COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2016 by Phyllis Ann Karr.
All rights reserved.
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
www.wildsidebooks.com
ALSO BY PHYLLIS ANN KARR
At Amberleaf Fair
Frostflower and Thorn
Frostflower and Windbourne
The Gallows in the Greenwood
The Idylls of the Queen
Inquisitor Dreams
OPENING QUOTATION
“The pain that is all but a pleasure will change
For the pleasure that’s all but pain…”
—Gilbert & Sullivan, Patience, Act I Finale
CHAPTER 1
Sunday, September 17
“With all due reverence, honored Rulemaster,” Corwin protested, “the Spanish version of the Inquisition did not make a habit of burning witches.”
“Don Serafino,” said Rulemaster Sam Imani, the portly and genial host of the Sunday rolegame parties, addressing Corwin by the name of his persona, “we’re playing this game by the Lurid Legend, not the historical record.”
“And I approve the Lurid Legend with the warmest and most pious enthusiasm, on the whole, at least as utilized in the present ludification. I strove merely to point out why Don Serafino would protest subjecting to even so much as arrest…” Corwin’s deep brown eyes turned for an instant toward Angela…“this valuable and responsible herbalist who serves her underpopulated hamlet as its sole midwife and, in effect, physician.”
“You’ve just lost even more points with your fellow inquisitors, Don Serafino,” said Julie Whitcomb, a.k.a. Fray Paulo, gracefully patting the colorful tattoo that peeked out above the scoop neckline of her long, blood-red gown. She went on, “We know how many secret heretics hide out as inquisitors. Rulemaster, roll the die and let’s see how many points Don Serafino has lost this time.”
“Oh, go ahead and burn Old Agnes!” Angela stood up. “I’d just as soon bow out of this game anyway. I’m going to see if I can’t start up a Raggedy Ann scenario with some of the others.”
“Raggedy Ann?” Corwin inquired, cocking one of his black eyebrows at her.
“Yes, Raggedy Ann! And when your fellow inquisitors have finished arresting and torturing and burning you, you can come over to my game and be Raggedy Andy!”
“That might prove very restful,” said Corwin. “Take good care of your candy heart, Raggedy Ann.”
She thought she felt his gaze following her as she bounced through Sam Imani’s big living room. At the door to the lounge, she paused and glanced back. She’d been right—he was still gazing after her—though as soon as she caught him doing it, he turned back at once to his fellow gamers in the Spanish Inquisition scenario.
Why had she even joined the silly Inquisition game in the first place? Partly, she supposed, from curiosity; partly because her other choices at the very beginning of the afternoon had been The Last Great War in the den and Gojira Attacks in the dining room; and partly because she and Corwin had been childhood friends who kept up a correspondence all through college and were finally seeing each other again in person after those five years two thousand miles apart in different sections of the Reformed States of America.
Well. Corwin Davison had always tended a little this way. Ever since at least fifth grade, his favorite author had been Edgar Allan Poe, from whom he had taken the sort of nick-surname so many people used. Of course, most children had a strong morbid streak, and their own neighborhood group, Corwin’s and Angela’s, used to play Feds and Klingons, Pollies and Robbers, and Savage Initiation Rites like any other bunch of kids. Only, Angela had outgrown that kind of thing. From what she’d seen of him so far, she didn’t think Corwin ever had. If anything, he’d grown worse…well, more emphatic about it, anyway.
She’d been forced to grow up all at once, start looking in earnest for her adult self when her mother died of Anne Sutler’s Disease the summer after Angela’s graduation from high school. Angela had already been accepted at the University of Minnemagantic, but her arrival there had had to be delayed for Mommy’s funeral. At the university, she found she either had to cultivate a sunny outlook, or sink into a suicidal depression. Luckily for her, her faculty advisor had been Professor of Music Clement Czarny, and if a vampire—whether he really was one or only thought he was—could live so heroically decent a life, surely Angela Garvey could grow her optimistic side to full flower.
As soon as Angela was safe at college, her father and younger sibs moved down to Miami, which was why she and Corwin had never managed to see each other again in their old home town during vacations. And, apparently, letters had not been enough to keep her aware of what was going on or—maybe—not going on inside his character. How could he still be enjoying such a totally repulsive rolegame as Spanish Inquisition?
And yet, otherwise, he seemed so gentle, so considerate, so much her old friend. Even, in some ways, improved, as people ought to improve when they grew up… With a puzzled shake of her blond head, Angela pushed into the lounge and started trying to interest players who had already been knocked like her out of their earlier games in a safe and pleasant Raggedy Ann scenario.
The quieter scenarios should be starting later in the afternoon anyway, by what Corwin had told her. And, to her delight, four of the five gamers in the lounge applauded her idea, including Hank Algood, who knew even more than she did about Johnny Gruelle’s world and undertook to guide her proposed scenario from the rather unexpected role—for Rulemaster—of the Camel with the Wrinkled Knees. They decided on the library for their playing area.
* * * *
Across town, Detective Sergeant Rosemary Lestrade and her junior partner Detective Dave Clayton were staring down at a stark naked corpse.
Murder wasn’t run-of-the-mill in a town of 35,000 in the safe breadbasket of the R.S.A., but this young man had obviously been murdered.
Dave, who was only twenty-eight, had already gone aside to heave and come back again, reluctantly but with his mouth wiped. Officer Kim Little Bird had probably done the same earlier—she and her senior partner, Officer Stan Vergucchi, had been the first pollies called to the scene. Stan was on the edge of retirement age and might have reasonably experienced insides.
At forty-four, Rosemary Lestrade had seen murder victims before. Enough to harden her stomach. Luckily, as far as that word ever applied in murder cases, the cold water had kept the corpse reasonably fresh, or even stronger police insides than hers might have turned. Especially at what had been done to the genitals. And other parts of the body.
Officer Little Bird said, “What a waste!”
“M.E.’s on his way,” Lestrade remarked. “For whatever the old floater’s opinion might be worth.”
“What a waste!” Officer Little Bird repeated.
Yes. Someone Kim Little Bird might have enjoyed dating, Lestrade thought wryly, if she’d met him in time. Someone whose life she might’ve changed enough to keep it from ending in murder.
“They didn’t have to torture him to death, on top of it!” Clayton burst out. “Bastards!”
“Watch your language, Detective. You can probably find a stronger word than ‘bastards.’ And I’m not convinced this was a torture murder. More likely post-mortem, I’d guess. Water’s rinsed away any blood that could’ve made it obvious, but that doesn’t look like an agonized facial expression to me. More like your plain, ordinary surprise at being unexpectedly dead.”
“Devils?” Clayton suggested.
Lestrade shook her head. “Stronger than that. It’s always beaten me why your Christian devils would even need to bother corrupting humanity. We do pretty