Unfettered III

by Shawn Speakman (ed)

  Rowan had reloaded for her.

  Fish smiled that horrid smile. “Damn, Lady Lisa, you smell real pretty. You don’t know the stink of the road until it’s off ya, heh?”

  She could still smell Fish. The stink of the road? On him, for sure, and also the stink of a dozen bars, a bottle or two of hooch, and maybe a stale pile of horse turds.

  Lisa’s fingertips played off the sliver handles again, danced along the dozens of handles sticking up from her waist holster, the larger handle of her stone knife.

  She was armed again . . . she felt whole again.

  Clean clothes. Her slivers. The knife at her hip.

  A Victim needed little to be happy, or so the saying went. She had those things, so why did she still feel that tentacle of dread wrapped around her heart.

  Once glance at the stone building told her why. She wanted to be away from this place. Far, far away.

  “She gets her slivers?” Fish frowned. “Then where’s my blade? Why don’t I get my weapons back?”

  “Because I don’t like you,” Duran said. “You’ll get your blade back when you leave. Now, let us discuss the matter of payment.”

  Fish sighed. “So much for the hospitality of the road, huh, Mister Duran? What would Goddess Chanterelle say?”

  “My men saved your life,” Duran said. “That’s pretty damn hospitable, by anyone’s measure. Healing your friend is another story. I don’t know what Kwallan used to heal him, and I don’t need to know. What I do know is such materials cost money.”

  Fish glanced at Lisa, shrugged.

  “We don’t have much money,” Lisa said. “What we do have, you’re welcome to it.”

  She reached into an inside pocket, her blood running cold for an instant—Rowan, or whoever had washed her robe, had surely taken what little she had left. That fear eased instantly . . . the finely carved wooden coins were still there.

  Three and a half Bowens. All that was left to her name.

  She held out her hand, offering the coins.

  Duran looked at the coins, but did not take them.

  “Sadly, miss, that doesn’t even come close.”

  “Maybe you need outriders,” Fish said. “Could we work off the debt?”

  Duran shook his head. “With what I pay my men, you’d be riding for the next hundred and fifty years to pay what’s owed.”

  Fish spit on the ground. “If we’d known you were charging to save a man’s life, maybe we would’ve kept moving on.”

  “Nothing’s in life’s free,” Duran said. “You didn’t know, because you didn’t ask. None of that matters now. There’s a price to be paid. But you don’t need money. I have an offer for you. I’m embroiled in a land dispute. Lady Falma, do you know who that is?”

  Lisa shook her head, but Fish nodded.

  “I’ve been through her territory a few times,” he said. “When I was riding with Highwayman Pitrelli.”

  Duran raised an eyebrow. “You rode with Pitrelli?”

  “That’s right,” Fish said. “Me and Jimmy both.”

  “Falma owns the land east of mine,” Duran said. “She seems to think she can let her people hunt on my land. I’ve taken it up with the duke. The duke says we need to work it out between us, that he won’t intervene.”

  Fish shrugged. “If you want us to kill her, mister, we can’t help you. She’s got a thousand men, at least.”

  “I don’t want you to kill her,” Duran said. “She’s challenged me about who owns the land, offered to settle it with a battle of champions. If it was a sword fight, I’d put Rowan there up against anyone.”

  He nodded toward the man in red. Rowan stared straight out, said nothing.

  “But it ain’t a sword fight, I take it,” Fish said.

  Duran shook his head.

  “Flinging at twenty paces,” he said. “I got boys that love to throw, that are good at it, but her champion is a tall beanpole with fast hands. Real fast. No one around here can touch him, so I haven’t put anyone up against him.” He smiled at Lisa. “But a Victim? I’m willing to bet a Victim could take him.”

  She hadn’t shown her necklace. She hadn’t said exactly where she was from. When she’d left the Hovel, it had never crossed her mind if people knew about the Victims or not. The robes were a bit of a uniform, sure, but she’d passed hundreds of people on the road—none of them seemed to know she was a Victim, or maybe they hadn’t known what a Victim was at all. Fish hadn’t known.

  “I saw a Victim throw, once,” Duran said. “In Orado. Street duel. Fastest thing I ever saw. When Rowan saved you, he saw you flinging slivers at the pitters. He said you hit eight shots, didn’t miss a one. He said he hadn’t ever seen anyone throw that fast. If you’re as fast as he says . . . you could win this for me.”

  Lisa stared back at the man. Empress, she wanted to be back home.

  “You want me to duel for you?”

  Duran nodded. “I’m tired of this dispute. The land is mine by rights, and I mean to have it. You came from out of nowhere. No one knows who you are. You couldn’t have been in town for long, or I would have heard about a Victim in these parts. If I haven’t heard about you, neither has Falma.”

  “Lisa’s brand-new,” Fish said. “You’re right, no one knows her round here.” He laughed, showing his missing teeth and grayish gums. “I been all up and down the coast, from Astoria to San Diego. Yeah, I said it, I been past the Trench. Way past it. I’ve seen plenty of slingers in my day. In all my years and all my travels, Lady Lisa here is the fastest I ever seen.”

  Fish was excited. Did he think there were two Lisas—the delicate, twenty-year-old girl hiding her body beneath a thick robe, and the slinger that could kill in a fraction of a second? The first Lisa was something to be desired, to be taken. The second? Fish respected the second Lisa.

  “Decide,” Duran said. “Kwallan needs an answer now. If your friend wakes up, and Kwallan hasn’t been paid? Then it is too late for you to do anything.”

  A duel at twenty paces. She’d done that at the Hovel, sure, hundreds of times, but always while wearing wooden armor, a helmet with a stiff mesh mask. She’d never thrown in a real duel . . . and she’d never been thrown at.

  Lisa shook her head. “I’m not settling your business for you, mister. I appreciate you helping Jimmy, but I—” she thought of the Laughing Man, the blood pouring out of his mouth, the way his face had thunked against the table “—I don’t want anyone dying.”

  Duran spread his hands. “Then I have no choice but to give Jimmy to Kwallan.”

  “You got a fucking choice,” Fish said. “Pay Kwallan. You got all the money in the world, you manipulating cocksucker.”

  Rowan reached for the handle of his sword, took a step toward Fish.

  “No,” Duran said sharply.

  Rowan stepped back, let his hands fall to his side. His eyes, still cold, still distant. Would he have killed Fish for just insulting Duran? Lisa knew he would have.

  “Gimme my sword back,” Fish said. “And we’ll see how good you are, Red.”

  Rowan said nothing.

  “It’s not the money, it’s the principle of the thing,” Duran said. “Besides, I have an arrangement with Kwallan. He doesn’t want my money for such things. Our deal is that anyone we rescue has to pay his own way. If not . . .”

  He shrugged.

  Fish stared at Rowan. Rowan stared at Fish.

  “If not, what?” Lisa said. “What happens to Jimmy?”

  Duran sighed, as if he felt real sympathy for Jimmy’s fate.

  “Then he belongs to Kwallan,” the bald man said. “For Kwallan’s . . . experiments.”

  Inside Lisa, the tentacle of dread stretched and spread.

  “Those things in the shadows,” she said. “Those were experiments?”

  Duran shrugged again.

  Lisa wanted to draw right then and there, throw a sliver into Duran’s bored eyes. The man already knew he’d won.

  Lisa had met Jimmy just last n
ight. She hadn’t even known him a full day yet. But when she’d been in trouble, Jimmy had stood with her. He’d stolen a horse. He’d gotten her out of town.

  And, maybe, he’d protected her from Fish.

  Lisa couldn’t leave Jimmy to that . . . that . . . Whitey.

  And wasn’t she trained? Had she thrown two hundred thousand throws for nothing? She was fast, the fastest one in her group at the Hovel. She was faster than most of the instructors.

  This wasn’t the Laughing Man. Whoever Lady Falma had as her champion, that man had never hurt Lisa. Lisa had no reason to take his life.

  “Do I gotta kill him?”

  Duran shook his head. “Up to you. You put him down however you like. Once he can’t get up, you win.”

  Lisa looked to the stone building. If she didn’t step up, Jimmy might never leave this place.

  All she had to do was win one duel.

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow,” Duran said. “Noon, most likely. Falma wants this settled as bad as I do.”

  Lisa felt at her chest, fingers finding the rattlesnake skull beneath her shirt.

  One, single, duel.

  If she didn’t, Jimmy was lost.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

  She rode in silence. Duran obliged, leaving her to her thoughts.

  The carriage was as fancy as anything in Duran’s house, another testament to the rancher’s wealth and power. On an actual highway, it probably would have been a smooth ride. But they weren’t on a highway. Through the narrow slats that passed for windows, Lisa saw endless scrub brush and struggling pines, the same as she’d seen on the ride north.

  She also saw Duran’s men. A trail of them behind the carriage, spears at rest, tips pointing straight up. Some had small flags on the ends of their spears, red, stitched with a black DR. More men out in front of the carriage, two riding on either side.

  At least the pitters would steer clear.

  There were other creatures out here in the hills, she’d heard. Bears. Mountain lions. Packs of cabras. Supposedly even continuars, with wings wider than four men lying end to end. With this many riders, though, everything would stay away. Even the continuars.

  Maybe.

  After agreeing to the duel, Lisa had spent the rest of the day practicing her throws. She’d reduced a throwing post to splinters and kindling. Two of her slivers had broken. Duran had offered to replace them, but when Lisa learned that Kwallan would be the one to do the work, she chose to leave those two holsters empty.

  Hours of practice had helped her focus, helped her tune out thoughts of Jimmy and Kwallan and the Laughing Man. When the sun had set, Lisa had eaten, then gone to bed in a guest room in the big house. She’d expected her thoughts to keep her awake—the dread of the coming duel, the unstoppable image of the Laughing Man’s blood—but the bed proved to be the softest she had ever known. With the stress and exhaustion of the previous day, she’d slept like the dead.

  The hours-long ride from Duran’s ranch to the duel site, however, had left her plenty of time to think. Think about the coming duel. How she might be wounded. How she might die. How she might kill a man.

  No . . . kill another man.

  She barely knew Jimmy. So why was she doing this? Jimmy might be a bad man, the kind that took ten-year-old girls into the woods. Maybe he worshipped demons. She didn’t know. So why was she doing this?

  Because Jimmy had helped her.

  And no matter how much she wanted to leave, she couldn’t abandon Jimmy to Kwallan. She couldn’t let Jimmy become one of the things crawling in the shadows.

  One duel. Then she could head home to the Hovel.

  The distant, isolated Hovel.

  The boring Hovel.

  Lisa closed her eyes, breathed slowly. She was a Victim. She was fast. She could win this duel, win it easily. She had to focus on that.

  She heard the driver calling for the team to stop, felt the carriage slow. When they came to a rest, Duran waited, smiled at her.

  “Not long now,” he said. “One sliver to the eye, or the throat, or the wrist, and this is all done.”

  She realized she hadn’t asked a question. A very important question.

  “And if I lose?”

  Duran shrugged his arrogant shrug.

  “Then Jimmy belongs to Kwallan.”

  Anger flared. Who did this man think he was that he could hold Jimmy’s life—or his soul—hostage? Who did he think he was that he could make Lisa fight to the death?

  Death. She would have died without Duran’s men. Would have died horribly. That she could not deny.

  “Tell me something,” she said. “If Rowan and your men had rescued us before Jimmy got hurt, and you still found out I was a Victim, would you have found another way to get me to fight for you?”

  In answer, Duran offered only his smile.

  The carriage door opened. Rowan stood there, offering a gloved hand to her.

  “Watch your step, miss.”

  She ignored his hand. She didn’t want to touch him, but not for the reasons she didn’t want to touch anyone; she worried that if she took his hand, she would want to touch him more.

  Besides, she wasn’t some frail thing that needed help. She was a trained slinger. She was a Victim.

  She hopped down. The wind blew from the west. Did it carry the smell of the ocean, or was she imagining that? The ocean might be right over the ridge, for all she knew.

  Maybe she could find out after this was over.

  If she survived.

  A horse trotted to a stop near her: Fish, riding his painter. The mount had been brushed, fed, and watered while at the Duran Ranch; it looked like a different animal altogether.

  “You ready, Lady Lisa?”

  She had to get him to stop calling her that.

  “Let’s get it over with,” she said.

  Ahead on the road, another carriage. Two dozen horsemen, most holding spears just like Duran’s men did, only these spears were flying flags of green and black squares, with a yellow lightning bolt in the middle.

  A man in a black shirt and black hat helped an older woman out of the carriage. She wore a pink hat and a pink dress, both lined with black witchglass beads. A few petticoats under the dress added to her shape, but Lisa had seen far worse in Frisco.

  From the end of the woman’s group, a man rode up on a white horse. Lisa knew, instantly, that this was her foe. He wore all black: boots, jeans, button-down shirt. No hat, but rather a bandanna tied over his head. A black scarf knotted at the neck, pointed ends blowing with the wind. Trimmed black mustache. Small granite U’s through his earlobes, a matching one through his nose.

  And a black leather belt studded with sliver holsters, the worn wood handles sticking up in a regimented row.

  “Well,” Fish said, “ain’t he a fucking dandy?”

  Duran dabbed at his forehead with a kerchief.

  “He’s killed three men,” he said. “That we know of. Come along, Miss Lisa, It’s time.”

  Lisa and Duran walked forward.

  Her opponent dismounted. He walked to meet Lisa, the woman in the pink dress at his side.

  On a lonely trail in the middle of nowhere, Lisa and Duran stood before Lady Falma and Lisa’s foe. He was tall . . . maybe six and a half feet. Longer arms meant a longer release speed, but he could probably throw much harder than she could.

  “Rancher Duran, you disgusting pig,” Lady Falma said, her voice as sweet as honey.

  “Lady Falma,” Duran said.

  The woman looked Lisa up and down.

  “Really, Duran? Your sack finally drops enough for you to accept my challenge, and this is what you bring to the dance?”

  Muscles twitched under Duran’s ear.

  “I’m confident in my choice.”

  Lady Falma hmphed dismissively. “Whatever it takes for you to give up your ridiculous claim on my land.”

  “The land is mine,” Duran said. “I shouldn’t even ha
ve to go through this!”

  Falma hmphed again.

  A man wearing white-trimmed black robes walked forward from her group. He wore a flat-brimmed black hat with a white enameled star on the front.

  “Rancher Duran,” he said. “Lady Falma.”

  “Judge Witcomb,” the two said in unison.

  The judge looked Lisa up and down, concern on his face.

  “Young lady, are you fully aware of the gravity of this duel?”

  All this talking—she wanted to get on with it. Formalities she’d never gone through back at the Hovel. Local law . . . she had to endure it.

  And she had to pee.

  “I am,” she said.

  “You’re doing this willingly,” Witcomb said. “You’re not being coerced in any way?”

  Lisa glanced at Duran. She couldn’t help it. His eyes narrowed in a wordless warning.

  “I am doing this willingly.”

  The judge sighed. “Very well. And you, Pete?”

  Lisa’s tall foe stared at her, a half smile on his lips.

  “Gravity,” the man said, waving a black-gloved hand. “Willing and all that shit. Can we get on with this?”

  The judge nodded. Duran and Lady Falma walked back to their respective groups.

  “I hope a ricochet hits you in the eye and kills you,” Lady Falma said over her shoulder in that syrupy voice.

  “Blow it out your ass,” Duran said, apparently unable to remain polite.

  The judge clapped his hands together twice.

  “Turn perpendicular to the road,” he said. “Duran’s champion to the north, Falma’s champion to the south.”

  Lisa glanced up, saw that the sun, hidden by a few thin clouds, was directly overhead.

  Noon.

  The black-clad man grinned at her.

  “You should concede,” he said. “I got no wish to hurt you. Concede, Falma wins the land, you walk away. Ain’t that right, judge?”