I pick through the scrub, leading Jema behind me. My body aches and groans from spending the night on the ground, bunched up tight to keep warm in the chilly darkness.
I’m famished—I haven’t eaten since I left camp yesterday, and I’m still two hours away from Three Lines. I spied dust along the road this morning, coming from Snaketown, so I expect the sheriff is out trying to pick up my trail. I hope she doesn’t have dogs, but just in case I’ve been turning up and down every draw and drainage I come across, trying to muddle our trail. I’ve swung so far south of the road I’m nearly to the tower mesas that rise like giants from the horizon. What should have been a three-hour ride from Snaketown has turned into a six-hour slog cross-country, but I’d rather the authorities think I’m fleeing south than along the river. Three Lines is well hidden, but the fewer folk poking around north of the road, the better.
Problem is, I’m well outside my usual stomping ground—if we’re drawing lines in the sand, this is technically Dirtwater Dob’s territory. He’s more of a poacher than a bandit, skirting around hunting restrictions for bison and pronghorn, which are less plentiful down here than up on the prairie, but we’ve crossed paths more than once. Back before I was able to send Bitty and Arana back to family in Callais, we had a full-out brawl with Dob’s posse over access to the stage road. We drove him off, though Bitty came away with a broken hand, and since then Dob has mostly stayed to his side of the mesas. Still, I’m keeping a sharp eye out. I’d prefer to avoid any run-ins. I’m tired and beat-up, and I don’t have Bitty’s tree-size biceps or Arana’s twin knives or Rose’s crossbow to back me up.
Rat sauntered off a little while ago in the direction of a willow seep, probably sniffing out ground squirrels. Jema’s hooves are making a fair amount of noise over the stony ground, and I’m distracted with wondering if I can risk turning north again—when I round a cluster of boulders to find I’ve walked right into an armed robbery in progress.
Sun be damned, it is Dirtwater Dob, as if conjured from my thoughts, though he seems to be down a couple of allies—there are only two beefy bandits backing him up, with a third rolling around on the ground with her hands to her bloody face. In their midst is a stout woman with a strip of blue fabric tied over one eye—it’s the Moquoian woman from Patzo’s general store, the pox-marked one arguing about the mail. She’s facing the three bandits with a confident grip on a broadsword, but she’s also favoring an ankle and backed into a tangle of juniper. A horse’s panniers are scattered across the ground, parcels and parchment strewn on the rocks. The horse is nowhere in sight.
Everyone stops midmotion to stare at my sudden appearance, save the bandit on the ground, still clutching her face.
“The Sunshield Bandit,” Dob says in surprise, his grungy eyebrows flying skyward.
The victim doesn’t lose her head and uses my momentary distraction to plunge for Dob. He recovers a second too late, parrying slowly with his dinged-up mattock and earning a glancing blow to his forearm. The other two waffle between jumping in to assist and wondering what I’m planning.
Joke’s on them—I have no plan. But I have to say, I don’t particularly like the odds here. I could side with Dob in the hopes of splitting the victim’s panniers, but it’s more likely he’d remember the brawl over the stage road and turn on me as soon as he finishes his target. Besides, I’m not big on killing innocent travelers. I’ll take all their stuff, sure, but I try not to take happenstance lives or strand anybody where they’re going to die of thirst.
Yeah, yeah, the old man’s stage. He was just outside Snaketown, though, and clearly he got back all right, didn’t he?
My face on the wanted poster flares up again, and without waiting any longer I slide my longsword out from under my saddle. I could run, I guess, but if Dob kills this traveler, in the same terrain I fled after Snaketown, in all likelihood the crime will be pinned on me, and then they might strike out the Alive part on my bounty. I spur Jema forward.
“Hey, Dirtwater! Don’t you have bison to poach somewhere?”
One of Dob’s cronies has joined in the struggle with the traveler, but the third wheels back to me as I bear down on them. He’s got a nasty-looking scythe in one hand, and he whirls it toward Jema’s shoulder, but I sling my buckler forward. A splash of afternoon sun washes over his eyes, and he flicks his head. It’s enough—I kick out with the toe of my boot and connect with his jaw. A tooth flies like a junebug. He spins a full circle and drops.
I make sure Jema steps on him as he screams and curses on the ground, and then I’m on the second bandit. He’s got a length of chain—did these guys just raid a logging camp for their weapons? He’s on my sword side, and I angle my blade, preparing to deflect a swing of the heavy metal links—but he whirls them instead at Jema’s nose. She tosses her head and sidesteps, treading again on the scythe bandit but throwing me off-balance. I grab a tighter hold on my reins and arc my sword just in time to parry a jab from a hunting knife. He’s quick, going for Jema’s flank, and I put all my strength into an awkward strike with my hilt. It cracks against his skull, and he drops both chain and knife, clutching his forehead.
“Hold! Hold—Mosset, hold.” Dirtwater Dob tosses up his hands, mattock hanging pick-side down from his wrist. His gaze flicks over his groaning companions and then up to me. “You’re a ways off the road, Sunshine.”
“And you’re getting a little bold, Dirtwater.” I adjust my buckler to make the most use of the glare. “Are the bison too smart for you? You’ve had to stoop to jumping single travelers?”
“At least I haven’t blundered into tripling the price on my head.” He palms the slice on his forearm. “Heard you held up one of the university deans and got your face on a bunch of posters along the road. Is that why you’re sneaking around down here? Sheriff on your tail?”
I don’t know what a dean is, but it’s my luck that the old man was somebody important.
“There’s been a price on my head for three years, and they haven’t flushed me out yet,” I say. On my right, the bandit called Mosset adjusts his grip on his chain, the links clinking. I lay the edge of my sword along his neck. He freezes, scowling. There’s a welt on his forehead the size of an egg.
Dob huffs. “All a matter of time, Sunshine, and then you won’t be lording over the road any longer. Come on, Mosset, Berta . . . Goon, quit rolling around under the horse.”
“She knocked out one’a my teef!” whimpers Goon.
“You got a bunch left. Come on.” Dob flicks his head at the one-eyed traveler. “Lucky day for you.”
The traveler doesn’t reply, just glowers at the posse as they collectively stagger to their feet and file away through the sage.
I grind my teeth, watching them go. I watch until I’m sure they’re really retreating and not just bluffing, and then I turn back to the traveler. She’s warily collecting the goods from her panniers, though one fist is still closed on her broadsword. She eyes me as I slide from Jema’s saddle.
“What’re you traveling around here for?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer, reaching for a bag of cornmeal that’s threatening to split along the seam.
“Want help?” I ask. “I wouldn’t mind helping you pack up in exchange for a meal.” Plus I just saved your ass, I decide not to add.
She grunts, though I can’t be sure if it’s in agreement or not. I kneel and reach for a bundle of blank parchment that’s spilled across the ground, many of the sheets peppered with somebody’s blood—probably Goon’s. Before my fingers close, though, she whacks my hand with the flat of her blade.
I jerk my hand away. “Hey!”
“Niq-otilai.”
Moquoian—right. I’d forgotten. My Moquoian is rusty—I haven’t had to use it since the mines.
“Again?” I ask, the foreign word awkward on my tongue. “Slow?”
“I said, go away,” she repeats.
I scowl, but I’m not fluent enough to snap back or suggest she offer a thank-you instead. From a little ways off, I hear Rat’s coyote yip-yip—perhaps at a wandering, riderless horse.
“You ride a horse, yes?” I ask flatly in my uneven Moquoian, eyeing a packet of thick jerky. “If I am go to get your horse, you can share a food?”
She huffs. “No. Go away.”
“I can rob you.” The threat sounds pitiful in my broken speech. She scoffs. I’d scoff, too.
“I fight better than that group of nobodies. Go away.”
“Fine.” I’m too tired and hungry for a devoted swordfight anyway. I put my hands on my knees, preparing to stand, when she moves suddenly—her hand lashes out to grab my sleeve. She pushes it back to reveal my longsword tattoo—and the old, scarred circular brand. Her face goes as dark as yesterday’s thunderstorm.
She drops my sleeve like it’s poison, steps back, and slings her sword toward my face. I’m still in a half crouch, and if she hadn’t had the decency to give an angry yell, she probably would have landed her blade right between my eyes. But her roar startles me, and I haul my buckler impulsively to block my face, bracing against the impact.
“Hey!” I shout, scrambling to find my feet. “What’s wrong with—”
She swings around again, and this time, I pull my sword out in time to lock her hilt in mine, hoping to wrench it out of her grasp. But just as I clamp my hand over her wrist, I’m hit with an intense, unmistakable smell, rippling off her clothes. The stink of guano.
Without warning, a memory floods my unguarded mind.
Clouds of little black bodies streaming out from cracks in the rocks, cheeping, swooping, their calls not quite drowning out gasps of pain, the ragged grind of a bow saw. The reek of ammonia mixed with the thick scent of blood and sweat and liquor.
I suck in a breath at the rush of vivid sights and sounds that awful smell has conjured. I drop her wrist and leap back, our swords disentangling with a metallic whine.
“Utzibor?” I say without thinking.
She grits her teeth and readies her sword again, but I don’t wait to parry her strike. I wedge my foot in Jema’s stirrup and slap her rump before I’ve thrown my other leg over. She starts forward, her hoofbeats clamoring with the string of Moquoian curses the traveler is shouting. I glance back over my shoulder—the woman is yelling with her fist in the air.
I don’t even care why—perhaps she recognized my tattoos and realized who I am, but all I can focus on is the ugly memories dredged up by that smell. My stomach boils with a misplaced sense of dread. I whip back around and urge Jema faster. We break from the scrub and out into the sage flats.
Sure enough, Rat is hopping around the girth of a dun-colored mule, its reins dangling freely. For a brief second I consider scaring the mule farther away, or even taking it with me, to keep the woman off my tail, but I’m overridden by the desperate desire to get far away from that stench and the sick memories it’s brought with it. I whistle to Rat and kick Jema into a canter, veering north for the distant road.
Utzibor. Nothing good happens at Utzibor, nothing, nothing, nothing.
I just want to be back home.