He was turning to leave as his words finally processed in my drug-and-beating-abused brain. “Wait? Murder? Of who?” Unless they had found a way to bring you in for thinking of killing someone, I was safe.
His turn and pause made it look like I was asking the world of him. “As if you didn’t know. You are being charged with the murder of your landlady, Nirtha, in her own apartment.”
Nirtha was dead? That wretched excuse for a sentient being was now toes up in the city morgue? I couldn’t help the smile that crept across my lips, nor did I try to fight it too much. But how in the hell could someone blame me for it? The last time I saw her she was fine. The last
time I fought with her that was.
I smacked myself in the head. At least my hands now worked. Someone had heard us fighting, bumped the vile thing off, then set me up for the fall. But who would want me out of the way?
Alric.
He had wanted me out of the way since the beginning, even said so during his evil lock-me-in-the-room routine. He hadn’t lied about it. He’d found someone to let me out.
I finished the swearing tirade I’d started back in his room. Damn it. He’d killed Nirtha just to get me out of whatever he was doing. I had almost convinced myself that I could leave him alone. But not now. Actually, I’d had no intention of leaving him alone if I was completely honest with myself. I just hadn’t planned on killing him before now.
“Who said I did it?” Might as well find out how far this went.
“She did.” The confusion in my head must have dribbled out to my face because he took a deep breath and clarified. “Nirtha did right before she died. She said ‘it’s all the bitch Taryn’…then she croaked.”
He didn’t even wait for me to recover before he turned and strode away, his flunky following him.
“Holy shit, girl, you killed a landlady? Bit tough to pay the rent?” Although with the gora’s accent it came out like ‘sheet’. But the meaning was the same.
“No, I didn’t. It’s no huge loss, but I certainly wouldn’t waste any weapons on that worthless fuzz ball.”
The gora shrugged and turned back to her companion. Obviously if I had no good tales to tell I wasn’t worth their effort.
Crap. No one would know where I was. Covey would go to my place eventually. Once she got done solving her mystery. That wasn’t a cheery thought. There had been times where she didn’t come out of her office for days.
The faeries wouldn’t notice until they ran out of food, which since I’d just stocked their castle wouldn’t be for weeks.
My only hope was Harlan. If he popped in to see me when he dropped the faeries off he might pick up on the murder and who they had charged.
The prison flunky showed up again after I’d been chasing the same thoughts around for a good hour.
“You have a visitor.” While his words were welcome, the tone wasn’t. Harlan must have found me, but Harlan was a well-respected archeologist. How the hell could some pipsqueak glorified guard dog look down his nose at Harlan? I’d deal with that later, right now I just wanted to get out of here.
I scrambled to my feet and tried to make myself respectable. “I am so glad to see—”
My voice dropped to the ground as a far too familiar and soon to be dead face came into view. He was dressed differently, wearing loose clothes to hide his lean fighter’s body, and a stodgy felt hat with his hair tucked under it. But it was Alric.
“Yes, there she is. I am her patron as you see by the documents. I will assure you that she will return in time for her trial.” His voice had dropped to a low gravely tone and an odd odor wafted my way. Onions and glock liver. No wonder the guard was standing a distance away.
“Now, if you would be so good?” Alric flittered a shaking hand in my direction carefully flashing age spots that hadn’t been there when I cuffed him.
The guard rubbed his upper lip as he studied the paper Alric had provided, finally he shrugged. “Not my here or there where she goes. Captain said to give you what you needed.” A look crept across his face that was either a thought or bad prunes at lunch. “I don’t recall him mentioning her though.”
Alric turned and toddled forward to get as close to the guard as possible and leaned into his space. I was torn between giving him up as a liar and getting the hell out of here. But even if Harlan or Covey showed up, a patron would have the best chance of getting me out before trial. And the idea of spending four weeks in here scared the crap out of me.
That bastard. One more thing I owed him for.
“Fine, fine.” The guard stepped back, waving the air in front of his face. “She’s yours. Just get her back for trial.” Without ceremony he unlocked the bars, motioning quickly for me to step out. The goras watched Alric with sharp black eyes. It appeared that they saw something in Alric far different than the guard or I did. Something extremely interesting.
I stepped out of the cell before they decided to see how interesting.
“There you are, young lady. It’s time we get you back to the school.” He patted my arm.
It took all my willpower not to choke him.
I just had to keep the charade up until we were out of sight of the prison, then I was laying him out like a faery on a binge.
“What in the hell are you doing?” I hissed under my breath as we hit the street. It was only early evening, but somehow it felt like I’d been locked up for days.
“Saving your ass in case you missed it.” Bright green eyes struck me from under the brim of his hat. They hadn’t been noticeable in the jail. “Unless you wanted to spend a month or so with the goras?”
I tried to pull my arm free of his grasp, but as I’d seen demonstrated the night before, he was far stronger than he looked. I couldn’t budge as we marched down the street. I might be able to fight free, but this close to the prison would just land me back inside.
The way my luck had been lately, the harpy half-breed would be awake this time.
“I give up. Why set me up then come and bail me out?” I figured asking point blank might startle him enough to let something loose. Me or his tongue, I was fine with either.
“What?” He pulled back to give me a closer look. Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting me to call him on it. “I didn’t set you up. Trust me, one of the last groups of people I want watching me would be the guards.” He winced as he caught a smirk I hadn’t been able to keep tied up. I’d shocked something out of him, just not what I’d been expecting. Still…
“How do I know? No one else knew I was in your den of ill-used clothing.” I dropped my voice and my head as a returning guardsman appeared far too interested in us. Alric shut up as well, and the guard passed without a word.
“I’m the one being harassed here—” He cut off as he heard something. He must have better ears than me. It took me a few seconds to even hear a buzz, a full minute before I heard what made him so pale— faeries. Faeries singing. And unless I was mis-hearing, that lovely horrifically off-pitch tune was being carried by my own three bundles of mischief.
“Damn it.” He looked around frantically, clearly debating his options. Finally he stopped and pulled me up against his chest. Even with the oversized clothing, there was no denying he was a fit specimen. “Don’t forget who got you out.” He looked down the road, trying to see where the singing was coming from. It was clearly getting closer. “This isn’t over,” he hissed next to my ear. An instant later he vanished.
There was no way to tell if his parting words were a threat or promise, but I decided for the moment I didn’t care. And that a certain trio of badly singing faeries was quite possibly the best sound I’d ever heard.
It sounded like the faeries were with someone on the ground, otherwise they would have already been here. Most likely Harlan.
I was almost to the cross street where the singing was coming from, when the faeries suddenly shut up. An instant later the singing was replaced by war cries. The sound wasn’t that different to the untrained ear, but ext
remely noticeable to anyone who knew faeries.
I had a feeling they’d found Alric, costume or no. Most people didn’t know, but faeries had excellent olfactory systems. Better than most hunting dogs. They didn’t want to ruin the mystique of being able to find people, so they never told anyone. I’d found out about it the hard way by bringing home some pickled herring one day.
Although the faeries had taken off in a different direction, heavy footsteps were still coming my way. I paused. The louder tread would be Harlan, my guess on the faeries escort was right. But at least three other lighter footfalls were with him. Were the guards bringing him in too? He’d been there during my argument with Nirtha.
A jolt of fear shot through my stomach and I thought about jumping in the bushes. Luckily, before I could bolt, Harlan and three of his cronies came into view.
Seeing who he had with him made me re-entertain the bolting option. The three were old-school diggers. And three of the biggest busybodies in town. Aside from Harlan. The four together could not be a good thing.
“Taryn!” Harlan’s booming voice hit a second before his hug did. “I was in fear we would have to storm the prison to free you.”
I patted his back and tried to push away. Unfortunately fur was hard to get traction against. Finally, he took my gasping as a plea to be released.
“I’m fine. How did you know where I was?” I cautiously nodded to the other three. There was no way I was talking about any of my current issues within a five block radius of them. “And where did the faeries go?”
“Rumors spread fast when you know what to listen for. You weren’t home last night so I kept an ear out,” he said. “As for the girls, they saw prey of some kind. Most likely a rat or weasel.”
I smiled at that. Very appropriate even if inaccurate.
“But they’ll find us later.” Harlan neatly spun me down an adjoining alley. “They always do. First we have a proposition, one that you are uniquely suited for.”
I sighed at the gleam in his eye. It never boded well for me if he let that gleam make an appearance. “What now, Harlan? I’m glad you rallied the troops to get me out, but I’ve had a really bad few days. I just want to go back to my place and get some sleep.”
“No, no, that won’t do. You see the vandals who killed your odiferous landlady also did some re-designing of your abode.” He raised a hand at my gasp. “Not to worry, I have my wives over there returning things to normal. Should be ship shape in a few hours.” The smile that joined the gleam was extremely bad for me. He was up to something I was going to hate. Something I couldn’t get out of.
Chapter 6
With a heavy sigh, I gave in and let Harlan and his cronies lead me where they wanted. I was simply too hungry, exhausted, and confused to argue about it.
My spirits lifted and crashed at the same moment when I realized where we were going. Sort of an odd feeling, not unlike someone pulling a rug out from under you while you were standing on a rocking ship. Harlan was leading us to the Shimmering Dewdrop. He didn’t go there often, being as he preferred old digger bars where the chairs were artifacts in their own right. The fact that he was taking me to my favorite bar for this conference of his was another bad sign.
Early evening like this was actually a slower time for the Dewdrop. The daytime drunks had all headed for bed to get an early start on the next day’s attacks on their liver. The night drunks weren’t out of bed yet.
The soothing murmur of a handful of voices hit my ears an instant before Harlan barreled through the two wooden swinging doors.
“Good to see you, Taryn,” Karys called out from her usual table. The stunning, dark-haired, dark-eyed man leaning up against her was new. Most likely he was a pirate. Karys may have had to give up the sea, but that didn’t stop her love of pirates.
But her smile was forced and not because of the lean man next to her.
Over in his usual position at the bar, Foxy hadn’t looked up, just kept polishing the same glass with a rag. Foxmorton never polished a glass twice in his life.
In the corner two swarthy men glanced at me, but kept looking back to their table. The twins must have just gotten back from a job; Alejandro and Max were pawing over ill-gotten gains. But their movements were slower, as if they were trying to watch me without letting me see their intent. Their third brother, who rarely would even be in the same room with them and absolutely refused to allow any of them to be called a triplet, stood near the side door. He gave me a smile-less nod then went outside. Abhijeet was a mysterious soul sometimes, but that was odd even for him.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” I said to the room of people carefully not trying to say or do anything to show what they were thinking. “I didn’t kill her.”
“We knew that, sweetie,” Karys said with a look at her companion, but at least her smile was approaching normal now.
“They don’t think you did anything of the sort.” Harlan patted my arm and led me to the far corner. His silent companions trailed behind. That was one good side effect of me being an accused murderess— his companions were rarely silent yet they hadn’t said one word the entire trip over here. All three, oddly looking very much alike, sat a good foot away from the table Harlan hovered over.
I rubbed my forehead and waved at Foxy for a drink. I shouldn’t have anything to drink on my near empty stomach, but I had to have something. Besides, Old Sod ale was thick enough to be a meal. And eventually Foxy would bring over something that would pass for dinner.
“What is it, Harlan?” I sighed as I took a long sip of the rich, almost black, ale. The knots in my back and shoulders twitched as they loosened.
Harlan nodded to his friends in an attempt to include them, but they still weren’t moving any closer. “Well, you see….” The look I gave him over the rim of my glass must have been bitchy. He shook himself out of the longwinded tale he was going to tell. “Actually, I’ll be blunt. We want you to break into the south dig and find out what they’re doing.”
I sputtered a mist of dark ale out at him. “What?” Never mind that I had just been thinking that I needed to do that very thing a few hours ago. My contemplating returning to Perallan’s last dig was a far cry from Harlan dragging me into one of his schemes.
He pulled back and gave me his best affronted look. But I refused to apologize. Nothing hit him, and besides, he deserved to be spit at for that suggestion since I’d just gotten out of jail.
“No reason to be rude,” he said as he settled back into his seat. “It’s nothing illegal. Just need you to pop in, see what they are doing, then pop back out.” He motioned toward himself and the three old farts behind him. “We’re far too old to be clambering over fences.”
“Fences? There aren’t any fences over the south dig…” I dropped my face to my waiting fists. “When did they put in the fences, Harlan?” Amazing how information had to be dragged out of such a gossipy individual.
“I was getting to that.” He bristled his fur in annoyance, a sure sign he was keeping still more information from me. “They put up the fences this morning. By ruling of the high council no less. A horrible affront—”
“You want me to climb fences put up by the council?” I leaned forward so only he could hear. “Do you want me dead? Or just want me back in prison for good? You do know the faeries will come live with you if anything happens to me.”
He had the decency to look worried at that one. As much as he enjoyed his visits with the girls, he wouldn’t want them around all the time. No sane person would.
“I wouldn’t ask if I thought there was a risk, Taryn, you know that.” He looked around, making sure even his cronies couldn’t hear us. “I think it somehow might be tied into the ransacking of your home. And Perallan’s death.”
Shit. He knew just what to say to get me interested in risking life, limb, and the pursuit of not living in a tiny box with bars.
“Perallan died of natural causes.” But the doubt that was creeping around my gut on little rat feet w
as clear in my voice as well.
“We all thought that.” Harlan patted my hand gently. “We don’t anymore. He’d been digging in the south zone long before he took you on as his digger. He was looking for something, always took on newer diggers, and he would switch out folks like you’d change underwear.” He tapped the table with one extended claw. “He was looking for something and he didn’t want anyone to know.”
I took another long pull of my ale. Surprisingly it was a lot closer to the bottom than I thought. “But somebody knew.”
“That’s what we think,” Harlan said and nodded back toward his cronies. “Somebody knew it and killed him for his secrets. When he didn’t tell them before he died, they went after his place. His widow said she had no recollection of selling all his belongings, but I think she was spelled take those actions and forget about them. High level too, as none of her friends picked up on it. Then they shut down the dig and went after you.”
“Damn it,” I swore a few more creative selections. “Do you think Alric is involved? What am I saying, of course he’s involved. That’s how my life goes.” I finished my remaining ale in one long swig then went back to holding my face up with my fists.
“Who is Alric?” Harlan sounded concerned, and looked that way as well when I finally looked up.
“The biggest mistake I’ve ever been paid for.” The ale was hitting me far harder than it should have. Of course aside from one or two of those miserable ration bars I hadn’t had any food in…far longer than I could recall. After a few minutes of wishing the excess alcohol out of my bloodstream—that didn’t work, by the way—I finally opened my eyes. “He’s my collar from last night. Or my attempt anyway.” My thoughts finally fought their way through the layers of Old Sod. “There’s more going on than you know, and I’ll bet you it somehow ties in to that bastard.”
I finally convinced Harlan to chase away his cronies and told him about Covey’s attack, the missing scroll, and my kidnapping. I’d tried to gloss over that portion quickly, but of course Harlan caught it like a three-legged blind mouse that fell into a vat of fresh cheese.
The Glass Gargoyle (The Lost Ancients Book 1) Page 5
