by Alex Bledsoe
I understood; one of his children had died under a drunken priestess’ care before they came to Neceda. “That’s exactly how I feel about horses.”
I tried the door to Liz’s office on my way out, but it was still locked. I had a key, but this late she’d probably just drop off her horses and wagon and return home. I could wait for her in far more comfort there.
The traffic was sparse as I walked up the street. The taverns, whorehouses and gambling establishments glowed with light and life, and their noise filled the air. As I passed Ditch Street, I paused and looked over the Lizard’s Kiss building. It was dark and apparently lifeless. Tomorrow I’d have to find out who bought it, what was up with the red scarf brigade and how it tied to Marantz.
Now, though, I wanted a quick drink before going home. As I approached the tavern, a man staggered out, one hand to his head. He leaned against the wall and hunched over, and something dark dripped from between the fingers pressed to his skull.
“Hey,” I said, “you all right?”
He looked up. He was in his late teens, and dressed like a Muscodian farmer. He bled from a fresh cut over his right eye, and still had that slightly dazed post-punch demeanor. He stared at me, and it took me a moment to remember how bad I looked. “Wow,” he said raggedly, “did he kick your ass, too?”
I helped him sit on the ground and lean back against the wall. “Did who kick my ass?”
“Some soldier from Sevlow. He was talking to my girl, and I asked him to stop. Next thing I knew I was staring up at the rafters.”
I pulled his fingers away from the cut. The damage wasn’t bad, certainly not permanent. “Let me guess. Big guy, little eyes, not a smiler?”
The farm boy nodded. “That’s him. When my head stops dancing—”
“You’ll go have a drink across town at Long Billy’s,” I said. “I’ve seen this guy, and believe me, he was being generous leaving your head attached to your shoulders.” I wasn’t that impressed by Argoset’s backup, but if this poor kid had been laid out with one punch, he was really out of his league. Better to overscare than underscare.
I helped him to his feet, pressed a coin into his hand and gave him a shove in the right direction. “Thanks, mister,” he said, holding his head with one hand, the money with the other. I sighed at my own idiocy; if I didn’t stop with the charity, I’d soon be so broke I’d have to go squat with Buddy and Bella Lou. There was no question of dipping into the money I’d scavenged from Frankie, either; that had way too much blood on it.
I entered Angelina’s and found the place packed, with a minstrel duo pounding out tunes onstage. The floor vibrated to the peculiar stomp-dancing popular in Muscodia. I went behind the bar, grabbed the stool I kept stashed there for occasions like this and found enough space at the bar for one elbow.
Angelina did a double take when she saw me. “You need a drink,” she said without asking, and put a tankard originally meant for someone else in front of me. When the original customer protested from down the bar she fired back, “Keep your jerkin on!” I nodded gratefully and took a long swallow. There was too much noise for us to talk, but if she’d needed to tell me something, she would’ve found a way. To my relief, she simply went back to work. No news was definitely good news at the moment.
I turned to survey the usual rabble, including many faces I knew but couldn’t put names to, all well into their mugs. Argoset’s big right-hand man sat in a booth, a girl on either side of him; he didn’t appear to have noticed me, and his boss was not around. I didn’t see Gary Bunson anywhere, either, but he had “arrangements” at several other establishments in town, and could be at any of them.
“Mr. LaCrosse!” a female voice cried above the din. I turned to see Callie, Angelina’s wayward waitress, staring at me. She carried a tray laden with ale mugs, and balancing it kept her body at an angle that emphasized her assets. She was arguably the prettiest girl in Neceda, all the more attractive because she didn’t realize it. She was also, alas, dumb as a bag of socks.
“Hey, Callie,” I said wearily. “When did you get back?”
“Today. Convinced Angelina to hire my boyfriend.” She nodded toward the stage. “That’s him, on the right.”
I glanced at him. Young, handsome, with a quick smile and a sparkling eye for anything in a skirt. Typical minstrel. “I thought you left with a conjurer.”
“I did, but his tricks weren’t the kind that lasted,” she said wistfully. “Tony, now he’s a keeper.”
“The folks do seem to like him.”
“What happened to you?”
I shrugged. I was too tired to explain it so that Callie would understand. “Fell off my horse.”
She nodded sagely, as if this truly explained everything. “Yeah. Well, take care of yourself, Mr. LaCrosse.”
“You, too, Callie.”
I finished my drink, dropped a coin in the tip vase and waved to Angelina. She gave me a nod in response. There was no need to go up to my office, and the only steps I wanted to climb led to my bedroom.
The tavern door opened as I reached it, and two men entered. Both were smallish, strong-looking guys with faces tanned and lined from working outdoors. Their clothes were cheap and home-mended. And both wore the red scarves.
I stepped aside and watched them. They looked around like anyone would for a seat, and when they spotted an empty table threaded through the dancers to claim it. Nothing unusual about that at all.
I hesitated, wondering if I should stay and try to befriend them. Ale, especially the good stuff Angelina served when I paid her extra for it, tended to loosen even the tightest tongues. But I was just too tired.
I meant to lie down just for a moment. Really. About three hours later Liz’s scream awakened me.
Okay, it wasn’t really a scream, just a surprised yell when she lit the table lamp and saw me sprawled shirtless and barefoot across the bed. I’d left my other clothes, shredded and bloodied from racing through the hawthorns, in a heap by the door. What I hadn’t done was clean the blood off me, which I’d intended to do after closing my eyes for just a second.
Her cry woke me with a start and I sat up suddenly, which did make her shriek. Then she glared at me with all her considerable righteous fury.
“Shit, Eddie, don’t do that!” she snapped. “You want to make me pee all over myself? God damn. . . .”
I blinked, yawned and said, “Wow. You’re late.”
“Not for a run to Pema and back,” she said. She sat heavily in a chair and ran trembling fingers through her hair. The lamp cast flickering light on her face. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“If I’d done that, there’d be nothing left of you.”
“Don’t try your charm on me when I’m pissed at you. So what happened? Did you get mauled by porcupines?”
I gave her the short and simple version, which still made her eyes widen. When I was done she said, “So you went for a quiet ride in the country and killed two people?”
“Only one,” I said wearily. “And he had it coming.”
“If you’d brought him back alive, you might’ve learned more,” she said as she pulled off her boots. They hit the floor with a loud thop.
“I learned enough. Fair trade for the satisfaction I got seeing him go splat. I know where to go poke into next.”
“Marantz?”
I nodded, which turned into a yawn.
She shook her head. “Eddie, sometimes I wonder that your feeble little brain can move your body around.”
She stood, untied her trousers and slid them down her legs. This got my attention, as it always did. Then she unlaced her tunic and pulled it over her head. This left her pretty thoroughly unclothed, a sight that, like a sunset, would never grow less beautiful to me. I was about to comment on it when she fetched a bottle and cloth from the tiny cupboard and sat beside me on the bed. I eyed her warily, my eyes flitting from her brief undergarments to the items in her hand. The bottle came from the moon priestess hospital, to
clean the spot on the back of my head if it needed it. It didn’t. “What are you planning?”
“We paid for this stuff, we might as well use it.” She dampened the cloth with the bottle’s contents.
“You have to be naked for that?”
“I’m not naked. And you’ve already bled all over the sheets; I don’t want you ruining my clothes, too.”
“I’m a big boy; why don’t I just go wash myself up?” I said quickly, and started to rise. I noticed the lamp was now making odd flickering patterns on the wall.
She put a hand firmly on my shoulder. “Just sit still and don’t be a baby. The more you fight, the longer this’ll take.”
She touched a medicine-soaked corner of the rag to a vicious scratch on my arm. It felt like I’d been branded, and I winced in response. Someone screamed outside in the street, a fairly common thing in Neceda. “See?” I said through clenched teeth. “It hurts so bad it makes total strangers holler.”
“Uh-huh,” she agreed, undeterred. She touched me with the rag again.
“Ow!” I griped. “Be careful, will you?”
She laughed, then leaned close and took my nearest earlobe in her teeth. Her other hand traced the long scar on my chest. “For a man who once took a sword hit to the heart, you’re pretty whiny.”
“Yeah, well, this hurts worse.”
Someone else screamed outside. It didn’t sound like excitement or surprise, the only good kinds of screams. Flames still flickered and danced on the wall, but they didn’t come from the evenly burning lamp. A bright glow from outside now lit the whole room.
“Something’s wrong,” I said.
chapter
EIGHT
I
nstantly Liz sat up beside me. “What?” Then she saw the light on the wall, too. “Oh, no.”
We rushed to the window. Despite being on the second floor in a town with only one three-story building, we couldn’t see the actual source of the orange glow: it was behind us, in the center of town. People rushed down the street toward the commotion, although a few timid souls fled the opposite way. The distinctive odor of burning wood filled the air.
I grabbed fresh clothes from the wardrobe; by the time I got my boots on, Liz was also dressed. I grabbed my short Urban Mercenary brand Bodyguard Special sword from the rack, she slipped a knife inside her belt and we ran down the stairs to join the commotion.
Mrs. Talbot stood on the front porch puffing on a pipe. Her hair was tangled, and she was clad in a sleeping tunic that hung off one shoulder. Her grandson, a toadish little boy of indeterminate age, lurked in the open doorway behind her. “Looks like a fire,” she said needlessly.
“Where?” Liz asked.
Mrs. Talbot pointed with her pipe. “Thataway, I expect.”
That was helpful. We joined the flow of morbid curiosity as it surged toward the fire, and at the corner we jammed up against the back of the crowd. Over their heads we saw the source of the flames now leaping high into the sky, visible no doubt for miles. An instant before I realized what was going on, Liz gasped over the din, “It’s Hank’s stable!”
The lower part of the building was already engulfed, and flames lapped eagerly at the sides and roof above, chewing their way up like hungry worms on a leaf. The horses in the outside corral reared and screamed, pressed together as far from the flames as they could get. No one seemed inclined to let them out, and their panicked whinnies cut through the other noise. The addition where Hank’s family lived was so far untouched, but that wouldn’t last. I didn’t see them anywhere, but surely they’d had time and sense enough to get out.
Because of the corral on one side and the street on the other, the stable was fairly isolated from the other buildings, which kept the flames from jumping to them. Still, people scrambled around on top of the other structures, pouring water from buckets handed from windows or hauled up on ropes. They weren’t trying to put out the fire, just wet down and protect their own places. I wondered if anyone had tried to start a bucket chain down to the river to actually fight the main fire, but it seemed unlikely; Neceda thought only of its avaricious little self. And now, judging from the size of the flames, there would be no point.
“My office,” Liz said numbly. “All my records are in there. . . .”
I took her hand and pulled her through the crowd toward the fire. Everyone in town had emerged to see the blaze, but they stopped well short of it. The only people in the open space between the crowd and the building were Gary Bunson and his two deputies, Pete and Russell. They looked confused, terrified and useless.
As we burst through the crowd, Pete lowered his toothpick spear, so old and dry it might shatter if someone sneezed in the vicinity. “Stay back!” he cried, his voice cracking like a teenager’s.
“Good grief, Pete, it’s me,” I said. Russell scampered over to back up his friend, the tips of their fragile lances trembling as they pointed them at us. Luckily Gary also saw us and waved them off before they embarrassed themselves.
“At ease, morons,” Gary snapped. He was sweaty and smoke stained. “Liz, there’s nothing left of your place, either, I’m afraid.”
“Is Hank okay?” Liz asked breathlessly. The wind shifted and engulfed us in smoke.
“Beats the hell out of me. I haven’t seen him, and if he’s smart he’ll stay hid ’til he can get out of Neceda in one piece. The whole town could go up if that fire starts roof-hopping, all because he got careless.” He looked at me, taking in the scratches visible on my arms and face. “What happened to you?”
“I was dancing with your ex-wife,” I said.
“Which one?” he shot back.
Somewhere inside the stable a horse screeched in terror. A great cloud of sparks surged out on the wind, and we all ducked and covered our heads. People in the crowd behind us screamed. I patted out a small flare on Liz’s sleeve. “What about Peg and the kids?” Liz demanded.
“Over there somewhere,” Gary said, waving toward the other side of the fire. “All of them, except Hank.” He looked away, fully aware of the implications. “Nobody’s seen him since this started.”
I looked at the stable. Wood and hay; it would go up fast and quick, and anyone trapped inside wouldn’t last long. It might be too late already. “We have to see if he’s in there,” I said.
“We?” Gary repeated sharply. “Uh-uh, my job is to keep the peace and I’m doing that just fine right here.”
“He’s your friend, Gary,” Liz said.
“So’s my ass.”
I was about to say something regarding Gary’s likely parentage when movement caught my eye. Between two of the buildings across the way, at the mouth of Ditch Street, stood a man with white hair, wearing an enormous pair of gloves. I was so surprised that I stared, momentarily forgetting the crisis.
He was a small, thin man with the kind of hatchet-like face that lent itself to stern disapproval. That made the pain visible in it, even from this distance, somehow more affecting. His snowy mane swept back from a pronounced widow’s peak and fell to his shoulders, and he wore the simple tunic and trousers most local people favored. The heavy gloves looked more like some giant child’s mittens than something an adult would wear in public.
Shapes suddenly appeared out of the darkness behind him, loping down Ditch Street toward us. The firelight revealed them to be short, thick-bodied men wearing those red head scarves. I had not seen them emerge from the Lizard’s Kiss building; they just appeared as if from out of the ground and stopped well short of the intersection, clustered together like a press-gang.
The white-haired man paid them no mind. He watched the fire with more trepidation than most, and of course I immediately wondered if he might be the arsonist behind it; not for a moment did I agree with Gary that Hank had gotten careless enough to burn down his own barn. Hank was a fourth-generation blacksmith and farrier; he wouldn’t make such a dumb mistake.
Without taking my eyes off the old man, I nudged Liz. “See that old guy over there
?”
She looked and said, “Where?”
“On the street outside the alley by the cobbler’s shop.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“That’s our mysterious visitor from the hospital. Go grab him. Gary and I will check for Hank.”
Liz nodded and immediately moved into the crowd. I felt a momentary thrill of pride that my girl, my girl, could be counted on to handle that sort of job. Plenty of men I’d known couldn’t be.
Then I realized Gary was glaring at me. “The hell we will,” he said.
“You owe him money,” I reminded him as I pushed him toward the fire. “If we don’t try to find him, people will think you set it to get out of the debt.”
“Why would they think that?”
“Because that’s what I’ll tell them.”
“I don’t care!” Gary wailed, but by then we’d reached the stable doors. Even the metal hinges were smoking as they baked off the grease that lubricated them. I tried the handle, but the bolt had been locked on the inside. I slid my sword between the doors and, using it for leverage, popped a plank free enough to get a hand in and slide the bolt. The heat scalded my knuckles.
We jumped aside to avoid the belch of flame that shot out. “This is crazy,” Gary said, pressing a kerchief to his face. The inside of the barn looked like the very mouth to hell. “I’m not going in there.”
“Yes, you are,” I said, grabbed his arm and pulled him into the stable after me.
chapter
NINE
T
he smoke’s odor immediately told me more than hay was burning. The place had been deliberately torched, most likely with oil or alcohol, so there was even less time than I initially thought. The blaze was at that liminal point where the stable looked like a line drawing rendered in flame: every edge and straight line glowed, and in moments they would all crumble and collapse. Even above the mingled roars of crowd and fire, I heard the creaking protests of beams about to snap.