“There, I set about devising a way to insure nothing like what had happened in that forest to my dear sister could ever occur in my presence again. I studied religiously, slaved over the ancient texts, digging through anything I could find on the fibra of Animlise. Within five cycles, I devised an ambitious Tish’Ret, then spent a grueling eight cycles questing for my ingredients. I succeeded, and since then, I’ve never been a pawn to the beasts of nature.”
Jillian walked slowly to him. She stopped just shy of stepping on his bare feet. When she raised a hand to his cheek, he tried to wave it off.
“Don’t,” she said in a soft breath, grazing his face with her fingers.
She wrapped her arms around him. He didn’t stop her. He didn’t cry. He’d done enough of that, but he welcomed her embrace. It felt good to have someone care, even if it was only pity. He rested his forehead on the top of her head as her hands massaged his back.
The door clanged open and drowned the moment.
“Bad time,” Uther said, his girth filling the entire doorway. His pudgy cheeks were pink from the cold, and the wooly hood of his bearskin overcoat was snug on his head. “I could come back in a few marks of the dial. That’s about all the time you need, right Twig?”
“This must be the friend,” Jillian said, her arms slipping from him.
“Haven’t you got any villagers to grind for your bread?” Riken asked.
“That a jab at my size?”
“No one could ever call you dim.”
Uther stomped into the room, stopped at the bed, and whistled as he surveyed the damage from Riken’s attack.
“Fun night?” he asked, giving Jillian a mischievous eye that caused the lady’s prim trappings to resurface. She fiddled with the collar of her dress as if it had a top button that needed fastening.
“What do you want?” Riken asked.
“Jatta’s house caught fire last night,” he said.
“What?” Riken asked.
“How awful,” Jillian said, her hand on her mouth. “Is Jatta…?”
“She’s fine. I was watching the place like you asked,” Uther said, nodding at Riken. “Got her and her mumma out in time. They’re at my place, but theirs is nothing but kindling now.”
“How’d it start?”
“Don’t know. The mother says it might’ve been the bread in her stove, or maybe a candle upstairs. Jatta’s pretty upset, course. All her daughter’s stuff was upstairs, and she didn’t have time to get it out.”
“Can’t be a coincidence,” Riken said, his brain stewing.
“Wouldn’t think so,” Uther said.”
“Let’s go,” Riken said, heading for the door.
“Where to?”
“To see a man whose got some fucking explaining to do.”
Chapter Twelve
Sefen didn’t answer the Ullimars’ door, but he wasn’t hard to find.
A slim, pasty man with a neat, white mustache greeted Riken and Uther at the entrance, took their coats, hung them in the receiving room closet, then dutifully escorted them to Sefen’s room. The man didn’t give much credence to the fuming looks on their faces. He did his chore, then left them with a polite bow.
Riken rapped on the door. When Sefen opened it, he had barely enough time for an annoyed roll of the eyes before Uther snatched him by the gold collar of his black servant’s robe and dangled his feet a good nine inches above the floor.
“What is the meaning of this?” Sefen asked, trying to sound exasperated, but coming off a hair more frightened.
“Know any good pyrons, friend?” Riken asked, stepping through the open doorway behind Uther and easing it shut.
Sefen attempted to wriggle free of Uther’s sure grasp, and asked, “What are you talking about?”
“Jatta Marllig’s house caught fire last night,” Riken said, looking around the small, tidy room. It was roughly the size of Riken’s rented room, but boasted a tad more decoration. A sturdy bed rested with its head beneath a lone rectangular window of stained, purple glass. Stone end tables flanked its sides, one with an oil lamp and a leather-bound book atop it. A standing mirror within a silver frame reflected Riken’s image as he strolled to a shelf and plucked from it a copper figurine of a lamb. Like the rest of the Ullimar mansion, scented fabric covered the walls. “Care to tell us about it?”
“Kindly remove my possessions from your hand,” Sefen said, discontinuing his thrashing, obviously perceiving its futility. “And, while you’re at it, you might unhand me as well.”
“I don’t have you,” Riken said, holding up his hands and wiggling them. “See?”
Even being manhandled, Sefen could be counted on to give Riken that slightly disgusted look he’d rehearsed to perfection.
“I know nothing about a fire,” he said.
“Problem is, that doesn’t really convince me,” Riken said. “Now, that in and of itself wouldn’t normally give you much cause for worry, I’m sure. But these aren’t normal circumstances. You see, today I’ve brought…how should I say…heavier reinforcements. Sefen, meet Uther.”
Sefen stared at Uther’s blank expression. The giant man might as well have been holding a sack of cotton for all the exertion he showed.
“Wish I could say well met,” Sefen said.
“Oh, by all means, say away,” Riken said. “Don’t let me stop you. I simply adore pleasantries.”
“I already told you, I know nothing about a fire at Min Marllig’s home.”
“But you do know of Min Marllig? From that first wonderful day you came into my lonely life, I didn’t get that impression.”
“She slipped my mind,” Sefen said. “The Ullimars have many servants.”
“So I’ve noted.”
“So you can comprehend the lapse?”
“Didn’t say that. I have a hunch – just a hunch, mind you – that a man such as yourself is not often prone to lapses of any kind, be they forgetting people who serve under you or failing to wipe your stringent ass clean after a visit to the bed pot.”
“You are a crude man, Mon Snowtear,” Sefen said.
“I have a certain flair.”
“Min Marllig was ill that day,” Sefen said. “I simply overlooked her, no malice intended.”
“Odd. I spoke with her that very same day. She didn’t appear ill.”
“Then she was false with me.”
“Know how I came about her name?”
“I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.”
“Lovely young fawn name of Anastasia,” Riken said, dropping the copper lamb back on the shelf and picking up a matching deer. “You heard of her?”
“I knew the girl.”
“Knew? That’s right. Met a bad end, that one. Hear about that?”
“You know I did,” Sefen said. “Could you kindly ask your heavy reinforcement to lower me? I find conversation much more conducive when I’m not suspended in midair.”
Riken nodded to Uther.
Once again on level footing, Sefen made a spectacle of smoothing the wrinkles from his wholly unsullied robe, then perched himself on the edge of his bed. Riken was shocked he had the gall to muss the flawless shape of the sheets.
“Better?” Riken asked, letting the deer figurine slip recklessly from his fingers, not bothering to pick it up when it fell to the floor. Next, he inspected a particularly fragile-looking, glass Fire statuette.
“Much. My thanks.”
“Just so glad I could accommodate.”
Uther stood regal in the middle of the room, seeming to stare at nothing in particular. Riken wondered if Sefen knew it would only take a simple gesture to stimulate the giant’s desire to tear the man’s spinal cord out through his neck.
“In my so far fruitless search for Sage Ullimar,” Riken said, “I’ve had only two leads, the first offered by a girl who turned up murdered soon after. The other helpful soul’s house is now a smoking heap. I dare say, if it hadn’t been for luck by way of that seething man standing over you now, Mi
n Marllig would’ve met a similar end as Anastasia. Does that strike you as curious in any way?”
Sefen mused a moment, looking very much the part of a concerned employer. Riken glowered at the man. Not a single hair on his head was out of place. His manicured hands rested calmly in his lap. He didn’t appear intimidated by his current company in the least. He might as well have been the honored guest at a child’s tea party.
“Unfortunate, aye,” he said, “but hardly curious.”
“That so?”
“Mon Snowtear,” Sefen said as if addressing a toddler, “we live in a huge city. In it, many uncivilized people abide and thrive. It’s the nature of such a place to breed a few malcontents. It’s hardly odd that appalling things occur within our borders.”
“Malcontents? Like the two men with clubs sent to entertain me in my room the other night?”
“Aye,” Sefen said, as if he’d only caught the first part of the question.
“Hear that?” Riken asked Uther. “Malcontents, he says.”
Uther stared at the wall, hands at his sides.
“Good word,” Riken said. “What book you read that in? I’d like to borrow it. Me, I’m so crude and uneducated, I couldn’t come up with anything better than heartless, prim, black-souled fucks. But, you know, I obviously don’t have your esteemed pedigree.”
Regretfully, the glass statuette fell from Riken’s fingers to the floor, where it shattered into shards. Sefen didn’t flinch, not even when Riken ground the largest piece with the heel of his boot.
“I had buttered yams for lunch,” Riken said, wiggling his fingers at the man. “Must’ve missed a spot when I washed up.”
“An understandable ailment,” Sefen said coolly.
“Were good, though. You should try them.”
“My thanks for the suggestion.”
“Think nothing of it, friend,” Riken said, lifting his boot and brushing a few specks of glass from the bottom. “Me and Uther here are on sort of a tight schedule, you might say. So, if it’s not too much trouble – I mean, we don’t want to put you out or nothing – kindly tell us what we need to know about your hand in these two matters, and then we can be out of your hair.”
“I wish I could be of more help to you gentlemen,” Sefen said.
Pleased, Riken nodded again to Uther.
Sefen actually managed a short whine when Uther jerked him from the bed, ripped the back of his robe down the middle, spun him like a toy, then rammed his face into the wall. A framed painting came free of its nail and clanked on the floor. Riken couldn’t decipher Sefen’s protest. His face being bonded into the wall gave the utterance a muffled texture.
“Talk,” Riken said.
“I don’t know any…”
Uther ground the man’s face further into the wall, the scented fabric crinkling around him.
“Myself,” Riken said, “I can’t endure physical exertion for long periods, but my ally here is not so afflicted. You might want to juggle your statements a bit, see what else pops up.”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” Sefen gasped.
Riken nodded again, and Uther’s fist rocked the man’s lower back. When Uther jabbed Sefen a second time, despite himself, Riken winced. Like a boulder hitting a dandelion, he thought.
The interrogation went on for another few marks, until Riken was certain they’d get absolutely nothing from the man. He wasn’t innocent. Of that, Riken was sure. But he wouldn’t be bullied either. Riken had to give Sefen his due. He wasn’t much to look at, only slightly more imposing than Riken himself, but he had the impudence of a prized bull.
Whether or not Sefen’s continued torment would garner any results, Riken allowed Uther to go on a while longer. The man should be allotted his fun, too. Riken didn’t care for being rude to friends.
As Sefen crumbled under the onslaught of thundering blows, the man’s bare back caught Riken’s eye. Just visible above the frayed rip in his robe, Sefen had a small, dark smudge. Near his bony shoulder, there were marks that looked like he’d been stabbed with the pointed end of a tiny pickaxe.
Uther looked over his shoulder at Riken. Riken sighed and gave his shoulders a half-hearted shrug, then Uther released his prisoner. Sefen slumped to the bed, saying nothing, barely moaning.
“I trust you know the way out,” Sefen said, tilting his head to the side of his pillow and spitting a wad of blood onto his white sheet. “I’m afraid I haven’t the faculty to escort you properly.”
“Nay, you get your rest, friend,” Riken said, opening the door with a smile. “Don’t trouble yourself in the least. We can find our own way. Hope you’re feeling better soon. We’ve just got loads more to discuss. Be seeing you.”
Outside on the Ullimars’ elevated porch, Riken turned to Uther and said, “He’s good.”
“Aye,” Uther said.
“Promise me if I ever get on your bad side, you’ll give me a chance to right things.”
“You’re often on my bad side.”
“Right,” Riken said. “Then at least remember where a good amount of your income comes from.”
“Why do you think you’re still walking without aid of a cane?” Uther asked.
Riken looked at him, expecting a smile to break on his friend’s face. When it failed to emerge, he sucked in a short breath and descended the porch steps in contemplation.
“I should go home and check on Jillian,” he said as they passed a young couple walking hand in hand. “Need to clean up, I guess. Care to help?”
“What’re friends for?” Uther asked.
This time, the smile finally made an appearance.
The rest of the way home, Riken breathed a little easier.
“I think he knew when I was following him.”
“Who, Sefen?” Uther asked as he lifted the wardrobe from the floor with one large paw.
“Aye,” Riken said.
“Why?”
“Why did he know I was following him?”
“Why do you know he knew you were following him?” Uther asked.
“Sometimes you make my head hurt,” Riken said, picking up the fragments of the busted end table.
“Shouldn’t stiff me coin.”
“Not what I meant.”
“How did he know?” Uther asked, putting the wardrobe back in place.
“Because Sefen’s smart,” Jillian said, coming through the door. In one hand, she had a bucket of water. In the other, a scrubbing brush.
“Exactly,” Riken said. “That’s why he didn’t do anything but errands, go to some dreadful concert – which is still ringing in my ears, by the way – and head on home to read in his comfy chair. He knew.”
“And probably,” Jillian said, “he didn’t want to lead you to his other residence.”
“Other?”
“Anastasia’s townhouse.”
Riken regarded her curiously, puzzle pieces easing into shape. “So they were…”
“That was the rumor about the manor,” Jillian said.
“I knew that place was too pricey for her,” Riken said. It made perfect sense. The two were lovers, and that had given Sefen easy opportunity onto Anastasia grounds. But how could he have known the girl had tipped Riken off? “Why didn’t you say anything about this before?”
Jillian looked shyly over her shoulder at Uther, then leaned in close to Riken, her voice just above a whisper. “You mean during the time you were too consumed with fever to form coherent thought, or during my attempted molestation.”
At her palpable unease, Riken had to smile. A cool look of contempt from her red face wiped it away swiftly. “My apologies,” he said, taking the bucket from her. The weight pulled at his sore muscles.
Riken sat the bucket down next to the stained circle of blood. He stared thoughtfully at the spot, until Jillian brushed past his shoulder and crouched down on the floor to begin scrubbing.
“I can do that,” Riken said, craning his head just enough to view her backside.
“Eyes front,” she said as she dipped the brush into the water.
“I’ve already seen it.”
“Remember it well then,” Jillian said.
“Ah,” Riken said and caught the smile from the corner of her mouth.
“Question is,” Jillian said, “besides his little fling with Anastasia, what else was he trying to hide?”
“That I don’t know, but it was important enough to send those two thugs after me when I was getting too close.”
“To?”
Riken shook his head.
“What’s this?” Uther asked.
As the woman scrubbed vigorously at the stubborn stain, her rear swayed back and forth, but Riken managed to drag his gaze away.
“Hmm?”
“That,” Uther said, pointing at the floor.
Riken followed Uther’s outstretched arm. On the wood where the wardrobe had been lying face down for the last couple days, he saw a bluish smudge. He knelt down for closer inspection. Swiping at it with a finger, it felt thick and grainy.
“Clay?” Riken asked himself aloud.
“From where?” Jillian asked.
Uther dropped to a knee beside Riken. The overburdened floorboards groaned. He dipped his finger in the smudge, lifted it to his nose, and sniffed.
“Only clay I know of anywhere in Winter Moon is near the docks,” he said, pinching it between two thick fingers.
“I haven’t been to the docks in ages,” Riken said, screwing up his face in thought. Behind him, Jillian’s scrubbing ceased. He turned back to her. She stood on her
knees, facing him, the brush at her side.
“But you haven’t been the only one in this room of late,” she said.
Chapter Thirteen
“A man with a purple scar and another with lots of freckles?”
“Aye.”
“That’s what you’ve got to go on?” Uther asked.
“Besides the fact that they were both as big as houses, and they haven’t shown up for work in the last few days,” Riken said.
Snowtear Page 11