The old man chuckled.
“Why, I do believe I am,” he said. “Father Perk, see to this gentleman’s mount. The rest of you, back to your duties.”
The old man never raised his voice, but feet scuffed and red robes scattered. A pair of kids took the mare away.
Father Wickens beamed at us.
“Few of my visitors are so adamant to be wed,” he said.
Give me credit. I wasn’t the one ready with a hasty rebuttal.
“We’re actually here to talk about another wedding,” said Darla. “But we’d prefer to speak in private.”
“Of course, young lady. I’m always happy to talk. This way, please.” He flashed me a mischievous grin. “We do have hitching posts outside, young man. For your use in the future, you understand.”
I grinned back, despite myself.
The Father chuckled and led us to a room.
Father Wickens listened, nodding and not quite smiling, while we explained our need to find Tamar Fields and her injured fiancé before other less charitable parties did the same.
He clasped his hands together on the table when we were done, and pondered the matter for a moment.
“I see,” he said. “You believe Miss Fields is in genuine peril.”
“We do.”
He nodded gravely.
“That is problematic. You see, young man, there is the matter of confidentiality. If a young woman comes to me and asks for the protection of the Church, I can hardly reveal the details of her situation with anyone else.”
“I understand that. But, Father, she’s in deeper than she realizes. If she intends to go ahead with the wedding, somebody might be inclined to show up and finish Carris Lethway off out of petty spite.”
Father Wickens sighed.
“The world is indeed peopled with dark-hearted villains. You believe this to be a real possibility?”
“Father, I’ll be straight with you. I don’t know who got out of that fire. They might all be dead for all I know. But if Japeth Stricken survived, and Carris Lethway’s father lived, then there’s a good chance Stricken is out for blood. That’s a given. And I couldn’t think of a better way for him to get it than show up at a Lethway wedding.”
“This is deeply troubling.”
“Deeply. And it gets worse. The men who were behind the kidnapping—they might not be done, either. Look. Even if you can’t tell us where Tamar is. Even if you can’t admit you even know her, can’t you try to talk her out of this?”
“Hypothetically, let us assume I have already tried just that. Hypothetically, I urged her to take her intended and flee the city before the forces arrayed against her could regroup.”
“And, speaking hypothetically, what did she say?”
“It bordered dangerously near a cardinal sin,” said the old priest, behind the ghost of a grin. “As well as being anatomically unlikely for a man of my age.”
Darla sighed and put her hand on mine.
“There’s no talking her out of it, hon,” she said.
“No. No, I suppose there isn’t.” I met the old priest’s eyes. “I know you can’t tell us anything specific. But speaking purely in general terms, how does a couple go about getting married beneath the Broken Bell anyway?”
Father Wickens pondered that.
“General terms only, Father. This has nothing to do with any headstrong young women. I merely seek to educate myself in the finer points of husbandry.”
“Well,” said the priest. “The couple in question needs to arrive here early that morning. Before the sun is fully risen. Neither man nor wife may cast a shadow outdoors, on that day.”
“Get here with the roosters,” I said. “Go on.”
“The bride to be is escorted to the Meditation Hall, where she may pray, dress and prepare herself for the ceremony.”
Darla nodded. “Is she alone during that time?”
“She may take a single bridesmaid with her into the Hall. No more.”
“The husband. Is he locked away too? In a room without windows or ventilation shafts?”
Darla kicked my shin under the table.
“The grooms are taken, collectively, to the Fellowship Rotunda. Libations are served, and the groomsmen may gather there as well.”
Darla sniffed and wrinkled her nose.
“How lovely.”
“Other priests may conduct themselves differently, Miss, but I do not tolerate the Rotunda being used as a beerhall,” said Father Wickens. “Which may, I confess, contribute to the reduced number of marriages over which I preside. But I insist on dignity.”
“Which is why Carris and Tamar came to you,” said Darla.
The old man dipped his head in an old-fashioned bow.
There was a lot more of the same. Shoes had to be placed on feet at a certain hour, and not before. Flowers of specific colors were affixed to veils and lapels in this fashion, but not before certain songs were sung. Guests had to arrive in batches of ten, wines had to stay on the north ends of certain rooms. There were even restrictions on the partings of hair and the wearing of copper buttons.
And when the big moment arrived and the Broken Bell was struck, the grooms had to be holding the hands of their new brides, he facing east and she facing west, and they were to kiss just as the last echoes of the Bell faded.
When the Father ran out of ifs and buts, I stood and stretched my legs.
“Thanks, Father. Looks like all we have to do is show up and keep our eyes open for trouble.”
The Father frowned.
“Um. Are you, dear, a bridesmaid?”
“No.”
“And you, sir? A groomsman?”
“If I say yes, will that get me inside?”
The Father shook his head. “You could come as guests, of course. But that will only place you in the presence of the bride and groom near the end of the day.”
“Not good enough, Father. The people I’m worried about won’t stand in line patiently waiting their turn.”
“We have armed men among us, you know. I’ll see that they are in place—discreetly, of course.”
“That might be enough, and it might not be.”
I’d just ridden a warhorse into a church. I’d done that without much thought, and with only the faintest inkling of dread.
But what I was thinking now—that, I realized, that was dangerous.
I licked my lips, which had suddenly gone dry.
“Oh, don’t look so pale, hon,” said Darla. “Father. Tamar is in danger. Her fiancé too. What Mr. Markhat is struggling to ask is this—what if we entered the premises, that day, under the pretense of getting married ourselves? Wouldn’t that put me with Tamar, and him with Carris, all day, right up until the last moment?”
The Father bit his lip.
“It would. And if you simply left the cathedral before you spoke the vows, you would be neither married nor disruptive of the ceremony.” He shrugged and frowned. “I do not love suggesting such a thing, but—yes. Yes, I would allow it.”
“It’s settled then.” I turned to Darla and winked. “Dear, we’re getting hitched.”
She smiled and clutched my arm.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
There was little chance to talk when we left Wherthmore. Darla held tight and laughed a couple of times, but that was all the conversation we could muster above the clopping of hooves and the sway of the ride.
For which I was thankful in no small measure.
Planning a wedding, even a sham wedding designed to keep Tamar and groom alive through their very real vows, was a danger all its own.
Knowing that Darla knew I musing upon that very fact didn’t help. The empty streets and the broken, looted storefronts and scurrying ne’er-do-wells didn’t help set a festive mood, either.
War was coming. Chaos was loosed. Fires smoldered, trailing the horizon with fans of black smoke.
And yet Tamar Fields was going through with her wedding, come war, Hell or wand-wavers.
Foolish? Brave? Both?
I couldn’t say.
And I knew that my failure to do so was a subtle knife twisting in Darla’s heart.
I spurred the horse and urged her on, though in truth I had little idea where exactly I was heading. I needed to know how Evis was faring. I needed more rounds for the hand-cannon. I needed to know if Pratt had survived, if Lethway lived, if Japeth Stricken had cheated death again, and was lurking in the shadows eager to exact a twice-thwarted vengeance.
Between downtown and Avalante lay fires and angry mobs. Even mounted, I was wary of such a journey. Doubly so with Darla’s hands clasped around my chest.
Finding Pratt seemed easiest. Of course that meant risking a meeting with Lethway, but since he might well have died at the Timbers I decided to chance it.
I managed to convey my intentions to Darla in a shout. I didn’t make any attempt to take her home.
I didn’t think I could bear to hurt her twice in one day.
We made for Lethway’s offices. I didn’t think Pratt would still be employed there, but I knew I could find out who was alive and who was being winged to wonders above.
I brought the mare to a halt right in front of Lethway’s building. The street was populated by a trio of Watch sergeants and a bevy of idling soldiers. I’d planned on sneaking in, but even Lethway wouldn’t dare murder in the street in front of the Watch.
The doors were open. A pair of stout worthies flanked them and made no secret of carrying crossbows in open defiance of city law.
I dismounted, tied the mare to the hitching post and carefully approached the door, my hands open at my sides and my face a smiling beacon of goodwill.
“Good day, gents.”
No reply. But they kept their crossbows aimed at the street. I laid a hand on the door and neither of them blinked.
I opened it and stepped inside.
The place was a beehive. Harried men in suits ran to and fro, shouting and waving papers. Messenger boys charged up and down stairs. Half a dozen lawyers in top hats and capes conferred in a corner, hungry vultures dividing up the feast.
But there, behind the desk, I spied a familiar face.
“Miss Marchin,” I said. “So good to see you again.”
Miss Marchin looked up. Her eyes were red and so was the tip of her nose.
“Oh, go away,” she said. Her lip trembled. “Just go away, or I’ll yell for Cooper and Benny.”
I stopped. “No need for that. I’m just looking for Pratt.”
“He’s dead.” She mopped at her face with a white cloth. “Just go.”
“Pratt? Dead?” I took a step backward. “I’m going. I’m sorry. I liked him.”
She cried a bit into her hanky.
“Mr. Lethway?”
“Nearly dead. Elf-struck. They say he won’t last the day. What do you care? Get out.”
She threw something at me. I assumed it was the hanky at first, but it flew too straight, too true.
She managed a wink out of those puffy red eyes.
I bent and scooped up the object she’d thrown.
I got. Benny and Cooper watched me go with no signs of interest. Darla waited until we rounded the corner to speak.
“Well?”
“I’m told Pratt is dead. I’m told Lethway is heading that way.”
I couldn’t see her frown, but I could hear it in her voice.
“But you don’t believe that.”
“My right coat pocket. A note. Read it for me, won’t you?”
She found the paper, read it, brought her lips close to my ear.
“Pratt is alive,” she said. “He wants you to come see him.”
She read me an address, and I turned the mare that way.
Chapter Twenty-Five
We were soon surrounded by Army tallboys, Army troop transports and whopping big twenty-horse Army cargo flats.
Lucky for us, my borrowed mare was Army bred and Army trained, and she snorted at the biggest and the worst of them and kept plodding dutifully along.
The address Pratt provided led to a busy coffee shop five blocks from Lethway’s lair. The usual clientele was gone, replaced by idling officers who knew a good place to lay low while there was real work to be done, but that suited me just fine. It was a poor place for murder.
I seated Darla at a table next to a trio of smiling young lieutenants and then I shouldered my way into the coffee shop.
Pratt himself was seated at a table in the back. He wasn’t alone. I didn’t know the man seated across from him, but at a word from Pratt the big-boned stranger stood and offered me his seat and then vanished into the crowd.
I sat.
Pratt looked bad. His right eye was concealed with a bandage. His lips were swollen and split. An ugly purple bruise peeked out from under the bandage wrapped around his forehead, and I realized he wasn’t wearing a hat to hide the damage because the swelling left him with nothing that fit.
When he grinned, he revealed a couple of missing teeth. But he grinned anyway, and stuck out his hand, and I took it and shook it.
“Glad to see you made it.”
“Likewise.”
“You don’t have a scratch on you, you lucky bastard.”
I shrugged. “I broke a nail, though. Nasty business.”
“I guess you heard Lethway took it worse than either of us.” Pratt shifted in his seat and grunted in pain. “Had a stroke while his doctor was patching him up. Word is he won’t live through the night.”
“What a pity. How’s the missus?”
“She’s fine. I did it, Markhat. Took her out of there. Got a house on Verdant. You should come around sometime.”
“Heard from Carris?”
Pratt shook his head. “Not a word. But I know he got out, Markhat. Saw him leave. So maybe I should be asking you where he is.”
“Wish I knew.” I told Pratt about Carris and his visit to the Fields house. Then I described trying to catch him at the docks and watching the last boat leave instead.
I didn’t tell Pratt about the wedding, or Tamar, or the Church.
Shame on me.
“So the kid made it, wounded and feverish, all the way uptown.” Pratt beamed. “He’s a damned tough kid.”
“Somebody taught him that.” I eyed the crowd. “You know, a boat out of town might not be a bad idea.”
“She can’t travel just yet.” He didn’t look up. “No, we’re staying put. You?”
“I hate boats.”
“I had some men check the bodies,” said Pratt. “Japeth Stricken wasn’t there.”
“Damn.”
“Damn is right. He’ll be apt to look you up, Markhat. Once he’s done with Lethway.”
“The thought crossed my mind. I’ll keep an eye out.”