Some of the Best From Tor.com, 2013 Edition: A Tor.Com Original

by Various

  As soon as the doorway was damp, Fa Liang and Elijah and Faye used the wood-chopping stump to break through and run for the dogs.

  Fa Liang and Elijah grabbed the two closest to the doors. Dog 5 was crushed under a beam, but Dog 2, parked farthest back, was still whole, and glowing underneath a canopy of fire.

  “It’s not worth it!” Fa Liang was already shouting, and Elijah called, “Faye! It’s a goner, leave it!”

  Frank, outside, was screaming, “FAYE!”

  She stumbled, but didn’t stop. They needed as many dogs as they could save.

  They weren’t mounts, now. They were weapons.

  She shrank back from the walls as the heat rolled out, but she reached Dog 2 at last.

  As she grabbed for a canvas, as she spat on her palms and turned the key until smoke rose between her fingers, as she threw the drape over and rode out with her back blistering, she never heard the sound of the fire.

  She only heard Frank, screaming her name over a hundred other voices.

  Elijah pulled her from the rider’s seat, the canvas around her like a shroud.

  But Frank was the one who carried her up the stairs of the big house, who cut Faye’s shirt off her back—she bit down on something and screamed, hoped Maria put a belt in her mouth and she hadn’t severed her tongue.

  “Did the dog make it?” she asked later, when she was in a tub, and Maria was making something with mortar and pestle, and Frank was rinsing her with cool water.

  Frank snorted, said thickly, “You would worry about that now.”

  Even in pain, she knew that wasn’t fair; dimly she thought, I’ve always forgiven you, when you worried about what you loved.

  “Not as bad as it could be,” said Maria, bandaging her ribs. “It might blister, but we were quick, and your skin is thick there.”

  Faye never thought she’d thank the Mormon school for those scars.

  Her hand was another story—there was a diamond key mark burned into her palm, as deep as Frank’s. Some things were past healing.

  “It’s all right,” Marie said. “The wound is clean, it will be no trouble. I’ve brought you some clean things.”

  “Whose?”

  “A wife has ways,” Maria said, with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  But she was right—a clean wound hurt less, once the shock wore off. After Marie helped her into Elijah’s clothes, Faye was calm enough to say, “Let’s go down.”

  “Good,” said Marie, fastening Faye’s belt. “They’re waiting.”

  Frank was at the door, and he walked so close Faye thought it was a good thing she hadn’t burned her shoulder.

  The others stood as she came in—even Tom, green with fright.

  “I’m all right,” she said as they took their seats. (Maria sat next to Joseph.) “How are the dogs?”

  “Fine,” said Fa Liang. “Dog Two got out all right. He just needs mending.”

  “We have to fight,” Frank said. “The next time some coward from the city or the railroad comes here, we send him back dead on his horse.”

  “It can’t have been someone from town!” Tom cut in.

  “The tracks led that way,” said Joseph.

  Tom blanched. “But—” he started, then fell silent as something occurred to him he chose not to voice.

  “Go home, Tom,” said Maria. “If anyone asks what happened, you tell them someone set the barn on fire, and not a word else. Safer.”

  After a little silence where no one spoke in his favor, he pulled on his gloves and stood.

  “It wasn’t the town,” he said, but this time it was half a question.

  “The railroad put him up to it, whoever he was,” said Maria, when they were alone.

  “I need to talk to the mayor,” Elijah said.

  “No,” said Faye.

  They all glanced at her.

  “She’s right,” said Frank. “No point.”

  “The mayor probably set it,” said Maria.

  “It does us no good to start fighting without asking for peace,” Elijah said.

  “That’s all we ever asked!” Frank said. “And see how they treat us the second we stand up.” He propped two stiff fingers on the table. “Who here ever had understanding from that kind?”

  No one raised a hand.

  Elijah got an odd, quiet expression.

  He said, “Not every man’s army, Frank. Not even railroad men. Many folk are kinder.”

  Frank sat back in his chair.

  “Strange thing I’ve run across,” Frank said, “since Faye and I were given to the school—knowing how many of them want us dead, and expect forgiveness.”

  Elijah got the expression of a man for whom some things he’d never thought about were falling into place.

  “Well,” he said at last, “then it’s a vote.”

  He plucked five singed chips of bark from the hearth. He passed one to each of them.

  Then he stood back empty-handed.

  “Burned, we fight. Clear, we look for help.”

  Maria snapped hers on the table char up like the high card in a hand of poker, pulled back fingers dusted black.

  Faye wasn’t surprised. Anyone can be run off once, but roots take stronger, sometimes, on strange soil.

  (They were around this table, weren’t they?)

  Fa Liang sighed, and scratched at the back of his neck, and set down his chit with the pale side up.

  Joseph was quiet for a little while before he spoke.

  “I’m a free man, and if any man questions me, I have his answer. But I don’t know as I want any more fighting.”

  His bark went on the table, the pale side up.

  Frank sat forward, slid the black chit into the center of the table.

  Elijah pressed a fist to the wall behind him. “This won’t bring any peace,” he said.

  “Expect not,” said Frank.

  Then everyone at the table turned to look at Faye.

  Frank didn’t. Frank had closed his eyes, laced his hands tight against his stomach.

  He did that, sometimes, when he was frightened.

  Faye wished Elijah hadn’t asked her.

  She’d wanted to leave three winters back, as soon as they could walk, but Frank asked to stay the night, and then they’d met the others, and the dogs.

  Despite everything, Frank loved this place, where their ancestors might have lived, and somehow she had tricked herself that if they were happy, this was home; but it never had been, and it couldn’t be.

  Home was a safe place. That was gone.

  Now there was only Frank, fingers curled against the necklace he’d bought in River Pass from a trader, because it was what he remembered of their father, long white strands looped like armor.

  She tossed the bark back into the fire.

  “No vote,” Elijah said, trying to hide a smile.

  When she looked at Frank’s face, her heart broke.

  Don’t doubt me, she thought, more angry at him than at the men who’d tried to burn them out.

  She’d freed them from the school; she’d led them to homeland again; she’d trained gangly boys to ride the dogs and never been so far as the summit by herself, because he’d asked her not to go, and she’d promised.

  If she didn’t want them fighting, he should know why; they’d seen what happened when you were outnumbered.

  She let the wind slam the door behind her.

  Faye remembered being young, when the land was the earth and the marks of antelope and the horizon that told you what was coming and plants growing in the shadow of the rocks.

  At the school, she’d learned about barren. Barren was what happened to bad women, to the crops of people who did wrong. In the prayers they repeated until their tongues were numb, there was the hope of plenty, the fear of the blank land.

  She found the path to their cabin without really looking, set herself on the hard-packed dirt that marked three years of habit.

  There was a chill on the breeze, the ed
ge of a winter that was still far off.

  She knew why Frank wanted to make a stand. She just couldn’t risk it.

  If he would only leave, she’d go tonight, head for the mountains, never stop moving.

  Their cabin was on a little rise, and she could tell its shape by the way it blocked the stars.

  It was close enough to home, sometimes.

  Of all the things that had been taken from her, she missed most the days when she looked across the place that had been home, and hadn’t yet learned what empty was.

  She was still awake at dawn, looking across the plain to the disappearing stars, when Frank found her.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Elijah’s gone to speak to the mayor.” He sat with her. “How are your burns?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “I was calling for you.”

  “I know,” she said.

  They sat that way, not talking, just together and awake, until there was enough light to start work on the barn.

  They worked all day, hacking out dead boards and scavenging replacements, trying to fit a home for the dogs.

  “We could board them with the horses,” Joseph said.

  Maria frowned. “Absolutely not. Those dogs will go in the sitting room first.”

  “I’d beat you in a race through the house,” Fa Liang said, and across Dog 2, Faye gave him a look until he laughed.

  They worked until the supper bell, and ate quickly, too sore and tired to make conversation.

  It wasn’t until Maria was pouring coffee that the empty chair occurred to Faye.

  “What time did Elijah leave this morning?”

  Maria paused.

  Then she pulled back with the pot in her hands, counting his hours, her knuckles going white.

  “Oh please no,” she said.

  They stood up so fast they knocked their chairs over, a clatter that echoed as they ran for the dogs.

  Because the land was what it was, Faye and Fa Liang saw the horse two miles before they reached him.

  Whoever did it had waited until Elijah was on his own ground to shoot him.

  His horse was loyal, and stood only a few yards from where his body had fallen—just past his property line, crossed by the long shadow of the sign for Western Fleet.

  Fa Liang was the one who lifted the body and carried him to the dog.

  (Faye couldn’t imagine touching him; he was the sort who hadn’t presumed.)

  When Father Jake came to consecrate the ground, Susannah Pell came with him.

  They all went up the hill in a ragged procession behind the cart that held Elijah’s coffin, and they stood in a line beside the grave as the father said things that didn’t matter.

  After it was over, Father Jake walked with Maria to the house, and Fa Liang and Joseph began to cover the coffin.

  The dirt landed with heavy thuds, as if their fear and sorrow had cracked the land, and Elijah was sinking into a place that would never be quiet again.

  Frank took the harness of the cart horse. Faye fell into step with him.

  So did Susannah Pell.

  “I have her papers,” Miss Pell told Faye. “Let’s hope she can keep the land.”

  So it was theirs to defend; the law would never freely give.

  “Not with the railroad men coming,” Faye muttered.

  “They’re afraid of you,” Miss Pell said.

  Faye looked over. “What?”

  “They’re cowards,” Miss Pell said, with too much feeling for someone at the county clerk’s. “Grant calls you awful names in town, makes out like you’re trying to rob them of a chance.”

  “What are they saying?” Faye asked.

  “Things no one should believe. Joseph’s a drunk, he says. Fa Liang worked for opium traders.”

  Frank raised his eyebrows. “And?”

  After a moment she admitted, “They say you have dark magic—you raise ghosts.”

  Faye flinched.

  Frank reached out for her absently, pulled back. He wasn’t a man of much comfort.

  “If I could raise ghosts,” said Frank, “they would be right to be afraid.”

  Miss Pell smiled tightly, moved faster to catch up with Father Jake and Maria.

  “We should leave here,” Faye said.

  Frank looked at her.

  “Where would we go?”

  He sounded as if he was thinking it over. Her chest went tight with hope.

  Twice before, he’d run when she asked him to.

  “Someplace quiet,” she said. “Free of people. Free. I want to look at the sky and know there’s no one else for fifty miles.”

  He put his hands in his pockets and looked sidelong at the horizon.

  (For a moment he looked like the little boy he’d been the first time the schoolmaster had accused them of black magic, for speaking their language.)

  “I’d feel like a coward if I ran.”

  “Then feel like a coward,” she said, “and live.”

  After a moment, he turned and led the horse and cart toward the stable, on the far side of the big house.

  For all she ached for home, she knew Frank’s anger. The whites had done things that shouldn’t even be spoken, yet they’d forgiven themselves. And now the train was trying to stretch an iron road across the land between them.

  You just can’t be dead enough for some people. They want to burn your footprints right off the earth.

  They slept in the big house together—it was safer to take watches through the day.

  There was no one left to speak for them. The town had done what was right, on paper. It was waiting to see if the railroad overcame, now that the man who mattered was dead.

  By evening they were awake, preparing for the worst.

  “We should fit up the dogs,” Faye said as they loaded rifles at the table.

  “What with?” asked Fa Liang.

  “Claws,” she said. “Blades. Something that can kill.”

  “They’re mounts,” said Joseph.

  “They’re weapons,” she said. “Arm them.”

  Maria, who was distributing bullets, looked up.

  “One blade,” she said. “Under the turn of the ankle. They won’t see it until you use it.”

  Joseph looked at her.

  But Frank and Fa Liang and Faye rose, to take blades from the kitchen and start their work.

  Grant and the railroad men waited until deep night before they came.

  As the cloud of orange dust rose behind their horses in the light of the torches they carried, Faye realized they must have been waiting to see if help arrived. They were sure, now, that it wouldn’t; there was no hurry.

  “We’ll lead them away from the house,” said Joseph.

  He was too tall for a good dog rider, but he’d brought Elijah’s horse from the barn, and had a rifle in one hand.

  “Stay here,” said Faye. “Maria will defend the house. Don’t leave her alone.”

  Joseph looked at them, loading up their dogs with weapons and water.

  “She’s right,” said Fa Liang. “Good luck.”

  After a beat, Joseph nodded, and turned for the house.

  Faye mounted Dog 2, slung her rifle in the holster and her pistol at her side.

  “Make for the hills,” she said. “Fa Liang, flank them. We’ll take them out from the rocks. Frank, with me.”

  “Of course,” said Frank, and grinned, his mouth a bright sliver of white in the dark.

  “You’re a fool,” she said, smiling.

  “Ride out,” said Fa Liang, and three engines started with a clunk and a shriek and a roar.

  The dogs ate up ground toward the hills, which were easy enough to hide in and take shots while you could.

  “How many are there?” Frank asked once.

  She risked a look, in between the pistons of her dog’s left legs, but behind them was only thunder and a soft glow, dimmer, as if some had broken off to burn the big house instead.

  “Hope you br
ought plenty of bullets,” she said.

  Frank laughed, which numbed her fear a little; it was dark, and they knew the ground better than a stranger could, and any minute they’d reach the hills.

  She’d forgotten about the barn fire, in the chaos; when two left ankles on Frank’s dog snapped, it took a moment too long to remember what happens to metal tempered in haste.

  “Frank!” she called as soon as he dropped from sight. She gripped the rings and pulled; Dog 2 spun with a screech, circling back to him. “Quick, take the middle leg from mine. There’s time if we move.”

  “There’s no time,” he said. His dog limped a few paces. It was slow, but the joints might hold long enough to reach the rocks.

  The men were gaining; she could see two men with torches, two more in shadow.

  “Get to the hills,” she said.

  He was testing the broken legs, finding a gait that could support him.

  “Go on,” he said through gritted teeth. “Fast as you can.”

  She hesitated. Her heart was pounding so hard it sounded like another horse coming after them.

  One of the silhouettes, she could see, was Grant.

  Her throat was dry.

  “No,” she said, “no, come now, come on, Frank—”

  “Faye,” he said, turned to her with a look she’d never seen. “Go on. I’m right behind you, soon as I can.”

  (She’d said the same to him, a long time ago, just before the soldiers reached them.)

  The horses were coming into sight.

  “Go on!” Frank shouted, gunned the engine, aimed the limping dog to follow her.

  A gun went off, close, too close.

  Faye took the hill.

  It was slick and steep, and a struggle even for the dog, and she was fifty feet up before she realized there was no sound behind her but the thunder of the horses.

  Frank, she thought, with a stab of guilt and sorrow sharp enough to tear her open; Frank, I would have stayed with you.

  She didn’t need to look to know what he’d done so she could escape; before she could turn, she heard two shots crossing and a sharp cry.

  (It was a voice she’d know among a hundred voices.)

  A body landed in the dirt.

  She spun, hardly breathing, her hands white-knuckle on the shifts, and tilted back so the dog’s front talons rose high, blades out.

  The rifle appeared at her shoulder, two shots in quick succession. Someone shouted; there was a clatter of hooves on the rocks.