Blood Ward Page 2

  “We’re Hunters with a Writ of Seizure for Lora,” Kard told the two workers. “The Wardkeeper authorized us to check on the crime scene and investigate. May we ask you some questions?”

  “Do we gets a choice?” the woman with her hands on the gun asked.

  “Can’t make you answer,” Kard said. “We just want to see justice done.”

  The two women exchanged a glance, then one shrugged.

  “May’s well,” she said. “What you want to know?”

  “What happened?” he asked. “That you know?”

  Teer adopted the easy waiting position any herdsman was familiar with. He could stand like that for hours, and his only real part in this chunk of the job was to learn.

  “Carind sleep two nights here,” the younger woman said. “Slept alone first night. Lora went with him second.” She shook her head. “Not sure why.”

  “Oh?” Kard asked, his tone neutral.

  “Lora’s not one of the working girls,” the woman told him. “Sheela or I”—she gestured to the older woman—“we’s for rent. Lora’s the owner’s daughter. She’s not.”

  “But she went willingly?” Kard asked carefully.

  “So far as we know,” Sheela said flatly. “Enough folks in the inn she wouldn’t gone by force. But…Carind is Marked of House Ilit.”

  The room was suddenly cold and silent, and Teer shivered. The Marked of a Spehari House were under that House’s protection, guarded from many of the actions a Spehari could normally take against a Unity citizen without punishment.

  They were the favored merchants and supporters of the demigods who ruled the Unity. That put a very different tone on the Writ Teer and Kard had taken on.

  Kard didn’t show any of that in his voice as he continued.

  “Ah. And who found Carind?” he asked.

  “I did,” Sheela insisted.

  She was lying, Teer realized. He wasn’t sure how he knew that or why she was lying, but she was. That was interesting, though he wasn’t sure what it meant.

  “And what did you find?” Kard asked gently.

  “Door was broke. Room was a mess. Carind was on the floor, bleeding out. Called the Wardwatches.”

  “I see,” Kard allowed. “We have the key to the room. May we see it?”

  “If you must.” Sheela gestured them up the stairs at the back of the room. “Room six.”

  “Thank you.”

  There was a moment of quiet as Kard led the way toward the stairs, then the younger woman spoke from behind them.

  “Don’t believe it,” the woman snapped. “Lora’s no killer. That ba—”

  “Shut it,” Sheela barked. “Sorry, Hunter. Lora is one of us. We…don’t trust all we hear.”

  “Then trust in the Unity’s justice,” Kard said levelly. “Our job is just to bring her back.”

  3

  The stairs led up to a wood-floored hallway lined with unevenly spaced doors. Each door had an ornamental number painted on it in a delicate hand, turning a practical necessity into surprisingly gorgeous decoration.

  Room six was one of the two at the end of the hall—and notable for having several planks across it, the boards reinforcing the door where someone had broken it open. The lock was a rough replacement that contrasted with the locks on the other rooms and matched the key the Wardwatch had given Kard.

  “Open it,” the El-Spehari ordered Teer, passing him the key.

  Shrugging, the Merik youth obeyed. Something told him to be careful and he dropped a hand to the grip of his quickshooter as he pushed the door open, the scent of blood clear to his nose.

  Kard was similarly ready as they moved into the room, sweeping for threats they didn’t find.

  “Nice room,” Teer murmured. The rooms Kard had rented at Anristo’s were stunning luxury to him, but this was something else again. It was at least half again the size of any bedroom he’d ever been in, with a four-poster bed against one wall and a seating area of comfortable-looking stuffed chairs.

  Several delicately carved crystal lamps were scattered around the room, their magical light easily controlled to provide steady light—but requiring regular recharging by a Spehari or replacement crystals that had been charged by a Spehari.

  Keeping crystal lamps running wasn’t cheap, but these ones continued to emit their warm red light despite the daylight leaking through the half-open shutters.

  Teer carefully crossed the room and opened the shutters to let the daylight in, making everything clearly visible.

  “What do you see?” Kard asked, the El-Spehari still standing by the door with his hands on his guns.

  Teer turned around to survey the room in the fresh light.

  “Pricey room,” he said. “I’d guess only a handful like this in town. Carind’s rich.”

  Real rich, too. Not the “rich” of men like Teer’s mother’s new husband, who ran a successful ranch and saw a lot of money flow through his hands and books…but never really had that much to spend after the costs of the business.

  “He’s Marked,” Kard replied. “That doesn’t get given for nothing. He’s important to one of the Houses.”

  Teer nodded, sweeping his gaze across the room. There was the blood. It started on the blankets, then trailed across the floor to a large stain on the edge of the rug around the bed. The bed coverings were a mess, though Teer didn’t see anything in them to really speak of struggle.

  “Fight started on the bed,” he guessed. “Carind hit the floor; she followed. Kept hitting him. With one of the lamps?”

  “Why the lamps?” Kard asked.

  Teer pointed at the fragments he had just noticed reflecting in the sunlight.

  “Somethin’ made of redcrystal broke while they were fightin’,” he said. “Fragments everywhere.”

  Kard joined him at the edge of the rug.

  “Strange. I don’t see a wrecked lamp around, but you’re right,” he agreed. “That’s a lot of blood, too. Carind was hurt worse than they said.”

  “He lived,” Teer noted. Ashan hadn’t lied about that, but there was enough blood on the rug and the bed that he would have figured someone had died.

  “Door was broken from the outside,” Kard said. “Was locked from in here. That wasn’t her.”

  “Someone else?” Teer looked around the room. He didn’t see any sign that there’d been more people in there than the two they knew of.

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t matter, either,” his partner admitted. “We’re not detectives. We’re trackers. Any sign where she went from here?”

  Teer examined the floor leading out of the room and shook his head.

  “Nothing to hold tracks, and people been in and out all mornin’,” he admitted. “She took a horse, though, right?”

  “That’s what we’re told,” Kard agreed. “I’ll go get our horses and gear and settle up the bill at Anristo’s. You check out the stables here, see if you can find a trail.”

  “Right.”

  Teer wasn’t sure he could find a trail out of stables in the middle of town…but on the other hand, he wasn’t the one who was supposed to pay the bill at Anristo’s, either.

  “What you want?” the older woman asked when Teer returned to the common room.

  “Sheela, right?” he replied. “We were told Lora stole a horse. I’ll need to see the stables.”

  Sheela glared at him.

  “Can’t steal what’s hers, can she?” she snapped. “Took one of her da’s horses.”

  “Not saying ’twas a crime,” Teer said. “But need to know where she left. Where’s her da?”

  “Gone. Hidin’ from folk askin’ questions,” Sheela told him.

  He met her gaze for a few moments, but she finally looked away and nodded.

  “Follow me,” she told him.

  Teer obeyed. He probably could have found the stables himself, but following Sheela also showed him the route through the inn that their bounty would have taken. There was, he figured, no way Lora had escaped
without being seen by at least one person.

  On the other hand, Teer was no fan of the Spehari or the Unity himself. He saw the need to bring criminals to justice, to protect people from attack, but he didn’t have much sympathy for a man who was one of the Spehari’s favorite pets.

  He grasped why the inn staff favored Lora, even if law and justice said she had to face a trial for beating a man to the edge of death. They knew the girl and not Carind.

  Everyone favored their friends over strangers.

  The stables Sheela led him to were plain but solid, attached to the back of the inn and out of view from most passersby.

  “Front stalls are for guests; back six with the blue paint are Sardo’s,” Sheela told him.

  “Sardo owns the inn?” Teer asked.

  “Yeah. He and Lora, since her ma died a ways back.”

  Teer nodded, feeling a spike of kinship for the woman he was chasing. He’d lost a parent too. He knew how that made people hurt.

  “Thank you, Sheela,” he told her. “I’m fine from here.”

  “Need to stay,” she replied. “Make sure you don’t steal horses.”

  Teer gave her a pained smile but nodded.

  Except for the very best horses, none would be worth more than a stone—and Teer had half a dozen stones tucked away in a concealed purse. He could buy Sardo’s remaining horses. He wasn’t going to steal them.

  Leaving the inn employee at the door, he walked down the stables to the blue-painted stalls. Three of them were empty. The other three still had horses in them, dark-haired mixes of a type he recognized: not necessarily pretty, but well-behaved and healthy.

  All three horses were distressed by the absence of half their regular herd. Teer looked around and found what he needed: there was a box of oatcakes on a shelf at the end of the stables.

  It didn’t much matter what he fed the three horses. It was the act of feeding them and talking to them in a calm, soft voice that soothed their nerves. It took him a few minutes to calm all three horses down…but he wasn’t impressed with whoever ran the stables.

  Shaking his head, he checked the empty stalls. One clearly didn’t have a regular resident, now that he looked more closely. There was no tack hung up in the stall, no brushes or blankets…no manure on the floor.

  The other two had clearly been occupied until recently. One stall had been stripped of everything, presumably loaded into saddlebags to provide supplies to care for a horse on a long trip. Lora had made sure she had what she needed to keep her mount going—and then some more.

  Teer figured she’d erred on the side of grabbing everything.

  The other stall was still mostly full. Whoever had taken that horse was expecting to be back in the next few days, which meant the girl’s father had probably taken that one to wherever he was hiding. Sardo wasn’t in trouble, after all. Just avoiding people asking questions.

  “Sheela,” Teer called the woman over. “Who takes care of ’ese horses?”

  “Sardo,” the employee replied. “There’s a few kids from around who help out; they’ll probably feed ’em as sun goes down.”

  So, Sardo hadn’t completely abandoned his animals, Teer reflected. He’d still left the three there stressed without calming them, but it wasn’t like Sardo wouldn’t have been stressed this morning.

  “Here, girl,” he told one of the horses. “I’m a friend; just need to see you closer.”

  He slipped into the stall, reaching out to feed the mare another oatcake. The horse relaxed to his tone, leaning into his hand as he reached out to touch her shoulder. Despite his being a stranger, she let him pick up her front leg and examine her hoof.

  Teer was a bounty hunter now, but he’d been a ranch hand before that—and he’d been taking care of horses since he had a mere ten turnings. He had some idea of what to look for when he was trying to follow a horse.

  And the horseshoes were everything he’d hoped for. Presumably made by a local smith, they were the artwork of someone who channeled creative urges into their day-to-day work. A distinctive pattern with a clear maker’s mark.

  “Now, girl, gimme…” The mare huffed at him, but she let him check her back hooves as well. All of her horseshoes were the same, shod at the same time and by the same farrier using the same shoes.

  Checking the other two horses was the work of a few minutes and most of the box of oatcakes. The shoes weren’t as fancy as shoes that were bought to be decorative, but the smith’s work made them distinctive enough, and all three horses wore the same shoes.

  He put what was left of the box of horse treats back on the shelf and gave each horse a soft pat on the nose before stepping away and realizing Sheela was still there.

  “I’m done here,” he told her. “Not gonna steal the horses. If you’ll show me, I’ll head out front and meet my boss.”

  “Never seen that before,” she muttered, but gestured for him to follow her. “They’re well behaved, those mares, but…”

  “I know horses,” Teer said. “You’ve just got to treat ’em right.”

  He took a moment as she was leading him out to pause at the exit from the stables and look around. There was only one way out of the inn’s yard, and it headed east onto the main street.

  Teer suspected he knew exactly where Lora had gone, at least to start.

  4

  Kard arrived at the front of the hotel just as Teer was stepping out of the yard, their two horses following behind him like the extremely well-trained animals they were. Saddlebags hung from both animals’ tack, holding all of their worldly possessions.

  Newly formed habit meant that the first thing Teer checked when he reached Star was the long scabbard hanging at the rear of the mare’s saddle. It held the rifled hunter he’d been given by his mother’s husband when he’d left with Kard, a breech-loading long-range gun of exceptional quality.

  The gun was worth more than anything else he owned…and it was the only weapon he’d ever killed a man with.

  “She left the yard onto the main street, headed east,” Teer told Kard. “Was panicking, I think, so she’d’ve kept going east. I figure I can pick out her horseshoes once we’re outside the ward.”

  There’d be a lot fewer horses on the road and there was a higher chance of mud, too, once they’d left the city.

  “Let’s ride,” Kard replied, running his hands over Clack’s mane. Clack was a nondescript speckled gelding, similar to both Star and the horses Teer had befriended in the inn’s stable in being of good health and no particular breed.

  The two men mounted up with the ease of long practice and set off. Carlon was awake now, and the coaches and horses around them were pressing in on Teer. He hadn’t noticed it as much when he was focused on the horses or the crime scene, something he noted for later.

  If he was focusing, maybe a city wouldn’t be so overwhelming? For now, at least, he was just happy to be leaving town.

  “Girl’s father took one of the horses, but he’s somewhere in town,” Teer told Kard. “She took another, with all of the gear. Wasn’t planning on coming back.”

  “We’ll change that,” Kard said. “Might take longer than I thought, if she’s being smart about things.”

  “We’ll see, I figure. She’s townfolk, not country, so might be easy.”

  Just because Lora knew what she was doing with the horse didn’t mean she’d know what she was doing in the country.

  “Hoy, Hunters!” a stranger’s voice shouted. “Hol’ up.”

  Teer exchanged a look with Kard but pulled Star up as Kard controlled Clack, turning to the source of the voice.

  The shaven-headed Merik man who rode up to them wore practical clothing, much the same shirts and breeches everyone else was wearing, except his were dyed a deep red that would never stand up to heavy wear. It was a sign of wealth that tried to be subtle but still screamed its intent to anyone with the eyes to see.

  “You are the Hunter Kard and his apprentice, yes?” the stranger asked. “The coats
are distinctive.”

  “That would be their duty,” Kard said calmly, precisely. “How may we help?”

  “My name is Terino, I work for Carind, Marked of House Ilit,” the Merik introduced himself. “You are pursuing the woman who attacked my employer, yes?”

  “We are,” Kard said. “That is a matter of Writ and Unity law, yes.”

  “My master is awake now and he wished me to speak with you,” Terino told them. “His injuries will take some time to heal and he is angry. He wishes you to know that he will expand upon the rewards promised by Ward and Unity to bring Lora to justice.

  “If she is delivered alive to the Wardwatches, I or another of Carind’s factors will pay you an additional ten stone beyond the promised reward.”

  Teer sucked in a breath, aware that his reaction would be obvious to Terino but unable to help himself. Ten stone was half of what they’d been paid for Boulder—and Boulder had been a brigand leader who’d rampaged across the Eastern Territories and killed nine Wardwatches.

  “Carind is very invested in seeing his attacker brought to justice,” Terino said in reply to Teer’s wordless commentary. “It will, of course, be easier to pay you if you bring her directly to Carlon, but we will endeavor to find and compensate you regardless.”

  Teer only understood about two-thirds of that sentence, but he figured he’d got the meaning.

  “We will do what we can,” Kard said gruffly. “Thank you for letting us know. Come, Teer.”

  The youth pulled Star in behind his mentor as Kard continued riding east, leaving Terino sitting on his horse in the middle of the street.

  “Kard?” Teer murmured a few minutes later.

  “Later,” Kard snapped. “We’re reaching the edge of the ward. You said you could find her trail?”

  Teer could see the green dome coming up ahead of them, its glowing haze reaching down to the soil. He took a breath as they reached it, tightening his hands on the reins.

  Few animals liked crossing a ward—which was part of their value to the wardtowns—but horses were mostly trained for it. It was still wise to keep a grip on the reins, just in case.