No one had said that, yet, but Ger wagered a whole lot of them were thinking it, Crowmakers and regular Army alike. Just like no one was looking at or talking about the Crows, but every head twitched toward them every few minutes. Every Crowmaker left standing knew exactly where his Crow was. The link to Ger’s Crow burned in the back of his mind like an impending disaster.
Ger wondered how long until someone did make the suggestion. After all, what good was it, locking down the Crows while the soldiers who controlled them walked around free? Whatever story Ellis was busily selling to the Army and the plain folks at the mansion, Ger figured the Crowmakers were less human beings at this point than they were walking potential threats.
Which was funny, because Ger didn’t think he’d ever felt more human.
The wagons were drawn up on the edge of the camp nearest the mansion. Past the hitch of one, Ger glimpsed the splintered white steps that Ackermann’s Crow had crashed into, edges dark like a wound in the mansion’s otherwise unblemished façade. As Ger approached the food line, a woman’s voice, from somewhere inside the mansion, trilled into the evening like the song of insects.
If insects wept. These were the people the Crowmakers were sent here to help. These were they people they were supposed to protect.
Mrs. Epler slopped a serving of cornbread and pork onto a tin plate, and Mrs. Lockton held it out to Ger. His stomach rolled and threatened to heave, but he took the plate anyhow. The tin cup containing a gill of whiskey that Mr. Lockton proffered a few seconds later, Ger accepted more readily. By the time he settled into his bedroll, he suspected he’d wish there was more of that.
A vague sense of guilt nagged Ger. It seemed wrong, doing mundane daily things like eating and drinking and sleeping. It felt sacrilegious in light of the death surrounding them.
Up at the mansion, a door opened and closed. Ger had no trouble at all recognizing the brisk cadence of the booted footfalls that sang out as they crossed the mansion’s wide porch.
You knew we’d get to it sooner or later. Here it comes, then.
When he turned to look, Ger wasn’t at all surprised to see Tucker Ellis stepping around the gash in the steps before striding down the hill toward the Crowmaker camp.
4
Kellen didn’t have to take any real action in response to Ellis striding into the Crowmaker camp. She’d already forced dinner down her throat but hadn’t been able to face the empty dark of her tent and bedroll and the nightmares she suspected lurked there, so she’d been simply standing in the no man’s land between the wagons and the tents. Just standing there, with gnats rising from the seared summer grass and dancing in the cooling evening air around her head. Not with the other Crowmakers, but near them.
None of the rest of them were doing much speaking or even looking at each other, really. But Kellen felt less alone than she would’ve in her tent.
Ellis stopped near the wagons. No fire, cooking or otherwise, had been lit, but dying sunset light trickled between the dusk-blackened silhouettes of Harrison’s prized walnuts and painted a rosy hue along the edges of Ellis’s sharp outlines—fine-featured face, perfectly-groomed hair, expensively-cut coat.
Dandy, Kellen thought. And on the heels of that, with a fire that surprised Kellen but that also actually felt kind of good, Fucking asshole.
“Gentlemen.” Ellis’s brandy-smooth voice didn’t do a thing to take the edge off Kellen’s abrupt irritation.
The Crowmakers—what’s left of us—were mostly out of uniform, jackets laid aside long ago as they toiled under an August sky. The nine of them—Colley was still up at the mansion—were arrayed throughout the camp, in varying stages of washing up or eating or, like Kellen, trying to decide if their tent or bedroll was worth the effort. In ones and twos, slowly and without a trace of military snap, they meandered toward Ellis or in some cases just turned their heads toward him.
From the corner of her eye, Kellen saw Brian Byrne lift his head from where he’d bowed over the wash basin. Water dripped from Byrne’s chin, but he reached for his shirt and started toward Ellis anyhow.
“Nothing like a man who knows when to take charge of a situation.” William Jennett stepped up beside Kellen. His typical sarcasm overflowed with outright disgust. His icy blue eyes were fixed on Ellis.
None of the Crowmakers had talked about it yet—about any of it, really—but Kellen guessed she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed how, when Ackermann’s Crow had started rampaging, somehow Ellis had wound up in safety. Not in the thick of things with the Crowmakers, not fighting with everything they had when they’d have liked to run.
“Even Bradley’s got more guts than this weasel,” Jennett muttered.
Vincent. He’d stood on that porch, squared off against Ackermann’s Crow with fierce determination. Thinking about it added whole new layers of confused to Kellen’s present state of mind. Instead, she grabbed hold of that fiery thread of anger Ellis’s arrival in the camp had sparked.
And yet, despite her irritation, Kellen caught herself wanting to hear whatever order Ellis was about to deliver. Having something—anything—to do had to be better than standing here in the half-dark with no idea what to do with herself.
Maybe she wasn’t the only one to feel that way. They might not have been standing at attention, but almost all of the Crowmakers shuffled closer and stood a little straighter.
“With Captain Ellis, we at least know what to expect.” Kalvis stepped up on Jennett’s other side, sparing no glance toward either Jennett or Kellen. His remark held less emotion than Jennett’s, but no more volume. And he didn’t sound reprimanding, as Kalvis so often did.
“More of the same bullshit, you mean?” Jennett’s voice rose into a range Kellen recognized, the one Jennett fell into when he was looking to pick a fight.
The near silence lying over the camp shifted, from a dazed sense of time simply passing to a weightier waiting. Closer to the wagons from where Kellen stood with Jennett and Kalvis, Ger and Petras turned their heads toward the sound of Jennett’s voice. Bosch stood with them, staring blankly at Ellis like a big, dumb cow.
Shuffling sounds from behind Kellen indicated that Goodson and Langston and Byrne were still making their way to where Ellis waited. Up the hill beyond Ellis, the mansion’s door opened, spilling yellow lamplight into the deepening shadows of the porch.
Ellis’s gaze turned in Jennett’s direction, but before he could speak or even focus his gaze on Jennett, Byrne stalked through the space between Ger and Kalvis.
“Where is Colley?” Byrne barked the question as he pulled to an abrupt halt just in front of Ellis.
Kellen’s throat tightened. As much horror as there had been to deal with all afternoon and into the evening, the image of Ackermann’s blank stare had kept coming back to her. And she’d kept imagining that look on Colley’s face—Colley, with the freckles and spectacles and mild smiles. They’d been friends long before they’d become Crowmakers.
Ellis frowned in Jennett’s general direction. But by the time he turned to face Byrne, his usual smooth smile had reasserted itself. “Mr. Byrne. I assure you, Mr. Colley is in good hands.”
Byrne huffed an utterly un-amused laugh.
Before Byrne could elaborate, Ellis gestured behind him, at a figure now coming down the steps, skirting the splintered section Ackermann’s Crow had left behind.
Byrne recognized Colley even more quickly than Kellen did. He was past Ellis and storming toward Colley before Kellen’s sigh of relief reached her throat.
When Byrne reached Colley, he pulled up short. The two of them just looked at each other for a second. Then Byrne slapped Colley on the shoulder and turned to walk him the rest of the way back to camp.
Ellis turned his trademark slow, solemn gaze over the gathered Crowmakers.
Only ten of us, now. Still a fair number, but to Kellen it felt impossibly diminished. The two who weren’t there left a weighty emptiness that wove between the remaining ten.
“We
will depart at first light.” Ellis’s tone was crisp, matter-of-fact. “Make whatever preparations necessary tonight. We must deal with Tecumseh’s Town before the situation can degrade further.”
Silence fell again, for a moment.
5
Leave. Deal with. Business as usual. Kellen glanced toward the corner of the camp where the unloaded Crows had been chained.
Then Jennett snorted incredulously. “Just like that?”
“For what purpose?” Kalvis’s more polite phrasing overrode Jennett’s belligerence. Kellen heard an unfamiliar strain even there, though.
Ellis glanced toward Jennett before inclining his head toward Kalvis in that annoyingly patronizing way of his. “Tecumseh’s forces are gathered there. They will hear what happened here. The Crowmakers are ideally outfitted and situated to—”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Jennett took a half step forward, clenched fists pressed against his sides.
Ellis blinked, obviously so unfamiliar with the experience of being interrupted that it threw him.
Jennett dived headfirst into Ellis’s shocked silence. “A fucking Crow is the reason we’re in this fucking mess to begin with! Ackermann lost it—his Crow, his mind, who the hell knows what? Colley near about did the same. We had to… Ward had to fucking shoot Ackermann.”
Kellen’s breath blew out like she’d been gut-punched. Goodson had made it up to where the rest of them stood by now, and Kellen couldn’t help it. She looked toward Goodson, and he was looking at her, and God but the agony on his face.
I shot Ackermann. I did. And Goodson held him as he died. Whatever steadiness Kellen thought she’d recovered over the course of the day fled. She felt like a child, standing there and trying not to tremble while Jennett went on with his diatribe.
Jennett took a step forward and stabbed a finger at Ellis. “And you want us to what, load up our guns and our Crows and just go meandering off like nothing happened? If you think we are ideally anything but a deadly fucking failure, then you’re more fucking dangerous than the rest of us combined.”
“You should have thought to shoot Mr. Ackermann sooner.” Weird things had happened to Ellis’s typically-controlled face while Jennett was talking. He’d gone red, and his mouth curled into such an ugly knot that Kellen barely recognized Ellis. His normally brandy-smooth voice pitched lower, deadlier. “You lost control of the situation.”
Jennett, whose red face and ugly scowl were not only familiar but a regular fixture, turned a shade redder yet. He sucked in a breath so hard that Kellen heard it and leaned even further toward Ellis.
“Dale Ackermann was one of our own.” Kalvis spoke before Jennett could spout whatever he’d intended to spout next.
Kalvis stepped up beside Jennett and put a hand on Jennett’s arm. Kalvis’s face did not redden. He was like a wall, expressionless and impervious. Jennett’s fists stayed clenched, but his forward lean eased back some.
“So was John Rawle,” Kalvis added. “They are dead for reasons we don’t know. Many are dead.”
On Kalvis’s far side, Ger cleared his throat. “You can surely understand our reservations.”
Colley and Byrne had reached the camp and stopped alongside Petras. Langston had finally dragged himself up with the others, too, and stood behind Goodson. Langston stared at Ellis, dull-eyed and close-mouthed.
They didn’t form a line, exactly, but they stood shoulder to shoulder, all the Crowmakers.
All the surviving Crowmakers. Only ten of us now.
Ellis pulled himself up straight. He breathed deep enough that Kellen saw his fancy waistcoat expand and contract, just like Ellis might be a real live, breathing person.
“We haven’t the luxury of time or options with which to entertain reservations. The Shawnee will retaliate against our settlers. The Crowmakers are the only force capable of stopping them.” Ellis did another of his long, slow glances over the gathered Crowmakers. “You will be prepared to leave at first light.”
Without another word and without waiting to see if any of them had any more, Ellis turned on his expensively-booted heel and strode back up the hill toward the mansion. He’d climbed the shattered steps, crossed the porch, and shut the door behind him before anyone in the Crowmakers camp spoke again.
“Denial.” Jennett snorted again. “How long does he think that’ll work?”
“Long enough to redeem himself, apparently.” Ger stared up at the mansion like he was trying to read Ellis’s mind through its brick walls.
Kellen caught herself staring at Ger, studying him as if he was a stranger. Not someone she’d shared room and board with back in Philadelphia, not someone she’d once faced off against a murderer with, not someone she’d kissed before she’d realized what a huge mistake taking that road would be.
In Kellen’s mind she’d kept seeing Ger Owen as the underfed, nigh-suicidal fool who’d first blundered into her life. But he stood straight these days, walked with his head high. His shoulders had filled out, as had the scruff of fine blond whiskers along his jaw. His eyes remained the same, deep brown wreathed by worry lines, even when his quicksilver smile flashed sunshine into darkness.
Ger hadn’t rushed to her rescue, Kellen realized for the first time. Earlier in the day—a lifetime ago—when Ackermann lost his mind and his Crow went on its spree, Kellen had stepped up and handled things all on her own, just like she’d said she could. And Ger had let her.
Kellen supposed she should feel good about that. Instead, she just felt tired. She looked away from Ger and instead stared up at the mansion just like he was.
She couldn’t see through its walls, of course, no more than Ger could. Beyond it, all around her, something darker than night seemed to open up. Something she couldn’t see, couldn’t measure, sure couldn’t prepare for.
We were supposed to be invulnerable. Unstoppable. All they had to do was follow orders, and they’d accomplish great things, wasn’t that what Ger had kept saying? We were supposed to be the heroes.
Into the following silence, Kellen wondered if maybe the Crowmakers weren’t what people needed to be saved from, instead. They were what needed to be redeemed, a far bigger task than Ellis saving face with his cronies at the capitol.
And maybe, a darker voice yet whispered, maybe there was no redeeming them. Maybe they were all broken, just like Ackermann.
Maybe they just didn’t know it yet.
6
The next morning dawned as full of unmoving humidity as the night before. Kellen laid her folded uniform jacket over the back of her saddle, but even in shirtsleeves she felt overdressed. The sun, rising to their right as they followed the northward meander of the Wabash, only worsened the situation. The air cooked. Kellen tried to settle into the swaying rhythm of her walking horse and not think about the cool, enticing murmur of the river through the trees to her left.
Enticing, until Kellen recollected events on the White River only a few days back. Maybe it was better to hope for a storm. The weight of the humidity against her skin had sure reached that point where a darkening sky and flashes of lightning seemed increasingly likely.
I wouldn’t even care. Sky could spill buckets of cold raindrops on my head, and I’d just sit here and take it.
Miserable as Kellen was, though, she had to allow that riding a horse under a sullen summer sky was still a far cry better than what they’d been doing yesterday. The Crow riding on the back of her saddle, unloaded though it was, felt too heavy. Too close. She sat straighter than usual just to avoid touching it.
She couldn’t get away from the touch of its link inside her head. She tried not to think too much about that.
With nothing to do but hold her horse’s reins and stay upright in her saddle, and with some of the shock of yesterday wearing off, Kellen started asking herself questions—more specific ones than just “What the hell happened?” and “Why?” The questions careened around in her head, and the longer they did, the more her shoulders itched with the need
to talk them over with someone.
Not just someone. With Ger. Because Ger listened—usually. And Ger looked at things in a careful, reasoning way. And because some of the things that Kellen wanted to talk about, only she and Ger had lived through.
But no one was talking, really. The Crowmakers rode mostly single file, and even those who rode more or less side by side didn’t do much looking at each other. Ger rode only two horses ahead of Kellen, so getting close enough to him wouldn’t be a problem.
But the horse between Kellen’s and Ger’s carried Joseph Goodson.
I shot Ackermann. And Goodson held him while he died.
Which brought Kellen neatly back around to “Why?” and “What the hell happened?”
Goodson hadn’t spoken two words to Kellen since things went to hell the day before. But he hadn’t spoken to anyone else, either, so maybe Kellen’s suspicion that Goodson now hated her was her own guilt talking.
Eventually, the questions bouncing inside Kellen’s skull convinced her to press her heels to her horse’s side. She eased up into the space between Goodson and Ger until she was close enough to catch Ger’s attention without raising her voice too much.
“I’ve been thinking,” Kellen blurted out, because no other preamble she could think of sounded any better. Maybe sometimes the best way to break a silence was just to break it.
Ger turned his head. Then he drew back on his reins and slowed his horse until Kellen’s horse walked alongside his.
On Kellen’s other side, Goodson’s horse kept the same pace. But she felt Goodson’s attention shift to her, a nearly physical sensation of weight against the back of her neck.
“I’m afraid to ask,” Ger replied. He flashed a ghost of a smile, and Kellen recognized it as an attempt at humor.
“Funny.”
It wasn’t, and the ragged edges of Kellen’s reply weren’t either. But a weird stiff discomfort had been wedged between them since the day before the Shawnee had arrived, when Ger had taken issue over Kellen siding with Vincent, and Kellen had pretty much told Ger to fuck off.
Monsters of Our Own Making Page 18
