Cruel Zinc Melodies (36 page)

I nodded, told Algarda, “Good thinking.” I’d seen that often enough during the war. “Where did you do your five?”

73

Furious Tide of Light returned in less than fifteen minutes. Like a proper witch, riding a broomstick.

But I was wrong about the broomstick. It was a coat tree. She had somebody behind her, a Hill type big on visual drama. This one loved black, starting with a vast hooded cloak that fluttered and flapped as the Windwalker hurtled toward us. Inside the hood was a bleached-bone mask holed for eyes, nose, and mouth.

What did it take to bring someone like this out, with complete kit? Black bags dangled from the foot of the coat tree.

The newcomer dismounted stylishly. He, or she, took the black bags off the coat tree. Furious Tide of Light settled to the pavements, dismounted, set the coat tree upright. It wobbled on uneven cobblestones.

The newcomer considered the injured. Triage with non-medical judgments included. Who got helped first would be whoever had offended the healer least.

The Windwalker floated over to her father. She studied our surroundings intensely. She was looking for someone.

Tinnie slipped in under my right arm. She was shaking. After a moment to just snuggle she began nudging me out of the press.

I thought that might be because she’d noticed Colonel Block among the onlookers. Block seemed only vaguely interested in me. Like it was only to be expected that Garrett would be part of the furniture at a particularly grotesque crime scene.

Satisfied that she could do so without being overheard, Tinnie whispered, “Garrett, it wasn’t a ghost that did that. What happened out here. I don’t know about what happened inside.”

“I don’t follow.”

“It wasn’t the thing under the theater that attacked those people.”

“I’m listening.” She had an interesting theory. And I had nothing.

“It was that man you brought around. The one with the hots for Lindy.”

“Bill? Belle Chimes?”

“Whatever. Somebody called him the Bellman, too.”

“You have my interest, Miss Tate. On more than the usual level.”

“That’s refreshing. Finding out you can be something more than my boy toy.”

“Can’t have you getting distracted from that, though.”

She wasn’t in the mood for banter. I wasn’t, myself, except as a distraction from disaster.

She said, “I'll bet everybody saw the same ghost come out after those people. What did you see?”

I described it. And recalled thinking the ghost looked familiar.

“Same here,” she said. “That was Chimes. If he was twenty.”

“Damn! Sweetheart, you are on to something. Dierber and Avery were out to get him. He turned the tables.”

Maybe Belle Chimes wasn’t the feeble bush necromancer he pretended. Maybe, when he was really stressed, he could regress his apparent age by decades, long enough to smash heads, crack bones, and get gone before anyone reacted.

I replayed events in my head. They didn’t come together seamlessly but I convinced myself that Tinnie was right.

Could we prove it?

Should we care? Or even bother?

Belle’s squabble with the Hill was a private matter.

I had troubles of my own.

I had to do some stuff, fast. Before Max and Gilbey decided that employing me created more problems than it cured.

I took my case to Colonel Block.

The good colonel grunted, with admirable timing. He was both curious and sympathetic. Until I finished. Then he asked, “And you expect me to care, why?”

“What?” Startled. “That’s what you do.”

“It’s hard for me to get excited about helping you do your job when you’re always determined to complicate mine.”

Tinnie chuckled. “You know what they say about paybacks.”

Ever-maturing me, I stifled a query as to whether she might not be a payback herself. I told Block, “I thought you’d be interested. Hill folk are involved.”

“I’m disinterested on account of those folk. They’re all the time telling me to stay out of their business. This looks like an opportunity to give them what they want.”

“Did I mention characters called the Bellman and Lurking Felhske?” I had, of course. “The Director hauled me in the other day because he thought I might tell him something about Felhske.” Just a little fib, for effect.

“Deal has his own priorities.”

Block was having fun. A twinkle in the corner of one eye betrayed him.

Or maybe that twinkle was about him having gotten a good look at Furious Tide of Light. Who was sparking a few speculative twinkles, despite the situation.

I told him, “If you sniff the breeze you can catch an occasional Felhske whiff.”

While Block mused, “I’ve heard so much about her. First time I’ve seen her. Looks just like her mother.”

Um, a little charge of nostalgia? Was there a history?

Could be. Barate Algarda had a hard face on him all of a sudden and he was looking our way.

Tinnie turned on some heat. Just enough to get Block’s attention. He knew what was going on but he couldn’t help himself. None of us can.

It’s sorcery. It’s the blackest black magic.

My gal. She’s got the magic in spades but doesn’t want to rule the world. Lucky world. She’s content to cloud men’s minds one mewling sack of sludge at a time.

The good colonel seemed fascinated by Miss Tate’s hypothesis. The very hypothesis that I’d put forward just moments before.

Tinnie closed with a fetching pout. Block set tin whistle to lips and tootled.

Red caps came out of the brickwork. They sprang out of the ground. They dropped from the sky. Westman Block allowed himself a smirk of satisfaction over my discombobulation.

A few quick instructions and the Watchmen scattered. Except for the handful directly working the matter of the fallen and strewn sorcerers.

I suggested, “You might want them to know that the Bellman can change his apparent age.”

“Timely, Garrett. Very timely.”

“Huh? What’s that mean?”

“I didn’t stammer, stutter, or speak in tongues. As is your habit, you sat on a critical point till it was well past ripe.”

Man, you hold out the teensiest bit on behalf of a client, once way back in the dawn of time, they hammer you about it till the sun goes cold. “Tit for tat, my old friend. I’ve got the scars and bruises to back my argument, too.”

More than once the good folks at the Al-Khar had just plunked me into the deep soup to see how the broth flew.

“As you say, old buddy. That was then. This is now.” Block worked his whistle magic again, using a different musical phrase. He was a bit more talented than the thing down under.

Red caps materialized.

Ah. Most were the same ones as before. So Block hadn’t thrown the entire herd into the stampede.

After a few quick words the troops got busy pushing the neighborhood rubberneckers back.

74

I beckoned Saucerhead. And told one of Block’s thugs, “Let him through. He’s my chief security guy. Head. Round up your troops. You need to lock the place down before somebody gets a bright idea and tries to sneak in the back door.”

Some of TunFaire’s bad boys are fast on the uptake, swift to seize the day, and stupid enough to go for a quick hit on a Weider property.

Some did beat Tharpe into the World. Where, unfortunately, they ran into angry ghosts. Or the Bellman making his getaway.

Three freelance socialists were scattered over a quarter acre of floor, physically undamaged. Two were hard at work babbling, one in tongues and the other talking to his dead mama. The third was in a coma. But there was no evidence of any big fight between the sorcerers and the ghosts.

The thing down underground seemed content. I saw only a few indeterminate shimmers, uninterested in us. Saucerhead hadn’t minded coming inside.

“Garrett. Hey. You got to see this.” Saucerhead pointed into the cellar.

“What?”

“Couple guys who must have been in a blind rush to get away.”

I joined him. Colonel Block joined us. The lighting was feeble down there. Most of the lamps had burned out. But I could make out two men who did appear to have fallen, possibly while running blindly.

One had hit down where Rocky’s leavings were piled. He still twitched. He cut loose a long moan that might have been a cry for help.

Furious Tide of Light joined us. Barate Algarda was close behind. She used her timid little voice to ask us to get the inside lamps burning again.

“Good idea,” I said. Wondering where the hell the lamp oil was hidden. I hadn’t seen any during my prowls. “There’s got to be a better way to light a place this size.” Then I jumped, startled.

A glowering Tinnie Tate had turned up. Evidently, I’d had some sort of glint in my eye while talking to the Windwalker.

I was too distracted to appreciate either lady. I’d been stricken by a fit of genius.

Need a better way to light a place as big as the World? I had the answer.

Go tell Kip Prose he needed to figure out how to do it. That kid can figure out how to do anything. If you hand him the challenge in the right way.

“You’re getting a look on you that I don’t like, Malsquando.”

All because I had my eyes pointed at a skinny little blonde while my genius was perking. I wasn’t seeing the Windwalker, let alone appreciating the view. I was trying to recall Kip’s comments about something we’d discussed in the once upon a time, long ago, while we were getting in a few minutes of time killing, hiding from some bad guys.

It wouldn’t come. But I knew it was there. All I had to do was take it up with Kip, next time our paths crossed.

Where the hell was the boy now? Had he paid attention when I’d told him to go see the Dead Man?

“If he didn’t, I'll go see his mother,” I muttered. Reviewing some fond memories.

“Whose mother? What are you?”

“Tinnie. Darling. Sweetheart. Light of my heaven whom I love more than life itself. If you don’t stop this shit... Do I come around, sticking my oar in and getting underfoot when you’re trying to work?”

That woman is a multiple personality. Ninety percent of the time she is the absolute center of her own universe. But once in a while, if you crack her between the eyes with a big enough stick, she'll step back from all-about-Tinnie long enough to look at something differently. Plus, I got to admit, the personality she shows me is one I pretty much handcrafted for myself.

“I got it, Garrett,” she said. “I’m pretty sure.”

“Pretty, anyway.” She might have a clue, after all. She sounded serious. And she didn’t call me Malsquando. “So, thank you, Light of My Life. Now let me get on with my work.”

A core problem was, despite her having known me for ages, from days when my chosen profession pulled both of us into far harsher, deadlier, and spiritually more dangerous places, Tinnie can’t see what I do as real work.

She doesn’t need to know, but I feel the same way, sometimes.

I do what I do mostly because it’s better than working for somebody else.

“Hey! Saucerhead.”

Tharpe gave up looking into the pit. He came alongside, courageously inserting himself between me and the redhead, apparently under the misapprehension that I needed help. “What you got, Garrett?”

“What I got is, I’m thinking I want to bail on this whole adventure for today. I want to head on home, talk it over with my motion-challenged sidekick, then get myself twelve hours in a real bed. Not to mention some of Dean’s home cooking.”

“I could go for some a? all that my own self. But my boss is a prick. Ain’t no way I can get loose long enough to get some a’that for me.”

I disdained any reply. I couldn’t win.

He was laying the groundwork for some kind of extortion.

“Attitude, Garrett,” Colonel Block said from behind me. “Everything depends on how people respond to a man’s attitude.”

Everybody I know, given the ghost of a chance, piles it on, higher and deeper. Fanatically determined to make the world’s ills all my fault.

Sometimes you just have to walk away.

That’s what I told me as I headed west, leaving the World and its miserable environs to stew.

No one else walked away? excepting Tinnie, who stuck tight. The rest all kept on keeping on, doing what needed to be done.

I was going to hear it from the Dead Man. I was going to hear it from Max Weider and Manvil Gilbey, too. I might hear it from Alyx and her smoking crew. I might hear a little something from Colonel Westman Block and Director Relway, later. I might get the random admonitions from Dean, Tinnie, Tinnie’s niece Kyra, and even lovable, quiet Kip Prose. Hell, I might even hear it from my great-uncle Medford Shale before the final word got spoken. My acquaintances are a chatty bunch.

Let them bark. I had to step outside of events for a while. I had to have some time out to see if I couldn’t get something to add up.

The appearance of the freaky families of the Faction might have put a new spin on everything.

75

Singe opened the front door as I was about to let myself in. I told her, “Look what followed me home. You think I should keep her?”

Tinnie shoved the back of her left hand under Singe’s nose like she expected the ratgirl to kiss it.

An air of abiding amusement suffused the house.

So did voices.

“Do we have company?” Feeling stupid the instant I asked.

“Yes. Mostly to do with business.” Getting in a dig, “You just missed Penny Dreadful.”

No doubt because Old Bones told her I was coming. What had he had her doing now?

Tinnie observed, “You’ve really put the fear of Garrett into that little girl, Malsquando.”

“I can’t help entertaining a mild suspicion that Tate women are somewhere behind that.”

Speaking of: A semihysterical peel of laughter came from the Dead Man’s room. That couldn’t be anybody but Kyra, Tinnie’s apprentice in the arts and sciences of heart-breaking. What was she doing here?

I asked, “What?”

Singe told me, “Go on in. I'll let Dean know you’re home.”

The big, wicked grin Tinnie had worn while showing Singe the landscape of the back of her hand vanished. Dread replaced it. She was worried about her niece.