The Five Faces (The Markhat Files) (9 page)

When she let her coffee go cold, I pushed back my plate and looked at her until she couldn’t pretend she was avoiding my gaze any longer.

“Something has you spooked, hon,” I said. “Spill it.”

She took a small swallow of her tepid coffee.

“That was a bad nightmare you had last night,” she said, her tone neutral.

I shrugged. “Not the worst I’ve ever had, but yes, it was no picnic. People have nightmares. But I woke up and I’m here and I’m fine.”

She looked at me over her cup.

“Are you?”

“I am.” I sighed with dawning comprehension. “This is about something Mama said, isn’t it?”

“I don’t need Mama to tell me when you are troubled, my first and so far best husband. But now that you mention it, Mama may have made a point or two.”

“Such as?”

She put down the cup. Her hand was just beginning to shake.

“You may have killed a man yesterday.”

“Maybe. They were three. I was one. They were none of them saints.”

She nodded. “I know what they were,” she said. “And I know where you were. Down in the dark. Among the dead. With a dog.”

She reached across the table and took my hands.

“The War was a long time ago,” I said. “Twelve years. What happened yesterday had nothing to do with—what do they call it? Going war-crazed?”

“Why don’t we just leave Rannit for a while? We could go to Bel Loit. To the Sea. Or we could book a room for a few weeks on the
Queen.
We can stay up all night and sleep all day and eat Evis out of boat and kitchen. Please, honey. Please, let’s just go.”

I squeezed her hands when she stopped for breath.

“Whoa there. Easy. Look. I know Mama can be convincing with her cards and her birds and that witch-woman cackle, but I’m telling you, I’m fine.”

“Fine, like you were when you walked with the huldra? You lied then too.”

I knew she regretted the words as soon as she spoke them.

But, being pig-headed and occasionally foolish, I let go of her hands, stood, and marched out the door without a word.

I milled around on the street for half an hour, torn between going back to Darla and getting to work.

Foolishness won out. Hatless and empty of pocket, I made my way on foot to Cambrit, all thirty-six blocks away.

I added another block to my aching feet to avoid passing by Mama’s place. Finally, I made the corner at Cambrit, only to be greeted by the sight of Watch officers at my office, pounding away and shouting.

I cussed and turned on my heel. Of course the damned Watch was scratching at my door. I realized I’d been lucky I hadn’t been grabbed on the street.

Maybe Mama was right,
said a little voice in the back of my mind.
Maybe I am not quite myself.

I pushed the thought aside. The Watch officers hurled a final fusillade of blows on my door, yelled a final pair of demands, and then put their backs to the wall, crossed their beefy arms over their barrel chests, and settled in for a long morning of muttering and glaring.

I was engaging in glaring of my own when a tiny little hand slipped into mine.

Buttercup beamed up at me, then put her finger to her lips in a perfect mimicry of Darla’s own signal for silence.

“Sweety, you shouldn’t be out on the street in daylight,” I whispered.

She giggled and did a dainty little dance step. Her shadow lagged a bit too long behind her actual movements, and the sight made my hair want to stand on end.

“Does Mama know where you are?”

Maybe she squinted because the sun was in her eyes.

Or maybe she winked, knowing exactly what she was doing.

She tugged at me, trying to lead me toward my office.

“I can’t go that way, honey. Those rude men will shout if they see me.”

She seemed to ponder that. Then she giggled and tried to pull me again, not toward the street, but into the alley old Mr. Bull uses to dump his night soil.

There, propped against the alley wall, was a ladder.

Now, following a banshee onto a series of poorly maintained rooftops in an effort to escape the Watch and gain entry to my office by banshee wall-walking might not seem like the best way to start one’s day. But I was without my hat, without any coin, and completely bereft of beer or revolvers, so I followed Buttercup up onto the roof and we climbed and crawled our way slowly toward my office.

We disturbed a surprising number of astonished pigeons and half a dozen sleeping crows, but we found my warped roof without falling headfirst into a Watch wagon. Once above my place, I closed my eyes and braced myself, and Buttercup took that little banshee magic hop that takes her through walls. An instant later, we stood atop my desk, none the worse for wear.

Buttercup preened and grinned. I patted her head and tousled her hair and let her wear my second-best hat. Then I filled my pockets with the necessities, loaded my revolver, and looked up to find Buttercup and set about making her understand Uncle Markhat needed to leave the same way he came in.

But Buttercup was gone, with last year’s grey hat.

“Buttercup, honey,” I whispered, hoping she was playing hide-and-seek. “Come out!”

Silence.

I cussed softly. I’d managed to solve the dilemma of the empty pockets by replacing it with the equally knotty problem of being behind a door guarded by a pair of determined Watchmen.

I sat heavily down in my chair. Paper rustled. I stood, turned, found the note, recognized the handwriting, and cussed some more.

Maybe I was going soft in the head.

Boy,
read the letter.
I reckon you’ll sit down and take notice now, won’t ye? I knowed you’d wind up here, and I knowed you’d come tiptoeing past my door. But you needs to hear what I’ve got to tell, so you just keep reading, or you’ll be the worse for it.

Gertriss told me all about that there drawing you found on that dead man. She told that all them fancy wand-wavers down to Avalante couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Shows what they know, boy, cause old Mama done heard whispers about the five faces, oh yes I have. Weeks ago, the rumors started. Some crazy man from up Prince way draws them faces and writes your name, and you is as good as dead, and no mistake. That’s what they say. I reckon it might be true.

Them what knows of it won’t speak the crazy man’s name. But I reckon I’ll hear it spoke anyway, come sundown. I’ll even tell them fancy-pants halfdead up to Avalante, if’n it’s convenient. I reckon they is the lesser of neighboring evils, as they say.

Don’t you go asking outright for this man’s name, boy. He’s got some kind of foreign mojo, can hear things, can see things. They say he can kill with just a look. I don’t put much stock in that but foreigners can have some outlandish hexes so you heed me, you hear?

And don’t think I didn’t see you out walking last night, boy. Oh yes, I seen you pass, head near up to the clouds, all high and mighty-like. I seen you, and I seen who you was with, and boy you got to be thrice times three the biggest fool what ever lived if ye trust a word that creature says.

I’ll send Buttercup to fetch you directly. Them Watchmen wants you bad. I reckon the weather will be nice and sunny today. I wears a size nine boot, and I prefers the leather ones from Bale’s General Store on Cauthon.

Mama.

I tore up the note and hid the scraps in case the Watch got inquisitive later. Then I sat back and waited for the sound of banshee feet on the roof and tried not to imagine Mama cackling smugly into her cauldron of stewed bats.

I didn’t wait long. Buttercup appeared without a sound, wearing a Watchman’s blue hat and a grin far beyond her apparent years.

I hung the round, blue Watch cap on my hat-rack, took her hand, and braced myself for the banshee hop-step.

Buttercup only followed me a couple of blocks before waving and vanishing. I stuck to alleys and back streets, ducking in and out of doorways and stables, and slowly made my way back to the Docks.

My feet were blistered by the time I smelled the first hint of the tanneries. I made a mental note to start walking more and napping less. Time was I could have traipsed around town all day without breaking a sweat, but I was puffing like an Ogre when I spotted the first shallow hull of a barge wallowing down the river toward Bel Loit.

My plan for the morning was simple. I intended to poke around the Docks and see if I could scare up someone nervous enough to start naming names. If House Lethe wasn’t running the weed trade anymore, whoever was would be taking control.

I didn’t figure they’d be using subtlety and gentle restraint with weed dealers.

I also planned to find out who paid Chuckles to run the dog fights and ask them about men with wide-brimmed hats and outlandish accents. I was hoping the confusion created by the weed-trade takeover might have loosened a few tongues.

Finding weeders was no problem. The gutters were filled with any number of them. Most wobbled or batted at the air before their faces or screamed incoherently at things only they could see.

But I needed an ambulatory specimen, one with coppers to spend and a need to satisfy, so I turned my aching feet toward the wharfs and idled in the shade for a bit.

A barge loaded with last year’s cotton bales rode low in the shallows while an army of sweating haulers transferred her cargo from deck to waiting wagons. I loitered until I spied a skinny, pockmarked laborer snatch a handful of coins from a blustering cargo master. Then I fell into step behind Skinny as he scurried off toward what I hoped was his first purchase of weed for the day.

Skinny made a beeline for an alley by a fishmonger’s stinking, open-air stall. I watched from the street as he exchanged a few words with a pair of nervous figures who stuck to the shadows. As soon as Skinny darted out of the alley, I slipped my hands into my coat pockets and sauntered into the dark.

They met me halfway. One was tall and burly and wearing a cast-off Ogre’s beaver-fur greatcoat. His associate was short and fat and aiming a cheap, post-War crossbow at my gut.

“Turn your ass around and walk,” he said. “Ain’t nothing for you here.”

I pulled both my pistols.

“You know what these are?”

The crossbow hit the filthy cobblestones. Short-and-Fat put his hands in the air. His tall friend bolted, sending trash flying, banging into both walls in his haste to secure employment elsewhere.

“I see you know a gun when you see one. Good. I’d rather not shoot you. The noise gives me headaches.”

“Dammit, mister, we already paid our cut to the new bunch,” he said. “Two crowns, just this morning. This is our alley now. They said we wouldn’t have no trouble.”

I nodded amiably, but kept my guns trained on his chest. “You pay Dickey, or Mr. Snout?”

“We paid Feather. Said his name was Feather. Look, mister, I don’t know any Dickey, or any Snout, but Feather gave me a receipt…”

He reached for his pocket. I’d not stopped walking, so I was able to remind him about alley etiquette with a poke of revolver muzzle between his beady little weed-dealer eyes.

“Easy there,” I said. “Why don’t you move a little slower and live a little longer? Now drop the receipt. That’s right. Good man.”

I put my foot on a corner of the paper when a vagrant breeze tried to blow it away.

“Now pick it up and unfold it.”

He did, sweating and shaking.

“Now read it.”

“Mister, I can’t read.”

“Unfold it and look at it then.” If the paper was covered with hex signs it wouldn’t matter that he couldn’t read.

He unfolded it and held it up in front of his face.

His ears didn’t steam and he didn’t start screaming, so I took the paper and read it myself.

It was a receipt. To Stales and Calwup, for the use of the alley by the fishmonger Hatton for a week’s time, signed by a Mr. Feather.

I lowered my guns.

“Well, that’s all right, then.”

He let out his breath in a great, noxious exhalation. “Damn, did you need to scare us like that? Calwup is probably still running, and he’s got the damned bag hid in that coat.”

I shrugged. “Not my problem. We’re just making sure rules are obeyed. Might make an example of anybody playing fast and loose.”

He paled. “Look, we just sell a bag or two, now and then,” he said. “We don’t want no trouble.” His eyes narrowed just a tad. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“Feather’s boss. They call me Feather’s boss. You can call me sir for short. Speaking of trouble—you know a man with an accent who wears a wide-brimmed hat, hangs around the dog fights?”

“Feather’s boss, huh?”

I sidestepped about the time the brick came whizzing past my left ear. Short-and-Fat wasn’t as fast and took it right below his nose.

I put my back to the filthy wall and kept one pistol on each of my new friends.

“Calwup, isn’t it?” I asked of the tall man who had just returned with a zeal for flinging bricks.