"She said she thought it was."
"We have to find it and destroy it before it can be put to use. Did she say it was complete?"
"She said it was taken. Stolen by a character named Holme Blame. That's all. She didn't go into details. She just wanted to hire me to find it
"Don't. Don't go near the thing. An evil that great Let us handle it. No human is pure enough of heart to resist." He wasn't talking to me anymore. He went on not talking to me. "This will ruin me. My production schedule will go to hell. But I have no choice." He remembered me, whirled. "You're a cruel man, Mr. Garrett."
"Say what?"
"You've made it impossible for us to get any work done while this monstrosity is loose. Our entire industry may collapse."
Right after the moon fell into the sea. He was overreacting. "I don't get it."
"Imagine yourself to be deeply evil. Then imagine yourself with the power to become any of a hundred other people, each designed to your specification. One might be a super assassin. Another might be a master thief. One might be... anything. A werewolf. You see what I mean?"
"Oh. Yeah." I'd begun to catch on but not clearly enough. The possibilities I'd imagined originally had been much too picayune.
"Armed with a completed book, that witch would be almost invincible. And as long as she lived in the Book of Shadows, she'd be immortal. If you killed the persona she was wearing, she'd still have ninety-nine lives. If she prepared properly. Plus her own. And she'd only be vulnerable in her natural form. Which she would avoid assuming because she would be vulnerable."
I got it. Sort of. It didn't make a lot of sense the way be said it, but nothing much about sorcery does, to me. "We've got big trouble, eh?"
"The biggest if the book is complete. I doubt that it can be, though. But even incomplete, it's a powerful tool. And almost anyone who knew what it was could use it—if she was foolish enough to write it in a language someone else could read. You wouldn't have to be a sorcerer. You'd just look up the page for sorcerer if that's what you wanted to be."
I thought about it. Hard. The more I thought, the more possibilities I saw and the less I liked this book. It sounded like a triple shot of Black Plague. "You think there's a chance it really exists? That it isn't just somebody's fancy?"
"Something exists that people are willing to kill for. But it just can't be complete." He sounded like he was whistling in the dark. "Else the thief wouldn't have gotten to it. But it would be dangerous in any state. It has to be destroyed, Mr. Garrett. Please go straight to the Dead Man. Urge him to exercise his entire intellect. My people will do everything within their power."
Tinnie's place in the mess was fading fast. The stakes seemed huge. I should've known it couldn't stay simple. My life never does. "Let me know if you come up with anything."
Gnorst nodded. He had given me more time and information than either of us had planned. Now he seemed anxious to see me go. I said, "We ought to excuse ourselves and attack our respective tasks."
"Indeed. My life has been complicated no end." He signalled. The old boy from the front door popped out of nowhere. He took me back the way we had come. Somebody scampered ahead to warn all the dwarves. They were all hard at work when I passed by.
Nobody is that industrious all the time.
13
I slipped out into the afternoon, leaned against the wall a dozen feet from Dwarf House's door, pondered my place in this exploding puzzle. The Book of Shadows. A real nasty. Did I have a moral obligation here? Gnorst and his gang knew how to handle it.
I understood the danger better by the minute. I was tempted by the book and didn't yet know how it could be useful to me. Pretty easy to see why Gnorst was scared of it.
If I stayed involved, I was going to have to cover my behind. There were some rough players out there. I didn't know them, but they knew me. Maybe it was time to drop by the Joy House, see if Morley had anything cooking.
I started toward his place, not hurrying, still trying to figure angles.
I didn't get there.
There was a whole gang of them but they were dwarves, SO I had the reach. And for once in my young life I'd had the sense to go out dressed. I dented three heads and chucked one dwarf through a window. The owner came out and cussed and howled and threatened and kicked a dwarf I knocked down. Nobody paid him any attention. The rest of us were having too good a time.
I started out not really trying to hurt anybody. I just wanted to fend them off and get away. But they were playing for keeps. I decided I'd better argue more convincingly. My stick wasn't getting the message across.
Somebody whapped me up side the head with a house. It had to be a house. Nobody dwarf size could hit that hard. The lights went out.
Usually I come around slowly after I've been sapped. Not that I have a lot of experience with that. This time I wasn't slow, maybe because I was so excited about finding myself still alive, if a little run down.
I was bouncing along facedown. Cobblestones slid past inches from my nose. The hairy runts were taking me somewhere rolled into a wet blanket. They were skulking along through an alley. Maybe they wanted us to party some before they let me swim the river with rocks tied to my ankles.
I didn't like the situation. Naturally, Would you? But there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it. I couldn't even yell. My throat felt like I'd tried to swallow cactus.
However.
The dwarves stopped. They chattered gutturally. I strained, lifted my head, looked around. My temples throbbed. I saw red. When my eyes cleared, I saw a man blocking the alleyway ahead. He was alone and there were eight dwarves around me, but the numbers didn't bother him.
His name was Sadler. He was one of Chodo Contague's top boys, pure death on the hoof. The dwarves chattered some more. Someone was behind us, too. I couldn't twist around enough to see him, but I could guess. Where Sadler went Crask was sure to follow. And vice versa.
Those two are hard to describe. They're big men, have no consciences, will cut a throat with no more thought than stomping a bug. Maybe less. And you can read that in their eyes. They're scary. They probably eat lye for breakfast.
Sadler said, "Put him down." His voice was cold and creepy.
Crask said, "And get out of here." His voice was so much like Sadler's, people had trouble telling them apart.
The dwarves put me down, all right, but they didn't get out of there. Which made it sure they were from out of town. They might be thugs, but any thugs native to TunFaire wouldn't have argued for an instant. Nobody in his right mind bucks Chodo without he has an army behind him.
Sadler and Crask were efficient and ruthless and not even a little sporting. They didn't argue, they didn't negotiate, they didn't talk. They killed dwarves till the survivors decided to get the hell out of there. The two didn't chase anybody. They had what they had come for, which was one broken-down confidential agent named Garrett.
Crask grabbed the edge of the blanket and gave me a spin. Sadler said, "You're keeping weird company, Garrett."
"Wasn't my idea. Good thing you guys happened along." Which I said knowing they hadn't happened along at all. They probably wouldn't have lifted a finger if they hadn't been sent.
"Maybe you won't think so." That was Crask. "Chodo wants we should ask you a question."
"How'd you find me?"
"Your man told us you went to Dwarf House." Dean would. Even with the Dead Man watching over him. He isn't that brave. "We saw you get knocked down. You got to learn to control that tongue, Garrett." I didn't remember saying anything but I probably did. Probably asked for it. "We don't want to lose you." That was Sadler talking. And what he was really saying was that he didn't want me to get myself smoked before the day came when Chodo decided the world would be better for my absence. Sadler looks forward to that day like it might be for the heavyweight championship of Karenta.