Текст книги "Brown River Queen"
Автор книги: Frank Tuttle
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 14 страниц)
Another carriage pulled in behind the first, and another after that, and soon the dock was swarming with well-heeled socialites and the polite but wary eyes of House Avalante.
Drinks were poured despite the youth of the day. The smell of sausages cooking wafted up briefly from the makeshift kitchen.
While the party found its feet and learned how to stumble, Evis’s gun crews busied themselves on the deck above me. No shouting or cursing this time, but in just a few minutes they erected three of the awful fast-firing guns that wounded a nightmare just a few hours ago.
The men covered the snouts of the guns with clean white linen sheets and took positions around them, hands clasped at the small of their backs, eyes on the crowd below.
If they let loose, I figured they could cut the dock itself in two after only a few seconds of firing. I hoped I wouldn’t see that.
Carriages were lined up as far as I could see by the time the sun climbed above the bluffs. As horses shuffled and snorted and the band played on, a pair of tuxedoed Avalante staff removed the velvet rope that separated the carpet beneath the tent from that on the dock, and Rannit’s rich and famous made their way-drinks in hand and luggage behind-toward the Queen.
Between them stood Stitches and her flashing brass ring.
The first of the Queen’sguests was the old general who’d been first under the tent. He drained his glass, threw it in the river, and stomped through the ring at such a pace his trio of servants had to hustle to keep up.
From my vantage point, I saw nothing but a brief shimmering in the air about the man, and he was through. The old general’s servants came next, one-two-three, their arms loaded with suitcases and bags hanging off every shoulder. The last dragged a trunk. Servants and trunks popped through the shimmering like bugs through a bubble, and Stitches nodded, and a white-coat motioned the next party through.
I caught Evis watching from beside the tent. He saw me, waved, and vanished into the crowd.
Darla returned, two steaming china cups of coffee in her hands, and sat.
“The casino looks different,” she said. “They’ve taken the covers off everything. I suppose they’re open for business, even at this hour.”
“I doubt they close until we finish the trip or sink.”
Darla sipped coffee and closed her eyes.
“Sorry. You know me. Always a Troll until noon, at least.”
“There’s a grand ball tonight.” She opened her eyes. “You haven’t forgotten, have you?”
I had.
“Not at all,” I said. “May I borrow your red evening gown?”
“You’re hopeless.” She took another long draught of coffee and stood. “Gertriss is waiting for me. Have a good morning, dear. I’ll see you at lunch. And the red gown will make your hips look like you’ve got pumpkins in your pockets.”
“I treasure your frankness, wife of mine.”
She blew me a kiss and sashayed away.
I drank my coffee and when it was gone I held my empty cup and pretended to drink and I watched the rich folks board, one by one. The brass ring never did more than shimmer, and the guns just above me never spoke-never hurled down fire and death from their pitiless steel maws.
For four hours, the band played and drinks flowed and the ring shimmered. At noon, the velvet rope was replaced, and a fresh wagon of musicians arrived, and another bearing cooks and trays of meat and bottle after bottle of expensive fancy wines.
Stitches took to her ring, poking it with a long metal rod while strange shadows played across its empty face.
Which made me jump, just a bit, when a second Stitches appeared in the empty chair beside me and spoke.
Good morning, Markhat.Her tone was tinged with amusement. I am glad to see you vigilant.
The other Stitches, a good sixty feet away, continued poking at the ring with her glowing metal stick.
“Nice trick,” I said, just mouthing the words behind my empty cup. “You’ll have to teach it to me, some day.”
I have completed the adjustments to the device. But I wanted to speak with you. When I leave, an object will be left behind. Take it. Keep it on your person at all times. And speak of it to no one. Not your wife. Not Evis. No one.
“If I ask what it is, are you going to answer or just vanish?”
It will appear to be a tortoise shell, sealed with black wax.
I damn nearly jumped out of my chair and into the Brown. I did put down my cup so no one would see my hand begin to shake.
“You found one? A huldra?”
No. This is only a crude replica. It will not withstand intense or prolonged scrutiny.
“You said you lacked the skill to even create a simulacrum.”
I did and I do. As I said, it will not withstand scrutiny. But it might buy you a few seconds. What you do with those few seconds is entirely up to you.
“Stitches, what the hell are you trying to say?”
But she was gone.
And there, in the chair, was a small brown tortoise shell, sealed with old black wax.
I didn’t pick it up. Fake or not, it was a perfect physical replica of the thing I’d grasped when I thought Darla dead. I’d taken it up, and I’d told it my true name, and it had burrowed its way down deep into my soul.
I remembered the nights I’d walked with it. I’d grown, until I looked down upon Rannit, until clouds had literally soaked my face and hair. I’d seen things, on those night walks-seen the magic that Stitches and her kin wielded, hidden in folds of shadow that had been right there, all the time.
I’d seen things, and heard things, and most of all, I’d felt the power.
I’d killed while I walked with the huldra. I’d loosed my rage upon the guilty, and I’d torn them limb from limb, without pity or remorse or hesitation. I’d taken what I thought was my vengeance, and I’d loved it. Though in the end I’d crushed the huldra and walked away, a part of me had never forgotten the power, or the sweet, sweet taste of revenge, justly extracted, and furiously applied.
The huldra had taken my name. It had nearly taken my soul. Darla alone brought me back from that dark abyss.
As I recalled those walks, recalled the blood on my hands, I wondered if perhaps some brief shadows born of that abyss now dwelt in me.
Chapter Eleven
I wasn’t allowed to watch the Regent board.
No one was, save perhaps Evis and Stitches and anyone they deemed necessary to the boarding process. Instead, all aboard were all asked to gather on the casino deck for a grand welcome. Free libations were mentioned, and within moments the stampede commenced, and the Queen’souter decks were clear.
I kept hold of Darla and allowed myself to be herded along. A band started playing, waiters and waitresses dispersed throughout the crowd, and Rannit’s Minister of Commerce harrumphed and mumbled his way through a magnificently dull speech.
I knew when the Regent set foot on the Queen, though. The air rushed for a moment as a subtle but potent spell took hold. I saw a few faces turn this way and that, searching for the source of the sudden brief breeze.
Darla squeezed my arm.
“Was that?”
“It was.” I grabbed a pair of long-stemmed wine glasses from a passing waiter. “Here. Might as well have a drink while we wait.”
Darla took a sip. “Wait for what?”
“Best time to cause trouble would be right now. Before everyone gets settled in, gets all their goodies unpacked.”
She knew who “everyone” was.
Half an hour crept by, second by agonizing second. The Minister of Commerce shuffled off the stage.
The Queen’sstained glass windows went black. The casino was plunged into sudden darkness. Squeals and laughter rang out-none from me.
Candles flared to life on every table. Above us, the massive hanging lights flickered, and a burst of music sounded. As the music swelled, the lights came quickly to life, and the Queenwas filled with ethereal, dancing starlight.
Evis himself took the stage, blinking in the sudden glare.
“Lords and ladies, sirs and madams, captains of industry, heroes of the War,” he began, and his voice sounded easily over the music. “I welcome you aboard the jewel in Avalante’s crown-the Brown River Queen!”
Applause drowned out even the most strident notes of the song.
Darla was clapping, her display of enthusiasm somewhat hindered by the gun in her right hand and the wary look in her eyes.
“As we welcome you to a new era of entertainment and luxury, I am proud to reveal that we are accompanied by a very special guest. For you travel with none other than the Regent himself, who has graciously agreed to make the Queen’smaiden voyage truly historic by lending us his presence.”
The crowd clapped louder and faster, even as they exchanged shocked glances.
“On behalf of House Avalante and the crew of the Queen, I bid you all welcome. And now, by order of the Regent himself, let us be underway, and let the celebration begin!”
Trumpets blew. The crowd, well-fueled by equal parts booze, surprise, and in many cases, terror, roared like the host of Hell.
Beneath my feet, the Queen’sdeck began to vibrate, and even though I couldn’t hear a thing over the din, I could feel her pistons wake and begin to move.
Within moments we were underway. I couldn’t see the big red wheel turn. Some sorcery prevented us from hearing it churn the Brown’s muddy face, but I could see the metronomic splashes of water on the aft glass, and as these increased in volume and frequency I knew we were on the move and picking up speed.
Give her this-she was a graceful lady, the Queen. Not a single wine glass fell. The deck never swayed. We might as well have been sitting in my office rather than thrashing our way to the middle of the Brown.
Evis motioned with his hands. Bright red balloons fell from the Queen’sceiling and exploded just as they neared the tops of our heads. A tiny shrieking dragon, glowing like an ember, flew from each balloon, darting to and fro overhead as the crowd shouted and cheered.
The diminutive dragons vanished, one by one, with a loud pop and a puff of radiant vapor. Evis bowed and left the stage as a line of musicians took their places in chairs at the rear.
Music sounded, loud and clear, though the musicians hadn’t sorted out their horns and harps, much less started playing. The music was strange, unearthly, and I couldn’t begin to even name the instruments, much less the melody.
Around us, the crowd began to move. Most made their way to the gambling tables, eager to line Avalante’s pockets by betting on dice or wheels. A surprising number of couples took to the dance floor in front of the stage.
I set off in that direction myself, Darla at my side. I found us a spot in the dim wash of light that crept from the stage and put my back to it before bowing and formally offering Darla my hand.
She didn’t laugh. “I’d be honored,” she said as she slipped into my arms.
“Keep an eye on the musicians,” I whispered into her ear.
Around us, couples bowed and curtseyed and stepped and spun, all moving according to some ages-old custom that demanded all the precision of a military drill corps and promised roughly the equivalent measure of intimate contact with congenial womenfolk. I reflected upon the probability of imminent mayhem, put my arms around Darla’s waist, and just started swaying.
She pretended to gasp. “Why, Mr. Markhat! The scandal!”
“I’ll have Evis put it on my tab.” I pulled her closer, ignoring the curious stares of our fellow dancers, who still moved in their ever-changing hops, curtseys, and rounds.
The music played, slow and suggestive. Something stringed made mournful notes while a deep bass drum beat like a weary heart.
“I like this music,” I said. Darla leaned into me. “What the hell is it, and where is it coming from?”
“Gertriss and I heard it earlier. It’s a recording made from music that Evis and his people found playing on that long-talking device they have hidden away under Avalante. Evis thinks it comes from another world.”
“It might.” A woman began to sing with the music, her voice low and husky, her words foreign and incomprehensible, but her amorous intent crystal clear.
We swayed. I moved my feet around a bit. The couple closest to us gave up their precise choreography for a halting but enthusiastic embrace.
“Look, dear, we’re trendsetters,” I whispered.
She smiled and moved with me. Before the foreign song faded away, and another began, half the dance floor was standing close and swaying in the dark, while the traditionalists glared and pranced and gave us room.
I scanned the crowd for Evis or trouble and saw neither. I did catch a brief glimpse of Gertriss’s bright green gown and braided blonde hair, both of which were surrounded by smiling, eager young men hoping to outshine his fellows.
We did a half-turn.
“They’re wasting their charm,” said Darla. “Any sign of our toothy host?”
“Not since he left the stage. I’m sure he’s got orders to give, boats to steer, brooding, dark looks to cast dramatically across shadowed, empty halls.”
“Were we ever that confused?”
“You never wavered in your quest to win my heart, oh first wife of mine.”
She pinched me. “First wife? You have another?”
“Not yet, but the night is young.”
Gertriss slipped away from her bevy of suitors and I lost sight of her in the crowd.
“What’s this?” Darla’s hand paused casually over the wax-sealed tortoise shell in my right jacket pocket.
“A gift.” I recalled Stitches’s admonition that I tell no one of the false huldra, even Darla. I told Darla the whole story in whispers.
“You should throw it in the river,” she said when I was done. Her eyes were somber. “I like Stitches. But I don’t trust her.”
I dipped Darla and made her smile. “If I do, I might wish I hadn’t.”
“Let me then.”
“We’ll see.” The music faded away, and the spotlight flared to life, and a tall black woman in a long white gown took the stage as the musicians tapped out a rhythm and began to play.
The Queenlurched-just a bit, but enough to cause the remaining pair of formal dancers to stumble and lose their place. The lights even flickered.
And then it was over. The sounds of dice clattering and wheels spinning and gamblers shouting and cheering never faltered, not even for an instant.
“Did you see that?”
“I did.” I felt Darla’s heart beat faster. “Trouble?”
“Don’t know.” We kept dancing. The black lady introduced herself as Lady Rondalee of Bel Loit and dedicated her first song to ‘all the lovers out there.’
“Trouble,”she sang. “Trouble, bad trouble, been dogging me all my days…”
“Well, that’s comforting,” whispered Darla.
“Ain’t no comfort, ain’t no comfort, no comfort ever comin’ my ways…”
“I think she can hear you,” I said.
“I hear you, I hear you sayin’, sayin’ I needs to be changin’ my ways…”
Darla stopped swaying. “You don’t think-”
“I don’t. Coincidence. We’re on edge, that’s all. It’s just a song.”
A waiter pushed his way through the crowd. His starched white shirt was stretched to near bursting by his muscular physique. A scar ran all the way down the right side of his face. Something under his black dinner jacket bulged, and I didn’t think it was a salt shaker.
He bore down on us, mindful to keep his hands visible and open, palms toward me.
He stopped a few paces short of us, and waited until I gently disengaged from Darla and moved to stand in front of her.
He nodded, reached slowly in his jacket, and came out with a note. He held it up and I took it from him, and he vanished into the crowd-doubtlessly to employ those muscles in the precise pouring of any one of Rannit’s finer wines.
I unfolded the note, just halfway, to make sure it didn’t bear hex signs. Instead, I recognized Gertriss’s tall plain hand, and opened it all the way.
BOSS, it read. BY THE PORT STAIR. COME QUICK. IT’S BAD.
Darla gasped, reading over my shoulder.
“Don’t suppose I could convince you to wait here?”
“Waste of time trying, dear.”
And we were off, weaving through the dancers, plowing through the drunks and the gamblers and their noisy entourages.
I caught one more stanza of Lady Rondalee’s song, before the din drowned her out.
“One day soon, one day soon, trouble gonna be the death of me…”
“Not tonight, I hope,” I muttered. Darla didn’t hear.
I put my shoulder to the mob and charged toward the stairs.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I found Gertriss.
Blood, maybe. Bodies, possibly. Mayhem, certainly.
But what we found appeared to be a shapely, young, blonde woman locked in the throes of rather public affection with a young man deep in his cups.
Gertriss and her companion had chosen a tiny table for two at the very back of the Queen’scasino deck. It was tucked into an alcove formed by the stairwell and the wall, and as such, it was deep in shadow and as well out of sight as any spot on the entire casino floor.
The table had been pushed away from the wall. Gertriss sat in the man’s lap, his arms over her shoulders, her face pressed to his.
Darla caught on fast. The man’s arms were too limp. His hands just flopped. The only reason his head wasn’t hanging down was because Gertriss was keeping it up with her simulated kisses.
There aren’t many young women willing to get so intimate with a corpse that everyone nearby was fooled into thinking they were a couple.
I eyed the crowd around us. Hell, nobody was doing more than glancing and grinning. Most eyes were on the wheel a half-dozen steps away, where a greying banker and a woman half his age were throwing away a fortune amid gales of laughter and demands for more drinks.
Darla took a position behind me. I leaned down and spoke into Gertriss’s ear.
“Is he dead?”
“Yes, boss. I didn’t see who did it. He was laughing one minute and dead the next. There’s a knife in his chest. Boss, his eyesare gone. I put his head down on the table and wrote out a note and gave it to a waiter to give to security. I was afraid someone notice he wasn’t moving, so I pretended we were a couple. What do we do?”
“We talk about giving you a raise.”
“Now, boss. What do we do now? We can’t panic the guests. Evis. He’ll be ruined.”
I laughed, long and loud, and pretended to pull Gertriss from her fellow. I let his face hang down before anyone nearby got a good look.
His eyes were gone. There wasn’t much blood. Just two empty sockets, eyelids sunk in and hanging limp.
“He’ll just have a headache in the morning,” I said for the benefit of anyone listening. “Here, let’s get him back to his room.”
Gertriss stood and helped me block the view. I checked for a pulse in his neck, found none, dropped my hand down until I felt the wet spot on his shirt.
“I pulled it out,” said Gertriss before I could ask. “Didn’t want anyone to see.”
He was wearing a jacket. I fumbled with the buttons until I got it closed.
“You don’t say,” I roared, laughing. “Well, no more brandy for you tonight!”
“Is he drunk again?” said Darla, hands on her hips.
“Dead drunk,” I replied. Gertriss got on his left, and I on his right, and together we hefted the dead man to his feet. As long as no one got inquisitive, he looked like any other passed-out drunk.
Darla began a furious tirade that drew a few stares but kept them off the dead man. She kept it up the whole time Gertriss and I conveyed our limp friend through the casino and up the stairs. I waved off a pair of waiters, and they had the sense to turn and walk away.
I was never so glad to find a dark and winding staircase. If we were attracting attention, it wasn’t much. I dared a single pause just before the ceiling cut off my view of the casino floor, and scanned the crowd to see if any one face was watching us go with more than casual attention.
I saw nothing but a mob of Rannit’s elite throwing taxpayer money away by the fistful, so I hauled the dead man up the stairs while Darla pretended to chide us both for our lack of decorum and Gertriss fought back tears.
The hall, when we reached it, was empty. Darla took Gertriss’s place under the corpse’s right arm.
“Where are we taking him?”
“Our room. I don’t like it either, but we’ve got to get out of sight.”
She bit her lips and nodded. We headed for our door, mindful of voices and the sounds of approaching feet, but we managed to make the trip without meeting anyone.
Darla got the door open and I shoved our quiet new acquaintance inside.
“Blanket,” I said. Gertriss darted past me, found a linen closet, and threw a new white blanket upon the floor.
I laid the dead man on it, as gently as my aching arms allowed. He hadn’t been a small man, or a light one.
Darla knelt down at his eyeless head.
“What did this?”
“Someone wanting to make an impression.” I unbuttoned his coat, searched his pockets, laid the contents down in a pile.
Eight hundred crowns, all of it paper. Two gold crowns in a leather case, inscribed “From Father, on the Day of Your Birth.“ A door key, numbered 233. A white hanky, two paper-wrapped peppermints, and a silver card case.
I opened the case.
“ROLLAR KIST,” read the stark white linen-paper card. Below that was a seal-two daggers crossed against a bed of roses.
And that was all.
I closed the case. I reached up to shut the dead man’s eyes until I remembered he didn’t have any to bother with.
“Rollar Kist,” I said. “Anybody recognize the name? Gertriss?”
She shook her head. She stopped crying, but not shaking. I gave Darla a glance and she rose and led Gertriss to a chair.
“I hate to ask, but I have to. Tell me what you saw.”
Gertriss sat, her hands clasped in her lap. She took a breath.
“He sent me a drink. And a card. I couldn’t find Evis. So I went over to thank him. He was alive and smiling when I stood up, boss. Dead and… like that when I got there, maybe a quarter of a minute later. Just sitting there. Like that.”
Darla got behind her and started rubbing her neck.
“You see anybody near him? Anybody speak to him or hurry away?”
Gertriss shook her head no.
“It was dark. And loud. And there were so many people moving around. I’m sorry, boss. I didn’t see a thing.”
“You weren’t meant to. Don’t beat yourself up. Whoever did this knew what they were doing.”
Gertriss shivered. Not because I was right, but because she realized, as I did, that the killer could as easily have chosen her as his target, and might do so yet.
“You think this man was killed because he sent Gertriss a drink, and she knows you?”
“Could be me. Could be Evis the killer meant to rattle. Not sure yet. But someone is determined to make trouble.”
Darla’s eyes fell. “So you don’t think this is a coincidence? A random killing?”
“He was stabbed. Then his eyes were removed. They left a thousand crowns in his pockets.” I shook my head. “No. This was meant to touch off a panic. Say Gertriss had screamed and raised a ruckus. Dead man, knife in his heart, eyes in somebody’s pockets? Free drinks aren’t going to take the sting out of that.”
A knock sounded at the door.
“Markhat,” said Evis. “Is Gertriss in there? Open up!”
I pulled the blanket over the dead man before rising and heading for the door.
I checked the peephole before I unlocked it. Evis was there, flanked by a pair of Avalante halfdead in dark glasses.
“She’s here,” I said, motioning them all inside. “Quick. We’ve got trouble.”
“I heard. You left at a trot. What the hell?”
He nudged the blanket aside with the toe of a finely polished boot.
“What the hell?”
He saw Gertriss then and rushed to her side. She stood, wiping at her smeared make-up.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“She’s certainly not fine,” said Darla, her arms crossed over her chest. “She pretended to embrace a mutilated corpse just so you wouldn’t have a panic on your hands.”
“What the hell?”
I pulled Darla aside. “Give him some room,” I said as Evis and Gertriss began a frantic whispered conversation. “He’s repeating himself. Sure sign of panicked contrition. What’s that?”
Darla held up a short, wide dagger, using a napkin to keep from touching it. Blood stained the blade. “This is what she pulled out of the late Mr. Kist,” she said. “I’ve never seen one quite like it.”
The hilt was as fat and short as the blade. Both were worked with symbols I couldn’t place, except to say they weren’t Kingdom or Old Kingdom or the tall straight script of the Church.
“Let me have a look,” I said. Evis was beside me, though I never saw him move.
“Dammit, Markhat, don’t-”
Before he could finish, the knife was in my hand.
I didn’t take it. Darla swears to this day she didn’t hand it to me. One instant my hand was empty, though, and the next I was gripping a fat silver dagger with a bloody sharp blade.
It went cold-colder than Yule Eve ice. I tried to throw it down. I opened my fingers and threw, but it was stuck to my skin as surely as if it were glued.
The hairs on the back of my neck tried to stand up and scamper away as the hex stored in the dagger settled over me like a blanket woven of frost.
Markhat,said a faint hex-voice in an airy whisper. Markhat.
Evis shouted. “Get Stitches up here now!” One of his halfdead soldiers darted out my door.
The dagger moved and changed in my grasp, became a wine glass, a beer bottle, a vase I’d given Darla to keep her fireflowers in the day we moved into our new house.
Darla, her eyes wide, tried to take the thing from my hand, but Evis grabbed her and pushed her back. “Damn me,” he said, fixing his gaze over my left shoulder. “Marcus. Kill it.”
The remaining halfdead pulled a pair of short silver blades from beneath his dark coat and charged past me.
I whirled. Marcus’s blades were slicing and gleaming, cutting through a thickening darkness in the air but spilling no blood.
The shape solidified, took on the form of a hooded, cloaked figure so tall its hood scraped the ceiling.
It raised a bony hand to point at me and began to speak in that hissing, dry whisper.
Marcus dropped his blades, pulled a revolver, and emptied it into the dark form.
It neither flinched nor faltered. A ringing began to sound in my ears and a tightness began to grow in my throat.
Darla nearly managed to claw her way past Evis when I broke for the door.
“Dammit, Markhat, wait for Stitches!”
I didn’t reply. I hit the hall and bowled over a fat little man in a top hat and I didn’t look back.
I made for the stairs. The vase warped and shook and it was a cold, full bottle of beer. I’d bolted with the intention of throwing it over the side. I was three steps down the stairs before I realized I’d have to go into the Brown with it since it refused to let me let it go.
The beer bottle became a tortoise shell, sealed with old black wax. A single glance behind me revealed the dark form gliding down the stairs, bony finger still raised in silent accusation. A minor stampede started when a half-dozen revelers heading up met me and fled at the sight of my rapidly-gaining pursuer.
So down I charged, for lack of anything better to do. I hit the landing on the casino floor and yelled out a warning and headed for the exit.
My shout was lost in the din. Maybe a dozen people glanced my way, but only briefly, before returning to their games or dates or drinks.
I hit the doors. Cool midnight air and the unmistakable aroma of the Brown’s muddy waters greeted me. I charged a short distance up the narrow deck. I now held the snow-globe Evis gave Darla and me as a wedding present. As it changed and flowed, I brought my hand down hard on the Queen’siron rail.
Whatever it was becoming shattered. Shards flew.
I brought my hand down again as the specter flung open the Queen’swide doors and floated toward me, still speaking in a dry, crackling whisper nearly drowned out by the steady thump-thump-thump of the Queen’spaddle wheel.
More pieces flew, steaming when they hit the water.
The phantom was nearly upon me.
I debated pulling my pistol with my left hand, opted for a final hard blow on the rail.
The thing in my hand shattered and the phantom wailed, and an answering shriek from somewhere out on the water startled us both and gave me the chance to shove my free hand in my pocket and thrust Stitches’s fake huldra right under the hooded spook’s vaporous nose.
The bubble surrounding the Queenflared bright and as hot as the noonday sun, blinding me. I tried to turn and went down on my ass instead, and I felt a shadow pass quickly over me, and when I managed to stand the deck was dark and I thought I was alone.
Deeply troubling, said Stitches. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, which showed nothing but spots and a blurry after-image of a length of deck and a robed form. Despite our best efforts, a sophisticated piece of hostile magic was secreted aboard.
“What was that thing?”
I heard Evis and Darla and the sound of running feet. I stuck the fake huldra back in my pocket, leaned against the rail, and crossed my arms.
A distraction. The Regent’s guards were attacked. One is missing. I must attend.
And she was gone, vanishing with the same ease as my phantom.
Evis, flanked by grim-faced halfdead bearing blades and guns, bore down on me, surrounding me.
“It’s gone,” I said. “But you’d better get upstairs. Something hit the Regent’s people. One of them is gone.”
“How-”
“Stitches was here. I’m fine. Go.”
He gave me an exasperated hiss and turned, ordering one of his people to stay behind. The rest flapped away, vanishing into the night like so many agitated crows.
Darla emerged from the rush of retreating vampires and made her way to me, gun still in her hand.
“Are you sure it’s gone?”
“I broke the knife, or whatever it was, and Stitches took care of what was left. I’m fine. You’re not a widow just yet.”
The lone halfdead ordered to stay behind turned his back and hid himself in the shadows. Darla joined me at the rail, staring out at the dark water.
“If we just jumped in now, husband, do you think we could swim all the way back to Rannit?”
“Not in these clothes. We’d sink like rocks.” I put my left hand on Darla’s right, unable to gauge her mood. None of Dad’s advice concerning matters of emotional intimacy with womenfolk extended to the aftermath of near-fatal attacks by magical booby traps. “Anyway, we’re safer here, aboard the Queen.Stitches’s shield is holding.”
“Did Stitches say that?”
“Sure she did. Shield is as good as new. Better, in fact. Nothing at all can get past this time.”
Darla nodded, her eyes still fixed on the night.
“Then why, dearest, did Buttercup just stroll right through it?”
