TALES OF THE FAR WEST

by Scott Lynch

  Erasmo soon joined the Tinker. The first time he stood to dance and his serape stirred, Pei Pei realized he too was an amputee. His arms had been severed between the shoulder and elbow. Seeing his injury made Pei Pei’s stumps ache.

  The mariachi’s lack of arms did not diminish his grace. He stamped the ground, turned and stood at perfect attention. His gaze slid over the faces of the audience, his eyes lingering on the women until they giggled and turned away. Then his feet exploded in a complex rhythm while his body barely moved. Slowly his body turned while the patter of his feet outraced Beto’s guitar.

  The others clapped, cheering the dancers until the first song was done. Then the villagers joined them, dancing and singing around the fire while Pei Pei remained outside the circle of light and laughter.

  At first she pitied herself, trapped in bed without the legs she used to have. Then she realized she was not alone in. Even before Erasmo, she had seen amputees before. Most were men who clutched bricks on which they walked with their hands. The pitiful things dragged their stumps along the boards, begging for bits or food or a drink of whisky.

  Pei Pei finally recognized the blocks for what they were. She could grasp the handles and pull herself along like those crippled men. Nobody had the guts to tell her so, or mabye they had been left there as a cruel joke.

  No, that did not seem right. The people who looked in on her had shown her only kindness. Nothing about it seemed pitying, either. Pei Pei thought of how the old Doc had stopped himself from taking her hand but left his nearby there in case she chose to take it.

  Much as she longed to sit beside the fire, Pei Pei could not bring herself to crawl. She did not want the others looking at her the way she had looked at those crippled men.

  She wondered why no one offered to carry her out. No one even asked whether she wanted to join them. Instead, they left those blocks. Maybe they hadn’t wanted to offer her a hand that she might strike away in pride. Instead, they had left one nearby. It was up to her to choose whether to take it.

  She threw the sheet off and looked at her ruined body. The absence of legs no longer shocked her, but her thinness did. She feared she would not have the strength to stand after leaving the bed. But she reminded herself she had crawled halfway across Thousand Mesas, or so it felt. In truth she had no idea how far she was from Presteign’s dig.

  She raised herself up on her hands—there was still some strength in her arms—and pushed her thighs over the side of the bed. Trying to lower herself onto the floor, she slipped and fell hard upon her stumps. The pain dazed her, but the heat that flushed her face was not from despair. It was anger. There was a fury engine inside her, as surely as there was one somewhere beneath the dig.

  Pei Pei dragged herself over to the blocks and pulled them down from the chair. She set them on either side of her and gripped them as she might handle the bar at Madame Beauvais’ studio. She raised herself up, shifted her weight, and stepped forward with her right hand.

  It was easier than she’d feared, but her strength waned. The extra height she gained from the blocks was all she needed to walk without crawling. Even so, with her weight on her arms, every step felt a hundred times harder than it had legs. Every time she moved forward, just a few inches, she reminded herself she had crawled much farther without the blocks.

  As she emerged from the hut, no one by the fire noticed her. She hesitated for a moment, afraid of seeing pity or disgust as they turned to see a freak approach. Then she saw Erasmo’ gaze lock as he twirled in place. Each time his head whipped around, his eyes found hers. His chin rose as he saw her coming, not in a disdainful gesture but in one that Pei Pei had seen far too rarely.

  Erasmo looked at her with admiration.

  His approval sped her gait. As her walking block touched the first stone around the fire pit, the Widow turned her head. She did not look directly at Pei Pei—indeed, Pei Pei could not imagine how the woman could see through such a thick veil even in daylight.

  Invincible Tsau noticed her next, already smiling as he turned to look at her. He did not offer her a hand, as a gallant should, but with a bow he surrendered his seat for her. Pei Pei struggled to pull herself onto the wall.

  As if that motion was their cue, all the people turned their full attention to Pei Pei.

  “We are so happy you chose to join us,” said the Widow. Her voice was softer than the breeze, warmer than the fire.

  “Everyone here has good reason to hate Presteign,” said Erasmo. He looked longingly at the cigars that lay beside him, but the boy had long since gone to bed.

  Pei Pei took a cigar and placed it between his lips.

  “I can guess your offense,” the mariachi said to her. “For punching a guard, they let the train take my arms.”

  Invincible Tsau lit Erasmo’s cigar. “I overheard Bloor talking with Presteign.”

  Not for the first time, the Widow laid a hand on Tsau’s arm. The rifleman lowered his voice whenever she reminded him, but invariably his volume rose as he became excited. “They do not care so much about the airship itself but about its weapons. I tried to learn more by asking the other prisoners.”

  Doc nodded as if to confirm the tale.

  “Another prisoner told Denson I was asking questions. Presteign decided I’d heard enough for one lifetime.” Tsau cupped his shriveled ears. “Steam whistle on either side, all day long. In my head, the whistle never stopped. I thank the heavens that it did not drive me mad.”

  “No such luck for the Tinker,” said Doc. He indicated the little man lying beside the fire, arms curled around a whisky jug. “He was one of Presteign’s men, until he refused to build a collar to shock the prisoners. They put his head in a vice. Funny thing is, they didn’t squeeze out all of his wits. He’s the one who freed Tsau and the Widow, because the guards considered him harmless.”

  “Harmless enough,” said Doc, stretching his remaining fingers. “Long as you keep him away from the dynamite.”

  The Tinker made a sound in his sleep and stirred like a dog dreaming of a chase. Doc took the opportunity to retrieve the whisky jug from the little man’s arms.

  Pei Pei turned to the woman in black. She noticed that the Widow’s hat matched the mariachi’s cape, although it suited her black lace gown well enough. “What did Presteign take from you?”

  “My eyes,” she said in a husky whisper.

  “How can that be? You walk without a cane,” said Pei Pei. “You saw me when I came out of the hut.”

  “No,” said the Widow. She reached beneath her veil as if to remove a necklace. Instead she withdrew a strange apparatus of bone and wire. “I heard you. While wearing this device, I could hear you breathing even before you left your bed.”

  “The Tinker works wonders,” said Erasmo.

  Pei Pei pointed at Tsau, noticing that he looked at her mouth as she spoke. “You also turned as I approached. If Presteign had you deafened, how did you hear me?”

  “I did not hear you,” Tsau grinned and tilted his hat back. Pei Pei saw a pair of curving mirrors affixed to the brim. “I saw you.”

  “But how can this Tinker be so clever? He acts like a little child.”

  “Yes,” said Erasmo. “But also sometimes no. He may behave like a child, but he likes to play, too. And he likes to win.”

  “Just don’t let him play with dynamite,” grumbled Doc. He tipped the jug over his shoulder and took a swig.

  Tsau nodded. “The Tinker saw that I had taken to turning my head all the time, to see behind me what I could no longer hear.” His voice grew loud again, and the Widow nudged him. “He said I could use some eyes in the back of my head. When I told him that’s exactly what I needed, he came back a few days later with these mirrors for my hat. Now I don’t even need to turn my head to know someone’s sneaking up on me.”

  The queer wonder of it all caught Pei Pei’s breath. While it was marvelous that the Tinker had helped these other crippled people, it wasn’t enough.

  “Why has no
one told the marshals that Presteign is capturing all these people to use as slaves?”

  Doc shook his head. “The marshals work for men like Presteign. They serve the powerful, not the weak.”

  “But what about the Twin Eagles?” said Pei Pei. She looked at Tsau, who cocked his head. She repeated the question, and he saw what she said.

  “First thing I did when I could ride again was report to the Aagency,” he said. “The trouble is that no one can hire the Agency for such a risky operation. Even if all the families of all the people he’s kidnapped pooled their money, it wouldn’t be enough to persuade the Agency to go up against a man like that. For even suggesting it, I put myself out of a job. All I could get out of them was a new rifle before they cut me loose.”

  “And yet you came back here,” said Pei Pei. “Why?”

  “From what we can understand from the Tinker, it won’t be much longer before Presteign finishes his operation,” said Doc. “Once he can fly off in his airship, he’ll have what he came for. He’ll have no more use for his prisoners.”

  “He’ll kill them all,” said the Widow. “And knowing Presteign, he will do so in the cruelest manner possible.”

  “Until then, we remain here and hope one day enough of Presteign’s prisoners will escape that we can turn them against him,” said Doc.

  “One day? Hope?” said Pei Pei. “Every one of us is miracle simply because we survived. How many folks will die while we wait for them to escape?”

  “What are you saying?” said Doc. Pei Pei sensed mockery in his voice.

  “I’m saying—” It was too absurd to consider. Apart from the villagers, they had a blind woman, a deaf gunslinger, an armless mariachi, an insane dwarf, and a legless dancer.

  “Go on,” said Erasmo.

  “Someone must say it,” said the Widow. “No one has had the courage to say it.”

  Pei Pei looked back at Doc. In his eyes was a twinkle, but it wasn’t full of mockery as she’d first through. It was a gleam of hope.

  “I say we go back to the dig. I say we free everybody.”

  “And when Presteign and his men try to stop us?”

  “We exert a little discipline.”

  It was Pei Pei’s turn to mind the Tinker. Doc was serious about taking turns keeping the odd little man away from the dynamite he’d smuggled out of Presteign’s dig.

  “The little fellow can do marvelous things with the few scrap parts we’ve found in the area,” said Doc. “And sometimes he needs a little boom powder to make ’em work. But we got to keep track of the powder less he were to leave something dangerous lying around.”

  They sat just outside the workshop, watching the Tinker through open panels that let a breeze pass through the cluttered interior. The little man smoothed a length of wood with a carpenter’s plane. He blew away the curling scraps, measured the thickness with a pair of calipers, and set the wood aside. For a moment he appeared confused. He checked his watched, peered out at the sun, and waddled over to a worktable to inspect a regiment of screws, washers, and bolts organized in ranks by size.

  “What is he doing?” Pei Pei whispered.

  Doc tongued the wad of tobacco to a new position in his cheek. “Sometimes he forgets what he’s doing, moves on to another project, maybe three or four others, before remembering the first one.”

  “Why don’t you remind him?”

  “Don’t help,” said Doc. “Confuses him all the worse, more often than not. Best to let him take his own path, meandering as it may be.”

  “He seems so gentle. It is hard to imagine he was working for Presteign.”

  “That gentleness could be why they butted heads. From as much as I can understand of the Tinker’s stories, I reckon the weapons on the ship Presteign’s after were something special. Some Steam Baron had it built a few years back. Spent half his fortune, but it got the job done. Still, the other Steam Barons had their spies on this fellow. When they heard what he’d made, they tried to buy it from him. When he wouldn’t sell, they sent their own ships to steal or destroy it before he could turn it against them.” He turned his head and spat. Pei Pei grimaced, remembering the last time a man spat so close to her. Doc paused, noticing her expression. He shook his head and didn’t ask about it. “Anyhoo, I get the impression this particular airship was armed with some kind of lighting cannon. Heavenly powerful. Like whatever it was burned down Diamond Spur.”

  Pei Pei shivered in the afternoon heat. She’d heard the legend of Silas Lash, greatest of all Engineers, one of the Peerless Seven. Whatever the people of Diamond Spur had done to earn his wrath, the city ruins still smoldered thirty years later.

  “Then it’s even more important we stop Presteign before he can use such a weapon.”

  Doc nodded, but he stared an unspoken question at Pei Pei.

  “What?” she said, irritated by his expression.

  “Is that your real reason for rounding up this posse?” he said. “Or is it revenge you have in mind?”

  “You think I just want to kill Presteign because of what he did to me?”

  “Maybe,” said Doc. “But it wasn’t his name you said when that groepero picked you up.”

  Pei Pei bit back her reply. Denson was the name she wanted to spit on the ground.

  The Widow walked along one side of the target room, little more than a roof on four posts with a single wall lined with straw dummies. Invincible Tsau pulled a string, ringing a bell above the third target.

  The Widow flicked her fan. A steel dart quivered in the ring around the bull’s eye.

  Pei Pei shook her head. She was no longer surprised to see the Widow strike her target, but the accuracy still astonished her. More than that, her constant poise inspired an unexpected pang of envy. Despite the woman’s disfigurement, her husky voice and assured demeanor charmed the men. At first Pei Pei assumed the Widow had accepted Tsau as her courtier. If true, that did nothing to stop the other men from doting on her.

  Pei Pei felt ugly as she followed the Widow on her crude “shoes.” A few weeks earlier, someone replaced the wooden blocks with bricks. It was a struggle moving them the first few days, but she grew stronger. The trick, she learned, was not gripping the handles too tightly. Instead, she balanced her weight on each palm, fingers loose around the grip.

  Sometimes Pei Pei resented the devices the Tinker made for the others. When she asked why the Tinker had given her the marvelous fan as well as the hearing device hidden beneath her veil, the Widow smiled and opened the fan to reveal its colorful face. Painted upon the silk was a scene of imperial courtesans lounging beside a willow-steeped pool.

  “This heirloom has been passed down among the women of my order since the time of Chessa By Damn.”

  “You’re a Foxglove woman!” Pei Pei had read countless stories about the mysterious order of female assassins.

  The Widow nodded. “I was sent to spy on Presteign. Before I could get close enough, one of his men intercepted my orders. They were encoded, but Bloor deciphered them.”

  Pei Pei didn’t need to hear the rest to know Presteign decided the Widow would read no more messages.

  Outside the village, Tsau took aim at a distant cactus. He fired, but Pei Pei saw no impact.

  She held herself up on the twin rails of the nearby fence. At the Tinker’s direction, Tsau and a couple of the village men had rebuilt them as a pair of parallel bars. Using her hands to walk their length, Pei Pei could build her arm strength while becoming as nimble on her hands as she’d been on her feet.

  Erasmo stepped in front of the rifleman and shook his head. “The wind shifted.” Tsau stared at him, so he repeated the words.

  “Oh,” said Tsau, watching Erasmo’s mouth. He scooped up a handful of dust and observed how it spilled through his fingers. “There are so many ways to listen,” he shouted. “It is harder now for me to understand why some people choose not to hear. The Agency, for instance. They could do something about Presteign, but all they hear is money.”

&
nbsp; Pei Pei swung beneath one of the bars, folding herself over the next and letting her momentum bring her all the way around to perch atop them.

  “What were you doing at Presteign’s dig, anyway?” She winced when she realized she was shouting.

  “I was searching for a missing family,” Tsau yelled back. Erasmo nudged his foot, and Tsau lowered his voice. “Found ’em.”

  He fired again. A bud the size of a man’s ear flew off the cactus.

  Erasmo fought the wooden dummy. To Pei Pei, it looked more like a hat rack than a person. Erasmo kicked each of the limbs as quickly as she could have struck them with her fists. She had seen him kick a target a foot above his head without leaping. He hit each limb of the dummy too quickly for her eyes to follow. He repeated the pattern three times before changing the order of his routine.

  “You could have been a dancer,” said Pei Pei.

  “I am a dancer. Both a lover and a fighter, as the young men say.” said Erasmo. His smile faded beneath his pencil-thin mustache, which Pei Pei had seen the boy shave for him. She wondered how old Erasmo was. When he smiled, he looked younger. His eyes reflected the mischief she had so often seen in Kong-sang’s eyes.

  “I meant, how did you come to be at Presteign’s camp?” She thrust her hands into the pot of sand. Her fingers bled less than they had the day before. Her skin was hardening.

  Erasmo did not pause in his attacks. He struck the dummy with his toe, his heel, either side of his foot. “My brother Blaz went to work for this man Presteign. Hearing of his reputation, my mother sent me to bring him home.”