Book 1 - Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook Page B

the peacock place.
    “Of what?”
    “He said Kronk was killed
during
the Venageti
thing. Not
by
the Venageti.”
    “An imprecision due entirely to laziness, no
doubt.”
    “Probably. But that’s the kind of detail you keep an
ear out for. Sometimes they add up to a picture people don’t
know they’re giving you, like brush strokes add up to a
painting.”
     
    The peacocks raised thirteen kinds of hell when they discovered
us. They crowed like they hadn’t had anything to holler about
for years.
    “My god,” I murmured. “She hasn’t
changed a bit.”
    “She was always old and ugly?” Morley asked, staring
at the woman who observed our approach from a balcony on the side
of the house.
    “Hasn’t even changed her clothes. Careful with her.
She’s some kind of half-hulder witch.”
    A little man in a green suit and red stocking cap raced across
our path cackling something in a language I didn’t
understand. Morley grabbed a rock and started to throw it. I
stopped him. “What’re you doing?”
    “They’re vermin, Garrett. Maybe they run on their
hind legs and make noises that sound like speech, but they’re
as much vermin as any rat.” But he let the rock drop.
    I have definite feelings about rats, even the kind that walk on
their hind legs and talk and do socially useful things like dig
graves. I understood Morley’s mood if not his particular
prejudice.
    The Old Witch—I never heard her called anything
else—grinned down at us. Hers was a classic gap-toothed grin.
She looked like every witch from every witch story you’ve
ever heard. There was no shaking my certainty that it was
deliberate.
    A mad cackle floated down. The peafowl answered as though to one
of their own.
    “Spooky,” Morley said.
    “That’s her image. Her game. She’s
harmless.”
    “So you say.”
    “That was the word on her when I was here before. Crazy as
a gnome on weed, but harmless.”
    “Nobody who harbors those little vipers is harmless. Or
blameless. You let them skulk around your garden, they breed like
rabbits, and first thing you know they’ve driven all the
decent folk away with their malicious tricks.”
    We were up under the balcony now. I forbore mentioning his
earlier response to a gardener’s bigotry. It wouldn’t
have done any good. Folks always believe their own racism is the
result of divine inspiration, incontestably valid.
    My dislike for rat people is, of course, the exception to the
rule of irrationality underlying such patterns of belief.
    The Old Witch cackled again, and the peafowl took up the chorus
once more. She called down, “He was murdered, you
know.”
    “Who was?” I asked.
    “The man you were looking for, Private Garrett. Syndic
Klaus. They think no one knows. But they are wrong. They were seen.
Weren’t they, my little pretties?”
    “How did you . . . ?”
    “You think you and that girl could sneak through here
night after night, running to that cemetery to slake your lusts,
without the little people noticing? They tell me everything, they
do. And I never forget a name or a face.”
    “Did I say they were vermin?” Morley demanded.
“Lurking in the shadows of tombstones watching you. And
probably laughing their little black hearts out because there is no
sight more ridiculous than people coupling.”
    Maybe I reddened a little, but otherwise I ignored him.
“Who killed him?” I asked. “And why?”
    “We could name some names, couldn’t we, my little
pretties? But to what purpose? There is no point now.”
    “Could you at least tell me why he was killed?”
    “He found out something that was not healthy for him to
know.” She cackled again. The peafowl cheered her on. It was
a great joke. “Didn’t he, my little pretties?
Didn’t he?”
    “What might that have been?”
    The laughter left her face and eyes. “You won’t be
hearing it from me. Maybe that machuska Kayean knows. Ask her when
you find her. Or maybe she doesn’t. I don’t know. And I
don’t