Silver on the Road

by Laura Anne Gilman

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  FOR

  JOE MONTI

  AND

  BARRY GOLDBLATT,

  WHO BELIEVED IN THIS PROJECT

  WHEN OTHERS DIDN’T.

  PART ONE

  FLOOD

  PART TWO

  THE ROAD

  PART THREE

  DUST AND BONES

  PART FOUR

  CROSSROADS

  PART FIVE

  THE RISING WIND

  PART SIX

  SILVER ON THE ROAD

  PART ONE

  FLOOD

  IZZY LEANED AGAINST THE RAILING and watched the sun rise over the far end of town. Flood wasn’t much to look at, she’d admit. Sun-greyed planks and local stone: there wasn’t much point in prettifying with paint when the wind and sun would only beat you back down to plain again.

  The way the story’d been told her when she was younger, a gospel sharp had ridden into town before there was much of a town at all, just the saloon and a couple-three homesteads, looked around, and pronounced that they’d be the first washed away, come the Flood. The name’d stuck. But the sharp had been wrong about the important thing: Flood had dug its roots in deep and stuck, too. In addition to the saloon, there were a dozen storefronts now, and a bank, and thirty families living within town limits. “Thirty pieces of silver,” the boss called them, and would shake his head and laugh, and say they’d gotten that story all wrong, too.

  The boss had a sense of humor, Izzy thought. Not a man could say he didn’t.

  The sun was stretching higher over the rooftops now, and the town was beginning to stir; she could hear Missus Wallace calling to her chickens, and then the blacksmith’s hammer rang out, a pause followed by a series of steady blows. Hiram was always the first to work each morning, and his forge never cooled entirely, the scent of brimstone and hot metal always in the air. Izzy breathed in, letting the familiar stink settle in her chest. Her bare toes curled and relaxed against the dry wood of the verandah, the morning sun touching her upturned face.

  Winters were bad, dry and cold, and in summer, the sun got hot and the ground got hotter and mostly folk stayed under shade if they could. Just now, though, Flood was nearly perfect.

  At that thought, a shiver ran through her, and she wrapped her shawl more tightly around her shoulders against an imagined chill. Today, she thought. I have to decide today.

  As though her thought had called him, a voice came from the doorway. “Izzy. What are you doing awake so early?”

  She didn’t turn around but smiled, a gentle curve of her lips the way she’d seen the older women do, that she’d practiced late at night, looking in the mirror over her washstand until she got it right. “It’s my birthday.”

  “All the more reason to sleep in.” The boss’s voice was deep and smooth, and always gentle, even when he was angry. In all her years, Izzy realized, she’d never heard him yell. Angry, yes; his temper was legendary. But he never yelled. He never had to; nobody ever dared cross him. Flood was his town, not the buildings or the land, but the people who lived here. They were all of them his, one way or the other.

  “I’m sixteen today,” she said, as though testing the words.

  “Yes. You are.”

  He had been the one to draft her indenture papers fourteen years before; he knew what that meant.

  She turned, keeping the smile on her lips with an effort. He was standing in the doorway of the saloon, the morning light silvering his dark hair, two tin mugs in his hands. The mugs were battered and dented, and tendrils of steam swirled over the tops as though an unseen finger stirred them. She could smell it from where she stood: chicory and coffee, and a chunk of sugarcane boiled with it.

  She stepped forward and took one of the mugs, the thick dark brew sloshing slightly against the rim. “Thanks.” He was the boss; he shouldn’t be bringing her coffee.

  “Not every day a girl turns a woman,” he said, as though knowing what she’d been thinking. “And today’s twice special. No doubt you’ve been thinking on it for a while.”

  She sipped the bittersweet brew, wincing as it burned the inside of her mouth, and nodded. For months now, tangled thoughts that each time she thought them neatly sorted would tangle again while she slept. He knew. He always knew, even when he didn’t say. That was the boss through and through, though; you had to come to him.

  His smile turned faintly mocking. “Well, if you’re determined to be awake, put yourself to use. Marie tells me Catie’s got the headache, so Ree could use help in the kitchen.”

  It might be her birthday, but there was always work to be done, and idle hands were the devil’s tools. She nodded again.

  “And Izzy?” he said before going back inside.

  She looked up.

  “Happy birthday, dearling.”

  She smiled then for real, cupped her mug in her hands, and turned back in time to see the sun come full above the horizon, turning the sky from dark to pale blue.

  Sixteen. Fourteen years since she’d first come to Flood. This was the only home she’d ever known: the two-story building of the saloon and the wide, rutted street in front of her, and the flickerthwack of cards laid on faded green felt, the clink of glasses, the scrape of boot­heels on wooden planks, and the stink of sweat and hope and desperation on human skin.

  Flood was home, the only one she could imagine.

  But she was sixteen now. A woman grown in the eyes of the law, and her indenture ended.

  Everything changed. If she wanted it to.

  Ree was already arms-deep in work when Izzy slipped through the kitchen doorway. The morning air might be cool, but the kitchen was steamy-warm already, the smell of bread baking mixing with the tang of fresh meat, and the sharp, warm spice that tasted like licorice. Her mouth watered, anticipating. “Good morning, Ree. Boss said you could use some help?”

  “Knead dough,” the cook said shortly, not looking up from the haunch he was cutting up. Ree was stern and mostly silent, but he was that way with everyone, even the boss. He might’ve known it was her birthday or might not, and most probably didn’t care.

  She made a face—breadmaking wasn’t her favorite chore—but tied a kerchief over her brow to keep the sweat from her face and reached for an apron hung on a hook to cover her clothing. She’d worn her best dress today, a brown gingham that had been made for her, not handed down and mended. She’d tried to add a new bit of ribbon to her bodice when she dressed, but her hands had been shaking so badly, she finally left off.

  Izzy prided herself on steady hands and ordered thinking. Lapses in both irked her. The boss had put his finger on it and tangled all her tho
ughts again. He did that: she’d be going along with her day, and he’d say something out of nowhere, and she’d start thinking again.

  Mostly, she liked that. Working through a problem, looking at all the details. But this wasn’t something she could think on forever. Today was her birthday. Today, she had to choose.

  Izzy pulled the dough out from under its cloth cover and turned it into a bowl, digging her fingers into the spongy mass. Soon enough, her arms ached with the effort of turning it into something useful, but the quiet warmth of the kitchen and the repeating actions of her hands and arms let her thoughts go where they would.

  Unfortunately, they seemed to go around and around, without cease. Her whole life, there were things other folk decided. Where she slept, what chores she did, and what lessons she was put to, even after she left school last year. Marie, who ran the saloon for the boss, had no use for what she called chickenskull girls. They could all read and figure as well as pour drinks and shuffle cards, know how to charm a stranger and listen to confidences. And most of the girls seemed content with that, night in and night out, the same routine safe and soothing as running water. Izzy, though, she kept thinking.

  “Now leave alone.”

  Izzy started, then realized that Ree was talking about the dough. She’d been kneading longer than she realized, and her hands were beginning to cramp. She shook her arms out, wiping them with the warm cloth he offered, and rolled her sleeves back down. Sweat had formed under the kerchief, and she lifted her braid to wipe the back of her neck as well.

  Ree had already gone back to work, and she looked across the kitchen at him, frowning. He was a big man; sallow-skinned, round-­shouldered, and bald. His arms were covered with lines of dark ink, and he never covered them, not even when the wind turned bitter cold and the horses grew their coats out thick. He was a good cook, good with the horses the boss kept, good with his hands when something needed fixing. He could have done anything, anywhere, pretty much.

  “Why did you come here? To Flood, I mean.” To the saloon, she meant. To work for the boss, out of all his choices.

  She’d never asked before. Never dared to. You didn’t poke into someone’s privacy unless they offered first.

  Ree didn’t say anything for the longest time, and Izzy thought maybe he wouldn’t, until he did. “Nothing where I started for me. Nothing out there for me. People scattered, land shuffled like cards to whoever won. So, I went west, came here.”

  She chewed on that a little while she turned the dough into its bowl, covered it, and set it on the shelf at the far end of the kitchen, where it could rest. Everyone who came to Flood wanted something: an answer, a Bargain, a way to get out of a mess you’d made. That was why you came to Flood. But most of them took what they got and moved on. If you stayed, Izzy thought, it was because the devil had need of you.

  If you stayed, it was because you’d made a Bargain. But if you never asked what someone came for, you never asked what they paid.

  “Was it worth it?” The question slipped out anyway, like she was still a little girl who didn’t know better.

  Ree chopped a handful of carrots, shoving them off the board into the stewpot, every motion focused on what he was doing. If she had been rude, he didn’t seem to care. “For me, yes.” He reached for another bunch of carrots and the knife cut into them, a quicker, lighter thunk than the blacksmith’s hammer, but with the same steady rhythm. “This I know: when you deal with the devil, first know what you want, and what you can pay.”

  Izzy opened her mouth to ask another question, but no sound came out. How did you know? she wondered. How could you know what you were able to pay, and what did you offer when you had nothing of value except what he already owned?

  Flood was the boss’s town. He owned everything—and everyone in it. Including her.

  For one more day.

  Her hands clean and dried, Izzy wandered to the single window, waiting for Ree to give her another chore. She rubbed a finger against the pane. The glass was flawed, thick and wavy, but it let in light from the alley that ran between the saloon’s backside and the Judge’s office. A clowder of cats prowled there; Ree tossed scraps out for them every evening, but she’d seen the remains of rats and birds there, too. Like everything else in Flood, the cats served a purpose.

  One more day, she thought, letting her fingers rest on the sill. “What’s out there?”

  Ree knew she didn’t mean the alley. “Beyond Flood? Open space. Plains, mountains, deserts. Indígena, los nativos do país. Some homesteads, some towns. Go too much west, Espanhóis. Go east, cross the Mudwater into the States, there are cities. Lots more people.”

  “How many more?”

  Ree looked at her, his eyes dark and unblinking, until Izzy started to feel nervous. She had known him all her life, it seemed, but just then, he was nearly a stranger, thinking of things she’d never seen.

  “More people than you have ever met. More people than in all of the Territory, north to south. Too many people.”

  She had no basis for “too many people”; the words were only words. “Have you seen a city?”

  He shuddered. “No. No desire to.”

  She ran her fingers along the frame of the window and looked through it as though she might see something new. Nueva España didn’t like folk crossing the border; she knew that much. They considered the Territory unclean, dangerous, and everyone who lived there lost souls, to be saved or burned. But the stories about the States said people there didn’t care, so long as you could earn your way. If she wanted to, she could go to the States. Head across the River to Fort Cahokia, or all the way east to one of the cities, Boston or even New York.

  And do what, once there? No one knew her, there. No one would even notice her. She thought about being somewhere nobody knew her name, tried to imagine living somewhere like that, and found the one thing that scared her.

  The kitchen only got warmer as the morning went on, and Izzy sighed with relief when Catie, Ree’s usual helper, came in to take over.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she said to Ree. “Megrim this morning wouldn’t let go.” Then she saw Izzy. “Lord, child, don’t try to carry all that at once. Give that to me, here.” Catie was slender, red-cheeked, and blunt-spoken, and rumor had it she’d been born across the River, in the States, though she never spoke of it, or anything before coming to Flood two years before.

  “Sit, eat something,” Catie said. “You’re still a growing girl, and if I know Sundays by now, odds are you won’t have a chance to sit again until supper.”

  Izzy willingly sat at the long worktable and tucked into the corn dodgers and cold pork Catie handed her, then wiped the grease carefully off her fingers before rinsing her plate and cup. She waited a moment, but the two of them seemed to be knowing exactly where to be and what to do, with no more need of her. Izzy returned her apron to its hook and left them to their work.

  It was still early by the saloon’s usual hours, and the main room was quieter than she was used to. Izzy knew that she should take advantage of the time, get to her usual chores before the day got busy. The saloon officially opened midmorning, but sometimes someone wandered in earlier off the road, and Iktan never turned anyone away, serving up coffee and whiskey to the men—and some women—who came in.

  Instead, she sat on the wide wooden stairs leading to the second level where the living quarters were, tucked her skirts up under her legs, and watched the others.

  Iktan was nowhere to be seen, although his apron and rag lay across the gleaming wooden bar that filled much of the left-hand wall. Young Sarah was helping Feeny set up the tables, the girl as usual more trouble than help. Alice, at ten the youngest and newest saloon girl, was sweeping the floor, while her brother, Aaron, wound the mechanism of the striking clock. They’d come to Flood over the winter, half-starved and terrified, dropped off by a stern-faced man with a road marshal’s badge. Their p
arents had been outlaws, and nobody else would take them, certain the twins would be trouble, too.

  The boss had promised to beat it out of them, if so.

  The boss had beaten her once. She had been their age and spoken rudely to a customer who’d insulted her. The boss had taken her side in public, but that morning, after the saloon closed, she had been summoned to his office. Marie had assigned her chores to keep her standing up the next day, for mercy.

  The boss had a temper, yes, and a strong hand, but never undeserved. Every now and again, a gospel sharp would come to Flood. He’d set up outside the saloon—never coming in, despite the boss’s own invitation—and would preach for hours in his coat and collar, sunrise to sundown, about how the devil was evil, the devil was wrong, the devil was a risk to their immortal souls and ruining these lands, beside; that without him, the high plains would be fertile, the rivers lush even in summer, and no one would ever die of hunger or thirst or native attack.

  Izzy had never been sick, never gone hungry, never been threatened by real danger—at most, a customer might tug at her braid or pat her backside until one of the women distracted him, took his attention back where it belonged. She was safe here.

  She thought about that, and again about what she knew of the States, still in turmoil after their rebellion, and Spain’s holdings south and far west of them, where everyone bowed to the Church.

  People didn’t bow in the Territory. Preachermen and gospel sharps here would call to you, cajole and harangue you, but nobody had to listen to them who didn’t have a mind to. You just went somewhere else until they were gone.

  But no matter how much she thought on her options, of Nueva España or the States, or the wild lands far to the north, they slipped through her thoughts like trying to catch minnows, too slick to hold. She couldn’t imagine herself there . . . but she couldn’t imagine this, either, doing the same thing tomorrow she’d done every night before.