Vinnie reflexively opened his fingers, but the spikes held the sword in place. Without his grip to control it, though, the weight of the blade made it fall over suddenly, and I heard the crack of a wrist bone. Lockett had been right; the Shadow Slasher III was top-heavy, for just that reason. Vinnie howled again.
I saw none of this, though, because I wasn’t dumb enough to take my eyes off Marantz. He was completely unruffled. “Now what?” he asked calmly as he looked up at me.
“How about you tell me what you’re after here,” I said.
He laughed. “You gotta work a lot harder to scare things out of me, bucko.”
I put more weight on his sternum and he grunted. “Not that much harder,” I said, fighting to stay calm. Rage would do me no good.
“Oh, God,” Vinnie sobbed behind us. “My arm…”
“It’s a business investment,” Marantz said, his voice tight. “Tempcott controls Prince Frederick, and I control Tempcott.”
“And what’re your people looking for in the Black River Hills?”
He laughed again. “You do get around. My people are looking for a long shot. If they find it, then I’ll have something any king in the world would give his trea sury and firstborn daughter to obtain. If not… no harm done.”
“Boss…,” Vinnie pleaded.
“I’m occupied!” Marantz snarled.
“No harm except for Laura Lesperitt,” I said. “What is it?” I knew, but I wanted to hear him say it, to have his words give it a tangible reality.
Instead he smiled. “The fire dreams are made of.”
“Are you suddenly a poet?” Now I grinned. “You think there’s no harm telling me about your setup because I’ll be dead before I can pass it on, don’t you?”
“Pretty sure,” he agreed.
I pulled my knife away, slipped it back in my boot and stood. Marantz stared at me, puzzled, but didn’t move. I went to Vinnie, took his limp hand and pressed the catch on my sword. The spikes retracted, and he moaned in both relief and fresh pain. He fell flat on his face as I put the sword back in its sheath.
Marantz slowly sat up. “What are you doing?”
“Walking away,” I said. “I have no real quarrel with you. You can send your boys after me if you want, and eventually I’m sure they’ll get me. But I’ll take a few of them down first, and word would get around that you’re wasting time and manpower trying to get revenge on someone who had a knife to your throat and didn’t slice it.”
Amused and bewildered, he said, “You’re counting on my sense of honor?”
“No, your vanity. You have a lot of pies on your fingers because you don’t make silly decisions. No one knows about this little run-in except you, me and Vinnie. I won’t tell anyone, and I don’t have any illusions about how you’ll deal with Vinnie. So unless you start talking, no one will ever know.”
He stood and brushed dirt from his clothes. “Who are you, soldier?”
I shook my head. “The less you know, the safer I am.”
He laughed again. He laughed a lot, for a guy with so much blood on his hands. “I can find out any time I want, you know. And every shadow you pass might have a knife with your name on it.”
I shrugged. “I could say the same thing to you. Except I already know who you are.” With that I turned and walked away into the mist; I couldn’t ask for a much more dramatic exit. Marantz’s chuckling followed me down the hill.
TWENTY-ONE
It’s hard to be nonchalant when you’re expecting a crossbow bolt in your back at any moment, but I managed it. Only time would tell if Marantz called my bluff, because bluff it surely was.
I’d gone quite a ways down the hill when wheels rattled in the mist behind me. I stopped and waited as a single-horse wagon came into view. It carried a farmer and his wife on the seat, and four children in the back. They were dressed up and looked very grim. The farmer reined up beside me and looked me over. “You hurt?” he asked with no urgency.
“No, just heading into town. Is this the right way? Hard to tell with this fog.”
“We’re going into Neceda for the hanging. We could give you a ride.”
Hanging? Who the hell was Gary hanging? “Thanks. I’d appreciate it.”
“Well, hop in. We don’t want to miss it.”
I climbed into the back. The four kids, three boys and a girl all under age ten, looked at me with the barest minimum of curiosity. “Who’s getting hanged?” I asked as I sat.
“Fella who killed one of the moon priestesses,” the farmer said as he snapped the reins on the horse’s rump. The wagon jumped forward. “Mother Bennings. She helped out Myrtle here when little Helene was breech. Can’t believe someone would just cut her up like that.”
“That’s why we don’t live in the city,” Myrtle said. “Too much violence.”
I said nothing, but my mind was racing. I couldn’t believe that weasely Gary Bunson had actually apprehended Mother Bennings’ murderer overnight. “Do you know who it is?”
The farmer shook his head. “Nope. But whoever it is, we want to see his face when the rope snaps tight. She didn’t deserve that; she was a good woman.”
The sunlight finally rose over the treetops and burned off the mist. Despite his ostensible urgency, the farmer seemed content with his horse’s idle walk. Other wagons, lone riders and even three unsupervised children on foot passed us on their way into town. “Break his neck, pay his check!” the kids gleefully called out, a gallows chant children everywhere seemed to know.
I settled into the back corner of the wagon bed, aware that the four children never took their eyes off me. They didn’t join in the chant, and all had the same dead eyes as their parents. Whatever they farmed to eke out a living apparently left no room for childhood joy.
I arranged my sword at my side so the hilt didn’t dig into me. The three boys watched, fascinated by the weapon. I stretched out my legs, forcing them to scoot over.
The little girl, Helene, just sat staring at me. I smiled at her and winked. The corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly.
I closed my eyes in what I thought was a simple blink, and when I opened them again we were rattling into Neceda. Man, the way I kept nodding off it was a miracle I survived the last two days. I sat up, momentarily disoriented, and startled Helene, who’d curled up beside me under my arm. The three boys sat in a huddle at the front of the wagon bed.
We passed the remains of the stable, where a few wisps of smoke still rose from the rubble. People gathered at the far end of town, and a fresh rope hung from the gallows oak. Apparently everyone from the countryside had come to town for the event; word of a hanging typically spread fast. More kids ran loose, and hawkers sold ale, food and little souvenir hangman’s ropes. A good execution rivaled the excitement and economic boom of the annual harvest festival, and Neceda responded with new levels of spontaneous greed.
The cart that would bear the prisoner up the street to his demise was parked outside the jail, so we hadn’t missed the show. A smaller, rowdier and more inebriated group waited to pelt the condemned man with vegetables and eggs when he emerged. I climbed stiffly out of the wagon, thanked the family and looked around for someone I knew.
Angelina and Callie stood at the back of the more subdued crowd at the gallows. Both were dressed for work at the tavern, which by law would remain closed until after the execution. Callie bounced in place with excitement, and I spotted two teenage boys discreetly enraptured by the parts that bounced the most. “Ooh, do you think he’ll come when his neck breaks?” Callie asked Angelina. “I hear men do that. I wonder if women do?”
“One easy way to find out,” Angelina said, as usual looking vaguely bored. Like me, she’d seen enough hangings to be neither impressed nor curious about them. Her eyebrows went up as I approached.
Callie also did a double take. “ Wow, Mr. LaCrosse. You look worse every time I see you lately.” She leaned
