Gilded Latten Bones gp-13 Read online

My sweetie isn't one hundred percent contrary. There are times when reason will take hold. Times when she will accept a valid argument without herself arguing for the sake of being difficult.

  This was not going to be one of those.

  For half a minute she was incapable of doing anything but sputter vile accusations.

  6

  A big black coach sat twenty feet from our door, just up Factory Slide, the broad street running along the northeast face of the Amalgamated manufactory and the Annex that had been thrown up during the war with Venageta. Factory Slide saw very little traffic not involved with Amalgamated.

  This coach had nothing to do with the manufactory.

  There was only one coach like it. It belonged to an acquaintance. I hadn't seen her in a long time. I didn't want to see her now. Especially not when Tinnie would know I was seeing her.

  Belinda Contague, empress of organized crime, deadly sociopath, one-time girlfriend, briefly, and, theoretical current friend, owned that coach. And was the kind of friend you might wish you didn't have because they can complicate your life to no end.

  Two armed men perched atop the black behemoth, behind a six-horse team. A brace of armed horsemen preceded it. Four more waited behind. Not a one looked pleased to see Mama Garrett's number-one son.

  Though she had a few quiet shares in Amalgamated, Belinda was not here on business.

  The beautiful madwoman herself opened the near side door. "Hop in, Garrett. I'll give you a ride." From the gloom inside, louder, she said, "I need to borrow him for a while, Tinnie. I won't keep him longer than I have to."

  Tinnie outdid herself. For a moment I was scared there would be a skirmish between Belinda's thugs and the draft-age cousins. That would not go well for the cousins but would be bad news for the thugs in the long run. The Tates have a lot of pull.

  But my honey was not as far out of control as she put on, which was often the case. She was fond of putting on the drama. This scene, though, could lead to some really unhappy reviews.

  Belinda seized the day. She announced, "Someone tried to kill Morley Dotes. He's hurt bad. He may not make it. I need Garrett to help look out for him."

  That fired Tinnie up all over again.

  "Who is going to look out for me? It's his responsibility to look out for me. Garrett! I want. ." She went on and on.

  I asked Belinda, "Is he really that bad hurt?"

  She whispered. "Yes. I really don't think he'll make it." She surprised me by choking up a little as she said that. "Worse, I think there's a better than even chance that somebody might try to make sure that he doesn't."

  It could be argued that the Outfit was capable of handling that without me. But if Morley was on his way out, I had no choice. He was my best friend. I had to be there.

  I went back to Tinnie, took hold of her shoulders. "You're going to be all right. This is something I have to do. For my friend."

  My attempts to make her understand didn't have much success.

  She wasn't going to let that happen.

  She was mad and she was scared and she was thoroughly accustomed to being the Tate princess who got whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it, even from me. She was the ruling goddess in her own little universe. Right now, because she was unhappy, the wants or needs of others had no meaning.

  This was not the first time I had seen her this way. Talking wasn't going to do any good. Only time would have any effect.

  And she couldn't get any more angry.

  "I'll be back as soon as I can, darling. Midge, take good care of her."

  The cousin who had not come inside nodded. Sweat fell from his forehead. He gave up a huge sigh of relief, suddenly sure that he would not have to become the first casualty in a war so small it wouldn't be noticed while it was going on.

  I tried to kiss Tinnie. She wouldn't have it. I backed away. "I do love you. But you can't own me."

  She managed to keep from saying something really awful.

  I got in. The coach rolled before I settled the back of my lap on the plush opposite Belinda.

  Time had been kind. She was as striking as ever. Her best feature was her long, glossy black hair. It accentuated her pallor and the red she used to paint her lips.

  But today her hair was unkempt, stringy, in need of washing. Her complexion had gained a sickly yellow-green cast-though maybe that was the light. She did not wear any of her usual makeup, crafted to create a vampire look. And she had given little attention to her clothing.

  I guessed she hadn't changed in days. She had that air.

  Being an accomplished observer, I sensed that she was deeply upset. "Talk to me."

  "Somebody took a run at Morley Dotes."

  "You said."

  Morley had been my best friend for so long that I couldn't recall when he hadn't been. Well, not before the war. But almost forever. I hadn't seen much of him lately. Tinnie didn't approve. Her disapproval was not ethnic, or social, but intellectual. Morley Dotes had the capacity to distract her special guy from what she wanted him focused on: Tinnie Tate.

  I appreciated the courtesy of being informed but wondered why Belinda would involve herself in Morley's affairs. Maybe because she was the silent money behind his very successful restaurant enterprises.

  "I'll tell you what I know. Three nights ago he staggered into one of our knock shops on the edge of Elf Town. He was full of holes but not so full of blood. The backstairs crew was turning out his pockets when somebody recognized him and decided to keep him alive till they tracked me down. I went there the night before last. He was six inches short of dying. I waited around but he never came to."

  "What was he doing up there?" And why had she gone running to a cathouse when she heard? "Rhetorical question. Thinking out loud. I have no idea what he was up to these days. We don't get together much anymore."

  "I understand. Red hair."

  I doubted that she did. She had no one special in her life. She couldn't possibly know. . "My god!" Could it be? It couldn't be.

  Morley's First Law is, never get involved with a woman crazier than you are. But. . There it was, between the lines. Something was going on between the Queen of Darkness and my best pal.

  "What do you need from me?"

  "Stay with him. Make sure nobody helps him spring any more leaks. When he comes around, find out what we need to know."

  Which meant, find out who to hurt.

  "All right." She was saying plenty without stating it direct. There were ears up top and she wasn't in a trusting mood. She counted on our shared experiences to convey what she wanted me to know. For example, that she couldn't count on her own people to protect a boyfriend they didn't approve. "But I have my own problem." I told her about my visit from Butch and his brother.

  "Tit for tat. I'll look out for Tinnie. Any way I could get my hands on those two?"

  "What for?"

  "To ask if there's a connection."

  Stranger connections have turned up in my life. "They're inside the Al-Khar. You could ask General Block but I don't think he'd cooperate. Go after Jimmy Two Steps."

  "Two Steps?"

  "That's the name they gave up. You know it?"

  "I don't. But there are too many of them to keep track. TunFaire is like a dead dog and they're like flies."

  "There was mention of Raisin's Bookshop."

  Belinda frowned. In that light, doing that, she looked much older. "A bookstore?"

  Carefully, I said, "Think back to when we met. That was one of the places."

  She had been hard at work committing slow suicide in the worst dives TunFaire boasts. The Bookshop was one where I interfered with her self-destruction.

  "I must've been all the way to the bottom. I don't remember it at all."

  "It's bad news on wheels."

  "Not part of the family enterprise?"

  "It wasn't, then. I doubt there's been any reason for that to change."

  "It's a place to start." She thumped the wood behind her head. "Marcus
!"

  A panel slid aside. A guard showed his face. "Ma'am?"

  "How much longer?"

  "A minute. Two, tops."

  "Excellent." Of me, she asked, "Do you know a place called Fire and Ice on the north side?"

  "No. I've been weaned off any such useful knowledge."

  "You'll find it. Take the Grand Concourse north. Stay with it after it turns into an ordinary street. When you get close to Elf Town, ask. Somebody will know it."

  "I'm going there because?"

  "That's where Morley is. I don't want to move him till he can do it under his own power."

  He was my pal. I ought to be all over this. But I wasn't sure I was getting the whole truth.

  Belinda understood. "I'm not working you, Garrett. You take care of Morley. I'll take care of Tinnie. And her family if it's a trade dispute."

  That hadn't occurred to me. There were magnates capable of such shady tactics.

  The coach stopped. "We're here. You need anything up there, you tell them. They'll handle it. I'll see you as soon as I can." Before I could protest her presumption she opened the door and gave me a shove.

  Belinda is one of those people whose expectations become unspoken commands.

  7

  I turned an ankle, not badly, when I landed on the cobblestones of Macunado Street in front of my old house. It was still my place, I just didn't live there anymore and had not been around to visit for a while.

  The place had gotten a face-lift: paint and some tuck-pointing. The cracked window pane on the second floor had been replaced. There were new curtains up there. And there were planters on the front stoop with unstolen flowers in them.

  The siege of law and order had become quite epic.

  I stood there considering, wrestling a dread that when I went inside I would be entering a foreign country. I climbed the steps. I didn't feel the Dead Man.

  I dug in my pocket for a key I wasn't carrying, then knocked my personal "I'm not here at knifepoint" knock. I waited. I examined the brickwork to the right of the door frame. The hole into the voids inside the wall had been sealed with mortar and a chip of brick. Which explained why, on a fine, warm day, I didn't have pixies swarming around me.

  I'd have to get the story there. Melondie Kadare and her mob had been handy friends, if a little rowdy and unpredictable.

  The door opened. The lady of the house stepped aside so I could enter.

  Pular Singe had matured. She had put on a few pounds and was both better and more carefully dressed. I had nothing ready to say. "How's business?"

  "There has been a slowdown. That is Director Relway's fault. But we get by. Dean is making fresh tea. Come into the office."

  Her office was what we had once called the small front room, in the front of the house on the right side of the central hallway. It hadn't been used much before Singe cleaned it up and made it our bureaucratic headquarters.

  "What happened to the pixies?"

  "Melondie Kadare died."

  "They don't live long but she wasn't that old."

  "She got run over by an oxcart. She was drunk. She flew into something, bonked her head, fell down in the street. The wheel got her before anyone could drag her away. Afterward, the colony moved. I will find out where if it matters."

  "It doesn't. Not right now." I settled into a chair. She had gotten some comfortable furniture in. I considered her.

  Pular Singe was a ratgirl, a touch over five feet tall when she stood as upright as she could. Her sort-there are several species of ratpeople-were created by experimenting sorcerers several hundred years ago. The majority aren't very bright. They subsist at the lowest social level, doing the meanest jobs.

  Singe is a freak among freaks.

  She's a freak because she's a genius-not just among her own kind. She's brighter and more clever than most humans, too. So, a freak.

  She scares people. Sometimes she scares me.

  I adopted her, more or less, while working with her, when I realized that a dramatically fine mind would go to waste if she remained in the paws of the villainous ratmen exploiting her then. She'd been an early adolescent at the time.

  Dean Creech, ancient live-in cook and housekeeper, arrived with a tray bearing tea, cups, and sandwiches. He had been generous constructing the latter. He said only, "You're looking fit."

  "More exercise and less beer. It's hell." He headed back to the kitchen. I noted, "He's moving slower."

  "We all are. What's the trouble?"

  Singe knew I wouldn't be home if there wasn't something. That stirred her resentment. She didn't really like me walking in like I owned the place now that she was running it. But, more deeply, she did not like Tinnie telling me who my friends were and when I could see them.

  I explained what had happened to me and what Belinda said had happened to Morley.

  "Is there a connection?"

  I shrugged. "Not logically."

  "But you have no faith in the power of coincidence."

  "True."

  "First thing we will need to do is get Morley moved in here."

  That hadn't occurred to me. I did see her reasoning. There couldn't be a safer place to stash him.

  "Belinda says he's too badly hurt to move."

  "You will be with him. You will know when he can take it."

  I nodded.

  She stared into nothing briefly, then said, "I am considering knocking out the wall between this room and your old office. Any objections?"

  "Only emotionally. There are a few thousand memories haunting that room." It was the smallest in the house. I used to describe it as a broom closet with delusions.

  "We will be too busy to have workmen in, anyway. The Dead Man is asleep. If you were hoping to consult him."

  "I figured. He hasn't been harassing me." I surveyed some shelving she'd had installed. "That's a lot of books."

  "Some days I do not have much else to do. The only call for trackers anymore comes from the Guard. They have grown so effective with their law-and-order scam that they have people turning themselves in after they have reflected on whatever seemed like a good idea after a half dozen pints. The penalties are less painful. I do some bookkeeping for Humility. I manage his investments. And yours. I study. And that is it."

  I had investments? How come I didn't know about that?

  Because I would have spent the money instead of investing it.

  Another female doing my thinking for me.

  "You are doing well with your investments."

  "Especially Amalgamated?" I had a small percentage but never considered it an investment. I hadn't put money in, just me.

  "Especially. But I put some of your cash into other things. You will continue to have an income stream if Amalgamated comes apart."

  I wasn't paying attention. I mostly saw a ratgirl when I was with her. I didn't look for signs that she might be making sure I'd be all right if Tinnie, Amalgamated, and I had a falling out. I would get it later, though.

  "I see." We had begun talking about stuff that didn't require us to confess how much we missed each other.

  Dean came back. He brought his own tea and cookies. He took an empty chair. "Are you back, Mr. Garrett?"

  8

  I wandered around the house, cataloging changes and remembering some whens. The changes consisted of paint, new wall finishes, and new furniture.

  I lugged a big mug of beer. There was a supply.

  I had thought there would be. Singe was a fan.

  "You haven't been bringing guests in?"

  "No one but my brother, some workmen, and the Dead Man's students. Humility only comes on business since I stopped his beer privileges."

  Her brother, real name Pound Humility but known on the street as John Stretch, was chieftain of the biggest ratman gang in the city. He was of a different litter so they shared only the same mother, but their relationship was surprisingly tight.

  Singe said, "He just could not help being a rat. He took advantage."

>   "Don't piss him off. He's a handy guy to know."

  "Garrett."

  "I'm sorry. I can't help fussing."

  "And yet you resent it so much when people do it to you."

  I shrugged. Being consistent is a sign of a narrow mind.

  That was the moment we first stepped into the chill of the Dead Man's room.

  One small candle burned in a sconce outside the door. It didn't cast much light when I took it in. It wasn't there for that. It was meant to fire lamps when His Nibs had people in who needed the comfort of the light.

  I raised the candle high. The Dead Man was right where I'd left him. Where he had been since I bought the house, seated in a massive wooden chair, looking like a badly rendered idol featuring an anthropomorphic elephant god. I said, "Cold in here."

  "Yes."

  "Really cold in here."

  She explained the mix of spells, leased from the same supplier as those chilling the cold well in the kitchen. "Kip Prose designed the suite. It does not cost that much. It will make sure he is with us for a lot longer."

  "Kip Prose. Of course. He's into sorcery, now, too?"

  "No. He could not make a rock fall down if he had to use magic. He can come up with mathematical models to make spells work more efficiently, though."

  The last contractions had dropped out of her speech. She was talking slower. She had begun to show a little of the ratman lisping accent.

  She was nervous.

  "How much is the cold costing?"

  "Less than you might think. It is an investment in our future. We can keep food fresh in here, too."

  I do fuss about money. Someone has to make people think a little before they empty my pockets.

  I was the despair of Dean and the Dead Man, and of Singe after she helped herself to a place in my life, because I am disinclined to work any harder than necessary to avoid ending up ranting on the steps of the Chancellery in hopes somebody will be amused enough to toss a coin into my tips box.

  I heard harsh talk about poorhouses as those fine business minds missed the fact that the poorhouses were shutting down. Without a war there was no need for sweatshops to make things soldiers needed.