Weapon of Flesh

by Chris A. Jackson

  He heard Mya turn and walk away, then felt the painful press of the needle and the familiar rush as ink and magic infused him.

  Wiggen walked into the courtyard of the Tap and Kettle like she’d done a thousand times before. Two guardsmen stationed in the courtyard gaped at her, but she ignored them. As she passed, they fell in behind her, their hard boots scuffing the cobbles with every step. She went to the kitchen door out of habit and entered. The guards were through the door behind her before it could close.

  “Good Gods! Wiggen!” Forbish dropped a tin of scones and rushed to smother her in his beefy embrace. “Gods, girl, but you gave me a scare. I was beside myself!” He pushed her to arms length, his hands enveloping her shoulders in a grip that was so desperate it was painful.

  She tried to smile, but couldn’t. “I’m sorry,” she said, forcing down the wailing cry of anguish that had been building in her all morning.

  Then another hand enveloped her arm, and she heard the guardsman say, “And I’m sorry, Miss, but we’ve got to take you in.”

  “Like hell you will!” Forbish snapped, releasing her and slapping the guard’s hand away. He stepped between his daughter and the two guards with a quickness that she didn’t think his bulk could have managed.

  “Sir, please. We’ve got our orders. She’s to be taken in for questioning.”

  “I know you’ve got your damned orders, and I know who gave them to you!” Forbish folded his arms and glared at the armed men, defying them with sheer determination. “You try to take my daughter from me again, and there’s gonna be a fight, Boy! You can just send a runner to get Captain Norwood and bring him here.”

  “Father, I --”

  “No, Wiggen,” he said firmly, keeping his eyes on the two guardsmen, who were now exchanging dubious glances. “You’re staying here.”

  They’d been ordered to take her in, but they looked reluctant to do so by main force. They appeared confident that they, perhaps with some aid from the four additional guardsmen stationed in the inn’s common room, could overcome one plump innkeeper, but they also knew that their captain had spent a good bit of time sitting and drinking ale with this same innkeeper. Harming a friend of the Captain Norwood, even in the act of carrying out one of his orders, was not a good idea.

  “We’ll have to call the sergeant,” the senior of the two said, turning to his companion. “Go get him.”

  “That’ll be fine,” Forbish said. “He’s right out in the common room having a nice hot lunch.”

  The other guard left, while Forbish and the first one stared at one another, both refusing to move. After all Wiggen had been through, the confrontation seemed utterly silly. She could care less whether they took her in and questioned her, or questioned her here. It didn’t matter.

  Nothing mattered.

  She turned away from the two stubborn men and bent to pick up the dropped tin of scones. Two had rolled off the sheet and would have to be thrown out, but the others were fine. She gripped the hot metal using the blankets in her hands as a hot mitt and dumped the rest of the scones on the cooling rack with a practiced flip. Then she put the blankets aside, greased the sheet with a bit of butter and started dolloping batter into neat rows. She worked mechanically, without thought, without concern for what was happening right behind her, even though it concerned her directly.

  When she had put the tray in the oven and moved the one that was half done to the upper rack, four more guardsmen entered the kitchen, along with Josie and two young boys about twelve years old looking as eager as spring colts. She ignored them all, a formidable task, since the kitchen was now full to bursting.

  “Now, Master Forbish,” the sergeant began, placing his huge fists on his hips and glaring his worst. “You know we’ve got to take the girl in. Captain Norwood’s given his orders, and we’ve got to see to ’em. He’s got more’n a few questions for her, and we’ve got to have answers.”

  “Norwood can get his answers here,” Forbish fired back, not budging an inch.

  Wiggen scooped up the two fallen scones and tossed them in the bin, stirred the soup to keep it from scorching and began cleaning up the kneading board.

  “She’s not safe here! That killer could slip in here come night and --”

  “She’s as safe here as she was in your barracks, Sergeant!”

  Wiggen scoured the board with boiling water from the kettle and dried it with a towel, then measured and poured flour and milk into the mixing bowl.

  “Near a dozen of the Duke’s finest guardsmen died tryin’ to protect her, Innkeeper,” the sergeant growled, wagging a finger under Forbish’s nose. “A little more respect from you, if you please!”

  “It’s not disrespect, Man, it’s a question of whether or not she needed protection!” He waved a hand at his daughter without taking his eyes off the guardsman. “Here she stands, safe and sound, and your friends lie dead in their graves. And for what?”

  Wiggen cracked three eggs into the bowl and threw in a dash of soda. Then she grabbed the big spoon and started stirring the mix, adding a spoonful of molasses and a handful of raisins. She lifted the heavy bowl and stirred the thick mix with a steady whop, whop, whop of the spoon.

  “They were following orders. Just like I’m following orders, Innkeeper!”

  “I know you’re following orders! Stop for just a heartbeat and use your brain, Man! She’s no safer with you than with me!”

  “She’s coming along with us, Master Forbish, and that’s my final word!”

  Whop, whop, whop, went the spoon in the batter.

  “She’s staying here!”

  “Stand between me and my duty, Innkeeper, and you’ll find yourself clapped in irons!”

  “Oh, then maybe both of us will be safer. Is that the idea, Sergeant?”

  “Oh, stop it! Both of you!” The last was Josie. She stepped between the two parties like she was breaking up a scrap between her two nephews. “Would you maybe both just stop and look at her for half a breath? She’s not even payin’ attention, and here you are ready to come to blows.”

  “Wiggen?” Forbish said, turning for the first time from the burly sergeant. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

  Wiggen didn’t answer, she just put down the big bowl and went back to the oven. She opened it and took out the top tin of scones, flipped them off onto the cooling rack and began spooning more batter onto the hot sheet.

  “She’s spelled!” hissed one of the guardsmen.

  “Oh, shut up!” Josie spat, stepping past them all to Wiggen’s side as the girl finished filling the pan with fresh dough. “Wiggen, you don’t have to do that, Dear. We’ve got enough, and these men, they’re here to take you to see the captain of the guard.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, moving the lower tray to the top rack and putting the new one on the bottom.

  “What doesn’t matter, Dear?” Josie asked as Wiggen put the scones from the previous batch into a serving basket.

  “Anything.” She handed the basket to Josie and stepped past her to the mixing bowl. The batter didn’t need more stirring, but she did it anyway, steady strong strokes, the spoon going whop, whop, whop.

  “Something is wrong,” Forbish said, moving to his daughter’s side. “What is it, Honey?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Father. It’s done. We can go back to doing what we were doing before.”

  Forbish watched his daughter stir the batter for several breaths, then his face changed, as if a sudden realization struck him. He put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder and said, “It’s all right, Honey. You don’t have to do that.”

  “Somebody’s got to do it.”

  “Wiggen.” He put a hand on her arm, stilling the steady motion of the spoon. “What happened, Honey? Where’s Lad? How did you get here?

  “He didn’t come back,” she said, staring down at the bowl. “He left me, and he didn’t come back.”

  “Why didn’t he come back, Wiggen?”

  “Because he’s dead,
” she whispered, barely audible.

  “What? What happened, Honey?”

  “He’s DEAD!” She stepped away from him, letting the heavy bowl fall. It struck the floor and shattered, but everyone was looking at Wiggen. Her eyes were wide with horror, and she was looking right through them all as if at a distant horizon, her face set in a grimace of sheer anguish

  “He went to kill the Grandfather, but he didn’t come back!” she shrieked, fists clenched at her sides, retreating until she was against the wash pot in the corner. “He didn’t come back because they killed him! He promised me, but he didn’t come back!”

  “Oh, Dear,” Josie said, stepping past Forbish to take the girl in her arms.

  Wiggen collapsed into that embrace as if she were a marionette whose strings had just been cut. Tears finally began to flow, and between the sobs she cried, “He didn’t come back to me. He didn’t come back to me.”

  “Send a runner for Captain Norwood, Sergeant,” Forbish said, his voice shaking with unspent anguish. “My daughter’s in no condition to go anywhere.”

  “I’ll send a messenger,” Sergeant Tamir said with a nod. He ushered his men out of the kitchen, barking orders as he went. “You there! Private! Grab a horse and…” But Wiggen heard none of it over her own wailing sobs and the numbing pain of her shattered heart.

  Chapter XXVIII

  Wiggen sat upon the hearth with the heat of the banked fire warming her back. She held a cup of hot hard cider in her hands and half of its contents warmed her from the inside out. She almost felt like herself.

  She’d cried until she thought she could cry no longer, and then cried some more. Josie had taken her to her room and helped her change into cleaner clothes. She hadn’t commented on the scrapes and bruises Wiggen had received in the sewers, and hadn’t asked about the two blankets that Wiggen refused to let out of her sight. When she was clean, dressed and fed, Captain Norwood arrived.

  He surprised her.

  Without so much as a raised voice, he’d beckoned her to sit and make herself comfortable. He’d not asked a single question, but simply asked her to give an accounting of what had happened to her from the time two nights ago when she’d been freed from the barracks to the moment she’d walked back into the courtyard of the Tap and Kettle.

  She had simply sat comfortably by the fire and talked. He didn’t pressure her at all, except to ask for clarification on a few points. When her story was done, he asked for it again from the beginning, and she’d told it again, without a single fault. She knew she wasn’t lying. She’d lived it.

  Now he sat in one of the big chairs, a tankard on his knee, though he’d barely sipped from it, asking a few more gentle questions while Forbish and Josie sat nearby and listened.

  “After the magic was broken,” Norwood said, directing his question once more to that moment in the cell when Lad had freed himself from the binding spells, “when you crept through the sewers, did you notice anything different about him?”

  “Yes, Captain. He was very different.” She sipped her cup and even smiled at the memory. “He talked differently, acted differently. He even said things that were funny. He’d never done that before. Not intentionally anyway. He was scared, too, though he didn’t tell me that until later.”

  “Scared? What scared him?”

  “Oh, lots of things, I guess. He said he was scared for me, for my father, for all the people who he knew hated him for killing those people. He never wanted to kill anyone, Captain. It was the magic that made him do it.”

  “Yes, so you’ve said. I’ll have to take your word on that account, since we’re just a little bit short on evidence to that effect.”

  “Yes, you will, Captain,” she said, more disappointed than angry. It didn’t really matter what he thought of her, after all. If he thought she was lying, well, fine. He could arrest her.

  “And this, uh, Grandfather fellow. I’d like to know more about him. You said he was the one who put the magic on the boy...”

  “Lad.”

  “Oh, yes. I’m sorry, on Lad.”

  “No, he wasn’t the one who put the magic on Lad. A wizard did that, and I only ever heard Lad call him ‘Master.’ He died when they were attacked by brigands on the way here.”

  “Not much of a wizard if he was killed by simple brigands, I should think.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, Captain.”

  “Mmm, yes. But this Grandfather fellow. He was the one responsible for the murders, you say.”

  “Yes,” she said, swallowing more cider to calm her nerves. It seemed to her that the questions had suddenly become more pointed. “Lad said that the Grandfather had had him made. I think he must have paid the wizard to make Lad as he was.”

  “Must have been a tidy price for that many years’ work.” She heard the doubt in his voice, and could not refute it. It was all too incredible. She wouldn’t have believed it herself, if not for Lad. He’d made her believe.

  “And did this boy, Lad, tell you why he was made the way he was? I mean to invest that much in something, a man must have something specific in mind.”

  “He didn’t say, Sir. I don’t think he was ever really told why. They just told him when and who to kill. Every night there was one or two more, some just children.” She paused, her eyes going slightly vacant as she remembered Lad recounting each one of those murders, each innocent who had died by his hand. “He told me about them. All of them. He mourned each and every one of them.”

  “He mourned them? A trained killer?”

  She fixed him with eyes that gauged the depths of his disbelief. It is one thing to enlighten someone who is ignorant, quite something else to try to convince someone who chooses to remain ignorant because it better suits his convenience.

  “He was not made to mourn, Captain, the magic kept that from him, but he knew killing was wrong. That was what bothered him. He knew he was hurting people. Not the people he killed, but all those who loved them. He knew how I felt, having lost a brother and a mother. Then, when the magic was broken, it all came crashing down on him.”

  “And that’s why he went to kill this Grandfather fellow. Well, that I can understand, at least. I’d certainly want revenge on someone who’d done all that to me.”

  “It wasn’t revenge, Captain,” she said, shaking her head at his continued inability or refusal to understand. “He went to kill the Grandfather to make sure the same thing didn’t happen to others. If it worked once, it might work again. He couldn’t let that happen.”

  “Well, if this Grandfather fellow is as old as you say, he’d likely not live long enough to have another boy such as Lad made. I mean, sixteen years would put him in his grave.”

  “Lad said he didn’t think the Grandfather aged. He was old, but not aged, is what he said. Maybe he had some magic, too.”

  “No doubt.”

  Wiggen just stared into the depths of her cup. There was nothing she could say to corroborate her story.

  “And Lad said he’d come back to you, but he hasn’t. Is that right?”

  “That’s right.” She knew what he was thinking, and she knew he was wrong, but there was no way to convince him that Lad would never abandon her. “He must have underestimated the Grandfather.”

  “And he told you where this Grandfather lives, didn’t he? You mentioned it, but it slipped my mind. Someplace in Barleycorn Heights?”

  “Yes. The north end, near the river. It’s a walled estate with a single tall tower. It’s taller than any other around. He said it would be easy to find.”

  “Yes, I know the estate, and I know the man who owns it.” The captain straightened in his chair and set his tankard of ale aside. “It might surprise you to know his name is Saliez, and that he’s a very wealthy businessman. He runs an import-export business, and is well established in the Teamsters’ Guild.”

  She didn’t like the tone he was taking; his disbelief was edging toward insolence. That, if nothing else, piqued her ire. “If that’s t
rue, then you may be surprised to know that he is also the master of the Assassin’s Guild.”

  “I’m sorry, Wiggen, but I can’t bash down the door of such a prominent man on hearsay. The Duke would have my head.”

  “Then don’t.” Wiggen shrugged, gulped the last of her cider and stood. “The man I love is dead, Captain. I could care less what you do.” She hadn’t bothered to keep the bitterness out of her voice, and saw the astonishment on the captain’s face as she turned away.

  She wasn’t really surprised when he said, “Even if that includes arresting you?”

  She stopped and turned back, stopping her father with a glance. “Yes, Captain, including that. But if you don’t do anything about the Grandfather, even though Lad is dead, nobles are going to start dying again soon, and the Duke will come to you for answers.” She turned and walked to her room without another thought concerning Captain Norwood.

  “You heard her, Tamir,” Norwood said, stepping off the porch of the Tap and Kettle and starting across the courtyard. “What do you think about her story?”

  “It is a mite hard to swallow, Sir, I’ll give you that. But I don’t think she was lying. And she’s right about one thing: it don’t pay to just say she’s crazy as a bedbug and leave it at that.” The sergeant cracked his knuckles loudly as they reached the street and the waiting Imperial carriage. “Might not hurt to have a little talk with Master Saliez tonight, just to check her story.”

  “And if she is right about all this, it might hurt a great deal,” Norwood countered, turning to face his subordinate with a knitted brow. “If we walk in there and start asking questions of the good Master Saliez, and he does have something to do with this mess, we can kiss goodbye any chance we ever had of finding out the truth.” He scratched the stubble on his chin and grimaced at the thought of the choice he had to make.

  “I got a man in my squad what used to hunt quail, Sir.”