Текст книги "Brown River Queen"
Автор книги: Frank Tuttle
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 14 страниц)
Chapter Thirteen
Trouble, as always, wasn’t hard to find.
She’d not been a lovely woman. She’d had bug eyes and a weak chin and the kind of nose that evokes words such as “beak” or “proboscis” as descriptors. Her frown lines were deep and marked and spoke of a face set perpetually in a fierce, disapproving scowl.
Death had eased her scowl, at least. Now her bug eyes were wide open, as if in mild surprise.
Whoever stabbed her had done so with sufficient force to push a slender blade through her chest and through her heart and out her back. She died instantly, I guessed, since there was barely any blood from the single stab wound.
I found her sitting there-eyes open, head just beginning to slump-two tables from where Evis and the Regent and the Regent’s cat-eyed creature played roulette while a cheering crowd looked on.
I sat down beside her before she fell. I pulled her face close to mine and looked about.
The table was filled with empty glasses. The three other chairs were pushed back. I gathered the dead woman’s companions had found reasons to leave her alone. I hoped none would return before I came up with a way to get her body out of sight.
Finally, for lack of a better plan, I simply scooped her up, held her as though I was helping her walk, and headed for the nearest of the Queen’sopulent water closets.
She was light, all skin and bones. A minute ago she’d been alive. Scowling and bug-eyed, maybe, but alive. Someone had simply walked up to her and run her through, and I wondered if I could have saved her by being half a dozen steps closer or ten seconds faster.
I hit the door, which banged as it opened. Bright light washed over me, and I squinted as the attendant, a big man I recalled as Rainy Day, hurried to me.
“Sir,” he began. “This is the gentleman’s room. You can’t bring a lady in here.”
“Rainy, can you lock this door?”
“I said you can’t have a woman in here. This ain’t no place for that.”
I turned us so he could see her face. Even men who haven’t seen much death damned well know the look of it.
Rainy took in a quick breath. I remembered that Rainy seemed a bit slow. But he was catching on fast.
“Yes sir, I can lock it from the outside.”
“Lock it. Go find Evis. Tell him we’ve got another special problem. You got that? Say it for me.”
“I am to tell Mr. Prestley we have another special problem.”
“Good man. Get to it.”
He got, heeling and toeing it. I heard him lock the door and I laid the dead woman on the floor.
I was glad for the bright lights. I’d been right about the single stab wound. I hoped she’d died without suffering. She looked old and frail, there on the floor.
I closed her eyes. Noticed a trickle of blood dotting the right corner of her mouth.
When I pushed her lips and teeth apart, I saw that she had no tongue. It had been cut away. One clean slice. Done after she was stabbed. Almost no blood.
She had no pockets, of course. If she’d had a purse or a clutch, I’d foolishly left it behind.
Someone tried the restroom door handle.
I pulled my pistol.
“We’re full up in here,” I called. “Hit the next one.”
The handle stopped jiggling.
First eyes. Now a tongue. I reached the unsettling conclusion that someone-or something-was gathering the ingredients for a ritual, or a spell.
“I’m sorry you got caught up in this,” I said. She was losing color fast. “Sorry I didn’t stop it.”
I heard a key slide into the lock, heard Rainy speaking in excited tones just beyond the door. I didn’t holster my pistol.
The door opened and half a dozen Avalante soldiers piled in, two halfdead among them.
No Evis, though.
The two halfdead, oblivious to my drawn gun, joined me in kneeling around the body. I didn’t recognize either of them.
“Do you know her?” asked one.
“I don’t. She was stabbed. Her tongue was also removed.”
The other halfdead laid his palm upon her forehead and surprised me by saying a prayer.
“We have been instructed to remove the body via the dunways,” said the first when the prayer was done. “Mr. Prestley will see you shortly. Unless you can tell us who did this?”
I shook my head no. “The bastard is careful. I just saw her getting ready to fall. He was probably watching me the whole time, but no. I saw nothing.”
They nodded and took up the dead women as easily as I would heft a napkin.
“Report to Mr. Prestley,” said a halfdead to his living associates. “Double the security detail on the casino floor. Also the halls on the upper decks.”
“Yes, sir.”
And then they vanished, leaving me and Rainy alone.
A single spot of blood marred Rainy’s immaculate floor.
“It ain’t right,” he said as he fetched rags and a bucket. “Killin’ women like that.” He knelt and began to scrub. “But you’re Captain Markhat. You’re goin’ to catch the man what did this, ain’t you?”
“I hope so.”
“I hope so too.”
Rainy scrubbed. I walked, the dead woman’s eyes still clear in my mind.
Darla found me before I’d gone a dozen steps beyond the bathroom.
“Oh no.”
I took her hand and forced a grin. “Another murder. I’ve taken care of the body. Keep an eye out for Stitches.”
Darla forced her own smile for the benefit of anyone watching, and added a laugh as well. “Who, honey?”
“I don’t know. A woman. Let’s go watch the Regent.”
Darla nodded and took my arm as we ambled toward the Regent’s cheering retinue.
“Mama’s upstairs with Buttercup. I had to put her in our room.”
“Buttercup would wind up with us anyway.”
“You’re rattled, husband.” We elbowed our way through a tight-packed mob of men watching some complicated game of dice and spinning wheels marked with grinning skulls. “Bad, was it?”
“Took her tongue.”
Darla squeezed my arm and said nothing.
“Dammit, Stitches, where are you?”
We were close enough to the Regent’s card table to see Evis’s back and the top of the cat-woman’s hair. I was about to shove my way through to Evis when someone yanked at my sleeve.
“Boy.” Mama glared up at me. “I ain’t no fancy Dark House wand-waver, but I seen some things and heared some things and I come to tell you whether you wants to listen or not.” Mama saw Darla’s questioning glance and snorted. “I left the young ‘un with Gertriss. Might keep her out of harm’s way for a bit. Now. We needs to talk.”
“That we do, Mama. I’m glad to see you.”
“Somebody knock you one in the head?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure they’ve got plans in that regard.” Evis and the Regent were surrounded by twenty or more of Avalante’s most lethal waiters. I figured another forty or so were hiding in the shadows, ready to pounce.
“Let’s find a quiet corner somewhere.”
We did. It just happened to be a table right next to the restroom where Rainy was probably still scrubbing blood off the floor. I got everyone seated, put my back to the wall, and raised my voice as much as I dared.
“Mama,” I said. “I’ve got a hunch. So tell me-if I handed you a bag and in it I had a man’s two eyes and a woman’s tongue, what could you make out of it?”
Mama pondered for a moment.
“That ain’t no kind of magic for the likes of you or me,” she said. “Don’t reckon I could do nothin’. But…”
“Dammit, Mama, but what?”
Mama leaned toward me. “Was the woman what they call sharp-tongued?”
“Hell if I know.” I thought back to her face. “Probably. Say she was. What then?”
“It’s what you’d call an old wives’ tale. ‘Sharp eyes, sharp tongue, sharp ears, infant’s lung.’“
“Ghastly,” said Darla. She pulled her gun, not even bothering to hide it anymore.
“It ain’t nothin’ but an old song now,” said Mama. “But it’s a song about Elves. How they could make their selves invisible. Move about, murderin’ and stealin’. Damn, boy.” She made some complicated gesture with her hands. “Ain’t been a Elf seen on this side of the Sea for ten hundred years. You sayin’ there’s one running around loose on this here boat?”
“I’m not saying that, Mama. But someone took a man’s eyes, and a woman’s tongue. I’m just wondering why, and what they might want next.”
Sharp eyes, sharp tongue, sharp ears, infant’s lung.
“Ain’t a baby on this tub,” announced Mama. “I’d know, and there ain’t.”
“Buttercup,” said Darla in a whisper. “Some might consider her a child. A babe. Words change with time.” Her eyes went bright and hard. “Shall I go sit with Gertriss?”
“You’re not leaving my sight. Buttercup probably ate the last Elf this side of the Sea a thousand years ago. Relax. She’s the safest soul aboard.”
“If’n this is a Elf,” said Mama, scratching at her hairy chin, “then we got troubles, boy. A Elf can use that Elf magic-what they calls a glamour-to make you see things that ain’t there, or not see things what is.”
“Is that true, Mama, or just an old wives’ tale?”
“Well, it ain’t like I got an Elf in my closet to study on. But I reckon them stories is better’n half true. Elves was mean and cruel and tricky, and they’d as soon gut ye as say hello. And since they can make out to be people they ain’t, they’re damn good at the guttin’ part.”
A dread inspiration hit. Elves. Summer-born, as Stitches put it. What if a summer-born Elf and its unnaturally powerful glamour stepped undetected through her magical testing dingus?
What if the Elf had been with us all along, blithely sidestepping Stitches and her sophisticated arcane tools since we’d left Rannit?
And what if they were gathering ingredients for a grisly spellwork that would make them truly invisible?
“Eyes, tongues, ears, lungs,” I said aloud. Ears would be easy to find. Lungs not so much, especially from an infant.
Unless they brought them aboard in the first place.
What the devil are you talking about?
Stitches stood beside me. In one hand she held a glowing glass rod, wrapped in copper wires, with complicated spinning vanes whirling away at each end. A floating crystal ball hung above her other hand. The crystal was lit blood-red from within.
“Found another body. This one missing her tongue. Mama remembers an old song about Elves.”
“Sharp eyes, sharp tongue, sharp ears, infant’s lung,” said Mama, giving Stitches a good hard country glare. “That’s how the Elves of olden days took to sneakin’ about, doin’ their killin’.”
The glow from the crystal ball changed from red to a sudden brilliant white, bright enough to light Stitches’s ruined face. She passed the glass rod over her crystal ball and the noise around us vanished.
If a living Elf is among us, we are undone.
“Thanks for the pep talk.”
Silence.She hummed to her crystal. It muttered back, flashing on each dissonant word. The vanes at the end of her staff began to spit sparks and tiny bolts of crackling lightning.
“We kilt the last full-blood Elf before my great-great granddaddy’s time,” said Mama. “You reckon somebody was fool enough to lock one down somewhere deep and turn it loose on us?”
Stitches shrugged, and her crystal ball vanished.
I cannot say. There is either no unsanctioned magic within the shield, or there is magic beyond the ken of my means to detect it. Markhat. These murders. Could they have been committed by purely mundane means?
“Somebody cut a woman’s tongue right out of her head, half a dozen steps from fifty people.” I shrugged. “Go ahead. Say an ordinary man with a good sharp knife managed that. We’re still left with the question why. Why not cut her throat, throw the body into the crowd? You want a panic, that’s a good way to start one.”
“You knows about Elves, don’t ye?” Mama was trying her best not to be insulting. That alone sent shivers down my spine. “Am I right about that old tale, or not?”
You are correct. Elves were known to collect body parts as components of purely Elvish spell dynamics. The one you reference was reputed to allow easy movement among mankind.
“Easy movement. As in invisible,” I said.
I do not know the specifics of the spell. I suppose it is possible.
The ghost of an idea presented itself.
“So we’re seeing it now. The Elf or whatever it is. Seeing it-just not recognizing it.”
Despite my best efforts, that appears to be the case.
Mama leaned forward, peering at me from behind ragged locks of wild grey hair.
“Well, tell it, boy. ‘Fore somebody loses ears and such.”
“Old wives’ tales. You know a lot of them, do you? Mama? Stitches?”
“I knows ‘em all.”
I am familiar with Old Kingdom folklore.
“Then start making a list. Ash-wood and iron against Elves. Salt and milk against ghosts. Butter and corn husks against goblins.”
“It ain’t butter, it’s buttermilk,” said Mama. “What are ye gettin’ at?”
“We’ll need a pot. The biggest pot you can find. I want it right here, out where everybody can see it. On the boil, right now.”
Stitches turned. I didn’t hear what she said, but half a dozen well-muscled waiters gathered quickly around, listened for a moment, and then nodded before hurrying away.
A portable stove and a stew-pot are on the way. I assume it is to be filled with the contents of our lists?
“Exactly.”
“What the hell good will that do, boy? We ain’t likely to find half of what you want, and even if we did, you know damned well most of them old charms is nothin’ but nonsense.”
“Stitches, can you rig up some kind of magical Elf-hunting dingus? Something to stir the pot with?”
If I could detect this creature, finder, I assure you I would already have done so.
“That’s not the point. Listen. If this thing is as old as you think it is, and if it’s been imprisoned or asleep for the last thousand years, it may be as unfamiliar with your new magic and you are with its old.”
“So you just aims to fool it into thinkin’ we knows a way to hex it?”
“I want to make it nervous. I want it to think we’re onto it. I want to give it something to be puzzled about for a change.”
Stitches was silent for a long moment.
I can offer no superior alternative.She rattled off another round of nonsense words, and the chatter and tinkle and laughter of the casino floor returned. Missus Hog. Shall we begin compiling our list?
Mama shook her shaggy head. “Ash and iron,” she began. “But it’s got to be new iron, what ain’t never rusted…”
Finding Evis wasn’t easy. By remaining at the Regent’s side, he’d put himself in the center of a ring of determined bodyguards, and even my winning smile was barely sufficient to charm my way through them.
By the time I did get close enough to whisper in Evis’s ear, I’d been deprived of Toadsticker, my gun, both my knives, my brass knuckles, and even the coins in my pockets. I was beginning to think my shoes might be confiscated as well, given the somewhat pointy nature of the toes.
Evis, when I did reach him, was as pale and as weary-looking as any corpse I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.
I briefed him in whispers, leaving out a detail here and there in case anyone nearby was hiding pointy ears and a pocketful of tongues. He nodded grim assent.
“Keep her safe,” was all he said. I knew who he meant.
Then the Regent’s slinky creature turned her gaze upon us, and I sidled quickly away. I managed to retrieve all my items and headed back to check on Mama and Stitches.
Tables had been cleared to form a space twenty feet across. A silver rolling service cart sat in the middle, its top cut away and a grid of metal rods laid on it to support an enormous steel stew-pot.
On the bottom shelf of the cart, a small fire was already burning, its flames just beginning to lick the pot.
Dutson appeared, trying with little success to hide a scowl at the sight of sparks burning scars in his beloved casino floor. He hauled another serving cart behind him, this one filled with glass jugs of water.
“The water, sir,” he intoned as a trio of waiters filled the stew-pot with the contents of the jugs. “Might I suggest we cover the floor with a cloth of some sort?”
“Good idea,” I said, hoping my tone didn’t convey my utter disinterest in the state of the Queen’sfloor coverings. “See to it, won’t you?”
He shuffled off, radiating disdain.
Mama huffed up, her arms filled with jars and brick-a-brac, which she dumped at my feet.
“I had to knee a cook in his privates, but I got us all the common things,” she said, pointing and muttering. “Salt and sugar. Charcoal from an oven. White flour, corn flour, fresh tobacco, black pepper, red pepper…”
“Capital,” I said before she could finish her list. Darla poked at the pile with the toe of her shoe.
“Is that a silver thimble?”
“It is, and the woman whose hat I snatched it from ain’t happy.” She grinned. “But I reckon gettin’ folks riled up was half the point.”
I made frantic shushing motions, as Stitches and her silence spell were nowhere near, and Mama was all but outlining the heart of our deception. Mama chuckled and rummaged in her ever-present burlap bag. “I’ll get started on what I gots, boy.” She hauled out a pair of moth-eaten dried owls. “Gonna hex this but good, I tells ye.”
With that, she plopped down on the floor, used a tiny pot of something black and thick to inscribe a circle around herself and her pile of arcane goodies, and began to mumble and wave her owls over the stack of herbs and trinkets.
Dutson reappeared, a tarp folded carefully in his hands. He saw Mama, saw her circle, and dropped the tarp in disgust before stomping away without a word.
“There goes my beer supply.”
“Here’s Evis,” said Darla, nodding off into the shadows. “He doesn’t look happy.”
He didn’t.
“The Regent winning big?”
“Every hand. But that’s not the problem. I’ve lost contact with the shore patrols.”
“I didn’t know we had shore patrols.”
“They were secret shore patrols. Four hundred men. Both banks. Keeping pace with us, scouting the woods for any sign of ambush. They reported in every half-hour. They missed the last report and aren’t responding to our messages.”
“How are you talking to anyone outside the shield?”
“Longtalker. We’ve improved it. Much smaller, better range.”
I remembered the enormous, spark-spitting contraption I’d once used, far below Avalante, to speak to Evis from a distance.
“Maybe it just stopped working.”
“We’re still in touch with the House,” replied Evis. “No. Something wiped out the patrols. Which means they found an ambush up ahead.”
Darla handed Evis a drink, which he downed in a single gulp. “So we turn around,” she said. “Go back to Rannit.”
“That’s what I said. He said no. We are to continue on to Bel Loit, no change in course or speed. No discussion.”
I took a good hard look around. “So we turn around anyway.”
“Half the crew is ready to do just that,” said Evis. He crushed the glass in his hand. “We can’t, Markhat. His people could run the Queenwithout any of us. They’d not hesitate to butcher us all if it came to that. You know we can’t take them.”
I cussed. Darla pretended not to notice.
“We’re being used.”
“From the start. Damn it all. Look. Take this.” He pressed a long fat key into my hand. “Behind the stage. Right center. Waist level. There’s a knothole in the wainscoting shaped like a face. Stick this in the nose. The dunway behind it leads to a fake boiler down in the engine room. It’s lined with lead, silver, everything we could think of to keep the occupants safe from magical attack and physical blows. Not even Stitches knows. Use it if you have to.”
“Maybe it won’t come to that.”
“Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced. “One more thing. The Regent knows about the huldra somehow. Said he wants you to let his companion hold it for a second. Claims she can jazz it up.”
I didn’t like that. His knowing or his help, either one.
Darla put her hand on Evis’s shoulder. “What about you? Where will you go, if…”
“I started this mess. Put my people in harm’s way. I’ll see it through. Make sure Gertriss gets there with you. Markhat, I never told you this, but you married above your station. Angels help us all.”
And he turned and was gone, vampire-quick.
Stitches appeared at the edge of our cleared space, a pair of duffle bags thrown over her shoulder. They looked heavy but she bore them as if they were filled with feathers and moonlight.
Darla said nothing as I gave her the key.
“Mind my sacred-ass circle,” gruffed Mama as Stitches neared.
I have the items we require,said Stitches, dropping her duffels close to Mama. A work table would speed the process.
“Too good to sit on the floor,” said Mama with a sniff.
“One work table on the way,” I said before Mama could further expand her oratory on the spoiled nature of modern sorcerers. Darla was already at the nearest table, though, brushing aside the protests of its current occupants first with her winning smile and then with a casual wave of her unladylike gun.
I fetched the chair.
Once seated, Stitches worked quickly to erect her apparatus, which she positioned right next to the steaming steel stew-pot. Within moments she had constructed a sturdy metal scaffold, through which a complex system of glass tubes and copper hoses began to take shape. Glass globes fitted to accept tubes and lines were hung, wires were strung, and within minutes, sparks and glows came to life amid the turnings and workings, raising a chorus of ohs and ahs from the crowd that gathered at a respectful distance.
Mama glared at the circles of faces fixed on Stitches and her apparatus. “Well, it’s awful purty, if ye are wantin’ to decorate a young-uns play-room,” she grumbled. She snapped her fingers and barked out a word, causing a column of burning, coiling smoke to shoot from her pile of items. People screamed and leaped back. Mama hid a grin and went back to her muttering.
Your Mama Hog is quite the performer,said Stitches in what I recognized as her version of a whisper in my head.
“I’ll ask her to tone it down,” I whispered back at her.
No. The showier the better. I plan similar theatrics of my own.
“Can’t wait to see them.” I found a long copper ladle and stirred the bubbling pot. “Think we’re going to live through this?”
She just shrugged and busied herself with her sputtering, burbling machine.
Darla joined me at the pot, holding a napkin at arm’s length and wrinkling her nose. She shook the cloth out in the pot, eyed the stain left behind by something malodorous, and dumped the napkin in as well.
I stirred, turning my face away from the sudden rotting-meat stench.
“Tell me that did not come from the kitchen,” I said.
She was about to reply when the dead man came walking down the grand stairs.
I’d wrapped him in a blanket. I’d checked him for a pulse. I’d never forget that bloody eyeless face. I knew it was him, up and moving, though no spark of life remained.
People saw and screamed. A few rushed to help. Even in the dim light, you could easily see that his eyes had been gouged out. The way he walked, wobbly-legged, arms held out before him, made him appear gravely injured.
Before I could do more than draw my gun, the first of his would-be rescuers reached him. The dead man fell toward them, arms stretched wide, and caught two in a tight embrace. They all three went down, rolling and flapping, finally landing in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.
By then I’d managed to shove my way nearly there. I was close enough to hear the two men the corpse had grabbed start screaming, close enough to see them stumble to their feet, clawing at their own eyes, charging headlong into the crowd.
The dead man rose, laid his hands on the chest of the man nearest him.
That man too began screaming.
Then the screaming man took up a fork and put out his own eyes.
I threw someone aside and took careful aim and put all six rounds square in the dead man’s chest.
I might as well have tossed roses. He opened his mouth and made a wet burbling noise and came stomping toward me.
My gunfire had at least scattered the crowd. I backed away at a quick walk, waving my arms and keeping the blind corpse moving toward me. I figured I had a good twenty feet of floor before my back found the wall.
I hadn’t figured on an overturned chair. I tripped over the damned thing, dropped my fresh slugs, nearly let the corpse lay a cold white hand on me before I managed to scramble up and scamper away.
Darla appeared, guns blazing. Her shots had no more effect than mine.
I drew Toadsticker. Before I could swing him, a dozen halfdead sailed down the stairs, and twice that poured out of the shadows behind us.
They fell on the dead man like furious crows, silver blades flashing. I saw him grab, saw him take hold a few times, but the halfdead just shrugged him off and kept hacking.
Their blows had far less effect than they should have. Swords broke. Crossbow bolts barely penetrated the dead man’s loose skin-until the Regent’s creature entered the fray.
She didn’t charge in. She didn’t even rush. She strolled up to the dead man, plucked a pair of halfdead out of his grasp and cast them away. When the walking corpse laid his hands upon her, she simply took hold of his wrists and held them still.
The ring of halfdead closed in, blades flashing. Where a moment ago their swords had been useless, now they bit deep. Thick black blood flew.
It didn’t take long. Darla turned away. I loaded my gun and put it in my pocket and joined the ring of halfdead at the corpse.
The pieces still twitched and struggled. The mouth worked, teeth clacking, white tongue testing the air like some blind damp worm. The hands still tried to crawl and clench into fists, though each was pinned to the deck with a fine silver blade.
Small groups of halfdead managed to push the gamblers who’d been touched against the floor. All but one writhed and bellowed. Blood pooled under the still man, black in the dim light.
“Boy,” said Mama Hog, who came stamping up behind me, her infamous meat cleaver in one hand and a red-tipped fire poker in the other. “Boy, that wand-waver needs you, right now.”
I didn’t have to ask. A dozen halfdead nodded and broke ranks, flanking me and Mama without a word or a sound.
Stitches was standing near the stage, her metal-vaned staff glowing in her hands. Darla was beside her, guns drawn.
Do not come near. Sorcery is at work here.
I approached to stand by Darla. Mama stomped up as well, keeping the hot end of her poker in constant motion.
“What the hell?”
Things looked almost normal, at first. Couples were dancing, some in the decadent modern style made recently popular by a finder and his wife, some in the formal bows and turns of an Old Kingdom dance.
The casino was largely empty. The appearance of the walking dead has a tendency to clear a room. But these people danced, and danced, and from the looks of horror on their faces, and the way their jaws worked-trying to scream-it was obvious they were being compelled to dance.
“Dammit, tell the musicians to stop,” I said.
“They can’t,” said Darla. “None of them can.”
A woman twirled past, her arms raised, her feet moving in perfect time to the waltz. She should have been smiling.
She was trying to cry out.
A man rushed up to her, shouting and pleading. He stood in her way and she knocked him aside. He tried to grab her, to pick her up and carry her away, but even with her feet off the floor, she continued to spin and twirl, dragging him with her.
He kept shouting, calling her name. In desperation, he reached up and took her hands.
As soon as they joined hands, he stopped shouting. His feet began to move in time with hers. He tried to speak but couldn’t open his mouth.
His eyes lost focus.
They twirled silently away, and were gone.
“It’s a geas,” said Mama. She spat. “Damn, these here people is liable to dance ’til they’re dancin’ on nubs.”
A woman brushed past us and joined the dancers in a jerky, tortured path across the floor, her hand held up to a partner who wasn’t there.
More are being called. I cannot stop it.
I took Darla’s hand, motioned to Stitches. “Would something like this need a hexed object?”
Damned if I know.
I spied something on an empty table just beyond the range of the dancers and took a couple of steps to get a better look.
A small ornate chest, all brass and dark wood, sat on the table. Atop it, two tiny dancers spun in an endless circle.
“Stitches. Do you see that?”
Before Stitches could reply, Mama trundled past me. She brought her poker down on the music box with a wild yell.
The mechanical dancers danced on, unbroken.
Mama howled and swung her poker sideways. It struck the music box with a clang and bounced out of Mama’s hand, leaving the box intact and in place.
Mama hacked away with her cleaver, which raised sparks and left deep gouges in the table but couldn’t land a solid blow on the music box. Mama cussed and adopted a two-handed stance that probably would have decapitated Trolls but merely left her huffing and puffing as she circled the music box, swinging.
Stitches marched up beside Mama and brought her staff down hard on the clockwork dancers. There was a crack of thunder and Mama stepped back, still wheezing and puffing.
The tiny dancers danced on, unharmed.
This artifact must be summer-born.Stitches backed away from it. I advise keeping your distance.
“Markhat.” I turned, recognizing the voice and having no idea how the Regent had come to stand beside me. “The huldra. Give it to her.”
His creature oozed up, smiling at me, her right hand outstretched. It should have been covered in blood. There wasn’t a drop to be seen.
I hauled the false huldra out of my pocket and handed it to her.
She took it. We touched, just for an instant, and I had to fight not to jerk my hand back. Touching her was touching something far, far colder than the coldest winter ice.
She held the huldra in her right hand. Black talons emerged from her fingers, a tiny drop of venom glistening at the tip of each. She squeezed her hand, and one by one her talons penetrated the black wax that sealed the false huldra’s tortoise shell.
When her talons were buried in the wax, she closed her eyes, threw back her head, and howled, writhing like a devil right out of the Book.
“Damn,” said Mama, summing up my emotions quite well.
It straightened, opened its eyes, and pushed the huldra back toward me, its talons withdrawn. I thought about the venom and snatched up a discarded linen napkin and shoved the damned thing back in my pocket.
About us, men rendered mad by a walking corpse’s touch, screamed. Dancers in the grip of a deadly spell moved, pirouetting and spinning and swaying, their eyes wide with terror. Gunshots rang out sporadically– pop pop pop-and I heard wood splinter off in the dark.
