Whispering Nickel Idols (23 page)

46

This time the old slug thug himself dragged me out at a criminal hour. He was eager to go on. Excited, even. He borrowed a colloquialism when I protested the absurdity of thPeahyobuarc. ks are a bitch.

I didn’t get it until I was halfway through my second mug of black tea. When he started nagging me about dragging my feet.

He was getting even for all the times I’d dragged him out of his little naps, just so he could earn his keep.

“Life’s a bitch.”

How is your breathing?

I hadn’t paid attention. It was working. What did I care?

He withdrew. It wasn’t me making it work. I wasn’t back on automatic yet.

“I still have to think about it. Maybe the stuff Teacher brought isn’t the real antidote.”

Possibly not. He was not deeply concerned about an antidote when he purchased the samsom weed.

“Typical of the breed.”

I let Dean serve me breakfast. Singe came in. She’d been outside. I felt the cold roll off her fur. She said, “You need to take a look out there before it all goes away.”

I finished my mug, went and looked.

The world was glass. Or crystal. Actually, all coated with ice. So much ice that the weight had broken limbs off trees and pulled gutters off buildings. A kitten thought about going out with me but changed up as soon as he laid paws on ice. He jumped back, shook each paw in turn, indignant. “Don’t blame me. You’re the one who wanted out.”

I surveyed my neighborhood. Nothing moved but a family of mountain dwarfs trudging up Macunado like this was just a brisk morning in the hills back home. It had been an age since I’d seen TunFaire this quiet.

I retreated from the cold. “You’re right, Singe. It’s fairy-tale beautiful. And now it’s starting to snow.” Which would make the ice even more treacherous by masking its wicked face.

Dean met me at the door to the Dead Man’s room. He’d brought more tea. “You’ll need this.” I accepted and went inside.

The faces in the crowd remained the same. Saucerhead was sprawled on his back, taking up a vast amount of floor space, snoring. Brittigarn and Merry Sculdyte were in chairs, limp, under mental sedation. Morley was awake. But he’s the sort of pervert who doesn’t mind being in that state when the sun comes up.

“You still here?”

“You brought a blast of cold air in with you. Meaning you just looked outside.”

“It’s pretty out there.”

“Pretty isn’t a problem for you. You’re already home.” I raised an eyebrow.

“I’m nimble. But not nimble enough to make it to The Palms without breaking something.”

“I saw a family of dwarfs out front. They were managing.”

“This is skinny-dipping weather where they come from. And you said there aren’t any dwarfs around anymore.”

“I said you don’t see many. I just caught the not many on the move.”

“You may have to give up beer.”

“That’s a zig when I expected you to zag. What brought that on?”

“Singe.”

“Oh.” It would be a problem if she became too dedicated to barley soup. “You don’t suppose all that smoke out there is because Sarge and Puddle burned your place down?”

“I have an abiding suspicion that people are firing up their fireplaces.”

“It isn’t winter yet.” The sharp, softly bitter smell of woodsmoke is a sure sign of winter. More than snow is. People fire up their fireplaces only when they’re sure that the cold has arrived for real.

Fuel is dear. Most of it is barged in from way upriver.

I noted the presence of several kittens. One had homesteaded Saucerhead’s chest. Another had set up housekeeping in Merry Sculdyte’s lap. The Dead Man didn’t intimidate them anymore. They avoided BB, though. Despite his snoring. Morley observed, “It won’t be Sarge and Puddle who do me in. Neither one of them is smart enough to start a fire. The ones who worry me are the ones who
think
they’re smart enough.”

The Dead Man didn’t acknowledge my arrival until then.
How is your hand this morning?  Are you ready to resume?

I noted that I was favoring my left. “It’s stiff. I won’t be able to do much.”

Find a trustworthy professional letter writer.

“Have you paid any attention to me and Morley?”

I try not to indulge in frivolity.

“The weather situation isn’t frivolous.”

Oh, my.

He did seem surprised.
The season sneaked up on me.

I felt him recalculating how long he’d been asleep. “It’s unseasonable. But severe.”

It is snowing heavily now. Once several inches accumulate, the footing will become less of a problem.

“Hell, there’s an old pair of skates down in the basement somewhere. I could dig them out. I could fix them up, sharpen them up, refurbish them up, put them on Morley …”

Morley said, “Morley don’t skate.”

“Oh?”

“I tried it once. See this scar? In my eyebrow? That’s what hit the ice first. Split me right open. Why are you grinning?”

“Nothing, really.” I was just delighted to discover that I could do something he couldn’t, well and with style.

We will make do until the footing improves.

I noted a twinkle from under BB’s brows. He was awake but pretending not to be.

Old Bones noticed, too.
Our friend from Ymber is producing some interesting information.

“So give me all the gory details. Unless all that needs to be written down, too.”

Some will have to be, eventually. The man is a charlatan. A successful charlatan, to be sure, but a charlatan nonetheless. He was not born in Ymber. He migrated there before the religious squabbles turned bloody. One of his recent ancestors was not human. He has a touch of what he sells as psychic power. His religion he cobbled together himself. It went over well in Ymber because many people were tired of the feud between A-Lat and A-Laf.

“I thought open warfare was something recent.”

Yes. It would be instructive to compare Penny Dreadful’s recollections with those of Mr. Brittigarn. His are entirely self-serving.

Old Bones fed me the tale of a con man whose scam had worked well until it caught the attention of A-Laf’s deacons and sextons after a fundamentalist, activist faction seized control of A-Laf’s cult. They sharpened their teeth on Bb’s followers. The survivors fled to TunFaire, where they failed to support their pastor in the style to which he wanted to be accustomed. The sin pots of the big city picked them off.

Now that the battle between A-Lat and A-Laf had immigrated, it didn’t seem likely that Brother Brittigarn would enjoy the Dream Quarter much longer. “How about my roc’s egg?”

He did not bring that with him. Mr. Tharpe received no instructions concerning it. So the stone is still in the temple of Eis and Igory.

“But he did switch it out and then not fling it in the river?”

The stone is much too precious to be thrown away.

“No!”

Sarcasm does not become you.

“No. But I do tend to get sarcastic when you say something that obvious.”

He is reconsidering making a run for it.

“Then stop him. How hard is that to figure?”

It may not be that simple if he realizes what natural tools he possesses.

“Use your standard tactic. Baffle him with bullshit. Why does he want the stone?”

Proof that Old Bones hadn’t lavished much attention on BB then surfaced. He didn’t yet know why. He had to go pearl diving in a mind naturally indisposed to surrender its treasures.

This will take a while. He appears to have been of several minds concerning the stone. Though each of those focused on wringing the biggest profit possible from the windfall.

Classic crook-think. Calling a theft a windfall. “Why?”

I felt a little prickle in my mind. He was checking to see what I meant. Instead of asking. “You’re awfully impatient this time, Old Bones.”

There is so much going on. And I am so excited.

“You’ve become sarcasm incarnate. How is the egg important? Why is it valuable?”

Because he may have told the truth about how dangerous the rock is. Even though it might not have been stolen from the nest of a fabulous bird. He wants to auction the egg on the Hill for enough to get ou of the priest racket. The stone does rate description as “rare as rocs’ eggs.”

“I’m confused.”

I am surprised that you would notice.

He has a bite like a saber-toothed toad.

“Have Singe do your transcription. She needs the practice. And it’ll keep her out of the beer.” He offered the mental equivalent of a harrumph.

“So. About the stone?”

It can be used to start fires.

“Is that so?” I sensed that he didn’t know anything else, in any concrete way, but was chock-full of speculation.

I have Miss Winger working an angle that may tell us something useful.

Which he wouldn’t share right now, of course, because he doesn’t like to speculate or brainstorm — except among his own minds. He doesn’t like being wrong. But I could, guess what he was thinking. I’d considered it myself and decided the idea was too farfetched.
You should have mentioned the stone to Mr. Thorpe.

Saucerhead groaned. He sat up, clapped his hands to his temples, swore, and lied, “I’ll never do that again.”

“What is that?”

He realized he hadn’t taken on his career as a cat mattress by indulging in too many adult beverages. “What happened?”

Morley told him, “It was too nasty for you to go home last night.”

“What time is it? Oh, gods! I shoulda been over to … she’s gonna kill me!” He tugged at his clothes, retied his shoes, hoisted himself to his feet, and headed for the front door. I tagged along so his misery would have company once he looked outside.

Saucerhead took his look. “Holy shit! What did you do?”

“Man, you can’t blame the weather on me.”

“Sure, I can. No law says I got to be logical.” He showed me his biggest shit-eating grin. He stuck his head back outside, retreated again. “I blame it on the peace.”

“What? You blame what on the peace?”

“The weather, man. When we had us a war going we never had no weather like this. Not this early.”

“What the hell are you babbling about?”

He grinned again. “Just yanking your chain, brother. I keep hearing that kind of crap out there in the taverns.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t get out there no more. You don’t know the latest lunatic theories.”

Saucerhead Tharpe lecturing me about lunacy. It’s a strange old world. “You going to jump on out there or not?”

“I think I’ll hang out here. That’s just plain too ugly.”

It was a good thing Dean got a chance to lay in supplies.

I did what I could to loosen my writing hand, went back to work transcribing Merry Sculdyte’s memoirs. Singe and Morley spelled me. There wasn’t much else to do but try to play chess.

I found one more area where I could feel superior to my favorite pretty-boy dark-elf breed buddy. Though he insisted I was getting secret help from my sidekick.

And his handwriting is barely legible.

47

One by one my guests slipped away.

Morley left first, after waiting almost all day. An hour later Saucerhead plunged into the snowfall, which had passed its peak. It now consisted of glistening little flakes that looked artificial. There was a foot on the ground. And not much wind, which helped ease the misery.

With Tharpe gone, I asked, “What do we do with these other two? BB has a wife.”

The woman at the temple is his sister. He lets her believe she is the brains behind his confidence games. Singe was writing, tongue hanging out the left side of her mouth. She concentrated ferociously, head tilted way over. She wasn’t quite ready for illuminated manuscripts. “Singe. You think other ratfolk could learn to copy stuff?”

“What?”

“Do they have a high tolerance for boredom and repetition? If they could learn how, we could start a copy business.”

I turned back to the Dead Man and BB. “Is she? The mind behind?”

He does not believe it. He may be incorrect. You will have to feed him. Soon.

“Have to? Can’t I just cut him loose, chock-full of confusion?”

There is more to be had from him. Something he does not know he knows. Something that has his unrealized talent fully wrapped around it, protecting it.

“Is it critical?”

I
will not know till I chip it out.  It could be the final clue to the meaning of life. Or his mother’s recipe for buttered parsnips.

Taking into account my standing as fool to the gods, a quick calculation suggested that Brother B. would be partial to parsnips.

The Dead Man suggested I take over for Singe. He was impatient with her striving for perfection. I refused.

“We aren’t going anywhere in any hurry. How about Merry? Is he mined out?”

There is nothing left to be learned from Mr. Sculdyte. But his release into the wild must be handled carefully —
after long delay
. His absence will leave his brother indecisive. It will cause competing underworld factions to act with restraint. They will all be nervous and his disappearance from the criminal scene will work to Miss Contague’s advantage. Merry Sculdyte is the one enemy who was able to penetrate the Contague household.

“What?” This was news to me.

Perhaps he was exaggerating to make himself look better. Read the manuscript and find out.

“But —”

Read the manuscript. That will keep you out of trouble.

Dean brought supper for everyone. After supper Singe and I moved over to the office to read each other’s transcripts.

When I went up to bed I was aswirl with emotions. Once the Unpublished Committee for Royal

Security reviewed Merry Sculdyte’s memoirs, organized crime would suffer hugely.

The nagging question, as I fell asleep, remained, where were Chodo and Harvester? Were they together? Was all this something they planned way back when? Had Temisk pulled a dramatic rescue? Or was he working some huge scam?