The Banshee's Walk (13 page)

I heard voices from the House as Marlo and Gertriss brought out the servants. The banshee heard them too.

She just—left. Vanished. I saw only the briefest suggestion of movement, and then there was just an empty spot where she’d stood. No footfalls, no sound at all. I couldn’t even guess at the direction she might have taken.

I didn’t even notice, at first, that the hot buttered corn bread was gone too.

She’d left the napkin, but not a crumb.

I scanned the shadows.

“Good night, Buttercup.”

An owl hooted. A couple of dogs began to bark. People and torches began to fill the night.

“Next time, I’ll bring a biscuit.”

I bowed and turned and grabbed up the torch and drew Toadsticker just for show.

Gertriss was at my side in mere moments.

“I saw her get very close to you—did you see her? Did she try to hurt you?”

“When we’re inside.” People streamed past, all in hurry. Half were armed with the contents of Lady Werewilk’s basket of mayhem, and I hoped no one managed to cut off a finger or a toe before they put themselves to bed. A few were still chewing, not content to let a night of leaping ladies and menacing banshees put them off Lady Werewilk’s generosity.

Gertriss nodded. “If anyone did any surveying out here tonight they did it in a hurry, and they didn’t set out any stakes.”

I nodded and returned a few good evenings and set a leisurely pace back to the gaudy red doors.

“The night, as they say, is still young.”

“I had Lady Werewilk start some fresh coffee. Will I be taking the first watch, or will you?”

I smiled as we crossed the threshold of House Werewilk and the massive doors slammed shut behind us.

“You’ll have the first one. But all you’ll do is listen for the dogs, and you’ll wake me up if you hear them. You won’t go outside. For any reason. Is that clear, Miss?”

“I won’t go outside. I’ll wake you if the dogs raise a ruckus.”

“Good enough.”

The House was quiet. I could hear Lady Werewilk speaking to someone upstairs, but that was it.

“She told the lot of them that anyone not in their bed by the time we got back would be leaving for good in the morning.”

“And they obeyed?”

Gertriss nodded. “She meant it. Even the drunk ones could see that. Too, she was holding a bow at the time.”

“That does sometimes serve to emphasize one’s point.” I used Toadsticker to gently pry a pair of snoring hounds off the nearest couch before I flopped down across it myself. “I’ll be right here, Miss, sword in one hand and lightning in the other. Don’t let me sleep more than three hours.”

Gertriss nodded and was off, her eyes alight with the same youthful zeal for her new duties that I imagined I once wore.

Age takes it toll, though. I was sound asleep before either of the dogs dared join me on Lady Werewilk’s poor abused settee.

Chapter Nine

The night passed uneventfully, if one discounts the inherent discomforts of sleeping with restless canines and keeping one hand on the hilt of one’s newly acquired enchanted sword.

Gertriss and I traded watches every three hours. If Buttercup made any furtive dashes toward more of Lady Werewilk’s corn bread, she did so without alerting the resident dogs or Gertriss and her Sight.

I hadn’t told Gertriss about my trick with the corn bread yet. I told her most of the truth—that the banshee had simply stared at me, and then vanished without so much as a goodbye shriek. I decided I wouldn’t talk about any table scraps, unless they appeared to be luring the banshee within grabbing distance. I could just hear Mama cawing about the folly of feeding banshees from one’s pocket, and believe me Mama doesn’t need anything new to caw about.

We did talk about other things, though. Gertriss agreed that Weexil’s timely vanishing act was probably related to our arrival, and not just to coincidence. I couldn’t get much more than a vague description of what Gertriss had seen when she was out on the roof-ledge trying to loop a rope around Serris. According to Gertriss, Buttercup had just appeared behind them, standing there on the tiles as easy as a blue-jay. And then she’d turned those big luminous eyes on them, and let loose her trademark banshee howl.

The rest was a blur of falling over the ledge, grabbing at ropes and nightgowns and being sure she was about to plunge to her death.

Which she very nearly had. I cringed at the thought, suddenly aware that I’d taken her on as an employee with no warning as to the risks involved.

And though I’d not spoken a word of that, Gertriss had frowned at me over her coffee and informed me that she was a grown woman who had made the decision to come to Werewilk all on her own, thank you very much.

I was too tired to snort and mention Mama’s authorship of the whole plan. But I guess Gertriss saw that too, because she sighed and changed the subject.

“So tomorrow. What then?”

I shrugged. “First, we tell Scatter and Lank to spread the word that the market price for fresh surveyor’s sticks is a pair of coppers apiece.”

Gertriss cocked her head. “How will finding more of them help? We already know they don’t have any marks.”

“Greed, Miss. Pure and simple greed. A pair of coppers is a nice sum, out here in the rustic wild. Now, it’s one thing to ignore Lady Werewilk when she orders you to patrol the grounds at night. But I’m offering coin, just for bringing in sticks. In the daytime.”

Gertriss nodded in dawning understanding.

“And you think they’ll fan right out in a frenzy, scour the woods for you, maybe even find out where the surveyors are camped.”

It was my turn to grin and nod.

“And here I was, thinking we’d be riding out at first light doing the looking ourselves.”

“I might have done just that, back when I first started. These days, I try and let human nature do some of the hard labor for me.”

“And Lady Werewilk? Will she be happy when you tell her she’s buying up surveyor’s stakes?”

“She’s got banshees in her well-house and panicked painters under her roof. Come daylight, I’d bet my best socks that at least two of her staff quit. Two more if—” I nearly slipped up and called her Buttercup, “—if the banshee puts in another appearance the night after that. She won’t blink at buying stakes for two coppers each, Miss. That I can promise you.”

“You can stop calling me Miss, Mr. Markhat.”

“Certainly, Miss.” I heard a clock strike somewhere off in the shadows. “My turn to listen for the mutts. The couch has lumps and it smells like beer.”

“Everything in this place smells like beer.” Gertriss rose and rubbed her eyes. “See you in three hours.”

And so she had. By the time the sluggard sun managed to lumber high enough to cast some light through the trees, we’d both come to loathe that beer-scented couch.

On the heels of the sunrise came the breakfast crew. They were four in number, each apparently vying for the coveted title of Most Surly Woman South Of Rannit. I asked my usual questions, got nothing but grunts and glares and mumbled denials.

I kept on, planting myself firmly in their way, and making it painfully obvious I wasn’t going to budge until one of them deigned to speak.

Her name was Gladys. She’d been at House Werewilk longer than all but three of the staff, not counting Singh, who had apparently dropped fully formed straight from High Heaven on the Day of Creation and assumed his duties as butler right before the formation of firmament.

And if there was one thing Gladys hated, she opined, it was people getting between her and her cook-stove when there were biscuits to be baked.

I just kept grinning and kept reclining on the aforementioned cook-stove.

“So tell me, Gladys. When did the banshee first start coming around the House?”

Gladys gave me a hard glare and set her jaw. The rolling pin clutched in her flour-crusted right hand looked less like a cooking utensil and more like an instrument of mayhem with each passing moment.

I crossed my arms over my chest and widened my smile.

“I first heard talk of it back in mid-summer.”

Victory. I nodded.

“What kind of talk?”

“People sayin’ they’d seen it, plain as day, up in the trees, or wanderin’ the roofs.” She stamped her feet and broke out into a sweat. “Look, Mister, I’ve got work to do. I can talk and do it, but if’n I don’t get these biscuits in the oven right now I’m gonna let you explain to everybody why they ain’t got no breakfast.”

The stove was getting hot on my fundament anyway. I moved out of the way.

“There’d always been stories, though, hasn’t there?”

Gladys charged her precious stove and started laying out biscuits in a pan.

“Why you think they call this the Banshee’s Walk? ’Course there’s always been stories. I ain’t talking about stories.” She dusted the pan of biscuits with flour, gave them a good hard glare, and shoved them in the oven. “I’m talking about people seein’ that there thing out in the woods. Sober people. Hunters. Trappers. Them what knows what they’re seein’.”

“So she’s been seen other places than just here?”

Gladys charged across the kitchen, bent on another urgent culinary task.

“Ain’t too much huntin’ and trappin’ going on in Lady Werewilk’s yard, now is there?”

“I suppose not. One more question, and I’ll leave you be.”

Gladys snorted.

“Are there any quaint local customs about keeping the banshee happy? Do people put out food for her, bowls of milk, tie crossed ash sticks above their doors, anything like that?”

She turned and regarded me as if I’d just suggested we both climb aboard a flying pig and make for the Regent’s house.

“What kind of damn fool stump-jumpers do you take us for, city fella? Put out food for a haint? Listen, we works for our food around here, ain’t none of us hold it so cheap you’ll catch us leavin’ it outdoors for the coons…”

She had more to add, but I’d heard enough. I did leave like a gentleman, and refrained from slamming the door.

Gertriss caught me just outside it, stifling a bleary-eyed snicker. “That’s an interesting interview method, Mr. Markhat.”

“I like my coffee black. And find a big cup. The fancy ones don’t hold enough.”

Gertriss threw me a mock salute and passed bravely into the kitchen. I made for my room upstairs, and the fancy flushing toilet and hot bath therein.

Every time I visit a wealthy estate, I vow to renounce my sluggard ways and become rich myself so I too can have hot running water and the other comforts only serious coin can buy.

I lay back in the gleaming copper bathtub and let the steamy bath soothe the aches I’d earned sleeping downstairs. I let handful after handful of hot soapy water rush down over my cuts on my face. It stung, but not as much as I’d feared, so I decided I would probably live.

Or at least not die from an infected cut. Oh, banshees or mysterious bandits might get me, but probably not in the tub.

I closed my eyes and tried to map out the day. First I’d need to spread word of my stake-buying campaign during breakfast. Then I’d need to corner Singh and the last surviving Werewilk male and see what, if anything, I could get out of them.

I’d half-expected to spot Milton faking his condition, since he was the obvious, indeed the only, choice as a suspect in some sort of inter-family land grab. But after watching him at supper the night before, I was all but ready to discount that theory. The man just wasn’t there.

I let more hot water run down over my face while I chided myself for drawing conclusions without gathering any evidence. Maybe the man was just a rare fine actor.

I couldn’t even suggest that for my new friend Buttercup. She wasn’t human. And since she had the howl and the stealth that legend always relegated to banshees, I was fairly comfortable calling her just that.

Of course, she might not be anything of the sort. Sorcerers have spent the entire long march of history meddling with everything from humans to mice. If the stories coming out of Norvalk can be believed, there’s an entire race of tall, feathered humanoids gradually creeping out the jungle. They can speak, they’re handy with tools, and they claim they’ve spent the last ten thousand years waiting for someone called the Longfather to return to his mountain fortress and take them all to Paradise.

I suspect they’ve got a much longer wait than even their own history suggests.

Whatever she was, I still couldn’t put Buttercup at the center of any clandestine surveying of the Werewilk place.

People only survey for two reasons.

To draw up boundaries, usually preparatory to a land sale or as the result of a squabble over lines and fences.

That had been my first thought.

But there was another reason.

I rose splashing, got water everywhere and didn’t care. I found a towel and dried off and then found the notes I’d taken at last night’s meal.

I’d drawn a crude map of the stakes, and the dates they were found.

I sat down, found a pencil and made new scribbles of my own.

“Damn.”

It still didn’t make any sense.

My crude map already included the approximate boundaries of the Werewilk estate, which gobbled up vast tracts of the surrounding forest.

The stakes were nowhere near the legal lines. Of course, the only ones I had drawn were the ones the staff had found, and they’d hardly canvassed the entire Werewilk estate. But even so, by drawing lines through the rows of stakes, I could see that none of the lines bore any relation to the property borders.

But, by squinting just right and nudging a few of the locations a bit here or there, they did seem to suggest a single long line, from which other shorter lines branched off.

Or not. I realized I was jumping to conclusions again, and I stamped back into the bathroom and mopped up my mess with the towel and was nearly dressed when Gertriss knocked.

“Coffee, black, in a small keg.”

I grunted and opened the door.

She had coffee and biscuits on a tray. There were chunks of ham stuffed in the biscuits.

“I should give you a raise.”

Gertriss breezed past me.