Book 03 - Cold Copper Tears Read Free Page A

the hierarchy, at about the level of a duke. Legate was
an imperial appointment, supposedly plenipotentiary, in reality
powerless. The imperial court persists and postures at Costain but
has had no power for two hundred years. It survives as a useful
political fiction. Warden is the title that matters. It means
he’s the one man in the world entrusted with guardianship of
the Terrell Relics.
    Agire and the Relics had disappeared.
    I don’t know what the Relics are. Maybe nobody but the
Warden does anymore. He’s the only one who ever sees them.
Whatever, they’re holy and precious not only to the Orthodox
factions but to the Church, the Eremitics, the Scottites, the
Canonics, the Cynics, the Ascetics, the Renunciates, and several
Hanite creeds for whom Terrell is only a minor prophet or even an
emissary of the archenemy. The bottom line is that they’re
important to almost all the thousand and one cults with followings
in TunFaire.
    Agire and the Relics had vanished. Everyone assumed the worst.
But something was wrong. Nobody claimed responsibility. Nobody
crowed over having gotten hold of the Relics. That baffled
everybody. Possession of the Relics is a clear claim for the favor
of the gods.
    In the meantime, the whispering war of revelation had
intensified. Priests of various rites had begun whittling away at
rivals by betraying their venalities, corruptions, and sins. It had
begun as border-incident stuff, little priests excoriating one
another for drunkenness, for selling indulgences, for letting their
hands roam during the confessional.
    The fun had spread like fire in a tenement block. Now a day was
incomplete without its disclosure about this or that bishop or
prester or whatnot having fathered a child on his sister, having
poisoned his predecessor, or having embezzled a fortune to buy his
male mistress a forty-eight-room cabin in the country.
    Most of the stories were true. There was so much real dirt,
fabrication wasn’t necessary—which satisfied my cynical
side right down to its bunions. Reputations were getting reaped in
windrows, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of
guys.
    Pokey was bored by the whole business. If he had a weakness it
was his narrowness. His work was his life. He could talk technique
or case histories forever. Otherwise, only food held his
attention.
    I wondered what he did with his money. He lived in a scruffy
one-room walk-up although he worked all the time, sometimes on
several projects at once. When clients didn’t find him, he
went looking. He even went after things—deadly
things—just to satisfy his own curiosity.
    Whatever, he didn’t feel like yakking up old news. His
belly was full. I’d tantalized him with a wicked aroma. He
wanted to get hunting.
    I helped him puff Dean’s ego, then walked him to the door.
I sat down on the stoop to watch him out of sight.
     
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4
    The descending sun played arsonist among high, distant clouds.
There was a light breeze. The temperature was perfect. It was a
time to just lean back and feel content. Not many of those times
fell my way.
    I yelled for beer, then settled in to watch Nature redecorate
the ceiling of the world. I didn’t pay attention to the
street. The little man was there on the stoop, making himself at
home, passing me the big copper bucket of beer he’d brought,
before I noticed him.
    Up to no good? What else? But the beer was Weider’s best
lager. I don’t get it that often.
    He was a teeny dink, all wrinkled and gray, with a cant to his
eyes and a yellow of tooth that suggested a big dollop of nonhuman
blood. I didn’t know him. That was all right. There are a lot
of people I don’t know, but I wondered if he was one of the
ones I wanted to keep on not knowing.
    “Thanks. Good beer.”
    “Mr. Weider said you’d appreciate it.”
    I’d done a job for Weider, rooting out an in-house theft
ring without getting his guilty children too dirty. To discourage a
relapse the old man kept me on retainer. I