Cold Copper Tears (30 page)

Two kinds of guys had run from the excitement, those who were so ashamed that they never came back and those that did come back looking sheepish. They helped sort the mess out.

Maya hadn’t run. I don’t know why not. She couldn’t have done anything but get hurt. Fifteen minutes into the cleanup she grabbed my arm. “Agire bought it. And Hester is gone.”

For a moment I felt sorry for Jill. She deserved more of life... Then suspicion raised its snoot. “Where’s Agire?”

“Over where they were.”

I walked that way, keeping one eye on the smoldering black thing. Its flesh — if flesh it could be called — was almost consumed.

I found the Warden and knelt. Maya dropped to her knees opposite me. “Been hard on religious bigwigs lately,” I said. And on littlewings, too, as the cults and denominations stripped their priests and monks to see how well they were hung.

Blood had run from Agire’s mouth. He was lying on his back. There was no wound visible. I rolled him over, grunted.

A minute later I told Sadler, “Far as I can see I’ve done my part here. You guys know how to handle it. I’m going home.”

Morley stayed. Maya tagged along with me. She had nowhere else to go. We had to do some serious thinking about her future now. She said, “You’ve got something on your mind. What is it?”

“Jill.”

“What upset you?”

“She killed Agire. While we were distracted she stuck a knife in his back. Couldn’t have been anyone else because the excitement never got to them.”

“But why?” She didn’t claim Jill couldn’t do a thing like that.

“The Terrell Relics, I think. Agire gave them to her to hide. He never said he got them back. The only thing she left at our house was that key. That could’ve gotten her killed if she’d kept it. Hell. Maybe she was out to snatch the Relics from the beginning.”

“Why?”

“She’s fond of money and nice things. How much would the Church pay for the Relics? How about some other cult?”

Maya just nodded. After we’d walked a few blocks, she said, “We should be headed for the Tenderloin.”

Maybe. But I’d wanted to ask the Dead Man if it was really any of my business.

53

It was my business. I’d been hired by Peridont and I’d made a point of claiming he was still my client, dead or not.

Maya was pleased. I wasn’t so sure I was. It had started to snow earlier than I’d expected, heavier than I’d anticipated. The wind was nippy. If I’d let it go I’d be home, toasty warm, sipping a beer, wondering how I could get Dean out of the house and the Dead Man to go to sleep so Maya and I could...

We walked into a Tenderloin like a ghost town. The first snowfall always has that effect on TunFaire. Everyone gets in out of it and stays. We went around the side of the talk house, into the alley.

“Too late,” Maya said. There were tracks in the snow on the steps to the second floor, downward bound.

“Maybe.” I hustled upstairs, went inside, hurried along a hallway not unlike the one downstairs. One door stood open. I stuck my head in.

Jill’s, all right. I recognized the clothing scattered around. It included what she’d worn to the festivities down south. I cursed and headed out.

Maybe I was a little loud. A door opened. The elfish woman Polly looked out. “What’re you doing?” she asked.

I fell in love all over again. I gulped. “I came to tell you how much … I’d better go. I’m making a fool of myself.” Not bad for off the cuff, Garrett. I got out.

I rejoined Maya. “She’s gone. Let’s get after her before her tracks disappear.”

As we moved out I glanced up. The elfish woman was at the top of the steps looking down, wearing a puzzled smile.

Jill wasted no time but the snowfall betrayed her. We gained ground. Her tracks became fresher. The snowfall tapered off. Visibility improved. The street we were following entered a square. A figure shuffled across it ahead of us.

“That’s an old woman,” Maya said. “Look at her. She’s old enough to be Hester’s mother.”

I could see that, just the way the woman moved. She wore a lot of black, the way old women do, and moved slowly. “Damn it!” How had I confused trails? I thought back.

I hadn’t. This trail hadn’t crossed any other. That woman was the one who had come out of the talk house. And she was carrying a bundle she hugged to her breast. “Come on.” I began to trot.

The snow and wind muted our footsteps till we were a half-dozen yards from the woman.

She whirled.

No old woman moved like that.

“Hello, Jill.”

She straightened up, stopped pretending. “Garrett.”

Maya moved around to cut her off if she ran. I said, “I can’t let you get away.”

She sighed. “I know. That’s the way you are.” She shrugged. “I didn’t think you’d catch on so quick.”

“It was pure chance.”

“Suppose I turned them over voluntarily? Would that be enough?”

“I don’t think so. There’s a saying. Any man’s death diminishes me. You shouldn’t have killed Agire. You didn’t have to.”

“I know. It was stupid. I did it without thinking. The opportunity was there and I grabbed it. I knew it was a mistake before he fell. But that’s not something you can take back.”

“Let’s go.” I believed her. Maya didn’t. She stayed behind us throughout a walk all the way to the Dream Quarter. And as I walked beside Jill, in silence, shivering, I did a lot of reflecting, most of it on the fact that, though none had by my own hand, seven men had died the night we rescued Maya from the Orthodox complex. I could rationalize however I wanted but I was the guy who had taken Morley along.

As we approached the gate I told Jill, “Just hand them the casket. Don’t say anything. Don’t answer any questions.”

She looked at me oddly, her eyes as old as she was dressed. And that’s the way she did it. A guard came to see what she wanted. She pushed the casket into his hands and turned away, looked at me to see what next.

I said, “Good-bye,” and walked into a quickening snowfall, holding Maya’s arm. We pushed into the wind with our heads down and our cheeks biting cold, saying nothing. Crystals of ice formed at the corners of my eyes.

54

The Dead Man was pleased with himself. He was cocky as hell. Even mention of his miscalculation regarding Glory Mooncalled didn’t let the wind out of his sails. While Maya watched him nervously, unsure where she stood in his bachelor household, he crowed at me and I tried to shut him out.

I emptied my pockets, putting little bottles onto the shelf where the dread key had been hidden. We would do the obvious with that. There were no protective spells on it, only charms meant to fit it to the lock it served. I would cut it up and scatter the pieces among several scrap dealers. It would be no problem once it was melted down. That should’ve been done in the old days.

I placed the coin from the Blue Bottle on a shelf with memorabilia from other cases. I wished I had the one from Jill’s place instead. It would’ve meant more and would’ve reminded me more strongly of our fallibility. I wondered what she would do.

She’d survive. She was a survivor. In a way, I wished her well. I wished her free of the burden of her past.

As I lifted an iron chain and rock pendant from around my neck I hit the point where I’d had enough of the Dead Man. “You blew it on Jill, Old Bones. She sucked you up. You were so damned proud because you spotted that key that you never looked at what she was hiding behind her worry.”

You can shut him out or hide your thoughts from him if you concentrate. Obviously, Jill had kept the whereabouts of the Relics from him by worrying about the key, which was of no value to her anyway.

That slowed him down. But instead of confessing a shortcoming he changed the subject.
Why have you been wearing that rock? Have you joined one of the cults?

“Not hardly.” I grinned. “Sadler gave me this little gizmo. It keeps the thunder lizards away. In all the excitement that night he forgot to take it back. I didn’t remind him. It might come in handy someday.”

He gave me a big dose of that mental noise which serves him as laughter.
It might at that. It might at that
. I got a hint that his thoughts had turned to Maya. He sent,
I have stretched myself unreasonably rescuing you from the consequences of your actions this time. I am going to take a nap.

That was as close as he could get to saying he approved of a female friend of mine.

I went into the kitchen and told Dean he had his nights off to go home again, starting immediately, and hastened him out the door over his protests.

The city buzzed for days about the reappearance of the Terrell Relics. Once that became old news, though, it looked like we were in for a quiet winter.

Then somebody raided Chattaree, stealing a fortune in gold and silver and gems from the altars. No villains were identified. The Church suspected darko breed street gangs because of profane graffiti left at the scene.

I stayed away from Morley’s place. My contacts told me the Chattaree raiders had used a variety of nuisance spells to neutralize the priests who responded to the initial alarm. I didn’t want to be in the place if a gang of unhappy Churchmen turned up. From what Saucer-head told me, though, I gathered Morley didn’t change his lifestyle.

When Chodo Contague decides to do something he sticks with it till it gets done. For eight months he masterminded and underwrote the siege of Copperhead Bar, employing a fulltime staff of temporary employees numbering as many as a hundred. By the end of that eighth month he’d thrown damned near every rat, mouse, and bug in TunFaire at the island. He’d foiled four rescue attempts by the Sons of Hammon. He’d survived several attacks by eight-limbed devils conjured by the dead Loghyr. A very stubborn man, Chodo Contague.

He had a purpose behind his purpose, of course. He wasn’t just settling a score, he was making a highprofile effort to show the world what you were in for if you pissed him off. I didn’t look forward to that inevitable day when our careers pushed along irreconcilable paths. But for the moment he owed me and would do most anything for me.

For me it was a quiet, lazy winter for about ten days.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Glen Cook was born in 1944 in New York City. He has lived in Columbus, Indiana; Rocklin, California; and Columbia, Missouri, where he attended the state university. He attended the Clarion Writers Workshop in 1970, where he met his wife, Carol. “Unlike most writers, I have not had strange jobs like chicken plucking and swamping out health bars. Only fulltime employer I’ve ever had is General Motors, where I am currently doing assembly work in a light duty truck plant.

Hobbies include stamp collecting, and wishing my wife would let me bring home an electric guitar so my sons and I could terrorize the neighbors with our own home-grown head-banging rock and roll.”