by Glen Cook
I started walking. Though I shuffled along and might have looked preoccupied, I was reasonably alert. I noticed, for example, that the sky was overcast and a chill breeze was as busy as a litter of kittens tumbling leaves and trash. There wasn't much else to notice as far as I could see.
21
Chattaree, the Church's citadel-cum-cathedral, sits at the hub of the Dream Quarter. I looked it over from across the avenue. How many millions of marks did it take to erect that limestone monstrosity? How many more to keep it up?
In a city where you see uglies as a matter of course, artisans had had to stretch to make Chattaree hideous. Ten thousand fabulous beasties snarl and roar from the cathedral's exterior—supposedly to keep Sin at bay. The Church has that neatly personified in a platoon of nasty minor demons. Maybe the uglies work. They gave me the creeps as I started across to the cathedral steps.
There are forty of those. Each has a name and they surround the cathedral completely. It looks like somebody started to build a pyramid and suffered a change of heart a third of the way through the project. The cathedral itself starts thirty feet above street level, all soaring spires covered with curlicues and ugly boys. The steps are uneven in width and height to make running difficult for unfriendly people in a hurry to drop in. There was a time when rivalries between sects were less restrained.
The dungeons where Magister Peridont reputedly had his fun were supposed to exist as catacombs worm holed into the foundations beneath the steps.
Halfway up I met an old priest. He smiled and nodded benevolently, one of those guys who are what priests are supposed to be, and as a consequence, remain at the foot of the episcopal ladder throughout their lives.
"Excuse me, Father," I said. "Can you tell me how to find Magister Peridont?"
He seemed disappointed. He studied me and saw I wasn't one of the faithful. That left him perplexed. "Are you sure, my son?"
"I'm sure. He invited me over, but I've never been here before. I don't know my way around."
He looked at me funny again. I guess people don't come prancing in looking for Malevechea every day. He gave me a lot of near-gibberish Church cant. Boiled down, it told me I should ask the guy on guard duty inside the cathedral door.
"Thanks, Father."
"For nothing, my son. Have a pleasant day."
I clambered to door level and surveyed the Dream Quarter. The Church's nearest neighbor was also its most bitter competitor. The sprawling grounds of the Orthodox basilica and bastion began a hundred yards to the west. Its domes and towers looked somber behind surrounding trees. People came and went at the minority temple but nothing moved over there. It was as silent as a place under siege. I guess the scandals were bad for business.
I stepped in out of the gloom, found the guard and woke him up. He didn't like that. He liked it even less when I told him what I wanted.
"What do you want him for?"
"About twenty minutes."
He didn't get it, which was why he had a guard's job. He wasn't smart enough for anything else. He wasn't your everyday parish priest. He was a no-neck kind of guy who probably should have been a wrestler. His frown threatened to fold a mountain range in the center of his forehead. He deduced that I was poking fun and didn't like it.
I told him, "Me and the Magister are old war buddies. Tell him Garrett is here."
A second mountain range rose atop the first. An old buddy of Malevechea? He knew he'd better be careful until he got the go-ahead to stomp me. "I'll tell him you're here. You keep an eye out. Don't let nobody carry nothing off.'' He looked at me like he wondered if maybe I might plunder the altars.
It was not a bad idea if you could get away with it. You'd need a train of wagons to haul the goodies away.
He was gone a while. I hung around beaming at passersby. The regulars did a double take and frowned, but went about their business when I told them, "New on the job. Don't mind me." A dumb smiled helped.
The guard came back looking perplexed. His world was tilting. He'd expected Peridont to tell him to bounce me down all forty steps. "You're supposed to come with me."
I followed him, surprised that it had been so simple. I trod warily. When it's easy you don't go barefoot because there's always a snake in the grass.
I didn't see any prisoners. I didn't hear any wails of despair. But the ways we followed were narrow and dark and damp and rat-haunted and sure would have made nice dungeons. Hell, I was disappointed.
No-Neck brought me to a cadaverous, bald, hooknosed character about fifty years old. "This is the guy. Garrett."
Hawk nose gave me the fish eye. "Very well. I'll take charge. Return to your post." His voice was a heavy, breathy rasp, like somebody had smashed his voice box for him. It's hard to describe how creepy it was, but it gave me the feeling he was the guy who had all the fun tightening the thumbscrews.
He gave me the evil eye. "Why do you want to see the Magister?"
"Why do you want to know?"
That caught him off balance, like what I wanted really wasn't any of his business.
He looked away, got himself under control, grabbed papers off his escritoire. "Come with me, please."
He led me through a maze of passages. I tried to picture him as the guy who'd run over me and Maya last night. He had no hair and a weird nose but was about a foot too tall. He tapped on a door. "Sampson, Magister. I've brought the man Garrett."
"Show him in."
He did. Behind the door lay a chamber twenty feet by twenty and cheerful for a place that was buried. Magister Peridont didn't have ascetic tastes, either. "Doing all right for yourself, I see."
Hawk nose pursed his lips, handed over his papers, bowed toward Peridont, and hurried out, closing up behind me.
I waited. Peridont didn't say anything. I told him, "That Sampson is a creep."
Peridont put the papers on a table twelve feet long and four wide. They vanished in the litter already there. "Sampson has social disabilities. But he makes up for that. So. You've reconsidered?"
"Possibly. I'll need some information before I make up my mind. It may have become personal."
That puzzled him. He studied me. I was doing a boggle on everybody today. It's all in knowing how, I guess. "Let's have the questions, then. I want you on the team."
I never trust guys who want to be my pal. They always want something I don't want to give.
I showed him the coins. "You recognize these?"
He placed the card on his table, put on bifocals as he sat down. He stared for half a minute and took his cheaters off. "No, I don't. Sorry. Do these have a bearing on our business?"
"Not that I know of. I thought you might know who put them out. They're temple coinage."
"Sorry. That's strange, isn't it? I should." He perched those bifocals on the tip of his nose and eyed the coins again. He handed me the card. "Curious."
I'd tried. "More to the point. Did you hire somebody else when I turned you down?"
He poked at that question before he admitted he had.
"It wouldn't have been Pokey Pigotta, would it? Wesley Pigotta?"
He wouldn't answer that one.
"It's a small field. I know everybody. They know me. Pokey would have suited your requirements. And he took on a new client right after I turned you down."
"Is this important?"
"If you did hire Pokey, you're short a hired hand. He got himself killed last night."
His start and pallor answered my question.
"So. A big setback?"
"Yes. Tell me about it. When, where, how, who. And why you know about it."
"When: last night after dark sometime. Where: an apartment on Shindlow Street. I can't tell you who. Four men were involved. None survived. I know about it because the person who found the bodies asked me what to do about them."
He grunted, thought. I waited. He asked, "That's why you came? Pigotta's death?"
"Yes." That was partly true.
"He was a friend?"
"I don't quite see your interest."
"Somebody tried to kill me, too. Me and Pokey both doesn't read coincidence to me. I talk to you and somebody tries to off me. You hire Pokey, he gets it. I wonder why but even more I wonder who. I want to cool him down. If that helps you, so be it."
"Excellent. By all means, if the people responsible for Pigotta's death tried to kill you too."
"So who did it?"
"I don't follow you, Mr. Garrett."
"Come on. If somebody wants in your way bad enough to kill anybody you talk to, you ought to know who. There can't be so many you can't pick somebody out of the crowd."
"Unfortunately, I can't. When I tried to hire you I told you I think there's a concerted effort to discredit Faith, but I don't have one iota of evidence that points in any particular direction."
I gave him my eyebrow trick in its sarcastic mode. He wasn't impressed. I'll have to learn to wiggle my ears. "If you want me to find somebody or something—like the Warden and his Relics—you'll have to give me somewhere to start. I can't just yell 'Where the hell are you?' Finding somebody is like picking apart an old sweater. You just keep pulling loose threads till everything comes apart. But you have to have the loose threads. What did you give Pokey? Why was he where he was when he got killed?"
Peridont got up. He prowled. He lived on another plane. He was deaf to anything he didn't want to hear. Or was he? "I'm disturbed, Mr. Garrett. Being outside this you miss the more troublesome implications. And they, I regret, tie my hands and seal my lips. For the moment."
"Oh?" I gave my talented eyebrow one last chance.
He missed it again. "I want your help, Mr. Garrett. Very much. But what you've told me puts matters into a new perspective. Contrary to popular imagining I'm not a law unto myself. I'm one tree in a forest of hierarchy."
"A tall tree."
He smiled. "Yes. A tall one. But only one. I'll have to consult my peers and ask for a policy decision. Bear with me a few hours. If they want to pursue this I'll give you the information at my disposal. Whatever the decision, I'll be in touch. I'll see you're compensated for what you've already done."
How very thoughtful of him. How did such a nice guy get such a nasty reputation?
He was being nice because he wanted something he couldn't get by tossing me into a cell and pulling my nails. I said, "I have to get moving on my own hunt."
"I'll get in touch at your home. Before you go—"
I interrupted. "The name Jill Craight mean anything to you?"
"No. Should it?"
"I don't know. Pokey died in an apartment occupied by a Jill Craight."
"I see. Would you hold on a minute?" He opened a cabinet. "I don't want to lose another man. I want you to take something as a hedge against the kind of surprises that got Pigotta." He pawed around amongst several hundred small bottles and phials, selected three.
He placed those on the table, three colorful soldiers all in a row: royal blue, ruby, and emerald. Each bottle was two inches tall. Each had a cork stopper. He said, "The ultimate product of my art. Use the blue where maximum confusion would benefit you. Use the green where death is your only other out. Break the bottles or just unstop them. That doesn't matter."
He took a deep breath, lifted the red bottle carefully. "This is the heavyweight. Be careful. It's deadly. Throw it against a hard surface at least fifty feet away. You don't want to be any closer. Run if you have the chance. Got that?"
I nodded.
"Be careful. Twenty years from now I want to tip one with you and reminisce about the bad old days."
"Careful is my middle name, Magister." I put the bottles away gingerly, where I could grab them in a hurry. Garrett never argues with a gift horse. I can always deal it to the glue works.
I sneaked a peek at his cabinet. What could those other bottles do? They came in every color. "Thanks. I can find my way out." I shot my final question as I neared the door. "You ever hear of a cult that cuts its members? Takes all their equipment, not just their testicles?"
He blanched. I mean, he really turned white. For a second I thought his hair would change. But he showed no other reaction. He lied, "No. That's grisly. Is it important?"
Lie to me, I'll lie to you. "No. It came up in a bull session the other night. The weather was pretty drunk out. Somebody heard something like that from somebody who heard something about it from somebody else. You know how that goes. You can't trace the source."
"Yes. Good day, Mr. Garrett." Suddenly he wanted me out of there.
"Good day, Magister."
I closed the door behind me. Smiling Sampson was right there to make sure I had no trouble finding the street.
22
A drizzle had started. The breeze had freshened. I put my head down and walked into it, grumbling. I wouldn't be out in this if the world would learn to leave me alone. How thoughtless of it.
Head down with not much going on inside—some would say that's the normal state of my bean—I trudged toward that small district beyond the Hill where both city and Crown maintain their civil offices. I hoped the Royal Assay people could tell me what Peridont wouldn't.
He had recognized the coins.
I didn't believe much of what he'd told me—though some of it might have been true. I disbelieved only selectively. I took nothing at face. Everywhere I turned religion popped up, and that's a game of masks and deceits and illusions if ever there was one.
My course took me within a block of the Blue Bottle, where curiosities Smith and Smith had holed up. Wouldn't hurt to stop by, see what Maya had missed.
The place didn't look promising. There'd been no upkeep done in my lifetime. But it was a cut above places where all you got for your copper was a place on a rope that would support you while you slept standing up.
It was the sort of place frequented by the poor and the lowest-order bad boys. The people who operated it wouldn't be eager to talk. I'd have to use my wits to get anything.
Not always the best hope with me.
The interior delivered the promise of the outside. I stepped into a dingy common room inhabited only by a flock of three winebirds hard at their trade. Some invisible force had pushed them to the extremities of the room. One was educating himself in a continuous muttered monotone. I couldn't make out one word in five but he seemed to be engaged in a furious debate on social issues. His opponent wasn't apparent and seemed to have a hard time making himself heard.
I didn't see anybody who looked like a proprietor. Nobody responded to the bell over the door. "Yo! Anybody home?"
That didn't bring any customer-conscious landlord charging in from his toils in the kitchen. But one of the silent drunks detached himself from his chair and reeled toward me. "Wha'cha need? Room?"
"Looking for a couple of my pals, Smith and Smith, supposed to be staying here."
He leaned against the serving counter, bathed me in fumes and knotted his face into a ruddy prune. "Uh. Oh. Third floor. Door at the end." He didn't work up much disappointment over the fact that I wasn't going to put money in his pocket.
"Thanks, pal." I gave him a couple of coppers. "Have one on me."
He looked at the coins like he couldn't figure out what they were. While he pondered the mystery I went upstairs. Carefully. The way those steps creaked and sagged it was only a matter of hours until one collapsed.
I wasn't disappointed by the third floor, either. It was more like a half story—five rooms under the eaves, two to either side of a claustrophobically narrow hall and one at the end. Two of the side rooms didn't have a hanging to ensure privacy. One still had a door that hung on one hinge, immobile. My destination was a door that wouldn't close because of a warp in the floor. The Smiths weren't home. Surprise, surprise. I hadn't expected them to be after their encounter with the Doom. I pushed inside.
Whatever plot or conspiracy or outfit the Smiths w
ere with, it was miserly. They'd slept on blankets on the floor. And they hadn't had a change of clothing to leave behind.
I started going over the room anyway. You never know when something minute will make everything fall together.
I was on my knees looking into the canyons between floorboards when the hallway floor creaked. I looked over my shoulder.
The woman looked like the Dead Man's wife. There was enough of her to make four women with some to spare. How had she gotten that close without raising a roar? How had the stairway survived? Why was the building standing? It was top-heavy enough to tip over.
"What the hell you doing, boy?"
She was spoiling for a fight and there wouldn't be any getting around it. "Why do you ask?"
"Because I want to know, shithead."
So it don't always work.
She was carrying a club, a real man-sized head-buster. I pitied the guy who got hit when she got her weight behind it.
It looked like I might get a chance to practice my self-pity if I didn't use those wits I'd been daydreaming about. "Who the hell are you? What the hell are you doing sticking your face in my room?''
When you don't have space to dazzle them with your footwork you try baffling them with bullshit.
"Your room? What the hell you yelling, boy? This room belongs to two guys named Smith."
"The guy I paid said take this room. I did what he told me. You got a problem with that you take it up with the management."
She glared at me. "That goddamned Blake up to his old tricks, eh?" Then she yelled, "I am the management, shithead! You been conned by a wino. Now get your ass out of here. And don't come whining to me for your money back."
What a dreamboat.
She turned around and stomped away. I held onto the floor. If the building went I could ride it down. She kept grumbling. "I'm going to kill that sonofa-bitch this time."
What a sweetheart. It was a good thing she didn't get physical, because I don't think I could have taken her.
I did some more quick looking, but when the yelling started downstairs I figured it was time I made my getaway.