Alex Bledsoe: Burn Me Deadly

We walked in with Liz’s arm around my waist, surreptitiously supporting me. Angelina came out from behind the counter and, without a word, put her arms around both our necks. It hurt when she squeezed, but I said nothing. My hand covered Liz’s on Angelina’s back. If I had a family anymore, these two women were it: lover/partner and sister/confessor.

Angelina pulled away and scowled at me. “Hit him in the head, huh?”

“No doubt there’s a mace with a serious dent in it somewhere,” Liz said.

Angelina shook her head. She was middle-aged but still handsome, with a form that in its day must’ve inspired plenty of young men to acts of passion or violence. She was well educated, road smart and honest, and could’ve done much better for herself than owning a tavern in Neceda. But I never asked any questions, and she never offered any hints about who or what she was hiding from.

Angelina returned to her spot behind the bar and said, “Callie will be sorry she missed you.”

Callie was Angelina’s favorite barmaid, a sweet teenage girl with the figure of a goddess and the smarts of a horseshoe. “Where is she?” Liz asked.

“She fell in love. Ran off with some traveling conjurer. I figure she’ll be back any day now…”-she patted her stomach-“… hopefully without a surprise in the works.”

“Teenage girls never know what’s good for them,” I agreed as I lowered myself onto a stool at the bar. Liz took the one beside me. The big square room had booths along the walls, four wobbly tables and a clear space for musicians and dancing. The wall behind the bar hid the kitchen, although the heat and odor of whatever was cooking always filled the place. There were no windows, so except for the table lamps it stayed perpetually dark, which suited the clientele.

“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.”