Bitter Gold Hearts

______ XVIII ______

I sat on the buggy seat, beside the crossroads obelisk, and watched a parade of farm families and donkey carts head up the Derry Road. I didn't see them. I was trying to pick between Karl Junior's farm prison and Saucerhead's witch. The decision had actually been made. I was putting the thumbscrews on myself trying to figure if I was going to the farm first just to delay the pain skulking around the other place. No matter that I had to head the same direction to reach both and the farm was nearer. You don't alter the past, turn the tide, or change yourself by brooding about your hidden motives. You will surprise yourself every time, anyway. Nobody ever figures out why.

"Hell with it! Get up."

One of the team looked over her shoulder. She had that glint in her eye. The tribe of horses was about to amuse itself at Garrett's expense.

Why do they do this to me? Horses and women. I'll never understand either species.

"Don't even think about it, horse. I have friends in the glue business. Get up."

They got. Unlike women, you can show horses who is boss. The bout with introspection rekindled my desire to lay hands on the people responsible for the human equivalent of sending Amiranda to the glue works. The exit to the farm was up on a ridgeline where the ground was too dry to hold tracks, and hidden by undergrowth. I passed it twice. The third time I got down and led the team, giving the bushes a closer look, and that did the trick. Two young mulberry trees, which grow as fast as weeds, leaned together over the track. Once past them the way was easy to follow, though it hadn't been cleared since Donni's departure. I had to go through a half mile of woods, not a mile. It was dense in there, dark, quiet, and humid. The deerflies and horseflies were out at play, and every few feet I got a faceful of spider silk. I sweated and slapped and muttered and picked ticks off my pants. Why doesn't everybody live in the city?

I ran into a blackberry patch where the berries were fat and sweet, and decided to lunch on the spot. Afterward I felt more disposed toward the country, until the chiggers off the blackberry canes started gnawing. The track through the woods showed evidence of recent use, including that of the passage of at least one heavy vehicle. I had a feeling that, no matter what suspicions haunted me, I wouldn't unearth one bit of physical evidence to impugn Junior's version of what had happened. I kicked up a doe and fawn near the edge of the wood. I watched them bound across what once had constituted considerably more than a one-family subsistence farm, though now the acreage was wild and heavily spotted with wild roses and young cedars. The grass was waist high and some of the weeds were taller. A trampled path led down slope to what had been a substantial house. There were no domestic animals in sight, no dogs barking, no smoke from either chimney, nor any other sign that the place was occupied.

Still, I remained rooted, giving the wildlife time to grow accustomed to my presence and return to business. The Boga Hills loomed indigo in the distance. The most famous Karentine vineyards are up there. This country was close enough to have some of the magic rub off, but hadn't been turned into vineyards. I wondered if someone hadn't gotten that idea and had abandoned the place when they found out why. Then I recalled Donni Pell. A girl who came from some kind of money who went to work for Lettie, on contract, supposedly because she liked the job. A girl who now supposedly owned a place that, a few years ago, had been in satisfactory shape for a quick sale to TunFaire's land-hungry lords. I doubted it was part of the problem at hand, but it might be interesting to unravel the whys. Ten minutes of pretending I was scouting for the company left me impatient to get on with it. I tied the horses, got down low, and started my downhill sneak.

The place was as empty as a dead shoe. I went for the buggy, turned the team loose to browse while I prowled.

Junior's report was accurate down to the minutiae. The only things he hadn't mentioned were that the well was still good and his captors had equipped it with a new rope and bucket. The horses awarded me a temporary ceasefire after I drew them a few buckets.

There was no doubt that a band of ogres—or a mob equally unfastidious —had spent several days hanging around. Days during which they must have eaten nothing but chicken to judge by the feathers, heads, and hooves scattered around. I wondered how they had managed to pilfer so many without arousing the ire of the entire countryside. I did a modestly thorough once-over, with special attention to Karl's lock-up. That room had the rickety furniture, cracked pitcher, filthy bedding, overburdened chamber pot reported. The chamber pot was significant. I concluded that its very existence meant I must surrender my suspicions of Junior or radically alter my estimate of his intelligence and acting ability. If he had put together a fake, he had done so with a marvelous eye for detail, meaning he had anticipated a thorough investigation despite his getting home healthy and happy, which meant...

I didn't know what the hell it meant, except maybe that I had my hat on backward.

Why the hell did Amiranda have to die?

The answer to that would probably bust the whole thing open. Conscious that I had a passing duty to Amber as a client, I went over the place again with all due professional care to overlook nothing, be that the tracks of a four-hundred-pound ogre with a peg leg or two hundred thousand marks gold hidden by throwing it down the well. Yes. I stripped down and shimmied down and floundered around in the icy water until I was sure there would be no gold strike. My curses should have brought the water to a simmer, but failed. I guess I just don't have the knack.

Four hours and the risk of pneumonia turned up just one thing worth taking along, a silver tenth mark that had strayed in among the dust bunnies against the wall where Junior's blankets were heaped and hadn't been able to find its way home. It looked new but it was a temple coin and didn't use the royal dating. I'd have to visit the temple where it had been struck to find out when it was minted.

But its very presence gave me an idea. It also gave me a bit of indigestion for not having thought to ask a few more questions while I'd had Junior on the griddle. Now I would have to get the answers the hard way—on the trip home. The hard way, but the answers I got were likely to be square. The sun was headed west. It wasn't going to rebound off the hills out there. I had a call to make, and if I wanted to get it handled before the wolfmen came out to stalk the wily mammoth, I had to get moving. The horses let the armistice stand. They didn't even play tag with me when I went to harness them up.