by Frank Tuttle
“I came here to talk, Mr. Lethway. And I’ll be glad to tell you what little I know about your son’s disappearance. But bullying me isn’t a good way to start. I’ve been bullied by bigger and better, and frankly, you’ve lost your touch.”
He went full-on purple.
“You are insolent.”
“That I am. And you’re stubborn. Your only son has been kidnapped, and instead of trying to help the man who’s looking to bring him home you lock him in a room and make scary noises at him. That’s no way to be. Let’s start over, shall we? My name is Markhat. I have reason to believe your son Carris has been kidnapped. I’d like to find these people before they hurt Carris. This is a good cigar.”
His knuckles were white and his jaw worked silently but in the end, Lethway swallowed the urge to have me decapitated on the spot.
“I don’t want your help, Mr. Markhat. I don’t want anything to do with you. Carris is away on family business. He realized marrying that…commoner was a mistake. She is deluded, or greedy, or both.”
I shook my head. “She’s neither. And Carris is no more away on business than I am king of the ogres. But I’ll tell you something you don’t know, in a gesture of good faith. I think the kidnappers came to see Mr. Fields as well.”
He sputtered and lifted his empty glass and tried to drink from it. I shook my head.
“So you didn’t know that. Good. I’ve told you something you didn’t know. Why not do the same for me? He’s your son, Mr. Lethway. Trusting the kidnappers to keep their word may seem like the best plan, but I’m here to tell you they don’t often keep it. It’s too easy to just silence the only witness and head East with the money. Don’t let that happen.”
“Damn you. Stay out of this. What is it going to take? Money? I have money-more than you can imagine. Name your price. Name it, damn you, and go.”
“No. That isn’t going to happen, Mr. Lethway. Like it or not, I’m going to find your son. You can help. It won’t cost you a cent.”
He glared at me. “I don’t tolerate insolence. You had a chance to walk out of here a wealthy man. You turned that down. So be it. Pratt.”
Pratt stood. His expression was somber, almost apologetic.
“No blades. These are good rugs.”
Pratt nodded and cracked his knuckles.
“You’re going to murder me, right here?” I took a long puff of my cigar. “You never even offered me a drink. And here you are, making snide remarks about commoners. The cheek of you, man.”
Pratt moved.
So did I. I leaped to my feet and feinted left and darted right and managed two good steps before arms closed around my waist. Toadsticker’s scabbard has an open end, just for occasions such as that. I pulled him half-out and backed up and jammed the blade backwards, hard. Someone yelped and I shook him off and hit another man with my shoulder and charged toward the door.
Pratt was there, fists lashing out toward my midsection. I whirled and leaped and got tangled in someone’s feet and went down and got kicked. Toadsticker lashed out again, giving me time to get back up, and a sprint took me toward the door.
It was locked. I knew that. I put my back to it and held Toadsticker at the ready, low and level. Pratt and his three companions closed slowly in on me while Lethway kept his distance.
“You can’t take us all,” said Pratt. “Good try. But you ain’t leaving here. Why not make it easy on yourself?”
I started banging on the door and yelling.
“No one will answer, Mr. Markhat,” said Lethway. “You see, I own this establishment. No one else is here.”
He smiled a grim little smile.
And at that very moment, someone banged on the door from the other side, and replied to my shouts with shouts of their own.
“City Watch,” came a voice. “We have a warrant. Open this door or we break it down.”
“It’s locked,” I yelled back. “Break it down. Murder! Mayhem! Quickly, man, I’m a member of the Regency.”
And while Lethway goggled and sputtered, the Watch brought that door down, right at my back. I dropped Toadsticker as the door fell, and hoped like Hell I’d get him back.
A half-dozen Watchmen poured in, swords and crossbows at the ready, giving everyone a good Watch glare.
“How dare you,” began Lethway.
“Shut it, Pops,” barked a Watchman. “”We’ve got a warrant for a finder named Markhat.”
“That’s me,” I said, raising my arms. “I’m Markhat. Guilty as charged. Ready to pay my debt to society, officer.”
Pratt stifled a grin. A trickle of blood ran down the forehead of one of the men I’d tangled with. A second was clutching his stomach, where behind his hand a red stain grew. The Watch sergeant saw and spat on Mr. Lethway’s good rug in disgust.
“Take him. The rest of you lot. What the Hell was going on in here?”
“They were just showing me the error of my ways, Officer.”
“I am the owner of this establishment, Sergeant. My name is Lethway.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what your name is, Pops, unless it’s on my warrant. Shut it. You.” He whirled me around while another man lowered my arms and fitted shackles on my wrists. “You are under arrest for the murder of a…” he looked down at his paper, “a Mr. Harry Tibbles, late of Barclay Street. You have the right to remain silent. I have the right to kick your ass all the way from here to the jailhouse if you give me trouble. Shut up and walk.”
I winked at Pratt as the Watch led me off to jail.
And so it was that the famous finder Markhat spent his first night in a modern Rannite jail.
The facilities, I must report, were less than amenable. The toilet consisted of a hole in the floor. The smell that issued from said void was persistent, indescribable and utterly inescapable.
My Avalante pin, my sword and my obvious genteel bearing did at least rate me a cell of my own. My neighbors on either side were crammed into their similar accommodation ten to a cell, and my special treatment was the source of the evening’s commentary. I have never been so glad to be bordered on two sides with sturdy iron bars. I was careful to avoid coming within grabbing distance of my new neighbors, which left me confined to a narrow strip of filthy stone floor that was three paces long and less than a pace wide.
The Sprangs were in the Old Ruth. I was enjoying the hospitality of a much newer jail with the less colorful moniker of Number 19 Municipal Holding. The guards were taciturn but efficient, going so far as to toss a filthy pillow between the bars when it was noted that my cell lacked either cot or stool.
I did not sleep. The noise was one factor and my neighbors another. The few times I did doze I was showered with whatever debris they could collect.
I had not considered the consequences of going to jail dressed as I was. So I sat upright and alert and pondered the injustices of Rannit’s unwritten class conflicts while I waited for morning and Gertriss.
I expected to be released before lunch. The Regency’s case against me hinged on the murder of a small, furry man who resided in a hatbox, and even the kind of lawyers I can afford can easily handle that.
Guards came, new prisoners shuffling before them. Doors screeched and then clanged shut. Men shouted and hooted and laughed. Guards left, bleary-eyed and yawning.
That is the rhythm of life in a jail. Endlessly repetitive, unbearably boring. I wondered how many men died trying to escape not to freedom but away from the awful unchanging sameness of the jails.
After an eternity, light began to creep in from the narrow windows set well out of jumping reach along the wide hallways. A sparrow flew inside and was greeted with a brief, reverent silence. Then the light grew bolder, and the breakfast carts came bumping down the hall, and before I’d even had a chance to sample what appeared to be scrambled eggs and hard biscuits a pair of guards approached my door and set me free.
In the end, I got Toadsticker, my shoes, my coat, and all the contents of my pockets-even the loose c
oins-back. I signed a receipt and was told the charges against me had been dropped and if I ever pulled a damn fool stunt like that again the warden would personally shove my ass down the nearest shithole, head-first.
My belongings were shoved in my hands and I was hustled through a tall armored door and then I was blinking in Rannit’s morning sun, a free man at last.
Free but in his sock feet. I was struggling to get my shoes on when Gertriss came darting around the corner, breathless and grinning.
“Boss.” She hugged me, nearly knocking me over since I was standing on one foot. “Boss, are you all right? I thought they’d changed their minds. I’ve been waiting out front for half an hour.”
I looked around. They’d put me out the back door, like a common criminal.
“Their way of saying ‘and don’t come back,’ I suppose. Thanks, Miss. I’m fine.”
She wrinkled her nose. “No offense, boss, but you don’t smell so good.”
“I smell like jail. Which is perfectly acceptable, since that’s where we’re going next. Would you rather stick with me and face the Sprangs, or head back to Mama’s?”
“I’ll take the Old Ruth, Boss. I’ve got a cab waiting.” A Hooga popped around the corner, dipped his eyes at me, and then withdrew. “He insisted on coming, at least until you were out.”
“I knew he would.” I got my shoes tied, refilled my pockets, got Toadsticker strapped to my waist. It was too warm for the coat so I threw it over my shoulder.
And then I put my back to Number 19 Municipal Holding and told the cab driver to make for the Old Ruth.
He raised his eyebrows and grinned.
“Touring a lot of jails, are we, sir?”
“Trying to pick a favorite.” I flipped him a couple of coins. “I can’t recommend this one. The bed linens weren’t ironed.”
He laughed, and I climbed aboard with Gertriss and we rattled away.
Chapter Nine
Gertriss was right. The stench from the hole in my cell had pervaded my clothes. We brought both cab windows down and that helped, but everything I was wearing was going to need the tender attention of old Mrs. Chong and her secret magic laundry mix.
Gertriss filled me in on the youngest Sprang, who Mama had tied to a chair before dabbing him liberally with some malodorous potion she’d finished brewing about the time I’d poked Toadsticker into someone’s gut. The Sprang kid thrashed and yelled, Gertriss reported, until Mama finished dribbling three full handfuls of her brew over him.
“After that, he calmed right down,” said Gertriss. “He quit cussing. Quit yelling. He was confused for a little while, but then he asked for water and said please, so Mama untied him. He drank. He ate two biscuits, and then thanked Mama and asked if he could see the ogre again.” Gertriss shook her head. “He was a different child, Boss. Probably even a polite one, by Sprang standards. Buttercup even peeked out at him and smiled.”
“So you think he really was hexed?”
“Mama thinks so. I tried my Sight. Never saw a thing.” She seemed troubled by that. I wondered if she was losing touch with her Hog-born Sight, and from the way she bit her bottom lip I guessed she was wondering the same thing.
“Mama have any idea who might have hexed a kid?”
“If she does, she isn’t saying. But she’s angry, boss. Really angry. I wouldn’t want to be whoever she thinks did that. Even if they’re still in Pot Lockney, that might not be far enough away to keep Mama from taking a whack at them.”
I hadn’t considered that. “Think she might try? Is that even possible?”
Gertriss shrugged. “A year ago I’d have said no. Now, I’m not sure. Mama isn’t what I thought she was.”
“Mama is Mama.” I didn’t need to say more. “But the kid-does he have a name, by the way? — he’s fine?”
“His name is Rainy. Mama swears he’s free of whatever was riding him. He’s calm and perfectly rational. Boss, Mama thinks the hex was designed to make the Sprangs want to murder me and you. It started small. Just a little voice whispering how awful we are. The longer it goes, the more powerful it gets.”
“So the elder Sprangs like me less today than they did when I was kicking them around Cambrit. Lovely.” My morning’s plan, to free the Sprangs, revolved wholly around gaining their trust. If they were hexed to hate me against reason, that was likely to be a hard sell.
“Mama got any of that potion left?”
Gertriss nodded. “She knew you’d ask. She made a big batch. Enough to bathe them in it. She said that it hit Rainy so hard because he’s a child. No hex works that well on adults. So maybe they hate you, but by now they probably hate jail more.”
I grunted. I hoped so. I didn’t see the Sprangs accepting my invitation to come over and have a nice bath without Hooga and Hooga holding them by the scruffs of their necks.
We were close to the Old Ruth. The streets were rough, the pedestrians ragged, the smells of the crematoriums pungent.
“I guess we’ll have to hope for the best. You brought the release papers?”
She produced the wax-sealed folder.
“You sure you want to do this, Miss? You can wait in the cab, if you want. Might even be the best idea.”
“No, Mr. Markhat. I’m coming with you. I did what I did, but I had reason. I’m not running anymore.”
I smiled. “Good for you. Just don’t get within grabbing distance.”
The cab rolled to a stop. The weathered, stained wall of the Old Ruth engulfed us in sudden shadow.
“Let’s get this done, Miss.”
“Yes. Mr. Markhat?”
I paused, half-in and half-out of the cab.
“Thanks.”
“We’re partners,” I said, offering her my hand. “Now, come on. Sooner we get these road apples heading home, the sooner I can get a bath.”
She laughed. We headed inside.
The Old Ruth isn’t a cheerful place. Despair and rage have sunk into the stones. The place reeks of human waste.
Local lore claims that thirty or so weedheads a day expire inside those walls. I no longer question that figure, save to say it’s probably too conservative. Number 19 Municipal was an Old Kingdom palace compared to the Old Ruth.
Gertriss and I were shuffled from guard to supervisor to jailer to magistrate. Each visit required a review of the papers I’d procured yesterday and payment of some obscure and likely fraudulent fee.
Gertriss chipped in on those, or the Sprangs would be in the Old Ruth yet.
Our journey took us from the street level offices to a hall two stories underground. In the bad old days, when the Old Ruth had been a fortress, construction had gone down instead of up. Nowadays, the lower you go, the darker and damper and fouler the Old Ruth gets.
The air was enough to choke a Troll. Gertriss was having trouble speaking without gagging. I was faring little better, though the smoke from the numerous torches was burning my throat. We hadn’t seen a single magelamp since leaving the stairs.
Broke and hoarse, we were finally led into an abominable stonewalled room divided by a row of iron bars. The bars sported rust and something darker. A bored guard seated himself on a stool in the corner beside Gertriss and I, a head-knocker in his pudgy fist.
The door closed behind us. Another opened on the far side of the bars.
Feet shuffled, and chains clanked. In marched the Sprangs, sullen, filthy and wary-eyed.
“You.” The eldest Sprang glared at me and spat. His sons followed behind, the youngest supported by the eldest, who glared but was silent.
They were masses of blood and cuts and bruises. Gilgad’s right eye was swollen shut. His lips were bloody. His hair was matted and dark with blood.
His sons were worse. Polter, the youngest, swayed and murmured, his eyes shut, blood trickling from his nose and mouth.
“Bitch.” Gilgad spoke to Gertriss. She didn’t flinch.
“What you need to do, Gilgad Sprang, is shut up and listen. You can either walk out of her
e, right now, today, or you can rot here. Call my partner names and I’ll decide for you, and I’ll decide to let you rot.” I nodded toward his youngest son. “Your boy is in bad shape. Another day in here and he’ll be dead, and you know it. So are you going to shut up and listen or are you going to bury a son?”
I could see him clench his jaw. Something, him or the hex, wanted to tell me to go to Hell almost bad enough to lose a child.
I almost felt sorry for him then.
He managed to bite back the word.
“All right. Here’s the deal. This paper gets you and your sons out of jail. It does that because the lady and myself agree to pay your fines and fees. Do you understand that, so far? Just nod.”
He nodded.
“There are conditions. First, that you and yours walk out of jail and keep walking right out the East Gate and hitch a ride with a cargo wagon and go home. And once you get home you never ever come back. Because-and this is important, Mr. Sprang-if any of you are ever picked up in Rannit again, all your fines and fees are tripled and you are brought right back here and I tell you this true, you will never see the sun again, or breathe free air. You’ll die here. I’ll see to that. Do you understand?”
He licked bloody lips. “I understand.”
“Tell me what I just said.”
“You pay us out. We go home. Never come back.”
“Good. Now I’m going to ask you a question, you murderous little git. And you’ll answer it, or I swear I’ll tear this paper up and go have myself a big, hot lunch. Why did you come all this way to go after the young lady and I?”
“She stole from our kinfolk.” His voice took on a low growling quality. “She kilt, and she stole.”
“I see. So you were so upset at the financial loss of your kinfolk that you decided to hike all the way to Rannit and do a bit of murder yourself. Touching. Family means everything to you, doesn’t it?”
“City folk ain’t likely to understand,” he said.
“I do understand kids have no business being outdoors in Rannit after Curfew, Mr. Sprang.”