Angry Lead Skies

42

"What will you do?" Singe asked.

"Knock on the door and see if anybody answers. Whack them over the head if they do." I brandished my headknocker. There was no peephole in Casey's door so he would have to open up in order to respond.

I knocked. Singe looked around nervously. And sniffed. She said, "It's hard to tell but I think they may have gone back downstairs again."

I knocked some more. "Playmate, Rhafi and I did come up and go down before."

Still no answer to my knock.

The building shuddered. Doris was on the job.

Something fell behind the door.

I did a fast picklock job between club strokes. "Get back against the wall," I told Singe. "Squeeze your eyes tight shut." I pushed the door inward, knelt, tripped the rug booby trap. I got the same crackle, pop, and flash. I avoided problems with my hair this time but did get the fuzz crisped off the outside of my forearm. Casey must've adjusted the aim of his sorcerous implement.

A glance across the hallway assured me that was true. The wall was smoking at a site two feet removed from the previous. And the crisped area was significantly larger.

I began to suspect that Casey might not plan to honor our new alliance. And I began to reflect on the fact that this particular silver elf wasn't as reluctant as the others to resort to violence.

"Don't expose yourself yet," I told Singe. "This thing's going to pop a couple more times."

Second try wasn't a charm. As before, the fury of the sorcery was considerably lessened. But its aim had shifted since the first flash. I lost most of my stick and got a mild case of roasted knuckles. The lead from the end of my stick was still liquid when I peeked.

We were collecting witnesses now, the older ones probably thinking about launching a raid as soon as the dangerous people got out of the way.

Doris kept whapping the outside wall. That was sure to attract attention out there. Police attention, eventually.

I told Singe, "We probably won't have much more time." But haste could be painful. Or even lethal.

I got down on the floor and slid my arm in to trip the third flash. It was more feeble than the last time I'd done this, though plenty bright enough to have me seeing spots.

Then I recalled Casey having just hopped over the trigger carpet.

Better safe than sorry.

I hopped.

There were no changes in the room behind the door. Casey had returned his possessions to their appointed places. Every item in the place looked precisely positioned.

I had a suspicion that Deal Relway's place would be very much like this.

I looked at the window that wasn't there on the outside of the building. The view it presented was impossible. What it should have shown was the wall of the building next door. Instead, I found myself looking down into the street out front.

Interesting.

Something thumped behind the closed curtain of Casey's bedroom.

"Come in and close the door," I told Singe. "Keep an eye on this window. Look for anybody who might belong to the Guard. Or who just gives you the feeling that they might be trouble." I yanked the curtain aside. And said, "Well, hello."

I'd found some of my missing people. Rhafi and his mother. Kayne was unconscious. So was Rhafi, but he was restless. Neither had a stitch on. Rhafi's clothing lay on the floor, as though discarded by someone undressing in a hurry. Nowhere could I find anything that looked like it might have come off Kayne.

I tried not to get distracted by the still life.

"Hey, Singe. You think you could track somebody's clothes if somebody else was wearing them?"

She stepped over where she could see what I saw. "My." She kept looking back and forth between the window and the naked people. "Well." And, "Can you wake them up?"

I was trying to do that already. I wasn't having any luck. I tried to avoid any expression as Singe took her opportunity to inform herself of the nature of human bodies.

"Would you consider the female attractive?" she asked.

With any other woman I know I'd have to consider that a trick or loaded question. Singe, I guessed, actually wanted to know. "Yes, she is. Especially considering her age and the fact that she's borne three children."

Singe becomes horrified whenever she contemplates the size of human babies. Her people have babies in litters of up to eight, the aggregate weight usually being less than that of one human newborn.

"And the male? Is he attractive?"

"Not to me. But that's partly because I know him. He could be attractive to some women." Nature appeared to have blessed Rhafi in one respect. I returned to my question. "Could you track the woman's clothing? I think our villain might've used it to disguise himself."

Singe eyed Rhafi dubiously, looked at me in mild alarm, then shifted her attention to the window. She thought. I kept trying to waken Kayne and her son.

It became obvious that they were under some kind of enchantment that I couldn't penetrate.

After several minutes of silence, Singe told me, "I can follow the horses again."

"Meaning?"

"Following the clothing would be extremely difficult. But I will have no trouble following Mr. Playmate and Mr. Tharpe. Who would have been with or who would have been following what they believed to be this woman." She eyed Rhafi again, growing more uneasy with what she saw.

I opened my mouth to ask a question, then realized that I'd been outreasoned by a ratgirl. A ratgirl who had other things on her mind.

Rhafi was getting more of her eye time than that window was.

Casey had spun the tables on me.

He needed help to get to Kip. He'd told me so. But he didn't want to be anybody's partner. So he became Kayne Prose and lured Playmate and Saucerhead into going where he wanted, where they would, doubtless, fight like lions to defend the lovely Kayne from the villainous silver elves.

"Garrett! Something's happening!"

Dopey me, I glanced at Rhafi first, figuring maybe he was having a happy dream. But nothing to startle Singe was happening there.

"What?"

"The window. It keeps showing different things."

I stepped over.

She was right. It kept alternating between four different live scenes. "Did you touch it? Did you do anything?"

"No! I was over here, looking at... I never thought they were so big... . I was picking at the colored spots on this strange gray stone." She shoved a paw at me. Her whiskers were way back. But she just had to take another look at Rhafi.

I took the "stone." A number of not dissimilar items were scattered around the room. But not nearly so many as there had been during my previous visit. Which suggested that Casey might have taken some with him.

Those elves we'd chased, who'd knocked me out over and over, had used some small fetish or amulet or whatnot to do so. Maybe all those things were different magical devices.

Which got me thinking. We had a small collection back at the house, from that last place where Kip's kidnappers knocked us down, plus those I'd taken away from Rhafi. Should they stay there, dangerously near my partner, when we didn't know their capabilities? Might it not be more useful to surrender them to Colonel Block? That might earn me some obligation points. And might even be a service to the Crown. If these silver elves actually were a sorcerous threat from foreign lands.

Singe made a squealing sound that might have been surprise, fright, dismay, or all three together. I glanced into the other room.

I asked Singe the same question. "Did you touch it? Did you do anything?"

Singe backed out of the room but couldn't stop staring until I closed the curtain. I chuckled but didn't pursue the subject. I did suspect that in future she'd be less inclined toward romantic experimentation.

I thought it might be a good idea to gather up everything of potential interest to the people Block represented because minutes after Singe and I left it, Casey's place was going to get picked clearf.

"Garrett?"

"Uhm?"

"You said tell you if I saw anything interesting?"

"You found Rhafi interesting, did you?"

"Not that." Her tone put me in my place for my having my mind in the gutter. "In the window."

I saw what she meant when the view of the street out front came up.

Three silver elves had taken station across the way. They weren't out in traffic but, even so, you'd think people dressed that weird would attract some notice. That they attracted none whatsoever told me that some sort of enchantment concealed them from passersby but couldn't fool the window's eye.

A hint of a flicker of afterimage indicated that they were pretending to be women. Women who didn't know their ways around. One stared at something in her hand as she swung her partially extended arm right and left.

"We did something to attract Casey's enemies," I said. "And they got here fast. But they still don't quite know where to find him. We'd better get out of here while we can." I squinted at the window when the street view came back up. Did those elves really have waists and breasts? That was a fine crop of nubbins, to be sure, but damned if it didn't look like something was there, putting a little appeal into those elegant silver lines.