“Calprit Homes”.
“Stolen?”
The young man rolled his eyes. “Everyone knew it, Serris. He just took old ballads and made your name fit.”
Serris shrieked, flung a full beer into his face and fled the room. I made to signal Gertriss to follow, but she was already halfway out of her chair.
Laughter rose, quickly silenced with a sweeping, icy stare from Lady Werewilk.
“Continue, Mr. Markhat.”
I nodded. Calprit Homes mopped beer and blushed and glared at Nordred Vasom. I wanted to tell them they’d both better give Serris a wide berth for a long time or they’d get worse than beer in the face, if her expression as she fled was any indication of her fury. But some lessons have to be learned the hard way.
I put my fingertips together and assumed my All-Knowing Finder expression.
“Weexil’s departure makes me wonder,” I said. “It makes me wonder what else he did here, beside fetching you brushes and paints and canvases.”
“He did Serris,” muttered a painter, from behind his napkin. Nervous titters sounded, but quickly died.
“Which was apparently common knowledge,” I said. “So let’s talk about other happenings that were also common knowledge.” I leaned forward. “Let’s talk about the woman in the woods.”
Someone dropped a fork. Someone else coughed and choked. And not a single man-jack nor lady lovely in the entire blazing room would so much as meet my eyes.
Except, of course, Lady Werewilk.
“Those are mere legends,” she said, after a moment. Her tone made it clear my subject for dinner conversation failed to please her. “They were born before Rannit was walled. Perpetuated by a hundred generations of fearful peasants all eager to embrace any excuse to get them home and inebriated before dark.”
Marlo made a wordless gruffing sound. Lady Werewilk did not turn to fix him in her glare, and I gathered that was because she knew it was a contest she’d probably lose.
“Them what lives in the Wardmoor been seein’ that there woman for twenty-five, thirty years,” he said. “Them what lives here say she comes around when Death is a fixin’ to visit.”
“She ever been known to give Death a helping hand?” I put the question to Marlo, while keeping my eyes on Lady Werewilk. She still wasn’t happy, but she kept her lips tight together.
“Not that I know of. Reckon she just knows when to be, and where.”
I nodded, not committing to anything, hoping Marlo would go on.
Instead, he shrugged and filled his mouth with an enormous chunk of Lady Werewilk’s finest roast beef.
I watched Skin for a moment. The man was just pushing perfectly good food around on his plate. He hadn’t taken a bite since sitting. He was gaunt, tall and thin as a stick, and I suppose now I knew why.
“All right,” I said, beginning to wonder where Gertriss was. “Let’s talk about the surveyor’s markers.”
More sidelong glances and sweat mopping. Half of them would have darted, had not Lady Werewilk been perched at the head of the monstrous old table.
“Starting with Skin, I want to know who found them, and where.”
I pulled out my notepad and a brand new pencil as I spoke.
Marlo managed to choke down a good portion of a cow’s hindquarters and answered for Skin. Others piped up grudgingly, and after a lot of back and forth and arguing over days and times I finally established something like a timeline, and a map.
If Lady Werewilk noticed the discrepancy between the dates she’d been given and the dates I was getting now she showed no signs of it. I did catch Marlo giving a few hard glares, and I decided he was a close second to being in charge. Interesting, I thought. It’s usually the butler who runs the show, but Singh showed no interest at all in anything but Milton Werewilk.
I chewed a mouthful of sweet potatoes and studied the map I’d made.
My hand-drawn map of the Werewilk grounds was hardly to scale, but the marks I’d drawn didn’t suggest even a hint of a pattern. If someone was trying to define a property line, they needed fancy eyeglasses. It appeared the stakes were being placed with all the methodical precision of a child’s game of Kick the Wagon.
I swallowed.
“Now I’m going to ask a question none of you probably want to answer. If you’d rather catch me alone later, that’s fine. I won’t name names, and you have my word on that.”
Lady Werewilk lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t say a word.
“It’s possible some of you may have been approached by whomever is putting out these stakes. Maybe they wanted information. Maybe they wanted a blind eye turned here or there. Maybe they even offered payment. Maybe you even took it. But I’m telling you now that if someone grabs this House you’ll all likely be turned out. So unless they paid you enough to set you up for life, you’d be better off coming to me. Like I said, I won’t name any names.”
Lady Werewilk stabbed a fork into something so hard people started. I grinned.
“Anyone have anything to say?”
Silence all around.
I shrugged. I hadn’t been expected anything. At least not right under the Lady’s nose.
“Fine. I thank you for your time and your cooperation. My partner and I are going to poke around for a time. If anyone wants to talk, I won’t be hard to find.”
Nods, and a few mutterings. Marlo and the staff, sensing business was done, set about mopping sweat with fancy napkins and eating everything in sight. The artists rose and departed in groups of twos and threes, taking most of the beer with them and stuffing their pockets with rolls and slabs of corn bread.
Talk was sparse. I ate my fill, and then some, while I watched people watch me. The heat kept anyone from lingering too long. Last to go were Singh and Milton, who was led out by hand. He placed his feet oddly, haltingly, moving like a very young child or a very old man. After they were gone, I sat sweating across an empty table from Lady Werewilk.
The blast from the fire still hadn’t raised a sweat on the woman.
“I never particularly liked Weexil,” she said, toying with her food. “Had he not always returned from his buying trips with money left over, I’d have let him go months ago.”
“Money left over? Large sums?”
She shrugged. “Large enough to make keeping him viable, despite his disruptive influence,” she replied. “Is that significant?”
It was my turn to shrug. “Might be. Might not. Did he keep receipts? Do you know where he shopped?”
“Marlo would know. I’ll have him come round and speak to you about it.”
Marlo, again.
“I thought Marlo ran the stables. He handles the money too?”
She smiled. “Marlo does what I tell him, though he’d deny that with his last breath. Singh used to handle the money, but Milton needs him all the time now. And gruff as Marlo is, he has a good head for figures, and he’s honest.”
I nodded. Sweat dripped off my nose. “How do you stand it?” I asked. “You must be half-baked by now.”
Lady Werewilk laughed. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret, Mr. Markhat. The spot on which this chair sits is hexed. I feel nothing from the flames.” She pushed her chair back, rose, took a single step to her right.
I watched the heat wash over her. She immediately began to sweat.
“House lore claims my great-great grandfather, five times removed, had this charm set beneath the foundation. His reasons for doing so are lost. But my father, and his father, and his father before him all knew of it, and all used it for the same purpose I did tonight.”
“To show the help who’s boss?”
She fanned herself and moved quickly away from the fire, coming toward me in the process.
“The Lord of Werewilk’s legendary ability to sit close to that inferno and not sweat hasn’t been seen here in years,” she said. “I thought tonight it might inspire some honesty.”
I grinned. She moved to stand at my side. The heat raised her perfume, and brought a hint of color to her cheeks, and I might have been inspired to say something far too honest had not Gertriss charged in. She had some color in her cheeks too, but the set of her jaw and the way her hands were clenched into fists made her agitation all
