The Banshee's Walk (2 page)

Rannit had moved up and away from Wardmoor, even before the War. The big farms were north and west. The new reservoir was east. The only roads I knew of that went south were logging roads, and even those were seldom used, since it was easier to float timber down the Brown than it was to haul it through the woods and the mud.

“I run the House now,” said Lady Werewilk. “I’ve made it an artist’s colony. I house thirty-five of Rannit’s most talented painters and sculptors. One day their works will be known as the single most important body of work since the end of the War.”

I nodded, as if that was of course a widely known fact.

“Do you know of anyone who might wish a different direction for the House, Lady?”

Lady Werewilk frowned. “I do not, Mr. Markhat,” she said. The ashes at the end of her tobacco stick were getting dangerously long, and I hoped Gertriss was hurrying.

“You have family?”

She nodded and inhaled. “I have a brother. Milton. Our parents are long dead, no aunts, no uncles, no distant cousins, no one left. And Milton—well, Mr. Markhat, Milton is simply incapable of plotting to seize the House.”

“We’re very relaxed here, Lady Werewilk,” I said. “I’ll sweep the floor later.”

She thumped her smoke stick, and the ashes fell, and she used those few moments to gather her words. I pretended to scribble notes and gave her some time. No one, rich or poor, likes to be rushed when showing the family skeletons to tradesmen.

“Milton served in the War,” she said. “When he came back, he was…changed.”

I nodded. Some called them changed. Others called them the Broken. You see them all over Rannit, slumped and silent and vacant-eyed, still fighting their own dark battles years after the last bugle sounded. “I served too,” I said. “And I saw a lot of changed men, Lady. I understand.”

She smiled at me, for the first time. It was brief, but bright.

“Milton is not insane,” she said. Her smile vanished. “He is not—what do they call it? Broken. But he has retreated. Into a world of his own making. He has no interest in the House, or anything else, for that matter. He would no longer eat, if I didn’t have Singh sit him down twice a day and force him to chew and swallow.”

“Singh?”

“Butler,” said Lady Werewilk. “He’s been with us for forty years. He amassed a small fortune himself, during the War. His loyalty is without question.”

I nodded as though I agreed, although questioning unimpeachable loyalties is often what I’m paid to do.

Gertriss knocked once and then came bustling in, balancing a tea tray carefully in one hand. On it, a silver teapot gleamed, and I wondered just where Mama kept her good china.

“Lady Werewilk was just telling me about her House, Gertriss. She has reason to believe someone might want to remove it from her control.”

Gertriss, bless her, just nodded and set about pouring tea.

“Go on, Lady Werewilk,” I said. “So you have thirty-five artists, Singh the butler and your brother Milton. Who else?”

“A staff of ten, not counting Singh.” She took a dainty sip of her tea, her grey eyes intent on Gertriss, who blushed. “Forgive me,” said Lady Werewilk, to Gertriss. “But you, young lady, have a unique look. I believe some of my artists would be fascinated by you, those skin-tones…that face. Would you be interested in posing at Werewilk, dear? There would be no pay, of course, but I believe some of our works are destined to be masterpieces.”

Gertriss wrinkled her brow. “Me, my Lady? Pose for a picture painter? Why, I wouldn’t even know what to wear.”

“You’d wear nothing, of course. We are interested in the nude human form, not any passing fad of fashion.”

“Gertriss, I need more sugar,” I said quickly. “I’m sure Mama has some, will you see?”

I was relieved that Gertriss didn’t slam the door on her way out.

Lady Werewilk laughed. “Oh dear,” she said. “I’ve ruffled some feathers, have I not?”

I nodded and made a rueful face. “This is her first day in Rannit,” I said. “And I’m sure it’s also the first time she’s ever been asked to be painted in the nude. It may even be the first time she’s ever heard the word nude spoken aloud.”

Lady Werewilk stubbed out the remains of her smoke stick on the saucer left by my fleeing Gertriss. “Pity,” she said. “Most of the models I get are stick-thin rich men’s daughters who starve themselves because they think it looks Elvish. She has a certain earthy appeal, your Miss Gertriss. Tell her the offer still stands, should she change her mind.”

“I’ll do that, Lady Werewilk.” I leaned back in my chair and did my best to appear studious. “Now, tell me about your staff. All of them. Start with the most recent ones hired and work backwards.”

Lady Werewilk nodded, lit another smokestick with one of those newfangled red-tipped matches, and set about describing her household while smoke-wraiths swirled and danced.

Gertriss knocked.

“Come on in, Gertriss,” I said. “Lady Werewilk is gone.”

Gertriss, still blushing, stomped in.

“I’m sorry ’bout that,” said Gertriss. “I reckon I’ve got to get used to city folk and their ways, and turnin’ red and puffin’ up ain’t the way to handle it.”

I nodded, though I could almost hear Mama’s voice coaching Gertriss to say just that.

“You did fine. Lady Werewilk was unusual even by my standards.” I picked up the long thin birchwood stick that was lying on my desk and handed it to Gertriss. “Do you know what this is?”

She took it, eyed it gravely. “Looks like a surveyor’s marker,” she said.

I beamed. “That’s what it is. It doesn’t have a maker’s mark on it, so I don’t know who it belongs to, but it’s a surveyor’s stick. Lady Werewilk has been finding them all over her property for the last several weeks.” I motioned Gertriss into the client’s chair. “Nobody admits to planting them, or to knowing anything about them. What does that suggest to you, Gertriss?”

She wrinkled her brow. “Somebody wants her House or her land. Or at least part of it.”

“One thing a finder should never do is jump to conclusions.” Her big blue eyes fell, so I spoke again quickly. “But that’s what I’m going to assume too, at least until we find otherwise.”

She smiled and put the stick down. “She got brothers, sisters, cousins?”

“One brother,” I replied. “He came back from the War broken. She doesn’t believe he is capable of dressing or feeding himself, much less snatching the House out from under her. We’ll assume that’s true too, at least until we meet him in person.”

She brightened at that. “I’ll be goin’ with you, Mister Markhat?”

I nodded. “You won’t be much use to me sitting here. But I have conditions, Miss. First, you stay quiet as much as possible, but you listen.”

She bit her bottom lip and nodded.

“Next, while you listen to what people say, watch what they do. Watch where they go. Watch who they talk to or don’t talk to. Sometimes that tells you more than their words ever do.”

Again, a nod. I chuckled inwardly.

“Oh, and Miss Gertriss. No posing nude while you’re on my payroll.”

Finally, she laughed, and her eyes twinkled.

“I weren’t plannin’ on no naked shenanigans. On your pay or off it.”

“Good girl,” I replied. “Now here’s the plan. We head south tomorrow, first light. We’ll be staying at the House until we find our mystery surveyor or until Lady Werewilk gets tired of paying us, whichever comes first. As junior member of the firm Finder Markhat you get one of every five crowns we’re paid. Do good, and the next case might get you one and a half. Is that a deal?”

She went wide-eyed. I guess by backwoods standards a crown was a small fortune. In Rannit, she’d learn soon enough, it was somewhat less than that.

I held out my hand. She took it, shook it, and the Finder Markhat agency officially doubled its staff.

I let her take a breath.

“All that means we’ve got some things to do today,” I said. “We want to blend in, Gertriss. We want people to forget who we are and where we are, as much and as often as possible. And that means we’ve got to get you into some city clothes, before we go.”

She blushed again, and her right hand instinctively caught at the rough unsewn hem of her coarse handmade blouse.

I raised a hand before she could protest.

“I have a lady friend who will handle all the personal attention,” I said. “And don’t worry about the cost. One thing Darla has is plenty of clothes and a soft spot for young ladies dressed in burlap.”

“But, Mister Markhat, Mama said I could borrow some of her old…”

I had a flash, saw Gertriss arrayed in moth-eaten rags four feet too short for her that trailed owl feathers when she walked.

I stood up. “I am the boss, am I not, Gertriss?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then here’s another condition. No wearing anything Mama gives you. Ever. Got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

I smiled, rose, nodded for her to do the same.

“Glad that’s settled,” I said. “Let’s go meet Darla. I’ll tell you about House Werewilk on the way.”

Gertriss rose. I guessed she was still none too sure about dressing in lewd, lascivious city garb but determined to hang onto her pay even at the cost of burlap-enforced modesty.

“Will we be walking or taking a cab, Mister Markhat?” she asked.

I thought about those Army-issue doggers she was wearing and the long hike to Darla’s and added the cost of a cab to my loss of every fifth crown and forced a big wide city fella smile.

“Why, a cab, of course,” I said, snatching my good grey hat off its peg and offering my arm to Gertriss. “We city folk never walk when we can ride in style.”

Gertriss looked at my proffered elbow in sincere puzzlement. “Somethin’ wrong with your arm, Mister Markhat?” she asked.

I laughed, and we made for the street.

It was a day of firsts for Gertriss. Her first ride in a cab, her first sight of ogres walking shoulder to shoulder with human folks, her first sight of red-clad street preachers and the bridge clowns on Cyrus and the short skirts and open solicitations of the whores that line the streets between Camus and Drade. And everywhere, of course, the ragged Broken, the nimble beggars, the ever-present cries of the whammy men and the clanging of distant foundry machines in the factories that line the south bank of the River.

I tried to fill Gertriss in on the Curfew and the dead wagons on the way. I explained about the Big Bell banging out Curfew every night, and how the halfdead were legally entitled to snack on anyone who wasn’t Watch or a marked city employee after Curfew. I explained about the dead wagons that stalked the streets each morning, and what caused that smoke that wafted from the tall crematorium chimneys along the Brown.

“Missus Hog claimed you broke Curfew all the time,” sputtered Gertriss, unable to tear her eyes away from the antics of the bridge clowns that paced our cab as we crossed over the canal at Drade.

I shrugged. “I’ve had to break Curfew a few times,” I said. A clown caught hold of the cab’s window and capered along with us, gibbering and hooting at Gertriss until the cabbie landed a whack on the top of his head with a stout shaft of oak. “That doesn’t mean you can do it. If you’re ever caught out, and you hear that bell ring, you get indoors if you have to break in somewhere, you understand? The halfdead won’t enter a business or a dwelling. That’s the law. They don’t break it.” Because they don’t have to, I added, mentally. The sad fact is that there is a more than sufficient supply of idiots and criminals. So many, in fact, that most Curfew-breakers never see a halfdead, much less wind up dead by one.

Gertriss nodded, still mesmerized by the capering clowns. “Too, I have this,” I said. I produced the medallion Evis gave me, a while back—it marked me as a friend of House Avalante, and while that wasn’t an iron-clad assurance of safety, it meant that anyone harming the wearer would face the wrath of a Dark House, and even other Dark Houses weren’t usually that hungry.

The cab clattered along, and Gertriss drank it all in, gabbing happily along the way. I managed to learn that she’d been a farmhand back home, mainly dealin’ with hogs. She reported she was the oldest of six sisters, and she had once seen a Troll in the woods taking a shit in a creek. Not exactly a sterling resume for becoming a street-wise finder. But there was an intelligence behind her countrified accent and naiveté, so I resolved to give her a chance. One chance, and no more, and if Mama took that hard that was just too bad.

We reached Darla’s, and I paid the cabbie, and as Gertriss noted the fare she got her first taste of the high cost of living in the city.

I shrugged and grinned. “Welcome to Rannit,” I said, pulling her quickly onto the sidewalk before a passing cab spun her out of the way.

She looked up and around, gawking openly at the wonders of three-story wood-front buildings and the glass windows that revealed everything from jewelry to clothing to fancy lamps for milady’s tea room.

“This is Darla’s,” I said, easing her toward Darla’s fancy oak and glass entry. “Darla is a friend of mine.”

“More’n a friend, way I hear it,” said Gertriss with a sly grin.

“It’s a wonder Mama Hog ever gets any sooths said, the way she gossips,” I noted. A bell on the door chimed, and Darla herself came darting out from the back, a long black gown twin to the one Lady Werewilk had been wearing in her hands.

“Darla dearest.” I probably smiled. “I’d like you to meet someone.”

Darla smiled back. She has a good smile. And big luminous brown eyes and short dark hair. She draped the gown over a mannequin and came quickly over to meet us.

“Miss Darla, this is Gertriss.” Gertriss blushed and wondered what to do, until Darla stuck out her hand to shake. “Gertriss is Mama Hog’s niece. She’s come to Rannit to learn Mama’s trade.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Gertriss. “I’m working with Mister Markhat, for now.”

Darla lifted a narrow brown eyebrow and tried to hide a grin. She’d sized up the whole morning’s events faster than I could have explained them.

“We start our first case in the morning,” I said. “Miss Gertriss needs some new clothes.”

Darla nodded and took my hand and squeezed it. The twinkle in her eye said “And then she needs to burn all her old ones.”