Malice of Crows: The Shadow, Book Three

by Lila Bowen

  “See here?” Inés said.

  “None of it means shit to me,” he grouched. “Told you. I got no letters.”

  “The picture, Rhett. Even children understand pictures.”

  Rhett looked, his eye sliding uneasily over the scrawled letters to the ink-drawn pictures Inés wanted him to see. The book had to be very old, as the fellers in the pictures seemed to be wearing long dresses and had right peculiar hairstyles that made them look like idjits. One in particular was a nasty sort, in all black with black eyes and a large owl sitting on his shoulder. As Inés pointed from one image to another, Rhett tried to follow along.

  “To switch bodies, a necromancer needs these: a great confidence and conviction. The bones of a man and the bones of the earth.” When he shook his head in confusion, she clarified. “Bone and gold. Which you’ve already seen. The necromancer also requires a familiar, an animal with enough life force to power the change.”

  “We already knew all that,” he said, preparing to go back to sleep.

  Inés caught his sleeve. “Wait. I’m not done. Don’t test my patience. Yes, we already knew all that. But we didn’t know this. To remove him from a body, we must remove the bone and gold he’s hidden within it.”

  Rhett perked up at that. “Wait. How’s he get bone and gold in a body?”

  “I have a theory.” He could almost see Inés smiling under the veil, smug as a cat with a face full of feathers. “You said you saw a jar full of teeth?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “That means he removed teeth from his victims.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “And we know that gold can be used to replace a tooth. What if he mixes gold with a tooth and implants it in a man’s jaw? Or perhaps, in the case of a growing child like Meimei, he pierced her ears and made earrings merging bone and gold.”

  Rhett thought back to his brief time with the child.

  “Yeah, she had ear baubles, sure enough,” he said. “So if I take out her earrings, Trevisan will pop on out?”

  At that, Inés actually laughed. “Would that it were so easy. You must remove both earrings and any other such gold and bone mixtures she might be holding. And you must say this spell.” She pointed to a string of letters just as jumbled and scrawly as any others.

  “Then I reckon we’re shit out of luck, because I don’t know what that says,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his head and feeling just as prickly.

  “Then this is our task tomorrow. I will read it and you will repeat it to me until you can say it flawlessly, from memory. And then, if we are very lucky, you can save Meimei and defeat Trevisan.” She closed the book with a satisfyingly heavy thump, leaving a long blade of grass to mark her page.

  “You say that’ll get him out. But where will Trevisan go? What if he tries to go into somebody else?”

  Inés nodded thoughtfully, and Rhett wished he could see her face, her eyes, the set of her mouth, any clues as to what the woman actually thought. Did they have a chance in hell? Or was this another cruel, useless errand guaranteed to disappoint and leave scars, as the Cannibal Owl had?

  “This is why Trevisan must be brought outside the city, to a place of our devising. In the city, there will be too much interference, curious onlookers and distractions. Anyone wearing gold could become his next victim. We need to get out here.” She raised her hands to indicate the quiet prairie around them. “We must keep him quiet, prevent Meimei’s mouth from speaking. We must remove all gold and bone from the child’s person and be sure that no one else in the area is holding such objects. Rather than destroy his familiar, we must keep it nearby to power our own magic. And then you must speak this spell.”

  “That sounds downright complicated,” Rhett said.

  “Magic always is.”

  “Pretty convenient how you found that, the night before we arrive.”

  Inés chuckled. “Funny how the muse finally shows up when you get down to business and demand her attention.”

  Rhett’s dreams were always twisty things, but it seemed to him like Santa Muerte watched him now, always on the periphery, a dark and skeletal spectre with a knowing smile. It wasn’t like the dreams where the Injun woman or Buck had spoken to him, when he’d mostly had control of his own mouth and thoughts. It was more like the skeleton lady was standing over him, listening and scheming. He could sense her but not holler at her or shoot at her. It was downright frustrating, but he knew better than to ask Inés about it. He didn’t need anyone doubting his sanity or destroying his confidence. Of course, he didn’t need death goddesses spying on him in his own mind, neither, but he could face that problem after Trevisan was taken care of. Life had been so much easier when he’d figured there was maybe just one god, and that one pretty boring.

  He woke up feeling like maybe he’d et a spider in his sleep. But when he rinsed his mouth with the water in his canteen, he immediately spat it out. Because it wasn’t water. It was… warm and thick and sweet?

  Rhett stared at the brown splatter on the tan dirt, then sniffed his canteen. It was maybe a tiny bit like coffee but nothing Rhett had tasted before.

  “What’s that?” Sam asked.

  Rhett handed him the canteen. “I don’t rightly, but it sure as hell ain’t the water I put in it last night.”

  Sam sniffed it and sipped cautiously. “Why, Rhett,” he said, looking surprised. “That’s hot chocolate.”

  “Hot what now?”

  Sam took a deeper sip and handed the canteen back. “Hot chocolate. Had it a few times as a boy, back in Tanasi. You never had it?”

  Rhett considered his own childhood. Hell no, he hadn’t tasted chocolate. It was about the only thing as rare as gold. He’d only ever had one piece of candy, and he’d spent two weeks licking it down to nothing. But Sam didn’t know any of that.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, taste it.”

  Rhett did, and this time he found it good. The first time, when he’d spit it out, he’d been too surprised and confused. There was something in the slurry texture and warmth that spoke too much of spilt blood. But now, knowing what it was, it warmed his middle, bitter and sweet all at once.

  “How’d you get chocolate?” Sam asked as Rhett finished it off.

  “I have no idea.”

  But he did. He thought back to Santa Muerte on the edges of his dream last night, then even further back to the statue in the mission, the pieces of something brown sitting at the hem of her robe. Chocolate. Which made sense. If the boring saints liked waxy white candles and bits of bread, of course the goddess of death would like something as rare and bitter and sweet and strange as chocolate.

  Sam got up and left, and Rhett closed his canteen, murmuring, “If that’s how you want to play it, lady, you go on and show up in my dreams anytime you want. But don’t go thinking I owe you.”

  Yesterday, the clouds had pressed down, and the cold earth had reached up as if to claim him. Today, the sky snapped blue and bright, the wind cutting and pulling at every exposed inch of skin, tugging at the corners of Rhett’s eye and drying out his lips. His hands cracked where they clutched the reins, and his feet rattled around in his boots. His nose ran like a leaky roof. He rode Ragdoll today, even though it made two days in a row, because he knew well enough that this was a fight he might not be able to come back from, and he wanted her to know she was his favorite, even if she was an ugly little thing. BB didn’t seem to mind. Sometimes Rhett figured the unicorn reckoned him a poor substitute for the Captain, and Rhett himself had to agree.

  They hit the road all too soon for Rhett’s taste, navigating around slower wagons and holding back the horses as cowpokes and stagecoaches dashed rudely by. They’d packed up the books since they had their answers now, and Inés sat beside Cora on the wagon bench, her fingers curled over the seat. Cora was… hell, Rhett tried not to look, most of the time. She looked anxious and angry and worried, and he couldn’t blame her for it, not a bit. She’d waited a long time to see her sister
again, and she’d had to wait even longer at a chance to truly have her Meimei back. And they still might not save the child. Hell, Rhett might have to kill the poor thing.

  Turned in the saddle to watch Cora, Rhett recognized that he’d been acting like a chickenshit coward all this time. The truth of it was he felt shame over losing Meimei to Trevisan, and it was flat-out easier to avoid Cora than deal with how he’d failed her.

  Muttering “Goddammit,” he turned Ragdoll and trotted her over to the wagon.

  Cora looked at him like someone with a fever, half dull and half on fire. She’d once looked at him with nothing but a different kind of fire, and he’d vastly preferred it.

  Figuring it was best to just say what needed to be said, he blurted out, “Woman, I owe you an apology.”

  Cora’s lips twisted up in a grim sort of way. “Why, in particular?”

  He exhaled, shut his eye to think, and just said it. “For everything. I wasn’t good to you. You were upset with me, and I just let you go. Pushed you away. I did the best I could in Trevisan’s car, and I reckon you know that, but you’re still unhappy with the outcome, as am I. And I’m making it right in the best way I can, which I figure you don’t like, either. But… I should’ve been better to you. More understanding, I guess. What you been through ain’t easy. And I’m a man of action, not words. Feelings just slow me down, make my job harder. But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. And I’m going to fix things in the only way I know how.”

  He sucked in a big gasp of air, after all that. Cora watched him, bemused and angry and thinking. It was funny, how he’d come to know her from afar as they traveled. Theirs was not a relationship of secrets and trust and whispers. It was like two birds flying free, sometimes bumping into each other and caroming away. But he’d always liked her, even when she hadn’t thought much of him.

  “Red-Eye Ned, know this. If you have to kill her to kill Trevisan, I will forgive you. I will have to go far away, but I will be grateful. Better I lose my sister than she continue to be a pawn for such evil.”

  Knowing that she meant it and that it was hard as hell to say, he nodded. “I understand. And I will do my best for you. And for her.”

  She nodded back, her face hard. “Good.”

  “Then that’s all, I reckon. I’m just sorry. For everything.”

  He tipped his hat, nodded, and spun his horse, cantering back up with Sam before she could… say something. Which was still a bit chickenshit, but at least he’d tried.

  “What was that all about?” Sam asked, brow wrinkled down adorably. Rhett was stunned to realize that Sam was maybe a bit jealous. And that he, Rhett, liked it.

  “Just apologizing.”

  “What for?”

  “Everything.”

  Sam chuckled. “Did it help?”

  Rhett shrugged. “Hell if I know. She hasn’t turned into a dragon and eaten me yet, at least.”

  “Women seem like a fair bit of trouble.”

  “Truer words were never spoken, Sam.”

  That afternoon, the first huts and shop stalls showed up along the road, reaching out from the city like a hungry child’s skinny arms. The smell slunk up Rhett’s nose, making him flinch. It was all bodies and sewage and beasts and smoke and the great piles of trash left to rot because folks weren’t made to live all cheek to jowl. The wobble in his belly was happy, though. It went from being a tugging sort of ache to a satisfied expectation. Reminded Rhett a bit of the way a man’s feelings could turn from starving to appeased the moment he knew food was on the way. A monster like Trevisan… well, it was food for the Shadow, wasn’t it? And, finally, the Shadow was close to sinking claws into deserving prey.

  Dan galloped up front and reined in beside Rhett.

  “We should sell some horses,” he said tightly.

  Rhett looked back at the herd, about thirty horses now, and noted the folks along the street staring at them in a hungry, calculating sort of way.

  “Fair enough. Everything but the mounts and mule. You know well enough who can go.”

  Dan’s jaw twitched, his eyes hard. “The local folks won’t want to do business with me.”

  Fury burned up Rhett’s spine. “Then let’s just take the herd back out five miles and let ’em loose.”

  A snort from Dan, and then a smile. “While I appreciate your indignation, I’d rather just have the money. Sam and I can go sell them off while you and the women secure a room.”

  Rhett looked at Dan like he’d grown two heads. “How the hell do I secure a room?”

  “Ask Winifred. Better yet, let her do all the talking. Come on, Sam.”

  Dan turned back toward the herd and tugged on the rope halter of the stubborn black mustang mare who was second fiddle to Ragdoll. Where she went, the rest would follow, all except the horses tied to the wagon.

  Sam gave Rhett an encouraging grin. “It’ll be fine, Rhett. We’ll meet in the city tonight, maybe go out for a drink. You can usually find somebody selling good tamales on the street, almost as fine as Conchita’s. Me and Dan, we can sell the horses, no problem.”

  He tipped his hat, and Rhett tipped his hat back, and they both knew now that it meant more than that. Then Sam rode off with Dan, taking the herd of horses along. They turned off the road just past the first of the rickety stalls and headed for a prosperous-looking cattle company up on the hill with a fancy sign and boards that had been recently painted white. Rhett hated to watch the horses go. As far as he was concerned, a feller who had enough horses could do anything he pleased, and for the rougher end of a small herd, there was still some fine horseflesh hiding among the hopeless beasts. But he had Ragdoll and BB and Blue, so he had everything he needed. As the Captain had once told him, things tended to weigh a man down.

  What was currently weighing him down the most was wanting to kill a goddamn lich.

  Winifred rode up beside him on Kachina. Rhett hadn’t paid her much mind that morning, but she was back in her city duds, a blue-sprigged dress that hid road dust pretty well over her soft doeskin leggings and an Aztecan shawl tied over her shoulders. Her hair was in a long braid down her back, and she wore an old hat that shouldn’t have suited her but did.

  “It’s going to be hard to find someone who’ll let a room to us. Bunch of folks, only one of us white and him not with us at the time. If we didn’t have so much gold, we’d have to rough it out here on the outskirts. But I think we’ll be able to find something – maybe upstairs in a saloon. And we’ll need to find a hostler for the beasts and the wagon.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Rhett growled. “We don’t need any such thing. Pay a man to brush our horses?” He spit in the already filthy street. “Hell, I could hunt down Trevisan right now, gag him, and drag him out into the country. I don’t need to get all homey in a place that smells like an outhouse. I’m not trusting some no-good fool with my mounts or getting shoved out the back door by some pinch-faced old shrew.”

  “This is the city, Rhett.” Winifred acted like she wanted to pat his arm but knew he’d bite her fingers off. Her voice went soft, as if she were speaking to a wild animal. “We must act like we belong here if we’re to have any hope of accomplishing our goals.”

  Rhett looked down the road into San Anton. It was a teetering mess of buildings leaning this way and that, cut into blocks and rows by dirty streets knee-deep in mud and shit. It reminded him all too much of the railroad town, except that instead of having the good sense to up and move to fresher country every couple of days, San Anton just kept on festering like a mesquite thorn stuck deep in feverish, putrefying skin, building up a world of muck around its mud-black heart. He would’ve vastly preferred to make camp out in the wilds.

  Cities were places for fools.

  As they passed a big, stout wooden pen with a sturdy barn attached, Rhett asked Winifred, “That there. Is that a hostler?”

  “Yes, but —”

  Rhett kicked his mare and rode up to a smallish boy standing by the gate. “Hey, boy,” he
called. When the boy looked up, he held up a penny and added, “You understand me?”

  The boy looked at him like he was a damned fool. “Yes, sir.”

  “Feller who owns this barn. He a nice man? Good to his horses?”

  The boy looked back toward the barn and crept closer. “No. He shorts you on grain.”

  “If you had a horse, where’d you take it?”

  The boy’s mouth twitched as he looked around. “Two streets up, go right. Mr. Marko.”

  Rhett flicked the penny up in the air, and the boy caught it easily. Rhett almost wished he had a horse to give the boy, as the child looked at Ragdoll not as if she were a scrubby little appaloosa mustang, but like she was a fine thing worth having. A penny would do, though. It was more than Rhett had ever had as a child.

  “Thanks kindly.” He tipped his hat and led his posse up two streets and then right.

  He liked the look of Marko’s place right away, and even though the feller’s speech was right peculiar and had the same guttural accent as the dwarves Rhett had met in Burlesville, they struck a decent enough deal for the keeping of the horses and wagon.

  Pointing up at the hay loft overhead, Rhett asked Mr. Marko if he was willing to let folks sleep up there, but Marko wouldn’t have it. Turned out his mother-in-law ran a boardinghouse across the street. That’s where they ended up, eating peculiar German grub at a long table with a whole crew of laughing Germans. Rhett had no idea what most of ’em were saying, but they seemed friendly enough and nobody frowned at him, so he liked them fine and ate the rich food until he was close to bursting a button. He’d grown accustomed to white folks taking to Sam, and it felt strange to be among strangers without Sam there as a buffer.

  “Wait,” he said, overcome with panic. “How will Dan and Sam find us?”

  Winifred pointed at her belly, or just above it, and then at her nose. “Same way Dan always finds us.”

  That’s when it struck him. As Rhett looked around, amazed that nobody was hating him by sight or being rude to him by mouth, he realized something right peculiar: He couldn’t sense a single monster. Besides his own friends, there wasn’t any kind of wobble in the area, and he’d gotten sensitive enough to notice such things from a far piece. He hadn’t felt another monster since the giant Gila lizards, and nothing in the city had raised his nerves a jot. Although he could feel the slight tug of Trevisan almost like a little fish testing the bait, the Shadow – or destiny, or whatever the hell – seemed pleased that Rhett was near his quarry and that the quarry was staying put. So between his sensitivity to monsters and his coyote nose, even in the stinky city, Dan would find them.