second knife went right by his head, ineffectually I thought at first.
Then I saw the first jet of blood from the big vein in the side of his neck. He had no idea he’d even been hit at first, until he felt the hot fresh blood spray down onto his shoulder and arm. By the time he put his hand to the wound, a quarter of his blood had shot into the darkness in ever-weakening arcs.
He fell to his knees and dropped my sword. I did not approach him. Blood shot through the fingers pressed against his neck. He said nothing, but I never saw any hatred in his eyes. He was a pro to the end.
When he finally collapsed, I sat and waited until I saw no fresh blood shining in the firelight. It took a while. By then most of the fires had burned down to glowing ruins, and their pops and hisses filled the night.
Finally I stood, retrieved my sword and neatly beheaded Stan’s corpse. Always pay the insurance.
The only person I buried was Cathy, in a shallow grave with no marker. I found her charred-boiled, really- body still in the metal tub inside one of the ruined buildings. Her unburned head lay on the ground outside. I put the rest of the corpses on the most active fire, and kept it going until they’d been consumed. The smell was as appalling as it sounds.
At dawn, I returned to Epona’s cottage. No horses followed me through the forest. No weird birds sang overhead. The house was exactly as I’d left it, but the woman-whoever she’d been-was gone. Perhaps the poisoned wine had driven her into the forest to die. I didn’t know, and didn’t really care. I considered torching the place, but I’d seen enough destruction to do me for a while.
NowI sat in the silent ruins of the cottage, the odor of burning flesh once more in the air. The dark-haired woman who once faced me here, who had become my lover and burrowed so far into my head that even now my skin tingled at the memory of her touch, had claimed to be a goddess. Her blond, blue-eyed twin now claimed to be a victim. I didn’t believe either of them, but the only way to get at the truth seemed to be buying into those delusions. Someone once hated Epona Gray enough to commit a massacre. If Epona really was Rhiannon, could this someone also be behind the disappearance of her son?
Andrew Reese is broken to pieces.
“Eppie,” I said to the air, “I sure wish you were here right now. I could use the advice of a goddess.”
A tiny bird sat atop one pile of debris and, just as I registered its presence in the corner of my eye, flew off into the woods. It seemed to leave the same sparkling trail as the birds I’d glimpsed in Rhiannon’s cell, but I couldn’t swear to it. Its departure dislodged the deer antler it had perched on, which now slid with a soft clatter down the side of the pile. It stopped when it dislodged something else, a small wooden box that traveled the rest of the way to land at the bottom with a thump that dislodged the lid. An object fell out with a solid, heavy thud.
I stared at the box, weathered and decayed but still obviously the one Cathy had carried, and the tarnished, rusted horseshoe that fell from it. “You have got to be kidding,” I said aloud.
I picked up the box. Still folded in the bottom was a neat piece of vellum that had evidently been treated with something to protect it from the rain, winters and other elements that might cause it to decay over time. I unfolded it slowly and took it to the door so I could examine it in the light.
The language was familiar Boscobelian, although the handwriting was atrocious. The text was obvious and, for the moment, inconsequential. But the name at the bottom gave me what I most needed at that moment.
The signature read, ANDREW REESE.
Andrew Reese is broken to pieces.
And my pieces were now falling into place. Cathy told me she’d been hired in Boscobel, and this was written in its language. I now knew my next step.
I got sudden chills. The chances of finding such a blatant clue after all this time were almost enough to make me buy into divine intervention. Perhaps another goddess heard my prayer and answered it out of professional courtesy.
I jumped as something moved within the pile of bones and sent several clattering to the ground. A big rat poked its head into the light, squeaked at me and withdrew. The disturbance had revealed a human skull, split along the top by a jagged crack. It seemed to laugh silently at me.
I carefully placed the note in my pocket; I’d have plenty of time to think it over on my way to Cape Querna. It wasn’t a short voyage.
I glanced up in time to see another bird flit away from a windowsill. Once again I might have imagined it, but it seemed, for a moment, to leave a glittering trail through the air.
TWENTY-ONE
Andrew Reese?” Bernie Teller repeated thoughtfully. “Reese, Reese… no, don’t know the name.” Two weeks after I found the note in Epona’s ruined hut, I sat in Commander Bernard Teller’s Cape Querna office on a bright summer day. City noises filled the air outside, but since Bernie’s digs were on the sixth floor, we were literally above it all. He reclined with his feet on his desk, his long official sword propped against the end. He was as lean and alert as I remembered. “What sort of guy is he?” he asked.
“Never met him,” I said. “Right now he’s just a name related to a case I’m working on. Don’t know his age, his nationality, anything. But I know he was here thirteen years ago. And he might be… deformed.”
“Deformed,” Bernie repeated.
“Or handicapped from an injury.”
“Hm. And you said wealthy?”
“Wealthy enough that he paid a hired killer to spend eleven months in the Ogachic Mountains waiting for his victim to show up.”
Bernie idly pulled on his left earlobe, a gesture that meant he was thinking. After a moment he said, “Hang on. I want somebody else to hear this.”
While he was gone, I looked around his immaculate office, only slightly less austere than my own. In one corner stood a shelf with a few legal scrolls. A small painting of Boscobel’s Queen Dorothea hung next to it; on the wall behind me was a detailed canvas map of Cape Querna. Through the window I saw, over the intervening roofs, the mast tops of ships anchored in the harbor. This high, the breeze was brisk and clean, with only a hint of salty tang. The harbor city was Bernie’s domain now, and he seemed to have it well in hand. At the very least, he’d forced the panhandlers, beggars and other entrepreneurial refuse off the street, and that had made a huge quality- of-life difference.
I first served under Bernie for three months during the trapper skirmishes fifteen years earlier, between the time I left Arentia and the day I met Cathy Dumont. He had the career soldier’s typical disdain for mercenaries like me, but once we got past that we discovered similar views on women, money, politics and our jobs. The next time we fought together, a couple of years after Cathy’s death, we were both captains, and staged an elaborate ambush for which I let him take the credit. Since going solo I’d dropped into Cape Querna whenever I could, and he’d occasionally sent business my way, as he’d done with the missing Princess Lila. We had not spoken in three years, and the last time I saw him he’d still been a stubbly, rough-edged army major who did not play the political games that gained you higher rank. So either he’d changed, which seemed unlikely, or he’d been sponsored by someone who recognized his integrity as something sorely needed in the notoriously corrupt Civil Security Force. Either way, I was certain that beneath the clean-shaven, smoothed-out and well-groomed exterior the same relentless scruples still thrived.
When he returned, he preceded a uniformed officer with unruly white hair and the unmistakable build of a man used to physical confrontation. “Eddie LaCrosse, this is Leonard Saye.”
I shook hands with the newcomer. “Nice to meet you.”
“He’s been a street officer here for twenty years,” Bernie said, “and he knows everybody.”
“I know of everybody,” Saye corrected. He sized me up in a glance. “You’re from Arentia, aren’t you? You still have a hint of the accent.”
“Long time ago,” I said flippantly. “Sheer accident of birth.”
“So I guess you’ve been following their big scandal?”
I shook my head. “Don’t pay much attention to gossip.”
“Well, your King Philip sentenced Queen Rhiannon to life in prison for killing their son. Said she deserved to
