Whispering Nickel Idols

64

Harvester provided his cat’s-paws with a flaked form of the stone, which resisted powdering. He acquired it from the A-Laf cult, at an extreme price. The cult obtained a hoard of the stones when it took over the temple of A-Lat. Numerous stones went astray before being inventoried. A-Laf’s sextons were not as devout as their superiors desired.

Bittegurn Brittigarn wasn’t wrong when he connected the stones with rocs. The Dead Man said they originated in rocs’ gizzards. The phoenix legend came about because roc chicks, like kids, will swallow anything. Which sometimes makes the stones ignite. That chick goes up in flame while its nest mates bail out, possibly giving a distant observer the impression that he’s watching a rebirth.

The stones were priceless because they could start fires. Anywhere, anytime, in most any material, from a distance, if you knew how to trigger them. Using sorcery. Or a mental nudge after the manner of the Dead Man.

Chodo discovered that he could spark residual fire-stone flakes on the hands and clothing of Harvester Temisk’s alkies. Not being suicidally mad, he eliminated them only after they left him.

Harvester Temisk’s crime was that he kept hiring disposable people after Chodo began killing them.

“He tried to burn Whitefield Hall down with everybody inside?”

He did. Doctoring the oil in the lamps. Mrs. Claxton was targeted specifically. She received a pin because she had seen Mr. Temisk at work. It ignited much earlier than Temisk planned. Mr. Contague was in a rage. It was chance that the doctored lamps were out of his range by then.

“So the mystery of the human combustions is solved.”

More or less. There have been incidents that cannot be traced back to Mr. Contague and Mr. Temisk. But we are not interested in those.

“I’ve got a lot of questions, Smiley. Who slung a rock at me? Why? How come it took so long for Morley’s door to catch fire? What about Rory Sculdyte? And Belinda? These damned cats and Penny Dreadful? And what do we do about Temisk and Chodo?”

I owed Chodo. I had to discharge that debt. Which clunked me right into a bubbling pot of moral quandary.

The Dead Man knocked the Ymberian deacon out so he could free up enough brainpower to show me the nightmare inhabiting Chodo’s head. A nightmare as bad as that of a claustrophobe trapped in a coffin and unable, ever, to die. It was just a glimpse. Just a little teasy peek, secondhand, of a seething black hell haunted by genius. Supreme ugliness under only the most primitive, selfish control.

The madman was imprisoned in an herbal cage. Though the cage had created the madman, the madman now belonged there.

The kittens seemed fond of him, though.

“What do I do, Old Bones? We can’t turn that loose.”

Worry about something else. Concentrate on Mr. Temisk, whose own madness is gaining momentum. His conscience is withering. He is no longer troubled about what he might be unleashing. Though he is not blind to the possibility that he might be its immediate victim.

“He’s like me, then. Obligated to good old Chodo. Wanting to believe that this is the same old Chodo. He just can’t walk or talk.”

Worry about something else.

So I watched Tinnie feed the Ymberians. Beauty and the beasts.

Singe leaned through the doorway. “Do we have a plan for dealing with the people out front?”

“Who is it?” Pounding had occurred, off and on, for hours. The Dead Man seemed uninterested. I’d taken my cue from him.

“That List person.”

“He’s still alive?”

“He must be lucky.”

“Is the door holding up?”

“Mr. Mulclar’s pride is in no danger.”

“Any idea what he wants?”

“Maybe somebody saw us bring those two in and recognized them.”

I didn’t think so. We would’ve drawn somebody more important than Captain Ramey List. “Hey! Smiley! We done with Big Bruno yet? How about I fling his ass out like I did Merry and his crew?”

The Dead Man did not respond. For one panicky instant I thought he’d fallen asleep. But he was just too busy to be bothered.

The racket up front stopped. Ramey List went away again.

I decided to indulge in another nap. I dragged my disease-ravaged carcass upstairs and dumped it into bed.