Frank Tuttle - Hold The Dark

“All the time. Eddie makes a good sandwich.”

“You need to vary your diet.” Something about the way she said it made the room get hot.

Waiters came, glasses were brought, orders were taken. The room was lit by candles and reflections of candles. Darla’s hair took on a soft reddish hue, and I noticed she was left-handed.

I don’t know what we talked about. I do know it wasn’t about Houses or black carriages. Darla had wine, I had a damned good beer and the doorman was right, the steaks were good.

I didn’t think business again until a pair of Evis’s grey-clad day staff came sidling into the Hearth and took up stations by the door. Darla saw too. She folded her napkin and sat up straight.

“Time to go back to work, isn’t it?” she asked.

“I’m afraid so. Don’t want the Hoobins to get the idea I’m entertaining comely young women on their time.”

“Oh, so now I’m comely and young, am I?”

I found myself smiling. “You are. The Velvet is keeping at least one of its lamps under a basket.”

Darla grinned a sly little grin. “Maybe I wasn’t always a bookkeeper, Markhat.” She leaned forward, took my hand. “Maybe I know more than you think about what goes on, behind those doors.”

And with that, she rose and sailed forth, brushing past the bemused Avalantes with an airy wave.

I counted out coins and followed.

Darla was gone, when I stepped squinting out into the street. Halbert was there, cab and all, looking hangdog. I clapped him on the back and told him he’d done the right thing and then he clattered off for one more church and one more round of priest baiting.

“Will that be all today, sir?” asked Halbert.

“It will.”

Halbert nodded and snapped his reigns. I leaned back into my comfy seat and let out a long and ragged sigh.

I’d tracked them down, one and all, and a more distasteful two day’s work I’d seldom seen. It’s not that I don’t like priests-nay nay, it’s that they don’t like me. I’d nearly had to break down the doors at Ellsback. Word about the pesky finder and his mysterious combs had gotten around as fast as Encorla’s fancy black carriage. Priests had fled the mainhold like ants from an overturned nest, the first afternoon I’d gone around. I’d been forced to resort to an early-morning visit and a half-day wait to finally catch a single black mask come skulking down an unlit hall.

And the black mask of Ellsback, in perfect unison with all his peers, sang a song of innocence and ignorance.

Evis and I had refined our plan somewhat, after reconvening at House Avalante for blood and sandwiches. Evis had clad a dozen or so of his day-walking staff in new grey coats and new grey hats and ordered them to hang around the various churches, following priests who entered or left as vagrant whims took them.

“An abundance of Markhats,” Evis had said, with a toothy grin. Then he’d surprised me by quoting scripture. “Guilt flees while innocence rests,” he said. “Let us see if priests fall prey to the same follies as lesser sinners.”

I’d just shrugged. Let the guilty wonder how the clever finder Markhat gets about so quickly. Even better, let them wonder how many grey-clad men Hisvin has working on the combs.

Halbert bellowed suddenly at a cabman, and I looked out long enough to see the Velvet’s red-flagged roof peek up above the rest.

I smiled, waved though I knew she could not see. The temptation to knock on the carriage roof and tell Halbert to stop at the Velvet was strong, but I resisted. No need for Evis to know more than he had to. Time enough for wooing when work was done.

I’d told Darla just that, more than once, in those three days. We’d managed to have lunch again, once. She’d chided me for failing to shower her with wine and roses. I’d responded with observations that spinster bookkeepers ought to be appreciative of good Pinford ham sandwiches and ice-chilled bottles of Bottits.

She’d laughed and tossed a pickle at me. And then we’d kissed, and kissed again, until the waiter at the Sidewalk Cafe had issued a discreet cough so he could refill our glasses.

We’d held hands, like school kids, and we’d walked in circles around the Velvet, waving at Hooga as we passed. He’d looked the other way when I picked a fireflower for Darla. She kissed me again, and showed me a hidden alcove where the Velvet’s gardeners hid to take naps.

About that , I will say no more.

I grinned at the memory and eased further back into the well-cushioned seats of Evis’s carriage.

At that moment, we rattled past the Velvet. I pushed the window-curtain open wide just to see if Darla was out on the street, or at the Sidewalk Cafe.

She was nowhere in sight. Sharp-eyed Hooga, still on his stoop, dipped his eyes as I passed. I thought of ogre-hash and Martha Hoobin and felt a small pang of guilt.

I let the curtain fall and sighed. Three days, done and gone. Three days of stalking and talking, but if I’d managed to terrify any Hands of the Holy, I’d also failed to see any evidence of such terror. My final four Cleansing priests had shown the same measure of disinterest before they’d heard Hisvin’s name, and similar levels of apprehension afterwards. All had denied ever seeing or Cleansing the combs. All had denied the combs bore the invisible but unmistakable mark of a Cleansing.

That lack of the elusive holy mark was proving worrisome. Evis had seemed so certain about the Cleansing-but what if Evis’s wand waver was simply wrong?

I scowled at passers-by, in fine old rich coot style, and mulled that over. If the combs had no link to the Church, then Martha Hoobin was dead, plain and simple.

I shoved the thought aside. “Can’t be wrong,” I muttered. Evis could afford the best wand-waving money could buy. If he said the combs had received a Church-style Cleansing, then they had done just that.

Priest or acolyte, sorcerer or sweeping man-someone wearing the black robes of the Church had arranged for a box or two of middling good trinkets to be wiped clean of their provenance, just so someone like Mama couldn’t fix their back-street Sight upon a comb and start mumbling things about cassocks and red masks.

Maybe an apprentice did a quick and dirty version of the Cleansing, omitting the much-vaunted holy affluence. Or maybe one of the Hands I’d just spoken to did so, in the unlikely prospect that someone like me came calling.

Evis and I were betting that the combs themselves were a casual acquisition. They’d been seized at an excommunication, bought at an estate sale or picked up for a few gold jerks in the shadows down at the docks. In any case, we were betting that our man knew little, if anything, about the combs and their history.

But he’d be wondering now, if we were right. Wondering and pacing and ruing the day he bought the awful things. Oh, he’d check my story, starting with my association with Encorla Hisvin. That confirmed, if he bothered, he’d learn that Gantish cargo barges sink all the bloody time, and that half of them are named “Embalo”, which is Gantish for “unsinkable”, and that tracing the mere existence of such a vessel might take weeks, if indeed it could be done at all.

I leaned back. Like all the best lies, mine was a careful blend of half-truth and outright misdirection. It would hold, for a short time.

Time enough for panic to take root and bloom. Time enough to let the name Encorla Hisvin rise up and crash down and squeeze them like a vise.

Evis and I were betting fear would be sufficient to scare the truth out of our mark, priest or not. After all, that was the best course, when piloting past a creature like Encorla Hisvin. He didn’t want the combs, specifically. Since all he wanted to know was where they came from, why not tell him?