by Guy Haley
Mom made sure he didn’t come back. She was never squeamish about that.
For the second time in a month we were waiting to see what God had in store for us. The road was one from the Gone Before. I’ll tell you how you can tell their roads. The surface they used is gone. But earthworks, they stay put until shifted. You see a long, long dip, like a big ditch or a dry river, with embankments that don’t seem to serve no useful purpose? Chances are it’s an old road. This one had been broad enough to build a house across, a big house at that, now it was barely more than a track. Trees and scrub had encroached on its width from the sides and from the middle. Sometimes you’d catch sight of broken things from the time before. Most often bridges, where one of their roads crossed another. In New Karlsville we used to call them from the Gone Before “Bridge Builders,” they made so many.
The state of the road tells you a lot about how important New Karlsville was. But sorry though it was, the road was a main way to Charleston from the south, so we were hopeful someone would be along, and that they wouldn’t be a man with a black heart.
“The Good Lord provides,” my mom said. She said that a lot.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off the trees. Dense forest round there, where we was, and not a sign of civilized human life.
We were four hours there before Quinn rode up. We heard his horses’ hooves thumping hollowly on the mulch first, and his gear jangling. We looked down the road. He appeared round a corner, his horses’ feet ringing louder as he crossed onto the small patch of bare concrete we were sitting on. My mother drew up her knees, stared resolutely at him. She was afraid of this man with his gun and his swords.
Quinn—we didn’t know his name then—Quinn glanced at our wagon sagging on its broken axle, then he looked not at us exactly, more over our heads. He rarely looked you in the eye. Often when he did look a man in the eye, it meant trouble.
I’m not a liar, so I’m not going to say when he came riding up to us that first day that we didn’t think he might be a thief. The suspicion lingered, days after he took us on, until that time when I saw Quinn fight. Then I knew for sure he was what he said he was.
“Dangerous country this,” said the man who might have been a knight, or might have been a murderer.
My mother did not reply.
“Where are you headed?” he said.
“North,” said my mother. Her voice was unusually clipped, dismissive. She wanted him to pass on by.
“Charleston?” he said.
My mother said nothing.
“Further?” he said.
My mother nodded, just slightly.
“Where?”
No reply.
“I don’t mean any harm.”
She looked at him, openly hostile.
“I can help you, ma’am.”
“It is not your concern where we are headed, sir,” my mother said.
Quinn shifted on his saddle. “Okay.” He said nothing for a minute. His horse snorted and paced from foot to foot, impatient to be on. His pack pony was already cropping grass. Quinn looked at the wagon. “Not safe, a boy and a woman alone. I’m headed north. I’ll take you to Charleston.”
“Your weapons, your armor. They are those of a knight,” my mother said.
“They are,” he said.
“How did you come by them?” Her eyes strayed to the bare patch on his left shoulder, the place he should have been wearing his badge. If he was a knight, good for us, because they got codes. If he weren’t . . . well, I don’t need to spell it out for you.
He leaned down, and he did look directly at us for a second.
“How do you think?”
He swung his leg off his horse and slid to the ground. He stretched in a way that suggested he’d been riding for hours. My mother did not take her eyes off him. He lifted his arms high in the air and bent his back. He smelled of the road and of danger. His sword hilts knocked together, and I saw him do that little motion that I was to see him do so many times, a hitch and a push at the hilt of his falchion to keep his swords clear of each other. He looked at us for a long time.
“How about I find you a fresh axle for that wagon?” he said eventually.
“That would be kind, thank you,” Mom said. A touch of hope entered her voice. The knight had made no move against us.
He looked at the wagon. “You’ll need to turn this in to the postmaster in Charleston.”
“I cannot pay you if you ride with us,” she said. She was lying; she could pay, but she’d have been a fool to tell him about the bride price hidden under the mailbags. My mother was no fool.
“We’ll figure something out.”
“I will not pay you in that manner.” Her grip on my hand became fierce.
Quinn gave a half shrug that made his mail jingle. “I don’t mean anything of that nature.” He went to the pony and pulled out an oilcloth bundle and unrolled it on the ground. There were a number of tools inside, all in pockets sewn perfectly to fit them. Worn wooden handles and iron heads poked out of each. They looked like bald orphans tucked up in rows of beds in an orphanage, hopeful to be picked. He pulled out a small saw and a hatchet.
“There’ll be a reward for the recovery of this mail wagon. If you’ll see your way to letting me keep the money, I’ll get you as far as Charleston.”
“What about afterwards?” I blurted.
“I don’t know about further north. It’s bad country past the city, and out of my way.”
“Please, mister,” I said.
Quinn gave me a smile, tight, but friendly. “Maybe we’ll work something out. What happened to the mailman? Was he on his own? No gunner?”
My mother nodded. “His gunner left him a while back. He always said he preferred to travel alone, and wouldn’t take another partner.” She nodded backward off the road, to where his corpse lay stitched into sacking behind a bush. “Such a stupid accident. The pothole there broke our axle. He fell. One moment he was talking, and the next . . .” she trailed off. Her eyes had gone a little pink. “He was a good man. A kind man.”
“That’s bad luck,” said Quinn.
“Yes.” She had more than her share of bad luck, my mother. God did love to test her.
“You took care of him?”
“Of course. He took a blow to the head, but I was not about to take chances with my son.”
“Wise,” he said. He had this way of lading a whole sentence worth of meaning onto one word. “Let’s see about that axle.”
He went away for a while. We heard him chopping a tree. I made to go watch but my mother pulled me back and shook her head.
Fifteen minutes later he returned dragging a sapling. He threw it down on the floor, and went to his tool roll for a curved draw knife and worked it at the sapling’s twigs.
“This will do, till we get to Charleston. It won’t take us any further than that.”
“It’s got a kink in it, mister,” I said. My mother shushed me.
“That’s why it won’t take us any further.” He hitched up his belt, adjusting his swords again. “It’ll break soon enough too. It’s not seasoned. And bad timber round here, none of it grows straight.” He looked into the dense stands of young trees crowding into the road as he said this, telling them more than us. “I could do with a hand, ma’am,” he said.
“There’s no need for that.”
“What do I call you then?” He looked up from under his eyebrows, amused, but maybe—and this is the oddest thing—shy.
“Mrs. Hollister,” she said. Her first name was Sarah, although she didn’t tell him that until later. I always intended to call my daughter Sarah, after my mom. But the Good Lord didn’t see fit to bless me that way. “This is Abney.”
He nodded at me. I stared back.
“Then help me, Mrs. Hollister, and we’ll be on our way.”
They had to take the mail out of the back to lighten the wagon. I tried my best to help, but the sacks were bulky even if they weren’t heavy, and most of them wer
e heavy. Not once did Quinn look like he’d break the wire seals. Neither the king’s law or the Dreaming Cities take kindly to mail pilfering, but I figured he could do just what he liked. Who’d stop a man armed like that taking what he wanted? He didn’t so much as squeeze the bags to see what might be in them.
My mom was strong and capable. They worked hard, not a word between them, as they levered up the wagon with a pole cut from another tree. Quinn propped up the wagon base on logs and a couple of rocks. Then he fit the new axle, quick and clean. We took away the prop, and loaded up the mail again. That was that.
Last in was Walter. A good man, well liked in our village. He didn’t have to take us. But he did. If his death had ought to do with us, I can’t say. Maybe you think I’m some kind of draw for bad luck, like a few of the elders say still from time to time. You think that, think on this—without us, who would have been there to make sure he didn’t go the way of the dead? He slept easy, Walter. That’s more than some of us will get.
I was tired and Mom said I should ride in the back. I was ready for sleep, but I couldn’t take my eyes from Walter. Mom had sewn him up tight, the proper way, one stitch through the nose to make sure he wasn’t still with us. Stains spread from his head where the rock had done him, another from the back of the neck where my mom had severed his spine. Bump bump, the wagon went, sending old Walter rocking to and fro. What if Mom had missed? What if it didn’t work on him? I couldn’t stop watching, sure as sure that at any moment he’d make the moan of the returning dead, start thrashing about, trying to get out of the bag and tear at me. It was hot and stuffy in the wagon, fall heat that sets you up for a chill when night’s in. The light shining through the canvas turned blue and dingy, and I tried to go to sleep. But every time I shut my eyes, I thought of Walter coming back and creeping up to gnaw on me and my eyes flew open. Walter’s corpse was a horrible shape in the dark. The canvas flapped on the wagon hoops, mailbags rolling, and Walter going bump, bump, bump.
I caught a few words up front. The wagon stopped. Walter rolled in his sack one last time. I swallowed. My throat was dry and my skin clammy.
Quinn rode up round the back. I didn’t see him coming, being a mite occupied, so I near died myself when he lifted the flap.
“Not healthy, son, staring on the dead like that,” he said. “Get out and ride up front with your mother.”
I scrambled out fast as if ghouls had got a scent of me and were baying for my blood. My mom gave me a little squeeze. I was shaking something, and I needed it. It’s a hard time of life for a boy, being halfway a man. Damn fool I felt like, staring wide-eyed like a kid the whole time at the knight. I shoved my mother’s arm off, my cheeks burning, even though I wanted her to hold me close more than anything.
Quinn trotted up level to the driver’s side, that big white horse of his glowing in the twilight.
“Thank you, sir, for looking out for my boy,” my mother said. “You never told us your name.” She hadn’t said much to the knight. She was still wary, but he hadn’t tried anything. Maybe she’d not asked his name to forestall any unpleasantness. Ask some men their name, and they think you’re asking for a whole lot more.
“Quinn,” he said.
“That’s all?”
He nodded, looking down the road. “It’ll serve,” he said.
“And you are a knight?” she asked this cautiously. I could tell she was weighing up in her mind the need to know, against the need to not provoke him.
He gave his quick, crook-mouthed smile. There and gone. “For my sins,” he said.
“But you wear no badge? Which city is your lord?”
“My choice, ma’am,” he said, answering the first question but not the second. “We best stop for the night,” he said.
“Here?” said my mother. The forest was thick still, the sky that utter black blazing with stars that you find yourself under out in the wild.
“Can you suggest anywhere better?” he asked.
We stopped.
He got off his horse. Conversation over.
Quinn tended to his horses. He had a way with them that was kind and careful, and I lost some of my suspicion of him.
He caught me watching.
“You gonna help, son?”
I didn’t move.
He shrugged. “This here’s Parsifal,” he said, slapping his horse’s neck. “The little one is Clemente. Clem, if you prefer. He don’t mind.”
“Strange names,” I blurted.
“The angels named Parsifal, son, they like to allude to old stories. They think it’s fitting, funny. Clem though, I named him myself.”
The pony shook out his mane at the mention of his name. Quinn strapped on his nosebag. They had an understanding between them, those three.
Several hours later, I twitched awake. I was lying on my back, the lumps of the ground pressing into my back. Half asleep like that, for a moment I thought I was lying on bones, all the bones of the dead past reaching up hungrily through the ground to devour the present. That woke me up for real.
The moon had gone. It was damn cold, not yet frosty, but that was only a few weeks away. I think the chill was what woke me.
Mom and Quinn were talking, the low, sibilant rumblings of adults being quiet. The voices they use when they’re engaged in love, or arguing. Rarely any other time else.
Mom and Quinn were close to argument.
He and my mom talked hard, her trying not to shout, all hisses and bitten words, him slow and reasonable, voice mumbling like water. If they’d have known I was awake they would’ve shut up, so I kept still and listened, me being endlessly fascinated by the dealings of adults.
Adults think kids don’t understand. My mom thought I didn’t. She loved me, my mom, she would do anything for me. That’s why she sold herself on to Gern after I turned eight. Keep me fed, keep me strong. I understood that, she never spoke with me about it, but I knew what she did. She didn’t want to remarry, and even though Gern was good in his way, he’d still demand his rights. That must have been hard on her. I don’t think she ever loved anyone after my father died. Same with all that travel to get me here. You might think about leaving this place, going somewhere else, but leaving’s harder than just picking up your pack and walking down the road. There’s the angels for one, they’re not always happy with folks with itchy feet. Sometimes they are, sometimes they ain’t. You can’t ever tell. Then there’s finding somewhere. You want to make it in the city, fine, but you want a new village? Good luck to you. They won’t let you in unless you got something to give. My mom, she had something—she was fertile, but she wanted better than to just sell herself again. All her life she’d struggled to keep a bit of freedom and had never quite managed. But she didn’t go halfway across Virginia for her. You might think otherwise, but I know she did it for me.
This is what Quinn and my mom were saying.
“I’ll take you to Charleston. Make a new life for yourself there. I can’t take you to Winfort.”
“And what is there for me in Charleston, Mr. Quinn? How long until a man stakes a claim on me, and paid my bride price to the magistrate? Then what? If I go to my cousin, then he will vouch for me, take me in, and I will be free of marriage difficulties.”
“You don’t want another husband? Taking a man will ease your way some.”
“Maybe. In time. But the choice will be mine.”
“The boy needs a father.” I could feel his eyes on me. I lay dead still. “This is a rough world, ma’am. Rougher still if you’re on your own. You’ll be the first to get thrown out if there’s a bad harvest, or the dead come, or there’s disease. You get your pick. You’re pretty, still young, fertile too, and that’s a rarity.”
“If you are suggesting that my boy’s interests are not my highest priority, Mr. Quinn, you are incorrect. I have to be careful. I don’t want some dirt poor farmer working him to death, or him apprenticed in a filthy trade.”
Quinn sighed. I heard him poke the fire, it burning ha
rder after he did. “My point is, ma’am, why go all that way? Set the price high, that’s your prerogative, and drop it for the right man. The road north of Charleston is dangerous.”
My mother’s voice hardened, an ugliness crept into it. She was stubborn, so stubborn it might have poisoned her if she’d lived longer. “All it takes, Mr. Quinn, is for some man to bribe the justice to judge my price too high and lower it by legal fiat. Then what? The power I have over my own body is tenuous at best. I need a man to shelter me so that I might freely choose. Under the vouchsafe of my cousin, we’ll both be free.” She was angry about this, she always was angry when she spoke on this subject. “Men with money are rarely kind.”
“You chasing kindness might just get you killed.”
“I’d rather chance the angels’ wrath than have my boy watch his mother die miserable, and then him die miserable because of it.”
Quinn grunted in agreement. They were silent a space. “It wasn’t always like this,” he said. “It won’t be like this forever.”
“It does not matter how it was,” my mother said, “and I do not share your optimism, Mr. Quinn. God has reduced us to the level we deserve.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Why did you leave, Mrs. Hollister?”
“After New Karlsville fell, there was nothing left there. It is as simple as that.”
“Things rarely are simple, ma’am. Let me see your letters.”
Clothes rustled. She kept Cousin Matthew’s letters close by her chest.
Quinn breathed out. I imagine he was reading.
“This the last?”
“Yes.”
“And you got this five years ago?”
“Yes. His letters became less frequent, on account of the increasing depredations of the Emperor’s Punishment, but he was still alive then, and he says life away from the river was good, ’cause the Emperor’s Punishment didn’t go that far north.”
“Things change. The angels are unpredictable, their creatures more so.” This from a man who was one himself. “The Lord of Winfort holds his lands at the angels’ command, but that don’t make him immune to the dragon. How old will your cousin be now?”