"This's going to be a blow, I know. But, as important as you are, we weren't waiting on your account."
"I'm crushed. So what is the holdup?"
"A dashing young gentleman sorcerer who uses the business name Dreamstalker Doomscrye. Or maybe Doomstalker Dreamscrye. He wants in. We don't tell those people no. He was supposed to be here hours ago. Evidently as an apprentice he wasn't taught to tell time."
Relway's sarcasm was quite daring. I was beginning to think the man had no sense. In TunFaire we restrain our opinions concerning the lords and ladies of the Hill. They can do worse than turn you into a frog if you irritate them.
"Ulp!"
"What?" Relway asked.
"I forgot my bird."
"Then go fetch the prima donna chicken."
"Too late. Might as well enjoy myself." I didn't miss the fancy-pants crow at all.
Relway's man Ritter was headed our way. A kid maybe fourteen blistered out of a dark chink between tenements. He held a rusty knife extended ahead. I knew the tactic. He was a cutpurse. He just wanted to steal and run before his victim could react. It happened every day, everywhere in TunFaire, though elsewhere cutpurses usually selected more promising targets. This kid had to be counting coup.
His pals were all set to cheer when Ritter sidestepped, snagged the thief's long hair, slashed him several times with a knife that appeared as though by magic. The whimpering boy collapsed into the muck. Ritter came on as though he'd done nothing more significant than stomp a bug.
That kind of cold demonstration was why the Guard was becoming feared.
They were nasty, these new lawmen.
Believers so often are.
"Doomscrye is here," Ritter announced. "What a jerk. He's already complaining about us wasting his valuable time."
These secret policemen were too daring.
"He's young," Relway told me. "He'll learn."
Did he mean Doomscrye or Ritter?
61
As a place to squat the object of our interest was a long slide downhill from a tomb. It was an ugly little lean-to shanty hugging the hip of a three-story frame tenement that tilted ten degrees sideways while twisting around its own waist. "Good thing we don't have to go in there," I observed. "Our weight would bring it down."
"It's tougher than it looks," Ritter told me. "Ninety-two people live there."
That was probably a short estimate. The occupants might use the place in shifts. I asked Relway, "If the manpower shortage was so awful we let whole tribes of nonhumans immigrate, how come people down here didn't take advantage?"
"Some did. And some are unemployable in any circumstance." Relway's bitterness sounded personal.
He hailed from the underbelly of society. He had been able to get somewhere. He was outraged because so many people wouldn't even try.
Plenty willingly made the effort to be unpleasant, though. We were attracting more watchers the age of the kid Ritter had hurt. I saw sticks and chains and broken bricks, the weapons of the very poor.
My companions remained unconcerned.
Ritter pretended to be in charge so Relway wouldn't attract attention. A donkey cart appeared, headed our way.
The observers were getting nervous. Doomscrye complained incessantly. He was very young for a sorcerer. He hadn't seen military service. He might be the harbinger of a generation never to get its rough edges knocked off where nobody was special when the Reaper was on the prowl.
Doomscrye did not understand that real trouble could climb all over him any second. Likely he'd never faced even minor trouble.
Fate handed him the opportunity to discover that nobody thought as well of him as he thought of himself.
A hunk of brick got him in the chest. Block snagged him and dragged him behind the cart.
Ritter and several others struck back contemptuously, bashing heads. Other Guards shackled captives with chains from the donkey cart. The only kid to get in a solid blow died swiftly, his throat cut.
"Oh, shit!" I muttered. "We're in for it now." There was a lot of racket. I expected a riot.
I was wrong. The locals were intimidated by ruthlessness—particularly once Doomscrye set the brickthrower on fire. The kid was still screaming when we ripped Crask and Sadler's hovel apart and learned that all the buildup had come to an undramatic, anti-climactic conclusion.
There was no epic battle, no ferocious last stand by cornered baddies. Crask was delirious with fever. Sadler was unconscious. It took four Guardsmen to hoist the villains into the cart. Nobody insisted they be treated gently.
Me neither. Though I did recall times when we were less unfriendly.
Crask's delirium faded briefly. He recognized me. I said, "Good morning, Bright Eyes." But looking into them was like looking down a dark well at a remote mountain of ice.
Maybe The Call ought to work on the problem of humans who have no humanity in them.
Crask wasn't afraid. Fear to him was a tool used to manage others.
"You going to question them?" I asked.
"We're a little slower than we like to pretend, aren't we?" Relway sneered. "Would this exercise have a point otherwise?"
"I'd sure like to know why they jumped Belinda when they did."
Relway smiled. "I'll bet you would."
"What's that mean?"
"I expect she has some questions. Like how they knew where to find her."
"Is this all there is, then?"
"I expected more excitement myself, Garrett. But I'm pleased there wasn't. They don't seem so terrible now, do they?"
"Neither does a saber-tooth tiger when he's sick on his ass. You guys be careful. They won't be completely harmless even if you hang them."
"I'm always careful, Garrett."
That I believed. But was he careful enough?
I stuck with the gang only till we cleared the Bustee. Wouldn't do to be seen with them by my patriotic friends.
The chained kids would get five years in the Cantard. They would be aboard prison barges before the end of the day. The mines always needed a few good men. Or whoever else they could get. Already they were the catch-all sentence for any crime not a capital offense.
The mines would constitute a death sentence for many, anyway.
So what's changed since I was young? These guys would get shovels instead of swords—and worse odds of getting home alive.
62
My favorite venue for exotic research is the Karentine Royal Library, over where all the midtown government buildings cluster, clinging to the petticoats of the Hill. There are lots of books—and no wizards to make them a high-risk objective.
The most interesting books in town are, of course, squirreled away, under lock and key and deadly spell, up the Hill, behind imputed beware of the wizard signs. Only brawn-for-brains barbarians try to reach them. Which supplies the wizards with leather for bookbinding.
The Royal Library is a Crown indulgence. It isn't supposed to be open to walk-in traffic. I get around that. I have a friend inside.
Linda Lee is a treasure. And cute, too. Especially when she's mad, which she always seems to be whenever I drop by.
"You're full of it up to your ears, Garrett," she snapped. "How did you get in this time? And how come you still have that trash-beak penguin parked on your shoulder?" I'd stopped by the house. Just in case my peripatetic sidekick had chosen not to cover up the fact that we were partners anymore. "You're one slow learner." She was no fan of the parrot. And was always very admiring of the way I put words into his beak without moving my lips. Even from another room.
The secret of getting into the library is you slide in through a small side door that has escaped the notice of most of the world. As a rule, though, most of the world would be more interested in getting out of a library than getting in. Books are dangerous.