Scarlett could see the relief in the man as he moved away from Albert; he practically skipped toward the tent. “It doesn’t have to be like this,” she said. “The money—”
“You think to negotiate with me, after what you’ve done?” Shilling pressed a hand beneath his coat. “One bullet to my shoulder, one right above my heart. If I wasn’t wearing body armor, I’d have died back there in Lechlade. Thanks to you, it hurts to breathe.”
“I could help fix that little problem,” Scarlett said.
Shilling smiled. “I’d kill you myself now, but I have to wait for my employer. We’d spread out, looking for you, but she won’t be far away.”
The man standing beside Albert grunted. “I sure as hell hope not.”
“I told you to relax! He’s restrained, isn’t he?” Shilling’s own tension was obvious. He scowled across at Scarlett, spinning the umbrella again. “You know what really shocks me? You let Albert Browne strut around this raft without a band! Days of it! Past towns and villages, where innocent, law-abiding folk slept in their beds, not dreaming something so evil was an oar’s length away. It’s a miracle it hasn’t been unleashed. Truly, you’re out of your mind. And you wouldn’t have lasted long either. Sooner or later, he would have killed you.”
“Now we’re going to do that for him,” the young man beside Scarlett said. He laughed.
Scarlett didn’t bother making a rejoinder. She was eyeing up her options. The red stain in the sky hung over them, its phosphorescent fingers bending on the wind, as if blindly clutching at the lagoon. There was light enough for her to see by, get the details fixed for when she made her move. Shilling and four others. There was no sign of the one she’d kicked over the side—perhaps she’d staved his ribs in—and the man on the deck was lifeless. Five men in total. All of them had guns. The young man at her side was good, and Shilling’s skills she already knew.
Not easy.
One thing possibly to her advantage. It was a small area that they stood on, a rough square: everyone facing inward as if on the margins of her mat. Gunplay would not be simple for any of them without risking hitting their associates. There’d be hesitation for sure, and she’d be moving fast….
But no, it wouldn’t wash. She could take two out, probably; three at most. Not all five. After that they would shoot her. They would have already shot the old man and the child. Albert they were keeping alive for now—but he might be caught in the cross fire too.
No. They’d all die. It wasn’t viable.
It wasn’t viable on her own.
She looked at Albert.
She thought of the Lechlade wharves going up in flames.
Her gaze dropped down to the dead man at his feet. Something had killed him very quickly. The guy hadn’t had time to draw his gun or the big knife in his belt.
She looked back at Albert again.
His eyes stared past her, out at nothing. No doubt about it. The restraint was doing something to him. It wasn’t physical. The bound hands, the metal teeth digging into his forehead: they weren’t the half of it. He was there and yet not there. The frightened men were constraining something else too.
From where she stood, she could just see the metal rod hanging down his back, connecting the circlet with the two lengths of chain that bound his hands. It wasn’t a very thick rod. Scarlett looked at it, fixing its position in her mind.
The flare above them faded; the lantern hanging at the tent reasserted itself. It cast a dim glow over Scarlett, Albert, Joe and Ettie, and Shilling and his men. They stood like a convocation of ghosts, silent and somber, in the middle of the open sea.
“Albert,” Scarlett said. She spoke as slowly and clearly as she could. “I want you to stay absolutely still.”
He gave no sign that he had heard. Shilling glanced at her, amused. “You’re in luck there, girl. He can’t do anything else.”
Engines in the night. Far off, she saw green headlights. Three boats approaching through the dark.
“Here she is,” Shilling said. “Not long for any of you now.”
Not long. Scarlett knew enough to realize that, short as the odds were now, they would become shorter still when the pale-haired woman stepped on board.
It is death to go near her.
Almost as if she shared Scarlett’s thoughts, Ettie started to cry. Her grandfather instantly tried to shush her, sought to pick her up, but the little girl would not be comforted. She squealed, screamed, began thrashing in his grip.
“Ettie,” Joe said. “Please…”
The man who had been charged to search the raft passed by with Scarlett’s rucksack and prayer tube in his hand. “Dr. Calloway won’t like this noise.”
Shilling nodded. “Paul—”
“Give her a moment!” Joe cried. “She is only three! Please, Ettie…”
The noise redoubled. Everyone watched the little girl. Everyone except Scarlett, who was checking the distances, the angles between the men.
“Ettie…”
“Dear gods above us,” Shilling exclaimed. “What a racket! Throw her off the side.”
During her days wandering in Wessex, Scarlett had several times seen conjurers in fairs bring frogs’ corpses to juddering life with the aid of a pair of electrodes and a vinegar battery. It was as if Joe had received a similar jolt. He gave a ragged cry; with sudden strength, he snatched up his granddaughter and began retreating toward the side of the raft, where the rowboats were. The small man followed; the man holding Scarlett’s rucksack threw it out into the dark and moved across to intercept them. Everyone’s attention shifted.
It was exactly what Scarlett wanted and was waiting for.
Four actions, four movements.
She carried them out in as many seconds.
The first was a punch sideways into the throat of the bearded man beside her, so that his eyes bulged, his tongue protruded, his shiny grin burst open like a paper bag.
Better still, his grip loosened on his gun.
As his fingers relaxed, she snatched it from him with her left hand, pulled the trigger, sent a single shot at a diagonal through the shoulder of the man beside Albert. That was her second action.
During the third, she rolled beneath a bullet fired by Shilling, landed beside the dead man on the deck, wrenched the long knife from his belt with her right hand, and kept on going.
Then she jumped up past the man clutching at his shoulder and swung the knife round with all her strength at the back of Albert’s neck. She had time, during this fourth action, to hope he had done what she asked and remained in precisely the same place.
He had. The very tip of the knife sliced clean through the metal rod, snapping it in two.
Scarlett’s momentum carried her to the edge of the raft, almost over the top of the box that housed the engine. In the next few moments, she was busy righting herself, swiveling, firing twice in the direction of Shilling’s darting form, keeping him at a distance. She wasn’t focused on Albert. She didn’t see the broken rod fall away. She didn’t see the ends of the chains come free. She didn’t see Albert pull his hands clear and wrench the circlet off his head.
She did see what happened after that.
Shilling opened his mouth in warning. Then something struck him and the others head-on.
His men were cast aside like skittles—they tumbled upward and away, guns spinning, bowler hats whirling aloft. The small-boned man; the man with the wounded shoulder; the one who had injured Scarlett on the cliff; the one who had been trying to intercept Joe and the child—all of them were gone. They were tossed away like dolls, screaming, higher and higher into the dark.
Shilling himself cried out, doubling over as if he had been punched in the stomach, but he did not instantly careen off into the air. He was driven several feet backward along the deck, his coat outstretched behind him, his bo
ot heels dragging on the wood. He collided with a pole at the corner of the tent awning. The pole cracked but held; he was momentarily wedged.
The lantern on the tent spun crazily, its light striping the raft. Albert stood alone in the center of the deck. His head was bowed. Scarlett could not see his face.
She started forward, but it was like walking into the mouth of a tempest. She called his name. He turned. His eyes were blank; she did not recognize him. She stumbled sideways, squinting into the gale. Where was Joe? Where was Ettie? From on high came shrieks that soared and swept like fireworks and, like fireworks, burst suddenly and went out.
Shilling’s hat had vanished. He was crushed against the pole. He forced his gun up, snarling.
Albert raised a hand.
Shilling’s spectacles bent, were pushed, cracking, back into his eyes. Shilling cried out. He fired the gun three times.
And the middle of the raft broke apart.
Deck boards shattered. Crates moved across the deck, swung in vicious arcs with Albert at the center. One slammed into Shilling, drove him backward through the tent, tore both it and him away.
A scream of snapping wood; crates spiraled off, splashed into blackness. The raft splintered. Scarlett tried to call to Albert, but the deck was tilting; he went one way, she another. The world turned upside down. Water crashed upon her from above. There was air below, and she was falling into it. Something struck her head. Sheet lightning flashed across her eyes. She thought for an instant it was day again, that she was standing on a bright road, with someone waiting patiently for her there. Then the dark returned, and with it wetness, pain, and terror.
Scarlett’s body went one way, her mind the other. Nothing filled the space between.
It was a small thing that finally convinced Albert he needed to escape. Not a beating, not a torture; not a turn of the dial or a session with the flail. Not even the death or disappearance of another kid—the empty bed, the bundled clothes, the burial parties setting out while the rest of Stonemoor was having breakfast. He used to watch them from the cafeteria window as he queued up for his eggs: the warders in long overcoats pushing something in a barrow toward the sandy ground beyond the pines.
Not any of that. The pain grew dull with repetition. The beds were restocked. The eggs always tasted fine.
Just a small thing. A petal on the floor.
“Oh, Albert,” Dr. Calloway said. “Well done.”
A faint click came, as it always did at the end of the testing. What was she doing? Switching on the lights? Closing off the circuit? He never had the energy to care.
Perfume spiked his nostrils and awoke him from his trance. His body shook, his heart pounded. His bones felt brittle beneath his flesh. With his dripping head slumped against his chest, Albert hadn’t heard the footsteps of Dr. Calloway as she crossed over to his chair. He felt her fingers moving against the back of his head, working on the knot. The mask was removed; he had already squeezed his eyes tight against the neon brightness, but it blinded him nonetheless.
She unstrapped him, gave him the cup, and let him drink. Objects swam into focus: the white tiles, the woman’s dress as she moved to stand above him, the metal table with its range of items, halfway across the room. He caught the blond halo of her hair, the shining metal crescent open in her hand. She always took time putting the mind restraint back on him. It was a way to emphasize how helpless he was: after the experiments, he had no strength left to do anything to her.
Unusually, she lingered, studying him.
“Well done?” he whispered.
“Look at the flower.”
He obeyed her as he always did, though his eyes were raw in their sockets. It was strange to see the items on the table in their true solidity after staring at mental impressions so long. The lit candle had burned halfway down during his testing. The dish of rice, the pot of stones, the mouse, the bottle…all sat as before. Today’s flower was a Cheddar pink, five-petaled, frail of stem, drooping like an invalid over the lip of its jar of water. It too was identical to the image he had fixed in his mind, except for a single petal now missing from the fringed corona that surrounded the purple-pink heart.
“Did I do it, then?” he asked.
“On the floor by my feet.”
He turned his neck with care; during one of the stronger electrical shocks, he’d spasmed so hard against the straps that a line of skin was gone. But yes, there—down by her polished black shoes, a full twelve feet from the table: a fleck of purplish pink lying on the tiles. Albert stared at it, uncomprehending, then looked up at her. “That’s…quite a long way,” he said.
“A very long way.” In the cool light of the testing room, her skin glowed palely, neatly emphasizing her heart-shaped face, the wide cheekbones that tapered to the small and dimpled chin. “You removed the petal blindfolded,” she said, “and carried it slowly across the room. You kept it at a constant height and speed, despite all the distractions I could throw at you. Such delicacy and precision! Such fine control, regardless of the pain! I have never witnessed a better performance, Albert Browne. I am impressed. Who knows—with help, you may yet achieve great things. It is a special day. And now it is time for lunch.”
She smiled at him, a smile of startling directness and clarity that he had not seen from her before. And in that moment, bathed by the radiance of that smile, Albert for the first time knew true happiness, a sense of tearful gratitude that, despite the weakness of his nature, despite his inner deformity and moral wickedness, he had finally proved himself to her. He had completed the task without physical collapse and without the threat of maxing out. He’d done something that impressed Dr. Calloway. He had repaid her faith in him.
His surge of pride and pleasure was so strong that he also knew another thing even more clearly. If he stayed at Stonemoor so much as a day longer, he would be lost. He would stop struggling, he would stop resisting, he would never again look longingly out over the walls of his prison toward the world. He would become hers. He would lose his dreams of freedom and, like a slavish dog, pursue only her goodwill.
She moved out of sight around the chair to fix the band back on his head, treading on the petal as she did so. Albert’s eyes dropped to the blot of pinkness crushed against the tiles. “Thank you, Dr. Calloway,” he said sincerely. “I think you’re right. This is going to be a very special day.”
The ringing of the bell did not itself wake her up, but it was a staircase leading back to the living world. She followed it slowly, ascending its long, steep ramp of sound for unknown minutes, up from deepest darkness and in and out of dreams, until black became gray, gray became white, and the whiteness split apart and she lay staring at the sky.
Small clouds were passing across it—slow, frothy plumes like sheep tails, floating on an immensity of blue. She knew it was the sky; yet, for all she could tell, she might have been above it, with the whole Earth pressing on her back, and her looking down into a bottomless void.
She lay gazing straight ahead without moving, assembling her impressions carefully. She was on a hard surface of some kind. There was warmth on her face, but a breeze was blowing and she was otherwise cold. She had a dull ache in her hand and a sharp one in her head. A bell rang nearby, a persistent clanging that was neither particularly pleasant nor harsh enough to act on. Occasionally she heard the flap of cloth. There was also the constant rustling of the sea. A fly passed in and out of her vision. For a long while, she lay still without feeling the need to know anything more. Then thoughts dripped like syrup back into her brain. She remembered who she was. She remembered her own name.
Scarlett raised her head stiffly, looked down the length of her body. She lay on a smooth gray concrete slope, head lower, feet higher, amid a mess of pebbles, sand, shells, and rags of seaweed. Beyond her boots, the slope continued on, pitted, whorled by waves, with great holes and fissures spread rando
mly. They looked big enough to swallow a girl. At an unknown distance, the concrete fractured into three enormous shards. One rose straight up to an implausible height. The other two jutted back outward, bent like daffodil leaves, with overhangs of incalculable size and weight that might at any moment slam down to obliterate Scarlett as if she had never been. The realization gave her sudden vertigo, which instantly led to nausea; she turned on her side and vomited out a rush of seawater. This made her feel much better.
With her head askew like that, she could see the blank, gray water of the lagoon stretching away in sunlight to meet the clouds at the horizon. A few feet away, a gentle froth-splash of waves struck against the slope and over a piece of washed-up planking. And now her syrup thoughts flowed faster. She recalled the fight on the raft; she recalled Shilling, Joe, and Ettie.
She recalled Albert.
Albert. The men flying impossibly into the air.
The raft breaking up, collapsing.
Albert at the center of it all.
“Holy crap…,” Scarlett said.
A cold feeling unrelated to her soaking clothes rose through her. It was the chill of desolation. She lifted numb fingers and felt mechanically for her cuss-box, but it had been torn away. Torn away like everything else she had. She closed her eyes, gathering her energy; then Scarlett raised herself again.
She got unsteadily to her feet, slipping in the sand and shingle. Her movements felt like those of someone else. She was wet through, though the sun and wind had begun to dry her out. Her hair was sticky, her skin granular with salt. At last she was upright. She took a deep breath and looked around.
And saw an immensely tall man standing right behind her.
Scarlett gave a scream and leaped back, scrabbling for her gun. But she had lost that too. She stumbled, stood at bay, eyes staring, hands raised.
The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne Page 25
