The Damnation Affair

Chapter 18

Mr. Overton was a curious case. His skin was the color of coffee with cream, and his dark hair was slicked down with something that resembled wax. He was no taller than Cat herself, with a long nose, and his full lips were pulled tight as he shook some of the biscuit-colored dust from his bowler hat.

His eyes were odd, too, a variety of light almost-yellow she had never seen before. His charing—a brass ring, denoting some form of servitude in his past—was alive with a soft red glow, showing him to be a chartermage.

No wonder he had come to the West. Even in the Northern provinces a chartermage of his particular color might find it difficult to find proper work—if he did not fall foul of a coffle-gang meant to drag him into the dark South where he could be drained of his mancy and turned into a soulless automaton, living only in name.

Robbie had wanted to enter Army service, but their father had categorically forbade it. The War had been fought to settle the Abolition Question, but even after all the blood and trouble there seemed precious little settled. Not when there were still coffle-gangs; she had seen them on the streets of Boston the very day she had left.

It gave one the shudders to think of, although Cat’s parents had been firmly of the State’s Rights opinion. Now, as she eyed the man before her, she wondered if she should have perhaps paid more attention to the Question. It was an altogether uncomfortable thing to have one who would be affected so intimately by such a debate before one in the flesh.

Li Ang hurried away, her step light on the stairs, and little Jonathan’s wailing ceased after a few moments. Cat straightened her gloves. “How do you do, sir.”

“How do, ma’am.” He moved as if to touch his hatbrim, his gaze roving everywhere but to her face. “Gabe said you’d be needing an escort to the schoolhouse.”

“So he thinks.” She adjusted her grip on the leather satchel and lifted her chin. “May I offer you some tea? Or coffee; I believe Li Ang knows how to make such an infusion.”

“No thank you, ma’am. Best get going, there’s work to be done today.”

Indeed there is. “Certainly.” She stepped forward, and at least he was polite—he opened her front door, sparing only a brief glance at the porch outside where the…thing…had been last night.

“I’ll be fetching you too,” he said over his shoulder as he stumped down the steps, his stride wide and aggressive. “Gabe left at dawn, business elsewhere.”

“I see.” Left? Where on earth would one go, here? To another town, perhaps? Why?

But she could not ask. The wind had died—which was a mercy. The blowing dust and moaning air all night had invaded Cat’s dreams, and she had dreamed of Robbie as well. Terrible dreams, full of dark cavernous dripping spaces and flashes of tearing, awful blue-white brilliance.

My nerves are not steady at all.

The sky was a bruise, and the dust had scoured everything to the same dun colors as Jack Gabriel’s coat. No wonder the garden looked so sad and dingy. She accepted Mr. Overton’s hand and climbed into the wagon, and the patient bay horse flicked his tail. He had a curious fan-shaped burlap thing affixed to his head, glowing with mancy. “What does that do?” she wondered aloud, then answered her own question. “Ah. The dust. Are such storms usual, Mr. Overton?”

“Simoun, they call ’em.” He hauled himself up on the other side with a sigh. He still did not look directly at her. “Poison wind. Sometimes it goes on for days. People can’t take it. They go back East.” He gave the last two words far more emphasis than they merited, and flicked the whip gently at the bay, who stepped to with a will.

“I found it rather soothing.” Cat set her chin and adjusted her veil. And why would you suggest I retreat to Boston, sir? This is our first real acquaintance; the difference in our station does not matter nearly so much here in the wilderness. Or does it?

“You’d be the only one. Can I ask you something, miss?”

You just did. “Certainly, sir.”

“You’re an educated lady, and you’ve got some mighty fine cloth. So fine, in fact, it’s got me wonderin’ what a genteel miss like you is doin’ all the way out here.” Now he cast her a small sidelong glance. “And it’s mighty odd you get things left on your porch, too. I just wonder.”

“I was engaged as a schoolmistress after sitting for my teacher’s certificate,” she replied, coolly enough. Mother had thought I would make a good marriage instead of needing an education. Father thought the governesses and tutors quite enough, and I did not need to attend the Brinmawr Academy, after all was said and done. A simple certificate-course after my brother sent me the oddest letter I have ever received, and I am heartily regretting my actions now, thank you, sir. “I rather thought my gentility was seen as a benefit.” I paid the Teacher Placement Society for this post, and handsomely, too. An independence is a wonderful thing.

“You could be in San Frances. Dodge City. A place with an opera house instead of some two-bit fancyhouse saloons. I’m just curious, miss.”

You, sir, are not merely curious but fishing. “Perhaps I wished for a purer life than can be found in some places.”

“Never thought I’d live to hear Damnation called pure.” His laugh came out sideways in the middle of the sentence, as if he found the very idea too amusing to wait. Cat agreed, but she had thought long and hard about what reason she might give for her presence in this place, if pressed, ever since Jack Gabriel had stood next to her outside the pawnshop window.

And Mr. Gabriel was gone today, on some mysterious errand.

“My parents fell victim to Spanish flu.” She sought just the right tone of bitter grief, found it without much difficulty. “I have no family now, and Boston was…a scene of such painful recollections with their passing, that I fled everything that reminded me of them. Perhaps I should not have.”

He was silent. Did he now feel a cad? Hopefully.

The wagon shuddered along the road, its wheels bumping through flour-fine dust. It was a wonder he could find the track in all this mess. The hills in the distance were purple, but not a lovely flowerlike shade. No, it was a fresh bruise; the sky’s glower was an older, fading, but still ugly contusion. The sun was a white disc above the haze, robbed of its glory, and the stifling heat was no longer dry but oddly clammy. Or perhaps it was merely the haze which made it seem so, since her lips were already cracked.

The rest of the ride passed in that thick obdurate silence, and the appearance of the schoolhouse, rising out of the haze, was extraordinarily welcome. Mr. Overton pulled the wagon to a stop, and when he helped her down she was surprised to find his fingers were cold even through her gloves.

He dropped her hand as if it had burned him. He mumbled something, and was in the wagon’s seat like a jack-in-the-box. The conveyance rattled away toward town, and Cat was left staring, her mouth agape in a most unladylike manner.

“Well. I never,” she muttered. Except it was precisely the manner of treatment she supposed she should expect from such a man. Chartermages were notoriously eccentric, he was not Quality, either, and he was no doubt unused to polite conversation with someone of Cat’s breeding.

Still, his manners were only one of a very long list of things that troubled her. Troubles were fast and thick these days. She opened the schoolhouse and waited for her students, attending the small tasks that had quickly become habitual, and as she did, a plan began to form.

If I give myself time to think, I will no doubt find a thousand reasons not to do this. She adjusted her veil once more. It was no use; she had plenty of time to lose her courage on the walk into town.

Dismissing the children at the lunch-hour was a risk. Yet she could legitimately claim that so few had shown up, and the return of the storm seemed so ominous, that she had done so for their safety. And the streets were oddly deserted—or perhaps not so oddly, as the lowering yellowgreen clouds were drawing ever closer.

She could even claim to have come into town to find a means of alerting her other students of the school’s closure for the day. That problem she would solve as soon as she had this other bit of business done.

The pawnshop’s door stuck a little, its hinges protesting. She stepped inside quickly, unwilling to be seen lingering, and glanced out through the plate-glass window. Perhaps no one had seen her.

She could always hope.

“Hello?” Her voice fell into an empty well of silence, and the walls seemed to draw closer.

It was dark, not even a lamp lit, and chill. Strangely prosaic for a chartershadow’s haunt—clothing in piles, some tied with twine and tagged with slips of yellowing paper, others merely flung onto leaning, rickety shelves. A vast heap of leather tack and metal implements, and two long counters—one at the back, one along the left side—with various items on ragged velvet and silk. Pistols, knives with dulled blades, pocketwatches, hair combs. Jewelry both cheap and fine, tangled together.

She tried again. “Hello? I have come to buy.”

Perhaps he was at luncheon?

At the counter in the back, something glittered in response.

Cat glanced in the window, and the oddity caught her attention. The bed of fabric, where shiny wares would be displayed to tempt passersby, was empty.

Her throat closed. Was there no one here?

She glanced at the gleam on the back counter again. Pillows of that same moth-eaten velvet, and the locket glittered, recognizing her. Its mancy sparked faintly; a thrill ran along Cat’s nerves.

Her breathing came fast and high. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

Perhaps he is at luncheon. It would be the civilized thing to be doing at this hour.

But sure instinct told her that was ridiculous. Such a businessman would not leave his door unlocked and his wares half-secured, chartershadow or no. And, strictly speaking, the locket was hers by right. Surely the need to find her brother outweighed what she was about to do?

I have sliced a man in the face with mancy and a stick; I am spending every afternoon with frail women; last night I was in the arms of a man who now calls me by my charing-name; and now I am about to steal. Mother would be very disappointed.

Would Cat’s mother even recognize her daughter now?

She inched across the floorboards, holding her breath until darkness clouded her vision. Finally remembering to inhale, she reached out a trembling gloved finger and touched the locket’s gleam. Snatched her hand back, glancing about as if she expected a reprimand.

Nothing happened. The pawnshop was silent as a crypt.

Avert, she thought, and brushed ill-luck aside with a quick motion.

A few moments later, Robbie’s locket and its broken chain tucked in her reticule and her satchel swinging, Cat Barrowe closed the pawnshop door behind her with a soft snick. There was nobody on the street, and the wind inched its way up from a low whisper to a soft chuckle, sliding dust along the boardwalks with brisk broom-strokes. A skeletal tumbleweed rolled past, and Cat hurried along in the precarious shade of flapping awnings toward Capran’s Dry Goods. She could enquire after the delivery of items for little Jonathan and engage one of the store’s boys to take a message to Miss Tiergale that school was canceled for the afternoon.

Her heart refused to slow its mad pounding, her hands trembled. But she put her chin up and hurried along, hoping no one had seen her.

Dear Robbie, I am now a thief. If you are alive when I find you, I am just going to pinch you.