Red Iron Nights Read online

  Not only hardheaded but not very bright. But I kept that thought to myself. “Not very tolerant” goes along with the other two, most places.

  “Played some myself when I was younger,” Playmate told me.

  “Why am I not surprised?” He’d have made a team all by himself.

  Playmate was slick. He managed to insinuate an opinion into an argument so old it was obvious ritual, elicited a response because, apparently, in his olden days he’d been a star. Before I understood what was happening, he and I were part of Atwood’s crowd. I pursued Playmate’s advice diligently. The Dead Man would have been impressed by how long I kept my mouth shut.

  In time the Atwoods veered from the tried and true long enough to betray polite curiosity concerning Playmate’s presence. Playmate gave them a big grin, like he was mocking himself for taking anything seriously. “My pal Garrett and me, we’re on sort of a crusade.”

  Those guys understood a crusade. They were religious. Real salt of the earth and backbone of the nation. Hadn’t had an original thought in generations.

  Pardon. I do get overly critical at times.

  Curiosity levels rose. Playmate played with them a minute, then said, “I better let Garrett tell it. He’s the one been closest to it. I’m just trying to lend a hand.”

  I pictured Block exploding if he heard I was hanging out his dirty laundry all over town, grinned, told the story of the dead girls. The Atwoods were properly horrified. I played to that, noted the old man paying closer attention than the others, who just wanted to be entertained.

  I said, “So right now it looks like the only way to trace this monster is through his coach.”

  Everybody got it then. The whole gang got quiet and grim. All eyes turned to the old man. He considered me neutrally. “You suspect that coach came from my shop, Mr. Garrett?”

  “I have no idea, Mr. Atwood. Playmate says you’re the premier coachmaker in TunFaire. If it was built here, according to him, you’re the only man with the talent to have built it.”

  “I expect so. Describe it again.”

  I did, recalling every possible detail.

  The sons were less skilled than he at concealing their thoughts. I knew that coach had been built by Linden Atwood. The question was, would the man expose his buyer?

  He would. “We delivered that coach, built to strict and exacting specifications, about three years back, Mr. Garrett. I do not believe in false humility. It was the finest coach ever built in TunFaire. I will accept responsibility for that, but I refuse any blame.”

  “Excuse me?”

  One son muttered, “Damn thing’s jinxed.”

  The old man glared. “Madame Tallia Lethe, wife and mother of the Icemasters Direfear, commissioned it. Three months after she took delivery, there was an accident. She fell. A wheel rolled over her head.”

  Oh, boy. “I knew we could get some big-time sorcerers into this.” Karentine wizards mainly belong to the Elemental Schools: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. The Windmasters and Storm Wardens of the Air school are common, Firelords more so. There may be Earth schoolers elsewhere in Karenta, but none in TunFaire. Water-school types are almost as rare. “I didn’t know we had any Icemasters here.”

  “We don’t,” the old man said. “The woman lived here. The Icemasters are dead, anyway. Crossbones Bight.”

  Ah. The big naval battle of the War. We got our Karentine asses kicked. Unfortunately for the Venageti, a naval triumph hadn’t meant much strategically. “I see,” I said, not seeing at all.

  “Madame had no heirs. The estate passed to the Crown. The Crown agents auctioned everything. Lord Hellsbreath bought the coach.”

  There was a name to conjure nightmares.

  The only Hellsbreath I recalled was no healthier than Madame Lethe. “He had some bad luck himself, right?”

  “He was murdered. The assassin got away.”

  “He was in the coach when it happened,” a son volunteered.

  “Crossbow bolt right in the eye,” another said. He demonstrated with enthusiastic gestures and sound effects.

  “Then who got the coach?”

  “Duchess of Suhnerkhan. Lady Hamilton.”

  I knew that one. “Does seem like it was unlucky.” The King’s great-aunt, Lady Hamilton, had decided to visit the family estate at Okcok. She hadn’t bothered with an escort, though there’d been a full moon out. Werewolves had given her a fatal set of hickeys.

  Linden Atwood grunted but conceded nothing.

  “That was a year and a half ago. I guess it’s changed hands a few more times?”

  “No. Crown Prince Rupert brought it back to town and stored it in the coachhouse behind Lady Hamilton’s town house. Far as I know, it hasn’t been out since.” The old man produced a pipe and pipeweed. He filled up, lit up, leaned back, closed his eyes, puffed, and thought. The clan waited quietly. I followed their lead. Playmate signaled for another round of the dark. On me, naturally.

  The beer’s arrival wakened Atwood. He tilted forward, drained half his mug, wiped foam with the back of a hand, belched, said, “I don’t put no stock in this jinx stuff, Garrett.” We were pals now. I’d bought him a beer. “But was I you, I’d be careful. Seems like everybody that gets near that coach gets dead.” He frowned.

  He didn’t like that at all. What if word got out? What if people started thinking it was the coachmaker’s fault?

  “I’m not much on haunts and jinxes,” I told him. “But if that coach is jinxed, you got any notion how come?”

  “Beats the shit out of me.” He guzzled the other half of his beer. “Shit happens. Sometimes it don’t make no sense.”

  Playmate horned in. “Thanks, Mr. Atwood. Sure was good of you to talk to us.” He nudged me with a knee, got up. I wondered why he was in a hurry, but I’d promised to follow his lead. I piled on my share of thanks and excused myself, followed Playmate into the rain.

  “What was that? How come the run-out?”

  “Atwood was getting glassy-eyed. In about a minute he was going to start in on his boys that didn’t make it home from the Cantard. I thought you might want to get some sleep tonight.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. You got to feel sorry for the guy. But that don’t mean you got to go live in his hell with him. He’s got to lay his own ghosts himself.”

  True. But I was surprised that Playmate thought so. I pulled my cloak tighter. There was enough wind to make the night cold.

  “Past my bedtime, Garrett. Hope all that helped.”

  “You hope? Hell, it cracked the thing. All I need now is to find out who’s been using that coach.” And how hard could that be? I mean, the Crown Prince’s duties included running Karentine internal security. The TunFaire Watch were one obscure arm of the many he oversaw. And if what Block said was true, the heat on the Watch had good old Rupert behind it.

  “Come around more often, Garrett,” Playmate said. “At least soon enough to let me know how this comes out.” He strode off like he was late for a date with one of his mares. I stood absorbing some rain for a moment, startled, then shrugged. Playmate did these things. He didn’t know he was being rude and unsociable.

  What now?

  16

  Morley’s place, that’s what now.

  It wasn’t that far out of my way. I dropped by. My reception was no more charming than before. Maybe not as good. More people departed. The others seemed edgy, except for Saucerhead’s pal Licks, who was at the same shadowed corner table stoned out of this world.

  Puddle gave me a huge scowl, glanced down at his keg. I told him, “That rat Sarge said he was going to blame it on me. Morley here?”

  Puddle already had a finger pointed skyward and an eyebrow up. I nodded to make sure he understood that I wanted to see Morley as well as to know if he was home. With Puddle you have to take it by the numbers. He don’t fill in the gaps so good.

  He was the kind of guy who thought if you couldn’t solve a problem with a right cross or a club, then it wasn�
�t a problem in the first place and therefore didn’t need solving. Ignore it and it would go away.

  Puddle grunted, growled at the speaking tube, fluttered a hand to indicate that I should go on up. Apparently Morley didn’t have company.

  I climbed the stairs, tiptoed to Morley’s door, listened before I knocked. I didn’t hear anything. Usually there was scurrying as somebody’s wife headed for cover. All I heard was Morley telling me to come in.

  I opened the door. Something zipped past the end of my nose. Morley was behind his desk, his feet up, leaning back, tossing darts. I didn’t recognize the painted face serving as his target. “You doing the hoodoo voodoo on somebody?”

  “Not really. Found all that in a junk shop. Velvet painting of a guy who looks like my sister’s husband.” Zip. Wham. Another eye put out. “What’s up?”

  “No company tonight?”

  “Too wet out there these days. Nobody’s going to be seeing much company as long as this weather keeps up.” Zip. Wham. Right in the end of the nose. “Want to get those darts for me?”

  “You’re a bundle of ambition tonight.”

  “Yeah. Long as you’re doing my legwork, you see that creep Licks downstairs? So I don’t have to go look for myself?”

  “He’s there. Unconscious, I think. The smoke was pretty thick.”

  He snagged his speaking tube. “Puddle. Toss that creep Licks out now. Don’t leave him where he’ll get run over.” Morley put the tube down, looked at me. “I hope he gets pneumonia.”

  “You have a problem with the man?”

  “Yes. I don’t like him.”

  “So bar him.”

  “His money’s as good as yours. Maybe better. He spends it here.” That didn’t get a rise, so he asked, “What’s up? You look like you can’t wait to get something off your chest.”

  “I got a line on the coach.”

  “Coach? What coach.”

  “The one out front that they tried to drag Chodo’s kid into. I found the man who built it. He told me where I can find it.” I explained.

  Morley sighed, took his feet down. “Isn’t that just like you? Here I am, having the time of my life, and you have to walk in and mess it up.” He got up, opened a closet, dug out a raincloak and fancy hat that must have set him back a dozen broken bones.

  “What you doing?”

  “Let’s go check it out.”

  “Huh?”

  “Way I see it, that beats hell out of trying to get to see Chodo. You carrying?”

  “Here and there.”

  “Finally started to learn, eh?”

  “I guess. What’s the problem with Chodo? I thought you were tight. It’s me that’s on his list.”

  “I don’t know. I sent word I needed to talk. That it was important. I never got an answer. That’s never happened before. Then comes a roundabout kind of hint that nobody out there wants to hear from me and if I’m smart I won’t bother them ever again.”

  “Odd.” I couldn’t figure that. Morley was an important independent contractor. Chodo owed him a listen.

  “Been odd ever since you and Winger went out there. And getting odder every day.” We were headed downstairs now.

  I asked, “What’s with the mustaches? That the coming thing?”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m seeing them all over. On you it don’t look bad. On Spud it would look good if he could grow one. But on Puddle it looks like some damn buzzard built its nest on his lip.”

  “He doesn’t take care of it.” Morley darted to the counter, spoke to Puddle briefly. I noted Licks’s absence and Puddle’s wet shoulders. Licks remained with us in spirit. The smoke was thick enough to slice.

  17

  When it rains and the wind blows, it gets real dark in TunFaire. Streetlamps won’t stay lighted, though those lamps exist only in neighborhoods like the Hill and the Tenderloin, where the wraths of our lords temporal and lords criminal encourage thieves and vandals to practice their crafts elsewhere. Tonight the Hill was darker than a priest’s secret heart. I didn’t like it. Given my choice, I want to see trouble coming.

  Morley was as excited as a kid planning to tumble an outhouse. I asked, “What’s your thinking on this?” I looked around nervously. We’d approached Lady Hamilton’s place unchallenged, which made me just that much more anxious.

  I don’t believe in good luck. I do believe in cumulative misfortune, in bad luck just lying back piling up interest till it dumps on you in one big load.

  “We climb over the wall, see if the coach is there.”

  “You could give Glory Mooncalled lessons in innovative tactics.” I didn’t like his idea. We could get ourselves arrested. We could get ourselves hurt. We could get ourselves fatally unhealthy. The private guards on the Hill are a lot less inhibited than their public-payroll counterparts.

  “Don’t get all worked up, Garrett. Won’t be anything to it.”

  “That’s what you said the time you conned me into helping deliver that vampire to the old kingpin.”

  “That time you didn’t know what you were doing.”

  True. But where would he get the idea I knew what I was doing now? “You’re too optimistic to live.”

  “Comes of living right.”

  “Comes of eating horse fodder till you have the sense of a mule.”

  “You could do with more horse fodder yourself, Garrett. Meat is filled with the juices of things that died terrified. They make you timid yourself.”

  “I have to admit I never heard anybody call a cabbage a coward.”

  “There they go. All clear.”

  There who go? Were we hanging around soaking because he’d seen someone? Why didn’t he tell me these things?

  He did have better night vision. One of the advantages of his elvish blood. The disadvantages, of course, started with a conviction of personal immortality. It isn’t true, what you hear about elves being immortal. They just think they are. Only an arrow through the heart will talk them out of the idea.

  Morley took off toward the Hamilton place. I followed, watching everywhere but where I was going. I heard a sound, looked for its source as I jumped ten feet high, walked right into the Hamilton wall.

  “You must have been some Marine,” Morley grumbled, and continued muttering about no wonder Karenta couldn’t win in the Cantard if I represented the kingdom’s best and brightest.

  “Probably a hundred thousand guys down there would be happy to let you show them how to do it.” Morley wasn’t a veteran. Breeds don’t have to go. The nonhuman peoples all have treaties exempting people up to one-eighth blood. The nonhumans you see in the Cantard are natives or mercenaries, and usually both. And agents of Glory Mooncalled besides. Except for the vampires and werewolves and unicorn packs, who are out to get everybody.

  The Cantard is a lot of fun.

  Morley squatted, cupped his hands. “I’ll give you a boost.” The wall was nine feet high.

  “You’re lighter.” I could toss him right over.

  “That’s why you go first. I can climb up there without help.”

  A point. Not one that fired me up to go first, but a point. This business was more in his line than mine. He wouldn’t buy my plan which was to go pound on the front gate and ask to see the deadly coach. That was too prosaic for his sense of adventure.

  I shrugged, stepped into his cupped hands, heaved my reluctant bones upward, grabbed the top of the wall in expectation of getting my fingers ripped to hamburger by broken glass. Broken glass is an old trick for discouraging uninvited company.

  Oh, my. Now I was really disheartened. There was no broken glass. I pulled my chin up level with the top, peeked. Where was the trap? They had to have something really special planned if they didn’t use broken glass.

  Morley whacked me on the sole. “Better move your ass, Garrett. They’re coming back.”

  I didn’t know who “they” were but I heard their footsteps. I took a poll. Opinion was unanimous. I didn’t want to find out who
they were. Up and over I went. I landed in a small garden, gently, failing even to turn an ankle. Morley landed beside me. I said, “This’s too easy.”

  “Come on, Garrett. What do you want? You have a closed house here. Who’s going to guard that?”

  “Exactly what I want to know.”

  “You ever begin to sound optimistic, I’m going to flee the country. Come on. Sooner we do it, the sooner you’re out of here.”

  I grunted agreement. “Looks like the coach house there.” I don’t like sneaking, much. I still thought we should have tried the front way.

  Morley scooted to a door in the side of the coach house. I let him lead. I noted how carefully he moved, for all he did so quickly. Whatever he said, he wasn’t taking chances.

  In his line you didn’t get old taking anything for granted. My line either, for that matter.

  Neither of us had brought a lantern. You do dumb things when you rush. Still, there was light enough leaking from nearby homes to let Morley see a little. He told me, “Somebody was here before us. They jimmied the lock.” He tried the door. It opened.

  I looked over his shoulder. It was blacker than the inside of a buzzard’s belly in there, and about as inviting. Something made noises and shuffled around. Something breathed. Something a lot bigger than me. Always a courteous kind of guy, I offered, “After you, sir.”

  Morley wasn’t that sure he was immortal. “We need a light.”

  “Now he notices. This the kind of planning you re going to do when you take over in the Cantard?”

  “I’ll be back in five minutes.” He vanished before I could argue.

  18

  Five minutes? It was more like twenty. The longest twenty I ever lived, excepting maybe a few dozen times in the islands when I was in the Corps, dancing the death dance with Venageti soldiers.

  He wasn’t gone ten of those five minutes when, from my lurking place under a crippled lime tree—where I was trying to drown less speedily—I noted a light moving past a downstairs window inside the Hamilton house. Probably a candle. It had a ghostly effect, casting a huge, only vaguely humanoid shadow on a drawn shade.