“Wasn’t that either,” Cinnabar piped in. His chair was tilted backward, his legs up on the table. “It’s the ground.”
Bonsoir looked confused. “The ground?”
“She wasn’t meant for it. She’s a flyer, and she’s spent the last five years hobbling.” The brim of Cinnabar’s hat still covered his eyes. “That would drive anything crazy.”
Chapter 16: And Yet Later . . .
The Captain had just finished marking his territory when a shadow hooted greeting. He buttoned unstained trousers and turned to face her. “Well?”
“He will be there?”
“He’ll be there.”
“You’re certain?” Elf’s eyes were bright, and between them and the moon there seemed no distinction in circumference. “You’re certain?”
The Captain was not honest, exactly, as many a creature had learned to its despair. But the Captain had a word, and once that word was given one did not question it, not even if one was Elf.
“Excuse me,” she said, turning away from his scowl. “It’s just that I’ve so longed to see him.” Her malformed wing shuddered against her torso. “I’ve just longed to see him so.”
When the Captain walked back into the bar, the rest of them assumed he was only unsteady with drink.
Chapter 17: And Later Still . . .
The rows of empty jugs had multiplied with the speed of caged rabbits. They piled onto the table and flowed over onto the ground. They were stacked high in the corner. They rolled out the back door.
“Down with the false lord!” Reconquista shrieked suddenly. “Long live the Elder! Long live the true Lord of the Manor!”
Bonsoir borrowed a pistol from Cinnabar and fired into the air. Barley beat his chest as if to break a rib. Boudica hooted once then fell silent. Drunk as they were, they’d have cheered for the moon to make war on the stars, and offered odds on the result.
Chapter 18: So Late as to Be Early . . .
Morning had begun its assumption over evening. The fire was long gray, no one left awake interested in tending it. In the corner Bonsoir and Barley had fallen asleep leaning against each other. The stoat had one arm around his old friend and the other coiled protectively over a jug of liquor. The badger snored loudly enough to awaken anyone not in a drunken stupor. Happily this was exactly how Boudica found herself, passed out behind the counter. Gertrude and Cinnabar were still at the table, drinking quietly. The Captain was nowhere to be seen.
Reconquista’s bar had seen better days, though the rat himself, collapsed on the back porch, didn’t seem to mind. Most of the windowpanes were unbroken. No permanent structural damage had been done. There weren’t any corpses to dispose of. Still, the bartender would have work to do when he woke, shattered jugs and empty bottles and overturned chairs and overturned tables and green stains on the walls and brown stains on the floors, both emitting odors that, as a rule, were best confined to an outhouse.
“Funny thing about it,” Cinnabar began softly, “I didn’t like the Elder.”
“I could never tell one from the other,” Gertrude admitted.
Chapter 19: The Power Behind the Throne
Mephetic had just left his office when the messenger arrived, and he was in an off mood. He was often in an off mood these days, weighed down by the endless bureaucratic details involved in being High Chancellor—grain harvests, floundering tax revenue, banditry, relations with neighboring kingdoms. When he’d organized the coup that had deposed the Captain and his pet claimant five years earlier, he had imagined his life involving more drunken bacchanals and fewer hours double-checking the sums of petty functionaries. Owning the crown, Mephetic had discovered—or, more accurately, owning the creature who owned it—was not all it was cracked up to be. Needless to say, the toad himself was no help. Most of the time he was barely awake.
So perhaps it was understandable that Mephetic’s first reaction upon discovering that his old nemesis was not only still alive but actively working toward his downfall was not fear, or anger, or even anxiety—it was outright excitement. He clutched the letter to his breast, and a slow smile stretched across his jaws. He hadn’t expected he’d ever need to make use of the traitor again, but he’d been paying him a bit by way of upkeep, just in case of this eventuality. The Captain’s body had never been found, after all. When he threw the last handful of dirt on the mouse’s coffin, then he’d be certain. Not before.
On his way to the cellars Mephetic caught himself in a mirror, spent a moment reflecting on his reflection, and decided he was not displeased. It had been years since there was a challenge to his position, and years before that since any wetwork had been required of him; most days he didn’t even bother to carry a gun. But he had kept in shape—the mask of his face was still a vibrant black, and his reek was sharp as old cheese. He nodded to himself. If the mouse was coming, he’d find a fit adversary.
More than one in fact, Mephetic thought as he headed toward the officer’s mess.
A long walk (the castle was a large place) found the skunk in one of the many sumptuous quarters of the vast estate: walls with bright watercolor murals, antique furniture, bottles strewn over the floor. Brontë reclined on some couches in one corner. A sleek, handsome fox, her fur bright red with fetching streaks of white, her claws neat and sharp and clean. Above her forehead was pinned a bright purple ribbon. Leaning against the wall behind her was a double-barreled blunderbuss, filigreed and shaped to fit her paw. For a smaller creature it would have been a shotgun, but for Brontë it functioned effectively enough as a pistol. It was a lovely looking thing, and Brontë liked using it whenever appropriate, and in a good number of situations where it strictly speaking wasn’t.
Next to her a calico cat puffed away at a hubble-bubble. Puss’s watch cost more than his vest, and his vest cost more than his boots, and his boots cost more than a house. If you stripped him naked and sold off his costume, you’d walk away with enough money to retire—though if you left him alive you wouldn’t have long to enjoy it. The only thing that could rival Puss’s vanity was his sadism.
Puss was rough and Brontë was worse, though as far as Mephetic was concerned neither could hold a candle, in terms of sheer menace, to the last member of the trio, coiled tightly against the back wall. They were his top ranks, the troubleshooters who helped to keep the Gardens running, any one of the three as dangerous as a battalion of rat guard. And if they didn’t quite snap to attention when Mephetic came through the door, well, they weren’t exactly your run-of-the-mill grunts, now were they? And they knew enough at least to pay him his due. Mephetic hadn’t gotten to where he was by being made of tissue paper.
He laid the situation out for them quickly, with little preamble and no aggrandizement.
“Well welcomed, as far as I’m concerned,” Puss said. Puss had drawing-room manners, and he was as amoral as a loaded gun. “I haven’t had anything interesting to do since coming to this backwater hellhole.”
“Not up to the standards of the Old Country?” Brontë asked.
“Nothing is,” Puss said, doffing his hat regretfully. “Would that father had been willing to overlook my . . . youthful indiscretions.”
“Which indiscretions were those? Dueling or buggery?”
Puss mulled this over for a moment. “You know, I can’t quite remember.”
Puss and Brontë laughed merrily. They were the best of friends. One of them was likely to kill the other before long.
Brontë turned to face the third of Mephetic’s high commanders. “You worked with them,” she said. “What can we expect?”
The Quaker had fed recently; you could tell from the fat knot stuck midway down his coil. This was the only reason Brontë had been willing to speak with him, and even so she asked the question from across the room, out of the serpent’s effective range, or so she hoped. The Quaker’s head was perched atop the tight weave of his body, and for a long moment it seemed he had not heard the question or simply didn’t care to answer. But then his ghost-white tail began
to rattle, like rain falling against a windowpane, though far less comforting.
Mephetic nodded to himself. He was ready for the Captain.
Part the Second
Chapter 20: South of the Border
Angie Weasel was drinking from the trough. She righted herself and blinked twice. It was a hot day, sun beating off dust as far as you’d want to look, and a creature could get to seeing things that weren’t there. She squinted and fanned herself with her hat. She called to Bessie Weasel, her younger sister, slung out on the swinging bench that hung from the roof of the patio, just outside the main house. It was the only structure that remained standing, apart from a large barn rotting a few hundred paces to her rear. Bessie sighed. Bessie listened to the hinges squeal. By the time Bessie had managed to stand several minutes had passed, and the Captain and Cinnabar were clearly within view, and so her effort was altogether wasted.
A brief word on weasels—it is not a coincidence that their species has entered the popular nomenclature as synonym for duplicity and cheapness of character. No one has ever caressed a lover and said, “You weasel.” A mother does not call her babe a “weasel” as she brings it to breast. A weeping son does not eulogize his newly dead father as “my dearest weasel.” As a rule, they exemplify the sort of low cunning and brute force that is little in demand among the civilized creatures of the world.
The Weasel sisters were very much emblematic of the species, if perhaps slightly nastier than the norm. They had come down from the Gardens years ago, just ahead of a mob of animals looking to hang them by their long necks. With such qualifications, they’d had no trouble finding work in the Kingdom to the South. The Kingdom to the South was that sort of a place.
It was a long time before the two of them came within speaking distance. The Captain wasn’t the hurrying kind. Cinnabar, though he could move very fast, very fast indeed, was not the hurrying kind either. The Weasel sisters were also not much for haste, or at least they didn’t snap to attention at the arrival of their guests; they didn’t even bother with a greeting.
“You gonna tell your boss we’re here?” the Captain asked.
Angie Weasel walked over and banged on the door of the house.
“You must be the Dragon,” Bessie Weasel said.
Cinnabar didn’t respond.
“You don’t look like no dragon to me.”
“You ever seen a dragon?” the Captain asked.
“No.”
“Then your opinion don’t hold much weight.”
Angie Weasel snickered. Bessie Weasel scowled. Things might have gone bad right then if the door hadn’t opened, and the only creature alive who could control the Weasel sisters came out of it.
It had been years since the Captain had seen Zapata, but he looked exactly the same. Armadillos age slowly, after all. The plate of their armor grows thicker and denser, gray scales shielding the soft flesh beneath. But apart from that there is little enough to distinguish a pup from an elder. A pair of bandoliers crisscrossed his wide chest and two fat revolvers peeked up from his belt. A sombrero, turned off-white by long years in the sun, shaded the narrow point of his face. Zapata gave the simultaneous impression of a tyrant and clown, like he would make you laugh before having you shot.
He approached the Captain with an excitement one sees in lovers long separated, his claws outstretched as if for an embrace. When he saw the Captain wasn’t going to go for it he shortened his paws up to at least offer a handshake. When he saw the Captain wasn’t going to go for that either he set them into his pockets. He remained smiling, however. “The Captain himself! The Elder’s avenger, bringer of righteous death! How long has it been, my friend?”
“ A while.”
“And by his side the Dragon, just as in the old days!”
Cinnabar nodded but didn’t say anything.
“You are both welcome, and more than welcome, to my humble abode. But perhaps this conversation is best done away from any prying eyes?” Zapata waved toward the entrance.
The Captain looked at Cinnabar. What passed between them, none could justly say. Then the Captain followed Zapata indoors, Cinnabar holding his spot by the trough.
Only the front room of the house remained usable, the rest having long fallen into disrepair, overgrown by the scrub grass that was the only form of flora the desert allowed. There was a table, and two chairs, and one rat who closed the door after the Captain had come inside. Zapata took a seat and waited for the Captain to take the other. For a moment it looked like he intended to stand, but then he gave the guard a glance that would have curdled milk and dropped down across from Zapata.
“I must say,” the armadillo began, unplugging the cork from a jug resting beside him and taking a swig, “I was surprised when you contacted me.” He pushed the liquor across the wood.
The Captain eyed it for a moment, then pushed it back. “Because you thought I was dead?”
When Zapata laughed, his stomach rocked the table back and forth. “Please now, Captain, we both know you’re too ornery to die. Though to judge by your eye, Mephetic took a pretty good run at it. How did that happen, exactly? One moment you are cock of the walk, and the next your throat is all but cut.”
“I suppose I’m just too trusting.”
Zapata laughed again. Zapata laughed often. “It is your one failing, if you don’t mind me saying so! You’re too trusting.”
The Captain’s appetite for humor had been well and fully satisfied by this point, however, and he refused to continue the jest. Zapata took another pull from the jug, then plugged it and set it back on the table. “Well, Captain, as far as I am concerned, it was worth the trip out here simply to see you. But I imagine you had a purpose in contacting me.”
“I need to find the Elder.”
Zapata pulled at the roots of his long mustache. “Why would I know where your old patron resides?”
“I know he fled to the south after everything went sour. And it would be in your country’s interest to keep him alive. You’ve got the connections with the new government to know where he is. And besides—there aren’t so many folks left from the old days to call on.”
Zapata nodded, as if the Captain’s last words contained some great weight of profundity. “That is true, Captain, that is very true. There are few enough of us alive who can still remember the war. Why do you think that is?”
“It’s a dangerous world.”
“You misunderstand—I am not asking why you think so many have fallen. I’m asking you why you think I’ve survived.”
“I guess it’s because you’re so damned good looking,” the Captain said, though he seemed unamused with his joke.
Zapata, by contrast, slapped his hands against his knees and roared with laughter. “I had forgotten how funny you were, Captain. But no, that is not why. The reason I have survived is very simple—it is because I am a survivor.”
“And I’m not?”
“No, Captain, I do not think you are. Don’t misunderstand me—you survive, obviously, or we wouldn’t be talking right now. But I do not think you are a survivor, if you see the difference.”
“I imagine it’s about to be explained.”
“You see, my old friend—I do what needs to be done at the moment I need to do it, and I don’t concern myself overmuch with the day before or after. When the Kingdom to the South looked weak, I raised the flag of rebellion. When it grew stronger, I made peace, and reaped the rewards. The wind blows, and I let it carry me along. Not you—quite the opposite, really. You find the fiercest gale you can and spit into its face! Now one might admire your audacity, and even the strength it takes to stand your comeuppance. But still, the wind blows, does it not? And you . . . you are still wet.”
The Captain nodded vaguely. “Thanks for the advice.”
Zapata smiled, laughed, scratched himself, slapped the table, took up a lot of space and attention. Somewhere in the midst of his buffoonery he shot his rat a look that he didn’t intend the Captain to see.
The mouse is a curious animal. He is small and weak. If he is not slow, he is slower than the cat, the fox, and the owl, his natural predators—which is to say he is not nearly fast enough. His claws and teeth are fragile things, unsuited to violence. Generally speaking he cannot even blend in to his surroundings. In short, the mouse is perhaps the single most helpless animal on earth, blessed with nary a resource to defend himself against the cruel privations of a savage world.
Save one—the mouse knows it. The mouse is too feeble to cling to any illusions of safety. From the instant he leaves the flesh of the womb, he knows his life is there for the taking, and he grows cagey, and sharp. He sees the goshawk above him, sniffs out the polecat lurking in the shadows.
All of which is to say that when the rat leveled his sawed-off shotgun the Captain was already moving, kicking his chair backward and falling with it, the load of buckshot passing swiftly through the space he had occupied and nestling itself into Zapata’s ripe and unsuspecting chest. The Captain had meanwhile shaken a holdout pistol from the sleeve of his coat, and he used the first two of its chambers to make sure his would-be assassin would not have time to regret the mistake. The rat staggered into a corner, counting down its last breaths. The Captain turned his weapon on Zapata, though he realized swiftly that the armadillo no longer presented a threat.
The Captain came slowly to his feet. He picked up his hat from where it had fallen and set it onto his head, his ears flattening to hold it upright. He returned his pistol to his sleeve holster.
From outside there were a series of gunshots, coming so swiftly it was impossible to make out the number.
The spray of lead had ripped through Zapata’s underbelly. His intestines were leaking into a little puddle on the floor, blood and bile with them. He smiled all the same. “That’ll be my girls.”
The Captain pulled a stool in front of Zapata and sat down atop it. The air erupted with a cavalcade of gunfire, rendering conversation inaudible.
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