Wicked Bronze Ambition

10

The evening started out rainy, not in any driving, windy form. Then it became a drizzle of the sort that is more depressing than soaking, a halfhearted weather episode that leaves the world feeling colder than it is and you wanting nothing more than to get inside, close to a fire. It got better later on.

After a nice evening at the Macunado place, Strafa and I split up. She wanted to go flying, then to drop by her grandmother’s house to try to arrange for the folks we had met there to visit the Dead Man. She promised to see me back at her house in the afternoon.

After a massive breakfast devoured at a ridiculously early hour, I headed for the Al-Khar. It was raining again. I hunched down deep inside my canvas coat. What breeze there was came from behind. I dedicated my attention to wishing that I had a hat with a more generous brim, especially in back. The beast riding my scalp just then did not keep the rain from running down the back of my neck.

People were out doing make-a-living stuff despite the hour and weather. I spent some pity on them for having to work, then some more on me for getting rained on when I ought not to have to lift a pinkie again.

The great dirty yellow ugliness of the Al-Khar, TunFaire’s Civil Guard headquarters, hove up out of the mist. They should paint it, or something. Anything to make it less of an eyesore.

I lumbered past a rank of transplanted poplars that would, once they grew and leafed out, slap a layer of pancake over the ugly, then hove to just in out of the rain, in a tunnel-like ancillary entrance. I considered those trees. They said a lot about the Civil Guard. They declared the age of law and order solidly begun. They dared anyone to be bold enough to try converting Guard property into firewood.

The city had been stripped of almost every stick outside the Royal Arboretum, for conversion to warmth, by the impoverished and refugees, before the law and order affliction commenced with a vengeance and became a full-fledged, citywide pandemic.

“May I help you, sir?”

The voice came from behind a small barred window on the left side of the tunnel, just before it was blocked by massive, antique wooden doors. An attractive brunette looked out from behind the bars. Not so long ago I would have been enthusiastic about letting her know that, indeedy-do, she certainly could, in several interesting ways. Instead, I deployed some of the gentlemanly skills I have been polishing since Strafa staked a claim backed by the full faith and terror of the Algarda clan.

“Yes, ma’am. My name is Garrett. I have private intelligence I need to pass on to the General personally.”

Silence stretched for several heartbeats. She pushed her face right up against the bars. Damn, she had beautiful eyes. “Garrett, you say?”

“Garrett. Yes, ma’am. That Garrett.”

“Well, you’re big enough. And you look like you might have been a Marine. A long time ago.”

She had to know who I was. Everybody at the Al-Khar knows Garrett. Garrett is a one-of-a-kind. .

“Haven’t kept in shape, have you?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry. You don’t measure up to the hype.”

“What?”

“I thought you’d be better-looking, too. And less dinged-up.”

“That’s just character!” What the hell was this? “I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you wanted me to be. Look, I’m not really pressed for time, but I’m not into verbal abuse, either. Or standing around in the rain. And I do think I might have somebody following me. It’s possible they could take a wild hair and try to stop me once they realize that this is where I’ve been headed.”

I made the follower part up. It might get her moving.

“I’m sorry. I’m just surprised to see that you aren’t a giant. You’ll be safe there as long as you stay behind the murder holes. I’ll be right back.”

An iron plate chunked down in front of the iron bars. I barked a protest but stopped when I heard a crossbow creak as someone spanned it behind one of the murder holes.

Nobody would listen to me and an even smaller population was likely to care what I had to say.

A pair of massive, iron-strapped wooden doors filled the passage a dozen feet back. The walls were not really that thick, though. The Al-Khar only pretends to be a fortress. The exterior walls were the back sides of inward-facing cells and offices, though the stonework at street level could withstand considerable abuse. The passage through was eight feet wide. There was a slim sally port in the left-hand door, so skinny that I would have to turn sideways to get through.

That skinny door opened and invited me in.

I have visited the Al-Khar often, usually on business, occasionally as an involuntary guest. I hadn’t used this entrance since they installed the welcoming window and skinny door. The murder holes were always there with guys inside who hoped that this would finally be the day when they got to use their crossbows. I eased through the skinny door thinking I would find a couple of red tops on the other side, waiting to pat me down before they took me to the General.

I slid into an upright coffin instead. The door clunked shut before I could change my mind.

I don’t like tight places. Not even a little. I really don’t like tight places. It was a miracle that I kept my composure. I treated myself to one lone girlish shriek, then focused on finding creative descriptions of the dams of the motherless dogs who had. .

Click! Ker-chunk! Screech!

The back side of the coffin swung away.

I backed off on the rhetoric. Some red tops are overly sensitive.

I keep getting smarter as I age. Or it could be that I have developed an allergy to nightsticks.

Four tin whistles occupied the space behind the door. Three were my size, a little over six feet, a little over two hundred pounds of rippling. . muscle, all equally scarred up. The other one was a big guy who probably ate bricks drenched in acid for breakfast. They carried chains and clubs, pole arms with hooks and thief-takers on the business end, and at least one weighted throwing net.

“Sorry, guys! I maybe got overexcited. I just came to report. .”

They showed no interest at all.

The big door without a coffin attachment creaked open. Uh-oh. I noted that the tin whistles were dressed for the weather. They were going after my imaginary pursuers.

I clenched my jaw, recalling all those times when my mother reminded me that one tends to learn a lot more a lot faster when one does not have one’s piehole open, trying to scam somebody holding a hammer.

Mom was a saint and a sage. And some other things I still get upset about whenever she gets into my head.

The woman from behind the window bars reappeared. She proved to be more interesting in portrait than when seen from head to toe. Everything from just above where the cleavage ought to start, downward, was too wide, too ample, inadequate, or just plain weirdly put together.

She was a personality kind of girl.

I got no opportunity for a more exhaustive inventory. She had not brought me Westman Block.

This fellow was short. He was ugly. Troops of nonhuman adventurers had enjoyed themselves swinging through his family tree. Most must have been ill-tempered and eternally suspicious because their descendant was in a bad mood and suspicious all the time.

But less so than usual right now.

Which did nothing to improve my temper or soften my inclination to be suspicious.