“What’s the use in worrying? What’s done is done.” She ran her tongue over her lips. “I’ll take that water now.”
“In a minute,” Aster promised. “We still have something to ask—you said if we got you the Sweet Thistle, you’d tell us where we could find Lady Ghost, remember? So, where is she?”
Violet’s gaze hardened. “Swear you’ll still take me with you?”
“For the love of the dead, yes, just tell us where we’re going,” Aster said, exasperated.
“You did save my life,” Violet admitted. “I would thank you, but it’s your fault for abandoning me when I dropped the Sweet Thistle in the first place. So. I guess we’re square now.”
“All right, you know what—”
“Northrock,” Violet said finally. “That’s where I’ll find—that’s where we’ll find Lady Ghost.”
For a moment there was silence. A swell of anger rose in Aster’s chest, as if she’d been betrayed. Northrock was at least a month away on horseback, near the border of Ferron. Well outside the Scab. Violet might as well have said Lady Ghost lived on the moon.
“Northrock?” Clementine echoed, before Aster could tamp down her anger enough to speak.
“But—but I thought you said we just had to get to Killbank,” Tansy stammered.
“I said we had to go towards Killbank,” Violet corrected. “But we’ve got a long way to go yet.”
“What else aren’t you telling us?” Mallow demanded. “Will her ‘magic’ work on anyone? Is there a cost for her services? I’m not skipping halfway across the country just to get turned away at her door.”
Violet hesitated. “They say it’s a thousand eagles a head to get a favor removed.”
“Hold on,” Aster snapped, her tongue finally loosened, “so we have to make it all the way to Northrock, and we have to come up with five thousand eagles along the way?” Most miners would be lucky to see a thousand eagles in a year. “And what do you mean, ‘They say it’s a thousand eagles’? Who the rip is they?”
“I said I’d tell you where she is, not how I know,” Violet said.
“If we’re going to base all our damn plans on your supposed information, I’d think we’d have a right to know the source.” Aster crossed her arms.
“Fine.” Violet sniffed. “If you don’t believe me, don’t worry about the money. Just show up and take your chances.”
It was clear from the worried looks the others were giving Aster that they believed Violet. Both about where Lady Ghost was and about the fee. In spite of her anger, Aster had to admit that, in some way, the thousand eagles made Lady Ghost feel just a tiny bit more real—not a mythical savior, but a woman charging for a service. Still, that didn’t begin to solve the problem of where to get it. Or how to get to Northrock.
“We have the ring,” Tansy began, clearly sensing the shift in Aster’s mind. “We could sell it—”
“To who?” Aster interrupted. “This ring was on the wanted posters. Anyone who recognizes it is going to turn us in.”
“Lady Ghost might not. Maybe she’ll accept it as payment,” Clementine said.
Might. Maybe. Aster felt the beginnings of hysteria creeping in. They would never make it to Northrock. It would be suicide to try. But there was also no hope of surviving if they stayed here, not with the McClennons after them. Chasing down Violet’s fantasies was just about the only option they had.
Dirty Luckers. You don’t know how good you had it in that house. Aster’s mind echoed with the apothecary’s words. “I need a minute,” she muttered, forcing herself to her feet.
“Wait, Aster, we shouldn’t any of us wander out alone—” Tansy fretted.
“I’ll only be a minute,” Aster said firmly. “I’m going to refill the canteen. I’ll be back.” She met Clementine’s eyes. “Promise.”
Aster slung the canteen over her shoulder and stumbled outside, blinking in the now-bright sunlight. It was a completely different forest from the one they’d braved last night. Songbirds called out to each other from tree to tree. A little lizard sunbathed on a rock.
She began to feel a little steadier. It wasn’t all bad, after all.
After a brief walk, Aster reached the creek. Even after their run-in with the stranger earlier, they’d been afraid to stray too far from it. Fresh water could be hard to find in the Scab. She angled carefully down the muddy bank. Knelt to fill the canteen.
A sudden rustle from above jerked her gaze to the branches overhead. A man’s shout punctured the air. Aster reached for her knife.
Before she could grab it, she was shoved to the ground.
8
Aster’s chest exploded with pain as the wind was knocked out of her. Her muscles seized with the familiar fear of being at a man’s mercy. She rolled over, regained her feet, grabbed her knife, and slashed out at the attacker in front of her with a desperate cry. He dodged the blade and pushed her down again.
“Be still!” he hissed. “I can’t fight both of you at once.”
Both?
He’d knocked the knife out of her hand. By the time she scanned the ground and reached out for it, the young man was already several feet away, his back turned to her, his own knife held out in front of him.
At the snarling catamount circling them.
Aster’s breath caught. She had never seen a catamount up close, though she’d sometimes heard their yowling in the distance. This one was even bigger than she’d imagined, twice the size of a man, muscular shoulders rolling beneath its sandy brown coat as it approached them with fangs bared.
It was bleeding from its chest, though. A long, shallow cut. The stranger had already managed to get a lick in somehow.
He saved me, Aster realized. Her heart hammered as she climbed to her feet once again. The catamount must have been stalking her and the stranger had pushed her out of its way just in time. He was bleeding, too, from where the cat had raked his arm.
Doesn’t make him your ally, though, a voice in the back of Aster’s mind warned. The dead only knew what he wanted with her.
But if she didn’t help him, the catamount would kill them both.
Aster wet her lips and gripped her knife tighter. The stranger feinted at the cat. As soon as it lunged towards him, Aster darted in and nicked its side. It let out an earsplitting screech. She leapt back quickly as the cat turned towards her. Then the stranger attacked it again, grazing its haunch. The cat wheeled around. Threw a heavy paw. The stranger ducked a swipe that would have crushed his ribs. Rolled away. The cat peeled back its black lips and lowered into a predatory crouch, preparing to pounce on him before he could recover.
Aster didn’t think. Her body was moving before her mind could stop it. She sprinted to the catamount, raised her knife, and brought it down, hard, between the beast’s shoulder blades. It let out an almost humanlike yelp, writhing in pain. Terror ripped through her. She yanked the knife free and backpedaled quickly, expecting it to face her with renewed fury. But the catamount had had enough. It snarled at them as it retreated, disappearing into the underbrush as suddenly as it’d come.
The forest grew still. Aster was breathing hard, her hands shaking and her insides loose. She summoned her courage. Now to deal with the stranger. She hadn’t been alone with a man since Green Creek—but things would go differently this time. Better to have died by the catamount’s claws than to let him have his way with her. She would carve him up, too, if she had to. She raised her knife again, approaching him from behind, as he stood watching the spot where the catamount had disappeared.
“You’re not supposed to show fear around these mountain cats,” he said, “but I’ll tell you what, I damn near pissed my pants just now.” He let out an easy laugh, sheathed his knife, and turned to face her. Aster flinched back in surprise.
The boy by the creek.
She was close enough now to see he wasn’t a ravener. His light brown eyes were a mortal man’s, and there was none of that dreadful, draining energy about him. He had no sh
adow at his feet, either, which meant he was a fellow dustblood—usually a good sign. In fact, Aster was almost certain she’d seen his face somewhere before. But still—
“You’ve been tracking us,” Aster snarled. She pressed the point of the blade to his chest.
He held his hands up, his face a mirror of her own alarm. “Hey, easy—”
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“Easy, I said. You’ll want to put that knife down. My name’s Zee. I’m a rangeman. I can help you.”
A rangeman—a Scab guide. From what Aster knew of them, he fit the bill. He wore a long brown duster coat over a simple work vest. Dark denims, piss-free, as promised. Riding boots. A wide-brimmed hat. And, of course, he was seemingly traveling the Scab alone. That was what rangemen did: they tamed the wilderness, they explored the unknown, they protected the weak and helpless from all the wicked things in the mountains.
Still, any asshole could put on a hero hat and ride into the hills. Was the whole thing just an act to lure them to the McClennons? Aster thought it more than likely.
“We’ll be fine,” she said stonily.
“It’s hard to be ‘fine’ out here, even for someone like me,” Zee argued. “There’s worse than catamounts in these woods.” His eyes dropped back down to the knife, pleadingly, but Aster refused to lower it.
“Even so. We don’t have the shine to pay you,” she said. And they certainly weren’t going to pay him any other way, if that was what he was expecting from a bunch of Good Luck Girls. She would cut his throat first.
“I don’t want your shine. I want McClennon’s ring,” Zee said. He slowly pulled one of Clementine’s wanted posters out from his inside pocket, keeping his other hand held up in a gesture of peace. “It says here that you all stole it. A ring like that’s priceless for a man in my line of work.”
Aster’s face burned with anger. “So you’re blackmailing us, is that it? Hand over the theomite ring or you’ll turn us in?”
“No! Ripping hell—”
Before Aster could respond, the brush rustled behind them. She spun, fearing the catamount had come back. But it was only the rest of her group. Aster sheathed the knife with relief. The five of them together could surely overpower this boy, if it came to that.
“Aster!” Clementine cried. “We thought we heard a catamount—”
They stopped short.
“Who the hell are you?” Violet demanded.
“It’s that stranger we saw yesterday. He claims he’s a rangeman, wants to help us get where we’re going,” Aster explained, her voice heavy with skepticism. “He tracked us.”
“He is a rangeman, and his name is Zee,” Zee said. He clutched at his still-bleeding arm. “Listen, I’d rather tend to this injury sooner than later. What’s it going to take to convince you all? I’ve been following you since Green Creek—I’ve had plenty of time to turn you in. And I don’t know what happened between you and McClennon, but I don’t particularly care, either. I’ll always side with Good Luck Girls, especially over those landmaster bastards. Always.”
Aster clenched her jaw. “Is that so?” Aster looked Zee straight in the eye. Her time at the welcome house had taught her the many ways men lied. To themselves and to one another. To feel more powerful or to hide something shameful. She was no stranger to men who promised you could trust them and a half second later showed you that you sure as hell better not. They had an oily, shifty look about them, she could always spot it. And Aster had to admit she saw none of that in this boy—but she didn’t know if she could trust her own self to notice now, not in this moment, exhausted and desperate as she was. “I trust you’ll stay put while we talk it over, then.”
She motioned for the others to follow her a short distance away—close enough to keep an eye on him, but far enough that he wouldn’t be able to overhear them. Once they were huddled in a circle, Aster filled them in on everything they’d missed. Zee had saved her from the catamount, true. But, Aster added, he was expecting payment for helping them further. He wanted the ring—which they ought to be saving for Lady Ghost.
“Maybe we can come up with the shine for Lady Ghost along the way somehow,” Tansy suggested. “We’re going to need help to cross the whole Scab, Aster. We barely got away with the medicine last night, and we’re almost out of food.”
“Yeah, and if he was going to turn us in, he would’ve done it yesterday. He knew where we were camped,” Clementine pointed out.
“And we’re more than enough to handle him,” Mallow said, echoing Aster’s earlier thought. “If he wants to betray us, he’s not going to have an easy time of it.”
“And he saved you from the catamount,” Clementine continued.
“Because I’m worth more alive than dead,” Aster said, exasperated. “We all are—”
“Look, I have no idea what he’s up to, and I won’t pretend to,” Violet interrupted. “But Northrock is hundreds and hundreds of miles away from here. We’re sure as hell going to need some kind of help to get there in one piece. And right now I think he’s our best option. Forgive me if I don’t trust you to do it.”
“You don’t find it a little convenient, though, that as soon as we decide to go to Northrock a rangeman shows up to escort us?” Aster asked, crossing her arms. “I’m sorry, but this whole thing smells sour.”
The others were silent for a moment. “I just have … a good feeling about him,” Clementine said finally, not quite meeting Aster’s eye.
Oh, well, Clem has a good feeling, so I guess that settles it then, Aster thought, exasperated. But Aster knew her sister’s feelings had a funny way of turning out right, more often than not, and the others had made convincing arguments, too. And, as Aster looked around their circle, she couldn’t help but wonder if they had a point. She was suddenly aware of how run down they all were: Violet still shaky from her ordeal, Tansy rubbing at a nasty sunburn at the back of her neck, all of them dirty and dehydrated and exhausted. And she herself would be dead right now if Zee hadn’t been there … As much as Violet’s words had bristled her, Aster feared she was right—they needed help.
“All right,” Aster conceded at last. “We’ll let him ride with us today. See how it goes. Feel it out. Let’s bring him back to the camp for now, get him patched up.”
But if Zee crossed them, Aster thought, she wasn’t going to hesitate to cut him right back open.
* * *
Whatever else Zee’s intentions, it became clear within the first few hours that he was at least, legitimately, a rangeman. He rode a pretty palomino mare named Nugget, and her saddlebags were loaded with supplies to survive on the trail. Flint and matches. Dried fruit and salted meat. A compass and a cook-kit. A rifle and a shotgun.
“Why do you need a rifle and a shotgun?” Mallow asked as they rode single file along a game trail. It was particularly windy today, red dust swirling up into the air in a haze that left Aster’s eyes watering and her throat coated with grit. Every so often one of them would be seized by a coughing fit, and Tansy would pass them a soothing honey drop from her bag of stolen medical supplies. Aster was working on one now.
“Well, the rifle’s just for hunting,” Zee explained. “But the shotgun’s for vengeants.”
“Does it kill them?” Violet piped up from the back.
“Of course not,” Aster answered for Zee. She was always astounded by Violet’s ignorance of the kind of basic knowledge every dustblood child had to learn by the time they were five. Ghosts were like stains, fading slowly over time. Some were more persistent than others. Vengeants, extremely so. The best you could do was weaken them.
“I’m sorry, Aster, was I talking to you?” Violet snapped back.
“The shotgun’s just a deterrent,” Zee said from the front, a little hastily. “I use iron pellets instead of lead. Drives the dead away.”
“Like the iron wardant we had outside our house growing up,” Tansy offered. “Or the ones lining the sides of the Bone Road.”
“Exactly,” Zee confirmed. “Most people carry a small piece of iron on their person for protection, too. But a lucky horseshoe won’t scare off a vengeant any more than a lit match will scare off a hungry wolf. You need a lot of iron, more than is practical to carry around. That’s why I prefer the shotgun. A little iron goes a long way when it hits a vengeant directly. Sends them running before they even get close.” Zee slowed down so he was beside them and passed the shotgun to Clementine for inspection. It was a handsomely made piece, even Aster could admit that, with a polished cherry-wood stock and fine gold inlays.
“You ever fired one of these before?” Zee asked, glancing over his shoulder.
“Oh, of course, you know, back before the welcome house,” Clementine said. This was barely true, Aster knew—she’d fired a six-shooter, once, on a dare. Boys in the Scab started handling guns as soon as they could walk, but girls were considered too delicate.
“That so?” Zee asked, sounding impressed. “Well, here I was hoping for the honor of teaching you a thing or two. But I see that won’t be necessary.”
“Well, it’s not as if I had a rangeman helping me last time. So I’m sure you can teach me one thing. I wouldn’t bet on two.”
“All right, go on and give it back to him, Clem, it’s not a toy,” Aster said, strained.
Zee went on to tell them that he also had an emergency stash of grayleaf to burn, as vengeants couldn’t abide the stench. It was the same herb hallowers used when blessing holy spaces. But theomite was the best protection of all, he said. It was made from the blackened bones of the great beasts that had existed when the world was young and the Veil was thin, and it still pulsed with their ancient energy, repelling malevolent spirits the same way alike magnets repelled each other.
“No vengeant’s going to come within a stone’s throw of a theomite ring like yours,” Zee concluded. “It’s no wonder folks are driving themselves wild trying to mine the stuff up.”
He certainly likes to hear himself talk, Aster thought. But at least it was keeping everyone distracted.
The Good Luck Girls Page 9