Glen Cook - Faded Steel Heat

Perhaps. But I have a strong intuition that we would have been better served had you held them here whilst I milked them rather than driving them away.

"Milked them? I didn't hear a moo from either one."

Intentional obtuseness seldom finds a complimentary acute observation. You should have probed them for information. You should have held them while I wormed in under their surfaces. He refused to let me exasperate him more than I had already. Their particular Free Company may finance itself by extorting funds in the name of The Call. But we are in no position to winkle that out now. Are we?

I hate it when he's right. And he was right. I let my emotions take over. I hadn't thought of those two in relation to the Weider problem. Yet they could have had that in mind. One of their cronies might have noticed the girls coming to my place.

Your problem far too often, Garrett.

"Huh?"

You do not think. You emote. You act on that emotion in preference to reason. However, there was nothing in their minds to tie them in to the Weider matter. Which, of course, is no guarantee that those who sent them are equally innocent.

"Aha! They knew about you."

Those two did not. They knew nothing about you, either, except what they had been told. I believe you muffed this one, Garrett.

I don't know about that. They probably wanted me to work. But I sighed. He really was right. And I definitely hate that. I hear about it forever. "I think I'll just go over to the brewery and—"

Yes. You should do that. But not right away. Go later. After the night crew comes in. They will be the younger men who have the Cantard more freshly in mind. If there are human rights activists there, they are most likely to be found among the younger workers.

What could I say? When he's right he's right. And he has been right a little too often lately. "All right. What're you going to suggest instead?" There would be something.

See Captain Block. Ask him about The Call. Let fall some gentle intimation of the threat to Mr. Weider.

Captain Westman Block runs the Guard, TunFaire's half-ass police force. The Guard is lame but more effective than the predecessor from which it evolved, the Watch, which existed primarily to absorb bribes to stay out of the way. The Watch still exists but only as a fire brigade.

The reason the Guard works is a little guy who is part dwarf, a touch of several other things, and maybe an eighth human. His name is Relway. He's the ugliest man I've ever met. He's obsessed with law and order. His conversations all revolve around his New Order, by which he means the absolute rule of law. When I met him, on a rainy night not that long ago, he was a volunteer "auxiliary" helping Block's tiny serious-crimes section of the Watch. I said something unpleasant to Relway that night. He assured me that I ought to be less unpleasant because he was going to be an important fellow before long.

His powers of prophecy were excellent.

Prince Rupert created the Guard and installed Westman Block as its chief. Then Block sanctioned Relway. And Relway immediately put together a powerful and nasty secret police force consisting of people who thought his way. Offenders have been known to just vanish once they attract the notice of Relway's section.

Probably no more than a thousand people know the section exists. He doesn't blow his own horn. And I'd bet there aren't more than a dozen people who can identify Relway by sight.

I'm one of them. Sometimes that makes me nervous.

That all rips through my mind whenever anyone mentions Block. I get the exact feeling Relway wants everybody to feel—that somebody is watching.

Old Man Weider is one of TunFaire's leading subjects. He's a commoner but is rich and powerful and influential. He has friends in high places who are real friends simply because he is the kind of man he is. Block would take an extra step to protect him.

Relway, being what he is, might take a few steps more if The Call was involved.

"Maybe that's all I really need to do. Get the Guard on the case. Block has more resources."

There is more going on.

"Why am I not surprised to hear that?"

Because you are, at last, becoming somewhat adept at reading people — though not yet at a conscious level. At that same shadow level both Miss Weider and Miss Nicholas fear that Ty Weider was not the recipient of the threat but its source.

"I don't like the guy but I could be wrong about him. Nicks thinks he's got something going."

Miss Nicholas is torn in many directions. I feel for that child. She does indeed think some good things, though. She has known Ty Weider as long as she has known Miss Alyx. She makes allowances because she knew the Ty Weider who existed before the Ty Weider who returned from the Cantard missing a leg. Have lunch, then see Captain Block.

"Yes, Mom."

Dumb move, Garrett.

The Dead Man took the mental muzzle off the Goddamn Parrot. That freaking jungle chicken just stores it up when he's under control. It gushed.

Block's headquarters were inside the Al-Khar, TunFaire's city prison. Handy, what with criminals being rounded up in gaggles lately. The place is huge, stark, cold, ugly, and badly in need of maintenance. It's a wonder prisoners don't escape by walking through the walls. Or by powdering the rusty bars in the infrequent windows. Ages ago some Hill family fattened up by cutting corners on construction, particularly in the choice of stone. Instead of a good Karentine limestone, available from quarries within a day's barge travel, somebody had supplied a soft snotty yellow-green stone that sucks up crud from the air, darkens, streaks, then flakes, leaving the exterior acned. The streets alongside the Al-Khar always boast a layer of detritus.

The mortar is in worse shape than the stone. Luckily, the walls are real thick.

I stopped, stunned, when I rounded a corner and saw the prison.

Scaffolding was up. Some tuckpointing was under way. Some chemical cleansing was restoring the youth of the stone.

Even clean that stone was butt-ugly.

How were they financing the face-lift? Till recently TunFaire jailed hardly anybody so no provision had been made to help maintain the seldom-used prison.

They'd had to evict squatters when Block moved in.

Captain Block not only was in, he was willing to see me. Immediately.

"You're a bureaucrat now, Block. Even if you haven't opened your eyes for fifteen years, you're supposed to be too busy to see somebody without an appointment. You'll set a precedent. You really live here? In jail?"

"I'm single. I don't need much room."

He seemed a little sad and a lot weary. He had shown fair political acumen getting the Guard created but, perhaps, didn't have the moral stamina to keep diverting frequent attempts to scuttle the rule of law.

"You look more relaxed these days." Block's quarters definitely didn't match his standing in the community. Neither did his dress. He should have been decked out like an admiral with two hundred years of service, but he just didn't care.

Block told me, "That business with the serial-killer spell that kept recasting itself made the prince love me. I'm almost untouchable. Almost. My cynical side says that's because nobody else wants the job. It certainly is thankless. But business is good. New villains jump up as fast as we harvest the old ones. They're like the dragon's teeth in that old myth. I'm endlessly amazed that so many of them survived the war."

I shrugged. I didn't know the one about the dragon's teeth.

Block is a compact, thin man with short brown hair quickly going gray. He needed a shave. He'd make a fair spy because there was nothing remarkable about him. You wouldn't notice him unless he yelled in your face. When I first met him, at a time when the law was honored more in the taking of bribes than actual enforcement, he'd had a mouth as filthy as the Goddamn Parrot's and all the manners of a starving snake.