Текст книги "Brown River Queen"

Автор книги: Frank Tuttle

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

He positively inflated with injured pride.

“Some people don’t see things that way, sir. I assure you, I’ve been kept quite in the dark.”

I shook my head and sighed. “Then you weren’t told that the Duchess is planning to surprise the Duke tomorrow, right here in the lobby?”

“No one has breathed a word, sir.”

“Unbelievable. Why, if I hadn’t arrived early…” I let my words trail off.

“Indeed, sir! The calamity! Now, how may I assist you?”

“I shall need to see the Duchess straightaway,” I said. “She usually travels under the name Chavel-by-Golance. Perhaps you can send a boy up with word that I am here?”

“Sir, I can assure you, we have no guest registered under that name.”

I snapped my fingers in a show of well-bred rage.

“She must be exercising even greater caution than usual,” I said. “I imagine she’s using another name. Gont de Lamon? Mrs. Notable of Plinker? Baroness Callowhapper?”

“Sir, no one of those names has ever been a guest here.”

“The Duchess is a striking woman. Petite, like all the dames of her line. Black hair, delicate features, blue eyes?”

The clerk’s face lit up with a sudden beaming smile.

“But of course, sir,” he said, his gaze moving past me over my left shoulder. “And here she is, right now!”

I turned.

And there she was. The same black hair, piled high and held tight. The same blue eyes gazing right into mine. The same wide smile, as if she’d just found something dear she’d lost long ago.

The knife in her slender small hands, though. The knife was not the same. This one was a plain backwoods hunting knife, its wicked blade honed to a deadly shine.

“Sir?”

Judging from his tone, I guessed the desk clerk had seen the knife and was beginning to realize that the woman was trouble-duchess or not.

I left my hat where it sat. I saw there to be more chairs and couches to my right, so that’s where I headed with commendable haste.

She followed, still smiling, quiet as a ghost but quick as a Troll. She gripped the dagger in her right hand and knew to keep it waist-high and moving back and forth.

Someone yelled. People scattered. Nervous laughter and snide advice broke out from the suddenly-crowded stairs.

“You shouldn’t have broken her heart, mister.”

“Don’t think flowers are gonna get you out of this one.”

“Call the Watch,” I yelled. I didn’t like the way that blade glimmered in the sun when she moved past a window. Something oily and wet was smeared all over the steel.

I put a table between us. She took hold of it with her free left hand and tossed it casually aside.

The laughter and snide commentary went silent as the mob made quickly for higher ground.

“I don’t even know who you are,” I said as I sought refuge behind a heavy couch. “I’ve always been told it’s rude to assault a stranger.”

She sent the couch sliding across the marble tiles as easily as she’d thrown the table and got close enough to stab.

I leaped away, my shoes clacking on the tile, my right sole nearly killing me by sliding. Toadsticker swung at my side and for an instant, I considered drawing him.

She kept coming. Dart, stab, dart, stab. I had plenty of chances to grab the wrist of her knife-hand but I knew she could nick me before I could wrest the knife away. There aren’t many poisons so deadly they can kill with a scratch, but there aren’t many identical, knife-wielding, smiling women either, so I opted for a series of dignified scampers around the lobby.

I made one complete circuit of the room. I was huffing and puffing and dripping sweat all over the Orlin’s fresh-mopped tiles. She wasn’t even winded, and not a single raven-black lock hung askew.

Worst of all, she was still smiling.

I unbuckled my belt. She lunged and stabbed. I spun and yanked and managed to drag Toadsticker’s scabbard free, and before she lunged again I whacked her hard on the right side of her temple with as much force as I could muster.

She lunged. I dodged.

I hit her again, using Toadsticker’s longer reach to avoid that venomous blade.

She didn’t even blink.

The big oak doors burst open, flooding the room with sunlight and a pair of huge Ogre silhouettes. I dropped Toadsticker and scabbard and ran manfully toward the Ogres, my smiling assassin close on my heels.

“Her knife is poisoned,” I yelled. A hairy Ogre arm swung up and out and I ducked, and she didn’t.

The Ogre’s blow sent her flying. I turned to watch, holding my empty hands up just in case a second Ogre blow was being considered.

She hit the far wall, landed on her feet, and came at me again, still smiling.

The Ogres exchanged low, wet growls.

“Mind the knife, boys,” I said. “Poisoned.”

One of the Ogres stepped into the burbling fountain, casually picked up a smooth, decorative chunk of white stone the size of a wheelbarrow, and hurled it directly into the smiling woman’s belly.

I heard bones crunch. She went down, coughed up a mouthful of blood, and came at me again, crawling this time.

The other Ogre ended her rampage with his boot, then extended to me his massive six-fingered Ogre hand and helped me to my feet.

The Watch whistles were nearly to the door. Curious onlookers, sensing the danger was past, crept back into the room, eyes widening at the sight of the corpse on the floor.

She was face down, for which I was glad. I’d seen all of that vacant smile I ever wanted to see. Blood was pooling beneath her, spreading across the clean white tiles like it had all the time in the world.

“Who was that?” someone said.

“What was that?” asked another.

The Ogres exchanged soft hoots and returned to their posts at the door. The Watch burst in, a dozen strong, swords drawn, crossbows at the ready.

“My name is Markhat,” I said before any of them spoke. I didn’t smile but I made sure they could see my hands. “This woman attacked me without warning or provocation. There were two dozen people present, and most of them are just out of sight on the stairs.”

“Shut your cake hole,” said the biggest of the blue-caps. He swung his crossbow around and kept it trained on my face. “Nobody moves. Nobody leaves. Nobody talks ’til I tell you to. Got that?”

“Got it.”

Cussing and stomping sounded from the back ranks of the Watchmen. I cussed a bit myself when I recognized the angry red face shoving its way through his fellows.

“Captain Holder. How good of you to drop by.”

“You.” The good captain befouled the Orlin’s premium flooring with spit and glared down at the expanding pool of blood.

“What is it with you and dead women, Markhat?”

“It gets better, Captain. Roll her over. You won’t believe me if I tell it, so see for yourself.”

He did.

He cussed some more while his Watchmen tried to force a confession out of me through the sheer intensity of their hateful glares.

“What the hell is this?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Downtown, Markhat. We’re going downtown, right now, just you and me and not a fancy, halfdead lawyer in sight.”

“Always happy to help the Watch with their inquiries, Captain. That’s my hat on the counter. Mind if I fetch it?”

“Lou. Get the man’s hat. Then put him in a wagon and take him to the Old Ruth. Shoot him in the leg if he gets smart.”

A Watchman grudgingly retrieved my hat. I put it on and adjusted the fit.

“You’re warming up to me, Captain Holder. Yesterday you’d have said shoot him in the head. By tomorrow, Lou here will be buying me beers-”

“Get him out of here. Stennis. Round up this mob. I want statements from everyone.”

Watchman Lou hustled me out the door. I bade my Ogre saviors a hasty farewell and clambered aboard the Watch hoosegow wagon with as much dignity as one can muster when being locked up in a soiled iron cage.

“Man, you’ve got some nerve, mouthing off at the Captain like that,” opined Lou as he forced the rusty lock shut. “He’s got it in for you, and no mistake.”

I leaned back, heedless of the dark stains on the rough-hewn wood, crossed my ankles, and pushed my hat down onto my nose.

“To know me is to love me,” I said. “What’s his first name, anyway? Your Captain’s, I mean.”

Lou snorted in derision and stomped away.

“Probably Eugene,” I said. I closed my eyes as the wagon rumbled into the street. “Maybe Percival.”

I didn’t nap. I did relax, relive my first sight of the dead woman, try to decide if she’d shown a flicker of emotion at any point during our brief but active acquaintance.

But all I could see were those bright blue eyes and that unwavering lie of a smile.

My afternoon with Captain Holder at the Old Ruth jail was markedly less than pleasant. Despite the two dozen witnesses to the assault and my refusal to draw Toadsticker from his scabbard, the good Captain was determined to hold me on at least one count of being Markhat.

Had Avalante not intervened, he’d probably have made good on that. I once spent a night in the Old Ruth, courtesy of the Watch. It’s not an experience I care to repeat. Until Evis’s lawyers showed up with writs of this and motions of that, I was wondering how to get word to Darla that her brand new husband might be spending the next fortnight pondering the error of his criminal ways.

But the lawyers came, and despite raised voices and much pounding of fists on tables and ominous vows to see me jailed until the Angels descend on pillars of fire come Judgment Day, Captain Holder let me go for the second time in as many days.

As I stepped out into the sunlight before darting into an Avalante carriage, I knew one thing-all the lawyers in Rannit wouldn’t get me out of the Old Ruth a third time.

I bade the driver to make haste, and I rubbed my wrists until the shackle-marks were all but gone.

They opened her up by cutting her from neck to navel and then from shoulder to shoulder. The dead don’t bleed. Much.

Stitches stood a pair of paces from us, her hood concealing her ruined face, her sleeves hiding her pale hands. She’s been standing there when Evis and I arrived, watching through the glass wall that separated us from the body. She hadn’t spoken or otherwise offered a greeting.

Evis hid his eyes behind dark glasses. The light in the autopsy room was noonday bright. None of the Avalante doctors were halfdead, and I wondered if that was because the blood would prove too tempting or the light was too intense.

I looked away as they peeled back the corpse’s skin.

Evis frowned. The doctors on the other side of the glass wall pointed and peered and moved about, poking and prodding at the dead woman’s insides like schoolboys finding a cache of new marbles.

“I’ll be damned,” said Evis.

“That’s the consensus of modern religious thought.”

Evis snorted. “That creature isn’t human. I’ll bet you two cigars.”

“Why? What did you see?”

“It’s what I didn’t see. But let’s hear what the good doctor has to say.”

As Evis spoke, one of the white-coats headed for the door. Evis opened it for him and the doctor joined us.

“That’s no woman,” he said. His hands were covered in blood. “No stomach. No intestines. No reproductive organs, no bladder, nothing. Doesn’t even have vocal cords.”

Evis spoke first. “What does it have?”

The doctor wiped his long nose, leaving it smeared with red. “Extra muscle. Solid bones, no marrow. Thought we’d never get the sternum cut. A third lung. And a lifespan of two days, maybe three, before it died of dehydration.” He shook his head. “Damnedest thing I ever saw. You say it came at someone?”

“Me. Nearly got me. Took a pair of Ogres to put her down.”

He grunted. “Not surprised. We want to open the skull, see how much of a brain it had. You’re a lucky man. If I had to guess, I’d say that thing was created to go out and kill someone and then just sit there until it fell over dead a day later.”

Evis crossed his arms over his chest. “Open the skull. Learn what you can. When you’re done, Stitches will take over. I want to know who made that thing and how they did it, and I want to know by tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll do what I can.” The good doctor failed to exude confidence. He did wipe more blood on his nose before returning to his fellows and the still body on the slab.

And behold, there is no new thing under the sun. No, not one.

“Nice to see you again too,” I said. “Is that scripture you’re quoting?”

Stitches laughed softly in my head. Indeed, though it is not a scripture native to the church you know. Evis. The good doctor will discover nothing of value, other than what he has already divulged. Neither, I suspect, shall I.

Evis frowned behind his glasses. “Your quote made me think you knew something already.”

Indeed I do. That creature was once called a bentan in a tongue that predates the Kingdom. They are the product of a potent magic and they are indeed designed to kill and then quickly die.Stitches turned to face me, though her cowl kept her face concealed. You have attracted the malice of a powerful sorcerer, Markhat. Doubtless one of the Corpsemaster’s rivals.

“Me? Why waste perfectly good malice on me? Hell, I never even knew the woman’s real name. I’ve got less political pull than Evis’s right boot. Why me?”

The way her hood tilted, I got the impression Stitches was giving me a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding stare.

“Markhat. You walked with the huldra. More than once. Do you not remember?”

I groaned and settled against the wall.

The huldra. Just thinking the word had nightmarish memories flooding back. I remember holding the cursed thing, right after the Corpsemaster tricked Mama into giving it to me.

I remembered walking, guided by the huldra’s whispering. I remembered growing, towering up above Rannit, until people and carriages scurried like ants at my feet.

I remembered the things the huldra tried to show me-the dark secrets it wanted to reveal to me, if I would just give it a tiny sliver of my soul.

“I’m never going to be free of that damned thing, am I?”

I assume your question is rhetorical. Unless you do, in fact, still possess it, or the remains of it?

“I broke it into pieces. Stomped them into powder. Dumped that into my chamber-pot. Threw that in a sewer.”

A novel approach to rendering it inert. Novel, but effective. Although you may wish you could wield its power in the days ahead if these attacks continue.

“You think they will?”

She shrugged. I cannot say. Perhaps the sorcerer is satisfied you no longer hold the huldra and thus are no longer a threat. Perhaps this was unrelated to the huldra at all and was merely done out of petty spite.

“I have a hard time believing anyone took the trouble to whip up a pair of those creatures just out of spite.” Evis was watching the white-coats pull the thing’s face off. “When is the last time you know of these bentan appearing?”

Pre-Kingdom. Prehistoric. They are the stuff of legend, at least until today. But do not ascribe a predominance of rationality to my brethren across the Brown. Most are quite mad by any measure you care to employ.

“How comforting. So they might be after my head because of the huldra, which I don’t have, or because I once wore brown shoes with a black suit, or because the Corpsemaster snubbed them at a dinner party a thousand years ago. Marvelous.” I wished for a chair but none were in sight. “Do either of you have any sage advice about how I might best live through all this sudden attention?”

“Look both ways before crossing the street,” said Evis.

There is a monastery devoted to the brewing of beer some nine hundred miles distant,noted Stitches.

I sank to my haunches. “Go to Hell, both of you.”

Stitches laughed again. Evis. Show him the Mark Twos. Markhat. The huldra may be gone, but its reputation remains. Ponder how you might use that to your advantage.She made for the door as the doctors peeled away the dead woman’s hair, leaving her bright blue eyes set in a wet and grinning skull.

I stood and turned quickly away.

“I’ve seen enough,” said Evis. Maybe it was the room’s harsh light, but he looked even paler than usual. “Let’s go get you a Mark Two.”

I didn’t even ask what a Mark Two was. I didn’t care. It could have been a three-headed billy goat with profound incontinence problems, and I’d have hugged it tight to my bosom just to get away from that room with the doctors and the fresh-skinned skull.

We walked.

“How’d you get the body, anyway?” I asked after a while. “I can’t believe the Watch just handed it over, even to Avalante.”

Evis grinned.

“Do you have any idea how much city morgue attendants make in a year?”

“No idea at all.”

“Neither do I, really. But rumor has it they’ll do almost anything for ten times their annual salary in Old Kingdom coin. Look the other way for a half hour, for instance.”

I whistled. “Good Captain Holder is going to burst a vein when he finds out.”

Evis shrugged. “We didn’t get the knife. I wanted that knife, and a sample of whatever was on the blade. Are you sure it never touched you?”

“Next time I’ll remember to get a flesh wound.”

We paused to let a parade of black-clad halfdead float by. Each held a long-barreled version of my hand cannon.

I pretended not to notice. Evis winked and resumed walking as soon as they were past.

“What’s a Mark Two, anyway, and why isn’t it a beer?”

“It’s a new revolver. Smaller than that blunderbuss you have but don’t carry. Fires six rounds instead of four, and in half the time. Small enough to conceal in a pocket. More stopping power, too.”

“Evis, thanks. But I couldn’t have opened up with that hand-cannon in a hotel lobby if I’d had it. I start shooting and somebody’s granny is going to get shot, and Captain Holder won’t need a good reason to bury me under the Old Ruth.”

“So take careful aim. Look. If one of the Corpsemaster’s old enemies has decided to take you out, you’re going to need more than a blade and you know it.”

“You say this Mark Two is smaller and more powerful?”

“We’ve improved the powder. The projectile is smaller but much faster.”

“Any chance I can get two of the miracle dinguses?”

“Get three or half a dozen. Why?”

“I want Darla to have one. Just in case.”

“Not a bad idea.”

We paused again, this time to let a trio of white-coated day folk huff and puff as they shoved some enormous mechanical contrivance around a corner.

I watched them wrestle with the thing, which made ominous buzzing noises as it moved.

“Just what are you people up to down here, Evis?”

He smiled a toothy vampire smile.

“Wouldn’t you love to know?”

Chapter Six

One of the many dark secrets hidden far beneath the neat slate roof of House Avalante is a vast, gloomy chamber they call the New Battery.

The New Battery is a firing range. There, I joined Evis and a few dozen somber, halfdead soldiers who were also practicing their aim with the long-barreled firearms they call rifles.

Evis tried to explain the name to me. The rifle barrels are filled with grooves, also called rifles, which causes the rounds to spin, which causes them to fly straight and true. My Mark Two revolver has grooves too, although at least two passing halfdead marksmen scoffed at the idea any mere handgun could benefit from such grooves.

I spent two hours down in the near-dark and expended several hundred of Avalante’s rounds before I could claim to hit a man-sized target twenty feet away more than half the time. Evis amused himself by using his own Mark Two to add eyes and a cheery smile to his target.

My stomach growled loud enough for the rumble to be heard above the crack crack crackof a dozen rifles. I lowered my weapon and stepped back from the firing line.

“You’re a long way from being any good with that,” said Evis.

“I’ll just throw it when I run out of bullets. I’m hungry and Darla will be home soon. I don’t want her to be home alone.”

“You should bring her here. Stay until we get a handle on the stabby brunettes. Ancient bugaboo or not, they won’t get past the front doors. Not in one piece.”

I popped out the spent cartridges, just as Evis taught, and replaced them with live rounds before pushing the cylinder back in place and listening for the sharp snap that tells you it’s ready to fire.

“If it comes to that we will. Thanks, Evis. I owe you. Again.”

He shrugged it off with a grin. “Least I can do for Captain Markhat, Hero of the Realm. By the way, we’ve set a date for the Queen’smaiden voyage. We depart in two weeks. Special guests and all.”

“I’ll be ready. Got to earn my exorbitant fee.”

Evis nodded and set about slaughtering a fresh paper target. I headed toward the New Battery’s only door and began the long uphill climb toward the sun.

Darla beat me home. She was sitting on our porch swing, a cup of chamomile tea steaming in her hands, when the cab dropped me off at the curb.

Our neighbors were outdoors as well. The man of the house was watering their new rosebushes while his lady critiqued his pouring style. Darla hid her grin behind her cup.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite husband,” she said, patting the seat beside her in invitation. “How was your day?”

I could smell soup cooking inside. I sat and my stomach rumbled audibly.

“Oh, lunch with the Regent, croquet in the Park, that sort of thing,” I said. “Deadly dull, I’m afraid.”

Darla nodded, all smiles. “So that wasn’t you who was attacked by a woman, saved by an Ogre, and hauled off to jail right after?”

“I’m glad you and Gertriss stay in touch.”

“She’s worried sick.” Darla balanced her empty cup carefully on the windowsill and settled close beside me. “I told her not to worry-that you had a plan, that you weren’t just stumbling through trouble hoping it all goes away. Was I wrong about that, dearest? Please tell me I wasn’t wrong.”

“Me? Stumble? Hope? You know better than that. I was in fact lying in wait for that crazed woman, knowing a pair of sturdy Ogres stood vigilant nearby.”

She pinched me.

“Ouch.”

“That’s for fibbing. Darling. Honey. Light of my life. You didn’t even draw your sword?”

“Honest, hon. I knew the Ogres would be getting involved. If they’d found me with Toadsticker drawn, facing a woman, they’d have raised their formidable Ogre fists and clobbered me first.”

She sighed. “That’s why they’re sending women, you know. Because they know you’ll hesitate.”

“Maybe I did the first time. But I didn’t today, and I won’t again.”

“You’d better not. I certainly won’t.” She stood before I could speak. “Supper is ready. Are you hungry?”

“Famished. The Regent sets a poor table for lunch. Nothing but tiny little sandwiches and parsley.”

“Still better than a tin cup of gruel at the Old Ruth.”

I stood and offered Darla my arm.

“Gertriss talks too much.”

“My husband talks too little.”

“Nonsense. I wished you a good morning just last Tuesday.”

I opened our door like a gentleman, and locked it tight behind.

Darla washes. I dry.

We both kept an eye on the kitchen window above the sink. The window looks out on the tiny fenced yard in the back of our house. There’s a poplar tree and a struggling young blood-oak back there. Darla wants a gazebo. I’m not sure what we’ll do with a gazebo but one of these days I’ll hire a couple of carpenters and we’ll build one where the poplar can shade it in fifteen years, if it hurries.

The sun set as I dried the last cup. Darla closed the kitchen window’s wooden shutters and locked them tight. I reflected that a single half-hearted punch would rip the latch apart and probably tear the shutters out of their frame as well.

“Did Gertriss mention Evis and his offer of a room half a mile under Avalante?”

Darla nodded. “I’ll not be chased out of our home by any crazed floozy,” she said.

“She was a floozy? I had no idea. How can one tell? Purely in the spirit of inquiry, that is.”

Darla used another word I’d never heard her pronounce.

“Such language,” I said.

“Would you be a dear and lock the rest of the windows, hon?” She reached into her apron pocket and withdrew a shiny silver revolver, a near twin to the inky black one I was waiting to give her. “I want to change and get ready for bed. Or battle. Whichever comes first.”

“Where did you get that?”

“Gertriss, of course. Isn’t it lovely? Much smaller than that clumsy cannon they gave you.”

I reached into my own pockets and put both black Mark Twos on the kitchen table.

“Evis sent these today. Belated wedding presents-”

Darla squealed-which she almost never does-pocketed her shiny gun, and snatched up both the Twos. “Ooh, I like these! I’ll take this one,” she said, bringing the one in her right hand up to a firing position. “Did you bring ammunition, too?”

“Indeed, sweetums.” I lowered her arm and stole a kiss. “My wife, the artillery woman.”

“I have to be, married to you.” She kissed me back and slipped out of my grasp. “I’ll be right back. If you shoot any magical assassins, make sure they’re not standing on my good red rug.”

“Yes, dear.”

She made for the bedroom, and I set about closing windows and locking shutters against whatever the night might bring.

Night took her time.

We listened to the neighbors for a while. They had company-two other couples-and they were all on their porch, laughing and talking and putting a couple or three bottles of red wine to good use.

They were indoors and quiet when the Brass Bell rang out, soft and nearly inaudible in the distance. Darla stretched out on the sofa and pretended to sleep, her hands full of guns. I took the claw-footed chair by her head and turned it so it faced our door and laid into my old Army knife with a whetstone.

The hours crept by, sock-foot and sneaky. Midnight, then one o’clock, then two. I heard Darla’s breathing change right after two and I let her sleep.

Three o’clock, shouted a distant Watchman. Three o’clock, and all is well.

The hairs on the back of my neck disagreed. The only sounds I’d heard were the ones every house makes when no one is stirring. Rafters creak, soft as a whisper. Joists stretch and groan. Floorboards pop, all with hardly more volume than the tread of a beetle.

Outside, nothing sinister stirred in the moonless shadows beyond my front window. An owl hooted softly. Someone’s dog yapped. I should have felt safe and secure.

But I didn’t. The air took on that peculiar breathless stillness that heralds storms. We’d all learned to pick out that stillness during the War. Sometimes it was all that saved us because the Trolls moved like shadows, silent and untiring and always, always deadly.

I put down my knife and took up my big old blunderbuss of a four-shot revolver. Maybe the new one was smaller and faster, but there was something comforting about holding a big, heavy cannon when you feel death ambling toward your door.

Darla’s eyes opened suddenly, two points of light glinting in the candlelight.

I blew out the candle and we waited in the dark.

We didn’t wait long. Two minutes, maybe three, and we heard footsteps beyond the yard, out on the sidewalk.

Light, small treads. With the click of heels and the dainty scrape of a woman’s fancy shoe.

I tried to count feet and divide by two, got lost somewhere in the teens. Darla mouthed the word “fifteen“ at me and sat up, facing our door.

Outside, someone tried the gate. I’d locked it. She pushed. Iron scraped and groaned and gave with a sharp rasping snap.

And then they came, in no hurry at all, down our cobblestone walk and up the three wooden steps to our porch and across it right to our door.

They gathered there, spreading out across the porch, silhouetting themselves in our windows as darker shadows against the night.

They did not speak. They could not.

One laid her pale hand on my door, turned the knob, and began to push.

I rose. Darla did as well. I motioned her to stay behind me and I made my way quickly to the door. I know which floorboards creak. I made it without treading on one.

The shadows at the windows moved, converging on the door that was straining in its frame.

I put the barrel of my four-shooter right against the door, just where a petite woman’s forehead should be, and I squeezed the trigger.

The gun roared like thunder. The pressure on the door eased, but only for an instant, and I felt the door strain as many more hands fell upon it and pushed.

I emptied the remaining three rounds into the door. If one of the women fell, she did so without any fuss, and without reducing the pressure on my door frame, which was beginning to pull away from the wall.

Darla came rushing in from the hall. “There are more at the back,” she said, her voice a tad too calm. “They aren’t trying to force the door, but I can see four of them waiting there.”

“They have weapons?”

“I think so.”

“Probably poisoned. They’re hoping we’ll make a break out the back, get nicked. Then all they have to do is wait.”

Glass broke in front of us. A hand reached in, perfect fingernails scratching against the shutter, trying to find the latch.

Darla fired. The wounded hand withdrew, but more glass began to shatter and the shutters began to shake.

I shoved the empty gun in my pocket and grabbed a loaded one. “Pantry,” I said, grabbing Darla’s elbow. “No windows there.”

She spun out of my grasp.

“You’re not locking me away in any pantry, Mr. Markhat.” She took aim at something behind me and fired. “This is my house they’re defiling.”

I opened my mouth to explain that it was me they were after, me they wanted. Just me. If I made a dive through a window and took off running, it would be me they’d chase.

But before I got the first word out, the front door gave, slamming open like a gunshot and letting in a crowd of smiling, well-coifed ladies.

Each held a blade. Kitchen knives, fancy daggers, even a silver letter opener. Each was silent.

None hesitated, not even for an instant.

Darla and I emptied our guns. Between us, we managed to bring down six of the smiling women, which left nine converging on us, their smiles never wavering.

The back door splintered and gave. I shoved Darla toward the kitchen. Toadsticker and I got lucky and took away the fingers holding the knife that was speeding toward my gut.

Dainty feet crushed broken glass in the hall.

“Go!” I said.

Damned if Darla didn’t shut the kitchen door, put it to her back, and pop the cylinder out of her revolver to start filling it with rounds.

Three black-haired beauties rushed me.

I slashed at the foremost. She stepped nimbly away from Toadsticker and her twin darted in behind my blade. I heard Darla’s gun clicking as she struggled to seat the cylinder. I knew, even as I threw up my left arm and charged, that I was about to find out exactly what kind of poison they smeared on their blades.