Maybe it’s true, about Hoobin women and the Sight. And, if so, maybe she could see that the huldra was leaking slowly out of my soul.
I try not to think about the huldra, these days. I try not to entertain my suspicion that Mama didn’t get it from some nameless backstreet mojo man. I try not to ponder her mission that day we thought Darla had died, try not to weigh the likelihood that the name she had sworn never to share was that of Encorla Hisvin.
It made sense. Maybe I was still seeing things, in that strange sideways fashion the huldra showed me, that rainy night of the new moon. Because I could see how Encorla might find it amusing to toss such a powerful object in the midst of what must have been, from his perspective, such a petty squabble.
No, I decided, that wasn’t the only way I knew. I thought back to that night, back to the strange memories that had risen up like windblown dust before me. While I’d walked, I’d somehow become Encorla, or something equally monstrous. Or, more likely, he or it had nearly consumed me.
Had I not broken the huldra-had I embraced the dark-I believe it would have been Encorla Hisvin who would have walked out of that warehouse that night. He and he alone-Markhat just another whirlwind memory, just another anguished cry troubling Hisvin’s dark dreams.
I shuddered, yanked my thoughts back to the present and nibbled at the warm bread and sipped the bitter tea.
Mama would be back soon, with a fresh batch of the foul stuff. I knew she’d linger, hovering over me, fussing and griping and bossing, but watching with those piercing Hog eyes all the while.
Watching to see if the darkness had truly left me. Watching to see if I’d been tainted beyond the reach of tea and herbs and whatever simple magics she was slipping past my door.
Evis stops by too, doing much the same thing, though he brings middling good beer and sets Mama to fretting because we sit up and smoke expensive cigars and watch the dark get thicker. Mama thinks he’s a bad influence. Like we’ll set out at any minute to steal apples off market-stands and taunt passing ogres by dropping our pants and shouting out rude words.
I laughed out loud at the thought of it. Evis has no evil in his soul, save the same tired old evils all men bear. He’d met the huldra’s gaze dead on and not flinched. He even tells a good joke, when none of the lads are around.
Evis did, on occasion, keep me informed as to the progress of Miss Cant, the sobbing halfdead we’d rescued from the warehouse. The Avalante physicians, and I was still trying to become accustomed to the idea of halfdead doctors, were actually doing her good. She was talking again. She could speak a few words, and she no longer tore off the clothes in which they dressed her. Some days she seemed to remember who she’d been.
We’d made a toast, to that.
Remembrance, for the good and the bad.
Darla doesn’t like to talk about the men who had snatched her from her home, or the halfdead who had toyed with her. She does know they had been instructed to kill her, not hold her. The halfdead, never ones for unquestioning obedience of authority, had decided instead to keep her alive and on the warehouse menu when another of the captives died the day of the new moon.
I had no proof, would never have proof, but I was sure I already knew who had given the order to kidnap Darla and slaughter her.
I was sure of the who, but still unsure of the why. To drive me to take the huldra, which conveniently turned up in Mama’s possession right after Darla appeared to be dead? To make damned sure I drove headlong into that nest of halfdead, no matter the consequences?
Because it spiced up an otherwise dreary Thursday?
I never put a name to the corpse hurled at my door.
She might have been a poor soul who had died at the hands of her halfdead captors and thus indirectly saved Darla. She might have been a maid or a streetwalker, caught out after Curfew once too often. Or she might have been an acquaintance of Hisvin, who had, like so many others, eventually failed to amuse. That tattoo on her back, though, had convinced me the dead body was Darla-to me that smacked more of a creature known as the Corpsemaster than of a gaggle of blood-mad halfdead. Such attention to fine detail seemed a bit beyond their ken.
There had been no survivors among the priests or the halfdead. And the one other person who might have the answers is not the kind of person you ask them of.
Mama banged on my door and barged through, more hot tea emitting steam from the pot in her rag-shielded hands.
“Brung you some more.”
“Thanks. I was just wishing I had something to dip Three-Leg in, his fleas are back.”
Mama thunked the pot down and scowled. “You need to be drinkin’ all this. Today. My sageroot came in and this is full of it.”
I grimaced. “Sageroot? Isn’t that poisonous?”
“Nah, not if’n it’s dried before it’s boiled.” Mama sniffed. “Best drink it hot too.”
I sighed. “You really think this is helping, Mama?”
“I reckon it is,” she said. She sat heavily in my client’s chair. “Cat don’t run from you. Miss Darla don’t see them things in your eyes. Mostly, though, you’re nearly as big a smart-ass as you was before that night.”
I nodded.
“I see that Halfdead friend of yours was around last night.”
“We had a couple of beers.”
Mama frowned. “He ever say how that poor woman is?”
I told Mama what I knew about Miss Cant. She seemed pleased, though not pleased enough to credit Evis with even faint praise.
Someone called Mama’s name from the street, and Mama bade me goodbye with a final stern admonition to drink the pot dry.
I drained the cup, started to pour a new one, heard Mama’s door shut and thought the better of it. The tea needed to cool anyway, and the sun was bright outside, and I decided a walk in the light would do me good- especially if it happened to lead to Darla’s fresh painted door.
Chapter Fifteen
The sun was bright. I squinted and tried not to look too hard at the shadows the bright sun cast. When I did glance their way, I saw movement in them, hints of form and substance that made no sense at all in the light, but were poetry and magic when considered in the dark.
I wished I had gulped down that last cup of Mama’s tea but I settled for whistling instead. Rannit bustled all around me, stinking, cursing, working and drinking all at once all around me.
Ogres passed, and each and every one dipped their gaze at me, as they had since that night. Darla said I’d attained some odd standing in the ogre community by saving the Hoogas the night we rescued Martha. I still don’t recall doing any such thing, but a town full of well-intentioned ogres is not a situation I wish to question.
I was halfway to Darla’s when I heard the first screams.
Screams and then shouts of warning and then a sudden rush of pedestrians towards doors and the slamming thereof. Within seconds the street was cleared, and I knew without seeing what was responsible for that.
A moment passed, and then the black carriage rolled into view, cloud of flies buzzing, the stench of it reaching and quickly engulfing me.
A much fresher corpse sat atop the rig, cracking a whip at empty air before he brought the conveyance to a halt at my feet.
The cloud of fat bluebottle flies still buzzed and worked. The stench of ripe decay so close to the conveyance was overpowering. I fought off a round of retching, clamped my jaw shut and pulled myself up and inside.
The same red-haired dead woman lolled there, swollen and limp. Her features were melting, like black wax, and when she spoke, it was a barely intelligible gobbling.
“Bravo, goodman,” it said. Flies rushed in and out of its mouth. “I congratulate you on your victory.”
