by Gilman
“Bored of bed,” Antonia said, her tone gone sulky, making a face down at her mug, which had finally stopped steaming, then eying the remaining eggs as though they’d given offense.
“If you’d just⏤”
She looked up, narrowing red-rimmed eyes at him as though daring him to continue, and he held up one hand in mocking surrender. “Your choice.”
“Thank you,” she said, her tone now dripping with bitter honey, and he laughed, some of the tension sliding off his face. Then she sneezed again, and sighed. “I’ll just get some more tea, and then I’ll go back,” she said, rising from her chair, and disappearing through the wooden slat doors into the kitchen.
And then it was just the boss, Iktan, and Grace.
Iktan poured a glass of something dark brown and set it by the boss’ elbow. He picked it up, then turned to her, elbow leaning against the bartop as though he had all the hours in the day.
She thought she should make her excuses, go back upstairs, or into the kitchen to see if there were chores that needed doing, but instead she remained, caught as though something had nailed her shoes to the floor.
“You’ve something you wanted to ask me.” It wasn’t a question, as though he’d expected to find her waiting here, when he emerged. Perhaps he had. If he knew what strangers desired without them having to voice it, why should she be any less obvious to him, living under his roof.
Or maybe he simply couldn’t conceive of any other reason she’d be dressed and waiting.
Did she have something to ask him? She did, she remembered, the discussion having nearly driven her earlier worried from her mind. If she had any sense, she would shake her head, laugh it off, make the best of what she had, as best she could.
But she was tired. Tired of herself. “What are you?”
“Interesting question,” he said, taking a sip from his glass and nodding approval at Iktan. “Somewhat rude, but interesting.”
She scoffed, watching him move from the bar to his table, drink in hand. “I would know who I work for. Only a fool would think you were human.”
“And I brook no fools under my roof,” he agreed. He reached for the first of three paper-wrapped decks on the table, and examined the seal on it. “Does it truly matter, what I am⏤or am not?”
She stepped forward, taking one of the seats across the felt from him. If she was going to challenge him, she should do it properly. “Everything matters. It’s only a question of how much, and to whom.”
“Truth,” he acknowledged. “But what I am is not what digs at you, is it?”
Her fingertips were cold, and she tucked them into her palm to warm them. He saw far too much, with those whisky eyes. But she’d never been very good at subtlety, and saw no reason to humiliate herself further now, in trying.
“When I first came here, they told me people ride into Flood because they have business with you.”
“Also truth.”
“Some people, though, they come to see what you are, because they’re curious. Because you’re the Master of the Territory, and hold their fates in your hands.”
His hands never stilled, stripping the wax seal and shuffling the first deck into his free hand. “That is what some believe.”
“I had no business with you. I wasn’t curious. I didn’t know you existed.”
She had never thought to come here, would never have come here, on her own. But she had entered a crossroads at high noon, when the winds were strong and strange, and even if she’d known⏤even if she’d known, she still would have taken that turn.
Maybe she was mad.
The devil set down the opened pack, and picked up another.
“Some folk come to test themselves against you. To say that they did. Face the devil and walk away unscathed. But⏤” and she paused, searching for the correct words. “I feel no need to test myself. I am what I am, and you are … whatever you are.”
“And that doesn’t bother you.”
“No.” She supposed it should. She had been raised a decent Christian, though she had never felt a particular call to worship, the way some did, and the devil…
He wasn’t the devil, of course. Not truly.
But he made deals⏤and he kept them. If you wanted⏤needed⏤something badly enough.
“Everyone wants something from you. And you … know what they want, what they need. How?”
How could he do it, how could he read people the way Judit read her cards?
The devil works in mysterious ways, they said. Or mayhap it was she who was lacking.
He laughed a little, almost under his breath. “Desire.”
That was what Zinnia had said. She shook her head, still not understanding.
“Desire is human. It’s blood and brain and spine all tangled up in the heart. Causes more trouble than it solves, but nothing would be solved without it.” He slit open a new pack of cards and fanned them out on the felt, scanning the colored backs for any imperfection or crease. “Some think to use it to control others, but I’ve noted it’s the one thing that makes folk uncontrollable. You, though. You’re something else, and that’s a fact.”
She bit her lip hard enough to taste the flesh underneath. She wanted, she’d always wanted. And now he was telling her … what? That she didn’t want enough? That no matter how she tried, she wasn’t good enough?
She’s not natural. There’s something just not right about her. Voices from the past, whispers when she should have been sleeping, beetles burrowing under her skin and setting up in her thoughts. Months of restlessness, chasing her even cross-River. The winds had been wrong: there was nothing for her here.
She stood, the chair pushing back behind her, and, unable to find the words to express what she felt, grabbed the nearest thing to-hand and threw it at him.
There was silence, which made the tiny pink-plink-plink of dripping yolk all the more obvious, as it gathered on his chest and fell with a splatter to the floor.
She felt something clawed dig into her chest, her spine stiffening in reaction, that violent urge to strike out replaced by horror that she had actually done so, and done so to the boss.
But layered over all that a bubbling sense of hysteria that she had done it, not with her knife, or her nails, or even her voice, but the eggs.
“I’d thought they were meant to be taken internally, not externally,” a voice said, and it took her an indrawn breath to realize that it was the boss. That he was running a finger through the mess and held the finger up for inspection.
“I … I’m …” There was no way to say she was sorry: they both knew she wasn’t, and while she’d become accustomed to hiding her thoughts, lying about them was a sin she’d tried to avoid.
“She’s as much a devil as you,” Iktan said, and the boss … laughed. And once started, it seemed almost as though he couldn’t stop, a hand thumping against his chest with a hollow beat, the rich tone of his chuckles filling the silence entirely, until it was all she could hear.
She risked a sideways glance at Iktan. He was leaning on the bar, fingers folded together, the wrinkles on his face softly calm as he waited for the boss to compose himself again.
But that seemed to almost set the boss off again, until he reached for the chair he’d knocked over, righting it and folding himself down into it, his free hand gesturing for her to do the same.
His laughter, rather than amusing, made her angrier, mortification heating her cheeks. It wasn’t enough, all of this, but he laughed at her?
“You’re angry.” The boss tilted his head at her, his expression puzzled, as though he couldn’t imagine why he might be upset, why anything about any of this might anger her. As though she were the odd one, the out of place one.
Again.
She welcomed the fury that filled her then, the heat of it pushing out uncertainty and confusion.
People wanted things, Zinnia had said. Desire is human, the boss claimed. She’d only wanted one thing her entire life, but it hadn’t ever done her
any good, had it? Only odd looks and awkward breaks in conversation, only her father’s pity and her mother’s worry, sideways glances and whispered gossip.
She had never asked for special treatment, had never expected to have to do anything but pretend. She knew better than to think she⏤odd, unlovely, ungentle⏤could ever be anything other than the odd one, the difficult one. The one who couldn’t quite be trusted, for reasons no-one would name. Not demure enough, not loving enough, not brilliant enough to be forgiven or explained away. An entire life spent on the fringe, rather than the weave.
She’d thought the Territory would be the place where she could fit, where she made sense, rather than forever having to reshape herself to fit others, constantly biting back words rather than speaking her mind. Had thought the devil himself would know what to do with her.
Why else would the winds have blown her there?
But the winds were uncanny, even in an uncanny place, and she had been warned not to think them helpful.
She’d done so anyway. Had hoped, even though she’d never let herself think it.
“Iktan.” The boss didn’t say anything more, but the bartender nodded once, and slipped from behind the bar and out the front door, closing it gently behind him. In the silence that followed, she heard the scratch and snick of a match, and the wet puffing noise of a cigar being lit.
The devil passed a hand over the front of his shirt, and the debris speckling the cloth disappeared. He then sat back in his chair and waited for her to do the same.
She stood her ground.
“Talk to me, Grace.”
She had spent too many years holding back to let her thoughts loose now.
He studied her, looked at her, the way he had the first day she came. She stared back, then dropped her gaze to the floor.
“You’re afraid.” He sounded almost surprised, he who was never surprised by anything. “Of yourself. Oh, little one, of all the things to fear in this world, yourself should never be one of them.”
“You said it true. I’m not like the others. I don’t … feel things the way they do. I don’t react properly. Even here.”
Even her thoughts had disturbed Zinnia into sleeplessness.
“And do you think Zinnia was frightened? That was why she crept into your chamber, to speak you to rest, because she was frightened?”
She made an effort not to be frightening. But people still knew. Even when she tried to hide it. She didn’t feel right. She couldn’t feel right.
“Do you think that’s why Bets tells you her dreams, her hopes? Or why Louis teaches you how to sharpen his beloved knives? Because you frighten them?”
She didn’t understand why any of them did any of that. She didn’t understand them. Had never understood their desire to bring her closer, or why they would be foolish enough to want that. All she had inside her was violence and anger, a spindle too-tightly wound, that would snap if she tried to use it.
She’d been born wrong. Her mother had known it, had warned her about it. “Pretend,” she’d told her daughter. “Pretend, and everything will be all right.”
She’d pretended, and thought it would be enough. But it wasn’t, and she had nowhere else to try.
“You think your desire was not enough?” The boss shook his head, all humor gone from his eyes and mouth. “Oh, little one. You were aching with it, so hard I could feel you through the currents, like a shockwave when you hit the shore. The winds sensed you as easily as I did. But you weren’t ready for us yet.”
Her anger shifted, the uncertainty returning, making her shift on her feet, suddenly awkward and uncomfortable. “I don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t suppose you do. That’s the problem, not that you don’t know, but you don’t understand what you know.”
She narrowed her eyes at him; he was doing that thing he did, that was only amusing when he did it to other people.
Her glare put the amusement back into his eyes, and he gestured to the chair opposite him again. “Would you care to play a game of cards, to discuss the matter?”
She eyed the pieces of board scattered on the felt, and shook her head. “I don’t have enough to wager, and I’d rather not be further in debt to you.”
He chuckled. “That makes you wiser already than most who ride in here. But I knew that already, too.”
Her eyes narrowed ever further, until she could feel the lines forming at the edges of her eyes. “Can’t you just tell me whatever it is you’re planning on telling me?”
“I could, but where would be the fun in that?” His eyes went flat. “Sit down, Grace.”
She pulled the chair out from the table, and sat down.
“If you didn’t belong here, you wouldn’t be here.”
He said it so calmly, he might have been discussing the whiskey in his glass, but the words felt like a blow to her throat; to have him say it left no room for dissent, no room for doubt. And yet…
“The winds blew me here.” A saying, back in the States. But the winds were a true thing, here. Dangerous, and true. The winds had sensed her, the boss said. But why had they taken an interest in her?
“The winds have their reasons and nothing mortal should try to understand them,” the boss agreed, and she wondered if he could hear what she did not say, as well. “Not unless they are willing to pay the price. That takes nothing from the fact that even they knew: if you didn’t belong here, you would not have come here.”
She bit the inside of her lips, as though to force them to stay shut, and shook her head. If she belonged here, shouldn’t she feel it?
“People cross the river for as many reasons as there are people. There isn’t anyone who deserves to be here, or who should be here. Only people who choose to be here.” His own lips quirked a little. “With the provision that we are discussing settlers; the I’i’yatchi, the born-here, they have their own stories and their own ways of learning who they are. Part of the Agreement is to allow those who might become I’i’yatchi to find their way.”
Unwillingly, Grace found herself distracted. “That’s a tribe?”
“It’s a people,” he said. “Less to do with where you’re born and more about why you’re born.” He tilted his glass at her. “And that’s a worry you needn’t take on. Let me and Marie fret over that, when the time comes.”
She shook her head again, unsure who Marie might be, but didn’t interrupt to ask.
“You⏤” and he stopped, but didn’t look away from her. His features were dark-shaded now, his hair a fine-spun thatch of moonlight, and for a breath, his eyes flickered with the silver of the moon.
She heard the sound of feet on the stair behind her, then they stopped halfway down and retreated. She didn’t turn around to see who it had been.
“The thing most don’t understand. The Territory isn’t here for you. Not you, nor me, nor anyone. It simply is. It’s … a space. Nothing less⏤but also nothing more.”
“A space you protect.” The stories she had heard back home said the devil had claimed these lands, that to come here was to abandon all hope of salvation. Within these lands, they called him the Master of the Territory. But he acted the master of nothing, not even his saloon.
She didn’t understand that, either.
A gentle shrug, the smell of black tobacco, brimstone, and whisky settling thick in the air. “I maintain a balance. The push and pull of conflicting needs. People come to me because they know what they need, but not how to find it.”
I want to belong, she wanted to say, to yell, to howl. But the words stuck in her throat.
“When they are ready, the come to me. What they need, I arrange⏤for a price. Often a high price.”
She scoffed a little at that. “I’ve never seen you take anything save coin in exchange. And you don’t care about coin.”
“Silver coin has its uses, and I welcome it to my pocket, but no. To gain desire, you must give something meaningful.”
She had nothing to give. Not even coin, a
ny more.
The devil leaned back in his chair, the cards slipping between his fingers in an effortless shuffle. “You will. When you’re ready.”
It took her four more months to be able to speak what she needed, fingers clenched and head bowed before him, until he lifted her chin, golden eyes filled with understanding she barely understood herself.
And if the price he asked was high, it seemed little enough for what she received.
Sound carried in the Territory. Seven months on the road, and she was still not accustomed to how the call of birds, the scolding chirps of ground-mice, even the far-overhead cries of hawk and buzzard could seem as ear-close as her hat. Most, she had learned to ignore the way she ignored the weight of her hat pulled low on her forehead, the absence of them more a warning than their presence. Most, but not all.
She reined her mule in and listened again, the mule’s cocked ear telling her it’d heard the sound, too. Something was out there, in the tall grass.
The first stretch of dawn had washed the stars away in a hot pink haze, promising another day of clear blue skies, the faint cackle of summer heat still only a hint of what was to come. She planned to be well out of the plains by then, although she had no clear thought of where. She was bound by nothing, now, save her own whim and nature.
She would not follow the winds, not in the manner of a magician, but often enough, they offered suggestion. Some might find that of concern; she had learned to accept it. They were uncanny; but so too was she.
The thought still made her smile, even as she considered her surroundings. If an ambush were to come, it would likely come now. The high plains that had been her home for months had slowly given way to wind-struck foothills and worryingly-shaped pillars of rock, capable of hiding a multitude of threats, and she still had to contend with the tall grasses that made every road a risk, offering cover to whatever might prowl alongside.
She feared nothing, welcomed violence, but that did not make her incautious.
The molly’s sides heaved, a sure sign that it was unhappy staying still, and she pressed her legs against its sides more firmly, reminding it who made the decisions. She preferred the mule to human company; it heeded her, without argument, unhappy but compliant.