Dread Brass Shadows

Chodo was concerned. That would be an understatement, as were most statements about the kingpin. In language the rest of us would use, it meant Chodo was mightily pissed.

I don't usually volunteer information, especially to the kingspin's people, but I made an exception. "Guys have been disappearing all over I can't find a trace of Morley Dotes. Likewise Saucerhead Tharpe. You might say I'm concerned, too. I don't hear anything on the street. You?"

He shook his head first, some top skin flashing in the hospital light. "I thought Dotes was sulking on account of we used his place."

"I thought so, too. At first. Only that wouldn't be his style, would it?"

"Nah. Feisty as he is, he'd have busted our heads and kicked our asses out of there if he was really pissed."

"He'd have tried, anyway."

Crask smiled. He did that so seldom it was startling. "Yeah. Tried. I got some business I got to get on with, Garrett. I'm late, I been chasing all over after you to find out about Sadler. I want you should walk along, talk to me. Maybe we can brainstorm out where people are disappearing."

I didn't feel like it but didn't argue. It wasn't that I was afraid of offending him. I thought I might learn something. Call it intuition.

The first thing I learned was that Crask wasn't, for the moment at least, the man I knew and loathed. He was so busy working on something inside him that some of his barriers against the world leaked. He seemed almost human at moments—though not so much I'd want my sister to marry him if I had a sister. I don't and I'm glad. My friends are hostages enough for fortune.

30

For some hours I'd entertained the notion that Chodo had eliminated Morley and Saucerhead in order to deprive me of resources should I discover he'd become interested in the Book of Dreams. Sometimes you get that way, thinking you're the center of the universe. But once I ran into Crask, the speculation collapsed under the weight of reason.

You grab straws when nothing makes sense.

Morley had dropped out before Chodo could have discovered the book's nature. Even now I had no real reason to suspect he knew about the book. Him looking for a missing Sadler only made everything murkier.

Who might be making people disappear? The Serpent shouldn't be interested in those guys. She was after the Book of Dreams. Headhunting wouldn't help. The same reasoning applied to happy old Fido Easterman.

So who had reason to eliminate my acquaintances?

Plenty of people, if you took them individually. But nobody was the only answer when you considered them as a group. They didn't share many enemies.

Crask agreed.

We trudged along, me leaning into the bitter wind and grumbling about not having a clue. Then about having so many clues I didn't know which had to do with what.

"Where we headed?" I asked. This wasn't helping me any yet. I glanced back I still felt the presence of that shadow that had been with me off and on. I didn't see anything. Like I'd maybe expected I would?

"Tenderloin," Crask mumbled. The wind was getting to him, too. He was trying to shelter his injured arm. "Got an appointment with some dwarves."

Ah. So, "Why didn't I think of that?"

The Tenderloin is sin's homeland in TunFaire. Anything goes, nobody asks questions, nobody interferes with anybody else. Missionaries not welcome. Reformers enter at your own risk. Likewise everybody else. The Serpent's whole gang could hide there in plain sight easy, despite everyone and everything being owned by Chodo. They'd just need to remember not to run in a pack.

I really should have thought of it. The Tenderloin isn't far from Dwarf Fort. It's just a few blocks past the Bledsoe and I'd been told the renegade dwarves had fled that way after one of their skirmishes with Gnorst's bunch. Had I been from out of town and needed to hide, that's where I'd have gone to ground.

So why hadn't I thought to come poke around? I must be getting senile

The Tenderloin never sleeps, it just slows down late. When we arrived, lamplighters were out snuffing lights, conserving oil. During peak hours the area is awash with light, a carnival, but the management doesn't waste a copper that won't return ten. This was the hour of the diehard, when light and darkness were irrelevant.

The Tenderloin is like the whores who are its chief commodity, all paint and makeup on the outside. Behind the flash lies rot and stink and human despair. Even where they could, they don't put makeup on that. By the time you look it in the eye, they've already gotten your money and are interested only in processing you through as fast as can be managed.

The wind grew more bitter by the minute. Maybe that was why the morCartha had taken the night off. Their native valleys are much warmer. The lamplighters hunched inside their ragged coats and cursed into their beards. The barkers for various establishments watched the street through doors cracked scant inches, waited till we drew abreast to jump out and wax rhapsodic about wonders unimaginable available within. They retreated when we signaled lack of interest. Nobody pressed. They all recognized Crask.

I let him show the way, wandered off inside me in search of one good reason why I kept charging around looking for the Book of Dreams. I'd begun to distrust me. I feared there was a part of me that wanted it the way the Serpent and Easterman wanted it. The way maybe even the local prince of dwarves wanted it.

There was a new idea. It deserved a look. It might explain why Gnorst was uncommunicative. He might be thinking of trying on Nooney Krombach's shoes.

"Uh-oh " While I was scouting the badlands within, the outer landscape had changed. The streets had emptied. Crask had stopped hurrying. Now he tred softly, clung to shadows.

Something was about to go down.

Crask had a few steps on me. I zagged to the side, up stairs that climbed the face of an old tenement. He didn't notice. His attention was focused ahead. I flattened out on the landing in front of a second-story doorway.

I trust my hunches, usually I'd had a sudden, strong one that this was no time for Garrett to be out in the open and a worse one to dive into shadowed alleys. I thought shadow and tried to become one with the chilly darkness, nothing but watching eyes

My hunch was good. I'd barely flattened myself out when every alley in sight barfed hard boys. Crask made hand signals. They all headed for the place that was the target of Crask's good hand.

About then he noticed I wasn't with him anymore. He looked around, startled, spat, cursed, and I knew I'd come one step short of stepping into a big pile of it, maybe.

Had he been leading me to the slaughter?

Joining his party sure didn't look like a brilliant move. I stayed where I was and froze my tail and wondered.

What was wrong with the Serpent? I'd been told and told that somebody who could make a book of shadows was a real heavyweight in the sorcery game. But she didn't act like a heavyweight. Her sort, when they have any weight at all, aren't bashful about throwing it around. But she did her pushing and shoving with second-string hired hands. It was confusing.

The state TunFaire was in, with all our witches and wizards and whatnot off to chase Glory Mooncalled, somebody like the Serpent ought to be able to do whatever she damned well pleased. But she was going about her search like she had no more power than crazy Fido.

Had she put it all into her book, then let that get away?

Sounded good. Sounded like she would be one desperate witch, cranky as a dragon with bad teeth.

Chodo's hordes swept silently toward a tenement. The silence didn't last. A big uproar broke out as soon as a couple got inside. There were enough illegal weapons in evidence to arm a company. The uproar inside reached battle pitch. People were getting hurt in there.