All the girls looked surprised by Aster’s sudden return—except for Violet, whose face was taut with anticipation in the lantern light. Aster slid down from the saddle.
“Pack up the camp,” Aster said, answering the silent question in Violet’s eyes. “We need to get out of here.”
“Why?” Clementine asked, alarmed. The others leapt to their feet and got to work.
“Zee.” Aster made his name a curse. “When I went into town, I saw him at the welcome house.”
Mallow’s eyes flashed with anger. “Hold up, are you sure?”
“Yes. It was him. He was on his way out. He can’t have afforded to stay long.” Aster felt sick. Zee was no better than Lieutenant Carney, or any of the rest of them. He’d probably think himself one of the good ones just because he wasn’t as openly cruel as the likes of Baxter McClennon.
But there was no such thing as a good brag. Every last one of them knew the girls they paid for were prisoners.
And the fact that Zee had smiled and promised to help them escape, only to turn around and subject some other girl to the same evils they were all running from …
“It’s damned twisted,” Violet said darkly.
“Ripping hell, they’re all the same,” Mallow swore.
“But he’s a dustblood,” Tansy said. “He’s one of us. I would’ve thought that meant—”
“It doesn’t mean a thing,” Aster spat. She’d once been innocent enough to believe otherwise, too. But, if anything, some of Aster’s most hateful customers had been dustbloods—bitter, broken men who’d been rewarded by their landmaster with a trip to the welcome house. It was the kind of privilege they could earn for warning their overseers about a strike or an escape attempt.
You couldn’t trust anyone.
“Come on, let’s go,” Aster urged, kneeling to roll up a blanket. “We need to be gone before he gets back.”
“Wait.” Clementine spoke for the first time since hearing the news. She was still sitting cross-legged on the ground. She struggled to keep her voice steady, but Aster could hear the hurt in it. “I … I want to wait for him. We deserve the chance to have it out with that snake in the grass for lying to us.”
For a moment, Aster saw her own burning shame and anger in her sister’s face, and if Zee were with them now, Aster could have cheerfully broken his jaw across her fist. She knew all too well the need to confront those who had done you harm, and she knew the pain only doubled when you never got the chance. Unsaid words dissolved to poison in the veins.
But that poison was still a slower death than one at the hands of dangerous men—and Zee was dangerous. There was no doubting that now.
Aster was about to say as much when Mallow spoke first.
“Actually, Clem might have a point. If we wait for Zee to get back, we can rob him for everything he’s got,” she said. “He clearly has shine to spare, if he can afford to be going to the welcome house.”
“Then we tie him up to make sure he can’t follow us again,” Violet said. “Honestly, we ought to do that anyway.”
They all fell silent for a moment, seeming to consider it. The vengeants’ cries rose up around them, blending with the wailing of the wind through the trees.
“We need the shine,” Aster said finally. “We need it to resupply at the next town. We’ll never make it to Northrock if we don’t. Zee was telling the truth about that much.”
“And I’d much rather steal shine from a brag like him than steal supplies outright from some innocent storeowner,” Tansy added.
“And Zee?” Clementine asked. “What do we do with him?”
Aster hesitated. “We won’t hurt him. Say we owe him that much for getting us to Drywell. But we’ll tie him up before we go, like Violet said. And the dead help him if he decides to come after us again.”
Mallow nodded, rolling up her cuffs. “It’ll be better to ambush him from the road. He won’t be expecting us there.”
“All right,” Aster agreed, “but not too close to town. There are lawmen around the deadwall.”
They hurried towards the Bone Road on foot, the better to navigate the thick undergrowth quickly. Brittle brown pine needles crunched softly beneath their steps; stars jeweled the sky above. Aster led the way with the theomite ring hung from a loop of twine around her neck. A chill had crept into the air, and not just from nightfall: the dead were waking, and they would be on the hunt, too.
When the five of them reached the edge of the road, just before the bend, they crouched beneath the cover of the brush as best they could. They positioned themselves in the gap of darkness between two of the iron wardants whose lamplight lit the road. It didn’t take long for someone to come along, though it wasn’t Zee.
First there was a loud party of well-dressed gamblemen in a large, open coach, none of them older than thirty. They were probably coming to town from some landmaster’s manor in the hills. Aster had no doubt one or all of them was on their way to the welcome house, and her nails dragged furrows into the dust as her anger grew. But she and the others were no match for such a large group.
Then came a pair of mounted lawmen on patrol. Aster counted her heartbeats until they passed.
Then came a middle-aged man traveling alone in a slow-rolling open coach. He peered into the dark of the forest uneasily, and he took a furtive sip from a flask to shore up his courage as a vengeant wailed somewhere in the near distance.
“I recognize him,” Violet whispered harshly. “He’s a statesman, stops by the welcome house every year during election season to talk up the other customers. And have his fun, too, of course.”
“He’s probably on his way to the welcome house now,” Clementine said. “A hardworking man deserves a little rest. Isn’t that what they say? Aster…” She gritted her teeth, her jaw twitching. “Aster, we have to stop him.”
“Zee,” Aster reminded her.
“To hell with Zee,” Mallow snarled. “To hell with all of them. Now’s our chance to gut one of these shitheels. I’m not letting it go.” She was already rising to her feet, hands clenching into fists.
“Wait,” Aster ordered, grabbing Mal’s wrist. She understood what the others were feeling. She felt it, too. Her mind worked quickly. “Maybe Zee’s not the only brag we can rob…” The statesman was only a couple lengths away. “Look—his hat alone is worth two hundred eagles. He’ll have more shine on him than any rangeman.” They could still deal with Zee afterwards, but Mallow was right—they couldn’t let this opportunity go.
“But how do we do it?” Tansy asked.
“I know his type,” Violet murmured. “Let me lure him to you all quietly. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”
She crept out from under the bushes and onto the road before anyone could argue with her. Aster swore, tempted to follow her. Violet wasn’t even armed. But it was already too late. The coach was right in front of them, and Violet stumbled into its path. She still wore Baxter McClennon’s clothes, but she had removed the hat and let her hair down. She waved her arms desperately over her head.
“Oh, thank the dead!” she said in a choking half sob as the driver brought the coach to a stop. She ran to its side and clutched at the door. The statesman looked down at her, bewildered.
“Easy, now, miss,” he said. “What are you doing out here all on your own? And dressed like a rough?” He narrowed his eyes as he noticed her favor. His tone grew considerably colder. “Are you a runaway? You ought to know you won’t get any help from me. I’m a man of the law, hear? I’ll be reporting you the moment we get into town.”
“Yes, please, take me with you,” Violet begged. “I’m from the Drywell welcome house. I’ve been kidnapped. The brag I was with, he and his friends—they didn’t want to pay, so they attacked the ravener at the door and ran off with me.”
“What?”
“Yes! And they made me wear these clothes so they could smuggle me out of town. I managed to give them the slip just now, but they still have anoth
er girl with them back at their camp. Please, sir, you have to do something. We only want to go home.”
The brag was silent. Aster watched him carefully, leaning forward on her haunches, preparing to spring. If he had seen their wanted posters already, he would recognize Violet at any moment. They’d have to fight him and his driver both.
But he just mopped his forehead with his silk dustkerchief, his face drawn with distress but not disbelief. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I have a charity event to attend. But I can drop you off at the lawmaster’s office, let them handle this—”
“There isn’t time! These men, they’ll kill my friend when they’re done with her. I heard them say so. But they’re cowards, I know it. They’ll scatter like cockroaches when they see you.”
“Well—”
“The welcome house will be forever in your debt if you help us, sir.” Violet stepped in closer, resting a hand on his wrist. “And so will I.”
That seemed to decide him. He sighed. “Is it far?”
“Not at all, just follow me…”
Aster couldn’t help a grudging respect as she watched it all unfold. How easily Violet slipped into whatever character she needed to be for the given moment, how effortlessly she detached from her true self. Aster had always envied that about her—the ability to escape. As soon as Violet turned her back to the brag, her expression relaxed into its usual cool indifference, the barest hint of her disdainful smile at her lips.
But it was far too soon to celebrate. Aster drew her knife and nodded at the others to ready themselves. Violet led the brag by the hand to the woods.
“All right, on my mark,” Aster whispered. She deepened her crouch. The sounds of the night grew overloud around her. She felt every pebble in the dry earth beneath the soles of her shoes. Violet and the brag broke through the bushes.
“Now,” Aster ordered.
They all leapt up to tackle the brag. His eyes widened in panic, but he didn’t have time to let out more than a strangled squawk before Mallow caught him with a straight punch to the nose. A crunch of bone, a gush of blood. He stumbled backwards, knees buckling, and Aster shoved him to the ground. Fell on him. The feel of her hands hitting flesh made her gorge rise. She’d been struck before. She knew where a body was most vulnerable. The throat. The groin. The dead center of the chest, where the heart beat just below the surface. She hit him as if doing so would frighten her own nightmares away. She hit him until her knuckles bled.
The others helped her. Their anger was a live thing, mindless and starved. He was not the one who had hurt them, but he would do. Clementine kicked his ribs. Tansy gagged him with his dustkerchief. When the coach driver ran into the bushes at the commotion, Mallow swung her fist across his jaw, leaving him dazed and moaning on the ground. Finally Aster pressed her knife to the brag’s throat, daring him to move. He stared up at her with hate in his eyes.
“I’m not surprised you didn’t recognize my friend,” Aster said to him, her voice deathly quiet. “I know we’re all the same to you. But she recognized you, Statesman. Said you’ve been to our welcome house many a time. We’re only here to collect our due. Then we’ll be on our way.”
By now Tansy had found the heavy coin purse in his coat. She whispered urgently in Aster’s ear. “The rope, Aster, we didn’t bring any rope to tie him up with.”
Aster faltered, the words breaking through her red haze. “Does he have any rope on him? Check his coach.”
“No luck there,” Violet said, running to Aster’s side. “I went back to look through it for valuables, but there’s nothing we can use.”
A bead of sweat fell from Aster’s brow. Her hands were trembling like an old woman’s.
“Well, someone has to go back to camp and get some, then,” she said finally.
“Let me go,” Clementine offered. She was looking at Aster knowingly. “I’m the only one who might be able to make it without the ring. At least I can see the dead coming.”
And yet the idea of Clementine running alone, through the woods, in the dark, with vengeants at her heels, was immediately unacceptable.
“Take the ring anyway,” Aster said, unlooping it from her neck with her free hand. “We’re by the Bone Road. We’ll be fine.”
Violet cleared her throat. “Listen to your sister, now, Aster, we need that ring here. They don’t call it the Bone Road for nothing.”
Aster spun away from the brag then, glaring at Violet. Why did she always choose the worst moments to be difficult? “I don’t recall asking for your opinion,” Aster snarled.
As soon as Aster turned, though, the brag broke free, yanking out his gag and stumbling towards the road.
“Ripping hell!”
“Grab him!”
Mallow tackled him around his legs just as he reached the edge of the road. They dragged him back into the dark. He cursed them, his voice cracking.
“You’re dead. All of you. I was campaigning with Jerrod McClennon himself in Green Creek, and I know for a fact that he followed you out of there with his best raveners. They’re coming for you Luckers. You’ll see—”
“By the Veil, shut him up,” Aster ordered. She felt on the edge of hysteria. Her throat burned with either laughter or tears. Clementine managed to gag the statesman again. His driver watched in wide-eyed silence, not having moved from the ground where Mallow knocked him down.
The girls were all breathing hard now, eyes glazing over with panic. Aster swallowed.
“Go on and get the rope, Clem,” she said. “Take the ring. Hurry back.”
Nobody argued. The rest of them each took hold of a limb to keep the brag from making another escape. They waited in silence for Clementine to return. Two more parties passed them by on the road, but, mercifully, none heard the brag’s muffled struggling. It would only be a matter of time before someone stopped to have a look at his empty coach, though, and realized something was wrong.
Clementine emerged from the dark. She looked shaken but unhurt.
“You all right?” Aster asked. She was afraid to turn her back on the brag again.
Clementine nodded. “Here’s the rope,” she said, passing it over.
“Thank the dead,” Violet muttered. They went to work propping the brag up against a tree trunk and tying him to it, then tying his driver next to him. The brag had resigned himself to his fate, it seemed, but he still glared at Aster with beady black eyes that shone like an insect’s. His loathing was palpable.
Well, the feeling was mutual. Aster pressed the point of her knife to the softness of his chin. With her other hand, she plucked the gold pin from his lapel. It was the Arkettan seal.
“Glory to the Reckoning,” Aster quoted softly. How many times had she seen those words? On the flag that had hung above the mining camp. On the sleeves of lawmen. On every coin that’d been exchanged to purchase her. A reminder that freedom in Arketta had to be earned.
As if it hadn’t been her due from the moment she drew her first breath.
Aster sucked her teeth and pocketed the trinket. “I bet you’ll be too ashamed to tell anyone it was a bunch of girls that did this to you, won’t you, Statesman? A fine public servant like yourself can’t afford to have that rumor going around. You’ll seem weak.”
The brag hesitated, then nodded once.
“Better stick to that, or we’ll be back to finish the job,” Aster warned.
She nodded to the others, and they retreated, leaving the brag to sweat in the dark until someone else found him. There could be no question of waiting to ambush Zee now, not after this. They had to get out of Drywell as soon as possible.
“Think he’ll rat on us?” Clementine asked as they picked their way back to camp.
Aster just shook her head. “Can’t see how it matters if he does. The McClennons already want us dead as it is.”
They were silent for a few paces. Then Tansy spoke up, hesitantly. “I’ve never seen a man afraid of me like that before,” she said. “It’s always been me who
’s had to be afraid of them.”
“Felt good,” Mallow said, nodding.
No one else replied, but Aster could sense the others’ unspoken agreement. And yet, none of them could quite seem to meet anyone else’s eye. Aster didn’t feel guilty in the least for what they’d done.
But she wondered if she ought to.
No. That dirty rip had it coming, she told herself fiercely. Let him be at our mercy, for a change.
But he’d almost gotten away. And if he had—
“We’ll be more careful next time,” Mallow went on, as if she’d heard Aster’s thoughts. “There’ll be a next time, won’t there?”
They hadn’t counted the shine yet, but Aster suspected it was enough to justify the risks they’d taken.
“There’ll be a next time,” she promised.
Some part of her looked forward to it.
* * *
When they got back to the camp, Zee was waiting for them, pacing back and forth like the catamount he’d driven off. Aster had known he might beat them back to camp, but the sight of him still sent a jolt of shock and nausea through her. She didn’t want to get in another fight tonight, but she would if she had to. The others stopped short behind her, their sudden fear palpable. Though Aster’s hand was sore and caked with dried blood, she clenched it into a fist, taking a step into the lantern light. A bitter wind twitched at her jacket as the song of the crickets rose and fell.
Zee’s shoulders dropped with relief at the sight of them. “Thank the dead! I was afraid you’d been captured. Where the hell have you been?”
“Where the hell have we been?” Aster echoed slowly. “Where the hell have you been? Because last time I saw you, you were walking out of the welcome house.”
It was too dark to read Zee’s face clearly, but Aster could sense the guilt in his silence, sharp as turned milk.
“It’s not what it looks like,” he began.
“We don’t want anything else to do with you,” Clementine broke in. “If you ever had even a drop of respect for us, then you’ll let us go our separate ways and forget we ever met.”
The Good Luck Girls Page 11
