Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2)

by J. C. Staudt

  Belgard gave her a reluctant look. A look that said he was only about to open his mouth because he had to. “The figures were off long before Brother Froderic disappeared, Sister Bastille. He’s been funneling goods through various channels for some time now.”

  “Oh, yes. I know all about Froderic’s… proclivities. How long have you known?”

  “I’m his assistant. He had no choice but to bring me in eventually. The Most High first put me under his supervision because of my background in mathematics. Of course, Brother Froderic didn’t let me see the books at all in those days. He kept this whole thing from me for months. Always had me leave the supplies outside the storeroom door and said he’d get to them later. Even when I was able to get a rare glimpse inside, it seemed pretty full to me back then. I didn’t know it was any different from what he’d written down. It was…” He trailed off, lost in sobering despair for a moment as he took in the sight of the empty shelves.

  When we begin trading with the heathens, we may very well be trading to get our own food back, Bastille thought with disgust. Food that was taken from this very storeroom to pay for Froderic’s slaves. “How did this happen?” she asked.

  “Little by little,” Belgard said. “It always does.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Angels in the Wasteland

  The three travelers watched the light-star rise from an endless sea of sand, igniting the bellies of the clouds like ripe orange fruit. They were heading due east at a slow walk, their horses lathered and eager for rest after a frantic overnight ride. It would take some doing to convince Lokes a rest was needed, however.

  Extracting the shepherd from the Black City had been easier than Jallika Weaver had predicted. Now the onset of sleep was threatening to part Toler from his saddle, though Lokes had bound his hands in the front so he could ride. “We ought to settle in and grab a bite,” Weaver suggested, sidling up beside Lokes.

  “No time for that. Gonna have to ride through the day, we wanna make it in time.”

  “That boy’s gonna fall and break his neck, ‘less we give him a minute to rest,” she said.

  Lokes’s horse Gish gave a wicker, as if to agree with her. Lokes himself was not so easily swayed. “I’ll strap him down if I have to.”

  “Ain’t you hungry?” Weaver asked. “We ain’t had a bite since yesterday afternoon.”

  “Once we get there and get paid, I’ll eat enough for the both of us. ‘Til then, we ride. ‘Fernal knows what kind of ornery folk they’ll send after this dway when he shows up missing.”

  “If we stop, I can give him that letter from the southerner. I suspect he can read; maybe he’ll tell us more once he gets a look at it. Tell us what we’re up against.”

  Lokes scowled. His cheeks inflated as he hacked up a gob of something, then spat it over his shoulder. “Have it your way, mammy. Y’ always do.”

  Weaver decided she wouldn’t dignify that remark with an answer. The last thing they needed while there was a character of dubious nature in their custody was to start fighting. She angled Meldi toward the shepherd’s mount, a rugged old gelding he called Seurag. The word meant something in the nomads’ language, but she didn’t know what. Taking the animal by the reins, she led them over the next rise and into a deep sandy trough, shaded from the early morning light by the tall dunes ahead.

  There she dismounted while Lokes helped the shepherd do the same. When they had set the horses loose on a stand of witchgrass, they sat together in the shade and shared a few rashers of jerky and a waterskin. Weaver eyed the shepherd before searching through her bag for the note. Lokes still didn’t know she’d read it, or that she’d managed to melt the wax seal back into place afterwards.

  “The dway who hired us wanted you to have this,” Weaver said, handing Toler the folded square of paper.

  He gave her a skeptical look, then snatched it from her and cracked the seal. As he read, his expression shifted from puzzlement to recognition, and then to anger. When he was done, he crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it away.

  Lokes swallowed the chunk of meat he’d been working on. He cast the shepherd a furtive glance before leaning forward in his cross-legged seat to dig the crumpled ball of paper from the sand and smooth it out on his lap. His brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to decipher the script. He spun the page several times before giving up.

  “He’s my brother,” said Toler. “His name’s Daxin.”

  Lokes was intrigued. “Your brother? Now, why in the great wide world would your brother send us to fetch you? And against your will, too? I reckon that’s awful fishy. Don’t y’all get on?”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Ooh,” Lokes chided him. “Hit a nerve there. Look at him… he’s heatin’.”

  “I should’ve guessed it was him,” said Toler, unamused. “My brother’s exactly the type of dway to run around with bottom-feeders like you.”

  “You hear that?” Lokes said, pointing. “This fella’s just questioned our honor.”

  “I question your honor every day, honey,” said Weaver.

  “That’s ‘cause you know me.”

  “I didn’t have to know you to doubt you were an honorable man,” she said with a wink.

  Lokes didn’t take that as a joke. “Just like I could tell you was a cold bitch from the get.”

  Weaver rolled her eyes. Here we go again. “I wish you’d quit bein’ so sensitive all the time.”

  “I don’t much appreciate you ridin’ my ass about everything you think is wrong with me,” he said, shoving himself to his feet. “I know how much you wish I was like that Kane Harrod fella you was with back at the Crossing. I can see it in the way you stare sometimes. Just wishin’ away. Am I right? Well. This is me, baby. Here I am. Take it or leave it. I is who I is, and ain’t nothin’ gon’ change that. Maybe you ought to head back up north and find Kane again, if he’s the kind of dway you want. Back to the Crossing, where you belong. Hah. You go on back, and leave me out of it.” Lokes stalked away, circling the dune in a heavy, awkward gait as his boots sank into dry sand with each step.

  Back to the Crossing, where I belong, Weaver thought. That is where I belong. I left it to be with you, she wanted to say. I left him to be with you.

  Jallika’s father had certainly believed the Calsaire’s Guild was where she belonged. From the time she was old enough to understand, she remembered little else of Nolin Weaver but that he had spoken words of pain into her life. He had been a severe, joyless man, his eyes never lit with laughter, his voice never warm or soothing.

  At the age of five, when Jallika had begun to exhibit the first strange signs of her powers, he had marched her south from their tiny seaside cottage in the bleak northern territories and sold her to the Guild without a second thought. The Guild was always willing to pay good hardware for a genuine sandcipher—especially a child who could be molded to follow its code and adopt its ideals.

  As rare as abilities like Weaver’s were in the Aionach, knowledge of the Guild and its customs was widespread. Weaver didn’t know what price she had earned her father the day he’d sold her to the Guild. Only that when she had returned to the homestead years later, she had found the cottage long-abandoned. Most of the children and adolescents she’d grown up with on the Guildhall’s hallowed grounds had similar stories—abandoned by destitute parents who had sold them to the Guild in hopes of giving them a better life.

  The Guildhall had not been without its scandals and atrocities, of course. Its rooms housed children and adults of all ages, an arrangement which had resulted in several questionable incidents during Jallika’s time there. She herself had been involved in a few, and some by no fault of her own—forced liaisons, isolated trysts, groping hands in the dark. She had grown up faster in those dark passages than any young girl should have to, and though she had tried to put her former life behind her, the memory of things both rumored and endured still haunted her all the same.

  “Is he like that all the time?”
Toler asked, nodding toward Lokes’s footsteps in the sand.

  “Most of it,” she said.

  “Why do you put up with him?”

  Weaver scooped up a handful of sand and watched it sift through her fingers. “I don’t always. Sometimes I stick up for myself.”

  “I mean why do you hang around with him? Why not take off on your own?”

  She shrugged. “He’s the only family I got.”

  “You’re lucky you don’t have family. My family likes to coff up my life because they think they know what’s good for me.”

  “It’s not like that with Will. I love him.”

  “Don’t sound so sure of yourself,” Toler said with a smirk. “Say, you wouldn’t mind loosening these for me, would you?” He lifted his hands. “I gotta piss.”

  Weaver hesitated. Showing the shepherd leniency would only incite Lokes’s wrath anew. “I don’t know. I shouldn’t.”

  “Oh, come on… it’s not like I’m going to run away.”

  She sighed, then took him by the wrists and loosened his bonds as best she could without giving him the freedom to slip out—or so she hoped. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ll have to go with you. I promise I won’t look.”

  “Too bad,” he said. “I was hoping you’d hold it for me.”

  Weaver gave him a gross look.

  “Mind giving me a hand?” Toler asked, brandishing his bound wrists. “Kind of hard to stand up on my own like this.”

  She helped him to his feet. They circled the dune and found Lokes standing alone on the windward side, twirling his guns. Weaver had seen him do it so often she’d grown tired of watching him, but Toler was looking on intently, his eyes glued to Lokes’s hands.

  “I’m impressed,” said the shepherd, unbuttoning his leathers and pulling himself out before Weaver could look away.

  Lokes grimaced when he saw the stream run out from between Toler’s legs. He turned his back but kept slinging his revolvers, whipping them out, spinning them, and slipping them back into their holsters with motions as smooth as silk. Jallika averted her eyes and waited until the last few drips hit the sand, a sensation she could feel so deep in her bones it made her cringe.

  “Hey, you got a smoke?” Toler asked Lokes when he was done.

  Lokes was abashed. “I look like an idiot to you?”

  “Kind of. You look like the sort of dway who might smoke.”

  “Well, I ain’t. If I wanted to kill myself, I’d try leaving this one.” He thumbed over his shoulder at Weaver, laughing.

  “That’s none of my business,” Toler said, though he was laughing along. “How about a drink?”

  Lokes cocked his head. “You fixin’ to nag me like an old woman the whole way to Belmond? I get enough of that already.” Again he gestured toward Weaver, who pretended not to notice. “Now drink this, and keep your mouth shut while you ain’t.” He tossed Toler a waterskin, full to bursting.

  Toler tried to catch it, but he couldn’t hang on. The skin hit the ground and the cap popped off, spilling half its contents onto the patch of sand already wet with his urine. He fumbled for it, but by the time he managed to pick it up there was almost nothing left inside.

  “That’s a might unfortunate,” Lokes said with a chuckle.

  “I meant a real drink,” said Toler, clutching the skin tightly. “Something stronger than water.”

  “Listen, Shep. I know what you meant. This ain’t no booze cruise. If I gotta pour liquor down your throat to keep you from twiggin’ out on me, this is gonna be a long trip for you. You best get your shit together.”

  “You’ve got some though, don’t you?”

  “Not for you,” Lokes said.

  Toler nodded at his guns. “Can you shoot those things as well as you spin them?”

  Lokes scoffed. “‘Course I can.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Toler. “I challenge you to a contest.”

  “I ain’t lettin’ you touch my sweeties, if that’s what you had in mind,” Lokes said, fondling their ivory grips.

  “Oh, I’d never touch your sweeties. What I’d like to do is propose that I can throw better than you can shoot.”

  “Hah! Target practice? Ain’t nobody ever walked away from a shootout with ol’ Lokes.”

  Weaver rolled her eyes. For Infernal’s sake… men and their cockfights. Coff on these two boneheads. Only thing they’ll ever prove is they’re both dimwits. You’d think they might figure out they’re better off working together every once in a while.

  “Here’s the wager,” said Toler. “I win, and you share your booze.”

  “How ‘bout when you lose?”

  “If I lose, I’ll convince my brother to pay you an extra few ounces of gold when we get to Belmond. Say, for a job well done.”

  “Three ounces of gold for half a bottle of swill? I’ll take that deal any day of the week.” Lokes extended his hand.

  Toler shook it as best he could. “You’ve gotta cut these things off my wrists first though, or it won’t be a fair contest.”

  “Fine. Keep an eye on him, Jal.”

  Weaver watched with amusement as Lokes flicked out his knife and cut Toler’s bonds. The shepherd let them fall to the sand, then rubbed his wrists and stretched.

  “Alright, you’re free,” Lokes said. “Now what?”

  “Let me find a couple of good rocks. Be back in a minute.” Toler wandered off into the scrub, bending occasionally to pick up whatever promising ones he found.

  Weaver watched him closely. What’s he up to? she wondered. He’s gotta have some kind of scheme in mind. He might be hankering for a drink, but the hankering can’t be that bad. Sure hope he ain’t thinkin’ ‘bout making a getaway. Trust don’t come easy with Willis Lokes, but it sure do leave quick enough.

  Lokes glanced over his shoulder from time to time, but his surveillance of the shepherd was not so careful as hers. He seemed more concerned with spinning his revolvers, checking the chambers over and over again, and sighting downrange to pick out targets he thought the other man might choose.

  After a few minutes, Toler returned carrying a handful of small stones. Lokes regarded him coolly, that look of smug self-assurance Weaver had grown all too familiar with.

  “You mind being the impartial judge?” Toler asked, turning to her.

  She shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Here’s how this is going to work,” said Toler. “That cactus down there—see it?”

  “Mmhmm.”

  “It’s my throwing arm against your snap shooting. Right hand to right hand. As soon as the rock leaves my hand, you draw and fire. If your shot hits that cactus before my rock does, the point is yours. You get one shot, and one shot only. Six attempts, then we switch to the left side. Got it?”

  “I got it, Shep. Let’s do this. And no funny business from you, over there,” Lokes said, giving her a wink.

  He wants me to cheat, Weaver knew. Shift the ground, or put sand in the shepherd’s eye. Lokes had no reason to doubt his victory in this contest. He had the clear advantage, unless Toler could throw a rock faster than Lokes could fire a bullet. He hardly ever missed with his sweeties, though Toler’s chosen target stood at considerable range.

  Toler took his first rock in hand, tossing it to get a sense of the weight, rubbing it with his thumb to feel its shape. Before making his throw, he glanced at Lokes. “Ready?”

  Lokes stood poised for action, feet spread and shoulders square to his target. How like an artist he was with those guns, his fingers just shy of tickling their ivory grips. “Mm,” he said with a subtle nod.

  Toler brought his arm back and let fly, nice and easy.

  Lokes drew and fired.

  The rock clunked against the cactus.

  Weaver strained to look, but from so far away it was hard to tell whether Lokes’s shot had hit. Jogging over, she held up a hand to pause the proceedings. There was a nick in the right side of the cactus flesh where the bullet had grazed it. “Hit,” she d
eclared. “Bullet before the stone.”

  Lokes raised his chin and slipped two fingers along the brim of his hat, impressed with himself.

  “You’re not bad,” said Toler.

  “Not bad? Not—” Lokes interrupted himself and resumed his stance. “Do the next one.”

  Weaver got out of the way.

  Again Toler let the stone fly in a lofting arc, and again Lokes drew and fired. A direct hit this time, Lokes’s bullet put a hole in the cactus’s trunk and sent a spray of pale green flesh out the back.

  “That’s two for Will,” said Weaver.

  On the third attempt, Lokes’s bullet struck the arm of the cactus, while Toler’s throw landed yet another solid thump, right in the center.

  “Hit.”

  “His doesn’t count,” said the shepherd. “The arms are a miss.”

  “I hit the coffin’ thing,” said Lokes. “That’s all you said we had to do.”

  “Just give it to him, honey,” Weaver advised. “You’re up two to one. Two more and he loses.”

  “We’ve got the left side to go after this,” Toler reminded her.

  “Alright, five more, then. That’s nothin’ my man can’t do.”

  But on the fourth attempt, Toler sent the stone hurtling toward his target with a quick sidearm throw. Lokes was fast, but even Weaver had to admit she saw the rock bounce off the cactus’s stem before his bullet exploded through the tip. A brief argument ensued, but the point ultimately went to Toler.

  Angered, Lokes missed his fifth shot completely. The cactus had proven to be just far enough downrange to pose a challenge for him. This shepherd is a clever fella, Weaver decided. But Willis Lokes was the best deadeye she knew, and he wouldn’t go down that easy.

  “Alright, you can throw, Shep. I’ll give you that,” Lokes finally admitted.

  Toler smirked. “You ever meet a shepherd who couldn’t throw?”

  “Nah, don’t reckon I have.”

  “That’s because they’re all dead.”

  “You want that liquor somethin’ awful, don’t you? Well I ain’t givin’ you shit, Shep. Throw.”