“I fear that I don’t know for certain. There were four or five of them. I think one or two went with Joaquin. But by now there must be some alarm over my disappearance and the nonreturn of poor Master Morgan.”
“Cross that one when we reach it, Doc.” Ryan glanced through the door. “Jak’s on the second or third floor?”
“Third floor back.”
“Then let’s go.”
IN A GROVE OF SLENDER POPLARS, two hundred paces from the rear entrance to the ville, Krysty waited with Mildred and Dean, both women working hard to reassure the boy that everything was going well.
“You saw them go inside,” the black woman said, running her fingers through her beaded plaits. “And they were both pretty up and walking good then.”
“But there was a fight. The corpse of the sec man’s still out there. I went and looked.”
“You shouldn’t have gone without checking with me or with Mildred,” Krysty chided.
“And I reckon I heard a shotgun.”
“We didn’t hear it.” Krysty stood to stretch her legs, taking a deep breath of the night air. “You know what your father said?”
“Sure. Wait until dawn. No word, we move back to the redoubt. Wait there for twenty-four hours until the next dawning. Then we jump out.”
Krysty nodded, the moonglow catching the fiery radiance of her hair. “And that’s what we do.”
Dean grinned, his teeth white in the darkness. “Sorry, Krysty. I can just see you and Mildred walking away from Dad and from J.B. Sure you will.”
THE SERVING WOMAN would have lived if she hadn’t tried to scream a warning when she saw the three outlanders picking their way through the sleeping ville.
Her job was to rake the ashes from all of the fires, so that another servant could come around the house in a couple of hours and lay them fresh and light them, ready for a new day in Washington Hole.
J.B. was closest when she came walking sleepily around the corner of the second-floor corridor and he took a lightning-fast step in, the moment he saw her mouth open and the muscles of her throat become taut, ready to deliver the yell of warning. He brought the butt of the Uzi up under her chin.
There was a loud crunching sound and her head snapped back, eyes rolling white in their sockets. As she began to fall, Ryan stepped in and caught the iron bucket she’d been carrying. Her head hit the flags with a sickening sound, like an apple under a man’s heel.
Doc gasped. “Did you have to strike her that hard? It looks as though the poor woman is no longer with us.”
“She’s chilled if that’s what you mean, Doc,” the Armorer said. “Didn’t mean her to get to be dead. If she’d gotten off a scream, then we could all have wound up dead. It’s the way it goes, Doc.”
The old man said nothing, but his lips moved silently as though he were muttering a prayer for the departed spirit of the unlucky woman.
IN THE HEART of the darkness the ville was quiet, almost deserted.
Twice the three friends had to withdraw into the shadows as a patrol of two or three sec men went by. One of the groups stopped for a minute or so, within hearing.
“Joaquin’s fit to be tied.”
“Josh was a friend from years back.”
“Right. Looks like it was the old bastard who did him with a hidden knife. Chilled him with a single blow, I heard.”
“Joaquin came close to losing it all. Went after the baron.”
“And old Sharpie didn’t give a fly in’ fuck about poor ol’ Josh, did he?”
“No. Too locked up with that doomie slut.”
“Where’s he takin’ her?”
“Down the zoo.”
“Joaquin was pissing steam when he came back up the stairs. Said Sharpie was off on his mental wanderings. Couldn’t get no sense from him. Just shooed Joaquin away like he was some beggar.”
“Yeah. Told him to come back after breakfast. He was too busy until then.”
“Didn’t Joaquin say he was ramblin’? Sharpie?”
“Sure. Told Joaquin that he was speakin’ to him with a tongue of silver. Somethin’ about a mirror and goin’ off to get himself lost in the desert.”