Faded Steel Heat by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

an easy victim.
    I felt good. I had an accommodation with the law   —which would work for me because Max Weider is a municipal treasure.
    It was a gorgeous day, a tad warm but with a nice breeze, a few scurrying clouds dancing on a sky so blue it defined the color for all time. It was the kind of day that makes us daytime people feel good. The kind of day when people laugh, visit friends not seen for a while, conceive children. The kind of day when bloodlettings are few and even the scroats take time off to appreciate what a wonderful world it can be. It was the kind of day when Relway’s crew might get into mischief because they had too much time on their hands.
    I headed east and north. It was time I visited an old friend of my own.
    The streets were crowded but the activists were having trouble working up much indignation. If the weather held, the coffinmakers and crematoria would catch up and have to cut pieces.
    A centaur clip-clopped past. He wore an old army blanket. I couldn’t make out the regimental mark. He couldn’t be real bright. If that blanket was loot and not a Crown issue to an auxiliary formation, possession could get him killed.
    Some days it could anyway.
    He was drunk. He didn’t care.
    The air above swarmed with pixies and fairies and whatnot, the young ones tormenting the pigeons. That wouldn’t earn them any enemies who weren’t pigeons themselves.
    Birds were out courting, too. I noted a few hawks and peregrines way up high. The little people better stay alert... A dimwit peregrine dived at a pixie girl. It drew a flurry of poisoned darts. The wee folk were using the nice day to educate a new generation of predators.
    It’s a pity people are stupider than falcons. Otherwise, we could teach them not to prey on their own kind.
    On days like this, when everyone comes out to soak up the warm, it seems impossible that so many beings live in this city. But TunFaire is really several cities occupying the same site. There are evening peoples and night peoples and morning peoples who never see one another. It is both an accommodation and a way of life. It used to work.
    The tip of a wing whipped across the back of my hair. The Goddamn Parrot was showing off for his plain-feathered cousins. “I know a Yessiley place where they put pigeon in everything they cook. And they don’t care if the pigeon is really a pigeon.”
    “Awk! I want to soar with eagles and am forced —”
    “You want me to call one of those hawks down? They’ll soar with you.”
    “Help!”
    “Hey, Mister. Does your bird really talk?”
    “Hush, Bertie. The man’s a ventriloquist.” Bertie’s mom gave me a look that said I ought to be ashamed, trying to scam people with an innocent bird.
    “You’re probably right, ma’am. Why don’t you take the poor creature and give him a decent home?”
    The air crackled around woman and child so swift was their departure.
    Nobody wanted poor old lovable Mr. Big.
     
     

11
    The place has pretensions toward being a class eatery. It doesn’t compete for the Yessiley trade. Its fashionable dishes never include anything harder to catch than squash or eggplant. Its name varies with the mood of its owner, Morley Dotes. The Palms is the moniker he’s hung on it lately. His target clientele has gone from being blackhearted second-string underworlders foregathering to plot, negotiate, or arrange an expedient truce to upscale subjects foregathering to plot, negotiate, or arrange an expedient truce.
    The staff, however, is a constant.
    It was an off-peak hour when I invited myself into Morley’s place. Diners of any station were conspicuous by their absence. Staff were making preparations for the hour when the crowd would show. Morley’s new gimmick was a money cow. The place reeked prosperity.
    “Shee-it! I done thunk we was shut of dis perambulatin’ sack a horse apples.”
    “Better watch using words like perambulate, Sarge. You’ll throw your tongue out of joint.” How long