Malice of Crows

by Lila Bowen

  Cora, poor girl, was all et up with guilt in addition to her ongoing dread for Meimei. As a healer with a wide range of practical knowledge, she had never seen a spider that could inflict such damage, even though Dan swore the spiders were just Durango brown tarantulas and should’ve been completely lacking in venom that could harm a man. Nobody contested that Sam had been hit hard, and it was clear to see that the alchemist’s control of critters wasn’t natural. The sense of comfort Rhett had experienced was gone. He wouldn’t let himself fall into it again. That first scorpion had just been an appetizer for the challenges Trevisan would let loose on the world, all to stop Rhett.

  And no mistake – Rhett wanted to stop. To give up. To turn around. To take Sam back to Tanasi and safety.

  But he never would. No matter what the lich threw at him, Rhett would keep going with his last breath.

  For himself, for Earl, for Cora, for everyone who’d died at the train camp. And now for Sam.

  His face, so scarred and damaged, was fresh out of smiles. Every step was a promise. The Shadow was no longer messing around. Like his oft-broken nose, there was no going back to the straight and narrow simplicity of life before he’d been broken.

  The days blurred together. They were in the saddle from dawn to dusk, and even if the days were shorter and the nights colder, Rhett fell asleep almost the second his head hit the stack of books he used as a pillow, curled up in the wagon by Sam’s sleeping body. If Sam sensed his presence there, felt his gentle touches and heard his sweet words, he didn’t show any sort of response. Cora took care of the doctoring, keeping Sam clean and doing what she could to calm him. The Captain’s laudanum came in handy every time Sam roused and jerked to sitting, screaming about spiders with his eyes wide-open and seeing nothing. But Rhett held hope. That’s why he stayed away when Cora turned and bathed Sam’s still body – he prayed that one day he’d see that body whole again and yearning for him. Cora seemed to understand, and her kindness was a gift. For all her own worry, she never begrudged Rhett for adding Sam’s nursing to her own tally of concerns.

  Sam wasn’t the only one struggling. Winifred grew tired easily and almost tumbled out of the saddle one afternoon after falling asleep, her chin on her chest. If not for Sam’s resting place and thrashing spells, she could’ve napped in the wagon, but she didn’t even bring it up. Watching her grunt as she stood or sat about made Dan right tetchy, and Rhett made sure to stop the group early in the evenings when he could, finding various little reasons that no one could argue. This creek was just right, the horses were getting spooky. Winifred looked at him, lips pursed, but said nothing, and she was always the first one asleep. Rhett didn’t begrudge her such rest; she was making another person from scratch, after all. Rhett took first watch, most nights, and it was like a long, waking dream, him staring into the fire and losing track of time, hoping to give his posse just a little more relief before falling into the wagon beside Sam, his dreams dogged with foolish hope.

  One night, Dan was staring at their Ranger map by the light of the fire, chewing on his chunk of jackrabbit and looking generally vexed, which wasn’t a new look for him, but it was aimed at the map instead of at Rhett, which was peculiar.

  “What’s got your breechclout in a wad, Dan?” Rhett asked.

  Dan looked up and gave Rhett the sort of look Rhett expected. “You’re leading us where the Shadow calls you, yes?”

  Rhett nodded. “Yep. I don’t mosey through the desert for fun.”

  “So when I look at the map and at the direction we’re headed, it seems we should be headed slightly south, toward the sea. If Trevisan is on the move, and you’re taking us to Trevisan, why does our path remain firmly east?”

  “Maybe Trevisan’s holding still,” Rhett said. “Maybe he’s doing something dirty in San Anton. Fetching more bones or making friends with spiders or doing whatever asshole alchemists do when they’re running around in the bodies of little girls. That ain’t my business. I just go where I’m…” Well, told wasn’t the right word. “Pulled.”

  “Then either he’s settled in San Anton for now or the Shadow is leading us somewhere else.”

  At that, Rhett snorted and snatched a piece of rabbit from Dan’s stick, just to be ornery. “Why the Sam Hill would the Shadow send us anywhere other than after Trevisan? Not like there’s something worse than him roaming around the damn prairie while we’re being chased by skittery monsters.”

  Dan nodded like he actually agreed with Rhett, for once. “That’s what bothers me.”

  As Rhett liked to be the only thing needling Dan, it rankled him as well. If they weren’t heading for Trevisan, what the hell else was calling him in San Anton?

  And would Sam be alive to see it?

  One day, they woke up to frost gilding the prairie, and Rhett had never seen a prettier sight. He wasn’t so fond of the cold outside of his buffalo robe and the wagon where he’d slept beside Sam, but for a moment there, the world looked like it was made of glass, and the sunrise sparked it red like magical fire. They rode until dusk and came upon a building. It wasn’t a white man’s sort of thing, and it wasn’t a cattleman’s sort of thing, neither. It was an old mission, humpbacked and beat down, made of soft clay cooked hard by the Durango sun. It hunkered down amid the scrub like an old toad, the cross at the roof crooked and the front door flanked by two statues. There were no fences, no horses, no herds of cows, no barking dogs to let the posse know they were unwelcome. Just an empty hitch out front and candles burning, warm and welcoming, behind oiled skin windows.

  Rhett’s belly was doing somersaults, a sure sign that this was exactly what the Shadow had wanted him to see. He stopped his horse, looked at Dan, nodded in a manly sort of way, and pulled out one of his pistols.

  “Do you suspect trouble in the church?” Dan asked.

  “I reckon if I expect trouble, I got a better chance of living through it.”

  Winifred cantered up on Rhett’s other side. Her pistol, taken from the Rangers’ stash, was likewise at the ready. “Or causing it,” she added.

  Dan barked a rare laugh. “She called it.”

  Rhett rolled his eye. “For a feller who keeps talking about my destiny, you sure seem certain I can change it just by handing out flowers instead of bullets.”

  Dan shook his head. “Be careful, but don’t assume the worst. Perhaps the Shadow brought us here for a different reason. Didn’t you say the Captain once spoke of a nun? In an old mission near San Anton? He told you she might have the answers we need to defeat Trevisan. And perhaps she’ll have a curative for Sam, so tread lightly.”

  Rhett rolled that around in his head for a minute. “I don’t think the Shadow has a great affection for books.”

  It was Dan’s turn to snort. “Rhett Walker doesn’t have a great affection for books, but the Shadow is often smarter than Rhett Walker.” Dan kicked his horse toward the mission, and Rhett was pretty sure he heard him mutter, “Thank goodness.”

  Rhett spun and trotted back to the wagon. “I don’t know what’s going on, but this is where the Shadow’s been leading me. You’d best hang back.” He looked sternly from Cora’s place on the wagon to Winifred on Kachina. “Both of you.”

  Cora nodded, but Winifred kicked her mare to a canter and went up ahead with Dan.

  “Goddammit, Winifred,” he muttered, whickering at BB to catch up.

  They cantered up together, three abreast, the tug on Rhett’s center growing stronger with every hoofbeat. He still had his gun drawn, as did Dan, but Winifred just defiantly leaned over her mare’s neck and urged her on. The horses skidded to a dancing stop in front of the hitching post, and Rhett hurried to tie BB up before Winifred went on and beat him to doing something stupid.

  “At least let me go in first,” he said, struggling with his reins.

  “It’s just a mission,” she shot back. “And considering I lived in one as a nun for a few years, I’ve got more experience than you.”

  “But the Shadow —” he s
tarted.

  “Isn’t the only one who gets to make choices,” she finished, giving him a dark glare before throwing open the door.

  “Wha —?”

  The word was cut off, and Winifred went totally still.

  Stiller than still.

  She had turned to stone.

  “Goddammit, Coyote Girl,” Rhett muttered under his breath. He rustled around in his saddlebag and brought out the Captain’s piss pan and bible, stuffed them down his binder over his heart, and swung off the horse. Samson’s second had picked up the canter, despite Cora yanking on the reins, and now the wagon shuddered to a stop in the dirt before the mission, the excited herd milling around it.

  “Cora, I’m begging you, let me go first. Hang back and protect Sam. I can’t lose… anybody else.”

  “What happened?” she asked, but then she found the still form in the doorway, her features cracking down from alarm to worry. She nodded and stood on the wagon box, feet spread. “I will protect him.”

  Anybody else might’ve thought she had a weapon hid somewhere on her slight person, but Rhett knew the real weapon was the dragon she could become.

  “You’re not going to tell me to hang back?” Dan said, lips pulled back over his teeth like he was already half coyote and feral to boot.

  “I don’t waste my breath on shit that won’t happen. She’s your sister, Dan. We can go in side by side if you like. I’ll even give you a first shot at whatever’s on the other side of that door.”

  In the silence, Rhett could hear his own breathing and Dan’s, as well as the slow slide of something on hard-packed dirt. Whatever was in the mission was headed for them, and not in a stupid animal sort of way. In a measured, thoughtful, cautious way. Which made Rhett suspect it had some wits, which is not what a feller wants to realize while he’s staring at a stone statue of his friend and holding a gun.

  “You know anything that can turn a body to stone?” he whispered.

  “Cockatrice. But it doesn’t sound like a cockatrice. They sound more like chickens. And that’s no chicken.”

  From within: Step, slide. Step, slide. Step, slide.

  “Maybe whoever’s in there keeps a cockatrice in a cage by the door. Pretty good guard dog, I reckon, if you have a fondness for statues of curious strangers.” Rhett glanced at the door, and another thought just about slapped him in the face. “Cockatrices – it’s their eyes that’s dangerous, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then maybe I should go in with something over my eye.”

  “Only you, Rhett, would consider facing a foe blind. But you could try something reflective, perhaps. The Captain once killed one by watching it with a lady’s pocket mirror and shooting backwards over his shoulder.”

  Rhett had to shove his pistol into his holster to pull the Captain’s pan out of his binder. It wasn’t the shiniest metal he’d ever beheld, but it would do. “Close your eyes, Dan, and go in with me. I’ll tell you if you need to shoot.”

  “Your plans never fail to surprise me, Shadow.”

  “Shut up and come on.”

  “Oh, I will. I look forward to shooting whatever’s inside.”

  Rhett turned his back to the door, pulled his pistol with his right hand, and held the pan in his left, out in front of him so he could sort of see what was behind him reflected in the metal. Right now, he mostly saw darkness and stone, but as they passed a window, the light glimmered there, warm and flashy.

  “Here we go,” he whispered as they approached the frozen gray figure of Winifred and the double doors she’d thrown open. Stepping into the space with Dan’s shoulder against his, he glared into the pan and saw… a nun.

  She looked calm enough, not the usual gibbering monster Rhett faced. Clad in a long black dress, her hair and face were covered in a veil. Her hands were clasped together under her sleeves, but as she saw Rhett, they whipped out and pulled the veil back to show glowing green eyes and a stern frown and – Sweet hellfire, her hair was… moving?

  “Shoot her, Dan! But don’t look at her! Her eyes are…”

  “Monster eyes?

  “Crazy murder eyes!”

  Dan’s pistol barked five times, the gunpowder tickling Rhett’s nose. As he watched in the plate, the nun absorbed each shot but didn’t stop her stately walk toward them. His ears were ringing now, and his heart was thumping like crazy.

  “Your other gun! Keep shooting. Hit the heart.”

  “I would if I could see her,” Dan growled.

  “Then aim up. Her hair is moving or something. Snakes? Hell!”

  Dan fired a shot over the nun’s head.

  “She’s shorter, and she’s getting close, fast.”

  Dan’s next shot landed right in the nun’s swarming hair, and at that she cried out in pain, one hand disappearing into the knot of writhing whatever-the-hell she called hair.

  “You got her, but she ain’t stopping, Dan.” Dan’s last shots went wild, and Rhett growled, “Goddammit.” And then he dropped the plate, ran backward, and rammed the nun, landing on top of her with his full weight, his back to her front. She crumpled beneath him, thrashing uselessly. She was a tiny little thing, after all.

  “Cover her eyes, Dan!” Rhett shouted, pretty certain that the nun would manage to wiggle out from beneath him sooner or later, as he wasn’t a large man himself. “But don’t get bit. Her hair is all snakes, and angry.”

  As he fought her, spreading his weight and trying to make himself heavier, he stared up to where old wood beams crisscrossed the ceiling. When the first snake nipped at his face, he slammed his head back into hers, hard. Whatever this nun was doing, he wasn’t about to get snakebit by her fool head while Dan did his work. The back of his skull cracked hard enough to make him see stars bursting against the dark ceiling, but the blow did its work, as the woman cried out and went limp beneath him.

  “I’m here,” Dan said.

  Rhett didn’t trust the woman not to budge, so he stayed in place until Dan had fixed the bandanna and held out a hand to help Rhett up.

  When Rhett stood, he felt dizzy and hot for a moment before getting his bearings. The chapel was full of wood pews and dripping candles, a contrast in light and dark. When he stared down at the swept dirt floor, he could see just what he’d been grappling with. The nun was indeed quite small, short and slender, her dark habit covering every bit of her, right up to her neck. Her chin was pointed, her lips full, her skin the rich brown of the Aztecans who had once lived in this part of Durango and still fought to steal the cattle the white men grazed in their ancestral lands. Dan’s bandanna covered her eyes and the top of her head, and a whole tangle of skinny little black snakes shoved and bit at it, hissing and striking. They weren’t vipers, as far as Rhett could tell, but they didn’t seem particularly friendly, and they sure as hell didn’t like the cloth.

  “You know what the hell she is?” Rhett asked.

  “Gorgon. I read about them in your grimoire. I knew something about turning creatures to stone was familiar. We’ve got to keep her eyes covered.”

  “Did the book say anything about turning the statues back into people?”

  Hands on his hips, Rhett dusted off his rump and spun around, real slow-like. The edges of the mission were lined with stone figures, mostly men. Rhett walked to one that seemed centrally placed, behind the altar and holding a cross overhead. As he got closer, he noted that the statue didn’t have the kind, holy, my-shit-don’t-stink expression of the usual sort of church saints. This one looked angry, and the two-handed grip on the cross would’ve better suited a knife. Putting two and two together, Rhett backed away from the statue, wondering if the people inside were still alive and able to see folks glaring back at them, or if they’d been reduced to stone forever.

  “The book said nothing of this.” Dan stood by Winifred, one hand up as if he wanted to touch her but was terrified to do so.

  Whether he was frightened that being made of stone was catching or maybe he was worried about breaking
her, Rhett couldn’t have ventured a guess. He hurried to Dan’s side and looked Winifred up and down, noting the determined but playful expression on her face. He reckoned that if she had to be stuck one way forever, that was a proper enough representation of the girl within.

  “Maybe we should go get Cora and look through the books,” Rhett ventured.

  “Maybe you should tie up the nun and go do that work yourself,” Dan hissed, teeth clenched together.

  “Fair enough.”

  Rhett untied the rope belt around the unconscious nun’s waist and used it to bind her hands together tightly. There was still some length left, so he dragged her across the room by her feet, careful to avoid the snakes. But when he got to the fancy chair by the altar, he couldn’t figure out how to get her in it without getting snakebit. Dan seemed preoccupied with walking around his sister and glaring, so Rhett tugged another rope down from an old curtain and tied the woman’s feet together, too.

  “I’m leaving her here, Dan,” he called. “Going outside now, like you told me to.”

  Dan didn’t answer, and Rhett figured that if he got turned into a statue after so many warnings, it was his own goddamn fault.

  Back outside, he found Cora parked in front of the wagon, Sam’s Henry ready, if awkwardly held.

  “What happened?” she asked, and Rhett exhaled a breath that at least Sam was mostly safe, for now.

  “It was a gorgon that turned Winifred into a statue. Dan sent me out for information on how to turn her back. Naturally he’d send the feller who can’t read to fetch a book. Cora, you know anything about gorgons?”

  Cora schooled her terror and worry into a calm mask and nodded silently, as she tended to do when thinking hard. She put the Henry down on the driver’s seat and disappeared back into the wagon. A few moments later, she jumped down from the back door carrying a stack of heavy books, several of which she offloaded into Rhett’s arms.

  “I have heard of gorgons, but they are not native to my homeland. With cockatrices, there is no way to turn someone back once they are stone, but perhaps the gorgon herself will tell us.”