James Axler – Stoneface

“What are you doing here?” Ryan demanded. Unconsciously his knees drew together.

With an easy smile, the woman replied, “I want a bath. No one told me this one was occupied.”

“As you can see,” Ryan said, “it is. Close the door on the way out.”

“All right,” Fleur said, but she didn’t seem inclined to hurry.

Ryan angled an eyebrow at her. “Yeah?”

“That tub looks very accommodating. I think it might hold two.”

“Don’t even bother to test that theory.”

Instead, Fleur strode forward. She casually raised the hem of her wrapper, sat on the lip of the tub, swung her legs over the top and plunged her feet into the water.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“If we’re to share the title of Helskel’s warlord, we need to talk.”

“I haven’t made up my mind about accepting the appointment, yet.”

“That’s what we have to talk about, Cawdor.”

“Why?” he asked.

Fleur’s face acquired a solemn, quiet expression. “I don’t care to share my position with anyone, unless it’s someone I can trust.”

“Makes sense.”

“And I can’t trust someone who doesn’t know where I came from, or how I came to be.”

“Tell me, then.”

“When I was twelve, I was crossing the Rockies with my parents, as part of an overland wagon train. We were out of Seattle and were heading for Colorado. Turned out our guides led us into a trap. A bunch of mercies swept down out of the hills and chilled everybody.”

“Except you,” Ryan said.

“Except me. Since slavery was one of their sidelines, they figured they could trade me to Baron Alfred Nelson, leader of the Vista ville.”

Ryan managed to keep the surprise he felt from showing on his face. Nelson was one of the many barons he and his group had run afoul of, and like many others, the man had lost his life when he sought to enslave or chill them.

“I tried to escape several times,” Fleur continued. “The last time, I got this.” She touched the patch covering her eye. “One of the mercies buttstroked me with his rifle. He was a little too enthusiastic, and I was instantly damaged goods.”

“They didn’t trade you to Baron Nelson, after all?”

The corners of Fleur’s lips twitched in a small, bitter smile. “They didn’t have the opportunity. The very next day a war party of Lakota swooped down. They butchered the mercies, just like the mercies had butchered the people on the wag train.”

“Let the punishment fit the crime,” Ryan intoned. “What did the Lakota do to you?”

They took me with them. They knew I was a prisoner, so they more or less rescued me. They took care of me.”

“How long did you stay with them?”

Fleur frowned. “Can’t say for certain. Four years at least, mebbe five. It wasn’t a bad life, though we were on the move a lot. I learned their language, they taught me to hunt, to track, to use weapons. To kill.”

“How did you hook up with Hellstrom and his Family?”

“We came across the patriarch and his people struggling through a mountain pass in the winter. There weren’t very many of them, and they were slowly starving to death. The patriarch wasn’t taking any food, but gave what little they had to the strongest members. They were even eating their own shoes. My band of Lakota took pity on them and allowed them to share the winter camp.”

Fleur closed her eye, as if viewing the past. “The patriarch and I made an instant connection. I knew, somehow, that he was a born leader, a messiah who would carve an empire out of Deathlands, one who would rule forever. I was shown that my white blood was far superior to that of the savages I’d been living with.”

Disgust welled up within Ryan. He guessed that Hellstrom had psi-scanned everyone in the Sioux village and found Fleur’s mind the most malleable, the easiest to influence.

“The patriarch and one of the tribal leaders, Touch-the-Sky, agreed to a pact,” Fleur went on. “The Lakota would allow the whites to remain in this country as long as they didn’t go anywhere near Mount Rushmore.”