by Sean Platt
“Don’t forget,” said Edward, reading the gunslinger’s mind, “we can still stop Kold from finding the third Orb and uniting the Triangulum.”
“Yar,” said Clint. “I suppose that’s something.”
A few days later, with absolutely no improvement from the dried-out corpse on the travois, three mounts and three riders came to the outskirts of San Mateo Flats — the first town at the edge of Elf Meadows, where they hoped to catch scent of Kold’s trail. There were no meadows and no elves (creatures Edward assured the humans were not at all cuddly), but dead vegetation now swapped space with sand more and more often. Clint, either recovering his spiritless spirt or deflecting, joked that soon they would discover a blade of grass and worship at its dewdrop.
“The whole world isn’t a desert,” said Edward. “Believe me, my people know.”
Next to Edward, atop an unspotted black appaloosa named Socks, Buckaroo belched steam from the back of his neck. The gold-skinned thinking machine checked what looked like a pocket watch on a chain and said, “It’s true, sir. I’ve not been to The Realm, of course, but I’ve seen towns near it through many a shimmer. The closer to The Realm, the greener.”
Sly Stone huffed. His own mount (also an appaloosa, this one brown, named Leroy) snorted as if echoing Stone’s sentiment. “Sounds very Realm, all right,” he said.
Clint said nothing. Edward, strangely, was also silent. Since the unicorn had regained his wits following his magic-addled fog, he and Stone had formed a strange sort of friendship that was somehow based on both shared goals and loathing. They didn’t like each other (since Edward didn’t like anyone), but whenever Stone told tales of his gang’s days stealing magic and subverting Realm operations in the Sands, Edward chimed in with some Realm vitriol of his own.
The path to San Mateo grew more funneled, less open. This concerned both gunslinger and unicorn, as following a narrow path exposed them to ambushes that weren’t possible in open sand. But there was no way around it, so they drew their guns and held them at the ready as the trails wound between dead underbrush, across packed dirt that had been trod by many feet and carriage wheels.
The party of riders stayed wary. Clint and Edward watched their front. Sly, with his twin shotguns, watched their rear. And eventually, then they found the ambush they’d feared… but the ambush they found wasn’t their own.
Off to the side of the trail, nearly in the brush, was a stagecoach with one door hanging ajar like a pouting lip. The big wagon was slightly cocked, the wheels on one side brushing the trail’s shoulder. The traces at the front of the coach had been cut, and whatever horses had once pulled it were long gone.
Clint’s sharp gunslinger’s eyes read the dirt like a water reader read the sands: close-set, heavy hoofprints deeper at the open end told him that when the ambush had happened, at least two horses had reared. A distinctive pattern of prints heading toward town (again with a deep-stomped set at the rear) said that the horses had run — not walked or trotted — in that direction. Around the severed traces and in the path’s center were undisturbed human footprints. There were only three sets. One set belonged to a man they found killt near the front of the coach. His coat marked him as its driver. One of the other sets had been made by boots that looked too narrow for the tracks’ depth, indicating a man who was lean but heavy, meaning that he had to be especially tall. The final set was made by a shoe Clint hadn’t seen in a long while, but which he recalled from a wisp of memory from his almost-invisible Realm days. These last tracks had been made by the shoe of a fancy man.
Clint waved the others back and dismounted. He circled the stagecoach on foot, soaking in details from the dirt. Then, once he reached the far end, he found a man under the coach who was lying somewhere between killt and alive.
“Pilgrim,” said Clint, noting the man’s fancy shoes. “You alive enough to warrant a saving?”
The man groaned. He tried to roll over to look at Clint. After a quarter roll, he yelped in pain and settled.
Clint turned to Edward, but the unicorn’s horn was already glowing. Under the stagecoach, the man lifted an inch straight up as if on an invisible skiff, with no part unsupported. He moved smoothly out from under the coach and settled on the dirt where Clint could get at him.
The man was beaten past beaten, his clothes ripped and filthy. Both eyes were already blackening and his body was covered in scrapes, scratches, and friction burns. His scalp was split, and beneath the split, his skull appeared to be partially caved, as if he’d been struck by something heavy. Seeing it, Clint was shocked that the man was still breathing, let alone conscious.
“Can you speak?” said the gunslinger.
“Leave me,” the man croaked, his breath falling from his mouth in harsh gasps. “I can see the reaper.”
“Don’t fear the reaper,” said Edward. “He’s not met a unicorn.”
Edward’s horn glowed again — this time a dull yellow. The magic haze gathered on his horn like a giant balloon, then floated toward the man in the dirt. The glow brushed the man. Then it seemed to empty into him, puffing his body up. The glow dispersed and the puff subsided. When the yellow was gone, the man’s eyes turned a proper color, and his scalp stitched with no crevice. Only a cake of dried blood remained, crusted across his neck and tattered clothing.
“Wait,” said the man.
“I don’t have time to wait,” said Clint.
“I…”
“Stop being dramatic. You are healed. Stand up.”
The man stood, looking down at himself, shaking his limbs as if expecting parts to fall from his torso. He seemed unwilling to believe his lack of pain, and wouldn’t speak until he’d verified that somehow, he was no longer neighboring death.
“What happened?” said the man.
“I happened,” said Edward. “You’re welcome.”
“Thankoo,” said the man, still looking at Clint. “I don’t know how you helped me just now, but…thankoo!”
Edward turned to Stone and Buckaroo and said, “Think I should un-heal him?”
Clint took the man by both shoulders, squared him, then gave a gentle shake to clear his awe. Awe was embarrassing, and neither a gunslinger nor a unicorn would ever expect a pleasem or thankoo. Except for Edward, that was.
“Who attacked you, and why?” Clint asked.
Instead of answering, the man started looking around the disaster until his eyes found a battered black satchel with some papers spilled beside it. He snatched nervously at the papers, then stuffed them into the satchel. Then he dove toward the brush behind the stage to recover more pages, gasping with relief at every new find. It was as if they were Orbs — too vital to leave in peril.
The man was everything Clint wasn’t. He was short and plump, and had small hands that were so soft they seemed naked without gloves. His face was smooth and unscarred. His clothes would be perfect if they were clean and untorn — a white shirt with a string tie; pearl buttons; a dour deep blue overcoat. His hair was combed and parted (possibly oiled), and he had a small, pencil-thin mustache drawn above his full lip. As Clint watched the man scamper, the man located his hat and donned it. It was a dented brown bowler with a small blue feather in its band.
“Pilgrim,” said Clint.
“Alan,” corrected the man. Then he seemed to realize he was being rude and ran toward Clint with his armful of gathered papers. With the satchel and vellum clasped to his chest, he thrust a hand clumsily toward Clint. Because his elbow was pinning papers to his body, he couldn’t fully extend the arm. Clint shook the man’s small, soft hand. The gunslinger’s large hand devoured it like a bird of prey.
“Alan Whitney,” the man said. “Attorney at law.”
“Where is Law?” said Clint.
“Nar. I mean I’m a lawyer.”
“I don’t know what a ‘lawyer’ is, nor do I care,” said Clint. “I want to know what happened here.”
“Attorneys enforce the law,” said Whitney, answering the question C
lint hadn’t asked. But once answered, Clint couldn’t help but look the man over with fresh eyes. He carried no gun and had no muscle. Plenty of meat on him, but none of it tough. And nar any weapons, at the scene nor on the man. How could one such as this enforce the law? But he let it go.
“What happened to you?” he repeated.
Behind him, Edward grunted. Sly, smelling Realm on the man, grunted a disapproving echo. Buckaroo, ever dutiful, said nothing. He did, however, check his faux pocket watch. It was a compulsion, if machines could be said to have compulsions.
“I was robbed, sir,” said Whitney. “I was riding into San Mateo when the horses stopped, reared, whinnied, whatever. I couldn’t see them because I was inside, but I heard it and I felt it. The coach rocked. I heard a great rustling and a scuffle, and by the time I came out the… oh, dear, I forgot. The poor driver.” The man looked over, removed his hat, set it across his heart, and then after a thoughtful moment returned it to his head. “When I came out, there was a man here dressed all in black, and nothing else to indicate the great noises I’d heard earlier, though there was an ominous sound — like a thousand maracas shaken at once — from off in the brush. The man himself was very tall and thin. He had a weapon like a heavy alloy ball on a stick. He robbed the coach’s strongbox — not much in there, anyway — then told me to run off. But I stood up to him.”
Whitney’s chest inflated with what looked like pride. Or stupidity, as Clint saw it. A coward ran when he could make a difference. Idiots failed to flee when they couldn’t.
“You stood up to him?”
“Yar. I told him I would see to it that he paid for what he’d done to the driver, who was in my employ and hadn’t hurt anyone, and who hadn’t so much as threatened the bandit from what I heard. I demanded his name. He laughed. He wore a bandana across his face to hide his features, but I knew he’d be easy to identify anyway on account of his stature, and told him so.”
“Well,” said Edward from behind Clint. “We’ll be on our way. You’re obviously too stupid to save. Would you like your injuries back?”
Whitney ignored Edward and kept speaking to Clint — the only one in the party who, in Whitney’s eyes, apparently looked like an upstanding lawman. The great white equine, the gold-skinned machine, and the clown with the giant orange ball of hair didn’t come close, it seemed.
“These lands are wild,” Whitney said. “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe since coming here.”
“I doubt it,” said Sly Stone, tracing the short grips of his sawed-off shotguns with a pale finger.
“Lawlessness everywhere. Well, it won’t stand. I told the man that law was coming to the wild Sands whether he liked it or not, and that men like him would answer for their crimes.”
“That’s when he tried to kill you, I reckon,” said Clint.
“Yar. He hit me with his weapon, then cut the traces and freed the horses. He punched me and kicked me, then hit me again with his large alloy ball. Here.” Whitney rubbed the spot on his head which, a moment earlier, had been concave. “I crawled under the stage. After kicking my papers around, the tall man left. When he went, that terrible rustling from the bushes went with him. Then I stayed for… I don’t know how long — Minutes? Hours? Days?… until you came along.”
“What was the rustling you heard?” Edward asked.
Whitney ignored the unicorn and turned to Clint, his eyes full of begging. “Will you escort me into town?”
The gunslinger took hold of Whitney’s head, then forcibly turned it so that he was looking back at Edward. “If you ignore my friend again, I will leave you here,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” said Whitney, looking at Stone. “I…”
“He was talking about me,” Edward said.
Whitney clutched his chest. “Providence! A talking horse!”
Edward’s horn glowed purple.
Clint stepped between them, arms out. He looked at Whitney, then Edward, then Whiney. After a moment, something seemed to settle into Whitney’s head and Edward paused his ominous magic.
“Tell you what,” said Clint. “We’ll palaver as we ride.”
CHAPTER TWO:
ALL SEVEN SPICES
They spoke while riding into San Mateo Flats, but Whitney wasn’t much help beyond what he’d already told Clint. He rode behind Buckaroo, the most accommodating in the posse, while casting suspicious glances at Sly Stone and his massive guns. He looked at Edward with something slightly different than suspicion, but no more flattering.
Eventually he realized Edward was a unicorn (“What gave me away?” the unicorn had asked him, waving his horn), but Whitney explained that his usual territory was well into Elf Meadows, much closer to The Realm, in a kind of lawful middleground where marshals and unicorns were seldom seen but things were relatively civilized. He’d heard of unicorns, of course — who hadn’t? — but he’d never met one. Clint advised him quietly to watch his step and do his best to keep from insulting Edward. Doing so could make things unpleasant.
Whitney had no more to say on the strange rustling from the bushes. He just repeated what he’d said earlier, about it sounding like a thousand maracas. Clint asked him to guess what it might have been. Whitney didn’t have a clue. Men? Clint asked, already knowing from the number of distinct footprints on the scene that the man with the large alloy ball rode alone. Whitney said he couldn’t be sure. It was possible the man who had attacked him came with a gang, that the gang had approached without stepping on the path, and that they’d waited in the bushes during the attack before leaving, also without stepping on the path. But why? Why would a man have a gang if they didn’t show themselves?
Stone, who’d noticed something Clint hadn’t, asked about the lacerations on the coach driver’s face and why his eyes seemed destroyed. Whitney shook his head, repeating that he didn’t know, that he wished he could add more, and that he’d been inside the coach when the driver was killt.
Stone, to make conversation with the nervous lawyer, asked about his business in San Mateo. Whitney replied that his business was in Aurora Solstice, where Clint’s crew had just come from, and that he wanted to establish a law practice. Clint wondered again how someone like Whitney could be a lawman and was near to voicing his ponder when Stone beat him to it by telling Whitney that Aurora Solstice was in the other direction.
“I know that, Mister…” He paused, waiting for Stone to give his name.
“… Bozo,” Stone answered.
“… Mister Bozo. But I need to return to San Mateo to report this crime. I saw a constable’s office when I rode through earlier.”
“Report this crime?”
“He wants him killt,” Clint told Stone.
“Nar, sir,” said Whitney. “I want him convicted.”
The riders understood the concept (Stone had been on his way to trial in The Realm before he and Buckaroo joined Clint’s posse, after all), but it didn’t make sense. The bandit Whitney sought had killt the coach driver and had intended to end Whitney. That called for killing, not accusing.
But Whitney was a strange man, so the riders let it go, falling silent. Unfortunately, Whitney seemed uncomfortable with silence. He yammered on, and on, and on. He told them about how the Sands were lawless and needed order. He told them about his hometown and his education. He told them about the law practice he wanted to start in Aurora Solstice. He raged and ranted about how bandits in the Sands must be captured, tried by a jury of peers, and jailed.
“And what if the local law won’t arrest him?” said Edward.
“Then I will face him myself,” said Whitney.
Edward grunted. Whitney took it for a noise of support, which it wasn’t.
Because they were going through San Mateo anyway, Clint agreed to wait for Whitney to lodge his complaint with the local constable — just long enough to make sure the idiot didn’t get himself laid out dead. It would be a quick stop. They would head in, stop to reload their supplies, and be on their way.
As they looked around and got a better feel for the whistle-stop, the town took on a strange tinge in Clint’s mind. It looked as if San Mateo had boomed, then stopped mid-explosion. There were many buildings, but many were unfinished and without a crew to work them. Some of the streets were coated with crushed stone rather than packed dirt, but the stone surfaces ended abruptly, as if the crews resurfacing them had suddenly surrendered. The main square’s skyline — if buildings two stories tall could be said to be a skyline true — was speared with alloy members. It looked as if several buildings were supposed to keep growing upward, but the subsequent stories had gone missing.
The constable’s office was on the main square. The square, in contrast to the half-finished buildings outside of it, was thriving. It was filled with coaches, pedestrians, and riders, and had been built around a large central island with a bandstand and a giant stone fountain. The bandstand was clean and white and new, but the fountain held no water. Shovels and picks circled the base, with bags of cement and sand stacked around it.
