunder sounded, accompanied by lights so bright they shone through the joining of the floor boards. Bolts continued to strike. I heard steel on steel, as men—dozens of them, from the sound of it—hacked at each other with swords and axes.

  The wand-waver grinned a wide nasty grin. He let his hood fall back so that the light touched his face. His eyes were blank pools of silver, lacking white or iris or pupil.

  My hand was in the bag already.

  “I’m going to mix the cincee,” I said aloud. “Kill me if you wish. But I won’t sit here and watch this lad die.”

  I didn’t wait for a reply.

  I grasped the thing Victor had given me. I didn’t pull it out of the bag. The green glow in the dead child’s eyes was getting brighter by the second. I pointed the device right at the center of the wand-waver’s slim chest, and I squeezed the trigger slowly, just as the book instructed.

  The thing coughed and jumped hard in my hand. The bag fell. Vials flew.

  The sorcerer looked at me with blank silver eyes and crumpled in a heap on the cold damp floor.

  I cocked the weapon and kept it trained on the wand-waver’s body. He didn’t move.

  Blood began to pool beneath him.

  His wand burned suddenly, leaving behind nothing but ash and smoke.

  The skull he’d dropped began to gibber and wail.

  Above, pandemonium took root and bloomed. The flares and blasts of sorcerous traps sounded and shone in rapid succession. Screams rose and fell. Boots thudded and scraped on the floor.

  I shoved the weapon in belt and pulled my knife from my boots and cut Carris Lethway free. He tried to help, but kept fumbling and lolling as though fighting off unconsciousness.

  I pulled him to his feet. He was wobbly and swaying.

  “Try to walk,” I said. “We’ve—”

  He kneed me in the groin, the ungrateful little bastard, and simultaneously delivered a solid blow to my nose with his bandaged left hand.

  I stumbled away. He managed to land another blow. I went down on one knee.

  “Dammit, kid, I’m here to rescue you.”

  And that’s all I was able to say before his sturdy oak chair came crashing on me.

  I didn’t pass out, although the room did spin. I crawled manfully under the table.

  “Hell, son, what is wrong with you?”

  He didn’t reply. I heard him race up the stairs, barefoot, and then strike the door at the top.

  I cussed. I grabbed my doctor’s bag but left the contents where they lay. The skull I scooped up and shoved in the bag. It saw me kill the sorcerer, and leaving it behind to plot some ghostly vengeance wasn’t a good way to reach ripe old age.

  Bag and skull in hand, I gave chase, even though it meant charging headlong into a full-blown melee, which featured dozens of armed combatants and a good dose of arcane traps.

  It was bedlam up there. Men hacked and slashed in shouting groups of three or four. Bodies lay everywhere. The floor was slick with blood. Lights flashed and blasts sounded and the Timbers was aflame.

  I caught one glimpse of Carris Lethway, and one only, as he wobbled out the door and onto the street.

  I tried to follow. A pair of men whirled to face me. They held long bloody swords. I had no idea who’d brought them here—Lethway, Pratt or Stricken.

  “I’m on your side,” I said.

  “Kill him,” shrieked the skull. “Kill him.”

  They both charged me.

  I hauled my weapon up out of my belt, aimed it, fired.

  One went down. The other wisely turned and ran.

  I made for the door. On the way, I saw Pratt, trapped in a
corner, trying to hold off three men with a broken longsword.

  I fired twice more. Two of his assailants fell. The other beat a hasty retreat right into a deadly rain of falling, flaming debris.

  Pratt waved and grinned.

  I never saw Lethway. Never saw Stricken. By the time I made it to the doorway, the heat of the fire so intense it nearly burned my back, Carris Lethway was gone.

  Carriages streamed away from the Timbers, scattering in all directions as Watch whistles blew and the dark street lit up with the ruddy glow of climbing fires. Men ran past, no longer fighting, intent only on getting the Hell out of there before the Watch and the Fire Brigades arrived.

  I cussed and fell right in beside them, not caring who was friend or foe. It was over.

  And precious few of us had any damned idea who had lost, or who had won.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Rescued I was, and by a pair of vamps.

  They found me ten blocks from the Timbers. The flames leaped so high they cast shadows all that way.

  I’d searched high and low for Carris Lethway. I knew he was barefoot. Injured. Running a high fever. Probably dehydrated and weak from blood loss and sudden exertion. I figured he’d spent most of whatever energy he had left clobbering me, and I didn’t figure he’d get far from the Timbers after that.

  But I hadn’t found him. I’d poked under trash heaps. Forced my way inside derelict buildings. Dared the thresholds of half a dozen weedhouses.

  I’d found any number of disgusting sights and the kind of smells no sane man can describe. Even my mumbling skull fell silent when I threatened to bury it in a trash heap if it spoke again before sunrise.

  But I found no trace of Carris Lethway. The hungry shadows had simply swallowed him whole.

  I was hiding in these same hungry shadows when a shiny black carriage slowed and then stopped.

  I heard the door open. I never heard footsteps. Suddenly, they were just there.

  “Well, well,” said one.

  “We meet again,” said the other.

  They smiled toothy vampire smiles.

  I recognized them as the pair who’d slain the fat man at the Docks.

  “Good evening, gentlemen. Out for a stroll?”

  “We saw the flames.”

  “We came to see.”

  “Fires send them fleeing.”

  “It’s more sporting that way.”

  My hand was already on the hilt of the weapon. I’d paused to reload it a few blocks ago. I wasn’t sure it would prove fatal to halfdead.

  I was sure I had no interest in finding out.

  “Ah, but I’m hardly fleeing.” I pulled the thing out. “I was just heading home, enjoying the fresh night air.”

  They locked eyes with me.

  One shrugged.

  “Ride with us,” he said.

  “We’re done hunting.”

  “Quite done.”

  “Evis will owe us a favor.”

  “A very large favor.”

  They turned and made for their carriage.

  I let out my breath and followed.

  I asked if they had seen a barefoot man. They responded in the negative, though they were quick to point out that their tastes were too refined to allow them to dine upon the sick or the injured. I hadn’t liked the way they looked at me, at that moment. I made it a point to force a sudden wet cough.

  They took me home to Cambrit and even bade me a good night. I still don’t know their names or their House.

  They regaled with tales of the hunt all the way home.

  I hoped I would never see either of them again.

  I stayed in my office long enough to change my shirt and coat. The vial that had broken inside my pocket stank of garlic. There was also blood splashed up my right arm. I had no idea to whom the blood last belonged.

  The skull was still muttering in the bag. I wished Mama were around with a bit of handy eldritch lore about muttering skulls. I could just stomp the thing into splinters, of course, but for all I knew that would leave me with a pile of vengeful dust. I settled for dumping a bag of salt on it and locking it in a drawer.

  Assuming Carris Lethway was alive, I decided he’d make a beeline for Tamar. And since he’d have no way of knowing Tamar was stashed in a hotel downtown, I had a hunch he’d find somewhere near the Fields house to hide, so he could watch for Tamar in safety.

  Which wasn’t a bad plan, except that the kid was wounded, feverish and very possibly dying.

  I shoved the letters I’d written in a drawer. Toadsticker’s hooks hung empty on my wall. I’d had no time to search for him when the fracas started. I hoped Evis would understand.

  The sun was just creeping up when I hit the streets again. The weapon was in my right-hand coat pocket. I was down to a dozen of the explosive rounds it fired, which meant I’d already fired a dozen times. Try as I might, I could only recall firing the thing six times.

  Six times or a dozen, I’d slain a wand-waver, and that’s something no mere sword could have done.

  I hoofed it until the cabs starting moving. So I was a good five blocks from Cambrit before I caught a ride. From there, I made good time, and reached Fields’s well-trimmed neighborhood before the sky lost its traces of dawn.

  I let the cabbie go. The sidewalks were getting crowded. Carris could hardly expect to mingle in his current state. That limited his hiding places.

  I made the block, noting places that afforded cover and a good view of Tamar’s home. I picked out six places. All but one faced the front door.

  I checked the long shot first. And found signs that someone had been sleeping there. But I didn’t figure it was Carris, since they left behind a couple empty bottles of cheap red wine and the wrapper from a pub sandwich.

  Curious. Someone with an interest in the Fields and their servant’s entrance. Might be the butler from down the street, carrying on with a maid.

  Or it might be something else.

  But it wasn’t Carris, so I emerged from the hedge with as much dignity as I could muster and joined the passing crowd on the sidewalk.

  Next, I checked the same clump of hedges that had recently concealed Mills and. I found blood on the leaves, blood so fresh it was still sticky. A bloody scrap of rag was lying on the grass, beside a pair of ragged shoes.

  So he’d grabbed clothes and shoes along the way, and left these when they didn’t fit.

  And then, presumably, he’d gone looking for the one person in the world Carris Lethway felt he could trust.

  I recalled the hint of murder I’d seen in Fields’s chubby little cheeks. I wasn’t convinced he would murder the kid in cold blood, but there was only one way to find out.

  I didn’t even have to knock.

  The door opened as soon as my shadow fell across it. Both Mr. Fields and his wife stood within, bleary-eyed and anxious.

  “Yes, he’s been here,” said Fields, before I uttered a word. “Been and gone.”

  “He was hurt,” said Mrs. Fields. “Badly.”

  “I know.” They stepped aside and motioned me in. “I found him last night, but he jumped me before I could explain who I was.”

  “He’s looking for Tamar.” Mr. Fields gritted his teeth. “And whoever is looking for him may be looking for her too.”

  “Which is why I kept her whereabouts a secret. Relax. Tamar is fine. Do you have any idea where Carris might be headed?”

  “Yes, dear, why don’t you tell Mr. Markhat where that poor young man is heading? And why he might be heading there?”

  She crossed arms over bosom in the universal sign for wifely disapproval.

  Mr. Fields went crimson.

  “You sent the kid on a wild goose chase to protect your daughter,” I said before he could reply. “Wonderful. Brilliant. That’s what any father would do, medals and parades all around. But I’m not Carris Lethway, Mr. Fields. So when I ask where you sent the kid, I expect an honest answer.”

  “He sent him to Wall Downs,” snappe
d Mrs. Fields. “You’ve heard of it? Tiny little town fifteen miles south of here? They grow wheat. We buy most of our flour from there.”

  I knew of the place. What I knew of it told me it might have a pair of roads, a couple of inns, a canal or two that connected the town to the Brown. Two hundred souls, a couple of big plantation houses and a lot of home-brewed corn whiskey.

  Not a bad place to hide someone. Not a good place to send an injured kid.

  “Did you give him any specific destination, or just point him south and slam the door?”

  “I cleaned him up and treated his wounds and gave him twenty crowns, Mr. Markhat.” He shot a sideways glance at his glowering wife. “I am not as heartless as people seem to think.”

  Mrs. Fields suppressed a snort of derision.

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I told him she was staying at the Two-Headed Lamb. It’s an inn. North end of town.”

  “And then you just let him go.”

  “Damned right I did. And I’m not sorry. He showed up here half dead and bloody, raving about kidnappers and fires, and demanding to see Tamar.” He glared at me. “He’s nothing but trouble, I tell you. Just like his devil of a father.”

  “He ran, Mr. Fields. Ran all the way across Rannit, after Curfew, wounded and sick. All to see Tamar. I don’t know the kid. But I do know this—his devil of a father would never have do that. For anyone.”

  Fields turned away.

  “He’s gone. Follow him or not, I don’t care which. His father, though. Dead?”

  “I hear he left town.”

  “Left? For where?”

  “Place called Wall Downs. Something about two-headed lambs.”

  He said something less than complimentary. His wife turned and marched away, leaving him alone with me.

  “The wedding is tomorrow,” I said. “You should think about getting a new suit.”

  He cussed and slammed his door.

  There are two ways to travel south out of Rannit—the old forest roads that creep through the forest via the South Gate or down the Brown itself.

  A man in a hurry would opt for the Brown. The forest roads are overgrown and prone to disgorge bandits, bears and bobcats from every tallish shrub. Half the bridges are out and the other half were never built to begin with.