“There’s folks asking about you,” Angelina said as she put two fresh tankards in front of us.
“Clients?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not, Mr. LaCrosse,” a new voice said.
I turned as much as my stiff body allowed. A tall, well-groomed man stood beside me. He wore a cloak, and the tunic beneath it bore the royal seal of Muscodia. The insignia told me he was a captain, an awfully high rank for one so young: he couldn’t have been more than twenty. His cleanliness told me he took himself and his position very seriously. His eyes told me I should, too.
The well-groomed young man said, “Daniel Argoset, King’s Special Office of Domestic Security.” He offered his hand, and I shook it. His grip was firm.
“Does your father know you stole his uniform?” I asked; I’d seen stable boys who looked older.
His smile was the patient expression of someone really tired of hearing jokes like that. “I’d like to ask you some questions about the incident on the Tallega road. Is there somewhere private we can talk?”
Another young uniformed soldier appeared at his elbow. This one was huge, with shoulders that strained the sash marking him as a mere private. He had the dull arrogance of someone used to applying force to any problem, and did not introduce himself.
Behind them, Gary Bunson hunkered down guiltily in a booth. So that’s how they found me. The man had a spine of wet pasta.
“My office is upstairs,” I said. “I haven’t been there in a week, so I can’t say what shape it’s in, but you’re welcome to come up.”
“I straightened it up a little,” Angelina said. “You’re a tenant, after all. It reflects on the whole establishment.” Her face was absolutely straight when she said this, but it was her way of assuring me there was nothing incriminating lying around.
I gestured toward the stairs. “After you, then, gentlemen. I’m still awfully slow at climbing things.”
Argoset headed up the steps first; I checked for dragons on his boots, but there were none. I was pretty sure I’d know the guy’s voice again when I heard it, but it never hurt to be overly cautious. Despite my warning, his muscle-bound companion dropped back to bring up the rear. He was about as subtle as a punch to the nose.
The stairs seemed to have grown steeper and higher since I’d been hurt, and without Liz behind me I would’ve tumbled backward down them quite ungracefully. I opened my office door and stepped aside to allow Liz, Argoset and Muscles to precede me, which gave my head time to stop swimming. The slab of beef balked, so I went in ahead of him. He followed, closed the door once we were all inside and then stood before it, arms crossed.
My office, in the attic over the kitchen, had once been used by workingwomen for functions not that morally dissimilar to my own. I’d put in a divider wall and another door to give me both a waiting room and a private inner office. I kept the front door unlocked, with a bench against one wall in case anyone decided they needed to wait. The dust on the bench was undisturbed, which said a lot about the recent demand for my services.
I unlocked the inner office, where I had a desk, two guest chairs, a sword cabinet and a hidden bottle of rum. Argoset took all this in with a slow, methodical sweep of his eyes. I went behind my desk and gratefully fell into my chair. Liz sat on the edge of the desk to my right, and Argoset took one of the guest seats. He sat upright, his spine and shoulders straight enough to draw lines with. Muscles closed the inner door and again stood with his back to it. If he’d stared at me any harder, his eyes would’ve shot across the room.
“Would anyone like a drink?” I said as I took the bottle from a drawer. “I haven’t had anything in a week that wasn’t flavored like green tea.”
Argoset shook his head. I looked questioningly at Muscles. He wrinkled his nose distastefully, although I wasn’t sure if it was because of me, the booze or the surroundings. I decided to hold off on that drink for myself as well.
Argoset took out a small wooden tablet with vellum sheets clipped to it. He lifted the first one and read, “ ‘Edward LaCrosse. Nationality unknown, age unknown, no apparent family.’ ” He cut his eyes at Liz, but she said nothing. “ ‘Current occupation personal soldiery, investigations into domestic indiscretions and so forth.’ I believe the slang term is ‘sword jockey,’ am I right?”
“When you call me that, smile.”
Argoset did not smile. “Where did you come from before you landed in Neceda?”
That story would take longer than Argoset could imagine. The tale of how a teenage heir to minor nobility lost the girl he loved and abandoned his fortune and title to become first an anonymous soldier, then a vicious mercenary and finally a middle-aged guy who offered his skills to private citizens would sound as ludicrous to him as it sometimes did to me. So I merely shrugged and said, “Around.”
“And how old are you?”
“Older than anyone else in the room.”
He looked steadily at me. Completely at odds with his youth, he had the cold, vaguely reptilian gaze of the intrinsically dangerous. “Mr. LaCrosse, why were you on the road to Tallega the night you were attacked? And spare me the wit, if you can.”
“I was doing an errand for a client.”
“Who was the client?”
I shook my head. The motion made my eyes cross a little. “That’s confidential. I’m sure you understand.”
“This is an official investigation of a murder.”
“And an attempted murder,” Liz put in.
“Yes,” Argoset agreed. “It was only luck that kept it from being a double homicide. We’re not even sure if you, or the young lady, were the intended victim.”
“Lots of people wouldn’t mind dropping me off a cliff,” I agreed. “But I’m pretty sure it was her.”
“You told Magistrate Bunson that you had no memory of the girl.”
He’d have to work harder than that to catch me out. “I didn’t then. Now I do. Lots of things are coming back to me.”
He closed the pad and looked at me. “I imagine, then, given your occupation, that you plan to conduct your own investigation based on some idea of personal honor and revenge.”
“Me? Nah. I plan on sleeping off this headache, which the priestess up the hill says may take six months even with whatever spells she does. Otherwise, I’ve got nothing on my schedule.”
Argoset tapped the tablet thoughtfully against his chin. “You really don’t seem like that kind of person.”
“He is,” Liz assured him. “I’ve seen swatting a fly exhaust him.”
Argoset put the tablet back in his pocket. “So you’re content to leave the investigation up to the people the king assigns to do this sort of thing?”
I shrugged. “It’s your job, not mine. I don’t have a client.”
He nodded again. His eerie, steady quality made me nervous, especially since it emanated from such a boyish face. I could imagine what it would do to someone who really did have a guilty conscience. Finally he said, “I don’t believe you, Mr. LaCrosse, but I do believe that your injuries will slow you down considerably and keep you from getting in my way. So I’ll leave you with this. A crime has been committed, and as far as we know, you are one of the victims. It wouldn’t require much traveling to look at things from the other side and see you as a suspect. Do you understand?”
I nodded, very slightly this time.
A slow, knowing smile spread across his face. It was not reassuring. “Right.” Argoset stood, nodded respectfully to Liz and left. Muscles fell in behind him. Liz followed, watched them descend the stairs, then closed the outer door behind them. She crossed her arms and said, “That was all kinds of strange, wasn’t it?”