by Glen Cook
“It ain’t a big deal. He’s taking a nap. We always get through his off-seasons.” Dean didn’t want to be reminded, though. I never do things the way he wants them done.
I said, “So, Dean, I hear tell a tribe of baby cats has infiltrated my kitchen.”
“They aren’t ordinary kittens, Mr. Garrett. They’re part of an ancient prophecy.”
“A modern prophecy has them taking a trip down the river in a gunnysack with a couple broken bricks as companions on the voyage. What’re you babbling about?”
“Penny isn’t just another street urchin. She’s a priestess.”
I poured some tea, eyed the bucket of cats. They looked like gray tabby babies. Though there was something strange about them. “A priestess. Right.” No surprise in TunFaire, the most god-plagued city that ever was.
“She’s the last priestess of A-Lat. From Ymber. She ran off to TunFaire after her mother was murdered by zealots from the cult of A-Laf. Who’re in TunFaire now, looking for the kittens.”
Somebody had gotten somebody to invest heavily in off-river wetlands. Similar scams are out there every day. People turn blind stupid if you say there’s a god involved.
Even Singe looked skeptical. She said, “They are cats, Dean.” Coolly.
“Ymber, eh?” I had only vague knowledge of that little city. It’s up the river several days’ journey. It has problems with thunder lizards. It’s supposedly a party town, ruled by a very loose goddess of love,
peace, and whatnot. Ymber ships grain, fruit, sheep, cattle, and timber to TunFaire. And lately, thunder lizard hides. It’s not known for exporting religious refugees. Or zealots.
One of TunFaire’s own main products is flimflam folk. Though I did not, immediately, see how the girl could sting Dean with a bucket of cats.
The religious angle was suggestive, though.
I said, “I’m listening. I haven’t heard how the cats tie in.”
“They’re the Luck of A-Lat.”
I tried to get more than that. He clammed. Probably because that’s all he knew.
“I’ll have to bring the big guy in on it, then.” The whole front of the house shuddered. I growled like a hungry dire wolf. I’ve had it with people trying to break down my door.
5
My current front door was next best to a castle gate. I had it installed on account of the last one got busted regularly by large, usually hairy, always uncouth, violent fellows. The character I spied through the spy hole, rubbing his shoulder and looking dimly bewildered, fit all those categories. Especially hairy. Except the top of his head. Its peak glistened.
He wore clothes but looked like Bigfoot’s country cousin. With worse fashion sense. Definitely a mixed breed. Maybe including some troll, some giant, gorilla, or bear. All his ancestors must’ve enjoyed the double uglies. He hadn’t just gotten whipped with an ugly stick — a whole damned tree fell on him, then took root.
“Wow!” I said. “You guys got to see this. He’s wearing green plaid pants.”
Nobody answered. Dean was fumbling with a crossbow. Singe had disappeared. Nothing could be felt
from the great blob of sagging meat who was supposed to apply ferocious mental powers at times like this.
The door took another mighty hit. Plaster dust shook loose everywhere. I used the peephole again. Yeti man wasn’t alone. Two more just like him, also in baggy green plaid, polluted my steps. Behind
them lurked a guy who might’ve been their trainer. He wore an anxious exapnredssaionhideous pair of
pants.
A crowd began to gather.
Most of the adult pixies from my colony were out.
Some buzzed around like huge, colorful bumblebees. Some perched in nooks and crannies, poised for action. And, of all people to reveal a hitherto unsuspected talent for timing, I spied my pal Saucerhead Tharpe half a block down the street. I glimpsed Penny Dreadful, too. I strolled back to my office, flirted with Eleanor, dug through the clutter, ferreted out my lead-weighted oaken knobknocker. The stick is a useful conversational ploy if I get to chatting with overly excitable gentlemen like the hair ball out front.
Said gentleman continued exercising his shoulder. My door remained stubbornly unmoved by the brute side of the force. “You ready yet, Dean? Just point the business end between his eyes when he stops rolling.”
I stepped up to the peephole. Big Hairy was rubbing his other shoulder. He looked down at the man in the street. That guy nodded. One more try.
Saucerhead stood around awaiting events. Big Hairy charged.
I opened the door. He barked as he plunged inside, somehow tripping on my foot. My toy made a satisfying thwock! on the back of his skull.
The other two hairy boys started to charge, too, but became distracted as their pelts started to crawl with tiny people armed with tiny weapons. Really, really sharp little weapons. All crusty brown with poison.
Singe leaned down from the porch roof, poking around with a rapier. Its tip was all crusty, too. She’d picked up Morley’s wicked habit.
Saucerhead grabbed the guy in the street, slapped him till he stopped wiggling, tucked the guy under one arm, then asked, “What’re you into now?”
“I don’t got a clue,” I said. “You didn’t break that guy, did you?”
“He’s breathing. He’ll wake up. Might wish that he didn’t, though, when he does. You want to go clubbing tonight?”
“Can’t. I’ve got a command performance. Chodo’s birthday party.”
“Yeah? Hey! Is that at night? Damn! I forgot. I’m supposed to. work security.” Tharpe started walking away.
“Hey!”
“Oh. Yeah. What do you want me to do with this guy?”
“Put him down and head on out. Relway’s Runners are coming.”
An urban police force sounds like a good idea. And it is. If it don’t go getting in your way. Which it’s likely to do if you spend time tiptoeing around the edge of the law.
Three Watchmen materialized. Two were regular patrolmen. The third was a Relway Runner. Scithe. He recognized me, too. “You just draw trouble, Garrett.” He eyed my house nervously. The Runners
are the visible face of the secret police, known by their red flop caps and military weaponry. They have a
lot of power but don’t like getting inside reading range of mind-peekers like the Dead Man. I said, “He’s asleep.”
Nothing lies more convincingly than the truth. My reassuring Scithe assured him only that the Dead Man was pawing through every dark recess of his empty skull.
He stuck to his job, though. “What were these guys up to, Garrett?”
“Trying to kick my door in.” He had to ask. I know. I have to ask a lot of dumb stuff, too. Because you have to have the answers to build toward more significant stuff.
“Why?”
“You’ll have to ask them. I’ve never seen them before. I’d remember. Look at those pants.” While we chatted, the patrolmen bound the hairy boys’ wrists. “There’s another one of those inside, guys. My man’s got the drop on him.” I moved toward the character that Saucerhead dropped. I wanted to ask questions before they dragged him off to an Al-Khar cell.
A patrolman called from the house, “This asshole won’t cooperate, Scithe.”
“Keep hitting him. His attitude will improve.” Scithe blew his whistle. Seconds after, whistles answered from all directions.
I stirred the unconscious man with my foot. “These guys have a foreign look.”
Scithe grunted. “I can tell right off you’re a trained detective. You realized no local tailor would ruin his reputation that way. People! Gather round. What happened here?” He was talking to onlookers who’d come out to be entertained.
Amazing changes are going on. Astonishing changes. Several Karentines admitted having witnessed something. And they were willing to talk about it. The more traditional response, after the law caught and hog-tied a potential witness, would be protestations of blindness brought on by congenital
deafness having spread to the eyes. In times past actual witnesses often could not speak Karentine despite having been born in the kingdom.
Relway was having way too much success selling civic responsibility. My pixies were old-school, though.
Witnesses agreed that the Ugly Pants Gang just came up and started trying to break in, ignoring onlookers like they expected to do whatever they wanted, fearing no comebacks.
I tickled the down character with my toe, near his groin, in case he was playing possum. “Garrett.” Scithe wagged a finger. “No, no.”
“The victim of the crime should be able to get a vague notion why somebody wants to bust up his place.”
“We’ll let you know what you need to know.”
“That’s comforting.” I didn’t have to decide for myself. The secret police would take the worry off my shoulders. They’d figure it all out for me. I just had to lie back and enjoy it.
I didn’t argue. The name Garrett is far too high on Relway’s curiosity list already.
Stuff happens around me. I don’t know why. Maybe because I’m so handsome and Fortune hates a good-looking man..
I told the pixie sentries that I appreciated their nest’s help. “Dean’s got some baby cats inside. Tell him I said to roast them up for you.”
6
Saucerhead fell into step beside me. I said, “I thought you might not get far.”
“Smells like a job opportunity.”
“I don’t really have anything … Wait. There is one thing. A street kid who calls himself Penny Dreadful. Runs errands. Carries messages. You know the type. There’s a thousand of him out there. Looks to be about twelve. Might actually be a girl a little older. And might be connected to what just happened.”
“Want me to catch her?”
“No. Just find out what you can. Especially where to find her. She’s not real high on my list, though. I’m worrying about Chodo’s birthday party.”
Saucerhead grunted.
Tharpe is huge. For a human being. And he’s strong. And he’s not real bright. But he’s a damned good friend. And I owe him, so a made-up job when I can manage one is never out of line. Especially when he might turn up something actually interesting.
I couldn’t conceive of any connection with what had just happened. Nor could I conceive of another explanation. But TunFaire is overrun with people trying to find a new angle.
Still, there’s hardly a bad boy around who doesn’t know what happens if they get too close to the Dead Man.
That screwball fable about foreign gods had some oomph!
“I’m all over it,” Saucerhead promised.
I gave him what little I could, including a description so feeble that all Penny Dreadful had to do to disguise himself would be change his shoes. “Promise me you’ll stay away from Winger. My life has been nice lately. I’d rather go right on not having her underfoot.” Winger is a mutual friend. Sort of. Being mainly a disaster on the hoof.
She’s the most amoral person I’ve ever met, with the social conscience of a rock. And all of a rock’s obsession with making the world a better place.
Winger is completely unaware that there are real, hurting people in this world who aren’t Winger. “I don’t figure she’s likely to be a problem, Garrett.”
“She’s always a problem.”
“She’s in a relationship.”
“Winger? She’s in love? With somebody besides herself?”
“I don’t know about love. There’s this little winky who’s so gaga about her that she don’t get much chance to get into mischief. He follows her all around. Everything she does, he writes it down. Creating her epic cycle.”
“All right.” As long as Winger didn’t pop up, trying to profit from whatever was happening. Which is her usual way of doing business.
“Where’re you headed, anyway?” Saucerhead wanted to know.
“To see Chodo’s mouthpiece. He’s been bugging me to come by. Something to do with the old boy’s will, I guess.”
“See you tonight, then.”
“Sure. Just don’t let all that neutrality go to your head. Old buddy.”
7
I never visited Harvester Temisk before. I’d had little to do with him even when his client was active. Puzzle as I might, I couldn’t imagine what he wanted.
He didn’t put up much of a front. His little shop was less cushy than the hole-in-the-wall I used before I partnered up with the Dead Man, then scored big enough to buy us a house. I slept, cooked, lived, loved, and worked in that tight little space, back then.
Harvester Temisk didn’t look like a lawyer. Not how I thought a lawyer ought to look, anyway, so we know them when we see them. There wasn’t an ounce of slime or oil on him. He looked short because he was wide. Once upon a time he might’ve been more thug than mouthpiece.
Chodo being Chodo, that might’ve been protective coloration.
The mouthpiece’s prosperity had suffered. His haircut wasn’t nearly as nice as it used to be. And he still wore the same clothing.
“Thanks for coming.” A note of criticism crept into his voice. He noted me cataloging the evidence of his newfound indigence. “You don’t work much when your only client is in a coma. He set up a trust that keeps me from starving, but didn’t make good investments. Did you review the stuff I sent you?”
“I did. And couldn’t make sense of it. Nor did I figure out what you want.”
“I needed to see you face-to-face. Has anybody from the Outfit been interested in me? Or Chodo’s condition?”
“I don’t think anybody inside, except for Belinda, knows you’re still around.”
“That should hurt. But I’m glad. I hope they forget me completely.”
He was worried. He couldn’t keep still. That didn’t suit the image projected by a square head, silver hair, square body, and squinty brown eyes.
“So, basically, you want to remind me that I owe Chodo. And you’re ready to call the marker.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t want to talk about it. Once he did, he couldn’t ever take it back.
“You’d better get to it. Especially if you want to get something done before the party. Belinda won’t reschedule.”
Belinda. There was a diversion he could snap up. “I’m worried about what might happen tonight.”
It would be a wonderful opportunity to eliminate a lot of people Belinda didn’t like if that was the way she wanted to work it.
Only somebody who knew the truth about Chodo’s condition would be suspicious. Though a lot who didn’t know still thought that it wasn’t natural for the Boss to run things through his daughter. Not for so long.
The rats smelled a rat.
A lot of wise guys would turn up just so they could give the Boss a good glim. His health, or the decline thereof, might suggest a potential for personal advancement.
I mused, “What’s she going to pull? How’s she going to pull it?”
“Can’t figure that out, either.”
Something didn’t add up. It took me a second to figure out what. “Wait a minute. You got in touch before Belinda announced the party. Did you have inside info?”
“I wish. No. I have almost no contacts inside now. This isn’t about the party. It’s about … I think it’s time to rescue him, Garrett. The party just complicates things.”
“Mind if I sit?” His best furniture was his client’s chair. “Time to rescue Chodo? You mean like round up a couple squadrons of dragoons and go raid the Contague estate? That isn’t going to happen.”
“Not rescue physically. Mentally. If we shatter the chains imprisoning his mind, the physical side will take care of itself.”
“You’ve lost me completely. I know coma victims have come back. But not very often. Never, if everybody else thinks you being in a coma is so exquisitely useful that it’s the next best thing to you being dead.”
“You ever know anybody who came out of a long coma?”
“No.”
“Ever know anybody who was even in a coma? Besides Chodo?”
“During the war. Usually somebody who got hit in the head.”
“Up close, for very long?”
“No. You headed somewhere?”
“Toward the hypothesis that Chodo isn’t in a coma, only a poststroke state resembling a coma, induced chemically or by sorcery. I don’t think he’s unconscious. I think he just can’t communicate.”
Giant hairy spiders with cold claws crept all over my back. That presented a gaggle of unpleasant possibilities. “Suppose you’re right. Chodo had willpower like nobody I ever met. He’d get around it, somehow.”
“Absolutely. He would.”
“And you’re somehow part of that?”
“That would mean he saw it coming. He was clever, Garrett. He read people like nobody else, but he wasn’t a seer.”
“But?”
“Yes. But. He was an obsessive contingency planner. We spent hours every week brainstorming contingencies.”
“Uhm?” I understood that. We’d done a lot of it when I was still a handsome young Marine making sure the wicked Venagetan hordes didn’t come suck the life and spirit and soul out of the king’s favorite subjects. Most of whom weren’t sure who the king was that week.
“He thought well of you.”
“And I’m sure I’m not glad to hear that.” We were back to my obligation to Chodo Contague because he’d been so good to me. Whether or not I wanted it.
“His contingencies usually ended up with him or me calling you in to restore the balance.”
“Restore the balance?”
“His words. Not mine.”
“Have you seen him lately?” I hadn’t.
“No. And it was an accident, last time I did. I went out to the estate and just walked in. Like I always did. The guards didn’t stop me. I’d done it for years and Belinda hadn’t said to keep me out. She wasn’t happy, but she was polite. And uncooperative. I didn’t actually get to see Chodo up close. I got to watch Belinda pretend to ask him if he felt up to talking business. She told me she was sorry I’d wasted the trip. Her daddy felt too sick to work today. Could I come back some other time? Better yet, how about he came to my place next time he was in the city?”