Cruel Zinc Melodies

by Glen Cook

  83

  The blizzard had worsened. In the falling snow parameter. You couldn’t see twenty feet. It was warmer and less windy. The snow came down in big, sloppy, slow flakes. The walk to Mr. Jan’s place was less miserable than I’d anticipated, though my calf muscles did ache from having to slog through snow in places already a foot deep. I gave a lot of mind time to a hope that it would melt before my turn at the shovels came again.

  I thought it might. This blizzard had the feel of Winter’s last forlorn effort.

  I didn’t proceed with battlefield caution. It was a storm. Bad people would be scarce. The reason most of them are bad is, they can’t stand the stress and structure of honest work. Or they’re too stupid.

  Stupid were the kind who would be out looking for victims in this.

  Still, my pace slackened ever more as I neared the tailor shop.

  Something was off.

  That old thing about it being quiet. Too quiet.

  Even for the middle of a snowstorm, where it’s always quiet.

  The quiet was the wrong sort.

  I saw nothing. But there was something. I felt it.

  I sniffed. And sniffed. And sniffed some more.

  There was nothing in this air but heavy, resinous smoke. Every working stove and fireplace was trying to hold off the cold, mostly by burning cheap dangerous softwoods.

  Maybe I was overly sensitive.

  I crept up to Mr. Jan’s door without having anything creep up on me. Wondering if this was one of those deals where the genius bad guy tells you all your questions will be answered if you show up at some remote place, all alone, and don’t tell anybody.

  That must have worked at some point, once upon a time. Else why would villains keep trying the blatantly stupid and transparent?

  Inside. The bell jangling. Still nothing suspicious. But I had my weighted oaken headknocker deployed. My left hand, in my coat pocket, had fitted itself to brass knuckles cast in our own manufactory from a design suggested by Kip Prose. Just twelve had been produced before I enjoyed one of my few successes as self-appointed company conscience.

  There really is no legitimate use for brass knucks.

  Mr. Jan popped through the curtains closing off the back of his shop. He carried Jokes Leastor’s special coat. “Ah. You’re here. I didn’t expect you for a while yet.”

  “My associates are fast. And have been known to be lethal.”

  That went over his head. Musingly, he observed, “They would be, wouldn’t they? Come on back here.”

  I leapt and caught him. Not only my associates are fast. He yelped, startled. “Tell me, Mr. Jan. Where did you get that coat? It’s only been a few hours since I traded it for what I’m wearing now.”

  The little man gasped, “Back there. In back.”

  He wanted me to go to the back. Into shadowy tight places where his fabrics were stored. Where villains by the dozen might be lurking.

  “I'll be right behind you.” I poked him with the end of my stick. Thoroughly put out, he pushed through the curtains. I stayed close enough to grab and use him as a shield.

  The back of the shop was a surprise. It was spacious and lighted. Mr. Jan’s fabric bolts hung on wall brackets where the cloth could be unrolled as needed. The floor was given over to cutting tables and manikins of varying size, most wearing apparel in some stage of construction.

  “Ah. Sergeant Garrett. You have me at a disadvantage for the moment. I hadn’t entertained the ghost of a hope that you would arrive so soon.”

  The other thing gracing Mr. Jan’s back room was His Royal Highness, Prince Rupert, Lord of This, Count of That, Duke of Something or Other Else. Hell. There I went. So up on my Royals that I didn’t know which titles Rupert preferred. A failing unlikely to garner positive reviews from His Grace. Though not that unusual down on the street, where who is what doesn’t make a lick of difference, day to day.

  I tried to recall the rituals you’re expected to pursue when entering the presence of someone so exalted. “I apologize, Your Grace. I’ve never been taught the appropriate obsequies.”

  “Never mind. There’s no one here to see.”

  There was Mr. Jan. But he had recovered his aplomb and was back at work on a larger, gaudier, new and improved version of the coat he had built for Jokes Leastor.

  I had a sinking feeling.

  Clown coats would be all the rage by the time winter rolled around again. Had to be if it was what the most popular Royal was wearing.

  Mr. Jan hummed softly as he cut and pinned.

  He could see that future.

  He’d be a made man this time next year. He’d have squadrons of employees. After all those years in the trenches he’d be an overnight success.

  The reason the prince felt at a disadvantage was, he was in his underwear. The tailor was using his exquisitely made outerwear to get the refined measurements needed to make sure the new coat was a perfect fit.

  84

  “Take a seat, Sergeant Garrett. Forget everything else. We have business to attend.” He had a jerky way of speaking that was unsettling.

  Prince Rupert conjured a couple of chairs, placed them beside an empty cutting table. I didn’t protest his use of a rank I no longer wore. I avoid contradicting princes whenever I can.

  I sat myself down, wishing I’d had the foresight to strap on my chastity belt this morning.

  You need one when nobility invites you to come be one of the boys.

  “You’re skeptical and suspicious,” the prince said. “And nervous. Good. Your mind doesn’t freeze up when presented with sudden, unusual circumstances. But relax. Let’s talk like professionals, here away from everyone else.”

  Damn! He’d used the clown coat to create a way to meet without Block and Relway looking over his shoulders.

  I peered around.

  “I’m alone, Sergeant. My bodyguards are somewhere warm. They don’t know I’m out prowling the stews again, alone.”

  He fibbed. A little, maybe. Their presence, behind the white, would be what I’d felt earlier, with senses honed in a more deadly place and time.

  “All right. You’ve got me here. Your Highness.” There were situations when he was supposed to be a “Your Highness,” and situations where he was supposed to be a “Your Grace.” I didn’t know the rules. I should’ve chosen my parents more carefully.

  “Neither Westman Block nor Deal Relway will be listening in. Neither will hear of this meeting unless you tell them.”

  I wouldn’t bet on Relway missing anything. Some of those guys out there shivering probably reported to him. Unless Rupert really understood that and did leave his people behind. In which case I’d been imagining what I’d felt out there.

  I waited.

  “The situation at the World. The one involving Shadowslinger, Link Dierber, and the others. It happened as you described it?”

  “Exactly.” I decided to dispense with honorifics till he insisted otherwise. Being me. Having to test the temper of whoever sat across from me. “I have no reason to distort the chronicle.”

  “I thought as much.” He observed, “The Algardas erred when they brought those people to your theater.”

  “Maybe. But they were just family, worried about their kids. The theater was full of dead bugs. The Algardas wanted to show the others what their kids had been up to. They weren’t there to start a war.”

  “I suppose. Had they been, they wouldn’t have gotten so badly mauled.” As though he’d forgotten me, he muttered, “Too bad it wasn’t Kilsordona who got in the Bellman’s way.”

  “Kilsordona?”

  “Precisely. Yes. Oh. That would be the Nighthunter Kilsordona. The one wider than he is tall. A particularly unpleasant personality and a favorite annoyance of mine.”

  “I didn’t know they let any Nighthunters come back from the Cantard.” They’d been one of the ugliest weapons fielded by our side. Invisible and undetectable after night-fall, the Nighthunters had been insane killers, often sent o
ut to eliminate vampires and other night predators for which the Cantard is justly famous.

  “A few showed an ability to get over the need for murder. But that is nothing to do with us. Or this. A personal annoyance only.”

  I shuddered. His speech was increasingly creepy. “Uh... can you tell me what that was all about? Link Dierber going off, determined to get his brother and getting got himself instead?”

  “Not so petty jealousy. The kind that happens in any family, but, for Link, magnified a hundred times. Link always made things bigger than they were. That was his psychosis.” Rupert paused. He waved a hand to indicate he wasn’t finished. He choked on his own words for thirty seconds before he got going again. “Many people would have lived longer, happier lives if Link Dierber had been stillborn.”

  “And Belle?”

  “Only half as mad as his crazy half brother. Only half as violent. Thanks to his upbringing.” He managed a note of sarcasm.

  “What happened between them? To start everything?”

  “I don’t think anyone knows what the trigger was. And you could be the only one who cares. It certainly doesn’t matter. We have to deal with the situation that exists today.”

  Don’t you hate having to communicate with people whose heads don’t work like your own?

  I don’t let it get to me. There are too many of them.

  “If you weren’t responsible for Dierber and the others being there, there’s no need to feel responsible for what happened, Sergeant.”

  I didn’t. The squabble between Belle Chimes and his family was an inconvenience. So were red tops who kept workmen from getting on with construction. Which I mentioned. Sourly. “What’s the bottom line going to be? My principal will be extremely unhappy if he gets dragged into a vendetta he didn’t start himself.”

  “No worries. Only Schnook Avery is likely to carry a grudge. And Schnook will be taking up residence in a special sorcerer’s suite at the Al-Khar. He'll stay there till we’re sure he'll behave. Or till one of my idiot older brothers has him cut loose.”

  Mr. Jan sewed assiduously, hearing nothing.

  “What about Belle? And Lurking Felhske?”

  “Felhske?” Distinctly unhappy at the mention. “Felhske isn’t germane.”

  Damn! He sounded a little heated, even.

  Calmer, “We'll see no more of him, I’m sure. The Bellman will be tracked down and arrested, though.”

  Understandable. “Why is he called the Bellman?”

  Prince Rupert stared for a moment, as though trying to work out if I was sincere, or just stupid. “Belle? Bellman? Nickname. Goes back to when he was about ten.”

  “Those people load themselves down with silly monikers. I thought it might have some special meaning. Like Stormwarden. Or Windwalker.”

  He flinched. He wasn’t immune to her magic, either. He said, “The reports about you appear to be accurate.”

  Great chance for a wise remark. Relway, Block, or any of their underlings would have gotten one. The prince, not so likely. “Excuse me?”

  “You worry and fuss about things in no need of fuss or worry.”

  An unusual way of stating it but a sentiment I’d heard expressed a few hundred times before. “None of this has turned out real satisfying.”

  “That’s life. Did you do your job? It looks like you did what you were supposed to do. That should be satisfying in itself.”

  I grunted. What was I doing in the back room of a tailor’s shop, during a blizzard, talking to the number-three man in the kingdom, under circumstances suggesting that the meeting was part of something big and secret?

  “Why am I really here?”

  “In addition to matters discussed? Two reasons. What’s buried under your theater?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. My associates think it’s a dragon. I’m not sure I agree. It doesn’t feel like what I think a dragon ought to feel like. We hope we can tame it with cold. Whatever it is, that seems to be putting it back to sleep. A few days? more winter should do it. Anyway, I’m not supposed to discuss it. The fewer who know anything, the fewer there are who will be likely to provoke it.”

  He eyed me unhappily. “The main reason for this is that I hope to recruit you into a new law enforcement department. In a senior position.”

  “Huh? Another one? Me? Be a tin whistle? I don’t think...”

  My lack of enthusiasm didn’t please the prince. “I’d think this would be your dream job. Doing what you do, with the Crown behind you. Your income guaranteed.”

  Being told what I could and couldn’t do, what I could and couldn’t wear, even being told how to lace my boots.

  I wanted to yell, “Get thee behind me, foul demon!” But it was better to temporize. “I was a Marine. I’m proud of that. But it isn’t going to happen again.”

  “You not being your own boss.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’d have more freedom than you think.”

  That would be true the day the air filled with live, squealing bacon thicker than a gnat swarm. “You’d have to get more specific before I’d consider it. I like my life the way it is.”

  “I’d hoped to make you my personal observer inside the Al-Khar. Straightforward enough?”

  “Ah....” Yes. He wanted to set me up to look over the shoulders of the masters of the Guard, Watch, and Unpublished Committee.

  He said, “I’m gathering people who are the best at what they do. With you we’d start out using an arrangement like the one you have with the Weider Brewery. Outside the Al-Khar your Special Office would handle things we don’t want the Guard or Watch seen ham-handing. Inside, you’d be Director of the Office of the Chief Inspectorate, publicly tasked to watch the watchers. You’d follow a career arc similar to Director Relway’s but with your name becoming less well known. You’d have the city’s most talented people reporting to you. You’d do highly important work but the public would remain unaware of it.”

  A snake oil salesman ought to have more facility expressing himself. The prince’s tics left him sounding like a crook even if he was being honest. “What would I be doing if I wasn’t keeping Relway honest?”

  “Not yet. Not a word more than what I’ve said. I repeat. This isn’t to become part of public discourse, now or if you accept the position.”

  All right. He was offering me a job. A real job. Probably doing what I do, till I weaseled my way in where I could keep an eye on the darkness at the heart of the Al-Khar.

  “If you accept I’d want you to bring all your resources with you. And to disengage from private arrangements.”

  That killed it. Wasn’t going to happen. But I wasn’t ready to break his heart in front of so many absent witnesses.

  He sensed the change. His eyes narrowed. “Compensation would be commensurate with your level of responsibility.”

  “Generous, huh?”

  “Very. I’m asking you to give up a lot.”

  My eyes narrowed. But temptation remained well behind me. I couldn’t imagine the king of Karenta being more generous than the king of beer. Not to mention less controlling.

  “Enough to let you retain your usual associates. Though they couldn’t know what you’re doing. Some don’t know how to keep a secret.”

  “You’ve been checking up.”

  “We could, in fact, set up departmental expenses separate from salaries. But you’d have to keep detailed records. You’d have to account for everything. And be prepared to argue convincingly for expenditures. I’m creating a fiscal oversight group, too.”

  The more he talked the more his offer sounded like a nightmare come true. “It’s interesting, the turns life takes.”

  “Seize the night, as they say.” His excitement was gone. He knew I wasn’t buying.

  He soldiered on, though. He asked my thoughts on the leading personalities of our day. A dozen times he said, “I never thought of it that way.” Or, “Is that how the little folk see it?” He had a strong interest in the differences i
n thinking between his class and those of us who do the world’s work. Not that he saw any particular merit in the plebian viewpoint.

  He might have been slumming, or just enjoying a freak show.

  He kept going back to popular attitudes toward Relway, Block, the better known human rights agitators, and the Contagues. And, more obliquely, his brother the king. I was as honest as I dared be. While growing ever more suspicious.

  Morley would be heartbroken. I’d have to tell him that, as yet, he had done nothing gaudy enough to have caught the eye of Good Prince Rupert.

  It would be nice if he kept it that way.

  Mr. Jan did seize the opportunity to take additional measurements while I was there. Though my new coat would now be delayed till he completed the masterwork he was creating for the prince.

  85

  Back to the World? Or go home?

  Home sounded good. The Dead Man could get to work making sense of what had just happened with Prince Rupert. And I could get warm.

  I had some ideas about the nature of the tar pit I’d stumbled into but wasn’t confident of my instincts. Old Bones could winkle out the shadowed connections.

  And the house would be warm.

  Everyone else had a different idea about what was going on at the World. They all agreed: We had us a dragon down below and we had to tippy-toe till it went back to sleep.

  Home kept calling but there was a lot of day left. I decided to check in with Morley Dotes. I had something nagging at me. My subconscious might nail it down while my friend distracted my conscious mind.

  Dotes looked so glum I decided to order a mixed veggie grill just to cheer him up. He joined me while I waited. I asked, “How come so blue? Nobody in their right mind would be out in this, anyway.”

  “It’s not that. Not just that. I’ve made a deal with a devil. I can’t stop thinking about the possible consequences.”

  “Any deal with Belinda definitely has a downside. You give up on collecting the bounty on Lurking Felhske?”

  “No bounty to be had anymore, brother.”

  “Huh? Not even Relway?”

  “Especially not Relway and his Unpublished Committee, apparently. A red top came around with a message for me, personally. He was part giant, part ogre, had fangs down to here, and made Saucerhead look like the runt of the litter.”