Bitter Gold Hearts (12 page)

I started to ask how she knew I was coming, but only managed to get the old flycatcher open before Shaggoth came out. And came out. And came out. That doorway was a good seven feet high and he had to crouch to get through. He looked at me the way I’d look at a decom­posing rat, snorted, and started unhitching the horses.

“Come inside,” the witch told me. I sidled in behind her, keeping one eye on friend Shaggoth. “Troll?” I squeaked.

“Yes.”

“He’s got jaws like a saber-toothed tiger. Saber-toothed tiger. The goddamned growly things with the fangs.”

She chuckled. “Shaggoth is of the pure blood. He’s been with me a long time.” She had me in the kitchen then and was dropping a tea egg into a giant mug that I wished was filled with beer. “The rest of his folk mi­grated because you pesky humans were overrunning ev­erything, but he stayed on. Loyalty before common sense.”

I forbore observing that she was human herself.

“They’re not a very bright race. Come. By the by, you’ll have noted that he isn’t sensitive to sunlight.”

No. That hadn’t registered. Teeth had registered. “How come you know my name?” Great straight line to a witch. “How did you know I was co — geek!”

Amiranda was seated beside a small fire, hands folded in her lap, staring at something beyond my right shoul­der. No. Not Amiranda. The essence of Amiranda had fled that flesh. That wasn’t a person, it was a thing. The pain would be less if I thought that way.

“Excuse me?” I glanced at the witch.

“I said Waldo told me you would come. I expected you sooner.”

“Who’s Waldo? Another pet like Shaggoth? He can see the future?”

“Waldo Tharpe. He told me you were friends.”

“Waldo?”
There must have been a little hysteria edg­ing my giggle. She gave me a frown. “I didn’t know he had a name. I’ve never heard him called anything but Saucer head.”

“He’s not enthusiastic about being Waldo,” she admit­ted. “Sit and let’s talk.”

I sat, musing. “So Saucer head jobbed us. The big dope isn’t as dumb as he lets on.” I kept getting drawn back to the corpse. It did look very lifelike, very undamaged. Any moment now the chest would heave, the sparkle would come back to the eyes, and she would laugh at me for being taken in. The witch settled into a chair facing mine. “Waldo said you’d have questions.” Her gaze followed mine. “I worked on her a little, making her look a little better, putting spells on to hold the corruption off till she can be given a decent funeral.”

“Thank you.”

“Questions, Garrett? I went to a good deal of trouble on Waldo’s behalf. What will you need to know?”

“Anything. Everything. I want to know why she was killed and who ordered it done.”

“I’m not omniscient, Garrett. I can’t answer that sort of question. Though 1 can surmise — which may not stand scrutiny in the light of what you already know — why. She was about three months pregnant.”

“What?
That’s impossible.”

“The child would have been male had it seen the light of day.”

“But she spent the last six months practically impris­oned in the house where she lived.”

“There were no men in that house? Hers was a miracu­lous conception?”

I opened my mouth to protest but a question popped out instead. “Who was the father?”

“I’m no necromancer, Garrett. The name, if she knew it at all, expired with her.”

“She knew. She wasn’t the type who wouldn’t.” I’d begun to get angry all over again.

“You knew her? Waldo didn’t. Nothing but her name and the fact that you sent her to him.”

“I knew her. Not well, but I did.”

“Tell me about her.”

I talked. It eased the pain a little, bringing her to life in words. I finished. “Did you get anything out of that?”

“Only that you’re working in a tight place. A storm-warden’s family, yet. Did Waldo tell you that the assas­sins were ogre breeds?”

“Yes.”

“A curse on the beasts. Waldo hurt them, but not nearly enough. I sent Shaggoth to find them. He caught nothing but graves. There was nothing on the bodies to betray them.”

“I know. I saw them myself. Tell Shaggoth to watch his step in the woods. There’s something out there that’s bigger than he is.”

“You’re making a joke?”

“Sort of. A mammoth did sneak up on me while I was looking at those ogre bodies.”

“A mammoth! Here in this day. A wonder for cer­tain.” She rose and went to a cabinet while I sipped tea. She said, “I’ve been considering your situation since Waldo left. It seemed — and does more so now that I know who she was — that the best help I could offer would be a few charms you might use to surprise the villains.”

I looked at Amiranda’s remains. “I appreciate that. I wonder why you’d commit yourself that way, though.”

“For Waldo. For the woman. Maybe for your sake, laddie. Maybe for my own. Certainly for the sake of justice. Whatever, the deed was cruel and should be repaid in coin equally vicious. The man responsible should be... But your tea is getting cold. I’ll put another pot of water on to boil.”

I got fresh tea, this time with fire-hardened flour bri­quets that must have been the scones mentioned earlier. I gave them a try. One should show one’s hostess the utmost in courtesy, especially when she is a witch.

Shaggoth stuck his head in and grumbled something in dialect that sounded suspiciously like, “Where the hell did my scones go?” He gave me a narrow-eyed look when the witch replied.

“Don’t you mind him,” she told me. “He’s just being playful.”

Right. Like a mongoose teases a cobra.

She sat down and explained how I could use the tricks she’d prepared for me. When she finished, I thanked her and rose. “If you can get Shaggoth to help me without breaking any bones in his playfulness, I’ll get out of your hair.”

She looked scandalized at first, then just amused. “You’ve heard too many stories about witches, Garrett. You’ll be safer here than out in the moonlight. Shaggoth is the least malign of those creatures who haven’t yet emigrated. Consider the moon. Consider her ways.”

Those who survive in this business develop an intuition for when to argue and when not to argue. Smart guys have figured out that you don’t talk back to stormwardens, warlocks, sorcerers, and witches. The place for reserva­tions is tucked neatly behind the teeth. “All right. Where do I bed down?”

“Here. By the fire. The nights get chilly in the woods.”

I looked at what was left of Amiranda Crest.

“She doesn’t get up and walk at midnight, Garrett. She’s all through with that.”

I have slept in the presence of corpses often enough, especially while I was in the Marines, but I’ve never liked it and never before had I had to share my quarters with a dead lover. That held no appeal at all.

“Shaggoth will waken you at first light and help you get her into your buggy.”

I looked at the body and reflected that it would be along, hard road home. And once I got there I’d have to face the question of what to do with the cadaver.

“Good night, Mr. Garrett.” The witch went around snuffing lights and collecting tea things, which she took to the kitchen. She started clattering around out there, leaving me to my own devices. I asked myself what the hell the point was of having nerve if I didn’t use it, rounded up a small herd of pillows and cushions, and tried to convince myself they made a bed. I tossed a couple logs on the fire and lay down. I stared at the ceiling for a long time after the clatter in the kitchen died and the light went with it. The flicker of the fire kept making Amiranda appear to move there in the corner of my eye. I went over everything from the begin­ning, then went over it again. Somewhere there was some nagging little detail that, added to the maverick coin from the farm, had me feeling very suspicious about Junior again.

Sometimes intuition isn’t intuition at all, but rather unconscious memory. I finally got it. The shoes Willa Dount had shown me first time I went up the Hill. Those shoes. They deserved a lot of thought from several angles. In the meantime, I had to rest. Tomorrow was going to be another in a series of long days.

__XX__

Breakfast with SHAGGOTH was an experience. He could eat. Three of him could lay waste to nations. No wonder the breed was so rare. If there were as many of them as there are of us, they would have to learn to eat rocks because there wouldn’t be enough of anything else to go around.

He brought the buggy around front and put the horses into harness with an ease that awakened my envy. Those beasts trotted out docilely and cooperatively and stood there smirking because they knew I would be irked by their easy acquiescence.

Damn the whole equine tribe, anyway. The witch came out with a lunch she’d packed. I thanked her for that, for her hospitality, and for everything else. She ran through the instructions for using the spells she’d given me. Those instructions were as complicated and difficult to recall as instructions for dropping a rock. But specialists think the uninitiated incapable of falling with­out technical assistance.

I offered to pay for the help again. “Don’t start up, Garrett. Let me do my little piece for justice in an unjust world. Somewhere out there, there is somebody with the soul of a crocodile. Somebody who ordered the murder of a pregnant woman. Find him. Balance the scales. If you don’t think you can handle him alone — for whatever reason — come see me again.”

She was quietly furious about Amiranda. And she hadn’t even known the woman. It was curious that Amiranda could find so many allies by getting herself murdered. And a pity none of us had been around when she needed us most. Though Saucer head had done everything he could.

I didn’t argue anymore. “I’ll let you know how it comes out. Thanks for everything.” I exchanged glares with the horses, putting on a good enough snarl to get my bluff in.

“Watch yourself, Garrett. You’re playing with rough people.”

“I know. But so are they.”

“They probably know who you are and might know you’re poking around. You don’t know who they are.”

“I’ve had plenty of practice being paranoid.” I swung up onto the seat, glanced back at the bundle I’d be taking home, and hollered at the horses to get going. Good old Shaggoth trudged through the woods ahead of the horses, showing them the easy way to get back to the road — the way I’d completely missed coming in. The beasts kept glancing back, silently accusing me of being a moron. I started with the first farm beyond the road to the place where Junior had been held. No, nobody there had seen a young man on foot the day Karl claimed to have started home. Certainly no one of any breed had come there looking to rent or buy a buggy or mount. It was what I expected to hear. He wouldn’t have done it so close, but the chance had to be covered. It was donkey-work time, grasping for straws. I had nothing concrete to affirm or deny my suspicions.

I got the same response house after house. Some talked easily, some not, the way people will, but the end was always the same. Nobody had begged, bought, borrowed, rented, or stolen transportation of any sort. Lunch time came and went and I began to consider restructuring my assumptions.

Maybe Karl Junior
had
walked home. Barefoot. Or maybe he’d hitched a ride or had flagged down one of the day coaches running into the city. Or the ogres might have left him some way to get home. That seemed damned unlikely. Walking, stealing, flag­ging a coach presented difficulties, too, for reasons of character and obvious traceability. Coachmen remember people they pick up along the road. Hitching looked like the best and most logical alterna­tive. It’s the way I’d have gotten myself to town. But I doubted that a resort to the charity of strangers would even occur to a spoiled child off the Hill. But had he gotten home that way, my chances of discovering the people who had helped were even more remote than they were by my present, most-favored course. So I stuck to what I was doing. I reasoned that if he had hitched, he would have mentioned it. He’d been careful to mention such details.

I now had a strong attachment to the assumption that Junior had participated in his own kidnapping. I had to caution myself not to get so attached that I began dis­carding contrary evidence. The vision sent me back to wartime days. The farmer and his sons and a dozen other men were advancing through the hayfield in echelon, scythes rhythmically swing­ing. They looked like skirmishers cautiously advancing. I pulled up and watched for a few minutes. They saw me but pretended otherwise. The paterfamilias glanced at the sky, which was overcast, and decided to keep cutting.

All right. I could play it their way. I slid down, walked to the edge of the field where the hay was down already — just to show how thoughtful a fellow I am — and approached the crowd from the flank. The women and kids raking the hay into piles and getting it onto the backs of several pathetic donkeys were much more curious than their men folk. I gave them a “howdy” as I passed, and nothing more. Anything more would have been considered a heavy pass by many farm husbands. I parked myself a cautious distance from the guy who looked like he was the boss ape in these parts and said “howdy” again. He grunted and went on swinging, which was all right by me. I was trying to be accommodating.

“You might be able to help me.”

This time his grunt was filled with the gravest of doubts.

“I’m looking for a man who passed this way four or five days back. He might have been looking to rent or buy a horse.”

“Why?”

“On account of what he did to my woman.”

He turned his head in rhythm and gave me a look saying I had no business going around asking for help if I was not man enough to rule my woman.

“He killed her. I just found out yesterday. Got her over in the buggy, taking her to her folks. Want to find that fellow when I get that done.”

The farmer stopped swinging his scythe. He stared at me with squinty eyes that had looked into too many sunrises and sunsets. The other scythes came to rest and the men leaned upon them exactly like tired soldiers lean on their spears. The women and kids stopped raking and loading. Everybody stared at me. The boss farmer nodded once, curtly, put his scythe down gently, hiked over to the buggy. He leaned against the side, lifted the cover off Amiranda.