Gilded Latten Bones (26 page)

It had been created right here in this house by Dean Creech.

No doubt Kip Prose could polish it and make it a bestseller.

Morley said, “Everybody thinks Tinnie has run her course. That you’ve started to show some spine. Maybe because of this Strafa. They talk like she’s your perfect woman.”

They? “That can’t be true. They can’t know her well enough.”

“They wouldn’t talk about it in front of you. And they do know Tinnie.”

“They? Who? Dean and Singe?”

“Don’t get excited. People care about you. They worry. They especially worry about how your decisions might affect their lives.”

Another worry I didn’t need. “Let’s get something straight. Do you think Strafa is better for me than Tinnie is?”

“I haven’t formed an opinion. I don’t know the new woman — except that she’s scary and she’s screaming gorgeous. Tinnie I do know.”

That didn’t sound like a ringing endorsement. “Meaning?”

“Tinnie has some wonderful points. But with some of us she resonates like the Remora does with you. You tolerate him because Winger is your friend. One could make a case for Tinnie being a particularly sinister proof of Dotes’ First Law. Don’t look at me like that.”

“It could be my fault.”

“That’s the sinister part. She makes you think the problems are all your fault.”

I muttered about us having to start recovery training, to avoid an inappropriate vent about him and Belinda. Then I wondered if I ought to poll my acquaintances for their opinions.

Of a sudden I had a distinct feeling that I liked Tinnie a lot more, and thought a lot better of her, than did most any acquaintance not named Tinnie. They tolerated her because she came with me. Odd, that. I was used to thinking that people tolerated me because I came with Tinnie.

Both views would be pure truth
 
—
depending where you are standing.

That was not the Dead Man. His Nibs continued snoozing. That was me imagining how Old Bones would respond if I asked his opinion.

I said, “Intellectually, I’m not feeling so good. I need time to get my mind right.”

Morley said nothing. He had no need. His expression told the tale.

Garrett had had years to think. He had done his best to avoid that. Now he was caught in a cleft stick, with guilt twisting his arm up behind him.

Sometimes procrastination can be a blessing. And sometimes not, with personal things. Time passing lets opportunities get away and unresolved problems fester.

“Really? Isn’t your actual problem that you think too much?”

“Hard to argue with that. Everyone I ever knew accused me of that.”

“Let’s get back to the plan.”

“It’s coming along. Since neither of us can go dancing with the devils right now we’ll train till we are able.”

“I understand the theory. But your thinking is anachronistic. It made sense back when you dealt with stuff that didn’t attract attention from generals and princes.”

What he meant wasn’t obscure, but I didn’t get it.

“You kept developing attachments, Garrett.”

“I don’t follow.”

“In the beginning there was you, me sometimes, and a sleek new girl every couple of months. And Tinnie in and out of your life. Then you started getting entangled. There was the brewery connection. Then the Contagues.” He made a gesture meant to warn me against interrupting. “You got entangled with Block and Relway and Singe. And Kip and the whole inventory of Tates.”

I understood, then. As life proceeded I kept making persistent connections that created ever more complicated obligations. The hiatus under Tinnie’s thumbs hadn’t shaken me free. People had expectations. I had expectations of my own.

Morley said, “All those entangling people will go right on doing what they do.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant but he was gracious enough to go on crushing my grand strategy.

That’s what it added up to. Our problems existed for other people, too. In this case, most everyone in the city.

“You put it that way, there’s no point in us making plans.”

“Now you’ve got it.”

I took another shot at getting up off the cot. This time I made it upright.

A drooping Singe materialized before I took a second step. “Where are you going?”

“Upstairs. To bed.”

“You just woke up.”

I coughed heartily. The cold was getting there. “Ah, crap! You should get some sleep, too.”

“Somebody has to run this circus. And I seem to be the only one who can stay awake.”

“Unfair. You didn’t get the magical smack down.”

“Nor did I, eyes wide shut, charge into what a three-year-old dimwit could recognize as a deadly instrument.”

“She’s got you there, Garrett.”

A point. When I charge around overturning and busting things sometimes it’s me that gets overturned and busted.

I would have been better off hanging back, throwing rocks.

I picked up the breather. “Show me what to do.”

What to do was take notes, for the Dead Man’s delectation later, from people poking into things for us. Half of them I didn’t know. Some I hadn’t seen before. I had no idea how or when they had gotten hired. And they were, universally, boring, because they had nothing interesting to report.

After the fourth I told Singe, “This is impossible. TunFaire can’t possibly be that quiet. People can’t still be that ignorant. There were witnesses out there.”

“Just means the powers that be kept the lid on. So far. Probably by manufacturing clever stories. Gang warfare. Ethnic strife. Something like that. There. I’m caught up.”

Nothing interesting happened for the rest of the day.

68

I did get to bed before sundown, never having taken a sip of beer. Dean had gone up right after supper. Singe didn’t stay up much longer than I did. We left the house to Penny and Dollar Dan.

I fell asleep snuggling with the breather and a mound of handkerchiefs. Singe had delivered a mug of fierce medicinal tea on her way to her repose. That put me under, fast.

I wakened with the sun on the rise. And I was not alone.

Strafa was spooned up against me as though she had been there every night for years. She was leaner and warmer than what I was accustomed to.

I was startled, but only for a moment. Where else could she stay? The other beds were taken.

I moved slightly. She adjusted, too. My right hand discovered something smaller and more firm than what I anticipated. I cupped it. She pushed against my hand and made a little sound of contentment. I slipped back into Nod. She was purring.

When next I wakened I was on my back. Strafa’s head was on my chest, over my heart. She was against me tightly, all the way down. Her hand was on my belly, thumb resting on my navel.

It all seemed perfectly reasonable.

My heartbeat quickened.

That wakened Strafa, slightly. Her hand drifted.

I squeaked. She purred but granted a stay after brief exploration. She wrapped that arm around me, over my right shoulder, pulled herself even closer, half on top, purred some more, and went back to sleep.

Singe awakened us. She showed no attitude. “You won’t have time to eat if you don’t get moving.” She grabbed my used handkerchiefs. “I’ll get these washed. There are fresh downstairs.” Her nose twitched, no doubt telling her what she wanted to know. “The Dead Man is still asleep. General Block should be here in about an hour. His message didn’t say why. Otherwise, there is no news.”

Strafa untangled herself from the bedding while Singe talked, exposing my nakedness. No surprise to Singe. She knows I sleep raw. But Strafa was equally bare and not the least self-conscious.

Singe’s nose twitched some more. She said nothing. Her season was no longer causing completely tormenting emotions.

She collected the breather. “I’ll have Dean recharge this.”

“Thanks.” I did not look at her. I could not stop staring at Strafa, who was digging in a trunk that hadn’t been against the west wall when I went to bed.

The door shut behind Singe. Strafa looked at me, now sitting on the edge of the bed. “You’re having naughty thoughts. I can tell.”

Oh, yeah.

She came to me, pushed me back, straddled me, asked, “Now? Or wait till tonight?”

I was no moral hero. I was no faithful lover. Had the name Tinnie Tate come up just then my best response would have been, “Who?” I couldn’t talk. My brains were scrambled. The woman had found her way deep inside my head. She had established emotional colonies. There was no way to drive her out.

I couldn’t come up with an answer. So Strafa allowed herself the luxury of deciding for me.

As far as she was concerned the issue never was if but when.

69

I was still distracted when we reached the kitchen. Kind old Dean served breakfast despite the time. He was in a fine mood.

Morley shuffled in. He checked us out, smirked, but never said a word. Penny appeared as Dean set a plate in front of Morley. She sniffed as she settled into the last chair. She gave Strafa a dark look but didn’t say anything, either.

Playmate stuck his head in. “Anything I can do, Dean?” While he eyeballed me and Strafa.

“You could grab a hammer, some nails, and some boards, and add on to my kitchen. Otherwise, no. We can’t squeeze another body in.”

It wasn’t
that
crowded — though nobody would be able to move if Playmate put himself on our side of the door.

I asked, “Dean, who all is here? Besides who all I can see right now.”

“Singe. Some of John Stretch’s people. That creature who calls himself the Bird.”

Penny said, “Bird came to paint. His Honor is napping, though. So Bird is silencing his voices instead.”

That was about the longest speech she’d ever made in my presence. She sounded disconsolate. I risked panicking her. “What do you think about him, Penny? Does he really hear voices?”

She made herself reply, her voice tiny as she did so. “Yes. He hears them. And not just because he’s crazy. They’re real. He let me talk to them while we were working.”

Kitchen business stopped. Penny shrank under the pressure of curious eyes.

“The Dead Man thinks the Bird belongs in the crazy ward at the Bledsoe.”

“His Honor can’t hear the voices. He only hears Bird’s answers. If Bird does answer. Mostly, he just takes another drink.”

“How did you talk to the voices, then?”

“Bird told me what they said. They heard me when I answered.”

Dean rested a reassuring hand on Penny’s shoulder. “You’ll be all right.”

I didn’t get the girl. A couple, three years ago she had been hell on wheels, acting in her role as high priestess of a screw-ball country cult, hiding out from religious enemies. But she’d always been pathologically shy around me. Which, as Kyra had told her, was totally Tinnie’s fault.

I asked, “You talked to them?”

“Sure.”

I blew my nose. “How did that work?”

“Bird just lets the voice take over. Then I talk to the ghost. It doesn’t last long. Bird only lets them talk so people will know he’s telling the truth.”

I made myself stay calm. I had to keep the intensity down. Penny would trample Playmate trying to get away if I tripped her panic response. “I’d sure like to see that.” Penny did not volunteer to arrange it. “Who do the voices belong to?”

“Dead people. People who were murdered. Awful people, mostly.”

I once spent time in a relationship with a woman who had been murdered when I was a child. I met her ghost as an adult. I had no trouble with Penny’s notion. “Do tell.”

“Tell what? That the ones I talked to sounded like they got what they had coming? That’s what drives Bird crazy. He has these whiny haunts, who deserved what they got, insisting that he do things for them.”

“I’ve got it.” Not only did the Bird have to deal with ghosts, his spooks belonged to that select crew who think they are more special than anyone else and should get special treatment always, in the main because they survived childbirth.

In TunFaire these leeches tend to come to a bad end early, though their survivability has improved since the war’s end.

Once upon a time the body politic shed its parasites in the cauldron of the Cantard. They could be counted on to get themselves killed.

The war had had its fierce egalitarian side. There had been no buying out of it — though the clever had been able to wrangle less risky assignments. Princes and paupers, everyone took his dip in the deadly pond. Old folks were nostalgic for the days when the war kept the streets clear of loud, badly behaved, sometimes dangerous young men.

“Mr. Garrett?”

“I’m sorry. Having an old man’s moment. You’re used to Old Bones. Can he fix the Bird’s brain so he doesn’t hear those people?”

“I don’t think Bird would want that. He hates the voices. But if they aren’t pestering him and he doesn’t drink, he can’t paint.” Then she asked, “How long do you think His Honor will sleep?”

“I’ve never figured the formula out. You’d do better to ask Singe.”

“What should I do since he’s not awake?”

“What would you be doing if you weren’t hunkered down here?”

“Stuff. I don’t know. Dean and Singe both say I shouldn’t leave. Those bad people might want to get hold of someone from this house.”

“Dean is a wise man. Why don’t you help him? These past few days have been hard for him. And you can help Singe, if she needs it. I’m going to go bug her myself, right now.”

Everyone bailed when I did. Penny stayed with Dean. I saw no enthusiasm in either of them.

Singe was writing something using an Amalgamated steel tip quill. “The Dead Man’s pet girl says she talks to the ghosts that haunt the drunken artist.”

“Take him along next time you dance with the dead men. Turn them around on their mistress.”

“I’ll run it past Old Bones when he wakes up. I have some questions for you.”

“Blow your nose first. That sniffling is disgusting.”

I took care of that, and coughed up some stuff besides. “Did anyone trace the giant bottles and glass vats from that warehouse?”

“Not that I know of. The Director and the Guard aren’t keeping me in the loop. I didn’t think to ask last time the General was here. Speaking of whom, he’s late. No one else tells me anything useful, either. Including your new wrestling partner.”