by Andrew Post
Thirty-six years later, the two women looked like framed pictures mounted side by side in the vanity mirrors. It was like this that Anoushka saw how time had made its mark. Lines, scars, Anoushka’s skunk stripe, Kylie-Nae’s suns-beaten cheeks and nose—she may as well have been one big freckle now.
“It’s good seeing you,” Kylie-Nae said to Anoushka behind her, through the mirror. “Must’ve gotten my letter.”
“I did. And it’s good seeing you too.”
Anoushka considered giving Kylie-Nae a hug but hesitated. If she wanted one, she would’ve offered. Therefore, they remained facing each other for a moment, Anoushka standing and Kylie-Nae sitting in this too-small space, both with arms out, ready but neither moving to complete the embrace. Clearing her throat, Kylie-Nae bobbed her head toward the posters tacked up about the caravan. One—with exaggerated biology—featured Cherry Bomb with sheriff’s stars over her nipples.
“Took me a while to decide to send the thrill-rag,” Kylie-Nae said, “but figured I like adoration; maybe you would too.”
“Didn’t make us look like idiots, at least,” Anoushka said. “I’ll give him that.”
Anoushka drew one of the many pistols from Kylie-Nae’s gun belt. There was a drum instead of a breach—no flint and pan. She’d heard about the advancement in ballistics but never held one of these newfangled revolvers. “Nice gear.”
“Thanks. If it bangs, I’ll probably like it. Sorry. Takes a minute to turn her off. But, hey, if you wanna hang around, we could meet up with Russ. Get drinks, some chow. Heard they’re gonna have chili for us tonight. Friends eat free.”
“I’d like that,” Anoushka said.
“So who’re the dorks outside? They look like they got lost en route to a costume party.”
To keep the bard outside, Anoushka had promised she’d try to remember the entire exchange with Kylie-Nae for his notes.
“That’s Ruprecht LeFevre the Second and his assistant.”
“From Associated Bards?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re shitting me.”
Anoushka grinned. “I am not.”
“All right, maybe I did send the book thinking it might . . .”
Before Kylie-Nae’s excitement could overflow, Anoushka said, “We still need the others.”
It still brimmed over. “But we’re getting the squad back together?”
“Potentially. Like I said, we still need the others. Peter, specifically. They want this next to be his story.”
“Oh, so we’re just dog shit?” Kyle-Nae shouted over her shoulder to be heard by the bard who was likely pressing his ear to the door. Sighing, she turned back to Anoushka. “I don’t know if he knows—or you—but Peter got Breakshale, Annie.”
Gods, to hear that nickname again. Erik and her fellow tree choppers had only ever called her Anoushka. Maybe she’d insisted.
“I know,” Anoushka said. “But Ruprecht sees an angle in it. Redemption.”
“Redemption for Peter, the wife killer? And I mean, that doesn’t speak too highly of our justice system if they’re just gonna let him out again.” Anoushka must’ve made a face. “They are releasing him, right?”
“Well . . .”
“You cannot be serious. It’s fucking Breakshale.”
“I know.”
Kylie-Nae, opening up the wardrobe, looked over clothes that looked far more like Kylie-Nae’s than Cherry Bomb’s. Dungarees, pearl-snap check shirts, and bandannas she’d often worn in the tank days to keep her hair under control. She slapped hangers aside, cursing under her breath. “Breakshale. Good gods.”
“We’re needed,” Anoushka said, “and I know we can do what needs doing. I’m sure Breakshale made that notoriety themselves, like a nanny talking up the bogeyman.”
“Except Breakshale is where the bogeymen all get sent.”
I should remember that line for Ruprecht, Anoushka thought, scolding herself for it at once. Giving her friend time to mull, Anoushka tried out Kylie-Nae’s face cream. While rubbing it in, she noticed on the vanity, among the piles of fan letters (most of them flowery-worded proposals), a small picture frame. A little girl, her thick spectacles making her peepers magnified enormous. Watercolor touches gave a powdery pink to otherwise monochrome cheeks and a familiar incandescent goldenness to her fountain of pin curls. Those huge eyes: vibrant sky blue.
“Fan of yours?” Anoushka said.
Kylie-Nae wriggled into second-skin dungarees. “Hmm? Oh, that’s my Molly.”
While they had kept up with infrequent spurts of correspondence, Kylie-Nae had never mentioned any baby. No real surprise; Kylie-Nae dropped in the detail of working at the circus but omitted that she’d become the star of the thing. It was a deluge or a drop with her. All or nothing. Anoushka never thought they’d be on the kind of terms where she’d only get drops.
Kylie-Nae buttoned her blue-and-red plaid shirt, leaving half undone. “How about you?”
“Kids? No.”
“Don’t need to say it like that. It’s not so bad being a mom. Though I scarcely qualify.”
“So who’s she . . . ?” Anoushka would’ve assumed straight-out Molly was staying here but hadn’t seen a second bed or any dolls.
“Her papa,” Kylie-Nae said.
“See her often?”
“When I can. Him and his mum are looking after her. Got a fella?”
“For a while.”
“Cheater? Boozer?”
“No, it just . . . didn’t work out.” Before, this would’ve been hours of Anoushka unpacking the whole sad ordeal. Maybe if Kylie-Nae agreed to rejoin, that awkwardness would melt away and it’d be like old times. Anoushka did want to get all of the frustrating business of Erik Redmondt off her chest. Heartbreak had been a common topic between them, and Anoushka had known no better listener than Kylie-Nae.
Tying on a bandanna, Kylie-Nae poked a strand of loose hair under. She stepped over, spurs clinking. “You wanna ask if I told. If I was the one who sold our troll story.”
They knew each other too well to effectively lie, especially at close proximity and with this many electric lights shining on Anoushka’s face.
“I didn’t,” Kylie-Nae said in her stalling silence. “And I never would. Not without talking to you first.”
“I know. I went there to tell him off. He had no right to print the story without my permission but . . .” Again, lying was impossible.
“If we all got together out at your place, you know the night wouldn’t be over before we were getting Joan back on her treads. Even just a quick spin around the hills. Shit, even then it’d be hard to stop. I mean, I like being Cherry Bomb enough.” Kylie-Nae scanned the posters and fan mail and racks of costumes. “But waferboard orcs are a crap substitute. And last I heard, Burned Mountain’s the new line, yeah?”
Anoushka nodded.
“That the contract?”
“Some necromancer,” Anoushka said. “But get this: he goes by the Baron of Decay.”
“Is he an actual baron?”
Anoushka bit her lip. “A file clerk.”
“But he just up and decides to call himself one?” Kylie-Nae snorted. “A baron of decay? What’s that even mean? He doesn’t brush often? Okay, well, does this . . . does this—heh—guy have a real name, or is that just what Mister and Missus Decay named their little puddin’?”
“Lyle.”
“Shut up.”
“Lyle Eichelberger.”
“Oh my gods!” Kylie-Nae said, doubling over. She had an infectious laugh; it’d landed them in detention more than once.
“So,” Kylie-Nae said, serious, “any ideas on springing Peter?”
“A few, yeah.”
“Gonna be tough.”
“Yeah.”
“Still, beats punching a clock. Say, what about Joan? How is the ol’ bitch?”
“Creaky.”
“Well, who’re we to pick?”
“You look good,” Anoushka said.
“Yeah, I do. And so do you. Just teasing.”
“Her cannon can still spark.”
Kylie-Nae grinned even wider. “No stopping her, is there?”
Anoushka’s heart fluttered, full. “Nope. Not at all.”
They hugged.
* * *
“Ruprecht LeFevre, Kylie-Nae Browne. Kylie, Ruprecht.”
Kylie-Nae pinched her shirt’s hem and gifted the bard a curtsy. “Charmed.”
Perhaps missing the sarcasm of her gesture, Ruprecht appeared genuinely flattered. “Will you be joining us?”
Kylie-Nae glanced Anoushka’s way, smiled. “Absolutely.”
“Splendid,” Ruprecht said. “Markus, a contract for Miss Browne.” The assistant raced off into the waist-high grass filled with cricketsong. “We had time to go into town,” Ruprecht explained. “I sent a deet off to the monastery. We’ll see if Zuther accepts the invite. I told him to wait for us in Yarnigrad, if he’s interested. I also spoke to an old friend who’ll be accompanying us. She was in quite the state, so I told her to swing by once she regains her land legs.”
“Who’s this?” Kylie-Nae asked.
“A friend,” Ruprecht said. “She’ll consult.”
“On?”
“Magick.”
“If we’re going to be dragging along some junkie wizardess, I’d like a name.”
“Junkie? No no no. The elixirs, they aid”—he twisted his hand around—“a practitioner’s grasp or some such. I’ll have her explain.”
“Huh. I thought I’ve heard otherwise,” Kylie-Nae said. “Thrusting Staffs, if I remember the title right.”
“One of Associated Bards’ first published works,” Ruprecht said, his back straightening. “Reader, are we?”
Kylie-Nae shrugged. “Eh.”
“I heard it was dismissed as cheap erotica,” Ruprecht said, “but I feel I did give a fly-on-the-wall look into the world of sorcerers and their covens—when I could fit them between the orgy scenes, of course.”
“Lodielle Springborn is a train wreck,” Kylie-Nae said, “if her portrayal wasn’t given too much creative license.”
“Either way, it might be sound having her along,” Anoushka cut in. “I don’t know magick from my own ass, and I don’t think you do either.”
“I don’t,” Kylie-Nae admitted and uncoiled the knot she’d made of her arms. “But I do know I need a drink. Gods permitting, I’ll make it there without mounting the first breathing thing I happen to pass.”
Ruprecht looked at Anoushka askance.
She shrugged.
Kylie-Nae marched off, high steps through the tall field grass. “Let’s go find Russ. He’ll shit when he sees you’re here. But don’t mention his wife, okay?”
“Something happen to Tara?” Anoushka said, following.
“Yeah. Something happened, all right. She’s married to somebody else.”
Behind the big top squatted a second pitch, a dark canvas tent. Inside, it was smoky, and a heavy spiciness hung in the air. Only candles for light. At cobbled-together tables, Anoushka saw the team of bear tamers playing Mumbly Peg, a trio of roustabouts engaged in a serious round of Usurp, and a thoroughly tattooed man behind a bar ladling bowls of chili from a giant cook pot and filling steins from a giant cask.
The same band that’d aided Cherry Bomb with her performance had moved their instruments here. With shrieking electric lute, crying violin, and the galloping beat on a snare, they sang-shouted:
Have ye ’eard about the big strong man?
He lives in a caravan.
Have ye ’eard about the Ironbeird/Joplin fight?
Oh, blazes whatta night.
Ye can take all the heavyweights ye got.
We’ve got a lad who can beat the whole lot.
He used to ring the bells in the belfry.
Now he’s gonna whoop the Tiny Fighties.
That was me cousin Russell. (What’s he got?)
A row of forty medals on his chest. (For big tussles!)
He’s got an arm, like a leg
And he won’t hesitate drainin’ yer kegs.
No need of words, he don’t suffer any shit
And he’s got a punch that’ll sink a battleship. (Orc ship!)
Cracking knuckles in the corner of a ring fenced by fuzzy ship ropes, a dwarf stood in a striped unitard. In the opposite corner, the mob of halfling clowns huddled to confer on tactics. With a flick of a sausage finger, the impatient dwarf made his cigar stub into an arching orange comet, which burst to sparks against the closest halfling. “What’s to debate, short-arses? Come have at me or run back to ye hairy-feeted mothers!”
Baited, the halflings charged. Piling onto the cackling dwarf, he was buried under colorful costumes and oversized shoes. No true blows, Anoushka noticed, just timed stomps on the mat to provide percussion sound effects. From under the mound, Russell let out a triumphant roar—and burst free, scattering the diminutive jesters.
Something on one of those thick digits as he continued to rain make-believe blows caught the candlelight, flashing. A gold band.
“I thought you said Russ and Tara split up,” Anoushka said to Kylie-Nae, standing ringside.
“I did,” Kylie-Nae said. “But you know Russ. Never was exactly great at letting shit go.”
The halflings avenging one of their “dead” brothers—lying on his back with eyes crossed and tongue lolling out his painted mouth—clambered atop the dwarf again. As Russell was accosted by a flurry of pretend punches, his gaze met with Anoushka’s through the ropes. He lost his concentration and was dragged down, having to declare, “I submit,” before they’d let him up.
Russell merrily bellowed, “Cap’n Annie!” ducking through the ropes. Burying his face in her belt buckle, Russell lifted her off her feet without a hint of struggle—his arms were still as thick as horse necks. Anoushka, laughing and a little embarrassed, patted the dwarf on the head until he put her down.
He stepped back from her. “Gods, look at ye! Gorgeous as ever—I mean, ahem, ye still cut quite a grand image, Cap’n.”
“It’s good to see you too, Russ.”
“I see ye’ve met our resident quick-draw queen,” he said, smiling Kylie-Nae’s way. “What brings ye . . .” he started before noticing the two unfamiliar faces at the tent’s fringes . . . trying to not draw attention to themselves and failing spectacularly. “They with ye?”
“Yeah. They’re with Associated Bards.”
Russell faced Anoushka, craning back to meet her eyes. “That best mean what I hope it means. Otherwise, I’m like to become right depressed, Cap’n.”
“What would you like it to mean, Mister Russell?”
The dwarf ran a stony hand down his face and tugged his braided beard. Dwarves let only two things show: anger and joy. He gave one: not anger. “I’d like for it to mean that this, right now, is more than a visit.”
Ruprecht, apparently able to read lips, approached. “Here’s the contract.” The bard shot daggers at Anoushka and Kylie-Nae. “We need to get on the road.”
“Oh, come on, it’s been six years,” Kylie-Nae said. She slapped down two half-julas for the tattooed barman. Ruprecht was ready to accept a drink and a bowl of gore-red chili as she returned, balancing the bounty on her arms, but she dispensed them only to Anoushka and Russell—keeping the last bowl and stein for herself. She winked. “Sorry, purse’s spent.”
“Cute,” Ruprecht said and went to go get his own, Markus following close behind. The assistant was receiving some untoward come-hithers from a gaggle of bustier-crushed contortionists who were maybe giving him feelings he wasn’t yet comfortable addressing.
The dwarf pulled a chair over to a spare table—an old door banged down over some sawhorses. Anoushka and Kylie-Nae joined him.
The chili was spicy and good, but the ale was thick as mud; Anoushka choked on what may’ve been a twig.
Russell didn’t lift his spoon. “I hope ye read this thing before givin’ it yer signatures,” he
said, removing his reading glasses. “This is for a thrill-rag called Dark Against Dark: The Redemption of Peter Elloch.”
Kylie-Nae leaned in. “We’re gonna break Peter out and be a squad again. Annie’s already gotten us a job, too.”
“Break Peter out? Why? That shite’s got what he deserved.” To Anoushka it sounded overpracticed; Russell’s stale anger rang halfhearted; old lines.
“He’s to be this tale’s hero,” Ruprecht said, sitting, drink in hand. One sip. He frowned and set the stein aside, far, afraid it might sprout legs and force a second sip on him.
Russell glared down the table at the bard in his fancy silks and lace so free of mud and blood. “I don’t like ye. Yer shifty. Like ye’re tryin’ real hard to sell something.”
“I am trying to sell something, Mister Ironbeird,” the bard said. “All of you, to the reading public. Peter Elloch may be the hero of this particular tale, but who doesn’t adore a story’s loveable sidekicks?”
“Sidekicks?” Russell rocked the table, bumping it with his belly and shooting to his feet. “I’ll kick yer side until ye shit out yer ribs!”
To the other circus workers, the heated game of Usurp became secondarily interesting. The man playing Mumbly Peg yelped, skewering himself. A heavy beat passed, and the other conversations resumed. The band restarted their song from the top.
Kylie-Nae righted Russell’s mug. “It’s a chance to work together again, Russ. Sit down. Yes, sit. And as much as I hate to say it, we’re all too old to enlist the traditional way. It’s this or nothing.”
“Aye. True. Well, who’s the mark?” It was clear the dwarf wasn’t keen to allow Ruprecht the small win by letting his interest show.
Markus promptly handed the Baron of Decay’s dense dossier to Ruprecht, who tossed it thudding before Russell. “Him.”
One glance and Russell shoved the thick document away, the scattering pages wicking up spilled ale. “Pass. Dustups with the undead are only satisfyin’ insomuch as they squish when Joan goes over them.”
Markus was quick to gather the soggy pages. “Lyle Eichelberger,” Ruprecht said, snatching them back, “isn’t some swamp hag. The Committee doesn’t adhere Priority to a file willy-nilly.”