13. A Job to Do
A Job to Do
Driz woke to find Pearl waiting for her.
Pearl sat on the rock they’d shared when she’d brought the second pie, watching. Driz’s heart leapt with happiness. She had come.
“Hey,” Pearl said.
“Hello.” Driz shook the sleep from her limbs, stepping out of the nook where she’d tucked herself at dawn.
“You got shot last night,” Pearl stated, her eyes scanning Driz’s body.
Driz looked down and absently touched her leg. A hole had been torn in the fabric covering her thigh, but the skin beneath was repaired. “Yes. How are the fields?”
“Still there. Thanks to you. How’d you know to stop them?”
“I saw a light and followed it.”
“I told you not to wait for me.”
“You did.”
Pearl sighed. A heaviness weighed down her shoulders. “I didn’t even bring you anything. There wasn’t time for a pie, and I didn’t know what you wanted.”
“I have never acted only for the gifts you bring me.”
Some strange emotion pinched Pearl’s face and she stood abruptly. “They aren’t gifts. They’re payments.” She ran a hand over her face.
“I am sorry,” Driz said, her wings twitching anxiously as she stepped closer, unsure how to ease Pearl’s distress.
“Why’d you do it? Just tell me. Please.”
Driz tilted her head. “I wanted to help.”
“But why did you want to help?”
Driz thought back to the first time she saw Pearl, when something shifted inside her. “I think I need to protect you.”
Pearl narrowed her eyes. “I don’t need your protection.”
Driz shook her head, unsure how to explain. “My kind were created to be guardians. Something about you stirs that instinct.”
“I’m not your dead goddess,” Pearl said harshly.
“I never thought you were. I do not quite understand it either. I just need you to be safe. And I want to be around you. To learn about you. To be…with you.” Driz held her breath as Pearl stared at her. Should Driz not have said all that?
“We live in different worlds,” Pearl finally said. “I cannot be with you in any way.”
“You are with me now.”
“And I need to go.”
Pearl turned away and panic flared in Driz’s chest. “Will you come back?”
“It’s dangerous for you to be here.” Pearl’s spine was rigid.
“I do not care.”
Pearl whirled on her. “It’s dangerous for me. And for my town. What if you wake? What if someone finds you here and you have to defend yourself? They saw you, Driz. And they’ll be looking for you.”
Driz’s wings and shoulders hunched. “Why would they look for me? What did I do wrong?”
“Oh gods.” Pearl let out a frustrated sound and covered her face with her palm again. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Thanks for your help, but you really should leave. For everyone’s good.”
“I will sleep farther away. We can—”
“No. We can’t anything. Just stop talking. Don’t make it worse.”
Pearl had almost rounded the corner when Driz blurted out her words. “I want something.”
Pearl froze. Then she turned around. “Tell me.”
Driz thought quickly. What could she ask for? “One of those music makers. The metal ones.”
Pearl’s brow wrinkled. “What?”
“The buzzy metal music boxes. That humans play with their mouths.”
“A harmonica?”
“Yes.” Driz had no idea if that was correct, but it didn’t really matter.
Pearl stared at her. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll try to find you one.”
And she was gone.
Mayor Wallace lived in the fanciest house in town. Set back from the main street, it had actual trees, scraggly and short though they were, growing in an attempt at symmetry in the front.
Pearl tugged at her starched scarf, resenting it as she climbed the steps behind her mother, who had forgone the stained duster jacket for once.
She wore a dark blue silk blouse with the hint of a ruffle down the front and circling the high neck.
It looked lovely on her, and Pearl’s gut twisted at the sight.
Sheriff Oak only ever wore it for the serious occasions.
Like funerals. And perhaps this was a funeral in its own way.
Wallace greeted them in the parlor. “Please, come in,” he said, all affable. But his smile was tentative. He knew who was really in charge of the town, and that was for the best. He looked at Pearl. “Thanks so much for coming as well. My lovely Clara is indisposed after the wedding.”
Pearl had landed the job of acting as a poor replacement hostess. She smirked at Wallace. “Don’t worry. If there’s one thing I’m very good at, it’s entertaining women. I even polished my teeth.”
Wallace chuckled nervously and Sheriff Oak narrowed her eyes at Pearl in a silent censure.
The commissioner from the rail company arrived fashionably late, rolling up in a once-dark carriage that had no business on these roads. The suited man stepped down into a cloud of dust, already sweating profusely and clinging to his young, pretty wife, who was draped in a frilled skirt.
“Commissioner, welcome,” Wallace said, ushering them inside.
Greetings were exchanged, and Sheriff Oak gave Pearl a meaningful look.
Pearl took that as her cue. She inclined her head at the wife. “Mrs. Graham, how’d you like a tour of the architecture? There’s a great view of the fields from the back porch.”
The lady looked a bit taken aback, but she nodded and hesitantly placed her hand on Pearl’s offered elbow, letting her steer them out of the room and into the hall. “I hope the lady of the house is not too unwell.”
“Don’t think so. But she just got married and been ill since. Too much dancing and cake, but you didn’t hear that from me.”
“I’m certain it was stressful. I did as well. Get married, that is. Just this spring, to my Matthew.”
“Congrats.”
Mrs. Graham eyed Pearl. “I take it you are not married, Miss Pearl?”
Pearl snorted. “Please just call me Pearl. Let’s not pretend there’s much missish about me.”
The young lady laughed lightly, and her cheeks pinkened as her gaze dipped to Pearl’s glinting mouth. She really was pretty, and if Pearl was reading her correctly, perhaps not overly enamored with her husband. “Then you must call me Cecilia.”
“If you’d like, Cecilia. Do you enjoy the architecture?” Pearl gestured vaguely as they walked down the hall. “The walls, as you can see, are papered. And the crown molding is…shaped.”
Cecilia laughed again, her body pressing closer. “It is very quaint. I hope you aren’t too disappointed you’ve been tasked with distracting me with crown molding as they talk business?”
“I’m quite fine with my task.” The lady was definitely flirting with her. Pearl could flirt back.
“Do most women dress like you and the sheriff out here?”
“Some do. I’ve always found skirts inconvenient. Unless I’m not the one wearing one. Then they’re quite convenient.”
Cecilia’s white teeth dug into her lower lip temptingly. Yes, she definitely understood that.
Pearl held the door open and let the young woman precede her out onto the back porch, which faced the bluffs and cragland rising behind.
“Oh my,” Cecilia said, her steps faltering.
“What?”
“Why are there so many graves?”
The cemetery extended outward from the back of the house, separated by only a thin iron fence. “Does no one die where you’re from?”
“No, of course they do,” Cecilia said, her hands fluttering. “But why are they here? Where is the temple to the empress?”
Pearl had to force herself not to roll her eyes. “You’ll find our worship a much more subtle and practical sort.”
When the Amelior Empire had been formed after the annihilation of the gods, the empress had demanded worship only of her. But no one out here had much time or use for that sort of thing.
Cecilia studied Pearl, her gaze boldly tracking down her figure and lingering on her holsters. “And are you responsible for many of these headstones?”
“A few.” Pearl suddenly wasn’t in the mood for flirting. “And I’ve known most.” Her gaze swept the area, landing on four headstones in a row. One large, and three small.
A wilted white daisy rested in front of each. The sheriff wasn’t one for sentimentality, but every week without fail, a new token showed up. Daisies in the summer, asters in the fall, feathers or rosehips in the winter.
Pearl never left anything.
Her eyes lifted to the fields beyond, the farthest flooded one still shimmering in the sunlight, and then toward the hidden ravine, where Driz likely slept right now. Pearl shouldn’t have wished the day would hurry up. She shouldn’t have been eager to see Driz again.
She looked back at Cecilia, forcing a smile and appreciating her beauty.
This was theoretically the ideal woman for Pearl.
She was pretty, clearly interested, and already married.
It would be un-messy and brief. The sheriff would skin Pearl alive if she found out, but perhaps Pearl was good at negotiating in her own way.
If it went wrong, it could blow up everything.
But if it went right, it might help. Happy wife, happy commissioner, right?
And perhaps a part of Pearl hoped it would blow up.
Would the railroad coming here really be best for their town, as her mother and Mayor Wallace said?
So many things would change. Shipments would be easier.
But more people would come. More outsiders.
More infrastructure. Bringing opportunities, and also danger and the destruction of their quiet solitude.
It was hard and rough out here, but it was home.
“Are you in there?” Cecilia watched her intently. Her eyes were the light, sparkling brown of a shallow river.
Pearl had a job to do. Yet she couldn’t seem to bring herself to want to do it. “My apologies.”
“I’m not boring you, am I?”
“Not at all.”
“So what do you do for fun out here?” Cecilia asked, standing close, her river-water eyes inviting. “Seems it would get dreadfully dull.”
“On the contrary, there’s rarely a dull moment.”
“Not much shopping.” Cecilia laughed lightly, and it grated oddly.
“Not on hand, but we can get near anything, if we’re willing to wait a month or two.”
“A month or two!” Cecilia placed a hand on Pearl’s elbow. Not quite a casual gesture. “But the trends may have already changed by the time an order arrives.”