The Damnation Affair

ride, so Joe had saddled a bay mare for her and she had leapt into the saddle neat as you please. No sidesaddle, that miss, Joe said, his blue eyes gleaming. Right pretty seat she has, too.

When asked which way she went, Joe spat and shook his head. He had horses to care for and the stagecoach was due in later today. He didn’t give a damn where she went as long as she brought the mare back before dark.

The whiskey had burned off. Jack’s head throbbed, and there was a deeper ache in his chest. Russ took his hat off, eyeing the boiling dark clouds over the hills. Thunder rumbled, growing closer. The betting on just when the rains would come would be in full swing by now.

Russ scrubbed at his forehead with his fingertips. “Today of all days,” he moaned. “Do you think maybe…she couldn’t know I’ve got her brother’s charing. I was careful.”

Gabe blinked. “A letter.” Curse me for a lackwit. “She got a letter today. From Boston, the postmistress said. Goddamn.”

“Maybe it…dear God.” Russ looked sick, leaning against the livery’s splintery wall. The morning light had taken on the eerie greenish-yellow cast that meant the storm was coming sooner rather than later. “What kind of brother would tell his sister where that claim is? Or…do you think he did? Maybe she’s got some way of knowing. She’s got some mancy.”

“Enough to have a Practicality.” He wished his skull would cease squeezing itself to pieces. “Let a man think, Russ. Just shut your hole for a minute or two.”

“We may not have a minute,” the chartermage worried. “If she breaks open that claim again, she might get infected. And you know what that means.”

Gabe clapped a lid on his temper. “I sealed it up, she ain’t gonna break it.” Except where there’s a will, there’s a way, and she’s got no shortage of will. “Now just shut up and let me goddamn think.”

Russ wasn’t listening. “We may have to put her down like a rabid—”

Gabe had him by the jacket-front, up against the wall, his fists turning in the material. How the hell did I get here? “Shut. Up. You hear me, chartermage? Keep your mouth shut. That claim was sealed as of yesterday, and she ain’t gonna break in. You are gonna go check Robbie Browne’s grave and see if her mancy led her there. I am gonna go check that goddamn claim, and if I find her there I am going to make her listen to some sense. One way or another, we are bringin’ her back to Damnation.” And I am not letting her out of my sight until we get a few things settled.

Russ gaped at him. How fast had Jack moved? And it wasn’t like him to hold a man up against a wall. His temper wasn’t certain, and that was a bad sign.

“All right. All right, Jack, just settle down—”

“I ain’t settlin’ until I see my girl’s safe. You just mind me, mage. That damn schoolmarm is…well, you ain’t gonna make any pronouncements about her without my say-so.” And if she does break into that claim…No, she won’t. She can’t.

Except he had an uneasy feeling that can’t wasn’t a word he could apply to his Miss Catherine Barrowe. She didn’t know the meaning of the term. And if the thing in the claim infected her like it had her brother…

What, Jack? You’ll shoot her? Another woman dead because you didn’t do right.

“All right,” Russ was saying, the words under a heavy counterpoint of thunder. “All right, Gabe. We’d better get started.” In the distance, lightning flashed, silver stitches under ink-black billows. And that was a trifle unnatural, though it was hard to tell with the way the storms swept through at this time of year.

She would go out just as the rains were coming in. If there was an easy way to go about things, the damn woman would arrange it the other way ’round just to spite him.

“Reckon so.” His fingers threatened to cramp as he released the chartermage. “You remember the grave, right?”

“I remember.” The weird light did no good by Russ’s complexion. The man was ashen, and staring at Gabe like he was a stranger. “You just be careful up at that claim, Jack. I’d hate to lose you.”

“Got no intention of being lost.” And no intention of losing her, either.

Chapter 26

After the heat, a cool breeze was welcome—until it turned chill, and she realized the clouds were not a good sign. She had not brought a coat—what need, when she hadn’t ceased sweating since she arrived? The wind held a fragrant promise of water, too, just the thing to tamp the dust down.

The bay mare was sweet-tempered and had a good pace, but for a long while the hills due west of the town seemed to grow no closer. She’d struck out from the western charterstone, the brass compass from Father’s desk tucked safely in her skirt pocket and her mother’s watch securely fastened. Her veil kept the dust away, crackling with a charm she had seen Mr. Gabriel perform, and the thought of him was a thin letter-knife turning between her ribs.

Perhaps he had thought Li Ang would be in no danger. Perhaps he thought—

Who cares what he thought? I shall find Robbie, or whatever remains of him. Then…what?

The locket tugged against her fingers, its chain wound around each one. The finding-charm was simple, and as soon as she had uttered its first syllable, the locket had lit with blue-white mancy, strange knots that were not quite charter running under the surface of the metal.

The ride gave her plenty of time to think, though her entire body began to protest that she was no longer practiced in such things. She had ridden with Robbie, of course—pleasure jaunts, and sometimes a hunt when invited to a country house.

If she found a grave at the end of the locket’s urging, what then?

Then I shall shake the dust of this hideous place from my person and leave at once. Perhaps I shall go to San Frances, or return to Boston.

Except the thought of returning to the city of her birth was too bitter to be borne. And there was a certain… well, the sand-dust ground, broken only by hunched figures of thorny plants and stunted junips, tumbleweeds scurrying from the lash of the wind, had a charm about it. The stifled parlours, parquet floors, endless rounds of social calls and charity work, the decisions of dress and etiquette and prestige, did not close about her so here. There was, she decided, a freedom to be had here in the Westron wilderness, but the incivility of Damnation was not the place to seek it.

And if she was quick enough, she would never have to see Jack Gabriel’s face again. Embarrassment all but made her writhe in the saddle. What had she been thinking?

But the heat of him, and the quiet capability in his hands, and that damnable half-smile when he glanced at her. Don’t think on it any further.

Except that was what he would say, wasn’t it? Don’t trouble yourself. And he would quietly go about solving a difficulty.

Like a body on her kitchen floor.

A body Mr. Gabriel probably had not been surprised by. But still… My girl.

A hot flush rose to her cheeks, and Cat muttered a highly impolite term in response. The man was a nuisance, scarcely better than Mr. Tilson and his bestial rage. He had put Cat in the path of murder—and now that she thought on it, the rabbit nailed to her porch must have been a warning to Li Ang, and therefore to Jack.

Not Jack. Mr. Gabriel. Thus he is, and thus he shall remain, world without end, smote it be,