Old Tin Sorrows

32

I joined Cook in the kitchen. We were alone. "Can you use a hand?"

"Come to try sweet-talking me out of something, eh? I see right through you, boy. You ought to know by now I don't run my mouth. I don't tell nobody nothing that ain't none of their business."

"Of course." I rolled up my sleeves, eyed the heap of dirty stuff distastefully. Not much I hate more than washing dishes. But I stole a pot of hot water off the stove, prepared a sink, put more water on to heat, dug in. Ten minutes of silence passed. I waited till I felt her curiosity becoming palpable.

"You were up there when they looked at the General. What did you think?"

"I think that croaker is as crooked as the General says." She didn't sound convinced. She sounded worried.

"Know what he thinks is wrong?"

"I know what he said. He's crazy if he believes it. Ain't no haunts around here."

"Three draugs."

She grunted. There lay the core of her doubt. If those draugs hadn't come, she wouldn't have given the doctor's idea a glance.

"People keep telling me, the General doesn't have enemies of the killing kind. And there's no incentive here for anyone to hurry him along, despite the size of the estate."

"What'll be left after he lets it wither. I swear, his damnfool sickness has infected the whole place." Her voice was weak. She wasn't the woman she'd been.

Things were going on inside her head. She had no attention to spare.

"If nobody from today wants to kill him, to torment him with slow death and the hell between when he passes, who in his past might? My gut feeling is, it goes back to before his move to the Cantard."

She grunted and threw utensils around and didn't say anything.

"What happened? The only trauma I know of is his wife's death. Could that have something to do with it? Her parents... Jennifer says she thinks they were a firelord and stormwarden but she doesn't know who. Is this a legacy from them? A delayed curse?"

She still didn't have squat to say.

"Were they involved in the Blue cabal that went after Kenrick III?"

"You put a lot together out of nothing, boy."

"That's what I do. I get paid for it. I think the grandparents were involved. I think Jennifer's mother came here partly to hide from reprisals if the plot failed. Lucky her. It did. And Kenrick devoured everyone remotely related to it. I wonder if the doctor who administered an incorrect drug was on the royal payroll. Maybe Jennifer survived only because he couldn't murder a newborn."

"You do put it together."

I kept quiet, hoping she'd fill the vacuum.

I washed, set stuff out to dry. There was enough work for me to make me a new career when I got tired of the old one. I was tempted.

"The missus's mother called herself Charon Light. Her daddy was Nightmare Blue."

"One fun-loving guy." Nightmare Blue had put the Blue plot together. He'd been as mean-spirited and vicious as they came. The story was that only the threatened defection of key conspirators forced him to confine his scheme to the King. He'd wanted to scrub Kenrick's whole house. The bad blood between the men stemmed from a mysterious childhood incident.

Charon Light, supposedly, was as innocent as a wife could be. She'd apparently been ignorant of the plot till the last hours. There was reason to suspect she'd been responsible for its failure, in the penultimate moment warning the King.

We'll never know—unless someone raises the dead to ask. None of those people survived. I doubt anybody would try. Raising a sorcerer is a fool's game—unless you're a more powerful sorcerer.

"Eleanor's mother brought her here to hide her?"

Cook grunted, having second thoughts about talking. She kept her peace for a few minutes. I got more hot water.

"Her mother brought her. In the middle of the night, it was. A devil's own night, thunder and lightning and the wind howling like all the lost souls. She was some distant relative of the Stantnors' was Charon Light. Don't recall her born name. Something Fen. She brought the child in so frightened, she wet herself. As bad as Jennifer, she was, never been out of her own house before. Such a pretty young thing, too."

"Like Jennifer."

"She was more retiring than Jenny. Jenny can work herself up. She's an actress, our Jenny. She puts on a role like a dress, that child. Not young mistress Eleanor. Scared of her own shadow, that one."

I grunted this time.

"The old General and Charon Light, they worked it out right here in this kitchen. I was here, serving tea. They'd marry the child to young Will, in name only, so she'd be safe. This was only a couple days before the storm broke. Kenrick couldn't do nothing to upset the old General. He was the only rock between Karenta and defeat in the Cantard in those days."

The war hadn't meant much to me back then. My father had been dead for years, killed down there, and I wasn't old enough to worry about going. But I did recall that, at about that time, Karenta's fortunes had been at low ebb and there'd been talk about the elder Stantnor being the only man who could handle the Venageti of the day.

"You want the benefit of my suspicion, I think Charon Light was going to deal. Going to sell the plot for immunity. I don't know if that's how she went. She didn't survive."

I told her, "I'm starting to get confused. I thought Jennifer was born about then. And she had an older brother."

"Half brother. His mother was the General's first wife. Have-to wedding when he was sixteen. Daughter of a serving woman. But you don't need to know that."

"I need to know everything if I'm going to make sense of what's happening. Hidden things kill. What happened to the first wife?"

"They stayed married till the boy was old enough for tutors and nannies. Then he put her aside. The old General sent the family away."

"Hard feelings involved?"

"Plenty. But the old General bought them off. He reminded young Will every day. Especially if he spent a night out wenching. A terror, he was, when he was a lad. Obsessed, you might say." She didn't sound like she'd thought him an amusing rake. He didn't sound like somebody I'd have liked.

For fifteen minutes I tried to get her to tell me more. I got only enough to guess the young Stantnor was a crude ass, a driven philanderer whose life had gained direction and meaning only after his permanent move to the Cantard.

"So he wasn't a nice guy. Who from those days hated him enough to—"

"No." There was no equivocation there. "That's life, Garrett. The hurt don't hang on. Everybody does stupid things when they're young."

Some don't ever stop.

"Everybody grows out of them. You don't laugh at them when you look back, but you don't take a killing grudge to your grave, neither."

I don't know. The Stantnors seemed pretty skewed. If that extended to their circle, someone in contact might hold a grudge over something normal people would call bad luck.

"Then you tell me. Who's haunting him?"

She stopped working, looked at me. She'd remembered something she hadn't thought about in years. For a moment she teetered on the brink of telling me. Then she shook her head. Her face closed down. "No. It wasn't that way."

"What wasn't?"

"Nothing. Some cruel gossip. Nothing to do with us today."

"You'd better tell me. It might have some bearing."

"I don't repeat no lies about no one. Wouldn't have nothing to do with this, nohow."

I got my third pot of hot water. I was tearing them up. I bet she hadn't seen so many clean dishes in years. I'm good for something. Can't keep people from killing each other, but I'm a wiz at washing dishes. Might be time to consider a career change.

After a while, she said, "What goes around comes around. He sure fell for Missus Eleanor. She was his goddess."

We all want what we're not supposed to have. I tried an encouraging grunt. When that didn't get any response I tried a direct question. She said, "I think I done talked too much already. I think I done said things I shouldn't have said to no outsider."

I doubted that. I thought she'd weighed every word and had told me exactly what she wanted me to know. She'd give me another ration when she thought I was ready.

"I hope you know what you're doing. I'd bet there're things in your head that could save lives."

Maybe I pressed a touch too hard there. She didn't have to be told what she already knew. She resented it. She gave me a dirty look and clammed up till dinnertime. Then she only growled and gave orders.