Read Online The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) by Frank Tuttle - Free Book Online Page A

caught a cab for Avalante.
    I wasn’t expecting anything out of the Watch. The Dark Carnival was camped well outside Rannit’s walls, and as long as the carnies restricted their predations to the woods, they could slaughter whole villages and fry up babies by the dozen, for all the Rannit City Watch cared.
    Holder was a different story. He was neither stupid nor corrupt, and if he came across a missing person who hadn’t wound up in the dead wagons as a Curfew-breaker he might remember my report and decide Dark’s Diverse Delights was a danger to Rannites after all.
    Would he break tradition and poke around beyond Rannit’s walls?
    Maybe. I didn’t know. But by filing a report I’d completed my civic duty. I’d also handed Holder information he wouldn’t otherwise have, and though I didn’t expect any lavish show of gratitude I might have stored up a crumb of goodwill I could nibble on later.
    If, of course, I had a later. As the cab rattled through Rannit’s busy morning streets, I pondered Ordwald’s death, and dreaded my meeting with his plain-spoken widow.
    Ordwald had tried threats. He’d tried sheriffs and finders and even men at arms.
    He’d failed to bring his daughter home, and then he’d died.
    I pulled my hat down to the bridge of my nose and tried to nap. The sight of Ordwald falling wouldn’t let me sleep.
    He’d done everything right, I decided. Everything right, but all of it wrong.
    He’d reacted. He’d demanded. He’d coerced.
    I thought back to my meeting with Thorkel. All those masks and wigs and prop limbs hanging in his tent. Macabre, yes, but aside from run-of-the-mill greed and a penchant for being overly dramatic, the man hadn’t struck me as being anything more than a carnival master.
    So what changed, after the crowds left the carnival midway?
    What transformed second-rate side-show acts into things out of nightmares?
    “Sorcery,” I muttered.
    And now sorcery held not only Ordwald’s daughter, but Buttercup.
    Buttercup isn’t a child. Certainly isn’t my child. But child or not, she’s certainly slipped into that role. Darla bakes her cookies and sews her new dresses. I play dolls with her and she goes to sleep on my knee.
    And now the carnival has her, I thought, and I’m about to charge their tents just as Ordwald did, except I’ll be doing it stone cold sober.
    It was a long ride up the Hill to Avalante.
    House Avalante is not the biggest of the Dark Houses. The estates on either side of it dwarf Avalante by two and three stories, respectively.
    Whereas the other houses opt for building up and out, Avalante chose to hide their expansions deep underground. I’ve enjoyed the illusion of freedom within Avalante for years now, and even so I have no idea how deep or how wide their subterranean chambers reach.
    Evis maintains a cherry-walled office four floors beneath the street. Jerle, Avalante’s unflappable day man, greeted me at the door to the second underground level.
    “I’m afraid Mr. Prestley is unavailable today,” said Jerle with the smallest sympathetic tilt of his graying head. “I shall tell him you called. Good day, Mr. Markhat.”
    Give me some credit for being a fast thinker. I didn’t hesitate, didn’t falter, didn’t fumble, even under Jerle’s unblinking gaze.
    “I’d appreciate that, Jerle. I was just passing through to say hello. On my way to the firing range. Lost a bet with Evis, and if I don’t work on my aim pretty soon he’ll start charging me for cigars.”
    “We cannot have that, sir. Good shooting.”
    I smiled and trotted down the stairs, rubbing elbows with silent, black-clad vampires who didn’t give me a second glance.
    I headed for the range. Borrowed a long gun. Fired off two hundred rounds and earned myself a reluctant grunt from the range master.
    Then I tiptoed back up the stairs. Jerle was gone. The halfdead idling in his place nodded when I passed, but failed to tear my throat out.
    I knocked softly at Evis’s door,