Cruel Zinc Melodies

76

Now that the entertainment portion of the evening has ended, suppose we consider business?

I hadn’t come home to do anything but stuff my face, brood about getting snakebit, and hit the sack. But, yeah, oh yeah, now. Anything to distract me from ‘‘Where would we live?’’ and ‘‘What about babies?’’ and ‘‘Just how much responsibility does a man have to endure?’’ Not to mention ‘‘Why did you bail on everybody down there just when they were beginning to pick up the pieces?’’

There was a chance that these things were somehow related.

A picture is coming together. Thanks to Miss Winger, Mr. . . . Salvation, Barate Algarda, and Garrett’s observations. With invaluable contributions from Miss Penny Dreadful.

‘‘What? Come on, Chuckles. That street kid can’t have anything to do with this.’’

In fact, she can. As an indefatigable foot soldier in the campaign to collect information. That she was not there besideyou, flashing ax in hand, when the World came apart around you, does not lessen her contribution. Nor does that lessen the contributions of Miss Winger and Mr. Salvation, both of whom have done yeoman work.

‘‘Mrs.,’’ I said without thinking. ‘‘She’s a Mrs.’’ Winger had kids and a husband somewhere, just not in TunFaire.

Refrain from retailing trivia. And it is too late for regrets about having walked away when there was still much to be done and seen.

He had me there. Even trudging home, with Tinnie getting burned because of my sullen silence, I’d felt increasingly guilty about shoving off in the middle of everything. And that just after I’d begun worrying about what Max and Gilbey would do.

‘‘I had to catch my breath.’’ Feeble, of course.

Amusement.Perhaps. About Miss Dreadful. She is a reservoir of little-known myth and legend. Which I will share if you will relax. What is done is done. And there is nothing you can do about the other thing, either. Let us move on.

I grunted. And considered my company. Was Kyra under the influence of something besides the Weider elixer? Why was Kip’s hair such a mess?

The compliance device does not appear to be operating. I can only suppose that the younger Miss Tate shares a genetic flaw with her aunt.

A shot. ‘‘That’s lovely.’’ I shuffled in place. I had to do something. I had nerves so bad sparks should’ve been crackling off me. Tinnie just sitting there . . .

Singe chimed in with a total non sequitur. ‘‘Garrett, there was a message from a Mr. Jan. He says you need to come in for a fitting.’’

‘‘Ha!’’ A grand new distraction. I’d focus on worrying about how the old tailor would react to what had become of his loaner coat.

It didn’t work.

Miss Dreadful had no direct—or indirect—knowledge of the entity beneath the theater. But she has suggested a possiblelegendary creature that fits the body of data that we have developed.

‘‘Which would be what?’’ He was playing to the full gallery, setting himself up for plaudits.

Startled, I realized that I’d only thought that question. The scary elder Miss Tate, looking rattled herself, had offered the verbal version.

Inspiration. ‘‘Keep an eye on Kyra, sweetheart. She’s doing her damnedest to lead that boy into temptation.’’ The kid was too young to get caught in the kind of cleft stick that had me squeezed.

Tinnie puffed up like a big old toadie-frog, turned red— then exhaled. What Kyra was doing to Kip was hard to defend even employing the most acrobatic, convoluted female logic. If there was malice. Though I promise you, the boy wasn’t going to complain, either way.

Of course, he might be working a little magic of his own.

No, Garrett. I told you. The compliance device is silent. And the girl is not deliberately teasing. Both are acting their age. Can we get to business? Please?

‘‘Go. Talk to us. Legendary creatures.’’ I got to work on food and beer. Concentrating on the latter.

We may have found a dragon.

I sprayed pig-in-a-blanket. Dean barked at me. I ignored him. ‘‘No! You’re shitting me.’’

Not necessarily a dragon of legend. Not necessarily one of the absolute, lord of the scaly ones, slippery monsters of story. But an entity that fits the traditions, unseen.

When I think dragon I picture a big-ass flying thunder lizard tearing stuff up and starting fires. Big fires. Kind of like an oversize, reptilian Marine.

Not probable.

‘‘There ain’t no dragons,’’ Winger kicked in, supporting her boggled old campaigning buddy, Garrett. ‘‘They’re whatcha-macallums, arch types. Symbols for thoughts. Externalized.’’

Jon Salvation beamed.

Damned if the runt wasn’t having an influence.

I said I do not necessarily mean dragon in the literal, mythic, fire-breathing sense. That creature almost certainly never existed. Put storybook dragons out of your mind.

Consider the concept of the deathmaiden instead.

‘‘Now you’re getting way out there in the tall weeds, Old Bones,’’ I said around a gobbet of soft white cheese. Pungent stuff. ‘‘What’s a deathmaiden?’’

Also called a cairnmaiden. A custom your peoples have abandoned in recent centuries. To the joy of young girls everywhere.

‘‘Cairnmaiden. Rings a bell, sort of. But it’s so far off I can barely hear the tinkle.’’

Some of your more remote ancestors thought it was a good idea to murder girl children and bury them under the gates to graveyards, or at the corners, or in the entranceways to burial mounds, or on top of a treasure that someone wanted left undisturbed. The theory being that the spirit of the deathmaiden would be so traumatized and outraged that she would stay around and savage anyone who disturbed her grave. The reasoning may be elusive to us today, but thefact is, everyone involved, including the murdered children, credited the concept absolutely.

The fad today is to bury a vampire on top of your treasure.

‘‘Kind of a waste,’’ I observed. ‘‘Inasmuch as, traditionally, little girls grow up to be big girls. Why not use mothers-in-law? You’d get more attitude, you’d conserve a valuable resource, and you’d perform a public service.’’

Tinnie poked me. She was too busy eating to fight. But she wanted to remind me that she had a mother.

If this relationship was going to go anywhere, we needed that finger turned into a deathmaiden.

Winger asked, ‘‘What’re you snickering about, Garrett? This’s some grim shit.’’

‘‘Lady fingers,’’ I said. ‘‘And that wasn’t no lady, that was my wife.’’

Winger told the Remora, ‘‘He’s lost it. It’s having that thing get inside his head all the time that done it.’’

Having that thing get inside his head all the time is what keeps him as sane as he is. Garrett. Set aside your panic over potential nuptials. The Weider establishment is paying us a fortune. We have to deliver.

A fierce glower came over my true love’s face. But she had a full mouth and couldn’t comment. I pulled down a long draft of Weider’s finest. Which did little to ease my nerves. ‘‘Could you share the reasoning that brought you to such an unsettling conclusion? About the dragon, I mean.’’

Attitude for attitude.I do enjoy a challenge.

He had no trouble making himself clear. Where he fell down was, because he was so proud of having pulled it all together, he insisted on identifying every little connective detail that only he had been in a position to jiggle into place.

Bottom line was, according to him, in a time immemorial, before humanity wandered into this region, possibly before here was here at all—indeed, perhaps even before the arrival of the elder races—somebody buried something valuable way down deep in the silt, then plopped a sleeping guardian on top. More silt piled up. Everything remained undisturbed till the Faction started building bigger, badder, hungrier bugs that found their way down to it. The ghosts were the dragon’s sleepy thought projections, tools it used to frighten threats away.

Bugs don’t worry about ghosts. Their frights are more basic, animated by two drives. To eat. To reproduce.

I kept an eye on Kip while the Dead Man patted himself on the back.

The kid ate the story up. All Kyra’s mystic powers weren’t enough to extinguish his intellect completely.

You’ve got to admire a kid who can keep his head, even a little, under pressure from a female Tate. He said, ‘‘There’s a hole in your reasoning. The ghosts only bother humans.’’

The Dead Man had an answer. He usually does.Humans are the only sentient species to have gotten down deep enough for the dragon to reach and unravel the secrets of their minds.

Nobody argued. Chances are, nobody understood. Singe snorted. I was sure she’d say something about all the rats that John Stretch had sent down. Then His Nibs would come back with something to the effect that he had said ‘‘Sentient.’’

‘‘I’ll get it,’’ Singe said.

What?

I said, ‘‘Kip, I need to talk to you about a better way to light a place the size of the World.’’

But he was preoccupied. No way could he remain focused long.

I remember days like that. Some of them not that long ago.