Wicked Bronze Ambition

83

“You know this man?” Moonblight had a globe of glowing air perched on the tips of the upheld fingers of her left hand. It had the slight greenish cast of firefly light and was no more intense. Her right hand held a scented handkerchief pressed to her face. Her eyes were watering.

“His name is Tribune Fehlske, but people call him Lurking Fehlske. He’s the top surveillance man in TunFaire. He’s been watching me, or us, off and on, since before Strafa died. He’s hard to spot and impossible to catch.”

“First time for everything, eh?”

“I guess. His odor is his weakness. It’s how you know he’s around. Or has been around. He doesn’t notice it himself. It’s like he’s had a lifelong allergy to soap. Maybe this will change his mind about hygiene.” Unlikely, though. He had had the lesson before and never learned.

“One can pray.”

“He isn’t dead, is he?” I didn’t have issues with Fehlske that went that deep.

“He’ll be fine except for a headache.”

“He was using some kind of sorcery, wasn’t he?”

“He was creating a lurking place but not very well. He let us spot a place where the shadows were too thick.”

“A natural talent, then?”

“Low-grade.”

“I always wondered how he could be so good at not being noticed.”

“He has talent that he doesn’t understand consciously. I expect that he just thinks he’s really good at what he does.”

Lurking Fehlske was good. That was beyond debate. How he managed that didn’t much matter to me.

I mused, not for the first time, “Why would he be watching us?”

“An excellent question and one for which I can offer no answer.”

“How could he know to be waiting for us here? Even if there was a tracer on one of us, we only just decided to cut through here a few minutes ago. Yet there he was. Waiting.”

Tara Chayne raised her glowing hand slightly, extending her forefinger to suggest that she needed a moment.

I backed off a few steps to reduce the chance that the smell would establish itself in my clothing. After the hustle of the day, I had worked up a good enough pong of my own, thank you very much.

The dogs went with me. They had had enough, too. Then Brownie found an excuse to take them off to scout “the perimeter.”

Tara Chayne said, “Here is what probably happened. He was cheerfully larking around, keeping track of us, being the other thing I sensed. We caught him completely by surprise when we suddenly came this way. He couldn’t get away without being seen, so he hunkered down and hoped we would go on by. It didn’t work.”

“Fits the known facts. Maybe we should wake him up and ask him questions.”

“I don’t think so. It’s been too long a day already. My feet hurt. I’m happy to leave him napping.” Shuddering, she slipped something inside Fehlske’s shirt. She needed light to see by so had to use the hand that had been holding the handkerchief. She gagged but did not lose her lunch. Finished, she shook her hand violently to rid herself of any vermin that had climbed aboard.

She regained control. “We can find him if we need to talk to him. Now let’s find Mariska and get this day over with.”

“I won’t last if she keeps moving.”

“I think she’s worn down herself. We were gaining before this.”

Nice to be kept up to date, I didn’t say out loud.

I was getting cranky. I was sure she must be, too. “We should see about finding a snack, too.”

“If the opportunity arises.”

We covered a block, straight ahead and slightly downhill, and reached an intersection with a street I can’t name because it was dark and I didn’t know the neighborhood. Tara Chayne made a sudden stop.

“What?”

“Quiet.”

Then I heard it, too.

Something was going on, quietly, back the way we had come.

I couldn’t see but was sure it was happening where Lurking Fehlske lay.

Maybe somebody with no sense of smell was rolling him.

Moonblight’s centipede scattered purplish sparks as it scurried across the faces of several buildings, going to see. When it stopped moving it was invisible.

Tara Chayne touched my arm. “Only a quarter mile to go.”

The centipede caught up before we got there. She and it communed, and then she sent it off to scout ahead.

The dogs weren’t willing. They were nervous and staying close.

“So,” she muttered. “That’s it.”

“That’s what?”

“Oh!” Like she was surprised to find me still with her. “They didn’t notice the tracer I put on him.”

“They, who?”

She didn’t want to discuss it. She pointed to a darkness looming ahead, where the street we were following ended as the trunk of a T. As yet there was no other light than that shed by an immense number of stars, the cloud cover having cleared away. The place she indicated felt big and ugly and exuded a psychic bad odor. “Mariska is in there. I think she’s asleep. I’ll make sure.” She gestured and whispered. Her centipede sparked into motion. Betraying sparkles falling off made for an interesting effect.

“Don’t let me fall asleep while we’re waiting for it to report.” I had settled down with my back to the side of somebody’s front steps. Brownie halfway climbed into my lap. The rest of the pack snuggled up, ready to sleep in a big, hot pile. Everybody was exhausted.

Very little time passed, but Tara Chayne had to use a magnum finger poke to bring me back. “Mariska is in there, alone.” She was uncomfortable for some reason.

“What’s wrong?” Groggily.

“The property belongs to the Hausers. It’s empty today, but I remember visiting the place when I was a kid.”

That left me with a sinking feeling. “Does that mean. .?”

“I’m hoping it just means Mariska ran to a place she knew would be empty, though she had to penetrate some ferocious wards to get in.”

Obviously. Otherwise the place would have been reduced to a hole in the ground long since.

“I don’t want to think that Richt might be one of the Operators.”

That didn’t seem plausible. Not sure why. My brain was working at ten percent. “Let’s just load the wagon and worry about where the mules will come from when we need them.”

“What? Oh. I got you. A little borrowed country wisdom.”

“Wisdom, anyway.”

“About earlier. I didn’t mean to shut you out. I was preoccupied. The people messing with your Fehlske creature were Big Thing and Curly Top. Big Thing poked Fehlske a few times. When he didn’t respond, it picked him up and took him away.”

“Whoa! That thing is a better man than me, then.”

“Perhaps it hails from a plane where such odors are perfume.”

“Yeah. Sure. I’ll buy that.” The little blonde had begun to collect people from outside the tournament? Why?

More twists. More nonsense. And me such a simple, straightforward kind of Marine. “Let’s do what we need to do.” I lived through the struggle to get to my feet. “And here we go, girls.”

The centipede hurried ahead. It wasn’t worn out. The rest of us limped and dragged.

The first door we tried was protected with physical locks backed by magical wards. Nobody felt like looking for an easier entry. Moonblight used what energy she had left to break the locks and crack wards put in place by somebody as wrung out as we were.

We found Moonslight snoring on a braided rag rug in a huge room otherwise naked of furnishings. The entire house lacked any furnishings.