I nodded. I’d dreaded this moment, knowing it was coming, knowing I’d have to decide how much to reveal of what I had seen, that night I walked. “Do you?” I said. “Seems to me that you might have been more pleased had things gone the other way. Too many people lived. Except your pet in the turtle shell.”
The dead woman burbled and spat. Maggots fell from her mouth and writhed in her lap. It took me a moment to work out her exhalations as laughter.
“Whatever are you talking about? And in such tones! Why, I’ve half a mind to take offense.”
I grunted. The smell was palpable, and there were dark, thick stains, busy with flies, all over the upholstery.
“Not that I don’t appreciate good theatre,” I said, surprising myself. “But the smell and the flies detract from the conversation.”
Instantly, the buzzing flies and the stench of a decaying human body vanished.
I took a breath and forced myself to meet the dead woman’s milk-white eyes. Things moved in the corners. She grinned with teeth going crooked in soft black gums.
“You could have wiped out the whole nest without any of this. You could have just spoken a few words, waved your hand about. Poof, no more half-dead blood cult. No more dead women.”
The corpse nodded amiably.
“True,” she burbled. “Though your appraisal of the situation is as yet incomplete. There were other players, other allegiances, other actors involved. My direct participation would very probably have resulted in the loss of far more lives. Innocent lives, I believe you would call them, although in my experience innocence is neither common nor particularly precious.” The dead woman waved a black hand in dismissal. “Too, it would have been so
“Can’t have that,” I said. A bloated eyebrow raised.
“Would it matter, if I told you that another sorcerer of my stature was involved? Would it matter if you were to learn that the intention was to plunge Rannit into chaos and bloodshed, on a scale that would quickly dwarf the very worst years of the War? Would it matter if I told you that the huldra wasn’t mine, that your mistrust of me is misplaced as well as dangerously impertinent?”
“Are you telling me any of that?
“Perhaps yes, perhaps no. As you can imagine, the situation is rather too delicate for open discussion, even now.”
I let a moment pass. Then I shrugged to hide a deep breath. “You ought to do something about Oddling,” I said. “The walls are going to collapse any day now, leaning like that.”
Silence. Just a beat, but for that beat, the flies didn’t buzz and the carriage didn’t clatter and the world might as well have been shut behind a thick, tight door.
I wondered if Hisvin would speak or merely strike me down.
“You are a man of surprising resources, goodman Markhat,” said the corpse, without a hint of bubbling or slurring. “I congratulate you. Few have proven so amusing, or dared so much in my presence. I assume you have mentioned Oddling to your friends at Avalante?
“Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. It’s one of those delicate situations you mentioned. For both of us.”
I hadn’t said a word concerning my vision of Oddling to Evis really. But I hid my thoughts, forced a smile. Knowing the resting place of a thing like Hisvin was a secret whole Houses would fight to the death for.
The dead woman laughed, the sound of it wet and choking.
“I like you, goodman,” it said. “No one else dares speak so plain to me. I find it refreshing.”
She put her dead hand on my knee and squeezed.
“This time.”
I managed a nod.
“So we’re done. There won’t be any more new-moon vampire picnics. My clients got their sister back. I got my fee.”
“We are done. Peace and tranquility are restored. Good has triumphed, and evil has been, I am told, dismembered and then burned.”
The carriage clattered on.
“I trust Miss Tomas is recovered from her adventures?” asked the corpse.
“Stop the cab,” I said. “Stop it right now.”
“Of course,” said the corpse. The dead cab man cracked his whip at horses that weren’t there. At once, the carriage began to slow.
“I owe you. I owe you twice, from the War. But if you ever mention Darla’s name again I’ll make a little trip up to Oddling. I’ll come and I’ll break down your door, and I’ll gut you dead. You hear me? Dead. No coming back.”
The dead woman laughed. Her lips trailed black ropes of thick fluid and her withered black tongue writhed and worked.
“Oh well spoken,” she said. “I expected no less.”
I opened the door, and I was out.
The carriage glided away, flies and stench and screams in its wake.
I marched the opposite way, all the way to Darla’s door. She was there and safe, baking a pie, a spot of flour on the end of her nose. She took me in without a single questioning word.
We are “walking out”, as Mama calls it. Mama is always pestering me to buy Darla fireflowers on Sweetheart Days or take her shopping at lunch. Any day now I expect Mama will start pointing out houses in the neighborhood that would be just perfect for a nice young couple starting out.
I sighed, put my feet on my desk, laced my fingers behind my head. One thing at a time Mama. I won’t be walking any aisles until I can stop walking Rannit at night with my head halfway to the clouds and murder and flames in my heart.
Things the huldra had showed me come back to me sometimes. I’ll look at the light streaming through the clouds, and I’ll briefly see a way to hurl lightning. A candle will flicker, just so, and I’ll see tiny, scurrying manikins, darting away from the wavering light, but each at my beck and call if I could just remember those long, strange words.
Three-leg Cat leaped suddenly into my lap, and I spilled hot tea. Three-leg scampered away hissing, and I rose cussing. Then Mama’s shadow fell over my door.
“Boy,” she said, turning my latch. “You in there?”
I mopped tea, took a deep breath, thought about Mama’s question. Am I? Was I? Will I be?
Another shadow joined Mama’s. This one was tall and slender.
“Are you alone in there, Markhat?” asked Darla, and I could hear the impish grin she wore in her tone, though I could see only shadows through my cheap and bubbled glass.
“Time will tell,” I said. I drained the cup of its last sip of dark bitter tea. “Come on in, ladies,” I added, sitting up straight and hiding Mama’s cup in a drawer. The fancy chocolate cake Martha had dropped off earlier sat untouched on my desk. “I’ve baked us all a cake.”
Mama flung my door open, grinning, and all but dragged Darla inside.
Darla eyed Martha’s cake as though it might conceal Trolls or haunts.
“You did not,” she announced, “bake that cake.”
“I beg to differ, Miss Tomas,” I replied. “I have baked thousands of cakes in my day. In fact, I’m scraping the finder’s eye off my door and painting a baker’s rolling pin on it tomorrow.”
Darla laughed. Then she glided around my desk and dropped into my lap.
“Cakes and shirts,” she said. “Do I have reason to be jealous, Markhat?”
“Not at all,” I replied. I lifted an eyebrow, as if pondering. “Unless, of course, it’s an unusually good cake.”
We kissed.
We kissed again.
“Well I reckon I’ll be heading on,” gruffed Mama. She dropped a brown-wrapped parcel on my desk-more bitter tea leaves, no doubt-and waddled out my door.
“Alone at last,” said Darla. Her eyes twinkled. “And I know just what to-”
