Chapter 17: Somebody Talked

Frankie

Garran’s sister came on the third day.

Aldric and I met her at the church. He stood beside the coffin with his hands folded. There was no light in them.

Neris Holt had brought her brother’s good coat.

“He hated being cold,” she said.

Nobody knew what to do with the coat.

Then Al took it and laid it over him.

I told her what had happened.

At first I said the mechanism had killed him.

She looked at me.

“I had it changed,” I said. “I started it. Al asked me to let them go, and I wouldn’t.”

She listened without interrupting, which made it harder.

“Write it,” she said when I finished. “Your name underneath.”

I did.

She took the statement and refused the money I offered her. I left it with the church in case she changed her mind.

She hadn’t, last I heard.

Aldric asked to accompany the body home.

I signed the permit and told Dren to send an escort and give Al whatever time he needed.

Very generous of me.

My name was right there above permission granted. I blotted it before the ink could run.

He came back when he said he would. Still no light.

* * *

Anet wanted three people out of the same dungeon.

Two mill hands and the woman who had helped her stand when the warders came.

She sent the names through Mara.

I paid for their release out of my own share, on the same terms I’d used for Liora. The steward complained. I kept him there until he brought the papers back signed.

The Boss approved the expense without questions, just his seal at the bottom. Like this was part of the bill for the weighing house.

The three people came to the church. I gave Anet their releases and a copy of her own.

She read them all.

“Do we have to thank you?”

“No.”

“Good.”

She went inside.

Over the next week, I heard Aldric had found work for one mill hand and a bed for the woman, who woke screaming whenever a door closed. He walked Anet’s boy to their new house himself.

I went to the church with a box of medicine.

Al carried it in. I followed him as far as the vestry.

“I don’t understand the oath,” I said. “You did what you could.”

“I chose the release that killed Garran.”

“Because I made the other choice worse.”

“Yes.”

“So why does it punish you?”

He put the medicine on a shelf.

“The covenant binds what I do. It does not sort every hand that brought me to the choice. That is work we still have to do ourselves.”

“You think the choice was wrong?”

“I think I would save Anet again.”

He looked at me then.

“And I would still have to bury Garran.”

I had wanted a rule I could argue with.

He handed me a basin and asked me to empty it.

I did that instead.

* * *

Twelve days after the weighing house, the first wagon came back without its driver.

The second didn’t come back at all.

Jory found the horse while helping the wheelwright make deliveries. It wandered near the birch ford with blood down its flank.

We reached the road before the blood dried. Hurrying hadn’t done Tovin a damn bit of good.

The driver lay beside the ditch. Somebody had dragged him clear of the wheel tracks and covered his face with a sack. Nice of them. Kill a man, then make sure he don’t get sun in his eyes.

I took the sack off.

Mara knew his name. She crouched beside him, then stood and told Hobb where his family lived.

“Don’t tell them from the doorway,” she said.

Hobb nodded.

I inspected the wagon.

Flour spilled across the road beside a broken axle, but nobody had looted it. The lockbox beneath the driver’s seat was gone, along with the pay for the bridge crew and the new grain stores.

Somebody had known what mattered.

Brannik studied a blackened mark on the wheel.

“Light damage.”

I looked at him.

“Holy light?”

“Light can burn without being holy.”

“Al hasn’t got any.”

“He has followers. Whoever left this knows that too.”

“Can you tell which?”

“Not by wishing.”

Fair answer. Bad morning for it.

* * *

We had changed the route after supper.

The south road was blocked by a fallen oak. Mara told us. Hobb proposed the ridge. Brannik said the loaded wagon would never make the grade. I chose the birch ford.

The conversation happened in the back room after the customers left.

Benny brought wine while Liora collected her sewing things from the end of the table.

Six people. One closed door.

Six people wasn’t everybody.

I said that out loud before Hobb could start counting on his fingers.

Tovin had learned the route before departure. The stable boy knew which horse he’d taken. Anybody watching the south road could have seen the fallen oak and guessed we’d choose another crossing.

“So a guess,” Mara said.

“Maybe.”

Then she showed me where the lockbox had been hidden. Not simply beneath the seat. Beneath a false board fitted by Brannik, with an ordinary tool chest beside it to attract the first search.

The tool chest was untouched.

I went looking for witnesses.

A shepherd had seen horses near the ford before sunrise. He remembered because one rider argued that they were too early. A woman gathering kindling had heard men crossing the ridge in the night. Neither description gave us a face. Both suggested preparation before Tovin received his instructions.

I talked to them one at a time. Put witnesses together and pretty soon they remember things neither of them saw.

It was still possible somebody had watched the route, watched the wagon, and been lucky about the money.

Maybe.

I kept coming back to that room. Six chairs. Benny pouring wine.

I went through the witnesses again.

On the way back, Jory asked what would happen to the bridge crew’s wages. He looked ashamed of asking beside a dead man.

“They get paid,” I said.

“Only my master says the money’s gone.”

“This money’s gone. The work was done.”

He nodded, relieved, then looked toward the wagon again.

“Tovin taught me how to tie the spare wheel on without it rubbing the axle. He said everybody teaches boys the difficult knots and forgets the useful ones.”

Tovin always brought the cart back on time. Always bitched about the wine.

That was what I knew.

Jory knew what knots he taught.

“Write that down,” I told Mara quietly.

She looked at me.

“For his sisters. They’ll want something from today besides the way it ended.”

I counted our people again. Same six. Counting twice wasn’t gonna improve it.

“Tracks?” I asked.

Mara pointed out several men’s bootprints leading uphill, with a horse’s tracks beside them. The horse had been led across the soft ground.

They had waited where the cart would slow. They knew which box to take. They left sacks worth less than the time required to load them.

Professionals.

I preferred amateurs. Amateurs made mistakes before anybody died.

At the edge of the ditch, Hobb found a strip of white cloth tied around a branch.

The church used white cloth on its message poles.

Everybody saw it.

Nobody said Al’s name.

Hobb looked at me.

“Yeah,” I said. “I see it.”

* * *

Aldric was changing a bandage when I arrived.

He looked up, saw my face, and asked who was hurt.

“That’s what I’m finding out.”

I put the strip of cloth on the table.

He examined it.

“Where?”

“Birch ford.”

“I was here.”

“People can act for you.”

“Yes.”

Couldn’t even give me a stupid answer to get mad at.

“Did they?”

“No.”

“You know what was in the wagon?”

“No.”

“Payroll. Flour. A man named Tovin who had two sisters and a habit of watering his wine.”

Aldric lowered the cloth.

“Then let us find who killed him.”

He let me search the church.

I’d promised not to violate sanctuary. He could’ve made me say what that promise was worth now.

He asked the people on the pews to move their things so Hobb could look underneath.

We found blankets, food, medicines, and a boy concealing a stolen pear.

I told the boy to return the core to its rightful owner when he finished.

Aldric had been tending a woman through the night, changing cool cloths while Rosella measured medicine. Six people confirmed it. Dren’s guard had watched the door. No messenger left after supper.

It wasn’t impossible that he had arranged something earlier.

It just required believing he guessed a route change before I made it, then killed a carter while leaving a piece of his own flag behind.

“You’d have stopped the wagon yourself,” I said.

“Yes.”

“And waited for me to arrive so you could explain how wrong I was.”

“Probably.”

He sounded almost sorry about the probably.

I put the cloth in my pocket.

“Your parole still stands.”

“I know.”

“I’m not asking you to break it.”

“I know that too.”

Al wanted the Boss dead. Wanted me to quit. Told everybody who’d listen.

If he’d taken my money, I’d have got a sermon with the receipt.

* * *

I paid the bridge crew from my own box.

Then I paid Tovin’s sisters.

One thanked me. The other asked whether I’d found who did it.

I told her no.

She didn’t thank me.

Back at the tavern, we reviewed the route conversation. Every word. Every entrance. Every person who might have overheard through the shutters.

Brannik checked the shutters while Liora examined the binding in the new latch. Benny said nobody had been in the passage. Hobb had barred the street door himself. Mara wrote it all down.

My seal held the ledger open while she turned pages. The ring clicked against the tabletop as I tapped a finger.

“No more departures after dark,” I said. “Two escorts to every load until we know what we’re dealing with.”

“That leaves the tavern short,” Benny said.

“Oren can cover the back passage. Hobb stays in the common room. I’ll take the first cart myself tomorrow.”

Everybody nodded.

We changed the watch at the tenth bell.

They attacked at the eleventh.

* * *

Oren shouted once.

Then the back door slammed against the wall, and a bottle broke on the kitchen floor.

Fire spread across the spilled liquor.

Rosella threw a wet cloth over it before it reached the stove. Benny was already moving toward the passage with a knife in his hand.

I came down with the Colt. Two men stood inside the back door. One had a crossbow. The other carried a hooked blade.

The crossbow fired.

The bolt struck the banister beside my face.

I shot the man holding it.

The second turned toward the office, where Mara had the accounts. I went after him.

He reached the doorway just as a chair hit him in the knees. Mara had shoved it across the floor. He stumbled, caught the frame, and looked up in time to see Hobb arrive from the other side.

Hobb hit him once.

The man stayed down.

Outside, more feet ran along the alley. Brannik pulled the new alarm cord. Every iron bell in the building began ringing, including one I hadn’t authorized inside my bedroom.

I would complain later.

Benny came back carrying Oren.

The watchman’s shirt was black with blood.

* * *

Aldric arrived before the bells stopped.

His escort came stumbling after him. For a moment, neither of us mentioned the parole.

He knelt beside Oren.

Rosella moved aside without speaking.

Aldric pressed a folded cloth against the wound and showed her where to hold it. He called for a needle. His hands shook, but the stitches were neat.

I looked at those hands.

Nothing happened.

For one stupid second I nearly asked why.

Then I remembered the three little clicks after Garran died.

“Come on, Oren.”

Like he was late for work.

Oren tried to say something.

Mara leaned close.

“I’ll tell her,” she said.

Aldric checked Oren’s throat and bent close to listen.

Then he bowed his head.

Maybe the light wouldn’t have done it. Maybe Al would’ve lost him anyway.

I kept trying that one.

Nobody said anything. Rosella put the needle down.

I looked at the man Hobb had caught.

He was awake now and tried to crawl backward as I approached.

“Who sent you?”

He shook his head.

I hauled him upright by the front of his shirt.

“Who?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“You knew the watch.”

“We were told.”

“By who?”

“A woman. At the tannery. She had the plan. She said the back door would be clear.”

I could hear Mara breathing behind me.

“What woman?”

“Hood up. I didn’t see.”

“But you heard her.”

He nodded desperately.

My fist had his collar twisted tight enough to turn him purple.

I let go. Needed him talking.

Hobb took him downstairs.

Mara knelt beside Oren and straightened his collar. She did it carefully, as though he could still be made more comfortable.

The broken window let in cold air.

Benny closed the shutter.

Six people had known about the ford.

Six people had known about the watch.

I looked around the room at the faces I had spent weeks learning to trust.

Somebody had talked.

I just couldn’t make myself believe it had been one of them.