Hoard It All Before, page 10
"Cordelia Quinn did you say?" interrupted the judge.
"Yes," replied Zin, "a new hire. Why? Do you know her? Has she done something like this before?"
"No, no, not that I can think of, but the name does have a ring of familiarity about it. But go on, you were saying?"
"Ms. Quinn was overheard speaking ill of the deceased, Porter Kohl. She tended the behemoth and it's been determined that Porter died by behemoth poisoning. She may have also lured the dragon Duncan to the behemoth enclosure."
"Why would she do that?" Javert asked.
"Dragons imprint on people," Zin explained. "When their handler dies, they'll attach themselves to the first person they see next."
I rolled my eyes and, because of the human standing right next to him, had to fight down the urge to correct Zin. This handler attachment notion is a rumor based on that habit of imprinting at birth I mentioned earlier. So far, I've yet to come across a single dragon who has any evidence to prove the notion's true. Unfortunately, no one in the rumor department has asked about my research.
Zin continued, "Making sure Duncan woke where she spent most of her time is a clear indication that Ms. Quinn wanted to be the first human Duncan saw after his old handler died."
"Or that said dragon just passed out in the mud," muttered Fergus, who had been pouting ever since Javert had said the Kailin wasn't coming.
"I see. Yes, it's all very interesting. Very open-and-shut," the judge said, his pudgy hand slipping over his jacket pocket.
Open-and-shut? Even I knew the evidence was circumstantial at best. We needed the Kailin. Of all the times for her to have other business to attend to.
"Sir, if I may present my evidence," said Boris as he pushed his way to the front of the crowd. In his hand I saw the photo of me and Porter that Cordelia had altered. I tried to talk Boris out of this gambit when he discussed it with me earlier. Now, after seeing the judge's style, I could only imagine it backfiring.
See, when Boris found the photo after searching through Cordelia's belongings, he reasoned that if Cordelia really hated Porter enough to kill him, she would have used his face as a dart board, slashed it with a knife, or damaged it in some other manner. But she hadn't even crossed it out with a black marker. She'd merely pasted her photo over it. This, according to Boris, clearly indicated that Cordelia was not a violent offender.
I had my doubts whether Judge Judge Javert would understand the subconscious symbolism Boris had interpreted from the photo's condition.
"No, no," Javert protested, "I'm coming to a decision. I cannot be having my mind cluttered with too much information." He pondered for all of ten seconds before saying. "Yes, as I said, this does seem open-and-shut, but as much of this evidence is only circumstantial--" A wave of relief made my legs tremble. The case would be dismissed. Or delayed until it could be heard by the Kailin. "--I cannot rule to bring the full punishment of the minotaur down on the defendant."
He stopped speaking and we all watched him, waiting for more. Reinhart nudged him. Javert gave a little start and shook his head as if only just realizing he had yet to deliver the sentence.
"As I said, the evidence is circumstantial at best. I do not have the means to take her with me now, but you have her secured?" Reinhart said we did. "Then keep her there. I will send someone to collect her in, let me think, the jailor is off for a-- Well, he called it a yoga retreat. Not sure what that is exactly, but nevertheless, he's due back in three days and can come collect her then. What you have said and what Reinhart has told me leads me to understand the Quinn woman wants to work with dragons." Zin nodded. "Then she will have her wish. I'm sentencing her to the Pits."
There weren't any gasps this time, but there were a few groans of disgust.
One of the region's main fuel sources, in addition to water mills, is dragon dung. I'm not proud of it, but what can I say, even the smallest of us is a big creature and what goes in must come out. In a slightly altered and much stinkier form. But that end product--
CORDELIA: Hind-end product?
DUNCAN: Good one.
The end product can't simply be fed into your furnace or your steam-powered jalopy. It has to be sent to what are known as the Pits, a work camp where dragon waste is processed. This involves the smelly, back-breaking, and dangerous work of spreading it out, drying it, turning it, then compressing it into bricks. The bricks can then be transported to retailers to sell at a profitable margin to customers who burn the bricks to fuel their furnaces, lamps, ovens, and more.
There's also a new system being worked on in which the poop is placed into sealed vats that collect the gas, which can then be piped into people's homes for lighting. But even this modern marvel involves someone going into the vats and turning the foul stuff to keep it doing its thing.
Regardless of how the poo is handled, let's be clear on one thing: No one willingly works at the Pits. Not in the processing department, anyway. I'm sure administration and shipping are perfectly pleasant places to spend the working day.
Despite being a nasty process, dragon dung is big business, second only to the circuses. Since the owners of the Pits are as greedy as humans get, they do whatever they can to keep the Pits' substantial amount of profit for themselves. Which is why a couple decades ago, the owners turned the hard labor over to convicts. After all, you don't have to pay convicts and you definitely don't need to bother treating them well, or provide them safe working conditions. And if one of your convicts injures him or herself (easily done in a job that requires frequent use of pitchforks), gets an infection, and dies, there's always another convict to take his or her place.
My point about the Pits is, you don't want the person you think might be your next handler, possibly your friend, to be sent there. I had to do something to clear Cordelia's name.
18 - SLEUTHING DRAGONS
JUDGE JUDGE JAVERT didn't even bother to go over to the Cells to tell Cordelia her fate. He left that up to me.
Okay, he didn't specifically ask me to inform her. He probably assumed Zin would relay the news. But as soon as Javert left, everyone seemed worn down. Instead of the usual buzz of excitement on the night of an opening day when we'd gather at the Cantina and jabber on about how the day went, what visitors to watch out for if they came back, what acts did great and which could use just a bit more polish, there was an uncomfortable hush over the grounds as the troupe went their separate ways.
I watched the dispersal, wondering who would go to Cordelia to explain the judge's rushed ruling.
No one did.
As such, I took it upon myself to deliver the verdict. Not wanting to draw the attention of any humans, I waited until long after moonrise when I was sure most people had gone to sleep. And as I waited, I wished I was an orcadon, because if speaking meant having to deliver this kind of news, I'd prefer to be one of those species of dragons who've lost their ability to speak.
"You have got to be kidding me," Cordelia said. She kept her voice lowered, but there was still plenty of fire in her words. "The Pits? That judge didn't even hear my case. He didn't even let the Kailin take a single look at me. How can I be convicted? It's a death sentence. You know that, don't you? I'm as good as dead."
She then blurted out more of her curse words. They sounded less adorable now and more like the roars of a desperate chimera. As she vented, she paced her cell, pounding her fists into the walls before each turn. I tried to say something, but she just kept on with her angry ramble.
Finally, she let out a loud huff and dropped down to sit on the wooden floor with her legs twisted into a pretzel shape. Maybe she'd finally run out of curse words.
CORDELIA: Never.
"The Kailin didn't come," I said a few seconds into the break of her verbal storm.
This caught her attention. It should have caught everyone's attention.
"Judges don't work without the Kailin," Cordelia said. "I mean, maybe for an offense like driving a caravan with an expired license, but not for big cases like murder. No one brought this up?"
I shook my head. "The judge just kept saying it was open-and-shut."
Cordelia gripped her head then scratched at her copper-colored hair that was inexpertly chopped into a pixie cut.
A little side note here... You should avoid the term pixie cut. At least in front of an actual pixie, otherwise they'll go on for an hour about how the expression is an offensive stereotype, and that not all pixies wear the same hair style.
Even though they do.
See, pixies are impatient creatures with short attention spans. This means the future beauticians among them rush through their training and only manage to learn one style of cut. Unfortunately, they also blaze through their lessons on how to avoid clipping off their clients' ear tips and I've seen more than one pixie leaving the pixie parlor with ears that look far more human than elven.
But back to Cordelia.
"Something's not right here, Duncan. Which judge did you say it was?" I told her, and she mulled over the name a bit. "It's got a familiar ring," she said, almost an echo of Judge Javert upon learning Cordelia's name. She mulled it over a moment longer, then shrugged. "Nope, won't come to me. You've got to do something, Duncan. I didn't do this. You believe me, don't you?"
"Yes, I just wish I could remember more. That wine was crazy potent. Maybe it was Roman. Did you know the Romans made their wine strong to reduce their shipping costs? Then when it was delivered, you were meant to water it down. Not everyone did, and I bet those were some wild nights." Cordelia was staring at me. "Sorry, I have a thing for trivia."
"Where did the wine come from?"
"I don't know. Porter just said a well-wisher sent it. Probably some townie gave it to us. Handlers are always getting gifts from fans. But you probably know about that."
Cordelia nodded, a slight smile at the edge of her lips as if recalling a fond memory. She then asked, "Did anyone else have it? The wine, I mean."
It took until just then for me to remember that the barrel had been tapped without me. And why.
"Porter gave Charlie some before he found me, and I shared some with Benny, but other than that, it was just me and Porter. I think he wanted to be away from other people for a bit. He was bothered by something."
"Did he say what?"
I shrugged a shoulder. "He was annoyed with Zin about an offer Zin had made him. I think Zin wanted Porter to work for free because of some money issues with the circus. But it was more than that. He seemed really rattled. Said something about people having no common decency. I'm guessing that was probably something to do with Gladys. Maybe they'd had a fight."
Cordelia pondered this, then asked, "Whose caravan is next to theirs? Would anyone have heard them arguing?"
I did a mental scan of the circus. While the arrangement of the grounds is fairly similar wherever we stop, the exact placement of caravans can shift depending on who wants to be neighbors with whom. And who doesn't want to be neighbors, which is probably more important to get right if you want to keep the peace in such close quarters.
"I think Molly's set up next to them. Not sure why. She and Gladys used to be close, but the two fell out over Fergus during our last run."
"Molly used to be with Fergus?"
"Dear dwarf dung, no. Molly can't stand him, which is saying a lot because Molly gets along with everyone. She just can't figure out why anyone would want to be with someone like Fergus. I wonder if it's because she doesn't have a lap?" Cordelia was looking at me like I was an insensitive idiot. "Right, moot point."
Cordelia stood up again, paced the Cells a few more times, then stopped in front of me, her face peering out from between the iron bars.
"Duncan, you need to listen. I can't get out of here unless you can pick a lock."
"Zin locks the Cells." I waggled my fingers like a sideshow magician to show her it wasn't a key Zin had used. "Lock picking's pointless with his satyr security system in place."
"I suppose it would only make me look more guilty if I escaped and fled. I need your help. You're going to have to find out what had Porter so upset. I'd bet it was to do with the Gladys and Fergus situation. Talk to Molly, see if she heard anything. If she did, get her to tell Zin or that brownie fellow."
"Boris?"
"That's the one. He seems like he likes doing things by the book. He'll want this done according to the law."
"He was a little annoyed the judge wouldn't listen to the evidence he found. Although, it might not have helped your case if he had."
"What evidence?"
"They searched your things and found the picture of me and Porter. The one with your head pasted over Porter's."
"A silly picture isn't exactly proof that I would poison someone."
"That was going to be Boris's argument. He wanted it made clear that the picture wasn't showing anything violent, just wishful thinking. I'm sure he wants to find out what's really going on. Maybe not as much as you do, but still."
"Good. We'll count him as an ally. Now, you also need to find out what made Javert come out here without the Kailin. It just strikes me as being suspicious, like someone was trying to hurry the case along. This is murder we're talking about. Any other judge wouldn't have come at all if he didn't have the Kailin with him. And he certainly shouldn't have been able to deliver a ruling and sentencing without her."
"But how do I do that? I can't exactly go wandering around town asking questions."
"I have no idea," she said, stepping back from the bars, her shoulders sagging. The dejected look left me feeling both eager to get to the business of clearing her name, and doubtful that a large, supposedly mute dragon who wasn't allowed to leave the circus grounds would be able to manage it.
Cordelia sat again on the wooden floor and again made a pretzel of her legs as she crossed them under her. "I suppose I'm lucky the region's jailor is on vacation. That at least gives us a few days."
"Us?"
She gave a single nod of her head.
"Us," she said with a twitch of a smile on her lips.
19 - MOLLY THE MINI-TAUR
THE DAY AFTER Opening Day would follow our normal schedule: starting at eleven in the morning and running into the night. If I was going to get anything done for Cordelia, I had to do it before the gates opened. So, resisting the siren call of the mushroom-and-gruyere omelet Pepper told me she'd be preparing for breakfast, I stopped by Molly's caravan. She was in the middle of picking out which headdress she would wear for the day's performance.
"Peacock feather, or the blue fluffy one? I'm leaning toward the blue fluffy one. It was a gift from an admirer and they put in a note saying how much they'd love to see me in it. I'm sure they'd get an absolute kick of delight if I wore it. What do you think?"
She held both up behind her head. Just the sight of the fluffy one made me want to sneeze, so I opted for the peacock feather. She later showed up to our act with the blue fluffy one, so I'm not quite sure why she asked my opinion.
"Molly," I began, as she applied a thick layer of cream to her face, "did you happen to hear anything the night Porter died? Between him and Gladys, I mean. He just seemed kind of upset and I never found out why."
"Oh sure." Molly was now smoothing an odd-colored liquid over the skin she'd just smeared with lotion. "I'd been listening to albums most of the night. I just adore the new one from Duke Elfington, and I was about to start it over for the sixth time when my gosh darn needle broke."
After screwing the jar of liquid shut, she pulled out a brush and a container of pinkish powder which turned out to be another item to apply to her face. I was beginning to wonder how she held her head up with the extra weight of all those layers.
"I knew Gladys had a record player and I was dying to listen to the album just once more before calling it a night, so even though her and I had our little falling out, I figured our tiff wasn't bad enough to go over and ask an old friend if she had a spare needle."
"So you went over there?"
"No, sorry, darlin'. Like I said, I was about to, then I heard Porter's voice and I knew I couldn't pop by."
"Why not? Porter's a nice guy. He would have given you a needle."
"Oh, I know that, you goofball. But I'd already washed my makeup off. I couldn't let him see me with my eyes all naked and my cheeks coated in cold cream."
"But you're letting me see you without..." I waved my forefoot vaguely in the direction of her scattered piles of jars and tubes and brushes.
"That's 'cause you're different. You're not human. Or even part human, like me. Humans judge people differently."
She was now dipping another brush into another dish -- one containing a glittering, blue powder that she swept over her eyes. Seriously, where do people learn how to manage all these tools and concoctions and steps? It's like a chemistry-meets-art experiment on your face.
"So you didn't see anything?"
"Didn't see anything, no." She pointed her brush at me then gave me a knowing wink. "But I still heard something. An argument. And it sounded like they'd already been at it a while, likely assuming I couldn't hear them with the record player on. They probably didn't notice when my music stopped playing."
"Could you tell what were they saying?"
"Well, I think Porter said something about not granting her a divorce. The minute I heard that, my ears perked right up and I forgot about my albums altogether. He said he couldn't afford to divorce her because he'd agreed with Zin not to be paid. Gladys went livid as a llama at that bit of news. And he said, shouted really, that it was only temporary to help Zin make ends meet."
"Make ends meet? But the circus is doing okay, isn't it?"
"I don't know anything about that, sweetie. But Gladys says he should have never made that agreement without consulting her. And he said he couldn't have consulted her even if he wanted to because she was never around. And Gladys said-- One tick, Duncan, this bit is tricky."
