Burn Me Deadly

TWENTY-TWO

Mrs. Talbot crouched on her porch, pouring some thick, vile concoction over a shivering dog. She held it firmly by the scruff, and it looked as miserable as I felt. She looked up as I approached, my boots scuffing in the dirt. “You look mangier than Filo here,” she said. “Maybe I should dip you, too.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “Not going to the hanging?”

She cackled. “I’ve seen more hangings than you have titties. Can’t imagine this one will be too different.”

“Happen to know if Liz is upstairs?”

“Ain’t seen her.” The dog whined, and she smacked it with her free hand. “Pipe down, ya mutt.”

I nodded my thanks and ascended the stairs. I seemed to grow heavier with each step, so that by the time I reached our rooms I was exhausted. I went inside, closed the door and leaned back against it.

I looked around our simple yet somehow comfortable space. Golden morning light made it seem even homier. I found no note, but a last-minute delivery could have called Liz out of town and she might’ve left word with Angelina, just as I’d done. I was too tired to worry or think about it, just as I was too weary to deal with that damn horse Pansy. If she starved outside Long Billy’s, then so be it.

There was no need to rush after Candora; Buddy had done his job for him. So once he got his new people searching for the late, lamented and nonexistent Lumina, he’d come back to town and be easy to find. And before I finally faced him, I needed to be a lot sharper than I felt just then. I hit the mattress, and none of the raucous festivities that followed the execution penetrated my weariness. I was too tired to even dream.

I opened my eyes into the setting sun, winced and cursed. I cleaned up and dressed with great, sluggish effort. Liz was still not home, and that nagged at me, but it also meant I could put off the confrontation about the old man with the gloves. I’d had enough confrontation to hold me for a while, and this one could not end well.

I went to Angelina’s tavern and my office. The streets were mostly empty; the party had moved from the gallows oak into the town proper, dispersing among the various establishments. Far ahead, Buddy’s silhouetted body dangled from a branch, and a dog barked at it while it swayed in the wind. Someone, I assumed Bella Lou, sat beneath it with her back against the tree. I wondered where the kids were.

I had my hand on the tavern door when I stopped and looked back at the execution tableau. Just keep going, my rational self said. It’s not your problem. Don’t you have enough things to worry about? My other hand, in my pocket, tapped my last remaining silver coin.

Bella Lou was asleep against the tree. No one else came near. She was covered with vegetable matter, and flies swirled around her almost as much as they did around her late husband. A crow stood on the ground looking at her, debating whether she, too, was a corpse. It sailed away with a caw as I approached, and Bella Lou opened her eyes.

When she saw someone coming she drew the cloak around her and hunkered down, like an armadillo curling in on itself. “It’s okay, Bella Lou,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She recognized my voice, frowned at my new appearance and said, “It’s okay if you want to. I’m just waiting for the king’s soldiers to come take me away.”

I crouched beside her. “They’re not coming. The king doesn’t care about you. I know you don’t believe that, but it’s true. Things will go a lot easier when you understand that.”

She said nothing.

“Where are Toy and Stick?”

“They’re safe. They can take care of themselves.”

“Bella Lou, they’re kids.”

She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “We’ve always prepared them for the day when their parents would be taken away from them.”

I dug out the bag of money I’d taken from Frankie’s saddlebag. I’d finally found a use for it that wouldn’t make me nauseous. “Bella Lou, listen to me. I want you to take this, round up your kids and get a room somewhere. This will pay for it for at least a week. I know another woman who just lost her husband, who also has a bunch of kids to raise on her own. That’ll give me time to get in touch with her and make some arrangements.” I offered her the bag.

“I’m no one’s servant.”

“No, but do you think you could be someone’s friend?”

She said nothing for a long time. The dog returned, sniffing at her feet. I kicked at it, and it scampered off. Above us, the branch creaked as Buddy’s corpse slowly turned.

Finally she said, “I haven’t had a friend since I met Buddy. He said they could only hurt us.”

“He was wrong about a lot of things.”

She took the bag. “It may take a while, but I’ll pay you back.”

“I’m easy to find.”

There was nothing else to say. I made the long walk back down the street, ignoring the disapproving looks. It was bad form to consort with the family of the condemned. No one had the bad sense to say anything, though.

Inside the tavern, the regulars at the counter were augmented by people carousing after the hanging. These men and women could barely stand or speak, but they showed no sign of stopping. They were country folk determined to have great stories of summer debauchery to tell around the winter hearth. Callie and two emergency barmaids I didn’t know looked exhausted, having worked the hanging rush nonstop. It always amazed me that these young, vapid girls had the physical stamina I’d wished my infantry possessed back when I commanded troops. Angelina handled the bar with her usual cool efficiency.

The stools were all occupied, and I was about to go upstairs and wait in my office when a piece of biscuit bounced off my head. I looked up, and Angelina gestured with the rest of the biscuit toward the kitchen. We went past Rudy into the storeroom I’d used to spy on Marantz the day before.

She shut the door, which did little to cut the noise. Her work outfit, as always, emphasized her bare shoulders and exquisite cleavage. For not the first time I wondered what spark was actually missing between her and me, because I knew she’d be a wildcat in bed, and you couldn’t ask for a more loyal friend. But its absence was undeniable.

“Guess you weren’t able to help your friend,” she said. “They strung him up right on schedule.”

“Turns out he deserved it.”

“Then you probably feel pretty foolish.”

I nodded. “And that’s not the only reason.”

“That haircut will grow out.”

“Very funny. No, it’s something else.” I paused, knowing that if I said it aloud, it would have an independent reality outside my own head. “Liz lied to me.”

“Wow,” she said evenly. “Are you sure?”

“One hundred percent.”

She ran a hand through her luxuriant hair and paced as much as the room allowed. Finally she said, “Eddie, I don’t know what to say. It doesn’t sound like her at all, but you wouldn’t make a mistake about something like that.”

“No. Have you seen her today?”

She shook her head. “I gave her your note yesterday at lunch. That was the last time.”

She stood quietly for another long moment. I leaned against the wall and watched a spider scuttle under a barrel. Finally she said, “There might be a good reason, you know.”

“I know.”

“I mean, you’d lie to her if you had a good reason, wouldn’t you?”

“No.”

“Of course you wouldn’t.” She looked down, fingered the fringe along her sleeve and said, “She’s the best thing that ever happened to you, you know. I was skeptical of her at first, but she convinced me. She was good to you and brought you out of that stupid ‘I’m so tough’ act, and that was enough for me. If you’re right, it means she made a fool of us both.”

“If you want to look at it that way.”

A firm hand knocked on the door. Callie opened it and presented me with a plate of eggs and biscuits. “Here you go, Mr. LaCrosse. Figured since you’d been asleep all day, you’d want breakfast.”

I took it with a smile, and a grateful nod to Angelina. “Thanks. Looks busy out there.”

Callie blew a strand of hair from her face. “You might say so. I can’t feel my ass from all the pinches and gropes. But the tips’ll pay me back for the money that no-account Tony ran off with, so it’s all fine with me.” She turned to go, then stopped. “Hey, someone went up to your office earlier today. Haven’t seen ’em come down, so they may still be there.”

I took a bite of the eggs, and at the first taste my appetite roared back full strength. I quickly shoveled more into my mouth, forgetting all the etiquette drilled into me as a boy. Between mouthfuls I said, “Let me guess: some old guy with big weird gloves on?”

“Actually, yeah,” she said, and went back into the tavern.

It took a moment for that to sink in. “Holy shit,” I said through another bite.

“What?” Angelina asked.

“Tell you later,” I said, and handed her the plate.

I rushed up the stairs, opened the door to my outer office and stared at the man curled up asleep on the visitor’s bench. It was indeed the man described by Mother Bennings, who I’d glimpsed with Liz the night of the fire. I stood very still; after everything that had happened, I half-expected him to fade into nothingness if I disturbed him.

He was old, all right, and had long white hair gathered in a ponytail. The ribbon holding it had loosened, so strands fell wispily about his face. He needed a shave, and his clothes were wrinkled like he’d slept in them several days running. His hands lay across his stomach and were covered in big gloves like mittens that seemed to be padded on the inside. Even in sleep his face creased into an expression of sadness and pain, and his snoring was mostly little whimpers, like he was about to cry. The room smelled faintly of burnt, rotted meat.

I shut the outer door with enough force to wake him up. He opened his eyes, squinted at me and raised a gloved hand to block the afternoon sun. “Mr. LaCrosse?”

I nodded. “And you are…?”

He sat up and yawned. “Chester Lesperitt. You’ve met my daughter.”

I said nothing.

He waved one gloved hand at my inner office. “Can we talk privately? There are many things I need to tell you, and I’m sure you have many questions.”

I escorted him to the inner office, closed and locked the door and sat behind my desk. He went to the window and discreetly peered out, as if watching for anyone spying on us. Satisfied, he sat in the guest chair.

“First, I want to thank you for trying to save my Laura. I wish you had succeeded, of course, but I also appreciate the effort.”

I licked my dry lips and, as casually as I could, asked the question whose answer I both anticipated and dreaded. “So how do you know Liz Dumont?”

“Oh, I’ve known Liz all her life,” he said. “Her and her sister Cathy. Haven’t seen them in years, but when they were children they came to my church with their parents.”

I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. Of course, of fucking course. Harry Lockett even told me Lesperitt came from Bonduel, original home of the Dumont sisters. How had that not registered? Maybe Candora’s whack to my head had done some permanent damage after all.

“I can’t tell you how surprised I was to see her here,” he continued.

“So did Liz know Laura?”

He shook his head. “Liz and Cathy left before Laura was born. They really weren’t with us that long; it’s just that they stood out: beautiful redheaded twin sisters, just on the cusp of womanhood. They attracted a lot of attention.”

“No kidding,” I agreed. “So why are you here?”

“In Neceda?”

“In my office.”

“You were the last person to see Laura alive. She knew something, something more important than you can imagine. Something people were, and are, willing to kill for.” He paused. “Did she tell you?”

I shook my head. “She didn’t tell anyone. That’s why they’re still out there looking for Lumina.”

He sighed with relief and showed no surprise that I knew the name. “That’s good, Mr. LaCrosse. That’s very, very good. That just saved your life. You have no idea what they’re seeking, no idea.”

“A dragon egg?” I said nonchalantly.

His eyes opened wide in surprise. “She did tell you.”

“No, she didn’t. But I’m paid to make connections.”

He sighed. “In this case, you’re wrong.”

“You just said I wasn’t.”

“No, I just said that it wasn’t a dragon egg.”

“Then what is it?”

He tossed his hair wearily from his face and said, “ Two dragon eggs.”

“Two.”

“Yes. Two nascent gods awaiting the moment of their creation.”

“They’d be hundreds of years old,” I pointed out.

“That doesn’t matter. The fire within them, the spark they inherit from their parents, never goes out. The eggs will stay viable until something destroys them, or triggers their hatching.”

“What triggers them?”

“No one knows.”

“But you believe they’re there.”

“I know they are, Mr. LaCrosse.”

I pulled my bottle from my desk, took out the cork with my teeth and drank a long swallow. It tasted better than any drink I’d ever taken. I did not offer any to Lesperitt. “And just how,” I asked wearily, “do you know? Have you seen them?”

“Yes,” he answered simply. “Laura found them long ago, still beside the skeleton of their mother, Lumina, during a religious pilgrimage. We were waiting for the right time to bring them into the open again, so that they might be tended and worshipped. But when that ass Tempcott showed up, waving his skull and making outrageous claims, Laura believed his lies, believed he was sent by Solarian. But she was smart enough not to give away our secret. Then Marantz got involved, and… my girl died.”

I looked at the bottle, but still didn’t offer it to him. I was a hard-ass, after all.

“When Laura realized what she’d gotten into, it was too late. I discovered Marantz sent her to Neceda ahead of Tempcott, so I came here as well. She escaped from the men trying to force her to reveal the location, and came to me. I was all she had.”

He paused, and his eyes grew shiny. “She was such a pretty little thing, and to see what those awful men had done to her…”

Well, my ass wasn’t that hard. I passed him the bottle.

He continued, “We went to the cave, found the eggs and hid them somewhere else. That’s how this happened.” He held up the gloves. “The eggs were still hot enough to scald, which we didn’t know until it was too late. Do you know dragon burns never heal?”

He took one glove off to show me his hand. It looked like he’d stuck his palm flat against a cooking stove sometime within the last day. Laura’s hands had looked the same. Worse, the faint odor of rotted, overcooked meat filled the room and threatened to gag me. “You can’t imagine how much this hurts. These gloves are the only way I can even function, but they do nothing for the pain. But the eggs were too important to risk falling into Tempcott’s hands. After we moved them, we split up and planned to meet back here in Neceda. But she never arrived until…” He looked down and sighed with the weight of the truly lost.

There was no denying the reality of his injuries, and his story held together and explained a lot. Well, except for the part about real dragon eggs. “Okay, so why tell me all this now?”

He wiped his eyes on the backs of the mittens and looked up at me. “Because, Mr. LaCrosse, I had this same conversation with Liz, and she went to find the eggs for herself. And she hasn’t come back.”