by M. K. Hobson
Emily shrieked, forced her eyes open, jerked her hands back. They stung as if they’d been dipped in acid. She pressed them flat against the cool granite. Stanton, too, shook his hands as if his fingers had been singed.
Breathing hard, Emily stared at him for a long, silent moment, before blurting: “What was that?”
“She was fighting with something, did you see? Something fierce. Something terrible.”
“Is that the stone?” Emily said. “The consciousness of it?”
“I don’t know. But it’s dangerous, whatever it is. And she’s protecting you against it.”
Emily looked at her hand, at the stone glimmering in it. A chill chased down her spine.
“I always figured it was powerful,” she said, “but I never thought it was dangerous.”
“The two often go together,” Stanton said.
There was a moment of silent contemplation, which Emily broke with a sudden peal of laughter. Stanton’s eyes focused on her with a spark of annoyance.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’ve never heard you say the words ‘I don’t know’ before.” Emily cocked her head. “They suit you.”
Stanton stood, brushing dirt from the knees of his trousers. “I think you’ll find they lose their charm over time,” he said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Wages of Sin
They rode hard all day, the horses trudging back up the Sierra’s steep flanks. They skirted Auburn, stopping only for a few hours’ sleep in the darkest part of the night before pushing on toward Dutch Flat. When they reached it, they rode well around, the horses picking their way along a cow trail on the ridge above town. Suppertime smells drifted up from the houses below, making Emily’s stomach rumble.
“I don’t suppose we could sneak down for a hot meal?”
Stanton shook his head, though it was clear the suggestion was tempting.
“I’m sure the Maelstroms headed for Lost Pine the minute we gave them the slip. Dutch Flat is the closest train station to Lost Pine. We don’t want to show our faces anywhere the Maelstroms might have been.”
The settlement of New Bethel was about ten miles east of Dutch Flat, nestled in a wide, swampy valley between two high ridges that enfolded it like greedy arms. The town was perched on the edge of a dismal marsh that was tall with winter hay. Emily had never been to New Bethel, and her first impression was how odd it was that the town just seemed to … start. It had no outskirts. Other towns had seedy establishments crowding the edges—rowdy saloons, gambling dens with faded signs in Chinese, rickety buildings that could be counted on as whorehouses.
But in New Bethel, the first building on the main road was a tidy little bank, built of buff stone. Which led to Emily’s second distinct impression of New Bethel: it was so strangely clean. Every building looked freshly painted. No litter on the street, no sloppy piles of firewood, no broken-down wagons in need of repair. Everything was neatly stacked, arranged, and organized. And it wasn’t just disorder that seemed to be banished from the town. Ornamentation, decoration, superfluity of any kind was also completely absent. There were no milk pots planted with gardenias, no lace curtains at the windows. It was as though the town had been ordered from a catalogue and assembled by someone with a gun to his head.
The streets were dead still. This was, Emily supposed, not unusual in a small town at suppertime. But as they came around a bend, she was surprised to see a half dozen men chatting quietly outside a boxy white church. She knitted her brow. It wasn’t Sunday, was it? She was under the impression that it was a Friday. She wondered how she could have lost track so quickly.
Stanton stopped at the general store to inquire after the gentleman he’d met outside Colfax. Emily waited outside, thumbs hitched in the pockets of her vest. There wasn’t any traffic to watch, so when a man came driving an empty buckboard up the road, he was an object of scrutiny by default. The driver was stocky, with a particular hunched way of sitting that suggested both weariness and extreme physical power at the same time … dark tanned skin, cornsilk blond hair …
She put her hand over her mouth.
Dag!
Coming to New Bethel to purchase hay … on today of all days! She stepped back into the shadows of the overhanging porch, wondering where she could hide, but then remembered that he wouldn’t recognize her anyway in her hideous man’s suit. She pulled her hat down over her eyes and watched him from under the brim. He rode past her, up the main street to a feed store at the far end of town.
Quickly she ducked into the store where Stanton was speaking to the counterman.
“Elijah Furness?” the counterman was saying. “Why, sure.” He pointed in the direction of the whitewashed church they’d passed. “Preparing for Friday evening service, I imagine.”
“He never misses them?” Stanton said.
“Never misses ’em?” The man smiled slightly, and for some reason it struck Emily that it was probably one of the man’s most riotous expressions of amusement. “Why, it would be a shame if he did, given he’s the preacher and all.”
Stanton thanked the man and went to the door. Emily followed him onto the porch.
Stanton looked down the street at the church, at the people gathered in front of it. His jaw rippled, and he sighed heavily.
“Did you see the church?” Stanton said, low. “More to the point, did you see the red cross on the church?”
Red cross? Emily wasn’t entirely sure what Stanton meant, until it came back to her in a flash. The street preacher they’d seen in San Francisco, the one outside the soup kitchen …
“It’s a Scharfian church?”
Stanton nodded grimly.
“Not just a Scharfian church, a whole Scharfian community. And the man who’s offered to buy my horses is the town preacher.”
“We have another problem,” Emily said. “I saw Dag.”
“Your lumberman?” Stanton’s brow knit. “Where?”
“He was riding up to the feed store, probably to buy a load of hay for his teams.” She paused. “Listen, let’s not risk it. Let’s take the horses and ride out of here. This all just feels … wrong.”
“And go where?” Stanton said. “With what money? With what supplies?” He put his head closer to hers, spoke lower. “We need what Furness is offering to pay for train tickets to New York. We’d have to ride all the way back to Sacramento to get the price he said he’d pay, and that would give the Maelstroms time to catch up with us.”
Emily chewed her lip, looked in the direction of the church.
“Well, he doesn’t have to know you’re a Warlock, right?” Emily said.
“Right,” Stanton said. He took a deep breath and let it out. “You stay by the horses here. I want to get Furness as far away from his church as possible. Keep your hat down. And for God’s sake, don’t say anything. You’re entirely unconvincing as a man.”
Stepping down from the porch, he paused by the horses, laying a silent hand on each glossy neck before striding across the dusty road to where the people stood before the white church. He hailed one of them. Emily leaned against the wall of the store and watched.
Stanton removed his hat and held it in his hands as he spoke to a white-bearded deacon. The deacon nodded and called inside the church. After a moment, the knife-faced man she remembered emerged, now in the clothes of a preacher: long black frock coat and a high white collar. A large red cross rested on his chest. Tucked under his arm was a massive Bible bound in black leather. The preacher looked at Stanton, and then toward the store, at the horses. He gestured a few of his parishioners to follow him.
“Been to Sacramento, eh?” Emily heard him saying as they approached. “I just saw you near Colfax a few days back. You were riding with a woman, I recall.”
Emily pulled her hat down over her face, crossed her arms, cleared her throat gruffly.
“That was my sister. I was seeing her to Sacramento to visit friends,” Stanton said. He didn’t even look in Emily’s directio
n; apparently he believed that if he ignored her entirely her presence would go unnoticed. “I’m afraid that my financial circumstances took a turn for the worse in that city.”
“Gambling, I suppose.” Taking the Bible out from under his arm, Furness handed it to one of his parishioners. The man took it with great reverence, laying a protective hand on the cover. “Maybe having to sell your nice horses will remind you what the book says about the wages of sin.”
Stanton lowered his eyes soberly. “You may rest assured that it will.”
Furness took a moment to run his hands over Remus’ feet and ankles. Then he grabbed Romulus’ bridle and jerked the horse’s head over. He pressed his thumbs in the corner of the horse’s mouth to look at the teeth.
“Well, they seem sound withal,” Furness admitted. “Fine animals, to make it to San Francisco and back so quick-like.”
Emily’s heart thumped.
“You must have misheard me, sir,” Stanton said. “We only went to Sacramento.”
“Ah,” Furness said. “I guess you’re right, I guess I misheard you.” He gave Stanton a dagger-slash grin. “They’re fine horses in any case. Join us for evening service. You can come to supper after and I’ll see to your payment.”
“I am in a hurry,” Stanton said. “I would like to make arrangements quickly.”
“Is there a problem stepping inside a church, Mr. Stanton?”
Stanton said nothing, but Emily was certain he wouldn’t have given the preacher his real name. She pushed her hat up slightly. The men that Furness had brought with them were pressing in closer, their hands flexing in preparation for violence. Emily’s heart pounded harder.
“We had a lawman named Caul through here earlier today,” Furness said. “He was handing out these.”
He pulled a folded piece of paper from inside his coat and held it before Stanton’s eyes. There were two pictures on it. Their own pictures, quickly and crudely rendered, above the words “Dead or Alive.”
“Says here the man is a Warlock, a servant of Baal. And the other”—he looked up at Emily, and she suddenly felt the piercing sharpness of his eyes—“is a woman.”
One of the men leapt onto the porch, strode to where Emily was standing. She flinched as he snatched the hat from her head. The hair sticks clattered to the ground. Indignantly, she bent to retrieve them, glaring up at the man.
“There’s been a mistake.” Stanton looked at the men closing in around him.
“Really?” Furness said. “Then I want to see you go into my church.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Emily said, her voice sounding too loud.
“The Lord will not suffer a sorcerer in his house,” Furness looked up at her. “If he’s no sorcerer, then he should have no difficulty coming to stand under the sight of God.”
Emily took a step closer to Stanton. She spoke in an anxious whisper: “What are you waiting for? Go into the church!”
Stanton was silent for a long time, staring at Furness. His jaw was held tightly.
“I can’t,” he said, finally.
The instant the words left Stanton’s mouth, the preacher’s men swarmed over him. Emily lunged forward, trying to reach him, but a heavy hand fell on her shoulder and the man who had snatched her hat jerked her backward. She stumbled against the threshold of the porch, falling hard.
Hands spread, Stanton barked words in Latin to defend himself. But Furness’ voice rose quickly to an apocalyptic level, drowning him with sound: “Diviner, enchanter, witch, charmer, consulter with familiar spirits, wizard, necromancer! For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee!”
Tearing his Bible from the hands of the man he had given it to, Furness pressed it against Stanton’s forehead and held it there. With an unearthly shriek, Stanton fell backward, clawing at his face.
“Stop it!” Emily screamed. She scrambled to her feet, but the man behind her clamped his arms around her waist. She kicked out as he pulled her up onto the porch. “Leave him alone!”
“The lawman told us he’d ensorcelled you.” Furness looked up at her, his eyes lingering on her ugly man’s suit and shorn hair.
“No one has ensorcelled me!” Emily hissed. “And Caul is a Warlock himself. A blood sorcerer, a murderer! You should have asked him to go into your church.”
“Captain Caul walked into that very church this morning.” Furness’ sharp eyes cut through her. “He took his hat off in front of the tabernacle and delivered his warning to godly people. He is no sorcerer.”
Caul could enter a church but Stanton could not? But there was no time to figure it out; the men had brought out ropes. They pulled Stanton’s hands back roughly, lashed his wrists tight behind his back. His face was pale with pain.
“You don’t have to do this,” Stanton said. In answer, one of the men hit him hard across the face with a balled fist and shoved him down to kneel in the dust.
“Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live.” Furness looked down at him. “In New Bethel, we take the word serious. We whip whores, we hang thieves, and we burn sorcerers.”
Stanton moved his jaw in a slow circle, then spat a mouthful of blood at Furness’ feet.
“Do you deny that you are a sorcerer?” Furness asked.
“I am a Warlock.” Stanton lifted his chin, his voice ringing clear in the stillness. “And this is the United States of America. Being a Warlock is not a crime.”
“Not yet, servant of Baal,” Furness said. “But God is not mocked. He calls the elect to vanquish sin and false powers.”
“I am no minion of Satan, nor a servant of Baal.” Stanton looked at the faces of the men around him. “The powers that witchcraft and sorcery harness are natural powers, legal powers. They are not—”
“All power is given by the Lord!” Furness roared. Without taking his eyes off Stanton, he spoke sidelong to a pair of his followers:
“Get kindling and good heavy oak logs. Wood that burns slow.” He paused, lips curving with anticipation. “We’ll send the sinner off screaming.”
At that moment, Emily caught sight of something coming down the road. A buckboard loaded with marsh hay. Dag was in the driver’s seat, craning his neck to get a better look at the brouhaha in front of the store.
“Dag!” Emily shrieked. “Dag!”
The man behind her clamped a callused hand over her mouth. She writhed under his grip, but he just pulled her back harder, drawing her tight and close.
But Dag had heard her. He reached down to the floor of the buckboard, and when he straightened, he had a rifle in his hand. Lashing his leads secure, he climbed down, squinting in her direction.
“Emily?” he called. Emily screamed affirmatively from behind the man’s hand.
Dag levered his rifle. Grudgingly, the man holding her let his hand drop from her mouth.
“It’s me, Dag!” she cried.
Dag raised the rifle. “Let her go.”
“Hansen, this is New Bethel business,” Furness barked. “You got no call to interfere!”
“What are you going to do with him?” Dag nodded his head toward Stanton.
“He’s a sorcerer,” Furness said. “You know what we do to sorcerers.”
“Good,” Dag said. Then he stepped forward, took Emily’s wrist, and pulled her toward him with a jerk. She stumbled into his arms, and he lifted her easily over his shoulder like a bag of grain. With long strides he carried her back to the buckboard, dumping her into the pile of fragrant marsh hay.
“Wait, Hansen! The law wants her. You can’t just …”
“The law can take it up with me,” Dag said. “She’s a Lost Pine girl.”
Brushing hay from her face, Emily sat up and planted her hands on the buckboard’s gate. “No!” she screamed. “Dag, please … you can’t let them. You can’t let them kill him!”
A badly controlled flare of jealousy darkened Dag’s face. “Why n
ot?”
“He hasn’t done anything wrong!”
Leaping over the buckboard’s gate, she snatched the rifle from his hand before he could speak. Pointing it at the sky, she fired. The sound echoed. Then she turned the rifle toward the men surrounding Stanton.
“Get away from him,” she snarled, levering another cartridge. She lifted the weapon, centering her aim right between Furness’ astonished eyes.
Furness took one step back, his face pale. He lifted his hands.
“Ensorcelled,” he said, softly. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”
“That’s me, the roaring lion,” Emily said. “Now get away from him.”
Slowly, Furness and his men moved to comply. Keeping the rifle up, Emily went to Stanton and reached inside his coat, feeling for the misprision blade. When she found it, she snicked it open. It gleamed in the high afternoon sunlight. She cut the ropes that bound him and handed him the blade.
“Get the horses,” she said. Her eyes dropped only for a moment, but it was long enough for one of the men to bring up a pistol in a swift blur of silver. There was a puff of smoke and a pop; a bullet sliced like a red-hot knife across her upper arm.
Pain seared her. Her arm fell slack, though somehow she managed to keep hold of the rifle stock. Dag roared and rushed forward, grabbed a handful of the gunman’s shirt, threw him like a bundle of sticks. Other men piled onto him; he lashed out at them, fists and elbows flying.
Emily clutched her arm, hot blood leaking through her fingers. Jumping to his feet, Stanton looked into her eyes.
“Can you ride?” he might have asked, but Emily’s heart was thundering in her ears and her head was spinning. Stanton threw Emily’s good arm around his shoulder, and dragged her toward Dag’s buckboard. He lifted her into the back, then took the rifle from Emily’s slack hand. He then turned back to where Dag was still brawling with the Scharfians.
“Hansen!” Stanton yelled, indicating Emily with a curt jerk of his head. Dag threw one last punch before rushing back to the buckboard and Emily.