Angry Lead Skies

by Glen Cook

  Greve sighed, explained, “We must ensure that our three-wheel is the only three-wheel the elite find acceptable once the fad gets started. Imitations are certain to appear as soon as someone capable of building them lays hands on one he can tear apart. We have to make sure that anybody who actually buys a competing three-wheel is considered a second-rater. Or worse.” His expression suggested that he had begun to rank me with the dimmer of the dimwit Tate cousins.

  Lister said, “It’s possible that I can work my royal household connections to wangle a decree of patent.”

  If the Crown so ordered, nobody would be allowed to build three-wheels but us. Until somebody able to offer a big enough bribe got the King to change his mind. Or got the people who made up the King’s mind for him to do so. Likely, the King himself would never know about the decree of patent.

  “I’m glad you guys are on our side.” I thought I could see how Weider beers had become the choice of beer drinkers, now. Snob appeal, backed by suggestions that any tavern brewing its own beverages on premises was an outdated second-stringer, its product likely fit only for the meanest classes.

  Which is true. In many cases. The uniformity and consistent quality of Weider brews exceeds anything produced by corner taverns. And I can claim a certain expertise in judging the quality of beers.

  Greve continued to pontificate. “Obviously, our ability to produce three-wheels will be limited. Demand will exceed supply for as long as the fad runs. We want to sustain and exploit that situation. First, we’ll set a publicly announced fixed unit price — exorbitant, of course — then we’ll place our buyers’ names on a list. Then Lister and I, being cheesy lawyers, will let those who want to do so bribe us to move their names up the list.”

  “Excellent thinking!” Lister Tate declared. He actually rubbed his hands together in washing motions and chuckled wickedly till he realized some of us were staring. He grinned, told us, “Sorry I don’t have mustache ends to twirl. Here. Let’s do this while we’re at it. Publish the list by posting it outside the compound entrance. Update it daily. So the buyers will know where they stand. In case they feel an urgent need to move on up.”

  “Oh, yes! Excellent idea! Here’s another idea. We’ll put serial numbers on the three-wheels. The lower the serial number, the more exalted the status of the three-wheel.”

  I said, “I can see people falsifying serial numbers....” Oh.

  Both men gave me looks that said they wondered how a grown man could be so naive and still be here among the living.

  More than one three-wheel would go out the door with the same low serial number.

  Pure, raging, unbridled capitalism. Now, if they could just find ways to steal our raw materials, evade taxation, and not pay our workers their wages, our profit margin might begin to approach what those guys would consider minimally acceptable.

  I was becoming increasingly certain that the best thing I could do for the company I had invented would be to stay away. I should just let them haul my share of the profits over to the house aboard a beer wagon.

  My mind just wouldn’t fall into a businesslike groove.

  If I was building a business I’d do it as if everybody involved was a partner. Kind of the way I had things already.

  Enough of that.

  I saw Kip’s family whenever I visited the Tate compound. Kayne was bored. Prosperity was all right with her but she wanted something to do. She was used to working, long and hard. I told her, “There’s plenty of work around here. I’ll pass the word. Cassie? Rhafi? How about you guys?”

  Cassie was extremely adept at doing nothing useful and planned to keep right on doing what she did best. Rhafi was content to polish his loafing and consuming skills as well.

  “So be it.”

  I was in the Tate compound when the workers completed our first presentation three-wheel, half of the pair of gaily painted monsters meant for the King’s daughters. We drew lots to see who would pedal it away. I didn’t win.

  76

  Sleepily, the Dead Man again asked, How does it feel to be a captain of industry? His inquiry had an amused, sharp, mocking edge to it. The sort of edge his thoughts take on when things go exactly according to his prognostications.

  “I feel like a man wasting his life. Like the proverbial square peg.”

  Indeed? But if you were not working there you would be here either sleeping off hangovers or indulging yourself in some rakish indulgence.

  “Yeah. That’d be great. Indulging in some indulgence.”

  He was feeling generous. He didn’t mention the several Visitor women I’d finagled out of the house not that long ago.

  Singe invited herself into the Dead Man’s room, then into the conversation. Evidently the Dead Man had kept her posted. She took a sandwich out of her mouth long enough to ask, “Are you having problems with the red-haired woman again? I hope?”

  “Absolutely. Always. That goes without saying. But not as many as usual.” Mainly because Tinnie was too busy working. And I stayed out of her way.

  “I am sorry.”

  “No, you’re not. You’ve been polishing up your sarky, haven’t you?”

  “When you are lower than a ratman’s dog you do have to try harder. John Stretch was here not long ago. He wanted us to know that he knows where the other Visitors are hiding. The ones we ran into out in the country.” Singe still shivered when she recalled that adventure, though it made her the awe of all ratpeople who heard the tale. “They are here in the city, now. Their skyship is hidden inside a large, abandoned structure on the Embankment, a little ways north of the Landing.”

  Way up there in strange territory.

  Coincidentally within a few hundred yards of the site where the ship belonging to Lastyr and Noodiss is suspected to have gone beneath the water.

  I frowned, trying to picture such a fantasm as an abandoned building in TunFaire. I’d expect to bump snoots with a unicorn first. This city is awash in refugees from the former war zone. Nothing that remotely resembles shelter isn’t infested with desperate, dangerous people.

  Singe anticipated my question. “People lived there until ten days ago. Something scared them into moving out.” Meaning maybe somebody more dangerous had moved in.

  “What do you think, Old Bones? Worth a look? Or are we out of the thing since Kip doesn’t seem to be in trouble anymore?” Though how could we be out while we still had Casey underfoot? I wished there was some way I could give him to Morley, too.

  The Dead Man’s response was the mental equivalent of a distracted grunt.

  “Don’t you dare go to sleep on me! Who’ll keep Casey under control?”

  The question elicited only a mental snort and the equivalent of “I was just resting my eyes.”

  “You don’t keep him managed, Chuckles, I won’t have any choice but to turn him over to the Guard. I can’t handle him. We’ve already seen that.”

  Mental grumbles. Old Bones was getting testy, a sure sign he was headed for a long nap. He’s predictable. Kind of like the weather is predictable. You look out the window and tell everybody a storm is on its way. No way you’re ever wrong, given sufficient time.

  What is your attitude toward unearthing Lastyr and Noodiss?

  “Not quite obsessed but definitely still interested. Despite all logic. They planted that one deep, whoever did it.”

  He didn’t tell me what I wanted to know.

  “That was supposed to be a hint, Old Bones. Who messed with the inside of my head?”

  I am inclined to suspect Casey but I do not know. I have not read direct responsibility in any Visitor mind yet. But the Visitors have been exceedingly adept at concealing specific items. Witness Evas and her sisters. Witness Casey himself. He has not yielded up a tenth of his secrets even though he has been in direct mental contact with me for ages now.

  Also, it might be wise to consider the possibility that your urge is not of Visitor origin.

  “What?”

  We might do well to reco
llect, occasionally, Colonel Block’s several subtle cautions about the intense interest in the Visitors being shown, behind the scenes, by several Hill personages. You have been rendered unconscious with some frequency of late. We might review your memories of those episodes with an eye toward the possibility that some of our own folk might have created an opportunity to implant a compulsion.

  “Maybe who really isn’t as important as what. Who wants the secrets of the Visitors’ magic isn’t truly critical to us. Who won’t have much direct impact on our lives.”

  Perhaps. If you discount the moral dimension.

  “Naturally.”

  And when the talking is over, you do want to meet the mysterious Lastyr and Noodiss yourself.

  “I sure do. I know I’ll be disappointed. I always am. But I’d definitely like to see who got the cauldron bubbling.”

  Then cease investing your time in the three-wheel business. There is nothing you can contribute there except exasperation for your associates.

  I’d had the feeling that even Willard Tate was considering changing the locks on the compound doors. It isn’t just that I ask too many questions, I ask questions that make people uncomfortable.

  Even the bloodiest villains have to work hard at conscience management sometimes. Until they get their full arsenal of justifications filed, sanded, and polished to fit their shadowy needs.

  Indeed you do. Also, you must stop juggling the women in your life. I understand that you are trying to live every young man’s dream and are managing a twisted approximation. But there come moments when each of us must step away from the dreamtime.

  Sometimes somebody besides me flops something uncomfortable onto the table.

  Find Lastyr and Noodiss. Before they perish from old age.

  I didn’t contradict him. But Evas had told me that Visitors never grow old, nor do they die of old age. They live on until Fate finds a way to squash them with a falling boulder or until they do something really stupid, like going into a horse stall all alone, without a witness around anywhere.

  Which sounds like some of those old, false legends about Morley’s people.

  “Singe, it ought to be safe out there now. You ready for another adventure?”

  “Whither thou goest.”

  “Oh, that’s rude. All right. First thing in the morning. Bright and early. For real. But for now, let’s just hit the kitchen and tip a few mugs of Weider Select.”

  I am getting old. I thought about heading out to Grubb Gruber’s to enjoy a few with the old jarheads. I thought about wandering over to serenade Katie, whom I hadn’t seen in so long she might’ve forgotten her favorite little honey bunny. I thought about several other ways to fritter my evening. And, in the end, I just stayed in, sipping the dark and exchanging brew-born wisdom with my pal Singe. I hit the sack early, never suffering a thought about the feuding pixies.

  77

  Singe and I set out about a week before my normal getup time. We headed for the Casey digs Belinda’s connections had discovered. We didn’t learn a thing there except that the Guard had the place under surveillance — a fact that would interest Miss Contague a great deal. We also learned that thugs I assumed to be Relway’s were keeping watch on us loyal subjects, by means of some very clever operatives and tactics.

  The shiftiest operatives alive have trouble keeping up when the folks they’re watching can step around a corner and vanish. Which Singe and I did a few times. Then I decided it wouldn’t be smart to give away the fact that we really could slide around a corner and disappear.

  That invisibility fetish was a wonderful device. I didn’t want it taken away by some Bubba Dreadlock.

  The pursuit did a hell of a job of hanging on. I’d have to congratulate Block and Relway. Someday.

  I told Singe, “We can’t shake them. Every time we give them the slip they get right back on track after a while.” I hadn’t been too obvious about trying to lose them yet, however. I was just pretending to take normal precautions. I didn’t want them to know that we knew we were the object of a massive tail.

  Singe stopped being talkative as the morning wore on. Her shoulders hunched. She seemed to shrink. Maybe I did a little, too. We had reached the Embankment, which is an ancient docking and warehousing district along the riverbank north of the Landing. It’s rough country and I don’t know my way around there. Nor do I know a soul amongst its denizens, which isn’t true of the waterfront on the south side. The Embankment seemed a bleaker, harsher, less colorful district than its more familiar cousin.

  The Embankment is the jumping-off point and home base for all trade along the navigable waterways, some of which reach a thousand miles beyond Karenta’s borders, a thousand miles into the heart of the continent. The south-side waterfront is the jumping-off point for what seems to me far more exotic destinations along the ocean coasts and overseas.

  “What is that smell?” Singe asked.

  “The sweet aroma of uncured animal hides.” I was able to answer that one because of my intermittent association with the family Tate. “You won’t believe this but there are men crazy enough to hunt thunder lizards and mammoths and saber-tithed toogers in the plains and mountains and forests back in places so far away they don’t even have dwarves or elves there yet. Flatboats bring hides and teeth and horns and bones and ivory and fur and, sometimes, even meat down to TunFaire. And sometimes gold or silver or gemstones, or lumber or untaxed whiskey. It all gets unloaded right here on the Embankment.” Where several of the bigger warehouses belong to the Contague family and store none of the mentioned goods except whiskey.

  A broad range of herbs and spices grows wild in the interior, too.

  But hunting is the thing.

  A bold enough hunter, responding to the appropriate commercial demand, can set himself up for life by making a handful of the right kills. I expect a lot of bold veterans will toss the dice out there before long. And have enough success that the market for animal by-products will get shaky.

  Perhaps the Crown ought to encourage homesteading. That would bleed off a lot of extra people.

  Generally speaking, the quickest way to get dwarves to give up their silver and gold is to take it away, over their dead bodies. But if you can bring them the head of the right kind of thunder lizard — which they won’t hunt themselves, no matter what — they’ll throw gold dust at you like the bags are filled with sand. But that head has to come off an adult specimen of one of the major carnivores. Or off a three-horn or the rarer five-horn, because an infusion of powdered horn will scare impotence into the next continent.

  I’ve never heard why dwarves covet the teeth of the great meat eaters, but who better than a lady dwarf to know, intimately, the meaning of rock hard?

  Singe told me, “We must pass through this place that smells of old death.”

  “Huh?’

  “The area where they make leather from those uncured animal hides.”

  “The tannery district.” There were places which processed tallow and bone, too, though little of that would be imported. None of those places lacked their enthusiastic odors. “Why?”

  “Someone is using ratman trackers to follow us. There can be no other explanation for their success. Yet few of my people have the courage to visit the fastnesses of death. Even if they forget that not many generations have passed since our own kind were killed and flayed to provide fashionable trousers for young dandies, the stench will overwhelm anything as subtle as traces left by you and me. Without leaving it obvious that we were trying to distort our backtrail.”

  “Ah, my friend, you continue to amaze me.”

  “A year from now you will be working for me.”

  There was a thought to rattle me.

  Singe jumped up and down and clapped her paws. “I did it! I did it! You should see the look on your face.”

  “I believe I’ve created a monster.”

  Ratpeople aren’t built to laugh but Singe sure did try. And she kept her mind on business while she was
having fun. She led the way along a path a ratman tracker ought not to find suspicious, yet one that would overload any tracker’s nose.

  Singe was too naive to understand that anything not going his way would be suspicious to Director Relway.

  I may have remained a little naive myself.

  Not till after we had begun taking advantage of the district’s natural odiferous cover did it occur to me that having Relway’s fanatics on my backtrail might be a lesser evil.

  78

  Singe and I were on a holiday stroll, giddy because we had shaken free. Singe more so than I because she had a better appreciation of what she had accomplished — and of its cost. Her own olfactory abilities had been dampened hugely.

  A sudden whir. The pixie Shakespear materialized above my right shoulder. He told me, “You must hide quickly. They will be here in a minute.”

  Another whirr as Shakespear went away. I glimpsed a second pixie, hovering, pointing in the direction of the threat. I heard the wings of several more.

  Singe pulled me toward the nearest doorway. It was open. Beyond lay the noisome vats of a small tannery. I wondered how the flies stood the smell. I whispered, “Did you know that the wee folk were with us?”

  “You did not know? You missed the sound of their wings?”

  “You have better ears than I do. And you’re starting to make me feel old. I should’ve been more aware of what was happening around me.” Maybe my friends are right. Maybe I am getting too tied up inside my own head.

  There wasn’t anything in the tannery. There was no tanning going on, thought the place was still in business. It gave the impression that the entire workforce had slipped out just minutes before we arrived. Curious. It wasn’t a major holy day that I knew of, though possibly the place employed only members of some lesser cult.

  Still, there ought to be somebody around to keep opportunists from finders-keeping all those squirrel hides.

  “Here.”

  Singe had located a low opening in the outer wall, placed so air could waft in and rise to roof vents, so the tannery could share its chief wonder with the city. The opening lay behind a heap of pelts from small animals. The majority had come off rodents but some were scaly. The odor off the pile guaranteed that no ratman tracker would find us here.