by Glen Cook
117
The big fireworks show always takes place on the waterfront at the foot of the Street of the Gods. The actual launching is done from barges anchored out. That’s safer. Maybe once a decade somebody screws up, does something royally stupid, and all the fireworks on a barge explode at once, resulting in a dead stupid guy who takes along any friends dumb enough to work with him, plus countless catfish whose deaths are less in vain because they get to participate mightily in numerous All-Souls feasts.
The barges were a lesson hard-learned. A century ago a thousand people died in a Great Fire following a fireworks mishap.
TunFaire has had half a dozen Great Fires over the ages.
It was chilly on the ridge. The dogs woke up and gamboled a bit, making plenty of noise. I found a good place to sit. There was moonlight enough to limn the city skyline. Chattaree’s spires stood out. A tail of smoke still leaned west from the cathedral, a little orange and red at its root.
Penny and Hagekagome settled beside me, right and left, crowding in for warmth. Penny said, “I should have thought about coats.”
Behind us, Tara Chayne chuckled. “Then you wouldn’t have an excuse.”
The first shell went up a few minutes later. The scattered fireworks we’d seen earlier were neighborhood efforts or kid stunts. I said, “I heard the Crown is kicking in this year.”
Tara Chayne responded, “The army donated several tons of surplus.”
Whoa! That could get showy if it included anything besides signal rockets. What they threw up at enemy Windwalkers and broom riders, flying thunder lizards, or anything else that might attack from above would be showier and louder than anything civilians ever saw.
Tara Chayne settled to her knees and hams behind me, close enough for me to feel her warmth. Hakekagome wasn’t shy about snuggling up and getting a two-hand death grip on my left arm. Penny maintained a careful little gap. Nasty old Tara Chayne whispered, “Make a memory, girl,” and pushed her.
Wild dogs came out of the dark. They invested no time in greeting rituals. They just made themselves comfortable. Brownie had made herself at home in my lap already.
Then the first army star shell went up. It didn’t throw off fancy colors, just created a globe of ferociously deadly lesser fireballs that expanded more than a hundred yards before the fade began. No magic there, just chemistry. Chemistry able to sear holes through half an inch of steel were anyone strong enough to carry that much armor aloft.
The fire faded with “oohs,” and “aahs,” muted by distance.
The next shell was also surplus, less obviously dramatic. It created a cloud lighted by an inner fire that spun off lightning bolts. Those would have made passage problematic for anything sharing that airspace.
Some of the cemetery mutts raised their heads, flicked their ears, made soft, interrogative noises. Brownie answered with a sound closer to a purr than anything normally made by a dog. The others dropped their chins back onto their paws.
Little Strafa dropped out of the night with Singe and Orchidia, Singe straining to appear unflustered. Clearly, the ladies had shared a lively conversation while they were airborne.
Orchidia announced, “We ran into some gargoyles. They lit out. They didn’t want to talk.”
Strafa said, “They weren’t dumb enough to try anything. But they did curse us in their own dialect.”
They had a language?
Orchidia said, “They were looking for friends who never came home from a job in the city. They may have blamed us.”
Singe asked, “What have we missed?” She eyed Hagekagome and Penny fiercely. Little Strafa also gave Penny a dark look.
“They just started.”
Singe bullied a couple of mutts and made herself a place beside Penny. Orchidia did the same by Hagekagome, even laying a hand on the pretty girl’s back. Hagekagome seemed pleased. Little Strafa made her place behind me, on her knees like Tara Chayne. She pushed Moonblight over behind Penny but still stayed partly behind Hagekagome. She didn’t do or say anything to the pretty girl. The pretty girl paid no attention to her. She stayed where she was, snuggled up tight.
Over my left shoulder I said, “So you were actually looking out for me the last couple days?”
The fireworks began to pick up.
“After I figured out who I was. Jiffy helped me with that.”
Orchidia said, “Jiffy would be the big guy.”
“Um.” I sort of figured.
“At first I didn’t know anything. I headed for Grandmother’s house. I guess that was instinct. I didn’t know why, or who she was. It just seemed like the place to go.” She rested her hands on my shoulders. They were shaky.
I said, “I’ve worked some of it out, but I can’t get it to make sense without figuring in truly boggling levels of incompetence.”
“Then you don’t have it figured out,” Orchidia said. “Though you’re right about the incompetence.”
A colorful barrage fixed our attention briefly; then Moonslight took it up. “Any sense anything made would likely do so only if you’d spent your life on the Hill. Only somebody who thinks like Constance Algarda could have done what she did to abort Meyness Stornes’s ambitions.”
“She knew about him?”
“Not specifically. She sensed a new tournament taking shape. She’d been watching for it. She called us in. Like everybody else, though, she thought that Meyness hadn’t come home from the Cantard.”
Strafa said, “I never made it to Grandmother’s house. I ran into Jiffy and Min. They saw that I was scared and confused and crying and didn’t know who I was, or where. They thought they were being kind by not letting me get to Grandmother. They had just come away from her and thought she was too wicked for any little girl to be around.”
Probably true, that. “What were they doing there?”
“She hired them to investigate her granddaughter’s future husband, but she paid them so much up front that they were suspicious. Min knew somebody she could pay to do the spying while she and Jiffy found out what Grandmother was really up to. For some reason Jiffy decided he had to stick with me all the time.”
He fell in love at first sight and wanted to protect her, that’s why. Strafa always had that appeal. It was one of her hidden powers and, possibly, the one ambitious Meyness really wanted most. Surely it would be massively more potent with Strafa looking like a lost, bewildered, vulnerable little girl.
I had no trouble understanding Jiffy being pulled in, especially if he was no brighter than he seemed.
“I tried to warn you one time, but I didn’t really know what I was talking about then. You didn’t pay attention, anyway. You were distracted. .” Her hands tightened on my shoulders. “Anyway. .”
A barrage interrupted. As it faded, Moonblight said, “Constance went almost as dark as Meyness in order to ruin his tournament.”
Orchidia said, “Because she was thinking forever. She’d have no trouble justifying it to herself if she couched it as a final solution.”
Tara Chayne said, “You’re right, Garrett, thinking that Strafa’s death was accidental, the way it worked out. I’m sure Constance intended something almost as ugly visually but slightly less permanent. She probably wanted it to look like Strafa was beyond the grasp of the Operators. That would shake their scheme to its roots. She would hunt them down while they were confused, with help from you and your friends. You would want revenge. But when she got Min together with Strafa to make the sacrifice, something went wrong. Min should have died and Strafa should have gone into a state mimicking death that would relax eventually. I’m sure you’re right about that missile. Constance would have worked on it for weeks, refining the spells and layering them on for timed release. But it bounced off a bone inside Min and took out Strafa for real.”
“Yeah.” Not quite incompetence, that. More like malicious Fortune. We saw absurd stuff like it all the time during the war. “So, after that she let the scam run anyway, but she ducked out on us by fak
ing a stroke.”
Tara Chayne said, “The stroke was real, it just wasn’t as bad as she made out.”
“So. . let me get this. Vicious Min is alive but she should be dead. Shadowslinger meant to murder her when she hired her. My Strafa is dead, but Min’s murder was supposed to make it so she could be revived.”
Tara Chayne, Orchidia, and Little Strafa agreed: That was the exact situation.
“So, what’s the deal with this Strafa? And where does Hagekagome fit? Or does she?”
The pretty girl answered the mention of her name by trying to snuggle closer.
“She fits,” Orchidia said.
118
Tara Chayne said, “Here is where the theory gets esoteric. The practical aspects of what happened may take years of study to work out.”
“Since it looks like you all are finally willing to talk about this stuff, why not fill me in even where you don’t think I’ll understand? I can fool you sometimes.”
Orchidia said, “Strafa, Singe, and I talked this over on the way here. Singe believes that the smoothest road forward is the direct one.”
“Thank you.” Three large goat carts would have been needed to haul that load of sarcasm.
Singe said, “Don’t make me reconsider.”
Her sense of humor is atrophied. Better not risk her going totally serious.
Little Strafa said, “When Grandmother’s spell activated, it not only did what she wanted it to, but did what the laws of nature required. She hadn’t taken those enough into account, probably because she never looked past what she wanted right now.”
Orchidia said, “Constance is a master. Her spell suite would have performed exactly as designed if that bolt had struck the sacrifice’s heart. But once it ricocheted into the protection Strafa was trying to weave-”
Moonblight interrupted. “That’s what made the missile stray. Strafa being Strafa, she probably tried to protect Min first.”
Little Strafa said, “I can reclaim no memory of anything that happened between the time I left Garrett that morning and when I ran into Jiffy and Min. I’m not sure how many hours or days I lost, then gained by going back.”
Definitely weird, that great leap backward.
They were picking at something I thought we had covered before. Then I saw that there was more to it. Why did we have Hagekagome and Little Strafa? “Was Strafa supposed to be regressed?”
Tara Chayne said, “No. A temporal tremor created her and the other girl, both.”
“Out of legend,” Orchidia said, harkening back.
“Huh?”
She indicated Hagekagome. “That has happened before. In folklore.”
Tara Chayne said, “I’m sure the point of the exercise, for Constance, was a false death for Strafa that would make the Operators scramble to replace her in time to do the Ritual tonight.”
I didn’t get that. The midnight changeover from Day of the Dead to All-Souls might be particularly potent, but I suspected that the Ritual did not have to happen at any specific hour.
Maybe midnight tonight was just the best time to do it using a skeleton crew.
Orchidia said, “Meyness apparently wasn’t that distraught about missing the chance to harvest the power of TunFaire’s only Windwalker.”
“Could that be because Furious Tide of Light had no healing powers to mention?”
“Ah. Yes.” Cold, cold. The Black Orchid had emerged. I tried recalling Dane and Deanne from the heyday of the Faction. Had they shown any talent for healing?
They hadn’t impacted my consciousness much. The talent I recalled was one for shaping life-forms. They had helped the Faction create monster bugs. “I see what he must have been thinking.”
“He was wrong.”
“In so many ways. But that’s behind us. That’s all settled. Talk to me about Hagekagome. Who is she? What is she? How can she possibly be so devoted to me, and have those stories about our wonderful times together, while I have no clue? I’ve never suffered egregious and persistent memory loss. And how can she be only this old if she’s been pushed forward in time? If Strafa got younger?” Fact, though. The girl had been gaining on Penny, fast, from the moment she attacked me.
And my own Strafa didn’t get younger, did she? My own Strafa got dead. Little Strafa was a whole different creature. So why shouldn’t Hagekagome be a whole different creature, too?
But. .? Different from?
Orchidia made a joke. “Dog years.”
“Huh?”
Penny hadn’t contributed much but awed responses to the flash and bang over yonder, so far. Now she found a reserve of daring, leaned her cheek against my arm, and said, “Hey, Hage!”
Must have been a game they’d made up. Hagekagome responded, “Hey, Dread!” Sleepily.
“Hey, Kage! Who is that boy that you’re in love with?”
“Mikey Garrett. Hey, Dread! Who is that man. .?”
The game went a couple of rounds more. I lost it, becoming frozen in a moment.
Hagekagome tightened her grip even more when she said my brother’s name.
All the evidence was there.
I plummeted into the deep, dark well of my mind, headed down and away further than I’d ever fallen before.
119
The roar over the river kept me from getting lost.
Game over! became an anchoring thought, though it made no sense in the circumstances.
I could not interrogate Hagekagome, or anyone else, because of the racket from the waterfront. The fireworks guys were moving toward their big finale. That looked likely to roll on longer and louder than ever, thanks to the generosity of Karenta’s Royal Army.
Mikey. Hagekagome had confused me with my little brother. No one had yet convinced her that she was wrong.
How hard had anyone tried? Had anyone, other than Penny, even worked that part out?
Hagekagome being misinformed helped explain why I didn’t know her. Mikey had had time for a girlfriend or three after I went off to war. But that didn’t explain why I thought I should know her name. I was sure that I’d heard it before. Neither Mikey nor Mom had been the sort to write letters. Neither had been the sort to afford a scrivener and the post, nor had any mad need to communicate ever befallen them. I wouldn’t have heard about a girlfriend from a letter.
Too, Playmate knew the name. He must have heard it before he went to the war zone. Mikey was gone before Play got back.
Maybe Mom mentioned Hagekagome after I came home, during the short while that I had her-mainly as an emotional sparring partner. She hadn’t been able to get her mind around the fact that I was a grown-ass man who had survived the ugliest that the world could fling at me and no longer ought to be treated like a slow eight-year-old.
Even with all the information at hand, I kept missing the last point. I knew I had it all. I just couldn’t look at it from the right angle, despite a lifetime spent in this bizarre city. Despite a civilian career spent eyeball-to-eyeball with the mystical, supernatural, implausible, and sometimes downright logically impossible. After having dealt with several varieties of ghosts and undead. After having coped with gods and demons, devils and giant insects, and intelligent fungi. After having battled shape-shifters, racialists, coin collectors, vintners, and similarly fantastic creatures, I still failed to see the obvious. The simplest explanation. The step right out of folklore obvious once my lady companions piled on the hints. But I could call an excuse: Hagekagome was neither a fox nor a crane.
Moonblight sighed. “My forehead is getting sore, being banged against a wall. . But time flies. Midnight has gone. The slide has begun. It could go very fast now. I have no choice, however much you all want to nudge and hint so he can work it out for himself.”
Hagekagome held on to me even harder than she had been. I glanced down. Moonblight made a jewel of a tear in the corner of her eye. Several dogs had crowded in close to her, including all four who had gone adventuring with me. Brownie had turned in my lap and now extended overbo
ard enough to rest her chin on Hagekagome’s right thigh.
More than anything, I was having trouble getting past the fact that Hagekagome thought that I was Mikey. Poor child, to be so wondrously beautiful, yet so dim.
Little Strafa’s fingers on my shoulders now shivered constantly.
Moonblight asked, “Are you being willfully slow? I’ve heard that you often pretend to possess the reasoning capacity of a twenty-year-old stump.”
“I’ll stipulate the incapacity but not that I’m doing it on purpose. I’m the most frustrated one here. I know that I should get it. I know that I keep looking at it wrong.”
“For goodness’ sake,” Orchidia said. “Your brother brought home strays. .”
And Bang! The last great barrage began, lighting the city brighter than day. And Bang! The truth exploded inside my head. The implausible, impossible truth.
I remembered where I’d heard the name Hagekagome.
Mikey had brought home a sweet, beautiful little black-and-white stray not even old enough to wean. She had been in bad shape. Thunder lizards had had her cornered when he intervened. She had lived at our house for a while because even hardhearted Mom hadn’t been able to make such a loving, pretty, and badly injured little thing “run away” before she was well enough to make it on her own.
She hadn’t been my pup, my friend. She had been as devoted to Mikey as any dog could be. But even I had shed some tears when Hakekagome wasn’t with us anymore.
Mikey had named her that, making the name up from words he had learned from a foreign trader kid he met on the waterfront. It had something to do with a game like hide-and-seek that he learned about from the foreigner-who might have been a girl, his first infatuation. He spent a lot of time on the wharfs for a while.
Of course, that was me thinking. I am the one who sees all history in terms of the females involved.
That Hagekagome spent a summer and part of an autumn with us. She and Mikey had done all those things she told Penny about. But then my cousin Gesic came home missing an eye, an ear, an arm, and a leg, and there had been no one else to care for him during his remaining days. We couldn’t support Gesic and a dog, too. Even Mom cried-and had enough emotion invested that she insisted Mikey had to deal with this one himself. How grim he became! My little brother, always so cheerful before, was never the same afterward. Always glum, never smiling.
