‘Huh. The dwarf at the bar said you fancied yourself a chieftain.’
The man’s face purpled, and his thick moustache twitched. ‘Ain’t no chieftain, citizen. Sheriff’s the lawman in the Gaellands shires, blessed by the stars.’
‘This here’s the Hardscrabble Territories.’
‘Same stars overhead.’
Fisk opened the cell door, and motioned the man to exit.
Reeve holstered his pistol, uncorked the bottle and took a swig. ‘So, what’s so Ia-damned important that ye had to rouse me from my winter’s nap?’
‘I’m on orders from Senator Cornelius, the governor.’ Fisk withdrew a silver eagle from his vest pocket.
Reeve’s eyes widened. ‘A centurion, then.’
‘Acting.’ Fisk held out his hand.
Instead of taking it, Reeve slapped the bottle into his palm. ‘It’s mescal, from the maguey.’
Fisk unstoppered the bottle, took a long pull, inhaled sharply, then said, ‘Passing acquainted. Looking for a couple. A boy – a man who ran off with a person of importance.’
‘Person of importance?’
‘Imperial importance.’
‘Well, what do ye want from me?’
‘You seen anyone like that?’
‘A boyish man and a person of Imperial importance? Nay, haven’t seen ’em.’
‘He’s a man, my height, looks a bit like me, maybe half my age. Dark hair. Packing Hellfire. Might be in cavalry uniform, might not. The girl—’
‘Girl?’ Reeve laughed. ‘Ye said person of Imperial importance.’
‘Yeah, a girl. Pretty. Long neck, fine features. Olive skin.’
‘Sounds dee-lightful.’
‘Seen ’em?’
‘Nay, I’ve not.’
Fisk cursed, placed his hand on his Hellfire pistol, shifted his weight – thinking. ‘I need you to keep an eye out, then. They’ll be riding from the south, Big Rill way.’
‘Trouble always comes from Big Rill way. North? There’s only the Big Empty.’
‘I’m staying at Ruby’s. Gonna sleep off the trail.’ Fisk took another pull off the bottle and then handed it back to Reeve. ‘You’ll need to watch the street.’
‘Aye. Go, centurion. I can give ye some respite.’
Fisk put out his hand, and the men gripped forearms.
Fisk rolled out of bed and had already levered an imp into the chamber of the carbine when the banging on his door stopped.
‘It’s Reeve.’
‘Ia-dammit, man. Come in.’
Reeve entered the small bedroom. It was late, now, very late, but the sounds from the barroom had only increased in the few hours Fisk had been asleep. Fisk tossed the carbine onto the room’s single, mussed bed. He sat down on the mattress and pulled on his boots.
‘Couple rode in from the south. Followed them to the saloon. Might be the birds you’re looking for.’
Fisk rubbed his face. ‘Man and woman? Good lookers, the both of them?’
‘Cloaked heavily, but they come matching ye description, as far as me old eyes can see.’
‘From the south?’
‘Aye, just as you said, centurion.’
‘Have the piano player do “The White Rose of Cordova” and see how they react. I’ll be waiting out front.’
‘Ye going through the bar? They’ll see ye.’
‘There’s the window.’
Reeve looked from Fisk, to the window, and back.
‘Gods save ye from madness.’
Fisk moved to the dresser, threw water on his face from the basin, towelled off. He grabbed his gunbelt and strapped on the Hellfire. He chucked his head at the door. ‘You might want to mosey on back down, don’t let them get out of your sight.’
‘There was something else.’
‘Something else?’
‘Aye. The birds rode in and made a beeline for Ruby’s. I’m on watch in the shadows of the mercantile porch. Once they were inside, I hung back, just to let them get a’settled.’
Fisk withdrew a pistol from the holster, emptied the imp rounds into his hand, and ran a calloused thumb over each warding. He thumbed the rounds back into the pistol’s fixed cylinder. His hands moved quickly, making short work of both guns.
‘I caught it only from the corner of me eye. A blur.’ Reeve shook his head as though clearing it. ‘Like a spirit following behind the pair. Couldn’t get a bead on it.’
‘Big thing. Moving fast?’
‘Aye. Fast and tall, it was.’
Fisk stood looking out the window, cursing, rolling the words in his mouth, slow and deliberate. Spitting the words. ‘Ia-dammit.’
He went to his saddlebags and withdrew a small box. ‘If you’ve got any extra men, get them now. If they have Hellfire pistols, load up with these.’
‘Special rounds?’
Fisk nodded. ‘Silver. Holly tipped. Made special by Cornelius’ tame engineer.’
The sheriff’s eyes widened. ‘What’re ye saying, man? We facing unbound daemons like roam in the Northern Protectorate?’
‘Worse. Vaettir.’
‘Damnation. I thought they remained content to stay in the Whites.’ Reeve popped open the box, removed the bullets from his pistol, and replaced them with the holly-tipped rounds, cursing. ‘Ye bring trouble with ye, centurion.’
‘Seems I’ve a knack for it.’ Fisk levered a round into the carbine, shrugged on his oilcoat. He held his hat in his hands, ran his fingers around the grey brim’s edge, and placed it on his head. ‘Remember, “The White Rose of Cordova”. Let them see you looking at them. The boy—’ He put his boot over the window casement, stopped, and looked back at Reeve. ‘The man, he’s deadly. Stay out of his way. Once he sees me, he won’t be focused on the girl as much. That’s when you should try to grab her.’
‘Let me see that eagle again.’
Fisk withdrew it from his pocket and tossed it to Reeve. ‘Keep it until this is over. And if I’m not around to collect it, you can pack it off to Livia Cornelius, daughter of the Senator.’
Reeve had sense enough not to remark on that.
‘Ye believe it’ll get that bad?’
‘There’s stretchers about. It’s already that bad,’ Fisk said, and he disappeared out the window, leaving Reeve holding a still-warm silver eagle in his hand.
NINETEEN
The next day, Beleth had no questions at all for Agrippina. He had only a straight razor, a large, dark tome, a quill, and an oversized inkwell.
We breakfasted in the great room with the vaettir looking on. Fried fish, nuts and small brown limes, eggs and pickles, and crusty bread with butter, coffee, brandy. I must admit, I did not do the victuals honour. I couldn’t manage to eat while Agrippina watched from her cage.
‘You do not approve of me,’ Beleth said, popping a bit of fish into his mouth and chewing.
‘Wouldn’t say that, sir. Ain’t my place.’
‘Nevertheless, you do not approve.’
‘I ain’t one to approve or disapprove of anything, sir.’
‘Why do you not carry Hellfire, Mr Ilys?’
‘Don’t need it.’
‘Really? You’re a cavalryman in service to the Empire in a fierce, untamed land. And you carry no gun.’
‘Don’t mean I’m unarmed.’
Beleth smiled but it did not touch his eyes. ‘I find it peculiar that you don’t carry one. Is it due to some pacifistic philosophy?’
I chuckled. ‘Like them what the Autumn Lords massacred?’
‘Exactly.’
‘I’m half-dvergar, sir. We’re a peaceful people, but we’re fine with some bloodshed if there’s a reason to it. Defending our own. Protecting ourselves.’
‘I see. Then there must be something else.’ He cracked a boiled qu
ail egg on the table and carefully peeled it, took a pinch from the salt-well and applied it liberally, and then placed the egg in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Swallowed. He had the mechanics of eating down, that’s for sure. ‘Is it a religious fastidiousness?’
I looked at my plate, and then back at Beleth. ‘I was born a long time ago, sir, before there was six-gun damnation everywhere. I’ve made it this far without one. Don’t see why I can’t live out the rest of my days without having one, either.’
‘Damnation? Interesting choice of words. So it is a religious fastidiousness. The usage of the infernal is sanctioned by the Emperor himself, as head of the church and high pontifex. As Ia uses the infernal to punish the wicked, so shall we harness its power to drive the interests of the Empire.’ He wiped his mouth and threw the napkin onto his plate. ‘Nevertheless. This is good. Religious beliefs are mutable and weak in the face of true adversity. Despite all the evidence of the infernal around them, there are non-believers, yet they pray when girded for war. Saints will forget their own teachings when confronted by fleshy temptation. Peaceful idealists will kill when their children are threatened.’
I had the feeling he might have forced those issues a few times in his life. He looked at me, and I’ll be damned – it was like I was a specimen to be collected, a butterfly to be pinned to a board or an insect to be judged and catalogued by some natural philosopher. I was less than nothing to this man, just a creature that he now knew more of.
He said, ‘So, in the end, you’ve just not been pushed far enough to take up a gun. A piece of damnation, as you say.’
I stayed quiet but held his gaze until he broke it by pushing away from the table and standing up.
‘Let’s hope you never are.’ He clapped his hands, all business. ‘I won’t need you much today, as it will be an afternoon of experimentation. However, please remain on hand to ask any question I might want to put to the thing.’ He looked at the legionaries guarding Agrippina. ‘Gentlemen?’
Once the legionaries had uncaged and bound the vaettir appropriately, Beleth approached her still-naked form.
‘Hmm. When we are done I will require, from now on, that the beast be washed each morning.’
I don’t know what was more frightening to me, the implication of his words – that this would be an ongoing ordeal for Agrippina and thus myself – or what followed.
‘This will be your job, Mr Ilys. Perhaps the intimacy with the thing will give you insight as to its nature.’
With that, he flicked open the straight razor, took a strop to it, and whisked it back and forth until it met with some fantastical ideal of sharpness that existed only in Beleth’s own mind.
‘Make sure it’s bound well, gentlemen. Today I get up close and personal with the beast.’
And that he did. But he started slow.
When the blood was flowing well enough to collect, he unstoppered the inkwell. He filled the rest of it, catching the drops streaking down her arm and dripping from her fingers.
Replacing the lid, he held the bottle tight and shook it vigorously, mixing the blood with the ink. He turned to the massive black book, opened it, and removed some loose scraps of paper from between the pages.
He spent a good long while trimming his quill with a pocketknife. Looking at no one, he said, ‘It’s important to have an extra large reservoir cut into the quill when dealing with blood. Coagulation, you know. So, the ratio of blood to ink needs to be around one to two.’ He thumbed the quill’s nib and then blew on it. ‘That’ll do nicely, I think.’
He dipped it into the blood-ink mixture and scratched at a scrap of paper. ‘Yes, that will do quite nicely. Let’s see how well it works on flesh. Mr Ilys, if you’ll be so kind as to bring the Opusculus Noctis over here so I might view it as I work?’
I don’t know about being kind, but I did what he said, Ia save my soul. I did what he said.
He spent a long time that day painting glyphs on Agrippina’s skin. She remained as still as stone. At one point, she closed her eyes and I saw them move slightly under her lids, as though she were dreaming.
The wounds he’d made on her to get the blood had healed by the late afternoon, and her body was an intricate map of glyphs and indecipherable marks.
Beleth called for brandy, and when no one responded he looked at me and said, ‘Is your hearing deficient?’
I nearly lost my temper. I’m not too proud to admit it. But I kept my tongue. So I’m still breathing today.
I poured him a brandy, which he drank as he smoked.
‘I’ve worked through the Vesalian lexicon, each glyph, and none had any effect,’ he mused aloud. He sipped his brandy, puffed his cigar, and blew smoke rings at the ceiling of the stateroom. ‘I’m wondering if I should try to make some symbolic binding between the primori orbis and the body of the vaettir and then complete the glyph …’ He rubbed his chin, holding the cigar in his mouth. Then he waved his hand at no one. ‘No matter. We have all the time in the world for experimentation.’
Later, after he’d left, and we’d moved her back to the centre of the orbis argenta, I washed the blood and drawings from her body with warm soapy water and a rag. Around her forehead, throat, elbows, knees, and ankles were strong leather straps holding her tight against the wooden sluice-board, now soiled with black blood and the ink mixture. Two legionaries watched with troubled expressions.
I said, ‘Do you eat? Have they fed you?’
Agrippina kept her eyes closed. I cleaned her chest and moved down her arm. The blood was tacky in places and took some scrubbing to get off. They’re tall, the vaettir, and I imagine I’m the only living person in the world who’s ever been as close to a live one in the whole history of stretcher, man, and dvergar.
‘Do you eat?’
Her eyes shot open and fixed on me. In them I saw pain, hatred. Which only made sense. Would she ever capitulate?
She opened her mouth as though to speak, and I noticed how cracked her lips were. I went to the table and retrieved a pitcher of fresh water and poured her a glass. When I tipped the glass to her mouth, water spilled over her lips and down her chin, but she worked a thick tongue around in her mouth, moistening it. After a moment, she accepted some more, swallowing heavily and panting afterward like a massive dog.
‘Do you eat?’ I asked again, keeping my voice hushed.
I went back to the table and made a small plate of fish, bread, eggs. I poured two tumblers of brandy. Placing it all on a small tray, I brought it back to Agrippina, laid out flat on the sluiceway in the centre of the stateroom’s parquet flooring, at the exact centre of the orbis argenta burnt into the tiles.
I took a piece of bread, buttered it, and brought it to her lips, pushing it into her mouth.
She closed her lips, worked her jaws, and then spat the saliva-softened bread into my face.
The legionaries erupted into laughter, elbowing each other.
I had children once. You didn’t know that, did you? I spent thirty years raising a family: a boy, two daughters. I had a wife who loved me, but I was young and stupid and had the wanderlust. When our oldest was born, something went wrong and she was never whole. It was as though two children lived within the same skin. One was kind and loving, the other impulsive and mean-spirited. I’ve had food spat in my face before.
When you’re bound by love, you can work through it.
But this thing wasn’t my child. I wiped off the gobbet of moistened bread hanging in my whiskers. I knocked back first the brandy I had poured for her, and then the brandy I had poured for myself.
I dumped the bucket of bloody water on Agrippina, then left, looking for Cimbri and a boat to the eastern shore. I needed to ride.
TWENTY
While Fisk was sleeping, it had begun to snow. The cold had settled in and made brittle the mud of Broken Tooth’s main street. The wagon ruts and footprint
s had frozen in hard, treacherous dips and valleys and crunched underneath Fisk’s boots as he walked. Snowflakes drifted through the air like bits of eiderdown from a busted pillow, and his breath was crystalline in the early morning air.
Fisk scanned the rooftops and galleys and frozen opaline alleyways for the stretcher. Reeve hadn’t been specific, and there could be more than one. There can always be more than one stretcher.
He moved into the street. Other men might have tried to keep their back to a wall, get some cover, but not Fisk. He was as blunt and forward in gunplay as he was in everything else in life, except maybe women. He held the carbine loosely in his big, rawboned hands, and he composed himself, searching for the calm needed for killing.
From inside Ruby’s, he heard the first strains of “The White Rose of Cordova”, the sad lilting minor of the verse to major lift of the chorus. The sound of the Gallish piano player’s voice carried through the desperate wooden slats of the frontier saloon, out into the street, fraught with wood smoke, love, and blood.
‘The virgin bloom is on the white rose.
Dare I climb that garden wall …’
There came a clattering commotion from inside, and the doors flew open.
‘And when I pluck it at night’s close,
Into her breast I’ll fall, into her breast I’ll fall.’
From inside, someone yelled ‘Blazes!’ and cursed and two cloaked figures burst into the frigid night, the larger tugging the smaller along by the hand.
He let them get halfway across the street before Fisk called out, ‘Mr Bantam! I’ve come to get the girl.’
Banty hunched his shoulders as though he’d been shot and turned, still holding Isabelle’s hand. Banty pushed her behind him, and said, ‘Go. Go get the horses.’
She hesitated. Even from where he stood, thirty feet away, Fisk could see the confusion on her face, the doubt and the terror. Maybe the honeymoon wasn’t working out as either of them had planned.
‘Go!’
Reeve clomped out onto the wooden platform in front of Ruby’s, watched the girl flee toward the stables. He walked slowly down the wooden sidewalk, keeping his body facing Banty and his hand tight on the pearl grip of his six-gun until he was behind Banty and moving across the street to the stables.
The Incorruptibles Page 17