“His name was in our lessons of calling. We’re to count cattle, sheep, pigs, oxen… and horses. Of all your livestock, horses are the most important. Patrick Delgado was the man we were to see in that regard. I’m sorry to hear he’s come to the clearing at the end of the path, Susan. Will you accept my condolence?”
“Aye, and with thanks.”
“Was it an accident?”
“Aye.” Hoping her voice said what she wanted it to say, which was leave this subject, ask no more.
“Let me be honest with you,” he said, and for the first time she thought she heard a false note there. Perhaps it was only her imagination. Certainly she had little experience of the world (Aunt Cord reminded her of this almost daily), but she had an idea that people who set on by saying Let me be honest with you were apt to go on by telling you straight-faced that rain fell up, money grew on trees, and babies were brought by the Grand Featherex.
“Aye, Will Dearborn,” she said, her tone just the tiniest bit dry. “They say honesty’s the best policy, so they do.”
He looked at her a bit doubtfully, and then his smile shone out again. That smile was dangerous, she thought-a quicksand smile if ever there was one. Easy to wander in; perhaps more difficult to wander back out.
“There’s not much Affiliation in the Affiliation these days. That’s part of the reason Parson’s gone on as long as he has; that’s what has allowed his ambitions to grow. He’s come a far way from the harrier who began as a stage-robber in Garlan and Desoy, and he’ll come farther yet if the Affiliation isn’t revitalized. Maybe all the way to Mejis.”
She couldn’t imagine what the Good Man could possibly want with her own sleepy little town in the Barony which lay closest to the Clean Sea, but she kept silent.
“In any case, it wasn’t really the Affiliation that sent us,” he said. “Not all this way to count cows and oil derricks and hectares of land under cultivation.”
He paused a moment, looking down at the road (as if for more rocks in the way of his boots) and stroking Rusher’s nose with absentminded gentleness. She thought he was embarrassed, perhaps even ’shamed. “We were sent by our fathers.”
“Yer-” Then she understood. Bad boys, they were, sent out on a make-work quest that wasn’t quite exile. She guessed their real job in Hambry might be to rehabilitate their reputations. Well, she thought, it certainly explains the quicksand smile, doesn’t it? 'Ware this one, Susan; he’s the sort to burn bridges and upset mail-carts, then go on his merry way without a single look back. Not in meanness but in plain old boy-carelessness.
That made her think of the old song again, the one she’d been singing, the one he’d been whistling.
“Our fathers, yes.”
Susan Delgado had cut a caper or two (or perhaps it was two dozen) other own in her time, and she felt sympathy for Will Dearborn as well as caution. And interest. Bad boys could be amusing… up to a point. The question was, how bad had Will and his cronies been?
“Helling?” she asked.
“Helling,” he agreed, still sounding glum but perhaps brightening just a bit about the eyes and mouth. “We were warned; yes, warned very well. There was… a certain amount of drinking.”
And a few girls to squeeze with the hand not busy squeezing the ale-pot? It was a question no nice girl could outright ask, but one that couldn’t help occurring to her mind.
Now the smile which had played briefly around the comers of his mouth dropped away. “We pushed it too far and the fun stopped. Fools have a way of doing that. One night there was a race. One moonless night. After midnight. All of us drunk. One of the horses caught his hoof in a gopher-hole and snapped a foreleg. He had to be put down.”
Susan winced. It wasn’t the worst thing she could think of, but bad enough. And when he opened his mouth again, it got worse.
“The horse was a thoroughbred, one of just three owned by my friend Richard’s father, who is not well-to-do. There were scenes in our households which I haven’t any desire to remember, let alone talk about. I’ll make a long story short and say that, after much talk and many proposals for punishment, we were sent here, on this errand. It was Arthur’s father’s idea. I think Arthur’s da has always been a bit appalled by Arthur. Certainly Arthur’s ructions didn’t come from George Heath’s side.”
Susan smiled to herself, thinking of Aunt Cordelia saying, “She certainly doesn’t get it from our side of the family.” Then the calculated pause, followed by: “She had a great-aunt on her mother’s side who ran crazy… you didn’t know? Yes! Set herself on fire and threw herself over the Drop. In the year of the comet, it was.”
“Anyway,” Will resumed, “Mr. Heath set us on with a saying from his own father-'One should meditate in purgatory.' And here we are.”
“Hambry’s far from purgatory.”
He sketched his funny little how again. “If it were, all should want to be bad enough to come here and meet the pretty denizens.”
“Work on that one a bit,” she said in her driest voice. “It’s still rough, 1 fear. Perhaps-”
She fell silent as a dismaying realization occurred to her: she was going to have to hope this boy would enter into a limited conspiracy with her. Otherwise, she was apt to be embarrassed.
“Susan?”
“I was just thinking. Are you here yet, Will? Officially, I mean?”
“No,” he said, taking her meaning at once. And likely already seeing where this was going. He seemed sharp enough, in his way. “We only arrived in Barony this afternoon, and you’re the first person any of us has spoken to… unless, that is, Richard and Arthur have met folks. I couldn’t sleep, and so came out to ride and to think things over a little. We’re camped over there.” He pointed to the right. “On that long slope that runs toward the sea.”
“Aye, the Drop, it’s called.” She realized that Will and his mates might even be camped on what would be her own land by law before much more time had passed. The thought was amusing and exciting and a little startling.
“Tomorrow we ride into town and present our compliments to My Lord Mayor, Hart Thorin. He’s a bit of a fool, according to what we were told before leaving New Canaan.”
“Were ye indeed told so?” she asked, raising one eyebrow.
“Yes-apt to blabber, fond of strong drink, even more fond of young girls,” Will said. “Is it true, would you say?”
“I think ye must judge for yerself,” said she, stifling a smile with some effort.
“In any case, we’ll also be presenting to the Honorable Kimba Rimer, Thorin’s Chancellor, and I understand he knows his beans. And counts his beans, as well.”
“Thorin will have ye to dinner at Mayor’s House,” Susan said. “Perhaps not tomorrow night, but surely the night after.”
“A dinner of state in Hambry,” Will said, smiling and still stroking Rusher’s nose. “Gods, how shall I bear the agony of my anticipation?”
“Never mind yer nettlesome mouth,” she said, “but only listen, ifye’d be my friend. This is important.”
His smile dropped away, and she saw again-as she had for a moment or two before-the man he’d be before too many more years had passed. The hard face, the concentrated eyes, the merciless mouth. It was a frightening face, in a way-a frightening prospect-and yet, still, the place the old hag had touched felt warm and she found it difficult to take her eyes off him. What, she wondered, was his hair like under that stupid hat he wore?
“Tell me, Susan.”
“If you and yer friends come to table at Thorin’s, ye may see me. If ye see me, Will, see me for the first time. See Miss Delgado, as I shall see Mr. Dearborn. Do’ee take my meaning?”
“To the letter.” He was looking at her thoughtfully. “Do you serve? Surely, if your father was the Barony’s chief drover, you do not-”
“Never mind what I do or don’t do. Just promise that if we meet at Seafront, we meet for the first time.”
“I promise. But-”
“No more questions. We’ve nearly come to the place where we must part ways, and I want to give ye a warning-fair payment for the ride on this nice mount of yours, mayhap. If ye dine with Thorin and Rimer, ye’ll not be the only new folk at his table. There’ll likely be three others, men Thorin has hired to serve as private guards o’ the house.”
“Not as Sheriff' s deputies?”
“Nay, they answer to none but Thorin… or, mayhap, to Rimer. Their names are Jonas, Depape, and Reynolds. They look like hard boys to me… although Jonas’s boyhood is so long behind him that I imagine he’s forgot he ever had one.”
“Jonas is the leader?”
“Aye. He limps, has hair that falls to his shoulders pretty as any girl’s, and the quavery voice of an old gaffer who spends his days polishing the chimney-comer… but I think he’s the most dangerous of the three all the same. I’d guess these three have forgot more about helling than you and yer friends will ever learn.”
Now why had she told him all that? She didn’t know, exactly. Gratitude, perhaps. He had promised to keep the secret of this late-night meeting, and he had the look of a promise-keeper, in hack with his father or not.
“I’ll watch them. And I thank you for the advice.” They were now climbing a long, gentle slope. Overhead, Old Mother blazed relentlessly. “Bodyguards,” he mused. “Bodyguards in sleepy little Hambry. It’s strange times, Susan. Strange indeed.”
“Aye.” She had wondered about Jonas, Depape, and Reynolds herself, and could think of no good reason for them to be in town. Had they been Rimer’s doing. Rimer’s decision? It seemed likely- Thorin wasn’t the sort of man to even think about bodyguards, she would have said; the High Sheriff had always done well enough for him-but still… why?
They breasted the hill. Below them lay a nestle of buildings-the village of Hambry. Only a few lights still shone. The brightest cluster marked the Travellers’ Rest. From here, on the warm breeze, she could hear the piano beating out “Hey Jude” and a score of drunken voices gleefully murdering the chorus. Not the three men of whom she had warned Will Dearborn, though; they would be standing at the bar, watching the room with their flat eyes. Not the singing type were those three. Each had a small blue coffin-shape tattooed on his right hand, burned into the webbing between thumb and forefinger. She thought to tell Will this, then realized he’d see for himself soon enough. Instead, she pointed a little way down the slope, at a dark shape which overhung the road on a chain. “Do ye see that?”
''Yes.” He heaved a large and rather comical sigh. “Is it the object I fear beyond all others? Is it the dread shape of Mrs. Beech’s mailbox?”
“Aye. And it’s there we must part.”
“If you say we must, we must. Yet I wish-” Just then the wind shifted, as it sometimes did in the summer, and blew a strong gust out of the west. The smell of sea-salt was gone in an instant, and so was the sound of the drunken, singing voices. What replaced them was a sound infinitely more sinister, one that never failed to produce a scutter of gooseflesh up her back: a low, atonal noise, like the warble of a siren being turned by a man without much longer to live.
Will took a step backward, eyes widening, and again she noticed his hands take a dip toward his belt, as if reaching for something not there.
“What in gods’ name is that?”
“It’s a thinny,” she said quietly. “In Eyebolt Canyon. Have ye never heard of such?”
“Heard of, yes, but never heard until now. Gods, how do you stand it? It sounds alive!”
She had never thought of it quite like that, but now, in a way listening with his ears instead of her own, she thought he was right. It was as if some sick part of the night had gained a voice and was actually trying to sing.
She shivered. Rusher felt the momentary increased pressure of her knees and whickered softly, craning his head around to look at her.
“We don’t often hear it so clearly at this time of year,” she said. “In the fall, the men bum it to quiet.”
“I don’t understand.”
Who did? Who understood anything anymore? Gods, they couldn’t even turn off the few oil-pumps in Citgo that still worked, although half of them squealed like pigs in a slaughtering chute. These days you were usually just grateful to find things that still worked at all.
“In the summer, when there’s time, drovers and cowboys drag loads of brush to the mouth of Eyebolt,” she said. “Dead brush is all right, but live is better, for it’s smoke that’s wanted, and the
