“My office,” Liz said numbly. “All my records are in there…”
I took her hand and pulled her through the crowd toward the fire. Everyone in town had emerged to see the blaze, but they stopped well short of it. The only people in the open space between the crowd and the building were Gary Bunson and his two deputies, Pete and Russell. They looked confused, terrified and useless.
As we burst through the crowd, Pete lowered his toothpick spear, so old and dry it might shatter if someone sneezed in the vicinity. “Stay back!” he cried, his voice cracking like a teenager’s.
“Good grief, Pete, it’s me,” I said. Russell scampered over to back up his friend, the tips of their fragile lances trembling as they pointed them at us. Luckily Gary also saw us and waved them off before they embarrassed themselves.
“At ease, morons,” Gary snapped. He was sweaty and smoke stained. “Liz, there’s nothing left of your place, either, I’m afraid.”
“Is Hank okay?” Liz asked breathlessly. The wind shifted and engulfed us in smoke.
“Beats the hell out of me. I haven’t seen him, and if he’s smart he’ll stay hid ’til he can get out of Neceda in one piece. The whole town could go up if that fire starts roof-hopping, all because he got careless.” He looked at me, taking in the scratches visible on my arms and face. “What happened to you?”
“I was dancing with your ex-wife,” I said.
“Which one?” he shot back.
Somewhere inside the stable a horse screeched in terror. A great cloud of sparks surged out on the wind, and we all ducked and covered our heads. People in the crowd behind us screamed. I patted out a small flare on Liz’s sleeve. “What about Peg and the kids?” Liz demanded.
“Over there somewhere,” Gary said, waving toward the other side of the fire. “All of them, except Hank.” He looked away, fully aware of the implications. “Nobody’s seen him since this started.”
I looked at the stable. Wood and hay; it would go up fast and quick, and anyone trapped inside wouldn’t last long. It might be too late already. “We have to see if he’s in there,” I said.
“ We? ” Gary repeated sharply. “Uh-uh, my job is to keep the peace and I’m doing that just fine right here.”
“He’s your friend, Gary,” Liz said.
“So’s my ass.”
I was about to say something regarding Gary’s likely parentage when movement caught my eye. Between two of the buildings across the way, at the mouth of Ditch Street, stood a man with white hair, wearing an enormous pair of gloves. I was so surprised that I stared, momentarily forgetting the crisis.
He was a small, thin man with the kind of hatchet-like face that lent itself to stern disapproval. That made the pain visible in it, even from this distance, somehow more affecting. His snowy mane swept back from a pronounced widow’s peak and fell to his shoulders, and he wore the simple tunic and trousers most local people favored. The heavy gloves looked more like some giant child’s mittens than something an adult would wear in public.
Shapes suddenly appeared out of the darkness behind him, loping down Ditch Street toward us. The firelight revealed them to be short, thick-bodied men wearing those red head scarves. I had not seen them emerge from the Lizard’s Kiss building; they just appeared as if from out of the ground and stopped well short of the intersection, clustered together like a press-gang.
The white-haired man paid them no mind. He watched the fire with more trepidation than most, and of course I immediately wondered if he might be the arsonist behind it; not for a moment did I agree with Gary that Hank had gotten careless enough to burn down his own barn. Hank was a fourth-generation blacksmith and farrier; he wouldn’t make such a dumb mistake.
Without taking my eyes off the old man, I nudged Liz. “See that old guy over there?”
She looked and said, “Where?”
“On the street outside the alley by the cobbler’s shop.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“That’s our mysterious visitor from the hospital. Go grab him. Gary and I will check for Hank.”
Liz nodded and immediately moved into the crowd. I felt a momentary thrill of pride that my girl, my girl, could be counted on to handle that sort of job. Plenty of men I’d known couldn’t be.
Then I realized Gary was glaring at me. “The hell we will,” he said.
“You owe him money,” I reminded him as I pushed him toward the fire. “If we don’t try to find him, people will think you set it to get out of the debt.”
“Why would they think that?”
“Because that’s what I’ll tell them.”
“I don’t care!” Gary wailed, but by then we’d reached the stable doors. Even the metal hinges were smoking as they baked off the grease that lubricated them. I tried the handle, but the bolt had been locked on the inside. I slid my sword between the doors and, using it for leverage, popped a plank free enough to get a hand in and slide the bolt. The heat scalded my knuckles.
We jumped aside to avoid the belch of flame that shot out. “This is crazy,” Gary said, pressing a kerchief to his face. The inside of the barn looked like the very mouth to hell. “I’m not going in there.”
“Yes, you are,” I said, grabbed his arm and pulled him into the stable after me.
NINE
The smoke’s odor immediately told me more than hay was burning. The place had been deliberately torched, most likely with oil or alcohol, so there was even less time than I initially thought. The blaze was at that liminal point where the stable looked like a line drawing rendered in flame: every edge and straight line glowed, and in moments they would all crumble and collapse. Even above the mingled roars of crowd and fire, I heard the creaking protests of beams about to snap.
“Hank!” we yelled, but our cries were too muffled to really be heard. The heat sucked the air from us and replaced it with foul, acrid smoke. Crouching low and skirting the burning debris, we made our way to the rear of the stable. Gary hid behind me just as Hank’s son had done behind his father.
All the horses, including the ones owned by Argoset and his henchman, had been cleared out. Only a young stallion barely out of colthood remained, kicking futily at the gate of one of the rear stalls. I unlatched the gate and the wide-eyed horse rushed toward the front door. The animal was already badly singed, and so terrified that he didn’t even pause before he dashed through a fresh sheet of flame into what he supposed was freedom outside.
“He’s not here,” Gary said. “Let’s get out while we can!”
“We haven’t checked the back,” I insisted.
“It’s on fire! The front’s on fire! The sides are on fire, and look! The ceiling! Guess what? It’s on fire! ”
The heat grew so intense I was sure my beard would combust. I danced around several blazing clumps of hay that filtered down from the loft through widening cracks in the ceiling. We reached the back of the barn where the door led into Hank’s house. I pounded on it with my sword hilt, but it was bolted from the other side. That meant someone had been alive to lock it, and I had a moment of relief before I turned and suddenly felt a chill despite the blaze.
Hank Pinster was pinned to the wall by a pitchfork through the torso. His hands, already burned down to blackened talons, uselessly clutched the smoldering handle. His feet barely touched the floor; whoever had killed him had been stronger and taller. The ends of his hair burned slowly toward his skull.
Gary and I looked at each other, neither of us with the extra air to speak. We both knew this meant arson, and murder.
Then the ceiling above Hank gave way, and we barely avoided the surge of flaming wood, hay and debris that burst out from the impact. The hayloft was disintegrating above us, and the whole structure would collapse at any moment.