19
When she was sure the boys were gone, Rhea crept out of her door and into the hateful sunshine. She hobbled across to the tree and fell on her knees by the tattered length of her snake, weeping loudly.
“Ermot, Ermot!” she cried. “See what’s become of ye!”
There was his head, the mouth frozen open, the double fangs still dripping poison-clear drops that shone like prisms in the day’s strengthening light. The glazing eyes glared. She picked Ermot up, kissed the scaly mouth, licked the last of the venom from the exposed needles, crooning and weeping all the while.
Next she picked up the long and tattered body with her other hand, moaning at the holes which had been torn into Ermot’s satiny hide; the holes and the ripped red flesh beneath. Twice she put the head against the body and spoke incantations, but nothing happened. Of course not. Ermot had gone beyond the aid of her spells. Poor Ermot.
She held his head to one flattened old dug, and his body to the other. Then, with the last of his blood wetting the bodice of her dress, she looked in the direction the hateful boys had gone.
“I’ll pay ye back,” she whispered. “By all the gods that ever were, I’ll pay ye back. When ye least expect it, there Rhea will be, and your screams will break your throats. Do you hear me? Your screams will break your throats!”
She knelt a moment longer, then got up and shuffled back toward her hut, holding Ermot to her bosom.
Chapter V
WIZARD’S RAINBOW
1
On an afternoon three days after Roland’s and Cuthbert’s visit to the Coos, Roy Depape and Clay Reynolds walked along the upstairs hallway of the Travellers’ Rest to the spacious bedroom Coral Thorin kept there. Clay knocked. Jonas called for them to come in, it was open.
The first thing Depape saw upon entering was sai Thorin herself, in a rocker by the window. She wore a foamy nightdress of white silk and a red bufanda on her head. She had a lapful of knitting. Depape looked at her in surprise. She offered him and Reynolds an enigmatic smile, said “Hello, gents,” and returned to her needlework. Outside there was a rattle of firecrackers (young folks could never wait until the big day; if they had crackers in their hands, they had to set match to them), the nervous whinny of a horse, and the raucous laughter of boys.
Depape turned to Reynolds, who shrugged and then crossed his arms to hold the sides of his cloak. In this way he expressed doubt or disapproval or both.
“Problem?”
Jonas was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, wiping shaving soap from his face with the end of the towel laid over his shoulder. He was bare to the waist. Depape had seen him that way plenty of times, but the old white crisscrossings of scars always made him feel a little sick to his stomach.
“Well… I knew we was using the lady’s room, I just didn’t know the lady came with it.”
“She does.” Jonas tossed the towel into the bathroom, crossed to the bed, and took his shirt from where it hung on one of the footposts. Beyond him, Coral glanced up, gave his naked back a single greedy look, then went back to her work once more. Jonas slipped into his shirt. “How arc things at Citgo, Clay?”
“Quiet. But it’ll get noisy if certain young vagabundos poke their nosy noses in.”
“How many are out there, and how do they set?” “Ten in the days. A dozen at night. Roy or I are out once every shift, but like I say, it’s been quiet.”
Jonas nodded, but he wasn’t happy. He’d hoped to draw the boys out to Citgo before now, just as he’d hoped to draw them into a confrontation by vandalizing their place and killing their pigeons. Yet so far they still hid behind their damned Hillock. He felt like a man in a field with three young bulls. He’s got a red rag, this would-be torero, and he’s napping it for all he’s worth, and still the toros refuse to charge. Why? “The moving operation? How goes that?”
“Like clockwork,” Reynolds said. “Four tankers a night, in pairs, the last four nights. Renfrew’s in charge, him of the Lazy Susan. Do you still want to leave half a dozen as bait?”
“Yar,” Jonas said, and there was a knock at the door. Depape jumped. “Is that-”
“No,” Jonas said. “Our friend in the black robe has decamped. Perhaps he goes to offer comfort to the Good Man’s troops before battle.”
Depape barked laughter at that. By the window, the woman in the nightgown looked down at her knitting and said nothing. “It’s open!” Jonas called.
The man who stepped in was wearing the sombrero, scrape, and sandalias of a farmer or vaquero, but the face was pale and the lock of hair peeking out from beneath the sombrero’s brim was blond. It was Latigo. A hard man and no mistake, but a great improvement over the laughing man in the black robe, just the same.
“Good to see you, gentlemen,” he said, coming in and closing the door. His face-dour, frowning-was that of a man who hasn’t seen anything good in years. Maybe since birth. “Jonas? Are you well? Do things march?”
“I am and they do,” Jonas said. He offered his hand. Latigo gave it a quick, dry shake. He didn’t do the same for Depape or Reynolds, but glanced at Coral instead.
“Long days and pleasant nights, lady.”
“And may you have twice the number, sai Latigo,” she said without looking up from her knitting.
Latigo sat on the end of the bed, produced a sack of tobacco from beneath his scrape, and began rolling a cigarette.
“I won’t stay long,” he said. He spoke in the abrupt, clipped tones of northern In-World, where-or so Depape had heard-reindeer-fucking was still considered the chief sport. If you ran slower than your sister, that was. “It wouldn’t be wise. I don’t quite fit in, if one looks closely.”
“No,” Reynolds said, sounding amused. “You don’t.”
Latigo gave him a sharp glance, then returned his attention to Jonas. “Most of my party is camped thirty wheels from here, in the forest west of Eyebolt Canyon… what is that wretched noise inside the canyon, by the way? It frightens the horses.”
“A thinny,” Jonas said.
“It scares the men, too, if they get too close,” Reynolds said. “Best to stay away, cap'n.”
“How many are you?” Jonas asked.
“A hundred. And well armed.”
“So, it’s said, were Lord Perth’s men.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“Have they seen any fighting?”
“Enough to know what it is,” Latigo said, and Jonas knew he was lying. Farson had kept his veterans in their mountain boltholes. Here was a little expeditionary force where no doubt only the sergeants were able to do more with their cocks than run water through them.
“There are a dozen at Hanging Rock, guarding the tankers your men have brought so far,” Latigo said.
“More than needed, likely.”
“I didn’t risk coming into this godforsaken shitsplat of a town in order to discuss my arrangements with you, Jonas.”
“Cry your pardon, sai,” Jonas replied, but perfunctorily. He sat on the floor next to Coral’s rocker and began to roll a smoke of his own. She put her knitting aside and began to stroke his hair. Depape didn’t know what there was about her that Eldred found so fascinating-when he himself looked he saw only an ugly bitch with a big nose and mosquito-bump tittles.
“As to the three young men,” Latigo said with the air of a fellow going directly to the heart of the matter. “The Good Man was extremely disturbed to learn there were visitors from In-World in Mejis. And now you tell me they aren’t what they claim to be. So, just what are they?”
Jonas brushed Coral’s hand away from his hair as though it were ii troublesome insect. Undisturbed, she returned to her knitting. “They’re not young men but mere boys, and if their coming here is ka-about which I know Farson concerns himself deeply-then it may be our ka rather than the Affiliation’s.”
“Unfortunately, we’ll have to forgo enlightening the Good Man with your theological conclusions,” Latigo said. “We’ve brought radios, but they’re either broken or can’t work at this distance. No one knows which. I hate all such toys, anyway. The gods laugh at them. We’re on our own, my friend. For good or ill.”
“No need for Farson to worry unnecessarily,” Jonas said. “The Good Man wants these lads treated as a threat to his plans. I expect Walter told you the same thing.”
“Aye. And I haven’t forgotten a word. Sai Walter is an unforgettable sort of man.”
“Yes,” Latigo agreed. “He’s the Good Man’s underliner. The chief reason he came to you was to underline these boys.”
“And so he did. Roy, tell sai Latigo about your visit to the Sheriff day before yesterday.”
Depape cleared his throat nervously. “The sheriff… Avery-”
“I know him, fat as a pig in Full Earth, he is,” Latigo said. “Go on.” “One of Avery’s deputies carried a message to the three boys as they counted horse on the Drop.” “What message?”
“Stay out of town on Reaping Day; stay off the Drop on Reaping Day; best to stay close to your quarters on Reaping Day, as Barony folk don’t enjoy seeing outlanders, even those they like, when they keep their festivals.”
“And how did they take it?”
“They agreed straight away to keep to themselves on Reaping,” Depape said. “That’s been their habit all along, to be just as agreeable as pie when something’s asked of em. They know better, course they do-there’s no more a custom here against outlanders on Reaping than there is anyplace else. In fact, it’s quite usual to make strangers a part of the merrymaking, as I’m sure the boys know. The idea-”
“-is to make them believe we plan to move on Fair-Day itself, yes, yes,” Latigo finished impatiently. “What I want to know is are they convinced? Can you take them on the day before Reaping, as you’ve promised, or will they be waiting?”
Depape and Reynolds looked at Jonas. Jonas reached behind him and put his hand on Coral’s narrow but not uninteresting thigh. Here it was, he thought. He would be held to what he said next,