“I’m betting those were just window dressing, old chum. Part of the con and never meant to be cashed,” said Mike, tapping himself on the elbow with the rolled-up paper. “I’ll also wager that Roy is going to protect the lady and never say she helped him with his bizarre fraud. Guys, most of them I’ve noticed, tend to feel protective about her. Have you noticed that, too?”
“She’ll get away clear.”
“Once again.”
He rose, very slowly, to his feet. “I’ll head home. Ask her to leave.”
“Don’t weaken. And happy Thanksgiving.”
Wes gave him the bottle of wine and left. When he arrived at his beach cottage, Casey’s car wasn’t in the driveway. All her clothes were gone from the bedroom, along with the dish-ware and the blender she’d brought. The only items of hers she left behind were three Carlos Miranda paperbacks in the living room bookcase.
Steepled on the coffee table was a copy of the day’s paper. There was no note, no goodbye message.
As predicted, Roy Pomeroy never mentioned her during his trial or sentencing.
And Wes didn’t hear from Casey again for nearly a year and a half.
But that’s another story.
Ride a Red Horse
by Dan Crawford
One foot up, breathe in. Foot down, breathe out. Other foot up, breathe in. Foot down, breathe out. Just keep moving.
Polijn’s face was dripping, and it felt at times as though the sweat was running straight down to her boots. But there was no shelter on the treeless plain; the only way out of this was to walk on.
The sweat might freeze, eventually, as night advanced and the cold, sloppy mush became frozen snow. But it might be less work to slip across that than through this quagmire of heavy, clinging goo, shindeep outside her boots and wellnigh ankledeep inside.
Polijn actually liked this kind of weather, within the bounds of enthusiasm. A few hours of concentrated misery put one’s life into perspective. This morning she’d been so hungry she’d wondered whether she’d mind being dead. Now that survival was really an issue, hunger was a gentle dream.
She stumbled over some discarded boot or clump of frozen weeds. Everything was snow, everywhere. The wind was in league with it, whipping it up and around so that was all you could see or hear.
Polijn set both feet together and tipped her head to one side, pulling her hood back a bit. Her ears were trained to pick things out in a roomful of singing people, so they ought to work just as well here. Surely that had been the sound of a bell.
There! She trudged in the direction of the sound. Even a lost cow would be some shelter.
Now she heard a second bell, pitched lower. Two cows, each with a different bell? But most bells in these regions would have been made by the same bellsmith, to a single pattern, and would sound alike. No reason there couldn’t be two bellmakers in a region, though, or itinerant bellsmiths, moving at random. That could even be the bellsmith’s cart now, with samples hanging outside.
Polijn was trying to talk herself out of what she thought the bells really were; she was far too soggy to deal with disappointment. But what rose before her was either a mighty even snowbank or a white wall. Nearer, and she could make out the dark splotch that had to be a door and, to the left of it, three bells: the big one on top, the small one in the middle, and the intermediate bell on the bottom, an arrangement so ancient that only the wizards knew what it had originally signified. If they knew.
All Polijn needed now were the doorknocker and the cry of “Enter, friend!”
The doorknocker was there. And, after she’d used the knocker, so was the cry.
The big door swung back. “Why, my lad!” exclaimed a tall man. His eyes searched the storm outside for any companions the visitor might have. “Whatever can you be doing out alone on such a night?”
“I am Polijn,” she informed him. “A minstrel.”
“Ah, another.” He stepped aside to let her pass. “I am Anderal, abbot of this place.”
Polijn moved inside. “My thanks cannot be numbered,” she told him. “I was afraid I was going to be buried before I was quite ready.”
Anderal moved back to bar the doors again. “No thanks are necessary, lad.” Polijn watched to see how the bar worked. Then her eyes swept the little entry room for weapons and hiding places: his or, at need, hers.
The Northern Quilt was dotted with religious shelters into which men or women retreated to contemplate other worlds that might or might not be. This could be a far less hazardous and more rewarding career than getting involved in the politics that had resulted in the crazy quilt of little countries. Their policy was to offer shelter to travelers without asking payment, as an offering to their god or gods. But some of them offered shelter so that travelers could be robbed and murdered in the night in case their god or gods needed the money.
Anderal was a tall man in a white robe that featured a red horse’s head stitched onto the back. She rather thought she liked him, as he held out a hand to escort her into the shelter. She did not take the hand, though: liking was not necessarily trust.
“Where are you from, lad?” he inquired, accepting this without a blink. “And where are you bound?”
She raised her hands. “I’m bound wherever the wind is kinder, good abbot. Most recently, I’m from Oduvon.”
“Ah, Oduvon.” He inclined his head. “Quite the walk, lad.”
Polijn didn’t correct the “lad.” She didn’t tell him where she was from, either. Rossacotta had such a reputation for villainy that some people, hearing she’d been there, were willing to stone her to death for fear she’d do worse to them.
Anderal extended a hand toward a small door at the other end of the small chamber. “Were you able to see Lady Denuit at Oduvon, lad?” His eyes went up and down her as she moved forward.
She had, in fact, and was able to discuss her recent wedding with enough detail to convince him she actually had been there.
As a public figure, Polijn was accustomed to being eyed for all sorts of reasons; minstrels were regarded as demideities in some regions, and fair game in others. And even in her childhood days on the streets of Malbeth, she’d have recognized the look in Anderal’s eyes — he was sizing her up for weapons and other possible threats. His questioning came from the same source: in the Northern Quilt, it was essential to know where people came from, where they were going, and what they meant to do.
The abbot seemed to feel his visitor was acceptable. He opened the little door, which led into a shadowy passage, and said, “It is not necessary for you to do homage to Our Lord Horse, if such is contrary to your own vows.”
Polijn had no vows, particularly, and knew the proper answer, no matter how amiable her host might be. “I would certainly do homage to one who has saved me from this weather.”
He guided her through a short hall to a pair of dark wooden doors. The shapes of men in battle array had been carved into the doors. Polijn added this to her store of information. These war cults could be exhausting audiences, but in general did not slay guests out of hand. She had heard stories, of course, of visitors’ being forced to prove themselves in arena combat.
Anderal pulled the doors open. The shrine behind the doors was carved of the same dark wood. No arms hung on the walls; Polijn wondered if this might not, instead, simply be a little temple that the local duke’s soldiers would visit on their way to battle.
The only thing clearly visible in the gloom was a bright red horse that sat on a high shelf between two branches of red candles. Polijn checked the walls: all the warriors depicted in the carvings were mounted. “Our Lord Horse” — it was a natural choice of deity for cavalry.
Anderal stepped up to the enshrined statue and bowed. He stood up straight and set one hand between his eyes, with the fingers pointed up but the thumb folded under. The other hand was cupped behind his left ear. Then he set both hands over his mouth and made half a curtsy.