"Who are you?" Krysty whispered.
"I'll be hung, quartered and dried for the crows!"
"Trader!" Ryan gasped. "How."
Emma's face was carved from stone, and her voice didn't change. "Abe's here with me. Trusty Armalite cocked and ready at the last. Surrounded by bastard ungodly. Bald fuck with shaved head and pretty crystal."
"That's Straub," J.B. said. "She's talking about how we left Trader and Abe."
"Death on every hand. Over, under, around or through."
"One of Trader's favorite sayings." Ryan felt a cold sweat trickling down the small of his back, the hairs prickling at his nape.
"Fog gets thicker."
"What happened, Emma? Did Trader and Abe pull through after we left them?"
The woman shook her head, her black hair swaying from side to side. "Can't tell anyone what I can't see. But you must remember that today is just the tomorrow that you were so worried about yesterday."
"She's coming out of it," Jak said.
"I'm coming out of it," she agreed, blinking and rubbing her eyes with the sleeve of her black shirt. "What happened? Where was I? I could see a ragged mob encircling me on a shingled beach, among weed-covered boulders. I was old, with a nagging pain in my stomach. It seemed like it might have been my ending, but the seeing stopped before the curtain came down."
Ryan had been leaning against the window, wiping at the steamed glass, glancing out through the leaded panes. "Raining again," he said.
Emma stared at him. "There's something wrong, Ryan. Tell me what it is. Something about me." She closed her eyes, leaning her forehead in her hands. "The mutie power. When did. You must clear this or it'll be like a high wall of raw stone topped with razor wire, between us."
He nodded, realizing that he was already taking for granted her truly remarkable powers in reading his mind. "There's questions," he agreed. "Should I ask them now?"
"I'm well enough," she said, shrugging off Jak's hand, turning to him. "Truly I'm fine. And, Jak, you mustn't."
"What, Emma?"
She sighed. "Nothing, love. Just that you mustn't think too much of me."
"Why?"
The young woman touched her index finger to his lips. "Wait, Jak," she said softly. "There can be good as well as bad, if that's the way you want the bones to fall."
There was an uncomfortable silence. Somewhere lower down in the mansion they hear a door slamming and a burst of chattering from two of the women servants.
Ryan coughed. "Want this to be you and me, or all of us, Emma? We don't have secrets between ourselves."
"Then it might as well be all of us. And it might as well be now."
There was a general shuffling around as everyone tried to find a more comfortable position, without making it too obvious that this was what they were doing.
When everyone was settled, Ryan sat on the end of the bed, facing Emma.
"Ask what you want, Ryan," the woman said, running a hand through her cropped hair. "I know what bothers you about me. And you're right to be bothered. Quite right."
"Only two things."
"How long have I had the power of seeing?"
He nodded slowly. "Right. That's number one. Number two is where have you lived your life?"
"Before I discovered the power or after?"
"Both."
Her bright eyes were hooded, as though a spider had woven a fine web across them. It seemed once again that a part of her mind had moved someplace else.
"I lived for the first twenty-one years of my life in the northeast, in a small ville called Naven, a bleak and miserable place, with a long beach opening onto the Lantic. Children were told never to go down by the sea as there were tens of thousands of devil crabs there, some of them eight or ten feet across. Horned creatures with spiked tails. Nobody was safe from their ravages. Even the headman of Naven, Guido Smith, fell victim to the curse of the crabs."
"And you had the power then?" Ryan asked.
"No. There were odd times that I had a sort of. a sort of 'feeling' about things. I could help finding a lost cow or a mislaid ring. Knowing when there might be a storm on the way. Most if it I kept to myself. There were a couple of times I saw that someone taken sick would die and not get well, I was rarely wrong. But nothing compared to now."
"Don't have to tell this if not want," Jak muttered, looking ill at ease with the interrogation.
"No," she replied, favoring the albino teenager with a brief wintry smile. "I don't mind, Jak. In a way it's a relief to be able to talk to someone about it. Someone you know you can trust." The gold eyes looked around the room. "One of the few good things about my cursed gift is that I can tell when someone can be trusted. I paid a price for learning that." She shook her head. "But I run before my horse to market."
"Did any of your family have the gift?" Krysty asked. "Because 'seeing' ran in my family, at my mother's generation. Always through the women."
"No, Krysty. Your mother must've been a most remarkable woman."
"She was. Gaia, but she was!"
Emma carried on with her story. "We often went fishing in a small boat, off the shore. Winters were cruel and iron-hard. The sea turned gray and froze, so thick you could drive a wag over it or roast an oxen on it. It was a winter past that it happened. A bitter day with a wind that would cut you to the bone. The white bears had been seen within a stone's throw of the ville."
"Polar bears?" Doc asked.
"Seen in old predark books that they called them that, Doc," J.B. said.
"We had a number of fishing holes cut, and it was the job of the younger women to keep them open, day and night. I was out on the sea, a hundred yards from shore, when I saw a white bear approaching me from the north. It had already come close enough to cut me off from the ville, so there was nothing to do but stand and fight. I screamed. 'Course I screamed. But I knew it wouldn't chill me. Knew it inside. But I was still terrified. Had a spear with me. But I tried to dodge it, hopping around the fishing holes in the ice, with the leaden water surging and slurping beneath. You know it turns thick, like gruel, in bitter cold."
She paused as they all heard booted feet walking slowly along the passage outside the room. The footsteps stopped for a moment and then carried on, the sound fading into stillness.
"Yeah?" Ryan prompted. "What happened? You fell in one of the holes?"
She nodded. "You certain sure you don't have the gift, as well, Ryan?"
"Good guesser is all," Krysty said.
"I slipped and my feet went from me. Next I knew I was deep under the ice." Emma's voice became dreamy as if she were reliving the experience. "I can see the light. Dappled like the sun through a forest. The cold took my breath. I swam toward the light, but the undertow had pulled me sideways and I had lost all sense of my bearings. When I came up toward the surface, I bumped my head on ice."
"That's triple scaring!" Dean exclaimed. "Reckon I'd have just shit myself."
"Perhaps I did, Dean. I don't remember that. I know I wasn't frightened by then."
"What about the bear?"
"I never knew, Dean. It must've been nearly as surprised as I was when its prey disappeared."
"Don't keep interrupting, son," Ryan said.
Emma gestured to a water pitcher and glasses by the side of the bed, and Jak quickly poured some out for her, holding it as she sipped.
"Thanks. Not much more to tell. I tried to breathe in the narrow gap of air between the sea and the bottom of the thick ice. But the movement of the water made it impossible."
Doc cleared his throat. "It was said that Harry Houdini, the famous escapologist, did that once when a trick went wrong. But my belief is that it was simply a clever piece of self-publicity on his part."
"Can't be done in the sea," the woman said. "Believe me, Doc, I know like nobody else. My lungs were bursting, and my sight went black and I passed out. Nobody was sure how long I was under, but someone had seen the bear and my fall. They came from the ville and smashed th
e ice all around as quickly as they could. And there I was, floating on my back, face like snow, my skirt drifting out all around me."
"Ophelia," Mildred whispered, but nobody took any notice of her.
"They got me out and bumped and pumped me. Stripped me and rushed me to a fire where they piled heaps of furs on me. I was in a coma. Is that the right word, Mildred?"
"Yeah. A coma. A long period of unconsciousness. It would figure."
"I was in that black sleep for a week. When I recovered I found I had the power."
"Did you tell people?" Ryan asked.
"Not exactly. I couldn't help saying things as they came to me. There was talk of burning me as a witch. I could see both past and future. Father helped me to escape before they came for me with their ropes and their smoking torches."
"Where did you go?" Jak took the glass from her hand and put it back on the table.
"South. To get away from the cold. I don't think they pursued me. Glad to be rid of the witch. I know they were all frightened of me." She sighed. "Wandered for a few months, toward the Shens, doing kitchen work and taking what came along."
"Where in the Shens?" Ryan asked.
"All around. Into the Smokies. Finally found myself in the ville of a baron called Paddy Clancy. I got work in his kitchen, but he saw me. Had a big appetite did Clancy. Specially for tender young females." Her voice was bitter and cold.
"Heard of him," J.B. said. "Visited him with Trader. Remember, Ryan?"
"Tall man with red hair and a pair of matched Navy Colts? That him?"
"Yeah. 'Course he was younger when we visited him. Only been baron for a few months. After his father died."
Emma nodded. "I saw the death when I was first in the baron's company. He killed his father."
"Thought the old man was trampled to death by a stallion," J.B. commented.
"Supposed to think that. I 'saw' his son with a club that had an iron horseshoe nailed to its end. Used it to batter his father to the dirt. Puddled his brains."
"You didn't let on you saw this?" Mildred said. "No, of course not. Stupe question."
Emma was silent.
"You let baron find out you knew chilled own father?" Jak said disbelievingly. "How? Why?"
She was on the brink of tears, talking only to the albino, her golden eyes locked to his ruby eyes. "You don't understand what it's like being a mutie, Jak. I keep telling you all that I can't control it. What I see and when I see it. Comes in a flash without warning. So I can't get ready for it, ready to try to conceal my emotions at what I see."
"The murder came to you out of the blue," Krysty said. "That it?"
"Sure did. Clancy wasn't a bad baron, and I saw enough to figure his father deserved the killing. And he wasn't the sort of man to have his sec guards tie you naked to a bed while he fucks you from midnight to tomorrow."
"But?"
"There's always a 'but,' isn't there, Ryan? He said he wanted to marry me. Said it out in front of half his family. We'd ridden to a picnic, on horseback. Paddy had a fine stallion called Bluegrass Prince. When he said he wanted to marry me and be as good a husband as he'd tried to be a son, I saw it all."
"The killing?" Dean asked breathlessly, carried along by the bizarre tale.
Emma sounded tired. "Yeah, yeah. Paddy stood there in front of me, offering a glass of elderberry wine. Brothers and aunts and nieces and all, around him. But I saw another guest at the picnic. Another Paddy Clancy, gripping the metal-tipped club he'd made, oh, so secret. Blood on the horseshoe. Blood and brains splattered all over his white shirt and across his face and all down his arms. Matted in his red hair."
"What did you say?" Doc asked. "It must have been a thoroughly dreadful moment for you, poor child."
"It was, Doc. By stone and water, it was!"
"Go on." Ryan's mind was only half listening to the young woman's story, since he already knew how it was going to turn out. Obviously she blurted out the murderous secret, yet she must have escaped. Otherwise she wouldn't be here with them now. He was more worried that what she'd done once she might do again.
And there was the strange locked section at the rear of Baron Sharpe's mutie collection to worry about.
Emma had just explained how she'd gasped at the horrid specter, saying what she'd seen. "It was like I'd spit in everyone's face. The baron turned white as a fresh-laundered sheet and broke the glass in his fingers, the white wine tinted pink with his blood. For once, I recovered faster than any of them and broke and ran. Threw myself on the back of Bluegrass Prince and snatched loose the reins from a thunderstruck groom and was away."
"They chased you?" Jak had got up off the bed and was walking around the room, brushing his long pale fingers across the tops of the furniture.
"Nobody could catch the Prince. I rode the poor beast until he frothed and foundered, bloody-lunged, full forty miles away from the ville."
"And came wandering east." Krysty shook her head. "It'll happen again, you know, Emma."
"I know it. I try to hide it, but it's like having a dagger of ice thrust into your heart. Anyone would cry out."
"Got take triple care." Jak sat by Emma again and took her hand.
"I know. It's a horror to me. Like spending all of your life with a naked ax blade suspended above your head by a single human hair."
"Let the wrong word slip and you can get yourself chilled," Krysty said.
Ryan shook his head. "No, lover. Wrong word slips and she can get us all chilled."
Chapter Twenty-Three
Supper with Baron Sean Sharpe passed without any problem. The food, as before, was dull at its heart. A haunch of mutton, steamed with cabbage, turnips and okra, was the main course of the meal.
During a watery soup with shredded eggs and fragments of gristly bacon that preceded it, Baron Sharpe seemed to be almost asleep. He asked what they had thought of his collection that they'd visited during the afternoon, but hadn't even bothered to make the pretense of listening to their answers, cutting off Krysty in midsentence.
"Yes, I know all this. And like so much else in this wretched life, I find it ineffably boring. Joaquin showed you all the animals, did he?" He looked across at his sec chief, who shook his head in a barely perceptible movement. But Ryan noticed it and wondered at the message that lay behind it.
"Yes, he did. But I won't bore you further, Baron, with my poor thoughts on them."
"Better, yes, better. Well, well, better. That is the most amazing hair, Miss Wroth. I don't suppose it conceals any strange skills, does it?"
"What kind of skill?"
He leaned back in his carved oak chair and belched, not bothering to stifle it with his hand. "Any sort of. unusual skill, my dear."
Ryan stepped in quickly, seeing the hazardous direction that the baron's thoughts were taking. "I don't think any of us have any special skills worth mentioning. Though we're all fair hands with a blaster or with a knife, as your sec man, Joshua Morgan, can testify."
"What of the snow-headed lad?"
"What of me?" Jak asked, laying down his soup spoon. "What of me, Baron?"
Sharpe shook his hands wearily. "You outlanders are all so eager to take offense when none is intended. I still have a slight curiosity. Such pale skin and eyes that glow like the embers of a fire. Do you see in the night? That might interest me a little, if you did."
"See bad in sun, Baron," the teenager replied.
Halfway through the eating of the stolid main course, Sharpe showed a peculiar change in his personality.
He pulled a face of disgust and spit a mouthful of meat onto the floor at his side.
"This is ditch water! I can't abide food that tastes of nothing!" He yelled to the group of servants that was huddling by the doors to the ville's kitchens. "Spices, damn you! Bring peppers, salt and chilies, and be quick about it!"
Mildred was sitting next to Ryan, and she whispered the single word "Schizophrenic" to him.
Ryan watched as Sharpe stood, throwing his na
pkin across the table, yelling out to the room in general that the food was shit. Fit to tar a boat but not fit to serve to guests. His face turned red, and a vein pulsed with rage.
"Lot of fuss about nothing," J.B. whispered.
Doc smiled gently. "It seems rather like taking a toothpick to a mastodon," he said.
White-aproned, sweating kitchen servants ran in, carrying bowls and jars, laying them on the table in a semicircle around the enraged baron, who attacked them with an unsettling ferocity, scattering spoonfuls of powder over his platter of mutton. Yellow powder and red powder. Speckled powder, gray and green. And red and green pastes, some with tiny seeds showing in their midst.
James Axler - Deathlands 27 - Ground Zero Page 17
