The Five Faces (The Markhat Files) (17 page)

The whole time we talked, Buttercup sat on the floor at our feet, looking up at me with puzzlement. She held long, whispered conversations with her skull, which kept its hollow eyes upon me no matter which way Buttercup squirmed.

Darla was oblivious to their presence.

We finished one pot of coffee. The other sat on our tiny kitchen counter, half a dozen steps away. Neither of us could muster the energy to go and fetch it.

I don’t know who fell asleep first. My last memory was of Buttercup whispering to her head-bone and then leaping into my lap.

She snuggled up between Darla and me, and began to hum some lilting little tune, and then I was dreaming of three-sided coins and a sky that rose and fell with the tide.

Mama Hog pounded on the door, but that wasn’t what woke me.

It was Buttercup’s gentle tugging on my ear that did the trick.

Darla was slumped against me, fast asleep despite Mama’s fusillade of blows. Buttercup let go of my ear and put her finger to her lips and giggled before leaping from my lap and simply stepping through the door Mama threatened to break down.

I shook Darla awake and then got my legs and feet sorted and made for the door.

“I’m coming,” I shouted.

“About time,” said Mama when I opened the door. “I brung Granny Knot.” She scowled up at me. “Boy, you look plum pitiful.”

“I see the mark of Angel wings upon ye, lad!” said Granny with a wink. “Where art thy sideboards? Whence come your soups?”

“Come in, ladies,” I said. Granny smiled and curtseyed. Mama stomped inside, still huffing and puffing from her exertions at the door.

Buttercup followed. She held a ragged doll, but her skull was nowhere in sight.

“No use leavin’ her locked up at home,” said Mama. “She was determined to come.”

I shot a glance at Darla, but she was making for the bathroom.

“So Buttercup came with you, just now?”

“Hell yes, she come with me just now.” Mama plopped herself down on the couch and glared at our empty breakfast plates. “Reckon the coffee’s gone too.”

“There’s a fresh pot right there,” I said, pointing. “Help yourself.”

Mama brightened and did just that.

Buttercup winked.

I shook my head and rubbed my eyes and didn’t waste much time wondering how Buttercup could be humming in my lap and out walking with Mama at the same time.

Mama rattled things in the kitchen. Granny Knot pulled a chair close and put her hand on mine and smiled at me.

“It’s good to see you again, Mr. Markhat,” she whispered. “I’ve missed our conversations.”

Granny Knot is what Mama calls a spook doctor. Spook doctors claim to speak to the dead, usually acting as mediators between the ethereal world of spirit and the more mundane realm of the bereaved widow or the heartbroken father.

All spook doctors are raving lunatics, at least in public, and Granny is no exception, at least while anyone else is listening. I suspect Granny drops the ranting when she’s alone with Mama, just like she does with me, but I’ve never asked.

“Mama fill you in on what we saw last night?”

Granny nodded. She wasn’t smiling. “Deeply disturbing. There have been rumors of an active necromancer working in Rannit for weeks now. I had hoped them to be false.”

“Boy, you got any sugar handy?”

“I mix mine with seagulls!” said Granny. “Seagulls and spring corn!”

“Second cabinet on the right,” I said. Mama resumed her search for condiments.

“What the hell is a necromancer?” I whispered, glad Darla had ducked out to freshen up.

Granny’s face hardened. “A fool. A necromancer doesn’t content themselves with speaking to the dead,” she said. “They seek to return a semblance of life to them.”

“And? Do they?”

Granny gripped my hand. “What they do is an abomination, Mr. Markhat,” she said. “If the rumors are true. If that is what you saw. Slay it, young man. Cut off its head and salt it and burn the rest.”

Mama stomped back to the couch, slurping at coffee. “Well, this ain’t half-bad, boy. I could take right well to this sort of fancy living.”

Granny withdrew her hand. “Be ye not tempted with comforts and worldly delights,” she said, wagging a finger at Mama. “Suffering begats righteousness, but ease is the womb of sin.”

Darla came out of the washroom, her eyes bright and merry, her hair combed and flawless, her smile as fresh as if she hadn’t spent a sleepless night thinking her husband dead or at least mortally wounded.

“Good morning, Mama, Granny Knot,” she said. “And you too, Buttermilk! Or is it Butterchurn?”

Buttercup squealed and hugged Darla’s waist, as though she hadn’t spent the whole morning snuggled up beside her.

I bit back a yawn. Darla beamed and took Buttercup’s doll and I could have sworn the doll had red yarn for hair just a moment ago, where it now had black.

“Let’s go visit some dead folks,” I said. “I’ll have the concierge rent us a carriage.”

“Lay flat and consider the lilies,” proclaimed Granny. “Nay, beg them for their boots, and await the fearsome tread of Angels!”

“With bells on, I expect.” I kissed Darla on her cheek and tousled Buttercup’s hair and headed for the door.

We took our rented carriage on a tour of Rannit’s finer boneyards.

Traveling with Mama Hog and Granny Knot is what life in a circus must be like. Add a headstrong little banshee to the pot, and the atmosphere remains that of a circus, only with the tents all suddenly ablaze.

The sun was out. I opted for an open two-horse rig so we could all see without crowding. Darla sat beside me and tried to keep at least one hand on our squirming, blonde banshee. Granny and Mama took up the bench behind us, carrying on a conversation in high screech with half a dozen people I couldn’t see.

Traffic was brisk. It took a while to reach the first cemetery I’d seen the witch-woman visit, and the first people we passed were a trio of groundskeepers installing a shiny, new, steel chain on the gate.

I tipped my hat as we passed. “Good morning, Granny Knot,” shouted one of the groundskeepers as he doffed his shapeless hat. “How’re the dead folks today?”

“Expectin’ the pleasure of your company any day now, Raymond Davies,” said Granny. “You’d best be shining up your hat and making ready!”

We rolled along a winding, narrow track. Gravewards rose up on every side, most covered with soot. The clean ones, the new ones, glittered and shone in the sun, but they wouldn’t for long. Rannit’s crematorium smokestacks never rest.

“What are we looking for?” asked Darla.

“The walking dead. Fresh corpses. Letters tossed carelessly to the grass that reveal the villain’s nefarious schemes. You know, the usual items.”

“I saw a squirrel just now.”

“Was he nefarious?”

“He was brown. Shall we interrogate him?”

“I must speak with the winter snows,” said Granny Knot. “Pray halt this many-legged contrivance, Your Majesty.”

I brought the carriage to a halt. Granny clambered down, waving her hands in the air and singing as she stalked away.

Mama watched her go, but kept her butt planted on the bench. I saw her reach into her bag and pull out a ragged barn owl.

“What’s she up to, Mama?” I asked.

“Don’t know just yet. I told her what we saw that witch-woman do, defiling them places of rest. Granny was keen to come with us this morning. She’s awful protective of her dead folks.”

Granny stopped in the shade of a tall oak and was having an animated if hushed conversation with people only she could see.

Buttercup escaped Darla’s grasp and scampered away. I looked around to see if any of the half dozen old folks wandering through the cemetery took notice of the little girl skipping blithely through gravewards, but no one appeared to be alarmed.

“Shall I go fetch her?” asked Darla as Buttercup began to dance in a circle around Granny.

“Granny doesn’t seem perturbed. Let her be.”

After a few moments, Granny bowed, hugged half a dozen invisible acquaintances, and ambled back toward the carriage.

Buttercup saved herself a few steps by simply vanishing from beneath the oak and reappearing by Mama.

“Hist, ye naughty child!” said Mama, grabbing Buttercup’s hand. “I’ve told you about showing off in the eye of the public!”

“Might as well shout at the clouds, Mama,” I said. Granny came clomping up, her expression grim.

“There’s trouble about,” she said in a near whisper. “Oh, and dancing crows, my how your knees cook a roast, such-like and so-forth. Drive please.”

Mama shook her owl over Granny’s head. “I take it you found them in a talkative mood?”

“Even the dead love spreading rumors,” said Granny. “Toadstools and bedsheets.”

I groaned inwardly. “So the rumors you spoke about earlier are rumors you’ve heard from the dead?”

“Well, they wasn’t from the Watch. Hath thee the head of a pumpkin? Who better knows the business of the dead than the dead themselves? I spy a meddling bread. Speak not to me of rugs. We aren’t moving.”

We weren’t. I urged the ponies ahead, and they bore us from that cemetery and on to the next.

We visited all five graveyards. Each time, Granny went off alone, held brief but animated conversations with thin air, and returned to us more deeply troubled than before.

By the time we reached the Pale’s fancy wrought-iron gates, Granny was barely speaking to the living at all.

“Hold,” she said after we passed the dour, old fart napping behind his red priest’s mask. “Wait.”

“You forgot to mention my eyeballs, or call for a pitcher of shade,” I noted. “Got to pay attention to details, Granny, or—”

“Get us out of here,” she said. She leaned close and dug her nails into my left shoulder. “For the love of Heaven, Mr. Markhat, turn around and go.”

I took us off the cobbled lane but I got us turned around. Then I snapped the reins and maybe the ponies were just bored or maybe they sensed whatever had Granny spooked, but we flew out of there at a full gallop, making such a racket the gate priest awoke with a start and got tangled in his robes and fell flat on his ass as we passed.

I took us a block away for good measure before bringing us to a halt.

“What did you see back there, Granny?”

“No one. Nothing. The cemetery was deserted. Bake me a pie full of urchins, and I’ll fill your sled with feathers, you stoat.”

Mama piped up. “I seen two dozen folks tidying up graves or putting down fresh flowers,” she said. “Maybe more, on up the hill.”

“The living were there, certainly. But none of the dead.” Granny whirled, standing and waving. “You there, in the shroud! Stay a moment, I’d like to talk.”

A few pedestrians regarded Granny with bemused stares.

Granny hopped down, rushed to an empty street-side bench, and spoke to the air. Then she waved over a second invisible person, and a third, and as she added more invisible speakers to her impromptu street party, a small crowd of solid folk gathered to watch her antics.

She put on a show, complete with a brief interlude of standing on the bench and preaching gibberish before breaking into song.

The crowd responded with laughter and scattered applause. Someone put a box down by the bench, and a few coins found their way into it.

“Disgraceful,” hissed Mama.

“She’s got to make a living like everyone else,” I said.

“I ain’t talking about her, boy. It’s them what’s laughin’ at a poor old lady that makes me mad.” Mama shook her owl at the crowd and rattled off a string of nonsense words.

“That’ll fix ’em,” she said.

I didn’t ask. Finally, Granny ran out of steam, the crowd dispersed, and I pretended not to see Granny empty the box of coins into the palm of a rail-thin, street kid who went dashing off without a thank-you or a backward glance.

When Granny climbed into the carriage, she was pale and shaking and her grin was forced.

“What was all that?” I asked.

“Nothing we can speak of now, lord of doubled fishermen,” she said. “Somewhere safe first. Make room, make room! You three get in the back. You with the skull face, you can stand. Mr. Pollman, she does not want to sit in your lap so you might as well stand and let the lady have the seat.”

Mama’s eyes went wide.

“Boy, we are in the presence of them what has passed,” she said. She shoved the owl back in her bag and withdrew a copper wire upon which six dried sparrows were impaled. “I don’t have nothing against dead folks, but hear me now, I ain’t takin’ in no boarders!”

“The rest of you, wait here,” shouted Granny to a bewildered passerby in a tall, white baker’s hat. “We’ll be back for the rest of you shortly.” She paused for a moment, listening. “As many trips as it takes, Mrs. Pots. You have the word of Granny Knot.”

“Trips? What trips?” I asked. “They may have the word of Granny Knot, but I have the rented carriage of Hay-top Buggins, and he charges by the hour.”