Double Trouble | Kelley Armstrong #3
“No, a dragon!” another says.
“It did not transform at all,” the woman says with satisfaction. “The shackles held it. Do you know why?”
“Iron,” I whisper to myself, but she hears and nods.
“Iron,” she confirms.
Iron affects fae. I’ve never heard of it stopping a doppelg?nger from transforming, but we know ridiculously little about them, and when I think of it, I wonder whether they are fae. That would make sense – humanoid tricksters that can take on any shape and sow confusion and discord.
“You said the beast was taken to the arena,” someone says.
“It was, and once they have determined whether or not they’ll allow it to trans form in the arena, they will execute it in a fight, open for all to see.”
“Oh, I hope they allow it to transform,” someone else says. “What a fight that would be.”
When the excitement ebbs, I fetch the woman another ale and ask, “Did you say it was male? Or female?”
“They said it looked male when they first saw it, though they could not be sure.” She cackles. “I ribbed them for that. Surely, when it changed back from being a cat, they could tell whether it was male or female. But they said no, that it transforms fully dressed.”
I feign confusion with the rest, though I actually know this to be true – for a doppelg?nger, clothing is like an extension of its skin, and it can take on any form, including one fully dressed.
“But it first appeared male,” I say. “Old or young?”
Her brows rise. “You seem very interested in what it looks like.” Before I can protest, she raises her hands. “I’ll not judge. It was a young man, around your own age. Middling height. Middling looks. Brown hair. Very average in appearance.”
“Ah,” I say when everyone peers at me. “I think I saw him – it – earlier that day. It offered to buy me a drink, and there was something odd about its eyes, so I refused.” I shudder. “I am glad of it.”
“As you should be,” the woman says. “Ana was not so lucky.”
* * *
The doppelg?nger has been caught, and it was the one I had spoken to. I tell myself that what I feel is disappointment, that I had hoped his story was true. But the apprehension whirling through me feels more like doubt.
What if he was telling the truth? What if he has been sentenced to die for a crime he didn’t commit?
But he was found at the scene. That should be proof enough.
Except that I don’t know why he would return to the scene if he were the killer. He might, though, if he were trying to find the killer.
Or he might if he realized he had left something behind.
The young woman had not been dead long when I found her.
It is entirely possible that he killed her and then it took some time for him to remove her hands, which let her body cool before I arrived.
He could have needed to stash the hands and flee when I arrived.
Then, as he waited for me to go, I came out the window, and he made up some story about the killer being his cousin.
Afterward, he returned for the hands and was caught.
Yes, that makes sense, and my doubt really is only disappointment.
I eat what little breakfast I can stomach, and then I pack. This hunt is done, and I need to find work that will pay.
Still, I drag my heels as I make my way out of town, taking a path through a field. I’m barely two paces into a stretch of forest when a voice behind me calls, “Did you hear the news?”
I spin, my hand dropping to my concealed knife. Then I blink as the doppelg?nger strolls out, grinning broadly.
“They caught her,” he says.
“I thought they’d caught you,” I say.
His steps slow, and he frowns, looking from me to the town. I feel the sting of his confusion, as if he’s asking why I would leave if I thought he had been unfairly arrested.
“They said they captured a young man,” I tell him.
He shrugs as he joins me. “That must have been the guise she had taken. But she is caught, squarely it seems, and so when I spotted you leaving town, I wanted to be sure you knew, in case you were trying to catch up with her.”
“I was not.”
He falls in at my side. “You do not need to apologize.”
I glance over, expecting to see a grin telling me he’s teasing. But while he is smiling, it’s smug.
“You may buy me dinner,” he says. “In recompense for not trusting me.”
Again, I expect this to be a joke. When I see only that smugness, I tell myself I am being foolish, thinking I knew a young man I had barely met, could anticipate how he might say something.
But it does make me look closer at him, and when I do, I see something is off about his face.
The nose is a little stronger, the chin less sharp.
Again, I chide myself. I saw him once, by moonlight. Yes, I had been right in front of him, staring into his face as I held a knife to his throat, but I don’t know him well enough to pick out such tiny differences.
Yet I would be a fool if I did not wonder. If I did not question.
“You can buy your own dinner,” I mutter. “I might buy you an ale, but that is the extent of it. I am not paid for jobs such as this.”
“Is there not a bounty on my cousin?” The doppelg?nger sounds disappointed. “I would expect a bounty.”
“I could hardly collect it, as I did not capture her.”
I hunch my shoulders, as if against a bitter wind, though the air is still here. In the forest. Where we are alone.
I reach into my pocket and take out a coin. “Here, for your ale.”
“You are not going to drink it with me?”
“I doubt we are going to the same place.”
The grin is neither easy nor charming, as his was.
This one shows teeth. As the doppelg?nger reaches for the coin, I slash with my knife.
The doppelg?nger moves too fast for the blade to do more than cut open its sleeve and the arm beneath, but as the creature pulls back, it loses the hold on its form.
It happens in an eye blink, so fast that I would have missed it if I had not been riveted. The shape of a wiry young man changes to one that is clearly female, though it retains the same hair and face. Then it flips back to the young man.
It looks at me, gaze on mine, ready to resume the charade, and then it seems to realize the futility and shifts fully to a woman, one slightly older than me, buxom, with dark hair and eyes.
“It was worth a try,” she says, with that same teeth-baring grin. “I do not suppose you will give up your hair willingly?”
“My what?” I say, startled.
“Your hair. I like it. I plan to take it. Obviously, I need to kill you, as you have apparently been tracking me. You and Volkir.”
“Volkir?”
“My foolish little cousin. I should be flattered, attracting the attention of two hunters. I would be… if either of you was up to the task. But at least you have lovely hair, so it’s not a complete loss.”
Before I can even raise my knife, I find myself staring at a huge winged serpent with the head of a rooster. That head lowers, and I catch one half-glimpse of the cockatrice’s yellow eye before I duck.
Look in its eye, and I’ll be paralyzed.
Or that is what happens with actual cockatrices. I have no idea whether doppelg?ngers also adopt the powers of what ever they transform into, but I am not taking the chance.
I duck my head, and the beast grabs me in its beak.
I scream my very best ‘Oh no, I am captured!’ scream, as I flail and kick…
and then I slam my open palm into the cockatrice’s serpentine neck.
It screeches at the slap. Or, probably, at the iron medallion my palm presses to its scales.
I fall from the beak, as it is no longer a beak and the creature cannot hold me aloft in its humanoid mouth.
As soon as I tumble, the doppelg?nger changes again, this time to a bear, jaws open, fangs snapping toward me. The heat of its breath hits just as I slap the medallion against its snout. The doppelg?nger loses that form as well, and before it can shift again, I am on it, pinning it to the ground.
We fight, and each time the iron stops touching her skin, she tries to shift again, only for me to slap it against her. Finally, she tries to grab the medallion. I release my grip on it, and she crows in triumph… and then her eyes widen as she sees the dagger, just before it plunges into her heart.
* * *
I make some small attempt to hide the doppelg?nger’s body. I only push it off the path and under some brush. I also relieve the creature of all its valuables, because again, I am not being paid for this particular job.
I briefly consider returning the corpse to town and proving she was the killer, but none of my experience with the law suggests this would end in any way except seeing the other doppelg?nger – Volkir – still executed, probably with me alongside him.
Even if people did believe my story, they would never turn down the opportunity to kill a rare monster, especially in such an entertaining fashion.
Which means I need to free Volkir. Earlier, I had insisted that his arrest wasn’t my fault and his escape not my responsibility. But that was only when I could still believe he might be guilty. Now that I know he is not – and that his cousin confirmed he was trying to stop her – I cannot walk away.
I need two plans. One to get inside the prison and another to get him out. I come up with the second more easily than the first. That takes time and thought, until I remember talking to the barmaid earlier, and it gives me an idea.
* * *
The prison guard looks me up and down. Then up and down again.
Eventually, his gaze fixes on my chest with all the wonder and greed of a man seeing gold rain from the sky.
I should point out that I actually have a figure best suited for when I wish to dress up as a boy.
However, the beauty of maidenly virtue is that I can cover myself from knee to throat, and all that is required for a spectacular bosom is a roomy bodice and plenty of stuffing.
The same goes for forming an ample posterior.