by Posey, Jay
“Hey, girly. We’re closed.” Corrin. The bartender hung his head. The woman leaned her head forward towards his, enough to make him draw back out of the way. When he looked up at her, she winked.
“Hey,” Corrin said, louder, which wasn’t necessary because everyone else had gone silent. “I said we’re closed.”
The bartender turned and went back to his usual place behind the bar, did his best to look disinterested. Corrin was an idiot, and, if the rumors were true, Kyth was a true psychopath. If the little lady didn’t leave soon, nothing good was going to come out of it.
The red-eyed woman swiveled her head theatrically, sweeping the entire bar with an exaggerated slowness.
“Funny,” she answered. “All the folks in here, kinda gives the impression of being open.”
“Nah, closed, like, you ain’t invited to be here.”
“Ah, I see,” she said, nodding. She looked back at the bartender, tilted her glass for another. Why was she doing this to him? He took down the bottle again, balanced atop the eggshells between him and her, hoping desperately that if he kept acting like all of this was just business as usual, no one would blow up his bar. He poured another generous dose and retreated back to his corner. Replaced the bottle. Tried to disappear. The woman smiled broadly. The bartender didn’t dare look at Corrin.
“You ain’t invited, like... Get out,” Corrin said.
“In a minute,” she replied, glancing over at the big man in the corner. The smile melted to the barest hint of amusement at the corners of her mouth. The bartender thought it might be a good time to loosen the sawed-off he had in a holster under the bar, but when he moved his hands, the woman’s eyes flicked to his and he knew it wasn’t a good time for that at all. He took a step back and crossed his arms. Once he was motionless, her eyes left his. Still felt like she could see everything he was doing, though.
Corrin flicked a hand at a couple of his juicehead friends; big meaty boys with necks bigger around than most people’s thighs. They got up from the table, lumbered over to the bar. Everyone else scooted out of the way right quick, but the woman just looked at them and cocked her head to one side, like she couldn’t quite tell if they were serious. One of them drew up short, put his hand on the other to stop his approach. The smarter of the two, apparently. Well out of range.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “Did you have something to say to me?”
“Just uhhh,” said the smart meathead. “You should probably go.”
“Yes I heard that the first time,” she replied. Then she slid off her barstool and took a couple of steps towards them. They both backed off.
She advanced a little further and other people started getting restless. Several patrons got to their feet, and a few jeered at her from behind the safety of those standing. But Corrin could see his boys were spooked, and he couldn’t have that, so he took charge and came to meet her. He pushed them both aside.
“Look, girly, I dunno where you come in from, but you better blow right on back out afore you get blowed.” He held his hand out in the shape of a gun and pointed it right in the woman’s eye, a hair’s breadth from touching her.
“Corrin,” the bartender said.
“Shut it,” Corrin barked. He didn’t look at the bartender when he said it, just kept his eyes on the woman. She held out her fist and opened it slowly, palm up. A flat grey circle rested there; a nanocarb chip worth about twenty Hard. Not a large sum.
Corrin looked down at it.
“What’s that supposed to be?”
“My gift,” the woman said. “To you.”
“Yeah?”
The woman dipped her head, a slow, single nod.
“Don’t look like much.”
The woman raised one shoulder. “And yet it’s all you’re worth.”
“Come again?”
“Your worth,” she said slowly, over enunciating. “As in, how much someone would pay.”
“You’re sayin’ my life is worth twenty Hard?”
“Oh, sorry, no,” the woman said. “Not just yours.” Then she swept her gaze around the room, resting lightly, briefly on each of those who belonged to Corrin’s crew. She knew each and every one of them. The bartender didn’t like that one bit.
“Yeah?” Corrin said. The woman dipped her head again. “Yeah, well. Price seems wrong to me.”
“Take this. Leave.”
“This is my bar, girly.”
“I’m not talking about the bar. I mean the town.”
“Oh yeah?” Corrin laughed. “Twenty Hard to leave town? Or what?”
“Or that’s the best offer you’ll get.”
“You got some spunk, huh? I like that.”
“Corrin,” the bartender said, louder, warning.
“Are you talkin’ again?” Corrin snapped, looking at him this time. The bartender knew Corrin would take it out of his hide for what he was about to say next, in front of all these people, but he had to stop things before the escalated any further.
“He can’t read, lady,” the bartender said. “He doesn’t know–”
“I told you to shut it!” Corrin shouted, and one of Corrin’s cronies threw a bottle at the bartender, who skillfully ducked it.
“Well,” she said, “perhaps someone should take this opportunity to educate him.”
The smart juicehead leaned over and started to whisper something to Corrin, but Corrin’s heat was up too much now. He shoved the man away roughly.
“How about I educate you, girly?” And then he slapped the woman’s still outstretched hand, sending the nanocarb chip sailing. It tumbled in the air and landed on the rubberized floor with a dull thunk. “You walk in my place with that kinda chat, and that’s the best you’ll get. And it all goes worse from there, I promise you that.”
The woman blinked at him. “By any chance, are you familiar with the concept of Schelling’s dilemma?” she asked, voice perfectly steady, perfectly cool.
“The what?”
“A Hobbesian trap, maybe?”
“Oh, well, yeah, sure,” Corrin said. “Ain’t that the one where a little thing walks into a place she don’t belong and bad things happen to her?”
“Say two fellows are pointing guns at one another. Neither of them has ever killed anyone before, neither wants to start now. But each is terrified that if he lowers his own weapon, the other will do him violence.”
“Nah,” the big guy said, scratching his throat with the back of his fingers. “Pretty sure it’s the one I said.”
“The best strategy,” the woman continued smoothly, “is for one fellow to lower his weapon. Gain trust. De-escalate the situation.” After a moment she added, “But that’s not usually the strategy either fellow takes. Usually, it goes to the second best strategy.”
“Yeah? And what’s that one?”
Her smile returned; broad, genuine. The bartender went for his gun.
The woman shot her hand out and Corrin said something that sounded like hurk! and then came flying towards the bar, crashed into it, scattered glasses and bottles and a couple of patrons. The bartender brought the sawed-off up, but there were too many paying customers running around for him to do anything with it. Not that he knew what he’d do with it anyway; hitting the woman would have been a death sentence. And now that the unpleasantness had started, he found himself strangely compelled to see how it’d all turn out. Surely he already knew; there was no way that little lady could handle all the folks that had closed in on her. But he was no fan of Corrin, and he kind of wanted to root for her anyway.
In the span of time it’d taken him to complete those thoughts, the woman had felled three more patrons; the two juicehead friends, and one heavyset woman that the bartender had once seen beat a man to death with an unbroken bottle. A guy in a red jacket grabbed her from behind, but the woman melted to the floor down between his legs and somehow came up behind him. She snatched him by his belt with one hand and under his chin with the other and jerked the man’s head back and down on to
her shoulder. She swung him to one side and then back the other, warding off the others, wielding him like a gibbering shield.
The crowd was confused, and one young man took the opportunity to lunge for her. She met him halfway, thrusting her human shield out and knocking the young man to the floor before drawing back, her captive once again secure before her.
“Twenty Hard was too high an offer for the lot of you,” she said. “This man here,” she waggled the man in the red jacket back and forth as she spoke, “is already dead. If you love your own life more than you love his, leave now.”
Everyone else seemed frozen in place.
“Can’t any of you idiots read?” the bartender yelled, and he showed the business end of the sawed-off around to whoever was looking his way. “Get outta here!”
For a moment it was silent. Then someone cursed about the same time someone else said Kyth and that broke the spell. People started clearing out every which way they could, as long as it didn’t take them anywhere near the red-eyed woman. The guy in the red jacket had taken to crying through his teeth, undoubtedly wishing he’d made wiser choices about his life.
The woman held her captive locked in place until the bar was empty of everyone else, save for the four bodies on the floor and the bartender. She looked over at the bartender then, down at the sawed-off he was pointing vaguely her way, then back up at him again. She arched an eyebrow. He put the gun down.
She adjusted her grip on the guy in the red jacket, just enough so he could open his mouth. Immediately a torrent of apologies erupted.
“I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t see ’cause I was behind you and I thought you were just some cat, please I swear, I swear!”
“I wish I could say acting out of ignorance was its own punishment,” the woman said. “But I can’t go around making exceptions. You laid hands on Kyth’s property. From your reaction, I judge you’re aware of the penalty.”
“Please,” the guy said, “please, I swear I didn’t know.” He was almost whispering now. The bartender couldn’t watch. He picked up the almost clean glass again and started wiping it out with a towel.
“I can do it now,” the woman continued. “And it’ll be quick. I let you go, Kyth’s still going to have his due. Can’t promise you when or how. Might be tomorrow. Might be ten years from now. Only thing I can tell you is it’ll be much, much worse.”
“Please, please don’t kill me.”
“Suit yourself,” the woman said. Then the bartender heard a thump, a grunt, and the sound of the guy in the red jacket hitting the floor. After that, she returned to her barstool, took a sip of her drink. Plunked something down on the bar.
The bartender didn’t want to look at her. “Still on the house.”
“Still not for the drink.”
He sighed, put the glass down again. Turned to look at her from his safe distance.
“Lady, I’m just trying to make a living here. It’s easy for folks like you to roll in off the streets and throw your weight around because it’s little people like me that always pay the price for it. I told you before I didn’t want any trouble, and you brought me a heap of it.” He slung his towel on the bartop and started wiping it just to give himself something to do. “Not that you care about any of that.”
“On the contrary, I do care. Quite a bit. That’s what this is for,” she said, tapping the stack of Hard she’d left on the bar. “So you don’t have to pay the price.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You won’t have to pay that price, either,” she continued. “The kid in red will wake up in a bit, and live the rest of his days in abject fear, I suppose. Maybe he’ll use his time to do some good. And a couple of folks will be around shortly to take care of the others. Things are going to be changing around here.”
“Yeah? And why’s that?”
“Corrin and his ilk annoyed Kyth.”
“Seems like a bad idea.”
The woman finished her drink in a strong gulp, placed the glass gently on the top of the bar, and then stood.
“There are two possible outcomes to annoying Kyth,” she said while she put on her coat. “One is that he takes away one of your favorite toys.”
She stopped there, left him hanging, headed for the door. The curiosity was too strong.
“What’s the other?” he called after her. She’d already opened the door partway, but stopped and looked back at him.
“He takes away one of your favorite toys, and then he takes an interest in you,” she said, and she flashed that heartmelting smile at him. “What’s your name, bartender?”
“Name’s Weston,” he answered.
“Well, Weston. Thank you for the drinks.”
“You’re welcome...” he trailed off, leaving room for her to offer her own name. She declined. And he knew it was silly to ask, but he couldn’t stop himself from trying. “I don’t suppose you got a name?”
“My name’s my own,” she said flatly. Then that smirk crept back up. “But most people just call me Trouble.”
FIFTEEN
When Wren first surveyed the twisted ruins across the open plain, he found himself completely overwhelmed by all the possibilities. At first, he had stood at the door looking back the way they’d come just like Haiku had told him to. But nothing he saw jumped out as an obvious refuge.
Everywhere he looked seemed equally sparse; all bad options and none better than any other. Having all choices was almost as bad as no choices. Maybe worse, because at least having no choice gave some direction. Wren adjusted his pack, more for something to do than because it was necessary. He did need to get moving, but the fear of heading the wrong way kept him frozen in place. And more than that, though he tried not to admit it to himself, there was a feeling of security there at the foot of that fortress. Even outside the tower, the strength of the place radiated outward and cut the sense of exposure. To leave it was to invite the malevolent eye of the wide open.
“Any action’s better than just standing around,” Wren heard Three say. Not quite audibly, but the thought formed so clearly in his mind he almost looked for him. “Get moving. You’ll find it.”
The weariness of his mind and body blended dreams with the real. But though Wren knew Three was dead and forever gone, his heart still responded to the confidence in the man’s voice, imagined or remembered.
You’ll find it.
Wren picked a direction more or less in line with the way he’d first come in and forced himself to leave the meager security at the foundation of the steel fortress. That security was an illusion anyway. The first few steps were always the hardest, he told himself. He’d feel better once he was on the move.
But as he walked across the barren plain and the distance between him and the building grew, fear swept in to fill the emptiness behind him. Whatever change of perspective he’d gained about the Strand on his way in had evaporated. Memories haunted his every step, images he’d suppressed awoke with vengeance and torment. Come nightfall, his mind told him, this empty stretch of dead land would be alive with the Weir. This was their land, their home. Wherever he hid, they would find him. He turned back towards the tower.
You’ll find it.
The phantom voice echoed amidst his thoughts, a stillness in the heart of the storm. Wren drew his knife and gripped it so hard it hurt. The blade was too small to save him, he was too weak to wield it well, but there was courage in the steel. And Haiku’s words as they left Greenstone too came back to him; back there was a life paralyzed by fear, nothing more.
He had already chosen. Now his job was to execute that choice. The fear was the way. And though he didn’t feel any safer or any braver, he turned his face away from the tower and into the fear, and with trembling steps, he advanced.
Once Wren had resolved himself, he made much better progress and his mind quieted. In ten minutes, he’d crossed the border of the dead space and reached where the first broken buildings rose. At first, he
wasn’t sure what to look for. Haiku had told him somewhere high, or somewhere small. That seemed too vague to be of any real help now. He wandered amongst the ruins, searching for a place that looked right. Was the second floor of a building high enough? Was something he could crawl through on his hands and knees small enough, or did Haiku mean something he had to get on his belly to enter? He spent maybe half an hour trying to think of all the things anyone had ever told him about being out in the open after dark, and using them to evaluate each option as it presented itself. Nothing seemed promising.
And then Wren realized he was going about it all wrong. He’d spent three nights traveling with Haiku, two of those outside the safety of a wayhouse. Maybe he didn’t have to think about it, maybe it was something he couldn’t figure out just by looking. Maybe he had to find something that felt right. And the only way to do that was to get inside some of the places he’d been passing by. It was obvious that nothing in the immediate area would do; there was hardly anything with two standing walls here. But armed with a new perspective, he doubled back.
Wren wandered without any specific direction, turning whichever way he felt like going. The first place he came to was a low one-story structure that had caved in on one side. The only entrance he could find was choked with debris, but there was a narrow gap that looked just big enough for him to squeeze through. He stood outside for a good two or three minutes trying to build up the courage to poke his head into that space. Ultimately, he couldn’t bring himself to do it, and moved on.
Wren wandered on as the sun slipped lower and the shadows grew longer, and his barely-suppressed anxiety threatened to bloom. About ten minutes later, a narrow three-story building caught his eye. Most of the front of the building was sheared off, but somehow the rooms inside were still in place, like some grotesque dollhouse. Both sides and the rear of the structure were still standing. The roof had collapsed and dumped a good portion of itself in the front; where it remained, it was deeply bowed. It was almost as if some giant hand had descended from the sky and stuck a finger right down the face of the structure. On the right side he saw an exterior staircase, rusting and skeletal, leading up to the second floor. He walked around that side to take a closer look.