Wicked Bronze Ambition: A Garrett, P.I., Novel (31 page)

Tara
Chayne pulled the bell chain beside Shadowslinger’s door. A weird shriek sounded on the other side. She didn’t wait for a response. She opened up and invited us in.

Mashego turned up as we were reorganizing in the foyer. She told us, “We were hoping you would come today. There is good news.”

I refrained from comment. Nothing good could come out of my mouth just now.

Tara Chayne asked, “That good news would be what?”

“The mistress is awake. It happened during the night.”

“Excellent.”

“However, she isn’t herself yet. She’s sitting up. She’s taking food and drink—plenty of both—but she is confused and has trouble communicating.”

Bashir joined us. “She doesn’t seem quite sure who she is or where. She has trouble talking clearly.”

I said, “Classic stroke stuff, then.”

“Yes. Dr. Ted concurs, with reservations.”

“Reservations?”

“He says there are anomalies. But that there always are. You’ll have to ask him about that.”

“I see.” I glanced at Tara Chayne. She didn’t appear as pleased as she might have been. Still, she was a sparkling fountain of positivism compared to her sister. For Mariska the news seemed bleak indeed.

Singe and Dollar Dan had no comment and, likely, didn’t care. They were flighty as dust motes in a sunbeam, in constant motion in relation to each other and Mariska, always making sure they were poised to counter anything she tried.

Their nostrils and whiskers, and their ears, twitched and flexed, twitched and flexed. I thought it reasonable to assume that they were catching sound and scent cues that said Moonslight was considering trying something the moment she thought she had a chance.

I faced Mariska, leaned in, looked her in the eye from bad-breath range. “Not a good idea to try right now.” Which startled her totally.

She had been so busy calculating that she hadn’t caught the cues she should have picked up from the rest of us.

One glance round showed her that escape wasn’t going to happen.

There was a noise out front, right on time. She looked hopeful for an instant, then lapsed into despair.

Moonblight demanded, “Really? You were thinking that way? Now? Under these . . . ?” Then she understood why her sister might take an idiot’s chance.

This was Shadowslinger’s hole-up. Shadowslinger was back. The old sow might be confused now, but how long would that last? How long before she remembered that her granddaughter had been murdered just down the Hill? How long before she heard that Mariska Machtkess had been in with one of the Operators?

I’d be desperate, too.

For no concrete reason, though, I was sure that Moonslight had had nothing to do with Strafa’s death. I was sure she knew no more about the murder than the rest of us did—despite her connections with the Operators.

I told Singe, “I just had an awful notion.” I grabbed Barate as he and Kevans came in quarreling, their timing perfect. “That was you two making the racket out there?”

“What?” he snapped. He was not in a good mood. Kevans was less so. Neither showed any improvement when Bashir told them that Shadowslinger had awakened.

I told anyone who cared to listen, “I just realized that, despite everything they’ve done to mess with us and hurt us, the Operators haven’t been acting like they were responsible for what happened to Strafa.” I laid a hard, fierce, pointed look on Mariska Machtkess and got enough force behind it to make her push back.

“He had nothing to do with what happened to Strafa.” “He” presumably being her clergyman boyfriend. “He was extremely unhappy about that. It meant that she couldn’t participate.”

Moonslight and I faced each other with people two-deep around us now. She continued. “He was sure his people were not involved. It would be stupid to eliminate Furious Tide of Light before the contest started.”

I had been thinking that for a while. “Why would Strafa even be picked when the tournament usually pulled in only young people?”

Mariska eyed me like she thought the Algarda family Mortal Companion had been stricken dim. She pointed at Barate, then Kevans, stealthily.

Oh. They had no talent to give up.

She went ahead and said it. “Furious Tide of Light was a Windwalker and more besides. She was a deep reservoir of power and talent. She never did figure out what all she could do. She wasn’t that interested.”

And, I suspected, she’d looked like an easy harvest.

She was always trusting and naive.

That could have been what got her killed. Not having the kind of mind that would be wary of someone rolling a big-ass siege engine up the street. I could see her watching somebody park and arm the ugly bastard without ever being more than child-curious until it was too late.

I said, “Barate, we need to get everybody together so we can share whatever we’ve found out. I haven’t gotten much. I kept nipping around the edges of the tournament thing. The villains kept coming at me from every angle.”

“Considering their success so far and the relentless interest of the Guard, they must be running short on dirty workers.”

Kevans’s mood did not improve. She was unhappy about everything. Plus, she’d had her nose rubbed in the fact that she had been passed over in favor of an old woman like her mother.

She was the new Algarda Champion, but one unsuccessful attack had convinced her that she wanted no part of the game. That had penetrated her shield of adolescent wishful thinking. That had gotten her attention where the murder of her mother had not.

Kevans felt compelled to say something. “I’m going to go check on Grandmother. Then I’m going to stay right here, with her, until this absurd shit is over.” Her glare dared anyone to disagree or to correct her language.

All she got was an explosive sigh of relief from her father.

Once we
started upstairs I no longer wanted to go. It had to be done, though. It could be. I had dealt with other warped defectives.

I don’t know why I thought Shadowslinger’s having suffered a stroke would make her more dangerous, but the conviction was there.

Her room stank of sickness and foul digestive gasses. Mashego was with her, beside the bed, patiently spooning Shadowslinger a dog-food-looking meat paste a bit at a time.

Shadowslinger looked healthier than I expected, considering how vicious strokes can be. She recognized us. She tried to talk but could not produce a sensible sentence, nor was her speech clear enough to understand. My mother was the same way after her second stroke.

Mom had trouble communicating after the first but had come up with workarounds. Worst for me had been her inability to get my name out. She called me “man” or “that man.”

Shadowslinger’s chow looked just awful. It probably smelled awful, too, but the stink could not break through that already in the room.

With the tact of her age Kevans said, “Isn’t there a window we can open or something? This place reeks enough to gag a maggot.”

No window was visible. Wall hangings kept any outside light well tamed.

Cold eyes settled on me. Where else could Kevans have acquired an expression like the one she’d used?

One pair belonged to the old sorceress herself. I thought I ambushed a glint of amusement. It went away quickly but left me reflective.

Bashir oozed through the crowd, past the foot of Grandmother’s bed, to the wall on the far side. “Would you give me a hand, sir?” He wanted to take down the massive carpet that hung against that wall.

And carpet it was. You could see the wear patterns traffic had left when it graced the floor of some Venageti poobah, before Shadowslinger arranged for it to have a better home.

I asked for instructions. Bashir provided them. Straining, we lowered the hanging to the floor. That revealed a moth-eaten tapestry. That coming down revealed a window behind. Clearing the shades and shutters so its leaves could be swung wide demanded careful work. The wooden parts were rotten.

Bashir swung the leaves inward, right and left, so he could get the outside shutters open. Then he swung the windows outward. Constance made unhappy noises. She did not want to face the outside light.

She did not have to shrink from that. The outside world had gone completely glum and rainy. Soggy cold air tumbled inside.

I stated the obvious. “Those shutters need replacing.” Paint wouldn’t be enough. They had gone too long without.

Barate said, “Another of a thousand maintenance issues that have been ignored for years.” He spoke toward the window. Neither his mother nor Bashir responded.

Kevans muttered something about how somebody who was too damned cheap to spend a copper now was going to have to shell out silver later. That did get a reaction from Shadowslinger, who had caught every critical inflection.

I decided to be the peacemaker. “We have bigger problems. Let’s deal with them before we decide what rouge to put on the pig.”

Barate said, “Much as we need fresh air in here, I think we can do without the wind and the rain.”

A gust had just scattered a gallon of cold drizzle inside.

Barate pulled one wing of the window shut and the other in till there was just a four-inch gap. Mashego backed off with the meat paste and, instead, handed the old horror a pad of paper and one of Cypres Prose’s stoutest Amalgamated writing sticks. Shadowslinger was able, impatiently, to communicate via head shake and clumsy block letter printing.

She used her right hand. Like most Algardas, though, she was naturally left-handed. Her left side had more coming back to do.

She let us know that she wanted to hear every detail of what had been going on while she was unconscious. She took the reports without reacting unless two or three people started talking over one another or arguing about some detail. She did show some irritation when Moonslight’s role came up. She didn’t seem especially surprised to learn that old campaigning pal Meyness B. Stornes had survived and was masquerading as a magister of the Church. She did get excited when she heard that Kevans had been drafted in Strafa’s stead and that someone had tried to kill her.

The attacks on me and Tara Chayne were, apparently, no big deal. Only to be expected. Just a device for attritting the opposition.

Somehow the Black Orchid never came up. Shadowslinger had Dollar Dan Justice come tell what the rat men had done and seen while helping deal with Kevans’s attackers. That only left her more upset.

I did my best to help Dan relax and report calmly. I also observed, “We still don’t have a Dread Companion.”

Shadowslinger’s sleepy gaze brushed me momentarily. She was exhausted now. She was pushing herself too hard. She grunted. I couldn’t tell what that meant, nor could anyone else.

Dr. Ted had remained quiet and out of the way till now. He decided that she was about to hit a wall. “Time for everyone to leave. Bashir, take them to the kitchen. They can go on with this down there.”

By which he meant following up on secondary conversations concerning the evidence having to do with Strafa’s death as well as the search-and-research work that had been under way.

Singe would, likely, be more use there than I would. She was in touch with the people doing the digging at least part-time.

I was next to last to go, leaving only Mash behind me. Dr. Ted had no intention of leaving.

Shadowslinger completed a laborious effort with her writing stick. She held the pad up, hands trembling. It said
Everyone out! Accept Garrett
.

You don’t correct a Shadowslinger. Not when you know what she meant.

Ted and Mash both wanted to argue. Ted and Mash gave that up after one good look at Shadowslinger’s darkening visage.

Visage is one of those cool words you don’t get to use much. It was the perfect choice here. The terrible old woman’s face had become a curtain between her interior realm and the rest of the universe. Intimations of rising storms therein left you determined to be somewhere else when the curtain rose.

Shadowslinger leaned into her writing stick and paper while Ted and Mashego made their getaway.

Shadowsli
nger’s new message said CHECk HalL. for EAVEsdrop. MAKE
It Go.

“Got it.” I looked. Sure enough, a herd of villains lurked there, ears cocked. I borrowed Shadowslinger’s pad to show them what she had to say. They moved on surlily.

I told Barate, “She’ll know if you sneak back.” Warning delivered while hoping that someone, preferably him, would be there to rescue me if Shadowslinger became overheated.

“I understand.”

He slunk away. And I understood that he wouldn’t be back. I was on my own. I would have no cover whatsoever.

I squared my handsome broad shoulders, put a smile on my handsome rugged face, turned to face the dread symphony.

With precision timing a gust flipped one leaf of the window open and flung rainy cold air inside. I scooted round the bed to deal with that.

Slowly, in words only slightly slurred, so softly it was unlikely that an eavesdropper might hear, Shadowslinger said, “Leave it. I need the noise.”

Mouth arrayed to catch horseflies and other small game, I ceased all efforts to do a good deed.

Speaking slowly and straining to make each word understandable, she said, “As you have begun to suspect, my health issue is not as debilitating as I have pretended.”

I closed my mouth so I could open it to ask a question. Several questions, actually. Or maybe a book full. That’s the kind of guy I am. I have an inquiring mind.

Shadowslinger cut me off with a look. “This seemed a good idea at one time. It no longer is. Time has flown. There isn’t much left. No more than forty hours.”

I had no idea what that meant. She didn’t explain. She refused to waste time on explanations. She was down to her deep reserve.

“You must end the tournament threat before time runs out.”

“But Strafa—”

“Your wife will be there. She will always be there. The Operators must be handled before that can be.”

I sighed. This meant a lot to her, in a strategic sense, not just personally.

I didn’t get it.

As is the case most all the time in my world, something was going on and I wasn’t being clued in.

She showed me a strained smile. “Break the Operators in the next forty hours. I promise you, you will be glad that you did.”

Another hefty Marine Corps sigh. “I can but do my damnedest, madame.” Then I had an idea. An unpleasant recollection that might be part premonition. “No one told you before. The Black Orchid has come out of retirement. She has become involved.”

Nothing for five or six seconds, followed by a whole-body shudder, as though the incoming air had just added a sudden arctic chill. Several more seconds slipped away. She regained control. “Orchidia Hedley-Farfoul? Involved? How? And why?”

I told her about Orchidia’s twins.

“Damn me, I should have anticipated that. The Operators should have taken her into account, too. This could be a disaster.”

Wow! The Black Orchid had an impact on Constance Algarda as big as Shadowslinger had on regular people.

Orchidia Hedley-Farfoul’s talent for murder must be all-time world-class.

Constance pulled herself together. “Orchidia is not incapable of reason. She is, in fact, coldly intellectual. Assuming she has sense enough to consult family, Bonegrinder will tell her the Breakers had nothing to do with her twins.”

Her condition had improved dramatically again.

Funny, that.

I kept my thoughts off my face, which I can do occasionally, in a desperate moment. “Breakers?”

“It’s what we called our gang when we were rebels. A weak inside joke. I use the name to include anybody interested in wrecking the Operators and tournament.”

The Orchidia thing truly had her stressed. She was giving stuff away left and right.

She made another effort. “This means nothing to you. It changes nothing for you. Though you will have to move fast if you want to question Meyness Stornes without the assistance of a necromancer. I am too weak to reach him once he goes toe-to-toe with Orchidia and loses—despite the season.”

Huh? “Maybe she doesn’t know about . . .”

“What she doesn’t know she soon will. Nothing stops the Black Orchid once she . . . Understand this. Orchidia Hedley-Farfoul might actually be the avatar of Death. Enma Ai. Death made manifest by faith.”

She had lost me.

“Some believe that. Their belief may not be just fearful superstition. Divine possession is uncommon but not unknown.”

No. It was not. I had seen it. It seemed improbable here, but . . . Most anything that the mind can imagine can happen in TunFaire, and certainly will in time.

Constance was wobbly from effort, and ready to collapse.

She said, “You must . . . resolve the tournament situation . . . before sunrise day after tomorrow.”

“Sunrise? Day after . . . ? What? Why?” Tomorrow, come to think, was Day of the Dead, a holy day important in some of our more successful religions. Sundown tomorrow would start All-Souls Night, significant to those who believed that it was possible to communicate with the dead.

The believers include me, though I don’t put much stock in All-Souls. I have dealt with ghosts. I had a relationship with the shade of a woman who was murdered before I was born. During All-Souls Night the membrane between worlds is so thin that anyone willing to work at it can reach the dead—if the dead are inclined to be reached.

Those that aren’t too lost to respond usually don’t want to. Those who do are the sort most likely to become haunts anyway.

Only a few really strange folks do try to peek into the next world.

I frowned at that grim old woman. “What are you planning?”

She wasn’t listening. She was slipping away. She asked the air, “Oh, what have I done?” I think. She was mumbling and facing away. “It may be too late.” Seconds fled. “Nothing went the way it was supposed to.” And then, fifteen seconds later, “I guessed wrong. He is too dim and too lazy to get it done in time.” Then she was out completely and that looked real.

I wasn’t happy. I had a powerful notion that somebody, name of Garrett, was the “he” that had her muttering about dim and lazy. Which was not even a little fair because she, like everyone else, hadn’t given me any explanation of what was going on, what I was supposed to do, or why.

Stipulated, she could be right. I might be too dim. I was less flexible in my readiness to concede being too lazy.

Damn, did I wish that the Dead Man hadn’t gone south for the winter! He might be able to say why a holiday that hitherto had had no mention would, according to Constance Algarda, loom large as a deadline in which the dead part might play a big role.

I wasn’t going to find out anything leaning over an unconscious, stinky old sorceress while rain-laden air whipped my face through a window long overdue for closing.

I closed it.

I went down to the kitchen. The crowd eyed me expectantly.