by Frank Tuttle
She laughed. “Your friend from Avalante is the most gracious, well-spoken man I’ve met in years. He is always welcome here. Tell him so.”
“I will.” We left the hall, entered the common area at the bottom of the stairs. The band was playing, but no one was dancing.
“I’ve called a halt to the dances and the drinking. But I’ve ordered the music to continue. It keeps the soldiers outside confused.”
“Good idea. So they’re painting now?”
“They’d better be.”
I glanced behind us, peered ahead. No one was in earshot. “I may need some help tonight, Lady Werewilk. Think you can get me outside without getting me filled with arrows?”
She frowned. “Outside?”
“It’s necessary. You’ll sleep better if you don’t ask why. I can use the tunnels again, if I need to, but I’d rather not risk being seen popping out of one if you think you can render me unseen by other means.”
She pondered that. “I might get you outside, Mr. Markhat, but once out, the door would be your only way back in.”
“I was afraid of that. Still…can you make preparations, in case I need to call on you? Just after dark?”
She just nodded. We heard voices nearby. The door to the gallery wasn’t far away.
A sleepy sort of inspiration struck.
“Mind if I have another look at your artists at work?”
“Not at all. The door is never locked.”
“Thanks. Oh. One more thing, Lady. I understand that when we spoke before about the old Ring you were reluctant to disclose your practice of you-know-what. So that may have colored your answer somewhat. But since I know about that now, is there anything else you can tell me?”
“I wish there were, Mr. Markhat. I truly do. I find it disconcerting that I’ve lived my entire life here and never once detected the presence of anything extraordinary in a magical sense. You may find that hard to believe, but I assure you it is the absolute truth.”
“I believe you.” I thought about the face in the sky. “Whatever this thing is, it seemed determined to stay buried.”
“I make no claims to being an expert, Mr. Markhat, but one hears things, things related to the Art. And what you told me makes me suspect that what you saw wasn’t the subject of the excavation at all, but a ward laid down by the persons who buried something there at the Ring.”
I stopped walking. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“There are certain very old stories, none of which are set anywhere near here, which describe the elaborate magical guards set in place in the tombs of Elvish sorcerers, for instance. And human ones as well. Which is one of the many reasons I would never take a shovel to the Ring, even if I suspected the ground beneath it to be quite literally composed of gold dust and diamonds.”
“I wish others hereabouts shared your opinion.”
“I’m off to check with the staff, Mr. Markhat. No one has seen Skin. Did you know he left?”
I did. I’d forgotten, but I’d known. “I don’t suppose he’s been seen since?”
She shook her head. “He did love those bees. Poor fool. Call me if you need anything. I have watchers posted upstairs, by the way. They are to blow trumpets if the men move across the yard.”
“Good idea.” And in truth her idea wasn’t a bad one, but between the thick bubbly three-bolt glass and the weeds and the shadows from the untrimmed trees, I wasn’t sure anyone would see anything before the first axe bit into the door.
She turned and walked away, swinging her sword and whistling a tune I suddenly recognized as one of the more depraved marching songs from my glorious days in the army.
Something told me the Lady Erlorne Werewilk not only knew the words but enjoyed them.
One day I’d have to ask how she’d learned such a common earthy tune. But today, I had other plans.
So I marched myself down to the gallery and opened the doors and stepped right in.
The place was silent. The artists stood in ranks, faces fixed and intense, arms moving, brushes darting and dabbing.
No one spoke. No one giggled or laughed or flirted or drank.
There were a few vacant easels. I picked one out. I found blank canvases stacked against the wall. I shamelessly pilfered brushes and paints and rags here and there from the artists. Each was so engrossed in their own work they paid me absolutely no attention.
I propped my blank canvas on my easel and watched the kids around me while I figured out what hand held what. I scooped globs of paint out of glass bottles and onto a board fitted with a handle. The paint board, which probably had a fancy name in some dead pre-Kingdom tongue, had obviously been used over and over again, and scraped clean after each new use.
Finally, I dipped my brush in a smear of dark red paint, and I held it poised just over the canvas.
I held my breath.
Nothing happened.
“Start simple,” I said, in a whisper. “A dog. I’d like to paint a dog. Anything but a bowl of fruit.”
My brush showed no signs of being guided by any supernatural forces.
I closed my eyes.
A fly buzzed my face and lit on my nose.
I batted it away, kept my brush poised, and sought artistic inspiration.
“Listen,” I said, after a while. “My name is Markhat. I’m no artist. I’m here because…”
Someone shushed me with a hiss. I stopped speaking aloud.
I closed my eyes again. I went back to Lady Werewilk arriving at my office. I tried to dredge up images of her, of Gertriss, of our trip here, of everything.
The room was dark and warm. I’d had a couple of hours of sleep after a hard night of skullduggery and derring-do. So maybe I went into that same half-asleep daze I used to slip into during parade dress.
So maybe I dreamed that something was listening. Maybe I dreamed that somewhere something just out of my sight was nodding and urging me to keep telling the story. Maybe I was kidding myself the whole time.
I was still dreaming, I suppose, when Darla slipped up beside me.
“Buttercup is wearing shoes,” she whispered. She kissed me on the cheek. “Care to tell me what you’re doing?”
“Completing my masterpiece.” I put down my brush. “What do you think?”
The canvas was blank. My brush was stiff with dried paint.
“I think you’re a man in need of a bed,” she said. She took my hand. “Come on. Another hour. I insist.”
I didn’t argue. We passed through the silent ranks of painters, who did not watch us pass.
So much for revelation through art.
Buttercup was indeed wearing shoes. Gertriss had found a pair of child’s slippers, and Buttercup was marching around my room, showing them off.
She leaped into my arms when Darla and I entered. I let her hug me briefly, and then I gently disentangled her and put her down. She ran a quick circle around me, pointing to her slippers as she went.
In addition to shoes, Gertriss had managed to tie the banshee’s mop of hair back with a bright pink ribbon. She’d also belted the gown with the same, which rendered Buttercup less childlike.
“She barely even fought,” said Gertriss. She looked behind Darla and I.
“Mama’s not with us,” I said. Gertriss sighed with relief.
“She still giving you trouble? I’ve explained to her what happened.”
“I know, and I thank you. But you know Mama.”
“All too well. She’ll pout and make a show, but she’ll get over it.”
I plopped down on the couch. Darla sat quickly beside me, narrowly beating Buttercup to the space. The banshee pouted but scampered away.
Gertriss found a chair and sat. “Boss, you look like the goats have been chewing on your beard.”
“I don’t have a beard.”
“It’s a saying. Means you look exhausted.”
“He is,” said Darla. “I’m putting him to bed for a bit. Especially since we’re going back outside to
night.”
Gertriss frowned. “We are?”
“No we are not,” I said. “Neither we. Not you nor you. No one but only me.”
Darla winked at Gertriss. “He’s incoherent. Let’s you and I raid this armory you spoke of. I’ll wake you up soon, dear. Do try to avoid skeletal hands for a bit, won’t you?”
I lay back. Buttercup darted past Darla’s agile hands and planted a kiss right on my lips.
“That is quite enough of that, young lady,” said Darla, who grabbed Buttercup’s pointy right ear and took her squealing from the room.
Gertriss followed, smirking.
I was asleep before the door even shut.
Darla didn’t wake me up in an hour, or even two.
The room was dark when I awoke. House Werewilk was always dark, but the shadows in my room bore the unmistakable weight of dusk.
I leaped to my feet, found my boots, found a dark shirt and my black felt hat. I got dressed, stuck Toadsticker through my belt, splashed water in my face and brushed back my hair.
The fancy mirror mocked me. Something Gertriss had said ran through my mind-you look like goats have been chewing on your beard.
I certainly did. A whole herd of goats. And chances were that I was going to look even worse later on.
I stomped downstairs, found another party in full swing. Buttercup had been introduced to the artists, who were taking turns dancing with her. Gertriss and Darla and Mama looked on. Darla was smiling, Gertriss was yawning and Mama was glaring at all and sundry.
“Good evening, ladies and gents.”
“Darling.” Darla grabbed me and pointed me toward Buttercup. “Look. Isn’t that amazing?”
I nodded. I smelled supper.
“Oh you poor man. You need your coffee. But she’s dancing, Markhat. Perfectly.”
And she was. The tiny banshee was spinning, stepping, swapping off partners and letting herself be picked up and set down and moved about the impromptu dance floor like a courtesan.
“She knows how to dance, hon. Think about it. She didn’t learn that in the woods.”
It finally dawned on me. Darla was right.
Buttercup had once lived with people.
The banshee whirled past me, grinned and waved. Her tiny skirt flew up as the spun, revealing legs that were quite shapely, if half-sized, now that they weren’t covered with a century or two of grime.
Mama Hog sidled up beside me.
“’Twere bad enough making a pet of that critter. Making it a plaything for this lot is gonna wind up bein’ a mite worse, Finder. You mark my words.”
I groaned, remembering the banshee’s determined little hands out in the forest.
“Gertriss. You’re the banshee-minder for tonight. She doesn’t get out of your sight, understand?”
“Boss, what about-?”
“Apprentice Hog. Do you enjoy having a job?”
She bit her lip. “Yes, boss.”
“Good answer.” Darla let a sly grin slip. “And you, oh blossom of my heart. You need not plan any picnics out in the yard either, because you’re staying put too.”
She stuck out her tongue.
“You can’t fire me. I quit. When do we leave?”
Mama cackled. Marlo, who had just stomped his way down the stairs, heard enough to chuckle and smirk.
I turned and headed for the kitchen. I always think better on a full stomach.
Darla had the grace not to follow.
Mama lacked that grace, though, falling into step beside me after grumbling something to Darla and Marlo. Her boots fell heavy on the tiles, and she put a lot of wheezing and whistling into her breathing until we passed through the kitchen door and were alone.
“Better make it quick, Mama. This is a popular room.”
Mama frowned and knotted her brow. Whatever words she’d chosen in the hall weren’t coming out easily.
I rolled my eyes. “You know damned well Gertriss wasn’t cavorting up there. Certainly not with me.”
“Oh, I knows it.” She flung up her hands and muttered a cuss word. “It ain’t that. But boy, she’s actin’ all strange. Takin’ on bold ways.”
I pulled out a chair and sat. “Bold ways? Gertriss? She’s still afraid to call me by name. She’s behaved herself perfectly, Mama. Despite plenty of temptation.”
“Them clothes. And that talk.”
“Mama. She was wearing a burlap sack and talking like a pig farmer. Like it or not, she’s come to Rannit, and not to farm pigs.”
Mama huffed and sat down herself, deflated.
“Your job and mine have a few things in common, you know. One of them being that we both see how blind people are when it comes to family. Am I right, Mama? You know exactly what I mean. We’ve both seen it a thousand times.”
Mama made a huffing noise that might have been assent or the early death of a sneeze.
“She’s a good kid, Mama. She’s smart. She’s brave. She’s loyal. And she’s hurt because she thinks you think less of her, when all she’s trying to do is what you told her to do in the first place. Don’t make a mess out of people doing what they were told. We’ve both seen too much of that to let it happen to us.”
Mama wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m thinkin’ she ought to quit her job with you when we gets home. Might have been a bad idea, her learnin’ finding.”
“Then you’re in for a shock, Mama. Because she’s actually pretty good at it. If she wants to stay on, I might just let her. You don’t get to decide that. It’s up to Gertriss. Which is the way it ought to be, and you know it.”
“I don’t know nothin’ of the sort. She’s my kin, and I’m her elder.”
“That might mean something, back in Pot Lockney. But, Mama, we’re a long way from there. And like it or not, that’s not how things are done in Rannit.”
Mama snuffed. “I know. But, boy, there’s things you don’t know.”
“That’s the damned truth, Mama. There are lots of things I don’t know. And most of them don’t matter. What I do know is that you’ll either start treating Gertriss like the smart young lady she is, or you’ll lose her for good. You don’t want that.”
“I reckon not.” Mama sighed. “She tell you why she left Pot Lockney?”
“She started to. We were interrupted. I’m sure she will, when the time is right.”
“Had to do with a man.”
I made sure my voice was gentle. “It’s not for me to know, Mama, unless she tells me. So stop right there.”
“I gets word from Pot Lockney, now and then. Just got some after you left. This man. She might have kilt him, boy.”
“If she did, I’m sure she had her reasons. Not my problem. Not my business.”
Silence. I let it linger, and then got up and started rummaging around for food. I heard the door open behind me, and got a glimpse of Mama walking through it.
“You’re welcome,” I said. And then I ate.
In the end, I wound up sneaking outside via the tunnels.
Lady Werewilk’s homebrew charm might have gotten me a step or two beyond the door before some sharp-eyed lad at the edge of the yard ruined another of my hand-stitched shirts with his rude crossbow. The lady of the house seemed, for the first time since I’d met her, a bit crestfallen by the admission.
I’d had coffee and a roast beef sandwich, though, and I assured her I’d put her hard work to good use.
I had a plan. Lady Werewilk would loose a purposely-clumsy charm at the clump of singed chokeweeds just beyond the door. The weeds would quickly begin to shake and toss about, and they’d light up like a beacon to any wand-wavers nearby. Meanwhile, I’d rise out of the ground in the distant cornfield, while Darla stayed behind to lower the works and let me in only after I issued the secret password. Marlo would be handy to keep her company. Evis would be at my side. Victor and Sara would be somewhere nearby, ready to engage in halfdead mayhem at any threat to Evis and, coincidentally, me.
I felt as safe as I could possibly fee
l, going outside to meet the likes of Encorla Hisvin.
Darla, Marlo and I waited until what Marlo called hard dark before we moved the oven aside and descended into the dark. That’s when the only variation to my clever planned emerged, in the form of Mama and her infamous oversized meat-cleaver.
“Boy! You down there?”
I cringed. We’d not even reached the bottom of the stairs, and there was Mama’s shaggy head blocking out the light up above.
Darla clutched at my arm. “I swear I didn’t arrange this.”
Mama came stomp-stomping down the stairs. The freshly honed edge of her cleaver gleamed in Marlo’s torchlight.
“Don’t you even think on sending me off to baby-sit no banshees,” she gruffed.
“Wouldn’t dream of it. I don’t suppose I could impose on you to keep your voice down to a mere shout?”
“I’m as quiet as a mouse, and you knows it. You better wipe that fool grin off your ugly mug or I’ll wipe off for ye, Farmer Brown. I ain’t to be trifled with.”
The last was delivered to Marlo, who wisely turned away so that the torch no longer lit his face.
“Hush,” I said. “Voices carry, Mama. I know better than to argue with you, and you know better than to get in my way. You speak when you’re spoken to, and you follow my lead, whatever that is. Got it?”
She just nodded. It was the best I could hope for. Whether she’d actually do anything I asked was anybody’s guess.
Evis came ghosting back out of the shadows ahead.
“All clear,” he whispered.
We set out. Darla kept her hand in mine, and I kept my free hand on Toadsticker’s hilt.
We hadn’t gone far when Marlo halted and began to carefully pick up and move the various cast-off treasures that made their home down in the dark with the crickets and the ghosts. Now I knew why I’d missed the cornfield tunnel my first time here-the entrance was covered with junk.
We all joined in, moving slowly and carefully. There might be soldiers hiding ten feet up, through the roots and grubs and soil. The last thing anyone wanted to do was bring a mob with shovels and picks down on our heads.
We cleared the entrance to the new tunnel in minutes. Marlo’s torch illuminated a much smaller, narrower passage, lined with bricks obviously older than the ones used elsewhere.
