“Got to give Mama one thing. She caught us both with this one. Did you know she had a house in Pot Lockney?”
“Everybody knows Plague Hill, boss. It’s haunted. Been haunted forever. I had no idea Mama owned it. There’s going to a panic when she starts lighting lamps, I can tell you that. The whole hill is cursed. Something from the old days.”
I grunted. “It’s cursed now if it wasn’t before. All right. We can’t go chasing after Mama with a banshee in tow, and even if we caught up to her there’d be no turning her back. Agreed?”
Gertriss nodded. “If she’s gone after the hex-caster’s head she won’t stop until his teeth are in her pocket.”
“Well put. So. We work our end, figure out as much as we can about the people the caster is sending.”
“Sounds good.” Buttercup began to sing softly, her words either a made-up babbling or some pre-Kingdom tongue dead so long all knowledge of it was lost. “Of course, that leaves you here with Buttercup. Could be a long stay.”
Gertriss bit her lip. She wanted to protest, but Mama left her without any real options, just as Mama intended.
“So I just sit here. Take naps. Comb my hair. Is that it, boss?”
“Enjoy it while it lasts, Miss, because it won’t last long.” I rose. Buttercup played with her flowers. Gertriss glared, not at me in particular, but at everything in general.
“I’ve got to see if I can roust Evis out,” I said. “Then I’ll head home. I’ll drop back around tomorrow, check on you two.” I crouched and put myself eye level with Buttercup. “You be a good girl for Aunt Gertriss.”
The banshee pinched my nose and broke into squeals of laughter. Gertriss gave me a forced half-smile and gathered up Buttercup, and we were both nearly at the door when Bentley swung it silently open.
“Allow me to show you to your rooms, Miss,” he said. “Mr. Markhat. Mr. Prestley would like to see you. Take the hall to the stairs. I believe you know the way.”
“I do indeed. Miss. Miss.”
Gertriss bade me goodnight and followed Bentley away. Buttercup looked up at me from her shoulder and winked as they vanished around a corner.
I took to the stairs. I’d never been left alone in the House before. It sounded of that peculiar quiet one can only find in deep places underground.
I hurried even deeper into the dark.
Evis is indeed a vampire, but the man keeps fine cigars.
Chapter Twelve
It was my turn to puff away on an expensive cigar and fail utterly to blow smoke rings while Evis did the fuming and muttering.
“Markhat, you don’t understand. Mama left the House unseen. Unseen, I tell you. That can’t happen.”
“Maybe not, but it did.” I let smoke crawl out of my mouth. “Mama is mostly put-on, but the old girl has a genuine trick or two up her sleeve, I suppose. Although I suspect she just sat in a dustbin and let Jerle put her by the curb.”
“This isn’t funny, Markhat. An elderly soothsayer breached House security. From within. You couldn’t do that. I couldn’t do that. But Mama did it, somehow.”
Evis rose and paced. The lit end of his cigar glowed bright in the perpetual shadow of his office. His dead eyes shone bloody in the glow.
“We’ll ask her how she did it when she gets back.”
Evis shook his head and sagged a bit. “Yes. Yes, we will. And you know damned well she’ll just cackle and spit in our eyes.”
“Probably. But if you bring a House wand-waver or two into the room, and have them ask her, politely, how she pulled one over on them, she might spill it. As long as they are appropriately awed by her obvious skills.”
Evis looked at me, his eyes still glowing in the cigar’s crimson light.
“You think that would work?”
“An appeal to Mama’s ego? Seriously? How could it fail?”
A ghost of a grin crossed his pale face.
“You just earned another cigar, Captain.”
I grimaced. “Finder. I’m not in uniform. Won’t ever be, hopefully.”
Evis returned to his chair.
“Speaking of the Army-”
“Let’s not.”
“Oh, but we must. I did something yesterday, you see. I think you’ll be interested to hear about it.”
“Unless it involves desertion, probably not.”
Evis chuckled and fished another cigar from the case and clipped the end off with a silver clipper before handing it to me. I snuffed my old one out and took one of the fancy matches from the box and lit it, first try, on the scratching-stone beside the box.
I sucked and puffed until it was well and truly alight. Evis waited until then before speaking.
“I rode down to the Old Wall. Same place you did, I understand. Busy place. Soldiers milling around. Officers thicker than flies at a funeral. Do you know what I did, Markhat?”
“Ran over the first lieutenant you saw?”
“I walked right up to the man in charge. I identified myself only as Evis Prestley of House Avalante. I ordered the man to assign fifty of the troops guarding the street onto the scaffolds so they could lay bricks. I ordered another twenty-five to assist with the mixing of mortar.” Evis took a long draw. “Can you guess what happened next?”
“Before or after he ordered you beaten to a bloody mess?”
Evis shook his head.
“He complied. With each and every instruction. Without question. Without hesitation.”
“You’re joking.”
“I am not. Un-uniformed, un-credentialed and outranked, I gave a series of orders. Orders which were immediately followed. I suspect you could do the same.”
“What the Hell?”
Evis waved his cigar. “Why were we drafted into the Corpsemaster’s army?”
“Because she’s a capricious monster who thought it was funny?”
“Possibly. Or partly. But consider this. We have apparently been given authority far in excess of our assigned rank. We were inducted, but not deployed. Indeed, we have been given no orders of any kind-is that so?”
“So far, that’s true. What are you thinking?”
“Politics. Finder. Even the Corpsemaster has obligations. Allegiances to maintain. New alliances to forge. Enemies to quell. Friends to placate.”
“Victims to torture. Corpses to steal. I get that. She’s a busy old spook.”
“The cannons. The gunpowder. Developed in secret. The war, kept secret thus far. What does that suggest?”
I took a puff and longed for beer. “I just assumed she was keeping the cannons to herself. Wand-wavers don’t like to share their toys. Especially the toys that make magic obsolete.”
“True. But what if one or more of Rannit’s other wand-wavers is working with Prince? What if the Corpsemaster is working alone because she is the Regent’s last ally?”
I took that in.
“Beer would be nice.”
Evis pressed the thing behind his desk that summoned a servant and a bucket of ice-cold beer.
“That would put us on the wrong side of some very nasty people.”
Evis nodded in the dark. “Indeed.”
The beer came. We cradled our bottles and drank in silence for a bit.
“So why bring us in? The Corpsemaster hardly lacks for bodies, warm and otherwise.”
“I wondered that too. Until last night. Now it seems obvious.”
“I’m afraid it’s not obvious to half the room,” I said. “Take pity on the unschooled finder, and spell things out for him, will you?”
Evis drained his beer. “It’s like this. She hasn’t given us orders because she doesn’t want to know what we’re doing. Because if she knows, maybe somebody else does too. We’re dealing with wand-wavers here. You and I know there’s no telling what kinds of things they get up to.”
“So we’re to operate outside her camp because, despite all the precautions she’s taken, you think someone on the inside is working for Prince?”
“Working for Prince. Working against the Regent. Working for the highest bidder. Doesn’t matter to us. We’ve been given the means to upset everyone’s apple-cart, at least once, and I think she expects us to do something so clever that even she’s surprised by our wit.”