by Alex Wells
She shifted her grip on the belt and, smooth as butter, like it fit in her hand, drew one of the pistols. She flashed it up to rest the tip of the barrel lightly against Geri’s forehead. His eyes, fixed on her own, went wide.
“Guess you forgot. Mayhap all of you did.” Her voice sounded hoarse to her own ears. “I got a name. It’s Ravani.”
Freki lunged toward her. The other pistol came to her hand without even a thought, the leather gun belt falling unnoticed to the ground. He froze in his tracks with the barrel resting against his cheek.
“You be calm,” Hob said. “Ain’t no one been shot yet. I’m wantin’ to keep it that way.” She thought about Coyote telling her that they weren’t a military unit, not really, they were a family. She had never truly felt it until now, as certainty welled up in her chest. “Ravani he called me, and that’s damnwell what I am.”
“He never out and said you were to follow him,” Geri snarled, eyes burning.
“I been followin’ him my whole life.” She glanced at Dambala, Akela, the few older Wolves left. “This ain’t ever been a democracy. I’m his kin, like he was kin to the Ravani afore him. Anyone got a problem with that, I can send you to argue with Old Nick.”
Geri stared at her, through her, like he was calculating if she really could pull the trigger. She didn’t know the answer herself, and didn’t want to know.
Uncertainty showed in Geri’s eyes, then he looked at the ground. “What’s it to be, Ravani?” Freki said nothing. He didn’t have to. There was a faint smile on his lips, like a flitting trick of the light.
“We got a funeral to see to. And a wake. And then we got jobs.” Her hands dropped to her sides. The pistols radiated the heat of the sun into her legs. “Get movin’, all o’ ya,” she said, loud enough to reach every man around them. “We got an old wolf to burn.”
There were murmurs and mutters, but none from the two men closest to her. Geri looked her in the eye once, nodded, and turned to go. She picked the belt up off the ground and put it on properly, holstered the pistols as the men filtered away to grab what passed for funeral finery and their best liquor.
“Gettin’ bitched by a woman,” Bhima muttered behind her. When he was younger, he’d gotten himself busted right and proper a time or two by Makaya and had choked on it. “Ain’t natural at all.”
Silently, she asked the ghost of Old Nick that she could just about feel at her shoulder, smirking into her ear, what she should do. There was no answer, not even of the useless, enigmatic variety that he loved so well. He was gone, she realized, and he never would have faced such words himself anyway.
She turned on her heel. With one hand she grabbed the man’s jacket, yanked him around to face her. He was as tall as her, twice as wide, at least ten years older. “Now listen good,” she snarled. “Just ’cause I got nothin’ dangling between my legs don’t mean I’m deaf. You want to fight me, then you do it to my face.” She held her hand in front of his eyes. Flames flared up over her fingers, flickering in time with the adrenaline-fired beat of her heart. Old Nick had always wanted it secret, even from those who might as well have been his kin. She was done with that, she decided. Done with the secrets and the silences and the never getting a straight goddamn answer about anything. “This ain’t natural either. I got something you don’t. I’m something you ain’t. Follow or leave, I don’t give a fuck, but I hear you dropping shit from your mouth again and I’ll burn you to dust.
“Coyote!” she snapped. She knew he was there and close, as sure as she could see Bhima’s heartbeat fluttering at his neck. Coyote had been waiting in her shadow since she’d come down to the training yard. “Take care of this discipline problem. I got better things to do.”
Coyote stepped out from around Dambala. It seemed natural, right, that suddenly he was the person she’d go to, just like Makaya and then Dambala had been Nick’s choice. His hand replaced hers on the man’s jacket. “Oh, Bhima, Bhima, Bhima. We are going to have such fun today, you and I.”
And from where he stood, Dambala caught her eye and nodded slowly, a smile tugging at his lips.
A test, she realized. It had been a test from him, from the other oldsters like Akela and Coyote, to see if she’d stand for herself and out-piss them all. Hob swallowed hard against her churning stomach. She kept her steps slow, steady, as she walked back to the office – it really was her office now, her ugly desk. She set the pistols among the files but didn’t sit, instead leaning against the window frame. The intense afternoon sun fell across her shoulder and arm.
She took a cigarette from the crumpled foil packet in her pocket, then lit it with a snap of her fingers. “It’s a joke, ain’t it. Your last stupid joke, on everyone.” A stupider, meaner joke than sending a girl out into the desert to survive or die, and then taking her home and giving her his name. She took in a long, shaky drag of smoke. The small breeze that was the only breath of such a hot day felt cool on her damp cheeks. “I still hate you, you old bastard. But I’ll do you proud. See if I don’t.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mag felt like her eyes were about to roll out of her skull. She’d been staring at the coded numbers in Clarence’s ledger so long that they swam in front of her, rearranged themselves, danced in mocking little lines. So much water, so many shares of food, so much spare cash – never enough of that, never – and eight different requests over three different towns from miners who’d gotten hurt or taken sick or gotten disciplined and needed help.
They’d have to pass the hat around again, she decided. That was the only way to make any of this work. And they needed more people, to reach out to more mining towns since the farmers had sent her packing, find better ways of communicating, and–
She felt a hot breath pass over her shoulder, like someone’s hand resting there, if a hand could be so hot or made of nothing but air. She still felt the weight of it, a palpable thing, the tug of fingers in a strong grip, squeezing. Something acrid and sweet caught at the back of her throat, just a hint of that smell Mama had always hated, the kind that came from those long black cigarettes. Mag turned her head, half expecting to see – “Uncle Nick?”
Ridiculous. He was sick, hadn’t left his base in weeks, though he wrote to her regular enough. Mind was playing tricks on her.
The sound of someone knocking at the door was a relief, calling her out of that strange fancy. She went to answer, pulling her hat on out of habit. She’d gotten good at ducking under the brim, keeping her face out of view.
A woman dressed in blackened miner’s togs waited on the other side. Mag didn’t recognize her immediately, strange, since she knew all Clarence’s regular visitors and conspirators on sight by now. “Can I–”
“Clarence here?” the woman interrupted.
“He’s on shift. What do you need him for?”
“You a relative of his?”
“Sister,” Mag said. Safe enough answer, even though she and Clarence looked nothing alike. But it had another significance. After watching the woman’s expression, tense like she was fit to snap, Mag listened to the instinct that whispered in her, this is one of yours. “Got kicked out by my ma and pa.”
The woman nodded sharply. “Then I need your help.”
“Come on in. You want coffee, or lemonade?” Different kind of ritual, that, and just as important. Mag got them both glasses of lemonade and settled them in the kitchen, though she still took care to close the account book. “You look like you come a long way,” she remarked.
“I come out of Segundo.”
“Longer than a long way,” Mag said, surprised. Segundo was the second closest town to Newcastle, almost as tightly in the company’s grip as Primero. They tended to get the better equipment, the less angry supervisors. “What happened?”
“Somethin’ big’s comin’,” the woman said. “Some kind of… they call it a witch hunt, like anyone but the preacher men believes in that nonsense any more. But they got us building a platform on the train station all special, b
een pulling double shifts to get it done to their satisfaction. Daughter’s been helping me.” She glanced at Mag. “Few years younger’n you, I reckon. There been all these special trains comin’ in, and the engineer that come with ’em, he–”
She slammed her glass down on the table, lemonade slopping over the sides. “He hurt my little girl. Not just once. And I told the supervisor, I fuckin’ told him, and the pit boss, and anyone who’d goddamn let me get in a word, even the preacher – and they put a fuckin’ disciplinary letter on me, said I was lyin’ and makin’ trouble and my girl was lyin’, and we had no evidence since it was just our word against his, and we better not spread our slander. Told me I could buy off the letter with money, but I ain’t got money for that. One strike, said if I get another I’m out of work, and…”
Mag swallowed convulsively, feeling sick. She was glad she hadn’t tried her own drink; she’d probably throw up. Might drop the glass too. Clear as day, she remembered the sound of a glass shattering to shard, of glass slicing through her palm–
“There ain’t nothin’ else I can do,” the woman said. It was the defeated, hopeless note of her voice that caught Mag’s mind out of the hold it had fallen into. Not anger, but despair. “And he’ll just keep comin’ back. My daughter ain’t the only girl in town.”
Mag licked her lips with a tongue that felt like leather. Her voice croaked when she tried it, like she’d been screaming even though she hadn’t made a sound. “Mr Franklin, right?” she asked.
The woman gave Mag a long, assessing look. “Yeah, that’s his name.”
Breathe, she had to remind herself to breathe. She was still terrified of him, and hated him all the more for it. This only affirmed the fears she’d had that had kept her silent about her discomfort around him, the threat always hanging over her parents, because blue suits protected their own before anything else.
“Visitor from Rouse heard me making a stink. Told me if anyone could help me, it’d be Clarence Vigil.” The woman looked at her levelly. “Ain’t no one can take back what he done to my daughter, and no one can fix the black mark against me. But Mr Franklin needs to be stopped.”
“What are you looking to do?” Mag asked, trying to think of something, anything. It had seemed so impossible to her, when she’d faced this.
“I want Clarence to get me a gun. No one’s gonna sell or give me one in Segundo. But I’m walkin’ half dead already if they think I’m a troublemaker. So get me a gun, and I’ll take care of it myself.”
The thought revolted her, even as Uncle Nick pressing that gun into her hand the night after she’d been rescued from Newcastle had revolted her. She was tired of blood and killing and death. But she also knew that there was no other recourse available. She had nothing but contempt for the company and what it had done to her, to everyone like her.
There was no other recourse but the gun. In a flash of understanding, though, she knew what gun in particular it should be. “Your daughter still needs you,” Mag said. “And if you’re half as fierce about protectin’ your brothers and sisters, we need you too. So I ain’t gonna give you a gun.”
“But–” the woman started.
Mag held up her hand. “We can’t afford their justice. But we can buy our own. Give what you can. I’ll cover the rest.” She’d eavesdropped on Uncle Nick enough as a girl to know what the price would be, and she’d figure it out. She’d needed to pass the hat anyway, and inventories were simple to fiddle if you were clever enough. “Tell me when the next train of his is coming in, so I can tell ’em. And you need to not be in town that day, you or your daughter. Take a day off, go to Primero for the theater. Somethin’. But make sure people know you’re gone so they can’t pin nothin’ on you.”
The woman looked slightly stunned. “Who you gonna buy?”
“Ghosts,” Mag said. “A whole pack of ’em.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Hob did her part to send Old Nick off when it was time. She drank whiskey mixed with Tabasco and gunpowder because that was the way he’d liked it. Her stomach felt like it was on fire, her tongue slack in her mouth. They made a bonfire out in the desert, far enough from the base that it wouldn’t betray their location if someone noticed the light and smoke.
Drunk and shouting, they circled the bonfire, dancing with their arms to the sky to the sound of drum and guitar and concertina, only stopping to drink more, to gasp out whatever ridiculous stories they knew about Nick. Half of them sounded made up, but Hob was beyond caring. It didn’t matter what reality had been; Nick was legend now.
Hob stared deep into the heart of the fire as it sparked, swaying as the men sang another drinking song about beautiful women and randy old Wolves. The fire roared and spat and at its heart wings unfurled, the phoenix raising its head to give a soundless cry. Flame burst into the air, a hot white flash that left everyone momentarily blinded and laughing drunkenly about the gunpowder in Nick’s bones. Hob raised her gaze, wobbling with burned-in shadows, to the night sky and watched the phoenix circle once, bright as a comet, before streaking out into the horizon.
She sucked in a breath and blinked her eye hard, squinting against the flames as she strode in close. And while Coyote shouted something that sounded like encouragement, she plunged her hand into the fire and found Nick’s hand, now with the flesh all burnt away. She pulled out one of his skeletal fingers, cradling the bones in her palm until she’d sucked all the heat from them, so much that yellow-white cinders bled from her skin. The men cheered for her, called her the Ravani, slapping her so broadly on the back that she almost dropped the bones. She curled her fingers around them tight until she had a chance to wrap them up in a handkerchief, like she’d done not long ago for the same bones belonging to Old Nick’s little brother.
The Bone Collector should have this, since he and Nick had been so cozy, and she would have questions for him when she handed it over. Though at this hour and with this much whiskey in her blood, she had no idea what those questions might be.
* * *
To Hob’s bleary, aching, hungover eyes, the pathetically short stack of job offers still looked like an insurmountable mountain. And the cup of coffee Coyote, looking disgustingly chirpy, set down next to it sounded like a gunshot against the wood.
“Bala’s making bacon sandwiches,” he offered. “Figured I’ll grab you one.”
“Don’t talk to me about food.”
“Grease’ll do you good.” He nudged the coffee cup a little closer. “Drink up, go through the stack, and I’ll hand out the assignments.”
“You’re a fuckin’ monster.” She picked up the cup two-handed and scalded her tongue and throat on it. But coming out the other side, she did feel a little less like death. Even if she ended the cup with a dangerous belch.
The job offers were slim pickings, some of it stuff she wouldn’t touch with a dead man’s hand, stealing from the townsfolk instead of the company. That was a road to hell she had no intention of walking. But there was a little escort job they could do, even if the offered pay wasn’t too good, a small pack of bandits that needed to be wiped out, and–
Hob looked dumbly at the familiar handwriting, the soft loops like a smile.
“Boss?” Coyote said.
She waved him off and opened it, read what was inside. “Huh.”
“What?”
She offered the letter to him, the terms in black and white and very readable thanks to Mag’s neat handwriting. “Mag thinks we should try our hand at policing.”
Coyote scanned over the letter. “Policing doesn’t seem to pay much,” he observed.
Hob curled her lip. “Truth. But it ain’t a half bad thought. Because if it gets known we take jobs like this, they’ll come in more regular than anyone’ll like to think, I reckon.”
“Mmm. The fun will be getting in and out of the towns.” And the way he said fun, all smiles, made it clear he meant hazard. “We’re going to have to keep a roster of fresh faces that no one knows. Or find better ways
of disguising ourselves.”
“Or better ways of trackin’ people down when they ain’t in town. Smart things.”
“It’s going to escalate.”
“It’s already fuckin’ escalated,” Hob said. “Ain’t gonna get any less goddamn escalated after Nick murdered a fuckin’ pit boss in front of God and everyone.”
Coyote shrugged.
Hob gave him a suspicious look. “Ain’t you supposed to be tellin’ me my crazy ideas are pure gold?”
“Oh no. My job is to disagree with you enough that you think your crazy through to the end,” Coyote said. “And suggest a bit more if you’re not going far enough. Lucky for both of us I’m so flexible.”
“I ain’t had enough coffee for this.” She rubbed her forehead. “Take Freki and Geri. You run this one. I got other shit to do. And get me my fuckin’ bacon sandwich.”
He threw a parody of a salute her way and turned to leave.
“Wait.”
“Yes?”
She squinted at him again. “When you do this job… get a couple of the wolf head coins. Leave ’em over his eyes.”
“Ooh, dramatic. I like it.”
She snorted. “If we’re gonna declare we’re open for the justice business, we better make it clear when it’s that kind of job we’re doing.”
For a moment, something serious shadowed his already dark eyes. “You’d better be certain, if you’re going to make this sort of move and start calling it justice.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “But when it’s coming from Mag, that I’ll trust.”
“So Mag’s the judge and you’re the executioner,” Coyote mused. “I always did think you were both cute as two buttons.”