The Broken Bell (25 page)

There were also queries about carbon and sand. The whole mess was more industrial small talk than ransom demand. I couldn’t see where withholding it was worth watching your kid dismembered.

Industrial espionage by a competitor? Maybe, I decided. But why not take the time-honored route of dropping a few crowns in front of clerks or shipping managers?

Why not just watch wagons come and go and count them yourself?

I lapsed into a snooze well before we reached the Barracks. That was getting to be a bad habit.

The smell of smoke awakened me, though, blocks from the site.

I felt the carriage slow. Whistles blew. The smoke began to billow up, the single column becoming two columns and then three before merging into a single monstrous shaft of smoke that rose up to blot out the sun.

A pair of fire-wagons charged past, horses frothing and straining, water sloshing over the sides. Another pair of fire-wagons rushed past.

Ashes began to rain down. The day was still and calm. People looked toward their roofs, fearful that a spark would set their shakes alight. Blankets began to appear, and buckets of water, and men hauling ladders and shouting.

My driver pulled to the curb to let another pair of fire-wagons race past.

It was only then that I began to recognize the ashes that fell for what they were—scraps of old paper, yellowed to a familiar shade.

I stuck my head out the window. “You. Kid. What’s on fire?”

The youngster looked up at me. “The old Barracks. Every building afire, what I hear. Likely lose the whole block.”

The kid charged off.

“I’ll see how far we can get,” said my driver. The ponies were already snuffling nervously and stamping. The smoke was getting thicker by the moment. “But if we’re going to try, it needs to be now.”

“Get as far as you can. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

He nodded. “Not going to be much left,” he said.

I pulled my head back inside. The ponies reluctantly trotted forward, daring the stream of traffic rushing away from the inferno.

We made it another two blocks before the smoke and the hot rushing air left the ponies unwilling to take another step. I wrapped a handkerchief around my mouth and bade the driver to get out of the smoke. Then I made my way to the Barracks, coughing and stumbling, knowing too well what I would find.

And find it I did. The Barracks were lost. The flames towered and the mere heat of the blaze touched off fires a block in every direction. Some of them burned for three days. Of the Barracks, nothing would be left. Even the massive cornerstones cracked from the heat.

I got there just as they dragged Master Sergeant Burris out into the street. I only recognized him because his brass sergeant’s stripes and campaign ribbons were still intact. He’d collapsed just outside the Building Two, according to the Watch, and the heat that kept them back burned Sergeant Burris to a crisp.

Beneath him, still clutched in his charred hands, was a thick leather binder stuffed with papers. A Watchman rifled through them, shrugged, and dropped the binder on the ground.

I noticed something the Watch didn’t—the sergeant’s sword wasn’t in his scabbard, and he was missing two fingers on his right hand.

Maybe the Sergeant had dropped his sword on his way out. Maybe he’d been polishing it when he first smelled smoke. Maybe he lost the fingers when a burning beam fell on his hand.

And maybe, I thought, he hadn’t.

I left the Sergeant there, lying uncovered on the ground, as firemen and Watchmen stepped over his corpse.

When the Watch bellowed for me to leave, the Sergeant’s leather binder was under my arm. If anyone saw me take it they didn’t give a damn.

I thanked the Sergeant briefly, between fits of coughing, and then I put the heat to my back and stumbled away from the flames.

The smoke got so thick it nearly choked me, and it did manage to blind me. I would never have found my carriage had the driver not come looking for me, and I’d never have made it inside had he not shoved my ass in.

I told him to head for Darla’s. Her house, not the shop. It couldn’t be good for business to have soot-stained finders coughing and hacking all over the fabric. I was hoping she’d pop home for lunch as I knew she often did, and by that time I ought to have coughed my lungs clear again.

I sent the carriage home, and I sat on her tiny porch and watched a pair of bluebirds build a nest in the little house she’d hung out for them. When my eyes quit burning I opened the binder and leafed through the papers, but all I saw were rows of cryptic abbreviations and columns of numbers that might have been crowns or counts of Troll toenails, for all I could tell.

I hoped Darla would see more. Because if she didn’t, Master Sergeant Burris had died for nothing.

Traffic on Darla’s quiet street picked up. Snatches of conversation drifted my way. War, and rumors of war. The columns of smoke from the Barracks were easily visible, even from that distance, and I saw more than one person point and heard more than one person wonder if the smoke was the first sign of the coming invasion.

Even the ogres that passed through had their hackles up. By the time I spied Darla walking briskly down the sidewalk toward home, I’d witnessed half a dozen people trying to decide whether to flee their homes or start boarding up the cellars.

The peace, I reflected, was well and truly dead.

Darla saw me and waved. I forced a smile and waved back and lifted my butt off her steps, but I didn’t fool her, even for an instant. Her smiled died on her lips and she broke into a run and within moments she caught me up in a fierce hug and then pulled back, eyeing me for fresh holes or broken bones, I suppose.

“You’ve been to the fire.”

“I have. Got there too late. You heard it was the Barracks?”

She pulled herself close again.

“I heard. I hoped it wasn’t true. Sergeant Burris?”

I shook my head. She didn’t see, but she felt it, and she began to cry.

“Because we were there?”

“I don’t know.” I knew in my heart that wasn’t true. But some lies are worth the telling. “The Sergeant. He got out. Almost. He was holding a binder. I have it. On your porch.”

It took her a moment to speak. “Have you looked at it?”

“I have. Numbers, letters. Didn’t make any sense.”

“He died holding it?”

“He did. Maybe it was just in his hand when the fire broke out. But, hon, if it wasn’t—do you think you’ll be able to tell me what it was?”

“I’ll try.” She gripped me fierce and tight. “Who would do such a thing?”

“Someone afraid of their past. Or maybe a candle fell over. We can’t know which, just yet.”

“Liar.” She wiped her eyes on my sleeve and looked up at me. “He was such a nice man.”

“He was. But the place was a fire, waiting for a spark. I promise you, Darla, if someone did murder him, I’ll see that they pay.”

She nodded, swallowed, pulled away and wiped away her tears. People rushed by on the street. I caught the word war spoken several times, and I know she did too. Her gaze fell on the binder.

“Let’s have a look, then,” she said. “I’ll make us some tea.”

I kissed her then, for no damned reason at all.

Watching Darla work is one of my favorite pastimes.

She chews on pencils. She musses her hair. She paces and glares. She tacks papers up on the wall and writes on them, moves them around, rips them down and tosses them away when they fail to amuse.

I helped by drinking beer and keeping my mouth shut. I tried to follow what she was doing, but she kept to her accountant’s shorthand and I know it like I know Mama’s squiggly hex signs.

Three beers. That’s what it took for her to run out of ledger entries. She rearranged her wall of papers, crossed out things, drew lines between others. Then she stood back, sagged a bit and dropped her pencil.

“There it is.”

I nodded agreeably. “It’s a beauty, all right.”

She rubbed her eyes. “There were three of them, darling of mine. The Colonel. The cook. And a Lieutenant with the initials S.J.”

“Three of them.” I was not smiling. “That complicates matters.”

Especially since Fields had never mentioned a third party.

“Tamar’s father probably didn’t even know about S.J.,” said Darla, reading my mind. Again. “Looks like he came in late. Probably demanded that the Colonel deal him in.”

“You’re beginning to sound like Evis.”

She laughed. “I’m certainly associating with a rough element these days.” She slipped into my arms. “Fortunately, I have you to protect my virtue.”

I was searching for a comeback when there came a knocking at Darla’s door. She frowned. “I’m not expecting anyone.”

“Mr. Markhat? Is there a Markhat here? Hello?”

I let go of her.

“Never heard of him. Who are you?”

“Evis Prestley sent me. My name is Barlow. I have a message. And a carriage too.”

I crossed Darla’s living room and peeked through her lace-curtained windows.

A black Avalante carriage was parked at the curb. A smiling young man in Avalante black stood at her door. He didn’t see me, but he did push his Avalante lapel pin forward just in case I was peeking through the curtains.

His hands were empty. He didn’t have half a dozen bowmen at his back.

“I just remembered. I’m Markhat. Be right out.”

“I’ll wait by the curb.”

Darla sighed. “My virtue is safe once again. Hurrah.”

“Not for long.” I eyed her wall of papers. “Better take that down, hon. In fact—maybe I’d better take it with me.”

“Oh, no. I’m keeping it. Now scoot. Evis wouldn’t have sent a man here if it wasn’t important.”

“At least take it down? Lock your door. Keep it locked.”

“I’m staying with Mary tonight. She’s upset with all the War talk. You could give me a ride.”

“I could indeed. Packed yet?”

“I keep a bag ready.” She darted into her bedroom, popped out an instant later, bag in hand. She snatched her papers off her wall and shoved them down beside her unmentionables.

We left, locking her door behind us before dashing into the wild-eyed crowd lining the street.

I dropped Darla off at Mary’s and saw her to the door. Mary lives in a tiny walk-up in a New People neighborhood not far from my old friends the Hoobins. Mary’s four brothers live next door. They aren’t quite as large as the Hoobins, but unless a trio of ogres showed up looking for Darla I was sure Mary’s siblings could fight off just about anyone who offered their sister or her houseguests harm.

Darla couldn’t have picked a safer place to spend the night. Unless of course it was on a boat headed out of Rannit.

As my carriage wove its way toward Avalante, I watched and listened. What had been conversation and concern yesterday was rapidly building into the panic the Regency sought to avoid by suppressing news of the coming troubles. I saw cabs and carriages packed high with chests and trunks and kids and grannies. People were heading out, fearing Rannit’s fall under siege even if the old walls held.

I couldn’t really blame the people who decided to run. It took the Trolls eight weeks to breach Right Lamb’s defenses. We’d run out of food in five weeks. If it hadn’t rained the last two we’d have died of thirst. I slept with Petey tucked under my arm for fear he might be eaten despite the Army’s ban on anyone but me touching my tunnel dog.

A few minutes of memories from Right Lamb, and I was nearly ready to head for the hills myself.

Instead, I remembered Evis’s note, so I pulled it out and read it and cussed so loud the driver pulled to the curb.

“What’s that, sir?”

“Nothing. Never mind. Dammit.”

“Huh?”

I crumpled the note and threw it out the window. “Forget Avalante. Take me home. To Cambrit.”

“Cambrit, yes, sir.”

And with that, we were off.

I fumed and scowled. Damn you, Evis.

The
Regency
was underway, headed north to blow the bluffs. Evis was aboard, despite his earlier pronouncement that he would do no such thing. Accompanying him was Gertriss and Buttercup. And of course enough unstable gunpowder to blow a pair of cliffs to gravel.

Evis had written that the
Regency
was ready sooner than expected, and he saw no need to delay. He’d invited Gertriss along rather than leave her alone in the House, and of course that meant Buttercup was aboard the warship as well. His tone seemed to indicate they’d popped out for biscuits and tea.

All that laughing and giggling. Hell, Evis had probably cooked the whole thing up last night, and Gertriss was only too happy to go along.

I was to expect routine dispatches, starting tonight, which I could pick up at Avalante at my convenience. Important ones would be sent via courier to my office. I assumed that Avalante would be using some sorcerous device to communicate with the
Regency
, although Granny Knot’s trained pigeons seemed to work about as well.

One day soon, I decided, I was going to need to teach everyone around me a lasting lesson in manners.

Here and there I passed shops with boarded windows and hastily lettered CLOSED signs hung carelessly on the doors. Every corner sported a kid hawking handbills and the attendant tight-lipped crowds. I saw the Watch swoop down on a couple of barkers, but they simply dumped their handbills and vanished.

I stopped and grabbed a handbill myself. RANNIT TO FALL TO INVADERS, it announced, emphasizing its point with a crude rendition of the High House and the Big Bell consumed by leaping flames. OLD KINGDOM KING SEEKS TO REGAIN THRONE.

I crumpled it up and tossed it out the window. As if the man calling himself King was any more the cause behind this than myself, or old Mr. Bull.

We rounded the corner on Cambrit. I sat up and peeked out my window, hoping to find my poor door intact and unmolested.

It was intact, but it wasn’t alone. A big man leaned against it, and two of his big-boned friends helped him idle by squatting on either side of him. Their clothes were ragged and filthy, right out of Pot Lockney.

I cussed, sighed and bade the driver to keep going. If I was forced to fight my way to my icebox and its heavenly stash of beer, I needed reinforcements, and I knew a man who owed me a favor.