Gilded Latten Bones

'Touchy.'

'Damned straight.'

'Why do you have all these people here, then?'

'I don't. I didn't invite them. Did you get an invitation from me?'

'No. But this is your house.'

'It's a place where I'm staying because I thought Morley would be safer here than anywhere else.'

He gave me a dubious look.

'The first I knew about this was just a while ago when Singe woke me up from a perfectly beautiful nap and told me to come help.'

'You always blow a creditable cloud of smoke.'

'Again, what do you want?'

'We've been warned off this case.'

'You're going to let it slide? You lost people.'

'Garrett, can the shit. For the rest of us this isn't about Morley Dotes. About him and his problems I don't much care.'

'Tell him that.'

'Gladly. Is he up for an interview?'

'He's in a coma.'

'Too bad. But his testimony isn't critical. What is critical would be our incorruptibility. When we started out Deal and I were promised that no one would be above the law. Not even the Royal Family. Prince Rupert stood behind us when we stepped on sensitive toes. But this time he's telling us to back off. We have to let it go. The same word has gone out to the Syndicate.'

'Who has the drag to bully the Crown Prince?'

'Exactly. We mean to find out.'

'You're not going to back off?'

'We're going to be less obviously vigorous. Unobtrusive. But the more pressure we get the more we'll dig. Same pertains for the Syndicate, I suspect. You push the Contagues, they push back.'

'You think dread of an explosion in production of dead bodies might be why the Prince wants to stand down?'

'No. I think somebody on the Hill, somebody who can make even Rupert shit his knickers, wants the thing left alone. I'll even go so far as to guess that the Hill as a whole wants it left alone.'

'Because the villains might be some of them?'

'In part. But more because if we poke our noses in very far we're likely to turn up all sorts of things they don't want the public to know.'

I poured myself some tea. Dean was outside the kitchen door telling me to hurry up. He had to get back to work.

I raised a questioning eyebrow.

Block said, 'I'll stipulate that most Hill folk are as distressed by the warehouse as the rest of us. But they want to handle it themselves.'

'So let them.'

'And next time somebody wants to shut the Guard out? Next time somebody wants to handle justice privately?'

Block had a fierce case of the same disease that ruled Relway. Most of the time it did more good than bad.

'All I can do is wish you luck. I'll be right here babysitting.'

He didn't believe a word.

Sometimes there's no point trying to communicate with some people. They live everything inside their heads. Outside things that don't fit get ignored.

Westman Block was a good man. I liked him. But he could frustrate me like almost no one else but Tinnie.

'Come on in, Dean.'

Dean burst in and got cracking. He was determined to render me destitute before the sun went down.

37

Belinda isolated me, in with Morley, amongst the deaf ratmen. 'They insist that we back off. That we have to let this alone.'

'They? We?'

'Don't play word games.'

'I'm not. You know what I mean. Nobody has told me not to do anything. And the only we I'm part of is me and Morley.'

'Then I'd have to ask why most everyone you know by name is here. I even saw that poisoner, Kolda, a minute ago.'

'He's not a poisoner.' Distracted. 'I don't know why you're all here. I had nothing to do with that. Like I told the General.'

She didn't believe me either. Someday I'll make a huge score because nobody will take me at face value. I could loot the Royal Mint, then run around yelling about how it was me that done it.

I did know what was going on. Singe and the Dead Man had cooked a plan to investigate out of my house. They would use people we had worked with in the past. I found it disconcerting that they weren't troubled by a Hill interest potent enough to make Prince Rupert back off. Old Bones must have seen a way to get away with defying that which must not be defied.

This was shaping up to be what I'd had in mind when I'd visited with the Windwalker. Who was not around today.

I asked, 'Is that healer ever going to come?'

'Are you kidding? After what I paid him before?'

'And he isn't worried about my friend in the other room?'

'He doesn't know. I told him you spilled the medicine. That we'll want more. But first he has to take another look at Morley. I'm pretty sure there's something more wrong than what he thought before.'

'And if he's a villain?'

'We'll know that straight off, won't we?'

We contemplated our mutual friend. Morley looked as peaceful as a man in a coffin.

I kept wondering why it was taking the healer so long to show.

He is out there. All the traffic makes him nervous. He does not like that but cannot shake his greed. He will come into the trap eventually.

My impatience faded. I just worried about Morley. Till my mind wandered off to Factory Slide.

An unexpected voice asked, 'Garrett, are you all right?'

I looked up. 'Gilbey?' Manville Gilbey and his recently acquired wife, Heather, were framed in the doorway. Gilbey was the number-two man in the Weider brewing empire. He seemed concerned. 'I'm all right.'

'We haven't seen you at the brewery lately. When I heard about your open house I thought we'd stop by and see what your situation is.'

'It's marginal despair.' I glanced at Morley. 'What do you need to know?'

'Nothing, now. We've been circulating long enough to get a flavor. Max will stand behind you.'

Of course, because Max Weider didn't like folks involved in illegal experimental sorcery. Several of his family were murdered by shape-shifting things created in abandoned beer vats. Max wouldn't mind exterminating the whole tribe of sorcerers.

Heather Gilbey was usually more forthcoming and social, naturally, than Manville, but today she just smiled and kept her mouth shut.