Faded Steel Heat (23 page)

Reliance looked at me sharply. He suspected I’d committed Chodo too fast, too glibly. Tell the rat anything to get what you want. But he knew Chodo’s reputation, too. Chodo always paid his debts. He nodded. “This is Pular Singe.” All ratman sibilants tend to stretch out into syllables of their own while
r
and
l
sounds get confused. “She is young but very talented.”

I checked his smaller companion. She? That wasn’t obvious. Her apparel didn’t differentiate her. Unlike most human girls she didn’t have obvious female attributes. I guess if you’re ratpeople you can tell. Or there wouldn’t be any ratpeople.

A youngish ratman moved closer, bristling feebly. I said, “If you say she’s the best, then she is and I owe you special thanks.”

The ratgirl eyed me shyly, unaccustomed to the company of humans. I gave her a wink and a glimpse of one raised eyebrow. Gets them every time. “What do I call you? Pular or Singe?” Depending on the clan — and I have only the vaguest notion how you tell that, though it has to do with which sorcerer created their particular line — surnames can come front or back.

“She is hard of hearing,” Reliance told me. “Her talent is a divine compensation. She does not speak human well. Her cousin Fenibro must translate for you.”

Fenibro dipped his muzzle. “She prefers Singe.”

“Thank you.” Singe, I noted, followed every word, maybe reading lips. Easier done with humans, of course.

Time was getting away. I asked Reliance, “Will you join us yourself?” I meant the question only as a courtesy. It would be hard enough working with the other two. This one might think he had something to contribute.

“I do not think so. I am far too old and slow.”

“I’ll tag along, Garrett.” Morley announced. “Come here, Puddle.”

“You will? I thought you wanted out of this stuff.”

“You can’t go after those two alone.” The ratpeople would scoot at the first sign of trouble. That was a given. “You think too much. You’d get your candle snuffed. I need you. You’re such a wonderful negative example.”

He could be right. Or maybe I owed him money I’d forgotten about. “We’d best go. They’re getting farther ahead all the time.” He couldn’t possibly want to tag along just on account of being my friend.

Morley whispered to Puddle. Puddle nodded. He went back into The Palms. Morley pointed a finger at the sky, the moon, and said, “I’m ready.”

I told Reliance, “Thank you again, sir. Singe? Fenibro? Ready?” I started jogging. Nobody had trouble keeping up despite ratmen not being built to run on their hind legs. When they get in a big hurry they bounce off their hands sort of like a gorilla. They move fast when they’re scared.

The Goddamn Parrot remained dumb, which was a blessing. He roused only once, just long enough to emit a sort of puzzled interrogative squeak. If I’d had time, I would’ve been worried about the Dead Man.

54

“Took you long enough,” Relway grumbled. He didn’t look much like the Relway I’d left though the changes were cosmetic and subtle. He’d acquired a drooping shoulder and a slight dragging limp, a lisp and a marked preference for shadows. I doubted even Morley would recognize him later, changed and in a different light. The runt even smelled different. The ratpeople wouldn’t recognize him later, either.

“Took a while to set it up.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“I got the best.”

Relway eyed the ratpeople. They were sniffing around and muttering. All the violence upset them. “The best is Pular Singe.”

“That’s her. You know her?”

“Only by reputation.”

Good for Morley and Reliance. Maybe not so good for me. Now I might actually find Belinda fast, which could mean a big fight with TunFaire’s two ugliest bad boys.

They would be like wounded animals, even nastier now they were hurt. Like cornered rats. Snicker.

Crask and Sadler were like a malevolent force of nature, beyond control, subject only to laws they created themselves.

I gave the ratgirl another reassuring wink. That seemed to calm her. She responded with the wedge-toothed grimace her kind thinks constitutes a smile.

There’s a certain pathos to the ratpeople. Most of them desperately want to be just like the race that created them. Poor deluded beasts.

Trackers amaze me. Singe amazed me doubly. And she wasn’t full-grown. She was going to be a legend. Once on the trail she was limited only by her ability to walk fast and mine to keep up. Fenibro kept giving me the ratman equivalent of a big shit-eating grin. You’d have thought
he
was running the trail. Pular Singe kept looking to me for approval. Boy, did I give her plenty. Evidently she didn’t get much at home. Ratmen don’t treat their young or females well.

Everybody needs somebody to look down on and treat bad. You wonder who’s left for the young ratwomen, though.

Later I grumbled, “These guys must be headed for the arctic.” We had covered several miles, leaving downtown’s seething heart for a neighborhood called the Plain of Cavalry. Centuries ago, when the citizen militia was TunFaire’s only army, the mounted troops assembled there to practice up for scrimmages with neighboring city-states. In those days the plain was outside the wall. Later the wall was extended to enclose the plain so it could be used as a bivouac in times of siege. They started burying dead soldiers there. Eventually it became a vast graveyard. It’s not much used anymore. It’s become the object of endless dispute. Those who want to build there insist that land inside the wall is too precious to waste on dead folks already forgotten by their own descendants. The descendants disagree. The traditional position has prevailed only because many of the dead are old-time heroes and imperials. But adequate bribes might silence the opposition.

The cemetery is a bivouac again, filled with shanties and crude tents slapped together by refugees. This isn’t popular with the neighbors, who have to suffer more than their share of victimizations. The Call is popular around the plain.

Wary tension filled the cemetery air. There was very little light. There’s no free fuel to be had anymore. I was uneasy because I hadn’t thought to bring a lantern. The moon wasn’t much help — though it gave Singe all the light she needed.

Squatter villages appear wherever there’s open ground. They’re unclean. They stink. It’s only a matter of time till some plague gets started. It can’t be long before the street conflicts engulf the camps.

“Hold up,” I told Pular Singe. I gestured, too. She stopped, waited, watched me with a disquieting intelligence. I suspected her hearing problem was less severe than Reliance thought, more a convenience than a handicap. She got my deaf-and-dumb sign language right away, too, though I was rusty. It was a shame Singe had trouble with the common speech. I got the impression she had a real sense of humor.

She had to be some kind of mutant.

“Morley, wouldn’t this pest-hole camp be perfect to disappear in?”

People were moving around us, despite the hour, looking for nothing they could have articulated if asked. Movement itself was the destination.

The squatter population was a volatile mix including every type of refugee. I saw people so exotic they had to be weird to themselves.

“Absolutely,” Morley said. “You’d have to be a woolly mammoth to get noticed around here.”

“Is the tracking getting harder?” I asked Singe.

She shook her head, a human thing, not natural for ratpeople. Pular Singe tried hard to emulate human ways.

Fenibro told me, “It is difficult but she can single it out.”

“She’s amazing.”

“She is. There is blood in it still.”

No blood had been visible for miles.

I observed, “She sure says a lot with a headshake.”

Morley murmured, “The boyfriend likes to show off his talent, too.”

“Which is?”

“Human speech.”

“Oh. Think we’re being led?”

“You asking me if I think Crask and Sadler grabbed Belinda hoping that you, personally, would try to rescue her?”

“It’s possible, isn’t it? They might even have counted on you coming with me.”

“
I
might calculate a scheme like that, Garrett. Not those two. They aren’t complicated thinkers. They saw a chance to grab Belinda. They grabbed her. They probably expected you to be with her. Things didn’t go the way they anticipated.”

Yeah? How did they know where to find Belinda? How did they know who she was supposed to be with? “You think they expect to be trailed here?” Morley wasn’t giving Crask and Sadler enough credit. They weren’t just mountains of muscle. They had brains. That’s what made them scary.

“Once they have time to think. They left a heavy trail. But they shouldn’t expect trouble this soon.”

I glanced around. As a group we presented an unusual look but out there the unusual was the norm — and inquisitive noses tended to get broken. “Figure Relway had us followed?”

“Is the moon made of green cheese?”

“That’s what I thought.” The tail wasn’t obvious, though. “Go ahead, Singe. You’re doing wonderfully. But please be careful.”

Fenibro looked at me like I wanted to teach granny to suck eggs. But Pular Singe practically purred. Whereupon Fenibro suffered a case of the sullens.

55

The change in our surroundings was minuscule but real. Surprisingly, I sensed it before Morley or Singe. I didn’t need to prompt Dotes, though. Still, I gestured to point out the fact that the refugee hovels shrank back from one particular mausoleum.

It was an antique from imperial times, a family thing that had been used for centuries. It would be as big as a house inside with several levels below ground. The family must have fallen on hard times. All families do eventually. The mausoleum needed restoration though it remained sound enough for someone to have set up housekeeping inside.

Pular Singe sniffed, pointed, gestured uncertainly. She dashed off. She circled back before I figured out what she was doing.

She whispered to Fenibro but looked at me from beneath lowered lashes, eager for more approval. Fenibro told me, “The devils you seek are in there.” He was scared. He wanted to get paid and go. His speech was barely intelligible. I understood Singe’s rattalk almost as well. “They have bad odors, sir. They are evil. Even my blind nose tastes them now.” He fidgeted, eager to go
 
—
but afraid to ask for money.

Morley squatted on his haunches. I don’t bend that way. I dropped to one knee. Dotes murmured, “Seems like we’ve done this thing before.”

“The vampire thing?” I stared at the mausoleum door. It stood open just wide enough to admit a bulk the size of a Crask or a Sadler. It seemed to sneer.

Dotes asked me, “Do you have anything in case we prance into an ambush?”

“I was thinking about throwing you in there to see what happens.”

Fenibro squeaked like one of his ancestors getting tromped. He suffered a sudden, sad suspicion that our natural inclination would be to elect him our tossee. Unlike Singe, he did not grasp the concept of humor.

Singe spoke rapidly in rat polyglot. I caught just enough to understand that she was telling Fenibro to control himself, then that their part of the adventure was over and it was time for them to take off. I started mining my pockets for coins.

Fenibro argued with Singe. He puffed his chest out, male demonstrating dominance. Singe hissed. Fenibro wilted. That left no doubt where real dominance resided. He whined, “Singe says to tell you Reliance requires no payment. Someday he will ask a favor in return.”

I groaned. That arrangement always gets me into trouble eventually.

Morley ignored the ratpeople. He persisted, “I thought you might have something up your sleeve. You often do.”

“Not this time. I wish, though.”

“A light, then. Surely we can come up with a light.”

A glance around suggested otherwise. The refugees and squatters had stripped the cemetery of everything burnable.

I nodded to Singe. “Go home now, darling. It might get hairy around here. And be careful.”

She took off instantly, practically abandoning Fenibro. He whined as he tried to catch up. There was no doubt that Singe was his girlfriend only inside his own head.

Morley grouched, “You never put any forethought into anything you do, do you?”

“This was your idea.
You
should’ve thought about bringing a lantern.”

“My idea? You’re stalling, Garrett.”

Yes, I was. In a good cause, too. I’m really fond of my skin. It’s rough and it’s scarred but it’s the only one I’ve got. Crask and Sadler might decide to use it to make wallets or belts.

Morley heard the sound first but I caught it an instant later. Somebody was sneaking our way.

There was enough moonlight to show me Morley. He gestured. I waved. We sank down behind antique tombstones.

Fate handed me a wonderful opportunity to look goofy. Yet one more time.

I jumped out at the sneaker, expecting Crask, Sadler, one of Relway’s goons, a squatter determined to share my wealth, anything but a terrified Pular Singe, who should’ve been miles away already. We bumped snoots. She squeaked and started to run. I caught her arm. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I thought you’d gone home.”

Her fright faded as quickly as it had come. She looked at my hand. If she’d been human, she would’ve blushed. She did shiver. I let go but stayed ready to grab again if she bolted.

“What is it?” I used my gentlest voice. And wondered where Morley was.

“I brought...” Those words were perfectly clear, if few. And she’d heard me just fine. She seemed too embarrassed to continue. She couldn’t meet my gaze. She lifted a shuttered lantern and offered it.

“You’re a dream come true, Pular Singe. I might just steal you away from Reliance.”

She was painfully embarrassed. She had a sense of humor but didn’t understand teasing. She was brilliant for her own people only.

I didn’t want her expiring from a stroke of shyness. “Thank you, Singe. You know I didn’t think about needing a light. I owe you. Not Reliance or Fenibro or anybody else. You. Personally. You understand?”