Wicked Bronze Ambition

18

The eavesdropper led me on a very short chase. She was close enough to hear Shadowslinger tell me to get her. Fear rattled her. I caught her heading for the front door, in the open, apparently wading through invisible mud up to her hocks.

“Helenia? You need to catch up with Preston and Target.”

I had forgotten her completely. Preston and Target had stayed underfoot, but she had faded away, out of sight and out of mind. Which might be her special value to the Director. She might be one of those people with a knack for being overlooked, which can be frustrating when you’re young, but becomes a priceless skill in the spying and law enforcement games.

I owed Helenia some so didn’t feel right doing anything beyond telling her to make herself scarce. “Before those less pleasant people back there take notice.” I thought that the most unpleasant of them all probably wanted Helenia to carry tales to her boss. It would be like her to use the Guard and Unpublished Committee to work her mischief.

Pallid, Helenia bobbed her head and backed away, headed for the street. I followed her out, sort of herding her at first, then just accompanying her once we hit the flagstone drive. I stopped outside the gate. She headed west. I noted that the ugly black coach, surrounded by red tops but lacking Target, waited two blocks downhill. So. There had been a plan.

I should have seen it coming.

I was distracted by emotion, of course.

Helenia walked faster as she moved farther away and the mud got shallower. She brushed past people who came out of the lane running alongside the property, flinching away from them.

I forgot Helenia.

Headed my way were the doll girl and groll that Strafa and I had seen near Shadowslinger’s place last night. The girl had said something. I hadn’t been interested at the time. I had forgotten the incident.

They came up even with me, strolling, neither making eye contact. The little girl held the groll’s hand as though they were about to step out in a pavane. One step past me she said, “I warned you.”

“What?”

The odd pair moved on while I gulped air and tried to get the watermills of my mind to turn over. I opted for a strategy that had worked in the past. The hell with thought or planning. Charge! Get stuff happening, then sort through the wreckage.

When I moved the groll shed his trance and looked back. Suddenly, Vicious Min looked like a runt. The groll eye nearest me glowed red. A trick of the light, surely, but it was sobering. He was not in a friendly mood.

The watermills kerchunked. I did recall that Strafa, far better equipped to deal with the strange and supernatural than was I, had died right here, on this street, twenty feet from where I was about to make a huge, potentially lethal mistake of my own.

I stopped. I watched for a moment. Then I turned, wound up my lazy old legs, and hustled after Helenia.

My new family was pleased to explain, minutes later, that my mind was not yet working right. I should have summoned them immediately. One of them might actually have been able to do something. Shadowslinger seemed particularly interested, especially once I revealed that Strafa and I had had an earlier encounter with the same pair. In fact, she seemed quite disturbed but then closed down on her thoughts except to suggest that those two must be connected to the tournament, maybe as a Champion and Mortal Companion or Dread Companion, working some tactical angle.

When Shadowslinger rolled out, with Barate behind her chair, with Bonegrinder foaming at the mouth and Tara Chayne Machtkess sniffing delicately, there was no pretty doll or ugly chaperone to be seen. Machtkess told us, “Their scent has dispersed.” She eyed me like she had begun to question my intelligence.

Bonegrinder felt the surface of the street, shook his head. “No warmth left behind, either.”

Shadowslinger said, “He didn’t make it up. He saw what he saw.” Her head turned slowly. She looked up at me from slitted eyes. “His word is gold.” As we headed back up the drive, she told me, “You have been given a thread to pull. Find out who she is, then yank it.”

My word needed not stand alone. Helenia and the red tops had seen the strange pair. But there was no need to offer witnesses. I was Strafa’s husband. I belonged. Now, with me welcomed by Shadowslinger, there could be no doubts about my report.

Right.

It was a unique feeling, though. Kind of warming. I seldom got as much support or trust even from Dean, Singe, or Penny.

They, though, had been schooled by me and Old Bones alike to question everything and those relationships had grown organically rather than dramatically.

• • •

New council of war, family-style, briefly. Shadowslinger chaired and did the talking. She reiterated her strategy. “We will take it easy till after the funeral. We will use that time to tame our emotions and consider our resources. After the interment we will gird our souls for war and rectify the imbalance.”

I got a definite sense of understatement there. I pictured an apocalypse developing within her mind.

“We will devour the Operators bite by slow, bloody bite, raw. Do you all understand?”

She was playing off her evil reputation now, maybe hoping Strafa’s servants, in attendance as always, would mention her mood while gossiping with servants from other households.

I hoped she wasn’t feeling literal. I hoped her reputation was exaggerated.

After speechifying scary the horrid woman handed out assignments, a few of which did make it sound like she meant to eat somebody. The jobs were odds and ends we could pick up, snip off, wrap or unwrap, while we tamed our shock, pain, and crushing hatred, awaiting Strafa’s funeral. I got one of the heavier loads.

She thought I ought to keep my mind occupied.

I do have a tendency to brood when things aren’t going well.