Deadly Quicksilver Lies (4 page)

7

The Jenn place was a fifty-room hovel on the edge of the innermost circle of the Hill. No mere tradesman, however rich, however powerful, would reach that final ring.

Funny. Maggie Jenn had not struck me as the aristo type.

The name still nagged. I still did not recall why I ought to know it.

That part of the Hill was all stone, vertical and horizontal. No yards, no gardens, no sidewalks, no green anywhere unless on the rare third-story balcony. No brick. Red or brown brick was what the mob used to build. Forget that. Use stone that was quarried in another country and had to be barged for hundreds of miles.

I’d never been to the area so I got disoriented.

There weren’t any spaces between buildings. The street was so narrow two carriages couldn’t pass without climbing the sidewalks. It was cleaner than the rest of the city, but the gray stone pavements and buildings made the view seem dingy anyway. Walking that street was like walking the bottom of a dismal limestone canyon.

The Jenn address was in the middle of a featureless block. The door was more like a postern gate than an entrance to a home. Not one window faced the street, just an unbroken cliff of stone. The wall even lacked ornament, unusual for the Hill. Hill folk build to outdo their neighbors in displays of bad taste.

Some slick architect must have sold some otherwise shrewd character the notion that starkness was the way to shine. No doubt storehouses of wealth changed hands, the ascetic look being more costly than mere gingerbread.

Me, I like cheap. Gimme a herd of double-ugly gargoyles and some little boys peeing off the gutter corners.

The knocker was so discreet you almost had to hunt for it. It wasn’t even brass, just some gray metal like pewter or tin. It made a restrained
tick tick
so feeble I’d have thought nobody inside could hear it.

The plain teak door opened immediately. I found myself face-to-face with a guy who looked like he got stuck with the name Ichabod by malicious parents back around the turn of the century. He looked like he had spent the numerous intervening decades living down to the image that kind of name conjures. He was long and bony and bent. His eyes were red and his hair was white and his skin was oh so pale. I muttered, “So this is what they do when they get old. Hang up their black swords and turn into butlers.” He had an Adam’s apple that looked like he was choking on a grapefruit. He didn’t say a word, he just stood there staring like a buzzard waiting for a snack to cool.

He had the biggest bony arches over his eyes I ever saw. They were forested with white jungles.

Spooky guy.

“Dr. Death, I presume?” Dr. Death was a character in the Punch and Judy shows going around. Ichabod and the bad doctor had a lot in common, but the puppet was six feet shorter.

Some people have no sense of humor. We had us one of those here. Ichabod neither cracked a smile nor twitched one of those woodlots camped over his eyes. He did speak, though. Fair Karentine, too. “You have some cause for disturbing this household?”

“Sure.” I didn’t like his tone. I never like the tone of Hill servants. It’s filled with the defensive snobbishness you find in the tone of a turncoat. “I wanted to see if you guys really do shrivel in the sunlight.” I had the advantage in this dumb game because I was expected and he’d been given my description. And he’d recognized me.

If he hadn’t recognized me, he would’ve slammed the door against my nose. Word would have gone out to the thugs who defend the rich and mighty from nuisances like me. A band would be hastening hither to deal me an exemplary drubbing.

Come to think of it, they could be hastening anyway, if Ichabod had a confederate with no better sense of humor. “Name’s Garrett,” I announced. “Maggie Jenn asked me to come for dinner.”

The old spook stepped back. He never said a word, but it was plain he doubted his boss’s wisdom. He didn’t approve of letting my kind in the house. No telling what might have to be dragged back out of my pockets before they let me go. Or maybe I’d scratch off some fleas and leave them to colonize the rugs.

I glanced back to see how my tail was making out. Poor sod was playing hell staying inconspicuous.

“Nice door,” I observed as I caught it edge-on. It was four inches thick. “Expecting a debt collector with a battering ram?” Hill people are rich enough to have those kinds of problems. Nobody would loan me enough for me to get in trouble.

“Follow me.” Ichabod turned.

“That should be ‘follow me, sir.’” I don’t know why the guy made me antagonistic. “I’m a guest. You’re a flunky.” I began having second thoughts about revolutions. When I go over to the Royal Library to see Linda Lee, I poke around in the books, too. Once I read one about rebellions. Seems like the servants of the overthrown get it worse than their masters do — unless they are perceptive enough to be agents of the rebels.

“Indeed.”

“Ah. A comment. Lead on, Ichabod.”

“The name is Zeke, sir.” The sir dripped sarcasm.

“Zeke?” That was as bad as Ichabod. Almost.

“Yes, sir. Are you coming? The mistress doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

“Do lead on, then. The thousand and one gods of TunFaire forfend that we distress Her Redheadedness.”

Zeke elected not to respond. He’d concluded that I had an attitude problem. He was right, of course, but for the wrong reasons. And I was a little ashamed. He was probably a nice old man with a herd of grandkids, forced to work into his dotage in order to support ungrateful descendants who were the offspring of sons killed in the Cantard.

I didn’t believe that for a minute, though.

The interior of that place bore no resemblance to the outside. It was pretty dusty now, but it had started out as the daydream of some wharfside loser who imagined himself a great potentate. Or a great potentate with the tastes of a wharfside loser. I’ll get some of these and a bunch of those and... And the only thing missing was a troop of houris.

The place was lousy with tasteless billows of wealth. Plush everything and way too much of it, and even more of everything as we moved nearer the center of the pit. Actually, we seemed to advance from zone to zone, each another expression of bad taste.

“Whoa!” said I, unable to restrain myself. “There it is.”
It
being a mammoth’s-foot cane and brolly stand. “You don’t see a lot of those.”

Zeke gave me a look, read my reaction to that bit of down-home chic. His stone face relaxed for a moment. He agreed. In that instant, we concluded a shaky armistice.

No doubt it would survive no longer than Karenta’s armistice with Venageta, which had lasted a whole six and a half hours.

“Sometimes we cannot relinquish our pasts, sir.”

“Maggie Jenn used to be a mammoth hunter?”

The peace was over. Just like that. He hunked along sullenly. I think that was because I’d admitted I didn’t have the faintest idea what Maggie Jenn used to be.

How come everyone thought I should know who she was? Including me? My famous memory was doing famously today.

Zeke ushered me into the worst room yet. “Madame will join you here.” I looked around, shading my eyes, began to wonder if Madame didn’t used to be a madam. The place was for sure done up in whorehouse modern, probably by the same nancy boys who did the high-fly joints down in the Tenderloin.

I turned to ask a question.

Ichabod had abandoned me.

I almost squeaked for him to come back. “Oh, Zeke! Bring me a blindfold.” I didn’t think I could stand the sensory assault otherwise.

8

It got to me. I stood around like I’d just made eye contact with a medusa. I’d never seen so much red. Everything was a red of the reddest reds, overwhelmingly red. Ubiquitous gold leaf highlights only heightened the impact.

“Garrett.”

Maggie Jenn. I didn’t have the strength to turn. I was scared she’d be wearing scarlet and lip rouge of a shade that would make her look like a vampire at snack time.

“You alive?”

“Just stunned.” I waved a hand. “This is a bit overpowering.”

“Kind of sucks, don’t it? But Teddy loved it, the gods know why. This place was Teddy’s gift, so I keep this part the way he liked it.”

I did turn then. No, she hadn’t worn red. She wore a peasanty sort of thing that was mostly light brown and white lace and a silly white dairymaid’s hat that set off her hair. She also wore a heavyweight smile that said she was amusing herself at my expense but I was free to join in the fun. I told her, “I’m missing something. I don’t get the joke.”

Her smile faded. “What do you know about me?”

“Not much. Your name. That you’re the sexiest woman I’ve run into in an age. Various self-evident characteristics. That you live in a classy neighborhood. And that’s about it.”

She shook her head. Red curls flew around. “Notoriety isn’t worth much anymore. Come on. We don’t stay here. You’d go blind.”

Nice to have somebody crack wise for me. Saved me the trouble of thinking them up and pissing her off.

She led me through several memorable rooms which weren’t important enough to note. Then we roared out into the real world, bam! A dining room set for two. “Like a night in Elf Hill,” I muttered.

She hadn’t lost her hearing. “I used to feel that way. Those rooms can be intimidating. Go ahead. Plant it.”

I took a chair opposite her at the end of a table long enough to seat two dozen people. “This is a love nest?”

“Smallest dining room I’ve got.” Hint of a smile.

“You and Teddy?”

“Sigh. How fleeting infamy. Nobody remembers except the family. That’s all right, though. They’re bitter enough for everybody. Teddy was Teodoric, Prince of Kamark. He became Teodoric IV and lasted a whole year.”

“The king?” Bells began to ring. Finally. “It’s starting to come.”

“Good. I won’t have to put myself through a bunch of explanations.”

“I don’t know a lot. That all happened when I was in the Marines. In the Cantard, we didn’t pay much attention to royal scandals.”

“Didn’t know who was king and didn’t care. I’ve heard that one.” Maggie Jenn smiled her best smile. “I bet you still don’t follow royal scandals.”

“They don’t affect my life much.”

“It wouldn’t affect your work for me, either, you knowing or not knowing all the dirt.”

A woman came in. Like Zeke, she was as old as original sin. She was tiny, the size of a child about to lunge into adolescence. She wore spectacles. Maggie Jenn took good care of her help. Spectacles are
expensive
. The old woman posed, hands clasped in front of her. She neither moved nor spoke.

Maggie Jenn said, “We’ll start whenever you’re ready, Laurie.”

The old woman inclined her head and left.

Maggie said, “I will tell you some of it, though, to soothe that famous curiosity of yours. So you do what I’m paying you to do instead of rooting around in my past.”

I grunted.

Laurie and Zeke brought in a soup course. I began salivating. I’d eaten my own cooking too long.

That was the only way I missed Dean, though! You bet.

“I was the king’s mistress, Garrett.”

“I remember.” Finally. It was the scandal of its day, a crown prince falling for a commoner so hard he set her up on the Hill. His wife had not been thrilled. Old Teddy had made no pretense of discretion. He’d been in love and didn’t care if the whole world knew. A worrisome attitude in a man who might be king.

It suggested character flaws.

For sure. King Teodoric IV turned out to be an arrogant, narrow-minded, self-indulgent jerk who got himself snuffed within a year.

We aren’t tolerant of royal foibles. That is, our royals and nobles aren’t tolerant. Nobody else would consider assassination. It just isn’t done outside the family. Even our mad dog revolutionaries never suggest offing the royals.

I said, “I do wonder, though, about this daughter.”

“Not Teddy’s.”

I slurped my soup. It was broth and garlic somebody tossed a chicken across. I liked it. Empty bowls went away. An appetizer course appeared. I didn’t say anything. Maggie might talk just to extinguish the silence.

“I’ve made my dumb mistakes, Garrett. My daughter was the result of a lulu.”

I chomped something made of chicken liver, bacon, and a giant nutmeat. “This’s good.”

“I was sixteen. My father married me off to a virgin-obsessed animal who had daughters old enough to be my mother. It was good for business. Since nobody ever told me how you don’t get pregnant, I got. My husband had fits. I wasn’t supposed to whelp brats, I was supposed to warm his bed and tell him he was the greatest there ever was. He went buggo when I had a daughter. Another daughter. He had no sons. It was all a female plot. We were out to get him. I never had the nerve to tell him what would happen if us women really gave him what he deserved. He got a taste, though.” Nasty smile. For one second, a darker Maggie shone through.

She nibbled some food and left me room to comment. I nodded and kept chomping.

“The old bastard never stopped using me, whatever he thought about me. His daughters took pity and showed me what I needed to know. They hated him more than I did. I bided my time. Then my father got killed by robbers who got twelve copper sceats and a pair of junk boots more than a year old.”

“That’s TunFaire.”

She nodded. That
was
TunFaire.

I nudged, “Your dad died.”

“So I no longer had any reason to please my husband.”

“You walked.”

“After I caught him sleeping and beat the living shit out of him with a poker.”

“I’ll take that to heart.”

“Good idea.” There was mischief in her eye. I decided I was going to like Maggie Jenn. Anybody who could live through what she had and have a little mischief left...

It was an interesting meal. I got to hear all about how she met Teddy without hearing word one about what she did between her shoeleather divorce and that first explosive encounter with the future king. I suspected she had loved Teddy as much as he’d loved her. You wouldn’t keep something as ugly as those red rooms in memory of somebody you disliked.