Gilded Latten Bones

by Glen Cook

  That figured.

  Belinda leaned into the doorway, which was the best she could do because of the crowd in the room already. “I got Kolda. It took a while. We had to run him down.”

  40

  Block had arrived looking for one thing. He went out with something else in mind, but happy and eager to get to work.

  The Dead Man would give him additional information. Soon the Al-Khar would be a-bustle. No one but the Director and the commanding general would know that the Guard was violating the spirit of their orders.

  Kolda joined me in with Morley. He was nervous. Our history, while limited, left him no reason to think that he was in a good position. I told him, “You’re an expert in chemicals and exotic herbs. My friend, here, has been poisoned. It’s not lethal, it just keeps him from waking up. And it makes him heal really slow.”

  Kolda gave me a big-eyed, frightened look but didn’t say anything.

  “The pudgy character with Dollar Dan’s paw tangled in his collar delivered the poison. That was given to him, along with a lot of money, by a third party, after Miss Contague engaged him to heal my friend. She gave him a lot of money, too.”

  Kolda had a worse flair for fashion than me. He couldn’t keep his hair combed or his shirt tucked in. He was always nervous. His social skills were negligible. But he was a genius in his field. And he owed me.

  I had insisted, to Block, that Kolda wasn’t a poisoner. But he did poison me, once upon a time. I’m still breathing and complaining. The evidence suggests that I found the antidote.

  I said, “Healer, give this man the bottle you brought today. Then Dollar Dan will take you across the hallway. Your redemption begins when you start work on Playmate.”

  He didn’t want to do that. Freebies went against the code of the Children of the Light. “I understand.” His voice was slow and toneless. He dug out a little bottle identical to the one he had given us during his visit to Fire and Ice.

  I asked the air, “What are the chances this bottle contains the same ingredients as the first one?”

  Indeterminate. Ten seconds passed. Clever catch, Garrett. He did, in fact, consult a contact after he heard that you needed more medicine. The excuse we provided was of a sort to excite the suspicions of a paranoid supplier.

  “We do still have the original philter. Kolda can compare them.”

  The healer surrendered his new bottle. Dollar Dan hustled him across the hall.

  I gave Kolda the original bottle. “This stuff goes three drops to a two-quart pitcher of water.”

  “Potent, then.” With commendable caution he unstopped each bottle and took a gentle sniff. Of the new bottle he said, “This is vanilla, a touch of clove oil, another of castor oil, in wood alcohol. There is something more that I don’t recognize.” After sniffing the original bottle, he said, “This includes everything in the other bottle, with less of the unknown odor and more of something that smells like death.”

  “Definitely different formulas, then?”

  “Yes. But subtly. Both would be deadly, in different ways.”

  I asked the air, “What do you think?”

  You may be on the right trail. Neither oil of clove nor oil of castor ought to dissolve in cold water but their presence, with the vanilla, might be there to suggest that the concoction is medicinal.

  “The poison has to be something that is effective in amounts so small...”

  The beans from which castor oil is rendered. They contain a poison so deadly that infinitesimal amounts can kill scores. The poisoner’s dilemma has always been how to remain unpoisoned himself, then how to disperse the poison in an effective manner. It would appear that someone has found a way to use it, one customer at a time.

  Ah! Friend Kolda has begun thinking along the same lines. I will spare you the admiration he has for the genius of his fellow chemist.

  Kolda said, “Someone has done the impossible. Someone has achieved an unbelievable breakthrough.”

  I asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Someone has found a way to extract the poison from castor beans.”

  “You dud. That’s been known for years. What nobody does know is how to use the poison safely.”

  Kolda gave back an unhappy grunt. He might not be as ignorant as we hoped.

  He was ignorant about the Dead Man. I’m not sure I approve but last time we crossed paths Old Bones added some trapdoors to Kolda’s memory.

  Kolda will never remember anything he learns while visiting us.

  I was beginning to think my partner wasn’t as swell as I claimed he was.

  I felt a touch of amusement from outside.

  41

  With Kolda and the healer gone to see the Dead Man there wasn’t much for me to do with Morley. And it was almost time for the ratwomen.

  I decided to cultivate my atrophied social skills. But only a handful of guests remained. The healer, Kolda, and Playmate were in with the Dead Man. The rest were in Singe’s office. Jon Salvation was talking up his next play. I checked the corners and under Singe’s desk. Still no Winger. How did he manage?

  The Dead Man’s special student, Penny Dreadful, hadn’t fled when I turned up. There had been enough witnesses for her to feel safe.

  My, how she had grown!

  You notice these things when you’re male and still alive.

  Morley’s longtime associate Sarge was there, too. He looked lost. He looked like somebody just poisoned his kitten.

  I snagged the last available chair, beckoned Sarge, indicated my willingness to share the contents of a pitcher clearly in need of refurbishing. Sarge was slumped on a chair in a corner not occupied by Saucerhead Tharpe’s or Singe’s office furniture. He brightened slightly and dragged his chair over.

  “How is the restaurant managing without our boy?”

  “We don’t need no barkin’ from Morley to make dat work, Garrett. We been in da racket so long da business rolls on like a mill wheel turnin’. But he’s our frien’, too. An’ none of us know what we’ll do if’n he don’t make it t’ru dis.”

  “Belinda has probably made you crazy trying to figure out what Morley was up to when he got hurt, but...”

  “Dat’s for sure. But she don’t listen to what nobody tells her so she ain’t never gonna get nowhere. She’s one a dem people what figures out ahead a time what dey’re gonna believe, den dey don’t never hear nothin’ dat disagrees.”

  I’d known Belinda longer than I liked to remember and more intimately than the world needed to know. She had huge intellectual flaws. Willful disdain of facts was never one of those. “For sure? Like how?”

  “Well, you know, Morley don’t got a lot a use for his et’nic roots. He’s a dark elf, but, yeah? So what? He’s in business in a human city an’ half da people dere, dey don’t know dat, can’t tell dat, an’ maybe don’t need ta know dat if’n dey’re da kind what gives a shit about dat.”

  I nodded. Sarge’s dialect was thicker than usual but I was following him. He was saying Morley wasn’t one for living in the past. “Did something change?” He had been found in that zone where greater TunFaire fades into the neighborhood known as Elf Town. Folk there, who never saw a house in their home country, live in tenements twelve to a room and insist that they’ll never put the old ways and old tongue behind them.

  “Sumptin’ did. Maybe dat bint what his folks arranged him ta marry came ta town.”

  “I thought he bought his way out of that a couple years ago.”

  “We all t’ought dat. Maybe he just wished he did.”

  Jon Salvation joined us, uninvited. He planted himself in front of me, hands on his skinny little girl hips. “Garrett, you have to help me.”

  Story of my life. “I can’t afford to invest in one of your plays. And I’m busy, here.”

  “I don’t need investors. I have people lined up to buy into anything I put on. I stick with the Weiders because they give me artistic control. But you’re the only one I can count on to make my next project
a success.”

  I forgot Sarge and Morley briefly. Pilsuds Vilchik had presented me with a grand conundrum. No way could a street operator like me assure the success of a stage drama. Unless he wanted me to sell seats at knifepoint. Or maybe he wanted Winger kept out of his hair.

  “Where is Winger?”

  “Getting into mischief somewhere.” He shrugged. “What I want is for you to get Tinnie to come back. She’s perfect for the lead in The Faerie Queene.”

  “You want to cast Tinnie as a fairy? Man, that’s a stretch. She is way too substantial.” That wisp Furious Tide of Light was far more suitable.

  “That’s the point. I’m not doing fairy-tale fairies. They won’t be ethereal. They’ll be like elves, only from a realm at right angles to our own. Tinnie’s coloring and attributes, her stature and sharp attitude, even her freckles, make her the perfect Mathilde.”

  “Will this go on at the World?”

  “Main stage, expanded. This will be my biggest hit yet, Garrett.”

  “Tinnie doesn’t get along with Heather Soames.”

  “I’ll make them get along.”

  I liked his confidence.

  He said, “Tinnie is Mathilde but I will send her packing if she behaves the way she did before. You don’t need to tell her that. I’ll make it clear at first rehearsal.”

  Interesting times were headed our way. “Look at you getting all self-confident and assertive. What happened to the Remora we knew and loathed?”

  “He found his passion. Are you going to pitch Mathilde to Tinnie?”

  “No.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “I’m committed to my own passion. That will keep me here with my injured friend. If you want Tinnie, head on over to Factory Slide. Or, better, catch her at work. Go in the afternoon. She’ll be sick of accounting. I can give you a letter to get you past the guards.”

  “If that’s the way it has to be. Would you be interested in a small role? I need a banged up hulk to play the faithful old soldier...”

  “Jon, you need to come at me some other time. I was involved in an important discussion with Sarge when you horned in.”

  The playwright goggled. He had lost his appreciation of direct talk.

  People did talk to the Remora that way, back when. They talked to Pilsuds Vilchik that way in the once upon a time. They didn’t talk that way to the town’s hottest celebrity today.

  Sarge volunteered, “I’d make a good fait’ful old sojer what’s been banged aroun’ enough ta have some character.”

  And there was another reason Jon Salvation felt free to unleash his inner dick. People put up with it because he might cast them in a play.

  42

  Salvation did not get in a huff. He just went away, no doubt deleting my name from his roll of potential character actors.

  “Sorry about that, Sarge.”

  “He ain’t timid no more.”

  “No. Unless he was on the street.”

  “No shit dere. Dat attitude don’t cut no nutin’ wit’ da brunos. If dey was any dat da Director didn’t already ship off ta da work camps.”

  An interesting notion, that law and order had become so ubiquitous that smarmy little peckerwoods like the Remora could turn snotty and not have to pay with bloody head wounds.

  What did Deal Relway think of that unintended consequence?

  “Anyway, you were telling me that Morley’s country fiancée might be in town hoping to dip into his pockets.”

  “Dat’s just one t’eory.”

  “Are there others?”

  “Probably. You gotta ast da Capa. Me, I don’t t’ink so fast so I jes’ follow along.”

  “I see. Don’t put yourself down. You have a knack for doing the right thing at the right time.” He saved my life, once upon a time. “Did you hold back anything from the Capa? Something you guys thought might upset her?”

  A downside to being a sociopath, like Belinda, was that people walked on eggshells around you. They didn’t tell you things that might upset you. You ended up operating in a bad news vacuum.

  Belinda was smart enough to see that. She created ways around the standard distortion. But those ways would not work inside a closed and loyal crew like Morley’s. Belinda might suspect that they were blowing smoke and leaving things unsaid but that would be outside her imperial reach.

  “Any other time, Garrett, an’ you’d be right. If Morley survivin’ wasn’t involved, we’d mix up a whole stew a half-troots an’ misleadin’ troots. We wouldn’t let her know what was really what. But dis time it was himself as da table stakes. Dis time we had ta tell her true.”

  The dialect had weakened. I understood every word.

  Morley’s crew would not hold out on Belinda while she could do their friend and employer some good.

  They would turn loose nothing that didn’t bear on the immediate problem, though.

  “You didn’t hold anything back?”

  “Nut’in’! We gotta get our Morley back — which I guess we sorta got, if’n he ever come outta dat coma — an’ we gotta have a shot at fixin’ whoever done whatever got did ta him. We figure you an’ da Capa tagether are gonna see the blood spread where dat’s gonna do da mos’ good. An’ I t’ink I better get on back down ta da place, now. Dey’re gonna need me. Dis is da busiest night a da week.”

  “I wouldn’t want to interfere with business. Get going. If something turns up that might interest me don’t waste time letting me know.”

  Sarge nodded. “He’s gonna make it, ain’t he, Garrett?”

  “I’m sure. Tell the others. Morley will be back real soon.”

  “T’anks, Garrett.” He stared at me for several seconds. “Maybe you ain’t da complete sponge we always t’ought.”

  Sarge, Puddle, and others of Morley’s bunch had, back when, treated me like I carried a social disease. They had kept it in check only when Dotes was there, watching.

  “I’m pleased to hear you say that, Sarge. It means a lot. Now go back to work and make Morley rich.”

  As Sarge headed out I realized that I could not remember what Morley called the place he had opened across from the World. What was wrong with me? Tinnie and I had eaten there several times.

  43

  A quick census revealed that the Garrett household had shed most of its visitors. Some, when the Dead Man showed me the roster, were folks I’d missed. Some I didn’t know. “Tinnie never showed?” I asked Singe.

  “Which means nothing,” she told me. “She was informed that important matters would be discussed but this is the middle of the workweek and Amalgamated still suffers from explosively good sales. Note that the people who were here mostly aren’t the kind who have ordinary jobs.”

  Yeah. True. She made it sound plausible.

  Those who were still around sure fit. Saucerhead Tharpe, maybe passed out drunk, looked pathetic snoring in a corner. Jon Salvation was bold enough to use Singe’s pens and inks to scribble in the bound book of blank pages he carried everywhere.

  Then Salvation was up and reminding me, “You said you’d write a letter that would get me in to see Tinnie.”

  “So I did. Help me swing this desk around and I’ll get on it.”

  I created a three-hundred-word masterpiece that would get Tinnie salivating over the prospects of what Jon Salvation might want to discuss. I kept me out of it. I said nothing about where I was, what I was doing, why, or even my state of health. She could squeeze that out of the Remora if she wanted to know. And he could let me know how interested she was.

  If it went right I might try to sneak away for a peace conference.

  And then we were down to Saucerhead, a few ratpeople, and the folks over there with the Dead Man. I complained, “I never got a chance to talk to John Stretch. I wanted to catch up on his adventures.”

  Singe said, “He’s doing fine. Outstanding, considering he’s still the boss of bosses in the rat underworld. After all these years.”

  “That would be about three, w
ouldn’t it?”

  “Only one as boss of bosses. The first of his kind, really.”

  She glowed with pride. Her brother was the undisputed overlord of crime amongst her species.

  Her look dared me to disrespect her pride.

  I’d never do that. Not to Singe.

  Garrett. Please join us.

  Though I did not hear Singe mentioned I was not alone in migrating.

  It seemed there wasn’t just one corpse in the cold room when Singe and I arrived. Nobody moved. You’d expect that from Old Bones but Kolda, Playmate, or the healer should have been doing something.

  Singe went straight to Playmate, who, definitely, looked dead.

  I had Mr. Kolda give him a measure of the medication meant for Mr. Dotes. We will put a bad thing to good use by keeping Playmate under while I battle the monster devouring him from inside. Singe, engage one of the Kerr tribe to take a message to the brother-in-law managing Playmate’s stable. He will need to understand what is happening. Do not give too much detail. Do not suggest that we have any great hope. The brother-in-law will, almost certainly, find the prospect of Playmate’s recovery disheartening.

  From what I knew about Playmate’s brother-in-law, I reckoned the Dead Man was spot on. Play’s sister was his only heir. The idiot husband probably had a buyer for the stable lined up.

  “So what are you actually doing?”

  I am working inside Playmate’s brain to shut down the pain that distracts him from handling the rest of his life. In parallel, I have been scanning Mr. Kolda’s herbal knowledge in hopes of discovering a specific for Playmate’s cancer.

  “Any luck?”

  Possibly. But it comes from the mind of Brother Hoto instead. He knows of a reptile venom that attacks tumor tissue vigorously.

  “Where do we find the poison lizard?”

  It is a tropical species. A flashily-clad critter something like an iguana with saber teeth appeared in my mind.

  “I remember this guy from the islands. A bad actor. You went down if he breathed on you.”

  As always, you exaggerate where there are no witnesses to contradict you. Nonetheless, the venom is potent. A few of the lizards may live in TunFaire.