Russell Overton, the town’s official chartermage, scooped up his cards with a grimace. Dapper in his favorite dark waistcoat, dark-curled and coffee-skinned, when he was sitting down you didn’t notice he was bandy-legged and had a stiff way about him. You could, however, always tell he was aching for a fight, like most short men. “That woman could sour milk. So, what’s she like, Gabe?”
“Granger? Still sour.” He picked up his own cards, his charing-charm cool against his throat. The schoolmarm’s was a confection of lacy silver and crystal; his own was a small brass disc with the orphanage’s charter-symbol stamped on the back. There couldn’t be a better illustration of just how much she didn’t belong here.
Stop thinking about it. It won’t do any good.
Dark eyes. Brown curls. Not like blonde, blue-eyed Emily.
Stop it.
“Not Granger, you buffoon.” Russ chomped the end of his cigar as if it had personally offended him. Smoke hazed between the lamps. “The schoolmarm. From Boston, yes?”
“Far as I know.” Gabe’s mouth was dry. He took another jolt of whiskey, eyed the cards. The room was close and warm, the saloon pounding away underneath them with rollicking piano music and a surfroar of male voices. Every once in a while a sharp feminine exclamation, as the saloon frails and the dancing girls went about their business. It was, Gabe reflected, almost like a steamboat making its way upriver. The noise made it seem like the place was rocking.
“You’re asking Gabe? You should know it’s like pullin’ nails.” The doctor showed a slice of yellowed teeth as he examined his cards. “She is from Boston. Highly recommended, according to Edna Bricketts. Why a miss consented to come here, only God knows. She’s a little thing too; I couldn’t see much in the melee. Seemed a bit prim.”
I am so very sorry, she had kept saying. I don’t wish to put you to trouble, Mr. Gabriel. After nearly fainting, for God’s sake. He was willing to bet it was a combination of hunger and nerves; someone should hold her down and feed her something fattening. Little and birdlike. And she acted like a pregnant Chinee girl was no great shakes, offering her hand to Li Ang and murmuring How do you do just as she had to him.
He laid his offerings down. “Two.”
For a few minutes, each of them focused on the game. Doc took the round. “Well, I heard Joss Barker’s already sayin’ he’s in love with her. So’s Eb Kendall. Two.”
“His wife won’t like that. Two and a half.”
“His wife don’t like nothin’. Three, and call.”
“You’d feel the same way, married to Eb. Look at this, two Dominions and a Pearl.”
Gabe laid his cards down. He took the round, with the remaining Dominions, two Espada, and a Diamond. There was a good-natured round of cussing before he accepted the greasy cards and began to shuffle. “Who else?”
There was a brief silence. Maybe they didn’t understand. So he added a few more words. “Barker, Kendall. Who else?”
More silence. He glanced up as his fingers sorted through the winnings, blinking a little, and Doc hurriedly looked away. Turnbull’s mouth was open slightly; he shut it with a snap and became suddenly very interested in his own pile of seed corn.
“Nobody,” Doc finally said. “You know how Barker is. Mouth two sizes too big for the rest of him.”
Well, that’s true. He searched for something else to say, a thing that might paper over the uncomfortable silence. “Last thing we need is some damn thing else happening to scare away the schoolmarm. Had a hard enough time finding one as it is, what with recent events.”
Meaning the boy, and the claim in the hills, the cursed gold, and the incursions. Since closing the claim, though, the rash of walking dead had gone down quite a bit. Even if some damn fool sooner or later would be tempted by the rich veins lurking under the claim’s black mouth. Or the bars, each stamped with that queer symbol, just waiting for the unwary to carry them home.
Another uncomfortable silence.
“Well, then.” Doc watched Gabe’s hands as the cards slid neatly into their appointed places, no motion wasted. “Bad mancy, to talk about women at a card game.”
“Aw, Hell,” Russ piped up. “What else we got to talk about? Whiskey and donkeyfucking, and claims up in the hills.”
“Not to mention undead. How’s the charter holding, there, Russ?” Turnbull grinned, and Gabe sighed internally as the chartermage and the saloon owner glared at each other over the cards.
“Charter’s holding up fine.” For once, Russ heroically restrained himself. It was probably too good to last. “No howlings from the hills that I can tell. Gabe?”
And from there it was all cards and business. But Gabe caught the doctor looking at him speculatively, especially as the night got later and Paul and Russ started sniping at each other again. The night ended as it always did—Paul a little behind, Russ a little ahead, Doc and Gabe largely breaking even.
And the saloon below them rollicking on.
Chapter 3
It was such a welcome sensation to sink into a bed; Cat almost squeezed her eyes further shut, rolled over, and dove back into sleep. But sunlight gilded the window, and she heard a queer tuneless humming floating somewhere in the house.
I am here.
Where was Robbie? Had he seen her, in yesterday’s comedy of errors? It wasn’t like him not to join in a joke. She’d half-expected the banner to be his idea, of course. How it would have warmed his heart. If anyone loved a prank, ’twas Robert Barrowe-Browne.
Cat pried one eye open, wincing as her body protested even such a simple movement. The humming was actually quite pleasant, and she deduced it must be the Chinoise girl. Her charing was blessedly cool, and she rolled over, blinking at the plastered ceiling and stretching gingerly.
All things considered, she was quite well. Merely hungry enough to do shockingly unladylike damage to a platter of breakfast, and sore clear through.
The larger bedroom was at the end of a tiny hallway; the smaller was tucked to the side and held a low corncrib and some few bits of fabric draped on the walls to provide a bit of cheer. Cat made a mental note to find at least a chair for the poor girl, and made her way downstairs on slippered feet. The slippers had been set neatly by her bedside, and yesterday’s gown hung to air on a press, charmed neatly enough that no dust or feathers clung to its folds.
Which was a most welcome surprise.
Her nightgown made a low sweet sound as she tiptoed along the back hall, following the humming to its source. Which was, as she had suspected, the kitchen.
The Chinoise, her slim back betraying little of the proud belly in front, was humming as she scrubbed, elbow-deep in suds, at something. The kitchen, bright and airy, was full of a wondrous scent. There was a stripped-pine table, two chairs, a steaming kettle, and a washtub to the side. The stove, its heat enclosed in an envelope-charm, spun a fresh globe of golden glow aside; the globe, drifting through the kitchen, bumbled merrily out the open top half of a door leading to a porch and a short breezeway. It bobbed along, the mancy on it crackling, and would eventually rise into the sky, safely dissipating away from anything flammable. ’Twas an elegant bit of work, and a relief. At least the house would not burn down around them.
It was a great relief that charterstones and charings would make mancy work reliably even if one was not properly native-born. The great influx of those from other countries seeking a better life, or merely drudgery in a new environ, could practice such mancy as was native to them within charterstone’s bounds. After the Provinces War, the discovery of gold in certain wasted places and the determination to bring the railroad to every corner of the New World had brought all manner of folk to these shores.