“Riza!”
Her hands dropped and became a blur. Only Roland, Eddie, and Jake were able to mark how they crossed at the waist, the right hand seizing a dish from the left pouch, the left hand seizing one from the right. Sai Eisenhart had thrown from the shoulder, sacrificing time in order to gain force and accuracy.
Susannah’s arms crossed below her ribcage and just above the arms of her wheelchair, the dishes finishing their cocking arc at about the height of her shoulderblades. Then they flew, crisscrossing in midair a moment before thudding into the side of the barn.
Susannah’s arms finished straight out before her; for a moment she looked like an impresario who has just introduced the featured act. Then they dropped and crossed, seizing two more dishes. She flung them, dipped again, and flung the third set. The first two were still quivering when the last two bit into the side of the barn, one high and one low.
For a moment there was utter silence in the Jaffordses’ yard. Not even a bird called. The eight plates ran in a perfectly straight line from the throat of the chalked figure to what would have been its upper midsection.
They were all two and a half to three inches apart, descending like buttons on a shirt. And she had thrown all eight in no more than three seconds.
“Do’ee mean to use the dish against the Wolves?” Bucky Javier asked in a queerly breathless voice. “Is that it?”
“Nothing’s been decided,” Roland said stolidly.
In a barely audible voice that held both shock and wonder, Deelie Estrada said: “But if that’d been a man, hear me, he’d be cutlets.”
It was Gran-pere who had the final word, as perhaps gran-peres should: ” Yer-bugger!”
SIX
On their way back out to the main road (Andy walked at a distance ahead of them, carrying the folded wheelchair and playing something bagpipey through his sound system), Susannah said musingly: “I may give up the gun altogether, Roland, and just concentrate on the dish. There’s an elemental satisfaction to giving that scream and then throwing.”
“You reminded me of my hawk,” Roland admitted.
Susannah’s teeth flashed white in a grin. “I felt like a hawk. Riza! O- Riza! Just saying the word puts me in a throwing mood.”
To Jake’s mind this brought some obscure memory of Gasher (“Yer old pal, Gasher,” as the gentleman himself had been wont to say), and he shivered.
“Would you really give up the gun?” Roland asked. He didn’t know if he was amused or aghast.
“Would you roll your own smokes if you could get tailor-mades?” she asked, and then, before he could answer: “No, not really. Yet the dish is a lovely weapon. When they come, I hope to throw two dozen. And bag my limit.”
“Will there be a shortage of plates?” Eddie asked.
“Nope,” she said. “There aren’t very many fancy ones— like the one sai Eisenhart threw for you, Roland—
but they’ve hundreds of practice-plates. Rosalita and Sarey Adams are sorting through them, culling out any that might fly crooked.” She hesitated, lowered her voice. “They’ve all been out here, Roland, and although Sarey’s brave as a lion and would stand fast against a tornado…”
“Hasn’t got it, huh?” Eddie asked sympathetically.
“Not quite,” Susannah agreed. “She’s good, but not like the others. Nor does she have quite the same ferocity.”
“I may have something else for her,” Roland said.
“What would that be, sugar?”
“Escort duty, mayhap. We’ll see how they shoot, day after tomorrow. A little competition always livens things up. Five o’ the clock, Susannah, do they know?”
“Yes. Most of the Calla would turn up, if you allowed them.”
This was discouraging… but he should have expected it. I’ve been too long out of the world of people, he thought. So I have.
“No one but the ladies and ourselves,” Roland said firmly.
“If the Calla-folken saw the women throw well, it could swing a lot of people who are on the fence.”
Roland shook his head. He didn’t want them to know how well the women threw, that was very nearly the whole point. But that the town knew they were throwing… that might not be such a bad thing. “How good are they, Susannah? Tell me.”
She thought about it, then smiled. “Killer aim,” she said. “Every one.”
“Can you teach them that crosshand throw?”
Susannah considered the question. You could teach anyone just about anything, given world enough and time, but they had neither. Only thirteen days left now, and by the day the Sisters of Oriza (including their newest member, Susannah of New York) met for the exhibition in Pere Callahan’s back yard, there would be only a week and a half. The crosshand throw had come naturally to her, as everything about shooting had.
But the others…
“Rosalita will learn it,” she said at last. “Margaret Eisenhart could learn it, but she might get flustered at the wrong time. Zalia? No. Best she throw one plate at a time, always with her right hand. She’s a little slower, but I guarantee every plate she throws will drink something’s blood.”
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “Until a sneetch homes in on her and blows her out of her corset, that is.”
Susannah ignored this. “We can hurt them, Roland. Thou knows we can.”
Roland nodded. What he’d seen had encouraged him mightily, especially in light of what Eddie had told him.
Susannah and Jake also knew Gran-pere’s ancient secret now. And, speaking of Jake…
“You’re very quiet today,” Roland said to the boy. “Is everything all right?”
“I do fine, thankya,” Jake said. He had been watching Andy. Thinking of how Andy had rocked the baby.
Thinking that if Tian and Zalia and the other kids all died and Andy was left to raise Aaron, baby Aaron would probably die within six months. Die, or turn into the weirdest kid in the universe. Andy would diaper him, Andy would feed him all the correct stuff, Andy would change him when he needed changing and burp him if he needed burping, and there would be all sorts of cradle-songs. Each would be sung perfectly and none would be propelled by a mother’s love. Or a father’s. Andy was just Andy, Messenger Robot, Many Other Functions. Baby Aaron would be better off being raised by… well, by wolves.
This thought led him back to the night he and Benny had tented out (they hadn’t done so since; the weather had turned chilly). The night he had seen Andy and Benny’s Da’ palavering. Then Benny’s Da’ had gone wading across the river. Headed east.
Headed in the direction of Thunderclap.
“Jake, are you sure you’re okay?” Susannah asked.
“Yessum,” Jake said, knowing this would probably make her laugh. It did, and Jake laughed with her, but he was still thinking of Benny’s Da’. The spectacles Benny’s Da’ wore. Jake was pretty sure he was the only one in town who had them. Jake had asked him about that one day when the three of them had been riding in one of the Rocking B’s two north fields, looking out strays. Benny’s Da’ had told him a story about trading a beautiful true-threaded colt for the specs—from one of the lake-mart boats it had been, back when Benny’s sissa had been alive, Oriza bless her. He had done it even though all of the cowpokes—even Vaughn Eisenhart himself, do ya not see—had told him such spectacles never worked; they were no more useful than Andy’s fortunes. But Ben Slightman had tried them on, and they had changed everything. All at once, for the first time since he’d been maybe seven, he’d been able to really see the world.
He had polished his specs on his shirt as they rode, held them up to the sky so that twin spots of light swam on his cheeks, then put them back on. “If I ever lose em or break em, I don’t know what I’d do,” he’d said. “I got along without such just fine for twenty years or more, but a person gets used to something better in one rip of a hurry.”
Jake thought it was a good story. He was sure Susannah would have believed it (assuming the singularity of Slightman’s spectacles had occurred to her in the first place). He had an idea Roland would have believed it, too. Slightman told it in just the right way: a man who still appreciated his good fortune and didn’t mind letting folks know that he’d been right about something while quite a number of other people, his boss among them, had been wide of the mark. Even Eddie might have swallowed it. The only thing wrong with Slightman’s story was that it wasn’t true. Jake didn’t know what the real deal was, his touch didn’t go that deep, but he knew that much. And it worried him.
Probably nothing, you know. Probably he just got them in some way that wouldn’t sound so good. For all you know, one of the Manni brought them back from some other world, and Benny’s Da’ stole them.