Book 11 - Whispering Nickel Idols Read Free Page A

satisfying
thwock
! on the back of his skull.
    The other two hairy boys started to charge, too, but became
distracted as their pelts started to crawl with tiny people armed with
tiny weapons. Really, really sharp little weapons. All crusty brown
with poison.
    Singe leaned down from the porch roof, poking around with a rapier.
Its tip was all crusty, too. She’d picked up Morley’s wicked habit.
    Saucerhead grabbed the guy in the street, slapped him till he
stopped wiggling, tucked the guy under one arm, then asked, “What’re
you into now?”
    “I don’t got a clue,” I said. “You didn’t break that guy, did you?”
    “He’s breathing. He’ll wake up. Might wish that he didn’t, though,
when he does. You want to go clubbing tonight?”
    “Can’t. I’ve got a command performance. Chodo’s birthday party.”
    “Yeah? Hey! Is that
tonight
? Damn! I forgot. I’m supposed
to.work security.” Tharpe started walking away.
    “Hey!”
    “Oh. Yeah. What do you want me to do with this guy?”
    “Put him down and head on out. Relway’s Runners are coming.”
    An urban police force sounds like a good idea. And it is. If it
don’t go getting in your way. Which it’s likely to do if you spend time
tiptoeing around the edge of the law.
    Three Watchmen materialized. Two were regular patrolmen. The third
was a Relway Runner. Scithe.
    He recognized me, too. “You just draw trouble, Garrett.” He eyed my
house nervously. The Runners are the visible face of the secret police,
known by their red flop caps and military weaponry. They have a lot of
power but don’t like getting inside reading range of mind-peekers like
the Dead Man.
    I said, “He’s asleep.”
    Nothing lies more convincingly than the truth. My reassuring Scithe
assured him only that the Dead Man was pawing through every dark recess
of his empty skull.
    He stuck to his job, though. “What were these guys up to, Garrett?”
    “Trying to kick my door in.” He had to ask. I know. I have to ask a
lot of dumb stuff, too. Because you have to have the answers to build
toward more significant stuff.
    “Why?”
    “You’ll have to ask them. I’ve never seen them before. I’d remember.
Look at those pants.” While we chatted, the patrolmen bound the hairy
boys’ wrists. “There’s another one of those inside, guys. My man’s got
the drop on him.” I moved toward the character that Saucerhead dropped.
I wanted to ask questions before they dragged him off to an Al-Khar
cell.
    A patrolman called from the house, “This asshole won’t cooperate,
Scithe.”
    “Keep hitting him. His attitude will improve.” Scithe blew his
whistle.
    Seconds after, whistles answered from all directions.
    I stirred the unconscious man with my foot. “These guys have a
foreign look.”
    Scithe grunted. “I can tell right off you’re a trained detective.
You realized no local tailor would ruin his reputation that way.
People! Gather round. What happened here?” He was talking to onlookers
who’d come out to be entertained.
    Amazing changes are going on. Astonishing changes. Several
Karentines admitted having witnessed something.
And
they were
willing to talk about it. The more traditional response, after the law
caught and hog-tied a potential witness, would be protestations of
blindness brought on by congenital deafness having spread to the eyes.
In times past actual witnesses often could not speak Karentine despite
having been born in the kingdom.
    Relway was having way too much success selling civic responsibility.
    My pixies were old-school, though.
    Witnesses agreed that the Ugly Pants Gang just came up and started
trying to break in, ignoring onlookers like they expected to do
whatever they wanted, fearing no comebacks.
    I tickled the down character with my toe, near his groin, in case he
was playing possum.
    “Garrett.” Scithe wagged a finger. “No, no.”
    “The victim of the crime should be able to get a vague notion why
somebody wants to bust up his