City of Corpses: The Dark Avenger's Sidekick Book Two (Moth & Cobweb 5)

by John C. Wright

  Finally, there was a lull. The dance band started playing. She clicked on the gooseneck lamp and swiveled the bulb toward the guestbook to see what the tall, dark, stern man had written. She was expecting to see some name ending in Moth.

  Pooh-Bah of the town of Titipu, First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chief Justice, Lord High Admiral, Master of the Buckhounds, etc., ad naus.; A gentleman of Japan.

  6. Unrewarding Night

  Nonplussed and disappointed, she leaned far over the counter, in a pose she had been instructed Peach Cobbler Girls never were to assume, and craned her neck so that she could better see. The dark man was not at the table where Joan had left him.

  The lights dimmed. That was the signal that drink service was suspended, for the waitresses were called to the dressing rooms prior to the floor show. Joan, as hostess, took over the hat check while Yumiko rushed away.

  After the show, Yumiko was sent to wait tables on a private party in an upper room in the back, which included some of Sir Garlot’s men from the Night World, but not he himself. From their talk, he had retired with Iele to some other room.

  They were playing a card game, wagering parts of their bodies, or that is what it sounded like. Since no actual toes, eyeballs or forearms were detached and tossed across the table at the end of every hand, Yumiko could not tell if these bets were real or in jest.

  But evidently their lord was in charge of all tips and emoluments. Or perhaps they did not know the custom.

  Between giving up her tables to Hala, failing to cover for Iele, and paying for the drinks for Kudlac and Licho, Yumiko made less in tips that night than anyone else.

  After curfew, she lay awake at night in bed, snuggled up between Xana and Anjana and staring at the reflected candlelight on the ceiling. She wished she could climb under the bed, get her suitcase, and retrieve the earbuds from her helmet so she could listen for the sound of the tracer hidden in Sir Garlot’s cloak.

  She had planted a second one in the hatband of the hat of the gentleman from Japan, of course.

  But she could hear Hala and Nightingale talking softly, gossiping about how to spend their extra money, and could also hear Krisky or Plaksy or both rising every ten minutes or so to go into the bathroom and take vitamins or drink cups of medicinal tea.

  Were they up late because of her? They had been assigned to watch Yumiko, but had lost sight of her. Had either of them told Wilcolac yet? Were his suspicions roused?

  Yumiko felt a sense of claustrophobia, but also of choking urgency. She could not stand still. Elfine had no one else looking for her. But each time Yumiko moved, she took risks, she made little mistakes, she left little clues, and the pattern of her actions and absences must be growing clearer to the hidden eyes that sought her.

  A sense of dread grew deeper, hardening into conviction. Wilcolac must know! He must have figured it out by now!

  With these thoughts tormenting her, it was many weary hours before she could force herself into sleep.

  The next morning, just at the onset of morning dress rehearsal, Yumiko was pulled out of the chorus line by Licho and told to report to the Magician’s office.

  Wilcolac wanted to see her.

  Chapter Eight: Hob in a Bottle

  1. Death Warrant

  Once more, Yumiko Moth found herself in high heels, seated on a high stool in the red and gold private office of Wilcolac Cobweb. As before, the walls to her left and right were full-length mirrors. Before her was the massive desk of Wilcolac Cobweb, with its green blotter and gold pen set. To one side of the desk was a bust of Shakespeare, and to the other, a tripod holding an ice bucket in which an amber bottle rested. Before her and above her loomed Wilcolac himself, square-faced, bulky, and stern.

  She was dressed in the wasp-waist corset, hot pants, and stockings of her Peach Cobbler Girl uniform, a white tie circling her naked throat, white cuffs at the wrists of her bare arms, and a top hat pinned precariously atop her oversized raven-black coiffure. She wondered darkly if Wilcolac had waited until dress rehearsal before issuing his summons, not just for reasons of psychological warfare but also for the practical point of putting her in awkward shoes, with no place to hide weapons and hardly a way to bend or inhale.

  Wilcolac had been scratching with a quill pen on butter-yellow parchment when she entered. He had silently gestured for her to sit, and she waited in silence for him to address her.

  As if pulled on a torture rack, the minutes while she sat elongated painfully.

  She watched the delicate motions of his huge and meaty hands as he dipped his pen in an inkwell or blotted up stray ink marks, and she wondered, not for the first time, why elf and half-elf seemed so hesitant about modern conveniences and technology.

  It was not as if he did not also have a ballpoint pen set on his desk and a phone, and his private secretary owned a typewriter for which it was apparently impossible to find replacement parts. This secretary was an ill-favored youth in the adjoining office with the apparently impossible name of Skrzat Czart.

  The thought occurred to Yumiko that Wilcolac was writing out something fraught with ceremonial significance, a document which had to be done in just the way it had been done centuries ago. A death warrant? Her death warrant?

  It was a silly idea, but difficult to dismiss once it was lodged in her head. Yumiko cleared her thoughts and concentrated on her breathing, patiently waiting until the waves disturbing the waters of her soul grew calm and still.

  Hence it was with an unusual degree of serene detachment that she saw Wilcolac clean his pen, salt his document, put them aside, and raise his eyes to her.

  This was it. He knew who she was. Questioning, torture, and death were before her. Yet she was calm.

  Their eyes met. Her gaze was like a bottomless well, pure, cold, and unruffled. His gaze was puzzled, but he masked his puzzlement under a layer of bonhomie.

  “Well, well!” he said in a voice of brassy and unconvincing joviality. “No doubt you knew this day would come! A little frightened, are we?”

  Yumiko met his gaze without flinching. Her life as she remembered it was less than a month; she had achieved nothing, saved no one. And yet no quiver of fear disturbed her. “I am ready,” she said.

  “Ah, good!” he said clapping his hands together and rubbing them. “Well, your two week trial period is over. You’ve missed no rehearsals, spilled no drinks on any customers, and you’ve kept your uniform tidy and presentable. Polednitsa gave you a clean bill of health on your blood tests. You were worried? Everyone is. Congratulations!”

  Since no one had told her even of the existence of a two week trial period, the news failed to elate her.

  But Yumiko wondered if this were some particularly cruel psychological torture, meant to make her feel relief and relax her guard so that the command to have her dragged in chains down into the bone-strewn underground vault would be all the more shocking by contrast. Therefore, she merely smiled and said, “Thank you, sir.”

  Unexpectedly, a glint came into his eye. Had she herself not felt the selfsame mood three days ago, she might not have recognized it. It was the victorious glee of a magician whose sleight of hand fools the chump.

  He had fooled her. How? What had he done?

  “Good, good!” he said, nodding. “This being the case, the time has come for you! You, see, I have discovered something about you…”

  At that moment, in mid-sentence, just as Yumiko was about to find out what he had discovered about her, the phone rang.

  Wilcolac snatched the handset up to his ear with comical haste, “Yes? Yes! Yes?”

  She realized the hectic confusion of last night was still in effect. Wilcolac bellowed, “Don’t let him leave! Don’t let him kill any mortals! I’ll be right there!”

  Wilcolac startled her as he bounced out of his chair, coming toward her. Moving with surprising energy for one so stout, and pelted across the room.

  Yumiko by reflex leaped to her feet when he jumped. He rushed past without noticin
g. The door slammed. She stood blinking, breathing heavily. He had left his top hat on the desk. She looked down and found herself in a half-moon stance: Feet spread, legs bent, left foot forward, toes turned slightly inward, left forearm up to block, right fist at her hip. She glanced at the mirror, frowned, and adjusted the position of her rear foot slightly. Sloppy. The stance did not feel correct in high heels, and they made her backside stick out too far.

  When was the last time she had actually drilled? It was outside the range of her remaining memory. So, more than two weeks ago. But she could not have practiced her katas while she was here in the Cobbler’s Club, being watched.

  She glanced at the mirror again and remembered what Iele the Romanian had told her. She suddenly felt as if eyes were watching her. Yumiko cleared her throat and straightened up, tugging and tucking her tight costume back in place.

  The sensation of being watched did not ebb. Yumiko casually glanced over one shoulder, slowly scanning the room, while trying to school her face to convey an air of idle nonchalance.

  Humming a leisurely tune, she allowed her drifting steps, as if by pure chance, to carry her over to Wilcolac’s desk, and she rolled her eyes here and there, and again, as if by merest happenstance, allowed her gaze to come to rest on the desk top where the parchment lay.

  It was partly covered with blotting paper. Only the lower part of the page was visible:

  …that Arthur lives. His voice I heard, and I know he speaks the truth. Your assurances have proved false: Sir Gilberec is no poseur, but a true knight of the Table Round. In his hand is the sword you spoke of.

  Allow me to be frank. No force of yours can defeat him. Send as many wolves or monsters as you may. Shades will not approach him while he walks in the company of the second, his cousin Matthias. He burned the hand from my dead Lantern. My mighty specter is now one-handed due to this. Must I lose more before you are convinced? No one as powerful a ghostly father since Dominic Moth I have seen!

  However, at great expense in bribes and gifts, I have lured to my house a knight equal in puissance, or more. He is bound by no code of honor, but is a caitiff and treasonous and will strike down the youth from behind, unseen, for the Cloak of Mists is his. Of course, I speak of Garlot Lackland, the Exile of Listenoise.

  I have gained means to send a message to the elusive Matthias Moth. All is in readiness and awaits but your nod. My reed you have in this.

  The text ended there.

  To whom was it sent that it had to be written with a quill pen on parchment? The salutation would be at the top.

  She offered another casual glance at the mirrors. For all she knew, any might have men behind them, or cameras, or ghosts, watching her every move. Did she dare push aside the blotting paper to see the upper half of the letter?

  It was unsightly to lean over dressed in this uniform. Instead, using the same poise as if she were lowering a drink to a table, Yumiko tucked one leg behind the other and bent her knees, keeping her upper body upright. She kept her face half turned away, masked in an innocent expression, and only turned her eyes down.

  She peeled up the merest corner of the blotting paper:

  To the venerated and dreaded Thursday of the Supreme Council of Anarchists, Lord of Wolves, Captain Lucien Cobweb, my patron, greetings and salutations. Dread Sir, two Arthurians met with me…

  Tears of fear came into her eyes at that moment and made her vision swim. The Captain! She had heard the title of the absent owner of the club once or twice but had not made the connection. Lucien Cobweb had been wearing a captain’s uniform from some antique and Napoleonic army when she had seen him. And Iele had called the Captain a fiddle-player. Yumiko had seen him playing it.

  This was the house of the master of the werewolves, Thursday, one of the seven Anarchist lords. This was not neutral ground, but a stronghold of the enemy.

  Lucien had already once lured her into a deadly trap in the warehouse district across the river. Perhaps this room was a trap. Perhaps this letter had been left for her to find, and Lucien stood behind the one-way mirror, savoring her shock.

  She breathed and let the fear subside. She had forgotten her former life and mission, but it had not forgotten her. To increase the dangers she faced by panic was shameful. Yumiko blinked and forced herself to concentrate on the words in the letter.

  …two Arthurians met with me in parley on the evening of Friday the 13th, a day my art shows to be auspicious for acts of darkness. As you commanded, against my better judgment, I put them to the test.

  The first is as honest and bold as rumored and is a true knight of the Lost King. Sir Gilberec vows that Arthur lives…

  The sensation of being watched grew and became overwhelming. Her fingers, as if by themselves, dropped the corner of the paper with a guilty start. Yumiko straightened up, brushing at imaginary dust specks, darting her eyes left and right.

  There. A face was staring at her. A tiny, whiskered face with glittering eyes. He was looking at her through the glass of the bottle perched in the ice bucket next to the desk. He was not behind the bottle peering through it. He was inside.

  2. Old Overholt

  For a moment, she thought it was Elfine, and she gasped. But, no, this was a man’s face. He was shirtless and shaggy, and his hair was like a tiny lion’s mane. His beard spilled across this chest like an open fan. He wore what seemed a loincloth of hair. He looked for the world like a miniature caveman. He even had the tiny bone of some small beast thrust through his topknot.

  He was kicking his legs, keeping afloat in the alcohol. She saw his legs were deformed in their lower extremity. Kicking was evidently hard for him.

  Despite resting in an ice bucket, this was not a champagne bottle. It was amber and square. The label held a cameo of a stern old man, or perhaps it was an ugly old lady, wreathed in barley stalks, and also the words

  Since 1810

  OLD OVERHOLT

  Straight Rye Whiskey

  She bent closer, puzzled, wondering at the sight. Why did the magician keep a little man in a bottle of rye?

  Even as she watched, the little man at the neck of the bottle thrashed. He pounded, or, rather tapped, his tiny fists against the brown glass. Then, with an expression of panic, he slipped below the surface of the liquor. Now he was near the middle of the bottle, waving his legs feebly, both little hands to his throat, eyes bulging.

  The label was off the cork, and the bottle was not full, so it had been opened previously. She pulled at the cork, but her fingers slipped. She wound her fingers around the bottle’s neck and pushed with her thumbs. The cork came free. (She was half expecting it to pop and fly in the air, but, of course, it did not. Whiskey is not carbonated.)

  Now what? She could not reach a finger into the neck of bottle to rescue the drowning swimmer. She opened one drawer and then another, hoping to find a glass. She found a set of files in one drawer, an elaborate makeup kit with wigs and latex prosthetics in another. The next held a book of dark leather bound shut with three chains which moaned and trembled when light struck it. She shut that drawer quickly. The next held a set of chains, fetters, and trick handcuffs, such as an escape artist might own, as well as hoops, ropes, candles, cards, crystals, and a hat with a false bottom.

  There were two cupboard doors below the drawers. Behind the right was a control panel with labeled switches sitting atop a rack of silently turning reel-to-reel tapes. Behind the left was a miniature bar with several bottles shelved before a mirror, a nook containing lemons and limes, and, above that, a row of cut crystal tumblers.

  She set out the tumblers and poured them one by one. The little man was caught in the neck of the bottle. He narrowed his body strangely, as if he had no bones, and shot out of the bottle to land in the final glass. He sank to the bottom. Yumiko put her fingers in the alcohol to fish him out, fearfully wondering if there were any way to start his breathing again.

  But her fingers came back dry. The little man opened his mouth and stood up, and what should
have been, to a man his size, a bathtub full of whiskey, now was in his mouth. He did a headstand, slurped up the last bit remaining in the bottom, righted himself, and jumped up to stand with one foot on either side of the rim of the glass.

  He raised his hand in an airy salute. “Top o’ the morning to ye, missy!”

  His voice was very loud. Instinctively, her hand flew to her collar, whose bow tie held a hidden microphone, which she smothered with her fingers. At the same moment, she realized that Wilcolac would never allow the kitchen staff to overhear his conversations with any of the Peach Cobbler Girls.

  Her eyes darted to the control panel. The door in the lower desk was still open. She could see each label next to a toggle had a name penciled in. One read Sorry. The toggle was off and the light next to it dark. Wilcolac had turned it off before she entered, of course.

  The little man, perhaps irked at being ignored, made a trumpet of his fingers before his mouth, and shouted, “Top o’ the morning to ye, I said! Is it deaf as a post, ye are?”

  “I hear you quite well, thank you, sir. But I don’t know what that means. Please?”

  “Aha! ’Tis an outrageous and orgulous Oirishism which no real potato-eating Irishmen would ever dare say, ’faith and begorrah!” He rolled his R’s with a trill so that last incomprehensible word came out something like begorr-rr-rr-rrah. “Cream rises to the top, so he who says the same be wishing the sweetest part of the day to you.”

  While he was talking, she undid her collar and stowed it under the empty tumbler, hoping that would prevent the sound from being picked up. “Well, then, top of the morning to you.” And she bowed slightly.

  “And the bottom of a sweet lass!” So saying, by some means unseen, he propelled himself like a miniature rocket away from the tumbler, across the desk, and into the plush leather chair behind it. He rebounded from the pliant surface, yodeled, and swan-dived toward her fanny, arms out. He intended what could be called either a pinch or an embrace, depending on whether one used his size scale or hers.