Free The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) by Frank Tuttle

His jaw was clenched tight.
    “Tell her anything,” he said. “But not the truth. None of this. Can I trust you?”
    I just nodded yes. I had a thousand questions, but from the way he started shaking and coughing, I knew asking even one was asking one too many.
    The door behind me flew open. A trio of white-coated Avalante doctors barged in, all scowls and glares. One pushed a silver wheeled cart loaded with sharp pointy things and stoppered vials that glowed in every color of the rainbow.
    “We were clear in our instructions,” said one physician.
    “You are to have no visitors,” said another.
    “Tsk, tsk,” added the third.
    Jerle marched in behind them, saw me, and glanced pointedly at the cutting tools on the cart.
    “Mr. Markhat seems to have lost his way,” he said. “Shall I show him out, Mr. Prestley?”
    Evis, bless his motionless heart, lifted his finger. “No, Jerle, you most assuredly shall not. See that he gets a pair of the new rotary guns and a crate of grenades. Then see him gently home. Gently. Is that clear?”
    “As you wish, sir.” Jerle moved to stand at my side. His smile was untouched by the least hint of murder. “If you will accompany me?”
    I nodded amiably. Jerle wasn’t halfdead, but he probably had a dozen lethal gadgets hidden under his suit coat and that bland, unassuming smile.
    I put out my hand to Evis.
    “You can trust me,” I said. He nodded, took my hand, shook it.
    The doctors hustled me out of there. Jerle stuck closer than my shadow.
    I got my rotary guns, in long wooden crates that each weighed more than I did. And I got a box of two dozen grenades, which Jerle claimed would explode with sufficient force to take down walls or reduce me to tiny wet bits if I didn’t throw the thing at least forty feet after pulling the ornate silver pin.
    But it wasn’t guns or grenades on my mind as I left Avalante.
    It was the touch of Evis’s hand.
    His skin had been warm. As warm as that of any normal man. Far warmer than the cold flesh of a halfdead should be, unless he was recently pulled from a fire, or burning with fever.
    Was it possible, I wondered, for a halfdead to die twice?
    I found Mrs. Ordwald at her hotel. She was seated in the lobby, her work-worn hands resting flat on a table, a glass of water untouched before her.
    I’ve relayed news of a loved one’s death more times than I could be paid to count. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sons—everyone leaves someone behind. I’ve watched hope be born only to quickly die in a thousand pairs of eyes, and watching despair take root never gets any easier.
    I took off my hat and sat across from her.
    “He is dead, my Berthold?” she asked. Her voice didn’t falter. Her lips didn’t tremble.
    “He is,” I said. Sometimes you try to sugar coat the news. This wasn’t such a time.
    “You are sure.”
    “I am sure. He died bravely.”
    “He died a raging drunk,” she said. A tear crept out of her right eye and rolled slowly down her tanned cheek. “He was a good man, before all this. You should know that. Gentle. Kind. Not given to drink.”
    I nodded. If she wanted to talk, I would listen.
    “I tried to stop him from going,” she said. She sounded weary. I supposed she’d been sitting at that table staring at that glass all night and all day. “I tell him, fool, they will strike you down.” A second tear escaped. “This is what he wants, I believe. An end to it all. No more of the shame, could he withstand.”
    “For what it’s worth, I believe he was correct,” I said. “I believe the carnival took your daughter. I don’t know how yet, or why, but I believe they did.”
    “And now they have taken my Berthold too.” Her jaw clenched and she shook, but only for a moment.
    “I have no more money,” she said.
    “I’m not asking for any.”
    “Widow I am,” she replied. “Beggar I am not.”
    “Agreed. You’re not a beggar, and I’m not the kind of man who takes advantage of widows. Your husband