The Five Faces (The Markhat Files) Page 19

  I realized the look in his eyes wasn’t shock or even weariness.

  It was defeat.

  Darla clung to me, and I to her. Neither of us looked toward the casket, or the still form within.

  She’d seen too much of it, and I didn’t dare see it at all.

  Mama hovered, whispering to her birds, rummaging in her burlap sack, muttering and stomping about. I’m told she was thought mad when she decried my corpse as false.

  Even now, I cannot say if mad she was, or not.

  Oddly enough, even with my corpse lying pale and broken a few dozen feet away, an impromptu party broke out. Someone dragged over a bucket of beer. Someone else found a sliced ham and a platter of fancy crackers. Even the priest joined in, wary of my resemblance to the dead man, but wisely opting to eschew mention of the same.

  “So the world ends,” said Evis, tipping back an unfashionably cheap beer. “The death god wins.”

  The party ground to a sudden, awkward halt.

  Darla gripped my hand and closed her eyes.

  “Not if I can help it,” I said. I patted the black silk bag that hung from my waist. “We’ve got one more chance to put Big-and-Ugly in the ground. For good.”

  “What do you need from me?”

  “The Wrath of Heaven.”

  He tilted his head, puzzled. “I have no idea what that might be.”

  “Yes, you do. You’ve already given it to me.” I stood. Darla stood with me.

  “No,” she said. “No. No damned way. You’re not leaving me behind. Not again.”

  I turned to face her.

  “You’re the reason I came back here. Look. I don’t know that this will work. Maybe the death god wins. Maybe he won all along. But I’ll not die alone, and neither will you. We go together. Live or die. For better or worse.”

  The old priest cheered. Mama kicked him in the shin.

  “That’s it?” asked Evis. “You’ve got your wife, a little dog, a black bag, and something I gave you I can’t even name. That’s what you’ve got to kill the death god and save the world?”

  “I’ve got a good sharp knife in my boot. You forgot to mention that.”

  “You’re an idiot, Markhat.” He held out his hand. “Take me too.”

  “And me!” said Mama, her Hog eyes blazing beneath her wild mane of tangled, grey hair. “Hell, what I got to lose?”

  Gertriss stepped in front of Mama. “If he goes,” she said, eyeing Evis, “I go.”

  I pulled out my coin.

  “Sorry, folks, but there’s only room for me and the missus.”

  I flipped the coin into the air, and before Evis or Mama or Gertriss could speak, it flashed as it spun and it fell.

  When it landed, I still held Darla’s hand, but the funeral parlor was empty. Empty and still and dark, like the night outside.

  “Whatever happens, I love you,” I said. “Even here, at the end of the world.”

  Cornbread yipped and hiked his leg on the end of a pew.

  Darla and I kissed, and we kissed until Buttercup danced through the wall, and then we made our way quietly out into the night.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was just past Curfew on the night I was to die.

  We made our way east, taking turns with Cornbread’s leash. I’d meant to leave him with Mama, but the coin brought him with us. He scampered back and forth, sniffing this and nosing that, happy to have all four paws back in the land of the living.

  I hoped his stay was measured in more than mere hours.

  Darla and I talked as we strolled. Small talk, about the house, about Mama, about Evis and Gertriss. We speculated openly on the bottle of wine Stitches had served—would serve—whichever it was. Evis was saving it for his wedding, she’d said. We pondered that and the implications thereof.

  Neither of us mentioned the body in the box, or what we would face in the alley off Coldwater Street.

  Darla didn’t ask what was in the black bag, either. I was glad. If these are our final moments, I decided, let them be spent on us, and our friends. Not on the enemy.

  I kept a gun visible as I walked. So did Darla. If any lurking halfdead spied us, they wisely remained hidden in the shadows to seek easier prey.

  I got Darla to laugh once, just once, and then I picked out the storefront of Captain Alfred’s Durable Hats and I realized we were just a block from my alley.

  We stopped. Streetlamps flickered, cast crazy shadows. I pulled her in and we kissed, and then the Big Bell clapped out the half hour and it was time to go and die.

  “One thing I never asked,” I said. “Where were you, when…”

  “Asleep on our couch. Wogsroot. Stomaline. Ketcher’s Shade. I should never have told you about that. You drugged me and went out and got killed and if you get killed again I will never forgive you.”

  “Sounds like something I’d do.” I scanned the rooftops for Buttercup, didn’t see her. “Stay close. Follow my lead. And be on the lookout for the witch-woman. I have a feeling she’s going to turn up. In fact, I hope she does.”

  “So do I.” Darla’s eyes were hard and wet in the lamplight. “She and I need to have words.”

  “Make them short and aimed at her head,” I replied. “So as I understand it, Evis and I set up an ambush, and things went poorly.”

  She nodded, swallowed hard. “You were injured. Evis was unconscious. You took off and came here.”

  We both heard the sound of boot soles on cobblestones coming closer. Cornbread sniffed the air and wagged his tail hesitantly.

  “I don’t want to see this,” said Darla.

  “Me neither. Let’s get it over with and go home.”

  Behind the boots came a heavy giant’s tread.

  I took Darla’s hand and we made for the alley.

  We met myself at the mouth of it.

  I was bleeding from a long, deep gash on my forehead. My left arm hung limp and trailed a long ribbon of blood. I was struggling to breathe and from the way I bent and clutched at my gut I suspected I had broken ribs, or worse.

  But still I ran.

  “Wait,” I said to my wounded counterpart. “Stop.”

  I charged past. I know I’d seen us. We’d looked right in each other’s eyes.

  I must have thought myself delirious. Or maybe the blow to my head left me seeing phantoms of every sort.

  I cussed and hurried after, down the alley from the drawing.

  We hopped over trash, and Cornbread growled at rats as large as he, and when we all came to the dead end, we were all panting and gasping and filthy.

  “It’s me,” I said to the other Markhat, who was wobbling and going pale but managed to point a gun more or less in our direction. “Darla. Tell him.”

  “Honey. Please. We don’t have time to explain. He is you, from the past. We’ve come to help.”

  “Like hell,” the injured Markhat managed to say. Blood ran down my chin.

  Bricks exploded behind us. The ground shook as the giant shouldered his way down the alley, laughing as he came.

  “Better save your bullets for Big-and-Ugly,” I said. I put my back to my wounded self and yanked the black bag off my belt. “Let me do this, and maybe we can all walk away.”

  The injured me coughed, wet and hard, and slumped against the filthy wall.

  Cornbread growled. The fur went up on his neck and haunches. He strained at his leash so I gave him to Darla.

  Vucik marched out of the dark.

  The other Markhat emptied his revolver. He didn’t miss. It didn’t matter. The giant laughed, his stature increasing, forcing us to crane our necks to look at his face.

  “The hour is come,” he said, his voice deeper and louder than a Troll war-cry. He spoke my name, my secret birth name, the name that only Darla knew. “I place my claim upon thee.”

  “Your turn,” said my wounded self. He sank to one knee. “Done here.”

  Vucik bent, his gargantuan hand outstretched, raised for a killing blow.

 
; “You there,” I shouted. “Ugly. Over here. Recognize me?”

  The giant’s red eyes shifted. He saw me, and I saw confusion flicker briefly across his face.

  “Brought you something,” I shouted. “You might want to shrink down a bit, so you can see it.” I brandished my black bag. “Unless of course you’re fearful of a tiny speck of a man such as me?”

  “Behind him,” said Darla. I glanced toward the giant’s ankles, caught a glimpse of the witch-woman peering out from between them.

  “I see you brought your girlfriend,” I said. “Or sister, whichever term you prefer. We’re very modern here in Rannit. Very accommodating. She’ll want to have a look too. I’ll give you a hint. It’s something she just lost. Something you both want to find.”

  I was gambling that the necromancer knew her crypt had been robbed.

  By the way she shrieked and rushed out from behind the death god, I knew she did.

  I aimed my revolver right between her eyes. She had sense enough to stop half a dozen long steps away.

  I risked a single glance upward. Still no Buttercup.

  “What have you done?” screeched the necromancer.

  “Precisely what you think I’ve done,” I said. “Darla. The bag. Take it and open it and show our friends what’s inside.”

  Darla took the bag, held up the severed right hand.

  “Say hello to dear old Mum,” I shouted.

  Vucik sank to half his size. The woman screamed a foreign curse, her dark eyes flashing bloody murder.

  “Let them have it,” I said to Darla. She threw the thing at the necromancer’s feet. “See that tattoo, on the wrist? Recognize all the rings, still on her bony old fingers?”

  Vucik’s eyes began to glow.

  “Here’s the deal,” I said. “The rest of dear old mother is with a friend of mine. Right about now, this friend is dousing the body down with lamp oil, and getting ready to strike a match. I’m told even a necromancer can’t raise ashes. That right?”

  They both howled. Darla shot Vucik in the groin when he took a step forward. He stopped, but barely bled.

  “Tell us where,” growled Vucik. “Tell us where and I kill you both quick.”

  “It’s not a question of where, but a matter of when,” I said. “See, mother isn’t here. She’s five years in the future, and if you want to fetch her, you’ll have to get the god to carry you.” I made a show of consulting my pocketwatch. “But you’d better hurry, or you’ll need a whisk brush and a scoop to gather up the ashes.”

  Vucik roared and towered. His sister screeched and grabbed his arm and pointed at the hand.

  Vucik shrank, then grew, then shrank again. His eyes flashed dull crimson and dirty brown.

  The godlet didn’t want to go walking. The body it was riding did.

  Buttercup appeared, skipping down the alley, glowing just enough for me to see her smile.

  My hand found the Wrath of Heaven, and as Vucik’s eyes flickered, I drew back my hand and hurled the silver cylinder right in his gut.

  Buttercup appeared, holding a second Darla’s hand. The new Darla looked groggy and confused. My Darla gasped and went wide-eyed at the sight of her sleepy double.

  I gathered up both Darlas and Buttercup and Cornbread in a hug. Time to work out who was who later.

  If there was a later.

  The world went silent. A light flared, bright as noon, bright enough to raise heat on my face and bare arms.

  I heard a sound, far away, growing closer. Heard the rush and roar of a mighty wind, heard it swell, felt the roar of it shake my boots. Heard a cry, brief and despairing, and then there was silence, and the dark.

  I opened my eyes.

  Vucik remained. The world was drained of color, reduced to blacks and shades of grey. The giant was enveloped in a shimmering nimbus of silver light, which quickly faded away.

  Color returned to the alley.

  Vucik smiled.

  “The hour is come,” he said, growing. “I place my claim on thee.”

  Both Darlas emptied their guns. Vucik reached down for me, untroubled.

  I stumbled to my double’s side. He was bloody and wheezing. My color wasn’t good.

  I watched me raise my right hand and show the fate god’s gold coin.

  “Darla,” the other Markhat said. He coughed and sprayed blood. “I’ll always love you. Catch.”

  The wounded me flipped the bloody coin into the air. Darla caught it and simply vanished.

  The other Markhat put his revolver beneath his chin, pulled his trigger, and died.

  The death god began to roar. His red eyes flared, and he lifted his hands as though to ward off a blow, and the light I’d seen earlier from the spent Wrath of Heaven returned, flashing before him with such intensity his outline was left burned into the bricks of the dirty alley wall.

  The ground shook under our feet. Roof tiles, timbers, and masonry began to shower down.

  I called Darla’s name until Buttercup grabbed my hand and took Cornbread and I three whole blocks away.

  I stole the first horse I saw. Knocked over a traffic cop. Caused half a dozen accidents. Kicked down my own front door.

  Darla was just stirring awake, staring at the gold coin in her hand.

  She remembered being with me in the alley. She remembered falling into a drugged sleep on our couch. We kissed until the Watch came trundling up on our porch. I spent the night in jail for breach of the peace, until Holder himself let me out an hour shy of dawn.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The universe, I am happy to report, failed to unravel.

  Rannit lost another block of stores in the wake of the death god’s demise. Stitches believes it is well and truly dead too, not just lurking in some congruent but uninvolved space while stalking a new body to inhabit.

  She claims that my heroic sacrifice created a paradox, and the death god paid the price.

  We buried me in a pleasant, sun-dappled plot at the foot of the Hill, courtesy of the Regency itself. The service was touching and well attended, partly for the sheer notoriety of watching the deceased toss the first spade of dirt over his shiny steel casket.

  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 do
gfight.

  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 franktuttle@franktuttle.com. 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