Peacemaker

by Marianne de Pierres

  I tethered Benny – though she didn’t need it – and walked to the top of the butte. The exercise felt good, blood flowing and sweat purging me of the hospital and Moonee and Mystere.

  Aquila hadn’t appeared, and there were no sinister crows in sight. A giddy sense of freedom overtook me. The vista of sand and rock made my eyes tear up for the second time in as many days.

  I groaned aloud. Really, Virgin?

  Benny whinnied from below, hearing my voice. I called to reassure her and headed back down. With Totes monitoring me on his shadow system, I didn’t have the luxury of too much time. He would probably back me up if Bull started asking questions, but I didn’t want him putting his job on the line for me.

  Benny picked her own path toward Dry Gulch, leaving me free to think about Totes. We’d worked together almost eight years. He was a few years younger than me, but I would never lose the notion of him being that precocious fifteen year-old who came to work with us the year before Dad died.

  Dad always said I was too hard on him, defended him against my aggravation.

  But I didn’t see it that way. Smart-arse geniuses weren’t on my Be Tolerant With list.

  The day Dad died, Totes wouldn’t leave the hospital. He sat in the waiting room, cradling one of his dolls, crying. Thinking about it now choked me up again.

  I tried to get a handle on my emotions. Must be fatigue, I told myself. And thinking so much about Dad.

  Benny angled into Dry Gulch down a worn path. The deep, dry waterway hadn’t run in two hundred years. Wind erosion had rounded off the steep edges so there were only one or two places you could get down onto the riverbed safely.

  The creek stretched from a way past the butte towards Paloma station. When you climbed out the other end (which you couldn’t actually do), you could see them in the distance. That end of the gulch disappeared underground – or at least had when it last ran – and popped up close to the surface again below the Paloma station well.

  I’d buried the memory dot with Dad’s journals about halfway along, and that’s where I was headed.

  Before I sent the horse upstream, I dismounted and set my phone on a rock. I didn’t want Totes tracking me to the exact spot. I also didn’t want to lead the Park admin straight to my illegal activity, if for some reason they confiscated Totes’ shadow system and found my route.

  Satisfied that I’d covered bases, I remounted and urged Benny onward.

  Gulch riding was slow going, and it took over an hour to reach the site where I’d buried the journals. I’d tucked it in under an ancient tree root sticking out of the side of the riverbank.

  I poked in under the root with some long-nosed pliers from my kit bag – just in case a snake or scorpion had set up home. It felt hollow, and nothing scuttled out, so I leaned over and reached my hand in. My fingertips brushed the perma-seal around the dot, but it was just out of reach.

  I withdrew and sat for a moment to think. Digging it out would leave signs of soil disruption. The Park scan would flag it and it would be photographed and analysed.

  When I’d put it here, I’d never envisaged retrieving it. Too painful for me to read and too personal for me to share, it seemed the right thing to do, bringing it out here. Birrimun had been his life’s passion, his life’s work. And, in my mind, his death. His innermost thoughts belonged out here as much as the soil and the ants and the mulla mulla.

  I went back to my tool kit and took the pliers apart, wiring them together end to end, so they made a longer lever. Then I reached back in and stabbed gently at the plastic case, slowly dragging it forward.

  After I bit I stopped, took the pliers out and felt with my fingers again.

  Got you!

  I pulled it free and sat back on my haunches, lifting my hair up off the nape of my neck to cool it. The sun had begun to bite, and sweat trickled into uncomfortable places. Packing up quickly, I mounted and took a sip or two from my canteen.

  Best get back before Totes got worried and did something rash. Soon as I reached my phone, I’d message him that I was on my way.

  But the trip upstream was even slower on account of the old watercourse’s vagaries. Several times, I got off and led Benny over ridges so her hooves didn’t crumble the edges in her efforts to climb.

  She understood what I was doing and lifted her feet high on my request. We’d done this dance many times. Benny was a park horse. Preservation of the environment was as much in her DNA as mine.

  Aquila landed on my shoulder at a bend in the course of the dry riverbed. I didn’t feel any pressure, more like a sense of movement near my face, a breath created by her wings.

  It startled me so much, I shifted in the saddle, but she took off as soon as she landed and fluttered ahead to a large boulder.

  I sat up and reigned in Benny, riding as slowly to where she perched as I could.

  The scars from her battle with the Mythos at Paloma were still visible, a chunk of feathers missing across her breast and a missing nail on one claw. To protect me. I still found it hard to believe, even though I’d seen it.

  “What is it?” I whispered. To her. To myself.

  Her gaze was solemn as always, and my pulse accelerated. I unholstered my pistol and dismounted. As quietly as I could, I crept up to the boulder. With some awkward maneuvering, I was able to peer around it without exposing too much of myself.

  Two guys waited there. One had his back to me and the other was bent over, examining my phone. They wore long sleeves, jeans and hip holsters, and I wouldn’t mind betting each bore the crow and circle ink under their shirts. I couldn’t see any horses, so they must have tethered them up out of the gully.

  I eased back and leaned against the rock, thinking. I couldn’t even contact Totes to sat-scan and photograph them. But if I could get back to the stables in one piece, he should have record of their presence on his system. He might even be aware of them now but had no way of letting me know.

  Aquila lifted off the rock and flew back down the way I’d just come. She landed on a tuft of spinifex that was barely clinging to the side of the bank and watched me.

  I get the message.

  Trouble was that this was the only way out without significantly destroying the natural contour of the bank. Not only did the idea of damage bother me, but it would leave evidence that I’d been there.

  I weighed up my options and decided that a little eco-damage was still preferable to me never getting home. Two armed men weren’t good odds.

  I crept back to Benny, turned her around and tapped her cheek a couple of times. She knew to keep quiet. I’d used that signal before, though usually so as not to scare a flock of birds or a shy wallaby.

  She stepped carefully and slowly, following my lead.

  Aquila flew ahead of us in spurts, like a forward scout. Once out of earshot, I mounted Benny and pushed her along a bit faster. Returning home this way would take longer, but once out of Dry Gulch, I could really push the pace.

  Halfway back to where I’d buried Dad’s journal, Aquila left her perch ahead of me and flew up one side of the creek, disappearing from view. I stopped Benny, wondering what to do. Wait for her? Continue?

  I opted for dismounting yet again and climbing the steep side to see where she’d gone. The first few feet were loose, gravelly dirt, but once past the initial scree, it packed down into heavier soil. After three of four large, awkward steps, I discovered a ledge hidden by a swathe of mulla mulla. The purple flower that thrived in the red dirt turned up in places no other flora could survive, because it preferred low water and full sun.

  Beyond the ledge was a natural rock wall. I scrambled up onto the rocks and found myself back out on the plain with a clear view south. Aquila was on the ground not far away, ripping into the guts of a small dead marsupial.

  I turned away, not ready to process how that could be possible, and looked back to the climb I’d just made. If I started Benny from the far side of the creek bed, she should be able to jump onto the ledge with mi
nimum damage. Getting over the next rock wall was more difficult. Though low, she’d be jumping from a standing position.

  I looked up and down the gulch. Going back toward the ambush was not an option, and the further I went west, the deeper the gully became, until it turned into the steep rock wall end I couldn’t climb.

  Aquila had led me to the best option I had.

  I climbed back down to my horse and led her to the opposite bank.

  “Come on, girl,” I said, remounting. “Just a couple of leaps and we’re home free.”

  She nickered at my cajoling tone. It usually came associated with fresh clover treats.

  I straightened, loosened the reins and clipped her ribs with my heels.

  With all the affront of a person slapped, she leapt across the creekbed and up the sandy scree toward the ledge.

  Her front legs didn’t quite make the distance, and she started to slide backward. I squeezed her sides with my calves and thighs. She responded by bunching her haunches underneath her and propelling herself forward. We dangled for a moment, but I threw my weight forward over her shoulders and she found purchase. With all four feet on the ledge, she pranced a little, ears flicking back and forth.

  I glanced down. The damage behind us looked minimal, some hoof marks in the loose gravel. In a day, the wind would have changed it all again.

  Now for the hard bit.

  I got off and climbed up over the rocks again. Aquila was still on the ground, picking bits of fleshy somethings from her claws.

  I went back to Benny and talked to her again.

  “You have to trust me,” I told her. “Just one jump and we’re out. The other side is wide open and level.”

  There was no soft nicker in response this time, and as I mounted, her ears flattened. She knew what I wanted and she wasn’t keen.

  I gathered up the reins and put enough pressure on the bit just to let her know this wasn’t optional. She tensed under my signals. Bunching up high on the saddle, I used the end of the reins to give her a light slap on her shoulder. She jumped forward stiff-legged and then baulked.

  I fell onto her neck and she reared, letting out a loud whinny that echoed along the gulch.

  Shit!

  I waited for her to settle before employing a stern tone. “You have to jump this. They’ll be coming.”

  Her ears flicked back and forth and she danced on the spot, backing dangerously close to the edge.

  “BENNY!” I gritted my teeth and jabbed her hard in the ribs.

  She baulked again but I persisted.

  “Come on, girl. Come on!”

  From behind me in the gully, I could hear voices. Then shouts as they sighted me.

  “BENNY!”

  On my final yell, she launched from standing, into the air, and cleared the rock wall with plenty to spare. Landing on the other side was a different matter. She stumbled and went down on one knee, sending me catapulting over her shoulder into the dirt.

  Aquila flew into the air, screeching.

  I lay there, spitting dirt from my mouth and feeling around my limbs. Everything whole. But as I rolled over, a shooting pain from the Mythos wound sucked my breath away, burning worse than fifty levels of hell.

  Get up.

  Aquila fluttered down near me. This close, I could see flecks of gold in her eyes and how the feathers around her eyes were dark brown and fading to grey. She looked regal and the intelligence in her gaze astounded me.

  I reached out my hand to her.

  She flew back a little way and turned her head sideways in the way birds do when they want to eyeball you.

  “Thank you,” I said, “for the warnings. But why have you come back now? What are you trying to tell me?”

  Her crest rose and she shrieked, as if letting me know that now was not the time for conversation.

  The voices were getting closer.

  I forced myself up and into the saddle and gave Benny her head. She pointed home and went hell for leather.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Totes jumped out at me as I walked Benny in through the Interchange.

  “Virgin, where the hell you been?”

  “Just let me stable her. Then I want to see a visual history of the geographical area on my phone’s GPS coordinates for the last few hours.”

  I stalked past him down the corridor, hiding my trembling legs and sore body in an angry gait.

  Leecey was in Sombre Vol’s stall and followed me down.

  “You must have pushed her hard. Girl’s foaming,” she said.

  “Had reason to,” I said. “Give her some electrolytes and an augmentation top-up.”

  “She’s not due for her booster until next month.”

  “Leecey.”

  “OK. OK. Everything alright, Virgin? Can I help?”

  Leecey had a ruddy kind of complexion that glowed when she’d been working. It gave her a permanently flushed look that some people mistook for guilt.

  It worried me, the amount the police were around so much right now. Detective Chance had already shown she wasn’t above targeting Leecey.

  “Just stay clean and away from me,” I said.

  Her skin flushed even deeper and she tugged at Benny’s girth.

  I put my hand on hers. “Look, it’s just… best to keep your distance from me at the moment. You don’t want to be caught up in… whatever it is.”

  “That’s not just your choice, Virgin.”

  “Well, it’s my preference.”

  She crossed the stirrups up over the saddle, slid it off and walked off to the tack room, humming, “You cain’t always get what you want.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but I didn’t have time to chase her and find out. Instead, I went and invaded Totes’ hidey-hole.

  “There were two guys in the park. They’d tracked the GPS on my phone,” I said.

  “Impossible!” said Totes, typing commands and tapping screens. “I have the sat scans for your route and the only person there is you. In fact, according to the tracker, you’re still there.”

  “Had to leave my phone behind on account of guys with guns.”

  Totes picked up his phone.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Telling Bull. The police should–”

  “Stop! Just show me the scan.”

  Lower lip pouting in disagreement, he reached for one of the dolls on his desk and petted it as he set the replay in motion for me to watch.

  My GPS showed me as a moving dot on a topographical map. At the entry to Dry Gulch, it became stationary.

  “I figured you’d gotten off to have a walk around. But you stayed there so long, I nearly sent the EMS out.”

  “I went around across the gulch and further north. My phone must have dropped out of my pocket when I crossed the creek bed. When I backtracked, looking for it, I found some guys there waiting for me,” I lied.

  “I’ll do an infrared retrieval scan on the area around your phone. See if anything was hot.”

  He whispered and touched his system like it was a friend with whom he shared a secret language. I was beginning to feel like the third wheel on a date, when he finally ran some more footage on the main screen.

  “My shadow system only analyses basic wavelength imaging. Let me match up the time… Wait… There...”

  I watched the time meter on the bottom of the screen as an amorphous blob moved across a dark landscape.

  “That’s you and Benny,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “You have a particular signature. See.”

  The horse and I separated for a few moments and then joined together and moved off again.

  “That must be when you dropped your phone, when you got off. What were you looking at?”

  “Just checking some damage to the sides of the Gulch,” I lied again.

  “But hey, then you’re heading west, not north,” he added.

  Shit. “I went west for a bit and then north. Listen, just flip forward
to the same spot an hour later. I’m in a hurry.”

  He did as I requested, and the evidence of me staying on a westerly course disappeared in a blur of dark pixels. He stopped it an hour along, and we watched again for a while.

  “There you are again. According to the contour overlay, you’re up on the bank.”

  “Yeah, behind a boulder. I heard something ahead of me, so I left Benny in the creek and climbed up behind a boulder to look.”

  “Look at what?”

  Totes was right. There was no other heat signature. No other horses, no other guys with guns.

  “They have to be there. I saw them,” I said, distressed.

  Totes held out his doll for me to cuddle. “Been a rough few days. You want some love?”

  I left the stables, preoccupied and upset. I had seen those guys, heard their voices. They were real. Totally real. Not Mythos, like the crow had been.

  But then, Aquila and the Mythos had looked totally real to me as well.

  Maybe I was losing my grip.

  I took the underground tunnel to the taxi rank on the other side, thinking I would go home, but a taxi pulled up and Sixkiller got out.

  He fixed me with a narrow-eyed, pursed-lip look and let both hands rest on his holsters.

  Seems he was mightily pissed.

  “Hey. You sleep in?” I asked lightly.

  He gestured for me to step away from the rank and the commuters in the queue.

  “I’ve been looking for you all morning. Thet little sidewinder Totes told me he hadn’t seen you. But you’ve been in the Park all along.”

  I felt a burst of gratitude towards Totes. Maybe Dad was right about him. “It’s where I think best. And I needed some time.”

  “Thinking get you dirty?”

  I looked down at my red-dirt-stained shirt and jeans. “Took a tumble off my horse. Just going home to clean up.”

  “Then I’ll be accompanying you. Got something you need to hear.”

  I sighed. “Sure.” And I followed him to the back of the queue.

  “Check the news feeds,” he said as we waited.