by CJ Brightley
“I heard you’ve been asking a lot of questions,” Carden replied. “What’s your interest in it?”
“Well, besides being a naturally curious sort of fellow, I’ve been thinking that the bounty-hunting business is a lot of risk for rewards that are few and far between. I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s time I got into another line of work.”
“Get out there and start digging,” Carden said. “I’m paying sixty drinas to the grain right now.”
Carden’s words knocked the breath from Silas as strongly as the rotgut whiskey had. Sixty drinas to the grain – he did a quick calculation. Just one of those lumps of ore he had dug up the day before would be worth sixty gildings or more. He had held a ranch foreman’s wages for three years in the palm of his hand. Even gold didn’t sell for that much.
Silas fought to keep from showing his reaction. “No, no. You misunderstand me. I’m an educated man, like you. I’m looking to go into business for myself. These scientists from over the ocean must want that stuff pretty bad, to pay that much for it. What’re they doing with it, anyway? Why’s it worth so gods-damned much to them?”
Carden’s face remained carefully neutral as well. “I have no idea. I’m a businessman, not a scientist.”
“You seem mighty certain that it doesn’t have anything to do with those night terrors.”
Carden chuckled. “Like I said, these Wildings folk are a superstitious bunch. They’ll believe anything; even some of my men are spooked by the idea. It would severely impair my ability to operate my business if that particular belief really took hold. So I’m sure you understand why I can’t let it go when I hear someone spouting that nonsense.”
“Well, all right. I guess it doesn’t matter what that stuff is or what it does, as long as those scientists are willing to pay that kind of money for it. Now, what I’m thinking is, the Wildings is a big place. There’s got to be other deposits of this ore. If I were to find more of it, I wonder if I could work the same sort of deal with those scientists that you have.”
A brief flash of excitement appeared in Carden’s expression, then quickly disappeared. “You say you’ve found more of the ore? Or you know where some might be found?” he asked with a hint of eagerness in his voice.
Silas shrugged. “Not saying I’ve found anything. But if I did find more and you were to set up a contact for me with them, I’d give you a sixty percent cut of my first six months’ profit.” An offer that should tempt any savvy – or greedy – businessman, he thought.
“Well, I don’t know,” Carden said. “Those scientists, they would rather have their business here kept confidential. Not that it’s any big secret that that’s who’s buying the ore, but I don’t think they’d like me bringing anyone else in. Maybe if you found a deposit, I could manage the working of it and give you sixty percent of all profits.”
An offer decidedly in Silas’s favor – it wasn’t the money Carden cared about. It was the ore. And he was dead-set against revealing who he was working for. Knowing what he knew now about the ore, Silas seriously doubted any scientists were involved. So who was it? Was Carden collecting the ore for himself? Where was all that money coming from?
Silas pretended to consider Carden’s offer, then said, “On second thought, I’ve been in business for myself for too long. The idea of taking on a partner doesn’t suit me. And anyway, I need to stick with the bounty hunting a little longer, at least until I finish this last contract.”
“Who are you hunting?”
“Afraid I can’t tell you that. It’s strictly confidential, a personal matter between my client and the person I’m hunting.” He stood up and tipped his hat. “I won’t waste any more of your time, then. Thank you kindly for hearing me out.”
“Wait.” Carden grabbed Silas’s arm. “You’re sure you haven’t found any more large deposits? Do you have any idea where there might be more?”
Silas pulled his arm away and grinned down at Carden. “I haven’t the slightest idea. For all I know, what’s here in the Bitterbush Valley is all there is in the whole entire world.” With another tip of his hat, he turned and walked away, thinking about the quick flash of desperation, or eagerness, or greed, that had appeared on Carden’s face and in his voice as he asked if Silas knew where he might find more ore. Clearly, Carden was desperate for the stuff.
Near the door, Silas paused by a card table, feigning interest in the game. The two miners and three house ladies rejoined Carden, and the men went back to their previous conversation. Keeping a close eye on Carden while pretending to watch the card players, Silas let his shields slip a bit and reached out with his mage senses. He scanned slowly, carefully, and deeply, looking not only for magic and shields, but at the life-force around each person where a shield would be blended in. With this deeper, more thorough scan, he ran a greater risk of being discovered, but at this point the benefit of learning the truth about Carden outweighed the disadvantages of Carden knowing who he was. If Carden was a mage, there was a good chance that he already knew, anyway.
Silas checked each person in the saloon – he hadn’t made his living as a mage hunter for more than five years without being thorough – taking note of each glimmer of undetected, unused power buried deep within a handful of the saloon’s workers and customers.
Then his senses skimmed past Carden as if the black-suited man wasn’t there at all.
Surprised, Silas went back and checked again, to be sure. His mage senses detected nothing from Carden. Not even life-force.
Damn, Silas thought admiringly in spite of himself. That was a hell of a strong shield. He wanted to dig deeper, to figure out just how Carden was doing it, but Carden gave no sign of having noticed the probe and Silas didn’t want to push his luck.
So Carden was his rogue mage, after all.
Silas left the saloon and returned to his rented room, working out how he was going to corner and capture Carden, and what to do with him after that. Rogue mages didn’t often survive their confrontations with him; in those cases he would send the Mage Council proof of the renegade’s death, usually the renegade’s mage ring. Those who did survive, he took to the Gap and dropped off at a mage hunters’ outpost the Mage Council operated near the Wildings end of the pass, or, if he didn’t have the time or inclination to make the trip himself, turned them over to one of the groups of mage hunters who specialized in transporting prisoners through the Gap in exchange for a healthy cut of the bounty.
Best of all, he entertained himself with pleasant guesses as to just how big the payout on Carden was going to be.
LAINIE STOOD AT the stove, stirring a pot full of stew with more vigor than was really necessary. For the last two days, ever since Mr. Vendine had stayed for supper, her Pa had made a point of keeping her especially busy around the ranch. When he had needed an errand run to town earlier that day, he had sent one of the hands, inventing reasons why he needed Lainie to stay home. To Lainie, it was painfully obvious that he didn’t want to let her out of his sight and risk her meeting up with Mr. Vendine again. He meant well, she knew, but all the same she resented it that he seemed to intend to treat her like a child and make all her decisions for her until the day came that he handed her off to Mr. Dobay. She just wanted to talk to Mr. Vendine about how to control her power, that was all. It wasn’t like she was planning to run off with him and become a mage, or something like that.
It didn’t help her mood any that the night terrors had come on even worse since she had gone out to the mining dig. Holding the ore in her hand seemed to have forged a link between her and whatever that power was, giving it a greater ability to touch her mind and her body and allowing her to understand the dreadful whispering, the terrible things that power wanted of her. Mr. Vendine couldn’t put an end to all this soon enough for her. She wished she could help him somehow, but if her Pa wouldn’t even let her out of the house…
Taking her frustration out on the stew wasn’t going to help anything, and anyway, it was nearly suppertime. S
he found a ladle for the stew and took the pans of biscuits out of the oven, then put her head around the doorway to ask her Pa to ring the dinner bell. Burrett was sitting in his chair in the front parlor, staring moodily at nothing as he did so often since Blake’s death. “Pa –”
Wik, the hand who had gone into town, stormed in the front door. “That damned-fool Carden is going to do it!” he shouted. “One of the fellas at the Bootjack said he found out Carden an’ the miners he picked are heading out to the mountains tonight.”
Burrett shot up from his chair. “Sheep-knocking idiot! He’s going to get us all killed. Soon as he sets foot in the canyons, the blueskins will be all over us.”
“They’re meeting at the Rusty Widow this evening,” Wik went on, “an’ a whole lot of folks from town and the other ranches are going over there to try to stop them.”
“Let’s go, then.” Followed by Wik, Burrett stalked out the door. Mr. Dobay joined them on the porch. Lainie dropped the ladle into the pot of stew and ran out after them. “Pa, wait!”
Burrett turned around on his way to the stable. “You stay here, baby girl. It’s going to be dangerous. There’s probably going to be shooting.”
Wik had left his horse by the front porch, and Burrett and Mr. Dobay fetched their mounts from the stable. Lainie stood in the front doorway, watching them ride out. “Pa,” she whispered, hating how scared and helpless she felt.
No. She wasn’t helpless. She could protect her Pa and herself. She hadn’t been there when Blake got caught in the middle of a shootout, but now she could be there for her Pa. She grabbed her hat from the hook by the door and ran to the stable for Mala.
WITH MALA ALTERNATING between a canter and a gallop, the ride into town only took about half an hour. By the time Lainie reached the Rusty Widow, Pa’s, Wik’s, and Mr. Dobay’s horses were already tied among the couple dozen horses hitched in front of the saloon. She tied Mala to the rail next to her Pa’s horse, then hurried through the saloon’s swinging doors and squeezed into a spot near the doorway.
The inside of the Rusty Widow was bright with lanterns and crowded with angry ranch people and town folk. A dozen or more miners stood bunched in the far corner of the room. Mr. Carden was standing on a chair in front of them, trying to speak to the crowd. “If you’ll just see sense – There’s never been an attack on settlers by the blueskins –”
“Not since the Compact! Have you forgotten about the bloodshed before then?” Mr. Winnard demanded. “Or are you such a greenfoot that you don’t even know about that?”
“We’ve never broken the Compact,” Mr. Minton added, “and we aren’t going to let you start now!”
Carden chuckled. “Do you really think that no settler has ever gone into the mountains and hills in the last thirty years? I think the blueskins are as afraid of you as you are of them.”
“Easy for you to say,” Mr. Dinsin said. “You got nothin’ to lose – no family, no land, no stock –”
“Wasn’t you the one sayin’ not even a nineday ago that it was the blueskins that are causing the night terrors and they’re the real danger?” Mr. Holus asked.
“Think of what we could gain!” Carden shouted. “Who knows what riches those savages are sitting on up in their mountains! The ore I’m after could just be the beginning! And those riches don’t go to the man who sits cowering in his town or his saloon or his house, afraid of a bunch of ignorant creatures that are barely even human. They go to the man with the guts –”
“The man wicked enough to enrich himself without thought for anyone else!”
Fear clutched Lainie’s heart at the sound of her Pa’s voice booming over the crowd, challenging Carden. “Pa!” she cried out. Surely he wouldn’t be foolhardy enough to get in a showdown with Carden.
“Now, Banfrey,” said Mr. Unrad, the banker, sharp and neat in his expensive suit. “You have to admit that Mr. Carden’s done a lot of good for this town.”
“For some of this town. Those that are willing to lie down an’ let Carden have his way. For the rest of us, he’s destroying our land an’ our families, an’ I’ll stop him from doing any more harm if I have to shoot him an’ every last one of his men myself.” Burrett stepped to the front of the crowd, his revolver in his hand.
A tense silence dropped over the saloon. “Pa, no –” Lainie whispered. She readied herself to protect him with magic. Even if it meant her power would be revealed to the townsfolk, she couldn’t let him get hurt, not if she had the ability to protect him. Maybe in the confusion, no one would notice if she used magic…
“Now, now, fellas,” the sheriff said from where he stood near Carden, as though sheltering there from the enraged crowd. “There’s no need for any shooting here. I’m sure we can come to an understanding –”
“Shut up, Armley,” Carden snapped.
“Yes – yes sir, Mr. Carden.” The sheriff shrank back.
Carden looked straight at Burrett. “Are you threatening me, Banfrey?”
“I think that’s as far as this goes.” Mr. Vendine’s voice cut through the saloon, drawing everyone’s attention. Lainie spotted him making his way through the crowd; she hadn’t noticed until then that he was there. He strode into the empty space between the angry crowd and where Carden stood on his chair, putting himself between Carden and her Pa. He held his large revolver in his left hand, aiming straight at Carden.
A shimmer, barely visible, more felt by Lainie’s power than seen by her eyes, formed in front of Carden, and he smiled. “You have something to say, Vendine?”
“That’s a pretty damned good shield you’ve got over your power, Carden,” Mr. Vendine said. “But when I put all the pieces together, it wasn’t hard to figure out what you are. What are you really doing with that ore you’re collecting? And don’t give me that story about scientists. No scientist would ever have anything to do with magic. Or with mages.”
A shocked murmur arose from the crowd, and Lainie caught the word “wizard” more than once. Carden’s confident smile suddenly took on a stiffness, as though he had to force himself to keep smiling. “Would you mind explaining exactly what you mean, Vendine? And don’t point that thing at me.”
The revolver in Mr. Vendine’s hand didn’t waver. “Are you going to come with me without a fuss? If you try to fight me, you’ll just prove to all the folks here what you are. But it’s up to you. It’s all the same to me if you let me take you alive or if they hang you.”
Carden’s eyes narrowed and he scowled at Silas. “So you’re one of the Mage Council’s pet hunting dogs. Should have known. If these folks can hang me, you know they can hang you too. And the Banfrey girl as well.”
Lainie’s heart dropped like a lump of ice. Carden had as good as told the whole town she was a wizard. Mr. Vendine had known; she should have known that Carden would know too, if he really was a mage. When had he found out, the day of the shootout?
“They can’t touch me,” Mr. Vendine said. “Now, are you going to quit trying my patience and give yourself up, or are we going to have to do this the hard way?”
“You don’t really think that piece of machinery –” Carden waved a hand at Mr. Vendine’s gun “– can have any effect on me, do you?”
“You’re welcome to try to find out,” Mr. Vendine said. He stood absolutely still, the gun unwavering. His left hand and his gun started glowing blue. Carden also stood stock still, his smile free and confident again. The saloon was so quiet you could have heard a piece of straw drop, and Lainie’s heart felt like it was trying to pound right out of her chest.
Carden’s right hand flicked almost imperceptibly. One of the miners behind him drew his gun. Before he could shoot, Mr. Vendine fired. A streak of blue light flashed towards Carden –
An explosion of noise and colored light – blue, orange, and black – slammed Lainie back against the wall. Her sight and hearing were blanked out by the explosion, her body stunned by its force. She felt herself slide to the floor, vaguely aware of other bodies pil
ed against hers. She lay there, blinded by light, deafened by the roaring in her ears, her head pounding, unable to move, hardly even able to breathe. Her body felt like it wasn’t even there.
Distant words filtered through the noise in her head. “Come on, boys! Who’s with me? Move! Gobby, bring the girl.”
A bustle of movement came close to Lainie, and rough hands hauled her up from the floor. Limp as a rag doll, she was flung over a meaty shoulder, her face coming to rest against a foul-smelling shirt. “What do you want her for, boss?” Gobby asked.
“She’ll come in useful.”
Gobby’s back and shoulders shook with laughter. “Useful, that’s for sure!”
“Not for that, you dolt. At least, not yet,” Carden said. “She’s got power. She can help us find the ore and deal with the blueskins. After that, you can use her for whatever you want.”
Gobby carried her outside. Something jostled against them, there was a tug at Lainie, familiar voices shouting, more scuffling and jostling… then with a couple of pained grunts, the brief fight ended. Next to her, Lainie heard someone mount up into a saddle. “Tie her hands and feet, then throw her up here with me,” Carden said.
Gobby dropped Lainie to the wooden sidewalk. She struggled, but her body was heavy and unresponsive. Gobby planted his knee in the small of her back and yanked her arms behind her while another man held her legs down. She was no physical match against men that size, and, she realized now with a sinking feeling, she had forgotten to bring her gun. Even if she had brought it, though, they would have taken it from her by now.
Gobby tied her hands and feet tight, then picked her up again and flung her face down across Carden’s legs. Her face brushed against the side of a horse, filling her nostrils with the animal’s scent. Better that than the smell of Gobby’s filthy shirt, at least. She thrashed her bound, half-numb limbs. “Let me go!”