Ger hunched his shoulders and peered down at his feet. “I suppose it was. I’m sorry.”
You’re being a bitch again. Stop it.
Kellen sighed and turned toward Ger. There in the shadows overhanging the clearing’s edge, it was almost like they were alone. He was standing so close she could’ve touched him.
“I want to do this right,” Ger said. “All of this. I don’t want anyone else to die because I couldn’t do anything about it.”
Of course that would be his take on things. Always the hero. Hadn’t he proven once already that duty was more important to him than anything else? Than anyone?
Kellen swiped a last pass over the bay’s coat and made a show of putting away the brush. When she turned around again, she found that Ger had ducked under the bay’s neck and stood right beside her. Much like the horse, he smelled of dust and sweat, and Kellen was tempted to lean into him, too, but for far different reasons than mere comfort. She looked up, into those bottomless eyes of his.
Doing this on my own, she reminded herself sharply, and turned her head.
“It’s fine,” she said. “It’ll be fine. The Indians know what they’re up against, now. They’ll come to terms with Harrison, and it’ll all be over.”
And then, finally, Mrs. Epler banged the kettle with her wooden spoon and called to the men in her thick Dutch accent. Kellen brushed around Ger and left him standing by himself.
14
“Trouble, Lieutenant Bradley?”
“Nothing I can’t handle, sir.” Vincent Bradley made sure to state it firmly, with no hesitation. Tucker Ellis was not a man you allowed to see your weakness.
Ellis didn’t so much as glance toward Vincent. A heavily marked map and a leather bound journal lay open on his camp table. Ellis stood with his hands clasped behind his back and continued to study them without saying anything further. Despite the rough conditions they traveled under, Ellis managed to keep his hair in fashionably-groomed waves, and his dark breeches and cropped riding coat were crisp and immaculate as ever.
By comparison, Vincent felt like he was barely keeping it together. He resisted the urge to wave away the gnats swarming in his face and waited for Ellis to end the deliberate silence. At least it wasn’t raining yet. Worse yet was to stand with rain dripping off his hat and running down his face while he waited for Ellis to acknowledge him.
Then, finally, Ellis’s gaze did shift to Vincent, locked on, and held. Vincent forced himself not to look away. You could never win a staring contest with Tucker Ellis—even if he looked away first, he still somehow managed to win. You could only hope to lose with dignity.
Ellis’s eyes narrowed briefly. Vincent wondered if something of what he was thinking showed on his face. Why he bothered trying to hide anything, he wasn’t sure. Ellis always seemed to see straight through him anyhow. Except for the one time, of course, when Vincent had convinced Ellis to bring Kellen on board, and look how well that had turned out. By the time Vincent had gotten to her, she’d moved on, shacked up with Gerald Owen, and had the gall to leverage Vincent into bringing Owen to Ellis, too.
“Perhaps you should have made a different career choice, Lieutenant Bradley,” Ellis said. “I suppose it’s too late now.”
Fuck you. Vincent swallowed hard to keep the words inside. His hands, thankfully behind his back, clenched into fists. Too late, indeed. Too late to tell Ellis he quit, too late to tell Ellis he didn’t want his damned job anyhow, too late to go back to that day on the docks and choose to stay with Kellen instead of leaving her to be easy prey for Ger Owen. Too fucking late.
Ellis stared Vincent down a few seconds longer, but Vincent managed to keep his expression smooth. He needed to get back into Ellis’s good graces, not fall further out of them. When Ellis finally looked down again at the maps and journal spread out before him, Vincent allowed himself to breathe.
“We will cross the Ohio River into the Indiana Territory within the week,” Ellis said. “There is a ferry crossing near the settlement of Louisville. Vincennes will be another ten days or so from there, if everything runs in good order. I presume you will see to it that things run in good order.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That will be all.” Ellis bent over his papers, leaving Vincent feeling like he no longer existed, except according to one man’s whim.
II: A Distant Thunder
1
Play the game. Keep passing the tests until something gives.
That was what had worked the first time, Vincent reminded himself as he stood a second longer beside Ellis’s camp table while Ellis pored over his maps and pretended Vincent no longer existed. He only had to be as calculating and clever as Ellis and wait for Ellis to remember why he’d chosen Vincent as his right hand to begin with.
For the moment, with gnats swarming around his head, Vincent accepted the dismissal and went to stand between the party’s two supply wagons.
The sun stood high overhead, only beginning to arc westward, and slanted full strength through the leaves. The Crowmakers had gathered in an uneven sprawl around Mrs. Epler’s kettle of venison stew. Some ate while standing, others claimed stumps embedded in the cleared trail. Twelve soldiers, all in charcoal-colored uniforms with black hats and night-colored guns on their hips, just like Vincent.
But all of them were together, talking, some laughing in easy camaraderie with each other and others bickering like usual. All of them had wing-like designs tattooed across their faces and necks and arms. All of them had a Crow settled nearby.
Kellen was with Brian Byrne and Patrick Colley, a pair of Irishmen, both with dark hair and blue eyes. Vincent could only tell them apart because Byrne was taller and thin to the point of gauntness, while Colley wore freckles and sometimes spectacles. Colley rarely talked, but Byrne more than made up for it.
With Kellen’s uniform and her hair cut short like it was, it wasn’t hard to mistake her for a man, from a distance at least. Byrne’s mouth was moving—was it ever not?—and Kellen grinned and nodded as she ate. Memory provided Vincent with an amused crinkle at the corner of her gray eyes and the soft huff of her laugh.
“What did you do?”
Vincent started and then covered it. It was just Annie—of course it was Annie, who else ever voluntarily spoke to him?
Annie James was thirteen years old, all angles and hunched shoulders inside the simple, high-waisted dresses she wore. She might be pretty someday, with her long dark hair and black eyes. For now, she seemed content to prove she was smarter than anyone else, with the possible exception of her father.
Annie hoisted herself onto the back of the wagon that Vincent stood beside, wriggled side to side until her skirt settled beneath her, and tilted her head to look up at him. Her hair, lackluster in the humidity, fell heavily over one shoulder.
“What?” he asked.
“What did you do,” Annie repeated, “to make Mr. Ellis so very upset? Last time I saw him that angry was when a favorite horse bit him. He’s been mad at you since before we left Philadelphia.”
Vincent managed a short laugh. ‘Mad’ was an understatement.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Nothing important. It’ll be fine.”
Annie tilted her head to the other side, still looking up at Vincent. Her face was as wide open and easy to read as a spring morning—no hidden meanings to look for there. Her brow furrowed just the tiniest of bits, but the corner of her mouth quirked up.
“He had the horse put down,” she said.
Vincent snorted. “Thanks so much. That’s very reassuring.”
Annie’s smile brightened. “You’re very welcome, of course.”
Over by the cook fire, a fresh round of laughter broke out. Vincent had no trouble at all picking out Kellen’s voice from the others. He swatted at the persistent gnats and rubbed his sleeve across his eyes.
“What are you doing, anyhow?” he said to Annie. “Shouldn’t you be resting or reading or whatever it is your father told y
ou to do?”
Annie rolled her eyes and shifted her legs around. The wagon creaked with her movement.
“Father wants me to read Plutarch’s Lives. I told him I already had and that allowing me to study his notes on the mythologies and legends of the native tribes would be a more valuable activity. But you know how he is, so we packed Plutarch. What I really wish is that he would let me help with his further research into the workings of the Crows.”
Vincent allowed himself a smile—a small one, but genuine. Annie James might be little more than a child, and she talked every bit like the uppity scholar her father was. But she wasn’t entirely bad company.
“I don’t understand why your father’s always thinking and scribbling notes about the Crows, anyhow,” Vincent said. “The Crowmakers are made.”
Annie didn’t answer right away—long enough that Vincent glanced over and caught a guarded expression on her usually forthright face. Her shrug struck Vincent as being deliberately casual.
“There are a few areas for improvement,” she said. “And for greater efficiency in the making process.”
“Improvements and efficiency that don’t include driving you to exhaustion?” The ritual that Samuel James used as part of turning plain dockworkers into Crowmakers involved Annie performing some Indian ritual. Vincent had seen firsthand just how hard the makings had been on Annie. They’d been a week away from Philadelphia before the dark circles under her eyes had finally faded.
Annie shrugged again, and again Vincent thought the gesture was too deliberate. She didn’t lie well, even when she wasn’t talking. Then he thought through what she’d said, exactly.
“Improving the process. That means you—”
“Are you sorry Ellis didn’t have you made, too?” Annie turned her head and smiled at him, tilted her head like she always did after she asked him something.
Vincent let his question trail away. Annie obviously didn’t want to answer. And really, did he need her to? Her anxiousness to change the subject said as much as any words.
They’re going to make more of them. Would he be exempt this time?
Did he want to be?
It was Vincent’s turn to shrug. “I don’t need a Crow,” he said.
“I’m glad you weren’t,” Annie said. “I’m glad you’re available to look out for me.”
Keeping an eye on Annie was only part of his job, and it wasn’t like he had a choice. That had been an order from Ellis. To Vincent, it felt like a punishment—he’d screwed things up, so Ellis was making him babysit the little girl. But Vincent didn’t have the heart to say any of that out loud to Annie.
“We’ll cross into the Indiana Territory within the week,” he said instead, to change the subject.
Annie regarded him for a breath longer. In the moment of quiet between them, other voices rose and fell, horses shifted with a restless jangle of tack, and birds whistled and called from the trees.
“And then on to Vincennes,” Annie said. “I hear Governor Harrison has some rare books in his collection at Grouseland. That’s his estate.”
Vincent grunted. He didn’t care one way or the other about books, rare or otherwise. But Harrison had other things at Vincennes, too—regular militia authorized by President Jefferson to support Harrison’s efforts, a decent stockpile of weapons and ammunition, a handful of treaties Harrison wanted signed, and a whole lot of Indians in the surrounding territory who didn’t like any of those things.
Not that what the Indians liked or didn’t like had a whole hell of a lot to do with anything, anymore.
But Vincent didn’t say any of that out loud to Annie, either. Doubts and questions were a sign of weakness, and he’d shown more than enough of that already.
“Your father’s been in Indian territories before,” Vincent said, intending to change the subject once more.
Annie blinked at him. That guarded look dropped onto her face again, the one where her eyes narrowed and her mouth pursed.
Means there’s a story there somewhere.
“I heard him and Ellis talking about it one time.”
One time when I was eavesdropping on them. What if he hadn’t been eavesdropping on Ellis and James? That was the act that started Vincent down this path with Ellis. What if he could take that moment back? What might it have changed?
“He has you use that ritual to tie the Crows to the Crowmakers,” Vincent continued. “The tattoos—mixing their blood with ink made from the tenebrium like the Crows, that’s just part of it. The ritual’s what makes it work.”
A memory rose, of Samuel James’s study and the air inside hot and stinking of blood and pounding like a pulse against Vincent’s skin. Of Annie’s voice, alone and wavering in the middle of all that. Without the ritual, that power was uncontrolled.
“The ritual,” Vincent continued. “When your father was in Indian lands before, that’s when he picked that up?”
“I suppose so.” Annie crossed her arms and frowned at him.
That wasn’t the only thing James had picked up, Vincent abruptly recalled. What else had Ellis said that night? He’d implied that James had stolen something from the Indians.
Vincent smiled and leaned a little closer to Annie, like she was about to tell him her best secret. “So what was it he stole from the Indians that made them so mad at him?”
Annie’s face paled. She uncrossed her arms, ducked away from Vincent, and slid down off the back of the wagon. Wood groaned and creaked as her weight shifted off it.
“I wouldn’t know,” she murmured as she slipped away. She glanced over her shoulder, and her black eyes pierced him. “You will have to excuse me now. I have reading to do.”
Black eyes. Abruptly, Vincent recalled other things he’d overheard.
“You’re but a half blood.”
“That’s still more Indian in my blood than in yours.”
“My mother is no longer with us.”
“Damn it all.” Vincent stared at Annie’s retreating back as she darted along the edge of the camp and away from him.
Whatever the story about James and his prior adventures with the Indians, it was a pretty sure bet Annie’s mother had been part of it.
2
August 1806
Indiana Territory: Tecumseh’s Town
In the timeless, hushed near-light just before dawn, Wind Man woke in the musky heat of sleeping bodies pressed close throughout the night. Blinking away sleep, he found his wife watching him through half-closed eyes. Laughing Girl’s long hair fanned in disarray across the deerskins that covered their brush bedding and writhed in black tendrils across her naked shoulders and breasts. Her eyes glittered.
Wind Man’s mind knew what that glitter meant. So did all the other parts of his body. He reached for her and touched her, and the touching led eventually to him covering Laughing Girl’s body with his own. For a time they spoke in the best way a man and wife could speak, without words.
Later, with a pleasant languidness weighting his limbs and easing his mind, Wind Man murmured against Laughing Girl’s hair, and its silk caressed his lips. “You make my heart whole, light of my life. Even during these hard times.”
She wriggled around to face him, her hips still touching his, and smiled up into his face.
“These will not be such hard times for very much longer.” Her breath was sweet against Wind Man’s cheek.
Dusky pink fingers of dawn crept beneath the bottom of their blanket-covered door now, as daylight emerged from darkness and illuminated the curve of Laughing Girl’s cheek, of her neck, of her hips still naked beside his. Outside the birch-covered framework of bent and tied saplings, a dog’s bark shattered the quiet. It was all too easy to believe that every good thing they hoped for would happen. The flying guns were only a story, like smoke that billows from damp wood even though the fire is small.
Comfortably drowsy, Wind Man murmured, “Yes. Tecumseh will unite the tribes, and we will drive the Long Knives back across the sea.”
<
br /> Laughing Girl pushed herself up onto one elbow. A small chill in her eyes roused Wind Man to greater wakefulness.
He’d missed something. What had he missed? Wind Man reviewed his words and could find no error in them—save that they claimed Tecumseh would save the Shawnee people and made no mention of Tenskwatawa.
He is her father. You would do well to remember, and keep your wife’s favor, foolish man.
Wind Man laid his palm flat against Laughing Girl’s hip and slid it gently up and down that soft flesh.
“With Tenskwatawa’s help, how can he fail?”
A frown shadowed Laughing Girl’s forehead and bowed her mouth. She did not seem to notice the soothing motion of Wind Man’s hand against her hip.
“My father will make it happen, with or without Tecumseh or the southern tribes. Do you think he cannot?”
Wind Man had not been married long, but it had been long enough that he knew not to answer that question directly.
And there was another question, one of his own, which fluttered to life beneath Laughing Girl’s. Prevent Tenskwatawa from making any bad decisions, Tecumseh had instructed. Was there something Tenskwatawa was thinking of doing, something that Wind Man did not know but Laughing Girl did?
“How could any man do such a thing alone?” Wind Man spoke slowly, treading cautiously. “The Long Knives are many, and between fighting them and the sicknesses they brought with them, they have made us few. When Blackhoof and Blue Jacket signed treaties and convinced their people to follow white ways, they made us fewer yet. We need the unity of tribes and warriors. Tenskwatawa’s ability to turn the weather is miraculous, a gift from the Master. But it is only the weather.”
He realized the error of his words as soon as they were out, but it was too late. Laughing Girl’s frown deepened, turning the lines around her mouth ugly.
“In my father’s youth, his guardian spirits told him he would become a healer, and he became a healer. He learned the roots and the herbs and the ways to use them. He learned to call upon the spirits for aid to drive away bad spirits and heal the sick.” Laughing Girl listed her father’s virtues as if chopping at wood with a hatchet. A very sharp hatchet. “And he did those things, as well as he could, even when he was fighting the whiskey-demons.”
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