“Nah. Tanko gave me a bogus address. The number didn’t even exist.”
He held out his hand. “Let me see it.”
I looked him in the eye. “I threw it away.”
He walked to the window and opened it. “It’s hot as my fat wife’s armpit in here,” he muttered. The salty wind lifted the curtains and stirred the ash in the fire as it made a breeze up the chimney. Bernie knelt by the hearth. “Buttons in with the coals,” he said. “Somebody burning clothes?”
“Not much firewood this time of year.”
He looked up at me. “Did you kill ’em, Eddie?”
I shook my head. “I shot Canino, but the girl killed him. He gutted her before he died.”
“What about the Dwarf?’
I shrugged. “Apparently he doesn’t exist.”
“You mean anymore.”
I smiled. “Bernie, if I’d killed the guy, I’d tell you. You know that.”
“We found a whole house laid out for special access. We found clothes cut to fit a dwarf. We found an awful lot of blood in the wine cellar, and what looked for all the world like a fresh grave. But when we dug it up, no one was in it.”
“And you think I did all that?”
“Somebody did.”
I went to the window and looked out at the clean, twinkling ocean far below. “Bernie, I swear to you, I didn’t kill anybody. Not Canino, not the girl, not the Dwarf. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have, just that I didn’t. And that’ll have to do you. I’m still working for my client, so I can’t tell you any more than that.” I turned to face him. “I’m going to leave now, unless you plan to arrest me.”
He nodded at the window. “Lean out a little and look to the north.”
I did, and saw a dark plume of smoke rising into the sky. It came from one of the warehouses along the docks. “The Dragonfly?”
“Yep,” he nodded. “Already burning down. The fire crew is down there trying to save the other warehouses, the legitimate ones. No telling how many bodies we’ll find in there.”
I felt a brief pang for spike-necked Allison, but her fate was out of my hands. “Hm. Quite a coincidence.”
“And you had nothing to do with that, either?”
“Not a thing.”
Bernie ran his hand along the mantel above the fireplace. “I got no reason to doubt you, I suppose. And nothing to really hold you on. In a few months, I may decide you’ve done me, the city and the common good a big favor.” His eyes snapped up to meet mine. “But for right now, I’d just as soon you left town. Quietly. And don’t come back for a visit before winter. By then, I should be your pal again.”
I nodded. I didn’t offer my hand, and neither did he. I left without another word.
I returned quietly and quickly to Arentia. I took a room above a pub in one of the far-flung suburbs of Arentia City. I wasn’t yet ready to approach Phil; at least one major task remained to be accomplished. But I needed reliable, discrete assistance.
I didn’t know how to reach Sir Michael Anders directly without giving myself away to the rest of Arentia’s officialdom. But he’d been quite free with the details about his young lady friend Rachel, and I recalled her highborn family from my own youth. I sent a messenger boy to her requesting she forward my confidential request to Anders. It took several days, but eventually he showed up at the pub, dressed like any other tradesman on a day off.
He sat down next to me at the bar without a glance, and when the bartender moved out of earshot said softly, “You look awful.”
“That’s because I work for a living,” I murmured back. “We need to talk; meet me out in the barn in ten minutes.” His nod of assent was so slight I barely caught it.
I paid for my drink and went behind the building to the stable, where Lola stood patiently in her stall. I picked up a brush and stroked her neck and mane while I waited for Anders. He arrived casually, although I knew he’d verified that no one followed him. If I hadn’t been alone, he would have feigned confusion and asked for directions back to the main road.
He leaned against the door of the stall. “Hey, that’s the same horse you stole in Pema.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you would’ve made horse stew of her by now.”
“She’s not so bad. Better than some people I know. Excluding present company.”
“Thanks. So what’s so urgent you had to worry my girlfriend to reach me?”
I stopped brushing Lola and looked at him seriously. “I need a huge, possibly career-ending favor from you.”
He didn’t blink. “Like what?”
“I need to get in and see Rhiannon alone.”
He chewed his lip for a moment before saying, “I guess you know about her sentence.”
“Just what I’ve heard second-hand.”
“The king imprisoned her for life at the main city gate. Her cell is built into the actual wall itself. During the day she has to come out into a cage, sit on a stool and basically take any shit anyone wants to throw at her, symbolic or literal. At night, she’s locked into her chamber. The guards are forbidden to let anyone else near her; even they can’t speak to her except to give instructions. I know them; they won’t bribe, and I’d hate to take them on in a fight.”
“Can we trick them?”
He shook his head. “If it were any other prisoner, maybe. Not this one. She’s all they have to worry about.”
“I have to see her alone, Mike. I can’t tell you any more than that right now, but it’s the only way to get Phil back his son.”
It took a moment for this to register. He only reacted with his eyes. “The prince is alive?” he whispered.
I nodded.
“And you know where he is?”
I nodded again.
“Then why aren’t we going to get him?”
“Because he’s safe where he is. If we bring him back here, I have to be sure there won’t be another try on his life. And to be sure, I need to be alone with the queen.”
Anders nodded. He climbed onto the stall gate and idly swung back and forth, like a thoughtful adolescent. Finally he said, “I outrank them. I can order them to leave their post. It won’t stay secret for long, though.”
“I don’t need long. Twenty minutes will be enough.”
He stepped back to the ground. “You’re right, I’d be risking my career to trust you. If you let me down, my new job will be kicking your ass.”
I grinned. After the sleazy folk I’d met in Cape Querna, working with Anders was like rain on a hot afternoon. “Fair enough.”
We scheduled our jailhouse visit for the following evening. The next day I entered Arentia City on foot with the rest of the proletariat during the morning rush. I wanted to see Rhiannon’s public punishment for myself.
The walls around Arentia City dated from a time when their strength meant the very survival of the culture. Fifteen feet thick and thirty feet high, they now served mainly as traffic control, funneling pedestrians and wagons onto the four main thoroughfares. Every few years a city commissioner or busybody noble would suggest either tearing down the old wall or knocking extra gates in it, but nothing ever happened. For one thing, it would mean redesigning all the money, which prominently featured Arentia City’s walled skyline.
The wall, though, wasn’t a solid barrier. It housed a network of passageways and rooms designed to shelter soldiers under battle conditions. One of these rooms had been remodeled and secured to function as Queen Rhiannon’s permanent prison cell. It contained a cot, a small table and the basics of toiletry, but nothing else was allowed. She could have no comforts or personal belongings at all. Food was delivered through a slot, and dishes passed out the same way. She was issued one candle a month.
Her cell opened straight out of the wall on the city side. A metal cage bolted to the stone enclosed the doorway and the space in front of it, where a crude stool became her new throne. The exposed sides allowed the citizens an unobstructed view of their fallen queen when, every day, she emerged at dawn to take her place in the cage and endure her public punishment.