Web of Defeat Read online

  "I don't see him," Tuesday said, scanning the room.

  "The roof," Gideon guessed; and they made their way toward the righthand doors, ignoring the short-form job applications being thrust in their direction by harried little bald men in white-fur clothes, past portly little bearded men in charcoal-grey hides and thin little harried men in frayed loincloths and blue dye. None of them seemed to recognize Gideon, which left him at once thankful and disheartened, and more than a few offered to take the duck off his hands for sums that could only be called extremely tempting.

  Suddenly, a man yelled in uncontrolled anguish, charged across the floor, and threw his arms around Tuesday. With an expertise born of being human-turned-duck and making the best of a bad situation, she planted her feet solidly at first contact. The man tumbled over her back as he discovered his meal wasn't going along with him, landed on his stomach, and found a heavy foot planted on his spine.

  "You hungry?" Gideon asked.

  The man nodded fearfully, then shook his head, nodded again, shook it again, and began to weep with frustration.

  The room grew uncommonly quiet.

  Tuesday squirmed free and backed toward the doors.

  Gideon reached to his side for the formidable weapon Whale had forged for him so many weeks before.

  Someone, finally putting the grim bearded face to the occupation, gasped.

  Gideon's hand closed slowly around the smooth, slender handle made of dark green wood, and the holster it was in opened as if by magic.

  The man on the floor began to sob.

  Gideon hefted the weapon, tapping its fat nether end into an open palm.

  "Do you have a job?"

  The man shook his head, considered, and decided to stick with the answer.

  Tuesday billed open the doors and slipped through.

  "What's your name?"

  The man rested his forehead resignedly on the smooth parquet flooring and whispered, "Horrn, sir. Jimm Horrn."

  Gideon removed his foot, and Horrn quickly scrambled to his knees, clasped his hands in a nicely groveling, supplicating manner, and stared at the magnificently proportioned baseball bat in Gideon's hands. His eyes widened in shock. His scrawny chest, barely hidden by a tattered homespun shirt, expanded with the deep breath usually reserved for those about to be executed by rifle. His sandy, spiky hair seemed to quiver on end.

  "That was my bird you were trying to abduct."

  Horrn nodded.

  "You know the penalty for stealing another man's food?"

  The silence could not have been deeper had someone undertaken to improve it with a shovel.

  Horrn whimpered.

  Gideon held out his hand. Horrn looked at it, stared at it, examined it for hidden devices of a destructive nature, then accepted it and was pulled gently to his feet. The bat was holstered. The room breathed a communal sigh of relief, and the custodians put their buckets and mops away.

  "Listen," Gideon said, putting an arm around the young man's shoulders and feeling suddenly, and stupidly, like a coach. "I have business upstairs. I suggest you listen to one of these gentlemen here and find yourself a job. Then you can get paid. Then you can buy food."

  "Food?" Horrn said. "Even if I have money, where am I going to buy food?"

  Gideon shrugged.

  Horrn shrugged.

  Gideon shook the man's hand and followed his sister's exit, onto a curving staircase that wound about a solid central pillar, until, after several minutes' climb during which he decided he would learn to fly because the steps were less than hospitable, he pushed open a narrow door to the roof.

  A breeze blew.

  The sun was comfortably warm.

  A flock of red-and-green birds swept and circled overhead.

  The roof was empty, save for a long table in its center, shaded by a bright yellow umbrella that trembled in the wind. On the table sat Tuesday; behind it, on a chair intricately carved with representations of beasts so fantastical they defied description, sat Whale Pholler.

  —|—

  "Gideon!" Whale called with delight.

  Gideon smiled and strode across, sat on a wooden bench, and shook the man's hand.

  "You look good," he said.

  Whale lifted a wavering hand in a shrug. At one time, or so he claimed, he had been immense and powerful and needed three chairs to support him; now he was thin, his face tanned and pleasantly equine, his thicket of brown hair slowly turning grey, and the wattles of his neck slightly pink from the pulling he did on them when he was nervous. His previous occupation had been that of armorer; his current one, mayor of Rayn.

  "I understand," Whale said, "that you want your sister back."

  Tuesday snorted, and half the papers on the table ruffled their disgust.

  "It would be a start," he answered.

  "I try, you know. I have tried, yes indeed. You can't fault me for that, Gideon. I have done my best."

  "I know, I know," he said. "But there's got to be something you can do. I mean, have you ever tried to live with a duck?"

  Whale thought about it.

  Tuesday dared him to answer.

  Gideon looked out over the city. "Peaceful, isn't it?"

  "Not for long," Whale said sadly. "I have failed in my position, and sooner or later they, the citizens of this wondrous place, are going to have my head."

  "The food?"

  Whale nodded. "I cannot help them. It is, as you have already gathered, a matter of supply and demand. The demand is there, but the supply is severely limited, and growing more so every day. I do what I can, but..." He spread his arms helplessly. "I am defeated."

  "So whomp up a spell," Tuesday said, her tone indicating that she already knew how Whale's spells worked.

  The thin man pointed to a large stack of bricks piled in one corner. "That was grass at one time," he sighed. "I had hoped, with very little reservation, to turn the blades into grain and thus produce a fair approximation of flour, which would, at last, give these wonderful people bread and cake."

  "You got bricks," Tuesday said.

  "I can see that."

  "Big bricks."

  Whale nodded.

  "Well," she said, "you can always drop them on the heads of the peasants when they try to storm the place."

  Whale looked at her, at Gideon, at the bricks. "Is that a joke? I think that's a joke." He smiled. "I'm not, as you know, a very humorous man. But I'm working at it. Really. It's all a matter of—"

  "Bricks," Tuesday said.

  "What?"

  "What you have is bricks." She jumped off the table. "I've changed my mind, Gideon. I don't want to be a brick."

  "But you wouldn't be!" Whale protested.

  She was halfway to the door when she stopped and twined her neck around to look at him. "What do you mean? Don't tell me you have another spell?"

  For answer, Whale pulled a large, leather-bound, gold-banded, obviously ancient tome from under the table and opened it to a place marked by a shimmering silver ribbon. The pages were yellowed and crackly, the printing on them tiny and in a language that Gideon, when he tried to read a sentence upside down, did not recognize.

  "I have discovered part of what I need," Whale said when Tuesday returned.

  "Part?"

  "It requires ingredients."

  Gideon decided instantly he wasn't liking the sound of this. Ingredients meant bottles and vials and chests and graveyards and dungeons and castles and dragons' lairs. They also meant having to go for them, and he was willing to bet there wasn't a dragon's lair in town. He still hadn't figured out what these people did with their dead.

  "I have them all," Whale said proudly.

  Tuesday preened.

  Gideon relaxed.

  "Except one or two."

  Tuesday raised the feathered equivalent of an eyebrow.

  Gideon decided it was time he found someone who could make him another pair of jeans. The ones he was wearing were getting awfully worn. And his boots... well, the
less said about their condition the better. And maybe a new shirt or two—something in a pinstripe, or a striking tartan.

  "Gideon."

  "Do you remember the last time this happened?" he said to them.

  "Yes," Tuesday said. "You found me."

  "I also nearly died."

  "In finding me."

  "I was hurt a lot."

  "Your sister."

  "I damned near got chomped by a sea monster, poisoned by a footh, trampled by a pacch, and recycled by an ekkler."

  "Your long-lost sister."

  "Whale," he said, "I don't want to offend you, but you do recall that your spells don't really work."

  Whale pointed at the book. "This one will. All I need is what I need."

  "Who put you through college," said the duck.

  "Are you sure?"

  Whale nodded fervently.

  "And what," Gideon asked, closing his eyes and praying for lightning, "is it you need?"

  "A Grahne of Shande."

  He opened his eyes, pleased, though somewhat puzzled by the man's curious pronunciation. "Really? You mean all I have to do is go to the beach?"

  "Well," Whale said, "not exactly."

  Gideon stood and saluted him. "See you around, Whale. I think I'd rather find a way myself."

  "The sister," Tuesday hissed, "who loves you."

  He sat.

  Whale pointed at the bottom of the lefthand page. "See this illustration?"

  Gideon leaned over, and saw.

  "That's not a beach, Whale."

  Whale smiled wanly.

  "That's a goddamned giant."

  CHAPTER THREE

  "Giddy," Tuesday said, "your mouth is open."

  "I'm looking at a giant," he said.

  "So?"

  He stared at her.

  "It's better than a dragon, isn't it?"

  "Don't call me Giddy," he said by way of retort and sat resignedly at the table, unable to move because Tuesday had taken it upon herself to sit on his lap. As children, it was something they had done while listening to their mother tell them fairy tales; as man and duck, however, the weight was putting his knees to sleep.

  Whale seemed not to notice. He flipped the page over and pointed to a rather closely printed paragraph which, he explained, gave the entire sordid history of one Harghe Shande, a creature who lived in the town of Terwin on the far eastern reaches of Chey and who, it was rumored, was not as sociable as his niece, Grahne Shande, who, it was rumored, was very sociable indeed when given half a chance and Harghe out of the country.

  Gideon asked if there was a picture of this intriguing female.

  After a delicate spate of throat-clearing, Whale allowed as how there was not, though he had heard through various sources that she was rather comely in her fashion.

  "What kind of fashion is that?" he asked.

  "The fashion of her uncle."

  "Who is... what?"

  "A barbarian."

  Gideon sat back and considered. Knowing the armorer as he did, he had to be sure what sort of barbarian they were discussing here: the skins and sword and no bath in a year kind, or a man who looked upon manners as something belonging to the elitist upper class whose only purpose was to, by its existence, define Shande's barbarism.

  Either way, it was only marginally better than sitting in a field with your tent falling down around your ears.

  "The niece sounds like a slut," Tuesday sneered.

  Gideon sat up.

  "Oh, by all accounts she is that," Whale said in the manner of one who mourns for the youth of yesteryear.

  Gideon lifted his sister onto the table and leaned forward. "And we're supposed to bring her back here?"

  Whale nodded.

  "You mean," Tuesday said huffily, "I have to stake my entire future on a woman like that?"

  Whale closed the tome with authority and waved away the dust. "It is written, my dear," he said solemnly. "There is little I can do about it. The spell I am contemplating requires Grahne, for some arcane reason, and I cannot change it. There is what there is, don't you know, and far be it from me, a simple armorer in mayor's clothing, to—"

  "Can it," Tuesday muttered, then hopped off the table and waddled to the edge of the roof. Her feathers drooped. Her tail dragged on the dusty stone.

  "I fear for her well-being," Whale whispered then. "I trust she won't do anything drastic."

  "She won't kill herself, if that's what you mean," Gideon said. "She's in love."

  "Ah."

  "With Finlay."

  "The blacksmith?" Whale spread his arms and widened his eyes. "The very large blacksmith?"

  Gideon nodded.

  "I begin to understand why she is so down at the beak. It must be difficult for her." Whale glanced at the morose duck with sympathy. "And does Finlay reciprocate her affections?"

  "I don't know. I never asked." Gideon looked at his sister, then out over the rooftops, and realized with a twinge of unwelcome guilt how insensitive he had been to her feelings. Visiting Whale on her behalf had, in truth, only been a way of finding something for himself to do, a way to justify his continuing presence in this curious world. And in doing so, he'd treated her shabbily.

  "Damn," he said softly, and put a fist on the table. "All right, I guess I have no choice. I'll go there, get Grahne, bring her back, and you can fix it so Tuesday is okay."

  Whale smiled weakly.

  Gideon groaned. "You're not telling me something."

  Whale scratched through his hair and tugged at his wattles.

  "You're not telling me something that I don't want to hear."

  Whale gestured feebly at the volume of Chey-lore. "It's a minor thing, really. I am not, as you know, a man given to minor things, all things considered, but there are exceptions, as you fully realize, being yourself an exception to this world. What I'm trying to say is—Grahne, as vital as she is to the success of my humble efforts, is not the entire package."

  Gideon cleared his throat; it sounded more like a growl.

  "What I mean to say is—I have..." Whale glanced from side to side, looked to Tuesday, who was flapping her wings gloomily, then half raised himself from his chair to look at the entrance to the staircase to be sure they were not being overheard. "Gideon, my friend, I confess to an ulterior motive." He sighed explosively, the weight of his torment at last lifted. "Two motives." Another sigh, of contrition. "Unless you count the last one, in which case there are three."

  Gideon looked around the roof, too, but he didn't care who was listening; he was looking for a Bridge, that mysterious gateway that had brought him here from his pantry in the first place and that, he was told, appeared only when one truly needed it. He had been hoping that Whoever or Whatever controlled those things knew that he wanted to go home. Apparently, and unfortunately, he didn't seem to want it badly enough.

  "So, then," he said in resignation. "What are the motives, or are they too dreadful to speak aloud?"

  "For heaven's sake's alive, no," Whale protested with a laugh.

  "Then speak, so I don't have to try to read your mind."

  Relieved, Whale once again checked the area before resting his arms on the table and leaning closer. "There has been talk," he said, barely moving his lips.

  "About what?" Gideon asked suspiciously, unconsciously lowering his own voice.

  "Were you... that is to say, did you have a curious, shall we say, visitation last night?"

  "Yeah. My tent fell down."

  "Besides that."

  He thought, one eye almost closed. "Are you talking about the earthquake, or the flying black thing."

  "Yes."

  "Whale, why do I have the feeling you're telling me that the earthquake and the flying black thing are connected? And why do I have the feeling that you think the earthquake and the flying black thing are connected to a certain person we only recently sent down home on a don't-come-back scholarship?"

  "I'm afraid so," Whale said.

  Gide
on didn't have to hear any more. The manifestations were evidently indications that Lu Wamchu was testing the waters to see if conditions were ripe for another surge of his own nasty brand of evil out of the land of Choy. And, Gideon thought further, it wouldn't surprise him a bit if the current food shortage was in some way instigated and manipulated by either Wamchu or one of his equally unsavory wives. There was no swifter way, other than the occasional beheading, to bring a population to its knees than to rob it of its sustenance; and no swifter way to gather it under a diabolical and tyrannical wing than to prove that the new regime was better equipped to put food on the table than the old one.

  Wamchu had learned his lesson well.

  "So," he said, "what you probably want me to do is, on my trip to wherever the Shandes live, find out what Wamchu's up to and stop him if I can."

  Whale smiled and nodded meekly.

  Gideon thought to say something, but changed his mind.

  "And the second motive?" he asked.

  "The second motive," Whale said after a sharp nod, "has to do with you, my friend."

  "It all has to do with me if I'm going."

  "I mean here," and he reached across the table to tap a finger against Gideon's forehead. "You're not yourself."

  "No kidding."

  "You want to go home, and you don't know why you can't find a Bridge."

  "You got it."

  "And you have learned that being a hero is only a part-time job, that there is more to life than saving lives and countries and ridding worlds of villains, that a man must have larger goals in mind or he becomes as a stagnant pond whose source has been cruelly severed."

  Gideon nodded, though he wasn't entirely pleased with the metaphor.

  All right, Gideon thought, the man wants me to go so I don't drive myself nuts. He also wants me to go because he wants me to find whatever niche there is for me around here, or to find that there isn't one at all so that I can summon a Bridge, however the hell that's done, and go back to my real home.

  "What's the third motive?"

  Whale rose, and this time did not content himself with a simple visual check. He walked around the entire roof, looking down at the square, up at the clouds, into the stairwell, and under the pile of bricks in the corner. He avoided Tuesday, who was quacking mournfully to herself, but took his time returning to his seat. When he did, he cleared the table with a sweep of his arm and glowered.