A huge, sourceless voice filled the hall. "Stand back. It's stunned, not dead." The thing began to assume human shape. Evidently young shifters adopt some base form to which they'll revert automatically if they can't maintain a shape they've chosen.
The shifters bound in chains made unhappy noises. Their despair was so strong I felt it—maybe because I'd been exposed to the Dead Man for so long.
Stunned didn't last. An arm grew to an impossible length. One incredibly nasty, sicklelike claw tipped it. That claw slashed at me. I was just fast enough to dodge or the shifter was just slow enough to miss.
A waterlogged blanket slapped a stone floor. Big bacon crackled. The shifter leapt into the air, shrieked, then flopped around like its back was broken. I told Morley, "I think I'll back off a ways."
"Clever fellow. Sign me on as your assistant."
I noted that he wasn't watching the shifter. "Whatcha looking for?"
"Just keeping an eye out." He used his "I've got an idea but I'm not ready to talk about it" tone. I looked around, too.
Block and Relway were busy making sure men kept guarding every entrance. I looked up at Tinnie and the girls. They hadn't fled. But they had let Marengo get away again. Two large gentlemen from the shipping dock had joined the ladies. Max, Manvil, and Ty now formed a glowering knot at the foot of the grand staircase, evidently concerned that my new playmate might develop a taste for toothsome wench. A taste I can't say I begrudge almost anyone.
I limped over to Genord. I'd banged my hip good getting down onto the floor. "Here we go again. Want to tell me anything now?"
Gerris still wasn't talking.
"Live a fool, die a fool—Now what?"
Another racket from the kitchen, that's what. Neersa Bintor was very upset about something. Had Singe?... No, Singe was there by the dining-room door, just steps away from Relway, shaking like a last autumn leaf, looking at me, in a stance that begged forgiveness for failing to expose the changer in time.
Still looking around, Morley asked, "You want some bad news?"
"No. I'd cherish some good news, though. Just for the novelty. What?"
"Crask and Sadler went missing during that excitement."
Gah! "You're shitting me."
Sure enough, their fetters were empty. How the hell?... They'd been out of the way and everybody had been distracted, but... I stormed toward Relway. "You want to tell me how Crask and Sadler could do a disappearing act in the middle of a hundred people?"
"What? They couldn't. I' ve got the only key... " A twisted hand came out of a pocket empty. "Hunh?" He was flabbergasted. It's a memory I'll cherish. Relway is seldom at a loss. "Somebody picked my pocket." He started growling at his own people, forgetting, for the moment, that he didn't want to reveal himself.
I went to Pular Singe, told her, "You did just fine. You couldn't be everywhere at once. Once the shifters understood that you could identify them they just stayed out of your way. Are you all right? You think you can work? I might need you to track those bad men again."
"Never mind the bad men," Morley said from behind me. "She turned them loose strictly for their diversion value."
Slap and bacon crackle happened again. People who should've been concentrating on that last shifter had let themselves be distracted by trying to keep track of me. That changer was off the floor again. It lurched toward its brethren, sprouting scissorlike claws capable of snipping silver. It seemed to be developing an immunity to the stormwarden's sorcery. A double application was needed to put it down this time.
"Someone would have to know me pretty good to think I'd drop everything if they... " Of course. Somebody who controlled the resources of Brotherhood Of The Wolf and Black Dragon Valsung could find out all about me. Somebody who'd had me dogged since before I knew I was getting into this mess. Somebody who... Who? I could look around me and see everybody involved in the case except Crask and Sadler. But they were pawns. Of the rest only Marengo remotely fit. Like the lead Wolf said.
North English might be one hell of an actor. But he had been behaving strangely ever since he'd gotten hurt. A fact which left me squinty-eyed with suspicion.
104
Wait! What about the redoubtable Lieutenant Nagit? Mr. Nagit was an excellent candidate. He probably felt underappreciated... Then I recalled something he'd said. Something I hadn't taken the trouble to hear at the time.
An evil globule of bright feathers hit my shoulder hard. "Goddammit!... "
"Do not be willfully stupid, Garrett. Do not be willfully blind."
People stared. Only Morley Dotes grasped the full significance right away. He turned, stared at the settling tank briefly, said, "You're one sneaky bastard, Garrett." He showed about a hundred pointy teeth in a grin. "I've taught you well, my disciple."
I ignored him. I told the bird, "No. I'm not being blind on purpose. I really just got it. Block! Colonel Block." He was close enough that I didn't really need to yell. "Find the woman. The mistress. Montezuma. It's her that ties everything together." Stupid, Garrett. Stupid. It was right there in front of you all the time. But she was gorgeous so you just didn't think she could be anything else. If she'd gotten lucky with you, you might have ended up as thick as Gerris Genord. Or well nicked by a meat cleaver.
How did she know Crask and Sadler? From her old days, before she got her hooks into Marengo?
We didn't know much about her. Nobody bothered to find out, no matter what we'd discussed. Why back-check a whore, however remarkable she might be?
She might have grown up with the nightmare twins.
Above, Marengo had found nerve enough to show himself. His mouth was open but nothing came out.
Mr. Nagit had told me the woman never did anything that didn't relate to her meal ticket. That explained why she had hooked up with Marengo in the first place. It explained why she'd work all the angles against the day Marengo lost interest. She'd started that as soon as she'd arrived at The Pipes, already old enough and wise enough to know that the ride couldn't possibly last.
Tama Montezuma would be one more reason Marengo North English couldn't finance his bigoted revolution. Tama would have found a hundred ways to suck herself a comfortable retirement out of Marengo's and The Call's cash flows.
It was amazing what vistas opened once I embraced the possibility that the luscious Miss Montezuma might be a villain. The probability of a connection with Glory Mooncalled laid itself out as though announced by trumpeters. I already believed that Mooncalled was behind the shapeshifters somewhere. I had hoped tonight's festivities would somehow lure him to the Weider mansion, too, probably in deep disguise. But no disguise would help as long as he came within a hundred feet of that settling tank.
Mooncalled would've gotten his claws into Tama the instant the Brotherhood Of The Wolf included Black Dragon Valsung in their plans. How she'd manipulated the Wolves was clear enough, based on the testimony of our witnesses. She'd pretended to be Marengo's go-between. Which the Wolf acknowledged when asked directly.
Tama wanted to be rich. She had only one thing to sell. The shifters wanted a brewery. They had nothing to market but their talent for infiltration. Glory Mooncalled wanted... what? Where Mooncalled came from and where he was going never had been clear. Even my partner, who made a hobby of studying the man, no longer understood what he was about. And the rest of the world knew only that Mooncalled traveled his own road and was a real pain in the ass about letting himself get pushed off of it.
The vistas stretched but I still had questions. Lots of questions. How did Tama get them to attack Marengo that night? Why try to eliminate all the main leaders of the rights movement? Or was that all staging? Where was Glory Mooncalled now? Why hadn't I pulled him in? Because of Perilous Spite? Or had he sensed the trap? And where was Tama Montezuma? Had she worked her magic on Mooncalled? That would be a real marvel, those two getting all tangled up in each other.