Burn Me Deadly

NINE

The smoke’s odor immediately told me more than hay was burning. The place had been deliberately torched, most likely with oil or alcohol, so there was even less time than I initially thought. The blaze was at that liminal point where the stable looked like a line drawing rendered in flame: every edge and straight line glowed, and in moments they would all crumble and collapse. Even above the mingled roars of crowd and fire, I heard the creaking protests of beams about to snap.

“Hank!” we yelled, but our cries were too muffled to really be heard. The heat sucked the air from us and replaced it with foul, acrid smoke. Crouching low and skirting the burning debris, we made our way to the rear of the stable. Gary hid behind me just as Hank’s son had done behind his father.

All the horses, including the ones owned by Argoset and his henchman, had been cleared out. Only a young stallion barely out of colthood remained, kicking futily at the gate of one of the rear stalls. I unlatched the gate and the wide-eyed horse rushed toward the front door. The animal was already badly singed, and so terrified that he didn’t even pause before he dashed through a fresh sheet of flame into what he supposed was freedom outside.

“He’s not here,” Gary said. “Let’s get out while we can!”

“We haven’t checked the back,” I insisted.

“It’s on fire! The front’s on fire! The sides are on fire, and look! The ceiling! Guess what? It’s on fire! ”

The heat grew so intense I was sure my beard would combust. I danced around several blazing clumps of hay that filtered down from the loft through widening cracks in the ceiling. We reached the back of the barn where the door led into Hank’s house. I pounded on it with my sword hilt, but it was bolted from the other side. That meant someone had been alive to lock it, and I had a moment of relief before I turned and suddenly felt a chill despite the blaze.

Hank Pinster was pinned to the wall by a pitchfork through the torso. His hands, already burned down to blackened talons, uselessly clutched the smoldering handle. His feet barely touched the floor; whoever had killed him had been stronger and taller. The ends of his hair burned slowly toward his skull.

Gary and I looked at each other, neither of us with the extra air to speak. We both knew this meant arson, and murder.

Then the ceiling above Hank gave way, and we barely avoided the surge of flaming wood, hay and debris that burst out from the impact. The hayloft was disintegrating above us, and the whole structure would collapse at any moment.

We dashed for the front doors, but a fresh pile of burning hay and crossbeams thundered down. Gary’s watery eyes opened wide in a panic, and I think he would’ve made a break for it just like the colt if, at that moment, Argoset’s huge lackey hadn’t emerged from the smoke and fire behind us. He had a rag of some sort wrapped around his head against the smoke, and only his size let me recognize him. He scooped each of us up under one enormous arm like two rowdy children and toted us through the now-open door to Hank’s home, out another door and into the street. Even though it was summer, after that inferno the air felt like a blast of ice water. He dumped us unceremoniously before his boss.

Coughing so hard I expected a lung to land in the dirt beside me, I looked up at Argoset in amazement. He wore clothes coated in road dust and held the reins of their two horses. His muscleman unwound the cloth from his face and wiped at the soot streaking his bare, sweaty arms.

“Are you two all right?” Argoset asked, and offered me his hand. “You’re really lucky, you know that? Marion had just finished making sure no one was left in there, and then one of Magistrate Bunson’s deputies said you’d gone in the front door. He volunteered to go back in and get you.”

I looked at the big, implacable face with the unlikely name of Marion. “Thanks,” I said. He nodded.

Gary remained on his knees, bent double in a convulsive coughing fit that seemed like it might snap him in half. “Water,” he choked out, and Argoset nodded to Marion, who took a canteen from his saddle. He handed it to Gary, who could barely swallow between coughs.

I took the canteen and drank gratefully. Even now the fire was beginning to chew its way into the Pinsters’ living quarters. It progressed more slowly, though; that part of the structure hadn’t been doused with whatever had been used on the rest of the building.

Argoset stared up at the stable’s burning roof. “It’s going up pretty fast.”

“Hay and wood,” Marion grunted.

Argoset nodded. “Glad you made sure no one was in there.”

I kept the reaction off my face-not hard, the way I was coughing-but I couldn’t miss the fact that Argoset had twice mentioned that the barn was empty. It would be hard for anyone with working eyesight to have missed Hank pinned to the wall, and Marion was certainly big enough to have killed him in the way we saw. But why would he? And did he know we saw the body before he found us?

I continued to gulp as much night air as my lungs would accept, and returned the canteen to Marion. Gary was still on the ground. Much of the crowd had dissipated now that the initial excitement was over and the hard work of cleaning up would begin. I looked around for Liz, and spotted her at the end of Ditch Street where I’d previously seen the old man.

She wasn’t looking my way; instead, she shoved the old man ahead of her up the street away from the crowd. They were talking animatedly almost like old friends as they turned down an alley between Jack Talon’s herbalist shop and the Lizard’s Kiss.

I opened my mouth to yell after them. A fresh fit of coughing seized me and little white specks danced in my vision. I made a sound like a bleating goat as the cough took over, and when I looked again, Liz and the old man had vanished.

Something inside the barn crashed behind us, and the remaining crowd collectively gasped. Some young wags from a casino began cheering. I turned in time to see the last of the hayloft and roof collapse down into the first floor. Like a wave on the ocean, light and heat surged out and then up, driving us all back before settling into a single column of flame.

Then Liz appeared at my side, so abruptly that I yelped with surprise. This made me cough again, and her arm snaked around my waist. She cocked her hip so she could take some of my weight, which she’d had plenty of practice doing lately. “Two seconds,” she said. “That’s all it takes for you to get in trouble when my back is turned.”

I tried to ask, What did the old man say? but only managed the words “old man.”

She shook her head. “Didn’t find him. Come on; let’s get you back home.” To Argoset she said, “Did someone have to drag him out? He really doesn’t have the sense to leave a burning building.”

“Marion rescued them,” Argoset said with a nod to his subordinate.

Liz turned to the big man. “Thanks, then.” He grunted a response.

“Glad we were around to help,” Argoset added. “And glad no one else was in there.”

As Liz pulled me away, I grabbed Gary’s arm and dragged him after us. Argoset raised his hand as if about to stop me, but changed his mind in mid-motion and turned it into a fake-jaunty wave. He locked eyes for a moment with Gary, then resumed watching the fire.

Pete and Russell started to stop us, then looked from Argoset to Gary, uncertain who they worked for at the moment. Gary waved at them to stay put, and they nodded. Pete glanced uncertainly at Marion.

People stepped aside as we staggered through the crowd. The night’s implications whirled in my head, and there was no way I could just go home. Once we turned the corner and were out of sight, I said, “I want a drink. A big one.”

“First smart thing you’ve suggested,” Gary agreed.

Liz was about to protest, then wearily changed her mind. Just because “drink” and “think” rhyme, she once told me, doesn’t mean they always have to go together. We cut behind the buildings and down the alleys that separated the main street from the few smaller, residential dwellings that backed up to it. These were dangerous passageways at night, but since most everyone was at the fire and I knew Liz and I could handle any bandits we might encounter, I wasn’t worried. We gave a wide berth to one body sprawled in the mud; I couldn’t tell if the guy was drunk, beaten or dead, but if he’d wandered back here, he probably deserved what he got.

We emerged at Angelina’s. She stood outside, a pipe in her hand, watching the orange glow in the sky. A few patrons lounged against the wall with their tankards. She looked tired, and her blouse was sweaty above her corset. When she saw us she smiled at Liz, then frowned at me and Gary.

“First you’re cut to pieces; now you’re half burned up,” she said. With a “hmph” of disdain she added, “And you’re keeping this kind of company.”

“Kiss my ass, Angelina,” Gary said, leaning wearily against the wall.

“What burned down?” she asked Liz and me.

“Hank Pinster’s stable,” Liz said.

Angelina’s eyes opened wide, and her attitude vanished. “Doesn’t that mean your office, too?”

“Yeah,” she said wearily.

Angelina patted Liz’s arm sympathetically. Then her normal disdain returned. “Let me guess-these two geniuses went in to make sure everyone was out.”

“Somebody had to,” Gary said. He glanced at me; I shrugged. If he wanted to claim credit for something noble, I wasn’t going to contradict him.

“Think you can get these two heroes a drink?” Liz asked drily. “Then maybe I can get mine off the street for the night.”

“Oh, sure,” she replied acidly. “Heroes are our favorite patrons.”

We followed her inside. Except for Callie busily washing tankards and the two minstrels sharing a pipe, the place was empty. Tables and booths were still cluttered with signs of occupancy, though, and the crowd would return as soon as the excitement ended.

Gary and I dropped heavily onto bar stools, still coughing and wheezing. Callie did a double take at us and said, “Wow, Mr. LaCrosse. You look worse than you did before.” I couldn’t argue.

Angelina placed two tankards in front of us, and a cup of wine before Liz. I drank mine gratefully, coughed some more, then turned to Gary and said, “Argoset lied to us.”

He nodded. He tried to speak, but choked on the ale.

“About what?” Liz asked.

“Hank was in there,” I said, low so only she and Angelina heard.

“He was?” Liz gasped. “Why didn’t you bring him out?”

“He was already dead. Somebody thought he was a hay bale and stuck a pitchfork through him.”

Angelina shook her head. “Poor Hank. With all those kids, too. And he still owed me money.”

“Argoset said no one was in there,” Liz said.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe that big lummox didn’t see him?”

“He was pinned to the wall like a royal decree. Kind of hard to miss.”

“Who was hard to miss?” Callie said as she elbowed in beside Angelina.

“Your new boyfriend,” I said.

She glanced over at him. Whatever he and his friend had in their pipe, it clearly made them happy, as both were laughing like toddlers. “Yeah, just wish he’d lay off the giggleweed. Makes their second set pretty sloppy.”

“This audience probably doesn’t notice,” I said.

Callie gave me a lopsided smile that, for the first time since I’d known her, carried a hint of shrewdness. “I hope they won’t always be playing to audiences like this. There’s something else on the horizon, a real big-time gig. But I don’t want to jinx it by talking about it.” Then she took a basket out to the floor and began collecting more discarded tankards so she could wash them before the patrons returned.

We all fell silent and nursed our drinks. In all honesty, though, despite the fact that a nice guy had died, I was far more concerned that Liz told me she hadn’t found the old man, even though I’d seen her do it. Bathed in amber light from the tavern’s lamps, she looked younger and lovelier than ever. I’d first met her in this tavern, in fact, two bar stools away from where she sat now. Maybe, I reasoned, she was just waiting to tell me once we were off the street. I leaned close and softly asked, “So you didn’t find any sign of the old guy with the gloves?”

“Nope,” she repeated, straight-faced, no hint of guile. I think my heart broke a little.

“So what are you crusaders going to do next?” Angelina said.

“Nothing,” Gary croaked.

I said, “First thing tomorrow, I’m going to-”

Gary grabbed my arm. I’d never seen him look so certain, and at the same time so terrified. “ No, Eddie. You’re not going to do anything. Whatever’s going on, whoever’s behind this, you’re already in further than you should be. So am I, and it’s going to take all my smarts to get me out.” Then he coughed some more and put his head down on the bar.

I waited until he got his breath before asking softly, “What do you know about it, Gary?”

“Nothing. I don’t want to know. These decisions come from far over my head, and my orders were to smile, nod and look the other way. So I’m looking.”

“Even though Hank’s dead,” I said.

“Yes,” he said with no hesitation. “Because whatever’s going on is that big, and I’m content to be little.” He slapped a coin on the bar, then went coughing into the night.

Angelina picked up the coin. “For Gary, that speech was medal-level bravery. And since he paid for his own drink, he must be really scared.” She tucked the coin somewhere out of sight, wiped his spittle from the bar and looked at me. “And since you won’t take his advice, what are you going to do?”

“Right now he’s going home,” Liz said. “Finish your drink and let’s go.”

“She sounds like your mother,” Angelina said.

“And in bed she sounds like yours,” I said. Angelina’s harsh laugh trailed us out the door.

When we reached our building, I was surprised to see Liz’s wagon and horses tied up outside it. I’d been so preoccupied by the emergency that I hadn’t noticed them before. The animals whinnied and tossed their heads when they saw her, but she ignored them and helped me up the stairs. “Is that your wagon?” I asked needlessly.

“Yeah. Didn’t feel like walking all the way from the office.”

“That’s lucky,” I said. Normally both wagon and horses would’ve been at the livery stable. “You bring home your most important assets just before your office burns down.”

“Yeah, isn’t it?” she agreed, with no sign of suspicion or guilt. She opened the door and went in ahead of me. While she lit the lamp, I undressed at the door and dropped my smoke-ruined clothes atop my earlier bloodied ones. At this rate I’d need a whole new wardrobe before the week was out.

I fell across the bed yet again, adding soot and sweat to the bloodstains I’d left there earlier. The muscles of my chest hurt when I coughed and the back of my head throbbed anew. My knuckles ached whenever I moved my fingers. Liz poured me a drink of water, handed it to me, then went to the window. The glow had almost vanished, and she had to lean far out to see past the corner. “Looks like they’ve kept it from jumping to any of the other buildings.”

“Good,” I said.

She turned and sat on the windowsill, her eyes on me. “That was, by any conventional wisdom, a thoroughly dumb-assed thing to do. I knew you were going in, but I didn’t expect you to have to be carried out.”

I nodded, and coughed. “Me, neither.”

“In the last month you’ve scared the daylights out of me more than anyone ever has. I’d really rather you not, from now on.”

“It wasn’t on purpose,” I croaked.

“It never is. That’s pretty damn little comfort, though.”

She crossed the room and knelt beside the bed. It reminded me of the way she’d looked when I woke up at the hospital. “I’m not some giggly girl, Eddie. I fell in love with you with my eyes open. I’m not asking you to change, just… remember that your actions affect someone else almost as much as they do you.”

I stroked her hair. It was damp with sweat. “I will,” I said softly. But all I could see in my mind was her talking to the old man with gloves, and all I heard was her lying about it.