by Glen Cook
“Huh?” That was Slither. Ivy was sucking up another mug of beer, his fifth. He’d begun to look brighter, more human. I’d begun to suspect the nature of his madness. He was a wino.
“What did you do before they put you in that place?”
Slither started another five-fall match with his memory.
I wondered how well he’d done before his venture inside.
Ivy drained his mug and headed for the cold well. I caught his wrist. It didn’t take much to set him down. “Don’t let’s overdo, Ivy.”
He stared at his plate a minute, then lifted a sliver of meat to his lips. He chewed slowly for a long time. After he swallowed he startled me by saying, “You can’t forget to eat, Garrett. That’s the thing you’ve got to hang onto. You can’t forget to eat.”
I stared at him. Slither stared at him. Slither howled, “I’ll be damned! I’ll be double dog damned, Garrett! He talked. What did we do? I never heard him talk before.”
The event seemed to give Slither’s intellect a kick in the slats, too. He started chattering at Ivy, trying to draw him out. Ivy didn’t want to be drawn. He stared at his plate and picked at his food. He looked up only once, to toss a longing glance toward the cold well. The object of his affection, my keg, lay there all alone.
“Well?”
Slither looked at me. “Huh?”
“I asked what you did on the outside, before you went in.”
“How come you want to know?” The fires of genius never burned real hot here.
I had to move before he faded again. “I want to know because if I know what you can do maybe I can find somebody who’ll pay you to do it.” There is no shortage of work in TunFaire, honest or otherwise, what with all our young men spending five years in the Cantard and a lot of them never coming home.
“Mostly I done bodyguarding. I was pretty good when I started, but I figure I picked up something when I was down south. I started kind of fading out sometimes. I started making mistakes sometimes. I screwed up on a real good job I got on account of my size mostly, so I took another one that wasn’t quite as good and I screwed up on that one, too, so I took another job and all the time the fading got worse and worse. I started not remembering anything sometimes. Nothing. Except I kept getting the feeling that I was doing things that weren’t right. Maybe really wicked things, only whatever I was doing I wasn’t getting caught by nobody because I always woke up at home. Sometimes I had bruises and stuff, though. And then I was right in the right place at the right time and landed me a real sweet job. I don’t know what happened or how. One day I wake up, I’m there where you found me and I don’t know how long I been there or what I done to get myself put inside.”
I’d seen him during one blackout. Powziffle. Maybe that one had been mild and harmless. Maybe he went berserk sometimes.
But then he’d have been in the violent ward. Wouldn’t he?
“What did you do in the army?” I asked.
“Nothing, man. I wasn’t no friggin’ ground-pounder.”
I knew that tone and that look and that fire in the eye. “You were a Marine?”
“Absofugginiutely. First Battalion. Fleet Marines.”
I was impressed. That meant something to a Marine. Slither had been one of the elite of the elite. So how come ten years later he set up housekeeping in the charity bughouse? The man had to be tougher than rawhide.
On the other hand, how many tough guys fall apart with a nudge in the right way at the right time?
Slither asked, “What about you?”
“Force recon.”
“Hey! All right!” He reached out to slap my hand, a silly habit left over from the Corps.
They told us when we went in we’d never stop being Marines.
“If you can keep your head together, I could maybe use you on the job I’m doing.”
He frowned. “What kind of work you do? Besides bust places up like you was trying to turn the whole world into a barroom brawl?”
I explained. I explained again. He didn’t get it till I told him, “It’s kind of like being a mercenary — only I just find things or figure things out for people who can’t handle their problems themselves.”
He still frowned but got the basic idea. His trouble was that he couldn’t grasp why I’d galavant around like I was some kind of white knight.
So I put that into terms he could understand. “Most of my clients are loaded. When things go my way, I can soak them for a bundle.”
Even Ivy brightened at that. But he kept looking at my cold well like it was the gate to heaven.
I got up, dug out a bottle of wine that had been around since the dawn of time, plopped it down in front of Ivy. I drew more beer for Slither and me. I settled. Ivy went to work on his bottle. After he finished a long pull, I asked, “How about you, Ivy? What did you do in the war?”
He tried. He really did. But his tongue got tangled. Gibberish came out. I suggested he take another long drink and relax. He did. That worked. Sort of.
“So?” I urged, gently, in the back of my mind beginning to hear guilt nag because I was getting soaked with a pair of fruitcakes when I ought to be hunting a missing daughter. “What did you do down there?”
“La-la-long ra-range re-re-recon. Ra-ranger stuff.”
“Excellent!” Slither murmured. Civilians wouldn’t understand.
I nodded encouragement and tried to cover my surprise. Ivy didn’t look the type. But a lot of guys don’t. And it’s often guys who make the elite outfits who’re good enough to survive. They know how to take care of themselves.
“Pretty grim?” I asked.
Ivy nodded. Any other answer would have been a lie. The fighting had been tough, vicious, endless, and unavoidable. Mercy had been an unknown. The war seems won now, years after our hours in the ranks, but fighting continues on a reduced scale as Karenta’s soldiers pursue diehard Venageti and try to stifle the guttering republic created by Glory Mooncalled.
“Dumb question,” Slither observed.
“I know. But once in a while, I run into somebody who insists he liked it down there.”
“He was rear echelon, then. Or a liar. Or crazy. The ones that can’t live no other way just stay in.”
“You’re mostly right.”
In a thin voice, Ivy said, “Th-there’s sp-space for them na-now we ga-got out.”
I agreed with him, too.
“Tell us more about what you do,” Slither said. “What you working on now that got somebody so pissed they shoved you into the Bledsoe?”
“I’m not sure anymore.” I saw no reason not to so I shared most of the details. Till I mentioned Grange Cleaver.
“Wait a minute. Whoa. Hang on. Cleaver? Like in the Rainmaker, Cleaver?”
“He’s called that sometimes. Why?”
“That last job I had. The plush one. I was running errands for that faggot asshole.”
“And?” I suffered a little twinge.
“And I don’t remember what the hell I was doing before I woke up in the bughouse, but I’m damned well sure it was the Rainmaker what put me there. Maybe on account of I bucked him.”
“This is interesting. How come you’re so sure?” It wasn’t that long since he couldn’t remember his name.
“Account of now we’re talking about it, I remember two times I helped carry guys in there myself. Guys what the Rainmaker didn’t figure was worth killing but what he had a hard-on for anyway, one reason or another. He’d say anybody crazy enough to give him grief belonged in the bughouse.”
I held up a hand. “Whoa!” Once he got rolling he was a rattlemouth. “I have a feeling I need to talk to Mr. Cleaver.”
Slither got pale. I guess the idea didn’t have a universal appeal.
24
My conscience insisted I do something to fulfill my compact with Maggie Jenn. What? Well, her daughter’s backtrail had been strewn with mystical whatnots, supposed surprises to mom, indicators that Emerald was into that old black magic.
Well, sure. A lot of TunFaire’s villains aren’t long on brains.
I decided I’d follow the road signs, genuine or false. If they were false, whoever planted them could tell me something.
I couldn’t discount the witchcraft angle. My fellow subjects will buy anything if the guy doing the selling is a good enough showman. We have a thousand cults here. Plenty lean toward the dark side. Plenty go in for witchcraft and demon worship. Sometimes bored little rich girls amuse themselves by dabbling.
Maybe I should have inquired after the state of Emerald’s virtue. That had not seemed important at the time. From her mother’s account, she was in good health and otherwise normal. There was no apparent reason for her to suffer virginity at her age. Most adolescents cure that before they get rid of their acne.
If you want information about something, it always helps if you corner an expert. Sure, the street is a great source of news, but out there sometimes you have to separate raindrops from the downpour. That’s maybe a lot of needless sorting if you know somebody who stays on a first-name basis with all the interesting raindrops.
People had called her Handsome for as long as I can remember, for no reason I know. Though mostly human, she had enough dwarf blood to give her a very long life. She’d been a cranky old woman when I was a kid. I was sure time had not improved her temper.
Her shop was a hole in the wall in my old neighborhood. It lay down an alley so dark and noisome even homeless ratmen would have avoided it had it not led past Handsome’s place.
The alley was worse than I remembered. The trash was deeper, the slime was slipperier, the smell was stronger. The reason was simple. Every day things do get worse than they’ve ever been before. TunFaire is falling apart. It’s sinking into its own offal. And nobody cares.
Well, some do. But not enough. Scores of factions front as many corrective prescriptions, but each group prefers to concentrate on purging heretics and infidels from the ranks, which is easier than improving the state of the city.
I should complain? Chaos is good for business. If only I could recognize lawlessness as a boon.
No wonder my friends don’t understand me. I don’t understand me.
There were ratmen sheltering in that alley, which was so insignificant it didn’t merit a name. I stepped over one and his wine bottle bedmate to get to Handsome’s door.
A bell jangled as I entered. The alleyway had been dark. Handsome’s hole was darker. I closed the door gently, waited for my eyes to adapt. I didn’t move fast, didn’t breathe deeply for fear I would knock something down.
I remembered it as that kind of place.
“Gods be damned! It’s that Garrett brat. I thought we got shut of you years ago. Sent you off to the war.”
“Nice to see you again, too, Handsome.” Whoops! Big mistake there. She hated that name. But she was in a forgiving mood, apparently. She didn’t react. “You’re looking good. Thank you for caring. I did my five. I came home.”
“Sure you didn’t dodge? Garrett men don’t never come home.”
Gave me a twinge there. Neither my brother nor my father, nor my father’s father, had come home. Seemed like a natural law: your name was Garrett, you got the glorious privilege of dying for crown and kingdom. “I beat the odds, Tilly.” Handsome’s real name was Tilly Nooks. “Guess that old law of averages finally caught up with the Venageti.”
“Or maybe you’re smarter than the run of Garrett men.”
I’d heard similar sentiments expressed before. Tilly spoke more forcefully than most. She carried a grudge. My Grandfather Garrett, who went long before my time, jilted her for a younger woman.
That bitterness never kept her from treating us kids like we were her own grandchildren. Even now I can feel her switch striping my tail.
Handsome entered the shop through a doorway blocked by hanging strings of beads. She carried a lamp that had shed no light on the other side. The lamp was for me. Her dwarvish eyes had no trouble with the gloom.
“You haven’t changed a bit, Tilly.” And that was true. She was just as I remembered.
“Don’t feed me that bullshit. I look like I been rode hard and put away wet about a thousand times.”
That was true, too.
She looked like a woman who’d survived seventy very hard years. Her hair was white and thin. Her scalp shone through even in that light. Her skin hung loose, as though she’d halved her weight in a week. It was pale though mottled by liver spots large and small. She moved slowly but with determination. It hurt her to walk, but she wouldn’t surrender to her frailties. I recalled those making up the bulk of her conversation. She complained continuously but wouldn’t slow down. She was wide in the hips and her flesh drooped badly everywhere. Had I been asked to guess, I would’ve said she’d borne a dozen kids from the shape she was in, only I’d never seen or heard of any offspring.
She peered at me intently, trying to smile. She had only a few teeth left. But her eyes glittered. The mind behind them was as sharp as ever. Her smile turned cynical and weary. “So, to what do we owe the honor, after all these years?” Maybe she wasn’t going to catch me up on her lumbago.
The rest of “we” was the scroungiest calico cat that ever lived. Like Handsome, she was ancient. She, too, had been old and scroungy and worn out all those long years ago. She looked at me like she remembered me, too.
You can’t lie to Handsome. She always knows if you do. I learned that before I was six. “Business.”
“I heard the kind of business you’re in.”
“You sound like you disapprove.”
“The way you go at it, it’s a fool’s game. You’re not going to get you no happiness out of it.”
“You could be right.”
“Sit a spell.” Groaning, she dropped into a lotus position. That she could had amazed me as a kid. It amazed me now. “What’s your business here?” The cat set up camp in her lap. I tried to remember the beast’s name, couldn’t, and hoped the question wouldn’t come up.
“Witch business, maybe. I’m looking for a missing girl. The only clue I have is that I found witchcraft type stuff in her rooms.”
Handsome grunted. She didn’t ask why that brought me to her. She was a major supplier of witchy stuff; chicken lips and toad hair and frog teeth. “She left it behind?”
“Apparently.” Handsome provided the very best raw materials, but I’ve never understood how. She never left home to acquire stock and I never heard of anybody who wholesaled that stuff. Rumor says Handsome is rich despite the way she lives. Makes sense to me. She’s supplied the witch trade for generations. She’s got to have chests full of money somewhere.
“Don’t strike me as the kind of thing a witch would do.”
“Didn’t me, either.” Occasionally a bunch of baddies will ignore the lessons of history and try to rob Handsome. None succeed. Failure tends to be painful. Handsome must be a pretty potent witch herself.
She’s never said she’s a witch. She’s never claimed special powers. The fakes do that. The fact that she’s grown old swimming with sharks says all that needs saying.
I told her my story. I left nothing out because I didn’t see any point. She was a good listener.
“The Rainmaker is in it?” Her whole face pruned into a frown. “I don’t like that.”
“Oh?” I waited.
“We haven’t seen him for a while. He was bad news back when.”
“Oh?” Handsome liked to talk. Given silences to fill, she might cough up something especially useful. Or she might take the opportunity to catch me up on her illnesses and infirmities. “People keep telling me he’s bad, but it’s like they’re embarrassed to say how. It�
��s hard to get scared once you’ve spent five years nose to nose with Venageta’s best and more than that butting heads with people like Chodo Contague.” Chodo used to be the kingpin of crime in TunFaire.
“A Chodo uses torture and murder and the threat of violence like tools. The Rainmaker hurts people on account of he enjoys it. My guess is he’s anxious not to get noticed. Otherwise he wouldn’t stuff people into the Bledsoe. We’d find pieces of them all over town.” She went on to paint the portrait of a sadist, yet another view of Cleaver.
I was starting to have misgivings about meeting the guy. But I had to do it, if only to explain that not liking a guy isn’t any reason to shove him into the cackle factory.
Handsome rattled on, passing along fact, fancy, rumor, and speculation. She knew an awful lot about Cleaver — in the old days. She could tell me nothing about him now.
“All right,” I finally put in, stopping that flood. “What about witchcraft cults today? The kind of black magic stuff that would appeal to bored kids? Any of that going around?”
Handsome didn’t say anything for a long time. I wondered if I’d overstepped somehow. Then she said, “There could be.”
“Could be?” I couldn’t picture her not knowing everything about such things. “I don’t get it.”
“I don’t got a monopoly on witchcraft supplies. They’s other sellers around. None to match me for quality or inventory, but they’s others. Been new people coming into the trade lately. Mostly they go after the nonhuman market. The folks you want to talk to is Wixon and White. They don’t ask questions the way I would and their slant is toward your rich crowd.”
“I love it when you talk dirty.”
“What? Don’t you jump to no conclusions about folks on account of where you find them, boy. They’s geniuses in the Bustee and fools on the Hill.”
“I don’t see what you’re saying.”
“You always was dense.”
“I’d rather people said things straight out. That way there’s no confusion.”