The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) (19 page)

“You’re afraid so much power will corrupt you?”

“I’m afraid it will change me,” she said. “You have walked with the huldra. Do you remember how Rannit appeared, then? How tiny and insignificant all those lives below you seemed?”

I just nodded. Wasn’t any point in trying to lie.

“That state is what I fear,” she said. “Ten thousand times ten thousand times that. Who will I be, after seeing such sights? What will I be?”

“You’ll still be Stitches,” I said.

“Just as you are still just Markhat,” she replied.

We nursed our beers.

“So why a boat?” she said after a while.

I told her the whole thing. Carnivals and Trolls and dead girls and fires. And Shango, of course, and my new sword Toadsticker.

She nodded and drank.

I finished my tale. She conjured up more dream beers.

“The girl in the pool,” I said. “The girl who taught you how to see behind shadows. Did you ever figure out who she was?”

“No. I gave up trying. But the phenomena is by no means unusual. Most sorcerers are introduced to the art by a stranger.”

“So is Shango my stranger, Stitches, or are you?”

“Oh no. This Shango is no sending of mine. I swear it, Markhat. I would not put that burden upon you. You are far too amusing as a mortal.”

“You gave Mama the huldra. Damned nearly relieved me of my mortality that night.”

“So you say.”

“You deny it?”

She looked me in the eye, and damned if she didn’t blink first.

“You didn’t give Mama the huldra?”

“It became expedient for you to believe I did so,” she said. “But I did not.”

It was my turn to suffer a loss for words.

If not Stitches, while she was the Corpsemaster, then who?

“I wasted decades searching for the girl in the pool,” she said after a time. “I suggest you avoid such a futile expenditure of energies.”

“I’m not a damned wand-waver,” I said.

She raised her right eyebrow. “You flew to the moon on a winged boat,” she said. “I think perhaps you need to be more flexible in your thinking.”

“I didn’t fly here on purpose,” I said. “You brought me here. I’ve enjoyed the dream-beers and the conversation, and your hair looks nice, by the way. But you didn’t bring me here to celebrate. So what is it you want?”

“I trust you,” she said. “You, of all men.”

“You don’t need me,” I said. “You’re soon to be a goddess. You’ll have clouds full of Angels and pews full of priests, all at your beck and call.”

“You’re wrong. The moment I stop being Stitches, I’ll need you more than ever. I won’t become the thing I hate. I won’t become a monster. Because you’ll kill me first.”

“Kill you?” I stood. “Is that what all this has been about? You set me up to be your assassin, if you get too big for your britches on a cosmic scale?”

“I set nothing up. I ask this as a friend.”

“Was the girl in the pool your friend?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Were it not for her, I would have lived and died in that valley, twenty centuries ago. I would be dust now. Forgotten. Insignificant. Vanished.”

“I don’t want to live twenty centuries,” I said. “I don’t want any of this.”

“Neither did I,” she replied. “Dammit. Neither did I.”

I stood there like a fool, in my Captain’s cap with its gold-braid embroidered trim and my dark blue nightgown with its mismatched red belt.

Finally, I sat.

“I guess maybe I can believe that,” I said. “So what do we do now? How do we go on living, knowing what we know?”

“I will remain here, for a time,” she replied. “Each artifact must be studied. Cataloged. Prepared for transport to a safe location.”

“Evis will have a conniption fit,” I said.

“Inform him of the situation. Tell him I have obtained entry to the vault. Tell him I am preparing to move the contents.”

“Evis knows all this?”

“He knows I have located and mastered a repository of powerful implements, nothing more.”

“I’ll keep it that way.”

She nodded.

“The carnival,” I said. “A toy nearly killed me. It killed dozens, maybe hundreds. Maybe more.”

“Sadly, such contrivances as the toy circus were common, in the summer. The shade of the child—you freed it, you know. You committed no murder. What you did was a mercy.”

“Bullshit.”

“A mercy,” she replied. “Necessary. Long overdue. But a mercy nonetheless.”

“Is that how emerging goddesses define murder, these days?”

“Truth is truth,” she said. She reached across the table, and put her hand on mine. “I have chosen wisely.”

“You’re as crazy as I am,” I said. “Maybe I truly am just dreaming. Boats don’t sprout wings.”

“Tonight they did,” she replied. “Go home, Markhat. Forget all this, for now. Take your boat. Take your wife. Live. There will be time enough for gods and terrors.” She squeezed my hand. “You remind me of Fjalfi. He had your eyes. Oh, and Mama’s black tea? It’s fatal, after long-term ingestion. I’d dump it in the river. Mama means well, but her grasp of herbal pharmacology is lacking. Be well, my friend. And thank you.”

“I’m leaving?”

She nodded. “You are. The best restaurant in Bel Loit is called Granny Mambo’s Feasting Table. Order the Everyday Gumbo. You’ll never have a better meal.”

I squeezed her hand back.

“Whatever happens, Stitches, you’re not a monster.”

“Not yet,” she said. She managed a smile. “Nice hat.”

I fell. I fell all the way from the moon to the sky to my boat and to my body, and when I landed I woke myself up.

A little light showed in the windows. Darla snored. Cornbread yawned and turned, regarding me with sleepy doggy eyes.

I rolled out of bed, quick as a vampire, quiet as a ghost. Darla didn’t stir. Cornbread followed, tail wagging. I rubbed his shaggy head and together we snuck out of the bedroom.

I dressed, then roused Slim. The sun was creeping up. The sky was clear and blue. We rented a wagon and set forth in search of year-old split pine.

Darla will be thrilled. She won’t care where we’re going. Bel Loit or the Sea, it’s all the same to her. We’ll point
Dasher
south and we’ll order Everyday Gumbo at Granny Mambo’s Feasting House and damn the Angels, damn the devils, damn the Heavens, damn the hells.

We’ll be alive. We’ll be in love.

If ever there was a more potent sorcery, it’s not any magic I know.

About the Author

Raised by carnival folk, Frank Tuttle embarked upon his writing career when the bottom dropped out of the freelance weight-guessing market. Despite the dismal failure of his first book series (a trilogy of hat-centered erotica aimed squarely at Romanian trapeze artists), Frank persevered, finally settling atop an abandoned Sears retail store to churn out Markhat books on a restored Underwood typewriter named Mr. Benny.

Frank invites you to visit his website,
www.franktuttle.com
. From there you may visit his weekly blog, view his latest Lafayette County Sheriff’s Department booking photos, or even communicate with him via the wonder of Internet e-mail (
[email protected]
).

Frank welcomes your comments, and will wave to you from his rooftop if you toss up a bag of candy and a fresh pair of socks.

Look for these titles by Frank Tuttle

Now Available:

Markhat Files

The Mister Trophy

The Cadaver Client

Dead Man’s Rain

The Markhat Files

Hold the Dark

The Banshee’s Walk

The Broken Bell

Brown River Queen

The Five Faces

When Death writes your name, there is no erasing it.

The Five Faces

© 2013 Frank Tuttle

The Markhat Files, Book 8

It starts as a typical day in the park, with Markhat tracking a bully the law won’t touch, and promising a little girl he’ll find her missing dog, name of Cornbread.

But as the sun sets over Rannit, a new menace creeps out with the dark. There’s a killer on the loose, and Markhat the finder suspects magic behind the murders. Each victim receives a grisly drawing depicting the place, time, and manner of death. Not a single victim has escaped the brutal fate drawn for them—and now Markhat’s own death-drawing has arrived.

The mighty Dark Houses are also falling, one by one, as terror grips Rannit’s streets. Even sorcerers are dying, their magic failing, their blood spilled as easily as that of any other.

With time and hope running out, Markhat races to outwit a creature that can see outside Time itself. Before the picture of his own death becomes stained with real blood

Warning: The dance moves described herein are not intended for novice trolley operators, and the Publisher assumes no responsibility for any loss of ornamental waterfowl, carrot-enhanced undergarments, or wheeled bathing contrivances. The preceding sentence should be read in the voice of Morgan Freeman and to the accompaniment of a competent string ensemble.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
The Five Faces:

Some sixth sense woke me just before the scrap of paper came sliding under my door.

I found my gun and kept it in hand for the count of ten. But no one knocked. No one tried the latch. Traffic was heavy on Cambrit, both horsedrawn and pedestrian, so I didn’t hear my note-slider leave.

I got up and peeked through my fancy glass anyway. Ogres rushed past, hauling their carts of night soil west toward the tanneries. People walked the streets, squinting in the sun. Mr. Bull pushed his ancient broom across his smooth-worn stoop and maintained an animated conversation with his tireless, silent shadow.

I used the toe of my shoe to push the scrap of paper into the patch of light my door-glass let through. The note had been folded, which meant it might bear hex signs, and the last thing I needed for lunch was a generous portion of killing magic.

I have learned a few things from Mama over the years. I filled a copper pan with moon-shone salt, and lit four white candles, one at each corner of the pan. I spat in the salt three times, and then I used my Army knife to put the note down centered in the salt. I threw three pinches of salt on the paper, turned around three times while holding my breath, and then I used my knife to unfold the note.

I KNOE THE DOG FIGHT MAN,
it read.
METE TONITE ALLEY BY LONGSWAITE AND COOPERS. COME ALONE HOUR PAST CURFEW BRING CROWN I GIVE YOU NAME.

I turned the paper over. It was half of one of the nuisance waybills the Regent outlawed right after he outlawed the newspapers. This one advertised a stage play from last summer.

I cussed some. Odds are a weedhead or a street kid was paid to slip the note under my door. They probably didn’t know much, but they could have given me a place to start looking, and since I’d been napping I didn’t even have that.

But I had enough to find my hat and check my revolver and head out my door. The address on the note could wait. I had Mr. Penny’s warehouse to visit.

The sun was bright and cheery. I pulled my hat down against the glare and waved at Mr. Bull’s muttered greeting.

Mama was right. I spotted four Watchmen before I had time to blink twice. Courtesy demanded I just stroll up to the closest one and give him my agenda for the day, but I recalled Captain Holder’s beet-red face and decided to put his shiny new Watch to the test.

Three blocks. Three blocks, two cabs, an alley, and a hat store. That’s all it took to elude the Watch and emerge from the alley by Cape and Sons Shoe Repair unencumbered by the vigilant gaze of law and order.

I walked another two blocks, just to be sporting. The Watch never showed. I watched a street mime get slapped in the face by a black-clad nanny wearing an enormous birdcage hat and then I hailed a cab and headed for the docks, whistling all the way.

It was a still day. The docks reeked, and the press of sweaty, working bodies only added to the palpable aroma of the place. I wasn’t sure even Mama’s homemade lye soap would ever get the stink out of my new white shirt.

I had to backtrack a couple of times, but I found Roy’s. From there, I followed Mr. Penny’s weed-addled directions—a block west, a block north, find the alley with the whitewashed bricks. I managed all that easily enough, still keeping an eye out for Captain Holder’s men. I wasn’t followed.

I watched the mouth of that alley for half an hour, trying to decide if anyone was keeping track of nosey pedestrians and perhaps applying blunt instruments to inquisitive noggins. Seeing nothing but the usual, tireless scurry of alley rats, I sauntered into the gaping dark.

The first right Penny predicted appeared halfway down the alley. It was a narrow path, constructed of rubble that curved away for ten yards before ending in a heap of broken bricks and rotting lumber.

But there, to my left, was a weather-beaten door.

I stood in the stinking shadows and listened. Aside from the pitter-patter of busy rat feet, I heard nothing but street noise.

I put my ear to the door. Again, nothing.

I pushed.

It wasn’t locked. I pulled my revolver and flung the door wide open.

No one asked me my name. No one demanded ten coppers. I saw a makeshift table just beyond the door and a pair of cast-off chairs beneath it. Trash covered the floor.

Rats scurried, but nothing else.

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. There were no windows, but enough sun slanted down from gaps in the roof to light my way ahead.

The room was long and narrow. A path led through the trash to another door set in the far wall. I made my way there, wary of any movement from the heaps of debris that surrounded me.

The second door was new. It featured a massive, brass lock and a hefty, iron bar. The lock was disengaged. The bar wasn’t set in place.

And the sturdy new door was ajar.

I sidled up to it and took a quick peek, well aware that in doing so I made my handsome silhouette a perfect target for anyone hiding in the shadows beyond.

I saw only darkness and a set of narrow wooden stairs leading steeply down.

I wrinkled my nose. The air wafting up from below smelled of blood. Blood, and rotting garbage, and something else—something familiar.

Dogs.

Six months training as a handler. Five years in the tunnels, finding Troll dens down deep.

Some things you never forget. Drink as you might, you never forget.

An oil lantern hung on a nail by the door. It was three-quarters full, and the wick had been recently trimmed.

I left it there.

Another thing you never forget is that the only way to survive the dark is to become a part of it.