The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) (10 page)

Chapter Twelve

I hadn’t seen a black man since the War.

For my first three years as a dog handler, our unit was under the command of a tall, gaunt black man from Samadat. We never knew his name, until after he fell.

We’d just called him the Reaper.

He was a master tactician, catching the Trolls by surprise, and always in places they didn’t expect and couldn’t effectively defend. He kept us alive and kept us fed and after a month under his command even the most villainous backwoods draftee was ready to march through Hell itself, should the Reaper glance that way.

When word came that Samadat lay razed and burned, and all her people slain, the Reaper threw himself at a line of Trolls fifteen strong.

He cut down four of them before dying. I’m told the Trolls still sing of his courage.

So when I limped through the weathered doors of a bar named
The Cat and Fiddle
and came face-to-face with a towering, thin giant of a black man, I almost saluted out of habit.

The black man smiled and kept smiling even as a soaking-wet Troll bearing what appeared to be a none-too-fresh corpse passed over his threshold. A dozen bedraggled halfdead soldiers, many still carrying firearms, followed Slim, and even that parade of mayhem didn’t cause the man to bat an eye.

“That all?” he asked, when his door was finally shut.

A solemn halfdead nodded yes. The black man passed by me, locked his door, and threw a heavy bar across it.

“Welcome to
The Cat and Fiddle
. I’m Marshal. Drinks on the right,” he said, motioning toward the bar. “Wounded to the left. I’ll get my kit. Randy, serve these folks.”

Another black man appeared. He too was tall and thin. It only took me a moment to realize I was meeting both father and son.

I headed for the drinks, Darla on my arm. Mama came stomping up behind us. Slim, bent nearly double to avoid banging his head on the ceiling beams, bore Alfreda’s still form toward a booth back in the shadows.

“What will you have, sir?” asked the kid. I figured him for sixteen, maybe less. If he was at all put off by the arrival of dripping Trolls and bedraggled vampires, he didn’t show it any more than his father did.

“Beer,” I replied. “And one for the lady too, if you please.”

“And another for me,” said Mama, hauling herself up on a stool. “Reckon I’ve earned myself a wee drink.”

“Reckon we all have,” I said.

The kid nodded and sped off toward a gloriously clean brass beer tap.

“Evis owns this place?” I asked. “Evis owns a bar and he never told me?”

Mama snuffed. “Ain’t that a damned surprise,” she said. “Don’t suppose I’d tell neither. Can’t have you drinking all the profits and bringing around a low element, can we?”

The kid returned with three tall mugs in his hands.

“Berenstorm Black,” he said, beaming. “Best beer in Rannit, Dad says.”

I took a sip. I’d have fallen off my stool in sheer delight, had it not been for Darla’s steadying hand.

“Your father is a man of rare taste and fine judgment,” I said. I stuck out my hand, hoping it didn’t smell too strongly of wet Troll. “I’m Markhat. This is my wife Darla. The lady next to her is Missus Hog, sometimes called Mama.”

The kid had manners. He shook my hand, nodded to Darla and Mama. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Markhat. I’m Randy. Dad lets me tend bar on quiet nights.”

I chuckled. “Quiet no more, I guess,” I said, reaching for coins long lost in the haunted woods.

“We don’t charge once the door is barred,” said the kid. Then he winked and sped off as his father called for bandages from the far end of the bar.

“Evis never mentioned this place?” asked Darla.

“Never,” I said. I sipped at my beer. “Guess everyone deserves a few secrets.”

“I don’t think Gertriss knew either,” whispered Darla. “Hon, do you know what’s wrong with Evis? Did you see him, tonight? He’s ill. He claims it’s a minor fever, but I’m sure he’s lying, and Gertriss is worried sick.”

“I honestly don’t know,” I said. “But look. He’s got the best Avalante doctors and the best Avalante medicines and no matter what’s wrong with him, I’m sure they’ve got a treatment hidden away in a vault somewhere. Hell, the man just took on mastodons. How sick can he be?”

“Looked like sick to death,” said Mama. “I ain’t heard of but one thing what can infect a halfdead. Vampire worms. But that ain’t vampire worms he’s got. I hope you’re right about them fancy doctors, boy. I hope they’re as good as you think.”

At the other end of the bar, Randy and his father hauled a halfdead onto the polished bar top and cut away his shirt. The elder man drew on a pair of white gloves, produced a pair of bright steel pliers, and plunged them into the halfdead man’s chest, probing and pushing.

Darla looked away.

“Evis said he’d join us here soon,” she said. The black man grunted, twisted his hand, and yanked a barbed steel hook out of the pale halfdead, who never made a sound. “I wish he’d hurry.”

I wasn’t entirely sure where
The Cat and Fiddle
stood, but I was sure we were a good dozen blocks from the docks, and on the wrong side of the river from the Hill. “It’ll take him forty-five minutes just to get here,” I said. “And that’s if he left immediately.”

Evis himself settled heavily onto the barstool to my right. He stank of gunsmoke and mastodon dung and muddy river water. His hands and wrists were black with gunpowder residue, and his cloak hung in dirty tatters about his spare frame.

“Hell of a night,” he said. He caught Randy’s eye, and held up a single sooty talon. The kid nodded and darted through a door toward the back.

“Angels and Devils, Evis. How did you get here so fast?”

Gertriss stepped out of the shadows. She’d wrapped a long tan coat around her ravaged clothes.

“Tell him,” Evis croaked. He reached for a breast pocket handkerchief that wasn’t there. Gertriss handed him a wad of bar napkins and sat beside him while he dabbed at the black ooze gathering at the corners of his mouth.

“He had Stitches install a stepping stone back there,” she said, nodding toward the back row of booths. I realized why the lamps in that area weren’t lit. “Like the ones she uses to get around the House. Step on a stone in the office, step off a stone here. Nobody knows about it but us.”

“Keeping secrets from the House?” I asked. “Won’t that be frowned upon, possibly beaten with sticks?”

“Won’t be considered at all if everyone keeps their mouths shut,” said Evis between coughs. Randy returned, bearing a plain silver chalice filled to the brim with something dark and black.

The kid set it carefully down on the bar top, as though he were handling a bucket of snakes.

“Here you are, sir,” he said.

Evis drained the chalice all at once. Gertriss looked away, biting her lip, her brow furrowed into a brief hard frown.

“Why all the secrecy?” I said. “It’s not like we haven’t set a few fires before now. Allegedly, of course.”

“Somebody higher up might ask why Avalante shot up a backwoods carnival,” said Evis. “Last thing I want is for the House to take an interest in Buttercup.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. “You think the House might?”

“Not if we keep a lid on things,” said Evis. “Otherwise, she might be considered an ‘experimental asset.’ Not sure I’ve got the pull to get her off that list. Sure as hell don’t want to find out.”

He started coughing again. Gertriss handed him more napkins.

“Didn’t mean to drag you into this,” I said.

“You didn’t.” Evis shot a meaningful glance at Mama, who shrugged and drained her beer.

“What’s this about me being gone for two days?” I asked. “I swear it’s been a night, no more.”

“Let’s see,” said Darla. “You had your driver strand us in the middle of a hayfield five miles from town three days ago.”

“Thought you was awful smart, didn’t you, boy?” said Mama.

“It kept you from getting killed,” I replied. Darla didn’t smile.

“When you didn’t come home that night,” she said, “I went to the carnival. Walked around. Looked and looked. No sign of you or Buttercup.”

I thought about Darla alone within Thorkel’s reach and my gut twisted.

“I followed her, boss,” said Gertriss. She held Evis’s hand while he made wet retching noises. “No one paid any attention to her.”

“And I was there, watching the both of ye,” said Mama. “’Cept I snuck into that fancy-ass carnival master’s tent, had myself a look around.” She grunted. “Didn’t find nothing.”

“I rented a manure wagon,” I said. “Walked in with a bunch of farmers. Hid until hard dark.” I retold the tale of hiding in Slim’s cage, of finding the black tent, and watching Buttercup held fast by the world’s ugliest doll.

Evis had me repeat my conversation with Thorkel. I described the interior of the black tent twice too. He kept his dark glasses on, so I couldn’t read his eyes and tell if he reacted to anything I said.

I wound down. The bar was dead silent, save for Slim’s soft guttural muttering and the occasional dry whisper exchanged between halfdead.

“So that’s it,” I said. “Dammit, when is Stitches due back?”

“Two weeks or more,” said Gertriss. “And no, we’ve got no way to speak to her.”

I cussed. “Mama? Anything?”

“Ain’t no mirror magic I know of,” she said. “Ain’t never seen no grabby dolls, neither. But I reckon you put a flame to it, and it’ll burn up right enough.”

“You said you entered Thorkel’s tent,” said Evis. He was hunched over and shaking. If he hadn’t already passed through death’s door I’d have claimed he was nearing the threshold. “Describe it. In detail.”

“I seen wigs,” Mama said. “Wooden arms. Wooden legs. Clothes all over. Hats. Shoes. Gloves. All of it old, all of it shabby. None of it hexed, as far as I could tell.”

I remembered Thorkel’s empty clothes falling away from my grasp.

“What did you take, Mama?” I said. “I know you didn’t leave empty handed. Show us.”

Mama grinned with her two best teeth and hefted her bag. She produced a matted, filthy wig, a crumpled porkpie hat, a pair of threadbare wool gloves, and a fancy patent leather shoe, right foot only.

“I was pressed for time,” she said. She plopped her loot down on the bar. “But I thought maybe that sorcerer might take a keen interest in something took from Fancy Pants’ tent.”

I smiled, pulled my knife from my boot, and poked at the filthy wig. “Good thinking, Mama.”

“Didn’t know she weren’t here,” said Mama. She scowled at the objects. “Reckon I could hex ’em good, though. Willing to try.”

“We’ll see.” I motioned for another restorative beverage, slid my knife back in my boot. “Let’s say we’ve got four days to figure out what they’ve done to Miss Ordwald and get Buttercup out of the glass. Ideas?”

Evis broke into a coughing fit so hard he fell off his stool. Gertriss followed him down and kept him supplied with napkins.

When the fit was over, Gertriss’s hand was black with thick ooze, and Evis was gasping breathless on the floor.

Every halfdead in the place gathered around us, silent as shadows, every gaunt gray face bent over Evis, every pair of dead white eyes following the rise and fall of his chest.

The silence was finally broken by the sound of Gertriss crying.

“We have to get him home,” she said. “He needs the doctors.”

“Won’t. Help,” he said. “Get me up.”

Thin arms encircled him and bore him to a booth.

Another silver chalice of the black fluid appeared. Gertriss helped him drink it down.

“Better now,” said Evis, after a while.
Liar,
mouthed Gertriss. He took her hand and tried to smile.

“Today is a wash,” he said. “We’re wounded. Exhausted. Need rest. Need strategy.”

Slim joined us, stooped nearly double, smelling of equal parts musky Troll and river mud. The ring of halfdead quickly made room.

“Fight?” he asked, looking at me.

“Not now,” I said. “Rest first. Fight later.”

He dipped his eyes, in the Trollish way of nodding assent. “I hear you talking,” he said. “The sky wagons. They will ride away. Soon.”

“We ruined them,” I said. “Tore them to shreds. They won’t be flying for a long time.”

“Sometimes storms come,” said Slim. “Tear at sky wagons. So they have fresh skins. This many.” He held up his right hand, spread wide his six Troll digits.

A general chorus of muttered curses arose. Mine alone was worthy of a year in Hell, claims the Church.

“Will some flee, leaving others behind?” I asked.

Slim shrugged. “Who can say?”

“So we might have four days, or two, or none,” said Gertriss. “This just gets better and better.”

“They have mastodons and necromancers,” I said. “What do we have?”

“Pluck. Resolve. Assorted serious injuries,” said Evis.

Call it inspiration. Call it a mild concussion. Call it what you will, but a shiver rose up my spine and ended in my sudden smile.

“No,” I said. “We have the power of the press, and twenty thousand witless readers.”

Evis lowered his head to peer at me over the tops of his dark glasses. His eyes, or what little I could see of them, were a bright blood red.

“Someone. Is thinking. Happy thoughts,” he said. “Do share.”

I laid it all out, making parts up as I went.

Mama hooted and broke her mug banging it on the bar. Slim grinned a toothy Troll grin and boomed something I gathered to be affirmative in Troll.

Darla and Gertriss exchanged worried glances, and quietly reloaded their revolvers.

It took maybe half an hour to hammer out the details. Runners were dispatched. Lies were told. Money was spent.

Lots of money. Most of it mine. I insisted on that. Evis tried to argue, but in the end he simply ran out of breath.

“That’s it,” said Gertriss, after Evis nearly passed out coughing. “We are done. I’m taking you home. Darla, boss, Slim, come with us. A carriage is waiting down the block.”

“Go ahead and use the fancy magic dingus,” I said, rising. “You two head on back to Avalante. I’d prefer my own bed.”

Gertriss ignored me and got Evis up.

“The stepping plate is one-way,” she said. “Have to take the carriage back. We have your room ready.”