by Glen Cook
"He'd have tried, anyway."
Crask smiled. He did that so seldom it was startling. "Yeah. Tried. I got some business I got to get on with, Garrett. I'm late, I been chasing all over after you to find out about Sadler. I want you should walk along, talk to me. Maybe we can brainstorm out where people are disappearing."
I didn't feel like it but didn't argue. It wasn't that I was afraid of offending him. I thought I might learn something. Call it intuition.
The first thing I learned was that Crask wasn't, for the moment at least, the man I knew and loathed. He was so busy working on something inside him that some of his barriers against the world leaked. He seemed almost human at moments—though not so much I'd want my sister to marry him if I had a sister. I don't and I'm glad. My friends are hostages enough for fortune.
30
For some hours I'd entertained the notion that Chodo had eliminated Morley and Saucerhead in order to deprive me of resources should I discover he'd become interested in the Book of Dreams. Sometimes you get that way, thinking you're the center of the universe. But once I ran into Crask, the speculation collapsed under the weight of reason.
You grab straws when nothing makes sense.
Morley had dropped out before Chodo could have discovered the book's nature. Even now I had no real reason to suspect he knew about the book. Him looking for a missing Sadler only made everything murkier.
Who might be making people disappear? The Serpent shouldn't be interested in those guys. She was after the Book of Dreams. Headhunting wouldn't help. The same reasoning applied to happy old Fido Easterman.
So who had reason to eliminate my acquaintances?
Plenty of people, if you took them individually. But nobody was the only answer when you considered them as a group. They didn't share many enemies.
Crask agreed.
We trudged along, me leaning into the bitter wind and grumbling about not having a clue. Then about having so many clues I didn't know which had to do with what.
"Where we headed?" I asked. This wasn't helping me any yet. I glanced back I still felt the presence of that shadow that had been with me off and on. I didn't see anything. Like I'd maybe expected I would?
"Tenderloin," Crask mumbled. The wind was getting to him, too. He was trying to shelter his injured arm. "Got an appointment with some dwarves."
Ah. So, "Why didn't I think of that?"
The Tenderloin is sin's homeland in TunFaire. Anything goes, nobody asks questions, nobody interferes with anybody else. Missionaries not welcome. Reformers enter at your own risk. Likewise everybody else. The Serpent's whole gang could hide there in plain sight easy, despite everyone and everything being owned by Chodo. They'd just need to remember not to run in a pack.
I really should have thought of it. The Tenderloin isn't far from Dwarf Fort. It's just a few blocks past the Bledsoe and I'd been told the renegade dwarves had fled that way after one of their skirmishes with Gnorst's bunch. Had I been from out of town and needed to hide, that's where I'd have gone to ground.
So why hadn't I thought to come poke around? I must be getting senile
The Tenderloin never sleeps, it just slows down late. When we arrived, lamplighters were out snuffing lights, conserving oil. During peak hours the area is awash with light, a carnival, but the management doesn't waste a copper that won't return ten. This was the hour of the diehard, when light and darkness were irrelevant.
The Tenderloin is like the whores who are its chief commodity, all paint and makeup on the outside. Behind the flash lies rot and stink and human despair. Even where they could, they don't put makeup on that. By the time you look it in the eye, they've already gotten your money and are interested only in processing you through as fast as can be managed.
The wind grew more bitter by the minute. Maybe that was why the morCartha had taken the night off. Their native valleys are much warmer. The lamplighters hunched inside their ragged coats and cursed into their beards. The barkers for various establishments watched the street through doors cracked scant inches, waited till we drew abreast to jump out and wax rhapsodic about wonders unimaginable available within. They retreated when we signaled lack of interest. Nobody pressed. They all recognized Crask.
I let him show the way, wandered off inside me in search of one good reason why I kept charging around looking for the Book of Dreams. I'd begun to distrust me. I feared there was a part of me that wanted it the way the Serpent and Easterman wanted it. The way maybe even the local prince of dwarves wanted it.
There was a new idea. It deserved a look. It might explain why Gnorst was uncommunicative. He might be thinking of trying on Nooney Krombach's shoes.
"Uh-oh " While I was scouting the badlands within, the outer landscape had changed. The streets had emptied. Crask had stopped hurrying. Now he tred softly, clung to shadows.
Something was about to go down.
Crask had a few steps on me. I zagged to the side, up stairs that climbed the face of an old tenement. He didn't notice. His attention was focused ahead. I flattened out on the landing in front of a second-story doorway.
I trust my hunches, usually I'd had a sudden, strong one that this was no time for Garrett to be out in the open and a worse one to dive into shadowed alleys. I thought shadow and tried to become one with the chilly darkness, nothing but watching eyes
My hunch was good. I'd barely flattened myself out when every alley in sight barfed hard boys. Crask made hand signals. They all headed for the place that was the target of Crask's good hand.
About then he noticed I wasn't with him anymore. He looked around, startled, spat, cursed, and I knew I'd come one step short of stepping into a big pile of it, maybe.
Had he been leading me to the slaughter?
Joining his party sure didn't look like a brilliant move. I stayed where I was and froze my tail and wondered.
What was wrong with the Serpent? I'd been told and told that somebody who could make a book of shadows was a real heavyweight in the sorcery game. But she didn't act like a heavyweight. Her sort, when they have any weight at all, aren't bashful about throwing it around. But she did her pushing and shoving with second-string hired hands. It was confusing.
The state TunFaire was in, with all our witches and wizards and whatnot off to chase Glory Mooncalled, somebody like the Serpent ought to be able to do whatever she damned well pleased. But she was going about her search like she had no more power than crazy Fido.
Had she put it all into her book, then let that get away?
Sounded good. Sounded like she would be one desperate witch, cranky as a dragon with bad teeth.
Chodo's hordes swept silently toward a tenement. The silence didn't last. A big uproar broke out as soon as a couple got inside. There were enough illegal weapons in evidence to arm a company. The uproar inside reached battle pitch. People were getting hurt in there.
It didn't last. The kingpin's men started dragging captives outside, began forcing them to undress
Uh-oh. The Dead Man's prophecy had come true.
I couldn't hear the orders and threats Crask issued but didn't need to. He had to be looking for tattoos.
I didn't see the Serpent among the prisoners. Neither did Crask. He stomped around and cussed theatrically. I rested my chin on my forearms, shivered, and wondered how he'd known about the tattoos. Had I mentioned them? I couldn't recall. I guess I must have when I was trying to direct Chodo's attention toward the Serpent.
Crask didn't accept defeat. He had his troops drag out the dead and wounded, lined everybody up, started his inspection all over again. The prisoners shivered and whimpered. The wind was merciless.
He found her. She'd assumed the form of a ratman. Short fur hid her tattoo. The second he made her he popped her upside the head, got a gag stuffed in her mouth and about forty-three miles of rope wrapped around her. She looked like a mummy. He wasn't going to take no chances with a witch.
He barked orders, The wind stole them away I didn't need to he
ar them. The hard boys started marching prisoners toward the river. I had a suspicion their life expectancies weren't those of immortals.
Chodo isn't a forgiving sort. These people had stomped on his toes, sort of... He has no trouble conjuring justifications.
A half-dozen thugs shuffled off with the Serpent. Crask and a few buddies hung around.
Well. I thought to me, I thought, I guess this means Chodo wants him a little light reading, just to pass those chilly winter nights. A little something to peruse beside the fire.
He wouldn't get the book from the Serpent. She didn't have the foggiest where it was. But he'd get something. He always did. And she had managed to become a credible ratman... Ah. There Crask went, back into that tenement, shoulders set like he meant to find something.
That would have been a good time to stroll on out of there—if about four of Crask's buddies hadn't been hanging out, keeping a wary eye.
I got me comfortable in a good position for shivering and thought about Holme Blaine. Why had he come to me as Carla Lindo? Why had he come at all? How had he known to come to me? Through contact with Easterman I could pursue that. Come morning. After a good sleep. If I thawed out enough. Sure be nice to head for bed. Why wouldn't Crask's clowns clear the street?
They didn't do me any favors. In fact, I was getting suspicious that they had something on their pea brains besides the Serpent and her improbable book. They spread out, started poking into shadows and alleys. So.
Crask passed below me, massaging his arm. He muttered something about the cold and "I don't get it. One second he's right there beside me, the next he's gone. He ain't no spook. How'd he disappear?"
Who? Bet you guessed as fast as I did. What a bunch of guys.
I'd suspected it for a while. The kingpin's boys don't generally do you many favors. I'd tried setting it aside because I didn't want it to be true. But there it was. Chodo had something special in mind for a guy named Garrett. Maybe just a fancy dinner, a dip in the inside pool he's got out to his place, with the hot and cold running blondes. Maybe. Maybe just a friendly chat, old times, like he'd mentioned in the coach. I didn't want to find out. The streets aren't filled with guys who have had chats with Chodo.
One of Crask's boys came over and mumbled something I couldn't catch. Crask cussed and growled. "Keep looking!" Then he did an odd thing, for him. He went and perched on the steps of the raided tenement, rubbed his arm for a minute, rested his chin on his good fist, went away somewhere inside. If he hadn't been Crask of the Crask and Sadler torture show, I'd have pegged him for a man wrestling with his conscience.
He stuck with it till all his boys had given up and gone away. Naturally, I stayed put. Me and my frozen fanny. Ever have yours up in the air with a winter breeze tickling it? I wasn't in any shape to outrun or outfight Crask, or even somebody's granny, had no interest in trying and even less interest in visiting Chodo or maybe checking out the attractions on the bottom of the river. Frostbite can have its attractions.
Garrett is tough and patient. I outstubborned Crask. He finally had enough and went away. I pried my stiff bones loose from that porch and did the same. In another direction.
Boy, was I glad people never think to look up
31
I swung through the Safety Zone, found exactly what I expected to find. A big nothing. Morley's place was dead and dark. I was beginning to wonder if it wasn't time to start thinking about a wake.
I approached my place carefully. Crask might have it staked out.
Here was a problem that deserved some thought. I was too dependent on my home. If the bad boys wanted to hand me real trouble sometime, they'd just have to cut me off from my base.
Didn't seem to be anybody around. Even that off-and-on presence behind me was absent. Nice that whoever that was occasionally slipped up or needed rest.
I hustled to the door and banged away. Dean opened up. I crabbed, "What took so long?" He answered me with one of his better glowers. He hadn't taken long at all. The house was quiet. "Carla gone to bed?"
"Yes. I shall do so myself, now."
"Where? Across her door?"
"The daybed."
He didn't give me what I deserved for my crack. Oh, well. "Sleep well." I clumped into the Dead Man's room. "Awake there, Old Bones?" It would be like him to take a two-week nap in the middle of things.
Yes. I gather you were frustrated again.
"It just gets worse," I told him. "Any suggestions?"
Get some sleep. While the implications are disturbing, the information is tenuous. I will have to do considerable thinking.
"Get some sleep? That's the best idea you've had in years."
Do not allow frustration to embitter you, Garrett. We all suffer our unproductive days.
Easy for him to say. He had unproductive centuries. "Your talent for noting the obvious remains unblunted."
Indeed. But we cannot indefinitely continue to be in the wrong place or to arrive too late.
"We can't? Want to bet?"
Despair does not become you, Garrett. Dawn follows the darkest hour as surely as the rains fall to earth. Put Chodo Contague out of mind. Rest. That is the most useful thing you can do at this point. Relax. And rejoice. He does not have the book itself.
He was right. The dead fat genius usually is. Sometimes he can't be wrong if he wants. But: "No. He's just got somebody who knows how to make a book. That son of a bitch would write his own." I was in one of those moods where you're contrary for contrariness's sake. But maybe I've grown up some. I didn't overindulge. "While you're pondering, conjure me up a theory that explains the disappearances of Morley Dotes, Saucerhead Tharpe, and Sadler. And figure out who's following me like a ghost, so good I've never caught a glimpse."
As to those disappearances, I do have a hypothesis. Two, in fact. But they must be tested. And I refuse to discuss them till you have slept.
I knew better but wasted time trying to pry something out of him. He wouldn't budge. Does anybody ever budge? I don't think they can. They only don't or won't. It's always negative. How come?
See what kind of mind is out there leading the war on evil? Tsk-tsk.
He wouldn't budge. And even a boulder anchored to bedrock is less stubborn than a dead Loghyr.
I gave up, shambled toward the doorway.
What news from the Cantard, Garrett? As though he hadn't read my mind and found that. I hadn't bothered asking around. Just a little nudge, there—nudge, unfortunately, being one of those words that doesn't come standardly negative. Old Bones nudges me a lot. Hinting that maybe if I cooperated more with him, he'd help me more. Right. Laziness is his reason for hanging around. He's too damned lazy to finish dying.
I didn't answer him. I tramped upstairs and threw myself into bed still clad, lay there searching my soul, tossing and turning, for at least seventeen seconds.
32
Dean wouldn't let me sleep in. I got four hours of the kind of sleep that fires and earthquakes can't interrupt, then he arrived. The ultimate disaster.
I cracked one eye a hundredth of an inch, heaved one leg over the side of the bed. That seemed good enough for a day's work, but that old man wasn't satisfied. He went for a bucket of water he had cooling out back. He found me sitting up when he got back. I grumped, "How come you couldn't send Carla?"
"Because you wouldn't get up. The sausages would burn, the biscuits would blacken, the kettle would boil dry while you tried to lead her astray."
"You're one suspicious and negative old goat." I made an epic attempt to stand up. It didn't work.
Dean chuckled. "I know you. If I don't stay between you and Miss Carla, nothing will get done around here for the next two weeks."
"I'm hurt. I'm in pain. Why don't you just bring breakfast up here?"
He hefted the bucket of ice water.
"Whoa!" I blinked several times, taking my morning exercise. Dean eased over to a better spot, started to wind up. The man doesn't know the meaning of mercy.
He sneered. "Maybe that's not such a bad idea."
"Huh?"
"My niece Ruth brought me fresh clothing. She's downstairs. She'd love to serve you breakfast in bed."
I groaned. The man won't play fair. Talk about your double-whammy threat. Ruth is a nice kid. Lots of personality. You know how that translates. Dogs don't howl when she goes by, they whimper and slink, hoping she won't notice them. "I'm out of my class now."
He chuckled again. Evil old man.
Then I didn't think well of myself for a minute. Ruth was nice. She couldn't help her looks.
I got completely vertical and wobbled toward the hail. I made it downstairs without killing myself. I even pasted on a wan smile for the ladies in the kitchen. Carla and Ruth had a contest to see who could beam back the brightest. It was like staring into the rising sun. I dropped into a chair and shielded my eyes.
Dean was a prophet. Breakfast was sausages and biscuits, with hot tea My condition improved radically, though I never achieved sparkle. I staggered up and made the song march to the Dead Man's room. "I'm here, Chuckles." Plop into the chair.
Barely.
"Huh?" I had to figure it out. I'm not at my best in the morning. You may have noticed.
We have only one real option left. We have to be the first to find the book. I consider that imperative now. If we fail, it could mean disaster for TunFaire.
"Eh?" It was too ear'y. I'd left my brain upstairs snoozing.
After sustained reflection I have come to distrust the motives of my friend the Gnorst. The cues are small but there. He has succumbed to temptation.
"I thought so."
We can, for the moment, ignore the Serpent. She has been neutralized. Easterman is of little account.
"You think? He's got Winger playing for him."
She is lucky to slay alive. Her luck will not last. No, Chodo Contague is the hunter who concerns me. The focus has shifted to his forces and those of the Gnorst. Both parties are far more formidable than the originals commanded by the witch and the madman. We now have the potential for a substantial conflict, perhaps fired by some personal animus, considering hints you picked up during your interview with the kingpin.
