The Damnation Affair (the bannon & clare affairs)

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “How do, ma’am.” He moved as if to touch his hatbrim, his gaze roving everywhere but to her face. “Gabe said you’d be needing an escort to the schoolhouse.”

  “So he thinks.” She adjusted her grip on the leather satchel and lifted her chin. “May I offer you some tea? Or coffee; I believe Li Ang knows how to make such an infusion.”

  “No thank you, ma’am. Best get going, there’s work to be done today.”

  Indeed there is. “Certainly.” She stepped forward, and at least he was polite—he opened her front door, sparing only a brief glance at the porch outside where the…thing…had been last night.

  “I’ll be fetching you too,” he said over his shoulder as he stumped down the steps, his stride wide and aggressive. “Gabe left at dawn, business elsewhere.”

  “I see.” Left? Where on earth would one go, here? To another town, perhaps? Why?

  But she could not ask. The wind had died—which was a mercy. The blowing dust and moaning air all night had invaded Cat’s dreams, and she had dreamed of Robbie as well. Terrible dreams, full of dark cavernous dripping spaces and flashes of tearing, awful blue-white brilliance.

  My nerves are not steady at all.

  The sky was a bruise, and the dust had scoured everything to the same dun colors as Jack Gabriel’s coat. No wonder the garden looked so sad and dingy. She accepted Mr. Overton’s hand and climbed into the wagon, and the patient bay horse flicked his tail. He had a curious fan-shaped burlap thing affixed to his head, glowing with mancy. “What does that do?” she wondered aloud, then answered her own question. “Ah. The dust. Are such storms usual, Mr. Overton?”

  “Simoun, they call ’em.” He hauled himself up on the other side with a sigh. He still did not look directly at her. “Poison wind. Sometimes it goes on for days. People can’t take it. They go back East.” He gave the last two words far more emphasis than they merited, and flicked the whip gently at the bay, who stepped to with a will.

  “I found it rather soothing.” Cat set her chin and adjusted her veil. And why would you suggest I retreat to Boston, sir? This is our first real acquaintance; the difference in our station does not matter nearly so much here in the wilderness. Or does it?

  “You’d be the only one. Can I ask you something, miss?”

  You just did. “Certainly, sir.”

  “You’re an educated lady, and you’ve got some mighty fine cloth. So fine, in fact, it’s got me wonderin’ what a genteel miss like you is doin’ all the way out here.” Now he cast her a small sidelong glance. “And it’s mighty odd you get things left on your porch, too. I just wonder.”

  “I was engaged as a schoolmistress after sitting for my teacher’s certificate,” she replied, coolly enough. Mother had thought I would make a good marriage instead of needing an education. Father thought the governesses and tutors quite enough, and I did not need to attend the Brinmawr Academy, after all was said and done. A simple certificate-course after my brother sent me the oddest letter I have ever received, and I am heartily regretting my actions now, thank you, sir. “I rather thought my gentility was seen as a benefit.” I paid the Teacher Placement Society for this post, and handsomely, too. An independence is a wonderful thing.

  “You could be in San Frances. Dodge City. A place with an opera house instead of some two-bit fancyhouse saloons. I’m just curious, miss.”

  You, sir, are not merely curious but fishing. “Perhaps I wished for a purer life than can be found in some places.”

  “Never thought I’d live to hear Damnation called pure.” His laugh came out sideways in the middle of the sentence, as if he found the very idea too amusing to wait. Cat agreed, but she had thought long and hard about what reason she might give for her presence in this place, if pressed, ever since Jack Gabriel had stood next to her outside the pawnshop window.

  And Mr. Gabriel was gone today, on some mysterious errand.

  “My parents fell victim to Spanish flu.” She sought just the right tone of bitter grief, found it without much difficulty. “I have no family now, and Boston was…a scene of such painful recollections with their passing, that I fled everything that reminded me of them. Perhaps I should not have.”

  He was silent. Did he now feel a cad? Hopefully.

  The wagon shuddered along the road, its wheels bumping through flour-fine dust. It was a wonder he could find the track in all this mess. The hills in the distance were purple, but not a lovely flowerlike shade. No, it was a fresh bruise; the sky’s glower was an older, fading, but still ugly contusion. The sun was a white disc above the haze, robbed of its glory, and the stifling heat was no longer dry but oddly clammy. Or perhaps it was merely the haze which made it seem so, since her lips were already cracked.

  The rest of the ride passed in that thick obdurate silence, and the appearance of the schoolhouse, rising out of the haze, was extraordinarily welcome. Mr. Overton pulled the wagon to a stop, and when he helped her down she was surprised to find his fingers were cold even through her gloves.

  He dropped her hand as if it had burned him. He mumbled something, and was in the wagon’s seat like a jack-in-the-box. The conveyance rattled away toward town, and Cat was left staring, her mouth agape in a most unladylike manner.

  “Well. I never,” she muttered. Except it was precisely the manner of treatment she supposed she should expect from such a man. Chartermages were notoriously eccentric, he was not Quality, either, and he was no doubt unused to polite conversation with someone of Cat’s breeding.

  Still, his manners were only one of a very long list of things that troubled her. Troubles were fast and thick these days. She opened the schoolhouse and waited for her students, attending the small tasks that had quickly become habitual, and as she did, a plan began to form.

  * * *

  If I give myself time to think, I will no doubt find a thousand reasons not to do this. She adjusted her veil once more. It was no use; she had plenty of time to lose her courage on the walk into town.

  Dismissing the children at the lunch-hour was a risk. Yet she could legitimately claim that so few had shown up, and the return of the storm seemed so ominous, that she had done so for their safety. And the streets were oddly deserted—or perhaps not so oddly, as the lowering yellowgreen clouds were drawing ever closer.

  She could even claim to have come into town to find a means of alerting her other students of the school’s closure for the day. That problem she would solve as soon as she had this other bit of business done.

  The pawnshop’s door stuck a little, its hinges protesting. She stepped inside quickly, unwilling to be seen lingering, and glanced out through the plate-glass window. Perhaps no one had seen her.

  She could always hope.

  “Hello?” Her voice fell into an empty well of silence, and the walls seemed to draw closer.

  It was dark, not even a lamp lit, and chill. Strangely prosaic for a chartershadow’s haunt—clothing in piles, some tied with twine and tagged with slips of yellowing paper, others merely flung onto leaning, rickety shelves. A vast heap of leather tack and metal implements, and two long counters—one at the back, one along the left side—with various items on ragged velvet and silk. Pistols, knives with dulled blades, pocketwatches, hair combs. Jewelry both cheap and fine, tangled together.

  She tried again. “Hello? I have come to buy.”

  Perhaps he was at luncheon?

  At the counter in the back, something glittered in response.

  Cat glanced in the window, and the oddity caught her attention. The bed of fabric, where shiny wares would be displayed to tempt passersby, was empty.

  Her throat closed. Was there no one here?

  She glanced at the gleam on the back counter again. Pillows of that same moth-eaten velvet, and the locket glittered, recognizing her. Its mancy sparked faintly; a thrill ran along Cat’s nerves.

  Her breathing came fast and high. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

  Perhaps he is at luncheon. It would be the civilized thing to
be doing at this hour.

  But sure instinct told her that was ridiculous. Such a businessman would not leave his door unlocked and his wares half-secured, chartershadow or no. And, strictly speaking, the locket was hers by right. Surely the need to find her brother outweighed what she was about to do?

  I have sliced a man in the face with mancy and a stick; I am spending every afternoon with frail women; last night I was in the arms of a man who now calls me by my charing-name; and now I am about to steal. Mother would be very disappointed.

  Would Cat’s mother even recognize her daughter now?

  She inched across the floorboards, holding her breath until darkness clouded her vision. Finally remembering to inhale, she reached out a trembling gloved finger and touched the locket’s gleam. Snatched her hand back, glancing about as if she expected a reprimand.

  Nothing happened. The pawnshop was silent as a crypt.

  Avert, she thought, and brushed ill-luck aside with a quick motion.

  A few moments later, Robbie’s locket and its broken chain tucked in her reticule and her satchel swinging, Cat Barrowe closed the pawnshop door behind her with a soft snick. There was nobody on the street, and the wind inched its way up from a low whisper to a soft chuckle, sliding dust along the boardwalks with brisk broom-strokes. A skeletal tumbleweed rolled past, and Cat hurried along in the precarious shade of flapping awnings toward Capran’s Dry Goods. She could enquire after the delivery of items for little Jonathan and engage one of the store’s boys to take a message to Miss Tiergale that school was canceled for the afternoon.

  Her heart refused to slow its mad pounding, her hands trembled. But she put her chin up and hurried along, hoping no one had seen her.

  Dear Robbie, I am now a thief. If you are alive when I find you, I am just going to pinch you.

  Chapter 19

  Hathorn was no longer the youngest horse, but she was dependable and Gabe had ridden her out of town before. She didn’t get excited easily, but when she did she was fleet and smarter than the average equine. She was also prickly-tempered, and didn’t respect a rider who would put up with any foolishness.

  Well now, that reminded him of a certain miss, didn’t it.

  Don’t think about her.

  There was plenty of other thinking to do, and he did it best when he was alone, scanning the horizon and eyeing the tops of ridges for any silhouette that didn’t belong. It was daylight, but the sky was too clouded for his comfort.

  Still, he wouldn’t be able to rest until he checked that goddamn claim.

  The dangers out here weren’t merely wildlife or some of the miners and panners getting a bit twitchy with a stranger. There were harpies higher up in the hills, and other, fouler things in some of the deep-scored gullies and valleys. The wild mancy out here, without a chartermage or people using its flood to shape and tame it, gave birth to oddities. Even the few remaining survivors of the Red Tribes wouldn’t come near this slice of the Territory, and they had coexisted with this continent and its oddities before Gabe’s kind had sailed west to find the spices of the Sun.

  Disease and war had all but wiped out the tribes, though there was some talk of a hole in the world they had escaped through, into a paradise without invaders. Privately, Gabe hoped they had, and wished they hadn’t left any of their kind behind, given how his kind by and large dealt with those survivors. All the same, this was a fine land, and he’d been born on its shores. Working another country’s mancy would be problematic at best.

  He didn’t mind. Much. The Ordo Templis was far more active across the Atlantica, and escaping to a country they didn’t have their fingers in would be a trick indeed. Unless he wanted to take Chinoisie lessons from Li Ang and keep heading West until it became East.

  He found the lightning-blasted tree silhouetted against the sky, and suppressed a shiver as he turned Hathorn’s black head toward a thicket of spinesage. She didn’t like it, but she went, and when he left her at the edge of the hidden spring with its sweet-crystal bubbling top swirling with blown dust, she was content enough.

  From there it was slogging through fragrant junip and wild tabac wilting under the heat, underground water heaving the devilpine trees up to clutch at the sky with their bony fingers. He was sweating by the time he was halfway up the side of the wash, and the midges had found him.

  Damn biters. He didn’t risk a charm to shake them off, though. No need to announce his presence any more than he already had, or any more than the grace on him would.

  The going became a little easier, but he slowed as it did. Something had come this way lately, breaking branches and scuffing the ground. Didn’t take a genius to read those signs, or to see the mark of a bootheel with nails crossed to ward off bad luck. Didn’t prove much, but he went cautiously, his breathing slow and even and a trickle of sweat tracing its way down his spine.

  A sharp hairpin bend even a mountain goat would have trouble with, but Gabe knew its trick and leapt lightly. Landed catfoot, and crouched, hard up against an old devilpine whose bark smelled of crushed cinnamon when he leaned into its shade. He was leaving sign too; no way to avoid it. Damn the whole thing.

  It was too quiet in this little defile. No bird sang here, and even the wind was muted. The dust didn’t reach too far up, the devilpines sheltering the hillsides wherever there was enough water for them to cling to. Nothing slithered in the undergrowth, nothing nested in the trees, and even the midges hung back.

  That would have been a mercy, if not for the cold. His breath didn’t frost when it left him, but it felt like it should. The chill wasn’t physical. It was inside.

  He crouched there near the tree, taking his time. Then he inched forward, using his shoulder on the trunk to brace himself, and took a peek.

  And ducked back behind the devilpine, swearing internally, clear beads of sweat standing out on his forehead and cheeks, wetting his underarms and making his woolen stockings slippery inside his well-worn boots.

  Oh God, protect a sinner, now and forever. Shine Your light on us, dear Lord, and let us be as lamps in darkness. I am a sword of the righteous and You are my shield.

  Funny how the urge to pray returned, even though he’d sworn never to do it again after Annie died, screaming an undead’s unholy grinding cry. Only it was a pair of dark eyes he thought of now, and curls knocked loose, and her trembling against him.

  He was shaking, but his hands knew what to do. One of them touched a pistol’s butt, the other drew a knife.

  Another look, just to be sure. He ducked back again, and this time the fear was high and hard and sharp, bitter copper against his tongue and his heart pounding in his temples and wrists and ankles so hard he thought he might slide into unconsciousness right there on the hillside. And lie there, vulnerable and alone, with the unphysical coldness breathing over him.

  That brought him up in a rush, and he stepped out into the open, facing the dark mouth of the unsealed claim. It yawned, a fracture in the hillside full of spilled-ink darkness even broad daylight wouldn’t penetrate, and the cold struck him like a wall of flash-flood water in a gully.

  And Jack Gabriel, who had once been a priest, went about his holy work.

  * * *

  He slumped in the saddle instead of riding straight. Hathorn knew her way home, but he should have been more alert. Instead he was thinking through cotton. The chill exhaling from the mouth of the seal-cracked claim got into a man’s bones.

  Think about something warm, then.

  His thinking wouldn’t listen. Instead, it hitched on the boy. What was his name?

  He couldn’t pull it out of his memory at first, and that was odd. More than odd, since he had a suspicion it wasn’t the first time. It was downright unnatural, the way the boy’s name kept slipping through the cracks.

  Jack’s fingers were strips of ice; he had long ago ceased shivering. The sky was a congested mass, dust billowing as Hathorn picked her way carefully, the fan-shaped charmhood on her sleek head bobbing. A good horse, even
if he was getting on in—

  There it is again. Getting distracted.

  Devilpine trees shook as the wind rattled them. Soon they’d be in the flats, heading for town, and he would see Catherine’s face again. Those wide dark eyes, and the sweet way her mouth turned down at the corners when she tried to put on a prim face. The single dimple in one soft cheek when she forgot herself and smiled.

  There. That’s it.

  “Robbie Browne.” His feet were numb and his hands, too. The cold was all through him, except for the flame in his chest that was the light in a pair of dark eyes. Such a small, still spark to hold back that ice. “That was him.”

  Just a greenhorn, a boy with a quick tongue and deft hands at cards. An expensive charing and good cloth, but he slid around trouble like grease on a griddle. Dark eyes, a stubborn wave to his dark hair, and a jaw just begging to be set right with a fist when he smiled that easy smile.

  With so much other trouble to keep in check, though, Gabe hadn’t worried about him. Just another dreamer come Westronward without the sense God gave a mule.

  Like Catherine?

  Damn the woman, dancing into his thoughts all the time. But the thought of her pushed the ice back, gave him space to breathe. He lifted his head slightly, checked his surroundings. The hills were behind him, falling away like a sodden coat.

  When Robbie Browne showed up with gold bars and a mysterious smile, there was a certain amount of grumbling. But there was grumbling any time a miner struck anything worthwhile out there. But then there had been the incursion, the circuit broken and something deadly lurking in the junip and wild tabac, something whose breath brought the corpses up out of sandy soil and gave both Russ and Gabe plenty of trouble.

  It was the claim, of course. Just sitting there waiting for someone, and the boy had stumbled across it. Tracing the incursion of bad mancy to its source had led Gabe straight to the claim, and he and Russ had arrived just in time to see the boy vanishing into the dark crack in the hillside. Waiting for Browne to come out had been nerve-wracking, but Gabe had been sure he would.