Free Brown River Queen by Frank Tuttle

woman attacked me without warning or provocation. There were two dozen people present, and most of them are just out of sight on the stairs.”
    “Shut your cake hole,” said the biggest of the blue-caps. He swung his crossbow around and kept it trained on my face. “Nobody moves. Nobody leaves. Nobody talks ’til I tell you to. Got that?”
    “Got it.”
    Cussing and stomping sounded from the back ranks of the Watchmen. I cussed a bit myself when I recognized the angry red face shoving its way through his fellows.
    “Captain Holder. How good of you to drop by.”
    “You.” The good captain befouled the Orlin’s premium flooring with spit and glared down at the expanding pool of blood.
    “What is it with you and dead women, Markhat?”
    “It gets better, Captain. Roll her over. You won’t believe me if I tell it, so see for yourself.”
    He did.
    He cussed some more while his Watchmen tried to force a confession out of me through the sheer intensity of their hateful glares.
    “What the hell is this?”
    “I wish I knew.”
    “Downtown, Markhat. We’re going downtown, right now, just you and me and not a fancy, halfdead lawyer in sight.”
    “Always happy to help the Watch with their inquiries, Captain. That’s my hat on the counter. Mind if I fetch it?”
    “Lou. Get the man’s hat. Then put him in a wagon and take him to the Old Ruth. Shoot him in the leg if he gets smart.”
    A Watchman grudgingly retrieved my hat. I put it on and adjusted the fit.
    “You’re warming up to me, Captain Holder. Yesterday you’d have said shoot him in the head. By tomorrow, Lou here will be buying me beers—”
    “Get him out of here. Stennis. Round up this mob. I want statements from everyone.”
    Watchman Lou hustled me out the door. I bade my Ogre saviors a hasty farewell and clambered aboard the Watch hoosegow wagon with as much dignity as one can muster when being locked up in a soiled iron cage.
    “Man, you’ve got some nerve, mouthing off at the Captain like that,” opined Lou as he forced the rusty lock shut. “He’s got it in for you, and no mistake.”
    I leaned back, heedless of the dark stains on the rough-hewn wood, crossed my ankles, and pushed my hat down onto my nose.
    “To know me is to love me,” I said. “What’s his first name, anyway? Your Captain’s, I mean.”
    Lou snorted in derision and stomped away.
    “Probably Eugene,” I said. I closed my eyes as the wagon rumbled into the street. “Maybe Percival.”
    I didn’t nap. I did relax, relive my first sight of the dead woman, try to decide if she’d shown a flicker of emotion at any point during our brief but active acquaintance.
    But all I could see were those bright blue eyes and that unwavering lie of a smile.
    My afternoon with Captain Holder at the Old Ruth jail was markedly less than pleasant. Despite the two dozen witnesses to the assault and my refusal to draw Toadsticker from his scabbard, the good Captain was determined to hold me on at least one count of being Markhat.
    Had Avalante not intervened, he’d probably have made good on that. I once spent a night in the Old Ruth, courtesy of the Watch. It’s not an experience I care to repeat. Until Evis’s lawyers showed up with writs of this and motions of that, I was wondering how to get word to Darla that her brand new husband might be spending the next fortnight pondering the error of his criminal ways.
    But the lawyers came, and despite raised voices and much pounding of fists on tables and ominous vows to see me jailed until the Angels descend on pillars of fire come Judgment Day, Captain Holder let me go for the second time in as many days.
    As I stepped out into the sunlight before darting into an Avalante carriage, I knew one thing—all the lawyers in Rannit wouldn’t get me out of the Old Ruth a third time.
    I bade the driver to make haste, and I rubbed my wrists until the shackle-marks were all but gone.
     
     
    They opened her up by cutting her from neck to