Molly splashed more water as Bill opened the door. The sand-coloured dog lay on the stoop. It perked its ears up and trotted in, ignoring Bill. He cocked the pistol's hammer and raised it, but Molly shook her head. "Leave it, Bill. It'll calm my nerves to have some company while you're gone."
He nodded and vanished, leaving the door open to the night.
Molly set the washbasin on the floor. The dog began to lap up a messy drink.
She brushed a speck of feather off the shoulder of the Colonel's coat, repeating the gesture until her hands stopped shaking. "Seems a shame," she told the dog, but it ignored her in its thirst.
The locked trunk in the corner of her shack had laid there a long while, with its unused key attached by a cheap length of twine. Molly unlocked it and hefted the lid open. Inside was a collection of measly effects: boots, a hat, a tarnished pocket watch and a liver-shaped money belt. A bundle of letters from their father, written to his offspring from his deathbed, in which he set out his hopes and expectations for their future prosperity; each was addressed to "William Bright Junior." Underneath, a pistol and a belt of ammunition. Yet another letter, from the Stonechurch Brothers' military quartermaster, explained how most of Bill's clothes were missing because they were burned with his corpse. His wages and the cash missing from the belt had been donated towards his victims' burial expenses.
Molly reached in and pulled out the hat. From inside the brim she plucked a long hair and held it up to the light of the moon.
"Seems a shame," she said again, "but I can't see any other way."
#
On the morning of the Cotillion, Molly Bright packed her personal belongings into the trunk. She left the household effects in their usual positions; sooner or later, some other soul would have need of an outsider's dwelling. She folded the Colonel's coat in a stiff flax blanket which would not shed stray fibres, and added layers of paper bound with string for good measure. It took pride of place at the summit of the loaded donkey. Her own dress went in a saddle bag, though she treated it with no less care.
Then she snuffed her lantern, hitched the door closed and said goodbye to the Venom Gully shack for what she imagined was the last time. As she rode her gelding towards Mirror Springs, leading the indifferent donkey, the rangy mutt fell in with her again.
Bill was nowhere to be seen. For a time Molly considered whether she'd misjudged his determination to sour her affairs. Unlikely. He was probably just saving his strength for the moment of greatest chaos.
At the outskirts of the town, as the scratchy brush of the desert fringe gave ground to the patchy grass and broad-leafed bushes sprouting in the vicinity of the springs, suspicious eyes fell upon Molly. The dog whined, cautious and low, and dragged its heels until it fell well behind her plodding mounts.
"It's all right," she told it. "You don't need to worry about me anymore. I'm protected, you see."
The dog dropped into the dust with its chin laid flat and huffed.
Molly smiled back at it. "You go about your business, and I'll see to mine. When my situation is settled, I'll find you. It'll be nice to have a friend with me sometimes."
The dog rose and turned, trotting back in the direction of the shack. Molly watched it go with a hard lump growing in her throat. She rode through the town, leading her diminished menagerie. She met every hostile eye with a half-smile and an unblinking look. This provoked a range of variations on a frown - disbelieving, disapproving, bemused and one or two in the fashion of teeth-baring hostility. No one outstared her, and soon they found other directions to look.
The Colonel's house rose up like a fresh bloom on Finality Hill. She'd ordered it built while she was away at war, which the townsfolk had taken as a gallant gesture of confidence in the conflict's outcome. Molly suspected it had more to do with cultivating the legend of Colonel Tempest. She led her team up the crushed-rock path past newly planted flower beds and a garden setting overlooking the market stores and houses set along the western bank of the stream. A gang of men with picks and shovels, stripped to the waist and baring their military frames and regimental tattoos, broke rocks for a stone wall encircling the house. They kept their eyes to their labours.
Molly tethered the animals to the hill's one old feature: the great spreading spikewood tree after which the hill was named. In the early days of Mirror Springs, when the silver rush was at its acrimonious and lawless height, Finality had served as gallows for those deemed too murderous for even that wild frontier to bear. Its ongoing existence was another message from the Colonel to the town, by Molly's interpretation.
A Sunjali man wearing the Colonel's household blue-and-gold met her at the front step. He wordlessly directed her to a suspended chair lined with cushions; when she sat, he applied brushes and polish to her boots, top and bottom, until they shone spotless. She stood, and he circled her with a second set of brushes, clearing away the evidence of her journey. When he at last nodded his satisfaction, she looked like she'd just stepped away from her dresser.
"Thank you," she said, adding, "I am Molly Bright."
The servant nodded with a small quirk of his lips but did not offer his own name in return. He led her through a door with a stained glass portrait of the Colonel in full uniform, saluting with her sabre.
The furnishings were new and clustered, as if their final positioning had yet to be determined. The interior smelled of oils, waxing polish and woodrind: the distinctive yellow-grey paint that adorned most of Mirror Springs' buildings, made from ground talcum and feldspar mixed though the gummy sap of chalkleaf shrubs.
Molly was led to a sitting room. The Colonel reclined on a day bed, dressed in carelessly-secured Sunjali pyjamas, plucking a crisp pinching-march from a seven-stringed taramba. She finished the piece before she looked up at Molly.
"I knew you wouldn't run," she told Molly. "I made a bet with Justice."
The manservant bowed. "My Colonel, you placed your trust wisely. I see now what you saw at once." Molly heard falsity in the words, but the Colonel smiled indulgently and waved him into silence with a look of satisfaction. He produced a silver coffee set from an adjoining room, arranging sour tarts and filling cups as the women spoke.
Molly said, "I gave my word, Colonel. I've never done so lightly."
"I'm pleased. Does this mean you're favourably disposed to my proposition?" The Colonel sipped the tarry skin off her coffee, savouring it with lidded eyes and flared nostrils.
Molly drew a healthy draught of her own and set the cup on the small table before her knees. The urge to look over her shoulder tugged at her chin. She resisted. If Bill were to surprise her at this moment, all was lost. She held to faith that he would not.
"I will accept on one condition, Colonel."
"Another condition, Molly Bright? You've a wilful soul, haven't you?" Displeasure rippled at her throat and temples. Molly pressed on before it could build.
"It is no great inconvenience, Colonel, I assure you. You will have satisfaction before the evening is done. But I will not offer my word until you don the coat I made for you."
The Colonel rose with energetic decision. "Is that all? Justice, bring Miss Bright's packages in. I'll put it on this minute and toast our unity."
"Don't be hasty, Colonel," said Molly, setting a hand on the Colonel's arm in what she hoped seemed a comforting familiarity. "You may still keep your promise, for my surrender will not precede your own."
"Whatever do you mean?" The note of irritation was back. But the Colonel did not try to shake off Molly's hand, so she knew she was safe.
"Only that I cannot consent to your company until you have resigned your office and the paraphernalia that goes with it. When you shed the uniform in which you hanged my brother, I'll swear myself to your heart." When the Colonel's tiny frown would not flatten, she added, "I only hope you can see the conflict your kindness inspires, Colonel. I could not bear the constant reminders of my brother's craven treachery, nor of his final agony."
Molly thought she ought to weep a
scattering of tears as the bereaved sister. She could not bring herself to add so crass a performance to her crimes of omission.
The Colonel raised her cup and drained it with measured slurps. Her knuckles were white and the small finger shivered against the base of the cup like a drummer's salute. Molly swallowed slowly, to avoid the appearance of nerves or parody.
"I understand. Of course I do. But I have a condition of my own." The Colonel's voice was like the singing spin of a well-oiled pistol cylinder. She reclined on her lounge and adopted a leisurely pose. "I've been pondering this dress you made. I figure it's every bit as much my commission as the coat. So I want to see it. Before anyone else lays eyes upon it, you understand. For my sight alone."
Molly stammered, "If you can direct me to a dressing chamber, Colonel, I'll be happy to -"
"No," snapped the Colonel. "I mean right here."
"What?" Even knowing it was coming, the Colonel's hungry calculation set Molly's heart roaring like a creek in flood. In the moment, panic almost hooked her. She fought down the instinct to look over her shoulder.
"You step out of those road rags you're in and out of whatever smalls you've got. I mean to see what goods I'm promised, Molly Bright, cloth and skin alike."
An outraged retort rose in her - "I'm not your purchase! I'm not your prize of war!" - but Molly won that battle too. The words went unspoken.
"Justice has already dusted you off but I believe on closer inspection I may find a spot or two he missed," said the Colonel. "Once we get the desert off your hide, we can work on putting you back together like a proper lady of town. Layer by layer from the skin out, till there's nobody could say you were ever otherwise."
With meek little movements like darts of shame, Molly closed her eyes and began to unravel bows, loosen binds and unhook buttons.
She thought it best not to hurry too much.
#
No place in Mirror Springs was grand enough for the cotillion but the residence of Jeremiah Stonechurch. Though Stonechurch Senior's indifference to both society and architecture was long evident, his late wife Charlotte dedicated herself to the betterment of both aspects of the town. A preponderance of narrow-gabled roofs and arched entry ways adorned almost every structure erected since her arrival, the most prolific evidence of her influence. The oversized dance hall now known with some affection as Charlotte's Jamboree was by far her most ostentatious contribution to the social fabric.
When Molly Bright stepped through a cascade of iridescent curtains on the arm of Colonel Tempest, the horn pipe-band's music and the gathered worthies' conversations continued uninterrupted. But sly glances turned in their direction. Molly wanted to wilt under the sear of gazes, but the Colonel's grip would have none of it. She allowed herself to be steered to the centre of the dance hall where, beneath a seven-armed candelabra puffing smoke into a ceiling vent, gathered the Stonechurch entourage.
The Colonel commanded their attention as she bowed in the cavalry style; one knee bent and the trailing foot thrust behind. The tip of her scabbard scraped across the tiles, scratching a trail in their dull mirrored sheen. Her hat, coat and military breeches were patched and presented in an enviable condition, all the work of Justice the servant.
"Mister Stonechurch," she intoned, dipping low for her intended. She turned upon Balthazar, and now Molly did not mistake the ironic gravity in her tone. "Young Master Stonechurch. Honoured worthies of the community. Your kind hospitality puts me to shame. May I present my companion, Mistress Molly Bright?"
Stonechurch Senior was a desert bird. He was as withered and scrawny as a packless dog. His eyes never stilled, always searching, calculating and weighing up prospects. Molly preferred to look past him, but the Colonel's instructions were not to be ignored. She greeted the company with the traditional dip at the knees, with which the tight ribbons strapped about her waist and hips did not much interfere.
"Gentlemen," she said. Terseness was also against the Colonel's edict, but she did not quite trust herself to embark on polite conversation with her chief antagonist and his coterie. "Pleasant evening to you."
To his credit, Jeremiah Stonechurch did not demur; he kissed first the Colonel's hand, with a relish that seemed to entertain the idea of taking a bite, then Molly's. The mercifully brief contact felt like a gravel burn.
"She's got no business here." One Stonechurch loyalist broke ranks and pointed a red finger at Molly. "The Chamber turned her out. Fancy skirts or no, she can't come a-dancin' with decent folk."
The Colonel pretended to consider the declaration's merits, a twitch of vicious humour working the muscle along her jaw. "I don't reckon you heard me clearly, Mister Roderick." Her voice was a battlefield bugle that carried to every corner. "This is my companion. Decent folk needn't concern themselves. I'm taking all her dances for myself."
Roderick the loyalist squared his shoulders for further disputation but the Colonel threw a companionable arm about his neck and wheeled him to face the elder Stonechurch. "If that's acceptable to you, sir, naturally."
Jeremiah Stonechurch looked Molly up and down, which his shadows took as invitation to do the same. Their eyes ranged with hungry appraisal from the twisting fall of hair knotted with ribbons and fresh-cut flowers, past the faint red imprint of teeth along her clavicle, to the starburst of black pleats distorted by contours of breast, hip and thigh.
"She'll do," said the patriarch. Captive breaths were released; Molly held hers a little longer than most. "Now don't you young people have revels to attend? Get to dancing."
With a light laugh, the Colonel bowed again and made to steer Molly across the floor. Molly set a hand on the Colonel's and said, "Now, what can you be about, Colonel? This is a promenade, not a cavalry charge. Mirror Springs is done with soldiers and wars. It demands a woman of means and stature. As do I."
A look of something darker than consternation crossed the Colonel's brow; Molly glimpsed the cold architect of ruthless strategies in those eyes. Calculation too, as though she suspected a trick or an act of rebellion. Both, perhaps.
"Well, why not?" she said, breaking her thoughtful inspection of Molly's gaze. "Let's be done with formalities and get to the festivities as soon as we may."
She turned, sweeping her hat high and low in salute at Stonechurch, who had not moved yet. With a complicate flourish of her wrist, he held it out to Molly, who took it and retreated a few steps. She sensed the Colonel would want some room. "Marshall Stonechurch, have I not served your cause loyally and discharged my duties to your satisfaction?"
Stonechurch Senior nodded. Balthazar downed his drink in a gulp and groaned, until silenced by his father's glare.
"Exemplary, I should say," he agreed. "My enemies have bled or fled, or offered terms I consider most favourable. You've done all I asked and more." Despite his desiccation, he was the Colonel's equal in overcoming the noise of the ball. In any case conversations and music were easing off.
"The warring's done. I can't rightly serve as your Colonel any more, sir. Will you bid me lay down my sword?" She unbuckled her sword belt and set the weapon at Stonechurch's feet.
"Will you grant me leave to silence my guns?" She raised her pistols and flicked them open to show empty chambers. She put them beside the sword with her holsters and ammunition belt.
"Shall I set aside my uniform in the hope it need never be worn again?" She shrugged the coat off and folded it into a precise square with effortless movements. It made a soft puff of complaint as she dropped it atop the weapons.
Stonechurch nodded impatiently. "Yes, yes, I give my blessing. What about the rest of it?"
She held a curled hand to his lips. Around her middle finger was a twist of silver; she unfurled her hand to reveal its twin. "I propose a new arrangement, if you're willing."
Stonechurch plucked the jewel and raised it to his eye with a bone-deep prospector's instinct. But he looked at Molly with frank suspicion. "What about her?"
"You'll see as little of her as you p
lease," said the Colonel, "or as much as you like."
The old man rammed his gnarled middle finger through the ring and pressed his hand to hers. "We'll see about that," he said, smacking his woody lips. "All right, then, Colonel Tempest, you can marry me if you're inclined."
She smiled like a sun-warmed snake and said, "My military days are behind me, my intended. You'd best get used to calling me Harriet."
Three things happened.
First, the good folk of Mirror Springs lit a blaze of applause that spread and rose until hoots and cheers swallowed it. Hearty fellows slapped each other's backs, ladies stamped their dancing boots, and brimming glasses were raised in congratulations.
Second, Harriet Tempest's manservant Justice weaved through the throng with Molly's coat and slid it expertly over her arms and shoulders even as she laid an unbroken kiss on her fiancé's weathered lips, to still greater bonhomie.
Third, William Bright appeared with a gun in his hand.
Where Tempest stood, so stood Bill. In the first instant he seemed to be an outline, like a portrait painted on a glass set in front of her, and his face was pressed against Stonechurch's like hers. Gasps of shock came from every quarter; everyone saw Bill Bright as an echo around Harriet Tempest.
"Revenant!" came the cry.
Then his hands, her hands, their hands came up and shoved the old man in the chest. As he sprawled, Tempest reeled back in horror from her own hand, which held a mahogany-gripped pistol she'd never seen before.
Molly knew it well enough. She'd seen her brother steal it from the Sunjalese sisters. She saw Mercy in the crowd, and knew that she recognised it too.
Tempest shouted, in a growling voice not her own, "You filthy old bastard! You stuck us out there fighting for your table scraps. I risked my life every day to protect the silver in your pocket, you tunnel-scab! Let's see how you like it!"
Their arms rose as one, steady and level, the pistol pointed unerringly at Stonechurch. Harriet's eyes were wide and wild, and she cried, teeth bared, "No no no. Stop him. Someone stop him."
Mnemo's Memory Page 13
