Hold The Dark: A Markhat story (16 page)

Chapter Twelve

Evis himself came, soon after. In the daylight, no less.

He was swathed in yards of black—black that covered his black-gloved hands and his booted feet and his black-veiled face. He came and he knocked and he spoke, and I found myself at the door, throwing the bolt, more out of shock than any act of conscious will.

He bowed. “I came to extend my deepest sympathies. May I enter?”

I stepped aside. He straightened and darted in out of the sun.

I made my way back to my side of my desk and sat. I did not speak. After a moment, Evis sat too.

He pulled the cowl back, and the veil, and regarded me through his dark glasses. Even so covered, he grimaced in the dim light of my office.

“I confess we were unaware of any close associations. Aside from Mrs. Hog. And we considered her to be at little risk.”

I’d considered none of these things, and it stung.

“We’d just met,” I said. “At the Velvet. She was Martha’s friend. She’d been asking around, about Martha. Maybe she asked once too often.”

And while I had the name Encorla Hisvin to protect me, she had nothing. Nothing but me, and I’d failed her.

“I am partly to blame, as well,” said Evis, reading my mind. “We applied pressure, as I directed. Pressure to a group of none too stable persons already inured to pointless violence. And now another innocent is dead.”

“Your man outside. I never saw him.”

Evis sighed. “He saw nothing. Nothing, until a body struck your door and fell. He remained hidden, hoping the bearer or bearers would reveal himself. He or they did not.”

“How could he have seen nothing? She didn’t walk to my door. Someone carried her.”

“Sorcery. A powerful charm of concealment. Or perhaps one that acts to distract onlookers. We have not been able to determine the specific nature of the charm.”

“You check on your man’s whereabouts the last few new moons? Maybe he didn’t see because he was holding their coats.”

“I will forgive this insult. You are overwrought. Understandably so.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” My Army knife found its way into my right hand.

“The man in question was Victor. He was at my side, the last four new moons, raiding suspected meeting places. He has taken no human blood for nearly forty years. Were he to partake now, the effects would be impossible to conceal.” Evis raised his hand. “Please. Your ardor is excusable, to a point. But it was not I who has done this thing.”

I put the knife down.

“They didn’t just kill her.” The words came hard and each stuck in my throat.

“I know. What was done to her was monstrous. Worse than death. Had you not done what was necessary—”

I heard the dead wagon rattle away again, in the shadows of my soul.

“—she would have risen. In that state, you could not have helped her, or spared her the pain.”

I thought of the crematoriums. Thought of new black smoke and fine grey ash, boiling out of the tall brick smokestacks.

“She is free now,” said Evis, as if he knew my thoughts. “The pain is gone. They may not touch her, ever again.”

Nor I
, I thought.
Nor I
.

“And now we must end this. They have identified you as their tormentor. They dared not slay you, for fear of the wrath of Hisvin. But this they have dared. Despite the risk. It demonstrates recklessness, a disregard for even their own safety.” He shook his head. “There is no more dangerous creature than one which fails to realize its own mortality.”

“The Thin Man.” I’d not really been listening. “Think he’ll still show?”

“I believe so. Consider. He and his other human compatriots would have never ordered, nor authorized, an attack on Miss Tomas. I doubt that they even know. Indeed, I hope that they do not.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Because such actions are certain to lead toward exposure,” said Evis, speaking slowly, as though explaining steam engines to a slow-witted child. “And exposure will damn the day folk more swiftly and finally than any of the halfdead. Think about it, Mr. Markhat. The halfdead have their Houses—where, though, will the day folk turn, should any of this come out?”

I nodded. It did make sense. Day folk plot. Halfdead bite and rend. Biting and rending gets noticed. And should I or someone like me announce to the world that a handful of priests and a few dozen halfdead had conspired to slaughter the daughters of the honest working poor, the flames wouldn’t die down for years.

“Dissent in the ranks.”

“Indeed. In fact, were we to simply step back, to take no further action at all, I suspect that the entire organization would simply collapse—messily—in a week. Two at the most.” He shrugged. “But for Miss Hoobin, I might suggest just such a thing.”

I leaned back. There was still a smear of Darla’s blood on the edge of my desk.

“We aren’t going to forget Martha Hoobin.” Or Darla Tomas, though I did not speak the words aloud.

Evis nodded, regarding me through his dark lenses. He’d heard the words I hadn’t spoken. And I in turn heard him bite back an admonition against a blinding passion for vengeance.

I stared him down. I used to wonder, down in the tunnels, where the fear went. Never figured it out. One minute you’re terrified. One minute you’re not, though death is there, waiting silent in the dark.

The fear just goes away. And so it had, again, something cold, unblinking and unfeeling taking its place.

“Very well,” said Evis. “Then we have plans to make, do we not?”

We did, and we did. When he left, a good hour later, it was all settled, and we would be taking Martha Hoobin home before sunrise.

Evis would have a small army at his side—an army he kept out of sight. He would be watching me watch Innigot’s Alehouse, known far and wide as the place to go after Curfew for a quiet beer or an even quieter conversation. And if the Thin Man showed, Evis would come in a certain small span of time later, and we’d all sit and talk about combs and new moons and Martha Hoobin.

That was the plan, at least as far as Evis knew. Mine involved an army of my own, an army of Hoobins and other fine examples of New People citizenry. I didn’t think Evis would approve, so I didn’t bring it up.

And if we didn’t find the Thin Man, didn’t learn Martha Hoobin’s whereabouts—well, perhaps I’d just share what I’d learned with the Hoobins. Perhaps I’d just suggest we took a stroll across the Brown, and started lighting fires until we found someone who was willing to talk.

I was sure Evis wouldn’t like that.

Gone with fear was caring. Let them burn, said the cold hollow voice deep within. Let them all burn.

Evis stood. “My deepest sympathies. And my vow. You shall stand face-to-face against those who injured her. I shall see to that.”

I stood too.

“I’ll see them dead. All of them.”

He beheld me, something like sorrow on his face.

“Yes,” he said. “I believe you shall do just that.”

And then he was gone, out my door and into his carriage and away.

I sat, watched and waited for dark.

Sometime after Evis left, Hooga and Hooga showed up at my door. They stationed themselves on either side of it and stooped wordlessly into that “I’m waiting to pounce” stance you see all over Rannit. So quiet were they that I didn’t know they were there until Mama came shambling back and I heard them hooting back and forth.

“They heard about Miss Darla,” said Mama, after telling me they were there. “They don’t know nothin’, ’cept that Martha is gone and Miss Darla is dead. They said they decided somebody needs killin’, and they figure stayin’ close to you is the best way to catch up to ’em.”

She sat. I stood and stretched. Mama brushed back her hair and let out a long exhausted yawn.

It was only then I noticed how small she looked and how tired. Her eyes were red and puffy and her wild grey mane was tangled and matted. Her wrinkled old fingers shook as they gripped her tattered sack tightly closed.

She let out a breath and thumped her sack down hard atop my desk.

“Shut up,” she said, before I could speak. “I brung you something.”

I shrugged. I didn’t care, didn’t care to know, didn’t need any backstreet mojo.

“This ain’t what you think. I told you once I didn’t know the names of them what casts black mojo. I knows a name now.” She shuddered. “I knows it, and they knows mine.”

Mama gulped air and set her jaw. “There’s things that oughtn’t to be. Things that ain’t got no business comin’ out of what-ever dark hole they was born at the bottom of. Wicked old things that ain’t got no place in this world.”

“Do tell.”

Mama’s eyes narrowed, and when she parted her lips a hiss escaped.

“I do tell just that.” She shook the bag. “This is one of them wicked things. I reckon I ought to burn it. I reckon I ought to let you go out there tonight and get kilt. But I reckon I ain’t as good a person as I thought. Cause I want them bastards dead. I want you alive. And if that’s gonna happen, boy, it’s gonna happen because of this.”

She let go the mouth of the bag, turned it up, cast a rag-wrapped bundle the size of my clenched fist onto my desk.

“The one what give it to me called it a huldra. Reckon it’s a foreign word.”

She looked away, threw her bag down onto the floor.

“Take it,” she said, through gritted teeth. “Take it, and tell it your name, and Angels help us both.”

“I don’t need it.”

She glared up at me.

“Damn you, boy, you do! You need anything you can get. What you gonna do, you walk into a room and find twenty of them sharp-toothed bastards? What you gonna do?”

She reached out, caught the bundle a slap with the back of her hand, sent it sliding toward me.

“I know you’re hurtin’, boy. I see that dead look in your eyes. I know all you can think about is findin’ them what hurt Miss Darla. But you got to think about after you find ’em. Cause it ain’t gonna matter how mad you are, or what they done, or how much they deserve to die. They’ll laugh. They’ll take hold of you and they’ll tear your damned fool head off. Is that what you want, boy? Is that how you’ll avenge her? By bleedin’ at their feet while they decide who eats first?”

She pointed at the bundle. “You take it. You take it up and tell it your name. It knows why you need it. It knows what to do.” She drew in a breath. “I don’t rightly know if you’ll ever be rid of it, after. But I reckon we can figure that out tomorrow. If’n we get a tomorrow.”

I took up the bundle, began to unroll the rags, realized they were Orthodox grave-clothes stained with thick dark fluids still moist to the touch.

Mama turned her face away, fished in her pockets, came up with what looked like a tiny dried owl.

Inside the rags, deep within the turning, was a tortoise shell. A worn, scratched, fist-sized tortoise shell, the openings sealed with new black wax.

“Don’t touch it,” said Mama, still not looking, as I unwound the final turning. “Don’t you never ever touch it with your bare hands.”

I shrugged, opened a drawer, found a clean handkerchief. I took the shell up with the cloth, turning it this way and that.

It was heavy. Too heavy for its size, unless it were filled with lead. It was also too cold, not quite like a chunk of snow, but nearly so.

“You got to tell it your name,” said Mama. She gripped her dead owl close to her chin.

“What the Hell.” I knew she wouldn’t leave until I’d done so.

I raised the thing, spoke my name—my secret birthing name—to it.

It shook in my hand, but only briefly.

Mama began to cry. “Forgive us both,” she said. Though if she prayed, I knew not to who. “We done what we had to do.”

Tears ran suddenly down her face. She rushed around my desk and gave me a single fierce hug. Then she was bawling and out the door, leaving her bag and her dead owl and a fresh-brewed hex-paper charm—the one I’d asked for—behind.

I didn’t follow. I left the cloth-wrapped shell on my desk. I gathered my things, found my coat and put Mama’s charm in the pocket. I took my black hat off the hook where Darla had hung it, and I put it on.

A storm blew up, an hour after dark. Cold winds blew, and cold rains fell. It felt like spring had given up, and handed the streets back over to winter.

I listened for the count of bells amid the thunder. Found that I’d idly taken the huldra up within my hand. Still cold, even through the cloth, I found it comforting to hold, and the vague patterns on the shell drew my eye.

I thought of Darla, thought of Martha, thought of the rain-swept streets. But mostly, I thought about fires. Fires and blades and shouts, rising in the night.

The huldra stirred in my hand. I started and heard, faint behind the blow and beat of the storm, the Big Bell clang out Curfew.

I rose, donned my coat, slipped the huldra in a pocket. I put out a handful of jerky for Three-leg Cat, thought about it for a minute and upended the tin on the floor beside my desk.