Hereafter

by C. K. Crigger

  Nate, his voice laconic, broke the silence after a minute. “A Mexican standoff,” he said.

  Bannion moved impatiently. “Make sense.”

  “He means we’re at a stalemate.” Lily smiled. “And he’s right.” A movement of her pinky finger sent a fireball the size of a pinhead to the old oak floor at Bannion’s feet where it charred a disproportionately large hole. He ground the burn with his boot sole before a blaze could start and glared at Nate as if the situation were his fault.

  “Here,” Selkirk said. “Don’t you be tearing up my house.”

  Lily ignored him and sucked in a deep breath. “Of course, you could try making some of these factions into allies. Join together, fight together for the common good.”

  “We’ll not be taken over by anyone,” Selkirk said unequivocally.

  “Hence the meaning of the word ‘ally,’ ” Lily said, “and speaks of negotiating from a position of strength, either real strength or assumed.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bannion said.

  Seemingly careless, she shrugged. “Well, then, there is a third option I can suggest.”

  She’d thought this offer over carefully on the way to the meeting. Even now a hollow feeling in her gut warned of the loneliness, the danger, the isolation that was in her future—if she had any future at all.

  The council members stirred, but said nothing, leaving the question to the sheriff. He obliged. “What option?”

  “Give me a horse, some supplies. I’ll leave the ranch.” Her head lifted. “I want to check out my grandparents’ place. See if anything is still there. If there are bones, I’ll bury them. Maybe my cousins lived. Maybe—”

  “You’ll carry a grudge.” Bannion dropped his casual stance by the fireplace. “The clan can’t sleep as soundly at night with you out there. They’d always be wondering when you’d take a notion to drop a fireball on’em.”

  “Take a notion?” Lily’s eyes blazed, sudden wrath showing no matter that she tried to veil the signs. Some of them might be afraid of her anger. “I’m a Border Patrol agent. I joined the force to serve and protect my country and its people. I took an oath that means the world to me! Why should this purpose change? From what I’ve seen, this country, no, this world, needs more people with genuine altruistic objectives.”

  Someone whispered, “Altruistic?”

  “Humane,” Lily snapped. “Selfless. Forgiving.”

  Selkirk stood up, started to speak.

  She flashed a hand at him, making him dodge as though expecting another fireball, and she shook her head pityingly. “Look at you, on tenterhooks looking for an attack in your own home.

  “Liberty and justice for all. We used to say that. Has anybody here even heard of the Pledge of Allegiance? Those words were part of it.”

  A few of the O’Quinns looked to Nate, who jerked his chin. “I read it in a book. Sorry to say the words might be fine, but they don’t mean much, Lily. Not now.”

  Stretching her leg, she tried to ease the ache. “They do to me, Nate. They mean I won’t drop a fireball on anybody who isn’t attacking me.” Staring hard at Bannion, she added, “They mean I won’t bomb Spokane just because a few saiclers from there followed a madman here. They mean I won’t slaughter Mags for the pure hell of it. If I find they need hunted, I’ll hunt them, but I require proof. Liberty and justice for all.”

  Selkirk snorted. “Ain’t that fine, though. Sounds about what a Cross-up would say just before lambasting you with something nasty.”

  “Then perhaps,” Lily said, her voice pitched low and warm, and sweet, “Bannion can ask his birds to watch his back, or Nate can call down a protective storm, or Neila can shut off a blood supply as an act of mercy or should a patient prove inconvenient. Perhaps Harrison can watch the horizon with his eyes closed and you, Selkirk, can practice plausible deniability to cover them all. Folks will believe you. They always have. You have the knack.” Her gaze swept the room. “You all have the knack.”

  She didn’t need her extra sharp hearing to make her aware of butts shifting uncomfortably in chairs. For a moment she would’ve recalled her words—until Nate chuckled.

  “You aren’t supposed to have twigged to that, Lily,” he said.

  Selkirk stuck a fork in his leftover pie like he wished it was a saber slicing through Lily’s gut. “Nothing to twig to, Nate, and you know it. We’re not mages.” He glared around the table. “We’re not. We’ve learned to read signs. To pay attention to what’s going on around us. That’s all.”

  Lily recalled Bren’s panic and the look of concentration on Neila’s face when the girl with the severed hand had begun spurting blood again. Then the abrupt, seemingly miraculous easing of the situation. Nope. She wasn’t mistaken. Neila had used power. Lily had felt it, even tasted it in the air. And Neila had known what she was doing, nothing accidental.

  “Oh, please,” she scoffed, low in her throat. “Do not try that on me.”

  Bannion refused to meet her level gaze.

  Suddenly, her leg buckled under her. Lily grabbed the back of the nearest chair, whose present occupant leapt to his feet like he’d been singed by fire. Damn the O’Quinns, she thought muzzily, groping her way around and collapsing onto the seat. Making everyone afraid of her, as if the method she’d used to defeat Philip Barnes hadn’t drawn enough unwelcome attention.

  As though the man’s relinquishment of his chair was due to good manners rather than the flash of fear she saw cross his face, Lily murmured, “Thank you.”

  Ignoring what sounded like a whole hive of bees droning in her head, she glanced around the room. Several of the council members refused to meet her eyes, choosing to fiddle with tea cups or cough or whisper to whomever sat beside them. She’d known herself to be the subject under discussion when she walked in, but the way they avoided looking at her increased her tension. At some time or another over the past several days, she had exchanged greetings with most of them. A few words, pleasantries.

  Anger flashed like bright lightning behind her eyes. The clan didn’t act terribly appreciative of her efforts on their behalf today. Nor even sympathetic of her wound. Or if they were, they hid their support well.

  “So,” she said, controlling her voice with an effort. “I’ll require a horse and a few days supplies. I’ve earned the supplies in return for my services. And, according to your own records, the success of your horse herd over the years can be attributed in large part to the strength of my mare Heathen’s mustang blood. I believe you owe me a replacement.”

  “Hold on,” Selkirk said, but Harrison quieted him with a shake of his head.

  “I, personally, owe you more than that, Lily,” he said. “I owe you my life. It’ll be done. Your pick of a horse out of my portion. A mare?”

  “By preference. Thank you.”

  “You’re taking a lot on yourself, Harrison.” Selkirk rested his fingertips on the table and stared down at each of the committee members in turn. “We should put this to a vote.”

  “I vote we keep Lily with us.” Jacob, his young face paler than it had been during the midst of the fighting, spoke up.

  “You don’t have a vote,” Selkirk said. “In fact, I don’t know what you’re doing here.”

  Jake glared at the clan leader. “I’m the last of my family, Selkirk. I inherit their vote.”

  “You’re sixteen, Jacob. Talk to me in two years.”

  Harrison heaved his thin body off the straight-backed kitchen chair, rubbing his chest where his wound must’ve been bothering him. “I’d vote for you to stay as well, Lily, but I sense you wouldn’t be comfortable among us. Not that I blame you.”

  “Think they used to have something they called an attitude adjustment,” Nate said. “We need to learn the technique. I vote she stays.”

  He was funny without meaning to be, Lily thought, smiling crookedly at him, but as she studied the grim faces around her, she knew how the vote, now it had been called, would go. Nor was sh
e wrong, not completely. More of the voters, who’d also been fighters today, turned a little more compassionate than she anticipated.

  But there was Selkirk, who hammered his hand on the table and said strongly, “We should kill her.”

  And Nate, who said just as strongly, “Who you got picked to do the executing, cousin? Yourself? Because I won’t do it.”

  Bannion muttered, “Damn it, don’t look at me,” which caused a twitch of Selkirk’s brows and took Lily by surprise.

  The clan’s verdict was a foregone conclusion when counting the influence Selkirk and Bannion held over the rest. Banishment, they said, conceding her right to a horse and supplies. The time frame was not as lenient.

  “We ought to make you leave tonight.” Bannion looked tired as he said this, and just a little stricken, as if he realized the injustice of their decision but was impelled by his duty as sheriff to enforce Selkirk’s and the family’s edict. “But tomorrow will do. Go back to whatever hidey-hole you found, Lily Turnbow. Meet me at the horse barn in the morning.” He looked up. “This meeting is adjourned.”

  Almost as one, the committee members rose stiffly from their seats and began stuffing arms into coats sleeves and jamming hats on heads. They were a silent group. Only Nate remained still, and after a period of consideration where he tapped his teeth and stared at her, finally spoke.

  “Hold it,” he said. Everyone jerked around to look at him. Dropping what Lily knew was a casual pretense, he took his place beside his cousin at the fireplace, his shoulders set in an aggressive posture. “Seems to me somebody needs to do a little of this negotiating Lily mentioned.”

  Selkirk and Bannion wore matching scowls. “Negotiate what?” Selkirk demanded.

  “Lily killed Screenmaster. In my opinion, the spoils of war belong to her.”

  “Spoils of war?” Selkirk demanded. In the background, the others whispered.

  “Screenmaster’s wagon, his horses, his supplies.” Nate winked at Lily. “He had a regular little rolling home. It’s almost as good as Neila’s camper.”

  “Excellent idea,” Harrison said approvingly, while Jacob, a knit hat crumpled in his hand, nodded and grinned. Most of the others shrugged.

  “Wait a minute,” Selkirk’s scowl grew more fearsome. “How do you figure she’s entitled. She gets a horse and enough supplies for a week. That’s enough.”

  Nate shook his head. “She’s earned much more than that, Selk, and you know it.”

  Lily’s heart felt squeezed as gladness poured through her. Not friendless. Not completely alone, after all. The connection between Nate and her meant something. She knew it now.

  Selkirk protested again, before Bannion said loudly, “Call a vote.”

  “What?” Selkirk’s question was a protest.

  “Call a vote,” Bannion repeated, making Nate smile. “She rode Nog today. Nobody rides Nog but me. He won’t let’em. If she can, she ain’t all bad.” His dark eye caught at the others. “What do you say? Rondo? Let her have the ‘spoils of war?’”

  Sergeant Zelnor was already at least halfway in Lily’s camp. “All right with me,” he said. “Can’t imagine anybody here’d want anything that belonged to the dwarf anyhow.”

  “You know where I stand,” Harrison said. “Aye.”

  “Aye,” voted the head of the family whose daughter had lost a hand.

  “Aye,” said the Shandy patriarch, evidently remembering Lily had given up a bed for their daughter.

  “No,” said a woman who stared with longing eyes at Selkirk.

  “Aye,” Jacob called loudly, making his opinion known whether it counted as a vote or not.

  Lily was shaking by the time it was all over.

  Banishment, but not destitution. It could’ve been worse. It wasn’t a death sentence. Not yet.

  She’d never been more frightened in her life.

  Chapter 25

  Daylight brought a drop in temperature and a surcease of the snow. Nate, wet to his knees from wading through drifts blown up against the barn door, was slathering a purple potion on the horse Screenmaster had stabbed. It flinched, hide rippling at his gentlest touch.

  “Whoa, boy. Easy now.” He murmured soft nothings until it relaxed and went back to mouthing the handful of oats scattered in the manger.

  Body heat from the animals lucky enough to be under shelter helped warm the barn, keeping Nate’s bare hand from freezing as he ministered to the horse. A draft of cold, along with a brief display of sunshine, announced he had a visitor. Boots stomped away snow before approaching the stall where he worked. The boots, and the man wearing them, stopped behind him.

  “Checking up on me, Cuz?” he asked without looking up from his chore.

  “How’s the horse?” Bannion, voice loud in the cavernous building, gave Nate’s question short shrift.

  Straightening, Nate patted the creature’s rump before turning to face his cousin. “Better than I expected. Glad I didn’t put him down. He isn’t up to hauling that heavy wagon yet, but he will be in a few days.”

  “She goes today. We decided. She agreed.”

  Nate snorted. “Hell, yes, she agreed. The woman isn’t crazy, in case you haven’t noticed. Lily knows she has no choice. Given this particular set of circumstances, if you’d been warned you’d be killed otherwise, wouldn’t you? No matter what the cost?”

  “She agreed,” Bannion insisted, stubborn and unthinking as an ox. Or so Nate considered. Also just like him to have left the door unlatched, for it flapped open again briefly in an errant gust of wind.

  “It isn’t right, sheriff—” Nate used the title deliberately “—turning her out in this weather, under these conditions. She’s wounded, beat down, and running a fever. Also smart enough not to stay here any longer than it takes to recover her strength.”

  Bannion sighed and stuffed his mittened hands in his coat pockets. “I know it, cuz. I do. But Selkirk is letting Neila call the shots on this one. Guess he’s hoping it’ll help drain the venom out of her. He figures it’s all caused by this baby thing she’s obsessed with all the sudden. You know she’s always blamed the old ones for what happened to her, and any way you look at it, Lily Turnbow is an old one. And female to boot.” His voice hardened, “I agree it’s best she goes. She’s made just enough friends in the clan to split us right down the middle. You don’t want this to spiral down to a family squabble and endless infighting, do you?”

  Damn it, Nate thought. Bad as he hated to agree, Bannion was right. There wasn’t a thing either of them could do about—or for—Neila, and Selkirk had given up trying. Bannion felt the clan’s pulse all too accurately. The family had only been at headquarters two weeks and here they were, bickering back and forth like it was already spring.

  He corked the pot holding the horse’s medicine, wiped his hands on the rag he’d brought along for the purpose, and made one more try. “The folks just need the chance to get used to her. That’s all. Given inspiration by their leaders, I doubt it’d take too long.”

  “I don’t want any family division, and Selkirk won’t stand for it. Final word, Nate. Get those other three horses hitched to the wagon. Awkward, I know, but it’ll have to do.”

  “We don’t even know if she can handle a team. Let her have a day or two to learn. I’ll keep her away from the folks. Talk to Selkirk. Persuade him.”

  Bannion hesitated before shaking his head, and Nate was pretty sure he detected a tad of regret at the decision.

  “Noon,” the sheriff said. “That’s the best I can do.” He turned and strode away, kicking at a pile of loose hay outside a mare’s stall. This time the door latched behind him.

  The barn was quiet when he’d gone, except for a horse chewing and slobbering, and Nate’s own breathing. “I suppose you heard all that,” he said into empty space. He scowled toward the shadows at the rear of the barn.

  “Yes.” Lily dropped her "you can’t see me” cloak and limped forward from where she’d been silently communing with a barn
cat. She came to stand beside him, resting her arms on the stall gate, inside which the white horse, eased by Nate’s doctoring, now drowsed. “I don’t understand why Neila blames me for her problems. She has one son, so obviously she’s fertile. Seems to me her barrenness now could be a matter of inverse consequence.”

  “What’s that” Nate tried the phrase on his tongue.

  “In this case, bad luck. Or fate.” She studied him. “Being in the right place at the wrong time. Women, in case you didn’t know, are only fertile at certain times of the month. The sex act has to take place at that time. Or, could be her age is against her.”

  Nate had known that, in an off-hand way. Being a single man, it hadn’t particularly concerned him—until now. He was jolted by a sharp urge in his loins. Damn. Lily was standing close enough he caught her clean scent.

  “While it’s logical for Bannion and her brother to support her against me,” she said, thankfully oblivious to his sudden discomfort, “logic doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  “I don’t suppose it does.” Deliberately, he turned away, wrapped the pot of medicine in an old sack and put it on an upended wooden box where it wouldn’t freeze.

  “I’m having trouble getting my head around what I’ve become, myself,” she admitted.

  She didn’t look happy, for true. The corners of her mouth drooped like a child about to cry. Nate hoped she wouldn’t. Crying women made him nervous.

  “In all fairness,” she added, “if, back in my time, I’d met someone who could toss fireballs or disappear at will, I’d be leery, too. But I will not become the goat for whatever caused the meltdown all those years ago, or assume the responsibility behind humanity’s mutations. From what anyone knows, it may even have been something out of nature. An errant asteroid knocked the planet askew on its axis or something.” But he could tell she didn’t think so.