“A what?”
“Never mind.” I stepped around him, shoved my desk back in its place, and wrestled my ruined door open.
“Try not to bleed on my floor, will you? The maid gets squeamish.”
I yanked the door shut before he could reply.
The street was still quiet. No trace of hex-stink lingered. But I knew where the stinker was headed, and I intended to meet him there.
Chapter Thirteen
There’s no way to get a cab in Rannit after Curfew. But a man in a hurry with a pocketful of coin can get a horse and saddle, if he manages to rouse Mr. Flemmons out of his bed without beating down his door in the process.
I managed it. Which meant I not only had the advantage granted by an intimate knowledge of Rannit’s highways and byways but the added speed of four talented hooves. The saddle rubbed my ass raw, and I drew the stares of a couple of halfdead out on the prowl, but I made it to the Docks unpunctured and well in advance of any short, fat hayseeds fleeing Cambrit on foot.
I helped myself to a barn near the Bargewright and made sure my mighty steed Rosie had water and hay. Then I made my way down the pitch-dark street toward the flickering candlelit windows of the Bargewright.
Places like the Bargewright cater to lumberjacks and cattle ranchers and everyone else who has reason to float cargo down the Brown but lacks the funds to end their journey downtown in the clean inns. No, the Bargewright had a leaky roof and thin walls and, if they supplied anything with generosity, it was the cheap booze and the day-old stew.
I walked around the place to find all the doors. Turned out there was only one that wasn’t chained and locked, and it was the front door, so I grinned and ambled inside.
The common room was dim and smoky. A fire that wanted tending was smoldering in a crumbling fireplace. Flies buzzed about, feasting on pools of spilled beer and the remains of abandoned meals.
There were three men and two women scattered about the room when I opened the door. By the time I’d taken two steps inside, they were gone.
“Wise choice.” I took a moment and dabbed the doorframe with Mama’s hex goo. I loosened my coat. I poked up the fire before I choked on the smoke.
Then I turned a chair so that it faced the door and I waited to surprise my out-of-town friend.
I figured a fat man, on foot, would need a good forty-five minutes to make it from Cambrit to the docks, even at a steady run.
An hour and half passed, banged out by the Big Bell’s smaller sibling, before I heard boots and heavy breathing outside.
A man dove inside and slammed the door behind him.
His beady little eyes were wild. His bald, round head was bathed in sweat and streaked with dirt. He was gasping for air and trying to mouth words but couldn’t get them out at first. He stank of hex-brew and to a lesser extent of pig manure.
He saw me. But whatever he’d seen outside was occupying all his mind.
“Vampires,” he managed to gasp. “Outside. Chasing.”
“Well, you can relax. They won’t beat down the door. Curfew says you’re fair game if they catch you outdoors, but once you cross a threshold the chase is done.”
He gobbled air and regarded me with eyes going wary.
I pushed my hat back.
“Of course, there’s no telling who might be waiting for you inside, is there?”
He knew, then. I’m sure he’d seen me before, even followed me. While he stood there panting and sweating, it dawned on him who I was, and I watched his little brain piece together the events he knew must have led me here, and what that meant for his next few moments.
I had him. I had him, and he knew it. He had nowhere to run. Halfdead behind and finders before. I braced myself for the begging and the denials.
The last thing I expected that fat turnip-herder to do was open the door and charge back into the dark.
But that’s just what he did.
I leaped to my feet and charged after him.
I didn’t even hear him scream. I saw a blur of movement, black shadows whipping within blacker shadows, and as I drew Toadsticker the fat man’s body slumped to the street and a pair of halfdead were suddenly standing before me.
Their mouths were red and wet. Their dead pale eyes were fixed upon me.
“I’m with Avalante,” I said. I tapped my silver House pin. “Evis Prestley is a friend of mine.”
“The finder,” said one.
“How amusing,” said the other. A trickle of blood ran down his chin. “Was that a friend of yours?”
“Hardly. He tried to kill me earlier. I was hoping to ask him why.”
“Apologies.”
“Regrets.”
I didn’t like the way they kept smiling.
“Evis is, in fact, a very good friend of mine.”
They laughed high, hissing laughs before turning and gliding away.
I went to the fat man’s side, felt for a pulse at his neck.
I felt no beating of a heart. When I pulled my hand away, it was wet.
I cussed a bit and turned him over and searched him for pockets and papers. I found a key, a last meal in the form of a half-eaten biscuit he had probably consumed in that alley across from my place, a couple of copper coins, and a short length of wood carved with what felt like mystical symbols.
I cleaned my hand on his shirt and left him for the dead wagons. He no longer stank of Mama’s hex-brew. I guess that departed with his heartbeat.
An ogre passed, pulling an empty cart. He sent the dead man flying up onto the sidewalk with a single casual kick.
Hell of a way to end a life.
The dead man’s room was much like his corpse-it reeked of body odor, and the only thing that could cleanse it now was a hot fire.
I used Toadsticker’s point to move clothing and suspect bits of trash around. He hadn’t come to Rannit with anything except a burlap bag and an extra pair of boots, but he’d somehow managed to collect quite a few articles of used clothing, most of them filthy and probably housing legions of lice and fleas. What he intended to do with a load of filthy clothes is not something I’ll ponder.
I didn’t see the tiny chest of drawers at first. It was stuck in a corner and covered with rags. But Toadsticker’s point found it, and I scraped the debris away and there it was-three legs and leaning, but sporting three closed drawers.
The bottom two were empty. The top one held a sweat-stained paper envelope. Inside were two folded sheets of Army-issue yellow paper, and scrawled on one was my name, my address and a largely inaccurate map of Rannit and the Docks. Gertriss was mentioned as well, though listed as living at my place.
Scrawled below her name was the notation
The next page was a map. It was drawn in a different ink and with a different hand. It started at a point north of Mama’s hereditary village of Pot Lockney and then wandered through the Northwoods to a point just south of Prince. Then it led straight to Rannit via the Brown.
No names, no brief but informative narration of dastardly plots, no hastily scrawled confessions by the hex-
