Gilded Latten Bones

101

There were faces all round me, looking down, when badly blurred vision began to return. I tried to say, "Hey! You guys are all right."

Unless I was hallucinating, the circle included Morley, Belinda, Penny, John Stretch and Dollar Dan, Dean, and Strafa shouting down a long tunnel about how leaving me unsupervised was worse than leaving a three-year-old home alone.

Penny was crying. I heard General Block and several others yammering farther away.

Singe hove into view armed with a pitcher and mugs. She said something about how it was too damned expensive to have me live at home anymore. Mr. Mulclar was already at work repairing the door.

I'm not sure how my head was working. I wondered how long I had been out but what came out was, "The Bird?"

"It has been handled," Morley told me. "You have been unconscious for sixteen hours." Which meant it was the middle of the night, now. Why were all these people here in the middle of the night?

While I was thinking that Crush and Mike poked their clocks in to check the status of my breathing. I heard DeeDee giggle somewhere, apparently at a joke Saucerhead told Playmate.

Dean reported, "The monster did it. It shape-shifted into the man Bird painted, only in awful shape. Big chunks were missing. He looked like he'd been rotting. But he was in good enough shape to go pound you. He took off with the woman and the cart."

Singe said, "I tracked them to the Knodical. The woman who hit Fire and Ice went there, too. They wouldn't take these two in. They headed up the hill from the Knodical. I lost them. They poisoned the trail again."

Strafa said, "I checked my house. They didn't go there."

"Don't matter where they run," I tried to say. "I know what they're doing. I think I know where they're doing it."

So there I was, with people crowding in, eager to hear the big revelation.

I went back to sleep amidst a great fuss about concussions.

I wakened to a remixed set of faces. This set included Deal Relway and Westman Block. The latter was in no mood for foreplay. "We've been fired."

I made noises.

"Can they do that? They can. For cause. Strictly speaking, for actually doing the kind of corrupt stuff they're insisting that we do. In a broader sense, they have to make it stick. Right now it doesn't look like they have the horses."

I made more noises while wondering why they were here instead of out doing something useful.

"The public temper is fragile right now. People are nervous and upset. Two attacks in one night by monsters and zombies is a little excessive. Dismissing the Civil Guard officer corps for trying to deal with it may be too much. We have every man out trying to keep the head on the barrel."

"How come you're here?"

"Because the King's men don't dare come after us here. Word is out that the Dead Man is awake and extremely unhappy."

He was not. I got no sense of Himself at all.

"Last resort, we will let out the truth about the thread men."

Several people helped me up, including Morley. "Trying to play Little Dead Man, eh? Going to sleep right after dropping a big hint that you had it all worked out."

They moved me to Singe's office, installed me in the best chair. I could not help seeing the empty doorway during the journey. I whined.

Singe told me, "Mr. Mulclar will have it fixed by this time tomorrow."

Mulclar had been maintaining the door for several years.

"What happened to the F and I girls?"

"Gone to watch a Jon Salvation play rehearse. Then they'll head for Strafa's. She's going put them up for a couple nights."

I glanced at Strafa. She nodded. "You'd better get over there and lock up your valuables. How about the Bird?"

Block said, "In a cell at the Al-Khar and still bitching. Forensics is trying to figure out how."

"Thought you were fired."

Relway said, "Only in theory. The King and Crown Prince are isolated in Knodical. The Specials have kept them from communicating with the cavalry barracks."

Some bright monarch, having attained the throne with the assistance of the city garrison, had bought insurance against a repetition by moving all the barracks outside the city wall. Now the troops were in no position to put down a mutiny by the tin whistles.

"That's a big risk."

Block said, "We know. We took it because the Windwalker told us you figured the mess out and can tell us what we need to do to restore order."

Strafa made kissy lips from across the room.

Now I had to deliver.

"I still don't know how Morley fits. Maybe the gods just wanted to get our attention. He'll remember eventually."

"Time is wasting," Block said. "Don't go wallowing in it the way your sidekick does."

"What's been happening is, villains from an old branch of the Algarda family tree, armed with the family talent for sorcery, found a way to stay young and beautiful-and to make dramatic physical improvements."

I had them. Everybody wants to be beautiful forever.

"I don't know how they do it. Your forensic sorcerers can figure that out. But it has to be the cruelest sorcery ever. They started out using dead people. Resurrection men have been around for ages, keeping a low profile, stealing corpses to sell to sorcerers for their research. The bodies could be patched together to use as. . We don't know what they used them for, back when. Maybe illegal stuff that a live villain couldn't survive. We may turn up answers to a lot of old questions before we're done."

"What changed?" Relway asked.

"Several things. The most important was, the cost of staying young kept going up. The longer they lived, the harder it got to stay beautiful. Gilded latten."

"What does that mean?" Relway demanded.

"Remember Belle Chimes? The Bellman? No? Doesn't matter. He apprenticed in a jewelry shop. He told me about an alloy called latten. It has four or five metals in it. There is no fixed formula. The main ingredient is zinc. The point is, latten makes a perfect base for cheap jewelry, candlesticks, and whatnot, that look like something rich. The gold in one sovereign can coat more than a hundred pieces of latten jewelry-every one as pretty as a piece crafted from solid noble metal."

"Gilded latten?"

"In this case, gilded latten bones."

Block and Relway both scowled at me.

I said, "Their real troubles started when they took on clients outside the family."

They rewarded me with a nice little stir.

I thought I understood the Dead Man a little better.

"Demand for bodies outstripped supply even after they made a deal with the Works Department for its dead."

"You think they started buying them still on the hoof?"

"I do. Live bodies should have a lot more of whatever it was they were taking." I looked to Strafa. She offered an uncertain nod. It was not her area of expertise. "They probably only took the dying to start. But they got hungry. And maybe greedy."

Strafa said, "Note that the undead have always favored live victims."

The Director made a weird noise. "We can invoke the Undead Protection Acts! The King himself can't overrule those because the King could be a vampire covering his own ass." The ugly little man stamped around chuckling and rubbing his hands together.

Block said, "You're scaring the mundanes, Deal."

"Maybe. Maybe. But that has got to be our angle. Once we proclaim the invocation on the steps of the Chancellery, everything stops till the King proves he's not undead."

I said, "I think that might be something like what's really true."

"He's a vampire?" Relway asked.

"No. He's a horndog fool who charged in with eyes wide shut. Anybody who's seen the women in black has to know they can get anything they want from most any man alive. One broke the heart of a nancy tailor when she was getting fitted."

"You saying there's more than one?"

"Has to be. One was wounded at Fire and Ice. She couldn't possibly have healed up in time to come at us here." But if she had quick access to the life-magic she used to stay young. .

Singe reminded me, "That one is holed up in the Knodical with Prince Rupert and the King."

Morley asked, "You think they were taking turns being the old woman and the young woman?"

"Something like that." I hadn't thought it out that far.

"Where does the King fit?"

"I think he saw and decided he wanted. They might have set him up. They could do themselves a lot of good if they controlled the head of state."

Morley didn't say anything but I could practically hear him wondering how he had gotten involved.

I said, "The Little Dismal notion came up before. You said you'd look at it. What happened?"

Block said, "Arrests have been made. More will follow after the bean counters go through the records. Specials have taken charge. The wicked won't tap that pool again."

"Excellent. Then all we have to do is to go down to their place of business and root them out."

"Their place of business?"

"That abandoned warehouse on the Landing."

"Which abandoned warehouse?"

"The one I sent John Stretch to tell you about the other day."

Relway growled, "You sent a ratman with a message?"

Said ratman was in the room and he was not happy. "The message was delivered to the Al-Khar, at the door. The duty constable assured me that it would be passed along. She and the guards there would not let me deliver the message in person."

Block told a scowling Relway, "We just found our volunteers for the Bustee patrols."

Relway said, "It's time to go into action."

Before anyone could suggest a better or more cautious course those two were clambering past the crippled front door.

I was aggravated. There were matters in need of discussion and resolution.

Even my new sweetie took off, claiming a need for face time with colleagues on the Hill.

That angle of our thing scared the crap out of me. I could relate to Furious Tide of Light, no problem. But hobnob with her class? I didn't think I had it in me.