by Glen Cook
Who was this Agonistes? I didn't know anybody by that name in Morley's crew.
"Agonistes" is what you people call a street name.
"Oh. Silly me. I really thought somebody's mother would hang a tag like that on him."
Dean passed me, headed for the front door, wiping floury hands on a dishrag. I ducked into my office, which is a large, messy closet across the hall from the Dead Man's spacious suite. I swung the door most of the way shut. I left it cracked both so I could hear what was said in the hall and so I could peek at the Dead Man's visitors. "Dean, remember to keep an eye on Winger. She'll try to kype something."
"I always do, sir. All of your friends."
He started fumbling with locks and latches and chains, taking away any chance I would have had to speak on behalf of my friends.
The man's birth name was Claude-Ned Blodgett.
I didn't know that name, either, but I could see why he would take up just about anything else. Who was going to be scared of a gangster named Claude-Ned Blodgett? Was he going to pop you with a farm implement?
Agonistes, though, had a kind of self-selected sound to it. Names picked up on the street don't usually come that dramatic. Pretty often, they really sound plain stupid. Our great wizard lords on the Hill pick their own business names, and they always choose something like Raver Styx.
Winger started barking before Dean got the door all the way open. I hoped the Dead Man just had her doing legwork. She could complicate things real bad if she got in far enough to get ideas for some scheme.
30
"Garrett here?" Winger demanded.
"I fear not, Miss."
"I'd swear I heard his voice."
"Holy hooters!" the Goddamn Parrot squawked. "Look at them gazoombies!" He managed a creditable wolf whistle. Winger is blessed. Nobody will ever doubt that she is female, despite her six-foot stature.
"If Garrett wasn't my best friend I'd throttle that critter," Winger said.
I wanted to jump out and tell her not to hold back on my account, go for it, turn the little vulture into mock chicken soup.
Though he knew I would do no such thing, the Dead Man did brush me with a cautionary touch. Up front, the Goddamn Parrot continued to flatter Winger. Saucerhead's rumbling laugh filled the hallway. "I think he's in love, Winger. I bet you Garrett would let you take him home." He knew.
"Shee-it."
"Think of the advertising. That bird around wherever you went."
"Double shee-it."
I leaned in an effort to look through the narrow crack by the door hinges. I wanted to see this Agonistes character. I didn't get much of a look, though he waited for Winger and Saucerhead to go into the Dead Man's room first. He didn't look like a thug. He looked like a lawyer, which is a whole different species of villain. But, then, Morley is trying to polish his image these days.
I listened carefully. I couldn't catch a sound from the Dead Man's room. Dean went back to the kitchen, prepared a tray with tea and muffins. My mouth watered. I was hungry. I resisted temptation. Those three did have to leave the house convinced I was still on the run. Dean wouldn't be able to go out at all now. We would have to survive on whatever we had on hand. Unless Dean had managed some marketing, that would not be much. I had eaten out while the old boy was gone.
On his way back to the Dead Man's room, Dean stepped in and quietly handed me tea and several hot muffins. He winked, crossed the hall. Before the Dead Man's door shut I heard Winger carping about me being so cheap I wouldn't serve a decent breakfast.
Winger is one of those people you love because they have style. Anyone else who did the things she does would have no friends. Winger does it and you just sort of sigh and chuckle and shake your head and say, "That's Winger."
That kind of person always irritates me—along with guys who never get dirty or rumpled—but I fall under their spell as easily as anybody.
I munched a muffin with one hand and felt the stitches in my scalp with the other. They were tender. Surprise, surprise. But when I didn't touch them they itched. At least my hangover was long gone. I wished I could sneak into the kitchen for a brew. But there wasn't a drop in the house.
Oh my. No beer. And I couldn't go out. And Dean couldn't go out. Even having Dean have Saucerhead bring in a keg wouldn't work. Nobody out there would believe the keg was for Dean or the Dead Man.
That led to the really uncomfortable question. Were those god gangs likely to come play rough? Would they bust in here just to poke around?
"They're gods, Garrett," I reminded myself. "Maybe they aren't as powerful and all-knowing as they want people to think and most people usually think gods are, but they're still a long way up on us mortals." I could not see them having much trouble figuring out where I was.
And that being the case, why shouldn't I just cross the hall and hand Saucerhead a few marks and a nice fee for fetching me a keg?
Continue to assume you are the focus of a mighty confidence scheme, Garrett. It will help if you believe we are not powerless in this.
I jumped. For a moment after the touch opened, I expected it to be Nog is inescapable. I'm not sure why.
What was that all about? He did not expand upon his remark, which only indicated he was monitoring my thoughts, something he wasn't supposed to do except in extreme circumstances.
Dean stepped in. "More tea?"
"If you can manage. What's going on over there?"
"He has them collecting rumors so he can compare and collate them and test some theory about the true intentions of Glory Mooncalled."
My expression scared Dean. He grabbed my mug and platter and scooted. I squeezed the edge of my desk so hard I ought to have crushed fingerprints into the wood.
I wanted to blow up in a shrieking rage. I wanted to stomp around the house breaking things. I wanted to use words my mother would have disowned me for even thinking. I wanted to grab a certain humongous sack of petrified camel snot and drag him into the street, where he could become snacks for homeless and otherwise dis-advantaged vermin. I couldn't do any of that without giving myself away, so I sat there rocking back and forth and making weird, soft noises that could get me committed to the mental ward at the Bledsoe Imperial Charity Hospital.
I had a feeling Dean had just let slip the real con going on around here. My esteemed sidekick was using my concern about my own dire situation to gull me into thinking I was getting something for my money when it was really him getting something else.
Child and Loghyr, living and dead, I have been in this world more than a dozen centuries, Garrett. Never have I encountered a creature as cynical and selfish and penurious as you. There are great changes stirring. True marvels and wonders are transforming today into history out there. And you insist we all focus completely on a squabble that may work itself out just fine without you or me.
I didn't shriek. I didn't foam at the mouth. I didn't go over there and choke him. For what good would that do me? It would not have any effect on him. And until his guests departed, I could do nothing but fume and paint mental pictures of vast, complex, and exquisite torments to try out on the Dead Man.
Were you to distract me so, I might not be able to maintain the webs of deception I have woven to keep your presence here concealed.
He could deal with me and his guests both because he has more than one mind. Which mainly means he can be a pain in the butt several places at the same time. Not what I count as a big plus talent.
The fact that I could fight back only in the darkness of my heart only made my situation more unbearable.
Perhaps you should spend less bile upon me and invest more thought in the situation you fancy has engulfed you.
Standard fare from the self-declared brains of the outfit. Tell me to figure it out for myself.
Not easy. The situation was unlike any I had faced before. With me identified as the divine key, there was no mystery involved—unless it was why I had gotten trapped in the first place.
I did not
like being the key, but I believed the Dead Man was right. Though No-Neck had made nothing of it, I was able to stroll right into a temple that was supposed to be sealed so tight that gods couldn't get inside.
How had I become the key? When had I? How come I hadn't been consulted? The virgins who give birth to the children of gods, the men compelled to beat into those sprats the principles of offering accounting and believer manipulation later, those folks always got an advisory visit from a messenger angel before the fact. Just to smooth the road, you know. Me, I'd gotten diddly. Squat. Zilch plus zip. Hell, I was out of pocket on this thing. And I could be helping people I actually liked to handle problems I actually cared about.
Not that I wanted to dive into the Weider family troubles. That just looked less treacherous than where I was at now.
The Dead Man may have been amused by my quandary, but he was preoccupied with his visitors. He spared me no more attention while he extracted whatever it was he wanted from the crew, then filled them up with new instructions and sent them on their way.
Winger was the last to leave. Of course. Dean shepherded her carefully, stopped her from entering my office, then stayed between her and anything valuable that she might find too tempting.
31
You do overestimate Miss Winger's cupidity and amorality.
The front door had not yet closed behind the overestimated lady, who had started swapping compliments with the Goddamn Parrot. I had to wait till the door slapped her behind before I could respond.
"I really doubt that."
She has a code of right and wrong. She sticks to it firmly.
"Yeah. Her code is, If it ain't nailed down it's hers to carry away. And if it can be pried loose it ain't nailed down."
You do the woman an injustice. But, then, you feel you have been through trying times and are justified in demonstrating a foul temper.
"It's no feeling, Smiley, it's fact. And my temper is going to turn even more foul if you keep indulging your hobbies while I'm getting batted around by characters who actually make you look attractive."
I stormed across the hall, burst into the Dead Man's room. Dean entered behind me, stood around nervously waiting to find out what was going on. He was scared. However casual or indifferent the Dead Man seemed, Dean's intuition told him we had big trouble. Usually he copes with big trouble by going wild in the kitchen.
Though you want to believe otherwise, I have given your god problem some attention. Your friend Linda Lee brought a cartload of books here last evening. She and your friend Tinnie and her friend Alyx and their friend Nicks spent hours reading for me. I learned very little that you do not already know. Neither the Godoroth nor the Shayir pantheons represent golden examples of the brilliantly absurd natural imaginings of humanity. If some unimaginably great beings were to be connoisseurs of absurdities, these would form the centerpieces of their collections. These pantheons slithered from the bottom depths of lowest-common-denominator minds. Thud and blunder, sex and scandal, and afflict your mortal followers with pestilences and famines, disasters and humiliations, for fun, is what they are all about. And in that, of course, they mirror the souls in their care. All gods are shaped by the hearts of their believers.
What a sight that must have been, the Dead Man surrounded by beautiful women reading aloud, him absorbing the information they provided while smugly ignoring the fact that I was flailing around on the bottom in the deep smelly stuff somewhere else. And he had been aware of my plight—the Goddamn Parrot, having abandoned me to my fate, had flown home to him.
There is one aspect in need of deeper consideration. The girl who brought you out of Shayir captivity does not appear in any recorded account of either pantheon. Nor does your air-mobile infant. Which, by the by, is usually called a cherub.
"Hell, I remember cherubs now." They were part of the mythological hardware of my mother's religion. Mostly they just appeared in religious art.
They are part of the background populations of divine beings common to most religions springing from the same roots as the Church.
So he still had a spying eye inside my head.
For efficiency's sake only, Garrett. About the girl. It is your feeling that she is the by-blow of either Lang or Imar, her mother having been a mortal woman?
"She didn't tell me a whole lot about herself."
No. She did not. And you were too taken by the imaginary possibilities of your circumstances to try to elicit any useful information.
"Hey!... "
I reiterate. She does not figure in either mythology. The cherub springs from another family of religions entirely.
"I heard you. Give me a break. Imar and Lang are both the kinds of guys who grab whatever and whoever wherever and whenever they think they can get away with it. And probably don't much care if they get caught."
Stipulated. That is not in dispute. It is beyond dispute. But it may not be relevant. What troubles me is this anomaly, these players who do not fit the game. This girl, the cherub, even the winged horses. Anomalies always worry me. Your better course may have been to stay with the girl until you learned who she was and what she wanted.
"Maybe." Hindsight makes geniuses of us all. "And maybe if I had done that, right now I would be the meat in somebody's stew."
We really are contrary this morning, are we not?
"Damned straight. The whole crew. Me, myself, and I. Happens every time I find my partner blowing my hard-earned in order to collect political rumors. Wasting it on people like Winger, that we know too well, and on that Agonistes, that we don't know at all."
Both are entirely trustworthy within the limits of the tasks they were asked to perform.
"Yeah? What happens when somebody out there starts wondering why you're asking questions? Political people are born paranoid. If they interrogate Winger, she'll tell them anything she thinks they want to hear to get herself out of it. We could end up with Relway's thugs all over us, or The Call, or somebody out of the Cantard, or the for gods' sake Pan-Tantactuan Fairy Liberation Army... "
You are becoming excited. Please restrain yourself.
Grumble grumble.
You fail to appreciate the real magnitude of the crisis gripping TunFaire. And you fail to accept my ability to protect myself.
"It ain't you looking out for your butt that I'm worried about, Old Bones. You've always done a truly outstanding job of covering number one. It's my ass ending up in a sling that worries me."
Always the self-centered, demanding...
"Don't play that game with me, Chuckles. It's time you paid your rent. I'm calling. Tell me how to deal with this gods mess."
What do you know about the rash of strange fires in the Baden neighborhood?
"Huh?" Talk about your blindsider. But he does that. One of his minds will be mulling over something not remotely related to anything under discussion and it will pop right out. "I've been busy. You would have noticed if you weren't worrying about things like fires and Glory Mooncalled. What about these fires?"
I do not know. Several of my visitors have mentioned a series of unexplained, fatal fires. Not arson. Nothing burns but the victim himself, apparently, unless he sets fire to something himself.
"Sounds grisly."
Perhaps. It is only a curiosity, of course, but I gather there was no connection between the victims, none of whom were the kind of people who get themselves assassinated.
"Great. Sounds like the perfect puzzle to keep you out of my hair on a long winter's day. So put it on the shelf till the snows come back. Give me a hint here. What about these gods? Are we even dealing with gods?"
Again, the amount of energy being expended and the number of players involved militates against it being a confidence action. Indeed, it would be possible for a cabal of wizards to produce the effects you have encountered. But to what purpose such effort? There is no hint of any stake other than that proclaimed by the principals. This appears to be a straightforward struggle for divine status.
&
nbsp; "Status?" Got me again. Another blindsider.
Of course. Do you accept as absolute and literal their expectation of total oblivion if they are driven from the Dream Quarter?
"Pretty much. They were real intense about it. You're right, though. They could set up in a storefront somewhere. Plenty of crackpot outfits do."
And there you have it. If you are not established in the Dream Quarter, yours is not a serious religion. You are a focus for lunacy. A bad joke. Even if you have a hundred times the followers of a respectable cult.
"But that would win you a place in the Dream Quarter."
True. Although you would carry a stigma for generations. Like new money amidst old. You see my point?
"Theirs, too. You got only a couple, three followers left and you get the old eviction notice, then you try to set up shop in an abandoned sausage cookery, your followers maybe won't show up for services anymore. Too embarrassing. They might sign on with some other crew who knew the right people and worshipped in the right place. So maybe you are dead if you're out. It's just not sudden."
They might see it that way.
"So suggest me a plan. Sit tight?"
I am applying some thought to the matter. I feel it is unlikely that the pantheons remain ignorant of your whereabouts, despite our precautions. It remains to be seen if they will accept inactivity—especially once someone realizes that you are the key.
"You think they will?"
I reasoned it out easily enough. They are less able, constitutionally, to consider a mortal closely, but eventually it will occur to someone that you entered that temple as though there was no seal upon it.
"Could have been No-Neck. He was with me."
No doubt he will pay for that.
"He deserves a warning."
He does. I will see to it. He seemed to mull something over. I let him ferment. Events could become exciting, I fear, once that conclusion is reached. Particularly if one of the Godoroth reaches it first.
"Huh? You want to explain?"
He was in a mood. His usual response would be to tell me to work it out for myself. You suggested that Lang had eyewitness knowledge of your visit with the Godoroth. I suggest we seriously entertain the possibility that, in fact, he did hear from an eyewitness.
