Gunlaw

Gunlaw 27

She caught up by the edge of town and walked between the Ays as they approached the shack. Remos and Daveos had reached the building already but hung back at the open door. Sally wrinkled her nose at the stink of the place. It made corpsers seem bearable. George strode up between the boys. "I smell brains. Someone's been here before us!"

George ducked through the doorway and disappeared into the gloom. Sally half expected shots and flinched when the shutters banged open. The corpser sauntered out a few moments later, licking his fingers. "Dead girl, dogman pup dead on the floor, rest of them are fucked up good, but looks like they were born that way. Nothing for us though." He shrugged. "Best get out to these ruins of yours."

Billy made to go in. George set a hand across his chest. "Ain't got time for collecting, brother. We're on a schedule here. The train won't wait."

"You going out on that train again?" Remos looked impressed. Sally thought it might be the first time.

"You shot that kin. They won't let you ride," Daveos said, as if the rules on kin-shooting were well established. Sally hadn't heard of anyone killing a kin. Ever.

George shrugged again. "It don't matter to kin. Death interests kin right enough, but not so's they care if it happens to them or not. You know how that grey bastard looked when I jabbed my shotgun into his guts? Puzzled. And when I put both barrels through him? Puzzled. And when he hit the ground? Dead. Kin won't hold a grudge though. Train'll be leaving on time, with us or without."

He turned and led off. Sally paused. She didn't want to look in the shack. She'd been not looking for years. The hunska would leave malformed kits out on the saltpan to die. Men chose to draw the suffering out, on both sides, fuel for the fires in which they burned, self-righteous congratulations for Mrs Walmer in her nest feathered with mining shares, an aimless malice for Ruben Twist, misery for the children, no happiness in it anywhere. Sally didn't want to look, but she did. There had been a young domen trailing them when they went down to view the taur's corpse this morning. And here another one? The same one? She set her hand to the wall planks, the splinters rough beneath her fingertips. And looked in.

A girl's corpse sprawled across one bed, brains decorating the far wall, grey and lumpy and running in sluggish rivulets. Vomit surged in Sally's throat. She forced herself to look again. The domen boy lay almost at her feet, curled in his blood, watching her from one slitted eye. Corpsers never could tell the living from the dead. Four broken children survived. One rocking, tied to a wall ring, biting his fingers bloody. A twisted girl, near choked by the tangle of grey sheets around her. A red haired boy twitching on his bed. And . . . for a heartbeat only she saw the worst of them, first his eyes held her, watching with a curious intelligence, then she took in the rest, a child distorted by knotted and useless muscles, limbs turning in at each joint, head lolling, kept upright only by the board they'd strapped him to. For one heartbeat she saw the ruin of his body, and then as he unfurled his mind toward her a bright and pure torrent washed over her, through her, filling her so swiftly and so fully that she overflowed, blinded with tears, the strength taken from her and the bitterness, both stolen away along with the old rage that had frozen and set in place long ago. The flood of that light lifted all hurt from her, wounds she understood and wounds to which she had become blind - the ones she had wrapped herself about, becoming as broken and distorted as the child before her. The boy's blinding aura expanded through her, past her, a shell pushing beyond the shack until, entirely enveloped, she could see him once more, only now his eyes saw nothing, glazed and unfocused. Sally pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, blinked away tears and stepped in closer. The boy made no signs of noticing, but in the core of her she knew that if he was no longer watching her it was because he watched something else, somewhere else.