Bitter Gold Hearts (2 page)

She thought 1 was joking. A man of my class turning his back on a hundred marks gold? A man in my line? I ought to be sprinting uptown to find out who they wanted killed. Chances were
she
had run uptown, bartering her good looks for the pretty things she wore.

She asked, “Couldn’t you just take me on faith, and for the gold?”

“The last time I trusted somebody from up the Hill I got stuck in the Marines. I spent five years trying to kill Venageti conscripts who didn’t know any better than I did what we were fighting about. I didn’t figure that out till I came back home, and then I liked your lords and ladies of the Hill even less. Good day, Miss Crest. Unless you’d be interested in some more personal business? I know a little place that serves seafood you could kill for.”

I watched her think it over, looking for angles she could use. Finally, she said, “Domina will be very angry with me if I don’t bring you.”

“How sad. But that’s not my problem. If you don’t mind? Your boys out front are probably baking in the sun, anyway.”

She stomped out of the room, snarling, “You’re throw­ing away the easiest hundred marks of your life, Mr. Garrett.”

I followed her to make sure she used the door for its intended purpose. “If your boss wants to see me so bad, tell her to come down here.”

She paused, opened her mouth to say something, then shook her head and slipped outside. I caught a glimpse of the sweltering guards jumping to their feet before the door closed. I went back to the Dead Man.

You were a little stubborn, were you not?

“She’ll be back.”

/
know. But what temper will possess her?

“Maybe she’ll be ready to lay it out straight, without the games.”

She is a female, Garrett. Why do you persist in such unreasonable optimism where that alien species is concerned?
This was one of our running arguments. He was a misogynist to the marrow. This time I refused to play. He gave up.

Are you interested in the job, Garrett?

“My heart won’t be broken if it doesn’t develop. You know I told the truth when I said I don’t have much use for the lords of the Hill. And I particularly have no use for sorcerers. We don’t need the money, anyway.”

You always need money, Garrett, the way you drink beer and chase skirts.

He exaggerated, of course. His envy was talking. His single greatest regret about being dead was his inability to guzzle beer.
Someone is hammering on the door.

“I hear it. It’s probably old Dean, early for work.”

The Dead Man would not endure a female house­keeper, and my tolerance for housework is minimal. I’d only been able to find one old man — who moved with the flash and style of a tortoise — willing to come in, pick up, cook, and clear the vermin from the Dead Man’s room.

I was surprised to find Amiranda back already. “Quick trip. Come in. I didn’t know I was so irresistible.”

She strode past me, then turned, hands on hips. “All right, Mr. Garrett. You get it your way. The reason Domina wants you is because my... because the Stormwarden’s son Karl has been kidnapped. If you insist on getting more than that, we’re both out of luck. Because that’s all I’ve been told.”

And you certainly are worried about it, I thought.

She started for the door.

“Hold it.” I squinted at her. “Give me the hundred.”

She handed it over without a smirk of triumph. One point for Amiranda Crest. I decided she might be worth liking.

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

I took the gold to the Dead Man. There was no safer place on earth. “You heard?”

/
did.

“What do you think?”

Kidnapping is your area of expertise.

I rejoined Amiranda Crest. “Let us fair forth, fair fairy lady.”

That failed to put a smile on her face.

Not everyone appreciates a great sense of humor.

__III__

We marched off like a parody of a military outfit. Amiranda’s companions were clad in uniforms. That seemed to be the limit of their familiarity with the military concept. At a guess I would have said their only use was to keep their livery from collapsing into the dust. I tried a few conversational sallies. Amiranda was done talking. I was one of the hired help now.

The Dead Man was right. Kidnapping was my area of expertise, mostly by circumstance. Time and again I get stuck doing the in-between. Each time I deliver the ran­som and bring the body home alive the word gets around a little more. Both sides in a swap know where they stand with me. I play it straight, no tricks, and heaven help the bad boys if they deliver damaged goods and my princi­pals want their heads. Which they always do in that case.

I loathe kidnapping and kidnappers. Abduction is a major underground industry in TunFaire. I’d as soon see all kidnappers sent down the river floating facedown, but sound business practice makes me play the game by live-and-let-live rules. Unless
they
cheat first.

The Hill is a good deal more than a piece of high ground looking down its nose at the sprawl of TunFaire, the beast upon whose back it rides. It is a state of mind, and one I don’t like. But their coin is as good as any down below, and they have a lot more of it. I register my disapproval by refusing jobs that might help the Hill tribe close their grip even tighter on the rest of us.

Usually when they try to hire me it’s because they want dirty work done. I turn them down. They find somebody less morally fastidious. So it goes.

The Stormwarden Raver Styx’s place was typical of those on the High Hill. It was huge, tall, walled, brooding, dark, and just a shade more friendly than death. It was one of those places with an invisible “Abandon Hope” sign over the gateway. Maybe there were protective spells involved. I got a strong case of nerves the last fifty feet, the little watchman inside telling me I didn’t want to go in there.

I went anyway. One hundred marks gold can shout down the watchman any time.

The inside reminded me of a haunted castle. There were cobwebs everywhere. Amiranda and I, after shed­ding our escort, were the only people tracking the shadowed halls. “Cheerful little bungalow. Where is everybody?”

“The Stormwarden took most of the household with her.”

“But she left her secretary behind?”

“Yes.”

Which told me there was some truth in the things I’d heard about the Stormwarden’s husband and son, both named Karl. Put charitably, they needed a shepherd.

At first glance Willa Dount looked like a woman who could keep them in line. Her eyes could chill beer, and she had the charm of a stone. I knew a little about her from whispers in the shadows and alleys. She arranged dirty deeds done for the Stormwarden.

She was about five feet two, early forties, chunky without being fat. Her gray eyes matched her hair. She dressed, shall we say, sensibly. She smiled about twice as often as the Man in the Moon, and then without sincerity.

Amiranda said, “Mr. Garrett, Domina.”

The woman looked at me like I was either a potentially contagious disease or an especially curious specimen in the zoo. One of the uglier ones, like a thunder lizard.

There are times when I feel like I belong to one of the dying breeds.

“Thank you, Amiranda. Have a seat, Mr. Garrett.” The “mister” left her jaws aching. She wasn’t used to being nice to people like me.

I sat. So did she. Amiranda hovered.

“That will be all, Amiranda.”

“Domina —”

“That will be all.”

Amiranda left, furious and hurt. I scanned the clutter on the secretary’s desk while she glared the girl from the room.

“What do you think of our Amiranda, Mr. Garrett?” Again she got a jaw ache.

I tried putting it delicately. “A man could dream dreams about a woman with her —”

“I’m sure.” She scowled at me. I had failed some test.

I didn’t care. I’d decided I wouldn’t like the Domina Willa Dount very much. “You had a reason for asking me to come here?”

“How much did Amiranda tell you?”

“Enough to get me to listen.” She tried to stare me down. I stared back. “I don’t usually have much grief to spare for uptown folks. When the fates want to stick them I say more power to them. But to kidnapping I take exception.”

She scowled. I give the woman this — her scowl was first rate. Any gorgon would have been proud to own it. “What else did she tell you?”

“That was it, and getting it took some work. Maybe you can tell me more.”

“Yes. As Amiranda told you, the younger Karl has been abducted.”

“From what I’ve heard, there aren’t many more de­serving guys around.” Karl Junior had a reputation for being twenty-three going on a willful and very spoiled three. There was no doubt which side of the family Junior favored. Domina Dount had been left to keep it civilized or to cover it up.

Willa Dount’s mouth tightened until it was little more than a white point. “Be that as it may. We aren’t here to exercise your opinions of your betters, Mr. Garrett.”

“What are we here for?”

“The Stormwarden will be returning soon. I don’t want her to walk into a situation like this. I want to get it settled and forgotten before she arrives. Do you wish to take notes, Mr. Garrett?” She pushed writing materials my way. I figured she supposed me illiterate and wanted to enjoy feeling superior when I confessed it.

“Not till there’s something worth noting. I take it you’ve heard from the kidnappers? That you know Ju­nior hasn’t just gone off on one of his adventures?”

By way of answering me she lifted a rag-wrapped bun-die from behind the desk and pushed it across. “This was left with the gateman during the night.”

I unwrapped a pair of silver-buckled shoes. A folded piece of paper lay inside one. “His?”

“Yes.”

“The messenger?”

“What you would expect. A street urchin of seven or eight. The gateman didn’t bring me the bundle till after breakfast. By then the child was too far ahead to catch.”

So she had a sense of humor after all. I gave the shoes the full eyeball treatment. It never works out, but you always look for that speck of rare purple mud or the weird yellow grass stain that will make you look like a genius. I didn’t find it this time, either. I unfolded the note.
We have yore Karl. If you want him back you do what yore told. Don’t tell nobody about this. You be told what to do later.

A snippet of hair had been folded into the paper. I held it to the light falling through the window behind the secretary’s desk. It was the color I recalled Junior’s hair being the few times I had seen him. “Nice touch, this.”

Willa Dount gave me another of her scowls.

I ignored her and examined the note. The paper itself told me nothing except that it was a scrap torn from something else, possibly a book. I could go around town for a century trying to match it to torn pages. But the handwriting was interesting. It was small but loose, confi­dent, the penmanship almost perfect, not in keeping with the apparent education of the writer. “You don’t recog­nize this hand?”

“Of course not. That needn’t concern you, anyway.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Yesterday morning. I sent him down to our warehouse on the waterfront to check reports of pilferage. The foreman claimed it was brownies. I had a feeling
he
was the brownie in the woodpile and he was selling the Stormwarden’s supplies to somebody here on the Hill. Possibly even to one of our neighbors.”

“It’s always reassuring to know the better classes stand above the sins and temptations of us common folks. You weren’t concerned when he didn’t come home?”

“I told you I’m not interested in your social attitudes or opinions. Save them for someone who agrees with you. No, I wasn’t concerned. He sometimes stays out for weeks. He’s a grown man.”

“But the Stormwarden left you here to ride herd on him and his father. And you must have done the job till now because there hasn’t been a hint of scandal since the old girl left town.”

One more scowl.

The door sprang open and a man stomped into the room. “Willa, has there been any more word about...?” He spotted me and pulled up. His eyebrows crawled halfway up his forehead, a trick for which he was famous. To hear some tell it, that was his only talent. “Who the hell is that?” He was renowned for being rude, too, though among people of his class that was a trait the rest of us expected.

__IV__

Willa dount spoke up. “There hasn’t been any­thing yet. I expect we won’t be contacted for a while.” She looked at me, her expression making that a question. “They like to let the anxiety level rise before they come after you. It makes you more eager to cooperate.”

“This is Mr. Garrett,” she said. “Mr. Garrett is an expert on kidnappers and kidnappings.”

“My god, Willa! Are you mad? They said don’t tell anybody.”

She ignored his outburst. “Mr. Garrett, this is the Stormwarden’s consort, the Baronet daPena, the father of the victim.”

How he twitched and jerked! Without changing her tone or expression, Domina Dount had hit him with a fat double shot, calling him consort (which labeled him a drone) and mentioning his baronetcy (which wasn’t he­reditary and purely an honor because he was the fourth son of a cadet of the royal house). She may even have gotten in a sly third shot there, if, as you sometimes heard whispered, Junior wasn’t really a seed fallen from the senior.

“How do you do, Lord? He has a good question, Domina.” I’d been working up to it when he burst in. “Why bring me in when the kidnappers said don’t tell anybody? A man with my reputation, and you sent out what amounted to a platoon of clowns, with the girl dressed flashy enough to catch a blind man’s eye. It’s not likely the kidnappers won’t hear about it.”

“That was the point. I want them to.”

“Willa!”

“Karl, be quiet. I’m explaining to Mr. Garrett.”

He turned white. He was furious. She’d made it clear who stood where, who was in charge, in front of a lowlife from down the Hill. But he contained himself. I pre­tended blindness. It isn’t smart to see things like that. Willa Dount said, “I want them to know I’ve brought you in, Mr. Garrett.”