Dave Duncan - West of January

I took a deep breath—I have never been able to decide whether or not there was time for me to use it. Maybe there was. Maybe not. Had I called, then I might have distracted Red and given Quetti a better chance. Or I might have warned Red in time to avoid a very clumsy attack, one that should never have succeeded. I didn’t call. So was that another of my killings? I do not know. Does one more or less matter? A man is either a killer or he isn’t. I am.

Quetti tipped the bag over the angel’s head as he straightened up. Constrictors fall on their prey, and apparently they react the same way when dropped. Red made no sound. Either a coil went around his neck at once, or else Silent Lover squeezed all the breath from him before he could speak. The man in the bag fell down in the undergrowth. Quetti stood there and watched until the bushes stopped thrashing.

Then he came trailing wearily back down to the water’s edge. He waded out to the chariot and stopped. He stared up at me and I looked down at him, and for a long moment neither of us spoke.

The expression on his sallow face reminded me of my childhood. Many times I had seen one or another of my numerous brothers act naughtier than he had intended and then try not to show how scared he felt. Quetti’s young face looked just like that—defiant and unrepentant, but wary of what might be said next.

I reached down a hand to shake his.

“Well done,” I said.

Quetti took my hand, pale lashes blinking in surprise.

“I’m heading back to the grasslands,” I said. “Can I offer you a ride somewhere?”

He stared at me in bewilderment for a dozen heartbeats. Then he began to weep, tears pouring down his hideously grazed cheeks, sobs wracking his bony frame. That was what he needed. I hauled him into the chariot and then I held him for a while, until he regained some control and pushed me away in shame.

I could leave him then, leave him to work out his grief and guilt, while I went to get the grapnel.

Silent Lover had already departed in search of more prey. I could not bury Red-yellow, but I dragged his body to the water and sent it on its way. But first I retrieved his gun.

I was humming as I lurched back to the chariot.

Whatever you do, never expect gratitude.

“LET’S BE SURE I’VE GOT THIS RIGHT,” said Black-white-red. “He opened a sack and stuck his head in it, and there was a python in there. It wanted to loop around his neck…so he let it?” He drummed long black fingers on the table.

“More or less,” I said.

“How much more? How much less?” His head was against the bloody glow of the window, his eyes almost invisible, and only the silhouette of his woolly hair was distinctive. He was coldly furious—with some justification, I suppose.

I sighed. “No more, no less. Yes, it sounds crazy when you put it in those words. But he was exhausted, remember. Neither of us was watching…maybe he tripped and fell on top of it. Accidents happen.”

“Accidents can be made to happen!”

I faked a little anger. “You’re accusing us of murder! What possible motive could either of us have had to harm him?”

“You’d both been imprinted, and he had killed your women.”

“If we had slain him, why would we have come here, to Heaven?”

Black-white growled low in his long throat and drummed his fingers faster. At my side, Quetti sat in silence, his right shin balanced on his left knee, impassively studying a thumbnail. Of course we had murdered Red-yellow, but if neither of us confessed, there was nothing the angels could do about it, certainly not after so long a time…or was there?

Sensing the anger around me, I was suddenly uncertain.

The room was very small and it was rapidly becoming stuffy. The walls and the low ceiling were curiously irregular, made of variegated slabs of snortoiseshell that creaked whenever the building moved. Features were hard to make out, for the only lighting came from a foggy casement directly behind Black and the two men flanking him.

Beyond that rattling window lay the nightmare landscape of Dusk—scabby hills tangled with dead trees and monstrous bloated fungi in bilious yellows and mauves, all lit by a baleful red twilight along the horizon. The clearings were buried deep in snow, drifted by icy winds that ran wailing under a dark sky. The snortoise browsed with monotonous crunching, and in the distance many others issued their weird roaring bellows. This was Heaven, but it was much closer to what I should have expected of Hell.

Since our meeting at the spinster’s lair, Black-white had gained promotion. In place of angel buckskins he wore a heavy green robe. The others addressed him as Uriel or Archangel.

On his right sat a leather-clad angel, a fairish man with tawny hair and yellow eyes. His stripes identified him as Two-green-red.

The man on Uriel’s left was older, portly, and swathed in a purple robe. He sported a coronet of snow-white curls and a friendly sort of face. This was, of course, Saint Kettle, of whom I have spoken earlier. He was there to represent his superior, Archangel Gabriel. Gabriel had a cold. Colds are common in Heaven.

There was a sixth man present also, sitting in silence in the corner behind Quetti and me, so we could not see him without turning. Uriel kept shooting him glances, but so far he had not spoken at all.

The snortoise roared deafeningly beyond the window and took a mighty lurch forward, rocking the building.

Kettle coughed.

“Yes, Saint?” Uriel asked.

“I’m curious to know how they escaped the forest.” Kettle shuffled through his notes on the table. I had been wondering what sort of game he was playing, having never seen writing done before. “Even with the spinster dead, wetlanders are precious goods in those parts, but these two evaded recapture. They somehow managed to sail that chariot, by land and river, out of the forest, and that in itself is no mean feat. They must have gained hospitality from the inhabitants or else lived off the land.”

He paused, thinking. “No. They must have done both, so they’re good hunters and damned good diplomats, too! They made their way north across the cold desert, then east through the dying lands to Heaven, but without any formal navigation, I assume. They evaded predators, two-eyed and three-eyed. All in all,” he added, rubbing a plump chin or two, “those are astonishing accomplishments for a couple of beginners, and one of them a cripple!”

Black—Uriel—nodded rather reluctantly. “I agree, but it’s taken them long enough. Heavens, I’ve been up to Sunday since then and over to February. How long is it?”

How long was what? I wondered.

“It’s been about three years” Kettle said.

I wondered what that meant, growing angry at such gibberish being spoken over my head. If they were discussing time, then it had been long enough for Quetti to grow from fuzzy-faced boy to a hard-faced young man with a heavy growth of golden stubble. That stubble—and my own—had been annoying Uriel since he first set eyes on us.

“Long enough that they must have talked themselves into every pretty girl’s bed from Friday to Tuesday,” he said crossly. “Shaving, masquerading as angels!” He fired one of his angry glances at the sixth man in the corner.

“No!” Quetti looked hurt. “Not just the pretty ones!”

Uriel growled again; it was obviously a habit of his. I could have told him that Quetti had never needed the angel disguise—he had an astonishing ability to make girls want to mother him. That wasn’t true of me, though, so I stayed silent, hoping someone would change the subject.

It was Two-green who spoke into the silence. “I doubt that they could have done otherwise, Uriel. Who else drives a chariot but angels? They had to pretend to be angels or else abandon the chariot—and one of them can’t walk.”