“Mama have any idea who might have hexed a kid?”
“If she does, she isn’t saying. But she’s angry, boss. Really angry. I wouldn’t want to be whoever she thinks did that. Even if they’re still in Pot Lockney, that might not be far enough away to keep Mama from taking a whack at them.”
I hadn’t considered that. “Think she might try? Is that even possible?”
Gertriss shrugged. “A year ago I’d have said no. Now, I’m not sure. Mama isn’t what I thought she was.”
“Mama is Mama.” I didn’t need to say more. “But the kid—does he have a name, by the way?—he’s fine?”
“His name is Rainy. Mama swears he’s free of whatever was riding him. He’s calm and perfectly rational. Boss, Mama thinks the hex was designed to make the Sprangs want to murder me and you. It started small. Just a little voice whispering how awful we are. The longer it goes, the more powerful it gets.”
“So the elder Sprangs like me less today than they did when I was kicking them around Cambrit. Lovely.” My morning’s plan, to free the Sprangs, revolved wholly around gaining their trust. If they were hexed to hate me against reason, that was likely to be a hard sell.
“Mama got any of that potion left?”
Gertriss nodded. “She knew you’d ask. She made a big batch. Enough to bathe them in it. She said that it hit Rainy so hard because he’s a child. No hex works that well on adults. So maybe they hate you, but by now they probably hate jail more.”
I grunted. I hoped so. I didn’t see the Sprangs accepting my invitation to come over and have a nice bath without Hooga and Hooga holding them by the scruffs of their necks.
We were close to the Old Ruth. The streets were rough, the pedestrians ragged, the smells of the crematoriums pungent.
“I guess we’ll have to hope for the best. You brought the release papers?”
She produced the wax-sealed folder.
“You sure you want to do this, Miss? You can wait in the cab, if you want. Might even be the best idea.”
“No, Mr. Markhat. I’m coming with you. I did what I did, but I had reason. I’m not running anymore.”
I smiled. “Good for you. Just don’t get within grabbing distance.”
The cab rolled to a stop. The weathered, stained wall of the Old Ruth engulfed us in sudden shadow.
“Let’s get this done, Miss.”
“Yes. Mr. Markhat?”
I paused, half-in and half-out of the cab.
“Thanks.”
“We’re partners,” I said, offering her my hand. “Now, come on. Sooner we get these road apples heading home, the sooner I can get a bath.”
She laughed. We headed inside.
The Old Ruth isn’t a cheerful place. Despair and rage have sunk into the stones. The place reeks of human waste.
Local lore claims that thirty or so weedheads a day expire inside those walls. I no longer question that figure, save to say it’s probably too conservative. Number 19 Municipal was an Old Kingdom palace compared to the Old Ruth.
Gertriss and I were shuffled from guard to supervisor to jailer to magistrate. Each visit required a review of the papers I’d procured yesterday and payment of some obscure and likely fraudulent fee.
Gertriss chipped in on those, or the Sprangs would be in the Old Ruth yet.
Our journey took us from the street level offices to a hall two stories underground. In the bad old days, when the Old Ruth had been a fortress, construction had gone down instead of up. Nowadays, the lower you go, the darker and damper and fouler the Old Ruth gets.
The air was enough to choke a Troll. Gertriss was having trouble speaking without gagging. I was faring little better, though the smoke from the numerous torches was burning my throat. We hadn’t seen a single magelamp since leaving the stairs.
Broke and hoarse, we were finally led into an abominable stonewalled room divided by a row of iron bars. The bars sported rust and something darker. A bored guard seated himself on a stool in the corner beside Gertriss and I, a head-knocker in his pudgy fist.
The door closed behind us. Another opened on the far side of the bars.
Feet shuffled, and chains clanked. In marched the Sprangs, sullen, filthy and wary-eyed.
“You.” The eldest Sprang glared at me and spat. His sons followed behind, the youngest supported by the eldest, who glared but was silent.
They were masses of blood and cuts and bruises. Gilgad’s right eye was swollen shut. His lips were bloody. His hair was matted and dark with blood.
His sons were worse. Polter, the youngest, swayed and murmured, his eyes shut, blood trickling from his nose and mouth.
“Bitch.” Gilgad spoke to Gertriss. She didn’t flinch.
“What you need to do, Gilgad Sprang, is shut up and listen. You can either walk out of here, right now, today, or you can rot here. Call my partner names and I’ll decide for you, and I’ll decide to let you rot.” I nodded toward his youngest son. “Your boy is in bad shape. Another day in here and he’ll be dead, and you know it. So are you going to shut up and listen or are you going to bury a son?”
I could see him clench his jaw. Something, him or the hex, wanted to tell me to go to Hell almost bad enough to lose a child.
I almost felt sorry for him then.
He managed to bite back the word.
“All right. Here’s the deal. This paper gets you and your sons out of jail. It does that because the lady and myself agree to pay your fines and fees. Do you understand that, so far? Just nod.”
He nodded.
“There are conditions. First, that you and yours walk out of jail and keep walking right out the East Gate and hitch a ride with a cargo wagon and go home. And once you get home you never ever come back. Because—and this is important, Mr. Sprang—if any of you are ever picked up in Rannit again, all your fines and fees are tripled and you are brought right back here and I tell you this true, you will never see the sun again, or breathe free air. You’ll die here. I’ll see to that. Do you understand?”
He licked bloody lips. “I understand.”
“Tell me what I just said.”
“You pay us out. We go home. Never come back.”
“Good. Now I’m going to ask you a question, you murderous little git. And you’ll answer it, or I swear I’ll tear this paper up and go have myself a big, hot lunch. Why did you come all this way to go after the young lady and I?”
“She stole from our kinfolk.” His voice took on a low growling quality. “She kilt, and she stole.”
“I see. So you were so upset at the financial loss of your kinfolk that you decided to hike all the way to Rannit and do a bit of murder yourself. Touching. Family means everything to you, doesn’t it?”
“City folk ain’t likely to understand,” he said.
“I do understand kids have no business being outdoors in Rannit after Curfew, Mr. Sprang.”
A ghost of confusion passed over his bloody face.
“My boys ain’t babies,” he said. “They’s grown men.”
“Rainy too?”
“I brung Gerlat and Polter.”
I dared put my face close to the bars.
“Then why the Hell did I pull Rainy off the street yesterday? Why did he spend a whole damned night—a whole night, Mr. Sprang—out with the vampires, after Curfew? Why?”
“You’re lyin’. Rainy ain’t in Rannit. I brung Gerlat and Polter.”
“I am not lying. Rainy is here. And alive, thanks to me and Miss Gertriss and Mama Hog. It’s a miracle he survived one night. He’d not have lived through another. And you tell me you didn’t bring him?”
“I ain’t fool enough to bring a child on a man’s errand.”
Gertriss stepped up beside me. “He’s telling the truth, Boss. About Rainy. He didn’t bring him.”
Mr. Sprang glared at Gertriss, but she neither looked away nor stepped back.
“I don’t need no help from you, you—”
“Remember what I said about insulting my partner.”
He clamped his mouth shut.
“We just saved your son’s life. We’re offering to pay you out and send you home. Seems like you owe me a favor, Mr. Sprang. But you hate me even more for that, don’t you?”
“I’d kill you where you stand, if’n it wasn’t for my boys.”
“Does that make sense to you? Does it?”
“Mama took a hex off Rainy,” said Gertriss. “A hex cast to make him hate Mr. Markhat and I.”
“Same hex is riding you,” I added. “Think about it, Mr. Sprang. That day we met. You and your boys pulled blades on me without even knowing for sure who I was. Have you ever done anything like that before?”
“Your woman. She kilt my kin.”
“She’s nobody’s woman but her own. So you were close to Harald Suthom? You loved him like a son? Bounced him on your knee as a baby?”
“He was kin.”
“What color eyes did he have?”
The eldest Sprang hesitated.
“You don’t even know. You don’t know because it never mattered much to you. And it never mattered much because Harald Suthom was a two-bit, lousy sonofabitch, and you know it. So you think about this, Mr. Sprang. You think long and hard about who might have hexed you and your grown sons here and little Rainy too. Because they almost got Rainy killed.”
“I ain’t believing a word of this.”
I shrugged. “I don’t really care what you believe. I told you the truth. Whether you believe or not is another matter. Now, are you willing to sign these papers and get out of Rannit and stay out of Rannit? Will you take Rainy and go home and leave Gertriss and I alone?”
Polter moaned softly. In the distance, an echoed scream rose and fell and died.
“We’ll go,” he said, at last. “Just let us go our way. And we’ll let you go yours.”
“Gertriss?”
Gertriss stared.
“I don’t think he’s lying, Boss. They’ll go home.”
“Then let’s get this done. And you better listen good, Mr. Sprang. Because if I ever see you in Rannit again, you’ll wish the Watch was there. Because I’ll kill you myself and feed you to the ogres. Understand?”
He didn’t speak. But he did lower his eyes and nod.
I woke up the guard. “Fetch an officer,” I said. “We got some papers to sign.”
He grumbled and rose and went.
The Sprangs slumped against the wall and muttered amongst themselves. None of it sounded threatening.
“Think the Old Ruth is stronger than the hex?”
Gertriss frowned and considered that.
“Maybe,” she said at last. “Depends on who cast it.”
“You know of any witch women back home who might have that kind of skill?”
Gertriss shook her head. “Old Granny Gint could probably turn them all into blue-jays if she wanted to. But she wouldn’t. She’s dead set against any kind of black hex.”
I grunted. “Any kin to Harald Suthom or this lot?”
“None. She’s not responsible, Boss. I’m sure of that.”
“Then we’ve got ourselves a stray wand-waver.”
She didn’t reply. I didn’t blame her.
Freeing the Sprangs took maybe five minutes. Papers were signed by myself and Gertriss and passed between the bars and the Sprangs scrawled their marks. The clerk read the terms of the release aloud in a rapid-fire sing-song that escaped everyone in the room, but we nodded and raised our right hands and spoke the oath that bound us to the terms and set the Sprang clan free.
They didn’t release the Sprangs at once, nor did they allow us to mingle. So while they were led away, still in rusty shackles, Gertriss and I hurried back up toward the street and a cab.
The Sprangs were coming to Mama’s to pick up Rainy, and the Hoogas still had orders to pound them on sight. Since the family Sprang didn’t appear to need another beating, we arrived first, and I kept the Hoogas handy, but asked them to refrain from any violence unless the Sprangs started it.
They didn’t. No one spoke. I’d thrown a couple of coppers into the mix, which allowed the Sprangs to hire a wagon for their trip out of town. Polter was stretched out flat in the back of it, still moaning. His color wasn’t good, and a trickle of blood leaked from his ears. Mama just shrugged as she dribbled her anti-hex potion on him and then looked away.
Rainy didn’t even recognize me. He ran past me and grabbed his father’s waist and hung on.
“Now git.”
Mama spoke those words, and they were the only words spoken the whole time.
They got. The Hoogas watched the wagon roll out of sight, and then they sagged a bit. Mama gave them hash and I gave them coin. Then they shambled away, heading back to whatever it is ogres do when they have a pawful of money.
“You’re sure the Sprangs are heading home?”
“That they is, boy. Ain’t nobody could hex them back here again. Not today, anyways. They’s beat, and they’s hurt, and they is stupid but they ain’t crazy. Go on and do your business. We’ll be safe.” Mama looked suddenly grim. “’Leastways ’til I knows what I’m dealing with.”
A bath did wonders for my aroma, if not my spirits.
I lingered a long time in that hot copper tub. Steam wafted off me. Soap worked its homespun magic. Mr. Waters doesn’t allow clients to bring in beer, but one must have followed me from home because there it was, in my right hand.
I bathed and sipped beer and allowed myself the luxury of not pondering the events of the night and the day. I’d been assaulted. I’d had myself arrested for the murder of a little man with four legs. I’d been freed.
And someone in Pot Lockney might be hexing the whole village to come after my head while I lay there bathing.
I had no doubt Hisvin could not only discern the identity of the person who had hexed the Sprangs but probably also make them appear with a flash, caught up struggling in whatever dead hand Hisvin happened to be wearing at the moment.
Which would leave me even further in Hisvin’s debt.
I took a long draught of beer. No. That wasn’t going to happen. The moment I let the Corpsemaster fight my battles, that was the moment I became just another shuffling body in her legion of shuffling bodies.
I put my beer down on the floor and sank beneath the water. I could hear muffled sounds, under there—the tap of blind Mr. Waters’ stick, the sound of distant voices, a peal of sudden thunder. But it was muffled and distant and, best of all, no problem of mine.
I stayed down there in the warm, wet deep until I needed air. When I rose, sputtering and dripping, Mr. Waters was there.