Alex Bledsoe - Burn Me Deadly

Unfortunately, he was no man of action, and when the son of one of these wealthy old men caught him in the act with his mother, James found himself on the other end of the blackmail pike. He needed me to chase junior away, which turned out to be easy enough to do. I made a nice pile on the job, and also realized how ideal Neceda was to my business: small, isolated, yet a center of trade and commerce. People could find it easily, but few people noticed anyone else in it. I always meant to thank Nightingale for bringing me here, but I never saw him after that job. The last I heard he’d settled in Mauston, teaching music to actual eunuchs. There’s irony for you.

The forest loomed ahead like a great wall of dense green, its supporting latticework of black wooden trunks and limbs occasionally visible through the leaves. A round gap marked the spot the road entered it, and beyond that it really did look like a tunnel, with shafts of sunlight poking through the leaves at irregular intervals.

I had no delusions that I’d find any physical clues left from the attack, like distinctive horseshoe tracks or boot marks. But if I could identify the spot the girl first ran out in front of me, I might be able to locate the farm where she’d stolen her jacket. From there, if I was lucky, I hoped to backtrack to the house she’d escaped from, and where the three men took us and tortured her to death. And if I was very lucky, those men would still be there, and it would be time for answers and a little payback.

But I wasn’t after revenge. I knew its ultimate futility: I’d seen the results of revenge on a scale most people could barely imagine, and I had no desire to walk that path. I wanted justice. I needed to know that the men who had casually tortured Laura Lesperitt would never be able to hurt anyone again. I understood these human monsters-I’d been perilously close to it myself as a younger man-and knew that they’d only stop hurting people when they also stopped breathing. So I intended to cut off their air. And if I also cut off a few limbs as well, I could live with that.

I moved to the edge of the road and traveled much slower than everyone else as I looked for clues. The air beneath the forest canopy was noticeably cooler. I saw many small trails that emerged from the woods and joined the road. None of them looked well or recently traveled, though. They were game tracks, or simply the onetime passage of someone looking for firewood, meat or toilet privacy.

A youngster of about ten cut loose from the traffic and fell in beside me. A tied bundle of fresh herbs and leaves bounced on the rump of his… her?… saggy, tired horse. “You look like you lost something, mister. Need a hand?”

I really couldn’t tell if this was a boy or girl. I nodded at the plants and asked, “You pick those or buy them in town?”

“Oh, I picked them. That’s my job. Mama does the selling.”

“Then I reckon you know these woods pretty well, don’t you?”

“I know them on that side of the road like I do my own fingernails. Daddy won’t let me cross the road into the Black River Hills, though. Says all the herbs and plants we need grow just fine on this side. Too many weird things happen over there.”

Naturally, the side she/he couldn’t visit was the side Laura had emerged from. “Weird how?”

She/he shook his/her head. Little wooden bug-shooing beads braided into his/her hair slapped her/his shoulders. “He won’t say. Just that lots of people go in there and don’t come out. And there’s people who live in there who’re…” His/her shoulders shivered. “Weird.”

I nodded. “That’s the word of the day. Tell me, did you ever see anybody with dragons on their boots poking around out here?”

“Dragons?”

“Yeah. Silver design on the back of the heel, maybe.”

Again the beads slapped his/her shoulders. “Sorry. Guess I’m not much help after all. Want to buy some foxglove? Can’t get any fresher unless you pick it yourself.”

“No thanks, er… you.”

She/he grinned mischievously. “You can’t tell if I’m a boy or a girl, can you?”

“No,” I said.

He/she laughed, nudged the horse and rejoined the traffic on the road. I shook my head and turned my attention back to the side of the road where the weird things were.

Suddenly I yanked the reins tight. The horse snorted and tossed her head in protest. I knew this was the spot. I saw no tangible trace, but the sun shone through the trees at the same angle as the moonlight that night and made identical shadow patterns. And there, behind the trunk of a huge oak tree that hid it from the road, was a trail wide enough for a rider. A mostly naked girl on foot could’ve used it easily.

It didn’t mean it was the same trail, but it was a start. The way she’d been scratched up, she could’ve just bolted through the untracked forest. But it was all I had.

I took the path down the incline. It followed a natural route through the trees, but maintained essentially a southern direction. According to my knowledge of the Muscodian countryside, this would lead me into the Black River Hills, so called because of the narrow, unusually deep waterway that bisected them before joining up with the Gusay. In addition to spooky stories and tales of weirdness, these hills were perforated with caves, old mines and sundry other hiding places where someone could torture a girl in peace. But we’d been taken someplace with a wooden floor, so I sought an actual dwelling, not a hole in the rock.

I reached a fork in the trail. I paused and studied it. I had nothing at all on which to base a decision, so I pulled a coin from my pocket, flipped it and chose the path to the left. As I nudged the horse forward I glanced up and saw, to the right, a thin trail of smoke rising into the sky. Where there was a chimney there was a house. I considered tossing the duplicitous coin off into the undergrowth, but money, even deceitful money, was too scarce right now. I pocketed it and turned down the right-hand path.

I emerged at the top of a steep but not very tall rise that looked over a tiny clearing. Below stood a small, ramshackle house. Goats milled about in a pen, and a huge pile of firewood lay stacked beside a two-wheeled cart. A scrawny garden provided meager produce. A pair of small children ran around yelling in the front yard, and their high-pitched shrieks made my horse snort in annoyance.

I looked again at the big pile of wood, and the cart beside it. Laura had called the people who provided her stolen jacket “farmers.” But it had been dark, she was in a hurry and it would be hard to farm in the middle of the forest. Might they have been woodcutters?

I headed down the slope. The two children, both under age five, froze when they saw me. Their clothes were a handmade mix of milled cloth and animal skin, and their hair was cut short. As with the herb collector, I couldn’t say for sure whether they were boys, girls or one of each. Kids these days.

“Hi,” I said. “Is your mom or dad around?”

“You don’t know my daddy,” the smaller one said.

“You’re right,” I agreed. “But I’d still like to talk to him.”

“Are you from the government?” the other asked, in a higher voice that implied femininity. She had a hard time with the last word, and pronounced each syllable distinctly, as if well practiced.

“Me? Nah.” I dismounted and crouched so we could talk at her eye level. “I live over in Neceda.”

“Daddy says King Ar-chee-bald will try to take everything away from us,” the little girl said.

I looked around at the shack they called home, the goats they used for dinner and milk and the wood they sold to get everything else. “I really wouldn’t worry about it,” I said.

“Well, I would,” a woman’s voice replied. It was deep and firm. “Now step away from my children.”