Trapped

At which point, Zunctweed might throw Gretchen into the lake-or worse. The spells that made slaves obey their owners didn't apply once the owner was dead… and I'd seen slaves commit gross atrocities on their late owners' bodies. Even slaves who seemed resigned to their lot might take posthumous vengeance for years of indignity. Kicking, mutilating, attacking the corpse with any weapon they could find. Then, after the savagery was over, they'd docilely report to their owner's heir. Slavery spells didn't end with one owner's death; they just took a brief holiday, then reasserted themselves with a new master.

I wondered whom Zunctweed would go to once he learned Gretchen was dead. Maybe me. Sometimes when Gretchen got into a huff, she'd threaten to leave me Zunctweed in her will.

As if I didn't have enough problems.

18: BING BANG BOOM

We left Vickie and Victor moping over the impossibility of lifting Oberon's body into their cart. With all of us heaving, we might have been able to move his massive weight, but Impervia refused to let us try. She was furious with the world, and the undertaker's children were the most immediate targets for her wrath. "I saw how much Phil paid them," she told the others. "They can deal with this on their own."

Perhaps she just wanted to get moving again. Away from the beach and the corpses. With seething glares, she forced us to gather our gear and depart.

Leaving our dead friends in the less than capable hands of Vickie and Victor.

As we walked up the street into town, Pelinor gamely tried to fill the silence with overhearty remarks about our surroundings-"Pretty little sign on that store there, what's it supposed to be, a hammer do you think?"-but no one else responded to his efforts at conversation. That didn't stop him: Pelinor was the sort who handled his grief by talking trivialities.

I didn't mind his babble; it was better than empty quiet. No one else tried to shut him up either-not even Impervia. She was putting up a good front of being in control, but underneath… underneath, she was a deeply emotional woman who thought most emotions were sinful. Someday that inner conflict might rip her apart.

But not yet. Not yet.

So we trudged through Crystal Bay's central square. Along the way, we passed numerous tethered horses, all of whom received a "Good day," from Pelinor and comments on their hocks and withers. Local residents who saw us coming ducked into stores or side streets until we were gone. Considering Impervia's mood, I'd say people were smart to hide… but it was still unnerving to see our presence turn the place into a ghost town.

Therefore I was glad when we finally reached the stagecoach company. If you could dignify it with the name "company." Its meager excuse for an office was nothing more than a windowless shack in front of a stable. The stable was not much fancier-room for only one coach, and perhaps eight horses if they doubled up two to a stall.

Not what you'd call a big operation. Quite possibly, the stage ran only once a week, doing a circuit of nearby villages, then ending back at Crystal Bay. The rest of the time, the coach driver apparently served as the local blacksmith; a shed beside the stables had its door open to reveal an anvil and a furnace, neither of which were currently in use. In fact, there was no one in sight at all. The only promising sign was that the coach had been trundled out of its shed and hitched to a team of four, all of whom looked adequately strong and healthy.

Pelinor went off to talk to the horses while Impervia stuck her head into the office shack. "Empty," she reported. The glowering look on her face suggested dark suspicions-that the driver had absconded with our down payment, that he was hiding and ready to ambush us, or perhaps that he'd been murdered by Ring agents-so it must have come as a letdown when a man emerged from a privy at the back of the yard, his trousers still half-undone.

"There you are!" he called, buttoning his pants with no great haste. "Hope I didn't keep you waiting, but my pa always said to empty the chutes before takin' folks on a drive."

He smiled as if we should be impressed by his father's acumen. That smile seemed to sum up the man: sunny, casual, and his idea of inspired advance planning was remembering to visit the outhouse before leaving on a trip. Our driver (who introduced himself as Bing: "Fred Binghamton, but my pa always went as Bing, and that's good enough for me!") was nearly as dark as Impervia and almost twice as muscular-he was, after all, a blacksmith-but he had none of the holy sister's knife-edge aggression. Though he was young (mid-twenties), Bing's face already had abundant laugh lines; his eyes showed a permanent twinkle and he moved with the contented slowness of a well-fed bear.