Wicked Bronze Ambition

111

A noise from the wagon. . Morley. Very unhappy. “Garrett.” He rasped it. “I can’t do this. I can’t handle the closed space yet. Sorry.”

So he wasn’t all the way back psychologically.

“I’ll do it. Leave me the toys.”

I lay back in the coffin a minute later. He slid the lid into place, covered it with a blanket. I began to shake.

I have problems with dark, tight places. I have bigger problems with taking up premature residence in a coffin. I launched a calming mantra from wartime days, to keep the panic at bay.

Everything lurched and shifted. The wagon had begun to roll.

Oh, did I hope that Mikon D. was more scared of the Black Orchid than he was of Meyness B.!

This really didn’t seem like such a brilliant idea now that I was the guy wearing the pine tuxedo. Despite all I could do to remain calm, a big part of my head kept upchucking things that could go wrong, some stuff so unlikely that I marveled at my capacity to imagine such bizarre disasters.

The wagon stopped. I assumed we were at the door to Magister Bezma’s hideout, the erstwhile Hauser stead.

The hearing inside the box was surprisingly good.

Two people responded to Mikon’s arrival. I heard later that neither was a wild-haired old man with a momentous wen. One was a gray rat man. The other, a human, demanded, “What do you want here, little man?”

A voice from the house called, “Is that you, Mikon? What took so long?”

“I almost got caught. Twice. The first time at the cemetery. Did you know that that place is overrun with wild dogs?”

The voice asked, “Did you get it?”

“I got it. But-”

“Excellent. Segdway. Bones. Help Mikon and Chick. Evil Lin. Take the wagon away once they get the coffin off. Drop it at least a mile from here and then just keep going.”

Evil Lin slurred something that made it sound like he was real excited about moving on and wanted to get to that as fast as he could.

He was beloved of the gods-providing Orchidia overlooked him.

Any villain who didn’t make tracks soon was likely to end up celebrating All-Souls from the nether side of life’s great divide.

The coffin tilted and rocked. The foot end went high. My head crashed into unpadded wood. That hurt like hell. Fierce old me, I managed not to bark or whine.

I heard the wagon roll, then stop again after just seconds. Evil Lin had come down with the drizzling shit horrors after catching a whiff from the clotted darkness where John Stretch and friends were communing with their spying regular rats.

After a few seconds Evil Lin took one exaggerated step directly away from the house where the coffin had just disappeared, making a statement. From now on he would have no part in anything. He would go away and be seen no more forever. And he started rolling again.

He will hear from John Stretch someday, even so, I’m sure.

What were Brownie and the girls doing? Like about every female in my life but Hagekagome, they were probably smarter than me and keeping their heads down. Hell, Vicious Min was probably smarter than me.

A voice said, “Set it on those chairs.”

The coffin tilted, rocked, chunked down onto something that creaked. I heard what sounded like somebody agitated trying to talk around a gag. Kevans, sounding more angry than frightened.

That was good, as long as she controlled that anger.

I tried hard to picture how many people were out there and where they were located. The element of surprise would have a very short half-life. I would need to remain the center of attention long enough for the Black Orchid to strike. But our future victims were not being cooperative. Hardly any said enough to give themselves away.

The one I thought was Magister Bezma said, “There’s something wrong. I feel it, Mikon. Did you see anything out there? What did you bring down upon us?”

“I saw some rat men.” Which was one hundred percent true.

“They belong. They’re Evil Lin’s people. That’s not it. There’s something else. But the rats and dragons would give warning, wouldn’t they?” He was talking to himself by then.

“Meyness. .”

“All right. You’re nervous. You’re upset. You aren’t invested in this. I understand. But be patient. Tomorrow will be a huge new day.”

Another voice said something. The magister responded, “I can only repeat what I just said. Come midnight, everything will change. Come midnight, I will gain the power to heal us all. But not before.”

The unintelligible voice got louder and angrier, presumably someone with a wounded friend who wouldn’t make it till midnight.

Voices rose. There was a scuffle. The mutineer might have paid the usual price of failure. Or, at least, he ended up of no value to Magister Bezma-who, in turn, ended up distracted from his concern about trouble gathering on his doorstep.

He emerged from the confrontation shouting, “Mikon, where are you going?”

“Uh. . I was going to look around outside, see if that attracted any attention.”

I didn’t buy it and I was inside a box, halfway panicked because I was inside a box, and couldn’t see Mikon’s face. How much less believable was he to someone standing in front of him who had known him all his life?

“I can’t manage this without you, Mikon.” Appeal and threat alike there, with the threat prevailing. “So get back in here and help.”

All Mikon had going now was a stall and a hope that the trouble he’d brought with him would pull him out of the deep dung.

I suspected that poor Mikon was going to get hosed one way or another. He was one of those guys who just can’t not put themselves into bad places.

Time passed faster than it felt like, trapped in there, and Magister Bezma was anxious to get on with things himself. He began ordering people around. Feet shuffled. Furniture scraped and thumped. People bickered. People complained. Kevans got very verbal after her gag slipped. She was in good shape for sure, nor was she as frightened or intimidated as she ought to be. But I heard nothing to tell me how Kip was faring. Kevans never spoke to him, which left me troubled.

I’d learn the good news or bad the hard way, once the lid came off.

Something whispered to me.

Something crossed my chest like a marching cockroach.

I came within an ounce and inch of screaming like a scared little girl.

Something was there in the coffin with me.