Here and there were open empty graves, evidence of the Church’s unflagging and doubtlessly holy efficiency in all manners fiscal.
I caught up with Granny easily. I hadn’t wanted to shout out for her, not among the dead. Mama Markhat had instilled a few manners after all.
“Granny Knot,” I said, puffing a bit. “Glad I found you here.”
Granny held her rags up to her mouth and looked carefully around to make sure we were alone.
“Good to see you as well. Do you have news for me?”
I fell into a slow amble beside her. The sky was bright and cloudless and blue. The gravewards gleamed white all around us.
“I do.” I retold Stick’s story, gave an accounting of money spent. I didn’t voice my own misgivings just yet.
“So, my shade has lied to us.”
“It seems that way, Granny.” A pair of ink black crows gazed down on us from atop a leaning, above-ground crypt and issued a chorus of ragged caws. “Any idea why he might do that?”
Granny shook her head. “None whatsoever.”
“Think you could ask him?”
“I intend to.” Granny shook her rags. “I don’t enjoy being lied to. Especially when by doing so he made me complicit in his lie.”
“Can you ask him now?”
Granny halted. We stood before a relatively new wardstone. This one had been bought, not made by a grieving but unskilled family. It bore a few words of Church, and at the very bottom, a single name.
Gorvis.
“I’m very much afraid I cannot, Mr. Markhat.” Granny scowled at the graveward. “At least, not at the moment. But I shall, I assure you. As soon as possible.”
“This is him, isn’t it?”
“First name H-O-R-A-C-E.” Granny spelled it out so the name wasn’t spoken aloud. “Yes, I believe so.”
I frowned. “You believe so?”
“Like you, Mr. Markhat, I have my resources. I employed them with the aim of learning the true name of the spirit who called himself Sellway. These-resources have provided me with a first name and led me to this spot. This is not who the spirit claimed to be. I am as surprised as you are. Possibly more so.”
Granny’s handful of rags fluttered in her hand. There wasn’t a breath of wind.
Granny whirled to face me.
“We must go, Mr. Markhat. Now!”
“Why?”
That was as much as I got out before Granny grabbed my wrist with her implacable, elderly hand and dragged me at a middling fast run away from the graveward.
We made good time down the winding path to the gate, and through it, and onto the street, before Granny halted and bent double, gasping for air.
I let her catch her breath.
“That. Was close.” She was grinning, like we’d just outrun the Watch. There was even a twinkle in her eyes.
“What was close?”
“He almost saw us there.” Granny straightened. “I’m not ready for him to know I know, just yet.”
“Who, the spook?”
“The spook, as you say. They often return to the location of their remains as they prepare to intrude upon our world. This one is no different.”
“Won’t he see us?” I could see the wardstone plain from where we stood. The hedges were not much more than sticks on the street side of the cemetery. I guessed that wagon-drivers let their ponies nibble on the foliage as they passed.
Granny shook her head. “No. Not in broad daylight, not before he has a chance to…let us say, assert himself. We are quite safe here.”
Granny turned and started marching for home, and I followed.
“So, his real name was Gorvis.” It wasn’t a name anyone had mentioned yet. Not that I was at all convinced by Granny’s fist of rags. She could easily have staged the whole scene when she saw me coming. For what purpose, I still didn’t know.
“He’s buried not far from your house, Granny. And that’s not a name you know?”
“It isn’t.” Traffic started picking up, so Granny fired up her public spook doctor act, complete with muttering and random bursts of howled laughter.
“I’m not a big believer in coincidence, Granny.”
“Nor am I.” She replied in a whisper between rants about spying spirits and groaning ghosts.
“I’m going to go out on a limb, Granny. I’m going back to Regency Avenue, and this time I’m going to ask about a man named Gorvis. If you just staged that whole, little scene back there on the spur of the moment, tell me right now, or so help me I’ll start handing out the crowns at random, on the street.”
Granny guffawed.
“You go. You ask your questions. You get down off that roof, shade of Angus Fergis!” She said the last in a screech that caused pedestrians all around us to stop and search the rooftops for spooks.
“And when you’re done, come back. You and I will have business tonight. After Curfew. You and I and a man named Gorvis. Are you willing to do that, Mr. Markhat?”
“If that’s what it takes to earn my pay.”
“I see you, shades of the Lowrey twins! I see you peepin’ in them windows!”
Granny winked.
I said my farewells and headed back to Regency Avenue.
The first thing I did after arriving at Regency was present myself to the biggest pair of Owenstall’s bullies I could find.
They knew my name, and they knew I had the blessing of the boss himself. One of them even went so far as to suggest a place or two some of the older folks might be at the moment.
Oh, what a difference a few words from Mama had made.
I thanked them and started making my rounds. This time, I wasn’t concentrating on the name Sellway, but on Gorvis.
And I wasn’t having much better luck, either. Blank looks. Shakes of the head. Frowns and creased brows and ultimately, variations on the theme of no.
I expanded my search, no longer just talking to people of a certain age and above. I talked to kids. To their parents. To their nannies, to their grannies, to their yipping poodle-dogs.
One of Owenstall’s bullies brought me a sandwich and a glass of tea sometime well after noon. He even wished me luck.
I had the blessing of the local muscle, but none whatsoever from Lady Luck. I pondered that as I chewed. I’d seated myself on a bench under the largest of the poplars that lined the avenue. It offered scant shade, but I’d learned long ago to take whatever comfort I could get.
The sandwich, at least was good. And the tea was cold and dark.
So I was more than a little annoyed when a trio of well-dressed toughs walked up to my bench and knocked my glass of tea right out of my hand.
I swallowed and put the rest of the sandwich down, lest it too be cast into the street.
“Whoa,” I said. I did not stand. I could tell from the expression of my tea-tosser that he’d just knock me down if I did. “Look, gents, you need to check in at the head office. Owenstall himself said I could ask my questions. And this sandwich and that tea were his, by the way.”
“I don’t know any Owenstall,” snarled my new friend. He made his hands into fists. “But I do know you.”
“Are you sure? Because to know me is to love me. Trite, but true. It’s my innate charm-”
I didn’t get to finish, because I was hauled to my feet by the two silent gentlemen.
I’d assumed they belonged to Owenstall because of their dress. They weren’t common street thugs. Their shoes were shined, their shirts were pressed, their trousers actually fit and someone had ironed the wrinkles out not too long ago.
I didn’t struggle. That made the third man frown. People were beginning to stop, to stare. Some even flocked out of doors to watch the show.
I knew none of them expected that. The normal procedure in most of Rannit is to turn away from trouble, lest it come and visit you.