Dread Brass Shadows

47

Winger invited herself along. I didn't argue. She could stick pins in me, keep me awake.

We set our watch against the wall, outside the west gate, among the most optimistic beggars in the world. I mean, half the people inbound are destitute peasants looking for the streets of gold.

"Think we got here in time, Garrett?"

I'd taken our lives in my hands and cut through the Bustee, following the most direct route. "She doesn't know the city. Even if she hired a coach, she couldn't have gotten here first." True, logically, but I was whistling in the dark. After recent events, logic didn't seem very trustworthy

I mean, the Dead Man getting swindled not once but three times? That was damned hard to swallow, though for the sake of peace in the house I'd take his word.

I suspected wishful thinking had helped Carla Lindo sucker him. He'd been exposed long enough to have smelled something. He'd overlooked it because she'd charmed him...ell. I should talk?

"She have any money?" Winger asked.

"I don't think so. Why?"

"I wondered if she could hire a coach or buy a horse."

"She gave us everything she had to hire us."

"She'll be walking, then. Can she read?"

"Why?"

"If I was her and I could read, I'd open that book and turn me into somebody else in case somebody came after me."

I hadn't thought of that. I couldn't recall if she could read or not My memory plays tricks when I'm tired. "Assume the worst. Watch for anybody with something that might be the book."

"How big?"

I made gestures, as best I could recall what I'd seen in the naked woman's arms

Winger scrunched down in the shade of the wall, ignoring the glower of the beggar next to her. She closed one eye like she was going Halfway to sleep. "Think there'll be trouble because of what sour sidekick did to Easterman?"

"Nah. Shit happens. Pretty often around our place. The neighbors will be happy it was just entertaining this time. One time half the houses got busted up. That's why all the new brickwork and stuff. People that don't like excitement moved out. Nobody else gives a damn. They don't own, they rent."

"I noticed that about TunFatre. Nobody gives a damn about anything but themselves."

Not entirely true, but close

Nothing happened for a while. I got into a discussion with a bum who was a fellow ex-Marine, mostly about Glory Mooncalled's exploits in the Cantard. During the night, while I was preoccupied, word had come that Mooncalled's magnificent maneuver down there hadn't panned pure gold. Our fearless leaders had, in fact, anticipated it. They'd gone ahead and jumped into a brawl with the Venageti but had held back powerful reserves. Those had continued the pursuit of Mooncalled and had carved him up pretty good.

From the sound of it, once the dust settled there would be no predominant force in the Cantard. We'd be back to the old endless terror, only now with the balance teetering three ways instead of two. That should make the situation there crazier than ever.

I was glad I was past all that.

Winger nudged me.

One gorgeous redhead had come hiking out the gate She was dressed for rough travel and carried a big pack.

She was in a hurry. Literate or not, she hadn't changed her appearance.

She was in too much of a hurry. Thus, she didn't notice us or know that she'd acquired other admirers, city thugs who thought they had them an easy mark. They cruised along behind, knowing the road ahead would provide ample opportunity. Three miles past west gate you're into wild country already. The hills out there are better suited to raising sheep than to grape growing.

Winger rose with me. She understood the situation without my pointing it out "1 got a suggestion you ain't going to like."

"Which is?"

"Let those three clowns have first crack, then take the book from them."

"You're right. I don't like it."

"Think about it. No telling what's up her sleeve. Right? So why not let somebody else take the lumps?" She did have her own style of thinking She had a point, too.

I was in a foul enough temper to accept it. "You come to TunFaire this way?"

"Yeah. So?"

"There's a big curve in the road a couple miles ahead. Runs around the end of that ridge yonder, to a town called Switchback."

"I remember."

"If somebody was to go over the ridge, they could save a mile and a half, get ahead, arid come back this way. We could come at them from two directions. My guess is they'll jump her at the knee of the ridge, Maiden Angel Shrine, or the spring just past there."

"Does somebody mean me9"

"There's a thought."

"Here's another one. She going to be watching behind her or ahead? She running to or from? Who's she going to recognize?"

Damn her black heart. She was right Carla Lindo would recognize me in a second. I bellyached a lot, but when the time came I headed uphill, cussing all the way.

It wasn't so bad going down the far side. I tripped and rolled part of the way. No work at all, that. But I didn't make the time I should have. I was late getting to the Shrine of the Maiden Angel.

The bad boys had had time to catch Carla Lindo and Winger had had time to catch them in an indelicately exposed posture. When I came puffing along, one was dead and another working on it while the third was unconscious. Winger had just finished tying a half-naked Carla Lindo to a sapling. "You stop for a couple of beers, Garrett?"

"My pins aren't short enough for running down hills." A westbound peasant family studiously ignored us. They would report us at Hellwalker Station, the cavalry barracks two miles beyond Switchback. Riders would come to investigate. Highwaymen aren't tolerated the way criminals are in the city.

Carla Lindo had gotten batted around some. It took her a while to recognize me and turn on the heat. I gaped. Winger spat, shook her head, grabbed Carla Lindo's pack in one hand and my arm in the other. "You going to stand there drooling or are you going to haul ass?"

I shuddered and shivered and broke the spell. "Haul ass. One minute." I squatted, told Carla Lindo, "The cavalry will be here soon, sweetheart. They'll turn you loose. If you don't want to spend the rest of your life explaining to every firelord and stormwarden there is, tell the soldiers that these guys jumped you, then some travelers came along and broke it up. But they took off before anybody thought of cutting you loose."

"Garrett! Please." Could she ever turn on the heat. She wasn't human. I turned to hot wax. "I have to have the book. I can't go home without it."

I repeated my shudder-and-shiver routine. I can withstand them when I have to. "No way, darling. It's too wicked. It's killed too many people already. It's got to be destroyed. And I don't trust anybody to do that. Maybe not even me." I wasn't tempted anymore, though. I'd suffered too much. I Just wanted to put an end to the damned thing.

I touched Carla Lindo's cheek. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. It could have been something."

"Garrett, you can't do this to me. You loved me. Didn't you?"

"Maybe I did, some. That don't mean I'll let you use me. That don't mean I'm going to go to hell for you. I wouldn't do that for anybody "Except maybe Tinnie. I'd skipped through a suburb of hell for her trying to get this straightened out. I had to go see her again.

Carla Lindo changed. She stopped being that delicious little morsel, turned into a wildcat with a mouth like a dock walloper, speaking the true shadows in her heart. She became the real Carla Undo Ramada, no better than the other two who'd worn her face.

Winger grumbled, "You ready now? Or you want to hang around and put yourself through some more punishment?"

Right. I put a cap on my hurt, turned my back on Carla Lindo Ramada, walked toward TunFaire Winger and I didn't talk much. Wasn't much to say. I told myself it could have been worse. I could have gotten involved with Carla Lindo. That wouldn't have been hard. But events had conspired to keep me distanced. Lucky me, I'd ended up just getting another lesson revealing the basic blackness lying below the human heart. Once again I'd seen that, given incentive and opportunity, most anybody will jump at the chance to turn wicked. And the wicked will turn wickeder still.

Priests of a thousand cults proclaim the essential goodliness of Man. They must be fools. All I see is people flinging themselves at the chance to do evil.

I said a lot of that out loud. Winger told me, "You're depressing."

"So they tell me. If they run into me at a time like this. Afterwards. Hang around me much longer, you'll see me really black."

I wondered how black it would get. She had Carla Lindo's pack. She might get a notion to cash in off Eastermari.

I'm not sure where the idea came from. Maybe it was spur-of-the-moment. Maybe it was in there all along because the route I picked through the west end was not the fastest. Whatever, suddenly we were at the corner of Blaize and Eldoro. Across the way, alone, hunched, as though shunned by its neighbors, aware of that, cringing, stood a building of ocher brick. Most TunFaire brick is red. Smoke wisped from a stack. The idea hit me. "Come on over here."

I pushed through the front door of that place. A cowbell arrangement announced me. A wizened kobold appeared. A squirrel on two feet. His hands permanently washed one another over his heart. "How may I help you, sir and madam?" His smirk told us he knew. All his kind have a fawning companionship with death.

"I saw smoke from your chimney. You all fired up?"

Puzzled, he replied, "No sir. We keep the fire burning so we don't have to spend time preheating the kiln."

"Let me have the pack," I told Winger. She gave it up reluctantly. She was puzzled, too. She came from an area where they had few nonhumans. If she'd known what was up, she might have resisted. I told the kobold, "I want to run this through." I let him look at the pack.

"Sir?"

"I'll pay the usual fee."

"Very well, sir." Even kobolds don't usually argue with money, whether or not they understand. He reached for the pack.

"I'd rather send it off myself. So I'm absolutely sure. You know?"

"As you wish." He didn't move. Time to show him the color of my money. I did. He smiled, put it into a cash box that appeared magically, and disappeared even more quickly. He washed his hands some more, suggested, "If you'll follow me, then?"

"What the hell we doing, Garrett? What is this place? It has a weird smell."

"You'll see."

We went down a hall that passed between several small rooms. In one a kobold family kept vigil over an old, still form on a stone table. Winger got it then.

Many of the races, and even some humans, prefer not to bury their dead. The reasons vary. For kobolds and some others burial supposedly leaves the dead the option of getting up and walking again. Or so they fear. For us humans expense is usually the major consideration. TunFaire is short on cemeteries Burial ground is expensive.

The kobold took us to the kiln room. He shouted in his own language More kobolds, likely family, popped up, threw coal into the kiln's firebox, pumped bellows furiously. In seconds waves of heat beat at us.

"You're going to burn it?" Winger asked.

"Going to chuck it in there and cremate it. Won't be anything left but slag." It gets hot in those kilns. Has to, to reduce bone.

The little folk shoveled coal and pumped. The whole place got toasty warm. Winger argued with herself. She wasn't much at hiding her thoughts. "Garrett... I got to go outside. I can't handle the smell." It was a bit thick in there but she just needed an excuse to remove herself from temptation. If she could stand herself, she could stand a crematorium.

Soon enough the old kobold told me the kiln was ready. I wrestled with myself a little, finally managed to pin the dark side of me long enough. I tossed the bundle in onto the rack were they usually parked the bodies. I leaned my nose against a mica porthole and watched.

Carla Lindo's pack burned quickly, exposing the book. First time I'd seen it. It was pretty much as described, big, thick, bound in leather that went fast Its brass pages started to curl.

I'm sure it was imagination. I don't know what else it might have been But as those pages yielded to the fire I thought I heard tiny, distant screams. I thought I saw frantic shadows scurrying over the glowing coals.