Cold Copper Tears (18 page)

I didn’t expect to find much and I was right again. The scavengers and sightseers and souvenir hunters had picked the bones clean. They’d even stripped the stiffs. The rat-men were bitching because there wasn’t anything left.

If they want the cream, they ought to get there in time to skim it.

I did notice one thing right off. Those sopranos had taken over the whole building and had been there long enough to turn it into a weird residential temple. One wall in every room had been replastered and painted with murals depicting creatures with eight limbs, no two the same. I saw a spider, a crab, an especially ugly octopus, and a lot of things that don’t come with eight limbs, including a ringer for the thing that had visited Chodo. One double-ugly was human except that it had a skull for a face and something disgusting in every hand. Above him was the same motto as on the temple coins, “He Shall Reign Triumphant.”

I said, “I don’t think I’d like that.”

“Ugly mother, ain’t he?” a ratman remarked.

“He is. Any idea who he’s supposed to be?”

“You got me, chief. Looks like something somebody dreamed up while he was doing weed to get him through a withdrawal fit.”

“Yeah. Not your average boy next door.”

There wasn’t anything else. I hit the street. We headed south. I didn’t have much to say. I was thinking that if I ever stopped chasing around long enough I’d have to spend some time researching these guys and their devil god.

We walked another mile. I started mumbling about only now realizing how damned big TunFaire is. One of the Sisters told us the guy we were following had gone into a warehouse half a mile ahead, fifty yards from where the one getaway boat had been abandoned.

The girls had the place scouted when we got there. There were two doors, front and back, and no windows at ground level, just some high up to let out the heat during the summer. The main door was big enough to roll wagons in and out. The girls had the back covered. They had no idea who or what was inside. They didn’t want to find out.

I looked at the place. What did I have here? An army of kids, nasty but not real fighters. My angels, who had no interest in launching a raid. And a big unknown.

“I’m going in there,” I said.

“You’re crazy, Garrett.” Tey shook her head slowly.

“Sometimes you have to make things happen.”

34

The man-sized door in the wagon door wasn’t locked. I stepped inside. The place was as dark as a tax man’s heart. I listened. I heard nothing but what might have been mice scurrying, then what sounded like a door slamming at the far end of the place.

I eased forward, sliding my feet, feeling the air with my left hand. Far away, I glimpsed a flicker of light above head level. I kept moving cautiously, wishing I had owl’s eyes.

I didn’t get that wish but I did get light.

A bunch of guys jumped out of nowhere, opening the shutters of lanterns they’d kept well hidden. I counted nine. A tenth, from behind the others, said, “Mr. Garrett. We’d begun to fear you hadn’t taken the bait.”

“Sorry I’m late. Had trouble with tardiness all my life.”

Weapons appeared. My sense of humor wasn’t going to play with this crowd.

“If I’d known it was that kind of party I’d have dressed.”

I had no idea how I’d be affected myself, but I let loose with my green bottle.

I reacted the same as everyone else. In three seconds I not only didn’t know where I was or why I was there, but I wasn’t too sure who I was. I couldn’t move in a straight line. I tried — and hung a left and walked into a stack of crates. They were empty. I kept going. The whole pile came down on top of me.

That was one to brag to the grandkids about.

I tried to fight the crates, but they were too quick. So I just gave up and let them have their way with me.

I would have taken a nap except a bunch of people kept yelling at some guy called Garrett and I couldn’t get to sleep for all the racket.

Somebody dug me out of the pile. Two of my angels stood me up while another popped me in the face. That didn’t help a whole lot.

The other two started tying guys up. There were girls all over the place, looking for something portable and valuable. I got my tongue untangled. “Maya.”

Kids started running around yelling, “Maya!”

Guys yakked about getting hold of some guy named Chodo, they could sell him their prisoners for a fortune. I seemed to remember them as angels. They didn’t sound very angelic.

My head began to clear. “I’m all right now, guys. You don’t need to hold me up.”

Wedge snapped, “What the hell kind of stunt was that, Garrett? Walking into a trap you knew was there.”

“Had to make something happen.” I wasn’t going to admit the ambush had been a surprise to me, too. Anyway, I figured it would not be smart to brag that I’d wanted to make them come in the warehouse after me. They might not appreciate that.

They grumbled and let me go. I picked up a lantern and tottered back into the warehouse, following shouting girls.

Maya was in a loft office all the way back, above another double-ugly homemade temple. She was tied up enough for four kids. She looked a little shopworn, with bruises and abrasions that said she hadn’t been a cooperative prisoner.

I didn’t find her. The girls got there first. They were slicing her out of her cocoon when I arrived. But I got the credit. “Garrett! I knew you’d come.”

“Had to, Maya. When somebody does something to a guy’s partner, a guy is supposed to do something about it.”

She squealed and stumbled at me.

Some females can’t tell a wisecrack from a marriage proposal. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, kid, but maybe you ought to stand downwind till we get you next to some soap and water.”

“We can throw her in the river, Garrett,” Tey suggested.

Maya glared green death. Tey glared back. There was no love lost between those two. I asked, “How many got away?”

“None.” Tey snapped it. “They were all waiting for you except one. They have him out back.”

“Good. Can you walk, Maya? We can’t hang around. These guys have friends who’ll check up on them. Not to mention the Doom is way off its turf.”

“You’re not going to ask those guys questions?”

“If I was to set an ambush I wouldn’t use guys that could tell anybody if they blew it. And these guys are making a career of screwing up. You think any of them can tell me anything you didn’t pick up while you were their guest?”

She admitted it was unlikely. “They were a bunch of farmers before they came to TunFaire. They don’t know spit from dog doo. They’re just trying to do what their wacko god wants.” But she wanted to get back at somebody.

“Kick somebody in the ribs on the way. Come on. We’ve got to go. Thank Tey for helping find you. She didn’t have to.”

Maya did, but not very graciously. She must have felt threatened. When you’re a chuko, you have to prove yourself everyday.

There wasn’t anyone for her to kick. Wedge had decided reinforcements were likely to arrive so he and his buddies had made sure they’d collect whatever bounties Chodo had put on those guys.

Maya looked bad when we hit the street. I said, “I told you Wedge wasn’t nice people.”

“Yeah.” After we walked a while, she said, “Men like that Wedge, they’re a whole different kind of bad, aren’t they? People like my stepfather … He was cruel, but I don’t think he could’ve killed a dog. That Wedge did it like it was nothing.”

Chukos put a lot of value on being tough. And a lot of them are hard, nasty little critters — especially in front of an audience. Some are dead losses at thirteen. But some still have the kid in there somewhere behind the defenses, and that kid wants to believe there’s some point to living. Maya still contained that hidden child. And it wanted some reassurance.

“Who do you think does the most real harm?” I asked, thinking maybe anybody else was better qualified for this. “The emotional cripple who tries to cripple people who can’t protect themselves? Or the emotionally dead killer like Wedge who basically doesn’t bother anybody but them that asked for it?”

That wasn’t saying what I wanted to say the best way. Maybe there were big holes in it, but there was plenty of truth, too. The hurt a creep like her old man did lasts a lifetime. It gets passed on to the next generation. Wedge’s kind of hurt is flashy but it doesn’t last. And it doesn’t eat up kids who can’t fight back.

I didn’t like Wedge. I didn’t like what he was. He probably didn’t have much use for me but I’d bet he’d agree.

Anyway, I knew what I was saying. And Maya seemed to get the message. “Garrett …”

“Never mind. We’ll talk when we get home. The bad time is over.”

Sure it was. You smooth talker, Garrett. Now try and convince yourself.

Dean fussed over Maya like he was her mother. I didn’t get a chance to talk to her. The sun was coming up, so I said the hell with it and went to bed.

35

My own body turned traitor. I woke up at noon and couldn’t get back to sleep. I should have been smug, the hero who had gone out to save the damsel and had succeeded, but I didn’t feel smug or heroic. I felt confused, angry, put upon, frustrated. Most of all I felt out of control.

I’m not used to getting knocked around without at least some idea of what’s happening and why. In this one I was starting to suspect that maybe nobody knew and everybody was too busy bobbing and weaving to figure out why we were in the ring.

Well, hell! I’m a thug for hire. I get paid. Do I have to think, too?

I want to know, for my own peace of mind. I’m no Morley Dotes, for whom the money is the only morality.

I went downstairs to stoke the body’s fires.

Dean had heard me knocking around and had gotten a meal started. Hot tea was on the table. Re warmed muffins landed beside it as I entered the kitchen. There was butter and blueberry preserves and apple juice, and sausages were popping in the pan while eggs boiled.

The place was crowded. “You having a party?” Two women were there with Dean.

He gave me one of his looks.

I recognized one of his more determined nieces, Bess, but the other woman, whose hair Bess was plaiting … “Maya?”

“Do I look too awful?”

No. “Stand up. Turn around. Let me look at you.” She didn’t look awful at all. They’d drum her out of the Doom if they saw her like this. “I just ran out of excuses for not taking you out. Except for maybe there’d be riots.” She looked good. I’d guessed that. But I hadn’t guessed just how good.

Bess said, “Down, boy.”

Dean said, “Mr. Garrett!” He used his protective father tone.

“Phoo! I don’t mess with children.”

“I’m not a child,” Maya protested. And when you thought about it, she wasn’t. “I’m eighteen. If it wasn’t for the war I’d be married and have a couple of kids.”

It was true. In prewar times they’d married them off at thirteen or fourteen and had given up hope of getting rid of them by the time they were fifteen.

“She’s got a point,” I told Dean.

“You want these eggs the way you like them?”

How typical of him to drag in extraneous issues. “You won’t hear another word from me.”

“Grown men,” Maya told Bess, who nodded in contempt. That nearly sent Dean off on one of those tirades that bust out of him every time one of his nieces opens her mouth.

It occurred to me that Bess was barely three months older than Maya. Dean had no trouble picturing Bess married to me.

People seldom see any need to be consistent.

The key word there, though — of course — is “married.”

I said, “Let’s forget it. Maya. Tell me what you learned while those people had you.” I went to work eating.

Maya sat down. Bess started on her hair again. “There isn’t much to tell. They didn’t try to entertain or convert me.”

“You always pick up more than you think, Maya. Try.”

She said, “All right. I got the bright idea I could show you something if I followed those guys. All I showed you was a fat chance to tell me you told me so.”

“I told you so.”

“Smartass. They grabbed me and dragged me off and kept me in a place they used for a temple. A weird, grungy place they’d made over by painting the walls with ugly pictures.”

“I saw it.”

“I sat through their religious services. Three times a day I sat through them. Those guys don’t do anything but work and eat and pray for the end of the world. I think. Mostly they didn’t use Karentine in their services.”

“They sound like a fun bunch.”

Maya snatched a buttered muffin off my plate and smiled brightly. She was moving right in. “Get used to it, Garrett. Yeah. They were fun. Like an abscessed tooth.”

I chewed sausage and waited.

“They’re really negative, Garrett. In the Doom I know people who are negative, but those guys could give lessons. I mean it. They were praying for the end of the world.”

“You’re telling me things I didn’t know. Keep going.”

That was praise enough to light her up. It takes so little sometimes. I had a feeling she’d turn out all right, given encouragement. “Tell me more.”

She said, “They call themselves the Sons of Hammon. I think Hammon must have been some kind of prophet, about the same time as Terrell.”

Dean said, “He was one of Terrell’s original six Companions. And the first to desert him. A bitter parting over a woman.”

I looked at him in surprise.

He continued, “Later dogma says Hammon betrayed Terrell’s hiding place to the Emperor Cedric — if you find him mentioned at all. But in the Apocrypha, written that same century and kept intact in secret since, it’s the other way around and Hammon died two years before Terrell was turned in by his own wife. Known to us as Saint Medwa.”

“What?” I gave the old man the long look now. He’d never shown much interest in religion or its special folklore. “What is this? Where’d you get all this? When did you become an expert? I’ve never heard of this Hammon character and my mother dragged me to church until I was ten.”

“Council of Ai, Mr. Garrett. Five Twenty-One, Imperial Age. Two hundred years before the Great Schism. All the bishops and presters and preators attended, along with a host of imperial delegates. In those days every diocese spawned its own heresy. And every heretic was a fanatic. The emperor wanted to end a century of fighting. In Five Eighteen in Costain, in one day of rioting, forty-eight thousand had been killed. The emperor was a confirmed Terrillite and he had the swords. He ordered the Council to expunge the memory of Hammon, so the proto-Church and Orthodox sects wrote him out of their histories. I know because my father taught me. He was a Cynic seminarian for three years and a lay deacon all his life.”