“A-Laf.”
“Huh?”
“The god’s name is A-Laf. Not Aleph.”
“I stand corrected. Is that important?”
“I doubt it. Damn. That dead soldier was the last of his regiment.”
Subtle.
“I’ll see if I can’t scare up some recruits. As soon as we finish.” Part of being a crack investigator is finding a thread to tug. I’d grabbed hold of a rope.
“What’s that?”
“What?”
“That thing you’re fiddling with.”
“A rock. Somebody tried to kill me with it. Tell me about A-Lat.”
He didn’t correct my pronunciation. “A-Lat is the Queen of the Night. The Mother of Darkness. Love and death wrapped up in one ugly bundle. Her cult used to be big on temple prostitution. It doesn’t exist anymore. Can I see the stone? It don’t look natural.”
“How long ago did you leave Ymber? If the cult is extinct, how come I’m up to my ears in its enemies?”
“I’ve been here two years. My faith fled when the A-Laf cultists began murdering unbelievers. Especially A-Lat’s women. They tortured the last high priestess to death. They sacrificed the goddess’s sacred feline avatar to the idiot idol in A-Laf’s temple.”
Ah. Finally. Actual information.
The Dead Man is right. Patience wins.
Notions fell into place. There was a pattern and rhythm here. TunFaire would be the secondary impact zone. In Ymber there’d be prophecies and rumors of secret heirs to unknown obligations. There’d be brave fighters continuing the struggle even though all hope seemed lost. One-eyed men and left-handed men missing a finger from their right hand. The stuff of high heroic tales. On a farm community scale, of course. Where most of the king’s subjects don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that. They have thunder lizards to skin and crops to get in.
“Let me see that thing.”
I handed BB the stone despite an instant of irrational reluctance.
He grunted. He stared. He grew pale as he moved deeper into the light flung off by a phalanx of votive candles. He squeaked, fumbled the stone, regained control, shoved the rock back at me. “Keep that away from fire. Any kind of fire. No matter what else you do.”
“Huh?”
“You let a flame touch it, you’ll be sorry the rest of your life. Which will last maybe as long as another minute. If you’re friggin’ beloved of the gods.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What the hell?”
“You don’t got no idea what you got there, do you?”
“I have a green rock. Somebody tried to brain me with it. I started carrying it around because I tend to slow down, relax, and think clearer thoughts when I’m fiddling with it.”
“Your hands are warm. It likes that. So it makes you feel good.”
Warm hands? Tell that to Tinnie. “How about a little hint?”
“It’s egg shaped. Right? That’s on account of it’s an egg.”
“Huh?” Old Garrett is quick as a glacier sometimes.
“Friend, you’ve laid hands on a roc’s egg. I don’t know why anybody would try to brain you with it, but-”
“Great pun, Slick. Egg-shaped rock. Rock’s egg. Where baby boulders come from.”
“Roc. Bird of fire. Burn your house down around you in half a minute if the egg touches flame and it hatches, roc.”
“Bird of fire? I thought that was a phoenix.”
“Same difference. I was you, I’d jump outside and see how far I could fling it out in the river. It’d stay plenty cold down in the mud.”
“Rocs are huge. They carry off mammoths.”
“An exaggeration. There are four species around Ymber. The biggest might be able to take a lamb or a small dog. People remember them big because they’re so busy getting under cover they don’t have time to look close. The littlest roc ain’t much bigger than a sparrow. Zips around like a hummingbird. That egg you got, that’s from what they call the bird of paradise phoenix. Looks kind of like a pheasant in a clown suit.”
“Like a parrot?”
“Gaudier. Tenderloin gaudy. On account of which, they’ve pretty much been hunted out for their feathers.”
“How do you hunt a roc down and take his feathers?”
“Like the joke says. Carefully.”
I gave him the fisheye. He’d distracted me from comparative-religion research. “My mother used to call things ‘rare as roc’s eggs.’ When she wasn’t on about frog fur or hen’s teeth.”
“More roc’s eggs around than frog fur coats. But they ain’t common. Especially the big ones. It takes a rare combination of guts and inspired stupidity to raid a phoenix’s nest.”
“I know some guys who’d fit.”
“Indeed. A-Laf’s sextons are chock-full of stupid and brave. But the deacons, the dicks who tell them what to do, wouldn’t waste them that way. You got a sweet mystery there, my friend. No telling how one a them got hold of an egg. Maybe from when they took A-Lat’s temple. She had them all.” BB paused to irrigate his pipes by chugging half a pint of wine.
“Thought that dead soldier was the last of his tribe.”
“You didn’t run out and volunteer to… you didn’t volunteer to run out and… hell. We got a new regiment coming into the line. Aged in the cask since last Sedonaday.”
“Which?”
“Sedonaday. Holy day of obligation for Ymnamics. Day before yesterday. Man, I’m telling you, if that was my egg, I’d prance outside and see how far out I could throw it. Get it way out there, down deep in the cold, cold mud.”
I ignored BB’s chatter, which was one hundred percent pure bull specks. But he had gotten me thinking. “Suppose I wanted to kill somebody by setting them on fire?”
BB’s face got redder. “I ain’t getting rich here, Slick, but I ain’t the kind that-”
“I don’t want to kill anybody. I want to figure out why they’re dying. It’s something else I’m looking at. People catching on fire.” I explained a little, naming no names.
“I can see where you might think rocs’ eggs, not having heard about them before. But your target would have to cooperate. The big question is, why even try? There’re easier ways to kill people. It does sound like a sorcery problem, though. Look for a fire kind of wizard with rabid bats in his belfry. Or some stray pyro talent who hasn’t been spotted by the horrors on the Hill yet. A refugee, maybe.”
BB’s latest bottle, come out of nowhere, seemed particularly potent. He developed difficulties enunciating. Before long he would shift to a language no one but Bittegurn Brittigarn understood.
“Maybe somebody who came to his abilities late and thought he could keep them hidden? Somebody with a deep streak of darkness?”
“There you go, Chief. You keep on keeping on, there you’ll be.”
This was starting to head for one-hand-clapping country.
“Give me a little help before you get all the way gone, Pastor. I need to know about the A-Lat cult. You say it’s dead. But I know a girl who says she’s the high priestess of A-Lat.”
Bittegurn Brittigarn focused on those skills needed to lift a wine container to his lips with no wastage.
I asked, “How does a roc’s egg turn into a projectile meant to brain me?” If that really was an egg, how come it was hard as a rock?
“I don’ know, man. Go ask the sexton what flung it.”
That was on my list. If Block and Relway would indulge me.
BB was sliding fast. “The A-Laf crowd. Why would they rehab the Bledsoe?”