Faded Steel Heat (27 page)

“Why?” Always direct, Linda Lee.

“Shapeshifters murdered some people I know. We caught them and sent them to the Al-Khar but some got away before we could question them. The rest died. I need to find out whatever I can about them.” Pant pant.

“I can’t help much. The information we have here probably wouldn’t be reliable.” Linda Lee cocked her head. The head librarian was just warping into the guardroom, from the sound. Our whispers hadn’t reached her. “What you want you’d probably only find in a specialized library.”

“What’s that?” I had a feeling I didn’t want to know.

“A private library. On the Hill.”

Sorcerers. “I’m psychic.” I didn’t like that answer.

“You don’t know anybody up there?”

“I know people. Met another one today. They ain’t our kind of people.”

“You wouldn’t know anybody in The Call?”

“Uh... Why?”

“You could try to get into the library at their Institute For Racial Purity. Where they research racial issues. They came here trying to hire a librarian. They have a lot of stuff from private sources. They wanted it cataloged and organized so they could use it to support their theories.”

“Linda Lee, you’re a treasure.”

“I know. What made
you
realize it?”

“I do know somebody in The Call.”

“Aha!” the chief librarian shrieked in the distance. “I’ve caught you, my pretty!” But she crowed too soon. She always declares before she has me in sight. I moved with trained silence and deliberate speed to the end of a stack. I could remain unseen there till the old woman committed to a particular path. Linda Lee would signal me, I’d take a different route and once again the old woman would be scratching her head and wondering what she’d really heard.

It’s unnatural that anyone her age would hear so well.

Linda Lee whispered, “I’ll see what I can find out.” Then she glommed on and kissed me. Linda Lee knows kissing better than she knows books. I didn’t start it but after about four seconds I was plenty read to continue. Weider who? Shapeshifter what? I don’t know no Relway.

The chief librarian cackled.

“I’ve got you for sure this time, my proud beauty! I’ll teach you to tryst with your leman in a holy place!” She stomped and clomped her way closer.

I slipped away from Linda Lee, who winked and made noise heading another direction while I sneaked between stacks on little mouse feet. We’d played this game before. Linda Lee probably more times than me.

“Awk! Shit!” said the Goddamn Parrot, with impeccable timing. “Help!” He started flapping.

I’d kill him for sure this time.

A vise closed on my right shoulder. It turned me. I gaped at the ugly grin of a foul-breathed ogre I hadn’t seen before and whom I hadn’t heard coming. He was twice my size and twice as stupid. I had a notion he wouldn’t ask me to recommend a good book.

In fact, I suspected he was the kind who liked to hit people and watch them bounce. Exhibit number one: He had a gargantuan green fist pulled back three yards, all set to whistle my way.

The old lady had foxed me.

I kicked the ogre hard where a sharp knock will drop any reasonably constructed critter, puking. The ogre just showed me more green teeth and put some moxie into his punch. Only trolls and zombies are less vulnerable there.

I never got a shot at his ears.

Ogres drop like stones if you slap both ears at the same time. So I’m told. Nobody I know ever got close enough to try. The source is always a friend of a friend of a friend, but, “It’s gospel, Garrett. It really happens that way.”

Before the lights went out I had the satisfaction of knowing the old woman would need weeks to pick up all the books that scattered while I was flying through the stacks.

Might be wise not to visit Linda Lee at work for a while.

If anybody robbed me while I was splashed all over the alley behind the library, they sure overlooked the one thing I wouldn’t mind losing. I came around to find the Goddamn Parrot muttering like one of those psycho guys who stomp around shaking their heads and arguing with ghosts. I hurt everywhere. I had book burns. That ogre had pounded me good after I couldn’t see to make a getaway.

There’d been way too much of this stuff lately. I never recovered from one thumping before I stumbled into the next.

Was I nurturing some kind of death wish?

63

Time to tap an
old
resource.

Time to drop in on the Cranky Old Men.

I didn’t look forward to it. It wouldn’t be pleasant. But with my aches and pains and premature cynicism I’d fit right in.

They say there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Undoubtedly true, but why would you want to? Whoever the first
they
was. Somebody with strange habits. Who needs to flay felines? I hear they keep right on shedding after they’re tanned.

Maybe the saying was started by the guy who knocks out ogres with his bare hands.

The Cranky Old Men are an ongoing crew of antiques who pooled resources to purchase, maintain, and staff an abandoned abbey where they await the Reaper, many because they’re so unpleasant their relatives don’t want them around home. Somebody in a black humor named the place Heaven’s Gate.

In its prime the abbey housed fifty monks in luxurious little apartments. More than two hundred Cranky Old Men live in the same space, three to the apartment and who’s got any use for even one chapel let alone the three of the original setup?

The place is cramped and smelly and almost as depressing as the Bledsoe and makes me hope that in my declining years some twenty-year-old lovely with an obsession for chubby old bald guys who smell bad takes me in so I don’t have to buy into anything like Heaven’s Gate. Of course, with my luck and the way things have gone lately I shouldn’t worry about getting old.

The abbey was constructed in a square around an inner court, two stories high, filling a larger than normal city block. Not an uncommon layout in TunFaire. Tinnie’s clan resides in a similar though larger compound, which includes their tanning and manufacturing facilities. In a display of misplaced faith in their fellow-man the monks had included ground-floor windows around the street faces. The Cranky Old Men had adapted to modern times by installing wrought-iron bars. Most people just brick them up.

There are two entrances, front and rear. Each is just wide enough to permit passage of a donkey cart. Both are blocked by double sets of iron gates. The place looks more like a prison than the Al-Khar does.

Somebody’s grandson was on some scaffolding, installing bars on a second-floor window. The deeper poverty arriving with the immigrants might make the place attractive after all.

I eased around the scaffolding to the gate. It was comfortable in the shadows there.

“Eh! You! Move along!” a creaky voice insisted. “No loitering.” A sharp stick jabbed between the bars too slowly to hurt anyone.

Everyone got this treatment, including favorite sons.

“I came to see Medford Shale.” Not strictly true, but you do need to offer a name and I knew that one. The hard way.

“Ain’t no Medford Shale here. Go away.”

“That’s him back there under the olive tree. On the cot.” Which was true. And handy. So maybe my luck wasn’t all bad.

The sharp stick jabbed again. I didn’t go away. The old man on the other end came out of the shadows. I said, “Hello, Herrick.”

The old man squinted. He scowled. He tried to stand up straight. “I ain’t Herrick. Herrick passed. I’m his kid brother, Victor.”

“Sorry to hear about Herrick, Victor. He was good people. I need to see Shale.”

Victor’s eyes narrowed again. “You ain’t been around lately, have you?”

“It’s been a while.” Medford doesn’t make you want to hurry back.

“Herrick passed two years ago.”

All right. It had been a big while. “I’m really sorry, Victor. I need to see Shale.”

“You got a name, boy?”

“Garrett. We go way back.”

Victor sneered. “Shale goes way back. You’re just a pup.” He started to shuffle off, thought better of it. Maybe he decided he’d given in too easily. “What you got there?”

I didn’t think he’d miss the bundle. “Little something for Shale.” There was more on the way. These sour old flies would need a lot of sweetening.

“Bigger than a breadbox,” Victor muttered. He considered the Goddamn Parrot. “You better not be carrying no birdcage there, boy. We got no truck with useless mouths.”

I patted the bundle. “It’s edible.” The best bribes are the wonderful things the Cranky Old Men know they shouldn’t eat. Or stuff they shouldn’t drink.

“Got a creme horn?”

“I do believe. If Shale will share.”

Victor fumbled with the inner gate. He muttered to himself. He didn’t sound optimistic about Shale sharing. He had reason to be pessimistic. Great-granduncle Medford is a cranky old man’s cranky old man. Maybe he had a little ogre or Loghyr in him somewhere, way back. He hasn’t aged obviously since I was a kid and my Great-grandaunt Alisa was still alive. He’s one really nasty old man.

But he’s got a soft spot for me.

As long as I come armed with molasses cookies.

Victor opened the outer gate.

The instant it opened wide enough so Victor couldn’t stop me the Goddamn Parrot revealed his secret relationship with a lady pig.

The old boy just stood there, poleaxed, as I started toward Shale. I said, “Bird, these codgers don’t get a lot of meat in their diet. Costs too much. A buzzard in the pot might put smiles on all their faces.”

I could see the little monster only from the corner of my eye but, I swear, he sneered. Somewhere, somehow, he’d gotten the idea that he was invulnerable.

Probably my fault.

“Hey, you!”

I sighed, stopped, turned. “Yes, Victor?”

“Whyn’t you say you was one of them ventriloquisitors? A guy with a good and raunchy routine would be a big sell around this dump.”

“I’ll think about that.” Might be a good career change. I never saw a ventriloquist with his head bandaged or his arm in a sling. “Let’s see what Shale thinks.” I just can’t seem to get by without people thinking I’m flooding the dodo’s beak with nonsense.

How come his big silence couldn’t last?

Was some petty little god still carrying a grudge?

64

Shale appeared to be asleep. Or maybe dead. His chest wasn’t moving. Maybe he was hibernating. Maybe that explained why he never got any older. I hear you don’t age when you’re sleeping.

He’d been in the same place so long the olive tree no longer protected him from the sun. He was all wrinkles and liver spots and if all his fine white hairs were tied end to end, they might reach his knobbly ankles. His clothing was threadbare but clean. Medford Shale had a thing about cleanliness.

“Shale thinks you’re a no-talent little peckerwood and it’s probably that mallard doing the actual talking and putting words into mouths.” Shale’s withered lips scarcely moved. Maybe somebody from the great beyond was ventriloquising him. “You found yourself a wife yet?”

“Good to see you well, Uncle Medford. Nope. Still playing the field.”

Any other old boy in the place would’ve done a wink and nudge and boy-do-I-envy-you number. Medford Shale snapped, “You some kind of nancy boy? Ain’t gonna be none of that in this family. What the hell you doing, coming around here dressed like that?”

No relative of Shale’s ever did anything that didn’t embarrass him. The more sensitive sort never visit him. Generally, that includes even those of us with hides like trolls.

“Your life is so full you don’t have a minute to come ease an old man’s last years?”

“That’s right, Uncle. Given a choice between watching grass grow and listening to you bitch there ain’t no contest.” I’d always wanted to say that. When I was a kid my mother stopped me. Later, respect held me back
 
—
though I think respect should run both ways. Shale is too self-engrossed to respect anything. Right now, with a fresh crop of ogre-inflicted bruises atop the other aches I’d collected recently, I was crabby myself.

“That’s no way to talk to —”

“You want to be treated right, you treat people right. If I want to be pissed on and cut down, I don’t need to trudge all the way over here.”

Shale’s eyes widened. He sat up more spryly than you’d expect from a guy three times my age. “That parrot has become confused about what words to put into your mouth. No kin of mine would talk to me that way.”

“All right. I’m no kin. And the buzzard is quacking. He says, you want things easier here, help me. I know where to find a baker’s dozen of those molasses cookies you like.” I gave him a glimpse of the bundle.

Medford Shale wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t the kind of character who didn’t look out for number one, either. I learned to deal with him when I was a toddler, before Aunt Alisa died and he bought into Heaven’s Gate thinking the staff would cater to him the way his wife had. And they did. Almost. But he could begrudge the most reasonable request. Human nature made paybacks inevitable.

One of the staff heard me mention cookies. She was wide and ugly and tough, neither tall nor entirely human, probably a war veteran despite her sex. She had the air. Female combat nurses did visit the Cantard.

“Nothing sweet for him, you. Nothing spicy. They make him cranky.”

“Really. All my life I’ve thought he was just a nasty old man.”

“No shit. You fambly?” She was so solid she recalled things I’d seen in foreign temples, the sort of wide, steadfast, imperturbable creatures that guard doors and windows and roofs.

I nodded.

“I see the resemblance.”

Shale observed, “A cookie never hurt nobody, you ugly witch. Don’t listen to a word she barks, boy. She tortures us. She comes around in the middle of the night...” He thought better of continuing his rant. Possibly she did visit the troublesome ones in the night.

“What do you want?” she asked me.

“Why?”

She was surprised. “I’m in charge. I need —”

“The residents are in charge. You work for them.”