Alex Bledsoe - Burn Me Deadly

“Do you still have the knife?”

“ ’Course. Want to see it?”

I nodded. She went to a trunk-sized box shoved up against the wall and opened it. Light glinted from the blades of a dozen knives clipped to the inside of the lid, ready for the day the king’s soldiers came to arrest them, I supposed. She picked one, pulled it loose and closed the box.

She handed it to me: five inches long, perfectly balanced and sharp on both edges. If you didn’t know about knives you’d never pick this one, because it was about as visually impressive as a nice letter opener. But I did know, and it told me that if the screaming guy had wanted to hit her, he probably could have. This was a pro’s throwing knife.

But what it told me most was that I was on the right track: embossed into the black handle was a dragon emblem identical to the one I saw on the man’s boots.

I tapped the design. “Is this why you call them the dragon people?” I asked.

She nodded. “Why do you?”

“One of them has the same thing on his boots.” I put the knife on the table. “Can I buy this from you?”

She shook her head. “We don’t use money. Money feeds into King Archibald’s repression.”

Slowly so I wouldn’t spook her, I drew my own knife from its hiding place in my boot. It was almost exactly the same size and weight and, since I’d left the filigree along the blade, looked much more expensive. “Can I trade with you, then?”

She took both knives and held them side by side, scrutinizing them like two cucumbers at the market. Then she handed me the dragon knife. “Sure. It’s probably bad luck for me to keep it, anyway.”

I slipped the new weapon into my boot just as heavy steps thudded on the porch outside. “I got us a couple of wild pigs,” a rough male voice called. “Ought to be good for a week, at least. Got ’em strung up to drain.”

“Buddy, you know you don’t have to gut ’em; I’ll do that,” Bella Lou called through the door. She smiled and shook her head. “I’m a lucky woman, all right. He spends all day hunting and still has the energy to field-dress ’em and start the blood running out.”

The front door opened and Buddy stepped into the room. He was a short, round man with arms the size of my legs, dressed in ragged, homemade clothes patterned to blend with the light and shadow of the forest. He’d removed his boots on the porch, and his broad, pasty-white feet slapped the floor with each step. He wore a big knife on his belt and his hands were bloody. Intense little eyes peered from under the floppy brim of his cap and said he was not pleased to see a stranger. He looked me over for a long, tense moment. Finally he growled, “Who’s this, Bella Lou?”

“This is Mr. LaCrosse,” she said.

“And why is he in my favorite seat?”

She kept her eyes cast demurely down. “He was asking about the dragon people.”

“We don’t know any dragon people,” he said as he hung his hat on a peg. He had a wild tangle of thin, ginger-colored hair around a sizeable bald spot.

“Your wife just said you did,” I pointed out.

His hard little eyes flicked back to Bella Lou. “Yeah, well, she’s not too smart sometimes. Ain’t that right?”

Bella Lou, eyes still averted, nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Buddy asked, “That your gray mare out there?”

I nodded.

“Pitiful excuse for a horse.”

“I know.”

“Bella Lou, get me some water.” He wiped his hands across his belly, leaving red smears on the fabric. As she jumped to get water from a barrel, he stepped close to me and looked down. “You are in my favorite chair.”

“I’m a guest,” I said. Buddy had, in the time it took him to walk across the room, gone from annoying me to truly pissing me off, and I halfway welcomed the chance to make a big deal out of something. “Don’t they always get the best seat in the house?”

Buddy tried his best glare on me. “You and your pitiful horse better leave, mister.”

“Sure. Just as soon as one of you tells me where I can find the dragon people.”

“I said before, we don’t know any dragon people.”

I smiled my brightest smile. “Then your wife’s a liar. Or you are.”

His face turned red. “Mister, get on your way or next time I’ll just leave you out there for the coyotes,” he growled.

I frowned, puzzled at the comment. He looked startled as well, and embarrassed, like he’d blurted out more than he should. Then I got it. “Oho,” I said softly, “so you’re the fellow who found me and brought me into town.”

His tough veneer turned out to be as substantial as a sneeze; the fear in his eyes could probably be seen back in Neceda. “I think you better leave, mister,” he said with no juice.

I loved it when a tactical advantage just fell out of the sky like that. I nonchalantly tipped my chair back. “I’m not ready to give up my seat just yet. Yeah, my friend at the stable described you. He didn’t know your name, but he’s seen you at the market in town before. You tried to sell my saddle to him.”

Now Bella Lou froze in the act of handing him his mug of rainwater. Her eyes grew big and, as I watched, began to sizzle with fury. “You were at the market? In town?”

Buddy looked helplessly from me to her, unable to think of anything to say.

Bella did not have that problem. She tossed the water in his face, then threw the mug against the floor at his bare feet. It shattered, the noise sharp and loud. “Completely self-sufficient, you said. Never let anyone even know we’re here, you said. And now I find out you’ve been going to the market in town regularly?” By the end her voice had risen to a considerable shriek, and I was glad she wasn’t yelling at me.

Buddy took a step back toward the door. “Well, I had to-”

She was right up in his face now, hands on her hips. “You had to lie to me? To our children? You had to do that?” She smacked him across the back of the head. “We live knee-deep in goat shit and dead leaves, and you sneak off to town?”

He looked past Bella Lou at me, his expression desperate.

I stood and said, “Bella Lou, before you crack his head like a walnut, I’d sure like him to show me where the dragon people are.”

She turned that seething glare on me, and I responded with my blandest smile. She snapped, “Sure, might as well get some honest work out of him. I’m going for a walk.” She pushed past me and went out the back door. “Shut up!” she bellowed when the goats in the pen started bleating. Her muttering was so loud it carried back to us for several moments until she disappeared into the woods.

I turned back to Buddy, who looked like a convict granted a scaffold reprieve. “She’s got strong opinions,” I said.

“And a strong right arm,” he agreed, rubbing the back of his head.

“Maybe you shouldn’t lie to her next time,” I said.

“I don’t need your damn city advice,” he mumbled. Then he scooped his cap from the hook and, with as much dignity as he could muster, jammed it on his head. “Come on, then.”

I followed him outside. Two good-sized pig carcasses hung by their feet from a nearby tree, blood draining onto the ground; even I could spot them as plump, farm-raised livestock. Buddy pulled on big muddy boots, took the reins of a scraggly pony from the hitching post and mounted in a single leap. The pony visibly sank under his weight. The various tools and implements hanging from the saddle jingled. I mounted my horse and, after battling with her for a few moments, got her under control. “Buddy,” I said, “first I want you to show me where you found me. It’s close to where you’ve seen the dragon people, isn’t it?”

He nodded without looking at me.