It was to the compass—and a handy little pocket-sized object called a GPS locator—that he turned now. The setting moon provided enough light to read by if he tilted the compass just right. Nikita pointed slightly left and raised his eyebrows, first at Jackie and then at Sebastian. Jackie nodded. None of them were about to pop up over the tamarisk like a prairie dog to check their bearings; it carried rather too great a risk of being popped
off
like a prairie dog.
Nikita met Sebastian’s eyes, and acknowledgement passed between them like an electric current. Nikita breathed another sigh. This one was relief; the connection between them lived. He had been afraid that it had died with their ability to jaunt back and forth between 2002 and 1964, although he would never have admitted to mourning the lack of . . . telepathy . . . for any reason other than the advantage it gave them. He trained his eyes forward as they started moving, wishing he could fall back a couple of steps and brush up against Sebastian’s shoulder.
Just for luck.
One-Eyed Jack and the Moment of Truth.
Saint Thomas, Nevada. Summer, 2002.
Shells crunched like bones, and dry mud powdered my clothes. It all looked strange in the moonlight, even to my otherwise eye—alien, twisted around with thick heavy ropes of power I didn’t recognize, heady strength binding and wrapping things in ways I didn’t understand. It was power, though, and I tasted it, even if I couldn’t use it. It was young, and tempered, and it sank deep and reached broad.
It occurred to me that I could be standing in the ruins of my own house, and I would never know it.
Creepy sensation, that.
We crept past uncapped wellheads and drowned foundations, past the corpses of betrayed trees and the rusted machinery fragments embedded like tombstones in the petrified mud. Sebastian had to crouch to keep his head under the tamarisk, and even Nikita couldn’t quite stand up straight. I hunched uncomfortably, continually glancing at the GPS locator in my hand as if it would tell me where Stewart and James were.
Our footsteps were almost silent on the baked earth. I could hear the whisk of Nikita’s inseams as he walked forward, and it occurred to me that someone from a more temperate climate would find the lack of droning insects spooky. That wasn’t what drew me up—or the spies either, I imagined, although Sebastian had fallen too far back again for me to see if he checked.
No. Nikita and I froze with one foot in midair because I am the one-eyed Jack, and the dice roll sevens for me, and the one-armed bandits come up cherries. We froze because I’m the knave of spades now, whatever I used to be, and if I draw to an inside straight, baby, you can bet the ranch that the card I’ll draw is the one I need.
We froze because somewhere in the darkness, somebody who wasn’t one of us stepped on something that crunched.
“Drop,” Sebastian hissed and I did it, face down on the mud, stems of tamarisk pressing my thighs, my flanks—
Mud grit under my palms and the thick, fermented scent of the trees, cordite, the showering of splintered tamarisk on my head, my shoulders, my hands before I ever heard the perk and whine of bullets searing overhead. The salt cedar parted, mown off, and tumbled on my head—and I didn’t yelp, not quite, when a big hand closed on my ankles and
pushed
me forward. The tamarisk fell, interwoven branches covering us in a bullet-ripped bower, and I buried my head under my arms and tasted dirt as I swore.
But Sebastian was right there, right there, tugging my pant leg, urging me forward, and—buried in tamarisk, gouged by sticks, occasionally brushing Nikita’s boot with the tips of my right-hand fingers, I went.
I heard a sharp yelp somewhere off left, where Main Street used to be, and bit my lip as the gunfire continued, dropping off to intermittent spits. It could have been one of ours or one of theirs; no way to tell, but it didn’t sound like Stewart. I prayed it was anybody but him, then hated myself for the prayer.
Nikita didn’t actually pick his head up, but I felt him pause and tense. I stopped crawling, grateful for the dark that hid us from the gunmen, worried about the source of a second sharp cry that came in conjunction with a burst of gunfire—this time, from only one weapon, and I caught the muzzle flash. Dammit. It was easier when I knew the spies couldn’t get killed—at least, not by gun-slinging henchmen.
But now they were real, and while that might protect them from the assassin, it meant that the narrative would not longer protect them from the second-stringers.
Sebastian patted my ankle again and crawled past me, shoulder to shoulder with his partner under the tamarisk. They held some sort of conversation, mostly in touches and glances, with the occasional hand gesture, and then Nikita jerked his hand up suddenly, and Sebastian froze.
This time I heard it too, distinct and ghosty.
The rattle of chains.
Sebastian turned over his shoulder and caught my eye, and I nodded. Ready, yes. He pointed—
that way
—and I followed. On my belly, like a good spy. Clamshells scraped my palms and elbows, and I was glad that I’d found a pair of leather pants that nearly fit. Considering the pounding I put my clothes through, leather’s not really tough enough for my purposes, but most places won’t let you in to dine in armor plate, these days.
Well, except the Excalibur. But that’s a special case.
We crawled toward the sound of metal on metal. Sebastian paused when he drew up next to a skeletal tree, got his feet under him, and slowly rose to a crouch, using the black trunk to conceal his black-clad silhouette. So far, the corpses of trees all marked houses. Even seventy years ago this had been the desert, and trees only grew where someone maintained and watered them.
Laura had rose bushes. Laura took care of the windbreak, too, six thick-boled cottonwood trees.
While Laura was alive.
I wasn’t in love with her. I wouldn’t demean her memory to pretend I was. But she was the only family I ever had that wanted me, before I had Stewart, and Las Vegas.
And you should have seen her roses.
I stayed on my belly, a body-length behind Nikita, but dared lift my head and peer in the same direction as Sebastian. The foundations we’d passed so far had been low, broken walls; this one was high enough that you’d have to stand right next to it and peer over to see what was behind it. And the building was bigger; tumbledown walls had scattered rubble through the tamarisk. It was the church, which meant we couldn’t be too far from the receding lake, in the heart of drowned Saint Thomas. And the sky to the east was graying behind banded mountains.
Again the rattle of metal, and Sebastian pressed himself against the tree trunk, hiding his face against the bark, leaning forward and standing on tiptoe. I noticed Nikita wasn’t looking in the same direction he was, but scanning the area around us. That seemed like a good idea, so I tried watching in the other direction, and caught Nikita flashing me a smile out of the corner of my eye.
Sebastian slithered back down the tree trunk and crawled back to us. His hands were scratched badly enough to show blood in moonlight; I winced. He seemed oblivious.
“He’s in there,” Sebastian hissed, and I glanced from him to the church in surprise.
“Alive?” Shaping the words more than speaking them, but even in the darkness, Sebastian picked them out.
He nodded, a sharp jerk of his chin. “Chained—”
“In a
church
?”
The spy blinked, and glanced at his partner. The Russian pursed his lips and nodded, thoughtfully, before he murmured, “Yes, I see your point.”
“Luray must have done something to protect him,” I said.
“Which means if we interfere, it could kill him, right? Tribute, I mean, not Luray.” Sebastian frowned, as if trying to work through it.
“Yes.” I wasn’t up to testing my magic against a Promethean. Not face to face. “It’s got to be set up that way.”
Sebastian asked, “Can you protect Tribute?”
“From what?”
“The church.”
“If we try to get him out,” Nikita said.
“Maybe,” I said, and looked at the foundation of the church, and looked away, and shook my head. “Maybe,” I clarified, and I think the spies might have laughed at me if it wasn’t likely to draw gunfire. “But I’d get shot trying to get to him.”
Nikita propped himself on his elbows and grinned, hard enough that teeth flashed white in his blacked-out face. “We’ll take care of that. Just stay down and get him out of there.”
“What about you?”
I knew it was stupid when I said it, but I said it anyway. Sebastian just reached out and shoved my upper arm with the palm of his hand.
“We’re expendable,” he said. “And we’re going to try to take out the assassin.”
“What about Luray?”
He shook his head and grimaced, his elastic face scrunching as if he’d eaten something terrible. “Luray, I fear, is your problem, my friend.”
And then Nikita turned his head, and cupped one dirty palm against his ear, and frowned. “Sebastian,” he whispered, in an entirely different tone, “do you hear hammering?”
Tribute and the Voices In the Dark.
Saint Thomas, Nevada. Summer, 2002.
Nobody but me would have heard them talking. The American, the Russian, and Jackie, whispering almost under their breath, planning my rescue. Damn them.
And I had no way to warn them that wouldn’t give them away. And the results of that—
Well. I’d heard the gunfire and the shouts. If you don’t think too good, try not to think too much, as the man said, but I could extrapolate just fine. If you smell three spies and a couple of genii, and you know the bad guys are lying in wait somewhere nearby, and shooting breaks out—well, there’s a limited number of conclusions a man can draw.
Although I had to admit, I was damned curious about that hammering. I could think of one obvious suspect, but—
Hell. If the spies already knew where I was, there was no point in going down quietly. And no way to keep them from exposing themselves coming after me other than removing temptation. And there was a definite rhythm to the hammering, if I listened hard, and it was getting clearer with every blow.
I wrapped my fists around the chains and leaned back against them. The steel links cut my palms, and I gave them one quick yank, just as a test, and then set myself and braced myself and rolled my shoulders under the jacket. I was strong, still sharp but full of blood, and I was ready to be done with all this. I opened my mouth and started to
sing
.
Loud.
At the top of my lungs, with all the belly under it that I could put there. And you know, God damn it, I could still lay down a note, and hold it up on the other end.
“Well, John Henry, he could whistle”—
yank
—“and John Henry, he could sing”—
yank
—“Went to the mountain early in the morning”—
yank
—“Just to hear his hammer ring!”
The chains snapped taut with a hellacious rattle every time I tugged them. It didn’t sound much like the sharp clear tolling of John Henry’s hammer, but it certainly made a racket, and that was what I was counting on.
Well, that, and I was honestly hoping I could pull the staples holding the chains down loose. It was old concrete, after all, waterlogged despite the rebar, and even masonry bolts might not be enough to hold me down.
I’m a lot stronger than I look. And “John Henry” has a lot of verses. I could feel the bolts slipping before I got to “Shaker, you’d better sing! / Throwing fifteen pound / from my hips on down / listen to the cold steel ring!”
With every fraction of an inch they gave, I heard John Henry’s hammer ringing louder and faster, and I felt something burning along my arms and neck, a searing sunburn pain wringing tears down my cheeks.
And you can’t drive steel like me, Lord, Lord. You can’t drive steel like me.
No mistaking it now. I was belting it out, singing at the top of my lungs, and John Henry’s hammer rang on every downbeat. I looked up and saw the sky stained rose and gray, seeming to shiver with each yank on the chain, with every stroke of the hammer, with every beat of the song. I rocked against the chains, heard a bolt snap, felt the chain slip, felt the black blood run down over my hands as the muscles of my shoulders bunched and strained under the coat.
Just give me a cool drink of water
’
fore I die—
The coat split at the center seam; I felt the abused leather give. Someone appeared at the top of the steps—the assassin. I saw him level his pistol, with the moment’s glance I spared. And then the assassin was lifting his chin, turning, curious, as if he heard the hammer ringing down the lake, ringing out of the mountains.
I didn’t linger for the bullet. I didn’t have time to stand there and wait to be shot. Instead, I shouted the song, and doubled my fists, and
pulled.
John Henry drove him fifteen feet and the steam drill only drove nine, Lord, Lord. The steam drill only drove nine.
A gunshot cracked flatly in time. I heaved. The bolts snapped and I fell backwards on my ass, skin bubbling, lips split and running cold blood down through the blood crusted all over my face, eyes tight shut in anticipation of the fire. Somewhere, not too far, a killer wave broke on stone and John Henry’s implacable hammer came down and a second gun yelped—
My hands were burning. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear my own voice, to finish the song.
And he laid down his hammer and he died, Lord, Lord. He laid down his hammer and he died.
I would have sworn on my mother’s grave that I felt the river break over me.
John Henry Holliday and the Exigencies of Narrative.
Las Vegas. Summer, 2002.
Atop the blockhouse of Hoover Dam, every stroke of John Henry’s hammer rang like Gabriel’s horn. Doc Holliday felt the terrible shiver through his palms where his gloved hands clenched on the weighty, pointed, iron rod John strove against. Each swing of the hammer was a wheeling overhand blow, a massive effort rolling up John’s thighs and hips and through shoulders wider than some doors, the hammer falling like a meteorite, the mere task of supporting the (immaterial) spike enough to rattle Doc’s (immaterial) teeth in his jaw.