Myoko was dead. Gretchen was dead. Oberon was dead.
Only ten minutes had passed since we left Dainty Dinghy.
The red-haired teenagers lumpishly hauled the coffin off the wagon and dragged it to the jolly-boat. They set down the coffin beside Gretchen; I suppose they thought Gretchen looked more dead than Myoko. Impervia immediately broke off her prayers. “This one,” she said, pointing at Myoko. “This one first. Then the other.”
“You want them in the same casket?” Victor asked.
“Of course not!”
“We only got the one casket,” Vickie said. “Either we double up or somebody goes without.”
“You’ll get another casket.” Impervia’s voice was the hissing fuse on a bomb. “You’ll put this woman in the casket you have and you’ll get another casket for that woman there. You’ll be quick about it and you’ll handle them with respect.”
“Here,” I said, stepping forward. I had my trusty purse out and enough cash in hand that I hoped Vickie and Victor would shut their mouths. “This will cover your expenses. Just do what needs doing.”
Vickie and Victor stared at the money a moment, then both reached to grab it. They had a three-second shoving match over which of them would take possession of the gold.
Under other circumstances, it might have been funny.
Impervia stomped away to the edge of the lake and stared out over the water. She kept her back turned as the teenagers picked up Myoko’s body.
Pelinor drew me aside. “While Impervia was speaking with the undertaker,” he said, “I arranged for a coach to Niagara Falls. There’s no regular run scheduled, so, uhh, we’ll have to pay extra.”
I nodded; whatever the price was, I could cover it. Didn’t I always pay for everything? I could afford the coach and the coffins as easily as I bought the first round of drinks whenever we went to a tavern.
(It occurred to me, we’d probably never go bar-crawling again. With Myoko gone, we couldn’t bear the hollowness. We might even start avoiding each other.
(Nothing would ever be the same.)
Annah went with Vickie and “Victor back to their wagon. She spoke with them quietly for several minutes. When she returned, she said, “The undertaker will hold all the bodies while we’re in Niagara.”
“And if we don’t come back?”
“If we don’t return in three days, they’ll take the corpses to Gretchen’s ship.”
At which point, Zunctweed might throw Gretchen into the lake—or worse. The spells that made slaves obey their owners didn’t apply once the owner was dead...and I’d seen slaves commit gross atrocities on their late owners’ bodies. Even slaves who seemed resigned to their lot might take posthumous vengeance for years of indignity. Kicking, mutilating, attacking the corpse with any weapon they could find. Then, after the savagery was over, they’d docilely report to their owner’s heir. Slavery spells didn’t end with one owner’s death; they just took a brief holiday, then reasserted themselves with a new master.
I wondered whom Zunctweed would go to once he learned Gretchen was dead. Maybe me. Sometimes when Gretchen got into a huff, she’d threaten to leave me Zunctweed in her will.
As if I didn’t have enough problems.
18
BING BANG BOOM
We left Vickie and Victor moping over the impossibility of lifting Oberon’s body into their cart. With all of us heaving, we might have been able to move his massive weight, but Impervia refused to let us try. She was furious with the world, and the undertaker’s children were the most immediate targets for her wrath. “I saw how much Phil paid them,” she told the others. “They can deal with this on their own.”
Perhaps she just wanted to get moving again. Away from the beach and die corpses. With seething glares, she forced us to gather our gear and depart.
Leaving our dead friends in the less than capable hands of Vickie and Victor.
As we walked up the street into town, Pelinor gamely tried to fill the silence with overhearty remarks about our surroundings—”Pretty little sign on that store there, what’s it supposed to be, a hammer do you think?”—but no one else responded to his efforts at conversation. That didn’t stop him: Pelinor was the sort who handled his grief by talking trivialities.
I didn’t mind his babble; it was better than empty quiet. No one else tried to shut him up either—not even Impervia. She was putting up a good front of being in control, but underneath...underneath, she was a deeply emotional woman who thought most emotions were sinful. Someday that inner conflict might rip her apart.
But not yet. Not yet.
So we trudged through Crystal Bay’s central square. Along the way, we passed numerous tethered horses, all of whom received a “Good day,” from Pelinor and comments on their hocks and withers. Local residents who saw us coming ducked into stores or side streets until we were gone. Considering Impervia’s mood, I’d say people were smart to hide...but it was still unnerving to see our presence turn the place into a ghost town.
Therefore I was glad when we finally reached the stagecoach company. If you could dignify it with the name “company.” Its meager excuse for an office was nothing more than a windowless shack in front of a stable. The stable was not much fancier—room for only one coach, and perhaps eight horses if they doubled up two to a stall.
Not what you’d call a big operation. Quite possibly, the stage ran only once a week, doing a circuit of nearby villages, then ending back at Crystal Bay. The rest of the time, the coach driver apparently served as the local blacksmith; a shed beside the stables had its door open to reveal an anvil and a furnace, neither of which were currently in use. In fact, there was no one in sight at all. The only promising sign was that the coach had been trundled out of its shed and hitched to a team of four, all of whom looked adequately strong and healthy.
Pelinor went off to talk to the horses while Impervia stuck her head into the office shack. “Empty,” she reported. The glowering look on her face suggested dark suspicions—that the driver had absconded with our down payment, that he was hiding and ready to ambush us, or perhaps that he’d been murdered by Ring agents—so it must have come as a letdown when a man emerged from a privy at the back of the yard, his trousers still half-undone.
“There you are!” he called, buttoning his pants with no great haste. “Hope I didn’t keep you waiting, but my pa always said to empty the chutes before takin’ folks on a drive.”
He smiled as if we should be impressed by his father’s acumen. That smile seemed to sum up the man: sunny, casual, and his idea of inspired advance planning was remembering to visit the outhouse before leaving on a trip. Our driver (who introduced himself as Bing: “Fred Binghamton, but my pa always went as Bing, and that’s good enough for me!”) was nearly as dark as Impervia and almost twice as muscular—he was, after all, a blacksmith—but he had none of the holy sister’s knife-edge aggression. Though he was young (mid-twenties), Bing’s face already had abundant laugh lines; his eyes showed a permanent twinkle and he moved with the contented slowness of a well-fed bear.
Bing obviously enjoyed life...and if his wits were less than lightning-fast, his good nature had a contagious quality we badly needed at that moment. It would be ridiculous to say the sight of him cheered us up—that was impossible. But Bing was so pleasantly normal, he served as a reminder that the world contained more than grief. His smiling presence eased a bit of the tension wrapped around my heart.
I couldn’t help noticing his smile grew wider when he looked Impervia’s direction. He obviously liked what he saw, and didn’t mind anyone knowing. I doubt if he even recognized Impervia’s tunic and trousers as nun’s apparel—Magdalenes weren’t often seen in backwaters like Crystal Bay, and besides, Impervia’s clothes were still clinging wet from getting splashed. I could forgive Bing for ogling a nun; the question was if Impervia could forgive him.
Several long seconds passed: Bing smiling broadly, the rest of us holding our breaths to see what Impervia wo
uld do. Slowly she lifted her hand...then, incredibly, she brushed it through her snip-clipped hair as if trying to comb it into some more orderly arrangement. A moment later, she dropped her gaze; with her jet-dark skin it was impossible to tell, but I would almost have said she was blushing.
I shook my head in amazement. Any other man on any other day would have received a sharp-tongued reprimand; Impervia might even slap his face. But today...grief affects people unpredictably. I could have sworn Impervia was so angry over Myoko’s death, she’d lash out at anyone who gave her the least excuse. Obviously, I’d been wrong. Maybe she’d been ready to roar at Bing—to go through her usual routine of instant hostility toward male attention—when suddenly, she just didn’t have the heart. Not enough energy to work herself into a rage: especially not over someone as transparently harmless as Bing. I don’t know if that’s what actually went through Impervia’s mind, but I could see the bottom had dropped out of her fury. Nothing left but that weak almost-feminine gesture of straightening her hair.
Her fire had turned to ashes. She looked exhausted.
Bing was not the sort whose smiles lengthened into leers. After only a moment more, he turned from Impervia and began talking pleasantly with Pelinor: explaining some nicety about the way the horses had been hooked to the coach. (“My pa made that harness; it’s got special features.”) When Bing bent over to point out some detail about the cinch under one horse’s belly, Impervia’s gaze flicked over to study him behind his back. As if he was a puzzle and a challenge.
But her eyes still looked tired.
I walked over to her. “How are you doing?” I asked.
She sighed. “Praying for strength.”
“Really?”
“Really.” She glanced my way, then back at Bing. “Nothing’s ever simple, Phil. A few hours ago, I was so...excited...about going on a holy mission. Now Myoko’s dead, and we haven’t accomplished anything. Not yet, anyway. I, uhh...I regret how I felt. Excitement was naive. Perhaps even a sin. Thinking that I’d arrived and would never have another silly little problem.”
“What silly little problems do you have?”
Impervia nodded toward Bing. “When I see a man like that, the devil whispers in my ear. It’s not lust—not much—but it would be so uncomplicated just to...you know. Fall into someone’s arms right now. To let go. To have someone who would...oh, just to have someone. To live like other women. Marry or not, settle down or not, have children or not: I don’t know what I’d do, but sometimes I look at a man who’s simple and decent, and I think how much easier it would be. Just to be someone other than Sister Impervia.”
She gave a weak snort. “Impervia. What a stupid name. I chose it when I took vows at fifteen. Cocky little kid, sure I was stronger than anything. Why on Earth would anyone let a fifteen-year-old girl make such an important decision?”
“What’s your real name?” I asked.
“It’s...” She stopped suddenly. “My real name is Sister Impervia. I’m praying for strength, Phil, remember?” She stepped away from me, then yelled at the others, “Why are you all just standing around? There’s no time to lose!” She stormed a few steps forward, then whirled back to glare at me. “Quit lollygagging, you! Get into the coach. Now!”
Impervia still looked tired; but she also looked strong.
The ride to the Falls took three hours—cramped bumpy hours, bouncing over OldTech roads whose potholes had been patched with dirt rather than asphalt or gravel. The dirt was now mud; the potholes were mudholes. Every time a wheel hit one, the whole coach jolted.
Pelinor rode beside Bing on the driver’s seat. No doubt they spent the entire journey nattering about horses. I sat in the carriage next to Annah, with Impervia directly opposite me and the Caryatid on the other side. Every now and then we’d hear Bing’s booming laugh, roaring about something Pelinor said...and I’d look across to see Impervia listening keenly to the sound. If she wasn’t careful, she might work herself up into a bosom-heaving crush on the big man; but then, Impervia was always careful, wasn’t she?
Anyway, there were worse things than crushes. I thought about that as I held Annah’s hand. The coach was small enough that we were pressed in tight on the narrow bench; and for some reason, we held our hands down low at our sides, as if trying to hide what we were doing. I’m sure Impervia and the Caryatid knew perfectly well that Annah and I had covertly linked hands, but they pretended not to notice. Mostly they were lost in their own thoughts. So was I. So was Annah. Until some wincing moment when the memory of some corpse surfaced in my brain (Myoko, Gretchen, Oberon, Xavier, Rosalind, Hump, Dee-James), and I would find myself desperately squeezing Annah’s hand for reassurance. She would always squeeze back...and sometimes she would fiercely squeeze on her own, as if some similar horror had silently risen in her mind’s eye.
But we didn’t speak. None of us. We passed the hours staring out at the late afternoon. Damp fields of muck. Orchards with bare branches. Less snow here than back in Simka, more melt-water streaming through the ditches.
Early in the trip, we saw farmers mending fences or hauling the winter’s crop of stones off their land; but as time went on, the men and women we passed all seemed to have stopped work for the day. They sat silently on rocks or stiles, perhaps smoking pipes or holding half-empty wineskins in their hands, perhaps just staring into nothingness as the sun sank in the sky. Most nodded in our direction as we went past—some as if they knew Bing, some with an air of vague courtesy that suggested they would nod to anyone who entered their field of vision.
Shadows lengthened. Soon, the people we saw were more likely to be walking home than just sitting: finished work, finished their pipes and their wineskins, turning their backs to the road and heading toward sturdy farmhouses.
As the sun touched the far horizon, the pavement under our wheels became smoother—so abruptly that Impervia stirred from her brooding and lifted her head as if sensing some threat. The stillness of level asphalt. As Impervia looked around warily, I said, “We must be getting close to Niagara. The highway’s been paved to impress the tourists.”
Impervia relaxed—don’t ask me why. I certainly didn’t feel relieved that we’d almost reached the Falls.
In red and gold twilight, we stopped at an inn called The Captured Peacock. Bing told us it lay on the outermost edge of “Niffles”: his name for the city and tourist area around the Falls. (“Niffles” was spelled “Niagara Falls” but for some reason, Bing made gagging sounds when anyone pronounced the name in full. I couldn’t tell if saying “Niagara Falls” proved you were an ignorant tourist, or if “Niffles” was a disdainful nickname by which Crystal Bay folk belittled their big-city neighbors. Another of those regional rivalry things.)
Bing said he was happy to drive us all the way downtown, but first he wanted to rest the horses—maybe give them some water and feed. No one objected to the break. After hours in the coach, we were glad to stretch our legs, visit the privy, get some supper. We also realized there was no point proceeding until we’d formulated a plan. Nifftes was a huge city: 30,000 permanent residents plus heaven knew how many tourists. Finding Sebastian and Jode wouldn’t be easy...unless Dreamsinger had already tracked them down, in which case we could just look for the big patch of smoldering rubble.
So while Bing dealt with the horses, the rest of us trooped into The Captured Peacock (ducking under a lurid sign that showed such a bird with golden ropes tied around his neck: teardrops ran from his eyes, but his tail was raised in full display, as if he were weeping bitterly at being snared, yet still boyishly eager to impress any passing peahens). I couldn’t help recalling I’d entered a similar drinking establishment at almost exactly the same time twenty-four hours earlier: The Pot of Gold in Simka, where we’d joked about quests and faced nothing more serious than drunken fishermen.
Now everything was different. Annah was here. Myoko wasn’t. And no one would ever again tease me about Gretchen, or even mention her name in my hearing.
Yesterday. More distant than the farthest star.
The Captured Peacock’s interior was slightly bigger, slightly brighter, and slightly less rancid than The Pot of Gold. Actual pictures hung on the wall—watercolor washes over black-ink renderings of the Falls from various angles, probably created by some teenager whom everyone said was “marvelously gifted.” But the place was still just a big room with a bar at one end and hard-to-break furniture everywhere else. Without having to speak, we instinctively headed toward a table just past the end of the bar: out of the flow of traffic, but close enough that one could holler drink orders directly to the tapman. We’d sat in the same position at The Pot of Gold...and at every other dive we visited.
The tapman nodded amicably as we walked by: a diminutive fellow with a profuse busby of a beard as compensation for his shortfalls in height and weight. “Evening,” he said in a surprisingly deep voice. “What can I get ya? Nice chicken stew tonight.”
“Then bowls of stew all around,” Pelinor said. “And four ales, one tea.” Our usual beverage order. Except that we now had Annah instead of Myoko. Pelinor realized this a moment too late; he blustered an apology through his mustache and asked what she wanted.
“Tea is fine,” Annah said.
“Three ales, two teas,” Pelinor told the tapman. A trivial change, but it started the Caryatid crying. I knew how she felt.
While waiting for food and drink, we talked about finding Sebastian. What he might be up to...besides getting wed to an alien shapeshifter. With Myoko gone, I was the only one present who knew the boy in any depth; and I’d obviously missed a lot, because I hadn’t known about his psionic powers or his relationship with Rosalind. Still, I’d talked with him many times—at meals and casual “snack-ins” where I’d invite three or four of my boys into my suite to eat cookies, drink apple juice, and chat. No teenager ever confides totally in an adult, especially not a shy and private boy like Sebastian; but I’d got to know him better than most people did, and that would have to suffice.
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