“They do,” Cuthbert said brightly. “And you’re looking very well, sai Reynolds.
The wet weather’s soothed your pox, has it?”
Without looking at Bert or losing his pleasant little smile, Roland shot an elbow into his friend’s shoulder. “Pardon my friend, sai. His humor regularly transgresses the bounds of good taste; he doesn’t seem able to help it. There’s no need for us to scratch at one another—we’ve agreed to let bygones be bygones, haven’t we?”
“Aye, certainly, all a misunderstanding,” Jonas said. He limped back across to the desk and the game-board. As he sat down on his side of it, his smile turned to a sour little grimace. “I’m worse than an old dog,” he said. “Someone ought to put me down, so they should. Earth’s cold but painless, eh, boys?”
He looked back at the board and moved a man around to the side of his Hillock.
He had begun to Castle, and was thus vulnerable . . . although not very, in this case, Roland thought; Deputy Dave didn’t look like much in the way of competition.
“I see you’re working for the Barony salt now,” Roland said, nodding at the star on Jonas’s shirt.
“Salt’s what it amounts to,” Jonas said, companionably enough. “A fellow went leg-broke. I’m helping out, that’s all.”
“And sai Reynolds? Sai Depape? Are they helping out as well?”
“Yar, I reckon,” Jonas said. “How goes your work among the fisher-folk? Slow, I hear.”
“Done at last. The work wasn’t so slow as we were. But coming here in disgrace was enough for us—we have no intention of leaving that way. Slow and steady wins the race, they say.”
“So they do,” Jonas agreed. “Whoever ‘they’ are.”
From somewhere deeper in the building there came the whoosh of a water-stool flushing. All the comforts of home in the Hambry Sheriff’s, Roland thought. The flush was soon followed by heavy footsteps descending a staircase, and a few moments later, Herk Avery appeared. With one hand he was buckling his belt; with the other he mopped his broad and sweaty forehead. Roland admired the man’s dexterity.
“Whew!” the Sheriff exclaimed. “Them beans I ate last night took the shortcut, I
tell ye.” He looked from Roland to Cuthbert and then back to Roland. “Why, boys!
Too wet for net-counting, is it?”
“Sai Dearborn was just saying that their net-counting days are at an end,” Jonas said. He combed back his long hair with the tips of his fingers. Beyond him, Clay Reynolds had resumed his slouch against the notice-board, looking at Roland and Cuthbert with open dislike.
“Aye? Well, that’s fine, that’s fine. What’s next, youngsters? And is there any way we here can help ye? For that’s what we like to do best, lend a hand where a hand’s needed. So it is.”
“Actually, you could help us,” Roland said. He reached into his belt and pulled out the list. “We have to move on to the Drop, but we don’t want to inconvenience anyone.”
Grinning hugely, Deputy Dave slid his Squire all the way around his own Hillock.
Jonas Castled at once, ripping open Dave’s entire left flank. The grin faded from Dave’s face, leaving a puzzled emptiness. “How’d ye manage that?”
“Easy.” Jonas smiled, then pushed back from the desk to include the others in his regard. “You want to remember, Dave, that I play to win. I can’t help it; it’s just my nature.” He turned his full attention to Roland. His smile broadened. “Like the scorpion said to the maiden as she lay dying, ‘You knowed I was poison when you picked me up.’ ”
6
When Susan came in from feeding the livestock, she went directly to the cold-pantry for the juice, which was her habit. She didn’t see her aunt standing in the chimney comer and watching her, and when Cordelia spoke, Susan was startled badly. It wasn’t just the unexpectedness of the voice; it was the coldness of it.
“Do ye know him?”
The juice-jug slipped in her fingers, and Susan put a steadying hand beneath it.
Orange juice was too precious to waste, especially this late in the year. She turned and saw her aunt by the woodbox. Cordelia had hung her sombrero on a hook in the entryway, but she still wore her serape and muddy boots. Her cuchillo lay on top of the stacked wood, with green strands of sharproot vine still trailing from its edge. Her tone was cold, but her eyes were hot with suspicion.
A sudden clarity filled Susan’s mind and all of her senses. If you say “No, ” you’re damned, she thought. If you even ask who, you may be damned. You must say—
“I know them both,” she replied in offhand fashion. “I met them at the party. So did you. Ye frightened me, Aunt.”
“Why did he salute ye so?”
“How can I know? Perhaps he just felt like it.”
Her aunt bolted forward, slipped in her muddy boots, regained her balance, and seized Susan by the arms. Now her eyes were blazing. “Be’n’t insolent with me, girl! Be’n’t haughty with me, Miss Oh So Young and Pretty, or I’ll—”
Susan pulled backward so hard that Cordelia staggered and might have fallen again, if the table had not been handy to grab. Behind her, muddy foot-tracks stood out on the clean kitchen floor like accusations. “Call me that again and I’ll . .
. I’ll slap thee!” Susan cried. “So I will!”
Cordelia’s lips drew back from her teeth in a dry, ferocious smile. “Ye’d slap your father’s only living blood kin? Would ye be so bad?”
“Why not? Do ye not slap me, Aunt?”
Some of the heat went out of her aunt’s eyes, and the smile left her mouth. “Susan!
Hardly ever! Not half a dozen times since ye were a toddler who would grab anything her hands could reach, even a pot of boiling water on the—”
“It’s with thy mouth thee mostly hits nowadays,” Susan said. “I’ve put up with it—more fool me—but am done with it now. I’ll have no more. If I’m old enough to be sent to a man’s bed for money, I’m old enough for ye to keep a civil tongue when ye speak to me.”
Cordelia opened her mouth to defend herself—the girl’s anger had startled her, and so had her accusations—and then she realized how cleverly she was being led away from the subject of the boys. Of the boy.
“Ye only know him from the party, Susan? It’s Dearborn I mean.” As I think ye well know.
“I’ve seen him about town,” Susan said. She met her aunt’s eyes steadily, although it cost her an effort; lies would follow half-truths as dark followed dusk. “I’ve seen all three of them about town. Are ye satisfied?” No, Susan saw with mounting dismay, she was not. “Do ye swear to me, Susan—on your father’s name—that ye’ve not been meeting this boy Dearborn?”
All the rides in the late afternoon, Susan thought. All the excuses. All the care that
no one should see us. And it all comes down to a careless wave on a rainy morning. That easily all’s put at risk. Did we think it could be otherwise? Were we that foolish?
Yes … and no. The truth was they had been mad. And still were. Susan kept remembering the look of her father’s eyes on the few occasions when he had caught her in a fib. That look of half-curious disappointment. The sense that her fibs, innocuous as they might be, had hurt him like the scratch of a thorn.
“I will swear to nothing,” she said. “Ye’ve no right to ask it of me.” “Swear!”
Cordelia cried shrilly. She groped out for the table again and grasped it, as if for balance. “Swear it! Swear it! This is no game of jacks or tag or Johnny-jump-my-pony! Thee’s not a child any longer! Swear to me! Swear that thee’re still pure!”
“No,” Susan said, and turned to leave. Her heart was beating madly, but still that awful clarity informed the world. Roland would have known it for what it was: she was seeing with gunslinger’s eyes. There was a glass window in the kitchen, looking out toward the Drop, and in it she saw the ghostly reflection of Aunt Cord coming toward her, one arm raised, the hand at the end of it knotted into a fist.
Without turning, Susan put up her own hand in a halting gesture. “Raise that not to me,” she said. “Raise it not, ye bitch.”
She saw the reflection’s ghost-eyes widen in shock and dismay. She saw the ghost-fist relax, become a hand again, fall to the ghost-woman’s side.
“Susan,” Cordelia said in a small, hurt voice. “How can ye call me so? What’s so coarsened your tongue and your regard for me?”
Susan went out without replying. She crossed the yard and entered the bam. Here the smells she had known since childhood—horses, lumber, hay—filled her head and drove the awful clarity away. She was tumbled back into childhood, lost in the shadows of her confusion again. Pylon turned to look at her and whickered. Susan put her head against his neck and cried.