The Redcap raised his hands with a sycophantic smile, and it was so grotesque I almost shot him then and there.
“Wipe that silly grin off your face,” I told him, and he did. He tried for passport-photo neutral in its place, but just looked kind of constipated. I didn’t care, as long as I didn’t have to see him smiling.
“I don’t have time for any crap,” I said, “I’m going to ask questions, and if I don’t like the answers I’m going to shoot pieces of you off until you aren’t spurking there anymore. Got it?”
“Aye,” he said.
“You wouldn’t spurk with the Guard unless your arms were being twisted. So someone sent you. Who?”
He sighed. “Nobody,” he said quietly.
Bradley drew himself upright, “Maybe you weren’t listening –” he started.
“Bradley,” I said, “Ease up. That was a real answer.”
“Oh. Well, it’s your party. Just let me know when you want me to shove this pole up his…”
“Thanks,” I told him, then turned my attention back to the Redcap, “Nobody? So he’s real?”
The Fae nodded.
“He happen to say why he wants us dead?”
“He did nae confide in us. He held our caps, and we dared not question him too close. We had no choice,” he said, “No choice but to obey.”
The caps dyed in blood aren’t just grisly souvenirs, they’re the source of a Redcap’s strength and power. Without them, or fresh blood to dye them red anew every night, a Redcap will die with the morning. It was, I reflected, a pretty big bargaining chip.
But Nobody. How the spurk did he fit into this? What I’d thought was a run-of-the-mill little con gone wrong was turning into something several orders of magnitude more complicated. Or hell, maybe this was about Joey Pennylegion.
If being wise means knowing that you don’t know, I was spurking Socrates. One thing I was sure of: I had to talk to the thing that had been pretending to be Glenn Jackson. And fast.
I pointed my gun to the ground. “You remember,” I told the little man who stank of someone else’s blood, “Who took your cap, and who didn’t. Remember who beat you in fair fight and gave you your life.”
He nodded, blood-soaked wool cap bobbing up and down.
“If I see you on this side of the Border again,” I said, “Nobody will be the least of your worries. Now go. Run.”
He blinked at me, incredulous. Then without another word he turned and ran, across the grass, towards the lake. I watched him go. It was a shuffling, awkward run, his body full of tension, hunched over. He was expecting, I realized, to be shot in the back.
As the Redcap rounded a bend and disappeared from sight, I glanced at Bradley. He dropped the iron pike and he sat down hard.
I crouched beside him and looked at his head. Even a glancing blow from iron-shod shoes can do serious damage, but – I checked to make sure his eyes were reacting to light and motion – yeah, Bradley had dodged a concussion for the second time today.
“Somebody up there likes you,” I said.
“Yeah? Then why did he jump on my head?”
I almost fell over. Bradley, joking? It was turning out to be a day of miracles and wonders.
I had a look at Bradley’s ear, and it confirmed my hunch that his little friend had clipped the side of Bradley’s head, ear and shoulder on the way down with those damned shoes. Better, of course, then taking an iron pole to the skull.
I had no first aid gear. Bradley probably did, back in his car, but…
“Look,” I said, “We can take the time to get this looked after properly, but we’re going to risk losing the Autumn Man.”
He nodded. “That’s why you let Toque-boy go,” he said, “Nowhere to put him. No one to hand him off to. No time to waste.”
I relaxed, as the fight I’d been bracing myself for evaporated before it began.
“If deciding which of the two perps who tried to kill you to go after makes for a time-management crisis,” Bradley added, “You guys are more understaffed than I thought.”
“We have high turnover,” I said, “So, want me to MacGyver something for your head? It’ll be…”
“Improvised,” he said, with a slight smile.
I smiled back, and pulled my knife.
