25
"Mr. Garrett? Where are you? Are you all right? Answer me if you can."
I could but I didn't. She could not be sure I hadn't fallen during our landing. Damn! If I had kept my mouth shut, if I hadn't asked her her name, she couldn't have been sure I hadn't fallen earlier, when she was having too much fun to concentrate.
The bumblebee whir of the runt's wings came toward me, wordlessly putting death to my maunderings. He knew I hadn't fallen. He was on patrol now, running a slow search pattern. The little rat couldn't shut up. And everything he said was less than complimentary toward my favorite working stiff. Me.
To know me is to love me.
I headed for home full speed, encouraged by a racket behind me that suggested a welcoming party might have been waiting. Sounded like lots of folks were in a sudden bad mood, including a nation of pixies untimely rousted from their sleep. Over what sounded like a henhouse disturbed I heard Cat shout at one of her horses. She wanted to get airborne again.
The little winged guy buzzed up to within a few feet of me. He settled his plump rump onto the outstretched bronze palm of one of the few nonmilitary statues in the park. He had an arrow across his bow. His moonlighted expression said he meant to use it. "Know you're around here somewhere, Slick. Know you're close enough to hear. That was a nifty stunt, turning sideways to reality to give the kid the slip." Weed smoke had begun to cloud up around his head. He ought to be too stoned to breathe. "But fun is fun, and I don't think you're gonna have much more if you don't come in now. You don't got no other friends."
I figured the Godoroth crew had tried to reel me in, irked because I had been trafficking with the enemy, and now they were triple irked because I had done a fade. I considered taking advantage of my invisibility to get a closer look at them. But I was worn out. I just wanted to go home. Reason told me home was no safer than out here, but the animal within me wanted to believe otherwise, wanted to slide into its den and lick its wounds. I kept the sack of invisibility around me till I was sure the flying runt had gotten lost.
I caught his buzz again as I was about to leave the park. I stepped into deep shadow and froze. Thus I was out of sight and motionless when two huge owls flapped over moments later. Though they were talking owl talk, the girls were bickering virulently.
I chuckled. To myself, of course.
Let them go butt heads with the Godoroth.
Knowing the Shayir were around put some extra hustle into my step. Good thing, too. Wasn't long before I began to feel a chill. It grew. I found another deep shadow and shrank down into it. I was crouched there when Abyss the Coachman floated across my backtrail like a black, wind-tossed specter. Looked like he had been sent to patrol the routes from the park to my home.
Had that been set up ahead? Had they expected an escape attempt?
You get paranoid.
I'd always thought gods were big on omniscience and such. Maybe as your followers become fewer you have less ability to draw on the power leaking over from the old country. Certainly if either bunch had any way of knowing things for themselves they would have no need for me. And I wouldn't be running around loose.
Paranoia. I had a bad feeling mat when the smoke cleared and the earth stopped rocking and the dust settled, neither bunch would have much use for a mortal pug who had gotten his nose into too many divine secrets.
Something to keep in mind.
I heard a rustling. It came from the south. It grew louder quickly. Nog? No. Not Nog the Malodorous. Marvellous. I crouched in another shadow. Something passed overhead like a flight of bats but was not bats. More like fluttering paper shadows in a big hurry, moving with great purpose, hunting. Might that be the thing called Quilraq the Shadow? I wasn't inclined to hang around and find out.
I stuck to alleys and breezeways that would not have been graced by my presence at any other time. I even crossed the Bustee, the deadliest slum in town, where nine of any ten inhabitants would have cut my throat for the shoes I was wearing and the gods themselves would walk in peril. Twice I turned to Maggie's wonderful cord to fend off overeager shoppers. That was one handy tool, but I was getting reluctant to use it. It could be no coincidence that every time I did one of the Godoroth turned up soon afterward.
No exception in the Bustee, either. Each time it was one of the ugly guys that came, too, like the Godoroth knew those mean streets well enough to send only their meanest and most expendable. The streets emptied quickly after that, even though the locals could not see what was scaring the bean sprouts out of them.
I tried to see the bright side. The Shayir were not turning up at the same time. They were, apparently, only running random patrols in areas that interested their opponents.
The ugly guys were not Nog. Nor were they especially powerful other than in the scary department. I ducked and dodged them with little difficulty. On the other hand, I suspected everyone now had a solid idea of where I was headed. Whole platoons of divine beasties might be setting up camp near my house.
Owls and paper shadows, flying horses and flying babies who smoked weed crisscrossed the night, possibly taking their bearings from Godoroth on the ground. It was a wonder they didn't collide.
I changed course the minute I cleared the Bustee, skirting its eastern edge as I headed north. I mean, what would Mrs. Cardonlos say if I brought this all home and the gods themselves started duking it out in Macunado Street?
It seemed a better strategy would be to go where the gods wouldn't look, then stay put till their deadline passed. Put them all out of business.
Faces and figures flickered through my memory. Such a pity I couldn't pick and choose. There were some divine ladies amongst those gods, and the world might become a lesser place for their absence.
26
I drifted more than a mile north and east of my original course. I attracted no attention but never made up my mind where to go, either. Then I changed my mind.
This was like being back in the Corps. The people in charge didn't know what they were doing. I cussed the guy giving me orders. I told me to shut up and do what I was told.
I'd decided that I did have to go home. I needed to see the Dead Man. He needed to know what had become of me. Maybe he could find a thread of sense in this madness. There was more going on than I had been told, and I still had only a glimmering of the rules of the game I was being forced to play.
Surely both god gangs had my place staked out. I needed to draw them away. So give them a sniff of the false trail, Garrett.
Out came that cord. I turned it into a poking stick and swished it around, relaxed it and trotted a third of a mile northeast, toward TunFaire's northernmost gate, then I played with the rope in an alley infested with snoring drunks. I hurried on, used the cord one last time on the street that leads directly to the gate.
TunFaire's gates all stand open all the time. Only once had they closed, when some thunder lizards from the north had been ravaging the countryside. A guy with the need could make a high-speed exit anytime of the day or night. I suspected the gates would be of particular interest to the new secret police.
The street to and from the northeastern gate is always busy. I tied my rope around my waist and plunged into traffic headed south. I didn't think the Godoroth and Shayir, busy tripping over one another, would become sure of where I wasn't for a good while yet.
My plan worked like they write them up in a book. For a few minutes.
I was preoccupied. The texture of the night changed, and I failed to notice because there were no mad little gods weirding around me. The street grew quiet and tense and the crowds thinned out, but I caught on only after a howl arose ahead and I discovered the street blocked by a bunch of guys carrying angry red-and-black banners. They were armed with clubs and staves and were whipped along by drums and trumpets. They sang some really vicious racist song.