Page 73 of Up in Smoke

Sandro blinked, and then his eyes widened. “Well, damn. I can just show up, tell him I’ll need a few weeks to finish the poem, and that we’ll be in and out of Asylum while I finish the composition. We’ll fill your wagon up, disguise how much we’re taking with clever packing, and that’ll do the trick. If we’re quick about it, we might even be able to reach the boundary and get them through it before we’re due back in Asylum to do my share of the work. And since I’ll be using a poem I wrote for that work, he’ll have no reason to think I’m lying about it.”

The women stared at Sandro, and I wondered at their silence.

“Who are they?”

“Scryers, and Mansfield cut their tongues out so they couldn’t reveal his secrets.” He pointed at the ground, and I realized they’d been writing in the mud to communicate. “He wanted to make sure anyone who could reveal his future plans wouldn’t be able to talk about it, but he wanted them alive so he could get an edge on anyone who might be trying to edge in on his turf. These ladies were wise enough to play dumb regarding their education, so as far as they know, he isn’t aware they’re literate. Mansfield tends to automatically believe anyone who isn’t just like him is uneducated or somehow a lesser person.”

What a jackass. “We have confirmation he’s up to something, then?”

“We know he cut out their tongues so they wouldn’t be able to talk about the future. He did the same with the other scryers—or he killed them.” Sandro scowled. “My first concern is to get them to New Orleans. I don’t know if the Voodoo queens can do anything to help them, but at least they’ll be safe.”

Well, as safe as it got in New Orleans. Unable to argue with him, I nodded. “I can find them a good shelter for the night, and we can skip back to Asylum long enough for you to act like a diva poet who needs perfect conditions to write your poetry.”

Sandro stared at the eldest of the women, who had gray streaking her brown hair, a gaunt and thin frame, and haunted eyes. “Do you believe that will work?”

After a moment of thought, the women closed her eyes, lifted her hands to cover her face, and stood still. I waited, keeping quiet from the fear I might disturb her working. The minutes dragged, but she finally lowered her hands and nodded. Then she crouched and wrote: His ambitions blind him. He will believe because he is desperate for that to be the truth.

If given a single opportunity, I would wring Mansfield’s neck. After I strangled him, I’d cut his body into tiny pieces and leave him for the wildlife. “What a dick.”

“My thought precisely.” Sandro eyed the woman’s words, scratched into the mud. He erased the evidence with his shoe, shaking his head. “Let’s find a good shelter closer to Tulsa, and then I shall pretend I’m quite the diva. But with my reputation, I won’t have to put on much of an act, and as Mansfield doesn’t truly understand how my magic works, it should be easy enough. I’ll tell him two to three weeks, and that I might not bring you back until then, as you are my inspiration, and I become quite crabby when my inspiration isn’t around.”

“Which, to him, means you’ll be in a mood to dispose of the ethically compromised,” I muttered.

“You are absolutely correct. And I will. I will take the risk of emailing Ryleigh, although I will take care to make sure even if Mansfield reads the correspondence somehow, he will not understand our intent. With luck, she’ll be waiting for us at the boundary with news.”

With luck, we’d be able to learn the truth, be able to prove it, and rid the Alley of Mansfield once and for all. While I worried our luck had run dry, I would do what I could with what I had. If it took me until my dying breath, I would seek out justice for all he’d done.

Somehow, the bastard would pay.