The Banshee's Walk by Frank Tuttle Page B

revealed. I did the same. Another masterwork.
    Gertriss gasped. I followed her gaze down to the canvas. A man and a woman danced. They’d left their clothes somewhere but didn’t seem concerned.
    The painting was so good you nearly forgot they were naked. The artist had caught them in the midst of a twirl, had caught the fluid motion of their bodies, the look in their eyes. The Regent’s Council of Art would have an apoplexy at the nude bodies, but the painting wasn’t dirty. It just wasn’t.
    “Something isn’t right,” I said, quietly. I let the cloth fall back down on the canvas. “They can’t all be prodigies.”
    “Prodi—whats?”
    “Prodigies. Persons of unusual and rare skill or talent.” I swept my arm across the room. “We ought to find one or two we can’t take our eyes off of. Not every one of them.”
    Gertriss frowned. “Maybe this Lady Werewilk has a good eye for painter-folk,” she said.
    “Maybe.” I resisted the urge to go methodically about the room, lifting every canvas. “Let’s see what else we can find while we wander lost, looking for the dining room.”
    Gertriss giggled. I chose the door set in the far side of the room from the one we’d entered.
    And I reluctantly closed it behind me.
     
    The rest of the House wasn’t nearly so artistically inclined. There were storage rooms and rooms full of stored furniture and rooms full of barrels and rooms full of crated art supplies. And then there were the rooms, which housed the artists themselves.
    The artists were housed barracks-style, with a half-dozen single-occupant rooms set aside for special stars of either gender. I poked my head in here and there, finding nothing but the clutter and mess you’d expect a gaggle of perpetually drunk teenagers to leave behind. The smell was exactly that I remembered from my army days. I gathered Ella and Emma had long ago abandoned any pretense of maid services in the artist’s wing.
    We made it as far as the laundry unchallenged. Inside that room, though, stirring an enormous vat that boiled and smelled of bleach so strongly it made my eyes water were two of Lady Werewilk’s staff.
    They gave us the usual stink-eye but neither said a word. Clouds of blinding caustic steam rose up with every slap of their paddles. I rummaged through the list of servants Lady Werewilk had provided and decided those two worthies were Eegis and Gamp.
    Neither appeared inclined to speak, much less confess to nefarious deeds, and Gertriss was turning an interesting shade of blue.
    “Excellent work,” I offered, as we brushed past them. “Mind that wine stain on my pantaloons.”
    And out the door we went.
    I blinked. We were outside, though in a shade so deep it might as well have been in the dark heart of the House. But the air was cool and sweet, and we both just stood there and blinked away the bleach for a minute.
    Gertriss put her hand on my arm just as I was about to speak.
    “…heared nothin’ good about him,” said a gruff man’s voice.
    The door we’d stepped out of opened to the side of the House. A rough gravel wagon path wound around to the door, which I gathered was used for deliveries coming in and trash being hauled out. Parked there in the gravel round was a wagon, sans ponies. The wagon was tipped back and away from Gertriss and I, and from the sound of it a couple of layabouts were reclining in the empty wagon bed, taking advantage of the cool evening breeze and the apparent absence of any watchful eyes.
    Oh, but there were ears. Four of them.
    “Still, I don’t think Weexil had nothin’ to do with no foolishness with crossbows. Them people is from town. You know what happens when town-folk get kilt.”
    Silence. I assume someone nodded in grave agreement. I all but shouted for them to keep talking.
    “Well, even if he does come back, I reckon Lady Werewilk won’t be havin’ none of him no more. I’m lookin’ to take on his job. Maybe that little split tail of his