Agnes Day
Page 24
By nightfall they were clear of the city, Gideon insisting that they get out in the open before he let them stop.
And when they did, and when Lain's body had been placed beneath the tallest tree in a stand that topped a rise overlooking a slow-moving river, he dropped to his knees and began to weep. He didn't want to, not now that it was all over, but he hadn't had the time before to really say good-bye to his friend, and he had all the time he wanted now.
He wept until he couldn't find another tear, and when he rose and walked down to the grassy plain again, a firepit had been dug, and a fire brought them warmth, and he was mildly surprised to see the Wamchu still there.
"I thought you'd be gone," he said, taking a mug from Tag and a piece of cooked meat from Ivy.
"With no clothes, where would I go?" the man said. "And besides, it isn't going to be the same at home without Agnes." He allowed himself a chuckle. "Quieter, for one thing. And safer, for another."
"She tried to take over more than once?"
"No, but every time I told her a joke, I had to build her a new house. It got pretty grim there for a while when I ran out of things to build with."
Gideon watched him across the flames, trying to read his mind. This man, the Wamchu, had attempted to murder, pillage, subjugate, destroy, and cause havoc; now he was sitting there wrapped in a tattered cloak and not making a move to get rid of the only people left who could ruin his ambitions forever. And he could do it, easily—they were still shaken by the fight, still aching from their injuries, and every so often couldn't help looking back to the city as if Agnes would rise again from the ashes the lightning made her.
It didn't make sense.
"Right," said the Wamchu, and winked at him.
Gideon didn't respond.
"And I bet the fighting's over, too."
"Really?" said Tag, sounding disappointed.
"Would you fight if you knew you were going to die for a lost cause?"
"But is it really lost?" Gideon whispered.
The Wamchu winked again. "For the time being. Maybe for quite a while." He sobered then, and stared for a long time at the fire. "In a way, you know, you saved my life."
"No 'in a way' about it," Tuesday snapped from beside Red. "He saved your ass, pal, and you owe him for that."
Gideon stiffened, thinking that his sister was going too far at last, and only relaxed when Ivy put a hand on his shoulder and whispered something so obscene in his ear that he had to think about it for a while before he decided that it was, in an odd sort of way, a hell of a compliment.
"Now, wait a minute," the Wamchu said to the duck. "I grant you he saved me, all right? But he also stopped me—more than once, may I remind you—from fulfilling a lifelong ambition."
She waddled up to him and flipped a wing in his face. "But you, you sonofabitch, stopped me from fulfilling my lifelong ambition."
He nodded after a moment's thought.
"Not to mention this," she said, and flipped her wing at him again.
"Oh," he said, "well, I suppose I do owe you that."
Tuesday looked over her shoulder. "He does?"
Gideon nodded, not knowing what he was nodding for but not wanting her to take another chunk out of his leg.
"Okay," she said. "You do."
At which point he grabbed her by the neck, stood up, and held her over his head.
Instantly, Red growled dangerously to his feet, Gideon grabbed up the bat, and Ivy reached into the fire and pulled out a brand she prepared to toss at the man's head.
Until the duck stopped squawking, and the orange feet stopped kicking, and the wings stopped flapping, and the Wamchu lowered Gideon's sister to the ground.
"My god," Tag said. "She's naked!"
"Jesus," Ivy said, "she's... she's beautiful!"
"Not too shabby, I admit," said Vorden Lain, close enough to make Ivy shriek, Red run a hundred yards into the dark, and Gideon grab his chest where he last knew his heart to be.
"What," he said then, "the hell are you doing here?"
"I'm cold," the greenman said. "And I'm hungry, if it's all the same to you."
"But you're dead!"
"I was not."
Gideon clenched a fist; this was really too much. "You were too. I checked. Didn't I check him, Ivy? Of course I checked him. Your heart had stopped, and you'd stopped breathing."
"I stopped breathing because I was sleeping," Lain said, pushing him easily to one side and grabbing for a piece of meat. "And my heart stopped because I don't have one."
"You what?"
"I don't have one. A heart. In the literal sense. Here, in my body. Behind—"
Gideon stared at him, openmouthed, and then walked away, walked around the fire, and looked at his sister looking at the Wamchu.
"Hey," he said.
She looked back at him, and smiled. Ivy was right, he thought; she was beautiful. She was his sister, but she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life.
"You want a steak?" he said.
Tuesday turned to face him, hands on her hips, her long brown hair falling modestly over her breasts. "Gideon Sunday, I am standing here in the absolute altogether, with a man who is also in the absolute altogether, and you ask me if I want a steak?"
"Tuesday—"
She looked at Wamchu with a sigh. "When he gets like this, you have to ignore him."
"Tuesday, that man tried to pluck you, kill you, and bury you more times than I can count!"
"See what I mean?" she said.
Gideon grabbed for her arm, but Ivy grabbed his instead and pulled him away. He sputtered, he protested, he shook off her grip and was grabbed again, though not before he saw his sister and Lu Wamchu walking arm in arm away from the fire, heads together, his cloak rippling around them suggestively. And when Ivy tugged at him, nearly yanking him off his feet, he turned and glared into her innocently wide green eyes.
"This is ridiculous, you know," he said heatedly.
"I suppose," she said.
"I mean, I can't let that happen."
"Why not? She's a big girl, and I guess it beats dolphins all to hell, wouldn't you say?"
"But he's the bad guy, for Christ's sake!"
"And who are you, the hero?"
He thought about it. He looked at Red and thought about it; he looked at young Tag and Vorden Lain, and thought about it; he thought of what Whale and Glorian would say when he told them what had happened to Agnes and, as a muttered aside, the Wamchu and the duck, and thought about it; and he looked at Ivy, and he thought about it.
"Yeah," he said. "Goddamnit, yeah. I am."
She laughed, laughed again when he flinched, and threw her arms around him. "Then act like a hero, hero, and take the heroine off into the woods and do disgusting but perfectly natural things to her body."
"Ivy, please," he said. "This isn't the time."
She released him with an exaggerated groan, stood back, and pointed angrily at his chest. "Gideon Sunday, don't you ever say that to me again, you hear me? Never!"
"But—"
She hushed him with a look. "And as long as you're going around talking about who saved whose hide here, let me remind you about the time—"
He walked away.
"Gideon!"
He walked up the hill toward the grove.
"Gideon, don't you dare walk away from me when I'm talking to you!"
He walked through the grove, over the top of the rise, and down the other side.
He walked until he couldn't hear her anymore, and walked a little more just to be on the safe side. Then he waited, and, as he had known he would, Red came to him and let him onto his back without him saying a word.
He rode for some time, not knowing where he was going, trusting the lorra to find the right way. And as he went, he explained how it was, how he might really be a hero, but in his world heroes didn't take advantage of women, especially not women who were out of their minds with the pain of injury, and especially not
women with whom, he might as well admit it, he was in love.
"Now I'm not saving myself or anything," he said when the lorra stumbled. "I don't mean that at all. But it's like a code, you know what I mean? A code of the Old West, so to speak. You do what you have to do because you have to do it, and that's an end to it. If the woman you love can't see that for the clothes on her... body, then there ought to be a little breathing space before they make a commitment that might make them sorry later. Do you understand what I'm trying to say, Red? It's simple enough in my head, but I'm not very good at putting it into words. She'll just have to understand, that's all, that I haven't really rejected her because god knows I want her, but there's—where are you going, Red?"
The lorra climbed back up the rise.
"Red?"
Red ambled into the grove and stopped.
Ivy was standing under a tree, the fire below giving her shadow and light.
Gideon scowled at the betrayal, but slid off, deciding that now was the time she had to understand him, or that time would never come again.
"Ivy," he said.
"Thanks," she said to the lorra.
"Don't mention it," Red answered. "But couldn't you shut him up for a while so some of us can get some sleep?"
Ivy laughed.
Gideon gaped.
And the lorra trundled back down the hill toward the fire, shaking his silken head as he heard Gideon ask her how she made the big goat talk, and shaking his head again when she told the goddamned hero to shut his goddamned mouth and take off his goddamned clothes before she showed him what else his bat could do.
Gideon stared down at the lorra, stared over at Ivy, stared at her again, and said, "Be gentle. I've had a rough day."
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY