Wicked Bronze Ambition

105

“They’re trying to break into your tomb,” my companion gasped, astonished that anyone would commit such an atrocity.

“I know who the old guy is.” Magister Bezma’s sidekick and possible brother. I was surprised to see him, though the timing was right if he had collected his thugs and headed here after he and Bezma finished their business with Trivias Smith and Flubber Ducky. But why?

The henchmen were immigrant day laborers taking what work they could get to keep body and soul and family together.

Our advent, reinforcing the dogs, was all the encouragement they needed to start running. I hoped they could pawn their tools.

The dogs let them go but not the older man, whom they backed against the mausoleum door. He swung a crowbar menacingly, to little point. He survived on sufferance.

I warned, “Don’t run! I can’t save you if you give them a quarry.”

My own old man bleated in misery when he saw the damage to the mausoleum door, forced open a crack but not enough to admit anyone. Its hang had been ruined.

Number Two and several friends squeezed inside once I pushed the burglar out of the way.

I told Brownie, “Keep this fool from running but don’t hurt him,” then dropped to a knee beside the injured mutt, an ugly mix of bulldog and beagle. “We’re in luck. Doesn’t look like any permanent damage.” I fought the temptation to touch, to pet. She was wild. She was hurting. She was handling that by showing her teeth and threatening to use them.

I went to the tomb door. Squatting some, grasping its edge, hoisting, shoving, taking baby steps, I moved it enough to let me get by. My sidekick said, “There are lamps and lighters in the alcove to your right.”

I eased inside. He faced off with the captive, whose body language suggested abject surrender. He had had enough. He hadn’t wanted to be involved in the first place. He was just plain thrilled to be out of the game.

He wasn’t so done that he was ready to lie down and die, though, just to where he was ready to let the world get on without his participation.

I lighted a lamp. The folks in charge had been on the job. There were five of those, all with fuel reservoirs full and wicks trimmed with military precision. I let the old man know that I was impressed.

“How about you reward me by hurrying it up, then, Slick? It’s cold out here and I’m too friggin’ old to be dancing with the bad guys, even when they’re feebler than me.” He indicated the captive in case I was too dim to grasp the insult.

“We’ll take care of that. You. Inside with me.” So I could keep an eye on him in case he wasn’t as feeble as he looked. “Don’t move. Don’t speak unless I ask you a question.”

“As you wish, sir.”

I fired up two more lamps, placed them in niches prepared for them. They helped only a little. The space they had to illuminate was huge. Strafa’s coffin was one of nearly a dozen. Many more resided in recesses in the walls. They had verdigris-corroded nameplates on their ends dating back centuries. Algardas had been dying to get in here for ages.

Only the most recently deceased were on display. Once the living forgot who they had been, they got shoved into a wall slot. Plenty of those remained available.

There were eleven coffins out, with room for one more. There hadn’t been a free pedestal the other day. I pointed at the empty. “Sit there.”

The villain sat.

The migration of a coffin into a wall was the only change since my last visit. The bad guys hadn’t gotten to do whatever they’d had in mind.

“Name?” I demanded while using a sleeve to dust the glass separating me from my love. She hadn’t changed. She reminded me of the girl in the story who had been so naive about accepting the free apple. I wished a kiss was enough to bring her back. Only, where to find a prince I could trust to do the necessary and then back off, leaving the girl for me?

I caught a wisp of violet coruscation from the corner of my eye, behind the captive. So. Interesting, that.

Had it been with me all along?