The Seven Markets (19 page)

“Thank you.” She pressed on the chest’s catch and pushed up the lid. Inside he saw three levels of trays that she was able to slide apart. Each tray was mounted on a clever accordion-style bracket that allowed her to examine the entire contents of the chest at once.

“Where are you . . . where are you . . . there!”

She stood away from the chest and the bed. He saw a small shot glass in her hand.

“Thirsty?”

“Actually, I am. Too much salty food downstairs. I’ll pay for that later, but for now—well, here.” She pressed the glass into his palm. “Welcome to the Market.”

“Um, thank you? Didn’t you say no food or drink?”

“It’s not for drinking. Press it up to your ear. Wait, sit down first, then listen.”

Possibilities swam through Hart’s head. The most likely was that she’d hoodwinked them all. First she separated him from Presley and the others and now she was going to take him out with . . . a shot glass? Hart couldn’t decide if he felt moronic or curious, but it was a day for taking leaps of faith. He closed his eyes and pressed the mouth of the shot glass to his ear.

At first, nothing. Then a single note in the darkness, high and long, stretching out to the infinity in his mind. Another note joined the first. This one was low, reverberating with power. He could imagine a steel guitar being strummed over and over—
burm burm burm
—as the audience screamed in anticipation.

More notes, faster, an explosion of sound. The song was familiar but he couldn’t place it. It wasn’t a single song, it was
every
song, played together, layering one on top of the other, fitting together like a four-dimensional puzzle. The beginning was the end and the middle enclosed them all. Song after song played in his head and he wasn’t Hart the soldier anymore, Hart the Navy SEAL, who’d obeyed his orders in Iraq heedless of the cost. Hart with his tough-guy exterior, always itching for a fight because the alternative was your CO asking,
hey, what’s up, you okay, man?
The one question he couldn’t answer, would never be able to answer.

Hart with his kid brother who’d wailed on the guitar and died way, way too young.

Her hand was cold on his as she loosened his fingers and withdrew the shot glass from his ear. Hart the soldier would have knocked her hand away, pushed her over, and taken the glass for his own.

Hart the man sat a while, eyes closed, savoring the resonating silence.

“It’s all real, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“But . . . how does no one know about it? I mean, we’re in Cleveland, aren’t we? How are people driving past all day without flipping out?”

She didn’t answer right away. She turned the shot glass over and over in her palm. She hadn’t listened to it, not yet. He could tell she was tempted, but something in the way she handled it told him she was also terribly afraid. Her prince still had his claws in her. What effect would hearing Billy play have on those claws?

“Someone once told me the reason the Market only comes once every hundred years or so was so people would have time to forget. That makes about as much sense as anything else I’ve ever heard.”

“I’ll never be able to forget.”

“No? Okay, but you’ll tell your kids and maybe they’ll tell their kids. And right about the time the Market’s ready to come back, all the folks who’ve heard your story will be joking about crazy old great-grampaw and his trip to Disneyland.”

“You heard that, huh?”

“I hear a lot.”

“How about you, though? How’d this happen to you?”

She shrugged. “I sat at the wrong table, attracted the wrong man’s attention. I suppose it happens. Can’t seem to shake it even all these years later.”

“How old were you when he took you?”

“I was seventeen. I think I was about to get engaged.”

Hart balled his hand up into a fist and swore. “Seventeen. You don’t look seventeen, not anymore. Are you aging?”

“Not at first. I am now.”

“Slowly?”

“It was slow at first. It’s been picking up recently. I have another gift from a friend. It helps some of the time. I try not to think about it.” He noticed her twisting a ring on her finger as she spoke and wondered if she was aware she was doing it.

“We should go,” she said.

“Go? We should stay. Especially if no one can see this room. Hell, we should bring Presley and the others up here and set up a little ambush action. Catch your husband flatfooted when he comes home. Nice and private up here. Don’t have to worry about civilians, either.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know quite what this counts as. These rooms—I don’t know how they work.”

“So we’ll find out. Fortune favors the bold, right?”

He saw she was tempted. But there was something else, something she wasn’t telling him. It might even be something she was keeping from herself.

“It cannot be. This place, it’s his. I don’t know how powerful he’ll be here.”

Hart nodded his agreement and stood to leave. He opened the door a crack and listened for signs of movement. When he’d assured himself they were alone, he led her out into the suite’s main rooms. As her hand lighted in his, weightless as a bird in flight, he imagined her as a girl of seventeen years, flushed with anticipation of marriage. He imagined Billy with his guitar slung over his shoulder and decided, no matter what, her husband was due for a major ass-kicking.

Presley greeted them at the bar with a frosty mug in his hand and a stupid, distant grin on his face. He tried to kiss the old woman’s cheek, missing only because she pulled away before he could. He embraced Hart like a long-lost brother, announcing to everyone how glad he was to have his friends back.

“Boss, what’s going on here?”

Presley raised a finger to his lips. “Shhhh. Camouflage. You were gone too long.”

He pulled Hart with him. There was a large crowd gathered around one of the tables by the fireplace. Docherty was in the thick of it; he wore the same dazed expression as the major. And when he saw Hart and the old woman he threw up his hands and called for a fresh round of drinks to celebrate their return.

McBride was sitting at the table, opposite a wall with vaguely human features. It had a beard and eyes and something resembling hands jutting out from its body. McBride had his shirt off. He was limbering up his right arm, rolling the shoulder, shaking his hands for circulation.

Hart tried telling Presley they’d found the target’s suite. The major couldn’t have been more uninterested. “Always were a real stick in the mud,” Presley said, sloshing his drink onto Hart’s boots.

“This is bad,” the old woman said, pulling Hart back from the table.

“No, really? You’re my resident expert, what can we do about this?”

“Coffee and a cold shower? A fistful of aspirin? They’re drunk, Captain, not doped up. It’s just that the food here, the drink, it’s different from what they’re used to.”

“It’s not, like, magic?”

She swallowed a sad laugh.

“Okay, not magic. So we need to drag them upstairs and let them sleep it off? What about Vulgari?”

“The guy by the gate? I told you, I’ve never seen anything like that before. But look at them. Remember what he was like? Shoveling food in, gulping pint after pint of ale. This is different.”

He sighed loud enough to be heard over the din. “Okay, upstairs to bed. Cold shower. Hot coffee. Do you know what I did before I met you? Bodyguard duty, mostly. Standing in the shadows making sure nobody takes a shot at your client. Fighting to stay awake. Can’t believe I miss it.”

He picked Presley out of the crowd. The major was in the center of it, shouting right into McBride’s face. Hart let himself hope Presley had come to his senses, and was dressing down McBride for losing control.

Then Presley slapped at McBride’s forearm. He took the other man’s hand and held it up high, hooting and hollering as he did so.

The wall slammed its elbow down on the table. The floor shook and several mugs clattered to the ground. Hart realized what was going on.

They were going to arm-wrestle.

In spite of himself, he almost laughed. He’d been getting worked up, expecting the worst, but it was just McBride losing at arm-wrestling. Let the locals have their fun. Once the wind went out of Presley’s and the others’ sails, they’d be more than happy to retire upstairs and sleep it off.

The wall growled something that might have been words. McBride slammed his own elbow down on the table. He wrapped his hand around the wall’s, shifting his weight so his whole body was behind his right arm. He couldn’t win—anyone watching could tell that—but it was plain to Hart and the entire surrounding crowd that he intended on putting up a good fight.

They roared as the wall lowered itself until it was in position. A blue thing with too many arms separated itself from the crowd and asked if both men were ready. The wall made a sound like stone blocks being dragged over gravel. McBride changed his grip and told the blue thing to quite stalling.

It counted down from five, the words strange but their meaning crystal-clear. Hart could almost hear the numbers as it called them out:

“Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . go!”

McBride and the wall pushed all their weight, all their strength, into their arms. To give McBride his due, the contest looked to actually be a contest. Hands shot up throughout the crowd, waving coin purses and, in some spots, actual paper money. Legal tender, though it was anyone’s guess what that might mean.

The wall fought to keep its arm up, losing more ground than seemed believable but losing it just the same. It was a man arm-wrestling a great stone wall, and that should have made for a one-sided contest. But McBride was hanging in there, even gaining ground. Hart couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Something, innit?” Presley forced a mug into his hand. Hart had it halfway to his mouth before he remembered himself.

“I’m driving, boss, remember?”

Presley nodded and did not argue. He drained his own mug, then snatched Hart’s away. Docherty was right at McBride’s back, rooting him on, screaming in his face not to quit, not to give up, you’ve got him, Mac, you’ve got him.

McBride’s shoulders shook as he fought harder and harder to bring down the wall. His free hand dug into the edge of the table; there would be deep furrows in the wood once the match was over. He bore down, pushing all his strength into his arm, and with superhuman determination hammered the wall’s hand twice into the flat of the table.

The crowd exploded. Even the old woman, who was hiding once again beneath her hood, skulking back into the shadows, was peering through the mass of visitors for a look at McBride. Hart told himself it was pride he was seeing on her face. She’d brought them here. McBride was her guest, after a fashion.

She spoke, but was too far away for him to hear. A moment later she shrank back against the wall, her face receding into the shadow of her cloak’s hood. The abruptness of it and his experience as a bodyguard told him she thought someone had spotted her. Someone had recognized her.

“Dammit.”

He pushed through the crowd, away from Presley, McBride, and Docherty. They’d have to manage without him for a minute. His job was to watch over her and he’d let her get too far away for safety’s sake. Presley might not care now, but when he sobered up, he’d rip Hart a new one for letting the client get hurt. Especially if it meant they wouldn’t get paid.

Also, he was becoming somewhat fond of her.

“You okay?” he said.

“Cutter. It’s Cutter. He saw me. He
heard
me.”

He started to tell her
no way, it’s too noisy in here for that.
Before he could, however, a gunshot rang out, and the inn fell into stunned silence.

Hart took a reflexive step backward, swinging the old woman around so he was between her and whatever Presley and the rest of his squad was facing. His hand dropped to the weapon at his hip, flipping open the holster’s safety-snap.

“Wait,” the old woman said, laying her hand over his.

Across the bar, Presley had his .45 drawn. Wisps of smoke rose from its barrel. As Hart watched, the major leveled his weapon at the ring of onlookers, centering his sights on the closest, largest of them. It was the wall-shaped thing McBride had been arm-wrestling.

“All I’m hearing are excuses,” Presley said. “You made a bet. Your friends made bets. You lost. We won. Pay. Up.”

The wall didn’t seem capable of speech. A gray, wiry creature next to it stepped forward. It waved its arms at Presley—if you could call the pulpy, wriggling things arms—in what Hart thought was a clear plea for level heads and patience. Hart couldn’t understand its gibberish, but the meaning got through somehow.
My brother should not have been making bets,
it said.
I’m sure we can work something out, friend.

“Sure we can,” Presley said, shifting his aim from the wall to the gray creature. He seemed to consider a second before squeezing off a pair of shots, one aimed at the creature’s head, the other at what Hart took for its chest.

A splatter of viscous purple gore erupted from the back of the creature’s head, painting the wall with its brains. It fell back, chest oozing in a slow but steady flow. As the crowd parted, the onlookers suddenly remembering other places they needed to be, Hart was able to see the gray creature’s leg twitch several times before becoming still.

Then it moved. It hitched itself up with a few of its spindly arms. Hart watched the wound on the back of its head shrink and then vanish. The spray of brains and blood and who knows what else remained on the wall.

The gray creature sat up and opened its eyes.

It spoke. Again the words were nonsensical, but again, its meaning was clear:
you gonna be sorry for that, man.

Presley laughed, leveling the barrel of his gun at the creature’s face. “Neat trick,” he said. “See if you can’t—”

He never got to finish his sentence. Hart felt the floor of the inn rumble beneath his feet, a high, keening sound reverberating through the air. It was in his teeth and the pit of his stomach. In his heart. His eyes itched and his tongue had gone dry as sandpaper. It was as if every cell in his body had developed a terrible itch at the exact same moment.