Wicked Bronze Ambition

88

Once we started upstairs I no longer wanted to go. It had to be done, though. It could be. I had dealt with other warped defectives.

I don’t know why I thought Shadowslinger’s having suffered a stroke would make her more dangerous, but the conviction was there.

Her room stank of sickness and foul digestive gasses. Mashego was with her, beside the bed, patiently spooning Shadowslinger a dog-food-looking meat paste a bit at a time.

Shadowslinger looked healthier than I expected, considering how vicious strokes can be. She recognized us. She tried to talk but could not produce a sensible sentence, nor was her speech clear enough to understand. My mother was the same way after her second stroke.

Mom had trouble communicating after the first but had come up with workarounds. Worst for me had been her inability to get my name out. She called me “man” or “that man.”

Shadowslinger’s chow looked just awful. It probably smelled awful, too, but the stink could not break through that already in the room.

With the tact of her age Kevans said, “Isn’t there a window we can open or something? This place reeks enough to gag a maggot.”

No window was visible. Wall hangings kept any outside light well tamed.

Cold eyes settled on me. Where else could Kevans have acquired an expression like the one she’d used?

One pair belonged to the old sorceress herself. I thought I ambushed a glint of amusement. It went away quickly but left me reflective.

Bashir oozed through the crowd, past the foot of Grandmother’s bed, to the wall on the far side. “Would you give me a hand, sir?” He wanted to take down the massive carpet that hung against that wall.

And carpet it was. You could see the wear patterns traffic had left when it graced the floor of some Venageti poobah, before Shadowslinger arranged for it to have a better home.

I asked for instructions. Bashir provided them. Straining, we lowered the hanging to the floor. That revealed a moth-eaten tapestry. That coming down revealed a window behind. Clearing the shades and shutters so its leaves could be swung wide demanded careful work. The wooden parts were rotten.

Bashir swung the leaves inward, right and left, so he could get the outside shutters open. Then he swung the windows outward. Constance made unhappy noises. She did not want to face the outside light.

She did not have to shrink from that. The outside world had gone completely glum and rainy. Soggy cold air tumbled inside.

I stated the obvious. “Those shutters need replacing.” Paint wouldn’t be enough. They had gone too long without.

Barate said, “Another of a thousand maintenance issues that have been ignored for years.” He spoke toward the window. Neither his mother nor Bashir responded.

Kevans muttered something about how somebody who was too damned cheap to spend a copper now was going to have to shell out silver later. That did get a reaction from Shadowslinger, who had caught every critical inflection.

I decided to be the peacemaker. “We have bigger problems. Let’s deal with them before we decide what rouge to put on the pig.”

Barate said, “Much as we need fresh air in here, I think we can do without the wind and the rain.”

A gust had just scattered a gallon of cold drizzle inside.

Barate pulled one wing of the window shut and the other in till there was just a four-inch gap. Mashego backed off with the meat paste and, instead, handed the old horror a pad of paper and one of Cypres Prose’s stoutest Amalgamated writing sticks. Shadowslinger was able, impatiently, to communicate via head shake and clumsy block letter printing.

She used her right hand. Like most Algardas, though, she was naturally left-handed. Her left side had more coming back to do.

She let us know that she wanted to hear every detail of what had been going on while she was unconscious. She took the reports without reacting unless two or three people started talking over one another or arguing about some detail. She did show some irritation when Moonslight’s role came up. She didn’t seem especially surprised to learn that old campaigning pal Meyness B. Stornes had survived and was masquerading as a magister of the Church. She did get excited when she heard that Kevans had been drafted in Strafa’s stead and that someone had tried to kill her.

The attacks on me and Tara Chayne were, apparently, no big deal. Only to be expected. Just a device for attritting the opposition.

Somehow the Black Orchid never came up. Shadowslinger had Dollar Dan Justice come tell what the rat men had done and seen while helping deal with Kevans’s attackers. That only left her more upset.

I did my best to help Dan relax and report calmly. I also observed, “We still don’t have a Dread Companion.”

Shadowslinger’s sleepy gaze brushed me momentarily. She was exhausted now. She was pushing herself too hard. She grunted. I couldn’t tell what that meant, nor could anyone else.

Dr. Ted had remained quiet and out of the way till now. He decided that she was about to hit a wall. “Time for everyone to leave. Bashir, take them to the kitchen. They can go on with this down there.”

By which he meant following up on secondary conversations concerning the evidence having to do with Strafa’s death as well as the search-and-research work that had been under way.

Singe would, likely, be more use there than I would. She was in touch with the people doing the digging at least part-time.

I was next to last to go, leaving only Mash behind me. Dr. Ted had no intention of leaving.

Shadowslinger completed a laborious effort with her writing stick. She held the pad up, hands trembling. It said Everyone out! Accept Garrett.

You don’t correct a Shadowslinger. Not when you know what she meant.

Ted and Mash both wanted to argue. Ted and Mash gave that up after one good look at Shadowslinger’s darkening visage.

Visage is one of those cool words you don’t get to use much. It was the perfect choice here. The terrible old woman’s face had become a curtain between her interior realm and the rest of the universe. Intimations of rising storms therein left you determined to be somewhere else when the curtain rose.

Shadowslinger leaned into her writing stick and paper while Ted and Mashego made their getaway.