The Damnation Affair

Every once in a while, Gabe would settle in a patch of shadow near the mouth of a dusty alley, and watch the chartershadow’s back door. It was useful to see who was visiting Salt. It was also useful to see how they approached—swaggering or creeping, desperate or slinking.

Very rarely, Gabe found himself collaring one of the desperate and telling them to go elsewhere. It wasn’t his business, and Salt didn’t need to know how closely he was watched. In fact, the less Salt knew about anything involving the sheriff, the better.

But sometimes, some nights, he couldn’t stop himself.

Tonight was not one of those nights. He watched, noting who came creeping down the alley. And while he waited, he thought things over.

Here came thin, dried-up Mandy Carrick, keeping to the shadows and paying who knew what for protection when he decided to jump another claim out in the hills, stealing some other man’s rightful work. That was outside Gabe’s jurisdiction, certainly, but he still took note of it. Struthers slithered down the alley, a blur of fawn coat and stickpin flashing, looking for cheat-card mancy. A Chinois man was closeted inside the back of the pawnshop for quite a while, and Gabe didn’t like the looks of that. Their mancy was different, even if it lived comfortably within charter, and he wondered just what one of them would want with Salt.

It was late by the time the trickle to the chartershadow’s door dried up. The saloons would be rollicking, and there had been a few crackling gunshots. Nothing out of the ordinary here in Damnation. He’d made sure the schoolteacher’s house was in a quieter part of town. Respectable, almost.

As respectable as you could get, out here.

Will you stop? Irritated with himself, he took a deep breath and slid out of concealment. She’s just a Boston miss a long way from home, and you’re a goddamn idiot.

He smacked the unlocked door open without even a courtesy to knock, almost allowing himself to grin with satisfaction when it banged and Freedman Salt, his lean scarecrow body seeming put together from spare parts and his thick white wooly hair shocking atop such a wasted face, actually jumped.

This back room was low and indifferently lit, and the chalked charter-symbols on the floor were all subtly skewed. Some were scuffed and others redrawn—Salt had been a busy little boy tonight. He wasn’t quite a sorcerer, or a chartermage; the man didn’t have the discipline. Instead, the twisted drained bodies of small furry things lay at certain points within the diagram, false-iron nails driven through skulls, paws, tails. It stank of spoiled mancy and clotted-thick rust.

“Well now.” Gabe rested a hand on a pistol butt. If he had been back East, it would have been a knife instead. He restrained the urge to shake the memory away. “What have we here?”

“Sheriff Gabriel.” Salt’s thin lip curled. “Pleasure, as always.”

“Not fixin’ to be. Dead bodies inside the charter this morning, Salt. Start explainin’.”

“Since when do dead bodies have shit-all to do with me?” As if butter wouldn’t melt in his lying mouth.

“These were walkin’ around.” Gabe eyed the walls, rough boards covered with an intaglio of twisted, slurred charter-symbols. Even the dust in here reeked of blood. “Ridin’ the circuit again put me in a bad mood, and the charter was solid. Which means I’m lookin’ real hard at you, Salt.”

A mockery of innocent shock twisted the chartershadow’s lean face. “Me? Maybe you need a better chartermage. That one you got is all tarbrush and no talent.”

“So are you, Freedman.” It was a sure way to nettle the man, and Gabe almost regretted it as soon as Salt’s face suffused with ugly maroon.

“I ain’t no—”

Gabe’s free hand flicked forward, the charm biting and fizzing in midair. Salt backpedaled, his boots smearing unfixed charter-symbols. A twinge of satisfaction burned Gabe’s chest just as the choking chartershadow managed to get about half a syllable out. The curse went wide, splashing against the wall and punching a fist-sized hole.

Then Gabe had the man down on the floor, the gun cocked and pressed right behind Salt’s ear. This close, he could see the dark roots of the man’s charm-bleached hair, and also smell the faint smoke and slippery wetroot rot of the lean lanky body as the bad mancy kept twisting him, one slow increment at a time. Salt’s hair frayed, chalked charter-symbols on the flooring writhing as Gabe scrubbed the shadow’s face across them.

There was, he reflected, almost too much enjoyment to be had in terrorizing the wicked. The Order did not precisely frown on such enjoyment…but it was dangerous.

“Settle down.” Or so help me, I will settle you. That curse could have taken my face off.

The only problem was, Salt’s replacement was likely to be worse. Every town, no matter how small, had at least one chartershadow. Even when there wasn’t a respectable mage to be found, the shadows crept in.

Harsh breathing. The tips of Salt’s boots scrabbled against the planking before he went still. Gabe knew better than to think he’d given up.

But for right now, it was enough. “Now.” He didn’t relax. “You been doing something that brings walkin’ corpses into Damnation, this’n your chance to tell me.”

“Would I be so stupid?” The words were muffled by the floor. At least he wasn’t writhing anymore. “I got a nice li’l nest here, Sheriff. Except’n you, it’s a bed of fucking roses.”

There’s always a thorn somewhere, isn’t there. “Well now. Mighty suspicious, then, that I’m the one who ran across walkin’ dead.”

Still, if Salt had brought the corpses in or charmed them, he would have been ready for Gabe to come through his door, and would have had a lot worse than a half-measure of curse waiting.

“I don’t know. It warn’t me.” Half-hysterical now, with the edge of a whine underneath the words. Salt could have been a reasonably employable chartermage with enough application and discipline, but he was both lazy and a coward.

And mancy—or grace—didn’t forgive cowardice easily.

Am I a coward now? How would I know? “You sure, Salt? You don’t sound too convinced.”

“It warn’t me, dammit!”

He eased up a little. “And of course you wouldn’t know anything about it, would you.”

The chartershadow began to struggle again, heaving under him. “First time I’ve heard, now leggo!”

Gabe did. He was on his feet and observing a cautious distance by the time Salt heaved himself up, his face choked with dust and bright beads of blood from several scrapes. The gun was back in Gabe’s holster—but his hand still itched for it.

“Evenin’, then, Mr. Salt.” He touched the brim of his hat.

“What, you ain’t gonna shoot me? Threaten me some more?”

“No point. I discover you ain’t been honest, it’s easy to find you. You havin’ such a nice little nest and all.”

Salt actually paled, his wasted frame visibly trembling. Whether it was rage or fear was an open question. He wore no guns, but Gabe was sure there was a knife or two handy. It would be just like the little bastard to slit someone in a dark alley.

He would have to be more careful now. Why had he drawn a gun, for God’s sake? Salt wasn’t enough of a threat to justify that.

Sir, your head is none too organized right now. He imagined Miss Barrowe’s clipped, cultured tones, how a single eyebrow would lift fractionally, but those dark eyes would hold a different message. She likely thought she was hard to read, the schoolmarm, but those eyes were windows straight down to the bottom of a clear pond.

Windows to the soul, Jack? Just like Annie’s.

The door was still open, a night breeze redolent of horse, dust, and Damnation breathing into the chartershadow’s room.

“Sheriff?” Salt wiped away the blood around his thin lips. “I saw a new face out my window today. Dressed in yellow, and pretty as a picture.”