by Glen Cook
A broad range of herbs and spices grows wild in the interior, too.
But hunting is the thing.
A bold enough hunter, responding to the appropriate commercial demand, can set himself up for life by making a handful of the right kills. I expect a lot of bold veterans will toss the dice out there before long. And have enough success that the market for animal by-products will get shaky.
Perhaps the Crown ought to encourage homesteading. That would bleed off a lot of extra people.
Generally speaking, the quickest way to get dwarves to give up their silver and gold is to take it away, over their dead bodies. But if you can bring them the head of the right kind of thunder lizard—which they won't hunt themselves, no matter what—they'll throw gold dust at you like the bags are filled with sand. But that head has to come off an adult specimen of one of the major carnivores. Or off a three-horn or the rarer five-horn, because an infusion of powdered horn will scare impotence into the next continent.
I've never heard why dwarves covet the teeth of the great meat eaters, but who better than a lady dwarf to know, intimately, the meaning of rock hard?
Singe told me, "We must pass through this place that smells of old death."
"Huh?'
"The area where they make leather from those uncured animal hides."
"The tannery district." There were places which processed tallow and bone, too, though little of that would be imported. None of those places lacked their enthusiastic odors. "Why?"
"Someone is using ratman trackers to follow us. There can be no other explanation for their success. Yet few of my people have the courage to visit the fastnesses of death. Even if they forget that not many generations have passed since our own kind were killed and flayed to provide fashionable trousers for young dandies, the stench will overwhelm anything as subtle as traces left by you and me. Without leaving it obvious that we were trying to distort our backtrail."
"Ah, my friend, you continue to amaze me."
"A year from now you will be working for me."
There was a thought to rattle me.
Singe jumped up and down and clapped her paws. "I did it! I did it! You should see the look on your face."
"I believe I've created a monster."
Ratpeople aren't built to laugh but Singe sure did try. And she kept her mind on business while she was having fun. She led the way along a path a ratman tracker ought not to find suspicious, yet one that would overload any tracker's nose.
Singe was too naive to understand that anything not going his way would be suspicious to Director Relway.
I may have remained a little naive myself.
Not till after we had begun taking advantage of the district's natural odiferous cover did it occur to me that having Relway's fanatics on my backtrail might be a lesser evil.
78
Singe and I were on a holiday stroll, giddy because we had shaken free. Singe more so than I because she had a better appreciation of what she had accomplished—and of its cost. Her own olfactory abilities had been dampened hugely.
A sudden whir. The pixie Shakespear materialized above my right shoulder. He told me, "You must hide quickly. They will be here in a minute."
Another whirr as Shakespear went away. I glimpsed a second pixie, hovering, pointing in the direction of the threat. I heard the wings of several more.
Singe pulled me toward the nearest doorway. It was open. Beyond lay the noisome vats of a small tannery. I wondered how the flies stood the smell. I whispered, "Did you know that the wee folk were with us?"
"You did not know? You missed the sound of their wings?"
"You have better ears than I do. And you're starting to make me feel old. I should've been more aware of what was happening around me." Maybe my friends are right. Maybe I am getting too tied up inside my own head.
There wasn't anything in the tannery. There was no tanning going on, thought the place was still in business. It gave the impression that the entire workforce had slipped out just minutes before we arrived. Curious. It wasn't a major holy day that I knew of, though possibly the place employed only members of some lesser cult.
Still, there ought to be somebody around to keep opportunists from finders-keeping all those squirrel hides.
"Here."
Singe had located a low opening in the outer wall, placed so air could waft in and rise to roof vents, so the tannery could share its chief wonder with the city. The opening lay behind a heap of pelts from small animals. The majority had come off rodents but some were scaly. The odor off the pile guaranteed that no ratman tracker would find us here.
Singe had both paws clamped to her muzzle.
Gagging, I whispered, "Could you pick me out of this?"
Singe shook her head slightly, took a paw away from her muzzle long enough to tap her ear, reminding me that her people also had exceptional hearing. Then she dropped down so she could watch the street between bars that kept dogs, cats, and other sizable vermin from getting to the delicacies. They would have to stroll all the way down to the unlocked and open door if they wanted to compete with the bugs.
Singe beckoned me. I went for the fresh air.
I got down on the dirt floor, amongst the crud and the hair and the fleas off the pelts, and observed. And learned.
The first few hunters weren't unusual. They were just thugs. But they were extremely nervous, very alert thugs. They were thugs whose main task was to protect a brace of extremely unhappy ratmen. The trackers kept glancing over their shoulders. I didn't recognize anybody but wasn't surprised. I didn't know many members of the Guard. And Relway was enlisting fellow fanatics like harvesting dragons' teeth.
Then I saw white boots. With platform soles and cracked, fake jewels. Bic Gonlit was up on top of them. The real Bic Gonlit. And Bic wasn't alone. Nor was he in charge. His companion wore black as tattered as Bic's white but was a lot more intimidating. He looked like he was about nine feet tall. He wore a mask. Arcane symbols in gold and silver spattered something like a monk's hooded robe. An extremely threadbare robe. This particular stormwarden wasn't enjoying a great deal of prosperity.
That would make him especially dangerous.
Singe was even more careful than I was about not attracting attention by breathing. Her people have nurtured that skill since their creation.
I didn't recognize anybody but Bic.
My first inclination was to drop everything and head for home. Let Bic and the big boy play the game. Which is exactly what most people do and what all the big boys expect us to do. They count on that, up there on the Hill. They don't know how to react when ordinary folks refuse to fold and fade.
Usually that's followed by a lot of sound and fury and people getting hurt. Which explains the prevalent cowardly attitude.
Once they passed by, I whispered, "I've got Bic Gonlit figured out, now." He'd taken Casey's money. He'd underwritten his taste for high living by collecting books for Casey, but once things got real interesting the little pudgeball had made a fast connection up the Hill.
That being the case, why hadn't any Hill-type visitors come to the house?
Maybe Brother Bic hadn't made himself a deal so good that he felt like giving up everything he had, informationwise. Or, more likely, the Dead Man had revised his recollections before letting him leave the house.
You've got to keep an eye on the dead guy. He's sneaky.
Old Bones has been getting slicker every day for a long time. He doesn't keep me adequately informed, though, I thought. I must have an unrecognized tendency to blab all over town.
Another pack of intense bruno types came along, following Bic and his buddy in black. They were alert. They were all armed, too, though that was against the law.
Once again, neither Singe nor I breathed.
I'd love to see Relway attempt to impose his idealistic, no exceptions, rule of law outlook on the lords of the Hill. Or even on their minions.
The resulting fireworks would make for great popular
entertainment.
Bic's stride faltered. He stopped. He seemed uncertain.
He bent to caress his ragged magic boots. Frowning, he looked straight at me, though without seeing me. He frowned, shook his head, said nothing to the ragged wizard. The stormwarden beckoned two ratman trackers. A conference ensued.
The whole crew had become confused.
Nobody had the track now, by scent or by sorcery.
Singe pinched me.
79
I breathed, "This isn't the time," because she'd snuggled up like she wanted to get really friendly. It hadn't ever gotten this complicated when I was running with Morley. Then Singe proved that I had misjudged her again.
She pointed back past the heap of possum and muskrat hides.
Several Visitors were up to something back there. Singe had pressed against me to make sure the invisibility spell concealed us both.
I whispered, "What the hell are they doing? They're not supposed to be here." One of the Visitors had his arm in a sling. Another seemed to have a broken leg. Evidently the Maskers hadn't been able to work any medical magic.
Every Visitor carried at least one gray fetish and studied it intently.
I whispered, "There're too many of them." There were more here than the Masker four. I couldn't get them all in sight at once but I definitely counted at least five Visitors. Though it was hard to tell one from another, even when the Visitor hailed from Evas' crew. Unless you charmed them out of their silver suits.
I whispered, "We're still blocks away from where John Stretch said they're hiding."
Singe murmured, "Quit whispering so much," then added a thought I'd had already and didn't want to be true. "Maybe they were warned about us coming. Maybe they are here because they expected us to go to the place where we were told that they would be hiding."
Maybe. Because in TunFaire nothing ought to surprise you. The possible will happen. The impossible takes only a few minutes longer.
In this case the probabilities were apparent. Certain overly friendly Visitor ladies, desperate to get a ride home, had conned simple old Garrett into returning some Visitor fetishes they said they'd need in order to sneak in and join Evas in her adventures with Morley Dotes at The Palms. Taking advantage of simple old Garrett's understandable and righteous desire to rectify a near-cosmic injustice.
If they got away I hoped the girls were dim enough to take the Goddamn Parrot with them.
Smirk. I'd have to remember to call the place The Joy House next time I dropped in at Morley's. Smirk.
The extra Visitors lurking here had to be Lastyr and Noodiss, erstwhile missionaries. Just had to be. Because no Visitor would be going home if they couldn't all work together, and the Maskers would have been gone already if they'd gotten reinforcements from the old country. The women in particular had to be extremely cooperative with the others. They were at everyone's mercy.
Disdaining Singe's advice, I whispered. "You watch them. I'll keep an eye on the street." The confusion out there had begun to commence to begin to get ready to head on out somewhere else.
Bic and his pal resumed moving, though confusion didn't cease being their guiding spirit. They faded away.
I expected them back. You cast around a bit but you always return to the point where your track evaporated, to hunt for the one thing you missed the last time you looked.
Minutes later Singe murmured a grand understatement. "We should leave. Sooner or later they will stumble over us in spite of this invisibility amulet."
"Or they might have some way to tell if an invisibility spell is being used anywhere nearby." If I invented an invisibility-maker I'd sure try to come up with a way to tell if somebody else was using something like it around me.
"Or they might hear you whispering."
That, too.
We'd come to the Embankment to find Visitors. Although this wasn't quite the situation I'd hoped for. This wasn't good. This didn't fit in with my half-assed plans at all.
Singe was spot on about whispering. But she was a tad off when it came to who would do the eavesdropping.
Yikes! Here came Bic Gonlit and his threadbare stormwarden buddy, hustling like they were being driven by one of the wizard's spooky winds. Their trackers and henchmen scampered along behind them, confused and alert and able to keep up only because Bic had those stubby little pins.
The flotilla's course ran straight toward me.
I poked Singe, indicated that she should peek through the airhole. Once she'd done so we got up on our hind feet and, chest to chest, in careful lockstep, began to ease along the brick wall, toward the cover of another mound of hides. We found it necessary to freeze every few steps because the Visitors had become extremely nervous, suddenly. They were inclined to jump at the slightest sound.
They had to suspect that they had trouble in their hip pocket.
Several Visitors, fetishes extended before them, suddenly rushed the hide pile Singe and I had abandoned. Bic and his cohorts were causing a disturbance outside. And Singe and I hadn't gotten but a dozen feet away. So we froze. And shivered. And held our breaths. And hoped nobody stumbled into us.
The Visitor with his arm in a sling missed running into me by scant inches.
Tension mounted amongst the Visitors. The advent of danger reawakened the bad feelings between the Maskers and Kip's pals. I could sense just enough to tell that the Maskers blamed Lastyr and Noodiss for everything. Kip's friends blamed the Maskers for zipping all over the sky, thereby alerting the savages to their presence.
Lastyr and Noodiss had abandoned the altruism that had brought them to TunFaire. In fact, prolonged exposure to our fair flower of a city had turned them bitter and cynical.
Imagine that.
Singe and I continued to move, teensy baby steps, then with more vigor once we realized that the people outside intended to come inside.
Visitors began flying all over the place. Two quite literally. I didn't see any ropes or wires. "Keep moving," I told Singe, in what I thought would be an inaudible whisper.
Visitors froze.
Something had changed. The Visitors were alert in a whole different way.
The Visitors then unfroze, every man jack getting busy with fetish boxes.
Those guys needed bandoliers to carry all the fetishes they had. Evidently every task imaginable could be managed with the right gray box.
Two Visitors headed our way, weaving slow, serpentine courses, zeroing in.
Bic's gang poured through the open door.
Big surprises happened. For everybody.
The confusion attained an epic level.
At first it looked like it would be a walk for the startled Visitors. Thugs went down left and right, exactly as easily as I had in my first several encounters with Masker magic.
Then Bic came through the doorway.
The Visitor sorcery didn't affect Little Bitty Big Boy.
Bic selected a paddle meant for stirring the contents of a curing vat. He took a swing at the nearest silver figure, which happened to belong to the Masker with the broken leg.
The Visitor rewarded Bic with a beaten-sheep sort of bleat.
The shabby stormwarden stepped inside. And instantly called down some of that old-fashioned thunder and lightning, the ability to control which gave stormwardens their name.
Weather magic is the flashiest and most obviously destructive power possessed by our lords of the Hill—and the most common.
Hides flew. Vats exploded. People shrieked. Bic Gonlit rose ten feet into the air, spinning faster and faster as he did so. The stormwarden followed, spinning himself. But he threw off spells like the sparks coming off one of those pinwheel fireworks.
I told Singe, "We really need to take ourselves somewhere else."
The game looked like it was just starting to get serious.
"I thought you wanted to find the Visitors... "
"We found them. Now let's take advantage of the fact that nobody here has us at the head of their
to-do list right now."
80
Pixies flitted around us, giggling and squabbling, more annoying than a flock of starving mosquitoes. Not a single one had anything useful to say. Their presence didn't help anything. Singe and I weren't invisible anymore. There was no need.
Nobody was interested in us. But the squawking bugs threatened to attract attention.
For the gawkers, trying to figure out what was happening in the slowly collapsing tannery, a guy hanging out with a ratwoman bold enough to walk the streets by daylight was a secondary spectacle.
Threads of blue light as thin as spider silk crawled over the ruins. The entire heap of rubble hurled itself skyward. Everything inside went up with the building itself. People and debris alike floated on the surface of an expanding, invisible bubble.
More time seemed to pass than actually did.
The bubble popped. And collapsed.
A raindrop smacked me in the cheek. I noted that a cold breeze had begun blowing. The change in weather wasn't unseasonable or unlikely, it was just a surprise because I hadn't been paying attention.
Vigorous lightning pranced over the remains of the tannery. One bolt struck something explosive, probably chemicals used for treating leather. The explosion scattered brick and broken timbers for a hundred yards around. A spinning sliver sixteen inches long flew between Singe and me, narrowly missing us both.
Singe said, "We have found them. Do we really need to stay so close, now?"
"I don't know. You may have a point." I spied a dirty white behind wagging as somebody struggled to back his way out of the mess. When the pile finally finished birthing Bic it developed that he had hold of his employer by the ankle. He strove to drag the wizard out by main strength.
I said, "I think we might move a little farther away."