Summer had slipped away with a final flirt of her greengown; harvest-time had arrived.
2
Rhea cared not a fig for Reaping dances or carnival games, but she could no more sleep than those who did. Most nights she lay on her stinking pallet until dawn, her skull thudding with rage. On a night not long after Jonas’s conversation with Chancellor Rimer, she determined to drink herself into oblivion. Her mood was not improved when she found that her graf barrel was almost empty; she blistered the air with her curses.
She was drawing in breath for a fresh string of them when an idea struck her. A wonderful idea. A brilliant idea. She had wanted Susan Delgado to cut off her hair. That hadn’t worked, and she didn’t know why. . . but she did know something about the girl, didn’t she? Something interesting, aye, so it was, wery interesting, indeed.
Rhea had no desire to go to Thorin with what she knew; she had a fond (and
foolish, likely) hope that the Mayor had forgotten about his wonderful glass ball.
But the girl’s aunt, now . . . suppose Cordelia Delgado were to discover that not only was her niece’s virginity lost, the girl was well on her way to becoming a practiced trollop? Rhea didn’t think Cordelia would go to the Mayor, either—the woman was a prig but not a fool—yet it would set the cat among the pigeons just the same, wouldn’t it?
“Waow!”
Thinking of cats, there was Musty, standing on the stoop in the moonlight, looking at her with a mixture of hope and mistrust. Rhea, grinning hideously, opened her arms. “Come to me, my precious! Come, my sweet one!”
Musty, understanding all was forgiven, rushed into his mistress’s arms and began to purr loudly as Rhea licked along his sides with her old and yellowing tongue.
That night the Coos slept soundly for the first time in a week, and when she took the glass ball into her arms the following morning, its mists cleared for her at once. She spent the day in thrall to it, spying on people she detested, drinking little and eating nothing. Around sunset, she came out of her trance enough to realize she had as yet done nothing about the saucy little jade. But that was all right; she saw how it could be done . .. and she could watch all the results in the glass! All the protests, all the shouting and recriminations! She would see Susan’s tears. That would be the best, to see her tears.
“A little harvest of my own,” she said to Ermot, who now came slithering up her leg toward the place where she liked him best. There weren’t many men who could do you like Ermot could do you, no indeed. Sitting there with a lapful of snake, Rhea began to laugh.
3
“Remember your promise,” Alain said nervously as they heard the approaching beat of Rusher’s hoofs. “Keep your temper.”
“I will,” Cuthbert said, but he had his doubts. As Roland rode around the long wing of the bunkhouse and into the yard, his shadow trailing out in the sunset light, Cuthbert clenched his hands nervously. He willed them to open, and they did. Then, as he watched Roland dismount, they rolled themselves closed again, the nails digging into his palms.
Another go-round, Cuthbert thought. Gods, but I’m sick of them. Sick to death.
Last night’s had been about the pigeons—again. Cuthbert wanted to use one to send a message back west about the oil tankers; Roland still did not. So they had argued. Except (here was another thing which infuriated him, that rubbed against his nerves like the sound of the thinny) Roland did not argue. These days Roland did not deign to argue. His eyes always kept that distant look, as if only his body was here. The rest of him— mind, soul, spirit, ka— was with Susan Delgado.
“No,” he had said simply. “It’s too late for such.”
“You can’t know that,” Cuthbert had argued. “And even if it’s too late for help to come from Gilead, it’s not too late for advice to come from Gilead. Are you so blind you can’t see that?”
“What advice can they send us?” Roland hadn’t seemed to hear the rawness in Cuthbert’s voice. His own voice was calm. Reasonable. And utterly disconnected, Cuthbert thought, from the urgency of the situation.
“If we knew that,” he had replied, “we wouldn’t have to ask, Roland, would we?”
“We can only wait and stop them when they make their move. It’s comfort you’re looking for, Cuthbert, not advice.”
You mean wait while you fuck her in as many ways and in as many places as you can imagine, Cuthbert thought. Inside, outside, rightside up and upside down.
“You’re not thinking clearly about this,” Cuthbert had said coldly. He’d heard Alain’s gasp. Neither of them had ever said such a thing to Roland in their lives, and once it was out, he’d waited uneasily for whatever explosion might follow.
None did. “Yes,” Roland replied, “I am.” And he had gone into the bunkhouse without another word.
Now, watching Roland uncinch Rusher’s girths and pull the saddle from his back, Cuthbert thought: You ‘re not, you know. But you better think clearly about this.
By all the gods, you ‘d better.
“Hile,” he said as Roland carried the saddle over to the porch and set it on the step.
“Busy afternoon?” He felt Alain kick his ankle and ignored it.
“I’ve been with Susan,” Roland said. No defense, no demur, no excuse. And for a moment Cuthbert had a vision of shocking clarity: he saw the two of them in a hut somewhere, the late afternoon sun shining through holes in the roof and dappling their bodies. She was on top, riding him. Cuthbert saw her knees on the old, spongy boards, and the tension in her long thighs. He saw how tanned her arms
were, how white her belly. He saw how Roland’s hands cupped the globes of her breasts, squeezing them as she rocked back and forth above him, and he saw how the sun lit her hair, turning it into a fine-spun net.
Why do you always have to be first? he cried at Roland in his mind. Why does it always have to be you? Gods damn you, Roland! Gods damn you!
“We were on the docks,” Cuthbert said, his tone a thin imitation of his usual brightness. “Counting boots and marine tools and what are called clam-drags.
What an amusing time of it we’ve had, eh, Al?”
“Did you need me to help you do that?” Roland asked. He went back to Rusher, and took off the saddle-blanket. “Is that why you sound angry?”
“If I sound angry, it’s because most of the fishermen are laughing at us behind our backs. We keep coming back and coming back. Roland, they think we’re fools.”
Roland nodded. “All to the good,” he said.
“Perhaps,” Alain said quietly, “but Rimer doesn’t think we’re fools— it’s in the way he looks at us when we pass. Nor does Jonas. And if they don’t think we’re fools, Roland, what do they think?”
Roland stood on the second step, the saddle-blanket hanging forgotten over his arm. For once they actually seemed to have his attention, Cuthbert thought. Glory be and will wonders never cease.
“They think we’re avoiding the Drop because we already know what’s there,”
Roland said. “And if they don’t think it, they soon will.”
“Cuthbert has a plan.”
Roland’s gaze—mild, interested, already starting to be not there again—shifted to Cuthbert. Cuthbert the joker. Cuthbert the ‘prentice, who had in no way earned the gun he’d carried east to the Outer Crescent. Cuthbert the virgin and eternal second.
Gods, I don’t want to hate him. I don’t, but now it’s so easy.
“We two should go and see Sheriff Avery tomorrow,” Cuthbert said. “We will present it as a courtesy visit. We have already established ourselves as three courteous, if slightly stupid, young fellows, have we not?”
“To a fault,” Roland agreed, smiling.
“We’ll say that we’ve finally finished with the seacoast side of Hambry, and we hope to be every bit as meticulous on the farm and cowboy side. But we certainly don’t want to cause trouble or be in anyone’s way. It is, after all, the busiest time of year—for ranchers as well as farmers— and even citified fools such as ourselves
will be aware of that. So we’ll give the good Sheriff a list—”
Roland’s eyes lit up. He tossed the blanket over the porch rail, grabbed Cuthbert around the shoulders, and gave him a rough hug. Cuthbert could smell a lilac scent around Roland’s collar and felt an insane but powerful urge to clamp his hands around Roland’s throat and try to strangle him. Instead, he gave him a perfunctory clap on the back in return.
Roland drew away, grinning widely. “A list of the ranches we’ll be visiting,” he said. “Aye! And with forewarning, they can move any stock they’d like us not to see on to the next ranch, or the last one. The same for tack, feed, equipment. . . it’s masterful, Cuthbert! You’re a genius!”