“I thank you, Victor. And your House. I really do. But I’ll not abuse your generosity. I don’t see where the interests of Avalante and my case meet, in this instance.”

“I concur. They do not. Nevertheless, I am compelled to ask.”

“Thanks. But no thanks.”

Something like a smile flickered across those cold blue lips.

“I expected no less. In that case, I am instructed to give you this.”

From within his billowing silks, he produced a polished oak box.

“Brandy? Chocolates? A bill for the carriages I’ve borrowed?”

Damned if the halfdead didn’t actually snicker.

“It is a weapon. A weapon of last resort. Evis warns you against using it, unless the need is dire and the alternative is certain death.”

I took the box. It was heavy, and it could have used a handle, since my mere mortal hands didn’t have the grip of a vampire.

“Thank you,” I said. “I am again in your debt, and indebted to your House.”

“Well spoken. Good luck, finder.”

“To you too.”

And then he was gone, closing the door behind him.

There was a chair. And the angel still looked lonesome. So I sat, and put the heavy oak box in my lap.

“Let’s see what you are,” I said aloud. I found the latch and pushed. It clicked with the peculiar bright click of freshly oiled brass.

I lifted the lid and peered inside.

Chapter Twenty-One

I left Avalante in another borrowed carriage. My driver was a kid. His jacket swallowed him whole.

I figured the dust-up Jerle had alluded to meant the grown-ups were needed on the ramparts. I didn’t figure the kid would be in any more danger atop my carriage than anywhere else in Rannit, so I didn’t put up a fuss.

“Name’s Randal,” said the kid as I stepped up to the rig. “You must be Markhat.”

“If I must, I must,” I said. “How’s school these days?”

“Up yours, grandpa. Where we heading?”

“To the nearest toolshed, if you keep that up.”

He spat and shrugged. A hard case.

I gave him an address and clambered inside.

The oak case, empty now, rested beside me. An unfamiliar weight rested in my right coat pocket. Toadsticker was sheathed on my left. A dagger and a set of brass knuckles and a few other sundry small items poked me here or rubbed me there, and I resolved to lighten my load of armaments before the evening’s festivities.

Getting downtown took longer than usual. It wasn’t so much the measure of traffic, but the kind-Army tallboys and long, fat cargo wagons were everywhere, bringing lesser vehicles to a halt and driving some off the streets entirely and generally wreaking the same sort of mayhem on honest Rannites that they were ostensibly there to prevent.

I sat back and waited with the patience of a monk.

Finally, though, the address I’d provided hove into view, and a peek out my window told me my orders, given before I left for Avalante, had indeed been attended to.

Rannit’s enforcement of laws was, by necessity, streamlined considerably during the War. Which meant the Old North Gallows were allowed to fall into what some called a shameful state of disrepair, as convicts found themselves in the uniform of the Kingdom rather than in the grip of a noose.

Today, though, two unfortunate souls dangled from new ropes, keeping themselves breathing only by standing on their tiptoes. A pair of soldiers at the bottom of the steps kept the hooting crowd from pulling the hangman’s lever, but was doing nothing to stop the barrage of garbage that was obviously aimed at the lever and intended to send the noosed men plunging to their deaths.

In fact, the grinning soldiers were shouting out suggestions to the mob, which was rooting around industriously in search of more trash to throw.

I bade Randal to stop and shouldered my way through the mob. I had to show Toadsticker’s hilt and six inches of steel once, but after that, a path miraculously cleared before me.

The soldiers snapped to attention as I neared.

“Relax, boys. I’m not in uniform. Let’s keep things informal.”

“Yes, sir.”

I sighed. “They have anything to say?”

“Not a thing, sir. Won’t even tell us their names.”

I grunted. I hadn’t really expected them to talk. I was hoping a few hours standing tiptoe on a gallows would impress upon them the precarious nature of their position.

I took the thirteen steps up the gallows at a jaunty gait.

“Good afternoon, gents. Welcome to Rannit. I trust your accommodations are to your liking?”

I had a tall one with a face full of foreign tattoos and a short one with a scar that ran from his left ear and across his throat before vanishing on the way to his right shoulder.

Neither was gagged. Neither was talking.

“I see. No talking from you two, is that it? Commendable. Loyal to the last.”

Again, no response, save for glares and clenched jaws.

“Pity. The men you’re being loyal to are all dead. There was quite the bloodbath at the Timbers, right about the time you two were picked up. Quite the bloodbath. Even your wand-waver bought it. The Lethway kid too. So there’s no real reason to keep you gentlemen hanging any more, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

I stepped over to the hangman’s lever and gave it a push.

It was iron. Old rusted iron. It moved, but only barely, with an agonized metallic screech.

“Should have had them oil it. No matter.”

I put my shoulder against it and pushed. Hard.

Metal squealed, and the lever began to move.

“We know names,” said the tall one.

“Shut the Hell up,” hissed the scarred man. “He’s bluffing.”

I gave the lever a damned good shove. It moved a quarter of the way across its travel.

“Names. You said they were all dead. I know the names of the ones who weren’t there.”

“Not interested.” I let go of the lever and rubbed my hands together. “Hey. You down there.” I pointed toward a drunken behemoth of a man who stood at the back edge of the mob. “Come up here and give me a hand, will you?”

“Aye, for a pair of coppers.”

“Done.” I fished in my pocket and held up the coins. “Let’s get them hung. I have a dinner date.”

The big man began to shove his way through the crowd.

“Damn you, we never laid a finger on anyone,” snarled the talkative half of the pair. “You can’t do this! We’ve not even been charged!”

I leaned against the lever. It moved again, and the falling floor beneath the men dropped, just a bit, but enough to jerk their ropes taut.

“Stricken,” spat the tall one. “We were hired by Stricken. But he was hired by someone else. Someone high up.”

My helper reached the steps and came stomping up them.

“Sure he is. These are your last words, you know. Better start calling on Angels.”

“They call her Silver Eyes. Wand-waver. Big doings, I hear. Mixed up with the ones coming. I know things. Big things. For Angel’s sake, please, don’t.”

“That’s old news.” My helper came stomp-stomping over. I put two coppers in his dirty hand and nodded at the lever.

“Happy trails, gentlemen.”

We gripped it, both of us.

And then we pushed.

He spat out names. I didn’t recognize many of them. But in that brief time between the lever’s first movement and the end of its travel, the tall one reeled off six strange names between pleas for mercy.

The lever went loose. The false floors dropped. Both men went plunging down.

All the way to the trash-strewn ground, where they lay kicking and squirming.

I noticed that even Shorty had pissed himself.

The crowd roared. A fresh rain of garbage fell. The man I’d paid two coppers to commit a pair of murders looked up at me with eyes gone wary.

“That ain’t my fault. I ain’t givin’ this here money back. I ain’t.”

“Wouldn’t dream of asking for it. Scoot. With the thanks of a grateful nation.”