Wicked Bronze Ambition

102

The stroll to the Dream Quarter took us into a new climate zone. The sun there was trying to break through the overcast. Then the ground quivered gently, weirdly, just as a sunbeam pierced the clouds and stabbed Chattaree, painting the masonry bone white and pale golden.

“Somebody got all busy with the whitewash,” Morley said.

“Yeah. I didn’t notice the other day. But the light was bad then.”

Clouds above went on about their celestial business. The sunbeam perished. Chattaree lost its glow.

Morley quipped, “That couldn’t last.”

“Looked too much like a blessing.”

We came to the bench that Moonblight and I had exploited before. I decided to repeat the exercise, though the east end was occupied by a derelict. A little guy, he had not yet chosen to make the bench a bed. I scooted over enough to make end room for Morley, then leaned back and considered the cathedral, wondering, now that I was there, what I could actually do.

Brownie and the girls showed a strong interest in the bum. He was not happy about that.

Most of us have trouble seeing the unexpected. I didn’t expect to be sharing a bench with Niea Syx, cathedral gatekeeper, so I failed to recognize him for half a minute. Of course, he had recognized me as we approached and now wanted to remain unnoticed, which he might manage if he didn’t make a run for it.

“Niea. My man. How you doing?”

Not so good, his body language suggested.

I could not recall the circumstances of his exodus from the Macunado House. I hadn’t put him out the door. Maybe Penny did. “How come you’re out here?”

He gave me a hangdog look worthy of Number Two at her most artfully pathetic, rubbed his left biceps, looked like he blamed it all on me, whatever “it” might be, and said nothing.

I got some mental exercise by jumping to a wrong conclusion. “They busted your ass because we took you when we dragged Almaz and his thugs off.”

Sigh. “No, sir. I got thrown down the steps when those men showed up looking for Magister Bezma. They wouldn’t believe that he isn’t there.”

“Everyone knows the Leading General Select Secretary for Finance never leaves his quarters.” Just trying to be helpful.

“True. Insiders. Which they were not. I thought I was lying. It turned out that I was telling the truth. I think.”

“There it goes again,” Morley said, nervously.

The earth shrugged the tiniest bit, a slight roll more perceptible than before but still barely enough to tweak the nerves. There was no sound with it, neither of breakage nor of panic. It was for sure no serious temblor.

TunFaire hadn’t experienced one of those in decades.

“Wonder what that’s about,” Morley said. I thought he meant the shaking till I noted that he was staring at Chattaree, where tobacco-brown dust had begun to roll out of the windows and doors.

Guard whistles sounded from several directions, the extended “Woo-he-up!” indicating an emergency in progress. A Guardsman needing help puffed on his whistle in shrill blats.

Niea grumbled, “Now they’ve done it.” With no explanation of what “they” might have done. “I don’t want to be anywhere near here when the red tops start picking up the pieces.”

“Damn!” I said, with feeling. Threads of lightning had begun prancing inside the roiling dust, which seemed no less dense despite its expansion outward.

The ground moved again.

“And here come some piece picker-uppers,” Morley breathed. Or maybe he had made a pun and said “peace.” Sometimes he can’t help himself.

Tin whistles, some of them Specials, flickered into existence on all sides, rushing the dusty excitement. None of them, management or honest laborer, seemed especially motivated, however.

They had survived strange stuff in the Cantard. They were alive to see this strange stuff because they had taken time to think before dealing with that strange stuff, back in the day.

The brown dust rolled closer. I suggested, “Why don’t we not stick around for a closer look at that?”

The vote of confidence in my leadership was unanimous. Even Niea joined the rout-though we didn’t run. We strolled briskly, good Karentine subjects who had recalled urgent appointments elsewhere.

The lightning kept playing inside the dust as the cloud spread and became shallower. It crackled and popped behind us as we made with the heels and toes. Fingers of brown, just two inches thick now, caught up and oozed past. The brown remained dense and roiling under a slick surface that recalled liquid mercury. Two-leggers and four, we all avoided contact.

The red tops followed our lead.

Came a fourth tremor, like the involuntary shudder after a sudden, inexplicable chill. The brown began to retreat, ignoring physical law. It left a one-mote-thick walnut discoloration that behaved more like a stain than a layer of dust. It didn’t puff up or transfer when disturbed.

Morley and I watched bolder folks experiment. The girls stayed back, the most unhappy of them still offering soft growls of displeasure and discomfort.

Niea Syx seized the afternoon and made like the good shepherd. On discovering his sudden invisibility, I shrugged. I doubted that he had anything useful to tell us. And we knew where to start a track if we needed to see him.

He would have been handy as a guide had we gone on with the proposed incursion. I took that off the table. There was too much excitement inside the cathedral already. Plus, red tops were gathering in numbers. Whole battalions would be getting in each other’s ways soon.

I offered an alternate proposal. “Let’s leave this to the incompetents already here and yet to appear.” If Barate and friends were in there and stayed healthy, they could get by on Hill privilege. I shouldn’t put my cream-of-the-rabble self out for notice by offering unneeded assistance.

“Then let us be off and away,” Morley said. “And keep putting on a show that will thrill Jon Salvation when he turns it into a drama.”

For a moment I thought he had our red top audience in mind; then the direction of his gaze indicated the little blonde on the parapet of a temple a block east of Chattaree.

Curiouser and curiouser, she.