Barbara Hambly - Dead water

January fell silent. Like the songs about wading in the bayou, a red bandanna had long been a signal of danger between them.

Only when Thucydides had left did she whisper, “About half an ounce, as far as I could tell . . .” She nodded to the flask of opium and sherry on the floor beside the bed, the only bottle in the room. “The door was locked—I had to get Thu to force it. He isn't drunk, Ben. And he doesn't have a fever, he's like ice. I think he was poisoned.”

NINETEEN

January dabbed some of the liquor from the flask onto his finger and tasted it, but the bitterness of the opium and the heavy sweet of Malaga sherry drowned any hint of whatever had been added to the brew. Still, he had no doubt that the poison, whatever it was, had been put into the flask. Taking a drink from it would have been the first thing Hannibal did upon entering the room.

And the second thing would have been to lock the door against Theodora Skippen, who was apparently determined—not to say desperate—to find a new protector for herself. No wonder Rose had had to get Thucydides to open it.

Since Hannibal seemed to have vomited everything in him, there seemed little point in a further purge. “See if you can get some water and a little salt beef from the galley,” January said, and dug in his medical kit for a paper twist of dried foxglove. Hannibal's hands and face were icy, but sweat stood out on his forehead and cheeks. When January lifted back his eyelids, he found the pupils dilated rather than constricted, as opium would have left them. His breathing was sunken to a thread—January watched closely the rise and fall of his chest, but though he seemed deep in a stupor he was having no obvious trouble or spasms.

“Why on earth would anyone have wanted to poison Hannibal?” demanded Rose, returning with a pitcher.

January mixed the tiniest pinch of foxglove with the water, and gently raised his friend and spooned some of it into his mouth. Hannibal swallowed, but didn't open his eyes.

“For exactly the reason we thought he—or she—had provoked the duel,” replied January grimly. “To get us off the boat. To get me off the boat . . . since, if I'm supposed to be Hannibal's slave, I must remain in Mayersville with him even if I didn't do so out of sheer humanity. If he died—”

Rose's eyes widened and filled with tears, and January shook his head reassuringly.

“His heartbeat seems to be steadying. And his breathing isn't weakening, so I suspect our poisoner miscalculated the dose. But if he had died, I'd be held by the local authorities pending arrival of next of kin. . . .”

“Or Gleet would produce a bill of sale and a story about how Hannibal signed you over to him to pay a gambling debt.” Rose's voice had an edge like chipped flint.

January raised his eyebrows in agreement, but said nothing for a time. For a long while the only sounds in the room were the droning of the flies—which infested this side of the boat—and the dull throb of the engine and the splashing of the paddle as the Silver Moon picked up speed, and the slow, sobbing whisper of Hannibal's breath.

“Yet it was Molloy they killed.” Rose picked up the rifle-bullet January had laid on the dresser and turned it over in her fingers. “They could have shot Hannibal at the same time. It is ‘they,' isn't it? Not ‘he or she'?”

“I think so. And the more I look at it, the less I'm inclined to believe that Molloy's death has anything to do with Weems's theft of money from the Bank of Louisiana.”

“You mean if Weems was blackmailing Cain—and had a letter or whatever it was in his stateroom that Molloy later took—he could have had something that implicated someone else on board? Mr. Lundy, for instance? Except we know where Lundy was when Molloy was shot as well.” Rose edged around January and began to pull off Hannibal's boots.

“I'll get that,” January offered, making to put down the medicine, but Rose shook her head,

“I'm no good with nursing, and I've had plenty of practice at yanking off Hannibal's boots.”

January grimaced agreement and ran an affectionate hand along his unconscious friend's arm. “I'm afraid most of his friends have,” he said. Rose looked exhausted, and no wonder, thought January. The night of stress and fear for her friend had been followed by the terrible shock of finding him still in peril . . . and there was still the decision looming of what they'd do when they reached Mayersville and the sheriff took January and Hannibal into custody.

A decision, thought January, glancing at the brightening daylight through the louver-slits of the door, that he—and she—would have to make probably within the hour.

“You don't think it was Queen Régine who poisoned him, do you?” she asked. “You said there were poisons in the bundle we found. If he'd seen her accidentally, for instance . . .”

“If Queen Régine wanted to poison anyone,” said January, “it would be me. . . . And I've been very careful not to eat or drink anything that's stood unwatched in this stateroom. And Queen Régine knows perfectly well that I know—and therefore, that you and Hannibal know—that she's on this boat, and nobody's been able to see her yet, except one glimpse of a skirt. If that was her. If she'd wanted to poison Hannibal, for whatever reason, he'd be dead now.”

“I suppose so.” Rose sank down onto the bed, rubbing her forehead. “But even if someone got off the boat under cover of darkness, to hide in the trees—which could have been done fairly easily—I still don't see how they could have gotten back on after the duel, when it was daylight. We watched everyone go over and come back: Gleet came back, Cain and his slaves went over, and Cain was with the slaves the whole time. They came back with Molloy's body, then later a deck-hand rowed over and got you.”

“Yes.” January came around behind her and laid his big hands on her shoulders—the muscles of her neck felt like wood under his fingers. “Cain and his slaves. There are unanswered questions concerning Cain and his slaves on the night of Weems's death, too, aren't there?”

Rose opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. Then she said, “Cain . . . is using his slaves as agents? That's terribly risky, isn't it? He's a slave-dealer. . . .”

“He says he's a slave-dealer,” said January softly. “But we've been on this boat for over a week and I have yet to see him even try to sell a single slave.”

Outside, the pilot-house bell clanged as the Silver Moon approached the landing of Brock's Wood-Yard. Souter's voice trumpeted orders to the deck-hands to cast lines and bring her in. A shadow darkened the doorway of the stateroom, and Quince said, “Much as I abhor intemperance of any variety, might I offer your master a sovereign remedy for the inevitable fruits of such behavior? In this particular instance I am inclined to hold him guiltless—it is clear to me that the quarrel was forced upon him by that . . . that abominable hussy, and Mr. Molloy got no more than he asked for.”

“That's very kind of you,” said January as Rose moved aside to let the young man into the already crowded stateroom. “As it happens, I suspect my master is ill rather than drunk. There was no liquor in the stateroom, and, as you can see, no smell of it.” He took the bottle proffered and sniffed the cork. “What's in it?”

“A distilled vegetable elixir known to the ancient sages of Persia and India,” replied Quince helpfully.

“Known to the Old Man of the Mountains, anyway,” remarked Rose, taking a sniff of the cork, but she spoke in Latin and January—who had also detected the unmistakable pong, not of the Old Man of the Mountains' legendary hashish but of more modern laudanum—carefully schooled his face not to laugh.