by Sean Platt
Mai reached into her saddlebag and extended a new gunbelt to Clint. It was El Feo’s.
“Come on,” said Edward, annoyed. “Take it and put it on. At least you don’t have to be a horse.”
Clint buckled the bandit’s gunbelt around his waist, withdrew the shooter, and found it to be light (“like a toy”) but accurate. He climbed onto Edward’s saddled back and they began their approach into town. Both of Sly Stone’s shotguns were tucked into Edward’s saddle, but the magic in them had been keyed to his hand. Clint had tried them on the trail, finding the guns plenty handy but now entirely conventional. They would act as handy backup weapons.
Clint wore a new shirt with curly stitched accents at the top of the chest. The shirt was a light shade of blue, almost periwinkle, and made Clint want to vomit. Edward had magically shined his boots, bringing out a glimmer that Clint had nar seen in them before, and Mai had given him a stiff hat she’d picked up at a trader’s stand. Under the hat, Mai had combed and oiled Clint’s hair, and had wiped the trail grime from his face. With his makeover complete, Mai assessed him and declared him quite dapper. Clint gandered as best he could in a small hand mirror and declared himself ridiculous. Edward said that he didn’t want to hear a dagged thing about anyone looking ridiculous. Then he began making dumb-horse jokes in order to deflect.
Mai stowed Clint’s seven-shot guns, promising to protect them with her life. Given what they’d seen of Mai lately (she didn’t seem to have paused her transformation and was still somehow improving), that was a promise with teeth.
The fancy man and his gray horse, duly disguised and both mumbling, made their way across the green, grassy plain and down a set of rolling hills. They crossed a valley, skirted the alloy, steam, and spark metropolis of NewTown, and entered the more familiar-looking OldTown. The first building they encountered was a livery stable. Clint dismounted and hitched Edward to a post. The unicorn who was now a horse threatened to disembowel the gunslinger, but Clint said that no respectable fancy cowboy would ever leave his horse untethered, given that horses were so stupid. Then, snickering, he walked into the barn and called up into the hay, looking for the proprietor.
After a few shouts, a balding man with wild hair sticking out above his ears and a crazy graying beard matted to his chest shambled down a ladder and approached him, broadcasting his welcome.
“Yar!” said the man.
“Evenin’,” said Clint, touching his hat and trying to sound appropriately yokelish. “I’m looking for a man of mine. Came into town to inquire about some supplies but hasn’t returned. Big man. Giant, in fact.”
The man scratched his head, then his rear. “Lots of giants around here.”
“This one came from outside, not from the mountains. We fear he might have gotten himself into some trouble because he wasn’t officially employed and wouldn’t know the ways of the town. He’s hot-tempered.” That was a lie, of course, but Clint already knew where Pompi was. He was merely fishing for whispers.
“Well, he’d be the one in with Fat Ziggy, then. They brought a giant in just a bit ago, in fact. Needed a wagon to do it, so everyone came out to watch while they dragged the giant inside. Was a bit of a spectacle since giants don’t never really misbehave. But Ziggy, he’s into spectacle. Ever since Diamante touched him to marshal over the whole of Meadowlands and gave him that crew of thugs, he’s been flashing his badge more than actually getting his job done. Wants to be Diamante’s right hand, he does.”
“We need to get him out,” Clint said. “We bought our giant fair and square, and have a substantial investment in his person.”
The man squinted at Clint. “Well now, that’s not true, is it? You’re not the kind of guy what buys a giant.”
Clint forced himself to stay calm, though his heart was beating hard. They’d carefully disguised themselves, but within a minute, a livery stable owner had seen right through him. What had they left hanging in the breeze? And what else might give them away? Did they have any chance at all?
“What do you mean?” said Clint.
“Well, you’re a Realm marshal, ain’t you?”
“Um…”
“Friend, look at your hands.”
Clint looked down. His right hand was open in front of his torso, gesturing as he talked to the frizzy-haired old-timer. His brain had effectively told that hand to be casual, and since it was his dominant hand, it had obeyed. But Clint’s non-dominant left hand, idle, had remained on autopilot. Right now, it was poised in a long-fingered claw at his side, his elbow cocked outward, hovering above a pistol that wasn’t there.
“My grappy was a Realm marshal,” said the stable owner. “He retired with honors after years and years and years of service to the royals and came out here to the Sands to start a simple life, and here he met my grammy and they had appy. Till his dying day, long after he turned in his guns and surrendered his unicorn, grappy held his hand like that, like he was ready to draw. Said it got into his blood. Grammy thought it was funny, tried to break him of it since he always looked like he was waitin’ to strike. She’d give him things to hold in that hand, but his draw stance never totally went away.”
Clint forced his hand to hang at his side. “I’m just a merchant,” he said.
“Hands.”
Clint looked down again. This time his right hand was poised. It was the correct hand this time, given that it was where he wore his single pistol, but nobody other than a seasoned gunslinger literally couldn’t keep his hands from being constantly at the ready.
“Look,” said the old-timer. “My name is Percy Noodle, and I’m your friend. I ain’t gonna tell nobody about whatever you’re doing, since no Realm marshal that weren’t renegade would ever pretend to be nothing else. And no Realm marshal who were still with The Realm would be looking to spring that there giant, what folks say was mouthing off about Diamante.”
Clint started to object, but Noodle held up a wrinkly old hand and continued.
“It’s okay. I been here since before Fat Ziggy, back when this town was wind spit. This city may be in love with the new baron, but that’s only because all that matters to them is steam and spark and that fancy black train they think will make ‘em rich. But I can see how The Realm grows more visible, and I know from my grappy what that means for the magic — and, hey, what The Realm means for the magic true.”
“I don’t know what you’re yapping about,” said Clint.
Noodle extended a finger, pointing at Edward. “You know, don’t you?”
Edward opened his big supposed-to-be-a-horse lips and said, “Yar, I know.”
Noodle showed no surprise at the talking gray horse. Instead, he walked over to the side of the barn door, retrieved a bottle of apple brew from a crate filled with ice, and shoved it into Clint’s left hand. Then he held Clint’s shoulder and pointed down the dirty OldTown central street.
“Your man is in the building with the star out front,” he said. “And if you ever need anything, Marshal, you come back here to me. You and your unicorn.”
“He’s not a unicorn,” Clint said, grasping at straws.
“Keep that brew in your hand to occupy it and you’ll be fine,” said Noodle. “And if you’d abide some advice, I’ll offer you this: try not to kill them lawmen until they need killing, no matter whose pocket they’re in. In Meadowlands, one thing’s nar changed: If you start something, you’d best be prepared to finish it.”
CHAPTER FOUR:
MERCY BARLOWE
They had to buy Pompi to free him from jail.
Clint was counting on the law’s corruption in Meadowlands as the key to the giant’s emancipation and wasn’t disappointed. It didn’t matter what Pompi was in jail for, and didn’t matter that his contract was with the railroad. It didn’t matter that he’d been publicly expressing reservations about the benevolence of the great Diego Diamante and what he was doing with the railroad. Lawless towns were far more honest than places like Meadowlands. True, Meadowlands had law an
d order, but crooked lawmen never served the greater good. They served the man with the biggest whip or wallet, and on the day Clint stepped inside the station, his wallet still held plenty of Paladin Havarow’s gold coins.
The two identical albinos manning the station looked askance at Clint and the apple brew inexplicably clutched in his left hand, but once he pulled out his coins and offered to buy back “his giant,” the Teedawge archetypes forgot all about the prisoner’s supposed offenses and who he may or may not belong to. The lawmen had bills to pay after all, and should anyone come later to claim the giant, they could always say they’d accidentally killed him during torture. He was only a giant, after all.
Pompi had been beaten beyond beaten. His big eyes were swollen shut and black. His face was a mess of scratches and scuffs. His clothing was torn and bloody, and one arm and one leg seemed either badly sprained or broken. With the help of a giant attendant (one of the two giants who’d beaten him, Clint noticed while gripping his apple brew almost hard enough to shatter the bottle), they were able to get him outside, but once outside and unsupported, Pompi couldn’t stand. He was semiconscious and didn’t seem sure who Clint and Edward were. He was bleeding from his ears. One of the women who came out to watch the commotion said that between the dizziness and the bleeding ears, it probably meant a concussion — something that was extremely rare for a giant on account of it being so hard to do, and often fatal. The woman suggested they rush Pompi to the town doctor, who lived out on the edge of OldTown in a white ranch house with a picket fence.
Clint looked at Edward, silently asking if there was anything he could do. The gray horse gave a subtle shake of his head. He couldn’t heal Pompi in front of so many witnesses, and even without the witnesses he had to remain inert. Using magic inside of Meadowlands would be like ringing a dinner bell for Dharma Kold.
Pompi couldn’t walk, and Edward couldn’t help to carry him other than as a normal horse. He was strong, but without magic, he wasn’t strong enough to drag a giant up a sloping dirt street. But Percy, the livery stable owner, had been watching, and once Pompi fell, Percy ran back to his stable and returned with a team of four horses and an extra saddle girth (especially long and wide, used on his draft horses) and looped it across Pompi’s chest and under his armpits. He tied the girth to his team of horses, then used a second girth to pin Pompi’s hands to his sides. And in that way, they dragged the giant to see the doctor.
Doctor Mercy Barlowe was a thin man with a short, neatly trimmed beard and squeaky clean spectacles. He saw Noodle, Clint, Edward, the four-horse team, and the ailing giant on their approach and ran outside to greet them, bag in hand. He said he’d never treated a giant, but promised to do his best. And his best, in the end, turned out to be good enough.
A few hours later, Barlowe yanked a blanket over the unconscious giant, who he’d had to leave in the front yard. He promised Clint and Edward that Pompi could stay until he recovered, adding that Diamante wouldn’t like it. But the spiteful way he said it made Clint feel as if Diamante’s displeasure was reason enough, on its own, for Barlowe’s allowance.
Clint reached into his pouch for gold, but Barlowe held up his hand.
“I won’t take your money,” he said. “But there is one thing I’ll accept as payment for this service rendered.”
Clint raised his eyebrows. “Name it.”
“Your party’s company,” he said. “I have extra beds. And a stable.”
Clint shook his head. “We couldn’t impose.”
“I insist,” said Barlowe. “Besides, you won’t be doing yourself any favors by staying in OldTown tonight. No innkeeper will want you. They all know why this giant was in lockup to start with. OldTown is afraid of Diamante.”
“And you aren’t?”
“I’m the town’s only doctor,” he said. “All that steam and alloy and spark and growth? They bring their money. They bring their supplies. But they did not bring doctors, and none among them have what they need to learn. They have a few Magic Aid kits, of course, and those ointments will heal cuts and even a broken bone if it’s not snapped right in half. But this town teeters on the unsustainable. They don’t think of health and medicine in the same way they don’t think on other things of good sense. Unless they can open The Realm like Diamante promises or until they can scour the Sands and persuade another trained physician to come here, I’m all that stands between Diamante’s men — or any of the people down there — and death by a slow-bleeding gunshot, or a heart issue, or any other among a thousand things.”
“I can’t believe that,” said Clint.
“Believe it.” Barlowe pushed the spectacles up high on his nose. “This town is full of magic, but none where it matters. It’s like false magic, which can light sparks but cannot heal. The only true white magic in this town is what you brought with you.”
Clint looked around, again feeling like he’d been punched in the face. Even with the apple brew clutched in his hand, he’d never felt so transparent.
“Don’t worry,” said Barlowe, reading the gunslinger’s reaction. “Nothing gave you away. Percy Noodle told me, is all.”
“Percy told you — !”
“Oh, don’t be mad at old Percy. He comes off like a coot, but he’s sound of mind. He won’t share your secret, and the only reason he told me is because he knows I’d want to help.”
Clint sighed, then closed his eyes. Never before had he felt so out of control for so long. Barlowe didn’t seem like a threat, but Clint felt as if he and Edward shouldn’t have bothered to disguise themselves at all, for all the good it was doing them. They could have ridden in as a two-gun marshal on a white unicorn, magic blasting. Even if Kold came at them, at least Clint wouldn’t feel like an impotent actor caught in a bad role.
“Why?” Clint asked. “Why would you want to help us?”
“Marshal,” said Barlowe, “I’ve devoted my life to easing pain and suffering, but now there are men in town who live and breathe it. They won’t hurt me. They need me. So please. Stay. I will tell you what I know, and mayhap in return, you can help me with my mission, as a healer.”
“Yar,” Clint said, patting his ordinary pistol, “as long as you don’t mind that I use different instruments to do my healing.”
CHAPTER FIVE:
WORLDS WILL END
Clint told Barlowe that their party was incomplete, and that they had to ride out to retrieve another. Barlow said he had plenty of room at his house, and invited the gunslinger to bring back all the subversives he wanted. So Clint mounted his gray horse (a horse which complained endlessly about its tack, saying it itched something fierce) then rode out into the open range to retrieve Mai.
When they found Mai, she was sitting cross-legged in the dirt, her hands on her knees and palms to the sky. Her eyes were closed, and her hands were glowing. In the dark, the glow was bright. Clint was surprised to see she hadn’t lit a fire, but when he walked up and touched her, he found her warm. She didn’t respond to his touch.
“Mai.”
Behind Clint, Edward’s horn re-emerged and his coat flushed white, popping into its usual brilliance. A pink bolt of energy shot toward the saddle and reins, which fell to the ground. Edward sighed and heaved with relief.
“Mai,” Clint repeated. He tapped her cheek.
Her eyes opened, and she looked surprised.
“What are you doing?”
“Sitting,” she said. She looked around, confused. “How long have I been sitting like this? It’s dark out!”
“What do you mean?”
She stood, looking briskly at the campsite. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I watched you leave. I ate some turkey pie from the pack. I remember preparing to make the fire, but then… then this.”
Clint asked a few more questions, but Mai had no idea what she’d been doing, how long she’d been doing it, or what it all meant. Clint, admonishing, told Mai she could have been killt. But when he said it, she locked eyes with him and told him qu
ite sternly that being killt was never a danger true.
Edward had no idea what had happened either, but it was late and they were tired, so they gathered their supplies, obscured the camp, and walked back toward Barlowe’s as two humans and a unicorn. When they got close enough, Edward concealed himself again to buffer his magic from Kold and the Triangulum’s vision. He refused to wear the saddle, and instead dragged it in the dirt behind him.
A mile or so from Barlowe’s, Edward stopped. He turned, looked at Mai, and told her that he could feel her radiance and that her magic was going to give them away. If they got much closer to town, Kold would sense her for sure. So he ran forward alone, leaving Clint and Mai to wait behind in the dark.
A few minutes later, he returned with a vial and gave it to Mai to drink. She asked what it was. Edward said it would suppress her new abilities just as Edward had suppressed his own by hiding his horn. She asked why a country doctor would have an elixir to suppress magic, but Edward simply repeated his order to drink it. She might already be too powerful and too close, and every passing second threatened to expose them. So Mai did as Edward instructed, and almost immediately she told them she felt a chill through her marrow. Edward protruded his horn slightly, seeming to test her, then declared her safe. Inert and more or less powerless, but safe. Then he added that with Clint’s sidearms buried back at the old camp and with Mai’s magic subdued, the pair would be defenseless if separated from Edward. Clint tried to tell him that he had a sidearm (be it conventional or not) and that he was still plenty deadly. Edward murmured in an unconvinced way and walked on.
They arrived at the doctor’s house to find Barlowe waiting at the door. He took Mai’s hands in his, then led her to a chair on a patio lit by a conventional lantern. The spark lines, he said, didn’t run out this far.
