Free Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories by Kelly Link Page A

toe. "That meat'll spoil soon enough, but before he does, let's have some fun, shall we? Give us a hand." He bent and lifted Grinder under one arm. He nodded his head at the remaining arm. "Come on," he said, and I took it, and we lifted the limp corpse of Zophar Grindersworth, the Grinder of Saint Aggie's, and propped him up at the head of the middle table, knife handle protruding from his chest amid a spreading red stain over his blue brocade waistcoat. Monty shook his head. "That won't do," he said, and plucked up a tea towel from a pile by the kitchen door and tied it around Grinder's throat, like a bib, fussing with it until it more or less disguised the grisly wound. Then Monty picked up one of the loaves from the end of the table and tore a hunk off the end.
    He chewed at it for a time like a cow at her cud, never taking his eyes off me. Then he swallowed and said, "Hungry work," and laughed with a spray of crumbs.
    He paced the room, picking up the cutlery I'd laid down and inspecting it, gnawing thoughtfully at the loaf's end in his hand. "A pretty poor setup," he said. "But I'm sure that wicked old lizard had a pretty soft nest for himself, didn't he?"
    I nodded and pointed down the hall to Grinder's door. "The key's on his belt," I said.
    Monty fingered the key ring chained to Grinder's thick leather belt, then shrugged. "All one-cylinder jobs," he said, and picked a fork out of the basket that was still hanging from my hook. "Nothing to them. Faster than fussing with his belt." He walked purposefully down the hall, his metal foot thumping off the polished wood, leaving dents in it. He dropped to one knee at the lock, then put the fork under his steel foot and used it as a lever to bend back all but one of the soft pot-metal tines, so that now the fork just had one long thin spike. He slid it into the lock, felt for a moment, then gave a sharp and precise flick of his wrist and twisted open the doorknob. It opened smoothly at his touch. "Nothing to it," he said, and got back to his feet, dusting off his knees.
    Now, I'd been in Grinder's rooms many times, when I'd brought in the boiling water for his bath, or run the rug sweeper over his thick Turkish rugs, or dusted the framed medals and certificates and the cunning machines he kept in his apartment. But this was different, because this time I was coming in with Monty, and Monty made you ask yourself, "Why isn't this all mine? Why shouldn't I just take it?" And I didn't have a good answer, apart from fear. And fear was giving way to excitement.
    Monty went straight to the humidor by Grinder's deep, plush chair and brought out a fistful of cigars. He handed one to me, and we both bit off the tips and spat them on the fine rug, then lit them with the polished brass lighter in the shape of a beautiful woman that stood on the other side of the chair. Monty clamped his cheroot between his teeth and continued to paw through Grinder's sacred possessions, all the fine goods that the children of Saint Aggie's weren't even allowed to look to closely upon. Soon he was swilling Grinder's best brandy from a lead crystal decanter, wearing Grinder's red velvet housecoat, topped with Grinder's fine beaver-skin bowler hat.
    And it was thus attired that he stumped back into the dining room, where the corpse of Grinder still slumped at table's end, and took up a stance by the old ship's bell that the morning child used to call the rest of the kids to breakfast, and he began to ring the bell like Saint Aggie's was afire, and he called out as he did so, a wordless, birdlike call, something like a rooster's crowing, such a noise as had never been heard in Saint Aggie's before.
    With a clatter and a clank and a hundred muffled arguments, the children of Saint Aggie's pelted down the staircases and streamed into the kitchen, milling uncertainly, eyes popping at the sight of our latest arrival in his stolen finery, still ringing the bell, still making his crazy call, stopping now and again