Angry Lead Skies (3 page)

Even so, soon every fourth word out of Kip’s mouth sounded vaguely familiar. They may even have been real words — completely out of context.

“No. Never. He doesn’t have that kind of imagination. But this’s exactly the way he got when those elves came looking for him.”

“Elves? What elves? Are we suddenly starting to get somewhere?”

“No. I just feel more comfortable calling them elves. Say they were elf-sized but they weren’t like any elves that we know. They were female. You ever see a female elf who didn’t look like the devil’s disciple?”

Not my choice of descriptives but I knew what he meant. Even the ugly elf girls are pretty enough and wicked enough to melt your spine with a wink and a smile and a wiggle if the fancy takes them. “No. Never have.”

“These girls... weren’t. They were almost asexual.”

“How did you know?”

Garrett! I do not enjoy such an oversufficiency of mind-space that I can waste any following your digressions. Save that for later. The creature is in the alley. It is confused. It can be captured. Will you please see to that and cease this passing the time of day with Mr. Playmate?

“Play, my sedentary sidekick tells me one of your elves is skulking around in the alley out back. Why don’t we go invite him to the party? We can smack him around a little to break his concentration. Old Bones can ransack his mind while he’s distracted. Which means I’ll be able to find out what this’s all about and you’ll find out if there’s any real reason for you to worry.”

Damn! That wasn’t the best word to use. Playmate worries. All the time. And his worry-to-success equation is an inverse proportion. He only gives up worrying and fussing when things get truly awful.

Garrett!

“All right!” He’s so damned lazy he can’t be bothered to die but he expects me to scurry like bees getting ready for winter. And sees no inconsistency. “All right. Here’s the official plan, Play.”

4

Playmate’s job was to come into the alley from its Wizard’s Reach end. Being younger and more athletic I took the longer way around so I could close in from the other direction. I trotted west on Macunado, then ducked into a narrow, fetid breezeway, where I kicked up a covey of pixies who were living under an overturned basket. Poor, new immigrants, obviously. I knew before I saw their ragged country costumes. “You folks better find yourselves someplace where you won’t have to fight off the cats and dogs and rats.” Though TunFaire’s dogs and cats do, mostly, know better than to bother little people. But rats, while cunning, aren’t always real bright. And as for the others, hunger has a way of overwhelming even the most pointed of past lessons.

These little folk thanked me for my concern by swarming around me, cursing in tiny voices while threatening to stick me with teensy poisoned rapiers.

When I entered the breezeway the Goddamned Parrot was a passenger on my shoulder. He was behaving. But once I started leaping and swatting at those damned mosquitoes he flapped toward a perch high above, whence he spouted gratuitous advice. To the pixies: “Stay to his left! He doesn’t see as well on that side... Awk!”

The racket had attracted the interest of one of those leather-winged flying lizards that sometimes nap up on the rooftops between pigeon snacks. They aren’t common anymore, mostly because they have trouble outthinking large rocks. They make rats and pigeons look like shining intellectuals. They are very slow learners.

This one looked particularly shopworn. The trailing edges of its wings were tattered. It had patches of mold on its chest.

When it looked at the Goddamn Parrot it saw the answer to all its prayers.

It was the scruffiest flying lizard I’d ever seen but it still looked like the answer to a prayer or two of my own. Life would be so much simpler if I got rid of the chicken in the clown suit — as long as I could manage it in some way that wouldn’t aggravate the Dead Man or Morley Dotes. Morley had gifted me with the jabbering vulture, accompanied by a strong suggestion that no harm should come to the monster, at my hand or through my negligence.

The pixies lost interest in me the moment the lizard started trying to get into the breezeway. They knew a real threat when they smelled one. A chorus of squeals preceded a general surge of the flock toward the scrofulous flyer.

The Goddamn Parrot dropped back down to my shoulder. He was shaking. For once in his sorry existence he was fresh out of smart-ass remarks.

As I got out of there the pixies proved that they’d been playing with me all along. As I left the breezeway a matron zipped over to ask which cuts interested me. “They’s good eatin’ on them things, Big’un. The giblets is real tasty when they’s grilled.”

“You people keep the whole thing. I brought my lunch.” I jerked a thumb at my shoulder ornament.

“Ooh... Pretty,” one small voiced piped.

Another wanted to know, “Kin we have some of the feathers?”

I sensed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Something came over me. My jaw locked up. I couldn’t mouth the offer I make almost every day, as many as a dozen times. I wanted to shriek.

I couldn’t turn loose of the dodo in the clown suit!

The air seemed to tinkle and sparkle with invisible chuckles.

So! Old Bones wasn’t quite as preoccupied elsewhere as he wanted me to think. I should’ve gotten suspicious when the painted jungle buzzard demonstrated such exceptional manners.

Interesting. The Dead Man hadn’t ever before touched me directly this far from the house. Maybe he
was
distracted. Maybe distracted so much that he couldn’t be as careful keeping the full range of his abilities concealed. Or maybe he just liked the Goddamn Parrot too much to let him go.

Wish I had time to experiment.

After our initial divergence of viewpoint the pixies and I went our ways on friendly terms. Meaning they were too busy harvesting everything but the flyer’s squeak to waste time tormenting a Big’un. Though a couple of youngsters did follow me, mainly to get out of doing chores.

I headed east, down the alley, afraid my delays might have allowed my quarry to give me the slip. Though if I’d thought I would’ve realized that my foul-beaked companion would’ve been barking like the wolf at the end of the world if the Dead Man had suffered a moment’s disappointment.

Something buzzed behind my ear. Not the family bird-brain, who was on patrol now, or, more likely, hitting on some nitwitted pigeon. I started to swat the sound, held up just in time. A pixie girl, definitely a little inexperienced, unwittingly drifted forward far enough to be seen from the corner of my eye.

One key to success in my racket is making friends. Lots of friends. In as broad a range of stations, races, and professions as is possible. A pixie ally would be a huge resource.

I started sweet-talking.

No telling what I might have accomplished if Fate hadn’t decided to roll my bones.

The pixies let out startled shrieks at the same moment that the Goddamn Parrot barked my name.

5

I got about a tenth of second’s glimpse of a man who fit his name perfectly. Unusual. He was all rounds. He had a round head with dwindling thickets of hair sagging to the south, leaving a blinding shine behind. He had a round mouth with puffy, round lips, round eyes, and a nose that was almost round as a hog’s snoot. He had a round body, too. I didn’t get a good look at his feet.

The whole globular package didn’t stand but maybe five inches over five feet tall.

This was Bic Gonlit. Bounty hunter. A man you’d peg as an apple-cheeked little baker addicted to his own products. Or a guy who cracked feeble jokes in place of real entertainment in some dive harboring upwardly mobile aspirations toward the lower lower class. He was a man who had to wear elevator boots to get up enough altitude to cork a big, handsome boy like me.

Had to be the boots. He was known for the boots. Legend said he had had them specially made by a dwarfish cobbler in a sleazy little shop off Bleak on the southern edge of the Tenderloin. So rumor would have it, because the boots had been made into Gonlit’s signature inside the TunFaire underworld.

Or maybe he’d brought a ladder, since ordinarily he was way shorter than me. The boots only made him two inches taller.

I didn’t get a real gander at the infamous boots. I didn’t see any ladder, either. I did get a vague glimpse of what looked like an overweight donkey behind my assailant, then an outstanding look at an upwardly rushing alley surface after Gonlit leaped up and whacked me across the back of my skull. The one tap turned my bones to jelly. I sagged into the muck like a candle left out in the summer sun. The Goddamn Parrot and the pixie girl cheered me on. Or jeered me. Or something. They made a lot of noise. I think the donkey started laughing.

Playmate was fanning me when I opened my eyes, hoping for some blond angel of mercy. Good friend that he is, he had dragged me into the shade and propped me against a wall, all before anyone found me and explored my pockets for hidden treasure. I made a crippled kitten sort of sound to express my appreciation and ask when the angel would arrive.

Playmate said, “I wouldn’t move around, was I you.”

“I am me. And I don’t plan to even breathe hard. My head! And I didn’t drink a drop.” This morning. “I’ve got to get ahold of a war-surplus helmet. One of the kind with that big-ass spike on top.”

“You’d still have to remember to wear it. What happened?”

“I was going to ask you.”

“I don’t know. I heard your bird screaming. Made me suspect that you’d found yourself on the short end again. You’ve got a talent for that. I charged up here. Behold! You really were in trouble. A roly-poly little bald guy who looked a lot like Bic Gonlit was strutting around you measuring you for a hearty whack with the great hairy club he was packing.”

“It was Bic Gonlit. I caught a glimpse before the lights went out. He must’ve been wearing his extra special tall boots, though.”

“This isn’t his normal style, Garrett.”

“You know him?” I for sure wanted to know him better than I did now. What little I did know was hearsay. He was a bounty hunter who brought them in alive. He had quirks and unusual personal habits and magic boots. I’d seen him just often enough to recognize him. “You failed to mention that when the name came up before.”

“I didn’t need to mention it. Kip told you all you needed. Then. I only know his reputation, anyway. Which doesn’t include murder. He grew up in my part of town. He’d be a little older than me. He’s supposed to have a big taste for fine food and good wine. Including the TunFaire Gold when he can get it. But if that really was him he’s sure gone downhill since the last time I saw him.”

“That was him. Or his evil twin. Maybe he’s been eating so high he’s had to expand his repertoire.”

“He wouldn’t just bushwhack a guy.”

“Why the hell not?” Could Playmate be that naive? Even I would bushwhack a guy fifteen inches taller and fifteen years younger than me, not to mention fifteen stone lighter. Assuming that I was adequately motivated.

The quality and the nature of the motivation is what’s worth debating.

On reflection Playmate decided he had no ready answer.

I asked, “Where is he now?”

“He took off when he saw me coming. Jumped on a burro not much bigger than him and rode off, covering his face.”

“Think he recognized you?”

“I expect that’s why he bothered to hide his face. I mean, how many people of my size and coloring are there? And how many of those are likely to be caught hanging around with you?”

If Bic Gonlit knew who we were he was about to become scarcer than lizard hair. “Good points. I wonder. Did he know whose head he was bopping before he tried to brain me?” I have a reputation, partly for lacking humor about things like headbashing when it’s my melon involved, partly for having acquired a number of close friends whose responses would be unpredictable if something unpleasant happened to me that wasn’t my own fault. Some might start sharpening their teeth.

It’s hard to imagine it being my own fault, but, in the laws of obligatory revenge there
are
exit codicils about “He asked for it,” and “He needed it.”

Playmate might be one of those friends. My partner is, definitely. I like to believe that Saucerhead Tharpe and Morley Dotes are others, along with several powerful, wealthy family chieftains I’ve helped in my time. Those include the beermaking Weiders, the shoemaking Tales, and the we-don’t-talk-about-what-we-do Contagues.

The Contagues would be the real worry for any villain, though the least likely avengers. The Contagues captain the Outfit, the Syndicate, the Commission, the central committee of the city’s organized crime. Their strength and reach and savagery when roused are legendary. Even our wizardly overlords on the Hill concern themselves about needlessly rousing the ire of Chodo Contague and his daughter Belinda. Chodo and Belinda do not allow themselves to be constrained by traditional legal customs or the normal rules of evidence. They hurt people. And they kill people. They’re supposed to be my friends and they scare the whiskers off me.

At the time it did not occur to me that Bic Gonlit might have wanted to collect a bounty on me.

“What do you want to do?” Playmate asked.

“Besides find Bic Gonlit and whip fifty pounds of lard off his broad butt? Go home and get cleaned up.” TunFaire’s alleyways aren’t paved. Neither are they kept clean. Where they exist at all they’re little more than broad, shallow trenches where refuse can accumulate in anticipation of eventual rains heavy enough to carry some of the waste down into one of the storm channels that drain into the river.

It takes a conscientious sort, willing to make an extra effort, to take advantage of the travel opportunities offered by TunFaire’s alleys. The King’s good and lazy subjects employ them when they’re too shy to dispose of something in the street out front. So by the grace of Bic Gonlit I made the intimate acquaintance of some of my neighbors’ greatest embarrassments — most of which, of course, would seem trivial to a disinterested witness.