Wicked Bronze Ambition

  Everybody but Hagekagome snickered.

  67

  We still had places to visit, people to see, things to do, but I declared, “We’ll head back to Macunado Street now. Helenia, Captain Scithe, we’ll drop you off on the way.”

  Those two had been keeping quiet, trying to go unnoticed, with ears the size of saucers. Helenia, though, was pleased. She now knew she wasn’t a fieldwork kind of girl.

  Scithe made himself look as bland as wild yogurt.

  I wouldn’t be rid of him as easily.

  I told Playmate, “I’ll let Dean and Singe know you’re coming.” I might have Dean boil up a kettle of grits if I had to feed a crowd.

  Playmate touched Hagekagome lightly. “Would you help me in the stable?”

  She bounced up, grinning, eager to help.

  I looked to Tara Chayne for a reaction.

  “You’re trying to be clever. Get your answers from your partner.”

  Something smelled funny there.

  “He’ll tell you what he thinks you need to know.”

  And there it was. She thought Old Bones would keep me in the dark, too.

  It made no sense.

  But why did it have to now? A dab of patience would bring whatever knowledge I needed. I just hated waiting.

  Playmate and the girl readied the horses. I installed Helenia aboard the mare, who finally betrayed her true self by nipping me.

  Playmate, Hagekagome, and Helenia all barked at me when I popped the monster in the snot locker. Brownie put on the same look of disappointment that my mother used to get when she was unhappy about something that I’d done.

  I asked her, “You weren’t my mom in another life, were you?”

  Niea gasped, horrified, reminding us of his presence. Reincarnation theory was anathema to all true-believing Orthodox.

  The mare just looked dumbfounded.

  • • •

  We delivered Helenia to the Al-Khar. Scithe did drop out there, too, only asking once if he could take Niea with him. He took “No” for an answer. The Specials faded away, too, probably because their shifts were up. We weren’t far along before I spotted Preston Womble again, though.

  He didn’t care if he was seen, probably because he didn’t care what we were doing. He was working because he had been given no choice.

  I chose to go past Frenkeljean’s roach wagon, where I treated everyone to sausages, including the mutts—though they got surplus that had been around too long for people to eat. Grease running up my arms, I told Tara Chayne, “Now, this is what I call good eating. Yo. Frenkle-man. Give me another one.”

  Tara Chayne’s reaction to her sausage approximated mine to her pepper-based abomination. She took a few bites, made ladylike retching noises, and passed the rest to Number Two, who totally agreed with me. How could anybody not love a big old juice-dripping pork sausage?

  Frenkeljean filled me in on local gossip. That didn’t take long. My activities hadn’t gotten any rumors started. Folks didn’t care what happened on the Hill as long as the Hill didn’t include outsiders as collateral damage.

  It was an attitude I knew well. I’d shared it before Strafa came into my life.

  From Prince Guelfo Square it was a short trek to Macunado, where several red tops deliberately showed themselves. I heard grumbling from neighbors who objected to the possibility of excitement.

  Tough.

  The Dead Man was awake. I began to feel him when we were a block away. He was playing ambush predator, but why wasn’t clear. He might not know that himself.

  Penny opened the door. She said something nice to Moonblight, looked down to where I was trying to make the horses comfortable. She told Brownie, “I’ll get something for you guys in a minute.” To me, “Can you put them in back?”

  I asked the air, “What happened to the real Penny Dreadful?”

  Your Church friend is most intriguing.

  “What have you got?”

  It is too early to concern yourself. Do as Penny suggested.

  “Huh?” Did she suggest something? I must have missed that.

  The dogs! With exasperation.

  That let me know that I really did have to get it together. A lapse so small shouldn’t trigger the impatience of someone normally little pressed for time. There must be a frustrating pattern.

  Well, of course. Especially since I’d lost Strafa.

  I kept recognizing it, then failing to do anything about it.

  “Come on, girls. Follow me.” Down a narrow breezeway alongside the house stood gates into my garden and that of my neighbor to the left. I had not, literally, been back there for years. I expected masses of windblown trash and the rotted memory of a gate. I found neither.

  The breezeway was clean. The gate was new. “That Singe,” I muttered. “She’s spooky efficient.”

  The breezeway had been cleaned after someone had tuck-pointed the mortar on the side of the house. A few missed slate chips told me that some roof repairs had been made, too.

  The girls and I found Dean on the back porch, juggling bowls. Penny was there to help, a pot in each hand. She must have opened the back door. Dean couldn’t budge it. It seldom gets used and is stubborn about sticking shut, then is tough to close again once you do get it open.

  They set out four bowls of mutt grub in ridiculously generous portions. Penny’s pots held water. Somebody had gone out of his or her way while I was off earning a living. Sic. Such as that was.

  The pay had been lousy lately, and, being self-employed, I had me a really cheap-ass boss.

  Penny reddened slightly, patted a couple of canine heads on critters too busy to notice, grumbled, “Got to go answer the door.”

  There was no point raising my concerns with Dean. That old boy has no shame when it comes to spending my money.

  “You girls be sure to thank the nice man.” I glanced around, saw essentially a desert the size of a handkerchief. Dean had started an herb garden once upon a time but couldn’t keep it up. Singe kept talking about creating a fancy flower garden, but she never got past the talk. She was too busy.

  Penny and I were too damned lazy, and I didn’t care, anyway.

  Gardens are nice when somebody else does the planting, watering, weeding, and grooming. I used to hit the Royal Botanical Gardens about once a year, then more often after I hooked up with Strafa.

  I went back around front wondering if we should put the horses back there, too, and arrived just in time to see Penny close the front door behind Dollar Dan Justice, then to spot a slowly moving Playmate, with a patently worried Hagekagome, turning onto Macunado off Wizard’s Reach.

  With no audience but the girl, Play was revealing how weak he really was.

  I should have a man-to-man with his dopey brother-in-law.

  Accumulated circumstantial evidence suggested that the jerk just wanted Playmate to hurry up and die so he could get hold of the assets, sell them, and squander the proceeds on fool get rich schemes. He had done that with Play’s sister’s inheritance.

  68

  Penny was waiting to let me in. I heard talk from Singe’s office. John Stretch was using his deadly calm, lethally reasonable voice. I thought he would use that voice to explain why he was going to kill you. He was the only one doing any talking.

  I raised an eyebrow to Penny. She shrugged, raised one hand with all five digits up, said, “The others are over there,” indicating the Dead Man’s room, then stepped around me to wait for Playmate and Hagekagome.

  She knew they were coming, though I hadn’t said anything and they were still out of the Dead Man’s range.

  Old Bones was peeking again.

  Dean had not brought out any refreshments. Maybe our guests were less than totally welcome.

  Perhaps he was being encouraged to restrain his natural hospitality.

  I could endorse that attitude wholeheartedly, and about time, too!

  You are dithering.

  And not even recognizing it. I checked Penny. She was o
n tiptoe at the peephole. Satisfied, I advanced boldly on Singe’s office.

  It was like a rat people clubhouse in there, minus the weed smoke and beer smell. There was plenty of rat smell, though, all with anger and fear behind it.

  Singe was at her desk, making notes. Her brother stood beside her, dressed to the nines for a rat. Dollar Dan Justice and an unfamiliar mutant almost my size stood to either side of the doorway. The rest of the room was filled with four smaller, poorer, rattier rats who were much more gray than my friends. They were a different breed.

  There are three kinds of rat people. Most humans don’t pay attention, but the two breeds that aren’t John Stretch’s and Pular Singe’s kind are uncommon. The differences hark back to the species of rats the creator sorcerers used in their experiments, and to the methods they used.

  There are only two species of ordinary rat, ugly and uglier.

  Rat eyes turned my way. I wasn’t stricken shy. “Some of these guys were on me and Tara Chayne a while ago.”

  John Stretch said, “They were. They’ve never been so bold. I thought this might be a good place to ask them why. And thank you for sending word.”

  “Best place in town for asking questions.” Speaking of Tara Chayne, what had become of her?

  She is in the kitchen with Dean.

  So at least one of his minds was not fully occupied.

  Singe rewarded me with her most penetrating look. “Tara Chayne? Really?”

  “Moonblight, if you prefer. Got to call her something.”

  Her look shifted subtly. The subject would be tabled. It would come up again. I didn’t get why. She had to know that the sorceress wouldn’t be that kind of problem.

  I asked, “What’s their story?”

  Singe said, “My apologies on behalf of the rude interloper, gentlemen. This is Garrett. He owns the place and on that he tends to presume.”

  The sleekest gray said something in dialect.

  It is impenetrable to me as well, though I will pick it up. It descends from Karentine as spoken by the poorest poor two centuries ago.

  John Stretch hunched his shoulders, nodded. He had been included. He was not yet used to hearing voices inside his head.

  Singe bobbed her head, too.

  Tara Chayne strolled in. She had equipped herself with my own favorite oversize tankard. It was filled with fragrant Select Dark. My mouth watered. She said, “Stinks like the monkey house in here.”

  The grays cringed.

  The other rat people were not much more at ease.

  They all knew what she was, and maybe who. Her forbears might have had a paw in the creation of their lines.

  She asked, “Have we learned anything yet?” Then slurped.

  His mouth watering, too, John Stretch said, “Friend Evil Lin here was just starting to tell us a story.”

  Singe said, “Perhaps you could translate, Humility.”

  “But . . .”

  “Is anyone better qualified?”

  “No.” He just did not like to admit that he had contacts as low as these people.

  Everybody has somebody to look down on.

  “Evil Lin?” I asked.

  “They favor names like that. Wicked Pat is his littermate.”

  Wicked Pat. I knew that name. He was a gray tribal leader.

  I’d had nothing to do with grays before today. The opportunity hadn’t come up.

  69

  “This is what we learned,” John Stretch said. “They were sent to keep an eye on Garrett, the thinking being that even my people would pay no attention. They have a long history with this employer, whose identity they would not give up, possibly because they don’t know it.”

  “Cheap,” Moonblight grumbled, evidently to herself. Her intensity said she thought she might know who. Maybe she knew somebody who had a habit of employing grays. She didn’t want to share, though trying to hide anything in my house was futile.

  Or maybe she was just feeling the beer.

  She should have eaten that sausage.

  She thinks her sister was responsible. The timing is intriguing. I cannot determine when contact could have been made. Grays have almost no grasp of time, relative or exact. Past and future become entangled with the present.

  But?

  Indeed. Oddments in Niea’s mind suggest Moonslight made occasional nighttime visits to Chattaree.

  So why didn’t he react to Moonslight’s twin when we showed up?

  He never saw her. He is the day man. He heard talk. Nor did Moonblight behave as though she was intimate with someone inside. He has not developed a conscious suspicion, but he has begun to feel an itch.

  That’s what Old Bones is good for. Making connections, probably not only with stuff from inside Niea’s head but also clutter from the shadows in Tara Chayne’s, spiced with whatever he got from the rest of us.

  Tara Chayne began to grunt and scowl. She muttered, “The more you get done, the more they want you to do.”

  Penny stuck her head in. “The dogs are done eating. I’ll get them ready to go.”

  So. Playmate and Hagekagome had arrived. Penny had put them in with the Dead Man.

  Exactly. Get a move on.

  “A move on? What, where, and why?”

  “We are now off to see my sister. To rescue her if we’re asked. Actually, maybe, to capture her and drag her bony ass back here.”

  I was confused.

  Not unusual, sadly. Please hurry.

  “Just me and Tara Chayne? Against the Operators?”

  Indeed. They are old. You are fast on your feet and fierce, and you will be accompanied by four savage hellhounds. And, likely, by half the Specials and Relway Runners infesting TunFaire.

  “But . . .”

  Quickly. Speed is essential. They may move her when they hear that these four have been captured.

  Damn! Oh yeah! More of their kind might be coming around.

  Singe said, “Then I have to go, too.” She worked herself out from behind her desk, then through the crowd. John Stretch gestured to Dollar Dan. Dan nodded. He stepped into the hallway to await the body he would guard.

  Singe snarled in exasperation.

  She doesn’t want to be treated like a girl.

  I said, “Don’t waste time arguing. Put on your walking shoes.”

  Penny announced, “I want to come, too.”

  I need you here, dear.

  “I can take care of myself.”

  Indeed. I would not question that for a moment. You should certainly do better than some members of the party. You use your head to a purpose higher than damaging fists and nightsticks. But I do require your assistance. Singe and Garrett will be out of the house while we have outsiders on the premises. Dean cannot handle them if they become unruly.

  Meaning Dean was too feeble to chuck the bodies out by himself if badly behaving guests had to be tossed overboard.

  Penny turned surly but acquiesced.

  I wondered if Himself did truly need her or just wanted his pet kept out of harm’s way.

  He didn’t clue me in. He did give me a swift mental kick to get me moving.

  Pouting, Penny headed for the back of the house. Tara Chayne and I scouted a route to the front door. Dollar Dan twitched nervously while watching for Singe to catch up. He lurked in the open doorway while we two stood snarling on the stoop, watching an unfamiliar teen boy mess with the horses in full view of a couple of tin whistles who did nothing about it.

  Moonblight spat, muttered angrily, considered doing something that would have been unpleasant for the boy. Then she cocked her head, listening.

  The Dead Man was on the job. The boy eased past us on the steps, eyes on Penny, who awaited him with a smile. He was too scared to appreciate that, but he couldn’t make himself stop.

  Old Bones didn’t waste mental capacity letting me know what was going on with the boy. Nor did I much care just then.

  Brownie and crew charged out of the breezeway. Well, she and the nameless pair
charged. Number Two sauntered, not at all eager to seek further adventure. She wanted to be napping in the shade while the flies buzzed round.

  I told her, “Stay here if you like.”

  Big, dumb-eyed stare. And maybe a doggy sneer. No. No way.

  I needed to get shot of her. Really. She thought I might do something wicked to her pals if she wasn’t there to stop me.

  Tara Chayne fished something out from under my saddle blanket. “Oh, lookee.” It was leather, sticky on one side, had odd figures inked onto the other, skin side. They might have been tattooed there while the skin’s owner was still warm. “You and the bitch certainly are two of a kind, aren’t you? My. This is another tracer from that same craftsman.”

  Number Two and I glared at each other. That snap had been hard on us both.

  Tara Chayne cocked her head again. “Ah. He was just paid to install the patch. He doesn’t know what it is. He doesn’t care. He was hired by some generic ‘old guy.’”

  Ah, the sharp eyes of youth. “That does reduce the suspect pool.”

  Tara Chayne tucked the leather tracer into a pocket. “I’ll use it to start a false trail later.”

  “Think it was the Operators?”

  “Probably. But you have to wonder how the little girl does it, too.”

  I should. Now that it had come up. It seemed she only watched, but how did she know where to be?

  “Where is that woman of yours?”

  Woman? Of mine?

  It took a few seconds.

  Amazing lack of prejudice in the old gal now, when there were no rat people to witness. She meant Singe.

  Dollar Dan missed it. He was still on the stoop, getting restless, too.

  Tara Chayne said, “We’ll walk the horses. They’re worn out.” And our rat companions couldn’t keep up if we rode.

  Singe turned up wearing a complete new outfit. She had gone for an adventuress look, tan and plain, with one of my old hats slit to fit her ears. She carried a staff that I hadn’t seen before, made of bamboo strips bound and glued together. It had to be eight feet long. I stared but didn’t comment. Maybe she had a blade for its end hidden down her pants leg.

  Any red top who got close would wonder, too.