Wicked Bronze Ambition

75

I wasn’t totally gone in the wastelands of my own thoughts-years of being the butt of practical jokers who scheme beneath the seat of the three-holer in the sky guaranteed that we would see an ambush before we got to my house-but I was nibbling round the crust of a slice of curiosity. What should we do with our captives once the Dead Man was done burglarizing their brains?

We must have them stacked in like cordwood by now.

Tara Chayne could do whatever she wanted with her sister once we were done with her. Maybe the Guard could pass the rest along to the labor camps.

Barate smacked us hard with the obvious. “It’s dark.” He had helped himself to some lumber from the storage lot, a broken piece of form board. He swished it around like a practice sword.

I protested, “I’m alert.”

Singe and her big stick were more ready than I was.

The dogs were close in and halfway slinking, expecting trouble.

“There was that ugliness with the Hedley-Farfoul twins last night. That must have been the first official clash of the tournament. Right?”

“So I understand.” I looked around nervously. “You’re getting at something specific?” We did not have the street to ourselves. There was civilian traffic and plenty of movement rolling with us. Tara Chayne, though, didn’t seem particularly uneasy, so I assumed that movement must be friendly. Nominally. Like Specials hoping our honey would draw more flies. Honey, I say! Not horse puckey. Not any kind of puckey, horse, chicken, or bull.

In the outbacks of my mind, a puckish imaginary being ticked the box next to Bull, Commercial Grade.

Barate said, “We should consider the likelihood that there will be more action tonight. Possibly several incidents, all extremely violent.”

“Yeah.”

Things were moving faster than we or the Operators liked.

“You should, then, be more concerned than you have been showing.”

“Eh?”

“As far as we know, you’re still Mortal Companion to Kevans’s Family Champion. The Mortal Companion should be close enough to support the Family Champion, especially when the Dread Companion isn’t around. Do you know where Kevans is?”

Oh. No. I did not, not in the least. I couldn’t think of anything to say and Barate was a worried dad snakebitten already by a nasty loss. “We should work on that once we get these villains delivered.” I unlaxed even more, and upped the pace.

Moonblight, I noted, was psyching herself up for something, too. Even Dr. Ted appeared to be readying himself.

Moonslight, though, appeared to be relaxed.

That seemed like an evil portent.

I was, by then, comfortably confident that she was connected to the Operators.

Tara Chayne softly whispered, “Mariska and Meyness Stornes were a hot item back in the day.”

I missed the hint in the fact of the whisper because I was thinking that nostalgia becomes a potent driver as we age and spend more time snuggled up with our regrets.

The workings of Moonslight’s mind were less a mystery than were those of Meyness B. Stornes, whose own grandson could become one of the victims of his cruel scheme.

Maybe the eldest Stornes planned to cheat in favor of his descendant.

“Hey,” I said to Tara Chayne, not using my inside voice. “You think anybody besides us has any idea who Magister Bezma might be?”

“And the inimitable Garrett steps into another big, steaming pile,” Singe muttered. “Really, Garrett? Don’t you ever think before you blurt stuff out?”

No need for her to explain. There was Moonslight, till now brilliantly unaware that we knew, her eyes widening in horror and her head jerking as she looked for some immediate opportunity to escape.

“Not often enough,” I confessed. “Not nearly often enough. I’m a Marine. It’s hey, diddle, diddle, straight up the middle, smashing things till the job is done.”

Some of my companions could think on their feet. Or paws, as the case might be. First the dogs, then Dr. Ted and Barate closed in around Moonslight. Ted helped her up after she tripped over Number Two while making a sudden, brief bid for freedom.

She went from confidently calm to panic in seconds. Was that only because we knew about Meyness B. Stornes? And did we, really? I didn’t feel like that had yet fully passed the frontiers of speculation.

Tara Chayne slapped me across the back of the head. “Genius.” Then, “Gods, aren’t you lucky that you’re pretty?”

That stung. That was sarcasm at its pure, crusty finest.

“I do my best,” I protested. “You should have suspected the worst when you heard that Strafa picked me.”

“That would be on her, not on you.”

Dollar Dan said, “Can we keep it down? There may be people interested in your problems, but none of them are here. We want to keep an ear on what is happening out there in the darkness.”

Singe’s whiskers wiggled. She snuffled up little chunks of air.

Tara Chayne and I exchanged looks. Dan must have taken a fistful of courage pills. He’d never been so forceful, nor as responsible, come to that.

I whispered, “Something is about to happen.”

Moonblight nodded. “Dan, whatever happens, don’t let anybody get away.”

Dollar Dan puffed up. A major Hill player had just spoken to him by name, like he was a real person.

When the something happened it didn’t happen to us. A light show, with bangs and roars, broke out over toward the Hill. Whips and staves of light lashed and slashed the darkness, making the scattered raindrops sparkle like descending diamonds. Every glow tossed off a splatter of fading shards when it hit something.

Stunning. Beautiful. A great distraction, suitable for leaving everyone oohing and aahing, but it didn’t distract us completely. We were not unready when the flood of gray rats arrived.

There had to be forty in the swarm, maybe the majority of their kind. The attack made no sense. I saw males, females, preadolescents to hobbling elders. None were armed with anything more dangerous than a stick. I might have felt sorry had they been jumping somebody else. The assault seemed that pathetic.

I didn’t let my lack of understanding keep me from cracking heads. I didn’t let my eye or conscience distinguish the stick-wielding adult male from his stick-wielding mate or granny or pup. Doing that could only lead to pain.

Ted did scruple. That doctor thing about first doing no harm. It cost him blood and bruises and us all the loss of Mariska Machtkess.

Weight of numbers nearly did for us all. Luckily, gray rat people are not big. They do not have much mass going for them.

Swamping was the point, of course.

The rush wasn’t about liberating Mariska; that was just its result. The object of the thrust was our gray rat captive. We would learn, later, that he was Wicked Pat, the grays’ John Stretch. Wicked Pat had been clever enough to conceal his identity and so avoid having to meet Deal Relway.

Pat would be of definite interest to the Director.

His friends and family weren’t clever enough, though. Only Mariska Machtkess benefited.

The rat tide left me wobbly and blessed with a thousand new aches and bruises. I just wanted to lie down and feel sorry for myself. Ted was in worse shape. He didn’t have enough oomph left to help himself, let alone the rest of us. He asked, “What should we do about these people?”

Meaning the rat folk who had been left behind. The light was poor. My count only approximated, yet I had eighteen feebleminded fools scattered about the street, conscious and unconscious. I hoped none were dead or badly broken.

“We’ll take a couple along so my partner can find out what moved them. The rest are fine right where they’re at.”

Singe, Dollar Dan, and the rest all panted a lot and said very little. Barate was down on one knee, bent over a puddle of lunch. Some rat had given him a solid whack to his pride and joy. Tara Chayne, between huffs and puffs, battled a case of the giggles.

“What’s with you?” I demanded, taking a break from sucking left hand knuckle abrasions. I couldn’t remember losing the skin.

“The joke is on Mariska.” She fought for breath. “I put a tracer on her a while back. Not the one from your saddle, the old Guard one. If she ran I figured it would be funny if she just got into it deeper with the tin whistles.”

Yeah. That’s the kind of thing you do to your siblings, just for the hell of it. And it was funny till you considered possible real consequences.

The fugitive was Moonslight, a Hill-topper sorceress. She didn’t have many resources, but the red tops weren’t Hill-toppers. She had skills, and her lack of an arsenal could be rectified quickly.

A general with troops to burn would rush a battalion to the Machtkess house with orders to sit tight and wait. Mariska would show. She had to show.

Moonblight didn’t say so straight up, but she considered my reasoning simplistic and naive.