I pulled my pistol.
“We’re full up in here,” I called. “Hit the next one.”
The handle stopped jiggling.
First eyes. Now a tongue. I reached the unsettling conclusion that someone-or something-was gathering the ingredients for a ritual, or a spell.
“I’m sorry you got caught up in this,” I said. She was losing color fast. “Sorry I didn’t stop it.”
I heard a key slide into the lock, heard Rainy speaking in excited tones just beyond the door. I didn’t holster my pistol.
The door opened and half a dozen Avalante soldiers piled in, two halfdead among them.
No Evis, though.
The two halfdead, oblivious to my drawn gun, joined me in kneeling around the body. I didn’t recognize either of them.
“Do you know her?” asked one.
“I don’t. She was stabbed. Her tongue was also removed.”
The other halfdead laid his palm upon her forehead and surprised me by saying a prayer.
“We have been instructed to remove the body via the dunways,” said the first when the prayer was done. “Mr. Prestley will see you shortly. Unless you can tell us who did this?”
I shook my head no. “The bastard is careful. I just saw her getting ready to fall. He was probably watching me the whole time, but no. I saw nothing.”
They nodded and took up the dead women as easily as I would heft a napkin.
“Report to Mr. Prestley,” said a halfdead to his living associates. “Double the security detail on the casino floor. Also the halls on the upper decks.”
“Yes, sir.”
And then they vanished, leaving me and Rainy alone.
A single spot of blood marred Rainy’s immaculate floor.
“It ain’t right,” he said as he fetched rags and a bucket. “Killin’ women like that.” He knelt and began to scrub. “But you’re Captain Markhat. You’re goin’ to catch the man what did this, ain’t you?”
“I hope so.”
“I hope so too.”
Rainy scrubbed. I walked, the dead woman’s eyes still clear in my mind.
Darla found me before I’d gone a dozen steps beyond the bathroom.
“Oh no.”
I took her hand and forced a grin. “Another murder. I’ve taken care of the body. Keep an eye out for Stitches.”
Darla forced her own smile for the benefit of anyone watching, and added a laugh as well. “Who, honey?”
“I don’t know. A woman. Let’s go watch the Regent.”
Darla nodded and took my arm as we ambled toward the Regent’s cheering retinue.
“Mama’s upstairs with Buttercup. I had to put her in our room.”
“Buttercup would wind up with us anyway.”
“You’re rattled, husband.” We elbowed our way through a tight-packed mob of men watching some complicated game of dice and spinning wheels marked with grinning skulls. “Bad, was it?”
“Took her tongue.”
Darla squeezed my arm and said nothing.
“Dammit, Stitches, where are you?”
We were close enough to the Regent’s card table to see Evis’s back and the top of the cat-woman’s hair. I was about to shove my way through to Evis when someone yanked at my sleeve.
“Boy.” Mama glared up at me. “I ain’t no fancy Dark House wand-waver, but I seen some things and heared some things and I come to tell you whether you wants to listen or not.” Mama saw Darla’s questioning glance and snorted. “I left the young ‘un with Gertriss. Might keep her out of harm’s way for a bit. Now. We needs to talk.”
“That we do, Mama. I’m glad to see you.”
“Somebody knock you one in the head?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure they’ve got plans in that regard.” Evis and the Regent were surrounded by twenty or more of Avalante’s most lethal waiters. I figured another forty or so were hiding in the shadows, ready to pounce.
“Let’s find a quiet corner somewhere.”
We did. It just happened to be a table right next to the restroom where Rainy was probably still scrubbing blood off the floor. I got everyone seated, put my back to the wall, and raised my voice as much as I dared.
“Mama,” I said. “I’ve got a hunch. So tell me-if I handed you a bag and in it I had a man’s two eyes and a woman’s tongue, what could you make out of it?”
Mama pondered for a moment.
“That ain’t no kind of magic for the likes of you or me,” she said. “Don’t reckon I could do nothin’. But…”
“Dammit, Mama, but what?”
Mama leaned toward me. “Was the woman what they call sharp-tongued?”
“Hell if I know.” I thought back to her face. “Probably. Say she was. What then?”
“It’s what you’d call an old wives’ tale. ‘Sharp eyes, sharp tongue, sharp ears, infant’s lung.’“
“Ghastly,” said Darla. She pulled her gun, not even bothering to hide it anymore.
“It ain’t nothin’ but an old song now,” said Mama. “But it’s a song about Elves. How they could make their selves invisible. Move about, murderin’ and stealin’. Damn, boy.” She made some complicated gesture with her hands. “Ain’t been a Elf seen on this side of the Sea for ten hundred years. You sayin’ there’s one running around loose on this here boat?”
“I’m not saying that, Mama. But someone took a man’s eyes, and a woman’s tongue. I’m just wondering why, and what they might want next.”
Sharp eyes, sharp tongue, sharp ears, infant’s lung.
“Ain’t a baby on this tub,” announced Mama. “I’d know, and there ain’t.”
“Buttercup,” said Darla in a whisper. “Some might consider her a child. A babe. Words change with time.” Her eyes went bright and hard. “Shall I go sit with Gertriss?”
“You’re not leaving my sight. Buttercup probably ate the last Elf this side of the Sea a thousand years ago. Relax. She’s the safest soul aboard.”
“If’n this is a Elf,” said Mama, scratching at her hairy chin, “then we got troubles, boy. A Elf can use that Elf magic-what they calls a glamour-to make you see things that ain’t there, or not see things what is.”
“Is that true, Mama, or just an old wives’ tale?”
“Well, it ain’t like I got an Elf in my closet to study on. But I reckon them stories is better’n half true. Elves was mean and cruel and tricky, and they’d as soon gut ye as say hello. And since they can make out to be people they ain’t, they’re damn good at the guttin’ part.”
A dread inspiration hit. Elves. Summer-born, as Stitches put it. What if a summer-born Elf and its unnaturally powerful glamour stepped undetected through her magical testing dingus?
What if the Elf had been with us all along, blithely sidestepping Stitches and her sophisticated arcane tools since we’d left Rannit?
And what if they were gathering ingredients for a grisly spellwork that would make them truly invisible?
“Eyes, tongues, ears, lungs,” I said aloud. Ears would be easy to find. Lungs not so much, especially from an infant.
Unless they brought them aboard in the first place.
What the devil are you talking about?
Stitches stood beside me. In one hand she held a glowing glass rod, wrapped in copper wires, with complicated spinning vanes whirling away at each end. A floating crystal ball hung above her other hand. The crystal was lit blood-red from within.
“Found another body. This one missing her tongue. Mama remembers an old song about Elves.”
“Sharp eyes, sharp tongue, sharp ears, infant’s lung,” said Mama, giving Stitches a good hard country glare. “That’s how the Elves of olden days took to sneakin’ about, doin’ their killin’.”
The glow from the crystal ball changed from red to a sudden brilliant white, bright enough to light Stitches’s ruined face. She passed the glass rod over her crystal ball and the noise around us vanished.
If a living Elf is among us, we are undone.
“Thanks for the pep talk.”
Silence. She hummed to her crystal. It muttered back, flashing on each dissonant word. The vanes at the end of her staff began to spit sparks and tiny bolts of crackling lightning.
“We kilt the last full-blood Elf before my great-great granddaddy’s time,” said Mama. “You reckon somebody was fool enough to lock one down somewhere deep and turn it loose on us?”