Gilded Latten Bones

by Glen Cook

  The Windwalker demanded, “You’re completely sure you don’t have anything more to tell us?” I hoped she really was capable of separating Furious Tide of Light from Strafa Algarda.

  She stepped in till she and Kevans were nose to nose. She whispered. The girl began to shiver. She was ready to break down but, still, did not have anything to say.

  If she did know anything it was something she would not surrender willingly.

  I indulged a vain hope that the Dead Man was playing possum.

  The Windwalker focused on Kevans but included her audience when making it clear that TunFaire faced a test of right and wrong more terrible than any since the age of uncontrolled experimental sorcery that had produced the ratpeople, plus worse beasts that had been exterminated during the hysterical public response.

  Another Time of Troubles might be coming. Ignorance and fear are with us always. Stupid is all-pervasive. TunFaire wallows in bottomless reservoirs of that. A plague of zombies could trigger something way out of proportion to the horrors we had seen.

  The Windwalker changed her approach. “Kevans, come with me.” She used her Windwalker voice.

  They went to my old office. It was quiet over there. Morley eased himself into the more comfortable chair that Kevans had vacated. He struggled to conceal his discomfort. “I hate being like this,” he said softly.

  “You’ve been hurt before.”

  “Not like this. Not this stupidly. Any other time I always knew why. Singe. Anyone find out who paid that healer to drug me?”

  “That would have a yes and no answer. The Dead Man saw the woman inside the healer’s mind, but only vaguely.” She tipped a hand toward Penny’s sketches. “Probably her. Miss Contague, with an assist from Mr. Kolda and reluctant cooperation from the Children of the Light, is pursuing that.” Then she volunteered, “Other acquaintances are investigating other things. The reports aren’t encouraging. It’s amazing that so much wickedness can leave so little evidence. These villains are heinous but careful.”

  I asked a question that had been nagging me. “Why?”

  “Garrett?”

  “Why are these people doing what they’re doing? If we knew that the search range would narrow considerable.”

  Singe still looked puzzled.

  “Come on. These villains didn’t just get up some morning and decide, ‘Let’s have some fun. Let’s cut up dead people and build some jigsaw zombies.’”

  “They are not zombies, Garrett.”

  Literal minds! “Whatever. You know what I mean.”

  “Yes. And you are correct. The question of motive has not come up in so plain a form. The behavior we have seen may have little to do with that.”

  I said, “It has to do with covering up. A dumb effort to quash something that never got out. That’s what attracted attention.”

  “We may never know why. I expect the Hill people to get to them first. They have the most resources.”

  Probably. Those people insist.

  One of those people came back with her daughter. The daughter was pale. The Windwalker looked grim. “Kevans will tell Barate to come see you. She and Mr. Prose will then meet me at the warehouse in Elf Town. Question Barate, then send him to join us. No excuses. I don’t expect that he will know anything so it shouldn’t take long. Is there anything else you want from these two?”

  “No.”

  Kyra certainly had something but she kept her mouth shut.

  Kip would have some explaining to do later.

  Singe handled the door work.

  The instant that shut Morley observed, “That woman can be fierce when the mood takes her.”

  “She didn’t think they were telling the whole truth.” I turned to Kyra. “So now we need to get you home safely.”

  TunFaire suffered ever more virulent paroxysms of law and order but a beauty like Kyra still rated an escort, if only to keep the chatter down.

  I was about to volunteer. Singe spoke up first. “Dan, please ask Toast and Packer to do the honors.” She followed that with burning eye contact. There would be no adolescent bravura on her watch.

  I folded.

  Were Singe human she would have sneered and told me I was painfully predictable.

  She could play me as easily as Tinnie could. Maybe more so because with her my ego did not feel compelled to take stands.

  And Kyra never argued.

  The apprentice redhead was feeling exceptionally vulnerable.

  Toast and Packer turned out to be the ratmen who had come with Dollar Dan.

  72

  The population of the house on Macunado continued to dwindle. Dean and Penny overruled me and went out to do some desperately needed shopping. Dollar Dan tagged along. I could not refute Dean’s contention that all the entertaining had seen our bones get picked. The old man kept muttering about having trouble remembering the recipe for water soup, which was what we would be eating if he didn’t go.

  He clinched the deal by telling me he needed to see Jerry the beer guy. We would find ourselves in a desert otherwise.

  One keg was dry. The other was down to a slosh.

  Singe wore the ratgirl equivalent of a troubled frown after she recorded the advance she had given Dean.

  “Reality catching up?” I asked.

  “Not exactly. I noticed that Amalgamated is eleven days late with the quarterly dividend. We’ll need that money if we keep pouring cash into this case the way we have been.”

  I heard “we” a lot but chose not to quibble.

  She continued, “Considering the season, the dividend ought to be strong. I will claim penalty interest.”

  Her shoulders hunched like she expected me to take the company line against my interest as an investor.

  I disappointed her.

  I didn’t know what she was talking about. I left that sort of stuff to her. She understood it. She reveled in it. She wallowed in it when she could.

  Playmate joined us, trying to sub for Dean. He brought tea but was too shaky to manage pouring it.

  Morley told him, “Sit your ass down, man! You look like hell.”

  I said, “He’s two hundred percent better than when he got here.”

  Singe fiddled with her papers, getting more restive by the moment. Finally, she snapped, “Take it across the hall, boys. Take it next door. Take it anywhere but here. I have a ton of work. I need quiet to get it done.”

  Morley flashed a killer grin. Playmate looked soulfully wounded. I said, “As you command, so shall it be.” I collected the Bird’s painting and Penny’s drawings. We crossed to the Dead Man’s room.

  “Warmer in here,” Morley opined sarcastically.

  Playmate planted himself in the best chair. “The pain isn’t a tenth what it was but I still don’t got any energy.” He had brought the tea with him. He poured while sitting.

  “That will turn around,” I said. “Old Bones is totally confident. Mostly, it’ll just take Dean to feed you up to your fighting weight, now.”

  “Think he’ll be out for long?” Playmate tipped a thumb at the Dead Man. “I can feel the evil starting to grow again.”

  “I don’t know. He’s unpredictable. The stuff Kolda brought isn’t working?”

  Playmate tapped a dusting of brown powder into his teacup. “It’s working smoky-ass miracles, Garrett. But it just slows the devil down. If I take it faithfully, obeying Kolda completely, it will take me three times as long to die.”

  His tone was understandably strained.

  Meanwhile, Morley studied the artwork like he was determined to commit every brush and pencil stroke to memory.

  Playmate said, “I think I’ve seen that man in the painting somewhere.”

  I suggested, “Year and a half ago? The mess at the World Theater?”

  Playmate stared some more. “I see what you mean. But that’s not the same man. An older brother, maybe.”

  “Barate Algarda was an only child.”

  “I got it. Nat something. A long time
ago. I was a kid. But...” He frowned deeply.

  “What?” I asked.

  Morley blurted, “You’re right. He does look like that Algarda creep. But not the same. See the scar?” He pointed.

  Playmate ignored him. “The man I remember looked like this over thirty years ago. Scars and all.”

  I enjoyed that pleasant feeling you get when you stumble onto something good, though I didn’t really know if this was worth the stumble.

  Playmate smacked himself upside the head. “The drug is working already. I can’t hardly remember anything. I know he was a villain. Who ought to be a long time dead.”

  Playmate slurred. His chin dropped to his chest. Morley observed, “That is some kick-ass knockout powder.”

  “But of limited commercial value. Otherwise, Kolda would have a pot to pee in.”

  “I don’t like to speak ill of your friends, Garrett, but that Kolda...”

  Singe shoved into the room. “Don’t you hear the door, Garrett?”

  “No.” I did so now only because she had the hallway door open. Door-answering isn’t part of my special skill set, anyway. “Who is it?”

  “I suppose we would know if somebody answered it.”

  The thumping suggested someone was getting frustrated.

  Singe made an exasperated noise more appropriate to one of our recent young adult lady visitors. She stamped up the hall.

  Morley said, “If she was human I’d think Aunt Flo was winding her up.”

  “It’s about the same thing. She’ll be over it soon.”

  He said, “I may have crossed paths with this guy myself, sometime.”

  73

  Singe brought Barate Algarda into the Dead Man’s room. He was not in a good mood but he had shown up quickly. He wasn’t wearing a mesh helmet. He wasn’t going to hide.

  Barate Algarda was a big man, Saucerhead size, ugly, and unkempt. He looked like a down-on-his-luck thug not getting much work because of Deal Relway’s impact on the shadow economy. He nurtured that image. It left people unready for the real Barate Algarda. He was as bright and quick as his female descendants. His only talent for the magical, though, was a strong natural resistance to the Dead Man’s mind probes.

  Algarda was darker and wider than Strafa or Kevans. Strafa took after her mother, whom I had seen in ghost form, once upon a time. Kevans had gotten a little more from the paternal side. She’d never be a beauty.

  Algarda barely glanced at the Dead Man. “Well?”

  Singe remained in the doorway, I suppose so she could jump in if Algarda became actively hostile. He had done so before, when he thought his daughters were threatened.

  “Did Kevans explain what’s been going on?”

  “Honestly? Not really. I got the impression that she thought she was being hounded unfairly.”

  “That could be.”

  “She showed the same attitude when her bunch were breeding giant bugs.” He added, “Gods, I’m glad they didn’t do any spiders.”

  I shivered. Me, too. “You have to admit, Kevans has a sociopathic side.”

  “Runs in the family.”

  Indeed. “So let me sketch some situations that turn out to be tied together.” I brought him up to speed.

  “Bizarre. Where does my daughter fit?”

  I started looking for the best words to indicate a warehouse owned by his mother.

  “Not Kevans. The Windwalker.”

  “Oh.” I gave it to him straight, leaving out the personal side.

  “The Crown Prince, eh?” he interjected at one point.

  “Yeah.”

  Morley listened quietly. Playmate joined Old Bones in dreamland, only he snored. Curious Singe looked like my sanitized tale made her want to take a nap, too.

  “Glassware, eh?” Algarda mused, out of nowhere. “Unusual glassware. In a warehouse. In Elf Town.”

  “Where Kevans lived for a year. A place owned by your mother.”

  He seemed mildly surprised. “A strange woman, my mother. She kept secrets.”

  Why not just add another whole level of weird? Though the Dead Man would have cautioned me about jumping to conclusions based on prejudices.

  I reiterated, “There was evidence that Kevans stayed there. The Specials have that. She says she was there for a year. She knew about the place because her grandmother took her there when she was twelve.”

  “That’s how you got to my mother.”

  “Does the glassware mean anything special?”

  “Not really.”

  “Morley, could you hold that lamp up so Mr. Algarda can get a look at those pictures?”

  Morley turned the pictures, too. They had not been visible from where Algarda was standing. Algarda asked, “Who are these people?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “I can tell you who they were forty years ago. This is my great uncle Nathaniel. He died while I was in the Cantard.”

  “Did he have kids? Playmate remembers him as a neighborhood thug from when he was a kid. Morley remembers him vaguely, with no where, when, or why. Today he’s a resurrection man called Nathan.” I had to explain that because Algarda was unfamiliar with the term.

  “Really? People will do anything, won’t they? It took a lunatic god to create our tribe. Let me think.” He put on a frown more of puzzlement than concentration. “All right. Nathaniel had one child, Jane. She would be my mother’s cousin but was way younger than Mom. Younger than me, even. She was a ferociously wicked, precocious six-year-old last time I saw her. She might’ve looked like this at eighteen.” He indicated the drawings of the woman. “She’d be in her fifties, now.”

  We had an old woman in the mix, though based on nothing solid I guessed she would be older than that. “Could she have produced children who looked like their ancestors?”

  Algarda shrugged. “Possibly. I don’t know much about those people. We never had a lot to do with them. They weren’t good people.” He shot me a sudden, narrow look, maybe reading something into my question. “As far as I know, their line died out during my first tour.” He looked at the artwork more closely, appreciating what Penny had captured. “The man even has the scars Nathaniel had.” He looked hungry when he considered Penny’s drawings.

  He was deeply uncomfortable when our gazes met again. “Are you some kind of diabolical facilitator?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Last time the Algardas got into trouble you were digging up worms. Here you go again.”

  Morley interjected, “The worms were there, begging to be dug. Be grateful Garrett was manning the shovel.”

  Algarda was a hard guy. He tried laying a hard look on Morley. Morley took no notice. Algarda said, “You’re right. There’s probably some serious behind-the-scenes rumbling going on at the top of the Hill. This could even tie in to some odd questions I’ve been asked lately, by people I never expected to visit my new place.”

  He did not explain. He did say, “I’ll dig into a couple of old family legends.” He turned toward the doorway.

  Singe did not move. She looked to me for advice. I nodded, but said, “I’m supposed to tell you to go straight to the place in Elf Town from here.”

  He frowned. “For who?”

  “The Windwalker.”

  He gave me the hard-eye but then just nodded and turned to follow Singe. She returned from the door to say, “I don’t think he is happy with you.”

  “My heart is broken. Was his mother involved last time we had some excitement with his people? A couple of old crows got themselves dead, if I remember.”

  “I do not recall. I will look it up.” Someone knocked. “That will be Mr. Tharpe.”

  “Have you started reading minds, too?”

  “No. That would be crippling around you two. I saw him coming up the street when I let Mr. Algarda out.” She went to open up.

  Morley said, “We’re inching toward something.”

  “Yes. And it might involve the undead or zombies after all.”
>
  74

  Tharpe rolled in and crashed onto a folding chair. “Damn! This cold air feels good.”

  “It hot out there?”

  “Working on getting there. And I need to shed about twenty-five pounds. Shit. Look at you, up on your hind legs and everything, Dotes.”

  I said, “Once we weaned him off the poison he came back fast. Next week he’ll be able to make it to the front door with only one rest stop.”

  “You better watch out for the little girl, then. He’ll have her giggling and squealing like a piggy in some dark corner.”

  Once upon a time Morley would have joined the game. Now he just scowled. “I’m a one woman man,’Head.”

  Tharpe said, “Singe, honey, my dogs are worn down to the ankles. You want to take a look out front and see how big that flock of flying pigs is? Take one a them Amalgamated umbereller thing-jobbies along in case they got the flying dyer-rear.” He snickered at his own wit.

  I chuckled, too.

  Morley tried but only managed to look grim.

  Saucerhead continued, “Ah, gotcha. A health issue, that woman being involved.”

  Maybe a real health issue. Morley looked physically uncomfortable. I asked, “You all right? You need something?”

  “I’ve been pushing it too much. I’m starting to feel it.”

  “Singe, I don’t think he’s ready to do without his angels.” I hadn’t seen any ratwomen today.

  “I’ll make sure they’re here tonight.”

  “Good on you.”

  She asked, “Why don’t we ask Mr. Tharpe what he’s doing here? That might prove interesting.”

  Saucerhead said, “Mr. Tharpe was hoping somebody would bring him a mug so he could relax while he was telling his story.”

  I asked, “You need musical accompaniment? I saw a mandolin somewhere the other day, when we were salting the windows. It was short two strings, though.”

  Singe made a growling noise.

  Maybe that was enough grab-assing around. “There’s a problem,’Head. The beer barrel ran dry. Dean is out trying to find Jerry right now.”

  “I guess I can wait.”