Lawless Lands by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Falstaff Books
Published: 2017-06-14T23:00:00+00:00

12

Bloodsilver

A.E. Decker

The Bay’s sides rippled with only a slight sigh of protest as Rider Bell flung her tooled leather saddle over his back. “Good boy.” She gave him a pat before leading him out of Myer’s Livery Stable and into the dusty yellow expanse of Sutton Street. A notion struck her as she was hitching him to the post beside the watering trough in front of her house.

“S’pose I’d better wake up Dead Guy, huh?” she said, stroking The Bay’s nose. “He’ll want to know where we’re headin’.”

The livemetal disk flashed in the sunlight as she hauled it out of her shirt by its leather cord. Her fingers tingled; the disk was always cool to the touch, even on days her spit evaporated before it hit the ground. Rider nicked her thumb on her knife, squeezed out a bead of blood, and swirled it over the disk. The shiny surface absorbed the red wetness like dry sand sucking up the drippings from a canteen. She never had to wipe it clean.

Dead Guy didn’t always show himself the same way. Sometimes he rose up out of her shadow or spun himself into existence from a passing gust of wind. None of that today: a mad hot day with a glaringly blue sky, not a breeze stirring. Today he just appeared: blink, and there he was, resting his long forearms against The Bay’s saddle.

“What’s up, Rider?” he asked, his black hair ever-whipping in a gale that blew solely for him. One eye glowed like a thundercloud before the lightning forked down; a crescent scar sealed the other. Black hat and black boots and black trousers. Black shirt, a laced-up red vest only a couple shades off black, and a long black duster. Brown gloves, though. Rider often wondered if that was an oversight or Dead Guy’s strange brand of humor.

He’d had a name when he was alive, but Rider never used it.

“Rumors of Skeleton Dancers at Bondee Camp,” she told him.

Molly Bindle sashayed down the wooden sidewalk wearing a new hat. Whoops of laughter erupted inside the Hellbell Saloon as Abe Jabbot and Darly Firth burst through the swinging door. They staggered across Sutton, kicking up dust, smug as a pair of tomcats. Probably just spent the night wasting all the earnings from their arcsilver mine on faro, whiskey, and ladies of negotiable virtue.

Dead Guy rubbed his chin. “Where’d you hear this?”

“Miles Bronson.”

Snorting, he rolled away from her, lounging against The Bay’s side. “Miles Bronson is a son of a bitch,” he said to the sky.

“I ain’t arguing with you,” said Rider. Everyone in Camlock had seen Mrs. Bronson with an eye all swollen up like a plum behind its mask of powder.

“Miles Bronson would steal the last tooth from his granny’s gums to turn a profit.”

“I still ain’t arguing with you.” Rider worked the pump. The first trickle of rusty brown coughed out. She pumped it clear then held her canteen under the spigot’s mouth.

“Miles Bronson—”

“Bronson got no reason to come crying to me without cause,” said Rider.

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