Wicked Bronze Ambition gp-14 Read online

  I seemed to have the streets to myself, all by my lonesome. I started out as alert as on a patrol into Venageta’s slice of the island swamps. No one showed any interest in me, nor did I smell one. Neither friend, foe, nor Guardsman gave himself away.

  I liked that but found it curious.

  I followed Macunado east for a while, walked four blocks sideways to Magnolia, took that east to Prince Guelfo Square. That isn’t much bigger than a hankie. I stopped to visit Frenkeljean the sausage vendor and had a juicy hot sausage on a bun with masses of raw onion, checking my surroundings while dripping grease everywhere. Frenkeljean sees stuff. He functions more like furniture than people. Folks pay no attention. He has the added camouflage of being only part human.

  He is a stringer for Deal Relway, too. I saw him inside the Al-Khar once, reporting. He didn’t see me.

  I asked a few soft questions, mostly out of curiosity. I really was there mainly for the sausage.

  If Strafa had a downside, it was her passion for healthy food. I could never convince her that big fat bratwursts in quantity were real good eating.

  Seizing the day, I treated myself to another. Stomach bulging and happy, I resumed my approach to Playmate’s stable, now confident that I was not the drum major for another parade. I paid no attention to the dogs that were out. The city has its strays, always there, like rat people, seldom noticed.

  Could the lack of interest in me be because somebody really clever had tagged me with a sorcery-based tagalong tracer? Or was it just what it seemed? Nobody cared anymore.

  No boost for the ego, that. It meant that everyone, friend and foe, had found something better to do. I was old news.

  Even my own life can’t be all about me.

  I was in the last stretch, headed up a slight hill, puffing and telling myself that I really had to do something to get in shape.

  My best exercise happens mostly inside the gymnasium of my mind.

  Despite my determination to maintain a level-one alert, I did not, for some time, realize that I was no longer operating alone.

  30

  I had acquired a shaggy brown twenty-pound mongrel sidekick who had taken station at my right ankle like he had been there forever and that was the meaning of life.

  “Head on out, dog. You’re too old to hook me with cute.”

  He awarded me the doggy equivalent of an adoring smile. I noted that he was actually a she. So what? A mutt is a mutt. I don’t have much use for any of them.

  My brother Mikey brought strays home all the time. Mom put up with it, too, though they usually “ran away” within a few days. Mikey never could do any wrong.

  She would have fits if I brought a critter home. Of course, mine were way cooler. A baby mastodon, maybe. Or a raptor thunder lizard. One of the little ones that only come up to your hip and mostly eat rats and cats.

  Another sign of the times. We hardly ever see those anymore.

  That dog was definitely female. She did not hear a thing she didn’t want to hear. She just got on with escorting me to whatever destination pleased me.

  I growled under my breath. Brownie growled right back, making good-natured conversation. “Brownie” because I’m so clever, though Spots would have done the job, too. She had a white patch on her throat and another on her left hind leg. Her tail had been broken.

  While I was cataloging her charms, another four-legged lady usurped the place of honor on my left. She was the same size but had a ration of bulldog in her background. She was charming in a maximum ugly kind of way. She did not appear to have a pleasant personality like Brownie.

  She suffered from the same hearing disorder.

  I was a hundred yards from Playmate’s stable. I would hunker down there, see if somebody had slipped a steak into my pocket. I saw Play his own self chatting up a customer looking to board a horse. The nag glanced my way. She made an unhappy noise.

  Here we go. They’re all out to get me. Nobody believes me, but I never find any proof to the contrary. This mare wasn’t issuing a challenge, though. She was just unhappy because she had to be in the same street as that horrid Garrett creature.

  Yeah. She knew who I was. She recognized me. Those monsters are connected telepathically.

  Little Moo charged out of a dark breezeway. She hit me full speed. She had on the outfit she’d worn in the cemetery. She had nothing new to say. “Hate you! Hate you!” She pounded my chest with her fists.

  The dogs danced around us, excited but not really taking sides.

  Playmate came running.

  I got hold of the girl, tossed her over my shoulder, went to meet him, whereupon he proved that he wasn’t going to be any help at all. “Put her down and turn her loose, Garrett. People are watching.”

  He had a point. Folks aren’t always sympathetic to a guy in his thirties lugging a young girl who is kicking and screaming, even when her racket makes it sound like a domestic dispute. The mob might sort me out and consult the facts later, which would give the girl a great head start.

  Folks there were slow, though, maybe on account of the dogs. There were four of those now, and they were turning the excitement into a great doggie celebration. They yapped. They yipped. They bounced up and down happily. How could any of that be part of an abduction?

  I blathered loud nonsense about how Mom was going to blow her top this time. I put the girl down but hung on to her right hand, which was small, pudgy, and hot. We ducked into Playmate’s place.

  Play brought his customer and the man’s steed inside while muttering, “Kids these days.” Then, “Dogs in the office, Gee, not around with the horses.”

  Gee?

  I herded hounds, never turning loose of my new young friend. The mutts were cooperative, the girl just passive. She seemed ashamed now. She kept her eyes downcast and moved sleepily.

  She was set to bolt the instant she saw an opening.

  I shut the door to the street.

  The dogs all sat or lay down. Brownie settled on her belly in front of the street exit, chin on paws, looking worshipful. The others were not so friendly.

  Brownie seemed to be the boss female.

  I asked the girl, “What’s your name?” Still hanging on to her hand.

  She looked at me like the question confused her, then down at the floor. “Hate you,” she said with little force.

  “Not much of a vocabulary, sweetie.” I planted her in a chair, stepped away. She wiggled around before she decided she was comfortable.

  “No name, eh? Where do you live, then?”

  That one appeared to be as tough as the one about her name.

  “All right, then. Who are your mom and dad?”

  Zip. Nothing. I asked a few more, none of which produced any information other than a sense that she didn’t understand what she was being asked. She did, sadly, softly, once remind me that she hated me, but then each question made her shrink in on herself a little more, leaving her a touch more embarrassed.

  Playmate joined us. He was not in the most cheerful mood. “I had to lie about you to close that deal, Garrett. So what the dickens do we have here? What’s going on?”

  “I’d cheerfully tell all if I had a clue.”

  He settled behind an actual desk that took up about a fifth of the room, faced the girl across its wooden plain. That desk had come to him from his brother-in-law in a debt settlement. The brother-in-law had a history of failures achieved after showing amazing promise, energy, and enthusiasm in the organization and financing of bold new ventures.

  Play’s expression was skeptical. He gave me the fish-eye, then the girl in the cow costume, and the same to all four dogs, every one absurdly quiet and well behaved. Brownie hid her eyes behind a paw.

  I said, “I came over to ask about your trip to the Dream Quarter with Penny. And to see how you’re doing. And to offer you a small job helping find the people who attacked Strafa. You know what happened with Little Moo. You watched it happen.”

  He could not deny that. But he was
n’t quite ready to take that at face value. He grunted and waited for me to talk myself into or out of something.

  “Things happen around me. Weird things.” Things that sometimes sweep up my friends with the dust and clutter.

  “Play, I don’t know this girl. I’ll happily leave her for the Reverend Playmate to sort out. I just want to know if you saw something that Penny missed because she was busy being a priestess.”

  “Strafa wasn’t down there, Garrett. We would have noticed. The turnout was the worst I’ve ever seen. Religion is dying.”

  “In TunFaire? This is the most god-ridden city there ever was.”

  “In TunFaire. There are empty temples on the low end of the Street of the Gods today. The little cults can’t make the rent.”

  Brownie lifted her chin half an inch and cracked an eye like she wondered if one of the two-leggers might do something interesting. Maybe food would be involved.

  In a whisper, bashfully, Little Moo reminded me, “Hate you.”

  “That’s all she’ll say, Play. Not why. Not her name. Nothing about her family. I don’t know if she even understands the questions.”

  Playmate stood and leaned forward, over the desk. He had his gentlest look on, but even after the cancer had depleted him so badly, he was huge and intimidating.

  Brownie opened her other eye and made a sound meant to communicate something somehow, but I did not get it.

  Playmate suggested, “Maybe she’s slow?”

  “It don’t seem like she’s been abused.”

  Slow girls on their own don’t last long. Maybe this one was doing all right because she lived in the new, law-hagridden TunFaire sprung from the nightmares behind Deal Relway’s forehead.

  Playmate settled back. “Is there someone else who could help if I turn you down?”

  “I was thinking Kolda since he’s close by.”

  “Anyone else? His old lady keeps him on a short leash since the mix-up with the zombie makers.”

  They hadn’t been zombie makers, but I knew what he meant so I didn’t correct him. “You see him much these days?”

  “He keeps me in the stuff I need to fight the cancer. I buy him dinner at the Grapevine when Trudi lets him out. Who else do you have?”

  “Jon Salvation?”

  “Probably not your best choice.”

  “Oh?”

  “He’d do it. He’d jump at a chance to be part of another adventure.”

  I scowled. Did he know something about Salvation that I didn’t?

  “Really, Garrett. Whatever it is to you, it would be an adventure to him.”

  “You could be right.” It would all be part of a story to Jon Salvation. It would turn up in some future play. And while he was involved in real events, he would be trying to do revisions and rewrites, heading west.

  Play announced, “I have animals that need me. And now I have this,” meaning Little Moo. “If you can’t get Kolda, or anybody else, then come back. We’ll find a workaround.”

  Beer crossed my mind. I hadn’t had any yet today. Why think about it now? Playmate was no drinker. He might not have any on the premises. Then I got what my subconscious was trying to tell me. “I could try Max Weider or Manvil Gilbey. Preston would get all excited if he thought he had a shot at working for the brewery.”

  “And there you go. So take on off. I’ll try to get something out of her.” Then, before I actually got rolling, he told me, “I don’t know what to say, Garrett. I hurt for you so bad. What happened has tested my faith. That girl was the best thing that ever happened to you. I guess I should thank God that you had her in your life for as long as you did.”

  “I do,” I said. “Thank you, Play. That means a lot.” It really did, because it is so hard for Playmate to express his emotions. In this case it was especially hard because he had been a huge fan of the woman Strafa had replaced so suddenly.

  I still had trouble fully believing that myself.

  31

  The brewery visit went the way it usually did. Everyone but top management acted like I was a typhoid carrier, though everyone did sympathize with my loss. The disease they really dreaded was a mild cousin of the one Deal Relway and General Block were splashing wildly across the canvas of the city. My own artwork was limited to the brewery floor and storage caverns.

  There wasn’t much pilferage anymore. Max Weider paid his people well and didn’t mind a little personal consumption, so it wasn’t often that his security team-me-had much to do. So little, in fact, that I hardly ever showed up, so people worry that there might be a stink in the wind when I do come out of the woodwork. I might get my nose into somebody’s business. I made folks uncomfortable.

  That was my principal function.

  I did drop by Kolda’s shop before moving on to the brewery. I never got to the subject of him lending me a hand. His wife scared me off.

  She really did want us to stay away from each other. She considered me trouble on the hoof.

  Max and Manvil Gilbey were at the brew house together. I made my case. They asked a few questions. Manvil suggested, “We can write the lost time off against your retainer.”

  Which Max followed by remarking, “Which compensation package we may have to renegotiate. This is the first time you’ve been here this month, and that’s only because you want a favor.”

  He was correct. I had slacked off shamefully lately, at Amalgamated Manufacturing and at the brewery.

  I got all apologetic.

  Max told me, “Remain calm. I understand your situation. It wasn’t that long ago that I was there myself.” Most of his family had been murdered. That was back when I met Singe. “You helped me get through that.”

  Gilbey said, “Whatever we think of your feeble work ethic and ambition deficit, Garrett, we do owe you. You have been a true friend, to your own cost. We can’t be anything less ourselves.”

  I knew that intellectually. I really did. But I didn’t want to weaken myself further by depending on others even more.

  I have seen too many people turn passive under stress, then never, ever get up and rely on themselves again.

  “So, what do you want done?” Max asked

  I explained that I needed Preston Womble lured into the Dead Man’s clutches.

  “Easy-peasy,” Gilbey declared. “I’ll handle it. How urgent is it?”

  It struck me that if we took the Tournament of Swords seriously-and what could bring the seriousness home more forcefully than the murder of your wife-then I had to take a more holistic approach. I had to view the contest as a societal affliction, not just a familial imposition.

  The genesis for the notion was my recollection that Max Weider had a surviving daughter. Alyx was a walking compendium of character flaws common to rich kids. She was also bright and energetic and a good person when the inclination took her. And her daddy was richer than God. She might be the kind of outsider the Operators would conscript into an open Champion slot. She could be an attractive choice if they were feeling vindictive toward me.

  I took the attack on Strafa as a personal assault, mostly because it made more sense that way.

  Alyx’s best friend was the woman who had been my squeeze before Strafa entered my life. Wouldn’t Tinnie make an amusing Mortal Companion? Though she was no fighter and couldn’t last in a lethal environment.

  Nor could Alyx.

  “Garrett!”

  Both of my companions repeated my name. Gilbey finally got my attention by pinching my right arm just above the elbow.

  Max said, “You went all gray. I was afraid you’d need a doctor.”

  “I’m all right. But I did have a sort of mental heart attack. Hear me out. This is unbelievable. If Strafa hadn’t been murdered, I’d have trouble buying it myself. But it’s all true and I want you to hear it for Alyx’s sake.” Then I told them the whole thing, with every detail that I had collected.

  Once I started, it seemed entirely rational to pull another of TunFaire’s modern power loci in to keep the
tournament from happening.

  They listened skeptically, as you might expect. They asked questions, as you might expect. They did not refuse to believe.

  Strafa Algarda was dead. The Tournament of Swords was why, real or fantastic.

  Manvil said, “You should have told us this before.”

  Max agreed, but admitted, “I don’t know if I would have listened, though, before you realized that Alyx could get dragged in.”

  Gilbey said, “I don’t see that happening.”

  I said, “It doesn’t sound to me like the Operators quite have their heads in the present century.”

  Max said, “Consider us part of the cure, Garrett. Manvil. Let’s convene emergency sessions of our boards of directors.”

  “Because?”

  “Because, between us, the Tates, and Garrett’s various friends, we can conjure up ten thousand sets of eyes. Nobody can stay hidden with that many people watching.”

  Not strictly true, but you couldn’t stay hidden if you wanted to do something like interact with people. And you really couldn’t stay invisible if you wanted to kick off some big, flashy, loud, and bloody elimination game.

  Somebody would see you slipping around.

  Time was on the side of the good guys. Somebody would spot somebody doing tournament work. I just hoped a finder like Morley, Belinda, or Relway would send for me before they got all ferocious.

  Manvil Gilbey can be frustratingly practical sometimes. Like Singe, he asks difficult, emotionally unsatisfying questions. “We appreciate the heads-up, Garrett. This is really disturbing stuff. We’ll protect Alyx however much she howls. But a question has occurred to me.”

  “Yes?” His tone said he was going to ask something that would make me very uncomfortable.

  “Your wife was murdered. People have followed you around. They were able to find you when you were on the move, or were able to anticipate your movements. You have been attacked unsuccessfully. So far. Do you have some reason to think that last night’s failure was the end of any interest in doing you harm?”