by Glen Cook
The Goddamn Parrot shrieked and headed down the hall. Dean clumped after him, exercising his own vocabulary. The bumblebee buzz drifted. I heard rattling at the door to the small front room.
"Nothin' in there. Stinks, though. That bird. Let's look at this next one."
I went over behind my desk and picked up the spare headknocker. It was time to find out how much power a cherub had.
Calmly. Calmly.
The runt's mouth never stopped. Neither did his banger. The smoke began coming in under my office door.
The Goddamn Parrot's beak never stopped.
Dean kept swearing.
Cat kept after everybody. She sounded like she was about to break down crying.
Be patient, the Dead Man sent. The girl is rattled. This is to our advantage. I see weaknesses in the armor around her mind.
"Oh, excellent," I muttered. "And what about that stinking, banger-smoking cherub?"
Cherub?
"The one in the hallway with the rest of that baby riot? The half-bug little guy trying to get into everything?"
Cat shrieked, "Fourteen, stop that!"
Oh. That cherub. And, somehow, I knew he could not sense the little monster at all except through the senses of others. Presumably he was seeing through Cat's eyes, since I was not out there. Unchosen mortal Dean ought to be blind to the critter.
Would ordinary mortals smell the smoke even if they could not see the smoker?
"That very cherub," I said. "Since you've found these chinks, chip away." And good luck with the runt. You marvel, you.
Your attitude needs adjustment desperately.
"And you need to get back outside of my head, Chuckles." Gotcha. I felt his withdrawal. He didn't do it as a favor to me.
He was going to need all his minds to deal with Cat and Fourteen.
I tried to commune with Eleanor. Eleanor wasn't interested. And who could blame her?
35
Garrett. I have attained control. You may join us if you so desire.
"Oh, I will. I've got to see this."
The Dead Man was smugly self-satisfied. Which was not an unusual state of affairs. When things go wrong for him that is always someone else's fault, but his triumphs are all his own, brilliantly unshared. Just ask him.
"A prime candidate for Amazon school," I cracked. Cat did look like a leading contender for future queen-ship of the women warriors. "Another Winger."
Not quite. This one is completely healthy and totally honest and wholesome. The girl you will want your daughter to be.
"There anything inside that handsome head?" Cat was that kind of girl when you got her out into the light.
I was paying her no mind, really. I was studying the cherub. It was perched on the arm of the Dead Man's chair, frozen solid as some stone gewgaw on a temple wall.
Handsome, by the way, is a physically pretty woman who has no attractive pizzazz whatsoever. Something like being your good-looking sister. A perfect match for your feebleminded cousin Rudolf from Khuromal. Give her a pat on the hand and a weak smile, then go find the girls who want to be bad.
"You accomplish anything with the runt there?"
I succeeded in extinguishing his smoke. The room stank. The hallway outside stank. I managed to petrify him. Otherwise he has proven intractable.
"Shut up and put out is good enough for me. How about Cat?"
There is a great deal in there, but I cannot reach it without her cooperation. She is quite strong.
"Must be the blood."
Sneer. A mental sneer is a remarkable thing.
"Hey! This is a woman who rides flying horses and thinks it's fun."
The Dead Man relaxed his grasp ever so slightly. The light of awareness grew in Cat's eyes. She shuddered, shifted her gaze to stare at the Dead Man. Her expression became one of horror. "We didn't know that," she murmured. She looked at me. "So you are here."
"I are. I live here. What's your excuse?"
She remained cool under pressure. She reached out to the cherub, touched him gently. "Poor Fourteen. He'll be unfit to live with after this."
"He's fit now? Ratmen would run him off."
"I came looking for you."
I settled into the chair that we keep there for me. It doesn't see much use. I put my feet up on a stool and examined my left thumbnail. Yep. Still there. "Why? Do I know you? Do we have a relationship? I don't think so."
"You deserted me before I could... "
"Definitely. Before you could anything. Especially anything unpleasant."
"But I got you out... "
"I haven't forgotten. Last night wasn't that long ago. But I can remember rescuing a light colonel from the Venageti so the Karentine army could hang him. I walked before you finished haggling with whoever you were delivering me to."
"I was taking you to my mother. We argue all the time. That's just the way we are."
Maybe. It happens. I waited. It may be true.
Cat said, "She was the one who wanted you freed from the Shayir."
"I appreciate that. She didn't have time to spring me herself?"
Gently, but continue. She is beginning to leak. This is very interesting.
"Mother doesn't dare stay away long. It might be noticed. They're all so paranoid these days. Because of the temple business. And she can't manage Chiron and Otsalom."
Was I supposed to have a clue here? "Hell. I have trouble with five-card pitch."
Chiron and Otsalom, it appears, are winged horses common to the myths of the peoples of the city states of the Lumbar Coast a few dozens of your generations ago.
"Back around the time you went to sea?"
Cat looked baffled. The Dead Man ignored the remark. Coincidentally, cherubs appear in those myths, none of them named. And that whole family of religions is a branch from the trunk that produced the Church and its local relatives.
"Chiron and Otsalom are my horse friends, Mr. Garrett. Mother never learned to manage them. She never had time. It's very difficult for her to get away. And I have a knack. She asked me to get you out and bring you to her. I tried."
"I'm grateful. I wasn't enjoying captivity at all."
Then I suggest you get rid of that goofy grin.
Darn. He can see through others' eyes.
"Savage." I continued, "I just wish I knew who she was and why she bothered." I recalled that the Lambar Coast has been a Karentine tributary since imperial times. For so long that there is no separatist sentiment there anymore.
The ships and boats and barges that dock in TunFaire often carry Lambar sailors, Garrett. Working ships is what the Lambar peoples do.
"They do. And that's interesting. What's going on, Cat?"
She put on a stubborn face.
We live in a time of amazements, Garrett. Would you suspect the existence of a temple serving the needs of Lambar sailors, down in the Dream Quarter?
"Some of us are surrounded by amazements. Some of us are just too lazy to die. Of course there's a temple for Lambar sailors. I'd almost bet your life there's more than one. You're a soldier or a sailor, even a merchant sailor, you have to do something after you've spent your wages in the Tenderloin and they've thrown you out of your rooming house for not paying your rent. Come on. You've had time to dig. What's her story?"
Cat gaped at me. She moved nearer the cherub, though reluctantly because that put her nearer the Dead Man. Being able to touch the little guy seemed to boost her confidence.
You told me she looked like Lang and Imar. Not so? But the fact is, she looks even more like Imara.
"You're pulling my leg."
I am not. Her divine half comes from her philandering mother. She is unaware of her father's identity. She knows only that he is not Imar, for which she is grateful. She does not think this consciously, but she suspects that her mother may not know who her father is. Imar, by the way, is unaware of her existence and, it would seem, Imara is eager to maintain his ignorance. I suspect that, should he learn the truth, he would in
dulge in one of those infamous celestial rages that tear down mountains and sink continents. Or he would at least cause the creeks to back up and mice to get into the corncrib.
"Huh?" Whoa. Who was getting wound up now?
I didn't figure Imar and the horse he rode in on had much heavenly oomph left between them, but why thumb our noses? You ask for trouble and you're damned well going to get it. "That's ringing the changes on the old holy bed shuffle, isn't it? Where do I fit?"
I intended the last question for Cat. She didn't answer me. Neither did the Dead Man, really. I am unable to reach that information, Garrett. She may not have it. She seems to be motivated mainly by a desire to be a dutiful daughter.
"Don't look to me like she's all here right now." Maybe she was mentally allergic to the Dead Man. She seemed to be aging before my eyes, taking on that lost look you sometimes see in stroke victims. She had a firm grip on the cherub. I doubt I could have beaten it out of her hand.
Easy, Garrett. Calm yourself.
Sometimes you stumble without seeing it coming. My mother suffered a series of strokes. A stroke finally killed her. In between the first and last, my cousins took the brunt because my brother and I were in the Cantard. She outlived my brother, but I got home often enough to see it at its worst.
It will tear your heart out when your mom all of a sudden can't remember your name.
Easy, I say.
" ‘The pain still remains,' " I told him, quoting a popular soldiers' poem. He would be hearing that a lot if he kept up his interest in current politics. The Call had set it to music. When the fighting is done and the long night is gone, the pain still remains.
Manage it, Garrett.
"Getting short-tempered, are we?"
We have an opportunity here. This child is the stone at the center.
"The fruit outside looks pretty tasty, too."
Mental sneer. She cannot be reached. Not at her heart. And now I see that it is not of her own choosing.
I'm a normal, red-blooded TunFairen boy, so I wasn't much concerned about her heart when I looked her over. I grumped, "You manage your own pain."
Cat was drifting, but she was not catatonic. She knew we were talking about her and probably did follow my half of the conversation. She did not appear to resent it. Assuming the Dead Man was right about her birth, she undoubtedly had had plenty of experience being an outsider.
Ah. A plan presents itself. Inasmuch as you find Cat such a delectable morsel, you might try doing what you do so well. Charm her. See where that goes. She may lead you to valuable information.
"Like we have that kind of time?" He dwells entirely in the realm of fantasy when he pictures my abilities to understand and communicate with the opposite sex. Old Bones, they are way too opposite for me.
And it was not like him to give up on himself so easily. Let Garrett do it? Not when he thought so much of his own ability to get inside another mind. Either he overestimated Cat or he was sneaking around to get an angle on me. This news could break his heart, but it seemed to me that, as is the case with so many young ladies her age, there just wasn't a whole lot in Cat's head to find.
Faintly, faintly, like the remotest, most tenuous whiff of weed smoke drifting from an alley, gone in a blink: Nog is ines...
I shuddered.
That was not pleasant.
"You ought to smell him."
Not a problem for me anymore.
"Nice to know there are advantages to being dead."
The watchers have begun to move in slowly as members of each pantheon try to stay a few feet ahead of their competitors. I need Dean to send the bird out again.
From the kitchen came an uncommon construction blurted in response to the Dead Man's touch. I heard Dean stomp toward the front door. I heard him say something very unpleasant to Mr. Big. The Goddamn Parrot did not respond. Maybe he had discovered manners.
Maybe there were blizzards in the hot place and all the young devils were sharpening their skates.
Dean stuck his head into the Dead Man's room. "Mr. Dotes is headed this way."
"Morley?" It had been a while since I had seen Morley Dotes, my sometime best pal. He was trying to go high class, which apparently meant scraping old buddies off the soles of his shoes.
"Do we know another Dotes?" Dean does not approve of Morley. Of course, he doesn't approve of much of anything but marriagable nieces and his friends Tinnie and Maya. But not many other people approve of Morley, either. Morley is what discreet, gentle folk would call a thug.
In the real world Morley is known as one badass bonebreaker.
Who has developed delusions and illusions.
Please await Mr. Dotes at the front door, Dean. Bring him straight here. I am certain we will find his news enlightening.
36
Morley Dotes is part human, part dark elf. His elven side dominates. His choice. He seems embarrassed by his human side. Can't say I blame him.
He is short and lean and so damned good-looking they ought to jail him and lose the key. So the rest of us get a break. I have known him a long time. Sometimes we are best pals. Sometimes he does stuff like give me a talking buzzard that is possessed by an insane demon that causes diarrhea of the beak.
"Mr. Dotes," Dean said, showing Morley into the Dead Man's room.
"Egad," I said. I've always wanted to say that. The opportunity never presented itself before. "Your boys knock over a tailor shop?"
He was dressed to the nines. Maybe even to the tens or elevens. He had on a silver-trimmed black tricorner hat, a heavy, bright red-, black-, and silver-trimmed cutaway over a white shirt wild with lace and ruffles at throat and wrists, a skinny sword cane, natty cream hose, and incredibly shiny shoes with huge silver buckles. He even had a little twitch of a black mustache coming in.
"Some high-class Hill couches must have died to make that coat."
Morley removed a white silk glove, took out a scented little hanky, held it beneath his nose. He sniffed and eyed Cat speculatively, wondering if there was something between her and me. That is the one line he never crosses.
"Really putting on the airs now, isn't he?" I asked the Dead Man.
A man has got to do what a man has got to do. The Dead Man's sarcasm would have rattled the windows if the room had had any windows to rattle.
Morley took it in stride. We peasants could not be expected to appreciate his improved, refined station. "As you requested," he told the Dead Man, flouncing that damned hanky like he belonged in the West End, "I inspected the site you specified. In fact, I soiled a perfectly beautiful... "
Nog is inescapable.
This one was a lot stronger. Nog was close. And his thought did not touch just the Dead Man and me. Morley lost his color.
I told him, "That's not just another Loghyr. That's a for sure howling petty pewter god whose specialty is hunting people down. Right now he's looking for me."
Cat had caught it, too. She started moving around nervously. "I need to get out of here, Garrett. If Nog finds me here... "
Show the young lady to the small front room, please, Dean. Miss Cat, I wish to speak to you for a moment privately before you depart. In the interim, I need to consult with these gentlemen.
"Where will I be able to get ahold of you?" I asked Cat, as though I believed the Dead Man really did plan to cut her loose.
"I'll find you."
"Sure you will. Good-bye, then. Behave yourself."
She gave me a funny look, then went with Dean. She failed to take Fourteen with her. That had to mean something to somebody.
In the background Nog faded away, but he left no doubt that he was not far off and in a foul mood besides. His pals were bound to be around, too, and I couldn't see their tempers being any more pleasant.
I fear it will not be long before they come visiting.
Morley asked, "Are you into something weird again, Garrett?" He stared at the cherub like he half expected it to come to life and snipe an arrow right into his black heart
.
"Me? Into something weird? The gods forfend." I told him all about it. And concluded, "It wasn't my idea."
"But then, it never is. Is it? I take it that was some other clown named Garrett who went chasing the skirt up Macunado."
"Here's the pot calling the kettle. You never saw a skirt you wouldn't chase."
"Technically incorrect, although true in spirit. If you will recall I was able to resist several of the old man's nieces."
"They're a pretty resistable bunch."
I remembered the owl girls. I chuckled. They would make a fine payback for the Goddamn Parrot. I could give him back birds with interest. If I could fix it so he couldn't get away from them for a month or two.
"Great story, Garrett. Real interesting. I'm sorry I can't help you with this one." Dotes shrugged. "And I didn't come over to trade insults." He pumped a thumb. "That one asked me to look into something. I came to tell him what I found."
That you have appeared in person leads me to believe that the treasure is, indeed, hidden exactly as Magodor suggested.
"There's one to wake up to in the morning, Morley."
When money was involved Morley trusted nobody. I have become so cynical I even wondered why he hadn't just grabbed the treasure and reported it nonexistent. I wondered why the Dead Man had chosen to send Morley. I would have used Playmate. Morley's ethics are not as flexible as Winger's, but they still have plenty of elastic in them.
Actually, he wouldn't do me that way. He might use me in a scheme without consulting me first, as he had done a few times already, and he might dump a Goddamn Parrot on me as a practical joke, but he would not steal from me.
Excellent. Then there is a possibility Garrett's latest misadventure will not turn up a complete loss. Will you contract to recover the treasure for a percentage?
"Hey!... "
You will be busy running, Garrett.
I caught just the faintest parting echo of Nog. How long before he passed this way again?
"Mr. Garrett?" Dean was in the doorway. "Slim is here for his delivery and pickup."
"Good." I hadn't gotten a chance to steal a sip off the emergency pony keg. Life is a bitch. "That gives me an idea. Go let him in."
