Faded Steel Heat gf-9

by Glen Cook

  Garrett, being able to read your mind and intentions helps but even so what you have just said makes only marginal sense.

  I had no trouble understanding me.

  Belinda got it, too, though her coal-chip gaze never stopped boring holes through me.

  I asked, "Darling, why couldn't you be somebody else?" Nobody grabs the unreasoning side of me like Belinda Contague.

  "Sometimes I wish I was somebody else, too, Garrett. But it's too late."

  "Do we have to be enemies?"

  "Were we ever?"

  Yes. Careful, Garrett. "No. But what we are can drive us places where we're out of choices."

  "Sufficient to the day the evil thereof."

  I gave her a look at my raised eyebrow. That always charms them.

  "And don't try that on me, Garrett. You're in my heart. Suppose we just go on the way you did with my father?"

  "Your dad thought he owed me." The final account left me way in his debt, though.

  "I owe you. In a different way. You're the only guy I know who treats me like a human being. Even when I was completely weird you treated me right."

  "That's just me." I glanced at the Dead Man. He was one witness too many.

  "Shut up. I'm not proposing. I'm not going to steal you away from the Tate woman." She has more spies than Relway. "But I do have my small claim on you."

  Control your breathing, Garrett.

  When I was younger the old guys promised me I'd grow out of the heavy breathing. Maybe you have to be dead, though. There's always a Belinda or Tinnie or somebody scrambling my brain.

  "If what Relway wants doesn't involve me, what's the secret?"

  Good point. Perhaps. "He wants to infiltrate the rights movement. And I'm involved because some rightsist group is trying to extort money from the Weider family."

  Belinda became the kingpin completely, a stone killer handicapped only marginally by her sex. "I have rightsist problems, too," she said. "Those people have no respect. They believe they have the right to do whatever they want because their cause is just."

  I grunted agreement. That was their thinking exactly.

  "I won't let them tread on my toes."

  Oh-oh. Somebody else wanted to sign me up.

  I am going to take a short nap, Garrett. I expect it will last all night.

  What? Now I knew why I hadn't seen Belinda's coach outside. She'd had no plans to leave and His Nibs suddenly was inclined to humor her. Which he had not been only a short while ago. What intriguing thought had he plucked from her spider's nest of a mind?

  24

  I'm a devil pig, I'm told, because I like women. A lot. Go figure that kind of thinking.

  The preference has gotten me into trouble occasionally. With Belinda trouble could get ugly. The spiders in her head spin strangely kinked thoughts. And she had to turn up just when Tinnie's stubbornness had begun to crack.

  I heard about it over breakfast, basking in Dean's disapproval. I hated to let him waste all that bile.

  "Thanks," I said, accepting the tea. "You'll need to do up the guest bedroom after Belinda gets up."

  The old boy had an idea in his head. He wasn't going to let me confuse him.

  "You're wasting an ulcer, Dean." Help! I appealed to the Dead Man. Tell him nothing happened.

  I was asleep, Garrett. However, if a small prevarication will oil the machinery...

  Dean made a sound of disgust. He didn't want to believe the Dead Man, either.

  Belinda came downstairs. She was in a bitter mood. She didn't like not getting her own way. She glared at Dean. He responded with the indifference of a man so old he has nothing left to fear.

  Belinda shrugged. She cared for no man's opinion, which wasn't always wise. Her world was unforgiving and the penalties for failing to observe its rules often lethal. She worried too little about making enemies inside her own circle. She could have worked something out with Crask and Sadler.

  Belinda was Chodo Contague's child, both his creation and his doom.

  It must have been hell to be his kid. Belinda wouldn't talk about it but there was no doubt that she was bitter.

  There are suspicions that Belinda's mother went to her eternal reward early because Chodo disapproved of her infidelity.

  That was common rumor before I ever met Belinda. It might have plenty to do with Chodo's condition now.

  I feared Belinda's obsessions might compel the Outfit to take her down. But she was quite capable of taking it down with her.

  Belinda asked, "Suppose I explain in person?"

  "That might get exciting."

  "Is the woman irrational, Garrett?"

  "Is any woman reasonable after she makes up her mind? Tinnie's not. I can't figure her out. I hardly try anymore. What're you trying to do to me?"

  "Nothing anymore, Garrett. It's just business now."

  Did I need to concern myself with the hell hath no fury syndrome?

  "Don't worry, lover. These crackpots are bad for business. They'll be dealt with. But—"

  "Hey! Could that be why Crask and Sadler are back? Because somebody wants their knowledge about you?"

  Belinda smiled like a cat contemplating a cornered mouse. "Possibly. I have an idea. Why don't I be your companion tonight? I can see people I'd never run into otherwise."

  "I'm dead."

  She has put forth an outstanding idea, Garrett. Consider it.

  I had a good notion where she came up with it, too. "You consider it, Chuckles. You don't have to get along with Tinnie Tate."

  As Miss Contague has suggested, Miss Tate cannot be entirely irrational.

  "Then you know a different Miss Tate." He did see more of Tinnie than I did, though. Maybe he knew something. Maybe the leopardess had changed her spots. Maybe she'd traded them in for saber-tooth tiger stripes.

  I told Belinda, "Me and the junior partner need to butt heads. He agrees with you."

  "Tell him I take back all the wicked things I ever said about him."

  "I won't. I'm going to invent new words so I can say more."

  25

  "What is this?" I demanded as I blew into the Dead Man's room. "Are you determined to get me lynched?"

  I reiterate. Miss Tate is not irrational. Enough of that. There are larger issues at hand.

  "Larger to who, Old Bones?"

  Thousands. Even tens of thousands. Name for me, if you will, just five nonhumans murdered today who considered Miss Tate's potential ill will an eventuality more dire than the catastrophe which actually afflicted them.

  "Unfair. Unfair." He was deft at carving holes in the thickest smoke when the mood took him. "None of them knew Tinnie like I—"

  Garrett.

  "All right. How is taking Belinda along going to be useful?"

  We want to situate you so that you become a recognized intermediary between as many interests as possible. So you can dip into the information flows. This will position you to take advantage of anyone wishing to communicate with the Syndicate. Particularly as regards those with little sympathy for The Call and its ilk.

  Ilk? What kind of word is ilk? "Relway?"

  An excellent example. With Max Weider and his moderate friends, perhaps, as another spoke to that wheel. With effective guidance I can even see you situating yourself on the axis between the radical parties and Glory Mooncalled's people.

  Guess who would do the guiding.

  He was feeling smug about his genius. His true plan drifted too near the surface of his thoughts. "Hang on there, Old Bones. There ain't no way I can sell me to all those folks as the hero of their prophecies."

  You do not have to sell yourself to Mr. Weider or Mr. Relway. You serve their interests already. No effort is needed to bring Miss Contague along, either. She wants to come aboard. That leaves only the rightsists and the rebels. The former are after you already.

  Aw, hell. Why not link up with the nonhumans and all those wannabe revolutionaries who have been lying low since the explosion of rightsist terrori
sm? The rightsists have no use for those guys, either. Rightsists don't like anybody very much.

  "Nothing to it, Big Guy. Apiece of cake."

  The rightsists should be fish in a barrel, to use your vernacular. You are exactly what they want. A certified war hero.

  "I'm a war hero who lives with a Loghyr and a psychotic talking bird and my best friend is part elf."

  All faults that are correctable. A man can come to the truth late. You can sell the rightsists because they want to be sold. Glory Mooncalled's is the organization I am concerned about cracking.

  "Why bother? I don't share your infatuation with Glory Mooncalled."

  Truth be told, Garrett, I no longer share that infatuation with my younger self. When Mooncalled was a distant gadfly yanking the beards of the lords and ladies we love to hate it was easy to cheer him on. But he is among us now and the glimmers of purpose I catch are depressingly sinister. Perhaps the Mooncalled I treasured perished along with his dream of an independent Cantard. Or he may have elected to become Karenta ‘s great foe because we no longer have serious enemies but deserve them.

  "There's that damned word again, Smiley."

  Which word?

  ‘We.' I find nonhumans fond of reminding the rest of us that Karenta is a human construct. They make big shows of negotiating exemptions from human law and rule.

  Excellent. Maintain that capacity for dredging up irrelevant sophistries and The Call will clutch you to its bosom. You may be promoted directly into their Inner Council.

  "I don't want to do this."

  There is little choice, Garrett. These are pivotal times. Everyone must take a stand before it ends. Who refuses will be devoured because he will be out there alone. But we who recognize the signs and portents have the opportunity to deflect or defeat the gathering darkness.

  "I know where I stand, Windy. But I'd rather be noble and honorable and defend true justice and the divine right of Karenta's kings while I'm sitting in my office with a mug in my hand, chatting with Eleanor."

  And you insist that I am lazy.

  "Only because you have no more ambition than a bone that's been buried for twenty years. You don't have to go out there and try to run between the raindrops, partner."

  That is another matter which warrants future discussion.

  26

  "Right on time," I said when somebody hammered on my door late in the afternoon.

  Belinda said, "My people are expected to be punctual and to do their jobs well. And they deliver."

  "You should take life easier, Belinda. You don't always have to be—"

  "I try, Garrett. But some demon keeps pushing me. I can't beat it. And it'll get me killed eventually."

  I nodded. That came with the territory. I looked out the peephole. An unfamiliar hulking creature of mixed ancestary shuffled impatiently on my front stoop. "I think I understand. Is this thing somebody you know?"

  She leaned past me, so close I had trouble breathing normally. "That's Two Toes Marker. My driver."

  "Driver? He looks like he wrestles ogres for a living."

  "He looks badder than he is. He doesn't move very well anymore."

  Two Toes knocked again. Despite plaster dust falling all over the house Dean didn't come out of the kitchen. He was exasperated with everybody. And for once he did put the blame where it always belongs: squarely on the shoulders of the Dead Man.

  "I'll get my shoulder ornament and we'll be set."

  "Why? That bird is disgusting."

  Finally, somebody who agreed with me.

  The Dead Man relaxed his control of the Goddamn Parrot. The little monster barked, "I'm in love! Look at this sweet fluff!"

  "I already looked, you deadweight jungle buzzard. And you're right. She looks damned good. But she's a lady. Mind your stinking manners."

  "That was really good, Garrett," Belinda told me. "Your lips never moved once."

  Argh! But the bird was right. I was right. She did look good, if a little too vampiric for current fashion. She'd had people in and out all afternoon, some to elevate her to this supernal state. She didn't want to go unnoticed tonight. Hell, she was going to raise the dead. I thought about wrapping her in a blanket so we wouldn't have crowds chasing us through the streets.

  This evening would be easy on my eyeballs. Alyx was sure to give Belinda a run. So would Nicks. And Tinnie would be absolutely killer if she bothered to try. Belinda would be a blood-dark rose in a garden of brilliant whites and yellows and carmines.

  "If I was doing the talking this little shit would say things to score points for me, not to get everybody pissed off."

  Belinda laughed. Then she demanded, "What?"

  "You startled me. You don't laugh very often. You should."

  "I can't. Though I do wish I was different."

  A shuddering déjà vu overcame me. I recalled her father once suggesting that he didn't really want to be a bad guy but he was in a bind where his choices were to be the nastiest bad boy he could or end up grease under some climber's heel. The underworld is strictly survival of the fittest.

  The Contagues survive.

  I opened the door. Belinda pushed past, murmured something to Two Toes.

  Dean bustled out of the kitchen. "Did you remember your key, Mr. Garrett?"

  "Yeah. And this door better not be chained when I get back. Got that?"

  He had talked me into installing an expensive key lock, supposedly so I wouldn't need help getting in late. But maybe he just wanted to aggravate me.

  It used to be cats. He was always adopting strays, apparently because I didn't want them around. I attract enough stray people.

  "Absolutely guaranteed, Mr. Garrett."

  I looked at him askance. I didn't like his tone. "Thank you, Dean." I shut the door. "Living with him is like being married without any of the perquisites." I waved to Mrs. Cardonlos, who was outside watching again. I wondered if she knew what she was looking for. I wondered what had become of Mr. Cardonlos. I have a suspicion he's alive and well and happy somewhere far from here.

  She got an eyeful of Belinda. That one and its sister both liked to popped. I thought her chin would hit her knee.

  Now she had something juicy to chew up and pass around. What do they see in that man ?

  Two Toes had left the Contague coach around the corner on Wizard's Reach. As we strolled behind him I noted that he had earned his nickname the hard way. He had a weird, crooked limp.

  I gave him a significant glance, then raised my eyebrow to Belinda. She'd relaxed. She understood. "Old family obligation." She made a noise I would have called a giggle had it come from another young lady. "Guess what? He has a twin brother. No-Nose Harker. The Harker boys didn't have much luck in the army."

  I gave the automatic response of every guy who ever made it back from a war when most soldiers didn't. "Sure they did. They got out alive."

  If you check the men in the street, particularly in the rightsist freecorps, almost every one bears some physical memento. And beyond the outside scars there are still suppurating wounds of mind and soul. And those affect our rulers as well as the least man among us.

  You won't find a duke or stormwarden crouching in a filthy alleyway trying to exorcise his memories with wine or weed but up on the Hill, or out in the manors, the great families have locked doors behind which they conceal their own casualties. Like Tom Weider.

  You don't hear about that in histories or sagas. They whoop up the glory and forget the horror and pain. The Dead Man assures me that all histories, whether official or oral, bear only coincidental resemblance to actual events—which few principals considered to be history in the making at the time.

  27

  Belinda said, "You used to be a lighthearted guy, Garrett. A little cynical, yeah, but it's hard not to be cynical nowadays. What happened to the wisecracks?"

  "Darling, a wise man once told me each of us is allowed only so many wisecracks. Then life stops. That's how he explained there being so many sour old fart
s. I've only got one smart-ass crack left. I'm saving it. Which means that for the next four or five hundred years I'm going to be a sour old fart, too."

  Her sense of humor was underdeveloped. She didn't get it. Or just didn't appreciate it. "You making fun of me?"

  "No. Never. Just ringing changes on something an old-timer did tell me when I was a kid. This guy was so ancient he could remember when Karenta wasn't at war with Venageta."

  "A human?"

  "Yeah. I said he was old."

  Dwarves and elves and some other species hang around as long as the Loghyr, given sufficient good luck. In fact, elves claim to be immortal. But even the Dead Man isn't sure about that. He hasn't been around long enough to see one never get killed.

  Stories about elven immortality come from the same myth cycle that tells us that if you con a dwarf into coming out of his mine in the daytime or riddle a troll into staying up past sunrise they'll turn to stone. Word to the wise. Don't bet your life. Don't bet your favorite cockroach. You'll find out what that red stuff is between trolls' toes.

  Sure, you don't see many trolls on the daytime streets of TunFaire but that's because trolls don't like cities. Things move too fast. But if you insist on looking for trolls, be sure you don't get trampled by all the dwarves trying to separate humans from their money, day or night.

  I continued, "This old man was a real storyteller. Tall tales. I wish somebody had written them down. He claimed he was so old because there was one last joke that Death came and told you and he hadn't heard it yet."

  "My father used to say that."

  "Chodo?"

  "Yeah. Really. Maybe he knew the same old man." She became the cold, hard Belinda I'd come to regret.

  "Someday you have to tell me what it was like being Chodo's kid."

  "What?"

  "Most of the time I like you. But whenever you even remotely connect with your father you go all cold and spooky." The coach stopped. I shut my yap, peeked between curtains. "We're here. Without any trouble."

  Two Toes dismounted and came to the coach door. "One minute," Belinda told him. "Garrett, sometimes I'm halfway in love with you. Most of the time I'm not. You treat me decent. I like that. But we can't ever go anywhere. I can't always control the part of me that you don't like. If you shoot your mouth off when I'm out of control... "