Book 03 - Cold Copper Tears Read Free

eats everything but the woodwork. Maybe it’s the
only time he gets to eat real cooking.
    Dean is good for that. Sometimes I claim it’s the only
reason I keep him on. Sometimes I believe what I say.
    We hadn’t had a strange face in for a while, which spurred
Dean to one of his better efforts. That and the fact that Pokey can
lay it on with a shovel when he wants and Dean is addicted to
everybody’s flattery but mine.
    Pokey leaned back and patted his stomach, drenched Dean with a
bucket of bullhooly, belched, and looked at me. “So
let’s have it, Garrett.”
    I lifted an eyebrow. It’s one of my best tricks. I’m
working on my ear-wiggling. I know the ladies will love that.
    “You took on a client you want to farm out,” Pokey
went on without waiting. “Good-looking woman with style,
I’d guess, or she wouldn’t have gotten past Dean. And
if she had, you wouldn’t have listened to her.”
    Had he been listening at the keyhole? “Regular deductive
genius isn’t he, Dean?”
    “If you say so, sir.”
    “I don’t. He was probably hanging around trying to
beg crumbs from our castoffs.” I told Pokey the story. All I
left out was the size of the retainer. He didn’t need to know
that.
    “Sounds like she’s running a game,” Pokey
agreed. “You said Jill Craight?”
    “That’s the name she gave. You know it?”
    “Seems like I should. Can’t put a finger on
why.” He used his pinkie to scratch the inside of his ear.
“Couldn’t have been important.”
    Dean produced a peach cobbler, something he’d never do
without company present. It was hot. He buried it in whipped cream.
Then he served tea. Pokey went to work like he wanted to store up
fat for the next ice age.
    Afterwards we leaned back, and Pokey lighted one of those savage
little black stink sticks he favors, then went to catching me up on
the news. I hadn’t been out of the house for days. Dean
hadn’t kept me posted. He hoped silence would drive me out.
He never says so but he worries when I’m not working.
    “The big news is Glory Mooncalled did it again.”
    “What now?” Glory Mooncalled and the war in the
Cantard are special interests around my house. When he’s
awake the Dead Man makes a hobby of trying to predict the
unpredictable, the mercenary Mooncalled.
    “He ambushed Firelord Sedge at Rapistan Sands. Ever heard
of it?”
    “No.” That was no surprise. Glory Mooncalled was
operating farther into the Venageti Cantard than any Karentine
before him. “He took Sedge out?” It was a safe guess;
his ambushes had yet to fail.
    “Thoroughly. How many left on his list?”
    “Not many. Maybe three.” Mooncalled had begun his
war on the Venageti side. The Venageti War Council had managed to
tick him off so bad he’d come over to Karenta vowing to
collect their heads. He’d been picking them off ever
since.
    He’s become a folk hero for us ordinary slobs and a big
pain in the patoot for the ruling class, though he’s winning
their war. His easy victories have shown them to be the
incompetents we’ve always known they are.
    Pokey said, “What happens when he’s done and all of
a sudden we don’t have a war for the first time since before
any of us were born?”
    The Dead Man had an answer. I didn’t think it would go
over with Pokey. I changed the subject. “What’s the
latest on the temple scandals?” Playmate had tried to give me
the scoop but his heart hadn’t been in it. The scandals
weren’t the circus for him they were for me. His religious
side was embarrassed by the antics of our self-anointed spiritual
shepherds.
    “Nothing new. Plenty of finger-pointing. Lot of ‘I
was framed.’ On the retail level it’s still at the
swinging-drunks-in the-tavern stage.”
    For now. It would turn grim if Prester Legate Warden Agire and
his Terrell Relics didn’t turn up.
    Agire was one of the top ten priests of the squabbling family of
sects we lump together as Orthodox. His title Prester indicated his
standing in