De Loungville whispered to a man at the corner, “Are the men in place?”
“Waiting for you,” came the reply. “Thought I saw something up there on the roof a few minutes back, but it might have been a cat. Things are pretty quiet.”
De Loungville nodded, half seen in the gloom, then said, “Let’s go!”
They entered the whorehouse as if it were an enemy camp. Jadow struck a bouncer a head-ringing blow that brought the man to his knees before he could stop them entering the room, and as he knelt on the floor, Erik caught him with another blow that rendered him unconscious.
Roo ran past de Loungville and a couple of women too startled by the eruption of violence to do more than sit in openmouthed astonishment. He reached the stairs, where a large woman of middle years had just turned to see what the disturbance at the front door was. She found Roo’s dagger at her chin. “Tannerson?” he said in a quiet voice dripping threat.
She went pale but whispered, “Top of the stairs, first door on the right.”
Roo said, “If you’re lying, you’re dead.”
The woman looked and saw Jadow and Erik coming toward her, and for the first time registered the size and lethal aspect of the two men bearing down on her. “No, I mean first door on the left!”
Roo was off and de Loungville a step behind. He turned and signaled for Erik and Jadow to hold the bottom of the stairs. He then turned back to see Roo reach the top of the stairs. Roo hesitated, motioned for de Loungville to kick the door, then ducked low.
De Loungville kicked the door and Roo was through in a crouch, his sword at the ready. He needn’t have bothered. Lying in bed was Sam Tannerson, his vacant eyes staring upward at the ceiling as blood dripped from a gash across his throat.
“What?” said de Loungville as he saw the tableau before him.
Roo hurried to the open window and looked nut. Someone had exited the room minutes before they had arrived, from the look of things. Roo turned and started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” asked Erik as he reached the top of the stairs and looked in.
Roo pointed to the corpse on the bed. “Some whore killed Tannerson, and I bet it was so she could steal my gold.”
De Loungville poked around in the man’s garments and said, “No purse or coins.”
Roo said, “Damn! So now some whore has all my gold.” De Loungville looked at the corpse. “Maybe. But we had better leave and talk about this somewhere else.”
Roo nodded once, put up his sword, and followed de Loungville out of the room.
The girl watched as across the street the men who had attempted to capture Tannerson left the inn, dragging out those men who had been playing pokiir downstairs. Other men prowling the streets nearby were checking to see if they were being observed. She was certain they hadn’t seen her leave Tannerson’s room. She glanced at her hands, half expecting to see them shake, but instead they were firm upon the eaves of the roof where she crouched, sheltered in the darkness from the sight of those below. She had never killed before, but no one had murdered her sister before either. The cold rage that had fueled this revenge had not diminished with Tannerson’s death, as she thought it would. There was no sense of closure, no sense of putting paid to the account. She still seethed inside and nothing would bring her sister back to her.
Curiosity pushed aside other concerns and she wondered who those men had been. She had been less than five minutes out of the bedroom when she had heard the voices raised in anger across the street. She had left her work clothes secreted in a bag behind a chimney on the roof of the house opposite the whorehouse Tannerson used as a headquarters, against her need to get out of bloody clothing after the job was done. When she had decided to avenge Betsy, she had vowed that either Tannerson or she would lie dead on the floor of that bedroom tonight.