Dread Brass Shadows

One reason thunder-lizards stay away from the sapient races is they always get the dirty end. They're pretty dim, but they've learned that teeth and claws and mass are only so much use against brains and sorcery and sharp, poisoned steel.

Which is another reason we didn't see much fear. Not to mention the fact that TunFaire is surrounded by a wall no thunder-lizard could climb.

The excitement made it difficult to tell if we were being tailed, by Fido's boys or Chodo's. I took it for granted we had company. I worried more about Easterman's clowns than Chodo's troops. The latter would be pros. They'd be predictable. All I knew about the brunos was that they could be deadly.

As we walked I hammered away at Winger, trying to get through. She couldn't believe things were as black as I claimed. She didn't understand how potent the Book of Dreams could be. Or she didn't want to.

We'd just passed Lettie Faren's cathouse, which clings to the skirts of the Hill like a malignant parasite, and I'd started telling Winger a story about something that had happened there. I was worried about the woman. She didn't get the chuckle she should have... Sadler stepped out of an alley. Just for a second. Nothing special to someone who didn't know him. But I knew him. I glanced back. I doubted any tail would have spotted him.

He wanted to talk to me. Did I want to talk to him? Particularly, did I want to walk down a dark alley with him?

Well, maybe I could get him off my tail. "Winger, I got to see a man about a dog. Hang on a minute." I headed toward that alley hitching my pants. Watchers would buy it if I didn't take all day.

I was at a disadvantage stepping out of the brightness into shadow. If Sadler wanted me, he had me. I said, "Make it fast."

"Right. Heard you had a close scrape."

"Yeah. Dwarves Again."

"I heard. That the woman we been looking for?"

"The very one. Only she didn't cut Squirrel. I think I know who did. Brunos who work for a guy called Fido Easterman."

He snickered. "Fido?"

"It's an imperial title. Don't make mock. Yeah. He's crazy as a platoon of loons. Real candidate for the ha-ha house. Got a place up the Hill looks like a haunted castle. Wants to be an evil sorcerer."

"He isn't?''

"Like a stone isn't. He's just crazy. Maybe it's his business. Metal smelting. Maybe he's breathed too many fumes off the crucibles. He's got four brunos that I spotted. Not first water. I think he went for cheap over competent."

Sadler clicked his tongue, looked thoughtful. He seemed distracted. Odd. He'd wanted to talk to me, not the other way around.

I said, "There's a good chance they offed Blaine, too."

Sadler clicked again, looked even more thoughtful. Maybe he was turning into a philosophical cricket. It could happen. Stranger things have.

"What?" I asked. Impatient me. Just because a whiz don't take twenty minutes.

"These guys are second rate, eh?"

"Looked it to me." Was he paying attention?

"What about that door? Who cut Squirrel so deep? Somebody with a little strength, eh9"

I hadn't thought of that. "Yeah. I guess."

"You guess. That's you, Garrett. Guessing and stumbling around in the dark till you fall over something. Reason 1 wanted to talk to you, we got a line on some dwarves. Probably won't do you no good. They was in a big dust-up down on the Landing. Dwarfish gang fight. One bunch jumped another bunch. After, some headed for Dwarf Fort, some headed toward the Bledsoe. I'd call it a draw, far as how mt turned out. I got some guys trying to track the ones went toward the hospital. Thought you'd want to know."

"Yeah. Thanks." I forgot to mention Winger and I were on a trail. Better to have the hard boys headed somewhere else. "This is turning into the longest leak in history. Anybody was watching me they'd be getting suspicious."

"You worry too much. Crask can handle them. But go on. Catch you later." He drifted into shadow, taking his aura of menace with him.

"Yeah. Later." I stomped out of there hitching my pants and shaking my head.

Winger said, "You must have a five-gallon bladder, Garrett." She was breathing heavy.

"Yeah. Something happen?"

She gave me a mocking smile. "Nothing I couldn't handle. Some guy tried to pick me up. I discouraged him."

"Oh. Let's move." I wanted to see what I could see before Chodo's boys stumbled into my way. Always seemed to be people turning up dead when they did.

Winger seemed disappointed that I didn't have any banter or follow-up questions about her encounter. I shrugged it off.

It was hard to make any speed. The streets had filled with people gawking at the pigeon exterminators. One glided over, pathfinding. I said, "I hear those things only go thirty, forty pounds." This one went night over the Tate compound, which wasn't far away. I wondered if Ti

"Cheer up, Garrett. We'll find that book and get rich."

Or dead. Lots more likely dead.

26

The longer we walked the more certain I became that I'd have to renegotiate with Winger. I glanced at her, big as me, strutting along like she dared the world to take its best shot. Something about her unjustified cockiness appealed to me give her a dose of sense, she might be all right.

"Hey, Winger. That twenty isn't an open offer. I won't buy a pig in a poke. You got to deliver dwarves."

"No cat in this bag, Garrett. You'll get dwarves."

Cat and pig, both expressions come from an old country con. Once upon a time peasants took piglets to market in a ‘poke.' Some grifter got the idea of stuffing the bag with a cat and selling it to somebody gullible enough not to look inside before he handed over his money. So. Pig in a poke, cat out of the bag.

I wanted dwarves. I got them. But not exactly in mint condition.

"What's going on?" Winger muttered. People were milling around a tenement that had seen its best days a hundred years before I was born. People who weren't interested in the ongoing airshow.

"Trouble," I told her. "Past tense. Else we'd have a desert here."

"Ghouls9"

"You could say that."

She pushed through the crowd, not caring who she shoved or elbowed. She was mad, perfectly willing to get in a fight. I wondered if I ought to be around somebody who had herself a war on with the whole world.

The first dead dwarf lay sprawled in the tenement entrance, hacked and stabbed and twisted up into an u

The nearest vultures looked at me like I was crazy. I shrugged, pushed inside. No crowd in there, which suggested the folks outside expected city busybodies any minute. People not worried about the Watch would have been inside collecting anything the dead couldn't use anymore.

The Watch seldom bothers doing much policing or chasing, but they do grab folks found on the scene, then make life miserable for them. I told Winger, "We'd better do this quick."

"Do what?" She sounded depressed. I supposed she was thinking about all the things she couldn't buy with the money I wasn't going to pay her.

"Look the place over. See what's to be seen."

"Why? All you're going to see is more dead guys."

She had a point. There was another on the first floor landing and three in the hallway on the second. Two of those may have been attackers. They were better kempt, better clad. Gnorst's bunch.

The fight had proceeded along the hallway, scourged a half-dozen sleeping rooms, and tumbled down a cramped rear stairwell. None of the rooms had doors. Most had been torn apart by somebody in a hurry looking for something. We found a ratman and a dwarf, both critically wounded and a lot of nothing else. I asked, "Was this the place you wanted to sell me?"