“Penny isn’t my stray.”
We exchanged troubled looks. Hanging around our house might have gotten that girl into the worst trouble of a short, troubled life. And we might have gotten Crush, DeeDee, Mike, and the gang at Fire and Ice into the worst trouble of their troubled lives, too.
I said, “Well, for now let’s just be gay bachelors — the way we were before the females began to accumulate and complicate.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, with a marked absence of enthusiasm. He headed for the door. A moment later I heard Dollar Dan ask why he looked so glum.
Rain was falling again. I got a strong whiff of Dollar Dan as he followed Dean to the kitchen.
99
I went out onto the stoop. I’m not sure why. Maybe some vague notion about seeing for myself if all the watchers had been chased off by the rain. Or maybe I just wanted to enjoy the sound of rain on the stoop roof.
It was an odd rainfall, not heavy but steady, with big drops.
The street was empty. No people. No animals. The Palace Guard vehicles were gone. The air was cold and it was clean. For a moment all was right with my world.
Dean came out. “Can you come back in? We have a problem.”
I gripped the cold, wet, recently painted balustrade. I did not want to leave contentment to deal with whatever had him upset.
My imagination was capable of encompassing only one terrible possibility. The Dead Man had given up the ghost, for real and forever. Henceforth my life would revolve around removing a quarter ton of moldering corpse.
Dean did head for the Dead Man’s room. “Here,” he said, indicating the Bird with the toe of his right shoe.
“I know. I thought he went home, too.”
“That’s the problem.”
“Huh?”
“He’s dead. He’ll start smelling pretty soon, no matter how cold we make it.”
I knelt for a closer look. A voice not Bird’s told me, “Get your boot out of my back, asshole, unless you don’t want to keep them ugly teeth.”
I touched Bird’s neck. No pulse. “Penny was right.”
“Apparently. But how can they use him after he’s one of them?”
“I don’t know.” I was upright again and oozing toward the door. “But this strikes me as a sound reason for procrastination. Suppose we just let dead Birds lie till Strafa gets back? She’ll know what to do. Or she can tell us who does.”
Dead Bird said something obnoxious. How? Voices came out of his mouth, not like the Dead Man talking inside my head.
Dean said, “Perhaps I was hasty when I pronounced him dead. Look. He’s breathing, now.”
He was, but only to collect wind to mutter and snarl in several voices, squabbling over how best to use the artist’s corpse.
I said, “Just to make sure we don’t get any unhappy surprises, how about we tie him up?”
“Clothesline is on the way.” Dean headed for the kitchen.
The quarreling voices stilled. Bird’s body began to shake. Then one voice shrieked, “Oh, shit! What’s that?”
Another squealed in pure terror.
100
So there I was. My witchy girlfriend was gone. My sidekick was sound asleep. My trusty ratgirl assistant was far away. And something I was not going to like was about to happen.
A solid boom came from up front. Somebody my size and about as bright had just charged into the door at full gallop.
I went to take a look.
Dean yelled, “Garrett!” as I bent to the peephole. His holler preceded an inhuman shriek so violent the house shuddered on its foundations. Something crashed in Singe’s office.
I finished my peek, sprinted for the kitchen.
Stuff had fallen in there, too, but I didn’t take inventory. Dean and Dollar Dan were staring out the back window, into the barren space that had been an herb garden back when Dean was young enough to wrangle one.
“You have got to be shitting me,” I said, in deadpan awe, without inflexion.
The world’s biggest and probably only land-going kraken was out there thrashing megatentacles and making hideous messes while casting a mad yellow eye at the snacks behind the glass.
Several tentacles had been truncated recently. They oozed ichor, or whatever you call implausible monster blood. The beast’s body quivered like an epileptic dog suffering a grand seizure. “The salt. It works. Dean. Salt. Get ready. Use it if that thing gets any part of itself inside.”
I had seen that old man stressed a hundred times. I had seen him hopping mad and slow-burn, sullenly angry. I had seen him everything but outright panicky. I did not see him panic now. Nor did Dollar Dan, though ratfolk are notoriously flighty when straits get tight.
Dean retrieved the remaining pickling salt. He collected two small pots and started sharing it out.
I asked, “What did Singe do with the family arsenal when you started having youngsters underfoot?” There was a closet upstairs that once boasted an enviable collection of illegal weaponry. At latest check it contained two backup head knockers, a rusty throwing knife, two worn-out brooms, and several saps that were actually memorabilia. They had been used on me before I took them away.
“Singe didn’t. I did. Penny is fascinated by things that are sharp and pointy. The dangerous stuff is in the black wooden case under my bed.”
He wanted to say more but time was tight. There had been three more huge blows against the front door, of a magnitude that promised to break through eventually.
Then would come the fire.
Getting the case out from under Dean’s bed required maneuvering. It was six feet long. It was two and a half feet wide. It was eight inches tall. It was freaking heavy. I grumbled, “What the hell is this, old man? You been holding out on me?”
He had, indeed. All my illegal weaponry was in the box but that was a minority of the tools of death stashed there. Where in the hell had Dean gotten light infantry pilea? There were four of those. There were three classical javelins, two halberd heads, a variety of swords (some of them mine), two finely crafted longbows with bundled arrows beside and strings presumably handy. There were spearheads and lots of knives.
I wanted to stand there marveling and wondering whence it all had come but they hadn’t given up on the door and I didn’t hear any tin whistles.
There were three crossbows to choose from. I assembled a standard Marine Corps heavy piece in seconds. I hadn’t lost the knack. I grabbed a twelve-pack magazine of iron-tipped bolts, added a selection of other deadly tools, then got my beautiful young behind to my bedroom window — just in time to greet a slow-moving thread man who had climbed up with the intention of chucking firebombs inside. Somebody down below tossed one up, not quite high enough. The villain missed it. Down it went. I heard it break, then heard a whoosh! as the fuel ignited.
A roil of fire and smoke headed skyward.
I used an old time pileum to evict the thread man from my roof. He staggered into the arms of demon gravity while trying to pull the business end of the spear out of his cold chest.
I stopped watching. I was looking down the length of my crossbow at the woman who had been created to glamorize black leather. Tonight she wore a pink wig in what they call a pageboy cut. Her eyes were enormous. Gods, she looked good!
But I was in the soldier zone. It didn’t matter how good she looked. I squeezed the trigger just the way they taught me. The bolt flew true but the woman moved in that exact instant when it became too late to shift my aim.
The bolt missed her heart. It went in where her left arm joined her shoulder. The impact spun her. She grabbed at that bit of bolt still protruding. Her feet tangled. She fell, making an inarticulate yelp of surprise.
People do not get shot in the TunFaire shaped by today’s Civil Guard. Especially not villains.
By the time she managed to look up at me, from her knees, while still falling, I had the crossbow spanned and another bolt laid in. I might be out of practice on the mental stuff but operating one o
f these things had become a part of me. I’d still be able to span, load, and shoot on my deathbed.
The woman was trying to get up when my second bolt arrived. It ripped into the left cheek of what had to be the sweetest female behind ever minted.
She squealed like the proverbial stuck pig. She tried to run. Her left leg didn’t want to engage in that enterprise. She shrieked something high-pitched, incoherent, and desperate.
A thunderous thud marked another attempt to break my front door. Obviously, I had been smart to get the work done on that, back when.
The incredible vision in black had not come just with thread men and a monster. Her shrieking summoned a goat cart. I thought she had lost that at Fire and Ice. Only later did it occur to me that the baddies could have more than one.
The goats trotted up. I loosed my worst shot yet. It missed the women entirely, grazed one of the critters. Both animals said something foul in goat and took off.
Leather, ever so tasty woman lunged, snagged the back of the cart, hung on and let herself be dragged out of the kill zone.
The thread men and thing out back were on their own.
Wishful thinking had me hearing whistles that weren’t really there.
I backed off the window, grabbed up instruments of mayhem, scuttled back to Dean’s room. I broke the crossbow down, put everything back in the case and pushed the case back under Dean’s bed. Then I headed downstairs.
The monster had broken in through the back window. Dollar Dan had two tentacles nailed to the windowsill with kitchen knives. Dean was delivering salt to any other part that came in range.
I said, “Excellent. You’ve got it under control. Just don’t go out there after it. I’m going to see what they’ve done to the door.” I grabbed a long, two-tine fork Dean used when turning a roast. At the same time I saw something I had not noticed before.
Our kraken had no suckers on its tentacles. One side looked just like the other. I don’t think I ever saw a squid or octopus that didn’t have suckers. Some had suckers with teeth.
I found the front door frame almost free of its anchor bolts. Despite its massive design the door itself showed cracks. Splinters littered the hallway.
The peephole still worked.
I saw bits of fire burning. I saw two thread men, one down and the other ambling in a small circle, constantly turning left. Easing my head to the right I spied one more just standing in one place.
I tried the bolts and locks. Every one worked, though the one Singe had complained about before had to be forced. The bottom of the door hit the floor when it was halfway open. It would go no farther. But that was room enough for me to get out, heavily armed with a custom club and a cook’s fork.
I didn’t want to be seen with anything more useful at a time when some of my betters would appreciate excuses to lock me up.
I saw nine thread men: three down, four standing still, one smoldering, and one circling to his left. Then a tenth fell out of the sky, firebomb in hand. Fire oozed out from under him.
I was about to go galloping back inside when I spotted the goat cart just standing in the street up near the Cardonlos place. A dark lump lay ten yards closer to me. It moved.
Oh, yes! Time for that sweet thing and me to get friendly. I ducked back into Singe’s office and conscripted a small lantern to share patrol duty.
The door would not shut all the way again.
The woman had trouble making headway with her left arm and left leg damaged but she was stubborn. She almost caught up with her cart before I caught her.
I found the pink wig about two thirds of the way there.
“You dropped something, precious. Here. Let me give you a hand.” Odd. She no longer made that outfit look as good as she had just minutes ago.
She turned to see who was talking.
“Goo!” That face was a good forty hard years old. “This a magic wig?” I tossed the wig into the back of the cart.
A big uproar broke out behind my house. A cloud of brown dust rolled up, illuminated by the burning thread man.
Several thread men got motivated and started our way.
A big scream came from behind my house. It was a lost soul kind of yowl.
The woman gasped, “This can’t be happening!”
She was determined to get up without help. Her now drooping posterior betrayed her. Down she went, leading with her chin.
The thread men did the same.
The woman now looked a hard rode fifty.
“The more you move around the more the barbs on those bolts will chew you up inside.”
“Can’t let go now.” She started to get up again.
I tucked my tools into my belt, set my lantern down, stepped over to the cart, yanked the canvas cover off. That released a pocket of stench so pungent it almost laid me out. Even so, I hoisted the woman up there and stretched her out on her right side. “Hang in there. Neither bolt cut a big vein. I’ll get them out before they do lethal damage.” Where the hell were the tin whistles? I got busy eliminating evidence that might suggest the use of illegal weapons in a civil confrontation. “Grit those teeth, girl. This will hurt like hell.”
I started with the bolt in back. Its head was peeking out already. I could just push it through. “Thanks for coming by. You helped me figure it all out.”
Shouting erupted down the street. A ratman wanted my attention. Other ratmen were with him, making sure the thread men would not get up again. The work apparently required the use of hatchets.
The ratman screamed at me. It couldn’t make out what he said.
I slipped the bloody bolt inside my shirt. “One down. Now for the one that’s really going to hurt.” She had been a trooper during the first removal. She had an old truce with pain.
Several ratmen were yelling now. Two were headed my way. I turned to see what their big-ass problem was.
Something hit me with all the enthusiasm of a haymaker delivered by a truly pissed-off war god.
101
There were faces all round me, looking down, when badly blurred vision began to return. I tried to say, “Hey! You guys are all right.”
Unless I was hallucinating, the circle included Morley, Belinda, Penny, John Stretch and Dollar Dan, Dean, and Strafa shouting down a long tunnel about how leaving me unsupervised was worse than leaving a three-year-old home alone.
Penny was crying. I heard General Block and several others yammering farther away.
Singe hove into view armed with a pitcher and mugs. She said something about how it was too damned expensive to have me live at home anymore. Mr. Mulclar was already at work repairing the door.
I’m not sure how my head was working. I wondered how long I had been out but what came out was, “The Bird?”
“It has been handled,” Morley told me. “You have been unconscious for sixteen hours.” Which meant it was the middle of the night, now. Why were all these people here in the middle of the night?
While I was thinking that Crush and Mike poked their clocks in to check the status of my breathing. I heard DeeDee giggle somewhere, apparently at a joke Saucerhead told Playmate.
Dean reported, “The monster did it. It shape-shifted into the man Bird painted, only in awful shape. Big chunks were missing. He looked like he’d been rotting. But he was in good enough shape to go pound you. He took off with the woman and the cart.”
Singe said, “I tracked them to the Knodical. The woman who hit Fire and Ice went there, too. They wouldn’t take these two in. They headed up the hill from the Knodical. I lost them. They poisoned the trail again.”
Strafa said, “I checked my house. They didn’t go there.”
“Don’t matter where they run,” I tried to say. “I know what they’re doing. I think I know where they’re doing it.”
So there I was, with people crowding in, eager to hear the big revelation.
I went back to sleep amidst a great fuss about concussions.
I wakened to a remixed set of faces. This s
et included Deal Relway and Westman Block. The latter was in no mood for foreplay. “We’ve been fired.”
I made noises.
“Can they do that? They can. For cause. Strictly speaking, for actually doing the kind of corrupt stuff they’re insisting that we do. In a broader sense, they have to make it stick. Right now it doesn’t look like they have the horses.”
I made more noises while wondering why they were here instead of out doing something useful.
“The public temper is fragile right now. People are nervous and upset. Two attacks in one night by monsters and zombies is a little excessive. Dismissing the Civil Guard officer corps for trying to deal with it may be too much. We have every man out trying to keep the head on the barrel.”
“How come you’re here?”
“Because the King’s men don’t dare come after us here. Word is out that the Dead Man is awake and extremely unhappy.”
He was not. I got no sense of Himself at all.
“Last resort, we will let out the truth about the thread men.”
Several people helped me up, including Morley. “Trying to play Little Dead Man, eh? Going to sleep right after dropping a big hint that you had it all worked out.”
They moved me to Singe’s office, installed me in the best chair. I could not help seeing the empty doorway during the journey. I whined.
Singe told me, “Mr. Mulclar will have it fixed by this time tomorrow.”
Mulclar had been maintaining the door for several years.
“What happened to the F and I girls?”
“Gone to watch a Jon Salvation play rehearse. Then they’ll head for Strafa’s. She’s going put them up for a couple nights.”
I glanced at Strafa. She nodded. “You’d better get over there and lock up your valuables. How about the Bird?”
Block said, “In a cell at the Al-Khar and still bitching. Forensics is trying to figure out how.”
“Thought you were fired.”
Relway said, “Only in theory. The King and Crown Prince are isolated in Knodical. The Specials have kept them from communicating with the cavalry barracks.”