Bitter Gold Hearts

  “Do you know anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Of course you do. Who came for the body? What were they going to do with it?”

  “I guess they were his family. Or from his family. Fancy people off the Hill with their own private soldiers and no charity in them for poor people. They talked like they were going to have him cremated.”

  I grunted. That was the thing to do if you didn’t want anybody getting too close a look at the stiff. Like, say, the woman who had given life to the flesh. Or maybe I was too suspicious. This business can do that to you. You have to remember to keep it simple. You don’t need to look for the great sinuous, compli­cated schemes reeking of subterfuge and malice when a little stupidity followed by desperate cover-up efforts will explain everything just as well. And you have to remem­ber to keep an eye out for who stands to gain. That alone will flag your villain eight times out of ten. That, more than any other facet of the affair, baffled me this time. Not the gold side, of course. However that worked out, the gold was its own explanation. But who could profit from the death of Amiranda Crest? How and why?

  I stared at the woman. She wouldn’t know. I doubted that she knew anything more worth digging out. “Step back into the corner, please. That’s fine. Now sit yourself down.”

  She grew pale. Her hands, clasped around her knees, were bone white as she fought to keep them from shaking.

  “You’ll be all right,” I promised. “I just want to know where you are while I go over this place again.”

  I found exactly what I expected to find. Zip. I took the doeskin bag and headed out.

  As I passed through the doorway the woman called after me, “Mister, do you know anybody who wants to rent a room?”

  __XXVIII__

  I found myself a syrupy shadow and installed myself across from the tenement. The street was empty of people now, and of the more honest cats and dogs. The yelling and scuffling inside the buildings had died down. The slum was gathering its strength for tomorrow’s frays. I waited. I waited some more. Then I waited. A band of pubescent marauders swept past, in search of trouble, but they didn’t spot me. I waited. After two hours I gave up. Either the woman had no intention of running to Gorgeous and Skredli or she had left the building another way. I suspected she felt no need to take warning. I set myself for a long night. First, home to let the Dead Man know what I’d learned, then to Morley’s place to find out what his people had reported and to learn what he knew about a thug named Gorgeous. Maybe more after that if anything interesting had turned up.

  The interesting stuff started before I got to the house. Despite the hour there were a bunch of guys hanging around out front. I held up and watched awhile. That is all they were doing. Hanging around. And not trying to hide the fact. I moved a little closer. I could then see that they wore livery. Closer still, I saw that the livery belonged to the Stormwarden Raver Styx. Not being inclined to cooperate if they were waiting around to do evil when I showed, I slid away and ap­proached the house from the rear. We had no company back there. I rapped and tapped till I got Dean’s atten­tion. He let me in.

  “What have we got, Dean?”

  “Company from the Hill.”

  “I suspected that. That’s why I’m so good in this busi­ness. When I see fifteen guys hanging around in the street, I have a hunch that we’ve got company. What about our guest?”

  “Upstairs. Buttoned up tight and keeping quiet.”

  “She knows?”

  “I warned her.”

  “Good. Where is the company?”

  “In your office. Waiting impatiently.”

  “She’ll have to keep on waiting. I’m hungry and I want to let the old boy in on what I picked up. And I wouldn’t mind guzzling about a gallon of beer before I face that harpy.”

  That made two chances I’d given him to ask how I’d guessed that my company was Domina Dount and twice that he’d ignored the bait. He has his little ways of getting even.

  “Won’t do no good to bother his nibs. He’s gone to sleep.”

  “With an outsider in the house?”

  “I suppose he trusts you to handle it.” Dean’s tone suggested he had a suspicion that the Dead Man’s genius had lapsed, that maybe he’d rounded the last turn and was headed down that final stretch toward Loghyr heaven. It looked like I now had two of them who couldn’t keep straight who owned the house and who was the guest or employee. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dean wasn’t thinking about moving in. He’d reached the occasional nag-about-money stage.

  “Be nice, Dean. Or I’ll leave you standing at the altar and run off with Willa Dount.”

  He didn’t find that amusing.

  “I might as well be married the way things are going around here.”

  He slapped a plate in front of me like an old wife in a snit. But the food was up to par.

  I permitted myself a satisfied smirk.

  __XXIX__

  Up north along the edge of the thunder-lizard country there is a region called Hell’s Reach. It’s not wholly uninhabitable but nobody lives there by choice. Every­where you turn there are hot geysers, steaming sulfur pits, and places where the raw earth lies there molten, quivering, occasionally humping up to belch out a big ka-bloop! of gas. The lava pools sprang to mind the instant I saw Willa Dount. All her considerable will was bent toward re­straining a hot fury. She had an almost red glow about her, but was determined to give it no vent.

  “Good evening,” I said. “Had I expected a caller, I wouldn’t have stayed out so late.” I settled myself and my mug. “I hope you haven’t been inconvenienced too much.” Before I’d left the kitchen Dean had reminded me about sugar, vinegar, and flies, and I’d taken his advice to heart.

  It’s not smart to go out of your way to make enemies of the Hill, anyway.

  “It has been a wait, but my own fault,” she replied. Amazing that she would admit the possibility of fault in anything she did. “But had I sent someone to make an appointment, I would have been delayed even longer — if you would have been willing to see me at all. I’m certain you would have refused to come to me again.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m aware that you don’t hold me in high regard, Mr. Garrett. Certainly your contacts with my charges have done nothing to elevate your opinion. Even so, that shouldn’t interfere with a business relationship. In our contacts thus far you have remained, for the most part, professionally detached.”

  “Thank you. I try.” I do. Sometimes.

  “Indeed. And I need you in your professional capacity once more. Not just for show this time.”

  It was my turn to say, “Indeed?” But I fooled her. I showed her my talented eyebrow instead.

  “I’m desperate, Mr. Garrett. My world is falling into ruin around me and I seem to be incapable of halting the decay. I have come to my last resort — no. That’s getting ahead of myself.”

  I told my face it was supposed to look enrapt with anything she might say.

  “I have spent my entire adult life in the Stormwarden’s employ, Mr. Garrett. Beginning before her father died. It’s seldom been pleasant. There have been no holidays. The rewards have been questionable, perhaps. By being privy to inside information, I’ve managed to amass a small personal fortune, perhaps ten thousand marks. And I’ve developed an image of myself as a virtual partner in the Stormwarden’s enterprises, able to be trusted with anything and capable of carrying any task through to the desired conclusion. In that spirit I’ve done things I wouldn’t admit to my confessor, but with pride that I could be trusted to get them done and trusted not to talk about them later. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. No point slowing her down.

  “So a few months ago she was called to the Cantard because the course of the war seemed to be swinging our way and it was time to put on all the pressure we could. She left me to manage the household, as she has done a dozen times, and especially charged me with riding herd on her family, all of whom had been showing
an increas­ing tendency toward getting involved in scandals.”

  “The two Karls, you mean? They’re the ones the ru­mor mill loved. I never heard of the daughter till the other day.”

  “She was blind, the Stormwarden. Those girls were the ones who were deserving. Though Amber had begun to show signs of getting wild, just for the attention.”

  I nodded as my contribution.

  She took a deep breath. “Since she’s been gone this time, it’s been like I’ve been under a curse. Father and son were determined to circumvent me at every turn. Then that kidnapping business had to come. I had to deplete the family treasury severely, selling silver at a discount, to get that much gold together. It was a disaster, but for a cause the Stormwarden could respect once her temper cooled. I might even have survived Amiranda’s having taken flight during the confusion. The girl was restless for some time before she took off. The Storm-warden herself had remarked that it was coming. But putting out two hundred thousand marks gold to ran­som Karl, only to have him take his own life, that’s insupportable.”

  Was I supposed to know about Junior or not? Instinct told me to play it cautious. “Did you say that Karl killed himself?”

  “This morning. He slashed his wrists and bled to death in a hole of a room in Fishwife’s Close.”

  “Why the hell would he do that?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Garrett. And to be perfectly frank, at this point I can’t much care. He destroyed me by doing it. Maybe that was his motive. He was a strange boy and he hated me. But Karl isn’t the reason I came here. I’m doomed when the Stormwarden returns, which she will very shortly. However, my pride — badly mauled but not yet dead — insists I go on, trying to salvage what I can on her behalf. Amber fled the house this morning. This is where you come in.”

  I told my face to look interested.

  “Amiranda and Amber are at large and therefore at risk. If I can salvage that much for the Stormwarden, I will. I’m going to try. I have gone into my own funds to do so. I want you to find those girls. If you can.”

  She plomped a sack down in front of me.

  “One hundred marks gold, to retain you. I’ll pay a fee of one thousand marks gold each if you can return either of those girls before the Stormwarden comes home.”

  “Your man Slauce can’t handle —”

  “Courter Slauce is an incompetent imbecile. This morn­ing I sent him after Amber. He turned up just before I left to come here, too drunk to recall where he’d been or what he’d been doing. I console myself with the certainty that he’ll starve to death after the Stormwarden chucks the lot of us into the street. Will you look for my missing girls, Mr. Garrett?”

  “Give me a few minutes to think.” I had to smooth out some dents in my ethics and reach an accommodation with my conscience. I considered myself to be working for three clients already: myself, Saucer head, and Am-her. Though Amber wasn’t getting the first-class produc­tion. And nobody was paying me. Willa Dount would be paying, though she wouldn’t be getting her money’s worth. Still, an experiment had oc­curred to me.

  “Suppose I had a notion where I could find one of the girls right now?”

  “Do you?”

  “Take it as a supposition. How can I be certain I’d get my fee?”

  She levered herself out of her chair, straining like a woman decades older. “I came prepared for that possibil­ity.” What might have been a smile tickled the corner of her mouth. She started digging sacks out of her clothing. In a minute there was a line of ten before me, each a twin of the one offered me as a retainer. I checked the contents of one at random.

  It was good. Eleven hundred marks gold. More than I’d ever had a chance at before. With prospects for another thousand, which I could collect easily. Certainly a temptation to test the dark side of a man’s soul. We all look for the big hit — hope for it, talk about it — but I don’t believe we think about it. Not seriously. Because when it’s suddenly there, a lot of thinking has to be done. Amiranda was dead. And what was Amber to me? Morley always says the supply of women is inexhaustible. And who would I have to explain to or make excuses to?

  Just to myself. With maybe the Dead Man smirking over my shoulder. Still, there was the possibility of a useful experiment. I rose and collected the gold in one big bear hug.

  “Come with me.”

  Dean had turned down the lamps in the Dead Man’s room. I don’t know why he thinks that makes any differ­ence. The Dead Man doesn’t care about light one way or the other. When he wants to sleep, he’ll sleep through sun, lightning, or earthquake. I hired me down and depos­ited the take beside his chair.

  Domina Dount asked, “Are you going to deliver some­thing or not, Mr. Garrett?”

  “Turn around.”

  For a moment she was human. She let out a little squeak and raised her hands to her cheeks. But she asserted control, taking a full minute to get the parts into the desired order. Then she murmured, “Will the disas­ters never end?”

  She faced me. “I presume you can explain?”

  “Explain what?”

  She took ten seconds, eyes closed.

  I prodded. “You engaged me to find and deliver to you, if possible, Amber daPena and Amiranda Crest. I’ve done half the job already.”

  She stared at me and hated me through narrowed eyelids. Her voice remained neutral, though, as she re­marked, “I had hoped that you would deliver them in better health. She is dead? Not in a trance or ensorcelled?”

  “Yes. Amiranda has been in poor health for some time now.”

  “Your attempts at wit become tiresome, Garrett. I suppose I can assume that you weren’t the agent of death. I want to know the who, what, when, where, why, and how.”

  So did I.

  My experiment had flopped. Domina Dount wasn’t about to be flustered into giving anything away. If there was anything in her that I didn’t already have.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  Why not? I might still shake something loose. “The day you were supposed to make the ransom payoff, Amiranda hired a friend of mine as her bodyguard. That night he accompanied her into the countryside north of TunFaire. She took several travel cases with her. She went to a crossroad near Lichfield, where she stopped. My friend thought she expected to meet somebody there and that he was supposed to have been dismissed when that somebody showed.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. He, she, or it never came. A band of ogre breeds did instead. My friend killed some of them but he couldn’t drive them off or keep them from killing Amiranda. He couldn’t even save himself, though the ogres thought he was dead enough to throw into the bushes with Amiranda and the other casualties. When they scattered to keep from being seen by travelers, my friend found the strength to pick Amiranda up and carry her three miles to someone he knew who, he hoped, could save her.”

  “To no avail.”

  “Of course. My friend isn’t very smart. He’d failed. He was outraged and his pride was hurt. Somehow, he got back to Tunfaire, as far as the Bledsoe Infirmary, where I got his story in the deathwatch ward.”

  Willa Dount frowned, uncertain why I’d told her what I had. “You’ve left something out, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t need to know. Because no one needs to know except my friend’s friends — some of them are the kind of guys who eat ogres for breakfast — who figure there’s some balancing due for what got done.”

  You couldn’t crack Willa Dount with a hammer. She looked at me straight in the eye and said, “That’s why you’ve been digging around and poking your nose in.”

  “Yes.”

  “The Storm warden resents people who pry into her family’s affairs.”

  “I’ll bet she resents people killing her kids even more.” Me and my big damned mouth! I’d blown a potful for free there. But she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Maybe. But those who stick their noses in often be­com
e victims of deteriorating health.”

  I chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind. I’m sure my friend’s friends will, too. They might even be so disturbed they’ll give the problem enough attention to handle it before she gets home.”

  I’d abandoned the tactic of experimentation for the strategy of increasing the pressure on Willa Dount. Not that I had her fixed for anything, but she knew things/wanted to know. Maybe she would tell me some to get the heat off.

  “How about you tell me the how, where, and when of the ransom payment?”

  Domina Dount smiled a thin smile. “No, Mr. Garrett.” She thought she was covered. If she had any need.

  I shrugged. “So be it. Do you need a way to transport the body? I could send my man —”

  “I came in a coach. That will do. I’ll send my men in to get it.”

  “No you won’t. You have the coach brought. I’ll carry it out.” She smiled again. “Very well.”

  As I looked away from the coach, Domina Dount told me, “You will try to deliver Amber in better condition, won’t you?”

  I took a count of five, letting my irritation with her confidence in the power of her gold cool out. I kept reminding myself that it was just business. “I’ll do my damnedest.”

  She climbed into her coach smiling, sure she’d taken the round by getting to me more than I’d gotten to her. I wasn’t so sure she was wrong.

  I went inside to see what the Dead Man thought of her.

  The fat dead son of a bitch had slept through the whole damned thing.

  __XXX__

  I finished a long, cold one and wiped my lips. “I feel like killing the keg, but the night has only just begun. Tell Miss daPena the Domina has gone, but if she has the least sense and regard for her life, she won’t even peek out a window. We may have reached a stage where people are cleaning up loose ends, real and imagined. I’m going to see Mr. Dotes. I’ll slide out the back in case somebody is watching. You lock up tight. Don’t answer the door unless you look first and see that it’s me.”