“I was hoping you could tell me. The fellow who brought you in said he found you out in the Black River Hills, but he left town before we could get any more details, including his name. What do you remember?”
“I was riding from Tallega to Neceda when somebody slipped up behind me and whacked me on the back of the head. Next thing I knew, I woke up here.”
He nodded. “And who was the girl?”
I don’t know why, but I decided to play dumb. “Girl?”
“The dead girl that was brought in with you. She’d been beaten up pretty badly. Or pretty well, depending on whose side you’re on. The gals here told me when they looked her over that at least three of her injuries could’ve been the fatal one.”
I shook my head slightly. “Not a clue.”
“It’s not the first time he’s been coldcocked,” Liz offered. “They said those things add up, and he might have some memory loss.”
“Hm. The convenient kind, I suspect,” Gary said. “But there’s no rush. If it’s bandits, they’ll do it again to somebody else and we’ll hear about it. If it’s personal, you will. If you think of anything you want to add, let me know.”
“That’s your whole investigation?” I said wryly.
He shrugged. “No point in leveling my lance if there’s no one to joust with. Give me a name or a description, I’ll get on it. Otherwise
…” He shrugged.
Gary left, and I watched out the door until he was far down the hallway. He stopped and chatted with a pair of apprentices in their striped robes, and left them giggling. When he finally turned the corner and was out of sight, Liz sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand. “Want to tell me about the girl?” she asked quietly, her face neutral.
“I picked her up on the road. She’d been beaten up and needed a ride into town. I thought she’d been smacked around by some drunken husband or father. Turned out I was wrong.”
“Did you get her name?”
“Laura Lesperitt.” I looked up and managed a smile. “And that’s all I got from her.”
Liz’s eyes narrowed playfully. “Well, let that be a lesson to you about seeing other women behind my back, Eddie LaCrosse.” Then she kissed me.
THE next day I left the hospital. My ribs had pretty much healed, and the huge bandage around my head had diminished to a single circlet mainly protecting the thick scab under my hair. Mother Bennings said it could go, too, whenever I felt like it. My head still hurt and my side ached, but I could rest at home just as well. Besides, those blank white walls were starting to get to me.
My belongings, including my Jackblade KG-model sword, were returned to me when we checked out. So the guy with the dragon boots hadn’t kept it; he meant for my death to look like an accident, as if I’d simply ridden off the cliff in the darkness. I checked it over, including the stiletto hidden in the hilt, but it was undamaged and had not been sabotaged. I did not buckle the scabbard around my waist; it had done me no good at all the last time I’d worn it.
Down the hill from the hospital squatted Neceda, happily going along without me. It was a small village on the Gusay River, a crossroads town where people stopped on their way to and from other places. The town’s actual population was small, but at any given moment hundreds of strangers roamed its streets, drank in its taverns, fornicated in its whorehouses or languished in its jail. And for now and the foreseeable future, it was home. The people who wanted my services appreciated the fact that my office wasn’t in a big, gossipy city where their friends or enemies might spot them talking to me.
Liz may have looked slender and shapely-which she was-but she was also ox strong, and came awfully close to carrying me a few times as I hobbled out to her waiting wagon. I was stiff, thick with too much rest and blinded by the fresh sunlight. Every bump in the road sent jolts through me, so she kept us at a crawl.
I scanned people’s feet as we rode through town, especially those of men lounging against walls, standing in doorways or doing any of the other things people do when they’re trying to fake being casual. I saw no dragon boots. One guy caught me checking out his feet and glared at me, then took in the bandage around my head. His expression changed to one of annoyance mixed with pity.
As the wagon rolled through town, I glanced down one of the side streets and managed a weak double take. A group of men and women unloaded furniture and other items from three over-stuffed wagons. Two things were odd about this: the building they were moving all this into had been a popular whorehouse called the Lizard’s Kiss before I’d been hurt, and the people all wore matching red head scarves. They also had the same general physical look: squat and thick bodied, with coarse features set in what looked, at this distance, like a perpetual scowl.
“What’s all that?” I asked Liz.
“What?” she said, looking around.
“Back at the Lizard’s Kiss. Looked like they were redecorating.”
“Oh. That closed down. Joan, the owner, sent the girls packing and lit out for somewhere else.”
“Why?” It seemed odd because Joan had been thoroughly well connected to the powers that be in Neceda, something that took a while to establish and was not lightly thrown away.
Liz shrugged. “Don’t know. Might ask Gary.”
“Yeah,” I said. A whorehouse shutting down wasn’t that unusual, but something about those red-scarved people stuck in my mind. Nothing shook immediately loose, so I pushed it aside for more immediate concerns. “Go by the tavern.”
“What?” Liz said.
“The tavern. I want to check in at my office.”
She did as I asked. Even though it was not yet noon, a half-dozen horses were tied on the street outside Angelina’s establishment. The building was low and broad in the front, with a second-story attic in the back built directly over the kitchen. The main doors opened as we stopped, and a tall man with a scarred face wobbled out, squinting into the light. He froze when he saw us, his expression a mix of shame and surprise. I had no idea who he was, and after a moment his red-rimmed eyes adjusted and he realized he didn’t know me, either. He stumbled off with a mumbled apology, his conscience apparently so guilty over something that even being blind drunk in the middle of the day couldn’t quiet it. I checked his boots; dragon free.
“Just wait here; I’ll go get her,” Liz said.
“Uh-uh,” I said, and swung one heavy leg over the side of the wagon. “I’ll never live it down if I don’t walk in with my chin high.”
“That’s silly.”
“So is calling something a ‘sharp curve,’ but we still do it.”
We walked in with Liz’s arm around my waist, surreptitiously supporting me. Angelina came out from behind the counter and, without a word, put her arms around both our necks. It hurt when she squeezed, but I said nothing. My hand covered Liz’s on Angelina’s back. If I had a family anymore, these two women were it: lover/partner and sister/confessor.
Angelina pulled away and scowled at me. “Hit him in the head, huh?”
“No doubt there’s a mace with a serious dent in it somewhere,” Liz said.
Angelina shook her head. She was middle-aged but still handsome, with a form that in its day must’ve inspired plenty of young men to acts of passion or violence. She was well educated, road smart and honest, and could’ve done much better for herself than owning a tavern in Neceda. But I never asked any questions, and she never offered any hints about who or what she was hiding from.
Angelina returned to her spot behind the bar and said, “Callie will be sorry she missed you.”
Callie was Angelina’s favorite barmaid, a sweet teenage girl with the figure of a goddess and the smarts of a horseshoe. “Where is she?” Liz asked.
“She fell in love. Ran off with some traveling conjurer. I figure she’ll be back any day now…”-she patted her stomach-“… hopefully without a surprise in the works.”
“Teenage girls never know what’s good for them,” I agreed as I lowered myself onto a stool at the bar. Liz took the one beside me. The big square room had booths along the walls, four wobbly tables and a clear space for musicians and dancing. The wall behind the bar hid the kitchen, although the heat and odor of whatever was cooking always filled the place. There were no windows, so except for the table lamps it stayed perpetually dark, which suited the clientele.