by Frank Tuttle
“Well, damned if it ain’t His Highness hisself,” muttered Mama Hog. “Looks like he’s headin’ this way, too.” Mama gave Evis a wink. “Now, I’ll be more’n willing to share my taters with the man.”
Evis repeated his earthy expletive. Gertriss stood, putting her hand light on Mama Hog’s elbow.
“Mama, why don’t we take Buttercup upstairs?”
Mama hooted with laughter, but rose and threw down her napkin. “I was just messin’ with you, boy. Thank ye kindly for the meal. I’ll be leavin’ you to your business.”
And then she surprised us all by nodding, taking Buttercup by her hand, and walking quietly away.
Mama was right. The Regent was making a leisurely beeline right for us.
“Evis, say the word. Do we stay or go?”
“Stay,” said Evis. “If he’d wanted to talk privately he’d have sent for me.”
“We’ll keep it brief,” I said. “Just ‘Yes, Your Honor’ and ‘No, Your Honor.’ The less said the better.”
And then, without warning, the Regent stood before us.
“Do not stand,” he said. His voice was deep and smooth and he didn’t quite smile as he spoke. “And do not salute. Let’s not turn this into a state event.”
Dutson appeared, a pair of waiters in tow. Within seconds the table was cleared, a new tablecloth laid, and a pair of new places were set.
We kept our mouths shut. The Regent seated his lady friend and then settled into his own chair. We’d become the center of attention for maybe a dozen onlookers, but no more.
Like everyone else, I’ve heard rumors that the man is a secret sorcerer. At that moment, I believed it.
“I trust your accommodations are acceptable, sir.” It was Evis who broke the silence.
The Regent nodded curtly. A waiter I’d never seen placed a long-stemmed glass of wine by the Regent’s hand. He picked it up and made a show of swirling it about and smelling it, but he never brought it to his lips.
“They are more than adequate, Mr. Prestley. I commend your House.” He put down his untouched wine. “Mr. Markhat. Mrs. Markhat. Sorceress.”
Each of us nodded. Darla and I managed a somber ‘Your Honor.’
“You were attacked.” He spoke to me. His eyes, if you dared look into them, were brown. There wasn’t a damned thing ordinary about his gaze.
“I was. Or I seemed to be. I suppose the hex could have been randomly choosing targets and I got lucky.” Darla kicked me in my shin. “Your Honor.”
“I think not. Neither do you. We both suspect the next attempt on my life will occur soon. Perhaps at this table.” He shrugged and glanced at his silent companion. “I might as well taste the wine, don’t you think?”
She smiled, displaying teeth longer and sharper than any halfdead ever had. She blinked, and her eyes changed, showing yellow vertical slits. Long black talons sprang from her elegant fingertips.
The woman hissed. Her breath stank of the grave.
The Regent smiled a small smile, right at me. “My companion suggests caution.”
The woman blinked and her eyes were normal. She closed her lips. Her talons retracted. Each left a tiny drop of glistening venom where they had lain.
The Regent kept looking at me. I spoke only when it became obvious Evis wasn’t going to. “So your people didn’t manage to grab the attacker?”
Darla kicked me again.
“The attack was designed to occur only after my assailant was safely away,” replied the Regent. “The hexed dagger, as you call it, drew attention to you. While my staff was occupied determining the nature of that threat, the real attack commenced. It was invisible. Entirely arcane. Surprisingly powerful.”
I was seated two places down from the Regent, on a boat under attack by bogeymen right out of legend, being glared at by a female with talons and fangs. I decided we’d left our bag of caution back in Rannit and plowed in before Darla could contrive to stuff a napkin in my mouth.
“Old magic, was it? Something out of legend?”
“Precisely. Fortunately, I too have access to unique and powerful arcana. Isn’t that right, my dear?”
His woman purred. The sound of it raised every hair I had.
“And you think they might try again here, any moment.” In a crowded casino, I nearly added. And you took a seat right by my wife.
“It’s almost as if I’m taunting them, isn’t it, Mr. Markhat? Barging down here, my wand-wavers nowhere in sight, nothing to protect me but a single beautiful woman.” The creature’s purring grew louder. If she’d had a tail, she’d have swished it languidly. “That’s just the sort of behavior one might expect from an arrogant megalomaniac. Carelessly endangering the lives of innocents because he believes in his own innate invincibility.”
“Not what I said.”
“But what you meant. And, if that were the case, you would be correct. But I must ask you to trust me, Mr. Markhat. I assure you there is a method, as they say, to my madness.”
Trust you? I thought. Like the Corpsemaster trusted you?
Careful, said Stitches in a tiny whisper in my head. Think happy thoughts. Or at least not treasonous ones.
“You’re the boss,” I said. I met his eyes but didn’t attempt to smile. “We’re all just trying to get you to Bel Loit and back alive.”
“In that, I wish you luck. Now I will try my hand at the tables. Mr. Prestley. Join us.”
Evis rose with all the cheer and enthusiasm of a man bound for the gallows.
“Don’t be so glum, Mr. Prestley. I have no intention of looting Avalante’s coffers this evening. I am not a skilled gambler.”
“Somehow I doubt that. Your Honor,” I said. Darla hissed, but my words were out.
The Regent laughed. “Remember your mission, Mr. Markhat. Bel Loit and back, alive.”
His cat-eyed woman showed me her teeth again. Then the Regent turned and walked away, with Evis on his left, and the woman slinking on his right. Darla punched me in the ribs. “What happened to ‘Yes, Your Honor’ and ‘No, Your Honor?’“
I rose. “Light of my life, would you be so good as to see Mama put somewhere safe for the night, and send Gertriss my way?”
She frowned but nodded. “And then I’ll join you.”
We both shall, said Stitches. She stood too, keeping her hood pulled low on her face. I have some instruments to fetch.
“So you didn’t know the woman was a cat-thing either?”
You surprise me, Markhat. No. I did not. I assumed she was a bodyguard, perhaps a mistress. Nothing about her suggested an extraordinary nature.
“Another old magic, right out of legend?”
I simply do not know. She turned and made for the stair.
“What was that all about?” asked Darla.
“Surprises all around. Stitches has gone to fetch her good wands.”
“I’m beginning to wish we ran a dairy farm.” Darla found a grin. “I’ll be right back.”
I watched her vanish into the crowd. Then I unbuttoned my jacket and pulled out my new revolver and checked it right there at the table.
Toadsticker hung at my side. I had a facsimile magic tortoise shell in one pocket and a gun in a chest holster. I had a dagger in my right boot and my old Army knife in an ankle sheath on my left leg. I was armed as well as a well-dressed man could be, and I still felt naked, knowing what might be wandering around out there among the gamblers and the revelers and the well-heeled ne’er-do-wells.
I resolved to tear up my finder’s license and take up turnip ranching if and when the Queen docked back at Rannit.
I plunged into the crowd, looking for trouble.
Chapter Thirteen
Trouble, as always, wasn’t hard to find.
She’d not been a lovely woman. She’d had bug eyes and a weak chin and the kind of nose that evokes words such as “beak” or “proboscis” as descriptors. Her frown lines were deep and marked and spoke of a face set perpetually in a fierce, disapproving scowl.
>
Death had eased her scowl, at least. Now her bug eyes were wide open, as if in mild surprise.
Whoever stabbed her had done so with sufficient force to push a slender blade through her chest and through her heart and out her back. She died instantly, I guessed, since there was barely any blood from the single stab wound.
I found her sitting there—eyes open, head just beginning to slump—two tables from where Evis and the Regent and the Regent’s cat-eyed creature played roulette while a cheering crowd looked on.
I sat down beside her before she fell. I pulled her face close to mine and looked about.
The table was filled with empty glasses. The three other chairs were pushed back. I gathered the dead woman’s companions had found reasons to leave her alone. I hoped none would return before I came up with a way to get her body out of sight.
Finally, for lack of a better plan, I simply scooped her up, held her as though I was helping her walk, and headed for the nearest of the Queen’s opulent water closets.
She was light, all skin and bones. A minute ago she’d been alive. Scowling and bug-eyed, maybe, but alive. Someone had simply walked up to her and run her through, and I wondered if I could have saved her by being half a dozen steps closer or ten seconds faster.
I hit the door, which banged as it opened. Bright light washed over me, and I squinted as the attendant, a big man I recalled as Rainy Day, hurried to me.
“Sir,” he began. “This is the gentleman’s room. You can’t bring a lady in here.”
“Rainy, can you lock this door?”
“I said you can’t have a woman in here. This ain’t no place for that.”
I turned us so he could see her face. Even men who haven’t seen much death damned well know the look of it.
Rainy took in a quick breath. I remembered that Rainy seemed a bit slow. But he was catching on fast.
“Yes sir, I can lock it from the outside.”
“Lock it. Go find Evis. Tell him we’ve got another special problem. You got that? Say it for me.”
“I am to tell Mr. Prestley we have another special problem.”
“Good man. Get to it.”
He got, heeling and toeing it. I heard him lock the door and I laid the dead woman on the floor.
I was glad for the bright lights. I’d been right about the single stab wound. I hoped she’d died without suffering. She looked old and frail, there on the floor.
I closed her eyes. Noticed a trickle of blood dotting the right corner of her mouth.
When I pushed her lips and teeth apart, I saw that she had no tongue. It had been cut away. One clean slice. Done after she was stabbed. Almost no blood.
She had no pockets, of course. If she’d had a purse or a clutch, I’d foolishly left it behind.
Someone tried the restroom door handle.
I pulled my pistol.
“We’re full up in here,” I called. “Hit the next one.”
The handle stopped jiggling.
First eyes. Now a tongue. I reached the unsettling conclusion that someone—or something—was gathering the ingredients for a ritual, or a spell.
“I’m sorry you got caught up in this,” I said. She was losing color fast. “Sorry I didn’t stop it.”
I heard a key slide into the lock, heard Rainy speaking in excited tones just beyond the door. I didn’t holster my pistol.
The door opened and half a dozen Avalante soldiers piled in, two halfdead among them.
No Evis, though.
The two halfdead, oblivious to my drawn gun, joined me in kneeling around the body. I didn’t recognize either of them.
“Do you know her?” asked one.
“I don’t. She was stabbed. Her tongue was also removed.”
The other halfdead laid his palm upon her forehead and surprised me by saying a prayer.
“We have been instructed to remove the body via the dunways,” said the first when the prayer was done. “Mr. Prestley will see you shortly. Unless you can tell us who did this?”
I shook my head no. “The bastard is careful. I just saw her getting ready to fall. He was probably watching me the whole time, but no. I saw nothing.”
They nodded and took up the dead women as easily as I would heft a napkin.
“Report to Mr. Prestley,” said a halfdead to his living associates. “Double the security detail on the casino floor. Also the halls on the upper decks.”
“Yes, sir.”
And then they vanished, leaving me and Rainy alone.
A single spot of blood marred Rainy’s immaculate floor.
“It ain’t right,” he said as he fetched rags and a bucket. “Killin’ women like that.” He knelt and began to scrub. “But you’re Captain Markhat. You’re goin’ to catch the man what did this, ain’t you?”
“I hope so.”
“I hope so too.”
Rainy scrubbed. I walked, the dead woman’s eyes still clear in my mind.
Darla found me before I’d gone a dozen steps beyond the bathroom.
“Oh no.”
I took her hand and forced a grin. “Another murder. I’ve taken care of the body. Keep an eye out for Stitches.”
Darla forced her own smile for the benefit of anyone watching, and added a laugh as well. “Who, honey?”
“I don’t know. A woman. Let’s go watch the Regent.”
Darla nodded and took my arm as we ambled toward the Regent’s cheering retinue.
“Mama’s upstairs with Buttercup. I had to put her in our room.”
“Buttercup would wind up with us anyway.”
“You’re rattled, husband.” We elbowed our way through a tight-packed mob of men watching some complicated game of dice and spinning wheels marked with grinning skulls. “Bad, was it?”
“Took her tongue.”
Darla squeezed my arm and said nothing.
“Dammit, Stitches, where are you?”
We were close enough to the Regent’s card table to see Evis’s back and the top of the cat-woman’s hair. I was about to shove my way through to Evis when someone yanked at my sleeve.
“Boy.” Mama glared up at me. “I ain’t no fancy Dark House wand-waver, but I seen some things and heared some things and I come to tell you whether you wants to listen or not.” Mama saw Darla’s questioning glance and snorted. “I left the young ‘un with Gertriss. Might keep her out of harm’s way for a bit. Now. We needs to talk.”
“That we do, Mama. I’m glad to see you.”
“Somebody knock you one in the head?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure they’ve got plans in that regard.” Evis and the Regent were surrounded by twenty or more of Avalante’s most lethal waiters. I figured another forty or so were hiding in the shadows, ready to pounce.
“Let’s find a quiet corner somewhere.”
We did. It just happened to be a table right next to the restroom where Rainy was probably still scrubbing blood off the floor. I got everyone seated, put my back to the wall, and raised my voice as much as I dared.
“Mama,” I said. “I’ve got a hunch. So tell me—if I handed you a bag and in it I had a man’s two eyes and a woman’s tongue, what could you make out of it?”
Mama pondered for a moment.
“That ain’t no kind of magic for the likes of you or me,” she said. “Don’t reckon I could do nothin’. But…”
“Dammit, Mama, but what?”
Mama leaned toward me. “Was the woman what they call sharp-tongued?”
“Hell if I know.” I thought back to her face. “Probably. Say she was. What then?”
“It’s what you’d call an old wives’ tale. ‘Sharp eyes, sharp tongue, sharp ears, infant’s lung.’“
“Ghastly,” said Darla. She pulled her gun, not even bothering to hide it anymore.
“It ain’t nothin’ but an old song now,” said Mama. “But it’s a song about Elves. How they could make their selves invisible. Move about, murderin’ and stealin’. Damn, boy.” She made some
complicated gesture with her hands. “Ain’t been a Elf seen on this side of the Sea for ten hundred years. You sayin’ there’s one running around loose on this here boat?”
“I’m not saying that, Mama. But someone took a man’s eyes, and a woman’s tongue. I’m just wondering why, and what they might want next.”
Sharp eyes, sharp tongue, sharp ears, infant’s lung.
“Ain’t a baby on this tub,” announced Mama. “I’d know, and there ain’t.”
“Buttercup,” said Darla in a whisper. “Some might consider her a child. A babe. Words change with time.” Her eyes went bright and hard. “Shall I go sit with Gertriss?”
“You’re not leaving my sight. Buttercup probably ate the last Elf this side of the Sea a thousand years ago. Relax. She’s the safest soul aboard.”
“If’n this is a Elf,” said Mama, scratching at her hairy chin, “then we got troubles, boy. A Elf can use that Elf magic—what they calls a glamour—to make you see things that ain’t there, or not see things what is.”
“Is that true, Mama, or just an old wives’ tale?”
“Well, it ain’t like I got an Elf in my closet to study on. But I reckon them stories is better’n half true. Elves was mean and cruel and tricky, and they’d as soon gut ye as say hello. And since they can make out to be people they ain’t, they’re damn good at the guttin’ part.”
A dread inspiration hit. Elves. Summer-born, as Stitches put it. What if a summer-born Elf and its unnaturally powerful glamour stepped undetected through her magical testing dingus?
What if the Elf had been with us all along, blithely sidestepping Stitches and her sophisticated arcane tools since we’d left Rannit?
And what if they were gathering ingredients for a grisly spellwork that would make them truly invisible?
“Eyes, tongues, ears, lungs,” I said aloud. Ears would be easy to find. Lungs not so much, especially from an infant.