Angry Lead Skies

11

I do not recall the darkness coming. My next clear memory is of Morley Dotes with his pretty little nose only inches from mine. He's reminding me that to stay alive one must remember to breathe. From the corner of my eye I see Saucerhead Tharpe trying to sell the same idea to Playmate while the ratgirl Pular Singe scuttles around nervously, sniffing and whining.

The disorientation faded faster than the effects of alcohol ever do. Without leaving much hangover. But none of those clowns were willing to believe that high-potency libations hadn't been involved in my destruction. When people go on a nag they aren't the least bit interested in evidence that might contradict their prejudices.

Pular Singe, ratgirl genius, was my principal advocate.

What can you do? "You two are a couple of frigid old ladies," I told Morley and Saucerhead. "Thank you for your faith, Singe. Oh, my head!" I didn't have a hangover from this but I did have one from last night. The latest headache powder wasn't helping.

"And you'd like us to believe that you don't have a hangover," Morley sneered. Weakly. One side of his face wasn't working so good.

Not a lot of time had passed since the advent of the silvery people. Smoke still wisped off the cut ends of some of the wall planks. I suppose it was a near miracle that no fire had gotten going. Perhaps, less miraculously, that was due to the sudden appearance of Dotes, Tharpe, and Pular.

"Singe!" I barked at the ratgirl. "Where did you guys come from?" She was likely to give me a straight answer. "Why're you here?" Bellows that Morley and Saucerhead would accept indifferently could rattle Singe deeply. Ratfolk are timid by nature and Singe was trying to make her own way outside her native society. Ratfolk males don't yell and threaten and promise massive bloodshed unless they intend to deliver. They don't banter.

When Singe is around I usually tread on larks' eggs because I don't want to upset her. It's like working with your mom wearing a rat suit.

She didn't get a chance to answer. Morley cracked, "This one's all right. He woke up cranking."

"What're you guys doing here, Morley?"

"Thank you, Mr. Dotes, for scaring off the baddies."

"Thank you, Mr. Dotes, for scaring off the baddies."

"See? You can learn if you put your mind to it."

"I was doing pretty good there on my own." The side of his face that wasn't working well had a sizable young bruise developing. "That's gonna be a brute when it grows up. What happened?" Morley's stylish clothing was torn and filthy, too. Which would hurt him more than mere physical damage could.

"I had a special request from the Dead Man. Round up Singe and a squad of heavyweights, come over here and keep an eye on you. You're a major trouble magnet, my friend. We're not even in place yet and we find the excitement already happening. What were those things?"

With more help from Singe than from Morley I made it to a standing position. "Where's the kid?"

"There was a kid? Maybe that's who your silvery friends were hauling away. Who were they, Garrett?"

"I don't know. You didn't stop them?"

"Let me see. No. I was too busy being bounced off walls and rolled through horse excrement. You couldn't hurt those guys." He looked as sour as he could manage with only half a face cooperating. "I broke my swordcane on one of them."

I couldn't resist a snicker. Morley is a lethally handsome half-breed, partly human but mostly dark elf. He's the guy fathers of young women wake up screaming about in the wee hours of the night. His vanity is substantial. His dress is always impeccable and at the forefront of fashion. He considers disarray a horror and dirt of any sort an abomination.

Dirt seems to feel the same way about him. It avoids him religiously.

I snickered again.

"It must be the concussion," Morley grumped. "I know my good friend Garrett would never mock me in my misfortune."

"Mockery." I couldn't resist another snicker. "Heh-heh. Misfortune." I glanced around. "Damn! Where'd he go? I only looked away for a second. Too bad. You're stuck with his evil twin instead of a friend."

"I hate it when that happens."

Singe had seen us in action often enough to discount most of what she heard but she still couldn't quite grasp what was going on. She watched us now, long fingers entwined so she could keep her hands from flying around. Her myopic eyes squinted. Her snout twitched. Her whiskers waggled. She drew more information from the world through her sense of smell than with any other.

She tended to be emotional and excitable but now remained collected. If she had learned anything from me it was better self-control. I felt it to be a cruel miscarriage of propriety that my companionship hadn't had a similar impact on the rest of my friends.

She took advantage of a lull to inquire, "What is this situation, Garrett? I did not understand the message I received from the Dead Man."

And yet she had come out of hiding. Because she had a chance to help me.

Morley smirked. I would hear about that as soon as Singe wasn't around to get her feelings hurt. She had an adolescent crush on me. And Morley, known to have broken the bones of persons having thrown ethnic slurs his way, thought it was great fun to torment me about being mooned over by a ratgirl.

He could commit every crime of prejudice he hated when they were directed toward him, yet would never, ever, recognize any inconsistency. Because ratpeople were a created race, products of the malificent sorcerous investigations of some of our lords of the Hill during the heyday of the last century, most people don't even consider them people. Morley Dotes included.

I told her, "Anything you heard from His Nibs makes you better informed than I am, Singe." Her particular line of ratpeople place their personal names second. Just to confuse things, other lines do the opposite, in imitation of local humans. "He didn't tell me anything. Not that he was interested in what's happening here nor even that he was planning to make you a part of things."

"What is happening here?" Morley asked. "Can you handle that one, Playmate?" Saucerhead had the big stablekeeper up on his hind legs now.

"I don' t'ink," Playmate mumbled.

I tried to tell everybody what I knew, not holding back anything, the way my partner would. Well, some little details, maybe, like about how good the Dead Man was at sneaking peeks into unprepared minds. Nobody needs to know that but me.

"You sure you ain't been jobbed?" Saucerhead wanted to know. "That sure ain't much. Play, you runnin' a game on my man Garrett?"

I waved him off. "It's not that." Chances were good the Dead Man would've clued me in if that were the case. My concern was more that Kip and Playmate were being manipulated. "But I do wonder if someone isn't running a game on Kip. Play, you ever met Lastyr or Noodiss?"

"Not formally. Not to talk to. I've seen them a few times. Not so much recently, though. They used to come around here a lot. When they thought Kip would be here alone."

I grunted, irritated. Atop all the aches and pains it looked like the only way I was going to learn anything of substance would be to catch me a silver elf and squeeze him.

Which was a conclusion my partner must have reached before I left the house. Else how to explain Singe's presence?

Besides being my only friend from TunFaire's lowest lower class, Pular Singe is the finest tracker amongst a species known for individuals able to follow a trail through the insane stew of foul odors that complement the soul of this mad city.

"Singe? You find a scent yet?" I knew she was sniffing. She couldn't help herself. And she was clever enough to understand why she had been invited to the party.

She tried to shrug, then to shake her head. Ratfolk find both human gestures difficult. Singe wants to be human so bad. Each time I see it I hurt for her. I get embarrassed. Because most of the time we aren't worthy of imitation.

Failing, she spoke: "No. Not the elves. Though there is a unique odor where the two fell. But that exists only there. It does not go anywhere. And it does not smell like any odor from a living thing."

"Wow." Her human speech had improved dramatically since last I had seen her. It was almost free of accent—except when she tried a contraction. Her improvement was miraculous considering the voice box she had to use. No other rat in my experience had come close to matching her. Yet she was said to suffer from a hearing deficiency. According to the rat thug Reliance, who first brought her to my attention. "You've even mastered the sibilants." Determination can take you a long way. Her sibilants still had a strong serpentine quality. But Singe needs a lot of encouragement to keep going. She gets almost none of that from her own people.

"So what do we do now?" Morley asked. He wasn't interested, really. Not much. He was trying to work out how he could get back to The Palms and get cleaned up and changed before anyone noticed his disreputable condition. I had a feeling that, any minute now, I would find my best pal missing.

Singe said, "I cannot follow the strange elves. But Garrett taught me to follow the horses when I cannot follow a target who becomes a passenger in a vehicle that horses are pulling."

What a talent, that Garrett guy. After a moment, I confessed, "The student lost even the teacher on that one, Singe."

She looked at me like she knew I was just saying that so she'd feel good, getting to explain. "The elves took the boy. Him I can track. So I will follow him. Wherever he stops moving, there will we find your elves."

"The girl is a genius," I said. "Let's all go raid Playmate's pantry before we go on the road."

That idea was acclaimed enthusiastically by everyone not named Playmate. Or Morley. Playmate because his charity is limited when its wannabe beneficiaries are solvent. Morley because the weasel wasn't around to vote.

Ah, well. My elven friend would be out there somewhere, a desperate fugitive fleeing the wrath of the good-grooming gods.