Chapter 17 – Present Day - Ansos Pillar

There might be as many Station Hotels as there are pillar-towns, but this was the First Station Hotel and the proprietors took pains to let you know it. Mrs Havasu even managed to look down her nose at the town gunslinger and a hex-witch, a feat that took some doing given they both overtopped her by a foot or more.

Jenna followed Mrs Havasu up the polished oak staircase. The woman had at least afforded them the honour of a personal escort. Mikeos trailed in Jenna's wake, resting his eye a moment on the sway of hips beneath those flowing robes. Been too long since you kept a woman company, Mikeos. He quelled the thought by switching his attention to Mrs Havasu, a bony woman comprising too many sharp angles for intimacy. She put him in mind of a cacti that grew out along the tracks.

Mrs Havasu led them to the far end of the balcony where two doors stood isolated from the others. "Should I be sending for your baggage?" Her gaze fell to the rusty stains around the bullet hole in Mikeos' shirt. With her index finger she pushed her iron-rimmed spectacles further up her nose.

Mikeos filled the pause when it became clear Jenna was not going to speak. "We come as we are, Mrs H. Gone by morning."

"The Parade Room." Mrs Havasu opened the door to the left. Bright walls papered with flower patterns, rose and lilies, thick rug running beneath a writing table, two sweep-backed chairs, a brass bedstead with a plump mattress. "And the Mayor's Room." The door on the right gave onto a larger chamber with a painting of some mayor of yesteryear, a silver-haired fellow with far more gravitas than the currently weasel-faced incumbent. "A connecting door between them." She glanced at Jenna's stony face. "Locked."

"Thanks." Mikeos stepped toward his room. "If we're not downstairs by half-four tomorrow send a boy to knock us up, if you would." He left the two women on the balcony to savour their mutual distaste, and closed his door on the pair. The room smelled of camphor and the wallpaper had a tinge of black mold where it curled up by the skirting board. He shrugged and fell into the bed accompanied by a protest of springs and the feather duvet hissing its disapproval. He lay dead, letting images run through him, young Nathan, too slow, taking his bullet through the head, John Barker fast as fast but not quite quick enough, the sniper's bullet punching a burning hole through his side, the flies rising in a black devouring cloud. The woodkin doctor came again, dry fingers probing a wet wound. The swirling darkness of infection. And older memories, sights that were never his. A child's face in a shard of age-spotted mirror, the hex mark thorn-scratched across her forehead. Jenna!

"Jenna?" The word took his head from the pillow. The room lay dark, and sweat coated him.

"What?" Her voice through the connecting door, as if she were standing with her nose an inch from the wood, waiting on a question.

What? He had nothing. "Just checking."

"Your Mrs Havasu doesn't seem much impressed by the Ansos gunslinger."

Mikeos heard the unspoken 'or hex-witches'. He smiled. "You're mistaking me for the marshal or a holder. You've spent too long in that tower of yours if you think gunslingers rule the roost. I don't get to run people's lives, put dollars in their hands, or say who's in the wrong. Gunlaw puts the slinger in charge of the big rules. Who comes, who goes. I speak to the rail-master and the kin will impose whatever travel policies I come up with. But it turns out not to be such a big deal day-to-day."

"It should be the biggest deal of them all." A touch of irritation in Jenna's voice. "You forbid the sect."

"That's not how people work though, is it? It's now that matters. Now and tomorrow. Not next week and next year." He lay still, picturing Jenna's face as it was reflected in his dream. "The gunslinger's a particular breed. Fast hands and reckless. But the gunlaw gives us the long game, not the short. Fast hands don't mean you're clever. Standing a challenge don't make you fit to tell folks how to live. The opposite probably. But that's the gunlaw for you. If your lot ever stepped out of that pillar you'd know the holders have the real power. Harry Lan owns most of Ansos. It's his word that counts across eight pillars. A smart man, rich, got hisself an army of guns to protect what he holds. Moss Peters has the Oh-Oh-Nine wrapped up, influence in the Oh-Teens. Peters is tight with three taur clans, takes their cattle in. Abattoirs, meat, leather. There's more power in that than in the guns of six slingers."

A long silence. Mikeos started to wonder if she'd fallen asleep. He rolled over as she spoke. "The gunlaw—"

"The gunlaw don't matter so much. People always talking about gunslingers, about this free-fighter or that one who's gonna challenge. Ain't a whole lot more than entertainment to most folk. Leastways not til the sect start showing an interest."

Mikeos watched the dark slab of the intervening door, imaging Jenna standing hard against it, forehead to the wood, the tight grain beneath her healed wound, a white linen shift hung about her, damp with the heat. He could almost see it and for an instant his forehead pulsed. Jenna's blood running in his. He saw her lift her head, step back, understanding his knowledge of her, face unreadable. This was why she had resisted healing him. Sharing blood meant sharing more than she ever wanted to.

In that moment he wanted Jenna with an intensity that had him rising, ready to test Mrs Havasu's lock, consumed by the need to hold her, to be one flesh. In the next instant he saw the corral that day after his father died, shot by Jimmy 'Bright ... James Purbright, he saw gunsmoke rising, the empty gun in his hand, nine years old, the ruin of his father's horse. Mikeos' passion ran from him, lust gone. Jenna knew him blood to bone. She had saved him and now she knew him, from blackest sin to ugliest habit. He fell back against the pillow. You can know too much.

"The sect will show an interest everywhere, in time," Jenna spoke into the pause.

Mikeos supposed it was true. And that, after all, had been what brought gunslinger and hex-witch together – the sect's interests. It had been what put Remos Jax in Jenna's sights and roped the son of Jax's old friend Daveos Jones into her plans.

Mikeos' fingers returned to the healed wound in his side and the rifle from which that bullet spat. Gunslingers being hard to kill, most died in challenges – leaving no problem of succession. The moment they showed weakness, started to slow, a challenger would take their title. For a slinger to die outside a contest – that was a bad thing for everyone. If Harry Lan wanted a new 'slinger for the Oh-Oh-One he wouldn't set about it with riflemen on roofs. He'd have to encourage the right free-fighters to make their challenges, and hope for a victory. Kill Mikeos outside the gunlaw and Ansos would be open. Mikeos' ban on sect coming in on the rails would be void and sect fighters would arrive from off-world to challenge. That would spell disaster for Lan. Everyone else too. There might be rare individuals with the right kind of crazy to work on the sect's behalf, but none of them had ever broken the ultimate taboo. Even the right kind of crazy knew that the sect would eat you up as soon as they got through the door. The sect knew about lying, they just weren't any good at it. That raw sect hunger shone through any lie they might offer up. No man faced with a sect was ever under any illusion he wasn't on the menu.

Whoever was on that roof, firing that rifle, he worked for the Stranger. One of the Three. Jenna had fractured rules with her questions and now a god was out to kill them both.

Knocking. "Mister Jones?" Another knock.

"W—what?" Mikeos rolled from the bed, limbs heavy, feeling drunk. He scooped his guns from the bedside table. Sleep had stolen up and taken him unawares.

"Half four. Missus said you wanted waking."

"Uh. Thanks."

Jenna sat alone at the common table waiting for Mikeos, pale in the lamplight but not the fish-belly pallor of the hex. "Thought you'd decided against the trip." No hint of a smile.

A serving girl came in behind him, fried bread on a tray, bowls of porridge, a tiny silver thimble brimming with honey.

"Busy night." Mikeos made a smile for the girl and she blushed, setting the tray down with a clatter. "Too many dreams." He touched a finger to his forehead.

A second girl hurried in on quiet feet as the first left, this one bringing an urn of hot char, and china cups. Mikeos took one and filled it – a nice dark cup of wake-the-fuck-up.

"Two guns today?" Jenna didn't miss much.

"Got my socialisers on." Mikeos patted the six-shooters in his holsters. "Wore my work gun yesterday, my Pa's gun." He caught himself in the lie. It had been Remos'. Daveos Jones had reached for his gun only once in anger, and died for it. "My work gun's a single action revolver, that's a slinger's weapon. Gotta cock it by hand but one shot's often all it takes in a challenge, and cocking with your off hand let's you keep your aim." He pulled one of his Colt Thunderers. "Double action."

Jenna raised an eyebrow.

"They don't teach you much in that tower." Mikeos grinned at her annoyance. "Double action. Means it cocks itself. I keep squeezing the trigger, it keeps firing. A touch less accurate. Can be a hair slower. But I can use two at once. For when there's a crowd." As he moved to holster the weapon. Jenna covered his hand with hers.

"What's it made of? Where's it come from? How was it constructed? Why a 'colt'?" Mikeos found it was his turn to frown. "Everyone knows where it comes from. Kin bring 'em in on the train."

"That's worse than no answer, Mikeos Jones, andyou should know it."