A shudder went through me. I recognized his voice from that night: he’d been the torturer defending his professional skill. The dead man at the cabin had called him Frankie. That cold rage came again as I said, “I know she died being peeled alive by you.”
“Who are you working for, tough guy?” he demanded; suddenly he was now interrogating me. “You know Marantz doesn’t like strange noses poking into his business.”
“Then Marantz should’ve hired better people,” I said as if the name meant nothing. But it did; in my business, you got to know all about people like Marantz.
He laughed. “Okay, to tell you the truth, we were-” Then he head-butted me in the forehead. I reflexively slashed with the sword and cut the skin of his throat as I fell back, but not deep enough to do any real damage. I sat heavily on the fallen tree and my sword fell from my limp hand. I shook my head hard, and my vision cleared in time for me to see the man’s weapon glint in the sun as he brought it around in a wide, full-power slice at my neck. I leaned back so that it swished over my chest, then jumped up so that in one move I pushed him back and punched him in the jaw. He dropped his sword and, with an annoyed cry of, “Oh, god damn it!” fell backward over the edge of the cliff.
Almost.
I grabbed the front of his tunic, dug my boots into the dirt and managed to hold him with just his heels barely on the edge. The drop below was about forty feet, onto the same hard rocks that had so gently cradled me and his other victims. It might not be fatal; it definitely would leave a mark.
He froze, his arms flung wide for balance. All I had to do was open my hand. “Ready to talk now, smart-ass?” I said.
He glared at me. “I got nothing to say to you. You shouldn’t have been there that night, and we should’ve made sure you were dead. Mistakes all around.”
“Who is Lumina?” I asked.
He laughed. “The fire dreams are made of, pal.”
Dirt crumbled under his feet and he slipped a little. I couldn’t hold him balanced like this much longer. “What’s Marantz after?”
More rock fell. Somewhere a crow signaled to its brethren. “You are in so much trouble. Once Marantz hears about this, you and everyone you know will be mutton on the fire. You get me?”
I had to admire the guy’s balls for trying to talk his way off the edge of a cliff. “I get you.”
“Now if you let me go, we might be able to work this out. I can talk to Marantz for you. I mean, yeah, you killed Jimmy up at the cabin, but he was a kid and he wasn’t too smart, so he’s no loss. Marantz won’t give a shit.”
“ You killed Jimmy, Frankie. Remember? And does Marantz give a shit about you?”
He grinned. “Hey, we’re family.”
I didn’t know if he meant it metaphorically or literally, and really didn’t care. The chill was back: the image of Laura’s dead face in the moonlight loomed vividly before me. “You tortured a helpless girl to death. You damn near killed me, and you did kill the best horse in the world.”
“The horse?” he said in real surprise. “You’re upset about the horse?”
“Not anymore,” I said, and let him go.
His last words were something like, “No, wait!” But we were way past negotiating.
I watched him bounce off the side of the cliff about halfway down and land with the kind of limp thud that said he wouldn’t be getting up. Still, I sat down and waited to make sure he wasn’t faking. When something thick and crimson seeped out from under his head I was pretty sure, but after two crows landed and began pecking at the skin of his hands with no response, I knew he was really dead.
Killing him had felt good, but not smart. He might’ve said more if I’d kept at him. But hopefully he said enough: Marantz. That one name told me an awful lot. With a sigh, I got to my feet and walked down the trail toward the cut.
SEVEN
It was dark by the time I got back to Neceda riding my loaner horse and leading the other two I’d acquired. It had not been hard to catch them: once they weren’t being herded, they stopped and began grazing on whatever pitiful scrub they could find at the top of the cut. The two bad guys’ horses were placid and much easier to handle than my gray curse.
After collecting them, I returned to the shack, but a search of the hanging man’s corpse revealed nothing of interest. The same was true of the man I’d dropped off the cliff, who his late friend referred to as “Frankie.” His pockets were empty, his clothes contained nothing of use and his sword had all identifying marks, even the smith’s name, filed off. The leather armor was genuine Muscodian government issue, although that didn’t really mean anything: old soldiers were always selling off their mementos for spare change or more ale. Still, he’d learned archery marksmanship somewhere, so maybe this was a clue. If so, it was the only one either corpse provided.
Their saddlebags, though, were a treasure trove. Jimmy, the man at the shack, carried a big map of the whole Black River Hills area marked with random “x” symbols. There was no legend to explain their meaning, but there were dozens of them. He also had a knife identical to the one Bella Lou had given me. It looked brand-new; was it a replacement for the one Bella Lou had snatched? Were the dragons the symbols of some bandit gang? I knew most of the outfits that worked the river and surrounding countryside, but it didn’t mean a new one might not be trying to move in.
Frankie’s bags revealed even more. He had a tool kit that at first glance seemed to be for leather-working, but the dried blood on the instruments told a different story. Now I knew exactly how he’d removed those strips of skin from Laura Lesperitt, and felt even less remorse for letting him take the fast trail to the canyon floor. He also carried a healthy bag of gold, all in small-denomination coins. Most odd was a long strip of bright red cloth, like a head scarf. In fact, it was exactly like the scarves I’d glimpsed on those people moving into the former Lizard’s Kiss whorehouse.
But the day’s big clue was the name Marantz.
In Muscodia, all trails of vice and illegality eventually led to Gordon Marantz, who’d moved here after escaping Trasketania one step ahead of the gallows. He gained the favor of King Archibald’s court, and so officialdom looked the other way when he began eliminating his competition along the Gusay from Tacketville to Pema. In no time he controlled all the ale, girls, gambling and protection rackets. Many places worked directly for him while others, like Angelina’s, paid him protection. He was smart enough to be hard to find, but easy to run afoul of if you tried to cut into his action. In my years in Muscodia I’d only seen him once, leaving a gambling house late one night surrounded by his goons. In his forties, with black hair worn slicked back from his broad, mean face, he looked like a guy who could still get his hands dirty if the occasion demanded it. I wasn’t sorry our professional paths had never crossed.
I looked over the shack a second time, but found nothing I’d missed. I left Jimmy hanging, along with the strange padded box. Then, with the two new horses in tow, I descended the cut and retraced my steps up the canyon as the sun began to set.
We scared a fat buzzard away from Frankie’s corpse, then reached the spot where I’d left Buddy on grave digger duty. The little bozo was nowhere to be found. As I expected, he’d dug about half a hole and then vanished, probably sure I’d been ambushed. I wondered if he’d actually been on Frankie’s payroll, or if he just knew I was walking into a trap and hadn’t bothered to mention it.
All the horses balked at the scent of decay. I hated to leave Lola exposed and undignified, but ultimately had no choice. Maybe Buddy’s conscience would get the best of him and he’d return to do the job right. It beat facing his wife; I doubted he wanted both me and Bella Lou on his case. Besides, this was nothing but a pile of rotted horse meat; if there were a Summerlands, then Lola’s spirit now galloped across its smooth plains toward unending grazing.