Sweet Silver Blues

21

"We're here," Morley growled the next morning. "What now?" He had stoked up on biscuits baked with lard and served with greasy gravy. It was the nearest he could get to a vegetarian breakfast.

"Now I try to pick up the woman's trail. Her family should still be here. They ought to know something."

It sounded too simple even to me. But sometimes things go your way. It would be sweet if I could find her at her dad's place, make my pitch, and head out with her yea or nay.

Full Harbor had changed and not changed. New buildings. New naval facilities. New streets laid out after the cleanup from the big Venageti attack three years ago. Same old whores and stews and pawnshops and overpriced inns and tailors preying on the loneliness of young sailors and Marines far from home and in the shadow of death. The gods know I wasted enough of my own time and pay in places like that. Reformers keep talking about shutting them down. They won't. The boys would have nothing left to fill their time.

I expected commentary from Morley Dotes. He disappointed me in a pleasant way. "You humans are a despair, that this is the best a soldier can expect."

Maybe it was his human side talking.

We are the only race that goes in for war habitually, in a big way. The others, especially the elves and dwarfs, have the occasional brawl, but seldom more often than once a generation, and then usually only a single battle, not much sorcery, winner take all.

Plenty of them get in on our doings as auxiliaries. They can be useful but are unreliable. They have no concept of discipline.

"You're right. Let's find ourselves a base, then get to work."

We drew plenty of stares, being civilians, and them being what they were. I didn't like the attention. Mine is a business where I don't want to be remembered.

We found a place that would accept civs and breeds without devouring the income of ten years. It was about as sleazy as a place could get. I bribed the owner to keep alcohol away from the triplets, then Morley and I hit the streets.

Full Harbor, on the map, looks something like a lobster's head lying between its arms. The city proper, and its naval facilities, sits at the end of a fortified neck of land. The arms reach out and shield the bay from the worst storm-driven seas. The city's location makes it very defensible. The Venageti have managed to penetrate it only twice, each time losing the entire force committed. The farther you get from the waterfront and naval facilities, the more "civilized" the city becomes. There are some low, wooded hills just inside the neck of the peninsula, right behind the Narrows Wall. They harbor the homes of the city's well-to-do.

No lords reside in the city. They refuse to risk themselves or their properties where the Venageti might show up with the unpredictable suddenness of a tropical storm.

They're funny that way—plenty willing to trek all over the Cantard risking themselves for glory and personal gain, but...

I don't understand them any more than I understand frogs. But I'm handicapped by my low birth.

Kayean's father had been one of the Syndics who dwelt in the hills, with a wife, four servants, and eight kids. Kayean was the oldest.

Memories returned, bringing a certain nostalgia, as I guided the rented carriage up and down pacific lanes.

"What're you looking all moony-eyed about?" Morley demanded. We had left the triplets at the inn, an action the wisdom of which I still doubted, though Morley assured me he had not left a farthing between them.

"Remembering when. Young love. First love. Right here in these hills." I had not filled him in on every little detail. A bodyguard did not need to know all the sordid angles.

"I'm a bit of a nostalgic romantic myself, but I never figured you for one, Garrett."

"Me? The knight in rusty armor always clanking out to rescue undeserving maidens or to do battle with the dragons of some lunatic's imagination? I don't qualify?"

"You see? Romantic images. Though why should you mind working for nuts if they have money to spend? You can milk a man with an obsession like a spider milks a fly."

"I don't work that way."

"I know. You really want to rescue maidens and champion underdogs and lost causes—as long as you get enough grease to keep the joints in the armor from freezing up."

"I like a beer sometimes, too."

"You've got no ambition, Garrett. That's what's wrong with you."

"You could write a book about all the things you've found wrong with me, Morley."

"I'd rather write one about the things that are right. It'd be a lot less work. Just a short little fable. ‘He's kind to his mother. Doesn't beat his wife. His kids never have to go in the snow barefoot.' "

"Sarky today, aren't we?"

"I'm off my feed. How much longer are we going to be looking for the ghosts of might-have-been?"

Not only sarky but a little too perceptive. I supposed I might as well confess. "I'm not being romantic. I'm lost."

"Lost? I thought you said you knew these parts like the back of your hand."

"I did. But things have changed. All the trees and bushes and stuff that were landmarks have grown or been cut down or—"

"Then we'll just have to ask somebody, won't we? Yo!" he shouted at a gardener clipping a hedge. "What's the name of the guy we're looking for, Garrett?" The gardener stopped working and gave us the fisheye. He looked like a real friendly type. Poison you with his smile.

"Klaus Kronk." The first name was pronounced claws with a soft sibilant, but Morley took it for a nickname.

He climbed down and approached the gardener. "Tell me, my good fellow, where can we find the Syndic Claws Kronk?"

The good fellow gave him a puzzled look that turned into a sneer. "Let's see the color of your metal, darko."

Morley calmly picked him up and chucked him over his hedge, hopped over after him and tossed him back, thumped on him a little, twisted limbs and made him groan, then said, "Tell me, my good fellow, where can we find the Syndic Claws Kronk?" He wasn't even breathing hard.

The gardener decided that at least one of us was a psychopath. He stammered directions.

"Thank you," Morley said. "You have been most gracious and helpful. In token of my appreciation I hope you will accept this small gratuity." He dropped a couple of coins into the man's palm, closed his fingers over them, then rejoined me aboard our conveyance. "Take the first left and go all the way to the top of the hill."

I glanced back at the gardener, still seated beside the lane. A glint of mischief sparked in his swelling eyes.

"You think it's wise to make enemies out here, Morley?"

"We won't get any comebacks from him. He thinks I'm crazy."

"I can't imagine why anybody would think that about you, Morley."

We had only one turn left to make. A cemetery flanked both sides of the road. "You know where you are now?" Morley asked. "A landmark like this ought to be plenty memorable."

"More memorable than you know. I think our gardener friend got us. We'll see in a minute." I turned between the red granite pillars that flanked the entrance to the Kronk family plot.

"He's dead?"

"We're about to find out."

He was. His was the last name incised in the stone of the obelisk in the center of the plot. "Got it during the last Venageti incursion, judging from the date," I said. "Fits what I remember about him, too. He would get out and howl for Karenta."

"What do we do now?"

"I guess we look for the rest of the family. He's the only one who's established residence here."

He lifted one eyebrow.

"I can find my way from here. Kayean and I used to walk up here at night to, uh... "

"In a graveyard?"

"Nothing like tombstones to remind you how little time you have for the finer things in life."

"You humans are weird, Garrett. If you want an aphrodisiac, there's one that the sidhe tribes of the Benecel river basin make from the roots of something like a potato plant. It'll keep your soldier at attention for hours. Not only that, but when you use it you're guaranteed there's no way you're going to become a papa."

Vegetarian sexual aids? Some people take good things too far.