Brown River Queen

by Frank Tuttle

  “Dammit, Markhat, wait for Stitches!”

  I didn’t reply. I hit the hall and bowled over a fat little man in a top hat and I didn’t look back.

  I made for the stairs. The vase warped and shook and it was a cold, full bottle of beer. I’d bolted with the intention of throwing it over the side. I was three steps down the stairs before I realized I’d have to go into the Brown with it since it refused to let me let it go.

  The beer bottle became a tortoise shell, sealed with old black wax. A single glance behind me revealed the dark form gliding down the stairs, bony finger still raised in silent accusation. A minor stampede started when a half-dozen revelers heading up met me and fled at the sight of my rapidly-gaining pursuer.

  So down I charged, for lack of anything better to do. I hit the landing on the casino floor and yelled out a warning and headed for the exit.

  My shout was lost in the din. Maybe a dozen people glanced my way, but only briefly, before returning to their games or dates or drinks.

  I hit the doors. Cool midnight air and the unmistakable aroma of the Brown’s muddy waters greeted me. I charged a short distance up the narrow deck. I now held the snow-globe Evis gave Darla and me as a wedding present. As it changed and flowed, I brought my hand down hard on the Queen’s iron rail.

  Whatever it was becoming shattered. Shards flew.

  I brought my hand down again as the specter flung open the Queen’s wide doors and floated toward me, still speaking in a dry, crackling whisper nearly drowned out by the steady thump-thump-thump of the Queen’s paddle wheel.

  More pieces flew, steaming when they hit the water.

  The phantom was nearly upon me.

  I debated pulling my pistol with my left hand, opted for a final hard blow on the rail.

  The thing in my hand shattered and the phantom wailed, and an answering shriek from somewhere out on the water startled us both and gave me the chance to shove my free hand in my pocket and thrust Stitches’s fake huldra right under the hooded spook’s vaporous nose.

  The bubble surrounding the Queen flared bright and as hot as the noonday sun, blinding me. I tried to turn and went down on my ass instead, and I felt a shadow pass quickly over me, and when I managed to stand the deck was dark and I thought I was alone.

  Deeply troubling, said Stitches. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, which showed nothing but spots and a blurry after-image of a length of deck and a robed form. Despite our best efforts, a sophisticated piece of hostile magic was secreted aboard.

  “What was that thing?”

  I heard Evis and Darla and the sound of running feet. I stuck the fake huldra back in my pocket, leaned against the rail, and crossed my arms.

  A distraction. The Regent’s guards were attacked. One is missing. I must attend.

  And she was gone, vanishing with the same ease as my phantom.

  Evis, flanked by grim-faced halfdead bearing blades and guns, bore down on me, surrounding me.

  “It’s gone,” I said. “But you’d better get upstairs. Something hit the Regent’s people. One of them is gone.”

  “How—”

  “Stitches was here. I’m fine. Go.”

  He gave me an exasperated hiss and turned, ordering one of his people to stay behind. The rest flapped away, vanishing into the night like so many agitated crows.

  Darla emerged from the rush of retreating vampires and made her way to me, gun still in her hand.

  “Are you sure it’s gone?”

  “I broke the knife, or whatever it was, and Stitches took care of what was left. I’m fine. You’re not a widow just yet.”

  The lone halfdead ordered to stay behind turned his back and hid himself in the shadows. Darla joined me at the rail, staring out at the dark water.

  “If we just jumped in now, husband, do you think we could swim all the way back to Rannit?”

  “Not in these clothes. We’d sink like rocks.” I put my left hand on Darla’s right, unable to gauge her mood. None of Dad’s advice concerning matters of emotional intimacy with womenfolk extended to the aftermath of near-fatal attacks by magical booby traps. “Anyway, we’re safer here, aboard the Queen. Stitches’s shield is holding.”

  “Did Stitches say that?”

  “Sure she did. Shield is as good as new. Better, in fact. Nothing at all can get past this time.”

  Darla nodded, her eyes still fixed on the night.

  “Then why, dearest, did Buttercup just stroll right through it?”

  I whirled.

  Out on the water, a dozen steps from the Queen’s rail, Buttercup pranced and spun, glowing like a harvest moon. Her dainty little banshee feet kicked up sprays of water, at which she giggled and pointed, but she neither sank nor bothered to swim.

  She was well within the bubble of arcane protection we’d both seen keep the first attackers at bay.

  “Mama Hog in a rowboat,” I said.

  Darla’s gaze followed the rope tied about Buttercup’s waist.

  Mama Hog’s distant voice sounded over the Queen’s churning wheel.

  “Well, don’t just stand there gawkin’, boy! I ain’t plannin’ on swimmin’ aboard!”

  Our vampire friend detached himself from his corner of midnight and joined us at the rail. His dead white eyes were wide, and he forgot his manners and let his toothy jaw hang open.

  “You might as well go tell Evis to set an extra place at our table,” I said as gently as I could. “She’ll swear she doesn’t, but she likes beer and cigars.”

  Buttercup saw us and squealed, lifting up her arms and simply taking flight. Mama cussed as her tiny rowboat was yanked forward, surging ahead so fast the front half of the boat lifted entirely out of the water.

  My halfdead friend’s cloak barely made a sound as he raced for the safety of the Queen’s casino doors.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Now this here steak is a mite under-done,” reported Mama, eyeing her cut of prime beef with airy disdain. Her fine silver knife flew, slicing through the meat as though through butter. “But I reckon I’m much obliged all the same.”

  She chewed and smacked with gusto. Buttercup slid feet-first out of her chair and vanished beneath the table, and instantly I felt a tugging at my meticulously polished shoes.

  I’m not entirely sure halfdead can shed tears, but Evis appeared to be on the verge of doing so, physiology be damned. Gertriss wrung her hands uselessly at his side. Darla leaned forward and from the sudden shrieks and giggles under the table I surmised she caught hold of Buttercup.

  Beside me, Stitches pushed carrots around on a fine white china plate and dabbed now and then at the blood weeping from her tight-sewn eyes. She hadn’t said a word since seating herself.

  I drank beer and waited for the Queen to simply explode.

  “One more time,” said Evis, during a lull in the music being played by the Queen’s imperturbable band. “For Stitches. Tell us how you got here.”

  Mama choked down a chunk of steak and chuckled.

  “Reckon you was awful surprised to see the likes of me step aboard your fancy boat.” She punctuated her words with pokes of her knife. “Old Mama Hog is a woman to be reckoned with, and don’t you forget it.”

  “Mama.” I didn’t raise my voice. “We’re impressed. You may get a hat. Maybe a medal. But right now Stitches needs to know how you got aboard. Because if you did, others can.”

  Mama snorted. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about that.” She fixed Stitches in a beady-eyed Hog stare. “Is she to be trusted? Tell me the truth, boy. Can I tell her what she needs to know without harm to you-knows-who?”

  “You can. On my word. I vouch for her.”

  Stitches rewarded me with the ghost of a sewn-lipped smile.

  “Well. If’n you say so.” She reached up and mopped at her chin and lips with a white linen napkin. “This here,” she said, dragging Buttercup up from beneath the table, “ain’t no ordinary child.”

  I surmised as much, said Stitches, allowing
no humor to creep into her voice. She is a keener. What some folk call a banshee.

  “That’s right. But I tells you this, Miss Fancy Wand-Waver. I done took a likin’ to this child, keener or banshee or whatever else ye wants to call her. She’s my kin, you got that? And I ain’t tolerant, not the least damned bit, of anybody who would ill-use my kinfolk.” Mama’s voice went hard and clear. “Is that understood?”

  Perfectly. Please continue.

  Mama nodded. “Well, I been studyin’ up on ways to keep her from roamin’ the streets at night ever since we took her in. I tried everything and then some, I tell you. Potions. Poultices. Hexes. Charms. Boy, did you know I drawed a hex-sign on my ceiling in silver paint and burnt a damn half-bushel of myrrh potentifying it? Did you?”

  I shook my head no. Hell, Mama could burn whole sewers in that pot of hers and the smell wouldn’t be worsened or improved a single whit.

  “Well, I did. Cost me three month’s wages. And she skipped out of that circle like I’d done naught but sneeze in a flour-sifter. No.” Mama shook her head sagely. “Ain’t nothing can keep this child contained, if’n she’s got a mind to go elsewheres.”

  Evis put his dead white face in his pale, claw-tipped fingers.

  “Mama. The point, please. It’s late.”

  Mama sniffed. “Well, I got to thinkin’. Whatever magic this child has is a powerful old magic, and the likes of me ain’t going to best it.” She cackled and grinned at Stitches. “I reckon the same could be said ‘bout you, ain’t that right?”

  Indubitably.

  “Well, I thinks, if ain’t nothing but Buttercup’s magic equal to Buttercup’s magic, then how can I take hold of some of that?”

  Stitches lifted her chin a full fraction of an inch.

  “So, I took to collectin’ hairs,” said Mama, her wide old face suddenly smug. “Oh, she sheds hairs like any young un’. And she likes havin’ her hair brushed, don’t ye, child?”

  Buttercup giggled and squirmed in her lap.

  “So I took them hairs, I did, and I tied them end to end. And when I had me a nice long line made, I hired a man to weave me a rope around it.”

  I applaud you, Missus Hog. That was a stroke of sheer brilliance.

  Mama actually blushed. Darla saw it too, but wisely said nothing.

  “I don’t know about all that. Just common sense. If’n you wants to hold something that can’t be held, use a rope what can’t be broken. That’s an old Troll sayin’, Miss Stitches. I reckon them Trolls is a mite smarter than what anybody thinks, hereabouts.”

  Indeed. This rope of yours—it allowed you to pass through the shield, unharmed, in the same way the child did.

  “I got to be honest. I didn’t know nothin’ about no magical shields. I wasn’t even intending on coming here. I got the rope back from the rope-maker yesterday. I tied it around her waist at sunset. And damned if she didn’t drag me all the way here like I was one of her dolls.” Mama pushed a grey shock of hair out of her face. “Truth is, she hauled me through Rannit kickin’ and cussin’, and if I hadn’t knocked a man out of his rowboat and jumped in I reckon I’d have been drowned when Little Bit here first took to the Brown.”

  I said it so Stitches wouldn’t have to. “You mean you just kept hanging on, knowing where she was probably heading?”

  Mama grinned a crooked grin.

  “Like I said, boy. She’s kinfolk, or close enough to it. And I knowed she was comin’ cause your fool hide was in danger. Now, can I get one of them fancy cigars?”

  Evis fumbled in his pocket.

  “What do you know about banshee magic?”

  Stitches shrugged. Nothing. Hers is a magic ancient beyond even my ken.

  Something changed in the not-voice Stitches used.

  There are cycles to magic, finder. Seasons, if you will.

  I looked around. Evis was lighting Mama’s cigar. Gertriss and Darla were trying to keep Buttercup seated and inconspicuous. I gathered no one but me was hearing Stitches speak.

  The child you call a banshee was created during an age when arcane conditions were different from those which exist today. If I continue my seasonal analogy, your Buttercup was born on the longest day of summer, when magic burned hot and bright.

  I nodded, hoping Stitches would continue.

  If that was summer, then today is early spring after a long cold winter. The magic that imbued the banshee is not even possible today. Nor will it be for some long time. But she still wields a shadow of it, which means she is unbound by the rules beings born in winter must obey.

  I dared a whisper. “So that’s how she walked through your spells.”

  I doubt she even noticed them.

  Inspiration made my heart sink.

  “How many other of these summer-born critters do you think might be out there?”

  A goodly number. But these creatures, and their domiciles, are known. Cataloging such creatures is commonplace among my peers. Most summer-born slumber, nearly in hibernation, awaiting the end of the magical winter. Those who do not sleep have taken to the Deep. They do not walk among us.

  “That’s a relief,” I whispered, though no one was paying me any attention. Another disturbing thought arose. “But Buttercup wasn’t in any catalog, was she?”

  She was not. Either her childlike nature has kept her hidden or she has hidden behind a childlike nature.

  Buttercup made us both jump by emitting a loud snort of giggling from beneath the table. Darla and Gertriss struggled to pull her back into her seat.

  “So, what does all this have to do with our little dinner cruise?”

  Everything. Stitches paused long enough to waggle her fingers. The noise around me diminished, though mouths still moved and musicians still plucked at their strings. Even those who slumber are not entirely removed from the world. They leave behind—we shall call them agents. Agents dedicated to preventing the rise of cannon. Of rifles. Of steam engines. Of anything and everything that could pose a threat to their masters, when they wake. Stitches gestured, taking in the Queen’s bustling casino floor. So yes. Our little dinner cruise, as you call it, has taken on a significance only a few understand.

  I wasn’t thrilled to be numbered among that few.

  “So the attacks on Avalante. On the Regent. Hell, even on me—it’s these agents trying to keep us from forging cannon big enough to blow their masters to bits?”

  In essence. They see the Regency as a possible point of emergence for technologies and sciences which could one day endanger even the most powerful magical beings.

  “So what the hell is the Regent doing taking long boat rides when he ought to be hiding deep in a bunker somewhere?”

  Conflicts are never resolved through defense alone.

  I grabbed for a beer, found only empties.

  “Draw them out. Make himself such a tempting target, and so far from the High House that the agents can’t resist taking a whack.”

  Thus revealing their allies among Rannit’s sorcerous elite. Hag Mary we know. Her compatriots we do not. Yet.

  “Do me a favor and stop spilling state secrets. I’m getting the uncomfortable impression it’s not healthy to know any of this.”

  The Corpsemaster trusted you. I trust she had reason to do so.

  “I hear the Corpsemaster was a little too careless with her trust. That true, Stitches? About who killed her?”

  She knew damned well who it was we weren’t talking about. The Regent.

  It may interest you to know the huldra was also a relic of the summer years.

  I cussed. No answer was as damning as a cheerful confirmation.

  “That explains all the sudden interest in it. Can’t have that running loose.”

  Indeed. I still fail to understand why the Corpsemaster allowed such a potent object to be introduced so haphazardly in the midst of a growing conflict.

  “She had a wicked sense of humor.”

  The noise around us returned to its previous level. Darla and Gertriss
looked up suddenly, as though I’d spoken.

  “Boss?”

  “Dear?”

  “Nothing. Was just calling for Dutson. He owes me a beer.”

  The omnipresent Dutson appeared at my side, bearing a frosty brown bottle and a clean crystal glass.

  “Shall I pour, sir?”

  I indicated my assent with a wave of my aristocratic right hand and was pleased when it didn’t shake.

  If what Stitches said was true, our little dinner cruise was drawing far more interest than I’d ever imagined possible.

  “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “A rowboat and a fast horse.”

  Dutson merely nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  He toddled away. Darla gave me a questioning glance. I grinned and shrugged, which is our private code for ‘explanations will follow.’

  Mama Hog broke the silence that followed with a long country belch. “Better out than in,” she announced through a proud gap-toothed grin. “I’d like another plate of them mashed-up taters, if’n you please.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Evis.

  Mama assumed a rare expression of surprise. “Well, never ye mind, then.”

  Gertriss went pale, put a hand up to cover her mouth. I turned to see what they were seeing.

  The Regent isn’t a tall man. Nor is he physically remarkable in any way. He’s neither young nor old, fat nor thin, muscular nor flabby. His hair is dark, halfway between black and brown. His nose is neither hawkish nor flat. He’s got a chin, but I’ve seen stronger. He’s so unremarkable he can, for instance, walk through a crowded casino without attracting the kind of attention one would expect for the most powerful man in all the remnants of the Kingdom.

  Oh, more than a few realized who it was that brushed past them. Faces turned his way. Jaws dropped. More than one celebrant assumed the panicked flush of the undiscovered criminal and darted unceremoniously for the Queen’s upper decks. But most just kept on drinking or rolling dice or glaring at their cards, unaware and blissful because of it.

  The Regent might be physically unremarkable, but the woman on his arm was remarkable in every way. She wore a tight black gown worked with threads of silver that glittered and shone in the Queen’s magical lamps. Her long black hair was braided and piled high in the fashion of fine city ladies. Her shoulders and arms were scandalously bare, and the contrast of her pale skin and the black gown was striking. She didn’t smile. Her eyes, big and dark, never stopped moving among the crowd, and something in my gut told me she was more dangerous in that tight black gown than any two dozen of Avalante’s halfdead foot soldiers, guns or not.