Conspiracy of Ravens

by Lila Bowen

Rhett stepped away and reholstered his gun, because whatever this thing was, he wasn’t supposed to be seeing it, apparently. Prospera would’ve charged a hell of a lot more than two bits to see something like this. William was at least eight feet tall, maybe more, roughly human shaped and completely covered in long chestnut-brown hair. He wore a beat-to-hell top hat and carried a broom, and his eyes were big and deep brown and very, very sad.

  “Yes, Miss Prospera. Of course.”

  “Do a better job than yesterday, or there will be no dinner for you.”

  “Of course, Miss Prospera. Do excuse me, good sir.”

  His long, hairy legs clanked as he shuffled away, and Rhett noted a slender chain buckled around one of his boat-sized bare feet and trailing back to Prospera’s purple wagon.

  “Do pardon our mess,” Prospera said. “Good help is so hard to find. William is a laggard, practically inexcusable, even for an indentured servant. All the way from the frigid wilds of Kanata, if you can believe it.” She laughed like a church lady, secure in her place above everybody else, and Rhett tried to laugh along like he hadn’t just met a Sasquatch sweeping up rabbit shit in the middle of Durango.

  Prospera showed him several more wagons that were really just cages with roofs. There was a Wampus cat, a hellhound, a ghost deer, several cockatrices in chicken cages, and salamanders sticking to the sides of big glass jugs still wearing the rim of old brown liquor. It was possibly the saddest thing Rhett had ever seen, and that was saying a lot. He began to realize, as they moved from wagon to wagon and he pushed himself to feign wonder, that part of Prospera’s presentation involved whipping back the canvas curtain on each wagon, making his nose itch and showering dust on the creatures within. Considering he could already see the monsters as they were, his best guess was that the powder changed something for normal folks. For once, being the Shadow didn’t give him an edge; it only made it harder to see the truth.

  What finally got to his swallowed-down heart was the unicorn. Now, he’d gentled unicorns before and felt no sadness for their shorn horns and nuts, as everybody knew stallions just caused trouble on the trails. He could accept a working animal kept well while earning its keep. But this unicorn was a mare, dainty and blue-white, glimmering like a broke-off sliver of moon in the new morning. Her horn wasn’t the death spike of the males; it was delicate and almost see-through, like a fine piece of twisted quartz, and her tail hung low between her hocks like she was expecting a beating. Rhett—once Nettie—knew that feeling well.

  “What about this one?” he said, jutting a thumb at the hobbled creature.

  Prospera gave a cloying smile. “That old nag? Just a lame cart horse. Nothing more.”

  Rhett held out a fist for the mare to sniff, but the unicorn only flinched and shied away.

  “What’ll you take for her?” he asked, knowing that he wasn’t supposed to see what was really there, this time.

  With a wave of her hand, Prospera led him in a different direction. “She’s worth nothing but to the knacker, and she’d die on her feet before you found one. But here is a creature to amaze you.” She threw back the curtain on some sad-looking beaver-duck thing, but Rhett wasn’t listening to her bullheaded prattle. He wanted that unicorn set free, his heart tugging toward it as surely as his belly did. Was that what his destiny wanted, shoving him toward Prospera’s show when he had real business at Trevisan’s labor camp? Was the Shadow just here to set a damn unicorn free?

  He shook his head. Whatever the Shadow wanted, Rhett wanted to drop all goddamn pretense and take care of business.

  “What about you?” he asked suddenly.

  Prospera spun around to stare at him, half-amused and half-wary. He pulled his hat down over his eye.

  “What about me, good sir?”

  “What are you?”

  Her laugh reminded Rhett all too much of the whores at the Leaping Lizard back home. Practiced, light, and entirely lacking truth.

  “My dear boy, I am but a humble caretaker for this fine collection of specimens, bringing joy and wonder to the world, one town at a time.”

  “No, really. You’re something. Shifter?”

  She wrapped her shawl more tightly around her shoulders and turned away. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  Rhett grabbed her shoulder and spun her around, holding her in place. “I’m sure you damn well do.”

  The old woman lurched back, drawing a tiny pearl-handled revolver from somewhere in her layered garments. “Don’t you dare,” she hissed. “Don’t touch me. I cannot be bought. I am not part of the show.”

  “But you’re something.”

  “Nothing that’s your business.”

  “Well—”

  Before Rhett could explain that monsters were damn well his business, Prospera shot him in the shoulder. They were pretty close, which meant he got to experience the exquisite pain of a bullet going in one side and popping out the other. For one second, he felt wind whistle through the tunnel, and then his skin started knitting up, a warm and itchy sensation.

  He huffed a sigh and poked a finger through the new hole in his buffalo skin. “Hellfire, woman. I just got this damn coat, too.”

  A look of complete horror grew on Prospera’s face, and the longer Rhett went on standing up straight, glaring at her without doubling over in pain, the more her grimace made her look like a shriveled-up potato that had caught wind of its inherent doom.

  “What are you?” she asked, voice low as she pointed her gun at his good eye.

  “I reckon I’m the feller sent here to kill you,” he answered, drawing his gun. The first round, he knew, was regular, but the second was silver.

  Without another word, he unloaded them both into where he figured her heart might be.

  Chapter

  11

  Prospera did the dumbest thing possible: She squawked and flopped over dramatically on the ground, wailing and spluttering. Rhett kicked her over onto her back and whipped out his knife, wondering where the Sam Hill the whatever-she-was kept her heart. The siren at Reveille had been like this—disinterested in dying easy, with a heart protected by a cage of whatever such things had for bones. But the siren had also laughed and fought back, while Prospera seemed totally taken up with hysterical death throes.

  “You keep your heart somewhere else?” he asked, squatting down on his heels.

  Her mouth moved, but nothing came out. Except blood, dark as syrup.

  “Mistress?”

  It was William, galumphing out from the wagons with his hat in his gigantic hands. He stopped at a polite distance and cocked his shaggy head.

  “Good sir, what has happened?”

  “Well, I shot her. But she didn’t explode into sand, so I’m trying to figure out why. She got a particular sort of anatomy?”

  “To my limited knowledge, she is the same as any human.”

  Rhett’s blood went cold, and he probed around under Prospera’s shawl, popping the buttons of her shirt to reveal more layers, all soaked in blood. The last layer exposed an all-too-human chest, blood oozing from two bullet holes.

  “Are you saying…she ain’t a monster?”

  The Sasquatch kneeled at Rhett’s side, and even though William was big and burly enough to rip him in half, the feller didn’t feel like a threat under the current circumstances.

  “She was a monster in heart if not in body. And now, she is nothing.” Huge fingertips alit like moth wings to brush down her eyelids. In all Rhett’s worry about her heart, he hadn’t looked at the old woman’s face as she died. But she was gone now, sure enough.

  Rhett stood, took off his hat, and held it in his hands.

  “I reckon it’s a lot easier to kill things that turn to sand,” he said. “I…I never killed a human before. Much as I’ve wanted to, now and again.”

  “Do not feel too bad,” William said, putting his top hat back on and standing straighter, cracking his back. “I assure you she deserved it, and worse.”

  Rhett tu
rned around, taking in the little camp. The cows and horses went on doing their creature business of not giving a shit. The things in the wagons kept on being in their wagons. The unicorn simply stared at Rhett with great black eyes.

  “So what the hell now?”

  William cocked his head. “Well, you’re the one with the gun.”

  They regarded each other for a moment, the wiry cowpoke in the buffalo coat and the Sasquatch two feet taller and three hundred pounds heavier. There wasn’t any threat in it, as far as Rhett could reckon, but there was a question. And Rhett, somehow, was the only person who could answer it.

  “Well, what do you want to do, William?”

  The Sasquatch took a moment to consider it. “I want to be free of this chain.”

  “And then what?”

  “That’s as far as I can think, good sir.”

  Rhett pulled his Bowie knife and squatted by the giant hairy feet. The chain in question was slender and tarnished but definitely silver. Where it encircled William’s ankle, the hair had rubbed off, leaving raw pink skin. Rhett looked up, squinting his one eye. “You ain’t gonna kill me, are you?”

  William looked down with gentle dignity. “I am a pacifist.”

  “Don’t know what that is, but it doesn’t sound like revenge.” With one quick slice, the chain dropped off William’s ankle and slithered to the ground, and the great Sasquatch sighed in happiness and shook out his foot.

  “I don’t know what you are, but I am in your debt,” he said.

  Rhett stood and looked around the camp. “Just tell me what to do with all these damn critters. Except the unicorn. Her, I’m setting free.”

  William nodded, and when Rhett stalked toward the unicorn, the Sasquatch followed. As they approached, the mare danced around as much as her silver hobbles would allow, snorting in fear like any horse who lacked trust in mankind.

  “Whoa, there, filly,” Rhett murmured, doing his best to calm her and knowing she wouldn’t be calm until she’d galloped out of his reach. “Hold her halter, would you?” When William had the mare in hand, Rhett leaned down to slice off the silver chains, careful to cut them away from her hooves and leave no trace of the metal against her flesh. As soon as the last bit of silver had fallen away, William pulled off the halter, and the unicorn bounded over the makeshift fence and away, head high and dainty hooves kicking up dust.

  Rhett picked up the chain, expecting it to hurt his hands somehow. It didn’t.

  “Why silver?” he asked William, holding it out. “Doesn’t it only hurt on the inside? Knives and bullets?”

  The Sasquatch flinched away from it. “Prospera had magic. Whatever she did to the silver made it painful to…us. To our skin. Not to humans.”

  “I ain’t human.”

  “Then you must have magic, too.”

  Chewing his lip, Rhett rolled the chain up around a twig, then started rolling up the chain William had left behind. The Sasquatch followed along behind at a respectful distance until Rhett found the hook bolting it to Prospera’s wagon, where he had originally met her. He sliced the end of the chain and tucked it all into a pocket. The Captain would’ve called it spoils of war.

  “This wagon is where she kept her things?”

  William nodded.

  “You reckon there’s anything in there that could hurt me?”

  “I don’t know,” William said. “I’ve never been in there. I wouldn’t fit.”

  And he wouldn’t. The wagon was a solid wood rectangle with an arching canvas roof, and the door in the back was small enough that Rhett had to duck to get through. The inside would’ve been dark if not for the sunlight filtering through the fabric. There was room only for a platform bed mounded with pillows and furs, a small table covered with cooking-type instruments, and a heavy old trunk on which sat an interesting sort of book. It was bound in leather and very thick, the pages scrawled in dark brown ink instead of the usual printing-press stuff. Even harder to read, if Rhett had been able to do so.

  “You lettered?” Rhett called.

  “Minimally.”

  “Then I’m taking this book. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Good sir, you freed me from servitude. Take the entire camp and I’ll not complain.”

  “Don’t want the damn camp,” Rhett muttered. “Just want the magic.”

  Dumping a pillow from its case, he stuffed the heavy leather book inside, adding to it something he recognized as a mortar and pestle from the table. Inside the trunk, he found some fire stones, sharp knives, and another length of chain. Most importantly, there was a cunningly crafted wooden box full of all sorts of powders, each labeled in the same spider-writing as he’d found in the book. He was about to rifle the bed when Blue’s bray split the morning’s calm.

  “What the Sam Hill now?”

  William cleared his throat. “Good sir, several riders approach from afar.”

  Rhett sighed. “Let me guess. A flashy palomino, two fat paints, a bay draft, some forgettable chestnuts, and a goddamn donkey.”

  “Accurate to the one.”

  “Take this, will you?” Rhett stuffed the bag and box into William’s huge hands and crawled on out of the wagon. “Before they get here and start meddling, you and me should make a plan. What do you reckon should happen to this camp? Are these monsters dangerous?”

  William looked around, tapping a finger on his chin. “Who can say? Many consider me dangerous, and I know for a fact that you are dangerous. But neither of us belongs behind bars, nor would we choose such a life.”

  “That ain’t exactly what I’m asking. Which of these monsters would kill people, given the chance?”

  “I would assume all of them.”

  “Well, ain’t you a goddamn philosopher?”

  Rhett dusted off his hands and pulled out his knife, considering his options. He was the Shadow, and his destiny had led him here. The tug on his belly had lessened as soon as Prospera was dead, and as he looked to the opposite horizon, on the other side of the camp, he was now compelled to hit the trail in that direction. Whether or not the Captain would consider it the right thing to do, Rhett’s job had been to kill the old white woman, the human, holding all these supposed monsters in thrall. And now, before Dan’s preaching and Sam’s sunny disposition and Winifred’s kind heart arrived to muck up his thoughts, he had to finish the job on his own terms.

  “The cattle and horses. They eat folks?”

  “The horses are merely beasts of burden, to pull the wagons. The black mare bit me once but didn’t draw blood. As for the cows, Prospera called them Death’s Head cattle. I don’t know what they eat, but they seem complacent enough.”

  Rhett nodded and ran to the makeshift corrals, kicking down the posts and slicing the wire away with his Bowie knife. The horses erupted in a dust cloud as they galloped away, tails held high, but the cattle only moved a little away and stared at him with empty night-black eye holes. Hurrying back to the wagons, Rhett took a deep breath and considered that if there were gods, this might be what they felt like. He’d have known better what to do if he’d rolled the damn dice. Kill the wrong thing, and there was unjust blood on his head. Let the wrong thing live, and who knew what critter might rampage through a town, killing folks. Either way, the wrong choice made him all the more monstrous, and he felt monstrous enough as it was.

  “To hell with it,” he shouted. And then he decided.

  The Elmendorf Beast, which looked like a coyote’s shadow—it growled at him, and he shot it in the heart, leaving black sand on the floor of its wagon. Same with the Wampus cat, which took a swipe at him with long claws and looked like it might eat babies just for fun. The harpy was opening her foul mouth to cuss him like a dog when he shot her in the heart, immediately feeling himself relax as her sand hit the floor. Rhett couldn’t imagine a day he’d let a harpy live.

  He let the wagon of rabbit-things go and enjoyed watching them bound and flutter into the brush. He had his gun cocked at the hellhounds until one whi
mpered and reached out a long tongue to lick his hand. With a muttered “Aw, hell,” he unlatched the wagon and let them run off into the hills, silent and swift. The ghost deer, as it turned out, were held in by a single loop of silver chain wound around the bushes, and the moment he pulled it down, they leaped away, white tails flashing like starlight. All that was left by the time his posse rode up were the cockatrices and salamanders, creatures that seemed mostly below notice.

  Dan stopped his chestnut a few feet away and grinned down at Rhett, who was panting from exertion as he wound up another coil of silver. “Do I even want to ask what happened?”

  “The Shadow happened.” Movement reminded him of his manners, and he nodded to the Sasquatch, who held his top hat in his hands. “And this is William.”

  “I prefer Bill, actually.”

  “Well, hellfire, then. Bill.”

  “We saw a unicorn,” Winifred said, making it more of a question.

  Rhett shrugged, feeling the fool. “I let her go. Big damn eyes. I let just about everything go that didn’t growl at me. And I don’t want to hear a goddamn thing about it. Just figure out how the old lady was using magic to make normal folks see monsters, and I’ll be obliged.”

  Taking the pillowcase of loot from Bill, Rhett shoved it at Dan.

  “There’s a book and a bunch of powders in there. She kept them in with silver chains and shackles that burned from the outside. Might could figure that out, too.”

  “Why’d you leave us behind, Rhett?” Sam said, impatience failing to mask his hurt. “Don’t you know you can trust us? We came to help you.”

  “I know, Sam. I know.” He sighed but refused to hang his head. “I don’t know why I do what I do, but it sure as hell feels like I don’t have a choice.”

  “Now that you’ve sown your oats, are you ready to ride, then? To Trevisan?” Earl was back in human form, dusted with dirt and red-faced with annoyance.

  Rhett shook his head. “I reckon we’ll camp here today,” he said.

  Earl looked like he might explode. “And why’s that, lad?”

  Rhett tossed a look over his shoulder, to the body in the dust. “Because I’ve got to dig my first grave.”