by Frank Tuttle
I let the moment linger.
He snatched up the envelope, tore it open, pulled out the paper inside and read it.
I let that moment linger too.
“This is a damned fine steak.”
“You think this is going to save you?” He threw the paper that bore his name down, where it landed in a gravy bowl. I fished it out while he fumed. “It means nothing.”
“Oh, Colonel. You know that isn’t true. It means ruin. It means you’re about to lose every damned copper you ever had. It means all your fancy friends will trip over each other in a mad dash to distance themselves from you. And then it means the gallows, Colonel. You stole from the Regency. For years.” I grinned. “You stole a fortune. You and your partners. You’ll all hang. All I have to do to make that happen is whisper in a few ears.”
“You think I don’t have friends? You think I’m going to let some commoner threaten my good name?”
“That’s Captain Commoner to you, Colonel. And here’s a question you might ask yourself. Ask yourself if any of your friends outrank Encorla Hisvin. Because one of my friends, Colonel, is the Corpsemaster himself. And if anything happens to me, a letter will reach Hisvin’s desk. A letter and a crate. I’m sure you can picture the rest without my help. And in light of Hisvin’s somewhat inventive methods of dispatching the enemies of the Regency, you’d best hope for a death as quick and easy as the gallows.”
“You lie.”
He said it, but he didn’t mean it. If he’d checked on me at all, he’d heard rumors I had ties to the Corpsemaster.
“I do not. I can snuff you out on a whim, Colonel. What was it you said about sunrises? It applies to you as well.”
He glared. His color was so bad I grew fearful he might suffer a stroke right there.
“But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can both take in a lifetime of sunrises, and all I need is a bit of cooperation.”
He made a growling noise deep in his throat.
“How much do you want?”
I sighed. “Not a copper. I told you before. I’m not out to rob you. I just want to bring your son home, safe and sound.”
“You need to stay out of this. I’m handling that.”
“How? By destroying the evidence? By stalling? For all you or I know, Carris is dead already. You don’t seem to give a damn. Why is that? “
“You didn’t see hundreds of people die in the war? Thousands?”
“Damn right I did. That doesn’t justify the death of even one more. Especially not your own son.”
“You don’t know what you’re getting into. I’m telling you to leave it alone.” He puffed up a bit. “That is an order.”
“You’re retired. Shove your orders. Who has Carris, Colonel? I think you either know or suspect, and I think their initials might be S.J.”
“The Lieutenant is dead. Just as you will soon be.”
“A Colonel ought to know that repeating empty threats is a poor tactical maneuver. Let’s talk about this dead Lieutenant. Since you claim he’s dead, what’s the harm in giving me his name?”
“His name was Japeth Stricken. He died begging. So will you.”
“Japeth Stricken.” The name was not one I knew. “You seem to know a lot about how he died.”
He smiled a thin wicked smile.
“I was there. He came to me, making demands. Just as you have.”
I nodded. “His share of the take ran out, so he put the squeeze on you for more, is that it?”
“You commoners are all the same.”
“You thieves share certain traits as well. Still. You’re sure he’s dead?”
“He’s dead. Just like you.”
“So what is it the kidnappers want, Colonel? And why won’t you give it to them?”
He clamped his jaw shut.
“You’re going to tell me. I’ll give you a minute to think it through. There’s no way out, Colonel. I’ve got more than enough to hang you, or worse. I can’t be bought or scared off. Your only option is to tell me what I need to know and hope to kill me some fine day long after this is over, and you know it.” I picked up his woman’s wineglass and tasted the vintage. Maybe rich folks like things sour and warm, but I decided I’d take cold beer any day.
“They never asked for money.” He spoke in a low growl. “They want information. Shipments of ore. How much slag we sell. How many wagons of ingots sold last quarter. Things you wouldn’t understand.”
“A competitor, out to beat you in the markets?”
“What else?”
I shook my head.
“Colonel. Commoner I may be, imbecile I am not. We both know there’s more to all this than a rival mining company trying to wring another half-percent profit out of this year’s take.”
“I told you to leave it alone.”
Damn. The man was actually trying to protect what he thought was a state secret. He’d stolen freely while serving. Just my luck he was having a sudden resurgence of patriotism.
“I know more than you think about a lot of things, Colonel. But that’s not really important, because knowing the why doesn’t help me get your son back. It’s the who I’m after.”
He said nothing.
“This is what we’re going to do, Colonel. You’re going to answer the next letter you get. You’re going to promise them they’ll get everything they want-in a direct exchange for Carris. No ifs, ands or buts.”
“I will do no such thing.”
I tapped my finger on the letter.
“Yes. Yes you will. You’ll agree to whatever time and place they dictate. You’ll agree to bring with you whatever records they want. And you’ll do it just as I say, or I’ll hand you over to the Corpsemaster and you can drive his black carriage around until the skin falls off your damned old bones. You know what they’ll say, Colonel? They’ll say ‘there goes old dead Lethway, thief and traitor. Got what he deserved.’ Is that how you want to be remembered?”
He had no answer. I didn’t press for one.
“You’ll send word to me when you’ve made the arrangements with the kidnappers. You’ll remember what I said about crates and letters if I have a tragic fall in the bath anytime soon. You’ll do this and get your son back and make me go away. Or else. That common enough for you?”
“Bastard.”
I speared a chunk of butter-covered broccoli and chewed and swallowed. “Oh, one last thing. Don’t go getting any ideas about going after Tamar Fields again. What was that about, anyway? You worried fat little Fields might decide to cause some trouble for you, in the middle of this mess?”
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
I reached in my pocket and withdrew the head of the walking stick his man had taken away and plopped it on the letter.
He quickly moved his gaze away.
“Have a nice evening, Colonel Lethway. Sorry about your date. I don’t think she’s coming back.”
“I’ll do as you say,” he said in a whisper. “But one day, Markhat, I’m going to watch you die.”
“There ought to be quite a crowd. You should probably bring your own chair.” I rose and dropped a pair of coppers down on the table. “My part of the tip. Be seeing you.”
Mills was suddenly at my side. Lethway’s brutes looked to their boss, but he motioned them to stay put, and they did.
We walked out of the Banner, Mills and I, our bellies full of beer and the heady taste of short-lived triumph.
My carriage was still at the curb. I had a sudden urge to travel and no particular destination in mind.
We climbed inside and rolled into the empty street.
I let out my breath in a great long sigh.
“I thought that old man was going to pop a vein right there,” said Mills. “Is it healthy, pissing off rich folks like that, in public?”
“Keeps me young and sharp. The name Japeth Stricken mean anything to you?”
“Stricken. Hmmm. Seems familiar. Is it important?”
/> “It might be. Word is he’s dead. I wonder if that’s true.”
“I know some people who’d know.”
I grinned. “They stay up past Curfew?”
“They ain’t afraid of vampires. Hell, they probably skin ’em and eat ’em.”
“And you claim vexing the elderly is dangerous to my heath. Can you tell the driver where these worthies might be found, at this unholy hour?”
Mills banged on the ceiling and barked out directions to the driver.
Curfew keeps honest folks off the streets. But if my night out with Mills was any indication, the Curfew was also creating a wee-hours culture based in equal parts on crime, gambling and the frantic cultivation of garlic.
I never mentioned that Evis and his friends are no more repulsed by garlic than you or I. We might wrinkle our noses if someone shoves a handful of cloves in our face, but try that with a halfdead and you’ll only succeed in getting your arm ripped off, and worse.
Mills and I tramped from stinking bar to underground bawdyhouse to gambling hall to weed den. We asked the same question of every shifty-eyed card shark or nervous barkeep we encountered, and after forty-six askings got us the same indifferent shrugs and variations on “How the Hell should I know?” I was beginning to think we were wasting time.
But on the forty-seventh asking, in a weed-den dug below the warped floorboards of an abandoned rooming house on Sidge, we found what I was looking for.
The man’s real name wasn’t Glee, and if it was, it ought not have been. He didn’t smoke weed himself, but years of handling it and inhaling the fumes left him with the same afflictions all weedheads share. He twitched. He fidgeted. His lips were bloody and raw from being licked and picked at. His rheumy eyes made Evis’s look clear and healthy by comparison.
But he still had a mind in there.
He perked up before Mills finished pronouncing Japeth Stricken’s name.
“He’s back,” said Glee. He said it before he thought about setting a price. I was sure he wasn’t lying. The weed had dulled him that much.
“Is he now?” I asked. I let a few bright coins dance in my palm. “Back from where?”
Glee licked his lips. They bled afresh. His blood was black in the dim candlelight.
“Back from the dead, what I hear,” he said. I rewarded him with a pair of coins.
“He got stabbed about five years ago. Almost died. Crawled under a porch. Got away. That’s what he claims. Back now, settling old scores. Killed a man or two already, I hear.”
He shut up. I passed another coin his way. Somewhere in the dark, a weedhead started crying, until someone else kicked him in the gut.
“Say where he’s been, these past five years?”
Glee’s eyes darted. He shut his mouth and fidgeted.
Mills pushed him against the dirt wall.
“The man asked you a question,” he said.
I held up another coin.
“Prince,” said Glee, in a whisper. “Said he’s been in Prince. Claim’s he’s a big deal there, now.”
I flipped the coin his way. He caught it. Most weedheads wouldn’t realize a coin was in the air until they dreamed about it next week.
“Where could we find this big deal from Prince?”
“Hell, mister, I don’t know.” Mills pushed harder. I heard something pop. “Honest. It ain’t like we’re drinkin’ buddies.”
“You know all that, you don’t know where to find the man? I don’t believe that, weedhead.” Mills smiled and twisted Glee’s right arm. “Maybe you just need help remembering.”
Glee screamed. A couple of weedheads screamed back. If Glee kept a couple of thugs around to keep the peace, they were wisely finding less perilous chores to attend.
“A house. A house somewhere up in Torrent. I ain’t even sure that’s the truth, mister. It ain’t like I talked to the man myself.”
“Let him go.” Mills relaxed, and Glee sagged and wound up on his knees cradling his right arm.
“Wasn’t no need for all that,” he said. Blood ran in thick trails down his chin. “Wasn’t no need.”
I flipped a final coin at his feet.
“You have a good night. You’ll have a better one if you forget you ever talked to us. Isn’t that right, Mr. Mills?”
“That is the truth, Mr. Markhat. That is the Angel’s own truth.”
Glee just snatched up the coin. If he had any reply he spoke it too low to be heard.
Mills snorted and kicked him onto his side. I got him out of there before any of Glee’s employee’s realized they could safely hurl a brick from the darkness.
We made a couple more stops after that. The house in Torrent was mentioned again, as was Stricken’s fondness for long knives. As we emerged from the grimy shadows of our last stop, a smoke-filled gambling house whose doorway sported a blood-drained corpse lying so close we had to step over it, the first dim light of dawn was creeping up from the east.
“Sounds like this Stricken is a bad lot.” In a fit of civic-mindedness, Mills grabbed the dead man by his shoes and dragged him away from the door, leaving a trail of dark blood behind.
Another pair of steps, and the dead man would have lived. I suppose that sums up life in Rannit.
“If I’m right, he’s working for people far worse.” Mills was kneeling over the dead man, rifling through his pockets. He saw me give him a look and returned a shrug.
“It’s not like he needs anything any more. Look at this.” He produced a handful of coins, not all of them copper.
“Guess it’s my lucky day.”
There came a whisper of sound. Mills' expression changed from that of sudden satisfaction to mild confusion.
And then he fell down beside the dead man, the only sound the tinkling of the coins that fell from his open hand.
I dove. Something struck the wall behind me and skittered off the brick. I rolled over and over and saw sparks where another arrow hit the pavement, broke and skipped away.
An open alley loomed. I heaved myself into it, rolled to my feet, ran. Blind in the dark, I careened off stacks of trash and collided at least once with a drunk and fell again when my feet got caught up in a loose pile of rotten timbers.
But I lived. Another arrow came darting into the alley, coming to rest at my feet. I snatched it up, broke it in half and shoved the pieces in a pocket.
The drunk I’d collided with earlier grunted and cussed.
The alley opened into a dark narrow street. I hid in the shadows and listened.
Nothing. No footfalls pursued me. No shouts called out my whereabouts. Was the bowman waiting at the end of the alley into which I’d fled, or was he already rushing to cover the street before me, sure I’d head that way, hoping to lose him in the windings and the shadows of dawn?
I couldn’t know. So I waited there until I could breathe without panting.
Then I made my way carefully back the way I’d come.
The drunk I’d disturbed bumbled ahead of me. He emerged into the street screaming about vampires. He didn’t sprout any arrows, so I just watched him go.
The street remained quiet. After a time, the door to the gambling den opened, and a small hushed crowd emerged. They surrounded Mills and the dead man, and I strained to hear them speak.
“Both dead,” I heard. My heart sank. “One’s got an arrow in his neck.”
And then they fell to fighting among themselves as they discovered the loot Mills had dropped.
The crowd got suddenly larger, as did the noise. After a moment, I slipped out of my hiding place and joined them, milling around with the mob until Watch whistles began to blow. And then I scurried away, hat held down, back bent, just like all the rest.
I found my carriage still waiting three blocks away. The driver didn’t ask. I didn’t tell.
We just got the Hell out of there while the lazy sun awoke.
I didn’t go back to Cambrit.
Crossbows are the preferred weapons of Rannit’s better crimina
l element. Bows are too large, too obviously the tool of the murderer and the bandit. You can’t hide a longbow in a suitcase, and the weapon that had launched the arrow I held was indeed a powerful old longbow.
The head was razor-sharp steel. The shaft was black ash. The fletching was pure black raven-feather.
The vile thing screamed professional assassin. Not of the local vintage.
Which meant someone, perhaps Stricken, had decided certain finders had officially become a nuisance.
If Mama had been handy, I’d have asked her to check the arrow for hexes.
But since Mama was off beheading ex-army wand-wavers in Pot Lockney, I didn’t have that option. Even Gertriss was gone, presumably lounging on the foredeck of a new-fangled sailing machine while Buttercup played atop a heap of explosives, and Evis laughed and smoked cigars.
So I bade the driver head up to Elfways, and I hoped Granny Knot was an early riser.
I watched the streets while we drove. I didn’t spot anyone following us. I hadn’t spotted any bowmen last night. And Mills was dead because of it.
An arrow in the throat. One that was probably meant for me. Two men in coats and hats, same height, same general build-I realized I’d been a finger’s breadth from dying last night, and the thought chilled me to the bone.
I yelled for a halt at the cemetery next to Granny’s shack. From there, I could see the street, scan the warped and leaning rooftops, make out anyone idling or standing or crouching in the morning sun.
Aside from a few old women emptying chamberpots it seemed safe enough.
I clambered out of the cab. My driver kept keen eyes moving along the likely places a bowman might hide.
A dog barked. Someone cussed. No arrows flew hissing through the chilly air.
Granny Knot herself flung open her door.
“Sing a song of sorrows, if it ain’t the King of the East,” she shrieked with a wink. “Bring your heels inside, Your Majesty. But leave them Queens outside. I don’t harken to no dancin’, you hears me?”
I leaped up on her porch. “As you wish, my Lady,” I said with a bow.
“Cheeky young bastard,” she whispered. I passed through her weather-worn door and relaxed when she shut it and bolted it.