“What?” I have an old reputation as a master of repartee.
Oh. Yeah. Might be demons were willing to kill for it. It must contain something special. Maybe something dangerous.
“Right. I was distracted. Wondering why we haven’t heard from the tin whistles yet.”
The red tops, the tin whistles, the Civil Guard, jump onto any excitement like a cat onto a herd of mice.
Singe said, “Put it where they won’t think that it might have something to do with the attack.”
“I should start my track before they get here. Otherwise, it could be tomorrow before I can get away.”
Good point. The red tops, with the Specials even worse, can be intrusive and obstructive.
John Stretch said, “Hide your weapon. They see that, they will lock everyone up.”
For sure. Our protectors don’t want us able to fight back.
SINGE AND DOLLAR DAN, WITH PENNY TAGGING ALONG, DID GET GONE before the Civil Guard arrived. I wasn’t thrilled about Penny going, but the Dead Man backed her up. I couldn’t argue with that.
John Stretch and I made tea, hovered over Dean, and waited. I asked, “How come you turned up so fast?”
“We keep an eye on the place.”
“You do?”
“Dollar Dan does, mostly. But there is always someone.”
“He’s wasting the emotion.”
“You know. I know. Even Dan knows. But I will not stick my nose in.”
“Probably best we don’t.”
“So Dan was watching when you showed up, which was a sure sign that something was about to happen.”
“Hey!”
“Does anything happen when you are not here?”
“Purely circumstantial.”
“No. Purely Singe. She sensibly sticks to high-margin, nontoxic projects like looking for lost pets and missing wives, and forensic accounting. She does not get tangled up with the undead, mad gods, or crazed sorcerers until you come around.”
He might have some basis for his argument. But it’s not like I go looking for weird. Bizarro comes looking for me.
“And there you go,” the ratman said. “You picked a family physician named Harmer.”
“I did not. Singe did because he’ll treat rat people, too.”
“I will wait in the kitchen while you handle the Guard.”
“Thank you.”
The minions of the law would be excessively intrigued by the presence of a senior crime boss.
I was headed for the door. “I’m always polite.”
“They start it.”
I do not deal well with authority. The Civil Guard is self-righteously authoritarian in the extreme.
Wow! He sounded like my mother when I was eight.
THERE WERE TWO TIN WHISTLES ON THE STOOP AND A PLATOON IN THE street. John Stretch’s henchrats had turned invisible.
Dr. Harmer was just dismounting from his pretty little buggy. His driver, his gorgeous half-elf wife, stuck with the rig in case somebody tried to kype it among all the red tops.
“Lieutenant Scithe. How are you? How’s the missus? Have you lost weight?”
“I
Scithe was a tall, thin man in a big, bad mood and an ill-fitting blue uniform to match. He didn’t talk about his wife. He didn’t ask about my fiancée.
My whole damned life works this way. Anything happens, whatever it is, it gets blamed on Ma Garrett’s oldest boy.
My partner gave me a mental head slap before my mouth started running.
Dr. Harmer shoved through the press, a thin, dark character with merry brown eyes, unnaturally white teeth, and a devilish goatee. “Show me what you’ve got.”
“Dean is in my office. He got smushed under this thing and a guy even bigger who turned into that pile of goop.”
That pile was getting smaller. Some was evaporating. Some was seeping through the floor, where it could lie in the cellar and make the house stink forever.
The doctor snorted. “I’ll look at Dean first.” He eased along the hallway, stepping carefully.
Scithe said, “We should have been here sooner. If we’d known you were back we’d have had somebody watching. And I had to ask the Al-Khar about special instructions.” The Al-Khar being Guard headquarters.
The Dead Man laid a mental hand on my shoulder.
“The Director said we didn’t need the Specials.”
Oh, good. The secret police would let me skate. For now. They’re so nice.
“How thoughtful.”
The Dead Man squeezed, just hard enough.
Scithe asked, “So what’s the story?”
“Same old, same old.”
“Meaning you’ll claim you don’t know a thing.”
“Not quite.” I told it like it happened, every detail, forgetting only the cherrywood box, Singe’s artillery, and John Stretch, who was probably devouring everything in my larder while he waited.
Scithe squatted beside the thing with the bolt in its forehead. “Still breathing, here.” He tapped the nock of the quarrel. “I could use a better light.”
The tin whistle who had come in with him said, “The wagon just rolled up, boss. I’ll get a lantern.”
A big brown box had pulled in behind the doctor’s rig. It had crowns, keys, nooses, and whatnots painted on to proclaim it a property of the Civil Guard supported by a royal subsidy.
Scithe asked, “Any theories, Garrett?”
“Only what’s obvious. He probably wanted to see the Dead Man. Somebody didn’t think he should.”
“They got their wish. What does the Dead Man think?”
I replied, “More or less.” Mostly a whole lot more.
Scithe said, “I see ogre and troll and bits of other races.”
“Trolls and ogres don’t mix.”
Scithe shrugged. “I see what I see. Which is that somebody with a huge ugly stick whaled on all his ancestors for five generations back. Then he fell in a barrel of ugly and drank his way back to the top.”
The three strains of rat people exist because of old-time experimental sorcery.
