by Glen Cook
With no audience but the girl, Play was revealing how weak he really was.
I should have a man-to-man with his dopey brother-in-law.
Accumulated circumstantial evidence suggested that the jerk just wanted Playmate to hurry up and die so he could get hold of the assets, sell them, and squander the proceeds on fool get rich schemes. He had done that with Play’s sister’s inheritance.
68
Penny was waiting to let me in. I heard talk from Singe’s office. John Stretch was using his deadly calm, lethally reasonable voice. I thought he would use that voice to explain why he was going to kill you. He was the only one doing any talking.
I raised an eyebrow to Penny. She shrugged, raised one hand with all five digits up, said, “The others are over there,” indicating the Dead Man’s room, then stepped around me to wait for Playmate and Hagekagome.
She knew they were coming, though I hadn’t said anything and they were still out of the Dead Man’s range.
Old Bones was peeking again.
Dean had not brought out any refreshments. Maybe our guests were less than totally welcome.
Perhaps he was being encouraged to restrain his natural hospitality.
I could endorse that attitude wholeheartedly, and about time, too!
You are dithering.
And not even recognizing it. I checked Penny. She was on tiptoe at the peephole. Satisfied, I advanced boldly on Singe’s office.
It was like a rat people clubhouse in there, minus the weed smoke and beer smell. There was plenty of rat smell, though, all with anger and fear behind it.
Singe was at her desk, making notes. Her brother stood beside her, dressed to the nines for a rat. Dollar Dan Justice and an unfamiliar mutant almost my size stood to either side of the doorway. The rest of the room was filled with four smaller, poorer, rattier rats who were much more gray than my friends. They were a different breed.
There are three kinds of rat people. Most humans don’t pay attention, but the two breeds that aren’t John Stretch’s and Pular Singe’s kind are uncommon. The differences hark back to the species of rats the creator sorcerers used in their experiments, and to the methods they used.
There are only two species of ordinary rat, ugly and uglier.
Rat eyes turned my way. I wasn’t stricken shy. “Some of these guys were on me and Tara Chayne a while ago.”
John Stretch said, “They were. They’ve never been so bold. I thought this might be a good place to ask them why. And thank you for sending word.”
“Best place in town for asking questions.” Speaking of Tara Chayne, what had become of her?
She is in the kitchen with Dean.
So at least one of his minds was not fully occupied.
Singe rewarded me with her most penetrating look. “Tara Chayne? Really?”
“Moonblight, if you prefer. Got to call her something.”
Her look shifted subtly. The subject would be tabled. It would come up again. I didn’t get why. She had to know that the sorceress wouldn’t be that kind of problem.
I asked, “What’s their story?”
Singe said, “My apologies on behalf of the rude interloper, gentlemen. This is Garrett. He owns the place and on that he tends to presume.”
The sleekest gray said something in dialect.
It is impenetrable to me as well, though I will pick it up. It descends from Karentine as spoken by the poorest poor two centuries ago.
John Stretch hunched his shoulders, nodded. He had been included. He was not yet used to hearing voices inside his head.
Singe bobbed her head, too.
Tara Chayne strolled in. She had equipped herself with my own favorite oversize tankard. It was filled with fragrant Select Dark. My mouth watered. She said, “Stinks like the monkey house in here.”
The grays cringed.
The other rat people were not much more at ease.
They all knew what she was, and maybe who. Her forbears might have had a paw in the creation of their lines.
She asked, “Have we learned anything yet?” Then slurped.
His mouth watering, too, John Stretch said, “Friend Evil Lin here was just starting to tell us a story.”
Singe said, “Perhaps you could translate, Humility.”
“But. .”
“Is anyone better qualified?”
“No.” He just did not like to admit that he had contacts as low as these people.
Everybody has somebody to look down on.
“Evil Lin?” I asked.
“They favor names like that. Wicked Pat is his littermate.”
Wicked Pat. I knew that name. He was a gray tribal leader.
I’d had nothing to do with grays before today. The opportunity hadn’t come up.
69
“This is what we learned,” John Stretch said. “They were sent to keep an eye on Garrett, the thinking being that even my people would pay no attention. They have a long history with this employer, whose identity they would not give up, possibly because they don’t know it.”
“Cheap,” Moonblight grumbled, evidently to herself. Her intensity said she thought she might know who. Maybe she knew somebody who had a habit of employing grays. She didn’t want to share, though trying to hide anything in my house was futile.
Or maybe she was just feeling the beer.
She should have eaten that sausage.
She thinks her sister was responsible. The timing is intriguing. I cannot determine when contact could have been made. Grays have almost no grasp of time, relative or exact. Past and future become entangled with the present.
But?
Indeed. Oddments in Niea’s mind suggest Moonslight made occasional nighttime visits to Chattaree.
So why didn’t he react to Moonslight’s twin when we showed up?
He never saw her. He is the day man. He heard talk. Nor did Moonblight behave as though she was intimate with someone inside. He has not developed a conscious suspicion, but he has begun to feel an itch.
That’s what Old Bones is good for. Making connections, probably not only with stuff from inside Niea’s head but also clutter from the shadows in Tara Chayne’s, spiced with whatever he got from the rest of us.
Tara Chayne began to grunt and scowl. She muttered, “The more you get done, the more they want you to do.”
Penny stuck her head in. “The dogs are done eating. I’ll get them ready to go.”
So. Playmate and Hagekagome had arrived. Penny had put them in with the Dead Man.
Exactly. Get a move on.
“A move on? What, where, and why?”
“We are now off to see my sister. To rescue her if we’re asked. Actually, maybe, to capture her and drag her bony ass back here.”
I was confused.
Not unusual, sadly. Please hurry.
“Just me and Tara Chayne? Against the Operators?”
Indeed. They are old. You are fast on your feet and fierce, and you will be accompanied by four savage hellhounds. And, likely, by half the Specials and Relway Runners infesting TunFaire.
“But. .”
Quickly. Speed is essential. They may move her when they hear that these four have been captured.
Damn! Oh yeah! More of their kind might be coming around.
Singe said, “Then I have to go, too.” She worked herself out from behind her desk, then through the crowd. John Stretch gestured to Dollar Dan. Dan nodded. He stepped into the hallway to await the body he would guard.
Singe snarled in exasperation.
She doesn’t want to be treated like a girl.
I said, “Don’t waste time arguing. Put on your walking shoes.”
Penny announced, “I want to come, too.”
I need you here, dear.
“I can take care of myself.”
Indeed. I would not question that for a moment. You should certainly do better than some members of the party. You use your head to a purpose higher than damaging fists and nightsticks. But
I do require your assistance. Singe and Garrett will be out of the house while we have outsiders on the premises. Dean cannot handle them if they become unruly.
Meaning Dean was too feeble to chuck the bodies out by himself if badly behaving guests had to be tossed overboard.
Penny turned surly but acquiesced.
I wondered if Himself did truly need her or just wanted his pet kept out of harm’s way.
He didn’t clue me in. He did give me a swift mental kick to get me moving.
Pouting, Penny headed for the back of the house. Tara Chayne and I scouted a route to the front door. Dollar Dan twitched nervously while watching for Singe to catch up. He lurked in the open doorway while we two stood snarling on the stoop, watching an unfamiliar teen boy mess with the horses in full view of a couple of tin whistles who did nothing about it.
Moonblight spat, muttered angrily, considered doing something that would have been unpleasant for the boy. Then she cocked her head, listening.
The Dead Man was on the job. The boy eased past us on the steps, eyes on Penny, who awaited him with a smile. He was too scared to appreciate that, but he couldn’t make himself stop.
Old Bones didn’t waste mental capacity letting me know what was going on with the boy. Nor did I much care just then.
Brownie and crew charged out of the breezeway. Well, she and the nameless pair charged. Number Two sauntered, not at all eager to seek further adventure. She wanted to be napping in the shade while the flies buzzed round.
I told her, “Stay here if you like.”
Big, dumb-eyed stare. And maybe a doggy sneer. No. No way.
I needed to get shot of her. Really. She thought I might do something wicked to her pals if she wasn’t there to stop me.
Tara Chayne fished something out from under my saddle blanket. “Oh, lookee.” It was leather, sticky on one side, had odd figures inked onto the other, skin side. They might have been tattooed there while the skin’s owner was still warm. “You and the bitch certainly are two of a kind, aren’t you? My. This is another tracer from that same craftsman.”
Number Two and I glared at each other. That snap had been hard on us both.
Tara Chayne cocked her head again. “Ah. He was just paid to install the patch. He doesn’t know what it is. He doesn’t care. He was hired by some generic ‘old guy.’”
Ah, the sharp eyes of youth. “That does reduce the suspect pool.”
Tara Chayne tucked the leather tracer into a pocket. “I’ll use it to start a false trail later.”
“Think it was the Operators?”
“Probably. But you have to wonder how the little girl does it, too.”
I should. Now that it had come up. It seemed she only watched, but how did she know where to be?
“Where is that woman of yours?”
Woman? Of mine?
It took a few seconds.
Amazing lack of prejudice in the old gal now, when there were no rat people to witness. She meant Singe.
Dollar Dan missed it. He was still on the stoop, getting restless, too.
Tara Chayne said, “We’ll walk the horses. They’re worn out.” And our rat companions couldn’t keep up if we rode.
Singe turned up wearing a complete new outfit. She had gone for an adventuress look, tan and plain, with one of my old hats slit to fit her ears. She carried a staff that I hadn’t seen before, made of bamboo strips bound and glued together. It had to be eight feet long. I stared but didn’t comment. Maybe she had a blade for its end hidden down her pants leg.
Any red top who got close would wonder, too.
Singe would have been grinning were she made that way. Her body language practically screamed that she was in a great good mood. She went out of her way to be nice to Dollar Dan.
Dan had decided to back off and bank the fire. He would become part of the environment, which was his job assignment anyway.
Singe was amused. She was bright enough to recognize the new strategy.
I think she was secretly flattered.
I began to suspect that there was a marginal chance that Dan could wear her down.
On the other hand, I doubted that he had enough time. He was mortal.
70
Tara Chayne said, “Let’s take these beasts back to their stable. It’s practically on the way.”
“Suppose your sister isn’t in good enough shape to walk?”
“We can only hope. We’ll drag her. You grab one foot, I’ll grab the other, and we’ll both hope she’s wearing a skirt.” She faked a dreamy look. “And no bloomers.”
How much of that poison was real?
The Machtkess girls certainly had an eccentric love-hate thing going.
Singe fell in beside me. “I just had to get out of the house.”
“Huh?”
“It is getting stressful. I am not equipped to mother a human teenager, nor do I have the force of personality to manage an old man who refuses to act his age.”
“Problems with Penny?” I faked an anxious look around. “Actually, she’s pretty well grounded. Just don’t let her know I think that.”
“She is. Near as I can tell, being younger than her in actual years.”
There was that. Singe was a full adult rat person, but in universal time she was two years younger than Penny.
Her people grow up faster, living shorter, harder lives. Ninety percent have been dead awhile by the time they reach my age.
“Hey. How has it been with Vicious Min? I never even thought to check on her.”
“Dean handles her with help from Humility’s women. I have other things to do.”
Her distaste was plain.
I shrugged. “Whatever works.”
“Penny helps a lot, too.”
“Good for her. She’s finally making herself useful.” I was jabbering on semiautomatic. Something didn’t seem right. Brownie and the girls weren’t happy anymore, either. “Has His Nibs gotten anything out of her?”
“What he has gotten is frustration. He says something inside her keeps adjusting as he finds ways in, as soon as he begins to probe.”
We stopped briefly while an old-style Sisters of the Biting Oracle party, playing brass instruments, crossed an intersection in front of us. That took a while, not that they were deliberately holding up traffic. They were old. The youngest was Tara Chayne’s mother’s age-and she was strutting out in front of her grandparents.
Sons and grandsons helped carry the instruments.
Tara Chayne said, “I enjoyed their music more when I was Penny’s age.”
“The nuns probably enjoyed it more when you were Penny’s age, too. And that was wicked of you.”
She had attached the leather tracer from under my saddle blanket to an instrument case being lugged by the last grandson in line.
She might have been my kind of girl when she was Penny’s age, too. Unfortunately, back then I hadn’t been old enough to be born yet.
Singe and the dogs were sniffing the air now, and Dollar Dan’s head bobbed like a pigeon’s as he looked for something. Only Tara Chayne seemed at ease.
Then I spotted the gargoyles.
They were watching from atop a white limestone building up ahead. There were eight of them. Their heads bobbed the way Dollar Dan’s head was.
I told Moonblight, “That looks like more your expertise than mine.”
“What does?” Then she spotted the critters staring at us in apparent confusion. “I see.” She laughed.
“What?”
Neither Singe nor Dollar Dan got the joke, either.
“You thought they were demons, didn’t you? Real gargoyles, maybe? But they’re regular animals. We just don’t see them inside the wall anymore.”
Closer and looking from a steeper angle, I could see that she was right. Those were flying thunder lizards and yes, of a sort not seen inside the city lately. Other people were beginning to point and wonder, too.
The gargoyles seemed unhappy about being on the city stag
e.
We kept moving. They kept fidgeting, watching us in a way that left me sure that we were the reason that they had come to town.
Moonblight told me, “You are one lucky son of a bitch, Garrett.”
“It ain’t luck, it’s mad skills. What did I get right this time?”
“You lucked out. You caught that boy marking your horse. If you hadn’t spotted him and I hadn’t slapped that tag onto that baboon’s bassoon-”
“It was a two-reed flute.”
“-those monsters would be all over us now.”
I was getting my mojo back. Instead of screeching, tearing my hair, and refusing to believe her, I observed, “That would constitute a whole new angle on the art of murder.”
“Well. . Not really. But this might be the first time in your lifetime that anyone collected flying lizards and imprinted them with a target.”
For no rational reason I thought aloud, “The Black Orchid.”
“Not hardly.” Amused. “Orchidia is a hands-on girl. If she wants you dead you’ll be smelling the cognac on her breath when your lights go out. This was set up by somebody who wanted to be far away when the excitement started.”
“Me for sure?”
“Yours was the horse that got marked. Though I will stipulate that the kid might not have known it was your horse. And the baddies probably want anybody with you to go down, too. To ease the pressure later.”
I grunted. The boy probably figured that the smaller horse had to belong to the woman.
We were just yards from being directly in front of the limestone ugliness. The thunder lizards were three stories up, making noise enough to be heard a block away. Had they had any brains, you might have thought they were arguing about what to do.
A singleton squawked and flapped clumsily off toward the musical nuns.
You could still hear them playing, faintly.
71
Moonblight revealed her talents once more, showing no originality at all. Her best trick seemed to be that giant flying centipede of darkness.
