I shook my head, startled by an original thought. I couldn't recall ever having seen new construction anywhere in the city Was the war that big a drain on resources?
The war is the most important thing in all our lives, whether or not we're directly involved. It shapes our selves and surroundings and forges our futures as every minute passes.
Whatever was happening in the Cantard, so heroic the Dead Man could sense it from here, would have a crashing impact on all our lives.
That scared me. I'm not fond of things the way they are, but the only changes 1 can see will be for the worse. The bigger the change, the more for the worse.
Some tiny sound reached me, some ghostly flicker of motion teased the corner of my vision. I'd been a step too far away from here and now realized it, and my reaction was maybe more vigorous than it should have been. I did me a wild roundhouse kick toward the movement, brought my foot down, ducked and pivoted and lashed the air with a knife.
Crask was saved by the fact that my tippytoe brushed his chin lightly, pushing him back. He'd thrown himself away at the same time. Now he sat on his duff looking up at me with a goofy expression.
"Say..." he said. "Say. what's wrong with you?"
I had so much juice in me so sudden I started shaking. I'd blown it, really. I took some deep breaths to calm me down, put the knife away, extended a hand. "Sorry. You startled me bad."
"Yeah? Well, you got no call..." I shut up as he reached with his left hand. I didn't like the look in his eye. I pulled my hand back before he grabbed it and went to chewing on it.
He got up slowly, using only his left hand. I noticed he had his right arm strapped to his stomach. "What happened to you?" Hard to tell in that light but his face looked a little worse for wear, too. He looked less intimidating than usual.
He got up slowly, rubbed his behind. Damn, he looked embarrassed! Maybe it was the light leaking from the Bledsoe... He didn't have an answer.
I leaped to a conclusion. He'd been the guy Winger had discouraged when Sadler had me in that alley. No proof, and he'd never tell, but by damn I'd put money on it. A copper or two, anyway. I grinned. "You shouldn't ought to sneak up that way."
"I didn't sneak. I walked right into you, Garrett."
I didn't argue. You don't with a Crask or Sadler. "What you doing here?"
"Looking for you. Your man said you were headed for Dwarf Fort. I come down this way figuring you'd be headed back by now."
I was going to have to have a talk with Dean. Though it was understandable he'd answer Crask's questions if Crask put on his nasty face. "What's up?"
"Couple things. You seen Sadler?"
"Not since . Not for a long time. Why?"
"Disappeared." Crask didn't waste many words. "Come to see Chodo right after . ." He wasn't going to talk about the incident. "Talked some, then went away. Nobody seen him go Wasn't told he was supposed to. Nobody's seen him since. Chodo's concerned."
Chodo was concerned. That would be an understatement, as were most statements about the kingpin. In language the rest of us would use, it meant Chodo was mightily pissed.
I don't usually volunteer information, especially to the kingspin's people, but I made an exception. "Guys have been disappearing all over I can't find a trace of Morley Dotes. Likewise Saucerhead Tharpe. You might say Fm concerned, too. I don't hear anything on the street. You?"
He shook his head first, some top skin flashing in the hospital light. "I thought Dotes was sulking on account of we used his place."
"I thought so, too. At first. Only that wouldn't be his style, would it?"
"Nah. Feisty as he is, he'd have busted our heads and kicked our asses out of there if he was really pissed."
"He'd have tried, anyway."
Crask smiled. He did that so seldom it was startling. "Yeah. Tried. I got some business I got to get on with, Garrett. I'm late, I been chasing all over after you to find out about Sadler. I want you should walk along, talk to me. Maybe we can brainstorm out where people are disappearing."
I didn't feel like it but didn't argue. It wasn't that I was afraid of offending him. I thought I might learn something. Call it intuition.
The first thing I learned was that Crask wasn't, for the moment at least, the man I knew and loathed. He was so busy working on something inside him that some of his barriers against the world leaked. He seemed almost human at moments—though not so much I'd want my sister to marry him if I had a sister. I don't and I'm glad. My friends are hostages enough for fortune.
30
For some hours I'd entertained the notion that Chodo had eliminated Morley and Saucerhead in order to deprive me of resources should I discover he'd become interested in the Book of Dreams. Sometimes you get that way, thinking you're the center of the universe. But once I ran into Crask, the speculation collapsed under the weight of reason.
You grab straws when nothing makes sense.
Morley had dropped out before Chodo could have discovered the book's nature. Even now I had no real reason to suspect he knew about the book. Him looking for a missing Sadler only made everything murkier.
Who might be making people disappear? The Serpent shouldn't be interested in those guys. She was after the Book of Dreams. Headhunting wouldn't help The same reasoning applied to happy old Fido Easterman.
So who had reason to eliminate my acquaintances?
Plenty of people, if you took them individually. But nobody was the only answer when you considered them as a group. They didn't share many enemies
Crask agreed.
We trudged along, me leaning into the bitter wind and grumbling about not having a clue. Then about having so many clues I didn't know which had to do with what.
"Where we headed?" I asked. This wasn't helping me any yet. I glanced back I still felt the presence of that shadow that had been with me off and on. I didn't see anything. Like I'd maybe expected I would?
"Tenderloin," Crask mumbled. The wind was getting to him, too. He was trying to shelter his injured arm. "Got an appointment with some dwarves."
Ah. So, "Why didn't I think of that?"
The Tenderloin is sin's homeland in TunFaire. Anything goes, nobody asks questions, nobody interferes with anybody else. Missionaries not welcome. Reformers enter at your own risk. Likewise everybody else. The Serpent's whole gang could hide there in plain sight easy, despite everyone and everything being owned by Chodo. They'd just need to remember not to run in a pack.
I really should have thought of it. The Tenderloin isn't far from Dwarf Fort. It's just a few blocks past the Bledsoe and I'd been told the renegade dwarves had fled that way after one of their skirmishes with Gnorst's bunch. Had I been from out of town and needed to hide, that's where I'd have gone to ground.
So why hadn't I thought to come poke around? I must be getting senile
The Tenderloin never sleeps, it just slows down late. When we arrived, lamplighters were out snuffing lights, conserving oil. During peak hours the area is awash with light, a carnival, but the management doesn't waste a copper that won't return ten. This was the hour of the diehard, when light and darkness were irrelevant.
The Tenderloin is like the whores who are its chief commodity, all paint and makeup on the outside. Behind the flash lies rot and stink and human despair. Even where they could, they don't put makeup on that. By the time you look it in the eye, they've already gotten your money and are interested only in processing you through as fast as can be managed.
The wind grew more bitter by the minute. Maybe that was why the morCartha had taken the night off. Their native valleys are much warmer. The lamplighters hunched inside their ragged coats and cursed into their beards. The barkers for various establishments watched the street through doors cracked scant inches, waited till we drew abreast to jump out and wax rhapsodic about wonders unimaginable available within. They retreated when we signaled Jack of interest. Nobody pressed. They all recognized Crask.