Glen Cook - Sweet Silver Blues

My successors would be just as young and just as serious.

Morley said,"Find the busiest, sleaziest cathouse you can. We go in drunk with him between us. We find a dark corner in the waiting room, squat, order drinks for three, tell the madam not to bother our buddy because he's dead drunk, take our turns at the trade, then get out. They won't bother him till the crowd thins out because they'll want to roll him. By then they'll have forgotten us and he'll be their problem."

"Suppose we run into somebody who knows him?"

"There are risks in everything. If we dump him here in an alley, whoever sent him will know what happened. My way he'll have to wonder. That was blockshaush in the ring, wasn't it?" He used the elvish name for the poison. On our side of the line we call it black sauce.

"Yes."

"Good. By the time his boss finds him it'll be too late for even a master wizard to tell he was poisoned." He sounded very thoughtful. I knew what he was thinking. He was wondering what other uncharacteristic surprises I had in store. He was thinking I was tight with the Dead Man, and that was probably why I was carrying poison. He was wondering just how much and what kind of advice the Dead Man had given me.

I figured a little worry would do him good. It might take his mind off his stomach for a while.

We ditched our friend Morley's way. I expected tribes of his buddies to swarm, but it came off smooth. The guy's boss would never really know what had happened.

Who was his boss? Why did he want to discourage me from doing my job?

I packed a lunch, knowing it would be a long day of runaround at the military city hall. Because they would not let Morley in, I told him to go find out what he could about Zeck Zack. The triplets I sent to watch incoming harbor traffic again.

"But be careful," I told Dojango. "They might decide to take you in to ask if you're Venageti spies."

"Actually, that possibility occurred to us yesterday," Dojango told me. "We've lived on the fringes of the law long enough to know when we're pushing our luck."

Maybe so. Maybe so.

I hefted my picnic basket and went to work.

First there was a clerk, then a senior clerk, then various sergeants followed by a couple of lieutenants who gave me to a captain who admitted he did not think I would have much luck before he dropped me in the lap of a major. One and all checked my bona fides before sending me on. Sometimes twice.

I kept a smile on my mug, stayed polite, and kept my tongue on a tight rein. I could play the game.

I figured I would earn every mark I would gouge from Tate for that day. Besides, it was all part of the plan.

Outlast the bastards.

The major was halfway human, and he even looked like he might have a sense of humor. He apologized for the shuffle and I offered to share my lunch.

"You packed a lunch?"

"Sure. I've dealt with the army before. If it was something complicated, I would have brought a blanket and an overnight bag. You get in the craw of the system and stay there, disturbing routine, somebody is going to go out on a limb, take a chance, tell you what you want to know or make a decision to throw you out, just to get you out from under foot. I get paid exorbitantly for letting people give me the runaround, so I don't mind."

For a moment I thought I had misjudged him. He was not pleased. Knee-jerk response. Give him credit. He gave it a think before he came back. "You're a cynic, aren't you?"

"Occupational hazard. The people I meet leave my faith in human nature mostly negative."

"Right. Let's try again, with the understanding that I'll be the man who ends your quest with an answer or by having you booted out. You want?"

"Some way of getting in touch with Major Kayeth Kronk, cavalryman, the only one of the woman's family of whom I have been able to catch wind. I want to ask if he knows where I can get in touch with his sister. The simple, obvious thing for the army to do is tell me he's out at Fort Whatever. I'd go interview him. But it won't work that way. The army will act on the perfectly reasonable assumption that the entire Venageti War Council has been holding its collective breath for years, waiting to discover the major's whereabouts. So any communications will have to be managed the hard way."

"You are a cynic."

"I'm also right. Not so?"

"Probably. What's your hard way?"

"I write him a long letter explaining the situation and asking him to meet me here or, if that's impossible, to respond to a list of questions. The weakness of the method is that I end up having to trust the army both to deliver the letter and to get the reply back to me. My cynical side tells me that that's too much to expect."

He looked at me from a face of stone. He knew I was setting him up for something and was trying to figure out how I was boxing him in. "That's probably the best you'll get. If that. It isn't the army's problem. But we do help with family matters where we can."

"Any help I get will be appreciated. Even if it isn't much help."

He had not figured any angles yet, which might mean that he did not know how a headquarters really worked. "I'll check with my boss. You check with me tomorrow morning. Just to be safe, bring your letter with you, unsealed but ready to go."

That took care of the aboveboard.

I figured I'd been around long enough—and had explained my problem to enough people—for the word to have spread throughout the headquarters. So I thanked the major, shook his hand, and said I would be heading back to my inn. Did he want to keep the rest of the lunch?

No.

I dawdled through hallways. I loitered in corners. Finally, he found me. He being the first staffer to convince himself that I was not a Venageti agent, and therefore safe, and therefore maybe he could pick up a small gratuity by telling me where I could find the man I wanted.

That had been the whole point of taking the runaround.

"Fort Caprice?" I asked back. He nodded. I crossed his palm with silver. We both got out of there.

I went off disappointed. Major Kronk did not, at least now, belong to the same outfit that Denny and his buddies had.

Dojango and his brothers got back to the inn before I did. When I arrived they were eating like they meant to use up my expense money before the end of the week.

Dojango reported,"Nothing to report, actually. Nothing came in today. But we did bribe a piermaster to let us go down there mornings and wait for the rest of our family to arrive. Quite a coup, I thought, actually."

"Quite a coup," I agreed. I forbore asking where they had gotten the wherewithal to grease a piermaster. Nothing about those boys was going to surprise me anymore.

And I have yet to report half their tricks.

Morley wandered in an hour after I did. "Any luck, Garrett?"

"I found out where her brother is stationed. You?"

"Some."

"Zeck Zack?"

"An interesting character. Nothing secretive about him, supposedly. Everybody knows him. Nothing obvious to connect him with your Kronk people. He's a centaur, an auxiliary veteran who was given citizenship for his service. He's some sort of middleman between the centaur tribes and the merchants of Full Harbor. The darkest rumor about him is that he indulges in a little night trading. He likes to play with human women. The bigger and fatter, the better."

"Can't hang a guy for that," I said, demonstrating my vast tolerance.

"Lucky me."

As proven by the prevalence of accidents like Morley and his buddies, cross-race contact is a sport too popular for us to go lynching the players.

Morley went on,"He does own the house, but he's never there because he's never in the city."

"But there's more."

"Oh?"

"You have a gleam in your eye."