Kingdom River

'Oooh, look at this… look at this!' She held a caked forefinger up to him. 'If you bite, I'll make you sorry.'

'Make you sorry' was a phrase all Mailmen were taught in training – when occasionally they were made sorry for flapping off the glacier flyway from Cambridge to New Haven and back again. Webster apparently recalled it. He closed his eyes, opened his mouth… and Patience felt eager wetness and heat, the rhythmic tickle of his little tongue as he licked and sucked the clots from her finger.

Five loaded fingertips later, Webster burped and said, 'Fly?' – his first courteous word since their fight.

'Yes.' Patience lifted him down and set him on her shoulder, which he clutched with fanned translucent amber wings. ' – To Map-McAllen.'

Webster understood 'McAllen' at least, and nodded. He had – as all completed Mailmen had – a perfect map stuck in his understanding by weeks and weeks of careful feeding of treats for remembering, weeks and weeks of careful scorching with candle flames for forgetting, say, where Map-Charleston, or Map-St. Louis, or Map- Philadelphia, or Map-Amarillo were, and their direction either way and any way. Scorching, as well, for forgetting the how-to-get-theres of much smaller places. All to fashion a messenger so superior to silly pigeons, who could only return where they came from.

'Not sunshine.' Webster was a coward, and frightened of hawks.

'No,' Patience said. 'Moonlight.' And turned her head to him for a puppy kiss. He didn't kiss very well… really only licked little licks.

The near-frozen rain peppered the tent's canvas as Patience sat on her cot, and using her small silvered-glass mirror for backing, while Webster watched from her shoulder, wrote a tiny note in tiny printing on a tiny strip of best-milled white paper.

fm better-weather, dear cousin louis, voss and 4000 cav going probably north to be bad in probably texas. now send webster back, yrs, p.

She reread it as Webster crawled down to the blanket beside her and thrust out a fragile little leg. It barely had a knee, had toes too small to count.

It seems probable, Patience thought. She'd heard the word 'north' spoken by a trooper in horse-lines. And a farrier cursing over the lack of replacement shoes for Voss until Boquillas del Carmen. So… probable.

She gently wrapped the strip of paper around Webster's leg – there were tiny soft bones in it – then looked in the covers for the piece of string she'd had ready to fasten the message on. She found the string on her pillow… and found also that she'd changed her mind.

'Why,' she said to the Mailman, 'should we make my so-old Cousin Louis look wise in Map-McAllen? Why let him interfere with my camp's campaigning? Though it would serve a certain rude ruler right, who threatened to pull me off my horse and hit me with a whip… Still, what could be more foolish than helping foolish Louis rise to Faculty, when he'll deny us credit?'

Webster watched her from the blanket.

' 'Oh,' he'll say, 'I knew it before, that cavalry coming up.' His so-old wife will agree. And you know, Webster, if Monroe's people lose severely in Texas, there will soon be no North Map-Mexico. And with no North Map-Mexico, no need for an ambassadress to it.'

Patience unwrapped the note from the Mailman's leg, tucked the paper into her mouth, chewed thoroughly, and swallowed. 'Instead, let's adopt the Warm-time attitude of wait-and-see.'

''Wait and see,'' Webster said, his voice thin as the piece of string, though he had no idea what those words meant. He had suckled his white cheese too greedily, and proved it by burping a mouthful up.

***

Howell Voss, having restrung the banjar with true cat-gut – two silver pesos a coil, shipped from Imperial Trading & Market in Cabo – leaned back on his cot and played a tuning chord, Warm- time G. Or so it was assumed. He'd long had the suspicion that ancient tuning was slightly different from the present's – different enough so the music said to have been theirs, notated as theirs in surviving copy-works, now probably sounded somewhat off.

He twisted his pegs, plucked… twisted his pegs again, and was in modern tune at least.

He'd just taken a singing-breath, when someone scratched at his tent-flap.

'I heard you tuning,' Ned Flores said, stooping to come in out of gathering darkness. He wore an ice-spangled army blanket as poncho, and was pale as a weary girl. '- Thought I'd better interrupt before the camp suffered.'

'You might remember that wasn't your sword hand you lost.'

'No.' Flores dropped the blanket, gently kicked open a folding camp chair, and sat. 'But you wouldn't duel an officer for an act of mercy.'

Voss sighed and set the banjar down. 'Truly refined taste is so rare… And how is that wound? Should you be up and walking?'

'Well, after five days in a mercy wagon with a fresh-sewn stump, I'm glad to be up. As for this,' holding out a thickly bandaged left wrist, ' – not, by the way, as comic as your fresh-trimmed ear – I'm told I can have something made, and strapped on.'

'What something?'

'Your Portia says, a hook.'

'The doctor's not 'my Portia.' But I think a hook would do.' The sleet was rattling, coming down harder.

'I've been considering tempered steel, Howell, forged from knife stock a flat inch and a quarter wide by a quarter inch thick – in-curving to a wicked fish-hook point. And, and its outer edge filed and sharpened.'

'The whole outside curve of the hook?'

'Hollow ground to a razor edge. Hook in, slash out.'

'Mountain Jesus. You'll have to be careful with that thing, Ned.'

'Others… will have to be careful of it. I don't suppose you intend to share any tobacco. You're getting damned rude, Howell – or should I say 'General'?'

'A curtsy will do.' Howell dug in a trouser pocket, tossed a half-plug over. 'Don't take it all. That's Finest.'

Ned bit off a chew. 'Oh, of course it is; it only smells like dog shit. Who sells you this stuff?' He tossed the remainder back.

'Maurice.'

'Maurice, the Thief of Reynosa?'

'He was acquitted. And that was about mules; the store was not involved.'

Ned tucked the chew into his cheek. 'Remind me, Howell…' he leaned far back in the camp chair, paged the tent-flap aside with his bandaged stump, and spit over his shoulder out into the rain. 'Remind me to play pickup sticks with you again. For money.'

'Yes, I will – and what the fuck happened at This'll Do?'

'What's the Warm-time for it? Got… 'too big for my britches.' '

'Elvin always gets that wrong.' Howell bent to pick up the banjar.

'Please don't. I'm an invalid.'

'Healing music.' Howell commenced soft strumming. 'So, what happened at This'll Do?'

Ned shifted his chew. 'Absolute dog shit… Well, nothing as wonderful as the Boca Chica thing, from what I hear. Our Sam standing aside to watch you make an ass of yourself – which, by some miracle, you did not.'

'Which – by some miracle, Ned – I did not.' Howell struck a chord, then lightly muffled it with his fingers. Struck… muffled. Struck… muffled.

'At This'll Do, I thought… Howell, I thought there was a very good chance to beat those people.'

'You did?'

'And I would have, if they'd had the usual old fart commanding them.'