Part 13 (1/2)

The juju stuff had been so plentiful and obvious that you had to wonder about a plant. Then you had to wonder who and why (guess I should have been digging into that), and then you had to wonder if the obviousness of the evidence argued against its having been planted. Could anybody be dumb enough to think someone would buy it?

Well, sure. A lot of TunFaire's villains aren't long on brains.

I decided I'd follow the road signs, genuine or false. If they were false, whoever planted them could tell me something.

I couldn't discount the witchcraft angle. My fellow subjects will buy anything if the guy doing the selling is a good enough showman. We have a thousand cults here. Plenty lean toward the dark side. Plenty go in for witchcraft and demon wors.h.i.+p. Sometimes bored little rich girls amuse themselves by dabbling.

Maybe I should have inquired after the state of Emerald's virtue. That had not seemed important at the time. From her mother's account, she was in good health and otherwise normal. There was no apparent reason for her to suffer virginity at her age. Most adolescents cure that before they get rid of their acne.

If you want information about something, it always helps if you corner an expert. Sure, the street is a great source of news, but out there sometimes you have to separate raindrops from the downpour. That's maybe a lot of needless sorting if you know somebody who stays on a first-name basis with all the interesting raindrops.

People had called her Handsome for as long as I can remember, for no reason I know. Though mostly human, she had enough dwarf blood to give her a very long life. She'd been a cranky old woman when I was a kid. I was sure time had not improved her temper.

Her shop was a hole in the wall in my old neighborhood. It lay down an alley so dark and noisome even homeless ratmen would have avoided it had it not led past Handsome's place.

The alley was worse than I remembered. The trash was deeper, the slime was slipperier, the smell was stronger. The reason was simple. Every day things do get worse than they've ever been before. TunFaire is falling apart. It's sinking into its own offal. And n.o.body cares.

Well, some do. But not enough. Scores of factions front as many corrective prescriptions, but each group prefers to concentrate on purging heretics and infidels from the ranks, which is easier than improving the state of the city.

I should complain? Chaos is good for business. If only I could recognize lawlessness as a boon.

No wonder my friends don't understand me. I I don't understand me. don't understand me.

There were were ratmen sheltering in that alley, which was so insignificant it didn't merit a name. I stepped over one and his wine bottle bedmate to get to Handsome's door. ratmen sheltering in that alley, which was so insignificant it didn't merit a name. I stepped over one and his wine bottle bedmate to get to Handsome's door.

A bell jangled as I entered. The alleyway had been dark. Handsome's hole was darker. I closed the door gently, waited for my eyes to adapt. I didn't move fast, didn't breathe deeply for fear I would knock something down.

I remembered it as that kind of place.

”G.o.ds be d.a.m.ned! It's that Garrett brat. I thought we got shut of you years ago. Sent you off to the war.”

”Nice to see you again, too, Handsome.” Whoops! Big mistake there. She hated that name. But she was in a forgiving mood, apparently. She didn't react. ”You're looking good. Thank you for caring. I did my five. I came home.”

”Sure you didn't dodge? Garrett men don't never come home.”

Gave me a twinge there. Neither my brother nor my father, nor my father's father, had come home. Seemed like a natural law: your name was Garrett, you got the glorious privilege of dying for crown and kingdom. ”I beat the odds, Tilly.” Handsome's real name was Tilly Nooks. ”Guess that old law of averages finally caught up with the Venageti.”

”Or maybe you're smarter than the run of Garrett men.”

I'd heard similar sentiments expressed before. Tilly spoke more forcefully than most. She carried a grudge. My Grandfather Garrett, who went long before my time, jilted her for a younger woman.

That bitterness never kept her from treating us kids like we were her own grandchildren. Even now I can feel her switch striping my tail.

Handsome entered the shop through a doorway blocked by hanging strings of beads. She carried a lamp that had shed no light on the other side. The lamp was for me. Her dwarvish eyes had no trouble with the gloom.

”You haven't changed a bit, Tilly.” And that was true. She was just as I remembered.

”Don't feed me that bulls.h.i.+t. I look like I been rode hard and put away wet about a thousand times.”

That was true, too.

She looked like a woman who'd survived seventy very hard years. Her hair was white and thin. Her scalp shone through even in that light. Her skin hung loose, as though she'd halved her weight in a week. It was pale though mottled by liver spots large and small. She moved slowly but with determination. It hurt her to walk, but she wouldn't surrender to her frailties. I recalled those making up the bulk of her conversation. She complained continuously but wouldn't slow down. She was wide in the hips and her flesh drooped badly everywhere. Had I been asked to guess, I would've said she'd borne a dozen kids from the shape she was in, only I'd never seen or heard of any offspring.

She peered at me intently, trying to smile. She had only a few teeth left. But her eyes glittered. The mind behind them was as sharp as ever. Her smile turned cynical and weary. ”So, to what do we owe the honor, after all these years?” Maybe she wasn't going to catch me up on her lumbago.

The rest of ”we” was the scroungiest calico cat that ever lived. Like Handsome, she was ancient. She, too, had been old and scroungy and worn out all those long years ago. She looked at me like she remembered me, too.

You can't lie to Handsome. She always knows if you do. I learned that before I was six. ”Business.”

”I heard the kind of business you're in.”

”You sound like you disapprove.”

”The way you go at it, it's a fool's game. You're not going to get you no happiness out of it.”

”You could be right.”

”Sit a spell.” Groaning, she dropped into a lotus position. That she could had amazed me as a kid. It amazed me now. ”What's your business here?” The cat set up camp in her lap. I tried to remember the beast's name, couldn't, and hoped the question wouldn't come up.

”Witch business, maybe. I'm looking for a missing girl. The only clue I have is that I found witchcraft type stuff in her rooms.”

Handsome grunted. She didn't ask why that brought me to her. She was a major supplier of witchy stuff; chicken lips and toad hair and frog teeth. ”She left it behind?”

”Apparently.” Handsome provided the very best raw materials, but I've never understood how. She never left home to acquire stock and I never heard of anybody who wholesaled that stuff. Rumor says Handsome is rich despite the way she lives. Makes sense to me. She's supplied the witch trade for generations. She's got to have chests full of money somewhere.

”Don't strike me as the kind of thing a witch would do.”

”Didn't me, either.” Occasionally a bunch of baddies will ignore the lessons of history and try to rob Handsome. None succeed. Failure tends to be painful. Handsome must be a pretty potent witch herself.

She's never said she's a witch. She's never claimed special powers. The fakes do that. The fact that she's grown old swimming with sharks says all that needs saying.

I told her my story. I left nothing out because I didn't see any point. She was a good listener.

”The Rainmaker is in it?” Her whole face pruned into a frown. ”I don't like that.”

”Oh?” I waited.

”We haven't seen him for a while. He was bad news back when.”

”Oh?” Handsome liked to talk. Given silences to fill, she might cough up something especially useful. Or she might take the opportunity to catch me up on her illnesses and infirmities. ”People keep telling me he's bad, but it's like they're embarra.s.sed to say how. It's hard to get scared once you've spent five years nose to nose with Venageta's best and more than that b.u.t.ting heads with people like Chodo Contague.” Chodo used to be the kingpin of crime in TunFaire.

”A Chodo uses torture and murder and the threat of violence like tools. The Rainmaker hurts people on account of he enjoys it. My guess is he's anxious not to get noticed. Otherwise he wouldn't stuff people into the Bledsoe. We'd find pieces of them all over town.” She went on to paint the portrait of a s.a.d.i.s.t, yet another view of Cleaver.

I was starting to have misgivings about meeting the guy. But I had to do it, if only to explain that not liking a guy isn't any reason to shove him into the cackle factory.