I stretch a little taller and eye what of Sue I can see. “You feeling sharp? Because you know there ain’t no one like you that can clear a path, and we’re going to need your bladework to get out of this place.”
Sue snorts dismissively. “Sharp enough, I suppose. Just be ready later tomorrow night, close to dawn. We’re going to do what needs to be done.”
“You know where to find me,” I say. It’s meant to be a joke, but nobody laughs.
Sue and Callie take their leave, Callie giving me one last inscrutable look over her shoulder, and I turn just as Miss Duncan walks in, carrying my canteen and a plate of food. My stomach rumbles; I’d been so preoccupied I’d almost forgotten how hungry I am. I have to keep myself fed; there’s no telling when the next opportunity for food will arise.
I lean against the bars of the cell, arms hanging out. Miss Duncan pauses. “Planning something, Jane?”
I grin at her, then retreat until my back is against the wall. “Eating. Is that for me?”
“Yes, compliments of Gideon Carr. He wanted to make sure you got an extra portion this evening.” An expression I can’t name crosses her face. Disgust? Fear? “You do know that he is Mayor Carr’s son?”
I shrug. “Yes, ma’am, that’s what he said.”
“So why exactly has he taken such a shine to you?” Her voice is heavy with suspicion, and I know what she’s on about: a freewheeling Negro girl getting cozy with an affluent white man. There’s only one way that story ends, and it ain’t happily ever after.
Plus, they got names for girls like that. And I’m sure it ain’t escaped Miss Duncan’s notice that I rode into town in the company of women who make their living on their back.
The extra food is straight bribery, his not-so-subtle way to try and convince me to champion his cause. But I ain’t got any use for standing behind rubbish like his vaccine, and no amount of extra helpings is going to change my mind.
But I ain’t about to tell Miss Duncan any of that.
“Miss Duncan,” I say, giving her my best smile even though my tone is far from polite, “I promise that there is nothing going on except that this town is about to be overrun. And at some point you folks will think the answer yet again is to throw us colored girls at another problem of your own making.”
I don’t bother to keep the cold rage from my voice. Miss Duncan worked to train girls for years, girls who were packed off as little more than slaves, sent west to die just because they were cheap and expendable and no one would miss them. She’s got no room to judge me, and I’ll be damned if I let her start now.
“Jane—”
“I’ll thank you to hand my supper on through. Seems like some folks could stand to think on their own sins and stop worrying about how I account for mine.”
Miss Duncan purses her lips before handing me my canteen through the bars. She unlocks the door and hands through the plate, nearly catching my hand as she quickly slams it shut.
An ominous silence settles over the sheriff’s office once again. “You know they ain’t going to be able to stop that horde with the gun, no matter how fancy it might be,” I say. “The dead are going to take this town, and this county, hell, all of Kansas. Our best bet is to run, and keep running.”
She turns away, but not before I hear her soft reply. “I fear that you are right, Jane. That we will all find our end here.”
Her despair was almost enough to put me off my food.
Almost.
Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am in trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly.
—Psalms 31:9
—KATHERINE—
Chapter 12
Notes on the Ones Lost
After leaving Lucas, Ida, Sue, and Callie to their planning, I make my way to Gideon’s house, which after a bit of inquiry I discover is in the middle of town. I am still desperately in need of a bath, and the Madam had promised to find a change of clothing for all of us when I had headed out to find Jane. Here is to hoping she is as resourceful as my maman.
As I walk up to the house I am quite stunned by its beautiful simplicity. It is a fine structure, with an actual gable and a porch. The entire structure bears the signs of a recent whitewash and it makes me wonder just how the house came to be. This is no barrack. Was this once the home of a post commander, or maybe a chaplain? I do not know much about Army forts, but the building seems incongruous in a place that is mostly utilitarian in nature.
Either way, the house is the finest that I have seen out here in Kansas, and I wonder how it was that Gideon came to be in possession of it. I cannot see the fine people of Nicodemus giving over a house so easily; they must truly revere Gideon and his upgrades to the town’s defenses.
I enter the structure to find the Madam and her soiled doves talking in hushed whispers in the sitting room. They stop when I enter, their eyes wide. I pause on the threshold. “Did I interrupt something?”
Sallie is the only one who looks me in the eye. “We were discussing leaving. Sooner rather than later.”
I sink into a nearby chair. “No one is going to keep you from leaving,” I say.
The Madam straightens. “That wasn’t what we were concerned about.”
“Well,” I say, forcing a smile since the silence has pressed on a bit too long and no one seems to want to elaborate, “what is the matter at hand, then? I assume you have a plan? A destination? A way through or around that horde bearing down on us?”
The Madam looks embarrassed, and Nessie seems uncomfortable.
“We got enough of a plan, but our biggest concern is Lily,” Sallie says. “The Duchess thinks we should take her with us, on account of her being so close to Thomas and all, but me and Nessie think the girl should have her own mind to make up as she chooses.”
“Since her brother is gone,” Nessie says, her voice soft, “she should be able to choose her own path. Stay here with you and Jane, or head north with us.”
“You’re planning on taking Thomas?” I ask.
“You have a problem with that?” the Madam asks, leaning forward in her chair a bit.
I shake my head. “Of course not. It is clear he has become attached to you in a very short time, and there is no one here in town who would raise an argument. I am just considering that the difficulty of any trek is magnified by the presence of little ones. And none of you is trained in the art of defense.”
The Madam leans back and crosses her arms. “Well, that is something we’ve considered. There’s a group of Summerland roughnecks planning on leaving come dawn, and they’ve invited us to go along with them. We’re going to head up north where I’ve heard tell it’s safer.”
I purse my lips, because just what exactly is a group of Summerland drovers expecting as payment to escort a group of fallen women? I have to believe those men are not helping them out of the goodness of their hearts, but I am not so crass as to point that out.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I ask, changing the subject. The Madam does not seem to trust me completely, and that is fine, but I know Jane would not want me to let these women leave Nicodemus without any sort of plan. As much as Jane pretends toward indifference, she is fiercely loyal, and I know the Madam to be one of the few people Jane cares about in this wasteland.
“No, but it’s the one I got,” the Madam says.
I am tired and my temper is frayed from too many days of hardship. “There is a horde out there!” I say, unable to keep my terror out of my voice. “And I do not believe a single one of those drovers will be able to protect you all from the dead.”
“Maybe not,” the Madam says. “But there’s something about this town that makes me uneasy, and the sooner we take our leave the better I’ll feel.”
“Exactly,” Sallie says.
I take a deep breath and let it out. There is no use in yelling at a grown woman about her life choices, even if they are poor. “So in light of this revelation, I think I agree with Nessie and Sallie,” I say. “We
should ask Lily what she wants to do.”
“I want to watch Jane hang,” Lily says from the doorway.
“What?” I ask, while the soiled doves gasp.
“You don’t mean that,” the Madam says.
Lily storms into the living room, rage and tears in her eyes, and I wave the rest of the women away. “I will take care of this,” I tell them. The women nod and take their leave.
Lily stands before me, arms crossed and expression fierce. She wears clean clothes but there are tearstains on her face. She has been crying. I do not know the girl well, but even I can tell when a child is crying out for help.
So I do the only thing I can think of. I gather her up into a bone-crushing hug.
Lily flails, and I hold her tighter, my lips near her ear. There is no way past this but through, so I start talking.
“We did not get to talk much on the road here, did we? You might not remember me from Miss Preston’s, but I remember you. You and the Spencers used to bring us lemonade and cookies while we trained. You would scowl and chase Thomas around while his mother served us, and once you asked me if it was hard, killing the dead.” I am not glib like Jane, and I do not have her knack for spinning words into stories that ease the worries of those around her. And I am not clever like Jackson was, I cannot tell Lily the one thing she wants to hear so that she will trust and believe me. But I know how to spot a problem and solve it, and Lily’s broken heart is not so strange a thing.
We have all lost someone we have loved. It is practically the only guarantee in this terrible world.
Lily stills as she remembers, just enough that I loosen my grip a bit, but I do not let her go. “You said it was as easy as harvesting wheat in a field,” she whispers, voice clogged with emotion.
“Well, that day, I lied to you. Killing the dead is not easy. It is the hardest thing you will ever do. Not physically, though swinging a blade hard enough to sever a neck is no cakewalk. But because it takes a piece of your soul. No matter what you tell yourself, you know those folks were once just like you. They loved and fought and did all the messy parts of living you and I do.
“For us to keep on living, they have to die. There is no way around that. But that does not make it easy. And for the Negro to be the one to carry that burden, to bear the brunt of all the awfulness, well, it is far from just. Life is not fair.
“Lily, I knew your brother, and I know Jane. And it was Jane helping your brother find you that landed us all out here in Kansas in the first place. She knew it was dangerous, to go poking around in whatever awfulness we would find in the Spencers’ deserted house. She knew that it would mean bad things, for all of us. And yet she went, because it was you. And because that was what Jackson asked of her.”
Lily says nothing, her breaths coming too fast, and my heart breaks for her once again. But I keep talking, because that is all I can do. I know that there are not enough of us in this world taking care of one another, and I cannot let Lily go while she carries hate in her heart for the only person who loved her brother as much as she did.
We can fight together or we can die alone.
“Jane ended your brother because she loved him. And he asked her to do it because he knew that she loved him enough to carry it through. Watching someone turn, keeping them company in those last, final moments in the world . . . that is not easy, either. That is hell. Jane went through hell for your brother, because he asked her to, and she would do it again if she had to.”
I release Lily and take a step back. She does not move, and I gently take her hands, squeezing them tightly. Her eyes are closed, tears leaking from beneath the lashes.
“She didn’t even cry,” she finally says, ripping her hands out of my grip and slamming her fists against her thighs. “She just came back, handed me his belongings, and started barking out orders. If she hurt so bad, why didn’t she cry?”
“Because she knew in that moment that saving the rest of us was more important,” I say. “Losing Jackson broke Jane, but the thing about Jane is she is never going to let anyone see the cracks. She is going to do her healing in private. Because she knows she has a job to do, which is making sure the rest of us are as safe as we can be.
“But we have a job, too. Letting them lynch Jane, letting her die—that is wrong. Jane fought to save us all in Summerland, and you cannot turn your back on her no matter how angry you are right now. Not just because it is the last thing Jackson would want, but because if there is anyone in this world who understands your broken heart, it is Jane McKeene.”
Lily sniffs once, then twice, and then throws herself back into my arms, her small body wracked with sobs. I hold her until the storm subsides, rubbing her back. Once she has calmed, she pulls away, still crying softly.
“I’m still cross with Jane,” she says.
I nod. “I would recommend you get used to it. I spend much of my time the same way. But she is a good person, and good people are so hard to find. Now: you have a decision to make. Do you want to travel with the soiled doves and Thomas, or do you want to stay with Jane and me?” Jane is in no position to travel anywhere or make any kind of offer to the girl, but I know that if I were to let Lily run off with the Madam and her girls Jane would string me up herself. I still plan on convincing the Madam to stay until a more opportune time for leaving, maybe with the patrols once we have rescued Jane, but one step at a time.
Lily shrugs in answer to my question about her future. “I don’t rightly know.”
“Well, no one is going anywhere tonight, so you have some time to consider. But just know that there are few people I have had cause to admire as much as Jane McKeene, and she feels more affection for you than she lets on.”
She nods. “I’m going for a walk,” she says. I watch her leave through the door I just entered not long ago before taking a deep breath and letting it out.
A bath and a change of clothing is in order. And after that?
I need to see Jane. Because if Lily is in this kind of state, how can Jane be holding up? She needs someone by her side. Despite her bravado I know that Jane is scared. And what she needs right now, as much as an escape plan, is to know that someone is on her side no matter what.
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
—Shakespeare, Macbeth
—JANE—
Chapter 13
In Which I Get a Visit from the Dead
Through the night, the rail gun keeps up its maddening rhythm—whoomp whoomp whoomp—firing for about a minute before going silent. It fires every hour on the hour, and it is the world’s worst timepiece. I can’t see what it’s doing, but I can hear it, and it’s enough to make a body go insane.
Of course, so is being trapped in a tiny cell.
By the time the sky begins to brighten outside of my prison and no one has come to liberate me or string me up, I start to get antsy. Miss Duncan comes by to feed me breakfast—a cold biscuit and some kind of greasy meat—and to empty the bucket. But other than that I am left to my own devices. No Katherine, no Sue, no Sheriff Redfern. And no Gideon, though that last one is a relief.
I take a peek out the window of the cell to see what I might be missing, but the streets are empty, the day near burning hot even as the sun is not near its highest point in the sky. Autumn is near, and beyond that a winter I’ve heard to be harsher than what we’re used to back east, but you wouldn’t know it from the current temperature. I wonder if the heat is what’s got the streets so empty, with not a soul out and about seeing to their business. The only sound in all of Nicodemus is that rail gun and its clockwork firing.
But I am not without entertainment. And when my racing thoughts get to be too much, and when I’ve cried whatever tears I have to give at any given time about Jackson’s loss, I read my letters. The one from my momma, and the one I took from Jackson.
At first, I feel guilty reading the purloined letter. There’s a whole lot of waffling before I pull it out and open it
. This remorse is a new thing, because in the past I have never let a bit of thievery put me off my game. But now, every time I do something questionable, I hear Katherine’s voice in the back of my head—Jane, what an awful thing to do and Jane, you are better than this in that way she has—and I get all twisted up.
But at the same time, I can’t not read the letter. I have to know why Jackson married this girl. I keep thinking about him and this mystery girl, limbs entangled, and it sets off a whole new spell of crying.
And sometime around the dozenth or so firing of the rail gun I realize that my chances of leaving Nicodemus alive are dwindling by the second. See, I’ve been in the cell a day and a night. And that rail gun has been firing most of that time. How many rounds has that infernal device sent hurtling toward the dead? And how many are still left? It ain’t like bullets are easy to come by, even if Gideon got his own workshop set up here in Nicodemus. The fact that it keeps firing means nothing good. Even if I survive the coming trial, there ain’t no way any of us are surviving that horde if we’re not gone soon.
So, figuring that my immortal soul is already beyond all redemption, I open the letter and begin to read it.
And immediately wish I hadn’t.
Jackson,
You will not read this. You cannot read this. But it isn’t right to send someone off into the world without a love note, no matter what you might say. Protest all you want, this is mine.
I know you hate hearing this, but I am entirely devoted to you. Every morning waking up next to you has been the best day of my life, and when our child is born I know it will be even better. You’ve felt the way he kicks! I have no doubt that he will be just as mischievous as his papa.
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