that place that sells biscuits on the sidewalk.”
“Three coppers.”
“No coppers if you say another word. Scoot.”
He scooted. A crowd began to gather, and Piggy got red-faced and restless when the laughter started.
“You want to tell me why you and your brood pulled knives on me?”
“Go to Hell. Take that there witch-woman with ye.”
Mama cackled.
“Witch I ain’t, Gilgad Sprang. And that’s a bad piece of luck for you, and do you know why?” Mama leaned close and poked his bloody nose with her crooked forefinger. “A witch might be moved to show you some mercy. But not me. You is doomed, and all your kin, and ain’t no way past that now.”
And then she muttered a long string of nonsense words and shook a dried owl in Piggy’s face.
He shut up, something like fear showing in his piggy eyes. I watched a mob of street kids empty his sons’ pockets. Both seemed to be stirring and moaning a bit, and I let out a breath I’d been holding.
It was one thing to summon the Watch when you had three bloodied but breathing assailants to present. But even on Cambrit Street, corpses require a lot of explaining.
Whistles blew, and I heard the hurried clip-clop of Watch ponies and the rattle of a Watch wagon.
Mama gave the head of the Sprang household a good hard kick in the face before backing up a step.
“I’m leavin’. If’n you needs a witness, send ’em to my door.’
“Thanks, Mama. I’ll keep you out of it if I can.” Mama isn’t any more popular with the Watch than I am. Years ago she kneed a Watchman in the groin when he barged into her place looking for a street kid she was hiding in a barrel. Neither she nor the Watch was much on forgetting or forgiving.
“See me when you’re done, boy.”
The wagon rounded the corner. Mama trundled away, muttering.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” I said as four blue-capped Watchmen approached, wiping the remains of the breakfast I’d so rudely interrupted off of their thick wool shirts. “Let me tell you about the morning I’ve had.”
Chapter Two
I didn’t have to make the trip downtown to file an official complaint. Turns out half the neighborhood had seen the altercation, and in a rare display of civic mindedness, people had actually lined up to give their accounts to the Watch.
I attributed that more to Mama’s presence on the scene than to any affection for the neighborhood finder.
Even so, the evidence was clear-I had been the subject of an armed, unprovoked attack.
And so I was sitting in Mama’s tiny parlor, Buttercup at my feet, while the Sprangs were enjoying the dubious hospitality of Rannit’s least accommodating public house, the Old Ruth Gaol.
“And then the Watch left,” I said while Mama stirred that enormous black pot she always has on the boil in the back of the room. Today it stank of rotten eggs and burnt hair.
Mama sighed. “How long you reckon they’ll keep ’em locked up?”
“Hard to say. If they can pay the fine, maybe a couple of weeks. If they have to work it off, could be a couple of months.”
Mama grunted. “I was hopin’ it would be a mite longer than that.”
“Spill it, Mama. You knew that man. Bet you also know why he came looking for me.”
“He don’t care nothing for you, boy.”
“Gertriss, then?”
“I fears it.”
Damn. Gertriss had started to tell me once why she’d left Pot Lockney, the pastoral ancestral abode of Hog women since time began. We’d never finished that conversation. I’d never asked, assuming she’d finish the story when she was good and ready.
Now, though, I’d need to press for answers.
I started to speak, but Mama raised a bony finger to her lips and nodded toward Buttercup, who played with dolls at my feet.
I forget sometimes Buttercup is a centuries-old banshee who understands far more Kingdom than she chooses to speak.
“I need to know this, Mama.”
“Tried to tell you once, didn’t I? And as I recall you got all uppity about people needin’ their privacy.”
“That was before the Sprangs tried to carve out my kidneys.”
Mama stirred. “Well. From what I hears, and this is all third-hand mind ye, I reckon she kilt a man who-,” Mama hesitated, picking words carefully, “-who got determined with her. I ain’t got no use for a man what mistreats woman. No use at all.”
Whatever was in the pot threatened to come sloshing over the side. Mama cussed and slowed her stirring before continuing.
“Sounds to me like she did what she had to do.”
“There’s some what don’t see it that way.”
“These Sprangs. They his family?”
“That’s where it gets bothersome, boy. The man she kilt was a Suthom, from over Gobbler way. Ain’t no relation to the Sprangs.”
I frowned. Buttercup saw and handed me the doll she was cooing wordlessly to.
“Thanks, sweetie.” I took the doll by its hands and made it dance on my knee. “So why did these Sprangs come looking for Gertriss?”
“That Suthom boy she killed. Word is he had bought a big patch of farmland from the Sprangs. He was figurin’ on settin’ up with Gertriss there. Well, he paid them half, promised the rest. But she kilt him before he delivered. I reckon they figure she took the half of the money he was holdin’, and I reckon they wants it.”
I nearly forgot to keep the doll dancing.
“Whoa. They came all this way looking for Gertriss because they think she has half of the money a dead man promised them for a farm he’ll never live on?”
“You a city boy. Listen. That Suthom promised that there money to them Sprangs. In their way of thinking, Gertriss was his, and that means she promised it too. So he might be dead, but she ain’t, and by old law she still half-owns that patch of dirt and she owes them half that money.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“Them Sprangs look like they was jokin’, boy?”
“No. No, they didn’t.” I gave Buttercup’s dolly a big dance finish and handed it back to her. She clapped her hands and giggled and hugged me before scampering off to Mama’s back room.
“So if that’s all true, why jump me? They figure I owe them money too?”
Mama grumped and looked away, but I got a glimpse of her face before she turned, and I’ve been a resident of Cambrit Street long enough to recognize Mama’s many faces. I was seeing the rarest of all her faces-the guilty one.
“Mama.”
“Well, they must have got word Gertriss is workin’ for you now.”
“That isn’t reason to start carving on me, is it?”
Mama gave the contents of her pot a glare.
“I reckon word might have got around that she was a mite more than any ol’ employee.”
I groaned. I’d surmised that myself before she spoke the words.
I’d also surmised how the Sprangs, and everyone else in rural Pot Lockney, might have gotten those particular words.
“Why, Mama? Tell me that.”
“Boy, I didn’t think they’d come stomping to Rannit aimin’ to spill blood. I swears I didn’t. A man from the
