Storey settled down only after, for a moment, it looked like Trail had suffered a stroke. Several shifters bled liberally. The silver fetters took the strength right out of them. Trace whimpered like a whipped puppy. The voice of the guy who’d been in the stable and on the stair to Tom’s room said, “We should’ve killed the sonofabitch when we had the chance.” I couldn’t tell if he meant me or Storey.
The boys from Brotherhood of the Wolf were chained to the next pillar over. Several seemed stricken. They saw faces they recognized. Faces that belonged to people who weren’t even human. People who had been manipulating them…A glance at Gerris Genord told me he’d figured that out already. Maybe while he was in the Al-Khar, maybe even the night he killed Lancelyn Mac. Maybe he knew the key answer, too.
Who.
I had an idea, name of Mooncalled. Only I couldn’t make him fit. Going strictly by the available evidence, Marengo North English seemed more likely.
There was no coolness toward Genord on the part of the other Wolves. Block and Relway hadn’t sold them a thing. They trusted their buddy. Kind of touching, that. These days trust is moribund and fading fast.
It did mean I had guessed wrong about Genord not being the commando type. It takes going through hell with a man to develop that kind of trust. I asked Genord, “You want to put somebody on the spot?”
He looked through me. He wasn’t going to tell me jack. If there was any settlement due, his pals would handle it. We couldn’t hold them forever.
That attitude came out of the going through hell together, too. I remember that attitude. I miss it. But all the guys I shared it with are gone. I’m left with just the pale ghost of it in my friendships with Morley and a few others.
An uproar loud enough for all the guests to hear erupted out in the kitchen. Neersa Bintor bellowed like an angry she-elephant. Before I finished making sure everybody didn’t rush that way and thereby leave the rest of the mansion unwatched, the big woman stormed into the great hall. She had a body over her shoulder, a shifter caught in mid-change, flopping like a crippled snake. In her off hand she carried a kitchen maul that looked like it could be used to drive the stakes that hold up circus tents. She searched the gawking crowd, spotted me, flung the shifter from thirty feet away. It left some skin on the uncarpeted floor.
“I an’ I, I be tryin’ to manage de kitchen, you Garrett, you. You be gettin’ me better help dan dat t’ief, you. You be keepin’ you rat out a dere, too, you.” Behind her Pular Singe managed to look sheepish and proud at the same time. She’d winkled out the interloper.
It occurred to me that we’d neglected our obligation to inform Neersa Bintor of our full plans. Not an oversight the goddess of the cast iron would easily forgive. In the heirarchy of the Weider mansion Neersa Bintor ranked right behind Max and, just possibly, Manvil Gilbey.
I apologized profusely in front of the mob. A certain gaudily costumed woodpecker had a grand laugh at my expense. “Lend me your cane there, Storey.” I whacked the side of the settling tank three or four times. The bird said “Gleep!” and flew back to his perch on the chandelier.
“You listen, you bird-boy, you. I an’ I got no room in my kitchen for vermin, be dey talk or no. You unnerstan’, you? I will catch my own t’iefs, I an’ I.” The shifter at my feet stirred. Neersa Bintor raised a prodigious sensible shoe, brought it down hard, then exorcised her venom through a hearty application of her maul. She kept her foot in place while a couple of Guards got the changer fitted with chains.
I whispered to Singe, as though she hadn’t understood what had been said, “Maybe you’d better stay out of the kitchen.”
She whispered back, “You tink so, you?”
Singe the wonder child. She was being sarcastic. “Yeah. Scoot.” When I turned back to the crowd I saw the Bintor phenomenon withdrawing.
I told the Guardsmen, “You guys better get this thing shackled to its friends before it remembers what kingdom it’s in.” I suspected the passivity shown by the changers was partly due to their psychic connection, which must be charged with a communal sense of despair.
Block, near Relway, beckoned impatiently.