The Damnation Affair

much to her surprise, that she quite missed them already. And Li Ang’s round, now-familiar face, and little baby Jonathan’s piping cries. She even missed the heat and the dust. Any heat would have been welcome now.

Is Jack well? He stayed behind at the cave, to do…what? He said he had business there. Oddly enough, the thought of him—dirty, stubbled, and comforting—hurt somewhere in the region of her chest. A piercing pain, as if she had been stabbed.

Her head ached quite dreadfully, too. “I truly do not feel well.” Her voice was high and rather young, as if she were nine and afraid of the shadows on the nursery wall again.

“Don’t worry.” Her brother tautened the reins, and the horses—thin nags, but tough as bootleather—halted, switching their tails. “We have arrived. Straighten your fan, dearest.”

The words—just what he would say before a ball, in the carriage as they braced themselves for another night In Society—made a small, forlorn giggle escape her. How far they were from Boston. Here, in the middle of a wet night in the cold, and her throat throbbing terribly…but still, she clung to his arm until he fastened the reins and hopped down from the wagon.

It was dark, and the rain came down in sheets. She could just make out a roaring river, its curve reminding her terribly of the crescent of sandy beach and the soul-eating blackness on its other shore. But there were white- trunked jessum trees, shaking their jangling bracelet-leaves under the wind, and as Robbie lifted her down she felt a tingle along her skin. It was a comforting warmth, and even though her breath came in puffs of white cloud as the wind veered and cut through her sodden riding habit, she felt it like a blanket about her shoulders.

“Oh,” she said, a thin breath of wonder, and her brother laughed again.

“I told you that you would feel it. Now, step this way, sister.”

She did, holding fast to his arm, and the rain was a curtain of jewels. The jessum trees waved their long fluttering finials in greeting, and there was a patch of sunken earth with a stone at its head.

Robbie drove the shovel in at the foot of the grave, his booted foot stamping it cleanly home. It would wait until needed.

She clung to his arm with all her remaining strength, and when he turned to face her, there was a break in the heavy clouds, and starshine played over his pale, ravaged face.

“Are you quite sure?” he asked her, pointlessly.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her throat really did hurt most awfully, and her head was full of rushing noise. She stepped away, her hands falling to her sides, fisting inside the ruins of her gloves. “We shall go to San Frances. The opera there is quite fine, I’ve been told.” There was a gleam in his hands. The rain slackened. The gleam was a pistol, and the fear was suddenly very large, and she was lost in it. “Robbie…” Breathless, and she lifted her chin. I am a Barrowe-Browne. I shall not cry. “Do it, for God’s sake. Do not let me become a mindless slave to that thing. I would rather…well.” I would rather die, but I will, won’t I? Either way. It is six of one, a half-dozen of another. At least this way I shall not become a slavering hag.

“I…” His throat worked, and the warmth enveloping her skin was familiar. Where had she felt it before? “I am sorry, Kittycat.”

She nodded, strings of wet hair falling in her face. If she ever reached a dry warm place after this, she would stay there for a month, she promised herself. Thick woolen socks, and a wrapper, and some of Li Ang’s harsh black tea would do very well right at the moment.

The pistol’s mouth looked very large as he pointed it at her. Where had he acquired such a thing, she wondered, and decided not to ask if it had been bought in a pawnshop on Damnation’s dusty main street.

What else had Robbie bought from a chartershadow, she wondered?

“If this hurts,” she managed in a queerly husky, ruined voice, “I shall simply pinch you, Robert. Twice.”

He squeezed the trigger, and squeezed his eyes shut at the same time, and there was a terrific blow to her chest.

How odd, it doesn’t hurt. The warmth spilled through her, and there was a rivulet of something hot on her chin. She reached up to dab it away, but her limbs would not obey her. A swimming weakness took her, and Robbie cried her name, over and over.

It is all well, she wanted to tell him, but the bubble of warmth burst on her lips and she fell. She did not feel it, spilled sideways onto the cold ground…

…and Catherine Elizabeth Barrowe-Browne died.

Chapter 33

“I ain’t giving you a horse.” Joe glowered, the bandage around his head glare-white in the livery’s lamplight. “You rode Bessie near into her grave, dammit, and that schoolmarm—”

“It warn’t her fault.” Gabe’s eyes burned, and he was sure his temper was none too steady. “And I ain’t asking, Joe. I need a horse, Hathorn’s missing, and after the night we’ve had, you’d do well not to question me.”

“Give him a goddamn horse.” Russ coughed rackingly, leaning against a stall door. “He’s got business.”

Gabe pulled his hand away from the gun-butt. “How long you been standin’ there?”

“Long enough.” The chartermage fixed him with a piercing glare. Russ looked about ready to fall down and sleep right there against the stall door, but his gaze was clear and his hands were loose, leftover mancy popping and sparking about him. “She might not have been in her house, Gabe. And that thing in the claim…”

“It can’t have her.” The words had to work their way around a wet rock lodged in his throat. “By God, if I have to, I will put her in a quiet grave. But it won’t have her.” And if it killed her, I will return the favor. I have grace enough for that.

I have to.

Russ nodded, wearily. His hair, free of the wax and grimed with mud, stood up anyhow. He’d lost his bowler hat somewhere, and the guck smeared all over him was thick enough to turn aside a curse. “You want some help?”

As if you could give me any. “I ain’t askin’.”

“But I am.”

Joe set about saddling a big white cob-headed beast of a horse, mutiny evident in his every line. He cast both Russ and Gabe reproachful little glances, but neither of them paid attention.

“Damnation needs you more.” Gabe considered the chartermage for a long moment. “I’ll take the ammunition you’re carrying, though.”

For a moment there was silence, as Russ unbuckled the belt full of cartridges and leather boxes of stacked bullets. He handed it over, and Gabe weighed it. Almost full; Russ’s battle had not involved gunplay.

“I was of the Templis.” The words surprised him, and the fact that he could say it so calmly surprised him as well. “I was a Knight, full-made and Baptized. I left them to marry Annie, but it follows a man, don’t it.”

“Fate tends to do that.” Russ leaned back against the stall door. The exhaustion had turned him gray, even in the warm lamplight. “I didn’t think the Ordo Templis still existed.”

Oh, they do. “My…my wife. She…died.” Why had he not told the man before? I had my reasons.

But were they good ones? Was it too late to offer an explanation, or even ask for…what? Forgiveness?

My way is to cleanse, not to forgive.

“So I gathered.” Russ coughed again. “I ain’t gonna see you again, am I.”

“Maybe not.” But Gabe paused, taking the reins from Joe as the big pale animal snorted and eyed him nervously. “You’re a good friend, Russ Overton. I wish to God I’d told you what I was.”

“Shitfire, Gabe, you think I didn’t guess?” The laugh was worn and threadbare, but it still made the chartermage look years younger. “Go on now. Do what you got to.”

That’s all I ever do. What I got to. Some days I wish it weren’t. His foot found the stirrup, and he heaved himself up with a grunt, his entire body protesting. “This ain’t, by any chance, that man- eating bastard of a horse your dad was swearing to put down, was it?”