Wicked Bronze Ambition Read online

  Moonblight, I noted, was psyching herself up for something, too. Even Dr. Ted appeared to be readying himself.

  Moonslight, though, appeared to be relaxed.

  That seemed like an evil portent.

  I was, by then, comfortably confident that she was connected to the Operators.

  Tara Chayne softly whispered, “Mariska and Meyness Stornes were a hot item back in the day.”

  I missed the hint in the fact of the whisper because I was thinking that nostalgia becomes a potent driver as we age and spend more time snuggled up with our regrets.

  The workings of Moonslight’s mind were less a mystery than were those of Meyness B. Stornes, whose own grandson could become one of the victims of his cruel scheme.

  Maybe the eldest Stornes planned to cheat in favor of his descendant.

  “Hey,” I said to Tara Chayne, not using my inside voice. “You think anybody besides us has any idea who Magister Bezma might be?”

  “And the inimitable Garrett steps into another big, steaming pile,” Singe muttered. “Really, Garrett? Don’t you ever think before you blurt stuff out?”

  No need for her to explain. There was Moonslight, till now brilliantly unaware that we knew, her eyes widening in horror and her head jerking as she looked for some immediate opportunity to escape.

  “Not often enough,” I confessed. “Not nearly often enough. I’m a Marine. It’s hey, diddle, diddle, straight up the middle, smashing things till the job is done.”

  Some of my companions could think on their feet. Or paws, as the case might be. First the dogs, then Dr. Ted and Barate closed in around Moonslight. Ted helped her up after she tripped over Number Two while making a sudden, brief bid for freedom.

  She went from confidently calm to panic in seconds. Was that only because we knew about Meyness B. Stornes? And did we, really? I didn’t feel like that had yet fully passed the frontiers of speculation.

  Tara Chayne slapped me across the back of the head. “Genius.” Then, “Gods, aren’t you lucky that you’re pretty?”

  That stung. That was sarcasm at its pure, crusty finest.

  “I do my best,” I protested. “You should have suspected the worst when you heard that Strafa picked me.”

  “That would be on her, not on you.”

  Dollar Dan said, “Can we keep it down? There may be people interested in your problems, but none of them are here. We want to keep an ear on what is happening out there in the darkness.”

  Singe’s whiskers wiggled. She snuffled up little chunks of air.

  Tara Chayne and I exchanged looks. Dan must have taken a fistful of courage pills. He’d never been so forceful, nor as responsible, come to that.

  I whispered, “Something is about to happen.”

  Moonblight nodded. “Dan, whatever happens, don’t let anybody get away.”

  Dollar Dan puffed up. A major Hill player had just spoken to him by name, like he was a real person.

  When the something happened it didn’t happen to us. A light show, with bangs and roars, broke out over toward the Hill. Whips and staves of light lashed and slashed the darkness, making the scattered raindrops sparkle like descending diamonds. Every glow tossed off a splatter of fading shards when it hit something.

  Stunning. Beautiful. A great distraction, suitable for leaving everyone oohing and aahing, but it didn’t distract us completely. We were not unready when the flood of gray rats arrived.

  There had to be forty in the swarm, maybe the majority of their kind. The attack made no sense. I saw males, females, preadolescents to hobbling elders. None were armed with anything more dangerous than a stick. I might have felt sorry had they been jumping somebody else. The assault seemed that pathetic.

  I didn’t let my lack of understanding keep me from cracking heads. I didn’t let my eye or conscience distinguish the stick-wielding adult male from his stick-wielding mate or granny or pup. Doing that could only lead to pain.

  Ted did scruple. That doctor thing about first doing no harm. It cost him blood and bruises and us all the loss of Mariska Machtkess.

  Weight of numbers nearly did for us all. Luckily, gray rat people are not big. They do not have much mass going for them.

  Swamping was the point, of course.

  The rush wasn’t about liberating Mariska; that was just its result. The object of the thrust was our gray rat captive. We would learn, later, that he was Wicked Pat, the grays’ John Stretch. Wicked Pat had been clever enough to conceal his identity and so avoid having to meet Deal Relway.

  Pat would be of definite interest to the Director.

  His friends and family weren’t clever enough, though. Only Mariska Machtkess benefited.

  The rat tide left me wobbly and blessed with a thousand new aches and bruises. I just wanted to lie down and feel sorry for myself. Ted was in worse shape. He didn’t have enough oomph left to help himself, let alone the rest of us. He asked, “What should we do about these people?”

  Meaning the rat folk who had been left behind. The light was poor. My count only approximated, yet I had eighteen feebleminded fools scattered about the street, conscious and unconscious. I hoped none were dead or badly broken.

  “We’ll take a couple along so my partner can find out what moved them. The rest are fine right where they’re at.”

  Singe, Dollar Dan, and the rest all panted a lot and said very little. Barate was down on one knee, bent over a puddle of lunch. Some rat had given him a solid whack to his pride and joy. Tara Chayne, between huffs and puffs, battled a case of the giggles.

  “What’s with you?” I demanded, taking a break from sucking left hand knuckle abrasions. I couldn’t remember losing the skin.

  “The joke is on Mariska.” She fought for breath. “I put a tracer on her a while back. Not the one from your saddle, the old Guard one. If she ran I figured it would be funny if she just got into it deeper with the tin whistles.”

  Yeah. That’s the kind of thing you do to your siblings, just for the hell of it. And it was funny till you considered possible real consequences.

  The fugitive was Moonslight, a Hill-topper sorceress. She didn’t have many resources, but the red tops weren’t Hill-toppers. She had skills, and her lack of an arsenal could be rectified quickly.

  A general with troops to burn would rush a battalion to the Machtkess house with orders to sit tight and wait. Mariska would show. She had to show.

  Moonblight didn’t say so straight up, but she considered my reasoning simplistic and naive.

  76

  We were on Wizard’s Reach, outside the Dead Man’s range, approaching the intersection with Macunado from the south. Singe was in a dark mood over the behavior of the gray rat people.

  I tried to talk her down. She was determined to be angry. She had influence enough with John Stretch to spark a war. That could not possibly turn out well for the grays.

  Her brother’s people were everywhere. There were a lot of them. Mostly they went unnoticed by the folks they wouldn’t be shy about hurting if the boss rat lapsed into his own dark mood.

  If he did, though, he might set off Deal Relway. Director Relway and General Block have a far larger gang.

  I was working myself up to whine because John Stretch hadn’t contributed more to the current effort when I suffered an epiphany. That complaint would be unreasonable to the point of absurdity. John Stretch didn’t work for me, nor did he owe me feudal service. He was a friend taking time out of his own life to help because his sister had tied herself to me. Hell, he had had his number-one guy leave his regular work to hunk around with me and Singe. And, most of all, this was only our second day of vigorous operations.

  It seemed like we had been at it a lot longer.

  “That does not look like it will resolve itself soon,” Dollar Dan said as we reached the intersection. The light show continued sporadically. Glistening diamonds continued to fall. The rain had neither increased nor diminished. The drops remained exceptionally large.

  Tar
a Chayne suggested, “That smells like a forced conflict between matched opponents who didn’t want to fight in the first place.”

  The rest of us hoped she would say more, but she had nothing to add. We weren’t the only watchers.

  No one should have complained that it was less than a hell of a show, but a certain personality type did feel compelled to belittle the demonstration. Someone who had been to the Cantard and survived had to tell everyone that they had seen bigger, flashier, louder, stinkier, and most certainly deadlier, in take your pick of major battles down there. And, though sprung from a petty mind, the claims were solid. When major sorcerers butted heads in the Cantard, the earth itself boiled and screamed. The sky tore. Shredded flakes of reality fell like crispy black snow.

  Moonblight said, “I begin to suspect that we’re seeing what they want this to be. A show.”

  “Um?”

  “We did the same in our day. When I went against Constance we favored smoke and noise and temblors, but the strategy was that prolonged drama might bring the Operators out where we could hurt them.”

  Barate asked, “Did it work?”

  “Some. We roasted three like chestnuts. The tournament began to come apart. The other Operators went underground. We only ever found two more.”

  I said, “We’ve got good stuff going and we already know who one of them is. If we catch him and get him to the Dead Man, we can break the whole mess up and zero in on the dick behind what happened to Strafa.”

  Moonblight wasn’t listening. “Our problem now is, Meyness was a big player when we pulled our stunts. He won’t be sucked in by stuff we did back then. He was never a real team player—I remember thinking that he would’ve played our cycle out if he’d thought that he could win. He’s surely warned the other Operators.”

  I supposed. With so many survivors of the last tournament still breathing, the Operators would have to account for them in their schemes—especially when those survivors started pushing back even before the tournament began.

  I wanted to ask how many survivors were still with us, but we were close enough for the Dead Man to feel us coming.

  He let us come a hundred feet farther, then, Inside quickly. There are enemies about with deadly intentions.

  Enemies, huh? I couldn’t pick them out, but I did spot Target and another red top. Whoever took a whack at us would start a battle.

  Indeed. And numerous innocents will become collateral damage. I will fog the minds of those nearest the house, but please do not dawdle. I cannot spare the attention for long. Once you are inside . . .

  I did not find out what then. His attention did turn elsewhere.

  I explained to my mob; then we went, straight on like good Marines hell-bent, everyone holding on to a prisoner. Then I tripped over a dog. I couldn’t make out which one. They were all frightened and crowding close. I blamed Number Two because she was my least favorite.

  Barate used his free hand to help me up while Singe broke her staff over the head of a weasel-faced, dried-up little guy about fifty who had popped up with one of those needle-bladed daggers meant to slide through links of chain mail. She might have killed him, she hit him so hard. We didn’t stop to give first aid. Target and his troops could clean up.

  I wasn’t sure if I should treasure or be horrified by the look on that man’s face when he realized he’d been laid down by a girl rat.

  One more villain tried. Target snagged him off a tangential dash, by the collar, and had him in restraints before he knew what was happening.

  Inside. Feebly, like he had no more strength to spend. A battle may break out anyway.

  Penny opened the door. Her eyes bugged at the parade of gray rats, dogs, friends, and allies on the steps.

  A crossbow bolt struck sparks off brick beside me, so close it clipped a bit of hair. I ducked, looked back, could not pick out the shooter, who would be in for a truly bad time if Target caught him.

  Then came a dull boom, huge, from an uncertain direction and indeterminate distance, then a long, muted grumble. The ground shook. Things rattled and clinked in Singe’s office and the Dead Man’s room. Something fell in the kitchen. Another crossbow bolt, as close as the first, slashed my right sleeve and thunked into the door, narrowly missing Penny, too. I dove past her. Ahead, between legs, I saw Dean, who had been watching the invasion develop. He hustled off to rescue his pots.

  With scant help from the invisible force, we got everyone settled and, more importantly, quiet. Tara Chayne and Barate migrated into Singe’s office. Dollar Dan and Dr. Ted loomed over the prisoner collection, Ted failing miserably to look like somebody fierce.

  Another distant rumble shook the house. Being about as brilliant as a human being comes, I opened the door and stepped back out to see what I could see. What I saw was a baby riot as red tops chased villains among gawkers watching the show on the Hill. I didn’t see anything to explain the rumbling.

  I didn’t get shot. The sniper had moved on. It would not be in his personal interest to get caught with an illegal weapon.

  I congratulated myself on being clever enough to get home just before the rain began to get serious about answering its natural calling.

  Can you come assist me, please?

  77

  The Dead Man’s room remained untainted by the chaos burbling in the hallway. He was not alone, though. Penny was there pretending to work on a painting, escaping the confusion herself, and making a statement. If we wouldn’t let her play with the big kids, she wouldn’t do anything else that she didn’t have to.

  Penny was the only one conscious there. There were leftovers from other roundups. They weren’t stacked in, but they did take up most of the available room.

  In fits because he was running near capacity, Old Bones informed me, I need your . . . assistance clearing . . . out. Too . . . much of my attention . . . is consumed by the . . . need to manage them.

  “So why not have Penny . . . ?”

  Penny . . . does not have the strength or . . . physical skills needed to . . . handle one of them . . . if my control slips.

  Penny did that girl-kid thing where she sticks her tongue out the side of her mouth while pulling down a lower eyelid with a single finger. I’ve never figured that out and didn’t see how it fit the current situation, either.

  I was pleased that she was no longer afraid to act like that.

  The gods don’t want us to understand kids, nor are kids supposed to understand us—our lack despite us having survived kid-dom ourselves.

  I suppose that, like childbirth pain, it just drifts off into the ether.

  I noticed some friendlies behind the crowd, Playmate and my friend the poisoner . . . Excuse me. My friend the apothecary, Kolda. He and Playmate must have become inconvenient to have underfoot, though I thought Playmate would have been useful removing no longer wanted houseguests. Maybe Old Bones was so distracted and pressed and frustrated that he had added them to the people freeze because that was easiest.

  I glared at Penny. There was no way she couldn’t have managed those two just by making puppy eyes.

  She asked, “Did you see what they did to the door?”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to need that Mr. Mulclar again.”

  “Door? Mulclar?” Mulclar has an enduring problem with gas. I could smell him already. Feh! “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything. Some people tried to break in. Some of them weren’t human. Himself had so much going he couldn’t totally deal with them. He only had me and Dean to help.”

  And me standing there looking at Playmate and Kolda. Kolda was no ax-swinging barbarian, but Playmate, even weakened by cancer, could handle his weight in wildcats.

  “It got exciting. He had to keep all these idiots controlled while he held off the people outside. They were working on the door with pry bars when some red tops finally stepped up.”

  “I see. So. Who were they? Do we know that much?”

  “No. At least Himsel
f didn’t tell me and none of them offered a calling card. Probably had to do with those Operator creeps.”

  “They didn’t know about the Dead Man?”

  “Maybe not. Maybe they didn’t care. We didn’t get to ask.”

  They would care if they knew.

  She added, “Maybe the red tops will tell you what they get from the ones they caught.”

  Maybe. I didn’t think I’d hold my breath.

  That should’ve been the Dead Man’s cue for a comment about my cynicism. He forbore. Or he was too damned busy.

  “Penny, how about you give me a hand clearing these deadbeats out?”

  Playmate and Kolda looked like their minds were beginning to unfog.

  Old Bones managed a feeble Do not . . . waste time. Big pressure . . . has begun . . . to develop from . . . outside.

  Meaning he would have no attention left for doing anything with or to the new intelligence sources I’d brought in.

  Exactly.

  And that was his last word.

  78

  I chose a villain who looked ready to be returned to the wild, suggested, “Pick one, Penny. Then lead him out ahead of me and mine.”

  Grumbling, she did as I suggested.

  “Wait by the office door. I’ll get Barate and Ted to help.” If nothing else, somebody had to stand by at the front door in case of comebacks while the bad boys were being ejected.

  We were at the door. Penny was set to spring it. I got caught up in one of those speculation loops, wondering what had become of Hagekagome. I’d seen no sign of her. Had she run away, been turned loose, or been chased off? Unlikely. Playmate was still here. He’d never let anyone that vulnerable roam around unprotected.

  And what about Vicious Min? Was she still in that induced coma?

  Penny poked me, hitting a pain point perfectly, no doubt having learned by observation. My once-upon-a-time, Tinnie, had been a master at finger-poke torture. “Wake up, old man! You’re the one who says we have to do this.”