The Banshee's Walk (8 page)

At the foot of the stairs, there were more kids, two dozen at least, mostly paired off in the usual boy-girl fashion doing what were either dances or some sort of fever-induced fits. They weren’t all dancing. Naturally, there were a half-dozen partiers of either sex hovering in ragged circles around the dance floor, either staring into their cups to make it obvious they didn’t care much about this dancing foolishness anyway or giggling at each other and whispering behind raised hands.

I stepped inside. Gertriss followed. I let the door slam with a monstrous thud and it was only then that anyone noticed the House had been invaded.

The place was dark, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust. I saw mouths drop open and dancers turn and go still. By the time I was used to the lamplight and the candles, the last beats and bangs from the musicians died and the House was suddenly silent.

“You must be the finder,” said a kid.

“We’re supposed to fetch Lady Werewilk,” said another.

“Get him a beer first,” said a third.

And, lo and behold, someone pressed a tall cool beer right in my outstretched hand.

There was ice in it. Actual ice, cut out of a frozen stream last winter and stored in sawdust since.

I saw Gertriss frown as I lifted the glass to my lips. Maybe a touch of sight runs in my family too because I heard, clear as day, Mama warning Gertriss that I was too much fond of all things fermented.

It was good beer. Not one I recognized, either. A local brew, probably, one redolent of honey and an unusually sweet variety of hops.

There was a sound on the stairs, way up in the dark, and before I could take a second drink the musicians and the dancers and the hangers-on scattered. Within seconds, nothing was left but empty glasses, a few scarves and a lone white dog, that tilted his head and looked up at me with innocent doggy bewilderment.

“I do not ask for much,” said an icy voice from above. Gertriss mouthed “Lady Werewilk” as quick footfalls wound down toward us.

“But I suppose even what I do ask is too much,” continued Lady Werewilk. “I apologize for your reception, Goodman Markhat. You were supposed to be greeted like a guest, not thrust into the midst of a drunken bacchanal.”

Lady Werewilk reached us, somewhat winded and obviously annoyed. She was wearing another tight black dress, the skirt long but slit up her right side nearly to her waist. I decided to entertain the assumption that she had a pair of very nice legs, since what I could see of the right one invited further scrutiny.

I hefted my beer. “The greeting was perfectly acceptable, Lady Werewilk,” I said. “You have a lovely home.”

“Thank you, Goodman. It is a pity those who live here under the benefice of this House do not see it with such high regard.” She clapped her hands. “Emma! Ella! Bags!”

Feet scrambled, presumably those of Emma and Ella.

“It seems your trip was not without adventures.”

Beer and skirts. I’d forgotten about the claw-marks on my face.

“We ran into some trouble on the road south,” I admitted. “Bandits, probably.”

“Bandits.”

I shrugged. “That’s as good as any explanation for now, Lady.”

Emma and Ella appeared, clambering down the steps with twin expressions of exasperation. And twin everything else, right down to their maid’s outfits and the way their shiny leather shoes each sported a loose buckle on the left. They were tiny, compact girls, blonde haired, blue eyed, with just a hint of Elvishness in their long fingers and delicate noses.

“May we—” said one.

“—take your bags?” finished the other.

Gertriss let her jaw drop. I shot her a look, and she closed it. I knew from Mama that a lot of country people held some odd superstitions about twins, but this wasn’t the time or the place to air them.

“Please do,” I said. I’d worked the crossbow bolt out of my rucksack on the ride through the woods.

“Your rooms will be on the third floor,” said Lady Werewilk. “Emma, take Goodman Markhat’s bag. Ella, see to Miss Gertriss.” She frowned in concern, and I saw her resist the urge to touch my wounded face. “I’ve arranged to have the entire household present for the evening meal,” she said instead. “I believe you wanted to speak to everyone at once.”

“I do, and I thank you.” Emma picked up my rucksack with no apparent effort despite her diminutive size. Ella did the same with Gertriss’s bag, which from its heft must have contained both Mama’s card and potion shop and Darla’s entire inventory of summer gowns.

“You’ll hear a bell half an hour before the meal is served,” said Lady Werewilk. “Another will sound at five minutes until. The dining room is that way.” She motioned toward a wide, dark hall that led off to the right. “You’ll have no trouble finding it. Just follow the noise.”

“We’ll be there, Lady.”

Lady Werewilk nodded, oozed down the few remaining stairs and made off down the hallway she’d just shown us, doing fascinating things to her dress on the way.

Gertriss poked me in the ribs.

“You’re bleedin’ again, Mister Markhat.”

I felt a big fat drop of blood gather precariously at the end of my nose.

“So I am. Lead on, Emma. I may need to be stitched up before we dine. Have you ever stitched up a wounded man before?”

Emma giggled, and she and Ella sped up the stairs in absolutely perfect time.

My room—which was actually three rooms joined by two doors and one archway—was on the west side of the House. The tiny windows let in just enough afternoon sun to throw long shadows across the floor. I had to light candles just to keep from stumbling into things.

Gertriss was four doors down, on the same side. The walls were so thick I couldn’t hear a sound, though I knew she was prowling around and taking it all in.

I dropped my rucksack on the vast plane of clean linen that was my bed and started pounding on the wall.

A moment later, I heard a pounding in response, and muffled shouting about my lack of manners and how it had been a long and trying ride.

I left Gertriss to her explorations and sought out the fancy water closet. There was running water, both hot and cold, and the same newfangled flush toilet I hear the Regent squats over twice a day.

Feeling very cosmopolitan, I unpacked my shaving kit, ran enough hot water to fog the mirror, and set about seeing to my thoroughly clawed face.

I whistled. It was worse than I’d thought. Even with her claws blunted by a manicure, Gertriss had managed to give me a good country raking. I washed the cuts, which of course started the bleeding all over again, and by the time I was done it looked like an army surgeon’s tent had emptied itself on the floor.

Not an auspicious way to appear at the evening meal. But between the story of the crossbow bolts and the sword, which I imagined was spreading like wildfire below courtesy of Scatter and Lank, a few recent battle-scars might at least put the innocent off guard just enough to make tongues wag.

And wagging tongues are what line my purse.

I washed. I shook the wrinkles out of a good shirt and donned a pair of new shoes that sported a hole in the sole from a crossbow aimed at my favorite head. I combed my hair back and smoothed it down with the hair oil Darla bought me for Victory Day. Even so, I figured we had a good hour before the first of Lady Werewilk’s dinner bells rang.

I grinned. Time to show my young apprentice a thing or to about how finders spend their spare time.

I closed my door quietly behind me, stuck my hands in my pockets and ambled to Gertriss’s door. My hand was raised to knock, very softly, when various latches and locks began to click and loose until the door swung open just far enough to reveal a finger’s breadth of Gertriss’s face.

“Mister Markhat.” She spoke in a whisper. “You are the boss. I respect that. Believe me I do. But there is a bathtub in here. A bathtub with running water. Hot running water. A bathtub with hot running water and fancy store-bought soap and some kind of smell-good stuff in a jar. Is anyone about to kill us?”

“Not at the moment.”

“So I’ll close the door, but not lock it. And you can count to ten and come inside and wait for me in the front room. Can you do that?”

“I can do that. Except maybe the counting to ten part. What comes after four?”

The door shut. I heard feet dart quickly away.

I counted to ten, fingered my wounded face, counted to ten again just in case I’d counted too fast the first time. Then I went inside.

The next door was shut. Tendrils of steam wafted underneath it, and I could hear splashing.

Country girl. Hot bath.

I found a chair, folded my hands and let her take her time.

House Werewilk was a noisy place. Even the thick stone walls couldn’t block out the sounds of thirty-odd artists and the staff of ten banging, shouting, and stomping through their day.

Dogs were barking. I closed my eyes and counted at least six different barks. I didn’t think they were barking at anything in particular—each other, the wind, a squirrel—but the presence of so many dogs and so many people ought to have made it very difficult for a surveyor and his crew to slip unnoticed through the grounds.

Of course, from what Marlo had said, a circus complete with elephants could have paraded past the House’s red door, and it’s unlikely any of the staff would have done so much as peeked outside. And the artists all seemed to be kids, who doubtlessly had better things to do than be curious about any goings-on outside.

And the crossbows on the road. A random encounter with bandits?

I didn’t think so. The road we were traveling was seldom used. It seemed a poor choice for locating well-heeled prey.

I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable in the realization that someone might have been willing to commit murder just to keep me from reaching the House. Not that my murder would have necessarily roused the Watch from its perpetual bureaucratic slumber—but Evis, for instance, might be inclined to poke around. A vengeful Avalante is not a thing the casual killer is likely to merely shrug off.

And what exactly had Gertriss seen, in the trees? She claimed it was a woman. I was hardly an expert on the ways of the sturdy country folk hereabouts, but finding their women ascended into the boughs seemed unlikely. But what else could she have seen?

Her Sight. A trick of her Sight. I decided to ask her about that, and right on cue water splashed beyond the door and she spoke.

“She was there, Mr. Markhat. It weren’t no trick of my Sight. There was a woman sitting up there in a big old oak.”

I rose. I paced. It’s a bad habit, but having somewhere bigger than my tiny office to pace was just too much of a temptation.

“Maybe she was picking apples.”

“It was an oak tree, Mr. Markhat. She wasn’t picking anything. She was watching us. She didn’t think she’d be seen.”

The dogs had seen. So had Scatter and Lank. And all their reactions to seeing the woman had been to run.

“What did she look like, Gertriss? Why did the dogs spook, and the kids run?”

I could tell by the sounds that Gertriss was trying to figure out how to make the tub drain. Finally, there came a gurgling gush of water.

“She was maybe as tall as Mama, but thin, Mr. Markhat.” Glassware tinkled. “Thin like a bird. Wild hair. She was—well, nude, mostly.”

I grinned, hearing the obvious blush in her voice.

“Starkers and up a tree. You’d have thought Scatter and Lank would still be rooted to the spot. But they ran, Gertriss. Tell me why.”

Gertriss hesitated. That bothered me. I can’t have my eyes and ears editing their truths. Not at one out of every five crowns.

“Spill it, Gertriss. I’m the boss, remember?”

She sighed. I could hear a brush being drawn through her hair.

“She was wearing spider webs, Mr. Markhat. And not many of them. Just dirty spider webs, wrapped around her—her, um, body.”

“Go on.”

“She was pale. Deadly pale. Her fingers were long—too long. But her eyes—they were big, too big. And dark and …” she trailed off, looking for words.

“Scary?” I suggested. “Eldritch? Foreboding? Inflamed?”

Clothes rustled. Shadows flew beneath her door. Finally, Gertriss herself emerged.

I’d have to start watching my reactions to Gertriss. Darla would not approve of how my jaw tended to go slack and my eyes fixed themselves on places that were not on the approved list of viewing sites for semi-attached males.

“They weren’t normal eyes, Mr. Markhat.” She breezed past me, all soap and fresh linen, and sat in the chair across from me. The thick bathrobe, twin to the one hanging in my closet, left her legs bare well above her knees. I shifted my gaze north and forced my mind heavenward.

“Not normal how, Gertriss?” Inspiration struck. “Look, I know Mama has told you a lot of things about me. One being that I’m pigheaded about accepting advice based on Hog Sight. Maybe that’s true, and maybe it isn’t. But I am asking. And I do want to know.”

Bingo. Gertriss beamed.

Everyone likes to think their opinions are sought after.

“She saw right inside you, when she looked, Mr. Markhat. More than that, when I saw her, she knew it, somehow, and when she looked at me, she…was getting in my head.” She shook her head and shivered, not from any chill in the room. “I know what that sounds like. But it happened. She has something like Sight, but different. Stronger. Older.”

I nodded. “Did you get a sense she wanted to hurt you?”

Gertriss shook her head. “I couldn’t make no sense—I couldn’t make any sense out of what I felt,” she said. “Just…one minute, she was way off up in that tree. The next, her face was right in mine.”

“No wonder Scatter and Lank took off.”

Gertriss nodded. “No wonder.”

“All right. So we’ve got a scary witch-woman watching us from the trees. We’ve got equally scary men with crossbows trying to pin us to the trees. And in a little while we’ll sit down to dinner with forty-six strangers and ask them all kinds of rude questions. Then we’ll spend the night watching the haunted forest for signs of mysterious land surveyors. Still glad you got the job?”

Gertriss managed a laugh. “Beats hog farming. I should finish getting dressed.”