Gilded Latten Bones

73

Singe brought Barate Algarda into the Dead Man's room. He was not in a good mood but he had shown up quickly. He wasn't wearing a mesh helmet. He wasn't going to hide.

Barate Algarda was a big man, Saucerhead size, ugly, and unkempt. He looked like a down-on-his-luck thug not getting much work because of Deal Relway's impact on the shadow economy. He nurtured that image. It left people unready for the real Barate Algarda. He was as bright and quick as his female descendants. His only talent for the magical, though, was a strong natural resistance to the Dead Man's mind probes.

Algarda was darker and wider than Strafa or Kevans. Strafa took after her mother, whom I had seen in ghost form, once upon a time. Kevans had gotten a little more from the paternal side. She'd never be a beauty.

Algarda barely glanced at the Dead Man. "Well?"

Singe remained in the doorway, I suppose so she could jump in if Algarda became actively hostile. He had done so before, when he thought his daughters were threatened.

"Did Kevans explain what's been going on?"

"Honestly? Not really. I got the impression that she thought she was being hounded unfairly."

"That could be."

"She showed the same attitude when her bunch were breeding giant bugs." He added, "Gods, I'm glad they didn't do any spiders."

I shivered. Me, too. "You have to admit, Kevans has a sociopathic side."

"Runs in the family."

Indeed. "So let me sketch some situations that turn out to be tied together." I brought him up to speed.

"Bizarre. Where does my daughter fit?"

I started looking for the best words to indicate a warehouse owned by his mother.

"Not Kevans. The Windwalker."

"Oh." I gave it to him straight, leaving out the personal side.

"The Crown Prince, eh?" he interjected at one point.

"Yeah."

Morley listened quietly. Playmate joined Old Bones in dreamland, only he snored. Curious Singe looked like my sanitized tale made her want to take a nap, too.

"Glassware, eh?" Algarda mused, out of nowhere. "Unusual glassware. In a warehouse. In Elf Town."

"Where Kevans lived for a year. A place owned by your mother."

He seemed mildly surprised. "A strange woman, my mother. She kept secrets."

Why not just add another whole level of weird? Though the Dead Man would have cautioned me about jumping to conclusions based on prejudices.

I reiterated, "There was evidence that Kevans stayed there. The Specials have that. She says she was there for a year. She knew about the place because her grandmother took her there when she was twelve."

"That's how you got to my mother."

"Does the glassware mean anything special?"

"Not really."

"Morley, could you hold that lamp up so Mr. Algarda can get a look at those pictures?"

Morley turned the pictures, too. They had not been visible from where Algarda was standing. Algarda asked, "Who are these people?"

"I was hoping you could tell me."

"I can tell you who they were forty years ago. This is my great uncle Nathaniel. He died while I was in the Cantard."

"Did he have kids? Playmate remembers him as a neighborhood thug from when he was a kid. Morley remembers him vaguely, with no where, when, or why. Today he's a resurrection man called Nathan." I had to explain that because Algarda was unfamiliar with the term.

"Really? People will do anything, won't they? It took a lunatic god to create our tribe. Let me think." He put on a frown more of puzzlement than concentration. "All right. Nathaniel had one child, Jane. She would be my mother's cousin but was way younger than Mom. Younger than me, even. She was a ferociously wicked, precocious six-year-old last time I saw her. She might've looked like this at eighteen." He indicated the drawings of the woman. "She'd be in her fifties, now."

We had an old woman in the mix, though based on nothing solid I guessed she would be older than that. "Could she have produced children who looked like their ancestors?"

Algarda shrugged. "Possibly. I don't know much about those people. We never had a lot to do with them. They weren't good people." He shot me a sudden, narrow look, maybe reading something into my question. "As far as I know, their line died out during my first tour." He looked at the artwork more closely, appreciating what Penny had captured. "The man even has the scars Nathaniel had." He looked hungry when he considered Penny's drawings.

He was deeply uncomfortable when our gazes met again. "Are you some kind of diabolical facilitator?"

"Excuse me?"

"Last time the Algardas got into trouble you were digging up worms. Here you go again."

Morley interjected, "The worms were there, begging to be dug. Be grateful Garrett was manning the shovel."

Algarda was a hard guy. He tried laying a hard look on Morley. Morley took no notice. Algarda said, "You're right. There's probably some serious behind-the-scenes rumbling going on at the top of the Hill. This could even tie in to some odd questions I've been asked lately, by people I never expected to visit my new place."

He did not explain. He did say, "I'll dig into a couple of old family legends." He turned toward the doorway.

Singe did not move. She looked to me for advice. I nodded, but said, "I'm supposed to tell you to go straight to the place in Elf Town from here."

He frowned. "For who?"

"The Windwalker."

He gave me the hard-eye but then just nodded and turned to follow Singe. She returned from the door to say, "I don't think he is happy with you."

"My heart is broken. Was his mother involved last time we had some excitement with his people? A couple of old crows got themselves dead, if I remember."

"I do not recall. I will look it up." Someone knocked. "That will be Mr. Tharpe."

"Have you started reading minds, too?"

"No. That would be crippling around you two. I saw him coming up the street when I let Mr. Algarda out." She went to open up.

Morley said, "We're inching toward something."

"Yes. And it might involve the undead or zombies after all."