Angry Lead Skies

by Glen Cook

  “I suppose what I really want is for you to look out for him. Kip’s a royal pain sometimes, Garrett, but that’s mostly because nobody ever taught him how to get along with people. He befriended a couple of strays. Lost souls in the physical sense. He took care of them. They were grateful. That made him feel important. Same as I feel when I take care of him and the horses. He shouldn’t get hurt for that.”

  Playmate was right. The world needed more helpful and considerate people. But I was looking at something else. Some very complex things seemed to be going on inside Playmate right now. He was taking this more personally than he should.

  “You wouldn’t be the missing father here, would you?” That stunned Playmate. He chomped air a couple of times, in a way that left me wondering if I hadn’t somehow struck nearer the mark than I’d thought possible. One glance and even the most cynical student of human folly would understand that Cypres Prose was no kin to Playmate.

  “Don’t try to provoke me, Garrett.”

  “Huh?” Provocation isn’t my style. Not with my friends. Not very often, anyway. Not the ones that’re three feet taller than me and strong enough to hold a horse under one arm while using the off hand to change the monster’s shoes.

  “I’m sorry. I apologize. This mess is keeping me on edge.”

  “Why is that?” By now I had resigned myself to not being able to make peace with Katie anytime soon. “Why don’t you just lay this whole thing out so we don’t have to pick you guys apart just so we can assemble enough information for me to start?”

  I’ve found that clients never want to tell the whole story. Never. Another given is that they’re going to lie to you about half of what they tell you. They want results without having to reveal anything embarrassing. They lie about almost everything. The worst offenders are those who have fallen victim to their own greed or stupidity. They expect results, too.

  Playmate was not a bad client. His fib quotient was pretty low, probably, as much because he knew about my partner as because he’s naturally a good guy. He talked a good deal but failed to tell me much more than I had gotten already. Kip had become friendly with a pair of oddballs named Lastyr and Noodiss, no other names given. He had helped them learn their way around. After a while other oddballs turned up looking for the first two. Inasmuch as they never explained their interest, that was not taken to be benign. Especially considering recent events at the stable and Kip’s home. Not all of the oddballs were necessarily the same kind of oddball.

  Lastyr and Noodiss had been around for most of a year. Those hunting them had shown up only recently. All the elves seemed very determined.

  Kip nodded a lot and didn’t add anything. I trusted the Dead Man would collect anything that reached the surface of the boy’s thoughts.

  Playmate told me, “It may be coincidence. Kip’s always made up fantastic stories. But it was right after those first two characters showed up that he started inventing things. I mean, things that worked or looked like maybe you could make them work.”

  The boy’s head is bursting with the images of the most amazing mechanisms, Garrett.

  He seemed completely thrilled.

  I asked, “What would you suggest I do?”

  “Just stick with us for a while,” Playmate said.

  Investigate.

  “Investigate what?”

  Let your experience be your guide. And, Whatever else you do, do try to catch one of those creatures and bring it here to see me.

  “I’m the miracle worker of TunFaire, aren’t I?”

  Aren’t I?

  7

  There was no sign of Katie when we stepped out the front door, me freshly bathed and cleanly dressed in hand-me-down apparel that approached the respectable. My sweetie had an hour head start now. And would be boiling like an overheated teapot.

  Katie was going to require some cautious cooling down. I definitely didn’t want her getting too cold.

  I did spot Dean. Headed home. Where the hell had he been? He wasn’t carrying anything.

  He dropped a coin — a coin that belonged to me because he’d never give away a chipped copper of his own — onto the tattered blanket of a streetside fortune-teller. That caught her completely by surprise. Nevertheless, she gave him a toothless blessing.

  There was an idea. I ought to hang out a shingle proclaiming myself a great psychic. Old Bones could rummage around inside their heads and feed me the items I would use to impress them enough to make them turn loose of their money.

  An open mouth precludes open ears.

  “What the hell does that mean?” I hadn’t said anything. “I hate it when you talk that ancient wisdom stuff. The butterfly is silent when the eagle walks upon the sand.”

  I patted myself down. I was equipped with an arsenal of — mostly — nonlethal tools of mayhem. “Lead on, Play.”

  Playmate descended the steps and turned left. I followed, keeping Kip between us.

  Dean met us at the foot of the steps. “Where you been?” I asked.

  “Running a couple of errands.”

  “Ah.” I said no more. No point letting him know he gave himself away whenever he was sneaking around doing something on the Dead Man’s orders. “Let us continue, friend Playmate.” I studied the street as we resumed moving. I saw nothing out of place.

  Macunado Street is a busy thoroughfare, day or night. A ferocious downpour or bitter winter weather are about all that will clear it. The street was particularly busy today. But it was conventionally busy. Not one known villain, nor a potential riot, was anywhere in sight.

  “Who was that?” Playmate asked after I waved to a neighbor.

  “Mrs. Cardonlos. The police spy. Sometimes tormenting her is the only fun to be had.”

  “There’re occasions when I despair of you, Garrett. There’re times when you appear to be your own worst enemy. Why on earth would you want to taunt someone who has the power to tell lies about you to people who’d just as soon feed you to the rats?”

  “Because Relway’s bunch would be more suspicious if I didn’t.” Deal Relway is the master of TunFaire’s unacknowledged secret police force. I know him because I was there when that particular terrorbird hatched. Its existence has become an open secret, anyway.

  I do get nervous sometimes, knowing what I do know about some key individuals. Relway wouldn’t hesitate to bend or break the law in his determination to maintain law and order. He might not hesitate to bend or break me.

  Playmate’s livery establishment was less than an hour away. We reached it without running into trouble. Once we did I borrowed his kitchen to brew myself a fresh mug of headache medicine.

  8

  Kip’s little workshop didn’t tell me much. It was evident the kid knew his tools, though. He had a hell of a collection, half of which I didn’t know what they were. He had a hundred unidentifiable projects going. As soon as we walked in he grabbed a file and went to work on notches in a round metal plate about eight inches in diameter. It took him only a few seconds to become totally focused.

  “What the hell?” I asked.

  Playmate shrugged. “I don’t know. Part of one of his machines. I can show you the picture he had me draw.”

  “I meant, how come he suddenly goes from being something you have to keep on a leash to being somebody who’s blind to the whole damned world?”

  Another expressive shrug. Playmate showed me into his forge area, which had expanded considerably since my last visit and which was an amazing clutter of junk and what looked like things half-built. I wondered how he got any shoeing done.

  From some niche Playmate produced a leather folder filled with dozens of sheets of good linen paper. He shuffled through unsuspectedly good bits of artwork until he located the piece he wanted. I glimpsed my own likeness in passing. “Now that was a good-looking young man.”

  Playmate grunted. I think that was meant to be neutral but failed to sound like it when he observed, “The operative word being ‘was.’”

 
There were more portrait sketches. They were all good. I recognized several people.

  How many hidden talents did Playmate have? He surprised me every few months.

  The portfolio contained more sketches of devices than of people. Some were really complicated, highly unlikely mechanisms. And a few didn’t seem complicated at all. One of those was a little two-wheeler cart with a pair of long shafts sticking out in front. A man had been sketched in as pulling it, conveying another seated in the cart.

  Something like that, without the shafts, sat about ten feet from where I stood. “You’re trying to build some of these things?”

  “Unh? Oh. Yeah. All of them, eventually. But there’re problems. With that thing I’m having trouble finding long enough poles that’re still light. But we did test it. It’ll work.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we have an extremely lazy complement of wealthy people in this town. And a lot of unemployed young men who need something to keep them out of trouble. My notion is to build a fleet of those things and rent them out at nominal fees so some of those young men have a way to make a living. Which will keep them out of trouble at the same time.”

  Having a way to make a living didn’t keep me out of trouble.

  That was Playmate, though. Finding a way to get rich doing good deeds. Except that then he would end up giving away any wealth he acquired.

  Next to the cart stood a second mechanism. I could not figure it out. It had three wheels. Two were about a foot in diameter and were mounted at the ends of a wooden axle. The other was about two and a half feet in diameter, turning on a hardwood pin which passed through the ends of a two-lined wooden fork. That rose through the upper end of an arc of hardwood that curved down to the two-wheel axle. A curved crossbar above the hardwood arc allowed the larger wheel to be turned right and left.

  I did not see a sketch of that in Playmate’s folio. “What is that?”

  “We just call it a three-wheel. Let me finish showing you this. Then I’ll let you see how it works. Here. Check this. It’s a two-wheel. It’s a more complicated cousin of that.” He extracted a drawing.

  This mechanism had two wheels of equal size, fore and aft, with a rider perched amidships, as though astride a horse. “I’m not sure I get this.”

  “Oh, I don’t, either. Kip explains these things when he has me draw them but I seldom understand. However, everything he finishes putting together does what he says it will do. And sometimes it seems so obvious afterward that I wonder why nobody ever thought of it before. So I take him on faith. This engine — and that one there — gets around on power provided by the rider’s legs. If you want to know much more than that you’ll have to ask Kip. He’ll turn human after a while. Come here.” He led me to the three-wheel.

  “Climb up here and sit down.”

  The wooden arc part of the mechanism boasted a sort of saddle barely big enough for a mouse. When I sat on it my butt ached immediately. “So what is it? Some kind of walker with wheels?” If so, my legs were too long. “I’ve seen lots better wheelchairs.” Chodo Contague has one that is so luxurious it comes with a crew of four footmen and has its own heating system.

  “Put your feet up on these things.” He used the toe of a boot to indicate an L-shaped bar that protruded from the hub of the big wheel up front. “The one on the other side, too. Good. Now push. With your right foot. Your other right foot.”

  The three-wheel moved. I zipped around in a tight circle. “Hey! This’s neat.” My foot slipped off. The end of the iron L clipped my anklebone. I iterated several words that would have turned Mom red. I reiterated them with considerable gusto.

  “We’re working on that. That can’t be much fun. We’re going to drill a hole down the center of a flat piece of hardwood...”

  I got the hang of the three-wheel quickly. But there wasn’t enough room to enjoy it properly in there. “How about I take it out in the street?”

  “I’d really rather you didn’t. I’m sure that’s why we’ve had the trouble we’ve had. Kip took it out there, racing around, and before he got back he had several people try to take it away from him. And right afterward the strange people started coming around.”

  I scooted around the stable for a few minutes more, then gave up because I couldn’t enjoy the machine’s full potential under such constrained circumstances. “Are you planning to make three-wheels, too? Because if you are, I want one. If I can afford it.”

  Playmate’s eyes lighted up as he saw the possibility of paying my fees without having to part with any actual money. “I might. But honesty compels me to admit that we’re having problems with it. Especially with getting the wheels and the steering bar to move freely. Lard doesn’t seem to be the ideal lubricant.”

  “And it draws flies.” Plenty of those were around. But the place was a stable, after all.

  “That, too. And the kinds of hardwoods we need to make the parts aren’t common. Not to mention that we’d have to come up with whole teams of woodworking craftsmen if we were to build even a fraction of the number of them we think we’d need to satisfy the demand there’d be once people started seeing them in the streets.”

  “Hire some of those out-of-work veterans to make them.”

  “How many of them, you figure, are likely to be skilled joiners and cabinetmakers?”

  “Uhn. Not to mention wheelwrights.” I walked around the three-wheel. “That geekoid kid over there actually thought this up?”

  “This thing and a whole lot more, Garrett. It’ll be a mechanical revolution if we ever figure out how to build all of the things he can imagine.”

  I slid down off the three-wheeler. “What do you call this?”

  “Like I told you. Just three-wheel.”

  There had to be something that sounded more dramatic. “Here’s a notion. You could train your veterans just to do what it takes to manufacture three-wheels. That wouldn’t be like them having to learn all about making cabinets and furniture.”

  “And then I’d have guild trouble.”

  I stared at the three-wheel, sighed, told Playmate, “I guarantee you, somebody’s going to get rich off this thing.” My knack for prophecy is limited but that was a prediction I made with complete conviction. I had no trouble picturing the streets of the better neighborhoods overrun with three-wheels.

  “Someone with fewer ethical disadvantages than I have, you mean?”

  “That wasn’t what I was getting at, but it’s a fact. As soon as you get some of those things out there you’re going to have people trying to build knockoffs.” I had a thought. Lest it get lonely I sent it out into the world. “You said Kip took this one out and somebody tried to take it away from him?”

  Playmate nodded.

  “Could it be that Kip’s having problems because somebody wants to steal his ideas?” I’m sure that I’m not the only royal subject bright enough to see the potential of Kip’s inventions.

  Playmate nodded. “That could be going on, too. But there’s definitely something to the trouble with the weird elves. And right now I’m more worried about them. Stay here and keep an eye on Kip while I make us all a pot of tea.”

  Ever civilized, my friend Playmate. In the midst of chaos he’ll take time for amenities, all with the appropriate service.

  9

  Kip tired of filing his metal wheel. He put it aside and started fiddling with something wooden. I watched from the corner of one eye while I thumbed through Playmate’s drawings and sketches. The man really was good. More so than with portraits, he had a talent for translating Kip’s ideas into visual images. There was a lot of written information on some of the sheets, inscribed in a hand that was not Playmate’s.

  “How do you come up with this stuff?” I asked Kip. I didn’t expect an answer. If he heard it at all the question was sure to irritate him. Creative people get it all the time. They get tired of questions that imply that the artist couldn’t possibly produce something out of the whole cloth of the mind. It was a question I
wouldn’t have asked a painter or poet.

  Kip surprised me by responding, “I don’t know, Mr. Garrett. They just come to me. Sometimes in my dreams. I’ve always had ideas and a head full of stories. But lately those have been getting better than they ever were before.” He did not look up from the piece of wood he was shaping.

  He had become a different person now that he was settled in the sanctuary of his workshop. He was calm and he was confident.

  I wondered how much puberty had to do with his problems and creativity.

  Tucked into the back of Playmate’s folio, folded so I nearly overlooked them, were four smaller sketches of strange “elves.”

  “Would these be some of the people who’re giving you a hard time?”

  The boy looked up from his work. “Those two are Noodiss and Lastyr. Left and right. They’re the good ones. I don’t know the other two. They may be some of the ones Play ran off.”

  Playmate arrived with the tea. “They are.”

  “I told you your talent would be a wonderful tool in the war against evil. See? We have two villains identified already.”

  “Do we, then?”

  No, we doedn’t, doed we? We had sketches of a couple of likely baddies about whom we knew nothing whatsoever. I wasn’t even sure they were the same kind of elves as the other two. They didn’t look like the same breed in the sketches.

  I changed the subject. “I have an idea, too.”

  Man and boy looked at me skeptically.

  “It can happen!” I insisted. “Look. You see how much work it was making the steering handles for your three-wheel? You could use ox horns instead. You could get them from the slaughterhouses.” Though the two of them began to look aghast I warmed to greater possibilities. “You could get them to save you the whole skull with the horns still attached. You could produce a special death’s-head model three-wheel for customers from the Hill.”

  Playmate shook his head. “Drink your tea, Garrett. And plan to go to bed early tonight. You need the rest.” I offered him a hard glower.