We dashed for the front doors, but a fresh pile of burning hay and crossbeams thundered down. Gary’s watery eyes opened wide in a panic, and I think he would’ve made a break for it just like the colt if, at that moment, Argoset’s huge lackey hadn’t emerged from the smoke and fire behind us. He had a rag of some sort wrapped around his head against the smoke, and only his size let me recognize him. He scooped each of us up under one enormous arm like two rowdy children and toted us through the now-open door to Hank’s home, out another door and into the street. Even though it was summer, after that inferno the air felt like a blast of ice water. He dumped us unceremoniously before his boss.
Coughing so hard I expected a lung to land in the dirt beside me, I looked up at Argoset in amazement. He wore clothes coated in road dust and held the reins of their two horses. His muscleman unwound the cloth from his face and wiped at the soot streaking his bare, sweaty arms.
“Are you two all right?” Argoset asked, and offered me his hand. “You’re really lucky, you know that? Marion had just finished making sure no one was left in there, and then one of Magistrate Bunson’s deputies said you’d gone in the front door. He volunteered to go back in and get you.”
I looked at the big, implacable face with the unlikely name of Marion. “Thanks,” I said. He nodded.
Gary remained on his knees, bent double in a convulsive coughing fit that seemed like it might snap him in half. “Water,” he choked out, and Argoset nodded to Marion, who took a canteen from his saddle. He handed it to Gary, who could barely swallow between coughs.
I took the canteen and drank gratefully. Even now the fire was beginning to chew its way into the Pinsters’ living quarters. It progressed more slowly, though; that part of the structure hadn’t been doused with whatever had been used on the rest of the building.
Argoset stared up at the stable’s burning roof. “It’s going up pretty fast.”
“Hay and wood,” Marion grunted.
Argoset nodded. “Glad you made sure no one was in there.”
I kept the reaction off my face-not hard, the way I was coughing-but I couldn’t miss the fact that Argoset had twice mentioned that the barn was empty. It would be hard for anyone with working eyesight to have missed Hank pinned to the wall, and Marion was certainly big enough to have killed him in the way we saw. But why would he? And did he know we saw the body before he found us?
I continued to gulp as much night air as my lungs would accept, and returned the canteen to Marion. Gary was still on the ground. Much of the crowd had dissipated now that the initial excitement was over and the hard work of cleaning up would begin. I looked around for Liz, and spotted her at the end of Ditch Street where I’d previously seen the old man.
She wasn’t looking my way; instead, she shoved the old man ahead of her up the street away from the crowd. They were talking animatedly almost like old friends as they turned down an alley between Jack Talon’s herbalist shop and the Lizard’s Kiss.
I opened my mouth to yell after them. A fresh fit of coughing seized me and little white specks danced in my vision. I made a sound like a bleating goat as the cough took over, and when I looked again, Liz and the old man had vanished.
Something inside the barn crashed behind us, and the remaining crowd collectively gasped. Some young wags from a casino began cheering. I turned in time to see the last of the hayloft and roof collapse down into the first floor. Like a wave on the ocean, light and heat surged out and then up, driving us all back before settling into a single column of flame.
Then Liz appeared at my side, so abruptly that I yelped with surprise. This made me cough again, and her arm snaked around my waist. She cocked her hip so she could take some of my weight, which she’d had plenty of practice doing lately. “Two seconds,” she said. “That’s all it takes for you to get in trouble when my back is turned.”
I tried to ask, What did the old man say? but only managed the words “old man.”
She shook her head. “Didn’t find him. Come on; let’s get you back home.” To Argoset she said, “Did someone have to drag him out? He really doesn’t have the sense to leave a burning building.”
“Marion rescued them,” Argoset said with a nod to his subordinate.
Liz turned to the big man. “Thanks, then.” He grunted a response.
“Glad we were around to help,” Argoset added. “And glad no one else was in there.”
As Liz pulled me away, I grabbed Gary’s arm and dragged him after us. Argoset raised his hand as if about to stop me, but changed his mind in mid-motion and turned it into a fake-jaunty wave. He locked eyes for a moment with Gary, then resumed watching the fire.
Pete and Russell started to stop us, then looked from Argoset to Gary, uncertain who they worked for at the moment. Gary waved at them to stay put, and they nodded. Pete glanced uncertainly at Marion.
People stepped aside as we staggered through the crowd. The night’s implications whirled in my head, and there was no way I could just go home. Once we turned the corner and were out of sight, I said, “I want a drink. A big one.”
“First smart thing you’ve suggested,” Gary agreed.
Liz was about to protest, then wearily changed her mind. Just because “drink” and “think” rhyme, she once told me, doesn’t mean they always have to go together. We cut behind the buildings and down the alleys that separated the main street from the few smaller, residential dwellings that backed up to it. These were dangerous passageways at night, but since most everyone was at the fire and I knew Liz and I could handle any bandits we might encounter, I wasn’t worried. We gave a wide berth to one body sprawled in the mud; I couldn’t tell if the guy was drunk, beaten or dead, but if he’d wandered back here, he probably deserved what he got.
We emerged at Angelina’s. She stood outside, a pipe in her hand, watching the orange glow in the sky. A few patrons lounged against the wall with their tankards. She looked tired, and her blouse was sweaty above her corset. When she saw us she smiled at Liz, then frowned at me and Gary.
“First you’re cut to pieces; now you’re half burned up,” she said. With a “hmph” of disdain she added, “And you’re keeping this kind of company.”
“Kiss my ass, Angelina,” Gary said, leaning wearily against the wall.
“What burned down?” she asked Liz and me.
“Hank Pinster’s stable,” Liz said.
Angelina’s eyes opened wide, and her attitude vanished. “Doesn’t that mean your office, too?”
“Yeah,” she said wearily.
Angelina patted Liz’s arm sympathetically. Then her normal disdain returned. “Let me guess-these two geniuses went in to make sure everyone was out.”
“Somebody had to,” Gary said. He glanced at me; I shrugged. If he wanted to claim credit for something noble, I wasn’t going to contradict him.
“Think you can get these two heroes a drink?” Liz asked drily. “Then maybe I can get mine off the street for the night.”
“Oh, sure,” she replied acidly. “Heroes are our favorite patrons.”
We followed her inside. Except for Callie busily washing tankards and the two minstrels sharing a pipe, the place was empty. Tables and booths were still cluttered with signs of occupancy, though, and the crowd would return as soon as the excitement ended.
Gary and I dropped heavily onto bar stools, still coughing and wheezing. Callie did a double take at us and said, “Wow, Mr. LaCrosse. You look worse than you did before.” I couldn’t argue.
Angelina placed two tankards in front of us, and a cup of wine before Liz. I drank mine gratefully, coughed some more, then turned to Gary and said, “Argoset lied to us.”
He nodded. He tried to speak, but choked on the ale.
“About what?” Liz asked.
“Hank was in there,” I said, low so only she and Angelina heard.
“He was?” Liz gasped. “Why didn’t you bring him out?”