by Lila Bowen
“Thank you for what you did,” he said quietly, rolling over to watch her.
“I am glad to do it,” she said with a solemn sort of set to her mouth. “It’s good to be useful of my own volition, to know that I can help those I choose and set right what others have done wrong. Everything in the camp…well, it was like fixing the toys of an angry child, knowing that they would soon be broken again. She is an interesting creature, your Winifred.”
“She ain’t my Winifred.”
“So I begin to see.” Her smile was tired and impish and private, and she did him the favor of rolling over and showing him her back, which was covered with a sand-dusted and now familiar blanket. “Good night, Rhett,” she said.
Rolling to his other side, he found Sam Hennessy watching him thoughtfully. “You ever watched a tumbleweed, Rhett?” he asked.
Rhett snuggled down blissfully, treasuring every flicker of firelight on Sam’s bare face. “I seen one roll by, now and again.”
“In a town, they sometimes pick up bits of whatever’s in the road. Cotton fluff and candy wrappings and horsehair and scraps of newspaper. You’ll see one roll by, and it’s thick as a popcorn ball.”
“I’ve never seen that. Reckon I’ve never been in a town big enough to cast off so much trash.”
Sam tipped his head to concede the point. “What I’m saying is that you remind me a bit of a tumbleweed. Not in a bad way,” he added, when Rhett’s eyebrows drew down. “Just that…you’re this wild thing, but you keep picking up extra bits wherever you go. People and mules and coats. Stuff seems to stick to you. Like it wants to be there.”
“Well, I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted, Sam.”
Sam’s smile was as honest as the sun. “Neither, I reckon. I guess I’m just glad you rolled by me, Rhett. I’m glad you’re back, and I figure you’ll roll along to somewhere new and interesting and take us all with you, ain’t that right?”
“Wherever the Shadow needs to go, I hope you’ll go, too.”
And that was as close as Rhett could get to the truth.
“It was boring here without you. Dan taught me how to shoot a bow and arrow.” Jealousy pierced Rhett, but he didn’t let his grin waver. “Took down the deer we ate today. And I shot a scout that came sniffing around, too. He popped to sand, and we caught his horse. Pretty little dapple gray.”
“You like ’em fancy.”
“I do, Rhett. I do like ’em fancy.”
And that stung a little, as Rhett himself would never be fancy, even given the chance. What would Sam think if he saw Rhett in one of Trevisan’s dandy outfits, all kitted out with gloves and a cravat? Rhett shook the image out of his head. They’d never find out what that might look like. If Sam couldn’t love what Rhett was, then Rhett sure as shit didn’t need to go changing himself to be something else to suit him. A dun couldn’t change its stripes and become a dapple gray.
This—this, right here, right now—would have to be enough.
That, or he’d have to learn to want something different. Something he could actually have.
“Hey, Sam?”
But Sam was snoring.
“I’m awake,” Winifred called from the wagon, her voice low and teasing.
“Nobody asked,” Rhett hissed.
Winifred’s only answer was laughter. Just like a damn coyote.
“I’m awake, too.”
Rhett rolled over to find Cora staring at him, her dragon eyes dancing with the embers of the fire and one small hand peeking out from under the blanket. Settling more firmly on his shoulder, Rhett considered her. His hand snaked out to tuck her fine black hair behind her ear.
“You should sleep,” he said softly. “It’s been a long day.”
“It’s been a long year.”
He nodded knowingly. “That it has.”
She smiled, and something bloomed in Rhett’s chest.
“Thanks again for seeing to Winifred,” he said, for lack of something real to say.
“I’ll look through the stores in the wagon tomorrow, but I should have some herbs that will help her.”
Rhett had been on the brink of sleep, but now he was confused. “With her foot? It seemed right as rain.”
“With her morning sickness,” Cora said. “Did she not tell you? She’s with child.”
Chapter
27
Rhett lay awake a long time, long after Cora’s breaths had fallen off to tiny puffs like a puppy dreaming. He turned onto his back, his hands behind his head, and stared at Winifred’s wagon. Inside, hidden, was a woman he didn’t much like with a body he liked quite a bit. And inside that body was a whole other person, just starting to take form.
He had known, the morning after Buck’s Head, that peculiar things had happened. What had passed between him and Sam had been a kindness, a once-in-a-lifetime gift from gods who had otherwise been cruel. Those memories he cradled somewhere inside, kept warm like a guttering flame. But there were other memories, too—of Winifred and Earl, and maybe someone else. The god himself, or one of his people? There was no way to know. Winifred herself might not even know, not if she had forgotten as readily as everyone else.
How did a feller even start a conversation like that? “Hey, coyote-girl. You carrying a god’s get? You reckon he’ll be born with antlers?”
Hell no. Such things would go forever unsaid, and if the babe popped out with extra appendages, Rhett would do his best to politely ignore them.
Not that it mattered. She wasn’t his woman, and he didn’t want her to be. He had no further plans to seek solace in her wagon. But he’d traveled with her long enough to consider her part of his posse, and so he’d do a man’s work to keep her safe and the babe, too, when it came to that. And he’d keep his mouth shut about everything else.
When he finally fell asleep, his dreams were of groves and wine and goat legs and antlers and the laughter of a god who neither made nor kept any promises. Those dreams, he knew, were best ignored.
The next morning, they all rode out to the railroad camp. Everyone except Earl, who still had a hatred in his heart for the train and everything it stood for. Of course, Earl wanted his cut of whatever they found but refused to budge off his ass, swearing that someone had to stay behind to guard Winifred’s wagon and the mules.
Rhett was glad to discover that his saddle still fit his fundament, and Ragdoll crow-hopped a little to show him that she’d done just fine without him on her back. Dan rode his chestnut and Sam rode his palomino and Winifred rode Kachina, both feet firmly in the stirrups of the saddle gifted to her by the god. Cora drove gentle Hercules and the empty wagon, claiming that now was not the time to learn to ride astride.
Riding out between Sam and Dan, Rhett was the happiest he’d been in a long while, excepting time spent in Cora’s tent. The day was cloudy in the way that suggested exciting things might happen later, and Rhett’s very skin felt electric. When they finally saw the still train sitting silent on the prairie, he kicked Ragdoll to a dead run and whooped his way back to hell on wheels with Sam and Winifred riding hard behind him.
He pulled to a stop just by the engine and dismounted, his boots raising a cloud of dust. It was goddamn unnerving, was what it was. Whatever power the camp had held was gone now. There was no smoke, no constant clang of industry as horses were shod and rails were laid and white men lost their money in the rickety shebang. The town had been dismantled, the wood and canvas taken for better uses. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but rails, red dirt, and the abandoned train.
“Mighty quiet,” Sam said, pulling his horse up beside Rhett’s and swinging down to stand beside his friend, both their hands on their guns like any Durango Ranger worth his salt.
“It wasn’t like this,” Rhett muttered. “It used to be…like standing under a goddamn thundercloud, knowing you were bound to be struck by lightning. Men crawling all over like ants.”
Cora pulled up her wagon then, Dan trotting gallantly at her side.<
br />
“It feels so different,” she said.
Rhett just nodded. It was different. Not only from when the camp had been here, from when Trevisan had ruled, but after. Something had changed.
“Stay in the wagon,” Rhett called to Cora. He pointed at Winifred. “You stay with her.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he held up a hand. “Please,” he said, and it was so rare that she knew he meant it, so she walked her horse to the wagon and nodded her agreement.
With his gun in his hand and a Ranger on either side of him, Rhett walked along the line of train cars, every sense on alert. The remaining bits of canvas flapped in the wind. Chunks of coal littered the ground near the engine, where the fleeing men had carried away anything of value. The rail cars still held rails and ties, too heavy and valueless to take. Every car they checked had been ransacked, stripped. Earl was going to be disappointed. If there had been gold here, it was long gone. Not a soul could be seen, nor any creature moving.
At least, not until they got to their final hope of riches, the last car. Trevisan’s car. A raven sat on the roof, watching them approach with clever eyes. It let out a haughty caw and took wing. Rhett aimed his gun at the bird but for a reason he couldn’t name, didn’t pull the trigger. It flapped westward, as stark as the camp itself, another shadow against the gathering clouds.
Rhett lowered his gun and considered the car.
“Same brand,” Dan said, pointing at the design painted in white and gold on the glossy black side.
“I don’t need my letters to know that,” Rhett said in the tone he generally used to tell Dan to shut up.
They were on the wrong side of the train to get to the door, so they walked around the back of the caboose, to the other side.
Every hair on Rhett’s body stood up when he realized the door was open.
“Draw,” he whispered, and they did.
“What’s wrong?” Sam whispered back.
“That door was closed when I left. It’s hidden. Only Trevisan knew how to open it, I reckon. And Cora’s sister, Meimei. Trevisan kept her in a cage in his car. I figure she’d watched him open the door every day, so she knew. She closed it from the outside when we left so nobody’d know Trevisan was dead, at first.”
Dan cocked his head at Rhett. “If she was a captive inside, then how’d she know where the latch was on the outside?”
The sky seemed to go a shade darker as the pieces clicked together in Rhett’s head. “Goddammit,” he muttered, leading the way through the door and into the car.
The lanterns still burned, which was peculiar, as they didn’t seem to have any oil. The wreckage Rhett had left behind hadn’t been cleaned up so much as picked through. All the bones and bits of gold were gone, along with the books that had lain on the table. The silver instruments that Trevisan had used on Rhett before Rhett had used them on Trevisan—they were gone, too, along with their fancy leather roll.
“Alchemy,” Dan said. Rhett looked up and found him tracing the designs and figures burned into the wall. “Silver, gold, mercury. He was doing alchemy.”
“What the Sam Hill’s alchemy?”
The look Dan gave him was grim indeed. “Alchemy is a kind of science. Its practitioners—the people who do it,” he corrected at Rhett’s huff of annoyance, “they want three things. To turn base metals into gold, to create light that never stops burning.” He paused, glanced meaningfully at the glowing lanterns, and looked Rhett right in the eye. “And to prolong life. To live forever, in any way possible.”
“Uh, fellers?” Sam called from the other side of the car.
Rhett hadn’t given too much attention to the area behind the chair as he’d been in the chair at the time and then stalking a man who needed to die. He’d known there was a chandelier full of birds, but all he’d seen behind that was another wall. Sam stood by the wall now, his hand on yet another hidden door, now open. When Rhett stepped forward and looked inside, he realized he was in Trevisan’s closet. Dozens of candy-colored dandy suits hung on hooks, and a row of boots glistened on the floor amid a scattering of ink-black feathers. In the corner, sitting before an empty safe that stretched from floor to ceiling, was Meimei’s red silk jacket.
Chapter
28
That was it, then.
There was no gold.
There was no Meimei.
Rhett realized that he had to find words to tell Cora that her sister had been…well, not taken. Stolen. Usurped. Because only Trevisan could be in the little girl’s body now, and he had a head start going westward. Rhett could feel it in his belly, in the Shadow’s heart— a tug toward Azteca. He could almost picture it—a round-cheeked, slyly smiling Chine girl sitting on the wagon-box, legs swinging freely, her pudgy hands holding reins and a whip as she—he? As the thing that was now Trevisan spirited his gold and magic away to a new life.
“Goddamn witches,” Rhett murmured.
“Alchemists,” Dan corrected, and Rhett didn’t have the heart to toss him a glare.
“What do we do now?” Sam asked, sounding lost as a lamb.
Rhett hopped out of the train car and stared west, right as the rain fell in a heavy sheet that pummeled the train cars mercilessly. Taking off his hat, he closed his eye and let the rushing water wash over him. He could feel their eyes on him, his friends, his posse, feel them waiting for him to lead. But Rhett was no Captain. And he’d failed. He’d come here to kill what needed to die, and instead, he’d let it slip away.
“We go west,” he said. “Because this ain’t over.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
If you read the Author’s Note in Wake of Vultures, and I hope you did, everything I said there continues to be true. To wit: I’m a bad historian who loves to make shit up, this series is only loosely based on actual history and geography, and I’ve added a good bit of fantasy to the reality of a mid-1800s Texas. My intent was to do honor to those who walk lives other than my own and to those who suffered in the past, and if I’ve messed that up, I hope you’ll forgive me.
If you’d like to know more about the history of Black Indians like Rhett, I continue to recommend Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage by William Loren Katz. Another resource used in this particular book was Hell on Wheels: Wicked Towns Along the Union Pacific Railroad by Dick Kreck. I also enjoyed excerpts of Builders of the Nation: The Railroad by Cy Warman and Workin’ on the Railroad: Reminiscences from the Age of Steam by Richard Reinhardt, which were found and kindly provided by Melissa Nerino of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. And I watched the TV shows Hell on Wheels and Deadwood to immerse myself in the visual shorthand of the world. We could all learn a lot from Al Swearengen.
Writing a story set in a colorful Old West dominated by white men, I continue to struggle with showing the prejudice that existed while writing real characters who fight and triumph over that prejudice. In this book, I’ve introduced two new populations who suffered untold atrocities and cruelties and who were known for building the railroads we still use today: the Irish and the Chinese. Both peoples came here with the same hope as all immigrants, and both were treated as less than human and forced into servitude. Through Earl, Cora, and Grandpa Z, I hope I’ve shown both the challenges they faced and the strength with which they strove to survive and thrive. Like Nettie, now Rhett, they are fighters.
In Conspiracy of Ravens, it was truly important to me that Nettie be able to make the transition from confused woman to confident man. I hope that the jump from Nettie to Rhett is as clear and necessary in your mind as it is in mine. I can’t tell you how much it meant to me when several reviewers used masculine pronouns in their reviews of Wake of Vultures, confirming that this was the natural and only choice. For the record, #illgowithyou.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. I continue to believe that a person can be whatever and whoever they choose to be.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Mighty big thanks:
To the Hachette/Orbit team, including my amazing editor De
vi Pillai, her assistant, Kelly O’Connor, art director and flawless mermaid, Lauren Panepinto, map artist Tim Paul, publicist Ellen B. Wright, and everyone who makes it possible for folks to read my books, especially Tim, Anna, and the sales team I had the pleasure of meeting in March. Y’all are the best!
To my agent of Awesome, Kate McKean, who feeds me duck and finds me when I’m lost.
To the readers. I cherish every message, and y’all lift me up when I’m feeling low. Special thanks to Juliene Coelho and Kachina, Flo Frank, Sheila Stephens, Andy, Mike Shelton, Mike Sheldon, the mysterious Sam, Tia, Stephanie Constantin, Erin Blake, and Caitlin Siem.
To Missy Nerino and the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania for answering my questions about where everybody pooped at a railroad camp.
To Adam Rakunas (author of Windswept), Kevin Hearne (author of the Iron Druid Chronicles), and the ever-amazing David Wohlreich for gluten-free cake when I needed it most.
To the editors who invited me into anthologies, including Jaym Gates, Monica Valentinelli, Jonathan Maberry, Christopher Golden, James R. Tuck, Shaun Hutchinson, Navah Wolfe, and Shawn Speakman. To Tom, David, Shelly, and Jen from SW, who I couldn’t thank properly in the right book. To Rebecca Seidel for morning calf pics and Susan Spann for the seahorse pics that keep me on Facebook when I want to leave forever. To Kronda and AnomalyCon, ConStellation NE, Carol and the Dahonega Literary Festival, the Decatur Book Festival, the San Antonio Book Festival, Dragon Con, Phoenix Comicon, GenCon, ConFusion and the Subterranean Press gang, and all the cons kind enough to let me through the door. To Michael and Lynne at Uncanny Magazine for getting “Catcall” into the world. To RT Book Reviews for their support and for honoring Wake of Vultures with its first award. I promise not to stab any vampires with it. To Rob Hart and LitReactor and Sean Patrick Kelley and Paradise Lost for trusting me to mold minds, and to my students who make it worthwhile. To Malaprop’s Bookstore and Cafe, the Firewheel, TX Barnes and Noble, the Boulder, CO Barnes and Noble, and the 501st Mountain Garrison, who took great care of me during signings.
