Amazon Queen (9 page)

It was another long
walk back to the farmhouse. I had tried to remove the cuffs on my own, but the son had snapped them tight and all I got for my efforts were scrapes to add to my already torn palm where he had bitten me. So I was forced to walk back to camp cuffed.

And the yard was full. Areto was running the warriors through their exercises, Lao had the hearth-keepers on the front porch tying bundles of herbs together, and Thea was sitting under the oak next to Sare. Today she
was
carving fetishes. As I approached, Thea held a falcon up to the sun. When she saw me, she dropped it onto the girl’s lap.

I walked past her. “Lao, meet me in the kitchen.”

The hearth-keeper took care of minor home repairs. She was my best bet for picking the lock.

“What happened?” Thea, of course. Alcippe, for all our disagreements, understood when I didn’t want to talk.

My new high priestess, however, seemed clueless in this arena, or more likely she just didn’t give a damn.

Lao had stood and was brushing bits of herb off her hands. When Thea asked her question, the hearth-keeper scowled. Mumbling, she stepped over a stack of lavender and tromped toward me.

“There should be a paper clip in the junk drawer. Should do the trick.”

Without answering Thea’s question or even glancing at her, I followed the hearth-keeper.

“Zery,” Thea called. “You had a call earlier. I told her you were out. Her name was Mel. Isn’t that your friend? The one who is out of town for a long time . . . ?”

My shoulders lowered. I stared at the safe-house door, scuffed and badly in need of a fresh coat of paint.

I didn’t know why Mel had called. She wasn’t supposed to be back in Madison until tonight. Maybe she had called from Michigan. No matter, I didn’t have to explain anything to Thea.

I kept walking. I was still going to Madison tomorrow and I still wasn’t taking Thea with me.

She would just have to deal with it.

I followed Lao. Behind me Thea cleared her throat

My strides strong, I stepped over the threshold.

My back spasmed.

I hesitated, feeling almost as if I had been poked.

I looked back. Thea still stood where I had last seen her, her arms hanging loose at her sides and a challenge on her face.

I kept walking.

Lao picked the lock on the handcuffs, then gave me a rag to run over my face while she got some medicine for my hand. I tried to wave her off, but she jerked my palm toward her and used her chest to cradle my hand as she dabbed medicine on the wound.

“Don’t know what bit you and I’m not asking to know, but there’s no reason to walk around torn up.”

After that I didn’t fight her. I just sat quietly as she put a piece of gauze over the wound and wrapped a bandage crosswise over my palm—not that different from how a pugilist wraps her hands before a fight.

She opened and closed my fingers, in and out of a fist. “Fine, won’t even slow you down.” She thumped on the table with her open palm, stood, and gathered up her supplies. She looked at the cuffs for a second before holding them out to me. “You probably have more use for these than I do.”

Chuckling, she shook her head and dropped them in my lap. Despite her humor, the gesture reminded me of Thea dropping the fetish in the artisan’s lap. I stared at them for a second. When I looked up, Lao was watching me; her eyes were serious.

“Best get out there.”

I waited, thinking she would say more, but apparently she was done. First aid kit in hand, she walked from the room.

Best get out there
. Four simple words. She could have said them any day, but for some reason I didn’t think she’d said them casually today.

I pushed back my chair and headed out into the yard.

Thea was sitting beside Areto. I’d say she was whispering in her ear, but that was more a feeling than fact. As I stepped off the porch, both stared at me as if expecting something—an explanation, I guessed.

It was a fair expectation. I didn’t arrive at camp in handcuffs too often. Unfortunately for them I wasn’t feeling driven to be particularly fair at the moment.

“There were women in the woods earlier,” I said, addressing Areto. “I expect them to come back. Set up some patrols starting now and keep them going until I say to stop.”

“Through the night?” Thea asked.

“Go,” I said to Areto. She nodded and trotted off.

“What kind of women were they?” Thea took a moment; she seemed to be inspecting me. I still looked rough; I hadn’t bothered washing anything except my face with Lao’s rag. I hadn’t even bothered looking in a mirror. So I didn’t know exactly how rough I looked, and I didn’t care.

“Bird-watchers.” Down by the barn Areto had gathered the warriors. I turned to join them.

As I walked away, Thea followed.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” The question didn’t come across as pushy, more bored curiosity.

However, I wasn’t much in the mood for sharing.

The warriors stood in a row. Two were probably my age; two were older. Bern cracked her knuckles as I approached. She was pushing two hundred, in both pounds and years. Her skin was cocoa colored but her eyes were bright green, like new grass. The contrast alone made her stand out. Add her size, how she carried herself, and the fact that she’d chosen to dye her hair bright red, and just looking at her would cause most humans to cross the street. It was why I had assigned her the job of backup when we had gone to steal the baby from the sons.

“Put Bern on the dusk shift.” I figured the birders were looking for the same owl I’d seen right before I stumbled upon them. Most people thought of owls as being nocturnal and many were, but I’d seen mine not long after dawn, which probably meant he was one of the few who preferred the grayer skies of dawn and dusk.

I was guessing the birders would know that too, and I hoped seeing Bern come at them even completely unarmed would send them scurrying back home for good.

Areto didn’t question me, but Thea did.

“Bird-watchers got you in handcuffs?” Her eyes showed interest and disbelief.

I slid my jaw to the side. The role of queen had some privileges, like not having to explain anything you did at camp. I answered to the high council and Artemis. That was it.

I took a step toward the barn.

I needed to fill Areto in a bit on what had happened, to make sure she knew the real threat wasn’t the birders I’d mentioned, but the son.

I wasn’t making the announcement publicly, because there was no reason for most of the camp’s occupants to know. It was the warriors’ jobs to protect the rest of the tribe.

Areto followed, as did Thea.

Looking at Areto, I said, “I want you to patrol for the birders, but there’s another threat too, a son. One of the sons with the baby. He’s been watching us. I don’t know for how long.”

Areto answered with only a silent incline of her head; she knew I would tell her all she needed to know and wouldn’t pry further.

Thea, however, was a different matter. “That explains the handcuffs, eh?” She darted her gaze at Areto. The warrior looked straight ahead, waiting for whatever else I had to say.

Her reaction reassured me that I was making the right choice regarding the position of lieutenant.

Still, I had decided I needed to tell Thea what had happened. “On my walk, the son returned.”

Her brow quirked. “Alone?”

“Yes.”

She pursed her lips and looked to the side.

I tightened my jaw. One son had got me into the cuffs. It was a truth I couldn’t deny.

“I’m leaving in the morning for Madison, with the hearth-keepers,” I announced.

“And me?” she asked.

“Knowing the son is around, we can’t afford to both be away from camp.”

A muscle in her neck twitched.

“My council contact hasn’t called back. The sons in Madison are our best hope.”

“The sons who are out of town? Who won’t be back for some time?” She watched me from the corner of her eyes.

“They may not be. I don’t know, but Mel is coming back early. We spoke last night.” We hadn’t and it wouldn’t be that hard for Thea to find out I was lying, but I felt no need to be completely honest with her. Basic need to know facts . . . I was going to Madison to get information on the sons or the baby. She was staying here to help Areto protect the camp.

I turned my attention back to the warrior. “You will be in charge until I get back.”

Areto’s eyes flicked to the side toward Thea, but if the high priestess was annoyed by my decision, she didn’t show it.

“Your friend left the tribe. What makes you think she will help us?”

I smiled. “I don’t . . . or at least she won’t do anything
because
it helps us, but if I can convince her a child is at risk . . . ” I shook my head. “Goddess bless the son who gets in her way.”

*   *   *

I was asleep, or as asleep as I get, when two soft taps of someone’s knuckles on my door awakened me. I was on my feet, my staff in my hand, before a third could sound.

Dressed only in an oversized T-shirt, I padded to the door and waited. Two more raps, silence, and then another. Code to let me know a warrior was waiting on the other side.

Keeping the staff ready, I opened the door.

Areto, her mouth grim, greeted me. “Bern. She found a body. One of the birders, we think.”

I jerked on a pair of shorts and followed her.

It was maybe one in the morning. The full moon was past, but the night was still bright enough to make out the two people in the yard. Bern stood with her arms hanging stiffly at her side. Thea stood beside her looking authoritative and in control.

When I stepped onto the sidewalk, she strode toward me. “One of your bird-watchers?” She motioned to where a human-sized hump lay under the oak that dominated our yard.

I glanced at Bern, but even with the moon’s light her expression was unreadable. As if sensing my thoughts, Thea flipped on a flashlight. “Bern says she found her next to the obelisk.”

I cut my gaze to the silent warrior. “Dead?”

She inclined her head slightly.

I returned her nod and looked back at the body. “Were there others? Any sign more had been there?”

A shake this time.

Processing this, I walked to the body. I recognized her instantly—the woman who had challenged me, the leader of the group. She was dressed as I’d seen her earlier, same cheery yellow T-shirt with suns and daisies, same khaki shorts.

“Heart attack?” I asked, this time of Thea.

“No. It looks like she was strangled with these.” In her hand was a pair of nunchakus. The pair I’d lost in the woods while fighting with the son.

“Are they . . . ?” She twisted them over. A crescent moon was carved on the end of one stick. I didn’t need to answer; that told her they were mine.

“Of course, Bern . . . Areto tells me she’s an expert with these.” Thea paused as if waiting for me to say something . . . to jump on the story, to lay blame on Bern?

I looked at the warrior who still stood silently watching. “Did you kill her?”

“No.” Her first word, and I believed her.

I looked back at Thea. “She didn’t do it.”

“But if she didn’t, then who . . . ” She glanced at the crescent, then pressed her lips shut.

“The son?” I offered, although I didn’t believe that either. The son had no gripe with the birders. Why would he kill one? Unless it was to make trouble for us.

I bent down to study the body. The skin on her neck was waxy, almost transparent in places, but her face was a dark angry red. I picked up her hand; her fingers were limp. I motioned for Thea to direct the flashlight beam closer. As she did, I pressed my fingers against the flesh of the bird-watcher’s underarm. The white imprint where my fingers had touched shone white. I checked her eyes next. They were open and flat looking. I touched her skin there too, checking for stiffness. There was none; rigor mortis hadn’t set in. She hadn’t been dead long.

I glanced at Bern. “How was she when you found her?” It was a test; I did believe her, but it didn’t hurt to run a check or two.

She motioned at the body with her hand. “Like that, mainly. I think she may have been dragged a bit.”

She must have seen the question on my face.

“Look at her heels. When I picked her up, dirt fell onto me.”

I checked the woman’s shoes, Bern was right. Clumps of moist earth were caked on the heels of her practical white walking shoes.

“Someone bigger than her, then,” I murmured. Which narrowed down the possibilities by about zero.

I checked her neck then. From what Areto had told me—and the state of the birder’s face—I knew she had been strangled, but I wanted to see for myself. There was a line of bruises that ran from the front of her neck to the sides, where it angled up slightly. It was thinner in the front too, just like you’d expect from the nunchakus—the chain cutting into the front of her throat and the rods pressing against the sides.

“What should we do?” Thea asked.

I’d been asking myself the same question. A woman was dead. I knew she had friends, and chances were she had family too. Someone would notice at some point that she had gone missing. When they did, I couldn’t have them coming here.

The question, however, was: should we destroy the body or leave it somewhere with hopes of directing the investigation away from us? I sure as hell wasn’t calling the human police to my camp.

I flipped off the flashlight and stood. With Thea in my sight, I asked. “Can you clean her up? Make it look like she died somewhere else?” I didn’t understand magic, couldn’t work it myself, but I knew with wards almost anything was possible.

The priestess stared down at the body. “The evidence will still be there, but I can make it so no human will notice it. Deflect their attention away from anything that would lead back to us.”

I nodded; it was what I wanted to hear.

“It won’t change what other people know, though. If anyone knew she was coming here, and they saw you yesterday, they can still report to the police.”

Bern stepped forward. “Not if they already have the killer.”