Glen Cook - Wicked Bronze Ambition

Our driver took us in under the porte cochere. Target manned the door, helped Helenia dismount. Barate came out to greet me with an uncharacteristic hug.

Algarda said, “Mother is on her way. She’s been delayed because there were steps she wanted to take first.”

Did I even want to know? He made “steps” sound nastily portentous.

He eyed Target, Womble, and Helenia but kept his expression neutral and did not comment. They had red berets on now, too. Other tin whistles were all over. A squad had a couple of the Hill’s private patrolmen cornered and were asking embarrassing questions.

I showed Barate a raised eyebrow.

He said, “There was an explosion on the other side of the Hill. They all headed over there. Those two were dumb enough to come back. The rest have vanished off the face of the earth.”

They would be found. They would explain why they had not done the job for which they got paid more than your average tin whistle did. The Civil Guard were hard on the private side lately. Too often the private guys didn’t do their jobs or got caught taking tips to look the other way right before bad stuff happened.

Times were changing, though.

The weather was not. It seemed determined to get colder, wetter, and windier. I beckoned Target, Womble, and Helenia. “Let’s get inside.” I told Barate, “They’re with me.”

He went right ahead on having no comment.

I failed to notice that Helenia left her case in the coach, meaning it was just a prop.

• • •

We were still shaking the moisture off in the ballroom-size foyer when a bug-eyed Preston pointed and declared, “That’s Vicious Min!” like he could not believe his eyes.

“The woman who hired him to tail you,” Target reminded me.

A very large woman in a very sad state of repair sprawled on a big table brought in for the purpose. It was eight feet long and four feet wide. Parts of Vicious Min hung over all the ends and sides. She was a big girl.

Strafa was on another table, close by. She didn’t look all the worse for wear. I probed the sore tooth socket of emotion. I was in battlefield mode, numb and rigidly controlled, saving the hysteria for later.

Min had lost gallons of blood. It was all over her, all over the table, and had pooled on the floor. The leakage had stopped. She was still breathing, raggedly, but her color was awful. I said, “Shouldn’t somebody be working on her?”

“I am,” said a guy who had, apparently, had to step away momentarily. He looked like he knew what he was doing. I didn’t recognize him.

Barate proved he was agile for his age. He kept himself between me and anybody he decided I was bullying unreasonably. He kept reminding me, “Our innings will come after the nosies go. We’ll handle our family responsibilities.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant but did understand that he was well disposed toward me and definitely not so much so toward whoever had hurt his little girl. “Of course,” I said. “You’re completely right.” I noted that Target was sticking close to me. No doubt he had instructions to monitor my every breath.

Preston Womble had no attention to spare for anything but the big woman. He did stay out of the doctor’s way.

I could not see what Helenia was up to.

The doctor beckoned Barate, asked, “You know anything about this woman?”

“No. She’s a stranger. Ted, this is Garrett. Strafa’s husband.” He left off the to-be part.

“Nice to meet you.” I pointed. “Preston knows her.”

Ted deployed that most unhelpful of formulas, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Garrett. I didn’t know Strafa as well as I would’ve liked, but she was a fine woman. A fine woman. What happened here was a crime.”

Yeah, well. People can’t always get the words out right.

Ted gave Barate a look I took to mean that his admiration for Strafa did not extend to other members of the Algarda tribe. Barate didn’t surprise me much later when he told me that Dr. Ted had once had a serious crush on Strafa.

Ted wasn’t over that. He was quite intense when he grilled Preston. He got mad when Preston couldn’t tell him anything about Vicious Min but her name, that her money was good, and that she was generous with it. I chirped in to ask if he thought Elona Muriat could tell us more if we caught up with her.

Preston didn’t think so. Preston was very smug about our chances of finding his girlfriend.

Pular Singe lurked in the back of my mind. Singe was the cure for the elusive.

I stared down at the woman I would bury just days before we were to have celebrated our wedding. Anger simmered inside me without controlling me. I had avoided unreasoning rage, so far. I was more drained by my loss and was now approaching the gates of desolation.

Barate had traveled further along the sad road. He had started plucking halfheartedly at future plans.

He eased me farther back into the house, away from other ears. “This had to do with what we were talking about at Mother’s house yesterday.”

“Did it happen because I went to the Al-Khar?”

He considered before answering, “That doesn’t seem likely. That creature, Min, evidently caught Strafa coming home. I think she was here to tell Strafa that she’d been designated the Algarda Champion. Instead of Kevans.”

I had myself under control. My mind was working, some. I wanted to bark, “What?” and maybe something about why the hell Strafa when the whole tournament absurdity was always about kids busting each other up. .? Except I had enough rationality in stock to realize that I knew no such thing, I had just inferred it from what had been said at Shadowslinger’s place. Too, I wondered, “How come you know all that?”

Barate said, “I was on my way here to see Strafa about Kevans. . I came around the corner while it was happening. If I hadn’t shown up when I did, the big woman would have died, too.”

“You saw who did it?”

“No. Strafa was airborne but falling. The big woman was on her knees, cursing, holding her chest and bleeding. We’ll get into all that once Mother gets here. Strafa was still alive then. She begged me to tell you how much she loved you. She tried to guess who did it. Then she stopped breathing and her heart stopped. I couldn’t get anything started again. I don’t have the power. .” He stopped talking, took deep breaths, forced himself to become calm.

He did have that Algarda talent, an ability to manage emotion. To go cold as death when calm and calculation were needed.

He exhaled. “That one was still conscious. She tried to talk. She called herself Vicious Min. She looks mixed-breed, maybe groll, but I don’t think she’s from this world.”

“So that ridiculous tournament thing hasn’t even started and somebody jumped somebody else.”

Barate nodded. “Yes. I don’t think that breaks the rules. I don’t think you can cheat, the way Mother explains it. But this would come close. The selection of participants has only just begun and the contest is down a probable Champion, maybe has a Dread Companion dying, and has you, if you’re the Mortal Companion, potentially crippled by grief. That has to be an encouraging start for somebody.”

I tried channeling the young Garrett who crept through snake-filled, croc-infested swamps to find strangers to murder in nightmares gone by. That Garrett was always scared but never out of control. He got on with getting on.

Once a Marine. .

Shadowslinger showed up while I was dealing with the notion that I had been tagged to be Strafa’s sidekick by the Operators. Her Mortal Companion, formally.

There was a lot of formality in this murder game.

The old sorceress arrived in such a dark mood that those who were not part of the family began clearing off as they found plausible excuses. Her reputation was kingdomwide.