The Last Rune 4: Blood of Mystery

by Mark Anthony

  “Do you want to go watch the fireworks later?” he asked. “I imagine the saloon will clear out for that. If it does, I bet Manypenny would let us go.”

  “No, thank you. I wish to go see a play.”

  Travis gave her a curious look. She set down her drink and pulled a folded piece of paper from her dress.

  “A man at my table gave me this. He called it a playbill, and it says a play is to be performed tonight at the Diamond Theater on Aspen Street.”

  “A play, you say?” said Niles Barrett from the end of the bar. The Englishman’s eyes were slightly blurred, but his voice was as crisp as ever. “That’s bloody good news. We could use a deal more culture in this town. Do you know that Oscar Wilde recently visited Leadville? If that collection of hovels can get the likes of Oscar Wilde to come give a lecture, I don’t see why we can’t in Castle City. I hear from those who saw him that he’s a fascinating man.”

  The miner standing next to Barrett snorted. “And I hear he was more lady than man.”

  Barrett scowled at the miner, but before he could respond, the next man down the bar spoke—another miner, given his stained hands.

  “I was there in Leadville,” the man said. “And I saw this Oscar Wilde fellow. He was dressed all in velvet and lace, and he carried a lily everywhere he went. When he visited one of the mines, they served him up whiskey, harsh as snake venom, thinking to make an easy fool of him. But you know what? He outdrank every single one of them miners, for all that he was standing there in white stockings and knickers.”

  That won a grunt of respect from the first miner.

  Barrett rolled his eyes. “I see. So it’s for Lord Wilde’s drinking prowess that we should admire him, not the subtle skill of his pen.”

  The two men stared at him.

  “Never mind,” Barrett said with a pained look. He turned his back to the men and regarded Lirith. “What is the play to be, Miss Lily? Is it Shakespeare? Please let it be Shakespeare. Or better yet, Marlowe. Poor Kit, stabbed in the eye in his prime.”

  Lirith smiled eagerly. “The man said he thought I’d especially like this play.”

  She unfolded the playbill and pressed it flat on the bar. Travis’s heart sank.

  Barrett sniffed. “Ah. American melodrama. What utter rubbish.” He turned his attention back to his brandy.

  Lirith smoothed the playbill. “Look, Travis. They’re like me.” She touched the two figures—a man and a woman— drawn on the playbill. Their faces were shaded as darkly as Lirith’s own. Above the grotesquely rendered drawing was the play’s title.

  UNCLE TOM’S CABIN OR, LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY A MELODRAMA IN FIVE ACTS

  “Lirith...” Travis fought for words. How could he explain it to her? “You don’t want to see this play.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “Why not?”

  Travis didn’t know where to begin, so he took a deep breath and started by telling Lirith about slavery. He talked about what he remembered from college history, about the slave trade that brought people from Africa to the Americas against their will, about the abolitionists, and the Civil War, and President Lincoln, and how he was assassinated. All the while Lirith listened, her face without expression.

  At last Travis ran out of things to say. Lirith was silent for a moment, then she touched the playbill.

  “So this Independence Day they are celebrating,” she said. “It didn’t mean independence for everyone, did it?”

  Travis took her hand in hers. “It does now, Lirith. Or at least, someday it will.”

  She pulled her hand away and picked up the playbill. “If the woman who wrote this was one of these abolitionists, as you called them, then I would still like to see the play. I think it would be good for me to know what it was like for them.”

  Travis swallowed. He had to make Lirith understand. Yes, Harriet Beecher Stowe had been opposed to slavery, and her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin had helped fuel the cause of the abolitionists. However, he also knew that by the time the book became popular as a play, it had more to do with slapstick comedy than commentary against slavery. Lirith wanted to see people who looked like her. But Travis was certain the actors would be as white as he was beneath their thick coating of blackface. However, before he could say these things, a familiar figure stepped through the swinging doors of the saloon and approached the bar, peg leg drumming against the wooden floor.

  Travis froze, but Lirith smiled as she looked up. “Sareth. What are you doing here? I thought you were going to help Maudie put up decorations.”

  The Mournish man scratched his pointed beard. “What do you mean, beshala? I came here as fast as I could.”

  Travis struggled to find his tongue. Something was wrong with this. “Why exactly did you come here, Sareth?”

  “In answer to your message,” Sareth said, a scowl darkening his coppery visage. “The boy you sent came to the boardinghouse. He said you needed to see me at the saloon right away.” He glanced from Travis to Lirith, evidently seeing the puzzlement on their faces. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” Travis said. “I—” Confusion gave way to understanding, and dread surged through Travis’s chest like a cold gully washer. “Gentry,” he said, and the others stared at him.

  It had to be. Who else would trick Sareth into leaving the Bluebell? Certainly not Tanner, and no one else in town even knew him. But why do it all?

  You saw the way he looked at Sareth that day. Gentry hates him. There’s no reason for it, but a man like that doesn’t need a reason. Sareth looks di ferent, and that’s enough.

  But why today? It had been over a month since their encounter with Gentry and his cronies. Why wait until now to do something? Before Travis could think of an answer, the saloon’s doors swung open, and three men stepped through, confirming his fears.

  “Speak of the Devil,” Barrett muttered, gripping his brandy. The saloon had fallen quiet, and despite his soft tone the Englishman’s voice echoed loudly.

  Lionel Gentry turned his blue eyes toward Barrett. “You don’t want to be here, Niles,” he said in his easy drawl. “Why don’t you go on over to China Alley and buy yourself one of them pigtail boys we all know you like. Wasn’t that what they kicked you out of England for? You might as well have yourself a good time. Judgment Day is coming soon for the likes of you. But it’s him we’ve come for tonight.” He nodded toward Sareth.

  Gentry’s words were like a blow to the Englishman. His face blanched, and he backed into a corner, still clutching his drink. Outside, a volley of firecrackers crackled like buckshot against sheet metal. The dozen men left in the saloon all cringed on reflex. Travis forced himself not to glance down at the shotgun beneath the bar. His hands, resting on the polished wood, were only inches from it. He wished Manypenny was there, but the saloonkeeper had stepped outside to watch the parade.

  Lirith stepped forward, interposing herself between the men and Sareth.

  “You have no claim to him,” the witch said.

  The long-faced one, Eugene Ellis, took a draw on his thin cigar. “So the stories are true,” he said in an exhalation of rank smoke. “Manypenny did hire her. Only I can’t quite tell if she’s a Negress or a mulatto.”

  “It don’t matter,” Calvin Murray said. His downy red beard made him appear more boyish rather than less. “No kind of woman should be dealing cards. It ain’t proper.”

  Ellis let out a sardonic laugh and smoothed his waxed mustache. “Don’t be beguiled by her beauty, Mr. Murray. I tell you, without doubt, she’s not a proper lady. That’s a harlot’s dress she wears.”

  Color darkened Lirith’s cheeks, and she turned away. Sareth tried to catch her eyes, but she wouldn’t look at him.

  Ellis let his gaze flicker up and down the witch’s slender figure. “I wonder that hiring her kind for such a public position is even legal.”

  “Maybe it is,” Gentry said, taking a step forward, spurs jingling. “And then again, maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe the law in this town ain’t
doing what it should. But that’s all right. Because there are men who’ll do what the law won’t.” He fixed his cold blue gaze on Travis. “You’re friends with that new deputy, aren’t you? Mr. Dirk, I believe his name is?”

  Travis swallowed but didn’t say anything.

  “I heard Dirk’s a man-killer out of Abilene,” Murray said, his voice high-pitched with emotion. “And I don’t doubt it. Not from the look of him. That’d be just like Tanner, to go and deputize an outlaw.”

  “You’re right, Mr. Murray.” Gentry kept his focus on Travis. “And there’s something shifty about this one, too. Though I can’t quite put my finger on it. He doesn’t wear a gun, but he’s dangerous all the same. I’d keep my eyes on his hands, if I were you.”

  Outside, a rocket screamed like a mountain lion. Travis let go of the bar. The moist outlines of his splayed fingers lingered on the wood, then evaporated.

  “What do you want with Sareth?” Travis said, although he knew the magic of the coin fragment made the name come out Samson .

  Gentry took another step forward. “We have it on good account that your friend Mr. Samson robbed McKay’s General Store earlier today.”

  Both Lirith and Travis shot astonished glances at Sareth. The Mournish man shook his head in confusion.

  “It can’t be,” Lirith said.

  “I talked to one of Mr. McKay’s clerks myself,” Ellis said, tossing his cigar butt on the floor. “Mr. Samson stole a box from the loading dock. The clerk said it contained a set of silverware intended for young Miss McKay’s wedding gift, and that it was worth more than fifty dollars. I suppose this here thief has already melted it down and sold it.”

  “Is that so, Mr. Ellis?” said a deep, calm voice.

  Travis looked up to see two figures standing in the doorway of the saloon. One was slight, with a sandy mustache, the other no taller, but broad and solid. Sheriff Tanner and Durge. Travis felt a surge of relief.

  “Sheriff,” Gentry said, spitting out the word like bad whiskey.

  “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here,” Tanner said. “I only just now heard about the robbery at McKay’s. And if it hadn’t been for one of Mortimer Hale’s newsboys, selling the late edition of the Clarion fresh off the presses, I might not have heard about it at all. When I saw you all come in here, I thought I’d better stop by. You see, I still can’t quite figure out why the folks at the paper heard about this, only I didn’t.”

  “Maybe the clerk at McKay’s didn’t think you’d do anything about it, Sheriff,” Gentry said with a sharp grin. “Maybe he came to people who he knew would help him.”

  Durge gave Gentry a piercing look. “It is more likely that this clerk you speak of had some compelling reason not to speak to Sheriff Tanner. Perhaps he stole this silver himself and wished to blame another for the deed.”

  Tanner nodded at the knight. “That’s good thinking, Mr. Dirk. We’ll be sure to have a talk with him. He might have something more to tell us.”

  At that, Murray cast a glance at Gentry, his eyes worried. Gentry glared at him.

  Ellis’s face grew more sallow yet with anger. “Are you calling us liars, Mr. Dirk?”

  “Even good men can be made into fools, Eugene Ellis,” Tanner said.

  “Wait a minute,” Travis said, shocked to realize it was he who had spoken. “It doesn’t matter if the clerk was lying or not. Sareth couldn’t have robbed anyone. He was at the Bluebell Boardinghouse all day. I’m sure Maudie Carlyle can vouch for that.”

  Tanner raised an eyebrow and glanced at Sareth. The Mournish man chewed his lip.

  Travis felt panic rising in his chest. “You were at the Bluebell, weren’t you, Sareth?”

  The Mournish man gave him a sheepish look. “A man came to the boardinghouse while Lady Maudie was resting upstairs. The man said he had a delivery for Maudie, but his arm was in a sling, and he couldn’t carry the box, so I said I would carry it for him. He took me to a shop—this McKay’s—and pointed to a box on the loading dock. So I took it back to Maudie’s.”

  Travis’s right hand itched. It had all been a setup. On Eldh, the Mournish were known to be clever con men. Sareth should have been able to see through what was happening.

  Only this isn’t his world, Travis. Everything in this place is strange to him. There was no way he could tell that what was happening wasn’t right.

  The sound of fireworks was reaching a crescendo, mixed with the bright sound of bugles and the stomping of feet.

  “Did you hear that, Sheriff?” Gentry said, taking a step toward Sareth. “This thief just confessed to his crime.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” Tanner said.

  Ellis clenched his hands into fists. “What are you talking about, Tanner? Everyone in this saloon just heard him say he took the box from McKay’s.”

  A few of the onlookers in the saloon nodded.

  “That’s right,” Tanner said. “He took the box this other fellow told him to. And I’m wondering who this man is, the one with the bum arm. Can you describe him, Mr. Samson?”

  Sareth opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Calvin Murray lunged forward and grabbed his shirt.

  “You’re a thief!” the young man shouted, his face as red as his hair. “And we ain’t gonna let you get away with it!”

  “Step away from him, Calvin Murray,” Tanner said, his voice low with authority, his right hand by his hip.

  “Or what, Sheriff?” Gentry said, his lips curving in a sharp smile. “Dropping your gun won’t accomplish much.”

  Next to his hip, Tanner’s hand shook violently, moving so quickly the fingers blurred. The sheriff turned away, clutching his right hand with the left, stilling the spasm.

  “Let go of me,” Sareth said. His eyes glinted with a dangerous light that made Travis think of his sister, Vani.

  “You’re gonna pay right now for what you done,” Murray said through clenched teeth.

  Countless flashes of light burned through the saloon’s windows as a volley of rockets was launched outside, and in the strobe everything moved with queer, staccato slowness.

  Calvin Murray reached into his suit coat and pulled out a silver revolver. The gun glinted in the white-hot light as he pressed it against Sareth’s chest. Sareth grabbed for the young man’s gun hand. As he did, Murray slugged Sareth across the jaw with his free hand. Then the two men stumbled away from the bar, spinning and grappling, their bodies so close together Travis couldn’t see what was happening.

  Lirith reached toward Sareth, her mouth open in a cry Travis couldn’t hear above the noise of the fireworks. Both Tanner and Durge started forward, but Ellis stepped into their way. Only Gentry didn’t move. Instead he watched, hands on hips, a smile on his face.

  You’ve got to do something, Travis.

  But what? The shotgun was in reach, but Sareth and Murray were spinning so fast there was no telling which he’d hit. And using a rune wouldn’t be any better.

  It didn’t matter. He couldn’t just stand and watch. Wasn’t that what he had learned last Midwinter’s Eve? Making the wrong choice was better than making no choice at all. Travis’s right hand tingled as he reached out and started to speak a rune.

  There was a searing flash of light, and with it came one final report, louder than all the others before it, shattering the air of the saloon, stunning those within. Then the light dimmed, and the noise rolled away like thunder. Outside, on Elk Street, the parade was over.

  Travis lowered his hand as a coldness spilled through him. Sareth stood in the center of the saloon, a bruise already forming on his jaw, his expression one of puzzlement. In his hands was Murray’s silver gun, and at his feet lay Calvin Murray. The young man stared upward with dull eyes, his cheeks no longer red, but white as ash. Already blood soaked into the sawdust around him, oozing from the hole in his chest.

  The silence in the saloon was broken as words of shock and anger rose from the onlookers. It was Lirith who moved first. The witch knelt beside Murray
, touched his brow, then looked up at Sareth.

  “He’s dead,” she said, her eyes filled with anguish.

  Sareth shook his head, staring at the gun. Travis couldn’t quite hear the words he spoke. They might have been, This cannot be so.

  “Get away from him, Jezebel!” Ellis shouted at Lirith, lifting his hand as if he might strike her. The witch rose and stumbled toward Travis and the bar.

  “So the thief’s become a murderer,” Gentry said. “If he wasn’t already.” Of all the people in the bar, he was the only one who didn’t seem shocked at what had happened. Instead, there was something satisfied about his expression. “What are you going to do, Sheriff? I say we carry out justice right here and now.” He rested his hand on the grip of his holstered gun. Murmurs of assent ran around the saloon, along with a few muttered instances of man-killer and hang him high.

  Now all eyes were on the sheriff. Tanner gazed at the dead man with what seemed a thoughtful expression. At last he nodded and looked up at Durge.

  “Mr. Dirk,” he said, his voice weary. “Arrest Mr. Samson. Take him to the jail. We’ll lock him up to wait for trial.”

  “Lynch him now!” came a shout from the back of the saloon. More shouts echoed this sentiment, but Tanner silenced them all with a stern glare.

  “I said take him to the jail, Mr. Dirk. The circuit court judge will be coming in a couple of weeks. Mr. Samson will get his trial then.”

  Durge let out a heavy sigh, then he stepped forward and took Sareth’s arm. “I am sorry. It is my oath to obey Sir Tanner.”

  The Mournish man nodded. “I understand.”

  “No!” Lirith gasped. “You can’t do this, Durge.”

  Tanner approached the bar, and he spoke in a quiet voice. “Let Mr. Dirk do his duty, Miss Lily. You’ll see it’s for the best.

  We’ve got plenty of time to sort things out before the circuit court judge comes. And right now, the jail is the only place in town where Mr. Samson will be safe. If I don’t put him behind bars, they’ll hang him before the sun rises.”

  Travis knew Tanner was right. More men were coming into the saloon, listening to the words the others whispered, and turning their angry gazes on Sareth.