"Well?" I demanded.
"They're going to pick up the coffins."
I looked him over. Tinnie helped. She had a fair touch with wounds.
"That all you have to tell me?"
"Morley sent me back 'cause I got hurt, actually. He's still out there working them. If that critter gets out of this alive, it sure won't be on the cheap." And that was all he would say.
Awhile later the grolls came tramping back in with the coffins. The landlord was right behind them raising hell about our bunch stomping back and forth through the common room during quiet hours. "I'm never leaving TunFaire again," I promised myself once more, and snarled. "Quit your bitching. You've made a bundle because of us, playing all the sides, and we'll be out of your hair in an hour anyway. Do us all a favor and make yourself disappear."
I looked so nasty he had no trouble getting the hint.
We refilled and sealed the coffins and gathered what remained of our possessions. For Tinnie and Rose and Vasco and Saucerhead Tharpe that meant no work at all. Their adventures had left them with nothing but the clothing on their backs. I wondered if I ought to put a burr under Dojango's saddle, recalling how meticulously he had gone over the ruins of their last encampment, salvaging coins and jewelry the night people had discarded. I decided the wiser course was to keep everyone dependent upon my charity.
We marched out to the sighs of the landlord and his crew.
We reached and boarded our ship without suffering misadventure.
Time passed. The tide turned. The sailors prepared to cast off. And still there was no sign of Morley.
"Where the hell is he, Dojango?"
"He said don't worry. He said go ahead. He said don't hold up anything on his account." Dojango said it, but he didn't feel it. He wanted to do something.
I didn't believe it. Morley Dotes wouldn't sacrifice himself for anyone.
"Here he comes," Saucerhead said. The deck crew was paying out the last lines, fore and aft.
He was coming for sure, in that sort of wild sprint only elfin can manage. Zeck Zack was thirty yards behind and gaining fast.
"Perfect," Dojango whispered.
Perfect, like hell. Morley wasn't going to make it without help. I looked around for a weapon and couldn't find anything.
"Now!" Dojango said. And, "Actually!"
The striped-sail woman and her crew materialized from amid the freight on the pier. They all carried ready crossbows. Morley whipped past. Zeck Zack skidded to a halt, stood there shuddering. Morley leaped from the pier to the ship, teeth glistening in a grin.
"Is this the one?" the woman called.
"The very one, darling," Morley gasped.
The gang closed in on the centaur.
"You damned fool!" I yelled at Morley. "You could have been killed."
"But, if you'll notice, I wasn't."
54
The passage north was slower than it had been going south. The winds were less friendly. But it was almost as eventless. There was a spot of trouble one night when Rose tried pushing Kayean over the side, but she collected only bruises for her trouble. There were no encounters with pirates, privateers, Venageti, or even Karentine naval vessels. We made Leifmold and I almost believed the gods had decided to lay off me for a while.
Rose's assault on Kayean was due to my lack of foresight.
I was taking her out of her box at night, giving her the chance to breathe real air and face the real light of the stars. Foodwise I had gotten her to where she could keep down small amounts of lightly browned chicken flesh. I'd left her on deck to fetch some, and had gotten into an argument with Tinnie, who felt I should be apportioning my time somewhat differently. Rose made her move and took her lumps in my absence. I found out what was happening only when one of the ship's night watch told me Rose needed saving.
I got there in time, though Kayean almost crossed the line and surrendered to the hunger. Rose crawled away, into the comforting arms of a Morley getting back to his cynical ways.
I calmed and fed Kayean and we sat in the starlight awhile, watching the wake luminesce and the flying fish leap. She finally spoke. "Where are you taking me?"
Her words were barely intelligible. Down in the nests, it is said, they don't allow their brides to talk. She was rusty.
No one had told her what was going on. I'd just snatched her and dragged her along, giving her as much control of her destiny as she'd had while she was in the pit.
So I told her the story, and I wound up saying, "I think you ought to grab it. Denny wanted you to have it, and right now it's the only thing you've got going in this whole world."
She gave me a look that took me back in time. I had to take her down and put her away before I did something foolish. I returned to the deck to watch the sea unscramble my brain.
Morley came out of the darkness and settled beside me. After a while, he said, "I have a statistic I want you to consider, Garrett. Of all the guys who have loved her, only one is still alive." Then he was gone. The superstitious half-breed.
Later I took advantage of Tinnie's conciliatory mood to lay my haunts for a while.
Fate had us overhaul Binkey's Sequin running up the Leifmold channel and I cut a deal with Master Arbanos even before we made the quay. He was vastly amused to see me saddled with Rose and Tinnie again.
We laid over three days in Leifmold, waiting for Master Arbanos to offload a cargo of army supplies and take on twenty-five tons of smoked cod. Morley split his time between getting fat eating green leafies and keeping Rose too busy to get into trouble. The triplets sold one of their unicorn horns and went on a toot. I think Vasco spent his time thinking about doing himself in. The rest of us just waited, with me lending a thought or ten to my routine once we reached TunFaire.
I still had to get myself and my associates paid.
55
We tied up at Sequin's place on the TunFaire waterfront late in the afternoon, which pleased me to no end. Eager as we were to escape the smell of fish and visit old haunts, there were things Morley and I had to get done before our return became known. Keeping control until sunset was less difficult because it was only for a short time.
After hard dark fell, we all trooped off and slithered around the city's back ways to the back door of Morley's place, where everyone and everything, willing and unwilling, went into temporary hiding. I sneaked off to get some advice from the Dead Man while Morley worried about how he was going to consummate his arrangement with the kingpin.
He had asked Saucerhead and me to be his bodyguards when the meet went down, for which he would "gladly pay your standard fees—as soon as Garrett delivers me my wages for the last couple of months." I figured he had delivered above and beyond the call, if mainly to save his own hide, and I could do him a favor in return. Saucerhead signed on because he'll do any damned fool thing as long as he's getting paid.
I swear I did not know what he was going to pull.
The Dead Man acted like I'd just stepped out half an hour ago and had just given him time to work into a comfortable snooze before I came clanging and banging. After having fulfilled his reputation for being cranky, he asked for my story. For five hours I gave it to him. He didn't interrupt often as he didn't need more information for anything. He thought my precautions against getting stiffed by Willard Tate would prove needless, but supposed they would hurt nothing. We talked tough at each other a little while I cleaned up around there, then I hightailed it back to Morley's to grab thirteen winks before I walked into the Tates' den.