I don’t generally like to talk shop with the hired help until I get them all in the same room. That way they hear the same thing, and I eliminate the inevitable wild rumors that fly when private conversations get retold a few dozen times.
I gave Gertriss a sideways glance that I hoped meant here’s an old finder’s trick.
“Too soon for me to have much of a reckoning,” I said, amiably. “But you live there. You see everything, hear everything, know everybody.” I tilted my head just so, furrowed my brow with just the right mixture of interest and concern. “Why not tell me what you reckon is going on?”
Marlo laughed. “Now what makes you think an old dried up road apple sech as me knows anything ’bout the goins’on in that there House?”
“You’ve got a good pair of eyes and a sharp pair of ears. I bet you knew about the stakes on the grounds before the Mistress did.”
That made sense. It would be a gardener or a stable boy or a driver who found the first surveyor’s stake. I doubt Lady Werewilk, or any other Lady, did much traipsing around in the weeds as a part of her daily routine.
Marlo chuckled and turned back toward the road. “It were Skin what found them first stakes,” he said. “Dern fool didn’t know what they was. Brung ’em in for kindling-wood.”
“Skin?”
“He keeps the bees,” said Marlo. “I reckon Skin might be a bit tetched. In the head, you know. But he’s a deft hand with them bees.’
“How long ago did he find the first stakes?”
“Reckon it were the first of the month. Yea, that would be right, it were payday.”
I shot Gertriss a look. Lady Werewilk had put the discovery of the stakes only two weeks past—as usual, the communication between masters and servants was showing a few holes.
Gertriss nodded, understanding.
“How many times since then?”
“Damn near every other day,” grumbled Marlo. “Never in the same place, you understand. Sometimes here, sometimes there. Onced they was right in the middle of Skin’s beehives. I thought he was gonna bust a gut, made him so mad, them messin’ with his bees.”
I nodded, went quiet while Marlo urged his ponies in and out of a ditch with a series of grunts and foot-stomps.
“Lady Werewilk said she’s had people out at night watching the grounds,” I said, once we were back on the road. “Why do you think no one has ever seen the surveyors laying the markers?”
“I reckon they’s awful sneaky,” said Marlo. He spat. “We’s housekeepers n’ cooks and one daft beekeeper. Ain’t a soldier in the lot. No, sir. And this be the Banshee’s Walk.”
Gertriss poked me. I nodded since Marlo couldn’t see. I knew we’d both come to the same conclusion—Lady Werewilk might well have ordered her staff to walk the grounds at night and keep watch, but the only walking they’d likely done was well within their doors, and the only watching they’d done was between naps and from behind their windows.
“I wonder why it’s called that? Banshee’s Walk, I mean. No such thing.” I let the wagon roll over another bone-jarring bump. “Is there?”
Marlo snorted. I watched him look around, watched him gauge the distance between us, the kids and Gefner, who were lagging a good thirty paces behind the wagon and were well out of easy hearing.
“You can think what e’re the Hell you want,” said Marlo. “I know you city folk don’t hold no truth to old stories or old pony-masters. But I’m gonna tell you, you and your lady friend, that there’s more than just big old trees out here in these woods.” He raised his hand in protest, though I’d not said a word. “Now I ain’t sayin’ there’s banshees. I ain’t saying there ain’t, neither. I’m just sayin’ that people ought not to think that everywhere in the world is just like it is back there in that city, ’cause it ain’t.”
“I’ve been a lot of places,” I said, after a moment. “I’ve seen a lot things that people said I wouldn’t see. And one thing I never do is ignore what the people who live in a place say about a place.”
“Then you’re smarter than you look.” Marlo gruffed out a laugh to show, I suppose, he meant that as a compliment. “You just remember what ol’ Marlo told ye if you take a notion to go out of doors after dark. Might be more’n wild boars to worry about. Might be worth a damn sight more’n you’re gettin’ paid.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Marlo spat again, feigned a sudden interest in the road ahead.
I got nothing out of the rest of the crew. The skinny kids, Scatter and Lank, were stable boys who tagged along ostensibly to help with bags but were actually out to escape a morning shoveling the stables while sneaking gulps out of the bottle of still-brewed whiskey they utterly failed to hide. The other adult, Gefner, had introduced himself as a carpenter and hadn’t said a word to us since, although he was verbose enough with Scatter and Lank. I caught enough words on shifts of the wind to guess the topic of conversation—women—and gather that Gefner had quite a few opinions on the subject. I hoped Scatter and Lank had better sense than to take Gefner’s words at truth, though I doubted it.
Aside from Marlo’s dire warnings of supernatural ne’r-do-wells in the woods and Gertriss beginning to dab at my wounds with one of my own clean white socks, the ride grew uneventful. An hour passed and I finally settled into a rhythm, swaying and bobbing with the wagon, watching the shadows, seeing them once again begin to tumble and dart and wave.
Gertriss pinched me hard on the side of my leg. Her eyes were wide as saucers.
“What the Hell?” I batted her hand away.
Her eyes weren’t looking at me but out into the leafy murk.
“Mister Markhat,” she whispered. “I saw a woman, up in that tree.”
Marlo heard, turned, his eyes bright and sharp.
“Hush,” he barked. “Missy, you hush, and you hush now, you hear me, or so help me Angels you’ll be a walkin’ all the way to the House.”
“The lady won’t be walking anywhere,” I said. I meant it. “What did you see?”
Gertriss swallowed, stared. “It’s gone.” She swallowed. “I reckon my eyes were playin’ tricks on me.”
Marlo grumbled something. And behind us, the dogs began to bark and snarl, and I heard Scatter, Lank and Gefner break into a sudden determined run.
I whirled, but all I saw were three chagrined looking men being easily outpaced by the dogs, who overtook them and then overtook the wagon and ran quickly out of sight, tails tucked, fur on end, paws flying.
“Anything back there?” I yelled.
“Thought we heard a boar,” said Scatter. His long greasy hair hung down over his face.
“Boar my ass,” began Lank, who caught a boot to his shin by Gefner for his troubles.
“Boar,” said Gefner. “Reckon we’ll stick a might closer.”
Scatter cussed and muttered something uncomplimentary, but didn’t expand on his thoughts at that moment.
And Lady Werewilk would never hear a word of any of this, at least not from her staff. I wondered how many other things she’d not been told. I suspected there were more than a few.
I tried, but couldn’t pry anything else out of them. Gertriss all but moved into my lap. The shadows tumbled and capered, and until I slid my hand in my rucksack and found Toadsticker’s smooth hilt I heard the whispers begin anew.
“I know you think I’m crazy, Mr. Markhat, but I swear that’s what I saw.”
Gertriss spoke in a whisper, but Marlo heard anyway. He might have had something to say in rebuttal, but I decided Toadsticker’s blade needed a bit of polishing and he swallowed his words with a grunt.
“I don’t think you’re crazy.” Toadsticker gleamed in the shadows. “During the War, six of us were camped out on the bank of some lake. Never did find out if it had a name. But all six of us were awake and sober as stones, and we saw every damned fish in that lake just come jumping out of the water, right onto the bank. Flopping around by the thousands. Big and small and long and short. All flopping in the moonlight, all at once.”
Gertriss raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Really. We hauled ass out of there. Caught up with our company the next day. Nobody ever believed us. But I saw it.”
Marlo spat, and there may have been an earthy word mixed in with the expulsion. I grinned.
“So when I’m told there might be women in the trees, I say that’s a possibility. Especially since it doesn’t appear you’re the first to see this arboreal female—isn’t that right, Marlo?”
That shut Marlo up for the rest of the ride. I could tell, though, we were nearly to the House when the ponies picked up the pace and the old road showed signs of frequent use and the odor of wood smoke began to waft through the walls of forest. We rounded a wide bend, and dogs started barking. I heard a snatch of far-off laughter.
Marlo dropped his reins. The ponies didn’t need to be told or led or cajoled any longer, as they knew water, oats and rest were close.
Leaving the woods and entering the House grounds was such a subtle change I’d almost missed it. The shade was the same, cast by the same enormous old blood-oaks that ruled this patch of the forest. The road merely widened a bit, and there it was, the House Werewilk, shaded on all sides by trees that hung over it and kept its peaked roofs in dapples of shadow.
The House was old. Very old. You don’t see those roofs anymore, except in paintings. Slate tiles covered them, at angles so steep the moss could barely grow. The idea was to make it hard for Trolls or Elves or ambitious neighbors to climb around up there, and for flaming arrows or the like to slide quickly off.
The House was tall and square. It rose up five extra-tall pre-War stories, with a six-story turret at each corner. The tiny turret slot-windows provided for archers were all bricked up, but I could see plain where’d they’d been.
The whole place was brick and stone. Any wood that did show was ornamental. The old places had been built to resist burning, whether caused by careless cooks or oil-soaked missiles.
The tiny glass windows, set way back in their barred iron frames, were small and so thick they showed nothing but blurs behind them. I wondered if it was dark inside then decided it always looked like midnight, behind those doors.
The doors themselves were massive iron-banded garrison gates that someone had painted a merry and highly inappropriate bright red. The knocker in the middle had been given a garish coat of sunflower yellow. Such décor in Rannit proper would have brought out the Historic Preservation Society with battering rams and whole battalions of grim-faced lawyers.
Gertriss gawked and forgot herself and put a hand on my arm and then snatched it quickly away.
“That’s the biggest house I’ve ever seen, Mr. Markhat,” she said.
I chuckled. She’d seen places far bigger in Rannit, but I guess seeing Rannit’s houses crammed together made her think of them as less than this.
“It’s a nice place for a summer home,” I said. Marlo climbed down and started fussing with his ponies, Gefner followed him, yammering suddenly away and the kids Scatter and Lank vanished like yesterday’s dew.
I grabbed up my rucksack and offered to take Gertriss’s bag, but she leaped down with it in hand before I could say a word.
I laughed and nodded at the bright red doors.
“I guess we’ll just show ourselves in,” I said.
She nodded, listening to something.
I listened too.
There was music coming from inside the house. Music and clapping and probably two dozen people laughing behind those massive shut doors and those thick, bolt-proof glass windows.
Gertriss frowned.
“Does anyone work around here?” she asked.
“Just us tireless finders,” I said. We set out across the weedy lawn, past ward statues covered in vines and neglect, over stepping-stones that had sunk into the grass so deeply they were nearly covered over. I noticed that someone had painted smiles on the faces of the more somber yard wards, which is not only not seen in Rannit’s better neighborhoods but is actually illegal even in the shabby ones.
Bold red fox squirrels chattered and barked above us as we passed beneath them, and their shadows flew as they flanked us. The canopy was tall and thick, and the military part of me groaned at the thought of trying to ever defend this place now—the carefully planned fields of fire afforded by the corner towers were useless, cluttered up by limb and bough, leaving the house vulnerable to an easy assault on the doors.
Gertriss frowned. “You don’t much like this place, do you, Mr. Markhat?” she whispered.
I shrugged. Being in the woods was enough to spook a city boy, even one without crossbow bolts buried in his rucksack. And maybe there was something to Mama’s claims of Gertriss and the Sight.
“It could use some work,” I said. We were a stone’s throw from the red door now, and the laughter and music from inside was loud enough to make insulting our hosts aloud perfectly safe. It was obvious no one was watching out for visitors from town.
“Remember what I said. I’ll do most of the talking. You are my eyes and ears. I’d rather know what people do, who they look at, which ones say too much and which ones don’t talk at all. Got it?”
Gertriss nodded. We hiked up the big old granite steps, put our bags down in the weeds that sprang up through the cracks, and I gave the yellow doorknocker a good solid half-dozen blows.
I might as well have dropped a sack full of shadows. If anyone inside heard me, and over the din it seemed unlikely, no one bothered to come to the door.
I took up the knocker and gave the door another half-dozen whacks. “Hello,” I shouted. “City Watch. Your house is on fire. Trolls in the yard. Tax collectors.”
Nothing.
I put my shoulder to the door and shoved.
It wasn’t even latched. Sunlight spilled in, three dogs and a pair of cats spilled out, and the musicians didn’t miss so much as a single beat.
The doors opened into a standard three-walled alcove. The missing wall, to our right, opened into a Great Room, and it was there the party remained in full swing.
A band of sorts was parked up and down the grand, swooping stairs that led up into darkness. There was a pair of shaggy-haired skinny kids on long-necked Southern guitars, another pair whistling away on flutes, and another banging out a rhythm on a pair of old infantry drums. The drummer was so drunk he could barely stand, but his drumbeats were perfect.