Faded Steel Heat

88

Spooky people were waiting in a back room. Belinda Contague and Pular Singe sat beside a crippled table with rags piled on top. "What's this?"

Morley let me have it behind the ear with a sap.

I said, "Wha de grungle frunz ya?... " It made perfect sense to me but apparently not to anyone else. At least nobody tried to answer me.

The darkness never really came. Not entirely. I remained vaguely aware of being manhandled and womanhandled and rathandled and half-elf handled around till I was the vain wearer of a tonsorial array fit to embarrass most guys who haunt alleys for a living. Puddle stuffed everything in a bag—including my proud tools of mayhem—and vanished. Morley and Belinda tied me to the rickety chair formerly occupied by Pular Singe. Singe said something apologetic and drifted off after Puddle.

The scow of consciousness pitched and rolled across heavy seas. The thump had reawakened every headache I'd enjoyed lately. I talked some more but only a drunk would have understood. Or maybe Singe. I'd understood her.

Morley said something about if I was the real thing, he'd treat me to the gourmet best of The Palms. I could not express my joy.

Belinda's apologies sounded more promising.

The two of them rubbed me all over with silver.

A dwarfish voice gobbled something. Morley responded in the same tongue. Belinda began letting me loose. I tried to turn her over my knee but had barely strength enough to raise a hand. I said something in a tongue that sounded sufficiently dwarfish to me but drew no response from anyone else.

I understood Belinda when she said, "You hit him too hard."

"I hit him just right. Too hard and he wouldn't be breathing."

"I think you scrambled his brains."

"Be a little hard to mix them up more than they already are. He'll come out of it."

Bless him for his optimism. I would take it into account when I got even for all his abuses.

"Sorry," he told me, not sounding the least bit contrite. "We had to make sure Puddle got the real you. Been several Garrett sightings lately and I'm sure that, talented as you are, you're not yet able to be two places at once."

"I'm gonna work on it, though," I promised. "I'm gonna be having dinner with Relway and Colonel Block while I'm stuffing that talking vulture down your throat. Sideways."

Some of that dribbled out in comprehensible Karentine. Morley seemed surprised by my attitude. But he didn't let it get in his way. "Something that looked like you turned up at The Palms last night asking for Belinda."

I glanced at Belinda. She was still hanging out there? "Not what you think, Garrett," she said. "Crask and Sadler did such a good job I can still barely move."

Morley continued, "We knew it wasn't you right away."

"Uhn?" So a shapeshifter went there pretending to be me. If there was an easy way to recognize one, I wanted to know. Later. After my head stopped hurting.

"Sarge offered you a mixed pepper platter. One of his little jokes. But you took it and dug right in."

"Now I know they're completely stupid." Even a hog has more sense than to eat peppers. Morley's pepper platter is a gorgeous mix of colors and shapes. Kind of like parrot on a plate. Just the stench, though, would've had me gagging—if I'd been into self-abuse far enough to let Sarge shove something that nasty under my nose in the first place. "What did you do with it?" In a few hours one of those critters could destroy a reputation I've worked on for years.

"We caught him but he got away as soon as we turned our backs. Those things don't have bones, apparently. It got out through a crack barely big enough for a cat."

My brain was up to about half speed. And I had a cup in hand, brought by the dwarf, which smelled strongly of boiled willow bark. I'd only have to suffer the headache another hour, then make sure I never ranged too far from a chamber pot. "Let me see. It was after Belinda. With harm in mind?"

"We took more hardware off it than we did off you just now."

"Stranger and stranger. We have shapeshifters attacking the Weiders. We have them attacking The Call. We have them going after Belinda... " I stopped. My mouth hung open. A small but significant fact had caught up. "Belinda. You've been at Morley's place since we dug you out of that tomb?"

"Mostly sleeping."

"But you've been in touch with your people."

"As much as necessary."

"How about with Marengo North English?"

"North English? Why would I?... "

I raised a paw. "Wait." I let the brain limp along for a minute. "The Call tried to bring on their season of Cleansing last night."

"It fizzled," Morley said. He showed lots of pointy teeth in a wicked grin. He wasn't disappointed.

"While the rest of his gang were having a good time bopping heads and busting shop doors Marengo North English was up north on the edge of Elf Town expecting to meet Belinda for a night's indulgence in the labors of love."

"What?" she barked. "How could?... "

"He got a message. It told him to meet you up there. He believed it was real." I'd believed it was real when he told me. "Men sometimes surrender to wishful thinking." If I'd thought about her condition, I'd have been suspicious as soon as North English mentioned getting the message. Her family owned tenements in the area. It seemed a handy trysting place if you thought in sneak-around terms. Obviously, Marengo did. "When he got there a gang dressed up as righsists tried to murder him. They got interrupted by a gang of dwarves looking for rightsists to pound."

"A marvelous irony," Morley observed, absolutely straight of face.

"I thought so myself." I managed a feeble smile. The first weak efforts of the tea had begun to make my fingertips tingle and my headache less assertive. "There is a common thread in everything," I said. "However confusing. Shapeshifters. All evidently members of a group of commando mercenaries once known as Black Dragon Valsung."

"What about Crask and Sadler?" Belinda asked. "They aren't shapechangers."

"Maybe I'm not thinking as clearly as I imagined." My headache gave a particularly unpleasant throb. Probably Crask and Sadler wishing me evil from their cell, if they were still healthy enough to entertain wishes. "They were hired by shapeshifters." Just to keep my theory alive.

"Or by a somebody who hired the shifters, too," Morley said, knowing that would put a twist on the evidence that I wouldn't like.

I grunted. "Keep in mind that Glory Mooncalled has got to be shoehorned in here somehow, too. I'm pretty sure." Seeing those centaurs had convinced me. Organized, disciplined, military centaurs always have something to do with Glory Mooncalled. No other commander had ever been able to to hold their attention long enough to sell them on the military virtues. No other captain ever got them to fight for ideas instead of money or plunder.

Pular Singe eased into the room diffidently. I wondered what had become of Fenibro. Maybe she'd decided she could get along without the boyfriend. I had yet to see her affliction handicap her very much. "The watchers have followed the parcel of clothing." She spoke slowly and carefully. Her diction was the equal of Fenibro's. She was proud of herself. "I will have no trouble tracking any but one. One leaves no trail at all."

I frowned at Morley. He shrugged. Belinda said, "It shouldn't take them long to figure out that Puddle doesn't have Garrett's bones in that sack."

"Point taken. Can you walk, Garrett?"

"In circles."

Pular Singe said, "The one who leaves no trail is like the one who pretended to be... " She pointed at me. "That one had no scent, either."

Interesting. Could that be a way to detect changers? Add a ratman to your bodyguard?