This Crooked Way (19 page)

“Hm,” said Morlock. “Didn't you write a stop-word into your golems' life-scrolls? Something that would bring them to a halt if they started to go astray?”

“Of course. What do you take me for?”

Morlock looked like he was about to tell him, then said, “Never mind that.”

“Well, it didn't work anymore, that's all.”

“I wrote stop-words into the golems I made for you a few months ago.”

“Oh, I know all about that. I took the scrolls out and changed their safe-words to my own. And now that won't work. You look like you don't believe me, but it's perfectly true.”

Morlock didn't answer this; he was silent for a moment, obviously thinking. “You obtained the information and secured it in your house?” he asked.

“Yes. I—”

“Was the place well hidden?”

“Yes. The—”

“Did you tell anyone the location? Did your golems see you hide it?”

“No. Whenever I—”

“Is it in a room with a window?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Charis stared at Morlock for a moment and said, “Yes, there's a window. But it was shuttered when I hid the information; no one could see in, if that's what you're—”

“Then we will go to your house.”

“But I
can't—
”

Morlock stopped him with a single glance. Oh, how I've tried to do that, but it never works, even with my daughters.

We went to Charis's house: a fortresslike palace of native blue-stone, not far from the western wall of the city. It was surrounded by a dry moat. There was no obvious way to cross the moat, but at one point in the wall there was a great bronze door; maybe that could be lowered like a bridge. Bow slits lined the walls above the moat; every now and then I caught the gleam of watching eyes.

We lurked in the shadows of a half-ruined building across the way from the bronze door while Charis pointed out to Morlock the window of the room where the information was hidden. “But we'll never reach it,” Charis said despairingly, and I had to agree: the window was halfway up a smooth featureless wall. Even if we could get across the moat without being spotted we could never climb up. And, even if we could get in the front door (which we couldn't), I didn't like the thought of trying to sneak through a house of killer golems.

But Morlock, when Charis had made the layout clear to him, just nodded and took something out of a pocket sewn into his cloak. (His clothing was full of weird pockets.) It looked like a big feathery ball; he unfolded two winglike branches, revealing a glassy sphere hanging in the middle. It was like a bird with no head, black wings, and a glass body.

I had no idea what it was, but Charis did. “No!” he gasped. “Not—”

“Keep him quiet,” Morlock said to us.

We did, enthusiastically.

Morlock held the bird-thing in his right hand. He struck flame with something he was holding in his left hand and applied it to the glass sphere. Nothing happened at first, but then something lit up inside the glass sphere. The wings stretched out and seemed almost to come alive.

Morlock said a couple of words I didn't understand and tossed the wing-thing into the air. It hovered above us for a moment, the glowing sphere casting a weird red light on our heads. Then it flew away toward the blue-stone facing of Charis's house, its red heart trailing fire through the blue-black darkness. It hit the house exactly on the opposite side of where the information was hidden (if Charis was telling the truth). The wing-thing exploded when it hit the wall and flame splashed out, taking root even in the stone and continuing to burn.

“Wow!” Thend remarked brilliantly.

“Do it again!” I said.

Morlock grinned crookedly at us and gestured that we should let Charis go.

“My house!” he groaned.

“It's not your house right now,” Morlock pointed out. “If we succeed tonight, it may be your house again.”

“I don't see how.”

“Then the fire loses you nothing. In any case, I'll pay you for the damage. We cross to the moat now.”

“What about the watchers?” I asked.

“There won't be any. All his golems are instructed to fight fires when they occur. I noticed it when I was last here. He's terrified of fire.”

“And why not?” Charis groaned.

Morlock did the shut-him-up-with-a-look thing again and we all ran across the open space and jumped down into the dry moat. Morlock led us around until we were just under the window of the room we wanted. He took something that looked like a big bean out of another pocket and, holding it up to his mouth, muttered some words to it. Then he put it down on the ground.

The bean burst like a hatching egg, and out of it crawled a vine with broad greenish black leaves. It crawled straight up the side of the moat and the wall above it.

“Wow!” said Thend. “That'll be handy in the mountains.”

Morlock looked rueful. “I'm afraid it's my last one. I had four, but I traded three of them to this boy for his cow.”

“That's crazy!”

“Well, I really needed the cow.” The vine stopped growing. “I'll go first,” Morlock said. “Send Charis after me. Then both of you come up; no one is to wait below.”

“Morlock,” I whispered, “I'm not sure I can climb all the way up to that window.”

Morlock replied quietly, “Just take a firm grip on the vine and hold on.” He did so, and vanished. I looked up and saw the vine was carrying him upward to the window. He fiddled with the shutters for a moment, then looked down to us and gestured. He disappeared into the now-open window.

“What a thief he could have been!” Thend whispered to me. “Robbery. Lock picking. House breaking. He can do it all.”

“Tell him sometime,” Charis said, with a pale unpleasant leer. “As long as I'm there to watch.”

“Up the vine, you,” I snapped.

His face got a mutinous look for a moment, but then he looked at ours. He turned and grabbed the vine. It carried him up the wall to the window and he climbed in.

Thend went next; I was last. It was like falling straight upward, and I nearly lost my grip at the top. But I didn't quite, and scrambled through the casement into the room I thought we'd never reach.

“Close the shutters,” Morlock said, still quietly, but not whispering. There was a big commotion coming from other parts of the house; it looked like Morlock's plan was working so far. He struck a light and set it on a nearby table.

“What's that?” I asked in a quavering voice, just before it moved.

It: vaguely manlike, but half again as tall as a man, and broad in proportion, with thick trunklike limbs. Its huge hairless head had big batwing ears dangling on either side and one great blue eye occupying its whole face: no nose or mouth. I thought it was a statue, set with its back against the door to keep it shut, until it stepped forward, clenching one hand and raising a spear in the other.

Morlock's sword was strapped over his back and he drew it just as the creature moved, thanks to my warning, I think. He leaped forward and struck off the thing's head. The head went spinning off and bounced against the door…but there didn't seem to be any effect on the creature at all. It grabbed Morlock with its left hand and threw him like a rag doll against the far wall. Then it threw its spear, pinning Morlock's sword arm to the wall. It strode up to him and grabbed his left arm with its right. It clenched its left hand and began striking Morlock on the head and body with its great stonelike fist: heavy blows, killing blows.

Thend cursed and ran forward to grab the thing's left arm. It was the bravest thing I'd seen since Roble ran off to fight the whole Bargainer village and the God in the Ground with one thin knife (my knife, as it happens, and I never got it back, either, but maybe that's not important).

But it was perfectly useless. The headless thing kept on pummelling Morlock, dragging Thend back and forth with each blow. It didn't even seem to know he was there.

I looked around for Charis. He was crouched under a table across the room. Useless sack of quivering snot—but what good could he do? What could any of us do? The thing would kill Morlock and then each one of us. Unless I could make it to the window and the vine would take me down…

It was the only course that made any sense. I couldn't help Morlock or Thend. There was no use in my dying, too.

Glancing about wildly, I saw the thing's severed head, sitting on the floor in front of the door. The single blue eye, still alive, was intently watching its former body pummel Morlock. I thought about tossing the head out the window, but that wouldn't do any good; it could kill Morlock without seeing him, now. I shuddered, wondering what sort of monster could kill someone after its head had been cut off.

Then I knew, of course. It had to be a golem. That thing, that golem in Charis's shop today, it had gone on babbling after Morlock ripped its eye out and split open its chest. It had only stopped moving when he…when he…

“Oh, no,” I whispered, as the idea struck me. “I can't do it. I
can't”

But I had to.

“Aaaaa-aaaa-
aaaaaah
!” I screamed, running across the room and leaping onto the golem's back. Its shoulder was surging back and forth as it pounded

Morlock, and I almost got thrown off, but it didn't seem to know or care that I was on it, and I managed to hold on with my legs and left arm. I plunged my right arm down into the open neck of the golem.

The inside of the golem was sticky, like wet clay, and the nastiness of it nearly made me let go. But I held on and groped around inside the golem's chest until my right hand closed on something that felt like a scroll. I seized it and pulled it out through the open neck.

The headless golem was just throwing back its fist for another blow. It froze as I brought the scroll triumphantly out.

“Ha!” I shouted as it teetered there, and then added, “Uh-oh!”

The dead golem fell back to the floor with me under it.

“Owie,” I complained, and passed out.

When I woke up I wasn't sure I had really been anywhere. It seemed like it was all a weird dream, and I was lying in my own sleeping cloak in the room of the abandoned house where Naeli and I slept.

Then I tried to sit up. “Be still, you stupid moron,” said Thend, pushing me back down. I realized my head was in his lap. He bent down and kissed my forehead.

“Hey!” he said. “She's all right!”

I was about to correct him, because I ached all over. But then I realized that if I was all right I could sit up. I pointed this out, pushing his ugly face out of my way after patting his cheek, and struggled to my feet.

The room was suddenly full of people who were glad to see me. If you've ever had the experience, you can fill in the blanks here—I'm not going to describe everything that was said and done.

Eventually I noticed Morlock leaning against the doorway with a broad smile on his bruised face, watching me in the bosom of my family.

I glared at him. He was supposed to be invulnerable, protecting me from the bad people. And there he was grinning at me because, through sheer luck, his recklessness and the golem hadn't killed all four of us in Charis's house.

“Thanks for saving my life,” he said, when the furor died down a bit.

“Yeah, well,” I said huffily. “Watch your step. I might not be around to do it, next time.”

He shrugged and opened his hands in a
well, you know
kind of gesture. This seemed pretty flippant, under the circumstances, so I clouded up and thundered at him for a while. I was pretty clear about what I expected from him and how he had so far failed to deliver. At least I tried to be, but the fact that my face was buried against his chest part of the time may have muffled some of my words, that and some of the weeping.

He patted my back awkwardly until I settled down, and then said, “Eh, what are you complaining about? You didn't even have to walk home.”

Charis was standing nearby in the room beyond and he said, “I must say the young lady has a point. We all owe her a great deal. I would estimate—”

“It's not a business relationship,” Morlock said. He wasn't smiling when he said it, but his tone wasn't really much different than when he'd been talking to me. Still, Charis crumpled like a moth who'd gotten too close to a candle flame.

I stood back and wiped my eyes. “So you got what you need from Charis's house? Now we go north?”

Charis's twisted face took on a panicky look, which Morlock ignored, saying, “Yes and no.”

“Ugh. What a stupid thing to say! Which is it?”

“Yes, we got the information from Charis's house. No, we are not going north, at least not right away.”

“Morlock thinks there's some threat to the city from outside,” said Roble, coming up beside me. “He may be right.”

“So what?” I said. If all Sarkunden sank into the ground it wouldn't ruin my day.

“Eh,” Morlock said, “it's not my favorite city either. But it's the keystone of the Empire's defenses in the north. If it broke, the Khroi or the Anhikh could sweep in at will—possibly both.”

“You're an imperial outlaw!” I said. “What do you care?”

He shrugged his wry shoulders. “I have friends in the Empire. If it collapses, they'll be in harm's way. I'm going to see about this.”

“All right,” I said grudgingly. “What do we have to do?”

“You,” my mother said, with a calm that was just the thin icy coating on a deep dark lake of fury, “will do precisely
nothing
.”

I didn't feel like arguing with her. First because she obviously was one thumb's length away from crazy and I didn't want to push her in the wrong direction; second because I ached all over, especially in my belly. I didn't want to go anywhere.

“It's someone else's turn on the field anyway,” Stador said, apparently thinking I was disappointed. “Come look at the map!”

The map was unrolled on the floor in the next room: a huge map of the city. Looking closely at it, I saw three tiny pieces of gold quivering on the map.

One was not far from the Great Market, where we'd had our run-in with the Sandboys. Another was moving down the twists of an alley toward the South Wall. One was firmly fixed on the citadel, where the Imperial Guards had their headquarters.