Gilded Latten Bones (25 page)

I tried to purr, managed to sound like I was choking on phlegm. Tinnie made sure I wasn’t, then focused on Morley. Dean said, “According to Mike we lost Dotes the second the attack began.”

Typical. Dean was on nickname terms with Miss T after one exposure.

He asked, “What about you, Tinnie?”

“I’m still flustered. Still not sure what’s real. But I’ll be all right. Worry about Penny instead.”

Dean passed the soup. Tinnie settled into the seat the ratwomen used to feed Morley. She blew steam off a spoonful of broth. Dean went off to help somebody else.

“We have a world of things to talk about, Malsquando. Mostly concerning how my head has been working lately.” She got Morley to take some broth; then she looked down at me. I wasn’t shivering as badly. Her eyes were unreadable. “I saw things tonight that gave me a new perspective.”

That did not sound good.

“I promised you and the Dead Man... Well, I promised. I’ll stick to that. General Block explained what it’s all about.”

I wondered what Block was up to, stirring the pot while drunk and angry.

Tinnie got some more broth into Morley. “I see that this has to be dealt with. There are only a few people who can handle things like it. And you’re one.” Another spoon of soup. “I should be supporting you, not distracting you and holding you back.”

That cost her. She had clamped down hard on her emotions. No doubt Strafa tending me in the street was in the front of her mind. That was a slice of reality she couldn’t ignore.

I couldn’t say anything. I snuggled the rocks and tried to appear grateful.

Penny came to the doorway. She looked as rocky as I felt. “I’m going to leave now, Mr. Garrett. Please send for me when he’s able to go back to work.”

I tried to tell her that I would.

Tinnie said, “He can’t quite talk, yet. Shouldn’t you just stay here? It would be safer.”

Penny considered me, weighing the risk of being ravished against the certainty of safety and comfort. From behind her, Kyra said, “Stop worrying. Garrett is harmless. My aunt ought to be ashamed of the stuff she told you. It’s because of her in-securities. He won’t even look at
this
cross-eyed.” She posed.

Oh, woe! The mighty Garrett considered harmless by the young and the beautiful?

Tinnie snapped, “That is quite enough, Kyra!” She told Penny, “She’s right, though. You are safe. There’s an extra bedroom upstairs. Use that. Warn Dean so neither of you get any surprises. Go on. You need to stay close to good people right now.”

Good people?

What was this? That shock must have hit Tinnie hard.

Kyra said, “I’ll show you.”

And she knew, how? And why?

Tinnie looked like she had the same questions.

Many interesting things must have happened here in my absence.

Muted girl voices came from the kitchen. Dean definitely was exceeding the call of duty tonight. He should have been in bed hours ago.

65

The woman tried hard to drown me but I was too crafty. Whenever she shoved soup into my face I swallowed it. It was Dean Creech wonder soup. Every spoonful hit bottom, then declared itself throughout my body. Energy came back fast, along with confidence and a sense of well-being. It wasn’t long before I found my voice.

“Something I’ve been wanting to bring up all evening, darling. I never got to it because so much was going on.”

Wow. I made a miracle comeback. Almost as good as shaking that awful cold overnight. Though I hadn’t, really. A host of unpleasant symptoms were back now that Old Bones was asleep.

I could not help feeling uncomfortable about how my sidekick had begun operating without consultation. Strafa had put me away drowning in my own snot. Next morning the mess was gone and almost forgotten.

Maybe Old Bones didn’t think I had time to be sick.

Tinnie developed a mild glower while I rambled through distracting thoughts. “Let’s have it, Malsquando! Good or bad, let’s get to it.”

I was nervous. When Penny and Kyra got upstairs they would see that somebody had used that bed.

The guilty flee where no man pursueth.

We could see some interesting action when Strafa returned.

“All right. Here we go. Before the good goes away and the mucus comes back. Jon Salvation has been bullying me to get you to act in his next play. He wants you bad. Did he talk to you about that?”

“He tried to talk to me about something but I didn’t pay attention. And he kept hemming and hawing.”

The woman can have that effect on the male of the species.

“He has a new play about fairies. He wants you to be in it.”

“I’m done with that stuff.” Stated entirely without conviction, damned near begging to be talked into changing her mind. “I wasn’t able to be that kind of woman.”

“What you weren’t able to do was stop being a self-involved pain in the ass. You were Tinnie Tate to the third power.”

Had to be the soup. Something in the soup was worse than alcohol for loosening the tongue.

“Garrett?”

“Let’s just say you wouldn’t have put up with half of what you dished out if you’d been doing Salvation’s job.”

Her mouth opened and closed. No words came out. She reminded me of a freshly caught trout, with distractions. Say, better, a freshly caught mermaid.

“He wants you for the lead role, darling. And he’s sure this will be his biggest play yet.”

Her eyes got huge. She drifted off into fantasyland, harkening to dreams she’d had before she alienated everybody.

“Really?”

“Really. I tried to talk him out of it. He insists you’re perfect. I’d bet he used you when he created the character. Who you might not like much if you do get involved.” Tinnie had no patience with women who had quirks like hers.

Jon Salvation had a reputation for drawing his characters from life, and writing them true.

“What?”

“What I’m saying is, we don’t see ourselves the way other people see us. Not saying that what they see is any less subjective. But the way you were at the World...”

“Stop!”

She did not carry the argument forward.

I had unearthed ambitions my honey had kept hidden. She felt vulnerable, now. Maybe secretly ashamed.

She knew she had been a jerk back when she got kicked out of that select pool of cuties who could act without having to entertain the punters in private after the show.

She had been good but her uncles never approved.

She got all starry-eyed and lost in her imagination.

“Tinnie?”

“I’m sorry, Malsquando. This... It’s... It’s a lightning strike from a clear blue sky. He really said he wants me?”

“Like I told you, I think he used you to create the fairy queen. You wouldn’t even have to act. You could just be you. As long as that you isn’t the Tinnie that got everybody so mad...”

She jumped up and down like she was Kyra’s age. “I know what you mean. I learned my lesson. I’m not that Tinnie anymore. Garrett, sweetheart, you know what this means?”

“It means you need to get together with the Remora and convince
him
that you aren’t that Tinnie anymore.”

“No, dumbhead. It means that if I don’t mess this up I can tell my uncles to go to hell. They can find somebody else to keep their damned books.”

Epiphany! Though she hid it well Tinnie didn’t like her life much. “They’d have to
pay
somebody.”

“Yeah!” She had been trying to be what they wanted her to be. I had suffered because she tried to make me into the man they thought she ought to have. “If you’re running some practical joke on me, Malsquando...”

“He’s been trying to get hold of you for days. You wouldn’t let him.”

“I thought... Never mind.” She bounced up and down again. And didn’t turn sour when I suggested that she move into a better light so I could more fully appreciate the view.

I was, for the moment, content. We were rolling along just the way we ought. Only one teensy gnat in the ointment.

Old Bones and I needed to have a sit-down when he woke up. He needed to make his thinking clear. He was the serpent who could slither the deepest cesspits of the human mind. He could explain why he preferred Strafa Algarda to the woman who had been closest to me for an age.

Kyra galloped in. I was sure she would want to know who had been using the guest room bed. Instead, she said, “Our coach is here.”

Tinnie said, “It is way late. I need to get Uncle Oswald and Artifice home so they can be treated.”

I struggled into a sitting position. “We all need sleep. Kyra, can you see if Dean needs any help? He’s got to be half dead by now.”

She went. Tinnie asked, “What about you?”

“I’ll manage.”

“You need to rest, too. But somebody has to let Singe in when she gets back.”

“Dollar Dan can handle that.” The ratman was in Singe’s office, staying out of the way.

“That sorceress will be here, too.”

“She might be,” I admitted.

Tinnie took a first step in changing the rest of her life. She let that go. She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t try to manipulate me by telling me how much she trusted me.

Old Bones had had some impact after all.

66

I didn’t know when Singe and Strafa came back. They didn’t bother to wake me up. I lay back down after Dollar Dan, the Tate women, and their coachmen hauled Uncle Oswald and Artifice away. I was asleep before Dollar Dan locked up behind them.

I slept on the floor. The Windwalker used my bed. Not only did I miss out on the temptation, I knew nothing about it till late next day. By then I was in a bad temper, fighting a terrible cold or incipient flu. I was surly with everybody. Singe had to be the pleasant face of the household to the rest of the world.

I hurt all over. And Old Bones was asleep. But Playmate was awake, ambulatory, trying to help Dean. He looked a lot better, though the plan had been to keep him unconscious several days more.

He had missed his doses of the stuff that had kept Morley down.

Dotes was seated on the end of the cot. He moved gingerly when he moved at all. It hurt him to talk today.

Him being upright brightened things a lot.

He said, “I hope you feel better than you look.”

“I doubt it.” I climbed onto the other end of the cot, which creaked but held. I told him about my latest brush with the darkness.

Penny appeared with a stack of handkerchiefs. I suppressed the urge to grab her wrist and pull. Keeping right on, growing up.

She offered a half curtsey, fled.

Morley chuckled. “Time’s been good to her. So you’ve made up.”

“Sort of. I don’t know how long it’ll last without Old Bones cracking the whip.”

I heard Singe talking to somebody in the next room. Then somebody left the house. Singe joined us. I said, “You look frazzled. Did you get any sleep?”

“Some. We had the usual luck.” She sneezed.

“You, too?” I offered a hanky. “They lost you?”

“This is not a cold. It is a continuing reaction to something they used to stop me from following them. I did not stop to identify ingredients. I got away fast. The compound was designed to ruin my nose forever.”

“You’re all right?” I was concerned despite my own bad humor.

“Yes.”

“Strafa?”

“She’s all right, too. I owe her. She pulled me back before I got a nose full. She brought me home. She just went back out. I don’t know why.”

“You’re suspicious?”

“Just a feeling. Probably mostly because she is so interested in you. I shouldn’t distrust her for that. She is too simple to be evil.”

That was an interesting notion.

Morley drank it in without comment.

I said, “I’m going to try to get up, now. I have some business that needs doing.” I thought. I ought. It had been a long night.

Singe said, “I’ll get a chamber pot.”

I lifted my butt eight inches off the cot, could not find the strength to get any higher. Then I realized that I didn’t need to go as badly as I should.

Morley grinned when he saw my frown deepen.

“Wait a minute.”

Singe said, “The cleaning women took care of you, too. You hardly groaned. And you definitely needed the work.”

I faced a creative linguistics challenge but was too sluggish to manage more than an apathetic, “Dirty rotten rackelfratz.” I did turn red.

“It is just a job to them, Garrett. They said hardly anything. And you really needed it. You were a mess.”

I used another handkerchief.

Singe added, “I will ask Dean to prepare a camphor breather.” She left. I blew some more and worried about how bad the cold would get once it got down into my chest.

I was not looking forward to that.

67

Morley asked, “Do we have a plan?”

“We get us back in shape. Then we go find the people who hurt you.”

“A masterpiece of strategy and tactics.”

“It needs a little refinement.”

“That’s the usual Garrett approach. Stomp around and break things.”

“It works.”

“I’m not sure why. I will stipulate that you still walk among us.”

Dean and Playmate turned up. Playmate carried a clever little table that folded up flat. It had the Amalgamated hall-mark burned into a leg. Another Kip Prose invention, no doubt. Playmate set it up. Dean deposited a tray featuring tea, dry toast, two bowls of soup, and the thing Singe called a breather. Fresh handkerchiefs accompanied that.

Dean volunteered, “The younger Miss Tate sent us a half dozen of these tables and some more fold-up chairs.”

“Thoughtful of her.”

“It was, truly.” He eyed me expectantly. So I thanked him for the table and tray.

He left looking sour.

Morley poured the tea. “He was hoping you would clarify the direction you’re headed emotionally.”

“What?”

“They’re all wondering the same thing, Garrett. I can see that and I’ve been dead for a month.”

I sipped tea, nibbled toast, downed a few spoons of soup, then suggested, “Clue me in,” before I shoved my face into the inhaler device. Which did not bear an Amalgamated hall-mark.