by Glen Cook
The guys who'd visited my place ambled out of the shrubbery. Didn't look like their manners had improved.
They made me so nervous I hit them back first, shielded by the spell that put me out of focus to anybody trying to concentrate on me. Damn, that was a neat one! They hopped and flailed and swung and cussed and missed me like a bunch of drunks. Meanwhile, I was hard at work with my mystical head-knocker, scattering unconscious bodies. Davenport's gardeners were going to be busy picking up fertilizer for a while.
I amazed myself. But we're all capable of amazing behavior once we're adequately motivated.
The Davenport mansion couldn't be seen from the gate. I undertook an odyssey across vast expanses of manicured lawn, maneuvering between sculpted shrubs and trees. Almost got lost in a maze created from hedges. Gawked my way through an incredible formal flower garden, thinking half the people of the Bustee slum (every one a human) could've supported themselves farming that ground.
The Davenport place was enough to kindle revolutionary fervor in a stone. Something about it shrieked contempt for every race.
I didn't march up to the door and hazard the mercies of another Ichabod. Once I spied the main house I resorted to my old recon training. I sneaked and hustled and lurked and tiptoed till I got to the rear of the house. There were plenty of people around and plenty saw me, but they were cringing characters wearing tattered Venageti military apparel. They were employed at such socially useful tasks as trimming grass with scissors. They pretended blindness. I returned the favor, didn't see their humiliation.
Never had I thought prisoners of war might be reduced to this. Not that I had any love for the Venageti. You got people chasing you through the swamps, trying to kill you, making you eat snakes and bugs to stay alive, you won't develop much sympathy if they stumble later. Still, there was an essential wrongness about their situation. And the core of it, I suspected, was that Elias Davenport wouldn't distinguish between vanquished foes and the "lower orders" of Karentines.
Elias must have had him a cushy desk mission far from the fighting back when he was serving his kingdom. Most ruling-class types get out to the killing grounds and discover that when they're cut they bleed the same as any farmboy or kid from the Bustee. "Sharp steel don't got no respect," one of my sergeants used to say, wearing a big-ass grin.
I found a back door that wasn't locked or guarded. Why bother? Who was going to do a break-in in this loony nest? Who would dare discomfit Elias Davenport?
(The name was a cipher to me at that point.)
I don't mind folks being stinking rich. I'd like to get there someday myself, have me a little hundred-room shack on a thousand acres well stocked with hot and cold running redheads and maybe a pipeline direct from Weider's brewery. But I expect everybody to get there the same way I would: by busting their butts, not by burying some ancestor, then raising their noses.
I know. It's a simpleminded outlook. I'm a simple guy. Work as hard as I need to, look out for my friends, do a little good here and there. Try not to hurt anybody needlessly.
That house was a house of pain. You couldn't help feeling that as soon as you stepped inside. Sorrow and hurt were in its bones. The house now shaped its inhabitants as much as they shaped it.
You find houses like that, old places possessed of their own souls, good or evil, happy or sad.
This was a house possessed by disturbing silence.
It should have had its own heartbeat, like a living thing, echoing comings and goings, creaking and rattling and thumping with the slamming of distant doors. But there were no sounds. The house seemed as empty as a discarded shoe—or Maggie Jenn's place up on the Hill.
Spooky!
I started thinking trap. I mean, those guys had been ready at the gate. A minute stalling around while somebody ran to the house, supposedly for permission, then they were all over me.
Was I expected to get past them? Was I supposed to walk into... what?
I grinned.
Saucerhead says I think too much. Saucerhead is right. Once you commit, you'd better give up the what-ifs and soul-searchings, do your deed and scoot.
I moved into the silence carefully, wearing a renewed grin. If I ever name my jobs, this one would have to be the Case of the Burglar Who Was the Good Guy. I was sneaking into every place I came to.
Not that I wanted it that way. People made me.
66
I didn't have the strength to lift my eyes in search of the source of the voice that said, "You're a resourceful fellow, Mr. Garrett. And remarkably adept with a truncheon." The speaker had the nasal drawl of an old-line aristocrat, scion of a lineage dangling down from the age of empire.
I barely retained the presence to wonder what had happened. One moment I'm trying to conjure a good rationale for my breaking and entering habit, the next I'm in a cold red place of echoes, tied into a hard chair, limp as a wet towel. No mental effort, however mighty, supplied details of intervening events.
"Pay attention, Mr. Garrett. Otto."
Fingers ungently buried themselves in my hair. The helpful presumptive Otto yanked my head back so I could do my blurry-eyed mouth-breather act in full view of a guy on some kind of elevated seat. He was just a terrible silhouette against a scarlet background.
I was too dizzy to be scared. But I was hard at work trying to get control of my head so I could be. I recognized my surroundings from whispers about it by some less than sane acquaintances connected with the Call. I was in the star chamber of the Holy Vehm, the court of honor of the Call. Not being an active member, I had to assume I stood accused of being a traitor to my race. Only...
The way I'd heard, there were supposed to be three judges. The spook in the high seat should've been the meat in a lunatic sandwich.
I focused my whole being on my tongue. "What the hell is going on?" I don't know why I bothered after the first few words. They all came out in a language even I didn't understand. But I'm an optimist. I kept trying. "I just came here to interview Emerald Jenn." Had I been given the tongue of a dwarf while I was out?
"It takes the spell a while to wear off, lord," a voice announced from behind me.
Can a silhouette glower? This one did. "I am aware of that fact, Otah." Otah? Like in Otto pronounced backward?
I sagged again. A hearty yank on my hair helped me stay focused on the silhouette. A guy started slapping rny cheeks. That helped, too.
Oh, heavens. Another guy stepped in to help the first. He was an exact copy of the other. Identical twin thugs? This concept was too bizarre. Time to wake up.
I woke up but only to find identical cretins waling on my face. My tongue had lost its skill at dwarvish. I began to render opinions in only mildly accented Karentine. And my mind raced far ahead of my laggard tongue. "Do you realize to whom you are speaking?" the silhouette demanded. The guy sounded put out.
"I did, I could've said something more specific about angles of approach and velocities of insertion."
The silhouette snapped, "Control your vulgarity, Mr. Garrett. You broke into my home."
"I was invited. To see Emerald Jenn."
"I'm afraid that won't be possible."
"She not around? Then I'd better be going."
Davenport chuckled. He must have done well at crackpot villain school because he brought it up from the pit, full of evil promise. "Nonsense, Mr. Garrett. Really." He gave me another chuckle just as good as the first. "Where are the books?"
"Huh?"
"Where are the books?"
Uh-oh. "What the hell you talking about?" I never thought anybody would ask me.
"Do you think me naive, Mr. Garrett?"
"I think you're a raving lunatic." Pow! Right in the chops. Chaz was going to have to do without a kiss next time we ran into each other. I guess Otto or Otah didn't agree with me.
I also thought Davenport was a damned fool. He'd made the same mistake the Rainmaker's thugs had back in the dawn of time, when they hadn't emptied my pockets. His boys were fool
s, too, because they hadn't bothered to check. Davenport wouldn't have risked breaking a nail touching me himself.
I had my stuff.
I just needed to get to it. Nothing to that. Once I shed the twelve nautical miles of rope cocooning me.
"Where are the books?"
"Give me a clue, Bonzo. What the hell you talking about?"
"Otto."
Pow!
As the constellations faded I suffered an idea. It wasn't the best I'd ever had. It was going to hurt.
Typical Garrett plan.
"The books, Mr. Garrett. Unaltered first editions of When No Ravens Went Hungry. Where are they?"
"Ah. Those books. I don't have the faintest." Could he have been behind the wrecking of Penny and Robin?
"I don't believe you."
"You want to sell me the idea a jerk as stinking rich as you needs to bust people up and kill them and steal old books over a treasure as puny as Eagle's?"
"The record says that treasure consisted entirely of silver, Mr. Garrett. To accomplish its purpose, the Call needs that silver."
I lost my focus as I intuited the nature of his interest. He meant to become the boss crackdome.
Silver was the fuel of sorcery. Black magic lurked behind the Call. Maybe the silver shortage was holding the Call back more than was any excess of reason, humanity, or common decency. Maybe the guy who brought the silver in would own the Call. And maybe whoever ran the Call would own the kingdom if the lunatics got their racist revolution rolling.
"Marengo North English tell you to find it?"
Elias Davenport said nothing for a moment, which confirmed what I'd guessed. Then, still not speaking, he came after me. He didn't exactly bound my way, though, and when he stepped into a better light I saw why. He was probably around when Eagle sneaked off with his slaves.
He had a bulging, throbbing vein in his left temple. I suggested, "Don't have a stroke, old-timer."
Shucks. He didn't. He just got really mad. He made a gesture that must have meant punch Garrett in the face till you turn him inside out because the twins really went to work.
Felt great when they took a break. Gave me a chance to spit the blood out and suck some air.
"Where are the missing pages, Mr. Garrett?" Davenport was shrieking now.
67
Yep, it sure wasn't the cleverest idea I ever had and it sure did hurt. I decided I'd strung them along long enough. "Shirt. Pocket," I gurgled. "Box. Key. To house."
Davenport was right in my face, gagging me with foul breath caused by rotten teeth. He was so eager he didn't wait to hear the story I'd rehearsed. He pawed my shirtfront, found the box I wanted him to find, snatched it, and stumbled toward his high chair. Or whatever he called it.
My ears rang like church gongs, but I still heard the buzz when the whatever in the box woke up. The twins heard it, too. "Please be careful, lord!" one squealed. "There's something wrong... "
Davenport fumbled the box open. I knew when because he screamed to let me know.
If I hadn't hurt so bad I might have felt sorry for him, such was the agony and despair in his shrieking.
One of the twins squeezed my throat. "You better make it stop... " He went to work on his own screams before he made his point. That aggravated his backward named brother, who stepped up to maul me, only just as he reached for me he got a big look of surprise and started howling himself.
I never did see what got them. They'd tied me up real good. I do know the uproar attracted people from elsewhere because I heard new voices rushing around asking what the hell was going on. Then some of those started screaming, too. Their shrieks left the star chamber and dwindled.
Circumstances being what they were, I couldn't do much but sit around plotting my next move. Despite my discomfort I even fell asleep (I'm too tough to pass out) for a while. Probably a long while, though in such situations the whiles tend to stretch longer than they really are. I doubt more than a couple months passed in the outside world.
My big worry was the killer bug coming back, but when sounds disturbed my nap I learned that I had more immediate troubles.
"Got yourself in it real deep this time, Garrett." Winger strolled around me while her boyfriend watched from a distance. This was my fault. I'd made it possible for him to track me again. But I'd had my reasons. They just didn't make much sense now.
Winger wasn't suffering from any overwhelming passion to set me free, so I didn't act like I was as aware as I was. I was confident that Otto and Otah had left me looking well done. I turned loose a moan that didn't take much acting.
"Think he told them anything?" the boyfriend asked.
"What? How? He don't know anything."
The boyfriend grunted but sounded unconvinced. But he'd been on my tail closer than Winger had.
Winger grabbed my hair, lifted my head. "You in there, Garrett? Where did everybody go? Where did you send them?"
"Hon? Wrong question," the boyfriend said. He was over by the judge seats now. "Ask him what he did to them."
Winger went to check what was left of Elias Davenport. "What would do that?" She glanced back at me nervously.
"I don't think I want to find out," the boyfriend said. "There are more over there. Four, maybe five. All torn up the same way."
"What did you do, Garrett?" Winger actually seemed concerned. Like maybe she was worried I might do it again. Maybe she was getting old.
I noticed that nobody was straining to get me loose yet. Winger asked, "They have all three books, Garrett? Or just the one the girl took from her mother?"
I wondered if I could lure her close enough to bite her.
"Hon!"
I couldn't turn, but I heard them come into the chamber, at least four men. Maybe more. Things froze. Winger was at a loss for what to do. I wondered why.
"Holy hooters! Looka them gazoombies!"
The Goddamned Parrot! What the hell?
Slither moved across my field of vision. For reasons known only to him he was lugging a military entrenching tool. He brandished it at Winger but didn't say anything.
Next thing I knew Morley was lifting my head, looking into what little could be seen of my eyes behind the swelling. "He's alive. Get him untied." A second later, Ivy and Spud went to work on the ropes holding me. They didn't seem to be in any hurry, though. "Saucerhead. Cover that door. Sarge, get that one over there. Looks like they went that way when they ran." He lifted my head again. "What happened?"
"Mimble sif cubby bunka snot!" Oh, damn! I was speaking fluent dwarvish again. Courtesy of my swollen face and tongue. But this time I knew what I was trying to say.
The Goddamned Parrot definitely possessed a working man's taste in femininity. And he wasn't going to let Winger get away without hearing about it.
She and her boyfriend were making sure they didn't do anything to get anybody upset.
Ivy and Spud kept fumbling and I kept trying to tell them not to be so thoughtful of the ropes, just haul out a knife and hack away. They didn't understand me, though. They kept doing it the hard way till Morley snapped, "We don't have any call to be careful of property, Narcisio. The owner is over here full of holes. A prosecutor won't worry about a damaged rope."
Saucerhead scolded Winger. Spud and Ivy tried to get me to stand. Morley faked looking like my well-being was the only thing of any interest to him. Slither wandered around muttering and waving his shovel. Sarge studied the expanse of his belly, maybe contemplating drawing a map.
Somebody somewhere shrieked in pain, somebody not there in the chamber but not real far away. Then another somebody screamed. Then we heard a furious buzzing, getting louder. My pet was coming back.
That fool Slither chuckled like this was what he'd been waiting for all his life, like he'd finally found his chance to use that killer comeback he'd thought of fourteen years ago. He told Sarge, "Better get outa the way, Ace, 'less you want it coming right through you."
Sarge took a peek at the bodies. He opted for discre
tion and cleared the doorway fast.
An instant later, something came through that doorway so fast it was barely a blur on a course that curved right toward me.
Slither swung his shovel. He stepped into it, got his arms extended and all his arm and shoulder strength into his swing.
Splang!
He dropped the blade of his tool to the floor and began cleaning it with the edge of his sole. His grin was huge. "There's how you handle them little boogers. They're fast and they're mean, but you can handle them easy if you just don't take your eye off them. I guess nobody around here must've seen them before."
Morley asked me, "Will you be able to walk?" He left Slither's strokes to the others.
I tried to ask the big guy where he'd run into those devil bugs before. Only dwarvish came out. Morley thought I was talking to him. "Good," he said. "You're tougher than you let on. Let's get out of here."
A good idea. After making sure nothing got left that would implicate any of us. Though I couldn't see how it would be possible for some of us not to be connected somehow. There were live people in the house still, and the POWs outside could be forced to reveal whatever they had seen.
Winger and her pal tried to turn sideways and thereby become invisible, but as TG Parrot reminds us occasionally, Winger in profile is hard to miss.
"We can leave you here," Morley told her. "There is ample rope now." He indicated the chrysallis I'd left behind.
"No. No. That's all right." Winger didn't want to stay. It was likely the weather would turn real nasty soon. The Call wouldn't know that Davenport had gone rogue. They would want a blood price paid.
It was all my fault. I admit it. If I'd been able to shuffle my feet faster, we might not have had to play in the rest of the game.
68
We never cleared the star chamber. I mean, I was heeling and toeing as fast as my heels and toes would cooperate, but we just didn't get far.
Morley howled suddenly. That startled the rest of us into freezing. Another bug? I thought. How?... Dotes leapt into the air. As he peaked out, a guy stepped into the chamber and presented his chin for kicking. He dropped like his legs had been cut off, but a whole herd of brunos stormed in over him. He was going to have bruises on his bruises and powdered bones if he ever came around.