Authors: Glen Cook
“Thanks. Good beer.”
“Mr. Weider said you’d appreciate it.”
I’d done a job for Weider, rooting out an in-house theft ring without getting his guilty children too dirty. To discourage a relapse the old man kept me on retainer. I wander around the brewery when I have nothing better to do. I make people nervous there. Considering what he’d been losing, I’m cheap insurance. The retainer isn’t much.
“He tell you to see me?”
The dink took the bucket back, sipped like an expert. “I’m unfamiliar with many facets of the secular world, Mr. Garrett. Mr. Weider is face-to-face with it every day. He said you were the man I need. Provided, as he put it, I can pry you off your dead ass.”
That sounded like Weider. “He’s more achievement oriented than I am.” And how. He started out with nothing; now he’s TunFaire’s biggest brewer and has fingers in twenty other pies.
“So I gather.”
We passed the bucket back and forth.
He said, “I looked you over. You seem perfect for my needs. But the factors that make you right make it hard to recruit you. I have no way to appeal to you.”
It was a mellow evening. I was too lazy to move. I had nothing else on my mind but a couple of oddballs down the way who were dead ringers for a couple of oddballs who were hanging around last time I came out. “You bought the beer, friend. Speak your piece.”
“I’d expected that courtesy. Trouble is, once I tell you the cat will be out of the bag.”
“I don’t gossip about business. That’s bad for business.”
“Mr. Weider did praise your discretion.”
“He’s got reason.”
We went back and forth with the beer. The sun ambled on. The little guy held a conference with himself to see if his trouble was really that bad.
It was worse, probably. Usually they’re going down for the third time when they ask for help — and then they want to sneak up on it like a virgin.
“My name is Magnus Peridont.”
I didn’t wilt. I didn’t gasp or faint. He was disappointed. I said, “Magnus? Nobody in real life is named Magnus. That’s a handle they stick on some guy who’s been dead so long everybody’s forgotten what a horse’s ass he was.”
“You’ve never heard of me?”
It was one of those names you ought to know. It had turned up on a loo wall somewhere, or something. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”
“My father thought I was destined for greatness. I’m sure I was a disappointment. I’m also known as Magister Peridont and Peridontu, Altodeoria Prin-ceps.”
“I hear a distant campanile.” A Magister is that rarest of all fabulous beasts, a sorcerer sanctioned by the Church. The other title was a relic of antiquity. It meant something like he was a Prince of the City of God. There was a bunk in heawn with his name on it, guaranteed. The bosses of the Church had-made him a saint before he croaked.
A thousand years ago that would have made his a dyed-in-the-wool, hair-shirt-wearing, pillar-sitting holy man. These days it probably meant he scared the crap out of everybody and they wanted to buy him off with baubles.
I asked, “Would Grand Inquisitor and Malevechea fit in there somewhere?”
“I have been called those things.”
“I’m getting a fix on you.” That Peridont was one scary son-of-a-bitch. Luckily, we live in a world where the Church is always one gasp short of being a dead issue. It claims maybe ten percent of Karenta’s human population and none of the nonhuman. It says only humans have souls and other races are just clever animals capable of aping human speech and manners. That makes the Church real popular with the clever animals.
“You’re dismayed,” he said.
“Not exactly. Say I have philosophical problems with some of the Church’s tenets.” Elfish civilization antedates ours by millennia. “I didn’t know Mr. Weider was a member.”
“Not in good standing. Call him lapsed. He was born to the faith. He spoke to me as a favor to his wife. She’s one of our lay sisters.”
I remembered her, a fat old woman with a mustache, always in black, with a face like she had a mouth full of lemons. “I see.”
Now that I knew who he was, we were on equal ground. Now he needed leading around to the point. “You’re out of uniform.”
“I’m not making an official representation.”
“Under the table? Or personal?”
‘’ Some of both. With permission.”
Permission? Him? I waited.
“My reputation is greatly exaggerated, Mr. Garrett. I’ve encouraged that for its psychological impact.”
I grunted and waited. He didn’t look old enough to have done all the evil laid at his doorstep.
He said, “Are you aware of the tribulations besetting our Orthodox cousins?”
“I haven’t been so entertained since my mother took me to the circus.”
“You’ve put a finger on the crux, Mr. Garrett. The mess has become a popular entertainment. There are no heretics more deserving of Hano’s justice than the Orthodox. But no one views these events as a scourging. And that fills me with dread.”
“Uhm?”
“Already the rabble have begun to step forward with revelations just to keep the pot boiling. I fear the day when the Orthodox vein plays out and they seek new lodes.”
Ah. “You think the church might be next?” That wouldn’t break my heart.
“Possibly. Despite my vigilance, some will stumble into sin. But no, my concern isn’t for the Church, it’s for Faith itself. Every revelation slashes Belief with a brutal razor. Already some who never questioned have begun to wonder if all religion isn’t just a shell game perpetrated by societies of con men who milk the gullible.”
He looked me in the eye and smiled, then passed the beer. That could have been a quote. And he knew it. He had done his homework.
“You have my attention.” I suddenly knew how Pokey felt when he took a job just to satisfy his own curiosity.
He smiled again. “I’m convinced there’s more here than a scandal gone brushfire. This is being orchestrated. There’s a malign force bent on savaging Faith. I think a rock needs to be lifted and that social scorpion revealed.”
“Interesting and interestinger. I’m surprised by your secular way of stating it.”
He smiled again. The Grand Inquisitor was a happy runt. “The diabolical provenance of the attack is beyond question. What interests me are the identities, resources, goals, and whatnot of the Adversary’s mun-dane adjuncts. All that can be defined in secular terms, like a street robbery.”
And a robbery could, no doubt, be defined in sectarian cant.
The runt seemed awfully reasonable for a supposed raving fanatic. I guess the first talent a priest develops is acting ability. “So you want to hire me to root out the jokers putting the wood to the Orthodox priesthoods.”
“Not exactly. Though I have hopes that their unmasking will be a by-product.”
“You just zigged when I zagged.”
“Subtlety and credibility, Mr. Garrett. If I hire you to find conspirators and you unearth them, even I couldn’t be completely sure you hadn’t cooked the evidence. On the other hand, if I hire a known skeptic to search for Warden Agire and the Terrell Relics and in the course of the hunt he kicks some villains out of the weeds. …”
I took a long drink of his beer. “I admire your thinking.”
“You’ll take it on, then?”
“No. I can’t see getting in a mess just for money. But you know how to pique a guy’s curiosity. And you know how to scheme a scheme.”
“I’m prepared to pay well. With an outstanding bonus for recovery of the Relics.”
“I’ll bet.”
The Great Schism between Orthodoxy and its main offshoot happened a thousand years ago. The Ecumenical Council of Pyme tried to patch things up. The marriage didn’t last. The Orthodox snatched the Relics in the settlement. The Church has been trying to snatch them back ever since.
“I won’t press you, Mr. Garrett. You were the best man for the job, but for that reason the least likely to take it. I have other options. Thank you for your time. Have a nice evening. Should you have a change of heart, contact me at the Chattaree.” He and his bucket marched off into the dusk.
I was impressed with the little guy. He could be a gentleman when he wanted. You don’t see that much in people accustomed to power. And he was one of the most feared men in TunFaire, within his sphere. A holy terror.
5
Dean stepped outside. “I’ve finished up, Mr. Garrett. I’ll be going home if there’s nothing else.”
He always talks like that when he wants something. Right now he hoped I’d have that something else. He lives with a platoon of spinster nieces who make him crazy.
One of the legacies of the war in the Cantard is a surplus of women. For decades Karenta’s youth have gone south to capture the silver mines and for decades half of them haven’t come back. It makes it nice for us unattached survivor types, but hell on parents with daughters to support.
“I was sitting here thinking it would be a nice evening for a walk.”
“That it would be, Mr. Garrett.” When the Dead Man is sleeping somebody always stays in to bolt the door and wait for whoever is out. When the Dead Man is awake we have no security problems.
“You think it’s too early to see Tinnie?” Tinnie Tate and I have a tempestuous friendship. She’s the one they had in mind when they set the specs for redhead stereotypes, only they toned them down because nobody would believe the truth.
You might call Tinnie changeable. One week I can’t run her off with a stick, the next I’m tops on her hate list. I haven’t figured out the whys and wherefores.
I was listed this week. Past the peak and dropping but still in the top ten.
“It’s too early.”
I thought so, too.
Dean is in a bind where Tinnie is concerned. He likes her. She’s beautiful, smart, quick, more square with the world than I’ll ever be. He thinks she’s good for me. (I don’t dare risk his opinion on the flip-flop issue.) But he has all those nieces in desperate need of husbands and half a dozen have standards low enough to covet a prince like me, squeaky armor and all.
“I could go see how the girls are.”
He brightened, checked to see if I was teasing, and was set to call my bluff when he realized that would put me there while he was here, unable to defend their supposed virtues. He imagined me in there like a bull shoulder-deep in clover, like they couldn’t possibly have sense enough to look out for themselves. “I wouldn’t recommend that, Mr. Garrett. They’ve been especially troublesome lately.”
It was all a matter of perspective. They hadn’t troubled me. When I first took Dean on, they did. They kept me up to my ears in cookery, trying to fatten me up for the kill.
“Perhaps I should just go, Mr. Garrett. Perhaps you should wait another day or two, then go apologize to Miss Tate.”
“I got no philosophical problem with apologizing, Dean, but I like to know why I’m doing it.”
He chuckled, pulled on the mantle of worldly-wise old warrior passing his wisdom along. “Apologize for being a man. That always works.”
He had a point. Except I have a flair for getting sarcastic.
“I’ll just stroll over to Morley’s, quaff me a few celery tonics.”
Dean pruned up. His opinion of Morley Dotes is so low it has to look up at snakes’ bellies.
We all have rogues in our circles, maybe just so we can tell ourselves, “What a good boy am I.”
Actually, I like Morley. Despite himself. He takes some getting used to but he’s all right, in his way. I just keep reminding myself that he’s part dark elf and has different values. Sometimes, very different values. Always malleable values. Everything is situational for Morley.
“I won’t be out long,” I promised. “I just need to work off some restlessness.”
Dean grinned. He figured I was getting bored with loafing and we’d see some excitement pretty soon.
I hoped not.
6
It isn’t a long walk to Morley’s place, but it is a walk over the border into another world. The neighborhood hasn’t acquired a name like so many others, but it is a distinct region. Maybe call it the Safety Zone. Members of all species mix there without much friction — though humans have to put in overtime to be acceptable.
There was a little light still in the air. The clouds out west hadn’t quite burned out. It wasn’t yet time for the predators to hit the streets. I was no more than normally wary.
But when the kid stepped into my path I knew I had trouble. Big trouble. It was something about the way he moved.
I didn’t think. I reacted.
I gave him a high kick he wasn’t expecting. My toe snapped in under his chin. I felt a bone break. He squealed and ran backwards, arms flapping as he tried to keep his balance. A hitching post jumped in his way and gored him from behind. He spun around and went down, losing his knife as he fell.
I slid toward the nearest building.
Another came at me from what had been behind. He was an odd one, kid-sized but clad in a cast-off army work uniform. He was an albino. He had a nasty big knife. He stopped eight feet away, awaiting reinforcements.
There were at least three more, two across the street and one back up the way, standing lookout.
I took off my belt and snapped it at the albino’s eyes. That didn’t scare him but did give me time to frisk the building.
The buildings around there were a week short of foiling down. I had no trouble finding a loose, broken brick. I pulled it out and let fly. I guessed right and he ducked into it. I got him square in the forehead, then jumped him while his knees were watery, took his knife, grabbed him by the hair, and flung him toward the two coming across the street. They dodged. He sprawled.
I screeched like a banshee. That stopped the two. I feinted left, right, came back to fake a cut at the knife hand of the guy with the blade I’d taken, then snapped my belt at his eyes. He saved himself by jumping back.
He fell over the albino. I shrieked again and flung myself through the air. It never hurts to have them think you’re crazy. I landed with both knees on the guy’s chest, heard ribs crack. He squealed. I bounced away as the other came at me.
He stopped when he saw I was ready. I sidestepped and kicked the albino in the head. That’s me, Fairplay Garrett. At least I was going to get out alive. I looked around. Broken Jaw had taken a hike, leaving his knife. The lookout had opted for discretion.