Gilded Latten Bones (41 page)

“Of course.”

DeeDee and Crush were not in their work clothes but DeeDee’s taste tended toward flashy trash.

“Before we go,” Mike said. And dragged me back to the kitchen. Dean and Dollar Dan scrunched up and let us in, Dean automatically beginning to rattle teacups. He had gotten the window fixed already.

Mike pressed up against me tight. I said, “I’m flattered but...”

“You ought to be. That Salvation.”

“What about him?”

“Is he really as naïve as he seems?”

“Oh, yeah. More so. He’s good at faking being cool.”

“So he doesn’t know about us?”

I understood. “Actually, he does. He thinks it’s all kind of romantic.”

She shook her head. She sneered a little. Part of me was proving not to be loyal to any one woman. “You’re alive after all.” She relented, stepped back. I was not as flustered as she had hoped. She asked, “What’s his interest? Guys his age, it’s usually Crush. But he treats her like he doesn’t know she’s a girl.”

“He knows. I guarantee. But he doesn’t want her to think that’s what’s on his mind. If he’s interested in anybody that way, I figure it’s you.” Which I said for the hell of it.

“Which is why his drool is all over DeeDee’s shoulders, I suppose.”

“He’s shy. He doesn’t know how to interact with a refined lady.”

“Wiseass.”

“He’s good people, Mike. Don’t mess him up.”

“We never mess first. It’s one of my rules.” She turned to the door but had a wicked thought. “But I’ll let me break it just this once.”

She stepped back against me, wiggled a little. “You and the Windwalker split up, stop by.” Chuckling, she winked at Dean, pushed off, and left the kitchen.

Dean said, “You don’t want her, I’ll take her.”

“You old villain.” I took half a minute to catch my breath and let the swelling subside, then headed up the hall to make my farewells.

103

Morley told me, “I have to be in on this. I won’t contribute, but... It will be historic.”

This was next day. Mr. Mulclar had finished fixing the door but it remained open in honor of the man’s special faculty. He has a digestive disorder. It doesn’t improve if he eats gravel. His leave-behind here suggested a diet exclusively of fermented beans and thousand-day eggs.

Over the past twenty-plus hours the principals dealt with personal issues, political issues, squabbled over turf, and behaved like a pack of four-year-olds. The Director and General Block got heads together with some senior military people and talked them into staying out of the way unless there were disorders the Civil Guard could not manage.

The people inside the Knodical remained stubborn. Strafa’s peers on the Hill made excuses for doing nothing, though they did agree to deal with any villains who came their way.

I was convinced that a witch hunt was a sure thing, but the peace held.

Block and Relway had every man helping keep the lid on.

Belinda was in the woodwork somewhere, licking her wounds, sulking, scheming bloody retribution — and helping keep the peace.

She had all her troops called up, too.

The battle at Fire and Ice had gone her way. Some good guys had survived. Everyone from the sporting house escaped. Belinda owed her own continued existence to the superhuman efforts of Joel, who had proven his love.

Joel was alive but not expected to stay that way.

I suffered mild episodes of grogginess and was unsure of the boundary between reality and fantasy. Still, I boarded a coach hired by the Guard and rode it down to the Landing. The Landing is called that because some old-time explorer first set foot in the city there. The city already existed, but was savage, pagan, and uncivilized. Its people neither spoke the explorer’s language nor worshipped his god.

The neighborhood swarmed with Civil Guards and Outfit soldiers.

I told Singe, “I don’t think this is the smart thing to do.”

“Then call it off.”

“You’re kidding. You think I’m in charge? Besides, it’s too late.”

“You could stop this cold by presenting a reasoned argument for holding off till better evidence is collected.”

Me deliver a solid argument for restraint? Hopeless. Besides, a lot of people wanted to make something happen. It didn’t have to be a good something so long as some fur flew.

Singe stayed close, on my left. So did Strafa, to my right. She snuggled up close enough to make me regret having left the house. Then she gave herself some space and became the Windwalker, Furious Tide of Light. The change was impressive.

General Block, Director Relway, and Belinda Contague all were in sight. Morley was close by, surrounded by his old crew. John Stretch had brought a dozen of his hardest men, three of who screened Singe and me. The rest were out sniffing, which was unnecessary. The air was still and heavy. I could smell it myself.

The Windwalker drifted upward. Singe and I caught up with General Block. He said, “The guards have done a runner.”

“Think the villains have cleared out, too?”

Morley squeaked something from a few yards away. “What’s up?” I asked Sarge.

“He’s remembering something.”

“The smell,” Dotes said. “And that place straight ahead. Made with the odd color bricks. That was the place.”

The bricks in question were gray. Most bricks used in TunFaire are some shade of red.

The scouts agreed. The gray brick building was the place. The smell increased as we got closer. There was a taint of death in it overridden by the stenches of urine and feces.

The Guards, Outfit thugs, and the rest collapsed inward till we established a cordon round three and a half sides. The rest of one side faced the river and consisted of a pair of concrete-walled, silted channels where once upon a time army barges had been loaded from the warehouse. Someone had begun making an effort to clear the silt.

I said, “That’s what you do with your thread men when you aren’t using them to set fire to people’s houses.”

“There,” Morley said, indicating a small, broken, wooden door that opened on the divider between channels. A wooden ladder in a dangerous state of disrepair clung to the side of the warehouse nearby, leading to the roof. “That’s where I got out.”

Singe asked, “You climbed that ladder?”

“I did. All the way. In the rain. I stayed on the roof for a day and a half. I should have stayed longer. They heard me coming back down because I said something too loud when I slipped. I got a head start but it didn’t do me any good.”

Directing Guards by gesture, General Block asked, “And how did you get in there in the first place?”

Relway announced, “We’re set at all the entrances. Say when.”

“When.”

Morley said, “I don’t remember that part yet.”

I asked, “How are you doing now? You able to keep going?”

“I’ll have Puddle piggyback me when I can’t manage anymore.”

Puddle expressed his opinion about that rather pithily.

Civil Guards broke down doors. Outfit bone breakers rushed inside. Somebody yelled something about idiots not forgetting the godsdamned colored lanterns so friends wouldn’t bust the skulls of friends in the dark.

I looked up.

Strafa was way up there, watching the whole neighborhood. Her clothes faded into the background overcast. She was hard to spot.

Singe gagged.

“What?”

“They opened something in there. I have to move back. It’s too much.” She headed toward the coaches. Most of the ratmen were doing the same. John Stretch went a few seconds after Singe. “It’s too foul.”

Too foul for a rat?

I smelled it. It was everything that had been there before, but a hundred times worse.

Guards stumbled out of the nearest doorway, desperate for clean air. One headed toward Block. He had thrown up on himself.

Block asked, “Is it really that bad?”

“Worse than you can imagine, sir. Way worse.” He threw up again.

I said, “I suggest we don’t send anybody in that we don’t have to.”

Morley, using a stick for a cane, asked, “Remember the smell when we raided that vampire nest?”

“Yeah. This may be worse.”

Ten minutes later a pair of red tops emerged with a limp figure between them. The man screamed when they brought him into the light.

“More stuff like that nest,” Morley said.

There wasn’t much light for those of us used to the surface world. The overcast was growing heavier. It would rain again soon.

The Windwalker plunged like a striking hawk. A bolt of actinic light preceded her.

104

I started to yell at Block. That wasn’t necessary. He grabbed able bodies and headed out. I told Morley, “I’ll be right back.”

“Take your time. I’ll be here.”

Strike point for the Windwalker’s bolt was two blocks away. I was winded when I joined the circle. The Windwalker remained upright, right foot planted on the throat of the woman in black. The latter wore a silver wig and was at her absolute peak of perfection, fully recovered from my brutality. She was singed and had a bad case of the shakes.

The Windwalker growled, “Can’t any of you stop staring at her tits long enough to do something useful?”

I have mentioned how good the woman looked going away. With her top torn open the full frontal view was even more striking.

I rolled her over. That helped. The red tops bound her hands behind her and hobbled her. Relway took her wig. That helped some more.

The Windwalker said, “Stuff her into a gunnysack if that’s what it takes.” She stepped close to me, shut down the Windwalker some and hit me with a minor dose of her own magic. “You did good. I’m proud of you. You might find a little something special in your bed tonight.”

A big racket broke out back whence we had come. The Windwalker reestablished herself. She floated upward. “Yeah! I am so ready for this.” She shot that direction, did a loop and plunged. I charged after her, huffing and puffing. She swooped and darted like a smaller bird harassing a raider raven.

Something below her screamed and screamed.

Morley’s mention of the vampire nest reminded me that I had heard that kind of scream before. It was rooted in the agony of knowing that immortality had been betrayed.

Tentacles whipped at the Windwalker. She dodged them easily.

Coming into the last hundred fifty feet of my run I saw that the monster had only two tentacles free to fend off an aerial attacker. The rest all had hold of people, the most notable of who was Morley. Several men threw things ineffectively. Nobody had come prepared to deal with this. But it could not flee while in squid form.

I was fifty feet away, lungs afire, wishing I’d had the stones to bring something lethal to the fight. The Windwalker made a quick run.

She pelted the beast with precisely delivered handfuls of rock salt.

It stopped trying to fight. It began to shudder, to shake. It turned loose of Morley and the others. I got in close, grabbed Sarge’s arms, and started dragging. Other guys got hold of other victims, some of who had gotten thoroughly squeezed.

The Windwalker dropped down beside me. She turned into Strafa Algarda again. She was not breathing as hard as I was. “I ran out of salt!” She was exasperated.

“But you had enough.”

She slipped her right hand into my left hand and pulled me forward.

The monster ripped through one final, violent, screaming convulsion, followed by a bizarre, noisy death rattle. It relaxed into the Nathan of the Bird’s portrait, only looking as he might have at twenty, improved by a vast suite of cosmetic enhancements.

This was the male equivalent of the sweet thing in black leather — except for proportional wounds where its alternate form had been showered with salt.

Block caught up. He clamped his right hand on my left shoulder, facing me, while he fought for wind. “We got’em. Finally.”

“Not all of them. Not yet.”

Morley stumbled over and hung on to Block. He could not take his eyes off our prisoner. “I remember most of it.” He pointed at Nathan, who was getting the hog-tie treatment despite his poor health. “Him. He was the one who locked me up down there. I think because I saw them bringing prisoners off a barge over there.” At which point he became completely confused.

I asked the question that was troubling him. “What were you doing here in the middle of the night?”

“I don’t remember.” But he did before he finished saying that. And it was something he dared not discuss with Westman Block close by.

This near the river, after dark, meant smuggling. In Morley’s case, undoubtedly to avoid import duties. He donned a broad, weak grin.

Block said, “We won this round.” His men had Nathan cocooned in rope in case he decided to come back to life. “But we still have work to do.”

105

They picked me to step up to the Knodical door and ask for Prince Rupert. Strafa went along. The door opened. We went inside.

Other than the servants who admitted us there were no visible staff. The place was halfway a ruin. Maintenance had been neglected for years.

I went in all worked up to protect my best girl. A few minutes later I was thinking more rationally. I understood who would be protecting whom.

The servants led us to Prince Rupert. He was the absolute antithesis of happy. My message was brief. “The people outside want you to see something before this situation gets any uglier.”

He had no choice. We had seen the inside of the Knodical. We would take that information back with us. And go we would because the Windwalker would make it happen.

“What?”

“You need to see it with a virgin mind.”

Strafa said, “You have no choice, Rupert. See what you must see. Then we’ll put this trial to bed.”

He asked, “Is it still raining?”

Prince Rupert shared our coach. We reached the Landing. General Block had the army setting up a field hospital. Morley, Belinda, and Deal Relway were still on site and getting underfoot. The ratpeople were all gone. Nobody offered the Crown Prince a welcoming smile.