Faded Steel Heat

106

Morley cursed softly. Somehow, cobwebs had gotten onto the lace of one of his cuffs. Soil was supposed to avoid him. "This isn't the fun it used to be, Garrett."

"Fun? Fun doesn't have anything to do with it. We're the last righteous men, standing with jaws firm in the face of the chaos."

Pular Singe giggled.

Morley cursed again, but conceded, "It is a great way to meet interesting women."

"Can't disagree with that." Strange ones, too. "What is it?" Singe had stopped. She sniffed. I couldn't see a thing. The one lantern I'd come up with hadn't lasted all the way through the underground passage.

We were in the wagon lot behind the brewery loading docks, having exited the brewery through the storage caves. I hadn't been able to stop and share a tankard with Mr. Burkel, who'd been disappointed. But he'd told us we were only minutes behind Tama, who hadn't been able to negotiate the tunnels with our ease.

"She got aboard a wagon," Singe told me.

There were at least twenty of those crowded into the lot, waiting for sunrise. Morley grumped something about have to search them all. Singe said, "No, the wagon left."

I glanced back at the dock. There were two dock wallopers on duty, snoozing on stools under a single feeble lantern. Nights, of course, they only loaded independent haulers.

I woke them up. With sullen cheer they admitted having loaded a small wagon a short time earlier. "One driver," one told me. "Out of Dwarf Fort. They' re fixin' to celebrate one of their holidays."

"She's on a cart out of Dwarf Fort," I told Morley.

"Then we'd better move fast." Dwarf Fort wasn't far away.

"She won't be headed there herself. She knows about Singe and she's improvising. She'll get off before the wagon goes inside."

Embarrassed, Singe informed me, "I cannot trail her well if she is riding."

"So how about you follow the wagon? Or the horses, if you can stand the stink? You knew she got into a wagon and there's only been one go out of here lately, seems like you could."

Singe brightened instantly. That hadn't occurred to her. Yet. It would have. She sniff-sniff-sniffed, then headed out.

"Not only brilliant and talented and beautiful but fast as well," Morley whispered. "You don't want to let this one get away."

"Did Marengo North English and Bondurant Altoona rub off on you?" He was ragging me at Singe's expense.

"Whoa!" He started to argue but decided against. "All right. Let's abuse the parrot." Who, conveniently, wasn't around to defend himself. He'd chosen to stay behind. Apparently. I was always the last to know what that overdressed crow was up to. Or even what that critter who figured everything out for him was up to, for that matter. We were in for some headbutting after this mess settled out.

"Wish you'd decided that a year ago. Then maybe held him underwater to see how long he could go without breathing." Singe flinched. She still wasn't used to our banter. It always took her a moment to realize we weren't really about to skin each other. "I'm thinking about spiking your goulash with catnip. Then you'd wake up married to Winger."

"Couldn't. She's already got a husband somewhere. And I'm engaged."

"Really? When did that happen?"

"Oh, back before I was born. I just don't talk about it much. My grandparents arranged it. They were immigrants. They stuck to the old ways. They still try to."

"I'll bet you're a major disappointment."

"They weep human tears at every family gathering."

"When are you supposed to start making this poor woman miserable?"

"Oh, a long time ago. But she never showed up for the ceremony."

"Smart woman."

"She just hadn't met me. If she had... I don't know if I could've talked my way out of that. The old folks are stubborn as rocks. They still carry on like it was my fault. They can't blame it on Indalir's family. They have royal blood. As if every elf who ever walked doesn't, the way those people tumble anybody who can't outrun them."

"I'm glad you aren't the kind of lowlife who finds women interesting."

"Definitely one weakness you can't pin on me."

Pular Singe stopped. She turned slowly, nostrils flaring. Morley shut up and began searching the night, too. He loosened his swordcane. I said, "I hoped they'd lose us because of those tunnels."

Singe said, "No. Not watchers. It is the two evil men who escaped. They met the wagon here." She dropped to all fours, circled, sniffed.

I muttered, "Coincidence? Or prearrangement?"

Morley asked the important question. "How could they know where she'd be? She didn't know. She was just running."

"If she thought tonight might be the end of her run, she might've had somebody waiting outside. Who's going to pay any attention to a dwarf making a beer run?"

"There is the smell of fear," Singe said. "Mostly from the driver but also from the woman. I think she did not expect to encounter the evil men."

"She wouldn't want to run into them," Morley said. "After what they've been through they'd have a few bones to crack with her."

"If they got this far, I'll bet it was because they were allowed to," I said. "There'll be somebody else on this trail real soon, Singe. Probably the little man who tries so hard to hide who he is."

Morley tested his cane again. "You carrying anything?"

"I'm not military but I'm fixed." I did wish that I had my head-knocker. I needed to have some more of those made up.

"Notice the streets are empty."

"They're never busy down here. And there were centaurs around. Maybe there still are." It was unusually quiet, though.

Singe squeaked. "Blood. The direction changes. That way."

"I'm blind here," I reminded them. "I'm cursed with human eyes."

"Over there," Singe said.

I went. Morley followed. He confessed, "Her eyes are better than mine, too."

The treasure at the end of this dark rainbow was a broken dwarf. He wasn't dead but that was only because Crask and Sadler hadn't felt any urgent need to kill him. They'd only wanted his wagon. We left him for Master Relway. Singe picked up the trail again. She wasted no time getting on with the hunt.

The cynic in me, or maybe the practical businessman, told me I had to get in good with her now because she was going to be a phenomenon later. All she needed was a little more confidence, a little more experience, and a little more force of personality.

I kept up, puffing. I gasped, "I'm worn-out. These last few days just never made much sense. Everybody I know was mixed up in it, all of them banging off each other and getting in each other's way... "

"Sometimes the world works that way, Garrett," Morley replied. "When everybody heads a different direction nobody gets anywhere."

I understood that but it didn't satisfy my sense of propriety. Everybody jumped into the mud. They all clawed and slashed in squalid pettiness, all the while espousing grand ideals.

I grunted. Morley chuckled, then said, "Here you go launching another clipper of despair because all the humans you know act like human beings."

We really are a tribe of sleazeballs but I don't like being reminded of it. It would be nice to believe that at least some of us are climbing toward the light without pursuing a hidden agenda.

Singe slowed. I took the opportunity to recapture my breath before it got away completely. The ratgirl whispered, "The wagon is just ahead." I knew that. I heard its iron-rimmed wheels banging the cobblestones. "It is a small one drawn by two ponies." Which was no surprise, dwarves not being inclined toward big wagons and plowhorses. "I smell fresh blood."

The coldness that always comes when I think about Crask and Sadler began to engulf me. I was almost superstitious about those guys. I wasn't, strictly speaking, scared of them but I dreaded a confrontation because facing them was like challenging forces of nature.

Morley observed, "They'll still be in bad shape. Their jail time couldn't have been any holiday." In tone more than word he sounded like he wanted to convince himself. So maybe he had his own reservations.

The villians had set a course headed north. Soon they'd leave this quiet neighborhood for one where the night people thronged. Nobody likes to work with strangers looking over their shoulders. We had to do something soon.

"You go along the right side and grab the driver," Morley said. "I'll take the left."

"Me?"

"You're taller and heavier. You'll have more leverage."

No point arguing with the obvious. "Now?"

"Without all that stomping. You don't want them to know you're coming."

Stomping? I wasn't making a sound. All I could hear was the whisper of Singe's nails on the paving stones.

Now there was enough diffuse light that I could make out vague shapes and keep from crashing into walls and watering troughs. Soon I made out the dwarf wagon. Morley loped beside me, in step. I murmured, "I see it."

"Do it."

My heartbeat increased rapidly. This confrontation had haunted me for years.

From somewhere came a loud, "Awk!" in distinct parrotese. It didn't sound like a warning so it must have been only to let me know there was a friendly witness. Which wasn't much comfort since it was hardly possible for reinforcements to arrive in time if I screwed up.

Singe must've been more scared than she let on. She began to fall behind.

Any noise I made got covered by the curses of the man driving. He couldn't get those stubborn ponies to move faster than a walk. Dwarf ponies have one speed. Slow. The only alternative gait is dead stop, inevitably exercised in the event of excessive brutality.

Funny. Dwarf ponies are a whole lot like dwarves.

I grabbed the driver's right arm, used my momentum to pull him down. I couldn't tell which man I'd grabbed but that didn't really matter. Crask and Sadler might as well have been twins. I didn't see the other one. He had to be inside the wagon, probably in worse shape.

I glimpsed a surprised face as my victim hit the cobblestones. Foul air blew out of him. He groaned, then lay still. I moved in warily.

There was no need. The anticlimax was real. Sadler had bashed the stuffing out of the street with the back of his head. Shaking with the letdown I tried to decide how to tie him up so he'd still be there when Relway's crew arrived. "I got mine!" I said.

The Goddamn Parrot offered a pleased squawk from somewhere overhead.

The wagon stopped. Morley said, "Crask's inside. He's unconscious."

"Another anticlimax."

"What're you talking about?"

"For years I've expected this. It was going to be an epic battle. Bodies flying around, knocking down houses, busting holes in the street. Going on for hours. Everybody'd have to bring a lunch. Instead we butt heads with them three times in the last few days and hardly got a scratch for our trouble."

"So we caught them when they were weak. That's the smart way to do it. Hang on. This one's bleeding. Hell. He's got a knife stuck in him! I'm not so sure I want to snuggle up with Tama Montezuma after all."

I used strips torn from Sadler's jail smock to bind his wrists behind him. He made vague gurgling sounds. I asked, "Where is she? She in there?"

"Bad news, Garrett. More bad news. There's nobody in here but me and Crask and ten kegs of Weider's cheapest beer. And the dwarves will come looking for that before long."

"Awk!" Eight pounds of outrage in a three-pound package slammed down onto my shoulder. I lurched toward the wagon.

Morley was right. There was no beautiful woman in there at all, let alone the marvelous Miss Montezuma. "Where did she go? How could we lose her? Singe? Singe, where are you?"

Singe didn't answer me. I scurried around calling her name. Morley started laughing. He gasped, "We've been had, Garrett. You realize that? We've been snookered by a ratgirl."

"Yuck it up, you glorified greengrocer."

He kept laughing. "We can't go anywhere without Pular Singe. Not if we want to get there ahead of Relway or North English or Belinda. Only question left is, did the kid do it on her own or did Reliance put her up to it?"

"You really think it's that hilarious?"

"Well, no, actually. I don't enjoy getting slicked, either. I'd rather it was me doing the slicking. But you and I don't really need the money. We just think it'd be nice to keep North English from getting it back. And you want Montezuma for what she did to the Weiders."

I grunted, grumped. "I think I'll just go home and go to bed now."

"Why?"

"I should've expected this. Nothing in this whole damned mess had gone the way you'd expect it to or made any sense while it was going to hell. So I think I'll just wish Singe good luck, drop out now, and let the loose ends tie themselves up on their own."

"Garrett, there's sure to be a fortune involved."

"You just told me you don't need the money."

"I didn't say it wouldn't be nice to have it."

"Tinnie is still back at the Weider place." So was my sometime partner. But he could look out for himself. I was little peeved with him.

"You want Winger to score on this one?"

"You think she'd ditch the old guys?"

"I think Saucerhead will actually have a thought somewhere along the way, will say it out loud, will get no answer, and will discover that he no longer has one of his companions."

"Playmate... "

"Is so honest he's easier to flummox than Saucerhead is. He won't suspect a thing if she tells him she had to step into an alley to get rid of some of that beer. Tharpe would be suspicious, though. He's dim but his light isn't all the way out. And he's had experience with Winger."

Relway's troops began filtering out of the darkness. That put an end to all speculation.

The Goddamn Parrot began swearing his black heart out. Maybe my partner took Singe's coup personally even though it didn't really have much to do with him.

107

That really should've been the end of it, I thought. Most of the guilty had been exposed as villains. The whys and some of the wherefores of their crimes had been dragged sniveling into the sunlight. Clever exposure of truths dredged from evil minds and a judicious stimulation of wicked rumor by my sedentary sidekick, mainly behind my back, resulted in an indefinite postponement of the Cleansing. It particularly disarmed Glory Mooncalled by laying waste to his beloved rebel image. The more exciting rumors even stirred a Royal Inquest into the behaviors of Perilous Spite when some of his peers began to wonder if those rumors had substance and Spite might plan to use captured shapeshifters in some wicked scheme of his own.

The Dean Man hadn't dared touch the stormwarden's mind at Weider's but four centuries of observing human misbehavior closely had allowed him to manufacture rumors that got the Hill churning like an overturned anthill. Spite's enemies soon resurrected old questions about his management of the secret and special services during the war. Even his friends began to wonder aloud about several mysteries surrounding his tenure.

Working with Ty Weider, whom he liked for some reason, His Nibs even helped fashion a face-saving formula whereby Ty Weider and gorgeous Giorgi Nicholas could honorably evade an alliance not even their parents found particularly desirable anymore. That mostly took exposure of the truth that only inertia was keeping any of the principals committed and quiet revelation of the "fact" that Ty would be unable to father an heir.

Life was good for Garrett. I had plenty of time to do what I do best, which is nothing.

But Tama Montezuma was still on the run. And Pular Singe hadn' t been seen since she'd deserted me, though Reliance and Fenibro both accused me of having squirreled her away in my harem. Neither Belinda nor Relway eased up on their machinations and malfeasances. Neither gave a rat's whisker if the Dead Man did know what they were doing. The Dead Man, of course, didn't make their mischief public, as he did with The Call, Perilous Spite, and his own personal fallen angel, Glory Mooncalled.

The stormwarden was particularly not happy but didn't get a chance to look for the source of his embarrassment. Odds were he never would. He had to devote all his genius to the manufacture of plausible explanations of how a man with his talents could blunder so often and so egregiously while Karenta's chief spymaster and still have grown filthy rich. Rumor began to speculate about possible past connections with the Dragons.

The day had been saved. I think.

At times I wonder, though, if TunFaire really deserves saving—whether the threat is from our own homegrown monsters or those from outside our experience.

If we didn't have a thousand religions already, I' d get me a black outfit and a big black book, grow a scraggly beard and start squawking about salvation and redemption. I know where I can get a black goat.

Grudgingly, of course, I admit that the Dead Man's efforts had made it possible for life to return to normal at the Garrett homestead. Or as nearly normal as a place can be while infested by a menagerie. It was a good week. Not one wannabe client came pounding on my door.

Dean had the place looking respectable again. Saucerhead and Winger had gotten the Dead Man back onto his wooden throne, not obviously the worse for his adventure. He looked like he'd never left home but certainly didn't think like it. He remained way too excited to fall asleep. Strategically, it would've been a great time to take on another tough case. Old Bones was up for anything that would let him show off. The only downside was that he just would not leave off complaining about having been stuffed into that settling tank. And never mind the fact that the ruse had been his own brainchild entirely. I'd nothing to do with the planning or execution of his scheme. I'd had only the shortest and most ambiguous warning that he intended to come to the party.

Dean complained more than the Dead Man did. He hadn't enjoyed having to move out, even for just a few days, never mind that it had been for appearance's sake. He refused to accept that explanation. He was going to make sure I shared his unhappiness.

Fortunately, Tinnie came around several times to help him clean and to cheer him up and to make him feel guilty about being alive. Her visits offered me blessed respites from both cranksters.

I caught up on my gossip with Eleanor. I scandalized Mrs. Cardonlos by telling her that I knew she was a police spy but I didn't mind that. I'm now convinced that she is Relway's creature. But I don't care. Me telling her I know she is a police spy has her backing off. It's clear she doesn't want such ideas to afflict her less tolerant neighbors.

To my complete and eternal astonishment everyone who had hired me paid all the fees and expenses I claimed. I was boggled because there were so few quibbles. Marengo North English astonished me by not holding a wake for each copper he had to let go. I got the distinct impression that he was in a huge hurry to get me the hell out of his life.

Despite all the good news my life was not very satisfying. A lot of people had gotten hurt and not many of the ones who did had deserved it. I couldn't help feeling there must've been more I could've done to keep evil at bay. Something I should probably be doing still.

Sometimes life may make no sense but you can't give up on it. You've got to soldier on. You probably can't win but if you abandon the struggle the darkness rushes in and swallows everything. But, on the other hand, you do get tired fighting the good fight. Me, Block, even Relway sometimes, we all feel faded, like the steel has gone, leaving no heat.