The Five Faces (The Markhat Files) (27 page)

The fate god’s coins, both of them, are buried with my other body.

The sweaty little god had been right about the coin. There had been a price, and we’d paid it.

Stitches believes Darla’s catching of the coin at the moment of my death merged the Darla asleep on our couch with the Darla I took to the alley. Stitches calls that event a quantum waveform collapse. She can call it buttermilk fencepost singing for all I care, as long as Darla is safe and sound and whole.

There are rumors that my gravesite is haunted, and that my shade is seen wandering the cemetery on moonless nights. I hope these rumors have no basis in fact, though I have no intention to investigate them personally.

Even if my ghost does roam, his lot is considerably better than that of Vucik’s necromancing sister. Stitches turned the unmarked crypt into a prison after she stole the crone’s partly-animated corpse. Turned it into a prison and shoved the necromancer inside, after capturing her just outside the city. You can hear the witch-woman scream up and down the Pale, I’m told.

Another claim I won’t be testing.

I found the original Cornbread yesterday morning, which means I have two identical shaggy little dogs snoring at my feet. Darla and I have decided to keep Cornbread the elder and return his younger incarnation to Saffy.

The other Cornbread was right where Stitches said he would be, in a big, filthy pen in a basement two blocks from the docks.

There were eighteen dogs there. Most were small. I freed them all. Then I used a sack of Avalante’s best unstable gunpowder to level the building. That loosed a number of tongues, and after another pair of inexplicable building explosions, I knew every name I needed to know.

Once I had their attention, I told the dog-fight organizers I’d be back with soldiers and more powder the first time I heard a whisper about a dogfight.

I meant it. They’ll either find another form of entertainment, or I’ll see their homes razed, and them buried beneath the rubble.

The Regent allowed Rannit’s newspapers to resume business. The headlines claim he acted out of a desire to return a free press to a free people, but I suspect the Regent’s real motive was to control the rumors generated by the sight of the towering slilth wandering the forests south of Rannit these days.

The most destructive activity it has engaged in thus far has been to inscribe a series of huge, odd circles in wheat fields. The papers eagerly depict each new pattern, while scholars and wand-wavers speculate on their meaning and significance.

According to Evis, Stitches takes the morning papers in Avalante’s common room, and laughs herself hoarse at the theories and assertions of the learned.

Mama Hog is on our porch, banging at our door, Granny Knot in tow. I can hear them arguing about whether I can be a ghost and a living lazy layabout ne’er-do-well at the same time. Darla is pulling a pan of fat, hot biscuits out of the oven. She keeps a revolver tucked in her apron, and there’s a spot of flour on her nose, and she’s the most beautiful woman in all of creation.

Maybe a necromancer’s mad screams sound day and night, up and down the Pale. Maybe I lie cold in my grave at the foot of the Hill, or wander amid the gravewards on dark moonless nights.

All things considered, I’ve seen this tired, old world look worse.

About the Author

Frank Tuttle is a seventy-foot long, snake-necked water creature who lurks beneath the icy waves of Scotland’s Loch Ness. When Frank isn’t dodging sonar equipped boats or teasing hopeful photographers, he writes fantasy, which he claims is “bloody hard to do with just these enormous flippers.” Frank would be thrilled from tail to gills if you would visit his website at
www.franktuttle.com
, and he loves getting email via
[email protected]
. He asks that if you send fish, please send halibut, as tuna gives him the vapors.

Look for these titles by Frank Tuttle

Now Available:

Markhat Files

The Mister Trophy

The Cadaver Client

Dead Man’s Rain

The Markhat Files

Hold the Dark

The Banshee’s Walk

The Broken Bell

Brown River Queen

When the banshee howls, start looking for the lifeboats.

Brown River Queen

© 2013 Frank Tuttle

The Markhat Files, Book 7

Take a simple, three-day cruise on a lavish steamboat casino, they said. Just keep an eye out for trouble while the Regent rolls the dice, they said.

Markhat should have known the maiden voyage of Avalante’s vampire-crewed Brown River Queen would be anything but a finder’s dream job. Especially when he charges a ridiculous fee—and gets it without a peep of protest.

Then a pair of identical murderous maidens attack him and his lady love, and it doesn’t take a banshee’s howl to confirm his sinking suspicion he’s about to earn his fee the hard way.

As the heavily guarded steamboat casts off, Markhat is forced to navigate shoals of old enemies, treacherous political undercurrents, and rogue waves of assassins. All to keep the walking dead from turning the Brown River Queen’s decks red with blood.

Warning: This is a work of fiction. Please stop trying to apply it as a cream directly to your forehead. The characters depicted herein are quite real despite this disclaimer and will be deeply hurt if you peek ahead to the ending. This prose is certified gluten-free. Not intended as an emergency substitute Flight Manual, no matter what the nerds at Popular Mechanics claim.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Brown River Queen:

Outside, wrapped in a mainsail’s worth of black silk against the midday sun, was Evis himself, peering back at me through his tinted spectacles. The halfdead don’t love sunlight the same way I don’t love being bathed in red-hot coals.

“Hurry, please,” said Evis as I fumbled with the lock. “I can’t pay you if I’ve been baked to cinders on your doorstep.”

I managed to swing the door open. Three-leg Cat darted out, heedless of the halfdead at the door. I’ve noticed most animals shy away from Evis, which I believe pains him deeply.
 

I stood aside and motioned Evis in. He glided into the comfortable shadows of my office, not quite running but not ambling either. I closed the door quickly and resolved to fashion some sort of shade for the window-glass. Even that much light would be a nuisance for Evis and his dead-eyed kin.

“Sorry about the light,” I said as Evis stripped off the top layer of his flowing day suit. “I’ll do something about that before your next visit.”

Evis shrugged it off but kept his dark glasses on. “Thank you. Everything getting back to normal?”

I sat. Evis sat. He kept his hat on and tilted his head so his face remained in deep shadow.

“As normal as normal gets. Business has picked up. Gertriss is out working now. She’ll be sorry she missed you.”

And she would. My junior partner and Evis were spending a lot of time together of late. Had been since their trip up the Brown River on House Avalante’s new-fangled steamboat.
 

If I was Mama Hog I’d be making pointed comments about all that. Gertriss is Mama’s niece, and Mama is none too thrilled about Gertriss and her recent choice of company. But since I’m not a four-foot-tall soothsayer who claims to be a century and a half old, I don’t stick my nose where it doesn’t belong unless someone is paying me for the effort.

Evis just nodded and put his feet on my desk. His hand moved to his jacket pocket and produced a pair of the expensive cigars he normally keeps in a humidor in his office.

“Uh oh,” I said, opening my desk drawer. I pulled out my notepad and my good pen. “Who’s dead, who’s missing, and how much of the story are you going to leave out?”

Evis kept his lips tightly shut but managed to feign an expression of deep and sincere injury.

“Now is that any way to respond to an offer of a Lowland Sweet?” he asked. “The last time we smoked these you remarked that it was your absolute favorite.”

“And you suddenly remembered that and grabbed a pair and ran all the way down here in the sun just to have a puff. Remarkable.” I put the tip of the pen in my inkwell and then down on the paper.

Evis ignored me and began cutting off the ends with a fancy steel cigar clipper. I found my box of matches and plopped them down on the table.
 

“So spill it,” I said. “And thanks. I do enjoy these.”

Evis handed me a cigar and struck a match. I let him light it.
 

It’s not every day a free Lowland Sweet walks through the door.

“Times are changing,” Evis announced after lighting his Lowland and puffing out a perfect smoke ring. “That run at restoring the old Kingdom was the last.”

“So say you.”

“So I do. Care to guess where Prince got the money to rebuild?”

Word from up the Brown is that the storm that nearly wrecked Rannit was a mere ghost of wind compared to the one the Corpsemaster loosed upon our erstwhile enemies in Prince. We’re still getting the odd rooftop or twisted shell of a building, lifted whole from streets in faraway Prince, drifting past on the lazy, muddy water of the Brown. No bodies, though. Not a one.

The Corpsemaster’s wrath is both thorough and lingering.

“No idea. I thought the city fathers in Prince went broke financing their invasion.”

“They did. But our very own Regent graciously made them a loan. At thirty percent interest. Rannit owns Prince now, Markhat. And the Regent won’t be letting them forget that for a very long time.”

I whistled. I hadn’t even heard that rumored.

Evis grinned a brief toothy vampire grin.

“Looks like our military careers are over,” he said. “It’ll be a hundred years before anyone takes another stab at Rannit. Maybe longer. But here we are, still drawing down a Captain’s pay. By the way, any word from the old spook lately?”

Old spook was code for Corpsemaster. Neither Evis nor I had seen her or her black carriage since the dust-up with Prince. Evis had gone so far as to hint that open speculation in some circles indicated the Corpsemaster might have fallen in the fray, or been reduced by the effort to such a state that she’d gone into hiding or hibernation.

I wasn’t quite ready to write her off so quickly, so I just shrugged.

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned ‘pay,’ you know.” I tried and failed to blow a smoke ring. “Not that I don’t enjoy your company, but what really brought you out for a stroll in the sun?”

“I’m here to hire the famous Captain Markhat on behalf of House Avalante.”

“Didn’t you read the placard? I’m a humble finder, not a Captain. My marching days are done. I’ve taken up pacifism and a strict philosophy of passive non-violence.”

“What’s your philosophy on five hundred crowns
—
paid in gold
—
for taking a relaxing dinner cruise down the Brown River to Bel Loit and back? With meals, booze, and as many of these cigars as you can carry, thrown in for free?”

I blew out a ragged column of grey-brown smoke.

“I’m flexible on such matters. But I’m troubled by the offer of five hundred crowns.”

“Make it six hundred, then.”

“I will. If I decide to take it at all. Because that’s a lot of gold, Mr. Prestley. Even Avalante doesn’t just hand the stuff out to see my winning smile. What exactly is worth seven hundred crowns to House Avalante?”

Evis winced. “You are, believe it or not. Look, Markhat. This isn’t just any old party barge outing. The
Brown River Queen
is a palace with a hull. The guest list reads like Yule at the High House. Ministers. Lords. Ladies. Opera stars. Generals.“

“And? You said it was a pleasure cruise. We won the war and didn’t lose so much as a potato wagon. Handshakes and promotions all around. Why do you need me for eight hundred crowns?”

Evis lifted his hands in surrender.

“Because the Regent himself is coming along for the ride,” he said in a whisper. “Yes. You heard me. The Regent. For every ten who love him there are a thousand who want to scoop out his eyes and boil them and feed them to him.”

“On your boat.”
 

“On our boat. This is it, Markhat. It’s the culmination of thirty years of negotiations and diplomacy and bribery. House Avalante is a single step away from taking its place at the right hand of the most powerful man in the world. He’ll have his bodyguards. He’ll have his staff. He’ll have his spies and his informants and his eyes and his ears, and that’s just fine with us. But Markhat, we want the man kept safe. We want trouble kept off the
Queen
. We want a nice quiet cruise from here to Bel Loit and back, and the House figures if anyone can spot trouble coming, it’s you.”

“When you look at things that way, nine hundred crowns is really quite a bargain.”

“Nine hundred crowns it is.” Evis blew another smoke ring and then sailed a second one through it. “And one more thing. Bring the missus. She eats, drinks, stays for free, courtesy of Avalante. Is that a deal?”