Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online

triplets, actually.” He responded to my unspoken question, “But with different mothers, actually.”
    Triplets with different mothers. Right. I didn’t ask. Making sense out of the things human folks tell me is brain strain enough.
    “What the hell are you doing here?”
    “Morley Dotes sent us, actually.”
    “What the hell for? Actually?” One of the big grolls growled at me. I used my fingers to sculpt a friendly smile.
    “To help in the Cantard.”
    The villain himself, Morley Dotes, had sneaked on stage. “So you decided you want the job, eh?”
    “At the moment there are certain advantages, where my creditors are concerned, to my being both employed and being out of town,” Morley replied.
    “And you thought you’d gather all your friends under the umbrella of that advantage? Like maybe my principal wouldn’t think of putting a bottom in my expense pot?”
    “If you would use half that vaunted detective brain of yours, you would bless my vision.”
    “It’s too early in the morning for me to remember my name. Enlighten me, O Illustrious One.”
    “Consider mules.”
    “Mules? What the hell do mules have to do with it?”
    “We’re going into the Cantard. No one will risk loaning or renting us mounts or pack animals. We’ll have to buy. On the other hand, wages for Doris and Marsha will run about what it would cost for a brace of good mules. And they can carry twice the load twice as long. And they’re a hell of a lot more use in a fight.”
    That made sense. Good sense. But . . . “What about friend Dojango?”
    Morley sighed. “Yes. Dojango Roze. Well, Garrett, they won’t break up the set.”
    I do believe I scowled. “You sticking me with deadwood?”
    “Dojango can lift a blade. He can sniff out water and find firewood. He can understand Doris and Marsha. If you keep an eye on him, he can cook an edible meal without burning anything too badly.”
    “I’m trying not to slobber in anticipation.” I scanned the triplets who had different mothers. They grinned groll good fellowship. They figured Morley had sold me.
    Dotes said, “Keep Dojango away from the juice and he’ll do all right.”
    Everyone knows breeds cannot handle their booze. Dojango’s grin became apologetic.
    “How much is this road show going to burn me?”
    Morley tossed out an outrageous figure. I slammed the door and went back to bed. He had one of the big triplets lift him so he could yell numbers through the broken window. I faked a mean snore till some interesting integers began rattling around behind me. In fact, Morley was so pliable I began wondering how bad his creditor situation was. I did not need more complications than I already had.
    “It’s your diet that makes you so stubborn, you know that, don’t you, Garrett? All that red meat filled with the juices stirred by the terror of the murdered beast, and you never exercising so you sweat them out of your own body.”
    “I figured it was something like that, Morley. That, too much beer, and not enough green, leafy veggies.”
    “Cattails, Garrett. The white hearts down near the roots of the young plant, diced into a tossed salad. Not only tasty, but informed with an almost mystical capacity for lightening the burden of guilt lying upon the carnivore’s soul.”
    “Horsepucky.” When I was in the Marines we raided an island where the Venageti promptly cut us off from our ships and drove us into a swamp. Cattails were a mainstay of our diet till the fortunes of war shifted. I don’t recall them doing anything remarkable for the temperaments of our sergeants and corporals, who seemed carnivorous enough to eat their own young. Rather the opposite, in a geometric progression.
    I know we all took it out on the Venageti when the time came.
    Maybe I did not start eating cattails young enough. “Morley, I did a job for a professor at the university one time. He was always spouting who-cares facts. Like one time when he said there are two hundred