Glen Cook - Faded Steel Heat

I wasn't sure I liked the new, improved, mannered and unantagonistic, dedicated Block better than the angry old one.

I told him, "In the old days you never seemed like the dedicated type. You only did what you had to to get by."

A shadow brushed his features. "I got religion, Garrett."

"Huh?"

"I let Relway talk me into putting him on full-time. Big mistake. His conviction infects everybody around him."

"It does." Given his head Relway will exterminate the concept of crime by the end of the year. He's a man with a holy mission. He's scary.

"So what's up? Going to collect favors owed?"

"Not entirely. I want to ask about The Call. And I want to talk about Max Weider. Somebody's trying to squeeze him." I betrayed tradition and fed him all the details.

He was suspicious. "Why tell me?"

I would have been suspicious, too. In the past I'd kept him in the dark on principle.

"My partner insisted. And I owe Weider. It would be handy if somebody official was watching if something happened."

"What could happen?"

"With these rightsists? Anything."

"No shit. You heard about those people burning up on the north side?"

"I heard. I didn't pay attention. I've been busy."

"They're people with no connection to each other, drunks and no-accounts who couldn't make an enemy on a bet. But they've been burning up."

"You're pulling my leg."

"No. It's happened six times. It's got to be sorcery. Relway wants it to connect with the rights business but I don't see it. I can't see some teetotaling sorceress setting drunks on fire, either, though."

"You think it would be a woman?"

"If it was a teetotaller. You know any men dead set against spirits?"

"Only one." And I have to live with him. "So what about it? Is The Call moving into the rackets?"

"I haven't heard that. Jirek!"

The door opened. A creature limped in. He wasn't human. Not much, anyway. There was a little of everything in him but the three main ingredients appeared to be ogre, troll, and ugly. The whole was complicated by birth defects and wounds. Jirek moved sort of sideways, stiffly and bent, like his back hurt all the time.

"Jirek was injured in the ambush at Council Wells."

A veteran, then. Yet not human. Another one of those inconvenient complications I'd pointed out to Carter and Trace. Some of our biggest heroes aren't even human.

"Council Wells. One of our great victories," I observed.

"Do I detect the odor of sarcasm?"

Council Wells was supposed to have been a preliminary peace conference. The Karentine army concealed commando forces in the surrounding desert. Those patriots murdered the Venageti delegates in their sleep.

Another of those little triumphs that, when totalled, helped Karenta win the war.

"Me sarcastic? The gods forfend."

Jirek's great knobbly green mess of a face twisted and wriggled into a grotesque smile. Then he guffawed. His breath could gag a maggot. But he had a sense of humor.

Block told him, "Relway should be in his cell. Tell him I need him."

Jirek told me, "Good joke," then left.

"What was that?" I asked.

"Jirek. A unique." Which was slang for a breed who had extremely complicated antecedents. "He saved my ass a couple times in the Cantard. He was a perfect soldier. Too dumb to question authority. Just did what he was told. And was one bad boy in a fight."

"I just might change my mind about you."

"Don't brag about it. People might wonder why it took so long to rid yourself of the old, clogged one."

"And I thought I was developing a new relationship with the minions of the law."

Relway arrived. A little guy, he sort of oozed into Block's cell, no knock, like a shadow that didn't want to be noticed.

Relway is another unique, a completely improbable mixture. His interior landscape is a strange, strange land, too. He has a chip on his shoulder big enough to provide lumber for four houses. He's so far into law and order that he considers himself above any law that might restrain his efforts to crush crime. Now his auxiliaries and spies and midnight avengers are everywhere. It shouldn't be long till his name becomes one of the most feared in TunFaire.

Relway the man (using "man" generically, to indicate a sentient creature that walks on its hind legs) is almost unknown. I know him only because chance put me in the right place back when.

He nodded. "Garrett. You been keeping well?" His voice was hoarse, cracking, only half there.

"I'm fine. You pick up a cold?"

"The weather's been strange. I hear you might know something about that."

"Me? I was out there freezing my butt off with everybody else." Why relive my misadventures amongst mobs of low-grade, feuding gods?

He gave me that look all lawmen develop. It says not one word dripping from your filthy mouth is true now, nor ever has been. The power had gone to his head, though there was no denying the good being done. He had the bad guys rattled.

"What's that on your shoulder, Garrett?"

Block had done me the courtesy of ignoring that owl in a clown suit. "My lunch. I'll share. Stoke up the fire."

The Goddamn Parrot—or the Dead Man speaking through the buzzard's beak—had to have his word. "Awk! Jerk alert!"

"How do you do that without moving your lips?" Relway asked.

"It's a trick they teach Marines."

Relway asked, "We got something, Wes?"

They were getting cuddly now?

"Maybe. You've been working the rights gangs?"

"Where I can. They're hard to infiltrate. Mostly they form from groups who knew each other in the Cantard."

I still hang out with guys I knew down there. We don't spend good beer-drinking time trying to figure out how to hurt people, though.

Relway continued, "Big mobs like The Call are more vulnerable. Everybody doesn't know everybody. The Call proper is organized like the army. And Marengo North English is building a real private army. Freecorps Theverly, they're calling it."

"Is Colonel Theverly with them?" I was surprised, though I hadn't known Lieutenant Colonel Moches Theverly well enough to make sound assessments of his feelings toward nonhumans. He treated everybody the same in the zone. He was one of few officers who didn't go around with his head firmly inserted in a dark, stinky place.

"A man of conviction, the colonel." Shadows stirred behind Relway's eyes. "You know him?"

"I worked for him in the islands. Briefly. He got hurt and they pulled him out just before the Venageti overran us. The wound cost him a leg if I remember right. He was a good officer."

"That's not why you're here?"

"No. I didn't know about that."

Block asked, "Is The Call moving into the rackets, Deal? As a fund-raising activity?"

Relway frowned. "You have a run-in, Garrett?"

"I have a client. Max Weider. The brewery Weider."

Relway nodded. My relationship with Weider was no secret.

"His daughter Alyx says somebody claiming to be from The Call took a run at her brother Ty. They wanted a piece of the gross. That didn't sound like The Call. But if they need money to conjure up their own army, they might try more creative ways of getting it."

"They might," Relway agreed. "I haven't heard of it being discussed seriously. Yet. On the other hand, they have discussed other areas traditionally associated with the Outfit—where those exploit nonhumans."

"Two birds, one stone?"

"Exactly. The Call's Inner Council put it, ‘We deem it fitting that the disease provide the means of sustaining the cure.' "

Interesting. Sounded like he attended Call council meetings himself. "They're pushing Chodo and they're still healthy?" I wouldn't have thought even the most fanatic member of The Call would dare jostle Chodo Contague. Chodo was the king of organized crime. Nobody poached in Chodo's territory. Nobody, that is, who wasn't ready to fight a major war. It's impossible to imagine a deadlier enemy than Chodo Contague.