Michael looked at the two men. “My name is Michael. Who would you be?”
“Addison,” the older man replied. “This here is Henley.” He hesitated, then added, “From the sound of you, you come from a landscape that’s a fair distance from here.”
“I come from a country called Elandar.”
“Country? Huh,” Addison said, nodding as if Michael had just confirmed something. “Didn’t take you for a city dweller, since most of them wouldn’t know what to do with a pack like that, let alone be able to carry it. Come on, then. It’s not too far a walk for someone who’s used to using his feet.”
Michael walked in front of the horses, torn between wanting to lengthen his stride to walk off his annoyance and wanting to slow down to delay getting to their destination—whatever it was.
Obviously they thought a wanderer was an uneducated man and couldn’t tell the difference between being from the country and living in a country. So let them underestimate him and judge him by his clothes and the pack on his back. All the better for him to get away from this place and figure out how to find Caitlin.
It didn’t take long enough before they passed stables, paddocks, and a line of hitching rails as well as…Yes, those wooden slats were bicycle racks. Looked like everyone left their conveyance here and went the rest of the way by foot.
The street was cobblestone, which was common enough. The colored lights that lit up the street…
There was a feel of a harvest fair about the place, and he almost expected to see the booths that offered games of chance. Of course, it felt like the seedy side of the harvest fair, where the games of chance weren’t as innocent as a ring toss to win a stuffed animal for your sweetheart.
There had been times, when his belly had been as empty as his pockets, when he’d accepted a coin or two in exchange for bringing someone a little more luck at those games of chance—or a little bad luck if the coins had come from a man’s rival.
“Is there some kind of festival going on?” Michael asked.
“Nah,” Addison said. He dismounted and handed the reins to Henley. “The Den of Iniquity always looks like this. You can leave the pack here. No point in jangling down the street, is there?”
Lady’s mercy. The last time someone suggested he leave his pack, they hadn’t wanted anything worth selling to be ruined if things got messy when they killed him. Music had gotten him out of that bad patch, and he’d made a point of avoiding that particular fork in the road ever since.
He looked at the two men—and noticed that each of them had a hand resting on a weapon. The Heart of the Bog had cleaned his tin whistle, valuing the instrument far more than the man, but he hadn’t had time to assure himself it was in any condition to be played. So it was best not to offer entertainment he wasn’t sure he could deliver—especially to men already suspicious of him because he was a stranger.
He slid the straps off his shoulders and set the pack on the ground.
“This way,” Addison said. “If Sebastian isn’t at Philo’s, the folks there will know where to find him.”
“And he rules this place?”
Addison pondered for a moment, then nodded. “That’s a way of saying it.”
Wondering what kind of justice would be found in a place called the Den of Iniquity, Michael followed Addison, who headed for a courtyard full of tables and statues.
Then he shoved Addison aside and ran to the woman standing next to a table with her back to the street.
He spun her around and grabbed her arms in a bruising grip. “Damn the darkness, Caitlin Marie, you scared me out of a decade of my life pulling a stunt like this! If you weren’t a grown woman, or close enough, I’d take a strap—”
He was dimly aware of the sound of chairs crashing as men shoved away from the tables, dimly aware of men and…something shaggy…moving toward him with deadly purpose. But what he saw with painful clarity was the fear in the woman’s blue eyes. He gentled his grip but still held on to her, ready to catch her if she swooned.
“I am sorry,” he said, working to make his voice soothing. “When I saw you standing there, I thought you were Caitlin Marie.”
“Who deserves a strapping?” Her voice trembled with fear, but there was an undercurrent of anger now—the kind that came from a woman who knew the feel of a leather belt against tender flesh.
The men and the shaggy things were closing in, and he was pretty sure he was holding the one ally he might have in this place—if she chose to be.
“She’s my sister,” he said quickly, too aware of how little time he had to explain. “My little sister. She disappeared. Just vanished from the village where she and my aunt live. I have to find her. There’s something evil out there, and I have to find her. And I thought, when I saw you—the right height, the right color hair—I thought I’d found her.”
“Take your hands off my wife.”
Hearing the “or else” under the command, Michael released the woman, took a step back, and took stock of how much trouble he was in.
The blond-haired man on his left was holding a sharp table knife, but not in a way that said he was used to street fighting. On another day, the two shaggy, horned creatures that looked like bulls walking on their hind legs would have scared him out of half his wits—especially since one of them was carrying a club and the other had a large knife, and they did look like they knew a lot about street fighting. But it was the dark-haired man coming up on his right that held Michael’s attention. He was dressed in black leather and had cold green eyes, and there was something about the way he rubbed his thumb against the fingertips of his right hand that produced a ball of fear in Michael’s gut.
The woman hesitated a moment, then shifted enough to half block the man’s approach. “Sebastian,” she said, taking hold of his arm with both hands.
So this was Sebastian, the Justice Maker who was going to decide his fate. I’m a dead man.
“He wasn’t trying to hurt me,” she said. “His sister is missing, lost in the landscapes.”
“And this is how he responds to finding his sister?”
The woman’s mouth primmed as she looked at Michael and made a lightning-flash decision. “I’ve been told that men who are scared tend to yell at a loved one as a way of showing relief. Which is totally unfair since the person being yelled at has already had a difficult time because otherwise she wouldn’t have been late. But unfair or not, I’ve been told that this is a male thing to do and men have to be forgiven, eventually, when they do it.”
Irritation tightened Sebastian’s mouth when the blond-haired man choked back a laugh, but it was enough to break the coldness in his eyes.
“I thought we agreed that discussion was finished,” Sebastian said.
“It is finished,” she agreed. “I was just reminding you of it.”
He would have found the domestic byplay more amusing if his life didn’t depend on Sebastian’s temper.
The woman looked at Michael. “You came here to find your sister.”
“I came here by mistake,” he replied.
“No one comes to the Den by mistake,” Sebastian said. “By accident, yes, but not by mistake.”
Michael nodded to indicate he understood the distinction. “By accident then.”
“The Merry Makers brought him across the border in order to see you,” Addison said from behind Michael.
“Why?” Sebastian asked.
“I’m looking for the answer to a riddle,” Michael replied. It wasn’t really a riddle anymore since he’d already figured out “belladonna” was a woman and not the plant, but if he kept these people intrigued about why he was among them, he might be able to talk his way out of this place.
“You said you were looking for your sister,” the woman said, shifting so she no longer blocked Sebastian’s right hand.
Damn the darkness, these people were too suspicious of strangers to be intrigued by anything. And if the woman stopped believing his reason for grabbing her…He had a feeling Sebastian could kill him in cold blood right here on the street and no one would say a thing about it.