Gilded Latten Bones

28

One custom had not changed since my move to Factory Slide. Singe had kept up the payments on the cold well in the kitchen. Currently, that contained a keg of Weider Pale Ale, a Pular Singe favorite. My taste runs to something slightly heavier but the pale ale was plenty good after several days dry.

Singe and I both drew big mugs and backup pitchers before we headed for her office, leaving Dean preparing a meal obviously meant for more people than me, Singe, and Morley. We settled into the wonderful new furniture and began to scheme out how this thing would go.

I said, "First thing, I want to catch up on what you did last week, up on the north side." I took a sip of the pale. Tasty! "I saw you. They probably didn't tell you what was going on."

"Not a lot, no. I took the job because you asked me to in your note."

"And?"

"And what? You need to use small words and be very clear with us Other Races."

Was she serious? Or just messing with me? Most of my friends did. Singe had been an exception. "The tracking job. Where did that take you? What did you find? That might give me some clue about what I need to do to help Morley. I know you found something because you're you, Pular Singe, the best there is and maybe ever was."

"Wow! Doesn't that make me feel special?"

"Singe! Please."

"I keep forgetting that you're a gelding now. All right. Miss Contague asked me to backtrack a team of goats. I did, into Elf Town, to a small warehouse, where we found some totally ridiculous stuff."

"Meaning?"

"I can't think of a way to say it better."

"So just tell me."

"All right. The warehouse was maybe forty by sixty feet, two stories tall, all open inside. The goat cart left the warehouse through a pair of doors, each three feet wide and of normal height. They were barred from inside when we got there. Miss Contague's men broke in while Director Relway's Specials looked the other way."

Pardon me, children. I can make this easier for you both. It is a significant event that Garrett has no knowledge of beyond the fact that Miss Contague wanted that cart backtracked.

Singe said, "She knew goats are more pungent and persistent than people. Tracing them would be the easiest way to get a handle on our villain. May I get on with my report?"

No. Too much will be lost if you do it verbally.

Vaguely, I heard Singe use language unladylike even for a ratgirl, then found myself living a memory, riding behind her eyes from the moment she started the trace. Initially, there were flashes, excised moments, as the Dead Man skipped me along like a flat stone across a pond. The stills came closer and closer together. Then I was outside the aforementioned double doors. They had been painted recently, a repugnant flat olive with a repulsive odor.

Red tops stared the other way while Belinda's thugs broke through. Nobody came to protest the violation. Because the doors were standing open when they arrived the Specials were free to pass through and see if crimes were in progress inside.

Nobody was home. Belinda's men and the tin whistles alike produced lights, moved fast.

I was fascinated by the differences in how Singe and I sensed the world. For her, visual things were less crisp and weaker on color. Her depth of field was limited. She had trouble seeing clearly things that were more than fifty feet away. But the smells!

She lived in a rich, rich world of aroma.

Her brother once told me the sense of smell was dramatically more important to rats than to humans and most of the Other Races. I had believed him but not to this extent. The smells were overwhelming.

And, inside that place, they were not good. They were the smells of corrupting flesh, of chemicals and poisons, smells implanted in ratkind racial memory. A place that smelled like it was where Singe's ancestors had been created. That thought hit her the instant she stepped inside, before the first lamp shed light.

Light only confirmed truths evident to her genius nose.

I could be a little parasite swimming around in Singe's recollections but I could not fully appreciate her experience. My senses acknowledged much different priorities.

Once the raiders made light I saw that the place conformed to the dimensions Singe had reported. There were no internal walls except for the far corner on the left side where a space eight feet by ten was isolated behind partitions eight feet high. There was nothing overhead but framing for a peaked roof, the rooftree of which was twenty feet above the floor.

Ahead were numerous glass vats big enough to hold a human being. Several did. They could have been blown only by an artist with a knack for sorcery. Every thug and tin whistle instantly decided that discovering the provenance of the vats would lead them right to the devil who had created this abomination.

The intruders moved deeper into the warehouse. The stench of corruption grew thicker. Scores of dead flies floated in the solution in those vats without closed tops. There were no active flies. They came in the front door but did not make it all the way to the rotting flesh.

That did come from dead people. A twenty foot long, massive oak workbench stood against the back wall. It boasted three corpses in the process of disassembly. Extra parts lay scattered about. At the right-hand end of the bench sat the biggest vat in the place, only as tall as the table but three feet wide and six feet long. Scrap pieces could be swept off into a solution that had to be something ferocious-though becoming slightly diluted. There were chunks of inadequately consumed big bones in there.

Singe had shut down all but the observer part of her mind. She handled the horror better than I would have. Certainly better than Belinda's soldiers and the tin whistles did. Several left and would not come back. Others did return but absent their latest several meals. Only the Windwalker, Furious Tide of Light, seemed unaffected. She moved through the place slowly, examining everything.

Experiencing all that through Singe's nose was no joy, though to the primal rats from which she descended stinky meat had meant food.

Singe paid little attention to the Windwalker. I was unable to watch the lethal waif saunter about, surrounded by a ten foot come-no-closer spell. Singe was interested only in the manufactory of horror.

That was what she had found. A place where monsters were made from pieces of dead people. It might be the foulest necromantic den TunFaire had turned up in centuries.

I felt frustrated. She didn't just pay no attention to the Windwalker, she didn't poke where I would have poked. Though she did better than I might have, really. I would have focused on the Windwalker. She was remarkable in so many ways, including by being off the Hill, one of TunFaire's top sorcerers. And, once upon a time, she had made it plain that she was inclined to stand very close to a certain professional investigator.

Garrett!

Nothing like a hammer between the eyes to make you concentrate.

Singe left the others for the walled-off section. It had a makeshift door that could be latched from either side. It was ajar. She pushed it open. "Can someone bring a light?"

One arrived quickly. Singe and the light bringer entered the room. The Windwalker followed. She did something mystic to create a better light.

The space was a child's room. Dirty clothes were scattered everywhere. An unmade bed was occupied by a large, tattered stuffed bear. Clutter was everywhere. It included moldy remnants of unfinished meals. The tin whistle with the lantern observed, "Somebody likes stuffed critters." There had to be fifteen of those, mostly large. The clothing was girl stuff, in what seemed to be a variety of adolescent sizes. Singe never actively examined those.

Singe sniffed. The Windwalker began an intense visual examination. The tin whistle asked, "He kept a kid prisoner?" Jumping to the obvious conclusion. "We need to get this guy."

Furious Tide of Light said, "Would you step outside, officer? Watch from the doorway if you like. Our first task will be to find out who lived here." She let Singe stay. Singe was the miracle girl.

The miracle girl didn't pay attention to what the Windwalker was doing. Near as I could figure, the woman was doing the same as Singe, only sniffing for magic.

And that was that. Furious Tide of Light decided that the place ought to be evacuated and cordoned off. A guard would be posted and no one would be allowed in except at Prince Rupert's direction. Singe learned what she could but had to leave with everyone else. She reported to Belinda, then came home. Nothing more had been heard.

Amongst the things I found while Miss Contague was with us was an angry recollection of being asked to drop her private investigation by the Crown Prince.