Chapter 15 #2
Hansard has a cup. An actual goddamn honest-to-goodness acorn cap cup, or at least one printed to look like an acorn cap. He decants most of the ampoule into it, then hands the almost-empty tab to Skotch.
“Bottoms up,” he suggests, and sips at his own draught of intellect merrily.
Skotch fumbles, drops the thing, scoops it up desperately.
Tilts his head back, eyelids peeled back.
A drop, just a drop, into his right eye.
The clarity of thought comes almost instantly, with the understanding that it’s only a passing phase, a moment’s respite.
“There’s more where that comes from,” says Brass-Shirt. “If we like your answers. So, Skotch?”
“That’s me.” The words still coming thick and rusty, but the little drop of oil doing its work to get the gears moving again.
“You want to tell me just why the hell the Grays were throwing such a party in your honour, son?”
Skotch blinks, takes a deep breath. Very aware of Lulu, her breathing easier now, her whimpering retreated further into her breast. Very aware of the guns, and that Hansard Brass-Shirt’s genial manner is just one more sheath you can hide a knife in.
“I’ll tell you,” he says. “Everything I can. But you’ve got to agree to fix her up. She’s not with the Grays—I mean, she came to fetch you guys, so you’ve got to know that. She’s not just any pigeon. She’s owned. She dies, it’s trouble.”
Brass-Shirt swills the thick Plangent in his tiny cup. “The way I see it, it wasn’t us who shot her. It was the Grays,” he points out. “That means the trouble devolves to them. I don’t see any reason to stop the world taking a big old dump when my enemy’s downhill of me.”
“That’s not how Rule One works,” Skotch tells him fiercely.
Aware that it’s half that, and half him not wanting Lulu to die, but that only the first of those will carry any weight with these brigands.
“Rule One craps on all of us. We do not make them take notice of us, right?” And he’s aware that Gehirner flirt with the edges of Rule One every day, from stealing food scraps out of the bins at Franz-Ferdinand’s to the Rattenkonige and Maulers trading services for human currency on the dark web.
But the sanctity of human pets is a point in the doctrine where there isn’t any flex. And Lulu just about counts.
“You’re getting no promises out of me,” Brass-Shirt says, but Skotch can see his big plume of a tail flicking about, giving the lie to his composure.
“We don’t have anyone who knows birds anyway.
But maybe there’s someone. We’ll make enquiries.
” He nods, and that same put-upon squirrel dashes out again.
“So maybe you talk. Why’d the Grays grab you, son? ”
With a drop of Plangent inside him, Skotch is able to get out a coherent story.
More than that, he’s able to edit before the words come out.
Brass-Shirt seems a sharp edge, so he doesn’t try to either play too dumb or get too clever.
He keeps the stuff about Meece on the slender side, though.
Helps that he doesn’t actually know the full truth himself, but he doesn’t trouble the Reds with his speculations, either.
Doesn’t mention Sly, or whatever it was Sly knew that Skotch, now, won’t find out.
Cuts down the cast of characters so names like the Baron’s and Muther Murnau’s don’t directly feature.
The Grays grabbed him, but they were working for the Country Club.
An escaped mouse. Somehow the whole thing turning into something between a circus and an auction.
Hansard chuckles into his mustachios about that.
He and his detachment were in the area because the Grays had been putting the word out to interested parties about valuable information.
Selling tickets to Skotch’s gallows confession, basically.
Ripper got greedy once she worked out that it wasn’t just the Country Club who’d pay.
Probably Szerky was royally pissed at it, but Skotch will shed copious tears over that when hell freezes over.
Anyway, once the Reds not only heard this particular word on the street, but figured out they were pointedly not invited, they decided to track down the party and crash it with extreme prejudice just on principle.
Hence, they were in the neighbourhood for Lulu to find and guide in.
And for once—given they’ve been on the back foot for a while against their rivals—it worked out for the Reds.
Except now Skotch has explained it wasn’t even a Gray scheme, just one they were providing the hired muscle for, because a single stoat wasn’t going to be taking on Sly’s entire kennel on her own.
Skotch goes quiet and still then. Hasn’t really had the time to process it. Sly’s death. And why? Not like the old fox was anyone’s ideologue. Szerky could just have bought what he knew off him, given the deep pockets the Country Clubs have.
Except, Skotch gets, it wasn’t that she needed to know it.
Presumably she—or her paymasters—already do.
It was that she couldn’t have anyone knowing whatever it was.
Meece’s chemistry experiment. That’s why she wants Meece dead.
That’s why she offed Sly once she worked out, or even suspected, that he was onto the secret.
“Son?” Brass-Shirt prompts. “Mud in your eye, get your memory sparking again?” He decants a single bead of Plangent from his cup and Skotch takes it on the pad of one finger and pulls his eyelid back to drop it in.
It’s not that he’s slow, though. It’s that everything else is big, and he’s having difficulty stretching his head to fit it all in.
There’s a limit to what even Plangent can do.
Szerky wants Meece dead. Benson wanted Meece alive, and then decided dead was also good. Meaning …
He shakes his head. The pieces rattle around but don’t quite connect.
“I don’t know what you want to hear, boss,” he tells Brass-Shirt.
“I got myself in the middle of some big old mess I don’t understand.
I’m not with the Grays, and right now I’m probably on their list of public enemies till I can buy myself off it, buttons or favours, you know?
I’m not a problem for you. I owe you, even.
Owe you even more if you can fix up the pigeon. ”
Brass-Shirt regards him levelly, slurps the last of the ambrosia from a cup no longer running over. That genial regard has crystallised into something calculating that reminds Skotch the Reds aren’t the good guys, just the bad guys who aren’t currently shooting at him.
“I mean, you’ve told me enough, son,” the squirrel says meditatively. “You’ve told me that your hide is worth something to someone.”
It was, Skotch considers, inevitable that they would end up here. If he’d been sharper he’d have seen it coming. There’s a tension in the way the guns in the room are being held that suggests he shouldn’t try to wring Hansard’s neck right now to register his dissatisfaction.
“I can do a lot of good work for the Reds. I have contacts, skills,” he tries.
Hansard does a little shrug and juggle with the cup, as if to say that contacts and skills are cheap in the big city, as opposed to a big sack of buttons to pay for guns and mercenaries.
“Cheer up, son,” he says sunnily. “Not like I’ll be selling you to the farms, or anyone who decides the Grays make better partners than we true children of Neuwien.
But someone’s buying, of that I’m in no doubt. ”
Skotch is already slouching to his feet for them to lead him out.
They put him back in with Lulu. She’s still alive, breathing, awake. Staring at him with one eye at a time.
“Skotch,” she whispers, deep in her throat. A voice that sounds like it’s gone on a long, ragged journey to find the open air. “I need you to do something.”
He sits down by her, slumping, brain trying to suck the last goodness out of those two drops of Plangent. “Whatever I can do,” he says.
“I need you to tell Schreiber—”
“Lulu, I’m not—I can’t…” Talking to a human, or at least a human who isn’t Saint Frances. Not something he’s going to do. Even a human who wants to hear from a Gehirner, it’s too far into Rule One territory. “You can tell him yourself,” he says, trying for “bright” and just getting “hollow.”
“Skotch…” she says, and to stop her asking, he starts talking. Telling her things. All the things he knows, all the workings of his mind. The Meece case, the story of the fugitive mouse, its details all Swiss-cheesed full of holes he’s trying to fill.
“Benson,” he tells her. “Benson at Uzco, he wanted what Meece knew, that’s why he hired me to bring the squeaker in alive.
” Wondering, as he says it, whether that “squeaker” would piss off Meece as much as “washbear” or “bandit” do him.
He’s never thought about it before, but he’s not had much to do with mice either.
“But I guess I wasn’t his only angle, and maybe he pulled some serious strings.
Next thing I know he wants Meece either way, and to me that says he found out what the mouse was up to, and decided it was dangerous.
And no way is Szerky on regular runaways duty, not with the buttons she’s throwing around.
The Baron told me Meece is like a super-genius mouse.
Whatever it is he knows would mess things up for Uzco as much as the farms.”
He looks at Lulu. Still with him. Managing a nod. The details are starting to fuzz and disassociate in his head. Talking about it is just about keeping the wheels turning.
“Murnau, the Rattenkonige, not sure quite what their angle is. Either they want him so they can sell him at a markup, or they want what he can make, or they want him dead because he’s a threat even to them.
I mean the only people who definitely wanted him alive and well were the Maulers, and they want to bring everything down. Or say they do.”
“What,” Lulu whispers, “does he know?”