ceiling over the whole dining room. It’s not really an attic, and if you slip off the rafters you’ll fall right through. But you can work your way down over his booth. I don’t know if you’ll be able to hear anything once you get there, but it’s the best I can do.”
I nodded, unbuckled my scabbard and placed my sword behind a shelf of plates. I put the wobbly bar stool as solidly as I could against the wall and started to climb onto it. Angelina put her hand on my arm.
“Okay, look,” she said, unable to meet my eyes. “There’s, ah… some other stuff up there, too. I need your word that you’ll never mention it.” She looked at me with a mixture of guilt and defiance.
I knew Angelina wasn’t completely legit, so this didn’t surprise me. “Sure,” I said without hesitation.
“Thanks. Have fun.” She went back through the kitchen to the main room. Rudy kept his attention resolutely on his cooking fire.
I climbed onto the stool. With a grunt I pulled myself up over the top of the wall. Ahead light from the main room’s lamps shone up through gaps and cracks in the woven ceiling panels, illuminating the narrow space I had to negotiate. And she wasn’t kidding: the beams were ragged and splintery, while the space above them barely let me raise up on my elbows. It smelled like dust and old grease.
I proceeded like an arthritic viper down one of the beams, brushing cobwebs aside as I inched forward. Three long, solid supports ran the length of the room, crossed by four smaller ones. A platform had been built over one of these squares, and it was stacked with small, identical wooden boxes. A well-fed rat sat atop one of them cleaning his front paws. A silverfish scurried over my fingers.
I couldn’t resist a peek inside; after all, I’d already given my word I wouldn’t talk about it. I lifted the closest box’s lid, and found nothing but old, dried beans. When I stuck my fingers beneath them, though, I felt the unmistakable shapes of coins. I pulled one out and held it in a shaft of light. It bore the image not of our own King Archibald, but of revered Queen Malena from Natabetia. Neither Muscodia nor any of the nations around us would honor these, so to be useful they’d have to be melted down and sold for their raw gold. The kitchen’s hearth fire got plenty hot enough to do that, I bet.
I put the coin back beneath the beans. I knew Angelina came from somewhere far away, and that she couldn’t operate the tavern on what she actually made from it. There were at least a dozen boxes in this stack, and since the gold in that one coin could stock the place for three months, she had no immediate money worries. And yet she constantly nagged people about their overdue bar tabs.
I resumed my progress. Through the ragged gaps, I looked down on tabletops and the heads of diners, and got a view down Callie’s cleavage that many men would’ve paid dearly for. I reached a point where two beams crossed, wriggled my way onto the other one and followed it to the edge. Here I struck a nest of small, harmless spiders and had to close my eyes and mouth to keep them out. My foot slipped from the beam and cracked the woven, clay-daubed ceiling, but my toe didn’t poke all the way through and no one below noticed the sudden shower of dust. I squirmed forward until at last I was above the booth where Marantz sat with Tempcott.
A crack let me see down onto the table, although my angle hid their faces. Marantz clutched a tankard beside a plate picked clean of food, while Tempcott’s dinner remained mostly untouched. I had to concentrate to pick their voices out of the general din. Luckily Tempcott’s was distinctive and harsh, and as usual he was upset.
“… waiting too long for this to have it yanked out from under me!” He pointed his fork at Marantz. “You will live up to your agreement.”
Marantz’s voice was even, steady, the voice of a man who tried to never sound worried. “Relax, will you? So he’s a little late. He had to go up into the hills, after all. We wait, have a little dinner, check out the local girls.”
“I have no interest in the girls,” Tempcott said with contempt. “And this tavern’s poor excuse for food makes me want to retch. I should never have agreed to this excursion. My faithful believe I’m still in the temple, not out in the world with these…” He gestured at the room and spat the last word. “ People. You’ve made me into a liar and a hypocrite, just like you.”
Marantz took a drink, belched and said, “You’re not a very pleasant man, did you know that? I don’t like getting up early, but I think I’ll leave at first light tomorrow just so I don’t have to spend any more time with you.”
“At least I have no blood on my hands,” Tempcott snapped back.
“Don’t even try to take the moral high road, Tempcott,” Marantz laughed. “You need me to bankroll this outfit, just like I need you to get what I want. In the end we’ll both get the things we need.”
“If your people don’t fail.”
Marantz’s voice grew tight, as if he spoke through clenched teeth. I could imagine just how tired he was of the belligerent old man. “They won’t fail. If that girl of yours knows where they are, my people will find out.”
“That may be complicated,” a new voice said.
I jumped so hard I almost fell off the beam and right through the ceiling. I knew that voice.
The man from the Tallega road, and that shack.
The one who killed Laura Lesperitt. And wore dragon boots.
SEVENTEEN
My rage boiled up like it used to before a battle, when I first caught sight of whoever I was being paid to kill that week. Back then I learned to summon it at will; now it sprang to life unbidden, with the force of something vicious released after too long in a cage. It took all my resolve to control it as the man responsible for everything stood ten feet below me now and all I could do was perch like a silverfish and listen. If I moved an inch to the right, I’d roll off the beam and crash through the ceiling right on top of him. He’d damn sure never see that coming, and believe me, the temptation was strong. But there was more at stake now than just getting my hands on Laura’s killer. I dug my fingers into the wood so hard it bent back my nails.
“Well, you made it,” Marantz observed with casual annoyance.
“Hey, had to stop at the house to change clothes when I heard the Big Mace was still in town,” dragon boots said. “What made you stick around?”
I risked leaning far enough to the left to peer through one of the ragged holes in the ceiling. There he was: surprisingly slender and wispy, with long brown hair and a dark beard. He looked about thirty years old. There was nothing in his appearance that advertised his vicious nature, but then again, the same thing had been said of me.
He did not wait for Marantz to answer. “Man, the old Lizard’s Kiss used to be so neat, with all the satin and velvet everywhere. Now it’s like a dungeon. C’mon, Father T., scoot over.” The old man grudgingly moved aside, and dragon boots slid into the booth next to him.
“So what do you mean, ‘complicated’?” Marantz said coolly.
“I’ve been on a horse all day; let me get a drink and I’ll tell you all about it,” dragon boots said cavalierly. Most people would not dare blow Marantz off like that; most people couldn’t slip up on me from behind the way he had, either. He whistled through his teeth, and a moment later Callie’s breasts appeared below me.
“Well, hey there, Mr. Candora,” she said in her professional voice. “What can I get for you?”
“Oh, call me ‘Doug,’ please,” he said.
“As in the hole I’d be getting myself into?” she flirted. “I know all about you. I bet you’ve got a girl in every tavern in Muscodia.”
“Lies, all lies,” he replied, and the smile was plain in his voice. Callie made everyone smile. “A tankard of blackberry, please.”
“On its way.” She turned, making her dress twirl.
How neat. Dragon boots was also Doug Candora, the very man I was supposed to keep away from Nicky. Well, if he was here, he couldn’t be bothering her, so at least I was doing that right. When Callie had gone, Candora said quietly, “Frankie and Jimmy are dead.”
“Dead,” Marantz repeated flatly.
“Did they find them?” Tempcott interrupted. “Is that how they died?”
“I don’t think so. I found Jimmy hanging in the cabin from Frankie’s manacles, and Frankie was at the bottom of a canyon.”
There was a pause. I was afraid they’d started whispering, but apparently this news was a big surprise.
