“Instead of being dead. I get it.” She raised the glass, emptied the beer. “Well. I should tell you the real reason I left Pot Lockney.”
“You should.”
But she didn’t. The great doors opened, and Lady Werewilk and Marlo came stomping in, still arguing.
Marlo marched right up to me. It was clear he didn’t approve of my beer.
“I say we ought to go get the Watch,” he said. “I say we’ve got murder being done, and it’s time we got some law in here before there’s more blood spilt.”
I nodded amiably. “You’re exactly right.”
Silence. Lady Werewilk walked up behind Marlo.
Marlo frowned.
“I said I’m going to send for the Watch.”
I shrugged. “Go right ahead.”
“Figured you’d object to that. Seeing as how it might take you off the payroll.”
Gertriss started to speak, but bless her, she looked to me first, and I silenced her with a quick shake of my head.
“Wouldn’t be any point in paying me if you’ve got the Watch on the case.”
Lady Werewilk joined the fray. “As the Mistress of this House, I and I alone will decide when and if the Watch is called, and who works for me afterward. That is final.”
Marlo’s expression made it clear what he thought of the finality of Lady Werewilk’s pronouncement.
“You going to go yourself, Marlo?”
“If I have to.”
I filled my glass with Lady Werewilk’s beer. “Have you had extensive dealings with the Watch, Marlo?”
“No more than anybody hereabouts.”
I sipped beer. “Then you might not know how the Watch is likely to respond when you start telling tales of banshees in the trees and bodies that get up and go for hikes right before they can be produced as evidence.”
Marlo puffed up. “Now look here, Mr. Markhat. I know I ain’t a city man, but we pays our taxes, same as anybody inside them walls.”
I had to stifle an outright laugh. “Mr. Marlo. You could produce a century of tax receipts and throw them in the Watch’s face, and the most they’ll probably do is cite you for littering. You don’t have a body. You’ll be telling tales about banshees and stakes left in the yard. Look. If I thought I could get a pair of Watchmen down here, I’d have sent for them already. But I’m telling you plain, Mr. Marlo. You’ll be wasting your time.”
“Which is precisely what I said,” added Lady Werewilk.
“Your family has been in the House for four hundred years,” growled Marlo. “First they fought Elves. Then they fought Trolls. Now they’re fightin’ something new, and by damn them what’s in the City are going to send help this time. I’m going. I’m taking Burris. With or without your blessing.”
“It will be without. And if you go, don’t bother to return.” Marlo’s face went the red of day-old meat.
“You keep an eye on her for me, Finder. Lady or not, sometimes she ain’t got much sense.”
And with that, he turned, walked out and let the big old doors slam behind him.
Lady Werewilk glared. The ragged circle of artists that had gathered to watch the show withered and dispersed. Even the dogs got up, tucked tails and slinked away, their nails tap-tapping on the tiles.
Gertriss rose, found another glass, filled it and handed it to Lady Werewilk, who drained it without a breath or a word.
Gertriss filled the silence.
“So you don’t think the Watch will come, boss?”
“Not a chance. We’re on our own.” I stood. My head still hurt, and my sideways ride on Lumpy had done bad things to my lower back, but the last thing an angry client wants to see is the finder she’s paying lounging on her couch and drinking her beer.
“The camp,” Lady Werewilk spoke. “Who occupied it? Why?”
When I opened my mouth, I fully intended to speak the words ‘I don’t know.’ I knew Lady Werewilk wasn’t going to like hearing them, but I’d been nearly strangled by a pile of bones and a banshee had tried to hold my hand and neither activity had done much to improve my mood.
But in that instant before I spoke, some tiny fragment of memory was dislodged.
The camp.
The big tent. The big tables under it. The abacus. The pencils. The stakes.
If we’d kept looking, there’d have been metal screens set in shallow wooden boxes too.
“Damn me,” I muttered. “Of course.”
“Boss?”
“Of course what, Mr. Markhat?”
“Lady Werewilk. I assume your House contains a library?”
Lady Werewilk frowned. “Of course. It’s in my suite of rooms.”
“And does this library contain a great number of old books which detail the early years of the House and the grounds?”
“Naturally.”
“I need to be in that library, Lady. Right now.”
“First you’ll tell me why.”
“It’s not your House they’re after. It never was. But there’s something on your land. Buried, probably. That’s what they’ve been looking for. And they’ve been using a map so old the land itself has changed.”
“All that, from looking at the empty camp?”
“I saw a camp just like it, once. Right after the War. Royal archeologists. They were excavating an old Elvish burial site the Trolls had found. They were using stakes to mark out the crypts and the catacombs. An abacus to help with the math. A big tent to bring in loads of dirt and sift through every shovel-full by pouring it through wire grates. Sorcerers all over the place to find old spells and handle the items they dug up.”
“An Elvish burial complex? Here? On my lands? Nonsense.”
“I didn’t say it was Elvish. But I need to have a look at your library. If there are old maps there, maybe I can take the sketches we made of the stakes you found and figure out where they were looking.”
“But they’ve gone now. The camp is deserted. Surely that means they found what they were looking for.”
I thought about the bony hand they left behind, about Weexil’s’ missing corpse, about the banshee in the trees.
“Maybe. And maybe it means they just found out where to dig. Which means somebody will be back. Maybe somebody worse. We need to figure out what they were looking for, Lady. And where. I’ll sleep a lot better if we can find a big empty hole.”
Lady Werewilk sighed. “Very well. Please come this way. You too, young lady. I assume you can read?”
Gertriss nodded, and off we marched.
Chapter Twelve
Lady Werewilk’s rooms took up the entire second floor of the House. Her bed was the size of a wagon. Both Gertriss and I pretended not to see the toe of a Marlo-sized man’s boot peeking out from under it.
The library was a single square room set into the southwest corner of the House. The windows actually let in light, and there were three big comfy leather chairs and three plain but sturdy reading desks, all arranged to take advantage of the sunlight. There was even a fancy globe of the world mounted in a shiny brass apparatus that allowed it to spin at the touch of a finger.
The globe was pre-War. It still showed human cities and settlements out East. It’s all ghosts and ruins out there now, and even if the Trolls let us move back that way it’ll be decades before anyone dips a toe in the Great Sea again.
The walls were covered in shelves, floor to ceiling, and the shelves were stuffed and crammed with books.
Lady Werewilk paused and considered the books, forefinger to her lips.
“Yes. I believe this series is a good place to start.”
With that, she walked to a shelf, removed half a dozen massive old tomes, and plopped them down on the nearest desk.
I carefully took up the oldest one. The leather used to bind it threatened to flake away into dust before my eyes. I took it to my desk, carefully opened it and began to educate myself concerning the Auspicious Origins and Heroic Deeds of the Mighty House of Werewilk, est. in the Year 453 of the Kingdom of Man.