The Native Star (16 page)

He had put handfuls of grain into his hat and was watching Romulus and Remus nose each other aside trying to get at it. She had never imagined he could look so sad. She did not move, afraid of making the moment worse by intruding on it.

But then his gaze stole over to where she lay. When he saw that she was awake, his face hardened with familiar guard.

“Good morning,” he said briskly. “Sleep well?”

“I dreamed about acorns and sangrimancers all night,” Emily yawned, as if she’d just opened her eyes. She stretched her stiff muscles. “I rather wish you’d let me have the whiskey instead.”

“Before we get on the road, I want to try something. I want to try to contact Komé.” He paused. “We’ll conduct a séance.”

“We can’t do a séance,” Emily said. “The stone won’t let us.”

“A séance is very small magic, and we know that the stone is less likely to absorb small magic. Furthermore, Komé seems to have the ability to mitigate the stone’s interference—after all, she sent you the vision about Caul and Mrs. Quincy. If we reach out, maybe she’ll reach back.”

Emily was silent. There were so many questions she wanted answers to, it was worth a try. Wiping her hands on the back of her trousers, she came to sit across from Stanton, who shifted to make space.

“I’ve never done a séance before,” Emily said.

“And I don’t suppose you’ve ever done any power work either …” He caught himself and softened his tone. “Have you?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Well, it’s simple. Put your hands over mine, without touching.” He extended his hands toward her palm-side up. Emily let her fingertips hover a few inches above his, felt the warmth radiating up from his skin. “The aim is to run the power in a circuit between your hands and mine.”

“Oh, healing hands!” Emily said. “We used healing hands to knit broken bones and such.”

Stanton nodded. “But instead of directing your will to knit a broken bone, concentrate on your memories of Komé … the way she looked, the way she moved. Concentrate on making her absolutely real in your mind.”

“All right,” Emily said. She remembered Komé’s small plump body, her face like a dried apple, the tattoos on her chin, her luminous sparkling eyes.

A glow started around Stanton’s fingers, and the stone in her hand tingled with warmth. And almost instantly, Emily could hear the Maien’s cracking-old voice, chanting low and cadent.

Emotion washed over her. Flashing memories of Komé’s life splashed on her skin like warm raindrops, each drop a moment of the woman’s existence. Smoke and mud, laughing children, laboring women. Death and anger, happiness and despair. And love. Love for the broken child whose feet had been set on such a difficult path. Her daughter. Emily and Komé, each a reflection of the other—a daughter who had lost a mother, and a mother who had lost a daughter. Their sadnesses interlocked as precisely as two halves of a broken bowl.

Releasing a trembling thread of breath, closing her eyes, Emily surrendered herself to the washing sounds of distant song. Fingers of power threaded around her body, trickling over her skin. She felt as if she were floating, warm breezes from below buoying her up.

In the center of her mind Emily saw the form of the Maien, kneeling, radiant. The old woman had something in her arms, and she was wrestling with it. Sometimes it looked like a baby, sometimes like a wildcat. The Maien crooned to it soothingly, but still it struggled ferociously against her.

“Komé?” Emily whispered.

The Maien’s head came up quickly, her eyes black as pitch. And Emily suddenly saw the thing she was holding. It was a huge ball of blackness, writhing and foul, bubbling and boiling and churning. It wanted to swallow her, Emily realized with horror. She could not hold it for long …

Emily shrieked, forced her eyes open, jerked her hands back. They stung as if they’d been dipped in acid. She pressed them flat against the cool granite. Stanton, too, shook his hands as if his fingers had been singed.

Breathing hard, Emily stared at him for a long, silent moment, before blurting: “What was that?”

“She was fighting with something, did you see? Something fierce. Something terrible.”

“Is that the stone?” Emily said. “The consciousness of it?”

“I don’t know. But it’s dangerous, whatever it is. And she’s protecting you against it.”

Emily looked at her hand, at the stone glimmering in it. A chill chased down her spine.

“I always figured it was powerful,” she said, “but I never thought it was dangerous.”

“The two often go together,” Stanton said.

There was a moment of silent contemplation, which Emily broke with a sudden peal of laughter. Stanton’s eyes focused on her with a spark of annoyance.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’ve never heard you say the words ‘I don’t know’ before.” Emily cocked her head. “They suit you.”

Stanton stood, brushing dirt from the knees of his trousers. “I think you’ll find they lose their charm over time,” he said.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Wages of Sin

They rode hard all day, the horses trudging back up the Sierra’s steep flanks. They skirted Auburn, stopping only for a few hours’ sleep in the darkest part of the night before pushing on toward Dutch Flat. When they reached it, they rode well around, the horses picking their way along a cow trail on the ridge above town. Suppertime smells drifted up from the houses below, making Emily’s stomach rumble.

“I don’t suppose we could sneak down for a hot meal?”

Stanton shook his head, though it was clear the suggestion was tempting.

“I’m sure the Maelstroms headed for Lost Pine the minute we gave them the slip. Dutch Flat is the closest train station to Lost Pine. We don’t want to show our faces anywhere the Maelstroms might have been.”

The settlement of New Bethel was about ten miles east of Dutch Flat, nestled in a wide, swampy valley between two high ridges that enfolded it like greedy arms. The town was perched on the edge of a dismal marsh that was tall with winter hay. Emily had never been to New Bethel, and her first impression was how odd it was that the town just seemed to … start. It had no outskirts. Other towns had seedy establishments crowding the edges—rowdy saloons, gambling dens with faded signs in Chinese, rickety buildings that could be counted on as whorehouses.

But in New Bethel, the first building on the main road was a tidy little bank, built of buff stone. Which led to Emily’s second distinct impression of New Bethel: it was so strangely clean. Every building looked freshly painted. No litter on the street, no sloppy piles of firewood, no broken-down wagons in need of repair. Everything was neatly stacked, arranged, and organized. And it wasn’t just disorder that seemed to be banished from the town. Ornamentation, decoration, superfluity of any kind was also completely absent. There were no milk pots planted with gardenias, no lace curtains at the windows. It was as though the town had been ordered from a catalogue and assembled by someone with a gun to his head.

The streets were dead still. This was, Emily supposed, not unusual in a small town at suppertime. But as they came around a bend, she was surprised to see a half dozen men chatting quietly outside a boxy white church. She knitted her brow. It wasn’t Sunday, was it? She was under the impression that it was a Friday. She wondered how she could have lost track so quickly.

Stanton stopped at the general store to inquire after the gentleman he’d met outside Colfax. Emily waited outside, thumbs hitched in the pockets of her vest. There wasn’t any traffic to watch, so when a man came driving an empty buckboard up the road, he was an object of scrutiny by default. The driver was stocky, with a particular hunched way of sitting that suggested both weariness and extreme physical power at the same time … dark tanned skin, cornsilk blond hair …

She put her hand over her mouth.

Dag!

Coming to New Bethel to purchase hay … on today of all days! She stepped back into the shadows of the overhanging porch, wondering where she could hide, but then remembered that he wouldn’t recognize her anyway in her hideous man’s suit. She pulled her hat down over her eyes and watched him from under the brim. He rode past her, up the main street to a feed store at the far end of town.

Quickly she ducked into the store where Stanton was speaking to the counterman.

“Elijah Furness?” the counterman was saying. “Why, sure.” He pointed in the direction of the whitewashed church they’d passed. “Preparing for Friday evening service, I imagine.”

“He never misses them?” Stanton said.

“Never misses ’em?” The man smiled slightly, and for some reason it struck Emily that it was probably one of the man’s most riotous expressions of amusement. “Why, it would be a shame if he did, given he’s the preacher and all.”

Stanton thanked the man and went to the door. Emily followed him onto the porch.

Stanton looked down the street at the church, at the people gathered in front of it. His jaw rippled, and he sighed heavily.

“Did you see the church?” Stanton said, low. “More to the point, did you see the red cross on the church?”

Red cross? Emily wasn’t entirely sure what Stanton meant, until it came back to her in a flash. The street preacher they’d seen in San Francisco, the one outside the soup kitchen …

“It’s a
Scharfian
church?”

Stanton nodded grimly.

“Not just a Scharfian church, a whole Scharfian community. And the man who’s offered to buy my horses is the town preacher.”

“We have another problem,” Emily said. “I saw Dag.”

“Your lumberman?” Stanton’s brow knit. “Where?”

“He was riding up to the feed store, probably to buy a load of hay for his teams.” She paused. “Listen, let’s not risk it. Let’s take the horses and ride out of here. This all just feels … wrong.”

“And go where?” Stanton said. “With what money? With what supplies?” He put his head closer to hers, spoke lower. “We need what Furness is offering to pay for train tickets to New York. We’d have to ride all the way back to Sacramento to get the price he said he’d pay, and that would give the Maelstroms time to catch up with us.”

Emily chewed her lip, looked in the direction of the church.

“Well, he doesn’t have to know you’re a Warlock, right?” Emily said.

“Right,” Stanton said. He took a deep breath and let it out. “You stay by the horses here. I want to get Furness as far away from his church as possible. Keep your hat down. And for God’s sake, don’t say anything. You’re entirely unconvincing as a man.”

Stepping down from the porch, he paused by the horses, laying a silent hand on each glossy neck before striding across the dusty road to where the people stood before the white church. He hailed one of them. Emily leaned against the wall of the store and watched.

Stanton removed his hat and held it in his hands as he spoke to a white-bearded deacon. The deacon nodded and called inside the church. After a moment, the knife-faced man she remembered emerged, now in the clothes of a preacher: long black frock coat and a high white collar. A large red cross rested on his chest. Tucked under his arm was a massive Bible bound in black leather. The preacher looked at Stanton, and then toward the store, at the horses. He gestured a few of his parishioners to follow him.

“Been to Sacramento, eh?” Emily heard him saying as they approached. “I just saw you near Colfax a few days back. You were riding with a woman, I recall.”

Emily pulled her hat down over her face, crossed her arms, cleared her throat gruffly.

“That was my sister. I was seeing her to Sacramento to visit friends,” Stanton said. He didn’t even look in Emily’s direction; apparently he believed that if he ignored her entirely her presence would go unnoticed. “I’m afraid that my financial circumstances took a turn for the worse in that city.”

“Gambling, I suppose.” Taking the Bible out from under his arm, Furness handed it to one of his parishioners. The man took it with great reverence, laying a protective hand on the cover. “Maybe having to sell your nice horses will remind you what the book says about the wages of sin.”

Stanton lowered his eyes soberly. “You may rest assured that it will.”

Furness took a moment to run his hands over Remus’ feet and ankles. Then he grabbed Romulus’ bridle and jerked the horse’s head over. He pressed his thumbs in the corner of the horse’s mouth to look at the teeth.

“Well, they seem sound withal,” Furness admitted. “Fine animals, to make it to San Francisco and back so quick-like.”

Emily’s heart thumped.

“You must have misheard me, sir,” Stanton said. “We only went to Sacramento.”

“Ah,” Furness said. “I guess you’re right, I guess I misheard you.” He gave Stanton a dagger-slash grin. “They’re fine horses in any case. Join us for evening service. You can come to supper after and I’ll see to your payment.”

“I am in a hurry,” Stanton said. “I would like to make arrangements quickly.”

“Is there a problem stepping inside a church, Mr. Stanton?”

Stanton said nothing, but Emily was certain he wouldn’t have given the preacher his real name. She pushed her hat up slightly. The men that Furness had brought with them were pressing in closer, their hands flexing in preparation for violence. Emily’s heart pounded harder.

“We had a lawman named Caul through here earlier today,” Furness said. “He was handing out these.”

He pulled a folded piece of paper from inside his coat and held it before Stanton’s eyes. There were two pictures on it. Their own pictures, quickly and crudely rendered, above the words “Dead or Alive.”

“Says here the man is a Warlock, a servant of Baal. And the other”—he looked up at Emily, and she suddenly felt the piercing sharpness of his eyes—“is a woman.”

One of the men leapt onto the porch, strode to where Emily was standing. She flinched as he snatched the hat from her head. The hair sticks clattered to the ground. Indignantly, she bent to retrieve them, glaring up at the man.

“There’s been a mistake.” Stanton looked at the men closing in around him.

“Really?” Furness said. “Then I want to see you go into my church.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Emily said, her voice sounding too loud.

“The Lord will not suffer a sorcerer in his house,” Furness looked up at her. “If he’s no sorcerer, then he should have no difficulty coming to stand under the sight of God.”

Emily took a step closer to Stanton. She spoke in an anxious whisper: “What are you waiting for? Go into the church!”

Stanton was silent for a long time, staring at Furness. His jaw was held tightly.

“I can’t,” he said, finally.

The instant the words left Stanton’s mouth, the preacher’s men swarmed over him. Emily lunged forward, trying to reach him, but a heavy hand fell on her shoulder and the man who had snatched her hat jerked her backward. She stumbled against the threshold of the porch, falling hard.

Hands spread, Stanton barked words in Latin to defend himself. But Furness’ voice rose quickly to an apocalyptic level, drowning him with sound:
“Diviner, enchanter, witch, charmer, consulter with familiar spirits, wizard, necromancer! For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee!”

Tearing his Bible from the hands of the man he had given it to, Furness pressed it against Stanton’s forehead and held it there. With an unearthly shriek, Stanton fell backward, clawing at his face.

“Stop it!” Emily screamed. She scrambled to her feet, but the man behind her clamped his arms around her waist. She kicked out as he pulled her up onto the porch. “Leave him alone!”

“The lawman told us he’d ensorcelled you.” Furness looked up at her, his eyes lingering on her ugly man’s suit and shorn hair.

“No one has ensorcelled me!” Emily hissed. “And Caul is a Warlock himself. A blood sorcerer, a murderer! You should have asked
him
to go into your church.”

“Captain Caul walked into that very church this morning.” Furness’ sharp eyes cut through her. “He took his hat off in front of the tabernacle and delivered his warning to godly people. He is no sorcerer.”

Caul could enter a church but Stanton could not? But there was no time to figure it out; the men had brought out ropes. They pulled Stanton’s hands back roughly, lashed his wrists tight behind his back. His face was pale with pain.

“You don’t have to do this,” Stanton said. In answer, one of the men hit him hard across the face with a balled fist and shoved him down to kneel in the dust.

“Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live.”
Furness looked down at him. “In New Bethel, we take the word serious. We whip whores, we hang thieves, and we burn sorcerers.”

Stanton moved his jaw in a slow circle, then spat a mouthful of blood at Furness’ feet.

“Do you deny that you are a sorcerer?” Furness asked.

“I am a Warlock.” Stanton lifted his chin, his voice ringing clear in the stillness. “And this is the United States of America. Being a Warlock is not a crime.”

“Not yet, servant of Baal,” Furness said. “But God is not mocked. He calls the elect to vanquish sin and false powers.”

“I am no minion of Satan, nor a servant of Baal.” Stanton looked at the faces of the men around him. “The powers that witchcraft and sorcery harness are natural powers, legal powers. They are not—”

“All power is given by the Lord!” Furness roared. Without taking his eyes off Stanton, he spoke sidelong to a pair of his followers:

“Get kindling and good heavy oak logs. Wood that burns slow.” He paused, lips curving with anticipation. “We’ll send the sinner off screaming.”