The Banshee's Walk (3 page)

“You know, I believe we have some casual day-wear that would fit without much alteration,” she said. She eyed Miss Gertriss critically, walking around her, while Gertriss blushed even deeper.

Darla didn’t start out as a dressmaker. But since she lost her job at the Velvet—my fault, I’m afraid—and was now co-owner of the dress shop with Martha Hoobin, she’d become quite a competent seamstress in her own right, as well as the book-keeper and general money manager.

“I’m thinking three new outfits, one new nightgown, two pairs of shoes, one pair of slippers, a bathrobe, a dressing gown, two pairs of lady’s trousers, four blouses, two hats and a coat,” said Darla, as she walked. “I’ll just add all that to your account, shall I, Mister Markhat?”

She grinned, full of sudden mischief.

I sighed. “Make it three hats,” I said. “No one’s ever accused me of being cheap.”

Darla laughed. “Three it is, then,” she said. “Now, Mister Markhat, if you’ll excuse us, I need to take some measurements, and we won’t need your services for that. Why don’t you go pester some vampires or tug at ogre beards for, say, two hours? Then you and I have a lunch date, if you’ll recall.”

I didn’t recall, but being a quick-thinking street-wise finder I merely nodded quickly.

“Back in two hours, then,” I said.

Darla stood on her tiptoes and planted an ambush kiss on my lips. Her perfume enveloped me, and I scandalized Gertriss by wrapping Darla up in my arms and kissing her back, maybe longer than propriety demanded.

“Not a minute longer than two hours,” she said, when she stepped back.

I nodded, breathed in more perfume, and headed out the door.

Chapter Three

I had two hours to kill. Ordinarily, I’d have headed to Eddie’s for a beer, but that day, I decided to immerse myself in the heady, erudite world of Rannit’s burgeoning art community.

My previous experience with art was limited to sneering at outdoor statues of War Hero This or General That, and cheering on the pigeons that managed to sum up my opinion of them perfectly, day after day.

My mother once found a case of mostly-empty paint jars and a pair of camelhair brushes, and she painted a surprisingly good portrait of my father with it, and even though she ran out of black before finishing his moustache and his right eye was a darker blue than his left, her painting hung above out mantel for all my childhood. That was the only fine art the Markhats had ever owned.

It’s never a good idea to head into the heart of a mess that may well center around some walk of life you know nothing about. That worried me about the well-dressed Lady Werewilk’s situation. I might be staring right at the obvious lynchpin of the whole thing, but because I don’t know my red paints from my antebellum surrealists, I might not ever see it.

So I told the cabbie to head for Mount Cloud and ignored his snort of derision.

Mount Cloud isn’t a street. It’s a neighborhood, one I’d only passed through a few times. It’s where the Regent’s Museum had stood, until the fire in the opening years of the War had gutted it. Reconstruction had only just begun, and although the surviving pieces of Rannit’s thousand-year art history were still safely tucked away somewhere in a deep, secret Regency subbasement, the neighborhood itself was lousy with galleries and art sellers of every description.

We clopped along. I tried to recall what little I’d ever known about art—it was once taught, here and there, before the War brought such frivolity to a halt—and decided I remembered only two things.

One was that bad old King Throfold had outlawed the depiction of bare-chested ladies in 1276. The other was that the worth of such paintings had tripled or quadrupled immediately thereafter, which resulted in a veritable flood of bare-chested ladies in paintings for two centuries thereafter.

I was never much of a student, but for some reason that stuck with me.

I grinned and wondered for the thousandth time if that hadn’t been King Throfold’s idea all along and then the cab pulled onto Cannon and I had arrived.

I tipped the cabbie and set foot along the cheery galleries and elegant cafes that lined the shaded streets.

I took in a few window-fronts as I walked. It seems art doesn’t keep banker’s hours, something I hadn’t considered when I set out, and every gallery I passed was most unapologetically locked up tight.

But the windows were open, and the sun was out, so I could see what passed for art in Rannit these days well enough.

I wasn’t impressed. Like old Throfold, I preferred my art to be pleasant to look at. What I saw, in window after window, was the War.

Heroic soldiers faced down slavering Trolls. Banners waved majestically in smoke-choked winds. The fires that ringed every battle only served to illuminate the fierce patriotic resolve that lined each soldier’s face with courage.

I was there, people. It wasn’t courage that kept us fighting. It was the simple lack of any other choice.

I fell into a damned march cadence without realizing it, and into a deep scowl when I did. Window after window revealed paintings of battles, sculptures of upraised swords, and tattered old regimental flags encased in glass and the like.

I did come to one conclusion. No veterans ever shopped these places.

They’d just not have the stomach for it.

I was about to hail a cab and head for Eddie’s when I came upon a door propped open with a brick and a pair of workmen carefully easing a blanket-clad canvas into the place. Being an inquisitive fellow, I fell into step right behind them and became the day’s first patron at Moorland Galleries, Established 1998.

“Where does this one go?” asked the nearest workman, of me.

“With the others, please,” I replied. No need in prompting a fusillade of questions at this hour of the day, after all.

They grunted and made their way through a rear door, and I took a moment to browse.

General Stark on horseback, sword uplifted. The Battle of Three Gates, ringed by fire. The Charge at Impriss, wind blowing the majestic banners the wrong bloody way. And then something unexpected—the Fall of Right Lamb.

I was gritting my teeth and thinking inartistic thoughts when someone softly cleared his throat right beside me.

“One of my personal favorites,” said a voice from below my shoulder. “It’s a Kelson, as I’m sure you know. Only Kelson can do twilight with such foreboding, don’t you think?”

I nodded. To me, it looked like someone had painted the awful thing using only three shades of dark bloody red and then blotted it liberally with lamp oil before leaving it out in the rain.

“Kelson is a master of subtle twilights,” I said, sensing mention of lamp oil or rain might offend my new friend’s delicate sensibilities. “Are you perhaps the proprietor?”

Laughter, mild and polite. “Goodness, no, sir. I am Steven, the manager. I wake before noon, you see.”

I chuckled and turned, and we shook hands. It wasn’t his fault the War was staring me back in the face from all sides.

“My name is Markhat.” Steven was a short skinny man, pale and bookish, but he had a scar running all the way from the crown of his bald spot to his shoulder, and I had a feeling he didn’t like these fine works of high art any better than I did. “You’ve got some interesting pieces here.”

“Thank you, sir. Is there an artist you’re interested in? We have quite a range of styles and techniques.”

I nodded, tried to tear my eyes off the Fall of Right Lamb. I’d been there. I’d seen it. Hell, I’d nearly died there, half a dozen times in that awful last night.

“Actually, I’m wondering if you know of a Lady Erlorne Werewilk,” The faces fleeing the Trolls in the painting before me at once became familiar—there was Otter, there was Walking Paul, there was the Sarge, flailing away at Troll heads with his crossbow when the bolts ran out. “I hear her House has produced some interesting pieces of late.”

Steven who rose before noon looked suddenly and furtively about.

“I know something of her,” he replied, his voice a terse whisper. “The name is not known to me,” he then said, in a much louder voice tinged with disdain.

I nodded knowingly, and a pair of jerks made their way to my palm, and then quickly into his.

He motioned for me to follow, and I ambled away in his wake, happy to be rid of the Kelson and its unsubtle remembrances.

“Here we have a pair of remarkable Galways,” he said, in a loud stage voice. “She’s not exactly embraced by the bosom of Rannit’s art community,” he added, in a soft whisper. “She refuses to depict anything involving the War. That doesn’t follow in line with the galleries, or even the Regent’s Council of Art. Makes her a pariah, truth be told.”

“So is she able to sell anything?” I asked, whispering.

“Sir, one of her artists could smear manure on a soiled bed sheet and sell it for twice anything here. The galleries claim they don’t want her, but the truth is it’s Lady Werewilk who doesn’t need the galleries. One vet to another.”

I grinned, and another jerk appeared and just as quickly disappeared.

“I find his use of perspective somewhat disturbing,” I barked.

Steven made commiserating noises. We moved on, circling the gallery, and while Steven prattled on about this use of color or that sense of scale and perspective, I mused on more worldly matters.

Lady Werewilk’s House might lack political power or even the kind of wealth that might make the Hill crowd nervous, but she had certainly caused an uproar in Mount Cloud. And if her crowd was selling their paintings like deep-fried money, that had to be putting a crimp in the coffers of every gallery on the street.

Lady Werewilk hadn’t ever alluded to any such thing, and probably had never considered it. I doubted she thought of the money itself as anything but a way to keep track of whose art was lining the most walls.

We’d come full circle, and I found myself standing before the Kelson that depicted Right Lamb. I inquired about the price just to be polite.

Eight hundred and ninety-five crowns. That was an easy fifteen years of work for most of Rannit.

“None of that is right, you know,” I said, not caring who might hear. “There weren’t any mounted lancers left, by dusk. And even if there had been, no one ever convinced a horse to charge a line of Trolls at night.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Steven, with a small disgusted sniff.

But he pointed as he spoke. Bottom left of the painting, a tiny hillock, one burned oak tree atop it.

“I’m sorry you are not interested, sir.” he said. His eyes were grim. One Tree, they called it. Only six men out of two hundred left that hill alive.

“Maybe another day,” I said, and then I got out of there.

I guess I’ll never understand art.

I ambled around Mount Cloud for another hour, and actually caught two more art shops open. I was shown out of both at the mere mention of Lady Werewilk’s name, the last time accompanied by a rather snippy “we deal in art at this establishment, sir, not amateur dabblings, good day.”

Which only confirmed everything early-rising Steven had said. Lady Werewilk may or may not be making art history, but she was making enemies.

Enemies who might be leaving surveyor’s sticks littered around her property.

I checked a big brass clock in a shop and decided I had time for a cup of that high-priced coffee that I got hooked on during the War. Of course, we’d strained it through scraps of tent-cloth and used creek-water heated over a campfire, but I must admit I like the fancy café version better.

I sat and sipped and watched people pass. Not once did I see anyone walk past with a just-purchased painting, but there was a lot of traffic in and out of the galleries. Some were workmen, some were clerks hurrying to work, some were bleary-eyed owners squinting in the sun.

None looked particularly formidable. But of course if Lady Werewilk’s troubles were coming from Mount Cloud, they’d hire out the dirty work. People who don’t get up past noon are hardly likely to know anything at all about the surveying trade.

But of course plenty of people did. With the slow but steady post-War boom, surveying was a big business. Trying to sift through the thousands of people who might know enough math and have some experience setting marker sticks would be a lot more difficult and time consuming that shaking down every gallery owner in Mount Cloud, and even that was impossible.

I drained my cup and waved the waiter off. I’d be back to Darla’s in exactly two hours, which I figured would be at least an hour early but if anyone was going to gloat it was going to be me.

Finding a cab was easy. I let Mount Cloud roll past, and I kept my gaze out of those windows.

The Big Bell was banging out the appointed hour when I returned to Darla’s. Neither Darla nor Miss Gertriss was available, quoth little Mary the salesgirl, though from the giggling and hushed words coming from the back I didn’t have to guess where they were.

Darla keeps a chair for me in the corner. I’ve always been a little nervous about that chair and its quiet implication that I’ll be spending so much time waiting for her that I might as well have a seat and fossilize. But it’s a nice chair, so I sat and pulled down my hat and was more than halfway to a snooze when someone tapped lightly on my shoulder.

A woman was standing over me, smiling.

My mouth was open to say something—I still don’t know what—when the woman laughed, and it was only then I recognized Gertriss.

Her hair fell down on her shoulders in a smooth blonde wave. Her eyes were luminous, her lashes long and dark, her skin aglow as if from candlelight. She smelled of soap and a hint of Darla’s own perfume.

Gone was her burlap smock. She was dressed smartly, not seductively, in black pants and a dark red blouse and shiny leather lady’s boots. Her waist was belted with a silk sash, and Mama was likely to emit steam when she saw the figure Gertriss was hiding under all that sackcloth.

“Damn,” I said. Gertriss went wide-eyed and jumped back, as though I’d sprouted horns and cursed, and I realized with instant regret she was half right.

“I meant you look amazing, Miss Gertriss,” I said, rising.