Book 03 - Cold Copper Tears Read Online Free Page A

impressed with the little guy. He could be a gentleman
when he wanted. You don’t see that much in people accustomed
to power. And he was one of the most feared men in TunFaire, within
his sphere. A holy terror.
     
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5
    Dean stepped outside. “I’ve finished up, Mr.
Garrett. I’ll be going home if there’s nothing
else.”
    He always talks like that when he wants something. Right now he
hoped I’d have that something else. He lives with a platoon
of spinster nieces who make him crazy.
    One of the legacies of the war in the Cantard is a surplus of
women. For decades Karenta’s youth have gone south to capture
the silver mines and for decades half of them haven’t come
back. It makes it nice for us unattached survivor types, but hell
on parents with daughters to support.
    “I was sitting here thinking it would be a nice evening
for a walk.”
    “That it would be, Mr. Garrett.” When the Dead Man
is sleeping somebody always stays in to bolt the door and wait for
whoever is out. When the Dead Man is awake we have no security
problems.
    “You think it’s too early to see Tinnie?”
Tinnie Tate and I have a tempestuous friendship. She’s the
one they had in mind when they set the specs for redhead
stereotypes, only they toned them down because nobody would believe
the truth.
    You might call Tinnie changeable. One week I can’t run her
off with a stick, the next I’m tops on her hate list. I
haven’t figured out the whys and wherefores.
    I was listed this week. Past the peak and dropping but still in
the top ten.
    “It’s too early.”
    I thought so, too.
    Dean is in a bind where Tinnie is concerned. He likes her.
She’s beautiful, smart, quick, more square with the world
than I’ll ever be. He thinks she’s good for me. (I
don’t dare risk his opinion on the flip-flop issue.) But he
has all those nieces in desperate need of husbands and half a dozen
have standards low enough to covet a prince like me, squeaky armor
and all.
    “I could go see how the girls are.”
    He brightened, checked to see if I was teasing, and was set to
call my bluff when he realized that would put me there while he was
here, unable to defend their supposed virtues. He imagined me in
there like a bull shoulder-deep in clover, like they couldn’t
possibly have sense enough to look out for themselves. “I
wouldn’t recommend that, Mr. Garrett. They’ve been
especially troublesome lately.”
    It was all a matter of perspective. They hadn’t troubled
me. When I first took Dean on, they did. They kept me up to my ears
in cookery, trying to fatten me up for the kill.
    “Perhaps I should just go, Mr. Garrett. Perhaps you should
wait another day or two, then go apologize to Miss Tate.”
    “I got no philosophical problem with apologizing, Dean,
but I like to know why I’m doing it.”
    He chuckled, pulled on the mantle of worldly-wise old warrior
passing his wisdom along. “Apologize for being a man. That
always works.”
    He had a point. Except I have a flair for getting sarcastic.
    “I’ll just stroll over to Morley’s, quaff me a
few celery tonics.”
    Dean pruned up. His opinion of Morley Dotes is so low it has to
look up at snakes’ bellies.
    We all have rogues in our circles, maybe just so we can tell
ourselves, “What a good boy am I.”
    Actually, I like Morley. Despite himself. He takes some getting
used to but he’s all right, in his way. I just keep reminding
myself that he’s part dark elf and has different values.
Sometimes, very different values. Always malleable values.
Everything is situational for Morley.
    “I won’t be out long,” I promised. “I
just need to work off some restlessness.”
    Dean grinned. He figured I was getting bored with loafing and
we’d see some excitement pretty soon.
    I hoped not.
     
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6
    It isn’t a long walk to Morley’s place, but it is a
walk over the border into another world. The neighborhood
hasn’t acquired a name like so many others, but it is