by Kyra Halland
Take the way she concealed her power. Instead of putting a shield around it, she pulled it deep inside of her so it was buried. The result was that no search for shields would reveal any hint of the buried magic – Silas had discovered this for himself – and this way of hiding power required a lot less power to maintain. Silas had tried to figure out how Lainie did it, but try as he might, and no matter how much she tried to explain it to him, he couldn’t get the trick of suppressing his power inside himself. There must be some quality inherent in Wildings-influenced power that made it possible.
Despite, or maybe because of, the differences between their powers, he felt like he was learning as much from teaching her as she was learning from him. Instructing someone who was nearly a raw beginner in the use of magic was forcing him to look closely at things he had always taken for granted, like the flow of natural and magical energies over the earth. Over the years, Silas had become so accustomed to them that he rarely noticed them unless he was intentionally looking for variations in their flow, such as those that would reveal shielded power. In teaching Lainie to recognize these energies, he had rediscovered them for himself and begun seeing them in ways he never had before.
He wouldn’t be surprised if, in the end, Lainie taught him more than he could ever teach her.
Shadows crept across the town and the room grew dark as the sun went down behind the hills. Silas’s stomach growled, and his mouth and throat were dry. He slid out of bed without waking Lainie and pulled on his pants and boots, then took the pitcher from the washstand down to the wellhouse and filled it. The pounding heat of the day had eased, and the town was quiet except for the sounds of voices and hammerbox music coming from the saloon and the wind rushing down the gap in the hills.
When he got back to the room, Lainie was awake. They drank, washed, and finished dressing, then went over to the Dusty Demon for supper.
In the saloon, eight or nine scruffy-looking men sat at the scattering of battered tables. A mustached man in a boldly-striped shirt that had seen better days was playing a hammerbox about as well as that instrument deserved to be played. A pair of house ladies in wilted finery slouched against the bar. Neither of them were nearly as pretty as Lainie, despite being considerably better-endowed in the chest area. Behind the bar, a big man with straw-colored hair in two long braids, shirtless beneath a stained apron that might have once been white, was wiping glasses with a cloth that looked to be dirtier than the glasses. In welcome contrast to the rest of the saloon, the smells coming from the kitchen were appetizing.
Silas walked up to the bar, Lainie close behind him, and they perched on a couple of tall stools. He noticed a few curious glances aimed at him, and several more interested stares directed at Lainie. It appeared that not every man in town thought Lainie was less attractive than the Demon’s house ladies. He couldn’t help feeling a sense of vindication on her behalf, but he also didn’t care for all the attention coming her way. For her own safety, he put an arm around her shoulders to warn everyone else off.
“Hey, there,” he said to the barkeeper.
The big blond man glanced at him, then went on with his wiping.
Undeterred, Silas asked, “Can we get a couple of plates of supper?”
“Nine drinas a plate,” the barkeeper said.
Food in Ripgap was as expensive as everything else. Mentally counting up how much he had spent that day, Silas put the money down on the scarred, stained bar. The barkeeper put the money in a drawer under the counter, then turned towards the half-open kitchen door. “Hey, Cookie! Two plates of whatever you’ve got in there!”
An unintelligible bass grunt came from the kitchen in response. “Be right up,” the barkeeper said. “Drinks?”
“Please.”
The barkeeper poured two glasses of beer and set them down in front of Silas and Lainie. “Three drinas each.” He went back to transferring grime between his cloth and the glasses.
Silas paid, then took a tentative sip of the beer. His mouth puckered and his gullet burned, but he figured the brew, obviously homemade from whatever cactuses were growing around, would kill whatever might be growing in the glasses, and he drank more deeply. Lainie took a swallow and doubled over, wheezing for breath. It occurred to Silas that he didn’t even know if she was a drinker. Apparently not, or at least not of this stuff. He debated asking for glasses of water for her and himself, then decided they were better off refilling their water flasks at the well and drinking from them. At least their canteens were reasonably clean.
While they waited for their food, Silas let the shield on his power down and felt around carefully, looking for Horden among the men in the saloon. Remembering Carden, he checked for concealed life force as well as for magic and shields, and found the vibrant aura that was the life of each person in the saloon. No one slid past his notice as Carden had done, and no signs of power or shields snagged at his mage senses.
“Hey, barkeep,” he said. The barkeeper glanced over at him and made an inquisitive-sounding grunt that Silas took as an invitation to continue. “I’m supposed to meet up with a fellow here in Ripgap, name of Garis Horden. Has anyone else come through town in the last couple of ninedays?”
“Not since the traders in the spring, except a gang of miners, they went up into the hills two, maybe three ninedays ago.”
That settled it; if neither the hotel clerk nor the barman at the saloon had seen Horden, then he almost certainly wasn’t in town yet. Silas turned his mind to the other matter at hand. “A couple of days ago, on our way here, we found a man hanged on the Onetree. Horse thief, I figure. You hear anything about that?”
“Nope.” The barkeeper seemed unruffled by the news of the hanging. Silas wondered if the Onetree was put to that use very often.
A twin of the barkeeper, except that he was bald and it was his long yellow beard that was done in braids, and his apron was even dirtier, came out of the kitchen, carrying a steaming tin plate in each hand. He set the plates down in front of Silas and Lainie, responded to their “Thanks” with a grunt, and disappeared back through the doorway.
The food tasted as good as it smelled. Fried beefsteak, beans, and a mash of some sort of starchy root, all seasoned with spices and herbs that were rare and expensive in Granadaia but grew out here like weeds – were, in fact, weeds. If someone were to undertake the cultivating or gathering of those seasonings and exporting them to Granadaia in the same serious manner with which the cattlemen approached raising and selling cattle, that person would make a fortune. Silas sometimes thought that when he was ready to retire from the bounty hunting business, he would buy himself a nice spread somewhere in the Wildings and raise some cattle and sheep, and maybe add a sideline of herbs and spices to the business as well.
“So,” he said to the barkeeper once the edge was off his hunger, “what brings people here to Ripgap? Doesn’t look like there’s much grazing for stock.”
“It’s a good place to be left alone.”
Silas could believe that. The citizens of Ripgap he’d met so far didn’t seem like overly sociable types.
In a surprising burst of talkativeness, the barkeeper went on. “There’s also some mining and prospecting. That what brings you here?”
Silas had had his fill of miners for his lifetime. And so, he imagined, had Lainie. “No. Like I said, I’m supposed to meet up with someone here.”
“Ain’t no one but you come through.” The barkeeper turned around and started arranging the smudged glasses on a shelf behind the bar, putting an end to the conversation.
While Silas and Lainie ate, Lainie’s glance kept going to a table where a game of Dragon’s Threes was in progress. Silas decided he was in the mood for a game; it was a good way to strike up a conversation with the locals, and, with some luck, he might win back some of the money he had spent. When he and Lainie were finished with their supper, he went over to the table, Lainie following him. The last game had just ended and a new one was about to start. “Mind if I
join in?” he asked.
The scrawny hotel clerk was among the men at the table, along with his brother the hostler and two others. “Sit yourself down,” he said, waving at the one empty chair at the table.
Silas took his seat. Lainie dragged a chair over from another table and squeezed in between the hostler and another man, across the table from Silas. “I’ll play, too.” She had some money Silas had given her in case they ever got separated and she had to make her own way for a while. He hoped she knew better than to bet it all; it would do considerable harm to their finances if she lost. He hadn’t even known she played cards, at least not for money.
“Suit yourself, little lady,” the clerk said.
The bushy-bearded hostler dealt out the cards. While the players were looking over their hands, the two house ladies sauntered over to the table. One perched on the knee of the hotel clerk; the other planted herself on Silas’s lap. She was tall for a woman, solidly-built and buxom, and impressively corseted beneath her low-cut gown, and it was impossible for Silas to look at his cards without looking down her cleavage instead. He tried to shift her off of him, but she was about as moveable as a half-buried boulder. “I’m taken,” he said.
“I’m not,” she answered. She put an arm around his shoulders and pulled his face even closer to the expanse of her bosom.
He looked over at Lainie helplessly, equally worried that she was hurt by the house lady’s attentions to him and that she was mad at him for allowing them. She glanced up from arranging her cards and gave him an inscrutable look, then turned her attention back to her hand as though it was the most interesting thing in the world. He couldn’t tell if she was mad or hurt or laughing at him, or all three, or something else entirely.
The first bets were placed on a tin tray in the middle of the table and the game began. Lainie lost the first round, then proceeded to win the next two. As play went around the table, Silas asked if anyone had seen anyone new, or heard tell of a party of settlers and a hanging. No one had seen anyone or anything, no one knew anything, and the conversation soon turned to speculation on how the prospecting was going up in the hills, a much more interesting topic to everyone but Silas.
Lainie also lost the fourth round – Silas was pretty sure she lost on purpose – then won the last round, playing the Sun King, Sun Priest, and Moon Mage to win the entire game. It wasn’t the flashiest hand, but it was a pretty sure win when you’d already lured everyone else into playing their best cards. Silas himself had lost every round and every penny he’d put on the tray.
“Hmpf.” The house lady on Silas’s knee flounced back to the bar. Apparently she wasn’t interested in sharing her cleavage, or anything else, with losers. Lainie took her winnings, which were enough to cover his losses and their meals and lodging for the night, and stood up from the table. She gave Silas the same mysterious look she had given him earlier, which he figured meant he’d better do what she wanted. “I’m afraid that’s it for me tonight,” he said, and followed Lainie from the saloon.
As they crossed the dirt street in the starlit evening, Lainie wrapped her hands around his arm, which just made it even harder for Silas to guess whether or not she was mad at him.
“You should never play for money, Vendine,” she said.
“I don’t play to win. I play to get information from the other players.” That sounded good; he might almost believe it himself. “But maybe you can let me win one round next time?”
“I was trying to let you win. You were… distracted.”
“I tried to get her off of me, but she wouldn’t move.”
“Uh-huh. At least it was me winning all your money. I might let you have some of it back, if you behave yourself.”
He glanced down at her; one corner of her mouth was bent up in a smile and her eyes glinted with laughter. She definitely wasn’t mad, then. “How’d you get to be so good at cards?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I started playing with Blake and the hands when I was four or five.” A shadow crossed her face at the mention of her brother, killed in the crossfire of a shootout this past spring. “I just seem to have a knack for knowing what cards to play and guessing what card the other players will lay down, and for fooling them with my plays. And I got good marks in figuring in school, so that helps, too.”
“That’s good to know, in case we ever need extra money,” he said, only half-joking.
They reached the front door of the hotel, and Silas pushed it open. Instead of going in, Lainie hesitated. “Are they pretty?” she asked.
“Who? Those house ladies?”
“Yeah.” She looked down at her feet and dragged the toe of her boot in the dirt.
Silas shrugged. “Passable, I guess. Not nearly as pretty as you.”
“Even though they’re so much more… you know, interesting up top?”
Before, in Granadaia, Silas had preferred voluptuous women, with lush curves that overflowed his hands. But life in the Wildings was hard, especially for women, and it was mostly only house ladies, whose lives were generally easier and more comfortable, who could achieve such ample figures. And even for a Wildings girl, Lainie was slender and deceptively fragile-looking. But her delicate frame was unmistakably feminine, and though her breasts weren’t very large, they were soft and pretty and fit nicely into the curve of his hands.
But if he said so, she might think he was only saying it to be nice, like she had earlier. He decided to try a different tactic. “Well, you know what they say about that, darlin’.”
“What do they say?”
“More than a mouthful is wasted.”
“More than – oh!”
Even in the starlight, he could see her furious blush. Laughing, he bent down and hoisted her over his shoulder. With her laughing as well and pounding at his back in mock protest, he carried her inside and up the stairs, eager for that fine quilt-covered bed.
* * *
SILAS HAD PUT a lot of energy and enthusiasm into showing Lainie that she was plenty woman enough for him and had worn himself out. But Lainie had slept during the afternoon, and now she was wide awake. After the heat of the day, the dry desert air turned surprisingly cool at night, and now she was glad of the quilt. In the dark, lying in the comfortable bed under the quilt like the one her mother had made, she could almost imagine herself back at home – except for being in her bare skin between the sheets. And except for the man sleeping beside her.
Less than three months ago, she hadn’t even known there was such a man as Silas Vendine. Then, when she met him, he had seemed like a hero from a penny-thriller novel come to life – handsome, mysterious, dangerous, and so kind and respectful to her. She never would have imagined being lucky enough to meet a man like him. And now she was his wife, married to him in view of the gods and three witnesses. Sometimes it seemed too good to be true; sometimes she wondered if it was too good to be true. But here she was, her life bound to his, for good or for ill.
On the face of it, there seemed to be an overabundance of trouble and ill. Her heart ached at the thought of her Pa, sitting lonely in the house at night, bereft of his family. Had he healed up okay from when he was shot by Carden’s miners? Was he eating well? She had been doing the cooking for so long, she didn’t know if anyone else even knew how to make beans and biscuits and flatcakes just the way he liked them.
And what about Rat, the fat old one-eared orange tom, and Bunky and Snoozer, the big cattlehounds? She hoped Pa or someone was remembering to give Rat and the barn cats their plates of milk every evening, and that Pepper and Polly were being milked properly. Did anyone besides her know that Polly gave down her milk more easily if she was sung to, and that Bunky and Snoozer needed new meat bones every so often because the old ones got all nasty and chewed up?
Silas had promised her that when they came to a town big enough to have a mail depot, she could send a letter to her Pa, and then they would wait there or come back when they could to see if there was an answer. Even though it might be nin
edays or even months before she got word on how things were at home, she could hardly wait.
She rolled onto her side and gently rubbed a fingertip along the ridge of an old scar on Silas’s shoulder, where he’d been shot once. There were a dozen others like it scattered over his body, and a lot of other scars where he’d been cut and stabbed and generally banged up. It would take a pretty large group of Plains to get the better of him, but when he wasn’t shielding he was as vulnerable to a bullet as anyone else. And in any town in the Wildings you could find enough wizard-hating settlers to make up a hanging mob big enough to overpower any mage.
And it wasn’t just Plains they were in danger from. There were the rogue mages he hunted, and if another mage hunter found out that Silas was illegally teaching Lainie to use magic and that they were in a marriage unauthorized by the Mage Council, they could be captured and imprisoned or Stripped of their power, or even executed.
And to top it all off, they were nearly broke and had no place to call home.
That would all change one day, Lainie vowed. One day, they would find a way to convince the Plain settlers that not all mages were as wicked as the ones in Granadaia who ground Plain folk under their heels. One day she and Silas would go before the Mage Council and show them that they weren’t really renegades, they were good people who had just found a different way of doing the right thing. The Mage Council would approve their marriage and remove the fertility block on Silas, that was placed on every mage child and only removed when they entered into an authorized marriage.
And then she and Silas would go home to the ranch in the Bitterbush Valley, and keep her Pa company during his last years, and raise their cattle and bring up their children. In the meantime, she would do everything she could to make their life together be for good, no matter how bad things seemed. As long as she and Silas were together, everything would somehow be okay.