by Frank Tuttle
Victor bowed to her. If he was smiling behind that silk, I couldn’t see it, and didn’t want to.
“As you wish. Good luck to you both. I fear the coming days will be dark ones.”
“Good luck to you, too.”
He bowed again and was gone.
“A thousand what?” whispered Darla. “What contrivance? What weapon? Is that the thing you’ve been hiding in your coat pocket all day?”
“I’ll explain on the way home,” I said. “You need to pick out a dress. I need to polish some shoes. Aren’t we getting married tomorrow? I do seem to recall something about that.”
Darla doesn’t giggle often, but she did then, and we stole a kiss right there inside a house full of vampires.
Some days, you just never know where your path is going to take you.
The rest of that day is, even now, a blur.
I returned my borrowed mare, and in her place I took a sleek black carriage and a pair of sturdy-looking ponies. I repaid a confused shoemaker for the mismatched pair of shoes I’d looted. I sought out a few unsavory acquaintances in search of news of Japeth Stricken, but found my ne’er-do-wells either dead or fled. I even made the long trip to Elfways, hoping Granny Knot had found a pigeon bearing news from Pot Lockney on her windowsill, but found her shack bolted shut and silent
That left nothing to be done but prepare for my wedding.
False wedding, I reminded myself. Sham wedding. An effort to keep Tamar and her young man safe. That, and nothing more.
I watched Darla smile at me from across the cab and hoped she was thinking along the same lines.
As the co-owner of a gown shop, I assumed Darla could simply reach out in any direction and fill her hands with a gown appropriate for a wedding, even a sham one. I assumed some alterations might need to be made, and that would be the business of an hour or so, but I didn’t consider the matter likely to demand more time or resources than that.
Oh, how wrong I was. Within moments of arriving, Darla and Mary and even Martha Hoobin set about conducting what appeared to be a full-on ruthless ransacking of their wares.
Gowns flew. Veils and unmentionables followed. Opinions and judgments came fast and furious, all reduced to a hushed female shorthand-
“This one is too-”
“If only that were-”
“Too light-”
“Too dark-”
I pulled my hat down over my eyes, forgotten in my appointed chair.
I did not sleep. I managed to buckle the contrivance Victor had given me around my waist. The belt held a leather holster for the hand cannon. It was ringed around with clever little leather pockets, each of which held an explosive round. I loaded the hand cannon and filled the belt and put a handful of extra rounds in my pocket just in case those eighty-five weren’t enough.
Darla and Mary and Martha tittered and whispered and plotted. So did I.
I had to have a ring.
Oh, I could just stop by Whistler’s or Trader Mac’s and walk away with a two-penny ring with a bit of sand in the middle. And that would be just fine for a sham wedding.
But I didn’t need Mama to tell me that handing Darla a backstreet petty ring and taking her to a lie of a wedding was going to have repercussions of the negative variety. Soon.
Very soon.
The street outside was all but deserted. Save for the Army, of course. Soldiers marched by in nervous little bands. Lone Army wagons thundered past, sparks flying from iron wheels, bound for destinations on the Wall.
I stood up quietly, so the floors didn’t creak. I unlocked Darla’s door with the stealth of a footpad.
I locked it behind me when I went out. Laid a finger across my lips to the soldiers I left standing there.
She still doesn’t know I left her there, that day.
We all need our little secrets.
One of the mysteries of the matrimonial process is the disparate amount of effort required in the assemblage of the respective costumes required.
By my count, the bare preliminaries involved in getting Darla kitted out for her wedding required seven and a half hours of continuous effort by no fewer than three determined women, each an expert in the field of elaborate costumery. That doesn’t count the night I’m sure Mary and Martha put in, making alterations or creating accoutrements from scratch.
My outfitting, by contrast, took an hour. Mary hemmed up the cuffs on a pair of black pants that sported grey pinstripes up the sides. Martha added fancy jade and silver buttons to a new white shirt, after Darla claimed the green in the buttons complemented my eyes. Darla found an old-fashioned long-tailed jacket, black as a crow’s wing, which fit. A black hat, black gloves, and some shiny black shoes were procured, I was admonished to shave, and I was pronounced worthy of groom-hood.
I did not see Darla in her final fitting. I reminded the ladies that this was not a real wedding, and thus the old superstition about seeing a bride in her bridal gown early did not apply, but Mary slapped my fingers with a fly-swatter and I decided not to push the matter further.
Night fell. My soldiers outside were swapped for fresh ones. I admonished them to resist the temptation to slack off until Darla caught me by the elbow and led me back inside.
“There’s no need to terrify them so soon, is there, dear?”
“Ha. Shows what you know about soldiers. They’re already plotting ways to get Mary baking them pies.”
“Hush.” She kissed me.
She was dressed again in her black pants and black canvas shirt. The dagger was back in her boot. I felt another hidden away at the small of her back when I put my arms around her, and my heart ached.
This is what you’ve done to her, said a mean small voice. She can’t even go outdoors without arming herself.
“I wore knives well before I met you, Mr. Markhat,” she whispered in my ear.
“Did you now?”
“I did. What’s next?”
She didn’t see. I almost didn’t. A man was walking slowly down the sidewalk, across the street. There was nothing remarkable about him, or the way he walked. He was just a man, perhaps a bit weary, holding his hat against a wind that still smelled of smoke.
But as he moved beneath a street lamp, he pulled back his hat and looked across the street.
It was Mills. His eyes were sunken and circled by mottled black rings. His skin was slack, going blue. The scarf wrapped around his ruined neck was stained an ugly brown in the front.
He nodded, lowered his hat, continued on.
“Dear, what is it?”
“Nothing. I remembered something. You stay here. I won’t be long.”
“Damn it. Damn it all, anyway.” She let go of me and hurried to the back. A cheery little bell tinkled as she closed the door.
I cussed a bit myself. Then I went out the door, gave the soldiers a glare, and hurried off after the dead man.
Mills set a good pace for a corpse. He went two blocks north and turned into an alley. I’d been keeping half a block behind, on the assumption the Corpsemaster wanted some privacy for our talk. I figured the alley was it.
In the alley, though, a plain Army tallboy waited. Its driver was either living or so freshly dead he still felt the need to sneeze. I nodded at him and clambered inside, and once I was seated he snapped his reins and off we went.
Mills sat across from me. There was no smell. No buzzing of flies. Nothing but a slouched figure in a bloody scarf.
“Captain.”
The voice wasn’t even that of Mills. It was the Corpsemaster’s own voice, or at least the voice she’d led me to believe was hers.
With her breed, one can never be too sure.
“Corpsemaster.” I didn’t salute. “Any news from upriver?”
“You refer to the Regency and her attempt to blow the bluffs.”
“I do.”
There was a small stirring of Mills’s dead limbs. “An ingenious stratagem. I had no idea Avalante had continued their research, after the War.
I commend you, Captain. Your efforts were daring and bold.”
“But were they effective?”
Silence.
“That, Captain, I simply do not know.”
“With respect, Corpsemaster, might I inquire as to what you do know?”
She chuckled. “Very little, I’m afraid. A powerful charm has been laid on the land itself, north of Rannit. I suspect it required the full efforts of all three of our sorcerers, working in close concert. That is in itself troubling. Nearly as troubling as the extent to which it has rendered me blind and deaf.”
“That’s why the long-talker isn’t working anymore.”
“Yes. Also disabled are the other more conventional lines of arcane communication used by the House. Oh yes. I know of those. Long ago, Captain, I laid certain charms of my own, up and down the Brown. All those that lie north of here have fallen silent.”
“We’re blind, then.”
Mills nodded.
“I have reason to believe, though, that the invaders are also reduced to what they can see with their unaided eyes,” she said. “This can work to our advantage. An unexpected boon, granted by the Angel of Chance herself, perhaps.”
“I don’t follow.”
“They perhaps do not see the Regency. Perhaps not be aware of her approach, or her mission. Indeed, her crew may have already laid the charges and blown the Bluffs. If the crew of the Regency made the attempt after the invaders loosed the concealment spell, the enemy may have well masked the very agents of their undoing. Poetic, is it not?”
“Is that what happened?”
“I have no way of knowing. I merely offer it as a possibility. It is also possible the Regency was discovered and sunk before she laid a single charge. I simply do not know.”
I nodded. We rolled on ahead, heading east, and not in any hurry.
“The reason for your visit?”
“If I should fall, finder, all those who serve me will fall as well. The few remaining sorcerers in Rannit may continue the defense of the city, or they may flee, or they may join the invaders. In any instance, there will be chaos. You will find no place of safety here, in the aftermath. Neither you, or those you love.”
“Is this one of those morale-building pep talks I remember? Because, with respect, if it is, it needs work.”
“Take those you care about. Go to my house. Find the lowest chambers. There is a door lined with silver at the end of a hall lined with lead. Open that door with this.”
A key appeared in my hand. She didn’t hand it to me. It was just there, cold to the touch.
“Why, Corpsemaster?”
She caused Mills to shrug.
“Because it amuses me. Because I would not leave this world knowing I was a villain to all. Because it is Tuesday and the whim stuck me-what does it matter?”
“Thank you.”
“I hear you’re getting married.”
That threw me. I gobbled air for a moment.
She laughed. “You did get the lady a proper ring, didn’t you? Not some dime-store trinket?”
“It’s not a real wedding. We’re at war, or about to be.”
“So?” Mills turned his head. “You can spend your life waiting for the right moment, Captain. You can spend a thousand lifetimes. A hundred thousand. Take it from me. I can make that statement, and mean it quite literally. Driver. Stop. The Captain will be leaving now.”
The tallboy rolled to the curb.
Mills hid his face with his hat.
“I would shake your hand, Captain, but I fear that would be less than pleasant for either of us. You have the key. Use it if all is lost.”
“We’re a long way from that, sir.”
“Optimism does not suit you, Captain. Fare thee well.”
“And you, sir.”
Mills turned away. I leaped to the pavement. The door slammed shut and the tallboy charged away.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Darla didn’t ask who I’d rushed out to meet.
She knew, though. She knew damned well.
We didn’t speak of it. Not speaking of it robbed us both of any words at all. Mary filled the silence with trivia about hair and make-up, and Darla did her best to make as if I hadn’t just rushed out to take a ride with a dead man.
We stayed there, at the shop, for most of the night. There wasn’t a damned thing else I could do. Mary and Martha sorted shelves and hung gowns and sparred over the displays and the pricing.
Darla pulled up a chair next to mine and we held hands and watched night swallow up the city.
The Corpsemaster’s key was tucked away safe in a pocket. It was just a big old-fashioned iron skeleton key, worn from age and handling.
And it led to a silver door at the end of a lead-lined hallway.
I wondered what lay behind the silver door. I thought of the Battery, and that strange grassland, and the foreign skies over both.
I decided I didn’t want to find out where that door led, because once it closed behind us, I knew it would never ever open again.
Darla squeezed my hand.
“So, you’re ready for tomorrow?”
“I’m ready.” A long column of bowmen ran past. “If anyone hostile shows up, I figure they’ll go after Carris. But stick close to Tamar all the same.”
“I will.”
And that was all we said.
I hear that a comet appeared in the north that night, hanging over the Brown like a flag, or a shroud. The canyons of downtown don’t leave much of the sky visible, these days. We never saw the thing.
But they saw the comet from the walls. Oh yes, they did.
Hundreds fled at the sight of it, on foot, taking to the woods and risking the bogs and the snakes and the haints, as Mama Hog called them.
But only hundreds. If the comet was a trick of the sorcerers from Prince, it was largely a wasted effort.
Not so much because so few fled, but because so few remained at all.
We left the store well after Curfew. I helped shutter the windows and bar the doors. The ladies looked back at the little place as we left, and only Martha took the trouble to hide her tears.
We all knew. We all felt it.
Whatever the dawn brought, Rannit would never be the same.
“What?”
“I tell ye plain. Ye are not seein’ Miss Tomas this morn’, and no amount o’ bluster is going to change that.”
Mary’s eyes blazed. Her hands were on her hips. The ladle she gripped in her right hand was heavy enough to swing, and I didn’t think her choice of it was entirely an accident.
I considered and rejected just picking her diminutive body up and moving her to the side.
“This is not a real wedding, dammit.”
“It’ll be real bad luck to them what is havin’ a real wedding,” said Mary. “And don’t you be dismissing my beliefs.”
I forced a deep breath. “Fine. Wonderful. Look. What if I wear a blindfold? What if I just speak to her through the damned door? Will your beliefs allow me that much?”
“They would,” said Martha Hoobin, who emerged from the rear of the house with a rare smug grin. “But you’re a mite late, Mister Markhat. Miss Tomas left for the Church half an hour ago. I suspect she is there now. See if you can sweet-talk your way past them Church soldiers, will ye?”
I was dressed, which was fortunate, because rather than speak words I would sooner or later regret I just jammed my ridiculous groom’s top hat tight on my fresh-shaven head and stomped out the door.
I did let it slam behind me.
The soldiers leaped to attention.
“Stay here, lads. If trouble starts, hide behind that pair of banshees.”
A pair of “Aye, Captains” were spoken at my back.
I found my borrowed carriage waiting at the curb. My driver leaped down and made a big show of opening the door for me.
I managed a gruff thanks and settled in for the ride.
The hand cannon rode heavy at my waist. The barre
l of the thing poked out from beneath my fancy jacket and I knew Darla would have a fit at the way it ruined the lines of the suit, but that would serve as her penance for sneaking out just to assuage some backwoods wedding superstition.
The day was turning out clear and brisk. The sky was a cheery blue we hadn’t seen in weeks. The few trails of smoke that remained were rising straight up before thinning out to nothing against the rising sun.
The Army was up and moving. Wagonloads of cannon shot rattled past, their contents no longer hidden by tarps or canvases.
Neither side had time for any last-minute surprises.
Wherthmore’s sooty domes rose up shortly, not quite glinting in the sun. I saw a carriage ahead of us stop and disgorge the female half of a wedding party, which scampered away up the steps. Another carriage did the same.
Then my turn arrived. A kid in bright red Church clothes opened my door and gestured for me to step out.
“Be welcome on this most blessed of days,” he began in a breathless monotone. “May the Angel Galaheil herself shade you with her mighty wings of eternal blessing-”
“Sure, kid, sure, Angels and blessings all around.” I flipped a coin into his palm, and he made it vanish with a grin. “Seen a groom show up looking sick, with a bandage on his head?”
“Maybe I did, Mister.”
I climbed out of the carriage and sent it rolling on its way.
Another coin did a magic trick by appearing in my hand and vanishing into his pocket.
“How long ago?”
“First light. Way too early. We let him in anyway. Afraid he might pass out on the steps waiting. He’s in with the other victims.”
“Victims. Ha ha. What a humorous lad you are.”
“You bring groomsmen, Mister?”
“They’ll be along any minute now. Why don’t you show me to this gathering place of grooms. Sounds like a place a man can get a drink.”
“Not today. Old Father Wickens is in charge today.” The kid looked around. “But if a man wants a drink anyway, a man could find a flask of good Aimish whiskey hid in the firewood later, if a man had another half a crown.”