by Alex Wells
“What the hell did you do to yourself?” she whispered. She looked into eyes with pupils blown so wide she couldn’t even see the ice blue of his irises any more. His mouth twisted strangely when she ran her thumb over that blue line again, and he shuddered. That scared her even more, because she couldn’t even guess what was going through his head.
He edged one foot forward, then gave his head a sharp shake. He lowered her gently to her feet, carefully let go of her shirt, and stepped away. “I did what I had to do.”
“That why you were out so long?” She pressed her hands against the wall for support, almost pulled over by the ache in her head.
“I had to… absorb it. Understand it.”
“Did it work?” As if that was the most important question; it was the only one she could really bring herself to ask.
He nodded, mouth twisting as he swallowed. “If only you could… It has a song to it. I wish that you could hear. It pulls at me night and day, and I’m so… close.”
Something about him seemed so lost. She’d never been the sort to offer comfort, to make gestures, but it tugged at her heart in a way she couldn’t define. She left the safety of the wall, took up one of his hands with hers for a moment, trapping his smooth, pale fingers under her own, scars, grimy fingernails, and all. “You gonna be OK?”
He let out a short, sharp laugh, smoothing his hair back with his other hand. “I can stand against the Weatherman now. I will kill him.”
“Didn’t answer my question.”
He squeezed her fingers, lifted one of her hands to his lips, brushed a light kiss across her knuckles like she was some sort of lady. “No, I didn’t.” He let go of her hand then, before she could pull away.
Hob took a few unsteady steps to the chair next to the window and sat as carefully as she could, trying not to jar her head. “So that’s it? You gonna kill him, and that’s the end of it?”
“Until they send another one.” He sat down on the edge of the bed she’d been occupying. “Though I think I may need your help. I should be able to kill him. But he’s got quite a few guards with him, from what I observed.”
“Fifty by my count.”
“So I will need help with that.”
She gave him a little smile. “You askin’ me, or you askin’ us?”
“The plural you, as in the Ghost Wolves. I can pay.”
He couldn’t know they already had a contract for it. While some part of her insisted that it was dishonest, that she should own up, the razor edge of savvy that she’d honed from the time she could walk told her that getting paid twice for the same job was a damn good deal when she had people to feed. “What’s the offer?”
“Oh, Hob. You become so businesslike.”
“This here is a business deal, so I’d hope that was the case.”
“I’ve got the cash boxes from the pay office in Pictou. I’ll give you one of them.”
“How many are there?”
He smiled at her. “It’s not my job to help you with negotiations.”
Life felt a little more normal, seeing just that hint of smug out of him. She smoothed down the front of her shirt. “Two cash boxes. The two lightest.” Coin was popular now, but there were still bills around, and they were worth more – and weighed less.
“Lightest and heaviest.”
“Done.” She leaned back in her chair. Outside the room, a floorboard creaked. “Whoever it is, come in. I don’t abide by eavesdroppers.” And for a moment, she felt a flutter of hope in her heart, because who was the biggest eavesdropper of all but Coyote?
The door opened to reveal Freki and Geri. Geri stared openly at the Bone Collector. Freki had a flimsy folded into an envelope in his hands. “Nice to see you up,” he said, handing the envelope to her.
“Good news or bad?”
Freki shrugged. “Complicated.”
She opened the envelope, but the letters seemed to blur, run away from her eye. “How about one of you boys just give me the gist of it? I been havin’ a rough day. Or…” she looked at Geri, who shook his head. “How long was I out?”
“More’n a full day,” Geri said. “And what my brother here doesn’t seem to want to tell ya is that it’s a note from Raff. Supply train with explosives ain’t comin’ in to Ludlow for a week, and it don’t matter anyway ’cause the Weatherman will be there three days from now.”
She stared at him. “You said I was only out for a day.”
“I did. Guess they decided to move the timetable up.” He shrugged. “Good news is, they delayed a day already ’cause of what happened in Shimera.”
Gently, she rubbed her forehead with one hand. “Dambala back with Coyote yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Fuck me. What about things in Rouse?”
“Sent Lykaios up there. She said they just opened up a new vein last week and they’re gonna be workin’ it for a while. So they’re full out, and won’t be gettin’ a resupply for at least two weeks, if not three.” As Geri spoke about the mining operations, the Bone Collector’s lips twisted with a hint of disgust.
“Shit. You got some good news for me?”
“’Fraid not,” Geri said. “Other than, well, ain’t you happy you’re alive?”
She would have laughed a lot harder at that if her head hadn’t hurt so bad. “Guess any day you’re alive is better’n the alternative.”
“What do you need the explosives for?” the Bone Collector asked.
“Stop the train afore it gets in to town so there’re less people to deal with. But if we can’t break the track enough, that’s a fuckin’ worthless plan…” She trailed off as the Bone Collector cleared his throat, tried to figure out what that long, hard look he was giving her meant until something clicked over in her brain. He could already tunnel through rock, tear synthcrete apart with his hands from beneath, and if he was stronger now… “Oh. Really?”
“Really.”
“You sure?”
The Bone Collector laughed. “You’d better hope that I am.”
“Mind lettin’ us in on the joke?” Geri asked.
Hob glanced at the Bone Collector, who only shrugged. “I’ll just say, I’m thinkin’ it’ll be justice to knock over that goddamn train with some proper witchiness.”
“Mayhap I don’t want to know after all,” Geri said.
“You’ll see for yourself soon, anyway.” Hob started to pry herself out of the chair.
“I’ll get things prepped,” Freki said. “Already got ’em started anyway. Maps’re in your office.”
She sat back down as a wave of dizziness hit her. “I do appreciate it. Give me an extra day of rest, and I’d better be less of a fuckin’ wreck tomorrow. ’Cause that’s when we’re gonna have to leave.”
“And if Dambala’s crew ain’t back by then?” Geri asked.
“Then it’s fifteen against fifty instead of nineteen. So you best keep your fingers crossed.”
“Bigger payday with less people anyway.” Geri and his brother turned to go.
“Geri, do me a favor?”
“Yessir?”
“Top drawer of my desk. Somethin’ in there wrapped in a handkerchief. Send someone over with it.”
He nodded, then shut the door behind him.
“I should probably go as well,” the Bone Collector said. “Let you rest, since we don’t have much time.”
“Bide a bit. Got somethin’ to give you first.” She let her head droop a little as a minute ticked by in silence. She didn’t have a problem with quiet most of the time, but now it felt like there was something on the edge of her hearing, trying to get her attention. “Would I have been out longer if you hadn’t showed up?”
He hesitated, then nodded.
“How much longer?”
“It’s impossible to say.”
“Impossible to say ’cause you don’t know, or ’cause I wouldn’t’ve woke up?” She looked him in the face when she asked. The man would probably be a champion if he ever learned
to play poker. “What’d he do to me? It was like… he was just choppin’ pieces out of my brainpan, just by lookin’ at me.”
“He’s strong,” the Bone Collector said softly.
“That gonna happen to me again, when we go up against him? ’Cause if so, I’m better off just sendin’ Freki and Geri and plantin’ my ass here.”
The Bone Collector smiled. “He’ll have other things to worry about when the time comes. Your concern is only the guards.”
“I hope you’re as confident as you sound.”
“So do I.”
A quick knock at the door and Raff let himself in, a rolled-up handkerchief in his hand. Hob shooed him away after he’d had a chance to see that yes, she was upright and mostly in one piece. She offered the handkerchief to the Bone Collector, making him stand to take it from her. She was tired of feeling wobbly on her feet for the moment.
“What is…” He unwrapped the handkerchief, revealing the charred finger bone of Old Nick. “Ah.”
“Thought you’d want that, you two bein’ such good friends an’ all.”
He bowed his head. “Thank you.”
“Can you tell me what killed him? He wasn’t doin’ that bad, just up an’ died.”
Head still bowed, he rolled the bone into his hand, wrapping his fingers around it. He let out a long, heavy sigh. “Oh, my friend,” he whispered.
Hob sat up a bit straighter. “What is it?”
When he looked up, his expression was smooth again, revealing nothing. “He was old, Hob, and sick. Sicker than you knew, perhaps.”
She looked him in the eye and saw nothing but herself reflected back until she looked away first. “Guess that’s a relief, then.”
“Oh?”
“Ain’t often that my paranoia don’t turn somethin’ up.” She sighed. “Get on out of here now. I’m gonna spend the rest of the day sleepin’ while everyone else preps. Tomorrow we’ll head out past Ludlow and get ready for the show. So be here at dawn. You can ride with us.”
“Riding. How… quaint.”
She laughed. “I like my method of travelin’ better than yours any day of the week.”
The Bone Collector rose. “Some day, I think you’ll come to appreciate it.” He turned to leave.
“Hey,” she said quietly.
“Hm?”
“Was that you? Were you… Are you my phoenix?” She couldn’t shake the image of it from her mind, and she wasn’t sure if it was comfort or curse. Because that phoenix had saved her, but she still carried the pain of it tearing out her eye.
He didn’t answer with words, simply bent over her and pressed a featherlight kiss on top of her head. Then he was gone, door drifting shut behind him.
Hob wobbled her way back to bed, laying down with care. She had to roll onto her side to get the worst of the throbbing in her head to stop. “Somethin’ ain’t right with that man,” she muttered. She closed her eyes and drifted off on a dizzy wave of sleep, to a place untouched by the Weatherman, but the phoenix circled and circled.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Hob slept for another sixteen hours, stirring occasionally to drink a little water, use the toilet, roll over onto her other side. Sometime in there, Dambala and his men returned with no Coyote. Sometime in there, Freki had all of the motorcycles checked, fitted, stocked, put at the ready with full combat equipment. The three big guns were cleaned and prepped, every spare round collected and properly boxed. Their collection of body armor was brought out, redistributed, repaired where needed. It wasn’t enough for even half of them, a hodgepodge of pieces stolen from trash heaps or taken from dead guards found in the desert, but it was better than nothing.
All those things were done by the time she woke and wandered out of the sick room, chewing at her own tongue in a vain effort to rid her mouth of the rank taste that had built up over the last two days. The only light in the night came from the kitchen window and the moons overhead.
Lobo stood inside, getting breakfast in order. He dropped a frying pan on the stove, clutching at his chest when he turned and caught sight of her. “God, the dead have risen, it’s the sign of end times.”
“You’re mighty funny.” Hob pulled a rickety stool up to the counter and sat. “If’n you don’t feed me, I might just try to eat your liver.”
“Leftovers or breakfast?”
“Whichever’s faster.” He put a cup of inky black coffee in front of her. She took a drink and felt like it was going to eat the enamel off her teeth. But at least her mouth tasted slightly better. “Christ, how long’s that been on the burner?”
“All night, just the way you like it.”
She laughed. “I ain’t turned into Old Nick yet.”
“Could’ve fooled me. Most nights before we had a big job, he’d be right here, lookin’ for a midnight snack because he couldn’t sleep.” Lobo slapped a sandwich onto a plate and put that in front of her, along with a glass of milk. “Milk’s startin’ to go a little off, but if you trade it with the coffee, you won’t notice a thing. Just say when you want another sandwich.”
While she ate, he caught her up on the news. Not even hearing about Coyote – or rather the lack thereof – put a dent in her appetite. She had to focus now on the job at hand, on what they’d be doing when they left in the morning. Coyote, she’d mourn later. Probably with a few other soldiers, before this business was through. “Dambala OK?”
“Good as you’d expect. He took it hard. But Bala don’t get sad so much as he gets even.”
“Harmony town still in one piece?”
“Town’s fine. Some of the people ain’t doin’ so well, I hear.”
She laughed without humor. “You gonna be ready to ride in the morning, bein’ up so early?”
“Don’t worry about me, I been doin’ this longer than you been alive.” He gave her a gap-toothed smile. “Sharpened my favorite carvin’ knives special, just for this occasion.”
“I’m sure those Mariposa boys will be glad they’re in the hands of a real craftsman.” She took a drink of the milk and shuddered, immediately taking a long sip of the acidic coffee. “I only been the Ravani for what… less’n a month? The fuck am I doin’?”
“What every Ravani does.” Lobo set a second sandwich in front of her, even though she was only halfway through the first. “You find us a payday and take us to it.”
“Gonna lose some people today.”
“Some of us are here ’cause we pissed off the wrong person. Some of us are here ’cause we just didn’t want to be miners or farmers or company shills. But I don’t think anyone’s here ’cause he wants to play it safe.”
Hob raised the coffee cup in the parody of a salute. “Absolvin’ me of my guilt afore I even have it. Masterful plan, Lobo.”
“Worked on Old Nick. It’ll work on you too, if you’d stop overthinkin’ things for five seconds. Eat your goddamn sandwich.”
She laughed, and ate down the sandwiches. “You’re a hard man to argue with.”
“So I’ve heard. You fill that black hole in your belly yet, or do you need somethin’ else?”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Then go get into some proper clothes. And I didn’t want to say nothin’ until you had a hearty meal, you bein’ just back from the brink of death and all, but there’s a powerful stench to you right now.”
Hob looked down at herself; blood and dirt ground into her shirt, who knew what else. It hadn’t bothered her before, but now everything felt stiff and crusty. She took an experimental sniff and grimaced. There was only so much a body could do, sweating day in and day out in a place where water was precious, but there was a certain threshold of stink they all tried to never violate. “Goin’ for sainthood, you are.”
Considering that there was a large measure more of blood and sweat and who knew what else in her future – if things went well – she wasn’t concerned enough to take a proper bath. But she did rinse out her hair and replait it, and scraped the worst of the dirt and stink out
of her skin with dry soap. After, she pulled on a fresh white shirt and black leather pants – good protection for her legs, and the extra heat it drank in would be that much more fuel for her fire now that she’d really practiced how to use it.
Her waistcoat was torn past all repair, so she dipped into the trunk of Old Nick’s things still waiting to be given away or trashed. His waistcoat didn’t fit quite right, since even the bare bit of chest and hips she’d grown was more than that man ever had on him, but it would pass muster and was far finer fabric than any of her own clothes. Her own coat was still in good enough shape, even if she’d bled all over it; there was a reason she favored black just as Nick had. It was forgiving about certain things.
She looked in the trunk again before shutting it, at the set of black ties, and the silver glint of Old Nick’s pocket watch. Ties were out of the question, since there was no need to give someone an extra handle to grab in the middle of a brawl. But she picked up the pocket watch, running her thumb over its back. The silver had tarnished into faint stickiness, begging for a polish. Nick had carried that watch on every mission, the silver chain hanging at his waistcoat pocket. She popped the cover open. There was a faded picture inside: Nick and his brother as young men. She peeled it out with one fingernail, to give to Mag later. The initials A. R. were etched into the metal beneath.
“Wonder who you were, A. R.,” she murmured, snapping the watch closed. “Hope you were a lucky bastard.”
False dawn just touching the sky, she checked her reflection in the cracked mirror hanging behind the door. She looked a proper undertaker now, dapper even with that pocket watch. Except women never seemed to be undertakers, something about being more concerned with bringing people into the world and less with ushering them out.
Hob grinned at herself, showing more teeth than anyone decently should. There were a lot of things that just weren’t done on her to-do list for the day.
* * *
The Bone Collector walked up to the gates as the sun showed a sliver above the horizon. The little base was a hive of activity, all of the motorcycles out of the garage and the men checking weapons and stowing gear. The larger equipment went on Lobo’s trailer, the three big guns and their ammo boxes.