I sat in my office and watched the sun sink. Nine bells rang and curfew fell across Rannit like the ragged cloak it is, which meant that the brave, the foolish and the felonious were still very much out and about. The Watch would stop a few curfew-breakers, send a few home and make “Well, what do you expect?” faces at missing persons reports tomorrow.
I stowed the Trolls out of sight but in easy reach. Mister Smith was in my room behind the office. Mister Jones was in Mama Hog’s, next door. Mister Chin was squeezed in the alley two Troll-strides down the street.
There’s a street-lamp right across from my door, and every shadow it cast at my office was that of a half-dead, slinking my way with murder on its lips and mayhem on its mind. I got out my old Army field knife and laid into the long steel blade with a whetstone, pausing to admire its edge only when a shadow bobbed toward my door.
Two hours after Curfew, he came.
I never saw a shadow.
I looked up and my door was opening and there it was, tall and thin and pale. Filmy eyes that looked like dirty marbles met mine.
I put down the knife.
Blue lips pulled back from wet white teeth. “You are the finder Markhat?”
I nodded. The Trolls might as well have been a million miles away.
“I am Liam. I come on behalf of Haverlock.”
I found my voice. “Nice to meet you. Pull up a chair. I’ll have the butler bring us drinks.”
Liam sat, dead eyes boring into mine like he could see secret things written on my bones. “No wise-cracks, Finder,” he said. “I was sent here to kill you. Rip you apart, specifically. I’m trying to do this another way. You aren’t helping. So again I ask-why did you come to Haverlock today?”
I gave up trying to keep up with his unblinking half-dead stare. “I came on behalf of a client,” I said. “A Troll client. He wants to know if a dead relative wound up decorating your master’s trophy room. I came to Haverlock to see. I believe I explained all that to your domestic staff, before they cited a dress code and showed me to the curb.”
“What did you see,” it said, leaning a hair’s breadth closer. “And what did you tell?”
“I told my Troll friend I was tossed out,” I said, adding a little emphasis to the word “friend”. “I told him I saw no Troll heads. I also told him I think it’s there, somewhere.”
It lifted a pale eyebrow. “You told the Troll that?”
“I did.” I forced my eyes back toward his. “And I was right. It’s there, or you’d be out grabbing breakfast instead of sitting here making spooky eyes at me.”
It grinned. Just for a heartbeat, but it grinned a crooked grin and I saw the ghost of the man it once was.
“You got a mouth, Markhat,” it said. “Reminds me of me, once upon.”
I guess I ogled. It shook its head. “Surprised I’m still human?” it asked. “I’m full of surprises tonight. First, I’m not going to kill you, so that Troll next door can put down his axe and relax.”
“He likes holding his axe,” I said. “Keeps him from getting fidgety.”
Liam grinned again. “We wouldn’t want that. In fact, we don’t want any trouble at all. So what if-and this is just a what if-what if I gave you a certain Troll artifact that may have mistakenly wound up here after the War? What if I apologized, and handed it over, and walked away? What then?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Is this you talking, or old man Haverlock?”
“Doesn’t matter to you. Answer the question.”
“It does matter, and you answer mine. You or Haverlock?”
He ground his teeth. “Do you know what happens to us when we get old?”
“Fancy dentures?”
His fist hit my desk, and the mask of humanity fell away. “Some go insane. Haverlock is insane. He wants you dead and your Troll friend dead and he’ll risk the whole House over a moth-eaten curio nobody has seen for ten years. Some of us don’t share his mania. Now answer my question.”
I shrugged. “I just don’t know,” I said. “Maybe the Troll will walk. I doubt it-Trolls don’t work that way. The honor of the clan has been besmirched. One of their cousins spent twenty years wandering around the Happy Hunting Ground without a head to whistle with.”
“What about wereguild? We could pay.”
“Trolls don’t want your money.”
It ground its teeth again. “I’ll ask my Troll,” I said. “But not with you sitting here. You’re a Haverlock-he’s honor-bound to start the War again if you two wind up in the same room.”
“I’ll be back.” Liam rose, and a man with a proper skeleton never moved like that. “I hope you have good news.”
“Sit back down,” I said. “You’ve left out a few things.”
He kept standing, but cocked an eyebrow and stood still.
“You haven’t told me how I stay alive after I wave goodbye to my Troll pal, if he takes your offer,” I said. “Say Haverlock goes to cuddle his favorite War trophy, finds it gone. Say Haverlock finds out that the finder Markhat is still walking around with his head and all his limbs attached. Won’t the Haverlock fly into a snit and send less contemplative boys back around my door, late one night?”
Liam’s dry eyes narrowed. “Haverlock will no longer be a threat to you, Finder,” he said. “Or to anyone else.”
“Time for a change in top-level management?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And we all live happily ever after.”
Liam hesitated, mulling that one over. “Yes. We live.”
I stood. “I’ll ask my Troll. We’ll see. When will you be back?”
“Later,” it said, turning and grasping the doorknob.
“Watch your step out there,” I said. “Gets rough in the neighborhood, after Curfew.”
It turned in the doorway and grinned.
“Especially tonight,” it said.
The door shut.
I hit the chair seat and fought back the first case of the shakes I’d had since the War.
Mister Smith’s heavy treads sounded at my door. “Come on in,” I yelled. “We’re always open.”
The Troll squeezed inside.
“I heard all,” said Mister Smith. He loomed over my desk, a mountain of fangs and fur, but he blinked and breathed and looked downright friendly compared to the Liam-thing. “You were brave in the presence of death,” said the Troll. “Your spirit is strong.”
“My spirit is scared,” I replied. “My spirit hopes and prays you can just take your cousin’s head and let bygones be bygones.”
“He said he would apologize, did he not?”
“He said so.”
“And does he speak for the clan Haverlock?”
I hesitated. “He speaks for those among clan Haverlock who think their master insane. He speaks for those who would remove the eldest Haverlock as leader, and put another in his place. Will that do?”
Mister Smith crouched down and got comfortable while his translator gargled and barked. He grumbled back at it a few times-asking, I suppose, for clarifications of weird human concepts like removing and replacing clan leaders.
“If we receive the head of our cousin and an apology from clan Haverlock,” he said at last, “We will be satisfied.”
“Who must give you the apology?” I asked.
“Clan Haverlock,” said his translator. “He who speaks for the clan,” it added, before I could ask again.
“That won’t be the same guy that actually stole the head,” I said. “I want to make sure you understand that.”
Mister Smith blinked and burped. “Naturally not,” spoke the translator. “It will no longer be possible for him to do so.”
I took in a deep breath. “I knew this was going too well,” I muttered. “Too easy.”
The translator started sloshing that out. “What I meant,” I said, “was that I’ve missed something here. Tell me-why don’t you expect old man Haverlock to apologize?”
Mister Smith chuckled. “Because,” he said, “part of the apology is the balance of insults. Haverlock kept the bones of my cousin these twenty summers. We will keep his bones for the same span. Honor will be restored, both to our clan and his. Is this not the way of all thinking beings?”
“So I have to give you old man Haverlock’s bones.”
“We’ll go and fetch them, if necessary.”
I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. “I bet you would.” I said. “But they’ll be waiting and even the three of you wouldn’t make it off the Hill tonight.”
“We might.”
“You’d die,” I said. “And that would be my fault and who would balance my honor?”
Mister Smith’s brow furrowed. “You have no clan?”
“Nope,” I said. “Clanless Markhat, that’s what they call me. No one to wash my socks.” I stood and stretched.
Something heavy hit the wall outside. Plaster cracked by my doorframe. There was a muffled thud, a squeal like a stepped-on puppy, and a wet tearing sound.
A Troll voice came from the street. Mister Smith growled back.
“One of what you call the half-dead approached,” said Mister Smith. “Not the one called Liam of the House Haverlock. This new half-dead withdrew a weapon and approached your door.”
“What was the ruckus?” I croaked.
“Mister Jones,” said Mister Smith. “He is sorry. He meant to leave the half-dead creature able to answer to you for the insult to your house, but he fears he squashed it. Shall we see?”
Something thin and dark was beginning to seep in under the door.
“Bring me its clothes,” I said. “Toss the rest in a garbage box, if you please.”
Mister Smith rumbled. There was a shuffling outside, and more liquid tearing noises. Mister Jones was having trouble deciding where clothes ended and half-dead began.
If it was one of the Haverlocks, I probably wouldn’t live to see Liam’s coup begin. If it belonged to another House, that meant word had spread and someone had decided a Troll vendetta might do to Haverlock what a dozen Families couldn’t. And what better way to touch things off than by bopping off that meddlesome Markhat?
Mister Jones shoved a wad of clothes through the door. They were wet, and it wasn’t raining.
I stuck my Army knife in the bundle, plopped it down on my desk, and spread things out with the blade.
Black pants, black shirt, black coat, black cloak. And one black shoe, foot still comfortably ensconced.
The shirt-buttons bore tiny dragon heads.
“He was of House Lathe,” I said. “Not one of Haverlock’s boys.”
I bundled things back up. “These can go with the rest,” I said. “And thank Mister Jones for me.”
Mister Smith made rumbles. Mister Jones bowed-I’d never seen a Troll do that before. Then he took the bundle and faded away.
“Will there be more?” asked Mister Smith.
“Could be,” I said. “But we’ve got to wait here for Liam.”
“We will be vigilant,” said Mister Smith. “Fear not.”
I settled back and grabbed my useless whetstone.
We waited, my Trolls and I. Mister Smith crouched in the corner and used my desk as an armrest. Mister Jones leaned against the wall outside my door and cleaned his foot-long claws. We kept Mister Chin hidden inside Mama Hog’s, and from the gurgling and choking I guessed that he and Mama Hog were gabbing away like spinster aunts. I’d told Mama Hog to stay with a friend until this mess was over. She’d pretended not to hear.
Mister Jones growled a couple times between dusk and the tenth hour, but nothing and no one came closer than the corner. I got sleepy despite the steady whirlwind wheeze of Mister Smith’s breathing and the knowledge that dozens of night people might be licking pale lips and heading my way.
The Watch sounded the eleventh hour. The bell wasn’t yet still when Mister Chin rumbled something long and nasty and Mister Smith unfolded and stood.
“One comes,” said Mister Smith. “Mister Jones thinks it is he who came before.”
“Let him in,” I said, standing and slipping my Marine knife in a pocket. “Squash him if he makes rude comments.” I added that in a loud, clear voice I was sure our visitor heard.
The door opened. It was Liam. He stepped inside, and his face in my lamplight looked pink around the edges.
“Have a nice supper?” I asked.
He grinned. His mouth was red and wet.
“I suppose we have a deal,” he said quietly. “Or is this an ambush?”
“We have a deal,” I said. “And us Trolls don’t do ambushes. Besmirches our honor.”
Liam nodded. He hadn’t looked at Mister Smith directly, and he wisely refrained from an eye-to-eye now. “You may retrieve your parcel tomorrow. At a time and a place that will be communicated to you later, via messenger.”
I frowned. “Why not tell me now?”
He frowned back. His frown was meaner than mine. “We both have interests to protect. Tomorrow. By messenger. Or else.”
Mister Smith growled. I shrugged. “Tomorrow, then.”
“Might I make a suggestion?” said Liam.
“Make away.”
“Bring your associates and come with me,” he said. “I can take you to a place of safety, for the night.”
Mister Smith made boot-in-mud noises his translator didn’t bother to translate.
“Much as I love slumber parties,” I said, “I think we’ll pass on this one. Thanks anyway.”
Liam shook his head. “You’ve been seen. You’ve been heard. The wrong people want to make trouble by killing you or attacking the Walking Stones just so Haverlock will have its own private Troll war.”
“Do tell.”
Liam cursed. “Three Trolls can’t hold off a dozen Families,” he said. “No offense intended.”
“None taken,” said Mister Smith, in Kingdom. “But until our insult has been balanced, we may not accept the hospitality of your House.”
“They are coming,” said Liam, wet lips a tight line across his pale face. “They are coming.”
“And we stand ready,” grumbled Mister Smith. “Ready to fight. Ready to die.” He puffed up and out, claws slipping out of sheaths, eyes narrowing, muscles tightening and bulking.
I bit back stammering noises. Liam shrugged. “If you live, you will be told tomorrow when and where to meet.”
“See to your own life,” said Mister Smith. “We shall see to ours.”
Liam gave me a long look out of those dead eyes. I tried to look confident and tough and wound up sneezing.
He left, noiseless as a shadow. The door shut and Mister Smith deflated and I mopped sweat off my brow.
Mister Smith grumbled something short and loud. Misters Jones and Chin growled back.
“We go,” he said to me.
“Go where?” I asked.
“Underneath. Below. To the tunnels that wind beneath your streets.”
“Not the sewers.” Please, not the sewers.
“The sewers,” he said, barking again at his friends. “Quickly.”
My speech about how Liam was right and how we couldn’t hold off a Night People offensive in my shabby ten-by-ten office and how we had to hide was hastily rewriting itself to exclude Rannit’s sewer system as the hiding place. “What about ‘we fight, we die?’” I asked. “What happened to bravery and heroism?”
Mister Smith rolled his eyes. “Load of crap,” he said. “Time to fight, we fight. Time to run, we run. Now is time to run. With haste.”
And so we went, with haste. The Trolls glided, noiseless as clouds. I trotted, feet thumping, pockets jingling until I tossed a handful of jerks out in the gutter. We charged all the way down Cambrit and turned the corner at Artifice and then darted into the foul-smelling alley by Barlett’s Butcher Shop.
Halfway down the moonlit alley, Mister Chin halted, stooped, rose and vanished. Mister Jones trotted to the same spot and dropped out of sight as well. Mister Smith put a sausage-sized finger in my back and gave me a friendly nudge. “We prepared several egresses some days ago,” he said. “You have but to step into the hole and drop. The Misters will catch you safe.”
I did not then pause to reflect on the wisdom of stepping into an abyss on the hope I would be caught at the bottom by Trolls. Something in Mister Smith’s tone brooked no argument. Troll ears are better than mine; maybe he heard the telltale flapping of exquisitely tailored cloaks.
I stepped off into the dark, and fell.
And fell. About the time I decided the Misters had missed, four bony Troll paws caught me and gave way enough to break my fall and not my back. My breath went out of me and I was tossed over a furry shoulder and we were charging through the dark before I could do more than gasp and wiggle.
“Put me down,” I said at last. “I can run now.”
Mister Chin obliged, slowing down to a trot and plunking me down like a child. He kept hold of my hand. “Follow,” he said, his translator’s voice higher in tone than Mister Smith’s. “Keep hold.”
And we were off. I held on and bounced off walls and tripped on gods-know-what and got soaked to my waist, but I kept the Misters in sight. Along the way I tried to memorize turnings and windings but finally had to just give it up-if I got out before daylight it would be with the Trolls or not at all.
So I gave up plotting our course and decided to ruminate on other matters instead. First and foremost, my talking Trolls.
Translator spells-or spells of any kind, shape, intent or fashion-had always been anathema to Trolls. Perversions, they called magics. Betrayals of the land-spirits, or something. Trolls used no magic during the War, and it cost them dear all along, right up until they lost.
Our wand-wavers never quite came to grips with that. They were always expecting some last-minute barrage of deadly Troll magics, a barrage that never came because of some ancient philosophical taboo no Troll ever broke.
Until now. Here were three Walking Stones with translators. I was beginning to suspect they weren’t human-made translators, mainly because they worked too well. And though I’m no expert on Troll optometry I was beginning to suspect the Misters had some night vision spells going, too-we were charging headlong and Troll-quick through sewers blacker and darker than the Regent’s shriveled heart and the Misters never missed a step.
Trolls with magic. Magic-and the half-dead-gave us the slightest of edges in the War. A dozen Troll sorcerers could have easily tipped the scales the other way.
I picked up the pace. Half the time my feet were off the ground anyway. It’s hard to keep up with a Troll in a hurry.
It’s even harder to beat them back.
“Here,” said Mister Smith. Our charge slowed and halted. We all stood panting, though where we stood was a mystery to me.
“Hold out your hand,” said Mister Smith. I did.
A short, gnarled stick was put in my palm.
The sun rose in the sewers. It wasn’t much of a sun-dim, green, and it flickered like a candle in a breezy window-but it let me see.
I’d had night-eyes cast on me during my Army days. This was nothing like it.
Troll magic. I shivered.
“Do you see, my brother?” asked Mister Smith.
“I see,” I said. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
It wasn’t, really. We stood at the dead-end of a tunnel maybe ten feet high and twelve across. The stones were wet and covered with nine hundred years of foul on foul on foul. Bones lay strewn all down the length of the tunnel; all had been cracked open for the marrow, and though most were canine or feline, the big one by my right foot looked like it might once have been part of somebody’s favorite leg.
The smell? Take three hot and sweaty Trolls and run them through an aging urban sewer. Toss in a few thousand decaying rodent bodies for spice. Add another millennia of mold and human waste.
I didn’t retch, but it did cross my mind.
“So what now?” I asked. “We do what?”
“We stand,” said Mister Smith. “We wait.”
I shivered again. “If the half-dead follow us down here-”
“They will,” said Mister Chin. “They shall follow, and they shall seek, but they shall not find.”
“You hope,” I said.
“I know,” he replied. He lifted his hand.
His four-fingered hand began to glow. A dozen fist-sized globs of shimmering goo, like luminescent soap bubbles but thicker, formed and made tight orbits around his claws and then shot off down the tunnel, out of sight.
I gawked. “Behold,” said the Troll. “Confusion. Wrong scents. Wrong sounds. Wrong movements in the dark. They will see what is not there, not see what is before them. They will see Markhats in the shadows, Trolls faces in the waters, hear footfalls, always out of sight.”
Mister Chin was a wand-waver. A Troll wand-waver, casting Troll spells.
“And if the half-dead do stumble upon us,” said Mister Smith, “they will die. Here, they cannot fly. They cannot surround and strike our backs. They cannot ring us round and tear our flanks. Here, they must face us, claw-to-claw.”
I was still staring at Mister Chin’s Troll hand.
“You did magic,” I said at last. “Magic.”
Mister Smith grinned. Trolls shouldn’t grin at people they like. “Yes,” he said. “Magic.”
“Isn’t that a no-no?”
“It was,” he said. “Then. But no longer. Nor ever again.”
I gulped. “You would have won.”
“Yes.”
“You could win now.”
“We are not at war,” he said. “Nor do we wish to be.”
Down the tunnel rang a crack of distant baby thunder. Mister Chin guffawed.
“Booby traps?” I asked. Mister Smith nodded.
“One of many,” he said. “Laid days ago, waiting, watching, gathering strength. My Clan knows the ways of the caves, of the winding dark places, of the hidden things that crave blood. It shall be, as you say, a long night. For some. Shall we sit?”
I kicked trash and bones out of the way and sat. The Misters folded their knees backwards and made themselves at home.
Hours passed. Bells rang. Distant shrieks echoed down the dark tunnels. Booms and bangs followed, now distant, now close. Once light flared, and Mister Chin loosed a volley of bubbles from his claw, and shortly thereafter dozens of voices cried out, whether in agony or fear I could not tell.
But the voices fell silent, and aside from the now-constant rumbles of echoed Troll blasts we were left alone.
Just after the fourth bell, we heard furtive footsteps, the telltale tinkle of metal on stone. The Misters rose, Mister Chin’s hands suddenly full of bubbling Troll magics.
A rat the size of a bullmastiff dog rounded the corner. The skeletal human arm it bore in its jaws still wore a dangling length of silver bracelet. Mister Jones growled. Rat feet made fast pitter-patters back into the dark.
The Watch sounded the fifth hour, and soon after that little slants of sunlight crept past trash-choked storm drain grates. Between Mister Chin’s night stick and the sun, the sewers grew bright, like some civil-minded giant had lifted the streets to air the place out.
The sixth bell sounded, and traffic noise began. The Curfew was lifted; the day had begun; the night people were yawning in their holes, too sleepy to hunt that crafty Markhat any more today.
“We made it,” I announced. “Hurray for us.” I rose. My knees and back popped so loud Mister Jones asked me if I were injured.
I offered Mister Chin the night stick. “Keep it,” he said. “We have another night to face.”
“Thank you,” I said, and meant it. Our own wand-wavers were never so free with their treats. “Shall we go back to my office and see what’s left?”
Mister Smith rose. “We shall,” he said.
We went. Three mighty Trolls and one stiff, sleepy human, all bathed in sewer-stuff, a bevy of barking dogs trailing us just for the fun of it. It wasn’t quite an Armistice Day parade, but we had almost as many oglers.
We rounded the corner at Cambrit.
I’d had callers in the night. They’d ripped my door off its hinges, stepped right in and made a mess visible from nearly a block away. Watchmen buzzed in and out of the hole in the wall like fat blue bees. Mama Hog waddled around among them, waving her fingers in various faces and snatching pens and the like-my pens, mind you-out of pockets and paws.
Mama Hog spotted us. “Get over here,” she bellowed, “before they steal everything that ain’t broke.”
Heads turned my way. Mister Smith chose that moment to yawn.
Trolls yawn like tigers roar.
Only two Watchmen were there by the time the Misters and I strolled on down the street.
The oldest Watchman, a gray-headed sergeant named Fleetcab with a scar all down the left side of his face, stood in Mister Smith’s shadow and tried to pretend that he had dealings with Trolls every day. “Somebody tore your place up, Markhat,” he said. “Any idea who that was?”
“My maid gets these spells,” I said. “Last week she set fire to my favorite ottoman. I’ll have a talk with her, I promise.”
He grunted. His partner, a skinny kid of maybe twenty, stepped forward. “Could it have anything to do with your new associates, Mister Markhat?”
I was tired and wet and filthy. I’d spent the night in a sewer. Thirsty half-dead were sleeping with my picture under their pillows.
“My cousins?” I asked. “Now why would you say a thing like that?”
Mister Chin growled.
And that was that. No long hike downtown, no afternoon on the Square answering the same questions over and over in a ten-by-ten room decorated in Stifling Heat and Rank Body Odor. I scribbled my initials at the bottom of an incident report and waved the Watch goodbye.
Mama Hog was inside sweeping. Mister Chin was scooping out debris. Mister Jones was hammering together a new door out of two of Mama Hog’s old tables.
Me? I had plans to make, plots to hatch, baths to take-so naturally, I stripped, rolled up in an old green Army blanket and slept like the dead I was so very close to joining.