Penny laughed. “Probably. You were rambling a lot.”
“What was I saying?”
“Nonsense. Gibberish. It was all in Spanish.”
It was Cole’s turn to laugh. “Portuguese,” he said.
“Whatever.” Penny finished her work and stood back. She looked him over, the sad expression still on her face. “Get some sleep,” she told him. She turned to go.
“Hey, wait.”
Penny stopped. She turned her head to the side.
“What?” she asked.
“Maybe it’s a good thing, the Seer telling us to all go. Maybe it can be interpreted a different way.”
“The way you want to hear it, right?”
“I’m just saying, the fact that the next fight might be our last…”
“Yeah?”
“Well,” Cole said, “it still leaves open the question of whether or not we’ll win.”
Penny stood still for a moment. She reached up and pulled an elastic band off her bunned-up hair, allowing it to spill down and across her shoulders. Turning, she locked Cole’s gaze with her own, and he saw the barest of smiles flirt with the corners of her mouth.
“Yeah,” she said, “I like that.” Penny nodded. “I like that a lot.”
49
“Well, I’m sure glad that’s over,” the prisoner said. He watched as the sheriff opened the cell door for Molly and waved her out. “I’ll be gods-awful glad to get free of this joint.”
Sheriff Browne turned to him. “What in hyperspace does a lick of this have to do with you robbing a buggy dealership?”
The prisoner scratched his beard. “I was hoping you could tell me!”
“Not a damn thing, that’s what. Now sit down and shut up. Next time I shoot you, it won’t be with my fingers.”
The prisoner shot a finger of his own up at the ceiling, but backed away as he did so. The sheriff turned and regarded his dead deputy. “Looks like your pet done finished what you started last night.”
“How did you do that?” Molly asked. She looked from the deputy to the Wadi on her shoulder, suddenly fearful to be reminded of what her pet could do. She flashed back to the fight on the Drenard shuttle when she’d last seen its ferocious side and tried to tease out what the two events had in common.
“I’ve always had a way with animals,” Sheriff Browne said. “A way that tends toward trouble.”
“So, am I free to go?” Molly glanced at the office door and thought about dashing out of there, just to get away from the residual tension she could feel coursing through her body. It was hard to believe she’d wanted to come there.
“Way I see it, this is now animal control’s jurisdiction.” The sheriff smiled at her. That smile faded as he looked back to the mess on the office floor. “But who’s gonna clean this up if the Callites keep going missing?”
“The Callites,” Molly said. “That’s why I came to see you. Some of my friends are in trouble.”
“Hardly surprising.” The sheriff looked down at his poor deputy. “Trouble seems to follow you around, don’t it?”
Molly frowned. “I think they might be in big trouble. Like I said before, another shuttle is supposedly going up today, and they might be on it.”
The sheriff stepped around his deputy, casting the body a forlorn look. He threw open one of the shutters and peered outside at the bustle on the busy street. “Never could stand what they were doing there at immigrations, even before the damned things were being shot down. But I had no right to inquire. The law is the law.”
“Just because it’s the law doesn’t make it right,” Molly said. She held the Wadi to her chest and went to the door. She opened it up to let in some light and let out some of the stuffiness created by the dead body.
“Then again,” the sheriff said, “if legals are being shipped off, like Cripple for instance…”
“Will you at least come with me and check? Because I’m going either way.”
The sheriff leaned on the windowsill and peered out through the haze of sunlit dust, his shoulders pressed up around his ears in a frozen shrug.
“Is it hard to think about going outside?” Molly asked.
The sheriff turned to her and laughed. “He meant it as a figure of speech. Whadya think, I sleep in here? I get out twice a day, to and from work. Hell, I arrested you right over yonder.” The sheriff pointed out the window to the sidewalk a dozen paces away.
“So you’ll come with me?”
The sheriff nodded. “I suppose so. As long as you don’t mind riding on the back of my Theryl.” He pulled his hat down snug, patted his holster, took one last look at his dead deputy, then turned to the door.
“Theryl?” Molly asked. “What in the galaxy is that?”
A monstrous horse-like animal, apparently. The sheriff led the large creature out of its stall and into the alley. He clucked at it affectionately, and the animal turned and looked down to survey Molly with its single eye.
“Hello,” she said, waving. “Nice Theryl.”
“Her name’s Clementine,” the sheriff said. He patted the animal on the neck. “Come back here and I’ll give you a lift.”
Molly hurried around to the other side of the sheriff and moved the Wadi to the back of her neck. The sheriff reached up and engaged a switch on the saddle. The rear of the leather seat opened up, and a second, smaller seat extended out its back as another pair of stirrups unspooled. “Up you go,” he said, creating a basket with his hands.
Molly let him boost her up. She threw a leg over the small saddle, and the Theryl shifted beneath her. She held on to the handles to either side of her seat and wondered how the sheriff was going to get up. She leaned to the side and watched as he stepped into a lowered stirrup, which began sucking up into the saddle, lifting him into place.
“And away we go,” the sheriff said. He clucked his tongue, and Clementine sauntered down the alley. At the end, the animal turned left, its hooves clomping loudly on the wooden sidewalk.
“Not today, old girl.” The sheriff pulled gently on the reins, turning the Theryl the other direction. “Bit of business for us oldtimers left to do.”
With that, he snapped the reins, and the Theryl threw her head back. She let out a whistle, a trilling call more like a bird’s than any mammal Molly knew of. Her front hooves left the sidewalk for a moment and waved excitedly in the air. And then they were off—tearing down the dusty street, weaving through traffic, with Molly and the Wadi holding on for dear life.
The sheriff and Theryl moved as one, leaving Molly to move awkwardly as something else. She let go of the useless little handles and wrapped her arms around the sheriff’s waist. She managed half a yelp as they picked up speed, the Wadi’s tail wrapping around her neck and squeezing off the rest of her outburst. All around her was the thunder of Theryl hooves and the strange and sickening rise and fall of its peculiar gait.
Molly concentrated on the rhythm of the beast and tried to move with it instead of fighting it. Each corner they rounded threw her timing off as everything leaned to one side or the other. After dozens of blocks flew by, the sheriff yelled something, and Clementine pulled to a halt in a staccato of clocking hooves.
“There,” the sheriff said. He pointed to a squat building at the end of the road, out on the edge of town. A tall fence studded with lookout towers ringed the structure; inset into this was a small guard station, which seemed to offer the only access through.