West Winds' Fool and Other Stories of the Devil's West

by Laura Anne Gilman

  The soft, dry sound of cards being shuffled drew her attention again, and she studied the one table currently in use, where the players at were intent, occasionally tossing a card down or moving a coin from one pile to another. The faint glints of silver reminded her of the coins in her bag, tucked into an inner pocket so as not to jingle and draw unwanted attention. Silver coins, not paper money, the surfaces plain and the edges flattened, the easier to cut in half, or quarters. The mercantile at the Landing had had a pair of shears at the counter, and trimmed bits off her coins for the few things she’d needed to buy. It was a practical system, she supposed, but difficult to transfer any great wealth.

  Then again, she thought as she watched the bits of metal move from one owner to another on the table, people did strange things with great effort, every day, and seemed satisfied with the results.

  The two men at the other table had been joined by a woman, her gown more of what she had expected to see in a saloon, a shimmery green fabric that clung to her body more like a chemise than anything to be seen in public. And yet, it covered her shoulders and bosom decently, and her hair was respectably bound in a braided knot atop her head. The men spoke to her as though an equal, listening to her words with their heads inclined, their hands wrapped around mugs of something steaming hot, nodding or shaking their heads occasionally, but not interrupting.

  Her father had listened to her like that, though he’d too-often ruined it by patting her on the cheek after, and telling her she was a smart girl, pity about that. She should miss him, she thought. She was aware of being gone from them, him and her mother both, but the sensation of absence was not, she thought, the same as missing.

  She did not feel the same as other folk. Did not behave the way they did. But she had learned to pretend.

  There were others in the room, she noted now that she had a chance to take it all in. A slender, well-dressed young man with pale blond hair lounged against the wall at the far end of the bar, watching the players. She studied his face, deciding that he was there to catch anyone cheating. At the other side of the room, a young girl wrapped in a white apron that covered her dress near-entire, her hair in a chestnut plait down her back, was arguing quietly with an older man in vest and sleeves, until he threw up his hands and shooed her away with a grin, only to have the woman she’d spoken to earlier approach him, laying a hand on his elbow.

  Was this the old man they’d all be speaking of? He did not look at all old, though she supposed it might have been a term of affection, or respect. His hair was the same chestnut as the girl’s, though threaded with silver that glinted in the lamplight, and his dark-complexioned skin seemed unlined from this distance. She might have thought him only a few years older than herself, if she’d met him at a social occasion.

  He looked up at something the woman said, and she knew that he was looking at her, though he did nothing so gauche as stare. Then he nodded and turned away, the woman’s hand falling from his arm as she watched him go. And then he … simply wasn’t there.

  She blinked, but no. Everyone was exactly where they’d been, save him. She looked down accusingly at the glass in her hand, but she knew the taste of spirits, and there had been none in her drink.

  “Come on, then.” The woman was back, looking at her impatiently. Did everyone move so quickly, that she could not see them?

  Uncanny. The landand the people as well, she supposed.

  She placed her glass back down on the bar with a nod of thanks to the bartender, and followed the woman in the brown dress through the room until they came to the far wall, and a doorway she would have sworn on her mother’s Bible had not been there before.

  “Go on,” the woman said, pushing the door open a crack. “You’ve made it this far, no reason to fear the rest.”

  The door closed behind her with a gentle click, and she was alone in a dark-paneled room.

  No, not alone. The man she’d seen before was seated at a wooden desk. There was a single chair set in front of the desk, and she lifted her chin and walked over to it, settling her skirts carefully as she sat down.

  Only then did she realize that she’d left her bag, with all her coin, all her belongings, back at the bar. A moment of panic fluttered her chest.

  The man looked up from the paper he had been marking, as though she’d made a noise, and shook his head with a faint frown. “Nobody will touch your bag,” he told her, and there was such certainty in his voice, she felt herself calm without second thought.

  “Welcome to Flood,” he said. “And to the Saloon.”

  “Thank you,” she said, because it seemed the polite thing to do. He was the source of that musk, she decided, although it was no stronger here than it had been outside.

  “So. Grace.”

  He seemed to be tasting her name, rather than asking it. The woman in brown must have told him, of course.

  “No family name?”

  She tilted her head, studying him. “Would it make a difference if I did?” Her family was all back east, so far as to not even existor perhaps it was she who no longer existed, for them. The living weights they had put on her seemed less binding, here, either way. No more the daughter of John Cooper Olcott, no longer the despair of Patience Olcott…

  His hair wasn’t chestnut, she realized, but black. Or perhaps that was merely the change of light. His eyes were a deep golden brown, set deep under a high brow, and…

  She shook herself. Was this even the same man he’d seen, out front? She firmed her lips, and studied him more carefully. Yes, it was the same man, though her first glance at him did not hold up so well at close range: he was definitely older, hair darker and skin paler, but she was convinced that it was him.

  “You are a surprise,” he said, more to himself than her. “The winds will have their amusement, I suppose.”

  “Excuse me,” she said, aware that her tone was less polite than her words. “But who are you?”

  Those golden-brown eyes widened, and this close she thought they almost brightened, before he leaned back in his chair and started to laugh.

  She waited, only practice in being mocked allowing her to keep her shoulders straight and her fingers loose on her lap.

  “You truly have no idea where you are, do you.” This seemed tonot so much amuse as delight him, she decided.

  “A town called Flood, in an unnamed saloon, locked in a room with a madman.”

  “You are not entirely wrong,” he said, but his voice was soft, and yes, definitely … amused. She should be angry, or at least worried, if this man held as much power as others seemed to deed him, but instead felt a tingle of something else, something that had her meeting that gaze squarely, waiting, rather than attempting to flee.

  Whatever happened here, at least it was better than what she had left. It had to be.

  “You have, however, heard of me, if not by name,” the man went on. “Beyond the Territory, in the so-called civilized lands, they call me the Devil.”

  There was silence in the small room, an almost palpable pressure against her ears, and then she thought she could hear her own heartbeat, slow as a metronome, before sound came rushing back as she let out a gasp of laughter.

  If you’re not careful, the devil will take you, girl. How many times had she heard that, as a child? Even time she showed anger, or dared contradict an elder, as though these were sins akin to those of Cain.

  She shook off the memory and lifted her chin, refusing to let him see the tremor that had passed through her at his words. Those dour men had pressed their Bibles when they lectured her, dreaming of hellfire and damnation sweeping her off, not … this.

  Of course she knew of the Devil, the so-called Master of the Territory. You sold your soul to him when you crossed the river, the stories said. Or, other stories claimed, you only sold your soul when you settled down; if you kept moving, he couldn’t catch you. Or, other stories said...

  There were many stories and very few of them agreed, save that the Devil was the so
le power in the Territories, and God Himself had given up on those lands, or perhaps never found them to begin with.

  Her mother, rest her soul, had scoffed at that. “The devil does not take human form, Grace,” she’d told her daughter, one smooth hand resting on her own Bible, the gilt lettering of the cover faded from endless reverent handling. “He has no need; we do too much of his work for him.”

  She might go to the devil some day, but she did not think today was that day. Besides, what he had said…

  “They call you the Devil,” she repeated carefully. “You do not claim that title for yourself?”

  “A title that is self-claimed is meaningless.” He leaned back in his chair, and reached for a slender cigar that had been waiting on his desk. He did not cut or light it, merely rolled it between his fingers, studying it for a moment, rather than her. “Something given unasked? That has meaning. And power.”

  Abruptly, that gaze returned to her face. “Why did you come to Flood?”

  It was less a question than a demand for a response, and she bit back her automatic reaction, to refuse an answer from sheer willfulness. This was not one of those dour men; if he was the Master of the Territory, he had every right to ask her, and expect a response.

  She could give him a handful of answers, each one as true as the other. Whim, or chance, or fate, or sheer cussedness, or the desire to go as far from other people as she could.

  “The winds pushed me here,” she said, instead, remembering the way the wind had seemed to wrap itself around her skirts, drawing her attention to the lesser path.

  “Yes. That much we gathered.”

  Had they? There was something in his words, something in what they were sayingand weren’tthat intrigued her. “The bartender, Iktan? He said I smelled of the wind.”

  “He’s rarely wrong in these matters. In fact, I’m not sure I remember the last time he was. It would be annoying, if it weren’t so useful.” The manthe Devilput the cigar back down on the desk, and steepled his fingers in front of his mouth, studying her over the tips. A shock of blond hair fell over his forehead and she had the odd urge to push it back.

  “The winds are none of mine to control nor call,” he went on. “They have their own mysteries, and act on their own whims. But I find it useful to take their counsel, when they choose to give it.”

  She licked her lips, suddenly aware that they’d gone dry. “You speak as through the wind is … alive.”

  He smiled, and she wished he hadn’t.

  “The windsthere are many of them, each with their own … mood, you may call it. And I do not claim to call them alive, but they are certainly aware.”

  She thought again of how the wind had belled her skirts and pushed at her knees. She thought of the voice she’d thought she’d heard, that faint echo of laughter. She had thought it … she had thought it her imagination, or at most a hint, her brain’s impulse. The idea that something might be directing her….

  Uncanny, she thought again, and then a familiar, if unwelcome, flare of anger warmed her spine. “And ittheysent me here?” She might travel to the ends of civilization, it seemed, and still she would be shaped to someone else’ssomething else’s whim.

  He rolled the cigar slowly against the desk, the leaf crackling slightly under his touch. “I doubt anything so overt, although I am open to surprise. More … they may have noted you in passing, and thought it amusing to direct you into my path. Or, perhaps, me into yours. You dislike that idea.”

  Her expression must have let slip her distaste. “I dislike anything attempting to manipulate me,”

  “Yes, I imagine you do,” he said, his own expression turning thoughtful. “I imagine you prefer to be the one doing the manipulating.”

  He did not sound disapproving. “A woman’s lot in life is to manipulate those around her. It is the only way we may gain even the smallest of control over our own lives.”

  His lips twitched, then regained their composed line. “Your mother must have been a formidable woman,” he said. “Or your grandmother, perhaps?”

  “My mother.” There was a faint pang at the thought. “She died two winters past.”

  “And you miss her.”

  “I … no.” The admission slipped out, past lips usually far more guarded.

  “No. You loved her, but you do not miss her. You believe she’d gone to a better place?”

  A faint shrug, two years of ache, and an odd sense of freedom impossible to explain. Unnatural child, her aunt had called her, more than once. “She is gone.”

  There was an absence where she had been, a space that had once been filled, but even in the first days after, she had felt only that absence, not the raw grief that had been expected of her.

  Odd and unnatural, her father had called her.

  “And, freed of that tether, you left your home, left all you belonged to, and came … here.”

  Suddenly he smiled, not the faint twitch of earlier, nor the closed-mouthed smirk she’d disliked, but an open, almost joyful shift. “Of course you did.”

  Even as it happened, she could not quite follow the movement that took her from the Devil’s study to a small room on the upper floor of the saloon, her bag placed on top of the low wooden drawers, her few items of clothing hung in the wardrobe, even her stockings folded and placed in the drawers, her brush and comb next to the now-empty bag. There was a basin and a pitcher of water on a stand by the narrow window, and an oil lamp hanging from a hook in the ceiling, a metal hook-and-cup hung on the wall for lighting or dousing it.

  “Your room,” the woman in brown had said, pushing open the door. “Mostly our girls share, but you’re too old for that nonsense. Peace and quiet’s what you need.”

  “Evening meals starts at seven in the evening,” the girl who’d been putting away her things was chattering now, fussily adjusting the wardrobe, as though there were twice as many clothes in there. Somehow, she thought there might be, as though each chemise and skirt had multiplied as they were shaken out and put away. “We don’t hold on ceremony, but that’s when the food’s first ready. Just come down and have what you want. Cook starts coffee when he wakes up, so whenever you come down it’ll be ready, there’s nobody who wakes before him, not even the boss.”

  “What’s your name?” She’d been told, she thought, but there was nothing but a grey haze in her thoughts, where it should be.

  “Bets. It’s short for Elizabeth but the boss said I was too wee a thing to need such a long name, and it stuck even when I got bigger. I’ve been here since I was seven.”

  “You’re a servant?” The hired girls back home had chattered endlessly, but only to each other. Still, she supposed her own status was … uncertain, here. She wasn’t even sure, herself, what she’d agreed to.

  “Indentured til I’m sixteen. That’s next year. I’m going to get married then. Boss said we had to wait, so Aaron’s been working his daddy’s farm, earning land of his own.”

  The girl turned, and clasped two fingers over her mouth. “And here I am chatting when you’re likely wore out and just want to rest. I’ll be out of your way in a twitch, let me just fetch you a towel for your basin. The sheets are fresh, but if the pillow’s not to your liking, just let me know. I run the linens, so I know where everything is.”

  If she hadn’t been tired before, the girl’s activity would have made her so. Grace managed a smile and a thank you, and waited until the girl had slipped out the door before she sat down on the bed, staring around her.

  She was part of the Devil’s household now, it seemed. If only she knew what that meant.

  “Grace. Grace! You’re mist-dreaming again.”

  “Was I? I’m sorry.” She looked down at the work in her hands, gratified to note that she hadn’t dropped the dish into the sink and broken something, this time. Mist-dreaming. That was a new term, among the many new words she’d learned in the past weeks. She supposed it was as descriptive as any.

  “It’s a nice change from Bets al
ways talking,” Anna said, shrugging. “You’re different.” Anna frowned, glancing sideways over the sink. “I don’t mean that in a bad way. Not exactly.”

  “I’m not offended.” She wasn’t. She couldn’t be, not when it was the truth.

  She finished wiping down the dish Anna had given her, and placed it with the others, then waited for the girl to finish with the one she was washing. It should have been lowering to be assigned kitchen duties with this child, as though she were still a girl herself, but the other option would be to serve drinks among the players, and neither she nor the boss had thought that was a good idea.

  Not yet, anyway, he had said, that cigar in his hand again, rolling it between long fingers like a mountebank might move a coin.

  Not ever, she had wanted to retort, but caution and training held her tongue. She was not the sort to let loose among others. She had none of the virtues of service, no smooth tongue nor gentle nature. He had seen that, he must have, and yet…

  And yet, weeks later, she still had no idea of what he wanted from her. All this … the boss had been all that was generous, but she did not pretend that it would not have a cost, eventually, and for more than her work as a household maid might bring.

  Particularly a maid they did not need.

  There were eleven souls living in the saloon proper: Iktan, the bartender, and the cook, a lean, pale specter of a man named Louis, were the only men. The boy she’d seen before, Moses, lived with his father, the farrier, outside of town proper. Judit was the woman in the brown dress; she ran the saloon for the boss, and all those within it: Anna and Bets, and a slip of a child unfairly named Prudence, who couldn’t be more than seven, but ran messages and generally got underfoot like an unruly cat, plus Zinnia and Edward, who dealt at the tables, and Maggie, who served drinks, and possibly offered more. She didn’t ask, and didn’t judge. The boss.

  And her now, of course.

  “It’s not a bad difference,” Anna went on, suddenly realizing she was still holding a soapy dish, and dunking it to rinse before handing it over for drying. “And it’s not because you’re from away; Maggie and Judit and Zinnia are all from away too, although Judit’s been here so long I don’t know if she even counts any more, plus she’s Judit. You’re different the way Winter is different.”