The Broken Bell m-6

by Frank Tuttle

  Which isn’t the way running a business is supposed to work. I resolved to pay the Lethways a visit and see what I could glean concerning the whereabouts of missing groom Carris. But first, I’d need to see my client.

  I hoofed it from the courthouse to Darla’s, glad of a cool day and a few clouds. She met me at her door with a kiss, finished up a conversation with a pair of chatty customers and finally hustled me into the back after putting Mary in charge of the sales floor.

  “So tell me, intrepid finder of all things lost, what have you found for me today?”

  By then, we’d said a proper good morning to each other, and were perched at a sewing table while the fringes of gowns hung down and tickled our heads.

  “I found your Miss Tamar, and her mother and father, and of course the inimitable Mr. Tibbles,” I said. “Lovely people. Except Mr. Tibbles. He made rude comments about my hat.”

  Darla shook her head in mock dismay. “I hear he wets the rugs too. Scandalous.”

  I laughed. Darla frowned, though, and traced her fingertips down my cheek.

  “There’s something else.” She wasn’t asking a question.

  I told her briefly about the Sprangs and the mess they’d brought from Pot Lockney. I hadn’t intended to tell Gertriss’s story, too, but it all came out. Darla nodded, as though she’d known it all along, and it’s entirely possible she had.

  “A few nights in the Old Ruth ought to have them ready to run back home,” she said. “Now why not tell me what’s really bothering you.”

  Can’t put one past that woman. Someday I’ll learn not to try.

  “Took a ride yesterday,” I whispered, Angels know why, sound barely carried in that room filled with hanging clothes and bolts of fabric. “Black carriage. No horses.”

  Darla just took my hand. “Will we ever be free of it?”

  I knew the answer to that. It’s no. But I didn’t speak it to Darla.

  “What did he want?”

  And the weight of that question-What will you tell Darla? — fell full upon me.

  “Not the time or the place.” Darla’s doorbell rang. Feet began to shuffle on the sales floor outside. “But don’t worry. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Liar.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.”

  Mary poked her head inside, asked for Darla.

  “Go,” I said. “I’m off to find this missing groom. See you tonight? After work?”

  “Indeed you will, Mr. Markhat.” She kissed me on my forehead. “And bring your mouth. You’ll need it to talk.”

  I forced a smile. She saw right through it, but she squeezed my hands in parting and let me go my way.

  Traffic was picking up. A dead wagon rattled right past me, heavy laden with the night’s pale leavings. The Regent has ordered the wagons covered now, and I was glad of it. Word was the number of bodies hauled daily to the crematoriums was on the increase. Soon there’d be grumbles about halfdead and the Truce. And then there’d be a spectacular murder or rumors of another range war out West and the halfdead and their Curfew-breaking victims would be forgotten.

  Until the rumors start up again.

  It’s an old tradition, in Rannit. Grumbling. And quickly forgetting.

  I shook off my reverie and headed downtown. I planned to walk as far as Northridge and then hail a cab to the Hill. It was time to beard the Lethways in their opulent lair, and employ my clever ruse to trick them into revealing the whereabouts of their only son Carris.

  I was hoping the walk would promote the formulation of my clever ruse. A block later, I hadn’t made any progress in that regard, which meant my entire plan of attack centered around the words “Hello, I’m Markhat, where pray tell is that son of yours?”

  I was so engrossed in my machinations mental it was another block before the tiny hairs on the back of my neck rose, and it dawned on me that I was the object of a stranger’s sudden, intense attention.

  I didn’t turn and look. That’s the kind of stunt that ends with bloody noses or worse. I watched glass shop-fronts until I identified my interested stranger and satisfied myself that he was working alone.

  I cussed out loud and drew a sour look from a little old lady in a veiled dowager’s hat.

  The kid was a Sprang.

  Not even a full-grown Sprang. He might have been ten at the most. Ten, and wandering around Rannit clad in homespun burlap and mismatched shoes.

  He was filthy. His hair was wild and matted. The dirt was so thick on his face I could see it plain in a dim reflection. The streaks in the dirt must have been from tears.

  Hell. The kid had been out all night. After Curfew, outside, with hungry halfdead roaming the streets.

  I almost repented of my plan to set the elder Sprangs free. They’d not said a word about a kid.

  I didn’t want to snatch the kid there on the street. Even the most sessile Watchman would probably come out swinging at the screams of a child, in this part of town, in broad daylight.

  So I circled back, hoping the kid was so lost already he wouldn’t realize I was taking him back to Cambrit. I kept a nice slow pace, making sure he didn’t lose me. If he knew he’d been spotted, he didn’t let it show.

  I bought a bag of biscuits from a pushcart vendor on Rains. The kid hid behind a fence and watched me through the cracks. I paused to tie my shoe on Borom. The kid nearly got himself run over by an ogre and his cart.

  By the time I’d hiked back to Cambrit, he was stumbling along, exhausted, either not realizing he was back where he started or just too tired to care.

  I slowed and let him catch up. I slowed more, and he kept coming.

  In the end, I just caught him up under his arms and hefted him over my shoulder. He didn’t even cry.

  The Hoogas dipped their eyes in greeting as I approached. “Delivery for Mama Hog,” I said, loud enough to be heard inside.

  Mama’s door rattled, and she poked her head out.

  “Boy!”

  “Indeed it is,” I said, passing by her and depositing the limp Sprang on her table. I patted him down for knives, found a single thin, worn blade, and handed it to Mama.

  “Another Sprang, I believe. Followed me all the way downtown. Looks like he’s been out all night.”

  Mama gobbled, her face reddening with the same anger I’d felt.

  “Wash him. Feed him when he’s awake. If he wants to leave, fine, but remind him what happens around here at night.”

  “I ain’t runnin’ no orphanage.”

  “He’s not an orphan. Yet. Here are some biscuits. I’ll be back before dark.”

  Gertriss opened her door, and I waved and winked then I was outside and away.

  I took a cab, this time. I’d walked in a big circle and wasted a lot of time, and I still had the Lethways to face.

  If there were more Sprangs lurking about, they didn’t make themselves evident. The bridge clowns capered and mocked me as the cab clattered over the Brown River Bridge. I must have looked somber because they adopted furrowed brows and pursed lips and puffed out their cheeks. I tossed them a few coppers as the cab left the bridge, and hoped some of the superstition about clowns and good luck lingered on.

  I’d abandoned any pretense of cleverness. I simply didn’t know enough about the Lethways to even guess at a tack. My best option was an old favorite-keep the conversation going for as long as possible, and hope something useful is revealed along the way.

  I knew I’d be lucky if I even managed to sit across from an actual Lethway. If Tamar hadn’t managed to get past the butlers, my chances were slim indeed.

  The cabbie wound his ponies up the Hill. We passed House Avalante, where my friend Evis lay sleeping, deep in his dark, cool crypt.

  I knocked the dust off my hat and smoothed back my hair and waved at Evis, though I knew he couldn’t see.

  The Lethways have a big new house three-quarters of the way up the Hill. Their blood oaks are maybe half the age and size of those that shade Avalan
te, so rather than lurk in the shadows, House Lethway gleamed in the bright midday sun.

  It was modest, as Hill houses go. A mere three stories tall. But it had the usual high swooping slate-tile roofs and ornate leaded glass windows. There were, however, no Old Kingdom turrets, no mock crenellations along the eaves, no pretense of garrison gates where the rather plain front door stood.

  And no guardhouse, and no ogres, and no dark-suited toughs with wary eyes and broad shoulders idling about, either.

  I paid the cabbie, tipped him generously, and suggested he might earn another handsome fee by swinging back this way in an hour. Then I adjusted the tilt of my hat and marched toward the front door, my face set in what I hoped was an expression of forthright determination.

  I didn’t get the chance to knock. I was two full strides from the Lethway’s door when it opened and a pair of stalwart gentleman sauntered out.

  They wore dark suits. Their eyes were wary. Their shoulders were broad.

  They weren’t quite ogres, but they weren’t far from it, either.

  “Good day, gentlemen.” I stopped, rocked back on my heels, clapped my hands together as though thrilled to be meeting such devoted youths.

  The pair exchanged an exasperated glance. “Wedding business,” muttered one. His companion nodded.

  Sometimes, fortune smiles.

  I beamed and smiled my widest.

  “Weddings are indeed my business,” I said. I put a lot of cheer into it. “Walter and Walter, florists extraordinaire. We’ve managed to secure ten dozen of the eastern white roses Miss Fields requested.” I fished in my jacket’s breast pocket and withdrew the papers, which would free the Sprangs but wouldn’t pass for a flower bill on close inspection. “If one of you gentlemen could sign for this…”

  “Not going to be any wedding,” offered one worthy.

  “Third one she’s sent up here this week. Crazy broad,” offered the other.

  “You’ll get paid,” added the first, to me. “Take the money and forget it. There ain’t going to be a wedding, you got that?”

  I adopted an expression of concern. “But, sirs, I spoke to the bride last evening-”

  They turned and threw open the door. “Like I said, the House will pay your bill,” said one, beckoning me inside. “But just this once. You show up here again and it won’t go so good for you. You understand?”

  I slipped my papers back in jacket and nodded, deciding that the floral agents of Walter and Walter probably had little experience in trading tough talk with House soldiers.

  The pair of toughs led me across a marble-tiled foyer and into a sitting room that could have used at least one window. I spent a few moments idling there, listening to the House, unable to do more than catch a few muffled footsteps and hear a snatch of conversation I couldn’t begin to follow.

  An older gentleman ushered me wordlessly from the tiny sitting room, down a hall with oak-paneled walls, and into a larger sitting room that had not one window but two. Portraits kept me company, three to a wall, scowling at me from beneath the powdered white wigs and ruffled collars popular in the years before the War. None looked happy. A loud clock ticked on a mantel.

  By the time I reached my third sitting room and a middling comfortable couch with dragons worked into the wood frame and claw feet, I was fighting off yawns and hoping the grumbles from my stomach weren’t audible all the way outside. I’d spent more than an hour just ambling from room to room, and I was no closer to a Lethway than I had been at home in my bed.

  I wondered if I’d been forgotten, then decided the servants were merely playing a game of let the money-grubbing tradesman waste his day. I wondered how many of the caterers and reception planners that Tamar sent to Lethway just gave up and left before collecting their fees.

  I listened. If anyone was moving around nearby, they were doing so in sock feet, and I doubted that.

  I rose, made sure my Avalante pin was plainly visible, and sauntered out of my sitting room and into the perilous bowels of Lethway itself.

  The House was quiet. If bustling was being done, it was being done elsewhere. I picked a hallway at random, ambled down it, found a flight of stairs leading up, took to them. I met an older gentleman clad in a butler’s black tails halfway up the first flight. I saw his eyes cut to my Avalante pin and then cut away.

  I picked halls at random, left closed doors shut, ventured into a couple of open ones. The second floor was surprisingly empty, aside from servant’s quarters and a couple of unfinished guest rooms. I did find a family portrait-Mom and Dad Lethway, he much older than she, flanking a ten-year-old kid who must have been Carris.

  No dirt on his face. No straw hat on his head. My, what a difference a few dozen copper mines make.

  I ran out of things to explore, so I gathered my nerves and took to the final flight of stairs leading up.

  At the top, voices and footfalls sounded. A woman laughed. Glassware tinkled. Knife and fork clattered on a plate.

  Lunchtime. I headed away from the sounds and the smells, preferring to lurk a few more moments.

  I wish I could claim I followed the pattern of wear on the floors or discovered Carris’s room by recognizing the patina on his doorknob as only a man his height would make. But the truth is I was guessing, and I opened every door that wasn’t locked, and his was the third one I tried.

  Tamar’s picture, painted by someone with talent, hung on his wall. There was a pile of fabrics and fake silk flowers heaped on his dresser. Beside the pile was a notepad, just like the ones I use, and on it were scribbled notes.

  Red fireflowers for grooms, read one entry. Yellow for rest.

  Below that was Meet bev. supplier tomorrow noon.

  I flipped through the pad, found more of the same.

  “You missed that meeting, didn’t you?” I said. “I wonder why.”

  I poked through the rest of the room, found nothing suggestive of a man planning a panicked flight away from the jaws of impending matrimony. What I did find, hidden in the far corner of the topmost sockdrawer, was a box that held a golden ring.

  Tamar’s ring. I’m no jeweler, but I’m no infant, either. A man on the run could sell that ring for a quarter of its worth and still finance a very long trip. The fact that he hadn’t sold it told me he hadn’t planned on leaving at all.

  I put the ring back where I found it, smoothed the bedcovers where I’d rumpled them, put everything as it had been. Then I put my ear to his door and listened for footfalls outside.

  It was quiet. I opened the door and stepped outside and closed it behind me.

  No one saw, shouted or rushed toward me with a club.

  I was so happy I could have whistled.

  But I didn’t. I patted my Avalante brooch and straightened my collar and decided that since Lady Luck was smiling I’d see if she’d join me for lunch.

  I marched down the hall, all pretense of sneaking gone. Why sneak? I was a friend of House Avalante, and a lunch guest at Lethway. If any mere butler dared question my presence I’d show him the bottom of my nose.

  I managed to locate the dining room by following the smells. The door was ajar, and from the hustle and bustle of servants and carts I gathered I’d nearly missed lunch.

  I opened the door and stepped inside. A butler whirled to face me, his sudden expression of haughty offense marred by the full mouth of mashed potatoes he was struggling to swallow.

  “I hope I’m not too late,” I said, before he could speak. “I was told downstairs there would be fried chicken. I prefer white meat.”

  Lady Luck wasn’t just smiling but laughing and drinking straight from the bottle. A black-haired maid started filling a plate with chicken.

  The butler fell into a fit of coughing. I breezed past him and helped myself to an empty glass and a pitcher of tea.

  “Green beans, too, that’s a dear.” She smiled and piled them high.

  Somewhere in the coughing fit, I suppose the butler spied my Avalante pin, because he tottere
d off to cover his mouth, waving the maids on as he turned. I grinned and grabbed a dinner roll. It was buttered and warm.

  The maid pulled a chair out for me, and I plopped onto it.

  “Too bad the meeting ran long. I was looking forward to lunch with the family.” I tore into the chicken.

  “Oh, sir, the Lady never takes her lunch here anymore,” quoth the younger of the two maids. “Dines in her rooms, you know. Hardly leaves them, these days.”

  “Hush, Margaret,” said the other, eyeing me with something like suspicion. “Fetch the gentleman a napkin.”

  “This is good,” I said, between mouthfuls. “Someone here knows her business.”

  “And what business brings you here, sir?” asked the suspicious maid. I pretended to wipe an errant crumb off my lapel, in case she hadn’t seen my brooch.

  “Morris ram stabilizers,” I replied. Bits of Rafe’s conversation with Evis crept back to me. “Did you know that straight-bore mining drills wear out after only eighteen days? But not with a pair of Morris stabilizers on the forepins. They’ll go twenty-six days, or better. Factor that in with the savings in site idle time and wages spent on repairs, and you’ll see an overall boost to your profits of nearly one and a quarter percent over any six-month period. And I don’t have to tell you how much that means in profits over the life of a copper mine.”

  I did not, in fact, have to tell her anything of the sort, because she gathered up a stack of plates and stomped from the room. Whether she’d bought my line of mining lore or was off to fetch the headsman I didn’t know.

  Margaret of the inky-black locks grinned and poured me more tea.

  “My father was a miner,” she said in a whisper. “I grew up around mines. There’s no such thing as a ram stabilizer, is there?”

  “There probably ought to be,” I whispered back. “Are you going to scream for the Watch?”

  “Depends. Are you here to help or hurt?”

  I swallowed and met her eyes squarely.

  “I’m here to bring Carris Lethway home.”

  She just nodded and gathered plates.

  “End of the hall. Take a right. Next time, a left. Third door on the right. Be gentle. She’s a nice lady. Just sick with worry.”