Slowly Ryan nodded. “Kind of worked that out, too.”
This time it was Krysty who said, “You did?”
“Yeah. Tell you later. Right now we need to keep eyes skinned. Got bridges coming up. Good place for trouble, if trouble wants to happen.”
Emerald was shaking her head. “I don’t get it,” she said. “You people actually seem like you got something in your skulls other than dried-up horse shit. So how come you’re so triple-stupe you don’t realize Bro Joe’s never gonna pay you? Except mebbe with a bullet in your heads. If he doesn’t feed you to those flying shitbird friends of his.”
To Ryan’s surprise it was Mildred who answered.
“Girl,” she said, “do we look to you like people who got a choice?”
The captive folded her arms beneath her bare breasts and scowled. “You always got a choice.”
“That’s just facile bullshit,” Mildred said.
“No,” Ryan said. “She’s right. There’s always a choice. You can always choose to die. Or you can choose to live and pay the freight. You can choose to break a deal and make your word worth nothing to anybody, or you can choose to keep a deal no matter how hard it runs or how deep it cuts. You can choose to run out on your hurt friend and leave him to his fate among enemies, or you can do whatever it takes to get him clear, even if in the end it means you all die. We know we’ve got choices, Princess.
“And we know which ones we made. So, it sucks to be you. That’s a right damn shame. But it’s just how it is.”
Dawn was rising out of the tree-lined bluffs along the far bank and spreading like fog over the river when they pulled the boat in between two warehouses at the little makeshift landing not far from the Soulardville gate. When Madame Sallée whined about Soulard and Breweryville not allowing docks on account of moral pollution from the notorious east side, she either didn’t have her story or her facts quite straight. Even the crippled wrinklie Saga had mentioned that Soulardville traded with riverfolk, which meant they had to have a place to tie up. And more, someplace reliable where they could load and unload cargo.
The dock had been built, as far as Ryan could tell, out of rubble from fallen buildings and planks most likely salvaged from the river itself.
“It’s bigger than I expected,” Mildred remarked as they escorted Emerald from the whaleboat. Her arms remained tied behind her back. She was hobbled by a rope tied between her ankles that allowed no more than two feet of play, against a last-second break. And as they stood on the warped planking they tethered her wrists by a twelve-foot length of rope to Ryan’s waist. They were taking no chances on their prize using her demonstrated ingenuity to thwart them.
“They need to move some pretty substantial cargoes in and out of here,” Krysty said. She was helping unload
the remaining backpacks. Ryan had shouldered his before cinching Emerald to him.
When Doc tried to place Ryan’s coat around the naked girl’s shoulders, she haughtily shrugged it off.
“I don’t want anything you bastards own touching me,” she said. “Let the people of Soulardville look all they want. I have nothing to hide, and nothing to be ashamed of.”
Once on the dock with packs on their backs the others looked at Ryan. “Let’s do it.”
“You sure you want to do this?” Mildred asked.
“I’m triple-sure I don’t,” Ryan said. “I’m also triple-sure this is the one and only shot we got for getting out of here with the Armorer and mebbe even all our parts.”
“I must admit, my dear Ryan,” Doc said, shaking his head, “that I fail to see any possible pathway that leads to such a salubrious resolution.”
Ryan grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “Then let’s hope the nuke-suckers in the ville won’t, either.”
They marched up the well-trod slope from the water to 7th Street. When the wide path swung left around an intact cinder-block building, they saw the main Soulardville gate scarcely a hundred yards away.
As they approached, the gate began to creak open to reveal Brother Joseph. Flanking him stood Garrison and the little wizened Booker. When he saw their prize, Booker did a little dance in place in monkey glee.
“Here’s your girl,” Ryan said.
At a fractional nod from Garrison, black-jerseyed sec men stepped in briskly to detach the rope from Ryan’s waist and secure the prisoner themselves. She didn’t deign to glance at them. She flung one last glare of emerald hate at Ryan, then stood with her head elevated and those deep green eyes staring at a point above the horizon.
“We brought what you asked for,” Ryan said. “Now it’s time we got paid.”
Bro Joe’s smile broadened. It was like the sun coming out from behind thunderclouds.
“Bend over, here it comes again,” Mildred muttered under her breath.
“Hush now,” Ryan said softly back.
“And you shall indeed receive what you have coming to you,” Brother Joseph said. “There is one unfortunate complication. I’m afraid that in your absence our beloved Baron Savij has died. You must, of course, be arrested and tried for daring to lay hands on the sacred person of his daughter, our new ruler.”
“So you finally found the balls to finish him off,” Emerald said. She spoke without heat or contempt or even sorrow. It was as if something she had long since known had happened had simply been confirmed.
Brother Joseph only smiled at her. Ryan noted the way his pale amber eyes seemed to caress every curve of her body.
The preacher looked at Ryan. “What? No protestations or complaints?”
“Why? Reckoned you’d backstab us.”
Brother Joseph frowned in what seemed genuine puzzlement. “Then why return at all?”
“We made a deal,” Ryan said simply. “Plus there’s the little matter of our pal, J.B.”
“Ah, yes. Well, you’ll soon be sharing his company. It appears he’s served his function.”
“No point delaying the inevitable,” Garrison said, as calm as always. “Haul it.”
His sec men marched their captives up the main street through growing dawnlight. Already there were a lot of people abroad, sprinkling water drawn from the communal
wells on bright flowers in pots on their front porches, or heading off to their daily occupations. Heads turned and eyes widened. Excited whispers began to spread.
At the plaza the companions were steered left down the half block to their house of earlier confinement. Emerald, still haughty and unwilling to acknowledge the very existence of her captors, was led on to the palace, which was now, technically, hers.
The stains on the hateful tilted slab in the plaza’s center, he noted, were once again covered by its canvas shroud.
Inside the house it was already hot and still. Relieved as expected of their gear and weapons, the companions immediately went about opening all the windows to get the air circulating. As before, neither Doc’s sword stick nor Jak’s concealed knives were taken.
As before, it didn’t look as if it would make much difference.
As Ryan was pushing open a window in a top-floor bedroom, he heard a rattling from the front door. Since he was at the back of the house he couldn’t see who it was. He emerged and went down the stairs as Krysty opened the inner front door.
“J.B.!” she cried.
Ryan rushed down the last few steps to stand beside her. There indeed sat the Armorer himself in a wheelchair pushed by none other than Strode, more grim-faced even than usual. Though J.B. wore his trademark fedora tipped to a rakish angle, his head hung. His eyes were half-closed and his jaws slack. His facial skin was gray and seemed to hang loose on the underlying framework of jaw and cheek and brow. He looked like Death rolling. But it was him, and alive.
“You try to take the healer hostage,” said the sec man who’d unlocked the door, “you’re dead.”
“Young man, don’t be more of an idiot than you absolutely have to!” Strode snapped. “They won’t harm me. Their overactive senses of self-preservation assure that if nothing else.”
Glaring back at both the sec-men quartet and her own pair of anxious assistants, Strode muscled the wheelchair and its burden inside by herself. Ryan and Krysty obligingly stepped back. Neither offered to help. For a fact, the ville healer had forearms and shoulders like a dock worker from moving her patients over the years.
“You can shut the door, now,” she said with a fierce glare at Ryan. He obeyed.
J.B. shook his head, opened his eyes wide and grinned.
“How’d you like my death’s-door act? Had you going as well as those sec stupes, didn’t I?”
A dark missile flew across the well-scuffed hardwood floor. “J.B.!” Mildred yelled, enfolding him in her arms as she stood.
“Careful there, young woman! He’s still in need of substantial recuperation!”
“Keep your hammer lifted, healer,” Ryan said. “She knows what she’s doing. And believe me, you don’t care a spent casing more about the patient than she does.”
Strode glared like an angry buffalo bull about to charge for a couple heartbeats longer. Then the tension went out of her powerful neck and shoulders, which wasn’t the same as saying she relaxed.
“Very well,” she said. “Although it’s difficult for me to imagine any of you really caring about anything but yourselves!”
“Don’t mind her,” J.B. called. “She’s not as mean as she lets on. Though, granted, she is as tough as hundred-year-old jerky.”
“If you don’t believe I’m as mean as I let on, young man,” Strode said, “I clearly didn’t give you enough enemas.”
“Sit down!” Mildred exclaimed when they broke their clinch and J.B. tried to step forward to greet his other comrades. “Sure, you’re better. But no way are you well!”
“Your friend is a tough customer himself,” the healer said. “And as with most people these days, a wound that doesn’t kill or cripple a person, a wound that can heal, usually does so fairly fast. Only the hardy survived the megacull top pass on their genes. For better or worse.”
“How do you feel, man?” Ryan asked, gripping J.B.’s forearm to forearm.
“The truth?” J.B. asked with a grin. “Like nuke death rollin’. Every breath is like somebody driving a railway spike through both lungs. But I’m fit to travel and fit to fight.”
“He exaggerates,” Strode said. “A typical masculine failing. Still, his determination to get back on his feet as soon as possible did aid the healing process, as any form of positive frame of mind will tend to. But as is often the case, it also rendered him less than ideally cooperative.”
“He’s a terrible patient,” Mildred agreed as Krysty came forward to give the Armorer a hug. The physician stood behind J.B.’s chair and massaged his left shoulder with her strong right hand, as if she couldn’t bear to break contact for even a moment.
Doc approached, his face wreathed in smiles. “Welcome back, our boon companion.”
Jak sort of sidled up to touch hands with J.B. “Good you back.”
“So you two seem to have cooked yourselves up a little conspiracy,” Ryan said.
“Let’s say we came to a meeting of the minds,” Strode said. “Your friend has a devious turn of thought.”
“Wouldn’t reckon a healer to have one,” Ryan said.
Strode’s laugh was so hearty it startled him. “You haven’t thought much about the art of healing then. Every good healer’s at least half mountebank. The best tend to be even more.”
Her face darkened. “Brother Joseph could be the best, if he cared about anything but power.”
“We reckoned there was no point letting that rad-sucker know I was healing fast,” J.B. said. “Now that you’re back, I think he calculates I’ll be a drag on you, so I ought go back to being your problem.”
“But his possession of you was what brought us back with the princess in the first place!” Krysty said. “Why would he relinquish that?”
“Because he hates to waste resources, as he says,” Strode said. “He has the princess back. You can care for him now.”
She studied each of them in turn. “You seriously expect me to believe that was your motivation in returning that poor child to such a horrible fate? Concern for Mr. Dix rather than reward?”
Krysty laughed as Ryan waved at their surroundings. “Here’s our reward, Healer.”
Mildred put both hands on J.B.’s shoulders. “And
here’s
our reward. We’re whole again.” The Armorer reached up to pat her hand.
His own hand was still gray and a bit on the skeletal side, Ryan noted. But coming back from a wound like that was never easy. He knew himself.
Strode shook her head. “I admit, I don’t know what to make of you people. You know that in your absence, Savij was murdered?”
“No,” Ryan said, drawing out the syllable, “but I reckon none of us’re much surprised.”
“How did it happen?” Krysty asked.
“Horribly. Apparently that…creature, Booker, came up with some raw plutonium.”
“How come
he
’s not thrashing and shitting himself to death?” Ryan asked in amazement.
“It was only a tiny amount. A single shaving, perhaps. The baron was fed it in his stew.”
“Wouldn’t it take an awful lot for rad sickness to act that fast?” Mildred asked.
“Not rad sickness at all,” Strode said. “From what I read in an old battered science book, plutonium is violently toxic. Once it gets inside you it eats its way right through you by sheer chemical action. It’s like being burned alive from your guts outward. I’d have given him poison to finish him quickly when he started shrieking and bleeding from the mouth and rectum. Or broken his neck. But Garrison’s goons held me back.”
She was in full-on glare mode at the companions again. “How can you be so stupe? Or are you just evil? Brother Joseph will—”
The door opened. The angry word stream shut off as if a floodgate had slammed shut. A mellow baritone laugh rolled into the hot and humid living room like liquid honey.
“Perhaps our visitors aren’t the only ones with impaired mental capacity,” he said, “since your passion apparently caused you to overlook the dangers of loudly spewing sedition before an open window.”
She turned to him. “Fine. You caught me. Go ahead and strap me to that sadistic lunatic altar of yours and sacrifice me in front of the whole ville. See how the people love you then!”
He laughed again. “No need,” he said. “I, like everyone in this ville, am under your care. I repose perfect confidence in your total adherence to that predark saying of yours—first, do no harm. I have nothing to fear from you.”
Her big shoulders rose as she drew in a deep breath, then she let it out in a sigh.
“Don’t feel bad, Healer,” Krysty said. “Your spiritual leader is a man with a gift for knowing where to grab people to get a hold on their souls.”
“Why, yes, I am, Ms. Wroth,” he said. “Most astute of you to notice.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“Ah, but I took it that way. Have you never heard the phrase, ‘the meaning of a communication is the message received’? Another ancient truth from the days before the cold and darkness that is widely overlooked today.”
He looked around at the rest. “You will join us for dinner tonight,” he said.
“What if we fail to find ourselves in a social mood?” Doc asked.
Brother Joseph laughed that maddening happy laugh of his. “Why, Doc, whatever led you to believe that was an invitation?”