Alex Bledsoe: Burn Me Deadly

She stepped aside, and a wide-shouldered man with heavy eyebrows moved closer. He looked me over, then nodded at the bandages wound tight to my skull. “I’ve seen better heads on cabbage.”

“Every time you look in the mirror,” I said.

Gary Bunson managed a smile. It was not an expression his features accepted willingly. He was the local head magistrate, a king’s agent content to let Neceda’s vices run rampant as long as no one got hurt and he got his cut. He was younger than me, but his ravaged complexion and gray-streaked hair made him look several years older, and his uniform always seemed too large, as if he were gradually wasting away inside it. He could be as vicious as a snapping turtle, but preferred the tortoise approach: slow, steady and willing to withdraw into his shell if things got sticky. He said, “I would’ve hoped that a good blow to the head would’ve made you funnier.”

“We can try a blow to your head next time.” I slid up into something like a seated position. “So what happened to me?”

“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.”