“So there’s no time to talk about your carriage ride either. How convenient.”
I couldn’t decide whether to sit or keep standing.
“I didn’t plan things this way. You know that.”
“Actually, Mr. Markhat, I’m not at all sure I know that at all. I’m beginning to think I don’t know a lot of things about us.”
“Darla, that’s not fair. It’s your case I’m working on. You asked me to do this.”
She brushed her hair back, but didn’t look at me.
“If it wasn’t a meeting after Curfew it would be something else.” She raised her hand when I started to protest. “I need to be a part of things. I need to be the first one you tell things, good or bad. I know you well enough to know something was said in Hisvin’s carriage. You’ve probably told Mama. You’ve probably told Evis. You could tell me right here, right now, probably in a hundred words or less. Why won’t you? Why?”
I didn’t answer right away. Even now, I have no idea what I was going to say; when I finally got my mouth open, but it was too late. Darla rose and darted up her steps and slammed her door behind her, leaving flowers and candy forlorn on her stoop.
I knocked, but my only response was the metallic clank of her sturdy door-bolts being thrown.
The cab that had dropped me off came rattling back down the street, heading in the opposite direction. He saw me standing there, saw the flowers and the candy on the stairs, and he rolled to a stop. Wisely, he didn’t say a damned word.
“You were wrong, by the way,” I said as I climbed back inside. “Roses wouldn’t have helped.”
I had the cab take me back by my place so I could pick up Toadsticker. I don’t take it to Darla’s-it’s just a reminder that my business doesn’t always involve pastries and friendly banter.
Darla’s words, and the hurt in her voice, haunted me all the way home. She was right.
And so was I. Which made fixing it difficult.
I didn’t pop back in at Mama’s. I didn’t hear any screaming or glass breaking, and the Hoogas appeared serene, so I just waved and darted in my place and came out with Toadsticker strapped to my waist, hidden under my long coat.
I had a sword on my belt, a knife in my boot and a pair of brass knuckles in my right pocket. The Avalante pin given to me by Evis was on my lapel. I was as ready as I could possibly be to break Curfew with a pair of well- heeled cigar aficionados who might decide during the conversation to reduce my number of functional appendages.
I caught myself glaring at passers-by. Damn it all, anyway. If Darla thought she was unhappy now, wait until she found out the truth.
I had the cab drop me a block from the cigar house. I found a bar and I planted my butt there until Curfew warning-two peals, silence, two more peals sounded, and the barkeep got red-faced and sputtered and finally worked up the nerve to ask me to leave. I plunged out into a street already nearly empty, aside from hurried figures shuttering windows and locking doors and looking furtively about as though they expected to be gobbled up by vampires in the next moment.
I unbuttoned my coat. I didn’t need to. Hell, the halfdead haven’t claimed a victim in the good part of town in years, but I was in a mood and I knew the sight of Toadsticker glittering in the lamplight would keep run-of-the-mill muggers away.
I found a shadowed alley across from the cigar joint and lurked there, waiting. The owners must be well connected, I decided, because they neither shuttered the windows nor turned down the lamps. I could see shapes moving about, but couldn’t discern much else through the curtains.
I waited until Curfew proper rang out, and then I crossed the empty street and marched up to the front doors.
They weren’t locked. I walked through, and a pair of uniformed kids took my coat. I was told I was expected and led down a long hall and into a room the size of a house.
It was paneled in walnut and the floors were covered in rugs and the fireplace at the far end was blazing. The room held a dozen people, sitting and speaking in hushed tones in four little bunches scattered throughout the cavernous room. There were no windows, and it was hot, and from the thick haze of smoke that surrounded Lethway and Pratt I gathered they’d spent the evening sitting too close to that unnecessary fire and puffing away on rich man’s tobacco.
Lethway was older than I’d expected, but trim and shaved and sitting bolt upright on a couch designed for slouching. He wore his white hair in an Army officer’s peel and his boots were officer issue and the walking cane leaning by his right knee was topped with the gold dragon’s head of the Sixth.
“Well, well,” said Lethway. His voice was strong and showed no hint of drink despite the half-empty bottle on the table beside him. “Mr. Markhat at last. We feared you discovered other appointments.”
“You said after Curfew. It’s after Curfew. I’m here.”
I sat across from Lethway. That left me facing both men, which wasn’t the perfect place to be if they decided to jump me, but I didn’t think they’d risk making a ruckus indoors with witnesses around.
Mr. Lethway nodded. A pair of waiters appeared and politely ushered everyone save a trio of well-dressed gentlemen and the three of us out. When the last waiter left, he locked the door behind him.
The three stragglers took up stations behind me. They did not sit. They did not speak.
They didn’t need to.
“So that’s the way it is.” There was a box of cigars at my elbow. I opened it, took one out, used the clippers on the table to snip off the end, and put it in my mouth. “Either of you gentlemen have a light?”
“Pratt. If you please.”
Pratt hefted his bulk from the couch with a grunt and fished in his pocket and produced a fancy sparking lighter. I leaned forward, and he stood close. His lighter rasped and sparked and I inhaled.
It was a good cigar. Not as good as the ones Evis gets, but close.
I blew out blue-grey smoke.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t mention it.” Pratt sat back down.
“Tell me what you know, Mr. Markhat.”
“I know a great many things. Geography, for instance. Did you know the Brown River runs for one thousand, two hundred, and sixteen miles past Rannit before it reaches the Sea?”
His tanned face flushed. Pratt glanced Lethway’s way, waiting for some long-established hint.
“I came here to talk, Mr. Lethway. And I’ll be glad to tell you what little I know about your son’s disappearance. But bullying me isn’t a good way to start. I’ve been bullied by bigger and better, and frankly, you’ve lost your touch.”
He went full-on purple.
“You are insolent.”
“That I am. And you’re stubborn. Your only son has been kidnapped, and instead of trying to help the man who’s looking to bring him home you lock him in a room and make scary noises at him. That’s no way to be. Let’s start over, shall we? My name is Markhat. I have reason to believe your son Carris has been kidnapped. I’d like to find these people before they hurt Carris. This is a good cigar.”
His knuckles were white and his jaw worked silently but in the end, Lethway swallowed the urge to have me decapitated on the spot.
“I don’t want your help, Mr. Markhat. I don’t want anything to do with you. Carris is away on family business. He realized marrying that…commoner was a mistake. She is deluded, or greedy, or both.”
I shook my head. “She’s neither. And Carris is no more away on business than I am king of the ogres. But I’ll tell you something you don’t know, in a gesture of good faith. I think the kidnappers came to see Mr. Fields as well.”
He sputtered and lifted his empty glass and tried to drink from it. I shook my head.
“So you didn’t know that. Good. I’ve told you something you didn’t know. Why not do the same for me? He’s your son, Mr. Lethway. Trusting the kidnappers to keep their word may seem like the best plan, but I’m here to tell you they don’t often keep it. It’s too easy to just silence the only witness and head East with the money. Don’t let that happen.”
