The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) (14 page)

“Moon-cured storm water in the stump of a lightning-kilt tree is the best,” said Mama, shaking her jar. “That’s what this is.”

“So I’m supposed to find you a lightning-struck oak?”

“No, boy, you’re supposed to take it with you. Pour it on that fancy mirror. I don’t rightly know what it’ll do, but this here water has been showing me secrets for years. It ain’t to be took lightly. Take it.”

I took it, held the jar up to the light.

“Thanks,” I said. “I was just thinking about making some fresh coffee.”

“Pah,” said Mama. “You needs all the help you can get, and you knows it. Now. When are we leaving? I got a few points to discuss with them carnival folk.” Her face, never overly pleasant, darkened. “They ain’t going to get off so lucky this time.”

“We make our move tomorrow night,” I said. “You know that. Tonight is too soon.”

She snorted. “Like you ain’t got some half-assed notion of sneaking around tonight, even if it’s just to peep through the pines,” she said. “I tells you I’m going, and there ain’t no stopping me.”

“Never is,” I said, rising. “We’re going as far as the ferry, just to make sure they’re still in business. A couple of Evis’s people will be going all the way to the carnival, but only to watch. We’re not going to move until all the pieces are in place, Mama. That’s final.”

Mama had no comment. She started gathering up her treasures just as Gertriss emerged from her bath.

“Well lookie here, the Queen is up and about,” said Mama. “How’s that sick beau of yours? I brung some blackroot for tea, if’n you can get them fool white-coats to listen to reason.”

“He’s better, Mama,” I said. Gertriss plopped down beside Darla with a weary smile. “Not well enough to join us, but certainly on the mend.”

“Like hell he is,” muttered Mama. “But I reckon he’s tough enough. We got time for one of them fancy beers, before we go watching carnival barges?”

“Always time for fancy beer,” I said. “But just one. We need to get moving soon.”

I sent for a bucket of beer and kept the conversation from veering toward Evis and his condition. Gertriss mouthed a silent ‘thank you’ to me when Mama wasn’t looking.

Beers came and sacrificed their lives in the line of duty. Mama reported hers wasn’t bad, wasn’t all that good, mind you, but she reckoned it was passable.

Then we gathered our various accoutrements, made sure they were loaded just in case, and we set forth for the River Gate.

A crowd was already gathering when we arrived.

There were women and kids and babies in strollers. I thought about the things I’d hacked at with my borrowed sword and shivered.

We took up a spot in the shade. Darla and Gertriss sat on a log. Mama stomped and muttered. Slim lurked in the trees, just another shadow cast by wind-blown boughs. He’d not wanted to leave Alfreda in the care of Avalante’s doctors, but in the end he’d relented.

The crowd swelled. More and more people passed out of the old gate every moment.

It took me about a quarter of an hour to realize a goodly number of the newcomers weren’t ordinary Rannites.

I cussed under my breath. Darla raised her right eyebrow. “What?” she whispered.

“Watchmen,” I said. “All over the place.”

“Watchmen? What would they be doing here?”

“Making a mess of things,” I said. I watched as an all-too familiar shape elbowed his way through the crowd.

“Isn’t that Captain Holder?” asked Darla.

“The one and only. Probably thinks he’s in disguise. Still wearing Watch-issue brogans. Might as well be accompanied by a brass band.”

“I didn’t think the Watch had any interest beyond the old walls.”

“They don’t. Or didn’t. Hell, let’s ask him.”

Darla rose. “Won’t that infuriate him?”

“It will if I ask it right,” I said, taking her hand. “Come on, let’s go pay our respects.”

We slipped away without Mama. Holder saw us coming and turned, but he must have caught a glimpse of my warm, open smile because he turned back to face us and fixed me in a furious glower.

“Well, well, Mr. Smith,” I said, as we approached. “Fancy meeting you here. I believe you know my wife, Flowerpot Groanworthy? Say hello, dear.”

I didn’t grimace when she kicked me in my shin.

“Hello, dear,” she muttered.

Holder’s face turned a beefy shade of murder.

“I don’t have time for this,” he said, nearly biting through his unlit cigar.

“Let’s walk,” I said. “Flowerpot?” I offered Darla my arm.

She took it. We sashayed away, aiming for the edge of the crowd, and after a moment I heard Captain Holder’s iron-toed Watch shoes come stamp-stamp-stamping after.

“This is a Watch investigation,” he said as soon as we were out of earshot of the nearest idlers. “I don’t need you loosing a batch of damned monsters in the middle of it.”

I held up my hands in a gesture of surrender.

“I’m not getting on the ferry,” I said. “Not crossing the water. Not visiting the carnival. My plans for the evening don’t involve monsters, in batches or otherwise.”

He spat. I gathered Darla’s presence was causing him to subdue his responses considerably.

“So I guess you don’t know anything about gunfire and worse in the woods last night,” he said.

“Not true. I know everything about it, because I was there. The carnival is taking people. I’ve seen them murder one man outright and now they’ve got somebody of mine. I’m going back, all right, but not tonight. If you go, you and your people had better be damned careful. Magic is involved. Lots of magic.”

“Taking people? Taking who, and how?”

“I don’t know any names.” I told Holder about the darker carnival, about the flying witches and the black tent filled with terrors. He chewed his unlit cigar the whole time, rolling it from one cheek to the other.

“But all that happened outside the walls,” I said when the story was told. “I didn’t think the Watch was interested.”

He grunted. “I’ve been told, just today, that the Watch takes a keen interest in anything or anyone that might present a danger to Rannit,” he said. “I’ve been told we’re eager to expand our authority, take it wherever we need to go.”

I glanced in the direction of the High House.

Holder nodded yes. I whistled.

“You ought to pat yourself on the back, Markhat,” he said. “You’re to thank for all this. First that business with the bunch from Prince. Then the death god. Every time trouble finds Rannit, I find you right in the middle of it. Now here you are again. You ever think about buying a house in Bel Loit?”

“I like the climate here,” I said. “And the thriving arts community.”

“So you’re gonna stay out of my way tonight,” he said.

“I am.”

He found a match and lit his cigar. It stank. Mosquitoes fled.

“When do you plan to pay the carny a visit?”

“Tomorrow evening. Before you ask, there’s going to be trouble then. Lots of trouble.”

“I don’t doubt it. Well. If I see anything interesting tonight, I’ll send word. If I see you there tonight, I’ll box your ears in. No offense, Mrs. Markhat.”

“None taken, Captain. I am moved to box his ears at least twice a week.”

He let a smile slip out.

“Be careful,” I said. “I don’t have a handle on what’s behind all this. But it’s a hell of a lot more dangerous than it looks.”

“So am I,” said Holder. “Ma’am.”

He doffed his hat to Darla, and shuffled off, wisps of malodorous cigar smoke curling in his wake.

“You have the most fascinating friends,” said Darla, as we headed back for our log.

“Funny. I don’t think of Holder as a friend. He never sends Yule cards, you know.”

“He hasn’t locked you up in ages. We should have him over for dinner.” Her face fell. “As soon as we’re settled in, of course.”

I hugged her, and she took her seat by Gertriss and we watched the Watchmen watch the eager mob until the carnival ferry left the opposite bank and wallowed our way.

We hung around and saw the first load of merry-makers depart.

The sun was down. I never saw Victor and Sara depart, but I knew they were across the water by now, moving through the trees like patches of shade.

Mama muttered something about visiting an old uncle and stomped off. When we saw a tiny boat leave the bank a few minutes later, we all recognized Mama’s squat silhouette.

Gertriss stood. Darla put her face in her hands and employed unladylike language.

I surprised them both by shrugging.

“I told Victor and Sara to keep an eye out for her,” I said. “Let her go. She might even learn something. If she’s not back by dawn, I’ll go find her myself.”

None of the circus clowns gave us a second look. I recognized four of them, though, by their distinctive face-paint. Clowns don’t swap their faces. I was sure I saw at least three of the ferry clowns among the dead just a few hours before.

I didn’t comment aloud on the risen clowns. I didn’t need to. Darla let a gasp slip at sight of the first, and Gertriss reached for a pistol, stopping her hand well before it but giving herself away all the same.

We watched until eleven, and then we headed back for Avalante.

No one else knew it, but I still had places to go.

Chapter Sixteen

To sleep, a poet once wrote, is to visit the House of Death.

At last, I slept. Slept, perchance to dream.

Soon I walked Rannit, half-conscious, only dimly aware of my surroundings. Rats and strays fled from my path as though they sensed my presence, while people remained deaf and blind to my passage.

I remember crossing the old city wall, stepping through it as though it were cobwebs and shadow. There was a brief instant of piercing cold, and that brought me, still dreaming, to my senses.

The night was still. I stood by the muddy place on the riverbank that the carnival ferry created as it took on passengers or sent them home. The ferry was gone, and so were the crowds, who left nothing but footprints and a few scattered paper food wrappers behind.

I wondered about the hour. The air smelled of a midnight long passed. The night sky was weary, soon to grow pale.

I increased my stature and crossed the river in a single easy stride. The carnival lay ahead. Lights still shone from it, and I heard sounds. I diminished but kept my head above the trees.

By the time I arrived, the darker carnival was done. Half a dozen creatures remained in the open, all crouching on their haunches while they devoured their meals.

I diminished, walked among them, checked the shoes of the dead. None belonged to Mama. None were Watch-issue street shoes.

The twin to the wolf-man I’d watched Slim decapitate the night before rose and belched before loping away. I followed.

The wolf-man vanished in mid-stride.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I said. Not a single monstrous ear twitched, not a face turned my way. “I know you’re there. I know the rules.”

And there it was. The black tent, just as I’d seen it before.

I hesitated at the flap. It seemed suddenly apparent that I should not enter by the tent’s version of a door, because by doing so I was granting it power of a sort to assert its own reality within.

Why such a thing should be suddenly plain to me was troubling. But I pushed that thought aside.

I let go of the tent flap, let it drop.

Then I walked through the burlap five feet from the flap, ignored the brief chill, and found myself inside the black tent once again.

Before, it had been silent. Now it was filled with a hundred noises. Some were cries, long and plaintive and hungry. Some were howls, bestial and unreasoning. Some were words, shouted through mouths with too many teeth.

But there was one voice I knew.

The black tent sought to fold space around me, trick me into walking in a direction that hadn’t existed until I saw it unravel from a hole in the dark.

I laughed, and dismissed the deception with a wave of my hand. Then I followed Buttercup’s voice to her prison.

The howls and cries around me grew more agitated, more strident. I remembered how cats and rodents had fled from me along Rannit’s streets.

I should have been frightened at the realization that I might not be invisible in the midst of so many nightmares.

Instead, I was unmoved.
If they come forth,
I heard myself think,
I shall simply cut them down.

Buttercup sat upright on her bed. The doll was tangled around her, holding her fast, its head resting on her right shoulder, the doll’s face pressed against the banshee’s ear.

Buttercup’s eyes were squeezed tight shut, and her lips moved as though she were repeating the same word over and over and over, as if to drown out the whisper of a doll.

“Enough,” I said. A chorus of monsters replied with roars. “This I will not have.”

I put my ghostly hand to the glass. I passed through it, unimpeded.

I stepped inside, wound up standing right in front of Buttercup, and I spoke.

“I am come,” I said.

Buttercup’s ice-blue banshee eyes snapped open. The doll’s face turned toward me.

“Let her go,” I said to it. “Trouble her no more.”

It flew upon me, doll-hands swinging, doll feet kicking. In an instant boneless stuffed arms were wrapped around my neck while legs wrapped around my waist. Its painted doll eyes, dull and faded and crude, bore into mine. It started to squeeze.

I grew, stooping to remain inside the small chamber. The doll’s arms fell away. It tried to drop, but I caught it by an arm. As it flailed and struggled I grabbed a stuffed, shapeless foot, and then I simply pulled.

Stuffing erupted. The leg tore free. I took its head, grasped its neck, twisted. The doll made a single brief squealing sound, and then it went limp, just as Thorkel had done.

When it was over, I had hair and yellowed cotton stuffing and a handful of cloth scraps.

I kicked it all away. Buttercup leaped from the bed and I caught her up, and she buried her face on my chest. She never cried. After a time, she relaxed and began humming a nursery rhyme.

I took her hand, and tried to lead her out. I passed through the glass without effort, but she remained trapped.

From without, I raised my fists, brought them hard against the glass, willing it to shatter.

It did not.

I stepped back inside. Buttercup was on her knees, scrambling under the bed, and only then did I recall that her pet sorcerer’s skull lay there.

She brought it out, rubbing the crown of the skull, chattering gleefully with it. The skull replied in dry whispers. I could not glean the meaning behind their words, but a part of me knew, was so sure, that I would begin to understand if only I would sit and be still and
listen
.

I could not. I remembered how time moved inside the black tent, on my last visit. I couldn’t afford to vanish for a day by the world outside’s reckoning.

I resolved to simply increase, and burst the chamber by filling it beyond its volume, in the hope that the glass too would burst.

Before I could begin, Buttercup tugged at my shirt. She hefted her pet skull, giggled, and then she took one of those deep, long breaths that always precede her bone-shattering banshee cries.

She let loose. I reminded myself I was dreaming, and instantly her cry sounded distant and faint.

She stood on her tiptoes, arms spread, mouth wide open. Her hair blew back. A golden glow enveloped her.

I heard a faint tinkle, and saw a tiny crack appear in the center of the glass.

It didn’t heal.

It grew, slowly, but perceptibly.

Buttercup kept screaming. Her skull joined in, chanting a long harsh word.

The crack spread.

“I will return,” I said.

She didn’t stop screaming, but she did dip her head in a small nod.

“I will return, and take you from this place.”

The skull’s chanting quickened. Buttercup’s scream grew louder and louder, despite my efforts to impose silence upon it.

I stepped out through the glass. Howls and cries assailed me. I grew, and my anger grew with my stature, and something dark and enraged rose up from the depths of my soul.

“I seek the master of this place,” I said. My voice boomed and echoed. “I call thee forth.”

The roars and howls continued. Amid the varied calls were strains of mad laughter.

“I seek an end to you,” I said. “You would bring calamity to my house? I bring annihilation to yours. Face me. Let us test our rage.”

I waited, alert for the scuff of Thorkel’s boots, or the tap of his cane.

I heard neither.

“So be it,” I said, my voice ringing like a bell filled with thunder. “You dug your grave. I’ll be back to fill it.”

I grew. I grew tall enough to push my head and then my shoulders and then my knees up through the black tent’s top.

Tents and carousels and tiny pinprick fires lay at my feet. I kicked idly at the nearest of them, did no damage.

The eastern sky was showing the first blush of pink.

“Not much time,” I said aloud. Birds erupted from the trees all about me. “They’ve got better sense than you folk,” I added, looking down on the carnival. “When I return, it’ll be too late to fly away.”

I turned my face toward the slumbering bulk of Rannit, and began my dream-walk home.

At the water’s edge, I paused. I had intended to simply step over the dark ribbon of water, but a fire flickered on the far bank. I diminished, walked across the face of the water, and nearly awoke when I recognized the ragged figure hunched over his meager campfire.

His cart full of lightning rods sat a yard away. The steel tips gleamed in the flames.

I drew close to his fire. Close enough to touch him, had I wished it.

Shango, the lightning rod man, rubbed his hands together briskly and then held them, palm up, before the fire.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said. After he spoke, his eyes turned up, tiny flames reflected in each. “Be welcome at my fire.”

“You can see me,” I said.

“And hear you,” he replied. “Hold out your hands. You can feel the warmth of the flames, as soon as you accept the fire as part of your reality. Try it.”

I kept my hands at my sides.

“Your name isn’t Shango,” I said. “And you’re no lightning rod salesman.”

He nodded, smiling amiably. “Might be some truth to that,” he said. “But here’s the thing, Markhat. That’s not an
important
truth. Who I am, what I am, all the questions crowding your jaw—they’re not the questions you need to be asking.”

“I’ll pick my own damned questions.”

“That you will. Plenty of time for that, later. But right now, there’s only one question that matters.” He pointed at the sky. Dawn was breaking. “You’re running out of time. Better ask it quick.”

“Why would I ask you anything? Your wares failed me. My house is ashes.”

“Failed you?” he asked. “What did you lose, that was precious to you? Whom did you lose?”

I bit back a reply.

Darla had escaped the initial rain of hostile magic. She had just enough time to scoop up Cornbread and run.

Shango smiled, his eyes bright below his floppy porkpie cap.

“I told you I smelled a storm coming,” he said. “I gave you what you needed. Heaven’s fickle wrath, I believe I mentioned. Was I wrong?”

The witch had hurled down magic, then fire.

Fickle wrath, from Heaven.

“No,” I said. “You weren’t wrong.”

“Good. You’re beginning to see. You know what you have to do next.”

“I do?”

“If you don’t, I can’t help you,” he said. “What you need is what you lost. Good luck, Markhat. Don’t let the darkness take over. You’ll want to, but don’t do it. That would be a shame. A damned shame.”

He vanished. As did his fire, and his cart of lightning rods, and the footprints he’d left on the sandy riverbank.

I was all alone. The last, brightest stars winked out, fleeing a blood-red dawn.

The sky rolled and shook. The ground beneath me heaved.

“Honey, wake up,” said Darla, and I did.

Preparations took all morning.

The rotary guns had to be cleaned and greased. Mama, who had turned up in the wee hours but refused to reveal what she’d seen, oversaw the process, claiming she was hexing the barrels. I didn’t point out that the bullets were the actual danger to enemies, because having Mama sit in the back of a wagon and wave a pair of dried owls at the guns was preferable to having Mama dog my footsteps.

And footsteps I made. I made my rounds of the newspapers, making sure the advertisements we’d bought were being printed as we specified, word for word. They were.

By late afternoon the papers would be all over Rannit, and then our scheme would be well and truly hatched, with no time for revisions or retreats.

I mentioned paying Captain Holder a visit. Darla decided she’d go sit with Gertriss, who was busy trying to punch holes in Avalante’s sturdy walls using nothing but the intensity of her glare.

And I did intend to pay Holder a visit.

But that wasn’t my only, or even my first, stop.

I took a cab to Middling Lane. I got out at the corner, a block away from our house, and I walked the rest of the way.

The day was bright and crisp. Leaves were beginning to fall. They crunched on the cobbles beneath my boots. Ordinarily I’d have smiled at the sound.

I wasn’t smiling when I saw what remained of our tidy little house.

The fire had been intense. Nothing remained but the stone foundation. Most of the stones were cracked and split from heat.

The fence was scorched and blackened with soot. The young oak tree in our yard was barren and charred. Our flowerbed was ash.

There were no steps to climb, no porch on which to sit. No front door to open, no red Balptist rug to welcome me home.

I stood at the gate until I felt eyes upon me. When I turned, our next-door neighbors were hurrying inside their house. They slammed the door, and an instant later drew their curtains shut.

So much for the special kinship between close neighbors.

I pushed the iron gate open. The paint had peeled away from the heat. Its squeal was at once familiar and heartbreaking.

I circled around the ruin. A few bits of charred timber jutted up through the ashes, their broken ends exposed like the bones of some fallen beast. Here and there small objects glittered in the sun. Melted glass here, a scrap of shapeless metal there. Darla’s clothes. The silver serving set she’d spent months saving for. Her mother’s modest but tasteful collection of jewelry and its tiny cedar box.

Gone.

There was nothing to salvage. Nothing to save.

I pondered the dream-Shango’s words. What I needed was what I had lost. Unless I needed charred oak, I didn’t see anything remaining that might be of any use.

I found a stick in the yard, used it to poke about in the ashes. I didn’t want to walk among them. Didn’t want to take burnt particles of our home back to Darla. She’d see, and she’d know, and she’d be hurt I hadn’t brought her.

My stick struck something heavy. I pried.

A length of blackened copper cable came up with my stick.

I yanked, and the copper cable moved. I yanked again.

Toadsticker’s hilt popped out of the ashes. Two loops of copper were wound around his hilt.

“Can’t be,” I muttered. I’d lost Toadsticker two days after the house fire, when the mastodons charged.