by Sean Platt
“What is this, Marshal?”
“‘Marshal?’ You were at my wedding, Earl. You’ve ridden with me.”
“Okay. What is this, Clint?”
“You heard the Reader.”
“I did. Good wedding, by the way. Did preacherman finish you up, or are you still a single man?”
“Hassle Stone is coming,” said Clint, ignoring the question. “He’ll be bringing men with him. Possibly many men. I need guns.”
“You need guns?” Earl looked suddenly distracted. “But you have your unicorn.”
“It won’t be enough.” The gunslinger shook his head. “Stone’s coming in worse than last time. I’ve heard what you haven’t, about things he’s done after being run out of Solace. He’ll burn fields if he can’t get what he wants. He’ll kill women if he can’t have them.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Marshal… Clint… but I believe Stone’s quarrel’s with you, not the good folks of Solace.”
“His quarrel is with the world, Earl Lancaster.”
“I don’t aim to invite trouble I can’t hope to pardon,” Earl said, scratching his head and looking past Clint, out into the street. “I just run a tack shop.”
“Then you’ll want to keep running it. I need your guns. You can use both of them if you’d like.”
Earl flinched, probably not knowing if it was blackmail coating the marshal’s tongue. He said, “I want to let him pass, Clint. He may come at you, but I’ve heard about his operations out on the Edge. Or rumors, anyway. He’s done with Solace. And if he’s not, I don’t know how we’d be able to stop him.”
“You don’t know what you can do?” Clint felt his face flushing red. “You can fight!”
“I don’t know, Clint.” Earl shook his head enough to make the marshal want to punch him. Then something flew over Clint’s shoulder. He ducked at the last second as a sack of oats smacked Earl in the chest, throwing him hard against the doorframe. Earl’s eyes were on Edward, filled with something between anger and fear.
“Like I said, Marshal, I don’t want any trouble. If you can stop Stone, you will. If you can’t, us fighting will only make him angry. He’ll take what he wants, then move on. Years under his heel taught us how to deal with a Hassle Stone.”
“How to deal? And the answer is to lie down?”
The sack of oats, which had landed between Earl and Clint, twitched. Clint raised a palm to Edward without looking.
“Earl. You’re a strong man and a good gun. I need strong men and good guns to handle whatever Stone’s planning on bringing to Solace. Simple as that. If I can get the men, I can drive him back. If I can’t, then even if Edward and I eventually root them out, it’ll only be after he kills scores of you all and burns your town to the ground. Stone won’t go peacefully, not this time. Before Edward and I came to town, the magic had nearly drained from this place, leaving it no better than the rest of the Sprawl. Stone had probably never seen a unicorn in person, or the flash from a marshal’s guns. Now he has. He’s been out in the Edge, maybe toying with darkness. This time he’ll know. And if he can’t fight magic, he’ll burn the world down around it.”
Earl shook his head, taking a long step back. “I just run a tack shop, Marshal.”
“Earl.”
Earl Lancaster closed his door. Behind him, Edward said, “I’ll bet I can get that sack of oats through his window.”
“Don’t.”
“So what’s next, genius?” said the unicorn.
Clint remounted and rode to Bill Maynard’s ranch on the outskirts of Solace. Bill raised turkeys and pumpkins. He had a few cattle, some chickens, and a small field of bedraggled crops, but as was true across the Sands, turkeys were still the stupidest and most prolific livestock there ever was, and pumpkins the only crop that continued to thrive in the Sands. There were aquifers deep under Solace, so water wasn’t a problem. The pumpkins gobbled it up and grew huge. The problem was the poison soil, or so said the soil and science men. It was all a bit over the gunslinger’s head.
Bill Maynard’s answer was the same as Earl Lancaster’s. Bill explained that the reason he raised turkeys so successfully was because he was just as stupid as they were. But Maynard insisted that he wasn’t much of a gun.
Clint reminded Bill how he’d once been on the side of law and order, loathe to live under another man’s boot, or do his bidding. Bill said Stone’s quarrel was with Clint, not with him, and that one sure way to get yourself caught under another man’s boot — the one way in which he could actually become stupider than the turkeys he raised — would be to cause trouble for himself with Hassle Stone where there currently was none.
Clint argued. Edward magicked things so they flew at him. But ultimately Bill shook his head and went inside, wishing the marshal good luck, pleasem and thankoo.
“Stephen MacElroy,” said Clint as he climbed onto Edward’s back. “He’s a sure thing. He’ll help us.”
“Queer MacElroy?”
“His queerness is why he’s a sure thing,” Clint argued. “Earl and Bill think it’s crazy to face Stone? Then I should be aiming for crazy.”
Yet, even Queer MacElroy, who sometimes wore his pants backward and kept a banana in his holster, refused. It seemed that even the village idiot figured going up against Stone was a bad bet.
“Let’s leave town,” Edward suggested. “I’ll even let you bring that woman of yours. We’ll go rogue again. You keep your star and your guns, and we’ll get her a nice dumb horse. These people don’t want to help save themselves? Fine. Then there’s no reason for us to save them.”
“I can’t abandon the people of Solace.”
“Why the Sands not?”
“Pretend you come across a population of horses. Plain old horses, too dumb to do magic or help themselves. And a man wants to come through and cut them up for his own amusement. The horses are too dim to save themselves. Do you run off? Or do you help them because it’s the right thing to do?”
“Are you saying that these townspeople are your poor dumb wards?”
“I’m saying I can’t turn away. I know Stone is coming, and even if he is coming for me, he’ll stop here first. He’ll strip this town to its bones and take what he wants. He’ll leave men behind like in Risk, and then he’ll come after us. Either way, Solace loses, and eventually burns.”
Before Edward could reply, the Water Reader came running up the street toward them, yelling and waving his hands frantically in the air. The Water Reader was an old coot; hair white and wild, and beard tangled enough to house a family of birds. His voice was high-pitched, like an old crone’s from a Grimm Tale.
“It isn’t just Stone who’s coming,” the Water Reader cried. “I couldn’t see it at first, but now that they’re closer, I have.”
“He has men,” said Clint, nodding.
“He has men behind him, yar,” the Reader said. “But he also has someone in front. Someone even the great Hassle Stone must obey.”
“Who?” Clint asked.
“I don’t know.” The Reader shook his head. “I can only see his silhouette… and his mount. Reason I ran here to the yonder was to tell you that whoever this dark man is, he’s riding a unicorn of a different color.”
CHAPTER FOUR:
DECISIONS
Clint took Edward, who was nursing an even blend of fear and disgust after hearing of the dark rider and his mount, and walked to the Otel, where Mai was upstairs drinking a mug of Fanta from the bar.
“Fanta?” he said. “What’s the occasion?”
“My fiancé has abandoned me and will be dying soon,” she said. “I decided there was no point in waiting for my wedding toast. I’m going to drink it all, and damn the ridiculous price.”
“Take it easy, Mai. You’ve no tolerance for improving drinks. You’ll be on the floor.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, dead man,” she said.
He took her arm and turned her around. She’d already had too much Fanta; he could see it in
her eyes. Had she come straight here to start drowning sorrows that needn’t be drowned?
“Grab hold of yourself, Mai. You’re to hitch a gunslinger, yet you’re acting like a trollop. Where’s your grit? Where’s the magic that’s in your blood?”
“Enjoying itself,” she said, raising her mug.
“Are you going to talk to me, or are you too far gone?”
She slapped him with her free hand.
“Better than drunk, anyway,” he said.
Mai crossed to the Otel room’s dresser and set the mug on its polished top, then dragged a suitcase from under the bed, unbuckled the straps, and began to fill it just as she had back in Clint’s room above the boardinghouse.
“The coach will be ready in an hour. When’s your date with death?”
“Around the same time. But there’s a new wrinkle.”
“Is there a kitten in need of rescue?” She slurred the last half of her sentence. “Does a little old lady need help crossing the street?”
Clint came close to smacking her back, but stopped because a man should never hit a woman — only men who had it coming. But he wanted Mai back to her old self: the woman who could take what a man could. This pouty, selfish Mai was different, and not altogether good. Maybe it was the Fanta.
“You used to stand on law’s right side,” he said.
“I used to be on the side of right,” she corrected. “There’s a difference. You came to this town as an outlaw wearing the star of a lawman. You should’ve been stripped of your guns and mount back in The Realm, but you walked the Sands with both until you found a job in a small town in the Sprawl that gave you legal right. You of all people should know what I mean. Minding books isn’t the same as minding sense.”
“And you think leaving these people defenseless is minding sense?”
“You cannot help people who don’t care to help themselves. If they want to dirty their knees to Stone, let ‘em. Meanwhile my compassion and grit will be riding with me to Sojourn, searching for others who care as well for what’s right, instead of settling for what’s left.”
“There’s more at work here, Mai.”
She turned, her interest piqued by something in his voice. She held a blouse above the open suitcase, pausing as she watched him, then set it in the suitcase and waited for Clint to continue.
“Stone brings with him a dark rider. Riding a unicorn of a different color.”
She gasped, a hand suddenly over her mouth.
“Solace starves for magic, as does all of the Sands — all of the world since the Leaking first started. Stone and his party are close. I suspect —”
“— I suspect that a unicorn of a different color making you want to stay even more means you’ve already lost whatever sense you had. They aren’t sensing dark magic as a sating of their thirst for magic of any kind. They have Edward in town already, with his white magic, and have for years.”
“You don’t understand this, regardless of your blood, Mai. Don’t pretend like you do.”
“I understand that when something pure willingly submits itself so fully to a master, it spits in the unblinking eye of creation! I understand that unicorn magic so totally under a human’s control is dangerous indeed. And I understand that you and Edward would stand no chance against such power.”
“Mai…”
“There’s nothing you can do, Clint,” she said. “Come with me. Maybe he’ll be drawn away, and Solace will survive. Maybe not. But you cannot stand and fight, and I cannot stand to see you try.”
“What I cannot do is run. You know I can’t.”
She sighed. “Yar, I suppose I do know just how pig-hearted you are. I just didn’t want to believe it, since it makes you so stupid, stupid, stupid.”
Clint’s ire was starting to swell, but he forced himself to let it go. It was actually best if Mai left, but only after she understood that he had no choice but to stay. He would face whatever happened in Solace, live or die by his choice, and join her later if he was still breathing.
“Tell me,” she said. “Have you made your rounds? Have you gone to the men of this town? Did you try to round up your posse, even before you knew about the dark rider?”
“Yar’m, I did.”
“And was anyone willing to fight by your side?”
Clint was silent.
Mai flared with anger. “These people don’t deserve you! This town is poisoned, like all of the rest of the Sprawl. It’s the magic gone missing. Solace tolerates you, and is happy to let you protect them with Edward, but it’s just that, Clint: tolerance. They don’t change. They’re sour like the air and the soil. What you see as redeemable here is all you brought with you, because of Edward. It’s a facade. The town wears a false smile to hide its despicable, ruined, cowardly face.”
“So I should abandon them?”
“Would you abandon rats?”
Clint stared, saying nothing.
“One hour, Clint. My coach leaves in an hour.” Mai approached the marshal and set her hand on his arm. “Come with me. Please. You always said you wanted to return to The Realm, and I’ve not seen her walls since I was abandoned on the dusty side as a child. We may never find it — Providence says that no man or woman can — but Sojourn is at least a spoke closer on the spiral. This place is used. Discard it. Remember me, and you, and where we’re supposed to be going. Don’t throw it away.”
“Once we left Solace as hitched, I was to no longer be a gunslinger,” he said.
A half-smile crossed her full lips. “I think we both know that one way or another, with or without your marshal’s star, you were leaving town on a unicorn’s back, with fourteen shots across your hips.”
Mai put one hand on the gunslinger’s chest, then the other. Her hands were delicate and small, immaculate against the dust and grit clinging to Clint like a second skin. “Let’s go. Take your guns and your unicorn. Take your woman. Let’s leave. Now. It’s not abandonment when folks are content to sit and stare into a setting sun. Your absence will make no difference.”
His heaving chest rose and fell under her tiny hands. After a long moment, he finally said, “I can’t.”
Her small hands gave him a little shove. Without a word, she returned to her suitcase.
“Then go, gunslinger. Go to your death.”
“I’ll find you when this is over,” he said. “Wherever you are.”
She wouldn’t meet his eyes as he stood near the Otel room door, listening to the ticking clock. He turned, and left the room to greet his doom.
CHAPTER FIVE:
THE KID
Clint returned to Edward’s stall that wasn’t a stall, in the barn that wasn’t a barn. He was stuffing gear into his ancient cowskin rucksack when the orphan kid, Teddy, approached him from behind and jabbed a finger in his back.
Clint spun so inhumanly fast, Teddy didn’t have time to retrieve his finger before Clint had a barrel from each gun digging into Teddy’s forehead, both cocked. Clint saw it was only Teddy who had gotten the drop on him, then holstered both irons, lowering the hammers.
“That was a bad idea,” said Clint.
“What color smoke comes out of them guns?” Teddy asked, nodding toward the gunslinger’s hip. “I heard it ain’t white.”
“Gunslinger rounds use a special powder, highly illegal unless you’re a marshal. It’s a semi-magic firepowder, which makes a dull red smoke.”
“You mean pink.”
Clint said nothing, shoving more supplies in his pack. He’d have to shoulder the entire load when he and Edward went to the Flat Top, of course, since Edward wasn’t a mule and didn’t wear saddlebags, despite being many times stronger than Clint.
Edward’s attitude reminded him of his own grandfather’s. Clint’s grandfather had lived in The Realm with the rest of them, back when what was now the Sands was still relatively magic. Grappy worked to bring home the money, so Grammy did everything else. Grappy reasoned he did enough, and shouldn’t have to wash dishes… or c
arry cargo.
“Is it true that unicorns bleed rainbows?” Teddy asked.
“They have redundant vessels bearing many different magical elixirs,” said Clint. “So yar, when wounded, before they magick themselves healed, their blood flows in multi-hues.”
Teddy was poking around Edward’s room, but meaning no harm. The boy was thirteen and curious, and in his mind, merely investigating cool cowboy stuff. But Clint knew that Edward, as he watched Teddy prod, saw it as an invasion of his privacy.
“What colors?” said Teddy.
“Red. Blue. Green. Purple. Yellow. Orange. More, I think.”
“That’s a rainbow,” said Teddy.
“I guess.”
Teddy poked at a stack of Joelalbums Edward had collected during his travels. “Being a gunslinger sounds really fruity,” he said.
Clint said, “I assure you, the bad guys don’t see it that way.”
“So what else do unicorns do?” said Teddy. “Do they poop gold?”
“Yar,” said Edward, breaking his silence. “Stick your hands under there and I’ll show you.”
“Holy Joe, you talk?” Teddy cried, rushing inside the stall toward Edward. Clint grabbed his arm and held him back, certain a stomping was imminent if Teddy violated Edward’s space further.
“Of course I talk, you idiot,” said Edward, turning back.
Teddy started singing an old campfire song about a talking horse named Mister Ed, glee on his face. Clint slapped his hand hard over the boy’s mouth to keep him quiet. Being compared to a horse was bad enough for Edward, but a horse named Ed made the song downright infuriating.
“How come I never heard you talk before?”
“Because you’re a dumb kid. Everyone else knows I talk.”
“But you never go around talkin’. Like, being a member of the town. Is that because Mister Ed will never speak unless he has somethin’ to say?”
Edward reared. If the stall door had been open, Teddy would have been facing two hooves in the face. Clint leaned down and whispered, “Do yourself a favor kid, and forget that song.”