We came out of the mist of the dreamsea into Verdemaire's deep cobalt sky, the clear waters far below a perfect blue mirror. I had brought us in high, wanting Karin to be able to get a good look at the landscape. Ahead of us was a coastline of brilliant white sand, broken by the long polished coral fingers of the quays. Past the ships moored at the quays, bring goods and oneiroi from all over Nightmare and past the glistening beaches, was the garden.
Verdemaire was all garden. There were a few buildings, scattered across the landscape, nearly lost in the ordered ranks of greenery. Here and there a dome or a spire rose to break the smooth curve of the horizon. Lady Heget's city, the Garden of Heart's Desire, was vast and attenuated. I struggled to get my bearings in a world with so few landmarks.
Karin pointed, indicating a course at an inland angle to the coast. “That way,” she said.
I gave the firespiders the command. I brought them down to within a couple stories of the ground and we skimmed over orchards of flowers, paths of oil-dark crushed stone meandering throughout the green. Below us incubi went about their business, most most mounted on the larger, nearly mindless, succubi. From this height they looked like single creatures, statuesque and sun-bronzed, feminine figures in harnesses of leather and silver. Only the ornate high collars and the variation of skin tone between bodies and heads gave away the unique nature of sexual dimorphism in the inhabitants of Verdemaire. Here the bodies were mostly workers, bred for size and strength. Elsewhere, I knew, were more exotic forms.
We cut parallel to the coast for several miles. Despite the busy throngs it didn't look like a city to me. Most business was conducted in the open air, with clearings among the flowerbeds acting as buildings would in other cities. There were no broad roads or open plazas, just paths and clearings and a mad patchwork of flowering plants. Statuary was scattered at seeming random, flowing organic abstracts in white stone that meant nothing to my eyes.
The style changed as we entered the Open Trade Zone. Just as in Hunger City, the Midword influence was evident. Paths were wider, and straighter, forming something like streets. There were more structures, trellises and hedges giving the impression of buildings. The population changed as well, a mix of Nightmare citizenry.
Karin pointed again and I altered course. We headed down a broad path the ran straight for a surprising distance. Then Karin pointed at an area surrounded by a tall hedge, a fruit covered trellis serving as a door. I recognized it from her picture.
I had the firespiders halt and drop to the ground and slid off mine, gave Karin a hand down from hers.
Woven into the hedge was a pattern of bright blossoms that probably would have identified the structure, but I didn't read Verdemaire floral language. There was a protocol for entering spaces marked as private that the locals took very seriously, no doubt to compensate for their lack of solid doors and walls.
I stood outside the archway and looked in. An incubus perched on a huge succubus, the female of the pair seated at an ornately carved stone bench.
“Excuse me,” I said, “I am Samhain Jackknife of Midworld. I should like to speak with Grandmother Wolf of Nivose, if she might be available.”
The incubus turned his eyes to me. What I could see of him looked like the head of a handsome young man, smooth-skinned, with flowing rich brown hair. It was obviously a male head, despite the lack of facial hair, while the body below the ornate collar was very female—over-muscled by Midworld standards, but voluptuously curved.
“And you are?” He asked Karin.
“Karin Svetlana Myraine Zverocovitch,” she said. “Also of the Midworld. And also here to see Grandmother Wolf. I'm an old friend of hers.”
“I don't know her,” he said. The succubus below him didn't move at all.
I sighed. “My companion is a magus, and she says that the person we seek is here. You have my word an Envoy of Messidor that I mean Grandmother Wolf no harm. I wish to make her an offer—should she refuse it, I will leave peacefully.”
The incubus raised an eyebrow. “Thought you said you were from the Midworld.”
I sighed. “I have duel citizenship. I will swear by either allegiance—or both—that I mean Grandmother Wolf no harm.”
“Sorry,” the incubus said. “Don't know her.”
“Oh, let them in, Mordak,” a voice called from deeper in the hedges. It was an old woman's voice, harsh and deep. “They won't go away otherwise.”
The incubus glared at me. “You swear on your honor that you will not initiate violence against any within my discreet?”
“I so swear,” I said.
“I so swear,” Karin echoed.
“Go on back,” he said, and got up and walked away.
I mean that incubus got up and walked away—he left his female mount there. The young man's head lifted up until his legs were visible above the collar. An unmounted incubus looks like a human head sitting on a collection of appendages—long crablike legs and sinuous tentacles. He clambered spider-like into the hedge and was gone.
“I hate it when they do that,” Karin muttered.
“He's being rude on purpose,” I told her. “Ignore him.”
The succubus was harder to ignore. She just sat there unmoving. She looked like a decapitated human. Her brain—such as it was—was in her chest. I was given to understand that behind the collar her stump of a neck ended in a large toothless mouth. Her sex organs were there, too, I'd heard, and the posture the males used to ride the females was also used for sex. Personally, I'd rather not know the details.
Which is why I carefully did not look at the succubus as we passed by.
Once inside the hedged space I saw it was divided into rooms by lower walls of hedge. I went through a door, Karin following close behind me, and entered into an open-air space furnished with a pair of ornate iron benches like the one at the front door.
Grandmother Wolf sat at one. She waved us to the other. “Envoy Jacknife, Miss Zverocovitch, welcome to my home away from home. Don't mind Mordak, he doesn't like Midworlders, but given the sort of tourists that Vendemaire attracts, can you blame him?”
“They do make such... entertainments available,” I pointed out.
“And they never object to the money,” Karin added.
The wolf-woman shrugged. “I didn't claim it was a rational response. In any event, here you are. Let's talk. Karin, you're looking well. You've filled out some since the old days.”
“You look just as ugly as ever,” Karin shot back.
“Ugly?” Grandmother Wolf acted hurt. “There's no need for that. I was never anything but kind to you, child.”
“Unless you count kidnapping me and trying to kill my friend,” Karin retorted.
“You must realize by now that I was acting under compulsion,” the wolf said. “And as for the violence—your Jakob started it. We offered him danegeld to leave, and he killed Serrol with an unlawful weapon.” Her eyes flicked to me. “Sheera is recovering well, by the way. You seem to have done her no permanent harm.”
That would be the tiger-woman, I guessed. “I'm glad to hear that. Close friends, were they?”
A shrug from the wolf. “Serrol was Tak's goon. The others were hired for the occasion. I prefer to work alone, but in this circumstance numbers seemed prudent once I realized things had escalated so far.”
“The Grimm took Karin from you,” I said.
Another lupine shrug. “His right, as first among us. Once the Grimm realized that Jakob had contacted you, he felt that he had to intercede. Your involvement has caused us all no end of trouble.”
“Perhaps I can correct that to some extent,” I suggested. “I have an offer.”
“So you told Mordak,” Grandmother Wolf said. “I am listening.”
“I can offer you the personal assurance of the Lord Mayor that if you choose to testify against Castor Tak you will not be held or charged, but will be free to leave following your testimony,” I said.
“My testimony...” Grandmother Wolf repeated slowly. “Regarding what, precisely?”
“Kidnapping me,” Karin said, “For one thing. The drugs the two of you have been smuggling for another.”
“The two of us, Karin?” Grandmother Wolf asked. “As I recall you were a party to that as well. A rather important party, in fact.”
“So was Leonid Vetch,” Karin said. “Mr. Vetch is dead. Tak killed him.”
“By his own hand?” Grandmother Wolf seemed surprised.
“A junkie in the home where Vetch was staying got a hotshot, went berserk, and killed Vetch,” I explained. “The crime lab says the tigerberry that was delivered to him was chemically pure. Kind of like that block you tried to bribe Jake with.”
“That block paid for my passage here,” Grandmother Wolf said. “I gave it to an undine captain in exchange for a fast journey and no questions. But I have given Tak uncut lots in the past—there are some connoisseurs in the Midworld. Tak was one of them.”
“The courier was a rashling,” I added.
The wolf-woman didn't try to hide her astonishment. “A rashling? If it was Tak, he is going well outside of his usual channels. The Blind Jokers don't ordinarily deal in metapharmaceuticals. Arson and robbery are more their line.”
“Who other than Tak would have wanted Vetch dead?” I asked.
“Oh, I didn't say that it wasn't him,” Grandmother Wolf said, “just that it isn't a move I would have expected. The act of a desperate man, perhaps.”
“Desperate enough to go after you next?” Karin suggested.
“Oh, I hardly need worry about him,” Grandmother Wolf said dismissively.
“Sure,” I said. “You're just in the Garden Of Heart's Desire for the weather.”
That struck home. “In any event,” Grandmother Wolf said, bristling, “even if I wanted to help you, I couldn't.”
“What's his hold over you?” I asked.
She gave me a long look and I could see her deciding how much to tell me. When she spoke she changed the subject.
“When I first met Castor Tak he was a minor dealer in junk,” the wolf said, and sighed. “I'm not judging him, mind you, I was the same, more or less. We both worked for—well, the name wouldn't mean anything to you. He was a big wheel on the Nivose side, quite a few years ago. Dead now.”
“But even then,” she continued, “I could tell this human was ambitious. He wanted more than a piece of someone else's action. He convinced me to join up with him, and we started smuggling the product. On ships, at first, mostly Pluviose registry. That's slow, and the captains take a big cut. Tak had some training as an engineer—he'd apprenticed at one of the 'lix refineries and knew the theory. But he didn't have access to a calculating engine, and he didn't have the talent for sorcery.”
She paused and glanced over at Karin before continuing. “One of his regular customers was an artist and teacher named Leonid Vetch. Leonid was a bit of a wild sorcerer himself, particularly when he was well juiced, and he could recognize talent. He told Tak about one of his students that he thought could learn to keep an outlaw gate stable.”
“Me,” Karin said flatly.
Grandmother Wolf nodded. “That's right. And that's when we started making real money. We cut out the middlemen and brought the junk straight across. Tak was smart with his cash, too. He didn't waste it or flash it around and get noticed. He invested, got to be the silent partner in a half dozen businesses, bars, cheap hotels, laundries. He got some muscle to make sure he got his cut and started building an empire. Bought up a lot of real estate, too. After a couple of years he didn't need the junk any more. It had never been part of his long range plans, just a high-risk, high-yield way to raise seed capital.”
“What do you mean?” Karin asked. Her voice was cold.
“What do you think I mean, child?” the wolf shot back. “Tak decided it was time to cut you and Leonid loose. He got out and called the witchfinders. I'm sure he expected you to go down with the ship, but Leonid surprised him and didn't roll over on you.”
Karin shook her head slowly. She looked about ready to cry.
“I took my cut and bought a place in the country,” Grandmother Wolf went on. “Starkmoor—ever heard of it? No? Big, wide open spaces, plenty of room to run. You should come visit some time. It's so quiet. Anyway, I did crossword puzzles and a little gardening for a while, and then out of the blue Tak calls me up and pulls my string. He must have run across you somewhere and got scared you'd expose him. So he tells me to put you on ice for a few weeks, just until after this election coming up. I promise that it was not my intent to harm you—I've always liked you.”
“Then the Lord Grimm took over,” I said.
“That,” Grandmother Wolf admitted sourly, “put me between the jaws of the trap. I had the compulsion from Tak to keep you in Nivose, but I no longer had the authority to hold you. The Grimm made it clear that he had no interest in continuing to own your soul. All I could do was try to discover who would be coming for you and dissuade them. Poorly, as it turned out. Fortunately the compulsion only held so long as you were in Nivose—once your friend Jakob returned you to the Midworld I was free of it and on the next ship that lifted sails.”
This brought me around to my original question. “By what does he compel you? What hold does he have on you?”
For answer Grandmother Wolf opened her jaws wide and pointed. There was a gap in the ivory on one side of her jaw. It looked as if three teeth were missing.
She snapped her jaws shut and leaned back. “Fetch me my teeth, Envoy. When you do that, we'll have something to talk about.”
“Any clues to where they might be?” I asked.
“He doesn't have them on his person,” Grandmother Wolf said, “I'd sense that. And I'm almost certain they are in the Midworld. Beyond that, who can say?”
“So sad, can't help you,” Karin said, standing suddenly.
I looked up at her in astonishment. “Wait, are you sure?”
“Hey, it's like she said, those teeth could be anywhere in the Midworld,” Karin said. “Maybe buried in the wall of one of Tak's properties, maybe in a bank vault, maybe stuffed up his dog's ass. Without some kind of token—”
“Sit down, girl,” Grandmother Wolf said. Then she added, “Please.”
Karin glowered, but sat.
“You're right, of course,” the wolf said. “Old habits die hard. Will you swear that you won't use my token to work ill upon me?”
Karin appeared to consider that. “No,” she said. “I'm done with oaths. You can either trust us to get your damned teeth back, or wait for MP Castor Tak to order you to walk in front of a bus. Your choice.”
A sigh from the wolf. “I really don't understand your rancor, child. I am not your enemy in this. But have it your way—I have no choice, as you well know.”
She reached her wrinkled hand into her cloak and felt around for a moment, then winced and withdrew her hand. There were a few short gray hairs clutched between two of her fingers. I really didn't want to know where they came from.
Extending her hand with the hairs to Karin she said, “If you return my teeth, I will testify to the Lord Mayor all I know of Castor Tak.”
Karin didn't take the hairs. “And keep my name out of it?”
“Yes, child,” Grandmother Wolf readily agreed. “I've nothing to gain by sending you to jail as well.”
Karin took the hairs. “That's the same thing that Mr. Vetch said,” Kain mused, “just before Tak's thug ripped his throat out.”
“I am sorry about that,” Grandmother Wolf said. “I know that the two of you were close, once. For what it is worth, I do wish things had turned out differently.”
“It's not worth anything,” Karin said, and stood again. “We'll be seeing you.”
To me Karin said, “Let's go home.”