Faded Steel Heat

44

"I'll take these three to the Al-Khar," Relway told me. "Drop by and find out what they had to say."

His people would wait outside the Weider shack while I rounded up the changers inside.

"I want these bodies," I reminded.

"Go ahead. Take them."

I folded the door shut before he changed his mind, pinned it, climbed to the driver's seat. I gathered the reins like they were covered with slime, told Relway's thugs, "You guys want to make sure this monster stays headed in the right direction?"

Monster and thugs eyeballed me. The horse smirked. One of the thugs—their names were Ritter and Abend but their attitudes left them undeserving of remembrance—said, "You can't drive a cart? Get down from there."

"I can drive a cart," I muttered. "If I really want to, I can drive a cart. But I'm going to let you do it this time." I can drive a cart. I learned in the Corps. But watching the south end of a northbound beast, knowing the critter is looking for a chance to visit disaster upon me, isn't my idea of fun.

The big bruno on the back gate was on the job now. He had let this very wagon scoot out—along with Relway's guys, whom he'd forgotten to mention, which you just naturally had to wonder about—but now nothing was going to get past him. "What's my name?" I demanded.

"You're Garrett."

"And what's my job?"

"You're in charge of—"

"Bingo! I'm in charge. And I'm telling you to let us in."

"But you never said nothing about—"

"I'm saying it now. I gave you some hard road about letting this wagon get away. Then I went and got it back. Open the gate."

"But—"

Relway's men ran out of patience. They vaulted the low wall and opened the gate. The guard raised a loud fuss. Gilbey arrived before I finished proving I could drive a wagon and got it parked. Of course, it might be sunrise before I got the best out of the damned four-legged snake pulling the vehicle.

Gilbey said, "I thought you went home with Dame Tinstall, Garrett. Your friend is fit to be tied."

"Which friend is that?"

"The one who came with you. What have you got here?"

I opened the side door. There was light enough from the house. Gilbey threw his right forearm up against the side of the wagon, closed his eyes, froze that way. He controlled himself before he asked, "What's going on?"

"Shapechangers." I told him what I'd been doing.

"It explains a few things. I just saw Kittyjo. Now I see why she was staying out of the way tonight when she was so excited about everything this afternoon."

"Any idea why a shapeshifter gang would want to take over the Weider family?"

"Because they like beer? Because they want a brewery?"

That wasn't some attempt at black humor. Gilbey meant it. "I'll bite. Why would they want a brewery? Why right now?"

"Better ask them, Garrett. Anyway, the brewery might not have anything to do with it. What now?"

"Much as I hate to, we have to tell the boss."

He seemed exasperated. "Of course we do. I mean, what do we do about these monsters? We need to catch them, don't we?"

"Sure. And we need to move fast. Before they get the word, change appearance, and get away. I think there are only three still here. The others took the corpses away."

Undetected and unchecked, I was sure the changers still in the house would have brought in more of their own. The Weider place would have become a changer fortress and haven.

But why the Weiders? There were other families as wealthy, others more iconoclastic, others better forted up.

But suppose the presence of the leaders of the rights movement had something to do with it. Suppose the changers had come in because of the guest list. Suppose Marengo North English and Bondurant Altoona got replaced? They were goofy already. Would anybody notice?

Whatever, it couldn't be meant long-term. Shapechanger schemes get found out. We liked to think, anyway. In TunFaire some real heavyweights would trample all over them once the news got around. By tomorrow there ought to be a hue and cry. The rightsists would be in deep clover.

Shapechangers scare everybody. Alienists make fortunes proving to losers that their loved ones haven't been possessed by demons or replaced by shifters. Or the other way around if that's where the profit is.

Alienists are like lawyers. Right, wrong, justice, the facts of the case, none of that matters. Results are what count. That's usually somebody else with empty pockets and a dazed expression.

The alienist's client doesn't want to believe his beloved no longer loves somebody as wonderful as him. The explanation has to be supernatural and sinister.

Changers have served as excuses for murder, too, though it seems the corpses never change after death. No murderer ever got off using that excuse.

I told Gilbey, "We won't make anything happen standing around trying not to cry."