Cold Copper Tears

5

Dean stepped outside. "I've finished up, Mr. Garrett. I'll be going home if there's nothing else."

He always talks like that when he wants something. Right now he hoped I'd have that something else. He lives with a platoon of spinster nieces who make him crazy.

One of the legacies of the war in the Cantard is a surplus of women. For decades Karenta's youth have gone south to capture the silver mines and for decades half of them haven't come back. It makes it nice for us unattached survivor types, but hell on parents with daughters to support.

"I was sitting here thinking it would be a nice evening for a walk."

"That it would be, Mr. Garrett." When the Dead Man is sleeping somebody always stays in to bolt the door and wait for whoever is out. When the Dead Man is awake we have no security problems.

"You think it's too early to see Tinnie?" Tinnie Tate and I have a tempestuous friendship. She's the one they had in mind when they set the specs for redhead stereotypes, only they toned them down because nobody would believe the truth.

You might call Tinnie changeable. One week I can't run her off with a stick, the next I'm tops on her hate list. I haven't figured out the whys and wherefores.

I was listed this week. Past the peak and dropping but still in the top ten.

"It's too early."

I thought so, too.

Dean is in a bind where Tinnie is concerned. He likes her. She's beautiful, smart, quick, more square with the world than I'll ever be. He thinks she's good for me. (I don't dare risk his opinion on the flip-flop issue.) But he has all those nieces in desperate need of husbands and half a dozen have standards low enough to covet a prince like me, squeaky armor and all.

"I could go see how the girls are."

He brightened, checked to see if I was teasing, and was set to call my bluff when he realized that would put me there while he was here, unable to defend their supposed virtues. He imagined me in there like a bull shoulder-deep in clover, like they couldn't possibly have sense enough to look out for themselves. "I wouldn't recommend that, Mr. Garrett. They've been especially troublesome lately."

It was all a matter of perspective. They hadn't troubled me. When I first took Dean on, they did. They kept me up to my ears in cookery, trying to fatten me up for the kill.

"Perhaps I should just go, Mr. Garrett. Perhaps you should wait another day or two, then go apologize to Miss Tate."

"I got no philosophical problem with apologizing, Dean, but I like to know why I'm doing it."

He chuckled, pulled on the mantle of worldly-wise old warrior passing his wisdom along. "Apologize for being a man. That always works."

He had a point. Except I have a flair for getting sarcastic.

"I'll just stroll over to Morley's, quaff me a few celery tonics."

Dean pruned up. His opinion of Morley Dotes is so low it has to look up at snakes' bellies.

We all have rogues in our circles, maybe just so we can tell ourselves, "What a good boy am I."

Actually, I like Morley. Despite himself. He takes some getting used to but he's all right, in his way. I just keep reminding myself that he's part dark elf and has different values. Sometimes, very different values. Always malleable values. Everything is situational for Morley.

"I won't be out long," I promised. "I just need to work off some restlessness."

Dean grinned. He figured I was getting bored with loafing and we'd see some excitement pretty soon.

I hoped not.