Sweet Silver Blues (3 page)

She placed the tray before me, still smiling. “Here’s a little of everything we had in the kitchen. I hope you’ll find something to suit.”

When they’re nice to you, you had better get your back against a wall.

“Your feet hurt?”

“No.” She gave me a puzzled look. “What makes you ask that?”

“The look on your face. It has to be pain.”

Not a flicker of response, except, “So the old man talked you into it, did he?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Into what?”

“Finding that woman of Denny’s.” Plenty of vitriol pent up behind that smile.

“Nope. I told him I’d go over Denny’s papers and look around town a little. I would tell him what I thought. That’s all.”

“You’re going to do it. How much did he offer you to find her?”

I put my best blank cardplaying face and stared into the starved ice marbles of her eyes. I don’t believe that stuff about windows of the soul. I’ve seen too many lying eyes. But beyond hers lay nothing but shatter-sharp flint and frosty iron.

“I’ll give you twenty percent if you don’t find her. Twenty-five if you find her dead.”

Blank-faced, I started on my breakfast. There was ham and sausage, too. The tea was so good I drained half the pot before I touched anything else.

“I could be very generous,” she said, turning sideways, posing to show what she had.

She had the equipment. All of it, and plenty of it. A prime little package, but a package filled with rot. “Denny said that you like small women.”

Some better than others, I thought. “I make a point of trying not to be cruel to people, Rose. The best I can do here is speak plain and say I’m not interested.”

She took rejection well. She ignored it. “I’m going with you, you know.”

“With me? Where?”

“To the Cantard.”

“I’ve got a flash for you, lady. I’m not doing any dirty work for you, and you aren’t crossing the street with me. I do thank you for bringing breakfast. I need it, and appreciate it. Now go away and let me see if there’s any reason I should be fool enough to get into this at all.”

“I’m a stubborn woman, Garrett. I usually get what I want. If you won’t help me, you’d better walk away from the whole thing. People who get in my way get hurt.”

“Unless you’re out of here by the time I finish this cup of tea you’re going over my knee and getting what your old man should have given you while you were still young enough to have some sense pounded into you.”

She retreated to the stairway. “I’ll claim you raped me.”

I grinned. Last refuge of the female scoundrel. “I’m not rich like you, but I can afford a truthsayer. Go ahead. Let’s see how your dad takes losing two kids in one week.”

She started upstairs. End of that game.

I went back and dug the dark package from the shadow between two floor joists anchored on the outside foundation. It was not hidden. Every space along that wall was stuffed. But the wrapping of this bundle was a cavalry saddle blanket. Denny’s service meant a lot to him. He kept every memento. What he would wrap in his saddle blanket would be important too.

I dropped my seabag into the harbor as I strutted down the gangway the day I mustered out. Tells you how thrilled I was with the life of a Royal Marine.

The bundle contained a stack of military maps of the Cantard, most ours, a few Venageti. Both kinds are dangerous to have. You could get arrested for spying. The people who ask questions for the court don’t stop till you confess.

With the maps were overlays of skin scraped transparently thin and several slim, expensive, bound journals.

I took the lot to Denny’s desk.

Each of the overlays examined a critical battle of the past six years. The names of captains, commanders, and outfits were noted. One journal examined each battle commander by commander and unit by unit.

What the hell? Denny wasn’t any war buff.

Reading gave me a glimmer, though. For instance, the table of royal officers:

1: Count Agar: Impulsive. Overly aggressive. Prone to act on inadequate intelligence.

9: Margrave Leon: Timid. Wants sure thing before offering battle. Easily rattled during engagement.

14: Viscount Noah: Vacillator. Excessively ferocious when engaged. A spendthrift of men and material.

22: Glory Mooncalled: Best all-around commander under Karentine colors. Excellent tactician. Able to train slowest and most uninspired men. Handicapped by low birth, mercenary status, and role in Seigod Mutiny while serving Venageti side. Weakness is a consuming hatred of Venageti warlords.

There was a Venageti list, too, and an analysis of potential matches and mismatches. If you were in the business of shuffling gold and silver, it would be handy to know who would control the silver mines a few months down the road. Denny had been serious about trying to outguess fortune.

I smelted an old dead carp, though. Denny drew forty-eight marks prize money and mustering-out pay. You don’t turn forty-eight marks into a hundred thousand without cutting corners.

Denny’s business log contained some hints.

Note from V: An agent of Stormlord Atto inquired the cost of 50 pd silver. First tremor of preparation for new offensive?

Z reported verbally:
Harrow
made port with 200 pd silver in ballast. Must sell before Mooncalled takes Freemantle.

Harrow
southbound with 1000 pd granulated inside hollowed ballast billets. Biggest deal yet. Pray for fair weather.

Letter from K. Warlord Ironlock, 20,000 men, 3 firelords of the Eastern Circle, Third Rite, ordered to Lare. Attack through the Bled? Viscount Blush defending. Buy coined silver.

V, Z, and several others could be the cavalry cronies Denny hung out with. There were hints it was a tight group operation. But K was no old army buddy.

I turned to the heir and lover’s letters last, about the time a cousin dropped in to ask what I wanted for lunch.

“Whatever the rest of you are having. With a quart of beer. And tell old man Tate I need him.”

That was when I started the letters. That’s when the guy in the cheap seats decided I was going back to the Cantard. The rest of me fought the valiant fight for a long time.

5

“You look like you saw a ghost,” Tate said.

I looked up from the letter I’d been staring at for five minutes. “What? Oh. Yeah. Almost. Mr. Tate, you told me it was honest money.”

He did not say anything. He had suspected it was something shady.

“You had any unusual visitors? Sudden old friends of Denny’s asking questions?”

“No.”

“You will. Soon. There’s too much here for them to let it go. Be careful.”

“What do you mean?”

It seemed an honest question. So maybe he did not know the world well enough to read what Denny had written. I laid it out for him.

He did not believe me.

“Doesn’t matter what either of us thinks. The point is, so far I’m interested enough to keep on. I’ll need that thousand. There are going to be heavy expenses from the start. And a box. I need a big box.”

“I’ll have Lester bring the money from the office. Why do you want a box?”

“To pack all this stuff.”

“No.”

“Say what?”

“You’re not taking it out of here.”

“I’m taking it or I’m taking me away. You want me to do a job, you let me do it. My way.”

“Mr. Garrett . . . ”

“Pop, you’re paying for results, not the right to mess with me. Get me a box, then go pound nails in a shoe. I don’t have time for whining and games.”

He hadn’t recovered from what I had said about Denny. He did not have any fight left. He took off.

The funny thing was he left me feeling guilty, like I had been giving him a hard time just to puff up my own ego. I didn’t need that guilt. So I ended up giving in and just letting everything go the way Tate wanted.

Strange how you can manipulate yourself when somebody outside can’t.

I leaned back and watched dust fall from the underflooring as a pair of sneaky feet stole after Tate.

I was still that way when the cousin brought lunch and beer. I was busy inhaling that when Uncle Lester appeared with a fat moneybag and a big wicker chest. I finished my beer in one long draft, belched against the back of my wrist, asked, “What do you think about all this, Uncle Lester?”

He shrugged. “Ain’t my place to say.”

“How’s that?”

“Eh?”

It began to sound like hogs-at-the-trough time—all grunts and snorts. “Did you read any of this stuff?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Care to comment?”

“Looked like Denny was dipping his toes in the shadows. You could tell that better than me.”

Page 15

“He was. And he was an amateur. A damned lucky amateur. You ever have any hints that he was into anything?”

“Nope. Unless you count that woman’s letters. Them writing back and forth like that all this time seemed a mite odd to me. Ain’t natural.”

“Yes?”

“The boy was kin, and he’s dead, and you don’t want to speak ill of either one. But he was a bit strange, that boy. Always a loner ’fore he went off to the war. I’d bet that woman is the only one he ever had. If he had her. He didn’t look at one after he got back.”

“Maybe he crossed?”

Lester snorted and gave me his best look of disgust, like I didn’t know about the Tates and the elves back when—though the cartha are the interspecies rage these days.

“Just asking. I didn’t think so. He seemed to be a guy who just wasn’t interested. I’ve been in brag sessions when he was around. He never had a story to tell.”

Lester smirked. “Listened polite like, way you might if’n I started telling stories about when I was a kid.”

He had me.

It is not often Garrett gets caught with nothing to say.

He grinned. “On that note I’ll be goin’.”

I grunted at his stern. Then I leaned back and closed my eyes and surrendered to the haunt that had me so distracted. To the coincidence so long the devils themselves must have pulled it in.

Kayean Kronk.

Maybe Denny
could
spend all those years in love with a memory. I gave it three hard ones before I broke the spell.

There was only one thing to do. Go see the Dead Man.

6

He’s called the Dead Man because they killed him four hundred years ago. But he is neither dead nor a man. He is a Loghyr, and they don’t die just because somebody sticks a bunch of knives into them. Their bodies go through the motions—cooling out, rigor mortis, lividity—but they do not corrupt. Not at any rate mere humans can detect. Loghyr bones have been found in the ruins on Khatar Island; they are very similar to a human’s when they are dry.

“Hey, Old Bones. Don’t look like the diet is working.” The Dead Man is four hundred fifty pounds of mean, a little ragged around the edges, where the moths and mice and ants have gotten to him. He was parked in a chair in a dark room in a house that pretended to be both abandoned and haunted. He smelled. The corruption process is slow, but it goes on. “You need a bath, too.”

A psychic chill set me shivering. He was sleeping. He isn’t easy to get along with at his best, and he’s at his worst when newly awakened.

I am not sleeping. I am meditating.

The thoughts hammered at my brain.

“Guess it’s all a matter of perspective.”

The psychic chill became physical. My breath clouded and my shoe buckles frosted over. I hurried with a little propitiations that are necessary when dealing with the Dead Man. The freshly cut flowers went into the big crystal bowl on the filthy old table before him. Then I lit candles. His sense of humor insists there be thirteen of them, all black, burning while he is in consultation.

To my knowledge he is the only Loghyr ever to allow his genius to be commercialized.

He does not need the candlelight to see visitors or flowers. But he likes to pretend that he does.

Aha! I see you now. Garrett. You pestilence. Can’t you leave me alone? Every other day you’re in here, worse than the moths and mice.

“It’s been five months, Chuckles. And from the looks of this place you’ve been meditating the whole time.”

A mouse that had been hiding beneath his oversized chair made a break for it. The Dead Man snatched it with his mind and sent it flying out of the house. Moths exploded away from him. He was incapable of doing malicious harm to bugs, who wanted to eat him, but could make life unholy hell for people with the effrontery to ask him to work.

“You have to work sometime,” I told him. “Even a dead man has to pay the rent. And you need somebody to give you a bath and clean the place up. Not to mention getting the vermin out again.”

A big, shiny black spider crawled out of one piglike nostril on the end of his ten-inch trunk. It did not like my looks. It ducked back inside.

Cheap flowers.

They were not. I had given him absolutely no legitimate cause for complaint. He couldn’t banish me because he didn’t want to work. I knew the state of his finances. His landlord had come to me about his last month’s rent.

Must not be much of a client you have, Garrett. You sneaking around after cheating wives again?

“You know better.” I was out of all that, thanks to him.

How much?

“You owe me for a month’s rent already.”

You have the smug, content look of a man whose expenses have been guaranteed.

“So?”

How much can you soak your client before he squawks?

“I don’t know.”

Enough, I think, the way you look. Which is like a man who has a good fix on the pot at the end of the rainbow. Start reading.

“What?”

Stop playing the idiot, Garrett. You’re too old. You dragged that crate of stuff here so you could bore me. That is the worst of being dead, Garrett. It is damned boring. You cannot
do
anything.