by Scott Lynch
Presteign was the real flicker-show villain. Pei Pei had realized that long before Denson came for her. As bad as Denson was, he was still only a hired man.
Denson had left her alone while her grandmother lived. The old woman posed no physical threat, but one glance from her half-lidded eyes could paralyze a man like the sound of a rattlesnake.
Her magic was in her age. Pei Pei’s stepfather was already an old man when he married her mother. His own birth must have surprised a woman who surely believed herself beyond childbearing. Before Grandmother came to live with Pei Pei’s family in Sevenfork, her other sons and daughters had already succumbed, one by one, to the influenza or plain old age.
In the year she’d lived with them, Grandmother had little to say to Pei Pei. She squinted at her adopted grandchildren, her face an unreadable mass of brown wrinkles that reminded Pei Pei of something from the root cellar. Grandmother never met her son’s wife. Pei Pei suspected the only reason she agreed to come live with her youngest son was that his foreign bride had died the year previous.
Even so, Grandmother settled in at Sevenfork only long enough to persuade her son to follow the booming trade opportunities in Sedoa, far away on the western shore of the Shining Mirror. Pei Pei sensed her father was reluctant to leave this last bastion of civilization not out of sentimentality for her late mother—although surely he loved her—but out of fear.
Pei Pei found the wild tales of the Periphery exciting, reading every bit novel she could persuade her brother to smuggle into the house. The stories of mysterious Foxglove ladies, seductive mariachis, and noble Twin Eagle agents fired her imagination.
Grandmother’s ceaseless arguments eventually wore down her stepfather’s caution, and he agreed to the move. Ever frugal, he arranged for the family to join a wagon train rather than conveying them by train. It was, Pei Pei thought, the last mistake of a weak, miserly man. Pei Pei regretted harboring such an uncharitable thought, but she couldn’t help it. After Presteign’s men attacked, neither her father nor brother had lived to endure the harsh servitude that followed.
Corralled with the survivors, Pei Pei and her grandmother followed their captors to the dig, an excavation the size of a town. There was a barracks for the guards and overseers, although it smelled more like a saloon. The pen in which they kept the prisoners confined at night might as well have been a horse paddock, so crude were its amenities. The various guard stands, storage sheds, and powder shacks were the little houses in this unhappy community.
In the middle of it all stood a four-story scaffold of timber and iron. Around it the laborers had already constructed a portion of the steel skeleton of a giant airship. The bronze-colored hull of a gondola lay atop the scaffold, awaiting the return of its unrecovered parts.
What Presteign could not recover from the crash site, he shipped in on the railway he had built for this singular purpose. The tracks wound through the low mesas to lie beside the central crater. There rested Presteign’s personal quarters in the form of a fabulous train car.
Only after they labored for a week at the dig did Grandmother begin speaking to Pei Pei. Unlike the men, whose backs burned red and brown as they dug in the open sun, the women knelt under screens made from scraps of the airship skins. They were even permitted to talk, so long as their hands never stopped scraping caked dirt from the mechanisms salvaged from the crashed airships.
Grandmother only asked questions, so Pei Pei answered them. She told the old woman about her life before the doomed trip to Sedoa. She described her dance lessons, both those her stepfather had arranged and those she had begged from her brother. From Madame Bohvay she’d learned to dance. From Kong-sang she’d learned to sweep the legs from beneath an opponent.
Pei Pei surprised herself by telling her grandmother about the time she had put her brother’s lessons to good use. One of Kong-sang’s friends became fresh after he and his friends had offered to walk her home from the dance studio. When they herded her into a dead-end alley, she drove her erstwhile rapist into the hardpan and crushed his fingers under her heel. One of the others tried to capture her arms. The first kick stopped him in his tracks. The second drove the breath from his lungs and laid him on the ground.
The third man demonstrated his good sense. He turned tail and ran.
Only when her grandmother laughed did Pei Pei realize she would never have told the story if not for their desperate straits. She knew there was scant hope of escape, less of evading Denson’s cruel desires. Pei Pei wanted her grandmother to know she would not submit meekly. She liked to think the old woman was proud to hear it.
Less than a day after Grandmother died, the sifting pan still on her dusty lap, Denson came for Pei Pei.
“Come along now,” he said. “Else I’ll have to exert a little discipline.”
Pei Pei had heard that phrase before. Usually it came just before a beating for a man the guards decided was working too slow. When Presteign’s men said it to one of the women, it meant she was to follow him to one of the shacks. Those who refused were beaten and dragged inside anyway.
At first she kept her eyes on the ground and shuffled along beside him. As the vise of his grip slackened, she waited until they were farthest away from both the guards at the dig and the guards sitting in the shade of the overseer’s shack.
The first kick threw a leg out from under him. The second knocked away his hat and caused a tooth to leap from his mouth. He went down. She didn’t count the blows after that. Her eyes were hot with tears for her father, for Kong-sang, and for the old woman she had just begun to love.
By the time they pulled her away, Pei Pei had one of Denson’s guns. She was pulling the hammer with both thumbs when the men struck it away.
They dragged just outside of Presteign’s car. The men bound her to a chair. They glared at each other until the weakest broke eye contact, removed his hat, and climbed into the car to inform Presteign of the fractured discipline of the site. When the messenger returned, he took a pitying look at Pei Pei.
They turned the chair to make her watch as they spilled a canteen over Denson’s face. Sputtering, he emptied the canteen and dropped it on the ground at her feet before limping away. Pei Pei watched the last beads of moisture evaporate from the canteen’s mouth.
Hours later, she realized the cruelty of the gesture. Before sundown, she almost wished she had given in to Denson, if only to drink a cup of tepid water. By noon the next day, there was no “almost” about it. When the men loosed her bonds, her limbs were too weak to struggle, her mouth too parched to speak.
As they pulled her along behind the horses, a fat horsefly buzzed around her head, distracting her from thoughts of what they planned for her. In its way, that fly was the last mercy she’d enjoy.
They dragged her to a spot along the tracks. It was barely a mile from the dig, sheltered from sight by a low mesa ringed by withered junipers. Pei Pei knew only that they called the place Devil’s Platter. She’d heard the scream of the train engine come from this direction before its monthly delivery of provisions, tools, and fresh slaves.
Pei Pei began struggling when she saw the stain and strands of rope still bound to the spikes on either side of the rail.
Bloor, Presteign’s secretary awaited them beside a smoldering iron brazier. He squinted at them through a smeared monocle. His yellow waistcoat made Pei Pei think of a children’s book character she had once seen, a porcupine or a hedgehog. Four branding irons jutted from the brazier. Bloor removed one to test the heat. Its point glowed white.
The first call of the steam whistle startled him into dropping the iron brand. Two of Presteign’s guards mounted up and rode toward the plume of steam. The huff of the engine grew louder as the train came into view. Presteign’s men fired a shot to gain the engineer’s attention. A face of sooty whiskers leaned out to peer down the tracks. The man shook his beard until the men pointed their guns at him. The engine picked up steam.
“Listen good, girl,” said Bloor. “Cha
nces are the shock’ll kill you outright. If not, I’ll see that you don’t bleed out. Mister Presteign likes to exert a little discipline, but he’s merciful.”
The man choked, maybe on account of the coal smoke. Pei Pei decided he couldn’t swallow that last, ridiculous word.
As the engine came closer, Bloor kept talking. She couldn’t understand the rest of what the secretary said. Something about cauterizing the wounds, and that she had a choice. She could crawl back to the camp and beg Denson’s forgiveness. Or she could crawl out into the Thousand Mesas desert to die alone. He leaned close to her face and shouted over the engine’s whistle. “Maybe that’d be for the best.”
It didn’t matter. As the train thundered past, Pei Pei couldn’t make a decision. All she could do was match the whistle scream for scream.
Night Wolf stalking the hare, belly scraping over the flints. Low mounds of cactus crouching beneath the blurry moons. Thistles forming a new skin as the shredded rags of the old slough away on the stones.
Rushing Rabbit creeping along on forepaws.
Two paws.
Laughter rattling in a dry gullet. The breath gone before the rattling stops. The rattling is not inside. It’s nearby.
A dull blow slaps the thigh, another the hip. Rolling, reaching, sharp sting on the palm, the wrist. Fingers closing with unexpected strength. Teeth breaking warm, dry flesh to unleash the hot torrent beneath. Blood thick and wet, softening the dead tongue, the brittle lips. Tongue burning, numbness spreading from the dead stumps, coursing through the remains. Poison. Poison for sure.
The bleeding moons. Sucking the last moisture from the snake’s flesh, a desperate reflex that only intensifies the thirst. There must be more to drink, but there is no breaking open the cacti without a machete or the strength to lift a rock.
Crawling out of the thistles. Hands reaching, nails scraping, arms pulling, body dragging. The last of the warmth dies beneath the crust of the earth. The cold air falls still in anticipation. Stars fade and perish in the dawn.
The hunter comes.
Night Wolf struggles to rise but cannot stand tall enough to make a shadow. Rushing Rabbit can only crawl. They are not a wolf and a rabbit. They are a snake full of its own poison.
She is dying, but she does not die. The rising sun warms her blood and the poison in it. She could stop, let it take her, but a cold desire fills her heart. She needs more time. There is one more thing to do.
With every painful reach and grip and pull her thoughts become clearer. Legless and feverish, poisoned and parched, anointed in dust and blood, she creeps toward the west. Every desperate inch is a prayer, but not for salvation.
A shadow falls upon her. Through the desiccated earth she feels the thunder. Her body longs for the rain, but when she falls onto her back, all she sees is empty sky. The shadows are not above her but all around.
Their rounded bodies are shorter than her legless carcass, but so close they look like behemoths. She has seen them before, from a distance. They are reptilian herd beasts, greps.
The stampede shudders through the herd. An instant before the disturbance reaches her, she raises her arms. The gesture reminds her of reaching for her father—her real father, gone so long that all she remembers of his face are his black, black eyes and a missing tooth. How he would scoop her into his arms.
She reaches up again. Something lifts her and drags her along. She smells the reptilian musk and clings tight, looking past the grep’s shoulder at the sun. It is as pitiless as Presteign’s eye, but it is not the Hunter who stares back at her. It the Maiden, who smiles down a secret.
Pei Pei hugs the grep tighter, nuzzles its neck, and bites.
Each night, the music drew them out, one by one. Pei Pei watched them from the adobe hut in which she first awoke. There the boy had brought water and bathed her face every hour. Every fourth time he visited, a woman accompanied him to check her dressings, feed her a thin broth, and clean her body.
Or what was left of it.
The train had taken off her legs high on the shins. Yet when she awoke she saw that her legs were shorter still. Even the knees were gone.
The horror of the violation drove a hot spike into her heart. Her tears evaporated from the heat of her anger before they could run onto her cheeks. Her rage was too great for words. And so she did not speak, not to the boy who gave her water, nor to the woman who tended her.
They did not seem to mind. They spoke neither to her nor to each other in her presence, although she heard voices speaking Castalan when they left the hut. She heard other voices as well, men, women, and children. She saw none of them until the sawbones visited.
He was a pale man with limp yellow hair and white stubble for a beard, but he spoke to the others in what sounded like perfect Castalan. When he spoke to Pei Pei in that language, she shook her head until he introduced himself simply as Doc.
In Sevenfork, there had never been a need to understand Castalan. Most of what Pei Pei had learned were swears coaxed out of Kong-sang. The thought of her dead brother cracked something that had hardened inside her. For the first time in memory she wept.
Doc did not touch her, but he lay his hand within reach of hers. He was missing two fingers. For a moment she almost took ruined hand, but instead she tried to calm her racing heart while he examined the stumps of her legs. Instead of the seared meat left by Bloor’s irons, she saw tidy stitches on either side of her legs. She could feel another line beneath, where the surgeon had folded her skin over like the end of a gift-wrapped present.
He’d had to amputate the stumps, Doc explained, because the flesh had gone sour. The alternative was to let the rot climb up her legs until it took the rest of her as well. He was sorry, he said, but he’d meant only to save her life. His apology sounded like a speech he’d had occasion to practice.
The good news, he told her, was that her fever had passed. He was afraid she’d been poisoned, too, judging from the snake bites he’d found. How she’d survived those he could not explain. In fact, he said, he couldn’t understand how she’d survived any of her ordeal—the amputation, the thirst and deprivation, or the trampling of a grep stampede. A groepero from the village found her in the herd’s wake. He’d meant to fetch her body for burial and nearly died of shock when he heard her speak.
Pei Pei asked Doc what she’d said.
Just one word, said Doc. “Denson.”
When she was alone, Pei Pei listened to the sounds outside. From a distant building she heard a clamor and guessed it came from a smithy. Sometimes she heard a whistle or the clatter of metal plates. Other times she heard the grunts of men laboring. She couldn’t imagine what kind of labor it must be, but the rhythmic clack of wood made her drowsy.
Mostly, she slept. That was all for the good, said Doc as he felt her wrist to measure the pulse of her heartbeat. Most healing comes from sleep, he said. When he left, Pei Pei noticed for the first time a pair of wooden blocks resting beside the rattan chair. Affixed to each was a sturdy handle wrapped in thick cotton. They were like no tool she had seen before. She wondered whether Doc, the boy, or the woman had left them.
No one else visited her, but Pei Pei regained enough strength to sit up during the day. Through the window of her room she could see at least four other buildings nearby, as well as a screw-driven well drawn by a scabby burro led by the boy. Pei Pei heard the others call him to other chores. Beto was his name.
Most of the villagers appeared to be farmers, but the brown fields beyond the farther house suggested they eked out a meager existence that way. A few men rode out in the morning. Sometimes they returned with a grep or two. Pei Pei watched Doc slaughter and drain them of blood, which he captured in milk cans. Afterward, two women blanched the carcass before separating the hide and butchering the meat.
The rest of the day was filled with routine work, except for a few hours at midday when everyone retreated to shelter for a rest. It was after sundown that the village truly came to life.
Beto was always the first to arrive. He brought the mariachi’s guitar, almost too large for him to carry, and laid it reverently beside the low stone wall ringing the fire pit. Sometimes he led the mariachi to the fire, lit a cigar from the flames, and placed it in the man’s mouth. Other times he stood upon the low clay wall and shouted, “Erasmo! Erasmo!” until the man appeared.
At a nod from Erasmo, the boy removed the guitar from its case and settled it across his knees. His fingers were too short to span the fret, but he could manage two strings at a time. Erasmo offered instructions, and the boy formed a few simple chords. When Erasmo was satisfied, he spat out the cigar and whistled the melody to Beto’s accompaniment.
The villagers arrived as soon as their chores allowed. The men came first, sharing cigars and passing a jug until the women arrived. Most nights, the other strangers joined them one by one. They were the ones that fascinated Pei Pei.
The Widow always arrived alone, her face veiled beneath a black tasseled hat. She walked with the stately care of a matron arriving at her own centennial. No matter the temperature, she wore spidery black lace from head to toe, except for the ivory colored fan that dangled from her wrist. She never spoke above a murmur, but Pei Pei judged by the smooth skin of her hands that she was not old.
No one dared sit near her, except Invincible Tsau. Whenever the widow arrived, Tsau stood and doffed his well-worn hat. Beneath its brim, something glimmered bright in the firelight. He often spoke too loud, but not in anger. Even though no one else came armed to the fire, he kept a rifle near to hand. It was the most splendid weapon Pei Pei had ever seen. Upon its stock she saw the famous Twin Eagle embossed in nickel.
Usually there was no sign of the Tinker, but those nights when he appeared were the loudest. He stood barely taller than Beto, although his green stovepipe hat gave him almost another foot in height. Beneath the curling brim, yellowed gray tufts of hair curled up in all directions. When he doffed his hat, Pei Pei saw scars on the bald top his misshapen head. When the Tinker spoke, she couldn’t understand a word he said. He jabbered and howled, but the others responded as though he’d said sensible words—a few of which did slip from his tongue from time to time. One slug of whisky was all it took to set him capering to the music.