Bitter Gold Hearts

______XIV______

I went back and got a big cold one to fortify myself for the coming campaign. I had to draw it myself. Dean had been stricken blind and could hear nothing but ghosts. He was exasperated with me. I downed the long one, drew another, lowered the keg, then went to tell the Dead Man the latest. He growled and snarled a little, just to make me feel at home. I asked if he was ready to reveal Glory Mooncalled's secrets. He told me no, and get out, and I left suspecting cracks had appeared in his hypothesis. A cracked hypothesis can be lethal to the Loghyr ego.

After depositing my empty mug in the kitchen, I went upstairs and rooted through the closet that serves as the household arsenal, selected a few inconspicuous pieces of steel and a lead-weighted, leather-wrapped truncheon that had served me well in the past. With a warning to Dean to lock up after the ghosts left, I hit the street. It was a nice day if one doesn't mind an inconsistent hovering between mist and drizzle. Comes with the time of year. The grape growers like it except when they don't. If they had their way, every Stormwarden in the business would be employed full-time making fine adjustments in weather so they could maximize the premium of their vintages.

I was moist and crabby by the time I reached the Hill and started looking for a place to lurk. But the neighborhood had been designed with the inconsiderate notion that lurkers should not be welcome, so I had to hoof it up and down and around, hanging out in one small area trying to look like I belonged there. I told myself I was a pavement inspector and went to work detecting every defect in the lay of those stones. After fifteen minutes that lasted a day and a half, I caught Amber's signal—a candle instead of a mirror—and started drifting toward the postern. A day later that opened and Amber peeked out.

"Not a minute too soon, sweetheart. Here come the dragoons."

The folks on the Hill all tip into a community pot to hire a band of thugs whose task is to spare the Hill folk the discomfitures and embarrassments of the banditry we who live closer to the river have to accept as a fact of life, like dismal weather.

Not fooled for a minute by my romance with the cobblestones, a pair of those luggers were headed my way under full sail. They had been on the job too long. Their beams were as broad as their heights. But they meant business and I wasn't interested in getting into a head-knocking contest with guys who had merely to blow a whistle to conjure up more arguments for their side.

I got through the postern and left them with their meat hooks clamped on nothing but a peel of Amber's laughter. "That's Meenie and Mo. They're brothers. Eenie and Minie must have been circling in on you from the other side. We used to tease them terribly when we were kids."

A couple of remarks occurred to me, but with manly fortitude I kept them behind my teeth.

Amber led me through a maze of servants' passages, chattering brightly about how she and Karl used the corridors to elude Willa Dount's vigilance. Again I restrained myself from commenting.

We had to go up a flight and this way and that, part through passages no longer in use, or at least immune to cleaning. Then Amber shushed me while she peeked between hangings into a hallway for regular people with real blue blood in their veins. "Nobody around. Hurry." She dashed.

I trotted along behind dutifully, appreciating the view. I've never understood those cultures where they make the women walk three paces behind the man. Or maybe I do. There are more of them around arranged like Willa Dount than there are like Amber.

She swept me through a doorway into an empty room and rolled right around with her arms reaching. I caught her by the waist. "Tricked me, eh?"

"No. He'll be here in a minute. He has to get away. Meantime, you know the old saying."

"I live with a dead Loghyr. I hear a lot of old sayings, some of them so hoary the hills blush with embarrassment at his flair for cliché. Which old saying did you have in mind?" "The one about all work and no play makes Garrett a dull boy."

I should have guessed.

She was determined to wear me down. And she was getting the job done.

Whump! The edge of the door got me as I was bending forward, contemplating yielding to temptation.

The story of my life.

I let my momentum carry me several steps out of orbit around Amber. She laughed.

Karl came into the room spouting apologies and turning red. He might have gone into a hand-wringing act if he had not had them loaded.

"I smell brew," I said. "The elixir of the gods."

"I recalled you were drinking beer in that place the other day. I thought it would be only courteous to provide refreshments, and so I..."

A chatterer.

I was amazed. Not only had he managed to come up with an idea of his own, he had managed to carry it out by himself, without so much as a servant to lug the tray. Maybe he did have a little of his grandfather in him after all. A thimbleful, or so.

He presented me with a capacious mug. I went to work on it. He nibbled the foam on a smaller one, just to show me what a democratic fellow he was. "Why did you want to talk to me, Mr. Garrett? I couldn't make much sense out of what Amber told me."

"I want to satisfy my professional curiosity. Your kidnapping was the most unusual one I've ever encountered. For my own benefit I want to study its ins and outs in case I ever get into a similar situation. The success of the kidnappers might encourage somebody to pull the same stunt again."

Karl looked very uncomfortable. He planted himself on a chair and gripped his mug in both hands. He pressed it into his lap in hopes of steadying it so I wouldn't notice it was shaking. I let him think he had me fooled.

"But what can I tell you that would be of any use, Mr. Garrett?"

"Everything. From the beginning. Where and how they laid hands on you. All the way through to the end. Where and how they turned you loose. I'll try not to interrupt unless you lose me. All right?" I took a long swig. "Good stuff."

Karl bobbed his head. He took a swig of his own. Amber sidled to the tray and discovered that Karl had brought wine, too, though he hadn't bothered to offer her any.

Junior said, "It started five or six nights ago. Right, Amber?"

"Don't look at me. I still wouldn't know about it if I didn't eavesdrop."

"Six nights ago, I guess. I spent the evening with a friend." He thought about it before telling me, "At a place called Half the Moon."

"That's a house of ill repute," Amber said, in case I didn't know.

"I've heard of it. Go on. They got you there?"

"As I was leaving. Going out the back way so nobody would see me."

That didn't sound like the behavior of the hell-raiser he was supposed to be. "Why the sneak? I thought that wasn't your style."

"So Domina wouldn't hear about it. I was supposed to be out working."

That puzzled me. "The word is that she has everyone on a tight leash while your mother is in the Cantard. Yet you two seem to come and go when you want."

"Not when we want," Amber said. "When we can. Courter and Domina can't be everywhere watching all the time."

"I thought you said you wouldn't interrupt, Mr. Garrett."

"So I did. Go on. When last seen you were making a getaway out the back door of Lettie Faren's place."

"Yes. I stopped to say good night to someone, right in the doorway, with my back to the outside. Somebody put a leather sack over my head. It must have had a drawstring sort of thing on it because before I could yell I was being strangled. I was scared to death. I knew I was being murdered and there wasn't any way I could stop it. And then the lights went out." He shivered.

I set my mug down. "Who were you saying good-bye to?" I tried to keep it casual but he wasn't a complete dummy. He didn't answer. I stared him straight in the eye. He looked away.

"He doesn't want to believe it," Amber said. "What's that?"

"That his favorite little tidbit was in on it. She had to be, didn't she? I mean, she would have seen whoever it was over his shoulder. Wouldn't she? And she would have had time to warn him if she wasn't part of it?"

"That's certainly worth a few questions. Does the lady have a name?"

Amber looked at Karl. He tried divining the future from the lees of his beer. Maybe he didn't like what he saw. He grabbed the pitcher off the tray and poured himself a refill, mumbling something as he did so. I collected the pitcher and pursued his fine example. "What was that?" "He said her name is Donni Pell." Put a point down for the kid. If she had wanted, she could have stuck it to him anytime, but she held back until he was ready to surrender the name himself.

Karl started working himself up a case of the miseries. He said, "I can't believe Donni was in on what... I've known her for four years. She just wouldn't..."

I reserved my opinion of what people in Donni's line would and would not do for money. "All right. Let's move on. You were strangled unconscious. When and where did you wake up?"

"I'm not sure. It was nighttime and in the country. I think. From what sounds I could hear. I was bound hand and foot and still had the bag over my head. I think I was inside a closed coach of some kind but I can't be sure. That would make sense, though, wouldn't it?" "For them it would. What else?" "I had a bad headache." "That follows. Go on."

"They got me where they were taking me, which turned out to be an abandoned farmhouse of some sort."

I urged him to get very detailed. It was in moments of transfer when kidnappers were most at risk of betraying themselves.

"They lifted me out of the coach. Somebody cut the ropes around my ankles. One got me by each arm and they walked me inside. There were at least four of them. Maybe five or six. After they got me inside, somebody cut the rope on my wrists. A door closed behind me. After a long time standing there I finally got up the nerve to take the bag off my head."

He paused to unparch his throat. He could pour it down once he got started. Being a naturally courteous fellow, I matched him swallow for swallow, though I hadn't been working my throat nearly so hard. "A farmhouse, you say? How did you discover that?"

"I'll get to it. Anyway, I took the bag off. I was in a room about twelve feet by twelve feet that hadn't been cleaned in years. There were some blankets to sleep on—all old and dirty and smelly—a chamber pot that never did get emptied, a rickety homemade chair, and a small table with one leg broken."

He had his eyes closed. He was visualizing. "On the table was one of those earthenware pitcher-and-bowl sets with a rusty metal dipper to take a drink with. The pitcher was cracked so it leaked a little into the bowl. I drank about a quart of water right away. Then I went and looked out the window and tried to get myself together. I was scared to death. I didn't have any idea what was going on. Until I got back here and found out Domina had ransomed me, I had my mind made up that some of Mother's political enemies had grabbed me so they could twist her arm."

"Tell me about that window. That sounds like a big lapse on their part."

"Not really. It was closed with a shutter and the shutter was nailed from outside. But the place was old and there was a crack in the shutter big enough to see through. As it turned out, my seeing what was outside didn't matter."

"How so?"

"The way they let me go. They just walked off and left me there. I figured it out when they stopped feeding me."

"Did you ever see any of them?"

"No."

"How did they get food to you, then?"

"They made me stand facing the wall when they brought the food in and took the old platter out." "Then they talked to you?"

"One did. But only from outside the door and then all he ever said was that it was time to get against the wall. But sometimes I could hear them talking. Not very often. They didn't have much to say to each other."

"Not even about how they were going to spend their shares of the money?"

"I never heard any mention of money at all. That was one of the reasons I decided the whole thing was political. That and the fact that, after the strangling, they treated me pretty gently. That isn't what I would have expected of kidnappers for profit." "It isn't customary."

He had his eyes closed and his mind on the past. I don't think he heard me. "The only thing I ever heard that might have had anything to do with the situation was the last afternoon. Before they vanished. Someone came running into the place and yelled, 'Hey, Skredli, it's coming through tonight.' I never heard what, though." "Skredli? You're sure?" "Yes."

"You think it was a name?"

"It sounded like one. You think it might have been?" I knew damned well it was. Skred is the ogre equivalent of Smith, only it is twice as common. Skredli compares with Smitty. Half the ogres in the world are called Skredli, it seems like. So much for the lucky break.

We let it sit that way for a minute while we split the remaining contents of the pitcher. It was a good brew. I wish its like befell me more often. But I usually can't afford the price of a sniff on my own hooks.

"So. We're almost to the end. What happened after Skredli got yelled at?"

"Basically nothing. As far as I know, for those guys that was the end of it."

I waited for him to expand upon that. "They didn't bring me any supper. By midnight I was hungry enough to bang on the door and complain. That didn't do any good. I tried to sleep. I did a little, then when breakfast didn't come, I got up and pitched a real fit. I pounded the door so hard I broke it open. Then I got so scared they would beat me that I hid in my blankets. But nothing happened. Eventually I worked up enough nerve to go look out the door, then to slip out and explore." "They were gone?"

"Long gone. The ashes in the kitchen weren't even warm. I ate some scraps they left behind. After those hit bottom I felt braver and decided to do some exploring."

Karl paused to look into his mug and curse because he could see the bottom and there were no reserves to rush into the fray.

I waited.

Karl told me, "That's why I know all about the farmhouse. A pretty substantial place before it was abandoned." He gave me an exhaustive description, not a peasant hovel but not a manor house either. "After I'd looked around awhile I finally got up enough nerve to follow the coach tracks through the woods. After a mile or so I came to a road. A passing tinker told me it was the Vorkuta-Lichfield road, a little over three miles west of the battlefield."

Amazing. Karl had been sequestered within two miles of the place where Amiranda had bought hers and Saucerhead almost took a slice too many. I was so astonished I may have blinked. "So you just walked on home?"

"Yes. I think I'll go fill this pitcher again. This is taking longer than I thought."

"No need. I'm almost done. Just a couple questions more."

"What do you think? Was it an unusual kidnapping?"

"In some ways. But it went off smooth and you can't criticize success."

"I don't know much about this kind of thing. I was so damned scared while it was happening I didn't study it or think about it. How was it remarkable?"

He had a hook out and wanted to see if he could pull in the name of his friend Donni Pell. Amber had a similar notion. She was alert for the first time in half an hour. I disappointed them both because I had ideas of my own and wanted to save Donni for myself.

"Two peculiarities pounce at you like ogres from ambush. The one that bothers me the least is that they locked you in a room you could break out of without bothering to keep you tied or blindfolded. But that could be explained several ways. No, the big croggle is the way Willa Dount handled her end. She turned over a lot of gold to proven crooks without doing anything to make sure the merchandise she was buying was in good condition. The custom is for the purchaser to insist on delivery at the point of sale. Otherwise there's nothing to keep the kidnappers honest."

Karl mumbled something that sounded like, "I wondered about that, too."

He was in a declining mood and getting restless. I supposed it was time to attack. I went after him hard about timing and movements, and when I noticed Amber looking at me odd and Karl frowning angrily as he stumbled over his answers, I decided I'd gotten too intense. "What the hell is this? I'm doing a professional exercise and I get going like it's the real thing. Thanks, Karl. You've been a lot more patient than I would have been if the roles had been reversed."

"You're done?" He considered the bottom of his mug.

"Yes. Thanks. Drink one for me and think a kind thought while you're at it."

"Sure." He got up and out, trailing one curious glance at his sister.