The Prophecy Machine (Investments) (22 page)

Step, slash—step and slash again—

—and then he was aware of the loner at his back, aware with a start, that his single enemy had turned into four. It struck him, again, this was not the vacation he'd bargained for.

“Standin' and fight,” said Foxer number one, “face me if yous dare!”

“We'll not bes harmin' if you do,” said number two.

“Yes we will,” said three, formerly known as Limp, “that bes what we're here for!”

“I'm afraid I have to go,” Finn said, “I'm expected somewhere.”

With a bark and a shout, Limp came at him, driving Finn up the steep slate at his back.

“What yous gotten in the basket?” Limp said, slashing at Finn's head. “When I bes makin' you deads, I takin' a look inside.”

“There's not as much as you'd think, but you're welcome to it if I fail.”

“Hey, failin' you will, for we doesn't welcome strangers to our shores.”

“If you'd not taken up with Nucci scums, we'd maybe lettin' yous go,” said a Foxer approaching from the right, one he didn't know. “You dids, though, an' we gots to stick you for that.”

Finn turned from Limp for an instant to drive the newcomer back. The Newlie was better than he'd thought. Instead of retreating, he lunged in quickly and ripped Finn's shirt at the chest, leaving a painful stripe of red.

“Hah! You'd best bes givin' in,” the Foxer grinned, licking his pointy nose, glaring at Finn with his hateful red eyes. “Yous no match for me, yous only a man!”

“A lucky hit,” Finn said, “don't count on doing that again.”

He forced a smile to match his foe's, but the cut hurt him
more than he wanted the fellow to know. Without looking back, he retreated up the steep slope, praying he didn't slip on a slat some lazy roofer had failed to nail down.

“Is it bein' true what wes heard,” Lump said, edging up on Finn's right, “is it trues in your land you got a place where strangers stop and sleep?”

“Spend the whole night?” someone added.

“And eats there too?”

“With peoples you don't even know?”

“Where yous can see them, and theys can see you?”

Limp made a face. “Humans is nasty everywhere, but I never heards anything sicker as that.”

“What is it you have against the Nuccis?” Finn asked, hopping to the right, and then the left again. “I'd simply like to know.”

He was nearing the peak of the roof. Another step or two, and he could risk a look down the other side …

“If it's that lad on the ship—is that it? I stopped Sabatino, I'd like to mention that. Weren't aware of that, right? To tell you the truth, I don't care for the Nuccis myself. Fate tossed us together, I assure you, I didn't have a great deal of choice.

“But attacking people in their beds, in the dark of night—that's a coward's path, there's little pride in that. Far better if you'd face them in the open, work out your quarrel in an honest, straightforward way—”

The Foxers came at him as if they were all of one mind, as if some sign, some gesture, had passed between them unseen. Their teeth were bared and their eyes were bright with rage. Their blades flashed in the sun, and they raised a terrible din.

“Something I said to offend, I'll wager,” Finn muttered to himself, hastily backing toward the peak. “I fear I've set you fellows off again.”

He reached the top, then, one foot braced on the near
side, one against the other, neither too secure, for he felt a bit light in the head. He'd ignored the wound thus far, knew he should have left before the weakness took him down.

The Foxers could sense his confusion, read the hesitation in his stance, smell the blood, perhaps, as their kind had done before the Change.

Every action, now, seemed to move faster for Finn, everything but the limbs at his command. While the Foxers were a blur, moving with a speed uncanny to the eye, his legs, his arms, the weapon in his hand, dragged through a thickening mire, moved with all the fervor and dash of a tortoise in a syrupy sea …

Color faded from the sky, simply cracked and peeled like dry and weary paint that's seen its day. Then there was nothing, nothing there at all, only the sense that he was falling, tumbling, giddy and muddled, out of control, drifting, drifting far away …

“V
AT DEY SMELLIT LIKE,” SAID THE ONE, “ IS S ON
yons. Vile onyons un' leeks.”

“Garlig,” said the other, “thas the wursof awl. Garlig getting in da poors an' dond efer goes avay.”

“I won say it iss or it's nod. To me, iss nod a simble thing, it's the mix dat make a scent I kant abide. You takes a radich. A radich un a kabach—ain't so fensive as it iss ven dey kook da damn ting, I'll say dat. Now der is un odor dat'll drife you up da vall.

“But I vas sayin radich, radich un kabach, dey won be zatisfy wid dat. A Hooman bein's goda grind dem peppah on it and stir in zum sprout. Bad enuf ven dey ead da filty stuf, the wurst iss in da varts. May I die if it's nod da holy truth, der is nuttin' like the badd smellin vind from a Hooman's goda gutt fulla green an' yellah plants. Vhatcha gotten now? I'm showin' pair of fivezies, and a prince. You goda tree twos, the bet's to you …”

Finn could smell them …

He could smell them in his dreams, smell them when he
woke, didn't even have to look. Bowsers always smelled the same, like they'd come in from the rain. He'd known a few at home. A couple lived on Garpenny Street and did good business selling meat and bones. Rabbit and gopher, possum and coon. Beaver, goat and porcupine, wrens, hens and hawks. Carcasses hanging on hooks out front, bloody and swarming with flies.

The folk who ran the shop were decent folk, but Letitia wouldn't speak to them at all. Some of the meat they sold were related, she said, squirrels and voles and such. Besides, Yowlies shopped there; even if they didn't care for Bowsers, they hungered for the dead things they sold.

“I goda tree Vitches,” said one, “that'll beat your twos.”

“You're a tamn cheet is vat you are,” said the other, “you didn haff no Vitches before.”

“I god you both,” said the third, “I god a pair of nines un tree Seers.”

“Shid,” said one.

“I'm oud,” said the other, and tossed in his cards.

Finn risked a look and opened one eye. When he did, a terrible pain shot through his head. For the very first time, he remembered the rooftops, remembered the Foxers, wondered just how he'd gotten here.

He could see the three across the room. They sat at a table under an oily lamp. One was rather pug-nosed and fat. One was very small, with very large ears. One, Finn saw, was bigger than the rest, with close-cropped hair and mean eyes. All three wore straw boaters, stiff collars and dirty white shirts. Two, Pugnose and Mean-eyes, wore monocles pinned to their vests. Some sort of thing they did,
Finn decided, for the butchers at home dressed exactly like that.

Skipo, for that was the butcher's name, had an accent as heavy as these fellows did, though he'd lived all his life in Ulster-East. Newlies had a thing about that, or some of them did. Even if they worked with humans, or had human friends, they took great pride in retaining their strange variant of the local tongue. The Bowsers did it here, and the Foxers as well, and likely most all the Newlie kind.

Squeen William, Finn decided, was probably an exception, and could do no better than he did.

On the other side of the coin, Newlies like Letitia, who had no trace of Mycer accent in her speech, were often reviled by Newlies who did.

This is often the way
, Finn thought.
If you do something right, someone will take affront, and try to bring you down …

“It's avake,” said the big one, “I zaw im move his eyes.”

“It's
been
avake,” said the smallest of them all. “Hoomans vill do dat, dey are wery sly.”

Finn was startled, suddenly aware they were clearly discussing him.

“Don get up,” Mean-eyes warned him, pushing back his chair. “Shtay vere you are.”

“I'm staying,” Finn said, “all right? Look, what's going on, what am I doing here? All I remember …”

“You fallin' off a roof. You hittin your head,” Pugnose said.

“Foxers isn't liken' you a lot,” Mean-eyes added with a grin.

“Tell me something I don't know. Whoever you are, thanks for your help. I see you've got some ale there, I could certainly use a drink.”

“He could use a trink,” Mean-eyes said.

“Give him a trink,” the little fellow said.

Pugnose got up, grabbed a jug of ale and squatted at Finn's side.

“You vant a trink, Hooman? You like zum ale?”

“If it's no bother,” Finn said.

“No pother, my friend,” the Bowser said, and Finn, with utter disbelief, saw the jug coming down at his head …

“They can be quite decent, most of their kind, but this is quite a callous bunch. I'm sorry they struck you in the head. I want you to know, I don't approve of that.”

“They struck me twice,” Finn said, “in the very same spot.”

Dr. Nicoretti frowned and shook his head as if he was truly alarmed. “No, they did not. You fell, on your merry chase across the roofs. If they hadn't been there, the Foxers would have surely run you through and dumped you in an alley somewhere. I put a gauze on your chest. Lost a little blood, no big thing. I expect you were somewhat over-wrought, more than anything else.”

“And I owe my life to you, yes? For that, and sending those louts to
save
me? So who put the Foxers on me, then? I don't suppose I can thank you for that as well?”

Nicoretti rolled his eyes. He leaned back in his chair, the one where Mean-eyes had sat before. Finn was not greatly surprised that he had woken to find Sabatino's uncle there. After the past few days, little shocked him now.

“That is a most ridiculous thing to say,” Nicoretti told him. “Why would I bother with such a charade— send those crazies after you, and rescue you as well? You've got more sense than that, lad. Don't play the fool with me.”

Finn forced himself to sit up. His head throbbed and his
throat was quite dry. Nicoretti had given him some ale, but the stuff was warm and sour and only made him thirsty for more.

“If I'm a fool, then I guess I've got reason to be. I don't know what's happening here. I don't trust the Nuccis, and I surely don't trust you. If I'm not mistaken, it was you who asked the old man to give Letitia away. For
spiritual rites
?”

Finn made a face. “Hooters and Hatters. You people aren't civilized here. Decent people don't go to churches like that. You're all mad is what you are!”

“I'll overlook that,” Nicoretti said. “You're clearly a bigot and you've been shaken up, you're not thinking straight. Besides, that business of you and the Newlie, that was just a joke. You two wouldn't do me any good, you're not from here. The Pastor wouldn't go for that.”

“Huh! Didn't sound like a joke to me.”

Nicoretti leaned forward, his hands on his knees. His eyes seemed to bore through the back of Finn's skull. In the flickering light of the lamp his features were shadowed, and somber as the grave.

“You call me mad, Master Finn, yet it's you that's acting less than sane. May the demons take me, what do you think you're mixing in here? Do you think you're
safe
up there with those two? Do you think they'll let that pretty of yours walk out of there?”

Nicoretti threw up his hands in despair. “Why did I bother? Why did I take the trouble to save your hide? You're too
dense
to listen, too full of pride. I should have let those idiots have their way, let them punch you full of holes. You're no good to yourself, and you're surely no good to me!”

Finn ignored the man's theatrics. The more he waved his arms about, the broader the deception, the bigger the lie, or so it appeared to Finn.

“If you did truly save me, then you had some reason, and you'll not mind telling me why.”

“I can't stand by and see a man do himself in just because he's a fool. And you've got a talent for it, Finn. You've angered the Foxers because you put yourself in their quarrel. They won't let go of that.”

Nicoretti raised a restraining hand before Finn could break in.

“They're hard-headed creatures, and your intentions mean not a whit to them. In their minds, you're an enemy as well as the Nuccis themselves.”

The doctor unwound his skinny frame, stood, and stalked about the cramped room.

“It's true you're taking blame for sins you couldn't likely help. My church has got its hats on crooked because you helped the Nuccis get away. The whole damn
town's
up in arms because you're staying there. Hospitality is the Fourth Deadly Sin in our religion and seventh in theirs. Sabatino and Cal are flaunting that in our face, and we're all wondering why.”

Nicoretti stopped his pacing, turned toward Finn with a questioning brow. “Maybe you could help me, Master Finn. I expect you have a guess at what's going on up there. It'd help me and others understand if you could shed a little light on that. Could you be of some aid in this?”

All this was delivered in calm and easy tones with a reassuring smile, an actor switching roles without a single change of scene, setting off alarms of every sort in Finn's head. Was this a trap of some kind? Did Nicoretti know about the madness Calabus was brewing in the depths below his house? And if he did, why then would he care? It was all a lunatic's obsession anyhow.