Doc Sidhe (25 page)

There was a loop of white cord tied to the front of the gun, just under the barrel. The cord continued along the left side of the barrel and was tied off to a knob near the trigger. He could tug on the cord and draw the loop closed.

Alastair, visible between crates on the far side of a set of shelves, said, "It's a Wexstan."

"It's weird."

"Sportsman's weapon. For birdstalkers who liked to get close to their quarry. Also for snakes that get too close." He came around the set of shelves to give the thing a better look. "This is the way gangsters modify the things. See the loop of rope? Drop it over a victim's head and draw it tight over his neck, and you ensure cooperation. If the victim tries to yank free, he'll probably yank the trigger. That's the end of the victim. The gangster can draw the loop tighter to control his victim. It's very good for kidnapping."

"Charming." Harris handed the weapon off to the next guardsman.

The second floor of the office building had been arranged into bedrooms and barracks rooms. Lieutenant Athelstane reported that the building had, until recently, housed more than the thirty or so men the raid had killed or captured. "We have a singer," he told Doc. "But he won't perform in sight of the others."

"Let's find him a private office," Doc said.

One of the offices downstairs was actually set up for business, with a desk and an adding machine nearly as big as an old-fashioned cash register. Alastair brought in extra chairs for Doc's associates.

Athelstane dragged in one of the captured gangsters. This man had a square face and slack expression under intelligent-looking eyes. His ears rose to a dramatic point; his hair was blond and he was clean-shaven. He was dressed only in trousers, and his hands were shackled in front of him with handcuffs the color of tarnished copper. Athelstane shoved him into the chair behind the desk; Jean-Pierre turned the desk lamp so it shined into his face. The man's eyes watered from the light. He grimaced but didn't complain.

"You know who I am," Doc said. "You know my reputation. These are the terms: You cooperate. I decide later what it's worth to me. Lie to me and it's not worth much. Give me the keys to the city and it can be worth a lot. That's as explicit as it gets. Yes or no."

The man said, "Yes."

"Your name."

"Swyn Alpson."

"Who do you work for?"

"Aremorcy Waterways."

"You've just insulted my intelligence."

The man shifted, restless. "My boss is Eamon Moon. I do most of the work he's responsible for. But Angus Powrie gives Moon orders, and he and Darig MacDuncan give each
other
orders. I don't know which one is the boss, but Angus calls Darig `sir' and Darig calls Angus things like `toad' and `bug'."

Harris leaned forward to interrupt: " `Bug'? This Darig guy is the Changeling, then."

Alpson nodded. "He calls himself that, yes."

Doc said, "MacDuncan. `Duncan's son.' Is he?"

"I don't know whose son he is."

"Is Darig a deviser?"

"No. Don't think so."

"But you have a deviser in your gang."

"No. Darig just gets packages with things in them. Books. Instructions. From a deviser. I don't know who."

"Does Darig show any sign of any Gift?"

"No."

"Why do you call him the Changeling, then?"

Alpson shrugged. "He likes it. He tells us to."

Doc sat back, frowning. "Where are they? Angus and the Changeling?"

"Went to the airfield early this evening. Angus went off to fetch Eamon back first. Eamon's supposed to be here when Angus and Darig aren't. Angus came back full of spite about you—" he nodded to Doc "—don't know why, and then he and Darig left. With the old sodder."

"Who is that?"

"Name is Blackletter."

Harris saw Doc and Jean-Pierre stiffen. His own back was suddenly tense.

Doc drew a long, slow breath. "Tell me about Blackletter."

Alpson twisted his mouth, an expression of distaste. "Came a few days ago with three big, stupid-looking men, and a bigger, stupider-looking
thing
. Took charge; Angus and Darig both call him sir. They talked and talked, like getting reacquainted." He gave Doc an evaluative look. "I heard some of what they were talking about."

Doc waited.

Alpson shrugged. "Blackletter asked about the list, whatever that is. Darig said it was all done but the new ones. A man and a woman are the new ones, I know that. I know the list is in the safe."

"Where is the safe?"

Alpson tapped his left foot. "Just here, beneath my foot."

Doc turned to Jean-Pierre. "Call Eight-Finger Tom. I'm not going to put anyone less on a deviser's safe. Offer him whatever it takes to get out here right now."

Jean-Pierre rose and left.

Doc turned back to Alpson. "What else did they talk about?"

"Blackletter said
his
list was done. Taunted Angus with it. Good-spirited, like. `I'm an old, old man and I finished my list first.' This afternoon they loaded up equipment and took it out to the airfield."

"What sort of equipment?"

"Don't know. Lots of it, though, all in big crates. Took eight slabside trucks to carry it. Loaded it onto two big airwings."

"This afternoon."

"Yes."

"Where were they going?"

The gangster shrugged. "Cretanis, somewhere. Some village. Adnum."

"Adennum?"

"That's it."

"What sort of airwings?"

"Big new Weissefrau Valks."

Doc sat back, looking distracted; his lips moved, but he didn't speak.

Harris said, "You mentioned big, dumb guys with him. Tell me about them."

"Stupid sodders. You can hardly understand their talk. They complain about everything. The cold. The heat. Us. One of them, name of Phipps, said something twisted his favorite firepiece all out of shape. Carried around a big lump of
iron
he tried to tell me used to be a gun. Stupid bugger."

"Phipps. Big guy, lots of muscle?"

"Huge, even more than you. Had a busted wing, but Blackletter sent him off to a doctor and he got that fixed right away. They were all big."

Doc said, "We'll talk again later. For now, show Lieutenant Athelstane their rooms. Angus', Darig's, Moon's, and Blackletter's."

The burly Novimagos guardsman seized Alpson by an ear and yanked him up from the chair. Alpson grunted but didn't complain and was led out.

Doc turned to Noriko. "We might be able to catch up to him in the
Frog Prince
."

She shook her head. "It's not much faster than Valkyries, Doc. Oh—you mean a straight flight."

He nodded.

Alastair smacked himself in the forehead. "Not again."

Noriko rose. "I'll have it ready by the time the rest of you get there." She limped out.

"Alastair?" Doc said. "Tell me what you make of this."

He knelt beside an upright cabinet in the plushly furnished room Alpson had identified as Darig MacDuncan's. The floor was covered with a colorful rug bearing an intricate geometric design; a four-poster bed surrounded by filmy curtains dominated the room.

Alastair and Harris moved over to look. Harris could hear Jean-Pierre, Gaby, and Alastair ransacking the room next door, the one Angus Powrie had lived in.

Doc knelt over a wooden strongbox. The lock had been forced and the lid was up. Harris could see a crumpled mass of gray cloth inside the box; there seemed to be wooden cubes beneath it. Doc held a curious object: a small, flexible brown disk with a loop attached to one side and an extrusion the size and shape of one finger-digit protruding from the other side. It seemed to be made of a translucent material and bent freely in Doc's fingers.

The context was wrong, and it took Harris a moment to realize that he was looking at something familiar. "Hey, that's a pacifier."

The other two looked at him, curious. "It's scarcely heavy enough to hurt a man when you hit him with it," Doc said.

"Huh?"

Doc mimed an overhand blow with a club. "A pacifier. A rubber or leather envelope filled with lead shot. Hoodlums use them to beat men unconscious."

"No, no, no. A pacifier is a nipple for babies. Pop it in their mouth and they suck on it. It's made of plastic." He took it from Doc, turned it over to look for a maker's mark. On one side, he found the almost invisible emboss reading "Made in Japan" and showed it to Doc. "Japan is the Wo of my world."

Harris stooped and rooted around in the box. The gray mass was a downy blanket with a maker's tag still attached to one seam. The cubes beneath it were alphabet blocks identical to ones Harris had had as a child. There was also a plastic rattle.

"Doc, this is all baby stuff from the grim world." Harris glanced at the two of them and found that each had one eye closed; Doc was looking at the objects with his left eye, Alastair with his right.

They looked at each other and opened their eyes. Alastair said, "It all has the aura of the man who lived in this room, but very, very strong. They're his baby goods, I'm sure."

Doc sat back, frowning. "Harris, you said the Changeling was young. How young?"

"Hard to say, especially here on the fair world. Not a teenager. Twenty, maybe twenty-five." He tried to remember the man's voice, tried to compare his face to what he'd since learned about the way the fair folk aged. "Closer to twenty."

"I think I have it," Doc said. "We know Duncan went to the grim world instead of dying twenty years ago. My guess, and these objects bear it out, is that he used old, old devisements to take the place and identity of a child of your world, Harris."

Harris snorted. "Whatever you say, Doc. I mean, I've seen weirder since I've been here. Just the prospect of that old guy crawling around in a crib and crying for milk is pretty strange."

"But that's precisely what he would have done. By his arts he would have made himself smaller and prevented the child's parents from recognizing the physical change. They would have noticed an alteration to his manner, of course. He would have been a screaming, shrieking tyrant."

"Like real babies, you mean."

"Worse. He would have leeched all joy from their lives and driven them to early death. But as little as your folk know about mine, they probably would not have realized what the change in him meant. They wouldn't have known the old ways to trick him, to get their baby back. So he would have used the identity he stole as a base for his activities on the grim world."

Alastair nodded. "And the child he stole, and sent back here, is Darig MacDuncan. Who calls himself the Changeling . . . even though it was
Duncan
who was actually the changeling."

"Raised by Angus," Doc said. "No wonder he's as twisted as he is. He'd no chance to be otherwise."

The captured gangsters were long gone and Doc's associates were gathering to leave when Eight-Finger Tom arrived. He was a short, slight man with quick mannerisms, a restless eye, and a gold tooth. He carried a small bag made of carpet. He had all ten fingers. He shook hands with Doc and said, "The usual?"

"Worse. It's a deviser's safe, an old one."

The other man grimaced. "Show me."

Doc took him into the office where they'd done the interrogation. Harris, waiting with the others in the hall, heard them pry up a panel from the wooden floor.

Tom's tone was curious: "What a strange design. And the handle—ouch! Who'd make a safe out of unsheathed steel? Bugger. Give me the gloves out of my pack, would you? The thin ones." There was a long wait. "Oh, yes. It's warded, all right. It's not enough to divine the combination; I'll need to mimic the timing, too." He raised his voice: "The rest of you stay out. We may be blowing up in here."

Doc chuckled.

Long, long moments of silence. Then, suddenly, Eight-Finger Tom appeared in the doorway, his bag in hand, his manner cheerful. "Not too bad," he told Jean-Pierre. "Blast would have sent the whole building front out into the street, but the thing was used enough that the combination and timing were imbedded all over the place. You know where to send my fee." He tipped his cap to the others. "Grace on you." And he jauntily marched out the door.

Gaby asked, "Why `Eight-Finger'?"

Jean-Pierre said, "When he was a strongbox cracker, he robbed a gang boss. The gang came after him. He took a finger from every one of them he killed. Keeps them in a jar. The guard could never make a case against him, as they couldn't find the rest of the body. But Doc did, and gave him a choice: retire from his old life and do work for the Foundation, or . . . "

"Right."

Doc stepped out into the hall. Under his arm, he carried a sheaf of papers. "Time to go," he said.

In his room at the Monarch Building, Harris found the carpetbag he'd seen at the bottom of his closet. He loaded it with the clothes and toilet articles he'd accumulated, the two big pistols from the truck, and the ammunition for them.

His entire collection of possessions from the fair world. It didn't seem like much.

He picked up Gaby's jeans and took them down the hall to her door. She opened it before he knocked; she looked on the verge of tears. "Harris, I'm
sorry
," she said.

"You should try them on before you say that." He handed her the jeans.

"Stop making jokes, you idiot. Tonight, you wouldn't have even gone if I hadn't backed you into it, would you?"

"Sure."

"Don't lie. Not to me."

"Okay." He took a deep breath, a delaying tactic, and sorted his thoughts. "No, I wouldn't. I would have stayed here."

"And you wouldn't have had to kill two men." Her voice shrank to a whisper. "It's my fault."

"No."

"Harris, you ought to go home to the grim world."

He leaned in close. "Gaby, the thing is, you were right. When you said that about not just standing by while everybody else risked his life for you. I admire you for that, and it kills me, because I should have felt the same way and I didn't.
I'm
the one who screwed up. As usual."

"No, Harris—"

"We're going to England. Pack warm." He left her.