liked, but one could never have too many friends in a strange place. She raised a skeptical eyebrow.
The guards said, “Who are you?”
And, “Where’d you get these people?”
And, “We’re not expecting any John Cockle.”
And, “What do you want?”
He turned back to them and stretched his empty hands even wider.
“I understand your caution, gentlemen. I applaud you, in fact. A man who is not wary out here in these days is a dead man soon enough. A case in point is your poor friend who was leading these men through the wilderness here to be healed; oh, he looked all around for bandits and Hillfolk and bloody-handed Agents, sure enough, but did he look down? He did not. And a snake got his ankle. There in the hot sun I found him, slumped against a red rock, raving.”
The guards spat and swore and angrily kicked at rocks and dust. “Who? One of us? Shit. Who?”
“Mr. Elgin. He clutched my hand as I bent over to hear his last words and told me his name. Poor man. The black swell and the stink of his poor ankle, gentlemen! The flies, and the carrion-eaters overhead, circling!”
He whirled his hands dramatically to indicate the circling of vultures, and watched the guards go pale.
“I knew from a mile off I would see some horror beneath those terrible birds; I was not wrong. I am no doctor, and I could not save him.”
He gingerly lowered a hand, to gesture at a bloodstain on his shirt, courtesy of Kloan, which he’d noticed the guards taking an interest in.
“I bled the wound, but I fear I may have only hastened his end. A blunderer like me is worse than no doctor at all; my respect for your vocation knows no bounds, gentlemen. I’d like you more were you to lower your rifles, mind.”
They didn’t.
“Here!” Creedmoor produced from his coat—moving slowly—the dead man’s papers. He waved them in the air until one of the white-clad men snatched them away. “He clutched my arm and said, Save them. Promise me. I did. I could not in conscience leave these poor creatures out in the wasteland to die. What sort of monster would I be, to do that? What else could I do but to take up their rope and lead them to you?”
They remained wary. They whispered to each other.
“Where did Elgin die?”
He told them.
“Long way from anywhere. What were you doing out there?”
“Isn’t it obvious, gentlemen? I’m a traveling poet. Song, jest, good humor, and so on and so on. A clown, I guess. I’d juggle this instant if I did not fear you might shoot me. And, being good with words, I also do a little lawyering—I’ll draw up your contracts or argue your case if you’re in the unlucky situation of needing me. And perhaps I’d been traveling with the good Dr. Sloop and his emporium, you may have heard of him, and Professor Harry Ransome and his electrical apparatus, and there’d been a dispute over the affections of the dancing girl, and I struck out on my own in unfamiliar country and frankly, gentlemen, got lost as all hell and—”
“What do you want?”
“I’ll get to the point, shall I? I hope to be paid for my efforts. Your charges would have died in the wilderness if not for me. I am not a young man, and I’ve walked for days. Will you not at least give me a bed for the night for my troubles?”
Liv stood close to Maggfrid. She did not know what to make of this strange man. He was handsome in an awful sort of a way, though not young. He unnerved her. His skin was leathered and his clothes were torn and filthy, and in Koenigswald, he would have been taken for a vagrant and accommodation would have been made for him in an institution. But out here, things were different, and who could say what he was? He had the confidence of an aristocrat. His eyes were laughing.
Liv noticed that her guide was not nervous, or even interested; he stood by the asses smoking a foul cigarette and idly counting the money she’d paid him. The guards at the gate were wary, but they had been wary of her, too. They were wary people here at the House Dolorous.
Cockle grinned at her; she nodded politely but guardedly.
She watched the men haggle over Cockle’s payment. She coughed once, politely, to ask if she might perhaps be allowed to enter; they had already