Sweet Silver Blues (27 page)

“That all you have to tell me?”

“Morley sent me back ’cause I got hurt, actually. He’s still out there working them. If that critter gets out of this alive, it sure won’t be on the cheap.” And that was all he would say.

Awhile later the grolls came tramping back in with the coffins. The landlord was right behind them raising hell about our bunch stomping back and forth through the common room during quiet hours. “I’m never leaving TunFaire again,” I promised myself once more, and snarled. “Quit your bitching. You’ve made a bundle because of us, playing all the sides, and we’ll be out of your hair in an hour anyway. Do us all a favor and make yourself disappear.”

I looked so nasty he had no trouble getting the hint.

We refilled and sealed the coffins and gathered what remained of our possessions. For Tinnie and Rose and Vasco and Saucerhead Tharpe that meant no work at all. Their adventures had left them with nothing but the clothing on their backs. I wondered if I ought to put a burr under Dojango’s saddle, recalling how meticulously he had gone over the ruins of their last encampment, salvaging coins and jewelry the night people had discarded. I decided the wiser course was to keep everyone dependent upon my charity.

We marched out to the sighs of the landlord and his crew.

We reached and boarded our ship without suffering misadventure.

Time passed. The tide turned. The sailors prepared to cast off. And still there was no sign of Morley.

“Where the hell is he, Dojango?”

“He said don’t worry. He said go ahead. He said don’t hold up anything on his account.” Dojango said it, but he didn’t feel it. He wanted to do something.

I didn’t believe it. Morley Dotes wouldn’t sacrifice himself for anyone.

“Here he comes,” Saucerhead said. The deck crew was paying out the last lines, fore and aft.

He was coming for sure, in that sort of wild sprint only elfin can manage. Zeck Zack was thirty yards behind and gaining fast.

“Perfect,” Dojango whispered.

Perfect, like hell. Morley wasn’t going to make it without help. I looked around for a weapon and couldn’t find anything.

“Now!” Dojango said. And, “Actually!”

The striped-sail woman and her crew materialized from amid the freight on the pier. They all carried ready crossbows. Morley whipped past. Zeck Zack skidded to a halt, stood there shuddering. Morley leaped from the pier to the ship, teeth glistening in a grin.

“Is this the one?” the woman called.

“The very one, darling,” Morley gasped.

The gang closed in on the centaur.

“You damned fool!” I yelled at Morley. “You could have been killed.”

“But, if you’ll notice, I wasn’t.”

54

The passage north was slower than it had been going south. The winds were less friendly. But it was almost as eventless. There was a spot of trouble one night when Rose tried pushing Kayean over the side, but she collected only bruises for her trouble. There were no encounters with pirates, privateers, Venageti, or even Karentine naval vessels. We made Leifmold and I almost believed the gods had decided to lay off me for a while.

Rose’s assault on Kayean was due to my lack of foresight.

I was taking her out of her box at night, giving her the chance to breathe real air and face the real light of the stars. Foodwise I had gotten her to where she could keep down small amounts of lightly browned chicken flesh. I’d left her on deck to fetch some, and had gotten into an argument with Tinnie, who felt I should be apportioning my time somewhat differently. Rose made her move and took her lumps in my absence. I found out what was happening only when one of the ship’s night watch told me Rose needed saving.

I got there in time, though Kayean almost crossed the line and surrendered to the hunger. Rose crawled away, into the comforting arms of a Morley getting back to his cynical ways.

I calmed and fed Kayean and we sat in the starlight awhile, watching the wake luminesce and the flying fish leap. She finally spoke. “Where are you taking me?”

Her words were barely intelligible. Down in the nests, it is said, they don’t allow their brides to talk. She was rusty.

No one had told her what was going on. I’d just snatched her and dragged her along, giving her as much control of her destiny as she’d had while she was in the pit.

So I told her the story, and I wound up saying, “I think you ought to grab it. Denny wanted you to have it, and right now it’s the only thing you’ve got going in this whole world.”

She gave me a look that took me back in time. I had to take her down and put her away before I did something foolish. I returned to the deck to watch the sea unscramble my brain.

Morley came out of the darkness and settled beside me. After a while, he said, “I have a statistic I want you to consider, Garrett. Of all the guys who have loved her, only one is still alive.” Then he was gone. The superstitious half-breed.

Later I took advantage of Tinnie’s conciliatory mood to lay my haunts for a while.

Fate had us overhaul
Binkey’s Sequin
running up the Leifmold channel and I cut a deal with Master Arbanos even before we made the quay. He was vastly amused to see me saddled with Rose and Tinnie again.

We laid over three days in Leifmold, waiting for Master Arbanos to offload a cargo of army supplies and take on twenty-five tons of smoked cod. Morley split his time between getting fat eating green leafies and keeping Rose too busy to get into trouble. The triplets sold one of their unicorn horns and went on a toot. I think Vasco spent his time thinking about doing himself in. The rest of us just waited, with me lending a thought or ten to my routine once we reached TunFaire.

I still had to get myself and my associates paid.

55

We tied up at
Sequin’s
place on the TunFaire waterfront late in the afternoon, which pleased me to no end. Eager as we were to escape the smell of fish and visit old haunts, there were things Morley and I had to get done before our return became known. Keeping control until sunset was less difficult because it was only for a short time.

After hard dark fell, we all trooped off and slithered around the city’s back ways to the back door of Morley’s place, where everyone and everything, willing and unwilling, went into temporary hiding. I sneaked off to get some advice from the Dead Man while Morley worried about how he was going to consummate his arrangement with the kingpin.

He had asked Saucerhead and me to be his bodyguards when the meet went down, for which he would “gladly pay your standard fees—as soon as Garrett delivers me my wages for the last couple of months.” I figured he had delivered above and beyond the call, if mainly to save his own hide, and I could do him a favor in return. Saucerhead signed on because he’ll do any damned fool thing as long as he’s getting paid.

I swear I did
not
know what he was going to pull.

The Dead Man acted like I’d just stepped out half an hour ago and had just given him time to work into a comfortable snooze before I came clanging and banging. After having fulfilled his reputation for being cranky, he asked for my story. For five hours I gave it to him. He didn’t interrupt often as he didn’t need more information for anything. He thought my precautions against getting stiffed by Willard Tate would prove needless, but supposed they would hurt nothing. We talked tough at each other a little while I cleaned up around there, then I hightailed it back to Morley’s to grab thirteen winks before I walked into the Tates’ den.

News from the Cantard was all the talk when I got back. You miss a lot when you’re traveling.

It seemed that when all the armies and half armies and whatnots had turned up at Indigo Springs for the big soirée that would determine who kept the water hole, Glory Mooncalled was gone. Without a trace except a friendly note to the Venageti warlords on his list.

I liked the guy’s style.

I was grinning when I went to work on the Tate gate by dawn’s early light. “I’ll get a little of my own back here.”

A sleepy apprentice finally opened up. He was too addled to recognize me.

“How’s the arm? Looks good. I need to see the old man.”

“It’s you!”

“I think so. Last time I looked it was world-famous me, back with the goods from the wars.”

He dashed away, which is something people don’t ordinarily do, yelling all the way. I closed the gate behind me and waited.

I have to admit that Willard Tate was a lot sharper at that hour than I will ever be. By the time the kid led me in, there were steaming cups of tea set out. His first words were, “Sit down. Breakfast will be ready in ten minutes.” He looked at me expectantly.

I set my accounts down beside my tea, got comfortable, took me a sip, and said, “I’ve got her. Tinnie and Rose, too. If you want them.”

That old man was downright spooky. He glanced at what I’d placed on the table, considered my choice of words, gave a nod that said he understood the situation, and asked, “What is she like?”

“Like nothing you ever imagined. Like nothing I ever dreamed, either, even in a nightmare.”

He reached for the accounts. “May I?”

I pushed them toward him.

“Tell me about it while I’m looking at these.”

The version I gave him was more tightly edited than the one the Dead Man had gotten, but I didn’t leave out anything he needed to know. To say he was surprised would be putting it mildly. To say he took it all well would be understating. The short version took two hours and skirted the worst behavior of females surnamed Tate. I think he caught wind of what I left out, though.

When I finished, he said, “I’ve checked and you have a reputation for being honest with your expenses. Bizarre and substantial as these are, I suppose they’re justified. Considering.”

“The advance covered almost everything but salaries,” I informed him. “Between us we’re maybe a hundred out of pocket, mainly because of the cost of bringing the girls home.”

Tate grunted, shoved the accounts back. “You’ll have the balance before you leave.”

“And my executor’s fees?”

“That’s in the hands of the probate. When can I expect delivery?”

“Tonight. But very late. Probably after midnight. I have to help Morley with something first.” Morley’s business had gotten lost in the editing.

“All right. I guess it will have to do.” Then he let me in on why he was being so understanding. “Would you be interested in taking another job? After you’ve recuperated from this one?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“You know the major portion of our business is army boots. The most expensive component of a boot is sole leather. Army specs require thunder-lizard hide for soles. We have our own contract hunters and tanners, trustworthy men all. I thought. But of late the shipments have been short.”

I saw where he was going and shut him out. I had turned out to be crazy enough to go into the Cantard, but I will never be the screaming sort of psychotic who goes into thunder-lizard country. Besides, I’d made myself a promise never to leave TunFaire again and I never break a promise to myself without my self’s prior permission.

I let him talk. When he ran dry I said I would give it a think and got the hell out with my expense money, knowing I would shriek a big “No!” the second I had my executor’s fees in hand.

56

Morley had set his meet on wooded creekside ground at the boundary between the real world and the high city of the dukes and barons and stormwardens and whatnot. It was a place often employed for such encounters. Any uproar, as might be caused by treachery, would bring an army of high city protectors down on everyone.

Over the years the formula and etiquette of a “brookside” have become fixed. As proposer, Morley set the time of the meet and the size of each party. He picked an hour after sundown and four people. It would take four of us to lug Valentine’s coffin. Dojango, Saucerhead, and I would back him.

The kingpin, on agreeing, got to pick which end of brookside was his, and could come early if he wanted, to check the grounds for signs of treachery. Morley was not permitted an early survey.

The kingpin agreed to meet. An hour after sunset I was helping carry a coffin uphill, into a situation that seemed to me to be of no special value to either of the principals. The kingpin’s reputation said he was good for his word. If he’d made promises to Morley, he would keep them. I couldn’t understand why he had agreed to the meet—unless his hatred for Valentine had overcome his good sense.

Morley Dotes was a tough and tricky independent, known to be in need of money, and TunFaire boasted a dozen men willing to pay large sums for the kingpin’s life.

We went up with Morley and Dojango in front, me and Saucerhead in back, so we bigger guys got most of the weight. We parked the coffin carefully. Morley stayed beside it. The rest of us fell back ten steps and kept our hands in plain sight.

After a while a shadow left the poplars opposite us and came over to Morley. “He’s in the box?”

“Yes.”

“Open it.”

Morley lifted the lid carefully from the foot end.

“Looks like it could be him. Hard to tell in this light.”

Morley slammed the lid shut. “Go get a torch, then.” He kicked the coffin. “This guy isn’t going anywhere.”

The kingpin’s man went away. I hoped Saucerhead and I were back far enough not to be recognized. I was getting a bad, bad feeling.

There was some talk in the woods. Then somebody struck a spark. A torch flared.

Saucerhead said, “Let’s get out of here, Garrett,” and began backing up. I noted that Dojango had already vanished. Morley was easing away from the coffin. I drifted with Saucerhead, got myself behind a nice bush. Tharpe kept going. Morley held up about five feet from my side of the box.

The kingpin and his troops marched up. “Open it,” said the boss of bosses. One of his boys got the job done.

“Gods. He looks weird,” another said.

The kingpin asked, “What did you do to him, Dotes?”