Alex Bledsoe - Burn Me Deadly

“Okay, okay. No questions, no lies. Of course I’ll give it to her.” She tucked it into her belt and looked up at me. “And you be careful. You still owe me rent and a pretty big bar tab.”

“I’m always careful,” I promised. Then I tossed Pansy’s reins over the hitching post.

“Hey, whoa, you’re not leaving that nag here,” Angelina said. “She’ll scare off the respectable horses.”

“Relax; I just have a couple of errands to run. She’ll be gone before lunch.”

“She better be, or my lunch special will be your ass.”

ANY connection with Gordon Marantz was cause for alarm, but the link between Marantz’s so-called “dragon people” and those weird folk with the red scarves nagged at me as well. Nothing happened in Neceda without a lot of people knowing about it, but that information was often unreliable, filtered through suspicion and self-interest. I needed a solid source for local gossip, and knew just the man.

Sharky Shavers stood on one of his flatboats moored on the Gusay. His shipping business operated out of a small building on Main Street, and the back door led straight down to the water. Like a lot of people who worked in town, he, his wife and four kids lived in the same building as his business. I went down the public walk to the docks and spotted him as he gazed over the side of the boat into the water. He did not look up, engrossed in whatever he observed.

Suddenly a head popped up at his feet. I thought at first it was his oldest son, Kenny, but the face was feminine, if not exactly attractive. Apparently his daughter, Minnow, was now old enough to join in the family business, and in Sharky’s world, everyone pitched in with the hard stuff.

“Looks like a branch snagged up there, dragging on the river bottom,” Minnow said as she hauled herself onto the boat. Sharky did not offer to help. She flopped on her belly like her namesake, then jumped to her feet. She was about fourteen, and the skimpy, waterlogged shift she wore would be scandalous on her before winter.

“Did you get it out?” Sharky asked.

“Not ‘til we discuss my deal.”

“You are not going off to be one of those weird-ass moon worshippers. That’s final.”

“What ‘going off’? It’s right outside town!” Minnow shot back. Their inflections, body language and obstinateness were identical.

“And they do bang-up work on banged-up heads,” I said by way of announcing myself.

“Hey, Eddie,” Sharky said. “Go put some clothes on,” he snapped at his daughter. “And send Terrell down to get that branch out.”

Minnow ran her hand coyly along the shift’s hem. “Then you have noticed I’m not a baby anymore.”

“I’ve noticed you’re about to get my foot up your ass for smarting off. Get!” He smacked the back of her head, not hard but firmly, and she scampered past me with a big grin. He sighed and climbed onto the dock. “Three boys, and put together they’re not as much trouble as that girl.”

“Why not let her go? She might not like it; then you can say you told her so.”

“Oh, she’ll like it. That’s what worries me.” He wiped his hands on a rag, then shook mine. “What brings you down here?”

I flipped a gold coin in the air so it caught the sunlight. Sharky’s eyes narrowed. “I wondered,” I said casually, “what you knew about the new owners of the Lizard’s Kiss.”

Sharky caught the coin on its next flip. “Bunch of weirdos from deep in the Black River Hills. They all look the same because they’ve been inbreeding for generations.”

“What’s with the scarves?”

“Religious symbol. Dragon worshippers.”

My eyebrows went up, but only slightly. Had to appear a little surprised. “Dragons?”

“Yeah. These guys believe dragons were real, and that they’ll come back one day and burn up everyone who ain’t part of their church.”

“Why did they buy a whorehouse?” Usually these strange little cults enforced strict, ascetic behavior that certainly didn’t encourage promiscuity.

“Don’t know, but Joan Diter had to skedaddle in the middle of the night. I saw her load onto a boat and head downstream with barely more than she could carry. And she was no wilting flower, that woman.”

The pattern was forming. Marantz certainly had the muscle to run off anyone he wanted, and his thugs had the same red scarves as these backwoods lacktooths and wore dragon emblems. I couldn’t imagine Marantz had suddenly found religion, though. Why bring these guys to town, buy a whorehouse and then close it? Why send his men into the hills to look for something by coating rocks with lamp oil? And why torture Laura Lesperitt to death? “Thanks,” I said, and patted Sharky’s arm.

As I climbed the hill from the riverbank, Minnow rushed to intercept me. She had on a dry dress, but her hair was still wet. “Mr. LaCrosse! Can I talk to you? You know Mother Bennings, don’t you?”

“She patched me up, but we’re not best friends.”

She looked up at me, eager and breathless. “Would you put in a word for me? I really want to learn from her.”

“Why? It’s not an easy life. There are places where moon priestesses are arrested on sight and turned into prostitutes.”

“Really?” She blinked in surprise. “Around here?”

“No. But they do it in Menasha. And in Brule their tongues are cut out if they speak in public.” That was a slight exaggeration, since all women were forbidden to speak in Brule, but in my experience moon priestesses were harder than most to shut up.

Minnow turned as pale as her dress. “Wow. You’re not lying to me just to help my dad, are you? Because he’s afraid if I join-”

I put my hand on her shoulder. “Minnow, I’m telling you things I’ve seen with my own eyes. Your dad probably doesn’t know about them, and if he did, he’d keep it to himself just to spare you. He loves you.”

I could see her mind working behind her big dark eyes. “Wow,” she said again. “Thanks, Mr. LaCrosse.” She turned and went back inside much more slowly, lost in thought.

I sighed. One more dream destroyed. Way to go.

THE barber, his hands still smelling of blood from a tooth extraction performed that morning, cut my hair shorter than it had been since I’d graduated to long pants. He was careful around the scab on the back of my head, but it still made my eyes water a couple of times. He also shaved my beard from my chin, leaving my mustache and side-whiskers. He trimmed them down to a fine, spidery line.

One reason I kept my hair long and my beard shaggy was so, in a pinch like this, I could quickly and drastically alter my appearance. I learned the trick a while back, during a particularly awful job on the island of Grand Bruan. When he held up the polished silver plate for me to check myself in, I saw someone I could barely identify; I doubted anyone who’d casually seen me around Neceda would recognize me elsewhere, especially with my new horse. I paid the barber extra, an unspoken agreement for his silence. It would hold, I knew, until someone offered him more.

I turned up Ditch Street on my way out of town and stopped in front of the old Lizard’s Kiss building.

It was two stories, slightly larger than Mrs. Talbot’s rooming house. The bottom floor was broader than the top, allowing room for a narrow walkway around the entire upper half. During festivals, the girls would hang over the rails to entice new customers. In the back was a walled-in garden, hidden from the street and the neighboring buildings. Upstairs were four rooms, while downstairs held four more, plus the large sitting room where guests could meet the ladies. The decor, on the outside at least, was drab and nondescript. I’d never personally seen the inside, and only knew as much as I did from piecing together stories told at Angelina’s.