“Hey, Callie,” I said wearily. “When did you get back?”
“Today. Convinced Angelina to hire my boyfriend.” She nodded toward the stage. “That’s him, on the right.”
I glanced at him. Young, handsome, with a quick smile and a sparkling eye for anything in a skirt. Typical minstrel. “I thought you left with a conjurer.”
“I did, but his tricks weren’t the kind that lasted,” she said wistfully. “Tony, now he’s a keeper.”
“The folks do seem to like him.”
“What happened to you?”
I shrugged. I was too tired to explain it so that Callie would understand. “Fell off my horse.”
She nodded sagely, as if this truly explained everything. “Yeah. Well, take care of yourself, Mr. LaCrosse.”
“You, too, Callie.”
I finished my drink, dropped a coin in the tip vase and waved to Angelina. She gave me a nod in response. There was no need to go up to my office, and the only steps I wanted to climb led to my bedroom.
The tavern door opened as I reached it, and two men entered. Both were smallish, strong-looking guys with faces tanned and lined from working outdoors. Their clothes were cheap and home-mended. And both wore the red scarves.
I stepped aside and watched them. They looked around like anyone would for a seat, and when they spotted an empty table threaded through the dancers to claim it. Nothing unusual about that at all.
I hesitated, wondering if I should stay and try to befriend them. Ale, especially the good stuff Angelina served when I paid her extra for it, tended to loosen even the tightest tongues. But I was just too tired.
I meant to lie down just for a moment. Really. About three hours later Liz’s scream awakened me.
Okay, it wasn’t really a scream, just a surprised yell when she lit the table lamp and saw me sprawled shirtless and barefoot across the bed. I’d left my other clothes, shredded and bloodied from racing through the hawthorns, in a heap by the door. What I hadn’t done was clean the blood off me, which I’d intended to do after closing my eyes for just a second.
Her cry woke me with a start and I sat up suddenly, which did make her shriek. Then she glared at me with all her considerable righteous fury.
“Shit, Eddie, don’t do that!” she snapped. “You want to make me pee all over myself? God damn…”
I blinked, yawned and said, “Wow. You’re late.”
“Not for a run to Pema and back,” she said. She sat heavily in a chair and ran trembling fingers through her hair. The lamp cast flickering light on her face. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“If I’d done that, there’d be nothing left of you.”
“Don’t try your charm on me when I’m pissed at you. So what happened? Did you get mauled by porcupines?”
I gave her the short and simple version, which still made her eyes widen. When I was done she said, “So you went for a quiet ride in the country and killed two people?”
“Only one,” I said wearily. “And he had it coming.”
“If you’d brought him back alive, you might’ve learned more,” she said as she pulled off her boots. They hit the floor with a loud thop.
“I learned enough. Fair trade for the satisfaction I got seeing him go splat. I know where to go poke into next.”
“Marantz?”
I nodded, which turned into a yawn.
She shook her head. “Eddie, sometimes I wonder that your feeble little brain can move your body around.”
She stood, untied her trousers and slid them down her legs. This got my attention, as it always did. Then she unlaced her tunic and pulled it over her head. This left her pretty thoroughly unclothed, a sight that, like a sunset, would never grow less beautiful to me. I was about to comment on it when she fetched a bottle and cloth from the tiny cupboard and sat beside me on the bed. I eyed her warily, my eyes flitting from her brief undergarments to the items in her hand. The bottle came from the moon priestess hospital, to clean the spot on the back of my head if it needed it. It didn’t. “What are you planning?”
“We paid for this stuff, we might as well use it.” She dampened the cloth with the bottle’s contents.
“You have to be naked for that?”
“I’m not naked. And you’ve already bled all over the sheets; I don’t want you ruining my clothes, too.”
“I’m a big boy; why don’t I just go wash myself up?” I said quickly, and started to rise. I noticed the lamp was now making odd flickering patterns on the wall.
She put a hand firmly on my shoulder. “Just sit still and don’t be a baby. The more you fight, the longer this’ll take.”
She touched a medicine-soaked corner of the rag to a vicious scratch on my arm. It felt like I’d been branded, and I winced in response. Someone screamed outside in the street, a fairly common thing in Neceda. “See?” I said through clenched teeth. “It hurts so bad it makes total strangers holler.”
“Uh-huh,” she agreed, undeterred. She touched me with the rag again.
“ Ow! ” I griped. “Be careful, will you?”
She laughed, then leaned close and took my nearest earlobe in her teeth. Her other hand traced the long scar on my chest. “For a man who once took a sword hit to the heart, you’re pretty whiny.”
“Yeah, well, this hurts worse.”
Someone else screamed outside. It didn’t sound like excitement or surprise, the only good kinds of screams. Flames still flickered and danced on the wall, but they didn’t come from the evenly burning lamp. A bright glow from outside now lit the whole room.
“Something’s wrong,” I said.
EIGHT
Instantly Liz sat up beside me. “What?” Then she saw the light on the wall, too. “Oh, no.”
We rushed to the window. Despite being on the second floor in a town with only one three-story building, we couldn’t see the actual source of the orange glow: it was behind us, in the center of town. People rushed down the street toward the commotion, although a few timid souls fled the opposite way. The distinctive odor of burning wood filled the air.
I grabbed fresh clothes from the wardrobe; by the time I got my boots on, Liz was also dressed. I grabbed my short Urban Mercenary brand Bodyguard Special sword from the rack, she slipped a knife inside her belt and we ran down the stairs to join the commotion.
Mrs. Talbot stood on the front porch puffing on a pipe. Her hair was tangled, and she was clad in a sleeping tunic that hung off one shoulder. Her grandson, a toadish little boy of indeterminate age, lurked in the open doorway behind her. “Looks like a fire,” she said needlessly.
“Where?” Liz asked.
Mrs. Talbot pointed with her pipe. “Thataway, I expect.”
That was helpful. We joined the flow of morbid curiosity as it surged toward the fire, and at the corner we jammed up against the back of the crowd. Over their heads we saw the source of the flames now leaping high into the sky, visible no doubt for miles. An instant before I realized what was going on, Liz gasped over the din, “ It’s Hank’s stable! ”
The lower part of the building was already engulfed, and flames lapped eagerly at the sides and roof above, chewing their way up like hungry worms on a leaf. The horses in the outside corral reared and screamed, pressed together as far from the flames as they could get. No one seemed inclined to let them out, and their panicked whinnies cut through the other noise. The addition where Hank’s family lived was so far untouched, but that wouldn’t last. I didn’t see them anywhere, but surely they’d had time and sense enough to get out.
Because of the corral on one side and the street on the other, the stable was fairly isolated from the other buildings, which kept the flames from jumping to them. Still, people scrambled around on top of the other structures, pouring water from buckets handed from windows or hauled up on ropes. They weren’t trying to put out the fire, just wet down and protect their own places. I wondered if anyone had tried to start a bucket chain down to the river to actually fight the main fire, but it seemed unlikely; Neceda thought only of its avaricious little self. And now, judging from the size of the flames, there would be no point.