by Alex Wells
Hob listened to the report in grim silence, as did Coyote, perched on the edge of her desk. “Hope they learned that nothin’ is gonna make them safe.” She curled her lip. “And that the preacher got no fuckin’ idea what he’s talking about.”
“Folks get scared. And when they get scared, they don’t think right. They just think about their own hides.” Dambala looked at Davey, made a little gesture as if prompting him.
“You got somethin’ to add?” Hob asked.
Davey cleared his throat. “We stopped at Shimera on the way back. I know it wasn’t orders, but folk in Tercio were sayin’ that was the next stop for the Weatherman, and it was on the way and all…”
“I like people followin’ orders, but I also like you usin’ your damn brains. Go on, report it proper.”
“Shimera got notice they’re to be gatherin’ at the train station in two weeks’ time, to greet the Weatherman. And that it’s mandatory if people want to keep their jobs.”
Hob idly took a fresh cigarette from her case, offering it to Davey and Dambala next. Dambala snorted. “Not for us, ma’am–”
“You call me sir like every other Ravani.”
“Sir.” Dambala grinned. “You’re like Nick. You smoke enough for ten of us, so we don’t got to.”
“Just don’t want you folk to start missin’ him too bad. Keep goin’, Davey.”
Davey nodded. “Woman killed herself there, in Shimera, the night they got the news. She was a witchy sort, doctored folk, and did a good job of it. Had a note in her hands, said she didn’t want to get anyone taken in by Mariposa, ’cause she was friend and kin to too many, so she did it to save ’em. They buried her proper while we was there.”
Hob shook her head. “Christ.”
“Preacher’s all hellfire and brimstone on the pulpit,” Dambala said. “But I talked to some of the folk, an’ he’s tryin’ to get people like her out on the sly. He’s just beatin’ the drum loud in the square ’cause the pit boss is in his house every damn morning. We can probably get people out as long as we do it soon.”
Hob frowned. The words tasted bad in her mouth, but she said them anyway, out of a sense of obligation: “Y’all keep remindin’ me that’s just puttin’ off the date of execution.”
Coyote finally spoke. “We can hardly sit on our hands. Not after what we saw in Tercio.”
“We very well could,” Hob said. “That’s what Old Nick would’ve done, I bet. We hunker down and don’t draw fire on ourselves.” She glanced askance at Coyote; he’d always been one of the biggest advocates of saving his own hide first; this was quite a change from him.
He smiled. “But you’re not him. And you look like it nearly killed you to say that.”
“Ludlow’s gonna be under the gun soon, but if we can get some folk out of Shimera, take ’em there. But we got to think of another place to take the ones from Ludlow when it’s their turn.”
“Could we just bring ’em here?” Davey asked.
Hob shook her head, hating the calculation she had to make. But she was already doing far more than Old Nick would have stirred himself to do, and the more people they brought out to their little camouflaged base, the more likely they were to be discovered, and then it would be all their necks. “Can’t have that many people here. We’re already stickin’ our necks out a lot, and if people know where we live… anyone’ll talk if you do ’em enough pain.”
“How many you want me to take, boss?” Dambala asked.
“However many you think you need. And however many you think you can trust to ferry witchy people across the sands.”
Dambala laughed. “Plenty’d do it with a song in their hearts just knowin’ it’ll piss off the company. You don’t got nothin’ to worry about with the witchiness.”
“Take a price for it. We’re makin’ this a job proper. Don’t want folk thinkin’ we gone soft and started doin’ charity.” If people thought the Wolves were doing things just because they had an ax to grind, that would make getting proper pay harder for other jobs.
“What kind of price did you have in mind?”
“Whatever they’re willin’ to pay. Change out of their pocket. Their damn wedding rings. As long as it’s somethin’, so we can say people was buyin’ passage from us.”
“You said there was another place they’d be hitting before Shimera, correct?” Coyote asked.
“That’s what my source said. Harmony.”
He whistled, long and low. “That’s a hell of a ways away.”
“Glad you even know where it is. I had to look it up on the goddamn map.”
Coyote shrugged. “Send me. I’ll see what I can see before the Weatherman shows up.”
“Doin’ the drive on a bike? I thought you didn’t like campin’ out.”
“I don’t. But I thought I’d hitch a ride on a train, since I’ve developed such a good relationship with them lately.”
Hob laughed. “You do that, then.” Anyone that got out of Harmony, he’d also be able to bring back on the train. “See all of you boys soon enough.”
She watched out the window as Dambala formed up his squad for Shimera and Coyote prepared to go on his lonesome way. When they were all gone, she took a motorcycle out on her own and made the long ride to Pictou, parking in that familiar long shadow of the extinct mine works.
Hob took her knife from her sleeve and pricked her thumb, then squeezed three drops of blood into the sand. This time she waited for twelve hours, a lone eagle circling overhead until the sun went down.
Answer enough: they were on their own.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Mag wasn’t surprised when someone knocked at the door during dinner. Clarence got visitors at all hours of the night, some of them legitimate, some of them secretive. Mag stood, giving dinner the sort of look normally reserved for departing lovers. Anabi had made shredded chicken-flavored protein and dumplings, the best she’d had in a long time.
Dambala and Davey waited on the doorstep. Mag peered past them, trying to spot the lanky form of Hob in the shadows, but they seemed to be alone. “Can I help you boys?”
“We brought you some more strays.” Dambala gave her a sheepish smile.
“I’ll let Clarence know. But… you realize, we’re gonna get our own visit, in three weeks. Got informed of it proper today. This ain’t a safe place.”
“It’s a week safer than Shimera.”
Mag leaned against the doorframe for a moment, her forehead against her hand. Just saying those words – three weeks – made it feel more real, more urgent, a sudden twist of fear turning the dumplings to stones in her belly. “You boys got to go back tonight?”
Dambala scratched at his head under the band of his hat. “Don’t think we have to, if you need us for somethin’.”
“Yeah, I’ll get Clarence to hand you the messages to run in the morning. You’ll get ’em where they need to go faster than our regular fellow. You’ll have to sleep in the shed, but we’ll feed you proper. Where did you leave your strays?”
“They’re with the motorcycles, behind warehouse six.”
Mag nodded and fetched Clarence; he didn’t look thrilled, but he took it as duty to bring new people properly into the town. He’d taken better to her drawing the line about witchiness than the men from Shimera and Rouse.
Dambala and Davey each got a helping of dinner in the house, and a proper introduction to Anabi. It didn’t escape Mag’s notice how the young woman shied away from even touching them. She did her best to indicate that they were good folk, ones that she’d known for a long time, but the wounded-animal look in Anabi’s eyes was far too familiar. Then there was the bad news out of Tercio, the happenings in Shimera to be discussed. Anabi sat with her head bowed the entire time.
Anabi waited for her in Mag’s room after dinner, a tattered flimsy clutched in her hands. She thrust it at Mag, who silently read: I got thrown out of Harmony before we even knew that the Weatherman was coming. For other reasons. But in Tercio, they
were going to hang me because of him. If he’s coming here, they’ll take me.
“I’m sorry.” The flimsy crumpled in her hand. When the Weatherman came to Ludlow, she’d be in the same situation. She’d already decided she wasn’t going to run again. “I got a revolver, in my dresser. I was thinkin’ to just shoot myself if it comes to that.”
Anabi shook her head, took the flimsy back and scribbled another sentence: That can’t be the answer.
“You can run if you like, if there’s a place you can run to and stay ahead of him. But I’m done running. Once was enough for me.”
Anabi looked close to tears: Is there any way to stop him?
Mag laughed bitterly. “Not unless you got an army in your pocket. I barely got the reps from Shimera to agree that hangin’ people weren’t any kind of answer. Can’t count on anyone sticking their neck out.”
And yet. Mag frowned, as an idea uncurled itself in her mind.
Anabi reached out and gently shook her shoulder, head tilted to one side.
“You go on to sleep. I’ll be gone a while.” Mag smiled at Anabi, covered the woman’s hand with hers for a moment, and then hurried from the room.
* * *
“We talked about this not four days ago, Mag,” Odalia said. She glanced at Clarence, who looked ready to fall asleep at any moment. “Knowin’ what happened in Tercio don’t make much of a difference. We can’t pick this kind of fight, not right now, and not for a few people half of us think ought to be dead anyway.”
Mag leaned forward where she sat on an empty crate, elbows on her knees. “But what if we weren’t the ones pickin’ the fight?”
“Mayhap it’s ’cause I’m sleepy, Mag, but could you explain yourself?”
“We don’t got the guts or guns to do it ourselves. But the Ghost Wolves do, I wager. We hire ’em, have them do the deed before the bastard gets to Ludlow.”
That woke Clarence up proper. “They’re bandit busters, Mag, nothin’ more than that. Ain’t near enough of ’em.”
“Old Nick wouldn’t’ve done it. But he ain’t in charge any more, remember? I know Hob, from way back. And they got no reason to lay that low, not after what happened in Rouse. We get a good enough payment together, I wager anything that they’ll take the job.” Hob had already been nibbling at the edges of it, after all, saving the witchy ones and calling it work by taking their cash. She’d as much as said she wanted Mag to aim her. Well, this was one hell of a target.
Odalia shook her head. “You can’t kill a Weatherman.”
“Hob almost did this one. Shot ’im in the neck. You heard talk about him only talkin’ like a croakin’ lizard.”
“I don’t believe it,” Odalia snapped, but there was doubt in her eyes. “They ain’t like us.”
“They’ll take a bullet and bleed from it like any other man. And what bleeds can die.”
Clarence looked thoughtful, smoothing his mustache with one hand. “Think the Ravani can manage to shoot him in the head this time?”
Odalia shook her head. “You’re talkin’ a price that we don’t even know the size of to protect a few people the preachers flat out want us to burn.”
“Not all the preachers. And it ain’t just them. It’s their family and friends. Have you heard about any of them makin’ it back to their towns after they been taken? And what about the two that got shot in Tercio, all because someone didn’t want to see an innocent person get put on that damn train?”
“If we pay them, it’ll hang on us.”
Mag shook her head, gritting her teeth around her desire to shout. She had to be reasonable, logical. “People pay the Wolves to do things all the time, and you’d never know. Just short everyone’s water ration a bit each week and send that to them. Little things like that, no one’ll notice if you don’t tell ’em. They’ll take just anythin’ they can get, since they got no supply train bringin’ stuff to them. Broke machines with salvageable wiring, things like that even.”
“You’ve gone crooked in the brainpan, girl.”
“Mayhap.” Mag stood, no longer able to hold in the anger that burned in her stomach. “But tell you what I am, both of you. I’m damn tired of running. You keep sayin’ tomorrow, tomorrow, we ain’t ready yet. Tomorrow ain’t ever gonna come, Odalia Vigil. You keep sayin’ it’s just a few people. Well, we’re just a few people on the face of this goddamn planet, and we’re all of us together whether you want to admit it or not. If we won’t stand for our brothers and sisters, who the hell’s gonna stand for us?” She slapped her hand down on a crate, so hard her palm went numb, and it just made her madder. “We ain’t ever gonna stand for anythin’ if we ain’t got a spine!”
Odalia looked stunned, like Mag had hit her with a shovel instead of just words. Clarence listened, face still sleepy but his eyes alert and glittering.
Well before dawn, she had an offer to send with Dambala and Davey to go with the messenger bag.
* * *
Hob stared at Mag’s familiar handwriting, reading the offer through a second time. She hadn’t been joking, quite, when she’d told Mag she had the better aim. But goddamn, she’d never imagined aiming this high.
“I think they were serious,” Davey offered, when she said nothing.
“Oh, I know they are. Mag don’t do a thing that ain’t serious as a heart attack.” She set the flimsy down. She knew what Old Nick would have said to something like this – too dangerous, not enough payout, too splashy. But she wasn’t Old Nick, and even if she wanted to protect his legacy, being him wasn’t the way to do it. He’d tried to teach her self-respect in his own fucked-up way, but had never quite realized the contradiction of hiding their witchiness even from those close as kin like it was a thing of shame instead of a mark of survival – or what a hypocrisy it was to turn his back on the other witches when they were in need.
There wasn’t really a choice here, not if she wanted to be able to look herself in the mirror ever again. The Wolves needed a job that paid, and she needed it to be a job that meant something. And if they killed the Weatherman – if they killed the Weatherman – they removed TransRift’s greatest weapon against the witches.
She looked up at Dambala. From the steady gaze he offered back, he already knew the answer and approved. “We’re gonna kill us a Weatherman,” she said.
“Shit,” Davey breathed. Dambala simply nodded in answer.
Her hand felt far steadier than it had any right to when she put her pen on that contract offer, considering she might be signing all their death warrants. But Coyote had always said none of them were here looking to live a long and safe life. Maybe she owed it to the Wolves as well, to not second guess herself into stasis, the way Old Nick had at the end.
She folded the flimsies up and handed them back to Dambala. “You get these back to Mag.”
He took them and hid them away in his jacket. “Heard anythin’ from Coyote yet?”
“Nah, not yet. Harmony’s a full day away if he caught the right train, more if he didn’t.” She pulled a small calendar book out of her desk, a present Mag had given to Nick that still had a heartbreaking number of pages left in it. Hob had written the witch hunt days down in it so she couldn’t miscount them. “I want us at Shimera when the Weatherman’s there, so we can see the dog and pony show ourselves, from start to finish. I wager he’ll be back before then.”
Dambala glanced at the calendar and nodded. “Wouldn’t want him to miss the fun.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Fun was the last thing on Coyote’s mind. Stupid was foremost, with a healthy helping of regret. He should have known better than to ride a train so far afield, when it meant no easy avenue of escape; damn his dislike of camping anyway. He should have thought of a lot of things, but no, he’d started believing in his own legend, in the invincibility of Coyote, who could talk himself out of anything.
Coyote squirmed carefully, trying to find a more comfortable position for his back against the dirt wall of the root cellar. The skin o
f his shoulder and arm stretched tight, angry and red, his entire body throbbing in time with his heartbeat. He was full of birdshot and pus.
It had gone wrong from the start, but he still couldn’t define exactly how wrong, or why. Days in advance, Harmony had been preparing for the arrival of the Weatherman like he was the second coming, had the brass band practicing and everything, flowers and decorations and an air of fierce righteousness. He’d stuck out like a sore thumb in that, expecting the same kind of attitudes that were normal in the mining towns near Rouse, which had been a stupid assumption to make. The people of Harmony already didn’t like strangers. He’d done his best to just be neighborly, hang out in the saloon and listen, but then that farmer had shown up, the one that’d looked a lot like Anabi, and he hadn’t been quick enough to hide that little prickle of recognition, hadn’t been glib enough about changing the subject…
Well, the Coyote of legend had always talked himself into trouble first.
The shotgun came out then, and things had gone painful and confused. Since then, it’d been just a dark cellar and stinking pain, and he hadn’t figured a way out of it yet. Escape seemed less likely with each passing hour, since the more his shoulder ached and flowed cloudy, stinking fluid, the less clear his thoughts became.
Coyote heard voices muffled through the cellar doors and didn’t stir. The few times he’d heard anyone get that close, it’d just been so they could pry a board back from the door and throw down a hunk of bread to him before hammering it securely back into place.
This time, though, the cellar doors opened fully. He shielded his eyes with the hand he could move, squinting into the bright white light.
“This is the one,” a man’s voice said. “Came around askin’ some funny questions. Didn’t seem right to us. We think he’s some sort of… agitator. Here to pour poison in the ears of good folk.”
