The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) (15 page)

I pulled the sword out of the ruin.

It was Toadsticker. Every dent, every scratch, every worn spot was there. I found the old nick in the blade, two finger widths from the hilt. I’d put it there swinging at a vampire. I felt for, and found, the tiny scratches Buttercup had left on the butt when she’d thrown the sword from my roof. The leather wrapping around the hilt was gone, but it was Toadsticker I held in every other way.

Or so it seemed.

I waved the sword around. It didn’t throw thunderbolts or hurl mighty winds.

“What are you?” I asked.

I stood there for a long time. I knew damned well I wasn’t holding Toadsticker. My best guess was the steel that had once been a lightning rod was now the thing I held.

I didn’t know who or what Shango was. Whether he meant me good or ill. Whether he was real, or some trick of the huldra’s ghost, haunting me from inside some dark and hidden place in my heart.

Taking up the sword might mean doom.

Leaving it behind could mean death.

“Ask the right question,”
Shango said.

I mulled that over, while my former neighbors peeked out of their lace curtains.

I’d walked as a dream. Traveled to the moon. Seen people and things that were certainly not what they claimed or seemed to be. Lives were at stake. Fates were to be determined.

A question sprang to mind. I asked my heart of hearts if I wanted a beer, and we agreed a beer was harmless if not prudent, and I wiped soot from Toadsticker’s blade on the scorched remains of my lawn.

Then, sword in hand, I left Middling Lane once and forever behind.

I had a beer. Bought a plain black sword belt. Then I paid Captain Holder a visit, mainly to shave a single lie off my day.

Holder wasn’t in. He’d left a letter for me, in case I came around. I found a corner out of everyone’s way and read it there in the bustling Watch house.

Markhat,
it read.
We didn’t see a thing until after midnight. We stopped a dozen worthies and five carny clowns heading for the place after it was shut down. One of the clowns had a big mouth. We shut it for him, and sent the worthies home. I’m told a few of them snuck back later. My men in the woods heard screams.

I sent a report to the High House. The House has assigned a Corps sorcerer to the case. You might want to get your business done before an Army wand-waver wades in. They won’t be taking prisoners or rescuing survivors. I doubt anything will happen tonight. Too many links in the chain of command. But tomorrow, for sure. Don’t be there when it starts.

Holder

I cussed. I shoved the letter in my pocket and cussed some more.

It wouldn’t matter which of Rannit’s deranged Corps sorcerers was chosen to deal with the carnival. All wand-wavers tend to deal with problems the same way, by hurling killing magic around until the wand-wavers are the only ones left standing.

Even if Buttercup survived the assault, they’d snatch her up in the aftermath.

I paid the cabbie extra to get me back to
The Cat and Fiddle
at speed.

Chapter Seventeen

“That looks just like Toadsticker,” said Darla after we shared a kiss.

“Holder’s men are experts at spotting swords in ditches,” I said. For all I knew, they were.

She nodded. We sat at the bar, and Randy put down a glass of wine for her and a beer for me. I shoved coins his way and had a drink.

“What did the good Captain have to say about last night?” asked Darla.

“Plenty.” I gave her the letter. She read it and sighed.

“We have tonight, then,” she said. “Only tonight.”

“That’s all we’ll need. We get Buttercup home, try to figure out what they did to Alfreda. Then tomorrow we let the Corps hammer the whole place flat. Problem solved. No more flying witches coming to town.”

“If we can’t get Buttercup free?”

“We can and we will.”

The front doors banged open, letting in sunlight and street noise. Marshal strode in, a smile on his face and a stack of newspapers in his arms.

“Evening editions of every paper,” he said. “Hot off the press. I imagine you’d like a look.”

I rose, grabbed a stack, and spread them out on the bar. Darla and Gertriss fanned the pages, looking for our secret weapon.

“Found it, boss,” said Gertriss. She flattened her page down and turned it around for me to read. “The
Rannit Times
.”

I read.

COME ONE COME ALL, proclaimed the paper, in letters too big to miss. FREE ADMISSION TONIGHT! DARK’S DIVERSE DELIGHTS. PRIZES! RIDES! FREE FOOD AND DRINK FOR VETERANS OR ACTIVE MILITARY!

Below that was a drawing depicting free food and drink, along with a helpful map showing the location of the ferry and the carnival.

Darla found our ad in the
City Daily
. They’d included a drawing of a man in a tall hat holding back a manticore with a whip and a chair. A frightened lady looked on, too stricken with fear to notice her gown was hanging by one shoulder.

The
Rannit Reader
, the
Evening Star
, even the stalwart
Old Kingdom Crier
ran variations on the same theme.

“Gonna be a riot for sure,” observed Randy as he produced a fresh beer for me. His father shot him a look.

“Hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Darla.

“They’ll be outnumbered a hundred to one. Maybe more. Soldiers everywhere. Watchmen too. They won’t have a choice. I’ll see to that.”

Darla laid her hand on mine, and we listened to the clock in the corner tick off the moments until dusk.

Pandemonium.

The crowd filling the River Gate plaza was a single hurled cobble from turning into a mob.

People pushed and shoved and yelled. Red faces abounded. Fists were raised and shaken in righteous indignation. Canes, too, were raised in protest, as were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of familiar newspaper pages.

The gate-keepers relented, throwing the rusty iron gates open wide. The crowd surged ahead, cheering.

I was glad we’d brought two wagons. Otherwise, we might have gotten separated in the crowd. Instead, we let the eager throngs surge around us. We stayed put until the plaza was navigable again.

Still, people arrived. Some on foot. Some in cabs. Some in private carriages. Many bore picnic baskets or blankets. Swords hung from most belts. What better way to prove you were a veteran than to produce your own sword, with your unit insignia stamped right there on the blade?

With the crowd down to manageable levels, I urged our ponies forward, and through the gates we went.

The mob made a beeline for the ferry landing. We were too far back to hear the shouting, but close enough to see half a dozen ferry clowns tossed into the water when they tried to deny boarding to the first wave of eager freeloaders.

Clowns floated past, cussing and thrashing as the current bore them away. I granted them a cheerful wave as they passed.

“Free food and drink,” I offered, as the clowns vanished from sight. “At least you got the free drinks.”

Darla tapped my shoulder. “Think fast,” she said. “Your new friend doesn’t look happy.”

Captain Holder, mounted on an Army paint that managed to look as grumpy as her rider, rode up beside me.

“I should have known,” he said. “Dammit, I should have known.”

“You appear to have lost your cigar,” I said. “May I offer you one of mine?”

“You can tell me what the hell it is you’re up to,” he said. “Got word of a near riot at the gate. Found this.” He held up a wadded ad, from the
City Daily
. “Now I’ve found you.”

“I don’t own any newspapers,” I said. “I’m just here to enjoy a free meal.”

“You and half of Rannit. Free meal my ass. Pardon my language, Mrs. Markhat.”

I found a cigar in my jacket and offered it to him. He scowled at it, as though sizing it up for shackles, but he grunted and snatched it away and stuck it unlit in his mouth.

“My men claim two thousand people have already gone through the gate,” he said. He pointed back toward the water, where a number of small fishing boats were converging and taking on passengers. “More are headed this way. No way can that carnival outfit hold them all, much less feed and entertain them.”

“I agree, Captain. Offering free victuals to the thrifty, bargain-savvy people of Rannit would be a foolish move on the part of any business. Why, one will hardly be able to walk, amid the crowd. And most of them armed too! Tut-tut. Still, the carnival folk are outsiders, and know little of big city ways.”

“You deny this is your doing?”

“I deny it.”

He muttered an unsavory word around the butt of my rather good cigar. I covered Darla’s ears with my hands.

“Such language,” I said. “Desist thy hooliganism, I say, or I shall be forced to file an official complaint.”

He repeated his word, spurred his clearly annoyed mare, and off he went, barking orders no one obeyed.

Darla lowered my hands. “One day you’re going to put him in a bad temper,” she said.

“Everyone needs a hobby.”

The flotilla of tiny boats grew. People clambered aboard them, laughing and smiling. Coins fell into the hands of poor fishermen, who made room for as many as their ragged boats could bear.

Someone on the carnival ferry found the horn and blew it. On the far bank, a mastodon trumpeted and hunched its shoulders as it hauled the ferry back across.

We joined the growing crowd at the water’s edge, and awaited our turn.

Mama pulled her cleaver out of her sack halfway down the forest road to the carnival.

People saw, and some whispered, but no one dared challenge her.

I said nothing myself. Mama hadn’t talked about whatever she’d seen in the woods last night. She’d returned weary and silent and with the hard look of murder boiling behind her bright Hog eyes.

She’d put a fresh edge on her cleaver. She was rubbing the blade with a scrap of cloth, one end of which was tied off to form a wet ball. Whatever fluid was inside the rag left a thick yellow stain on her cleaver’s edge. I didn’t ask and she didn’t tell.

Slim lay curled around the rotary guns. Both were concealed by a tarp. He’d grunt occasionally when our wagon struck an exposed root. He still stank, but not of whiskey, and when we’d spoken earlier his words had been neither slow nor slurred. I was glad of that. Even a runt Troll is still a Troll, and I knew we’d need him before the night was done.

He’d nearly balked when I insisted Alfreda remain at
The Cat and Fiddle
. He’d launched into a long rambling Troll narrative that seemed to indicate she was the key to his redemption from disgrace. “The innocent,” he called her. It was only when I pointed out that she’d most certainly be torn apart on sight by the carnival folk that he relented.

Sara and Victor lurked somewhere in the trees. They’d returned from their reconnaissance of the previous night to report that the carnival was rebuilding, getting ready for another show as if nothing had happened.

More troubling than that was the fate of the clowns and roustabouts we’d slain before the mastodons charged. Most had simply risen and gone back to work with the sunrise. The ones which remained dead were burned along with the trash.

There was no rush to escape. No frenzied building of fortifications. The ruined balloons were folded and moved inside a tent, and Sara claimed no one was even working to repair them.

The War taught me you may face one of two enemies—wise ones, or foolish ones. I’d never really decided which was more dangerous. Smart enemies left escape routes open, never got trapped, would stop fighting and run if they saw the day was lost. A wise enemy is more likely to gain the upper hand, but if they didn’t, the battle was likely to end quickly.

Foolish enemies wound up with their backs to the wall, with no way out. Left with no options but to fight, they’d fight, to the death. Your death or theirs, the odds were nearly the same.

The carnival’s ticket gates came into sight.

All were toppled. Scraps of paper littered the ground, blew about in the early evening breeze. A few clowns wandered, flailing their big red gloves in vain, getting punched and kicked as they sought to turn back the tide that had already flooded the midway.

“Let’s get this done,” I said.

“Damn right,” said Mama. Her cleaver gleamed blood red in the setting sun. “I aims to put paid to a witch or two.”

“Let’s get Buttercup first,” I said. I clambered down, set the brake, tied the ponies to a bush. “Slim, wait till dark. Gertriss. Get the guns set up.”

“Won’t they see?” she asked.

“I hope so.”

She threw back the tarp and got to work.

Within minutes, another trio of wagons pulled up. The first two pulled an honest-to-Angels cannon and a crew of four grinning Avalante day folk. The last wagon bore the single biggest rotary gun I’d ever seen.

“Mr. Prestley sends his regards,” said one of the drivers, before leaping to the ground. “Where do we stage, and who do we shoot?”

“Set up right over there,” I said, pointing to a spot ten yards away. “If you see a balloon go up, please shoot it down. Same for any broomsticks. Hell, anything that flies. You got enough ammunition for multiple targets?”

The man’s grin widened. “Mister, we brought enough ammunition to light this place up all night. Broomsticks? As in fairytale witches?”

“Believe it or not,” I said.

“It flies, it dies,” he said. He saluted and turned on his heel, barking orders and stomping.

“Is that smart, hon?” asked Darla.

“Not sure,” I said. “My turn to be unpredictable, though. Mama. You got the banshee-hair rope and the hexed stump water?”

She handed over both without a word of protest.

A fresh crowd of revelers came hurrying down the forest road. The clowns that dared protest their arrival vanished beneath a wave of boots and hats. The sun wasn’t set, but the sky was as dim as a bank of old coals, and I looked across the packed carnival midway and decided we were close enough to dark.

“Slim, get up. You’re with Mama.” The Troll rose. He hefted what appeared to be a section of railroad track. “And don’t say die well,” I added, before he could speak. “The idea is to live.”

He chuckled, but leaped easily down from the wagon to tower over Mama’s squat frame.

“Sara? Victor? I know you’re nearby. I assume you’re with Gertriss?”

Two halfdead, each clothed in loose black hooded garments, appeared by the wagon. Each nodded their pale face in silent assent. “Good,” I said. “Remember the black tent. You can’t see it unless you know it’s there, but now you know. Find it, but don’t go in. Find me. You see Thorkel, find me.”

“I sees that witch, I’m gonna kill her dead on sight,” said Mama. “Then I’ll come find ye.”

“Fair enough. One more thing. Thorkel isn’t behind all this. Neither is the witch. We need to find the heart of the carnival and stick a blade in it.”

Mama frowned. “What the hell does that mean, boy?”

“No idea,” I said. “Keep it in mind, though. Good luck. You, on the cannons. Anything big and ugly shows its face, open fire. Got it?”

“Yessir!”

Slim looked down at Mama. “Live well,” he said to her. She guffawed and stomped off toward the midway.

Gertriss turned to face me. “Good luck, boss,” she said. Flanked by Sara and Victor, she melted into the crowd.

“Just you and me,” I said to Darla. “Fancy a candied apple?”

She took my arm, and we waded in while the cannon crews banged and hammered.

The midway was at a near standstill.

People milled about, yes, but only at a shuffle. Food carts were surrounded. A few had been commandeered by civic-minded Rannites, who were handing out free hot dogs and sticky buns over the protests of carny clowns.

Every sideshow tent was surrounded. Every one sported a line. If the tent had a stage, the seats were full.

A few carnival barkers shouted and waved, exhorting the masses in their usual fashion. I saw one try to hold back the crowd, only to be laughed aside and pushed to the ground for his trouble.

The noise was impressive. So far, the crowd sounded happy. I hoped that would last as long as the hot dogs and beer held out.

“What now?” asked Darla, close by my ear.

“Look for a black tent,” I said. “Don’t let it tell you it isn’t there. It is, and now that you know that, you can see it.”

She nodded and looked about.

So did I. I recognized several tents. Malus was struggling to put on a show, despite the catcalls and debris hurled his way by the crowd. He held forth his hat, turned it upside down to prove it was empty, and a man leaped onto the stage, grabbed the hat, and ran off with it. When Malus’s veiled young assistant tripped the hat-thief and jumped on him, the crowd roared in applause.

The Man of Bones peeked out of his tent just in time to see the crowd surge inside, probably bowling him over in the process.

Only Vallata the swamp witch remained nonplused by the fray. Her handful of water moccasin snakes kept the mob at bay. Vallata spat at the crowd, laughing in their faces as she lunged, wielding the fat black snakes like weapons.

“Won’t do her much good when Mama finds her,” I said.