Conspiracy of Ravens Read online

  “Some food wouldn’t go amiss, neither,” Rhett added, eyeing a pyramid of sardines.

  “Go see one of the widow women with all the cats, then. They like lost things.”

  “Might we trouble you for a shirt?” Earl asked.

  Jasper’s eyes went colder—which was quite a feat for stone. “All out of shirts.”

  It was a lie, and they all knew it.

  “Gratefulness runs pretty slim out here, seems like,” Rhett muttered.

  A snort from Jasper. “With some more than others. We’re a choosy people with long memories of fair-skinned shapeshifters raiding our settlements back home. You’ve been compensated now, Ranger. The debt is paid. Not everyone here is grateful for your part in our tragedy.”

  “Seems odd, not being grateful to the man who killed the thing that plagued you.”

  Jasper’s eyes went flat. “The man who killed it too late.”

  Rhett’s eye went flatter, and his fist started itching. “Then I’ll just ask you when my people left and in which direction and be on my way.”

  “Last week. They were headed back to Las Moras when they walked right out the front of town, just as they walked in. Good day, Ranger.”

  Picking up a push broom, Jasper made as if to sweep the two visitors out the goddamn door, and Rhett hurried onto the porch before he had to break a fist on the dwarf’s damn nose. As long as he lived, Rhett couldn’t conceive of a day when he would gladly abide rudeness in a man. But he had what he needed, and supplies and information were more valuable than genuine thanks, in the long run.

  “What the Sam Hill was that?” he said as they landed on dirt again.

  “I told you, lad. Nobody likes the Irish. Especially not Germanic dwarves.”

  “Damn what they like. We need food, and we need another shirt, and then we’re getting the hell out of this fool town. Come on, now.”

  Rhett remembered well the house where Winifred had gone for rose-smelling soap and a dress that swished becomingly around the girl’s well-formed calves. If the lady dwarves wouldn’t turn away a damn coyote-girl, surely they’d tolerate a redheaded feller who was being, for once, mercifully quiet. Dust swirled down the street as they hurried to the right house, and Rhett wished for a mirror, a bucket of water, anything to help make him seem more like a down-on-his-luck feller who needed a rare bit of help than a begging girl who couldn’t keep clean.

  The door opened after one knock, revealing a dwarf lady who looked, to Rhett, about like all other dwarf ladies, which is to say she looked like a dwarf feller wearing a flower-sprigged dress under a curly gray beard. She said nothing, just stared at them in inquiry.

  “Sorry for the intrusion, ma’am,” Rhett said, “but Jasper said as you might have some spare food. I’m a Ranger, and I been separated from my people for a long damn time. I mean, a long time, excusing your pardon.” If he’d had a hat, he would’ve held it against his chest with both hands, affecting bedragglement. He wasn’t a feller who liked to ask for anything or admit any weakness, but after several weeks of wandering the desert with nothing to eat but dead vermin, he was ready to try.

  The dwarf woman looked them up and down, her shiny gray eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You’re one of Winifred’s people, are you not?” she asked with a clipped accent.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Rhett said, although it tasted strange in his mouth to say it.

  She jabbed a thumb at Earl. “And who is this creature?”

  “One of my people.”

  The dwarf lady stared at them as if testing the hardness of her heart, and lucky for Rhett, his stomach grumbled audibly, just then. If stony eyes could go soft, hers did. Sticking her head out the door, she scanned the street up and down before opening the door wider to admit them.

  “Just don’t tell anyone,” she muttered.

  Inside, her house was a riot of femininity. Not a single surface was spared a doily, a plate, a teacup, a carven figurine. The wallpaper was pink and hectic with flowers, and the chairs all had matching cushions. The scent of roses pressed down aggressively, and Rhett wanted to go roll around in some nice, clean dirt just to clear his senses.

  “Thanks kindly, ma’am. And if you might have an extra shirt, my friend here was gracious enough to let me borrow his.”

  She stared Rhett up and down and nodded. “Don’t sit. Go on out to the lean-to, and I’ll see you fed. But I’ll expect you to earn your keep. Got a coop that needs fixing, and the cow likes a gentle hand for milking.”

  Rhett nodded. “As you see fit.”

  Not that he had any idea how to milk a cow or fix a coop, but he wasn’t about to say that. Had she been this tightfisted with Winifred, though? Rhett seemed to recall them laughing, and the coyote-girl never said anything about being put to work. Or maybe folks just didn’t expect much use out of a girl on her lone in the world, whereas a man was expected to pull his share. Rhett would rather work than flutter around like a fool, giggling. To that effect, he nodded and headed in the direction the dwarf indicated, through a door in the kitchen that led to a rough lean-to outside with blue sky peeking between its boards. Earl followed him like a ghost, his bare, sunburned shoulders hunched and one hand ever holding up his britches.

  When the woman nodded at a toolbox and shut the door on them, Earl finally seemed to come back to himself. Hefting the box, he jutted his chin toward the backyard. “Come on, then. Might as well be useful.”

  “I thought you weren’t good for much.”

  “Not at roughin’ it on the prairie, but I’m just fine for fixin’ a coop. Grew up in a town a little like this, for all it was older than dirt. Lads as can’t fix a coop or milk a cow don’t get breakfast at me mam’s house.”

  Soon Rhett was holding chunks of wood while Earl pounded nails with angry hammer strokes that, Rhett imagined, involved imagining Jasper’s face on each nailhead. The chickens pecked around, the pigs grunted contentedly, and the single cow swished her tail and chewed her cud. It was right comfortable, which made Rhett a little itchy. This was what Pap’s place could’ve been, if anyone had given a damn. Fat animals, well-patched fences. No horses, though, which was unthinkable. When Earl seemed to have the coop under control, Rhett went to check out a bit of shingle that had fallen off the house and shimmied up to the roof to take care of that. For all that he couldn’t build things, Rhett was right good at hammering down broken chunks that had fallen off, thanks to Pap.

  Then Earl showed him how to pull up a stool and coax the milk out of the cow. It felt downright personal, yanking a creature like that, his cheek pressed up against her smooth, warm flank. Earl carried in the milk while Rhett gathered eggs in the apron of his shirt, glad for the ill-fitting pants and suspenders that didn’t make it an embarrassment. Aside from the persistent growling of his stomach, it was actually a pleasant afternoon, and it only made him long the more for a milling herd of fresh horses and a white-board corral in which to break them. It was peculiar, yearning for freedom and a cage at the same time.

  They met on the doorstep, and Earl set the toolbox on the lean-to floor with a clank loud enough to rouse the chickens. The dwarf lady opened the door and inspected the milk pail.

  “You’re done?”

  “Yes’m.” Rhett held out his shirt, and she took the eggs, one by one, in stubby hands.

  “Did I hear you on the roof, too?”

  “Yes’m.”

  She nodded and gave the hint of a smile. “Then I suppose you’d best come in and put some meat on those sorrowful bones.”

  Aside from some horrible green shit she called collards, it was possibly the best meal of Rhett’s life, sticking to his ribs with an extraordinarily pleasant heft. Cold as the Widow Helen had been before, feeding them seemed to loosen her mouth to talk and smile, both. After they’d eaten, she handed Rhett an old shirt, well-patched and far too wide, which he took to the lean-to to change into in some privacy before handing the crusty rust-red shirt back to a relieved Earl.

  “You boys don’t
want to wash first?” Helen asked.

  “Lord, no, ma’am,” Rhett answered. “We’re just getting right back on the trail. No need to waste perfectly good water on the likes of us.”

  “Your friend Winifred was in a poorly way, last I saw her,” Helen said, one eyebrow raised.

  Rhett couldn’t even feign inattention. “In what way, ma’am?”

  “Poor girl was all bruised up. Arm in a sling. And her foot…” She trailed off and shook her head.

  “Couldn’t your horse doc, I don’t know. Stick it back on?”

  Helen gave him a pitying sort of look. “You can’t just stick a foot back on. Can’t even sew it on, considering the way it was done. They said it was the Cannibal Owl his very self. Did you see it?”

  “I did.”

  “Then you know that the damage that monster has done can never be undone. We must hunt out these monsters as soon as we can, before they can do such damage, ja?”

  Rhett glanced at Earl, whose jaw was tight as he shook his head angrily. Rhett figured he didn’t want Helen to know about either his patched-up missing toes or the railroad. In any case, Rhett knew well enough when a feller wanted him to keep his own mouth shut, so he did that.

  “It’s a damn shame,” he finally muttered.

  “Like your eye. Some things can’t be fixed.”

  Rhett’s teeth ground. Like he needed a goddamn reminder. If he went long enough between mentions, he was able to forget that he could only see half the world now.

  “Anything else you need done, ma’am?”

  “I’ve upset you, and I’m sorry for that. I hope you boys find what you are looking for. And I hope someone can do something for that poor girl. Oh, and we’ve got a basket packed for you. Hate to send you out on foot to Las Moras without food. Regina?”

  Rhett went on point, hearing that name again. But it had to be her, didn’t it? The figure that flitted out of the pantry was noticeably smaller than the heaving-bellied pregnant woman the Rangers had left among the dwarves on their way to the Cannibal Owl’s lair, and Regina’s entire mien had changed completely. She’d seemed dreamy and complacent then, swelling with hope for her child and the return of her husband, dead though the feller surely was. Now she was whip-thin, her sprigged dress a dragging sack, her face as pinched as a mountain ridge plagued by eroding winds. Her eyes stayed on the ground, and she held out the basket with near-skeletal hands. “Good journey,” she muttered.

  “How are you, Miss Regina?” Rhett asked, taking the pail and wishing he had a hat to doff, as that was what a gentleman would do. It was what the Captain would have done, at least.

  Her head jerked up, her eyes met his, and her chin quivered.

  “You.”

  Rhett shuffled his feet and fidgeted with the basket, feeling lost for words. He’d never much understood the ways of the female mind, even though he supposedly possessed one. “I’m mighty sorry about your loss, ma’am. I wasn’t expecting to see you again. I heard you’d…done yourself some harm.”

  “I tried to join my sweet Marjorie, and they cut me down and brought me back to this hateful world. To suffer.” He could hear a strangled sort of quiver in her voice now, like she still felt the noose she’d made and worn as a necklace.

  “Well I’m…I’m just sorry. About everything.” Because what’s a man supposed to say to a woman who wants nothing but to be dead and was denied even that most personal of choices? What he wanted to say was that life was never fair, and he understood her completely. But she’d hate him even more for that.

  “It was you, wasn’t it? That killed the…monster?”

  Her voice shook like the last leaf of November. Rhett looked down and shuffled his new boots.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That’s what they said. The other Rangers did. That you finished it. Not soon enough, though.”

  He glanced up through his lashes, unsure of the next step. What she was saying sounded like it was thanks, but that wasn’t what Rhett felt rolling off her.

  Regina made a noise halfway between a sneeze and a sob. “Well, best go on and kill some more monsters, then, shouldn’t you? They don’t keep.”

  Rhett nodded and jerked his chin at Earl, who seemed just as perplexed by the whole interaction.

  “Guess we will, then. Many thanks to you both for the hospitality.”

  With one last glance back at the sorrowful woman, Rhett threw his shoulders back and sauntered out the door and into the dusty evening.

  “Let’s get the hell out of this town and change. We’ll find the Rangers faster if we ain’t encumbered by…”

  “All this goddamn humanity?” Earl said wryly.

  “That.”

  They ducked into an alley and transferred the widow’s meager food to Earl’s bag, leaving her basket near the porch. It was just a bit of cheese, a heel of bread, an old skin full of water, and a few tins of peaches, but it would be good enough to chase the taste of death out of Rhett’s mouth come morning. Hurrying along the road back out of town, Rhett couldn’t help checking for a flash of silver in the tower. But, really, what did the dwarves have left to defend? The town was peaceful, and the buildings and the people and their peculiar feelings about Rhett were soon blanketed in starlight. Once they were so far out that even the most farsighted dwarf couldn’t aim for them, Earl silently dropped his bag and began stripping. Rhett looked away and didn’t turn back around until he heard the click of hooves.

  “Take your bag, then, ass,” he muttered.

  As he hung the bags around the donkey’s neck, Earl sighed in relief and snapped at him with yellow teeth, but not like he meant to do any damage. Rhett knew how he felt. It was easier to be a simple animal than to try to puzzle out the queer meanings of what folks said and didn’t say. Burlesville should’ve considered Rhett a goddamn hero, but he’d been treated like the town drunk. And what the Sam Hill was Regina’s problem? She didn’t have to be glad to be alive, but she’d treated Rhett like he’d personally trussed her baby up for the Cannibal Owl himself instead of dedicating his life to killing the monster so it couldn’t happen again.

  Before he realized he was doing it, his fingers were already shucking clothes and stuffing them into the donkey’s saddlebags. Both sides were full now, considering they each had a full kit. Right handy, having a built-in beast of burden—at least when Earl was feeling cooperative. As soon as Rhett’s pants were off and in the bag, he was already reaching inside and trading shivering, embarrassed skin for proud feathers. The dust felt good under his claws, and the night air felt even better under his wings. He kept enough of Rhett about him now to fly lower and keep the donkey in his sights. It wouldn’t be long now. They were on the Rangers’ trail, and they had the single-mindedness of dumb creatures on their side.

  Coyote Dan had once told Rhett that he had a friend who turned into a hawk, and that that feller couldn’t think human thoughts while in bird form or he’d falter. Rhett found that if he tried to think in words, his feathers flicked carelessly and sent him wobbling. But if he thought only in pictures, he could stay aloft.

  The main picture he saw? Sam Hennessy.

  Whatever Rhett was now, whatever folks thought of him, he had to find Sam to make it right.

  They traveled until the moon was high. The donkey brayed like Satan’s trumpet, and Rhett came back to himself, mostly, and made an ungainly landing right as the donkey became a man.

  “I’m sleepy, lad. Let’s rest, then.”

  “To hell with sleepy, donkey-boy. Better to travel at night and sleep when the sun is hottest. We’ll catch the Rangers faster. They’re bedded down now, so we keep going.”

  Earl snorted and dug in his bags, tossing out clothes into two piles. “And you’ll be forgetting that it’s easier to fly than to trot, won’t you? Hooves are delicate things, man. And mine ache.” He handed Rhett a ball of cheese in partial apology.

  Rhett took a bite, relished the richness, and handed it back. “Look, you got to learn how to liv
e. A man’s got to know how to rough it, in Durango. So you’re gonna build this fire. Now start collecting little sticks.”

  They turned their backs to one another and dressed by moonlight. Earl made a damn mess of selecting kindling, and Rhett realized how bone-tired he was as he tried to explain the many ways the donkey was an idiot. By the time they had the fire going, Earl’s hands were a wreck from thorns and cacti, Rhett was out of patience, and both fellers were glad of the widow’s provisions and too tired to poke around under rocks for something meatier. They curled up on the bare ground on either side of the fire, and Rhett’s human thoughts came flooding back with a vengeance. He missed the Captain’s tidy camp. He missed the snoring, farting knot of Rangers and the night sounds of the horse herd, just a bit away. He even missed Dan and Winifred, a little. They made things more lively, at least, and arguing with ’em took his mind off darker things. Most of all, of course, he missed Sam. And the feel of a gun at his hip.

  Funny, how he’d started out with nothing but a one-eyed mule and a pair of boots, had gotten pretty much everything he’d ever wanted, had lost it in one night, and was now burdened with one eye of his own, a surly donkey, and an even worse-fitting pair of boots.

  But he wasn’t anywhere close to quitting. He’d get it all back.

  And soon.

  He fell asleep counting all the shit he was gonna take back.

  Deep in the night, possibly on the edge of morning, something jolted Rhett from untidy dreams. He opened his eye and sat up, muttering, “What the Sam Hill—?”

  And that’s when a hand landed on his shoulder and a knife stuck deep in his side.

  Chapter

  4

  With a shriek of ever-loving rage, Rhett struck out blindly, knocking a body toward the hot embers of the fire. His vision dancing in red and black, he yanked the knife out of the soft spot below his ribs and stared down at it, expecting treachery by Earl’s hand. But it was just a kitchen knife. A big one, to be sure, but nothing any self-respecting man would be seen carrying on the trail.