There were plenty of folk out today. The farmers’ market was booming, the street-stalls were crowded, children were laughing at a Pinch and Jilly show (Jilly was currently chasing Pinch back and forth and bashing the poor old longsuffering fellow with her broom), and the Reaping Fair decorations were going forward at speed. Yet Cuthbert felt only a little joy and anticipation at the thought of the Fair.
Because it wasn’t his own, wasn’t Gilead Reaping? Perhaps . . . but mostly just because his mind and heart were so heavy. If this was what growing up was like, he thought he could have skipped the experience.
He rode on out of town, the ocean now at his back, the sun full in his face, his shadow growing ever longer behind him. He thought he’d soon veer off the Great Road and ride across the Drop to the Bar K. But before he could, here came his old friend, Sheemie, leading a mule. Sheemie’s head was down, his shoulders slumped, his pink ‘brera askew, his boots dusty. To Cuthbert he looked as though he had walked all the way from the tip of the earth.
“Sheemie!” Cuthbert cried, already anticipating the boy’s cheery grin and loony
patter. “Long days and pleasant nights! How are y—”
Sheemie lifted his head, and as the brim of his sombrero came up, Cuthbert fell silent. He saw the dreadful fear on the boy’s face—the pale checks, the haunted eyes, the trembling mouth.
11
Sheemie could have been at the Delgado place two hours ago, if he’d wanted, but he had trudged along at a turtle’s pace, the letter inside his shirt seeming to drag at his every step. It was awful, so awful. He couldn’t even think about it, because his thinker was mostly broken, so it was.
Cuthbert was off his horse in a flash, and hurrying to Sheemie. He put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “What’s wrong? Tell your old pal. He won’t laugh, not a bit.”
At the sound of “Arthur Heath’s” kind voice and the sight of his concerned face, Sheemie began to weep. Rhea’s strict command that he should tell no one flew out of his head. Still sobbing, he recounted everything that had happened since that morning. Twice Cuthbert had to ask him to slow down, and when Bert led the boy to a tree in whose shade the two of them sat together, Sheemie was finally able to do so. Cuthbert listened with growing unease. At the end of his tale, Sheemie produced an envelope from inside his shirt.
Cuthbert broke the seal and read what was inside, his eyes growing large.
12
Roy Depape was waiting for him at the Travellers’ Rest when Jonas returned in good spirits from his trip to the Bar K. An outrider had finally shown up, Depape announced, and Jonas’s spirits rose another notch. Only Roy didn’t look as happy about it as Jonas would have expected. Not happy at all.
“Fellow’s gone on to Seafront, where I guess he’s expected,” Depape said. “He wants you right away. I wouldn’t linger here to eat, not even a popkin, if I were you. I wouldn’t take a drink, either. You’ll want a clear head to deal with this one.”
“Free with your advice today, ain’t you, Roy?” Jonas said. He spoke in a heavily sarcastic tone, but when Pettie brought him a tot of whiskey, he sent it back and
asked for water instead. Roy had a bit of a look to him, Jonas decided. Too pale by half, was good old Roy. And when Sheb sat down at his piano-bench and struck a chord, Depape jerked in that direction, one hand dropping to the butt of his gun.
Interesting. And a little disquieting.
“Spill it, son—what’s got your back hair up?”
Roy shook his head sullenly. “Don’t rightly know.”
“What’s this fellow’s name?”
“I didn’t ask, he didn’t say. He showed me Farson’s sigul, though. You know.”
Depape lowered his voice a little. “The eye.”
Jonas knew, all right. He hated that wide-open staring eye, couldn’t imagine what had possessed Farson to pick it in the first place. Why not a mailed fist? Crossed swords? Or a bird? A falcon, for instance—a falcon would have made a fine sigul.
But that eye—
“All right,” he said, finishing the glass of water. It went down better than whiskey would have done, anyway—dry as a bone, he’d been. “I’ll find out the rest for myself, shall I?”
As he reached the batwing doors and pushed them open, Depape called his name.
Jonas turned back.
“He looks like other people,” Depape said. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t hardly know.” Depape looked embarrassed and bewildered… but dogged, too. Sticking to his guns. “We only talked five minutes in all, but once I looked at him and thought it was the old bastard from Ritzy— the one I shot. Little bit later I th’ow him a glance and think, ‘Hellfire, it’s my old pa standin there.’ Then that went by, too, and he looked like himself again.”
“And how’s that?”
“You’ll see for yourself, I reckon. I don’t know if you’ll like it much, though.”
Jonas stood with one batwing pushed open, thinking. “Roy, ’twasn’t Farson himself, was it? The Good Man in some sort of disguise?” Depape hesitated, frowning, and then shook his head. “No.” “Are you sure? We only saw him the once, remember, and not close-to.” Latigo had pointed him out. Sixteen months ago that had been, give or take.
“I’m sure. You remember how big he was?”
Jonas nodded. Farson was no Lord Perth, but he was six feet or more, and broad across at both brace and basket.
“This man’s Clay’s height, or less. And he stays the same height no matter who he looks like.” Depape hesitated a moment and said: “He laughs like a dead person. 1
could barely stand to hear him do it.”
“What do you mean, like a dead person?”
Roy Depape shook his head. “Can’t rightly say.”
13
Twenty minutes later, Eldred Jonas was riding beneath come in peace mid into the courtyard of Seafront, uneasy because he had expected Latigo . . . and unless Roy was very much mistaken, it wasn’t Latigo he was getting.
Miguel shuffled forward, grinning his gummy old grin, and took the reins of Jonas’s horse.
“Reconocimiento.”
“Por nada, jefe.”
Jonas went in, saw Olive Thorin sitting in the front parlor like a forlorn ghost, and nodded to her. She nodded back, and managed a wan smile.
“Sai Jonas, how well you look. If you see Hart—”
“Cry your pardon, lady, but it’s the Chancellor I’ve come to see,” Jonas said. He went on quickly upstairs toward the Chancellor’s suite of rooms, then down a narrow stone hall lit (and not too well) with gas-jets.
When he reached the end of the corridor, he rapped on the door waiting there—a massive thing of oak and brass set in its own arch. Rimer didn’t care for such as Susan Delgado, but he loved the trappings of power; that was what took the curve out of his noodle and made it straight. Jonas rapped.
“Come in, my friend,” a voice—not Rimer’s—called. It was followed by a tittery laugh that made Jonas’s flesh creep. He laughs like a dead person, Roy had said.
Jonas pushed open the door and stepped in. Rimer cared for incense no more than he cared for the hips and lips of women, but there was incense burning in here now—a woody smell that made Jonas think of court at Gilead, and functions of state in the Great Hall. The gas-jets were turned high. The draperies—purple velvet, the color of royalty, Rimer’s absolute favorite—trembled minutely in the breath of sea breeze coming in through the open windows. Of Rimer there was no sign. Or of anyone else, come to that. There was a little balcony, but the doors
giving on it were open, and no one was out there.
Jonas stepped a little farther into the room, glancing into a gilt-framed mirror on the far side to check behind him without turning his head. No one there, either.
Ahead and to the left was a table with places set for two and a cold supper in place, but no one in either chair. Yet someone had spoken to him. Someone who’d been directly on the other side of the door, from the sound. Jonas drew his gun.
“Come, now,” said the voice which had bid him enter. It came from directly behind Jonas’s left shoulder. “No need for that, we’re all friends here. All on the same side, you know.”
Jonas whirled on his heels, suddenly feeling old and slow. Standing there was a man of medium height, powerfully built from the look of him, with bright blue eyes and the rosy cheeks of either good health or good wine. His parted, smiling lips revealed cunning little teeth which must have been filed to points—surely such points couldn’t be natural. He wore a black robe, like the robe of a holy man, with the hood pushed back. Jonas’s first thought, that the fellow was bald, had been wrong, he saw. The hair was simply cropped so stringently that it was nothing but fuzz.