The Five Faces (The Markhat Files) Page 15

  Stitches watched, enraptured, while Evis patched up his men, and I watched whole blocks go up in columns of sparks and flames.

  I’d asked a few questions of Stitches—namely, shouldn’t we still be running, and will there be a Rannit left, come sunrise. She merely lifted her palm for silence and kept her eyes on the show.

  “They are massing,” she said at last, though I couldn’t see any change in the chaos. “Observe.”

  I observed from a point right behind her right shoulder.

  The boiling in the sky quickened. The clouds whirled about a common center, moving so fast they formed an enormous red spiral lit by the flashes of spells and the slilth’s angry bursts of flame. A light formed at the center of the clouds’ rotation, rapidly grew bright as the noonday sun, and then plummeted down to the ground as the great-granddaddy of all thunderclaps shook the city to its core.

  When the infant sun met the earth, there was a flash. I looked away, raising my hands against the wash of harsh white light, and when I could see again, the giant and the boiling dark sky and the towering silver slilth were gone.

  Smoke rose where they had struggled. Fires winked and glowed.

  But the giants were vanished.

  “Meaning?” barked Evis.

  “Ascertaining that now,” said Stitches. She called her tame lights to her hands and then flung them toward the smoke. “I shall know in a moment.”

  “What the hell was that thing?” I asked.

  “Two slilths are said to have survived the end of the last magical summer,” said Stitches. “One was an invincible engine of remorseless destruction. The other was a sentient being compelled by an irresistible geas to ends lost in the river of time.”

  I groaned. “Need I ask which one we let loose on Rannit?”

  “I have no idea,” she replied. “The container wasn’t marked.”

  Her helpful glowing mists returned, flew into her hands, whispered words I couldn’t understand.

  She let out her breath and slumped. If I hadn’t caught her she would have fallen.

  “You can thank your god of chance, Captain Markhat,” she said. “The giant is much diminished and has fled. The sorcerers were repulsed by the slilth’s final blow. The damage appears to be confined to an area of ten city blocks.”

  “The slilth?”

  “Heading south. It has reverted to its original size. It prefers to go around obstacles rather than through them. It seems determined to make haste out of the city, which will lead the sorcerers away as well, should they regroup. We have faced an angry god and survived. Someone get me a drink.”

  “Shall I send men after the thing with all the legs?” asked Evis.

  “Waste of time,” replied Stitches. She wobbled and kept wobbling, so I walked her to a bench and sat her down. “It served its purpose. Brought the sorcerers into the fray. Hope the godlet swallowed a few.”

  Evis frowned, giving me a ‘What the hell?’ look. I waved him off, hoping Stitches would shut up before she said something Evis and I would both regret.

  She fell silent. Wispy lights darted and weaved about her, whispering sometimes. She never replied, and I wondered if she was even conscious.

  “I’ve seen enough,” said Evis, after a time. The fires still burned, but didn’t appear to be spreading. I thanked no one in particular for the nearly windless night.

  “You can come with us,” said Evis to me. “Get cleaned up. I’ll send you home in a carriage.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got a date,” I said. “Meeting Holder, right here on the Bridge.”

  Evis frowned. “You sure that’s a good idea? After all that?” He nodded toward the fires. “He’ll be as likely to throw you in the Old Ruth as say hello.”

  “I don’t think so. But if I turn up missing tomorrow you know where to look.”

  “I can stay.”

  “Better you don’t. He and I need to have this out sooner or later. Now is as good a time as any.”

  Stitches began slumping over. Evis caught her, and she started and mumbled but didn’t appear to come fully awake.

  “Get her home,” I said. “I’ll catch up tomorrow.”

  Ever the optimist, Evis snorted. “Fat chance,” he said, steadying Stitches.

  I watched them load up and disappear into the night.

  Midnight meetings in the middle of the Brown River Bridge are a time-honored Rannite tradition. The Bridge has hosted everything from clandestine political meetings to ransom payoffs to meetings between active participants of blood-feuds. The only rule is this—all parties arrive unarmed, and all parties walk away unharmed.

  Tradition holds that the bridge clowns act as enforcers, should someone break the old rules. I’d laughed at that idea before, in the friendly, bright light of day.

  But as I laid my pistols on the rail and began my march down to the middle of the bridge, I realized I was being watched by at least ten burly, somber-faced clowns. Many held truncheons, or worse.

  None looked likely to caper, cavort, or engage in pratfalls for my amusement.

  I could smell faint the smoke from the fires. Only ten blocks destroyed, Stitches said. I wondered how many considered that mere ten blocks to be their entire world, how many had watched everything they owned or loved go up in flames.

  It was well past midnight. But I was willing to give Holder another hour or two.

  I smelled the smoke and surmised the man had been busy.

  At the middle of the Bridge, I halted. I couldn’t see the Brown flow slowly past below me. The waters were hidden in deep shadow. But I could hear the lazy slosh of water, see the lights of a drunk’s fishing skiff pass by far below.

  A clown ambled past, puffing away on a comically large cigar.

  “Whole wagonload of bluecaps just parked out of sight on the city side,” he said, soft but plain. “Just thought you might want to know.” He reached up and honked his puffy red nose twice for emphasis.

  “Thanks.”

  I waited.

  Ten minutes passed. Finally, a man came stomping up to the city side, yanked off his sword-belt, and let it fall to the street.

  “It’s me,” he yelled. “Captain Holder. That you, Markhat?”

  I turned to face him. “It’s me. Unarmed and determined to be polite. Shall we talk?”

  The clowns went still.

  “Hell yes, we’ll talk.”

  Holder trundled forth to meet me.

  Light flared at my back. I turned, only to find a skinny clown lighting a torch, which he leaned against the rail. “So nobody trips and takes a fall,” he squeaked before frog-marching away.

  Holder stepped into the light.

  He was drenched in sweat and covered in soot and ash. His uniform was charred here and there where embers had landed. His eyes were red and running, his lips were cracked and peeling, and it would be weeks before his eyebrows grew back from being singed nearly away.

  “You’ve had a bad night, Captain,” I said.

  I expected an explosion. He was puffed up, ready to blow. But he stopped and he ground his teeth and then he surprised us both by slumping over the rail and peering off into the dark.

  “Lots of people have had a bad night,” he said. “Giants. Devils in the sky. Something with too many legs throwing lightning around.” He found a handkerchief and mopped his face. The cloth came away black. “You seem to be close by when things blow up these days, Markhat. Why is that?”

  I joined him on the rail.

  “Just lucky, I guess. But believe it or not, I’m on your side. I want the fires to go out and stay out, same as you.”

  He grunted and spat. We stood regarding the dark in amiable silence.

  “So no invitations to the Old Ruth tonight?” I said at last.

  “Word from on high. You are to be left alone, unless I see you actually engaged in treason. As if you didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t.”

  He cussed. “I could lie and claim you confessed to arson,” he
muttered.

  “You could,” I said. “But you won’t. For the same reason you never threatened to snatch my wife up, and put her to the question.”

  He turned and glared. “I don’t go after women when I have a problem with the man,” he said.

  “Exactly. Because you’re fundamentally decent, Captain. You never threatened Darla. Never sent the toughs around to toss Mama Hog’s place. Hell, the worst thing you ever did to me was raise your voice. No. You’re a decent man in a profane world, and you’d no more lie about official charges than I would set fire to a Rannite street.”

  He didn’t have an answer. Or maybe he was just too exhausted to speak.

  “There are things you ought to know,” I said.

  “What things?”

  “Nightmares come a’ walking.” I took in a good, deep breath. “One crawled out of a prison in Prince. Some big underground jail.”

  “Heard of it,” he said. “Called it the Pit.”

  “Aptly named. He’s the one drawing the murder scenes. Doing the killing. Taking over the gangs and the drug trade. The giant people saw. That’s all him.”

  “He got a name?”

  “None I can speak. Anyway, it’s not the man we’ve got to worry about. The man we could kill. It’s the thing that rides him. It’s not going to die just because we poke holes in it.”

  “Got anything to do with an old watch tower on the north wall?”

  “That’s where he sleeps. But don’t bother trying to storm it. You’d just see another ten blocks razed. Maybe more.”

  “Damn.”

  “I know you got a drawing,” I said. “Shows you dying in what, five days?”

  “It’s just a damned piece of paper,” he said.

  “I wish. It’s prophecy, Captain. Religious stuff. You a Church man?”

  He gave me a red-eyed, sideways glare. “What the hell do you think?”

  I chuckled. “Still. This is more than just a drawing meant to scare you.” I tried to think of a way to explain stepping outside of time and walking from the present to the future and then back to the past, but decided to skip it. “You need to take it seriously.”

  “Word is you’ve got a drawing too,” he said.

  “I do.”

  “So are you heading for the Sea? Digging a hole and planning to pull the opening in after you?”

  “Both thoughts crossed my mind.”

  “But here you are.”

  “Here I am. I guess we’re both stubborn that way.”

  “Stubborn to the last.” He coughed a bit. A clown scurried up and offered him a tankard of liquid, but he wisely batted it away. “So what do we do now?” he asked. “Wait to die? Watch monsters knock the city apart? You know what’s going on. All of it, or part. Is there a way to stop it?”

  “There’s one way. The only way, as far as I know. One of us has to live. Has to prove the drawing wrong. If we can do that—if we can cheat the prophecy—then the thing that crawled out of the Pit goes poof.”

  “Goes poof. Just like that.”

  “Just like that. It’s a god, of sorts. It’s already watched us both die, even though neither death has happened yet. If we manage to live, somehow, then it pops like a soap bubble.”

  “You’re not drunk,” he said. He wasn’t asking, just observing. “You’re serious.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “I’ll be damned.” That, too, was spoken as a simple statement of fact.

  “That’s what I know,” I said. “But there’s something I don’t know. Maybe you can help with that.”

  He spat into the night. “Happy to be of service to the great Captain Markhat,” he said.

  “There’s a crypt in the Pale.” I described the witch-woman’s unmarked crypt to him, until I was sure he could find it. “The Church keeps records of who is buried there. I need a name.”

  He grunted. “Any point in me asking why?”

  “The giant has a girlfriend,” I said. I surprised him by telling what little I knew about the necromancer Granny Knot’s spooks called Szerzhenkap. “Not sure where she fits in all this, but the name is a good place to start.”

  “Why don’t we just knock the damned crypt down and see what crawls out?”

  I glanced toward the dying fires.

  “Oh. You might have a point.” He mopped his sooty face again. “You can let your wife go home,” he said. “If I need you, I’ll send word.”

  “So we have a truce?”

  “Hell’s bells. I suppose we do.” He turned and stuck out his hand and did not smile. “So, who dies first? You or me?”

  I shook his hand. “Me,” I said. “By a few days.”

  “Damned shame. Well. I’ll go sit on a priest. Send the name to your office?”

  “That’ll do. And Captain. Thank you.”

  “Go to hell,” he said, but his heart wasn’t in it. “And save me a seat, when you get there.”

  “Happy to oblige.”

  He stomped away, his back to the flickering torchlight.

  I watched him go, watched him wave off the Guardsmen I still couldn’t see. It was only then I let out a sigh of relief, because I knew I wouldn’t be spending the night in jail.

  I left a pair of coins on the rail for the bridge clowns, doffed my hat to the dark in a show of genteel manners, and went to fetch my pistols.

  My pistols lay right where I’d left them.

  Both barrels smoked. When I touched the black steel, it was hot, as though the weapon had just been discharged.

  I picked one up, pulled the cylinder. Every round had been fired, though I hadn’t heard a thing.

  Buttercup rose up through the planks and timbers to stand before me. She glowed moon-bright and didn’t bother making her bare feet come anywhere near the bridge.

  Clowns broke and ran from every shadowed nook and night-cloaked cranny. I waited until they were gone before I spoke.

  “Honey, have you been playing with my guns?”

  She solemnly pointed at my face.

  “Damn.” I stood, loaded both pistols, reflected that I was ejecting the spent rounds I’d just loaded, all without firing a shot.

  “The crypt.” I knew it was the crypt. I’d briefly considered going there, hoping to catch a glimpse of the necromancer, maybe get an idea who she was, or what she was up to.

  Now I knew that’s what I’d done. What I was going to do.

  My empty pistols proclaimed the foolishness of the decision.

  But they also made it inevitable.

  “Any chance I killed the old spook?” I asked.

  Buttercup regarded me without expression for a long moment.

  Then she floated away, turning her luminescent face back toward me to make sure I followed.

  I did.

  No point fighting Fate more than once.

  After an hour of walking, I borrowed a drunk’s horse. Buttercup got impatient and took to the rooftops, leaping and shining like an exuberant comet.

  We reached the Pale in that hour between the deep of the night and the first frail glow of dawn. I turned the horse loose at the gate, and it trotted happily away.

  The cemetery gates were closed, but the shiny, new steel chain hung loose in the dirt. I picked up one end and examined it by Buttercup’s glow. The steel was cut so clean I saw my reflection in the new surface.

  Rather than force the unchained gates open and risk a loud metallic squeal, I decided to climb. I put boot to gate and heaved myself up, mindful of the spikes and blades, while Buttercup giggled and made a game out of skipping back and forth through its menacing bars.

  Once inside the Pale proper, she was all business. Her ever-present ragged doll became a child’s skull, and when it spoke, it did so in short, nervous whispers.

  I held out my hand. She took it, and we walked together up the winding, chalk-white paths until we reached the unmarked crypt halfway up the Pale.

  I stopped ten feet from the sealed door-slab of the thing. Buttercup stopped
too, neither tugging nor fidgeting.

  The crypt was polished marble. It cost someone a small fortune. I supposed that Vucik and his necromancer girlfriend could afford it, now that he was running the drug trade and most of the other vices along the Brown.

  The grass was neatly trimmed. A bouquet of fireflowers leaned against the crypt. The petals hadn’t even begun to wilt.

  There was no inscription on the crypt. The single graveward beside it was tall and unadorned.

  Worst of all, peeking out from behind a willow tree was the necromancer’s black wagon. It was empty, but her wild-eyed mares stomped and whinnied and dripped with new sweat, so I knew it hadn’t been parked there long.

  I checked my pistols out of habit and put one of them back in my pocket and took Buttercup’s tiny hand with my free one.

  “If things go bad, you get out,” I said. “You go home to Mama, you hear?”

  She tugged and I took a step forward, and Buttercup did the odd little skip-step that took us both inside the nameless crypt.

  Silence. And darkness.

  Buttercup squeezed my hand. Her skull flared to life.

  Time stopped.

  Still in her nightgown, Darla lay face-up on a marble slab, straps at her wrists and ankles. Her eyes were open, wide and staring, but she was still. Too still. I tried to take a step toward her, but Buttercup held me fast.

  The necromancer stood to Darla’s right, grinning down at her. The necromancer’s hand was poised to stroke Darla’s cheek.

  I raised my pistol and squeezed the trigger but it vanished from my hand before it fired.

  Buttercup put her finger to her lips.

  “Dammit, Buttercup, that’s Darla.”

  She pointed.

  At the far end of the slab, sunk in the shadows in an ornate marble chair, was a dead woman.

  The corpse’s head was thrown back. Her dry, toothless mouth gaped in the silent, eternal scream of the dead. Her arms were outstretched, her skeletal hands resting on the marble on either side of Darla’s face.