Wicked Bronze Ambition by Glen Cook
“We’ll take care of that. You. Inside with me.” So I could keep an eye on him in case he wasn’t as feeble as he looked. “Don’t move. Don’t speak unless I ask you a question.”
“As you wish, sir.”
I fired up two more lamps, placed them in niches prepared for them. They helped only a little. The space they had to illuminate was huge. Strafa’s coffin was one of nearly a dozen. Many more resided in recesses in the walls. They had verdigris-corroded nameplates on their ends dating back centuries. Algardas had been dying to get in here for ages.
Only the most recently deceased were on display. Once the living forgot who they had been, they got shoved into a wall slot. Plenty of those remained available.
There were eleven coffins out, with room for one more. There hadn’t been a free pedestal the other day. I pointed at the empty. “Sit there.”
The villain sat.
The migration of a coffin into a wall was the only change since my last visit. The bad guys hadn’t gotten to do whatever they’d had in mind.
“Name?” I demanded while using a sleeve to dust the glass separating me from my love. She hadn’t changed. She reminded me of the girl in the story who had been so naive about accepting the free apple. I wished a kiss was enough to bring her back. Only, where to find a prince I could trust to do the necessary and then back off, leaving the girl for me?
I caught a wisp of violet coruscation from the corner of my eye, behind the captive. So. Interesting, that.
Had it been with me all along?
106
“Mikon D.—for Dungenes—Stornes.”
“Brother of Meyness B.? Now going by Magister Bezma?”
“First cousin of. Meyness has been getting me into trouble since we wore dresses.” Which said plenty about how old the Stornes boys had to be. Even the rich stopped putting their boy children in dresses before my father was born. “I never could tell him to shove his stupid plans back up the hole where he found them.”
I recalled getting Mikey into stuff, taking total advantage of a little brother who looked up to me in awe.
“What were you up to here?” I stared hard at Strafa, willing her to open her eyes. I would forgive the cruelty of the practical joke if she would just end the game.
Others would not forgive, though. This tournament had claimed too many lives. Orchidia Hedley-Farfoul would add names to the roster of unshriven fallen. Magister Bezma, surely, had a little list of his own.
“Why were you breaking in here?”
“I was supposed to take Furious Tide of Light. I don’t know why. Meyness said he needed her. He didn’t explain except to say that he knew how Constance Algarda’s head worked. He understood the Breaker strategy. With Furious Tide of Light we could win despite Mariska’s defection.”
I stared down at my wife. I heard and understood every word. The shadowed underground rivers of my mind strained to winkle out meaning, but the up-here, smelling-the-stench-of-the-mortal-realm part wasn’t sufficiently engaged to generate follow-up questions.
There was an instant of impatient purple sparkle behind Mikon.
“Meyness kept the whole thing close, I think because he knew how stupid he’d sound if he explained his actual reasoning. But he did think he could make this tournament his own. He thought he knew what it was really about and that it hadn’t worked before only because too many willful people were involved. This time just him and me would be Operators. We would hire done whatever we couldn’t manage ourselves, using Mariska as our go-between.”
I grunted. “What’s the story with the swords and costumes?”
“Those are for the Ritual. At the end. When the power is taken.” He volunteered no more. Since he was in full galloping confession mode I suspected that he didn’t have anything else to give up.
“You snapped that stuff up before they were finished.”
“There was a time problem. The Ritual has to happen just before midnight, when Day of the Dead turns into All-Souls. The Ritual is supposed to include thirteen Operator celebrants and an altar, but he worked out a way to manage with us two and some hired hands. Ten celebrants wouldn’t have done anything but chant, anyway. The chant isn’t critical. When we placed our orders we expected Moonslight and some hirelings to help, but nothing went right. Somebody attacked Furious Tide of Light. People kept getting in the way. The contest spun out of control right away. The first victims were the wrong ones. . . .”
“Feder and his friend,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“And the Hedley-Farfoul twins, Dane and Deanne.”
Despite the lighting Mikon’s response was striking. He practically radiated a sickly light.
“You didn’t know about them?”
“No. I did not. It explains why Meyness became desperate to keep me from hearing any news. Bonegrinder . . . His enmity would be bad enough. But the Black Orchid . . . Do you have a knife? I beg you, give me a blade. I will take it outside. I won’t profane your shrine. But . . . I’m a coward. I admit it. No way can I handle what the Black Orchid is going to bring.”
Wow. People inside Hill culture had a total fear on when it came to the Black Orchid.
I’d been around Shadowslinger enough to wonder if Orchidia hadn’t been up to some serious self-promotion, too.
I suggested, “Go to the Guard. Make a deal.”
Relway loved that stuff. This guy had been in deep enough to know some sexy stuff that might be useful when the Al-Khar began butting heads with the Hill.
“Yeah. The Guard. They’re everywhere. They caused more trouble than you did because Meyness discounted them before we started.”
“Probably thought they could be bought the way the Watch could be.”
“Yes.” So. I could see that Cousin Meyness had set his feet on the road to today way back when he was a Breaker himself. The Watch in those days was an oft-drunk fire patrol whose members made more taking bribes than they did from their city salaries.
I said, “I haven’t heard of you before, though several people told us that Magister Bezma had a partner. Where do you fit, really?”
“I’m his cousin. I belong to the Phila Menes Order. I have since I was fifteen. I was a chaplain’s assistant during the war. I missed all the major fighting. I helped Meyness enter the Church as an immigrant named Izi Bezma, saying he was a distant member of the family. He did good work, so his situation kept improving. He never left Chattaree, so he never ran into anyone who might recognize him. For a long time I was the only one who knew, until he got together with Mariska Machtkess again.”
I caught a sparkle of purple. That news irked the centipede of night.
The Phila Menes are an order that does charity work. Mikon Dungenes Stornes wasn’t a bad man, he was a weak-willed guy with a true bad man in the woodpile, a cousin willing to use and discard him. He knew that despite turning a willful blind eye.
He met my gaze briefly. “You’re wondering where he got the money to underwrite his scheme. He stole it from the Church. No one at Chattaree was in on it but me. Meyness’s position, that he schemed and maneuvered to get, let him manage Church finances. He could take all the money he wanted. Nobody can keep track of coin donations. He was creative with numbers on paper, made some shrewd investments, and knew where enough bodies were buried to control most anyone who needed controlling.”
And he probably buried some bodies himself when that was useful.
This insanity had been festering since a kid named Meyness Stornes started running with Constance Algarda, Richt Hauser, the Machtkess girls, and the Breakers. He helped wreck that tournament so he could run his own game later. But being sure of that didn’t do me any good just now.
Mikon Stornes gave up on killing himself.
“I’m baffled, Mikon. Why did Meyness suddenly change up after being so careful for so long?”
“He’s dying. From something slow that he picked up in the Cantard. He’s spent a lot of time in the infirmary recently. He saw th
That was suggestive. The Children started out something like the Phila Menes, providing health care for the poor, but got outrageously good at it. They morphed into a gang that sold top health care to the high bidder. These days they are last-resort providers to the desperate rich—and have become desperately rich doing so.
“I see.”
“I think they decided his condition was hopeless last month. That’s when he stopped being patient. The point of the tournament and of being an Operator became all about collecting power for himself. If he achieved demigod status he could beat his disease.”
Not so hard to understand. “And he was going to take you along.”
“So he said. I never completely believed him, but he might have done. After he saved himself.”
Though I understood Stornes’s motivation, the rationale of the tournament still seemed loony. Fear of death is a powerful driver, especially inside Magister Bezma’s intellectual community. He wasn’t the first sorcerer willing to devour the world in order to beat Death.
Near as I knew, nobody had won that contest yet. At best you could buy time, a few centuries at most. The universe insisted on balance. When an Izi Bezma distorted the fabric of what Is, a countervailing force produced a Black Orchid.
Therein lay the calling of the shinigami, the death spirits. Enma Ai or Yama, in particular, could step out of the ether and deliver not only oblivion but damnation to the deserving.
Or such was the belief of some of the cults with which TunFaire is cursed and blessed. Izi Bezma, being Orthodox, might think he had found a mystical means of lawyering his way around the pitfalls that had claimed those who had failed before him.
Orchidia Hedley-Farfoul, though, might indeed be Enma Ai embodied, in the sense that she might be the device the universe chose to press Meyness B. Stornes back onto the thread the Fates had spun him at the hour of his birth.
I shook like a wet dog. So did all the mutts around me. Some chill had touched us all.
Maybe it was just my uncharacteristic, introspective ramble through realms of mystic speculation.
All so intriguing, this. I got most of it now, yet there was still plenty to mystify me. And, then, there was the whole other puzzle of Hagekagome, Brownie, and the dogs who dwelt here in the nation of the gone-before.
There was plenty I didn’t yet get. Something big was missing still. Something that would make sense of what had happened to my so-beautiful gift from the good gods, now beneath that sheet of glass. Something that might be out in plain sight if I but had eyes with which to see. No doubt the Dead Man would have seen it long since.
107
I stared at Strafa for several minutes. Inspiration did not come in a flash. It was more like a slowly developing infection. “Where were you supposed to take her? And how were you supposed to get her there?”
Mikon D. took a while because he hadn’t visited the place himself but eventually had me picturing the shack where Moonblight and I spent the night on the floor. Bezma meant to conduct his ritual there, with help from Mikon and his hired hands.
“There’s supposedly another place if it’s needed.” Mikon didn’t know where that was, though. Considering Bezma’s jackleg style so far, it probably didn’t really exist.
The how for moving Strafa turned out to be the wagon previously used to haul plunder away from Flubber Ducky and Trivias Smith’s, which waited behind a big mausoleum nearby, positioned so it couldn’t be seen from the sextons’ shack. Mikon had been sent to get Strafa after off-loading the goods at the Hauser place.
“So, where does Bonegrinder fit?”
“Bonegrinder? He doesn’t. He’s one of Constance Algarda’s Breakers.”
“He owns that house. And he’s Orchidia Hedley-Farfoul’s uncle.”
“Meyness probably . . . Maybe there’s some intent to misdirect, or to deceive by omission.”
No doubt.
“Meyness acted like he owned the place.”
I had seen no sign of recent visitors during my stay there.
Mikon said, “You need to decide what you want to do. Meyness will be racing midnight. If I don’t turn up in a reasonable time, he’ll know something went wrong. He’ll go with whatever backup he has planned. And he always has another plan.”
I glimpsed something sly peeping out the corner of Mikon’s downcast eyes. He was putting on a show of cooperation and contrition, but he hadn’t bailed on Meyness completely. The sneaky bastard had a faint hope left in keeping the faith.
“No way will I let you take my wife anywhere. But since you’ve had an epiphany and mean to dedicate the rest of your life to righteous works, I’m going to let you join the rush to drive a stake through the heart of the Tournament of Swords concept.”
All right. I didn’t say it quite so grandiloquently, but that’s what I meant. And I wanted to suggest that I wasn’t as clever as I pretended, which hasn’t ever been that hard to do. I wanted to get him thinking that he could manipulate me by pretending to go along to buy time.
He agreed without hearing specifics. Good thing, because I was woefully lacking on those and winging it completely.
“Let’s move, then.” Outside, I told Brownie, “Mikon says he’ll help us. You keep an eye on him anyway. If he does something suspicious, kill him and eat the evidence.”
The strays probably wouldn’t attack a human, but it couldn’t hurt to have the notion rattling around in Mikon’s head.
The dogs looked like they understood. Several sniffed Mikon like they were checking to see if he’d be tender and tasty or tough and stringy.
I grinned at the old watchman. He kept a straight face. “I want the tomb closed up. Make any repairs that you have to. I also want to rent or borrow a coffin like the one that my wife is in.” Grin controlled, I asked Mikon, “Meyness wouldn’t be familiar with Strafa’s coffin, would he?”
Mikon was puzzled. He lacked a ghost of a notion what I was thinking. I had only a ghost of a notion myself. It involved Morley Dotes and a recollection of a vampire we’d known. He and I were the only people living who knew what had happened.
Mikon and I collected the wagon. Me, he, and the watchman headed for the gatehouse, where I reminded Morley of the bad old days and offered my suggestion by implication. He got it, was amused, and said nothing to tip Mikon off.
After a liberal tip and my signature on a promissory note covering mausoleum repairs, Morley, Mikon, I, and my regular complement of mutts headed north, leading a covered wagon carrying a blanket-draped coffin. Though that did not have a glass top, it might pass for the one Strafa now called home.
The cemetery guys swore on God’s True Name that mausoleum repairs would commence immediately in the morning. One lone mention of Shadowslinger was encouragement enough for those old men.
We were half a mile from our destination when Pular Singe and Dollar Dan Justice materialized, apparently having lain in wait.
“For three minutes, maybe,” Singe said. “No longer.”
“How could you possibly know that I’d be coming past here?”
“Rat rumor,” Dan said. “We asked where you were. Regular rats reported a rough track. This seemed like a good place to wait.”
I didn’t buy it. I smelled a high bull dung content that suggested a new level of secret rat powers. That couldn’t be anything but propaganda.
Singe, though, said nothing to undermine the scam.
Mikon boggled at rat folks acting like they were real people but steadfastly ignored the suggestions of rat magic.
“All right. I get it. How doesn’t matter. What’s happened?”
Singe is never deeply shy about delivering bad news. What has to be done has to be done. “Barate Algarda, Kyoga Stornes, Richt Hauser, that weird man Bashir, and Shadowslinger have gone missing.”
“They invaded Chattaree this afternoon. They went after Magister Bezma because of Feder and his friend. We were outside. It got exciting. There were earthquakes
Mikon was aghast at the idea that anyone, even from the Hill, would invade the cathedral. He would be but one of thousands so shaken. The invasion would stir a huge uproar, possibly violence, and some pointed questions from the Director to everyone involved.
The Breaker side just might have included that in their calculations.
I asked, “What’s the disaster that I need to know about right away?”
“Sometime this afternoon, probably while you were at the cemetery, thugs invaded Shadowslinger’s house. They tore the place up, stole everything they could carry, killed Mashego, and kidnapped Kevans and Kip. Magister Bezma led them. The sorcery holding off the private watchmen caused widespread property damage. Mashego killed four raiders and wounded so many others that the survivors weren’t able to take their dead away.”
“Kevans and Kip? Kidnapped?” I hadn’t considered that possibility. How would Bezma know that Shadowslinger wasn’t there? Or had he just assumed that she was still in a coma? “What about the bodyguards who were supposed to be protecting Kevans?”
Embarrassed, Dollar Dan admitted, “They were not there. She ordered them to go away, they were fired, she did not want their ugly asses underfoot anymore, she did not want to see any of them ever again—no more than an hour before the bad guys turned up. They are back on the job, strongly reminded that she is not their employer, and are looking for her.”
How would a kidnapping fit in with the concept of a tournament? I glared at Mikon.
Mikon appeared one hundred percent chagrined. “I don’t know anything about that. Meyness was supposed to be setting up for the Ritual.”
“You know who we’re talking about?”
“I do. Their names head Meyness’s list of most-wanted gamers.”
“And if he had done his research, he’d know that neither kid has any supernatural powers.”