Then
I’m fourteen years old when the Butcher is born.
Mama is a few months gone, and I’m scrambling to keep everything together.
I hit the labor stalls every morning, but I’m short and scrawny, with an anger and intensity I wear on my skin that people find off-putting.
Any piecemeal jobs I manage to pick up pay scraps.
I give up my food and water to Halle and Kelda, but it isn’t enough.
There’s never enough to go around in the dust.
That’s when Bloody Bill Kilpatrick puts out a hit on Big Haul Cruz.
Big Haul is causing a stir in Covenant, speaking out against Gold Town and the wardens, the barons and the preachers.
He wants to raise people up, end the stranglehold by those in power, and his popularity is skyrocketing, with more and more dusters joining him.
He’s also the size of a homestead—a muscle-wrapped giant surrounded by loyalists and bodyguards.
So even though Kilpatrick is offering a cartload of paper, everyone who tries to take him out ends up wrapped in white and thrown into the Elysian Depths.
But none of those people can phase like me. And there’s so much paper on the line. Maybe, once, I might’ve cared about who held power in this town—
—but not anymore.
I find a rudimentary mask and hood to obscure my features. I lift a cheap, six-shot pulse pistol from an even cheaper storefront and trail Big Haul for days, working myself up to the job as I wait for an opening.
I finally catch Big Haul alone in an alley in the deep hours of the night, phasing in front of him and firing off two shots with the pulse pistol. I’m a bad shot, though, only managing to hit him in the leg, and he responds immediately, surging toward me with a roar. I panic and phase—
—but the pistol doesn’t phase with me.
I pull the pieces of myself back together on the opposite end of the alley, but I’m slow, disoriented. Big Haul whirls around, the pulse pistol I dropped looking tiny in his massive hand as he levels it at me. I try to disappear before he fires, but I’m not quick enough.
The shot hits my side, pain searing through my brain, breaking my focus. Scattering my concentration. Making it almost impossible to remember that I am nothing right now—less than the dust motes and rust flakes hanging in the air—and I’ll stay that way if I can’t find my way back.
And if I die, so do Kelda and Halle.
I jerk all the little bits of myself together, collapsing in a trembling knot in a dark, damp hallway, gasping at the air greedily as my pulse pounds in my ears.
My side is a bright explosion of pain. My skin feels tender, like it’s been scraped raw.
I can hear Big Haul in the alley just outside, overturning bins and kicking at crates looking for me.
If I’m going to abandon this plan, this is my moment. But if I leave Big Haul alive now, not only will there be no cash, but he’ll tell people what he saw. Someone with impossible abilities. A saint.
I grit my teeth and pull out the hooked, serrated knife I sheathed in my boot. Using the wall to push myself to a stand, the wound on my side burning, I inch to the door, opening it just enough to see out.
Big Haul has his back to me, his shoulders broad as a docking platform.
I tighten my grip on the knife, take a breath, and phase.
Big Haul yells in surprise as I appear on his back, my left arm wrapped tight around his neck, my legs around his rib cage.
He tries to reach for me, but I’ve already started stabbing.
In the neck. In the chest. Again and again and again.
My shoulder is on fire. My hands shake with the effort of keeping a hold on the knife hilt as it grows slick with blood.
But I don’t stop until Big Haul staggers, drops to his knees, and collapses onto the dirty alley floor.
I crawl off him, shaking, weak as a newborn, my red-stained hands limp in my lap. I stare at Big Haul’s empty face until his gray-blue eyes cloud over and his blood starts to cool. It’s only then that I’m finally able to gather all the unraveled bits of myself back together again.
I pick myself up, make sure my mask and hood are all still on, and deliver proof of the job to Kilpatrick.
I get paid in cash. More paper than I’ve ever had in my hands before.
I buy water—so much water—and food, and let my sisters eat and drink until they’re full for the first time in months.
I see the difference it makes. How Halle and Kelda relax under the new, delicious weight in their bellies.
Their lips no longer cracked and parched.
The dark circles slowly retreating from underneath their eyes.
That makes everything I go through in the months and years to come worth it. The night sweats. The sleepless dark hours. The meticulous picking of dried blood out from under my fingernails. The mistakes and fights and secret bottles of booze.
It’s all worth it.
The Butcher becomes a notorious figure in Covenant after that.
And a big part of me loves it. I really do.