by Glen Cook
Could he read me at all?
“What’s that?” Block demanded.
“One of those amulet boxes of theirs. Singe found it today. When things were blowing up on the Embankment. Figured I ought to bring it over. Casey. Do you understand anything I’ve said? Do you know what these people want?”
After a long, long pause Casey nodded.
Of course he knew. It was his mission to make sure they didn’t get it, from him or the Maskers or, especially, the Brotherhood of Light. I hoped he would keep his mission in mind. Because I was counting on him to get us all out of this mess.
“All right. Look here, Colonel. We’re getting somewhere already. Told you I could get through to him. Whoa there, Casey. Slowly and carefully. We aren’t sure which ones of those things are weapons.”
Casey took such offense that his indignance was plain to everyone. “We do not... make weapons!”
That caused a stir, more because he’d spoken than because of what he’d said.
“Is that true? But I’ve been knocked unconscious over and over again by something that left me with the worst headaches of my life.”
I believe Casey would have laughed if Visitors had the capacity for laughter. “What you experienced... was an effect... of a device used... for the removal of... the parasites common to... the bodies of most... of your animals... and races. Lice and... fleas in particular. With the device set... at its strongest... power. We do not... make weapons.”
“I’ll take your word for that. Which one of these doohickeys is a flea getter ridder ofer?”
Casey extended one spider leg finger slowly.
“Good. Sergeant, you want to take that one away?”
Excellent. Now I knew that Casey could tell these devices apart. Hopefully. Which would mean that he should know what kind of fetish I had placed on the table.
Maybe he was smart enough to understand what needed doing.
“So. Let’s go over the rest of these, one by one. Tell me what they’re supposed to do. Start with this one here.”
Casey did that. And after we’d reviewed a couple of fetishes I realized that he couldn’t really make me understand what he was talking about. I didn’t have the vocabulary. Then his voice gave out.
I asked Block, “Can we get him some water in here? He’s obviously not used to talking.”
Block said something. One of his men moved. I glanced over. And when I looked back Casey wasn’t there anymore. Neither were any of the fetishes. An instant later, as the shouting began, the hammer of darkness fell. Again.
84
“What happened?” I mumbled. I was the last one to wake up. The delouser’s effects were cumulative for sure.
“How about you tell me,” Block growled, dragging me into a seated position with my back against a wall.
“I’ve got a notion I don’t have a lot of fleas anymore. Gods, my head is killing me! Hit me and put me out again.” I meant it at the moment.
“No. I want you to get up. I want you hurting while you explain what just happened. You won’t be able to concentrate enough to bullshit me.”
“I don’t know what just happened. You were here. You were paying attention. You probably got a better look than I did.”
“Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. I can’t shake the feeling that there wasn’t a pea under any of the shells.”
Nausea overcame me as I tried to stand. Beer and my last meal beat me to the floor.
“Godsdammit! That just tops my whole day off, Garrett!”
I tried to climb the nearest chair. It was occupied. I gasped, “Get me some water. Wasn’t somebody supposed to go after water?” And, “What happened to him?”
The man in the chair was one of the sorcerers. His eyes were open but nobody seemed to be at home behind them.
The look was worse than the thousand-yard stare. With that you knew your guy would probably come back someday. Seeing this, you knew he wouldn’t, ever.
“I don’t know, Garrett. He seems to have turned into a vegetable. They all have. But nobody else was hurt.” He stepped carefully, avoiding my mess.
Wow. Casey must’ve done that deliberately. He wasn’t a nice guy after all. Unless he hadn’t been aware what they were and this was a by-product of them owning their talent in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Block declared, “I think their intelligence was deliberately and systematically destroyed.”
“That would make our Casey a vindictive little bastard, wouldn’t it? Completely without a sense of humor about being misused. Why do you suppose he let you and me and the rest of these guys slide? Because we’re like him, just battling the darkness the best we know how?”
“Gift horses, eh? You could be right.” He didn’t say anything for a while. I seized the opportunity to concentrate on feeling sorry for myself. I wondered if Lastyr and Noodiss had gotten away before they gave Kip an idea for a miracle headache cure. I’d better check. Then Block told me, “I’d better have you taken home. I want you to stay inside your house until I get this sorted out. There’ll be questions. Some of you men want to get this mess cleaned up? Can’t anybody around here do something without waiting to be told?”
It didn’t seem likely. Not when everybody was preoccupied with a killer headache.
“This is bad shit, Garrett,” Block whined. “This’s real bad shit. I’ll be lucky to get out of this just losing my job.”
“Aren’t you being a little too pessimistic?” I clamped down and pushed the pain back. But not very far. “Man, you let yourself get way too impressed by people off the Hill. Did Hill people give you your job? I thought Prince Rupert did that. And what were these guys trying to pull, anyway? They were trying to cut the rest of those witch doctors up there out of the jackpot. You watch. The rest of their kind will take one quick look at the facts and figure they had it coming.”
“You do have a knack for looking on the bright side, Garrett. I sure hope it’s as easy as all that.”
First I’d heard of me being a brightside kind of guy. But what the hell, eh? If I played to that maybe Block would forget to nag me about Casey’s getaway.
I reminded the good colonel of his obligations. “I thought you were going to take me home.”
85
Colonel Block’s coach was still a block from my house when it bogged down in traffic. Macunado Street was clogged with bodies, most of them human and only remotely acquainted with personal hygiene, but with plenty of odds and ends and mixtures in the crowd, too. Everybody wanted to see the glowing blob in the sky that seemed so interested in our neighborhood.
This blob wasn’t a flying disk. Nor was it like those things that Evas and her friends had flown. This was more of a cylinder with gently tapered ends, with nothing protruding outside. To hear the crowd tell it, the cylinder had descended to ground level several times but was now just hovering, like it was confused. Or just waiting.
I told Block, “I’m telling you right now, flying around up in the air isn’t one-tenth as much fun as you might think.”
“And you’d know what you’re talking about?”
“Hasn’t been that long since I took a few rides on a pegasus.”
“Garrett, you ought to write all your adventures down. Being mindful not to leave out any of the bullshit you’re always laying on people you know.”
“I’d do that if there was any way to make a few coppers out of it. But even I have trouble believing some of the stuff that’s happened to me.”
“You’re right. You’d have a credibility problem. I don’t believe some of it — and I was there when it happened.”
The crowd oohed and aahed as the skyship suddenly dropped down almost to touching level, just about where the Garrett homestead stood. It hovered there only briefly. Colonel Block was looking out the other side of the coach at the time. He might not have noticed.
He did say, “All these weird things going on in the sky lately have had their positive side effects.”
“For
instance?” I wasn’t paying close attention. I was worrying about Casey’s stubborn streak. Was he going to get after Kip again, now?
“Such as the political shenanigans have quieted down for a while. We haven’t had anybody march for days. And it’s been at least a week since there was a significant race riot.”
“People get tired of the same old entertainment.”
Casey’s skyship rose up against the backdrop of the night, dwindled till it was a point lost among the stars. I wondered just how strange his home country could really be. Presumably those of his people that I’d met were amongst the most bizarre specimens. The normal people would stay home, content to do normal things.
Colonel Block dropped me in front of the house, the street having emptied quickly once the show came to an end. “Hang on, Garrett.” He made me wait. “What do you intend to do about Bic Gonlit?”
I hadn’t given that much thought. It didn’t need much. “Ignore him and hope he goes away, I suppose. He’s just been doing his job. He can go on doing it. I don’t see how that could involve me anymore.”
Block grunted, said, “I do want to know which stormwarden he’s running with, if you happen to stumble across that bit of information.”
“You got it.” I started up the steps to the house.
A moment later I was surrounded by a cloud of pixies, every one of them squeaking, all of them determined to have me adjudicate countless disputes and quarrels. I was rude to them all, whether or not I knew them.
Singe opened the front door. She held a big, cold mug of beer. Ah, the little woman, welcoming me home.
As I started to extend my drinking hand Singe tossed back half the mug. Then she told me, “The Dead Man said you were coming.”
“He’s awake again?”
“That Casey woke him up. He said.”
“Damn! That’s a trick I wish he’d taught me before he went away.”
Garrett.
“All present and accounted for, near as I can tell. Headache and everything. What’s up, Big Guy? What’d the Visitor have to say?”
Just no hard feelings and farewell and thank you and do not be too concerned about reactions to his report. He does not believe that his superiors will insist upon any follow-up. The damage done by the Brotherhood of Light was slight and should damp itself out within a generation. Apparently it did the same last time around.
“That’s good to know. Whatever it means. I’m going to go sleep off this headache.” After I drank some beer and chased it with headache powders.
86
Deal Relway himself came to the house. He never made it quite clear why. The little man has trouble articulating sometimes. He did hint that he was convinced that I’d collaborated in the escape of a particular royal prisoner and that I had been an accessory to the total moronification of three already-subhuman subjects of the Karentine Crown. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing in the case of those particular subjects.
As far as he was concerned, justice had been served.
“What was that all about?” I asked the Dead Man after the director took his leave.
The only response I got was the psychic equivalent of a snore. I wanted to scream. I’d counted on the Dead Man to pluck Relway’s psychic bones.
87
Karenta’s current monarch has been so deft at survival that most of his subjects have had the opportunity to learn his birth date. They have begun taking advantage of the fact that the King’s Birthday is, traditionally, a Karentine holiday.
This year the people of substance had chosen to collect in the reservoir park. There they would show off their new seasonal outfits and their participation in the latest fad, the wonderful world of inventions called three-wheels.
Any family that showed up without being able to claim at least one three-wheel on order might as well resign itself to being the butt of condescending gossip for at least as long as it took for us to develop a grander, bigger, more expensive model.
I had to attend with my business partners, who brought most of their families. Which meant there were beautiful women in every direction I looked, be they Tate, Weider, or Prose. I didn’t get much chance to exercise my eyes, though. Tinnie had decided I was back on her A list. Which, apparently, awarded her complete custody of where I directed my vision.
Alyx Weider was too busy scooting around, showing off her own custom three-wheel, to afford her usual distraction.
I steered myself toward Tinnie’s Uncle Willard. “This is an amazing show, sir.” Every damned three-wheel we’d built was here somewhere. So it seemed. “When are we supposed to do the judging?” A huge part of the festivities was a contest to see which young lady could dress up her three-wheel the prettiest.
Our end users, so far, were almost all girls and young women of extremely considerable substance. A demographic I’d have found particularly interesting if I hadn’t been claimed. For the moment.
“Ha!” I told the redhead. “I am supposed to be looking.” Then, “Why aren’t you out there outshining Alyx and Rose?”
Pout. “One of my wheels broke when we were leaving. They wouldn’t let me get it fixed. That would make us late.”
Two painfully homely young women, paced by four fierce-looking, thoroughly well armed characters on foot, passed us, leisurely following the bridle path. “Ugh!” I said.
Willard Tate cautioned me. “Those are the royal daughters, Garrett.”
“Guaranteed to be winners in the contest,” Tinnie added, because I would be too obtuse and democratic to figure that out for myself.
I tried to remember how to do the tug at the forelock thing. I was out of practice. I asked, “How are we doing, businesswise?”
“Overall? We couldn’t be plundering the rich more effectively if we were a barbarian horde. And we’re doing it without any bloodshed. You hit this one square on the nose. You’re a wealthy young man, now. Or you will be before much longer. Have you been giving any thought to your future?”
Beyond maybe getting a bigger cold well installed so we could keep up with Singe’s added demands on the beer supply, no.
I said, “Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“Sounds like I’m about to be offered an investment opportunity.”
Willard laughed, something he didn’t do very often. Normally, he was as sour and serious as an accountant. “You might say that, Garrett. Deal of a lifetime. What I’m wondering about is, what are you and Tinnie thinking about?”
“Uncle Willard!”
Uncle Willard ignored Tinnie completely. “You’ve been playing cat and mouse with each other for several years, now. You’re both getting a little long in the tooth to keep it up.”
“I’m thinking you might want to address your questions to the cat. The mouse don’t get much say.” Which observation earned me an enthusiastic dig in the ribs.
“You planning to go on the way you’ve always done?”
I checked Tate’s expression for a clue to how he meant that. I thought I got it. “It’s what I do. I find things. I find things out. I try to help people who are in trouble. It’s what I’m good at. I’m not good at managing a big manufacturing thing. Hell, I have trouble managing the everyday business side of what I do now. Dean does most of that. So if you need me to fill in as the son you no longer have, well, I can try to play the role, but I don’t think you’d be happy with the results.” Deciding maybe I wasn’t quite as great an actor as had seemed the case the other day.
“I understand that. Come. It’s time for the formal judging. I hope you brought enough prize ribbons, Tinnie. Because everybody who’s anybody has to get some kind of award.”
“I brought one for every unit we’ve sold, plus a few extras.”
“Isn’t having been born into the aristocracy wonderful?” Tate asked. “You don’t really have to compete. You’re a winner automatically.”
I agreed. “Beats hard work and study all to hell.”
“You know what they say. Work li
ke a dog and what do you get? Dog tired.”
Tinnie hurried off to one of the Tate family carriages, of which there were several present. She came back with a sheaf of ribbons. I let her slide back in under my right arm, thinking it was, maybe, time to start putting the boy’s life behind. If she maybe thought so, too. The only other candidate I’d ever honestly considered was a young woman named Maya, who hadn’t been patient enough to wait for me. And Eleanor, of course, but that would’ve been a little too ethereal a relationship for me.
Just then a half dozen shimmering objects streaked across the northern sky in a tight formation, low, in the far distance. Three seemed sizable, sausage-shaped vehicles. The rest were exactly like the odd little skyships that Evas and her henchwomen preferred. The Masker ship must have flown home very fast indeed. And Evas’ secret hunger must be one she shared with a lot of Visitor women — if this was what Morley had predicted and not some kind of raid.
Dotes might’ve made the whole thing up.
Still, maybe I ought to get into the entrepreneurial spirit and...
Tinnie made herself at home under my right wing again. I was still on her A list. After all these minutes. Despite Uncle Willard. She asked, “Aren’t you done with those people?”
“I guess. As long as they’re done with Kip.” I did worry about the Goddamn Parrot, though. But I wouldn’t tell anybody.
I shook the unsettling notion that those larger vessels might be troopships. They were hovering over the Embankment now. Up to something.
Within minutes they headed back the way they had come. With an extra, disklike vehicle floating amongst them.
I tried to concentrate on the three-wheel festival. And spied Harvester Temisk immediately. Riding a three-wheel of his very own. He was headed my way. Looking altogether too serious for my time of life.
