by Frank Tuttle
And if the dog-fighting crew took a run at whatever lurked in that hulk of a tower, well, that wouldn’t bother me one little bit.
“So you’ve incurred the wrath of the dog-fight gangs,” he muttered. “And the weed dealers. And probably whoever is running the trade these days.”
“Not a bad morning’s work.” I finished off my beer. “You got any idea who chased House Lethe out of the docks?”
You get to know somebody well enough, you learn their tells. Evis swirled the contents of his glass around. He doesn’t do that often, but when he does, I know he’s hiding a handful of kings or sorting his truths.
I’d have been injured had I not just done the same thing.
“New gang. Out of Prince, we think. Head man is a bit of a giant. Bad news. They’ve killed everyone they couldn’t buy and killed about half the ones they bought anyway.”
“Avalante eats gangs for lunch.”
“Not this one. We think they’ve got a wand-waver or two in the mix.”
I whistled. “You said it. Bad news.”
I couldn’t tell Evis the Corpsemaster was living under his roof as Stitches. If she saw a reason to stay hidden, it was probably a damned good one.
“Surely you know another ancient wand-waver or two.”
He shook his head. “We spent a century courting the Corpsemaster. She may have been an amoral bitch, but she wasn’t insane. The rest of the old ones are, to the last.” He emptied his glass. “We’re on our own.”
“Stitches is pretty good.”
“She’s no Corpsemaster.” Evis rose and began to pace. “Stay away from that end of things. This new bunch—there’s something more than just a grab at the weed trade going on.”
“Like what?”
“Chase your dog, Markhat. You’ll live longer.”
A soft knock sounded at his door. Evis smiled a weary smile, toothy in the candlelight.
“That would be Gertriss reminding me we have a date,” he said.
I stood. “Let it never be said I ever stood in the way of the pitching of woo.”
Evis laughed despite himself. “You’re welcome to join us. The Queen’s head chef is cooking tonight.”
“Another time. I have dogs to find.” I grabbed my hat and coat as Evis opened the door.
Gertriss darted in, giggling. Then she saw me.
“Hello, boss, didn’t know you were here.”
“I was just leaving. You two kids don’t stay out too late. Rannit has a Curfew, you know.”
“Do tell.” She grabbed Evis by his elbow. “Unless you have other instructions?”
“Nope. Take the evening off. See you tomorrow, or in fifteen years when I get out of prison, whichever comes first.”
I hoofed it out of there.
The day staff, ever helpful, quietly suggested I leave via one of Avalante’s concealed exits. It seems the Watch was outside, nosing about in the shrubs on the off chance I came strolling out of Avalante’s wide doors.
So I departed by another way, unmolested by Captain Holder’s surly blue-caps. I exchanged my Avalante carriage for a working man’s cab a few blocks away, in case the Captain had eyes stationed on the Brown River Bridge keeping a lookout for handsome finders being conveyed by Avalante’s sleek ponies.
If there were Watchmen on the bridge, I didn’t spot them. I asked a bridge clown if he’d seen anyone new loitering about, and after I flipped him a coin, he shook his head before capering off to harass a mail-coach.
Still, I changed cabs twice before I reached midtown, more out of habit than significant suspicion. While the Watch might be keeping my house and my office under surveillance, they’d have no way of knowing where I was bound.
Which was north, of course. North toward the remnants of an Old Kingdom wall tower, the same one I’d last seen when I walked with Stitches.
I wasn’t sure what I expected to find there. I didn’t plan to knock on any doors, or climb through any windows. If Stitches was leery of getting too close without walking in a dream, I certainly wasn’t going to barge in.
But the old tower faced a street. A busy one at that. Just another cab rolling past wouldn’t arouse any suspicions, I decided. I needed to lay eyes on the place. My eyes, wide awake, just to see what I could see beneath a plain workaday sun.
I told my cabbie an address and told him to take the old wall road all the way there. He didn’t bat an eye.
We rolled on north. The tall, brick banks and counting houses rose up around us like walls of some orderly, white-trimmed canyon. We passed the half-completed bulk of the new Stock Exchange and were cooled by the shadow of the High House itself.
The farther north we went after that, the shorter the buildings became, and the rougher the streets. Rannit is expanding south and west, probably because the old wall still stands more or less intact to the north. The North End, as it is called, isn’t a rough part of town by any means—it’s just old.
The rooftops are spotted with moss. The brick walls are covered with ivy. The dwellers inside are lousy with money.
It’s a nice place to live, I decided, if one doesn’t mind watching the city turn its back and march off in the other direction.
About five blocks from the wall itself, the old homes give way to various trade establishments, taking advantage of the wide, old wall road. We left the mossy roofs behind and entered a world of barrel-wrights and wheel-makers and tobacconists. Still, no one on the sidewalks scurried or skulked or scampered. Some even smiled.
All that stopped two blocks from the old tower.
Windows were closed and shuttered. Doors were shut and barred. FOR SALE signs flapped in the wind, first here and there but soon nailed to every fourth door, then every third.
Pedestrian traffic just vanished.
Even the ponies sensed it. I looked ahead, and their ears were flattened, their big, brown eyes darting back and forth, their nostrils flared, testing the air.
The driver urged them on, and they obliged, hooves clip-clopping faster on the cobblestones, even breaking into a run until the cabbie reined them in.
By the time we passed the old tower itself, even I could sense the change in the air, and the ponies were ready to bolt, cabbie and reins be damned.
Like all the old, pre-War wall towers, this one had been stripped nearly clean of its limestone outer shell in the years before the War by enterprising Rannites using what is euphemistically called the ‘night quarry.’ Even some of the massive granite stones beneath the limestone shell were gone, leaving gaps and holes that the slanting rays of the sun painted with deep shadows against the sooty grey of the remaining structure.
The tower rose ten stories, then another two above the wall itself. A pair of wide, sloping ramps flanked the tower, ready to bring troops and boiling oil up the wall in case of attack. Both ramps were crumbling. Neither had a rail. The ground below them was littered with chunks of fallen stones, each decorated with crudely painted gang tags or unflattering depictions of the Regent engaged in pursuits both immoral and anatomically improbable.
We rolled past. I didn’t ask the cabbie to slow and I’d have been wasting my time anyway. The ponies weren’t stopping, and for once, I wasn’t willing to question equine wisdom in the matter.
The old tower doors were gone, leaving a single, massive arch that opened into shadow at the base. There were no windows.
There were also no weeders. No squatters. No idling gang lookouts.
It seemed our ponies weren’t the only creatures to smell something troubling in the air.
Three blocks past the tower, life returned to the street, bumbling about its business as though nothing were amiss a few minutes’ walk away.
I let the ponies calm down before I called for a stop. Then I had myself a cup of good strong coffee, discreetly checked both my pistols, and made my way back toward the old tower, listening for boots at my back every step of the way.
I spent the better part of an hour picking out my hiding place and
making my way into it. The old tower might be one good strong gust of wind from falling over, but it still commanded an excellent view of everything for blocks around, and I moved slowly and carefully to avoid being seen by anyone watching from high above.
What the tower’s builders hadn’t counted on, though, was Rannit’s post-War sprawl. Whereas Old Kingdom law forbade the erection of any structure taller than a shed anywhere close to the wall, all that had been abandoned with the Truce, so rooftops and walls obstructed most views now. With a careful bit of sneaking, anyone—I, for instance—could creep well within the tower’s shadow while staying out of sight.
The empty properties helped. I forced open a few back doors, crept tiptoe through empty rooms, crawled behind dusty counters and burlap-covered display tables. When I came to rest, I was peeking through a soot-blacked, shopfront window, and I had an excellent view of the empty street, the base of the tower, and the gaping wound that had once been an iron-banded door the size of a garrison gate.
I wedged my butt into a corner and propped my chin on my knuckles and waited.
Nothing moved beyond my sooty window. Not a single crow dropped down to peck at the bits of trash pushed along by a breeze. Not a single rat peeped out of the grates in the gutter drain. Hell, the pile of fresh horse-flop not ten feet away out in the street wasn’t troubled by a single fly.
Ice-footed spiders played up and down my spine. Rannit, even after Curfew, is a raucous, bustling place. It may lack grace. It certainly lacks manners. It is often brutal and usually capricious and unfailingly perilous—but it is seldom quiet, and never still.
Except then. The air was the only thing that moved, and it bore a chill that didn’t belong on that street any more than did the silence.
My hands found the reassuring bulk of my pistol-butts. I recalled seeing bullet holes in the plaster at the place Chuckles had died and wondered if the men who fell firing their weapons had gripped them with the same false comfort I felt.
I pushed the thought aside. I’d done years in the tunnels, years in the dark. I’ll be damned, I thought, if I let a quiet daytime street march me into a panic.
I’m just another shadow, I thought, like I thought so many times, down in the deep. Just another shadow. Part and parcel of the greater dark.
The ghost of a wet nose nuzzled my right elbow. I grunted, but didn’t stir.
The unmistakable scent of wet dog wafted through the empty room.
I don’t believe in ghosts. Except when I do.
An hour crept past. I tensed and relaxed my muscles in groups, kept my breathing steady. The sun sank, and the shadows grew, and I judged a second hour to have passed when a man sidled out of nowhere on the tower’s ruined right flank and, with a furtive glance at the sky, began to relieve himself on the ancient tower wall.
I held my breath. He went about his business, his face uplifted, his wary eyes moving.
When he was done, he stepped back into his patch of shadow and vanished.
I didn’t bother hiding my smile.
Some eldritch nameless evil might be lurking in yonder tower. But it had mere mortals in its employ, and careful though they were, they were only human.
And that particular human just made a grave mistake.
His eyes had given him away. He’d looked up, more than he’d looked right or left. Which confirmed what I suspected—the watchers were stationed high above. He’d known they couldn’t see him return his beer to the humble street from whence it came.
He’d told me something else too. There was nobody on the street. Which meant only one thing.
I was watching the wrong damned side of the wall.
It made perfect sense. Even things out of nightmares need men to do their bidding, and men need food and water and supplies. Moving all of that in and out of the old tower would be impossible in secret, even if you managed to empty the block—the wagons would still be seen coming or going. Tongues would wag.
Unless you smashed a hole in the decrepit, old wall and provisioned your forces from the outside. Then no one would know, or care if they did.
Rannites, myself included, are funny that way. The Watch doesn’t give a damn what transpires beyond those old walls. Neither do the neighbors. We’re vaguely aware there are trees and fields and isolated farming communities out there, but we seldom give them a second thought.
I sat grinning for another half hour. Then I bade the shade of Petey farewell and eased my way out, careful not make any more noise than the ghosts I seldom believe in.
By the time I was far enough away to be sure I was just another figure on the street, night was falling. I hoofed it six blocks before hailing a cab and got to the hotel right as the supper plates were being cleared from the dining room. I managed to snag a pair, get them warmed up on the kitchen stove, and make my way upstairs without being assaulted by the Watch.
I was balancing plates and beers when I heard voices from inside my room. A moment of hasty juggling saw the plates put silently on the floor, swapped for revolvers.
I crept closer.
Mama Hog’s laughter rang out clear and plain. Darla said something, and Mama laughed again, and when she paused for breath I gave the door our secret knock.
“Well, it’s about damn time,” said Mama as Darla’s soft footsteps came toward the door. “Boy, has I got things to tell.”
Chapter Ten
With Darla and I seated on the tiny couch, and Mama holding court from the hotel room’s single, overstuffed armchair, we sat in silence while Mama waved her dried owls and muttered nonsense words under her breath.
Darla watched with interest that was either real or convincingly feigned. I’d seen Mama’s shaking bird act so many times I figured I could do it myself, if I had any desire to fill my lap with desiccated feathers.
But since experience taught me that commenting on Mama’s avian ritual would only prolong it, I sat quietly and limited my commentary to the occasional eye roll, which Darla pretended not to see.
Mama spat out a final string of babbling and stuffed her dead owl back in her shapeless, burlap sack.
“That there is thirsty work,” she opined. I fetched a trio of warm beers—the hotel hadn’t yet invested in newfangled luxuries such as iceboxes—and passed them around.
Mama took a long draught and smacked her lips.
“I knows a name,” she said, keeping her voice pitched just above a whisper. “But I won’t speak it. Nor will you, boy, or you, dear. I wrote it down, so’s you can read it, but don’t you say it out loud, you hear?”
“We hear,” said Darla. She took my left hand and squeezed it. She wasn’t smiling, and her hand was cold.
Mama’s had a lot of practice being dramatic. So when she handed me a folded scrap of paper, I opened it and held it up to the lamp. She’d written two words, in big block letters, like this:
K I C U V R O T I V
“Kicuv Rotiv?” I said aloud.
Mama snatched the paper from my hand.
“I knowed you would do some damn fool thing like that! I told you, boy, this here man has got foreign mojo. He hears his name spoke, no matter who speaks it, or how far away they is. He hears and he’ll come and don’t think every gun you got will be enough, because I’m here to tell you it ain’t.”
“What kind of name is that, Mama?” asked Darla. “It’s not Kingdom, that’s for sure.”
Mama fixed her hog eyes on Darla. “He ain’t got sense enough to hear the truth of what I’m saying. I reckon you do. Can you make him promise to listen to me, or do I need to take my leave now?”
Darla squeezed my hand again. “Honey. Please.”
I sighed. “All right. I promise.”
Mama snorted and eyed me warily for a moment.
“I wrote it backwards.” She showed me the paper again. “See it, but don’t say it.”
Vitor Vucik. It wasn’t Rannish, but all the consonants reminded me of many of the Princers I’d met.
“He come from Pr
ince,” said Mama. “They opened up some big prison they had up there after the Corpsemaster knocked half the city over. This here fella was the worst of the worst, they say, and I reckon they might be right.”
“Worst what?”
“Worst everything. He kilt and he raped and he robbed and he kilt some more. I hears the prison was crowded to overflowin’ when they tossed him in it, and damn near empty when they let him out. They say he is half Ogre. Half Ogre and all crazy.”
It was my time to snort in derision. “Mama, you know better than that. Half Ogre, my ass. There’s never been a confirmed instance of interbreeding between humans and Ogres.”
“Well, I reckon you never met no Groats from over Spider way, because they are all eight feet tall and hairy as boars and has them big, flat Ogre teeth, sure as the sun sets,” said Mama. “But here. Half Ogre or just mighty big, this man is a born killer what has spent his whole life killin’ and aims to keep killin’, right here in Rannit.”
Darla was squeezing my hand so tight her nails were digging in. I patted her hand and she rewarded me with a nervous smile.
“Why is this person here?” she asked. “And why can’t we let the Watch find another prison to put him inside?”
“He’s here because Prince is dead,” said Mama. “Most of the folks what used to live there is in Rannit now, setting up shop or settling down. Killing a dead thing like Prince, that ain’t no fun for this man. So he’s here, aiming to turn loose, make everybody he sees pays for them years he spent in that jail. Or leastways that’s as near as I can figure right now.” She waved a bony finger in my face. “There’s something else going on too, boy. Something hid from my Sight. I reckon you thinks you know, what with being so friendly with that wand-waver from the Dark House.”
“All I know is that she doesn’t know,” I lied. “Avalante is worried, though. Because you’re right—this isn’t just about taking over the gangs and the weed trade on the docks. Something else is going on too.”
