I nodded. “Thanks. If anything else interesting happens, would you let me know?”
“Of course. And don’t go out and do anything to reinjure yourself. Everyone here knows how badly you were hurt, so as long as you’re walking around, I look like a great healer.”
On my way out I paused at the main door. Beside it stood a large, long-necked vase covered in symbols of the moon goddess: three women, one a young girl, one a pregnant mother, the last old and stooped. The vase’s practical function was to collect donations from people who could pay for their treatment, since most patients could not. And truthfully, neither could I. Yet I took one of the coins in my pocket and dropped it into the waiting mouth, wincing as it hit bottom with a hollow, metallic thud. Guess there hadn’t been a lot of donations lately.
It wasn’t payment for me, anyway: it was a token of appreciation for granting Laura Lesperitt her last moment of dignity. I was sure the moon goddess understood.
I went back through town and out the other end on the Tallega road where I’d met Laura. The horse had a bumpy, really uncomfortable gait that made my still-tender ribs ache with every step. I would be sure to demand a refund from Hank when I returned the beast.
It was a bright, clear day, and there was plenty of other traffic. I passed Angelina’s tavern and nodded to her as she escorted a stumbling patron out into the sunlight. She waved as the man fell first to his knees, then onto his face in the dirt. People stepped over and around him without a second glance.
I checked each person I passed for dragon boots. It seemed unlikely, but it was a way to pass the time and resharpen my skills after my little vacation. Most of them were farmers or tradesmen, although a few wealthy travelers passed me as well. None had the footwear I sought.
I rode under the shadow of the big gallows oak and drifted in behind a three-cart caravan taking two wagonloads of corn to Tallega and points beyond. The teenage boy driving the empty third wagon, its contents no doubt sold that morning in Neceda, kept glancing suspiciously over his shoulder at me, wondering why I didn’t just pass them. I simply smiled and nodded. No one was in a hurry, so despite the dry and fairly warm day, the dust stayed at a minimum, hovering in a thin, knee-high cloud.
Several travelers, still camped in the tall grass off the road, displayed tents and wares from every village within a ten-day ride. A ragged dog tied to a stake barked as we crept past, and my gray mare fought to flee across the prairie away from it. The little brother of the kid driving the empty wagon occasionally peeked at me from the bed. I made faces at him, which made him smile and duck shyly away. Their parents, ahead in the first wagon, were oblivious.
This wasn’t necessarily the best approach to the problem at hand. I could’ve stayed in town and found out who else Argoset interrogated, a perfectly appropriate activity for a sword jockey trying to find his way into a mystery. But I’d been attacked in the woods, and moreover, a girl who’d expected me to help her had been killed there. Argoset’s mystery might be in town, but mine started here, beneath these ancient, heavy-limbed trees.
I paused before entering the forest. I looked back and saw the river shimmering in the distance, its broad swath dark green and turgid. The Gusay wound in great coils through this part of the country, only growing straight and rapid when it neared the ocean across the border in Balatan. I counted four boats coming upstream, pulled by mules or horse teams onshore; three flatboats loaded with trade goods rode the central channel in the opposite direction.
I’d first come to Neceda on the Gusay, taking passage on a commercial boat with a dozen Wakle Dow slave girls in the care of the scariest matron I’d ever seen. There were other people on board, I suppose, but somehow all I could recall now were those young, flirty girls destined for a life of luxury and isolation. None were forced into the job; all signed contracts giving up every personal right in return for the lavish lifestyle they desired. I often wondered how it worked out for them.
I was coming here to meet Nightingale James, a con man with one of the more original scams going. Six feet tall and muscled like a work ox, James somehow managed to hang on to a high, girlish voice despite still having his full male package. He represented himself as a eunuch to wealthy old men with easily bored wives. Once ensconced in their households, he would seduce the wives, then blackmail them. He would also report to the husbands that the wives were cheating with some mysterious stranger, and offer to keep an eye on them-for an additional fee, of course.
Unfortunately, he was no man of action, and when the son of one of these wealthy old men caught him in the act with his mother, James found himself on the other end of the blackmail pike. He needed me to chase junior away, which turned out to be easy enough to do. I made a nice pile on the job, and also realized how ideal Neceda was to my business: small, isolated, yet a center of trade and commerce. People could find it easily, but few people noticed anyone else in it. I always meant to thank Nightingale for bringing me here, but I never saw him after that job. The last I heard he’d settled in Mauston, teaching music to actual eunuchs. There’s irony for you.
The forest loomed ahead like a great wall of dense green, its supporting latticework of black wooden trunks and limbs occasionally visible through the leaves. A round gap marked the spot the road entered it, and beyond that it really did look like a tunnel, with shafts of sunlight poking through the leaves at irregular intervals.
I had no delusions that I’d find any physical clues left from the attack, like distinctive horseshoe tracks or boot marks. But if I could identify the spot the girl first ran out in front of me, I might be able to locate the farm where she’d stolen her jacket. From there, if I was lucky, I hoped to backtrack to the house she’d escaped from, and where the three men took us and tortured her to death. And if I was very lucky, those men would still be there, and it would be time for answers and a little payback.
But I wasn’t after revenge. I knew its ultimate futility: I’d seen the results of revenge on a scale most people could barely imagine, and I had no desire to walk that path. I wanted justice. I needed to know that the men who had casually tortured Laura Lesperitt would never be able to hurt anyone again. I understood these human monsters-I’d been perilously close to it myself as a younger man-and knew that they’d only stop hurting people when they also stopped breathing. So I intended to cut off their air. And if I also cut off a few limbs as well, I could live with that.
I moved to the edge of the road and traveled much slower than everyone else as I looked for clues. The air beneath the forest canopy was noticeably cooler. I saw many small trails that emerged from the woods and joined the road. None of them looked well or recently traveled, though. They were game tracks, or simply the onetime passage of someone looking for firewood, meat or toilet privacy.
A youngster of about ten cut loose from the traffic and fell in beside me. A tied bundle of fresh herbs and leaves bounced on the rump of his… her?… saggy, tired horse. “You look like you lost something, mister. Need a hand?”
I really couldn’t tell if this was a boy or girl. I nodded at the plants and asked, “You pick those or buy them in town?”
“Oh, I picked them. That’s my job. Mama does the selling.”
“Then I reckon you know these woods pretty well, don’t you?”
“I know them on that side of the road like I do my own fingernails. Daddy won’t let me cross the road into the Black River Hills, though. Says all the herbs and plants we need grow just fine on this side. Too many weird things happen over there.”
Naturally, the side she/he couldn’t visit was the side Laura had emerged from. “Weird how?”
She/he shook his/her head. Little wooden bug-shooing beads braided into his/her hair slapped her/his shoulders. “He won’t say. Just that lots of people go in there and don’t come out. And there’s people who live in there who’re…” His/her shoulders shivered. “Weird.”
I nodded. “That’s the word of the day. Tell me, did you ever see anybody with dragons on their boots poking around out here?”
“Dragons?”
“Yeah. Silver design on the back of the heel, maybe.”
Again the beads slapped his/her shoulders. “Sorry. Guess I’m not much help after all. Want to buy some foxglove? Can’t get any fresher unless you pick it yourself.”
“No thanks, er… you.”
She/he grinned mischievously. “You can’t tell if I’m a boy or a girl, can you?”
“No,” I said.
He/she laughed, nudged the horse and rejoined the traffic on the road. I shook my head and turned my attention back to the side of the road where the weird things were.
Suddenly I yanked the reins tight. The horse snorted and tossed her head in protest. I knew this was the
