Regretfully, she shook her head. Nice as it would have been to educate these people—and they damn well needed education—this wasn’t the time, or the place. If she ever met any of them again, she could show them then what it meant to protect yourself. She turned back to her men, motioning quickly to show them where to go. Three people would be enough to search this circus. Especially when the bulk of their able-bodied adults were at the bonfires, trying to protect the boneyard from a frontal assault.
One of the men drew his finger across his throat before looking at her hopefully. She nodded. If they needed to kill to fulfill their mission, that was fine by her—and by Murphy as well, she was quite sure. The man was still too wrapped up in his own fancy ideas of dignity and ethicality to be a proper killer, but he could take a body apart when the need arose. She’d done her research before agreeing to sign on with him. She knew how many drifters and never-do-wells had been reported missing on or near the Murphy land. All of them had been forgiven by Hellstromme, and thus by Deseret. The two might as well have been one and the same in the eyes of the law, and a man like Murphy, well. He had no reason to restrain himself, not when there was something to be learned from the wet red treasures inside a man.
Laura pointed to the far end of the circus. The first of the men started in that direction, moving quickly, stepping light. She pointed to the center. The second of the men nodded and went where she had indicated, following the first for no more than a few yards before he veered off. She turned, squinting into the dark in front of her. Then she smiled, and slunk into the shadows.
Time to get to work.
There were those in Deseret who knew her by name, or by reputation, if nothing more than that. She was one of Hellstromme’s throwing knives. Less efficient than a bullet, which would kill whatever stood between it and its target, but more reliable in the long run. She could always come back to his hand and be flung again, while a bullet, once fired, was fired forever.
Murphy was a bullet. He had been sitting in the chamber of Hellstromme’s plans for years, and he might never feel the hammer come down, propelling him to his fate. Or he might find himself fired the second he returned to Deseret. Hellstromme wanted to see Murphy’s work completed, she knew that much. It mattered to him.
If it mattered to him, it mattered to her, at least as long as he was filling her pockets. Laura slipped between the wagons like a shadow, pausing at each one to listen to the sounds from inside.
Some were silent.
Some were filled with the sounds of people hiding from the world outside, the little scuffs and scrapes that betrayed the presence of the living. But none of them sounded properly terrified. They sounded scared, yes, like they didn’t know what was going on outside and didn’t know what they could do to help, but they didn’t sound terrified.
Grace Murphy would be terrified.
Grace Murphy would be shitting herself with the realization that this was it: she had reached the limit of her long and winding road to freedom, and was now pinned between the Oregon woods and the end of the world. She had to have known that she was always running on borrowed time: that short of finding a way off the continent, Murphy’s agents would catch up with her eventually and bring her back to Deseret to pay for what she’d done. It was a cold vendetta to draw against a woman with no resources of her own, but she should have expected it. She was Murphy’s property, and he was Hellstromme’s property, and that meant she had never had a prayer.
Laura couldn’t feel sorry for the woman. She had been given every opportunity Deseret had to offer. If she’d wanted a life of luxury, she could have stayed. If she’d wanted her freedom, she could have left the little girl. By refusing to do either, she had signed her own death warrant.
The shadows around the wagon wheels seemed thick as taffy. They tangled at her feet and clung to her ankles, until it was like they were trying to slow her progress through the circus—which was just silly. Shadows didn’t have minds. They couldn’t decide to do something like that.
A wolf howled from the forest above the town. Laura stopped, waiting for the echoes of the sound to pass before she resumed walking slowly forward, eyes darting from wagon to wagon.
The Blackstone Family Circus was a mid-sized show, smaller than the ones she’d seen outside the Holy City, but large for a production without a patron. They were beholden to no one save themselves. That must have been nice for them, to roll down the roads without worrying that they’d somehow offend their masters and find themselves called back.
At the same time, with no master, no patron, there was also no one who would come to save them if something happened.
Laura was very good at being something that happened.
A light caught her eye, shining as it did through the blackness of the boneyard. She shifted positions and saw that it was a lantern, hanging in an open wagon window. Laura frowned. Lanterns, placed like that, usually signified that there was someone inside. All the other wagons were walled up tight. So what did this one mean…?
Placing two fingers in her mouth, she whistled, long and low and sad, like the cry of a desert bird. The wolves were still howling up above; anyone who heard her and didn’t live here was likely to take the sound for just one more piece of the local landscape. She stepped back into the shadow of the nearest wagon, and waited.
It wasn’t a long wait. The nearer of her two helpers came trotting out of the shadows, his hands already clenched, ready to punch whatever she aimed him at. She stepped forward, enough for him to see her through the gloom, and waved him over.
“What is it?” he whispered, once he was close enough. Hand signals could only get them so far.
A pity. Speech was so loud. “Look,” she replied, and pointed to the lit wagon.
He turned, and his eyes widened. “Oh,” he said.
“Go,” she said.
He nodded, and went.
Part of being a throwing knife was understanding that some targets were better hit by other people. As long as she was the one who always returned, Hellstromme would continue to think of her as the truly useful one, the one who could accomplish whatever tasks he set for her. Every mission, every kill served to increase her reputation among the kind of people who could afford to pay her fees. Eventually, she’d be in a position to make demands of her own, and when that happened …
She did understand Grace Murphy’s desire to put Deseret behind her. She shared it. She was just going about it in a much, much smarter way.
Slinking back into the shadows, she let her hand rest on the stock of the pistol she had belted to her right hip and waited for the screaming to begin. One way or another, she was sure there would be screaming. All she had to do was stand back.
Her man—Hellstromme’s man, really, one of the great unwashed mass who teemed in Junkyard, waiting for the chance to prove themselves worthy of becoming something better than they were—approached the wagon slowly, cautiously, like he expected it to strike at any moment. There was something almost comic about watching a grown man stalk a wagon. Laura turned away. He would call if he needed help, and there was more boneyard to search.
Hand still resting on her pistol, she resumed her slow passage through the boneyard, pausing at each wagon. At the fourth wagon, her pause became a stop.
Someone was inside. They were crying. No: they were weeping, a soft, constant sound that reminded her uncomfortably of her childhood.
Laura drew her pistol, steadied her hand, and swung herself up onto the wagon steps, nudging the door open with her toe. The woman who had been crying lowered her hands and turned to stare.
There were three people inside the wagon: the crying woman—girl, really, barely out of her teens, still half-finished, with the ghosts of the pox living on the skin of her face like a brand—and the older woman who sat beside her, rubbing her back with one hand. There was a certain similarity between their faces and figures. They were family.
The same couldn’t be seen for the little girl who lay
in the bed across from them, her white-blonde hair fanned out across the pillow, her eyes closed and her breath coming easy. She was wearing a tattered white gown, and her feet were muddy, but apart from those small details, she could almost have been Annabelle Murphy, the scientist’s lovely, dying daughter.
“Well, well,” said Laura, with a slow smile. “What have I got here?”
The older woman made as if to stand. Laura raised her gun, aiming the barrel square at the woman’s forehead. The woman froze.
“No,” said Laura, calm as anything. “I don’t think you want to do that. I’ll shoot you, don’t see if I won’t, but Dr. Murphy might be a little put out if I bring his daughter back to him all covered in your brains. That’s his girl, isn’t it?”
“You stay away from Adeline,” said the younger woman. Tears still streamed down her pocked face, but she looked ready to get to her feet and fight for the sake of the child. Interesting. “She’s not some Dr. Murphy’s daughter. She’s Miss Pearl’s little girl, and she’s not yours to take.”
“Either of you have a weapon on you? No? Then she’s mine to do with as I please.” Laura took another step into the wagon. The little girl hadn’t so much as stirred. Her mother must have drugged her before running away again. Made sense. It was easier to leave a child when they couldn’t beg for you to stay.
Unless she’d poisoned the girl, and that was why the younger woman had been weeping. Fear—a rare emotion for her—uncurled in Laura’s breast. If the girl was dead, this had all been for naught. The journey back to Deseret would kill Annabelle, of that there was no question. Hellstromme would be angry if she returned with Murphy and neither of his children. The thought of his anger …
If the girl was dead, maybe this was when she would do her own cut and run. Some things were worse than being on her own in potentially hostile territory. Hellstromme’s wrath was among them.
“Wake her up,” Laura commanded.
“It’s her medicine,” said the older woman. “She needs to sleep in order to heal.”
“Her father’s here now. He’ll see to healing her. Now wake her up, or I’ll do it.”
“We can’t,” said the older woman. “It’s not—”
The bullet between her eyes stopped her in the middle of her sentence, painting a red punctuation across the wagon wall. The younger woman began to scream, high and shrill, putting her hands over her mouth like they could somehow hold the sound inside.
In her bed, the little girl rolled onto her side, and kept sleeping.
“She’s alive, then,” said Laura. “Good—oh, stop your screaming. If you don’t, I’ll have to shoot you, too, and that would be a wasted bullet.” The sound of Murphy’s voice drifted from outside. It was far from quiet out there. The woman’s screams might go overlooked for a while.
Not forever. Screams had a nasty tendency to attract attention. Laura stepped closer to Adeline’s bed, raising her gun so that the barrel was pointed at the screaming woman.
“Sorry,” she said.
Something snarled behind her. She began to turn. Heavy paws, bristling with claws, impacted with her shoulders and drove her to the ground. The screaming continued.
Chapter Twenty-two
Annie sat perfectly still in the back of the wagon of oddities, her hands clenched in her lap until she could feel the bones shifting under her skin, forced into stiff new positions by the pressure she was putting them under. It wasn’t painful, not quite, but it would be if she didn’t move soon.
Michael was out there, baying for her return. She knew him—she had married him—and she knew if he was yelling, it was only to draw and hold the attention of the people who might defend her. He would send his minions down into the boneyard through other channels, and they would be looking for her, that she might lead them to her little girl. No. She would not move. She would wait, taking the lesson from her oddities, and let them come to her.
The heavy tread of a boot on the back step of her wagon put steel into her spine, pulling her that fraction of an inch farther upright. She held her breath, still waiting.
A gunshot came from somewhere outside—somewhere closer than the bonfire line. A woman screamed, high and shrill and terrified. Annie’s hands clenched down harder, until she felt her nails break the skin on her palms. Still, she did not move.
Every instinct she had told her to go back to Adeline, to stand between her little girl and the world. But Adeline was sleeping. Adeline was drugged into blissful unconsciousness, locked safely in a dark wagon with Sophia and Soleil to watch over her. The only thing Adeline needed more than her mother was the opportunity to survive—to wake in a world where no one was looking for her, where she could be left alone to grow up and become the woman she was meant to be.
Annie could buy her that opportunity. She would pay for it with blood and with bone, but she could pay for it. Wasn’t that a mother’s burden? If she could make the world a better place for her daughter, she had to do it.
The wagon door eased open. The lantern light caught on the barrel of a pistol as it slid into the room ahead of the man who held it. So many men did that, entered a room gun-first, as if the trigger could pull itself when it sensed danger. This was a man of Deseret, land of scientific wonders. Maybe his gun could sense danger, could cock and aim itself. Annie doubted that. Hellstromme would one day make the men who thronged to follow him obsolete, but not yet, not until he had finished sucking the goodness out of them, one crime and one sin at a time. He still needed to be served.
The door opened farther. The bucket she had so carefully balanced there teetered.
(She had played that trick before, when she was a little girl, when dousing a housemaid with soapy water had been the absolute height of hilarity. Even her father hadn’t been able to be angry with her when he had come around the corner and seen little Grace laughing, while the long-suffering maid was flicking bubbles out of her ear. Sometimes children’s pranks were the best solution to adult problems.)
The door opened further. The bucket fell.
The man with the gun abruptly became the man without a gun: it fell to the floor, landing harmlessly on its side, as he screamed and clawed at the fish that were biting at his face and throat. The nibblers, for all that they might not be able to survive long outside of water, had more hunger than survival instinct—rather than flopping away, looking for the safety of their bucket, they clung to his flesh, chomping and tearing with their terrible jaws, filling their bellies while their gills starved.
The man kept screaming and clawing at his face, even though some of the fish were now clinging to his hands, stripping his fingers to the bone. They ate with incredible efficiency. The nibblers still confined in their tank thrashed and beat their bodies against the glass, jealous of their dying companions, who were eating, they were eating, they were filling their bellies and they were eating. Fish weren’t intelligent, but they knew envy. Annie was sure of that.
Still, she did not move, but only watched as the screaming man ventured farther into the wagon, staggering more than walking, and kicked the side of the tank that contained her pit wasp. The lid was off. The night was cool and the sun was down, rendering this particular monster sluggish, but even a sluggish beast could be roused to anger by the right stimuli.
Wings buzzing, the pit wasp rose slowly into the air. The man, still flailing, didn’t seem to notice it. His hand, swinging wildly, brushed the tip of one fast-moving wing.
The pit wasp struck.
It was a worker, small as pit wasps went, separated from the body of its hive. That didn’t seem to matter much. Maybe its venom was less potent than a queen’s, but it was still fully capable of burying its stinger in human flesh and pumping out poison. The intruder stopped screaming as he collapsed to the floor of the wagon, seizing wildly. The smell of urine filled the air, hot and acrid.
The nibblers that were still alive continued to burrow and chew, working their way deeper into his flesh, until Annie had to wonder whether
they were able to use his blood like water, continuing to breathe as long as it was flowing over their gills.
The man stopped thrashing. Annie remained motionless, and not only because the pit wasp was loose now, and had no loyalty: like the nibblers, it would destroy her as quickly as it would anyone else. Loyalty was for mammals, and she had few of those.
“Noah?” The door slammed open as a second man charged inside. He kicked the bucket as he came, sending it spinning across the floor to slam into the side of another tank. He didn’t seem to notice. Without the nibblers to fall on him from above, the entrance was harmless, ordinary even.
His attention was all for the man sprawling in the center of the wagon, and for the giant wasp that stood athwart his softly swelling neck. The first man—Noah—was quickly coming to resemble someone suffering from a terrible case of mumps, save for the almost total absence of his face.
“Noah!” the second man repeated, and dropped to his knees, nibblers squishing under the impact. He still didn’t seem to have noticed Annie.
It was interesting, she reflected, feeling oddly removed from the scene, like she was watching it through a pane of thick glass. Men liked to talk about how women were the centers of their worlds, how everything they did, they did for love, or for the sake of the women who waited for them at home, but when the time came to make those ideals real, women faded into the furniture. As long as she didn’t move, she didn’t matter. She was a prize to be won or a disobedient possession to be punished. She wasn’t real.
The newcomer reached for the dead man. The pit wasp, sensing danger, pulled its stinger free and rose again, wings beating so fast that they were a silver shimmer in the air, transcendently, terribly beautiful, too fine to exist in this world or any other.
The man shouted incoherently and grabbed the hat off his head, swatting at the wasp. Perhaps he could be forgiven for assuming that the thing was dangerous only to the already-distracted, like the unfortunate Noah, who had been consigned to death even before the pit wasp had become involved: few men thrive without their faces.
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