Bitter Gold Hearts

______ XXII ______

Old Dean knew how to get me going on the morning after. He bullied me into eating a good breakfast. When he thought I was slackening, he started banging pots and pans until I yielded to the lesser evil and resumed eating. A good big breakfast with plenty of apple juice and sweets really knocks the edge off my hangover, but food always looks and smells so ghastly I just can't believe it will do any good. Once I'd stoked up to Dean's satisfaction, he presented me with a huge steaming mug of a smoky-flavored herb tea that had come to us courtesy of Morley Dotes sometime back. It had a mildly analgesic nature. "His nibs is ready anytime you are, Mr. Garrett. You may take the mug along with you."

He was going to trust me carrying something out of the kitchen myself? I gave him a look that he interpreted correctly. He grumbled, "That room was creepy enough with one corpse in it. He can clean up after himself if he's going to keep the other one in there with him."

I rose. From the kitchen doorway I said, "Maybe they'll get married." Feeble, but it wasn't my best time of day. Dean gave me a black look and reached for the biggest pot he could find.

The Dead Man was trying to sleep when I stepped into his room. He was long overdue for one of his three-week naps, but now wasn't the time. "Wake it up, Old Bones. You're supposed to have some suggestions for me this morning."

He had several, but none of the first few was fit to record. I observed, "I take it you're sure enough of your Glory Mooncalled theory that you can indulge in a little smug snoozing."

The latest from the Cantard contains nothing contradictory.

"You going to break down and tell me?"

Not yet.

"What about the suggested approach you promised me last night?"

I would have thought that you would have seen the best chance already. You had the night to reflect on next moves.

"I took the night off. Give."

You are allowing yourself to become dependent upon my genius. You should be exercising your own, Garrett.

"We human types are bone lazy. Come on. Pay the rent."

Get the younger Karl. Bring him to me. He appears to be the weakest link in the chain of circumstance. If there is a tumor of guilt in him, I will open him up and expose it. One glimpse of that poor child there should be shock enough to leave him pliable.

"That's all I have to do, eh? Just go drag him out of that fort he calls home and bully him into coming here where you can work him over."

I cannot do your legwork for you, Garrett.

"Bah!" He was getting a sarky tone on him, Old Bones was. Maybe he'd stub a toe on his Glory Mooncalled theory and get dragged down from the heights of conceit. Oh, how he loves to strut.

There was a foreign object just inside the front door. "Dean!"

He came at a run. "Yes, Mr. Garrett?"

"What the hell is this?"

Actually, I knew what this was. It was my old pal Bruno frozen in midstride two steps inside the front door and leaning against the wall. His expression was one of terror and one hand grasped the air before him. Dean had used that to hang up the sweater and knit cap he wears when he comes in early mornings. That showed me a side of him I hadn't suspected.

"He came to the door while you were out in the country. When I answered he just busted in past me. His nibs must have heard the uproar."

Better than a watchdog. "And nobody bothered to tell me."

"You had things on your mind."

"How'd he get against the wall?"

"I pushed him out of the way. I have to get in and out to do the marketing."

I stepped over in front of Bruno. "What am I going to do with you? You just keep coming back. Maybe drop you in the river to see how fast you swim? I'll have to think about it, because you're getting to be a nuisance." I turned to Dean. "Maybe we ought to get a chain so things like this don't happen."

Dean admitted, "His nibs could have been asleep."

The problem of Bruno's ego slipped my mind as I trudged up the Hill. I had a bigger problem. How the devil could I get to Junior, let alone pry him out? Considering the attitudes of some up there, I might not get close to the Stormwarden's place. The hired guards might be waiting for me.

They weren't. Not obviously. I tramped around the daPena place three times, hoping maybe Amber would spot me before Eenie, Meenie, Meinie and Moe started closing in and I had to show the Hill the flash of departing heels. It didn't work. I had to go. I decided to take a long walk. Sometimes getting the blood moving vanquishes the gloomier humors and the brain will come up with a thought.

The best I could manage in three hours of marching was the notion of sending Junior a letter saying I knew where the gold was and if he would come down to my place we could talk it over. The trouble with that was it might take a lot of time I didn't have. He might dither a couple of days. Or he might not be able to slip his leash. Or the letter might not get to him at all, with highly unpredictable results. And Amiranda's body wasn't going to keep forever. For want of something more constructive to do, I went around to Saucerhead's place to see how he was mending. A girlfriend I didn't know said he was keeping just fine and I should get the hell away before I got my eyes clawed out. She was no bigger than a minute but she had her back up and looked like she would give it a damned good shot.

So much for Saucerhead. Maybe something had fallen into Morley's lap. Besides somebody's wife or an eggplant steak dinner. Morley wasn't anxious to accept visitors that early in the day but he was awake so I was allowed to go upstairs. He greeted me with a scowl and no banter.

I said, "You look like a guy who isn't getting enough fiber in his diet. What's the matter? Was there a crop failure in the okra forests?"

He grumbled something that sounded like, "Goddim fraggle jigginitz."

"Would you want your virgin daughters to hear language like that?"

"Snacken schtereograk!"

Aha! He was cussing, all right, but in one of the Low Elvish dialects. I've learned that when he goes to grumbling in Elvish he's usually having money troubles. "Been playing the water spiders again, have we?"

"Garrett, are you a curse upon my house?" He actually used a dwarfish idiom equally capable of being translated as "mother-in-law." But I'm such a nice fellow nobody would ever accuse me of mother-in-lawing. "You're the reverse blackbird, you know that? The backward harbinger. Every time I have some bad luck, I have some more because you turn up right afterward. I can count on it."

"You don't want me hanging around, stop betting on the bugs. There's a simple cause-and-effect relationship there—very much like the one between betting on the bugs and losing your boots."

He repeated his curse-upon-the-house remark. "What do you want, Garrett?"

"I want to know if you've heard any news I might find useful."

"No. Ogre Town is as quiet as a crypt. Those guys came from somewhere else. And they took the gold with them when they went back. There hasn't been a whiff of gold around town. If there was a hint of a pile that size, you know the hard boys would be as busy as maggots. Saucerhead is doing all right."

"I know. I found out the hard way. He's got some little she-devil standing gate guard. I thought I was going to get gutted before I got out of there. Who the hell is she?"

He gave me the first flash of teeth of the visit. "His sister, maybe?"

"Horse pucky. Nobody's sister carries on like that."

He grinned. "Actually, I did hear one thing you might want to know, but I don't see how it would be much use."

"Well?"

"A drunken sailor off a night boat staggered in here right before we closed this morning. The gods know why he came here."

"I was just thinking that myself. Only they know why anybody does." "Night boat" is a euphemism for smuggler. Smugglers account for a third of TunFaire's river trade.

"You want to hear this or do you want to wisecrack your way to ignorance?"

"Speak to me, Oracle of the Lettuce."

"He mentioned that Raver Styx's ship entered the harbor at Leifmold the afternoon they left for TunFaire. She's on her way home, Garrett. She'll be here in a few days. If that will make any difference in the way you do what you think you have to do."

"It might. I figure Junior deserves special attention because of Saucerhead and Amiranda. Having Mom around might present difficulties."

"That's the whole barrel, then. Go away so I can feel sorry for myself."

"Right. Next time you got to bet on the bugs, let me know so I can get down the other way and clean up."

"There won't be a next time, Garrett."

"Good for you, Morley." I left the room thinking I had heard it before. He might hang in there awhile, but sooner or later he'd hear about a sure thing and the fever would get him. I told the barman downstairs, "Send him a couple of turnip tenderloins smothered in onions and a double shot of your high-proof celery juice, straight up. On me."

He didn't crack a smile. I headed home, my head filled with visions of a steak so rare Morley would die to look at it.