Sweet Silver Blues (17 page)

31

We sat on a patch of grass not far from the witch’s house, surrounded by little folk stoned on sugar. Only a couple were sober enough to titter occasionally.

Morley had turned from argumentative to reflective. “You know what made it interesting, Garrett? That list. Sixteen items. But six of them were the same thing: a name, translated into six different languages. Curious. Especially because it isn’t a name either of us recognizes in any of its forms.”

“What was that?”

He rattled off a jawbreaker. “I’d give you the Karentine, but it wouldn’t make any sense.”

“Try it anyway. Karentine is all I speak.”

“There’re two possible translations. Dawn of Night’s Mercy. Or Dawn of Night’s Madness.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“I told you it wouldn’t.”

“What language uses the same word for
mercy
and
madness?
”

“Dark elfin.”

“Oh,” I glanced toward the centaur’s house. Not a thing had happened since our departure. I looked at the witch’s place. A light burned in an upper-story window. It hadn’t been burning when we’d come down the path. “Why don’t you guys head on up to the cemetery? I’ll catch up in a few minutes. There’s something I want to check out.”

I expected Morley to give me an argument. He didn’t. He just grunted, got to his feet, got the triplets moving, and vanished into the night.

Somebody small with a man-sized grin had passed out leaning against me. I tilted him over gently, patted his shoulder when he mumbled something, rose, and headed for the house. I prowled around looking into windows.

“I’m up here, Private Garrett.”

“Good. I was hoping to see you. But I was a little leery of waking you.” I couldn’t see her.

She laughed. Her laughter was mostly merriment, but it also carried a trace of mockery. She didn’t believe me. But she knew I didn’t expect her to.

“How can I help you, Private Garrett?”

“You could start by not calling me Private Garrett. I’m out of the Marines. I’d just as soon forget them. Then you can tell me if you know anything about somebody named Dawn of Night’s Mercy or Dawn of Night’s Madness.”

She was silent so long I feared she had deserted me. Then she threw down the dark elvish
gobblewhat
Morley had used, applying a distinctly interrogative inflection.

“That’s right.”

“
Gobblewhat
is not a person, Mr. Garrett. It is a prophecy, and an unpleasant one from your point of view. The name
Gobblewhat
is dark elfin, but the prophecy is not. It is an echo, a rumor, an aspiration, out of a deeper night.”

Being what she was, she naturally stoked the drama on her declamation, then clammed up, leaving her answer obscure.

I tried asking questions. That was a waste of time. She was done talking about
gobblewhat.
She closed the subject by saying, “That was spur of the moment. What did you really want?”

There was no point playing games. “Are you still in business? I’d like to buy a few of your special tools.”

She ripped off a first-class witch’s cackle. It was hilarious. I grinned. The peafowl even got into the act, though their mirth was confused and sleepy. “Go around to the front door,” she told me. “You’ll find it unlocked.”

When I rejoined Morley and the triplets, I carried five tiny, folded pieces of paper. I had hidden each carefully. Each bore a potent and potentially useful spell. I was still repeating the witch’s instructions to myself. Basically, all I had to remember was to unfold the papers at the appropriate moment, though a couple required a whispered word at the right time.

Morley said, “So. You survived the trail. I was about to go looking for you. What now?”

“We go back and get what sleep we can. Then early tomorrow we hit the road for Fort Caprice.”

“I thought you were going to let the centaur do the finding for you.”

“Contrary to the false notion formed earlier, I don’t trust him to do anything. If he comes through, fine. Meantime, I go on looking. He expects us to hide from him. I can’t think of a better place than out in the Cantard. Two birds, one stone.”

Morley was as thrilled as I might have expected. “I had to ask, didn’t I?”

32

Fort Caprice was a bust.

It was four days out of Full Harbor, pushing hard all the way, shielded every step by more luck than any five fools deserved. Not only did we not encounter one of our own Karentine patrols, but we didn’t fall in with Venageti rangers or representatives of any of the nonhuman races of the Cantard, most of which are at least marginally involved in the war. Their loyalties shift like a chameleon’s color, according to where they think the most profit lies.

Fort Caprice was not in the heart of the caldron, though. The richest silver country lay a hundred miles farther south.

Major Kayeth Kronk proved to be brevet-Colonel Kronk now, at the tender age of twenty-six. I did not remind him that we had met before, though I’m sure he remembered me before we reached the end of our short interview. I told him I was looking for his sister Kayean, and told him why. And he told me that he didn’t have a sister Kayean.

And that was all he would say about it. When I kept after him he got stubborn. Then he got mad and had a couple of soldiers show me the street.

We poked around among the hangers-on Fort Caprice had acquired—like fleas, ticks, and worms to a hound—and found out nothing more interesting than which men were watering their wine and which women would send you away with something you hadn’t had when you arrived. So we made the four-day journey back to Full Harbor, with fool’s luck cleansing the way ahead of us again.

It was a lovely time to visit the Cantard.

I hoped the centaur would come through so I wouldn’t have to do it again.

That would be tempting fate a bit too far We were out of Full Harbor nine days, all told.

33

The major from the military city hall was waiting at the gate through the Narrows Wall. There was nothing magical about it once I realized that without sorcery, a trip to Fort Caprice takes a predictable amount of time. He cut me out of my herd.

“Any luck?” he asked.

“Zip. Zero. Zilch. What can I do for you?”

“I have another list of names.”

“And getting my reaction is important enough for you to lay in wait for me out here?”

“Maybe.”

“Fire away.”

He did.

I knew five of the twelve names this time. Father Mike. Father Rhyne. Sair Lojda. Martello Quinn and Aben Kurts, of Denny’s old crowd. I admitted knowing the latter two only as friends of a friend, saying I thought they were in shipping. Then I asked, “What ties this together? What’s up?”

“All these people, and three more for whom we have no names, have died or disappeared during the last eleven days. I’m certain you would recognize more if you saw them. Imelo Clark was a guard at the civil city hall. Egan Rust was a clerk there. You interviewed them. I was not sure you had any connection with Kurts and Quinn, but since you did, then I assume there’s also one with Laught and the three unknowns, all of whom seem to have come off a yacht from TunFaire.”

“What the hell are you trying to say?”

“Don’t get your hackles up, Garrett. You’re safe. You were out of town during the excitement. In fact, the only time I place you or yours near anyone at a critical time is Father Rhyne. I’m satisfied your associate found him dead.”

I didn’t say anything. My thoughts were pounding off in twenty directions. What the hell was going on?

“It seems apparent that, in most of these cases, someone is cleaning up after you. It’s a wonder you haven’t been turned invisible yourself.”

Thoughtlessly, I admitted, “It’s been tried a couple times.”

He wanted details. He demanded details. I gave him some without mentioning centaurs or dead men or much else that would do him any real good. He thought it was crafty of us, setting the one group up for a career in the mines.

He observed, “I have a feeling that there are a lot of things you wouldn’t tell me no matter how nicely I ask. Like where the others from TunFaire fit in.”

“I wouldn’t be even a little shy about telling you that if I knew. What’s the story on them, anyway?”

Kurts and Quinn had died the evening we left Full Harbor. They had been found in an alley on the far south side. At first it had looked like they had fallen foul of robbers. Laught—identified because his name and that of the yacht were stitched on the inside of his jumper—died later that night in the graveyard where Kayean and I had played when we were kids. At almost the same time a tremendous explosion and fire had consumed the yacht. No one knew how many had died in that. The unburned remains of the yacht had sunk. It was a miracle the whole waterfront hadn’t gone up.

“That’s pretty rough stuff,” I said. “The stakes must be big. I don’t want to sound dumb or impertinent, but what’s your interest? Seems to me it’s a civil problem, gaudy as it is.”

“Full Harbor’s reason for existing is military. Anything gaudy could effect the city’s military situation. Garrett, I’m convinced you know things I want to know. But I’m not going to press you. When you feel like baring your soul, drop in. And I’ll trade you the name of the man she married. Meantime, I’ll just use you as a stalking horse.”

“Yeah.” I waved bye-bye, but my heart was not in it. I was pondering that equine-derived chestnut.

Morley and the triplets joined me. “Who was that?” Morley asked. I told him. He asked, “He have anything interesting to say?”

I told him all that, too.

“Gang warfare and vampires,” he mused. “What a city.”

“Vampires?”

“Several people claim they were attacked this week. It’s all the talk. You know how those stories get going. People will see vampires in every shadow for a month.”

34

We slept at the same inn. We couldn’t be safer elsewhere, and the quarters were the best available for grolls.

The innkeeper had five messages for me. They were from Zeck Zack, had come at a rate of one daily, and had become increasingly strident. I got the impression he wanted to see me.

“Tomorrow is soon enough,” I told Morley. “Tonight I’m going to lay around and ruminate and drink beer to get the Cantard dust out of my throat. I’m not much closer to the woman but I’m starting to see the outlines of the other stuff. Except for Vasco and his crowd, I don’t think it has anything to do with silver. I think three or four conspiracies with completely alien or only marginally overlapping goals have collided here, maybe with the woman being the link. I don’t think I’m the only one going around wondering, Who the hell are those guys? What do they want?”

I let it go there. Morley could chew on it if he wanted. I snuggled up with my beer and tried to let my mind go blank.

Some might say I did not have to work very hard.

Zeck Zack turned up next day. He got righteous with me.

“Do I work for you?” I asked.

He looked around. A lot of unfriendly faces were turned his way. Centaurs are not popular, which is probably why Zeck Zack spent so little time at his city house. He desisted, though he kept simmering. He handed me a sealed letter. “Your instructions are in there. You are to come alone.”

“Have you been smoking weed?”

“What?”

“I don’t go anywhere alone. People have been dying around this town. Four of them right out around your place.”

“You will go alone or they will not let you see her.”

“Then I’ll find her my own way.”

Morley walked in then, coming back from grazing. He slapped Zeck Zack across the rump, a familiarity and indignity that almost sent him into paroxysms. Morley said, “There was another vampire thing last night, Garrett. Sounded like the real article.”

“Remind me to wear my high-collar shirt when I go barhopping tonight.” His pursed lips told me he had something more on his mind but wouldn’t say what until I got rid of the centaur.

I told Zeck Zack, “You see? It’s dangerous to wander the streets alone.”

“I will put it to them. They are going to be very irritated with both of us. They have gone to a great deal of trouble to make the woman available. But, perhaps, for that reason they will accede to your petition.”

I did my eyebrow trick. My petition? “Right. Check it out. You know where to find me.”

He extended a hand. “The instructions? They will have to be changed.”

I gave them back. He left, giving me a couple of dark looks.

“He wanted me to come to the meet all by myself, on the lonesome,” I told Morley. “Just me face-to-face with ‘them,’ whoever ‘they’ are.”

“Whoever, they have him peeing down his leg. And he has a reputation for being a tough bastard.”

“I noticed he had a case of nerves. What’s up?”

“The place is being watched. Somebody followed me out and back. I didn’t give it a good scout because I didn’t want them to know they’d been made, but I spotted two more. I figured that’s iceberg.”

“Damn! The works. A whole crew. And now they know I’m dealing with Zeck Zack.”

“Spilled milk. Who do you figure for it?”

“That army bastard. I don’t know why. Vasco or the striped-sail crowd wouldn’t have the resources. The centaur doesn’t need to know every breath we take. He hopes he has us on the hook.”

“Maybe the major needs a closer look.”

“Maybe. Though I don’t even know his name. And I’d rather not. I’d just as soon get on with the job I’m getting paid to do.”

Morley nodded. “It’s getting thick. I find myself looking forward to the trip home—in my more insane, impatient moments.”

I slouched in my seat. “I guess we spend the day on in-and-out, getting a scout on how many and how good they are. We can make like we’re getting ready for another trip out of town. We can eat the food on the way home if the meet goes down and I get what I need.”

“We’ll have to work a way for all of us to shake them, too.”