“Meaning?”
“Following the clothing would be extremely difficult. But I will have no trouble following Mr. Playmate and Mr. Tharpe. Who would have been with or who would have been following what they believed to be this woman.” She eyed Rhafi again, growing more uneasy with what she saw.
I opened my mouth to ask a question, then realized that I’d been outreasoned by a ratgirl. A ratgirl who had other things on her mind.
Rhafi was getting more of her eye time than that window was.
Casey had spun the tables on me.
He needed help to get to Kip. He’d told me so. But he didn’t want to be anybody’s partner. So he became Kayne Prose and lured Playmate and Saucerhead into going where he wanted, where they would, doubtless, fight like lions to defend the lovely Kayne from the villainous silver elves.
“Garrett! Something’s happening!”
Dopey me, I glanced at Rhafi first, figuring maybe he was having a happy dream. But nothing to startle Singe was happening there.
“What?”
“The window. It keeps showing different things.”
I stepped over.
She was right. It kept alternating between four different live scenes. “Did you touch it? Did you do anything?”
“No! I was over here, looking at... I never thought they were so big.... I was picking at the colored spots on this strange gray stone.” She shoved a paw at me. Her whiskers were way back. But she just had to take another look at Rhafi.
I took the “stone.” A number of not dissimilar items were scattered around the room. But not nearly so many as there had been during my previous visit. Which suggested that Casey might have taken some with him.
Those elves we’d chased, who’d knocked me out over and over, had used some small fetish or amulet or whatnot to do so. Maybe all those things were different magical devices.
Which got me thinking. We had a small collection back at the house, from that last place where Kip’s kidnappers knocked us down, plus those I’d taken away from Rhafi. Should they stay there, dangerously near my partner, when we didn’t know their capabilities? Might it not be more useful to surrender them to Colonel Block? That might earn me some obligation points. And might even be a service to the Crown. If these silver elves actually were a sorcerous threat from foreign lands.
Singe made a squealing sound that might have been surprise, fright, dismay, or all three together. I glanced into the other room.
I asked Singe the same question. “Did you touch it? Did you do anything?”
Singe backed out of the room but couldn’t stop staring until I closed the curtain. I chuckled but didn’t pursue the subject. I did suspect that in future she’d be less inclined toward romantic experimentation.
I thought it might be a good idea to gather up everything of potential interest to the people Block represented because minutes after Singe and I left it, Casey’s place was going to get picked clearf.
“Garrett?”
“Uhm?”
“You said tell you if I saw anything interesting?”
“You found Rhafi interesting, did you?”
“Not that.” Her tone put me in my place for my having my mind in the gutter. “In the window.”
I saw what she meant when the view of the street out front came up.
Three silver elves had taken station across the way. They weren’t out in traffic but, even so, you’d think people dressed that weird would attract some notice. That they attracted none whatsoever told me that some sort of enchantment concealed them from passersby but couldn’t fool the window’s eye.
A hint of a flicker of afterimage indicated that they were pretending to be women. Women who didn’t know their ways around. One stared at something in her hand as she swung her partially extended arm right and left.
“We did something to attract Casey’s enemies,” I said. “And they got here fast. But they still don’t quite know where to find him. We’d better get out of here while we can.” I squinted at the window when the street view came back up. Did those elves really have waists and breasts? That was a fine crop of nubbins, to be sure, but damned if it didn’t look like something was there, putting a little appeal into those elegant silver lines.
43
The silver elves weren’t visible anywhere when Singe and I reached the street. I felt them vaguely, though, in the back of my mind.
“Can you smell anything?”
“Something cold... Like what I smelled when we were tracking that boy. But not quite’the same.”
“I think that’s because this’s a different bunch of elves. We have some kind of pyramid here. There’s one guy, Casey, who’s hunting two guys, Lastyr and Noodiss, because they’re wanted for unspecified crimes. Then we have these three elves, evidently all female. In times past they raided Playmate’s stable and the Prose flat, trying to lay hands on Kip. Then we have the four who actually did capture Kip. Unless Casey was lying — and his lips weren’t moving at the time, on account of he doesn’t have any — these people are all involved in criminal enterprises of some sort.”
We were moving away from the ugly yellow structure, Singe picking the way, me limping along in her wake lugging a sack filled with trinkets rescued from Casey’s digs. I nodded to Doris and Marsha as I passed. I felt the invisible elves start moving behind me.
Singe observed, “Reliance is involved in criminal enterprises. But a lot of his activities don’t appear to be morally questionable.”
Though she hadn’t stated it perfectly I was proud that Singe could reason to that level. “True. The law isn’t always about what’s right. Or wrong. A lot of times it’s about somebody being guaranteed an advantage over somebody else. And that’s human nature. That’s the nature of any sentient species, I think. Damn! Those invisible people really are moving back there. I get the feeling that they’re crossing to Casey’s place.”
I hoped that was what they were doing, rather than falling in behind us.
They were sure to walk in on some excitement if they went upstairs. I hoped they’d find Casey’s place crawling with scavengers and voyeurs.
I said, “I think it might be a good idea if we checked back to see how Rhafi and Kayne are doing, later.” Those two could end up in deep trouble if that sleep spell didn’t wear off.
“Shush. I need to concentrate.”
So now it was me who was the distraction. The triplets weren’t because they were keeping their distance, pretending they weren’t with me. Good on whichever one of them thought of that. But I needed to toss my swag bag into the cart with Dojango. I wasn’t about to carry it forever.
My aches and pains had receded somewhat but they continued to hamper me. I limped and gimped and had no sense of humor at all. I couldn’t even work myself into a state of amusement over Singe’s recent discombobulation. And that was pretty damned funny. It could become a classic after a few retellings polished it up.
When our path took us around a corner, thus taking us out of sight of any eyes tagging along behind, I halted. I didn’t move until Doris and Marsha appeared.
I tossed my swag bag into Dojango’s lap. The results were satisfactory. Rose’s enthusiastic barking demonstrated that he had been faking unconsciousness.
I left him to his brothers. Singe and I traveled on into the night, me limping and groaning and demonstrating grand vigor in protesting my determination to find a new way to make a living.
“Where in hell are we going?” I muttered. We’d been walking for hours. It was the middle of the night. I felt every step in every muscle and every joint. We were way up north, passing through neighborhoods where real elves roamed. Singe and I drew stares from folks curious about whether we were a couple. I could’ve told them that we were a couple of idiots.
This was dangerous country. But if we stuck to the main thoroughfare, the Grand Avenue, we should be all right, partly because it was customarily safe ground, partly because Doris and Marsha were ambling along with us, their clubs dragging the cobble
stones and their knuckles threatening to get down there soon.
“I am following the trail, Garrett. I am not creating it.” Singe was getting cranky, too. Probably needed to get some food in her.
“This is why I hate working. Once you get started you can’t just knock off when you feel like it and have a couple of beers. You’ve got to keep going until you drop. Why don’t you eat one of your sandwiches?”
Singe immediately went to the back of the cart and dug out several. “If it makes you feel better knowing, we are much closer than we were. Their scent is almost fresh. They are less than three hours ahead.”
Every silver lining has a cloud.
“That’s the godsdamned gate up there!” I grumbled, glaring at an island of light in the far distance. “Please don’t tell me they left town.”
“All right.” Singe sounded troubled. And she should. For ratpeople TunFaire’s outer wall constitutes the edge of the world. Go past it and you fall off into the misty void.
The situation wasn’t much better for me. I don’t like not-city. I don’t go outside often. When I do I prefer to visit some rich man’s estate, where I can be comfortable while I take care of business. I get back to town as fast as I can.
If we kept going this general direction for a few hours we could drop in on the Contague estate.
Although I know better intellectually, emotionally I feel like the deadly wilderness is clamoring at the city gate, all carnivorous or poisonous plants and animals, most of them bigger and faster than me, while the air is so full of man-eating bugs that you don’t dare breathe deep. In reality, most of the countryside near TunFaire is well tamed. If it wasn’t it wouldn’t be able to feed the city. The exceptions are some bits unsuited for exploitation or which the wealthy and powerful have set aside as hunting reserves or whatnot. The rare incursions of thunder lizards, mammoths, or even bears or giant ground sloths, are just that: rare. But they sure do get talked about plenty.
Marsha said, “We maybe need to take a sleep break first if we’re really going to go out there, Garrett.”
He had a point. A good point. Or, at least, a damned good excuse for us not to go wandering around the wilderness in the dark. Even if we were only a few hours behind our friends.
44
Wilderness is relative. Before sunrise we were in wild country compared to where I live. But we were in a carefully tamed and only mildly unkempt park compared to the places where I fought my share of the war.
Of course, this was the worst nightmare wilderness Singe had ever seen. She couldn’t take ten steps without stopping to sniff the morning air for the warning stench of approaching monsters. I kept after her to move faster. “The quicker we get there the quicker we get it over with and the quicker we get back to town. You don’t want to spend the night out here, do you?” But instinct is hard to overcome. I prove that every time I get too close to Belinda Contague. “Besides, the grolls can handle anything we’re likely to meet.”
Dojango had been yakking all morning, inconsequentialities. Typical of him, actually. So much so that nobody paid him the least attention. Though Doris did drag him out of the cart and have him pull it as one way of slowing his jaw down.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What was that?”
Because Dojango’s mouth runs with no real connection to his brain he just chomped air for a minute. What might he have said that could interest me? He hadn’t been listening. Then he went into mild shock because somebody was interested in something that he’d said. “Uh, I don’t remember, actually.”
“About the thing you saw in the sky.”
“Oh. That happened while you were all asleep, actually.”
When the time had come we’d all just planted ourselves at streetside, grolls on the flanks, and started snoring. We hadn I been bothered.
Size does matter.
Dojango continued, “I decided I’d stand watch on account of all of the rest of you were out like the dead.”
He was fibbing. He hadn’t been able to sleep because he’d spent all that time snoozing in the cart. It’s easy to tell when Dojango is revising history. He forgets to use his favorite word.
“And?”
“And a ball of light came in out of the east, from beyond the river. It went somewhere south of us. It stopped for a while. I could see the glow. Then it came north, slowly, drifting back and forth over Grand Avenue. I had a feeling it was looking for something, actually.”
“And it came to a stop up above us?”
“Yeah. After a while it shined a really bright light down on us. And that’s all I remember.” He shuddered, though. So there was something more.
“What else?”
He didn’t want to talk about it but Dojango Rose is incapable of resisting an invitation to speak. “Just a really bad dream where the light lifted me up and took me inside the glow, into a weird, lead-gray place. They did really awful things to me, these weird, shiny little women. This one wouldn’t leave my thing alone.”
“I see.” He’d healed wondrous fast if he’d been tortured. “Something to keep in mind.” I did some thinking. Some consideration of the circumstances. I came up with some ideas.
The first time we approached a sizable woodlot which boasted enough tangled undergrowth to suggest that it wasn’t used much I had Doris and Marsha carry the cart and its cargo deep inside and camouflage it with branches.
Dojango cried like a baby.
“I guarantee you I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy, buddy. Why don’t you use your sore feet to make the rest of you mad enough to smack some of those elves around when we catch up with them?”
That bought me a respite. Dojango Rose is a lover, not a fighter. He probably heard his mother calling but couldn’t run away as long as his brothers stuck it out.
We passed gated estates. The grolls attracted considerable attention. Most of the guards were friendlier than they might have been had I tried to engage them in conversation on my own. Doris and Marsha make a convincing argument just standing around, leaning on their clubs.
Some of those guards had seen Saucerhead and Playmate go by. But not a one had seen Kayne Prose. Or any other willowy blonde. Tharpe and Playmate had been bickering, according to several witnesses. They were, also, not making very good time. We were still only a few hours behind them despite our pause to enjoy a stone mattress.
“We keep on with this and we’re going to find ourselves out in the real country pretty soon,” I observed. We were past the truck gardens and wheatfields and starting up the slope into wine country. Ahead the hills started growing up. Fast.
We popped over a ridgeline, me cursing the day Kayne met Kip’s pop and, even more bloodily, the day I let myself get into debt to Playmate. “Whoa! There it is. That’s perfect.”
“There what is?” Dojango asked. I’d stopped. He’d sat down. He had one boot off already.
“That bowl of land down there. Filled with trees. It has a pond in there. You can see the water. Runs down off all these hills. Looks like a great hiding place. Bet you that’s where —”
Some sort of flash happened under the trees. A dark brown smoke ring rolled up through the foliage. There was a rumble like a very large troll clearing his throat.
“That was different,” Dojango said. He levered his other boot off.
“My guess is, our friends just found the elven sorcerers.”
Nobody rushed off to help. Dojango massaged his blisters and distinctly looked like he’d rather head some other direction. Any other direction.
Singe had the sensibilities of a soldier. “If we can see what is happening down there, then whoever is down there can see what is happening up here.”
“Absolutely.” I responded by dropping into the shade of a split rail fence. The Rose boys didn’t need the whole speech, either. The big ones made themselves as scarce as possible on an open road that ran downhill through a vineyard where the plants were seldom more than hip high. To me. Dojango rolled into a ditch.
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A look around showed me a countryside not made for sneaking. The wooded bowl was entirely surrounded by vineyards. I could cover some ground on hands and knees amongst the vines but there wasn’t a whole lot of cover for guys twenty feet tall.
And there were people out working the vineyards. Some not that far from us, eyeing us askance because of our odd behavior. Before long most of the workers began to amble downhill to see what was going on.
“There’s our cue, people. Look like you’ve got grape skins between your toes.”
Dojango began to whine in earnest. Once out of his boots his feet had swollen. He couldn’t get them back on.
It was real. We’d have to leave him behind. Which was just as well, actually. Dojango has a talent for screwing things up by getting underfoot when times begin to get exciting.
I told him, “We’ll pick you up on the way back.”
He didn’t act like his feelings were hurt.
45
Most of the vineyard workers reached the wood well before we did. Which was fine by me. Because something unpleasant was going on in amongst the trees. Something flashy, noisy, then smoky. Another doughnut of brown smoke rolled up out of the trees.
The vineyard people decided they wanted no part of that. They went scooting right back up the hills. Not a one was interested in wasting valuable running time gawking at my odd company.
At a guess I’d say people in the area had had bad experiences down there before.
Once you penetrated the dozen yards of dense brush and brambles on the outer perimeter of the wood you found yourself in a perfectly groomed, parklike grove. Without undergrowth. With grass almost like a lawn. With a pond an acre in size, somewhat off center to the west. And with a big silver discus thing smack in the middle, standing eight feet above the grass on spindly metal legs. A flimsy ladder rose from the grass to an opening in the disk’s belly. A silver elf lay at the foot of that, unconscious or dead. Likewise, one Saucerhead Tharpe, right hand gripping the elf’s ankle, whose scattered attitude suggested that he’d been dragged back out of the discus.