The Banshee's walk m-5

by Frank Tuttle

I shrugged. “They’d have just dug us out of the tunnels. Hisvin was losing. You know that.”

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  I thought about it. Mainly because I knew Darla would one day ask me the very same question.

  “The paintings. That’s what decided it for me. You’ve seen them.” I took a long puff. “Nothing evil painted those. Nothing evil would even know how.”

  “They’re brilliant. I agree on that. But they’re just paint. Could’ve been a ruse. What’s happened to you, Markhat? You used to be so marvelously cynical.”

  “Still am. But look. If all it wanted was to get Buttercup down there, it could have done that without my help. It could have taken the Lady anytime it wanted.”

  “It still could.”

  “It won’t.”

  Evis nodded, but didn’t open his eyes. “I hope you’re right. I really do. Learning there are things in this world scarier than the Corpsemaster is causing me to lose sleep.”

  “Me too.”

  “You haven’t asked once about the weapons that brought down Werewilk.” Evis leaned back in his chair and took in a long puff and let the smoke come hissing out between his mouthful of fangs.

  “Wasn’t sure you wanted me to.” I don’t have fangs, despite what some will tell you, but I followed suit as best I could. “Still not sure I want to.”

  Evis chuckled. “I’m going to tell you anyway.”

  “Why? I’m not on the Avalante payroll.”

  “The House wants the Corpsemaster to know exactly what nearly killed her,” said Evis. “And that’s when it gets complicated. They want her to know, but they don’t want to be the ones to tell her. Politics.”

  My cigar was beginning to taste a bit harsh.

  “So why not send a runner with a note?”

  Evis grinned, all white eyes and fangs in the dark.

  “She’s your lady friend, Finder. They figure it’s better coming from you.”

  I nearly snubbed out my cigar and remembered pressing appointments elsewhere, but Evis cleverly stayed my hand by producing that specially brewed dark beer he won’t tell me the name of.

  “The House has many interests,” said Evis as he poured. “Some financial. Some scientific. Some are even military.”

  I accepted his glass and took a long draught.

  “Military?”

  Evis nodded. “During the War, Finder, efforts were made, in secret, to produce a weapon capable of inflicting great harm over long distances by purely mundane means.”

  “No magic?”

  “None. At any phase of the process. No sorcerous fuels, no ensorcelled objects, no magic whatsoever of any kind.”

  “They’re usually called bows and arrows and swords,” I said. “Although catapults work nicely too, until someone like the Corpsemaster kicks them over with a couple of eldritch spells.”

  Evis folded his hands. “I speak of a new kind of weapon entirely,” he said. “We were nearly complete with our work. We needed only to refine certain chemical processes, which I believe would have been done within a few months, had the War not ended.”

  Realization dawned. “The things in the yard. The iron things. Someone else finished what your House started.”

  “They did indeed. They are called cannon, Finder. They are merely thick iron tubes, closed at one end. When they are filled with a certain substance and a projectile, the substance is then ignited. This expels the projectile outward with such force that even the Corpsemaster’s sorceries failed to deflect them.”

  I whistled. “You’re sure about that?”

  “I am.” He poured more beer. “Each cannon required a crew of four. None of these men were sorcerers. The training took only weeks to complete. And they nearly brought down Encorla Hisvin, with half a dozen cannon.”

  I employed one of the colorful words of which Darla does not approve. Evis merely nodded again.

  “The House has re-initiated our own efforts to produce this explosive substance,” he said. “I am confident that, within a few weeks, we will begin testing our own cannon.”

  “And you want me to tell the Corpsemaster that you’re building more of the same things that shot holes in her spells last week?”

  “We do. In fact, we hope she will assist us financially, or perhaps encourage the Regency to invest in our efforts.”

  I ogled. “The Regency?”

  “The cannon we faced were from Prince. It would not do to find thousands of them suddenly circling Rannit’s walls. I believe we have just seen how easily such a tactic could defeat even Rannit’s most potent sorcerers.”

  I drained my beer.

  “So much for the peace.”

  “I hope that is not so. But I see no other choice open to us.”

  I didn’t either. I smoked and Evis smoked and we drank all the fancy beer and Evis had to send for more.

  “Mama Hog?”

  I didn’t need to ask the rest. I laughed and set down my glass.

  “Still fuming. Gertriss is staying with me. I made her a junior member of the firm. She’s out dining alone at a place on Sickers right now, waiting for a rather careless but extremely married man to have dinner in public with his mistress.”

  “Leaving you to revel in your sloth.”

  “Mama’s exact words. But I enjoy sloth. It comes with beer and good cigars.”

  “The Lady Werewilk was by yesterday,” said Evis. “She bought her own gallery, by the way. I imagine there are puffy red faces all over Mount Cloud.”

  I raised my glass in salute to the Lady, and Evis did the same.

  “I hope she runs them out of business.”

  “She might. She said she’s recovered nearly three hundred intact works from the ruins. And she plans to start reconstruction of her House next Spring, on the very same spot, of course. I wonder if Old Bones will still be dreaming, by then.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. I know I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near there if the dreams turn bad.”

  “Art is never without risk.”

  “I know. I’ve still got a blister on my pinkie.”

  Evis chuckled. “They came back to Rannit, you know. All of them.”

  I didn’t ask what they he meant. I didn’t need to.

  “I imagine their numbers have grown considerably. You did mention that the Corpsemaster was given an artifact by the alarkin, before we were returned.”

  “I doubt any of the soldiers survived. I’m sure none of the sorcerers did.”

  “And you’ve had no word from Hisvin at all?”

  “None.” That haunted me. Every cab, every wagon, every carriage I heard on the streets made me look up and wonder if this was the hour Hisvin would send her black carriage for me, for another little talk.

  Now it seemed that I’d need to seek her out, if she failed to send for me. Which would only serve to remind her that I alone in all of Rannit knew where she laid her head.

  Which put me knowing two of her secrets.

  Another silence fell. We filled it with beer and unspoken fears. When it lingered too long, I took my leave and left Evis alone in the dark.

  Darla met me on the street. She’d hired a cab and brought me a yellow daisy for my lapel.

  “Did it hurt?” she asked, wide-eyed and innocent.

  “Did what hurt?”

  “Falling in the brewery, dearest.” She laughed and leaped aboard the cab and patted the seat beside her. “And next time bring me one of those fancy cigars.”

  I clambered up. If Hisvin’s black carriage was out there, it could go straight to Hell. There’d be time for talk of cannons and Regents another day.

  “I’ll bring two,” I said. “We can smoke them in front of Mama, and watch her change colors. It’ll be like springtime, only louder.”

  Darla smiled. “Buttercup learned a new word today.”

  “What word?” The tiny banshee had demonstrated an inerrant ability to select and repeat curse words. Mama was nearly beside herself with sham
e, since Buttercup also tended to pronounce them with Mama’s trademark brogue.

  “Chair. She calls everything that now. But she left her wings on all day. Mama said old Mrs. Gershon brought Buttercup a bag of sweets. I think it’s going to work.”

  “Knew it would.” We’d let it slip to a number of neighborhood gossips that Buttercup was actually Gertriss’s stunted daughter from a failed backwoods tryst. Then Darla had a pair of silk wings made, which Buttercup wore on a harness beneath her dress. Mama introduced her to her clients as a rare friendly forest sprite, and while a few of the most gullible believed that most took one look at the obviously false wings and recalled the rumors about Gertriss and merely smiled and nodded.

  Which allowed Buttercup to live without hiding, out in plain sight. At least for the present.

  “So where are we off to, light of my life? A mysterious errand? A sinister rendezvous? A nice steak and a helping of baked potatoes?”

  “I was thinking fish and wine. But they can be sinister fish, if you insist.”

  I kissed her, right there in the open, and I didn’t care who saw me.

  The cabman snapped his reigns, and Darla took my hands, and we headed back to our side of town.

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  Frank Tuttle

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