The woman hissed. Her breath stank of the grave.
The Regent smiled a small smile, right at me. “My companion suggests caution.”
The woman blinked and her eyes were normal. She closed her lips. Her talons retracted. Each left a tiny drop of glistening venom where they had lain.
The Regent kept looking at me. I spoke only when it became obvious Evis wasn’t going to. “So your people didn’t manage to grab the attacker?”
Darla kicked me again.
“The attack was designed to occur only after my assailant was safely away,” replied the Regent. “The hexed dagger, as you call it, drew attention to you. While my staff was occupied determining the nature of that threat, the real attack commenced. It was invisible. Entirely arcane. Surprisingly powerful.”
I was seated two places down from the Regent, on a boat under attack by bogeymen right out of legend, being glared at by a female with talons and fangs. I decided we’d left our bag of caution back in Rannit and plowed in before Darla could contrive to stuff a napkin in my mouth.
“Old magic, was it? Something out of legend?”
“Precisely. Fortunately, I too have access to unique and powerful arcana. Isn’t that right, my dear?”
His woman purred. The sound of it raised every hair I had.
“And you think they might try again here, any moment.” In a crowded casino, I nearly added. And you took a seat right by my wife.
“It’s almost as if I’m taunting them, isn’t it, Mr. Markhat? Barging down here, my wand-wavers nowhere in sight, nothing to protect me but a single beautiful woman.” The creature’s purring grew louder. If she’d had a tail, she’d have swished it languidly. “That’s just the sort of behavior one might expect from an arrogant megalomaniac. Carelessly endangering the lives of innocents because he believes in his own innate invincibility.”
“Not what I said.”
“But what you meant. And, if that were the case, you would be correct. But I must ask you to trust me, Mr. Markhat. I assure you there is a method, as they say, to my madness.”
Trust you? I thought. Like the Corpsemaster trusted you?
Careful, said Stitches in a tiny whisper in my head. Think happy thoughts. Or at least not treasonous ones.
“You’re the boss,” I said. I met his eyes but didn’t attempt to smile. “We’re all just trying to get you to Bel Loit and back alive.”
“In that, I wish you luck. Now I will try my hand at the tables. Mr. Prestley. Join us.”
Evis rose with all the cheer and enthusiasm of a man bound for the gallows.
“Don’t be so glum, Mr. Prestley. I have no intention of looting Avalante’s coffers this evening. I am not a skilled gambler.”
“Somehow I doubt that. Your Honor,” I said. Darla hissed, but my words were out.
The Regent laughed. “Remember your mission, Mr. Markhat. Bel Loit and back, alive.”
His cat-eyed woman showed me her teeth again. Then the Regent turned and walked away, with Evis on his left, and the woman slinking on his right. Darla punched me in the ribs. “What happened to ‘Yes, Your Honor’ and ‘No, Your Honor?’“
I rose. “Light of my life, would you be so good as to see Mama put somewhere safe for the night, and send Gertriss my way?”
She frowned but nodded. “And then I’ll join you.”
We both shall, said Stitches. She stood too, keeping her hood pulled low on her face. I have some instruments to fetch.
“So you didn’t know the woman was a cat-thing either?”
You surprise me, Markhat. No. I did not. I assumed she was a bodyguard, perhaps a mistress. Nothing about her suggested an extraordinary nature.
“Another old magic, right out of legend?”
I simply do not know. She turned and made for the stair.
“What was that all about?” asked Darla.
“Surprises all around. Stitches has gone to fetch her good wands.”
“I’m beginning to wish we ran a dairy farm.” Darla found a grin. “I’ll be right back.”
I watched her vanish into the crowd. Then I unbuttoned my jacket and pulled out my new revolver and checked it right there at the table.
Toadsticker hung at my side. I had a facsimile magic tortoise shell in one pocket and a gun in a chest holster. I had a dagger in my right boot and my old Army knife in an ankle sheath on my left leg. I was armed as well as a well-dressed man could be, and I still felt naked, knowing what might be wandering around out there among the gamblers and the revelers and the well-heeled ne’er-do-wells.
I resolved to tear up my finder’s license and take up turnip ranching if and when the Queen docked back at Rannit.
I plunged into the crowd, looking for trouble.
Chapter Thirteen
Trouble, as always, wasn’t hard to find.
She’d not been a lovely woman. She’d had bug eyes and a weak chin and the kind of nose that evokes words such as “beak” or “proboscis” as descriptors. Her frown lines were deep and marked and spoke of a face set perpetually in a fierce, disapproving scowl.
Death had eased her scowl, at least. Now her bug eyes were wide open, as if in mild surprise.
Whoever stabbed her had done so with sufficient force to push a slender blade through her chest and through her heart and out her back. She died instantly, I guessed, since there was barely any blood from the single stab wound.
I found her sitting there-eyes open, head just beginning to slump-two tables from where Evis and the Regent and the Regent’s cat-eyed creature played roulette while a cheering crowd looked on.
I sat down beside her before she fell. I pulled her face close to mine and looked about.
The table was filled with empty glasses. The three other chairs were pushed back. I gathered the dead woman’s companions had found reasons to leave her alone. I hoped none would return before I came up with a way to get her body out of sight.
Finally, for lack of a better plan, I simply scooped her up, held her as though I was helping her walk, and headed for the nearest of the Queen’s opulent water closets.
She was light, all skin and bones. A minute ago she’d been alive. Scowling and bug-eyed, maybe, but alive. Someone had simply walked up to her and run her through, and I wondered if I could have saved her by being half a dozen steps closer or ten seconds faster.
I hit the door, which banged as it opened. Bright light washed over me, and I squinted as the attendant, a big man I recalled as Rainy Day, hurried to me.
“Sir,” he began. “This is the gentleman’s room. You can’t bring a lady in here.”
“Rainy, can you lock this door?”
“I said you can’t have a woman in here. This ain’t no place for that.”
I turned us so he could see her face. Even men who haven’t seen much death damned well know the look of it.
Rainy took in a quick breath. I remembered that Rainy seemed a bit slow. But he was catching on fast.
“Yes sir, I can lock it from the outside.”
“Lock it. Go find Evis. Tell him we’ve got another special problem. You got that? Say it for me.”
“I am to tell Mr. Prestley we have another special problem.”
“Good man. Get to it.”
He got, heeling and toeing it. I heard him lock the door and I laid the dead woman on the floor.
I was glad for the bright lights. I’d been right about the single stab wound. I hoped she’d died without suffering. She looked old and frail, there on the floor.
I closed her eyes. Noticed a trickle of blood dotting the right corner of her mouth.
When I pushed her lips and teeth apart, I saw that she had no tongue. It had been cut away. One clean slice. Done after she was stabbed. Almost no blood.
She had no pockets, of course. If she’d had a purse or a clutch, I’d foolishly left it behind.
Someone tried the restroom door handle.