Frank Tuttle: Dead Man's rain

Noon found me standing at the edge of a fresh-dug grave. Sunlight mocked and set the blue jays to singing, but couldn’t quite reach the Sarge’s casket, no matter how hard the sun shone.

I crumbled a damp clod of earth, let it fall.

We’d lived through the War, the Sarge and I. Lived through the three-month siege at Ghant. Lived through the fall of Little Illa. Lived through two years in the swamps. I’d once seen the Sarge snatch an arrow out of the air and shove it in a charging Troll’s eye, and now he was dead after slipping and falling in a public bath.

“Bye, Sarge,” I said. “You deserved better.”

I met an Orthodox priest as I walked away. He dipped his red mask in greeting and slowed to a traipse, but I fixed my eyes on a big old pin oak and marched past. I’d said all my words, and had no use for his.

I was halfway to the cemetery gates when Mama Hog stepped out of the shadow of a poor man’s headstone and planted herself squat and square in my path.

And that’s when it started. I knew before she spoke what she was going to say. And I knew that I should have just keep walking, ignoring her like I did the priest, ignoring everything and everybody except a bar-keep named One-Eyed Eddie and his endless supply of tall, cold glasses. The Sarge was dead and I turned forty with the sunrise and the Hell with everything else.

But I stopped. “What is it, Mama?” I said, gazing out over the neat, still ranks of sad-eyed angels and tall white grave-wards. “Come to pick out a spot?”

Mama grinned up at me with all three of her best teeth.

“Come to find you, boy,” she said. “Come to send you some business.”

“The only kind of business I need now is the kind Eddie runs,” I said. “Anything else can wait.”

Mama frowned. “This ain’t any old business,” she said, shaking a stubby finger at my navel. “This is Hill business.”

Behind us, the first spade of dirt hit the Sarge’s coffin with a muted, faraway thump .

“Hill business,” I said. “One of your rich ladies need a finder?”

Mama’s card-and-potion shop does a brisk business when sleek black carriages that hurry to her curb disgorge Hill ladies wrapped in more cloaks and veils than the weather truly demands. I don’t know how Mama attracts such well-heeled clients, but she does, and more than twice a week.

Mama Hog cackled. “Rich widow, boy. Rich widow.” She grinned and shook her head. “She needs more than a finder, I reckon, but you’re the best I can do.”

The thump-thumps of earth on coffin came faster now. I squinted toward the gate, not wanting the Sarge’s widow to catch me in the graveyard. Outsiders aren’t welcome at Orthodox funerals, and the service would begin as soon as the coffin lid was fully covered with earth.

I sighed. “Let’s walk, Mama,” I said. “You can tell me on the way.”

Thump-thump . Another shovel rose and fell.

“He was a good man, your Sergeant,” said Mama. She fell in step beside me. “No words taste more bitter than goodbye.”

“Tell me about my new client, Mama,” I said. “What’s her name, how high up the Hill is her house, and what does she want me to do about her dear sweet Nephew Pewsey and that awful conniving gypsy girl?”

Mama Hog chuckled. “Her name,” she said, “is Merlat.”

Behind us, after a while, I heard the Sarge’s widow start to cry.

The Widow Merlat sat across from me, breathed through her scented silk hanky, and did her best to make it plain she wasn’t one of those Hill snobs who think of us common folk as mere servant-fodder. No, I was all right in her book-not a human being like her, of course, but as long as I kept my eyes on the floor and knocked the horse flop off my boots, I’d be welcome at her servant’s entrance any day.

“You come highly recommended, goodman Markhat,” she said, daring Rannit’s unfashionable south-side air long enough to lower her hanky while she spoke. “The most capable, most experienced finder in all of Rannit. I’m told you are discreet, as well. I would not be here otherwise.”

I sighed. My head hurt and I still had cemetery dirt on my shoes. I did not need to have my face rubbed in my humble origins by a Hill widow who doubtlessly thought her son was the first rich boy to ever take a fancy to the half-elf parlor maid.

“I’m also told you are expensive,” said the widow. She plopped a fat black clutch purse down on my desk, and it tinkled, heavy with coin. “Good,” she added. “I’ve never trusted bargains, nor shopped for them. Money means nothing to me.”

“Funny you should say that, Lady Merlat,” I said. “Why, just the other day I was telling the Regent that money means twenty jerks a day, to me. Plus expenses. And that’s only if I decide to take the job.” I leaned back in my chair and clasped my hands behind my head. “And, despite your generous display of the money that means nothing to you, I haven’t said yes yet.”

The widow smiled a tight, small smile. “You will, finder,” she said. “I’ll pay thirty crowns a day. Forty. Fifty. Whatever it takes, I will pay.”

Outside, an ogre huffed and puffed as he pulled a manure wagon down the street, and all the silk in Hent wasn’t going to keep the stench out of the widow’s Hill-bred nostrils.

The widow shoved her purse my way. I shoved it back.

“Tell me what you want,” I said.

She nodded, once and quickly, and took a deep breath. A hint of color fought its way past the powder on her cheeks.

“My husband is dead,” she said.

She was wearing more black than a barge-load of undertakers. “No,” I said, straight-faced. “How long?”

“Two years,” she said. More color leaked through. “Two years. He caught fever.” The widow’s voice went thin. “He caught fever and he died and I buried him.” She took in a ragged breath. “But now he’s back, goodman. Returned.”

“Returned?” I lifted an eyebrow. “How? Rattling chains, wearing a bed-sheet?” I stood. “Nice talking to you, Lady.”

Her small bright eyes got smaller and brighter. “Sit,” she hissed. “I am neither senile nor insane. My husband has returned. He walks the grounds at night. He rattles the windows, pulls at all the doors. All but four of the staff left after his second visit.” The widow Merlat gave her hanky a savage twist. “I had to hire caterers for the Armistice Day Festival,” she said. “The canapes were spoiled, and two of my guests fell ill after sampling the stuffed mushrooms.”

“Tragic,” I said. “Shocking. And the wine?”

“Goodman Markhat,” she said. “Are you mocking me?”

I sighed, eyed the coin-purse, sat. “Lady Merlat,” I said, “this sounds like a matter for the Watch, or the Church, or both. Why me? What can I do that they can’t?”

She twisted her hanky and chose her words. “The Watch. The Church. Don’t you think I tried, goodman? Don’t you think I tried?”

“I don’t know, Lady,” I said. “Did you?”

She glared. “Sixty crowns a day,” she said.

“So your husband is a revenant,” I said, slowly. “And he’s tracking up the flower beds and scaring the neighbors and the coachman is also the butler and nobody can cook a decent meal.”

“Sixty-five crowns,” she said, her voice glacial, to match her eyes. “Seventy, if you vow to hold your tongue.”

I grinned. “Sixty-five it is,” I said. “And I need to make one thing perfectly clear, Lady Merlat. I saw a lot of folks get suddenly, tragically dead during the War. What I didn’t see was anybody walking around afterward complaining about it.”