Glen Cook - Wicked Bronze Ambition

“Let’s just go. It turned out all right.” Clearly shaken, puzzled, and maybe a little frightened, like she had only just survived a brush with a very dangerous unknown.

I got up, helped her get up, got around behind, and this time behaved myself while she did what Windwalkers do.

• • •

We settled to the cobblestones outside the house where I’d lived till Strafa carried me off to her mansion on the Hill. It was dark red, brick, two-story, in perfect repair because my assistant Pular Singe is a freak about detail stuff. My bedroom lay athwart the front of the place, upstairs. Strafa’s old habit had been to sneak in the window on the left, above the roof of the stoop.

This time we would go in through the front door, like normal visitors.

I observed, “Old Bones is definitely awake.”

I knew because Singe opened the door while we were still getting untangled.

Pular Singe is a rat woman, descended from mutants created by sorcerers several centuries back. She stands about five feet tall when she forces herself into her most upright stance. I sort of adopted her when she was an adolescent. She has become the heart and soul of my investigative business. I go out and have fun digging while she stays home managing records, finances, the house, and all the other stuff I let slide because it’s boring. She has a genius for it. She keeps everything abovewater.

Singe is also the best scent tracker in TunFaire and, maybe, the best in the Karentine Kingdom. She makes a little cash on her own, on the side, doing contract tracking, usually for the Civil Guard when they’re willing to pay up front.

None of those guys work for pride alone, but they seem convinced that the rest of us should donate our time and take physical risks entirely out of a sense of civic duty.

Singe didn’t say a word as she let us inside.

My housekeeper and cook, Dean, came out of the kitchen drying his hands. He was ancient. He had begun to develop a stoop and was moving more gingerly than he had just weeks ago. His voice was strong when he greeted us, though.

Dean was a huge fan of Strafa Algarda.

A rattle and thump thundered down the stair from the second floor. The racket ceased a moment before an utterly cool, studiedly indifferent, totally cute little brunette of fourteen stepped into view. “Oh. It’s only you. Well, hello.” She headed into the kitchen as though that had been her plan all along.

Penny Dreadful is not a huge fan of Strafa Algarda.

She is my partner’s pet. Another adoptee of the house.

We’re all strays. Even Strafa made some bones that way.

“We came to see Himself,” I told Singe.

“There is a surprise.”

Dean turned to follow Penny. There would be tea and cakes soon enough. There might be some real food later.

Shadowslinger was too frugal to waste food on visitors.

My business partner is a nonhuman beast known as a Loghyr. Weighing in at nearly a quarter ton, he makes Shadowslinger look svelte. His species may be related to mammoths or mastodons. He looks something like a hairless baby mammoth that decided to strut around on its hind legs. He has a miniature version of the snoot.

I’m not sure about the strut. I’ve never seen a Loghyr on the hoof, and only mine and one other one dead. They are an uncommon breed.

The species has several interesting characteristics. Foremost is a huge reluctance to leave their flesh after they die. My Loghyr, affectionately known as the Dead Man, was murdered centuries ago. With mobility and breath denied him, he developed other skills.

Interesting. A Tournament of Swords. I thought the Hill got over that insanity generations back.

He reads minds. People who know are terrified and tend to stay away. They refuse to believe that he doesn’t spy when he isn’t invited because they know how they would behave if they had the identical ability.

“You’ve heard about this tournament stuff before, then?”

Indeed. Marginally. It is the sort of insanity only those afflicted with an insatiable hunger for power would pursue. It is a process whereby power can be concentrated and given over to a single wielder. Properly executed, the tournament would leave its winner strong enough to challenge the gods.

That, itself, may be why no tournament has yet gone according to design.

Clever Garrett got it in one. “In order for there to be one big winner, there have to be a lot of losers.”

Exactly. Where losing will hurt a lot more than it would in the daily lottery. And Hill folk are never the sort to scruple about doing whatever is necessary to avoid losing. And the gods themselves might have an interest.

“The players would all have a good idea of one another’s strengths and weaknesses, too, since they all know each other.”

More importantly, they would know those things about themselves.

“It’s a wonder TunFaire wasn’t destroyed in one of those matches.”

This city has its own protective magic. After a fashion.

I misunderstood. I fantasized some vast oversoul for the entirety of the polity.

I meant stupidity! And the fact that though the tournaments are organized, the fighting is not. Its effects are localized. The worst of the clashes always take place on the Hill.

“Which wouldn’t much amaze anyone anywhere else.”

Or cause noteworthy despair.

“So. We have a tournament fixing to get ready to commence to begin. Survivors and scuttlers from the last tournament want me to wreck this one before it can come together.”

He wasted no time suggesting that refusing the commission was an option. Not if I meant to forge ahead with Strafa.

And, perhaps, he had motives of his own.

The first step may be both easier and more difficult than you imagine.

Cryptics. He loves them. In a past life he interned as an oracle in a cave filled with weed smoke.

“Meaning?”

The roster of potential participants has been narrowed already. Most of the draftees should be identifiable by reasoned elimination. Who from each family is the most likely to be chosen?

Of course. No need to work on that, really. Shadowslinger could tell me most everything I’d need to know.

In fact, she has done that already. You were not paying adequate attention.

She did? She had! My problem was, Strafa had been doing something more interesting close by. Something like breathing fetchingly. Why do I always get distracted? “So what I really need to do is find the Operators and any outsiders who might take places belonging to families that no longer exist.”

Exactly.

“Crap. So where do I start?”

I suspect that all you have to do is leave the house to find that out.

He put pictures into my head. Things I had seen without paying much heed. A pretty little blond girl saying something obscure, then an odd smell as Strafa and I lifted off to fly to Macunado Street. And the people in that room at Grandma’s house.

They almost certainly involved you with the intention of letting you draw the lightning.

Meaning they might actually put the word out so that unknown baddies would become concerned that Garrett might pose a threat.

“I’m about to marry into a lovely crowd, aren’t I?”

It occurred to me that they must suspect the identity of at least one Operator if they were sure they could point out the goat tied to the stake in the clearing and reasonably expect results. Or maybe a lack of results would be equally informative, in its own way.

Please ask Miss Algarda to cease charming Dean and join us . And, while I made the long trek to the kitchen, he sent, We have a resource today that was unavailable to any previous generation. We will take full advantage of that.