The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) (2 page)

Chapter Three

The sun was peeking over the rooftops along Cambrit Street when the knock came at my door.

Back in the day, when I lived in the tiny room behind the office, I’d have probably stumbled out of that room cussing and shedding bed-clothes. I’d have yanked the door open with a glare and a wary eye.

Not so these days. Gertriss keeps the desks clean and puts fresh fireflowers in a vase on both. Red for her, blue for me. The place smells of lilacs. Even Three-leg Cat adopts a posture of calm repose and refrains from breaking wind when clients come calling.

It’s a brave new world, I’m told, so I opened my door with a smile and a hearty “Good morning.”

“I tell thee plain, there is nothing good about it. Not a damn thing,” replied the man who’d just knocked. He kept his balled fist raised, in case something in the vicinity of my smile needed a good thumping. “You are Markhat? The finder?”

He pronounced ‘there’ as ‘zere’ and ‘the’ as ‘zee.’ I’d heard that accent before, during my stint in the Army, spoken by farm kids from the endless grassy plains out east.

“I am Markhat zee finder,” I replied. I let go of my smile, since he wasn’t having any. “Mama Hog send you?”

“Oh for Heaven’s sake, stop trying to bluff the man, Bertold,” chirped a voice from regions behind and beneath Bertold. “We did not come all this way to sell livestock.”

Bertold’s scowl went flush with red. I stepped back and motioned him inside.

“Have a seat,” I said. “We can talk.”

Bertold didn’t budge.

He was a big man. Not the kind of big we get around here, which is usually a combination of old country tall and new city fat. No, Bertold was tall and rangy and he might have a head of stark white hair and a fifty-year-old beard of the same snow-white hue, but his shirt and sleeves bulged and his neck was a mass of sun-tanned muscle lined with old healed scars.

I crossed my arms over my chest.

“I don’t know where you’re from, or how they do things there, but I do business in Rannit,” I said. “In Rannit, we sit down in my office and close the door and have nice private conversations which may or may not lead to a job. Mama vouched for you, and she makes a damned good biscuit, but I’m about to close my door and if you’re on the wrong side of it when it shuts, you can look for another finder, and good luck.”

I reached down and grasped my latch. The man’s piercing blue eyes glinted like chips of glacial ice but he didn’t so much as take a breath.

“Honestly,” chirped the female voice, and a tiny woman in a homespun bustle-skirt and an old-timey frontier bonnet swept past her giant, caught him by his belt-buckle, and dragged him bodily inside.

She was diminutive, but no less work-worn than the shuffling Bertold. Her hair was every bit as gray, and her face was lined with wrinkles, but she smiled up at me and most of the years fell away.

“Please forgive my husband’s stubbornness,” she said, still tugging at the behemoth’s belt. “I am Renilda Ordwald. My husband is named Bertold, and he’d have told you that himself if he had any manners.”

“That be enough, wife,” growled Bertold.

“No. It isn’t. You heard what Mrs. Hog said. This finder is our last and only hope, and here you are, giving insult.”

“No insult given,” I said. I pulled an extra chair around and put it in front of my desk. “People don’t come to see me unless they’ve walked through Hell itself. Please, Mr. Ordwald. Sit. You’ve come this far. I don’t charge for consultations.”

I knew at once I’d said precisely the wrong thing. His knuckles went white on the back of my chair. “You think I have no coin? You think I am a poor man?”

“I think the act of coming here and hiring help is making you angry,” I said. I sat, and Mrs. Ordwald did the same. “Which makes you a proud man. Nothing wrong with that. Unless it gets in the way of doing what needs to be done.”

Mrs. Ordwald bit her lip.

We let the silence linger. I clasped my fingers together behind my head and smiled at Mrs. Ordwald.

Finally, the giant let out his breath. His frame slumped, and he pulled out the chair and sank down into it.

Damned if he didn’t start bawling. Right there, in my office, crying without a sound. His chest heaved and he shook like a man elf-struck. Tears and snot rolled down his face and his neck but the man never uttered a sound.

His wife put her hand over his.

We waited until he was done. When he was done, we pretended we hadn’t seen.

I got out my note-pad and my fancy gold-plated ink pen.

“So tell me all about it,” I said. “Start at the beginning.”

“That damned carnival,” he said. His hands clenched into fists. “That damned carnival. Took my Alfreda.”

Dutifully, I wrote down her name. The action gave father Ordwald something to focus on.

“The carnival took her. How? When?”

“Three years ago, on the first day of fall,” said Mrs. Ordwald. She kept her hand on her husband’s. He didn’t meet my eyes and didn’t speak. “A good summer, we had,” she added. “Five thousand head of prime beef, we sold in the single day. The single day! It was my idea, Mr. Markhat. Take the children to the carnival. We’d all go, we would. All see the sights, eat too much and laugh at the clowns and go home full of candy apples and carnival pies.”

“Wasn’t your fault,” muttered Mr. Ordwald. “Was mine. Alfreda, she does not wish to go. Go you will, I say. Put on your finest, and get into the wagon.” He took in a breath and his chest trembled.

Before Mrs. Ordwald could refute him, I spoke up.

“What’s the name of the carnival?”

“Dark’s Diverse Delights,” said Mrs. Ordwald. “We have the waybills. The posters. At our hotel. If such things you want.”

I scribbled, remembering mastodons, seeing balloons bobbing in the dark.

“What does this man of the city know of them who travel by night?” asked Mr. Ordwald. His voice cracked as he spoke. “What does this man know of anything, outside his walls?”

“They travel by air, towed by Troll horses,” I said. “Thirteen balloons. I figure the whole outfit numbers around two hundred souls.”

“Two hundreds and seven and ten,” said Ordwald. He looked up at me for the first time. I’d taken a chance by describing the carnival from my dream-walk, but I’d impressed the man at last. “Two hundreds and seven and ten, not counting the dozen Ogres and the pair of half-breed Northish giants and a stunted Troll. And not a soul among them, finder of the city. Monsters, all. You mark my words. Monsters, to take my Alfreda.”

“So you took the kids to the carnival,” I said. “What happened? Walk me through it. I ask just one thing—tell me what you saw. Not what you think, or suspect, or surmise. Just what you actually saw.”

They nodded.

“Start that night of the carnival,” I said. “You’ve just parked the wagon. Who climbs out?”

Mrs. Ordwald spoke first. “We were five then. Orval. Bivel. Alfreda. They were with us.”

I wrote. “Orval and Bivel—sons or daughters?”

“Sons. Bivel died last year. Orval is working a lumberyard south of Prince.”

“Go on.”

“We went here and there,” said the father. “Clowns danced. Foolish, they were. Children, unruly, running about disorderly. There was music, tents, crowds. I caught Orval trying to sneak off into a devil woman’s veil-dance and I box his ears for him.”

“Ears boxed,” I said, when they both stopped talking. “Fine. Got it. Now tell me about the last time you saw your daughter.”

“They dare not take her at the carnival,” said Ordwald. “You think they dare? You think I let them lay hands on my little Alfreda?”

His wife managed to push down the fist he raised against me.

“We were leaving,” she said. “It was nearly midnight. We had our backs to the tents. We were laughing. Talking. Happy. For the last time.” She set her jaw and continued. “A man stepped out of the dark. Startled me, startled us all. But he was quick to speak, quick to set us all laughing again.”

“He was devil,” said Ordwald. “A prancing devil. I saw the evil in him, finder. Was I to be made the fool by his quick tongue? By his high speaking?”

“This devil have a name?”

Mrs. Ordwald nodded. “Thorkel. Ubel Thorkel. Master, he says, of the Dark Carnival. He gave us his card. Gave our Alfreda a single red fireflower. Thanked us for coming. Wished us a good night.”

“I saw how he looked at her, finder,” said Mr. Ordwald. “Oh, he was a clever man with clever words. But I see his eyes, and I see what he wants for my Alfreda, and I told him then and there he’d have none of her. Not that night, not any.”

“And how did he react?”

“He laughed, Mr. Markhat. He laughed, said he meant no offense. He bade us farewell.”

“Did he leave?” I asked.

“Yah. As quickly as he came,” said Mrs. Ordwald. “Slipped back into the shadows. Like the ghost, he was. Like the ghost.”

“Then what?”

“We went home,” she replied. “We took to our beds. We slept. When we awoke, Alfreda was gone, her bed empty. Her bedclothes scattered on the floor.”

“We have dogs,” said Mr. Ordwald. “Good dogs. Do they bark? Do they make a noise?”

“I’m guessing they did not,” I said.

“You tell me, man of the city. What manner of creature walks by night, unseen and unchallenged? What manner of creature can pass eleven Northland wolfhounds, each trained for the kill, and not raise an alarm?”

“No man I know,” I replied. “Your dogs. Would they have barked at your daughter, had she left in the night?”

I nearly got punched. It took all of Mrs. Ordwald’s strength to keep that angry, farm-fed fist still.

“The Sheriff, he asks the same,” said Mrs. Ordwald, quickly. “The answer is yes. They would have barked at Alfreda, but not attacked. They bark at anyone moving about after dark. Anyone at all.”

I nodded. “Your ranch. It’s how far from the closest road, and the nearest neighbor?”

“Twenty and six miles to the old king’s road,” muttered Mr. Ordwald. “Ten and two miles to the Sutter ranch.”

“The Sutters have no sons at home,” added Mrs. Ordwald, quickly. “The Sheriff asked that too.”

“Lost a tooth for his trouble, he did,” said Mr. Ordwald.

“Any of Alfreda’s clothes or personal items missing?”

Both Ordwalds shook their heads no. “Her hairbrush, it is on her dresser,” said Mrs. Ordwald. “All her shoes, her boots, are there. Her rings, her necklace, her angel pin. All there.”

“She is a good girl, Alfreda,” said Mr. Ordwald. “She does not go outdoors without her angel pin above her heart.”

“Did either of you notice Alfreda acting strange before that night? Giving things away? Getting letters or unusual visitors?”

“No,” they chorused. “None of these things.”

“You said she didn’t want to go to the carnival. Did she say why?”

Father Ordwald lowered his head. “I did not ask,” he said.

I stretched. Three-leg Cat came strolling in from the back, leapt atop Gertriss’s desk, and gave us all a good hard glare in turn.

With some people, silence spurs talk. Not the Ordwalds. They waited, jaws tight, faces blank. I wasn’t sure whether to keep asking questions or break into song.

“And you haven’t seen her since,” I said, returning Three-leg Cat’s glare.

“No one has. I have spent my fortune, finder, searching for my Alfreda. Sheriffs we have hired. Men of arms.”

“We have followed this carnival for three years,” added his wife. “To Weston. To Prince. To Bel Loit. To the Outlands, and back. We hire lawyers. Finders. None can bring us Alfreda.”

“So I have to ask,” I said. “What makes you so sure Alfreda was taken by the carnival?”

“I will tell it,” said Mrs. Ordwald. “Let me.”

Her husband nodded once.

“The carnival was gone when we first went there to search,” she said. “Nothing left but stakes and trash. But my husband, he takes two ranch-hands, two mules. They follow the Troll horse trail. Thirty days they follow, and they find the carnival near a place called Tomb Stones.” She licked her lips. Her nails were digging into the back of her husband’s hand. “My husband, he buys a ticket. He walks among the tents. There he finds our little girl.”

Mr. Ordwald made a choking sound.

“Men,” she said, in a whisper. “They paid to see her. On her tent, the placard reads ‘living dead girl.’”

“They do not just watch,” said Mr. Ordwald. He spoke the words slowly and precisely. “Men go inside, with her. Men come out. More go in. I take my whip, finder. I take my whip and—”

“They beat him nearly to death,” said his wife. “The ranch-hands find him in the woods. They think him dead too, until he stirs. My Bertold is not so easy to kill.”

I watched the man’s face change from beet-red to corpse gray and I pondered the truth behind those words.

“Mr. Ordwald. You are sure you saw your daughter, that night?”

“I saw her. She was pale. So thin, how you say? Gaunt. Gaunt and white. Her eyes are black. She walks, but so clumsy.” He took his wife’s hand in his, and she gritted her teeth as he squeezed.

“She sees me, finder. At first I think her dead. But she sees me and she opens her mouth and she tries to scream.”

“Then?” I asked.

“Then nothing. I wake up in the woods. I cannot hear for many weeks. Cannot walk. My cattle men bring me home.”

“And you told all this to the Sheriff?”

He worked up a glob of spit and remembered his manners and swallowed it instead. “They go to see that devil of a carnival master. He blinds them with lies. All believe me a fool.” His wife wrenched her hand away. “I tell you, I am no fool. I saw her. She walked. Dead or alive, we will take Alfreda home.”

Mama’s words came creeping back to me.
That poor slip of a girl is dead but I fears she ain’t at rest.

“Let’s start with places and names,” I said. “Every place you’ve followed this carnival to. Every finder, every man you hired. Names, dates, what they did or didn’t do.”

Mrs. Ordwald produced a sheaf of folded, dog-eared papers, and we got down to business.

Chapter Four

I bought three newspapers before I hired a cab to take me to the River Gate. The trip across town gave me plenty of time to read.

The
Rannit Times
had a month-long head start on its competitors, the
City Daily
and the
Old Kingdom Crier
. But the
Daily
was printing pictures, it was a full ten pages longer than either of the other two, and its ink didn’t smudge. I declared the
City Daily
my favorite of our newly-resurrected newspapers just as my cab rolled to a stop on the River Gate plaza. Aside from a pair of fishermen hawking catfish from a barrel, the plaza was empty.

The gates stood open.

I folded my copy of the
Daily
neatly and put it under my arm. The sun was bright and the breeze off the river kept the stench of the nearby slaughterhouses wafting the other way so I didn’t mind the walk. The old road was choked with weeds and missing quite a few pavers, but it was passable all the way down to the bank of the Brown.

I caught the stink of mastodons before I heard their trumpeting and grunts. Ahead, trees cracked and fell, one after another, striking the earth with enough force to jar my teeth.

I got out of the way. Six of the beasts charged past, chained to massive logs they dragged sideways through the scrub brush. Any tree too big to be felled by the monstrous logs was wrenched from the ground and tossed aside by a Troll-horse’s mighty trunk.

In their wake was a wide, clear path leading right through the woods. Workmen were already swarming the sides of the path, hanging lanterns in trees and hammering garish posters and waybills here and there.

None spoke as I passed, at least not to me. I tried to follow their muttered conversations as I walked, but couldn’t make out more than one word in five amid whatever patois they were using.

The posters and waybills needed no translation, however. SEE THE AMAZING MAN OF BONES, proclaimed one, depicting an unlikely living skeleton dancing with a scantily-clad woman. The woman’s sheer gown was in danger of falling off, but the Man of Bones didn’t seem to mind.

Next came THRILL TO GOGOR THE TROLL, who menaced the dancing woman’s twin sister into revealing more of her bosom than she probably intended. After that was MALU THE MAGNIFICENT, MASTER OF MAGIC, and SYLIZABET, QUEEN OF THE ELVES, who must have borrowed her sheer gown from the Man of Bones’s dancing partner.

The newly-cleared path ran a mile before reaching the river. I passed all manner of horrors and wonders, most of them engaged in ill-advised acts of flirtation with ladies who weren’t dressed for winter, but not a single one of the waybills or posters advertised a living dead girl.

As the ravaged woods opened up to reveal the wide sluggish face of the Brown, a mob of cussing, stumbling clowns was hitching a makeshift barge to ropes secured around a mastodon’s furry neck. The buzzing cloud of horseflies that enveloped the beast was so loud it sounded as if the vile bugs were learning to sing.

Ropes dropped down into the river, snaking off to the other bank, where a second lazy mastodon amused itself by spraying the clowns down with gouts of filthy water from its battle-scarred trunk.

“So that’s how we’ll be crossing the river,” I said aloud.

A clown detached himself from his fellows and duck-walked toward me, his painted smile not nearly artful enough to reveal the scowl beneath.

“Look, mister, the ferry won’t be ready till nearly sundown, if then,” he said, spitting a gob of tobacco at my feet. “You’ll have to come back then. Unless you’re a tax man. Are you a tax man, mister?”

I noticed half a dozen nearby clowns drop their lines and timbers. Painted ears cocked my way.

“Me? Heavens no, my good man. Heavens no.” I brought up my copy of the
City Daily
with a snap. “Mortimer Bustman, at your service. I am a reporter for Rannit’s finest journalistic entity, the
City Daily
. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

He eyed the newspaper as though it were a three-eyed fish.

“So you ain’t a tax man.”

“I am reporter, sir. For a newspaper.” I waved the paper over his head, at his fellows. “Surely someone remembers newspapers?”

“Ain’t seen one since before the War,” grumbled a fat, sweat-soaked clown. “Hell, ain’t they still outlawed?”

“Not in Rannit,” I piped. My cheery smile was so wide and guileless, the corners of my mouth were beginning to hurt. “The Regent has seen fit to restore them. I’m here to do a story on your carnival.”

“A story?”

“A story, my good man. For people in Rannit to read.”

“Tax men?”

My smile didn’t waver. The fat clown saved me from further explanation by trundling past his fellows, snatching my copy of the
Daily
from my hands, and holding it upside-down while studying the tiny print.

“I reckon this is for the boss to decide,” he said, after a time. Sweat dripped from his red clown nose, and horseflies orbited his shaved head. “Looks like you’ll be first across, mister,” he added.

Then he broke into the single most dejected clown-dance I’ve ever witnessed, cussing and grunting the whole time.

I stood politely by and watched, even clapping when it was over, as ancient tradition and good manners demand.

“Blessed be all your crossings, your comings and your goings, and all that horse-shit,” he wheezed, when he was done.

I retreated to the only meager shade I could find and waited for the new ferry to bear me across the river and into the company of the carnival master, who might or might not be hiding at least one farm-girl in his tents.

By the time I reached the carnival master’s bright red tent, my lips were dry and I was hoarse and my newspaper was a ragged flopping thing, missing most of section 1A,
Fine Dining in Rannit.

I stood outside the red tent flaps and waited. I didn’t see the pair of shaggy Ogres crouching in the shade six feet away, watching me with that unblinking Ogre stare that conveys such wordless menace. I didn’t see the club one carried, or the shovel the other bore. I certainly didn’t ponder the significance of either item.

Voices sounded inside the carny master’s tent. One voice was male, low, and none too happy. The other was female, soft, and even less jubilant than the man. They talked for a good twenty minutes, neither speaking loud enough to make their words intelligible, until footfalls sounded and the tent flaps parted and out stepped a tall blonde lady wearing spider webs, a pair of shoe-strings, and what I surmised to be the remains of a tiny silk coin-purse.

“Oh, close your mouth, you flap-eared bastard,” snapped the woman, as I made to tip my hat.

“Always a pleasure,” I said. She hurried away, hips swinging.

“Come,” said a man, from inside the red tent. Being a cautious sort, I glanced at the Ogres. The one minding the shovel grunted and pointed at the flap.

I dipped my eyes at the Ogres before making my way inside.

It was midnight-dark within the tent. Candles burned, by the dozens, but the thick fabric blocked every beam of the midday sun. I took a single step before the flap closed behind me, and then I stopped, lest I barge into a shelf filled with priceless glassware or the pointy end of a freshly-sharpened sword.

I blinked away the dark, took a quick look around, and nearly turned and ran.

The tent’s walls were covered with faces. Hollow-eyed, mouths agape. Hundreds of faces, frozen in the midst of as many throatless screams. Amid the faces hung heads of hair. Men’s hair. Women’s hair. Children’s hair, fair and dark, long and short, young and old, locks draping and spilling across those below, some fluttering though the air was still.

Between the faces and the scalps drooped butchered limbs. Arms and legs, hands and feet, shoes and gloves and shirts and trousers.

A tall wide shelf lined with jars covered the back wall. Each jar was filled with dark fluid, and each jar contained something that moved, turning slowly, pressing white against the glass before retreating back into the murk. I saw half a dozen battered wooden trunks, each marked with strange script that crawled and writhed in the candlelight.

I smelled cinnamon and lilies. Saw a tiny copper pot boiling on a wrought-iron brazier, books in a tumbled heap beside a ragged wicker chair. A big pre-War iron safe hid in a nearby patch of shadow, only part of its dials and levers concealed by a tattered throw-rug. In the far corner sat a spinning wheel, slowly turning of its own accord.

Then I blinked, and the faces became masks, and the shocks of hair wigs, and the arms and legs prop limbs, things of wood and metal and paint.

A man sat behind a crude desk formed by a pair of beer-kegs and a half dozen warped planks. He wore a bright red Marine lieutenant’s dress coat, a pristine black top hat, a yellow linen shirt, and a blood-red scarf. The toes of polished black boots peeked out from under his desk.

His hair fell in long golden tresses from beneath the hat, framing his gaunt, pale face in the flickering candle-light. His nose was long and thin, his eyes were sunken and dark, and his teeth gleamed like new porcelain china out of lips so red I knew they’d been painted.

He rose, removed his hat, and executed a fluid formal bow.

“Welcome to my world,” he said, smiling a close-lipped little smile. “I am Ubel Thorkel, master of Dark’s Diverse Delights. My men tell me you write for a newspaper.” He nodded at the paper I clutched in my hands. “May I see it?”

I gave it to him. “Mortimer Bustman, city desk,” I said. He didn’t offer to shake hands and neither did I. “People in Rannit are curious about your carnival.”

He sat, opening the paper so that I could no longer see his face.

“Are they now?” he said.

“Oh, they are indeed,” I replied. “Mr. Thorkel, do you have any idea how many Rannites start each day by reading the
City Daily
? Our circulation is well over twenty thousand, and growing by the week. Why, a paragraph in our Diversions section could bring in hundreds of visitors to your carnival, the first few nights alone.”

He lowered the paper and stared up at me.

“My men suspect you are a tax man, Mr. Dustman.”

“The name is Bustman,” I replied. “We both know even the Regent of Rannit can’t collect taxes on a traveling carnival encamped outside the city walls. But I don’t work for the Regent. I’m just here to write about your carnival, Mr. Thorkel. We haven’t seen a traveling show in years, and people are eager to read all about you.”

The walls of the tent shut out noise as well as light. There’d been a gang of workmen hammering tent-stakes into the ground when I entered. I hadn’t heard a single hammer blow since passing through the flap.

I didn’t like the man’s eyes. They looked dry, as if both were glass with irises and pupils daubed on with paint.

He spoke. “Why don’t you tell me the truth, Mr. Bustman?”

“I just did.”

He let the
Daily
fall down to his rude desk. “You came here to mock. To ridicule. To demean. To print lurid descriptions of my show, for the titillation and fleeting amusement of your vapid, witless readership.”

“That’s twenty thousand vapid, witless readers, each paying five coppers a week to be titillated and fleetingly amused.”

He smiled.

“Twenty thousand, you say?”

“Twenty-two thousand by the end of the week.”

The carnival master nodded. Amid the masks and the wigs and the rest, mirrors hung haphazardly on every wall, and the effect of his nod reflected in so many mirrors filled the tent with the illusion of movement.

“May I ask what wage you are paid, to mock and demean?”

“Five coppers a word,” I said. “Six, if I manage to fit in ridicule.”

He laughed. The sound was abrupt and dry and harsh. I’d heard jackals once, while my unit camped under the stars at Branach. Jackals sang while sand dunes sparkled with hoarfrost in the night. Thorkel’s laughter sounded like a jackal’s cry, humorless and cruel.

He fished in his jacket, withdrew a silver Old Kingdom coin, and tossed it to me.

I caught it.

“Make them good words, Mr. Bustman. Excellent words. Now then. Let us show your magnificent audience the varied and unforgettable wonders of Dark’s Diverse Delights, mobile circus extraordinaire.”