by Lisa Shearin
“Do it somewhere else.”
“I go where the money is. Because you know I’m nothing but a low-life bastard who murders for pay, with no conscience and no regret. Wasn’t that what you said?”
Damn, over a dozen years ago and Rache remembered it word for word. He wasn’t just carrying a grudge; he was nursing it like a newborn. Great, just what I never needed.
“Meant it then, mean it now,” I said. “You lied to me. Nothing you ever said was the truth. You probably even lied when you said you loved me.”
The girl froze, eyes wide, sheet now clutched to her ample chest, looking from me to Rache and back again. “Uh, I don’t want to get in the middle of . . . whatever this is.”
Rache’s shoulders shook in silent laughter. “And now you’re here to ruin my reputation,” he told me.
“You’ve missed twice since you got here. I think you’re doing a fine job by yourself.”
“Twice? I missed once, and that was your fault.”
“Mine?”
“Try nailing someone who—”
The redhead jumped out of bed and pulled on a robe. “I’ll just step outside until you two . . . ah . . . settle things.”
Rache reached for her. “Kara.”
She stepped nimbly out of his reach. “I don’t do threesomes, and I don’t get in the middle of lovers’ spats.”
Rache blinked. “Lovers? Is that what you think this—”
“There’s nothing wrong with it; it’s just not my thing.” She quickly gathered her undergarments, such as they were. “There are girls here who specialize in this sort of thing, really like it. I can let Madam Camille know your new preferences and—”
Rache raised his hands in protest. “No, no. You think that he and I . . . because he said—”
The girl stepped back to the bed and placed a finger on Rache’s lips. “You don’t have to explain a thing. There’s nothing wrong with it. I just . . .” She looked me up and down, and gave me a look that I’m sure Symon had plenty of experience getting from women. “He’s just not who I’d expect you to be with.” And she left. Fast. There was no surprised squeal from her when she stepped out into the hall, so Mago must have ducked back into our room until she’d gone.
Rache glared at me, and lowered his hands.
“Don’t go for the dagger under the mattress or under the pillow,” I told him.
Rache smiled. “You don’t trust me.”
“Not as far as I can throw you.”
“You may not be able to throw me, but you were always good for a wrestle.”
I gave him my best eat-shit-and-die look.
Rache put his thin-bladed knife on the bedside table and slid his long legs over the side of the bed and stood. Naturally, he made no effort to cover himself. I made an effort not to look.
“Afraid you’ll like what you see?” he asked.
I barked a small, harsh laugh. “No, I’m afraid Symon will. I’m finding he doesn’t have much control.”
Rache just stood there, naked. His crossbow at his right hand, and the knife at his left. He made no move toward either—or toward the trousers that were on the floor at his feet.
“Why are you here, Raine?”
“For starters, Mychael Eiliesor.”
“Ah, yes.” There was a world of meaning in those two little words.
“Ah, yes, you tried to kill him. Did you get paid for it—or is it personal?”
“Darling, I must honestly say that I don’t know what you’re talking about. Though you’d like for me to say it’s personal, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t have that much of an ego, Rache. I don’t need to have men wanting me years after we parted ways.”
“There hasn’t been anyone else since us.”
I could say the same thing, but demons with pitchforks couldn’t poke it out of me. I’d gotten burned by Rache. Badly. I hadn’t exactly gotten in line for seconds after that. In fact, I stayed far from anything that could be remotely called a relationship. You could say I had a few commitment issues. That and trust and abandonment. Yep, thanks to Rache Kai, I was a veritable bundle of neuroses.
“Rache, I want Mychael alive and I want you gone. At the same time, I have no reason to want you dead.”
His eyebrows lifted in surprise.
“Did someone pay you to use Mychael for target practice?” I asked.
“I’m here for a job, but that job isn’t Mychael Eiliesor.”
“I saw you on the third floor of the building across from the elven embassy. You took a shot at Mychael. Fortunately you missed.”
“That wasn’t me.”
“Prove it.”
“I don’t miss.”
“You’re lying.”
“Which one? That I tried to kill him, or that I don’t miss?”
I’d never heard of Rache missing before, but there was a first time for everything. Though this definitely wouldn’t be the first time that Rache had lied to me.
“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes,” I told him. “I know who I saw.”
“You saw me.”
“I believe I just said that.”
“That’s your proof right there.” Rache took a step forward, so that his body was all too visible in the flickering firelight. “I know I have competition. Whoever hits the prince first gets paid; the poor bastard who doesn’t hit the mark doesn’t get the money. No one ever sees me unless I want to be seen. That wasn’t me, ducky.”
“Just like that wasn’t you trying to assassinate Prince Chigaru Mal’Salin on the waterfront.”
“Oh, that was definitely me.”
“You admit it.”
“Of course. And thanks to your interference, I hit my target, but I didn’t kill him. By the way, very impressive work on your part. I didn’t know you had it in you.” He indicated the glamour. “Or that, either.” He chuckled. “If you ever wanted to be a man, he wouldn’t be it.”
“You won’t tell me your business, I won’t tell you mine.”
“Raine, you know that the identity of my clients is strictly confidential. If I went around spouting off who hired me, I wouldn’t have any clients left.”
“And that would be such a calamity.”
Rache shrugged. “I’m a jack-of-one-trade, Raine. I am what I am, and I’m not going to apologize for it. And you know that I only take one hit at a time. I’m here to bag a goblin, not a paladin. I like to give a hit my full attention, and my clients their money’s worth.”
“You’re a sweetheart.”
Rache may not be bothered much by morals, but he did have professional standards. Those were sacred. He wasn’t going to reveal the name of his client.
“Okay, fine. I wouldn’t want you to compromise your ethics on account of killing the goblin or the elf who can keep the seven kingdoms from literally going to hell in a handbasket.” I leaned forward and dropped my voice to a quick, hissing whisper. “And if said kingdoms do end up in said handbasket, you’ll be out of a job. People will be killing each other for free. War is like that.”
I glared at him. He glowered at me.
“I deliver results, Raine. Not refunds.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“Not this time. My pockets haven’t been this well lined in years.”
“What if you found out that your client couldn’t pay the rest of your fee? What if he suddenly went broke? Would you finish the job?”
Rache laughed. “What do you think?”
I think I’d just gotten new motivation to fleece Taltek Balmorlan. I couldn’t see his client being anyone else now.
I smiled. “I think—”
Glass shattered out in the hall, and the screaming started.
Chapter 12
I ran to the doorway.
A broken bottle of wine and a pair of shattered glasses were on the floor at the feet of the source of the screaming.
A girl wearing a robe so sheer she shouldn’t have bothered was standing
in front of the open door to a bedroom, hands that had been holding the wine and glasses now clenched in front of her mouth. The screams had died to whimpers.
Mago came up behind the girl, took one look at what was in that room and swore.
Rache took one look, saw Mago, shoved me out into the hall, slammed the door behind me, and threw the deadbolts. A few seconds later came the sound of a window being wrenched open.
Dammit.
I turned and pounded on the door. I knew it wouldn’t do any good, but I did it anyway. I’d rather have been pounding on Rache. Those deadbolts could only be opened with a key. And Madam Camille would be the only one who had them. I wasn’t even going to bother trying to get them.
Rache was gone, and I didn’t know much more now than I did before, other than he’d taken one shot at Chigaru, and taken no shots at Mychael. I believed him on both counts. I didn’t think Rache was lying, at least not this time. So basically the only thing I’d gotten from all that was one more question without an answer. Who was trying to kill Mychael?
“You’d better look at this,” Mago called down the hall.
I did, and what I saw was something I really didn’t want to see.
A dead goblin. A mage. Chatar. Previously under suspicion for trying to poison Chigaru Mal’Salin. Presently dangling from a small iron chandelier set in a ceiling beam, a chair kicked out of the way beneath his gently swaying legs. He was naked.
I didn’t want to see that, either.
“Damn.”
Mago nodded in agreement. “And then some.”
The watch would be here soon, and while Symon Wiggs wasn’t wanted by the watch, they’d wonder what an elven banker was doing snooping around a newly dead goblin, because that was exactly what I was about to do. Obviously, Chatar had escaped the hotel fire, and what was equally obvious was that he’d decided he needed some consolation afterward.
Or maybe his motives weren’t so obvious.
We were here to hide out, get news, and kill some time before a clandestine meeting. Perhaps Chatar had been here for similar reasons. We drank brandy and smoked cigars to pass the time; Chatar decided to get naked and do something else. A matter of preference, nothing more. Besides, the goblin mage didn’t strike me as the desolate type. He’d said he wasn’t guilty and he’d stuck to it. I wasn’t buying the “overcome with guilt and hanged himself” story that was sure to come. There was more here than met Symon’s beady eyes, and I’d better find it before the watchers got here.
Mago knew what I was about to do and gave me a quick nod.
He put an arm around the girl’s shoulders that were now shaking with barely contained sobs. “My dear, come sit down.” He guided her to a settee at the end of the hall, and away from seeing what I was about to do.
I had two minutes at the most and I took full advantage.
Windows were locked from the inside. There was no sign of forced entry on the door. The girl had probably only been gone for a few minutes at the most, but I could confirm that by asking her some questions, though Mago was probably taking care of that right now. I studied the body, but was careful not to touch anything. The city watch had seekers, too. I’d rather not be added to their list of suspects, though it wouldn’t be me, it would be Symon.
Chatar’s fingernails were clean, the knuckles unscuffed. No sign of defensive wounds anywhere on his body, and I do mean anywhere.
No sign of an assailant, either.
I heard the sound of voices coming up the stairs. I looked at the goblin’s neck. The noose was red silken rope. I glanced at the bedposts. Matching rope was tied around three of the four bedposts. Kinky. Someone had put the fourth rope to another use. I said someone, because there was no way Chatar had died by hanging. He was killed and then strung up to look like he’d done it himself. I’d only seen a few hangings, but I’d been given a tutorial at a crime scene by my old friend Chief Watcher Janek Tawl back home in Mermeia.
Chatar’s feet were only about a foot off the floor, not far enough for the weight of his body to break his neck when the chair was kicked out from beneath him. There was a reason why gallows had a trap door and a long drop. Weight and velocity broke necks. When suicides tried to hang themselves using the chair and rope method, they often died from slow suffocation, probably not the quick death they’d planned on. If Chatar had strung himself up, he’d have strangled, and his face and neck would have been dark red and congested with blood.
Neither body part was in either condition.
It was murder, dressed up to look like not-murder.
I got out into the hall before Madam Camille and her bouncers cleared the last few stairs. I went to Mago and the girl.
“She was downstairs for ten minutes at the most,” Mago told me. “Came back upstairs and found him like that.”
“Did he lock the door behind you?” I asked the girl.
She looked up at me with wide blue eyes, the scent of wild roses wafting from her pale, spun-silk hair, her full young breasts pressing firm and taut against the gauzy fabric of her—
I shook my head to clear it of the flood of images that followed. How the hell did men get anything done when everything made them think of sex?
“I . . . I don’t know,” the girl stammered.
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Your question. Did he lock the door behind me?”
I cleared my throat. “Oh, yes. That question.”
“I guess he could have left it unlocked,” she said.
And a murderer had let himself in, killed Chatar, made a half-assed effort to make it look like a suicide, and made his escape.
“No one was in the hall while I was here,” Mago said. “And if anyone had gone down the stairs, he’d have been seen.”
I looked down to the other end of the hall, more specifically at a blank wall that I knew wasn’t so blank. I stepped away from the girl and motioned to Mago to follow me.
“Not if he didn’t go down those stairs,” I told him.
“There aren’t any others.”
“Oh, yes, there are.”
I told him about the hidden staircase on the other side of the wall that emptied out into the street behind the bordello next to a perfectly respectable bakery.
Mago raised an eyebrow. “There’s a story there.”
“There is, but not now.”
Madam Camille looked in the room and had much the same reaction as Mago and me. One distinct word that summed up her feelings perfectly. Prostitution was legal in the city. Murder was not. Suicide was bad for business—so was murder. Either one meant the law would soon be crawling all over this place. And if Camille didn’t notify them now, she’d be sorry for it later. An investigation into a death meant losing business for a night; covering up a crime meant losing business permanently.
She half turned to one of her bouncers. “Notify the watch.”
Camille was smart.
Mago spoke up. “And the goblin embassy.”
“What?” Camille and I asked at the same time.
“The victim was one of Prince Chigaru Mal’Salin’s mages. Whether suicide or foul play, he’s a subject of the goblin crown and has diplomatic privileges. The prince’s chancellor and the acting goblin ambassador must be notified.”
That would be Tam and Imala.
I bit my lip against a smile.
My cousin was smart, too.
The goblins would know a murder when they saw one; the watch may or may not. I could find out exactly what happened in that room, but only if I dropped my glamour. But if I dropped it, it would take who knew how long to get it up again. No pun intended. As I’d experienced before, frayed nerves equaled no glamour. It’d happened before, and I couldn’t risk it happening again with watchers on the way—watchers who had been told to arrest Raine Benares. I was stuck as a short, woefully unendowed, mild-mannered banker until we could get out of here. In the meantime, Symon Wiggs’s identity was the only protection I had.
A pair of
watchers arrived first. That made sense considering that next to the entertainment district, the red-light district was one of the heaviest patrolled in the city. They did little more than secure the room and wait for their superiors. This was the Satyr’s Grove, the most exclusive bordello in the city. A crime here would have repercussions up the watcher chain of command and the Conclave. Prostitution may be legal, but that didn’t mean that certain high-ranking officials wanted their names on a police report as possible witnesses to a murder or suicide of another high-ranking official. I imagine Camille had conveniently neglected to ask her clients to stay for police questioning. In five more minutes, we’d be the only people in the house.
The murderer could possibly be one of the horde of high-class clients pulling up their trousers or pulling down their robes and hightailing it out of here, and there was nothing I could do to stop them—or identify them—as long as I was wearing a banker glamour. I’d give every coin of Symon Wiggs’s ill-gotten gains for one spark of magic right now.
Mago and I were doing what people who were the first on the scene of a murder do—stand around, then stand around some more waiting to be questioned. The girl had already told them that the hall was empty and that when she screamed, Mago came out of one room and I came out of another, but seeing that said murderer was in the Satyr’s Grove, these two watchers weren’t about to potentially put their badges on the line by letting anyone leave who’d seen that body. At least not until their superior told them they could. And that the victim was a goblin made it even more of a career-risking move. The watchers weren’t just playing it safe, they were playing it paranoid. I didn’t blame them, but I didn’t like it.
Mago leaned his head in close. “You could track him?”
I nodded once.
Mago knew the source of my frustration. Unglamour and I could find a murderer. Unglamoured would also get me a pair of magic-sapping manacles and a trip to watcher headquarters—until I could be transferred to either a citadel containment room or Taltek Balmorlan’s specially built cell.
I glanced down the hall to Rache’s room and stifled a growl. He was gone and I had nothing to show for finally cornering the bastard except a denial and a now-empty room.
