I stared at the woman. She wouldn't know. I doubted that she knew anything more worth digging out. "Step back into the corner, please. That's fine. Now sit yourself down."
She grew pale. Her hands, clasped around her knees, were bone white as she fought to keep them from shaking.
"You'll be all right," I promised. "I just want to know where you are while I go over this place again."
I found exactly what I expected to find. Zip. I took the doeskin bag and headed out.
As I passed through the doorway the woman called after me, "Mister, do you know anybody who wants to rent a room?"
______ XXVIII ______
I found myself a syrupy shadow and installed myself across from the tenement. The street was empty of people now, and of the more honest cats and dogs. The yelling and scuffling inside the buildings had died down. The slum was gathering its strength for tomorrow's frays. I waited. I waited some more. Then I waited. A band of pubescent marauders swept past, in search of trouble, but they didn't spot me. I waited. After two hours I gave up. Either the woman had no intention of running to Gorgeous and Skredli or she had left the building another way. I suspected she felt no need to take warning. I set myself for a long night. First, home to let the Dead Man know what I'd learned, then to Morley's place to find out what his people had reported and to learn what he knew about a thug named Gorgeous. Maybe more after that if anything interesting had turned up.
The interesting stuff started before I got to the house. Despite the hour there were a bunch of guys hanging around out front. I held up and watched awhile. That is all they were doing. Hanging around. And not trying to hide the fact. I moved a little closer. I could then see that they wore livery. Closer still, I saw that the livery belonged to the Stormwarden Raver Styx. Not being inclined to cooperate if they were waiting around to do evil when I showed, I slid away and approached the house from the rear. We had no company back there. I rapped and tapped till I got Dean's attention. He let me in.
"What have we got, Dean?"
"Company from the Hill."
"I suspected that. That's why I'm so good in this business. When I see fifteen guys hanging around in the street, I have a hunch that we've got company. What about our guest?"
"Upstairs. Buttoned up tight and keeping quiet."
"She knows?"
"I warned her."
"Good. Where is the company?"
"In your office. Waiting impatiently."
"She'll have to keep on waiting. I'm hungry and I want to let the old boy in on what I picked up. And I wouldn't mind guzzling about a gallon of beer before I face that harpy."
That made two chances I'd given him to ask how I'd guessed that my company was Domina Dount and twice that he'd ignored the bait. He has his little ways of getting even.
"Won't do no good to bother his nibs. He's gone to sleep."
"With an outsider in the house?"
"I suppose he trusts you to handle it." Dean's tone suggested he had a suspicion that the Dead Man's genius had lapsed, that maybe he'd rounded the last turn and was headed down that final stretch toward Loghyr heaven. It looked like I now had two of them who couldn't keep straight who owned the house and who was the guest or employee. I wouldn't be surprised if Dean wasn't thinking about moving in. He'd reached the occasional nag-about-money stage.
"Be nice, Dean. Or I'll leave you standing at the altar and run off with Willa Dount."
He didn't find that amusing.
"I might as well be married the way things are going around here."
He slapped a plate in front of me like an old wife in a snit. But the food was up to par.
I permitted myself a satisfied smirk.
______XXIX______
Up north along the edge of the thunder-lizard country there is a region called Hell's Reach. It's not wholly uninhabitable but nobody lives there by choice. Everywhere you turn there are hot geysers, steaming sulfur pits, and places where the raw earth lies there molten, quivering, occasionally humping up to belch out a big ka-bloop! of gas. The lava pools sprang to mind the instant I saw Willa Dount. All her considerable will was bent toward restraining a hot fury. She had an almost red glow about her, but was determined to give it no vent.
"Good evening," I said. "Had I expected a caller, I wouldn't have stayed out so late." I settled myself and my mug. "I hope you haven't been inconvenienced too much." Before I'd left the kitchen Dean had reminded me about sugar, vinegar, and flies, and I'd taken his advice to heart.
It's not smart to go out of your way to make enemies of the Hill, anyway.
"It has been a wait, but my own fault," she replied. Amazing that she would admit the possibility of fault in anything she did. "But had I sent someone to make an appointment, I would have been delayed even longer—if you would have been willing to see me at all. I'm certain you would have refused to come to me again."
"Yes."
"I'm aware that you don't hold me in high regard, Mr. Garrett. Certainly your contacts with my charges have done nothing to elevate your opinion. Even so, that shouldn't interfere with a business relationship. In our contacts thus far you have remained, for the most part, professionally detached."
"Thank you. I try." I do. Sometimes.
"Indeed. And I need you in your professional capacity once more. Not just for show this time."
It was my turn to say, "Indeed?" But I fooled her. I showed her my talented eyebrow instead.
"I'm desperate, Mr. Garrett. My world is falling into ruin around me and I seem to be incapable of halting the decay. I have come to my last resort—no. That's getting ahead of myself."
I told my face it was supposed to look enrapt with anything she might say.
"I have spent my entire adult life in the Stormwarden's employ, Mr. Garrett. Beginning before her father died. It's seldom been pleasant. There have been no holidays. The rewards have been questionable, perhaps. By being privy to inside information, I've managed to amass a small personal fortune, perhaps ten thousand marks. And I've developed an image of myself as a virtual partner in the Stormwarden's enterprises, able to be trusted with anything and capable of carrying any task through to the desired conclusion. In that spirit I've done things I wouldn't admit to my confessor, but with pride that I could be trusted to get them done and trusted not to talk about them later. Do you understand?"
I nodded. No point slowing her down.
"So a few months ago she was called to the Cantard because the course of the war seemed to be swinging our way and it was time to put on all the pressure we could. She left me to manage the household, as she has done a dozen times, and especially charged me with riding herd on her family, all of whom had been showing an increasing tendency toward getting involved in scandals."
"The two Karls, you mean? They're the ones the rumor mill loved. I never heard of the daughter till the other day."
"She was blind, the Stormwarden. Those girls were the ones who were deserving. Though Amber had begun to show signs of getting wild, just for the attention."
I nodded as my contribution.
She took a deep breath. "Since she's been gone this time, it's been like I've been under a curse. Father and son were determined to circumvent me at every turn. Then that kidnapping business had to come. I had to deplete the family treasury severely, selling silver at a discount, to get that much gold together. It was a disas ter, but for a cause the Stormwarden could respect once her temper cooled. I might even have survived Amiranda's having taken flight during the confusion. The girl was restless for some time before she took off. The Storm-warden herself had remarked that it was coming. But putting out two hundred thousand marks gold to ransom Karl, only to have him take his own life, that's insupportable."