Faded Steel Heat

100

Storey settled down only after, for a moment, it looked like Trail had suffered a stroke. Several shifters bled liberally. The silver fetters took the strength right out of them. Trace whimpered like a whipped puppy. The voice of the guy who'd been in the stable and on the stair to Tom's room said, "We should've killed the sonofabitch when we had the chance." I couldn't tell if he meant me or Storey.

The boys from Brotherhood Of The Wolf were chained to the next pillar over. Several seemed stricken. They saw faces they recognized. Faces that belonged to people who weren't even human. People who had been manipulating them... A glance at Gerris Genord told me he'd figured that out already. Maybe while he was in the Al-Khar, maybe even the night he killed Lancelyn Mac. Maybe he knew the key answer, too.

Who.

I had an idea, name of Mooncalled. Only I couldn't make him fit. Going strictly by the available evidence, Marengo North English seemed more likely.

There was no coolness toward Genord on the part of the other Wolves. Block and Relway hadn't sold them a thing. They trusted their buddy. Kind of touching, that. These days trust is moribund and fading fast.

It did mean I had guessed wrong about Genord not being the commando type. It takes going through hell with a man to develop that kind of trust. I asked Genord, "You want to put somebody on the spot?"

He looked through me. He wasn't going to tell me jack. If there was any settlement due, his pals would handle it. We couldn't hold them forever.

That attitude came out of the going through hell together, too. I remember that attitude. I miss it. But all the guys I shared it with are gone. I'm left with just the pale ghost of it in my friendships with Morley and a few others.

An uproar loud enough for all the guests to hear erupted out in the kitchen. Neersa Bintor bellowed like an angry she-elephant. Before I finished making sure everybody didn't rush that way and thereby leave the rest of the mansion unwatched the big woman stormed into the great hall. She had a body over her shoulder, a shifter caught in mid-change, flopping like a crippled snake. In her offhand she carried a kitchen maul that looked like it could be used to drive the stakes that hold up circus tents. She searched the gawking crowd, spotted me, flung the shifter from thirty feet away. It left some skin on the uncarpeted floor.

"I an' I, I be tryin' to manage de kitchen, you Garrett, you. You be gettin' me better help dan dat t'ief, you. You be keepin' you rat out a dere, too, you." Behind her Pular Singe managed to look sheepish and proud at the same time. She'd winkled out the interloper.

It occurred to me that we'd neglected our obligation to inform Neersa Bintor of our full plans. Not an oversight the goddess of the cast iron would easily forgive. In the heirarchy of the Weider mansion Neersa Bintor ranked right behind Max and, just possibly, Manvil Gilbey.

I apologized profusely in front of the mob. A certain gaudily constumed woodpecker had a grand laugh at my expense. "Lend me your cane there, Storey." I whacked the side of the settling tank three or four times. The bird said "Gleep!" and flew back to his perch on the chandelier.

"You listen, you bird-boy, you. I an' I got no room in my kitchen for vermin, be dey talk or no. You unnerstan', you? I will catch my own t'iefs, I an' I." The shifter at my feet stirred. Neersa Bintor raised a prodigious sensible shoe, brought it down hard, then exorcised her venom through a hearty application of her maul. She kept her foot in place while a couple of Guards got the changer fitted with chains.

I whispered to Singe, as though she hadn't understood what had been said, "Maybe you'd better stay out of the kitchen."

She whispered back, "You tink so, you?"

Singe the wonder child. She was being sarcastic. "Yeah. Scoot." When I turned back to the crowd I saw the Bintor phenomenon withdrawing.

I told the Guards, "You guys better get this thing shackled to its friends before it remembers what kingdom it's in." I suspected the passivity shown by the changers was partly due to their psychic connection, which must be charged with a communal sense of despair. Block, near Relway, beckoned impatiently.

101

Relway is predictable some ways. For example, you can count on him to bring out the melodrama in any situation. He did that at the Lamp brewery, where he had guys with torches creeping around the interior ruins generating wonderfully creepy, dancing, slithering shadows. "It's in worse shape than I thought it would be," I told the little guy. The brick exterior remained sound but the inside walls and floors were falling down and caving in.

"Smells odd, too," Morley said. He drifted over and through rubble and ruin without attracting a speck of dust.

Relway grumbled, "The smell comes from what we're here to see." He wasn't pleased with his pal Garrett. Garrett had let Morley Dotes and Pular Singe tag along. Deal Relway wasn't dim. He knew Morley would try to memorize some identifying detail about him and that Singe, without even realizing it, would accumulate a battery of olfactory clues. I hoped he didn't feel threatened enough to consider some unpleasant form of rectification later.

"Through here." Relway ducked under a sagging floor joist. I had to duckwalk in order to follow him. The dust showed that there had been a lot of traffic before us. "What a glamorous life they lead."

Relway grunted. Block made a small speech about evil always seeming glamorous from a distance but being squalid and ugly when you saw it up close. It was hard to argue with that. I saw proof every day.

On the other hand, the wicked do prosper while the upright perform hopelessly in the theater of their own despair.

"Kind of like my shoulder ornament, you mean?"

The Goddamn Parrot, who hadn't wanted to miss this adventure, made a sneering noise—really! And Morley announced, "I resent that. That avian gem was a gift from me."

"For which you'll never be forgiven. Yech!" The smell was getting stronger fast. Though repellent it had a familiar edge, a malty—

"Here," Relway said, indicating a couple of old copper fermenting kettles that should've been stolen for their scrap value ages ago. "Take a torch and climb up there." He indicated a crude platform fashioned from old crates. "You too, Wes."

I borrowed a torch from a Guard. Colonel Block snagged another. We accomplished the climb with a minimum of injuries, though the wonder buzzard also lost some tailfeathers to a waving torch.

The kettles were full of stuff. A big bubble broached the surface of the one nearest me. "Oh! That's foul. Some people shouldn't be allowed to brew their own." That's what they were doing. Badly. That's why the stench seemed familiar.

Relway said, "That's right. Take that paddle and push the scum out of the way."

A six-foot pole with a wide, square end lay across the top of the pot. I followed instructions.

"Shit!" Block exclaimed. "What the hell is that?"

I had to keep pushing the surface gunk aside to see it. It was a slug olive drab thing four feet long and human-shaped. No. Monkey-shaped caught it better. Its limbs were long and skinny and it had a tail. It had a round head with large round lidless lemurlike eyes. And no ears.

There was another in the other kettle, not as completely developed. "What do you think?" Relway asked. "Think what's in them pots maybe's got something to do with why they'd want to grab control of TunFaire's biggest brewery?"

"They're cooking up baby changers. Damn! Makes you understand their behavior. Some. Makes you kind of sympathize—if that's how they have to reproduce." I smelled ancient sorcery of the same sort that had created Singe's people. "But they're still dangerous monsters from where we stand. I wonder if it'd make any difference to Max that his family didn't die just because of somebody's greed."

"Grief ain't big on caring about why," Block observed.

Singe suddenly squeaked, "Garrett! Danger!" and scooted into the darkness like... Well, like a scared rat. Something stirred back the way we'd come. Somebody barked something. Relway started to drag out a black knife. That started everybody else grabbing for weapons.

"Deal!" Block snapped. "Relax." Relway froze instead.

A wicked vision seemed to materialize slowly from the uncanny shadows, like that mythical breed of vampire that spends part of its unlife as a mist capable of passing through the finest fissure. As it moved into the torchlight I saw that it was someone in black robes with golden lightning bolts embroidered on, his face concealed behind a silver mask. Clearly the aforementioned Stormwarden Perilous Spite, clinging to the traditions of his kind, which have spooky behavior and bad clothes as their foundations.

But people off the Hill dress like they're expected to dress. I sometimes wonder where they find their tailors. I also wondered if I really wanted this guy to turn up after all. Already he felt like clabbered bad humor.

The Goddamn Parrot decided he wanted to go for a fly with Pular Singe. Probably a good idea. I didn't want him attracting attention.

Block caught my eye. He jerked his head. I stepped down. He followed. His pal the wizard took our place. He stirred the kettles and examined their contents.

I call him he for convenience. There was a one in three chance that a woman lurked behind that mask. Not that sex made much difference. Those people are all misery on the hoof.

Block tugged my sleeve, gestured with his head. It was time us grunts made ourselves scarce.

I departed still reflecting upon whether or not it was a good thing to have the stormwarden join us. His presence might be enough to guarantee the continued sinister shyness of the specter general from the Cantard, whose appearance would be much preferable to me.

As we strode toward the Weider mansion Relway asked, "You gotten anywhere finding out anything for me, Garrett?"

"Nope. And I'm not going to, either. They've flat out told me I'm not getting inside anything, nor am I getting anywhere near any information they don't already want the whole world to share."

"But you're the perfect recruit."

"I think I was the perfect recruit until I started talking to you."

"Hmm?"

"Just a hunch. But if I was you and Block, I'd keep an eye out for one of your guys who maybe feels as strong about human rights as he does about law and order."

The ugly little man's face turned to cold iron.

Thou shall have no other gods before me.