Wicked Bronze Ambition

  I said, “Tara Chayne, Ted, Barate, and I will be heading out shortly. . . .”

  Ted said, “I’ve been away from Constance for too long.”

  Barate nodded. “I still need to find Kevans and get her locked down where the gods themselves can’t get at her.”

  Tara Chayne wasn’t as thrilled with the prospect of my company as once she had been. Luminous intuition suggested that this might be because I tried to do the right thing in the tight places. I was too much into ethical folderol, even after my loss.

  I told her, “I’ll try to keep my big damned mouth shut.”

  She would catch Mariska, sure. Things might turn problematic then, though I was sure that Moonblight would prevail. I did hope to ask Moonslight a few questions before big sister took the process too far.

  “All right. If you want to tag along. But I’ll hold you to your promise.” She moved in, looked up at me from as close as she could get with her clothes still on. “I hear any of your usual lip, I’ll sew your mouth shut with catfish tripe.”

  “Gah!”

  “You won’t have the Algarda angels hovering anymore.”

  I took that as a reminder rather than intimidation. “Got you.”

  “That I’ll believe when I see it.”

  I turned away, chastened. Tara Chayne Machtkess had a little Mom in her. I told Singe, “See if you can’t get word to the Al-Khar suggesting that we might be willing to turn over Vicious Min. Penny . . .”

  The girl was tired. She turned surly. “I don’t want to hear about it.”

  “But—”

  “Not about any of it.”

  “All right! Dean. I need you to come up with a special diet for this one. Something with less sour in it.”

  Dean grunted. He had nothing else to say. He was pushing his cart. Somehow, while everything else was going on, he had found time to make sandwiches. He offered me a fat one.

  Singe turned from the front door. “Humility is coming.”

  “Means we can go without attracting any attention.”

  Of a sudden there was a racket on the stair. Four scruffy mutts tumbled into the hallway, ready to join the new enterprise. Number Two did a perfect imitation of a tame hound’s sit-up-and-beg maneuver.

  Dean said, “Pay no attention. They’ve been fed.”

  I wanted to blather at him and my girls about cleaning up dog hair and any gifts the critters had left but then glimpsed Hagekagome peeking round the corner at the bottom of the stair. So. She had been hiding out.

  She stared at me like she was determined to commit my face to memory. Very intent and, yet, the slightest bit confused.

  She didn’t charge, telling me how much she hated me.

  I told Penny, “Take good care of her, too.”

  “I will.” No arguments. No attitude. No nothing at all but a straightforward statement of intent.

  Did she know something that no one had bothered to share with me?

  Probably. A lot.

  Everybody knew stuff about stuff that they didn’t bother to share with me. That was the nature of my business. That was the story of my life.

  81

  The street was quiet. The show that had brought the crowds out was long gone. The cobblestones were still messy, though. Brownie and her friends found a hundred places deserving of sniffing and pawing. Some looked like patches where somebody had lost bladder or bowel control. A few stains might have been spilled blood.

  Local civilians wanted nothing to do with it. Some wanted to arrange it so nothing like it ever happened again. A fierce committee of two upright subjects and three busybody goodwives engaged us in the street. They explained in no uncertain terms how insistent they were that I not bring any more such intolerable nonsense into the hood. In fact, it would be best for the hood if I just packed up and . . .

  Tara Chayne stepped up to the grim-faced harridan who was the grit round which this pearl of displeasure had formed. “I don’t like people like you, you sour old witch.” She waved a hand on which fingers danced inside wisps of indigo mist. The unhappy woman’s hands leapt to her throat. She made choking noises. Her eyes expanded more than could be accounted for by choking.

  Despite everything that had happened tonight and all that she had ever seen, that old woman never really believed that what touched me could also reach out to her.

  She went to her knees still fighting for air. Moonblight patted her head as if she were a small child. “Anybody here having trouble understanding? No? Good. I didn’t think you would. In a nutshell, it’s mind your own business.” She dropped her fingers to the choking woman’s head, lifted. The woman floated up as if she weighed four ounces.

  Her choking never quite became life-threatening.

  “There. Have some air. That’s better, isn’t it? Are you listening now? I’m going to say something important after I remind you that Mr. Garrett is now part of one of the senior houses on the Hill.”

  The entire committee cringed.

  “Are you listening?” Moonblight asked again.

  The biddy could only nod.

  “That’s good. That’s what I wanted to hear. You need to listen and remember. What you’re experiencing now will stay with you forever. I’ll loosen it a little before we go. You should remember that it’s there—though I imagine that it will remind you frequently. I know your type. You’ll never stop cursing and complaining, so you’ll guarantee your doom. Once we go, that spell will tighten a little every time you say Mr. Garrett’s name.”

  Moonblight squeezed the woman’s shoulder. “It’s up to you. I don’t think you can save yourself. You’re too rigid, too sour, and too bitter. But I could be wrong. Maybe you can change. My sister did. Let’s go, gentlemen.”

  The only person of the male persuasion handy was me, and I’m no gentleman. Barate and Dr. Ted were long gone. Tara Chayne had been having too much fun to notice.

  We left those people flustered, intimidated, outraged, and frightened. Which one in what combination depended on individual characters.

  Out of earshot, with Tara Chayne hogging Number Two’s place to my left, I observed, “You weren’t very nice to my neighbors.”

  “They were going to be nice to you? I’m constitutionally incapable of being polite to that kind of butthead.”

  “But . . . Well, I’ve always tried to get along with them.” Sadly, I can’t control the bad behavior of people who come around trying to cause me misery. “Making it so she can’t even say my name seems a bit harsh.”

  “Pussy.”

  “But—”

  “That was all bullshit. Nobody can cast a spell that fine.”

  “But—”

  “You sound like you’re doing background vocals for one of those street-corner singing clubs.”

  “But—”

  “It’s too complicated to craft a spell that specific. But she doesn’t know that. We work hard to make people believe that we can wiggle our ears and make any damned thing we want happen. She’ll believe it. She’ll feel the noose tightening every time she starts bitching about you ruining the neighborhood. And when she does she’ll believe in it even more. She could end up strangling herself using her own imagination.”

  I couldn’t help blurting, “You’re evil!”

  “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

  I hoped I never got into a position where that truth might affect my well-being. And then I wondered if she wasn’t trying to do to my head what she’d already done to that of my neighbor.

  Probably. She was a natural-born voodoo woman. She’d been doing it since she was a toddler. She had started doing it to me the moment we met.

  She said, “I wonder what all the excitement was a while ago. Up the Hill, I mean. Remembering what we’re involved in.”

  It felt like she was playing some game with me again.

  “Are we going to go find out?”

  “Not hardly. We still have Mariska to catch.”

  We weren’t headed toward the Hill. I
should have understood that without having to be told.

  I was tired.

  I was going to get more tired. Or even tireder.

  She said, “We’re not out here alone again anymore. Again.”

  “Again?”

  “Again.”

  I sighed. “Any idea who it is?”

  “It might be the curly top.”

  I saw nothing but darkness. “No rats? No red tops?”

  “They figured we’d quit for the night.”

  “Why is this kid so interested in us?”

  “A good question. Let’s hope we get a chance to ask.” Some seconds passed. “I think the big thing is with her. Or someone showing an interest.”

  I suspected that “the big thing” was always close by, whether or not he was visible.

  Was he her Mortal Champion or Dread Companion? Where was the other member of their team?

  82

  Mariska Machtkess kept moving. We walked and walked without catching up. Each time Moonblight thought we were there, we found that Mariska had gone on.

  “She’s just being careful,” Tara Chayne said. “While she’s waiting for something. She’ll settle somewhere eventually.”

  We burglarized a couple of Mariska’s stopping places. Neither was occupied. Neither produced anything of interest.

  The last place looked like it had been tossed already. Tara Chayne observed, “The Operator organization may have slipped into panic mode. Mariska may not be the only villain on the run.”

  “We rattled them good, then.”

  “Maybe. I hope so. But I’m more inclined to think that somebody familiar with the Black Orchid recognized her work. Orchidia Hedley-Farfoul is a lot scarier than either of us. Scarier to some than even Constance.”

  “Gah!” That was pretty scary.

  “Exactly. With Orchidia there is no hype. She is as bad as your imagination can make her, and then some. Unlike Constance, she doesn’t look the part. Constance wants you to know, at one glance, that she is terror on the hoof and the only safe place is where she isn’t. But if you ran into Orchidia on the street you wouldn’t give her a second glance—though your chances of actually doing that are slim. She’s been a recluse since she came home from the Cantard.”

  Common enough. TunFaire is a vast, bustling, rowdy metropolis, but you really only ever see a fraction of its people. There are day people, night people, morning people, twilight people, all forming their own tribes. There are humans and nonhumans. Each affinity constitutes a city within the city. And then there are those who came home damaged, members of a tribe that is little seen. Their bodies came back absent something left to haunt the mountains and deserts and ten thousand jungle-cursed islands of the south.

  It’s out there, all round, seen but not seen daily. Any veteran will recognize it at a glance. But I have to confess that I have never completely understood it. Granted, the war wasn’t pleasant. We saw ugly things. But I’m back home, it’s over, and now I deal with things equally ugly here.

  In part, I guess, I haven’t vested myself in being a victim. Meaning, I do run into veterans who have made a career of suffering from aftereffects of what they survived. Not saying that isn’t real for some. Just thinking that a certain kind of personality feeds on the drama.

  A lot seems to have to depend on where you wear your face. You manage all right if you have it on looking forward, but not so fine if all you want to do is look back.

  Tara Chayne nailed me with the dreaded finger poke. “Think you can stay out of Fairyland long enough to deal if we get jumped?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “That’s what I thought. I’m wondering if I might not be safer working alone.”

  Brownie made a snuffling noise. For a moment I thought that was a rude opinion. But up ahead there, whichever mutt was scouting had stopped to stare into a grove of unnaturally dense shadows. Her fur was up and her teeth were showing, but she wasn’t growling. Yet.

  Tone amused, Tara Chayne punned, “Point taken. You do have your more reliable auxiliaries.”

  Whatever was out there, it did not terrify my girls. Number Two spread out left, the other unnamed mutt went right, and Brownie made like a good Marine, heading straight up the middle. All three laid on some fierce growling.

  Moonblight called forth her spirit centipede. You’d think that thing would be invisible in a moonless dark. It wasn’t. It’s navy-indigo presence was hard to spot when it didn’t move, but when it did it coruscated with dull violet highlights. When it scuttled fast it shed random little purple-lilac sparks. Fairy sparkles trailed toward the shadow orchard, fast. I got the feeling that our potential antagonist had not been aware of what Moonblight had at her beck.

  The dogs stopped, settled onto their haunches. They saw no need to get close enough to risk becoming collateral damage.

  83

  “You know this man?” Moonblight had a globe of glowing air perched on the tips of the upheld fingers of her left hand. It had the slight greenish cast of firefly light and was no more intense. Her right hand held a scented handkerchief pressed to her face. Her eyes were watering.

  “His name is Tribune Fehlske, but people call him Lurking Fehlske. He’s the top surveillance man in TunFaire. He’s been watching me, or us, off and on, since before Strafa died. He’s hard to spot and impossible to catch.”

  “First time for everything, eh?”

  “I guess. His odor is his weakness. It’s how you know he’s around. Or has been around. He doesn’t notice it himself. It’s like he’s had a lifelong allergy to soap. Maybe this will change his mind about hygiene.” Unlikely, though. He had had the lesson before and never learned.

  “One can pray.”

  “He isn’t dead, is he?” I didn’t have issues with Fehlske that went that deep.

  “He’ll be fine except for a headache.”

  “He was using some kind of sorcery, wasn’t he?”

  “He was creating a lurking place but not very well. He let us spot a place where the shadows were too thick.”

  “A natural talent, then?”

  “Low-grade.”

  “I always wondered how he could be so good at not being noticed.”

  “He has talent that he doesn’t understand consciously. I expect that he just thinks he’s really good at what he does.”

  Lurking Fehlske was good. That was beyond debate. How he managed that didn’t much matter to me.

  I mused, not for the first time, “Why would he be watching us?”

  “An excellent question and one for which I can offer no answer.”

  “How could he know to be waiting for us here? Even if there was a tracer on one of us, we only just decided to cut through here a few minutes ago. Yet there he was. Waiting.”

  Tara Chayne raised her glowing hand slightly, extending her forefinger to suggest that she needed a moment.

  I backed off a few steps to reduce the chance that the smell would establish itself in my clothing. After the hustle of the day, I had worked up a good enough pong of my own, thank you very much.

  The dogs went with me. They had had enough, too. Then Brownie found an excuse to take them off to scout “the perimeter.”

  Tara Chayne said, “Here is what probably happened. He was cheerfully larking around, keeping track of us, being the other thing I sensed. We caught him completely by surprise when we suddenly came this way. He couldn’t get away without being seen, so he hunkered down and hoped we would go on by. It didn’t work.”

  “Fits the known facts. Maybe we should wake him up and ask him questions.”

  “I don’t think so. It’s been too long a day already. My feet hurt. I’m happy to leave him napping.” Shuddering, she slipped something inside Fehlske’s shirt. She needed light to see by so had to use the hand that had been holding the handkerchief. She gagged but did not lose her lunch. Finished, she shook her hand violently to rid herself of any vermin that had climbed aboard.

  She regained control. “We can fi
nd him if we need to talk to him. Now let’s find Mariska and get this day over with.”

  “I won’t last if she keeps moving.”

  “I think she’s worn down herself. We were gaining before this.”

  Nice to be kept up to date, I didn’t say out loud.

  I was getting cranky. I was sure she must be, too. “We should see about finding a snack, too.”

  “If the opportunity arises.”

  We covered a block, straight ahead and slightly downhill, and reached an intersection with a street I can’t name because it was dark and I didn’t know the neighborhood. Tara Chayne made a sudden stop.

  “What?”

  “Quiet.”

  Then I heard it, too.

  Something was going on, quietly, back the way we had come.

  I couldn’t see but was sure it was happening where Lurking Fehlske lay.

  Maybe somebody with no sense of smell was rolling him.

  Moonblight’s centipede scattered purplish sparks as it scurried across the faces of several buildings, going to see. When it stopped moving it was invisible.

  Tara Chayne touched my arm. “Only a quarter mile to go.”

  The centipede caught up before we got there. She and it communed, and then she sent it off to scout ahead.

  The dogs weren’t willing. They were nervous and staying close.

  “So,” she muttered. “That’s it.”

  “That’s what?”

  “Oh!” Like she was surprised to find me still with her. “They didn’t notice the tracer I put on him.”

  “They, who?”

  She didn’t want to discuss it. She pointed to a darkness looming ahead, where the street we were following ended as the trunk of a T. As yet there was no other light than that shed by an immense number of stars, the cloud cover having cleared away. The place she indicated felt big and ugly and exuded a psychic bad odor. “Mariska is in there. I think she’s asleep. I’ll make sure.” She gestured and whispered. Her centipede sparked into motion. Betraying sparkles falling off made for an interesting effect.