by Stephen King
“Then go on up, the both of you, and let me palaver with the boss and be done with it. I’m too old for these late nights.”
When they were gone, Jonas dealt out a fresh line of cards, then looked around the room. There were perhaps a dozen folks, including Sheb the piano-player and Barkie the bouncer, sleeping it off. No one was close enough to listen to the low-voiced conversation of the two men by the door, even if one of the snoring drunkards was for some reason only shamming sleep. Jonas put a red queen on a black knight, then looked up at Rimer. “Say your say.”
“Those two said it for me, actually. Sai Depape will never be embarrassed by a surplus of brains, but Reynolds is fairly smart for a gunny, isn’t he?”
“Clay’s trig when the moon’s right and he’s had a shave,” Jonas agreed. “Are you saying you came all the way from Seafront to tell me those three babbies need a closer looking at?”
Rimer shrugged.
“Perhaps they do, and I’m the man to do it, if so—right enough. But what’s there to find?”
“That’s to be seen,” Rimer said, and tapped one of Jonas’s cards. “There’s a Chancellor.”
“Aye. Near as ugly as the one I’m sitting with.” Jonas put the Chancellor—it was Paul—above his run of cards. The next draw uncovered Luke, whom he put next to Paul. That left Peter and Matthew still lurking in the bush. Jonas looked at Rimer shrewdly. “You hide it better than my pals, but you’re as nervous as they are, underneath. You want to know what’s out at that bunkhouse? I’ll tell you: extra boots, pictures of their mommies, socks that stink to high heaven, stiff sheets from boys who’ve been taught it’s low-class to chase after the sheep . . . and guns hidden somewhere. Under the floorboards, like enough.”
“You really think they have guns?”
“Aye, Roy got the straight of that, all right. They’re from Gilead, they’re likely from the line of Eld or from folk who like to think they’re from it, and they’re likely ’prentices to the trade who’ve been sent on with guns they haven’t earned yet. I wonder a bit about the tall one with the I-don’t-give-a-shit look in his eyes—he might already be a gunslinger, I suppose—but is it likely? I don’t think so. Even if he is, I could take him in a fair go. I know it, and he does, too.”
“Then why have they been sent here?”
“Not because those from the Inner Baronies suspect your treason, sai Rimer—be easy on that score.”
Rimer’s head poked out of his serape as he sat up straight, and his face stiffened. “How dare you call me a traitor? How dare you?”
Eldred Jonas favored Hambry’s Minister of Inventory with an unpleasant smile. It made the white-haired man look like a wolverine. “I’ve called things by their right names my whole life, and I won’t stop now. All that needs matter to you is that I’ve never double-crossed an employer.”
“If I didn’t believe in the cause of—”
“To hell with what you believe! It’s late and I want to go to bed. The folk in New Canaan and Gilead haven’t the foggiest idea of what does or doesn’t go on out here on the Crescent; there aren’t many of em who’ve ever been here, I’d wager. Them are too busy trying to keep everything from falling down around their ears to do much travelling these days. No, what they know is all from the picturebooks they was read out of when they ’us babbies themselves: happy cowboys galloping after stock, happy fishermen pulling whoppers into their boats, folks clogging at barn-raisings and drinking big pots o’ graf in Green Heart pavillion. For the sake of the Man Jesus, Rimer, don’t go dense on me—I deal with that day in and day out.”
“They see Mejis as a place of quiet and safety.”
“Aye, bucolic splendor, just so, no doubt about it. They know that their whole way o’ life—all that nobility and chivalry and ancestor-worship—is on fire. The final battle may take place as much as two hundred wheels northwest of their borders, but when Farson uses his fire-carriages and robots to wipe out their army, trouble will come south fast. There are those from the Inner Baronies who’ve smelled this coming for twenty years or more. They didn’t send these brats here to discover your secrets, Rimer; folks such as these don’t send their babbies into danger on purpose. They sent em here to get em out of the way, that’s all. That doesn’t make em blind or stupid, but for the sake of the gods, let’s be sane. They’re kiddies.”
“What else might you find, should you go out there?”
“Some way of sending messages, mayhap. A heliograph’s the most likely. And out beyond Eyebolt, a shepherd or maybe a freeholder susceptible to a bribe—someone they’ve trained to catch the message and either flash it on or carry it afoot. But before long it’ll be too late for messages to do any good, won’t it?”
“Perhaps, but it’s not too late yet. And you’re right. Kiddies or not, they worry me.”
“You’ve no cause, I tell you. Soon enough, I’ll be wealthy and you’ll be downright rich. Mayor yourself, if you want. Who’d stand to stop you? Thorin? He’s a joke. Coral? She’d help you string him up, I wot. Or perhaps you’d like to be a Baron, if such offices be revived?” He saw a momentary gleam in Rimer’s eyes and laughed. Matthew came out of the deck, and Jonas put him up with the other Chancellors. “Yar, I see that’s what you’ve got your heart set on. Gems is nice, and for gold that goes twice, but there’s nothing like having folk bow and scrape before ye, is there?”
Rimer said, “They should have been on the cowboy side by now.”
Jonas’s hands stopped above the layout of cards. It was a thought that had crossed his own mind more than once, especially over the last two weeks or so.
“How long do you think it takes to count our nets and boats and chart out the fish-hauls?” Rimer asked. “They should be over on the Drop, counting cows and horses, looking through barns, studying the foal-charts. They should have been there two weeks ago, in fact. Unless they already know what they’d find.”
Jonas understood what Rimer was implying, but couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it. Not such a depth of slyness from boys who only had to shave once a week.
“No,” he said. “That’s your own guilty heart talking to you. They’re just so determined to do it right that they’re creeping along like old folks with bad eyes. They’ll be over on the Drop soon enough, and counting their little hearts out.”
“And if they’re not?”
A good question. Get rid of them somehow, Jonas supposed. An ambush, perhaps. Three shots from cover, no more babbies. There’d be ill feeling afterward—the boys were well liked in town—but Rimer could handle that until Fair Day, and after the Reap it wouldn’t matter. Still—
“I’ll have a look around out at the Bar K,” Jonas said at last. “By myself—I won’t have Clay and Roy tramping along behind me.”
“That sounds fine.”
“Perhaps you’d like to come and lend a hand.”
Kimba Rimer smiled his icy smile. “I think not.”
Jonas nodded, and began to deal again. Going out to the Bar K would be a bit risky, but he didn’t expect any real problem—especially if he went alone. They were only boys, after all, and gone for much of each day.
“When may I expect a report, sai Jonas?”
“When I’m ready to make it. Don’t crowd me.”
Rimer lifted his thin hands and held them, palms out, to Jonas. “Cry your pardon, sai,” he said.
Jonas nodded, slightly mollified. He flipped up another card. It was Peter, Chancellor of Keys. He put the card in the top row and then stared at it, combing his fingers through his long white hair as he did. He looked from the card to Rimer, who looked back, eyebrows raised.
“You smile,” Rimer said.
“Yar!” Jonas said, and began to deal again. “I’m happy! All the Chancellors are out. I think I’m going to win this game.”
5
For Rhea, the time of the Huntress had been a time of frustration and unsatisfied craving. Her plans had gone awry, and thanks to her cat’s hideously mistimed
leap, she didn’t know how or why. The young cull who’d taken Susan Delgado’s cherry had likely stopped her from chopping her scurf . . . but how? And who was he really? She wondered that more and more, but her curiosity was secondary to her fury. Rhea of the Cöos wasn’t used to being balked.
She looked across the room to where Musty crouched and watched her carefully. Ordinarily he would have relaxed in the fireplace (he seemed to like the cool drafts that swirled down the chimney), but since she had singed his fur, Musty preferred the woodpile. Given Rhea’s mood, that was probably wise. “You’re lucky I let ye live, ye warlock,” the old woman grumbled.
She turned back to the ball and began to make passes above it, but the glass only continued to swirl with bright pink light—not a single image appeared. Rhea got up at last, went to the door, threw it open, and looked out on the night sky. Now the moon had waxed a little past the half, and the Huntress was coming clear on its bright face. Rhea directed the stream of foul language she didn’t quite dare to direct at the glass (who knew what entity might lurk inside it, waiting to take offense at such talk?) up at the woman in the moon. Twice she slammed her bony old fist into the door-lintel as she cursed, dredging up every dirty word she could think of, even the potty-mouth words children throw at each other in the dust of the play yard. Never had she been so angry. She had given the girl a command, and the girl, for whatever reasons, had disobeyed. For standing against Rhea of the Cöos, the bitch deserved to die.
“But not right away,” the old woman whispered. “First she should be rolled in the dirt, then pissed on until the dirt’s mud and her fine blonde hair’s full of it. Humiliated . . . hurt . . . spat on . . .”
She slammed her fist against the door’s side again, and this time blood flew from the knuckles. It wasn’t just the girl’s failure to obey the hypnotic command. There was another matter, related but much more serious: Rhea herself was now too upset to use the glass, except for brief and unpredictable periods of time. The hand-passes she made over it and the incantations she muttered to it were, she knew, useless; the words and gestures were just the way she focused her will. That was what the glass responded to—will and concentrated thought. Now, thanks to the trollop of a girl and her boy lover, Rhea was too angry to summon the smooth concentration needed to part the pink fog which swirled inside the ball. She was, in fact, too angry to see.
“How can I make it like it was?” Rhea asked the half-glimpsed woman in the moon. “Tell me! Tell me!” But the Huntress told her nothing, and at last Rhea went back inside, sucking at her bleeding knuckles.
Musty saw her coming and squeezed into the cobwebby space between the woodpile and the chimney.
CHAPTER II
THE GIRL AT
THE WINDOW
1
Now the Huntress “filled her belly,” as the old-timers said—even at noon she could be glimpsed in the sky, a pallid vampire woman caught in bright autumn sunlight. In front of businesses such as the Travellers’ Rest and on the porches of such large ranch houses as Lengyll’s Rocking B and Renfrew’s Lazy Susan, stuffy-guys with heads full of straw above their old overalls began to appear. Each wore his sombrero; each held a basket of produce cradled in his arms; each looked out at the emptying world with stitched white-cross eyes.
Wagons filled with squashes clogged the roads; bright orange drifts of pumpkins and bright magenta drifts of sharproot lay against the sides of barns. In the fields, the potato-carts rolled and the pickers followed behind. In front of the Hambry Mercantile, reap-charms appeared like magic, hanging from the carved Guardians like wind-chimes.
All over Mejis, girls sewed their Reaping Night costumes (and sometimes wept over them, if the work went badly) as they dreamed of the boys they would dance with in the Green Heart pavillion. Their little brothers began to have trouble sleeping as they thought of the rides and the games and the prizes they might win at the carnival. Even their elders sometimes lay awake in spite of their sore hands and aching backs, thinking about the pleasures of the Reap.
Summer had slipped away with a final flirt of her greengown; harvest-time had arrived.
2
Rhea cared not a fig for Reaping dances or carnival games, but she could no more sleep than those who did. Most nights she lay on her stinking pallet until dawn, her skull thudding with rage. On a night not long after Jonas’s conversation with Chancellor Rimer, she determined to drink herself into oblivion. Her mood was not improved when she found that her graf barrel was almost empty; she blistered the air with her curses.
She was drawing in breath for a fresh string of them when an idea struck her. A wonderful idea. A brilliant idea. She had wanted Susan Delgado to cut off her hair. That hadn’t worked, and she didn’t know why . . . but she did know something about the girl, didn’t she? Something interesting, aye, so it was, wery interesting, indeed.
Rhea had no desire to go to Thorin with what she knew; she had a fond (and foolish, likely) hope that the Mayor had forgotten about his wonderful glass ball. But the girl’s aunt, now . . . suppose Cordelia Delgado were to discover that not only was her niece’s virginity lost, the girl was well on her way to becoming a practiced trollop? Rhea didn’t think Cordelia would go to the Mayor, either—the woman was a prig but not a fool—yet it would set the cat among the pigeons just the same, wouldn’t it?
“Waow!”
Thinking of cats, there was Musty, standing on the stoop in the moonlight, looking at her with a mixture of hope and mistrust. Rhea, grinning hideously, opened her arms. “Come to me, my precious! Come, my sweet one!”
Musty, understanding all was forgiven, rushed into his mistress’s arms and began to purr loudly as Rhea licked along his sides with her old and yellowing tongue. That night the Cöos slept soundly for the first time in a week, and when she took the glass ball into her arms the following morning, its mists cleared for her at once. She spent the day in thrall to it, spying on people she detested, drinking little and eating nothing. Around sunset, she came out of her trance enough to realize she had as yet done nothing about the saucy little jade. But that was all right; she saw how it could be done . . . and she could watch all the results in the glass! All the protests, all the shouting and recriminations! She would see Susan’s tears. That would be the best, to see her tears.
“A little harvest of my own,” she said to Ermot, who now came slithering up her leg toward the place where she liked him best. There weren’t many men who could do you like Ermot could do you, no indeed. Sitting there with a lapful of snake, Rhea began to laugh.
3
“Remember your promise,” Alain said nervously as they heard the approaching beat of Rusher’s hoofs. “Keep your temper.”
“I will,” Cuthbert said, but he had his doubts. As Roland rode around the long wing of the bunkhouse and into the yard, his shadow trailing out in the sunset light, Cuthbert clenched his hands nervously. He willed them to open, and they did. Then, as he watched Roland dismount, they rolled themselves closed again, the nails digging into his palms.
Another go-round, Cuthbert thought. Gods, but I’m sick of them. Sick to death.
Last night’s had been about the pigeons—again. Cuthbert wanted to use one to send a message back west about the oil tankers; Roland still did not. So they had argued. Except (here was another thing which infuriated him, that rubbed against his nerves like the sound of the thinny) Roland did not argue. These days Roland did not deign to argue. His eyes always kept that distant look, as if only his body was here. The rest of him—mind, soul, spirit, ka—was with Susan Delgado.
“No,” he had said simply. “It’s too late for such.”
“You can’t know that,” Cuthbert had argued. “And even if it’s too late for help to come from Gilead, it’s not too late for advice to come from Gilead. Are you so blind you can’t see that?”
“What advice can they send us?” Roland hadn’t seemed to hear the rawness in Cuthbert’s voice. His own voice was calm. Reasonable. And utterly disconnec
ted, Cuthbert thought, from the urgency of the situation.
“If we knew that,” he had replied, “we wouldn’t have to ask, Roland, would we?”
“We can only wait and stop them when they make their move. It’s comfort you’re looking for, Cuthbert, not advice.”
You mean wait while you fuck her in as many ways and in as many places as you can imagine, Cuthbert thought. Inside, outside, rightside up and upside down.
“You’re not thinking clearly about this,” Cuthbert had said coldly. He’d heard Alain’s gasp. Neither of them had ever said such a thing to Roland in their lives, and once it was out, he’d waited uneasily for whatever explosion might follow.
None did. “Yes,” Roland replied, “I am.” And he had gone into the bunkhouse without another word.
Now, watching Roland uncinch Rusher’s girths and pull the saddle from his back, Cuthbert thought: You’re not, you know. But you better think clearly about this. By all the gods, you’d better.
“Hile,” he said as Roland carried the saddle over to the porch and set it on the step. “Busy afternoon?” He felt Alain kick his ankle and ignored it.
“I’ve been with Susan,” Roland said. No defense, no demur, no excuse. And for a moment Cuthbert had a vision of shocking clarity: he saw the two of them in a hut somewhere, the late afternoon sun shining through holes in the roof and dappling their bodies. She was on top, riding him. Cuthbert saw her knees on the old, spongy boards, and the tension in her long thighs. He saw how tanned her arms were, how white her belly. He saw how Roland’s hands cupped the globes of her breasts, squeezing them as she rocked back and forth above him, and he saw how the sun lit her hair, turning it into a fine-spun net.
Why do you always have to be first? he cried at Roland in his mind. Why does it always have to be you? Gods damn you, Roland! Gods damn you!
