Darla’s dress shop was empty, locked and shuttered. So were all the shops on the street. A band of wary shop keeps, whose average age veered perilously close to codger-hood, patrolled the sidewalks, gripping their collection of push brooms and fireplace-pokers with as much well fed menace as they could muster.
They asked about fires and looting. I told them what I’d seen, and shared my cautious optimism that Destride had been the turning point. I advised them to take to their heels if a real mob showed on their street.
They shook their brooms and vowed mayhem on miscreants far and wide.
I wished them luck and turned my mount for Darla’s house. I had the street mostly to myself. If cabs were still running they weren’t doing it in my part of town. I did meet little bands of pedestrians, cases and bags in their hands, who were determined to flee to somewhere even if they had no idea where that somewhere might be found.
I sent the ones that would listen home. Getting out of town was now far more dangerous than finding a sturdy door and placing oneself behind it.
Which is where I found Darla.
I charged onto her quiet little street. It still smelled of flowers and not smoke. Her neighbors had shuttered their windows and closed their doors, but no windows were broken, and no doors had been knocked open.
I tied the mare to Darla’s white picket fence and ran up the stairs.
Laughter sounded inside. Men’s laughter, and Mary’s voice and more laughter.
I tried the door. It was locked. At the sound of my rattling the knob, though, booted feet came running, and in an instant I was staring down the shaft of a well-maintained Army crossbow.
“Darling.”
Darla pushed the crossbow carefully aside and caught me up in a fierce hug.
“What the Hell are you three doing indoors?”
I was eyeing the soldiers I’d assigned to guard Darla. They responded with a trio of explanations, two of them hampered in their efforts by the copious amounts of apple pie in their guilty mouths.
“They been outside all night an’ all day,” snapped Mary, who appeared in the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips. “Ye never said anything about starving them to death, now did ye?”
“Outside.” I glared. “Now.”
They swallowed hard and left without a word.
Darla eyed me with that all-knowing gaze of hers.
“Mary, is there any cider left?”
Mary snorted an affirmative and vanished.
Darla kissed me. Why, I don’t know, because my swim in the Brown and subsequent street-brawl had left me less than kissable. But she did, and I’m a wise enough man not to argue.
“Carris?”
“Alive.” I was suddenly tired. No, not tired-exhausted. Beyond exhausted.
“Sit. Those aren’t your boots.”
“I left mine guarding the Regent,” I said. “My jacket is now Minister of Education.”
I sat. She pulled a chair up facing mine and sat, her hands in mine.
“Tell me.”
I told. Mary arrived with a cup of hot apple cider and a frown about the time I finished.
“I told that band of old fools to stay off the streets,” she muttered.
I sipped cider and nodded.
“So Mr. Fields lied, and Carris is heading south. I assume you’re going after him?”
I sighed.
“Maybe. Maybe not. If there’s a boat left in Rannit, I might just put Tamar on it. South’s be a good place to be, when the war starts.”
“Evis?”
“It’s ready, hon. Everything we talked about. Whether it’s going to work or not-Hell. I just don’t know.”
She just nodded. That’s one thing I love about her. She isn’t afraid of letting a silence have its say.
I finished my cider while Mary fussed about my damp shirt and insisted I change before I catch my death of cold. I reminded her that war and mayhem were the order of the day, and catching death by cold seemed an unlikely prospect, but then my traitor nose issued forth a great sneeze and I was ushered, cider and all, into the back room where I was instructed to bathe and change into dry, borrowed clothes forthwith.
I was damp, and I did smell of the nether reaches of the Brown, so bathe and change I did. When I emerged, splendid in my new garments and smelling unfortunately of Darla’s preferred lilac soap, I emerged into the company of Darla, who had changed into black pants, a sturdy black shirt and tall, black riding boots while maintaining a steady conversation with me through Mary’s back room door.
“Oh no,” I began. “You are staying right here. No argument. No negotiation. No sweet talk, my sweet.”
She pressed a sword in my hand. To this day, she won’t reveal where she came to own a custom-made Beget steel blade. The hilt of a dagger peeked up from the top of her right boot.
“For all we know, the walls will be down by midnight,” she said. “A mob could come swarming up my street any moment. Or soldiers. Or whatever horror those wand-wavers unleash.”
“I’m not going to let that happen.”
She smiled. “I know you’re not. Which is why I’m going with you.”
“You’ve got three soldiers and a good strong door here.”
“I’d rather have you. Where I can see you. If the walls come down, that’s where I want to be. With you.”
“Darla. It isn’t safe.”
“No. It isn’t.” She crossed her arms and did not smile.
There are moments, small moments, on which larger matters rest.
“Damn it all, anyway.” I shook my head. “We’re going to see Tamar. That part of town should be free of looters and fires. It might not be free of Lethway’s goons or Stricken’s killers. Anyone looks at you crossways, you duck, is that clear?”
Darla smiled.
“Ye ain’t quite as dumb as ye look,” said Mary.
I sneezed again, and sword in hand, took Darla out into the city.
I left my trio of well-fed soldiers with Mary and a warning that if I caught them resting their boots under a table again they’d find themselves leading a three-man charge against the foe armed only with apple pies and mugs of cider.
Darla sat behind me, her arms tight around my chest. I spurred the mare downtown, and she took advantage of the empty streets by breaking into a surprisingly fast trot.
I had fully expected to find the hotel deserted. Instead, I found it filled to capacity and fully staffed.
My old friend from a few days ago was even at his station behind the counter.
Darla and I marched up. He eyed her up and down and lifted an eyebrow.
“Mister, you just love trouble, don’t you?”
“She’s my sister.”
Darla smiled angelically. “He knows better than to say aunt.”
“I’m here to see the missus.”
“Then you’re a little late, mister. The missus checked out first thing this morning. Kid too.”
It was my turn to raise an eyebrow.
“What? When?”
“First thing, like I said. She paid up and left.”
“Was she alone?”
I guess I put a little too much army into my voice. The clerk took a nervous step backward, and Darla slipped a hand on my shoulder.
“He’s just anxious to make sure she’s safe,” cooed Darla. “All this trouble, you know. Everyone is so nervous these days.”
“Like I said, your kid was with her. He took her bags.”
I forced myself to breathe.
“Thanks. Sorry. Been a rough few days.” I let a coin make a pleasant rattle on the counter. “Anything else?”
Darla beamed at him.
The coin vanished.
“Let me check.”
He darted off to confer with his fellow workers. Darla squeezed my hand.
“Someone might have dragged her out of here, kicking and screaming, but if she just walked out, she meant to,” said Darla.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
The clerk reappeared, a wax-sealed envelope in his hand.
“She left this for you.”
I took it from him, opened it, and read.
I’ve found Carris, it read. He’s hurt, but alive. I’m taking him somewhere safe, and I think it’s best that no one knows where we are. I’m not sure what you did, Mr. Markhat, but I am grateful. Please don’t look for us. We can’t trust anyone now, least of all our families. We’re together again, and we’re making our own decisions, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.
Darla read it as I did.
“How?”
I shoved the letter in my pocket. “The kid. Betrayed by my own son. Oh, how sharper than a serpent’s tooth.”
I gave the clerk a last good glare. “You see which way they went?”
“Out the door is all I know.”
I took Darla’s hand and out that same door we went.
“So the child you hired to play the role of your son was the one watching the Fields’s home.”
“Child? Huh. Treacherous little thief is more like it. Had to be. Tamar knew Carris would come looking for her if by some chance he got free. So Tamar paid the kid to watch the house. Kid sees bloody shirtless Carris arrive, then sees him leave dressed and patched up. I figure the kid caught Carris leaving, told him Tamar was hiding downtown, and then cleaned him out giving up the address. Or maybe he did the same to Tamar, or both. Conniving little bastard.”
“Can you find him?”
I shook my head. “Not likely. And even if I did, I doubt Tamar told him where she was taking Carris. I’m sure she didn’t. Because if she did, he’d have already found me, eager to give them both up for a handful of change.”
Darla nodded.
We’d sought refuge in a tiny deserted park ringed by the big buildings downtown. My borrowed mare munched happily next to the No grazing of horses here sign. Handbills and bits of trash scampered past in the wind, each one proclaiming a more horrific and devastating war than the last.
Neither of us acknowledged any of them.
An eerie silence gripped the town. Eerie because I’d never heard Rannit quiet in the daytime before. Eerie because even after Curfew the streets never felt so dead, so abandoned, so alone.
Darla shivered. I had my arm around her and her head was buried in my shoulder but she shivered anyway, right there in the sun.
“What do we do now?”
I shrugged. “Loot? You like jewelry, don’t you?”
She pinched my elbow.
“Tamar. Carris. The case. I’m still a client, you know.”
“Speaking of which. I don’t recall ever being paid.”
“I pay you in hats and kisses.”
“I could use one of each right now.”
She looked up at me, her eyes big and dark.
“I’m all out of hats.”
“Caterers.” The word rose out of some dim but industrious part of my mind. “Do you know any of the ones Darla was using?”
“You were supposed to suggest kisses just now, light of my heart.”
“And I shall. Soon. But, hon, tell me this. What do you think Tamar is doing, right this moment?”
“Shushing Mr. Tibbles?”
“The wedding. Hon, she’s going ahead with the wedding.”
Darla blinked.
“Rannit is at war,” she said slowly. “There’s chaos in the streets. Her fiance is wounded and sick.”
“And you really think Tamar Fields is going to let any of that put a stop to her wedding?”
“She mentioned the florist. Canter’s, I think. Or Carter’s.”
“They’ve got be downtown. Probably right around here.”
“That might be so, hon. But look. No one is doing business today.”
I frowned. She was right. We might find the shops, but we’d also find them shuttered and closed.
We both thought of it at the same instant. Our smiles were sudden and wide.
There’s one place that never closes, come war or wrack, dark or doom.
“She’s pestering the priests,” said Darla.
“Badgering the bishops.”
“Hounding the hands.”
“Nothing rhymes with fathers.”
“Bothers does,” said Darla. She rose. “You must promise not to blaspheme in the church, dear. We might wish to married some day too, you know.”
“I’ll keep a civil tongue, just for you.”
“Liar.” She whistled, and damned if the mare didn’t trot right up to us and whinny.