"But he keeps Hill time, of course," I grumbled. Meaning I figured the Stormwarden couldn't be bothered catering to the schedules of us lesser creatures. But that was all right. I wanted this devil out in the open where I could see him. "Tell me, old buddy, how did this guy hear about my party in the first place?"
Block shrugged. "I don't know. Not from me. I told you. He's well informed."
"Hmm." I glanced at Marengo, there with his old pal Max Weider, being mousy quiet. The very man who was grumbling and muttering about the caprice of sorcerers the other day. "I see."
North English lacked the grace to be embarrassed.
"I see," Max said, too. "So we'll wait, Garrett. Use the delay to build the pressure till these fools blow smoke out their ears. Then let the Stormwarden land in their midst like a cat in a mouse nest."
I said, "You're the boss." A little time sweating might indeed make somebody a tad more amenable. "Excuse me." Block had retreated halfway down the stair, then had stopped, looking my way. He had something on his mind.
I went to find out. The colonel whispered, "Relway says to tell you you have to come visit the Lamp brewery."
"He find something interesting?"
"Apparently so. He wouldn't explain. He did say that he didn't understand it but that you might and you probably ought to see it before you go ahead with what you're doing here."
Now? "Maybe he didn't notice but here is just a wee bit busy. And every time he wants me to see something that turns out to be dead bodies. I've seen enough dead people... Oh, shit!" Medford Shale and his Heaven's Gate cronies had been admiring the settling tank like it might be the doorway to paradise. I'd been keeping an eye on them in case they decided to try tapping it, the results of which were sure to amaze and distress almost everyone. "Bird, go down there and get those drunks headed in another direction. Go on. Shoo."
The arrival of the talking bird had the desired effect. The old folks retreated toward the kegs already tapped. But their bickering orbit around the settling tank brought them face-to-face with the arriving prisoners.
Storey went berserk. He flailed away at one of the shapeshifters with his walking stick. I murmured, "Apparently it can be the same Carter Stockwell who was involved in the Myzhod campaigns."
"What?"
"Long story. Those old men were soldiers a long time ago. Some shapeshifter mercenaries sold them out to the Venageti. It was a big disaster for our side. Looks like these could be the same shapeshifters. Storey—that's the guy being so stylish with the walking stick—mentioned the one he's whipping by name."
"I do believe I'm beginning to get an idea of why the stormwarden is interested."
Me, too, if Perilous Spite was what I suspected. "Let's go calm them down."
"Let's have a whisper with Deal."
100
Storey settled down only after, for a moment, it looked like Trail had suffered a stroke. Several shifters bled liberally. The silver fetters took the strength right out of them. Trace whimpered like a whipped puppy. The voice of the guy who'd been in the stable and on the stair to Tom's room said, "We should've killed the sonofabitch when we had the chance." I couldn't tell if he meant me or Storey.
The boys from Brotherhood Of The Wolf were chained to the next pillar over. Several seemed stricken. They saw faces they recognized. Faces that belonged to people who weren't even human. People who had been manipulating them... A glance at Gerris Genord told me he'd figured that out already. Maybe while he was in the Al-Khar, maybe even the night he killed Lancelyn Mac. Maybe he knew the key answer, too.
Who.
I had an idea, name of Mooncalled. Only I couldn't make him fit. Going strictly by the available evidence, Marengo North English seemed more likely.
There was no coolness toward Genord on the part of the other Wolves. Block and Relway hadn't sold them a thing. They trusted their buddy. Kind of touching, that. These days trust is moribund and fading fast.
It did mean I had guessed wrong about Genord not being the commando type. It takes going through hell with a man to develop that kind of trust. I asked Genord, "You want to put somebody on the spot?"
He looked through me. He wasn't going to tell me jack. If there was any settlement due, his pals would handle it. We couldn't hold them forever.
That attitude came out of the going through hell together, too. I remember that attitude. I miss it. But all the guys I shared it with are gone. I'm left with just the pale ghost of it in my friendships with Morley and a few others.
An uproar loud enough for all the guests to hear erupted out in the kitchen. Neersa Bintor bellowed like an angry she-elephant. Before I finished making sure everybody didn't rush that way and thereby leave the rest of the mansion unwatched the big woman stormed into the great hall. She had a body over her shoulder, a shifter caught in mid-change, flopping like a crippled snake. In her offhand she carried a kitchen maul that looked like it could be used to drive the stakes that hold up circus tents. She searched the gawking crowd, spotted me, flung the shifter from thirty feet away. It left some skin on the uncarpeted floor.
"I an' I, I be tryin' to manage de kitchen, you Garrett, you. You be gettin' me better help dan dat t'ief, you. You be keepin' you rat out a dere, too, you." Behind her Pular Singe managed to look sheepish and proud at the same time. She'd winkled out the interloper.
It occurred to me that we'd neglected our obligation to inform Neersa Bintor of our full plans. Not an oversight the goddess of the cast iron would easily forgive. In the heirarchy of the Weider mansion Neersa Bintor ranked right behind Max and, just possibly, Manvil Gilbey.
I apologized profusely in front of the mob. A certain gaudily constumed woodpecker had a grand laugh at my expense. "Lend me your cane there, Storey." I whacked the side of the settling tank three or four times. The bird said "Gleep!" and flew back to his perch on the chandelier.
"You listen, you bird-boy, you. I an' I got no room in my kitchen for vermin, be dey talk or no. You unnerstan', you? I will catch my own t'iefs, I an' I." The shifter at my feet stirred. Neersa Bintor raised a prodigious sensible shoe, brought it down hard, then exorcised her venom through a hearty application of her maul. She kept her foot in place while a couple of Guards got the changer fitted with chains.
I whispered to Singe, as though she hadn't understood what had been said, "Maybe you'd better stay out of the kitchen."
She whispered back, "You tink so, you?"
Singe the wonder child. She was being sarcastic. "Yeah. Scoot." When I turned back to the crowd I saw the Bintor phenomenon withdrawing.
I told the Guards, "You guys better get this thing shackled to its friends before it remembers what kingdom it's in." I suspected the passivity shown by the changers was partly due to their psychic connection, which must be charged with a communal sense of despair. Block, near Relway, beckoned impatiently.
101
Relway is predictable some ways. For example, you can count on him to bring out the melodrama in any situation. He did that at the Lamp brewery, where he had guys with torches creeping around the interior ruins generating wonderfully creepy, dancing, slithering shadows. "It's in worse shape than I thought it would be," I told the little guy. The brick exterior remained sound but the inside walls and floors were falling down and caving in.
"Smells odd, too," Morley said. He drifted over and through rubble and ruin without attracting a speck of dust.