Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction.
Jump to the new table of contents to read earlier content.
Important!
After this episodic post for Vengeance, My Heart, the serial gothic western novel is migrating to a new home on the companion site at ravensweald.art. That site is designed for a distraction-free reading experience, with reader-focused improvements to enhance the reading experience with you, the reader, in mind. The series will read more like a book and less like it was shoehorned into a series of blog posts. In fact, this post is live over there as soon as you can see this one, and you might want to give it a gander for an improved experience. For best results, be sure to view it through your preferred browser. It will render just nicely in the mobile Jetpack browser, but you’ll miss out on the typographic modifications I’ve embedded in the site to let you read the fiction in a way that best suits your whims and preferences.
To repeat: The series will continue over at it’s new home at ravensweald.art. I have not abandoned it.
Now, on with the story…
My boots needed resoling. I’d been telling myself that since Harrow’s Creek and had done nothing about it, which was either laziness or a quiet faith that the road would end before the leather did. Too bad the road was winning the battle.
There was slight pull of the toe on the left with every step made it not quite flap — a stitch or three that had gone broke somewhere along the way — and was annoying the hell out of me. The right hardly fared much better. It had gone thin right at the ball of my foot and went all leaky whenever there was rain. Thankfully, you didn’t see much rain in the waste’s border towns, though it might have ended up in more prompt repairs if it rained more.
My boots were up on the table edge. The table didn’t seem to mind. Nor did the bartender, though he looked like he might have thought about sayin’ something until he saw the gun.
Or it might have been the size of the coin I used to pay for my beer when he set it down in front of me. I waved him away while he made change and that seemed to make his slant-eye glares evaporate in a sudden manner.
Can’t say he should have known better. He was new since the last time I’d been by the Black Dog. Most of them picked up quick when I came by and he looked no dumber than the others.
I would have been back on warrant but something came to my attention that needed some resolving. So I sat down to cool my heels a bit to see what I might do about it. Nothing resolved right away, so the cards came out.
A couple rounds of Turning tends to make time pass and I weren’t opposed to helping it move along.
Just like always I shifted the Blind from the bottom and placed it top-deck.
Then the cards came one at a time, drawing each from the bottom of the deck.
Warranted of Bones. A figure mid-stride under a weight that hadn’t stopped him yet. Yep, I knew the feeling well. I balanced it face-down on my knee and drew another from the bottom of the deck.
The saloon at Caligo had the quality of a place that had somehow managed to survive its own ambitions. The bar was good wood gone dark with handling. The bottles behind it were real. A man two tables over was losing at something that required concentration and wasn’t getting any quieter about it. Behind me, someone was working a mouth harp into the ground. The barkeep had opinions about this. He was keeping them to himself, though I had my doubts his silence might go on much longer.
I had been in Caligo two days this spell. Long enough to have walked the graveyard on the east side of town, found the stone I was looking for, confirmed the drop was empty and the girl hadn’t left me any presents. Either she had gone to dirt or she was alive, kicking and still on warrant. She’d be wanting to check in soon and I would know which it was then. No point in worrying ’bout her. I doubt she needed me to waste my time in that way.
It was also long enough to have seen the same face three times in places that didn’t explain each other.
Warranted of Hearts. A figure in plain sight of another who couldn’t see them. I looked at it a moment longer than the last one. Set it down and drew again.
The beer at my elbow had gone warm. I didn’t much mind that either. It made a good prop for folks keen on making assessments of other folks. If I reckoned right, I wouldn’t have time to drink it anyway.
Hell. I had been a Warden of the Duskward for thirty-one years. In that time I had learned a small number of things with any reliability. One of them was this: when a face appears in the wrong place twice, it is coincidence. When it appears a third time, it is a decision.
You didn’t need no magic or cards to tell you something weren’t quite right. The stink of the sight told you everything you needed to know.
And I had seen his face three times in two days in a town small enough to cross in half an hour and big enough to get lost in, were you aiming to get lost in it.
The fourth time I saw that face, he walked through the double-hung door of the saloon. This time, the man wearing the face wasn’t alone.
I got a good look at him while he scanned the room, lookin’. The lines around the man’s grey eyes said he had seen a few years, but still lacking in any real wisdom. I placed him ’round half my age, give or take a half-dozen years. I didn’t need to hear him speak to know that he was a cocky sonuvabitch — the way he stood tall, you’d think he’d owned the saloon and was estimating the profits in real time.
The men with him were the opportunist type that hung around the trackside tenements along the north end of Caligo, all cheap guns slung low to impress folk. Foolishly low if they really meant business. They were the kind all too willing to accept some pick-up thuggery in exchange for a fistful of half-marks. If I were the suspicious type, I might think Old Grey Eyes meant to do someone some harm.
His eyes finally found mine and locked for a moment before his furrowed brow smoothed and a smile touched his mouth. He tried to be casual about it, looking away at nearly anything that weren’t me as he pulled one of his men to him and gestured outside. The other two looked over in my direction at the nod of his head. They lent him an ear while he gave them instruction with wind-chapped lips that barely moved.
I knew the drill and decided I weren’t in the mood to play along, so I took my time and gathered the cards on my knee and put them at the bottom of my deck. I went to slip into my mael at the hip, but the Blind caught and dropped next to my warm beer. The face on the card stared back at me, hand holding a revolver pointed at his chin. Spent of Graves. The Blind, showing its face. Damn, that was funny as hell, but I didn’t laugh. The universe was showing me its sense of humor tonight.
Picked it up and slipped it along with the others. I’d get my laughing done later.
Without looking at Old Grey Eyes’ hired help, I climbed the stairs to the second floor of the saloon where they let out rooms by the half-hour.
If someone asked, I wouldn’t deny a visit to the rooms myself from time to time — but no one was bothering to ask. That said, I knew just the room I was needing from my last amorous escapades on the second story of the Black Dog: Room Number 4.
It was unfortunate for those already occupying the room that I needed it more than they needed it. I politely applied a firm knee to the door, breaking the lock, but not my stride as I crossed the room, interrupting someone’s grunting and moaning session.
“What the fuck?” asked an offended party.
“Pardon,” I said, opening the window on the far side of the room from the door. Apologizing when you’ve given offense is considered good manners, so I’m told.
I slipped through the open window and dropped down to the roof of the place where they kept sheriffs when they had them. There weren’t one, presently.
The roof had the advantage of being on the opposite side of Black Dog’s entrance and near a dark alley, helpful in those situations where you want to go and fade into the night and leave all your troubles behind. I’d done my accounting and had a few things to take care of before the debts came due.
There were some more shouting coming from the open window, so I figured it were time to step up and move out before the owners of that shouting ambled on out of the window after me.
Old Grey Eyes had not neglected the rear service entrance and had posted one of his “gentlemen” to stand guard. I’ve been around, I know the drill. I dropped down to the alley behind the hired help, where he turned on his heel and pointed a drawn gun somewhere in my general direction. I don’t know who would be more surprised if he fired the thing and the bullet accidentally hit me.
“Stop!” He shouted, gun unsteady in his hand. “Or I’ll shoot!”
“You will?”
There was a long pause while the man thought hard about it. Too long. A man ought to shoot if he means to shoot. Not spend the whole night thinking about it.
Old Boy got bored with waiting for his reply and tackled him from the shadows, ripped out the man’s throat and left his lifeblood draining down the gutter without ceremony as he trotted off. The gun never fired.
Good jackal. I reminded myself to give the Old Boy a treat when this was done.
The Old Boy had already gone ahead. I suppose I had too, in the ways that matter. My feet just needed a moment to catch up.
— Story Links —
Beginning of Vengeance, My Heart
❧
Next (coming soon)
❧
Table of Contents for Vengeance, My Heart
Leave a comment. Markdown use is permitted.