Faded Steel Heat

60

I was beginning to like Tad Weider's sense of style. I selected an outfit that he might have worn to the horse races. It included a lot of yellow and red and brown. There were ruffles at wrist and throat. I spiffied myself, considered the result in my little mirror. "Oh! The elf girls are gonna carry me off and make me their love slave." I stepped back. "But if I'm going to dress like this, I'd better get a new pair of shoes."

My ragged old cobblehoppers sported memorabilia of a thousand city adventures. They didn't complement the look.

"What happened to you?" Block demanded when I got back. He looked me up and down.

"The Weiders felt I should upgrade my wardrobe."

"People been telling you that for years. But... You really need new shoes. Those clogs look like you wore them in the service."

"That's on my list. I thought we had a riot to attend. I'm ready," I said.

"New door?" Block asked as I locked up.

"Yeah. Somebody busted the old one."

"There's still snow piled up here and there. You sure you didn't have anything to do with that? I hear rumors with your name in them."

"How could I make it snow in the summertime? Even if, according to Tinnie, everything is my fault."

"You put in a key lock? You must be doing pretty well."

I'd been doing very well lately but he didn't need to know that. He might let something slip around crooks or tax collectors. Or crooked tax collectors. Or is that redundant? Doesn't it take a unique breed of pyschopath to prey upon his fellows that way?

The street was quiet except for the moans of stragglers nursing injuries sustained during the earlier debate. "This is better," I said. "You should've seen it here a while ago."

"I did. I'd have been here an hour ago if it wasn't for that damned parade."

We walked. I didn't like the direction he chose. If he kept on, we would stroll right into the Bustee, the ultimate slum and the most dangerous neighborhood in a city famous for bad neighborhoods. The only law in the Bustee is the law you make yourself. Outsiders won't go in except in big gangs. "I hope we aren't headed where I think we're headed."

"North side of the Bustee."

"I was afraid of that. Another reason to make a show?"

"Yes. To show that the Guard won't back off."

Relway I could see playing to the Bustee audience. Relway doesn't have sense enough to be scared. I was surprised he got anybody to go in with him, though, let alone the sort of highlifes he and Block would want to impress. Maybe I was out of touch.

When we arrived it was evident immediately that the Guard had impressed both the locals and the observers already. They had a dozen prisoners in chains, none of them the great villains Crask or Sadler.

I'd expected troops or something. But Relway had brought only the dozen Guards he would have assembled for the same job anywhere else. Observers outnumbered working lawmen even after we arrived. Block introduced me around. I knew several of the witnesses, though none well. You run into people in my racket. Some are friendly. Some aren't. You rub some the wrong way if you're determined to do your job.

I was overdressed. The most foppish dude there wasn't showing any lace. They all wore grubbies.

I faded away from the Names, joining Relway. Sullen neighborhood brats watched from a safe distance, as friendly as feral cats, waiting to spring their friends in chains. Or maybe to murder somebody from a rival gang. They were filthy. None wore clothing fancier than a loincloth. Several weren't that dressy.

In the Bustee sanitation is the exception rather than the rule. The quarter doesn't have even the rudimentary street-center sewage channels found elsewhere. There are few streets as we know them, just stringers of space where there are no buildings. The Bustee has its own unique aroma, and plenty of it.

"Figure Crask and Sadler know something's up?"

Relway glanced at his prisoners, then at me like he'd suddenly discovered that I was retarded. "Probably. We've been standing around here way too long, waiting to get started."

"I'm sorry. But—"

"This's going to be a blow, I know. But, as important as you are, we weren't waiting on your account."

"I'm crushed. So what is the holdup?"

"A dashing young gentleman sorcerer who uses the business name Dreamstalker Doomscrye. Or maybe Doomstalker Dreamscrye. He wants in. We don't tell those people no. He was supposed to be here hours ago. Evidently as an apprentice he wasn't taught to tell time."

Relway's sarcasm was quite daring. I was beginning to think the man had no sense. In TunFaire we restrain our opinions concerning the lords and ladies of the Hill. They can do worse than turn you into a frog if you irritate them.

"Ulp!"

"What?" Relway asked.

"I forgot my bird."

"Then go fetch the prima donna chicken."

"Too late. Might as well enjoy myself." I didn't miss the fancy-pants crow at all.

Relway's man Ritter was headed our way. A kid maybe fourteen blistered out of a dark chink between tenements. He held a rusty knife extended ahead. I knew the tactic. He was a cutpurse. He just wanted to steal and run before his victim could react. It happened every day, everywhere in TunFaire, though elsewhere cutpurses usually selected more promising targets. This kid had to be counting coup.

His pals were all set to cheer when Ritter sidestepped, snagged the thief's long hair, slashed him several times with a knife that appeared as though by magic. The whimpering boy collapsed into the muck. Ritter came on as though he'd done nothing more significant than stomp a bug.

That kind of cold demonstration was why the Guard was becoming feared.

They were nasty, these new lawmen.

Believers so often are.

"Doomscrye is here," Ritter announced. "What a jerk. He's already complaining about us wasting his valuable time."

These secret policemen were too daring.

"He's young," Relway told me. "He'll learn."

Did he mean Doomscrye or Ritter?

61

As a place to squat the object of our interest was a long slide downhill from a tomb. It was an ugly little lean-to shanty hugging the hip of a three-story frame tenement that tilted ten degrees sideways while twisting around its own waist. "Good thing we don't have to go in there," I observed. "Our weight would bring it down."

"It's tougher than it looks," Ritter told me. "Ninety-two people live there."

That was probably a short estimate. The occupants might use the place in shifts. I asked Relway, "If the manpower shortage was so awful we let whole tribes of nonhumans immigrate, how come people down here didn't take advantage?"

"Some did. And some are unemployable in any circumstance." Relway's bitterness sounded personal.

He hailed from the underbelly of society. He had been able to get somewhere. He was outraged because so many people wouldn't even try.

Plenty willingly made the effort to be unpleasant, though. We were attracting more watchers the age of the kid Ritter had hurt. I saw sticks and chains and broken bricks, the weapons of the very poor.

My companions remained unconcerned.

Ritter pretended to be in charge so Relway wouldn't attract attention. A donkey cart appeared, headed our way.

The observers were getting nervous. Doomscrye complained incessantly. He was very young for a sorcerer. He hadn't seen military service. He might be the harbinger of a generation never to get its rough edges knocked off where nobody was special when the Reaper was on the prowl.

Doomscrye did not understand that real trouble could climb all over him any second. Likely he'd never faced even minor trouble.

Fate handed him the opportunity to discover that nobody thought as well of him as he thought of himself.

A hunk of brick got him in the chest. Block snagged him and dragged him behind the cart.

Ritter and several others struck back contemptuously, bashing heads. Other Guards shackled captives with chains from the donkey cart. The only kid to get in a solid blow died swiftly, his throat cut.

"Oh, shit!" I muttered. "We're in for it now." There was a lot of racket. I expected a riot.

I was wrong. The locals were intimidated by ruthlessness—particularly once Doomscrye set the brickthrower on fire. The kid was still screaming when we ripped Crask and Sadler's hovel apart and learned that all the buildup had come to an undramatic, anti-climactic conclusion.

There was no epic battle, no ferocious last stand by cornered baddies. Crask was delirious with fever. Sadler was unconscious. It took four Guardsmen to hoist the villains into the cart. Nobody insisted they be treated gently.

Me neither. Though I did recall times when we were less unfriendly.

Crask's delirium faded briefly. He recognized me. I said, "Good morning, Bright Eyes." But looking into them was like looking down a dark well at a remote mountain of ice.

Maybe The Call ought to work on the problem of humans who have no humanity in them.

Crask wasn't afraid. Fear to him was a tool used to manage others.

"You going to question them?" I asked.

"We're a little slower than we like to pretend, aren't we?" Relway sneered. "Would this exercise have a point otherwise?"

"I'd sure like to know why they jumped Belinda when they did."

Relway smiled. "I'll bet you would."

"What's that mean?"

"I expect she has some questions. Like how they knew where to find her."

"Is this all there is, then?"

"I expected more excitement myself, Garrett. But I'm pleased there wasn't. They don't seem so terrible now, do they?"

"Neither does a saber-tooth tiger when he's sick on his ass. You guys be careful. They won't be completely harmless even if you hang them."

"I'm always careful, Garrett."

That I believed. But was he careful enough?

I stuck with the gang only till we cleared the Bustee. Wouldn't do to be seen with them by my patriotic friends.

The chained kids would get five years in the Cantard. They would be aboard prison barges before the end of the day. The mines always needed a few good men. Or whoever else they could get. Already they were the catch-all sentence for any crime not a capital offense.

The mines would constitute a death sentence for many, anyway.

So what's changed since I was young? These guys would get shovels instead of swords—and worse odds of getting home alive.

62

My favorite venue for exotic research is the Karentine Royal Library, over where all the midtown government buildings cluster, clinging to the petticoats of the Hill. There are lots of books—and no wizards to make them a high-risk objective.

The most interesting books in town are, of course, squirreled away, under lock and key and deadly spell, up the Hill, behind imputed beware of the wizard signs. Only brawn-for-brains barbarians try to reach them. Which supplies the wizards with leather for bookbinding.

The Royal Library is a Crown indulgence. It isn't supposed to be open to walk-in traffic. I get around that. I have a friend inside.

Linda Lee is a treasure. And cute, too. Especially when she's mad, which she always seems to be whenever I drop by.

"You're full of it up to your ears, Garrett," she snapped. "How did you get in this time? And how come you still have that trash-beak penguin parked on your shoulder?" I'd stopped by the house. Just in case my peripatetic sidekick had chosen not to cover up the fact that we were partners anymore. "You're one slow learner." She was no fan of the parrot. And was always very admiring of the way I put words into his beak without moving my lips. Even from another room.

The secret of getting into the library is you slide in through a small side door that has escaped the notice of most of the world. As a rule, though, most of the world would be more interested in getting out of a library than getting in. Books are dangerous.

The library guards are so poorly paid that none of them really gives a rat's butt who comes or goes. And the most indifferent guards get the side entrance. Young or old, the man on duty will be drunk or asleep. Or drunk and asleep. Or maybe not even there because he's gotten dry and had to go out looking for a drink.

I still have to go in on tippytoe. The guards have their pride. You don't make the effort, they are going to yell. You don't make the effort, they can't cover themselves with the gargoyle who rules the place.

Today's steadfast guardian of the priceless tomes was both drunk and snoring and had a huge, smouldering weed banger dangling from his left hand. Which would burn down to bare skin any moment...

"Ye-ow!" echoed through the building.

A screech demanded, "What was that?" That was the head librarian, a wicked old witch with a temper so foul that on her best days she was like a troll with very bad teeth. She began to shift toward the guardroom in a streaking shuffle. She'd lost all sympathy for youth in recent centuries. Her sworn mission was to get in life's way.

I whispered, "She must've been sneaking up on us."

"You keep those hands to yourself, Garrett." Which is all that I had done. So far. Sooner or later she would have her way. "I always give in and give you whatever you want when you start that stuff so you just stop it."

I didn't argue. We both knew she never did a thing she hadn't made up her mind to do. But she's a last-word kind of gal.

"Wouldn't think of it, darling. According to Morley I'm practically engaged to a pretty ratgirl named Pular Singe, anyway."

"Is that thug going to be your best man?"

"Uh?"

"I came by your place last night. To see that Dead Man." They're pals, sort of, him and her. He's never explained how he overlooks the fact that she's a woman. "A neighbor told me Dean and the Dead Man moved out. That they just couldn't take it anymore. And that you were out whoring around with some trollop in black."

It took no genius to figure out which neighbor that would be. "You need to pick who you gossip with more carefully, darling."

"I try. But you just keep coming back."

"You went to my house." Me forgetting who the last-word kind of gal was.

"I enjoy those conversations with your partner." She gripped my arm, looked up. Her eyes were huge pools of mischief. "Sometimes I do just want to sit around and talk. He's so interesting. He's seen everything."

"Now whose hands are—"

"This is different."

Funny. I was breathing just as hard.

"What do you want, Garrett?"

"Huh?"

"The Dead Man doesn't get distracted."

"Uh... He's dead. Even then you'd probably... Shapeshifters. I need to know about shapeshifters."

"Why?" Always direct, Linda Lee.

"Shapeshifters murdered some people I know. We caught them and sent them to the Al-Khar but some got away before we could question them. The rest died. I need to find out whatever I can about them." Pant pant.

"I can't help much. The information we have here probably wouldn't be reliable." Linda Lee cocked her head. The head librarian was just warping into the guardroom, from the sound. Our whispers hadn't reached her. "What you want you'd probably only find in a specialized library."

"What's that?" I had a feeling I didn't want to know.

"A private library. On the Hill."

Sorcerers. "I'm psychic." I didn't like that answer.

"You don't know anybody up there?"

"I know people. Met another one today. They ain't our kind of people."

"You wouldn't know anybody in The Call?"

"Uh... Why?"

"You could try to get into the library at their Institute For Racial Purity. Where they research racial issues. They came here trying to hire a librarian. They have a lot of stuff from private sources. They wanted it cataloged and organized so they could use it to support their theories."

"Linda Lee, you're a treasure."

"I know. What made you realize it?"

"I do know somebody in The Call."

"Aha!" the chief librarian shrieked in the distance. "I've caught you, my pretty!" But she crowed too soon. She always declares before she has me in sight. I moved with trained silence and deliberate speed to the end of a stack. I could remain unseen there till the old woman committed to a particular path. Linda Lee would signal me, I'd take a different route and once again the old woman would be scratching her head and wondering what she'd really heard.

It's unnatural that anyone her age would hear so well.

Linda Lee whispered, "I'll see what I can find out." Then she glommed on and kissed me. Linda Lee knows kissing better than she knows books. I didn't start it but after about four seconds I was plenty read to continue. Weider who? Shapeshifter what? I don't know no Relway.

The chief librarian cackled.

"I've got you for sure this time, my proud beauty! I'll teach you to tryst with your leman in a holy place!" She stomped and clomped her way closer.

I slipped away from Linda Lee, who winked and made noise heading another direction while I sneaked between stacks on little mouse feet. We'd played this game before. Linda Lee probably more times than me.

"Awk! Shit!" said the Goddamn Parrot, with impeccable timing. "Help!" He started flapping.

I'd kill him for sure this time.

A vise closed on my right shoulder. It turned me. I gaped at the ugly grin of a foul-breathed ogre I hadn't seen before and whom I hadn't heard coming. He was twice my size and twice as stupid. I had a notion he wouldn't ask me to recommend a good book.

In fact, I suspected he was the kind who liked to hit people and watch them bounce. Exhibit number one: He had a gargantuan green fist pulled back three yards, all set to whistle my way.

The old lady had foxed me.

I kicked the ogre hard where a sharp knock will drop any reasonably constructed critter, puking. The ogre just showed me more green teeth and put some moxie into his punch. Only trolls and zombies are less vulnerable there.

I never got a shot at his ears.

Ogres drop like stones if you slap both ears at the same time. So I'm told. Nobody I know ever got close enough to try. The source is always a friend of a friend of a friend, but, "It's gospel, Garrett. It really happens that way."

Before the lights went out I had the satisfaction of knowing the old woman would need weeks to pick up all the books that scattered while I was flying through the stacks.

Might be wise not to visit Linda Lee at work for a while.

If anybody robbed me while I was splashed all over the alley behind the library, they sure overlooked the one thing I wouldn't mind losing. I came around to find the Goddamn Parrot muttering like one of those psycho guys who stomp around shaking their heads and arguing with ghosts. I hurt everywhere. I had book burns. That ogre had pounded me good after I couldn't see to make a getaway.

There'd been way too much of this stuff lately. I never recovered from one thumping before I stumbled into the next.

Was I nurturing some kind of death wish?