off. No one was close enough to listen to the low-voiced conversation of the two men by the door, even if one of the snoring drunkards was for some reason only shamming sleep. Jonas put a red queen on a black knight, then looked up at Rimer. “Say your say.”
“Those two said it for me, actually. Sai Depape will never be embarrassed by a surplus of brains, but Reynolds is fairly smart for a gunny, isn’t he?”
“Clay’s trig when the moon’s right and he’s had a shave,” Jonas agreed. “Are you saying you came all the way from Seafront to tell me those three babbies need a closer looking at?”
Rimer shrugged.
“Perhaps they do, and I’m the man to do it, if so-right enough. But what’s there to find?”
“That’s to be seen,” Rimer said, and tapped one of Jonas’s cards. “There’s a Chancellor.”
“Aye. Near as ugly as the one I’m sitting with.” Jonas put the Chancellor-it was Paul-above his run of cards. The next draw uncovered Luke, whom he put next to Paul. That left Peter and Matthew still lurking in the bush. Jonas looked at Rimer shrewdly. “You hide it better than my pals, but you’re as nervous as they are, underneath. You want to know what’s out at that bunkhouse? I’ll tell you: extra boots, pictures of their mommies, socks that stink to high heaven, stiff sheets from boys who’ve been taught it’s low-class to chase after the sheep… and guns hidden somewhere. Under the floorboards, like enough.”
“You really think they have guns?”
“Aye, Roy got the straight of that, all right. They’re from Gilead, they’re likely from the line of Eld or from folk who like to think they’re from it, and they’re likely 'prentices to the trade who’ve been sent on with guns they haven’t earned yet. I wonder a bit about the tall one with the I-don’t-give-a-shit look in his eyes-he might already be a gunslinger, I suppose-but is it likely? I don’t think so. Even if he is, I could take him in a fair go. I know it, and he does, too.”
“Then why have they been sent here?”
“Not because those from the Inner Baronies suspect your treason, sai Rimer-be easy on that score.”
Rimer’s head poked out of his serape as he sat up straight, and his face stiffened. “How dare you call me a traitor? How dare you?”
Eldred Jonas favored Hambry’s Minister of Inventory with an unpleasant smile. It made the white-haired man look like a wolverine. “I’ve called things by their right names my whole life, and I won’t stop now. All that needs matter to you is that I’ve never double-crossed an employer.”
“If I didn’t believe in the cause of-”
“To hell with what you believe! It’s late and I want to go to bed. The folk in New Canaan and Gilead haven’t the foggiest idea of what does or doesn’t go on out here on the Crescent; there aren’t many of em who’ve ever been here, I’d wager. Them are too busy trying to keep everything from falling down around their ears to do much travelling these days. No, what they know is all from the picturebooks they was read out of when they 'us babbies themselves: happy cowboys galloping after stock, happy fishermen pulling whoppers into their boats, folks clogging at bam-raisings and drinking big pots o’ graf in Green Heart pavilion. For the sake of the Man Jesus, Rimer, don’t go dense on me-I deal with that day in and day out.”
“They see Mejis as a place of quiet and safety.”
“Aye, bucolic splendor, just so, no doubt about it. They know that their whole way o’ life-all that nobility and chivalry and ancestor-worship-is on fire. The final battle may take place as much as two hundred wheels northwest of their borders, but when Farson uses his fire-carriages and robots to wipe out their army, trouble will come south fast. There are those from the Inner Baronies who’ve smelled this coming for twenty years or more. They didn’t send these brats here to discover your secrets, Rimer; folks such as these don’t send their babbies into danger on purpose. They sent em here to get em out of the way, that’s all. That doesn’t make em blind or stupid, but for the sake of the gods, let’s be sane. They’re kiddies;'
“What else might you find, should you go out there?”
“Some way of sending messages, mayhap. A heliograph’s the most likely. And out beyond Eyebolt, a shepherd or maybe a freeholder susceptible to a bribe-someone they’ve trained to catch the message and either flash it on or carry it afoot. But before long it’ll be too late for messages to do any good, won’t it?”
“Perhaps, but it’s not too late yet. And you’re right. Kiddies or not, they worry me.”
“You’ve no cause, I tell you. Soon enough, I’ll be wealthy and you’ll be downright rich. Mayor yourself, if you want. Who’d stand to stop you? Thorin? He’s a joke. Coral? She’d help you string him up, I wot. Or perhaps you’d like to be a Baron, if such offices be revived?” He saw a momentary gleam in Rimer’s eyes and laughed. Matthew came out of the deck, and Jonas put him up with the other Chancellors. “Yar, I see that’s what you’ve got your heart set on. Gems is nice, and for gold that goes twice, but there’s nothing like having folk bow and scrape before ye, is there?”
Rimer said, “They should have been on the cowboy side by now.”
Jonas’s hands stopped above the layout of cards. It was a thought that had crossed his own mind more than once, especially over the last two weeks or so.
“How long do you think it takes to count our nets and boats and chart out the fish-hauls?” Rimer asked. “They should be over on the Drop, counting cows and horses, looking through barns, studying the foal-charts. They should have been there two weeks ago, in fact. Unless they already know what they’d find.”
Jonas understood what Rimer was implying, but couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it. Not such a depth of slyness from boys who only had to shave once a week.
“No,” he said. “That’s your own guilty heart talking to you. They’re just so determined to do it right that they’re creeping along like old folks with bad eyes. They’ll be over on the Drop soon enough, and counting their little hearts out.”
“And if they’re not?”
A good question. Get rid of them somehow, Jonas supposed. An ambush, perhaps. Three shots from cover, no more babbies. There’d be ill feeling afterward-the boys were well liked in town-but Rimer could handle that until Fair Day, and after the Reap it wouldn’t matter. Still-
“I’ll have a look around out at the Bar K,” Jonas said at last. “By myself-I won’t have Clay and Roy tramping along behind me.”
“That sounds fine.”
“Perhaps you’d like to come and lend a hand.”
Kimba Rimer smiled his icy smile. “I think not.”
Jonas nodded, and began to deal again. Going out to the Bar K would be a bit risky, but he didn’t expect any real problem-especially if he went alone. They were only boys, after all, and gone for much of each day.
“When may I expect a report, sai Jonas?”
“When I’m ready to make it. Don’t crowd me.”
Rimer lifted his thin hands and held them, palms out, to Jonas. “Cry your pardon, sai,” he said.
Jonas nodded, slightly mollified. He flipped up another card. It was Peter, Chancellor of Keys. He put the card in the top row and then stared at it, combing his fingers through his long white hair as he did. He looked from the card to Rimer, who looked back, eyebrows raised.
“You smile,” Rimer said.
“Yar!” Jonas said, and began to deal again. “I’m happy! All the Chancellors are out. 1 think I’m going to win this game.”
5
For Rhea, the time of the Huntress had been a time of frustration and unsatisfied craving. Her plans had gone awry, and thanks to her cat’s hideously mistimed leap, she didn’t know how or why. The young cull who’d taken Susan Delgado’s cherry had likely stopped her from chopping her scurf… but how? And who was he really? She wondered that more and more, but her curiosity was secondary to her fury. Rhea of the Coos wasn’t used to being balked.
She looked across the room to where Musty crouched and watched her carefully. Ordinarily he would have relaxed in the fireplace (he seemed to like the cool drafts that swirled down the chimney), but since she had singed his fur. Musty preferred the woodpile. Given Rhea’s mood, that was probably wise. “You’re lucky I let ye live, ye warlock,” the old woman grumbled.
She turned back to the ball and began to make passes above it, but the glass only continued to swirl with bright pink light-not a single image appeared. Rhea got up at last, went to the door, threw it open, and looked out on the night sky. Now the moon had waxed a little past the half, and the Huntress was coming clear on its bright face. Rhea directed the stream of foul language she didn’t quite dare to direct at the glass (who knew what entity might lurk inside it, waiting to take offense at such talk?) up at the woman in the moon. Twice she slammed her bony old fist into the door-lintel as she cursed, dredging up every dirty word she could think of, even the potty-mouth words children throw at each other in the dust of the play yard. Never had she been so angry. She had given the girl a command, and the girl, for whatever reasons, had disobeyed. For standing against Rhea of the Coos, the bitch deserved to die.
“But not right away,” the old woman whispered. “First she should be rolled in the dirt, then pissed on until the dirt’s mud and her fine blonde hair’s full of it. Humiliated… hurt… spat on…”
She slammed her fist against the door’s side again, and this time blood flew from the knuckles. It wasn’t just the girl’s failure to obey the hypnotic command. There was another matter, related but much more serious: Rhea herself was now too upset to use the glass, except for brief and unpredictable periods of time. The hand-passes she made over it and the incantations she muttered to it were, she knew, useless; the words and gestures were just the way she focused her will. That was what the glass responded to-will and concentrated thought. Now, thanks to the trollop of a girl and her boy lover, Rhea was too angry to summon the smooth concentration needed to part the pink fog which swirled inside the ball. She was, in fact, too angry to see.
“How can I make it like it was?” Rhea asked the half-glimpsed woman in the moon. “Tell me! Tell me!” But the Huntress told her nothing, and at last Rhea went back inside, sucking at her bleeding knuckles.
Musty saw her coming and squeezed into the cobwebby space between the woodpile and the chimney.
Chapter II
THE GIRL AT THE WINDOW
1
Now the Huntress “filled her belly,” as the old-timers said-even at noon she could be glimpsed in the sky, a pallid vampire woman caught in bright autumn sunlight. In front of businesses such as the Travellers’ Rest and on the porches of such large ranch houses as Lengyll’s Rocking B and Renfrew’s Lazy Susan, stuffy-guys with heads full of straw above their old overalls began to appear. Each
