“Welcome to House Werewilk, Mr. Markhat, Miss Gertriss,” said Lady Werewilk. She was again wearing black-black trousers, black waistcoat, black gloves-but tonight’s ensemble was more mannish than provocative. At her words, the entire assemblage stood, and a more miserable lot of sweaty-faced dinner guests I have never seen.
I recognized a few faces, of course. Marlo and Gefner, Scatter and Lank. Emma and Ella, looking wilted from the heat. I assumed the grizzled, stooped old man next to Lady Werewilk was Singh, and the vacant-eyed man who had to be prodded into standing by a poke in his ribs was Milton, Lady Werewilk’s War-broken brother.
“We thank you for your hospitality,” I said. Lady Werewilk made a small nod, and the gathered sank into their seats. I watched Singh lower Milton into his chair with gentle pressure on both his shoulders. Only when he was seated did Lady Werewilk take her own seat.
The enormous table was laden with a feast. Meats sizzled and smoked. Bowls of fresh-cooked vegetables simmered and steamed. Flagons of lovely golden beer sparkled in the candlelight. Markhats sweated profusely and sought out empty chairs.
We’d been placed at the head of the table opposite Lady Werewilk. That put the raging inferno close at her back, though she remained miraculously unfazed by the heat it poured forth. Napkins started mopping at faces, though, as we lesser beings began to slowly succumb to the heat. I had to bite back the helpful observation that food was customarily cooked in various ovens before the meal was served, not atop the table as people ate.
I took in the faces, the expressions, the postures. Most exchanged what-the-hell looks and mopped sweat. A few looked down or away. Milton’s gaze fell on his empty plate and remained there, unmoving.
“This is Mr. Markhat,” said Lady Werewilk, above the crackle and roar of the fire. “The finder from town. You will answer, honestly and without regard to my presence, any question he puts to any of you. Failure to answer, or to answer truthfully, will see you removed at once from my House. Is that clear?”
A chorus of “Yes ma’ams” sounded in reply.
Lady Werewilk nodded. “Good. I would be remiss if I failed to remind you all of the curse laid upon this hearth by my great-great-great grandfather Lint, which describes a variety of unpleasant demises that will pursue anyone who speaks a lie while basking in the warmth of his fire.” She smiled. “And as I see you are basking, we may begin. You may dine as we speak.”
Forty-five forks clattered on forty-five plates. Mine was not among them.
“We’ll start by going around the room,” I said, over the din. “Say your name, how long you’ve been here and what you do here. I’ll start. Markhat. I’m a finder. Been here three hours.”
I nodded at Gertriss. She introduced herself, and then the fun began.
I won’t bore you with the repetitions of forty-five names, except to say that Skin the beekeeper spoke in such low tones his every word had to be repeated aloud by Marlo, and Milton Werewilk would only speak his own name when prompted by Singh the butler in the same coaxing tones one might use with a shy child.
The rundown revealed the same names and times that Lady Werewilk had provided back in Rannit. I wasn’t expecting anything different. I just wanted to put names to faces. And to pick up any oddities the speakers might present.
I got a couple of those before I speared my first slice of crisp red apple.
The second of the artists to speak was a buxom, dark-haired beauty named Serris Eaves. Serris was maybe seventeen. She managed to state that she was a painter of the school of Wiltic impressionism, and that she’d been at Werewilk for a year. Then she choked up and had to fight off a bout of crying. Her unhappiness would have been obvious even if her voice hadn’t betrayed her. She’d made efforts to conceal her distress, but her eye-liner was running and her nose was red. She kept making both worse by dabbing at her eyes and nose with her dinner napkin.
Gertriss shot me a look. Weexil’s lady love?
I nodded in response. We’d see.
Milton Werewilk was the other oddity. He was a small man. Pale. Well-groomed and well dressed, unlike the Broken you can find collapsed in any ditch in Rannit. But what he shared with those men were the eyes.
Vacant. Oh, his eyes were fixed on something-a bowl of mashed potatoes, a bottle of wine-but he wasn’t really seeing it. His eyes just happened to be fixed there, while his mind was somewhere else.
I wondered where. I saw swords upraised. The huldra let me smell smoke, and I decided I probably knew.
He had Lady Werewilk’s dark hair and delicate features, but none of her animation. Singh fed him with a spoon. He chewed, but only as long as Singh mumbled to him.
I turned away.
“All right,” I said, as the last artist pronounced his name around a mouthful of green beans. “We all know each other. You all know why I’m here. So here’s my first question-where is Weexil Treegar?”
Serris Eaves broke out bawling. The pair of male artists flanking her laid hands on each shoulder and glared at each other while making soothing noises at Serris. I chuckled at the folly of youth.
Heads shook. Faces fell down, fixed on their plates.
I sighed.
“I know Weexil left early this morning,” I said. “I know his belongings were rather carelessly left in a cook stove fire. What I don’t know is who this Weexil was or what might have caused him to suddenly leave such lovely company and strike out for parts unknown. So someone tell me. Who was Weexil?”
The eager young painter seated on Serris’s right was the first to chime in, earning him a glare from the young man on her left.
“Weexil Treegar was a poser,” he said. “A poser and a cad.”
Serris burst into full-on hysterics.
“So he wasn’t an artist.”
My eager young man, who had introduced himself as Nordred Vasom, had a lot to learn about women.
“Weexil was a tradesman.” He sneered. “He fetched us things from town. Paints, canvases, brushes.”
Serris whirled on him, eyes flashing.
“He’s more than that,” she said, her voice ragged and quavering. “He has the soul of an artist. His songs…”
“His songs were stolen,” said the would-be suitor on her left. I glanced at Gertriss, who mouthed his name “Calprit Homes”.
“Stolen?”
The young man rolled his eyes. “Everyone knew it, Serris. He just took old ballads and made your name fit.”
Serris shrieked, flung a full beer into his face and fled the room. I made to signal Gertriss to follow, but she was already halfway out of her chair.
Laughter rose, quickly silenced with a sweeping, icy stare from Lady Werewilk.
“Continue, Mr. Markhat.”
I nodded. Calprit Homes mopped beer and blushed and glared at Nordred Vasom. I wanted to tell them they’d both better give Serris a wide berth for a long time or they’d get worse than beer in the face, if her expression as she fled was any indication of her fury. But some lessons have to be learned the hard way.
I put my fingertips together and assumed my All-Knowing Finder expression.
“Weexil’s departure makes me wonder,” I said. “It makes me wonder what else he did here, beside fetching you brushes and paints and canvases.”
“He did Serris,” muttered a painter, from behind his napkin. Nervous titters sounded, but quickly died.
“Which was apparently common knowledge,” I said. “So let’s talk about other happenings that were also common knowledge.” I leaned forward. “Let’s talk about the woman in the woods.”
Someone dropped a fork. Someone else coughed and choked. And not a single man-jack nor lady lovely in the entire blazing room would so much as meet my eyes.
Except, of course, Lady Werewilk.
“Those are mere legends,” she said, after a moment. Her tone made it clear my subject for dinner conversation failed to please her. “They were born before Rannit was walled. Perpetuated by a hundred generations of fearful peasants all eager to embrace any excuse to get them home and inebriated before dark.”
Marlo made a wordless gruffing sound. Lady Werewilk did not turn to fix him in her glare, and I gathered that was because she knew it was a contest she’d probably lose.
“Them what lives in the Wardmoor been seein’ that there woman for twenty-five, thirty years,” he said. “Them what lives here say she comes around when Death is a fixin’ to visit.”
“She ever been known to give Death a helping hand?” I put the question to Marlo, while keeping my eyes on Lady Werewilk. She still wasn’t happy, but she kept her lips tight together.
“Not that I know of. Reckon she just knows when to be, and where.”
I nodded, not committing to anything, hoping Marlo would go on.
Instead, he shrugged and filled his mouth with an enormous chunk of Lady Werewilk’s finest roast beef.
I watched Skin for a moment. The man was just pushing perfectly good food around on his plate. He hadn’t taken a bite since sitting. He was gaunt, tall and thin as a stick, and I suppose now I knew why.
“All right,” I said, beginning to wonder where Gertriss was. “Let’s talk about the surveyor’s markers.”
More sidelong glances and sweat mopping. Half of them would have darted, had not Lady Werewilk been perched at the head of the monstrous old table.
“Starting with Skin, I want to know who found them, and where.”
I pulled out my notepad and a brand new pencil as I spoke.
Marlo managed to choke down a good portion of a cow’s hindquarters and answered for Skin. Others piped up grudgingly, and after a lot of back and forth and arguing over days and times I finally established something like a timeline, and a map.
If Lady Werewilk noticed the discrepancy between the dates she’d been given and the dates I was getting now she showed no signs of it. I did catch Marlo giving a few hard glares, and I decided he was a close second to being in charge. Interesting, I thought. It’s usually the butler who runs the show, but Singh showed no interest at all in anything but Milton Werewilk.
I chewed a mouthful of sweet potatoes and studied the map I’d made.
My hand-drawn map of the Werewilk grounds was hardly to scale, but the marks I’d drawn didn’t suggest even a hint of a pattern. If someone was trying to define a property line, they needed fancy eyeglasses. It appeared the stakes were being placed with all the methodical precision of a child’s game of Kick the Wagon.
I swallowed.
“Now I’m going to ask a question none of you probably want to answer. If you’d rather catch me alone later, that’s fine. I won’t name names, and you have my word on that.”
Lady Werewilk lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t say a word.
“It’s possible some of you may have been approached by whomever is putting out these stakes. Maybe they wanted information. Maybe they wanted a blind eye turned here or there. Maybe they even offered payment. Maybe you even took it. But I’m telling you now that if someone grabs this House you’ll all likely be turned out. So unless they paid you enough to set you up for life, you’d be better off coming to me. Like I said, I won’t name any names.”
Lady Werewilk stabbed a fork into something so hard people started. I grinned.
“Anyone have anything to say?”
Silence all around.
I shrugged. I hadn’t been expected anything. At least not right under the Lady’s nose.
“Fine. I thank you for your time and your cooperation. My partner and I are going to poke around for a time. If anyone wants to talk, I won’t be hard to find.”
Nods, and a few mutterings. Marlo and the staff, sensing business was done, set about mopping sweat with fancy napkins and eating everything in sight. The artists rose and departed in groups of twos and threes, taking most of the beer with them and stuffing their pockets with rolls and slabs of corn bread.
Talk was sparse. I ate my fill, and then some, while I watched people watch me. The heat kept anyone from lingering too long. Last to go were Singh and Milton, who was led out by hand. He placed his feet oddly, haltingly, moving like a very young child or a very old man. After they were gone, I sat sweating across an empty table from Lady Werewilk.
The blast from the fire still hadn’t raised a sweat on the woman.
“I never particularly liked Weexil,” she said, toying with her food. “Had he not always returned from his buying trips with money left over, I’d have let him go months ago.”
“Money left over? Large sums?”
She shrugged. “Large enough to make keeping him viable, despite his disruptive influence,” she replied. “Is that significant?”
It was my turn to shrug. “Might be. Might not. Did he keep receipts? Do you know where he shopped?”
“Marlo would know. I’ll have him come round and speak to you about it.”
Marlo, again.
“I thought Marlo ran the stables. He handles the money too?”
She smiled. “Marlo does what I tell him, though he’d deny that with his last breath. Singh used to handle the money, but Milton needs him all the time now. And gruff as Marlo is, he has a good head for figures, and he’s honest.”
I nodded. Sweat dripped off my nose. “How do you stand it?” I asked. “You must be half-baked by now.”
Lady Werewilk laughed. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret, Mr. Markhat. The spot on which this chair sits is hexed. I feel nothing from the flames.” She pushed her chair back, rose, took a single step to her right.
I watched the heat wash over her. She immediately began to sweat.
“House lore claims my great-great grandfather, five times removed, had this charm set beneath the foundation. His reasons for doing so are lost. But my father, and his father, and his father before him all knew of it, and all used it for the same purpose I did tonight.”
“To show the help who’s boss?”
She fanned herself and moved quickly away from the fire, coming toward me in the process.
“The Lord of Werewilk’s legendary ability to sit close to that inferno and not sweat hasn’t been seen here in years,” she said. “I thought tonight it might inspire some honesty.”
I grinned. She moved to stand at my side. The heat raised her perfume, and brought a hint of color to her cheeks, and I might have been inspired to say something far too honest had not Gertriss charged in. She had some color in her cheeks too, but the set of her jaw and the way her hands were clenched into fists made her agitation all too obvious.
“Weexil’s lady love?” I asked.
Gertriss nodded, moved to stand with Lady Werewilk and I. I caught her eyeing the ravaged table, and felt a pang of guilt that she’d missed supper.
“She was,” said Gertriss. “Had been, the whole time he was here. Love at first sight. Songs under the moonlight.” She gave Lady Werewilk an accusing eye. “The locks on both barns need to be replaced. They weren’t the only ones disturbing your hay.”
I didn’t need a catfight, so I chimed in before Lady Werewilk could do more than inflate.
“She shoved his things in the oven? Was there a note?”
“She did, and there was. She burned it too. I love you, but I have to go. I’ll never forget you, but you should forget me. And there’s more.”
She was grim-faced. I didn’t think I’d have to guess more than once.
“She’s with child.”
“She thinks so. I think it’s too early to tell, but she’s convinced.”
“Had she told Weexil?”
“She hadn’t told him outright, but she’d hinted. She thinks that’s why he left.”
I cussed. Because if Weexil was just a rake who’d fled at the first sign of fatherhood, then he wasn’t a link to the crossbow on the road or the stakes in the yard.
Gertriss gave me a look that said she didn’t like me very much right then.
Lady Werewilk sighed. “I suppose this-event was inevitable,” she said. “Still, I had hoped it wouldn’t be Serris. She has a rare talent.”
“Seems all your artists have a rare talent,” I said. “Isn’t that unusual, Lady Werewilk? So many absolute geniuses, all here at once?”
“You’ve seen their work?”
“I’ve seen a few. All were marvelous.”
She beamed.
Screams broke out from down the hall. Screams and shouts, though I couldn’t make any sense of the shouting.
I was already at the door when Marlo charged through it. “Lady,” he boomed, ignoring me completely. “It’s Serris. She’s on the roof.”
Lady Werewilk blinked. “On the roof?”
I put myself between Marlo and the lady. “Show me. Right now.”
“Go,” said Lady Werewilk.
Marlo turned and charged. Gertriss and I followed, clambering up the stairs, darting down twisting halls, shouldering our way through thirty assorted artists, and finally bursting up into the attic via a narrow spiral stair and a warped trap door.
The attic was finished, in at least there were plain plank floors and even plaster on the walls. Junk haunted the corners-crates and chests and old saddles and old tools.
There was a lamp burning in the middle of the floor. Blankets and empty bottles littered the place, evidence of many a late-night tryst. Moonlight streamed through a panel in the wall that was open and creaking in a breeze-a panel that opened into nothing but a few inches of ledge and the long, deadly drop beyond it.
I cussed. That wasn’t a door, never had been. Some impatient carpenter a hundred years ago had just sawed a hole in the wall and stuck a crude hinged cover over it, making an opening a kid might fit through, probably to scurry up on the slate roof and replace a few broken tiles.
I cussed him for not nailing the damned thing shut and plastering it over fifty years before my parents were born.
I raced to it and dropped to my knees and exhaled, hoping I could get at least my shoulders through.
My head fit, and part of one shoulder, but that was it.
I could see her legs. Serris was barefoot and wearing a nightgown, and I could hear her crying. Her toes hung over the narrow ledge, and I heard her fingernails scratching on the slate roof tiles at her back, and I knew that even if she didn’t jump in the next few minutes she’d probably lose her balance and fall.
She painted her toenails the same shade of red as Darla used.
“Say something,” hissed Gertriss.
“Miss,” I said. “Please come back inside.”
She was sobbing so hard I couldn’t make out her reply beyond “no”.
Mama, I thought, where are you when I need you?
The girl’s feet shifted and jerked, whether from nearly slipping or working up the courage for a jump I couldn’t tell.
“Tell her he ain’t worth it,” whispered Gertriss. “Tell her something, dammit!”
“Miss. Please. It’ll all seem better in the morning. I promise it will.”
Gertriss punched me in the back. I heard the girl on the ledge take in a long, deep breath.
“I don’t care to live,” she whispered. “Not anymore. Not now.”
“You mean that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” She spat the word. Her legs began to tremble. “I mean it.”
“We’re probably sixty feet off the ground,” I said, keeping my tone casual. “You’ve chosen a good spot. It’s high enough to kill you, all right. Trouble is, Miss, it won’t kill you all at once.”
Gertriss grabbed my right arm and yanked. “Mister Markhat,” she whispered. “What the hell are you doing?”
She said it loud enough that I figured Serris heard.
“I’m just explaining a few things about falls to Miss Eaves. I once saw a Troll fling a man named Other Albert off a cliff about this high. Other Albert landed on sand. But even that broke him up inside. Took Other Albert all night to die, hacking up blood the whole time, when he wasn’t screaming.” I kept my tone cheerful, as though I was retelling a favorite Yule story. “If Miss Eaves decides to die like this, fine, but I think she should have all the facts before she jumps, don’t you?”
Miss Eaves didn’t speak. I thought I could detect a lessening in the volume and intensity of the sobbing.
“Sixty feet. It’ll take a while to fall that far, Miss. Long enough to count to five or six. Long enough to feel death coming. Long enough to realize what you’ve done. Maybe long enough to change your mind. But that’s the thing about jumping off roofs. There’s no changing your mind, once you take that leap. You’ll fall, and you’ll hit, and you’ll die. Bleeding out your mouth and your nose and your ears. And screaming, of course. Just like Other Albert. ”
“He left me,” she said. “He left me.”
“I know he did. And I’m sorry for that, I really am. And maybe right now you honestly don’t want to live, and I’m sorry for that too. But, Miss, it’s one thing to wish you could make the pain go away. It’s another to fall sixty feet. I know. I’ve seen. Come back inside.”
Serris quit bawling. Her feet stopped shifting, her toes curled uselessly around the ledge, and at last she spoke to me, in a very faint whisper.
“I can’t get back,” she said. “I’ll never make it back.”
“You don’t have to move at all,” I said. “Just be still. Take a deep breath. We’re going to come get you. Don’t look down. You hear me? Be still.”
She didn’t answer.
I popped out of the hole and back into the attic.
“Rope.” And hurry, I added, silently. She’s not going to last.
Marlo appeared, lunging out of the trap-door, a coiled rope already in his hand. I could have hugged his grizzled ugly face.
“You are never going to fit through there,” said Gertriss.
I was ready with half a dozen useless arguments, but they died on my lips. She was right. Too many years of good beer and Pinford ham sandwiches had passed.
I handed her the rope. She took it, tied a competent sliding loop in the end of it, was kneeling at the opening when we all heard the howl.
It was a woman. A woman screaming. I was sure for a single awful second that Serris had fallen, or jumped. But the sound of it rose up and up and grew in volume until it rang like a Church bell through the attic.
It came from outside, from inside, from far away, from a lover’s place right by your ear. And it sounded loud and high when it should have died and it went on long after human lungs should have been emptied of air and it sounded louder than thunder, louder than any blast of magic, louder than Other Albert’s most desperate agonized cry.
Gertriss was pale. Pale and shaking and saying something urgent, though her words were lost. She put the free end of the rope in my hands and, when I just stood there gaping, she slapped me hard across my wounded face and she wrapped the rope around my waist.
I came out of it enough to take the rope and brace myself, and then Gertriss kicked off her shoes and darted through the open panel and out into the night.
The rope jerked and dragged and went taut. I had just enough time to grab it hard with both hands when Gertriss came flying back inside and I was yanked off my feet and we wound up in a tangle on the floor, being dragged by the rope, which suddenly bore a young artist’s worth of weight bolstered by a short fall’s determined momentum.
Hands fell on me, as Marlo and Lady Werewilk yanked and pulled and cussed.
The scream died, cut off as suddenly as it began.
My ears rang. Gertriss and Marlo and Lady Werewilk all spoke, but I could hear nothing, and from their expressions I could tell they were experiencing the same sudden deafness.
Still, we managed to all take hold of the rope and pull, which brought the limp Miss Eaves finally up to and then through the open roof access panel.
The rope was looped under her arms. We scratched her up a bit dragging her back inside, and she lost a lock of golden hair in the corner of the opening, but she was breathing. I let Gertriss and Lady Werewilk adjust her flimsy nightgown while Marlo and I averted our eyes and collapsed against the wall.
“And that there is what we call a banshee,” were the first words I was able to hear, spoken by Marlo.
If Lady Werewilk heard she pretended not to.
Serris began to stir.
“She all right?” I shouted.
Gertriss nodded, spoke words I still couldn’t quite hear.
I shouted. “That was damned brave of you.”
“Grave for who?”
“Never mind,” I yelled. I rose, forgot to duck, banged my head on the low ceiling.
“I’m going outside,” I said.
“You’re a damn fool,” opined Marlo, who then surprised me. “I’ll go too.”
Serris came to her senses and erupted into shrieks and cries. I still wasn’t catching every word, but I gathered she’d seen something out there, and I had a good idea what it was.
Gertriss held Serris close and began to rock her. Before I’d managed to turn away she went quiet.
“Don’t waste your time, Mr. Markhat,” said Gertriss. “It’s gone.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” She murmured something to Serris. “We both saw it leave.”
The girl started shaking again.
“We can talk downstairs,” I said. “Lady Werewilk? Can you arrange for someone to stay with Serris tonight?”
“She won’t be left alone, I assure you,” said Lady Werewilk. She moved to stand by Serris and Gertriss, leaned down, and laid a hand awkwardly on Serris’ shoulder.
“There, there,” she said. I gathered Lady Werewilk’s stock of comforting truisms designed for hysterical teenage mothers-to-be was nearly as limited as my own. “Everything will be all right. There’s no reason you can’t be an artist and a mother.”
Which nearly resulted in a fresh round of renewed bawling, an event avoided only by fervent whispering from Gertriss and her insistence that we leave the attic at once.
The banshee’s howl had scattered the artists and staff. They were beginning to creep back up the stairs, though. Most were brandishing walking sticks or chunks of firewood, so I called out before we descended lest some nervous pre-War abstract impressionist decide to wax heroic.
Serris and Gertriss were quickly mobbed by artists, who cooed and wooed at the same time and generally embarrassed the poor girl to death.
“All right,” I shouted over the din. “The young lady is fine. The sound you heard came from outside. No, I don’t know what made it. No, we didn’t see anything. You, you, and you-” I pointed at random, picking out the three largest male painters who weren’t wobbling. “-get downstairs. See that the doors are locked. All the doors. Right now, son.”
I said the last in an Army bark perfected during my eight years in the War. Earnest young men darted for the stairs.
Gertriss chuckled despite herself.
“You’d make a fine pig-herder,” she said.
“Great. Let’s get out of here and buy a herd of swine.”
“Be a might safer.” Gertriss let Serris go into the hands of a trio of female artists, who covered Serris in a blanket and made what I assumed were the appropriate noises of commiseration and encouragement.
Marlo appeared at my side. His face was grim. “Need to get a few things. Meet you at the front door.”
And he lumbered away, bowling over artists as he went.
Lady Werewilk and Gertriss raised eyebrows. I suppose Lady Werewilk hadn’t heard Marlo and I plan our expedition.
Both began to question the wisdom of proceeding outdoors. I raised my own eyebrow at Lady Werewilk, who had not very long ago cast scorn on the very idea that banshees walked her woods.
“You’ve got the whole estate cooped up in here. Unless you want start assigning them bedrooms, we’ve got to make sure it’s safe for them to go home,” I said, resorting to practicality. “Marlo and I are going door-to-door before anyone leaves. Lock your doors behind us. We’ll need torches.”
Inspiration struck.
“I’ll be right back. Have the torches ready.”
I hit the stairs, huffing and puffing. Gertriss caught up to me easily, her face set in the same expression of unshakable pig-headedness Mama wore when she got her dander up.
“Don’t even bother, Mr. Markhat,” she said. “I promised Mama I’d keep an eye on you.”
“I promised Mama the same thing.” I couldn’t get all the words out in one breath. “Last thing I need out there is another body to watch.”
“And what you need most is somebody who can use Sight to see in the dark.”
“We’ll have torches.”
We finally reached the landing. I hustled into my room, Gertriss still on my heels, and yanked Toadsticker from his wrapping of old shirts.
“Torches won’t show what you need to be a seein’.”
“You slip back into country talk when you’re agitated, Miss.”
“And you change the subject when you know you’re wrong, mister.”
I shrugged. Gertriss went still, and I swear the room got cold.
She closed her eyes.
The hairs on the back of my neck tried to fall in formation and march.
“What are you doing?”
“Having a look,” she said, slurring her words.
She tensed.
“It’s back. Not close, but thinking about it.”
“Which direction?”
Gertriss lifted her right arm, pointed, then turned. I figured she was facing the barn we’d set as out last-resort meeting place.
“Has it seen you?”
“Not yet.” She opened her eyes, blinked, shivered.
And grinned.
“We’d better hurry. You can’t tie me up and leave me. You haven’t got time.”
I sighed, cussed.
“Stay behind me. Don’t use your Sight outside without warning me. Your word now, or I send you back to Mama, no second chances.”
She nodded. We made for the ground floor. I drew a frown from Gertriss by darting momentarily back into the kitchen. And then we trooped for the big red doors and the dark beyond them.
Marlo was there, an axe in his hand. The blade gleamed, and though it had never chopped anything but firewood that blade wasn’t anything I’d want swung at me.
A crowd had gathered. Those who could clustered at the three-bolt windows and peeped out, oohing and ahing at the dark like they could see anything at all.
No one stood anywhere near the doors though.
“I reckon you know your own business,” said Marlo, after a glance at Gertriss.
“And I reckon you should mind your own,” said Gertriss.
Marlo puffed up and went red, but before he could sputter out a response Lady Werewilk appeared.
She was dragging an umbrella stand that she’d stuffed with swords. “I thought you might need to be armed,” she began, trailing off when she saw Toadsticker and Marlo’s well-honed axe.
But Gertriss grinned like she’d just knocked over a bowl full of earrings.
“Oooh, I’ll take this one, if I may,” she said, yanking a short straight blade out of the jumble.
Lady Werewilk nodded, bemused.
“I believe it was actually used in the War.” She eyed the blades critically, selected one very similar, and damned if she didn’t spin it around in her left hand with as much skill as my old army sword master.
“I’ll be by the door with this, Mr. Markhat.”
I saluted her with Toadsticker, and she returned it-perfectly.
“I’m full of surprises.”
She threw back the bolts, and pulled the door open.
Marlo grunted, laid the axe on his shoulder and marched outside. I followed, Gertriss on my heels, and the three of us went half a dozen paces and stopped.
Gertriss laid her unlit torch onto the one burning by the door. It flared to life, trailing the stench of pitch. I grinned as Gertriss tried to figure out which hand to use for the torch and which to hold the sword.
“Torch in your right,” I offered. “Sword in your left, and then stick it point first in the dirt. You’re better off in a pinch with the torch anyway, unless you’re trained with a blade. Are you trained with a blade, Miss?”
The look she gave me would doubtlessly have sent an entire herd of pigs running for the stable or wherever it is that pigs are domiciled in quaint, scenic Pot Lockney.
Marlo helped by guffawing. Before Gertriss could turn on him, I motioned toward the barns.
“The woman with the big lungs is that way,” I said.
Marlo nodded. “So that’s where we head?”
“Nope. We go door to door like we don’t know where she is. That’ll take us that way anyway, but it won’t be quick. Gertriss, you keep an eye-a regular eye-out for women in the trees. Marlo, you watch the ground. If anybody’s been out here planting stakes while everyone was eating I want to know it.”
Marlo frowned. “We got banshees in the pines, and you’re worried about some damned surveyor’s sticks?”
“That’s what I was hired to worry about. And for all we know the banshee is the one leaving the stakes.”
“Banshees don’t give a damn ’bout land deals.”
“I’ll ask her when I meet her,” I said. My eyes were adjusted to the dark, helped by Gertriss’ flickering torch.
“Let’s get started.”
Gertriss managed to shove her shortsword through her sash. I put her at the back of the line so the light from the torch wouldn’t blind Marlo and I.
Eight outbuildings. It took us maybe twenty minutes to make a show of checking the windows and doors to see if they were all locked or shuttered-they were-and to light the door torches that flanked every opening. By the time we were nearing the barns, there was just enough stray torchlight flickering about to turn the Werewilk estate into something out of a nightmare.
Shadows danced. Huge old blood-oaks towered above us, spreading their boughs wide and blotting out the sky. The dancing red torchlight illuminated tossing leaves far above, giving the impression of furtive movement to join the dry, wooden whispers of the night.
Gertriss whispered occasional updates. She seemed sure the banshee was staying put, well out of the farthest reach of the torchlight.
I kept my eyes out for surveyor’s stakes and hoped she was right.
Marlo kept a white-knuckled grip on his ax and nearly let fly with it when a rooster flew down on his head from an outhouse roof to our right. Truth is, I nearly did the same with Toadsticker while Gertriss shamed us both by shooing the dim-witted bird away with her torch.
Finally, the last dwelling checked and found secure, we halted, gathered in the flickering half-circle of light cast by the door torches.
The barns loomed up a short distance away, more shadow than shape. A wind walked through the corn, and the ways the stalks bent and rasped made the hairs on my neck crawl the same way they had done on a regular basis during the War.
Gertriss caught my eye, glanced at the furthest barn, nodded slightly, just once.
“You two start bringing people out.” I spoke during a lull of wind so my voice would carry. “I’ll stay here, keep an eye out.”
Gertriss started to argue. I gave her a hard look. Marlo turned his back and started walking.
Gertriss handed me her torch.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
And then she was off, rushing to catch up with Marlo.
I figured I had maybe a quarter of an hour. It would take that long for the gaggle of staff to find their way home. So I stuck Gertriss’s torch in the ground, and then I walked to the edge of the light and I put my back to the barns.
Toadsticker’s hilt was warm and reassuring in my hand. Which made sticking it through my belt a difficult action to take.
The corn rustled. Leaves and limbs made dry furtive noises overhead. I imagined all manner of creeping horrors, slinking up behind me.
I’d had my back to the barns for maybe three long minutes-just enough time for Marlo and Gertriss to reach the House-when I heard a twig snap behind me.
I judged the distance to be maybe twenty feet.
And that, I decided, was plenty close enough.
My hand was already in my pocket. I moved it slowly.
I turned around. Slowly. Calmly. In my outstretched right hand was a slice of warm corn bread with a chunk of butter still melting in the middle.
And there she was.
Just standing there.
A banshee.
Every hair on every spot of my body stood on end.
She appeared to be a tiny woman, naked save for a liberal coating of dirt and spider-webs. I don’t mean a woman of small stature-I mean a human woman who had grown to full size and then been somehow shrunk down to a stature befitting a child. I’ve seen trick mirrors at Yule houses that can either shrink or enlarge reflections. The banshee might have stepped out of the former.
Except for perhaps her ears. In the dim light, and under all that matted hair, I couldn’t be sure, but it looked as though her ears might be pointed, as those of the Elves were said to have been.
Her hair was the color of dusty hay. It was wild and matted, encrusted with spider webs and leaves and twigs. Her eyes, though, were big and bright and blue.
I looked into them. The ghost of the huldra let out a scream that nearly brought my hands to my ears. But it made me look away, and that spared me the experience that had nearly overwhelmed Gertriss.
I fixed my gaze on the tiny woman’s filthy chin. Her face was a mask of indifference.
No fear, no anger, no emotion whatsoever. She just stood there, halted in mid-step, watching me with those wide blue eyes.
“I’ve never met a person of your lineage before,” I said. “What do I call you?”
She tilted her head and eyed me quizzically, but neither spoke nor howled.
“My name is Markhat. Do you have a name?”
Again, a blank stare. A vagrant breeze arose, and carried a whiff of her scent to me. I had to fight not to gag. I’d have to tell Mama banshees weren’t strong proponents of bathing.
My banshee kept staring. But she still wasn’t running.
I laid the corn bread and the napkin down on the ground and took three long steps back away from it. The corn bread was mashed a bit, but the butter had melted into it and the smell was heavenly. “Well, I’ll call you Buttercup for now. Is that all right with you? May I call you Buttercup?”
I heard voices from the House as Marlo and Gertriss brought out the servants. The banshee heard them too.
She just-left. Vanished. I saw only the briefest suggestion of movement, and then there was just an empty spot where she’d stood. No footfalls, no sound at all. I couldn’t even guess at the direction she might have taken.
I didn’t even notice, at first, that the hot buttered corn bread was gone too.
She’d left the napkin, but not a crumb.
I scanned the shadows.
“Good night, Buttercup.”
An owl hooted. A couple of dogs began to bark. People and torches began to fill the night.
“Next time, I’ll bring a biscuit.”
I bowed and turned and grabbed up the torch and drew Toadsticker just for show.
Gertriss was at my side in mere moments.
“I saw her get very close to you-did you see her? Did she try to hurt you?”
“When we’re inside.” People streamed past, all in hurry. Half were armed with the contents of Lady Werewilk’s basket of mayhem, and I hoped no one managed to cut off a finger or a toe before they put themselves to bed. A few were still chewing, not content to let a night of leaping ladies and menacing banshees put them off Lady Werewilk’s generosity.
Gertriss nodded. “If anyone did any surveying out here tonight they did it in a hurry, and they didn’t set out any stakes.”
I nodded and returned a few good evenings and set a leisurely pace back to the gaudy red doors.
“The night, as they say, is still young.”
“I had Lady Werewilk start some fresh coffee. Will I be taking the first watch, or will you?”
I smiled as we crossed the threshold of House Werewilk and the massive doors slammed shut behind us.
“You’ll have the first one. But all you’ll do is listen for the dogs, and you’ll wake me up if you hear them. You won’t go outside. For any reason. Is that clear, Miss?”
“I won’t go outside. I’ll wake you if the dogs raise a ruckus.”
“Good enough.”
The House was quiet. I could hear Lady Werewilk speaking to someone upstairs, but that was it.
“She told the lot of them that anyone not in their bed by the time we got back would be leaving for good in the morning.”
“And they obeyed?”
Gertriss nodded. “She meant it. Even the drunk ones could see that. Too, she was holding a bow at the time.”
“That does sometimes serve to emphasize one’s point.” I used Toadsticker to gently pry a pair of snoring hounds off the nearest couch before I flopped down across it myself. “I’ll be right here, Miss, sword in one hand and lightning in the other. Don’t let me sleep more than three hours.”
Gertriss nodded and was off, her eyes alight with the same youthful zeal for her new duties that I imagined I once wore.
Age takes it toll, though. I was sound asleep before either of the dogs dared join me on Lady Werewilk’s poor abused settee.