Lilith Saintcrow - The Damnation Affair

Por Gaetano mio.

Te absolvo.

The stagecoach creaked to a stop, fine flour-white dust billowing, and Catherine Elizabeth Barrowe-Browne gingerly unlaced her gloved fingers from her midriff. Her entire body ached, both with the pummeling that was called travel in this part of the world and with the unremitting tension. Her nerves were drawn taut as a viola’s charter-charmed strings.

For a moment, the sensation of not jolting and shuddering over a bare approximation of something that in a hundred years’ worth more of wear might possibly be generously called a road was exquisite relief. Then Cat’s body began reminding her of the assaults upon its comfort over the past several days, with various twinges and aches.

Also, she was hungry . A lady was far too ethereal a creature to admit hunger, but this did not make the pangs of fleshly need any less severe.

“ Damnation! ” the driver yelled, and the coach creaked as the two men hopped off. The fat, beribboned woman in mourning across from Catherine let out a tiny, interrupted snore, spreading herself more firmly over the hard seat.

Ceaseless chatter for nigh unto fifty miles, me jolted endlessly backward because her digestion won’t permit her to share the forward-facer, and now she sleeps. Cat grimaced.

Growing enough for a schoolteacher, apparently. Otherwise her plan would not have progressed nearly so smoothly.

“Damnation!” the driver yelled again, and the stagecoach door was violently wrenched at. Catherine’s fingers took care of pulling her veil down securely and gathering her reticule and skirt. There were other thumps—her trunks, sturdy Boston leather, and thank Heaven for that. They had been subjected to almost as many assaults as Cat’s temper for the past few days. “One for Damnation, ma’am!”

Yes, thank you, I heard you the first time. She slid across the seat, extended her gloved hand, and winced when his fingers bit hers. Feeling for a stagecoach step while half-blind with dust and aching from a bone-shattering ride across utterly Godforsaken country was a new experience, and one she had no intention of savoring. Syrupy golden afternoon light turned the dirt hanging in the air to flecks of precious ore, whirling like dreams of a claim in a boy’s fevered head.

Oh, Robbie, I am just going to pinch you. Her point-toe boots hit dry earth, the burly whiskered stagecoach driver muttered a “Ma’am,” as if it physically hurt him to let loose the word, and she took two staggering steps into the dust cloud. Is there even a town here? It doesn’t look like it.

Any place a coach halted would have charterstones and a mage to hold back the uncontrolled wilderness. Still, the sheer immensity of the empty land she had glimpsed through barred train windows and the stagecoach’s small portholes would trouble anyone properly city-bred. Across Atlantica’s wide heaving waves, the Continent was not troubled by the need for charterstones; but even after almost two centuries on the shores of the New World, civilization was uneasy.

She reclaimed her hand, quelling the urge to shake her most-certainly-bruised fingers. “Thank you,” she murmured automatically, manners rising to the surface again. “A fine ride, really.”

“Miss Barrowe?” A baritone, with a touch of the sleepy drawl she’d come to associate with the pockets of half-civilization she’d been subjected to in the last several days. “Miss Catherine Barrowe?”

In the weary flesh. “Yes.” She even managed to sound crisp and authoritative instead of half-dead. “Whom do I have the pleasure of—”

“She’s here!” someone yelled. “Strike up the band!”

The dust settled in swirls and eddies. A truly awful cacophony rose in its place, and Cat blinked. A hand closed around her arm, warm and hard, and it could possibly have been comforting if she had possessed the faintest idea whose appendage it was.

“Hey, Gabe,” the stagecoach driver called. “No trouble all the way.”

“Thanks, Morton,” her rescuer replied. “Those her trunks?”

“Yes indeedy. A very polite miss, glad to’ve brought her. Mail’s there, picked up a bag of it in Poscola Flats. And the chartermage’s order—”

“I see it, thanks.” Now he sounded a trifle chilly. Cat had the impression of someone looming over her—dust coated her veil, and she blew on it in what she hoped was an inconspicuous manner. The sun was a glare, sweat had soaked the small of her back, and she devoutly wished for no more than a chance to relieve herself and procure some nourishment. Any food, no matter how coarse. “Godspeed.”

“Yeah, well, from here to Tinpan’s a long ride and the country’s fulla bad mancy and walkin’ dead.” Creaking, as the driver hefted himself up. “See you.” The whip cracked, and the stage began to rumble.

Oh yes, mention living corpses! That is just the thing to do before a journey. Cat’s skin chilled, and she had the distinctly uncharitable thought that if the stagecoach was attacked by those who slept in unhallowed ground, at least the hefty woman in mourning would awaken for the event.

Or at least, so one hoped.

“Moron,” the man holding her arm muttered. “As if he’s not going to stop at the livery and pick up Shake’s whiskey. Well, you look rattled around, miss. Let’s get you through this.”

Her veil and vision both cleared, and Cat found her rescuer to be a lean, rangy man of indeterminate age, a wide-brimmed hat clapped hard on his head and a star-shaped tin badge gleaming on his black vest. Guns slung low on his hips, and the chain of a charing-charm peeked out from behind his shirt collar, glinting blue. The guns gave her a moment of pause—not many in Boston carried them openly. Her own charing-charm, safely tucked under her dress, cooled further.

At least with the charing she could be certain he was not of the walking undead. It was faint comfort, given the way he scowled at the retreating stagecoach’s back. He looked stunningly ill-tempered.

The cacophony crested, and she realized with a sinking sensation that it was meant to approximate music.

“Good heavens,” she managed. “What on earth is that noise?”

The corner of his thin mouth twitched up as he glanced down at her. He was quite provokingly tall. “Your welcome committee, ma’am. I’ll try to see it don’t last too long.”

How chivalrous—and ungrammatical—of him. Oh, Robbie. I am just going to pinch you , she thought for the fiftieth time, and braced herself.

The town center was a single street framed with raw-lumber buildings, a wide dirt thoroughfare that probably was a sheet of glutinous mud if it ever rained in this hellish place, and the greenery-cloaked mountains in the distance might have been pretty if they had been in a painting. Instead, they were hazy, oppressive shapes, grimacing in distaste.

An attempt at bunting and colored ribbon had been made across the front of a building whose sign proclaimed it to be the LUCKY STAR BAR SALOON, a smaller sign depending from it creaking as it swung and whispered WHISKEY SCALES HOT BATHS. For a moment she wondered just what whiskey scales were, but the sight of the crowd arrayed on the saloon’s steps under the bunting and spilling into the dusty street managed to drive the thought from even her nimble brain.

A gigantic banner flapped in the moaning-low, sage-scented wind, and a cord snapped. The banner, its proudly painted length folding and buckling, began to descend upon the motley collection of men beneath it playing instruments with more enthusiasm than skill.