Faded Steel Heat

26

"Right on time," I said when somebody hammered on my door late in the afternoon.

Belinda said, "My people are expected to be punctual and to do their jobs well. And they deliver."

"You should take life easier, Belinda. You don't always have to be—"

"I try, Garrett. But some demon keeps pushing me. I can't beat it. And it'll get me killed eventually."

I nodded. That came with the territory. I looked out the peephole. An unfamiliar hulking creature of mixed ancestary shuffled impatiently on my front stoop. "I think I understand. Is this thing somebody you know?"

She leaned past me, so close I had trouble breathing normally. "That's Two Toes Marker. My driver."

"Driver? He looks like he wrestles ogres for a living."

"He looks badder than he is. He doesn't move very well anymore."

Two Toes knocked again. Despite plaster dust falling all over the house Dean didn't come out of the kitchen. He was exasperated with everybody. And for once he did put the blame where it always belongs: squarely on the shoulders of the Dead Man.

"I'll get my shoulder ornament and we'll be set."

"Why? That bird is disgusting."

Finally, somebody who agreed with me.

The Dead Man relaxed his control of the Goddamn Parrot. The little monster barked, "I'm in love! Look at this sweet fluff!"

"I already looked, you deadweight jungle buzzard. And you're right. She looks damned good. But she's a lady. Mind your stinking manners."

"That was really good, Garrett," Belinda told me. "Your lips never moved once."

Argh! But the bird was right. I was right. She did look good, if a little too vampiric for current fashion. She'd had people in and out all afternoon, some to elevate her to this supernal state. She didn't want to go unnoticed tonight. Hell, she was going to raise the dead. I thought about wrapping her in a blanket so we wouldn't have crowds chasing us through the streets.

This evening would be easy on my eyeballs. Alyx was sure to give Belinda a run. So would Nicks. And Tinnie would be absolutely killer if she bothered to try. Belinda would be a blood-dark rose in a garden of brilliant whites and yellows and carmines.

"If I was doing the talking this little shit would say things to score points for me, not to get everybody pissed off."

Belinda laughed. Then she demanded, "What?"

"You startled me. You don't laugh very often. You should."

"I can't. Though I do wish I was different."

A shuddering déjà vu overcame me. I recalled her father once suggesting that he didn't really want to be a bad guy but he was in a bind where his choices were to be the nastiest bad boy he could or end up grease under some climber's heel. The underworld is strictly survival of the fittest.

The Contagues survive.

I opened the door. Belinda pushed past, murmured something to Two Toes.

Dean bustled out of the kitchen. "Did you remember your key, Mr. Garrett?"

"Yeah. And this door better not be chained when I get back. Got that?"

He had talked me into installing an expensive key lock, supposedly so I wouldn't need help getting in late. But maybe he just wanted to aggravate me.

It used to be cats. He was always adopting strays, apparently because I didn't want them around. I attract enough stray people.

"Absolutely guaranteed, Mr. Garrett."

I looked at him askance. I didn't like his tone. "Thank you, Dean." I shut the door. "Living with him is like being married without any of the perquisites." I waved to Mrs. Cardonlos, who was outside watching again. I wondered if she knew what she was looking for. I wondered what had become of Mr. Cardonlos. I have a suspicion he's alive and well and happy somewhere far from here.

She got an eyeful of Belinda. That one and its sister both liked to popped. I thought her chin would hit her knee.

Now she had something juicy to chew up and pass around. What do they see in that man ?

Two Toes had left the Contague coach around the corner on Wizard's Reach. As we strolled behind him I noted that he had earned his nickname the hard way. He had a weird, crooked limp.

I gave him a significant glance, then raised my eyebrow to Belinda. She'd relaxed. She understood. "Old family obligation." She made a noise I would have called a giggle had it come from another young lady. "Guess what? He has a twin brother. No-Nose Harker. The Harker boys didn't have much luck in the army."

I gave the automatic response of every guy who ever made it back from a war when most soldiers didn't. "Sure they did. They got out alive."

If you check the men in the street, particularly in the rightsist freecorps, almost every one bears some physical memento. And beyond the outside scars there are still suppurating wounds of mind and soul. And those affect our rulers as well as the least man among us.

You won't find a duke or stormwarden crouching in a filthy alleyway trying to exorcise his memories with wine or weed but up on the Hill, or out in the manors, the great families have locked doors behind which they conceal their own casualties. Like Tom Weider.

You don't hear about that in histories or sagas. They whoop up the glory and forget the horror and pain. The Dead Man assures me that all histories, whether official or oral, bear only coincidental resemblance to actual events—which few principals considered to be history in the making at the time.