“Of course I’m fine,” said Tamar. Mr. Tibbles looked up at me from her lap and growled. “I’ve caught up on my reading. I’ve written some letters. I’ve worked on the guest list for the wedding.”
“All from your room.” I didn’t ask it as a question. I was hoping the inference would be clear enough.
“Of course from my room. I’m not a ninny, you know. Although I don’t feel as if anyone is watching me. They really do think I’m your pregnant wife. The maids have been bringing up extra bits of food from the kitchen. They’ve said the most unflattering things about you, even though they’ve never met you.”
“All true, by the way.”
“So. Tonight you meet with my future father-in-law.”
I nodded.
“You’ll find out where Carris is, and you’ll go and fetch him.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Well, you’re aware the wedding is in three days?”
“Painfully.” I spoke fast to cover the gaffe. “You know, when this is over, you and Carris may have to make some hard decisions about maintaining family ties with the Lethways.”
“It will make for some awkwardness at Yule meals, won’t it though?” She shrugged and fed Mr. Tibbles another bit of bread. “I don’t care, Mr. Markhat. If we have to go and live in Sutton or Carland or even by the Sea, we will. I’ve had quite enough of people telling me who I can and cannot marry.”
“Good for you.” I rose. “Coming back here after Curfew will raise too many eyebrows. So I’ll be around in the morning. Hopefully with good news.”
“We’ll be here. Mr. Tibbles will be waiting. Won’t you, Mr. Tibbles?”
The dog had sense enough not to bark in reply. But I swear he met my gaze and gave me a stern look of doggie reproach.
“In the morning, then.”
I left. Maids whispered at my back, but no one else paid me any undue attention. There were no toughs idling in the lobby or pretending to look at handbills by the street doors. I circled the place a couple of times to see if anyone from one trip was still there the next, but no one lingered in place.
From there, I set forth in search of Mills, thinking I’d need someone watching my back if only for the look of the thing. Finding Mills wasn’t hard, and neither was hiring him. Getting him into some semblance of respectable evening attire was another matter, but luckily some of my clothes fit and what didn’t wasn’t so bad that it would attract attention.
The sluggard sun was setting by the time we got that squared away. There was no time to rest at Avalante, so I set Mills at my desk and took to my bed for a quick nap before confronting Lethway at the Banner.
My plan to drag information out of Lethway was weak at best. Tamar might be under the wary gaze of plotting eyes even as I lay down my head. Dozens of armed plowboys might be creeping toward my door as I lay, eager to fulfill the hex that rode them unawares.
So naturally, I slept, and slept hard, right up until I heard boots scrape at my back room door.
“Rise and shine, boss,” said Mills from the other side. “Time to go make powerful people angry.”
“What a wit,” I muttered. “All quiet out there?”
“So far. I need to make water.”
“Bathhouse is down the street. I need to make a stop too.” I rose, grabbed my things, made for the door. “Let’s get this done.”
Mills grinned at me, his face diabolical in the dark. Then he walked away.
I let out the breath I’d been holding. He hadn’t seen Toadsticker’s hilt in my hand, hadn’t realized that just for an instant something in his grin had rendered me temporarily homicidal.
I shook my head. Too many people out to get me. Too many angles to see at once.
I sheathed Toadsticker and hurried out into the dark.
Darla is convinced I spent my time waiting at the Banner by dining. That simply isn’t true.
First of all, heading into a confrontation with a belly full of roast beef is a good way to wind up carved into giblets oneself. My plan was to let Lethway finish his meal and down a couple of good stiff drinks before I showed my pretty face.
And second, the prices at the Banner are far beyond the reach of a simple working man. I could barely afford two glasses of beer, and what I could afford was sour.
But beer it was.
I sat at the bar, my back to the dining room. I sipped at my sour beer and waited for Lethway and his whore to arrive.
Mills did the same thing, at the other end of the bar. We’d entered a half hour apart. We didn’t speak. I was hoping we blended in with the bankers and managers and other well-dressed ne’er-do-wells, drinking and talking and eyeing the room for any unaccompanied ladies that might be passing by.
A mirror behind the bar let me watch the entrance without turning. I kept my hat pulled down low. Toadsticker was hidden under my light coat. The other items in my arsenal were secreted here and there, out of sight but in easy reach.
But it was the brown paper envelope in my breast pocket I was counting on to keep sword and dagger in their places.
The time rolled around. Right on cue, a suited heavy prowled past the maitre d', made a circle of the room and then vanished without a word.
That would be one of Lethway’s bully-boys, I decided, making sure no pesky wives or other such impediments were dining.
I was right. A minute later, Lethway sailed in, a wobbly brunette a quarter of his age on his arm. The maitre d' whisked them to a table. A waiter appeared. Chairs were pulled out. Napkins and silverware and menus and wine were dispensed.
Lethway took it in with scowls and grunts. His lady found a vacant smile and used that to hide her disdain for her hawk-faced suitor.
Whatever she was getting out of the deal, it soon wouldn’t be enough.
I risked a single nod to Mills, who saw but didn’t return it.
The table next to Lethway’s was soon occupied by his bodyguards, who sipped at crystal goblets of water and pushed around soup with a pair of silver spoons. They each gave the room a damned good glare and then they began to visibly relax.
The dining room was filling up. Waiters and wine stewards darted and dodged.
I couldn’t hear anything Lethway said over the refined din of three dozen conversations and the attendant clinking of forks and tinkling of crystal, but I could see him clearly in the mirror before me.
He growled an order to the waiter and sent back the wine in a snit and snarled something brief and nasty at his woman when she dared reach for a cracker from the basket by the candles.
A fresh vintage was produced, glared at, tasted, and deemed acceptable, though only barely. Salads arrived. His was shoved to the side of the table and whisked away lest, I presume, some vagrant leaf of lettuce offend the Colonel by its festive green coloration.
The woman was silent. Her eyes remained lowered. The way she gripped her linen napkin with knuckles gone white and stiff said all she dared not say.
Lethway guzzled down the entire bottle of wine by himself well before any hint of a meal arrived. The man could drink, and he did.
Another bottle appeared. Was rejected. Was replaced. Again, Lethway set about emptying it with the kind of gusto one sees in most of Rannit’s seedier alleys.
Halfway through the second bottle of wine, the meal arrived. She never bothered to reach for her fork. Lethway grunted and emptied his glass and grudgingly began to carve his steak.
I rose. Mills watched, but remained seated, according to plan. I put on my best smile and ambled between tables.
If Lethway saw me, he didn’t recognize me, right up until the moment I hauled a chair to his table and seated myself upon it.
The whore’s eyes came up and no sooner than my ass hit the chair than hers was up and standing.
“I need to go powder my nose,” she said, her voice ghostly soft.
“Take your time,” I said. She hurried away. Her steak smelled of heaven. “Mind if I join you?”
Lethway went ashen pale.
I picked up his woman’s fork and stabbed a bit of beef.
“Now, now. No need calling for your associates. This is a nice place, and I’m just an old friend dropping by to chew the fat.” I put the steak in my mouth, chewed, swallowed.
He’d been about to call for his goons when Mills joined them, just as I had. Mills was just sitting there smiling. Maybe they knew his face. Maybe they didn’t. But something his smile of his conveyed all kinds of things, none of them warm and friendly.
“In fact, I have lots of friends here. But that’s hardly worth mentioning. You going to eat that potato?”
“You’re a dead man, Markhat. Dead. You won’t live to see the sun rise.”
“Whoa. Keep your potato. I guess asking for your toast is out of the question?”
His thin old face twitched, and his jaw muscles worked like he was chewing.
“I’ll see you dead, you common street trash.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But there’s no reason we can’t be civil and have a conversation. About fires, for instance. I’m sure you heard the Barracks burned.”
He didn’t reply, but something like a grin did creep across his lips.
“Burned to the ground, they did. A total loss. All those Army records, ashes and cinders. A pity.”
“Indeed.”
“What you might not know is that not everything was destroyed, Colonel. And can you believe that some of the surviving documents have your name on them? What are the odds?”
“You lie.”
I reached inside my coat and found the brown envelope. I dropped it on the table in front of him, unopened.
“You offend me, sir. I do not lie. There is proof. You can keep it, if you want. I have more such documents. A whole crate full, as a matter of fact. They’re really very interesting, if one has an eye for history.” I leaned forward, dropped my voice to a whisper. “History and larceny.”
He didn’t want to open it. He wanted very much to shout and bluster and threaten and demand. That’s what he’d done, his whole long life, and for the first time he was realizing none of that was likely to work.
I let the moment linger.
He snatched up the envelope, tore it open, pulled out the paper inside and read it.
I let that moment linger too.
“This is a damned fine steak.”
“You think this is going to save you?” He threw the paper that bore his name down, where it landed in a gravy bowl. I fished it out while he fumed. “It means nothing.”
“Oh, Colonel. You know that isn’t true. It means ruin. It means you’re about to lose every damned copper you ever had. It means all your fancy friends will trip over each other in a mad dash to distance themselves from you. And then it means the gallows, Colonel. You stole from the Regency. For years.” I grinned. “You stole a fortune. You and your partners. You’ll all hang. All I have to do to make that happen is whisper in a few ears.”
“You think I don’t have friends? You think I’m going to let some commoner threaten my good name?”
“That’s Captain Commoner to you, Colonel. And here’s a question you might ask yourself. Ask yourself if any of your friends outrank Encorla Hisvin. Because one of my friends, Colonel, is the Corpsemaster himself. And if anything happens to me, a letter will reach Hisvin’s desk. A letter and a crate. I’m sure you can picture the rest without my help. And in light of Hisvin’s somewhat inventive methods of dispatching the enemies of the Regency, you’d best hope for a death as quick and easy as the gallows.”
“You lie.”
He said it, but he didn’t mean it. If he’d checked on me at all, he’d heard rumors I had ties to the Corpsemaster.
“I do not. I can snuff you out on a whim, Colonel. What was it you said about sunrises? It applies to you as well.”
He glared. His color was so bad I grew fearful he might suffer a stroke right there.
“But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can both take in a lifetime of sunrises, and all I need is a bit of cooperation.”
He made a growling noise deep in his throat.
“How much do you want?”
I sighed. “Not a copper. I told you before. I’m not out to rob you. I just want to bring your son home, safe and sound.”
“You need to stay out of this. I’m handling that.”
“How? By destroying the evidence? By stalling? For all you or I know, Carris is dead already. You don’t seem to give a damn. Why is that? “
“You didn’t see hundreds of people die in the war? Thousands?”
“Damn right I did. That doesn’t justify the death of even one more. Especially not your own son.”
“You don’t know what you’re getting into. I’m telling you to leave it alone.” He puffed up a bit. “That is an order.”
“You’re retired. Shove your orders. Who has Carris, Colonel? I think you either know or suspect, and I think their initials might be S.J.”
“The Lieutenant is dead. Just as you will soon be.”
“A Colonel ought to know that repeating empty threats is a poor tactical maneuver. Let’s talk about this dead Lieutenant. Since you claim he’s dead, what’s the harm in giving me his name?”
“His name was Japeth Stricken. He died begging. So will you.”
“Japeth Stricken.” The name was not one I knew. “You seem to know a lot about how he died.”
He smiled a thin wicked smile.
“I was there. He came to me, making demands. Just as you have.”
I nodded. “His share of the take ran out, so he put the squeeze on you for more, is that it?”
“You commoners are all the same.”
“You thieves share certain traits as well. Still. You’re sure he’s dead?”
“He’s dead. Just like you.”
“So what is it the kidnappers want, Colonel? And why won’t you give it to them?”
He clamped his jaw shut.
“You’re going to tell me. I’ll give you a minute to think it through. There’s no way out, Colonel. I’ve got more than enough to hang you, or worse. I can’t be bought or scared off. Your only option is to tell me what I need to know and hope to kill me some fine day long after this is over, and you know it.” I picked up his woman’s wineglass and tasted the vintage. Maybe rich folks like things sour and warm, but I decided I’d take cold beer any day.
“They never asked for money.” He spoke in a low growl. “They want information. Shipments of ore. How much slag we sell. How many wagons of ingots sold last quarter. Things you wouldn’t understand.”
“A competitor, out to beat you in the markets?”
“What else?”
I shook my head.
“Colonel. Commoner I may be, imbecile I am not. We both know there’s more to all this than a rival mining company trying to wring another half-percent profit out of this year’s take.”
“I told you to leave it alone.”
Damn. The man was actually trying to protect what he thought was a state secret. He’d stolen freely while serving. Just my luck he was having a sudden resurgence of patriotism.
“I know more than you think about a lot of things, Colonel. But that’s not really important, because knowing the why doesn’t help me get your son back. It’s the who I’m after.”
He said nothing.
“This is what we’re going to do, Colonel. You’re going to answer the next letter you get. You’re going to promise them they’ll get everything they want-in a direct exchange for Carris. No ifs, ands or buts.”
“I will do no such thing.”
I tapped my finger on the letter.
“Yes. Yes you will. You’ll agree to whatever time and place they dictate. You’ll agree to bring with you whatever records they want. And you’ll do it just as I say, or I’ll hand you over to the Corpsemaster and you can drive his black carriage around until the skin falls off your damned old bones. You know what they’ll say, Colonel? They’ll say ‘there goes old dead Lethway, thief and traitor. Got what he deserved.’ Is that how you want to be remembered?”
He had no answer. I didn’t press for one.
“You’ll send word to me when you’ve made the arrangements with the kidnappers. You’ll remember what I said about crates and letters if I have a tragic fall in the bath anytime soon. You’ll do this and get your son back and make me go away. Or else. That common enough for you?”
“Bastard.”
I speared a chunk of butter-covered broccoli and chewed and swallowed. “Oh, one last thing. Don’t go getting any ideas about going after Tamar Fields again. What was that about, anyway? You worried fat little Fields might decide to cause some trouble for you, in the middle of this mess?”
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
I reached in my pocket and withdrew the head of the walking stick his man had taken away and plopped it on the letter.
He quickly moved his gaze away.
“Have a nice evening, Colonel Lethway. Sorry about your date. I don’t think she’s coming back.”
“I’ll do as you say,” he said in a whisper. “But one day, Markhat, I’m going to watch you die.”
“There ought to be quite a crowd. You should probably bring your own chair.” I rose and dropped a pair of coppers down on the table. “My part of the tip. Be seeing you.”
Mills was suddenly at my side. Lethway’s brutes looked to their boss, but he motioned them to stay put, and they did.
We walked out of the Banner, Mills and I, our bellies full of beer and the heady taste of short-lived triumph.
My carriage was still at the curb. I had a sudden urge to travel and no particular destination in mind.
We climbed inside and rolled into the empty street.
I let out my breath in a great long sigh.
“I thought that old man was going to pop a vein right there,” said Mills. “Is it healthy, pissing off rich folks like that, in public?”
“Keeps me young and sharp. The name Japeth Stricken mean anything to you?”
“Stricken. Hmmm. Seems familiar. Is it important?”
“It might be. Word is he’s dead. I wonder if that’s true.”
“I know some people who’d know.”
I grinned. “They stay up past Curfew?”
“They ain’t afraid of vampires. Hell, they probably skin ’em and eat ’em.”
“And you claim vexing the elderly is dangerous to my heath. Can you tell the driver where these worthies might be found, at this unholy hour?”
Mills banged on the ceiling and barked out directions to the driver.
Curfew keeps honest folks off the streets. But if my night out with Mills was any indication, the Curfew was also creating a wee-hours culture based in equal parts on crime, gambling and the frantic cultivation of garlic.
I never mentioned that Evis and his friends are no more repulsed by garlic than you or I. We might wrinkle our noses if someone shoves a handful of cloves in our face, but try that with a halfdead and you’ll only succeed in getting your arm ripped off, and worse.
Mills and I tramped from stinking bar to underground bawdyhouse to gambling hall to weed den. We asked the same question of every shifty-eyed card shark or nervous barkeep we encountered, and after forty-six askings got us the same indifferent shrugs and variations on “How the Hell should I know?” I was beginning to think we were wasting time.
But on the forty-seventh asking, in a weed-den dug below the warped floorboards of an abandoned rooming house on Sidge, we found what I was looking for.
The man’s real name wasn’t Glee, and if it was, it ought not have been. He didn’t smoke weed himself, but years of handling it and inhaling the fumes left him with the same afflictions all weedheads share. He twitched. He fidgeted. His lips were bloody and raw from being licked and picked at. His rheumy eyes made Evis’s look clear and healthy by comparison.
But he still had a mind in there.
He perked up before Mills finished pronouncing Japeth Stricken’s name.
“He’s back,” said Glee. He said it before he thought about setting a price. I was sure he wasn’t lying. The weed had dulled him that much.
“Is he now?” I asked. I let a few bright coins dance in my palm. “Back from where?”
Glee licked his lips. They bled afresh. His blood was black in the dim candlelight.
“Back from the dead, what I hear,” he said. I rewarded him with a pair of coins.
“He got stabbed about five years ago. Almost died. Crawled under a porch. Got away. That’s what he claims. Back now, settling old scores. Killed a man or two already, I hear.”
He shut up. I passed another coin his way. Somewhere in the dark, a weedhead started crying, until someone else kicked him in the gut.
“Say where he’s been, these past five years?”
Glee’s eyes darted. He shut his mouth and fidgeted.
Mills pushed him against the dirt wall.
“The man asked you a question,” he said.
I held up another coin.
“Prince,” said Glee, in a whisper. “Said he’s been in Prince. Claim’s he’s a big deal there, now.”
I flipped the coin his way. He caught it. Most weedheads wouldn’t realize a coin was in the air until they dreamed about it next week.
“Where could we find this big deal from Prince?”
“Hell, mister, I don’t know.” Mills pushed harder. I heard something pop. “Honest. It ain’t like we’re drinkin’ buddies.”
“You know all that, you don’t know where to find the man? I don’t believe that, weedhead.” Mills smiled and twisted Glee’s right arm. “Maybe you just need help remembering.”
Glee screamed. A couple of weedheads screamed back. If Glee kept a couple of thugs around to keep the peace, they were wisely finding less perilous chores to attend.
“A house. A house somewhere up in Torrent. I ain’t even sure that’s the truth, mister. It ain’t like I talked to the man myself.”
“Let him go.” Mills relaxed, and Glee sagged and wound up on his knees cradling his right arm.
“Wasn’t no need for all that,” he said. Blood ran in thick trails down his chin. “Wasn’t no need.”
I flipped a final coin at his feet.
“You have a good night. You’ll have a better one if you forget you ever talked to us. Isn’t that right, Mr. Mills?”
“That is the truth, Mr. Markhat. That is the Angel’s own truth.”
Glee just snatched up the coin. If he had any reply he spoke it too low to be heard.
Mills snorted and kicked him onto his side. I got him out of there before any of Glee’s employee’s realized they could safely hurl a brick from the darkness.
We made a couple more stops after that. The house in Torrent was mentioned again, as was Stricken’s fondness for long knives. As we emerged from the grimy shadows of our last stop, a smoke-filled gambling house whose doorway sported a blood-drained corpse lying so close we had to step over it, the first dim light of dawn was creeping up from the east.
“Sounds like this Stricken is a bad lot.” In a fit of civic-mindedness, Mills grabbed the dead man by his shoes and dragged him away from the door, leaving a trail of dark blood behind.
Another pair of steps, and the dead man would have lived. I suppose that sums up life in Rannit.
“If I’m right, he’s working for people far worse.” Mills was kneeling over the dead man, rifling through his pockets. He saw me give him a look and returned a shrug.
“It’s not like he needs anything any more. Look at this.” He produced a handful of coins, not all of them copper.
“Guess it’s my lucky day.”
There came a whisper of sound. Mills' expression changed from that of sudden satisfaction to mild confusion.
And then he fell down beside the dead man, the only sound the tinkling of the coins that fell from his open hand.
I dove. Something struck the wall behind me and skittered off the brick. I rolled over and over and saw sparks where another arrow hit the pavement, broke and skipped away.
An open alley loomed. I heaved myself into it, rolled to my feet, ran. Blind in the dark, I careened off stacks of trash and collided at least once with a drunk and fell again when my feet got caught up in a loose pile of rotten timbers.
But I lived. Another arrow came darting into the alley, coming to rest at my feet. I snatched it up, broke it in half and shoved the pieces in a pocket.
The drunk I’d collided with earlier grunted and cussed.
The alley opened into a dark narrow street. I hid in the shadows and listened.
Nothing. No footfalls pursued me. No shouts called out my whereabouts. Was the bowman waiting at the end of the alley into which I’d fled, or was he already rushing to cover the street before me, sure I’d head that way, hoping to lose him in the windings and the shadows of dawn?
I couldn’t know. So I waited there until I could breathe without panting.
Then I made my way carefully back the way I’d come.
The drunk I’d disturbed bumbled ahead of me. He emerged into the street screaming about vampires. He didn’t sprout any arrows, so I just watched him go.
The street remained quiet. After a time, the door to the gambling den opened, and a small hushed crowd emerged. They surrounded Mills and the dead man, and I strained to hear them speak.
“Both dead,” I heard. My heart sank. “One’s got an arrow in his neck.”
And then they fell to fighting among themselves as they discovered the loot Mills had dropped.
The crowd got suddenly larger, as did the noise. After a moment, I slipped out of my hiding place and joined them, milling around with the mob until Watch whistles began to blow. And then I scurried away, hat held down, back bent, just like all the rest.
I found my carriage still waiting three blocks away. The driver didn’t ask. I didn’t tell.
We just got the Hell out of there while the lazy sun awoke.
I didn’t go back to Cambrit.
Crossbows are the preferred weapons of Rannit’s better criminal element. Bows are too large, too obviously the tool of the murderer and the bandit. You can’t hide a longbow in a suitcase, and the weapon that had launched the arrow I held was indeed a powerful old longbow.
The head was razor-sharp steel. The shaft was black ash. The fletching was pure black raven-feather.
The vile thing screamed professional assassin. Not of the local vintage.
Which meant someone, perhaps Stricken, had decided certain finders had officially become a nuisance.
If Mama had been handy, I’d have asked her to check the arrow for hexes.
But since Mama was off beheading ex-army wand-wavers in Pot Lockney, I didn’t have that option. Even Gertriss was gone, presumably lounging on the foredeck of a new-fangled sailing machine while Buttercup played atop a heap of explosives, and Evis laughed and smoked cigars.
So I bade the driver head up to Elfways, and I hoped Granny Knot was an early riser.
I watched the streets while we drove. I didn’t spot anyone following us. I hadn’t spotted any bowmen last night. And Mills was dead because of it.
An arrow in the throat. One that was probably meant for me. Two men in coats and hats, same height, same general build-I realized I’d been a finger’s breadth from dying last night, and the thought chilled me to the bone.
I yelled for a halt at the cemetery next to Granny’s shack. From there, I could see the street, scan the warped and leaning rooftops, make out anyone idling or standing or crouching in the morning sun.
Aside from a few old women emptying chamberpots it seemed safe enough.
I clambered out of the cab. My driver kept keen eyes moving along the likely places a bowman might hide.
A dog barked. Someone cussed. No arrows flew hissing through the chilly air.
Granny Knot herself flung open her door.
“Sing a song of sorrows, if it ain’t the King of the East,” she shrieked with a wink. “Bring your heels inside, Your Majesty. But leave them Queens outside. I don’t harken to no dancin’, you hears me?”
I leaped up on her porch. “As you wish, my Lady,” I said with a bow.
“Cheeky young bastard,” she whispered. I passed through her weather-worn door and relaxed when she shut it and bolted it.
“Oh my.” Granny wasn’t looking at me, but to my right. “And who might you be?”
I looked around Granny’s tiny home. We were alone.
“I’ll play along if you want, but I thought you dropped the crazy act when you’re not in public.”
“Hush.” She spoke that to me. “This isn’t part of my act, as you call it. You’re not alone.”
Icy fingers caressed my spine.
“You’re kidding.”
“I am most certainly not. You are in the company of a spirit. A new one. He seems quite confused.”
Granny motioned me to a chair. I followed and sat while she stared at things I couldn’t see.
“I was about to send a lad for you anyway,” she said, not looking at me. “Three pigeons arrived just after dawn.”
“Three? Mama must have written quite a letter.”
“She did indeed. Here.” She handed me a trio of tightly wrapped cylinders of paper. Each was so large I wondered how a bird could have borne it without resorting to an awkward two-legged hop.
“Read. And pray be silent until I speak to you again. I have work to do.”
Granny set about rummaging through cabinets and drawers, gathering candles and bags and bundles of oddly fragrant sticks.
I unrolled the first paper cylinder. Mama had helpfully started her letter with This here is the first page scribbled across the top.
“Boy,” it began.
“Well, if’n you got my first letter, you knows all about the high-n-mighty wand-waver and his doings hereabouts, and you knows I put a stop to him by tellin’ that he was eating the souls of babies. I reckon you think that sounds mighty backward, but folks hereabouts took it deadly serious.
So I knowed he’d be coming for me sooner or later. I figured maybe he’d wait, skulk around a bit, get the lay of the land around Plegg House before he came charging in, but, boy, I reckon he was mighty full of his-self, because damned if he didn’t show up last night aiming to relieve this poor old woman of her head.
I didn’t know he was about until fire started falling from the sky. I means it, boy, great big balls of fire, just like the ones you seen during the War. They set the yard on fire and the roof on fire and one even sat there long enough to burn clean through the roof and land in my bed. That made me mad, since that was a fancy featherbed and I paid dear for it.
Well, I conjured up a thunderstorm, quick as you please, and put them fires out before they spread. I reckon I landed a bolt of lightning close to somebody’s fancy britches, too, because there come a mighty yelp and some mighty cussin’ out of the woods and the next thing you know I hears some strange words and the hairs on my neck raised up and when I peeked out a window I seen my porch was full of snakes.
Bad snakes, boy. Rattlers and cottonmouths and even them white as bone snow serpents what educated folk say there ain’t none of no more. Well, boy, I can tell ye there’s still plenty of ’em in the woods around Plegg House, because I seen them crawling under my door and coming down my chimney.
I ain’t one to kill critters that ain’t done me no harm, but I reckon the wand-waver had set them snakes against me, so I didn’t have no choice but to call down a forest-full of owls and hawks and suchlike. They flew right in, and it was a blessing I had a big hole in my roof, because they set about catching up snakes like nobody’s business and the only one I had to kill was a big old timber rattler that got too close to my fireplace poker. I’m saving his skin for a hatband, and no mistake.
I waited a while, all quiet, before I heard somebody tromping through the weeds out front. I was feeling a mite ornery by then, because I opened up my door and even though I couldn’t see nobody I opined that sending snakes against them what can call down owls is a damnfool way to say hello.
I reckon that didn’t set too well with Mister High-and-mighty, cause I heared them words again and no sooner did I get my door shut than every wolf and every bear in the whole of Pot Lockney came a’ howling and a roaring up at my house.
I tells you, boy, I ain’t never heard nor seen the likes of it. Wolves everywhere. They was jumping at the windows and scratching at the doors and I swears a dozen of them got under the house and was trying to force up the floorboards.
And bears! A dozen of the buggers, if there was one. All reared up on their hind legs and trying to tear down the walls. The din they raised was something I ain’t ever likely to forget, boy, I tell you that.
But Mama Hog ain’t no fool. I gots iron bars on my windows and them doors is two layers of blood-oak as thick as your hand and the timbers in this house is as big around as bears. So they clawed and they roared and all they done was break out some glass here and there and tear up my poor flowerbeds something fierce.
About the time one of the bears started to climb up on my roof I brung out something Mister Fancy Britches wasn’t expecting. Boy, there’s been five families of skunks living under this here house since the first stones was laid. I knowed them when I was a child and they knows me, and we gots an arrangement.
So they come out when I called, every last one of them, and by the time them skunks done their business there wasn’t a bear nor a wolf left as far as a owl can see. And, boy, the woods hereabouts is going to smell of skunk for the rest of the year, you mark my words.
I reckon that done it. The next thing I heared was boots on my porch and then my door blowed open and there he was, all red-faced and scary, holding a big bright axe and a’ swearin’ on his name to cut me down.
The first tiny parchment ended there, and I doubt it was by coincidence. I unrolled the next two and read.
Boy, I got me a damned fine axe now. I put his fool head on a pole right by the footpath to my door. That there fancy wand of his burnt itself to ashes when he blinked his last. I dumped out my night pot on ’em, take that, ye nasty old haint.
Then I brewed me up some tea and set lights in all my windows. It didn’t take long for people to come poking around. First thing they seen was his head on a stick. Boy, you ain’t seen the like of the apologizing and back-pedaling as was done that night. I reckon any of them what had forgot respect for the Hog name has remembered it now.
I sent a couple of boys down to the lawn ornament’s shanty and told them to bring back everything they could carry. I knowed you might be interested to know who was trying to put you in the ground.
Boy, what they brung back was disturbing.
He called his-self the Creeper. That don’t mean nothing to me. Maybe it does to you. Along with the usual spell-books and what-not, which is right now making a nice fire for me to write by, this here Creeper had maps. Maps of Rannit, boy. New ones. Ones what showed the walls and has all kinds of writing on them. I can’t ken what the writing says, but I don’t like the looks of it one bit.
It’s too heavy for birds so I’ll be a setting out for Rannit as soon as I gets some rest and some provisions. I reckon you’ll want to be a seeing all this. And don’t worry no more about folks from Pot Lockney coming for you and that niece of mine. All that is over and done and I told everybody what’s going to happen to anyone who starts talking foolishness about money owed on fields and the like. I even stuck a empty pole in the ground just so they can think about whose head might be goin’ there next.
I’m all out of room so you take care.
This here is a damned fine axe.
“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost, Mr. Markhat.”
Granny was seated across from me, smiling.
“Mama was full of news.”
“I trust she is well?”
“Quite.” She’d put a cup of steaming tea in front of me. I picked it up, pinky held out like a Peer of the Realm, and had a sip.
“My friend still with us?”
Granny shook her head no. “He has other business now. He asked me to tell you he doesn’t hold you responsible for what happened.”
“He said that.”
“He did. Mr. Mills was a gentle soul, despite his profession and vices.” Granny took a sip of tea from her own chipped cup. “He did insist that he saw his body up and moving about. Isn’t that an odd thing to say, even if one is a newly born ghost?”
I just nodded. Granny didn’t force the issue.
“I hesitate to mention this, Mr. Markhat, but your deceased friend appeared to be rather more healthy than you do, at the moment. I have a cot in the back, if you would care to rest for a bit.”
I drained my tea. “No thanks, Granny. Miles to go before I sleep.”
She nodded. “I suspected you would say that. Still. Take a biscuit. And do be careful. Weariness leads to tears, my mother always said.”
“Good advice. Thanks for the tea.” She pressed a napkin-wrapped biscuit in my hand. I slipped it into a pocket and stood. “If my ghost comes back around, you might ask him if there’s anybody I can pay his last fee to. Mum or kids.”
“He had no one. Be careful, Mr. Markhat. I fear dark days are upon us.”
“That they are, Granny. That they are.” She unbolted her door, and I stepped out into the light.