Sweet Silver Blues Read online

  “Hey, Old Bones. Don’t look like the diet is working.” The Dead Man is four hundred fifty pounds of mean, a little ragged around the edges, where the moths and mice and ants have gotten to him. He was parked in a chair in a dark room in a house that pretended to be both abandoned and haunted. He smelled. The corruption process is slow, but it goes on. “You need a bath, too.”

  A psychic chill set me shivering. He was sleeping. He isn’t easy to get along with at his best, and he’s at his worst when newly awakened.

  I am not sleeping. I am meditating.

  The thoughts hammered at my brain.

  “Guess it’s all a matter of perspective.”

  The psychic chill became physical. My breath clouded and my shoe buckles frosted over. I hurried with a little propitiations that are necessary when dealing with the Dead Man. The freshly cut flowers went into the big crystal bowl on the filthy old table before him. Then I lit candles. His sense of humor insists there be thirteen of them, all black, burning while he is in consultation.

  To my knowledge he is the only Loghyr ever to allow his genius to be commercialized.

  He does not need the candlelight to see visitors or flowers. But he likes to pretend that he does.

  Aha! I see you now. Garrett. You pestilence. Can’t you leave me alone? Every other day you’re in here, worse than the moths and mice.

  “It’s been five months, Chuckles. And from the looks of this place you’ve been meditating the whole time.”

  A mouse that had been hiding beneath his oversized chair made a break for it. The Dead Man snatched it with his mind and sent it flying out of the house. Moths exploded away from him. He was incapable of doing malicious harm to bugs, who wanted to eat him, but could make life unholy hell for people with the effrontery to ask him to work.

  “You have to work sometime,” I told him. “Even a dead man has to pay the rent. And you need somebody to give you a bath and clean the place up. Not to mention getting the vermin out again.”

  A big, shiny black spider crawled out of one piglike nostril on the end of his ten-inch trunk. It did not like my looks. It ducked back inside.

  Cheap flowers.

  They were not. I had given him absolutely no legitimate cause for complaint. He couldn’t banish me because he didn’t want to work. I knew the state of his finances. His landlord had come to me about his last month’s rent.

  Must not be much of a client you have, Garrett. You sneaking around after cheating wives again?

  “You know better.” I was out of all that, thanks to him.

  How much?

  “You owe me for a month’s rent already.”

  You have the smug, content look of a man whose expenses have been guaranteed.

  “So?”

  How much can you soak your client before he squawks?

  “I don’t know.”

  Enough, I think, the way you look. Which is like a man who has a good fix on the pot at the end of the rainbow. Start reading.

  “What?”

  Stop playing the idiot, Garrett. You’re too old. You dragged that crate of stuff here so you could bore me. That is the worst of being dead, Garrett. It is damned boring. You cannotdoanything.

  “Loghyr don’t do anything when they’realive.”

  Read, Garrett. Your welcome is wearing thin.

  I won. Sort of. He listened while I gave him every word, showed him every map. A smooth, professional report. I stumbled only twice, once over the name Kayean, once when he set a squeaking mouse whizzing playfully around my head. It took a couple of hours and I got very dry. But I’d prepared for that, having been through it before.

  As I downed a long draft of beer, my head rang to,Very thorough. As far as it goes. What did you leave out?

  “Nothing. You got the whole show.”

  You are lying, Garrett. And not very convincingly. Though perhaps you are lying more to yourself than to me. You tripped on the woman’s name. It has meaning to you.

  Well, if you will lie to your best friend, you will lie to yourself. The Dead Man doesn’t tell any tales. “It has meaning.”

  Continue.

  “I knew a Kayean Kronk when I was in the Cantard. Her father was one of the Syndics of Port Fell. I was nineteen when I met her. She was seventeen. I fell hard. I thought she did too. But the campaign in the islands came up and I only got to see her maybe two days a month because we spent most of our time at sea. After about six months of that she started getting cool. Then I came in and there was a very kind letter asking me not to come see her, she was in love, the usual sort of thing. I never saw her again. I heard she was going with a cavalryman, and her father disliked him even more than he had disliked me. That was the last I heard of her till today.

  “I had a rocky few years after that. It hit me pretty hard.”

  End of confession.

  A long silence.

  Your friend never mentioned that woman’s name?

  “He never mentioned a woman.”

  An odd coincidence, and a long one, but not impossible. It would be illuminating to know if he was aware of the identity of the woman’s previous lover. How did you meet?

  “We met in a tavern where veterans hung out. We had liked one another. Not one detail I could recall implied that he had knowledge of me through a third party. I don’t think he was the kind of guy who could stay around somebody who had been his lover’s lover. I’d bet his whole fortune that he didn’t realize that I was the Marine she’d been seeing.”

  You may be betting it. You realize that the amount of money involved is going to have a lot of people interested in this business?

  “That’s why I came to you. I need your advice.”

  My main advice you would ignore.

  “What’s that?”

  Leave it alone. Stick with the brewery work. This could get you killed. Especially on the Cantard end. Some very dangerous people have to be involved there, if only peripherally.

  “How so?”

  Who did the woman marry?the Dead Man countered.

  “I don’t know. Why? Do you think it’s important?”

  I will hazard to opine that it may become the crux of the affair.

  “Why?”

  It is evident from the woman’s letters that she has access to information very restricted in nature and extremely dangerous to possess. She passed along data not only on the present movements and future plans of your armies, but on those of the Venageti as well. The implication is that she is in a unique position. Among you humans, females are not permitted to assume the responsibilities of such a position as a career. Thus, the further implication that she is mated to a man in such a position.

  The Dead Man’s mind speech has all the nuance of verbal communication—once you learn to do without gestures and facial expressions. He was crowing. “I could have figured that out soon enough.”

  About the time someone cut your throat. You count upon your ability to bluff or battle your way through obstacles, rather than thinking your way around them. It is a failing common to your race. All of you seem to believe that exercising your minds is shameful or painful, and prefer instead to snatch up a sword at the first hint of . . .

  He was off on his favorite crusade. Soon he would begin the paeans to the infinite superiority of Loghyr reasoning and logic and wisdom. I shut him out.

  That can be done if he is distracted by musing upon his own magnificence, if you’re subtle and don’t draw attention to what you’re doing. I hid behind my beer and counted silently. Having heard it all before, I knew how long he needed to get it out of his system.

  Garrett!

  So I miscalculated by a few seconds. He probably cheated. He knew me pretty well, too. But he was abnormally mellow. He employed none of his usual childish devices. Maybe I had given him enough to crack the boredom of being dead.

  “Yes?”

  Pay attention. I asked if you are determined to go ahead with this.

  “I’m not sure.”


  Your body calls your mouth a liar. I have this advice for you, inasmuch as you mean to go ahead despite all reason. Do not go this one alone. And do not permit emotion to get in the way of your usually strong instinct for your own best interest. Whatever else this woman may be or may have been, she is not the girl you loved when she was seventeen. No more are you that callow Marine of nineteen. If ever, for a minute, you allow yourself to believe that those days can be restored, you are lost. They are dead. Take it from an expert on being dead. There is no way to get your health back. You live on memories of what was and fancies about what might have been. Both can be deadly to the man who loses sight of the demarcation between them and reality.

  “End of speech?”

  End of speech. Were you listening?

  “I was listening.”

  Did you hear me?

  “I heard.”

  It is well. You are a pestilence upon my waning centuries, Garrett, but you keep me amused. I do not want to lose you yet. Be careful in the Cantard. You will not have me there to lift you out of the consequences of your folly. It grates, but I fear I would miss you, insolence, disobedience, and all.

  Which was about the nicest thing he ever said to me. I had to get out before we started getting maudlin.

  I made a beer run before going back to give him his bath and his place a bit of cleanup.

  7

  It was past suppertime when I left the Dead Man’s place. The shadows were long and indigo. The sky was turning colors you usually see only in elvish portraiture. It had been a long day, and there was a lot of it yet to go.

  The first order of business would be to see the Dead Man’s landlord and get him a few months ahead on his rent.

  I’ll buy the place for him if I ever make the big strike, though he could do that for himself if he wanted. It would, however, take several months of concentrated work for him to earn enough money. The very thought sends him into psychic spasms.

  Next step would be to look up Morley Dotes, which I’d had in mind even before the Dead Man admonished me against following my usual lone-wolf course. He was right. The Cantard is no place to go alone.

  A massive hand hurtled out of an alley mouth, snagged my arm, and yanked.

  Sometimes the city isn’t so safe either.

  I slammed into a wall and slid away from a fist I sensed more than I saw. I threw a feeble right that was just a distractor while I unloaded a girlish shin kick. The mountain of muscle and gristle before me waltzed back far enough for me to take in its true dimensions. They were awesome.

  “Saucerhead Tharpe.”

  “Hey, Garrett. Man. If I’d knowed it was you, I’d never have taken this job.”

  “Shucks. I bet you say that to all the boys.”

  “Aw. Don’t be that way, Garrett. We all got to make it the best way we know how.”

  I caught a glimpse of a familiar short person watching from across the street.

  I dragged out a fat purse containing part of the largesse her uncle had bestowed upon me earlier.

  “Hey. Come on, Garrett. You know you can’t bribe me to lay off. I’m really sorry this’s got to be you and me. But I got paid for the job. Where would I be if it got around that I could be bought off? I’d be out of work. I’m very, very, sorry, Garrett. But I got to do what I got paid to do.”

  I had expected no luck, but it had seemed worth a try.

  I said, “I’d be the last guy to ask you to welsh on a deal, Saucerhead.”

  “Gee. I’m glad. I was scared you wouldn’t understand.”

  “I want you to do a job for me, Saucerhead. There’s five marks in it.”

  “Yeah. I’d feel a whole lot better about this if I could do something for you. What is it?”

  “That woman across the street. The one that sicced you onto me. When we’re done here I want you to take her down to the Bazaar, strip her down naked, bend her over your lap, and give her thirty good whacks on the backside. Then turn her loose and let her walk home.”

  “Naked?”

  “Naked.”

  “She wouldn’t get out of the Bazaar, Garrett.”

  “There’s another five in it if she gets home all right. But without finding out you’re looking out for her.”

  Saucerhead grinned. “It’s a deal, Garrett.” He stuck out a palm the size of a snowshoe. I dropped five marks into it.

  Saucerhead’s hand dipped into a pocket. I hit him up side the head with the purse. I put everything I had behind it. Then I ran like hell for two steps.

  He gave Rose her money’s worth, fulfilling his contract to the letter.

  I tried to defend myself, of course, and actually did pretty well. Not many hang in there a whole minute against Saucerhead Tharpe. I even gave him one he might have remembered for the next ten minutes.

  Always thoughtful, is Saucerhead Tharpe. After he put my lights out he tucked my purse underneath me, just in case somebody came along before I woke up. Then he went along to the next job on his agenda.

  8

  I hurt everywhere. I had about two acres of bruises. Saucerhead had found places to hit that I didn’t know I had. All body and soul wanted was to go lay up for a week. But mind knew it was time to find Morley Dotes. Not even Saucerhead Tharpe would have messed with me if I’d had Morley Dotes along.

  Morley is the best at rough and tumble. And, by his own admission, the best at most everything else. Some people would like him and Saucerhead to square off, just to see how it would come out. But neither of them will swat a fly without getting paid first. And Saucerhead isn’t dumb enough to take a job on Morley. Nor is Morley vain enough to contract on Saucerhead. Neither cares much about who might come out best. Which says something about their professionalism.

  The obvious place to look for Morley was a place called Morley’s Joy House.

  The name is one of his bad jokes. It is a hangout for the elfin, the cartha, and breeds. The fare is vegetarian and nonalcoholic. The entertainment is so impenetrable and dull that the existence of a dead Loghyr might be exciting by contrast. But Morley’s kind of people enjoy it.

  The place went silent when I stepped inside. I ignored an arsenal’s worth of death-looks as I limped to the alleged bar. Morley’s barman gave me the once-over. He grinned, revealing pointy darkelf teeth. “You have a knack for making people mad at you, Garrett.”

  “You ought to see the other guy.”

  “I did. He came in for some sprouts. Wasn’t a scratch on him.”

  Conversations picked up behind me. The barman was being as friendly as darkelves ever are. That made me a marginally acceptable lower life-form, presence tolerated. Like that of a beer-drinking dog in a human tavern.

  “Word’s around already, huh?”

  “Everybody who ever cared about you one way or the other already knows the whole story. Slick the way you evened things up.”

  “Yeah. That’s out, too? How’d it go?”

  “She made it home. I figure that’s one quail that won’t ever mess with you again, Garrett.” He cackled in that way they have that gives you chills and makes you wonder if you will ever wake up from the nightmare. “Next time she’ll get somebody to cut your throat.”

  The possibility had occurred to me. I’d made a mental note to rummage up some of my more interesting gimmicks and armaments. In the general course of business I find being fast on my feet protection enough, so I load myself down with hardware only in special cases.

  This case looked like it was getting pretty special.

  The Dead Man had warned me.

  “Where’s Morley?”

  “Up.” He pointed. “He’s busy.”

  I headed for the stairs.

  The barkeep opened his mouth to yell at me, then thought about it. That might start a riot. In his friendly voice he said, “Hey, Garrett, you owe us five marks.”

  I turned around and gave him the fisheye.

  “Saucerhead said you’d knock it off his tab.”

  “A grin like that ou
ght to be bronzed and saved for posterity.”

  It got bigger.

  “That big goof isn’t as dumb as he looks, is he?” I dug down carefully, my back to the crowd. No point in showing what I was carrying and having the boys who were high on lettuce getting fancy ideas.

  “Nope.”

  I flipped the five coins and headed upstairs before he could get back to trying to stop me.

  I hammered on Morley’s private door. No response. I pounded again, rattling hinges.

  “Go away, Garrett. I’m busy.”

  I shoved through the door, which was not locked. Somebody’s wife squealed and dove into another room, a fistful of clothing trailing. Otherwise, I caught nothing but a flash of fancy tail. It was not one I recognized.

  Morley did his best to look elf-haughty in nothing but his socks and a snarl. He could not bring it off, despite being half darkelf.

  “Your timing is lousy as usual, Garrett. Not to mention your manners.”

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “Magic.”

  “Magic, my ruddy red. You have trouble making food disappear. If you call that silage you eat food.”

  “Ah-ah. Watch your mouth. You owe me one apology already.”

  “I don’t apologize. My mother makes excuses for me. How did you know it was me?”

  “Voice tube from the bar. You look awful, boy. Saucerhead must have sold that gal his top of the line. What did you do to her?”

  “Wouldn’t lie, cheat, and steal for her. And turned her down when she tried to bribe me with the big bribe.”

  He laughed. “You never learn. Next time diddle the gal and walk. She’ll sit around wondering what went wrong instead of sending cutthroats after you.” His grin vanished. “What do you want, Garrett?”

  “I’ve got a job offer for you.”

  “Not something foolish involving Saucerhead Tharpe, I hope.”

  “No. I’ve got a job I need some backup on. I can thank Saucerhead for reminding me that if I don’t get it soon my health might suffer.”