Faded Steel Heat

by Glen Cook

  “And we didn’t even eat it all,” Morley said. “Your share is in that sack over there.”

  We saw no one as we left the house. The place was a mausoleum infected by despair. Maybe that spread from Tom’s room. I felt a sudden fear that more evil might be headed the family’s way. “This would be a good time for the shifters to come back.” Unless Block’s troops were on the job and alert.

  91

  The city was darker than usual, the night people fewer than normal. We drew unfriendly looks but never a challenge. I did see evidence that some fainthearts, especially among the refugees, were getting ready to move on. The Call’s botched Cleansing had had an impact.

  I didn’t need to talk to anybody to sense the tension. TunFaire’s population is half nonhuman, most of whom operate nocturnally. But numbers won’t mean much if we humans gang up. Most of the other races don’t get along with each other any better than they do with humans. For some, like dwarves and elves, the enmity goes back millennia.

  I said, “The Call didn’t splatter a lot of blood around but they won anyway. You can smell the fear.”

  “That’s true. But what you don’t see is the people who aren’t running.”

  Morley probably knew something he couldn’t share with me. Though he wouldn’t be involved directly in anything, of course. Neutrality was a commodity he’d marketed most of his life.

  Belinda said, “If Marengo has half the brains I think he’s hiding, he won’t do anything for a while. Allegruan and Dryzkaksghul Gnarrisson and the others really sucked up their pride to hold it together long enough to face the Cleansing.” Allegruan and Gnarrisson were what you might call the urban elven and dwarfish war chieftains. “That’ll all fall apart now if The Call gives them time to remember old feuds.”

  “You’re right,” Morley said. “There’s talk about that already. One of Allegruan’s brothers got into a shouting match with Dryzkaksghul’s uncle during the rioting because Gnarrisson’s great-grandmother was a sister of the Burli Burlisson who ambushed the elves in Zhenda Canyon when they were headed home after attacking the dwarf caves in Wrightwight Mountain.”

  “Nerve of them, hitting back like that.” I didn’t know the incident. The history of the Karentine kingdom and its imperial predecessor is more than I can encompass and there’s not nearly so many centuries of that. Nor does it carry such a burden of treachery and betrayal. Among fundamentalist, rustic-type elves, treachery and betrayal are high art forms.

  “The brother’s point exactly. If nothing else Burli and all his get forever are guilty of boorish manners.”

  I guess history sometimes is one of those you-had-to-be-there things. “I’ve always treasured your ability to see the absurd, Morley.”

  “It’s only absurd by modern Karentine standards, Garrett. By those of the time, dwarfish and elvish alike, Burli showed very bad form. He didn’t even take prisoners. He killed all the raiders and cut off their heads and set those up on stakes outside the entrance to the forest Thromdredril, supposedly all because he spent a few years in old-time TunFaire and contracted human insanity. And this is where we part ways. Enjoy the Al-Khar.” He and Belinda scooted, deaf to my questions.

  92

  “Don’t do it!” I barked as somebody wound up to bop me from behind, right after I asked to see Colonel Block. “It’s the real me. Rub me all over with silver. Make me walk around with a crown under my tongue. Just don’t hit me on the head anymore.”

  In seconds I was surrounded. Relway’s was the only face I recognized till Block wandered in. He took me at my word. His troops held me down while a guy with a silver dagger tested me for a tendency toward morphism.

  Nobody apologized. Block said, “You’ve turned up here once already today. But the first time you weren’t you.”

  “No shit. But how’d you know?”

  “We knew you were out at North English’s manor. I can picture you being guilty of a lot but not of screwing up in two places at the same time.”

  Relway demanded, “You learn anything?”

  “I had a long, private talk with North English this morning. I could tell you word for word but I don’t think you’d learn anything you don’t already know. That bunch aren’t as secret as they pretend.” I told Relway everything anyway, almost, figuring that would save time. Then I asked Block, “What was this other me up to?”

  “Tried to get the duty jailer to release Crask and Sadler in his custody. He sold his cockamamie story, too. We’d have lost them if they’d been able to travel. But the jailer came to me to try to arrange transportation. I understood you were out of town. I went down to check it out personally. The shifter knew trouble when he saw it coming. He took off before we could close in on him.”

  “So the bad boys are still here?”

  “We have a full house. But there’s pressure from the Hill to release everybody being held for being public pains in the ass yesterday night.”

  “What about Gerris Genord? Gotten anything out of him yet? I just turned up evidence that he might be tied in with the shapeshifters.” Or to somebody in between, which is more the way I thought it would be. I didn’t think Genord deliberately hurt the Weiders. I suspected he hadn’t been knowingly involved in the infiltration of the shapeshifters. I thought he was a pawn moved so that bad things happened around him. His belated recognition of that fact might have caused the irrational state he was in the night Ty and Lance caught him sneaking around.

  Relway said, “We haven’t talked to him yet. There hasn’t been time. Too much excitement to cover outside.”

  Though, I noted, he did have the resources to keep track of me. “Can I talk to him?”

  “I’ll collect a team and we’ll visit him together.”

  “I don’t want to pull his toes off. I just want to ask a few questions.”

  “He’ll be more eager to answer if I’m behind you with a bunch of rusty tools. I’ll keep quiet.”

  Relway, being Relway. He would be as interested in watching me ask as he would be interested in hearing Genord answer.

  That wouldn’t cost me. “Let’s do it.”

  Genord was asleep when we got there but he woke up fast. He looked around wildly. He was confined in a cell every bit as evil as imagination could make one. The only positive was that he didn’t have to share. Elsewhere captured rioters were piled in on top of one another.

  “Comfy down here?” I asked. “I stopped in to see if they’re taking good care of you.” There’d been a change in Genord and it wasn’t what you’d expect of a guy who found himself buried in the Al-Khar. He’d hardened. His eyes had gone cold. He looked like a commando after all. He was a shapeshifter but only inside his head.

  He didn’t respond.

  “I’ve had a thought,” I told Relway. “About the changers and our friend here. You think they know we’ve got him?”

  “They do now. If they didn’t before. The one who pretended to be you saw him when he came down to visit Crask and Sadler.”

  “Meaning if Genord does know anything, they’ll want to get him out or shut him up.”

  Relway and Genord both thought they saw the direction I was headed. I took a quick turn on them. “Suppose we cut him loose? What will they figure happened?”

  “That he ratted them out,” Block replied. “I like it. Turning him out would solve a problem for me, too. It’d free up a cell that wouldn’t have to be a single anymore. And if we do hang on to him and his own buddies get in to cut his throat, we’re spared having to feed him till a judge lets us hang him.”

  Relway stage-whispered, “We got a budget. We don’t got to account for what we don’t use.”

  That was bullshit. I’d heard a little about the Guard’s finances from Block.

  I told Genord, “Brotherhood Of The Wolf is made up of elite-forces types. These shapeshifters operated as Black Dragon Valsung in the Cantard. A mercenary commando group. Is there a connection from the war?” Then I floated the suspicion I’d had for some time. �
�Is there a connection to Glory Mooncalled?”

  Not that Genord knew of. That notion startled him momentarily. Then he nodded. “Yeah. Mooncalled’s behind everything.”

  “He’s lying,” Relway said.

  “He thinks he’s lying. Thought he was when he said that. He’s already wondering, though.” You could almost hear Genord pondering the question of whether or not he’d been duped.

  He chose silence as the safest route. He hadn’t been in charge. He had to have faith that his superiors knew what they were doing. That they would come to his rescue.

  Commandos are like Marines that way. They don’t leave their own behind.

  I mentioned that to Block. He growled, “We’re prepared!” like how stupid did I think he was.

  I might not have gotten names or a bloody knife but I was now satisfied that there was a connection between Genord’s bunch and the shifters. I needed to go back to The Pipes to find out more.

  I said, “Hang on to him for a while yet, just so I can get a head start and drop his name a few places. Then go ahead and kick him out.” Ty was a vindictive sort. He would find this kind of vengeance particularly satisfying. Provided, of course, Genord couldn’t talk his way out of the deep shit.

  He hadn’t shown much talent for that yet.

  Block left a man with Genord in the unlikely event Gerris opened his heart. We were headed for the relative sanity of Block’s quarters. Relway had disappeared. Block asked, “You need to check on Crask and Sadler?”

  “I don’t think so. Long as they’re locked up tight I’m happy. They shown any signs of recovering?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “You be careful with them. And don’t forget there’s people outside who’re worried about them.”

  “I have some ideas about those two. Assuming somebody really does want them out. Or dead.” He gave out a mock-evil laugh.

  I suggested, “You’re gonna use them as bait in some stunt, don’t forget brother Genord.” Like he needed reminding again, already.

  “He’s already moved, I expect.” Block played with the evil laughter again. “We’re going to get them, Garrett.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I just hope I have some friends alive when it happens.”

  “They get to Hell before you, they can have the place all fixed up. A keg in every room. Platoons of panting females.”

  “That’s your idea of Hell?”

  “Oh. You won’t get to touch.”

  “I don’t get to do that now.”

  Block made like a man playing a funeral flute. “I’ve heard about your bad fortune.”

  “My reputation is entirely the product of Mrs. Cardonlos’ imagination.”

  The name seemed to startle Block. He asked, “What’s your next step?”

  “Back to North English’s manor. I’m almost convinced that he isn’t behind any of this. Though clever actors have fooled me before. Do you think he’s a born-again believer in The Call’s mission?”

  “I try not to judge the sincerity of his type. Nor that of people off the Hill. I keep an eye on what they actually do.”

  “You said there was pressure from up there...”

  “It’ll slack off.”

  “Thought a lot of Hill types support The Call.”

  “Only if it’s successful. They don’t want to be caught out dangling in the wind if North English’s gang goes batshit and fucks up completely.”

  It was getting on toward the hour of the wolf, the coldest, cruelest time of night, when despair rises up and gnaws the bones of even the strong. And also the hour when the worst trolls and ogres are out. When it’s plain common sense for a lone human investigator with too many enemies not to be wandering around alone. “You got a cell I can borrow for a couple hours? Just till the sun comes up?” I would nap my way into whichever future successfully conquered the city.

  “There’s probably one around here with your name on it, reserved. But for now you can use the cot in mine. I won’t bother you. I’m up, I might as well work. Maybe interview a few of our clients.” Block understood the hour of the wolf, too. There was no better time to question somebody who was chained up in a mass of filthy straw, shivering in the cold, desperately outnumbered by the rats and lice.

  “Thanks. Get somebody to waken me at the crack of dawn.” Before he could cut me down with a wisecrack, I said, “I ought to see the damned sun come up once before I die.”

  I found the cot and stretched out. Wow! Two naps in the same night. This was pure luxury. And there wasn’t one damned talking bird within miles.

  93

  The somebody who wakened me wasn’t one of Block’s regularly sanctioned gangsters. The somebody was Pular Singe. I almost whooped as I popped up, startled. “How the hell did you get in here?”

  I scared her. I had to calm her down before I could get any sense out of her. She lisped much worse when she was frightened and her hearing went north. In time I learned that she’d just walked into the Al-Khar, following my scent. There’d been nobody on guard. She hadn’t thought anything of that.

  “Did you see any bodies?”

  “No.”

  “Damn! I hope that means they were ready for an invasion and just ran away.” Because that was what a lack of guards meant. Somebody unfriendly had gotten inside but hadn’t found anybody to kill. Not right away. I suffered no overwhelming impulse to find out if Block and Relway were all right, though, “Why are you here?” I had myself together now. I started easing her toward the nearest street door. Seemed a stroke of strategic genius to get ourselves far away from whatever big trouble was afoot.

  “Reliance sent trackers after everyone following you, Garrett. He believed they would run to their masters as soon as they knew you had shaken the one with no scent. I teamed with two others to follow that thing. It can be done. I learned.”

  We were at the door. I thought I heard Block’s fake evil laughter from deep inside the jail. “How’d you manage that?”

  “By sight. This creature is not smart. It does not look back. It does not see those who are not people. That is why others were able to follow it. Even Fenibro is smart enough to look back sometimes. We took turns being closest. It is easy to track one another.”

  “Hmm.” The ratpeople were working real hard to put me in their debt. I had a bad feeling about that. People who do that sort of thing always want something back. Usually something that involves me having to work.

  There was enough light out to see. A modest fog had come in off the river. I understand that happens frequently but I’m seldom up early enough to see it.

  For some early is late. Singe was uncomfortable being out after daybreak but she stuck with me, valiantly trying to communicate everything Reliance’s people had found out about my personal road show. I must say, I appreciated the unflagging interest of all the friends I’d made recently. Even though they were watching one another as much as making sure that they knew every little thing I found interesting.

  Only Max Weider wasn’t watching me. But Relway was doing Max’s share as well as his own. He had a whole crew on my backtrail.

  Where did he find them all?

  That fact that he could round up that many people fanatically devoted to law and order was as scary as the fact that our Marengo North Englishes and Bondurant Altoonas could find all the friends they wanted.

  Human folks were flooding the streets now, starting their day. Many were the sort who worshipped Marengo. They did not like what they saw when Singe and I strolled by.

  It constituted a little lesson on what it means to be a ratman.

  Singe’s courage was not up to a prolonged test.

  Mine wasn’t much less feeble.

  Singe told me, “I cannot remain with you.”

  “I understand. Before you go, though, tell me, did your people track the scentless one to others like it?”

  “It went to a place where others of its kind waited.”

  “Ah! And where might that have been? Ho
w many of them were there?”

  “Three and the one we followed. We did not understand the language they spoke. Nor could I get very close. They were alert. They were very troubled.”

  “You did get close enough to listen?”

  Singe made a dramatic effort to respond with a nod. “We are often closer than you think.”

  I hugged her with one arm. She barely came up to my brisket. Somehow, she seemed bigger when we were just walking, talking. “You are the bravest child I’ve ever met.”

  Did you know rats purr? I’d heard cats and raccoons do it, but never... Singe did.

  I tried to be stern. “You can’t take risks like that. These creatures are extremely dangerous. They think nothing of murder. I’d hate myself if you got hurt.”

  Singe’s purr grew louder. I could hear Morley and Belinda mocking me now. I cautioned myself not to let Singe make too much of my praise.

  “Where’re they hiding?”

  She had trouble explaining. Ratpeople don’t think in terms of street names and addresses. Not that we have the latter anywhere but on the Hill. Mostly you locate yourself as being so many doors some direction from an outstanding landmark. Like, say, a tavern. Most of those draw their names from signs easily recognized by the illiterate. The Merry Mole. The Gold Seam, for dwarves. The Palms for people overburdened with wealth and self-opinion.

  She made me understand. “A lamp, is that it?” She got that across with finger speech when I proved too dense to get it verbally. “Down by the river? There aren’t any taverns... The Lamp brewery? That’s been closed up and abandoned for twenty...”

  What a wonderful place to squat. The Lamp brewery was no sprawling monster like the Weider place but in its day it was a leading producer of working-class lager. It went before my time but the old men remember it fondly. I suspect time improves the beer, as it will do. Had the Lamp product been superior, the brewery would still be in business.

  “That’s interesting, Singe. Very interesting.” I’d have to let Relway know. We could give the place a look when I got back from The Pipes.