The Dragon Done It (59 page)

"Too brackish for my liking," said Androcles, "but cleaner than the waterways of that cesspit you live in. What can we do for you, healer?"

Mascoli dug in his pouch for the shred of red-brown stained linen in its tiny bottle. "There is blood on this cloth. I want you to find the man it came from, if his body lies in the water."

Androcles took the scrap of cloth and put it into water he scooped into his cupped palm. Then both of them tasted the water. Brother Mascoli knew that they smelled and tasted things many thousands of times more sensitively than humans. They'd found bodies for him before. It helped the grieving widows of fishermen to reach some closure, and bodies were just dead things to nonhumans

The two water denizens looked at each other and then began to laugh.

"Do you mind telling us what is so funny?" asked the soldier, his eyes narrow.

"You've made an error with the sample, Brother," said Juliette. "This blood is not that of a human."

"Fey blood?" asked Mascoli warily. This opened up a whole new and dangerous area.

Carlo ground his teeth. "No, Brother. We've been set up. Pig blood, I'll warrant. Say goodbye to your friends. We need to get back to town."

Carlo walked at a brisk pace for a man with a crutch. "Where are we going?" asked Mascoli, keeping up, but not without effort.

"To the blacksmith. I doubt if there is anyone else in this one-donkey town capable of making a key. We already know where the bastards got the blood. The dogs led us right there."

"Pig blood! You mean . . . ?"

"Yes, Brother," said the soldier. "Fresh blood sausage probably. We haven't been busy trying to find a murderer. We've been busy trying to prevent one. The mob failed him. Now he will let the law—or that useless drunk that passes for it here—do it for him. And I think I now know why, too, and why he tried to do it that way."

"What? I mean who? Why?"

The soldier smiled sharkishly. "You sound confused, Brother. I was too, until I realized just now that I had looked at the wrong motive for the crime. I thought it was a falling out between black lotos smuggler-bosses. That this Vincente had somehow gotten in the way. Instead it was a clever way of getting rid of a thorn in his flesh, that the smuggler-master dared not simply have killed. The locals liked his money—the place is awash with more loose money than you'd ever find in a poor fishing and small market-town. They feared him and obeyed his orders. But they were scared of the witch. They respected her. He was an incomer, and she was thwarting him where she could. She deals with blue Lotos from the swamp. She did not want to lose her customers to the black."

They'd arrived at the smithy, where the smith was hammering away at his trade. He was a burly man, as smiths are wont to be.

"I want to know who you made a key for," said Carlo, not beating about the bush, pointing at him with the crutch.

The smith eyed him truculently. "I don't know what you're talking about." He started to turn back to his work.

Mascoli scarcely saw Carlo move, he was so fast. The crutch speared out and hit the smith in the solar plexus. As the man doubled forward, Carlo twisted the top of the crutch and drew out a long, thin concealed blade. He held it against the man's throat. "Unless you wish to die, don't lie to me. Who else could make a key?"

"They will kill me," said the smith fearfully. But there was resolve behind that fear. He looked at Brother Mascoli, a hasty glance, but something both of them saw. He believed—or perhaps just hoped—that the soldier would not kill him before a man of God.

Mascoli himself was less sure. He did not approve of the violence, but there was a time and place for it. And great evil would come unless they found evidence here. At the very least the Strega woman would die. The flow of black lotos would do more harm by far.

"My friend," he said with gentle firmness. "You know the woman Lucia Bari. I believe her ill sayings were respected." He would do penance for that too. But it was necessary.

The smith nodded. "She could turn cows' milk. Or women barren and cold. Or so my wife believes," he added warily.

He believed too, Mascoli could see. Both were simple herbal matters, hedge magic. But here in this rural swampland, well, little could be more important. A man's life was just his life, but his children were more than that. No wonder she was respected.

"A dying curse is powerful," he said. "I will tell her what you have done."

"I have done nothing to her," protested the smith. "I was not even with the crowd. I came home before the Dottore bought wine for the men in the inn. I would have stayed if I had known," he admitted. "I would do nothing to the Streghira. I swear."

"Yet you made the key for Vincente. So he could escape after he pretended he was dead. And you fear him, and his smuggler friends."

"Vincente? I do not fear Vincente," said the affronted smith. "He owes me money. You say . . . he pretended to be dead? Anyway I did not make the key for him."

"My friend," said Mascoli, "do you think that you will have anything to fear from an outsider and his friends when the truth comes out? That they tried to get the people of this town to murder the Streghira by pretending that she had killed Vincente? Who owed, by the sounds of it, every man in the district money. You made the key for Dottore Sarbucco, did you not?"

Slowly, the man nodded. "But you cannot touch him. He is too powerful."

Carlo slid the blade back into its sheathing crutch. "As an agent of the Signoria di Notte of the Republic of Venice, I think you will find that I can," he said grimly.

The smith's eyes nearly started out of his head.

"You will accompany me back to the cells," said Palinni. "My patrol of Schiopettieri are hidden in the house. We are going to visit the home of Dottore Sarbucco. Even if I cannot find him with black lotos on his hands . . . I think I may find a key, and a certain very alive dead man who was willing to pretend death to escape his debts. That will be enough to persuade the justices in Venice to put Sarbucco away for a considerable length of time, if they will not oblige me by hanging him."

"But his men . . ." said the smith warily.

"He lives about half a mile outside the town. We will have him away in a boat and on his way to Venice before the town even knows."

Brother Mascoli did not accompany them on their raid. Instead he went to the church. He felt a need for prayer, and a little soul searching. He found that his soul was not as offended by his conduct as he'd thought it should be. He was just walking out to greet the newly returned Father Baritto, when he heard a great commotion.

It was Carlo and the plump Schiopettieri Karg, walking on either side of a man in chains. They were being followed by most of the town. Father Baritto gaped.

Brother Mascoli took him by the arm. "It would appear, Father, that we have witnessed something no man has seen for fifteen hundred years. A man returned from the dead. But this one is no messiah. I think he has just come to pay his debts."

"He owes me money," said Father Baritto.

Later, Mascoli sat and enjoyed some more of the Barbera at the inn with the agent of the Signoria di Notte. It seemed a good wine, now, and not at all like blood.

"So he screamed his lungs out while Sarbucco gathered witnesses, well liquored witnesses, into a suitable mob. Once they started pounding on the door, Vincente broke open the bladder full of pig's blood and lay down in it. I believe that Sarbucco made them all hold back while he certified the man dead. He then had Lampara lock the second door, making sure that no one would find the missing corpse, leaving Vincente to use the spare key to let himself out and take off in the twilight for Sarbucco's house. Of course the deed was supposed to be done, and Lucia dead, by the time morning came and the mob sobered up enough to realize that they'd killed someone they were scared of."

"What are you planning to do with her?" asked Mascoli.

"Leave her to you, I should think," said Carlo with a grin. "You're going to preach at her, aren't you? She's had something of a fright. That should keep her from playing with real danger . . . which the blue lotos is not. And anyone attempting to move black lotos through her patch will suffer severe consequences now, I should think. I gather a few people have left town hastily since she was freed."

"You are not the evil man I thought you might be, Carlo Palinni."

"Not good either. And my name is not Palinni, of course. But you aren't the saint I feared you might be either, Brother. Sometimes we need saints, and sometimes we need a bit of pragmatism. I've been looking for a priest I could speak to with confidence for a while. Will you hear my confession? I've done things with this crutch that weigh on my conscience, and in my line of work a man can die unexpectedly."

Brother Mascoli nodded.

Editors' Introduction
The Long and Short of It

A John Justin Mallory Story
Mike Resnick

Dead Wolf in a Hat

Graham Edwards

This Town Ain't Big Enough

Tanya Huff

The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds

Neil Gaiman

The Whistling Room

William Hope Hodgson

Doppelgangster

Laura Resnick

Claus of Death

Michael M. Jones

McNamara's Fish

Ron Goulart

Gunsel and Gretel

Esther M. Friesner

Alimentary, My Dear Watson

Lawrence Schimel

Fox Tails

Richard Parks

A Case of Identity

Randall Garrett

The Case of the
Skinflint's Specters

Brian M. Thomsen

The Black Bird

David Barr Kirtley

The Enchanted Bunny

David Drake

The Adventure of the Pearly Gates

Mike Resnick

The Seventh Chapter

Harry Turtledove

The Detective of Dreams

Gene Wolfe

The Witch's Murder

Dave Freer and Eric Flint