Whispering Nickel Idols

26

I didn’t wander alone. A secret-police tail fell in behind me half a block from the house. He made no effort to be discreet.

Spider Webb was intimidated. But he didn’t give up. He just dropped back. He vanished later, when I wasn’t looking. So did several others whose fashion sense suggested a connection with the world of untaxed adult entertainment. But my main man just shuffled along with me, so close I had to listen to him hum.

He never stopped. But he had more trouble lugging a tune than my favorite antisinger, me. I never could tell what he was laying down.

The Dream Quarter gets its name because humanity’s spiritual imagination runs riot there. And because the war in the Cantard produced generations of veterans so cynical that belief in anything traditionally religious could only be a bad joke that nobody got. In the Cantard nobody prayed for help cleaving to the path of righteousness. It was all, “Dear Lord, won’t you please save my scruffy butt?”

Heavenly responses were random and erratic. Some of the sorriest clowns in the Cantard were guys who got what they asked for. Life with an ass but no arms or legs ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Dream Quarter is one long street that runs from the river’s edge deep into one of TunFaire’s wealthiest enclaves. Location on the street defines the status of the deities established there. In a complex dance that remains mysterious even after my several encounters, the gods and goddesses of the Dream Quarter move sedately up and down the street, from temple to temple, according to how many worshippers they claim. And, more significantly, according to how rich their congregations are.

One rich, backsliding hypocrite of a parishioner is worth a gaggle of destitute mendicants, however devoted. A god can make the eye of a needle big enough to pass the whole damned herd of camels. And try to find a goddess who doesn’t have six or eight hands out for contributions.

Bizarrely, the temples change to accommodate the look expected of their particular gods, goddesses, or pantheons.

I’ve heard that the gods reflect us instead of the reverse. Well, a smart god would have better sense than to create worshippers in his own image. Given a choice.

My instincts told me to start at the bottom end, down where a couple temples teeter over the chunky russet flood. The first person I asked indicated wreckage two steps short of the worst on the street. I’d visited the place once before, a while back, on another case. New management hadn’t made any improvements.

Eis and Igory were doing better than other cults. Which meant the river would have to go a yard over flood instead of a foot to sweep their cathedral away.

Mind like a steel trap, I realized that this Ymber cult was faring better locally than the two visiting the miseries on me. A-Laf and A-Lat had no temples at all.

Even after having lived with me for thirty years I was reluctant to approach the hovel. It boasted one open room capable of holding thirty people-if they were small and didn’t mind finding their noses in each other’s armpits.

The priest wasn’t what I expected. Which should have been no surprise since religion and I have so little in common. He could’ve passed as a fat apprentice friar from one of the regular churches at the successful end of the street. He even wore similar black robes. But his had eluded soap and water for so long that, at this late date, congress would be fatal for the cloth.

It was still some unholy hour before noon when I stepped inside. Brother Bittegurn Brittigarn got his tongue tied trying to introduce himself in turn. He’d already had a couple or nine pick-me-ups to start his day. By the time he pulled himself together he’d forgotten my name. “Who the hell are you? What the hell do you want?”

“I hear you’re the top expert on the religions of Ymber. I’ve got problems with people from Ymber. I’m knee-deep in cats and plagued by big guys too stupid to know that you ought to grin and suffer frostbitten buns before you wear plaid green pants.”

“Huh?” Brittigarn took a pull of wine. He was my kind of guy. He had his priorities set. He wouldn’t fake anything to please anybody.

The Dead Man encourages me to cope with the unexpected by drawing on experience and common sense. Meaning, basically, don’t run blindfold sprints in an active cemetery. Experience suggested that Bittegurn Brittigarn was dimmer than a bushel of rocks.

Bittegurn had a round, apple-cheeked face notable for a huge white drooping mustache. The hair had migrated there from the top of his head. He growled, “Well, is it a secret?” He took another swig of wine. I could smell the vinegar from ten feet away. “Smooth.” He sneered, wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

I explained again. “I’m Garrett. I find things out. I look for people. I ask questions. I’m here to ask questions about religion in Ymber.”

“Ain’t no religion in Ymber.”

“What?”

“It’s all here in TunFaire now. Which one are you doing now?”

“Asking questions so I can figure things out.”

He waited. Probably hoping I’d offer a bribe. I waited. He asked, “You going to start?”

“All right. To review. You’re from Ymber. Supposed to be an expert on its religions. I’m having trouble with religious people from Ymber. My house is overrun by cats dumped on me by a street urchin who’s supposedly a religious princess. Who’s disappeared. Now my neighborhood is infested with thugs wearing hideous green pants. They supposedly work for a god named Aleph. When they’re not destroying private property they do volunteer maintenance and rehab at the Bledsoe. Where they’re putting metal animal statues in the walls.”

“A-Laf.”

“Huh?”

“The god’s name is A-Laf. Not Aleph.”

“I stand corrected. Is that important?”

“I doubt it. Damn. That dead soldier was the last of his regiment.”

Subtle.

“I’ll see if I can’t scare up some recruits. As soon as we finish.” Part of being a crack investigator is finding a thread to tug. I’d grabbed hold of a rope.

“What’s that?”

“What?”

“That thing you’re fiddling with.”

“A rock. Somebody tried to kill me with it. Tell me about A-Lat.”

He didn’t correct my pronunciation. “A-Lat is the Queen of the Night. The Mother of Darkness. Love and death wrapped up in one ugly bundle. Her cult used to be big on temple prostitution. It doesn’t exist anymore. Can I see the stone? It don’t look natural.”

“How long ago did you leave Ymber? If the cult is extinct, how come I’m up to my ears in its enemies?”

“I’ve been here two years. My faith fled when the A-Laf cultists began murdering unbelievers. Especially A-Lat’s women. They tortured the last high priestess to death. They sacrificed the goddess’s sacred feline avatar to the idiot idol in A-Laf’s temple.”

Ah. Finally. Actual information.

The Dead Man is right. Patience wins.

Notions fell into place. There was a pattern and rhythm here. TunFaire would be the secondary impact zone. In Ymber there’d be prophecies and rumors of secret heirs to unknown obligations. There’d be brave fighters continuing the struggle even though all hope seemed lost. One-eyed men and left-handed men missing a finger from their right hand. The stuff of high heroic tales. On a farm community scale, of course. Where most of the king’s subjects don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that. They have thunder lizards to skin and crops to get in.

“Let me see that thing.”

I handed BB the stone despite an instant of irrational reluctance.

He grunted. He stared. He grew pale as he moved deeper into the light flung off by a phalanx of votive candles. He squeaked, fumbled the stone, regained control, shoved the rock back at me. “Keep that away from fire. Any kind of fire. No matter what else you do.”

“Huh?”

“You let a flame touch it, you’ll be sorry the rest of your life. Which will last maybe as long as another minute. If you’re friggin’ beloved of the gods.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “What the hell?”

“You don’t got no idea what you got there, do you?”

“I have a green rock. Somebody tried to brain me with it. I started carrying it around because I tend to slow down, relax, and think clearer thoughts when I’m fiddling with it.”

“Your hands are warm. It likes that. So it makes you feel good.”

Warm hands? Tell that to Tinnie. “How about a little hint?”

“It’s egg shaped. Right? That’s on account of it’s an egg.”

“Huh?” Old Garrett is quick as a glacier sometimes.

“Friend, you’ve laid hands on a roc’s egg. I don’t know why anybody would try to brain you with it, but-”

“Great pun, Slick. Egg-shaped rock. Rock’s egg. Where baby boulders come from.”

“Roc. Bird of fire. Burn your house down around you in half a minute if the egg touches flame and it hatches, roc.”

“Bird of fire? I thought that was a phoenix.”

“Same difference. I was you, I’d jump outside and see how far I could fling it out in the river. It’d stay plenty cold down in the mud.”

“Rocs are huge. They carry off mammoths.”

“An exaggeration. There are four species around Ymber. The biggest might be able to take a lamb or a small dog. People remember them big because they’re so busy getting under cover they don’t have time to look close. The littlest roc ain’t much bigger than a sparrow. Zips around like a hummingbird. That egg you got, that’s from what they call the bird of paradise phoenix. Looks kind of like a pheasant in a clown suit.”

“Like a parrot?”

“Gaudier. Tenderloin gaudy. On account of which, they’ve pretty much been hunted out for their feathers.”

“How do you hunt a roc down and take his feathers?”

“Like the joke says. Carefully.”

I gave him the fisheye. He’d distracted me from comparative-religion research. “My mother used to call things ‘rare as roc’s eggs.’ When she wasn’t on about frog fur or hen’s teeth.”

“More roc’s eggs around than frog fur coats. But they ain’t common. Especially the big ones. It takes a rare combination of guts and inspired stupidity to raid a phoenix’s nest.”

“I know some guys who’d fit.”

“Indeed. A-Laf’s sextons are chock-full of stupid and brave. But the deacons, the dicks who tell them what to do, wouldn’t waste them that way. You got a sweet mystery there, my friend. No telling how one a them got hold of an egg. Maybe from when they took A-Lat’s temple. She had them all.” BB paused to irrigate his pipes by chugging half a pint of wine.

“Thought that dead soldier was the last of his tribe.”

“You didn’t run out and volunteer to… you didn’t volunteer to run out and… hell. We got a new regiment coming into the line. Aged in the cask since last Sedonaday.”

“Which?”

“Sedonaday. Holy day of obligation for Ymnamics. Day before yesterday. Man, I’m telling you, if that was my egg, I’d prance outside and see how far out I could throw it. Get it way out there, down deep in the cold, cold mud.”

I ignored BB’s chatter, which was one hundred percent pure bull specks. But he had gotten me thinking. “Suppose I wanted to kill somebody by setting them on fire?”

BB’s face got redder. “I ain’t getting rich here, Slick, but I ain’t the kind that-”

“I don’t want to kill anybody. I want to figure out why they’re dying. It’s something else I’m looking at. People catching on fire.” I explained a little, naming no names.

“I can see where you might think rocs’ eggs, not having heard about them before. But your target would have to cooperate. The big question is, why even try? There’re easier ways to kill people. It does sound like a sorcery problem, though. Look for a fire kind of wizard with rabid bats in his belfry. Or some stray pyro talent who hasn’t been spotted by the horrors on the Hill yet. A refugee, maybe.”

BB’s latest bottle, come out of nowhere, seemed particularly potent. He developed difficulties enunciating. Before long he would shift to a language no one but Bittegurn Brittigarn understood.

“Maybe somebody who came to his abilities late and thought he could keep them hidden? Somebody with a deep streak of darkness?”

“There you go, Chief. You keep on keeping on, there you’ll be.”

This was starting to head for one-hand-clapping country.

“Give me a little help before you get all the way gone, Pastor. I need to know about the A-Lat cult. You say it’s dead. But I know a girl who says she’s the high priestess of A-Lat.”

Bittegurn Brittigarn focused on those skills needed to lift a wine container to his lips with no wastage.

I asked, “How does a roc’s egg turn into a projectile meant to brain me?” If that really was an egg, how come it was hard as a rock?

“I don’ know, man. Go ask the sexton what flung it.”

That was on my list. If Block and Relway would indulge me.

BB was sliding fast. “The A-Laf crowd. Why would they rehab the Bledsoe?”

He wasn’t native born. He had to have the charity hospital explained. Then, “For fifty years nobody but the imperial pretenders have put one copper into the Bledsoe.” Gross exaggeration. The Bledsoe is the big charity for TunFaire’s well-to-do. But that didn’t matter now. “I really want to know why they’re putting those metal animals in the wall.”

Bittegurn Brittigarn took him a long, long pull of wine. “For the pain.”

“What does that mean?”

The priest’s eyes closed. When they opened again they held a strong “You still here?” quality. He didn’t say anything. Probably couldn’t. But I had some interesting angles to pursue now. “I appreciate you taking time out of your busy day. I have to go. My mom is probably in a panic.”

He didn’t respond, other than to drool. In half an hour he’d gone from sober, friendly, and evasive to slobbering waste.

He did mutter, “The pain,” over and over. “They feed on the pain.”

He settled on the floor with his back to a wall. Making sure he had a fresh bottle in hand and several more in easy reach. He began to mutter a song in dialect, either liturgical or that dread tongue known only to those who drink sufficiently deep.

Wham!

The impact flung me against the wall. I turned as I bounced, wobbled toward a wide little woman swinging the business end of a broom in from the other side of town.

Wham!

“Hey! What the-?”

“So you’re the bastard who’s lured Bitte into the Realm of Sin!” Wham! She got all her weight into her swing.

“Lady, I never saw this guy before half an hour ago.”

“You maggot! You bottom-feeding pustule of sin! You…” There was more unjust defamation. A lot. By dint of longer limbs and skills honed in combat, I maneuvered around the stout little harridan and escaped.

She didn’t chase me.

I stood beside the doorway, out of sight, and eavesdropped as she turned her fury on a shiftless, lying, no-good, wine-soaked bastard Bittegurn Brittigarn.

I headed home convinced that I knew why Brittigarn had developed a love affair with the spoiled grape.