Red Iron Nights

by Glen Cook

  Belinda and Candy looked at me like they expected pearls of wisdom to drip from my lips, as though with a wave of rusty knight’s blade all could be made right between Barking Dog and his long-lost child. There was a lot of sentimental emotion floating around. If I was going to gain any ground with either of these beauties, I was going to have to play for the reunion.

  I’m a cynic. I admit it. I had to do it to maintain my chances. No way was I going to waste my precious time on that out of sentiment. I’m one of the hard guys. You can’t get me with that mush.

  I hoped Amato’s heart didn’t break when he found out what his daughter did.

  Hell, I didn’t know what she did. Did I? She danced for Bishoff Hullar. That didn’t make her a whore. Anyway, that wasn’t any of my business.

  I said, “I don’t want to be impolite, guys, but I really am beat. I’ve been hustling all day. You ladies want to stay up, talk to Mr. Amato, that’s fine with me. Make sure the front door is locked when you go to bed. What that means is, one of you has to stay up till Mr. Amato and those clowns in there with His Nibs leave.”

  The Dead Man proved that one of his brains had room left for me while he entertained royalty. You need not concern yourself, Garrett. I suspect that I will not get rid of this prince short of being so rude he hauls us up on charges. I am confident Dean will be awake in ample time to see our last guest out. Do get some sleep.

  That didn’t sound good at all. He isn’t kind to me unless he has plans for me. If he wanted me rested, he meant to run me into the ground later.

  I patted Amato’s shoulder. “Talk to the girls. I’ll see about your daughter.”

  Two minutes later I was between the sheets. I killed the lamp and was unconscious before my head hit the pillow.

  52

  The Dead Man ran me into the ground for days. I got to do all the legwork Block’s men were supposed to have done already.

  Actually, they had gathered all the relevant records into one room in the Chancery cellar. They just never got around to doing anything with the documents. So I got to winnow and collate—where I could. I had to bring in help with the older documents, which were recorded in the abandoned Odellic alphabet and wouldn’t have been readable anyway because the language has changed so much.

  While I goofed off days and spent profligate evenings in the Tenderloin, Block hunted Winchell and tried to avoid public notice. Word was out that he was the man charged with ending the killings. It was also out that he wasn’t having much luck. The scale and scope of the mess were getting exaggerated. The precursors of hysteria filled the air—which made no sense because people get murdered every day, curse or no curse.

  I think Block’s mistake was offering a reward for Winchell, despite that being the Dead Man’s idea. That focused attention. Attention got the poor fool working on an ulcer. His buddy Rupert couldn’t shield him from all the high-ranking dolts who just had to explain to him the best way of doing his job. The Prince himself was guilty of forgetting they were after a killer who was a bit out of the ordinary.

  “Tell the man,” Block grumbled. “He don’t listen to me.”

  “Getting disenchanted?”

  “Not yet. But close. I can still realize that he’s got his own problems and that’s why he can’t give us more help. It’s just a tad irritating when he shuts out whatever he doesn’t want to hear, though.”

  I shrugged a cynic’s shrug. I had no faith in his prince.

  So Block made excuses for him. “He does have enemies, Garrett. Plenty of people think TunFaire is just dandy the way it is now. Mostly they’re people whose fortunes would suffer from an outbreak of law and order.”

  “If it isn’t law and order it’ll be an outbreak of something.” The signs were growing stronger. “I ran into some old ladies who want to demolish all the breweries, wineries, and distilleries.”

  “That’s going too far.”

  “I tried to tell them. I said, ‘There is no civilization without beer. Beer is the lifeblood in the veins of society.’ They wouldn’t listen.”

  That put a smile on his face. “Fanatics. What can you do? We get fifty complaints a day about these religious nuts, Mississans, whatever they are.” His grin meant he thought I’d invented the old ladies. I hadn’t. They were working the Chancery steps a few levels above Barking Dog, crowded into a spot nobody else wanted. I wasn’t worried about them. In no rational society would theirs be an idea whose time could come.

  I saw a lot of Amato, spending my days at the Chancery. He wasn’t the same Barking Dog. The old fervor had gone. I made a point of catching him on his break. “What’s happening, hey? Something gone wrong?”

  “I’m scared.” He didn’t beat around it.

  “Scared? You? Barking Dog Amato?”

  “Yeah. Me. People haven’t really noticed yet, but they will. You did. Then where’ll I be?”

  “What’s the matter? What happened?” Maybe he had somebody persecuting him for real.

  “My daughter. Suddenly I’m vulnerable. When I didn’t know about her, nobody could get to me.”

  “You’re safe. Hardly anybody knows about her now. We’re not talking.” I sniffed the air. What was that? Aha! Amato wasn’t nearly as aromatic as once he’d been.

  “Yeah. I guess. I keep telling myself them what knows is decent folk. Then I get scared of her.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “I snuck down to the Tenderloin. I figured she had to hang out around that Hullar’s place sometimes, else how would he know to hire you. Right?” Everybody thinks he’s an investigator. “So I hang out and hang out and finally I get me a look at the gal they call Sas.”

  “And?”

  “She looked all right.”

  “I told you that. She’s got people to look out for her.”

  “Now I know about her, there’s no way I can get around meeting her face-to-face. And that scares the shit out of me. What do you say to your kid you ain’t seen since she was this high?”

  It would terrify Sas too. When the time came. She didn’t know that he was aware of her existence. I kept debating whether or not to tell Hullar. It would piss him off, but I guessed I’d better. “I understand. But don’t let the stress get you. You may have a valuable mission ahead.”

  “Huh?”

  “You should get out among the people. Hang around the taverns and sidewalk cafes.” Plotting urban revolution isn’t a poor boy’s hobby. Poor folks stay too busy working to keep body and soul and family together.

  Amato shook his head. “I wouldn’t fit in.”

  “Sure you would. Get yourself some new clothes. Put in some time getting in touch with today’s popular climate.”

  “How come?” Mild suspicion. He still didn’t trust me completely.

  “There’s a new spirit afoot. It doesn’t amount to much yet, but it could. You ought to be aware of it.” I thought he could become a real force on the street if he addressed real fears and angers. Lots of people had heard of him. He was a folk hero. People did listen when he stopped talking about himself.

  He spoke largely out of imagined pasts now, but there was no reason he couldn’t apply his passion to futures as yet unimagined.

  53

  Captain Block caught me during my chat with Barking Dog. He looked less like a Watchman than ever, though he was well-dressed. His henchmen, too, were trading uniforms for street clothing. Apparel had become a statement. Those who shed the red and blue meant to take their work seriously. The rest would become unemployed if Prince Rupert gained control of the city’s police powers.

  “How’s it going?” Block asked. He ignored Amato. Barking Dog pretended Block was invisible. It was a good working arrangement.

  “I’ve got a story. Sort of. It’s not as clear as I’d like. It won’t be much use. The documentation is all of the we-did-this-and-that, this-woman-got-killed, so-did-that-one, we-caught-the-villain-and-hanged-him-and-buried-him-where-he-fell variety. Not a hint how to control the curse.
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br />   “Back then the curse didn’t migrate from villain to villain the way it does now. It didn’t get the chance. I think the people involved understood it better. And it wasn’t as sophisticated as it is now. And the local wizards weren’t always out of town. The job wasn’t just up to the Watch.

  “Before the second killing round ended, everybody knew they were dealing with an accursed man who’d opened the grave of the first killer.” And we, as brilliant as our forebears, had gotten that far too. Hooray.

  “They didn’t do anything about it?”

  “Sure. They hanged a man and buried him where they thought he wouldn’t be found. They were wrong. I’m no expert on sorcery, but I’ll bet this curse has some kind of summons built in that calls till somebody hears it and sets it free. Smarter and nastier than it’s ever been before.”

  Block mused, “And today we can’t do anything about it even if we want. We don’t have anyone who can neutralize it. Because of the war.”

  Yep. All our real badass wizards were in the Cantard.

  “What about your end?” I asked. You never know. He or his boys might have tripped over Winchell.

  “Not a trace. We’ll have to trap him. It’s set. The girl goes back to work tonight. She skips tomorrow night, works the next two nights. The extra one is in case he can hold off for a day. Your partner says he wouldn’t move two days early.”

  I didn’t think Winchell would be dumb enough to go where he was expected at all.

  Block continued, “The only people in the place not part of the cover team will be Hullar, the dwarf, and three girls Hullar trusts with his life. There won’t be no way Winchell can get to her. If he has to do it, he’ll have to take the bait.”

  If he had to have either Candy or Belinda. But I wasn’t the least bit confident that Winchell wouldn’t find other victims. Unless his girl luck was as bad as mine.

  I didn’t criticize. The Dead Man had scoped out this plan. He termed it his martial-arts approach. We would lay back and let the curse betray itself. I’ve already mentioned his plan’s obvious weaknesses.

  “Just suppose he gives it a skip and takes second best.”

  “The minute we find a body, we’re on his trail. Spike’s hired the best ratman trackers in town. They’re on call. In fact, he’s got them wandering around in case they cross Winchell’s track by chance.”

  When everything you can do isn’t enough, you do whatever you can. Give Block that. This time he was giving a hundred percent.

  He asked, “You identify the sorcerer responsible?”

  “Only to a probability. It goes way back. Farther than we thought. There’s still some stuff I need translated before I can say for sure, though.”

  “Goddamnit, say something for unsure.”

  “Hey, temper. The oldest depositions, first time there were killings, mention a Drachir Nevets. I checked with a historian. He’d never heard of a Drachir Nevets but he did know about a Lopata Drachir of Nevetska, a real shadowy old-time superwizard who was always into it with a sorcerer named Lubbock Candide. Drachir’s forte seems to have been writing curses so complicated that nobody could escape them.”

  Block grunted, thought a moment, amazed me by knowing the names. He was better educated than I’d suspected. “Why this particular curse? Any hints?”

  “More shadowy stuff. Candide had a daughter.”

  “Arachne.”

  “Right. A major ass-kicker herself. Unless the translator was yanking my leg, both Drachir and Candide were out to win her favors and found a dynasty of witch-kings. Arachne decided she’d rather snuggle up with daddy, which pissed Drachir off mightily. Which, I’m guessing, led him to send a curse after her.”

  “All that would have been way, way before the first killings.”

  “Yeah. I’m thinking maybe that wasn’t the real first time around, only the first that got recorded.”

  “Like maybe Arachne deflected the curse earlier and buried it and didn’t tell anybody.”

  “Maybe.” The man could think when he wanted. “It might be useful to find out if there are any extant portraits of Drachir and the Candides. Especially Arachne.”

  Block grunted. He wore a faraway look. “This just won’t be settled the easy way, will it?”

  “Not hardly.” Heavens, the things I was going to have to talk over with the Dead Man. And him not in a charitable mood because the news from the Cantard had such a lull-before-the-storm feel. “Speaking of things not settling easily, without making a big to-do, catch a look at the guy watching us from up where the old ladies do their temperance thing.”

  Block looked. “Chodo’s man Crask.”

  “Bingo. I’m going to trust you with something.” Barking Dog had gone back to work early, not wanting to be close to a minion of his oppressors. No one would hear.

  “The other girl at my place. Belinda. Her full name is Belinda Contague. As in the daughter of Chodo Contague. She’s hiding out with me because Crask and Sadler want to kill her.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Because they did something to Chodo. Poisoned him or something. I’ve seen him.” What the hell? Everybody lies to the police. “He’s a vegetable. They just pretend he’s giving the orders. Belinda knows that, which is why they want to get rid of her.”

  “I think I missed something, Garrett.”

  “Belinda can take them down. They have to cover their scam or lose control. I got into it because they wanted to hire me to find her for them.”

  “A girl who happens to be one of the main targets of our killer?”

  That had been a problem for me, briefly. “I thought it was one damned long coincidence till I realized I was looking at it from the wrong end. From the end where we are, chasing Winchell. Look at it coming the other way. The thing between Belinda and Crask and them has been going on for months. The girl-killer thing is just something she stumbled into going somewhere else. She wouldn’t have been involved at all if the other thing hadn’t made her run away from home. Chance brought me into it at one point rather than another, sooner than later. The players had me chalked in for their game.”

  Block looked uncomfortable. “How come you’re telling me? It ain’t healthy knowing too much about Chodo’s business.”

  “Because there’s a very large and nasty man up there giving me very evil looks. He’s unhappy because I haven’t been busting my butt trying to find Belinda instead of noodling around with some who-cares serial-killing thing. As I recall, I’m supposed to call on the Watch if it can give me a hand. Not to mention that you might get a kick out of poking a stick into the eye of an evildoer of Crask’s stature, knowing he doesn’t really have Chodo behind him.”

  “Tell you the truth, Garrett, I think getting Crask off the street is a grand idea.” He snarled it, setting off alarms. What had I done? “But I don’t have much confidence in it being a healthy idea. What’s he doing?”

  “Glaring daggers. Probably thinking how nice it will be to drag me somewhere where he can do dental work on me.”

  “Why?”

  “The girl. He doesn’t know she’s staying at my place. He hasn’t seen me lift a finger to find her. Despite my having been told very plainly that it would be in my best interest to do so.”

  “You’re sure Chodo’s out of it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then maybe I’ll have some fun with Crask. But don’t expect a lot. These people always have friends in high places.”

  “How well I know,” I muttered.

  Block winked. “Have a nice day.” He strolled away, looking thoughtful, leaving me beached and sputtering.

  I did notice that he had friends in the crowd, mostly his auxiliaries. He’d begun to enjoy his role as honest Watchman. I wondered if he’d started turning all bribes away or only the most embarrassing ones.

  I hoped the New Order thing didn’t go to his head. Truly there can be such a thing as too much law and order—though I can’t foresee TunFaire ever suffering from that.
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br />   I bade a soft farewell to Barking Dog. He was on a roll, did not have time to set his brass megaphone down. He indicated his latest report on himself. I snagged it and moved away, awaited Crask.

  54

  Crask was displeased with me. “What kind of creep are you, Garrett, hanging out with dogshit like Block?”

  “He’s not so bad. We’re old pals. Didn’t you know? Sort of in business together too. The new order, like that.” I couldn’t get the caps in like Block’s creature Relway. “Got a problem with that?”

  “I got a problem with you. You was hired to do something. You ain’t doing it.”

  “You’re mistaken. Despite having had money forced upon me, I didn’t agree to anything. Not to say I refuse the job. But I do have a couple other things to wrap before I get to it. So flutter away.”

  “No. Chodo hires you, you’re on the job now. It’s the only job on your list.”

  “Aw, shucks. Here we go. How long you known me, Crask? Long enough. You know no matter how many ugly faces you pull, no matter how many muscles you flex, I’m going to do things my way. I told you, I have things to finish first. You wait in line just like you was real people.”

  “You’re pissing me off, Garrett.”

  “Eek.” That was the idea. “I have that effect on people. Especially the kind who jump lines or think they deserve special consideration.” If he was going to do anything, I wanted him to do something stupid, in public. “Look here. Look real close. I want you should see my heartfelt pain at how I’m causing you distress.”

  “I come here just going to caution you gentle, Garrett. Just going to take a minute out to show you the error of your thinking, so to speak. But now I got a feeling we need to go someplace and talk.”

  “You aren’t half as slick as you think, Crask.” That was Block, materializing out of nowhere. “Why don’t we all sit down on the steps here, like we was old buddies.”

  “Bug off, asshole,” Crask said. “Ain’t none of your business, what we’re talking about.”