Book 13 - Gilded Latten Bones by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

of employment.”
    “But . . .” I didn’t want my little ratgirl involved in something deadly. Not again.
    Belinda set a brisk pace when she had a goal. She returned with the essentials for letter writing before I finished inventorying improvements in Morley’s condition.
    “I brought extra paper. I’ll write a letter of my own, for Singe to pass on to John Stretch. I may have work to subcontract.”
    She was in the red zone. Somebody was going to get hurt.
    I hoped that wouldn’t be her. Or Morley. Or, especially, me.
    “I should send a note to Tinnie, too.”

17
    I did write a letter. It seemed futile once I finished. I didn’t have it delivered. Tinnie knew what was going on. Anything I said wouldn’t change her mind.
    My dearly beloved had become fixed in her attitudes. She didn’t let facts get in the way of her making up her mind. My friends thought that was my fault. Tinnie and I had a long history. When I stood up on my hind legs she would pack the attitude in. But I did let stuff slide because it was easier to go along.

    I was supposed to be guarding someone, not known to be alive, in a hideout where nobody would think to look. The engineer of the hidery hadn’t been successful. Somebody had tried the window already. A guard had lost his life. Then, scarcely an hour after Belinda went away, the last person I expected to see ambled into the room.
    DeeDee and Crush were with me, DeeDee worshipping Morley with her too-young eyes, while Crush plotted some means of getting the best of her mother once Morley came around.
    I got into weird stuff but not this kind of weird, where a mother looks younger than her daughter and acts it, both of them being professional ladies, fiercely competitive, and desperately eager for positive feedback from a man claimed by a bad woman from far above them in the food chain.
    I finished nailing the window shut. “Most excellent, Garrett. A job well-done.” I heard the soft scrape of a foot on hallway carpet. I turned.
    Deal Relway came in. The Director himself. The terrible swift sword of the law, older and more worn than when last I saw him. I had heard that he never left the Al-Khar anymore. Too many outsiders wanted to break his bones.
    He was a little guy, and ugly. Sometime way back an impudent dwarf had taken a climb through the family tree, plucking forbidden fruit. Additional members of the Other Races had contributed over the generations.
    Relway’s minions were too efficient. He had arrived with no more warning than his shoe brushing the nap of the carpet. He looked around, said, “About what I expected. You ladies finish what you’re doing and go.”
    They had no idea who he was. I told them, “It’s all right. He’s no enemy.”
    Frowning, unsure, they drifted out into a house saturated with red tops.
    Relway studied Morley. “Hard to believe.”
    “Bad luck can catch up with anybody. What brings you in out of the smoke?”
    “The hope that I might learn something helpful in dealing with a problem that’s been nagging me almost since you dropped out.” His tone and mannerisms were casual. He was more comfortable than when last I had seen him.
    “You do understand where you are? Whose place you’ve entered without invitation?”
    “Not something that concerns me. Her interests and mine coincide right now. Down the road I’ll probably shut her down.”
    “It’s good to be confident. But you, sir, are going to die young. And when you do you’ll refuse to believe that it could happen to you.”
    Relway was neither devastated nor confused. I kind of felt sorry for him. I didn’t know what I was talking about, either.
    “You’ve been out of action for a while, Garrett. The paradigms have shifted.”
    “Many casualties? Much property damage?” I wasn’t sure what a paradigm was. He didn’t look likely to explain. “Good for you. But what about right here, right now?”
    “Let us readjust and reassess. At the moment I have no interest in what