Mills and I tramped from stinking bar to underground bawdyhouse to gambling hall to weed den. We asked the same question of every shifty-eyed card shark or nervous barkeep we encountered, and after forty-six askings got us the same indifferent shrugs and variations on “How the Hell should I know?” I was beginning to think we were wasting time.
But on the forty-seventh asking, in a weed-den dug below the warped floorboards of an abandoned rooming house on Sidge, we found what I was looking for.
The man’s real name wasn’t Glee, and if it was, it ought not have been. He didn’t smoke weed himself, but years of handling it and inhaling the fumes left him with the same afflictions all weedheads share. He twitched. He fidgeted. His lips were bloody and raw from being licked and picked at. His rheumy eyes made Evis’s look clear and healthy by comparison.
But he still had a mind in there.
He perked up before Mills finished pronouncing Japeth Stricken’s name.
“He’s back,” said Glee. He said it before he thought about setting a price. I was sure he wasn’t lying. The weed had dulled him that much.
“Is he now?” I asked. I let a few bright coins dance in my palm. “Back from where?”
Glee licked his lips. They bled afresh. His blood was black in the dim candlelight.
“Back from the dead, what I hear,” he said. I rewarded him with a pair of coins.
“He got stabbed about five years ago. Almost died. Crawled under a porch. Got away. That’s what he claims. Back now, settling old scores. Killed a man or two already, I hear.”
He shut up. I passed another coin his way. Somewhere in the dark, a weedhead started crying, until someone else kicked him in the gut.
“Say where he’s been, these past five years?”
Glee’s eyes darted. He shut his mouth and fidgeted.
Mills pushed him against the dirt wall.
“The man asked you a question,” he said.
I held up another coin.
“Prince,” said Glee, in a whisper. “Said he’s been in Prince. Claim’s he’s a big deal there, now.”
I flipped the coin his way. He caught it. Most weedheads wouldn’t realize a coin was in the air until they dreamed about it next week.
“Where could we find this big deal from Prince?”
“Hell, mister, I don’t know.” Mills pushed harder. I heard something pop. “Honest. It ain’t like we’re drinkin’ buddies.”
“You know all that, you don’t know where to find the man? I don’t believe that, weedhead.” Mills smiled and twisted Glee’s right arm. “Maybe you just need help remembering.”
Glee screamed. A couple of weedheads screamed back. If Glee kept a couple of thugs around to keep the peace, they were wisely finding less perilous chores to attend.
“A house. A house somewhere up in Torrent. I ain’t even sure that’s the truth, mister. It ain’t like I talked to the man myself.”
“Let him go.” Mills relaxed, and Glee sagged and wound up on his knees cradling his right arm.
“Wasn’t no need for all that,” he said. Blood ran in thick trails down his chin. “Wasn’t no need.”
I flipped a final coin at his feet.
“You have a good night. You’ll have a better one if you forget you ever talked to us. Isn’t that right, Mr. Mills?”
“That is the truth, Mr. Markhat. That is the Angel’s own truth.”
Glee just snatched up the coin. If he had any reply he spoke it too low to be heard.
Mills snorted and kicked him onto his side. I got him out of there before any of Glee’s employee’s realized they could safely hurl a brick from the darkness.
We made a couple more stops after that. The house in Torrent was mentioned again, as was Stricken’s fondness for long knives. As we emerged from the grimy shadows of our last stop, a smoke-filled gambling house whose doorway sported a blood-drained corpse lying so close we had to step over it, the first dim light of dawn was creeping up from the east.
“Sounds like this Stricken is a bad lot.” In a fit of civic-mindedness, Mills grabbed the dead man by his shoes and dragged him away from the door, leaving a trail of dark blood behind.
Another pair of steps, and the dead man would have lived. I suppose that sums up life in Rannit.
“If I’m right, he’s working for people far worse.” Mills was kneeling over the dead man, rifling through his pockets. He saw me give him a look and returned a shrug.
“It’s not like he needs anything any more. Look at this.” He produced a handful of coins, not all of them copper.
“Guess it’s my lucky day.”
There came a whisper of sound. Mills' expression changed from that of sudden satisfaction to mild confusion.
And then he fell down beside the dead man, the only sound the tinkling of the coins that fell from his open hand.
I dove. Something struck the wall behind me and skittered off the brick. I rolled over and over and saw sparks where another arrow hit the pavement, broke and skipped away.
An open alley loomed. I heaved myself into it, rolled to my feet, ran. Blind in the dark, I careened off stacks of trash and collided at least once with a drunk and fell again when my feet got caught up in a loose pile of rotten timbers.
But I lived. Another arrow came darting into the alley, coming to rest at my feet. I snatched it up, broke it in half and shoved the pieces in a pocket.
The drunk I’d collided with earlier grunted and cussed.
The alley opened into a dark narrow street. I hid in the shadows and listened.
Nothing. No footfalls pursued me. No shouts called out my whereabouts. Was the bowman waiting at the end of the alley into which I’d fled, or was he already rushing to cover the street before me, sure I’d head that way, hoping to lose him in the windings and the shadows of dawn?
I couldn’t know. So I waited there until I could breathe without panting.
Then I made my way carefully back the way I’d come.
The drunk I’d disturbed bumbled ahead of me. He emerged into the street screaming about vampires. He didn’t sprout any arrows, so I just watched him go.
The street remained quiet. After a time, the door to the gambling den opened, and a small hushed crowd emerged. They surrounded Mills and the dead man, and I strained to hear them speak.
“Both dead,” I heard. My heart sank. “One’s got an arrow in his neck.”
And then they fell to fighting among themselves as they discovered the loot Mills had dropped.
The crowd got suddenly larger, as did the noise. After a moment, I slipped out of my hiding place and joined them, milling around with the mob until Watch whistles began to blow. And then I scurried away, hat held down, back bent, just like all the rest.
I found my carriage still waiting three blocks away. The driver didn’t ask. I didn’t tell.
We just got the Hell out of there while the lazy sun awoke.
I didn’t go back to Cambrit.
Crossbows are the preferred weapons of Rannit’s better criminal element. Bows are too large, too obviously the tool of the murderer and the bandit. You can’t hide a longbow in a suitcase, and the weapon that had launched the arrow I held was indeed a powerful old longbow.
The head was razor-sharp steel. The shaft was black ash. The fletching was pure black raven-feather.
The vile thing screamed professional assassin. Not of the local vintage.
Which meant someone, perhaps Stricken, had decided certain finders had officially become a nuisance.
If Mama had been handy, I’d have asked her to check the arrow for hexes.
But since Mama was off beheading ex-army wand-wavers in Pot Lockney, I didn’t have that option. Even Gertriss was gone, presumably lounging on the foredeck of a new-fangled sailing machine while Buttercup played atop a heap of explosives, and Evis laughed and smoked cigars.
So I bade the driver head up to Elfways, and I hoped Granny Knot was an early riser.
I watched the streets while we drove. I didn’t spot anyone following us. I hadn’t spotted any bowmen last night. And Mills was dead because of it.