The Five Faces (The Markhat Files) Read online

  The cracked sidewalk was packed. By the time I’d made a block, foot traffic was so thick wagons could hardly get through.

  People shoved and laughed and shouted and fought. The stink of cheap beer and cheaper rotgut whiskey managed to overpower the stench of the slaughterhouses now and then. Louder than the din of shouting and bellowing, music sounded, from dozens of close-packed bars.

  I picked a joint at random and shouldered my way inside. I caught a few glares, but the sight of Toadsticker and the set of my manly jaw kept events from progressing to fisticuffs.

  There were eighty avid non-bathers packed into a space built for twenty-five. The single barman, who dripped sweat in such volume he appeared to have just emerged from a swim in the Brown, shouted at me above the roar. “Whiskey or beer?”

  “Beer,” I shouted. I flipped him a coin and he filled a dirty glass. I showed him another coin and crooked my finger in an invitation to lean closer.

  “My money here wants to know about people with strange accents,” I said.

  “Hell, mister, half this bunch is from Bel Loit and the other half are Princers. They all talk funny.”

  I sighed and flashed a second coin. “Any of them rounding up bait dogs, for dog fights?”

  “Hell if I know.” He hesitated, grabbed a single coin. “This is just a drinking house. Keep heading for the water. That’s where all the trouble starts.”

  I nodded, put the second coin down on his greasy bar. “You hear anything else, send word to the finder named Markhat on Cambrit. I’ll pay.”

  My coin vanished, and he was off to fill another filthy glass with a thin, yellow liquid that laid only the most tenuous of claims to being beer.

  I gave my alleged beer to the nearest wobbling ne’er-do-well and pushed my way back to the street.

  The next bar I tried had a name. Eager Horace’s, read the hastily carved placard above the door. Good eats, good drinks.

  The stink of the place gave the lie to both claims.

  More blank stares and shrugs from the barman. Another pair of my coins stayed behind.

  I had to pull Toadsticker at the Sipping Sailor when a pair of drunks decided I was a dandy who didn’t respect the dignity of the honest working man. I kneed a bleary-eyed man in the groin in a place called Shank’s Joy House after he decided I was wearing his hat. When the fight broke out in the Bargemaster Inn, I smashed a window with a stool and led the panicked charge into the street the instant I smelled smoke.

  By the time I was half a block away, flames were licking at the walls of the Bargemaster. The street quickly became a mad press of people fleeing the scene, bearing the fruits of their looting, meeting those rushing toward the fire with an eye for the odd bit of theft.

  I hit another dozen bars before I reached River Street, which runs north and south along the Brown. I’d nearly emptied my pockets, and I hadn’t gotten a single, whispered hint as to where I might find heavily accented dogfight enthusiasts.

  I crossed River and headed south. The bars and eateries and inns were on my left. To my right stretched the wharfs and the docks and the weatherworn warehouses and then the sluggish face of the Brown, all but invisible in the dark.

  There were boats moving out on the water. Barges drifted past, slow and ponderous, their cargo lashed in stacks to their wide, flat hulls. Smaller craft bobbed between them, heading for the docks.

  I stopped by a bent streetlamp when I realized a line of half a dozen barges, far out on the water, weren’t moving at all. Each was brightly lit, far brighter than their cousins closer to the riverbanks, and I could see people, mobs of them, milling about under the lights.

  “A question, my good man,” I said, smiling my finest smile at a man ambling past and whistling. “Those barges. They aren’t moving, and it looks like they’re hauling whole neighborhoods. Why?”

  My new friend stopped whistling. “Princers,” he said, spitting into the street. “They take to the water after dark. Got some damn fool notion the halfdead can’t cross running water.”

  “You serious?”

  He shrugged. “Hell yes. There’s another pair of barges farther south. Gonna be a bad night when the vamps decide to get their fancy shoes wet.”

  I nodded. Halfdead deterred by running water? That was an old wives’ tale disproven long ago. The only thing that deterred the halfdead was the Curfew, and its terms made no mention of water, running or otherwise.

  My whistling friend spat again and ambled away.

  I kept walking. I listened. I watched. I dropped my few remaining coins here and there. Many a barkeep benefitted from my largess that night, but I was no closer to finding any wee doggies than I was when I stepped out of my cab.

  I pushed the last of my advance on finding Hurry-Up Pete into the pudgy fist of a barkeep who suggested I find better uses for my time, just as the first warning bell of Curfew struck.

  I hoofed it north and then east. I received a good cussing by stepping in front of a cab on Market, but I got a ride, and I was climbing the three steps to my porch before the Big Bell rang out Curfew proper.

  Darla met me at our door. She had flour on the tip of her nose and a revolver in her right hand.

  “Welcome home,” she said, smiling. “I’ve baked us a pie!”

  “Did you shoot it before or after you rolled the crust?” I kissed her. Kissing happens sometimes. Darla is careful to keep her revolver aimed at the floor when it does.

  “Before, silly,” she said. She wrinkled her nose. “You’ve been somewhere unsavory.”

  “Duty demanded that I carouse and cavort on the docks,” I said. We made our way to the kitchen, where supper laid waiting on the stove and a pie baked in the oven. “This is the earthy aroma of the noble working man.”

  “I can’t picture you cavorting,” she said. “Do you start off with your left foot or your right?”

  Tiny feet scampered across our roof.

  The neighbors have squirrels. We have a banshee.

  Darla’s smile died. “She’s been up there since dark.” She opened the oven and pulled out a tray of cookies. “I’ve been trying to coax her inside, but she won’t come.”

  Buttercup, our resident banshee, is the size and shape of a pre-teen girl who hasn’t enjoyed many good meals. Darla’s fresh-baked sugar cookies are her favorite, and the mere scent of them usually brings her inside in a hurry.

  I hugged Darla. Having a banshee walk the roof when your spouse is working a case can’t be the best way to pass an evening at home.

  “She’s probably just playing with her head-bone,” I said. “Anyway, look, I’m here and all in one piece.”

  The scampering on the roof stopped. Tiny, bare feet ran into the kitchen, and skinny arms hugged my waist.

  Banshees don’t bother with doors.

  “Hello, Buttercup,” I said, tousling her ragged mop of golden hair. “Darla made you cookies.”

  Buttercup squealed and leaped. Cookies began vanishing in a veritable hail of crumbs.

  “That’s hot, honey,” said Darla. Buttercup snatched up another one and crammed it in her already-full mouth, grinning.

  There might be things out there capable of injuring Buttercup. Old magics. Powerful sorcerers. Eldritch spells. Hot cookies, though, aren’t on the list.

  Darla began uncovering pans. I helped by getting in the way and received a playful slap on my hand when I dared grab one of Buttercup’s cookies.

  Finally, we sat and ate. Darla fries a mean pork chop. We had corn and green beans and a big fat potato each. Buttercup finished off the cookies and then amused herself by playing peek-a-boo with the whispering skull she carries.

  “Gertriss came by earlier,” said Darla as she put down her fork.

  You live with a woman long enough, you learn to recognize the subtle difference between a casual conversation and a conversation that only sounds casual but can veer off into the significant at any word.

  “Let me guess.”

  Darla laced her fing
ers together and rested her chin on them. “She said you left this morning looking for an awful man named Hurry-Up Pete and returned in the employ of a pair of street kids who’ve lost their dog.”

  “I believe in maintaining a diverse range of clientele.”

  “So this wasn’t some elaborate prank you played on Mama Hog?”

  “Nope. A man in a wide-brimmed hat who spoke with a strange accent cut the leash a little blind girl named Saffy was holding. The man took her dog Cornbread, and Saffy’s brother is going to pay off the debt working in our yard this summer.”

  Darla smiled. “And Hurry-Up Pete?”

  “I’ll tell the clients what I know. Refund half their advance. They’ll either find Hurry-Up, or they won’t, but I’ll not be a part of it. Not this time. Not anymore.”

  Silence, save for Buttercup’s unintelligible murmurings and her skull’s equally cryptic, whispered replies.

  “That’s why I love you,” said Darla at last. She rose and came and kissed me.

  Later, we ate that pie. Best damned pie I ever had.

  Chapter Four

  I rose before the lazy sun. Bathed and shaved and dressed in the dark, so as not to wake Darla.

  When I left, the sun was just beginning to pink up the eastern sky. I hailed a cab a couple of blocks away and headed for Cambrit.

  The only traffic out and about was the dead wagons. We passed three—none of them full, one empty save for a single, shrouded bundle lolling bonelessly in the wagon’s bloodstained bed.

  I thought of the crowds amid the docks and decided that the halfdead were hunting there these days. Then I remembered the crowded barges and put the thought out of my mind.

  Three-leg Cat greeted me at my office door. I raised my hand to unlock the door when it flew open and Gertriss yanked me inside.

  Gertriss is my partner. She’s a tall, blonde looker, right off a pig farm in Pot Lockney, Mama’s ancestral stomping grounds, and while she’s a long way from the swine pens, she’s still got a farm girl’s grip.

  “Easy, sister,” I said. “I’m a married man these days.”

  She peered through our glass spy window. “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said. Then she turned and put her back to the door. “Boss, just what the hell have you gotten yourself into this time?”

  Gertriss, as I said, is a looker. Pale gold hair, piercing blue eyes, alabaster skin.

  But her eyes were red and puffy, her hair was a tangle, and her clothes were wrinkled and askew.

  “You’ve been here all night?”

  “Someone had to be,” she said. “Sorry, boss. I’m tired.”

  “Sit.” I pulled back my chair. “Tell me what’s happened.”

  “I got here an hour after you left,” she said, taking my chair. She still smelled of some expensive perfume. “I found Marlene Horn.”

  Gertriss was working a case for the parents of a teenage daughter who believed their eldest, Marlene, had been snatched by a street gang two weeks past.

  “Dead or alive?”

  “Alive. She’s now Mrs. Marlene Coats. They forgot to mention the boyfriend they forbade her to marry.”

  “Mr. Coats, I presume?”

  She nodded. “Anyway. I met with the Horns. Broke the good news. Got paid. I was hanging around here, just resting.”

  She blushed. By resting she meant waiting for Curfew to fall, hoping Evis might pop around.

  Evis is halfdead. He’s my best friend, and Gertriss’s best friend too, although Gertriss and I apply the term with very different meanings.

  “The Watch showed up right at Curfew,” said Gertriss. “Started banging on the door, demanding to see you.”

  I frowned. “The Watch? What for? Did they say?”

  “Hell no, they didn’t say. Just said they saw the lights on and they knew you were here and open the damned door or we’ll break it down.”

  “I see they didn’t break in.”

  “They banged on the door for hours, boss. Hours. They even tried kicking it in. Then a Watch wagon rolled up and there was a lot of shouting and the whole mob of them tore out of here like the High House was on fire. So I ask again. What the hell are you working on?”

  I sat on my desk. Gertriss regarded me with a weary look of exasperation.

  “Mama told you all about it, I’m sure,” I said. “I went looking for Hurry-Up Pete. Found him. Took a new case involving a stolen dog, one Cornbread, who presents no particular interest to the Watch that I know of.”

  “That’s your story?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  She sighed and stretched, which did interesting things to the front of her blouse. I looked chastely away until she was done.

  “I’m going to Mama’s to get some sleep,” she said. “But the Watch will be back. If I were you, I’d think up something else to tell them. I don’t think they’re interested in dog stories right now.”

  I nodded. Then I saw Gertriss out and watched her until she was safe behind Mama Hog’s door.

  Three-leg Cat was perched in my chair when I came back to the office.

  “I’ll give you my hat and my gun if you’ll handle the Watch.”

  He blinked at me and made for the back room. “You’re fired,” I added, but he showed me the back of his tail and slipped through the barely-open door.

  I hung my hat on the rack, put my gun in a drawer, and wondered how long it would take the Watch day shift to finish breakfast and come huffing and puffing my way.

  My sowing of coin at the docks bore early fruit.

  The first caller of the day was a skinny, nervous man who introduced himself as Mr. Penny. Mr. Penny claimed he knew all there was to know about dogfighting on the docks.

  I tossed his ass out in the street when he hinted he’d let me in on all his secrets for a pair of Old Kingdom crowns.

  I’d barely gotten comfortable when he knocked at my door again. This time, he was willing to settle for a single crown, and out into the street he flew, by the scruff of his scrawny, dirty neck.

  Give Mr. Penny one thing—he was persistent. By the time we settled on a single pair of newly-minted coppers, he’d been shown the cobblestones four times, and had even received a mild thrashing from old Mr. Bull’s ever-present straw broom.

  “So tell me what you know,” I said. I slid one copper across my desk toward him and kept the other in my hand.

  Mr. Penny glared at me and silently worked his jaw. He was new to weed. In a month, maybe two, he’d be grinding his teeth together all the time, until they were cracked and ground to black, rotting nubs.

  “They fight every Friday,” he said. “Starts an hour after Curfew.”

  “Where?” You have to remind weedheads to keep talking, or they just sit there and chew.

  “It don’t have a name. Burned up right after the big storm. Was a warehouse. They fight in the basement. Watch don’t see any lights, that way. Give me the rest.”

  “Tell me how to get there first.”

  He tried to work up enough spit to swallow. It took him a while.

  “Find Roy’s. Go a block west. Then a block north. There’s an alley. Bricks are painted white. In there, first right, next left. Tell the man your name is Cauld. He’ll want ten coppers. He’ll open a door. That’s it. Give me the rest.”

  I slid the other coin his way.

  He snatched it up and was gone, leaving my door standing open.

  I got up to close it and watched him scurry away. He didn’t go alone. As Mr. Penny turned the corner, a man in a new, black hat and Watch-issue, black brogans popped out of a storefront and hurried after the weedhead.

  A moment later, Watch whistles blew.

  A moment after that, a pair of shiny, black Watch tallboys rounded the corner. Old Mr. Bull, still sweeping his stoop, saw them heading for me and laughed.

  “You’re in trouble now,” he said. His broom never missed a beat. “One of these days you’ll find some common sense and quit all this and stay home with the missus.”
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  I didn’t close my door. Instead, I leaned on the wall beside it and greeted the Watch with a smile and a cheery wave.

  “One of these days I just might,” I said to Mr. Bull. “Maybe I can get a job sweeping up. You hiring?”

  The tallboys came to a halt. Watchmen spilled out, grim-faced. None returned my winsome smile.

  The last Watchman to emerge was one I knew. Holder, Captain Holder, the bright and rising star of the Regent’s shiny, new City Watch.

  “Inside, Markhat,” said the Captain. “You’ve got some talking to do.”

  Mr. Bull hooted an old man’s cackling laugh, shuffled behind his door, and slammed it firmly shut.

  My office is made to seat two. There’s enough room for another four or five to stand.

  Captain Holder brought in six uniformed Watchmen. The Captain took my client’s chair. The Watchmen put their backs to my walls and fixed me in half a dozen steely glares.

  “I only have tea service for four,” I said. “But—”

  “Shut up,” said the Captain. “I don’t think you’re funny. I’m going to ask you a question. You’re going to answer it, and you’re going to answer it straight. Or we take this all downtown, and maybe I ask the question again today or maybe I get busy and I don’t ask again until next week. Is that clear?”

  I nodded. “It’s clear. Ask.”

  He inched closer so that he sat on the edge of my chair. His elbows were on my desk. His hands were clenched into fists. The knuckles on his right hand were bruised and crisscrossed with old scars.

  “Tell me what you were doing on the docks last night,” he said. His eyes were bloodshot but hard. “Tell me who you talked to, and what they said. Don’t forget we’ve got the man who left here. And you can bet your ass he’s telling us everything he knows.”

  “You aren’t going to like it,” I said. “I’m going to tell the truth. But it’s not one you want to hear.”

  “You tell the truth, and we’ll not have a problem,” he said. “You try one of your song and dance routines, and all the fancy lawyers in all Avalante’s pockets won’t get you out of the Old Ruth this time.”