Brown River Queen (2 page)

I hurried to the back, knocked damp sawdust off the bottles, and together Evis and I toasted my regrettable return to honest work.
 

Evis stuck around and drank beer and we talked dates and times, which I dutifully scribbled onto my notepad. He wrapped himself in black silk and darted back out into the sun maybe an hour later, leaving me to my thoughts.

A thousand gold crowns in good solid gold coin. All for a week of work that, on the surface, seemed to involve nothing more perilous than lounging around a floating casino while maintaining an aloof air of menace.

A thousand crowns, though. That’s a lot of money, even in Rannit’s booming post-War economy. A fellow could live quite well on a fraction of that.

Which meant someone high up at Avalante considered the threat of violence against the Regent quite real. Evis didn’t seem to agree. But he hadn’t blinked when I’d upped the ante, either, which meant his bosses had instructed him that money was no object.

“An even thousand crowns,” I said aloud. Darla would be thrilled. We could put a fancy slate roof on our new place on Middling Lane. Hell, we could tear the house down to the last timber and build it back again with twice as many rooms and still have money left over.

If, that is, a fellow lived long enough to collect his shiny gold coins.

I pushed the thought aside, gathered up the empty bottles, and eventually followed Evis out into the bright and bustling light of day.

Chapter Two

I made the block, wary of Ogres and their carts and their general disregard for pedestrian safety every step of the way.
 

The Arwheat brothers were up on their roof, screaming at each other between bouts of furious hammering. Old Mr. Bull was out on his stoop, muttering to himself, sweeping the same two-by-two step he’d been sweeping since sunrise. I wished him good morning as I passed and was rewarded with a cackle and a brief toothless grin.

Blind Mr. Waters stood in the open door of his bathhouse, squinting up at a sun and a sky he’d never once seen. I knew he was checking on the weather. A bright warm day like today would bring more customers in, requiring him to burn more wood to heat more bathwater.
 

“Good day to ye, Markhat,” he said as I approached. “Gonna be a right nice day, by the feel of it.”

He held up his right hand, letting the sunlight play through his fingers.
 

“Looks that way. Good for business.”

The old man nodded, all smiles. “That it is. I ken you’re bound elsewhere, though, is that right?”

“Afraid so, Mr. Waters. I’ll be back soon, though. Miss that brand of soap you carry.”

“Well, I’ll have a hot bath ready when ye are, finder. Take care now.”

“You too.”

And he was gone, closing his door behind him.

I walked on, waving now and then, speaking now and then. I may not live on Cambrit anymore, but a part of me will always call these leaning old timber-frames and none-too-square doors home.

There was one door in particular at which I needed to knock. I’d been dreading the task for days, and even there in the cheery sunshine I nearly just kept walking toward the tidy little single-story cottage with the white picket fence and the bright yellow door that Darla and I bought a few weeks ago.
 

But in the end, I turned and marched up to Mama’s door and was just about to knock when Mama herself called out from inside.

“I see you standin’ there, boy. Ain’t no need to knock, it ain’t locked.”

“Is that an invitation, Mama?”

Boots scraped floor, and the door swung open.

“Well, it weren’t writ on fancy parchment and delivered with no box of fancy chocolates, but I reckon it was an invite all the same,” she said. “Now are ye comin’ inside or not?”

I took off my hat and ducked under Mama’s doorframe and followed her into the shadows. Mama’s card-and-potion shop is never quite the same from visit to visit. On previous trips, I’d seen shelves filled with jars containing dried birds. I’ve seen neat rows of dead bats, each wearing a tiny mask, nailed in ranks to the walls. Once she even had the place covered with fine nets, inside which a thousand crickets crawled and crept and sang.
 

So I was prepared for anything
—
except, perhaps, what I saw.

Mama’s tiny front room was immaculate. The shelves of dried birds were gone, revealing plain wood walls suspiciously bare of cobwebs and charms. A few tasteful paintings hung here and there. Candles in sconces filled the room with a golden, soothing light. The floors were swept and mopped and uncluttered. The black iron cauldron, which had been bubbling with something potently malodorous since the day I’d first set foot on Cambrit, was gone, leaving only a barely visible scorch mark on the floor behind.

“You aimin’ to catch flies with that open mouth of yours, boy?”

“Mama. What happened in here?”

There was a small oak table set in a corner. It sported white lace doilies and a simple red fireflower in a plain crystal vase. Two chairs were pushed neatly beneath the table. Mama pulled out a chair, sat, and motioned for me to do the same.

“The times is changin’, boy. And I’m changin’ with them. Folks is less appreciative of all that old-timey backwoods mumbo-jumbo these days. ‘Specially well-to-do folks.”

The candles on the wall were arranged so that half of Mama Hog’s face was kept in shadow. She leaned forward and I could only see her in silhouette, her wild shock of hair lending a faint corona of light to her form.

“Watch this, boy.”

She closed her eyes and began to whisper, raising her hands beside her face as she spoke.

A light formed at the center of the table, right above the fireflower’s blood-red petals. It was only a spark at first, but it flickered and expanded and intensified, rising and growing, first as bright as a candle and then brighter still.

“Speak,” croaked Mama, opening her eyes.

The light flared. Within it appeared a skull.

A child’s skull, pitiful and small and very, very familiar.

I cussed.
 

The skull clacked its teeth and issued a faint giggle and vanished. The light that held it flickered and went out as well.

Mama clenched her jaw and crossed her stubby arms over her chest.

“Buttercup, honey, come out,” I said.

More giggling came from above and with it the telltale sound of bare little banshee feet scampering away on the rooftop.

“Mama.”

“Don’t you Mama me, boy.” She waved a finger in my face. “Look here. My niece left the family trade and took to finding. I ain’t got no other suitable kin. And I ain’t getting any younger. What’s the harm in usin’ that banshee a bit if’n it keeps a roof over our heads and soup in our pots? Ain’t neither free nor cheap, and you knows it.”

“You taught Buttercup that trick?”

“She’s always playin’ with that skull anyways, boy. You tried to take it away from her a half dozen times. So have I. But I reckon there ain’t no denying her that thing, and why not gain some good from it?”

We’d rescued Buttercup from an ancient crypt a little over a year ago, and had been hiding her in plain sight by passing her off as Gertriss’s stunted daughter ever since. Mama sticks a pair of obviously fake wings to her back and claims Buttercup is a rare tame forest sprite. The neighbors snicker and nod and wink knowingly at each other, which is exactly the reaction we’d hoped for.

The skull is a more recent and disturbing addition to our little family. The sorcerer who held it expressed a desire to see me dead
—
I’d declined to participate, and in the fracas, the sorcerer had fallen. I grabbed the skull on my way out, not wanting to leave behind any potentially vengeful witnesses to our little disagreement.

We’d still been trying to decide how to dispose of the skull when Buttercup found it. The tiny banshee may be a thousand years old, but she’s still childlike in some ways, and finding the wand-waver’s talisman filled her with glee. She cuddled it and carried it and whispered nonsense to it constantly. Hiding the skull did no good. We’d never found a place that could conceal it against
 
Buttercup’s sharp little banshee eyes.

Mama even brought in her friend Granny Knot, who claims she speaks to the dead. Granny pronounced the skull haunted by the ghost of an innocent, bound to the bone by a wand-waver’s dark spell, a spell she dared not attempt to unravel. What powers the skull might command, she could not or would not say.

Not that it mattered. Buttercup took the skull everywhere, and on those rare instances she wasn’t holding it, she hid it in places only a sure-footed banshee could reach.

Mama let the ghost of a grin slip. She’d won and she knew it, and I realized she’d been planning this little spook show for days if not weeks.

I sighed. I’d come to try and make peace with Mama, and if I hadn’t expected some stunt like this from her I had only myself to blame.

“Fine. Mama. I didn’t come here to argue with you. You haven’t been coming around lately.
 
When you do see me, you don’t talk. I think we both know why.”

Mama crossed her arms again.

“I’m sure I ain’t got no idea at all what you’re talking about, boy.”

“I’m sure you do. Darla and I got married and you weren’t invited.”

“I reckon it’s your business who you invites to your nuptials, boy. Ain’t no concern of mine.”

I took a deep breath. “We didn’t plan to get married that day, Mama. I’ve tried to explain that. We were just there to keep Darla’s friend safe.”

Mama pulled in air and puffed up. The effect was more toad-like than imposing, but I got the message.

“I thought the world was ending, Mama. The sky went dark. We saw flashes. Heard what I thought was cannon fire. Everyone in Rannit was sure we were dead. You’ve heard the stories. You know I’m telling you the truth.”

“Well, it weren’t no cannons and it weren’t no army and it weren’t no end of the world now, was it?”

I shook my head. “No. It was just Evis and his steamboat full of fireworks. But we didn’t know that. I thought we were about to die. It just…happened.”

Mama snorted.

“Mama, I swear. I didn’t mean to slight you. Darla didn’t mean to slight you.”

“I was planning on deliverin’ a blessing to you both on your wedding day,” said Mama. “Been brewing up a charm for it for a year. A solid year, boy. Put a lot of work into that there charm, I did.”

“I know you did. And we both appreciate that.” I stood. Mama didn’t look up. “We miss you, Mama. I miss you. I’m sorry things happened the way they did. Wars have a way of changing plans whether we want them changed or not. You know that.”

“Then you went and bought a fancy house and moved,” said Mama as my hand closed on her latch. “Without so much as a fare-thee-well.”

“You wouldn’t open your door. Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me knock.”

I got no reply.

“Things have changed, for both of us,” I said, not turning. “Gertriss is living in my old place. I’m married and newly with house. You’ve hidden your birds and bought a broom. But think about this, Mama. We’re still the same people. We can still be as much a part of each other’s lives as we ever were. But that won’t happen if you don’t open the door when somebody knocks.”

Mama didn’t reply. I didn’t wait.

Stubborn as a mule is my old friend Mama Hog.
 

I left her to her tasteful paintings and fresh-scrubbed floors and headed north, toward home.

The Missus and I have a standing lunch date, breakable only in cases of extreme emergency. She hoofs it toward home from the dress shop, I make my way from the office, and we meet up at the corner of River and Fane before strolling the last three blocks home.

I reached the corner first and killed a quarter of an hour picking out a yellow peony for my lapel and a red fireflower for Darla. Then I decided to ply my detective skills by slipping down the alley by Sylvester’s Hat Emporium and sneaking up behind my betrothed, who was hurrying down Fane with a decided spring in her step and a brown paper parcel in her arms.

I made it within two strides of her when she slowed suddenly and held the package out beside her.

“For heaven’s sake, take this. It’s heavy.”

I took it, and it was.
 

Darla turned and grinned. “It’s your shoes. I know the sound of your footsteps, my dear, and I can pick them out of a crowd, even a noisy lunchtime crowd.”

“From now on, I’m going barefoot.” I moved the parcel around and drew her in for a kiss, which is no mean feat when neither party stops walking. We made it brief and managed to avoid any collisions. “How is my favorite wife today?”

“Famished. Someone interrupted my breakfast.”

I feigned surprise. “What mannerless ape might that have been? And what’s in the box? More lavish gifts for your new husband?”

She laughed. “Mostly it’s for the kitchen. I found a silverware pattern I liked. Fireflowers and vines.”