“Are we so quick to forget our Gideons, then, when we have so much need of them, if only as examples?” the Widow asked. “The Sword of the Lord may be wielded by anyone, Mayor, so long as the fight — and the warrior — be righteous. It says so here, in Judges.”
At this, Catlin raised hand and voice together, in all-too-polite objection. “Now, Sister Sophy, I’m not entirely sure that’s the correct interpretation to place on — ”
“Sure does,” someone behind Morrow confirmed; “sure does. She’s right about that.”
Sophy knew her audience. The ripple grew, became a general agreeing murmur.
“Sheriff taught her himself, and there wasn’t no one better’n him for Scripture.”
“Or bravery. ’Member when he stood toe-to-toe ’gainst Reverend Rook, with nothin’ but the Lord for backup? Devil won that round, but only halfway; even Satan himself couldn’t keep them two parted, or let young Gabe there stay bewitched.”
“And so what if he went down later on, still fighting? All flesh turns grass, eventually — way of the world. Yet it was God himself told the first Zealot: Peace be unto thee, thou mighty man of valour; fear not; thou shalt not altogether die.”
“That’s enough!” Langobard thumped the tabletop, face reddening. “Missus Love, there’s courage, and then there’s plain foolhardiness. The Harmons and the de Groots were told not to take lots so far north, and suffered the consequences. But I’ll not strip every field of able bodies, ’specially this close to harvest, and in this weather! If these men have an honest need to tend their lands — ”
Sophy drew herself up, suddenly ablaze, shifting Gabe to her hip. “More delay!” she shouted, uncowed. “You have done it again and again, since your election. Indeed, I begin to wonder if we shall ever be ready to march on Hex City, upon your say-so!” Morrow watched as a group of some dozen townsfolk — all with faces he recognized from the aftermath of Bewelcome’s resurrection, that day Ludlow so yearned to pick his brain on, and all well-armed — assembled at the stage’s far end, gathering ’round Sophy like Templars to the Ark. “The people of this town dare not wait forever — ”
“The people of Bewelcome voted me Mayor, Missus Love, not you!” Langobard bellowed back. “I won’t be dictated to, not by a mere female grasping at power she has no right to — earthly, or otherwise!”
“I repeat: this is my husband’s town, with Gabriel his only heir. What small influence I have here I hold in trust, for them both.”
“And therein lies the rub. For this is still a democracy we inhabit, madam, one in which your son has yet to attain his age of majority, let alone be elected to any sort of public office.”
“Be Mayor, then, Mister Langobard.” Abruptly, Sophy was all ice once more; Langobard rocked back on his heels, nonplussed. “Fulfill the charges given you. You know as well as I do that Bewelcome is over-billeted with Mister Pinkerton’s operatives and Captain Washford’s soldiers — we cannot feed them forever, much less endure the riff-raff, provenderers and Hooker-girls trailing in their wake. As for the newcomers who’ve helped to settle our God-blessed land — His kindness be with them all, but a growing population is a distraction we can ill afford, one which renders us daily less united in our purpose.”
“You were less displeased with our success when the depot station went up. Without Mister Pinkerton’s influence, it might well have been years before we saw a rail line out here — ”
“And Captain Washford can well speak to the problems that caused,” Sophy went on, inexorably. “Or am I wrong, Captain, in thinking that the supply-line trains have been consistently preyed upon by Reverend Rook’s forces, since they finally began regular runs?”
Washford rose, his stance more uncomfortable than ever. “Raids’ve increased, yes, like we knew they would. Still, they serve to draw the hexes’ attention away from Camp Pink, where Doc Asbury assures me he’s developing new measures to counteract the enemy’s resources — ”
“Yes, yes, all right.” Langobard cut Washford off with a peevish wave, ignoring how the other man’s eyes flashed. “To recap, Missus: though your points are taken, you must now take mine. I am in charge here, not you, and I don’t aim to see us all go the same way as Mesach Love himself, solely ’cause you’ve lost patience for justice.”
An underhanded strike, but one which seemed to hit, and deeply. For a moment, Sophy looked down, studying the table, as though in search of an answer — and as the blue granite of her gaze softened, Morrow got a sudden sense of the pain which lay behind it: still jagged as the moment after Yancey Kloves’ bullet met her man’s skull, these long months later. A hurt which had burned away everything in her that once rang gentle, purifying through calcination to leave nothing behind but commitment, cold as any butcher’s blade.
And this image, in turn, sent his mind careening back toward the woman who’d spawned it. Lost Yancey, whom he’d known so briefly, at least in the flesh, yet thought on so damn often. For a man to yearn after a woman he barely knew was more comedy than tragedy, prime as any vaudeville. But it was a hard thing nonetheless, to find himself so lamentably haunted by somebody who, he could only assume — could only hope, devoutly, fervently — probably wasn’t even dead.
He had a fair idea that she probably still rode with the man-squaw Yiska and her renegades, yoked to the will of that undead harridan, “Grandma.” Stranded amongst savages, with Pinkerton’s former pet sorceress Songbird her only “civilized” companion — was that any place for her to heal, even with her own bitter vengeance already accomplished? Or was she changing yet further, so much they’d be unrecognizable to one another when next they met?
Those few nocturnal reveries he’d had of her since, however, sweetly fleeting as they were, seemed so damn real. Even now, shutting his eyes, it was like he was there: the taste of her skin, the feel of her in his arms, that scent he could never recall on wakening, yet knew he’d know for hers under any circumstances. They lay abed, tracing each other like a pattern while she let down her dark hair, a curtain shutting them away from the world; in between bouts, she quizzed him on subjects he liked to think might give her aid or comfort, wherever she found herself.
Where are you? He’d asked her, once.
Only to watch her shake her head, sadly, and reply: Can’t tell you that, Ed. Too dangerous, for both of us. We’re working at a disadvantage, after all.
I miss you, he told her, to which she shaped a smile, already fading: sweet, just the way he remembered, or thought he did. For there was much about her he found slipping away likewise, worn down by time and distance — and all the time meeting only in dreams probably didn’t help much, on that score.
Of course, there was another ghost held tenancy in Morrow’s brainpan, too: someone also still upright, at least bodily, who he tried his best to avoid musing about at all, and mostly failed.
For awake or sleeping, Morrow intermittently felt Chess Pargeter’s touch, heard his voice, his sly laugh, the punctuational double-cock of
his guns. He saw red hair glint under every hat, read Chess’s rooster-proud strut in a thousand passing walks. Thinking, as he did: This must’ve been how it was for him, with the Rev. . . .
“You mistake me,” Sophy Love replied, at last. “No person in this room knows more keenly than I do that Law is the only certain cure for lawlessness — Mesach preached on that very subject many a time, and though he knew he might never live to see it truly flower, we held it worth the price. For Law is the future’s currency, Mayor, and once established, it must be defended. Tooth and nail.” The knuckles of her hands, folded primly before her, were white. “But if our enemies are not defeated, all Law will fall before them. Therefore do not count me so much impatient as afraid, lest all of us should lose what slim chance at it we have.”
The room was shamed to silence. And Morrow, caught in admiration, could only marvel at those stupid enough to think “mere” women unfit to rule.
It was the mild, reedy voice of Professor of Experimental Arcanistry Joachim Asbury which broke the spell first, declaring: “Missus Love, your position — though eminently moral — remains strategically unsound, in almost every respect.”