The Good Luck Girls

by Charlotte Nicole Davis

  “There, I think that ought to do it,” Zee muttered. He stood up and gave the grappling hook a few experimental swings.

  “Watch it! You’ll take someone’s eye out,” Tansy hissed.

  “Sorry.”

  Zee gave himself some more room, swung the grappling hook around until it gathered enough speed, then released it. It caught on the top of the wall with the sound of a pickaxe hitting rock. He gave the rope a couple tugs.

  “All right, who wants to go first?” he asked, raising a brow. The wall was about fifteen feet high.

  “Violet—you go,” Aster ordered.

  “Why me?”

  “Because I said so. And don’t forget to roll when you land.” In truth, it was because Violet could stand to have her favor covered the longest, thanks to the Sweet Thistle. Every second counted here.

  Violet cursed and wrapped her face with a dustkerchief, scrambling up the wall gracelessly. She swung her legs up and over the top and jumped down on the other side, landing with a dull thump. Tansy and Mallow went next, then Clementine. Finally, it was Aster’s turn.

  “You’ll be here with the horses?” she asked Zee, handing him the theomite ring.

  He gave her a single nod. “I’ll be here.”

  Aster grabbed the rope. It was rough beneath her hands, the stone gritty beneath her boots. Her stomach flipped at the sensation of being parallel to the ground. She couldn’t help but hesitate for an instant before she jumped down to the other side of the wall. It was a shorter drop than the one from the welcome house window to the haycart, but it would also be a harder landing. She reeled up the rope and threw the grappling hook down first so they’d be able to use it again to escape. Then she sucked in a breath and pushed off the ledge.

  Ripping HELL, she thought as she landed. She’d ducked and rolled when she hit the ground, but it still rattled every bone in her body.

  “Are you okay?” Tansy asked.

  “I’m fine.” Aster stood and shook off her dizziness. There were no buildings this close to the wall, and their group was well hidden in the darkness for now, but they had only twenty minutes, at most, to get this done before their favors burned through their fabric and gave them away.

  “Remember, once we get into town, just act natural,” Aster reminded everyone. “If you try too hard to be inconspicuous you’ll only end up drawing more attention to yourself.”

  “No one’s going to look twice at us,” Violet countered, waving her hand. “They’ll assume any strangers wandering around Scarcliff were already cleared at the checkpoint.”

  “Let’s hope,” Tansy muttered.

  They set off to find the bank.

  “Where did Zee say it was again?” Clementine asked in a whisper. They ran, low and fast, through the outskirts of Scarcliff. The blacksmith, the carriage repair shop, the holy house and its graveyard—all the buildings shuttered for the night.

  “On the north side of Main Street, next to the lawmaster’s office,” Aster answered. The proximity had to be intentional. The law would be able to respond to a break-in within moments.

  Even so, her mood began to lift with the beginnings of the rush she felt every time they went after a brag. Her ears alive to every subtle sound in the dark, her skin itching with anticipation, her heart beating like a battle drum in her chest. In these moments, she couldn’t see in her mind’s eye the faces of the ones who had hurt her, couldn’t feel anything but an intense focus on the job. It was the starkest opposite of the deathlike detachment that had overcome her when she’d been trapped in the welcome house.

  Let them come, she thought.

  She was ready.

  Finally they reached the tightly packed cluster of Main Street, where they slowed to a brisk walk. Two rows of shops faced inward on a dirt road crowded with well-dressed men filtering in and out of the saloons, gambling houses, and welcome house.

  Aster lowered the brim of her hat and started down the road.

  Mallow scratched at her favor beneath the dustkerchief. “Which side is north?” she asked urgently, cutting her eyes back and forth.

  “On our right,” Aster murmured. Her breath caught as she spotted the Arkettan flag hanging outside the office. “There.”

  They pushed their way past the people on the street, Aster’s stomach churning every time a man’s body brushed up against hers. The urge to bolt coursed through her. She forced herself to ignore it. Focus.

  Her favor began to prickle beneath her dustkerchief.

  They passed the lawmaster’s office. Aster led them by without slowing, facing forward even as she cut a glance at the building from the corner of her eye. A single lawman was on duty out front, swatting away the moths that had swarmed to his lantern. There would be other lawmen inside, though, babysitting whatever drunks or petty thieves had been locked up for the night, and still more on patrol. Towns in the Scab were always heavily guarded—they had to be, folks figured, in a place where the children of the world’s worst criminals lived.

  Well, they’re right to be worried tonight.

  Aster didn’t slow as they passed the bank, either—they had another stop to make first. But she scouted it out, too. The bank was an unassuming building with a simple stone placard out front:

  RED ROCK BANK

  SCARCLIFF BRANCH

  A large window looked in on a waiting area, and beyond that, the teller’s cage. Aster could just make out the dark shape of the safe in the corner. Since they couldn’t get past the cage, the plan was to break in through the back of the bank. The commotion would almost certainly bring the law running.

  Which was why, first, they were going to find some brags to take hostage: they needed the leverage.

  Two doors down they came to a saloon. Aster stopped and nodded imperceptibly at the others. They walked in through the double doors.

  The inside of the saloon was stifling, cherry-wood floors scuffed from the soles of a hundred shoes and half-lit gasoliers hanging from a tin tile ceiling. The smell of alcohol and smoke and sweat hit Aster like a wall as soon as she walked in. The men’s voices around them were magnified tenfold. Talking, laughing, joking, cursing. Hands slamming down on tables. Glasses clinking together. She had not been in a room like this, utterly surrounded, since Green Creek. She stopped short in the doorway, panic rising up in her belly, filling her lungs until her chest threatened to burst. Her vision doubled until the whole room turned into a soft blur of yellow lamplight and brown shadows. Her thoughts ran together like ink in the rain.

  “Aster.” The voice sounded like it was coming from a thousand miles away. She didn’t even recognize it. “Aster.”

  Her vision refocused. It was Violet, standing in front of her, slapping her cheek gently.

  “Snap the hell out of it, Lucker,” Violet hissed.

  The harsh words cut through Aster’s haze. Aster curled her lip. “I’m fine,” she snarled back, shoving Violet’s hands away. She clung to the brief flash of anger, though, and one look into Violet’s eyes told her that Violet had known exactly what she was doing in provoking her: bringing Aster back to life. Aster swallowed. “You see any brags in here, or what?” she asked, her voice quavering.

  Violet jerked her head. “There’s a table of men over there who look like the type,” she said, letting her hair down and unbuttoning the top of her shirt. “I’ll flirt with them a bit, find out if they’re brags, and lure them out to you if they are. You all go out back and wait for me.”

  Aster nodded gratefully and led the others through the maze of tables towards the back door. Violet was the only one of them who could pull this off—not just because she could play the part most convincingly, but also because she was the only fairblood among them. The brags were much more likely to believe whatever lies she told them.

  And to think we almost didn’t bring her with us out of Green Creek, Aster thought. The pins and needles of her favor had escalated to a steady burn, and soon it would begin to glow with dull red heat.

  They fi
led out the back door, boots clomping on the wood of the back porch. There was only one other person out there, a man leaning against the wall and sucking on a cigar. He took a long drag and blew out a ribbon of smoke. He paid them no mind—yet.

  Aster took a steadying breath of cool air.

  “All right, everyone, weapons ready,” she murmured. Mallow, Tansy, and Clementine drew their revolvers. Mallow was the only one of them who’d learned how to shoot growing up, but the others had been practicing the past few weeks whenever they could.

  Aster drew her knife. Damned if she was going to freeze up again tonight.

  Two minutes later, the back door squeaked and swung open. Violet walked out, followed by the three young men, smartly dressed in checkered waistcoats over shirts with silver sleeve garters. Derby hats cocked back, watch chains glinting at their hips. The tallest had a baby face and an entitled smirk on his lips. Aster knew their type, had seen them all too often. Her anger grew hotter.

  Focus, she repeated to herself.

  “I told my friends there’d be some decent men in this town,” Violet was saying to them, her voice pitched high. “I can’t wait for you to meet them…”

  Click-click-click.

  Mallow, Tansy, and Clementine put the guns to the brags’ heads and released the safeties. The men staggered backwards and let out low curses.

  “What the hell—”

  “Is this a damned joke—”

  “Shut up,” Aster ordered. “All of you.”

  The man who had been smoking dropped his cigar and opened his mouth to cry for help.

  “Not so fast,” Violet said calmly, drawing her own revolver on him. “You breathe a word of this to anyone, and—”

  He snapped his mouth shut and darted back into the saloon before she could finish the threat.

  If they weren’t in a hurry before, they certainly were now.

  With Aster and Violet standing guard, Clementine, Mallow, and Tansy bound the brags’ hands behind their backs, then jabbed them in their spines with the muzzles of the guns. Aster led them away from the saloon, walking as fast as she could without breaking into a run.

  “You’re a ripping dustblood,” one of the brags observed as they passed through a pool of light, revealing his own shadow. His voice dripped with venom. “My father’s a lawyer. When he hears about this—”

  Aster whipped around and slammed his jaw with a backfist. For a terrifying, thrilling moment, she saw herself following it with a plunge of her blade.

  “Not another word out of you. Any of you,” she ordered. “Or the dead help me, I will geld you with this dirty knife.”

  They all shut up then, walking in silence. Aster’s head swam with a rush of power. She saw flashes of doubt in the others’ eyes as they exchanged glances. They wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger if the time came. She knew that with sudden certainty.

  But Aster was becoming more sure of herself by the second. Let these men feel what it was to be utterly helpless. Let them cringe with shame and beg for mercy. If it came down to her friends’ lives or the brags’, Aster wouldn’t hesitate for a heartbeat.

  They reached the bank’s back door. By now Aster’s favor felt like it was burning a hole in her skin.

  “Do it,” Aster said to Violet.

  Violet walked up to the door, aimed her gun at the lock, and shot it. The noise was tremendous, but the door didn’t open when she shoved it with her shoulder.

  “Damn it,” she swore.

  Shouts rose up from Main Street. Violet shot the lock again and again, until her gun was empty.

  “Watch out,” Aster growled. She kicked the door square, and at last it flew open. She wet her lips as she waved everyone through the doorway. The pain from her favor was beginning to make her light-headed.

  “You’re dead as dogshit,” Mallow’s brag said gleefully. “The law’ll catch you for sure now.”

  “The hell did she tell you about being quiet?” Mallow snapped, pistol whipping him upside the head. But Aster could hear the fear in her voice. Her always-steady hands trembled.

  The inside of the bank was dark and stuffy with the smell of dust. They’d entered on the inside of the teller’s cage, behind the grate that looked out onto the waiting room. A neat row of desks with cash registers lined the half wall. Aster turned to her left and spotted the safe. It was taller than she was and three times as wide.

  Aster ran over to it and knelt to open the lock. She could hear several lawmen outside the front of the bank now, working to break the door open.

  34, 8, 27, 46, 52.

  The wheel clicked as she spun it. She must have been spinning too quickly, though, because the safe didn’t open.

  She repeated the sequence, her movements measured.

  “We’re running out of time,” Clementine said urgently. “We have to get out of here before they come around back and surround us.”

  “It’s fine,” Aster said shortly.

  “She’s right, though. Let’s just abandon these three fools and run,” Mallow agreed.

  “Let me concentrate,” Aster ordered.

  34, 8, 27, 46, 52.

  34, 8, 27, 46, 52.

  The safe wasn’t opening.

  The lawmen broke through the front.

  “Hands up!” one of them roared.

  “We have hostages!” Aster shouted right back. “You all just stay back!”

  34, 8, 27, 46, 52.

  Nothing.

  Judging from the sound of it, there were lawmen crowding around the back door now, too, awaiting orders. Violet met Aster’s eyes and gave her head a short shake. Aster’s throat grew tight.

  “Why the rip isn’t this working?” Aster asked herself, kicking at the metal safe. It wasn’t fair. It’d never been fair. This was her shine. They owed her. Everyone in these twice-damned mountains owed her.

  But what if this isn’t actually the code to the safe at all? What if this string of numbers is for something else entirely? They’d so desperately wanted this to be the code, so desperately needed it to be that … Aster’s head pounded; her favor burned.

  “Hold up a second, that 7, look at it,” Tansy said then, quietly, peering over Aster’s shoulder. “I think it’s really a 1?”

  Aster’s mind stilled. She studied the numbers more closely.

  Ripping hell.

  She tried the safe one more time: 34, 8, 21, 46, 52.

  It clicked open.

  Aster’s knees went weak with relief. She hurriedly untied the sack at her waist and began loading gold and silver ingots into its mouth.

  “Orders!” one of the lawmen shouted. There were now at least half a dozen lawmen on the other side of the teller’s cage, guns raised, and another three standing guard at the back door.

  “Hold!” the lawmaster answered. He was in the front. His next words were addressed to Aster. “Bank robbery’s a capital offense!” he called out. “But you let these three boys go and we’ll work something out.”

  “Aster, if they get a clear shot, they’re going to kill us,” Violet murmured.

  “Don’t worry, they won’t—”

  Before she could finish, a surge of pain from her favor caused Aster to double over, coins spilling from her hands. She’d pass out soon if she kept it covered. Tightening her grip on the sack, she turned away from the safe. Pain was written on the others’ faces as they struggled to stay upright, their skin glowing through the fabric of their dustkerchiefs …

  “By the Veil, they’re Luckers—” Clementine’s brag yelled.

  Aster whirled around and punched him, but it was too late. Their cover was blown.

  “It’s the Green Creek girls!” one of the lawmen confirmed.

  “Do not let them escape! Is that understood? We need them alive!”

  Aster swore and ripped her dustkerchief away. The relief from the worst of it was instant, though the pain and glow would take a while to fade completely.

  “We don’t want to hurt these gentlemen!”
Aster called to the lawmaster. “Just let us pass, and we’ll let them go.”

  “You know we can’t do that,” the lawmaster said.

  “Then these men’s deaths will be on your hands.”

  “Well, we’ve reached an impasse, you and I,” the lawmaster replied coolly. “But don’t worry—I’ve sent for our welcome house’s raveners. They’ll sort you out.”

  Aster’s blood froze as cold as her favor was hot. Lawmen were one thing. But if raveners got involved, it was over. They would break the girls’ minds, drag them away.

  She glanced back at Tansy, Mallow, Violet … and Clementine. Words weren’t necessary. With one shared look, they all knew what to do.

  Bam! Mallow fired a shot above the heads of the three lawmen in the back doorway. The men ducked for cover. Bam! Another warning shot and the air swirled with gun smoke and panic.

  “Out of our way!” Aster yelled at the lawmen.

  One by one the girls took off through the doorway, abandoning the hostages, Aster sprinting out last with the sack of shine held tight in her fist. Boots slapped the ground, dust kicking up around them. Mallow fired off two more warning shots behind her.

  The lawmen had given chase, and now began firing back.

  A bullet whizzed by Aster’s leg. Another hit the ground between her feet. The law was trying to incapacitate them, not kill them. Their only advantage was that the orders were to take them alive.

  “Mallow—take—them—out—” Aster panted between breaths.

  “You mean…?”

  “No—just—stop them!”

  Mallow grimaced, but she skidded to a stop, turned, and fired off her last three shots while the rest of the girls kept running. Aster glanced over her shoulder. Two of the lawmen went down, clutching their legs. But the third shot had gone wide, and the last lawman was still on them.

  “Shit,” Mallow murmured, catching up to the rest of them. She sounded sick.

  “Give her your gun, Tansy,” Aster ordered. They were cutting through the outskirts of town now.