by Ari Marmell
“You cats startin’ a social club?” I asked Téimhneach.
Damn boggart was still smiling, all affable and whatnot. I wanted to sock him one on the chin.
With a girder.
“We just wanted you to see, Mr. Oberon, what sorts of resources you… have at your disposal.”
“At my disposal.” Meaning ready and willing to dispose of me. “Right. Cute.”
Huh. Carriage was gone. Okay, that was noteworthy; I shoulda felt something when it left, even through the veil.
And it was while I was hunting around for the coach that I finally got wise to where I was. You’ll have to excuse it taking so long. I didn’t know the alley, couldn’t see real far beyond it, so it took until I got a good whiff of the neighborhood, a solid sense of its aura, and a peek at the stars.
45th or 47th, somewhere between Racine and Halsted, if I wasn’t turned around completely daffy by now.
“You mugs know that this ain’t where you picked me up, right?” I said. “Least you could do is save me the trip you interrupted, not make it longer.”
“But Mr. Oberon,” Téimhneach said, sounding more like he was reminding me than telling me, “you’re not heading to the same destination any longer.”
“What? Listen, bo, I already told you I got a prior engagement—”
“And we already told you, no. You don’t.”
Nuts.
“You’re here,” he continued, “because we know you have a great many contacts and informants in this area. We wanted to make it as convenient as possible for you to begin tracking them down. Which you will do tonight. Now, in fact.”
I was getting’ real steamed—if that street light hadn’t already been broken, it probably woulda popped right about then. But there was still zip I could do about it.
“If you wanna tell us who you’re meeting,” Grangullie said, grinning, “we’d be happy to go give ’em your apologies.”
The other redcaps snickered.
Deal with the goddamn devil.
Knew what I was getting into.
Knew I was gonna regret it.
Did it anyway.
I hadn’t thought I had a choice, then, and I still don’t. I’d do the same again, if I had to.
But yeah. I regretted it.
* * *
First thought to zip across my noggin wasn’t about the case at all, not directly. It was to wonder if I oughta warn Pete’n the cops.
Remember what I said earlier? That I’d known the Unseelie hadn’t been in town ’cause I’d have heard about the bloodshed? Yeah. Now they were in town. Not just Unseelie in general—even the best of ’em are bad enough—but redcaps. They treat murder the way you treat a pack of cards or a baseball game. And when they ain’t mutilating and killing for fun, they’re killing and mutilating ’cause they blew their lid over some tiny insult. Get enough redcaps in town, and you know they’re on their best behavior if you can count the bodies without runnin’ outta fingers’n toes.
If I was gonna tell the law, though, I hadda figure a way to do it that they’d actually believe. While I chewed on that, I might as well get to the job at hand.
So where to start? For a while I just sorta roamed the underside of town, tryin’ to catch wind of my usual stoolies and gossips. Clubs’n speakeasies, hotels’n alleys, flophouses’n unlicensed fights. I was preoccupied, I admit, but not so much I couldn’t do my job.
And I found nobody.
Lenai hadn’t been spotted in days. Figured either something’d happened to her, or—more likely—she was just keeping her head down until this whole spear thing blew over. Pink Paddy had been to all his usual haunts lately, he just didn’t seem to be at any of ’em now. I coulda tracked him down eventually, but that woulda been a case all its own. Didn’t exactly have time for that.
Which meant, after I’d checked another few off the list, I was down to one.
I hadn’t laid eyes on Four-Leaf Franky since I’d pounded the stuffing out of him—in a friendly sorta way—behind a soup kitchen some months back. Hey, gimme a break! I hadn’t had time for the runaround he was trying to feed me. Other people didn’t have time for it.
Anyway, he’d tried real hard to lie to me. Made me think he wasn’t reliable as he used to be. And I didn’t guess he’d be in much of a mood to help me out, either, so I’d left him alone ever since. Figured that’d suit us both just fine.
No choice now, though. If he had a beef, he could take it up with the Unfit.
It was usually easier finding him than the others. Franky wasn’t stupid, it’s just he wasn’t in the habit of thinking, least not when any halfway decent amount of scratch or gold is involved. He’s always runnin’ something, pullin’ something, and always in hock up to his neck with someone.
Which means Franky ain’t the sort to lie low for more’n a few days at most. Find all the joints in his area where a cat can make a dishonest buck or ten without committing any “real” crimes—a definition that changes depending on what sorta measures he’s been reduced to—and you’re gonna catch up with him eventually.
I couldn’t really stand to wait for “eventually,” so I sucked up enough streamers and slivers of luck, from a hundred different places and people, until the Luchtaine & Goodfellow was about ready to pop, and dumped it all over myself. I swear my aura got so thick, I coulda gotten stuck in a narrow doorway.
It shoulda worked.
Between my new good fortune and what I knew of the gink’s habits, I shoulda run him down before dawn.
Nothin’.
All sortsa reasons that coulda been, but the result was still nothin’.
Well, fine. If I couldn’t rely on my usual sources, I’d just hafta try an unusual one.
The cat I had in mind now probably shoulda occurred to me earlier, really. Not a whole lot of the mystical and mysterious that moved through your Chicago he didn’t either have a piece of, or at least know about. He wasn’t even too far from where the Unfit had dropped me like a cheap fare. An odd bird, and unlike a lotta my stool pigeons, not the sorta Joe you could just threaten or smack an answer out of. Still, no good reason he shouldn’t be willing to steer me wise.
Well, unless he did have a piece of whatever was going down.
Or had already been paid off by someone who did.
Or was scareda someone who did, which was a worrisome notion in itself.
Or… Yeah. Any more of this, I was gonna “or” myself outta going.
I took a few turns I ain’t gonna describe, wandered along a few streets I ain’t gonna name. Wouldn’t help you if I did. Hruotlundt’s place is always in the same general neighborhood, and you can always find it if you know it’s there and it’s what you’re lookin’ for, but it does tend to hop around a bit. I’ll get into that in a mo.
So, I found myself in front of a familiar building I’d never seen before, strolled through a rundown lobby I recognized, despite never having being inside, and up a flight of stairs on a route I knew, despite never having taken it.
My feet finally led me to an oaken door, with a big brass knocker shaped like the Minotaur’s head with a ring in its nose. It gave off enough fumes to blind a basilisk—way, way too much metal polish—and its expression looked more constipated than fearsome.
(And for the record? Yes, it was the Minotaur’s head, not a bull’s. Yes, they really oughta be indistinguishable. They’re not—or they ain’t on Hruotlundt’s knocker, anyway—but damned if I’ve ever been able to figure out why.)
I didn’t knock. Nobody ever knocked. I don’t even know why he has the damn knocker. I shoved the door open, and for just a second I was falling forward. The world stretched out in fronta me as if it were some big honkin’ pit. Gravity got drunk and lost its balance, and the floor under my feet jerked three seconds to the left.
I half stumbled, the way you do when you miss the last step on a staircase, and then it was done. The world was where it should be, inanimate objects stayed put, and I was facing a neat little
reception room. Old, sagging sofa, a few dull lamps with age-mottled shades, and a bog-standard desk with a bog-standard secretary behind it.
Well, almost standard. Her hair, blinkers, and blouse weren’t just all brown, they were all a perfectly matching brown. Real woodsy. It didn’t look quite real.
She sounded normal enough, though, when she looked up from her nails, smacked her gum twice, and said, “Help ya, mister?”
“Yeah. Lemme see Hruotlundt.”
“Ya got an appointment?”
“Never needed one before, doll.”
She smacked her gum again. I restrained myself from smackin’ something else.
“I’m real sorry,” she told me, “but Mister Hruotlundt told me he don’t wanna be disturbed for anyone. Maybe come back in a couple days?”
I poked a thumb in the direction of the inner door, opposite where I’d come in.
“He in there?”
“Yeah, but like I said—”
I didn’t let her finish, just made for the inner office.
She didn’t let me finish. I was just layin’ a mitt on the doorknob when something wrapped a tight grip around my collar and lifted me not just off the floor but damn near outta my shoes.
“Like I said,” she repeated, her voice sounding not from right behind me but as though she was still behind the desk, “he don’t wanna be disturbed!”
I was too wrapped up tryin’ to figure where the sudden odor of wood pulp had come from—and okay, yeah, maybe a bit startled at being picked up like a wayward kitten—that I didn’t even realize I’d been tossed back across the lobby, until I cracked into the doorframe.
I was gettin’ real sick of being thrown around, I gotta say.
Since the skirt was still behind the desk (though she had gotten outta her chair), I gave the room a quick up’n down, trying to figure who or what’d just made me a baseball. It took only a second, but since I wasn’t payin’ full attention to her, it gave her time to get in another sucker punch.
Was a pretty sharp poke, just about doubling me over as it sank into my gut—and she hadn’t taken one tiny step to throw it. Her arm’d stretched, reachin’ across the room to wallop me, and though it got thinner as it got longer, it wasn’t lacking for strength.
That wood pulpy aroma filled my schnozzle again, and I could hear she was still smackin’ that friggin’ gum!
And it finally dawned on me what those two facts together probably meant.
“All right!” I growled, hauling myself upright against the doorframe. “All right. I’m going.”
Her arm’d snapped back to its normal size and length as if it were rubber, but she was watchin’ me close.
And chewing. Good God that was annoying.
I reached for the doorknob, stopped, and looked back, hesitantly as I could.
“Do you… May I leave my card? So that Mister Hruotlundt knows I called, and can contact me when he’s ready to see clients again?”
“Yeah, sure.”
They can be real effective, real useful, these critters. But they ain’t too sharp.
By the time she could see I’d yanked the L&G from my coat, rather’n a card or a wallet, I’d already started power flowing through it. I stripped away not just luck but some of the fundamental magics I knew I’d find soon as I tumbled to what she—it—was. And I knew exactly where to hit, to make the whole sequence of spells and formulae come unraveled.
If I’m making this sound easy, it wasn’t. Took a heap of concentration, and effort, enough I actually staggered when it was over. If I’d faltered for even half a heartbeat, she’da been all over me like cheap rags. Still think she’da come out second best, but I’d have been in pretty rough shape by the end.
Didn’t happen, though. I didn’t slip. And after a few tics, she just fell apart, disintegrating into a heap of dirt, rotting wood, and quickly melting—and ever dirtier—ice.
The inner door burst open before the dust’d even settled. (Well, soil, in this case.) I’d sorta suspected it would.
“Was that really necessary, Oberon?”
Hruotlundt cut a peculiar figure, in two-thirds of his cream-colored three-piece suit. (Slacks and vest, I mean; he’d left his coat in the office.) It somehow didn’t entirely clash, nor entirely compliment, his own rock-grey coloring, which was so uniform you really couldn’t quite tell where skin left off and beard began.
He also stood about as high as my armpits, which puts him on the tall side for a dvergr.
“Don’t blow your wig,” I told him. “You can replace it quick enough, yeah?”
“Don’t blow… Do you have any idea how much effort it takes to make a homunculus? Let alone one large and strong enough to serve as a guard!”
I couldn’t help it.
I made a big show of looking at the desk, and the heap of muck behind it, and said, “Not the foggiest idea. Do you?”
You ever heard the expression that someone’s “eyes went flinty”? Yeah, with the dvergar, that’s literal. I mean his blinkers really did turn to flint.
See, Hruotlundt ain’t like most dvergar. He’s got no head for crafting with magic or alchemy or all that. He can follow the instructions in a grimoire skillful enough, and he’s real sharp at identifying and defining enchantments and relics and what have you. But he don’t remember formulae worth a damn, and he’s got no imagination for invention.
So he and the other dvergar of Chicago’d mutually decided to part ways—so to speak—and Hruotlundt found a new use for his talents.
But any kinda jab at his abilities—or lack thereof—still stung. I thought maybe I oughta be a little friendlier.
“The gum was a nifty touch,” I said. “Really sold the whole thing. You probably shoulda built her to stop once trouble broke out. Didn’t seem natural after that.”
“What do you want, Oberon?”
“Just to bump gums for a few.”
He snarled a bit—teeth, tongue, lips, all that same precise shade of grey as his skin—and then stomped back into his office. I followed.
Real, real plain Jane sorta place. Old, worn carpet. Old, worn desk, with an old, worn ledger sitting on it and old, worn chairs scattered around it. A single lamp. A candlestick phone—guess he was more willing to put up with those than me. No art, no decoration.
Oh, yeah, and two doors in addition to the one I’d come through. One to my right, I knew from prior experience, led to a storeroom and a safe heavier than a whale’s grief. And the one opposite me…
Elphame.
You remember that passage I got hidden in my office? One of a whole mess of natural portals to the Otherworld, if you know how to open ’em? Yeah, this ain’t one of those—this one’s artificial. Hruotlundt created it straight outta some ancient tome or other. That’s why the office ain’t always in exactly the same spot. He’d anchored it real firmly on the other side, but he had to leave some slack on this one to make sure the damn thing didn’t snap.
I’ve heard tell that the office looks different if you come from the Elphame side, a lot more intricately adorned, a lot more artistry to the furniture, almost as much a noble’s chamber as a place of business. But I ain’t ever come that way myself, so I can’t swear to it.
Hruotlundt was grumbling—it sounded rather like a rock-crusher—as he slumped hard into his seat.
“Seriously considering billing you for that,” he groused at me.
“Look, whaddaya want from me? She wouldn’t let me in.”
“Uh-huh. And you know what you should have done, instead?”
“What’s that?”
“Not come in!”
“Talk to me for a few and I’ll leave.”
He sighed. I’m not sure I ever heard a dvergr sigh before. Most of ’em don’t live near enough to mortals to bother picking up the habit.
“Fine, but make it quick. You looking to unload something?”
“Not buying or selling,” I told the fence—sorry, he prefers facilitator. “All I need’s some
information.”
“Long as it’s not about a stupid spear,” he muttered, so quiet I don’t think I was supposed to hear.
I grinned broadly at him. “Well, actually…”
“Oh, goddamn it, Oberon! This is exactly why I didn’t want to talk to anyone!”
“I take it I ain’t the first to come nosing around, then?”
“No. No, you most certainly are not!” He pounded a stony fist against the desk a couple times in a near tantrum, leaving some nice, deep gouges in the wood.
“So whaddaya know?” I pressed.
Hruotlundt sighed again—never before, and then twice in one day!—and shook his head.
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told the others. I don’t know a damn thing of use. If there’s an enchanted or holy or otherwise abnormal relic newly come to Chicago, spear or otherwise, I haven’t heard about it.”
“Oh, come on! You hear everything! You got more ears in the underworld—both underworlds—than a cornfield!”
“Yeah, the others didn’t much buy it, either, which is the other reason I had a homunculus guarding my door. But it’s the truth.”
He paused, thinking. Might as well have been a dolled-up statue, until he finally spoke again.
“I heard a rumor a few months back,” he said, voice still far away. “From across the pond somewhere. Wales, I think. That someone had dug up an artifact of the old times. From before the Romans, maybe even before the Tuatha Dé Danann fell. And I heard there’d been more than a little blood spilled over it before it dropped out of sight again.”
I’d have been holding my breath, if it woulda meant anything.
“I suppose it’s possible that it’s made its way here to Chicago,” he continued. “That it could be this spear you’re all trying to dig up. On the other hand, I hear stories of that sort from the Old World every few years, and they’re usually either exaggerations or complete tall tales woven of moonbeams and stupidity. So I wouldn’t put a whole lot of cargo on that particular raft, if you get me.”
I grunted. That was it? Yeah, he was right. I wasn’t buying it.