The Banshee's Walk by Frank Tuttle Page A

I should finish getting dressed.”
    Her robe had slipped. I was having trouble concentrating on all things good and holy.
    “Yes. Be quick about it—we’ve got a few things to do before the dinner bells ring.”
    She rose, her expression questioning.
    “An old finder’s trick, Miss. Everyone heard Lady Werewilk tell us the last bell sounded five minutes before the meal. Everyone will assume we’ll spend the entire time before that relaxing in our baths and pilfering various small household items. So, instead, we’re going to take our very own tour of the grounds.”
    Gertriss grinned. “I got Miss Darla to show me some shoes with rubber soles. Perfect for sneakin’ around big old tile-floored houses.”
    I grinned back. “You’ve the makings of a finder,” I said, as she scurried off and shut her door behind her. “Or a first-rate thief.”
    “I heard that.”
    I laughed. I’d have to work very hard to keep any secrets from Gertriss. Very hard indeed.

Chapter Seven
    Sneaking around House Werewilk turned out to be so easy Gertriss need not have bothered with soft-soled shoes.
    As I’d hoped, the staff were in or around the kitchen or the dining room preparing a feast fit for a finder. That left only the resident artists underfoot, and the party we’d interrupted when we arrived was back on, musicians and dancers and all, at the very same spot at the foot of the grand old staircase.
    I waved off half a dozen offers of beer and two invitations to dance from girls young enough to be my daughters but too good-looking to have ever branched off my family tree. Gertriss even got an offer, which she returned with a look that she probably last used on recalcitrant swine. It certainly sent at least one tipsy young painter backpedaling toward safety.
    “I think that lot could use a taste of honest work.” The euphoria left by her first hot bath was quickly fading.
    I just nodded. Part of me agreed. Part of me was howling about the injustice of it all—at their age, I’d been slogging it out in the West, fighting Trolls or hunger or the ever-present cold.
    But part of me was glad to see kids being kids.
    I made a finger to lips motion for silence, and we skirted the hall that led to the dining room, heading the other way.
    Mice would’ve made more noise than Gertriss did. Mice wearing mouse-hair slippers. I crunched and squeaked and huffed. Gertriss paid me the courtesy of not commenting upon it.
    The hall went straight then hit a room. The doors were open, so we just ambled on in.
    Easels. Easels and canvases. And chairs, and couches, and at least a couple of beds, all scattered haphazardly about the room.
    Lamps were everywhere, but none were lit. The windows did little more than cast a few weak shadows.
    I wandered. Most of the works in progress were covered, but a few were not. I let my eyes adjust, and was still doing so when I heard Gertriss gasp.
    She’d lifted the corner of a cloth draped over a canvas. Beneath it, even in the murk, was a work of art.
    No swords, upraised or flashing. No banners. No Trolls.
    But there was a woman, in flowing robes, clutching a wilted bouquet of roses to her chest. She was on her knees, and she was weeping, and something not in the painting cast a long tall shadow over her.
    A wardstone. Her father’s. You could see that plain in her face.
    Gertriss let the cloth drop back down.
    “That was…”
    “Good. Damned good.”
    I walked, picked an easel at random, lifted a canvas cloth.
    A ring of children at play. Flowers that swayed on a mild summer breeze. In the middle of the ring of children, an old man laughed, his feet caught in mid-jig, his smile wrinkled and weathered, but his eyes caught alight, young again, just for that instant.
    Gertriss joined me, wordless.
    “I reckon I might have misspoke.”
    I let the cloth drop. “No wonder she’s not worried about the galleries. I may buy this one right now.”
    Gertriss tore herself away, chose another. More wonders were