by Glen Cook
“Belinda planned to use them somehow. And Humility had them there to look out for me, too. Belinda changed her mind and paid them off.”
“After she got warned off.”
I might want to talk to her about that.
No. She would wonder how you knew. Then she would conclude that her hairnet is not infallible.
Singe got up. “Shut the door behind me.” And, “I won’t be long.”
She wasn’t. I was still standing there, enjoying a mind-sharing experience with the Dead Man, cataloging faces in the street. I watched Singe approach with two brawny ratwomen. Old Bones told me, Nothing remarkable out there. One watcher from Miss Contague’s enterprise whose sole task is to see who else is watching.
“That’s it? There’s nobody from the Al-Khar?” I opened up for Singe.
Does the woman up the street still maintain a Watch outpost?
“Get with the times. It’s not the Watch anymore. It’s the Civil Guard these days.”
And the answer to the question? The woman up the street?
“Mrs. Cardonlos? Singe? Is Mrs. Cardonlos still a stringer for the red tops?”
“Yes. But since you have been gone she does not have a regular team staying there. She rents rooms for real, now. Let me get these two started on Mr. Dotes.”
The burly, badly dressed ratwomen looked at Singe like she was a goddess. They’d never seen a ratperson in a conversation of equals with a human. And Singe was female!
One eyed me like she thought there was something wrong with me.
I followed but stayed in the hallway while Singe explained the job. The ratwomen had done this kind of work before. They had no trouble understanding. Cued by the Dead Man, Dean brought a tray with food for the help as well as Morley.
Before he went back to the kitchen Dean offered a wan smile and said, “The excitement is back.”
Not really. We were going to sit here and do every bit of the nothing we had done at Fire and Ice. Everything else would be in the hands of others. Professionals. And criminals.
A warn-off by the gods themselves would not keep Belinda from digging.
I hoped no one on the law-and-order side pushed her. She was crazy enough to push back.
Dean went to bed before the ratwomen finished. I helped Singe clean up; then we resumed gossiping and honoring Weider’s beer.
It didn’t take much of the latter to slow me down.
I meant to quiz Singe on how I could handle Tinnie. But I stayed sober enough to realize that was stupid. Singe was barely an adult. She wasn’t human. And Tinnie was unique, possibly unfathomable by Tinnie Tate herself.
Eventually I dragged myself upstairs. My room was the way I had left it, except that somebody had cleaned it and had made up the bed with fresh linens.
Singe was altogether too efficient. And was, probably, resenting my intrusion into her quiet, orderly world.
30
There were four sleeping rooms on the second floor of my house. The biggest, stretching across the front, was mine. Dean’s room spanned the house in back, except for a storage closet and space taken by the stairs. Singe occupied the largest of the remaining rooms, which sat on the west side of the central hallway. In area, it almost matched Dean’s. The fourth room — our guest room — contained a seldom-used bed and lots of stuff that should have been thrown away. We used to hide somebody there once in a while.
There were two real, glazed windows in my room. They were not barred because there was no easy way for villains to get at them. Both looked down on Macunado Street. The one to the east might as well have not existed. I’ve never opened it and seldom looked out it. The other, beside the head of my bed, had seen some action. Once upon a time I would stare out it while I ruminated. Tonight, as always in warm weather, it was open a few inches so cool night air could get inside.
I liked sleeping in a cool room.
I had the opportunity that night. The temperature plummeted after sundown. At one point I wakened and added a light blanket to the sheet that had been adequate earlier. Later, I wakened again and used the chamber pot, setting some beer free. Then I wakened a third time, needing a heavier cover and with my bladder ready to explode.
The sky had been overcast during the afternoon and evening. That had cleared. The light of an unseen moon splashed the rooftops and turned them into a weird faerie landscape.
My aim was less than perfect. I missed the pot completely to start. Disgusting. I gobbled something incoherent meant to be an appeal to the Dead Man. No telling what I thought he could do. I got no response, anyway.
Then I saw the ghost.
The specter drifted down out of the night and came toward my window like a vampire in a dream. “But vampires don’t really fly,” I reminded myself. “They just jump really far.” Vampires can leap for altitude or distance but they don’t flit like bats. Nor do they turn into bats, much as they might want the prey community to think they do.
I calmed myself, completed my business, formulated a plan for cleaning up before Singe or Dean discovered the evidence. Then I checked the window. And nearly panicked.
The flying woman was still there, hair and clothing streaming in the breeze. Her dress was something light and white that, in moonlight, made me think of fashionable grave wear. And reminded me of what I had seen vampire brides wearing in the nests in the adventure where I first butted heads with Tinnie Tate.
My ears kicked in. I heard my name. Then my brain shed sleep enough to put it all together. That was the Windwalker, Furious Tide of Light. And she wanted in.
So, naturally, I remembered that vampires, like most evils, have to be invited in the first time. And I recalled my reaction to this woman last time our paths crossed.
She didn’t look like she had seduction in mind. She looked troubled.
I raised the window as high as it would go, which was not much. I turned up my bedside lamp. The Windwalker, being a wisp of a woman, drifted through the narrow opening.
I settled on the edge of my bed, waited, hoping she would feel no need to pace over there by the chamber pot. She glanced around, shoved my dirty clothes off the only chair, settled. She turned the lamp back down. “A watcher might wonder.”
Assuming he failed to notice a flying woman in her nightgown sliding in the window. “You didn’t ride anything this time.”
“A broomstick isn’t necessary.” She noted my interest in her apparel. “The King held a ball at Summer Hall. I was invited. He has aspirations.” She spoke softly.
So. Not a nightgown. “I see.” I matched her soft voice. Singe would invite herself to join us if she heard us talking. “And now you’re here.”
“Yes. It was on the way.”
Only by the most circuitous route.
31
“I’m frightened. Strange things are happening. They’re outside my control. I don’t deal well with that sort of circumstance.”
She spoke like she wanted me to understand, not like she wanted to be comforted, which was how my head worked when she was around.
“I’m lost but I’m listening.”
“Otherwise, I’m not sure what my problem is. Actually, I just know that one is shaping up. Besides being able to stroll through the air I’m strongly intuitive, but randomly. I can’t control it and don’t dare rely on it. Right now I intuit that something abidingly dark is afoot. Powerful people are trying to cover it up. I can’t understand why.”
“You wouldn’t be one of those yourself, would you?”
She seemed genuinely confused. “What do you mean?”
“Last time I was involved in weird goings-on involving secret labs and illegal experiments, your daughter and her friends were in the middle of it. You and your father went balls to the wall to make sure they didn’t get eaten alive for their foolishness.”
“Kevans isn’t involved this time. I don’t think any of the Faction kids are.”
Kevans’ gang of misfit genius friends called themselves the Faction.
“How come it sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself?”
“I admit it. Kevans does lie to me. When I see her. Which is hardly ever anymore.”
“She’s not living with you?”
“She has her own place. I don’t think she learned much last time. And I’m scared that some of her other friends might be involved. Or might know who is. And Kevans wouldn’t say.”
“Teen solidarity. But, involved in what?”
“Exactly.”
“Teen solidarity usually collapses in the face of real consequences.”
“I don’t think Kevans is involved.” She was waffling based on wishful thinking. “But she might be close to someone who is. I don’t want to press her. Our relationship is complicated and fragile.”
“I know. But how come you’re here?”
“Let me tell you about my week.” Which she did, wasting few words. “When the business on the edge of Elf Town broke Prince Rupert asked me to investigate. That ended after we found the warehouse where somebody was using parts from dead bodies to assemble custom zombies.”
“Singe told me.”
“I thought she would. She got warned off before I did.”
“Uhm?”
“What did she tell you about that hellhole?”
I sketched Singe’s report.
Furious Tide of Light said, “The girl who stayed in that room and slept with that stuffed bear was no captive.”
Singe was sure the room’s inmate had been a girl, too. “Singe said she was young.”
“In terms of socialization, possibly. But no child would have the strength and knowledge to do what she was doing.”
I ruminated briefly, then said, “An old woman. A goat cart. Something that behaved like and might have been a giant slug. Two dead men, cut down by sorcery...”
“Who have vanished. I was kept away from them. The old woman vanished, too. Cart and goats have gone the way of the dead men.”
“And nothing has happened since.” I guessed because I hadn’t even been fed what the mushrooms get.
“Nothing.”
“But you’re worried about Kevans. You’ve developed some disturbing suspicions.”
“Not really. I have some fears. I’ve been unable to support them, which is a good thing. I am intuitively convinced that we’re dealing with someone young, female, powerful, rogue, and entirely amoral, though.”
“I see. But back to basics. How come you’re here? What do you want from me?” I was determined to make a fully adult effort to remain faithful to the redhead in my life.
“I want to hire you. I think. I remember you from before.” The lighting was feeble but it was enough to reveal her embarrassment.
“I’m taken.”
Wan smile, without comment, in a manner that said exactly what she was thinking. My defenses were male defenses. And she did have a power besides intuition and flight. She could excite the statue of a dead general if she chose to turn it on.
I had seen her reduce a crowd of skilled tradesmen to drooling idiots with no conscious effort.
But tonight she was totally serious.
I wished I knew her situation better. She said she was estranged from her father and daughter. How much so? Her father had run every detail of her life, back when, despite her being one of the most powerful sorcerers in the kingdom. She had not been long on social skills. I couldn’t imagine yesterday’s Furious Tide of Light surviving on her own.
I shifted the subject. “What about the other Faction girls? I don’t recall them that well. Could one of them be our resurrection man?”
“I only knew the ones that came to our house. They were all odd. There were more than I saw. Kids came and went. Some never really belonged to the clique.”
“And some were cross-dressers. Including Kevans.”
“That, too.”
“Any of those kids connected to the Royal Family?”
She shrugged, not surprised. She had considered the question. “Not that I know of.”
“What’s the mood on the Hill?”
She frowned. Maybe she hadn’t thought about that.
“This will reflect on all of you. You want to police yourselves. This makes it look like you need outside help. The villain fled to the Hill twice.”
“No. Toward the Hill.”
I had to give her that. The monster may have done that as misdirection. “What are your neighbors saying?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have much to do with them. I’m not comfortable with the ways they think.”
The mental work behind the mad laboratory only exaggerated the attitudes of most Hill folk. Furious Tide of Light was the most sane and least dangerous of any I’d ever met.
“All right. Let’s lay it out. Straight up honest. What do you want?”
“I don’t want to be shut out. I guess Prince Rupert doesn’t trust me after the thing with the giant bugs.”
“Understandable. That involved another secret lab.”
“I know. I see why he might think what he’s thinking. That doesn’t change what I feel. I want you to help find out what’s really going on.”
“All right. You’re worried about your daughter. But why not stand back and let the professionals do their job?”
She did not offer an answer.
“So. You’re not just worried. You want to be a step ahead so you can cover for her again. Even if she’s behind the ugliest criminal incident we’ve seen in years.”
“Yes. Sort of.”
“Then Prince Rupert did the right thing when he shut you out.”
“She’s my baby, Garrett. I can’t just let her...”
“And you can’t keep covering. If she can’t get a handle on the concept of consequences she’ll just keep getting into trouble. You saw the inside of that warehouse. And six people died in two days. You can’t make excuses and cover up something like that.”
She shrugged. She was near the point where many women turn on the waterworks. She refrained.
32
A tree fell in the wilderness inside my head. Lucky me, I was there to hear the thud. “You’ve been thinking about this since you saw that stuffed bear.”
She admitted, “Your ratgirl friend made me think you were more involved than you said.”
“Singe was working for Belinda Contague. She’s an independent operator. I don’t live here anymore. Which you know. Because you checked up.”
She nodded.
“Then you know my real part in everything.”
“You’re really babysitting your friend.”
I nodded.
“Don’t you want to know who did it?”
I nodded again. “But I’ve gotten patient in my old age. I won’t do anything till Morley is ready. If the Guard or the Syndicate haven’t dealt with it by then we’ll see what we can do. It seems odd for you to be pushing revenge when you’re afraid your daughter might be involved.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m scared and out of my depth. You’re the only one I know who does what you do.”
I believed her. Including that she would hire me when I might head straight for the kid she wanted to protect. She had been sheltered her whole life.
“So you figure on defying the Prince — for Kevans’ sake, even though the best thing now would be to let everything take its course.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing! I never learned how. All I’ve ever had to do is be the Windwalker, Furious Tide of Light. I can do that. I can scatter an enemy regiment. I can bring down a castle. But I never learned how to raise a daughter. I never dealt with the quotidian world. Barate handled that so I could focus on being a prodigy.”
I wanted to ask about her father but suspected that he would be an unwelcome subject.
“Let’s back up to when you got the idea that Kevans — or the Faction — might be involved.” I would be covering ground already trodden but she seemed inclined to lurk in the shadow of the truth, now.
“In that warehouse. In that room. That stuffed animal belonged to Kevans. Though I haven’t seen it for years.”
“You’re sure?” I reminded myself that the simplest and most obvious explanation is usually the right one.
“There were other things that reminded me of the Faction. Rupert got the same feeling.” So she had seen the Prince at her party.
“You need to talk to Kevans. Straight up, woman to woman, no drama. Then see Rupert again. Be square with him. He’ll be square with you if he’s really a friend. You might even talk it over with Barate. You’re operating on emotion right now. Mostly on fear. You need good information. And you need to decide where you stand on the crime itself, personalities aside.”
“I hoped you could gather the information.”
She wasn’t hearing me. “Don’t take the dark side in this. It will just destroy you.”
Her jaw tightened. She was going to get stubborn.
“Talk to those people. You have to realize that they’ll go hard after whoever created that lab. The Hill is probably a turned-up ants’ nest. Nasty people are going to start poking haystacks and turning over rocks.”
Her expression told me that she hadn’t really considered the reaction of her own class. Those people take a dim and lethal view of rogue sorcery.
“You’re sure you won’t help me?”
“I can’t. Not how you want. Not however much I would like to. I have to stay here, with my friend. That goes to the bedrock of who I am. I’m here even though it could mean the end of my relationship with a woman who...”
She cut me off. She didn’t need to hear that. “All right. I won’t put you in harm’s way. I’ll do the digging and use you as a sounding board. You just tell me what to do and how to do it.”
Startled, I realized that we were not alone. I’d caught the ghost of a sense of amusement from down below.
“I’ve told you the first thing. The most important thing. Talk to people. An honest exchange could save us all a ton of trouble.”
She didn’t like that idea.
“If this is going to happen you have to put aside your quirks. You have to gut it up and go face-to-face. Promise me you’ll see Rupert, Barate, and Kevans if you can, tomorrow.”