Brown River Queen

by Frank Tuttle

  Dedication

  Dedicated to the memory of my mom, Patsy Tuttle.

  Chapter One

  Hammers fell by the hundreds. Lumber wagons rumbled past, either filled to bursting with building materials or freshly emptied and rushing back to the sawmills and the foundries for more timbers and nails. Saws bit deep into kiln-dried pine planks, filling the air with sawdust and the steady scratch-scratch-scratch sound of honest working men earning an honest day’s wage.

  Me?

  I sat, fundament firmly in the chair I’d placed on the sidewalk. While I sat, I watched a pair of honest working men earn their honest day’s wage by hanging and painting my sturdy new door.

  The workmen, a father and son outfit who shared but did not revel in the name Wartlip, were less than appreciative of my audience. For what I was paying them, I decided they could bear the unwelcome scrutiny.

  My new door is a beauty. It’s white with a fancy, round glass window worked in at eye level. The window’s thick glass is reinforced with a number of steel bars crossed so that worthies such as myself can peek through them, but objectionable materials like crossbow bolts or the sharp ends of swords will be caught before ruining, for instance, my favorite face. The inside of the oak door conceals a solid iron plate, which means Ogres can spend their days trying to kick their way inside and get nothing for their troubles but twelve hairy, bruised Ogre toes.

  Right below the window is a bright brass placard that bears the legend ‘Markhat & Hog. Finders for Hire.’

  And right below that is the traditional finder’s eye, etched into the brass so that patrons who might have missed the recent rush toward universal literacy can still get close enough to my well-manicured hand to cross my palm with money.

  I’m Markhat, founder and senior member of the firm. Miss Gertriss Hog, who bitterly proclaims she does most of the actual work these days, was out doing most of the actual work.

  I took another sip of my ice-chilled beer and eyed my new white door critically.

  “That top hinge creaks a bit.”

  The elder Wartlip muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath.

  The Wartlips, like every tradesmen in Rannit these days, had all the work they could get and then some. With half the city lying in various degrees of ruin, anyone who could grasp a hammer suddenly claimed to be a master craftsman and demanded the exorbitant fees to prove it.

  I’d waited three days past the appointed date for the Wartlips to show. I wasn’t letting them walk away until my office had a door again, because I knew getting them back to Cambrit Street would be the work of a lifetime.

  So they grunted and shimmed and frowned and banged until the door swung without creaking and shut without slamming and opened without a yank or a kick.

  I counted out coins. The Wartlips had been adamant about coin. “We ain’t takin’ none of that paper money,” the elder Wartlip insisted, shaking his finger at me for emphasis. “Who’s to say it’ll be any good come tomorrow?”

  I hadn’t argued the point. Rannit had nearly fallen to a trio of foreign wand-wavers intent on toppling the Regency and installing some alleged heir to the old Kingdom crown barely a month ago. The invasion had failed, thanks in no small part to my own heroic efforts, but nerves were still shaken and emotions were still raw, and the Regent’s fancy new paper money was viewed by many with open suspicion.

  So I counted out five coins, tossed the younger Wartlip a smaller one all his own, and bade the Wartlips a cheery good day.

  They and their tools were loaded in their patchwork wagon and headed downtown before I even managed a wave.

  Three-leg Cat sidled out of the alley between my place and Mama Hog’s. He gave the door a good hard glare, sniffed it tentatively, and planted his ragged butt down before it. He then set about licking his remaining front paw with a feline air that managed to convey his utter disregard for doors far and wide, even closed ones that stood between him and his food bowl.

  “Oh, go on in,” I said, working my new latch. The door swung open without even the faintest ominous creak—I remembered to grab my chair, and Three-leg and I headed indoors for breakfast and meditation, respectively.

  I was deeply immersed in profound meditation when the very first knock sounded on my unsullied new door.

  Three-leg Cat beat me to it, eager to head out and impose his unique brand of feline terror on the alleys and stoops of Cambrit Street. I took advantage of my new peeping window to see who was calling before I worked the latch.

  Outside, wrapped in a mainsail’s worth of black silk against the midday sun, was Evis himself, peering back at me through his tinted spectacles. The halfdead don’t love sunlight the same way I don’t love being bathed in red-hot coals.

  “Hurry, please,” said Evis as I fumbled with the lock. “I can’t pay you if I’ve been baked to cinders on your doorstep.”

  I managed to swing the door open. Three-leg Cat darted out, heedless of the halfdead at the door. I’ve noticed most animals shy away from Evis, which I believe pains him deeply.

  I stood aside and motioned Evis in. He glided into the comfortable shadows of my office, not quite running but not ambling either. I closed the door quickly and resolved to fashion some sort of shade for the window-glass. Even that much light would be a nuisance for Evis and his dead-eyed kin.

  “Sorry about the light,” I said as Evis stripped off the top layer of his flowing day suit. “I’ll do something about that before your next visit.”

  Evis shrugged it off but kept his dark glasses on. “Thank you. Everything getting back to normal?”

  I sat. Evis sat. He kept his hat on and tilted his head so his face remained in deep shadow.

  “As normal as normal gets. Business has picked up. Gertriss is out working now. She’ll be sorry she missed you.”

  And she would. My junior partner and Evis were spending a lot of time together of late. Had been since their trip up the Brown River on House Avalante’s new-fangled steamboat.

  If I was Mama Hog I’d be making pointed comments about all that. Gertriss is Mama’s niece, and Mama is none too thrilled about Gertriss and her recent choice of company. But since I’m not a four-foot-tall soothsayer who claims to be a century and a half old, I don’t stick my nose where it doesn’t belong unless someone is paying me for the effort.

  Evis just nodded and put his feet on my desk. His hand moved to his jacket pocket and produced a pair of the expensive cigars he normally keeps in a humidor in his office.

  “Uh oh,” I said, opening my desk drawer. I pulled out my notepad and my good pen. “Who’s dead, who’s missing, and how much of the story are you going to leave out?”

  Evis kept his lips tightly shut but managed to feign an expression of deep and sincere injury.

  “Now is that any way to respond to an offer of a Lowland Sweet?” he asked. “The last time we smoked these you remarked that it was your absolute favorite.”

  “And you suddenly remembered that and grabbed a pair and ran all the way down here in the sun just to have a puff. Remarkable.” I put the tip of the pen in my inkwell and then down on the paper.

  Evis ignored me and began cutting off the ends with a fancy steel cigar clipper. I found my box of matches and plopped them down on the table.

  “So spill it,” I said. “And thanks. I do enjoy these.”

  Evis handed me a cigar and struck a match. I let him light it.

  It’s not every day a free Lowland Sweet walks through the door.

  “Times are changing,” Evis announced after lighting his Lowland and puffing out a perfect smoke ring. “That run at restoring the old Kingdom was the last.”

  “So say you.”

  “So I do. Care to guess where Prince got the money to
rebuild?”

  Word from up the Brown is that the storm that nearly wrecked Rannit was a mere ghost of wind compared to the one the Corpsemaster loosed upon our erstwhile enemies in Prince. We’re still getting the odd rooftop or twisted shell of a building, lifted whole from streets in faraway Prince, drifting past on the lazy, muddy water of the Brown. No bodies, though. Not a one.

  The Corpsemaster’s wrath is both thorough and lingering.

  “No idea. I thought the city fathers in Prince went broke financing their invasion.”

  “They did. But our very own Regent graciously made them a loan. At thirty percent interest. Rannit owns Prince now, Markhat. And the Regent won’t be letting them forget that for a very long time.”

  I whistled. I hadn’t even heard that rumored.

  Evis grinned a brief toothy vampire grin.

  “Looks like our military careers are over,” he said. “It’ll be a hundred years before anyone takes another stab at Rannit. Maybe longer. But here we are, still drawing down a Captain’s pay. By the way, any word from the old spook lately?”

  Old spook was code for Corpsemaster. Neither Evis nor I had seen her or her black carriage since the dust-up with Prince. Evis had gone so far as to hint that open speculation in some circles indicated the Corpsemaster might have fallen in the fray, or been reduced by the effort to such a state that she’d gone into hiding or hibernation.

  I wasn’t quite ready to write her off so quickly, so I just shrugged.

  “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned ‘pay,’ you know.” I tried and failed to blow a smoke ring. “Not that I don’t enjoy your company, but what really brought you out for a stroll in the sun?”

  “I’m here to hire the famous Captain Markhat on behalf of House Avalante.”

  “Didn’t you read the placard? I’m a humble finder, not a Captain. My marching days are done. I’ve taken up pacifism and a strict philosophy of passive non-violence.”

  “What’s your philosophy on five hundred crowns—paid in gold—for taking a relaxing dinner cruise down the Brown River to Bel Loit and back? With meals, booze, and as many of these cigars as you can carry, thrown in for free?”

  I blew out a ragged column of grey-brown smoke.

  “I’m flexible on such matters. But I’m troubled by the offer of five hundred crowns.”

  “Make it six hundred, then.”

  “I will. If I decide to take it at all. Because that’s a lot of gold, Mr. Prestley. Even Avalante doesn’t just hand the stuff out to see my winning smile. What exactly is worth seven hundred crowns to House Avalante?”

  Evis winced. “You are, believe it or not. Look, Markhat. This isn’t just any old party barge outing. The Brown River Queen is a palace with a hull. The guest list reads like Yule at the High House. Ministers. Lords. Ladies. Opera stars. Generals.“

  “And? You said it was a pleasure cruise. We won the war and didn’t lose so much as a potato wagon. Handshakes and promotions all around. Why do you need me for eight hundred crowns?”

  Evis lifted his hands in surrender.

  “Because the Regent himself is coming along for the ride,” he said in a whisper. “Yes. You heard me. The Regent. For every ten who love him there are a thousand who want to scoop out his eyes and boil them and feed them to him.”

  “On your boat.”

  “On our boat. This is it, Markhat. It’s the culmination of thirty years of negotiations and diplomacy and bribery. House Avalante is a single step away from taking its place at the right hand of the most powerful man in the world. He’ll have his bodyguards. He’ll have his staff. He’ll have his spies and his informants and his eyes and his ears, and that’s just fine with us. But Markhat, we want the man kept safe. We want trouble kept off the Queen. We want a nice quiet cruise from here to Bel Loit and back, and the House figures if anyone can spot trouble coming, it’s you.”

  “When you look at things that way, nine hundred crowns is really quite a bargain.”

  “Nine hundred crowns it is.” Evis blew another smoke ring and then sailed a second one through it. “And one more thing. Bring the missus. She eats, drinks, stays for free, courtesy of Avalante. Is that a deal?”

  “An even thousand crowns for watching rich folks drink. I think you just bought yourself a finder, Mr. Prestley.”

  “Surely you have a pair of those awful domestic beers hidden away in your icebox,” said Evis. “I believe we have a toast to make.”

  I hurried to the back, knocked damp sawdust off the bottles, and together Evis and I toasted my regrettable return to honest work.

  Evis stuck around and drank beer and we talked dates and times, which I dutifully scribbled onto my notepad. He wrapped himself in black silk and darted back out into the sun maybe an hour later, leaving me to my thoughts.

  A thousand gold crowns in good solid gold coin. All for a week of work that, on the surface, seemed to involve nothing more perilous than lounging around a floating casino while maintaining an aloof air of menace.

  A thousand crowns, though. That’s a lot of money, even in Rannit’s booming post-War economy. A fellow could live quite well on a fraction of that.

  Which meant someone high up at Avalante considered the threat of violence against the Regent quite real. Evis didn’t seem to agree. But he hadn’t blinked when I’d upped the ante, either, which meant his bosses had instructed him that money was no object.

  “An even thousand crowns,” I said aloud. Darla would be thrilled. We could put a fancy slate roof on our new place on Middling Lane. Hell, we could tear the house down to the last timber and build it back again with twice as many rooms and still have money left over.

  If, that is, a fellow lived long enough to collect his shiny gold coins.

  I pushed the thought aside, gathered up the empty bottles, and eventually followed Evis out into the bright and bustling light of day.

  Chapter Two

  I made the block, wary of Ogres and their carts and their general disregard for pedestrian safety every step of the way.

  The Arwheat brothers were up on their roof, screaming at each other between bouts of furious hammering. Old Mr. Bull was out on his stoop, muttering to himself, sweeping the same two-by-two step he’d been sweeping since sunrise. I wished him good morning as I passed and was rewarded with a cackle and a brief toothless grin.

  Blind Mr. Waters stood in the open door of his bathhouse, squinting up at a sun and a sky he’d never once seen. I knew he was checking on the weather. A bright warm day like today would bring more customers in, requiring him to burn more wood to heat more bathwater.

  “Good day to ye, Markhat,” he said as I approached. “Gonna be a right nice day, by the feel of it.”

  He held up his right hand, letting the sunlight play through his fingers.

  “Looks that way. Good for business.”

  The old man nodded, all smiles. “That it is. I ken you’re bound elsewhere, though, is that right?”

  “Afraid so, Mr. Waters. I’ll be back soon, though. Miss that brand of soap you carry.”

  “Well, I’ll have a hot bath ready when ye are, finder. Take care now.”

  “You too.”

  And he was gone, closing his door behind him.

  I walked on, waving now and then, speaking now and then. I may not live on Cambrit anymore, but a part of me will always call these leaning old timber-frames and none-too-square doors home.

  There was one door in particular at which I needed to knock. I’d been dreading the task for days, and even there in the cheery sunshine I nearly just kept walking toward the tidy little single-story cottage with the white picket fence and the bright yellow door that Darla and I bought a few weeks ago.

  But in the end, I turned and marched up to Mama’s door and was just about to knock when Mama herself called out from inside.

  “I see you standin’ there, boy. Ain’t no need to knock, it ain’t locked.”

  “Is that an invitation, Mama?”

  Boots sc
raped floor, and the door swung open.

  “Well, it weren’t writ on fancy parchment and delivered with no box of fancy chocolates, but I reckon it was an invite all the same,” she said. “Now are ye comin’ inside or not?”

  I took off my hat and ducked under Mama’s doorframe and followed her into the shadows. Mama’s card-and-potion shop is never quite the same from visit to visit. On previous trips, I’d seen shelves filled with jars containing dried birds. I’ve seen neat rows of dead bats, each wearing a tiny mask, nailed in ranks to the walls. Once she even had the place covered with fine nets, inside which a thousand crickets crawled and crept and sang.

  So I was prepared for anything—except, perhaps, what I saw.

  Mama’s tiny front room was immaculate. The shelves of dried birds were gone, revealing plain wood walls suspiciously bare of cobwebs and charms. A few tasteful paintings hung here and there. Candles in sconces filled the room with a golden, soothing light. The floors were swept and mopped and uncluttered. The black iron cauldron, which had been bubbling with something potently malodorous since the day I’d first set foot on Cambrit, was gone, leaving only a barely visible scorch mark on the floor behind.

  “You aimin’ to catch flies with that open mouth of yours, boy?”

  “Mama. What happened in here?”

  There was a small oak table set in a corner. It sported white lace doilies and a simple red fireflower in a plain crystal vase. Two chairs were pushed neatly beneath the table. Mama pulled out a chair, sat, and motioned for me to do the same.

  “The times is changin’, boy. And I’m changin’ with them. Folks is less appreciative of all that old-timey backwoods mumbo-jumbo these days. ‘Specially well-to-do folks.”

  The candles on the wall were arranged so that half of Mama Hog’s face was kept in shadow. She leaned forward and I could only see her in silhouette, her wild shock of hair lending a faint corona of light to her form.

  “Watch this, boy.”

  She closed her eyes and began to whisper, raising her hands beside her face as she spoke.

  A light formed at the center of the table, right above the fireflower’s blood-red petals. It was only a spark at first, but it flickered and expanded and intensified, rising and growing, first as bright as a candle and then brighter still.