Glen Cook - Angry Lead Skies

"Not formally. Not to talk to. I've seen them a few times. Not so much recently, though. They used to come around here a lot. When they thought Kip would be here alone."

I grunted, irritated. Atop all the aches and pains it looked like the only way I was going to learn anything of substance would be to catch me a silver elf and squeeze him.

Which was a conclusion my partner must have reached before I left the house. Else how to explain Singe's presence?

Besides being my only friend from TunFaire's lowest lower class, Pular Singe is the finest tracker amongst a species known for individuals able to follow a trail through the insane stew of foul odors that complement the soul of this mad city.

"Singe? You find a scent yet?" I knew she was sniffing. She couldn't help herself. And she was clever enough to understand why she had been invited to the party.

She tried to shrug, then to shake her head. Ratfolk find both human gestures difficult. Singe wants to be human so bad. Each time I see it I hurt for her. I get embarrassed. Because most of the time we aren't worthy of imitation.

Failing, she spoke: "No. Not the elves. Though there is a unique odor where the two fell. But that exists only there. It does not go anywhere. And it does not smell like any odor from a living thing."

"Wow." Her human speech had improved dramatically since last I had seen her. It was almost free of accent—except when she tried a contraction. Her improvement was miraculous considering the voice box she had to use. No other rat in my experience had come close to matching her. Yet she was said to suffer from a hearing deficiency. According to the rat thug Reliance, who first brought her to my attention. "You've even mastered the sibilants." Determination can take you a long way. Her sibilants still had a strong serpentine quality. But Singe needs a lot of encouragement to keep going. She gets almost none of that from her own people.

"So what do we do now?" Morley asked. He wasn't interested, really. Not much. He was trying to work out how he could get back to The Palms and get cleaned up and changed before anyone noticed his disreputable condition. I had a feeling that, any minute now, I would find my best pal missing.

Singe said, "I cannot follow the strange elves. But Garrett taught me to follow the horses when I cannot follow a target who becomes a passenger in a vehicle that horses are pulling."

What a talent, that Garrett guy. After a moment, I confessed, "The student lost even the teacher on that one, Singe."

She looked at me like she knew I was just saying that so she'd feel good, getting to explain. "The elves took the boy. Him I can track. So I will follow him. Wherever he stops moving, there will we find your elves."

"The girl is a genius," I said. "Let's all go raid Playmate's pantry before we go on the road."

That idea was acclaimed enthusiastically by everyone not named Playmate. Or Morley. Playmate because his charity is limited when its wannabe beneficiaries are solvent. Morley because the weasel wasn't around to vote.

Ah, well. My elven friend would be out there somewhere, a desperate fugitive fleeing the wrath of the good-grooming gods.

Saucerhead's impatient pacing took him across the narrow street and back three times as he tried to establish a safe passage around a particularly irritable camel. No owner of the beast was in evidence. I was surprised to see it. Camels are rare this far south. Possibly no one would have this one. Possibly it had been abandoned. It was a beast as foul as the Goddamn Parrot. It voided its bowels, then nipped at Saucerhead. I muttered, "That's what I feel like right now."

"Which end?" Singe asked, testing her theory of humor. She giggled. So bold, this ratgirl who came out in the daytime, then dared to make jokes in front of human beings.

"Take your pick. You know what that thing really is? A horse without its disguise on."

Even Singe thought that was absurd. And she has less love for the four-legged terrors than I do. You could say a state of war, of low intensity, exists between her species and theirs. Horses dislike ratpeople more than most humans do.

Playmate said, "One day I fully expect to find you on the steps of the Chancery, between Barking Dog Amato and Woodie Granger, foaming at the mouth as you rant at the King and the whole royal family because they're pawns of the great equine conspiracy, Garrett."

The Chancery is a principal government building where, traditionally, anyone with a grievance can voice it publicly on the outside steps. Inevitably, the Chancery steps have acquired a bevy of professional complainers and outright lunatics. Most people consider them cheap entertainment.

I said, "You shouldn't talk about it! They're going to get you now." Singe started looking worried, frowning. "All right. Maybe I exaggerate a little. But they're still vicious, nasty critters. They'll turn on you in a second."

The resident nasty critter spit at Saucerhead. Saucerhead responded with a jab to the camel's nose. It was a calm, professional blow of the sort that earned him his living. But he put his weight and muscle behind it. The camel rocked back. Its eyes wobbled. Its front knees buckled.

Tharpe said, "Come on." Once we were past the camel, he added, "Sometimes polite ain't enough. You just gotta show'em who's boss."

We walked another hundred feet. And stopped. The street didn't go anywhere. It ended at a wall. Which was improbable.

"What the hell?" Saucerhead demanded. "When did we start blocking off streets?"

He had a point. TunFaire has thousands of dead-end alleys and breezeways but something that happened in antiquity made our rulers issue regulations against blocking thoroughfares. Possibly because they'd wanted to be able to make a run for it in either direction. And while what we were following wasn't much of a street, it was a street officially. Complete with symbols painted on walls at intersections to indicate that its name was something like Stonebone. Exactly what was impossible to tell. The paint hadn't been renewed in my lifetime.

The wall ahead was old gray limestone. Exactly like the wall to our left. Needing the attention of a mason just as badly. But something about it made all four of us nervous.

"It sure don't look like something somebody threw up over the weekend," I said. Believe it or not, some Karentine subjects are wicked enough to ignore established regulations and will construct something illegal while the city functionaries are off duty.

Nobody stepped up to the wall. Until Singe snorted the way only a woman can do when she's exasperated with men being men. She shuffled right up till her pointy big nose was half an inch from the limestone. "The track of the boy goes straight on, Garrett. And this wall smells almost the same as the odor I found where the two elves fell on one another."

Playmate took a few steps backward, found a bit of broken brick that hadn't yet been scrounged by the street children. (They sell brick chips and chunks back to the brickyards, where they're powdered and added to the clay of new bricks.) He started to wind up, but paused and said, "Garrett, have you bothered to look up?"

I hadn't. Why would I?

None of the others had, either.

We all looked now.

That wall wasn't part of anything. It might not even be stone. It just went up a ways, then turned fuzzy and wiggly and lizard's belly white. Then it turned misty. Then it turned into nothing.

"It's an illusion."

Playmate chucked his brickbat.

The missile proceeded to proceed despite the presence of a wall that appeared completely solid, if improbably cold and damp when I extended a cautious finger to test it. Saucerhead Tharpe isn't nearly as careful as Mama Garrett's only surviving son. He reached out to thump that wall. And his fist went right on through.