Book 03 - Cold Copper Tears by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

nonhuman
blood, nonhuman being defined as anybody of quarter blood or more
who wants to revoke his human rights and privileges forever.
Lately, though, the press gangs had been grabbing anybody who
couldn’t produce a parent or grandparent on the spot.
That’s what happened to the captains of the Travelers, though
they were breeds.
    Maya said, “So you want a couple of chukos off your
back.”
    “No. I want you to know they’re there. If they
bother me I’ll just knock their heads together.”
    She looked at me hard.
    Maya has a byzantine mind. Whatever she does she has a motive
behind her surface motive. She isn’t yet wise enough to know
that not everyone thinks that way.
    “There’re a couple of farmer types staying at the
Blue Bottle, using the names Smith and Smith. If somebody was to
run a Murphy on them and it was to turn out that they had
documents, I’d be interested in buying them.” That was
spur of the moment but would satisfy Maya’s need for a hidden
motive.
    It couldn’t be that I just wanted to see how she was
doing. That would mean somebody cared. She couldn’t handle
that.
    I paused at the door. “Dean says he’s whomping up
something special for supper. And a lot of it.” Then I got
out.
    I hit the street and stopped to count my limbs. They were all
there, but they were shaky. Maybe they have more sense than my head
does. They know every time I go in there I run the chance of
becoming fish bait.
     
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11
    Dean was waiting to open the door. He looked rattled.
“What happened?”
    “That man Crask came.”
    Oh. Crask was a professional killer. “What did he want?
What did he say?”
    “He didn’t say anything. He doesn’t have
to.”
    He doesn’t. Crask radiates menace like a skunk radiates a
bad smell.
    “He brought this.”
    Dean gave me a piece of heavy paper folded into an envelope. It
was a quarter-inch thick. I bounced it on my hand. “Something
metal. Draw me a pitcher.” As he headed for the kitchen I
told him, “Maya might turn up tonight. See that she eats
something and slip her a bar of soap. Don’t let her steal
anything you’re going to miss.”
    I went into the office, sat, placed Crask’s envelope on
the desk, my name facing me, and left it alone until Dean brought
that golden draft from the fountain of youth. He poured me a mug. I
drained it.
    He poured again and said, “You’re going to get more
than you bargained for if you keep trying to do something for those
kids.”
    “They need a friend in the grown-up world, Dean. They need
to see there’s somebody decent out there, that the world
isn’t all shadow-eat-shadow and the prizes go to the guys
who’re the hardest and nastiest.”
    He faked surprise. “It isn’t that way?”
    “Not yet. Not completely. A few of us are trying to fight
a rearguard action by doing a good deed here and there.”
    He gave me one of his rare sincere smiles and headed for the
kitchen. Maya would eat better than Jill and I if she bothered to
show.
    Dean approved of my efforts. He just wanted to remind me that my
most likely reward would be a broken head and a broken heart.
    I wasn’t going to get into heaven or hell letting
Crask’s present lie there. I broke the kingpin’s wax
seal.
    Someone had wrapped two pieces of card stock tied together with
string. I cut the string. Inside I found a tuft of colorless hair
and four coins. The coins were glued to one card. One coin was
gold, one was copper, and two were silver. They were of identical
size, about half an inch in diameter, and looked alike except for
the metal. Three were shiny new. One of the silver pieces was so
worn its designs were barely perceptible. All four were temple
coinage.
    Old style characters, a language not Karentine, a date not
Royal, apparent religious symbology, lack of the King’s bust
on the obverse, were all giveaways. Crown coinage always shows the
King and brags on him. Commercial coinage shouts the wonders of the
coiner’s goods or