The Banshee's Walk Read online

  “I can do that. Except maybe the counting to ten part. What comes after four?”

  The door shut. I heard feet dart quickly away.

  I counted to ten, fingered my wounded face, counted to ten again just in case I’d counted too fast the first time. Then I went inside.

  The next door was shut. Tendrils of steam wafted underneath it, and I could hear splashing.

  Country girl. Hot bath.

  I found a chair, folded my hands and let her take her time.

  House Werewilk was a noisy place. Even the thick stone walls couldn’t block out the sounds of thirty-odd artists and the staff of ten banging, shouting, and stomping through their day.

  Dogs were barking. I closed my eyes and counted at least six different barks. I didn’t think they were barking at anything in particular—each other, the wind, a squirrel—but the presence of so many dogs and so many people ought to have made it very difficult for a surveyor and his crew to slip unnoticed through the grounds.

  Of course, from what Marlo had said, a circus complete with elephants could have paraded past the House’s red door, and it’s unlikely any of the staff would have done so much as peeked outside. And the artists all seemed to be kids, who doubtlessly had better things to do than be curious about any goings-on outside.

  And the crossbows on the road. A random encounter with bandits?

  I didn’t think so. The road we were traveling was seldom used. It seemed a poor choice for locating well-heeled prey.

  I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable in the realization that someone might have been willing to commit murder just to keep me from reaching the House. Not that my murder would have necessarily roused the Watch from its perpetual bureaucratic slumber—but Evis, for instance, might be inclined to poke around. A vengeful Avalante is not a thing the casual killer is likely to merely shrug off.

  And what exactly had Gertriss seen, in the trees? She claimed it was a woman. I was hardly an expert on the ways of the sturdy country folk hereabouts, but finding their women ascended into the boughs seemed unlikely. But what else could she have seen?

  Her Sight. A trick of her Sight. I decided to ask her about that, and right on cue water splashed beyond the door and she spoke.

  “She was there, Mr. Markhat. It weren’t no trick of my Sight. There was a woman sitting up there in a big old oak.”

  I rose. I paced. It’s a bad habit, but having somewhere bigger than my tiny office to pace was just too much of a temptation.

  “Maybe she was picking apples.”

  “It was an oak tree, Mr. Markhat. She wasn’t picking anything. She was watching us. She didn’t think she’d be seen.”

  The dogs had seen. So had Scatter and Lank. And all their reactions to seeing the woman had been to run.

  “What did she look like, Gertriss? Why did the dogs spook, and the kids run?”

  I could tell by the sounds that Gertriss was trying to figure out how to make the tub drain. Finally, there came a gurgling gush of water.

  “She was maybe as tall as Mama, but thin, Mr. Markhat.” Glassware tinkled. “Thin like a bird. Wild hair. She was—well, nude, mostly.”

  I grinned, hearing the obvious blush in her voice.

  “Starkers and up a tree. You’d have thought Scatter and Lank would still be rooted to the spot. But they ran, Gertriss. Tell me why.”

  Gertriss hesitated. That bothered me. I can’t have my eyes and ears editing their truths. Not at one out of every five crowns.

  “Spill it, Gertriss. I’m the boss, remember?”

  She sighed. I could hear a brush being drawn through her hair.

  “She was wearing spider webs, Mr. Markhat. And not many of them. Just dirty spider webs, wrapped around her—her, um, body.”

  “Go on.”

  “She was pale. Deadly pale. Her fingers were long—too long. But her eyes—they were big, too big. And dark and …” she trailed off, looking for words.

  “Scary?” I suggested. “Eldritch? Foreboding? Inflamed?”

  Clothes rustled. Shadows flew beneath her door. Finally, Gertriss herself emerged.

  I’d have to start watching my reactions to Gertriss. Darla would not approve of how my jaw tended to go slack and my eyes fixed themselves on places that were not on the approved list of viewing sites for semi-attached males.

  “They weren’t normal eyes, Mr. Markhat.” She breezed past me, all soap and fresh linen, and sat in the chair across from me. The thick bathrobe, twin to the one hanging in my closet, left her legs bare well above her knees. I shifted my gaze north and forced my mind heavenward.

  “Not normal how, Gertriss?” Inspiration struck. “Look, I know Mama has told you a lot of things about me. One being that I’m pigheaded about accepting advice based on Hog Sight. Maybe that’s true, and maybe it isn’t. But I am asking. And I do want to know.”

  Bingo. Gertriss beamed.

  Everyone likes to think their opinions are sought after.

  “She saw right inside you, when she looked, Mr. Markhat. More than that, when I saw her, she knew it, somehow, and when she looked at me, she…was getting in my head.” She shook her head and shivered, not from any chill in the room. “I know what that sounds like. But it happened. She has something like Sight, but different. Stronger. Older.”

  I nodded. “Did you get a sense she wanted to hurt you?”

  Gertriss shook her head. “I couldn’t make no sense—I couldn’t make any sense out of what I felt,” she said. “Just…one minute, she was way off up in that tree. The next, her face was right in mine.”

  “No wonder Scatter and Lank took off.”

  Gertriss nodded. “No wonder.”

  “All right. So we’ve got a scary witch-woman watching us from the trees. We’ve got equally scary men with crossbows trying to pin us to the trees. And in a little while we’ll sit down to dinner with forty-six strangers and ask them all kinds of rude questions. Then we’ll spend the night watching the haunted forest for signs of mysterious land surveyors. Still glad you got the job?”

  Gertriss managed a laugh. “Beats hog farming. I should finish getting dressed.”

  Her robe had slipped. I was having trouble concentrating on all things good and holy.

  “Yes. Be quick about it—we’ve got a few things to do before the dinner bells ring.”

  She rose, her expression questioning.

  “An old finder’s trick, Miss. Everyone heard Lady Werewilk tell us the last bell sounded five minutes before the meal. Everyone will assume we’ll spend the entire time before that relaxing in our baths and pilfering various small household items. So, instead, we’re going to take our very own tour of the grounds.”

  Gertriss grinned. “I got Miss Darla to show me some shoes with rubber soles. Perfect for sneakin’ around big old tile-floored houses.”

  I grinned back. “You’ve the makings of a finder,” I said, as she scurried off and shut her door behind her. “Or a first-rate thief.”

  “I heard that.”

  I laughed. I’d have to work very hard to keep any secrets from Gertriss. Very hard indeed.

  Chapter Seven

  Sneaking around House Werewilk turned out to be so easy Gertriss need not have bothered with soft-soled shoes.

  As I’d hoped, the staff were in or around the kitchen or the dining room preparing a feast fit for a finder. That left only the resident artists underfoot, and the party we’d interrupted when we arrived was back on, musicians and dancers and all, at the very same spot at the foot of the grand old staircase.

  I waved off half a dozen offers of beer and two invitations to dance from girls young enough to be my daughters but too good-looking to have ever branched off my family tree. Gertriss even got an offer, which she returned with a look that she probably last used on recalcitrant swine. It certainly sent at least one tipsy young painter backpedaling toward safety.

  “I think that lot could use a taste of honest work.” The euphoria left by her first hot bath was quickly fadin
g.

  I just nodded. Part of me agreed. Part of me was howling about the injustice of it all—at their age, I’d been slogging it out in the West, fighting Trolls or hunger or the ever-present cold.

  But part of me was glad to see kids being kids.

  I made a finger to lips motion for silence, and we skirted the hall that led to the dining room, heading the other way.

  Mice would’ve made more noise than Gertriss did. Mice wearing mouse-hair slippers. I crunched and squeaked and huffed. Gertriss paid me the courtesy of not commenting upon it.

  The hall went straight then hit a room. The doors were open, so we just ambled on in.

  Easels. Easels and canvases. And chairs, and couches, and at least a couple of beds, all scattered haphazardly about the room.

  Lamps were everywhere, but none were lit. The windows did little more than cast a few weak shadows.

  I wandered. Most of the works in progress were covered, but a few were not. I let my eyes adjust, and was still doing so when I heard Gertriss gasp.

  She’d lifted the corner of a cloth draped over a canvas. Beneath it, even in the murk, was a work of art.

  No swords, upraised or flashing. No banners. No Trolls.

  But there was a woman, in flowing robes, clutching a wilted bouquet of roses to her chest. She was on her knees, and she was weeping, and something not in the painting cast a long tall shadow over her.

  A wardstone. Her father’s. You could see that plain in her face.

  Gertriss let the cloth drop back down.

  “That was…”

  “Good. Damned good.”

  I walked, picked an easel at random, lifted a canvas cloth.

  A ring of children at play. Flowers that swayed on a mild summer breeze. In the middle of the ring of children, an old man laughed, his feet caught in mid-jig, his smile wrinkled and weathered, but his eyes caught alight, young again, just for that instant.

  Gertriss joined me, wordless.

  “I reckon I might have misspoke.”

  I let the cloth drop. “No wonder she’s not worried about the galleries. I may buy this one right now.”

  Gertriss tore herself away, chose another. More wonders were revealed. I did the same. Another masterwork.

  Gertriss gasped. I followed her gaze down to the canvas. A man and a woman danced. They’d left their clothes somewhere but didn’t seem concerned.

  The painting was so good you nearly forgot they were naked. The artist had caught them in the midst of a twirl, had caught the fluid motion of their bodies, the look in their eyes. The Regent’s Council of Art would have an apoplexy at the nude bodies, but the painting wasn’t dirty. It just wasn’t.

  “Something isn’t right,” I said, quietly. I let the cloth fall back down on the canvas. “They can’t all be prodigies.”

  “Prodi—whats?”

  “Prodigies. Persons of unusual and rare skill or talent.” I swept my arm across the room. “We ought to find one or two we can’t take our eyes off of. Not every one of them.”

  Gertriss frowned. “Maybe this Lady Werewilk has a good eye for painter-folk,” she said.

  “Maybe.” I resisted the urge to go methodically about the room, lifting every canvas. “Let’s see what else we can find while we wander lost, looking for the dining room.”

  Gertriss giggled. I chose the door set in the far side of the room from the one we’d entered.

  And I reluctantly closed it behind me.

  The rest of the House wasn’t nearly so artistically inclined. There were storage rooms and rooms full of stored furniture and rooms full of barrels and rooms full of crated art supplies. And then there were the rooms, which housed the artists themselves.

  The artists were housed barracks-style, with a half-dozen single-occupant rooms set aside for special stars of either gender. I poked my head in here and there, finding nothing but the clutter and mess you’d expect a gaggle of perpetually drunk teenagers to leave behind. The smell was exactly that I remembered from my army days. I gathered Ella and Emma had long ago abandoned any pretense of maid services in the artist’s wing.

  We made it as far as the laundry unchallenged. Inside that room, though, stirring an enormous vat that boiled and smelled of bleach so strongly it made my eyes water were two of Lady Werewilk’s staff.

  They gave us the usual stink-eye but neither said a word. Clouds of blinding caustic steam rose up with every slap of their paddles. I rummaged through the list of servants Lady Werewilk had provided and decided those two worthies were Eegis and Gamp.

  Neither appeared inclined to speak, much less confess to nefarious deeds, and Gertriss was turning an interesting shade of blue.

  “Excellent work,” I offered, as we brushed past them. “Mind that wine stain on my pantaloons.”

  And out the door we went.

  I blinked. We were outside, though in a shade so deep it might as well have been in the dark heart of the House. But the air was cool and sweet, and we both just stood there and blinked away the bleach for a minute.

  Gertriss put her hand on my arm just as I was about to speak.

  “…heared nothin’ good about him,” said a gruff man’s voice.

  The door we’d stepped out of opened to the side of the House. A rough gravel wagon path wound around to the door, which I gathered was used for deliveries coming in and trash being hauled out. Parked there in the gravel round was a wagon, sans ponies. The wagon was tipped back and away from Gertriss and I, and from the sound of it a couple of layabouts were reclining in the empty wagon bed, taking advantage of the cool evening breeze and the apparent absence of any watchful eyes.

  Oh, but there were ears. Four of them.

  “Still, I don’t think Weexil had nothin’ to do with no foolishness with crossbows. Them people is from town. You know what happens when town-folk get kilt.”

  Silence. I assume someone nodded in grave agreement. I all but shouted for them to keep talking.

  “Well, even if he does come back, I reckon Lady Werewilk won’t be havin’ none of him no more. I’m lookin’ to take on his job. Maybe that little split tail of his too.”

  Lustful guffaws all around. Gertriss blushed, and she nearly let her nails do to my elbow what they’d done to my face.

  “You’re twiced too old to be chasin’ anything that young,” opined one unseen lounger. “You better stick with old widow Henshaw down the road.”

  More laughter. And then a graphic exchange of speculation involving the Widow Henshaw that was proving far too earthy for Gertriss’s delicate ears.

  I reached behind me, opened the door very quietly and then let it slam shut.

  The wagon nearly flipped over as it disgorged a trio of wide-eyed drovers, all of whom hurriedly set about trying to look busy despite their empty hands and equally empty wagon.

  “Evening, gents,” I said, greeting each with my famous friendly smile. “My name’s Markhat. Who might you be?”

  Sputtering. Exchanges of sideways glances. Three different versions of why it only looked like they’d been idling on the job.

  I held up my hands. “Relax,” I said. “I wasn’t hired to supervise the unloading of turnips. Nobody is going to tell tales later on of a few men taking a break after a long day’s work. I only asked your names to be polite.”

  “Hell, we don’t work for Lady Werewilk anyhow,” said the boldest of the lot. “My name’s Left. This is Tombs. That there is Polton.” He spat. “Must be havin’ quite a feed in there tonight. This was the second wagon-load of vittles.”

  I nodded. “The whole house will be there. Except maybe Weexil. I guess everybody knows about him, though.”

  Left nodded. “Took off. Packed up and left before dawn, not a word. Damndest thing.”

  I kept my mouth shut and looked hopefully expectant. Sometimes it works.

  “Burned all his stuff. Every scrap of it. Least that’s what they say. Old butler found what was left in the oven.”

  “Boots too,” I offered,
as though I’d already heard that. I was just guessing.

  “That’s what we can’t figure,” offered Tombs. “Who the hell burns a good pair of boots?”

  Sometimes I’m good at guessing.

  “We need to get the ponies,” said the third man. Maybe he was smarter than his companions, or maybe he just needed a privy, but he’d had enough gabbing with the people from town, friendly smiles or not. “Need to get back on the road.”

  And they went.

  Gertriss and I watched them go.

  I shrugged as soon as they were out of sight.

  “Do you reckon—do you think that this Weexil told someone we were due here today, Mr. Markhat?” asked Gertriss. “Maybe he didn’t want to be around when word got out we’d been murdered on the road.”

  I nodded. “The thought crossed my mind,” I said. Weexil, what had been his last name? Weexil Treegar. Bought all the art supplies for the painters. I tried to remember when the Lady had hired Weexil, decided he’d been there since the first batch of artists had taken up residence—well before the first surveyor’s stake was ever found.

  I motioned in the direction the drovers had taken. “We might as well see the grounds in the daylight,” I said.

  Gertriss walked, frowning. “But why did he burn everything?”

  “He didn’t burn it,” I said. Gertriss sets a good pace. I had to move faster than my customary amble to keep up.

  She turned her face toward mine.

  “If he didn’t, who did?”

  “His lady love, of course. Look. She either wakes to find him gone, or maybe he leaves behind a note of some kind. Either way, she’s not happy. So what does she do?”

  “She finds anything he left behind and she stuffs it in the only fire still burning early in the morning. The cook stove fire.”

  “Which makes me think he left a note,” I said. “Something sappy and overdone. I’d bet you two new horseshoes he even asked her to burn his note in the note. That’s probably what gave her the idea to toss in his boots as well.”

  Gertriss nodded. “Reckon the worthless lying bastard had that coming.” She practically dripped venom when she spoke, and for the first time I wondered if perhaps Gertriss had left her quaint country village for reasons that might surprise even Mama Hog.