Deadly Quicksilver Lies Part 33

"Not me."

"Silver, Garrett. Silver. You said it. They figured wealth differently in primitive times. Silver wasn't worth much."

It was now, though. Even with the war seemingly settled and the mines solidly in Karentine hands, the silver shortage was severe. The disappearance of silver coinage threatened to strangle business.

Silver fuels most heavyweight sorcery. Lately its value has been on a par with gold. The Royal Mint has been valiant in its efforts to produce alternate means of exchange, some of which are pretty unwieldy.

Silver. An apparent opportunity to unearth an old cache would excite all sorts of greed.

"By the Devil Harry," I swore, rolling out one of my granny's favorites. "Maybe you just tripped over the real core of the thing." That might even explain why a nose-hoister like Marengo North English would take an interest in the daughter of the notorious Maggie Jenn. It might explain why all this insanity had come to a head at this point in time.

The silver shortage wasn't likely to ease soon. Maybe never if the wrong people grabbed control of mine production.

"But what do I do about it?" I muttered.

Morley frowned my way. "Excuse me?"

"I think you're right. We have all sorts interested in Eagle's treasure because of the distorted metals market. People who wouldn't have given it a thought in normal times. Probably including my honey's daddy."

"Here comes that explanation." He stunned me by hoisting an eyebrow.

I got my breath back. "You been practicing."

"Almost forever. What about Chaz's father?"

"Call it intuition, but I'd bet your deed to the Joy House that what he really hated losing to the Rainmaker and Maggie back when was a first edition of the middle volume of When No Ravens Went Hungry When No Ravens Went Hungry. Which Emerald took when she ran away from home. Which she gave to Wixon and White for safekeeping, or they got it away somehow. That book is why I was hired. It's why Emerald was framed up with the black magic stuff. Cleaver knew where she was. He couldn't get to her. He thought he'd toss me in there to b.u.t.t heads with the human rights guys and maybe break her loose."

I rolled right along till I took note of Morley's smug smile. He stared into infinity, listening with half an ear. "What?"

"I was right. It's another explanation. You realize your theories clash?"

"We're not talking mutually exclusive, though. We have a lot of secret motives driving people. You aren't helping me for the same reason I'm helping Chaz's pop."

"I won't argue that, though I wish I was. You made up your mind yet?"

"Huh?"

"About what to do now."

"I'm going to stroll out to this estate. See what Emerald says."

"Flashing more nerve than brains, Garrett. You're jumping into deep doodoo."

I laughed. The professional lifetaker couldn't say one word that flowed easily from naughty six-year-olds. "With my eyes open."

"You're doing a Winger on me, aren't you?"

"What?"

"You've got an angle."

"I'm just not as paranoid as you. And I know how to talk to those people. You stroke their egos and let them think you love the cracks in their pots and they'll act like you're visiting royalty."

Dotes didn't agree but didn't argue. He suggested, "Maybe you'll take Saucerhead along?"

65.

I didn't take Saucerhead. I didn't need any help. I was just going to chat with a teenage girl.

I didn't take anybody but me because I sold myself the notion that Marengo North English was committed to an old-fashioned, rigidly fair way of doing things.

So I fooled myself. Eagerness to meet Emerald Jenn didn't take me anywhere near Marengo North English. The estate belonged to the character who had sent his pals to roust me, a fact I could have determined had I bothered to do a little homework before hitting the trail. One Elias Davenport owned The Tops. Elias Davenport thought Marengo North English was a candya.s.s who was just p.u.s.s.yfooting around the human rights thing. Elias was ready to act act.

I didn't listen listen when Slither told me who brought Emerald's invitation. when Slither told me who brought Emerald's invitation.

Getting onto the grounds of The Tops wasn't a problem. Managing a sit-down with Emerald was a little more trouble.

Silly me. I thought they'd let me see her, get me out of their hair, forget the whole thing. I had no idea they were out of control.

I figured it out, though.

The guys who smiled me through the manor gate shed their senses of humor when the gate chunked shut. Their eyes got mean. They kept on grinning, but the only part of the joke they wanted to share was the punchline. Kidney high.

The guys who'd visited my place ambled out of the shrubbery. Didn't look like their manners had improved.

They made me so nervous I hit them back first, shielded by the spell that put me out of focus to anybody trying to concentrate on me. d.a.m.n, that was a neat one! They hopped and flailed and swung and cussed and missed me like a bunch of drunks. Meanwhile, I was hard at work with my mystical head-knocker, scattering unconscious bodies. Davenport's gardeners were going to be busy picking up fertilizer for a while.

I amazed myself. But we're all capable of amazing behavior once we're adequately motivated.

The Davenport mansion couldn't be seen from the gate. I undertook an odyssey across vast expanses of manicured lawn, maneuvering between sculpted shrubs and trees. Almost got lost in a maze created from hedges. Gawked my way through an incredible formal flower garden, thinking half the people of the Bustee slum (every one a human) could've supported themselves farming that ground.

The Davenport place was enough to kindle revolutionary fervor in a stone. Something about it shrieked contempt for every race.

I didn't march up to the door and hazard the mercies of another Ichabod. Once I spied the main house I resorted to my old recon training. I sneaked and hustled and lurked and tiptoed till I got to the rear of the house. There were plenty of people around and plenty saw me, but they were cringing characters wearing tattered Venageti military apparel. They were employed at such socially useful tasks as tr.i.m.m.i.n.g gra.s.s with scissors. They pretended blindness. I returned the favor, didn't see their humiliation.

Never had I thought prisoners of war might be reduced to this. Not that I had any love for the Venageti. You got people chasing you through the swamps, trying to kill you, making you eat snakes and bugs to stay alive, you won't develop much sympathy if they stumble later. Still, there was an essential wrongness about their situation. And the core of it, I suspected, was that Elias Davenport wouldn't distinguish between vanquished foes and the "lower orders" of Karentines.

Elias must have had him a cushy desk mission far from the fighting back when he was serving his kingdom. Most ruling-cla.s.s types get out to the killing grounds and discover that when they're cut they bleed the same as any farmboy or kid from the Bustee. "Sharp steel don't got no respect," one of my sergeants used to say, wearing a big-a.s.s grin.

I found a back door that wasn't locked or guarded. Why bother? Who was going to do a break-in in this loony nest? Who would dare discomfit Elias Davenport?

(The name was a cipher to me at that point.) I don't mind folks being stinking rich. I'd like to get there someday myself, have me a little hundred-room shack on a thousand acres well stocked with hot and cold running redheads and maybe a pipeline direct from Weider's brewery. But I expect everybody to get there the same way I would: by busting their b.u.t.ts, not by burying some ancestor, then raising their noses.

I know. It's a simpleminded outlook. I'm a simple guy. Work as hard as I need to, look out for my friends, do a little good here and there. Try not to hurt anybody needlessly.

That house was a house of pain. You couldn't help feeling that as soon as you stepped inside. Sorrow and hurt were in its bones. The house now shaped its inhabitants as much as they shaped it.

You find houses like that, old places possessed of their own souls, good or evil, happy or sad.

This was a house possessed by disturbing silence.

It should have had its own heartbeat, like a living thing, echoing comings and goings, creaking and rattling and thumping with the slamming of distant doors. But there were no sounds. The house seemed as empty as a discarded shoe-or Maggie Jenn's place up on the Hill.

Spooky!

I started thinking trap. I mean, those guys had been ready at the gate. A minute stalling around while somebody ran to the house, supposedly for permission, then they were all over me.

Was I expected to get past them? Was I supposed to walk into...what?

I grinned.

Saucerhead says I think too much. Saucerhead is right. Once you commit, you'd better give up the what-ifs and soul-searchings, do your deed and scoot.

I moved into the silence carefully, wearing a renewed grin. If I ever name my jobs, this one would have to be the Case of the Burglar Who Was the Good Guy. I was sneaking into every place I came to.

Not that I wanted it that way. People made me.

66.

I didn't have the strength to lift my eyes in search of the source of the voice that said, "You're a resourceful fellow, Mr. Garrett. And remarkably adept with a truncheon." The speaker had the nasal drawl of an old-line aristocrat, scion of a lineage dangling down from the age of empire.

I barely retained the presence to wonder what had happened. One moment I'm trying to conjure a good rationale for my breaking and entering habit, the next I'm in a cold red place of echoes, tied into a hard chair, limp as a wet towel. No mental effort, however mighty, supplied details of intervening events.

"Pay attention, Mr. Garrett. Otto."

Fingers ungently buried themselves in my hair. The helpful presumptive Otto yanked my head back so I could do my blurry-eyed mouth-breather act in full view of a guy on some kind of elevated seat. He was just a terrible silhouette against a scarlet background.

I was too dizzy to be scared. But I was hard at work trying to get control of my head so I could be. I recognized my surroundings from whispers about it by some less than sane acquaintances connected with the Call. I was in the star chamber of the Holy Vehm, the court of honor of the Call. Not being an active member, I had to a.s.sume I stood accused of being a traitor to my race. Only...

The way I'd heard, there were supposed to be three judges. The spook in the high seat should've been the meat in a lunatic sandwich.

I focused my whole being on my tongue. "What the h.e.l.l is going on?" I don't know why I bothered after the first few words. They all came out in a language even I didn't understand. But I'm an optimist. I kept trying. "I just came here to interview Emerald Jenn." Had I been given the tongue of a dwarf while I was out?

"It takes the spell a while to wear off, lord," a voice announced from behind me.

Can a silhouette glower? This one did. "I am aware of that fact, Otah." Otah? Like in Otto p.r.o.nounced backward?

I sagged again. A hearty yank on my hair helped me stay focused on the silhouette. A guy started slapping rny cheeks. That helped, too.

Oh, heavens. Another guy stepped in to help the first. He was an exact copy of the other. Identical twin thugs? This concept was too bizarre. Time to wake up.

I woke up but only to find identical cretins waling on my face. My tongue had lost its skill at dwarvish. I began to render opinions in only mildly accented Karentine. And my mind raced far ahead of my laggard tongue. "Do you realize to whom you are speaking?" the silhouette demanded. The guy sounded put out.

"I did, I could've said something more specific about angles of approach and velocities of insertion."

The silhouette snapped, "Control your vulgarity, Mr. Garrett. You broke into my home."

"I was invited. To see Emerald Jenn."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible."

"She not around? Then I'd better be going."

Davenport chuckled. He must have done well at crackpot villain school because he brought it up from the pit, full of evil promise. "Nonsense, Mr. Garrett. Really." He gave me another chuckle just as good as the first. "Where are the books?"

"Huh?"

"Where are the books?"

Uh-oh. "What the h.e.l.l you talking about?" I never thought anybody would ask me me.

"Do you think me naive, Mr. Garrett?"

"I think you're a raving lunatic." Pow! Right in the chops. Chaz was going to have to do without a kiss next time we ran into each other. I guess Otto or Otah didn't agree with me.

I also thought Davenport was a d.a.m.ned fool. He'd made the same mistake the Rainmaker's thugs had back in the dawn of time, when they hadn't emptied my pockets. His boys were fools, too, because they hadn't bothered to check. Davenport wouldn't have risked breaking a nail touching me himself.

I had my stuff.

I just needed to get to it. Nothing to that. Once I shed the twelve nautical miles of rope coc.o.o.ning me.

"Where are the books?"

"Give me a clue, Bonzo. What the h.e.l.l you talking about?"

"Otto."

Pow!

As the constellations faded I suffered an idea. It wasn't the best I'd ever had. It was going to hurt.

Typical Garrett plan.

"The books, Mr. Garrett. Unaltered first editions of When No Ravens Went Hungry When No Ravens Went Hungry. Where are they?"

"Ah. Those books. I don't have the faintest." Could he have been behind the wrecking of Penny and Robin?