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

died on my watch, Mrs. Ordwald. I don’t tolerate that. I owe him, not you, and I’m going to get your daughter out of there and see you safely home.” I raised my hand when she opened her mouth to protest. “I mean it. You paid me to work the case and work the case I will. How long is your room paid for?”
    “A week,” she replied, in a near whisper.
    I stacked coins on the table. “Don’t speak. Meals. Clothes. You can make travel arrangements when I’m done. We have a custom here, Mrs. Ordwald. You’ve heard of a widow’s urn?”
    “I will take not a single copper.”
    “When a man dies and leaves a widow behind, an urn is placed on his grave. The man’s friends come around and fill that urn, because learning to be a widow is hard enough without starving to death. Your Berthold won’t have a grave, won’t have an urn, but by the Angels you will take this, and not as charity, but as your due.”
    She frowned, but her eyes lingered on the money. “This is not our way,” she said.
    “You’re in Rannit now. This is our way. Take it, or leave it for the waiter as a tip. That would be a foolish thing to do, but I don’t think you’re a foolish woman. I think you’ve seen the cost of pride is never worth what you pay.”
    “I cannot argue that.”
    “Stay here. I’ll be back with news. With Alfreda, if I can find her and free her.”
    “Berthold’s body?”
    “I’m afraid not.” I didn’t describe to her the bonfires. She didn’t need that haunting her.
    “Very well.” She pulled the coins her way. “Thank you,” she said. “I have no other words.”
    I stood. “Get some rest,” I said. “Send a runner to Mama Hog if you need anything.”
    She rose and walked away, back straight, chin held high.
    They make them tough, out in the wilderness. She’d only shed two tears.

Chapter Eight
    A pale arc of the moon rode faint and high in the afternoon sky. I thought back to Evis’s claim that Stitches was up there.
    Hell, I decided, she might be. Didn’t matter whether Evis was feverish or facetious, though—Stitches was away, and I’d have no sorcerous assistance when I returned to the carnival.
    Aside from what Mama cooked up, of course. Mama does a mean hex, and that oak-handled cleaver she carries has felled at least two halfdead, but I wasn’t sure how much good any of that would do against giant spiders and airborne witch-women.
    As my borrowed wagon rattled through busy streets, I weighed my options. We could charge in now, and hope to find the carnival folk napping.
    Or we could sneak in with the first ferry of merrymakers, and hope to snatch Buttercup from her tent and head back across the river before anyone realized she was gone.
    Both schemes had disadvantages. Going in before the carnival opened meant we’d have to announce our intentions or attempt to enter on a flimsy premise.
    Sneaking in with the paying customers exposed the good citizens of Rannit to the possible wrath of the carnival folk, if we were caught trying to snatch Buttercup.
    My new crates bumped and knocked as we rode. The rotary guns were fearsome, but were nearly as heavy as small cannons. Too, I’d never fired one. I’d been shown how—pull back the firing lever, release the magazine lock, turn the crank. Mayhem was sure to ensue.
    I’d not seen a grenade in use, but while they sounded formidable, they were also indiscriminate.
    I pictured Mama Hog, her burlap bag stuffed with grenades, cranking out a hail of deadly gunfire right down the carnival’s crowded midway.
    I saw crossbow bolts flying again, only this time, it wasn’t Ordwald they were striking.
    It was Darla. Or Gertriss. Or Mama, or her Hoogas.
    I could lose them all, guns or no, in the space of a single heartbeat.
    We passed a man in a bright red hat fussing over a rolling snack cart on a corner. Lunch was sizzling on his tiny grill, and the scent of roasting beef made my stomach grumble.
    “Going to be hell to pay,” I muttered, with a