“What do you think happened?” Marantz said at last, carefully choosing his words.
“Frankie didn’t kill Jimmy. He had some knife cuts on him, but nothing like what Frankie would’ve done. And Frankie wouldn’t fall off a cliff, or jump. So somebody else was there.”
“What about Laura?” Tempcott said.
“She’s being kept somewhere else,” Marantz said just a hair too quickly.
“Anyway, the box was still in the cabin, empty,” Candora continued. “So it doesn’t look like they found them before they were killed.”
“Any idea who it was?” Marantz asked.
Candora snorted. “The only three men left alive who knew what we were looking for are sitting at this table, and we’d be idiots to double-cross each other so blatantly. So unless it was one of us, I figure it had to be those dirt-sucking idiots who live in the woods and think King Archibald is going to take away all their stuff. Jimmy had a run-in with one of them. It has nothing to do with what we’re interested in. I’ll go take care of them tomorrow.”
Tempcott was not mollified. “But what about the-”
“We send more men up there and keep looking,” Marantz snapped. “It’s just a setback, and it gets dealt with.”
“You buffoon!” Tempcott hissed in his most grating voice. “Both of you! You with your smug certainty, and you — ” He pointed a trembling finger at Candora. “Turning my beliefs into a game, making sacred symbols into trinkets — ”
“God damn, old man, will you lay off about the boots? It’s all about building loyalty. Every good organization needs some heraldry. We’re Team Solarian; the girls are the Lumina Auxiliary.”
“This is not some club!”
“Well, they look stylish, and I like ‘em. I wear your stupid scarf when I’m around your herd, don’t I?”
“I warn you, if someone else does know about this-”
“Here you go,” Callie said suddenly as she placed the tankard in front of Candora. If she noticed the tension, she had sense enough not to comment on it. “Can I get you other gentlemen anything?”
“No,” Tempcott said before the others could speak. “We’re done here. Please bring our check.”
“Now, now, Mr. Marantz’s gold is no good here.” I could practically hear the wink that accompanied this.
Marantz and Candora blatantly watched her twirl away. Marantz sighed wistfully. Then, all business, he said to Candora, “All right. Settle up with the people you think killed Frankie and Jimmy. I assume you’ll also take care of the search?”
“Yeah. I’ll take a couple of more men up there with me.”
“You’ll forgive me if I’m less than confident,” Tempcott said. Then he added, “What happened to your neck?”
“That? Oh.” Candora chuckled. “I’ve been trying to get close to a certain young lady. She insists on keeping me at arm’s length, and her nails are sharp. I showed her why that wasn’t a nice thing to do.” He took a long draught from his tankard. “She won’t be trouble to anyone anymore.”
I went cold again.
I probably sent a cloud of ceiling dust down on the patrons below, but I didn’t care. I scurried backward, dropped to the storeroom floor and grabbed my sword. Angelina looked up from retrieving some clean dishes from the washbasin. “What’s wrong?”
“No time,” I said, and pushed past her out the back door. I ran around the front of the building and down the main street. Over the thundering of my heart and the breath rushing up from my lungs, I heard a soft, vaguely amused voice in my head: Oh, Mr. LaCrosse, you think you can help me, don’t you? You think you can ride up and save me, like a knight in a children’s story.
Everyone from the riverboat had apparently decided to meet in the street at the same moment, and I shoved people aside with no regard for politeness. I turned up Ditch Street and leaped onto the porch of the former Lizard’s Kiss. As always, the building appeared dark and deserted, but now I knew better. I drew back and kicked the door hard; it moved, but didn’t open. I kicked it again, and this time it slammed back against the inside wall.
I rushed in and took a moment to orient myself. To my right, the old greeting room had been stripped of all its ornate finery and redecorated with only a long, crude dragon mural that went around all four walls. The image showed two dragons mating, their serpentine bodies twined together, flames shooting from their mouths. The rest of the room was bare except for pillows thrown on the floor for minimum comfort.
A half-dozen people occupied the room. A pair of women, still wrapped in their red cloaks, sat on pillows against the wall. The two drummers from the earlier ceremony froze in mid-pass of a giggleweed pipe. In that pose I abruptly recognized them: the minstrels from Angelina’s, including Callie’s deadbeat boyfriend, Tony. The other two men were Black River Hills folk. I guess Marantz could imagine no reason anyone would want to break in, so he’d left no guards. His mistake.
I grabbed the nearest backwoods guy, slammed him into the wall and punched him hard in the chest. Completely surprised, he collapsed with a ragged gasp as he tried to catch his breath. The others, frozen and speechless, stared at me.
“Doug Candora was here a little while ago,” I said, my own breathing heavy from running. “Where’s the girl he came to see?”
They continued to stare. I punched the other hill dweller in his dull-eyed face, and he fell backward onto the pillows. The minstrels dropped their pipe and scrambled back against the wall, huddling like the women.
I glared at the musicians. “Okay, now I’m going to start beating on you two until one of you answers me. That means one of you will take a beating for nothing.”
“Hey, man, we just work here,” Tony said. His voice was high and jittery.
I grabbed the front of his clothes and yanked him to his feet. He was the kind of handsome that hid all his personality flaws; I wanted to punch him on general principles. “Thanks for volunteering. I’ll start with you.”
“Up the stairs,” one of the women said in a small, sheepish voice. Her expression was young and weary, the face of someone with little hope and fewer choices. “Top floor. The last room on the left. He took her up; she hasn’t come down.”
The woman beside her, older and more scorpionish, glared her disapproval but said nothing. Both pulled their red cloaks tight around them and huddled together as if they could blend in with the pillows.
“I’m going to take the girl upstairs out of here,” I said to the sad-faced one. “Do you want to come, too?”
She looked down and shook her head. Scorpion woman smiled up at me, vicious and triumphant. I didn’t have time to argue. The first guy I’d punched got to his knees, still wheezing, but when he saw me he fell back down.
I took the steps two at a time. No one else seemed to be around, and the only light came from sconces on the landings. I found the indicated door and kicked it open. My hip would thank me for all this in the morning.
The room was pitch-black. All the windows were blocked, and the only light came from the feeble candle outside in the hall. I took it from its holder and stepped cautiously through the door.
There was little to hide someone: a narrow single bed, a chamber pot, a small closet with its door open. A man’s dusty trail clothes hung in it. In its previous incarnation, this room would’ve been tapestried, filled with flower petals floating in bowls and lit by scented candles. Now it was a utilitarian cloister.
The bed was disheveled, and I spotted unmistakable dark droplets along the sheets. When I moved the pillow, I found a smear of blood, still warm and just starting to dry. Candora must’ve come straight to Angelina’s from here.
My heart wanted to jump out through my throat and search the room for itself. I made it stay put and called out, “Nicky? It’s Eddie.” There was no response. I was about to leave when the obvious finally occurred to me and I looked under the bed.
If candlelight hadn’t gleamed off her eyes I might not have noticed her curled up in a tight ball. She was still wrapped in the dark red robe, and it made her almost invisible in the shadowy space. I reached out my hand toward her. “Nicky, come on out; it’s me.”
She said nothing, and for a heart-stopping moment I thought she was dead, but then her bare feet shifted as she tried to make herself even smaller.
“Nicky, it’s Eddie. I’m here to get you away.”
