Brown River Queen (22 page)

Markhat,
said a faint hex-voice in an airy whisper.
Markhat.

Evis shouted. “Get Stitches up here now!” One of his halfdead soldiers darted out my door.

The dagger moved and changed in my grasp, became a wine glass, a beer bottle, a vase I’d given Darla to keep her fireflowers in the day we moved into our new house.

Darla, her eyes wide, tried to take the thing from my hand, but Evis grabbed her and pushed her back. “Damn me,” he said, fixing his gaze over my left shoulder. “Marcus. Kill it.”

The remaining halfdead pulled a pair of short silver blades from beneath his dark coat and charged past me.

I whirled. Marcus’s blades were slicing and gleaming, cutting through a thickening darkness in the air but spilling no blood.

The shape solidified, took on the form of a hooded, cloaked figure so tall its hood scraped the ceiling.

It raised a bony hand to point at me and began to speak in that hissing, dry whisper.

Marcus dropped his blades, pulled a revolver, and emptied it into the dark form.

It neither flinched nor faltered. A ringing began to sound in my ears and a tightness began to grow in my throat.

Darla nearly managed to claw her way past Evis when I broke for the door.

“Dammit, Markhat, wait for Stitches!”

I didn’t reply. I hit the hall and bowled over a fat little man in a top hat and I didn’t look back.

I made for the stairs. The vase warped and shook and it was a cold, full bottle of beer. I’d bolted with the intention of throwing it over the side. I was three steps down the stairs before I realized I’d have to go into the Brown with it since it refused to let me let it go.

The beer bottle became a tortoise shell, sealed with old black wax. A single glance behind me revealed the dark form gliding down the stairs, bony finger still raised in silent accusation. A minor stampede started when a half-dozen revelers heading up met me and fled at the sight of my rapidly-gaining pursuer.

So down I charged, for lack of anything better to do. I hit the landing on the casino floor and yelled out a warning and headed for the exit.
 

My shout was lost in the din. Maybe a dozen people glanced my way, but only briefly, before returning to their games or dates or drinks.

I hit the doors. Cool midnight air and the unmistakable aroma of the Brown’s muddy waters greeted me. I charged a short distance up the narrow deck. I now held the snow-globe Evis gave Darla and me as a wedding present. As it changed and flowed, I brought my hand down hard on the
Queen’s
iron rail.

Whatever it was becoming shattered. Shards flew.
 

I brought my hand down again as the specter flung open the
Queen’s
wide doors and floated toward me, still speaking in a dry, crackling whisper nearly drowned out by the steady thump-thump-thump of the
Queen’s
paddle wheel.

More pieces flew, steaming when they hit the water.

The phantom was nearly upon me.

I debated pulling my pistol with my left hand, opted for a final hard blow on the rail.

The thing in my hand shattered and the phantom wailed, and an answering shriek from somewhere out on the water startled us both and gave me the chance to shove my free hand in my pocket and thrust Stitches’s fake huldra right under the hooded spook’s vaporous nose.

The bubble surrounding the
Queen
flared bright and as hot as the noonday sun, blinding me. I tried to turn and went down on my ass instead, and I felt a shadow pass quickly over me, and when I managed to stand the deck was dark and I thought I was alone.

Deeply troubling
, said Stitches. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, which showed nothing but spots and a blurry after-image of a length of deck and a robed form.
Despite our best efforts, a sophisticated piece of hostile magic was secreted aboard.

“What was that thing?”

I heard Evis and Darla and the sound of running feet. I stuck the fake huldra back in my pocket, leaned against the rail, and crossed my arms.
 

A distraction. The Regent’s guards were attacked. One is missing. I must attend.

And she was gone, vanishing with the same ease as my phantom.

Evis, flanked by grim-faced halfdead bearing blades and guns, bore down on me, surrounding me.

“It’s gone,” I said. “But you’d better get upstairs. Something hit the Regent’s people. One of them is gone.”

“How—”

“Stitches was here. I’m fine. Go.”

He gave me an exasperated hiss and turned, ordering one of his people to stay behind. The rest flapped away, vanishing into the night like so many agitated crows.

Darla emerged from the rush of retreating vampires and made her way to me, gun still in her hand.

“Are you sure it’s gone?”

“I broke the knife, or whatever it was, and Stitches took care of what was left. I’m fine. You’re not a widow just yet.”

The lone halfdead ordered to stay behind turned his back and hid himself in the shadows. Darla joined me at the rail, staring out at the dark water.

“If we just jumped in now, husband, do you think we could swim all the way back to Rannit?”

“Not in these clothes. We’d sink like rocks.” I put my left hand on Darla’s right, unable to gauge her mood. None of Dad’s advice concerning matters of emotional intimacy with womenfolk extended to the aftermath of near-fatal attacks by magical booby traps. “Anyway, we’re safer here, aboard the
Queen.
Stitches’s shield is holding.”

“Did Stitches say that?”

“Sure she did. Shield is as good as new. Better, in fact. Nothing at all can get past this time.”

Darla nodded, her eyes still fixed on the night.

“Then why, dearest, did Buttercup just stroll right through it?”

I whirled.
 

Out on the water, a dozen steps from the
Queen’s
rail, Buttercup pranced and spun, glowing like a harvest moon. Her dainty little banshee feet kicked up sprays of water, at which she giggled and pointed, but she neither sank nor bothered to swim.

She was well within the bubble of arcane protection we’d both seen keep the first attackers at bay.
 

“Mama Hog in a rowboat,” I said.

Darla’s gaze followed the rope tied about Buttercup’s waist.

Mama Hog’s distant voice sounded over the
Queen’s
churning wheel.

“Well, don’t just stand there gawkin’, boy! I ain’t plannin’ on swimmin’ aboard!”

Our vampire friend detached himself from his corner of midnight and joined us at the rail. His dead white eyes were wide, and he forgot his manners and let his toothy jaw hang open.

“You might as well go tell Evis to set an extra place at our table,” I said as gently as I could. “She’ll swear she doesn’t, but she likes beer and cigars.”

Buttercup saw us and squealed, lifting up her arms and simply taking flight. Mama cussed as her tiny rowboat was yanked forward, surging ahead so fast the front half of the boat lifted entirely out of the water.

My halfdead friend’s cloak barely made a sound as he raced for the safety of the
Queen’s
casino doors.
 

Chapter Twelve

“Now this here steak is a mite under-done,” reported Mama, eyeing her cut of prime beef with airy disdain. Her fine silver knife flew, slicing through the meat as though through butter. “But I reckon I’m much obliged all the same.”

She chewed and smacked with gusto. Buttercup slid feet-first out of her chair and vanished beneath the table, and instantly I felt a tugging at my meticulously polished shoes.

I’m not entirely sure halfdead can shed tears, but Evis appeared to be on the verge of doing so, physiology be damned. Gertriss wrung her hands uselessly at his side. Darla leaned forward and from the sudden shrieks and giggles under the table I surmised she caught hold of Buttercup.
 

Beside me, Stitches pushed carrots around on a fine white china plate and dabbed now and then at the blood weeping from her tight-sewn eyes. She hadn’t said a word since seating herself.
 

I drank beer and waited for the
Queen
to simply explode.
 

“One more time,” said Evis, during a lull in the music being played by the
Queen’s
imperturbable band. “For Stitches. Tell us how you got here.”

Mama choked down a chunk of steak and chuckled.
 

“Reckon you was awful surprised to see the likes of me step aboard your fancy boat.” She punctuated her words with pokes of her knife. “Old Mama Hog is a woman to be reckoned with, and don’t you forget it.”

“Mama.” I didn’t raise my voice. “We’re impressed. You may get a hat. Maybe a medal. But right now Stitches needs to know how you got aboard. Because if you did, others can.”

Mama snorted. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about that.” She fixed Stitches in a beady-eyed Hog stare. “Is she to be trusted? Tell me the truth, boy. Can I tell her what she needs to know without harm to you-knows-who?”

“You can. On my word. I vouch for her.”

Stitches rewarded me with the ghost of a sewn-lipped smile.

“Well. If’n you say so.” She reached up and mopped at her chin and lips with a white linen napkin. “This here,” she said, dragging Buttercup up from beneath the table, “ain’t no ordinary child.”

I surmised as much,
said Stitches, allowing no humor to creep into her voice.
She is a keener. What some folk call a banshee.

“That’s right. But I tells you this, Miss Fancy Wand-Waver. I done took a likin’ to this child, keener or banshee or whatever else ye wants to call her. She’s my kin, you got that? And I ain’t tolerant, not the least damned bit, of anybody who would ill-use my kinfolk.” Mama’s voice went hard and clear. “Is that understood?”

Perfectly. Please continue.

Mama nodded. “Well, I been studyin’ up on ways to keep her from roamin’ the streets at night ever since we took her in. I tried everything and then some, I tell you. Potions. Poultices. Hexes. Charms. Boy, did you know I drawed a hex-sign on my ceiling in silver paint and burnt a damn half-bushel of myrrh potentifying it? Did you?”

I shook my head no. Hell, Mama could burn whole sewers in that pot of hers and the smell wouldn’t be worsened or improved a single whit.

“Well, I did. Cost me three month’s wages. And she skipped out of that circle like I’d done naught but sneeze in a flour-sifter. No.” Mama shook her head sagely. “Ain’t nothing can keep this child contained, if’n she’s got a mind to go elsewheres.”

Evis put his dead white face in his pale, claw-tipped fingers.

“Mama. The point, please. It’s late.”

Mama sniffed. “Well, I got to thinkin’. Whatever magic this child has is a powerful old magic, and the likes of me ain’t going to best it.” She cackled and grinned at Stitches. “I reckon the same could be said ‘bout you, ain’t that right?”

Indubitably.

“Well, I thinks, if ain’t nothing but Buttercup’s magic equal to Buttercup’s magic, then how can I take hold of some of that?”

Stitches lifted her chin a full fraction of an inch.

“So, I took to collectin’ hairs,” said Mama, her wide old face suddenly smug. “Oh, she sheds hairs like any young un’. And she likes havin’ her hair brushed, don’t ye, child?”

Buttercup giggled and squirmed in her lap.

“So I took them hairs, I did, and I tied them end to end. And when I had me a nice long line made, I hired a man to weave me a rope around it.”

I applaud you, Missus Hog. That was a stroke of sheer brilliance.

Mama actually blushed. Darla saw it too, but wisely said nothing.

“I don’t know about all that. Just common sense. If’n you wants to hold something that can’t be held, use a rope what can’t be broken. That’s an old Troll sayin’, Miss Stitches. I reckon them Trolls is a mite smarter than what anybody thinks, hereabouts.”

Indeed. This rope of yours—it allowed you to pass through the shield, unharmed, in the same way the child did.
 

“I got to be honest. I didn’t know nothin’ about no magical shields. I wasn’t even intending on coming here. I got the rope back from the rope-maker yesterday. I tied it around her waist at sunset. And damned if she didn’t drag me all the way here like I was one of her dolls.” Mama pushed a grey shock of hair out of her face. “Truth is, she hauled me through Rannit kickin’ and cussin’, and if I hadn’t knocked a man out of his rowboat and jumped in I reckon I’d have been drowned when Little Bit here first took to the Brown.”

I said it so Stitches wouldn’t have to. “You mean you just kept hanging on, knowing where she was probably heading?”

Mama grinned a crooked grin.

“Like I said, boy. She’s kinfolk, or close enough to it. And I knowed she was comin’ cause your fool hide was in danger. Now, can I get one of them fancy cigars?”

Evis fumbled in his pocket.

“What do you know about banshee magic?”