Sweet Silver Blues Read online

  They do get mean.

  “Not bad beer,” I said, quaffing my third while Doris and Marsha nursed their milk pails. “And serving it up didn’t break one bone, did it?”

  The barman wasn’t interested in bantering.

  Most of his regulars had deserted him.

  We followed their example.

  About fifty sullen men had gathered outside. Their mood looked ugly. I told Morley, “I ought to pay closer attention to what neighborhood I’m in.”

  “I like the way you think, Garrett.”

  Half a brick thrown by somebody named Anonymous arced toward us. It had some arm behind it. Doris—or maybe it was Marsha—stabbed a paw out and snagged it. He looked it over for a second. Then he squeezed it and let the powder dribble between his fingers.

  That impressed me, but not the mob.

  So he snapped off the timber from which the tavern’s sign hung. He stripped the sign off and flailed the timber around like a switch.

  That got the message across. The mob began to evaporate.

  Morley asked, “Could a mule do that?”

  “No.”

  We were more circumspect in selecting a place to spend the night.

  19

  “So where the hell is he?” I demanded. There wasn’t a shadow of Dojango.

  Morley looked bleak. He had been looking bleak for a while. I thought maybe I should buy him a bunch of carrots or something. He muttered, “Guess we’ll have to scout the alleys and taverns.”

  “I’m going to take a gander at that ship. Catch me on the pier when you find him.”

  Morley said something to the two remaining triplets. They grunted and moved out. I marched on down to where I could get a look at that striped-sail ship.

  There wasn’t much to see, a few men lugging things off, then lugging other things on. It wasn’t hard to understand why Dojango bugged out. Watching is boring work. It takes a patient guy to lurk for a living.

  A man came out on the rear deck, leaned on the rail, hawked, spat into the harbor.

  “Interesting.” He was Big One from Morley’s place and the pier.

  He began scanning the waterfront almost as if he had heard me. Then he shrugged and went into a cabin.

  Curious.

  Maybe Dojango would have stayed on the job if he had seen that guy before.

  I lazed in the shade, wishing I had a keg to nurse and wondering what was taking Morley so long. Nothing else happened except that the stevedores finished loading and unloading.

  I heard a soft scuff behind me. Maybe at last . . .

  But when I looked I saw Big One. He was not in a friendly mood.

  I dropped off the bale where I’d been loafing. Did this call for lethal instruments?

  He walked right up and wacked the bale with a short club. No accusations. No questions. Nothing but business. I leaned out of the way and let him have one in the gut.

  It did as much good as gut-punching a barrel of salt pork.

  That club was meant to scramble my brains, I feared. I hauled out a knife.

  I did not get to use it. The cavalry arrived in the guise of Doris or Marsha. The groll picked Big One up by one arm and held him out like a doll. A slow grin spread over his green face. Then he casually heaved him over the bales into the harbor.

  Big One never made a sound.

  They would have heard me cussing fifty miles away.

  Doris—or Marsha, as the case may have been—beckoned me to follow. I did, grumbling. “I could have handled him.” Probably about like I had handled Saucerhead, by pounding my body off his club till it broke.

  This case was doing wonders for my self-esteem.

  Dojango was not falling-down-drunk. He was climb-ing-the-walls-and-howling-at-the-moon-drunk. Marsha kept him under control while Doris explained what happened on the waterfront. Or Doris did while Marsha did. I passed my thoughts afterward.

  “Bad business,” Morley said. His sense of humor had deserted him.

  Bad business indeed. But I had gone up against wizards before. You can handle them if your footwork is deft. They have more handles than your ordinary street tbug. The big thing is, they’re all as crooked as a hen’s hind leg. They are in the middle of every stew of corruption. But they go for a squeaky-clean public image. It’s smart to keep some tarnish in your trick bag and be ready to spread it around.

  “We’ll be out of here tomorrow. Our worries will be over.”

  “Our worries will be over about the time I learn to handicap the D’Gumi races.”

  “Meaning never?”

  “Or maybe a little longer.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if we ought not to reexamine your diet, Morley. Such unrelenting pessimism must have some deficiency at its base.”

  “The only deficiencies bothering me are of good luck, financial wherewithal, and female companionship.”

  “I thought you and Rose—

  “As you said, she wants something for nothing. She had a chance at a once-in-a-lifetime experience and she tried to sell herself to me! As if she had something special. As if a woman with her attitudes could ever develop whatever talent she did have. I’ll never understand you people. What you do to your women . . . ”

  “What I do to them isn’t any different than what you do to yours. Rose’s problems are hers. I do get tired of hearing folks blame their faults on everybody else.”

  “Whoa, Garrett. Come on down off your stump.”

  “Sorry. I was just thinking how I was going to spend tomorrow.”

  “Say what?”

  “Listening to Dojango groan and moan and heave his guts over the side while he blames his drinking problem on his mother or somebody.”

  Morley grinned.

  20

  Dojango gripped the rail and made an awful noise as he sacrificed to the gods of the sea. A soft whimper followed.

  “What did I say?” I asked.

  We were twenty feet from the quayside.

  Morley was a little green himself. His trouble was all anticipation. The ship wasn’t even noticeably rolling.

  The ship’s master approached. He had time for us now that the vessel was turning toward the channel. He said, “I spoke to the harbor master this morning. The war situation is quiet. We’re clear all the way to Full Harbor if you want to stay with the ship that far.”

  “Of course we do.”

  Morley groaned. Dojango whimpered something about throwing himself overboard and ending it all. I grinned and set to dickering for the extra passage.

  Halfway out of the channel the groll portion of the triplets began gabbling at Morley. When we went to see what they wanted, we found we were overhaulingBinkey’s Sequin. The Tate girls were out on deck. They spotted us as we slid past on the starboard side.

  “I get the feeling they’re upset about something,” Morley said. He smiled and waved.

  “Women have no sense of proportion,” I said. I grinned and waved, too. “Wag a little tail at you and you’re supposed to eat out of their hands.” I looked at Tinnie and wondered if it might be worth it.

  They blistered the air. I wondered if my personal sacrifices could be parlayed into a bonus from old man Tate.

  We swooped pastSequin and dashed for the mouth of the channel. Master Arbanos’ vessel was a dark lump in the distance as we began our turn to the south.

  “I’ll be damned!”

  It was a morning for meeting old friends. A river scow entering the Leifmold channel carried Vasco and his buddies. “That damned Dead Man,” I muttered. “He could have banged them around a little, at least.”

  They hadn’t spotted us. I got everybody out of sight so it would stay that way.

  I had counted on the Dead Man to stall them longer than he had. Now I worried. Had they done something I would regret?

  “Keep an eye on these pirates,” Morley grumped. “They might murder us while we’re laying in the scuppers puking our guts out.” The ship had completed her turn. She was rolling in the
offshore swell.

  Morley had no call to worry. The ship’s crew treated us perfectly. The journey was almost without event. Once, the Stormlord’s striped sail passed us, wallowing and struggling through seas she was not designed to face. She did not seem interested in us, and was not to be seen in the harbor at our first port of call.

  Once we saw a royal man-of-war farther out, and another time a masterhead lookout yelled down that he had a Venageti sail in sight. Nothing came of either sighting. We entered Full Harbor eight days after departing Leifmold. No striped sail was to be seen there, either.

  For once I felt a little optimistic.

  21

  “We’re here,” Morley growled the next morning. “What now?” He had stoked up on biscuits baked with lard and served with greasy gravy. It was the nearest he could get to a vegetarian breakfast.

  “Now I try to pick up the woman’s trail. Her family should still be here. They ought to know something.”

  It sounded too simple even to me. But sometimes things go your way. It would be sweet if I could find her at her dad’s place, make my pitch, and head out with her yea or nay.

  Full Harbor had changed and not changed. New buildings. New naval facilities. New streets laid out after the cleanup from the big Venageti attack three years ago. Same old whores and stews and pawnshops and overpriced inns and tailors preying on the loneliness of young sailors and Marines far from home and in the shadow of death. The gods know I wasted enough of my own time and pay in places like that. Reformers keep talking about shutting them down. They won’t. The boys would have nothing left to fill their time.

  I expected commentary from Morley Dotes. He disappointed me in a pleasant way. “You humans are a despair, that this is the best a soldier can expect.”

  Maybe it was his human side talking.

  We are the only race that goes in for war habitually, in a big way. The others, especially the elves and dwarfs, have the occasional brawl, but seldom more often than once a generation, and then usually only a single battle, not much sorcery, winner take all.

  Plenty of them get in on our doings as auxiliaries. They can be useful but are unreliable. They have no concept of discipline.

  “You’re right. Let’s find ourselves a base, then get to work.”

  We drew plenty of stares, being civilians, and them being what they were. I didn’t like the attention. Mine is a business where I don’t want to be remembered.

  We found a place that would accept civs and breeds without devouring the income of ten years. It was about as sleazy as a place could get. I bribed the owner to keep alcohol away from the triplets, then Morley and I hit the streets.

  Full Harbor, on the map, looks something like a lobster’s head lying between its arms. The city proper, and its naval facilities, sits at the end of a fortified neck of land. The arms reach out and shield the bay from the worst storm-driven seas. The city’s location makes it very defensible. The Venageti have managed to penetrate it only twice, each time losing the entire force committed. The farther you get from the waterfront and naval facilities, the more “civilized” the city becomes. There are some low, wooded hills just inside the neck of the peninsula, right behind the Narrows Wall. They harbor the homes of the city’s well-to-do.

  No lords reside in the city. They refuse to risk themselves or their properties where the Venageti might show up with the unpredictable suddenness of a tropical storm.

  They’re funny that way—plenty willing to trek all over the Cantard risking themselves for glory and personal gain, but . . .

  I don’t understand them any more than I understand frogs. But I’m handicapped by my low birth.

  Kayean’s father had been one of the Syndics who dwelt in the hills, with a wife, four servants, and eight kids. Kayean was the oldest.

  Memories returned, bringing a certain nostalgia, as I guided the rented carriage up and down pacific lanes.

  “What’re you looking all moony-eyed about?” Morley demanded. We had left the triplets at the inn, an action the wisdom of which I still doubted, though Morley assured me he had not left a farthing between them.

  “Remembering when. Young love. First love. Right here in these hills.” I had not filled him in on every little detail. A bodyguard did not need to know all the sordid angles.

  “I’m a bit of a nostalgic romantic myself, but I never figured you for one, Garrett.”

  “Me? The knight in rusty armor always clanking out to rescue undeserving maidens or to do battle with the dragons of some lunatic’s imagination? I don’t qualify?”

  “You see? Romantic images. Though why should you mind working for nuts if they have money to spend? You can milk a man with an obsession like a spider milks a fly.”

  “I don’t work that way.”

  “I know. You reallywant to rescue maidens and champion underdogs and lost causes—as long as you get enough grease to keep the joints in the armor from freezing up.”

  “I like a beer sometimes, too.”

  “You’ve got no ambition, Garrett. That’s what’s wrong with you.”

  “You could write a book about all the things you’ve found wrong with me, Morley.”

  “I’d rather write one about the things that are right. It’d be a lot less work. Just a short little fable. ‘He’s kind to his mother. Doesn’t beat his wife. His kids never have to go in the snow barefoot.’ ”

  “Sarky today, aren’t we?”

  “I’m off my feed. How much longer are we going to be looking for the ghosts of might-have-been?”

  Not only sarky but a little too perceptive. I supposed I might as well confess. “I’m not being romantic. I’m lost.”

  “Lost? I thought you said you knew these parts like the back of your hand.”

  “I did. But things have changed. All the trees and bushes and stuff that were landmarks have grown or been cut down or—”

  “Then we’ll just have to ask somebody, won’t we? Yo!” he shouted at a gardener clipping a hedge. “What’s the name of the guy we’re looking for, Garrett?” The gardener stopped working and gave us the fisheye. He looked like a real friendly type. Poison you with his smile.

  “Klaus Kronk.” The first name was pronouncedclaws with a soft sibilant, but Morley took it for a nickname.

  He climbed down and approached the gardener. “Tell me, my good fellow, where can we find the Syndic Claws Kronk?”

  The good fellow gave him a puzzled look that turned into a sneer. “Let’s see the color of your metal, darko.”

  Morley calmly picked him up and chucked him over his hedge, hopped over after him and tossed him back, thumped on him a little, twisted limbs and made him groan, then said, “Tell me, my good fellow, where can we find the Syndic Claws Kronk?” He wasn’t even breathing hard.

  The gardener decided that at least one of us was a psychopath. He stammered directions.

  “Thank you,” Morley said. “You have been most gracious and helpful. In token of my appreciation I hope you will accept this small gratuity.” He dropped a couple of coins into the man’s palm, closed his fingers over them, then rejoined me aboard our conveyance. “Take the first left and go all the way to the top of the hill.”

  I glanced back at the gardener, still seated beside the lane. A glint of mischief sparked in his swelling eyes.

  “You think it’s wise to make enemies out here, Morley?”

  “We won’t get any comebacks from him. He thinks I’m crazy.”

  “I can’t imagine why anybody would think that about you, Morley.”

  We had only one turn left to make. A cemetery flanked both sides of the road. “You know where you are now?” Morley asked. “A landmark like this ought to be plenty memorable.”

  “More memorable than you know. I think our gardener friend got us. We’ll see in a minute.” I turned between the red granite pillars that flanked the entrance to the Kronk family plot.

  “He’s dead?”

  “We’re about to find out.”


  He was. His was the last name incised in the stone of the obelisk in the center of the plot. “Got it during the last Venageti incursion, judging from the date,” I said. “Fits what I remember about him, too. He would get out and howl for Karenta.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “I guess we look for the rest of the family. He’s the only one who’s established residence here.”

  He lifted one eyebrow.

  “I can find my way from here. Kayean and I used to walk up here at night to, uh . . . ”

  “In a graveyard?”

  “Nothing like tombstones to remind you how little time you have for the finer things in life.”

  “You humans are weird, Garrett. If you want an aphrodisiac, there’s one that the sidhe tribes of the Benecel river basin make from the roots of something like a potato plant. It’ll keep your soldier at attention for hours. Not only that, but when you use it you’re guaranteed there’s no way you’re going to become a papa.”

  Vegetarian sexual aids? Some people take good things too far.

  22

  Starting from the cemetery I was able to find the Kronk place with only one miscue. From the lane the place next door looked more like the one I remembered than the correct one. We were partway up the flagstones when I spied the peacock cages under the magnolias.

  “About turn and march,” I said. “One house shy of our mark.” I recalled how, if Kayean was not very careful sneaking in and out, those peafowl would raise six kinds of hell and there went the evening if it happened on the sneak-out side. Her old man knew what was going on but was never quick enough to catch her. She had been fast on her feet.

  I explained that to Morley as we retreated to the lane.

  “How the hell did a slob like you ever meet a quail living in a place like this?”

  “I met her at a party for bachelor officers the admiral put on. All the most eligible young ladies of Full Harbor were there.”

  He gave me an overly dramatic look of disbelief.

  I confessed, “I was there waiting tables.”