Bitter Gold Hearts gf-2 Read online

  "Not till there's something worth noting. I take it you've heard from the kidnappers? That you know Junior hasn't just gone off on one of his adventures?"

  By way of answering me she lifted a rag-wrapped bundle from behind the desk and pushed it across. "This was left with the gateman during the night."

  I unwrapped a pair of silver-buckled shoes. A folded piece of paper lay inside one. "His?"

  "Yes."

  "The messenger?"

  "What you would expect. A street urchin of seven or eight. The gateman didn't bring me the bundle till after breakfast. By then the child was too far ahead to catch."

  So she had a sense of humor after all. I gave the shoes the full eyeball treatment. It never works out, but you always look for that speck of rare purple mud or the weird yellow grass stain that will make you look like a genius. I didn't find it this time, either. I unfolded the note. We have yore Karl. If you want him back you do what yore told. Don't tell nobody about this. You be told what to do later.

  A snippet of hair had been folded into the paper. I held it to the light falling through the window behind the secretary's desk. It was the color I recalled Junior's hair being the few times I had seen him. "Nice touch, this."

  Willa Dount gave me another of her scowls.

  I ignored her and examined the note. The paper itself told me nothing except that it was a scrap torn from something else, possibly a book. I could go around town for a century trying to match it to torn pages. But the handwriting was interesting. It was small but loose, confident, the penmanship almost perfect, not in keeping with the apparent education of the writer. "You don't recognize this hand?"

  "Of course not. That needn't concern you, anyway."

  "When did you see him last?"

  "Yesterday morning. I sent him down to our warehouse on the waterfront to check reports of pilferage. The foreman claimed it was brownies. I had a feeling he was the brownie in the woodpile and he was selling the Stormwarden's supplies to somebody here on the Hill. Possibly even to one of our neighbors."

  "It's always reassuring to know the better classes stand above the sins and temptations of us common folks. You weren't concerned when he didn't come home?"

  "I told you I'm not interested in your social attitudes or opinions. Save them for someone who agrees with you. No, I wasn't concerned. He sometimes stays out for weeks. He's a grown man."

  "But the Stormwarden left you here to ride herd on him and his father. And you must have done the job till now because there hasn't been a hint of scandal since the old girl left town."

  One more scowl.

  The door sprang open and a man stomped into the room. "Willa, has there been any more word about... ?" He spotted me and pulled up. His eyebrows crawled halfway up his forehead, a trick for which he was famous. To hear some tell it, that was his only talent. "Who the hell is that?" He was renowned for being rude, too, though among people of his class that was a trait the rest of us expected.

  ______IV_______

  Willa Dount spoke up. "There hasn't been anything yet. I expect we won't be contacted for a while." She looked at me, her expression making that a question. "They like to let the anxiety level rise before they come after you. It makes you more eager to cooperate."

  "This is Mr. Garrett," she said. "Mr. Garrett is an expert on kidnappers and kidnappings."

  "My god, Willa! Are you mad? They said don't tell anybody."

  She ignored his outburst. "Mr. Garrett, this is the Stormwarden's consort, the Baronet daPena, the father of the victim."

  How he twitched and jerked! Without changing her tone or expression, Domina Dount had hit him with a fat double shot, calling him consort (which labeled him a drone) and mentioning his baronetcy (which wasn't hereditary and purely an honor because he was the fourth son of a cadet of the royal house). She may even have gotten in a sly third shot there, if, as you sometimes heard whispered, Junior wasn't really a seed fallen from the senior.

  "How do you do, Lord? He has a good question, Domina." I'd been working up to it when he burst in. "Why bring me in when the kidnappers said don't tell anybody? A man with my reputation, and you sent out what amounted to a platoon of clowns, with the girl dressed flashy enough to catch a blind man's eye. It's not likely the kidnappers won't hear about it."

  "That was the point. I want them to."

  "Willa!"

  "Karl, be quiet. I'm explaining to Mr. Garrett."

  He turned white. He was furious. She'd made it clear who stood where, who was in charge, in front of a lowlife from down the Hill. But he contained himself. I pretended blindness. It isn't smart to see things like that.Willa Dount said, "I want them to know I've brought you in, Mr. Garrett."

  "Why?"

  "For young Karl's sake. To improve his chances of getting through this alive. Would you say they're less likely to harm him if they know about you?"

  "If they're professionals. Professionals know me. If they're not, chances are they'll go the other way. You may have moved too soon."

  "Time will tell. It seemed the best bet to me."

  "Exactly what do you want me to do?"

  "Nothing."

  She blind-sided me there. "What?"

  "You've done what I needed you to do. You've been seen coming here to confer with me. You've lent me your reputation. Hopefully, Karl's chances have been improved."

  "That's it?"

  "That's it, Mr. Garrett. Do you think a hundred marks adequate recompense for the loan of your reputation?"

  It was fine with me, but I ignored the question. "What about the payoff?" Usually they want me to handle that for them.

  "I believe I can handle that. It's basically a matter of following instructions, isn't it?"

  "Explicitly. The payoff is when they're most nervous. That's when you'll have to be most careful. For your own safety as well as the boy's."

  Senior snorted and huffed and stamped, wanting to get his hand into the action. Willa Dount kept him quiet with an occasional touch of her icicle eyes.

  I wondered what the Stormwarden had left her in the way of leashes and whips. She sure had the old boy buffaloed. Karl Senior was still a handsome man though he was running away from forty—if he had not already sneaked past fifty. Time had dealt him a few wrinkles but no extra pounds. His hair was all there, curly and slickly black, the kind that might not start graying for another decade. He was a little short, I thought, but that didn't hold him back. He looked like a fancy man, and word was that he did night work best.

  Age had apparently not slowed him down. Those looks, a smooth tongue, his toy title, those magical eyebrows, and soulful big blue eyes all conspired to drop into his lap the sort of soft morsels we ordinary mortals have to scheme and fight just to get near.

  It was a certainty he was no use in a crisis. He danced and twitched like a desperate kid awaiting his turn at the loo. He would have panicked if Domina Dount would have let him. He was a member of the royal house, those wonderfully firm and decisive folks who had blessed the Karentine people with their war against the Venageti.

  Natural son or not, Karl Junior was a seed that had not fallen far from the tree. He was the image of Karl Senior in body and character, and to that menace to feminine virtue, he had added a generous helping of arrogance based on the fact that his mommy was the Stormwarden Raver Styx and he was her precious one and only, whose misdeeds would never be called to account.

  Senior didn't like my being there. Maybe he didn't like me. If so, the feeling was mutual. I've been busting my butt since I was eight and I don't have any use for drones of any sort, and those from the Hill least of all. Their idleness got them into the kind of mischief that resulted in sending a whole generation south to fight over the silver mines of the Cantard.

  Maybe Glory Mooncalled would turn on his Karentine employers once he polished off the Venageti Warlords. It wouldn't hurt.

  I said, "If you've had your way with me, then I'll be running along. Best of luck getting the boy back."


  Her expression said she doubted my sincerity. "You can find your way to the street?"

  "I learned scouting when I was in the Marines."

  "Good day, then, Mr. Garrett."

  Karl Senior exploded the second I closed the door. It was a good door. I couldn't decipher his yells even when I put my ear to the wood. But he was having a good time working the panic and frustration out.

  ______V______

  Amiranda caught me just before I reached the gate. I caught my breath, then chewed on my tongue a little so I could still fake being a gentleman. She'd changed from the show ensemble she'd worn to fetch me and now, in her every days, looked like something I find only under the covers of midnight fantasies. She looked good, but she also looked worried. I told myself this was no time for one of my routines. My sometime-associate Morley Dotes tells me I'm a sucker for a damsel in distress. He tells me many things about myself, most of them wrong and unwelcome, but he has me on the damsels. A good-looking gal turns on the tears and Garrett is a knight ready to tilt with dragons.

  "What did she say, Mr. Garrett? What does she want you to do?"

  "She said a lot of not much at all. What she wants me to do is nothing."

  "I don't understand." Did she look disappointed? I couldn't tell.

  "I'm not sure I do, either. She said she wanted the kidnappers to see me around the edges of the thing. So my reputation will shade him and maybe give him a better chance."

  "Oh. Maybe she's right." She looked relieved. I wondered what her stake was. I'd formed a suspicion and didn't like it. "So do you think he'll be all right, Mr. Garrett?"

  "I don't know. But Domina Dount is a formidable woman. I wouldn't want her on my back trail."

  A black-haired looker of the late teens or early twenties variety left a doorway about thirty feet away, caught sight of us, gave me a once-over she followed up with a come-and-get-it smile, then walked off with a sway to still the tumult of battles.

  "Who was that?" I asked.

  "You needn't pant, Mr. Garrett. You'd be wasting your time. You don't dare touch her with your imagination. That's the Stormwarden's daughter, Amber."

  "I see. Yes. Hmmm."

  Amiranda placed herself in front of me. "Put your eyes back in, mister. You made a big show of wanting to see me outside of all this. All right. Tonight at eight. At the Iron Liar."

  "The Iron Liar? I'm not from uptown. How could I afford... ?" I had to put that excuse away. This was the same little gem that had counted the hundred gold marks into my paw a couple hours ago. "Eight, then. I'll spend the rest of the day breathless with anticipation."

  I smiled smugly after I hit the street.

  I wandered down the Hill wondering why I'd never heard of daughter Amber when the Stormwarden and her family played such a big part in TunFaire's news and gossip. We had obviously been missing the best part.

  ______ VI ______

  Strange noises were coming from the Dead Man's room. I went into the kitchen, where old Dean was cooking sausages over charcoal with one eye on an apple pie that was about ready to come out of the oven. When he saw me, he began hoisting a pony keg out of the cold well I'd had installed with the proceeds of the Starke case. By damn, I was going to have cold brew whenever the whim hit while I could afford it.

  Dean asked, "A good day today, Mr. Garrett?" as he drew me a mug.

  "Interesting." I tipped my head back and swallowed a pint. "And profitable. What's he up to in there? I've never heard him make such a racket."

  "I don't know, Mr. Garrett. He wouldn't let me in to clean."

  "We'll see about that after I wrap myself around another one of these." I eyed the sausages and pie. If he expected me to eat that much, he was more optimistic than I thought. "Did you invite a niece over again?"

  He reddened.

  I just shook my head and said, "I have to go out this evening. Part of the job."

  There was a little troll blood on all sides of his family. I don't have any particular prejudices—who was going out with a part-fairy girl?—but those poor women had gotten a double dose of the troll ugly from their parents. Like they say, personality plus, but horses shied and dogs howled when they passed. I wished old Dean would stop matchmaking. I had given up hope that he would run out of eligible female relatives to parade past me.

  Three sausages, two pieces of the world's best apple pie, and several beers later I was ready to beard the Loghyr in his den. So to speak. "Food fit for the gods as usual, Dean. I'm going in after him. If I'm not out by the weekend, send Saucerhead Tharpe to the rescue. His skull is so thick he'd never know Old Bones was thinking at him." I thought about recommending Saucerhead to Dean's eligibles. But no, I couldn't. I liked Saucerhead.

  The Dead Man sensed me coming. Get away from here, Garrett.

  I went on in. It was war in the Cantard again, and this time the god of the wall had all the hordes of bugdom enlisted in his enterprise. It was the combined racket of their creepy little feet and wings that I had been hearing.

  "Caught him yet?"

  He ignored me.

  "That Glory Mooncalled is a tricky bastard, isn't he?" I wondered if he meant to clean up the entire bug population of TunFaire. For a service like that, we should find some way to get paid.

  He ignored me. His bugs got busier. I sat in the only chair available to me and watched the campaign for a while. He was experimenting, not re-creating. It was no campaign I recognized.

  Maybe he was even making war upon himself. The Loghyr can section up their brains into two or three discrete parts when they want.

  "Had an interesting day today."

  He didn't respond. He was going to punish my impertinence by pretending I didn't exist. But he was listening. The only adventures he truly had were the ones I lived for him.

  I gave him all the details, chronicling even the most trivial. Somewhere down the line I might have to call on his genius.

  I finished and watched him play general for a while. I got the feeling there was a hidden pattern that I was too dense to see.

  It was nearing time to meet Amiranda. I pried myself from the chair and headed for the door. "See you when I see you, Old Bones."

  Garrett. If you get lucky, don't you bring her back here. I will not endure such foolishness in my house. I seldom did, though occasionally circumstances insisted. It seemed too much like mocking his handicap. In life the Loghyr are as randy as a pack of seventeen- year-old boys. It was my suspicion that his misogyny was his way of compensating.

  I was almost out the door when he sent, Garrett. Be careful.

  I am careful. Always. When I'm paying attention and when I figure I have something to worry about. But how do you get into trouble just walking up the block to buy a bottle of stink-pretty from the neighborhood chemist?

  Believe me, it can be done.

  It was my lucky day in more ways than one, I smelled weed smoke and that got me curious. Not many in the neighborhood use weed, and this was less of a cloud than a minor storm. I started looking for the source.

  Source was five breeds, all with a lot of ogre in them. Ogres are not fast at the best of times and these boys had spent their take getting so high their pointy heads were bumping the belly of the sky. Their professional sins were legion. They hadn't done their homework, either.

  One asked me, "Your name Garrett?"

  "Who wants to know?"

  "I do."

  "It's him. Let's do it."

  I did it first. I kicked the nearest in his daydreams, spun and punched another in the throat—then tripped over my own damned big feet. The first guy bent over and started puking. The second lost interest and wobbled away holding his throat and sucking air.

  I rolled and leg-whipped another one, catching him by such surprise that he fell on his back without trying to break his fall. His head bounced off the street. Lights out. It was a good start. I began thinking I might make it without getting hurt.

  The other two stood around trying to get their muggy
brains untangled. I got in the finishing licks on the two I had hit already. A crowd began gathering. The last two decided to get on with the job. They closed in. They were more careful. I was faster but they took advantage of superior numbers to keep me boxed. We waltzed for a while. I got in a few hits but it's hard to hurt guys like that when you can't get in a sucker punch. They got a few in on me, too.

  The third such blow murdered my optimism. It left me seeing double and concentrating my considerable intellect on the age-old question: which way is up? One of them started saying something about me staying away from the Stormwarden's family while the other wound up to finish me off. I grabbed a big gnarly walking stick from an old bystander and smacked the one between the eyes before he could unwind. I went after the talker while the fighter was seeing stars and his hitting arm was flaccid. Yakety-yak did a good job holding me off, stick and all, until I got in a whack that broke his arm.

  He was ready to call it quits. So was I. The bystanders were scattering. I returned the old guy's stick and scattered myself. What passed for minions of law and order in TunFaire were coming. I didn't want to get hauled in and charged with intent to commit self-defense, which is about the way the law worked when it worked at all. I left the ogre boys trying to figure out what had happened.

  My lucky day indeed.

  The Dead Man was all enthusiasm when I told him about the incident. He gave me a good mental grumble about wishing the ogres had been a little more competent. But when I was about to leave, to get washed up and changed, he sent, I told you to be careful.

  "I know. And I'm going to keep that a little more closely in mind. Watch the cockroaches. They're about to flank the silverfish at Yellow Dog Mesa."

  He detached a part of his attention from his war and used it to levitate and throw a small stone Loghyr cult figure. It smacked the other side of the door as I shut it.