Angry Lead Skies Read online

  Guess I need to practice up. He wasn’t impressed. He just smiled and told me, “You’re starting to hallucinate.”

  “And I should leave that to the experts. All right. Why don’t I do some work? What can you tell me about these maybe elves that you haven’t told me already?”

  “They eat a lot of ugly soup,” Playmate told me. “My drawings don’t do them justice.”

  None of them appeared particularly repulsive to me. And I said so. Those homely boys didn’t know it but I was looking out for them.

  “Call it an inner glow kind of thing. You’ll see what I mean when you meet one.” He sounded confident that I’d do so.

  “Kip? Anything you can say to help out here? It’s really your ass that’s on the line.”

  Playmate advised, “Despite earlier events Kip still isn’t quite convinced that he’s in any trouble himself.”

  Most people are that way. They just can’t believe that all this crap is raining down on them. Not even when somebody is using a hammer to beat them over the head. And they particularly can’t believe that it’s because of them.

  We talked while we enjoyed our tea. I asked more questions. Lots of questions, most of them not too pointed. I didn’t get many useful answers. Kip never said so, of course, but now that he was where he felt safe himself his main concern was his friends with the absurd names. He had decided that not telling me anything was the best way to shield them.

  “It’s not me you need to protect them from,” I grumbled. “It’s not me that’s looking for them.” He might not know exactly where they were hiding but I was willing to bet he had a good idea where to start looking.

  Playmate offered nothing but a shrug when I sent him a mute look of appeal. So he was going to be no help.

  Playmate is a firm believer in letting our young people learn from their mistakes. He had enlisted me in this thing because he wanted to keep Kip’s educational process from turning lethal. Now he was going to step back and let events unfold instructionally.

  “You do know that I’m not real fond of bodyguard work?” I told Playmate.

  “I do know you’re not fond of any kind of work that doesn’t include the consumption of beer as the main responsibility of the job.”

  “Possibly. But asking me to bodyguard is like asking an opera diva to sing on the corner with a hurdy-gurdy man. I have more talent than that. If you just want the kid kept safe you should round up Saucerhead Tharpe.” Tharpe is so big you can’t hurt him by whacking him with a wagon tongue and so dumb he won’t back off from a job as long as he’s still awake and breathing.

  “It was your remarkable talents that brought me to your door,” Playmate responded, his pinky wagging in the wind as he plied his teacup. “Saucerhead Tharpe resembles a force of nature. Powerful but unthinking. Rather like a falling boulder. Unlikely to change course if the moment requires a flexible response. Unlikely to become proactive when innovation could be the best course.”

  I think that was supposed to be complimentary. “You’re blowing smoke, aren’t you? You can’t afford Saucerhead.” I’d begun roaming through the junk and unfinished inventions, growing ever more amazed. “He’d want to get paid up front. Just in case your faith in him was misplaced.”

  “Well, there is that, too.”

  The rat. He’d counted on the Dead Man’s curiosity to keep me involved with this nonsense, whether or not I got paid.

  Don’t you hate it when friends take advantage of you? I picked up the most unusual crossbow I’d ever seen. “I used to be pretty good with one of these things. What’s this one for? Shooting through castle walls?” Instead of the usual lever this crossbow was quipped with a pair of hand cranks and a whole array of gears. Cranking like mad barely drew the string back. Which was a misnomer. That was a cable that looked tough enough for towing canal boats.

  “We’re trying to develop a range of nonlethal weaponry, too,” Playmate told me. “That’s meant for knocking down a man in heavy armor without doing any permanent injury.”

  I didn’t ask why you’d want to do that. Didn’t mention that, sooner or later, the guy was going to get back up and get after you with renewed enthusiasm. I just hefted the crossbow. “Supposed to be a man-portable ballista, eh?” It had some heft to it.

  “The bolts are there in that thing that looks like a pipe rack.”

  “Huh?” I wouldn’t have recognized them otherwise. They looked more like miniature, deformed juggler’s clubs. Two had padded ends. Again I refrained from telling Playmate what I thought.

  I believe I understood what Morley feels each time I shy off what I consider gratuitous throat-cutting. Playmate’s boundary of acceptable violence was as much gentler than mine as mine was gentler than friend Morley’s.

  I loaded one of the quarrels, looked around for a target, shrugged when Playmate grumbled, “Not inside, Garrett,” exactly as he no doubt had at Kip a few hundred times.

  “All right,” I said. “Kip. You never did tell me why these elves want to catch your friends with the strange names.”

  “I don’t know.” He didn’t look at me. He was a lousy liar. It was obvious that he had some idea.

  I looked at Playmate. He gave me a little shrug and a little headshake. He wasn’t ready to push it.

  I asked, “So where do we go from here?”

  Playmate shrugged again. “I was looking at doing the trapdoor spider thing.”

  “That’ll work.”

  The trapdoor spider hunkers down in a hole, under a door she makes, and waits for somebody edible to come prancing by. Then she jumps out and has lunch. Playmate’s reference, though, was to an ambush tactic used by both sides in the recent war in the Cantard, employing the same principle. He meant he was going to sit down and wait for something to happen.

  10

  Without going headlong I kept after Kip about his strange friends. He frustrated me with his determined loyalty. He could not fully grasp the notion that I was there to help.

  I needed more time with the Dead Man. I needed to figure out what Old Bones knew as well as how to insert myself into the fantasy worlds where Cypres Prose lived. Apparently his fantasy life was so rich that it influenced his whole attitude toward real life.

  After a half hour of mostly polite tea conversation during which my main discovery was that Cypres Prose could avoid a subject almost as slickly as my partner, I was getting frustrated. I was prowling like a cat, poking at half-finished engines and mysterious mechanisms again.

  “Garrett!” Playmate exploded. He pointed. His eyes had grown huge.

  A small hole had appeared in the stable wall. It glowed scarlet. A harsh beam of red light pushed through. It swung left and right, slicing through the heavy wooden planks. Hardwood smoke flooded the stable, overcoming the sweet rotted-grass odor of fresh horse manure. It made me think both of smokehouses and of campfires in the wild.

  Campfires do not have a place in any happy memories of mine. Campfires in my past all had a very nasty war going on somewhere nearby. They always attracted horrible, bloodsucking bugs and starving vertebrates with teeth as long as my fingers. Hardwood smoke gets my battle juices going lots more often than it makes my mouth water.

  I picked up the overweight crossbow and inserted the quarrel that had no padding.

  The wall cutout collapsed inward. Sunlight blazed through. An oddly shaped being stood silhouetted against the bright.

  I shot my bolt.

  I used to be pretty good with a crossbow. Somebody found out that I still was. I got him right in the breadbasket. With plenty of oomph!, because the recoil was enough to throw me back a step and spin me halfway around.

  The villain folded up around the blunt quarrel, out of action. Unfortunately, he was not alone. His friends did not give me time to crank the crossbow back up to full tension. A shortcoming of the instrument that I would have to mention to Playmate, Its cycle time was much too long.

  I snatched up a smith’s hammer. It seemed the most convincin
g tool I was likely to lay hands on. The things I had hidden about my person wouldn’t have nearly as much impact.

  Two shimmering forms came through the hole in the wall, unremarkable street people who flashed silver each few seconds. The one I had shot lay folded up like a hairpin outside, entirely silver now. Another silvery figure ministered to it, briefly flashing into the form of a bum every ten seconds. Only the fallen one didn’t shimmer like I was seeing it through a lot of hot air. My bolt must have disrupted a serious compound illusion sorcery.

  Playmate stepped up and tried to talk to them. In Playmate’s universe reason should be able to solve anything.

  I’ve got to admire his courage and convictions. My own response to those critters was the only behavior I could imagine.

  One invader had something shiny in his right hand. He extended it toward Playmate. The big man folded into himself as though every muscle in his body had turned to flab.

  I let the hammer fly.

  Ever since I was a kid I’ve had a fascination with the hammer as a missile weapon. I used to enjoy playing at throwing hammers, when I could get my hands on one without anyone knowing that I was risking damage to something so valuable. I knew that in olden times the hammer had been a warrior’s weapon and the little bit of Cypres Prose resident within me had woven mighty legends around Garrett the Hammer.

  Garrett the Hammer was dead on with his throw. But his target saw it coming and shifted its weight slightly, just in time, so that the speeding hammer brushed its shimmer only obliquely, ricocheted off, and continued on in a rainbow arc that brought the metal end into contact with the back of the head of the silvery figure trying to resurrect the villain I’d knocked down earlier.

  That blow should’ve busted a hole in the thing’s skull. No such luck, though. The impact just caused it to fling forward and sprawl across the creature that was down already.

  These were Playmate’s elves, it was obvious, but equally obvious was the truth of his contention that his sketches did not capture their real nature.

  The one who had downed Playmate closed in on me. The other one chased Kip. Kip demonstrated the sort of character I expected. He had great faith in the patron saint of every man for himself. He made a valiant effort to get the hell out of there.

  Kip’s pursuer extended something shiny in his direction. The kid followed Playmate’s example. He demonstrated substantially less style in his collapse.

  I avoided the same fate for seconds on end by staying light on my feet and putting great enthusiasm into an effort to saturate the air with flying tools. But, too soon, I began feeling like I had been drinking a whole lot of something more potent than beer. I slowed down.

  The dizziness didn’t last long.

  11

  I do not recall the darkness coming. My next clear memory is of Morley Dotes with his pretty little nose only inches from mine. He’s reminding me that to stay alive one must remember to breathe. From the corner of my eye I see Saucerhead Tharpe trying to sell the same idea to Playmate while the ratgirl Pular Singe scuttles around nervously, sniffing and whining.

  The disorientation faded faster than the effects of alcohol ever do. Without leaving much hangover. But none of those clowns were willing to believe that high-potency libations hadn’t been involved in my destruction. When people go on a nag they aren’t the least bit interested in evidence that might contradict their prejudices.

  Pular Singe, ratgirl genius, was my principal advocate.

  What can you do? “You two are a couple of frigid old ladies,” I told Morley and Saucerhead. “Thank you for your faith, Singe. Oh, my head!” I didn’t have a hangover from this but I did have one from last night. The latest headache powder wasn’t helping.

  “And you’d like us to believe that you don’t have a hangover,” Morley sneered. Weakly. One side of his face wasn’t working so good.

  Not a lot of time had passed since the advent of the silvery people. Smoke still wisped off the cut ends of some of the wall planks. I suppose it was a near miracle that no fire had gotten going. Perhaps, less miraculously, that was due to the sudden appearance of Dotes, Tharpe, and Pular.

  “Singe!” I barked at the ratgirl. “Where did you guys come from?” She was likely to give me a straight answer. “Why’re you here?” Bellows that Morley and Saucerhead would accept indifferently could rattle Singe deeply. Ratfolk are timid by nature and Singe was trying to make her own way outside her native society. Ratfolk males don’t yell and threaten and promise massive bloodshed unless they intend to deliver. They don’t banter.

  When Singe is around I usually tread on larks’ eggs because I don’t want to upset her. It’s like working with your mom wearing a rat suit.

  She didn’t get a chance to answer. Morley cracked, “This one’s all right. He woke up cranking.”

  “What’re you guys doing here, Morley?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Dotes, for scaring off the baddies.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Dotes, for scaring off the baddies.”

  “See? You can learn if you put your mind to it.”

  “I was doing pretty good there on my own.” The side of his face that wasn’t working well had a sizable young bruise developing. “That’s gonna be a brute when it grows up. What happened?” Morley’s stylish clothing was torn and filthy, too. Which would hurt him more than mere physical damage could.

  “I had a special request from the Dead Man. Round up Singe and a squad of heavyweights, come over here and keep an eye on you. You’re a major trouble magnet, my friend. We’re not even in place yet and we find the excitement already happening. What were those things?”

  With more help from Singe than from Morley I made it to a standing position. “Where’s the kid?”

  “There was a kid? Maybe that’s who your silvery friends were hauling away. Who were they, Garrett?”

  “I don’t know. You didn’t stop them?”

  “Let me see. No. I was too busy being bounced off walls and rolled through horse excrement. You couldn’t hurt those guys.” He looked as sour as he could manage with only half a face cooperating. “I broke my swordcane on one of them.”

  I couldn’t resist a snicker. Morley is a lethally handsome half-breed, partly human but mostly dark elf. He’s the guy fathers of young women wake up screaming about in the wee hours of the night. His vanity is substantial. His dress is always impeccable and at the forefront of fashion. He considers disarray a horror and dirt of any sort an abomination.

  Dirt seems to feel the same way about him. It avoids him religiously.

  I snickered again.

  “It must be the concussion,” Morley grumped. “I know my good friend Garrett would never mock me in my misfortune.”

  “Mockery.” I couldn’t resist another snicker. “Heh-heh. Misfortune.” I glanced around. “Damn! Where’d he go? I only looked away for a second. Too bad. You’re stuck with his evil twin instead of a friend.”

  “I hate it when that happens.”

  Singe had seen us in action often enough to discount most of what she heard but she still couldn’t quite grasp what was going on. She watched us now, long fingers entwined so she could keep her hands from flying around. Her myopic eyes squinted. Her snout twitched. Her whiskers waggled. She drew more information from the world through her sense of smell than with any other.

  She tended to be emotional and excitable but now remained collected. If she had learned anything from me it was better self-control. I felt it to be a cruel miscarriage of propriety that my companionship hadn’t had a similar impact on the rest of my friends.

  She took advantage of a lull to inquire, “What is this situation, Garrett? I did not understand the message I received from the Dead Man.”

  And yet she had come out of hiding. Because she had a chance to help me.

  Morley smirked. I would hear about that as soon as Singe wasn’t around to get her feelings hurt. She had an adolescent crush on me. And Morley, known to have broken the bones of persons havin
g thrown ethnic slurs his way, thought it was great fun to torment me about being mooned over by a ratgirl.

  He could commit every crime of prejudice he hated when they were directed toward him, yet would never, ever, recognize any inconsistency. Because ratpeople were a created race, products of the malificent sorcerous investigations of some of our lords of the Hill during the heyday of the last century, most people don’t even consider them people. Morley Dotes included.

  I told her, “Anything you heard from His Nibs makes you better informed than I am, Singe.” Her particular line of ratpeople place their personal names second. Just to confuse things, other lines do the opposite, in imitation of local humans. “He didn’t tell me anything. Not that he was interested in what’s happening here nor even that he was planning to make you a part of things.”

  “What is happening here?” Morley asked. “Can you handle that one, Playmate?” Saucerhead had the big stablekeeper up on his hind legs now.

  “I don’ t’ink,” Playmate mumbled.

  I tried to tell everybody what I knew, not holding back anything, the way my partner would. Well, some little details, maybe, like about how good the Dead Man was at sneaking peeks into unprepared minds. Nobody needs to know that but me.

  “You sure you ain’t been jobbed?” Saucerhead wanted to know. “That sure ain’t much. Play, you runnin’ a game on my man Garrett?”

  I waved him off. “It’s not that.” Chances were good the Dead Man would’ve clued me in if that were the case. My concern was more that Kip and Playmate were being manipulated. “But I do wonder if someone isn’t running a game on Kip. Play, you ever met Lastyr or Noodiss?”

  “Not formally. Not to talk to. I’ve seen them a few times. Not so much recently, though. They used to come around here a lot. When they thought Kip would be here alone.”

  I grunted, irritated. Atop all the aches and pains it looked like the only way I was going to learn anything of substance would be to catch me a silver elf and squeeze him.