“First, because I’d know when they were out. Second, because the Old Ruth might get one or more of them killed, and if it does they’ll lay that at my doorstep too. Third, because I might just convince them to forget this whole mess and head back home owing me a favor, instead of coveting my head.”
“Foolishness, boy. Them Sprangs will turn on ye the instant the jail doors open.”
“If that happens there’s the Watch. If the Sprangs go in again, they won’t be getting out anytime soon, bail or not. You know that.”
“Do you drink a lot at night, boy? Have you taken up weed? Bailing the Sprangs out is the damn stupidest thing I’ve heard in a long time, and you’ll get nothing but trouble if you do.”
“It was just a thought, Mama.”
“Well then, you need to keep on thinking. Or give it up entirely, I ain’t sure which.”
From the back came a sneeze and the sound of a thin, hard bed creaking.
“Well, we’re in for it now,” whispered Mama.
Buttercup appeared at my knee, smiling and rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
“Good morning, Miss.” I tousled her hair and poked her gently on the tip of her nose. I pulled her doll out of my pocket and handed it back to her. She accepted it solemnly, her banshee eyes suddenly serious. “Thanks. Someone snores like a big girl.”
She stuck out her tongue and yawned.
Gertriss popped out of her door, not smiling. Her hair was a tumble, and she had dark circles under her eyes. I decided I would most certainly neither tousle her hair nor poke at her nose.
She was enveloped in an enormous nightgown that must have started life as a mainsail on a frigate. Her bare toes only peeped out when she walked. I caught Mama glaring at her red-painted toenails.
“Good morning.” I decided to keep things friendly. “Hope you slept well.”
Gertriss managed a nod and shuffled off to Mama’s tiny kitchen, groaning as she went. From out of sight came the sounds of cups rattling and sugar being spooned.
Buttercup pulled my cup down and stole a sip of my coffee.
“Fie!” snapped Mama. Buttercup giggled and skipped away, vanishing before reappearing behind Mama with her fingers waggling beside her ears.
Gertriss reappeared, bleary-eyed, sipping coffee and shuffling. “Morning, boss.”
I nodded. “Mama says the Hoogas didn’t bash any heads last night.”
“If they did they were quiet about it. Boss, how long can you afford to pay them? Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to buy a door and put a bar on the inside?”
Mama puffed up. “I ain’t havin’ no garrison gate on the front of my establishment. Makes the clients feel nervous.”
“And ogres don’t?”
“Shows what you know. Business will double today just to get a up-close look at ’em. Bah.” With that, Mama rose and hustled off to her kitchen, dragging Buttercup along by one of her long ears.
“I heard what you said about paying out the Sprangs,” said Gertriss in a whisper. “Sounds like a good idea to me.”
“It does? I imagined you’d be on Mama’s side.”
“She has a point. I’m not saying she doesn’t. But knowing where they are is also a point. And as pigheaded as they are, getting them out of the Old Ruth might be the only way to get them to listen. Too, I’ve got money saved. I might not be able to pay all of it, but I can do half.”
“I’m not asking you to do that.”
“I know. I appreciate that. But I’m insisting. And you know how Hog women can be when we don’t get what we want.”
I sighed. “Deal. We split it. But we make it conditional to the Sprangs—they leave Rannit, no loitering, no sightseeing, no sneaking back here with clubs. And we have the Watch witness it all, so the Sprangs get tossed back in the Old Ruth if they break the terms of release.”
Gertriss pushed a wild tangle of golden hair out of her eyes and nodded. “I think it’s a good idea, boss. Cheaper than ogres, in the long run.”
“Ha!” snapped Mama from the back.
I laughed. “Fine. Look. Until we know they’ve been rounded up, you need to stay put.”
Gertriss grimaced.
“I’ll head by the Old Ruth, see what the payout is. And then I’ll stop by the Magistrate and see if I can get a judge to sign off on this. With luck, we’ll be able to get it done tomorrow, the day after at the latest.”
Gertriss lowered her voice to the faintest of whispers. “If it takes any longer than that, boss, just get me a cell at the Old Ruth,” she said.
“I heard that, you ungrateful child.”
Gertriss winced, rose, headed for her room.
“Hurry,” she said, making no sound, just mouthing the word before she closed her door.
Hurry I did.
The Sprangs, had made themselves quite popular at the Old Ruth by fighting with jailers, prisoners and even each other. They’d managed to increase their original fines by a surprising margin, which made Gertriss’s offer to pay half not only generous but necessary.
I didn’t speak to the Sprangs themselves, preferring to wait until I knew I could arrange bail. So I cooled my boots for two hours down at the courthouse on Beld, waiting for a judge to deign my petition worthy of the Regency’s precious time.
I wasn’t entirely miserable. The high ceilings in the old courthouse made it breezy and cool. The benches weren’t padded, but they’re wide and deep and angled just right, which makes sitting on them not merely tolerable but enjoyable. And the pair of legal assistants buzzing about with papers and writs and lawyers were young and energetic.
I decided the redhead was my favorite, because she smiled even when she thought no one was looking. The blonde was better looking, and her skirt was certainly better fitting, but her smile vanished as soon as she thought she lacked an audience. To me, that spells trouble.
I wasn’t quite napping when the blonde strolled up to me and tapped me on my shoulder. “Sir,” she said. “Judge Hastings will see you now.”
I rose, stretched and thanked her.
“Down the hall, second chamber on your right. Have a good day.”
And she was gone, her smile falling as soon as she turned away. I never saw the redhead again, which is probably for the best, since my Darla isn’t fond of redheads.
Judge Hastings was a man of few words—specifically, yes, yes, no, yes, and yes. He scribbled notes in his ledger and scribbled more on a roll of parchment and then made the whole thing legal simply by sliding the parchment between the jaws of his seal and bopping the apparatus with his wizened fist to emboss the paper.
He handed it to me, and I knew without a word I was dismissed. In accordance with His Honor’s reluctance to waste words, I left without using any, the Sprang’s freedom and my bid for peace from them in my hand.
I started to head back to the Old Ruth and see if I could convince someone there to let me make my pitch to the Sprangs, lest Gertriss and Mama come to blows confined in such close quarters.
But the morning was gone, and my dealings with the Old Ruth in the past left me with the certainty that I’d need to be the first one through the doors to get the Sprangs out before Curfew. Poor Gertriss would have to hide under the covers one more day, and I’d be out more coins to the Hoogas for tonight.
Which isn’t the way running a business is supposed to work. I resolved to pay the Lethways a visit and see what I could glean concerning the whereabouts of missing groom Carris. But first, I’d need to see my client.
I hoofed it from the courthouse to Darla’s, glad of a cool day and a few clouds. She met me at her door with a kiss, finished up a conversation with a pair of chatty customers and finally hustled me into the back after putting Mary in charge of the sales floor.
“So tell me, intrepid finder of all things lost, what have you found for me today?”
By then, we’d said a proper good morning to each other, and were perched at a sewing table while the fringes of gowns hung down and tickled our heads.
“I found your Miss Tamar, and her mother and father, and of course the inimitable Mr. Tibbles,” I said. “Lovely people. Except Mr. Tibbles. He made rude comments about my hat.”
Darla shook her head in mock dismay. “I hear he wets the rugs too. Scandalous.”
I laughed. Darla frowned, though, and traced her fingertips down my cheek.
“There’s something else.” She wasn’t asking a question.
I told her briefly about the Sprangs and the mess they’d brought from Pot Lockney. I hadn’t intended to tell Gertriss’s story, too, but it all came out. Darla nodded, as though she’d known it all along, and it’s entirely possible she had.
“A few nights in the Old Ruth ought to have them ready to run back home,” she said. “Now why not tell me what’s really bothering you.”
Can’t put one past that woman. Someday I’ll learn not to try.
“Took a ride yesterday,” I whispered, Angels know why, sound barely carried in that room filled with hanging clothes and bolts of fabric. “Black carriage. No horses.”
Darla just took my hand. “Will we ever be free of it?”
I knew the answer to that. It’s no. But I didn’t speak it to Darla.
“What did he want?”
And the weight of that question—
What will you tell Darla?
—fell full upon me.
“Not the time or the place.” Darla’s doorbell rang. Feet began to shuffle on the sales floor outside. “But don’t worry. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“Liar.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
Mary poked her head inside, asked for Darla.
“Go,” I said. “I’m off to find this missing groom. See you tonight? After work?”
“Indeed you will, Mr. Markhat.” She kissed me on my forehead. “And bring your mouth. You’ll need it to talk.”
I forced a smile. She saw right through it, but she squeezed my hands in parting and let me go my way.
Traffic was picking up. A dead wagon rattled right past me, heavy laden with the night’s pale leavings. The Regent has ordered the wagons covered now, and I was glad of it. Word was the number of bodies hauled daily to the crematoriums was on the increase. Soon there’d be grumbles about halfdead and the Truce. And then there’d be a spectacular murder or rumors of another range war out West and the halfdead and their Curfew-breaking victims would be forgotten.
Until the rumors start up again.
It’s an old tradition, in Rannit. Grumbling. And quickly forgetting.
I shook off my reverie and headed downtown. I planned to walk as far as Northridge and then hail a cab to the Hill. It was time to beard the Lethways in their opulent lair, and employ my clever ruse to trick them into revealing the whereabouts of their only son Carris.
I was hoping the walk would promote the formulation of my clever ruse. A block later, I hadn’t made any progress in that regard, which meant my entire plan of attack centered around the words “Hello, I’m Markhat, where pray tell is that son of yours?”
I was so engrossed in my machinations mental it was another block before the tiny hairs on the back of my neck rose, and it dawned on me that I was the object of a stranger’s sudden, intense attention.
I didn’t turn and look. That’s the kind of stunt that ends with bloody noses or worse. I watched glass shop-fronts until I identified my interested stranger and satisfied myself that he was working alone.
I cussed out loud and drew a sour look from a little old lady in a veiled dowager’s hat.
The kid was a Sprang.
Not even a full-grown Sprang. He might have been ten at the most. Ten, and wandering around Rannit clad in homespun burlap and mismatched shoes.
He was filthy. His hair was wild and matted. The dirt was so thick on his face I could see it plain in a dim reflection. The streaks in the dirt must have been from tears.
Hell. The kid had been out all night. After Curfew, outside, with hungry halfdead roaming the streets.
I almost repented of my plan to set the elder Sprangs free. They’d not said a word about a kid.
I didn’t want to snatch the kid there on the street. Even the most sessile Watchman would probably come out swinging at the screams of a child, in this part of town, in broad daylight.
So I circled back, hoping the kid was so lost already he wouldn’t realize I was taking him back to Cambrit. I kept a nice slow pace, making sure he didn’t lose me. If he knew he’d been spotted, he didn’t let it show.
I bought a bag of biscuits from a pushcart vendor on Rains. The kid hid behind a fence and watched me through the cracks. I paused to tie my shoe on Borom. The kid nearly got himself run over by an ogre and his cart.
By the time I’d hiked back to Cambrit, he was stumbling along, exhausted, either not realizing he was back where he started or just too tired to care.
I slowed and let him catch up. I slowed more, and he kept coming.
In the end, I just caught him up under his arms and hefted him over my shoulder. He didn’t even cry.
The Hoogas dipped their eyes in greeting as I approached. “Delivery for Mama Hog,” I said, loud enough to be heard inside.
Mama’s door rattled, and she poked her head out.
“Boy!”
“Indeed it is,” I said, passing by her and depositing the limp Sprang on her table. I patted him down for knives, found a single thin, worn blade, and handed it to Mama.
“Another Sprang, I believe. Followed me all the way downtown. Looks like he’s been out all night.”
Mama gobbled, her face reddening with the same anger I’d felt.
“Wash him. Feed him when he’s awake. If he wants to leave, fine, but remind him what happens around here at night.”
“I ain’t runnin’ no orphanage.”
“He’s not an orphan. Yet. Here are some biscuits. I’ll be back before dark.”
Gertriss opened her door, and I waved and winked then I was outside and away.
I took a cab, this time. I’d walked in a big circle and wasted a lot of time, and I still had the Lethways to face.
If there were more Sprangs lurking about, they didn’t make themselves evident. The bridge clowns capered and mocked me as the cab clattered over the Brown River Bridge. I must have looked somber because they adopted furrowed brows and pursed lips and puffed out their cheeks. I tossed them a few coppers as the cab left the bridge, and hoped some of the superstition about clowns and good luck lingered on.