Sweet Silver Blues gf-1

by Glen Cook

  Sweet Silver Blues

  ( Garrett Files - 1 )

  Glen Cook

  Glen Cook

  Sweet Silver Blues

  1

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  It sounded like someone was knocking with a sledgehammer. I rolled over and cracked a bloodshot eye. I couldn't see a figure through the window, but that wasn't surprising. I could barely make out the lettering on the grimy glass:

  GARRETT

  INVESTIGATOR

  CONFIDENTIAL AGENT

  I had blown my wad buying the glass and wound up being my own painter.

  The window was as dirty as last week's dishwater, but not filthy enough to block out the piercing morning light. The damned sun wasn't up yet! And I'd been out till the second watch barhopping while I followed a guy who might lead me to a guy who might know where I could find a guy. All this led to was a pounding headache.

  "Go away!" I growled. "Not available."

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  "Go to hell away!" I yelled. It left my head feeling like an egg that had just bounced off the edge of a frying pan. I wondered if I ought to feel the back to see if the yolk was leaking, but it seemed like too much work. I'd just go ahead and die.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  I have a little trouble with my temper, especially when I have a hangover. I was halfway to the door with two feet of lead-weighted truncheon before sense penetrated the scrambled yolk.

  When they are that insistent, it's somebody from up the hill with a summons to do work too sticky to lay on their own boys. Or it's somebody from down the hill with the word that you're stepping on the wrong toes.

  In the latter case the truncheon might be useful.

  I yanked the door open.

  For a moment I didn't see the woman. She barely came up to my chest. I eyeballed the three guys behind her. They were lugging enough steel to outfit their own army, but I wouldn't have been shy about wading in. Two of them were about fifteen years old and the other was about a hundred and five.

  "We're invaded by dwarfs," I moaned. None of them was taller than the woman.

  "Are you Garrett?" She looked disappointed in what she saw.

  "No. Two doors down. Good-bye." Slam! Two doors down was a night-working ratman who made a hobby of getting on my nerves. I figured it was his turn in the barrel.

  I stumbled toward bed with the vague suspicion that I had seen those people before.

  I wriggled around like an old dog. When you're hung over there is no way to get comfortable, feather bed or creek bed. Just as I was getting reacquainted with being horizontal again, Bam! Bam! Bam!

  I told myself I wouldn't move. They would take the hint.

  They didn't. It sounded like the entire room was about to cave in. I was not going to get any more sleep.

  I got up again—gingerly—and drank a quart of water. I chased it with skunky beer and clung to my temper precariously.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  "I don't make a habit of busting female heads," I told the tiny woman when I opened the door again. "But in your case I think I can make an exception."

  She was not impressed. "Dad wants to see you, Garrett."

  "Say, that's wonderful. That explains a gang of runts trying to break my door down. What does the gnome king want?"

  The old codger said, "Rose, it's obvious this isn't a convenient time for Mr. Garrett. We've waited three days. A few more hours won't make any difference."

  Rose? I should know a Rose from somewhere. But where?

  "Mr. Garrett, I'm Lester Tate. And I want to apologize—on Rose's behalf—for bothering you at this hour. She's a headstrong child, and having been overindulged by my brother all her life, she's blind to any desires but her own." He spoke in the soft, tired voice of a man who spends a lot of time arguing with a whirlwind.

  "Lester Tate?" I asked. "Like in Denny Tate's uncle Lester?"

  "Yes."

  "It's beginning to come back. The family picnic at Elephant Rocks three years ago. I came with Denny." Maybe I had laundered my memory because Rose had been an unspeakably nasty wench that day. "Maybe it was all the hardware that made me forget your faces." Denny Tate and I went back about eight years, but I hadn't seen him in months. "So how is Denny?" I asked, maybe a little guilty.

  "Dead!" barked sweet sister Rose.

  Denny Tate and I were heroes of the Cantard Wars. That means we did our five years and got out alive. A lot of guys don't.

  We went in about the same time, were barracked less than twenty miles apart, but never met till later, here in TunFaire, eight hundred miles from the fighting. He was light cavalry out of Fort Must. I was Fleet Marines, mostly aboard the Imperial Kimmswick out of Full Harbor. I fought in the islands. Denny rode over most of the Cantard, chasing or running away from the Venageti. We both made sergeant before we got out.

  It was a nasty war. It still is. I like it better now that it's much farther away.

  Denny saw more of the worst than I did. The fighting at sea and in the islands was sideshow stuff. Neither we nor the Venageti wasted wizards on it. All the flash and fury of sorcery got saved for the struggle on the mainland.

  Anyway, we'd both survived our five, and had done part of them in the same general area, and that had given us something in common when we met. It was good enough till we got to know one another.

  "So that's why you're a walking arsenal. What is it? A vendetta? Maybe you'd better get inside."

  Rose cackled like a hen laying a square egg.

  Uncle Lester laughed too, but it was a laugh of a different breed. "Shut up, Rosie. I'm sorry, Mr. Garrett. The weapons are here to feed Rosie's hunger for drama. She believes we don't dare enter this neighborhood unarmed lest the local thugs ravish her."

  It was not a good dawn for me. Few of them are. Without thinking, I cracked, "The thugs in my neighborhood have some taste. She doesn't have to worry." Blame it on the hangover.

  Uncle Lester grinned. Rose looked at me like I was dog flop she wanted off her shoe.

  I tried to gloss over with business. "Who did it? What can I do about it?"

  "Nobody did it," Rose told me. "He fell off a horse and busted his head, his neck, and about ten other bones."

  "Hard to believe a skilled horseman could go that way."

  "It happened in broad daylight on a busy street. There's no doubt that it was an accident."

  "Then what do you need me for? Especially before the sun is up?"

  "That's for Dad to tell," Rose said. The shrew had a lot of anger in her, anger that was there before I gave her cause. "Bringing you in on it was his idea, not mine."

  I knew Denny's old man modestly. Well enough to use his first name if I was the kind of snotnose who calls his friends' parent by name instead of Mister. He ran a very successful cobbler's business. He, Denny, and two journeyman handled the custom and commercial trade. Uncle Lester and a dozen apprentices made boots under an open-end deal with the army. The war had been good to Denny's dad.

  They do say it is an ill wind indeed that blows no one any good

  Well, I was awake. Hair of the dog and scintillating conversation had reduced the pounding in my head to the tramp of ten thousand legions. Still there was a nagging guilt about not having made time to see Denny before the old gal in black climbed on his back. I decided to find out why the old man needed somebody in my line of work when there wasn't a doubt about how Denny checked out.

  "Let me get myself put together and we'll be on our way."

  Rose grinned wickedly. I realized I'd fed her a murderous straight line.

  I didn't stick around to hear her pounce on it.

  2

  Willard Tate was no bigger than the rest of his tribe. A gnome. He was bald on top
with tasseled gray hair to his shoulders on the sides and longer in the back. He was bent over his workbench, tapping tiny brass nails into the heel of a woman's shoe. Clearly he was at the top of his trade. He wore square TanHageen spectacles and they don't come cheap.

  He was engrossed in his work. Recalling his state since his wife died, I figured he was working off grief.

  "Mr. Tate?" He knew I was there. I had cooled my heels for twenty minutes while they told him.

  He drove one more nail with a single perfect tap, looked at me over his cheaters. "Mr. Garrett. They tell me you made mock of our size."

  "I get nasty when somebody drags me out before the sun comes up."

  "That's Rose. If she has to see you in, she'll see you in the hard way. I made a bad job of her. Keep her in mind as you rear your own children."

  I said nothing. You tell somebody you look forward to blindness more eagerly than to having kids, you don't win any friends. Those that don't think you're lying think you're crazy.

  "Do you have a problem with short people, Mr. Garrett?"

  About six flip answers never saw the air. He was dead serious. "Not really. Denny wouldn't have been my buddy if I did. Why? Is it important?"

  "In a sideways sort of way. Did you ever wonder why the Tates are so small?"

  I had never dwelled on it. "No."

  "It's the blood. The taint of elvish. On both sides, several generations before my time. Keep that in mind. It will help you understand later."

  I wasn't surprised. I'd suspected it before, the way Denny got along with animals. Plenty of people have the taint, yet most cover it up. There is a lot of prejudice against the half elfin.

  My hangover had improved, but not much. I had no patience. "Can we get to the point, Mr. Tate? You want me to do a job, or what?"

  "I want you to find someone." He rose from his bench and shed his leather apron. "Come with me."

  I went. He took me into the Tate secret world, the compound behind the manufactory. Denny never did that.

  "You've been doing all right for yourself," I said. We entered a formal garden, the existence of which I'd never suspected.

  "We manage."

  I should manage so good. "Where are we headed?"

  "Denny's apartment."

  Buildings stood shoulder to shoulder around the garden. From the street they looked like one continuous featureless warehouse. From the garden I could not imagine how I'd ever thought that. These houses were as fine as anything up the hill. They simply didn't face the street and make temptingly dangerous statements.

  I wondered if they killed the workmen when the job was done. "The whole Tate tribe lives here?"

  "Yes."

  "Not much privacy."

  "Too much, I think. We all have our own apartments. Some have street-side doors. Denny's does." Tate's tone said "This is a Significant Fact."

  My curiosity was definitely growing. Tate's whole attitude indicated indignation at Denny's having had secrets from his old man.

  He took me to Denny's place. The air inside was stuffy and warm, the way closed places get in summer. Nothing had changed since the one time Denny had invited me in—through the street-side door—except that Denny wasn't there. That made a lot of difference.

  The place was as plain and neat as a new cheap coffin. Denny had been a man of ascetic habits. He'd never hinted at the comforts enjoyed by his family.

  "It's in the basement."

  "What is?"

  "What I want you to see before I start explaining." He collected a lantern and lit it with a long match, which he kept burning.

  Moments later we were in a basement as spotless as the ground floor. Old Man Tate and his match went around lighting lamps. I made like a cat too lazy to lick his own paws and just hung around with my mouth open.

  Tate wore a small, smug smile when he faced me again. "Well?"

  The cat that had my tongue could have fought a couple weights heavier than a snow leopard.

  The only place you even hear about that much precious metal lying around is in stories about dragon hoards.

  Actually, when my mind started working, I saw it wasn't so much after all. Just more than I'd ever imagined I would see in one place. A few hundred robbers working double shifts for four or five years might pile up as much.

  "Where... ? How... ?"

  "I don't know most of the answers myself, Mr. Garrett. My knowledge is limited to the notes Denny left. They were all written to himself. He knew what he was talking about. There is enough to fill in the outlines, though. I expect you'll want to read everything before you start."

  I nodded but did not hear him. My friend Denny, the shoemaker. With a basement full of silver. Denny, whose only mention of money had been about the share he had taken when his regiment had overwhelmed a Venageti treasure caravan fleeing the defeat at Jordan Wells.

  "How much?" I croaked. I was not getting any better. The little guy that sits in the back row inside my head started catcalling me. I never thought wealth could have so much impact upon me.

  "Sixty thousand marks in Karentine coined silver. The equivalent of eighteen thousand marks in coined silver of other states. Eight hundred four-ounce bars. Six hundred twenty-three eight-ounce bars. Forty-four one-pound bars. One hundred ten pounds in larger bars. Just under one thousand coined goldmarks. There's some billet tin and copper, too. A nice amount, but it doesn't count for much compared with the silver."

  "Not unless a couple copper sceats would make the difference between eating and starvation. How did he do it? Don't tell me making ballroom slippers for fat duchesses. Nobody gets rich... working." I almost said "honestly."

  "Trading in metals." Tate gave me a don't-be-stupid look. "Playing the changes in the shifting exchange rate between gold and silver. Buying silver when it was cheap against gold, selling it when gold was cheap against silver. He started with his prize money from the army. He switched back and forth at the best points in the cycle. That's what I meant when I said keep the elvish blood in mind. We people of elvish ancestry have a feel for silver."

  "You're stereotyping yourself, Pop."

  "You understand what I've said? How he came by it? I don't want you to think it's dishonest wealth."

  "I understand." That did not make me think it was necessarily honest.

  Anyone with a knack for reading the shifts could get rich the same way. Silver goes up and down violently according to the army's fortunes in the Cantard. As long as we are plagued by sorcerers, there will be an incredible demand for the metal.

  Ninety percent of the world's silver is mined in the Cantard. Under all the excuses and historical claims, the mines are what the war is all about. Maybe if we could rid the world of magicians and their hunger for the mystic metal, peace and prosperity would break out all over.

  "Well?" Tate asked.

  "Well what?"

  "Will you do the job for us?"

  Good question, I thought.

  3

  I looked at Tate and saw a momentary idiot, a fool trying to twist me into doing something he feared I'd turn my back on if I knew the whole story. "Pop, would you make shoes if you didn't know the size? If you hadn't even seen the person who was going to wear them? Without knowing anything about getting paid? I've been real patient on account of you being Denny's old man. But I'm not going to play games."

  He hemmed and hawed.

  "Come on, Pop. Open the poke. Shake it out. Let's see if the little porker oinks or meows."

  His expression became pained, almost pleading. "I'm just trying to do right by my son. Trying to carry out his last wishes."

  "We'll put up a statue. When does the clam open up? Or do I go home and finish sleeping off this hangover?" Why do they always do this? They bring you in to handle a problem, then lie about it or hide it from you. But they never stop screaming for results.

  "You've got to understand—"

  "Mr. Tate, I don't have to understand anything except exactly what is going on. Why don't you
start from the beginning, tell me what you know, what you want, and why you need me. And don't leave anything out. If I take the job and find out you have, I'll get extremely angry. I'm not a very nice man when I get angry."

  "Have you had your breakfast, Mr. Garrett? Of course not. Rose wakened you and brought you straight here. Why don't we do that while I order my thoughts?"

  "Because there's nothing guaranteed to make me madder quicker than a stall."

  He went red in the face. He was not used to backtalk.

  "You talk or I walk. This is my life you're wasting."

  "Damn it, a man can't... "

  I started toward the stairs.

  "All right. Stop."

  I paused, waited.

  "After Denny died, I came here and found all this," Tate said. "And I found a will. A registered will."

  Most people don't bother to register, but that didn't amount to anything remarkable. "So?"

  "So in the will he names you and me his executors."

  "That damned sawed-off little runt! I'd break his neck for him if he hadn't already done it himself. That's it? All the shuffle-footing and coy looks is because he rung in an outsider?"

  "Hardly. It's the terms of the will that are embarrassing."

  "Yeah? He tell everybody what he thought of them?"

  "In a way. He left everything but our executor's fees to someone none of us ever heard of."

  I laughed. That was Denny. "So? He made the money. It's his to give away."

  "I don't deny that. And I don't mind, believe it or not. But for Rose's sake... "

  "You know what he thought about her? Want me to tell you?"

  "She is his sister."

  "Not that he had any choice about it. The nicest thing he ever said about her was, ‘She's a useless, lazy, whining, conniving freeloader.' The word bitch came up a few times, too."

  "But—"

  "Never mind. I don't want to hear it. So what you want is for me to find this mysterious heir, eh? And then what?" They want you to do some crazy things sometimes. I could guess why Denny registered his will. A Rose with thorns.