I punched him. No, not Morlock, though I kind of wanted to: the other guy, the guy about to stab him. I hit him hard, right on an eye, and the eye burst like a rotten grape, and some kind of darkish foul fluid that wasn't blood poured out.
Roble had seen it too, and Morlock instantly figured out what was happening (whatever he is, he isn't stupid), and they each grabbed one of the guy's arms. He had a knife in each hand, and I shouted to the children to get back in the house. They looked at me uncertainly, as if they were about to refuse, but then they looked at me closer and decided there might be something scarier in the street than a guy with two knives and they ran back inside. I didn't need any glass to see the future: the next time I gave them an order like that they might not obey it. But that was tomorrow's problem; I turned back to today's, which, like most of my problems, involved Morlock.
He and Roble each had one of the assassin's arms in both of their hands. I stood free, ready to help if needed or take the guy down if he wriggled loose (as he was struggling to do).
Suddenly the assassin stood still. Maybe he realized that he just wasn't going to get away. There was something weird about his face, apart from the rotten-smelling goo leaking over it. It was totally expressionless, even when he was fighting, like he wasn't really there somehow. The pale features had a blue-green cast, like a corpse.
"Let me go," he said in a voice as dead as his face. "I will self-bind not to harm you or yours."
"No," said Morlock.
"I can buy my freedom with knowledge," said the man with the smashed eye. "I can tell you so many things, so many secrets."
"I know who sent you," Morlock said coldly. "Shall I tell you a secret? Demons are not immortal."
The man with the broken eye screamed. Except, I guess, maybe he wasn't a man. He screamed and screamed. Then he fell limp to the ground, and the knives clattered on the stones of the street.
"Street-killings, even in self-defense, are an implicit violation of your residency contract," a scandalized voice remarked.
I groaned. Of course! The city government sent this weedy pale fellow, Glemmurn, once a month to inspect our books and make sure that we weren't spending more money than we actually earned in the city. And today, of all days, was the date for our inspection.
"We didn't kill him," Roble observed. "All we did was defend ourselves when he attacked us. And in fact-this body's been dead for some time: give it a niff."
Glemmurn, his pale face greenish with horror, stepped toward the corpse with the broken eye, took one whiff of the air surrounding it, and staggered backward. "Savage Triumphator!" he groaned. "An unregistered zombie!"
"Don't worry," I said. (The poor thrept seemed really horrified.) "It's dead, or dezombied, or whatever you call it."
"You don't understand!" he wailed. "That just creates more paperwork: unauthorized deactivization of an unregistered zombie is itself a code violation-there will be incident reports and witness affidavits and second-death certificates and tax assessments on the labor of the zombie and tax-penalty assessments on the unpaid labor taxes…. I'll be in the office all night long. And I promised to take my nonobligated semipartner Zaria to the election rally this evening out at Remer Fields."
"Well, there'll be other election rallies," I said.
He looked at me as if he suspected I might be an unregistered zombie myself. "Of course there will," he said sadly, "but she won't need to wait for one. My meta-cousin Vestavion will be all too willing to escort her tonight. That serial monogamist, that man-of-many-contented-partners, that winsome glib glad-footer! After alclass="underline" you know the effect election rallies have on women. The speeches! The chanting! The policy presentations! It makes them crazy. I might as well start saving up now for their wedding morseclass="underline" they're as good as preengaged."
"Look-" I said, hoping to stop him before he confided in me again.
"I've warned her about him," he said confidingly. "But he's an accountant with a private banking firm, and I think she's swept up in the glamour of all that-"
"This was not a zombie," Morlock observed.
"I could have been a banker, but I like to work in the open-What did you say?"
Morlock said it again.
"What is it then? Or what was it, rather?"
"A harthrang," Morlock said, and stopped. As if, you know, that explained everything.
"Don't keep us waiting, Morlock," Roble said after a second or two. "What's a harthrang?"
"A demon possessing a corpse," said Morlock, as if he were saying, We've run out of onions.
"Impossible," quacked Glemmurn. "The municipal demon-shields are-"
"-flawed," Morlock interrupted, and gestured at the corpse with the smashed eye.
"Ur. Well. I'll still need a certificate of second death from a physician. And I suppose I'll have to write up a brief incident report and a crematorium deposit-slip. But," he added, brightening up as he went on, "I won't need any witness affidavits, and there won't be any tax forms at all to file. If I postpone a couple of visits until tomorrow, I could be out of the office before sunset, and rally here we come. Hm. Yes. Yes indeed. Oh, Zaria, Zaria, grant me the blessings of your sweet franchise-That is. Yes. I think I'll make an official determination that this was a harthrang, not an unregistered zombie. If, of course, you'll submit a letter of support addressed to my board of advisors, describing the harthrang phenomenon and the steps you took to neutralize the demon-How did you neutralize it, by the way?"
"He scared it away," said Roble.
Poor pasty-faced Glemmurn looked at my brother (what a study in contrasts!), looked at the corpse with the smashed eye, looked at grim crooked Morlock and said, "Yes, the board will accept that, I think."
I went back into the crooked house and sent Thend to fetch the physician next door, a red-haired bundle of self-regard who went by the modest moniker of Reijka Kingheart.
"I'll go!" hollered Fasra, when she heard me talking to Thend.
"You won't," I said. "Glemmurn is out there, and he'll be in here in a minute to look at the books. You're the only one who understands them-"
"Oh, come on!"
11 -and you're going to explain them to him. Thend: go." Thend looked at me, not angry, almost sad. Of all of us who survived, I think Thend was the one who'd been changed the most by our trip through the mountains. He was only fifteen, but he was getting the poise and the patience of a grown man, and his deep brown eyes seemed to see deeply into everything they looked at. I often had the uncomfortable sense that he was humoring me, going along with this farce of a parent-child relationship because it was important to me. But he went and did as I told him; that was the main thing.
"Stupid old Glemmurn," Fasra grumbled, approximately. "I wish he were in a sewer somewhere. I like Reijka, Mama."
I sort of hated Reijka's guts, but I didn't say so. "She'll be over here in a minute," I said, "and she'll probably want to have a look at our wounds before she goes. She always does."
Fasra quietly slammed open the cash drawer and demurely yanked out the bound volume where we kept track of our accounts and gently smashed it down on the counter.
"Don't tear any pages," I said as she flipped open the account book.
"I have my emotions well under control, thank you," she said, with a searing glance from her bright black eyes. "Now, let's see: when was that stupid, greasy, dough faced bucket of dumbness last here?"
I told her and stepped back out into the street.
Reijka Kingheart was there, examining the twice-dead corpse and somehow simultaneously giving Roble the eye. I could have told her it was a waste of time-Roble isn't much for the ladies-but why do her any favors? For one thing, she was a Coranian. I'm not a bigot; I just hate all those pastyfaced shifty bastards.