Stone Junction

Daniel to the ground. Wild Bill picked up the ax and tossed it away as Daniel rolled and came up quickly. He hit Wild Bill in the chest with a round-house right, following with a glancing left off his cheek. Wild Bill rolled his heavy shoulders and brought his fists up to cover his face, elbows tucked to protect his solar plexus. Daniel hit him a solid right to the stomach. Wild Bill grunted but kept his hands up.

‘Fight!’ Daniel yelled, and hit him hard in the stomach again. When Wild Bill’s hands dropped for an instant, Daniel followed with a left to the head. Wild Bill yelped, staggering sideways a moment before catching his balance. He shook his head to clear it, blinking against the blood running from a cut above his eye.

‘Fight, you fucker!’ Daniel screamed again.

‘She’s dead, Daniel. Dead.’

Daniel threw a left uppercut that hit squarely on the point of Wild Bill’s elbows, sending a jolt of pain up Daniel’s arm to his shoulder.

‘Come on,’ Wild Bill said wearily, ‘get it all.’

Daniel hit him with a right hook above the ear but Wild Bill rolled with the blow. Daniel threw a left but there was no strength in that arm so he threw a right that Wild Bill easily blocked with a shoulder. Daniel threw another, another, another, and then he had nothing left, all the rage and fear and loss emptying in a rush, and he fell into Wild Bill’s arms.

Back in camp, Wild Bill held an improvised compress to his cut eye and Daniel soaked his swollen hands in the cold water. They didn’t speak for a long time. Daniel was exhausted and Wild Bill had nothing to say. Finally, Daniel stood shakily and worked his hands. ‘When are we leaving?’

‘I’m heading out in the morning,’ Wild Bill said. ‘You’re welcome to go with me or you can stay if you want. Owen’ll be there around dark if you want a ride.’

‘What then?’

‘I’m going to Arizona and put some desert between my ears. All this lushness sort of depresses me. Makes the eye sloppy.’

‘What about me?’

‘You go on with your training. Up to you.’

‘My training? I didn’t know I was being trained. What for?’

‘Depends on what you learn.’

‘Uh-huh, right. Well, one thing I’ve learned is not to expect a straight answer.’

‘I take teaching seriously, Daniel. I won’t tell you what I don’t know.’

‘Then tell me what you do know.’

‘There’s sort of three levels of association with AMO. The first is friends and kindred souls. That association is a loose system of mutual aid and moral support. They don’t pay dues. The second is allies, actual members of AMO who pay their yearly five percent, and who receive and provide direct benefits of the Alliance. And then there are adepts. They are people with particular gifts and understanding who sustain and expand the Alliance’s traditional arts and practices.’

‘Is that what you’re trying not to tell me, that I’m being trained as an adept?’

‘No one is trained as an adept. An adept is one who has mastered a particular art, who has achieved a certain understanding. You can’t teach mastery. You can only teach certain skills of awareness, which in turn lead to the recognition of possibilities and opportunities for further development – as well as the dangers involved. Beyond that, you’re on your own. But as Synesius noted as early as the fourth century, “There is always guidance available if you’re available.”’

Daniel considered this a moment, flexing his hands. ‘Do you think I have potential as an adept?’

‘I don’t give grades, Daniel. But yes, clearly, you have potential. Most everyone does. But you see, it’s like this: The brain processes information, and information can be an endless ride. With the addition of the heart, some information becomes knowledge. The spirit, or soul, transforms it into understanding. But that’s the problem with abstraction – it misleads by separation.’

‘What sort of potential do I have? I mean, what direction should I take? I’m not asking you to make the decision for me, understand – it’s just that I’d value your opinion.’

‘I don’t know. But I have a strong hunch that you’d make one helluva thief. Actually, what AMO calls a Raven, which goes way beyond stealing. “Agents of exchange and restitution” is what Volta calls them. Ravens are the only adepts that AMO allows to kill other human beings, and they can only use their imaginations as the weapon.’

‘You mean by imagining them dead? Or like shooting them from a hot-air balloon drifting by their window?’

‘I mean by writing them a note saying “I’m going to kill you tonight.” And the next day, one that reads “I was detained; it’s tonight,” and the next day, “Prepare yourself,” and do it day after day for a couple of weeks and then catch him asleep one night and fire a bullet just above his head and when he screams awake say, “Oops, shit, I missed – oh well, there’s always tomorrow.” And ten days later the guy runs his sports car into a concrete abutment.’

‘Jesus, what had he done?’

‘Daniel,’ Wild Bill scolded, ‘silence is golden.’

‘It’s still murder, though, in a way. Right?’

‘If you want to split moral hairs, talk to Volta. The use of violence has always been hotly debated in AMO, and over the centuries there’s been about a hundred different “official” policies – I’m relying on Volta’s scholarship here. The current policy is what Volta calls “compassionate condemnation.” That means you shouldn’t use lethal violence except in the most extreme circumstances – like self-defense – but that people, out of fear and ignorance and rage, make mistakes. And there is a meanness in the world that must be dealt with.’