Old Tin Sorrows (2 page)

“To everyone else you’ll be a hired hand, job unknown, antecedents mostly unknown. You should use another name. You have a certain level of notoriety. The name Garrett might ring a bell.”

I sighed. “You make it sound like I might spend a lot of time there.”

“I want you to stay till the job is done. I’ll need the name you’re going to use before I leave or you won’t get past the front door.”

“Mike Sexton.” I plucked it off the top of my head, but it had to be divine inspiration. If a little dangerous.

Mike Sexton had been our company’s chief scout. He hadn’t come back from that island. Peters had sent him out before a night strike and we’d never seen him again. He’d been Black Pete’s main man, his only friend.

Peters’s face went hard and cold. His eyes narrowed dangerously. He started to say something. But Black Pete never shot his mouth off without thinking.

He grunted. “It’ll work. People have heard me mention the name. I’ll explain how we know each other. I don’t think I told anybody he’s gone.”

He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t brag about his mistakes, even to himself. I’d bet part of him was still waiting for Sexton to report,

“That’s the way I figured it.”

He downed the last of his beer. “You’ll do it?”

“You knew I would before you pounded on the door. I didn’t have any choice.”

He smiled. It looked out of place on that ugly mug. “I wasn’t a hundred percent sure. You were always a stubborn bastard.” He took out a worn canvas purse, the same one he’d had back when, fatter than it had been before. He counted out fifty marks. In silver. Which was a statement of sorts. The price of silver has been shooting up since Glory Mooncalled double-crossed everybody and declared the whole Cantard an independent republic with no welcome for Karentines, Venageti, or what have you.

Silver is the fuel that makes sorcery go. Both Karenta and Venageta sway to the whims of cabals of sorcerers. The biggest, most productive silver mines in the world lie in the Cantard, which is why the ruling gangs have been at war there since my grandfather was a pup. Till the mercenary Glory Mooncalled pulled his stunt.

He’s made it stick so far. But I’ll be amazed if he keeps it up. He’s got everybody pissed and he’s right in the middle.

It won’t be long before it’s war as usual down there.

I opened my mouth to tell Peters he didn’t need to pay me. I owed him. But I realized he
did
need to. He was calling in an obligation but not for free. He didn’t expect me to work for nothing, he just wanted me to work. And maybe he was paying off something to the General by footing the bill.

“Eight a day and expenses,” I told him. “Discount for a friend. I’ll kick back if this comes out too much or I’ll bill you if I need more.” I took the fifty into the Dead Man’s room for safekeeping. The Dead Man was hard at what he does best: snoozing. All four hundred plus pounds of him. He’d been at it so long I’d begun to miss his company.

With that thought I decided it
was
time I took a job. Missing the Dead Man’s company was like missing the company of an inquisitor.

Peters was ready to go when I got back. “See you in the morning?” he asked. There was a whisper of desperation behind his words.

“I’ll be there. Guaranteed.”

2

It was eleven in the morning. They’d roofed the sky with planks of lead. I walked, though the General’s hovel was four miles beyond South Gate. Me and horses don’t get along.

I wished I’d taken the chance. My pins were letting me know I spend too much time planted on the back of my lap. Then fat raindrops started making coin-sized splats on the road. I wished some more. I was going to get wet if the old man and I didn’t hit it off.

I shifted my duffel bag to my other shoulder and tried to hurry. That did all the good it ever does.

I’d bathed and shaved and combed my hair. I had on my best “meet the rich folks” outfit. I figured they’d give me credit for trying and not run me off before they asked my name. I hoped Black Pete was on the level and had left that at the door.

The Stantnor place wasn’t exactly a squatter’s shanty. I figured maybe a million marks’ worth of brick and stone and timber. The grounds wouldn’t have had any trouble gobbling the Lost Battalion.

I didn’t need a map to find the house but I was lucky. The General had put out a paved private road for me to follow.

The shack was four storeys high at the wings and five in the center, in the style called frame half-timber, and it spread out wide enough that I couldn’t throw a rock from one corner to the other of the front. I tried. It was a good throw but the stone fell way short.

A fat raindrop got me in the back of the neck. I scampered up a dozen marble steps to the porch. I took a minute to arrange my face so I wouldn’t look impressed when somebody answered the door. You want to deal with the rich, you’ve got to overcome the intimidation factor of wealth.

The door—which would have done a castle proud as a drawbridge—swung in without a sound, maybe a foot. A man looked out. All I could see was his face. I almost asked him what the grease bill was for silencing those monster hinges.

“Yes?”

“Mike Sexton. I’m expected.”

“Yes.” The face puckered up. Where did he get lemons this time of year?

Maybe he wasn’t thrilled to see me, but he did open up and let me into a hallway where you could park a couple of woolly mammoths, if you didn’t want to leave them out in the rain. He said, “I’ll inform the General that you’ve arrived, sir.” He walked away like they’d shoved a javelin up his back in boot camp, marching to drums only he could hear. Obviously another old Marine, like Black Pete.

He was gone awhile. I entertained myself by drifting along the hallway introducing myself to the Stantnor ancestors, a dozen of whom scowled at me from portraits on the walls. The artists had been selected for their ability to capture their subject’s private misery. Every one of those old boys was constipated.

I inventoried three beards, three mustaches, and six clean shaven. The Stantnor blood was strong. They looked like brothers instead of generations going back to the foundation of the Karentine state. Only their uniforms dated them.

All of them were in uniform or armor. Stantnors had been professional soldiers, sailors, Marines—forever. It was a birthright. Or maybe an obligation, like it or not, which might explain the universal dyspepsia.

The last portrait on the left was the General himself, as Commandant of the Corps. He wore a huge, ferocious white mustache and had a faraway look in his eyes, as if he were standing on the poop of a troopship staring at something beyond the horizon. His was the only portrait that hadn’t been painted so its subject’s eyes followed you when you moved. It was disconcerting, having all those angry old men glaring down. Maybe the portraits were supposed to intimidate upstarts like me.

Opposite the General hung the only portrait of a young man, the General’s son, a Marine lieutenant who hadn’t developed the family scowl. I didn’t recall his name, but did remember him getting killed in the islands while I was in. He’d been the old man’s only male offspring. There wouldn’t be any more portraits to put up on those dark-paneled walls.

The hall ended in a wall of leaded glass that rose the hallway’s two storey height, a mosaic of scenes from myth and legend, all bloodthirstily executed: heroes slaying dragons, felling giants, posturing atop heaps of elvish corpses while awaiting another charge. All stuff of antiquity, when we humans didn’t get along with the other races.

The doors through that partition were normal size, also filled with glass artwork from the same school. The butler, or whatever he was, had left them ajar. I took that as an invitation.

The hall beyond could have been swiped from a cathedral. It was as big as a parade ground and four storeys high, all stone, mostly swirly browns from butterscotch to rust folded into cream. The walls were decorated with trophies presumably won by Stantnors in battle. There were enough weapons and banners to outfit a battalion.

The floor was a checkerboard of white marble and green serpentine. In its middle stood a fountain, a hero on a rearing stallion sticking a lance into the heart of a ferocious dragon that looked suspiciously like one of the bigger flying thunder-lizards. Both of them looked like they’d rather be somewhere else. Couldn’t say I blamed them. Neither one was going to get out alive. The hero was about one second short of sliding off the horse’s behind right into the dragon’s claws. The sculptor had said a lot that, undoubtedly, no one understood. I told them, “You two want to scrap over a virgin, you should work a deal.”

I headed for the fountain, heels clicking, the walls throwing back echoes. I turned around a few times, taking in the sights. Hallways ran off into the wings. Stairs went up to balconies in front of each of the upper floors. There were lots of polished round brown pillars and legions of echoes. The place couldn’t be a home. Only thing I’d ever seen like it was a museum. You had to wonder what went on inside the head of a guy who would want to build a place like that to live.

It was damned near as cold in there as it was outside. I shivered, checked out the fountain up close. It wasn’t going, or at least I’d have had its chuckles for company. Seemed a pity. The sound would have improved the atmosphere. Maybe they only turned it on when they were entertaining.

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the idea of being rich. I guess most people do. But if this was the way the rich had to live, I thought maybe I could settle for less.

My trade has taken me into any number of large homes and every one seemed to have a certain coldness at its heart. The nicest I’d hit belonged to Chodo Contague, TunFaire’s emperor of the underworld. He’s a grotesque, a real blackheart, but his place at least fakes the life and warmth. And his decorator has his priorities straight. Once when I was there the house was littered with naked lovelies. That’s what I call home furnishings! That’s a lot more cheerful than a bargeload of instruments of war.

I dropped my duffel bag, put a foot up on the fountain surround, and rested my elbows on my knee. “You boys go ahead with what you’re doing. I’ll try not to disturb.” Hero and dragon were both too preoccupied to notice.

I looked around. Where the hell was everybody? A place that size ought to have a battalion for staff. I’d seen livelier museums at midnight. Well . . . 

All was not lost. In fact, things had started to look up.

I’d spotted a face. It was looking at me around a pillar supporting the balconies to my left. The west wing. It was female and gorgeous and too far away to tell much else, but that was all I needed to get my blood moving again. The woman attached was as timid as a dryad. She ducked out of sight an instant after our eyes met.

The part of me that is weak wondered if I’d see more of her. I hoped so. I could get lost in a face like that.

She did a little flit into the nearest hallway. I got just a glimpse but wanted her to come back. She was worth a second look, and maybe a third and a fourth, a long-haired, slim blonde in something white and gauzy, gathered at the waist by a red girdle. Around twenty, give or take a few, and sleek enough to put a big, goofy grin on my face.

I’d keep an eye out for that one.

Unless she was a ghost. She’d gone without making a sound. Whatever, she was going to haunt me till I got a closer look.

Was the place haunted? It was spooky enough, in its cold way . . . I realized it was me. Might not bother someone else. I looked around and heard the clash of steel and the moans of those who had died to furnish all those emblems of Stantnor glory. I was packing my own haunts in and letting the place become a mirror.

I tried to shake a darkening mood. A place like that turns you somber.

The guy from the front door marched in after the girl disappeared, his heels clicking. He came to a perfect military halt six feet away. I gave him the once-over. He stood five-foot-eight, maybe a hundred seventy pounds, in his fifties but looking younger. His hair was wavy black, slicked with some kind of grease that couldn’t beat the curl. If he had any gray, he hid it well, and he still had all the hair he’d had when he was twenty. His eyes were cold little beads. You could get ice burns there. He’d kill you and not even wonder if he was making orphans.

“The General will see you now, sir.” He turned and marched away.

I followed. I caught myself marching in step, skipped to get out. In a minute I was back in step. I gave it up.

They’d pounded it in good. The flesh remembered and couldn’t hear the rebellion in the mind.

“You have a name?” I asked.

“Dellwood, sir.”

“What were you before you got out?”

“I was attached to the General’s staff, sir.”

Which meant absolutely nothing. “Lifer?” Dumb question, Garrett. I could bet the family farm, I was the only nonlifer in the place, excepting the girl—maybe. The General wouldn’t surround himself with the lesser breeds called civilians.

“Thirty-two years, sir.” He asked no questions himself. Not into small talk and chitchat? No. He didn’t care. I was one of
them.

“Maybe I should have come to the tradesman’s entrance.”

He grunted.

“Tough.” The General had my respect for what he’d accomplished, not for who he’d been born.

Dellwood had twenty years on me but I was the guy doing the puffing when we hit the fourth floor. About six wise remarks ran through my alleged brain but I didn’t have wind enough to share them. Dellwood gave me an unreadable look, probably veiled contempt for soft civilians. I puffed awhile, then to distract him said, “I saw a woman while I was waiting. Watching me. Timid as a mouse.”

“That would be Miss Jennifer, sir. The General’s daughter.” He looked like he thought he’d made a mistake volunteering that much. He didn’t say anything else. One of those guys who wouldn’t tell you what he thought you didn’t need to know if you burned his toes off. Was the whole staff struck from the same dies? Then why did Peters need me? They could handle anything.