“Fos! Deal’s off!” Lanyard shouted.
Fos Carpidian knelt before Slopkettle. His hands were tied behind his back, and now she sat her rifle muzzle on the bridge of his nose, sending the old man cross-eyed as he looked from Lanyard to the gun and back again.
The negotiations were going well.
“We get what was agreed on, no less,” Lanyard said, wincing as Dogwyfe hooked a bone needle through his neck. The crooked woman dragged a thread of sheepgut across his wound, stitching up the deep gash.
Dogwyfe was a dark-eyed automaton, numb in her ministrations, and hadn’t said a word since a waterman’s rifle had cut Magog out from beneath her. Mutch lay in the shade of the tanker, his face wrapped in rags torn from a dead man’s shirt. He’d taken a hatchet to the face, and if the birdman lived, it would be with one eye.
“We’re broke,” Fos said, head slumped. “But we can pay you soon.”
“No credit,” Lanyard said, knocking his shotgun against the underside of the tanker, the rumble echoing against the town wall. He figured the hole from a gunblast would empty the tanker just as good should the pack of townsfolk quit negotiating and just rush them.
“Water thugs cleaned us out,” the man continued, licking his lips nervously, sweat running down his nose. “But we’ve found another bleedthrough field, a big one. We need this water to get there.”
“All of this water?” Lanyard asked, eyebrows raised.
“You don’t understand, Mr. Everett,” Fos continued. “We’re packing up the whole town. By the time the Half-Dann’s friends come for us, they’ll find the doors open and the larder empty.”
Lanyard looked over the townsmen lurking nearby, indecisive and pacing, and saw the shapes of people on the walls, dozens more peering through the open gate. He realised that Fos Carpidian spoke the truth. This gambit to seize a water tanker was desperation, a last resort.
If Lanyard had died like he was meant to, Fos and his flock would already be on the move.
“Tell me about the bleedthrough field,” Lanyard said. “Where is it, how big, all the important stuff.”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Talk,” Slopkettle said, moving the rifle so that the tip was resting a hair’s width from Carpidian’s eyeball. Fos blinked rapidly, holding himself perfectly still.
“I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. None of us does.”
“Do you expect me to believe that?” Lanyard said. He scanned the mob of townsmen as they edged forward. One of the dogs set to snarling again, and he guessed that the owner was stirring it up, ready to let it off the leash.
“Stand back,” he shouted, tapping a metallic rhythm into the tanker for emphasis. “You—explain yourself, or Slopkettle starts taking your fingers off.”
“My girl’s seen a Leicester. A strong one, too,” Fos babbled. “Been twenty years since we last seen one, and never one this strong. A Waking City, just ripe for the picking. She’ll lead us there, and we’ll all be as rich as Neville, you’ll see.”
Lanyard knew a little of their belief, enough to puzzle it out. Sometimes, one of the faithful would be struck with the vision of a Leicester rising from the earth, a warrior in stone or bronze, and be drawn to it, waking and dreaming. The blessed would always find the statue, never deviating from the path. The path would always lead to another place where Before bled into Now.
The bleedthroughs brought all manner of treasure into this husk of a world. Machines, melted buildings, treasures and curiosities, books and booze. If this bleedthrough field was even larger than the vast scar surrounding Carmel, it meant wealth beyond all measure.
“Shut your damn mouth, Fos,” one of the townsmen said, and the rest murmured in agreement. Lanyard doubted that his use as a hostage was going to last much longer.
“Here’s the new deal,” he shouted. “And forget your damn tradestone, I know what your word is worth.”
“We take four of yours, and the lass who’s sniffed out the Leicester. We travel fast and light, and the rest of you can follow our trail. Your people stake out the claim, and we take our payment. We’ll be long gone by the time you arrive with this,” he said, resting one hand on the cool surface of the metal water tank.
“Absolutely not,” Fos said. “That’s my daughter you’re talking about.”
“All the more reason for you to behave,” Lanyard said. “Tell your kid to pack her bags. She’ll be safer than you are right now.”
Crooked folks weren’t allowed into their holy city, so the townsfolk marked rite outside the gate, carting out a Leicester on a litter.
The statue was nearly perfect. The bleedthrough had only marred one of its marble cheeks. Lanyard had seen the bronze men on roadside shrines, half melted and grotesque. Those crafted from the milk stone bled through better, and these statues were considered the purest.
The stone man leaned upon his rifle, the muzzle resting between his feet, dressed in a stout tunic that seemed all pockets and ammo pouches. The very picture of a warrior, of someone prepared to defend the weak. Finder of treasures, seeker of secrets.
This Leicester was etched with the holy words, and a long list of names from the Before. Fos and his people had added newer etchings, names from the Now, but like anything crafted in this time, these seemed crude.
An attendant with hammer and chisel added one last name to the list: MATILDE CARPIDIAN.
A young girl knelt in the dust before the holy figure, head bowed while the entire population of Carmel worked through the rite. Tilly Carpidian, all of ten years old, was trembling.
“God of our fathers, known of old,” a man in full regalia exhorted, garbed in a slouch hat and tunic of purest white. He was whatever passed for a priest in this faith. The man daubed at the girl’s face and hands with white paste, until she was as pale as the statue above her.
“Look at that mob, praying and braying,” Slopkettle scoffed, leaning all over Fos with a knife held casually against his throat.
“Shut your mouth,” Lanyard said.
“What? If the town-bred don’t stand for blasphemy in Crosspoint, why should I?”
“Still stands thy humble sacrifice, a humble and a contrite heart!” the priest shouted, laying the girl’s head across a chopping block. An attendant brought an axe forward, and the priest rested the sharp edge on the nape of her neck. A moment’s pause, and then he lifted the axe away, raised the girl to her feet. They placed a new slouch hat upon her head, and it was slightly too big, falling across her eyes.
“Mark my words, that girl will lead us into nothing but disaster,” the flenser said. “We’ll be lost and dead inside a week.”
“Leicester-We-Forget!” the priest cried.
“Leicester-We-Forget!” came the ecstatic answer, a liturgy from a hundred throats.
— 3 —
The gates of Carmel spewed out families with handcarts and drays, piled high with the makings of civilisation. Lanyard privately dismissed these comforts as dead weight. Along the walls and into the high places wriggled children with hammers and chisels, sent to deface the holy statues that they could not carry with them.
The town burned, smoke twisting up into the clear sky. Lanyard understood, approved almost. He’d have done the same in their position.
The water tanker sat still, the lizard sagging in its harness and sulking on the ground. Teamsters beat the lizard with goads and whips until it lurched to its feet, snapping and hissing at the people. The lizard did the work of two, straining at the heavy watertanker, and it was clear that Carpidian’s people would not be going anywhere fast. Lanyard wondered if Vern the Half-Dann’s friends would catch them out in the open, crawling across the landscape. Following a girl with a statue in her head.
A wise man would find a way to contact the water barons, he thought.
“Let’s go,” Lanyard said, tapping his new camel with the switch so that its knobby legs unfolded. Behind him, Mutch was strapped into the harness, his head swathed in a mess of
bandages. The man whimpered with the sudden movement.
Dogwyfe trotted by on Gog, having some trouble with the unfamiliar bird. Slopkettle kicked the remaining motorbike into life and though the engine rattled, the bike rolled forward.
A buggy kept pace with them, jammed full of Leicesterites, with Carpidian’s terrified daughter somewhere in the middle. A hulk with a shaved head stared at Lanyard, his rifle resting against the wooden frame of the car. Lanyard had heard them call the big man as Spence, and from the cast of his face guessed him to be Tilly’s cousin or uncle.
Lanyard offered a silent salute to the man, who spat and turned away.
Fos Carpidian stumbled along behind Lanyard’s camel, a long rope binding him to the harness. Lanyard took care not to go too fast, not wanting to drag the old fool across the stones.
An hour’s travel brought them to a stand of rocks, a crooked mesa that dog-legged out of the plain. Some forgotten generation had built a watchtower on top of this formation, but time had worn it down into a few layers of brick and stone.
“Here,” Lanyard said, pulling Carpidian closer, reeling in the rope as if the exhausted man were a hooked fish. Leaning down from the camel’s harness, Lanyard cut his bonds and the Lord Protector of Carmel stood there uncertainly, rubbing the circulation back into his wrists.
“Your people will come,” Lanyard said, tossing the townsman a half-empty waterskin. This was the height of charity in the Now.
“You look after my Tilly,” Carpidian said, miserable, defeated.
“It’s in my best interests that she survives,” Lanyard said. “We’ll leave you markers to follow, as agreed. Fair trade and all.”
They left Fos Carpidian beneath the overhang of the mesa, sheltering from the brutal sunlight. The man looked ridiculous from a distance, dwarfed by the stone above him.
“Should have left the old man his hat,” Slopkettle shouted over her clattering engine. Smiling, Lanyard touched the brim of the slouch on his head and thought of the one he’d lost back west, the hat he’d taken from Bauer’s corpse.
Hell if I know what the old Jesusman was doing with it, Lanyard mused. Fos Carpidian’s hat was a perfect fit, and perhaps skulking eyes would think him a townrider, maybe even the leader of this expedition.
The odd group skirted the edges of the Inland, following the jags of the Range to north and east, along a path that only the girl could see. Soon they crossed the old tradeway between Price and Sad Plain, a track now marked with Taursi prints and scatters of glass and sheep shit.
A commotion in the buggy, and then the machine came to a shuddering stop, the townsfolk clambering out. Lanyard gave a signal and his mob drew close together, ready for grief.
“This it?” Lanyard asked. Everyone ignored him. The young girl walked deep into the dust and yucca, and there seemed nothing to her but skinny legs and a long smock, the holy hat sliding around on her head.
The girl held a twist of rag that she unwrapped, peered into. Within, a brilliant light leaked around the edges of her fingers and she squinted into the brightness for one long moment before she folded it all away, stuffing the pretty deep into her pocket.
Lanyard felt the lurch then, the flutter in his gut, the urge to retch right there in the saddle. He fought back his gorge, eyes blinking, watering. The gap between all worlds was thin here, nothing separating them from elsewhere but a film stretched taut to the point of breaking.
Something was coming through.
Swearing, he checked the action on the Jesusman’s gun, hands beading with sweat. He’d been sniffed out by the ones he’d failed to kill, and now this stupid girl had led them all to a certain death.
One witch he could kill. Others, he might be able to keep at bay. More than a handful and he was as dead as the rest of these idiots.
I don’t know enough, he thought, heart racing. I never did. Sweat ran down into his eyes, and he wiped it furiously on his sleeve.
Carpidian’s daughter pointed to the earth, and the clay split apart, birthing a monster. The face was twisted, something out of his nightmares. Lanyard knew that others would follow, monsters he’d been sworn to slay that would know him for what he was, on sight.
A failed Jesusman, and a fool.
Spence and the others saw him raise his gun, and then they were pointing their own weapons at him, shouting. Lanyard ignored all of this, fixated on this intrusion from another world. Slopkettle slowly circled around on her bike, spiked chain at the ready, hand ready to squeeze on the throttle.
Lanyard lowered the gun, let out a shuddering breath. The moment that could have been a killing moment passed, replaced by curses and grumbling.
It was only a Leicester that pierced the earth, melted by the passage from Before to Now. Around the bronze statue, the tips of buildings began to push through like tiled pimples, the slag of lamp posts and other paraphernalia that those of the Now could only guess at.
A bleedthrough. As always, these thin spots held the hum of the land behind the veil, but nothing was watching them from that grey place. They were safe enough, so long as they didn’t linger.
It was a modest site, perhaps a handful of buildings that weren’t slag, but a motorcar appeared from the earth, poking up like a steel tombstone. It was whole, and only one pane of glass had bled through like toffee, the rest pure and clear.
“Your payment. Take it and go,” Spence told Lanyard, pointing to the twist of buildings. There’d be good forage here, perhaps food in tins and machine parts, clothes and books if they were lucky.
“We should stay, bossman,” Slopkettle said, coasting her bike to a stop beside his camel. “Let these damn idiots chase bullshit out in the Waste. There’s loot enough here to be as rich as Neville.”
She spoke sense. They’d kit out another mob soon enough from what they found here, and if they took the time to dig out the car, it would fetch a princely sum, working or no. He wanted to be quit of this doomed tribe, free to rebuild his empire. Everything he’d taken from King Jollylot had the stink of a curse on it, so this was a fresh start. Kill everyone here, including his own people. Take this wealth and browbeat some other mob. Perhaps even give up on the Inland and set up behind a town wall. You can’t outrun yourself, boy, he heard in the long-vanished voice of Bauer. Wherever you go, there you are.
Then, Lanyard realised the Carpidians were trying to change the deal again. This wasn’t the bleedthrough that they’d destroyed their town for and crossed the water barons to chase. Wealth here, but nothing like the Carpidians had spoken of. They were offering him a scrap, hoping to distract him from a proper meal. He shook his head, ignoring the protests of his women. Spence set his mouth in a grim line, even as the wealth of a dead world grew around them.
The outlaws and town-bred slept apart, two campfires smouldering upwind of the bleedthrough. As the sun fell behind the Range, Lanyard paced around their camp, setting what marks he knew. Making sure that none were watching, he quietly scratched out the symbols that would ward off lesser monsters from other worlds or wake him should something stronger blunder through his weak fence.
If those witches sniff me out, I’ll have just enough warning to blow my own head off, he reasoned. He lay down on top of his swag, exhausted and sore from the long day’s ride.
Mutch moaned in his sleep, thrashing about as Dogwyfe rubbed vinegar into his shattered face. Undressed, the wound stank out their little camp, a smell that spoke of a slow death and little hope of recovery.
“You need to do something,” Dogwyfe said to Lanyard, her first words since Magog’s death. “This is on you.”
“I only know this,” he said, patting the pistol on his hip. She scowled, stuffing rags into the hollow of Mutch’s face. Lanyard thought he saw a glimpse of exposed bone in the firelight and kept quiet.
“Maybe yonder wall-huggers have a medicine bag,” Slopkettle said, teeth gripping the stem of a pipe. Packing the pipe with kennelweed, she touched a match to the bowl. The flenser drew in the smoke wit
h deep satisfaction.
“Go easy on that,” he told her, and Slopkettle laughed. With a look at the dying birdman, Lanyard rose to his feet, groaning at the pain in his back. The camel he’d claimed was not long broken for riding and fought his every command. He wondered what Slopkettle would do if he took her bike in the morning, leaving her the unruly beast instead.
She would smile and let him take what he wanted and silently add this to the reasons for which she would one day kill him. He would never know the where and when, but he knew she’d already sized him up for the greypot.
If he tried to take Gog for his own, Dogwyfe would fly at him there and then, a dark but honest rage. He wondered which death he preferred and if he’d be better off just shooting them both.
He approached the town camp, making plenty of noise, his hands in clear sight. Spence and one of the others sized him up, and when they realised he was there to talk, they pointed him to a space by the fire.
“I need medicine for my man,” Lanyard said. “Wound’s gone bad.”
None of the others said anything, and Spence went back to working on a joint of meat, sucking out the fat with loud wet noises.
Young Tilly was bundled up in rugs, her eyes bleary and near closed. She held her slouch hat in her lap, and a mess of mouse-brown fuzz spilled down past her collar. She’d probably never travelled this far from her home and watched Lanyard curiously.
“Are we going to help them?” Tilly asked. “You said they’re guarding us, Uncle. Maybe we can make the sick man better.”
“Be quiet,” Spence said then grinned at Lanyard. “You, go look in your bleedthrough for help or cook your man or whatever it is that your lot do. I’ve got nothing for you.”
“I’ll remember this,” Lanyard said.
Spence spat lamb juice onto the coals, the grease sparking into a brief flame.
Papa Lucy & the Boneman Page 4