Free The Broken Bell by Frank Tuttle Page B

heads.
    “I found your Miss Tamar, and her mother and father, and of course the inimitable Mr. Tibbles,” I said. “Lovely people. Except Mr. Tibbles. He made rude comments about my hat.”
    Darla shook her head in mock dismay. “I hear he wets the rugs too. Scandalous.”
    I laughed. Darla frowned, though, and traced her fingertips down my cheek.
    “There’s something else.” She wasn’t asking a question.
    I told her briefly about the Sprangs and the mess they’d brought from Pot Lockney. I hadn’t intended to tell Gertriss’s story, too, but it all came out. Darla nodded, as though she’d known it all along, and it’s entirely possible she had.
    “A few nights in the Old Ruth ought to have them ready to run back home,” she said. “Now why not tell me what’s really bothering you.”
    Can’t put one past that woman. Someday I’ll learn not to try.
    “Took a ride yesterday,” I whispered, Angels know why, sound barely carried in that room filled with hanging clothes and bolts of fabric. “Black carriage. No horses.”
    Darla just took my hand. “Will we ever be free of it?”
    I knew the answer to that. It’s no. But I didn’t speak it to Darla.
    “What did he want?”
    And the weight of that question— What will you tell Darla? —fell full upon me.
    “Not the time or the place.” Darla’s doorbell rang. Feet began to shuffle on the sales floor outside. “But don’t worry. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
    “Liar.”
    “Am not.”
    “Are too.”  
    Mary poked her head inside, asked for Darla.
    “Go,” I said. “I’m off to find this missing groom. See you tonight? After work?”
    “Indeed you will, Mr. Markhat.” She kissed me on my forehead. “And bring your mouth. You’ll need it to talk.”
    I forced a smile. She saw right through it, but she squeezed my hands in parting and let me go my way.
     
    Traffic was picking up. A dead wagon rattled right past me, heavy laden with the night’s pale leavings. The Regent has ordered the wagons covered now, and I was glad of it. Word was the number of bodies hauled daily to the crematoriums was on the increase. Soon there’d be grumbles about halfdead and the Truce. And then there’d be a spectacular murder or rumors of another range war out West and the halfdead and their Curfew-breaking victims would be forgotten.
    Until the rumors start up again.
    It’s an old tradition, in Rannit. Grumbling. And quickly forgetting.
    I shook off my reverie and headed downtown. I planned to walk as far as Northridge and then hail a cab to the Hill. It was time to beard the Lethways in their opulent lair, and employ my clever ruse to trick them into revealing the whereabouts of their only son Carris.
    I was hoping the walk would promote the formulation of my clever ruse. A block later, I hadn’t made any progress in that regard, which meant my entire plan of attack centered around the words “Hello, I’m Markhat, where pray tell is that son of yours?”
    I was so engrossed in my machinations mental it was another block before the tiny hairs on the back of my neck rose, and it dawned on me that I was the object of a stranger’s sudden, intense attention.
    I didn’t turn and look. That’s the kind of stunt that ends with bloody noses or worse. I watched glass shop-fronts until I identified my interested stranger and satisfied myself that he was working alone.
    I cussed out loud and drew a sour look from a little old lady in a veiled dowager’s hat.
    The kid was a Sprang.
    Not even a full-grown Sprang. He might have been ten at the most. Ten, and wandering around Rannit clad in homespun burlap and mismatched shoes.
    He was filthy. His hair was wild and matted. The dirt was so thick on his face I could see it plain in a dim reflection. The streaks in the dirt must have been from tears.
    Hell. The kid had been out all night. After Curfew, outside, with hungry halfdead roaming the streets.
    I almost repented of my plan to set the elder Sprangs