Alex Bledsoe - Burn Me Deadly

From the street it looked abandoned: the doors were closed, and all the windows boarded up. The comfortable chairs that once lined the street-level porch had been removed. Still, the dirt had been trampled recently by a lot of feet, and footprints led up the steps to the door.

I added mine to them. I put my ear to the wood and listened. I heard faint hammering sounds and indistinct voices.

Then I felt the porch shift under new weight. Without acknowledging it, I slid my hand toward my sword hilt. I was ready when the voice said, “It’s closed.”

I turned. One of the red-scarfed men, his clothes streaked with dirt, stood behind me. He had hands the size of skillets that looked like he could twist off a mule’s head. His eyes were small and dark. The top of his head came up to my shoulder.

“Sounds like they’re renovating,” I said genially. “When will it open back up? There used to be a curly-headed redhead here who could swallow-”

“It’s closed for good,” he said in his guttural backwoods accent. “There’s other whorehouses in town.”

“Yeah, but this is the Lizard’s Kiss. It’s a legend.”

“It’s a closed legend.”

I sighed with all the weariness of a disappointed traveler. “Aren’t they all? Okay, thanks.”

He stepped aside as I went back to my horse, but he kept watching me until I disappeared around the corner. Sharky had them pegged, all right. But why were they here? And what did they have to do with Marantz?

MY route to Walpaca took me past the hospital, and Minnow’s questions reminded me that Hank had mentioned Mother Bennings. I detoured up the path to the building, where several of the young apprentices gathered outside the main door. As I got closer I heard some of them sobbing. I dismounted, threw the reins around the post and approached. I realized all of them were sobbing. “What’s going on?” I asked.

A girl with straight black hair and splotchy cheeks turned to me. “Someone killed Mother Bennings!” she wailed.

My stomach clenched. It had been doing that a lot lately. “What happened?” I asked. But the girl resumed blubbering on her friend’s shoulder. None of the others looked like they were in any shape to answer questions, either, so I pushed past them into the building.

I followed the line of crying girls into one of the big consulting rooms. Here the adult staff, all women with gray hair and serious expressions, stood around a table on which a body lay under a sheet. A few had wet cheeks and red eyes, but none were hysterical. I was about to say something when Argoset appeared from a side room, his hand on a matronly healer’s shoulder.

He was in uniform again, every hair in place and all his buttons shiny. The woman sniffled and nodded along with whatever he was saying. He stopped dead when he saw me, and it took him a moment to place me; guess the new haircut and shave worked. “Mr. LaCrosse. I’m surprised to see you up and around after last night. And freshly shorn at that.”

“I’m spry for my age.”

“Indeed. Marion’s still recuperating; I’ll have to tease him about that.” He excused himself from the matron and pulled me aside. “What brings you here?”

“Follow-up visit with Mother Bennings.” It wasn’t technically a lie, and it sounded reasonable.

“I see. Well, as you’ve no doubt heard, Mother Bennings is no longer available.” He gestured at the body on the table.

I lifted the sheet. Argoset said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

I didn’t flinch. I’d seen more gory death than he’d had wet dreams, although this one was certainly disturbing. The gentle-spirited priestess had been slit from navel to chin in a single clean slice, cutting through ribs and muscle. A lot of her insides were now draped outside. I looked at her face only long enough to assure myself of her identity. “What happened?” I said.

“We’re not sure. Some of your town’s leading citizens stumbled over her body just after dawn this morning. Seems they’d been celebrating the demise of the livery stable and found her in an alley.”

My mouth went dry, but I kept my face neutral. Liz, Gary and I had passed a body in the alley ourselves last night; had it been kindly, strong-willed Mother Bennings? At least, judging from the wound, I wouldn’t be tormented by the thought that we could’ve helped her. “What did Gary say about it?”

“Like Marion, Magistrate Bunson is suffering the effects of the smoke, so I decided to conduct the preliminary investigation myself. We all work for the same king, after all. So far, I’d have to say it looks like somebody with medical knowledge did it.” He gestured around us. “No shortage of suspects for that. Except that it would also take considerable physical strength.”

He spoke too softly for the other women to hear us. I nodded, thinking of the way Hank Pinster had also been killed by someone stronger than normal. “Well. Guess I’ll need to get a new doctor.”

“Yes. Oh, and just to be thorough, since you did know the doctor

… where did you go after the fire?”

“To Angelina’s tavern, then home.”

“And your wife will corroborate that?”

“Yes. But if you call her my wife to her face, she might neuter you.”

“Do you mind if I see your sword?”

I drew it slowly and presented it to him, hilt in my right hand with the blade across my left palm. He looked at it closely, checking for traces of blood. There were none. “I see you don’t carry a dagger.”

I did, but it was hidden in my boot and he didn’t need to know that. “I try not to let anyone get that close.”

He nodded again. “I’m sorry. I like to eliminate as many dangling threads as possible. Makes it easier to see the pattern of the blanket.”

“Nice metaphor,” I said as I sheathed the weapon.

He shrugged modestly. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of distraught women to question.”

I nodded, turned and left. The morning had certainly started off on a grim, bloody note, and I hadn’t even found Gordon Marantz yet.

I read once that if you wait long enough, everything eventually comes to you. I’m not sure I believe it as a universal maxim, but it definitely applied on that day. At mid-afternoon, on my way to Walpaca to find him, I ran smack into Gordon Marantz on his way to Neceda.

I was glad it hadn’t happened earlier, because after leaving the hospital I was so furious I might have picked a fight I couldn’t possibly win. Counting Laura Lesperitt, Mother Bennings was the third person killed since I’d been ambushed, and although I had no hard evidence the deaths were related, I knew they were. Bennings told Hank that she wanted to see me, and now both of them were dead. What had she wanted to tell me that could’ve been so important that it was worth two lives? Why not just kill me instead? On top of that was the agonizing knowledge that, for whatever reason, Liz had lied to me. Was I so blinded by love and lust that I just never noticed she had a treacherous, nefarious side?

And why had shack-trash dragon worshippers moved into an old whorehouse?

And who the hell was “Lumina”?

Pondering these questions helped calm me down and get focused back on the job. Which was good, considering how quickly I found what I sought. I barely had time to get off the road and out of sight.

Marantz wasn’t alone; guys like him never are. Half a dozen tough-looking men rode around him as bodyguards and lookouts. Behind them walked another batch of the red-scarved folk, although these were far more cosmopolitan than the ones back in town. They seemed to come from all over, lacking the hill people’s disconcerting physical similarity.

In the midst of them rode an old man, the only red-scarf not on foot. He was clean shaven, with a leathery complexion set in a permanent scowl of disapproval. His scarf was longer, trailing past his skeletal shoulders almost to his waist. Whoever he was, he looked both important and unpleasant.