Wicked Bronze Ambition

23

A piece of iron dropped into my extended palm. “What is this?”

“Could it be a pork chop?”

Stupid answer to a stupid question.

It was an iron crossbow bolt. The fletched end was missing. It had been designed to rip through plate armor. “This must have weighed three pounds, whole.” How do you break a chunk of iron like that? “This wouldn’t fit any man-portable weapon.”

It was a light artillery bolt made for a small siege piece or an infantry support weapon. It had a hardened-steel penetrator tip.

I wondered, “Any chance it was a stray?”

“Seriously?”

I tried again. “What is this?”

“Tell us what happened at your other house that night.”

Penny squeaked. I blushed. Really. I may be grown up, sort of, but I couldn’t discuss that stuff with a woman’s family.

“Oh, come on!” Kevans said. “It isn’t about that. Everybody knows you and Mom were like weasels. You couldn’t keep your hands off each other even in front of people. What were you going to be like when nobody was watching?”

“Uh. Yeah. Well. She kind of snuck out, after. There was a break in the weather. She wanted to go flying while it lasted.”

She was a Windwalker. Her greatest skills at sorcery centered on flying. There was nothing she would rather do than grab a broom and go walking on the sky. And that was what she had done that night.

“She was restless. She was all keyed up about the wedding. She was sure something would go wrong.” And hadn’t it just? “And she was even more worried about the reception.” That was supposed to have happened in the Royal Botanical Gardens, made available because people she knew in the Royal Family owed her.

She was scared my lowlife friends would get drunk and rip the place apart.

I said, “She grabbed a broom and went out the window. She asked if I wanted to go but didn’t hang around after I said no.” I’m not fond of going strolling in places where there is a hundred feet of nothing underneath my feet. “She wasn’t back yet when I got up. She still wasn’t back when I left for the Al-Khar. My partner wasn’t worried. It never occurred to me to be.”

Plus, I was all distracted by the onrushing tsunami of matrimonial doom.

I admit, I’d found no more perfect candidate for Garrett’s wife than Strafa Algarda, forgetting the family weirdness that came attached. Stipulated, the world was replete with better husband material.

Morley finally had something to say, tentatively, being unsure of his right to participate. “Was anything going on that night? Something she might have wanted to see?”

That was some good thinking. Strafa had become a rabid hometown tourist once she roped me in and had someone to drag along. I should’ve thought of that myself, but my thinker was all clogged up with dark emotions. Never a paragon, it was less sharp than usual lately.

Penny said, “There was an autumn solstice festival in the Dream Quarter. It started at midnight.”

The Dream Quarter is TunFaire’s religious center.

I asked, “You went?” I hadn’t seen her before leaving that morning but hadn’t thought anything of it. Penny was often invisible when I was there. Singe said that was because she had a crush on me, which was silly. Penny had made her feelings about me quite clear.

“I had to.” She still took her priestess role seriously, never mind that she was the whole cult now. “Mr. Playmate went with me.” Stated before I could go all parental and start barking about young girls being on the mean streets after midnight.

If you were a girl and had to be out there, Playmate was the man you wanted to be with. He was big, he was fierce, and he was one of the good guys. And he was a wannabe reverend who never quite got around to making the final leap of faith.

Penny volunteered, “We didn’t see Strafa.”

Kevans said, “Mom wasn’t the sort.”

True. She had been less religious than me. Hardly surprising, considering her trade and background.

Penny said, “There was a bad turnout because of the weather. We would’ve seen her if she was there.”

Shadowslinger closed my hand around the bolt. “Relax. Take the advice you give your clients. Stay calm. Use your head till you find a target.” She squeezed, grinned a horrible grin. “And then I will take over.”

She was right. I was at a stage where I was likely to waste time, energy, and emotion running in circles and whining.

I said, “My partner would like to interview each of you.”

That took the warmth out of the room.

After long silence, Shadowslinger said, “Very well. I will set the example. Barate, make sure my carriage is capable of making the journey.”

“Yes, Mother. Right away?”

She turned to me. “Right away?”

“Sooner would be better than later. He was fond of Strafa. He will find connections that none of us are likely to see.”

“I’m sure that you are correct. Do you all understand? Good. Perhaps you can work it out with Miss Pular today.”

Singe said, “He is awake all the time these days, but the rest of us have to sleep and do chores. It would be best if you visited in the afternoon or evening.”

Shadowslinger then told me, “Tell us about the child who attacked you in the cemetery.”

“There isn’t anything to tell. You saw it all. I don’t know who she was and I have no idea what she was up to. Maybe she had me confused with somebody else.”

“Possibly. You’ll see her again. Treat her kindly and gently.”

“Mother?” Barate was startled by the sentiment. The others also stared.

“The child isn’t one of our problems. Only Garrett needs be concerned.”

Which left everyone curious about an incident that had come close to being forgotten, with me not least among the forgetters. But Shadowslinger had said her piece. She would only reiterate her injunction that I be kind.

After that stuff about me being the man because I was the pro, she had Barate tell them all how they would contribute to my efforts to find my wife’s killer. She told the expert how to do his job, in detail.

I nodded a lot. I would do things my own way when she wasn’t watching. But I was open to original ideas.

It was the methodology I’d developed in dealing with my mother.