by Alex Bledsoe
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.
EIGHT
Instantly 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, pre
ssed 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.
NINE
The 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.
“Hank!” we yelled, but our cries were too muffled to really be heard. The heat sucked the air from us and replaced it with foul, acrid smoke. Crouching low and skirting the burning debris, we made our way to the rear of the stable. Gary hid behind me just as Hank’s son had done behind his father.
All the horses, including the ones owned by Argoset and his henchman, had been cleared out. Only a young stallion barely out of colthood remained, kicking futily at the gate of one of the rear stalls. I unlatched the gate and the wide-eyed horse rushed toward the front door. The animal was already badly singed, and so terrified that he didn’t even pause before he dashed through a fresh sheet of flame into what he supposed was freedom outside.
“He’s not here,” Gary said. “Let’s get out while we can!”
“We haven’t checked the back,” I insisted.
“It’s on fire! The front’s on fire! The sides are on fire, and look! The ceiling! Guess what? It’s on fire! ”
The heat grew so intense I was sure my beard would combust. I danced around several blazing clumps of hay that filtered down from the loft through widening cracks in the ceiling. We reached the back of the barn where the door led into Hank’s house. I pounded on it with my sword hilt, but it was bolted from the other side. That meant someone had been alive to lock it, and I had a moment of relief before I turned and suddenly felt a chill despite the b
laze.
Hank Pinster was pinned to the wall by a pitchfork through the torso. His hands, already burned down to blackened talons, uselessly clutched the smoldering handle. His feet barely touched the floor; whoever had killed him had been stronger and taller. The ends of his hair burned slowly toward his skull.
Gary and I looked at each other, neither of us with the extra air to speak. We both knew this meant arson, and murder.
Then the ceiling above Hank gave way, and we barely avoided the surge of flaming wood, hay and debris that burst out from the impact. The hayloft was disintegrating above us, and the whole structure would collapse at any moment.
We dashed for the front doors, but a fresh pile of burning hay and crossbeams thundered down. Gary’s watery eyes opened wide in a panic, and I think he would’ve made a break for it just like the colt if, at that moment, Argoset’s huge lackey hadn’t emerged from the smoke and fire behind us. He had a rag of some sort wrapped around his head against the smoke, and only his size let me recognize him. He scooped each of us up under one enormous arm like two rowdy children and toted us through the now-open door to Hank’s home, out another door and into the street. Even though it was summer, after that inferno the air felt like a blast of ice water. He dumped us unceremoniously before his boss.
Coughing so hard I expected a lung to land in the dirt beside me, I looked up at Argoset in amazement. He wore clothes coated in road dust and held the reins of their two horses. His muscleman unwound the cloth from his face and wiped at the soot streaking his bare, sweaty arms.
“Are you two all right?” Argoset asked, and offered me his hand. “You’re really lucky, you know that? Marion had just finished making sure no one was left in there, and then one of Magistrate Bunson’s deputies said you’d gone in the front door. He volunteered to go back in and get you.”
