by Rance Denton
She reared back and balled her fist again.
“Hey, Knox,” I said.
I swung the kerosene jug up. It whacked her in the skull and tossed her aside. I lumbered to my feet. Nycendera looked back.
“I got it,” I gasped. “Just hold them off while I—”
Knox sprang like a jackrabbit, giving me a kick in the gut that threw me several feet back. When she moved, she didn’t seem to care much about physics. She ran after me on the tips of her toes. When she got close, she grabbed my head between her hands and blasted death-breath against my cheek.
“Glad I got another chance to meet you,” she said. “The first time came to an end so fast.”
Her head snapped forward. My nose met her forehead. Blood started pouring down the back of my throat. I swung a fist for her. She caught it, twisted my arm, and drove me to my knees.
Her elbow didn’t taste very good when it crashed into my teeth. “I want the sly motherfucker that shot me.”
“Cicero? How do you know it was him?”
“Because it wasn’t you.”
She bent my arm almost to a breaking-point. I crumbled.
“He’s…he’s in Blackpeak,” I gasped. “Dead, for all I know.”
My elbow screamed. Her other hand raked at my face, my forehead. “She came for you. Why didn’t the bald one?”
“What do you fucking want me to tell you,” I growled. At her. At the pain. “He’s not around here, Knox. He’s gone.”
Nycendera shot again. Then she shrunk back against the wall, worked the action, and looked at me.
I could have asked the Herald to drop Knox, but I didn’t. I actually held up my bloody other hand to her.
“You sure he’s dead?” Knox said.
“Last I saw of him, the Magnate had him twisted up in his own personal tumbleweed.”
Knox’s bulldog face flashed through a whole caravan of thoughts. “Still gonna kill him. Maybe bring him back like me,” she said, “then kill him.”
“He was doing what I asked him when he shot you,” I said.
“His trigger. His finger.”
“My command,” I said.
“Don’t try to reason with me, Faust. You find his ass alive, you tell him I’ll find him. You tell him I owe him.”
Sure thing, I thought. Telling a dead man that a dead woman was going to come after him. I’d deliver the message with bells on. I half-expected her to pummel me again, but instead, she just let my hair go and stepped back. She grabbed the kerosene jug and hefted it in one arm. Then she swung it high and brought it crashing down to the stone floor. Glass sprayed out in shards. The tinny stink of kerosene filled the little room.
The oil spread across the thin layer of water, casting a rainbow’s reflection if the light hit it just right.
“Tell him,” she said, pulling a match from her pocket. I remembered right then that she’d been a pretty poor smoker in—…well, in life. “Tell him. Even if you tell just a corpse or a coffin, you tell him.”
Knox flicked the match with a mossy thumb-nail. Orange light flared between us.
She handed me the match. I took it.
“What about the Magnate?” I asked over a flickering flame.
“I’ve got more loyalty to my memory of the man who ended my life than to the greedy prick who gave part of it back to me. Gregdon’s a dying name. I serve me.”
She pried out one of her silver eyes, and threw it with disgust on the floor.
A moment later, she vanished.
Truth be told, I didn’t know what the hell was happening anymore. Like dying and living, I assumed it was best to fall back on simple before my tiny brain decided it’d had too damn much and just fell apart of its own accord.
Today I’d died.
Today I’d come back to life.
I’d seen another world. Two other worlds. I had the coin to prove it.
But I had a match. And kerosene-water. And a ladder.
Nycendera shot again. Another muzzle-flash lit the place up. The smoking cartridge ejected. When she fired again, the trigger just clicked.
A spray of bullets danced into the stony floor right next to her feet.
Time to go.
Nycendera threw the Henry to the ground, darted past me, and leaped with silent grace toward the ladder, her cavalry boots never brushing water. She made it look easy. When she grabbed the ladder, she started hoisting herself toward the light.
I dropped the half-burnt match to the kerosene.
In a blue wave of fire, the whole floor of the cavern burst into flames. The oncoming sandshades froze when they saw the flames.
I jumped for the ladder too. You’d be surprised at how much you need index fingers. Almost didn’t even make it. I grabbed a rung and started to slip, but I told myself that I wasn’t gonna make it if I complained about things like missing fingers and tired shoulders.
With smoke billowing up beneath us and the oil-fire raging on, I looked up – two-hundred feet up – to what looked like sky.
I took a breath and savored it.
I started to climb.
39
Climbing a rope ladder is hard enough normally, but with eight fingers, it’s a whole new struggle. Being in a rush certainly didn’t help matters, with the thing swinging like a drunken bar-brawler and a swath of kerosene smoke rising from below. Daylight beckoned.
It was a manmade hole, augured deep into the earth, but barely the width for a quaint fellow, let alone me. The shaft gave way to sides strengthened by patches of crude brick. The muscles in my shoulders and arms had been torn to shreds. Any second, a bullet or spell from below could have ended it all. But none did. When I got to the top, Nycendera’s face appeared above me. She pulled me out.
“Kind of you,” I muttered, pouring over the edge of the opening like water. An orange evening sky stretched out like tanned leather from horizon to horizon. A falling sun burned bright, casting the long shadow of a house.
I was outside.
Imagine my surprise when I crawled to my feet and found myself standing outside the abandoned Simpkin farm, staring at the half-crumbling well we’d just crawled up.
Nycendera already set to work, sawing the rope of the ladder where it was tied to the stakes. When it frayed and gave way, she let the tangled mess fall into the tunnel. It vanished below. Still, she had poise and readiness to her. Damned prepared to spring into action.
Tethered not far away from the crumbled well was a horse, a sleek, brown, forgettable creature. Blanketed, impatient, ready to ride. “Yours?” I asked.
“We must go. Time flees,” she said. “Town’s in danger.”
What else was new?
“These mines,” I asked. “They extend this far?”
“A spider’s web underneath our feet. Miles upon miles.”
“How’d you know to find me?”
“You make noise,” she said.
Focused, she started for the horse. Me, I lumbered behind her, glancing behind me at the well. Suddenly, it came clear as day: the abandoned Simpkin stead wasn’t just the Gregdon Twins’ little holiday house, but their back access to the father’s network of tunnels and secrets.
Nycendera pulled the reins off the rusted peg and gathered them up. She took to one of the stirrups, tack rattling and squeaking. “Why are you helping me?” I asked.
“Any man with his heart set on the Shattered Well is a far greater threat than any cruelties your town can offer. I am resilient. I will endure.”
“I can handle the Magnate if he comes calling. This isn’t your fight.”
“I am not here for him.”
“Then who are you here for?”
She raised a finger at me.
“I owe a debt. I will see it repaid,” she said.
“He had a hand in it. In freeing you.”
I reckoned as far as conversation went, I was getting the most of what I’d ever get from her. She curled the corner of her lip. “The works of his talent mean less t
o me than the labor of an honorable heart. I grant you this boon of my blade, and if necessary, my blood. For your town. For your—”
The thunder of a shotgun caught us both unawares.
A rain of pellets ripped through the ragged gray-black folds of Nycendera’s stolen hood and robes. Mercurial blood, fine as mist, belched into the air. She dropped off the horse. The beast twisted, swayed, all confused.
I dove for the well. From behind the protection of old stone, I saw the gunman standing like a statue on the edge of the Simpkin porch. A brisk memory played across my brain. I slingshotted back, back, to a hotter day, and to a simpler one. I’d been here before.
Billy Gregdon, cloaked in black, standing dull and silent and powerful, held a smoking shotgun and surveyed his kingdom.
Nycendera didn’t move. The wind dashed across her but didn’t stir her. The horse stirred, flicked its neck. Sure, I could have rushed the Gregdon on the porch, but two details locked me into place.
One, the shotgun.
Two, the burst of sickness that flooded me.
Maybe being down there, among all those shades, I’d grown used to it. Maybe up here, not so much. I could feel those cold, silver, steely eyes boring into me. I peeked back around the well. Dry, dead flesh sat in flecks on his clumpy beard. With a face like a melted candle, he wasn’t at all alive – just something sort of close to it.
Elias, came the invasive sigh. Running isn’t like you.
From the mouth of the Simpkin home, as if he’d lived there all along, walked the Magnate. He patted his son on the shoulder, nudged past him, and held high Illemone’s Heart. “I expected a stand-off, or a proposed duel, or even expected some kind of brave, self-sacrificing death more suiting your past escapades. But I suppose all men have their limits.”
When shit’s already rolling downhill, you learn to stop trying to push it back to the top.
“Billy,” said the Magnate. “Throw the marshal his pistol.”
The brute did nothing.
“Billy,” said the Magnate.
Nothing.
So the Magnate looked in my direction with apology scrawled all over his face. “Newer ones, they’re remarkably resistant to encouragement. We’re all works in progress, I suppose. William.”
Whatever spirit was tethered to Billy Gregdon’s shredded body must have only then realized what its name was. From his hip he drew a weapon in a twitching and unresponsive grip, then jerked his arm out toward me. One of my Colts landed in the yellow grass.
“Pick up the gun, Elias. I give you permission. Then forget whether your Herald friend is still breathing. Her kind are hardy people. Now come look me face to face like a man with purpose. Billy won’t shoot.”
“You some kind of bloodhound, sniffing me out?” I asked. “You mind enlightening me how you managed to get up here so quickly?”
“You’re remarkably dull for such a smart man, Elias Faust. Don’t you remember the lynching? I came to you. A little squeeze of Illemone here, and one step of mine can cross a hundred-thousand of yours. Now quit stalling. Pick up that gun.”
I was outgunned. We both knew that. I could run again, but luck would have it that without the Quicktooth’s blessing, I couldn’t run faster than shellshot or spellslinging. “What if I don’t want the pistol?”
“Then I put a bullet in you one more time for not dying the way the marshal of a town is duty-bound to. I hope you haven’t forgotten about your jurisdiction.”
“And the Shattered Well?”
“I’ve broken rules before. I’ll skin you alive, peel that Mark off your flesh, and find a new way while your dead ass bloats under the Texas sun.”
I leaned out and wrapped my remaining fingers around the butt of the gun. My pointer-finger stump was a black, burned lump, throbbing with every beat of my heart. It felt good to hold my own gun again.
When I got to my feet, he clamped his fist around Illemone’s Heart. I flew toward him like a bullet. An unseen hook in my breast dragged me his way. My feet scraped two snaking lines through the dirt. When I struck the stairs of the porch, I rolled over them, smashed in through the ragged front door, and came to a bleeding stop in the foyer of the house.
He liked playing with me. He knew and I knew that with the right application of willpower, he’d grind me to powder. Boots clicked on the floor. “Priorities,” said the Magnate. “A marshal needs to live his life by them. Do you remember this game? You played it with Curtis. Get on your feet.” The man spoke fire. Spittle foamed on his lips. “Point that gun of yours right at me.”
I was only too happy to oblige.
The room spun like a tumbleweed around me. On the ceiling and floors and walls, the triangles – all shapes, all sizes, scattered like kiddie fingerpaint – defaced what seemed like every inch of the world.
The Magnate stood there in his red robes, looking over the rim of his glasses. He gripped Illemone’s Heart at his left hip. His nose was just a spattered lump, courtesy of Shakespeare. Billy, the resident skin-carriage, stood beside his father with silent obedience, holding onto his shotgun almost like he didn’t know how to use the damn thing.
“I kill you,” I said, raising my weapon, “your Billy kills me.”
“To clarify: You try to kill me, but I shoot you before you make a move. I can almost guarantee I’m a faster draw than you’ll ever be, Elias Faust. I’ve had practice. And when we’re done, I invite Billy to rip your friend in half – whether or not she’s still alive.”
“This is between you and me, Gregdon.”
“It won’t be anymore. A Herald will be a unique addition. And so will every other senseless lump of skin in this shithole town.”
Because if he couldn’t have his Well, he might as well make it personal.
Because if he couldn’t have his Well, he might as well burn it all down.
Nero, a golden fiddle, and lots and lots of blood.
“Bringing your children back from the grave,” I said. “Assembling a group of misfits from the flesh of dead men. No matter what lengths you go to, you’ll still be a big fish in a little pond, Magnate. What you’ve done is inhumane. Unnatural.”
“Laws no longer hold importance to me.”
“You could have strangled me with magic,” I said. “Abracadabra’ed my brains into mush.”
“That would be fun, but certainly not as satisfying. I haven’t shot a man in years. I think you’re a good opportunity to reintroduce myself to all of the fun I’ve missed.”
Billy Gregdon drew back both of the hammers on his long shotgun and held it to the side. I flinched. Turned my pistol toward him. We met eyes. I snaked my middle finger up inside the trigger-guard.
“Antsy,” said the Magnate. “Too jumpy. You just need to relax, Elias.”
I was slow, that’s for sure. My senses were dulled from the drugs. My timing hadn’t been on for what seemed like years. Just as I turned my eyes back to Gregdon, his red cloak flapped aside. I watched him move like a professional. He drew his pistol, faster than you’d think a cheetah could move. Shoulders forward, but not beyond his hips. Interested. Ready to play. On his terms, of course.
He never intended for me to have a chance.
His left hand raked across the flintlock’s hammer the minute the barrel cleared leather.
It was Rufus Oarsdale’s flintlock. The one Bisbin fished off my body.
A hot tongue of fire flashed out of the flintlock. Smoke filled the room.
The Magnate shot me right in the stomach.
My back crashed into the wall. I sunk down to the floor. My guts twisted around the hole that had been blown in me. For a minute I was somewhere else, my brain swimming to hold on.
Well, that was that. Round two, I suppose. You only get so many chances to bounce back. I’d had a lot. Sometimes you just don’t get them.
I crumbled to the floor. Blood was everywhere. I pressed my palms against my stomach. It felt like trying to keep water in a broken bucket.
The Magna
te took the long shotgun from his sandshade son and came up to me. He held my chin up on the edge of the barrels. He crouched in front of me. “Too slow,” he said.
“Wasn’t…one of my better days.”
“Think of it as revenge for bringing Shakespeare into this.” He tapped his nose. “I guess you’re dead, Elias.”
“Just about.”
“It's a shame. You would have been the first one I'd ever converted alive. But now I suppose we get to watch your Blackpeak burn together in the distance as you bleed out in front of me.”
I was surprised to be still holding onto my pistol. I raised it up and pressed it against the Magnate's forehead. Billy made some kind of grunting sound and strode forward.
“Stay, Billy. Let the marshal have his revenge.”
“Eat shit,” I said.
I pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. Not a click, not a blast, not a jerk of the gun.
“Don’t you see?” Daddy Gregdon just plucked the Colt from my fingers and threw it out one of the shattered windows. “What I will to happen becomes real. That gun refused to work because I willed it so.”
“With her?” I said, nodding toward Illemone’s Heart. “With your stolen power?”
“Have a deft hand at them like mine, and the fantastic is limitless. In this case, I just unloaded it before I gave it to you. Stacking the deck is still playing poker.” He leaned forward and whispered in my ear. “Doesn’t it bother you to lose?”
Every muscle in my face tightened against the pain. I clenched shut my eyes. I reached out for the Shattered Well, but found silence.
The Magnate lifted up my jittering, spasming hand, soaked in blood, and wiped Bisbin’s blood and my blood away from the Mark under my skin. Then, with a knife, he pierced my skin. Began to fillet me like a fish. Redness ran free. Spilling out.
The pain was there. I just couldn't feel it.
I sucked in a few breaths. Then I rolled my head back and looked at the ceiling, at the walls, where there were triangles painted all around the place in old blood and coal. Some of them were incomplete, but most of them were well-drawn, very specific and precise, like they almost had an artist's touch.