Faded Steel Heat

82

I saw for myself.

Mr. Nagit bullied the freecorps thugs into moving back. I did admire their discipline.

There wasn't much smell yet but the flies were plentiful. They're always the first to know. I heard them before I saw anything.

The first dead thing wasn't human. It used to be a wild dog. Before something left nothing but a head and some feet and fur and odd bits of bone scattered amongst the well-tossed pine needles.

I heard a little "Tee-hee." I looked over my shoulder and wasn't surprised to see my one-eyed, lizard-loving buddy Venable checking another savaged remnant of wild Rover.

"Did your babies do this?"

He tittered. "Killed the wild dogs and ate them, they did, yes. And never laid a claw on Stucker. He was dead already. They won't touch carrion unless they're absolutely starving. Even then, sometimes, the strong males will eat the weak ones before they touch cold meat. Hee."

The dining preferences of his pets didn't interest me. Mr. Nagit was less intrigued than I. I asked, "What's this about Stucker? He looked pretty healthy when I saw him a few minutes ago."

Venable looked baffled.

Soon I saw why.

Stucker's corpse was naked. It was dirty and far from fresh. The wild dogs had been at him during the night, long before my glimpse of him in the house a while ago.

There was no doubt he'd been dead half a day before the dogs found him. I muttered, "But he was at supper with us last night."

The pine needles were well stirred. Here and there, in the soft soil beneath, were clear hoofprints.

"Why didn't they bury him?" I wondered aloud.

"They did. Over there," Venable told me. "Just not deep enough. The dogs dug him up. We pulled him over here and brushed him off before we sent for the lieutenant."

I wanted to scream and give Venable a good throttling. But that would do no good now.

I reminded Mr. Nagit that, "We saw centaurs on the road just north of here yesterday. And nobody was on the gate when we got here. We were talking about that when Stucker came out of here still pulling up his pants. I figured he'd gone off to take a dump. But... "

Mr. Nagit looked puzzled.

"The boss will understand. It's a matter of shapeshifters. Killer shapeshifters."

The light dawned. "He told us how he handled a couple of those at the Weider masque. I thought they'd all been captured."

"Some were. And used their abilities to get away. There seem to be an awful lot of them around. They keep turning up."

"We'd better grab the Stucker back at the house."

"Good idea. Only I'll bet we don't find him."

"Why not?"

"If you were him up there and saw this mob down here, what would you think?"

"That we found the body." Mr. Nagit showed me his comradely smile.

It wasn't that endearing. Venable's pets smiled that way while they waited for your friendly status to evaporate.

"Exactly. What else strange has happened the past few weeks? Any assaults? Unexplained deaths? Mysterious thefts? People supposedly seen two places at the same time?" The shifters seemed to have the solution to that difficulty worked out, though.

"No." Mr. Nagit barked at the freecorps fighters gradually pushing into the grove, wanting to sneak a peek at disaster. He finger-pointed half a dozen. "You men go up to the house. Grab Stucker."

"But—"

"If you see Stucker it won't be Stucker. Stucker's right there. Already starting to ferment. Get moving."

I observed, "That'll teach those guys to get so close an officer notices them."

Nagit smiled again. This had to be a record day. "I suppose it will." He glared around like he was thinking of something else that had to be done. Men backed away.

There was a lot of soldier in those guys still.

"Settle down!" I snapped at the Goddamn Parrot. Having decided he didn't love Tinnie anymore, he had jumped to my shoulder where he was practicing some weird tribal fertility dance.

Lieutenant Nagit said, "Looks like he's trying to see the body but you keep moving."

He was taking up for the bird? "Maybe he's hungry. He's a vulture in disguise. Venable. Think he could play with your pets?"

No?

That wonder buzzard is so damned useless I can't even turn him into lizard bait.

83

There was no sign of pseudo-Stucker. Surprise, surprise. The shifter was somebody else now.

So I was not surprised when I spied one Carter Stockwell, known shapechanger, drifting behind the crowd, moving toward the front gate. Evidently it never occurred to anyone else to wonder why an unfamiliar fellow would be wearing the same clothes Stucker had had on for the past two days.

"There's our man," I told Nagit. "Right there. That face is the one he wears whenever he's not replacing someone."

Nagit looked at me narrowly, briefly—then gestured several men closer. "How do you know that, Mr. Garrett?"

"I've run into this shifter before. He always collapses into this shape." Did that make sense?

It did to me.

The creatures really did have to be psychic when it came to threats. Carter looked at me suddenly, as though responding to my interest. He lengthened his stride immediately.

"He knows I've made him, Mr. Nagit."

The lieutenant gave orders quickly, softly. Everyone hurried to execute them. These freecorps boys took their military stuff seriously.

The mob took off after Stockwell, determined little turtles vainly coursing a hare. Stockwell changed as we watched, his legs lengthening until a foot of calf showed below each cuff. He bounded away, gaining ground fast. He circled the tent city and disappeared into the woods beyond.

"Wow," Mr. Nagit said. "That's what I call putting on a burst of speed." He kept a straight face.

Stockwell dwindled into the distance. What was his connection with the centaurs?

There had to be one. Tinnie and I had run into centaurs just up the road. Minutes later the Stucker look-alike, still buttoning his trousers, comes out of the very copse where later we find what's left of the real Stucker. Just downhill from a lot of ruined pasture. "The torn-up turf. The way it was torn up. Those centaurs helped catch the real Stucker for the changer." Which meant that there must be a common mission between the centaurs and shapeshifters. Which I thought the Dead Man, with his special interest in things and personalities out of the Cantard, would find very intriguing indeed. I might even tell him about it. Someday.

The Goddamn Parrot took flight. That little traitor would give the news away first chance he got. For free. Apparently out of practice flying, he had trouble staying straight and level getting across to Tinnie.

"How do I spot one of those things if they come back? Or if there're more of them around?"

"I'm trying to find out. That's why I was in the library. But I hadn't found anything yet. I do know they don't like silver. Not even a little. You could whap everybody with a solid silver ugly stick every once in a while. Why would they replace a low-level guy like Stucker?"

Nagit looked at me like he had sudden doubts about my smarts. "He was on the gate eighteen hours a day. He saw everyone who came and went. Valuable information to a lot of people, I'd think. Plus he had the run of the house in his free time. He could've dug around in there whenever he wanted."

"The perfect spy. He was good, too. I didn't know him so he had no trouble with me but he did fool Miss Montezuma at dinner last night."

"Stucker was the perfect target. He was a loner. Nobody knew him very well. Everybody knew he was totally committed to the movement, though. He did everything possible, in spite of his social handicaps. So the boss always said. You'd never suspect him."

Unless the replacement Stucker never got a chance to bury the man he replaced deeply enough. On account of that meddlesome Garrett turning up. I shivered, thinking a dark wing had brushed my soul. In Stockwell's place I might have paid me a deadly visit during the night.

I assumed the boss was right about the original Stucker. "You had doubts?"

"About Stucker? Never. The man had a minor job. He did it well. I notice people only when they don't do their jobs well."

"I see." I also saw that Tinnie was headed our way, oblivious to the moon-eyes around her. The woman put a definite strain upon these superior beings' commitment to correct behavior.

Every man in sight hated my bones the instant she slipped her arm inside mine.

She purred, "How much longer are you going to be?"

"I don't know, darling. This's another shapeshifter incident. The gatekeeper was a changeling."

"Too bad. He seemed nice."

"We only met the shifter. The real gatekeeper was dead before we got here."

Tinnie glanced that way. She flushed.

I said, "It isn't pretty. Wild dogs got after him. Then Venable's little pals got after the wild dogs."

"I know that, Garrett. What about you being much longer?"

I wasn't looking forward to facing Uncle Willard. "Mr. Nagit, I'm going to take the lady home. I'll be back."

Mr. Nagit wasn't completely thrilled. "Do what you need to do. I'll leave word to let you in."

In parting I suggested, "Venable might try to set his pets on that shifter's trail. If you do catch him, I definitely want to talk to him."

Nagit scowled. "I suppose—Now what?"

The soldiers had begun to stir.

"Looks like somebody's coming."

Yes, indeed. And it was somebody who liked his ceremony. He had outriders out, fore and aft, in numbers sufficient to stave off small armies. A guy who didn't look old enough to be a veteran hobbled up. "It's Colonel Theverly, Lieutenant. He's coming."

And he'd be in a bad mood after last night, too, I expected.

Tinnie scrunched up close. "This looks like a real good time to start hiking, boyfriend."

"Probably."

"Uncle Willard won't be the only one mad at you if these people suddenly get all paranoid about us." Which, on reflection, seemed entirely possible. The returning freecorps people we were about to encounter had no way of knowing that we were accepted guests. And good old Colonel Theverly always had been one to leave a lot of unfamiliar bodies around for the gods to sort out.

Renewing acquaintances with Theverly could wait. I expected to be back before nightfall. We could get together then.

Tinnie and I got out of the gateway to The Pipes only moments before the leading horsemen turned in. We stood across the road and gawked at the cavalcade. Quite a few cavaliers gawked right back at the redhead. Me, I just stood there wrapped in my cloak of invisibility.

Once we did start toward town the Goddamn Parrot began to get excited. He sounded like he was trying to talk again. What language wasn't clear, however.

"He can't stand country life," I explained to Tinnie. "Heh-heh. Maybe I can lose him in the woods."