Mnemo's Memory

by David Versace

  Did sanity prevail or had orders been issued to spare her life? She never knew. In the morning the brothers were waiting for her with a cart and a steep price. Molly loaded up what goods she could and rode out of Mirror Springs looking neither left nor right. A girl from the telegraph office ran alongside her and passed her the Colonel's letter, apologising for the delay in passing it on. Molly tipped her a week's wages just to hear a friendly word.

  Until the Colonel arrived on her doorstep, it was the last time she spoke to any living person but the brothers, who delivered the necessities once a week from Uncle Key's General Supplies. Eventually they also brought sewing orders from a few of her competitor's dissatisfied customers. So began the resumption, however meagre, of her trade.

  #

  She summoned up her pluck - no mean feat with Big Bill voicing his derogations along the way - and saddled the gelding she'd bought from the foreigners.

  "Don't you do it, Molly Bright," he repeated. "Don't you set your schemes against mine. Remember who's the thinker in this family?"

  Molly remembered and she set her schemes. The voice faded into her dusty tracks after a time, as the ghost of Bill Bright never strayed far from the mining shack. Or else he was unwilling to face the townsfolk of Mirror Springs. She couldn't fault him on that score.

  Mirror Springs was set on the banks of a lazy stream that the surveyors were convinced would connect to the mighty Alamatha River, if only someone were willing to chart its course west through Badlands infested with poisonous snakes, ambulatory cacti and hostile bear tribes. A man with papers from the Provincial Cartographer had come to town once, offering rich salaries to volunteers to accompany his expedition. Bill signed up at once, of course, but had fallen prey of food poisoning on the day the company rode out. They'd never been heard from again.

  The town got the parts of its name from the copper-smelling gas bubbling up from the stream, which was not unpleasant to those accustomed, and to the silvery sheen of its sandy banks. The glare around noon was so overwhelming that rival glass makers had set themselves up producing smoked lenses, and most every resident had procured a pair from one or the other.

  Molly shielded her eyes and turned her head away as her horse trudged into town.

  She paid her first call to the hostler.

  Ezekiel Grant's face wore a stormy outlook at Molly's approach. He'd sold her the horse, back in better times, and she did not mistake his scowl of resentment at the reminder. He worked beeswax into leather straps at the stoop of his establishment. His scowl deepened as it sunk in that she did not intend to pass him by.

  "Good morning, Mister Grant." Knowing she would not be treated kindly, she resisted further pleasantries.

  "What do you want?" To her horror, Grant's hand strayed from his leather work to rest on the butt of his sidearm. The man was a veteran of more wars than most and no stranger to violence, but what measure of threat did he suppose her to present? She was armed, of course, but the old lizard-rifle holstered along the gelding's flank was no serious threat.

  Businesslike, she said, "Water, feed and fresh shoes for my mount. A mule fitted with saddle bags and a cargo litter. Load up a month's store of dried fruit and oats."

  "Why would I do business with a traitor's kin?"

  Doing her best to pretend the gun didn't exist, Molly dismounted. "You're not in business with me, but Colonel Tempest. If you dislike what I've got to say, you'd best take the matter to her door."

  She held her breath. She was not quite ready to believe in the power of the Colonel's name to reopen slammed doors.

  Grant spat in the silvery dirt. "It'll be five carricks. Come back tomorrow. "

  The price was twice what the order was worth. Molly exhaled slowly and said, "Five it is. And I'll be back in two hours, hostler."

  She handed him the reins and turned for her next appointment to conceal the quiver in her bottom lip.

  "What you got to be so cut up about?" Bill demanded as he fell in step beside her. She looked curiously about, wondering if other folk saw him too, but their heads pointedly turned, or they spat and muttered insults and curses. She could not be certain one way or the other.

  "Ezekiel was a friend once," she said. The old soldier always had a kind word as she'd passed on the way to her dressmaker's shop. When Bill had signed his regimental papers and put on the uniform of the Stonechurch Brothers Mining Company, Ezekiel Grant made a solemn promise to watch over his little sister while he was away at war. His word was good until the day the first reports of Bill's treachery arrived. A frost settled in his heart she could never warm.

  "Friend? You don't need friends like that. I got a good mind to come back in the night and knock a candle over in the stalls while he's abed with that Sunjali whore of his."

  He was baiting her, working himself into a righteous rant.

  Could he make good on his threats? She wasn't sure. She thought he had moved things around at the shack, to vex her or put them where he thought they ought to go. As for cold-blooded killing? Well, he'd shown himself capable, hadn't he?

  Molly spoke under her breath. "Your wars are done, Big Bill. I don't need you to fight mine."

  "I'll do what I got to, to protect my own."

  She reckoned he didn't even know he was lying, so she let the matter settle.

  She paid her second call to the provisioners, two Sunjali sisters named Verity and Mercy, who ran Uncle Key's General Supplies. They had arrived on a train full of golden-skinned, violet-eyed immigrants and immediately bought out old Mister Cooper with a brick of bullion. Since then they'd expanded their business and built a schoolhouse. Mirror Spring grudgingly acknowledged them as pillars of the refugee community.

  "You are not welcome here," announced Verity as Molly stepped through the threshold. She was the taller sister, with the wider hips and more convincing smile. "Go away."

  Molly folded her arms and leaned against the jamb.

  Mercy tugged her sister's bonnet down so she could whisper a string of drumbeat Sunjalese into her ear. Verity's brow furrowed as she whispered back. Their brief argument seemed to encompass a dozen inconclusive exchanges, like a street shootout between cross eyed gun fighters.

  Finally Mercy waved her sister away and plucked a slate from the counter. "Tell me your requirements, then you can leave. I will send them to your...residence."

  As Molly recited her list, Bill sidled past her to a small cage of iron bars and wire mesh. Inside was a collection of used shooter's pieces ranging from the decorative to the coldly functional. He reached inside, unperturbed by the barrier, and with one finger spun the barrel on a long-arm five-shooter with mahogany grips. Verity looked up sharply at the noise and clucked her tongue, not quite firing off an accusatory look in Molly's direction.

  "One for each eye," intoned Bill, twinning his fingers to point at the sisters in turn, "and one left spare if there's no brain to be hit."

  Molly grimaced. To cover the reaction, she said "I see you're still wearing that pretty skirt I made, Mercy. Your sister too. Glad to see your objections to my custom don't extend to our past dealings. I hope they still bring you good fortunes on rainy days."

  Mercy scratched at the slate in the slash-and-jab script of her people, not meeting Molly's eye. "I have no grudge with you, Bright," she said. "You played no part in your brother's decisions, I am sure."

  "Then why are we not on friendly terms?"

  "Because you are bad for business. Me, my sister, we've made our place here. We grow strong roots together. Strong roots means wide branches. Wide branches mean shade for other Sunjali people. We look after them, they look up to us. We're respected, which makes Sunjali people more respectable."

  Molly nodded unhappily. "And if dealing with me offends the older families, they'll take their custom elsewhere and you'll be out of business."

  "Yes. No shady tree, no respectability. Then the Sunjali people end up where you are. I feel sorrow for your bad luck, Bright, but we have our own to think of
."

  "Maybe soon things will change." Molly hated herself for grabbing at the thin line of hope the Colonel's patronage held out. She couldn't help it. Her loneliness blindsided her like a shot in the back.

  Mercy's tight lips almost formed a smile. "When that day comes I will order you to make me a brand new green dress that makes my customers careless with their money. Today, you leave by the back door. If you need things, send someone. Don't call here again."

  Molly held the tears in until the door slammed behind her. Then she dropped onto the second step and sobbed, ignoring the stares of the goats and the mud-haired boy tending them in the yard beyond, and the heated Sunjali chatter coming from inside. When her distress drained out enough to stand again, she palmed her eyes dry.

  "Well, then," she said, to nobody in particular. "Hearts are set against you, Molly Bright. There's nothing to be done about that."

  "Sister, you can always change hearts if you got the right words. Or if that don't work, then deeds will."

  Big Bill kicked at a goat to move it on from a water trough and sat down. He turned the mahogany-gripped pistol over and over in his hands, inspecting it with fierce eyes. When he levered the barrel forward, she saw the chambers were snug with bullets.

  Was he a little more solid than before, with a shooting iron in his hand? She glanced at the boy, but he was soothing the startled goat and didn't look their way.

  "You stole from the sisters?"

  Bill sneered. "They won't miss it. Filthy Sunnies. And what do you care, when they treat you like a dog made for kicking?"

  Molly quashed her first instinct, to go back inside and make amends. Nothing she could think to say would be taken well. Verity was probably ready to shoot her as a trespasser.

  "Don't take my part, Bill," she said again, feeling the futility of the words as an ache in her chest. "I carry my own burdens. I don't look to the dead for succour."

  Bill looked up at the sun as it slid past noon. He didn't blink. "Hush now, Molly. Your big brother's taking care of things. Now you get on. You got the most important appointment still to go."

  Gnawing on the inside of her lip, Molly reached out to squeeze his shoulder, trying to appear just as grateful as she could. Her fingers closed over warm smoke, feeling nothing but a tingle under her nails. Bill shied away, swiping at her fingers like she was a bothersome fly. "Away with you, sister. Ain't you got the sense to know the difference between what's living and what's dead?"

  Molly thought about the question another way. How was she to deal with a spectre who could not be swayed with force any more than words?

  #

  Balthazar Stonechurch, Gentleman Tailor.

  The oversized sign suspended over the porch was a work of art in rich oils imported from back east and silver hammered tissue-fine by a master blacksmith. It depicted a moustachioed young man with slicked black hair and a superior smirk, with gleaming scissors in one hand and a length of royal purple fabric draped over the other arm.

  Molly snorted, though quietly, and pushed on a door panel where the same scene was replicated in miniature. Three bells chimed in ascending tones. She took in a clutter of multi-coloured fabrics, sample outfits and half-dressed mannequins. Then Balthazar himself appeared, gliding like a skater on an oily winter lake.

  He grinned like a fox in a coop. "It appears my eyesight is failing. The infamous Molly Bright? What a rare and indescribable pleasure." He looked like he did in the painting, though reality had applied a wash of hostility. "The circumstances must be extraordinary for you to transgress the town limits."

  "I'm only here to purchase supplies, Mister Stonechurch. It's not my intention to ignite discord between us."

  A twitch crossed Balthazar's painted-on smile, like a viper slithering between shadows. Molly tensed, expecting a slap or worse. It never came, though his hand surely flirted with the notion.

  "I guess you've forgotten some pertinent history, young miss," he said in a voice all hollowed-out and filled with wasps. "I guess you maybe don't recall how your brother turned his coat for a bag of enemy gold? How he and his miserable dog pack led a company of Calendar Men right to my Uncle Able's camp? Or how they all got cut up where they slept? I guess that might have slipped your mind."

  Molly held her ground as his face drew close. Her own face was turning as red as Balthazar's, on account of her bated breath. She didn't dare let it go or look away.

  "Your brother was a bushwhacking assassin, missy! My father turned you out of town because you have the same filthy venom in your blood. You should have done us all a favour and spilled it out in the slag heaps."

  "A bushwhacker, am I?"

  A shadow appeared behind Balthazar Stonechurch. Bill Bright set a hat of pressed rabbit fur atop his long blonde locks. His pistol was pointed at the ceiling. He lowered the barrel to nuzzle the back of Balthazar's head. Balthazar's furious glower cracked a touch but he reached down and pulled his own pistol a half-inch free of its holster.

  "Give me one damn reason why I shouldn't do to you what your kin did to mine!"

  Before either man could resolve himself to an act of murder, Molly started talking. "You might shoot me down, Mister Stonechurch, and I don't imagine it would nag at your conscience to know I'm unarmed. But let's have no myths or misconceptions between us. My brother did wrong by you and yours, no doubt. If a preacher told me there's no worse crime between men, I'd nod and sing allayla with the congregation. But that's not why Stonechurch Senior denounced me as a traitor before the town, is it? It's not why he dragged me by my hair and threw me in the dirt."

  "You say not?"

  She folded her arms, digging fingernails in hard to steady herself.

  "What I say is, his little war was coming to an end without his only son - a man in his majority with his eyesight and extremities in good working order - ever taking up arms on his behalf. If ever a man needed a good distraction from the shortcomings of his progeny, it was your father. My misfortune was to be a convenient scapegoat just when he needed one."

  Balthazar's pistol slipped clear of its confinement. "Did you call me a coward, Miss Bright?"

  "I did not. It's nobody's business but your own why you didn't ride out to war, nor even why you didn't go into your father's mining trade. You must thank the Fates your mother showed you how to cut a cloth and thread a needle before she passed on. Handy skills to have right when Mirror Springs needed them." She waved a careless hand at the half-finished waistcoat on his work bench, all uneven stitches, misaligned lining and not a thread of fortune, good or ill, woven into the fabric. "Though it takes more than a well-positioned store and a pair of sharp scissors to make a tailor, Mister Stonechurch."

  The pistol came up.

  Bill's teeth glinted with feral glee from the shadows as he thumbed back his hammer.

  Balthazar Stonechurch said, "I ought to-"

  Molly said "You won't, sir, or you would have done it by now. Put the pistol away and let's speak with civility. I don't hold a grudge against you or your father. Consider whether you truly have cause to say different."

  He stared at her eyes along the shaking sight of his pistol for what seemed like forever. Bill's grin became a scowl as the moment drew on, and under Molly's determined gaze, which took in both the living man and the dead one equally, he withered. He holstered his pistol. A moment later, Balthazar followed suit.

  "I know why you're here," he said quietly.

  "I expect you do. And you'll give me what I ask for, because otherwise you'll have to do the job yourself. Colonel Tempest means to court your father in a splendid coat, and if my brains are splattered all over what used to be my own shop, then there's nobody else to make it but you."

  "This empty sack of feathers ain't worth a bullet," said Bill.

  Balthazar said, "Not me. My father may be partial to her but I don't owe that damned woman a thing." His defiance fell flat. Even out of her hearing, Colonel Tempest was not easily stood up to.

  Not unkindly, Mo
lly said, "It's a hard thing sometimes, to reconcile ourselves to the concerns of others. Most especially family."

  She felt no real sympathy for Balthazar Stonechurch, who drew arms on her to protect his own ego, who cheered on her debasement by which he profited, whose late mother had coddled him into brittle spoilage, and who had more in common with her brother than either of them knew. He was an indifferent tailor and a coward. Time and patient education might cure both conditions, but if so they would be furnished by some other teacher than Molly Bright.

  "If that's settled, then let's get to the matter at hand." She led him around the shop, choosing fabrics and supplies, and carefully withholding her opinions on the placement of the displays.

  As he transferred her selections to the counter and wrapped them in paper, he attempted to offer explanations of his conduct. None of them sounded more apologetic than self-centred, so Molly cut him off each time with a firm, "It's none of my business, Mister Stonechurch."

  He was still grieving a mother more than three years in the grave, she surmised. Commendable maternal loyalty, perhaps, but demonstrating a loose grasp on the realities of the present. Colonel Tempest would capture his father's hand as ably as she'd conducted any military manoeuvre. Molly's best advice, were she to offer it, would be to get used to the idea. She didn't offer, knowing she wouldn't be heard. The bitterness Balthazar nourished would poison his family sooner or later.

  "I should have killed him," said Bill later, as she loaded her purchases onto the litter of a complaining mule. Both the mule and her brother shared the air of an irascible drunk.

  "What good would that have done me? I could hardly escape blame for a murder when every eye in town has been on me all day."

  "I'd be protecting your honour, Moll."