by Ben Galley
Asha hummed. ‘Maybe it’s your smell, or your face. They can smell fear, you know.’
All Gavisham did was laugh, long and hard, as if Asha had delivered a witty joke. As if fear were nothing but a punchline to him.
Silence reigned once more, for an hour or so, until they reached a creaking sign with “Cheyenne” painted on it in hunched and ridged letters, the ones the people of the Endless Land were so fond of.
Gavisham took a moment to stretch and stare down the main street running through the town, bustling as it was. These desert towns all looked the same to him, each a bold sprawl of something in a world primarily ruled by nothing. They sat like dark bruises on pale skin, erupting abruptly out of the dust so that with one step you could go from the wilds to the streets of so-called civilisation. Blink, and you would have missed it. No preamble. No boundaries.
Gavisham stared at the box-like buildings, jumbled and wind-warped: an array of wooden slats painted sun-faded greens, browns, and reds. Each had a sign nailed to its forehead and flat roof, sporting all sorts of names and colours, and sloped roofs sticking out into the street to offer a scrap of shade. Horses stood tethered in the sun in clumps at the buildings’ swinging doors, snuffling between each other. Their owners stood by the railings and water butts, swapping gossip, or dawdled about their business. Carriages and carts rattled up and down the wide street. Here and there stood sheriffsmen, wearing low hats and dark uniforms, keeping close to the noise-drenched saloons. In every other alleyway or so, a cactus had been allowed to remain, as if the residents of Cheyenne were hoping that keeping such a thing would appease the dangers of the wild.
Gavisham led Asha forward. She cast her eyes about beneath her tangled fringe, meeting the gazes of curious onlookers. Gavisham ignored their idle stares. There were strangers aplenty in this town. A couple more offered them no trouble.
They weaved through the crowds as they ebbed and flowed. There seemed to be a commotion over at the railroad station. Gavisham could hear the hissing and howling of locomotives above the crowd-noise.
Asha kept her head down, trailing behind him so that he had to keep checking over his shoulder. She said not a word about the town, but his keen ears heard a rumble in her stomach. He felt a sympathetic gurgling in his own. They had not eaten since morning.
‘I’m headed to the postal office. Need to send a wiregram to my employer.’
‘And who is that again?’ Asha enquired, barely a mumble over the bustle.
‘Nice try, girl,’ Gavisham smirked, flashing gold. ‘I’ll meet you by that saloon. See it? The one on the corner. Don’t get lost, alright?’
Asha screwed up her face. ‘I’m in no mood to be lost again.’
‘Fair enough,’ Gavisham said, and turned on his heel to stride up the steps of the postal office, boots clomping on the creaking wood.
As soon as he was inside, good and disappeared behind the swinging doors, Asha changed. She stood a little straighter, and her eyes widened ever so slightly. Her chin raised a fraction.
Calidae tutted and strolled to the saloon, pushing her way through the crowds now instead of weaving through them. The smell of the sweat on these desert-ripe people assailed her, as did the dust and dung of the various four-legged beasts being dragged through this town. She cared not a button. There was a glint in her eye now.
The young Serped was having fun with this ruse, it had to be said. To drop her graces and slip into a lower class, to perform this downtrodden maid character of hers—it was not something her breed got to do every day, after all, and it came with its benefits.
But it was tiring her today, with the heat and hunger, and the pain. The ever-present pain.
Though her skin may have knitted itself back together on the surface, underneath it still felt raw and hot. It was almost as if the flames still burned between the layers of her skin, and nothing could quench them. The sunlight stoked them more fiercely. She was a stubborn girl, like her mother, but the fire was beginning to take its toll.
Calidae took a moment to lean against a water trough and stare down into its gloomy rippled reflection. It was not the first time she had seen her face. That bastard Barnamus had shown her in a shard of dirty mirror in the first few days. She had struggled and gasped and screamed, but she had not cried. I do not cry. A bucket of water had shown her more, barely two days’ stumble from his shack. Now she stared upon herself a third time and gnawed at the inside of her twisted lip.
Calidae poked and prodded, gingerly at first, then harder, testing the new skin on her forehead. She felt the pain flaring, crawling like a spider with daggers for feet. The skin was soft, hairless under her cracked fingertips. It was a far cry from the pampered, perfumed skin she had known all her fourteen years. Her fingers traced down and back over the rippled shape of her ear, trembled over her bald scalp, and finally dropped to where fingers of scar tissue cobwebbed her neck.
Her hands ran cautiously through her tangled hair, thick with dust. She tried to tease out some of the knots but it tugged too hard on her skin, and she gasped. She noticed a few shadows in the corner of the trough, and looked up to see two boys, barely sixteen, leaning against a post and staring at her. She swept her hair over her scars and scowled at them, the taut skin around her eye stretching painfully.
Calidae walked around the corner of the building so she could lean against the wooden panels and get lost on the edges of the bustle. She bowed her head and stared at the dust, muddled as it was with countless hoof and boot prints. The girl took a long, deep breath and held it until her lungs ached—burned even, until spots danced at the edges of her vision. She finally allowed herself to exhale, though slowly, still pushing herself to torture.
‘I am a Serped,’ she whispered. Calidae knocked the back of her head gently against the wooden panelling of the building behind her. The crowd was too busy to notice. It was a stream of skin and leather, of dark beards and curled hair, of tanned faces and yammering tongues: the roaring tone of a river of people.
‘I am a Serped,’ she said again, louder this time, and harder too. Her words ground out between gritted teeth, like grain in a mill. Bang! She hit her head against the panel. She grunted and bared her teeth as the pain pounced. And still, not an eyelid was batted in the crowd.
‘I am a Serped,’ she hissed, once more shutting her eyes and driving her head back, where her scalp was just scar and patches of smooth, shining skin. Calidae winced as the pain flickered around her skull. She knew there would be blood. She got one passing look from a fat woman who was lumbering by. She was wrapped in a blue dress with spiralling black frills, and fanning herself. The downward curve of her red-painted lips said she neither understood nor cared. And there was revulsion of sorts there too, an inch below the surface. Calidae matched her stare until the woman was forced to look away.
Calidae forced herself to feel every flash and throb of pain. ‘I am a Serped,’ she sighed once more, barely audible even to her ears. She put a finger to the back of her head and put the blood to her lips. It offered her no tantalising shiver. One’s own blood never did. She felt the ache of craving, and buried it deep. Soon, she promised herself.
The girl waited in the shadow of the building for a good fifteen minutes before Gavisham came wading through the crowds. He made an imposing figure, tall and stocky in his long coat and dark grey bowler hat. The crowd did not bother him. He was sucking his teeth, staring about at the faces before him as he sauntered, hands in pockets. He stood out like a big rock in a little stream: his clothes, pale face, sharp jaw, mismatched eyes, all of it. No wonder the people avoided him. Calidae would have, had she not known his kind before. She wondered again whether he had known Suffrous. Part of her ached to ask him. But not yet, she told herself. There was more to find out about this Gavisham, such as who his employer was, for that matter. She needed to know before she demanded safe passage home.
Calidae let her shoulders slump and her head hang to the side. She kicked at the dust as he strode
up. He tugged a hand out of his pocket and waggled a small piece of yellow paper. A wiregram, if Calidae was not mistaken. She craved to know what it said, but Gavisham was already tucking it inside his coat pocket.
‘Bit of a queue,’ he remarked, eyeing her up and down. ‘You alright, girl? Aren’t fainting on me, are you?’
‘No, I just don’t like them starin’,’ Calidae said, trying to drop the edges of her words, as their kitchen maids had.
It may have been a half-lie, but it was a good enough excuse for Gavisham. He looked about, glaring. ‘People will tend to do that,’ he replied, winking each eye, blue then green. Calidae tried to smile politely until she felt the skin around her mouth wrinkle, and dropped it.
‘Right,’ Gavisham said. He had spied some sort of general store across the street with, fortunately for them, barely a queue at all. ‘That way.’
‘Lead the way,’ Asha shrugged herself away from the wall and followed him. An excitable-looking lady in a bonnet stood behind the counter. She said hello about four times before skittering away behind a table, shoving paper packets into a wooden box.
Calidae wandered back and forth along the shelves. The amount of saliva her mouth was currently producing was nothing short of astonishing. Though as hungry as she was, she had no idea what half of it was. She poked at packets and read labels twice. She held up scrawny vegetables and shook her head. If the knowledge did not fox her, the language did. The few edible things she did recognise had different names. Calidae shook her head. So there is a downside to having your food brought to you on silver platters all your life, she thought.
Gavisham had crept up on her. She tried not to flinch at the sound of his voice. ‘You’re picky, for a chambermaid.’
‘Excuse me?’ Calidae whirled on him. Hands on hips in the old habit.
‘Chambermaids get the scraps like everybody else and yet you can’t choose something to eat.’
‘Lady Serped fed us very well, actually.’
‘I suppose I should keep that to myself, and not tell my employer’s maids. There will be uproar,’ he told her, as he picked several packets and cans from the shelf and pressed them into her arms. Then he grabbed a few supplies for the road, a new knife, and led her to the counter, where the woman scampered back to greet them.
‘But there are no prices on these. How do you …’ Calidae asked.
‘They haggle out here. General stores always do. Take it you don’t have any coin, no?’ Gavisham soon got the message from Calidae’s stare. ‘Thought not. Well, I’ve got a good few sil’erbits, as they call ’em, maybe a florin or two. Yes, Madam, hello,’ Gavisham said as he let the things fall with a clatter onto the counter. The woman was a skittish one, that was for sure. She shook this way and that, picking at the things and counting something in her head, totting it all up so she could start to haggle. Calidae tapped her foot. Gavisham was feeling around in his pocket with his fingers. She could just about hear the muffled clinking of coins.
‘Sixty sil’erbits,’ she announced, in a giddy voice.
‘Madam, please. Are you trying to skin me alive? Fifteen,’ Gavisham countered.
The woman blinked owlishly. ‘No, sorry. Can’t do that. Forty. Sorry.’ She shook her head about ten times.
‘Twenty, and I’ll throw in a handful of copper dimes.’ The man pulled his hand out of his pocket and stacked about five dimes on the counter, sliding them across to nudge her hand. She flinched and made a little hooting sound.
‘Thirty, and that’s my final offer.’
Gavisham sighed and made a big show of looking his wares up and down. After some deliberation, he picked up one of the packets, clicked his teeth, and handed it back to her. The woman did not quite know what to do. She took it and then just held it in mid-air.
‘Twenty-five. Meet me halfway, Madam. Come on now,’ Gavisham urged.
‘Oh,’ the woman worked her face for a few moments before following that up with: ‘I guess so. Seeing as you’re goin’ without this.’ The words were there, but Calidae got the feeling this woman didn’t quite believe them. Gavisham had just haggled her down to over half-price. She was obviously not very good at it.
‘Thank you, Madam,’ he smiled and then began to pack the things away into the small bag he had slung over his shoulder. Somehow he even managed to con her out of a canvas sack for Calidae. She just stood by and watched, inwardly smiling at it all.
When Gavisham was done, he offered the woman a very profuse round of thank-yous, and made for the door. Calidae turned to follow him, but she hesitated when she heard the woman tapping on the counter with her nail, like a woodpecker giving a tree what for. Calidae looked up questioningly, and saw the woman slide up her sleeve to bare her arm. Calidae walked forwards to see the faint twisted cobweb of a burn scar. She did not know what to say. Neither did the woman it seemed. If she was hoping to offer some sort of affinity, Calidae did not care for it. In fact, she was just about to inform her so when the woman pulled out a small wooden pot from her pocket and held it forth.
‘It helps,’ the woman said, eyeing the right side of Calidae’s face. ‘It does.’
‘I don’t have anything,’ Calidae started, but the woman shook her head. The little container was slid across the counter and into her hands. The girl removed the lid and sniffed, wrinkling her nose. It smelled like fish with lemon.
‘Trust me. It helps.’
‘Erm, thank you,’ Calidae nodded, slowly peeling away from the counter and rejoining Gavisham at the door. She looked back several times and each time the woman just waved.
‘What was that about?’ Gavisham asked, when they were back in the sunlight.
‘Gave me some ointment, I think.’ Calidae held it up for him to see.
‘Kind of her.’
Calidae nodded.
Gavisham pulled a face. ‘Almighty! That reeks.’
‘I’m aware of that. You’re not the one who was told to put it on your skin.’
‘Well, I suppose that’s true. Maybe you should apply it once I’ve gone to sleep. I don’t want to have to eat dinner smelling that. Neither do you.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Calidae muttered.
Gavisham winked a blue eye at her. ‘It’s a habit of mine.’
Calidae just rolled her eyes and kept walking.
‘Now, let’s go see a man about a horse.’
*
Gavisham led them a roundabout route back through the town and past the locomotives in the station, which were still fizzling and whistling away. He wanted to see what all the fuss was about, and besides, he had somewhat of a soft spot for steam and clockwork.
One of the great machines was just about to leave, heading west for the frontier. A gang of whimpering wives and significant others were standing on the platform, waving at soldiers inside the carriages. The gun-metal grey locomotive shuddered, its angular frame catching the sun as the overlapping plates along its flanks flexed with clockwork clicks and the hissing of steam. This was no worker train on the way to the frontier, chuffing away, a pile of welded shapes on wheels. This was a military transport. It was armoured to the gills, its two, round smoke-stacks raised like two fingers at the open track before it. Steam leaked from its glowing vents. Water dripped onto the steel rails beneath it like the beast’s saliva.
Gavisham led Asha back through the cantankerous crowd. Everybody was pushing and shoving. It seemed space was in short supply on the locomotives, and there wasn’t enough room for the panic. There was shouting and bawling, and coin shoved under noses as if that would matter. Gavisham tutted, sucking his gold tooth once again. Wars are made of all manner of weapons, but fear is always the sharpest.
To their groaning disappointment, every stable in the town was empty but for the steeds of the sheriff and his men. With the railroad jammed up by the war, anything with four legs and an aptitude for a saddle had been snatched up. Gavisham didn’t relish the idea of being a horse-thief, and so they consented to trying again in th
e next town, wherever that lay.
Once they had broken out into the open desert, free from Cheyenne and its strife, Gavisham broke out some of the packets he’d bought. They ate as they walked, not speaking, just chewing. Asha seemed to be wolfing the dried meat down, hardly bothering to chew.
‘You’ve got an appetite on you,’ he said from one corner of his mouth. The other was busy masticating a shard of tough dark meat.
‘Hungry,’ Asha said between gulps. ‘Got any water?’
‘I do,’ Gavisham replied, reaching into his bag and pulling free a flask, beaten and scratched. It had a time-worn crest on it. Something that looked old and naval. Asha took it and washed it down. She would have drunk half the flask if he hadn’t snatched it from her. ‘Easy,’ he warned her. ‘We’ll need every drop we’ve got to make it to the next town. It’s a long walk into Nebraskar.’
Asha sniffed. ‘That’s why we need a horse or two.’
‘Horse thieves aren’t very welcome around here, and word spreads quickly even across empty desert. Steal a sheriffsman’s horse: get hunted for miles. I don’t want the attention. I’m only here for one person, and that’s it.’
He could feel it coming, like a clock-hand twitching towards its next notch—inevitable.
‘And who’s that?’
‘Not going to tell you is who,’ Gavisham grunted. Every time.
‘Maybe I know him. Know where he is,’ Asha said, still not deterred. ‘The Serpeds used to have all sorts at their table.’
Gavisham turned to look at her, an eyebrow raised as if he had just realised he left the gaslights burning at home, a mere four and a half thousand miles away. ‘Really now?’
‘Really,’ Asha nodded, still picking slivers of meat from the packet and shoving them into her mouth. The girl was ravenous. ‘All sorts.’
‘Who exactly? Give me some names.’ He spoke lower, as if the desert had ears.
Asha snorted. ‘That’s not very fair. I’m not allowed to ask questions, but you are.’
‘I’ve been sent here to ask questions, miss. That’s what I do. You, however, are just tagging along. Give me some names.’