by Glen Cook
That puzzled him but only for a second. Then he ignored it. Old people do weird shit. If you didn’t acknowledge it they usually stopped.
“Sir, my name is Ben Gesik. I am a junior apprentice with Trivias Smith. Master Smith sent me to tell you that the men who ordered the bronze swords came for them today. They took them even though only two blades were actually finished.”
The boy talked with his eyes shut, trying to get it word for word. “The master said to tell you they removed the tracer elements. They didn’t know that those would be there, but they checked and weren’t surprised to find them. Master thinks they would have become violent had they not been old and at a numbers disadvantage. They were very angry.”
“I can imagine. Tell Master Smith that the tracers have become moot. We found out who the villains are and know where to find them now.”
“Master will be pleased. I believe he was concerned.”
The kid didn’t sound like he meant just that. He sounded confused.
He added, “Master did tell me, as well, to report that the old guys meant to visit Flubber Ducky next.”
“Again, tell your master thank you so much from me and if there’s ever anything I can do for him, all he has to do is holler.”
Singe added, “And meet our standard retainer.”
The boy was done talking. He took a look around. His jaw dropped. He had spotted Penny and Hagekagome. Oh, hell yes! I sure could do something for Master Trivias’s number-one junior apprentice in the department of introductions.
I was about to caution him against getting drool on my nice hardwood floor when reality slammed him, having first achieved terminal velocity. Those two were leagues out of his class. He gulped some air, made several remarks in fluent, carefully rehearsed and clearly enunciated gibberish, and began to back up. Lucky boy, he never developed the momentum necessary to flip him over the porch rail when his behind began to interact with that.
“Thank you so much, Apprentice Gesik.” I closed the door gently, checked the girls. Hagekagome didn’t have a clue. She hadn’t noticed the boy. Penny, however, hadn’t missed an ogle. She was almost smug-while narrow-eyed with suspicion that she might not have been the main cause of Ben Gesik’s meltdown. She awarded Hagekagome a small, jealous scowl.
Morley was a couple of steps up the hallway, being amused. Far from him to miss that chaotic chemical weather.
Others had caught it, too, and were equally entertained, with Mariska wondering aloud why youth had to be wasted on the young and oblivious.
Hagekagome realized everyone was looking at her. She responded with a big, happy smile.
Penny decided that the old farts were entertaining themselves at her expense.
She was as smart as Hagekagome was not.
There are way too many smart females in my life.
Some might wonder, though, why, if they’re so damned smart, they’re in my life at all. Especially Singe and Strafa.
It’s because I’m such a big old lovable fuzz ball.
I told Morley, “How about you and me slide out and take a walk?”
He glanced back. Belinda would go ballistic if he ditched her. And he was in a mood to aggravate her.
He was in a mood to tweak everybody. “Sure. You can tell me how the new kid isn’t absolutely the perfect reflection of everything you ever fantasized in a girlfriend.”
He just wanted to bury a needle but did bring me up short. I hadn’t thought about that. Hadn’t really considered Hagekagome as a girl other than to note that she was wicked beautiful. But she could not have matched my earliest teen fantasies more perfectly were I a god armed with unlimited powers and a rack of ribs.
Did that mean anything? Could it possibly mean anything? I maybe needed to find a few minutes to think about it.
97
The gods of rain were merciful. Or, more likely, were setting a trap. The heavens would open and flash flooding would commence once I got three blocks from the house. For the moment, though, precipitation consisted of a mist.
I said, “I was hoping we could do this on our own.”
Morley chuckled. “That’s why I love you. You never cease to be optimistic.”
We had not yet gone twenty feet from my steps. We already had four canine companions, plus Preston Womble and Elona Muriat in beanbag-tossing range, not pretending that they weren’t going to stay connected by a very short string.
A couple of steps onward, Morley added, “As ever, your popularity grows.” Dollar Dan Justice popped into existence and fell in with us following a brief exchange with Brownie and Number Two. He had a deeper than normal slump to his shoulders.
“What’s up?” I snapped, knowing it couldn’t be good. “And don’t ever jump out at me like that. I’m gonna have to change my skivvies.”
Morley gave me a look that told me to find my patience. Dan needed to work up to his news.
I found a reserve. A very small reserve.
In the near distance Womble and Muriat fussed at each other because they had been completely surprised by Dan’s advent, too. Dan said, “Thank you, sir. We lower orders have a sneaky repute to live down to.”
I exchanged looks with Morley, who observed, “A smart plague is burning through the rat tribe. I’m scared, Garrett.”
Maybe, but Dan wasn’t clever enough to keep the snaps going. Having worked off some tension, he got down to business. “As the saying goes, I have good news and bad news.”
“And the traditional question would be, which do I want first?”
“As you say.” Putting on a trace of noble-class accent.
Where the hell was this guy lurking when he wasn’t stalking Singe?
“Let’s go with the good to start. There hasn’t been a lot of that lately.”
“You are going to see the smith?”
“We are. The news?”
“Right direction, then. Mud Man picked up your fugitive outside your place. He and his crew are shadowing her.”
“It hasn’t been that long. She can’t have gotten far.”
“Let me amend. Mud Man is following her and is now sure where she will settle.”
Morley remarked, “And now they are divining the future. The terror grows.”
Dan retorted, “And does not every rat ever born fervently wish that? No. There is no magic. John Stretch has everyone with whom he has influence poking sniffers in everywhere. Regular rats have been sent places our kind cannot access almost from the moment Furious Tide of Light went down. That sneaking and spying has begun to yield dividends. So. We now can guess where the big woman hides out.”
“Didn’t we find that already?”
“Different hideout, Mr. Garrett. Not much better, though. Mud Man would like to know what you want to do.”
“All right. Is it on the way?” A fat raindrop ricocheted off the tip of my nose. “Are you suggesting a visit?”
“You might learn something.”
“Always a dangerous proposition.” I might get my ass kicked and my guts stomped out. Vicious Min, even bad sick and fighting knockout drugs, was way bigger and stronger than me. I had no desire to put her down, which might be the only way I could handle her. I was now reasonably sure that she was not responsible for what had happened to Strafa.
“Mud Man will scout the place but not closely. He knows his limitations. He believes there are other people living there.”
Really? Min’s kind of people? What might that mean? “As long as it’s on the way. All right. I’ve psyched myself up. Hit me with the bad news.”
“We found the ballista used against your wife.”
Wham! Four feet of heavy plank, right between the eyes.
I halted so suddenly that I totally avoided being nailed by a wren’s-egg-size raindrop that splooshed down hard in a puddle lapping at my toes.
The dogs closed in, faced outward with teeth bared, Number Two targeting Womble and Muriat in particular. They felt the deep shift in my emotional climate. “That is the b
ad news? Tell me, Dan. How can that be the bad news?”
I had a sinking, hollow feeling before he went on. He had wanted to prepare me. This was going to be bad news. It was a dead certainty: Dollar Dan Justice was about to share a secret I didn’t want to know.
And I was right, but not quite the way I was anticipating.
98
“The ballista is in your cellar. It is broken down into parts and stuffed in among the rest of the lumber. Under your house on the Hill.”
The dogs were so close in that I couldn’t move without tripping. Morley, pale and puzzled, took hold of my left arm, in case. A good grip, I suppose to keep me from raging off somewhere without a plan, bereft of further facts.
Thinking that, but frozen otherwise, I started to lift my gaze to the sky. Toward the realm of whatever god it was who entertained himself with my misery. To see the little blonde on a rooftop up ahead, but paying her little immediate attention. “And, of course, I have an expert artilleryman on my household staff. And his alibi for the time of the killing has never been tested.”
Morley observed, “The news sheds light on questions that have puzzled everyone.” Never relaxing his grip.
He was right.
The first weak shakes began in my arms and shoulders.
Dollar Dan said, “Unfortunately, the critical question remains unanswered. Who? This has been checked and rechecked, Mr. Garrett, by all the best noses but Singe’s, because the truth is so important. One indisputable truth is that neither Race nor Dex ever visits any part of the cellar but the wine storage. That is a separate cellar accessed by its own stair, the door to which is kept locked. None of the rats in the house-and there aren’t many because Race and Dex are aggressive about not sharing the living space-have seen either man visit the lumber cellar. But they cannot recall any other intruder, either. Stipulating that their memories become hazy quickly even when dramatic events occur. The ballista itself appears to have been stored there forever, as rats see time. So. They cannot tell us who removed it, assembled it, used it, took it apart again, and put it back where it came from. They know that happened only because whoever used it did not cover up the fact that all the working mechanisms were freshly oiled.”
Morley seemed thoroughly intrigued. A smile kept tugging at the left corner of his mouth.
Dan’s report was registering with me but without the crushing impact I would have predicted if asked to assess a similar situation beforehand.
Morley said, “Somebody knew the ballista was there. Mr. Justice, by some chance did your creatures see any old-time iron crossbow bolts?” Because, of course, once upon a time, residents of the house had been connected to a scandal having to do with wartime armaments contracts.
Interesting, but now my attention had locked on to that little blonde. She was standing on an impossible slope, making no effort to hide-nor was she doing anything to attract attention. She was just there, counting on the fact that people don’t look up much. I didn’t see her big ugly sidekick.
Morley sighted her, too. Clever fellow, he asked, “Mr. Justice, have you been able to find out anything about that girl?”
She knew that she had been spotted when Dan turned. She began walking up the slope of the steep metal roof. A sharp eye, though, would note that there was air between her soles and the verdigris.
I learned another interesting fact about John Stretch’s lieutenant. He had better eyes than the average rat man. As a tribe, ratfolk are nearsighted and much more scent-reliant than vision-dependent.
Dollar Dan announced, “We think she is a ghost.”
I consulted my recollections. “She and her friend supposedly have hideouts on top of several buildings.”
“That may be, yes. Such places have been found but may not in fact be actual hideouts.”
He sounded close to plaintive, which confused me. He tried to explain. “She leaves no scents behind. Not the right scents. Except for possibly. . She is a ghost, Mr. Garrett.”
Perhaps. Maybe. But she’d been one solid spook that one time I got close enough to touch her.
My turn to plaint. “That could mean she’s not part of the tournament.” The Operators wouldn’t put ghosts on the player roster. Spooks and zombies wouldn’t work because of the unfair advantage factor.
So I started trying to recall every detail about the girl and her companion. Especially her companion.
Dollar Dan was not happy. He had handed me the solution to the mystery of the vanishing artillery piece, opening a pony keg of worms, and I was just getting infatuated with a little twist not yet ripe enough to split. .
I hustled back from way out there in the wanderlands, focused on Dan, mildly aghast. Had I tapped into his secret thoughts? Or was I daydreaming something offensive because of my own obscure prejudice?
Whatever, I felt creepy and creeped out.
“What are we doing?” Morley asked. “Besides standing in one place long enough for trouble to find us? That wasn’t happy news, but how does it change what we’re doing now?”
“You’re right. Dan did everything that could be already. Chasing Race and Dex down would just eat time better spent finding Vicious Min.” So there I committed to checking on her before seeing Trivias Smith.
“What?” Morley demanded. He and Dollar Dan eyeballed me like I’d just turned weird. Meaning I’d hidden it damned well before.
“Thinking about Vicious Min. Thinking about the little blonde’s sidekick. Wondering. There are differences but big similarities, too. They could be related. The variances could be simple sex differences. Like, who would believe that Strafa and I were the same species?”
“You have a profound point. She was an angel. You. . You’re. . You’re Garrett.”
Dan probably agreed but was too civilized to say so.
I confessed, “I always suspected that the weaseling romance gods laid Strafa on me because they wanted me to become the punch line to the universe’s saddest shaggy dog story.”
“Shaggy dog stories don’t have punch lines. They end with a whimper. Or a groan.”
“Bing! And we have a grand prize winner, folks.”
“That’s my pal Garrett, eternal optimist, everybody. Mr. Sunshine himself.”
Somehow the possibility of a connection between Vicious Min and the blonde’s sidekick troubled me more than did questions raised by discovery of the ballista in the basement.
We did get moving again before divine mischief brought us to grief.
I relaxed some, actually, certain that the baddies had squandered their resources for mayhem and would now be especially short, Mariska having stepped back, depriving her boyfriend of any Machtkess connection with the grays.
I was convinced that the Machtkess history explained the gray involvement.
I hoped Moonslight had not destroyed a whole people with her bad behavior.
Grown people will amaze you with childish stupid sometimes.
99
No plan survives contact with the enemy. That is common wisdom, becoming a storyteller’s cliche. It is the iron law encountered by every commander headed into action. It could be called Garrett’s First Law of Investigative Dynamics, too.
Nothing goes according to plan.
We doughty adventurers, and our tails, passed the Al-Khar en route to look for Vicious Min. I had no intention of visiting. I had no intention of consulting anyone there, nor of being noticed by its denizens. Either Womble and/or Muriat rejected my script.
Maybe I should have gone a longer way.
Whatever, my crowd suddenly expanded to include Brevet Captain Deiter Scithe, Target, and a vigorously limping Helenia, who looked like there was nothing she’d love more than to take a big, steaming dump on the altar of Fortune, she was so happy to be out in the weather with me. The dogs, though, greeted her cheerfully and begged for treats she didn’t have, which softened her mood from diamond to ice.
“There you are,” I said. “But why?”
Scithe said, “Prince
Rupert came to see the General and the Director. He wants the business involving your wife solved and wrapped.”
“Why? It’s none of his business.”
“It’s all his business, Garrett, and not just because she was a family friend. He’s the Royal responsible for ‘Public Safety.’ Right now that means he has to please the Hill, where people are outraged. He hopes to score political points, too.”
Which made sense of a sleazy sort. Prince Rupert would be our next king, maybe not long from now. He wasn’t keen on that, but he was realistic. Whatever skin he had pinched in the crimes and facts of the tournament, he had to bow to political considerations. Karentine princes who ignore politics always suffer brief, miserable reigns once they take the throne.
I didn’t like it, but that was the way it was. A weasel Rupert might be, but he should be the best king we had during my lifetime. He had a knack for seeing snippets of realities outside the neverlands of his palaces.
“He also wants to see you about making you his personal investigative agent. Again.”
“I have other stuff to do.” The brewery. Amalgamated. Revenge for what happened to Strafa. Avoiding the bitter insanity of Karentine politics.
“He’s willing to work with you on your concerns. He says you wouldn’t have to give up your normal life.”
“You smell that? It’s piled so high a tall troll would drown in it.”
“Garrett, you’re being willfully difficult.”
Helenia surreptitiously checked a waterlogged list, ready to prompt Scithe if he overlooked a talking point. Number Two was curious about that, probably hoping it was a treat that Helenia would give up eventually.
Scithe noted, “You spend ninety percent of your life doing nothing productive. He’s only interested in buying a fraction of that.”
Morley chuckled but eschewed going after the deeper dig.
“To start. That’s what he’d say. But how long before he claimed he owned me body and soul, day and night, till he used me up or got me killed?” I stopped. No point working up a lather. Scithe was carrying out instructions, by the numbers, with just enough enthusiasm to get by.
