Dread Brass Shadows

29

I had the night to myself. Unless you count sharing with a tail. It wasn't a happy feeling. Empty streets always mean trouble to me.

Whoever was after me was spooky. I only ever knew one guy that good, Pokey Pigotta. Maybe this was Pokey's ghost.

I'd outthought Pokey once when he'd been on me. Maybe I could use the trick again. It was hard to beat for a guy working alone. I looked for a busy tavern I knew would have a back door.

Not my day. It didn't work. I didn't catch anybody sliding in the front door by sprinting around from the back. It was like the guy was psychic. All I accomplished was to let whoever know I knew he was there. Go match wits with a rock, Garrett. Chances are the rock will come out ahead.

Having somebody dog you works on your head. You start out wondering who and why. Pretty soon you're into what if and then imagination flares and you've got a vampire or werewolf or ghoul pack just waiting for you to walk down a dark alley with your eyes closed.

There ain't no comforting thoughts, come a dark night.

Hell with the clown. Let him walk his behind off. He didn't seem interested in messing with me, just in seeing what I got me up to. If I kept moving, he'd have no rime to report to whoever sicked him on me.

I was tired and depressed and short on zest for life. Maybe even a little cranky. I get that way when things keep on not going my way. Call me spoiled.

I was near the Bledsoe Infirmary, a charity hospital supported by surviving descendants of the old imperial family, when I sensed a change in the night. It wasn't obvious, just a difference. Nothing I could pin down. My shadow was there still. The morCartha weren't making much racket. Random flying thunder-lizards still ghosted overhead, chasing bats. The streets remained underpopulated. I wondered if it might not be some holiday among the night people

I paused to consider the Bledsoe, a monument to good intentions having become a symbol of despair. A place of fear, where the poor went to die and the mad screamed out their souls in overcrowded, locked wards. The imperial family did all they could, but their best wasn't enough. Their money and donations of labor barely kept it from falling down. It was huge, gray, ugly, and may have been imposing in its prime, a couple of hundred years ago. Now it was just another shabby old building, bigger than but no better than ten thousand others in TunFaire.

I shook my head, startled by an original thought. I couldn't recall ever having seen new construction anywhere in the city Was the war that big a drain on resources?

The war is the most important thing in all our lives, whether or not we're directly involved. It shapes our selves and surroundings and forges our futures as every minute passes.

Whatever was happening in the Cantard, so heroic the Dead Man could sense it from here, would have a crashing impact on all our lives.

That scared me. I'm not fond of things the way they are, but the only changes 1 can see will be for the worse. The bigger the change, the more for the worse.

Some tiny sound reached me, some ghostly flicker of motion teased the corner of my vision. I'd been a step too far away from here and now realized it, and my reaction was maybe more vigorous than it should have been. I did me a wild roundhouse kick toward the movement, brought my foot down, ducked and pivoted and lashed the air with a knife.

Crask was saved by the fact that my tippytoe brushed his chin lightly, pushing him back. He'd thrown himself away at the same time. Now he sat on his duff looking up at me with a goofy expression.

"Say..." he said. "Say. what's wrong with you?"

I had so much juice in me so sudden I started shaking. I'd blown it, really. I took some deep breaths to calm me down, put the knife away, extended a hand. "Sorry. You startled me bad."

"Yeah? Well, you got no call..." I shut up as he reached with his left hand. I didn't like the look in his eye. I pulled my hand back before he grabbed it and went to chewing on it.

He got up slowly, using only his left hand. I noticed he had his right arm strapped to his stomach. "What happened to you?" Hard to tell in that light but his face looked a little worse for wear, too. He looked less intimidating than usual.

He got up slowly, rubbed his behind. Damn, he looked embarrassed! Maybe it was the light leaking from the Bledsoe... He didn't have an answer.

I leaped to a conclusion. He'd been the guy Winger had discouraged when Sadler had me in that alley. No proof, and he'd never tell, but by damn I'd put money on it. A copper or two, anyway. I grinned. "You shouldn't ought to sneak up that way."

"I didn't sneak. I walked right into you, Garrett."

I didn't argue. You don't with a Crask or Sadler. "What you doing here?"

"Looking for you. Your man said you were headed for Dwarf Fort. I come down this way figuring you'd be headed back by now."

I was going to have to have a talk with Dean. Though it was understandable he'd answer Crask's questions if Crask put on his nasty face. "What's up?"

"Couple things. You seen Sadler?"

"Not since . Not for a long time. Why?"

"Disappeared." Crask didn't waste many words. "Come to see Chodo right after . ." He wasn't going to talk about the incident. "Talked some, then went away. Nobody seen him go Wasn't told he was supposed to. Nobody's seen him since. Chodo's concerned."

Chodo was concerned. That would be an understatement, as were most statements about the kingpin. In language the rest of us would use, it meant Chodo was mightily pissed.

I don't usually volunteer information, especially to the kingspin's people, but I made an exception. "Guys have been disappearing all over I can't find a trace of Morley Dotes. Likewise Saucerhead Tharpe. You might say Fm concerned, too. I don't hear anything on the street. You?"

He shook his head first, some top skin flashing in the hospital light. "I thought Dotes was sulking on account of we used his place."

"I thought so, too. At first. Only that wouldn't be his style, would it?"

"Nah. Feisty as he is, he'd have busted our heads and kicked our asses out of there if he was really pissed."

"He'd have tried, anyway."

Crask smiled. He did that so seldom it was startling. "Yeah. Tried. I got some business I got to get on with, Garrett. I'm late, I been chasing all over after you to find out about Sadler. I want you should walk along, talk to me. Maybe we can brainstorm out where people are disappearing."

I didn't feel like it but didn't argue. It wasn't that I was afraid of offending him. I thought I might learn something. Call it intuition.

The first thing I learned was that Crask wasn't, for the moment at least, the man I knew and loathed. He was so busy working on something inside him that some of his barriers against the world leaked. He seemed almost human at moments—though not so much I'd want my sister to marry him if I had a sister. I don't and I'm glad. My friends are hostages enough for fortune.