Dangerous Women

by Unknown

  Here he takes us deep into the sinister silence of the Forests for the tale of a desperate and dangerous woman who will risk anything, do anything, to save her family, even in a place where hungry ghosts wait unseen behind every tree, and one false move means instant death …

  SHADOWS FOR SILENCE IN THE FORESTS OF HELL

  “The one you have to watch for is the White Fox,” Daggon said, sipping his beer. “They say he shook hands with the Evil itself, that he visited the Fallen World and came back with strange powers. He can kindle fire on even the deepest of nights, and no shade will dare come for his soul. Yes, the White Fox. Meanest bastard in these parts for sure. Pray he doesn’t set his eyes on you, friend. If he does, you’re dead.”

  Daggon’s drinking companion had a neck like a slender wine bottle and a head like a potato stuck sideways on the top. He squeaked as he spoke, a Lastport accent, voice echoing in the eaves of the waystop’s common room. “Why … why would he set his eyes on me?”

  “That depends, friend,” Daggon said, looking about as a few overdressed merchants sauntered in. They wore black coats, ruffled lace poking out the front, and the tall-topped, wide-brimmed hats of fortfolk. They wouldn’t last two weeks out here, in the Forests.

  “It depends?” Daggon’s dining companion prompted. “It depends on what?”

  “On a lot of things, friend. The White Fox is a bounty hunter, you know. What crimes have you committed? What have you done?”

  “Nothing.” That squeak was like a rusty wheel.

  “Nothing? Men don’t come out into the Forests to do ‘nothing,’ friend.”

  His companion glanced from side to side. He’d given his name as Earnest. But then, Daggon had given his name as Amity. Names didn’t mean a whole lot in the Forests. Or maybe they meant everything. The right ones, that was.

  Earnest leaned back, scrunching down that fishing-pole neck of his as if trying to disappear into his beer. He’d bite. People liked hearing about the White Fox, and Daggon considered himself an expert. At least, he was an expert at telling stories to get ratty men like Earnest to pay for his drinks.

  I’ll give him some time to stew, Daggon thought, smiling to himself. Let him worry. Earnest would pry him for more information in a bit.

  While he waited, Daggon leaned back, surveying the room. The merchants were making a nuisance of themselves, calling for food, saying they meant to be on their way in an hour. That proved them to be fools. Traveling at night in the Forests? Good homesteader stock would do it. Men like these, though … they’d probably take less than an hour to violate one of the Simple Rules and bring the shades upon them. Daggon put the idiots out of his mind.

  That fellow in the corner, though … dressed all in brown, still wearing his hat despite being indoors. That fellow looked truly dangerous. I wonder if it’s him, Daggon thought. So far as he knew, nobody had ever seen the White Fox and lived. Ten years, over a hundred bounties turned in. Surely someone knew his name. The authorities in the forts paid him the bounties, after all.

  The waystop’s owner, Madam Silence, passed by the table and deposited Daggon’s meal with an unceremonious thump. Scowling, she topped off his beer, spilling a sudsy dribble onto his hand, before limping off. She was a stout woman. Tough. Everyone in the Forests was tough. The ones that survived, at least.

  He’d learned that a scowl from Silence was just her way of saying hello. She’d given him an extra helping of venison; she often did that. He liked to think that she had a fondness for him. Maybe someday …

  Don’t be a fool, he thought to himself as he dug into the heavily gravied food. Better to marry a stone than Silence Montane. A stone showed more affection. Likely, she gave him the extra slice because she recognized the value of a repeat customer. Fewer and fewer people came this way lately. Too many shades. And then there was Chesterton. Nasty business, that.

  “So … he’s a bounty hunter, this Fox?” The man who called himself Earnest seemed to be sweating.

  Daggon smiled. Hooked right good, this one was. “He’s not just a bounty hunter. He’s the bounty hunter. Though, the White Fox doesn’t go for the small-timers—and no offense, friend, but you seem pretty small-time.”

  His friend grew more nervous. What had he done? “But,” the man stammered, “he wouldn’t come for me—er, pretending I’d done something, of course—anyway, he wouldn’t come in here, would he? I mean, Madam Silence’s waystop, it’s protected. Everyone knows that. Shade of her dead husband lurks here. I had a cousin who saw it, I did.”

  “The White Fox doesn’t fear shades,” Daggon said, leaning in. “Now, mind you, I don’t think he’d risk coming in here—but not because of some shade. Everyone knows this is neutral ground. You’ve got to have some safe places, even in the Forests. But …”

  Daggon smiled at Silence as she passed him by, on the way to the kitchens again. This time she didn’t scowl at him. He was getting through to her for certain.

  “But?” Earnest squeaked.

  “Well …” Daggon said. “I could tell you a few things about how the White Fox takes men, but you see, my beer is nearly empty. A shame. I think you’d be very interested in how the White Fox caught Makepeace Hapshire. Great story, that.”

  Earnest squeaked for Silence to bring another beer, though she bustled into the kitchen and didn’t hear. Daggon frowned, but Earnest put a coin on the side of the table, indicating he’d like a refill when Silence or her daughter returned. That would do. Daggon smiled to himself and launched into the story.

  Silence Montane closed the door to the common room, then turned and pressed her back against it. She tried to still her racing heart by breathing in and out. Had she made any obvious signs? Did they know she’d recognized them?

  William Ann passed by, wiping her hands on a cloth. “Mother?” the young woman asked, pausing. “Mother, are you—”

  “Fetch the book. Quickly, child!”

  William Ann’s face went pale, then she hurried into the back pantry. Silence clutched her apron to still her nerves, then joined William Ann as the girl came out of the pantry with a thick, leather satchel. White flour dusted its cover and spine from the hiding place.

  Silence took the satchel and opened it on the high kitchen counter, revealing a collection of loose-leaf papers. Most had faces drawn on them. As Silence rifled through the pages, William Ann moved to look through the peephole back into the common room.

  For a few moments, the only sound to accompany Silence’s thumping heart was that of hastily turned pages.

  “It’s the man with the long neck, isn’t it?” William Ann asked. “I remember his face from one of the bounties.”

  “That’s just Lamentation Winebare, a petty horse thief. He’s barely worth two measures of silver.”

  “Who, then? The man in the back, with the hat?”

  Silence shook her head, finding a sequence of pages at the bottom of her pile. She inspected the drawings. God Beyond, she thought. I can’t decide if I want it to be them or not. At least her hands had stopped shaking.

  William Ann scurried back and craned her neck over Silence’s shoulder. At fourteen, the girl was already taller than her mother. A fine thing to suffer, a child taller than you. Though William Ann grumbled about being awkward and lanky, her slender build foreshadowed a beauty to come. She took after her father.

  “Oh, God Beyond,” William Ann said, raising a hand to her mouth. “You mean—”

  “Chesterton Divide,” Silence said. The shape of the chin, the look in the eyes … they were the same. “He walked right into our hands, with four of his men.” The bounty on those five would be enough to pay her supply needs for a year. Maybe two.

  Her eyes flickered to the words below the pictures, printed in harsh, bold letters. Extremely dangerous. Wanted for murder, rape, extortion. And, of course, there was the big one at the end: And assassination.

  Silence had always wondered if Chesterton and his men had intended to kill the governor of the most powerful c
ity on this continent, or if it had it been an accident. A simple robbery gone wrong. Either way, Chesterton understood what he’d done. Before the incident, he had been a common—if accomplished—highway bandit.

  Now he was something greater, something far more dangerous. Chesterton knew that if he were captured, there would be no mercy, no quarter. Lastport had painted Chesterton as an anarchist, a menace, and a psychopath.

  Chesterton had no reason to hold back. So he didn’t.

  Oh, God Beyond, Silence thought, looking at the continuing list of his crimes on the next page.

  Beside her, William Ann whispered the words to herself. “He’s out there?” she asked. “But where?”

  “The merchants,” Silence said.

  “What?” William Ann rushed back to the peephole. The wood there—indeed, all around the kitchen—had been scrubbed so hard that it had been bleached white. Sebruki had been cleaning again.

  “I can’t see it,” William Ann said.

  “Look closer.” Silence hadn’t seen it at first either, even though she spent each night with the book, memorizing its faces.

  A few moments later William Ann gasped, raising her hand to her mouth. “That seems so foolish of him. Why is he going about perfectly visible like this? Even in disguise.”

  “Everyone will remember just another band of fool merchants from the fort who thought they could brave the Forests. It’s a clever disguise. When they vanish from the paths in a few days, it will be assumed—if anyone cares to wonder—that the shades got them. Besides, this way Chesterton can travel quickly and in the open, visiting waystops and listening for information.”

  Was this how Chesterton discovered good targets to hit? Had they come through her waystop before? The thought made her stomach turn. She had fed criminals many times; some were regulars. Every man was probably a criminal out in the Forests, if only for ignoring taxes imposed by the fortfolk.

  Chesterton and his men were different. She didn’t need the list of crimes to know what they were capable of doing.

  “Where’s Sebruki?” Silence said.

  William Ann shook herself, as if coming out of a stupor. “She’s feeding the pigs. Shadows! You don’t think they’d recognize her, do you?”

  “No,” Silence said. “I’m worried she’ll recognize them.” Sebruki might only be eight, but she could be shockingly—disturbingly—observant.

  Silence closed the book of bounties. She rested her fingers on its leather.

  “We’re going to kill them, aren’t we?” William Ann asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How much are they worth?”

  “Sometimes, child, it’s not about what a man is worth.” Silence heard the faint lie in her voice. Times were increasingly tight, with the price of silver from both Bastion Hill and Lastport on the rise.

  Sometimes it wasn’t about what a man was worth. But this wasn’t one of those times.

  “I’ll get the poison.” William Ann left the peephole and crossed the room.

  “Something light, child,” Silence cautioned. “These are dangerous men. They’ll notice if things are out of the ordinary.”

  “I’m not a fool, Mother,” William Ann said dryly. “I’ll use fenweed. They won’t taste it in the beer.”

  “Half dose. I don’t want them collapsing at the table.”

  William Ann nodded, entering the old storage room, where she closed the door and began prying up floorboards to get to the poisons. Fenweed would leave the men cloudy-headed and dizzy, but wouldn’t kill them.

  Silence didn’t dare risk something more deadly. If suspicion ever came back to her waystop, her career—and likely her life—would end. She needed to remain, in the minds of travelers, the crotchety but fair innkeeper who didn’t ask too many questions. Her waystop was a place of perceived safety, even for the roughest of criminals. She bedded down each night with a heart full of fear that someone would realize a suspicious number of the White Fox’s bounties stayed at Silence’s waystop in the days preceding their demise.

  She went into the pantry to put away the bounty book. Here, too, the walls had been scrubbed clean, the shelves freshly sanded and dusted. That child. Who had heard of a child who would rather clean than play? Of course, given what Sebruki had been through …

  Silence could not help reaching onto the top shelf and feeling the crossbow she kept there. Silver boltheads. She kept it for shades, and hadn’t yet turned it against a man. Drawing blood was too dangerous in the Forests. It still comforted her to know that in a true emergency she had the weapon at hand.

  Bounty book stowed, she went to check on Sebruki. The child was indeed caring for the pigs. Silence liked to keep a healthy stock, though of course not for eating. Pigs were said to ward away shades. She used any tool she could to make the waystop seem more safe.

  Sebruki knelt inside the pig shack. The short girl had dark skin and long, black hair. Nobody would have taken her for Silence’s daughter, even if they hadn’t heard of Sebruki’s unfortunate history. The child hummed to herself, scrubbing at the wall of the enclosure.

  “Child?” Silence asked.

  Sebruki turned to her and smiled. What a difference one year could make. Once, Silence would have sworn that this child would never smile again. Sebruki had spent her first three months at the waystop staring at walls. No matter where Silence had put her, the child had moved to the nearest wall, sat down, and stared at it all day. Never speaking a word. Eyes dead as those of a shade …

  “Aunt Silence?” Sebruki asked. “Are you well?”

  “I’m fine, child. Just plagued by memories. You’re … cleaning the pig shack now?”

  “The walls need a good scrubbing,” Sebruki said. “The pigs do so like it to be clean. Well, Jarom and Ezekiel prefer it that way. The others don’t seem to care.”

  “You don’t need to clean so hard, child.”

  “I like doing it,” Sebruki said. “It feels good. It’s something I can do. To help.”

  Well, it was better to clean the walls than stare blankly at them all day. Today, Silence was happy for anything that kept the child busy. Anything, so long as she didn’t enter the common room.

  “I think the pigs will like it,” Silence said. “Why don’t you keep at it in here for a while?”

  Sebruki eyed her. “What’s wrong?”

  Shadows. She was so observant. “There are some men with rough tongues in the common room,” Silence said. “I won’t have you picking up their cussing.”

  “I’m not a child, Aunt Silence.”

  “Yes you are,” Silence said firmly. “And you’ll obey. Don’t think I won’t take a switch to your backside.”

  Sebruki rolled her eyes, but went back to work and began humming to herself. Silence let a little of her grandmother’s ways out when she spoke with Sebruki. The child responded well to sternness. She seemed to crave it, perhaps as a symbol that someone was in control.

  Silence wished she actually were in control. But she was a Forescout—the surname taken by her grandparents and the others who had left Homeland first and explored this continent. Yes, she was a Forescout, and she’d be damned before she’d let anyone know how absolutely powerless she felt much of the time.

  Silence crossed the backyard of the large inn, noting William Ann inside the kitchen mixing a paste to dissolve in the beer. Silence passed her by and looked in on the stable. Unsurprisingly, Chesterton had said they’d be leaving after their meal. While a lot of folk sought the relative safety of a waystop at night, Chesterton and his men would be accustomed to sleeping in the Forests. Even with the shades about, they would feel more comfortable in a camp of their own devising than they would in a waystop bed.

  Inside the stable, Dob, the old stable hand, had just finished brushing down the horses. He wouldn’t have watered them. Silence had a standing order to not do that until last.

  “This is well done, Dob,” Silence said. “Why don’t you take your break now?”

  He nodded to
her with a mumbled, “Thank’ya, mam.” He’d find the front porch and his pipe, as always. Dob hadn’t two wits to rub together, and he hadn’t a clue about what she really did at the waystop, but he’d been with her since before William’s death. He was as loyal a man as she’d ever found.

  Silence shut the door after him, then fetched some pouches from the locked cabinet at the back of the stable. She checked each one in the dim light, then set them on the grooming table and heaved the first saddle back onto its owner’s back.

  She was near finished with the saddling when the door eased open. She froze, immediately thinking of the pouches on the table. Why hadn’t she stuffed them in her apron? Sloppy!

  “Silence Forescout,” a smooth voice said from the doorway.

  Silence stifled a groan and turned to confront her visitor. “Theopolis,” she said. “It’s not polite to sneak about on a woman’s property. I should have you thrown out for trespassing.”

  “Now, now. That would be rather like … the horse kicking at the man who feeds him, hmmm?” Theopolis leaned his gangly frame against the doorway, folding his arms. He wore simple clothing, no markings of his station. A fort tax collector often didn’t want random passers to know of his profession. Clean-shaven, his face always had that same patronizing smile on it. His clothing was too clean, too new to be that of one who lived out in the Forests. Not that he was a dandy, nor was he a fool. Theopolis was dangerous, just a different kind of dangerous from most.