Sweet Silver Blues Read online

  He hemmed and hawed.

  “Come on, Pop. Open the poke. Shake it out. Let’s see if the little porker oinks or meows.”

  His expression became pained, almost pleading. “I’m just trying to do right by my son. Trying to carry out his last wishes.”

  “We’ll put up a statue. When does the clam open up? Or do I go home and finish sleeping off this hangover?” Why do they always do this? They bring you in to handle a problem, then lie about it or hide it from you. But they never stop screaming for results.

  “You’ve got to understand—”

  “Mr. Tate, I don’t have to understand anything except exactly what is going on. Why don’t you start from the beginning, tell me what you know, what you want, and why you need me. And don’t leave anything out. If I take the job and find out you have, I’ll get extremely angry. I’m not a very nice man when I get angry.”

  “Have you had your breakfast, Mr. Garrett? Of course not. Rose wakened you and brought you straight here. Why don’t we do that while I order my thoughts?”

  “Because there’s nothing guaranteed to make me madder quicker than a stall.”

  He went red in the face. He was not used to backtalk.

  “You talk or I walk. This is my life you’re wasting.”

  “Damn it, a man can’t . . . ”

  I started toward the stairs.

  “All right. Stop.”

  I paused, waited.

  “After Denny died, I came here and found all this,” Tate said. “And I found a will. Aregistered will.”

  Most people don’t bother to register, but that didn’t amount to anything remarkable. “So?”

  “So in the will he names you and me his executors.”

  “That damned sawed-off little runt! I’d break his neck for him if he hadn’t already done it himself. That’s it? All the shuffle-footing and coy looks is because he rung in an outsider?”

  “Hardly. It’s the terms of the will that are embarrassing.”

  “Yeah? He tell everybody what he thought of them?”

  “In a way. He left everything but our executor’s fees to someone none of us ever heard of.”

  I laughed. That was Denny. “So? He made the money. It’s his to give away.”

  “I don’t deny that. And I don’t mind, believe it or not. But for Rose’s sake . . . ”

  “You know what he thought about her? Want me to tell you?”

  “She is his sister.”

  “Not that he had any choice about it. The nicest thing he ever said about her was, ‘She’s a useless, lazy, whining, conniving freeloader.’ The wordbitch came up a few times, too.”

  “But—”

  “Never mind. I don’t want to hear it. So what you want is for me to find this mysterious heir, eh? And then what?” They want you to do some crazy things sometimes. I could guess why Denny registered his will. A Rose with thorns.

  “Just tell her the bequest is here for the claiming. Get a statement of intent we can file with the registry probate. Already they’re harassing us about showing them that we’re doing something to execute the terms of the will.”

  That figured. I knew those jackasses. Before the brewery gave me the consulting job, I did investigations for them, free-lance, to make ends meet. “You said ‘her.’ This heir is a woman?” Denny never mentioned knowing any women all the time I knew him. I had him figured for a complete asexual.

  “Yes. An old girlfriend, from when he was in the army. He never fell out of love, it seems, and they never stopped writing letters, even though she married somebody else. You’ll find your best leads in those letters. You were in the Cantard, too, so you’ll know the places she talks about.”

  “The Cantard?”

  “That’s where she is, yes. Where are you going?”

  “I’ve been to the Cantard once. I didn’t get a choice that time. This time I do. Find yourself another patsy, Mr. Tate.”

  “Mr. Garrett, you’re one of the executors. And I’m too old to make that trip.”

  “Won’t hold a shot of legal water, Pop. An executor don’t have to do squat if he didn’t say he would and sign to do it up front. Good-bye.”

  “Mr. Garrett, the law allows the executors to draw up to ten percent of the value of an estate to recompense themselves and to cover their expenses. Denny’s estate will go on the up side of a hundred thousand marks.”

  That was a stopper. Something to make me think. For about two winks. “Five thousand ain’t to die for, Pop. And I don’t have anybody to leave it to.”

  “Ten thousand, Mr. Garrett. I’ll leave you my side. I don’t want it.”

  I admit I hesitated first. “No.”

  “I’ll pay your expenses out of my own purse. That makes it ten thousand clear.”

  I stayed clammed. Was the old coot in training for a devil’s job?

  “What will it take, Mr. Garrett?”

  “How come you’re so hot to find this frail?”

  “I want to meet her, Mr. Garrett. I want to see the sort of woman capable of making a monkey of my son. Name your price.”

  “Even rich don’t do you any good if the wild dogs of the Cantard are cracking your bones to get at the marrow.”

  “Name your price, Mr. Garrett. I am an old man who has lost the son he expected to follow him. I am a wealthy man with no more need to cling to wealth. I am a determined man. I will see this woman. So again I say, name your price.”

  I should have known better. Hell, Idid know better. I’d been saying so for ten minutes. “Give me a thousand on account. I’ll look over the stuff Denny left and do some poking around at this end, just to see if it’s feasible. I’ll let you know what I decide.”

  I went back down the stairs and pulled up a chair behind the desk where Denny’s letters and notes were piled.

  “I have to get back to work,” Tate called. “I’ll have Rose bring you some breakfast.”

  As I listened to Tate’s tiny footsteps fade away, I couldn’t help but weigh the possibility of dear Rose slipping something poisonous into my food. I sighed and turned to my work, hoping this next meal wouldn’t be my last.

  4

  The first thing I did was look for the stuff Denny’s family had missed. Misers always have something they think they have to hide. A basement like that, plain as it looked, had a thousand crannies where things could be squirreled away.

  Just as I spotted it a little dirt fell from the under-flooring overhead. I cocked an ear. Not a sound. Somebody was doing a passable job of cat-footing around up there.

  I had my feet on Denny’s desk and was expanding my literary horizons when Rose and my griddle cakes sneaked on stage. I checked her over the top of the first page of a letter that somehow had a quality ofdéjà vu. But I didn’t pay much attention. The smell of griddle cakes with wild honey, tea, hen’s eggs, hot buttered bread, and steamed boodleberry preserves was a bit distracting to a man in my condition.

  Rose was distracting, too. She was smiling.

  Snakes smile that way before they strike.

  When her sort smile you had better check over your shoulder for a guy with a knife.

  She placed the tray before me, still smiling. “Here’s a little of everything we had in the kitchen. I hope you’ll find something to suit.”

  When they’re nice to you, you had better get your back against a wall.

  “Your feet hurt?”

  “No.” She gave me a puzzled look. “What makes you ask that?”

  “The look on your face. It has to be pain.”

  Not a flicker of response, except, “So the old man talked you into it, did he?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Into what?”

  “Finding that woman of Denny’s.” Plenty of vitriol pent up behind that smile.

  “Nope. I told him I’d go over Denny’s papers and look around town a little. I would tell him what I thought. That’s all.”

  “You’re going to do it. How much did he offer you to find her?”


  I put my best blank cardplaying face and stared into the starved ice marbles of her eyes. I don’t believe that stuff about windows of the soul. I’ve seen too many lying eyes. But beyond hers lay nothing but shatter-sharp flint and frosty iron.

  “I’ll give you twenty percent if you don’t find her. Twenty-five if you find her dead.”

  Blank-faced, I started on my breakfast. There was ham and sausage, too. The tea was so good I drained half the pot before I touched anything else.

  “I could be very generous,” she said, turning sideways, posing to show what she had.

  She had the equipment. All of it, and plenty of it. A prime little package, but a package filled with rot. “Denny said that you like small women.”

  Some better than others, I thought. “I make a point of trying not to be cruel to people, Rose. The best I can do here is speak plain and say I’m not interested.”

  She took rejection well. She ignored it. “I’m going with you, you know.”

  “With me? Where?”

  “To the Cantard.”

  “I’ve got a flash for you, lady. I’m not doing any dirty work for you, and you aren’t crossing the street with me. I do thank you for bringing breakfast. I need it, and appreciate it. Now go away and let me see if there’s any reason I should be fool enough to get into this at all.”

  “I’m a stubborn woman, Garrett. I usually get what I want. If you won’t help me, you’d better walk away from the whole thing. People who get in my way get hurt.”

  “Unless you’re out of here by the time I finish this cup of tea you’re going over my knee and getting what your old man should have given you while you were still young enough to have some sense pounded into you.”

  She retreated to the stairway. “I’ll claim you raped me.”

  I grinned. Last refuge of the female scoundrel. “I’m not rich like you, but I can afford a truthsayer. Go ahead. Let’s see how your dad takes losing two kids in one week.”

  She started upstairs. End of that game.

  I went back and dug the dark package from the shadow between two floor joists anchored on the outside foundation. It was not hidden. Every space along that wall was stuffed. But the wrapping of this bundle was a cavalry saddle blanket. Denny’s service meant a lot to him. He kept every memento. What he would wrap in his saddle blanket would be important too.

  I dropped my seabag into the harbor as I strutted down the gangway the day I mustered out. Tells you how thrilled I was with the life of a Royal Marine.

  The bundle contained a stack of military maps of the Cantard, most ours, a few Venageti. Both kinds are dangerous to have. You could get arrested for spying. The people who ask questions for the court don’t stop till you confess.

  With the maps were overlays of skin scraped transparently thin and several slim, expensive, bound journals.

  I took the lot to Denny’s desk.

  Each of the overlays examined a critical battle of the past six years. The names of captains, commanders, and outfits were noted. One journal examined each battle commander by commander and unit by unit.

  What the hell? Denny wasn’t any war buff.

  Reading gave me a glimmer, though. For instance, the table of royal officers:

  1: Count Agar: Impulsive. Overly aggressive. Prone to act on inadequate intelligence.

  9: Margrave Leon: Timid. Wants sure thing before offering battle. Easily rattled during engagement.

  14: Viscount Noah: Vacillator. Excessively ferocious when engaged. A spendthrift of men and material.

  22: Glory Mooncalled: Best all-around commander under Karentine colors. Excellent tactician. Able to train slowest and most uninspired men. Handicapped by low birth, mercenary status, and role in Seigod Mutiny while serving Venageti side. Weakness is a consuming hatred of Venageti warlords.

  There was a Venageti list, too, and an analysis of potential matches and mismatches. If you were in the business of shuffling gold and silver, it would be handy to know who would control the silver mines a few months down the road. Denny had been serious about trying to outguess fortune.

  I smelted an old dead carp, though. Denny drew forty-eight marks prize money and mustering-out pay. You don’t turn forty-eight marks into a hundred thousand without cutting corners.

  Denny’s business log contained some hints.

  Note from V: An agent of Stormlord Atto inquired the cost of 50 pd silver. First tremor of preparation for new offensive?

  Z reported verbally:Harrowmade port with 200 pd silver in ballast. Must sell before Mooncalled takes Freemantle.

  Harrowsouthbound with 1000 pd granulated inside hollowed ballast billets. Biggest deal yet. Pray for fair weather.

  Letter from K. Warlord Ironlock, 20,000 men, 3 firelords of the Eastern Circle, Third Rite, ordered to Lare. Attack through the Bled? Viscount Blush defending. Buy coined silver.

  V, Z, and several others could be the cavalry cronies Denny hung out with. There were hints it was a tight group operation. But K was no old army buddy.

  I turned to the heir and lover’s letters last, about the time a cousin dropped in to ask what I wanted for lunch.

  “Whatever the rest of you are having. With a quart of beer. And tell old man Tate I need him.”

  That was when I started the letters. That’s when the guy in the cheap seats decided I was going back to the Cantard. The rest of me fought the valiant fight for a long time.

  5

  “You look like you saw a ghost,” Tate said.

  I looked up from the letter I’d been staring at for five minutes. “What? Oh. Yeah. Almost. Mr. Tate, you told me it was honest money.”

  He did not say anything. He had suspected it was something shady.

  “You had any unusual visitors? Sudden old friends of Denny’s asking questions?”

  “No.”

  “You will. Soon. There’s too much here for them to let it go. Be careful.”

  “What do you mean?”

  It seemed an honest question. So maybe he did not know the world well enough to read what Denny had written. I laid it out for him.

  He did not believe me.

  “Doesn’t matter what either of us thinks. The point is, so far I’m interested enough to keep on. I’ll need that thousand. There are going to be heavy expenses from the start. And a box. I need a big box.”

  “I’ll have Lester bring the money from the office. Why do you want a box?”

  “To pack all this stuff.”

  “No.”

  “Say what?”

  “You’re not taking it out of here.”

  “I’m taking it or I’m taking me away. You want me to do a job, you let me do it. My way.”

  “Mr. Garrett . . . ”

  “Pop, you’re paying for results, not the right to mess with me. Get me a box, then go pound nails in a shoe. I don’t have time for whining and games.”

  He hadn’t recovered from what I had said about Denny. He did not have any fight left. He took off.

  The funny thing was he left me feeling guilty, like I had been giving him a hard time just to puff up my own ego. I didn’t need that guilt. So I ended up giving in and just letting everything go the way Tate wanted.

  Strange how you can manipulate yourself when somebody outside can’t.

  I leaned back and watched dust fall from the underflooring as a pair of sneaky feet stole after Tate.

  I was still that way when the cousin brought lunch and beer. I was busy inhaling that when Uncle Lester appeared with a fat moneybag and a big wicker chest. I finished my beer in one long draft, belched against the back of my wrist, asked, “What do you think about all this, Uncle Lester?”

  He shrugged. “Ain’t my place to say.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Eh?”

  It began to sound like hogs-at-the-trough time—all grunts and snorts. “Did you read any of this stuff?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Care to comment?”

  “Looked like De
nny was dipping his toes in the shadows. You could tell that better than me.”

  Page 15

  “He was. And he was an amateur. A damned lucky amateur. You ever have any hints that he was into anything?”

  “Nope. Unless you count that woman’s letters. Them writing back and forth like that all this time seemed a mite odd to me. Ain’t natural.”

  “Yes?”

  “The boy was kin, and he’s dead, and you don’t want to speak ill of either one. But he was a bit strange, that boy. Always a loner ’fore he went off to the war. I’d bet that woman is the only one he ever had. If he had her. He didn’t look at one after he got back.”

  “Maybe he crossed?”

  Lester snorted and gave me his best look of disgust, like I didn’t know about the Tates and the elves back when—though the cartha are the interspecies rage these days.

  “Just asking. I didn’t think so. He seemed to be a guy who just wasn’t interested. I’ve been in brag sessions when he was around. He never had a story to tell.”

  Lester smirked. “Listened polite like, way you might if’n I started telling stories about when I was a kid.”

  He had me.

  It is not often Garrett gets caught with nothing to say.

  He grinned. “On that note I’ll be goin’.”

  I grunted at his stern. Then I leaned back and closed my eyes and surrendered to the haunt that had me so distracted. To the coincidence so long the devils themselves must have pulled it in.

  Kayean Kronk.

  Maybe Dennycould spend all those years in love with a memory. I gave it three hard ones before I broke the spell.

  There was only one thing to do. Go see the Dead Man.

  6

  He’s called the Dead Man because they killed him four hundred years ago. But he is neither dead nor a man. He is a Loghyr, and they don’t die just because somebody sticks a bunch of knives into them. Their bodies go through the motions—cooling out, rigor mortis, lividity—but they do not corrupt. Not at any rate mere humans can detect. Loghyr bones have been found in the ruins on Khatar Island; they are very similar to a human’s when they are dry.