Emma Bull - Bone Dance

I stood very still, because I had a suspicion about the hard thing over my ear, and wondered if I should tell her that no, the forgetting was all on my side, thank you. Because, of course, I’d known that the man in the silvertones had a partner.

“Put your hands behind you,” she said. When I did, something closed around my wrists. Handcuffs? No, these people were not City security, I knew that. What was happening here? What had I done?

“What do you want with me?” I asked, and there was more than a hint of a wail in my voice.

She came around in front of me. Yes, that was a gun she had. Under the mannish hat she wore I saw her hair, the dark cherry color I remembered from a distance in the Night Fair. Her skin was translucently pale, the complexion of the rich. Money made an excellent sunblock. Her eyes were cold, flat gray, and familiar—oh.

“You were with the nightbabies. Outside the Odeon,” I said. I was forgetting to breathe, which broke my sentences up. “With the bone in your nose.”

She looked pleased. “Very good! I didn’t even have to do the voice for you. Now—who are you, at the moment?”

I stared at her.

“All right, I don’t think your other half is a good enough actor to do that brain-damaged look. You’re still the little scavenger, whatsits… Starling? Sparrow.”

Behind me, I heard the steel door slam and feet come pounding down the fire stairs. “Well, damn it, Myra,” the pink-haired man said, “sometimes I feel like your damned bird dog. You can do your own flushing and chasing next time.”

He was simmering with something: adrenaline, anger, speed, maybe all of them. I could feel it behind me, and it made the skin on my back want to crawl around to the front of me for protection.

“Dusty, honey,” the red-haired woman—Myra—said, “I let you have all the fun while I stood out in the rain, so what are you complaining about?”

I cleared my throat and said, “Did you… was there anyone there when you passed through?”

Dusty came around at last into my line of sight. He might have been studying my face. Then he smiled his huge fluorescent smile. “That’d bother you, if I hurt somebody? No—messed up the real estate some, but the tenants, they’re all safe and sound. And I know where to find ‘em if I need to.”

“What do you want?” I said again, and this time I was pleading in earnest. “Is there something you want me to tell you? I’ll tell you. You don’t have to hurt me—you don’t have to hurt anybody.”

“That’s good,” said Myra. She took me by one elbow and pulled me toward the packed-dirt service drive by the riverbank. The rain had turned the dirt to slurry. I hadn’t realized it would be so hard to walk with my hands stuck behind me.

I could feel the major arcana at work, the cards that said someone else was in control of my future. I was in terrible trouble, and yet it seemed to stand a polite distance from me. All I had to do was be propelled around, by these people, by another set—simple. They would make me do what they wanted me to do, right or wrong. I had no choice, and no responsibility.

There was a little electric delivery van parked in the drive, painted dark maroon with “Kincaid Adjustments” on the driver’s side door in gold. I wondered if I was going to find out what the inside looked like. I could start yelling, I thought, and hope someone came to see what the problem was before they could club me senseless and make me disappear. Silly. Who would come?

The red-haired woman pressed me against the van’s front fender and over the wet hood; then she hooked her foot between my ankles and forced my feet apart. She was going to pat me down. A long, uncontrollable shudder went through me. “Dusty,” she said, “take this and cover her.”

“Her?” said Dusty.

A loud voice, behind and above me, said, “Stand back from the truck. Sparrow, move away from ‘em.”

It was Theo’s voice. I’d never heard him yell before. He was at the head of the fire stairs, with Sher beside him, and he, too, had a nice little gun, which he’d pointed at Myra and Dusty.

Oh, Theo, no. Didn’t he remember his own advice? Didn’t he know he was making the Underbridge look damned uncooperative? Didn’t he have the sense not to do this for someone who’d never done anything for him?

Dusty still had Myra’s gun. So he smiled and snapped it upward. I was lunging headfirst toward him, not sure how I’d gotten there or what I was going to do, when someone exploded the whole volume of air around us. At least, it sounded like it.

I was lying in the mud, deaf, looking at the toes of Dusty’s shoes. My nose was full of the smell of fired gun. I couldn’t get up, because my hands were behind me, so I rolled over.

Dusty still smiled, with the pistol in his hands pointed at the fire stairs. Theo stood where he’d been, wearing the archetype of expressions of surprise. Sher was flattened against the door at the top of the stairs, her eyes showing white all around, her face colorless. Everything was—I looked back at Theo. His attention was fixed on his right arm. It looked as if someone had spilled ink inside the sleeve of his white jacket, and the stain was spreading. I saw his lips move. Was it something profound? All I could think of that needed saying was, I’m sorry, and it wasn’t his line.

Then someone back by the van said, “If you try that with me, I’ll cut you in half, Peppermint,” and I thought, Have we had enough drama yet tonight?

I struggled to sit up, and found myself looking at Myra. She held an automatic rifle that I realized must have come from the van, was pointing it at Dusty, and seemed ungodly pleased with herself.

“Myra?” said Dusty with a quaver.

Myra surveyed us all with the same smile. “God, I love tableaux. Les Enfants du Paradis meet The Untouchables. Peppermint, hold that toy of yours by the barrel and fling it toward the river just as hard as you can. Now .” He did, and after a moment, there was a splash. “There’s a good boy. Lie down.”

“What the hell is going on?” Dusty’s voice was like a skin of ice over deep water.

“Allah has sent the change wind, and the world’s turned arse over ears. Now do what you’re told.”

“I ain’t gonna lie down.”

“Yes, you are. But you have a choice as to whether you do it alive or dead. I have no preference, myself.”

Dusty sank slowly to his knees in the mud, and finally lay on his stomach. Myra reached into the little van and started it, fiddled with some things in the cab, and stepped back. The van lurched forward into the darkness, toward the river. In a few moments, there was a crunch.

“Pity,” said Myra. “I was hoping it would sink. Now, as for you two,” she went on, turning her attention to Theo and Sher.

Theo had come to himself enough to clamp his hand over the wound in his arm, but he looked as if he would like to fall down. Sher was keeping him from doing it, and staring narrowly at Myra.

“Who are you?” Sherrea asked her.

Myra’s eyebrows went up. “Child, you frighten me. Bright young people always do. Take your leaking comrade back through that door, lock it, and don’t come out again. Will you do that for me?”