Temple of the Winds (49 page)

He finally came to a halt before a door partway down a narrow hall. With the walls painted red, the candles at either end of the hall provided little illumination. The place stank.

“
In here, Lord Rahl,” Silas said.

When he moved to open the door, Raina snatched his collar and pulled him back out of the way. She planted him in place with a sinister look. A look like that from Raina was enough to give an angry cloud pause.

She opened the door and, Agiel in hand, stepped into the room before Richard. Richard waited a moment while Raina checked the room for threat; it was easier than objecting. Silas stared at the floor while Richard and General Kerson went into the little room. Ulic and Egan took up posts beside the door and folded their massive arms.

There wasn’t much to see: a bed, a small pine chest beside it, and a washstand. A dark stain discolored the unfinished spruce floorboards. The bloodstain ran under the bed and covered nearly the entire floor.

The size of it didn’t surprise him. The general had told him what had been done to the woman.

The water in the washbasin looked to be at least half blood. The rag hanging over its side was red with it. The killer had washed the blood from himself before he left. He must either be neat or, more likely, didn’t want to walk out past Silas Latherton dripping blood.

Richard opened the pine chest. It contained orderly stacks of clothes, and nothing else. He let the lid drop back down.

Richard leaned a hand against the doorway. “No one heard anything?” Silas shook his head. “A woman is mutilated like that, has her breasts cut off, and is stabbed hundreds of times, and no one heard a thing?”

Richard realized that his exhaustion was putting an edge to his voice. His mood wasn’t helping, either, he guessed.

Silas swallowed. “She’d been gagged, Lord Rahl. Her hands were tied, too.”

Richard scowled. “She must have kicked her feet. No one heard her kicking? If someone was slicing me up, and I was gagged and my hands were tied, I’d have kicked the washstand over at least. She must have kicked her feet trying to get someone’s attention.”

“
I didn’t hear it if she did. None of the other women heard it, either. Least, they never mentioned it, and I’d think they would have come got me if they’d heard anything like that. If there was trouble, they always came to me. They always did. They know I’m not shy about protecting them.”

Richard rubbed his eyes. The prophecy wouldn’t leave him be. He had a headache.

“
Bring the other women here. I want to talk to them.”

“
They left me, after—” Silas gestured vaguely. “Except Bridget.”

He hurried to the end of the hall and knocked on the last door. A woman with rumpled red hair peered out after he spoke quietly to her. She withdrew back into her room and in a moment emerged, pulling a cream-colored robe closed. She tossed a quick knot in the tie as she followed Silas up the hall to Richard.

Standing in the belly of a stinking whorehouse, Richard was getting more angry with himself by the moment. Despite trying to be objective, he had begun to let himself be happy about having a brother. He was beginning to like Drefan. Drefan was a healer. What could be more noble?

Silas and the woman bowed. They both looked the way Richard felt: dirty, tired, and distraught.

“
Did you hear anything?” Bridget shook her head. Her eyes looked haunted. “Did you know the woman who died?”

“
Rose,” Bridget said. “I only met her once, for a few minutes. She just came here yesterday.”

“
Do either of you have any idea who murdered her?”

Silas and Bridget shared a look.

“
We know who did it, Lord Rahl,” Silas said, a smoldering tone welling in his voice. “Fat Harry.”

“
Fat Harry? Who’s that? Where can we find him?”

For the first time, Silas Latherton’s features twisted in anger. “I shouldn’t have let him come here anymore. The women didn’t like him.”

“
None of us girls would take him anymore,” Bridget said. “He drinks, and when he drinks, he gets mean. There’s no need to put up with that, not with the army …” Her words died out as she glanced to the general. She resumed with a different tack. “We have enough clients nowadays. We don’t have to put up with mean drunks like fat Harry.”

“
The women all told me that they wouldn’t see Harry no more,” Silas said. “When he came last night, I knew that they would all say no. Harry was real insistent, and seemed sober enough, so I asked Rose if she’d see him, as she was new and …”

“
And didn’t know she was in danger,” Richard finished.

“
It wasn’t like that,” Silas said defensively. “Harry didn’t seem to be drunk. I knew the other women wouldn’t take him, though, sober or not, so I asked Rose if she was interested. She said she could use the money. Harry was the last one with her. She was found a little while later.”

“
Where can we find this Harry?”

Silas’s eyes narrowed. “In the underworld, where he belongs.”

“
You killed him?”

“
No one saw who slit his fat throat. I wouldn’t know who done it.”

Richard glanced at the long knife tucked behind Silas’s belt. He didn’t blame the man. If they had captured fat Harry, he would get the same for his crime as had already been done. Although he would have had a trial first, and he could have confessed, just to be sure it was he who had done it.

That was why they used Confessors: to be sure they had convicted the guilty man. Once touched by her magic, a criminal would confess all that he had done. Richard wouldn’t want Kahlan to hear what had been done to this woman, Rose. Especially not from the beast who had done it.

It made him sick to his stomach to think of Kahlan having to touch a man like that, a man who had killed a woman in such a brutal fashion. He feared he would have killed Harry himself to keep Kahlan from having to touch the flesh of a man like that.

He knew she had touched other men who were no better. He didn’t want her to ever have to do that again. He knew it had to hurt her to hear such perverted crimes confessed in detail. He feared to think what terrible memories haunted her and visited her dreams.

Richard forced his mind off it and looked at Bridget. “Why did you stay when the others ran off?”

She shrugged. “Some of them had children, and feared for them. I don’t fault them their fears, but we were always safe here. Silas has always been fair to me. I’ve been hurt other places, but never here. It wasn’t Silas’s fault that a crazy killer did this. Silas always respected our wishes when we said we wouldn’t see a man again.”

Richard felt his stomach tighten. “And you saw Drefan?”

“
Sure. All the girls saw Drefan.”

“
All the girls,” Richard repeated. He held a tight grip on his anger.

“
Yeah. We all saw him. Except Rose. She never got a chance, ‘cause she …”

“
So, Drefan didn’t have a … favorite?” Richard had been hoping that Drefan had confined himself to one woman he liked, and that maybe she would be one who was healthy, at least.

Bridget’s brow wrinkled up. “How can a healer have a favorite?”

“
Well, I mean, was there one he preferred, or did he just take who was available?”

The woman stuck a finger into her mat of red hair and scratched her scalp.

“
I think you got the wrong idea about Drefan, Lord Rahl. He never touched us … in that way. He only came here to do his healing.”

“
He came here to heal?”

“
Yeah,” Bridget said. Silas nodded his agreement. “Half the girls had something or other. Rashes and sores and such. Most people who sell herbs and cures don’t want to help our kind, so we just live with our ailments.

“
Drefan told us how he wanted us to wash. He gave us herbs, and unguents to put on the sores. He came twice before, real late, after we was done, so as not to interfere with us earning a living. He checked on the girls’ children, too. Drefan was special kind with the children. One had a bad cough, and he got better after Drefan gave him something to take.

“
He came checking on us early this morning. After he saw one of the girls, he went to Rose’s room, to check on her. That’s when he found her. He came flying out of her room after what he saw and was calling out”—she pointed at the floor at Richard’s feet—“between throwing up. We all rushed out in the hall and saw him there, on his knees, heaved his guts out right there.”

“
So he didn’t come here to … to … and he never—”

Bridget guffawed. “I offered—no charge, since he helped me and all with what he gave me. He said that that wasn’t why he had come. He said he only wanted to help, that he was a healer.

“
I offered, mind you, and I can be very persuasive”—she winked—“but he said no. He has a real handsome smile, he does. Just like yours, Lord Rahl.”

“
Enter,” came the response to Richard’s knock.

Drefan was kneeling before his array of candles set about on the table against the wall. His head was bowed, and his hands were folded in supplication.

“
I hope I’m not interrupting,” Richard said.

Drefan looked back over his shoulder and then stood. His eyes reminded Richard of Darken Rahl. Drefan had the same blue eyes, with the same indefinably odd, unsettling look in them. Richard couldn’t help being disquieted by them. It sometimes made him feel as if Darken Rahl himself were staring at him.

People who had lived in fear of Darken Rahl were probably terrified when they looked into Richard’s eyes, too.

“
What are you doing?” Richard asked.

“
Praying to the good spirits to watch over the soul of someone.”

“
Whose soul?”

Drefan sighed. He looked tired and doleful.

“
The soul of a woman no one cared about.”

“
A woman named Rose?”

Drefan nodded. “How did you know about her?” He waved off his own question. “Forgive me—I wasn’t thinking. You’re the Lord Rahl. I expect you get reports of such things.”

“
Yes, well, I do hear about things.” Richard spotted something new in the room. “I see you’ve taken to brightening up the decor.”

Drefan saw where Richard was looking, and went to the chair beside the bed. He returned with a small pillow. He ran his fingers lovingly over the rose embroidered on it.

“
This was hers. They didn’t know where she came from, so Silas—he’s the man who runs the house—Silas insisted I take this for the small help I offer the women there. I won’t accept their money. If they had money to spare, they wouldn’t be doing what they do.”

Richard wasn’t an expert, but the embroidered rose looked to be done with care. “Do you think she made it?”

Drefan shrugged. “Silas didn’t know. Maybe she did. Maybe she saw it somewhere and bought it because it had a rose on it, like her name.”

He gently rubbed his thumb back and forth across the rose as he stared at it.

“
Drefan, what are you doing going to … to places like that? There’s no shortage of people needing healing. We have soldiers here who were wounded down by the pit. There’s plenty for you to do. Why were you going to whorehouses?”

Drefan dragged a finger down the stem of green thread. “I’m seeing to the soldiers. I go on my own time, before people are up and need me.”

“
But why go there at all?”

Drefan’s eyes welled with tears as he stared at the rose on the pillow.

“
My mother was a whore,” he whispered. “I am the son of a whore. Some of those women have children. I could have been any one of them.

“
Just like Rose, my mother took the wrong man to her bed. No one knew Rose. No one knew who she was, or where she came from. I don’t even know my own mother’s name—she wouldn’t tell the healers she left me with. Only that she was a whore.”

“
Drefan, I’m sorry. That was a pretty stupid question.”

“
No, it was a perfectly logical question. No one cares about those women, I mean cares about them as people. They get beaten bloody by the men who come to them. They catch terrible diseases. They’re scorned by other people.

“
Herb sellers don’t want them coming into their shops—it gives them a reputation and then decent people won’t come around. Many of the things those women have, even I don’t know how to cure. They suffer sad, lingering deaths. Just for money. Some of them are drunks, and the men prostitute them and pay them with liquor. They’re drunk all the time and don’t know the difference.