by Frank Tuttle
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Marlo spat again, feigned a sudden interest in the road ahead.
I got nothing out of the rest of the crew. The skinny kids, Scatter and Lank, were stable boys who tagged along ostensibly to help with bags but were actually out to escape a morning shoveling the stables while sneaking gulps out of the bottle of still-brewed whiskey they utterly failed to hide. The other adult, Gefner, had introduced himself as a carpenter and hadn’t said a word to us since, although he was verbose enough with Scatter and Lank. I caught enough words on shifts of the wind to guess the topic of conversation-women-and gather that Gefner had quite a few opinions on the subject. I hoped Scatter and Lank had better sense than to take Gefner’s words at truth, though I doubted it.
Aside from Marlo’s dire warnings of supernatural ne’r-do-wells in the woods and Gertriss beginning to dab at my wounds with one of my own clean white socks, the ride grew uneventful. An hour passed and I finally settled into a rhythm, swaying and bobbing with the wagon, watching the shadows, seeing them once again begin to tumble and dart and wave.
Gertriss pinched me hard on the side of my leg. Her eyes were wide as saucers.
“What the Hell?” I batted her hand away.
Her eyes weren’t looking at me but out into the leafy murk.
“Mister Markhat,” she whispered. “I saw a woman, up in that tree.”
Marlo heard, turned, his eyes bright and sharp.
“Hush,” he barked. “Missy, you hush, and you hush now, you hear me, or so help me Angels you’ll be a walkin’ all the way to the House.”
“The lady won’t be walking anywhere,” I said. I meant it. “What did you see?”
Gertriss swallowed, stared. “It’s gone.” She swallowed. “I reckon my eyes were playin’ tricks on me.”
Marlo grumbled something. And behind us, the dogs began to bark and snarl, and I heard Scatter, Lank and Gefner break into a sudden determined run.
I whirled, but all I saw were three chagrined looking men being easily outpaced by the dogs, who overtook them and then overtook the wagon and ran quickly out of sight, tails tucked, fur on end, paws flying.
“Anything back there?” I yelled.
“Thought we heard a boar,” said Scatter. His long greasy hair hung down over his face.
“Boar my ass,” began Lank, who caught a boot to his shin by Gefner for his troubles.
“Boar,” said Gefner. “Reckon we’ll stick a might closer.”
Scatter cussed and muttered something uncomplimentary, but didn’t expand on his thoughts at that moment.
And Lady Werewilk would never hear a word of any of this, at least not from her staff. I wondered how many other things she’d not been told. I suspected there were more than a few.
I tried, but couldn’t pry anything else out of them. Gertriss all but moved into my lap. The shadows tumbled and capered, and until I slid my hand in my rucksack and found Toadsticker’s smooth hilt I heard the whispers begin anew.
“I know you think I’m crazy, Mr. Markhat, but I swear that’s what I saw.”
Gertriss spoke in a whisper, but Marlo heard anyway. He might have had something to say in rebuttal, but I decided Toadsticker’s blade needed a bit of polishing and he swallowed his words with a grunt.
“I don’t think you’re crazy.” Toadsticker gleamed in the shadows. “During the War, six of us were camped out on the bank of some lake. Never did find out if it had a name. But all six of us were awake and sober as stones, and we saw every damned fish in that lake just come jumping out of the water, right onto the bank. Flopping around by the thousands. Big and small and long and short. All flopping in the moonlight, all at once.”
Gertriss raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Really. We hauled ass out of there. Caught up with our company the next day. Nobody ever believed us. But I saw it.”
Marlo spat, and there may have been an earthy word mixed in with the expulsion. I grinned.
“So when I’m told there might be women in the trees, I say that’s a possibility. Especially since it doesn’t appear you’re the first to see this arboreal female-isn’t that right, Marlo?”
That shut Marlo up for the rest of the ride. I could tell, though, we were nearly to the House when the ponies picked up the pace and the old road showed signs of frequent use and the odor of wood smoke began to waft through the walls of forest. We rounded a wide bend, and dogs started barking. I heard a snatch of far-off laughter.
Marlo dropped his reins. The ponies didn’t need to be told or led or cajoled any longer, as they knew water, oats and rest were close.
Leaving the woods and entering the House grounds was such a subtle change I’d almost missed it. The shade was the same, cast by the same enormous old blood-oaks that ruled this patch of the forest. The road merely widened a bit, and there it was, the House Werewilk, shaded on all sides by trees that hung over it and kept its peaked roofs in dapples of shadow.
The House was old. Very old. You don’t see those roofs anymore, except in paintings. Slate tiles covered them, at angles so steep the moss could barely grow. The idea was to make it hard for Trolls or Elves or ambitious neighbors to climb around up there, and for flaming arrows or the like to slide quickly off.
The House was tall and square. It rose up five extra-tall pre-War stories, with a six-story turret at each corner. The tiny turret slot-windows provided for archers were all bricked up, but I could see plain where’d they’d been.
The whole place was brick and stone. Any wood that did show was ornamental. The old places had been built to resist burning, whether caused by careless cooks or oil-soaked missiles.
The tiny glass windows, set way back in their barred iron frames, were small and so thick they showed nothing but blurs behind them. I wondered if it was dark inside then decided it always looked like midnight, behind those doors.
The doors themselves were massive iron-banded garrison gates that someone had painted a merry and highly inappropriate bright red. The knocker in the middle had been given a garish coat of sunflower yellow. Such decor in Rannit proper would have brought out the Historic Preservation Society with battering rams and whole battalions of grim-faced lawyers.
Gertriss gawked and forgot herself and put a hand on my arm and then snatched it quickly away.
“That’s the biggest house I’ve ever seen, Mr. Markhat,” she said.
I chuckled. She’d seen places far bigger in Rannit, but I guess seeing Rannit’s houses crammed together made her think of them as less than this.
“It’s a nice place for a summer home,” I said. Marlo climbed down and started fussing with his ponies, Gefner followed him, yammering suddenly away and the kids Scatter and Lank vanished like yesterday’s dew.
I grabbed up my rucksack and offered to take Gertriss’s bag, but she leaped down with it in hand before I could say a word.
I laughed and nodded at the bright red doors.
“I guess we’ll just show ourselves in,” I said.
She nodded, listening to something.
I listened too.
There was music coming from inside the house. Music and clapping and probably two dozen people laughing behind those massive shut doors and those thick, bolt-proof glass windows.
Gertriss frowned.
“Does anyone work around here?” she asked.
“Just us tireless finders,” I said. We set out across the weedy lawn, past ward statues covered in vines and neglect, over stepping-stones that had sunk into the grass so deeply they were nearly covered over. I noticed that someone had painted smiles on the faces of the more somber yard wards, which is not only not seen in Rannit’s better neighborhoods but is actually illegal even in the shabby ones.
Bold red fox squirrels chattered and barked above us as we passed beneath them, and their shadows flew as they flanked us. The canopy was tall and thick, and the military part of me groaned at the thought of trying to ever defend this place now-the carefully pla
nned fields of fire afforded by the corner towers were useless, cluttered up by limb and bough, leaving the house vulnerable to an easy assault on the doors.
Gertriss frowned. “You don’t much like this place, do you, Mr. Markhat?” she whispered.
I shrugged. Being in the woods was enough to spook a city boy, even one without crossbow bolts buried in his rucksack. And maybe there was something to Mama’s claims of Gertriss and the Sight.
“It could use some work,” I said. We were a stone’s throw from the red door now, and the laughter and music from inside was loud enough to make insulting our hosts aloud perfectly safe. It was obvious no one was watching out for visitors from town.
“Remember what I said. I’ll do most of the talking. You are my eyes and ears. I’d rather know what people do, who they look at, which ones say too much and which ones don’t talk at all. Got it?”
Gertriss nodded. We hiked up the big old granite steps, put our bags down in the weeds that sprang up through the cracks, and I gave the yellow doorknocker a good solid half-dozen blows.
I might as well have dropped a sack full of shadows. If anyone inside heard me, and over the din it seemed unlikely, no one bothered to come to the door.
I took up the knocker and gave the door another half-dozen whacks. “Hello,” I shouted. “City Watch. Your house is on fire. Trolls in the yard. Tax collectors.”
Nothing.
I put my shoulder to the door and shoved.
It wasn’t even latched. Sunlight spilled in, three dogs and a pair of cats spilled out, and the musicians didn’t miss so much as a single beat.
The doors opened into a standard three-walled alcove. The missing wall, to our right, opened into a Great Room, and it was there the party remained in full swing.
A band of sorts was parked up and down the grand, swooping stairs that led up into darkness. There was a pair of shaggy-haired skinny kids on long-necked Southern guitars, another pair whistling away on flutes, and another banging out a rhythm on a pair of old infantry drums. The drummer was so drunk he could barely stand, but his drumbeats were perfect.
At the foot of the stairs, there were more kids, two dozen at least, mostly paired off in the usual boy-girl fashion doing what were either dances or some sort of fever-induced fits. They weren’t all dancing. Naturally, there were a half-dozen partiers of either sex hovering in ragged circles around the dance floor, either staring into their cups to make it obvious they didn’t care much about this dancing foolishness anyway or giggling at each other and whispering behind raised hands.
I stepped inside. Gertriss followed. I let the door slam with a monstrous thud and it was only then that anyone noticed the House had been invaded.
The place was dark, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust. I saw mouths drop open and dancers turn and go still. By the time I was used to the lamplight and the candles, the last beats and bangs from the musicians died and the House was suddenly silent.
“You must be the finder,” said a kid.
“We’re supposed to fetch Lady Werewilk,” said another.
“Get him a beer first,” said a third.
And, lo and behold, someone pressed a tall cool beer right in my outstretched hand.
There was ice in it. Actual ice, cut out of a frozen stream last winter and stored in sawdust since.
I saw Gertriss frown as I lifted the glass to my lips. Maybe a touch of sight runs in my family too because I heard, clear as day, Mama warning Gertriss that I was too much fond of all things fermented.
It was good beer. Not one I recognized, either. A local brew, probably, one redolent of honey and an unusually sweet variety of hops.
There was a sound on the stairs, way up in the dark, and before I could take a second drink the musicians and the dancers and the hangers-on scattered. Within seconds, nothing was left but empty glasses, a few scarves and a lone white dog, that tilted his head and looked up at me with innocent doggy bewilderment.
“I do not ask for much,” said an icy voice from above. Gertriss mouthed “Lady Werewilk” as quick footfalls wound down toward us.
“But I suppose even what I do ask is too much,” continued Lady Werewilk. “I apologize for your reception, Goodman Markhat. You were supposed to be greeted like a guest, not thrust into the midst of a drunken bacchanal.”
Lady Werewilk reached us, somewhat winded and obviously annoyed. She was wearing another tight black dress, the skirt long but slit up her right side nearly to her waist. I decided to entertain the assumption that she had a pair of very nice legs, since what I could see of the right one invited further scrutiny.
I hefted my beer. “The greeting was perfectly acceptable, Lady Werewilk,” I said. “You have a lovely home.”
“Thank you, Goodman. It is a pity those who live here under the benefice of this House do not see it with such high regard.” She clapped her hands. “Emma! Ella! Bags!”
Feet scrambled, presumably those of Emma and Ella.
“It seems your trip was not without adventures.”
Beer and skirts. I’d forgotten about the claw-marks on my face.
“We ran into some trouble on the road south,” I admitted. “Bandits, probably.”
“Bandits.”
I shrugged. “That’s as good as any explanation for now, Lady.”
Emma and Ella appeared, clambering down the steps with twin expressions of exasperation. And twin everything else, right down to their maid’s outfits and the way their shiny leather shoes each sported a loose buckle on the left. They were tiny, compact girls, blonde haired, blue eyed, with just a hint of Elvishness in their long fingers and delicate noses.
“May we-” said one.
“-take your bags?” finished the other.
Gertriss let her jaw drop. I shot her a look, and she closed it. I knew from Mama that a lot of country people held some odd superstitions about twins, but this wasn’t the time or the place to air them.
“Please do,” I said. I’d worked the crossbow bolt out of my rucksack on the ride through the woods.
“Your rooms will be on the third floor,” said Lady Werewilk. “Emma, take Goodman Markhat’s bag. Ella, see to Miss Gertriss.” She frowned in concern, and I saw her resist the urge to touch my wounded face. “I’ve arranged to have the entire household present for the evening meal,” she said instead. “I believe you wanted to speak to everyone at once.”
“I do, and I thank you.” Emma picked up my rucksack with no apparent effort despite her diminutive size. Ella did the same with Gertriss’s bag, which from its heft must have contained both Mama’s card and potion shop and Darla’s entire inventory of summer gowns.
“You’ll hear a bell half an hour before the meal is served,” said Lady Werewilk. “Another will sound at five minutes until. The dining room is that way.” She motioned toward a wide, dark hall that led off to the right. “You’ll have no trouble finding it. Just follow the noise.”
“We’ll be there, Lady.”
Lady Werewilk nodded, oozed down the few remaining stairs and made off down the hallway she’d just shown us, doing fascinating things to her dress on the way.
Gertriss poked me in the ribs.
“You’re bleedin’ again, Mister Markhat.”
I felt a big fat drop of blood gather precariously at the end of my nose.
“So I am. Lead on, Emma. I may need to be stitched up before we dine. Have you ever stitched up a wounded man before?”
Emma giggled, and she and Ella sped up the stairs in absolutely perfect time.
My room-which was actually three rooms joined by two doors and one archway-was on the west side of the House. The tiny windows let in just enough afternoon sun to throw long shadows across the floor. I had to light candles just to keep from stumbling into things.
Gertriss was four doors down, on the same side. The walls were so thick I couldn’t hear a sound, though I knew she was prowling around and taking it all in.
I dropped my rucksack on the vast plane
of clean linen that was my bed and started pounding on the wall.
A moment later, I heard a pounding in response, and muffled shouting about my lack of manners and how it had been a long and trying ride.
I left Gertriss to her explorations and sought out the fancy water closet. There was running water, both hot and cold, and the same newfangled flush toilet I hear the Regent squats over twice a day.
Feeling very cosmopolitan, I unpacked my shaving kit, ran enough hot water to fog the mirror, and set about seeing to my thoroughly clawed face.
I whistled. It was worse than I’d thought. Even with her claws blunted by a manicure, Gertriss had managed to give me a good country raking. I washed the cuts, which of course started the bleeding all over again, and by the time I was done it looked like an army surgeon’s tent had emptied itself on the floor.
Not an auspicious way to appear at the evening meal. But between the story of the crossbow bolts and the sword, which I imagined was spreading like wildfire below courtesy of Scatter and Lank, a few recent battle-scars might at least put the innocent off guard just enough to make tongues wag.
And wagging tongues are what line my purse.
I washed. I shook the wrinkles out of a good shirt and donned a pair of new shoes that sported a hole in the sole from a crossbow aimed at my favorite head. I combed my hair back and smoothed it down with the hair oil Darla bought me for Victory Day. Even so, I figured we had a good hour before the first of Lady Werewilk’s dinner bells rang.
I grinned. Time to show my young apprentice a thing or to about how finders spend their spare time.
I closed my door quietly behind me, stuck my hands in my pockets and ambled to Gertriss’s door. My hand was raised to knock, very softly, when various latches and locks began to click and loose until the door swung open just far enough to reveal a finger’s breadth of Gertriss’s face.
“Mister Markhat.” She spoke in a whisper. “You are the boss. I respect that. Believe me I do. But there is a bathtub in here. A bathtub with running water. Hot running water. A bathtub with hot running water and fancy store-bought soap and some kind of smell-good stuff in a jar. Is anyone about to kill us?”