Yet he lingered.

“What?” she asked, trying not to be impatient. “Sheemie, what is it?”

“I’d like to take a fin de ano kiss from ye, so I would.” Sheemie’s face had gone an alarming shade of red.

Susan laughed in spite of herself, then stood on her toes and kissed the comer of his mouth. With that, Sheemie floated out to the Bar K with his load of fire.

4

Reynolds rode out to Citgo the following day, galloping with a scarf wrapped around his face so only his eyes peered out. He would be very glad to get out of this damned place that couldn’t decide if it was ranch-land or seacoast. The temperature wasn’t all that low, but after coming in over the water, the wind cut like a razor. Nor was that all-there was a brooding quality to Hambry and all of Mejis as the days wound down toward the Reap; a haunted feeling he didn’t care for a bit. Roy felt it, too. Reynolds could see it in his eyes.

No, he’d be glad to have those three baby knights so much ash in the wind and this place just a memory.

He dismounted in the crumbling refinery parking lot, tied his horse to the bumper of a rusty old hulk with the mystery-word chevrolet barely readable on its tailboard, then walked toward the oilpatch. The wind blew hard, chilling him even through the ranch-style sheepskin coat he wore, and twice he had to yank his hat down around his ears to keep it from blowing off. On the whole, he was glad he couldn’t see himself; he probably looked like a fucking farmer.

The place seemed fine, though… which was to say, deserted. The wind made a lonely soughing sound as it combed through the firs on either side of the pipe. You’d never guess that there were a dozen pairs of eyes looking out at you as you strolled.

“Hai!” he called. “Come on out here, pard, and let’s have some palaver.”

For a moment there was no response; then Hiram Quint of the Piano Ranch and Barkie Callahan of the Travellers’ Rest came ducking their way out through the trees. Holy shit, Reynolds thought, somewhere between awe and amusement. There ain’t that much beef in a butcher shop.

There was a wretched old musketoon stuck into the waistband of Quint’s pants; Reynolds hadn’t seen one in years. He thought that if Quint was lucky, it would only misfire when he pulled the trigger. If he was unlucky, it would blow up in his face and blind him.

“All quiet?” he asked.

Quint replied in Mejis bibble-babble. Barkie listened, then said: “All well, sai. He say he and his men grow impatient.” Smiling cheerfully, his face giving no indication of what he was saying, Barkie added: “If brains was blackpowder, this ijit couldn’t blow his nose.”

“But he’s a trustworthy idiot?”

Barkie shrugged. It might have been assent.

They went through the trees. Where Roland and Susan had seen almost thirty tankers, there were now only half a dozen, and of those six, only two actually had oil in them. Men sat on the ground or snoozed with their sombreros over their faces. Most had guns that looked about as trustworthy as the one in Quint’s waistband. A few of the poorer vaqs had bolas. On the whole, Reynolds guessed they would be more effective.

“Tell Lord Perth here that if the boys come, it’s got to be an ambush, and they’ll only have one chance to do the job right,” Reynolds said to Barkie.

Barkie spoke to Quint. Quint’s lips parted in a grin, revealing a scarifying picket of black and yellow fangs. He spoke briefly, then put his hands out in front of them and closed them into huge, scarred fists, one above the other, as if wringing the neck of an invisible enemy. When Barkie began to translate, Clay Reynolds waved it away. He had caught only one word, but it was enough: muerto.

5

All that pre-Fair week, Rhea sat in front of the glass, peering into its depths. She had taken time to sew Ermot’s head back onto his body with clumsy stitches of black thread, and she sat with the decaying snake around her neck as she watched and dreamed, not noticing the stench that began to arise from the reptile as time passed. Twice Musty came nigh, mewing for food, and each time Rhea batted the troublesome thing away without so much as a glance. She herself grew more and more gaunt, her eyes now looking like the sockets of the skulls stored in the net by the door to her bedroom. She dozed occasionally as she sat with the ball in her lap and the stinking snakeskin looped about her throat, her head down, the sharp point of her chin digging at her chest, runners of drool hanging from the loose puckers of her lips, but she never really slept. There was too much to see, far too much to see.

And it was hers for the seeing. These days she didn’t even have to pass her hands above the glass to open its pink mists. All the Barony’s meanness, all its petty (and not so petty) cruelties, all its cozening and lying lay before her. Most of what she saw was small and demeaning stuff-masturbating boys peeking through knotholes at their undressed sisters, wives going through husbands’ pockets, looking for extra money or tobacco, Sheb the piano-player licking the seat of the chair where his favorite whore had sat for awhile, a maid at Seafront spitting into Kimba Rimer’s pillowcase after the Chancellor had kicked her for being slow in getting out of his way.

These were all things which confirmed her opinion of the society she had left behind. Sometimes she laughed wildly; sometimes she spoke to the people she saw in the glass ball, as if they could hear her. By the third day of the week before Reaping, she had ceased her trips to the privy, even though she could carry the ball with her when she went, and the sour stench of urine began to rise from her.

By the fourth day, Musty had ceased coming near her. Rhea dreamed in the ball and lost herself in her dreams, as others had done before her; deep in the petty pleasures of far seeing, she was unaware that the pink ball was stealing the wrinkled remains of her anima. She likely would have considered it a fair trade if she had known. She saw all the things people did in the shadows, and they were the only things she cared for, and for them she almost certainly would have considered her life’s force a fair trade.

6

“Here,” the boy said, “let me light it, gods damn you.” Jonas would have recognized the speaker; he was the lad who had waved a severed dog’s tail across the street at Jonas and called, We’re Big Coffin Hunters just like you!

The boy to whom this charming child had spoken tried to hold onto the piece of liver they had copped from the knacker’s behind the Low Market. The first boy seized his ear and twisted. The second boy howled and held the chunk of liver out, dark blood running down his grimy knuckles as he did.

“That’s better,” the first boy said, taking it. “You want to remember who the capataz is, round here.”

They were behind a bakery stall in the Low Market. Nearby, drawn by the smell of hot fresh bread, was a mangy mutt with one blind eye. He stared at them with hungry hope.

There was a slit in the chunk of raw meat. Poking out of it was a green big-bang fuse. Below the fuse, the liver bulged like the stomach of a pregnant woman. The first boy took a sulfur match, stuck it between his protruding front teeth, and lit it.

“He won’t never!” said a third boy, in an agony of hope and anticipation.

“Thin as he is?” the first boy said. “Oh yes he will. Bet ye my deck of cards against yer hosstail.”

The third boy thought it over and shook his head.

The first boy grinned. “It’s a wise child ye are,” he said, and lit the big-bang’s fuse. “Hey, cully!” he called to the dog. “Want a bite o’ sumpin good? Here ye go!”