I saw from his eyes that appealing to his vanity wouldn’t work. What else might get to him? “All right. Say I go in there and actually find whatever it is that’s hidden there. You know it’s not really dragon eggs, don’t you?”
“Of course I know that. Do you think I’m some gullible stable boy? But something’s down there, and until I know what it really is, I don’t know what it’s worth.”
“What if I find nothing? What if Laura Lesperitt just conned us all? Are you still going to let her go?”
“I never said I’d let her go.”
“Then you better say it now.”
He mockingly thought it over, bobbing his head like a flighty girl. “Maybe.”
Play it carefully, LaCrosse, I told myself. “You know, things like ‘maybe’ don’t motivate me. I work better with promises.”
“Oh, well then, sure. I’ll let her go. You bring me back those eggs or whatever they are, and I’ll turn her loose. Maybe minus a few souvenirs, but not dead.”
Again I saw the utter coldness in his eyes, and the relish he had for his job. Still, he wouldn’t kill her until I returned, because without her he had no leverage over me. A lot could happen to her, though, that didn’t qualify as “killing.” And as for me, I definitely didn’t want to end up taking Marion’s place on that table. I decided to push him a little harder. “No. You don’t touch her again until I get back. Do we have a deal?”
“You’ve got nothing to deal with.”
“Suppose you’re wrong about my attachment to her? Maybe I know her, but I’m still willing to walk away from her if there’s a big enough profit in it. What’s to keep me from taking whatever is in that cave and simply selling it directly to Marantz? And in the process letting him know what a screwup you are?”
Ah-ha. I’d found something that rattled him, if only a little. The idea that he’d misread me bothered him. “If that’s true, why do you care if I carve her up?”
“Maybe she’s just a good lay, and I’d hate to see it spoiled. But whatever my reason, I’m making that part of the bargain. You don’t touch her again until I come back. Deal?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, sure, why not?” He held up his hands, the knife loose in his fingertips. He was still within striking distance, though; I couldn’t chance it. “She’ll stay just like she is, until you get back. But I’m only giving you until sunrise. If the sun peeks over the horizon through that window, I’m going to debone her like a chicken. After I bone her, of course.” He winced and gingerly held up his injured hand. “And I’m taking her thumbs first.”
I nodded. I bent to retrieve my sword, but Candora said, “Uh-uh. You don’t need that. Nothing up here but buzzards, crows and mountain goats.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Habit.”
“You can take the box,” he said, and nodded toward the leather-padded crate I’d found before.
I lifted it with a grunt; the lead casing inside made it spectacularly heavy for its size. I met Liz’s pain-glazed, terrified eyes and hoped she understood what I was trying to convey. I have a plan. Be ready. Be strong. Then I went out the door. I heard her yell something like my name, muffled through the gag. It took all my strength to keep walking away down the hill.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I had no real plan, of course, except to retrieve the broken eggshell I’d found before and use it to stall for more time. If I could get physically between Liz and Candora, I could finish this in a blink. But he was too smart to make that very easy.
Trusting Candora to keep his word while Liz dangled like a side of beef did not reassure me, either. The sight of her so vulnerable and helpless, her eyes filled with pleading, cut me deeper than any sword ever could and brought back memories of every person I’d tried and failed to save. Most vivid was the first one, Janet, who was the worst of all unless I messed this up and lost Liz, too. But these memories had no place in my head now. I had to move fast, and hope to hell another, better idea came to me soon.
I rode back to the crevice. The horse, slowed by the weight of the box, would approach no closer than before, and I didn’t have time to fight with him. I took the canteen and strip of sash cloth back up the hill, soaked the cloth with water and tied it over my mouth and nose. I had no idea if it would work or not, but it was the best I could do.
I left the box at the edge of the hole and climbed down again. Either the gas was weaker now or the cloth did its job, because I could barely smell the rank odor from before. The wavering line of blue light had also vanished. The moon’s position now sent light deeper into the tunnel, so I could see better and farther than before.
I found the eggshell where I’d dropped it. I was supposed to bring back evidence of two eggs, though. Even old Lesperitt had said there were two. Maybe Laura and her father had bought or created this fake as part of some elaborate con that got out of hand, and farther down I’d find the other one. I continued on, still staying low to avoid the fumes. This far in, there was not even moonlight, so I dropped to my hands and knees, feeling for more pieces of fake eggshell.
Finally I hit a dead end; the cave was not very long at all. My fingers felt the edge of a ragged piece of cloth. I carefully tugged on it, and it slowly came toward me. It was coated with something that made it stiff and unyielding, and I felt weight on it. I changed my grip and gently pulled the top of the blanket off the object it had been swaddling.
I stopped. My position thoroughly blocked any stray moonlight from the entrance, yet a faint reddish light came from the thing’s surface. I bent closer. It was egg shaped, and about eight inches long. Far from shining with reflected light, it glowed from within, faint but unmistakable. The surface was a swirl of multi-colored patterns similar to lamp oil on a puddle’s surface and identical to the shards in my pocket. I also felt distinct heat from it.
I nudged it with my knife. It rocked back and forth; it was no empty shell, but had weight and volume. Then it shivered as something inside it moved on its own. The red glow momentarily intensified.
I suddenly grew weak in a way that had nothing to do with the fumes. I sat back against the cave wall and stared at the glowing thing resting on its fireproofed nesting blanket. My heart battered against my ribs and sweat popped out all over me. I’d had one other moment like this in my life, when my entire sense of the universe had to change to accommodate the reality of an incarnated goddess, and I hated it. I was too old to keep having epiphanies.
Yet here was another one. No matter what I’d previously thought, regardless of what common sense dictated, it appeared that Candora and Argoset and Marantz and Tempcott and Laura Lesperitt had all been right. Dragons were real, and this was, in fact, an actual dragon’s egg, lain dormant for centuries. Its possession by either Marantz or King Archibald could alter the balance of power in this whole region, maybe throughout the world.
Wait. There was only a single egg on the blanket. Then the other one I’d found, the broken one, must have…
I shook my head. That was crazy. I’d taken a blow to the skull, sure, but it wasn’t hard enough to make me buy all this. I was a cynical ex-soldier and a well-educated, well-traveled guy. I knew better. Dragons might have existed once, but this egg was a fake, and a clever one, created by Laura Lesperitt and her father for who knew what reason and abandoned when Laura was killed and Lesperitt went into hiding. Maybe they’d planned to con Marantz, or even King Archibald, with it. Chemicals could mimic the effects of heat, light and movement, and a good potter could probably turn out fake eggs all day. An animal, probably a coyote or a bobcat, had broken the other one and eaten the contents, or perhaps the broken shell was part of the scam. No living egg could survive untended and intact for as long as everyone insisted this one had.
Regardless of its true nature, though, I needed it now to rescue Liz. I reached for the egg and felt the heat on my fingertips several inches away. It didn’t seem unduly hot, and the blanket was undamaged, but I couldn’t bring myself to take the chance. Burns from dragon flames never heal, Harry Lockett had said. Lesperitt’s hands were burned, certainly, but that could’ve been faked, too, or just the result of an unrelated accident. Hell, if he was crazy enough, he might’ve burned himself deliberately just to help with the ruse. Laura might’ve done the same.
Yet I withdrew my hand. I’d been cut up a lot, and burned a few times, and let me tell you, burns are worse,
