Wicked Bronze Ambition gp-14

by Glen Cook

  “Pussy.”

  “But-”

  “That was all bullshit. Nobody can cast a spell that fine.”

  “But-”

  “You sound like you’re doing background vocals for one of those street-corner singing clubs.”

  “But-”

  “It’s too complicated to craft a spell that specific. But she doesn’t know that. We work hard to make people believe that we can wiggle our ears and make any damned thing we want happen. She’ll believe it. She’ll feel the noose tightening every time she starts bitching about you ruining the neighborhood. And when she does she’ll believe in it even more. She could end up strangling herself using her own imagination.”

  I couldn’t help blurting, “You’re evil!”

  “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

  I hoped I never got into a position where that truth might affect my well-being. And then I wondered if she wasn’t trying to do to my head what she’d already done to that of my neighbor.

  Probably. She was a natural-born voodoo woman. She’d been doing it since she was a toddler. She had started doing it to me the moment we met.

  She said, “I wonder what all the excitement was a while ago. Up the Hill, I mean. Remembering what we’re involved in.”

  It felt like she was playing some game with me again.

  “Are we going to go find out?”

  “Not hardly. We still have Mariska to catch.”

  We weren’t headed toward the Hill. I should have understood that without having to be told.

  I was tired.

  I was going to get more tired. Or even tireder.

  She said, “We’re not out here alone again anymore. Again.”

  “Again?”

  “Again.”

  I sighed. “Any idea who it is?”

  “It might be the curly top.”

  I saw nothing but darkness. “No rats? No red tops?”

  “They figured we’d quit for the night.”

  “Why is this kid so interested in us?”

  “A good question. Let’s hope we get a chance to ask.” Some seconds passed. “I think the big thing is with her. Or someone showing an interest.”

  I suspected that “the big thing” was always close by, whether or not he was visible.

  Was he her Mortal Champion or Dread Companion? Where was the other member of their team?

  82

  Mariska Machtkess kept moving. We walked and walked without catching up. Each time Moonblight thought we were there, we found that Mariska had gone on.

  “She’s just being careful,” Tara Chayne said. “While she’s waiting for something. She’ll settle somewhere eventually.”

  We burglarized a couple of Mariska’s stopping places. Neither was occupied. Neither produced anything of interest.

  The last place looked like it had been tossed already. Tara Chayne observed, “The Operator organization may have slipped into panic mode. Mariska may not be the only villain on the run.”

  “We rattled them good, then.”

  “Maybe. I hope so. But I’m more inclined to think that somebody familiar with the Black Orchid recognized her work. Orchidia Hedley-Farfoul is a lot scarier than either of us. Scarier to some than even Constance.”

  “Gah!” That was pretty scary.

  “Exactly. With Orchidia there is no hype. She is as bad as your imagination can make her, and then some. Unlike Constance, she doesn’t look the part. Constance wants you to know, at one glance, that she is terror on the hoof and the only safe place is where she isn’t. But if you ran into Orchidia on the street you wouldn’t give her a second glance-though your chances of actually doing that are slim. She’s been a recluse since she came home from the Cantard.”

  Common enough. TunFaire is a vast, bustling, rowdy metropolis, but you really only ever see a fraction of its people. There are day people, night people, morning people, twilight people, all forming their own tribes. There are humans and nonhumans. Each affinity constitutes a city within the city. And then there are those who came home damaged, members of a tribe that is little seen. Their bodies came back absent something left to haunt the mountains and deserts and ten thousand jungle-cursed islands of the south.

  It’s out there, all round, seen but not seen daily. Any veteran will recognize it at a glance. But I have to confess that I have never completely understood it. Granted, the war wasn’t pleasant. We saw ugly things. But I’m back home, it’s over, and now I deal with things equally ugly here.

  In part, I guess, I haven’t vested myself in being a victim. Meaning, I do run into veterans who have made a career of suffering from aftereffects of what they survived. Not saying that isn’t real for some. Just thinking that a certain kind of personality feeds on the drama.

  A lot seems to have to depend on where you wear your face. You manage all right if you have it on looking forward, but not so fine if all you want to do is look back.

  Tara Chayne nailed me with the dreaded finger poke. “Think you can stay out of Fairyland long enough to deal if we get jumped?”

  “Uh. .”

  “That’s what I thought. I’m wondering if I might not be safer working alone.”

  Brownie made a snuffling noise. For a moment I thought that was a rude opinion. But up ahead there, whichever mutt was scouting had stopped to stare into a grove of unnaturally dense shadows. Her fur was up and her teeth were showing, but she wasn’t growling. Yet.

  Tone amused, Tara Chayne punned, “Point taken. You do have your more reliable auxiliaries.”

  Whatever was out there, it did not terrify my girls. Number Two spread out left, the other unnamed mutt went right, and Brownie made like a good Marine, heading straight up the middle. All three laid on some fierce growling.

  Moonblight called forth her spirit centipede. You’d think that thing would be invisible in a moonless dark. It wasn’t. It’s navy-indigo presence was hard to spot when it didn’t move, but when it did it coruscated with dull violet highlights. When it scuttled fast it shed random little purple-lilac sparks. Fairy sparkles trailed toward the shadow orchard, fast. I got the feeling that our potential antagonist had not been aware of what Moonblight had at her beck.

  The dogs stopped, settled onto their haunches. They saw no need to get close enough to risk becoming collateral damage.

  83

  “You know this man?” Moonblight had a globe of glowing air perched on the tips of the upheld fingers of her left hand. It had the slight greenish cast of firefly light and was no more intense. Her right hand held a scented handkerchief pressed to her face. Her eyes were watering.

  “His name is Tribune Fehlske, but people call him Lurking Fehlske. He’s the top surveillance man in TunFaire. He’s been watching me, or us, off and on, since before Strafa died. He’s hard to spot and impossible to catch.”

  “First time for everything, eh?”

  “I guess. His odor is his weakness. It’s how you know he’s around. Or has been around. He doesn’t notice it himself. It’s like he’s had a lifelong allergy to soap. Maybe this will change his mind about hygiene.” Unlikely, though. He had had the lesson before and never learned.

  “One can pray.”

  “He isn’t dead, is he?” I didn’t have issues with Fehlske that went that deep.

  “He’ll be fine except for a headache.”

  “He was using some kind of sorcery, wasn’t he?”

  “He was creating a lurking place but not very well. He let us spot a place where the shadows were too thick.”

  “A natural talent, then?”

  “Low-grade.”

  “I always wondered how he could be so good at not being noticed.”

  “He has talent that he doesn’t understand consciously. I expect that he just thinks he’s really good at what he does.”

  Lurking Fehlske was good. That was beyond debate. How he managed that didn’t much matter to me.

  I mused, not for the first time, “Why would he be watching us?”
r />   “An excellent question and one for which I can offer no answer.”

  “How could he know to be waiting for us here? Even if there was a tracer on one of us, we only just decided to cut through here a few minutes ago. Yet there he was. Waiting.”

  Tara Chayne raised her glowing hand slightly, extending her forefinger to suggest that she needed a moment.

  I backed off a few steps to reduce the chance that the smell would establish itself in my clothing. After the hustle of the day, I had worked up a good enough pong of my own, thank you very much.

  The dogs went with me. They had had enough, too. Then Brownie found an excuse to take them off to scout “the perimeter.”

  Tara Chayne said, “Here is what probably happened. He was cheerfully larking around, keeping track of us, being the other thing I sensed. We caught him completely by surprise when we suddenly came this way. He couldn’t get away without being seen, so he hunkered down and hoped we would go on by. It didn’t work.”

  “Fits the known facts. Maybe we should wake him up and ask him questions.”

  “I don’t think so. It’s been too long a day already. My feet hurt. I’m happy to leave him napping.” Shuddering, she slipped something inside Fehlske’s shirt. She needed light to see by so had to use the hand that had been holding the handkerchief. She gagged but did not lose her lunch. Finished, she shook her hand violently to rid herself of any vermin that had climbed aboard.

  She regained control. “We can find him if we need to talk to him. Now let’s find Mariska and get this day over with.”

  “I won’t last if she keeps moving.”

  “I think she’s worn down herself. We were gaining before this.”

  Nice to be kept up to date, I didn’t say out loud.

  I was getting cranky. I was sure she must be, too. “We should see about finding a snack, too.”

  “If the opportunity arises.”

  We covered a block, straight ahead and slightly downhill, and reached an intersection with a street I can’t name because it was dark and I didn’t know the neighborhood. Tara Chayne made a sudden stop.

  “What?”

  “Quiet.”

  Then I heard it, too.

  Something was going on, quietly, back the way we had come.

  I couldn’t see but was sure it was happening where Lurking Fehlske lay.

  Maybe somebody with no sense of smell was rolling him.

  Moonblight’s centipede scattered purplish sparks as it scurried across the faces of several buildings, going to see. When it stopped moving it was invisible.

  Tara Chayne touched my arm. “Only a quarter mile to go.”

  The centipede caught up before we got there. She and it communed, and then she sent it off to scout ahead.

  The dogs weren’t willing. They were nervous and staying close.

  “So,” she muttered. “That’s it.”

  “That’s what?”

  “Oh!” Like she was surprised to find me still with her. “They didn’t notice the tracer I put on him.”

  “They, who?”

  She didn’t want to discuss it. She pointed to a darkness looming ahead, where the street we were following ended as the trunk of a T. As yet there was no other light than that shed by an immense number of stars, the cloud cover having cleared away. The place she indicated felt big and ugly and exuded a psychic bad odor. “Mariska is in there. I think she’s asleep. I’ll make sure.” She gestured and whispered. Her centipede sparked into motion. Betraying sparkles falling off made for an interesting effect.

  “Don’t let me fall asleep while we’re waiting for it to report.” I had settled down with my back to the side of somebody’s front steps. Brownie halfway climbed into my lap. The rest of the pack snuggled up, ready to sleep in a big, hot pile. Everybody was exhausted.

  Very little time passed, but Tara Chayne had to use a magnum finger poke to bring me back. “Mariska is in there, alone.” She was uncomfortable for some reason.

  “What’s wrong?” Groggily.

  “The property belongs to the Hausers. It’s empty today, but I remember visiting the place when I was a kid.”

  That left me with a sinking feeling. “Does that mean. .?”

  “I’m hoping it just means Mariska ran to a place she knew would be empty, though she had to penetrate some ferocious wards to get in.”

  Obviously. Otherwise the place would have been reduced to a hole in the ground long since.

  “I don’t want to think that Richt might be one of the Operators.”

  That didn’t seem plausible. Not sure why. My brain was working at ten percent. “Let’s just load the wagon and worry about where the mules will come from when we need them.”

  “What? Oh. I got you. A little borrowed country wisdom.”

  “Wisdom, anyway.”

  “About earlier. I didn’t mean to shut you out. I was preoccupied. The people messing with your Fehlske creature were Big Thing and Curly Top. Big Thing poked Fehlske a few times. When he didn’t respond, it picked him up and took him away.”

  “Whoa! That thing is a better man than me, then.”

  “Perhaps it hails from a plane where such odors are perfume.”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’ll buy that.” The little blonde had begun to collect people from outside the tournament? Why?

  More twists. More nonsense. And me such a simple, straightforward kind of Marine. “Let’s do what we need to do.” I lived through the struggle to get to my feet. “And here we go, girls.”

  The centipede hurried ahead. It wasn’t worn out. The rest of us limped and dragged.

  The first door we tried was protected with physical locks backed by magical wards. Nobody felt like looking for an easier entry. Moonblight used what energy she had left to break the locks and crack wards put in place by somebody as wrung out as we were.

  We found Moonslight snoring on a braided rag rug in a huge room otherwise naked of furnishings. The entire house lacked any furnishings.

  84

  That finger poke, one more time. It was morning. Light didn’t improve the ambience of the vacant house, nor did it increase the appeal of the witch with whom we shared it. The floor-my mattress-remained as soft as chert. Tara Chayne showed me that she had the stamina of a sergeant major, last to retire and first to rise.

  It was morning. Light was getting inside somehow. I grumbled, “Why the hell do you keep doing that? It hurts!”

  “Because it works. Get up. Time to go. We’ve been in one exposed position for far too long.”

  That made it feel like a recon mission back in the islands.

  Misery, curdled, then double-dipped.

  She did have a point. That little nasty was out there with her giant-ass friend, plus who knew what all else with a bad attitude where we were concerned?

  Obviously, Tara Chayne Machtkess didn’t just sit around Force headquarters when she’d gone down South. She was here for this morning because she’d learned her lessons then.

  I sat up. “I feel like death on a stick and we never had anything to drink.”

  Brownie whimpered, maybe in sympathy but more likely in hunger. We’d been a team for no time and already she and her crew were spoiled.

  I observed, “This is the hardest damned floor I ever slept on.” The room itself was as big as a barn. A ballroom once, I suppose.

  Some thumping then, from beyond Tara Chayne.

  “And your little sis agrees.” I leaned forward for a better look.

  Mariska remained well and truly bound and gagged. She wanted to say something. She seemed desperate to speak. It might not be what I first thought. I could smell well enough to get that what she really wanted to do was complain.

  Tara Chayne observed, “If you’d just stuck with us last night, you’d have woken up in a real bed, clean and dry.”

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump!

  I said, “I believe I sense some anger issues.”

  “She can be that way sometimes.”

 
“Last night we said we were going to take her back to your place today. That made sense at the time. But couldn’t it be a little risky?”

  “It could be. Yes. But I’ve already informed Denvers. Things are in motion. We’ll stick to the plan.”

  She sent a message? How?

  No sooner wondered than answered. The centipede thing.

  It curled around Moonblight’s neck, whispered into her ear. Then it unwound and slithered into a corner, where it faded from sight.

  Tara Chayne grumbled, “Get your butt up so you can help me get up.”

  Oh. All right. She was in a foul mood because, despite not being bound, she remained a prisoner of her body. She resented the infirmities of age. More, she hated showing those where others could see.

  Aching everywhere, I shifted my bones. I helped the sorceress. Between us, muttering and whining, we got Mariska upright, too.

  Tara Chayne grumbled, “At least you didn’t sleep on a bare floor.” Not that the rag carpet would have given Mariska much comfort.

  I growled, “Can’t we just shut up and go? We’re all hurting. This whining doesn’t help. And I’m starving.”

  Mention of hunger, even if not by name, got the interest of the dogs, all of whom made noises showing that they agreed with me.

  I limped to the door. We had left obvious signs of breakage. We-in the form of Tara Chayne Machtkess-would have to apologize to Richt Hauser and make restitution. I took a cautious look outside, saw nothing suspicious, nor anything likely to attract attention-other than the coach rolling up. The coachman was having trouble staying awake.

  “Oh, excellent!” Tara Chayne barked. “Most excellent. Here already, Chase gets a bonus. Let’s move out. All aboard!”

  She crossed to the coach boldly, indifferent to curious looks from a passerby, leaving me to manage Mariska. I would be the great hairy thing remembered if a kidnapping story began to circulate.

  Tara Chayne opened the coach door, chucked dogs inside. That offended Mariska’s dignity. With hands bound behind her and wearing a gag, she still managed to make her displeasure plain. Stray dogs were so far beneath her that they did not belong in the same city, let alone the same vehicle, where they would shed mangy fur and parasites all over her.