Cold Copper Tears

22

A drizzle had started. The breeze had freshened. I put my head down and walked into it, grumbling. I wouldn't be out in this if the world would learn to leave me alone. How thoughtless of it.

Head down with not much going on inside—some would say that's the normal state of my bean—I trudged toward that small district beyond the Hill where both city and Crown maintain their civil offices. I hoped the Royal Assay people could tell me what Peridont wouldn't.

He had recognized the coins.

I didn't believe much of what he'd told me—though some of it might have been true. I disbelieved only selectively. I took nothing at face. Everywhere I turned religion popped up, and that's a game of masks and deceits and illusions if ever there was one.

My course took me within a block of the Blue Bottle, where curiosities Smith and Smith had holed up. Wouldn't hurt to stop by, see what Maya had missed.

The place didn't look promising. There'd been no upkeep done in my lifetime. But it was a cut above places where all you got for your copper was a place on a rope that would support you while you slept standing up.

It was the sort of place frequented by the poor and the lowest-order bad boys. The people who operated it wouldn't be eager to talk. I'd have to use my wits to get anything.

Not always the best hope with me.

The interior delivered the promise of the outside. I stepped into a dingy common room inhabited only by a flock of three winebirds hard at their trade. Some invisible force had pushed them to the extremities of the room. One was educating himself in a continuous muttered monotone. I couldn't make out one word in five but he seemed to be engaged in a furious debate on social issues. His opponent wasn't apparent and seemed to have a hard time making himself heard.

I didn't see anybody who looked like a proprietor. Nobody responded to the bell over the door. "Yo! Anybody home?"

That didn't bring any customer-conscious landlord charging in from his toils in the kitchen. But one of the silent drunks detached himself from his chair and reeled toward me. "Wha'cha need? Room?"

"Looking for a couple of my pals, Smith and Smith, supposed to be staying here."

He leaned against the serving counter, bathed me in fumes and knotted his face into a ruddy prune. "Uh. Oh. Third floor. Door at the end." He didn't work up much disappointment over the fact that I wasn't going to put money in his pocket.

"Thanks, pal." I gave him a couple of coppers. "Have one on me."

He looked at the coins like he couldn't figure out what they were. While he pondered the mystery I went upstairs. Carefully. The way those steps creaked and sagged it was only a matter of hours until one collapsed.

I wasn't disappointed by the third floor, either. It was more like a half story—five rooms under the eaves, two to either side of a claustrophobically narrow hall and one at the end. Two of the side rooms didn't have a hanging to ensure privacy. One still had a door that hung on one hinge, immobile. My destination was a door that wouldn't close because of a warp in the floor. The Smiths weren't home. Surprise, surprise. I hadn't expected them to be after their encounter with the Doom. I pushed inside.

Whatever plot or conspiracy or outfit the Smiths were with, it was miserly. They'd slept on blankets on the floor. And they hadn't had a change of clothing to leave behind.

I started going over the room anyway. You never know when something minute will make everything fall together.

I was on my knees looking into the canyons between floorboards when the hallway floor creaked. I looked over my shoulder.

The woman looked like the Dead Man's wife. There was enough of her to make four women with some to spare. How had she gotten that close without raising a roar? How had the stairway survived? Why was the building standing? It was top-heavy enough to tip over.

"What the hell you doing, boy?"

She was spoiling for a fight and there wouldn't be any getting around it. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I want to know, shithead."

So it don't always work.

She was carrying a club, a real man-sized head-buster. I pitied the guy who got hit when she got her weight behind it.

It looked like I might get a chance to practice my self-pity if I didn't use those wits I'd been daydreaming about. "Who the hell are you? What the hell are you doing sticking your face in my room?''

When you don't have space to dazzle them with your footwork you try baffling them with bullshit.

"Your room? What the hell you yelling, boy? This room belongs to two guys named Smith."

"The guy I paid said take this room. I did what he told me. You got a problem with that you take it up with the management."

She glared at me. "That goddamned Blake up to his old tricks, eh?" Then she yelled, "I am the management, shithead! You been conned by a wino. Now get your ass out of here. And don't come whining to me for your money back."

What a dreamboat.

She turned around and stomped away. I held onto the floor. If the building went I could ride it down. She kept grumbling. "I'm going to kill that sonofa-bitch this time."

What a sweetheart. It was a good thing she didn't get physical, because I don't think I could have taken her.

I did some more quick looking, but when the yelling started downstairs I figured it was time I made my getaway.

Then I spotted something.

It was a copper coin all the way down in a crack. I whipped out a knife and started digging.

There was no reason to believe the coin had been lost by the Smiths. It could have been there for a hundred years.

It could have been. But I never believed that for a second.

Maybe I wished hard enough. That scrungy little hunk of copper was the brother of those I'd collected already.

Click. Click. Click. Pieces started falling together. Everything was part of the same puzzle, except, improbably, Magister Peridont. Improbably because he'd lied. He knew something about what was going on even if he wasn't involved himself.

It was time to go.