by Sean Platt
“Absurd,” said Clint. “I’ve seen this kind of dark magic before. Its brain is in Lee. Kill him, and it will flee.”
The constable cocked his head. “You sure about that, friend?”
Clint realized that nar, he wasn’t sure. Back in Precipice, the Darkness had become rats and had run off with its own Orb sample, but they hadn’t seen it since. It could be anywhere, but he couldn’t be sure where. Was the Darkness in Lee? Or could it be in the birds? Could it be in both? The birds, all together, were much larger than Lee. If he killt Lee, might there not be more than enough shaped Darkness left to avenge the mace-wielding bandit?
“I guess I’m not,” said the gunslinger. He glanced at Stone. “I suppose leaving him killt might not have been wise.” He stood, nodded to the constable, then gestured at Stone to follow him. They crossed the bar and stood in front of the giant man in the shadows.
“You’re Pompi,” said Clint.
“Pompi,” said the giant, sipping brew and staring at floor.
“I’m Clint Gulliver,” the gunslinger said, extending his hand.
Pompi looked up — first at Clint’s face, then at his hand. The giant’s hand was holding a mug that looked like a toy. The other hung at the stool’s side. Loosely clasped with his knuckles brushing the floor, the hand looked like a massive boulder. Clint lowered his arm.
“I’m a marshal of The Realm,” he added.
At this, Pompi Bobo bolted to his feet, careful not to move toward Clint as he did. Because there was nowhere else for his body to go, he pushed back against the bar as his legs straightened, splintering the stool to kindling. His eyes went wide.
“Marshal!” he said. “Pompi had to go! Pompi had to leave! There’s something wrong there, yar there is. Please Marshal, don’t…”
“Exiled marshal of The Realm,” Clint clarified, holding up his hands. He looked to Stone, sharing a confused glance with the outlaw. The giant could squash either of them with a thumb, and Clint doubted anything other than a few perfect shots — even from his marshal’s guns — could fell the big man. Yet here he was, cowering before them.
“Oh. You’re not here to arrest Pompi?”
“Could a man arrest you?”
“Yar, if Pompi let him,” said Pompi.
Clint watched the giant, waiting for more. Pompi was silent. So the gunslinger said, “Nar. I’m not here to arrest you, but I might be here to make you a deal.”
“What kind of deal?” asked the giant, lowering his hands.
“Sit,” Clint said, gesturing toward one of the tables. “Let’s have us a palaver.”
Pompi, seated on top of the sturdiest table in the room and plied with a 65-quart stock pot full of chili, settled down once he saw that he wasn’t in trouble. Clint and Stone shared their own stories to make him more comfortable. Clint told him how he and his unicorn partner had been sent beyond the wall many long years ago. Stone told him how he’d sabotaged Realm vein-sewing operations and was wanted more than any other man in the Sands.
Pompi told them that he’d come from a city in Elf Meadows called Meadowlands — which, as Edward had said, was Realm adjacent, verdant and still relatively rich with magic. A new land baron had taken up residence there, commissioning the kinds of improvements that remained unfinished in San Mateo, only on a far larger scale — new buildings, vehicles, machines, spark lines and steam factories. The baron’s reasons for all of the improvements were unknown, but the showpiece of the entire Meadowlands project was the massive new railroad Whitney had spoken of to Lee.
The train, Pompi explained, led from the Realm, through (or over, or past, or around — whatever) the wall, and then traveled outward into the Sands. It would, rumor said, connect the Sands and The Realm, but only for people who actually rode inside of the train. The whole system was magic. The engine was magic; the rails were magic; even the ties and spikes were magic. A passenger in the train would traverse the fracture separating Realm and Sands, but if a man ran down the tracks in the direction of The Realm, he’d never reach it. Pompi couldn’t explain how it worked, and neither could Clint. Edward probably could — but knowing Edward, he’d never deign to.
According to rumor, the train was a bullet-shaped, magic-fueled, glimmering silver machine while it was in The Realm, but as it traversed the wall, it became a black steam-driven engine with camber-linked wheels and a tall stack shaped like a funnel. Because the rails were magic and nailed into the ground with magic spikes, the job had to be done with magic hammers. At this point, Pompi pulled his massive hammer from behind his back, again seeming to draw it from nowhere, and explained that the giants’ hammers were the only way to drive the spikes — something any decent giant worker could do with a single swing. And because the hammers were magic, he said to answer Stone and Clint’s widening eyes, they could collapse into small pouches that giants wore on the backs of their belts. He stowed the hammer again to show them.
The giants, he went on, had been called down from Colossus Hollow to work on the railroad. He added rather casually that this was a mandate from the land baron and considered compulsory. The baron was apparently a representative of The Realm who’d been tasked with opening trade between Sands and Realm. As a Realm man, his word was law. The giants were paid a fair wage, but there was no question of compliance. They were required to work for the good of all worlds, “to heal a festering sore across our land.”
Pompi said that under normal circumstances, he had a giant’s compliant temperament and would have been perfectly happy to work the railroad and earn his fair wage forever. But, he went on, he sensed something in Meadowlands that shouldn’t have been there. An evil presence, mayhap. So one day, he sneaked out in the middle of the night and headed east. He had only planned to stop in San Mateo Flats briefly for chili, but once he saw the way Independence Lee controlled the town, he felt he had to stay. Lee feared the giant, and Pompi figured that fear might be enough to keep things from leaping from bad to worse. And so, in return for his protective presence, the town kept Pompi employed on the few projects that Lee’s murder didn’t interfere with, and kept him in chili and brew.
Stone, Clint noticed, took a liking to Pompi immediately. Not only did the giant’s defection from Meadowlands make him an outlaw, but he also seemed to have an innate moral compass that somehow co-existed with his otherwise dim-witted manner.
“The train,” said Stone. “Does it run over a magic vein?”
“Yar,” said Pompi. “It’s the only way to power it. It draws from it by in…” He paused. “Pompi forgets.”
“Induction?”
“Yar. That’s the word. Like the magic in the vein speaks to the magic in the train. It follows the vein from The Realm and will come out here, to San Mateo Flats, then to Aurora Solstice and Harper’s Knee.”
“You mean Nazareth Shiloh,” said Stone. “The vein doesn’t go to Harper’s Knee.” It goes to Nazareth Shiloh. Then past Baer Manhattan, then to Precipice, then to a few Edge towns and beyond.”
Clint cocked his head. They’d been through Aurora Solstice. They’d been to Nazareth Shiloh, outside of which they’d met Sly. Did that mean Stone had been sabotaging stitching operations on the same vein upon which the new railroad would ride?
“How do you know where the vein goes?” Clint asked Stone.
“It’s my business to know,” said Stone. The gunslinger supposed he meant his “business” as an outlaw who stole magic, but Clint had been suspecting for a while that there was more to what Stone did than theft. Back in the Otel at Aurora Solstice, Clint told Stone that if he kept pulling threads in the fabric of the fractures, the worlds might finally and irrevocably tear into two or more. Stone had dismissed the implication, essentially saying, “So what?”
Then Clint realized something else.
Baer Manhattan. Precipice.
“The vein,” said Clint. Does it go through Leisei territory?”
“I think so, yar,” said Stone.
Clint’s heart beat
faster. “And Sojourn?”
“Yar.”
“Solstice?”
“Yar. Beyond Solstice is the delta. But of course, thanks to fractures, those towns never see the magic flowing beneath them, and couldn’t reach the vein no matter how deep they dug.” He shook his head and said with venom, “Realm. It’s all The Realm. Oh, they could tap it anywhere they wanted. But instead they dam it up, use it for their own needs. For their railroads. They stitch only those fractures that matter to them, letting it spill to the Core at the delta — down, not up, into the sand.”
Clint’s head was spinning. Based on what Stone was saying, he and Edward had been following the magic vein from the start. The same magic vein that, if Pompi was to be believed, would soon power a railroad connecting the Sands and The Realm — the unreachable, unfindable Realm. Clint didn’t know what it all meant, but it couldn’t be a coincidence.
He stood. Stone and Pompi looked at the gunslinger.
“Let’s go, Pompi,” he said. “You’ve got to palaver with the rest of my friends.”
CHAPTER SIX:
BIG NEWS
They found Edward, Buckaroo, and Mai out at the town’s edge, on the opposite side of San Mateo Flats from the road they’d ridden in. The streets and buildings were empty of birds.
Edward was at his most theatrically thoughtful, gazing out across an open plain studded equally with cacti and scrubby, dry trees. Rough desert grass sprouted in clumps. He was looking west, where the sun had just descended behind a rolling set of hills, spreading crimson light across the horizon like blood.
“Very nice tableau you have going here,” said Clint. “Would you like me to sing you a traditional cowboy trail song? Something from the Z collection, like ‘Sharp Dressed Man?’ Or maybe you’d like me to ask Ma to fry you up some grits.”
“I’m thinking.”
“I see that. I brought a friend. His name is Pompi.”
Edward looked, seemingly unsurprised to find that they’d gained a giant. Pompi nodded back. Clint remembered what Pompi had said about the giants’ relationship with magic and wondered if unicorns and giants shared any kind of kinship. It wouldn’t be the first time Edward had withheld information from the gunslinger.
“We booked a room in the Otel for the night,” Clint said. “Havarow’s treat.” He jingled a bag of coins that had once been owned by the paladin, back before Sly Stone had killt him. Out in the Sands, it was hard to say who were the good guys and who were the bad. But regardless of what Havarow was, he hadn’t needed his coins, so Clint figured they might as well use them for pie, brew, lodging… and now chili.
Edward looked from Clint, to Stone’s outrageous halo of orange hair, to Pompi, to Buckaroo the thinking machine, to the dry husk on the travois that had once been Clint’s bride-to-be, Mai.
“Tell me the truth,” said Edward. “You’re deliberately trying to add one of everything to our crew just for the shock value. At the next town, you’ve made arrangements to have something else ridiculous join us. A giant floating baby head mayhap?”
As usual, Clint ignored Edward’s sarcasm and went to Mai. He knelt on the dirt (dirt more than sand; that would take some getting used to) and bent over her. She turned her head, slowly. Then her eyes opened. Clint gasped. Those tortured eyes looked into Clint’s and then closed again, her breathing the rattle of dead leaves.
Clint said, “She opened her eyes.”
“She’s dying,” said Edward.
“But she opened her eyes.”
“Her eyes were open when we found her in the shack.”
“But nar since.”
“Fine,” said Edward, sighing. “Don’t believe me. But you will do your heart good to consider her gone. Even if she somehow becomes better…”
“Yar, yar. I know.” He stood, turned to the unicorn, and drew a spyglass from the saddlebags Edward loathed so much. He extended the lens and peered toward the horizon and setting sun. Behind him, Stone and Pompi sat on a rock in a low palaver. Buckaroo was either sleeping, standing, or in some sort of standby mode. It was strange, not knowing how to treat a machine that looked like a man.
“I don’t see anything,” said Clint.
“I’m sensing, not looking,” said Edward.
“Sensing what?”
“The Darkness. We haven’t seen it since Precipice, but now I sense it again. Can’t you see how jumping-up-and-down excited I am to see you and tell you this big news?”
Clint looked over at Edward, who slowly swiveled his big white head and looked at the gunslinger.
“Yar,” said Clint.
“I can tell it’s out there. In that direction.”
“Birds,” said Clint. “It’s in a flock of birds. And it’s also in the man who beat Alan Whitney nearly to death. I met him after you left.” He told the entire tale to Edward, including the detente that seemed to exist between Independence Lee, his birds, and Pompi Bobo.
“Birds?” said Edward.
“A murder of crows.”
Edward thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Nar.”
“Nar?”
“Nar. I sense something farther off. In the distance.” He nodded his head, gesturing with his horn.
“The birds flew off. They must be nesting out that way.”
“Mayhap,” said Edward. “But the point is, we found the Darkness again.”
“This is good news?”
“I said big news,” the unicorn replied.
Beside Edward, Buckaroo stirred. He made a beep, then pulled the device that looked like a stopwatch from the chest cavity that had been made to mimic a vest pocket. Commissioner to the end, he checked the device constantly, as if he were still commanding a crew of stitchers.
“Sunset, sir and sire,” he said. This was one of his affects. He announced the exact moment of the sun’s rise and fall. It was, Clint thought, one of the most useless functions a machine could have.
“Anything on a shimmer?”
“Nar, sir. The shimmer in Aurora Solstice was the last I’ve seen. Mayhap The Realm has stopped feeding me information, and that’s the reason we haven’t found another.”
“Is that how you work?” Clint felt suddenly paranoid, thinking that if The Realm had been sending information to its machine, it might be able to collect information from that same machine… perhaps about a party of outlaws and its intentions.
"It’s not how he works,” said Edward, rolling his big blue eyes. “He doesn’t know how he works. He’s partially powered by steam and the rest by magic. The Realm are the ultimate users. They have no idea how magic functions; they just stick it in machines and see what happens.”
“True, sire,” said Buckaroo. “It’s more likely that there simply aren’t any shimmers this close to Meadowlands. We can approach, and then hope for the wall to allow us inside.”
“That’s likely,” Clint muttered.
“Nothing changes,” said Edward. “We’ll have to walk, same as always. Tonight.”
“Tonight?” It was Stone, who’d been listening. He sprung up and trotted over, apparently eager to get going. “Good. I’m tired of this town. It’s freaking me out. All those birds.” He shivered. “Let the cowards who live here deal with their own problems.” He hopped onto Leroy the horse, who Buckaroo had moved to Edward’s spot of thoughtful meditation, and waited.
“Wait a minute,” Whitney said, turning to Clint. “Wait a minute, Marshal. We can’t leave. We can’t go and leave this town to that man Lee. You saw how he was. You saw those crows. We can’t just go.”
“You want to put his crows in prison?” said Stone.
“Pompi can’t leave,” said Pompi.
“Then Pompi can stay,” said Edward. “I don’t recall anyone inviting Pompi to come along, after all.”
“Wait, he’s got to come,” said Stone. “You need to hear his story, Edward. About the train and what’s happening in Meadowlands. We’re going to need him. Tell him, Pompi.”
“Pompi
used to work over in…” the giant began.
“I don’t care where Pompi worked,” Edward snapped. It was the first time in a long time that Clint had heard an emotion from the unicorn other than dry, biting sarcasm — or, apparently, out-of-control chili lust. “I also don’t care if the rest of you go with us. This started as a marshal and a unicorn, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s all it has to be… plus our friend on the travois, of course. We don’t need a lawyer. We don’t need a giant. We don’t need an outlaw with shotguns.”
“Edward,” said Stone. “You know that I…”
“You can come. So can the giant. But we’re leaving. Whoever goes, goes. Whoever stays, stays.”
“But this town needs your help!” Whitney blurted. “I need your help!”
“We saved your life. That’s help enough. The marshal will give you enough money to buy a horse. You can ride east, staying off Lee’s roads, and consider yourself twice assisted.”
“But justice…!”
“Perhaps he has a point, sir and sire,” said Buckaroo. “Law and order is one of the key components of Realm society that…”
Edward spun on Buckaroo. “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot one. We also don’t need a thinking machine. You uphold the ways of The Realm? You said yourself that they’d scrap you if you tried to return to the service you’ve loyally done for years. And for what? A dent in your chassis?”
Buckaroo beeped. Steam belched from behind his neck.
A soft, alien voice said, “He’s right.”
