Burn Me Deadly elm-2

by Alex Bledsoe

  “No, sweetie, no word,” Angelina said sadly.

  Callie kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks. I’ll get back to work.” She left the kitchen with the normal bounce in her step. Angelina lightly slammed her forehead against the wall.

  “Her boyfriend run off?” I asked when Angelina rejoined me.

  “Of course he did. He got what he wanted, which was a few days’ work and a few nights’ fun,” Angelina said wearily. “He could’ve been honest with her, though. She bought his whole line.”

  “Good thing she has you,” I said wryly.

  “Yeah, big sister to the goddam universe. Now back to your problem. I get most of my rum and ale indirectly from Gordon Marantz, and I pay reasonable protection money directly to him, so I’m not risking my ass, in any sense, by attracting his ire. So don’t even try to talk me into that again.”

  She fell silent. “But?” I prompted.

  “But if you want to risk your danglies, follow me.”

  She picked up an old bar stool left in the kitchen and led me into a storeroom packed floor-to-ceiling with plates, jugs and tankards. She pointed up. Directly over us was the floor of my office, but the dining room itself had nothing above it. “There’s a crawl space up there, over the top of this wall. It leads out between the roof and the ceiling over the whole dining room. It’s not really an attic, and if you slip off the rafters you’ll fall right through. But you can work your way down over his booth. I don’t know if you’ll be able to hear anything once you get there, but it’s the best I can do.”

  I nodded, unbuckled my scabbard and placed my sword behind a shelf of plates. I put the wobbly bar stool as solidly as I could against the wall and started to climb onto it. Angelina put her hand on my arm.

  “Okay, look,” she said, unable to meet my eyes. “There’s, ah… some other stuff up there, too. I need your word that you’ll never mention it.” She looked at me with a mixture of guilt and defiance.

  I knew Angelina wasn’t completely legit, so this didn’t surprise me. “Sure,” I said without hesitation.

  “Thanks. Have fun.” She went back through the kitchen to the main room. Rudy kept his attention resolutely on his cooking fire.

  I climbed onto the stool. With a grunt I pulled myself up over the top of the wall. Ahead light from the main room’s lamps shone up through gaps and cracks in the woven ceiling panels, illuminating the narrow space I had to negotiate. And she wasn’t kidding: the beams were ragged and splintery, while the space above them barely let me raise up on my elbows. It smelled like dust and old grease.

  I proceeded like an arthritic viper down one of the beams, brushing cobwebs aside as I inched forward. Three long, solid supports ran the length of the room, crossed by four smaller ones. A platform had been built over one of these squares, and it was stacked with small, identical wooden boxes. A well-fed rat sat atop one of them cleaning his front paws. A silverfish scurried over my fingers.

  I couldn’t resist a peek inside; after all, I’d already given my word I wouldn’t talk about it. I lifted the closest box’s lid, and found nothing but old, dried beans. When I stuck my fingers beneath them, though, I felt the unmistakable shapes of coins. I pulled one out and held it in a shaft of light. It bore the image not of our own King Archibald, but of revered Queen Malena from Natabetia. Neither Muscodia nor any of the nations around us would honor these, so to be useful they’d have to be melted down and sold for their raw gold. The kitchen’s hearth fire got plenty hot enough to do that, I bet.

  I put the coin back beneath the beans. I knew Angelina came from somewhere far away, and that she couldn’t operate the tavern on what she actually made from it. There were at least a dozen boxes in this stack, and since the gold in that one coin could stock the place for three months, she had no immediate money worries. And yet she constantly nagged people about their overdue bar tabs.

  I resumed my progress. Through the ragged gaps, I looked down on tabletops and the heads of diners, and got a view down Callie’s cleavage that many men would’ve paid dearly for. I reached a point where two beams crossed, wriggled my way onto the other one and followed it to the edge. Here I struck a nest of small, harmless spiders and had to close my eyes and mouth to keep them out. My foot slipped from the beam and cracked the woven, clay-daubed ceiling, but my toe didn’t poke all the way through and no one below noticed the sudden shower of dust. I squirmed forward until at last I was above the booth where Marantz sat with Tempcott.

  A crack let me see down onto the table, although my angle hid their faces. Marantz clutched a tankard beside a plate picked clean of food, while Tempcott’s dinner remained mostly untouched. I had to concentrate to pick their voices out of the general din. Luckily Tempcott’s was distinctive and harsh, and as usual he was upset.

  “… waiting too long for this to have it yanked out from under me!” He pointed his fork at Marantz. “You will live up to your agreement.”

  Marantz’s voice was even, steady, the voice of a man who tried to never sound worried. “Relax, will you? So he’s a little late. He had to go up into the hills, after all. We wait, have a little dinner, check out the local girls.”

  “I have no interest in the girls,” Tempcott said with contempt. “And this tavern’s poor excuse for food makes me want to retch. I should never have agreed to this excursion. My faithful believe I’m still in the temple, not out in the world with these…” He gestured at the room and spat the last word. “ People. You’ve made me into a liar and a hypocrite, just like you.”

  Marantz took a drink, belched and said, “You’re not a very pleasant man, did you know that? I don’t like getting up early, but I think I’ll leave at first light tomorrow just so I don’t have to spend any more time with you.”

  “At least I have no blood on my hands,” Tempcott snapped back.

  “Don’t even try to take the moral high road, Tempcott,” Marantz laughed. “You need me to bankroll this outfit, just like I need you to get what I want. In the end we’ll both get the things we need.”

  “If your people don’t fail.”

  Marantz’s voice grew tight, as if he spoke through clenched teeth. I could imagine just how tired he was of the belligerent old man. “They won’t fail. If that girl of yours knows where they are, my people will find out.”

  “That may be complicated,” a new voice said.

  I jumped so hard I almost fell off the beam and right through the ceiling. I knew that voice.

  The man from the Tallega road, and that shack.

  The one who killed Laura Lesperitt. And wore dragon boots.

  SEVENTEEN

  My rage boiled up like it used to before a battle, when I first caught sight of whoever I was being paid to kill that week. Back then I learned to summon it at will; now it sprang to life unbidden, with the force of something vicious released after too long in a cage. It took all my resolve to control it as the man responsible for everything stood ten feet below me now and all I could do was perch like a silverfish and listen. If I moved an inch to the right, I’d roll off the beam and crash through the ceiling right on top of him. He’d damn sure never see that coming, and believe me, the temptation was strong. But there was more at stake now than just getting my hands on Laura’s killer. I dug my fingers into the wood so hard it bent back my nails.

  “Well, you made it,” Marantz observed with casual annoyance.

  “Hey, had to stop at the house to change clothes when I heard the Big Mace was still in town,” dragon boots said. “What made you stick around?”

  I risked leaning far enough to the left to peer through one of the ragged holes in the ceiling. There he was: surprisingly slender and wispy, with long brown hair and a dark beard. He looked about thirty years old. There was nothing in his appearance that advertised his vicious nature, but then again, the same thing had been said of me.

  He did not wait for Marantz to answer. “Man, the old Lizard’s Kiss used to be so neat, with all the satin and velvet everywhere. Now it’s
like a dungeon. C’mon, Father T., scoot over.” The old man grudgingly moved aside, and dragon boots slid into the booth next to him.

  “So what do you mean, ‘complicated’?” Marantz said coolly.

  “I’ve been on a horse all day; let me get a drink and I’ll tell you all about it,” dragon boots said cavalierly. Most people would not dare blow Marantz off like that; most people couldn’t slip up on me from behind the way he had, either. He whistled through his teeth, and a moment later Callie’s breasts appeared below me.

  “Well, hey there, Mr. Candora,” she said in her professional voice. “What can I get for you?”

  “Oh, call me ‘Doug,’ please,” he said.

  “As in the hole I’d be getting myself into?” she flirted. “I know all about you. I bet you’ve got a girl in every tavern in Muscodia.”

  “Lies, all lies,” he replied, and the smile was plain in his voice. Callie made everyone smile. “A tankard of blackberry, please.”

  “On its way.” She turned, making her dress twirl.

  How neat. Dragon boots was also Doug Candora, the very man I was supposed to keep away from Nicky. Well, if he was here, he couldn’t be bothering her, so at least I was doing that right. When Callie had gone, Candora said quietly, “Frankie and Jimmy are dead.”

  “Dead,” Marantz repeated flatly.

  “Did they find them?” Tempcott interrupted. “Is that how they died?”

  “I don’t think so. I found Jimmy hanging in the cabin from Frankie’s manacles, and Frankie was at the bottom of a canyon.”

  There was a pause. I was afraid they’d started whispering, but apparently this news was a big surprise. “What do you think happened?” Marantz said at last, carefully choosing his words.

  “Frankie didn’t kill Jimmy. He had some knife cuts on him, but nothing like what Frankie would’ve done. And Frankie wouldn’t fall off a cliff, or jump. So somebody else was there.”

  “What about Laura?” Tempcott said.

  “She’s being kept somewhere else,” Marantz said just a hair too quickly.

  “Anyway, the box was still in the cabin, empty,” Candora continued. “So it doesn’t look like they found them before they were killed.”

  “Any idea who it was?” Marantz asked.

  Candora snorted. “The only three men left alive who knew what we were looking for are sitting at this table, and we’d be idiots to double-cross each other so blatantly. So unless it was one of us, I figure it had to be those dirt-sucking idiots who live in the woods and think King Archibald is going to take away all their stuff. Jimmy had a run-in with one of them. It has nothing to do with what we’re interested in. I’ll go take care of them tomorrow.”

  Tempcott was not mollified. “But what about the-”

  “We send more men up there and keep looking,” Marantz snapped. “It’s just a setback, and it gets dealt with.”

  “You buffoon!” Tempcott hissed in his most grating voice. “Both of you! You with your smug certainty, and you — ” He pointed a trembling finger at Candora. “Turning my beliefs into a game, making sacred symbols into trinkets — ”

  “God damn, old man, will you lay off about the boots? It’s all about building loyalty. Every good organization needs some heraldry. We’re Team Solarian; the girls are the Lumina Auxiliary.”

  “This is not some club!”

  “Well, they look stylish, and I like ‘em. I wear your stupid scarf when I’m around your herd, don’t I?”

  “I warn you, if someone else does know about this-”

  “Here you go,” Callie said suddenly as she placed the tankard in front of Candora. If she noticed the tension, she had sense enough not to comment on it. “Can I get you other gentlemen anything?”

  “No,” Tempcott said before the others could speak. “We’re done here. Please bring our check.”

  “Now, now, Mr. Marantz’s gold is no good here.” I could practically hear the wink that accompanied this.

  Marantz and Candora blatantly watched her twirl away. Marantz sighed wistfully. Then, all business, he said to Candora, “All right. Settle up with the people you think killed Frankie and Jimmy. I assume you’ll also take care of the search?”

  “Yeah. I’ll take a couple of more men up there with me.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I’m less than confident,” Tempcott said. Then he added, “What happened to your neck?”

  “That? Oh.” Candora chuckled. “I’ve been trying to get close to a certain young lady. She insists on keeping me at arm’s length, and her nails are sharp. I showed her why that wasn’t a nice thing to do.” He took a long draught from his tankard. “She won’t be trouble to anyone anymore.”

  I went cold again.

  I probably sent a cloud of ceiling dust down on the patrons below, but I didn’t care. I scurried backward, dropped to the storeroom floor and grabbed my sword. Angelina looked up from retrieving some clean dishes from the washbasin. “What’s wrong?”

  “No time,” I said, and pushed past her out the back door. I ran around the front of the building and down the main street. Over the thundering of my heart and the breath rushing up from my lungs, I heard a soft, vaguely amused voice in my head: Oh, Mr. LaCrosse, you think you can help me, don’t you? You think you can ride up and save me, like a knight in a children’s story.

  Everyone from the riverboat had apparently decided to meet in the street at the same moment, and I shoved people aside with no regard for politeness. I turned up Ditch Street and leaped onto the porch of the former Lizard’s Kiss. As always, the building appeared dark and deserted, but now I knew better. I drew back and kicked the door hard; it moved, but didn’t open. I kicked it again, and this time it slammed back against the inside wall.

  I rushed in and took a moment to orient myself. To my right, the old greeting room had been stripped of all its ornate finery and redecorated with only a long, crude dragon mural that went around all four walls. The image showed two dragons mating, their serpentine bodies twined together, flames shooting from their mouths. The rest of the room was bare except for pillows thrown on the floor for minimum comfort.

  A half-dozen people occupied the room. A pair of women, still wrapped in their red cloaks, sat on pillows against the wall. The two drummers from the earlier ceremony froze in mid-pass of a giggleweed pipe. In that pose I abruptly recognized them: the minstrels from Angelina’s, including Callie’s deadbeat boyfriend, Tony. The other two men were Black River Hills folk. I guess Marantz could imagine no reason anyone would want to break in, so he’d left no guards. His mistake.

  I grabbed the nearest backwoods guy, slammed him into the wall and punched him hard in the chest. Completely surprised, he collapsed with a ragged gasp as he tried to catch his breath. The others, frozen and speechless, stared at me.

  “Doug Candora was here a little while ago,” I said, my own breathing heavy from running. “Where’s the girl he came to see?”

  They continued to stare. I punched the other hill dweller in his dull-eyed face, and he fell backward onto the pillows. The minstrels dropped their pipe and scrambled back against the wall, huddling like the women.

  I glared at the musicians. “Okay, now I’m going to start beating on you two until one of you answers me. That means one of you will take a beating for nothing.”

  “Hey, man, we just work here,” Tony said. His voice was high and jittery.

  I grabbed the front of his clothes and yanked him to his feet. He was the kind of handsome that hid all his personality flaws; I wanted to punch him on general principles. “Thanks for volunteering. I’ll start with you.”

  “Up the stairs,” one of the women said in a small, sheepish voice. Her expression was young and weary, the face of someone with little hope and fewer choices. “Top floor. The last room on the left. He took her up; she hasn’t come down.”

  The woman beside her, older and more scorpionish, glared her disapproval but said nothing. Both pulled their red cloaks tight around them and huddl
ed together as if they could blend in with the pillows.

  “I’m going to take the girl upstairs out of here,” I said to the sad-faced one. “Do you want to come, too?”

  She looked down and shook her head. Scorpion woman smiled up at me, vicious and triumphant. I didn’t have time to argue. The first guy I’d punched got to his knees, still wheezing, but when he saw me he fell back down.

  I took the steps two at a time. No one else seemed to be around, and the only light came from sconces on the landings. I found the indicated door and kicked it open. My hip would thank me for all this in the morning.

  The room was pitch-black. All the windows were blocked, and the only light came from the feeble candle outside in the hall. I took it from its holder and stepped cautiously through the door.

  There was little to hide someone: a narrow single bed, a chamber pot, a small closet with its door open. A man’s dusty trail clothes hung in it. In its previous incarnation, this room would’ve been tapestried, filled with flower petals floating in bowls and lit by scented candles. Now it was a utilitarian cloister.

  The bed was disheveled, and I spotted unmistakable dark droplets along the sheets. When I moved the pillow, I found a smear of blood, still warm and just starting to dry. Candora must’ve come straight to Angelina’s from here.

  My heart wanted to jump out through my throat and search the room for itself. I made it stay put and called out, “Nicky? It’s Eddie.” There was no response. I was about to leave when the obvious finally occurred to me and I looked under the bed.

  If candlelight hadn’t gleamed off her eyes I might not have noticed her curled up in a tight ball. She was still wrapped in the dark red robe, and it made her almost invisible in the shadowy space. I reached out my hand toward her. “Nicky, come on out; it’s me.”

  She said nothing, and for a heart-stopping moment I thought she was dead, but then her bare feet shifted as she tried to make herself even smaller.

  “Nicky, it’s Eddie. I’m here to get you away.”

  She did not move, and made a sound like a kitten.