Angry Lead Skies Read online

  Playmate ignored my sarcasm. He knew me too well. “I thought he was mental, too, at first. This’s been going on for a while. And I never saw anything to convince me that he wasn’t making up another one of his stories. But then somebody broke into his flat. While some of his family were there. Which is weird, because the Proses don’t have a pot to pee in. Then, next day, this morning, they came to the stable. Three of them. Three strange, shiny women. I’ve been letting Kip use a corner of the smithy for a workshop. He does his projects there. They tried to drag him off.”

  “You didn’t let them?”

  “Of course I didn’t let them.” He was offended because I’d even asked. “Though it wasn’t all me. They seemed extremely distracted by the horses. Afraid of them, even.”

  “That just sounds like basic common sense to me.”

  “You shouldn’t joke that way, Garrett.” Playmate just will not believe the truth about horses.

  “These guys know horses mean trouble and they’ve got a beef with this kid and those things are somehow a surprise to you?”

  Some people view the world through a whole different set of spectacles.

  Playmate chose not to pursue the debate. “Their eyes were weird, Garrett. Almost like holes. Or like there were little patches of fog right there hiding them when they looked straight at you.”

  I tried to imagine the encounter. Playmate abhors violence, yet, for a nonviolent idealist, he can be totally convincing in any argument that steps on a banana peel and slides off the intellectual plane. Playmate has sense enough to understand that not everyone shares his views. There are some people that need hammering and others that just plain need killing. There are people out there even a mother couldn’t love.

  “These visitors some new kind of breed?” All the races infesting TunFaire seem capable of interbreeding. Often the mechanics aren’t easy to visualize but the results are out there on the street. At times nature takes a very strange turn. And some of the strangest are among my friends.

  Kip shook his head. Playmate told me, “Give me a sheet of paper. I’ll draw you a picture.” He produced a small, polished cherrywood box with silver fittings. When opened it revealed a battery of artist’s tools. He took out a couple of sticks I decided had to be Kip’s inventions.

  “Another unsuspected talent.” I pushed over a torn sheet of paper. I’d only just started using its back side.

  I recalled seeing charcoal drawings around Playmate’s place but I never wondered enough about them to make a direct connection.

  This detecting business requires great curiosity and attention to the tiniest details.

  I was amazed once Playmate got started. “You’re in the wrong racket, Play.”

  “Not much call for this kind of thing, Garrett.” His hand moved swiftly and confidently. “Maybe in a carnival.” He was a lefty, of course. They always are. The guy who did Eleanor probably had two left hands.

  The portrait took shape rapidly.

  “The original must’ve been one ugly critter.” It had a head like a bottom-up pear. It had a mouth so small it was fit to eat nothing but soup. No ears were evident but Playmate was still drawing.

  His hand moved slower and slower. A frown creased his forehead. Pinhead sweat beads appeared. He strained mightily to get his hand to do something it didn’t want to do. He gasped, “Less call than there is for new preachers.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This won’t come out like what I saw. I wanted to draw the woman in charge. A small woman, average-looking with ginger hair. Cut off straight above her eyes and straight all the way around the rest, two inches down from where her ears should’ve been.”

  The thing he had drawn owned no ears.

  He was drawing something that wasn’t human. Its head was shaped something like an inverted pear. Its eyes were oversize, bulgy, teardrops shaped, evidently without pupils. He did not put in a nose. Instead, there were slits, unconnected, forming an inverted Y.

  I observed, “There isn’t any nose. And what about ears?”

  “I thought they were hidden under her hair. I guess... not. There’re these dark, bruise-looking patches down here, practically on the neck. Maybe they do the same job.”

  That was weird. I couldn’t think of a race that didn’t have ears of some kind. In fact, most races have ears that make our human ones look like afterthoughts. Great hairy, pointy, or dangly things all covered with scales and warts.

  “Old Bones, you’ve got to help us out here. Why can’t Play draw what he really saw?”

  Grumpy atmospherics. Kip squeaked. The Dead Man observed, Mr. Playmate appears to be reproducing what was actually in front of him rather than what he believes he saw. It is possible he was gulled by some illusion. The illustration does resemble the boy’s recollections of his elven acquaintances.

  “Wonderful. Play, I’ll bet Colonel Block wishes he had somebody who could draw pictures like this of the villains he wants to catch.”

  “The Guard can go on wishing. You know I’m a simple man, Garrett. Not greedy at all. But I do have to point out that a second-rate stable operator like myself still makes a better living than the best-paid honest policeman.”

  “Most everything pays better than being honest. You want to work for Block and Relway, you’d better have a bone-deep law and order calling. Now what?”

  Kip was making noises. He wasn’t as impressed with the sketch as I was. “The eyes aren’t right, Play.”

  “They wouldn’t be, would they?” Playmate growled. “Since whenever they look straight at you they go all smoky. And they aren’t eyes like ours, anyway. They don’t have any eyelids.”

  “It’s not that. It’s their shape. They’re bulgier...”

  Garrett!

  The kid jumped, squealed, went paper pale in an instant, scattered the documents on my desk. He moaned, “They’re here! They’re trying to get into my head again!” He tried to jump past Playmate.

  “Hang on to him!” I said. “That’s just old Chuckles deciding to pick on me for a minute.”

  Old Chuckles demurred. He sent, The young man is entirely correct, Garrett. There is an unknown creature in the alleyway out back trying to look into the house. I am confusing it and blocking it but that is extremely difficult. The work requires most of the attention of most of my minds.

  The Dead Man belongs to a rare species known as Loghyr. They have that knack. Of having multiple minds capable of parallel and independent function. I’ve heard that some develop multiple personalities. I can’t imagine. Old Bones is a complete horror show being just one of himself.

  Simultaneous shrieks sounded upstairs and in the small front room. I don’t know what Katie’s problem was but it was audibly obvious that the Goddamn Parrot had decided to focus his powers of persuasion on convincing the world that he was about as sane as a drunken butterfly.

  The creature is now confused by what I have done. Which is to connect it to a couple of marginally sensitive but completely empty minds. Perhaps it will become equally lost.

  “That’s no way to talk about my girlfriend.”

  The Dead Man was able to make the air sneer. And I suppose he had a point. Nature endowed Katie with countless delicious attributes. At first glance excessive intellect doesn’t appear to be one of those. But, actually, bimbo is a survival strategy that she has let get out of control.

  The kid began babbling soft nonsense not unlike that of yon inebriated megamouth. It sounded suspiciously like some of the nonsense Katie whispered when she was about half-asleep and purring. I asked Playmate, “Kip have a history with booze or drugs?” The kid was now not speaking any form of Karentine I recognized. My place isn’t the neighborhood ranting ground for any of those cults that specialize in speaking in tongues.

  Even so, soon every fourth word out of Kip’s mouth sounded vaguely familiar. They may even have been real words — completely out of context.

  “No. Never. He doesn’t have that kind of imagination. But this�
��s exactly the way he got when those elves came looking for him.”

  “Elves? What elves? Are we suddenly starting to get somewhere?”

  “No. I just feel more comfortable calling them elves. Say they were elf-sized but they weren’t like any elves that we know. They were female. You ever see a female elf who didn’t look like the devil’s disciple?”

  Not my choice of descriptives but I knew what he meant. Even the ugly elf girls are pretty enough and wicked enough to melt your spine with a wink and a smile and a wiggle if the fancy takes them. “No. Never have.”

  “These girls... weren’t. They were almost asexual.”

  “How did you know?”

  Garrett! I do not enjoy such an oversufficiency of mind-space that I can waste any following your digressions. Save that for later. The creature is in the alley. It is confused. It can be captured. Will you please see to that and cease this passing the time of day with Mr. Playmate?

  “Play, my sedentary sidekick tells me one of your elves is skulking around in the alley out back. Why don’t we go invite him to the party? We can smack him around a little to break his concentration. Old Bones can ransack his mind while he’s distracted. Which means I’ll be able to find out what this’s all about and you’ll find out if there’s any real reason for you to worry.”

  Damn! That wasn’t the best word to use. Playmate worries. All the time. And his worry-to-success equation is an inverse proportion. He only gives up worrying and fussing when things get truly awful.

  Garrett!

  “All right!” He’s so damned lazy he can’t be bothered to die but he expects me to scurry like bees getting ready for winter. And sees no inconsistency. “All right. Here’s the official plan, Play.”

  4

  Playmate’s job was to come into the alley from its Wizard’s Reach end. Being younger and more athletic I took the longer way around so I could close in from the other direction. I trotted west on Macunado, then ducked into a narrow, fetid breezeway, where I kicked up a covey of pixies who were living under an overturned basket. Poor, new immigrants, obviously. I knew before I saw their ragged country costumes. “You folks better find yourselves someplace where you won’t have to fight off the cats and dogs and rats.” Though TunFaire’s dogs and cats do, mostly, know better than to bother little people. But rats, while cunning, aren’t always real bright. And as for the others, hunger has a way of overwhelming even the most pointed of past lessons.

  These little folk thanked me for my concern by swarming around me, cursing in tiny voices while threatening to stick me with teensy poisoned rapiers.

  When I entered the breezeway the Goddamned Parrot was a passenger on my shoulder. He was behaving. But once I started leaping and swatting at those damned mosquitoes he flapped toward a perch high above, whence he spouted gratuitous advice. To the pixies: “Stay to his left! He doesn’t see as well on that side... Awk!”

  The racket had attracted the interest of one of those leather-winged flying lizards that sometimes nap up on the rooftops between pigeon snacks. They aren’t common anymore, mostly because they have trouble outthinking large rocks. They make rats and pigeons look like shining intellectuals. They are very slow learners.

  This one looked particularly shopworn. The trailing edges of its wings were tattered. It had patches of mold on its chest.

  When it looked at the Goddamn Parrot it saw the answer to all its prayers.

  It was the scruffiest flying lizard I’d ever seen but it still looked like the answer to a prayer or two of my own. Life would be so much simpler if I got rid of the chicken in the clown suit — as long as I could manage it in some way that wouldn’t aggravate the Dead Man or Morley Dotes. Morley had gifted me with the jabbering vulture, accompanied by a strong suggestion that no harm should come to the monster, at my hand or through my negligence.

  The pixies lost interest in me the moment the lizard started trying to get into the breezeway. They knew a real threat when they smelled one. A chorus of squeals preceded a general surge of the flock toward the scrofulous flyer.

  The Goddamn Parrot dropped back down to my shoulder. He was shaking. For once in his sorry existence he was fresh out of smart-ass remarks.

  As I got out of there the pixies proved that they’d been playing with me all along. As I left the breezeway a matron zipped over to ask which cuts interested me. “They’s good eatin’ on them things, Big’un. The giblets is real tasty when they’s grilled.”

  “You people keep the whole thing. I brought my lunch.” I jerked a thumb at my shoulder ornament.

  “Ooh... Pretty,” one small voiced piped.

  Another wanted to know, “Kin we have some of the feathers?”

  I sensed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  Something came over me. My jaw locked up. I couldn’t mouth the offer I make almost every day, as many as a dozen times. I wanted to shriek.

  I couldn’t turn loose of the dodo in the clown suit!

  The air seemed to tinkle and sparkle with invisible chuckles.

  So! Old Bones wasn’t quite as preoccupied elsewhere as he wanted me to think. I should’ve gotten suspicious when the painted jungle buzzard demonstrated such exceptional manners.

  Interesting. The Dead Man hadn’t ever before touched me directly this far from the house. Maybe he was distracted. Maybe distracted so much that he couldn’t be as careful keeping the full range of his abilities concealed. Or maybe he just liked the Goddamn Parrot too much to let him go.

  Wish I had time to experiment.

  After our initial divergence of viewpoint the pixies and I went our ways on friendly terms. Meaning they were too busy harvesting everything but the flyer’s squeak to waste time tormenting a Big’un. Though a couple of youngsters did follow me, mainly to get out of doing chores.

  I headed east, down the alley, afraid my delays might have allowed my quarry to give me the slip. Though if I’d thought I would’ve realized that my foul-beaked companion would’ve been barking like the wolf at the end of the world if the Dead Man had suffered a moment’s disappointment.

  Something buzzed behind my ear. Not the family bird-brain, who was on patrol now, or, more likely, hitting on some nitwitted pigeon. I started to swat the sound, held up just in time. A pixie girl, definitely a little inexperienced, unwittingly drifted forward far enough to be seen from the corner of my eye.

  One key to success in my racket is making friends. Lots of friends. In as broad a range of stations, races, and professions as is possible. A pixie ally would be a huge resource.

  I started sweet-talking.

  No telling what I might have accomplished if Fate hadn’t decided to roll my bones.

  The pixies let out startled shrieks at the same moment that the Goddamn Parrot barked my name.

  5

  I got about a tenth of second’s glimpse of a man who fit his name perfectly. Unusual. He was all rounds. He had a round head with dwindling thickets of hair sagging to the south, leaving a blinding shine behind. He had a round mouth with puffy, round lips, round eyes, and a nose that was almost round as a hog’s snoot. He had a round body, too. I didn’t get a good look at his feet.

  The whole globular package didn’t stand but maybe five inches over five feet tall.

  This was Bic Gonlit. Bounty hunter. A man you’d peg as an apple-cheeked little baker addicted to his own products. Or a guy who cracked feeble jokes in place of real entertainment in some dive harboring upwardly mobile aspirations toward the lower lower class. He was a man who had to wear elevator boots to get up enough altitude to cork a big, handsome boy like me.

  Had to be the boots. He was known for the boots. Legend said he had had them specially made by a dwarfish cobbler in a sleazy little shop off Bleak on the southern edge of the Tenderloin. So rumor would have it, because the boots had been made into Gonlit’s signature inside the TunFaire underworld.

  Or maybe he’d brought a ladder, since ordinarily he was way shorter than me. The boots only made him two
inches taller.

  I didn’t get a real gander at the infamous boots. I didn’t see any ladder, either. I did get a vague glimpse of what looked like an overweight donkey behind my assailant, then an outstanding look at an upwardly rushing alley surface after Gonlit leaped up and whacked me across the back of my skull. The one tap turned my bones to jelly. I sagged into the muck like a candle left out in the summer sun. The Goddamn Parrot and the pixie girl cheered me on. Or jeered me. Or something. They made a lot of noise. I think the donkey started laughing.

  Playmate was fanning me when I opened my eyes, hoping for some blond angel of mercy. Good friend that he is, he had dragged me into the shade and propped me against a wall, all before anyone found me and explored my pockets for hidden treasure. I made a crippled kitten sort of sound to express my appreciation and ask when the angel would arrive.

  Playmate said, “I wouldn’t move around, was I you.”

  “I am me. And I don’t plan to even breathe hard. My head! And I didn’t drink a drop.” This morning. “I’ve got to get ahold of a war-surplus helmet. One of the kind with that big-ass spike on top.”

  “You’d still have to remember to wear it. What happened?”

  “I was going to ask you.”

  “I don’t know. I heard your bird screaming. Made me suspect that you’d found yourself on the short end again. You’ve got a talent for that. I charged up here. Behold! You really were in trouble. A roly-poly little bald guy who looked a lot like Bic Gonlit was strutting around you measuring you for a hearty whack with the great hairy club he was packing.”

  “It was Bic Gonlit. I caught a glimpse before the lights went out. He must’ve been wearing his extra special tall boots, though.”

  “This isn’t his normal style, Garrett.”

  “You know him?” I for sure wanted to know him better than I did now. What little I did know was hearsay. He was a bounty hunter who brought them in alive. He had quirks and unusual personal habits and magic boots. I’d seen him just often enough to recognize him. “You failed to mention that when the name came up before.”