“Did you ever know a woman named Epona Gray?” To aid her memory, I put money atop my check and a sizable pile next to it for her tip.
Trudy thought about it, her serving tray balanced on her hip. “No, I don’t think so. A lot of the old-timers left when it started getting crowded, maybe she was one of them.”
“How about Andrew Reese?”
“No, haven’t-” She stopped and looked puzzled. “Do you mean the children’s rhyme? ‘Andrew Reese is broken to pieces’?”
Those words, said so casually, sent a chill through me. The only time I’d ever heard them before was from Epona Gray’s own lips. “You know that one?”
She smiled. “Everyone here knows it. We all learned it when we were little kids in school.” She closed her eyes and softly sang:
“Because he had no manners,
She pounded him with hammers.
Because he was so rude,
She fixed his attitude.
Because he was so mean,
She made him scream and scream.
And now Andrew Reese is
Broken to pieces.”
She laughed a little. “Wow. It must really stick in your head if I can remember it after all this time.”
The last couplet, in Epona’s drunken voice, echoed maddeningly in my mind. “Yeah, I bet it does. So there’s no real person with that name?”
“Oh, I’m sure there is somewhere. But not in Poy Sippi. Nobody would be cruel enough to name their kid that. That’d be just asking for him to get beaten up.”
After she left to attend other customers, I sipped my ale and mentally kicked my own ass. I’d assumed, for no good reason, that Andrew Reese was a real person. I don’t know why, given the lunacy of everything else Epona said, that I’d seized on this one thing as an indisputable fact. Had she just been drunk, singing some nursery rhyme?
No. I was certain she’d said Andrew Reese sent the package Cathy delivered. And whether or not she meant it symbolically- an Andrew Reese instead of the Andrew Reese-it still counted as a clue. If my trip into the mountains crapped out, I’d pursue the origins of this children’s song. It was only a slightly longer shot than my current course of action.
I came out of the roadhouse and started down the street when a voice said, “Hey, mister.”
I turned. A tiny young girl stood in the alley between the livery stable where I’d left my horse and a ramshackle swordsmith’s shop. I guessed she was around four, with matted hair, a dirty face and clothes that were little more than rags. You saw kids like this in every town, especially those on trade routes like Poy Sippi: orphans or junior criminals, sometimes both. When I’d first passed through town with Cathy, the gangs had been adults; now, with security to keep the grown-ups in check, the streets fell by default to the kids.
This girl certainly looked more like a victim than a crook, but the voice that called me had belonged to an older child. As soon as I’d had time to make solid eye contact with the girl, a hand appeared behind her and yanked her out of sight down the alley.
“Help!” the other child’s voice called.
I looked around. None of the other passersby seemed to have heard, or else had sense enough to ignore it. I sighed, unsnapped the catch on my scabbard and strode toward the alley. I’m sure they counted on finding someone unable to just walk away from a child in danger, preferably a stupid do-gooder with a wallet full of gold and a naive belief in his own invulnerability. They’d soon find out how wrong they were-I had very little gold on me. My only advantage was that I knew exactly what I was getting into.
I peeked around the edge of the swordsmith building. The girl now waited at the alley’s far end, and again a hand yanked her out of sight once she knew I’d seen her. I was being drawn into the wider alley at the rear of the buildings, where the garbage and other refuse, some of it human, always collected.
I wanted to smack myself. Of course I was being suckered, and I was on an important job, but the infinitesimal chance that a child might actually be in danger made me proceed anyway. I hugged the wall down to the far end of the building, then stopped and listened. I heard nothing. I drew my sword, held it down beside my leg and stepped around the corner.
Luckily I’d also crouched, so the wooden board slammed against the building above me instead of into my head. I used my left arm to grab the kid who swung it. He was about ten, and struggled with well-practiced panic. “Hey, help! This guy wants to bend me over a garbage barrel! Let me go, you pervert!”
I got a good grip on his hair, yanked him back against me and raised the sword blade to his throat. He froze when the metal touched his skin.
I faced his gang. Three grubby boys, the oldest about fifteen, watched me with wide eyes. The little girl they’d used as bait ran over and hid behind them.
The boy in my grasp burst into renewed struggles, trying to catch me off-guard. I pressed the blade harder against his throat. I wasn’t going to kill him, but I didn’t care if he got cut a little. “Shouldn’t you kids be in school?” I said over my hostage’s head.
“Uh… give us your money,” the tallest boy said, falling back on routine.
I almost laughed. “I don’t think so. Why don’t you give me your money?”
He blinked. “What?”
“You heard me. On the ground, right here in front of me. Come on.”
The kids looked at each other.
I leaned close to my prisoner. “Better get ’em moving,” I snarled in his ear.
“Give him the damn money!” the kid squeaked.
The tallest boy, evidently the leader, stepped forward and said, “No. I don’t think you’ll hurt him.”
I slid the sword just enough to slice my hostage’s neck. It was no more than a glorified shaving nick, but the nice thing about those harmless, shallow cuts is that they sting like a bitch and bleed quite freely. This one did both, and the kids gasped. The little girl began to cry.
“Hell, Scotty!” my captive screeched. “Give him the money!”
“All right!” the boy Scotty said. He tossed a small bag to the ground at my feet. It jingled when it hit. “There. That’s all we have.”
“Is that the truth?” I asked the kid in my grip.
“Yeah!” he shrieked.
I slowly withdrew my sword. The boy was sure I was about to cut his throat all the way, but I wasn’t. When I released him his knees collapsed, and he crawled over to Scotty’s feet. He put his hand to his throat, and when he saw blood he passed out.
I picked up the money. It was maybe enough to buy a couple of meals. I looked at the raggedy idiots, sighed and tossed the money back to Scotty. “Here. This was embarrassing for all of us.”
Scotty caught it and stared at me. “Are you going to kill us?” he asked, his voice low but steady.
“No, you moron. But I should, just to save some other sword jockey from having to put up with you. Do you have any idea how close you came?” I sheathed my sword. “You guys are really bad at this.”
“You’re mean!” the bait girl said, then ducked back out of sight.
“Yeah,” I agreed, and turned to go. And that should’ve been that. But I never saw the blow coming, since whoever struck me did so from behind. I felt only the rush into that big black pool where nothing hurts and nobody bothers you.
THIRTEEN
My first thought as I awoke was that my head hurt so much, if anyone spoke to me, I’d cry. The second was that the room was way too small for my head.
This was the third time in my life I’d been knocked out. Those who make their living relaying tales of heroic deeds at fancy banquets would have you think this was no more than an inconvenience, to be shaken off as easily as raindrops. Their heroes always snap wide awake and rush off to make up for lost time. I can guarantee that the folks who come up with those stories have never been seriously whacked in the head.
“Is he alive?” a woman’s voice asked. I couldn’t place it, but I’d heard it before, and recently.