Wicked Bronze Ambition

117

The big fireworks show always takes place on the waterfront at the foot of the Street of the Gods. The actual launching is done from barges anchored out. That’s safer. Maybe once a decade somebody screws up, does something royally stupid, and all the fireworks on a barge explode at once, resulting in a dead stupid guy who takes along any friends dumb enough to work with him, plus countless catfish whose deaths are less in vain because they get to participate mightily in numerous All-Souls feasts.

The barges were a lesson hard-learned. A century ago a thousand people died in a Great Fire following a fireworks mishap.

TunFaire has had half a dozen Great Fires over the ages.

It was chilly on the ridge. The dogs woke up and gamboled a bit, making plenty of noise. I found a good place to sit. There was moonlight enough to limn the city skyline. Chattaree’s spires stood out. A tail of smoke still leaned west from the cathedral, a little orange and red at its root.

Penny and Hagekagome settled beside me, right and left, crowding in for warmth. Penny said, “I should have thought about coats.”

Behind us, Tara Chayne chuckled. “Then you wouldn’t have an excuse.”

The first shell went up a few minutes later. The scattered fireworks we’d seen earlier were neighborhood efforts or kid stunts. I said, “I heard the Crown is kicking in this year.”

Tara Chayne responded, “The army donated several tons of surplus.”

Whoa! That could get showy if it included anything besides signal rockets. What they threw up at enemy Windwalkers and broom riders, flying thunder lizards, or anything else that might attack from above would be showier and louder than anything civilians ever saw.

Tara Chayne settled to her knees and hams behind me, close enough for me to feel her warmth. Hakekagome wasn’t shy about snuggling up and getting a two-hand death grip on my left arm. Penny maintained a careful little gap. Nasty old Tara Chayne whispered, “Make a memory, girl,” and pushed her.

Wild dogs came out of the dark. They invested no time in greeting rituals. They just made themselves comfortable. Brownie had made herself at home in my lap already.

Then the first army star shell went up. It didn’t throw off fancy colors, just created a globe of ferociously deadly lesser fireballs that expanded more than a hundred yards before the fade began. No magic there, just chemistry. Chemistry able to sear holes through half an inch of steel were anyone strong enough to carry that much armor aloft.

The fire faded with “oohs,” and “aahs,” muted by distance.

The next shell was also surplus, less obviously dramatic. It created a cloud lighted by an inner fire that spun off lightning bolts. Those would have made passage problematic for anything sharing that airspace.

Some of the cemetery mutts raised their heads, flicked their ears, made soft, interrogative noises. Brownie answered with a sound closer to a purr than anything normally made by a dog. The others dropped their chins back onto their paws.

Little Strafa dropped out of the night with Singe and Orchidia, Singe straining to appear unflustered. Clearly, the ladies had shared a lively conversation while they were airborne.

Orchidia announced, “We ran into some gargoyles. They lit out. They didn’t want to talk.”

Strafa said, “They weren’t dumb enough to try anything. But they did curse us in their own dialect.”

They had a language?

Orchidia said, “They were looking for friends who never came home from a job in the city. They may have blamed us.”

Singe asked, “What have we missed?” She eyed Hagekagome and Penny fiercely. Little Strafa also gave Penny a dark look.

“They just started.”

Singe bullied a couple of mutts and made herself a place beside Penny. Orchidia did the same by Hagekagome, even laying a hand on the pretty girl’s back. Hagekagome seemed pleased. Little Strafa made her place behind me, on her knees like Tara Chayne. She pushed Moonblight over behind Penny but still stayed partly behind Hagekagome. She didn’t do or say anything to the pretty girl. The pretty girl paid no attention to her. She stayed where she was, snuggled up tight.

Over my left shoulder I said, “So you were actually looking out for me the last couple days?”

The fireworks began to pick up.

“After I figured out who I was. Jiffy helped me with that.”

Orchidia said, “Jiffy would be the big guy.”

“Um.” I sort of figured.

“At first I didn’t know anything. I headed for Grandmother’s house. I guess that was instinct. I didn’t know why, or who she was. It just seemed like the place to go.” She rested her hands on my shoulders. They were shaky.

I said, “I’ve worked some of it out, but I can’t get it to make sense without figuring in truly boggling levels of incompetence.”

“Then you don’t have it figured out,” Orchidia said. “Though you’re right about the incompetence.”

A colorful barrage fixed our attention briefly; then Moonslight took it up. “Any sense anything made would likely do so only if you’d spent your life on the Hill. Only somebody who thinks like Constance Algarda could have done what she did to abort Meyness Stornes’s ambitions.”

“She knew about him?”

“Not specifically. She sensed a new tournament taking shape. She’d been watching for it. She called us in. Like everybody else, though, she thought that Meyness hadn’t come home from the Cantard.”

Strafa said, “I never made it to Grandmother’s house. I ran into Jiffy and Min. They saw that I was scared and confused and crying and didn’t know who I was, or where. They thought they were being kind by not letting me get to Grandmother. They had just come away from her and thought she was too wicked for any little girl to be around.”

Probably true, that. “What were they doing there?”

“She hired them to investigate her granddaughter’s future husband, but she paid them so much up front that they were suspicious. Min knew somebody she could pay to do the spying while she and Jiffy found out what Grandmother was really up to. For some reason Jiffy decided he had to stick with me all the time.”

He fell in love at first sight and wanted to protect her, that’s why. Strafa always had that appeal. It was one of her hidden powers and, possibly, the one ambitious Meyness really wanted most. Surely it would be massively more potent with Strafa looking like a lost, bewildered, vulnerable little girl.

I had no trouble understanding Jiffy being pulled in, especially if he was no brighter than he seemed.

“I tried to warn you one time, but I didn’t really know what I was talking about then. You didn’t pay attention, anyway. You were distracted. .” Her hands tightened on my shoulders. “Anyway. .”

A barrage interrupted. As it faded, Moonblight said, “Constance went almost as dark as Meyness in order to ruin his tournament.”

Orchidia said, “Because she was thinking forever. She’d have no trouble justifying it to herself if she couched it as a final solution.”

Tara Chayne said, “You’re right, Garrett, thinking that Strafa’s death was accidental, the way it worked out. I’m sure Constance intended something almost as ugly visually but slightly less permanent. She probably wanted it to look like Strafa was beyond the grasp of the Operators. That would shake their scheme to its roots. She would hunt them down while they were confused, with help from you and your friends. You would want revenge. But when she got Min together with Strafa to make the sacrifice, something went wrong. Min should have died and Strafa should have gone into a state mimicking death that would relax eventually. I’m sure you’re right about that missile. Constance would have worked on it for weeks, refining the spells and layering them on for timed release. But it bounced off a bone inside Min and took out Strafa for real.”

“Yeah.” Not quite incompetence, that. More like malicious Fortune. We saw absurd stuff like it all the time during the war. “So, after that she let the scam run anyway, but she ducked out on us by faking a stroke.”

Tara Chayne said, “The stroke was real, it just wasn’t as bad as she made out.”

“So. . let me get this. Vicious Min is alive but she should be dead. Shadowslinger meant to murder her when she hired her. My Strafa is dead, but Min’s murder was supposed to make it so she could be revived.”

Tara Chayne, Orchidia, and Little Strafa agreed: That was the exact situation.

“So, what’s the deal with this Strafa? And where does Hagekagome fit? Or does she?”

The pretty girl answered the mention of her name by trying to snuggle closer.

“She fits,” Orchidia said.