Cruel Zinc Melodies (26 page)

Being almost as clever as a rat, I changed the subject. “How come you want Lurking Felhske so bad, Morley?”

I know. I asked before. I was hoping he’d give me a straight answer this time.

It could happen.

“Because he has a fat bounty on his head. And I need money. Business is bad.”

“You couldn’t stay away from the bug races?”

“I’m staying away just fine. What I can’t escape is the curse of family.”

“I'll bet that makes sense to a guy with the inside poop.”

“You know I’ve got obligations to family outside the city.”

“That arranged engagement. And your idiot nephew. Whatever happened to him?” A slow, cruel death if there was any justice. That psycho was responsible for me having had to suffer through a century-long affliction known as the Goddamn Parrot.

“He’s fine. And not the problem. The problem is the side of the family that thinks I ought to be getting married now.”

“A pressure not unknown at our house,” Singe observed. With another rattish smirk.

I asked, “The arranged marriage?” Country elfin folk betroth their offspring while the kids are still trying to figure out how to walk without holding on. Morley had one of those connections. He’d mentioned her name a couple times but I couldn’t remember it. The family made noises occasionally - the boy wasn’t getting any younger - but the dark elf maiden involved had no more interest than he did.

“That one. Yes.”

“I thought nobody was really behind that. And wouldn’t her family have to cover the costs? Or do you have some dumb custom like our nobility where you have to come up with a bride price?” The one thing the Venageti have right, to my way of thinking, is the dowry business. Where the bride’s family, in essence, pays the groom to take her off their hands. Sort of.

“Most of us weren’t. Except for her people. Even so, it wasn’t a real problem till she took an interest herself. Out of the blue. Evidently thinking I’m rich.”

“Joke’s on her, eh? Here’s what you do. Don’t tell her till after the honeymoon.”

Morley made ugly, inarticulate noises. He turned red. His face puffed up.

“Whoa!” I gaped. I’d never seen him like this.

Sarge and Puddle closed in, looking anxious. If Morley suffered a massive fit of apoplexy and assumed room temperature, they’d have to start thinking for themselves. They were just marginally bright enough to recognize what a disaster that would be.

Man by man, quick as an evil rumor, the rest of Morley’s troops came from whatever they’d dropped, expecting their boss to implode or explode.

Contrary as ever, Morley did neither.

He grinned his wicked, hundred-sharp-teeth grin. “You almost got me. How about that?”

“Almost, nothing. But getting you wasn’t the game. I was just asking. Because I care.”

“Sure. I know.”

A little sarcasm? I wondered.

I asked, “What’s money got to do with it? Do you have to be rich when she shows up for the wedding?”

“No. I need to buy my way out. Money is why she started pushing. She’s pressing so I'll come up with more money to get out.”

That made sense. To someone raised in this place and time. “Call her bluff.”

“I could cut my own throat, too. But it isn’t going to happen. I wish I knew where she got the idea that I’m rich. Whoever told her that would end up cursing his mother for not having gotten the abortion.”

Singe couldn’t restrain her whickering snicker.

Morley leaned back, shut his eyes, went to a happy place for a few seconds. He returned a changed man. “Garrett, I’m going to crawl out on a limb. I’m going to make a wild guess. You’re not supposed to be here. The Dead Man is awake. And he’s interested in what you’re doing. Which means he’s using you to find out what he needs to know before he figures it all out for you. Not so?”

I confessed with a small nod.

“So what should you be doing now? Instead of socializing?”

Singe and I went home. The Dead Man took a peek inside my skull. He had no comment. But his disappointment reeked like a psychic wet dog. I began to think it might be a good idea to move out if Tinnie and I set up housekeeping.

It was still early by my standards. I went to bed anyway. After just one sweet sample of Weider Select.

I might have had a touch of something.

52

“I forgot to ask last night. Did Winger show up?”

You were distracted. She did. She and her biographer are on the payroll. I offered each a challenge suited to his or her pride.

What did that mean? “You split them up? How clever are you?”

An appeal to pride and ego, presented with sufficient subtlety,
ofttimes will do where even bribery is futile.

“You did split them up.” Word was, that hadn’t happened for months. Even when Winger herself wished it would. It was why Jon Salvation was called the Remora by those who played his game. Those who just saw an obnoxious little geek still called him by his real name, Pilsuds Vilchik.

Both were motivated at the time but that may not last.

“What are they supposed to do?”

Jon Salvation will execute the library search you were unable to complete, assisted by Penny Dreadful.

“Definitely wouldn’t want Winger along on that.” That woman loose in a building full of rare books? She’d burn them to keep warm.

Miss Winger will round up persons I wish to interview, inasmuch as you are unable to find time.

Ouch! But he was right. “Oh, for those slower, lazier days of yesteryear.” And, “But I’m up irrationally early today.”

I ate while we talked. Multitasking, Tinnie calls it. Didn’t matter if I talked with my mouth full. Old Bones knew what I wanted to say before I said it.

I wondered what Tinnie was up to. I hadn’t seen her for hours and hours.

Himself disdained the opportunity for a disparaging remark, offering instead an observation about my unnatural wakefulness.
Which affords you the opportunity to pursue some basic work at and around the World.

He filled my head with chores, the most immediate of which was to have the construction workers build a shack so Saucerhead and his troops could get in out of the weather without having to be haunted. He thought I ought to add a stove so they could keep warm, make tea, and cook a little something.

“You expecting winter to last forever?” I was thinking, if I gave them someplace warm, then they wouldn’t go out where it was cold.

You will see.
Then:
Fuel. They will need fuel to heat the shack. You may have to go to the waterfront to arrange a delivery.
Because all of TunFaire’s fuels have to be barged in from up or down the river.

Yet one more chore. And one I didn’t know how to execute. That’s Dean’s area of expertise. We’re profligate with fuels here. We’re too prosperous. Except in the Dead Man’s room, of course. Wood, coal, and charcoal all are delivered. At some expense. The delivery folk have to travel with armed guards.

Not many villains will go for a load of firewood accompanied by guys with crossbows. That’s a quick way for a dimwit to commit suicide. Though stupid is as plentiful as air.

Make good use of the time available to you today.

That sounded portentous.

Tomorrow will be your turn at the shovels.

“Oh, don’t tell me!”

It is about to come down. It could go on for days.

A professional storyteller once clued me that the way to drag your audience along is to hit them with One Damned Thing After Another. And that’s my life. The malevolent, sniggering, buggering toadlet gods tugging on the threads of my tale plot it by that very method.

The older religions? we’re afflicted with several hundred? generally assign three vindictive crones to work the warp and woof of individual destinies. But that all goes on in a side room. The main stage features a team of fifteen working Poor Garrett’s Ever More Miserable Homespun.

Singe says I overdramatize. Which only proves that she hasn’t been paying attention.

Do you suppose this might be a good time to roll out your equally absurd tendency toward equine hysterics?

“What?” Then I got it. He was needling me.

Horses.

Because I have a rational, reasoned attitude toward those fiends.

People mock me when I report anything about the innate wickedness of horses. Those monstrous beasts have most people so fooled that every damned idiot out there thinks they’re man’s best friend. Big old cute pals who carry civilization itself on their backs. But the truth is, the beasts just lie in the weeds, waiting for a kill shot they can score while leaving nobody the wiser.

You don’t want to be alone with a horse.

Never, ever, under any circumstance, do you want to be alone with a whole bunch of horses.

Amusement tainted the psychic atmosphere.

There seemed to be a lot of that lately.

But what does he know? Even when he was breathing and waddling around on his hind legs he couldn’t have ridden anything smaller than a woolly mammoth.

You know what needs doing today. And you have finished eating. I suggest you earn some of the buckets of money the Weider interest has thrown your way.

Buckets? I hadn’t asked Singe how much more money Gilbey had sent over. Old Bones made it sound like it would be worth finding out.

Time to go, Garrett. It cannot be long before Miss Winger begins delivering persons of interest who may not wish to be seen by you.

“Harsh.” But what I was really thinking was, who could that possibly be? Which tossed up an “Uh-oh!” as I caught a whiff of something maybe called plausible deniability.

He wanted me away from the house, stumbling around, making myself a fat, solid alibi.

Time to go.

I took care of personal business, pulled myself together, dressed for winter, and stepped outside. And ducked right back inside for a sock cap and muffler to add to what I had going already.

The cold had hit me like a punch in the snoot. That meant Dean and Singe were keeping the house too damned hot. They were turning silver into smoke.

53

This wasn’t my first time out before the sun hit the meridian. Mine is a life of sorrow and misfortune. More often than I like I’ve had to be out with the early worms. Back when I was one of the Universe’s Elect, a Marine, I had to be up before the sun dragged its sorry ass over the horizon every freaking morning. So, though it was unnatural, I could take it.

I didn’t like the looks of the snow in Macunado Street. The slackers on the crew before mine wouldn’t do anything but make a show. Tomorrow would be hell. As in the realms of the cruelly used dead in religions where the abode of the fallen is an icy waste and the souls there do hard labor for having been too milquetoast in life.

I gave it all a second look, shrugged, sucked it up, and headed out.

It was time for an off-season New Year’s resolution. I spend too much time grumbling and anticipating all the ways that life will jump up and bite me. I should become more positive. And more active. I should drink less and get up earlier.

I’ve told myself the same thing at least once a week for the last five years. Along with, I need to get more exercise and to shed ten pounds. Or maybe twenty, these days.

So far it only takes for a few days at a time before the relapse sets in.

“I ain’t seen you out this early in years,” Saucerhead told me.

“A gross exaggeration, sir.”

“Possibly an exaggeration. But not gross. What’s all this stuff? What’s going on?”

“I’m doing a two birder. These guys are going to build you a guardhouse. Complete with a charcoal stove and a garderobe. They'll do it fast and efficient, right here, in broad daylight, while Weider’s contractors watch.” My workmen were breeds who were eager to work. “How many showed up today?”

“Almost all a’them, what Luther says. They’re getting scared a’being outta work.”

“This ought to give them a little extra incentive, then.”

“Or start a riot.”

“I see four Relway tin whistles without even trying. Anything starts, there'll be a bunch of guys donating skilled labor to the Crown.”

Desultory work continues round the seasons on the Marcosca aqueduct. Someday? maybe even during my lifetime? it will improve dramatically the quality and quantity of water available to the city. The system is a long, slow project because the labor is almost entirely convict.

Saucerhead watched the breeds unload carts and a lumber wagon. I suggested, “Show them where you want the shack put up. That one with the growth on his face is the top kick. Goes by Rockpile.”

There was a story behind that name but Saucerhead wouldn’t care. A guy called Saucerhead all his life don’t much care how somebody else got hung with an oddball nickname. Unless they hit it off and decided to go get drunk together.

Tharpe had definite ideas about the optimum size for his guardhouse. He and Rockpile began jabbering.

Bill appeared. So suddenly I jumped. “What the hell?”

“You ought to keep one eye open.”

I’d started thinking about Tinnie and where my life was headed. “Maybe I ought to. What’s on your mind?”

“I spent part of the night here with your thugs, last night. Mr. Tharpe mention that?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, whatever is down there is getting stronger. Putting an end to the damned bugs would probably turn that around. They weren’t all the time chewing on it, it could go back to sleep. But they just keep hatching out.”

“And?”

“Just saying. Do something about the bugs. The rest could follow.”

“We'll see some action on that today.”

My partner had plans afoot. Numerous plans. Some of them he’d let me in on. Plans were why he’d recruited so many messengers.

“That’s good. Me, I don’t mind the bugs. But the music could drive me nuts.”

“Music?” I hadn’t pursued that. I hadn’t dismissed it, either. I’d heard something myself, though calling it music would be a stretch.

“They’re bad melodies,” Bill said. “Very bad melodies. In several senses of bad. But mostly just awful as music.”