by Glen Cook
I made a face. “I’m out of practice on the jungle gourmet . . . Damn!” I realized that she was messing with me.
The woman could keep a straight face.
Morley’s jaw tightened, though not because his kitchen was being disparaged and he had no sense of humor about that. He was looking toward the front door. A rowdy crowd had begun to roll in. They came from across the street, from the World. They were in a good mood, collectively. A dress rehearsal had gone well.
One was a skinny little guy in doublet and hose. He wore his hair long under a goofy floppy hat with a peacock feather sticking out in back. The costume was not suited to the play or the street. He spotted me, abandoned his crew, headed my way.
Jon Salvation, playwright. I had to thank him for making time for the funeral. . . .
My throat filled with a sudden lump. If this was the crew from his new play, The Faerie Queene, then . . .
That explained why Morley had gone green around the gills.
He moved so Salvation could sit. Belinda did not object. I finally grasped the fact that Salvation was not in costume. He was outfitted weirdly on purpose, making some kind of statement.
He had been weird from the beginning. Weird before he found out that he could slap his tall tales down on paper as cracking-good stories for the stage.
Morley told him, “It’s good to see you back, Jon. I’ll go see if the boys need help handling your mob.”
What he did was place himself between us and that crowd in case my ex did not have her hatches battened, her ducks lined up, and her screws sufficiently tightened.
Tinnie had the lead role in The Faerie Queene. Jon Salvation had created the part for her unpredictable self. The Faerie Queene was Tinnie Tate as Jon Salvation thought he knew her from an extended acquaintance.
Tinnie Tate is a high-maintenance redhead with a quiver full of quirks, but she is good people. She would be in pain, still, because of Strafa, and, no doubt, she was confident that I had abandoned her simply because Strafa was more pliable.
And there she was, looking good for a heartbroke woman.
Our gazes met. Her laughter died, but what replaced it wasn’t hatred or anger, it was sorrow. She knew what had happened. Her niece Kyra had come to the funeral.
She inclined her head slightly, then moved on with her crowd, one of whom was Max Weider’s daughter, Alyx. Alyx did not have a sympathetic look for me. She and Tinnie were longtime friends. She was Tinnie’s understudy for the Faerie Queene.
Jon Salvation observed, “I guess that went well.”
“You disappointed?” Belinda asked.
“Oh. No. Not me.”
I asked, “How has she been doing?”
“She’s doing all right, Garrett. Staying wrapped up in her work. She’ll manage.”
“Good. That’s good. I never meant to hurt her.”
Belinda gave me a profoundly curious look, like she couldn’t believe I could say that and believe it.
But Salvation chirped, “She gets that. Part of the time. She’s her own worst critic. Speaking of former girlfriends . . . How is mine?”
“Winger? She’s Winger. She’s sharing a place with Saucerhead, just to save on rent. There’s nothing else there. The Dead Man has her running errands. Singe hires her when she has something that isn’t time-sensitive.”
Friend Winger gets distracted easily.
34
Satisfied that there would be no drama, Morley returned. Jon Salvation eased his chair back, said something to Belinda about saving her a premier seat for the opening of The Faerie Queene. He started to rise, had a thought, sank back. “I ran into something weird this morning. I was at that thief Pindelfix’s shop, Flubber Ducky. I was scrapping with the tailoring crew about the fairy costumes . . . Never mind. Those she-men are just going have to learn that I use real girlie girls to play my female roles and real girls have got bazooms. Anyway, I overheard a discussion that happened on the props’ side of the shop. Two old men were looking to get some ceremonial outfits made. They insisted that they had to have some bronze swords to go with them.”
“Bronze swords?” I asked. That was strange. Bronze weapons had been state-of-the-art in the once-upon-a-time, long ago, but not so much since somebody clever came up with iron, then figured out how to make steel. Bronze works better than wood or stone, but it doesn’t hold an edge very well and even “soft,” freshly smelted iron, can damage bronze weapons easily.
Interesting factoid: That sort of antique cutlery fascinates the black magic crowd. A bronze blade is ever the choice of the shady character who goes in for stinky black candles, songs in dead languages, and human sacrifices.
Salvation said, “That was what the clerk at the shop said, I think mostly because he couldn’t imagine what kind of play would call for actual bronze swords instead of painted wood. He goes, ‘You really gonna use them for props in a play?’
“‘Something like that,’ one old guy says. ‘But we do need a dozen functional swords, made of bronze. Well, no, actually, we need five. We have seven. But those will need reworking by the same smith who makes us the new pieces.’ Then the other old guy goes, ‘Maybe we should go ahead and replace those with new.’”
“Interesting,” Morley said, musingly. “The number twelve comes up.”
My first thought was of how much trouble the prop shop guy must have had keeping cool. Selling all those swords, custom-made, might guarantee a profit for the month, and why should he care how they got used, anyway?
Then I got what Morley meant. “Twelve, eh? Interesting.”
The laws about edged weapons don’t include religious relics, antiquities, or reproductions of antiquities. A fine point, of course. You go to the magistrates because the red tops took your antique reproduction blade, you’ll win your case and get it back—in about two years. And you’ll spend the rest of your life on the Guard’s list of people who get special treatment.
“Interesting indeed,” I said. “Did this old man mention any reason for wanting bronze swords?” Had to be something ugly. And we were hunting ugly.
Jon Salvation was getting exasperated. He had given me what he had and was in no mood to play interrogation games. “I thought they might be doing a revival right then.”
I pressed him whether he liked it or not. “Did you get a look at anybody?”
“Only a glimpse. I wouldn’t be able to pick anybody out of a group.”
“Well, hell. It’s something. Thanks. Tell you what, you find yourself with time on your hands, you could take that to the Dead Man. He’ll mine out the clues you caught but didn’t notice consciously.”
I didn’t have to explain. He was a veteran of the Dead Man’s operations.
“I’ll work that in later. After the show.” Besides the play in rehearsal, Salvation had two more running, one of those also at the World. The World was unique in that it could put on four plays at once, often a nightmare for everybody but the audiences.
I started to ask if he could have Alyx Weider come to the table for a minute, but then there was no need. Her father came in from the street with Heather Gilbey. Manvil’s wife managed the World, which was owned by the brewery. Morley’s people found them a table instantly, to the disgruntlement of a couple who had been waiting. Heather braved the theater crowd to ask Alyx to join her and her father.
There would be no need for me to brave the furious solidarity of all those womenfolk yonder.
Resolute, I turned my back.
Belinda snickered. “That Alyx is a piece of work.”
I raised an eyebrow inquiringly.
“She’s down on you for hurting her friend when she tried to get you to wrestle, what, maybe fifty times?”
“As I’m sure she’d tell you, that was a whole different bucket of monkey guts. Have you learned anything I might find useful?”
She didn’t challenge my presumption. We both knew she’d help with the hunt. I’d do the same for her in personal circumstances, and had. I wouldn�
��t help her with the kinds of problems that resulted from her business, nor would she ask.
“Nothing yet. It’s early. Anything as big as this is will cause ripples of some kind, though.”
No doubt. Before long we should be hearing lots of little things like the request for bronze swords. Most would have nothing to do with Strafa or the Tournament of Swords, but they would have to be noted, investigated, and studied by the Dead Man.
“Patience is the name of the game now, Garrett. Impatience will get you laid down beside your wife.”
Even Belinda had become a Strafa fan.
“I know that with my head. It’s my heart that’s giving me trouble.”
Morley said, “I’ll go visit that shop Jon Salvation told us about.”
Belinda shook her head. “You stay here and wrangle your eggplants, lover. Keep faking good citizenship. Let the real bad guys break the rules.”
Morley’s lips went tight and white till he grasped the fact that Belinda wanted to protect him, not to rob him of his manhood by henpecking his social routine. He relaxed, nodded, said, “Somebody has to make sure the leader of the pack here gets home with a minimal number of bits missing.”
“Which thinking I do appreciate, Morley,” I said. “But . . . Bell, when are you thinking about visiting that shop?”
She raised her eyebrows. She did not have the skill set needed to do just one by itself.
“If it was soon I’d tag along. I need to work on getting my edge back.”
Belinda glanced at Morley. Something passed between them. Belinda said, “How about after you finish your lunch?”
“I’ve got nowhere else to go but home.”
35
The shop was one of those places with airs and a clever name, Flubber Ducky. Which I didn’t get. Maybe no one else did, either, because I didn’t get an answer when I asked around. I never got to ask anyone inside. I came close to getting no chance to open my yap at all. Belinda wanted me to stay in the background and keep quiet. She didn’t want me asking questions that could be interpreted only as part of a quest to unearth the Operators.
There was more to her thinking, but she wasn’t inclined to share it.
With little more than an eyeblink and a wave of her fingers, she conjured the Contague family coach and half a dozen very large, hard men who would drive, ride the footmen’s running boards, or trot along ahead or behind on horseback. That she had only six escorts today told me that peace reigned in the underworld—for the moment.
Belinda faced more challenges than her father ever had simply because she was a woman. So many ambitious villains just could not believe that she was as ferocious and crazy as she really was.
We reached the shop Jon Salvation had mentioned. It really was called Flubber Ducky. It had a sign outside saying so. Amazing. Belinda’s thugs isolated it without being given specific instructions, establishing a unidirectional customer flow. There were no complaints. These were the kinds of guys who got their way just by standing around looking grim.
There were only a few customers inside, all on the costumers’ side. Belinda isolated the elder of two men working props. He fit Jon Salvation’s description of the clerk who had dealt with the men who had wanted bronze swords. She moved in close enough for her hot breath and buxom proximity to be intimidating. “Two men came here looking for bronze swords. Who were they?”
The clerk did that dumb-goldfish-tasting-the-water thing while seeing nothing but Belinda’s fierce red lips and strange blue eyes, all within licking distance. Could dread hetero possibly be catching?
Belinda used a soft, gentle, terrifying voice to suggest, “Talk to me while you still can.”
The clerk chewed on the air. A breeder storm had fallen on him out of a cloudless sky. He didn’t understand, except that this might be the start of something bad.
“Talk to me,” Belinda urged in her deadly mommy voice. “Who were they?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. They never said.”
I winced. Belinda’s ego was not yet ready for “ma’am.” Like Lady Tara Chayne Machtkess, she might never be ready.
She said, “They bought stuff.”
“Yes, ma’am. Robes. Other ceremonial-style stuff. Best quality.”
“Which will have to be delivered somewhere.”
“No, ma’am.” He gulped some more air. “They said they would pick everything up.”
“When?”
“A week from yesterday. They paid for priority service.”
“Did they say who would do the picking?”
“They said they would come themselves.”
That didn’t sound smart.
Maybe they weren’t villains. Or maybe they were sure that nobody would be looking for them.
The tournament thing was so completely anachronistic, why not?
Belinda kept pressing but didn’t get much more, other than to extract a copy of the order that the old men had placed, after which she wheedled the old clerk into telling her where the old men went to get their bronze weapons made.
“Normally we would commission the blades ourselves, passing them on at a big markup. Those men didn’t seem concerned about costs, but they were creepy. Scary creepy. I wanted them out of the shop. So I sent them to the smithy we use for specialty stuff. I sent a runner to tell Trivias to set the price high and kick back a sucker’s fee to Flubber Ducky.”
Belinda gave me a warning look. I was getting restless and was making inarticulate noises indicating that I had something to say. When she could take it no more, she snapped, “What?”
“We need to find a way to have this fellow visit my house.”
Belinda’s frustration faded. “Of course. That makes perfect sense. I should’ve thought of that. Elwood.” She turned to the largest of her large men. “Load our witness in the coach and take him to Mr. Garrett’s home in Macunado Street. Wait for him, then bring him back when he’s done visiting.”
“No, you don’t! Oh no, you don’t!” A skinny little guy, barely five feet tall, mostly bald but with hair six inches long where he had any hair at all, bustled in from the other side of the shop. He carried what looked like a naval belaying pin in a left hand that lacked its two outermost fingers. His eyes were a washed-out, watery blue, but they were fierce and fearless.
His sojourn in the Cantard was a long time gone. He was out of practice at the killer’s trade. He had lived in the tailor’s world since coming home. But he had not lost his courage, nor had he gained a grip on reality.
Nobody who had that grip would tie into Belinda’s crew the way he tried.
He did have the advantage of surprise. Briefly.
Belinda’s heavyweights broke some stuff, not including the tailor but that only because their boss insisted that she just get his attention. She examined price tags attached to the damaged goods. “Those were just display pieces, right?” She slipped a gold angel into the left-side pocket of Mr. Feisty’s blouse. “Take this one, too, Elwood. Leon, help wrangle. The rest of us will visit the man who is going to make those swords.”
Elwood and Leon, gently for thugs, showed the craftsmen to their transport. The rest of us gathered on the street, to debate the best way to get where we wanted to go—except for one normal-size but scarred and remarkably ugly character called Bones who stayed to explain to the staff that the damage they were about to put right could as easily happen to people who could not overcome a compulsion to whine to the tin whistles.
It had been said that Bones had gone for a run through the Forest of Ugly blindfolded on a moonless night and had banged into every tree before he got to the other side. With the scars added he was one intimidating character. It was not often that he was forced to act.
There was a tin whistle in the street, half a block west of Flubber Ducky, deftly ignorant of any miscreantcy that might be happening within rock-throwing distance of the Chodo family coach.
36
Closer to hand and ecstatic about seeing me again was my pal
Brownie. Her number two, which I had decided would be called Number Two henceforth because of her number-two attitude, wasn’t nearly so pleased. The other two ladies didn’t care, one way or another, but they were happy that Brownie was happy.
The strays from earlier hadn’t stuck with the crew.
Belinda asked, “These your friends from in back of the Grapevine?”
“Yeah.”
“They were at the cemetery.”
“Yeah. That odd girl was with them, too, when they caught up with me near Playmate’s place. Her attitude was still the same. Playmate has her now. He’s gonna try to find out who she is and what we ought to do with her.”
“She was pretty.” She checked for the mouse in my pocket.
“She was.” In fact, on reflection, I thought she had looked a lot like Belinda might have when she was still a fresh fourteen.
Elwood, Leon, their guests, and the sullen driver of a coach drawn by four Garrett-contemptuous drays headed westward toward my Macunado estate.
Belinda said, “That’s enough of that. Let’s walk.”
I glanced at her, thought about Little Moo, wished I had known Belinda when she was that age. But I would have been that age, too, then, which meant my head would have been on sideways.
Belinda’s remaining troops spread out. Brownie took her usual place, forcing Belinda around to my left. That did not sit well there, but Number Two kept her displeasure contained. She sensed that Belinda’s level of tolerance for uppity canines was quite low.
We hardly got our bad selves sorted into a traveling formation, reminiscent of the squad diamond of my defense days, when we got to the shop where most of the theater industry’s custom metalwork got done. Belinda invited us all inside despite the protests of some apprentices who, after considering the odds, put their hands in their pockets and stuck to muttering.
Belinda told them, “I want your master out here. Now.”
So I was expecting a master smith on Playmate’s scale, high and wide and muscle-bound. Instead, we got a guy who had some elf and a bit of dwarf in him, about five feet tall, who ambled out of the forge shed cleaning his hands on a rag. I was looking past him for the burly guy when he asked, “You wanted to see me?”