Jenna watched the gunslinger set off along the dirt road to Ansos town, his stride long and easy, no hint of tension in his arms. He didn't look like a man ready to be shot. She guessed he'd left his horse at the Hanging Tree. The Tree always had a crowd of free-fighters at the bar. Mikeos' sort of place. There wasn't much of that boy from the Five-oh-Seven left to see in him. He'd left that innocence behind somewhere in fifteen years on the move, hopping trains, killing under the gun-law, building a reputation that was slanting toward legend.
The pillar's shadow followed the road all the way into town. The Old Ones hadn't left much, but what they left cast long shadows.
Jenna had decided to come to Ansos on the day her brother died. They had buried Kyle that same afternoon, there had been no arrangements to make, no coffin to prepare.
"Best get it done, girl. Cain't let him lie on a day like this." Sheriff Marks wiped his brow with a gray rag from around his throat. Jenna still remembered the redness of his neck and the white bristles of stubble poking through the skin. "They'll box him up at Gunders'."
The heat that sat across the Oh-Seven had been heavy and brutal. The alley stank. Kyle had died in the place where they had met Sykes – the exact spot. He returned to it in his sickness, eyes wide and stark in his head, lips dark.
"I got no money, nothing for a burial," Jenna said. She should have called him 'Sir'. Sheriff Marks would have liked that. But the word wouldn't fit in her mouth.
"There's places you can get some, girl." And the sheriff had turned to go. "Get it done," he called over his shoulder. "There's a dollar fine iffn I find you left him for the corpsers."
Jenna watched him leave. She knew the kind of work Marks had in mind. The kind Kitty's girls did upstairs at the Bullet and Rye. Work you could do on your back.
As Marks vanished into Main Street a shaggy figure slipped past him into the alley. Jenna stood her ground, with Kyle curled on the dirt behind her.
"That you, Hemar?" She thought she recognized the dogman, but he looked too steady on his feet for Hemar.
"Yessum."
"I ain't got nothing for you, Hemar." Steady meant sober, and a sober Hemar was a dogman scenting out his next drink.
"Came to pay my respects, missy."
Hemar came into the light, red eyed, panting against the heat. He looked down at Kyle. A whine escaped him, over the lolling tongue, past yellowed fangs. It rose to a muted howl of misery.
"Ain't but a pup," Hemar said.
"I got nothing for you, Hemar." Jenna held her hands out. "Not a drop of whiskey. Nothing."
Hemar ignored her. "Where's them kids you run with?" He sniffed the air, seemingly immune to the stench.
"Cleared out," Jenna said. An anger she hadn't known was in her found its way into her voice. "They think Skyes Bannon is gonna come and take Kyle."
"That ain't no pack." Hemar shook his head.
Jenna shrugged.
"Is Bannon coming for him?" Hemar asked.
"Maybe."
"You should run too then," he said.
"No." Jenna remembered the terror the corpser carried with him, but she knew she wouldn't run.
Hemar grinned, all teeth and slobber.
"I got nothing for you, Hemar." The dog man smelled bad, fur matted with piss and old whiskey. She wanted him gone.
"I know." The dogman brushed past her and hoisted Kyle onto his shoulder. "We'll take him to the pillar."
And they went, Hemar carrying Kyle, panting all the way and cursing his head. Two miles seemed like twenty under the hammer of the sun. Jenna trailed behind the dogman, her skin burning through the rips in her old shift, only the black sheath of her hair to keep her from sunstroke.
They passed the Church of Three out on the pillar road. Hemar paused, looking to Jenna. She shook her head. The dark stone arch did not invite. Kyle had gone in once. Said it was full of old folks smelling like death. He told her the Three wait at the back, stone lumps with only the most vague hints at form so they might be any kind. Two smaller ones flanking a larger that stood way back in the shadows, spreading its arms.
"You ever go in, Hemar?"
"I looked once. The pack elders teach the Three are The One of the Domen, the One of the Hunska and the One of the Taur. If that's right there's no place in there for men." He shifted Kyle on his shoulder and walked on.
Jenna knew some of the old folk had it the statues were Father, Son, and Ghost. When she came to Ansos the book of Hex told her Brother, Sister, Stranger. Maybe they were all right. Or all wrong.
The Five-oh-Seven pillar looked vast from the town. As they drew closer, picking their way through the Hunska bone-pits and the yards where the taur set the skulls of their dead, the pillar seemed to fill the whole world.
"There's hundreds of them, you know?" Hemar said, pausing from his complaints. "A thousand."
"A thousand and sixty-three," Jenna said.
"Why's that?" Hemar shifted Kyle on his shoulder.
Jenna shrugged. "It's a magic number."
"How'd you know all that stuff?" Hemar growled.
"I listen."
They stopped a hundred yards short of the pillar. Jenna knew most corpsers couldn't get within a quarter mile of the stonework, but this close it seemed that even humans felt the pressure to leave. Hemar felt it too. She could see it in the hang of his tail.
"Must be three hundred yards wide." Hemar looked up. "How tall d'you reckon?"
"Very."
Jenna tried not to be impressed by what the Old Ones had left behind them. The pillars and the gun-law both hung over every part of her life. Both made men into children in somebody else's playground.
Hemar dug the grave. Jenna tried to help, but the rocky ground tore back her nails.
They put Kyle in the shallow scrape and Hemar set to covering him.
"Should we say something?" Jenna asked. She wondered what she could say, what words might come if she opened her mouth. Her brother lay limp and dead in a dirt hole, his limbs at the wrong angles, a blind stare in his eyes daring you to doubt his death. Despite the heat, Jenna's skin goosebumped. A tight knot sat below her heart, hurt and rage in equal measure, ready to explode. She remembered him at six when she was three and he had been her world. "Shouldn't we?"
"If you want." Hemar hung his head. "He ain't there, though."
Jenna looked up at the dogman. His eyes glittered behind a veil of dirty hair. She'd seen dogmen dead. They left them scattered for the ravens. If it weren't for the corpsers they wouldn't even drag them to the pillar.
"Cover him up."
The sun had started to fall by the time they left. They walked side by side.
"Thank you, Hemar." Without the dogman, corpsers would have taken what they wanted. Organs for their potions, skin to wear, blood and bone to make night-dust to sell to junkies.
"I liked him."
"You did?" Jenna had never seen them speak.
"He smelled right."
"And how do I smell?" She instantly thought of the sweat trickling from her armpits, and the greasy cloth hanging around her ribs.
"You smell like you don't belong," Hemar said. "Not here."
Jenna stopped walking. The lights of the Oh-Seven burned just ahead. "Where, then?"
Hemar shrugged. "Dunno. Somewhere. You need to be at the beginning. You got too many questions for this place."
***
The Oh-Seven stop didn't deserve to be called a station. Jenna stood by the tracks, keeping to the shadow cast by Hrumna. The taur could have provided shade for a half dozen skinny thirteen year old girls. His status allowed no concession to high summer and he wore a vast leather cape, tooled from collar to hem with a complex interlocking of axe and horn motifs. Three old prospectors waited with them, hands clutched over their sample cases, and a free-fighter strolled a little further down the track, keeping his distance, keeping his approaches covered.
"Where's that scamp gone?" The words thrummed out of Hrumna, almost too deep for hearing.
He turned and found Jenna lurking behind him.
"Run get me a pitcher from the trough," he said. "Penny in it for you."
Jenna hesitated. "I don't want to miss the train."
Hrumna's eyes widened, ridging the hide beneath his horn base. A laugh burst from him, spittle from his snout. Down the track the free-fighter flinched for his guns.
"Don't let them go without me," Jenna said. It wouldn't do to upset the cattle merchant. The taur had powerful friends, and besides, he could squash her under one hoof.
She ran for the trough back by Rees' hostelry on the edge of town. Hrumna wouldn't believe she had the fare. She almost didn't believe it herself. Three years of scraping and saving made a heavy fist of cents and nickels in the canvas bag bouncing against her hip.
She got back sweaty and panting, the leather pitcher still half-full. Hrumna snorted and took it from her.
The train pulled in about five minutes later, the last service out of the Oh-Seven for two days. It puffed out of the dust plain, belching steam and coughing smoke high into the still air. Jenna stepped back as it halted with a long squeal of brakes. It hurt to look at the engine, all gleaming chrome and brass that somehow defied any hint of dirt.
The conductor stepped down from the first carriage. He was kin of course. Only kin worked on the railways. The free-fighter joined the crowd as the conductor produced his ticket-book. Jenna stared. She had seen woodkin in town. The stories had it that kin who settled up north joined the trees there and never left the world again. But the kin didn't come from the world, any more than men did. This one looked nothing like the woodkin. His skin lay smooth where woodkin's gnarled like bark over arms that thickened with age. The conductor's limbs remembered street kids' emaciation, and where the woodkin watched the world from eyes like green pools, the conductor's eyes were burnished steel.
"Where to, sir?"
"Oh-Three." The prospector clutched his battered case all the tighter.
"Five-Oh-Three?"
"Uh, yeah." The prospector blinked, mouth half open, as if not really believing it was possible to journey so far you had to count the hundreds.
"Dollar seventy."
Hrumna next. "The Two-Ten." That got him glances from the others. A traveller this one!
"Three dollars and five, sir." The kin took Hrumna's silver dollars and a nickle.
The free-fighter wanted over to the Oh-Six. Rumour had it the Oh-Six's slinger came to a sorry end in a whore's bed. Free-fighters from all over would be looking to fill his boots.
"Where to, miss?" The kin's gray eyes encompassed her. Jenna felt a gentle pressure building against her thoughts.
"Ansos."
Hrumna bellowed laughter, so hard he nearly fell off the carriage steps.
"Oh-Oh-One?" The conductor didn't smile.
"Yes." Jenna bit her lip. She'd known the kin never acknowledge names.
"Twenty-five dollars."
"Hah!" Hrumna rubbed his right horn on the doorframe and watched.
Jenna heaved up the bag of coins from her rope-belt. The free-fighter's eyebrows went up at the jingle. "Damn! I thought that was clothes."
The conductor folded his long fingers around the bag. "Thank you." He didn't count it.
Jenna found an empty seat, maybe the last in the carriage. She sat on the stiff-brushed purple velvet, feeling small and dirty.
The free-fighter sat down beside her moments later.
"Remos Jax," he said. He wore black, from boots to hat, eyes kind but wary.
"Jenna."
"Ansos eh? Now that's a ways to go!" He gave a soft whistle.
Jenna hated the patronizing tone. She'd heard it all her life. "These trains run to whole different worlds, you know?"
"Well if you put it like that." Remos nodded. "T'aint so far."
"That's how the sect get here. The kin will take anyone who can pay the fare."
"Only fair!" Remos grinned, but he looked uneasy. Most folk didn't like to think about off-world or what it might cost to get there, let alone talk about it. And nobody wanted to talk about the sect.
"I heard the sect are breeding gun-men," Jenna said. "What do you think they'd be like?"
"Fast." Remos shuddered. "How'd you know all this stuff, Jenna?"
"I listen."
The train lurched and steam billowed around the windows as it stole into motion.
"Ansos, eh?" Seemed like Remos wanted to change the subject. "Going for a hex-witch?"
Jenna nodded. "I want the training." She wanted something that had to be taken. Something men had made for themselves, not something given.
Remos looked at her, as if seeing for the first time. "They say it's hard."
"Nothing's gained without sacrifice," Jenna had said.
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