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A tin whistle pointed. “Is that him?” He’d gone as pale as paper.
My partner is a quarter ton of defunct nonhuman permanently established in a custom-built oak chair. First thing you notice, after his sheer bulk, is his resemblance to a baby mammoth with a midget trunk only a quarter the length you might expect.
Most visitors don’t look close. They’re petrified by the fact that he can read minds.
One red top fingered the wh
istle on the cord around his neck. The talisman didn’t help. “Too cold in here, brothers.” He beat a retreat. His pal trampled on his heels.
Jerry didn’t get left behind.
The Dead Man is a Loghyr. They are exceedingly rare and exceedingly deliberate about giving up the ghost. This one has been procrastinating since he was murdered more than four hundred years ago.
DR. HARMER TRIED SMELLING SALTS. THE CHARACTER IN THE HALLWAY didn’t respond. Scithe finally had a flatbed haul him off to Guard headquarters after Harmer slapped a patch on his forehead leak. The bolt stayed where it was.
Scithe left us a promise to share information, worth the paper he never wrote it on. Jerry left a real receipt. I found it a home on Singe’s desk, snuggled up with Dr. Harmer’s bill.
The doctor went away, too, leaving Dean in a drugged sleep.
I let John Stretch know it was safe to come out.
Ratwomen cleaning specialists turned up fast. They had been waiting on the tin whistles. They had nothing flattering to say about the mess. They wrapped their faces with damp cloth and misted the fetid air with something that smelled like the spice in hot peppers. They used garden tools to scoop goop into pails they covered securely before sending them to be chunked in the river. They avoided contact with the goop.
John Stretch and I visited the Dead Man.
“Too cold in here,” the ratman complained.
“Singe’s fault. She claims the colder we keep him the longer he’ll last. And he don’t feel it.”
“I am sure she knows what she is talking about.”
“She knows everything about everything. So, what’s in the precious box?”
Air.
“Excuse me? Nothing? A guy died. Two more got hurt.”
It is a red herring. The real box is somewhere else.
“You came up with that, how?”
With great effort and stubborn determination, reasoned out from what little I retrieved from the creature Lieutenant Scithe took away.
The Dead Man likes his strokes. “That was some good work, then.”
The ladies are returning. It would appear that they enjoyed a limited success.
I let them in. Penny scooted past me and the cleaning women. Singe joined me in the chill.
“I hear you got lucky.” I flipped a thumb at the Dead Man.
“The gods smiled. Just barely. There was no trail for the girl. That means sorcery. We followed the wounded creature. Those things were not with her. We were tracking them when we saw her come out of the Benbow.” The Benbow is a staid old inn in the shadow of the Hill, used by out-of-towners who have business with the sorcerers infesting that neighborhood. “I sent Penny in. She oozed some girl charm and found out that she had just missed her pal Kelly, who calls herself Eliza now. Eliza shares a third-floor suite with her aunt, Miss Grünstrasse. They arrived in TunFaire yesterday.”
Penny joined us. “I had to check on Dean.”
“Doctor says he’ll be fine. Anything to add?”
“The manager is a little guy who looks like a squirrel. I put on some cute. He let me talk to people. Eliza came from Liefmold. There’s something not right about her. She doesn’t talk. Her aunt has a fierce accent. That’s when the squirrel got that I wasn’t really their friend. He sent somebody upstairs, probably with a warning, so I cleared out.”
