The Damnation Affair

Chapter 26

After the heat, a cool breeze was welcome—until it turned chill, and she realized the clouds were not a good sign. She had not brought a coat—what need, when she hadn’t ceased sweating since she arrived? The wind held a fragrant promise of water, too, just the thing to tamp the dust down.

The bay mare was sweet-tempered and had a good pace, but for a long while the hills due west of the town seemed to grow no closer. She’d struck out from the western charterstone, the brass compass from Father’s desk tucked safely in her skirt pocket and her mother’s watch securely fastened. Her veil kept the dust away, crackling with a charm she had seen Mr. Gabriel perform, and the thought of him was a thin letter-knife turning between her ribs.

Perhaps he had thought Li Ang would be in no danger. Perhaps he thought—

Who cares what he thought? I shall find Robbie, or whatever remains of him. Then…what?

The locket tugged against her fingers, its chain wound around each one. The finding-charm was simple, and as soon as she had uttered its first syllable, the locket had lit with blue-white mancy, strange knots that were not quite charter running under the surface of the metal.

The ride gave her plenty of time to think, though her entire body began to protest that she was no longer practiced in such things. She had ridden with Robbie, of course—pleasure jaunts, and sometimes a hunt when invited to a country house.

If she found a grave at the end of the locket’s urging, what then?

Then I shall shake the dust of this hideous place from my person and leave at once. Perhaps I shall go to San Frances, or return to Boston.

Except the thought of returning to the city of her birth was too bitter to be borne. And there was a certain…well, the sand-dust ground, broken only by hunched figures of thorny plants and stunted junips, tumbleweeds scurrying from the lash of the wind, had a charm about it. The stifled parlours, parquet floors, endless rounds of social calls and charity work, the decisions of dress and etiquette and prestige, did not close about her so here. There was, she decided, a freedom to be had here in the Westron wilderness, but the incivility of Damnation was not the place to seek it.

And if she was quick enough, she would never have to see Jack Gabriel’s face again. Embarrassment all but made her writhe in the saddle. What had she been thinking?

But the heat of him, and the quiet capability in his hands, and that damnable half-smile when he glanced at her. Don’t think on it any further.

Except that was what he would say, wasn’t it? Don’t trouble yourself. And he would quietly go about solving a difficulty.

Like a body on her kitchen floor.

A body Mr. Gabriel probably had not been surprised by. But still… My girl.

A hot flush rose to her cheeks, and Cat muttered a highly impolite term in response. The man was a nuisance, scarcely better than Mr. Tilson and his bestial rage. He had put Cat in the path of murder—and now that she thought on it, the rabbit nailed to her porch must have been a warning to Li Ang, and therefore to Jack.

Not Jack. Mr. Gabriel. Thus he is, and thus he shall remain, world without end, smote it be, amen.

She would do well to remember that. She did not need to feel grateful that he had dealt with such unpleasantness. He was, after all, part of its making. It was his duty, and she knew of duty, did she not? One performed it with head held high and smile cheerfully set, and it was only in the privacy of one’s soul—and sometimes not even there—that one railed against it.

The locket tugged, and she lifted her head. The hills were growing larger, and the sky overhead was full of ink-billows. Flashes of lightning crackled among the clouds farther into the pleated, jagged almost-mountains, and the breeze freshened, tugging at her clothing and her securely pinned hat. The bay was nervous, but Cat’s knees clamped home, and she soothed the horse as best she could.

As soon as she followed the locket’s urging to its source, she would be free. She could do as she pleased at that moment. Both duty and love urged her to make certain of Robbie’s grave, at least. Whatever his ravings of dark things in a cave, or hints of bad mancy, she had to find him.

He was her brother, after all.

Cat clicked her tongue and kneed the bay into a canter. The hills rose around her like teeth, and she suppressed a shiver as she rode into their jaws.

The mare grew increasingly fractious, and Cat sighed inwardly as she held the beast to her task. The locket tugged, and she followed—though finding a path grew more difficult as the sun vanished behind the heavy, ink-dark clouds and the undergrowth thickened. There was evidently some water here, for the junip and devilpine were no longer stunted but thick and clutching. The pines rose, and there was a trail leading up.

Unfortunately, the bay flatly refused to climb past a certain point, and Cat did not blame her much. The trail doubled back on itself in a series of hairpin turns, but a simple charm—one of Miss Bowdler’s—found a spring close by and Cat left the bay tied near its hidden bubbling. The locket wished her to proceed in a straight line up the hillside, which Cat was not prepared to do. So she followed the path, reasoning that it would either lead her where she wished to go…or not.

There was a convenient set of thick-growing, fragrant junips to relieve herself behind, and she was startled into a half-laugh as thunder rattled overhead. In Boston, such a thing—relieving oneself behind a bush while bolts of lightning crackled from the heavens—would have been farce, or unthinkable. Here, it was simply what must be done.

Mother would simply die. Avert!

Oh, Robbie.

Slipping and stumbling, she worked her way up the path. Roots tripped her, and devilpine clawed at her hair and habit. When she returned to town, she would be a sorry sight indeed—at one point she fell, scraping both hands and breathing out another curse that would have made Robbie proud. The locket was safely clasped in her fingers, though a bit grimed, and she did not glance up. If she had, she would have perhaps seen a lightning-charred tree twisting against the darkened sky, and guessed where she was.

As it was, she rounded a massive spice-smelling devilpine, shook her head, brushing bits of stuff from her dress, and halted short, tucking her veil aside.

It was a clearing of sorts, a shelf of dirt and stone before a frowning hill-face glowering down at the growth upon its chin. Its mouth was a vertical crack, large enough for a carriage to pass through, but very black. Above, the eyes were full of twisted, wind-scoured junip, and the devilpines around her soughed in the wind, pronouncing sibilants that sounded eerily like laughter. The nose was a ruin, a shelf of crumbling stone, and the locket tugged insistently. But not toward the crack.

Instead, it fairly leapt, the chain biting her fingers, and a clump of junip shook itself as thunder rolled. Cat let out a faint cry, stepping back and almost catching her abused bootheel on her skirts. Spatters of rain plopped down, and the earth released a heavy fragrance, junip stretching and tossing as the wind loaded itself with fresh moisture and the promise of renewal.

The figure, a scarecrow with dark messy hair, his once-white shirt smeared with crusted filth, leapt back as well, startled. “Who the Devil—oh, damn your eyes, Kittycat, what are you doing here?”

Cat stumbled and sat down, hard. Her teeth clicked together, and she tasted copper blood. The locket went mad, its chain sinking into her flesh as it sought to escape her grasp and fly to the scarecrow.

“Robbie?” she whispered, but the word was drowned in thunder. “Robbie?”

“What in God’s name are you doing here?” he hissed, and it was unmistakably Robbie. But so thin, and his eyes blazed. Their familiar darkness lit with a foxfire gleam, and another flash of lightning drenched the clearing, turning the face above into a leering skull. “You have to leave. Now. Before it takes over again—”

“Robbie…” Her heart pounded so hard she thought she might faint. Tears trickled, thick and hot, down her cheeks, cutting through dust and dry grit. “My God, Robbie!”

He beckoned, one pale hand flickering as a fresh spatter of rain fell, warm drops the size of baby Jonathan’s fist steaming as they splatted into dust and hit tossing devilpine branches. “This way, dammit. I can’t hold him forever…come on, Kittycat!”

She scrambled to her feet and ran for him; he caught her arm in a bruising-hard grip and yanked her aside—

—just as a searing flash lit the clearing afresh. She was tossed from her feet, a massive noise passing through her and a devilpine’s trunk rearing to break her fall. Or not quite, precisely, for she hit badly and there was a brief starry flash of pain before unconsciousness.