Elver came closer, taking each step as if held in the jaws of a gale. Mikeos could see the hollows of his eyes now, the motley flesh of his cheeks, rectangles stitched in a dry patchwork, pale here, dark there.
“You owe me, boy.”
Mikeos could hear the strain in the corpser’s voice.
“You owe me.” Ten yards separated them. The corpser struggled to take another step and failed.
The same terror that had run through Mikeos at the bar raced in his veins again. He felt the ache of the corpser’s touch on his neck. Hemar couldn’t save him. A cur like Hemar couldn’t even save himself.
“I can pay you.” Mikeos sounded like a frightened child, even to himself. “If you give me time, I can pay.”
Elver shook his head. Dust fell from the grey straggles of his hair. “Bring me bull-boy’s skull.” He pointed at it. “Pass it to me, and we’ll be quits. I’ll even discount your next bag of the good stuff.”
Frayed lips scraped back over dead teeth, and Mikeos realized Elver was smiling.
Mikeos woke to a persistent grinding sound. He had a crick in his back and felt cold in every limb. It took several moments to get his bearings. Morning light reached him down a set of stone stairs. His feet rested against iron gates barring the way into a crypt.
“Will he still be waiting?” he asked.
The grinding noise stopped as Hemar abandoned his bone to consider the question.
“Yes.”
Mikeos groaned and sat up. He felt like he’d been awake all night. Even out of the wind it was cold, and just as he fell asleep at last, it was morning.
“I should have given him the skull.”
“You did right, Mikey.” Hemar growled. “Besides, I didn’t believe him. He wanted more than that. He wouldn’t chase you into the Bullet, kill a bull taur, just for a dust-debt.”
Mikeos hugged himself, staring into the shadow. There had been a hunger about the corpser, something more than rage when he refused Samms the skull, refused to go near. “This is you and me now, boy,” the corpse had said. “Fuck the Walker and his master. I’m doing this for me.”
Mikeos didn’t know any Walker. Didn’t want to either. He went up the steps on his hands and knees, blinking at the dawn as he emerged. The crypt lay almost at the pillar’s base, one of hundreds, some elaborate, some plain, dozens of different styles, most housing some forgotten gunman from yesteryear.
“You’re sure he’s coming?” Mikeos asked.
“Yes.” The grinding started up again, back in the gloom down the steps.
When Remos Jax and that girl came, Mikeos and Hemar would have a chance to leave in safety. Even if the sect champion killed Jax, they could go back to town with the girl. She seemed to have some kind of hold over the corpser.
“Damned if I’d come to draw on someone if I knew they were faster than me,” Mikeos said.
He walked away from the crypt, hugging himself against the cold. At least the wind carried the boneyards’ stench away from him. He watched as a flock of ravens took flight from some high niche on the pillar.
Mikeos found a place by the path and waited, crouched, his face in his knees. It didn’t take long. The sun hadn’t yet cleared the horizon when two figures showed in the distance. One tall, one short.
Mikeos waited until they drew level.
“Hello,” he said.
Remos Jax looked at him. The girl kept her eyes on the pillar.
“Here for the showdown?” Remos asked. He had a gentle voice. Mellow.
Mikeos shrugged. “I guess.” He stood up.
“There’ll be a crowd by noon,” the girl said. “Everyone from town, and some from around and about.”
Mikeos frowned. He looked Remos up and down. Dust didn’t seem to find a hold on all that black like it should.
“So how fast are you, mister?” Mikeos asked.
Remos gave a slow smile. “Fast as I need to be.” And Mikeos found himself looking down the black eye of a Colt 45. There hadn’t been an in between. One moment the gun had sat in its holster on Remos’s hip. The next moment it had been an inch from Mikeos’s nose.
“Damn!” Mikeos shook his head. “Hemar says the sect slinger is faster’n you.”
Remos put the gun away. “Hemar might be right.”
“So why did you come?”
Remos started walking again. Mikeos fell in beside him and the girl followed. “Sometimes you have to make a stand.”
“You’re not worried you’ll get killed?” Mikeos cast a glance at the crypts.
Remos smiled again. “When you make the right stand, you’re bulletproof. Fast or slow, that bullet won’t harm you.”
Mikeos stopped walking. “You can’t be killed?” He felt betrayed. The gun-law could never allow such a thing.
“I didn’t say that,” Remos said. He holstered his gun with a spin. “When you pull a gun for the right reason, that reason remains right whether you live or die, that choice remains justified. That’s what a gunfighter is. He’s a set of ideas, he’s a list of things worth dying for, and the will to do just that if need be. That’s the gun-law, son.”
Mikeos almost rolled his eyes; Remos sounded like a preacher from the Church of the Three. He looked back at the girl. “Can we go back to town with you after? Me and my friend, Hemar?”
“Sure,” she said.
She took his hand and stopped walking. “Stay with me. Remos likes to see the ground where he’s going to fight and wait there until it’s time.”
They watched the gunslinger go on ahead, tiny against the bulk of the pillar.
Mikeos remembered his hand and pulled it back from hers. “What’s your name?”
“Lilly.”
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Very.”
“Th . . .” Mikeos broke off, then started again. “Thanks for, you know, back in the Bullet.”
“That’s OK.”
“Why did you do it?” he asked.
“I don’t like corpsers.” She grinned. “A thing should know when to die.”
“Remos had better hope the sect gunman does,” Mikeos said.
“What time is it?” Mikeos asked.
Hemar patted his legs. “Do I look like I own a pocket watch? I ain’t even got pockets.”
“It’s about eleven,” Lilly said.
The three of them sat atop a marble sepulchre with a good view of the “high street,” a strip of clear ground running between the tombs closest to the pillar. People from town packed the way, more coming by the minute, some in their holiday best, bonnets and morning suits.
“Looks like the sect man’s here.” Hemar pointed to a disturbance in the crowd back along the road to town.
Mikeos looked out across the hats and horns, and squinted. He couldn’t make it out.
“Yes,” Lilly said.
“Ever seen a sect man, Mikey?” Hemar asked.
“Saw one once when Ma took me to the fair in Oh-One.”
“Scary fellas,” Hemar said. “Armour all over, like those old taur knights, only it ain’t ironwork, it’s part of them, like a beetle. Sect been breeding them up, tryin’ to get something that can hold a gun.”
“I remember the eyes,” Mikeos said. “Bug eyes, like a fly. Hundreds of little windows.”
He could see the black gleam of the sect man now, the crowd surging around it. “What about you, Lilly?” he asked. “You seen a sect man?”
“I’ve seen sect worlds.” She said it softly.
“What?” Hemar seemed to notice her for the first time.
“The sect hold worlds by the score,” she said. “Only the gun-law keeps them from swarming this world too. Something to thank the Old Ones for.”
“And if Remos loses?” Hemar asked.
“The sect get their first toehold here. The sect fighter becomes the Five-Oh-Seven’s gunslinger and controls who comes in on the world rails. All of a sudden you’ll have sect swarming in, along with as many fighters as they can b
reed, and the trains will take them to any other pillar they like, long as they’ve got the fare.”
“Hey! There’s Remos!” Mikeos pointed to the far end of the high street.
Remos strode out into the center, a lone black figure. Somebody followed him from the crowd. A woman in a red cape, her skin too pale for the midday sun.
“That’s the hex-witch from the bar,” Mikeos said.
“Yes.” Lilly got up and started to climb down from the tomb. “She’s Jenna Crossard.”
“Hey, wait up, where’re you going?” Mikeos followed, scraping his chest while he slid down to the ground.
He tried to keep up as Lilly slipped between legs and twisted through any gap that presented itself. “Wait up!”
“She wants Remos to take her help,” Lilly said.
Mikeos dodged an elbow. Panting. “That’s good? If he wins it keeps the sect out.”
“If he cheats the gun-law won’t hold.”
“Why would she want that?”
“Jenna thinks her magic will fool the gun-law.”
“Will it?” Mikeos squeezed between two prospectors and suddenly he was out in the clear, stumbling into the high street.
“No,” Lilly shouted over her shoulder, and ran for Remos.
Mikeos ran after her, glancing back at the far end of the high street where the crowd had parted to let the sect man pass.
They reached Remos and the hex-witch together.
The hex-witch inclined her head. “Lilliana, you honour us.” Her voice cold.
“Remos—”
“Let her finish, Lilly,” Remos said.
“When the sect champion prevails, it won’t negotiate like gunslingers do,” the witch said. “The gun-law won’t save us from war. With the sect the gun-law will only keep us from defending what’s ours.”
The witch kept her eyes on Remos. Mikeos could feel a cold energy flow from her. His teeth and sinuses ached as if he stood naked against the winter might of the Frostral. What would it be like standing dead center of that stare?
“Besides,” the witch continued, “the gun-law will remain intact. I’ve walked the deep places, visited the foundations of the pillars where dark-wurms gnaw, and read the oldest runes. My hex will pass unseen. Only the sect man will feel it.”
“Sounds tempting.” Remos pursed his lips.
“Remos!” Lilly snapped.
“But, as we say in the trade, I’ll stick to my guns.” He patted his seven shooters.
“You’re a fool, Remos Jax.” The hex-witch seemed to go paler. Mikeos hadn’t thought that possible. “You’ll die here.”
The murmur of the crowd rose to a roar as the sect man advanced along the high street. He moved with quick steps, a flurry of them, then stopping, then another flurry, as if any kind of slow were anathema to him. His knees bent the wrong way on ball joints that clicked as he went.
The fight-master elect stepped out between the gunmen, an ancient woodkin in barkskin robes edged with dry moss.
“Clear the street. Clear the street.” The woodkin issued the order and the crowd took it up.
Mikeos and Lilly moved to the edge of the onlookers. The hex-witch hung at Remos’s side for a moment, still arguing.
“What will happen if Remos loses?” Mikeos had to shout into Lilly’s ear to be heard.
“The sect gunslinger will be the high-law in the Five-Oh-Seven,” Lilly said. “He’ll have the right to evict folk, and to move sect in from off-world.”
Mikeos had a sudden vision of his mother, lying weak on her bed. He tried to imagine leading her across the dust plains with the Frostral icy howl all around them. They hadn’t the money for the train. And if they reached the Oh-Six, would they find a place there? And how long ’til the sect followed?
Remos strode away from the hex-witch, one hand tugging down the brim of his hat. She stared at his back and then took her place among the onlookers. A space cleared around her.
“I hope he did agree,” Mikeos said. “I hope she does help him.”
A hush fell as the gunmen approached each other.
“If Remos Jax doesn’t hold to the gun-law then who else will?” Lilly said. “If his honour fails then the gun-law is broken. After centuries it would be broken.”
“You don’t think she can fool the law? Like she said she could?”
“She can’t,” Lilly said. She sounded sad.
The silence became complete. Remos and the sect man faced each other across fifty yards of dirt. The fight master bowed his head and backed toward the platform from where he would observe.
He found his place. It was time.
Mikeos wondered if it would be like the free fights he’d seen out on the fringes. Would they stare each other down for—
The shot rang out. He blinked. Neither gunman had seemed to move, but both now had their gun in hand, aimed at the other, smoking.
Mikeos’s heart pounded, but it felt like a slow beat, like the boxers’ countdown.
One.
Two.
Three. Remos half turned.
Four. And started to fall.
Five. A groan rose from the depths of the crowd.
Six. He crumpled in the dust. One hand out, reaching.
Seven. The groan became a roar.
Eight. And the sect man toppled.
They were close to the Oh-Seven before any of them spoke.
“What happens now?” Mikeos asked.
“Will the sect come?” Hemar asked. He growled. “The pack will fight them if they do.”
“The sect won’t come,” Lilly said. “Not yet at least. The gun-law is unbroken. The Old Ones’ protection remains. There will be no war.”
“But what happens now?” Mikeos asked. He shook away the memory of Remos being carried from the street, grey and limp. Nobody had wanted to touch the sect man, lying there in the dust at broken angles with black ichor leaking from a shattered head.
Lilly stopped and looked at him. “Another gunslinger will take Remos’s place, one will be appointed from the free-fighters or several will come and there will be challenges. The wild sect will breed more champions out in the dry lands but it will take them time and they will have to reach this place on foot. No journey is easy out in the empty spaces, nor safe. But in time the sect will return to make more challenges, as is their right under the gun-law. And life will carry on.”
Mikeos’s eyes prickled. “I’m sorry about Remos.” He wanted to say more but his voice wavered.
Lilly nodded. “I know.”
She reached into her skirts. “Remos asked me to give you something. He said you would know what to do with it. He said he knew your father, and thought you had his spirit.”
She pulled out a silver-handled revolver, a seven shooter. Loaded. A shiver of recognition ran through him.
“How did you know the hex-witch couldn’t fool the Old Ones?” Mikeos asked. He took the gun—heavier than he had imagined. He knew this gun, twin to one his mother hung in the closet the day his father died. The one she didn’t hang high enough. “How did you know?”
“Call it a hunch,” she said.
“Come, Hemar.” A touch of command entered Lilly’s voice and the dogman followed her without a word.
“How old are you?” Mikeos called after her.
“Very.” She didn’t turn around.
Mikeos watched them go, until they vanished against the houses of the Oh-Seven. He looked at the people straggling back toward home. The column stretched from the pillar. Weary and silent men, dogmen, taurs, the occasional hunska woman. All the creatures under gun-law, making for home, or for a glass at the Bullet and Rye.
His gaze wandered out among the crags to the west, following the tumbleweed. The corpser waited out there. Grinding bones, fermenting ichors, making the death dust, and other poisons less subtle.
He thought of his mother, turned the gun over in his hand, and over again. A thing of gleaming precision. They say twins share a mind. The gun held no mark
to set it apart from his father’s. It weighed the same in his grip. More heavy than it looked. He’d taken that gun, still a child, unknowing, wrapped in a hot grief, and turned it on the world. His mother had smith Hallum break it on his anvil and Mikeos had thought never to see another. The last link to his father gone, the final nail hammered into his coffin lid. And without that link, that tie, they’d slipped, Mikeos and his ma, slipped from their old life, slipped from each other.
Mikeos lifted the gun and sighted along it at the top of the pillar, dark against a bright sky. Remos had said . . . he’d said a lot of things. About when to use a gun, about when not to. Mikeos couldn’t properly remember the words. He remembered the man. A good man. He shrugged, pressed the gun into his belt, and set off.
“Ma?”
“Ma?”
Mikeos pushed into the room, trembling.
“Ma?” He found the oil lamp by the bed and pulled off its hood. A turn on the wick-twist and the light came up.
She lay curled around herself, like a dogman sleeping, one hand stretched out. The hand reminded him of Remos, sprawled after the sect man’s shot.
“Ma?”
He pried her fingers open, one by one, as white as the witch’s. The dust pouch she had been gripping felt little more than half full.
The place stunk. Mikeos went to the window and hauled the sash up half a foot.
“Mikey?” Her voice sounded so weak.
He turned and she uncoiled, slow like an old man.
“Mikey? Are you alright? I dreamed of your father. He said you were in trouble.”
“No trouble, Ma. I’m fine.”
“You’ve been to Elver? Got me some more dust? Have you Mikey?”
“No Ma. Elver’s not mine to fight. Not today. He ain’t the real problem.”
She frowned. “Your father said—”
“That’s not my father. That’s not my father you speak to when you take this.” He held up the pouch.
“W-what’re you doing, Mikey?”
Mikeos held the pouch at window.
“I’m making a stand, Ma.” He shook the dust out into the sunlight. “I’m making the right stand.”
Charlaine Harris
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Unfettered II: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy Page 42
