We were halfway to the street, all gathered in the dappled shade cast by the tossing boughs of a century-old madbark tree. The grass was soft and cool. Flowers swayed, birds chased and sang, and the air was breezy and sweet. Had the dogs not been wild-eyed, shaggy wolfhounds bred for fatal maiming, we’d have looked like something out of a Pastoral Period oil painting.
The widow’s head popped out of the door.
“Jefrey!” she shouted. “Put the dogs up and get back to the kitchen!”
“Yes ma’am,” said Jefrey. He rose, stretched, yawned.
“I reckon I was wrong about you, earlier,” he said, not looking at me but up at the wide blue sky. “Reckon you ain’t what I thought.”
“Jefrey!” shrieked the widow.
“It’s hard to know who people are,” I said. I rose too, as did all my shaggy new friends. “Takes time. Take the Merlat kids, for instance. I don’t know them, won’t have time to know them. You do.” I brushed twigs off my pants. “Tell me who the kids are, Jefrey. Who they really are.”
Jefrey’s face darkened, took on its usual tight-lipped, pinched expression.
“I reckon they’re a right lot of useless, bloodsucking, backstabbing bastards,” he said softly. “Monsters, all, and don’t you tell the Lady I said so.”
“I won’t,” I said. “The girl too?”
“Her especially,” said Jefrey, and he began to stomp and grind his jaw. “You mind her, finder,” he said. “She’ll come on to you, first thing, all sweets and juices. I reckon you’ll like that.”
I remembered the laugh from upstairs. “No, I won’t,” I said. “Thufe here is my only girl. Right, Thufe?”
The dog barked. I swear it did, and Jefrey nearly stumbled, so much was he surprised.
“You ain’t doin’ some mojo, are you?” he asked. “I swear, if you are—”
“I’m not doing anything,” I said. “Relax. The dogs just like me because I like them.” I paused, edged around a fireflower bed, fell back into step with Jefrey. “We had dogs in the Army. I was a handler. That good enough for you?”
Jefrey turned. “A handler? You?”
“Fifth regiment, eight brigade, out of Fort Armistead,” I replied. “Six years, one after the Truce.”
Jefrey cocked his head. “Didn’t they use dogs to sniff out Troll tunnels?”
I nodded. “We did,” I said, and Thufe looked up and licked my hand. “Don’t ask.”
Jefrey shrugged. By then, we were close enough to get on the sidewalk. The widow shouted once more, something about meeting us at the back, and the big door shut.
“Abad’s a gambler,” said Jefrey. “Diced away his inheritance in two years flat.”
“What’s he playing with now?” I asked.
“The widow’s money,” he said, ruffing the big male Hort’s neck-mane. “He borrows against the Merlat name, pisses it all away and then they show up. She always pays,” said Jefrey. “Ought to let ’em gut the rat-faced little bastard.”
We neared the corner. “What about the other brother?” I asked. “Arthur, isn’t it?”
“Othur,” said Jefrey, and he spat after pronouncing the word. “Weed.”
I nodded. “How long?”
“Long as I can recall, it seems,” said Jefrey. He was looking about now, checking windows and doors to see if the widow’s shadow fell across any of them. “Took to it when the old master left for the War. Ain’t much left of Othur now, ’cept when he’s running low. Then he gets mean. He’s the reason I lock my door at night, Markhat. Them others is bad enough—but I reckon they’re too lazy to cut a poor man’s throat for a handful of copper jerks. Othur, though—he’d kill you just to wait a day and snatch the coppers off your eyes, you mark my words.”
I nodded, kept my mouth shut. Jefrey was getting nervous, and though I wanted to ask about the daughter again, I didn’t want to put Jefrey on the spot with the widow.
We neared the kennels, and the dogs yipped and trotted. Jefrey wrestled open the top of a barrel and began to scoop out pellets of dog food.
“Here you go, you monsters,” he said, moving toward the line of bowls just inside the fence. “You done good, you did. Eat it up!”
I put my hands in the dog food, savored the smell. It was the same dry feed I’d used in the Army, and I hadn’t seen it since.
Jefrey finished feeding, shut the kennel gate. “We’ll let ‘em out at dark,” he said. Then he wiped his hands on his pants, grinned crookedly at me and held out his hand to shake.
“I reckon any man that can rub Thufe’s belly has a hand worth shaking,” he said.
I shook. Then he turned away and stomped toward the kitchen, the dogs barked their goodbyes and I followed him out of the sunlight.
Chapter Three
“We dress for dinner at this House,” said the Widow Merlat. She rose when she said it, and the glare she turned on Othur would have sent a normal man back at least a pair of steps.
But not Othur. He just slumped against the polished cherry door casing and turned a bleary half-smile back upon the widow.
“I am dressed, Mother,” he said. His voice was thick and wet, and he pronounced each word with the slow, elaborate care that makes weed-addicts think they’re speaking normally. “Dressed much better than him.” He’d raised a pale, thin hand and pointed at me.
Abad, seated across from me, snickered. Beside me, the daughter Elizabet pretended to be furious and used the occasion as an excuse to reach down and give my knee a friendly squeeze.
“You will sit down,” said the widow, still standing. “And if you disgrace your father’s table again tonight, you shall find yourself sleeping on the street.”
Othur shrugged, ambled toward a chair. The widow followed him with her eyes. “That goes for all of you,” she said. “This man will ask you questions, after we dine. You will answer them. Know that if you insult, if you lie, I shall cast you out. Out of this house, out of the will, out of the Merlat name. Is that clear?”
She waited for nods, got grudging ones and sat.
And so we dined.
The dining room—one of three I’d found, this being the smallest—had floors of Saraway marble, shot through with gold. The walls were paneled with cherry—one was hung with tapestries, one with weapons various Merlats had borne to battles diverse. One wall sported a mahogany and glass curio cabinet full of bric-a-brac and a door that led to a wine cellar.
The wall behind the widow, though, commanded my attention. Centered upon it was a portrait of Ebed Merlat himself. He was depicted as a tall, powerful man, dressed in cavalry officer’s blues, his helmet gone, his hair white and wild and flowing in a wind. He held up a sword at least a length and a half too long to have ever been real, and the horse he was mounted upon would have been a freak, were it truly that large.
But the effect worked. You didn’t see the soldiers in the background, or the fires, or the bulking forms of Trolls encircling them. All you saw was Ebed Merlat, his uplifted sword, his fierce blue eyes. I found it difficult to meet the painted man’s gaze.
He was probably four-foot-nine in real life, I decided. Four-foot-nine, balding, and the closest he ever got to a horse like that was watching the painter sketch it out.
The widow was seated at the head of the table, directly under the watchful glare of the painted Ebed. I assumed she did this intentionally, and applauded her attention to detail.
The table was polished blackwood, the chairs high-backed, cushioned with red velvet and still about as comfortable as a stump. Over the table hung a lead-glass chandelier from which three dozen candles shone. The light should have been brighter, but the ceiling was a dark red tile, and the room just seemed to suck up the light.
Even so, I was able to get good looks at each of the Merlat children. Abad, who had arrived first for dinner, was nearly thirty. He was clean, at any rate, and his clothes were new and well-kept. He had his mother’s small sharp eyes and coal black hair and his father’s tall straight frame, but he’d missed getting a chin of any sort from either of his parents. And while the Widow sat still and silent, Abad was a fidgeting, finger-drumming, fork-twirling mess of nervous habits. So far, though, the only attention he’d sent my way had been a glare that vanished as soon as I returned it.
The daughter, Elizabet, had shown up a few moments later. She’d dressed for dinner, too, though from the Widow’s sharp intake of breath and slight paling of features I’d known that the Widow Merlat and her daughter had different ideas about dressing.
So did I, for that matter. Elizabet’s bright red, over-the-shoulder, slit-up-the-thigh dress said loads about the wearer, and most of the messages had no place being sent in the presence of one’s mother. She had slinked in slow, stopped in the doorway to speak to her mother and turned as she spoke so I’d get the full view.
I’d gotten it. Long black hair done up in Old Empire curls that fell over her shoulders and cascaded down her back. Big brown eyes under lashes done up with just the right make-up for the room and the lighting. Legs in dark silk stockings treated with a powder that made them shimmer in the candlelight.
Her voice was low and husky, and when she repeated my name she smiled with her lips and let her eyes widen just a bit. Then she looked me over and kept smiling, as though she’d just found something she’d been looking for all day.
I let her think she had me hooked, even going so far as to pour her a glass of middling good wine. The widow watched, glaring and hawklike, and once just before Jefrey barged in with a serving cart, I saw Elizabet give Abad a quick look of triumph.
Jefrey served, moving from plate to plate and filling each with food from within his steaming pans. We had duck with bread stuffing, mashed potatoes and something Jefrey called
jelad café oromead
that turned out to be a three-bean salad and a slice of ham. It wasn’t bad, either; I made sure I asked Lady Merlat to compliment the cook, though we both knew that either she or Jefrey had cooked it all.
Abad choked his down and demanded seconds and thirds. Othur pushed his around without ever lifting his fork, drank five glasses of wine and slipped a solid-silver serving knife up his sleeve when he thought no one was watching. Elizabet, like Othur, merely toyed with her food, though she did manage to eat a few beans and most of the ham slice.
The widow’s plate sat untouched. The meal was quick, with the only conversation being of the pass-the-salt variety. Finally, the widow rang a tiny silver bell, and Jefrey rolled his cart back in and began collecting plates.
“Now we talk,” said the widow, as Jefrey scooped up my plate.
“Fine, Mother,” snapped Abad. “And what are we to talk to this gentleman about?”
He said “gentleman” with a sneer.
“Do you remember what I said, Abad? About insult?” said the widow.
Before he could answer, I spoke. “I’m here to find out who—or what—has been frightening your mother,” I said. “To that end, I need to ask some questions.”
“Go ahead,” purred Elizabet. “We all want to help Mother, I’m sure. Don’t we?”
The brothers Merlat issued a weak round of yeses. Elizabet beamed and turned toward me.
“Do me first,” she said.
Jefrey threw a handful of forks into a metal pan, but I ignored him.
“Fine,” I said. “Tell me, then. Have you seen your father’s shade?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, and she drew her arms across her breast and huddled closer to me. “More than once.”
“How many times?” I asked. “And when?”
She bit her lower lip. “The first time was—oh, three months ago,” she said. “I’d come home for a few days, to visit Mother, and the dogs began to bark, and the footmen were shouting. So I opened my window—I was in my room, on the fourth floor—and looked down, and there was Father, standing there, looking back up at me.”
“What was he wearing?” I asked.
She frowned. “Shrouds,” she said. “Grey, gauzy shrouds. He had grave-mold all over his face—oh, Mother, I’m so sorry, but he did.”
“And you’re sure it was your father?”
Elizabet shook her head. “It was him,” she said. “His ghost, I’m sure of it.”
“And you’ve seen him since.”
She counted on her fingers. “Three times,” she said.
“When?” I asked. “I need dates. If you can’t recall the exact day, that’s fine, but the nearer you can narrow it down, the better I can help your mother.”
She struggled, came up with four dates, one of which was a maybe, but close—within a couple of days.
“All right,” I said. “One more thing. You know the revenant stories, that they come back to take vengeance on their killers. Tell me, then—why is Ebed Merlat coming back here?”
At that, Elizabet shrugged. “They’re only silly old wives’ tales,” she said. “Surely you don’t believe such nonsense.”
“I don’t believe—or disbelieve—in anything yet,” I said. “I’m only asking you a question—why do you think your father would come back?”
She looked away. “I’m sure I have no idea,” she said. “That’s your job, isn’t it? To find that out?”
I shrugged. “If that’s what it takes, Miss Merlat, that’s what I’ll do.”
She drained her wineglass, and I’d moved on to question Othur and Abad.
Neither was helpful. Othur spent so much time “away”, as he called it, that he had neither seen nor heard anything. And Abad grudgingly admitted that he’d been home on two of the occasions the apparition was seen, though he wouldn’t claim it had been his father. He gave me dates for both days, said he didn’t know what might drive his father out of his grave and retired early, Othur at his heels.