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His father, or whoever had hit him back at the restaurant, had done a thorough job of it. His eyes still weren’t quite focusing correctly, but Harte could almost begin to make out the features of the room. One wall was lined with shelving that contained boxes and glass bottles. On the other was a row of large burlap sacks filled with dry goods. Harte realized then that the uneven pallet he was currently sitting on was a pile of those sacks, which had been emptied and stacked along the third wall. His father had mentioned that he owned a store—maybe he’d brought Harte there?
In the corner, Harte could hear something scratching and rustling—a rat, probably. Maybe a couple of them. But otherwise, the room was silent as a grave. The wide, rough floorboards that made up the ceiling above were quiet. If anyone was up there, he couldn’t tell. He didn’t plan on sticking around to find out.
With effort, he managed to get to his feet. He took one step and then two, and just as he thought he might be able to make it to the door, the room tilted again. Harte felt his legs going out from under him, and then the floor gave way and he collapsed. Since his hands were still tied behind him, he couldn’t catch himself, and he landed hard, rattling his already-throbbing head again.
The earthen floor felt cool and damp against his cheek, and Harte couldn’t do much more than breathe in the scent of dirt as he tried to keep his stomach from revolting.
He needed to get out of the ropes. It should have been easy enough—already he could tell that they weren’t tied with any kind of expertise. He writhed a little, twisting his hands and shoulders to work at them, but every movement made his head spin and his stomach rebel. The only thing that helped was to close his eyes and hold perfectly still. His head was pounding so sharply within his skull that Harte was sure he could actually see his heartbeat.
It was a long time later when he realized that his position on the floor should have been more uncomfortable. The necklace with the Djinni’s Star and Esta’s cuff had been secured beneath his shirt. He’d wrapped the two artifacts close to his skin with a length of material, because he wanted to make sure that no one could lift them from his pockets—and because Seshat seemed to retreat when they were close to his body. They should have been poking into him—uncomfortable lumps between his body and the hard, earthen ground. But they weren’t.
Harte sensed Seshat laughing then, a low rumble of mockery. I told you, she said. You were soft and let an old man get the best of you. How could you ever expect to stop me?
Harte rolled to one side and then the other, pressing his torso against the floor in a desperate bid to find some sign that the artifacts had simply shifted. But the movement made him dizzy, and panic made his vision blur and darken around the edges, and as he slipped back into unconsciousness, Harte knew that no amount of wishing or anything else would change the fact that the two stones that had been in his possession were gone.
THE TRIALS OF OTHERS
1904—Denver
Once he was officially hired, North immediately threw himself into his new position with the Curtis Brothers’ Show. He mucked stalls, brushed down horses, and lifted bale after bale of hay. By the end of that first night, his muscles ached something fierce. As long as he was working, he wasn’t thinking, which was fine by him. Because if he started thinking, he’d have to make a decision—whether to forgive Maggie for what she’d done to him. Or for keeping it from him for so long. Whether he even could.
He didn’t go back to town that first night or the next. Instead, he finished each day by collapsing into his assigned bunk and letting himself be pulled into a dreamless sleep. Then he rose early the following morning to start all over again. He’d figure things out with Maggie soon enough, he reasoned. It wasn’t like he had anything to tell her yet, anyway. Three days in, and he’d only managed to see Bill Pickett from a distance. Cordelia had been right—the bulldogger kept to his own work and minded his business.
But then, everyone around the grounds was keeping to themselves. A few of the hands had been arrested during the raid, and no one was much interested in getting to know the newcomer who’d taken their place. North’s experience in the mess tent had been the worst part, at first. There, men sat in small groups arranged by position and race, their backs turned and their heads down to ward off any intrusion.
Pretending not to notice the unspoken boundaries between the various groups, North sat directly in the space left between a couple of sullen-looking white cowboys and a couple of older gentlemen with skin even darker brown than Pickett’s.
The older men turned out to be soldiers, veterans of the 10th Cavalry, who’d mostly served after the Civil War and out in the western territories, where they’d worked to maintain the peace by fighting against some of the same Lakota they now shared the arena with each afternoon. At first the men were pleasant if distant, but after a bit they warmed up enough to start regaling North with stories of their days in the cavalry. The stories grew more fantastic as each man tried to outdo the one who’d spoken before. Their good-natured competition wasn’t exactly a chore to listen to, and North’s enjoyment of—and growing respect for—the men wasn’t an act, even if he was still angling for an introduction to Bill Pickett.
North felt a certain camaraderie with a sergeant named George, an older man with a long, narrow face capped by heavy brows. His brown eyes were speckled with amber, deep-set over a hooked nose, and his droll mouth drooped a little on one side when he talked. It was the result of a fever, he explained, after the army’s hospital wouldn’t admit him for treatment even with his many years of service. George didn’t say it outright, but North understood—it was because of the color of his skin.
George looked far older than his fifty-odd years, but when he talked, his eyes lit with humor, and North could almost see the younger man George must once have been: the man who’d been born on a plantation and had run away and taken his freedom for himself when he wasn’t more than twelve. George had taught himself to read so he could take up command of his own battalion instead of taking orders from the white sergeants who refused to see him and his men as their equals. He’d joined the Curtis Brothers’ Show after his wife, Letty, had died a few years before. After she’d passed, George couldn’t bring himself to stay in the house they’d shared. Too many memories, he’d told North.
North could appreciate the way George talked about his Letty, like she had been and still was the one and only light in his life. That kind of sentiment North understood deep to his core—it was exactly how he’d felt about Maggie, almost from the moment he’d met her. It was how he still felt about her, he realized, despite everything. And he found himself telling George about Maggie in turn.
Listening to their stories got North to thinking, though. He’d never known many people of color before—not in Chicago or Texas or even in St. Louis. It wasn’t that he’d ever had any poor feelings about a person because of their skin, though he knew plenty who did. It was more that he simply hadn’t thought to step outside his own steady path. Even on Gunter’s ranch, he’d stuck to the group of Anglo cowhands and hadn’t bothered much with the vaqueros unless he was working with them. He’d certainly never socialized with them.
Talking to George and his friends, though, and taking their easy company for the gift it was, North started to think that maybe he’d spent too much of his life only worrying about himself—and about the magic that flowed in his veins. He’d been so focused on how the world saw those with the old magic, he’d never considered that there were a lot of other folks with trials of their own.
The next morning, North was leading one of the horses in from the field to saddle it for the show, when he realized that his body hadn’t felt so well used and sore from a good, solid day’s work in a long, long time. The jobs he’d done in St. Louis for Mother Ruth and her Antistasi were often dangerous, but they’d never been all that physically taxing. Now North was starting to remember what it felt like to use his body the way it was intended. His skin was tender from the sun, and he knew he smelled of horse and sweat, but he felt happier than he had in years.
He patted the side of the horse he was leading, a pretty dappled Appaloosa mare the color of caramel. Out in the field, she’d rolled herself in a nice patch of mud, and while it might have made her feel better, it meant more work for North. He’d have to get her light, speckled hindquarters clean before the evening’s show.
The sun was already low in the sky as North looped the mecate reins through his belt and started to fill a bucket of water from the pump. The mare seemed biddable and good-natured, from what he could tell. Maybe that was why he let himself get distracted by someone watching him from the edge of the corral. North thought he saw something on the man’s lapel glinting in the sun. It wasn’t the silver star of a marshal, but a round medallion that looked like a type he’d seen too many times before.
But that couldn’t be right. There was no reason for the Society to be so far from St. Louis, way out in the mountains of Colorado.
North was so busy trying to get a look at the man without really looking that he wasn’t paying attention to the mare like he should have been. Without warning or reason, the horse spooked, and before North knew what was happening, the animal’s body was slamming into him. Nearly a thousand pounds of horseflesh pushed him into the fence as her hind leg kicked out.
He managed to dodge the worst of it. The hoof only caught the back of his thigh as he tumbled to the ground. But then the mare reared up, screaming her disapproval, and North knew he was in trouble. He barely had time to turn away, and he only had his arms to shield himself from the pummeling that was about to happen as the horse rose above him. Before her hooves could do any damage, though, someone else was there, standing between him and the Appaloosa. At first North only saw the shadow of a man silhouetted against the bright sun. He’d turned away from North as he walked the horse back, clicking and cooing at her until she stopped huffing her fear and finally calmed down.
North was still trying to catch his breath when the man turned. For a second he was too stunned to believe it could be Bill Pickett standing over him. It took Pickett extending a hand to him before North managed to pull himself together.
Pickett’s grip was strong and sure, and the other cowboy hoisted North up to his feet like he weighed nothing at all.
“You okay there?” Pickett asked, squinting a little. He offered North the leading rope again.
“I think I’ll live,” North said, taking the rope. “Probably’ll have a bruise on my leg to show off tomorrow, but it could have been a lot worse. ’Specially if you hadn’t been there.”
