by Glen Cook
He worked slower and slower. She watched for several minutes, then told me, “I’ve seen enough. Almost time to go. But first.” She snagged a seam ripper, pushed me against a wall, and began to pat me down. I remained polite and tolerant on the assumption that she wouldn’t make an unwelcome move in public. Though she might not be able to resist the absurdity of trying in the middle of this particular crowd.
“Turn. The other way. Stop.” She poked around behind and above my right hipbone, used the seam ripper. The tailors stopped work to watch. She showed me a small canvas patch. “Tracer One, gone.”
“I saw that but never thought anything about it. Singe is always fixing stuff without telling me.”
“Turn a little more. Did that Helenia creature put her hand in your pants?”
“No.”
“The Guard tracer got in there somehow.” She tugged at the top of my trousers.
“We were going to keep that one, remember?”
“Spoilsport. I wanted to go fishing. Another quarter turn, please. Perfect.” She patted my left calf down, down, and down. “Weird. Where did it get to? Hey. Pull your pants leg up.”
I did that. She frowned some, thought some. “Lift your foot but keep your toe on the floor. And here the devil is!” Then, puzzled, “But how did they manage this?” Using fingernails and the seam ripper, she worked on something on the top center back of my shoe, above and behind my ankle. “Did you have some bimbo hanging on your leg while you were fighting the zombies? This one has been there awhile.”
I no longer bothered arguing that they hadn’t been zombies. “You told me to wear comfortable shoes. But I didn’t.”
“What?”
“I didn’t. I forgot. These are the ones I always wear. That patch is really clever. I don’t know when or how the damned thing. . you wouldn’t notice it even if you were looking.”
“Not with untrained eyes. Besides tracer elements, there are spells making it hard to see. Which didn’t work against me.”
“They do say it ain’t bragging if you can do it.”
She gave me the fish-eye. “I’ll let that opportunity slide.” She held both tracer patches to the light. It looked like the clouds might be thinning outside. “These are first-rate.”
“Same craftsman made both?”
“I think so. Someone compelled to engage in commerce.”
Behind that lay prejudices seldom encountered anymore. Times are tough and even the gentry likes to eat.
Moonblight did something quiet and clever that stopped work while the tailoring crew boggled. She summoned a rat, a big bull that didn’t want to play. He fought her. He lost. He responded to her will. He came to her.
She had just finished working a tracer into the rat’s back fur when Feisty arrived with smoke streaming out his ears. He bellowed, “What the hell do you people think you’re doing?” Bellow being relative, considering his limitations. “Enough is enough. . ”
Moonblight’s fingers wove patterns in her lap. Pindlefix approached her showing the same ferocious reluctance that the bull rat had.
Tara Chayne welcomed him with love talk he’d never heard from a girl, so deftly that I failed to mark the transaction when she fixed him up with his own inherited tracer.
Scary, scary, scary once I got to brood on it.
The woman might be able to manipulate anyone that way.
Maybe I should have Kevans Algarda rig me a custom anti-Moonblight hair net.
She told me, “Don’t worry your pretty head. You’re special to me. Well, look here. It’s time to go.”
57
Second time running I boarded my horse without error or mishap. Brownie yipped happily, impressed. Admittedly, though, my dressage needed polish.
As did the mare’s. She was strictly economy transportation.
Moonblight asked, “Did we learn anything useful there, professional investigator Garrett?”
“Yeah.” Like, don’t underestimate Tara Chayne Machtkess. She was more than just another dirty old woman.
I said, “It was your idea to go stir them up.”
“But isn’t that your special technique? Don’t you always do that before you show off your formidable skills as a survivor and observer?”
She was playing with me again. “There was nothing to observe. My partner already interviewed the noisy little man and one of his associates. They were exactly what they showed the world. Pretentious, sure, but only peripherally involved in the tournament absurdity and ignorant about what happened to Strafa.”
Why couldn’t it be simple? Just once. Just march straight to whoever hurt Strafa and hurt them back with usurious interest.
Tara Chayne said, “The red tops have caught up.” Proving that she could be attentive when she wanted. I had only just glimpsed a brushy-haired, bearded Preston Womble myself-though why I was sure that was Womble in the underbrush I couldn’t explain.
“The Director was blowing smoke when he yelled at Womble and Muriat. He was just irked because they got noticed.”
“Oh yes. He is a bad, bad man.”
Sarcastically said, still having fun.
We headed for the Trivias smithy. Master Trivias came out personally, maybe sensing that someone of standing had arrived.
Moonblight offered him a cloth-wrapped object the size of the box lunch you can purchase from street vendors. “There are six pieces.”
“That should do.” Trivias was more deferential than I figured he should be. He placed the box on a massive wooden workbench, untied the cloth, unfolded it, opened an actual used lunch box gently. Inside, on white cloth, lay six teak-colored cylinders three inches long and less than half an inch in diameter, like fat sticks of dark chalk. He was impressed. “Oh! And you created these overnight?”
“I did. It’s a knack.” She was pleased by his reaction.
They commenced what sounded like people in vaguely related trades talking shop. I took the opportunity to roam the smithy and try picking the brains of the staff. Most were happy to explain their trade to an old guy who wasn’t just interested when he wanted to yell at somebody for not having been born perfect. I learned from them and played with the dogs till Moonblight said something about the swords needing to be peace-bonded in their sheaths, which the law demanded, so the tracers would activate when the swords were unsheathed the second time. Trivias ought to discourage experimentation by his clients when they took delivery. If one of those old men was sensitive, he might feel the surge when a tracer went active.
So I volunteered, “Don’t deliver the damned things sheathed. Lay them out like you want them checked over. Let them sheathe them, then bond them and bum-rush them out.”
They eyed me with that numb look people get when they have missed the snakebite obvious. It was a look I knew well because it turns up on my clock most every damned day.
Tara Chayne snickered. “Now you see why I keep him around.”
Trivias nodded. “I had an intimation that it couldn’t be for his prowess in the night lists.”
Ouch!
Brownie distracted me. She remained a big fan. And she still wanted to play. I followed her out of the shop. We amused ourselves by playing “Where’s Womble?”
Tara Chayne joined us. “I’m finished here.”
“Were you actually hitting on that little man?”
“I was. I had to give up on you.”
I felt my cheeks get warm.
She laughed as she readied her gelding. “Let’s go find the priest with the knot on his head.”
So. Yes. Off we went, horses, dogs, and people, with spies behind, probably aware that they had been spotted but going through the motions anyway.
58
“I’ve been thinking,” I told Tara Chayne, around a mouthful of a particularly nasty vegetable mix, foully spiced, inside a wrap, the principal ingredient of which seemed to be gritty sand.
“I worry when you do that.”
We were having a snack at a place called Sasah. She
was known there. She had enthused about the menu till I agreed to stop in. I regretted my weakness. I blurted, “This stuff is awful!”
Probably not the smartest reaction, which I realized a moment too late. So, naturally, I dug the hole deeper. “It has peppers in it. Bell peppers. Everything here has peppers in it. That’s sick. When I’m king of the world, as soon as we finish off the lawyers, we’re going to torch the pepper fields.”
She managed a strained smile. “You’ll just add a new angle to the underground economy. Your friends will start planting secret pepper patches, picking and packing by the peck.”
I answered with a gagging noise.
The nearest staffers, having overheard, looked baffled. Mental defectives every one, they couldn’t imagine anyone thinking that peppers were anything less than a blessing from the gods.
This town is afflicted with way too many freethinkers.
It does take all kinds, granted. But the world could get along fine without those nasty vegetables and, more so, without people compelled to put them in stuff that actual living, breathing human beings have to eat.
Sasah’s was a sidewalk cafe. It was in a fine part of town, just outside the Dream Quarter, including many big homes owned by top priests suffering through their vows of poverty and service. The mutts were right there with us, drawing scowls from other patrons and passersby. Staff did not have what it took to face us down, though.
Tara Chayne spotted me trying to slip my lunch under the table, where I had no takers. Not even contrary Number Two was hungry enough. “I rest my case. These are stray dogs. They never skip a chance to eat.”
“I believe I get it. Bell peppers don’t suit your taste.”
“Yes, dear. That’s true. Anyway, what I was thinking? Should we be making a move on this priest before his crowd collects those swords?”
She chomped down a gob of pepper chum like it was good. I tried to keep my reaction off my mug but couldn’t help recalling that she’d wanted me to kiss her.
She gave me a big smile. Her teeth needed work. Surprising, that, what with the options available to people with all the wealth and power she had. Colorful bits of pepper had gotten caught between several teeth.
“What are we going to do about your sister?”
“She’s good right where she’s at.”
“But. . family. .”
“Yeah? You try being her kin.”
But they lived together.
“Hell, Garrett, she’ll be fine as long as they think they can use her. Her personality being what it is, she might gloom them all into committing suicide before they figure out that she’s useless.”
She slapped some coins down. Too much. Showing off. “Sorry you didn’t enjoy it. Next time you pick, your treat. Let’s go find our man.”
While I was working out which foot went into which stirrup which way, I glimpsed Helenia, in ineffective disguise. Her crew included Womble and Muriat. The Director must be letting Helenia hone her field skills.
Family evidently meant a little something to Deal Relway.
“I have a cunning plan,” I announced. “Once we spot our man we turn him in to the Unpublished Committee. The Specials can handle the dirty work. They can make him disappear and then turn up at my place to chat with my partner. The Operators would never know.”
If she and I weren’t obviously involved, we would retain our freedom of action. Relway sticking an oar in anywhere wouldn’t surprise anyone who followed current events. That was what the man did.
Nobody, not even the Palace, could get him to stop.
I added, “The more I think about it, the better I like that.”
“There is a problem.”
“Yeah. It might look like Relway was being manipulated. He wouldn’t want anybody to get that idea.”
“You’re entirely too cynical. And you ignore the benefits of open communication.”
“Huh?”
“Just explain what you’d like done and why. Clearly. In short, declarative sentences. No asides. No parenthetical remarks. No historical justification or moralizing. The way you wish clients would talk to you.”
That sounded like. . Hell, I don’t know what. Maybe just something too sensible, simple, mature, and unlikely for human nature, especially if the nether half of the transaction was a nut job like Deal Relway.
“Overwhelming as a concept, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“The idea of just stepping up and saying something.”
She was messing with me, ringing the wind chimes of a lesser and tangled intellect. She pranced back to her original point. “There would be a legal problem if our man is a priest. Clerics are supposed to be handled inside their churches even when they commit civil crimes. That goes back centuries.”
I understood. There had been a stink about exactly that a few years ago. The Courts of Resolve ruled for a temple where a priest had committed rape, citing past practice, common law, and the fact that the cult was signatory to the Canonical Accord of the Synod of TiKenvile.
Life gets stupid once politics become involved.
“Got you. But what do you want to bet the Unpublished Committee doesn’t give a rat’s whisker?”
It wouldn’t go down in total secrecy, either, if ever it happened. Relway would want the priests to know that they enjoyed no more immunity than any other criminal class.
Yes. His branch of the Guard probably felt strong enough to begin eroding clerical privilege employing a time-honored tool: divide and conquer.
Every cult wanted to cut the rest down. There were hundreds to cut.
Relway might see a chance to establish the primacy of the Unpublished Committee because one of the Operators was a priest in TunFaire’s biggest denomination. If we told him.
59
We were clip-clopping along the Street of Dreams now, nearing its head and the great brooding mass of Chattaree, epicenter of the Orthodox rite. “Been a while since I’ve been here,” I said. There had been a case involving a bad magister back before General Block, Deal Relway, the reform of the Watch, and the founding of the Unpublished Committee. Hardly anyone knows about it. The Church handled its own dirty laundry, as ever it had. I told Moonblight the story, without nostalgia. We had by then dismounted and established ourselves on a public bench across from the cathedral.
“I knew a little about it,” she said, never asking why we were sitting when we could go inside and do. Chattaree was open to anyone who wanted to wander in. That was part of its function. “Constance had your background examined when it became obvious that Strafa was smitten and determined.”
That surprised me but should not have. I said so.
Tara Chayne responded, “Strange as the Algarda family dynamics are, they are a family. Insular in the extreme, yes, but you’re right. Constance is thorough. She probably knows more about you than you remember yourself. Her unreserved approval must have surprised a lot of people.”
Did that make me uncomfortable? Yes, it did. “It stunned me. I expected to be chopped into dragon chow first time Strafa took me to meet her formally.”
“Presumably Constance saw something no one else but Strafa did. Quickly, anyhow. I believe I’m starting to get it.” She gestured, including Brownie and the girls, which only made me feel more lost.
She chuckled when I moved a few inches away. “Garrett, sweetheart! You’re safe here. I don’t do my business in public.”
Must be stamped on my forehead in big red letters that don’t show up in a mirror: THIS IS GARRETT, BORN TO BE GIVEN A HARD TIME. ENJOY. And, yeah, lately I’ve been working on clearing enough upper-level forehead to make room for all that.
I concentrated on Chattaree, which was as much ugly citadel as it was cathedral. Never much for ambling through TunFaire’s remoter past, I didn’t know why the original builders had gone for hideous instead of sublime. And, as I did every time I beheld it, I wondered, “How many millions of old-time marks did they spend to pile all that limestone
up that high?”
“Do you really care?”
“Not much. It wasn’t my money.”
“The elders are still servicing the loans taken to finance the construction.”
My opinion of Chattaree was down there with snakes’ balls. It was like the architects and artisans had made special efforts to generate the maximum in repulsion, but then had changed their minds partway through the project. They had started with a step pyramid, but once they got thirty feet above ground level, new management decided to plant a cathedral where the rest of the pyramid ought to go. That part was all soaring spires covered with curlicues and gargoyles.
Chattaree dominated the skyline for miles around.
I considered the steps. There were forty, of irregular height and width. Brownie came and rested her chin on top of my right leg, considered me with big brown, soulful eyes. Wishful thinking took me back to the unreasoned devotion Strafa had shown. I missed her bad. “You think Strafa and I would have made it?”
“I don’t see why not. She was devoted to you.”
“I got that part. But for a total genius she was a little simple. Somebody promised me she would be trouble because of the way she lived before we got together.”
“The Algardas put that darkness behind them.”
“Not the family complications, just the fact that Barate never let her grow up.”
“Because she was spoiled, you mean?”
“Partly that. And she never developed any life skills. Though I’m not quite sure that nails it, either. Kind of, the way she lived before she met me was the only way she ever lived, so that’s the way she’d always expect things to go on being.”
“I see. You could have seen some of that. But don’t forget that when she was much younger and even less worldly, she managed a line tour in the Cantard without anybody to hold her hand. She bore down and dealt when the fire began to burn.”
