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She went through the swing door into the kitchen, and there was an
uncomfortable silence that nobody seemed to want to break. Until J.B. spoke.
"How many in this gang?"
Carl turned to him, narrowing his eyes as though he'd already forgotten who
the Armorer was. "The gang? There's fucking stickies in it, you know? What
kind of a man rides with mutie shutters like that?"
"How many?"
"Stickies?"
"All of them."
"Around twenty or so norms and half that many stickies. Too many for you and
your friends, Krysty.
Even with all those pretty blasters."
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"Tell me about Mother Sonja and Tyas McCann and Peter Maritza. What happened
in Harmony after I
left?"
CARL TOLD THEM how his father, Herb, had died a few years earlier of a bloody
flux after the wheel of a cart had shattered and the rig had fallen on him.
Peter Maritza had been killed the previous year. He'd gone hunting and
vanished. The spring thaw had revealed his desiccated corpse with both legs
broken.
"Think it was an accident," Carl insisted.
Uncle Tyas McCann had gone into a decline after Krysty had run away from
Harmony ville.
"You was always his sweetheart among the whole family," Carl said, wiping his
stubbled chin after draining the quarter glass of whiskey in a single gulp.
"Broke his heart, Krysty. Broke mine. Most of the young fellers in the ville.
But Uncle Tyas sort of lost interest in everything. Faded away and dried out
like a leaf in the fall. Got one of them coughs that bring out the red roses.
Know what I mean?"
"When did he die?" asked Krysty, who'd been sitting with her eyes fixed to the
patterned tablecloth as
Carl poured out the sorry news of the decline of Harmony.
"Two years after you went."
There was a long silence, while Krysty tried to summon up the courage to ask
the one question she was frightened of hearing answered.
Despite his lack of sensitivity, it was obvious that Carl knew what the
question was and he was backing off from responding to it.
"My mother?" The question was asked in the faintest whisper, yet everyone in
the diner heard it.
Carl had been eating his meal while he spoke. Now he gestured with the empty
glass to the woman who stood by the kitchen door. Slowly and grudgingly she
poured him another slug of the home-brew whiskey.
"Mother Sonja. By the gods, Krysty, but I been dreading meeting you one fine
day and having to be the one told you about what happened."
"She's dead?"
"No. Yeah. I mean, we don't know."
She was on her feet again, pointing an accusing finger at the fumbling man.
"You may have turned into a
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ands%2030%20-%20Crossways%20(v1.0)%20[html].html fat old drunk, Carl, but you
better just tell me what happened, clear and careful. Now."
To everyone's surprise and embarrassment, the blacksmith's son put his head in
his hands and started to cry, sobbing, his broad shoulders shaking, tears
trickling down his cheeks and dripping onto the table.
The woman owner of the Brown Burro went and patted him on the back. "There,
now, Carl, there now. It wasn't your fault. You weren't the one up and ran
away and broke the heart of a whole ville," she soothed, staring angrily at
Krysty.
Ryan was also standing, hands braced on the table in front of him. "Fireblast!
Will someone just tell us what exactly happened to Krysty's mother?"
"Nobody knows. Few months after you left her, it seems she left Harmony in the
mid of the night.
Abandoned her home and all her possessions. Left no note. No message. No word.
Nobody seen or heard from her since."
"Nothing?" Krysty's face was carved from living marble, showing no trace of
any emotion.
"Nothing," Carl said, wiping his nose and eyes on the back of his sleeve.
"Oh, Gaia help me," Krysty breathed, sitting again and closing her eyes.
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IT WAS A SHORT TALE, simply told.
Sonja Wroth had walked out of her life and walked out of the ville and nobody
had seen a glimpse of her.
Nor had there been any word of a sighting. She had disappeared off the face of
the earth.
"Not even a whisper. We asked packmen and traders and travelers to look out.
She was kind of distinctive to recognize. But we never got a word. By the
gods, Krysty, sweetheart, I'd have given all the jack in all the villes in
Deathlands not to have been the one told you this."
"I wanted her to be alive," Krysty said haltingly. "So I could make it up to
her for Or, if she'd been dead, then I could have mourned her and made my
peace that way. But with her gone. Just gone"
Nobody spoke for several long seconds. Finally Ryan broke the silence.
"Least we can do something to clean Harmony ville from its plague of rats. You
want to do that, lover?"
Krysty sighed and smiled. "Yeah. I think I'd like that very much."
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Chapter Thirty-One
As the woman from the Brown Burro had told them, it was easy to find
unoccupied cabins in Fairplay.
Carl showed them to one that he'd been using since he fled Harmony, which had
enough space for Jak and
Doc, while the place next door had two double rooms, ideal for J.B. and
Mildred, and Krysty and Ryan.
There had been no argument that they'd start off toward Harmony, about a half
day's brisk hike, as soon as the first light reached Fairplay. Carl would act
as their guide, getting them as close as possible to the ville, where they
would do what was necessary against the gang of killers.
"Remove them with extreme prejudice," was Doc's comment, when they talked over
their plans.
RYAN HADN'T BEEN SURE whether Krysty would feel like making love and he held
off, knowing how deeply distressed she had been at the news of her mother's
bizarre disappearance.
But she had moved close to him as soon as they were between the slightly damp
sheets, with a half-dozen thick blankets piled over them.
Her hand reached for his hand, holding him tight in silence. Then her leg
moved against his, over his thigh, her knee nudging at his groin.
Ryan reacted instantly, and he could actually feel her smile at him.
"Ever-ready, lover?" she whispered. "I wasn't sure you wanted to."
"I thought you might not feel like it. After the news of all the deaths and of
your mother."
Her other hand danced across his chest, pausing to tweak at his nipples, then
moving lower, across the flat, muscular Wall of his stomach, grasping him.
"One of the great things that Mother Sonja taught me, from her store of
wisdom, was to try not to allow
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guilt over something you couldn't help. Leaving when I did was the right thing
then. It's still the right thing. What happened doesn't alter that at all." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]