The Banshee's Walk (23 page)

“I hate to say this, Mister Markhat, but if we’re going to keep her indoors she’s going to have to have a bath. Soon. Now.”

I nodded. The food and drink was settling in. I was fatigued, but not quite ready to collapse anymore.

“Might be easier while she’s asleep.” I hated to do things that way, but Gertriss was right—we’d never be able to keep her hidden when a blind man could smell her from thirty feet away.

“I’ll go get bathrobe and some soap,” said Gertriss. “Lots and lots of soap. Why don’t you start a warm bath.”

I rose. “You handle her by yourself?”

“I think you’ve seen enough naked females for one night, Mister Markhat. You can sit right outside the door. And you come in only if I holler—call, understood?”

“Understood.” I got my aching feet out of my boots and padded back toward the fancy hot running water and the iron bathtub.

Marlo showed up, grumpy and glaring, before I finished filling the tub. I hauled Buttercup back to my bedroom and laid her on the floor and shut that door behind me before I let Marlo in my room.

The first thing he did was scrunch up his nose. “Damn, what have you been rolling in, Finder?”

“Trouble. Is that coffee for me?”

He handed me the cup and frowned. “You ought to have told the Lady you was back.”

I gulped it down, burning my tongue in the process.

“I figured word would get around. Anyway, as you pointed out, I need a bath. We’ll talk after that.”

“What’d you find, out there? Anything?”

“Too much. A couple of hundred men, I figure. Wagons. Horses. Wand-wavers. Oh, and something came up out of the hole they were digging and blasted a fair-sized chunk of the Lady’s timber flat.”

He just nodded, like that sort of thing went on all the time out here in the wholesome country air.

“I reckon they’re still watching the roads.”

“I reckon they are.”

“So what you gonna do about that, Finder?”

“Me? I’m going to change clothes and eat some more ham. And if people will let me think, I’ll do that too. In the meantime, everyone needs to stay indoors.”

“Horses and goats and cows got to be fed.”

“Not by me they don’t. Thanks for the coffee. Tell the Lady I’ll be downstairs shortly. Until then, nobody so much as sticks their nose outside, got it?”

“Skin left at first light to tend his bees. Ain’t seen him since.”

I was tired.

“Better find another bee-keeper.”

He snorted and stomped off. I slumped down onto the couch and seared the rest of my throat with the coffee.

Gertriss returned as I swallowed the last drop. She was clad in a dressing gown she’d probably found in her closet, because Darla would never have given her anything that much too small.

She bore an armful of towels and cloths and bottles. Judging from the number of soaps and shampoos and perfumes, I decided Gertriss was going to try and introduce poor Buttercup to the entire gamut of female make-up in one frantic go.

She saw my lifted eyebrow.

“Oh, hush. I won’t do anything to the poor creature she doesn’t want done.”

“Considering it’s entirely possible she’s lived her life in the forest without ever seeing a bathtub, that’s a potentially dangerous statement to make.”

Gertriss shook her head. “She’s tiny and maybe she’s not entirely human, Mr. Markhat, but I think she knows what a house and a bath is, from somewhere, even if it was a long time ago.”

“You’re the one with Sight, Miss. I’ll take your word for it.”

Gertriss sorted through her stack and pulled out a pair of dark pants and a plain white blouse and a few unmentionables. She put them on my couch.

“I’ll need those when I’m done,” she said. She shot a look toward the closed bedroom door. “Is the bath ready?”

“Ready and waiting. You sure you don’t want me there? Or maybe Serris, one of the female staff?”

She shook her head. “They’d gawk and stare and treat her like a monster or an Elf. She may be wild, boss, but she’s not stupid. She’d sense it. And I don’t think she’d like it.”

I rose. “Look. Modesty is well and good. But we don’t know what she’s capable of. So if she wakes up, and trouble starts, you yell, you understand? I’ll fight with one eye closed and the other pointed at the ceiling.”

She grinned. “I will. Here goes.”

“Good luck. Don’t look her in the eye.”

“It’s a bath, boss. How hard can this be?”

A quarter of an hour passed. I changed my filthy clothes for fresh ones and wiped off the worst of the filth with a wet face cloth. Gertriss assured me through the door that all was well.

I wasted a few minutes trying to peer outside through the thick window glass. I could tell it was daylight, and see smudges of green, but an army flanked by parades of leaping clowns could be down there and I’d not have seen a thing.

The windows were meant to swing inward so archers could open them and fire through them. These windows would swing no more, though—the hinges were gone, replaced with a solid and thoroughly immobile peacetime window-frame.

Which left us with no way to lob unpleasantness down on miscreants in the yard. Or to even see miscreants. The thick glass would stop the bolt from all but a siege piece, but now that none of them would open we were half-blind and helpless.

I heard a splash. Gertriss murmured, her voice soft and soothing. I knocked gently on the door.

“She stirred a bit, boss, that’s all. Still asleep.”

“You almost done?”

“Getting there. You’ll be able to raise tulips in this bathwater. Her dirt has dirt.”

I didn’t reply. I’d hoped Buttercup would sleep through being bathed and dressed. Now I was beginning to wonder if the little creature would ever wake up.

Had she caught the edge of a spell I couldn’t see, out there in the woods? I had no idea what else that wand-waver’s globe could do, other than emit sticky blue light. Had he had time to rattle of a spell before his head met the first of many tree-trunks?

I didn’t think so. But with wand-wavers, it was never safe to make assumptions.

More splashing. Gertriss assured me again all was well.

And why was Buttercup here, anyway?

Was she really a banshee?

Sure, she was able to do those strange little hop-skips and howl. But she’d howled when Serris had tried to jump, and Serris was alive.

She’d not howled when the wand-waver died. That seemed a bit un-banshee-ish. The legends claimed banshees could sense death, and the lore was adamant that when a banshee howled, death was at hand.

Maybe all those old legends were exactly the sort of bunk I’d thought from the beginning.

Which, if true, meant I knew exactly nothing about banshees or Buttercup.

Music started up downstairs. Music and hooting and stomping. The artists were at it again, right after breakfast, while the woods ran thick with hidden soldiers bent on errands which might include mayhem and slaughter.

I shook my head, more envious than angry.

I heard another splash, from behind the door.

And then tiny Buttercup awoke.

The banshee howled. She didn’t give it her usual slow buildup—no, she went from silence to ear-splitting shriek all at once.

I went deaf. I clamped my hands over my ears.

And then the cry went silent. My ears rang, but I could still hear a sort of burbling whistle, muffled and lent a gurgling quality as though it were being issued from under a body of water.

Gertriss cried out. I hit the door.

Gertriss had Buttercup’s face submerged in the tub. The tiny banshee clawed at her with arms and legs alike. Gertriss held on, but was clearly losing her grip on the tiny creature’s wet, slippery body.

I rushed to the tub. “Blanket blanket blanket,” shouted Gertriss. I saw a nice thick blanket laid out on a vanity and grabbed it, and had almost managed to fling it over Buttercup when she freed herself from Gertriss’s grasp and launched herself from the tub in a wide, tall fountain of hot soapy water.

“Buttercup!” I called out, hoping she would respond to my voice. Instead she fled, darting away from me, her tiny hands rubbing at her eyes beneath her tangle of dripping hair.

I lunged. Gertriss lunged. We caught the banshee between us, held her for an instant.

But only for an instant. The effort cost me my shirt. Gertriss’ already brief night-gown was ripped from one shoulder. I felt Buttercup tense, felt her start one of her magical banshee side-steps. I managed to grab her left forearm and go with her, slowing her down and preventing her from traveling more than a few steps toward the door.

“Buttercup! It’s me. Corn bread man. Slayer of wand-wavers. Calm down. We’re not here to hurt you.”

She turned toward me, one hand still rubbing her eyes. I thought perhaps she recognized my voice, thought she was calming down. She even stopped trying to twist her arm away from my grasp.

So when she stepped close to my waist and then head-butted me right below my belt-buckle, I wasn’t prepared to dodge.

I didn’t. I sank to my knees. Gertriss made a grab, but the banshee made a faster little dancing step and she was gone.

Gone. Out of the room. Gertriss went wide-eyed.

“Where—?” she began.

“Other. Side. Of door.”

We both heard crashings and thuds and footfalls from my front room. Gertriss snatched up the blanket and charged through the door.

I followed with somewhat less energy and verve.

Buttercup was frantic. She was running into walls, knocking over furniture, tearing cushions off the couch, looking anywhere, everywhere, for a way out. She wasn’t howling anymore. It took me a moment to realize that mewling sound she was making was crying.

I struggled to stand upright. I forced my voice to some semblance of normalcy.

“You know me,” I said. The banshee hurled a lamp at the wall, started clawing at the wood. “Buttercup. Listen to me. I am not going to let anyone hurt you.”

She began to strike the oak panels with her fists. Her back was to me. I walked slowly toward her, and when I was close enough I laid a hand on her shoulder.

“You know me,” I said. “Remember? Corn bread? The woods?”

She whirled.

I tried to smile. I managed not to step back.

I reached forward, pushed her hair out of her face. She managed to open her eyes. It was only then I realized they been stinging from the soapy water. “See? It’s me. You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

Gertriss wisely stood very still, and remained very quiet. Buttercup’s eyes darted toward her, and her mouth turned down in a tiny pout.

“That’s Aunt Gertriss,” I said. “She’s nice too. She was just giving you a bath. She has clothes for you too. Pretty clothes.”

Buttercups’ gaze turned back toward me, and she smiled, and took my hand.

“Good,” I said. “Now then—let’s put this gown on you. Gertriss? Very slowly?”

Gertriss took a small, slow step.

Buttercup snatched my left shoe off the floor and managed to fling it right toward Gertriss’s face. Gertriss deflected the shoe with the blanket, which she then flung at Buttercup, and Buttercup managed to move herself and me right behind Gertriss, where the banshee grabbed Gertriss’s dressing gown at the neck and gave it a good furious banshee yank.

Gertriss shrieked, and her dressing gown fell. Buttercup giggled, and at that very moment Fate arranged for my door to fly open and for Darla, my Darla, to walk in.

For a moment, all was stillness and silence.

There was Gertriss, mostly naked. There was Buttercup the freshly bathed banshee, completely naked and hanging onto a Markhat who was naked from the waist up. The floor was covered in cast-off clothing of both male and female varieties. Obeying some capricious law of garment behavior, a pair of Gertriss’s bloomers was hanging from a lamp.

Darla merely nodded at me, raised her right eyebrow and put her left hand on her left hip.

“I see you’re keeping busy, darling. I didn’t knock because I was told you were mortally wounded. I’m pleased to see you’re not. Yet.”

Momma Hog stepped into my room, joined by Evis, who was swathed from head to toe in yards of pure black silk.

Mama gobbled something incomprehensible at Gertriss, who wrapped herself in the blanket and fled for my bathroom.

Evis broke into hissing vampire laughter. He doubled over. He did manage to hide his mouthful of fangs behind a black-gloved hand.

And then Darla marched past Gertriss, pushed Buttercup gently aside and kissed me on the lips.

“So dear, tell me all about your day.”

I seated Darla on my right and Momma on my left. Gertriss wound up beside Mama, who was still clearly not in a mood to forgive Gertriss’s earlier state of dishabille. Buttercup tried to sit in my lap, but hopped up on the huge empty dining table after Darla fixed the banshee with her trademark icy stare.

Evis fidgeted in his chair right across the table from me. Even buried beneath a tent’s worth of silk and wearing tinted spectacles, the light was obviously causing him great discomfort.

Lady Werewilk herself had shooed her idling household staff out of the kitchen, which had taken on the role of gathering place for all of her displaced servants. She hadn’t had to ask twice after word got around that the funny man dressed all in black was a halfdead from town.

“I’m sure you’d all enjoy a bit of privacy,” said Lady Werewilk, before she opened the door to the hall. She’d impressed me by not treating Evis as anything but another guest in her home. She’d even inquired as to any special accommodations she could make on behalf of Evis.

Evis had politely declined.

Once we were alone, we all swapped stories.

Darla and Mama, it turned out, had both received messages that claimed to be from Lady Werewilk. The message was the same to both, short and simple—
Markhat is dying. Come at once.

No details. Nothing but that. Mama had been determined to set out, on foot, at that very moment, but Darla had convinced her to head to Avalante before leaving Rannit.

Which brought Evis, genteel halfdead, aboard. Upstairs, Evis had told me in a hushed voice that he’d also brought Victor and Sara, the married halfdead couple I’d met some months back. Victor and Sara were lurking somewhere shaded, out in the forest, waiting for night to fall before coming to the House themselves.