The Banshee's Walk Read online

  “I’ll do that, Lady Werewilk.” I leaned back in my chair and did my best to appear studious. “Now, tell me about your staff. All of them. Start with the most recent ones hired and work backwards.”

  Lady Werewilk nodded, lit another smokestick with one of those newfangled red-tipped matches, and set about describing her household while smoke-wraiths swirled and danced.

  Gertriss knocked.

  “Come on in, Gertriss,” I said. “Lady Werewilk is gone.”

  Gertriss, still blushing, stomped in.

  “I’m sorry ’bout that,” said Gertriss. “I reckon I’ve got to get used to city folk and their ways, and turnin’ red and puffin’ up ain’t the way to handle it.”

  I nodded, though I could almost hear Mama’s voice coaching Gertriss to say just that.

  “You did fine. Lady Werewilk was unusual even by my standards.” I picked up the long thin birchwood stick that was lying on my desk and handed it to Gertriss. “Do you know what this is?”

  She took it, eyed it gravely. “Looks like a surveyor’s marker,” she said.

  I beamed. “That’s what it is. It doesn’t have a maker’s mark on it, so I don’t know who it belongs to, but it’s a surveyor’s stick. Lady Werewilk has been finding them all over her property for the last several weeks.” I motioned Gertriss into the client’s chair. “Nobody admits to planting them, or to knowing anything about them. What does that suggest to you, Gertriss?”

  She wrinkled her brow. “Somebody wants her House or her land. Or at least part of it.”

  “One thing a finder should never do is jump to conclusions.” Her big blue eyes fell, so I spoke again quickly. “But that’s what I’m going to assume too, at least until we find otherwise.”

  She smiled and put the stick down. “She got brothers, sisters, cousins?”

  “One brother,” I replied. “He came back from the War broken. She doesn’t believe he is capable of dressing or feeding himself, much less snatching the House out from under her. We’ll assume that’s true too, at least until we meet him in person.”

  She brightened at that. “I’ll be goin’ with you, Mister Markhat?”

  I nodded. “You won’t be much use to me sitting here. But I have conditions, Miss. First, you stay quiet as much as possible, but you listen.”

  She bit her bottom lip and nodded.

  “Next, while you listen to what people say, watch what they do. Watch where they go. Watch who they talk to or don’t talk to. Sometimes that tells you more than their words ever do.”

  Again, a nod. I chuckled inwardly.

  “Oh, and Miss Gertriss. No posing nude while you’re on my payroll.”

  Finally, she laughed, and her eyes twinkled.

  “I weren’t plannin’ on no naked shenanigans. On your pay or off it.”

  “Good girl,” I replied. “Now here’s the plan. We head south tomorrow, first light. We’ll be staying at the House until we find our mystery surveyor or until Lady Werewilk gets tired of paying us, whichever comes first. As junior member of the firm Finder Markhat you get one of every five crowns we’re paid. Do good, and the next case might get you one and a half. Is that a deal?”

  She went wide-eyed. I guess by backwoods standards a crown was a small fortune. In Rannit, she’d learn soon enough, it was somewhat less than that.

  I held out my hand. She took it, shook it, and the Finder Markhat agency officially doubled its staff.

  I let her take a breath.

  “All that means we’ve got some things to do today,” I said. “We want to blend in, Gertriss. We want people to forget who we are and where we are, as much and as often as possible. And that means we’ve got to get you into some city clothes, before we go.”

  She blushed again, and her right hand instinctively caught at the rough unsewn hem of her coarse handmade blouse.

  I raised a hand before she could protest.

  “I have a lady friend who will handle all the personal attention,” I said. “And don’t worry about the cost. One thing Darla has is plenty of clothes and a soft spot for young ladies dressed in burlap.”

  “But, Mister Markhat, Mama said I could borrow some of her old…”

  I had a flash, saw Gertriss arrayed in moth-eaten rags four feet too short for her that trailed owl feathers when she walked.

  I stood up. “I am the boss, am I not, Gertriss?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then here’s another condition. No wearing anything Mama gives you. Ever. Got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I smiled, rose, nodded for her to do the same.

  “Glad that’s settled,” I said. “Let’s go meet Darla. I’ll tell you about House Werewilk on the way.”

  Gertriss rose. I guessed she was still none too sure about dressing in lewd, lascivious city garb but determined to hang onto her pay even at the cost of burlap-enforced modesty.

  “Will we be walking or taking a cab, Mister Markhat?” she asked.

  I thought about those Army-issue doggers she was wearing and the long hike to Darla’s and added the cost of a cab to my loss of every fifth crown and forced a big wide city fella smile.

  “Why, a cab, of course,” I said, snatching my good grey hat off its peg and offering my arm to Gertriss. “We city folk never walk when we can ride in style.”

  Gertriss looked at my proffered elbow in sincere puzzlement. “Somethin’ wrong with your arm, Mister Markhat?” she asked.

  I laughed, and we made for the street.

  It was a day of firsts for Gertriss. Her first ride in a cab, her first sight of ogres walking shoulder to shoulder with human folks, her first sight of red-clad street preachers and the bridge clowns on Cyrus and the short skirts and open solicitations of the whores that line the streets between Camus and Drade. And everywhere, of course, the ragged Broken, the nimble beggars, the ever-present cries of the whammy men and the clanging of distant foundry machines in the factories that line the south bank of the River.

  I tried to fill Gertriss in on the Curfew and the dead wagons on the way. I explained about the Big Bell banging out Curfew every night, and how the halfdead were legally entitled to snack on anyone who wasn’t Watch or a marked city employee after Curfew. I explained about the dead wagons that stalked the streets each morning, and what caused that smoke that wafted from the tall crematorium chimneys along the Brown.

  “Missus Hog claimed you broke Curfew all the time,” sputtered Gertriss, unable to tear her eyes away from the antics of the bridge clowns that paced our cab as we crossed over the canal at Drade.

  I shrugged. “I’ve had to break Curfew a few times,” I said. A clown caught hold of the cab’s window and capered along with us, gibbering and hooting at Gertriss until the cabbie landed a whack on the top of his head with a stout shaft of oak. “That doesn’t mean you can do it. If you’re ever caught out, and you hear that bell ring, you get indoors if you have to break in somewhere, you understand? The halfdead won’t enter a business or a dwelling. That’s the law. They don’t break it.” Because they don’t have to, I added, mentally. The sad fact is that there is a more than sufficient supply of idiots and criminals. So many, in fact, that most Curfew-breakers never see a halfdead, much less wind up dead by one.

  Gertriss nodded, still mesmerized by the capering clowns. “Too, I have this,” I said. I produced the medallion Evis gave me, a while back—it marked me as a friend of House Avalante, and while that wasn’t an iron-clad assurance of safety, it meant that anyone harming the wearer would face the wrath of a Dark House, and even other Dark Houses weren’t usually that hungry.

  The cab clattered along, and Gertriss drank it all in, gabbing happily along the way. I managed to learn that she’d been a farmhand back home, mainly dealin’ with hogs. She reported she was the oldest of six sisters, and she had once seen a Troll in the woods taking a shit in a creek. Not exactly a sterling resume for becoming a street-wise finder. But there was an intelligence behind her countrified accent and naive
té, so I resolved to give her a chance. One chance, and no more, and if Mama took that hard that was just too bad.

  We reached Darla’s, and I paid the cabbie, and as Gertriss noted the fare she got her first taste of the high cost of living in the city.

  I shrugged and grinned. “Welcome to Rannit,” I said, pulling her quickly onto the sidewalk before a passing cab spun her out of the way.

  She looked up and around, gawking openly at the wonders of three-story wood-front buildings and the glass windows that revealed everything from jewelry to clothing to fancy lamps for milady’s tea room.

  “This is Darla’s,” I said, easing her toward Darla’s fancy oak and glass entry. “Darla is a friend of mine.”

  “More’n a friend, way I hear it,” said Gertriss with a sly grin.

  “It’s a wonder Mama Hog ever gets any sooths said, the way she gossips,” I noted. A bell on the door chimed, and Darla herself came darting out from the back, a long black gown twin to the one Lady Werewilk had been wearing in her hands.

  “Darla dearest.” I probably smiled. “I’d like you to meet someone.”

  Darla smiled back. She has a good smile. And big luminous brown eyes and short dark hair. She draped the gown over a mannequin and came quickly over to meet us.

  “Miss Darla, this is Gertriss.” Gertriss blushed and wondered what to do, until Darla stuck out her hand to shake. “Gertriss is Mama Hog’s niece. She’s come to Rannit to learn Mama’s trade.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Gertriss. “I’m working with Mister Markhat, for now.”

  Darla lifted a narrow brown eyebrow and tried to hide a grin. She’d sized up the whole morning’s events faster than I could have explained them.

  “We start our first case in the morning,” I said. “Miss Gertriss needs some new clothes.”

  Darla nodded and took my hand and squeezed it. The twinkle in her eye said “And then she needs to burn all her old ones.”

  “You know, I believe we have some casual day-wear that would fit without much alteration,” she said. She eyed Miss Gertriss critically, walking around her, while Gertriss blushed even deeper.

  Darla didn’t start out as a dressmaker. But since she lost her job at the Velvet—my fault, I’m afraid—and was now co-owner of the dress shop with Martha Hoobin, she’d become quite a competent seamstress in her own right, as well as the book-keeper and general money manager.

  “I’m thinking three new outfits, one new nightgown, two pairs of shoes, one pair of slippers, a bathrobe, a dressing gown, two pairs of lady’s trousers, four blouses, two hats and a coat,” said Darla, as she walked. “I’ll just add all that to your account, shall I, Mister Markhat?”

  She grinned, full of sudden mischief.

  I sighed. “Make it three hats,” I said. “No one’s ever accused me of being cheap.”

  Darla laughed. “Three it is, then,” she said. “Now, Mister Markhat, if you’ll excuse us, I need to take some measurements, and we won’t need your services for that. Why don’t you go pester some vampires or tug at ogre beards for, say, two hours? Then you and I have a lunch date, if you’ll recall.”

  I didn’t recall, but being a quick-thinking street-wise finder I merely nodded quickly.

  “Back in two hours, then,” I said.

  Darla stood on her tiptoes and planted an ambush kiss on my lips. Her perfume enveloped me, and I scandalized Gertriss by wrapping Darla up in my arms and kissing her back, maybe longer than propriety demanded.

  “Not a minute longer than two hours,” she said, when she stepped back.

  I nodded, breathed in more perfume, and headed out the door.

  Chapter Three

  I had two hours to kill. Ordinarily, I’d have headed to Eddie’s for a beer, but that day, I decided to immerse myself in the heady, erudite world of Rannit’s burgeoning art community.

  My previous experience with art was limited to sneering at outdoor statues of War Hero This or General That, and cheering on the pigeons that managed to sum up my opinion of them perfectly, day after day.

  My mother once found a case of mostly-empty paint jars and a pair of camelhair brushes, and she painted a surprisingly good portrait of my father with it, and even though she ran out of black before finishing his moustache and his right eye was a darker blue than his left, her painting hung above out mantel for all my childhood. That was the only fine art the Markhats had ever owned.

  It’s never a good idea to head into the heart of a mess that may well center around some walk of life you know nothing about. That worried me about the well-dressed Lady Werewilk’s situation. I might be staring right at the obvious lynchpin of the whole thing, but because I don’t know my red paints from my antebellum surrealists, I might not ever see it.

  So I told the cabbie to head for Mount Cloud and ignored his snort of derision.

  Mount Cloud isn’t a street. It’s a neighborhood, one I’d only passed through a few times. It’s where the Regent’s Museum had stood, until the fire in the opening years of the War had gutted it. Reconstruction had only just begun, and although the surviving pieces of Rannit’s thousand-year art history were still safely tucked away somewhere in a deep, secret Regency subbasement, the neighborhood itself was lousy with galleries and art sellers of every description.

  We clopped along. I tried to recall what little I’d ever known about art—it was once taught, here and there, before the War brought such frivolity to a halt—and decided I remembered only two things.

  One was that bad old King Throfold had outlawed the depiction of bare-chested ladies in 1276. The other was that the worth of such paintings had tripled or quadrupled immediately thereafter, which resulted in a veritable flood of bare-chested ladies in paintings for two centuries thereafter.

  I was never much of a student, but for some reason that stuck with me.

  I grinned and wondered for the thousandth time if that hadn’t been King Throfold’s idea all along and then the cab pulled onto Cannon and I had arrived.

  I tipped the cabbie and set foot along the cheery galleries and elegant cafes that lined the shaded streets.

  I took in a few window-fronts as I walked. It seems art doesn’t keep banker’s hours, something I hadn’t considered when I set out, and every gallery I passed was most unapologetically locked up tight.

  But the windows were open, and the sun was out, so I could see what passed for art in Rannit these days well enough.

  I wasn’t impressed. Like old Throfold, I preferred my art to be pleasant to look at. What I saw, in window after window, was the War.

  Heroic soldiers faced down slavering Trolls. Banners waved majestically in smoke-choked winds. The fires that ringed every battle only served to illuminate the fierce patriotic resolve that lined each soldier’s face with courage.

  I was there, people. It wasn’t courage that kept us fighting. It was the simple lack of any other choice.

  I fell into a damned march cadence without realizing it, and into a deep scowl when I did. Window after window revealed paintings of battles, sculptures of upraised swords, and tattered old regimental flags encased in glass and the like.

  I did come to one conclusion. No veterans ever shopped these places.

  They’d just not have the stomach for it.

  I was about to hail a cab and head for Eddie’s when I came upon a door propped open with a brick and a pair of workmen carefully easing a blanket-clad canvas into the place. Being an inquisitive fellow, I fell into step right behind them and became the day’s first patron at Moorland Galleries, Established 1998.

  “Where does this one go?” asked the nearest workman, of me.

  “With the others, please,” I replied. No need in prompting a fusillade of questions at this hour of the day, after all.

  They grunted and made their way through a rear door, and I took a moment to browse.

  General Stark on horseback, sword uplifted. The Battle of Three Gates, ringed by fire. The Charge at Impriss, wind blowing the maj
estic banners the wrong bloody way. And then something unexpected—the Fall of Right Lamb.

  I was gritting my teeth and thinking inartistic thoughts when someone softly cleared his throat right beside me.

  “One of my personal favorites,” said a voice from below my shoulder. “It’s a Kelson, as I’m sure you know. Only Kelson can do twilight with such foreboding, don’t you think?”

  I nodded. To me, it looked like someone had painted the awful thing using only three shades of dark bloody red and then blotted it liberally with lamp oil before leaving it out in the rain.

  “Kelson is a master of subtle twilights,” I said, sensing mention of lamp oil or rain might offend my new friend’s delicate sensibilities. “Are you perhaps the proprietor?”

  Laughter, mild and polite. “Goodness, no, sir. I am Steven, the manager. I wake before noon, you see.”

  I chuckled and turned, and we shook hands. It wasn’t his fault the War was staring me back in the face from all sides.

  “My name is Markhat.” Steven was a short skinny man, pale and bookish, but he had a scar running all the way from the crown of his bald spot to his shoulder, and I had a feeling he didn’t like these fine works of high art any better than I did. “You’ve got some interesting pieces here.”

  “Thank you, sir. Is there an artist you’re interested in? We have quite a range of styles and techniques.”

  I nodded, tried to tear my eyes off the Fall of Right Lamb. I’d been there. I’d seen it. Hell, I’d nearly died there, half a dozen times in that awful last night.

  “Actually, I’m wondering if you know of a Lady Erlorne Werewilk,” The faces fleeing the Trolls in the painting before me at once became familiar—there was Otter, there was Walking Paul, there was the Sarge, flailing away at Troll heads with his crossbow when the bolts ran out. “I hear her House has produced some interesting pieces of late.”

  Steven who rose before noon looked suddenly and furtively about.

  “I know something of her,” he replied, his voice a terse whisper. “The name is not known to me,” he then said, in a much louder voice tinged with disdain.