Текст книги "The Broken Bell"

Автор книги: Frank Tuttle

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

He had no answer. I didn’t press for one.

“You’ll send word to me when you’ve made the arrangements with the kidnappers. You’ll remember what I said about crates and letters if I have a tragic fall in the bath anytime soon. You’ll do this and get your son back and make me go away. Or else. That common enough for you?”

“Bastard.”

I speared a chunk of butter-covered broccoli and chewed and swallowed. “Oh, one last thing. Don’t go getting any ideas about going after Tamar Fields again. What was that about, anyway? You worried fat little Fields might decide to cause some trouble for you, in the middle of this mess?”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

I reached in my pocket and withdrew the head of the walking stick his man had taken away and plopped it on the letter.

He quickly moved his gaze away.

“Have a nice evening, Colonel Lethway. Sorry about your date. I don’t think she’s coming back.”

“I’ll do as you say,” he said in a whisper. “But one day, Markhat, I’m going to watch you die.”

“There ought to be quite a crowd. You should probably bring your own chair.” I rose and dropped a pair of coppers down on the table. “My part of the tip. Be seeing you.”

Mills was suddenly at my side. Lethway’s brutes looked to their boss, but he motioned them to stay put, and they did.

We walked out of the Banner, Mills and I, our bellies full of beer and the heady taste of short-lived triumph.

My carriage was still at the curb. I had a sudden urge to travel and no particular destination in mind.

We climbed inside and rolled into the empty street.

I let out my breath in a great long sigh.

“I thought that old man was going to pop a vein right there,” said Mills. “Is it healthy, pissing off rich folks like that, in public?”

“Keeps me young and sharp. The name Japeth Stricken mean anything to you?”

“Stricken. Hmmm. Seems familiar. Is it important?”

“It might be. Word is he’s dead. I wonder if that’s true.”

“I know some people who’d know.”

I grinned. “They stay up past Curfew?”

“They ain’t afraid of vampires. Hell, they probably skin ’em and eat ’em.”

“And you claim vexing the elderly is dangerous to my heath. Can you tell the driver where these worthies might be found, at this unholy hour?”

Mills banged on the ceiling and barked out directions to the driver.

Curfew keeps honest folks off the streets. But if my night out with Mills was any indication, the Curfew was also creating a wee-hours culture based in equal parts on crime, gambling and the frantic cultivation of garlic.

I never mentioned that Evis and his friends are no more repulsed by garlic than you or I. We might wrinkle our noses if someone shoves a handful of cloves in our face, but try that with a halfdead and you’ll only succeed in getting your arm ripped off, and worse.

Mills and I tramped from stinking bar to underground bawdyhouse to gambling hall to weed den. We asked the same question of every shifty-eyed card shark or nervous barkeep we encountered, and after forty-six askings got us the same indifferent shrugs and variations on “How the Hell should I know?” I was beginning to think we were wasting time.

But on the forty-seventh asking, in a weed-den dug below the warped floorboards of an abandoned rooming house on Sidge, we found what I was looking for.

The man’s real name wasn’t Glee, and if it was, it ought not have been. He didn’t smoke weed himself, but years of handling it and inhaling the fumes left him with the same afflictions all weedheads share. He twitched. He fidgeted. His lips were bloody and raw from being licked and picked at. His rheumy eyes made Evis’s look clear and healthy by comparison.

But he still had a mind in there.

He perked up before Mills finished pronouncing Japeth Stricken’s name.

“He’s back,” said Glee. He said it before he thought about setting a price. I was sure he wasn’t lying. The weed had dulled him that much.

“Is he now?” I asked. I let a few bright coins dance in my palm. “Back from where?”

Glee licked his lips. They bled afresh. His blood was black in the dim candlelight.

“Back from the dead, what I hear,” he said. I rewarded him with a pair of coins.

“He got stabbed about five years ago. Almost died. Crawled under a porch. Got away. That’s what he claims. Back now, settling old scores. Killed a man or two already, I hear.”

He shut up. I passed another coin his way. Somewhere in the dark, a weedhead started crying, until someone else kicked him in the gut.

“Say where he’s been, these past five years?”

Glee’s eyes darted. He shut his mouth and fidgeted.

Mills pushed him against the dirt wall.

“The man asked you a question,” he said.

I held up another coin.

“Prince,” said Glee, in a whisper. “Said he’s been in Prince. Claim’s he’s a big deal there, now.”

I flipped the coin his way. He caught it. Most weedheads wouldn’t realize a coin was in the air until they dreamed about it next week.

“Where could we find this big deal from Prince?”

“Hell, mister, I don’t know.” Mills pushed harder. I heard something pop. “Honest. It ain’t like we’re drinkin’ buddies.”

“You know all that, you don’t know where to find the man? I don’t believe that, weedhead.” Mills smiled and twisted Glee’s right arm. “Maybe you just need help remembering.”

Glee screamed. A couple of weedheads screamed back. If Glee kept a couple of thugs around to keep the peace, they were wisely finding less perilous chores to attend.

“A house. A house somewhere up in Torrent. I ain’t even sure that’s the truth, mister. It ain’t like I talked to the man myself.”

“Let him go.” Mills relaxed, and Glee sagged and wound up on his knees cradling his right arm.

“Wasn’t no need for all that,” he said. Blood ran in thick trails down his chin. “Wasn’t no need.”

I flipped a final coin at his feet.

“You have a good night. You’ll have a better one if you forget you ever talked to us. Isn’t that right, Mr. Mills?”

“That is the truth, Mr. Markhat. That is the Angel’s own truth.”

Glee just snatched up the coin. If he had any reply he spoke it too low to be heard.

Mills snorted and kicked him onto his side. I got him out of there before any of Glee’s employee’s realized they could safely hurl a brick from the darkness.

We made a couple more stops after that. The house in Torrent was mentioned again, as was Stricken’s fondness for long knives. As we emerged from the grimy shadows of our last stop, a smoke-filled gambling house whose doorway sported a blood-drained corpse lying so close we had to step over it, the first dim light of dawn was creeping up from the east.

“Sounds like this Stricken is a bad lot.” In a fit of civic-mindedness, Mills grabbed the dead man by his shoes and dragged him away from the door, leaving a trail of dark blood behind.

Another pair of steps, and the dead man would have lived. I suppose that sums up life in Rannit.

“If I’m right, he’s working for people far worse.” Mills was kneeling over the dead man, rifling through his pockets. He saw me give him a look and returned a shrug.

“It’s not like he needs anything any more. Look at this.” He produced a handful of coins, not all of them copper.

“Guess it’s my lucky day.”

There came a whisper of sound. Mills' expression changed from that of sudden satisfaction to mild confusion.

And then he fell down beside the dead man, the only sound the tinkling of the coins that fell from his open hand.

I dove. Something struck the wall behind me and skittered off the brick. I rolled over and over and saw sparks where another arrow hit the pavement, broke and skipped away.

An open alley loomed. I heaved myself into it, rolled to my feet, ran. Blind in the dark, I careened off stacks of trash and collided at least once with a drunk and fell again when my feet got caught up in a loose pile of rotten timbers.

But I lived. Another arrow came darting into the alley, coming to rest at my feet. I snatched it up, broke it in half and shoved the pieces in a pocket.

The drunk I’d collided with earlier grunted and cussed.

The alley opened into a dark narrow street. I hid in the shadows and listened.

Nothing. No footfalls pursued me. No shouts called out my whereabouts. Was the bowman waiting at the end of the alley into which I’d fled, or was he already rushing to cover the street before me, sure I’d head that way, hoping to lose him in the windings and the shadows of dawn?

I couldn’t know. So I waited there until I could breathe without panting.

Then I made my way carefully back the way I’d come.

The drunk I’d disturbed bumbled ahead of me. He emerged into the street screaming about vampires. He didn’t sprout any arrows, so I just watched him go.

The street remained quiet. After a time, the door to the gambling den opened, and a small hushed crowd emerged. They surrounded Mills and the dead man, and I strained to hear them speak.

“Both dead,” I heard. My heart sank. “One’s got an arrow in his neck.”

And then they fell to fighting among themselves as they discovered the loot Mills had dropped.

The crowd got suddenly larger, as did the noise. After a moment, I slipped out of my hiding place and joined them, milling around with the mob until Watch whistles began to blow. And then I scurried away, hat held down, back bent, just like all the rest.

I found my carriage still waiting three blocks away. The driver didn’t ask. I didn’t tell.

We just got the Hell out of there while the lazy sun awoke.

I didn’t go back to Cambrit.

Crossbows are the preferred weapons of Rannit’s better criminal element. Bows are too large, too obviously the tool of the murderer and the bandit. You can’t hide a longbow in a suitcase, and the weapon that had launched the arrow I held was indeed a powerful old longbow.

The head was razor-sharp steel. The shaft was black ash. The fletching was pure black raven-feather.

The vile thing screamed professional assassin. Not of the local vintage.

Which meant someone, perhaps Stricken, had decided certain finders had officially become a nuisance.

If Mama had been handy, I’d have asked her to check the arrow for hexes.

But since Mama was off beheading ex-army wand-wavers in Pot Lockney, I didn’t have that option. Even Gertriss was gone, presumably lounging on the foredeck of a new-fangled sailing machine while Buttercup played atop a heap of explosives, and Evis laughed and smoked cigars.

So I bade the driver head up to Elfways, and I hoped Granny Knot was an early riser.

I watched the streets while we drove. I didn’t spot anyone following us. I hadn’t spotted any bowmen last night. And Mills was dead because of it.

An arrow in the throat. One that was probably meant for me. Two men in coats and hats, same height, same general build-I realized I’d been a finger’s breadth from dying last night, and the thought chilled me to the bone.

I yelled for a halt at the cemetery next to Granny’s shack. From there, I could see the street, scan the warped and leaning rooftops, make out anyone idling or standing or crouching in the morning sun.

Aside from a few old women emptying chamberpots it seemed safe enough.

I clambered out of the cab. My driver kept keen eyes moving along the likely places a bowman might hide.

A dog barked. Someone cussed. No arrows flew hissing through the chilly air.

Granny Knot herself flung open her door.

“Sing a song of sorrows, if it ain’t the King of the East,” she shrieked with a wink. “Bring your heels inside, Your Majesty. But leave them Queens outside. I don’t harken to no dancin’, you hears me?”

I leaped up on her porch. “As you wish, my Lady,” I said with a bow.

“Cheeky young bastard,” she whispered. I passed through her weather-worn door and relaxed when she shut it and bolted it.

“Oh my.” Granny wasn’t looking at me, but to my right. “And who might you be?”

I looked around Granny’s tiny home. We were alone.

“I’ll play along if you want, but I thought you dropped the crazy act when you’re not in public.”

“Hush.” She spoke that to me. “This isn’t part of my act, as you call it. You’re not alone.”

Icy fingers caressed my spine.

“You’re kidding.”

“I am most certainly not. You are in the company of a spirit. A new one. He seems quite confused.”

Granny motioned me to a chair. I followed and sat while she stared at things I couldn’t see.

“I was about to send a lad for you anyway,” she said, not looking at me. “Three pigeons arrived just after dawn.”

“Three? Mama must have written quite a letter.”

“She did indeed. Here.” She handed me a trio of tightly wrapped cylinders of paper. Each was so large I wondered how a bird could have borne it without resorting to an awkward two-legged hop.

“Read. And pray be silent until I speak to you again. I have work to do.”

Granny set about rummaging through cabinets and drawers, gathering candles and bags and bundles of oddly fragrant sticks.

I unrolled the first paper cylinder. Mama had helpfully started her letter with This here is the first pagescribbled across the top.

“Boy,” it began.

“Well, if’n you got my first letter, you knows all about the high-n-mighty wand-waver and his doings hereabouts, and you knows I put a stop to him by tellin’ that he was eating the souls of babies. I reckon you think that sounds mighty backward, but folks hereabouts took it deadly serious.

So I knowed he’d be coming for me sooner or later. I figured maybe he’d wait, skulk around a bit, get the lay of the land around Plegg House before he came charging in, but, boy, I reckon he was mighty full of his-self, because damned if he didn’t show up last night aiming to relieve this poor old woman of her head.

I didn’t know he was about until fire started falling from the sky. I means it, boy, great big balls of fire, just like the ones you seen during the War. They set the yard on fire and the roof on fire and one even sat there long enough to burn clean through the roof and land in my bed. That made me mad, since that was a fancy featherbed and I paid dear for it.

Well, I conjured up a thunderstorm, quick as you please, and put them fires out before they spread. I reckon I landed a bolt of lightning close to somebody’s fancy britches, too, because there come a mighty yelp and some mighty cussin’ out of the woods and the next thing you know I hears some strange words and the hairs on my neck raised up and when I peeked out a window I seen my porch was full of snakes.

Bad snakes, boy. Rattlers and cottonmouths and even them white as bone snow serpents what educated folk say there ain’t none of no more. Well, boy, I can tell ye there’s still plenty of ’em in the woods around Plegg House, because I seen them crawling under my door and coming down my chimney.

I ain’t one to kill critters that ain’t done me no harm, but I reckon the wand-waver had set them snakes against me, so I didn’t have no choice but to call down a forest-full of owls and hawks and suchlike. They flew right in, and it was a blessing I had a big hole in my roof, because they set about catching up snakes like nobody’s business and the only one I had to kill was a big old timber rattler that got too close to my fireplace poker. I’m saving his skin for a hatband, and no mistake.

I waited a while, all quiet, before I heard somebody tromping through the weeds out front. I was feeling a mite ornery by then, because I opened up my door and even though I couldn’t see nobody I opined that sending snakes against them what can call down owls is a damnfool way to say hello.

I reckon that didn’t set too well with Mister High-and-mighty, cause I heared them words again and no sooner did I get my door shut than every wolf and every bear in the whole of Pot Lockney came a’ howling and a roaring up at my house.

I tells you, boy, I ain’t never heard nor seen the likes of it. Wolves everywhere. They was jumping at the windows and scratching at the doors and I swears a dozen of them got under the house and was trying to force up the floorboards.

And bears! A dozen of the buggers, if there was one. All reared up on their hind legs and trying to tear down the walls. The din they raised was something I ain’t ever likely to forget, boy, I tell you that.

But Mama Hog ain’t no fool. I gots iron bars on my windows and them doors is two layers of blood-oak as thick as your hand and the timbers in this house is as big around as bears. So they clawed and they roared and all they done was break out some glass here and there and tear up my poor flowerbeds something fierce.

About the time one of the bears started to climb up on my roof I brung out something Mister Fancy Britches wasn’t expecting. Boy, there’s been five families of skunks living under this here house since the first stones was laid. I knowed them when I was a child and they knows me, and we gots an arrangement.

So they come out when I called, every last one of them, and by the time them skunks done their business there wasn’t a bear nor a wolf left as far as a owl can see. And, boy, the woods hereabouts is going to smell of skunk for the rest of the year, you mark my words.

I reckon that done it. The next thing I heared was boots on my porch and then my door blowed open and there he was, all red-faced and scary, holding a big bright axe and a’ swearin’ on his name to cut me down.

The first tiny parchment ended there, and I doubt it was by coincidence. I unrolled the next two and read.

Boy, I got me a damned fine axe now. I put his fool head on a pole right by the footpath to my door. That there fancy wand of his burnt itself to ashes when he blinked his last. I dumped out my night pot on ’em, take that, ye nasty old haint.

Then I brewed me up some tea and set lights in all my windows. It didn’t take long for people to come poking around. First thing they seen was his head on a stick. Boy, you ain’t seen the like of the apologizing and back-pedaling as was done that night. I reckon any of them what had forgot respect for the Hog name has remembered it now.

I sent a couple of boys down to the lawn ornament’s shanty and told them to bring back everything they could carry. I knowed you might be interested to know who was trying to put you in the ground.

Boy, what they brung back was disturbing.

He called his-self the Creeper. That don’t mean nothing to me. Maybe it does to you. Along with the usual spell-books and what-not, which is right now making a nice fire for me to write by, this here Creeper had maps. Maps of Rannit, boy. New ones. Ones what showed the walls and has all kinds of writing on them. I can’t ken what the writing says, but I don’t like the looks of it one bit.

It’s too heavy for birds so I’ll be a setting out for Rannit as soon as I gets some rest and some provisions. I reckon you’ll want to be a seeing all this. And don’t worry no more about folks from Pot Lockney coming for you and that niece of mine. All that is over and done and I told everybody what’s going to happen to anyone who starts talking foolishness about money owed on fields and the like. I even stuck a empty pole in the ground just so they can think about whose head might be goin’ there next.

I’m all out of room so you take care.

This here is a damned fine axe.

“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost, Mr. Markhat.”

Granny was seated across from me, smiling.

“Mama was full of news.”

“I trust she is well?”

“Quite.” She’d put a cup of steaming tea in front of me. I picked it up, pinky held out like a Peer of the Realm, and had a sip.

“My friend still with us?”

Granny shook her head no. “He has other business now. He asked me to tell you he doesn’t hold you responsible for what happened.”

“He said that.”

“He did. Mr. Mills was a gentle soul, despite his profession and vices.” Granny took a sip of tea from her own chipped cup. “He did insist that he saw his body up and moving about. Isn’t that an odd thing to say, even if one is a newly born ghost?”

I just nodded. Granny didn’t force the issue.

“I hesitate to mention this, Mr. Markhat, but your deceased friend appeared to be rather more healthy than you do, at the moment. I have a cot in the back, if you would care to rest for a bit.”

I drained my tea. “No thanks, Granny. Miles to go before I sleep.”

She nodded. “I suspected you would say that. Still. Take a biscuit. And do be careful. Weariness leads to tears, my mother always said.”

“Good advice. Thanks for the tea.” She pressed a napkin-wrapped biscuit in my hand. I slipped it into a pocket and stood. “If my ghost comes back around, you might ask him if there’s anybody I can pay his last fee to. Mum or kids.”

“He had no one. Be careful, Mr. Markhat. I fear dark days are upon us.”

“That they are, Granny. That they are.” She unbolted her door, and I stepped out into the light.