I rose, gathered up my toiletries and clothes, and headed for the bathhouse. I was breaking Curfew with the rich folks, and it wouldn’t do to appear as anything but well dressed and groomed.
Too, I had another stop to make at Darla’s. I’d be cutting our date short, and she wasn’t going to like that. And I’d be breaking Curfew, and she’d like that less.
But the things I wasn’t going to do or say were going to be regarded as the worst insult of all. I couldn’t help it. There wasn’t going to be time for a long talk, much less time to break the news about my new position in the Corpsemaster’s secret army.
So I bathed in a hurry and bought yellow fireflowers along the way. Then in a fit of desperation I bought a box of fancy chocolates sealed with a red silk ribbon. The cab driver grinned.
“You’ve either done something, or you’re about to do something; which is it?”
“Both,” I replied.
“You should have bought roses.”
I gave him Darla’s address. He took the hint and shut up.
The ride to Darla’s was brief. I spent the time glaring at the fireflowers and thinking the cabbie was right. I was delaying the inevitable, and I knew it, but for the life of me I couldn’t come up with any way around it.
Drafted. It didn’t seem real. But the black carriage was waiting, and one day soon it would come for me again, and I might be brought home or I might find myself counting skulls out of boredom with the lads at the Battery.
Darla deserved better.
Then why have you waited? asked a snide little voice. All that time wasted. Now it might be too late.
I shoved the thought aside and cussed. The cab rolled to a halt, and I gathered my flowers and my box of fancy chocolates and clambered out.
Darla popped out of her door while I was fumbling with coins for the driver. She was wearing a high-necked brown top that had flower-shaped brass buttons and new black pants and shoes so shiny I knew they’d never been worn. She was dressed to go out, but she saw the flowers and the candy and her face fell.
Just a bit, only for an instant, but I saw and she saw me see and we wound up standing there on the sidewalk facing each while trying to decide who would speak first.
“For me?”
“For you,” I replied, offering up flowers and candy. “An apology for ruining your evening.”
“You haven’t ruined anything. These are beautiful. But we’re not going out, are we?”
“Sorry. No. Not tonight. I’ve got this client, see, and she expects results, and the only way I can get them is to meet certain people at a certain place at a certain time.”
She crossed her arms over her chest.
“This certain time is after Curfew.”
“I’m afraid so. No way around it, sweetheart. Some people can’t be negotiated with.”
“Did you try?”
“Darla. Honey. It’s your case I’m working on. I tried seeing old man Lethway during office hours and got tossed into the street. This is the only way.”
She sat on her stoop, her arms still crossed. Her hair tossed about in the evening breeze.
“So there’s no time to talk about your carriage ride either. How convenient.”
I couldn’t decide whether to sit or keep standing.
“I didn’t plan things this way. You know that.”
“Actually, Mr. Markhat, I’m not at all sure I know that at all. I’m beginning to think I don’t know a lot of things about us.”
“Darla, that’s not fair. It’s your case I’m working on. You asked me to do this.”
She brushed her hair back, but didn’t look at me.
“If it wasn’t a meeting after Curfew it would be something else.” She raised her hand when I started to protest. “I need to be a part of things. I need to be the first one you tell things, good or bad. I know you well enough to know something was said in Hisvin’s carriage. You’ve probably told Mama. You’ve probably told Evis. You could tell me right here, right now, probably in a hundred words or less. Why won’t you? Why?”
I didn’t answer right away. Even now, I have no idea what I was going to say; when I finally got my mouth open, but it was too late. Darla rose and darted up her steps and slammed her door behind her, leaving flowers and candy forlorn on her stoop.
I knocked, but my only response was the metallic clank of her sturdy door-bolts being thrown.
The cab that had dropped me off came rattling back down the street, heading in the opposite direction. He saw me standing there, saw the flowers and the candy on the stairs, and he rolled to a stop. Wisely, he didn’t say a damned word.
“You were wrong, by the way,” I said as I climbed back inside. “Roses wouldn’t have helped.”
I had the cab take me back by my place so I could pick up Toadsticker. I don’t take it to Darla’s-it’s just a reminder that my business doesn’t always involve pastries and friendly banter.
Darla’s words, and the hurt in her voice, haunted me all the way home. She was right.
And so was I. Which made fixing it difficult.
I didn’t pop back in at Mama’s. I didn’t hear any screaming or glass breaking, and the Hoogas appeared serene, so I just waved and darted in my place and came out with Toadsticker strapped to my waist, hidden under my long coat.
I had a sword on my belt, a knife in my boot and a pair of brass knuckles in my right pocket. The Avalante pin given to me by Evis was on my lapel. I was as ready as I could possibly be to break Curfew with a pair of well-heeled cigar aficionados who might decide during the conversation to reduce my number of functional appendages.
I caught myself glaring at passers-by. Damn it all, anyway. If Darla thought she was unhappy now, wait until she found out the truth.
I had the cab drop me a block from the cigar house. I found a bar and I planted my butt there until Curfew warning-two peals, silence, two more peals sounded, and the barkeep got red-faced and sputtered and finally worked up the nerve to ask me to leave. I plunged out into a street already nearly empty, aside from hurried figures shuttering windows and locking doors and looking furtively about as though they expected to be gobbled up by vampires in the next moment.
I unbuttoned my coat. I didn’t need to. Hell, the halfdead haven’t claimed a victim in the good part of town in years, but I was in a mood and I knew the sight of Toadsticker glittering in the lamplight would keep run-of-the-mill muggers away.
I found a shadowed alley across from the cigar joint and lurked there, waiting. The owners must be well connected, I decided, because they neither shuttered the windows nor turned down the lamps. I could see shapes moving about, but couldn’t discern much else through the curtains.
I waited until Curfew proper rang out, and then I crossed the empty street and marched up to the front doors.
They weren’t locked. I walked through, and a pair of uniformed kids took my coat. I was told I was expected and led down a long hall and into a room the size of a house.
It was paneled in walnut and the floors were covered in rugs and the fireplace at the far end was blazing. The room held a dozen people, sitting and speaking in hushed tones in four little bunches scattered throughout the cavernous room. There were no windows, and it was hot, and from the thick haze of smoke that surrounded Lethway and Pratt I gathered they’d spent the evening sitting too close to that unnecessary fire and puffing away on rich man’s tobacco.
Lethway was older than I’d expected, but trim and shaved and sitting bolt upright on a couch designed for slouching. He wore his white hair in an Army officer’s peel and his boots were officer issue and the walking cane leaning by his right knee was topped with the gold dragon’s head of the Sixth.
“Well, well,” said Lethway. His voice was strong and showed no hint of drink despite the half-empty bottle on the table beside him. “Mr. Markhat at last. We feared you discovered other appointments.”
“You said after Curfew. It’s after Curfew. I’m here.”
I sat across from Lethway. That left me facing both men, which wasn’t the perfect place to be if they decided to jump me, but I didn’t think they’d risk making a ruckus indoors with witnesses around.