In Truth and Claw (A Mick Oberon Job #4) Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also Available from Ari Marmell and Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  A Brief Word on Language

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  A Brief Afterword

  Fae Pronunciation Guide

  About the Author

  IN TRUTH AND CLAW

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM ARI MARMELL AND TITAN BOOKS

  Hot Lead, Cold Iron

  Hallow Point

  Dead to Rites

  In Truth and Claw

  IN TRUTH AND

  CLAW

  A MICK OBERON JOB

  ARI MARMELL

  TITAN BOOKS

  In Truth and Claw

  Print edition ISBN: 9781785658891

  E-Book edition ISBN: 9781785658907

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: August 2018

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Ari Marmell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Copyright © 2018 by Ari Marmell. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  For Joe, quite possibly the kindest and wisest man I’ve ever known.

  A BRIEF WORD ON LANGUAGE

  Throughout the Mick Oberon novels, I’ve done my best to ensure that most of the 30s-era slang can be picked up from context, rather than trying to include what would become a massive (and, no matter how careful I was, likely incomplete) dictionary. So over the course of reading, it shouldn’t be difficult to pick up on the fact that “lamps” and “peepers” are eyes, “choppers” and “Chicago typewriters” are Tommy guns, and so forth.

  But there are two terms I do want to address, due primarily to how they appear to modern readers.

  “Bird,” when used as slang in some areas today, almost always refers to a woman. In the 1930s, however, it was just another word for “man” or “guy.”

  “Gink” sounds like it should be a racial epithet to modern ears (and indeed, though rare, I’ve been told that it is used as such in a few regions). In the 30s, the term was, again, just a word for “man,” though it has a somewhat condescending connotation to it. (That is, you wouldn’t use it to refer to anyone you liked or respected.) It’s in this fashion that I’ve used it throughout the novels.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It started the same way it was all gonna end: in the snow.

  You birds ain’t ever seen anything like an Elphame winter. A quilt of the brightest white over absolutely everything, and I do mean white. The slop you pump into the sky from your factories and your flivvers and who knows what else make your own winters sorta plague-gray, but even your cleanest, freshest snow don’t compare. I told ya before about the colors here, how they’re more’n just hues and shades. Entities unto themselves. Our snow? It’s like the gods just forgot to paint it in. It’s the shine of everything and nothing. Hurts to look at, but too pure to look away.

  Like the cold. Sharper’n the chill of your world. You feel it more, but it bothers you less.

  And through it all, a constant spatter of browns and golds and reds—and I mean gold and red, not those off-browns of your world—where tree branches and leaves’d shaken off their coats of snow. A couple flowers that’d forgotten they were supposed to be bunking for the season, or maybe they just had insomnia. Little islands where toadstools peeped up through the snow, mostly alive’n awake because the pixies liked ’em that way.

  Me, I’d seen it a million times before. Pete’d seen it before more’n a few times, too, which is why he’d already dusted out, headin’ deeper into the wilderness for his hairy weekend. Funny thing: the prints he left in the snow were wolf tracks even though he wouldn’t be changing for a few hours yet.

  But Pete wasn’t my only guest.

  “Oh, Mick, it’s beautiful!”

  “Yeah, sister. It really is,” I answered, more ’cause I figured she expected an answer, not because I was much for admiring the scenery. I was too busy givin’ her the up and down, even though I guessed I wouldn’t see anything new.

  Adalina looked same as she’d looked for more’n a year now. Massive peepers spaced way too wide across her face, skin paler’n a worm with the runs, and just overall… fishy. She’d started comin’ along when I stepped Sideways with Pete every month, somethin’ I’d allowed in hopes of learnin’ more about her. I mean, I look different here than I do in your world. Shorter, a touch less human. Thought maybe she would, too.

  So far, I got squat. I knew nothin’ more about her than I had the day she woke up, the day she’d spouted off some nonsense in half a dozen languages—a few of ’em deader’n the mummy who’d helped revive her. She seemed to have no memory of any of that, and her parents and I had decided it wasn’t anything we needed to tell her about.

  I had a whole lot I hadn’t told her about. Or them, for that matter. Hadn’t yet figured how.

  Old Gaelic. Old Polish. Old East Norse, not to mention several others, all muddled together in her initial disorientation. Somethin’ about that combination nagged at me, chewing at the back of my head like a persistent louse, but I just couldn’t figure why.

  If she was at all steamed that she hadn’t died that day in the burnt-down church, when she’d walked into her grandma’s spell in despair over becomin’ a “monster,” she never said. In fact, in the months she’d been awake, she hadn’t talked much about those days at all, and Orsola’s name never once passed her lips.

  Mine, either. Like I said, there were some yarns I hadn’t spun for any of the family yet.

  Anyway, point is, I hadn’t uncovered a damn thing I didn’t already know. Bringin’ Adalina to the Otherworld hadn’t worked. I’d spent some time nosing around Chicago—our Chicago, I mean, not yours—and that’d turned up bupkis, too. On the square, I’d run outta places to dig.

  Well, no, that ain’t entirely true. I still had some people I could ask, but… Well, that’d mean talking about Adalina to ginks I wasn’t so sure I wanted knowin’ about her. Or, at least, knowin’ she might be important.

 
; By now, I didn’t really have any good reason to keep taking her along when I brought Pete here on the full moon, but I didn’t really have good reason to refuse, either. She loved these trips, and Fino and Bianca loved anything that made their little changeling happy.

  And if I was good’n sick of her wide-eyed “Everything’s so beautiful and amazing and ooh and aah” routine, well, it was a burden I could shoulder.

  Besides, this was the first time she’d really seen our snow. I thought she was gonna break her neck, tryin’ to take it all in at once. “It’s the same snow in all directions, doll.”

  “It’s like something out of Wonderland!”

  So you’ve said, more’n a couple times. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “There still aren’t any shadows.”

  “Never are on the Seelie side of the joint. I told you that.”

  She shrugged as she turned. “I know, it’s just… Against all that white? It seems like there should be shadows.” She stopped mid-turn, then looked at a small copse of trees over my shoulder, and actually squealed. “It is like Wonderland!”

  My turn to, uh, turn. “What’s that, now?”

  “You never told me the Cheshire Cat was real, Mick!”

  I peered into the branches. Sure enough, big eyes, big ears, even bigger grin.

  “Sorry, Adalina, but it ain’t.”

  “What’s that, then?”

  “That,” I said, sighing, “is a friggin’ pixie with good hearing, too much time on its hands, and a lousy sense of humor.”

  The image vanished with a moist pop, leaving a tiny naked figure with dragonfly wings and filthy, scraggly hair. Scrawny, too; sharp-featured, and not in a pretty way.

  “Fuck you, Oberon!”

  You ever hear a pixie try to come off hard? Sounds like a teamster made of marmots.

  “Ah, buzz off, you little gink! Your momma was a woodpecker.”

  Tiny bastard flew off, shrieking something unprintable— and I don’t mean “obscene,” I mean there literally ain’t letters in any mortal language to convey those sounds—and we were alone again.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Adalina just sorta blinked at me. Lamps that big, I’m surprised I couldn’t feel a breeze. “Why would it…?”

  “Like I said. Lousy sense of humor, the whole lot of ’em. Frankly, you got lucky. That was just a dumb joke. I’ve seen people kick off or even lose their families over what some of those creeps think is funny.”

  Lucky. That reminded me…

  I pulled a pinch of salt from my coat pocket and tossed it over a shoulder. Even after all these months, I was still suffering those occasional strokes of bad luck. (I told you about ’em back during the whole mess with Tsura and the mummy, Nessumontu, and so far I’d had about as much luck findin’ the woman I was pretty sure was behind it as I’d had in uncovering any more about Adalina.) Odds were mortal magics wouldn’t hit me too hard here in the Otherworld— but on the other hand, it was just possible, if the magic was powerful or pervasive enough, it’d be worse. So yeah, I was still wearin’ various charms and taking steps.

  If Adalina wondered why the hell I’d just seasoned the snow behind me, she chose not to ask.

  Me, though, much as I’m more comfortable here away from all the hissing and snapping and itching technology of your world, I was about done with the place. “So, you ready to go back?”

  “We just got here!”

  “Yeah, but you know how it is. I don’t care to—”

  “I want to see the city, Mick.”

  Yeah, I knew this was comin’ eventually. No way was her curiosity gonna be satisfied with a couple square miles of wilderness forever.

  “Adalina, we talked about this…”

  We had, too. Wasn’t the first time she’d asked, and wasn’t the first time she was gonna get the “it’s way too dangerous” spiel. We’d gone through the whole rigmarole as early as our second trip.

  And the third.

  And the fourth.

  She’d skipped it last time, but yeah, it was gonna come up again sooner or later. Just thought maybe I’d had more time.

  So we went through it all again. You’ll have to live with me skippin’ the details. Wasn’t real fun the first time, let alone the fourth; I sure as hell ain’t eager to repeat it for you.

  But you know what? After about ten minutes of this hooey, I gave in.

  Sure, I didn’t want anyone in the Seelie Court—let alone out of it—gettin’ wise to why she was important to me, that she was a mystery even I couldn’t crack. Definitely didn’t want anyone gettin’ the bright idea that she might be useful, or powerful. And even in Elphame, or at least the civilized parts, she was gonna stand out a bit.

  She wasn’t gonna let it go, though. Here we had someone with no idea what she was, where she belonged. Also, adolescent and hormonal.

  She didn’t have a lot back home. Can’t really go to school or go cuttin’ a rug or whatever else kids do when you look like an eel. Her family loved her well enough, and did what they could, but she was a pariah and a shut-in. Wasn’t much made her happy except these monthly trips, so what happened when the shine rubbed off ’em?

  So, fine. Okay. All right already.

  “I got some ground— Hey!” I tried again when she was done jumping and squealing and all around trying to hug me into oatmeal. “I got some ground rules if we’re gonna do this, Adalina. You so much as bend one of ’em, and we scram so fast it’ll be an hour before your own name catches up to you.”

  All ears, then, with that same serious expression I was more used to her wearin’. Frankly, much as I liked to see it, “happy” still didn’t sit quite natural on her. “I’m listening,” she promised.

  “You don’t go anywhere without me, and I mean not even across the street. You follow my lead, always. You curtsy when I bow, you avoid who I avoid, you don’t breathe a peep unless I tell you to talk. And… look, doll, you know I don’t much like tellin’ you to do this, but you keep your hat pulled low and your scarf wrapped high, you dig?”

  That brought out a deep sigh—guess she’d hoped that wouldn’t be necessary away from the humans—but she set about arranging everything just so. Wouldn’t hide that she wasn’t human, but it might make it harder for anyone to tell that, even for us, she was an odd one.

  And then I’d run outta excuses to delay, so we set off.

  Ankled it the whole way, too, even though we hadda cross the brass railroad tracks to get there. We coulda hopped the train, I suppose; it’s what I did, more often than not. And I’m sure she’d have been real taken by the experience, seein’ the brass and bronze and gold, maybe even peekin’ down below to see the goblin rowers who kept the wheels turning.

  Thing is, hoppin’ aboard while the dingus is rumbling along ain’t exactly a piece of cake. I know I can do it; wasn’t so sure she could, slight as she was. Giving it a shot and failing coulda got her hurt, bad, and you might remember that a hurt here in Elphame ain’t something we can shrug off so easy.

  Plus, I wanted to tire her out much as I could on the walk. Try to encourage her to spend a little less time playing tourist in the big city, see?

  Don’t gimme that. I was tryin’ to keep her happy and safe. Ain’t as if that’s easy even with human children now, is it?

  Besides, she had a lot to see on the walk. Icicles hangin’ from tree branches, so clear they magnified whatever was behind ’em—and this bein’ the Otherworld, sometimes they did even more than magnify. Look through one just right, in the right moment, you might see the tree behind it spinning and dancing; look around it, though, and it was just another stiff and motionless trunk. Some of ’em gathered in clusters of varying heights, so that if you knew just the angle to get a good slant, and you happened to know the old tongues, you could read the lyrics to ancient songs. She heard the calls and the cries and the poetry of those beasts and birds that hadn’t taken the run out soon as the snows started to fall, and she exchanged waves with a few lonely passers
by. Not anything too peculiar. A few kobolds, marchin’ to work come rain or shine or snow; a white-frosted ghillie dhu who musta had somewhere important to be, to be out’n about with his bark and his leaves near frozen. And of course, a few more pixies, who knew what was good for ’em enough to keep their distance.

  We did spot a silhouette in the distance speedin’ along atop the snow, and damn me if it didn’t look to be a barbegazi, icy beard whipping in the wind, skiing on those big honkin’ hocks they laughably call “feet.” Couldn’t imagine what one of ’em would be doin’ here in the Chicago area—or at this altitude, or even on this continent—but then, I never did understand those mugs too well.

  Hell, maybe he was just a tourist, too. What do I know?

  Right. We took a walk. We saw some things. A few even bordered on interesting.

  And then we were there.

  Adalina’d seen some of the taller buildings from a distance before, but that hadn’t prepared her. The trees, bigger’n she’d ever seen, with doors built into the trunks at every height, buildings constructed on the branches. The gleaming skyscrapers of glass and bronze with support columns made of more trees, towering but spindly. White marble and black granite. Streets cobbled and walls constructed of bricks from every building that had ever burned or collapsed in your Chicago.

  Fae in suits and fancy dresses, in slacks and suspenders, a few holdouts in the fashions of past centuries. Carriages pulled by horses, or giants, or wing-clipped griffons, or, occasionally, humans. Countless human workers and servants, more of ’em than there ever could be of us. The whistle of the winter wind. Words that blended into a chorus of song, and songs made up of nothing resembling words.

  Chicago. Our Chicago.

  Damn it felt good to be here, and I couldn’t wait to leave.

  So we did the rounds, and I pointed out the sights. City Hall, where the local Seelie Court pretended they were mayors and police and aldermen and were more serious and dour and dangerous in their playacting than you lugs are with the real deal. The nearby establishment, half castle and half office building and all marble, where King Sien Bheara and Queen Laurelline—sorry, that’s “Judge” Sien Bheara and “Police Chief” Laurelline, because, gods, the whole lot of us are dippy—lived and threw their shindigs and everything else the royalty does when they weren’t holding court at City Hall. Pointed out our own police station, which was an ugly hunk of granite that was more a barracks and an armory.