Gilded Latten Bones gp-13

by Glen Cook

  A couple notions popped into mind immediately. And I limit my options by failing to be as ruthless as some.

  You see. It is all in knowing what you are up against. Which is why my people never reveal all there is to know about us, to friend, foe, or sibling.

  Wisdom with which it was hard to argue. At the moment I was thinking the best way to get him and Morley at the same time would be a swarming attack with firebombs. Light the place up and burn everybody inside.

  There are people out there able to do that and sleep like a baby afterward. People who would do it for the price of a quality high.

  Director Relway doesn't always seem like a bad idea.

  You begin to see. We are most vulnerable to those who know who and what we are.

  No doubt he meant that on multiple levels.

  "I see. In fact, I see so clearly that I'm sure Belinda made a mistake by moving us here."

  Let me suggest some possibilities. Perhaps she does not plan to leave Mr. Dotes here long. This may last only until it lures someone into range.

  "We're bait?"

  Possibly. She might, in addition, be pleased if I could excise a clue or two from Mr. Dotes.

  "About?"

  All of the great questions. Who? Where? What? Why? When? How? And who to? Or anything else that might lead to the cutting of selected throats. I am inclined to agree with Miss Contague about the potential value of the dig. Which will be difficult work. Exploring an unconscious mind, counterintuitively, is much more difficult than rummaging through a mind that is awake, aware, and trying to hide.

  "I'll take your word for it. You being the self-declared expert."

  Indeed. At this point you should find someone else to pester. I need all my minds to winkle out those things that Mr. Dotes does not know he knows.

  28

  One custom had not changed since my move to Factory Slide. Singe had kept up the payments on the cold well in the kitchen. Currently, that contained a keg of Weider Pale Ale, a Pular Singe favorite. My taste runs to something slightly heavier but the pale ale was plenty good after several days dry.

  Singe and I both drew big mugs and backup pitchers before we headed for her office, leaving Dean preparing a meal obviously meant for more people than me, Singe, and Morley. We settled into the wonderful new furniture and began to scheme out how this thing would go.

  I said, "First thing, I want to catch up on what you did last week, up on the north side." I took a sip of the pale. Tasty! "I saw you. They probably didn't tell you what was going on."

  "Not a lot, no. I took the job because you asked me to in your note."

  "And?"

  "And what? You need to use small words and be very clear with us Other Races."

  Was she serious? Or just messing with me? Most of my friends did. Singe had been an exception. "The tracking job. Where did that take you? What did you find? That might give me some clue about what I need to do to help Morley. I know you found something because you're you, Pular Singe, the best there is and maybe ever was."

  "Wow! Doesn't that make me feel special?"

  "Singe! Please."

  "I keep forgetting that you're a gelding now. All right. Miss Contague asked me to backtrack a team of goats. I did, into Elf Town, to a small warehouse, where we found some totally ridiculous stuff."

  "Meaning?"

  "I can't think of a way to say it better."

  "So just tell me."

  "All right. The warehouse was maybe forty by sixty feet, two stories tall, all open inside. The goat cart left the warehouse through a pair of doors, each three feet wide and of normal height. They were barred from inside when we got there. Miss Contague's men broke in while Director Relway's Specials looked the other way."

  Pardon me, children. I can make this easier for you both. It is a significant event that Garrett has no knowledge of beyond the fact that Miss Contague wanted that cart backtracked.

  Singe said, "She knew goats are more pungent and persistent than people. Tracing them would be the easiest way to get a handle on our villain. May I get on with my report?"

  No. Too much will be lost if you do it verbally.

  Vaguely, I heard Singe use language unladylike even for a ratgirl, then found myself living a memory, riding behind her eyes from the moment she started the trace. Initially, there were flashes, excised moments, as the Dead Man skipped me along like a flat stone across a pond. The stills came closer and closer together. Then I was outside the aforementioned double doors. They had been painted recently, a repugnant flat olive with a repulsive odor.

  Red tops stared the other way while Belinda's thugs broke through. Nobody came to protest the violation. Because the doors were standing open when they arrived the Specials were free to pass through and see if crimes were in progress inside.

  Nobody was home. Belinda's men and the tin whistles alike produced lights, moved fast.

  I was fascinated by the differences in how Singe and I sensed the world. For her, visual things were less crisp and weaker on color. Her depth of field was limited. She had trouble seeing clearly things that were more than fifty feet away. But the smells!

  She lived in a rich, rich world of aroma.

  Her brother once told me the sense of smell was dramatically more important to rats than to humans and most of the Other Races. I had believed him but not to this extent. The smells were overwhelming.

  And, inside that place, they were not good. They were the smells of corrupting flesh, of chemicals and poisons, smells implanted in ratkind racial memory. A place that smelled like it was where Singe's ancestors had been created. That thought hit her the instant she stepped inside, before the first lamp shed light.

  Light only confirmed truths evident to her genius nose.

  I could be a little parasite swimming around in Singe's recollections but I could not fully appreciate her experience. My senses acknowledged much different priorities.

  Once the raiders made light I saw that the place conformed to the dimensions Singe had reported. There were no internal walls except for the far corner on the left side where a space eight feet by ten was isolated behind partitions eight feet high. There was nothing overhead but framing for a peaked roof, the rooftree of which was twenty feet above the floor.

  Ahead were numerous glass vats big enough to hold a human being. Several did. They could have been blown only by an artist with a knack for sorcery. Every thug and tin whistle instantly decided that discovering the provenance of the vats would lead them right to the devil who had created this abomination.

  The intruders moved deeper into the warehouse. The stench of corruption grew thicker. Scores of dead flies floated in the solution in those vats without closed tops. There were no active flies. They came in the front door but did not make it all the way to the rotting flesh.

  That did come from dead people. A twenty foot long, massive oak workbench stood against the back wall. It boasted three corpses in the process of disassembly. Extra parts lay scattered about. At the right-hand end of the bench sat the biggest vat in the place, only as tall as the table but three feet wide and six feet long. Scrap pieces could be swept off into a solution that had to be something ferocious-though becoming slightly diluted. There were chunks of inadequately consumed big bones in there.

  Singe had shut down all but the observer part of her mind. She handled the horror better than I would have. Certainly better than Belinda's soldiers and the tin whistles did. Several left and would not come back. Others did return but absent their latest several meals. Only the Windwalker, Furious Tide of Light, seemed unaffected. She moved through the place slowly, examining everything.

  Experiencing all that through Singe's nose was no joy, though to the primal rats from which she descended stinky meat had meant food.

  Singe paid little attention to the Windwalker. I was unable to watch the lethal waif saunter about, surrounded by a ten foot come-no-closer spell. Singe was interested only in the manufactory of horror.

  That w
as what she had found. A place where monsters were made from pieces of dead people. It might be the foulest necromantic den TunFaire had turned up in centuries.

  I felt frustrated. She didn't just pay no attention to the Windwalker, she didn't poke where I would have poked. Though she did better than I might have, really. I would have focused on the Windwalker. She was remarkable in so many ways, including by being off the Hill, one of TunFaire's top sorcerers. And, once upon a time, she had made it plain that she was inclined to stand very close to a certain professional investigator.

  Garrett!

  Nothing like a hammer between the eyes to make you concentrate.

  Singe left the others for the walled-off section. It had a makeshift door that could be latched from either side. It was ajar. She pushed it open. "Can someone bring a light?"

  One arrived quickly. Singe and the light bringer entered the room. The Windwalker followed. She did something mystic to create a better light.

  The space was a child's room. Dirty clothes were scattered everywhere. An unmade bed was occupied by a large, tattered stuffed bear. Clutter was everywhere. It included moldy remnants of unfinished meals. The tin whistle with the lantern observed, "Somebody likes stuffed critters." There had to be fifteen of those, mostly large. The clothing was girl stuff, in what seemed to be a variety of adolescent sizes. Singe never actively examined those.

  Singe sniffed. The Windwalker began an intense visual examination. The tin whistle asked, "He kept a kid prisoner?" Jumping to the obvious conclusion. "We need to get this guy."

  Furious Tide of Light said, "Would you step outside, officer? Watch from the doorway if you like. Our first task will be to find out who lived here." She let Singe stay. Singe was the miracle girl.

  The miracle girl didn't pay attention to what the Windwalker was doing. Near as I could figure, the woman was doing the same as Singe, only sniffing for magic.

  And that was that. Furious Tide of Light decided that the place ought to be evacuated and cordoned off. A guard would be posted and no one would be allowed in except at Prince Rupert's direction. Singe learned what she could but had to leave with everyone else. She reported to Belinda, then came home. Nothing more had been heard.

  Amongst the things I found while Miss Contague was with us was an angry recollection of being asked to drop her private investigation by the Crown Prince.

  29

  I said, "That was amazing stuff. But what does it have to do with Morley?"

  For that connection you must be patient. I have begun exploration but the work goes like trying to fell a tree by gnawing through the trunk.

  Singe rubbed her temples. "That was no fun. I hope that is the last time we will go over it."

  I have it memorized, now. I can relive it whenever I want. I will not trouble you again.

  I started asking questions. I have that habit. Singe said, "You saw what I saw. You have every scrap of information I did. I need to see my brother before I get too giddy."

  "Speaking of John Stretch. Some of his people were outside the henhouse with you. What was that all about?"

  "Belinda planned to use them somehow. And Humility had them there to look out for me, too. Belinda changed her mind and paid them off."

  "After she got warned off."

  I might want to talk to her about that.

  No. She would wonder how you knew. Then she would conclude that her hairnet is not infallible.

  Singe got up. "Shut the door behind me." And, "I won't be long."

  She wasn't. I was still standing there, enjoying a mind-sharing experience with the Dead Man, cataloging faces in the street. I watched Singe approach with two brawny ratwomen. Old Bones told me, Nothing remarkable out there. One watcher from Miss Contague's enterprise whose sole task is to see who else is watching.

  "That's it? There's nobody from the Al-Khar?" I opened up for Singe.

  Does the woman up the street still maintain a Watch outpost?

  "Get with the times. It's not the Watch anymore. It's the Civil Guard these days."

  And the answer to the question? The woman up the street?

  "Mrs. Cardonlos? Singe? Is Mrs. Cardonlos still a stringer for the red tops?"

  "Yes. But since you have been gone she does not have a regular team staying there. She rents rooms for real, now. Let me get these two started on Mr. Dotes."

  The burly, badly dressed ratwomen looked at Singe like she was a goddess. They'd never seen a ratperson in a conversation of equals with a human. And Singe was female!

  One eyed me like she thought there was something wrong with me.

  I followed but stayed in the hallway while Singe explained the job. The ratwomen had done this kind of work before. They had no trouble understanding. Cued by the Dead Man, Dean brought a tray with food for the help as well as Morley.

  Before he went back to the kitchen Dean offered a wan smile and said, "The excitement is back."

  Not really. We were going to sit here and do every bit of the nothing we had done at Fire and Ice. Everything else would be in the hands of others. Professionals. And criminals.

  A warn-off by the gods themselves would not keep Belinda from digging.

  I hoped no one on the law-and-order side pushed her. She was crazy enough to push back.

  Dean went to bed before the ratwomen finished. I helped Singe clean up; then we resumed gossiping and honoring Weider's beer.

  It didn't take much of the latter to slow me down.

  I meant to quiz Singe on how I could handle Tinnie. But I stayed sober enough to realize that was stupid. Singe was barely an adult. She wasn't human. And Tinnie was unique, possibly unfathomable by Tinnie Tate herself.

  Eventually I dragged myself upstairs. My room was the way I had left it, except that somebody had cleaned it and had made up the bed with fresh linens.

  Singe was altogether too efficient. And was, probably, resenting my intrusion into her quiet, orderly world.

  30

  There were four sleeping rooms on the second floor of my house. The biggest, stretching across the front, was mine. Dean's room spanned the house in back, except for a storage closet and space taken by the stairs. Singe occupied the largest of the remaining rooms, which sat on the west side of the central hallway. In area, it almost matched Dean's. The fourth room-our guest room-contained a seldom-used bed and lots of stuff that should have been thrown away. We used to hide somebody there once in a while.

  There were two real, glazed windows in my room. They were not barred because there was no easy way for villains to get at them. Both looked down on Macunado Street. The one to the east might as well have not existed. I've never opened it and seldom looked out it. The other, beside the head of my bed, had seen some action. Once upon a time I would stare out it while I ruminated. Tonight, as always in warm weather, it was open a few inches so cool night air could get inside.

  I liked sleeping in a cool room.

  I had the opportunity that night. The temperature plummeted after sundown. At one point I wakened and added a light blanket to the sheet that had been adequate earlier. Later, I wakened again and used the chamber pot, setting some beer free. Then I wakened a third time, needing a heavier cover and with my bladder ready to explode.

  The sky had been overcast during the afternoon and evening. That had cleared. The light of an unseen moon splashed the rooftops and turned them into a weird faerie landscape.

  My aim was less than perfect. I missed the pot completely to start. Disgusting. I gobbled something incoherent meant to be an appeal to the Dead Man. No telling what I thought he could do. I got no response, anyway.

  Then I saw the ghost.

  The specter drifted down out of the night and came toward my window like a vampire in a dream. "But vampires don't really fly," I reminded myself. "They just jump really far." Vampires can leap for altitude or distance but they don't flit like bats. Nor do they turn into bats, much as they might want the prey community to think they do.

  I calmed myself,
completed my business, formulated a plan for cleaning up before Singe or Dean discovered the evidence. Then I checked the window. And nearly panicked.

  The flying woman was still there, hair and clothing streaming in the breeze. Her dress was something light and white that, in moonlight, made me think of fashionable grave wear. And reminded me of what I had seen vampire brides wearing in the nests in the adventure where I first butted heads with Tinnie Tate.

  My ears kicked in. I heard my name. Then my brain shed sleep enough to put it all together. That was the Windwalker, Furious Tide of Light. And she wanted in.

  So, naturally, I remembered that vampires, like most evils, have to be invited in the first time. And I recalled my reaction to this woman last time our paths crossed.

  She didn't look like she had seduction in mind. She looked troubled.

  I raised the window as high as it would go, which was not much. I turned up my bedside lamp. The Windwalker, being a wisp of a woman, drifted through the narrow opening.

  I settled on the edge of my bed, waited, hoping she would feel no need to pace over there by the chamber pot. She glanced around, shoved my dirty clothes off the only chair, settled. She turned the lamp back down. "A watcher might wonder."

  Assuming he failed to notice a flying woman in her nightgown sliding in the window. "You didn't ride anything this time."

  "A broomstick isn't necessary." She noted my interest in her apparel. "The King held a ball at Summer Hall. I was invited. He has aspirations." She spoke softly.

  So. Not a nightgown. "I see." I matched her soft voice. Singe would invite herself to join us if she heard us talking. "And now you're here."

  "Yes. It was on the way."

  Only by the most circuitous route.

  31

  "I'm frightened. Strange things are happening. They're outside my control. I don't deal well with that sort of circumstance."

  She spoke like she wanted me to understand, not like she wanted to be comforted, which was how my head worked when she was around.