2. An Unwelcome Sight
An Unwelcome Sight
Pearl hated the sunrise. So she generally avoided rising in time to see it, especially when she’d consumed nearly an entire bottle of bourbon the night before.
If it were up to her, she would’ve gladly stayed in bed until the sun burned high above. But it was barely on the horizon when her mother decided she had other plans for her.
“Wake up.”
Pearl groaned as the pillow over her head was removed. She blinked in the too-bright light and her mother’s glare.
“Up.”
“Yes, Sheriff,” Pearl grumbled, pushing upright and untangling from the patchwork quilt strangling her legs.
She was still mostly clothed, her waistcoat unbuttoned as if she’d made an attempt to undress, but she seemed to be missing one boot. She found it on her dressing table and jammed her foot into it.
“What d’you want?” Pearl asked as she poured some water into her chipped washbasin and dunked her face.
“Got a job for you.” Her mother folded her arms over her chest, wooden foot tapping ominously.
“What sort?”
Pearl’s mouth felt stuffed with raw wool.
She reached into it and snapped out the line of false gold teeth that comprised all but two of her top front ones.
She shouldn’t have fallen asleep with them in, but since she didn’t remember much from last night, she was simply grateful she’d ended up in her own room.
She doused the five teeth connected by thin wire with more bourbon and swallowed a gulp herself for good measure before wedging the piece back into place.
Then she finally faced her mother, who was very much the sheriff this morning.
Sheriff Oak’s long duster jacket might have once been blue, but the red dirt and salt residue had stained and bleached it alternately for so long that it couldn’t quite decide what color to be.
Her dark braid was woven with white and those lines on her face were not from laughter.
She’d run this town all of Pearl’s life and no one expected she’d stop anytime soon.
Pearl rummaged in her pockets for a smoke.
“The railroad’s coming.”
Pearl’s hands froze. “Here?”
“Dunno yet. That’s the question, isn’t it? Two company folks showed up to see me yesterday.”
“Rude, during a wedding. Is that where you disappeared off to? You missed the dancing.”
Her mother smiled tightly. “I didn’t miss it.” The wooden foot tapped again, pointedly.
Pearl rolled her eyes, finally finding the silver cigarette holder in her own duster jacket crumpled in the corner. The foot didn’t stop the sheriff from doing anything else she pleased. “You could dance. You just don’t wanna.”
She selected one of her hand-rolled cigarettes from the left half of the holder.
She needed a clear head this morning, and the trace amounts of illegal blight mixed with the tobacco would bring her one.
For a while at least. She stuck it between her teeth, lighting it with a match from the box on the windowsill.
Pearl inhaled deeply, the distinct, lightly sweet powder hitting her lungs in little sparkles. The blight buzzed through her veins, tingling beneath her skin, and she gathered it up into her head. Like squeezing a snake to force it to spit up a vermin it just ate.
The headache immediately subsided, though it’d be back when the effects of the blight ran out. But by then, she’d be moving.
Blight was a finicky substance. Useful but dangerous, and frequently unpredictable, it gave a temporary burst of power mortals were never meant to have.
She inhaled again and held out the smoldering cigarette.
Her mother took it and mimicked her. She clearly tasted the illicit blight, but she didn’t comment. She’d been the one to teach Pearl how to use and control it long ago.
Sheriff Oak passed the cigarette back. “The company hasn’t decided on the route it’ll take west. Could either go north of the bluffs, which’d take it right by here. Or south. Through the flats.”
Pearl scowled. “By Faltsprings.”
Sheriff Oak nodded, mouth thin.
“So what?” Pearl shared the end of the cigarette back. “You don’t like the railroad anyway.”
“I don’t. If I wanted city, I’d live in the damn city. But it’s coming. And since it is, I want it to come here, not down there. Think of how much safer and easier shipments of salt to Plainsburgh would be. Just a day or two by rail.” Currently it took over a week by wagon.
Pearl narrowed her eyes in grudging agreement. “So what’d you want me to do?”
“Railroad means more folks, which means more trouble. I wanna put on a show for the company commissioner when he comes. But more than that, we’ve got fences that need fixing and strengthening. Marcus is taking a wagon up the gorge for some timber this morning.”
“Why him?” Pearl asked sharply.
“Because he volunteered. And I don’t got a reason yet to say no.”
“He’s an outsider. His brother lives in Faltsprings.”
“I know. I don’t trust him either, after those cattle got mired in the fields this spring. Which is why I want you to go.”
Pearl strapped on her holsters. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”
Pearl walked several paces behind the others, wind and sweat plastering hair to the back of her neck.
The river that carved along the steep silty cliffs by their town of Salt Bluff was one of many running from somewhere deep in the crag’s heartland.
Farther up, it flowed from a gorge that provided the shade, protection, and nutrients to grow trees tall and straight for timber—rare and valuable in these parts, and a poorly kept secret.
It was about half a day’s journey from Salt Bluff, and by the time they reached it, the sun hit the crest of its peak.
Passing the stumps of previous harvestings overgrown by tall grass and springy saplings, they finally approached a stand of old, straight trees.
Pearl sank down in the shade and pulled out a fresh cigarette. A normal one this time, made of simply tobacco.
“You gonna help us, Princess Pea?” Marcus asked, cutting her a dark look.
“Nah.” Pearl kicked her feet out as she fished for her matchbox in a pocket of her waistcoat. “You got it.”
Marcus grumbled to himself as he faced the stand. The others in their party, Billy and Willy, had already taken up their axes and started chopping.
Puffy clouds, the sort that could turn to storms quickly, punctuated the blue sky.
Pearl eyed them as she enjoyed her smoke, carefully snubbing the butt out and crushing it beneath her boot in the dirt before pocketing it.
Then she sighed, shrugged off her duster, and cuffed the blue pinstripe sleeves of her shirt.
“Apparently, you don’t got it,” she said and grabbed an axe.
“Look who decided to be useful for once,” Marcus said, swinging too vigorously and missing his mark, creating a deep gouge above the notch.
“Keep that up and we won’t have any timber to bring back.”
“And it’ll be all my fault, ‘course.”
“It would be.”
“Your mama isn’t here.”
“Nah, she isn’t.” Pearl swung her own axe at his notch. It was a clean cut, and the tall trunk creaked, leaned, and fell. “I am, though.”
Pearl grinned at him, tilting her head back to let the sun past her wide brim and catch on her golden teeth.
“That you are,” he said quietly.
That response had the damp hairs on Pearl’s neck stand to attention as he moved to another tree. She glanced at Billy and Willy, but they were on the other side of the grove and focused on their task. She stayed close to Marcus.
By the time the sun was threatening the horizon, they’d crudely stripped the branches and hauled the timber back to the cart. The mud mules waited patiently by the rushing water. Patience was their finest attribute, after their strength. And they’d need both to haul this cart back to town.
Pearl flexed her hands, palms tender from the impact of the axe meeting wood, and rolled her sore shoulders.
“We’d better get going,” she said, shaking out her coat, sending a displeased snake tumbling and slithering into the undergrowth.
Marcus crossed his arms, walking over to the riverbank. “Not tonight. We’ll go back in the morning.”
Pearl glanced at Billy and Willy, who were frowning.
“We promised we’d be home late,” Billy said.
“Well, you shouldn’t have done that, huh?” Marcus retorted.
Pearl narrowed her eyes. “The sheriff expects us back tonight.”
“Well, she’s just gonna be disappointed, huh?” Marcus repeated, a mocking edge to his tone.
Pearl snapped open a tiny tin on her belt and dipped her finger inside. Swiping the sweet powder over her gold teeth and upper gums, she reached for her holster. The inlaid handle of her revolver was warmed from the sun.
When Marcus turned back around, the barrel of her weapon was pointing at his head.
His eyes flickered with surprise, and Pearl resisted rolling her own. It wasn’t like she was subtle.
Her hand was as steady as stone as the world sharpened around her. The hum of insects joined the cacophony of the river rushing over rocks in the gorge. Too much for a moment, the mundane blended with the important as her human senses tried to make sense of them.
There was more than one reason the Amelior Empire outlawed the use of blight. But this was Pearl’s land. No matter what some empire or demigoddess empress said.
“You gonna shoot me, Pearl?” Marcus asked, his voice too loud.
“I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Now get your ass in that cart.” Without taking her eyes off Marcus, she called over her shoulder to the other two, “Get the mules hitched.”
“It’s dangerous to travel at night,” Marcus protested, his eyes darting around. Something was very off, and it wasn’t only the fizzing blight in her blood telling her so.
“Yup. So is staying here.” On cue, thunder rumbled.
The gorge was a dangerous place to be when it stormed.
A flash flood could sweep everything away in a matter of seconds.
“Move,” Pearl ordered, but Marcus didn’t.
“I’m not playing with you, Marcus.” Pearl would sooner shoot and leave him than spend the night here.
Marcus was annoying and suspicious, but he wasn’t a total fool.
No sane person would suggest camping in the gorge with even the whiff of rain on the air.
A heart drummed behind her. Closer, accompanied by stifled breath and the snap of a twig.
She started to duck as a heavy strike landed along the back of her shoulders.
She fired a bad, distracted shot at Marcus and stumbled, knocked off balance, the ground coming up too quickly.
She moved faster than she was supposed to, the weapon slipping from her numbing grip.
Marcus screamed, which meant she’d hit something, but nothing instantly fatal. Shame.
Pearl spun, pain flaring across her back, her elbow swinging and connecting before her eyes did with her attacker.
Two more shots rang out near the water. Pearl’s gut clenched as part of her registered what those sounds meant, but she focused on the enemy in front of her.
Slipping a knife from its sheath on her thigh, she ducked beneath the second blow of the heavy wooden bat.
She tried to stand, but the pain of the earlier strike kept her doubled over, so she worked with it and channeled most of the blight in her body to the spot, suppressing the pain to stop it from hindering her. She should’ve eaten more of it.
Or perhaps not. The world moved too fast, the sensation a combination of being too drunk and too awake at once. She hurled herself forward, burying the blade in his inner thigh. The man crumpled and she swiped the bat from him on the way down, chucking it toward the water.
Her fingers brushed the handle of her second revolver when hands caught her own. She bucked, slamming her head into the face above her. Then familiar metal pressed into her cheek.
She looked up at Marcus, who panted, one bloody hand clamped over his side but the other steady as he held her own weapon to her skin.
“You should’ve aimed better,” Marcus gasped.
“I wish I had,” Pearl spat.
Her upper back pinched with pain the fading blight couldn’t disguise as her wrists were tied behind her. She glanced sideways at the forms of the mules trundling away, patience spooked by the close gunfire.
Billy and Willy lay unmoving by the bank. They’d been good men, for the most part. Far better than Marcus. But her chance to tell him so was cut short by the bitter gag stuffed in her mouth. It tugged on her false teeth.
“I wasn’t planning on you being here. But I’m sure your mama will pay a pretty price for her precious Princess Pea back, don’t you think?”
Pearl’s insult was lost behind the gag.
Four men surrounded her. Not the worst odds she’d faced. The one she’d stabbed in the leg still lay on the ground, twitching as he bled profusely. He’d stupidly pulled the knife free. The remaining three seemed to have already written him off but without the decency to just end it.
They finally noticed their predicament of the heavy, unhitched cart, and the two upright strangers, one clutching a wicked nosebleed courtesy of Pearl’s skull, went running after the mules.
Marcus didn’t look away, his eyes boring into her with a malevolent gleam.
She glared back, pouring everything she couldn’t say into her gaze.
She tested the bindings on her wrists, to see if she had enough blight left to enhance her strength to break them. They strained, but held. She definitely should’ve eaten more.
Marcus smiled, and winced. The wound on his side had spread dark red blood down to his boot, wet and sticky, and he swayed.
Thunder rumbled again, and lightning lit the darkening sky.
The men returned without the mules.
“We’ve gotta leave the cart,” one said.
“The cart was the point. We need this,” the other snapped.
“We got her.” The first jabbed his thumb toward Pearl. “She’ll be worth far more.”
“I still don’t think it’s a good idea. Let’s just kill her and be done with it. You really want Sheriff Oak to know it was us?”
“She don’t scare me.”
“Then you’re stupider than I thought.”
“Shut up!” Marcus snapped. “It’s already getting dark. Let’s get to higher ground and hope the storm passes without washing us away.”
The second man pulled out his own revolver. “And she’ll slow us down.”
“You aren’t gonna shoot her,” Marcus countered.
For once, Pearl agreed with the bastard.
His attention was distracted. And Pearl took her chance.