Blood of Mystery

by Mark Anthony

  Travis couldn’t help wondering if it wasn’t a bit daring to hire Lirith as a dealer. After all, the man who had approached her couldn’t be the only one in Castle City who thought a black woman didn’t belong in the saloon. It was 1883; the Civil War had ended less than twenty years earlier. And women possessed only a fraction of the rights men did.

  Then again, Manypenny was nothing if not flamboyant, and Travis had a feeling the saloonkeeper enjoyed causing a bit of controversy. It certainly would create talk in the town, which would likely bring in more customers than it turned away.

  Manypenny returned to his work, and Travis walked with Lirith and Durge to the door.

  “What is a deputy?” Durge asked.

  Travis tried to think of a way to describe it. “Is there a term for a knight who serves another knight?”

  “A vassal knight.” Durge stroked his mustaches. “There is honor in such a role, if one serves a good and noble man.”

  Travis could already see the gears turning in Durge’s head. He wondered if he should convince the knight not to go talk to Tanner. The last thing they needed was anything that brought attention to them. However, it could wait for later.

  “Lirith,” he said, “you never did get a chance to tell me why it was you two left the Bluebell today.”

  The witch smiled. “I was going to tell you that both Durge and I had decided to try to find jobs.”

  17.

  Lirith’s first night as a faro dealer at the Mine Shaft was, by any definition, a rousing success.

  “Lord above, you can’t deal faro in that dress,” Maudie exclaimed when they returned to the Bluebell and told her and Sareth what had happened at the saloon.

  “That’s what Mr. Manypenny said.” Lirith sighed, smoothing her brown-poplin dress. “I suppose this is a rather plain gown. But it will have to do for now. I won’t be able to afford a new one until I’ve earned some money.”

  “Nonsense,” Maudie said in a tone that allowed no room for argument. “This way, Miss Lily.”

  She took Lirith’s elbow in one hand, her cane in the other, and led the stunned witch up the staircase.

  “Where are they going?” Durge asked.

  Sareth let out a low, chiming laugh. “To work some magic, I would guess.”

  The Mournish man’s guess was correct. A half hour later, Maudie and Lirith descended the staircase into the parlor. At once, the three men rose to their feet.

  Durge’s brown eyes went wide. “My lady, you look...you look like...”

  “Like something from a dream,” Sareth murmured, his coppery gaze thoughtful.

  Maudie let out a throaty laugh. “See there, Lily? I told you that you’d turn men into fools in this dress, if the lot of them weren’t fools already.”

  Lirith’s smile was almost shy—and perhaps just a little pleased—as she brushed the jade-taffeta dress she wore, and which flowed and shimmered around her slim form like cool water. Its neckline plunged low to reveal the dark, lustrous skin above her breasts, which were made full and round by the tight bodice. The witch’s black hair was woven with red ribbons and fell in shining ringlets about her shoulders. Travis supposed the dress had once been Maudie’s.

  Sareth reached out and took Lirith’s hand. “Be careful tonight, beshala.”

  She touched his cheek. “I will. Beshala.”

  And so entranced were he and Durge that only Travis noticed how Maudie turned away to cough, and how she wiped her lips, leaving a splotch of color on her handkerchief as red as the ribbons in Lirith’s hair.

  Word about Manypenny’s new faro dealer must have spread all over town, for that night the Mine Shaft was more crowded than Travis had ever seen it, and a good part of that crowd was crammed in the corner around Lirith’s table.

  Travis had explained the rules of the game to the witch—as far as he knew them, anyway—as they walked to the saloon. Travis did his best to keep an eye on her in between pouring drinks and tapping new kegs of beer. However, if Lirith made a single mistake, he didn’t notice it—and nor did the dozens of men and handful of women who played at her table that night. Lirith turned the cards with elegant motions and swept in the winnings with a smile so radiant Travis doubted any of the men minded losing. Although there were a few women who appeared less than pleased with the way their beaus stared openly at the dealer.

  Lirith is a witch, Travis. You don’t suppose she’s casting a spell, do you?

  She was, he decided. Except it was a spell worked, not with the magic of the Weirding, but rather true and simple beauty and the light of her smile.

  Night after night, Lirith’s faro table remained every bit as popular as it had on that first—a fact that pleased Manypenny to no end. He had taken to calling her Lady Lily, a title far closer to the truth than the saloonkeeper could ever have guessed. And if Travis noticed the occasional dark glance in Lirith’s direction, or a few angry, muttered words from time to time, it was easy enough to forget them in the bustle of his work at the saloon. For with the success of Lirith’s faro table, things were busier than ever.

  Durge was busier these days as well. The day after their conversation with Tanner at the saloon, he left the Bluebell and walked to the sheriff’s office, wearing a brown suit Maudie had pulled from one of her seemingly bottomless closets, and which she said belonged to one of her former husbands. Travis was curious how many husbands Maudie had once had, and what had happened to them. However, Lirith gave him a sharp kick in the shin when he tried to ask.

  When Durge returned to the boardinghouse, he wore a silver badge on his vest and a gleaming revolver at his hip.

  Maudie pressed her lips into a tight line when she saw him. “That suit is too long for you, Mr. Dirk. Leave it in my sewing room so I can take it up a bit.” She hurried away, but not before Travis saw the worry in her eyes.

  He felt the same concern she did. “Are you certain you want to do this, Durge?”

  The knight’s eyes were resolute. “Sir Tanner is a good man. No doubt the job will be perilous, and I’ll quite likely perish in the course of it. But I could not refuse him and keep my honor as a knight.”

  “What about the gun?” Travis said, eyeing the revolver. “Did Tanner teach you how to use it? You don’t want to accidentally shoot yourself in the foot.”

  Durge shook his head. “Sir Tanner said a deputy must wear one of these guns, but I told him I would not use such sorcery, although I did not think less of him that he chose to.”

  Travis wondered if Durge had used those exact words, and if so what Tanner had made of them. Then again, he was starting to think part of the magic of the silver coin was that it made people hear what they expected to hear.

  “This gun doesn’t work,” Durge went on. “I asked Tanner to remove all of the pieces of metal it throws.”

  “Bullets,” Travis said. “They’re called bullets. So the gun’s not loaded.” He didn’t know whether to be relieved or more worried than ever.

  Stop it, Travis. Durge can take care of himself. He’s the toughest fighter you’ve ever met. Even Beltan would have a hard time winning a duel against Durge.

  “Well, it seems now I’m the only one who doesn’t have work to do,” Sareth said that evening as the four of them gathered in the parlor after dinner.

  “That’s not why we’re here,” Travis said. “We just needed some money to live on until Jack comes, that’s all. And now we’ll have more than enough.”

  “Besides, your work is to stay well,” Lirith said firmly.

  The Mournish man’s health had improved since their first days in Castle City, although not as much as Travis would have liked. Dark circles still clung beneath Sareth’s eyes, and he seemed unable to stand up completely straight. Travis wondered what was wrong, but he knew it could be any number of things: the high altitude, the shock to his system from traveling between worlds, or an Earth bacterium alien to Sareth’s Eldhish physiology.

  Sareth gave Lirith a bitter smile. “Staying well is a j
ob that doesn’t pay much gold, beshala. And I don’t need to read my fate in the cards to know there isn’t anyone in this village who would give me work.”

  “Can you use a hammer?”

  They looked up to see Maudie standing in the door of the parlor. Her eyes were on Sareth.

  “I can,” he said after a moment.

  “Then you can start by pounding down the boards on the front porch that are coming loose. I’ll pay you two bits for every hour you work.” Maudie turned away, then glanced over her shoulder and winked at Sareth. “It looks like you’ve got a job after all, Mr. Samson.”

  Sareth gazed down at his hands, but Travis could just make out the smile on his lips.

  Days passed. Sareth fixed the loose boards on the front porch of the boardinghouse. Then he painted the porch’s peeling railing. And repaired a dozen broken shutters, patched several holes in the roof, cut down the weeds all around, and chased a skunk out from beneath the foundation. He washed all the windows, and fashioned wind chimes from cast-off bits of metal and broken purple bottles and hung them out front, so that the air around the Bluebell was filled with glittering light and bright music. And if sometimes Sareth was forced to pause in his work, placing his hands on his knees while he caught his breath, the next moment he was on to some other task.

  Travis and Lirith didn’t see a lot of Durge, since they worked at the saloon in the evenings, and Durge assisted the sheriff during the daytime. As far as Travis could tell, Durge’s daily work consisted mostly of pitching in when townsfolk needed help: catching a stray horse loose on Elk Street, helping a lady whose wagon had broken a wheel, or putting out a small fire—which seemed to be a regular occurrence in Castle City.

  Unfortunately, Durge usually had a darker tale to tell each evening when they gathered at the Bluebell for supper, before Travis and Lirith went to work. Almost every day there was some rowdy or ne’er-do-well—or two or three of them—who had to be ridden out of town.

  These stories always made Travis clench his teeth. Durge was skilled with his fists. But his sword was still tucked up in the rafters of their room at the boardinghouse, and most of the men in town carried guns. No matter how strong or fast Durge was, all it would take to stop him was a single bullet. However, Durge and Tanner were always able to prevail. (These days, young Deputy Wilson manned the sheriff’s office and the jail.) So far, none of their encounters had ended badly.

  At least for Durge and Tanner. On three occasions, a man they had run out of town for breaking the peace showed up again a few days later. They found one floating facedown in Granite Creek, one shoved down an old mine shaft, and one hanging from a cottonwood tree. Every one of them had been shot directly through the heart—even the one that had been strung up.

  Who had killed the men, Tanner and Durge didn’t know— and nor did anyone the sheriff talked to. Of course, the editors of the Castle City Clarion were always happy to render an opinion in the “Morning Mayhem” column.

  While our good Sheri f, read the paper one afternoon, takes the easier (and one might daresay less courageous) road by doing nothing save to ask these ruffians and law-breakers to depart our fair city, it seems Fate is dealing these individuals punishments more suited for those of such violent and shiftless nature. Perhaps the Law will take note, and leave the sentencing of such individuals to Providence no longer, but rather take stronger measures to purge this town of the dregs of society. Then again, when men of questionable history and character are made into Deputies, it is hard to have faith that the Law will see the error of its ways. If that is the case, then it will be up to others to accomplish what the Law refuses. —The Editors.

  “And what would the printers of these words know about courage?” Durge rumbled after Maudie read the article aloud to him and the others. “It is the coward who strikes down the man who is weaker than he.”

  Lirith laid her hand on the knight’s. “I’ve heard people talk of this newspaper, as they call it, in the saloon. The publishers will print anything if they think it will cause people to buy more papers.”

  “That’s a fact,” Maudie said, folding up the paper.

  Travis knew Lirith and Maudie were right. Journalistic integrity and ethics were things that hadn’t yet made the train ride across the Great Plains to the Old West. All the same, the article troubled him.

  ...when men of questionable history and character are made into Deputies... Those words could only refer to Durge. Attention was the one thing Travis hadn’t wanted; they needed to keep a low profile until Jack arrived if they didn’t want another incident like their encounter with Lionel Gentry and his men.

  After supper, it was time for Travis and Lirith to head to the saloon. Travis had to admit, he was starting to look forward to his work at the Mine Shaft. Maybe it was just that, for all the differences, working for Manypenny reminded him of the time when he first came to Castle City and tended bar for Andy Connell. Those were the days when Jack Graystone was just his eccentric old friend—before Travis had ever heard of the Runelords, or the Seekers, or Eldh.

  Before long, Travis began to get to know some of the regulars who came into the saloon. There was the town barber, a man almost as big and jovial as Manypenny himself, and all of the clerks who worked at the First Bank of Castle City, and who each evening after the bank closed raised glasses of port in hands stained green with ink. Both of the town’s doctors and a good number of its lawyers drank at the Mine Shaft, along with the assayist and the owner of the Castle City Opera House, which was getting ready for its summer production of The Magic Flute.

  However, of all the regulars who came into the Mine Shaft each day for a drink, Travis’s favorites were Ezekial Frost and Niles Barrett.

  According to the stories Travis heard, Ezekial Frost had been a mountain man in his younger days. He had trapped beaver in the 1830s, before—in one of history’s odd coincidences—the animals nearly went extinct at the exact moment that silk replaced fur as the fashion for top hats worn by gentlemen in the East. In the forties and fifties Frost had worked as a scout, first for the US Army, then as a guide for folk passing through on their way to the gold fields of California.

  In 1859, Colorado’s own gold rush started, and—at least so the rumors told—shortly thereafter Ezekial Frost vanished. His few friends (former mountain men themselves) had thought him dead, mauled by a grizzly, perhaps, or shot by a claim jumper. Except then, just a few years ago, Frost appeared in Castle City as abruptly as he had vanished before.

  Of course, if it hadn’t been for the fact that one of Frost’s old acquaintances was still alive in Castle City at the time and had recognized him, no one would have known who Frost was or how he had vanished twenty years before.

  Certainly Frost seemed more than a little cracked. He had a habit of walking down Elk Street, clad in buckskins as weather-worn and wrinkled as his own skin, talking and laughing to himself, and occasionally breaking out into broken bits of songs that no one could name. He often stopped strangers on the street, grabbing their arms to tell them fragments of stories about lost treasures or secret passes in the mountains. And he was known to pick up the still-burning butts of cigars that had been tossed on the ground and smoke them. As far as Travis knew, he had no home, but slept in a teepee somewhere up in the hills.

  While people tended to clear away from the bar when Ezekial Frost approached, Travis always smiled and poured a glass of Taos Lightning.

  “Did I tell you about the feller who ate two squaws, an Indian guide, and a Frenchman?” he said one afternoon as Travis poured him his drink.

  Frost had a habit of telling bizarre tales, which was one of the reasons Travis liked him. He claimed to have been born in New York in 1811 before heading out West in his twenties— and given his long white beard and a frame as knobby as a wind-twisted pine, that was one story Travis didn’t doubt.

  “No, I haven’t heard that one yet,” Travis said, refilling Frost’s glass.

  “It was back in the fifties, l
ong before this town was even here,” Frost said in his rusty voice. “Now, how this feller first got a taste for man meat, I cain’t say. But once a feller has that taste in him, he can’t be rid of it. Anyways, so he’s on his way to Fort Laramie, carrying messages for the general out of Fort Craig, and he and his Arapaho guide get caught in a blizzard, and they sit in a hole in the snow for day after day as their provisions run out. Well, finally the snow lets up, and a while later the feller walks on into Fort Laramie. ‘Where’s your Indian guide?’ the lieutenant at the fort asks him. And the feller reaches into his saddlebag, pulls out a shriveled foot, and tosses it at the soldier. ‘Here’s what’s left of him. You can have it if you want, as I’m shore tired of eatin’ him.’ ”

  “That’s a most intriguing tale, Mr. Frost,” Niles Barrett said, taking a draw on a thin cigar. “But forgive me—it’s simply the journalist in me that causes me to call some of your details into question.”

  Ezekial Frost squinted at the tall, well-dressed man standing at the bar next to him.

  People about town whispered that Niles Barrett was the youngest son of a British lord, and that—as a result of some scandal or impropriety—he had been banished by his family to America. Travis couldn’t vouch for these facts, but Barrett did speak with an English accent, and he certainly seemed to have enough money to buy fine clothes, brandy, and cigars, and to stay at the Silver Palace Hotel on a permanent basis, all without having any obvious source of income.

  Barrett wasn’t a handsome man—his face was too long, and his features too irregular—but his impressive attire and cultured manner of speech lent him an attractive air. Travis liked listening to Barrett talk about anything—although the Englishman’s favorite topic was the weekly newspaper he hoped to start soon, which he intended to call the Castle County Reporter, and which only awaited a printing press on order from Philadelphia.