Faded Steel Heat

64

Shale appeared to be asleep. Or maybe dead. His chest wasn't moving. Maybe he was hibernating. Maybe that explained why he never got any older. I hear you don't age when you're sleeping.

He'd been in the same place so long the olive tree no longer protected him from the sun. He was all wrinkles and liver spots and if all his fine white hairs were tied end to end, they might reach his knobbly ankles. His clothing was threadbare but clean. Medford Shale had a thing about cleanliness.

"Shale thinks you're a no-talent little peckerwood and it's probably that mallard doing the actual talking and putting words into mouths." Shale's withered lips scarcely moved. Maybe somebody from the great beyond was ventriloquising him. "You found yourself a wife yet?"

"Good to see you well, Uncle Medford. Nope. Still playing the field."

Any other old boy in the place would've done a wink and nudge and boy-do-I-envy-you number. Medford Shale snapped, "You some kind of nancy boy? Ain't gonna be none of that in this family. What the hell you doing, coming around here dressed like that?"

No relative of Shale's ever did anything that didn't embarrass him. The more sensitive sort never visit him. Generally, that includes even those of us with hides like trolls.

"Your life is so full you don't have a minute to come ease an old man's last years?"

"That's right, Uncle. Given a choice between watching grass grow and listening to you bitch there ain't no contest." I'd always wanted to say that. When I was a kid my mother stopped me. Later, respect held me back—though I think respect should run both ways. Shale is too self-engrossed to respect anything. Right now, with a fresh crop of ogre-inflicted bruises atop the other aches I'd collected recently, I was crabby myself.

"That's no way to talk to—"

"You want to be treated right, you treat people right. If I want to be pissed on and cut down, I don't need to trudge all the way over here."

Shale's eyes widened. He sat up more spryly than you'd expect from a guy three times my age. "That parrot has become confused about what words to put into your mouth. No kin of mine would talk to me that way."

"All right. I'm no kin. And the buzzard is quacking. He says, you want things easier here, help me. I know where to find a baker's dozen of those molasses cookies you like." I gave him a glimpse of the bundle.

Medford Shale wasn't stupid. He wasn't the kind of character who didn't look out for number one, either. I learned to deal with him when I was a toddler, before Aunt Alisa died and he bought into Heaven's Gate thinking the staff would cater to him the way his wife had. And they did. Almost. But he could begrudge the most reasonable request. Human nature made paybacks inevitable.

One of the staff heard me mention cookies. She was wide and ugly and tough, neither tall nor entirely human, probably a war veteran despite her sex. She had the air. Female combat nurses did visit the Cantard.

"Nothing sweet for him, you. Nothing spicy. They make him cranky."

"Really. All my life I've thought he was just a nasty old man."

"No shit. You fambly?" She was so solid she recalled things I'd seen in foreign temples, the sort of wide, steadfast, imperturbable creatures that guard doors and windows and roofs.

I nodded.

"I see the resemblance."

Shale observed, "A cookie never hurt nobody, you ugly witch. Don't listen to a word she barks, boy. She tortures us. She comes around in the middle of the night... " He thought better of continuing his rant. Possibly she did visit the troublesome ones in the night.

"What do you want?" she asked me.

"Why?"

She was surprised. "I'm in charge. I need—"

"The residents are in charge. You work for them."

"Very definitely a fambly resemblance."

"I didn't come to see you. Unless you know something about shapeshifters. Then your company would be very welcome."

I was cranky not because the endemic crabbiness there was catching, nor entirely because of all my pains. I was going to have to pan a ton of fool's gold to get any useful information here. But gather a few nuggets I would if I persevered. It never failed. Between them Shale and his cronies knew something about everything. And they'd lived most of it.

"Boy," Shale growled at me, "you can't talk to Miss Trim like . .