Conspiracy of Ravens

by Lila Bowen

  Prospera’s caravan didn’t have a shovel, but it did offer a pickax with a rusty-red tip. Rhett didn’t want to know what the hag had used it for; he just wanted to get her in the ground so he didn’t have to look at her anymore. Dan and Sam and Winifred had checked out the camp, hobbled their horses, and tried various ways to get Rhett to talk, but he wasn’t damn ready and couldn’t be forced. His annoyance only made the hole easier to dig in the hard, sandy ground.

  It wasn’t a very good hole. It was all cattywampus and not flat at all, and the edges kept crumbling in. He’d never dug one before. Pap hadn’t exactly trusted Nettie Lonesome with sharp objects, especially ones that could be used from farther away than he could grab her by a braid and yank her to the ground. All Rhett could do was slam the pick down, again and again, and shovel out the scree with a pan Bill was kind enough to bring. But when it seemed like it might be deep enough to hold what was left of Prospera, Rhett stood back and nodded at the ground like they had an understanding.

  The posse had given Rhett a wide berth, which was good, because he would’ve snapped at anybody who showed up to stare at the tears merging with his sweat and rolling down his face and into his eye. When he stopped and threw down the pickax, though, Sam sidled up, not quite staring at him but just being there, much as Rhett himself would approach a skittish colt.

  “You want help carrying the body?” Sam asked, voice pitched low and private as he held out a fresh kerchief.

  “Much obliged,” Rhett answered, taking the rag to mop off his face. “You reckon the hole’s big enough?”

  Sam shrugged. “She’s pretty fresh. She’ll fold up.”

  Rhett flinched away, and Sam put a hand on his shoulder.

  “You did what you had to do, Rhett. That’s all you can ever do.”

  “Then why don’t it feel right?”

  Sam stared down into the hole as if it held the answers to all of life’s questions.

  “Because when killing starts to feel right, you’re doing something wrong.”

  Without a word, Rhett quick-walked back to where Prospera had fallen. Someone—not him—had pulled a chunk of canvas off one of the wagons and draped it over the still form. In the afternoon light, Rhett couldn’t help noticing the glittery dust coating the heavy fabric. Reaching down, he dragged a finger through it and looked right close. It was like ashes and cobwebs and felt smooth, not at all like sand. He’d noticed it earlier, dancing in the morning sunbeams as Prospera whisked the curtains away from each wagon. It had softly fallen on the monsters within. Was he right—could it be the secret to regular folks seeing monsters was in the dust?

  He touched the tip of his finger to his tongue, tasting only dust, maybe something mineral behind it, like a pebble in his grits.

  “What are you doing, Rhett?” Sam asked. Rhett turned to tell him he didn’t know what the hell he was doing, but Sam gasped and stumbled back a step.

  “What is it, man?”

  “Your eye, Rhett. It…it ain’t natural.”

  Rhett scrabbled around his good eye with his fingers, finding nothing strange about it. No pain, no lumpy bits. Just to be sure, he reached for his gone eye, too, but the damn thing still hadn’t had the sense to grow back. “I don’t feel anything peculiar. Has the sun tetched you?”

  Grabbing his shoulders, Sam spun him around and gazed with his face uncomfortably but welcomely close. “It used to be dark brown, like a swole-up river, a-churnin’. But now it’s…moon-yellow, with red around the outside.”

  “Like a vampire?”

  “No, nothing like a vampire. Just different. I ain’t saying it’s horrible, it’s just…well, like Dan’s coyote eyes. How he looks like what he is. You look like what you are. I swear it wasn’t like that, just a minute ago. Were you about to…change?”

  Rhett shook his head and blushed a little. “Not in front of you. I’d have to get…nekkid first, and the whole thing’s just horrible and awkward. I wouldn’t make you watch that.”

  Sam let go of his shoulders and looked away, blushing himself. “Well, now, it might not be the worst thing. I mean, it would be interesting. I never seen that sort of thing before. Not saying that I want to. But you ain’t horrible at all, and I’m not worried about…aw, hell. It’s still you either way, ain’t it?”

  Rhett grunted. “It is.” And he started walking for Prospera’s body.

  Six people stood around the makeshift grave, piled high with sand and stones. The men held their hats and Winifred clasped her hands as best she could while leaning on her crutch. Nobody looked at anybody else. It had been silent for far too long, and Rhett was sick of it.

  “Bill, you knew her best. Care to say a few words?”

  The Sasquatch looked up, placid and solemn. “Prospera bought me in Okla Humma and kept me in chains. She charged people money to laugh at me. When I spoke too much or out of turn, she beat me. The only words I have to say are that I hope there is a hell and she’s in it.”

  The silence after that was even more uncomfortable. Finally, Rhett slapped his hat back on and walked toward the circle of stones where Dan had started a fire.

  “To hell with her, then, and welcome,” he said. “Dust to goddamn dust.”

  The others followed, each taking their place around the fire. Rhett regretted letting the jackrabbits go, considering the critters he’d saved were all of the inedible sort unless he wanted an entire, possibly undead heifer. There was no game to be found, whether because Prospera’s magic had driven them away or the monsters themselves had scared away the local wildlife. The company ate what was left in Buck’s saddlebags, passing chunks of cheese and bottles of wine around wordlessly. As much as Rhett figured his friends generally talked too damn much, he hated the eerie silence of the prairie punctuated only by the creaking of the wagons settling, the rattling of the cows, the caws of far-off carrion birds, and the canvas curtains flapping in a breeze that somehow never reached his face.

  “Coyote Dan, I reckon you’ve got something to say. Some bit of teachin’ or preachin’ or wisdom.”

  Dan drank some wine and leaned back on his elbows. “I’ll talk when you don’t look apt to bite my head off. Care to discuss what troubles you?”

  Rhett took a gulp of wine and slumped over. “What troubles me? Hellfire, Dan. What don’t trouble me now? We’re after this Trevisan monster, and I was going to do it myself to save you, and you followed me anyway! And then I got here and everything was muddled, and I thought I was shooting a monster, but it was just somebody’s grandma. But she was mean as a damn snake. But she was a person, and this Ranger badge says I’m supposed to protect people like her from people like you. From people like me.” He flicked his badge with a fingernail. “So did I do the right thing or didn’t I? Because I don’t know anymore.”

  In the silence, Dan stared up at him, and Rhett saw something quite rare: surprise.

  “Rhett, your eye.”

  Rhett didn’t look away. “Yeah, Sam told me.”

  “I can tell what you are.”

  “No shit, Dan.”

  “Something changed.”

  Rhett stomped to the nearest wagon and dragged a finger over the canvas curtain, holding up a gray-stained fingertip. “It’s this dust, close as I can reckon. I think it’s the magic that lets regular folk, folks who haven’t killed, see monsters. So whether it’s because I touched it or licked it, it means the Shadow isn’t invisible.” He touched the dust to his tongue and smiled. “And it means I’m the one going in to kill Trevisan.”

  Chapter

  12

  To hell with the silence. Now everybody was talking at once, mostly arguing against Rhett’s cunning plan.

  “It’s not safe. We don’t know how this magic works,” Dan said.

  “And if Trevisan knows magic, he might recognize you using it,” Winifred added.

  “I just don’t like the idea of you going in alone,” Sam muttered.

  “I swear to God, I don’t care who goes if they’ll JUST
GO SOON!”

  This last bit of hollering from Earl, of course.

  Bill simply sipped tea from a cracked porcelain cup. No one knew where he’d gotten the tea or the cup, but nobody wanted to ask, far as Rhett could tell. At least the Sasquatch wasn’t bickering.

  “I think it’s fairly obvious to everyone who ain’t thickheaded that we’ll get moving in the morning when we can see our damn hands in front of our damn faces, Earl,” Rhett said, at the end of his patience. “And if you want to go in with me, Dan, I reckon that would be fine, so long as you let me be the one to make stupid mistakes. And if you lettered fools would crack open the witch’s book, I suspect you could find out everything you want to know about the goddamn powder. Does that about solve all your goddamn problems?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Good. Then let’s go to sleep and stop acting like goddamn idiots.”

  He flopped on the ground, arranging his buffalo coat, saddle blankets, and saddle into the most comfortable lump possible. Dan carried Winifred to Prospera’s wagon and helped her through the door, since sleeping inside would be more comfortable and keep the sand from collecting on her stump. Earl turned back into a donkey, claiming that he only had nightmares in human form and the ground seemed softer when he had fur. William simply sprawled where he was like an island of silky mops, his snores deep and long and strangely musical.

  Rhett rolled over and watched Sam Hennessy saunter back from his customary pre-sleep piss. Sam’s bedroll was right by Rhett’s, and Rhett took a moment to let that fact sink in with a smile as the blond-haired cowpoke settled in for the night. Did Sam remember anything about their night at the Buck’s Head? If he did, would it make things strange or serve as a reminder that Rhett could function as a man in all the ways that mattered? Rhett didn’t know which alternative was preferable, but if they for some reason had to stop in that town on the way home, he’d play dumb as a log and hope it maybe happened again. He didn’t know if that made him a bad person or not, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  Sam grinned like he didn’t have a care in the world and settled down on his back with a contented sigh. Rhett did the same. No matter how bad the day was, no matter how bad tomorrow was bound to be, there was still something fine about listening to your best friend breathing, even and sure, as you fell asleep.

  This. This was what Rhett understood. Sleeping under the stars, beholden to no man, back aching and hands calloused from a hard day’s work, even if that work was the kind he’d just as soon forget. The horses stamped and swished, the coyotes yodeled in the hills, and the fire quietly died down to a comfortable crackle. Rhett didn’t even realize he was holding his breath until Sam rolled over and spoke.

  “Hey, Rhett?”

  “Yeah, Sam?”

  “I got something to say.”

  Rhett rolled over on his side and propped his head up on an arm. “Then let’s hear it.”

  “What you said earlier today. About digging your first grave?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, I just thought…I mean…you never killed a person before?”

  Rhett shook his head.

  “I been thinking about it. You just seemed really upset, and I wanted you to know that you’re not alone. I killed people before, and on the Captain’s orders. You weren’t with the Rangers for long, so I guess you never had to do it. But there are people who aren’t monsters who still need to die. That lady today…sounds like she was a witch. I’ve seen them before. And brujahs, which are like the Aztecan version of a witch, I guess. And there’s ghouls and warlocks and whatever the hell else happens when folks who got no business with magic overplay their hand.”

  His bright blue eyes were wet and pleading, and Rhett wished he knew if his own eye was back to being mudwater-brown or was still red-and-yellow, which didn’t sound like the kind of eye anybody would want to look at for long.

  “So was it hard?” he asked.

  Sam nodded, his neck-apple bobbing like it did when he was trying not to cry. “It’s the sand. If you kill something and it turns into sand, you don’t got to deal with it. No digging a grave, no touching the body when it’s rubbery as all get-out. No standing over a mound of rocks and hoping the vultures don’t claw it open. No offense,” he added hurriedly.

  Rhett shrugged. “None taken. Pretty sure I never robbed any graves.”

  “I’m just saying…it’s easier when you can tell yourself it’s a monster, that it’s not like you. That it’s bad. It’s easier when there’s no mess to clean up. But that doesn’t mean the killing is wrong. You heard Bill. That lady was no damn good. You did the right thing, Rhett.”

  Rhett could only nod, fighting tears himself.

  “And Rhett?”

  “Yeah?”

  Just then, Sam did the unthinkable: He reached out and squeezed Rhett’s hand. “You might be a monster, but you’re a good person.”

  Despite all the crap feelings that had been weighing him down all day, Rhett suddenly felt as free as a damn bird in the bright blue sky. He smiled, and Sam smiled back, and that was the purest magic in all of Durango.

  Rhett fell asleep happy, and that was saying a goddamn lot.

  The next morning, nothing and everything had changed. Rhett had killed a person and dug a grave, but he still had to piss and build up the fire and see to his horses, which meant he had to get up and moving. He was vexed to find his flux hadn’t abated and had, in fact, made a mess in the night. Of all the things he had to deal with, he could leave most annoyances behind by killing them or walking away, but this one thing he was stuck with, a painful and messy reminder that no matter what he did and told himself, he was still something he didn’t want to be.

  A woman.

  It felt all wrong, and he could ignore it most of the time. But not now.

  Cussing to himself, he fetched the wad of rags and scraps he kept in his saddlebags and rigged everything into place feeling like a chunk of beat-up meat before heading to the nearby creek to wash out his britches. At least everyone else was still asleep so there were no witnesses to a situation that shamed him something awful.

  When he returned to the fire, Winifred was sitting on a cushion from the wagon, her forehead wrinkled as she watched Dan hook Hercules into the harness.

  “He wants me to ride in the wagon,” she said, throwing bits of grass in the fire. “Like an old woman. Like an invalid.”

  “Well, you are missing a pretty important part—” Rhett began.

  Winifred shushed him with an angry slash of her hand. “So are you. You want to ride up there with me? I’ll let you sit on the box and point out ways we’re broken.”

  “Hell, no. I can still ride.”

  “So can I.”

  “But if you fall off in a fight, you’re as good as dead.”

  “Say something like that again and I’ll shoot you myself.”

  Sam rubbed his eyes and sat up. “What’re you shooting Rhett for today?”

  Winifred huffed like she wanted to get up and flounce away but couldn’t. “Being mule-headed, same as usual.”

  Dan finished settling Hercules in and returned to the fire looking pleased with himself. “Looks like he knows what he’s doing. We’ll tie Kachina to the back, and you’ll be all set.”

  “I don’t need to be set. I don’t need to be looked after. I don’t need cushions and a roof. This isn’t who I am.”

  Dan inclined his head toward her foot. “It is for now.”

  Winifred grunted something in another language and struggled to stand on her one good foot. They argued in heated tones that didn’t need translation before Winifred hopped toward the horses.

  “If he comes after me, Rhett, I give you permission to hurt him,” she called.

  Dan didn’t budge, but he radiated anger, his arms crossed over his chest. “She can’t accept what is,” he said. “That’s always been her problem. Thinks things will stay the same if she wishes it hard enough. Thinks things will change ar
ound her, because of her. Thinks she gets to choose.” He shook his head. “Experience is a bad teacher. She thinks she’s hurt now, but it could be a lot worse.”

  As they watched, she unhobbled Kachina, whispered in the mare’s ear, and put the reins over the mare’s neck, carefully balancing all the while. Kachina gently lay down, and when Winifred was settled on her bare back, the pretty little horse climbed back to her feet. With neither bridle nor saddle, the girl guided the horse away at a stately walk, the morning breeze blowing back Winifred’s black hair and her horse’s black mane and tail like they were one creature.

  “Looks like she don’t give a shit about learning anything but what’s over that hill,” Rhett said.

  He didn’t let Dan see him smile. He’d do what Winifred was doing, too, if Dan tried to stop him. Hell, he’d done so just a few nights ago. The moment he’d left Pap’s house was the moment he’d decided that nobody else got to tell him who to be or what his limitations were. Winifred might’ve been a woman, but she was brave and stubborn, and Rhett could respect that.

  “Guess we better catch up, huh?” he asked.

  Dan sighed. “Looks like I’m the one driving the wagon.”

  A short while later, Bill smothered the fire with his huge foot, and Rhett struggled with what to say to him.

  “I reckon all this is yours now,” he said. “For whatever use you might put to it.”

  Bill stuck out his chin. “I have no need to possess what was my prison.”

  “Then take what you can use and be gone with you. It’s your choice.”

  “Yes,” the Sasquatch said solemnly. “Yes, it is.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “As you say: leave.”

  “To go where?”

  Annoyance flashed in Bill’s dark eyes, and he bared long canines that had been hidden until just then. “Home. Up north. Kanata. Away from this dire place.”

  “What’s it like?”

  Bill thought a moment, his face going slightly dreamy. “Vast. Cold. Green. Your Durango is empty and hot and dry, but Kanata is an endless labyrinth of trees and snow and stone. Here, people gape at me. There, no one will ever find me again.”