“It appears Clay is a better doctor than he is a horse wrangler,” Auggie said. Both men chuckled.
“Very similar jobs in many respects,” Bick said. “I wanted to thank you for what you did for me, for the sacrifice you made, when you had no reason to.”
“It was the right thing,” Auggie said, and shrugged. “What else is one to do, ja?”
Bick smiled. “What indeed.” He took some folded papers out of his coat pocket and handed them to Auggie. “I think you’ll find everything is in order.”
“Wh-what is this?” Auggie said, unfolding the documents and reading them.
“Your loans to me are paid in full,” Bick said. “You are free and clear, Mr. Shultz.”
Auggie looked at Bick and shook his head. “I … I don’t understand?”
“It’s the right thing,” Bick said. “What else is one to do, yes?”
Auggie smiled and shook Bick’s hand.
“Thank you, Mr. Bick,” he said. “This is … Thank you!”
As Bick took Auggie’s hand, a strange look crossed his dark features, almost a frown.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Bick?” Auggie asked.
Bick seemed to be looking him over.
“You are feeling fine, Mr. Shultz? No aftereffects from your injury?”
“Nein,” Auggie said, smiling. “I feel better than ever, ja?”
“Yes,” Bick said, seeming to chase away his dark demeanor. “Well, good. I need you in good health. I’d like to offer you a job, several actually.”
“Me? Work for you?” Auggie said, confused.
“Yes,” Bick said. “I’ve decided that Golgotha isn’t large enough yet to need two general stores, so I’m offering you the position of partner and manager of the mining company store I opened up on Argent, to be renamed—effective immediately—Shultz’s General Store. I’ll stay a silent partner, of course, in the venture, but you will own fifty-five percent of it and you can run it as you please, with no interference from me.”
Auggie looked at Bick. “But why, Mr. Bick?”
“For the same reason I’m offering you an even more important job,” Bick said, slapping Auggie on the back. “I need someone I can trust to oversee some of my business ventures here in Golgotha. I’d like that to be you, Mr. Shultz. I need someone who can tell me to my face when I’ve strayed from the path. I need a conscience, Mr. Shultz, and I’ll pay you handsomely to be mine.”
Auggie smiled. “That sounds like a full-time job, Mr. Bick.”
The saloon owner laughed.
“Indeed,” he said. “By half, I’d say. What do you say, Mr. Shultz?”
“Let me think on it, Mr. Bick,” Auggie said, picking up his broom to dust the floor. “You’ll have my answer by tomorrow.”
“Very good,” Bick said. “Tomorrow then, and thank you again for what you did for me, Mr. Shultz.”
“My friends call me Auggie,” he said.
“Auggie, then,” Bick said.
Bick was about to open the door to the storefront when Auggie called out.
“Mr. Bick? Why me? Why put so much trust in someone you hardly even know?”
“Because, Auggie, you gave me something back I thought I had lost a long time ago. I’m in your debt. Good day, until tomorrow.”
Bick shut the door behind him and walked to the front door of the store, pausing to tip his Stetson to Gillian. Clay was leaning against the counter and the two had been talking. They stopped as soon as Bick had opened the door. Bick gave them both a stern, almost judgmental look, as if he was looking through them, into them.
“Good day,” Bick said, and exited the store.
Gillian turned back to Clay, speaking in a low, almost conspiratorial tone. “I’m worried, Clayton. Are you sure there are no side effects, no aftereffects?”
Clay shrugged. “You’ve seen him, Gillian, he’s fine. The biorestorative is working. Just make sure you keep giving it to him.”
“I am, I am,” Gillian said. “He thinks I make the worst coffee in the world, but he drinks it and smiles, bless his sweet heart. Clay, did we do the right thing? Is this fair to him?”
“Would you rather visit his tombstone or have him beside you?” Clay asked. “We had to make a decision and make it quickly and we made the correct one, Gillian.”
“It’s just … You are sure there is nothing in that concoction connected to those evil worm-things, Clayton, you’re sure?”
“Why do you keep asking?” he said.
“Because I’ve been having dreams, Clayton. Dreams about floating in that black goo, about those worm-things swimming around me. I can feel them brush against me, I feel them wrap around my legs and pull me under.”
“That’s just anxiety,” Clay said. “You’re worried about Auggie. He hasn’t shown a single side effect, in fact…”
“Clayton,” Gillian said, “I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant and I don’t know if that happened before Auggie’s … death, or afterward.”
* * *
Little Roland Kinloch, age ten, kissed his mommy goodnight and knelt by his bed saying his prayers to Jesus, as he did every night, in his nice safe home on Rose Hill. Once he was tucked snug in his bed and mommy closed the door, Roland closed his eyes and said his real prayers. The ones the cold lady who had killed the schoolmaster had taught him, the ones to Raziel, the God of Murder and Torture and Pain. Roland rubbed the old yellow tooth between his fingers and it said the prayers with him, in his mind, like a secret song. He had taken it from the cold lady’s body in the commotion after the rescue at the schoolhouse. Roland’s was number eighteen.
* * *
Jim rode out to visit Sweet Molly and her sisters on a cold day in late December, when the sky was as gray as a Confederate’s coat. He tethered Promise to the simple wooden fence that marked the edge of Boot Hill, the paupers’ graveyard.
He walked out to her grave, which had only a simple little wooden cross, like most of the others. He knew it was Molly’s grave because Jim had been the only one present when they put her in the hole. He had wished he knew some fancy preacher words to say. He didn’t then, and he didn’t now. It was cold now, almost all the time. Winter had found them in Golgotha. Molly’s grave was bare dirt, cold, shifting in the frigid wind.
It all seemed so unfair to him. A sweet smile, a gentle disposition, and for that her last moments of life were filled with terror and pain most human beings could never even comprehend. It made no sense.
Jim’s hand found the bag at his throat. He pulled the jade eye out as he sat cross-legged at the foot of Molly’s grave. The sky darkened and the wind picked up. Jim relaxed, breathed, focused. He visualized Molly standing by her grave; her face was drawn, wet with eternal tears. Jim opened a door, pushed it open, and kicked it wide, like he was serving a warrant.
What he visualized on the other side of that door was Lottie, his little sister, running across a field of West Virginia wildflowers in a cold, bright spring. His mother singing on the porch on a June night ablaze with fireflies. His dad’s hands, strong and warm and callused, ruffling his hair, picking him up to an endless blue sky, strong enough to hold him aloft forever.
“You go on now, Molly,” Jim said quietly, the eye cold in his palm. “Go on through. Go on home now.”
For a moment the wind across the graveyard of the faceless, the forgotten, was warm and sweet with the scent of spring. Jim tried to hold the memory of home as tight and long as he could. He visualized Molly taking Lottie’s tiny hand, headed for home, for Ma’s cooking and Pa’s booming laugh.
The door closed, and winter returned with a frigid bluster. Jim sat for a spell at the foot of the grave. In time he stood and headed back to Promise, back to Golgotha.
* * *
The Bick ancestral home was a large but quaint farmhouse at the top of Methuselah Hill. It was a well-built house, but it was quite simple in comparison to the fine homes that stood at the pinnacle of Rose Hill.
Malachi Bick rode his black Ara
bian, Noche—of the same bloodline as his long departed Pecado—up the hill and to the house he had called home for almost ninety years. During almost all of that time, he had lived here alone.
He tethered Noche to the hitching post by the front door and then walked about to the back of the house. There he found Emily sitting in her sturdy high-backed wooden wheelchair, her easel set up. She was painting the distant rise of mountains, Argent at the immediate right on the easel, but most of the canvas was taken up by the western sky and the slowly fading sun, huge and orange, sinking behind the mountain, dabbing the sky with colors and hues that humans had no exact names for.
“It reminds me of the Fields of Radiance,” Bick said. “I remember them; remember riding them when I see the sunset.” He looked over to her and pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders. “It’s getting cold; we should get you in soon. Feel like walking?”
“In a moment,” Emily said. “Dr. Turlough came by; he gave me another of his treatments. He said I was very lucky, another inch or so and I wouldn’t have the option to walk ever again.
“Mr. Turlough is quite an accomplished … physician,” Bick said absently. “I hope he knows what he’s doing.”
Emily smiled at him and his dark musings scattered. “You are a worrywart,” she said. “A huge, grumpy worrywart. It’s most unbecoming.”
“Am I? Is it?” Bick said, laughing. “Well, I will endeavor to be less so, then.”
The sky was deepest indigo. Ribbons of dying umber, crimson and gold wavered at the jagged teeth of the horizon. The stars, bright and burning and ancient, unfurled before them from behind a gauze curtain of clouds.
“It looks like heaven,” Emily said, “or what I imagine Heaven must look like.” She looked up at Bick. “Is it?”
The man who was older than the stars above them put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder and felt its warmth. Her hand came up and joined with his.
“This,” Bick said, “is better.”
Acknowledgments
These last few years have been the best and worst of times. There are so many people who have encouraged and helped me. This book exists because of their love, support, and presence in my life.
To Bob Flack, a brother and a great friend. To David and Susan Lystlund and Jim and Wendy Gilraine, for being there in my darkest hours and also for being there to celebrate the light. To Eric Branscom, for sage council and steady enduring friendship. To Tim Beason, for being as generous as he is handsome and hip. To master storyteller Mark Geary, for an invaluable book on 1800s firearms and for just being so damned cool. To Katherine Milliner, for steadfast friendship, love, and for always being in my corner. To Charles Hooper and his lovely and wise mother, Bonnie, for good advice, plenty of love and support, and the best soup in Roanoke. To Brandy S. Givens, for near-infinite patience in finally getting her acknowledgment.
To my wonderful children, Jon, Emily, and Stephanie, for being my strength and my solace.
To my amazing and ever-supportive agent, Lucienne Diver, and all of the fantastic folks at The Knight Agency, thank you for making me feel like family.
Thank you to my “League of Extraordinary Beta Readers”: Sara Ruhlman, Susan Lystlund, Kim LaBrecque, Meg Hibbert, Leslie Barger, Steve Stanley, Patrick Crowley, and David Lystlund.
To Dan Smith, Meg Hibbert, Mike Allen, Paul Dellinger, and the incomparable Allen Wold, for friendship and for showing me what true writers are made of. I am in their debt for the generosity of their time and wisdom.
To my sister, Vickie, and brother-in-law, Tony Ayers, and all their children, grandchildren, and in-laws, for always believing in me.
To all of the terrific people at Tor Books whom I have had the honor to work with—my amazingly talented editor, Greg Cox, and Stacy Hill, Patty Garcia, Marco Palmieri, Diana Pho, Aisha Cloud, and Tom Doherty, for support, patience, and sympathy. Your kindness in my time of loss meant the world to me and I’ll never forget that. Thank you. Thanks to Raymond, Swanland, for another breathtaking jacket, and to George Skoch, for his amazing cartographic skills that turned my little imaginary town into a real place.
To our sweet little cat, Wafflez, rest in peace. We miss you and love you.
To every person who read The Six-Gun Tarot and took the time to send me a comment or encouragement, I can never tell you how much your support means to me. “Thank you” doesn’t begin to express my gratitude.
For every kind word, every gesture of love and friendship and advice. Everything counts, everything. Thank you all.
Books by R. S. Belcher
The Six-Gun Tarot
The Shotgun Arcana
Nightwise*
*Coming in 2015 from Tor Books
About the Author
R. S. BELCHER is the acclaimed author of The Six-Gun Tarot, which made several of year’s ten-best fantasy lists. He is a former newspaper and magazine editor and reporter, and lives in Salem, Virginia.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE SHOTGUN ARCANA
Copyright © 2014 by Rod Belcher
All rights reserved.
Map by George Skoch
Cover art by Raymond Swanland
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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New York, NY10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-7458-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-4273-1 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466842731
First Edition: October 2014
The Shotgun Arcana Page 47