The Five Faces (The Markhat Files) Read online

  “Think about it, Markhat. His drawings are never wrong. Even when drawn far in advance of the actual events. What does that suggest to you?”

  “He’s a smart-ass.”

  “He intends to eliminate the element of chance,” he said. “Remove it and replace it with his own unchanging design. You’re a reasonable man, Markhat. Does that strike you as a desirable way to run a universe?”

  “I’m not terribly impressed with the way it’s run now.”

  “Blasphemous, but I can’t honestly say I blame you. I’ll make it simple, Markhat. If you can cause one of the drawings to play out false, just a single one, you’ll send the five-faced death god sinking back down into the cosmic foam, where he’ll never injure anyone again. Won’t that be nice?”

  “If that’s true, I’ll just head back up to that room full of your business associates and shoot half a dozen. None of them will be much missed.”

  The damp little godlet frowned. “If it were that simple, I would have stabbed a pair myself. But no. The death god is way ahead of you. The only way to succeed is to get ahead of him.”

  “You’re a god. Why don’t you send Faces sinking down into the whatever?”

  “Because he’s likely to drag me down too.”

  “Oh, and as a lowly mortal my odds of survival are so much better.”

  Ecols sighed. “Actually, yes. Especially with my help.”

  I rose and banged on the door. The deadbolt clicked and the door swung partly open and Ecols stuck his head inside.

  “At least hear what I’ve got to say,” he said. I glanced behind me. Ecols, still seated, waved.

  “If I hear you out and decide to decline?”

  “Then I’ll go my way and trouble you no more.”

  I sat. Because I didn’t have a choice.

  The god—pardon me, a god of chance—had the courtesy not to gloat.

  “The death god, let’s call him Faces, steps outside of time now and then,” said the plump little god. “This allows him to see who will die, how they will die, and when. Which is why his drawings are never wrong—he is merely depicting scenes he has already observed.”

  “So if it’s already happened, how am I supposed to interfere?”

  He beamed. “You ask the most insightful and pertinent questions,” he said. “Take this.”

  He flipped me the coin. I batted it away. It rolled in lazy circles around us.

  “No. The last time I took hold of some magical dingus, it nearly swallowed me whole. I’m not making the same mistake twice.”

  “This coin will allow you to step outside the normal flow of time as well,” he said. “Faces won’t realize that immediately. You’ll enjoy a small advantage. I suggest you use it cleverly.”

  “Nothing doing.”

  He smiled. “So your answer is no?”

  “Yes. My answer is no.”

  “You just said yes.”

  “I said yes my answer was no, damn you.”

  “All I heard was yes, which means we have a deal.”

  “You said you’d go your way and trouble me no more. Was that a lie?”

  “Two of those Troll arrows hit Knock-knock in the chest,” he said. “What if they had come to rest just a few feet away? To his right, for instance. While you shielded Petey with your own body.”

  “I’m supposed to thank you? Is that what you’re digging for?”

  “Mr. Rorshot is unaware of my presence. We shall not speak again. I wish you luck, Mr. Markhat. I would say your odds of survival are poor, but hardly nonexistent.”

  The rolling coin struck my right shoe and fell over.

  “You bastard.”

  He shrugged. “Such are the ways of the gods. Tell it to your Angel. Maybe he’s listening today. Oh. One last thing. There are, of course, consequences for the use of the coin. A price, if you will. Part of the bargain, I’m afraid. Can’t be helped. Good day.”

  When I looked up, Ecols was gone.

  I kicked the crown away. I banged on the door. The halfdead who finally opened it was surprised to find me inside.

  “Long story,” I said. I didn’t recognize him. He certainly wasn’t the man who’d been guarding the door a few moments ago. “Time I went topside. Will I need an escort?”

  He merely stood aside and gestured for me to pass.

  I took to Avalante’s busy halls and began my long climb toward the night.

  By the time I stepped out under the sky, the night was nearly done.

  Already, the sky was pinking up. The dead wagons were beginning to stir. Ne’er-do-wells and bleary-eyed revelers wobbled toward their beds.

  I kept a revolver visible and walked among them. None troubled me, or even acknowledged my presence.

  I fought back the urge to go find Stitches and see what she thought of my self-proclaimed god of chance and his version of events. If he was telling the truth, even Stitches couldn’t help. And if he was lying, he was probably doing so at Stitches’s behest, part of some twisted scheme I’d never live long enough to unravel.

  Twice, I stuck my free hand in my pocket, and twice, my fingers found the god’s gold crown. I tossed it in the gutter the first time I found it and flipped it into the bed of a dead wagon the second.

  I kept my hand out of my damned pocket after that, but I could feel the coin move as I walked.

  I passed the corner at Stringle and Carnett. Home lay a good three hours of hiking away. Of course I couldn’t go home, so unless I wished to enjoy the determined company of the Watch for the next few weeks I’d need to turn my face east and seek out the hotel.

  I wondered if Holder had any idea how much danger he was in, now that he’d been depicted on a drawing. I doubted it. And I couldn’t devise a single plausible way of communicating his peril to him without spilling Stitches’s secrets or spinning a tale of gods and magic coins.

  I looked up from my musing and found myself once again at the corner of Stringle and Carnett. I stopped, blinking at the signs and the familiar shopfronts, and then I heard a man approaching.

  There was something disturbing about his walk. I ducked into a darkened doorway and watched him pass.

  It was me, pistol in hand, scowl on my face.

  The coin was suddenly cold in my free hand. I threw the crown away, only to feel the weight of it instantly return to my pocket.

  “Damn you,” I said.

  Ahead, I turned, revolver held level and at the ready.

  I pulled back into my patch of night and stood motionless and silent until I was gone.

  Then I followed. When I heard someone cuss, I did not turn but increased my stride.

  I walked and watched the sunrise, dogging my own footsteps all the way back to Bear Street Inn.

  Darla was pacing the floors in the lobby when I arrived. I sauntered through the hotel doors and she was upon me before I could say a word.

  “Honey,” she said after a long fierce hug. “I was so worried.”

  “No need to worry,” I said. “Meeting with the coal supplier just ran long, that’s all.” A nearby maid sniffed, and I shot a sleepless, red-eyed glare her way until she took her mop and found new floors to swab.

  “You look awful,” said Darla. She eased her grip enough so that I could breathe. “Are you hungry? Let’s have breakfast sent up to the room.”

  “Let’s,” I said. I tried to count the hours since I’d last had a meal and got lost in the twenties. “Make it three plates and two pots of coffee.”

  Darla scurried off to find a waiter. I sat down on the stairs and listened to her put in our order.

  Next thing I knew, Darla’s hand was on my shoulder, shaking me. “Hon! I didn’t see you come in. Are you all right? You look terrible!”

  “I thought I looked awful,” I said.

  “That too.” She sat beside me and took off my hat and put her head on my shoulder. “Are you hungry? The kitchen just started breakfast.”

  “Didn’t you just order three plates and two pots of stron
g coffee?”

  She smiled. “You must have been dreaming. I’ll have it all sent up to our room.”

  She kissed me and hurried away to find a waiter.

  I stood. The same maid who I’d glared at earlier came stomping up the stairs, muttering under her breath about ne’er-do-well husbands who spent their nights philandering while their wives walked the lobby floors.

  “Can it, sister,” I snapped. She hiked up her skirts and scurried off.

  Darla reappeared, bearing a pair of steaming mugs of coffee. “For while we wait,” she said. “Shall we?”

  “We’d better, before I go from awful to terrible to frightening.”

  Darla laughed, and we headed for the room.

  I could have sworn our room was on the sixth floor, but Darla stopped climbing stairs at the fifth. I didn’t question her and was glad of it when she opened the door to our room and generously helped my undress.

  “Looking for fresh wounds?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” she said, unbuttoning my shirt. “Wouldn’t be the first time a certain husband of mine has tried to hide evidence of nocturnal mayhem.”

  I kissed her and let it linger for a long time.

  She shivered. Our room wasn’t cold.

  “What have you gotten into this time?”

  Buttercup stepped out of the far wall and came skipping across the floor. She had her whispering skull in her right hand and half a dozen hard candy lollipops in her left.

  “Hello, Buttercup,” I said.

  She froze and went wide-eyed and dropped her stolen candy.

  Darla turned.

  “Where?” she asked.

  The little banshee put her finger to her lips.

  “Must have been mistaken,” I said. “Thought I saw something move in the corner.”

  Darla looked right at Buttercup, but kept looking about, as if searching the room.

  She put the back of her hand against my forehead.

  “I don’t have a fever, dearest wife,” I said.

  “You’re seeing things.”

  “I’m exhausted, that’s all.” I sat and pulled her down with me. “Evis is playing host to half of Rannit’s criminal underworld.” I spun a tale of bunkers and crooks, leaving out a few small details concerning gods of chance and drawings bearing my secret birth name.

  Breakfast arrived and was quickly consumed. Darla reported that the Watchmen at my office door simply walked away well before Curfew last night and hadn’t returned, according to the street kids Mama had dispatched with a message.

  “I hope that means we can go home soon,” added Darla.

  I shrugged. More likely that Holder had simply replaced the bluecaps with hidden eyes, hoping I’d do something stupid like assume I was a lawful citizen of Rannit going about my perfectly legal affairs.

  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,” p
roclaimed 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.