Faded Steel Heat

43

I stopped to see the security guys out front. They knew me. I told them I'd be right back. I stepped into the street, watching for the Goddamn Parrot as well as whoever wanted to see me. I didn't expect Relway himself. Relway prefers to stay out of sight. But the little guy emerged from the darkness like a whispering ghost. I squeaked, "You startled me."

"Sorry." Like hell. He smirked. "Sorry about interrupting your evening, too. But you have to see this."

"It's big enough to bring you out personally?"

"I'm here because every player in the rights game is here. That's significant. Something I have to look over with my very own eyes."

I wondered if he had people inside. I wondered again, aloud, as we walked. I got only silence in response. Which was answer enough for me. It was likely that several of Gresser's workers were secret police. Poor Mr. Gresser.

"It's quiet tonight," I observed. That wasn't a good sign, really. Not in TunFaire, where, by day or by night, completely quiet streets generally mean big trouble.

"Very."

The silence deepened as we walked.

The flicker of torchlight shone around a corner. We had walked only a few blocks, to the far side of the brewery. The torchlight had no noise attached. No excitement. We weren't headed toward a street party or toward a riot.

We turned a corner.

There was my missing wagon. There was my venomous new equine acquaintance. Four men surrounded them. Three carried torches. The fourth held a short spear to the spine of a man lying facedown in the street. Two of the torchbearers wore Gresser's corporate livery. How did they get away unnoticed?... Hell. They didn't. Gresser did complain. But the guys covering the front hadn't mentioned them... . Were they Relway's people, too? Of course they were. Which meant they were everywhere. Too bad I couldn't con them into doing my job for me.

The wagon was open on the side I'd been about to investigate when somebody decided to put me away for the night. Or a slab of sky had fallen on my noodle.

Relway told me, "These guys saw you get knocked down. They thought it might be interesting to trail the wagon and see what was going on."

I forbore complaint. I now had a notion about one guard who might be in with Relway.

The fellow with the spear forced the captive to keep his head turned away. Relway didn't want his face seen.

These four would be among his best and most trusted men, then. I tried to memorize their faces without being obvious.

"Shit!" I said softly when I looked inside the wagon. "This is what I was afraid of when—" Three corpses had been stuffed in there. Two were naked. Tom Weider still wore the dirty nightwear he'd had on when I was wrestling Carter and Trace. "Aw, shit," I said again. I couldn't express my despair any more articulately. This would crush the old man.

"You know them?"

"These two are Weider's kids, Tom and Kittyjo. The other one worked on the brewery's shipping dock. His name was Luke. He was helping tonight because he liked his boss. I don't think he was getting paid. He had four kids. We got a major problem here, friend. An enigma compounded by a mystery, as they say."

"Please be a little more specific."

"I saw all of these people in obvious good health inside the Weider place after this wagon left. I saw Kittyjo as I was coming out the door to meet you."

Relway grunted. "That doesn't sound good."

"Listen. We had gate-crashers who kept disappearing into the crowd whenever you weren't looking. But we never came up short on a head count."

Relway had to say the nasty word first. "Shapeshifters?"

"I'm willing to bet. Or, at least, somebody who always has some pretty tricky little spells handy."

"Changers have never been a problem here. But—"

"But?"

"The colonel got a letter. Off the Hill. Out of the blue. He didn't share all of it but it had to do with shapeshifters."

"We've got all these outsiders coming in. Some might be shapeshifters. Some up there would be interested." Traditionally, shapeshifters have preferred to play their deadly games where there are no sorceresses or wizards to winkle them out. They aren't a beloved breed. As they do with vampires, most races murder shifters as soon as they give themselves away.

"I didn't want to entertain the possibility until now," I continued. "You never want to see anything this ugly."

Shapeshifters have murdered people and replaced them for a lifetime, but not often. They prefer to hit and run, impersonating someone they've gotten to know well, briefly, without killing anyone. Even when they do commit murder they change guises frequently. Few have the ability to hold a shape and age it. And fewer can fool families and lovers for very long.

Their ultimate provenance is uncertain. They appear to be human most of the time. Maybe, like vampirism, their malleability is the result of some bizarre disease. What does seem to be true, or at least what everyone believes to be true, is that shapeshifters can't survive very long as themselves. They have to mimic. Maybe they even have to kill occasionally in order to appropriate a new soul.

They don't appear to be related to werewolves—though I expect they could become werewolves if they had one to pattern from.

"Anybody got any silver?" Relway asked. That made sense. As vampires and werewolves do, shapeshifters supposedly find silver poisonous. Relway wanted to run a test.

Nobody volunteered so I fished out one of Marengo North English's groats, the smallest silver coin I had. You've got to minimize your risks.

"Looks like your racket pays better than mine does," Relway chided. He knelt beside the captive. I repeated my morality tale about the nutritional value of idealism. Relway laughed. His life must be more fulfilled nowadays. He didn't use to have a sense of humor.

Relway slit the prisoner's shirt down it back. "I'll open his skin and flay it back so you can tuck the coin underneath." He tapped the captive's back in the spot you and I can't reach without a stick. "If they really don't like silver, we'll just let him hurt till he offers to help us find out what we want to know."

He never spoke to the captive directly. He carved with no more emotion than a battlefield surgeon.

The silver hurt the changer from the instant it touched him. He twitched, spasmed, shook, fought back a scream with every gasping breath.

Relway said, "Stay alert. That letter was right, this could attract more of them. They supposedly touch one another mind to mind."

I noted shadows moving in the surrounding shadows. "Did you bring a whole army?"

"Enough so I could handle any rightsist trouble if it happened."

Shapechanger minds were like a Loghyr's? Might that explain why the Dead Man hadn't seen what Trace and Carter were? "I've never heard that about them being mind readers. That could mean real trouble."

"Not like your roomie. They can only read other shifters. And only for general emotion, not specific thoughts."

"You sure?"

"No, Garrett. I'm not. Somebody told the colonel. He told me. Just in case. He didn't tell me why. He likes to pretend the Hill doesn't really influence him. Did anything interesting happen in the Weider place? Did you get a chance to spy on the big meeting?"

"I was mostly too busy. I got in once. By accident. Nobody gave anything away. But while I was there they asked me to investigate the Black Dragon bunch."

"You accepted that commission, I hope."

"That's what I said, did I? That groat you're abusing came out of North English's own purse."

"No. I thought he squeezed them till they squealed." The prisoner groaned. He would've screamed if he'd had any breath left. Relway covered his mouth and nose with a hand, just to make life more difficult. "Let me know when you're ready to talk."

A scuffle broke out in the darkness. It lasted for several seconds. I still marvelled at the absence of witnesses. TunFairens always scatter at the first hint of trouble but, once they feel safe personally, they usually come back looking to be entertained. Maybe the changers were radiating some stay-away emotion so potent even humans felt it.

But then why would I be hanging around?

"Damn!" I said. "If these things really do read each other from a distance, the ones at the house will realize that they've been found out."

"Not necessarily. Not if they just feel emotions."

"How did you know they were out here tonight? Block?"

"No. I didn't know anything till I stopped the wagon. Which I did because I thought it might have something to do with what the rights people are scheming. I wasn't looking for what I found."

"Seems like a lot of trouble just to keep an eye on the rights guys." I gestured at the surrounding night.

"They're dangerous people, Garrett. Until I caught this thing here I would've said that rightsists are the biggest danger Karenta faces. They get people hurt and killed and businesses destroyed and it's only going to get worse. I can't just let that happen. But the danger posed by these things might be even darker."

"I think he passed out." I indicated the changer.

"So he did." Relway let the thing breathe. "You know anything about shapeshifters, Garrett?"

"No. I ran into one once. A Venageti spy who'd replaced a Karentine counterintelligence officer. That's it."

Relway sat down on the changer, ready to use his hand. "I was afraid of that."

"Of what?"

"Not yet. Maybe this thing can confirm my suspicions."

Relway's men dragged someone over. This one shifted slowly between several sets of features. I recognized none of them. Relway searched it after making sure the other one would remain unconscious.

"This is interesting." He showed me a tattoo on the new captive's right forearm. It was black. It resembled a dragon, though the light could have been better. It incorporated a simple Karentine army crest.

"That is interesting."

"I do believe I'll have to do some digging. I suspect an untold story has begun to surface."

The changer recovered. His features became fixed. The tattoo faded. We pretended not to have noticed it.

I glanced at the wagon. "I need to go break the news. And grab the villains still inside. Bring the bodies back. The old man will want them."

"You need help?"

"Send your waiters back. Mr. Gresser will be infinitely grateful."

Relway grinned. He had an all-new and challenging bunch of bad boys to eradicate.

I told him, "Let me know what you get from those two."

"Goes without saying. Long as you let me know about the crowd in there."

"They're dividing turf, making peace with the Outfit and making rules about who they can and can't push around. They don't want to irritate anybody who can send troops out and they don't want to waste time fighting each other."

"Ah. Too bad about that."

"Belinda Contague is there. Speaking for her father."

"A genuinely hard woman. And so young. Out of a privileged household. Makes you wonder. You're a friend of the family. How come we see so much of her now and so little of her father?"

"Chodo had a stroke. He doesn't want people to see him until he recovers. They might think he's getting weak. But he's as hard as ever and getting mean-spirited besides. Anything new on Crask and Sadler?"

"No. But they're out there."

Those two were worth worrying about. They were nightmares.