Red Iron Nights (16 page)

I said, “This mess is getting kind of spooky, Smiley.” And I wasn’t alone in thinking so. Despite his flirtation with levity, Block was green around the gills.

There is sorcery in it, Garrett. Grim, gruesome, ancient, and evil sorcery. Necromancy of the darkest form. Dead men who have gone to the crematorium do not rise up and resume their atrocities.

“Really?” What genius. “Hell, I figured that out.” I’m not a detective for nothing. Deductive reasoning. Or was it inductive? I can never keep those two straight.

There is a curse at work. If this outbreak is indeed connected with those that went before, it is a very potent curse. In those cases, when the guilty parties were apprehended and executed, the killings stopped.

“But did start up again later.”

Eventually. Apparently. After generations.

“They started up again right away this time,” Block said.

This was the first time the guilty party was caught quickly. This was the first time without a trial and execution. This was the first time the guilty party was cremated.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Block demanded. He was into the thing now. In fact, he was back over by that lamp looking like he was thinking about starting a fire just to make the Dead Man get on with it.

He wasn’t as dumb as he pretended.

As I recollect, the earlier killers were caught, tried, convicted, and hanged. Two were hanged. I believe the first
w
as beheaded. Beheading was the punishment in fashion then. In each case the remains went into unmarked graves.

Executed criminals still go into unmarked graves. That’s part of the punishment. “And?” I asked.

“So?” from Block.

Garrett, Garrett, must you be so determinedly thick of wit? I have given you everything you need. Use your brain for something more than landfill that keeps your ears from clacking together.

The same old challenge. Use my gods-given mind and talents to figure it out for myself. He’s no fun at all. But he thinks he’s bringing me up right.

Block grabbed the lamp and headed for the Dead Man’s chair.

I waved him off. “He’s right. Sort of. He’s given us what we need. Anyway, if you bully him, he gets stubborn. It’s a pride thing. He’ll let you burn him and the house both before he’ll give you a straighter answer.”

Block eyeballed me a moment before he decided I was telling it straight. “A goddamned oracle, eh?” He put the lamp back where it belonged. “So what’s he talking about? Where’s our point of attack?”

I didn’t have the foggiest. All I knew was that the Dead Man had seen some fog, and if he had, then it was right there in front of my face.

Of course, you not being in the middle of it, stressed out and confused and still smelling the stink of a girl who died in terror, you have it all scoped out and you’re telling yourself that Garrett, he’s too dumb to be believed.

28

I nearly had it. I started to get a eureka grin. My unconscious was hinting that it might pay off if I was a good boy. But then somebody went to hammering on the door. The front door is the curse of my life. Could I brick it up? Slide in and out the back way? It some pest found himself facing nothing but rough brick, would he persist in trying to inflict himself on me?

I lost whatever was about to surface. I glanced at Block. He looked like he was having trouble figuring out how to spell his own name. No help there. I trudged to the door, glanced through the peephole. I saw Morley and Dean staring back. I was tempted to leave them there. But Morley was the kind of guy who would chew his way through a door if he thought you were letting him cool his heels. Anyway, he didn’t deserve to be left out in the rain. And I didn’t see how I could let him in without admitting Dean too, so I opened up and let the whole crowd stamp in with their ingrate comments about how long it ought to take to unlock a door.

It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I could sell my place for a lot more than I paid for the wreck it was when I bought it. I could move on somewhere where no one knew me. I could get me a real job, put in my ten or twelve hours a day, and suffer no hassles the rest of the time. Whoever bought my place could enjoy what I left behind. I could make the sale more attractive by offering the house’s contents at no extra cost.
Caveat emptor.
So long, Dean. Good-bye, Dead Man.

“You got me over here, you’d better catch my attention fast,” Morley told me. Not even a query about my health. But what are friends for, if not to make us feel little and unloved? “I’ve got a date—”

“Indeed.” I tried my Dead Man impression. “You will recall a certain corpse in a certain coach house on a certain Hill, not so long ago? Relating to a certain series of distinctly unpleasant murders?”

“As in the waste of high-grade dalliance talent?”

“Probably for someone far less deserving than you or I, but yes. The one we came across during our evening constitutional one night.” Why were we doing this? I’d started it and I didn’t know—except that Dean was there to witness whatever we said. But why should I care what Dean thought? The guy liked cats. There’s something fundamentally wrong with a guy who likes cats. Why should his opinion concern me?

“What about it?”

“This about it. The gentleman who got his deserts that night, despite having found his way into a city crematorium, hasn’t given up his hobby.”

“Say what?” Morley couldn’t stay with the game.

“There’s been another murder. Just like the others. Right on schedule. We don’t know who she was yet, but we will soon.” I gave a jerk of the head toward the Dead Man’s room. “Official company. The Dead Man tells us there’s a curse involved. Sorcery.”

“No! Really?”

“You don’t have to take that tone. Dean! You have work to do. You want to hang out here twenty-six hours a day, you damned well better . . . ”

He might be in his seventies, but he didn’t let the years slow him a bit. He stuck his tongue out like he was six. Then he headed for the kitchen fast as a glacier, smoke boiling around his heels. As he fled I told Morley about my plan to sell the place, as is, to anybody who had a few marks to invest. He didn’t jump at the opportunity. Dean wasn’t impressed with the threat. I had to spend more time on the streets, had to learn how to be nasty again.

Dean beat the seven-year locusts to the kitchen. I celebrated the new age by nudging Morley into my office, explaining the situation here. Being Morley, part elf and familiar with things sorcerous and eldritch, he cut straight to the heart of it, immediately finding the thing that had been nagging me since the Dead Man had told me he’d given me enough to go on.

“The man you skragged was naked when you brought the Watch captain. The men buried in the old days would have gone into the ground wearing whatever they had on when they were executed. Which would have been what they were wearing when they were caught. The clothes must be the key. Or something the old boy had on him. An amulet. Jewelry. Something that whoever got into the coach house took when he stripped the corpse.”

“Cut it.” By that point I’d gotten the point, if you follow me. It wasn’t the man that was cursed, it was something that went with the man. Like maybe some knives.

I shuddered. I shivered. I went cold all over. This was grim.

I would have to do some legwork. One hell of a lot of legwork. I would have to dig out records that went back to imperial times to see what the villains had in common. What piece of apparel, decoration, or whatnot, that might carry a curse compelling a man to waste ladies who ought to be conserved for fates sometimes known as worse than death.

Is it really worse, girls?

29

The case had developed a certain rhythm. I should have expected what happened next, as I was about to rejoin Block and the Dead Man. It was guaranteed.

Somebody pounded on the door. “Three guys with knives,” I muttered as I headed that way, Dean having proclaimed himself incapacitated before the pounding stopped.

I peeped through the peephole. “I wish it was three guys with knives.” I considered pretending nobody was home. But Barking Dog knew better. He had come around often enough to know our dark secret. Somebody was always home.

I opened up. “Uhm?”

“Been more than a week, Garrett. You ain’t been over to get my papers.” He bulled in behind the usual aromatic advance guard, dripping. He produced his latest report.

“You writing the history of the world?”

“What else I got to do? It don’t stop raining. I don’t like getting wet.”

“I noticed.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Cabin fever’s making me cranky. Maybe you ought to polish your speeches. It can’t rain forever.”

“No. Only all day every day. You noticed that? It’s mostly just raining during the daytime? How did the weather get so screwed up, Garrett?”

I thought about tossing him something flip about the Cantard and stormwardens but feared he’d go off the deep end with some wild new theory.

“You’d think the gods themselves don’t want me spreading the truth.”

“Them probably more than most mortals.” I left it at that, mostly because I didn’t get a chance to say anything more,

Barking Dog froze. His eyes got huge, his breathing ragged. He threw one hand up, fingers twisting into the sign against the evil eye. He said, “Gah! Gah! Gah!” in a high squeak, retreated toward the door. “It’s him!” he croaked. “Garrett! It’s him!”

Him
was Captain Block, who stood in the doorway to the Dead Man’s room, gaping. When I turned back to Amato, I saw nothing but the door closing behind him.

“Gah! Gah!” I said, making the horns. “What was that?”

Block asked, “What was Amato doing here?”

“Him and the Dead Man are buddies. They get together to make up stories about the secret masters. It’s amazing how they get along. What’s your story? How do you know Barking Dog?”

Block’s cheek twitched. He looked like he wasn’t sure where he stood. “In the course of my labors as a minion of the hidden manipulators, the puppet masters who pull the strings on marionette judges and functionaries, I was forced to circumscribe Mr. Amato’s freedom.”

I laughed. “You arrested him?”

“I didn’t arrest him, Garrett. Whatever he claims. I just asked him to come talk to a man who was put out about something he said. He’d have been fine if he could’ve kept his mouth shut for five minutes. But he just couldn’t resist tearing into the best audience he ever had. One thing led to another. I had to take him in front of a magistrate for a formal warning about libel. He couldn’t stop running his mouth. Donner doesn’t have a sense of humor. He doesn’t find Barking Dog an amusing street character. The more he bore down, the more Amato jacked his jaw. So he got pissed, gave Amato fifty-five days for contempt. And all of that is
this
running dog’s fault. You never heard such carrying on as when we were walking him over to the Al-Khar. Hell, if he could’ve kept his mouth shut then, I’d probably have screwed up and let him get away. But he pissed
me
off.”

“A different view of events,” I said. “Though his version isn’t much different. He said it was his own fault.”

Block chuckled, but grimly. “I wish all our rebels were as harmless.”

“Huh?”

“One of the reasons the Prince wants to get serious is, he thinks we’re on the brink of chaos. The way he puts it, if the Crown can’t demonstrate its willingness to fulfill its social contract with the Karentine people, in an obvious and popular fashion, we’ll head into a period of increasing instability. The first sign will be the appearance of neighborhood vigilante groups.”

“We already have those, some places.”

“I know. He thinks they’ll get stronger and become politicized. Fast, if Glory Mooncalled stays lucky. Each time he makes fools of us, more movers and shakers head down there to help tame him. The more that go, the fewer there are to keep the peace here.

“He thinks the vigilantes may connect up, form private militias. Then different groups that don’t agree politically will go to knocking each other’s heads.”

“Got it. Some might even take a notion to get rid of the folks running things now.”

“The Crown could end up as one more gang on the streets.”

Good boy me, I didn’t say a word about that.

Overall, we Karentine rabble are unpolitical. All we want is to be left alone. We avoid what taxes we can, but do pay some as protection money. You pay a little here and there, the tax goons don’t grab everything. Near as I can tell, that’s the common man’s traditional relationship with the state—unless he’s a state thug himself.

I said, “I might have to take a closer look at this prince—if he really thinks the Crown is something besides a mechanism for squeezing out cash to benefit the privileged classes.” I buttered too much sneer onto my remarks. Block didn’t understand that I was being cynical and sarcastic instead of seditious. He gave me a thoroughly dirty look.

I said, “Maybe I should pay more attention to the fable about Barking Dog’s running mouth.”

“Maybe, Garrett.”

“What did you do down there?”

That’s a question every veteran understands. And every human male adult in TunFaire who can stand on his hind legs, and plenty who can’t anymore, are veterans. The one thing the Crown does very well indeed is find every man eligible for conscription.

“Army. Combat infantry to begin, then long-range recon. After I was wounded they moved me into military police. I saved a baronet’s ass once, which is how I came to get this job.”

A hero. But that didn’t mean squat. Most everyone who lives long enough to get out does something heroic sometime. Even some downright nasty scum, like Crask, have medals they trot out. It’s a different world in the Cantard. It’s a different reality. Regardless of where they stand, heroes or villains, the men with the medals show them off with pride.

Contradictions. Being human is contradictory. I’ve known killers who were artists, and artists who were killers. The man who painted Eleanor was a genius in both fields. Both natures had tortured him. His torment ended only when he crossed paths with someone even crazier.