His Ragged Company

by Rance Denton

  She stopped, solid as stone, and regarded me.

  Then, after her chin jerked to the side, she looked at my outstretched hand.

  The girl placed her dirty hand in mine.

  Fingers brushed the inside of my wrist. Little digits of metal, cool like bullet-heads. The hairs on my neck and forearms shot to attention.

  Not a gentle touch. A grab. She tugged me close.

  A blossom of light blew wide open in front of me. I tried to speak, but nothing came out: just a stammer, pulled off my tongue, down through my throat, driving like a train along the veins of my arm, and then leaping out of my palm and into hers. I watched in frozen surprise as a flipbook flash of reason poured across her face. When she opened her mouth, teeth like cloudy glass clacked together. Then my words came out of her: “Atrocious bedside manner if you ask me.” A hoarse and yet oddly musical collection of creaks and whispers.

  Lachrimé crushed her cigarette between two fingers. “We should get her somewhere that isn’t just a well for disease, Faust. Get her some clothes, get her something to—”

  “Get her some clothes,” the woman repeated, in a remarkable echo of Lachrimé’s voice. “Get her something to—”

  “Eat,” Lachrimé concluded.

  Leading her out to the mouth of the alley was a journey in itself. Her gangly legs stretched in long strides, but her feet slid with all the uncertainty of a newborn calf. Tricks played out in front of me: in the alley she towered, stretched long like taffy, but by the time we were at the street she seemed smaller, meeker, as if she’d shrunk herself into the best imitation of normal she could manage. Between Lachrimé and me, she could have turned sideways and disappeared.

  Her hand gripped mine. Seeking reassurance. Or so I told myself, to avoid just how possessively powerful her grip felt.

  Lachrimé asked, “Levinworth?” and I nodded, because when you didn’t know what to do, you went to someone smarter, someone sharper. At all costs, we avoided lamplights and visibility and I hoped we could shuffle her off in due time.

  We passed by the Crooked Cocoon, skirting the span of light from the windows and porch. Tension shot through her stickfigure limbs, hard as steel. Her chin jerked left, right, and the jewel-like eyes began to seek out some kind of answers in the darkness. “Wrongness,” she said. “There is a – a wrongness here, like a failing heartbeat. You feel it. You must.”

  “You’re giving my senses more credit than they deserve.”

  “Why have I come,” she said, “but to fill myself with its – its prodigious stink? It is dying.”

  Lachrimé’s lips tugged into a line. “And so am I, listening to this. You got some kind of name, Stargirl?”

  “Do you not smell it? It weakens. It falls to pieces, pieces, pieces, and drags the clouds down with its cries. You—” Turning, she pulled her gaze from Lachrimé and pinned me to the wall with it. “You do. I know it.” Her nostrils flared. “You’re jumbled and misplaced, tangled and discarded and tossed aside, forgetting and forgotten.”

  Her hand opened. A brief surge of power like wind almost sent me ass over teakettle. I steeled my heels.

  It occurred to me, perhaps too damn late, that I was dealing with something else here. Something you don’t measure with yardsticks or pray about in church, something gone uncategorized in little books and catalogues. Human was just a familiar word, but not one that applied to her. Her jaunty, carved form turned away from us.

  Not knowing the etiquette of the unfamiliar, I asked, “Do you have a name?”

  “Everything has a name. I am not an exception.”

  “Then what will I call you?”

  “Can you not find it in yourself? I have left it there, in the space where I took the knowledge of words from you.”

  “Oo-kay,” Lachrimé breathed. “It’s been a nice walk, dear, but whatever you decided to smoke tonight has messed you up something mighty.” She reached out for the woman’s jade wrist, her fingers a kind invitation. “There’s a fellow we’re on the way to see by the name of Doctor Levinwo—”

  A sweep of her arm sent Lachrimé back, back, in a banner-flap flutter of skirts and sleeves, until she struck the side of the tailor’s building.

  I tugged the statuesque woman away from Lachrimé, away from the porch, shoved her out into the street with a firm proclamation of, “Back the hell off,” before I gathered any damn sense at all.

  Stargirl, still infantile with her feet, would have splashed right down into the street if it weren’t for crashing into someone else entirely, and almost collapsing against him.

  There was a kerchief wrapped around his head. Streaks from black coal were smeared down the front of his shirt. Despite the dark, I recognized him. He worked at the mines with Mr. Bisbin, the foreman. He was as big as a locomotive.

  “Well, goddamn, Faust, don’t mind if I do,” he said, giving the girl a twirl. When the light struck her it scattered in a hundred different rays. “And I’ll be, you’re one odd-looking duck if I say so myself. Ain’t that right? Ain’t that right. Hell, Marshal, look at you sneaking out to round up the circus freaks after hours.”

  His attention seemed to waft over her for just a few seconds before a dull glaze filled his wet eyes, and she slinked away from him like a crude afterthought. A vein on the right side of his temple bulged ferociously against his skin. He blew out a breath, reeking of hot whiskey. Behind Big Boy – I couldn’t remember his name for the life of me – a stumbling posse of shadows emerged: some of his friends, all faces from the Crooked Cocoon, stinking so strongly of Poindexter’s cheapest booze that I greeted their sweat before I ever saw their faces.

  Big Boy started rolling up his dirty cuffs. The universal sign of being drunk enough to toss an ass-whooping. “It’s a good Saturday night, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Good enough,” I said. “Great for enjoying a few deep breaths to clear the mind. How much have you had to drink?”

  He laughed. “Plenty. Plenty enough to do something stupid.” The miner’s fist tightened into a meaty sledgehammer.

  “But not enough to not reconsider, I hope.”

  “You make a habit of souring the mood, Marshal Faust? Soured the mood right up when you killed that Gregdon boy,” he said. “Seems like there’s twice as much work up at the mine now that he’s dead.”

  Behind him, his friends blew up their shoulders. “You think this is a smart idea?” I asked.

  “Nobody around to say it isn’t.” I kept my place, never moving, never shifting my weight. Though I knew he could have crushed me into the earth with barely any effort, letting him see that fear would have been a bad idea. “You love that shotgun of yours, Marshal. Hide behind it a lot. Last time you and I talked, you were hugging it like it was gonna suck you dry.

  “Shame you left the shotgun with that other cocksucker. Certainly makes a body wonder if you’re just as good with those revolvers.”

  One of his friends had the battered handle of a revolver hanging out of his pocket and a knot of rust-colored hair. The one in the middle was short and bald and so smeared with coal that he looked like he’d had a run-in with a tar pit. The third one stumbled drunkenly, a Four of Spades still stuck to his sweaty forehead from an unfinished game of liar’s poker.

  This was not going to go well.

  If girls falling from the sky were the start of the sentence and drunken miners with vendettas the period, I was the dumbass comma crushed in between. When Big Boy broke conversation and decided to break my face, I should have been ready. Should have. “Ya ain’t nothin’, not you, not that pussy-ass bitch of a deputy you got, either.”

  He swung. I scuttled back.

  “Miss Garland,” I said. “Could you ask Deputy Pussy-Ass Bitch that his company would be greatly appreciated?”

  His friends converged, intending to leave me in a heap. They came too, all at once. I barely had the Colt’s mouth cleared of the holster’s leather before they were close enough for me to breathe in, all their stink and sweat, all th
eir spit and rage. I jacked my thumb back on the hammer. The gun chirped like a cricket, ready to fire.

  But in the next instant the pistol was gone, knocked away. It hit the sand. Suddenly, the woman of gold and green was a wall between me and the oncoming threat, her hand ringing with an odd, metallic echo where she’d struck the pistol out of my hand.

  Keeping me from shooting.

  I tumbled back. The moment rolled back, too, like a pulley in reverse, the world stuttering the way it did before: little slivers of time staggering over each other, vying for control.

  In one, I drew, I felt the gun jerk, I felt blood—

  The next, I never had time: Big Boy crushed me, a wall of pain, behind his swinging fist…

  Another, we all simply walked past one another, eschewing offense, ignoring conflict, a proper Saturday night.

  Did Lachrimé feel it all, too? Did Big Boy and his goons? I gasped for breath.

  Her name poured into me, dragged out of nothing. Her name was—

  “Nycendera,” I shouted.

  When Big Boy moved, I couldn’t help but shout out, trying to warn her about what she clearly saw: the miner balling a fist as thick as a hamhock, then swinging it down, as if to crush her into the earth.

  She moved like a dancer made of starlight, her expression indifferent. She slid effortlessly out from beneath Big Boy’s falling fist. When it swung by her, she snapped her right hand out at her side, and a shock of green light flashed, wispy and thin, at the edge of her fingertips.

  A knife, or the likeness of one, sprang into being, just like that.

  A sliver of jade-like geode, perfectly arched, ready to stab.

  She reached up, grabbed one of Big Boy’s ears, and pulled him down so that his neck was just a breath away from slicing itself on the jagged edge.

  I sucked in a breath. I waited. The knife never moved.

  Something swam under the surface of Nycendera’s face.

  Confidence. Ease. Hardly a disturbance.

  Red Hair pulled his rusty gun and yelled something, pointing it at her. The coal-stained one – Tar Pit – balled his fists up and prepared to pounce. The drunk one – Four of Spades – staggered toward the threat, fumbling at the back of his belt for the handle of his own knife.

  Four of Spades swung his blade in a wide, lazy arc. When Nycendera pushed the Big Boy out at him, Four of Spades stumbled over his big friend and collapsed into the dirt.

  Tar Pit was on her next, jumping and swinging, throwing fists that were surprisingly fast. She slipped back, her bare, metallic feet kicking up not a speck of dirt. When she found her chance, she lashed out a bare hand.

  It struck. It struck more than once. It struck four, five, six times, with such rapidity that I thought I saw two, three, four ghostly fists flutter in right behind it. Tar Pit’s head snapped back several times – thunk-thunk-thunk – and his nose burst.

  Red Hair took aim, ready to shoot.

  The green knife snapped out like a scorpion’s tail. There might have only been one knife, but several after-images leaped into being, the arm leaving traces and memories of itself in the air. Dark blood spilled from Red Hair’s wrist. She twisted the cut wrist at such a wild angle that she managed to point the revolver up into Red Hair’s chin while it was still in his hand.

  A too-long second was all it took for her to assess the machine, understand it, and manipulate it.

  Before I could intervene, a flash.

  Red Hair’s skull hung open like a nutcracker’s jaw as he flopped to the ground.

  “Shoot the goddamn thing, Faust,” said Big Boy.

  As Nycendera turned, Four of Spades was there again, punching at her with the tip of his blade. She sidestepped, twisted, dodged. Never seen something move like that. Maybe wildcats. Maybe snakes.

  The next instant she was behind him, and the crystal knife pierced him time and time again, punching brutal holes in his back like a sewing-needle.

  He belched up a mixture of hot blood and sour whiskey, fell, and said no more.

  Tar Pit was still trying to get to his feet. Nycendera leaned down, picked up Red Hair’s revolver, examined it for a moment, then blindly pointed it at the miner and squeezed the trigger.

  Tar Pit went still.

  She dropped the weapon and began to stride toward Big Boy, her smooth feet silent on the grainy earth. Another knife flashed to life in her grip.

  The big miner was quick, too. He leaped to his feet and grabbed her forearm as she sliced.

  I could have interrupted. Should have.

  With my feet locked into place, just the reminder, Breathe, drifted to mind.

  When the miner punched, she flickered, moved aside, and when she stabbed, the miner swayed, avoiding the blurring edge. They struggled on like that for several moments, scuffling in the dirt.

  But a body tires quick. In seconds. In less than that. Big Boy did. He tried to pull something out of his belt, and I hissed, “No,” maybe at him, maybe at her, but it was too late.

  Her fist fell so hard on him, blasting against his chest, that I heard his heart just...stop.

  When the dust settled, there were four dead men. My Colts didn’t matter then. I had seen what had happened to four miners in less than ten seconds, and in two more, I’d be afraid to know what would be left of me.

  Nycendera simply dropped down to her knees in the bloody sand, surrounded by her handiwork. She put her palms on her knees. She watched me.

  “Ours is going to be a very strange future,” she said, surveying the scattered debris of bodies around her. She lifted her hands. Turned the knuckles, admired the curves, as if seeing them for the first time. “What wondrous things.”

  Then, the air seemed to pop, and all the air from the night around us poured in. Like a bubble had burst.

  It was Cicero’s voice, breathing hard, that I heard first. “Holy mother of God.” He stood there in a half-buttoned vest, cradling the shotgun. Miss Garland was there too. The two of them saw me, saw her, saw the corpses, like a curtain had lifted before them.

  Lachrimé covered her mouth.

  Cicero threw me my shotgun.

  I caught it in both hands, tugged back both hammers, and tucked it into the crook of my shoulder. As the world drew in around us, I noticed swan-necked children looking down from open windows. Men in longjohns and women in dingy nightgowns came out onto their porches. The street came alive with sleepy murmurs, and there was me holding a clothingless, hairless woman at gunpoint with dead men all around us.

  She turned her palms upward, showing no threat. Obeying the rule of the shotgun angled at her, I suppose.

  This wasn’t obedience on her part: it was a truce, a willingness to submit because she chose to.

  “What the fuck am I looking at,” Cicero asked, reaching for his pistol.

  “They intended to take your life,” Nycendera said.

  “She tore them to ribbons,” Lachrimé said.

  Nycendera tilted her chin to Big Boy’s corpse. “Theirs was a cruel intent worth intercepting.”

  Staring down the barrels of my shotgun didn’t allow me to feel any more powerful than I had before. I felt small, insignificant, even fragile, all ways I didn’t exactly like to feel when faced with something greater than me, or that I didn’t understand.

  “Was this,” Nycendera said, “a miscalculation?” As if finally noticing the bodies for the first time, in all their breathless wonder, looking like smoking lumps of meat.

  “You could say,” Cicero said, shoving his forearm against his nose.

  Nycendera lifted both her hands, those weapons of hers, and kept staring at me. She crossed her fingers behind the crest of her bald head and lowered her eyes to the earth.

  “Then I submit myself to you freely, Elias Faust, on penalty of destruction: I, known as O’uluth ar Nycendera, called elsewhere the Herald, have overstepped her boundaries to a grievous degree and from this moment, shall fully obey your tenets.”

  She knew my name without
me ever having given it to her. A sour knot of disgust clogged my throat. Had she...taken it out of me, the way she’d first given me that strange name of hers?

  Cicero held his sights steady on the silent creature as I slid forward and nudged her to stand with the barrels of my shotgun. We angled her toward my office, where the only jail cell in Blackpeak awaited its new resident, and Lachrimé Garland, with a handkerchief shoved against her mouth, leered down at snake-trails of blood.

  I turned to her. “Can you brave the alley one more time?”

  “Could. Doesn’t mean I want to.”

  “Find what she was looking for. Don’t let it get into anyone else’s hands.”

  Her stare could have sliced me into four different pieces. “You better fancy pinning a question mark onto the end of that, Elias.”

  “Consider it pinned and nailed,” I said. “Sorry.”

  She jerked around in a whisk of skirts, grateful to look away from the blood, and moved toward the alley. Leave it to Miss Garland to keep my manners in order, even at times of pure tribulation.

  Cicero whistled at the crude human wreckage behind us. “So I missed the party, but I can definitely tell that wasn’t your mess.”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “The problems aren't breathing anymore.”

  19

  In the absence of books or logic on a subject, you go with the next best thing besides bullets: the gut. Granted, this was unexplored territory, so Cicero and I did the only thing that seemed logical when faced with the unfamiliar. We drank about it.

  He poured glasses for both of us while I guided Nycendera to the lone cell. It’d seen its share of drunks and fools and fighters. At the rusted door she stood, gazing blankly at the rusted bars. “Is this the consequence?”

  “One of a few.”

  “Must I enter?”

  “Make this easy on me,” I said. “This is the way it goes.”

  “A Herald abides by no metal box,” she said.