Chapter 27
Mikeos took the handle, the metal cold and slightly slippery. He turned it and pushed the door open. The room beyond was lit so brightly that he had to squint against it. Probably more lanterns and candles burned here in this one space than in all the rest of the workings put together. Lanterns hung from the ceiling on chains, candles burned in twisted iron stands, scarlet curtains hid the walls and a single oak desk faced him, with a high-backed chair behind it in which a dead man sat.
"Visitors! I don't get many of those." The dead man looked up from his ledger, setting his plumed quill back in the inkwell. He had a pale face, almost all one piece, ill-fitting his bones. Grey hair ran across his scalp in dry tufts. Apart from books and the quill only a paper-spike and an old bowler hat sat on the desk.
Mikeos moved in, gun held straight-armed before him, aimed at the corpser, eyes taking in the curtains, looking for man-shapes. The place stunk of death and blood. "Got questions for you, dead man. The Walker? That's how they call you?"
The corpser gave a dry grin, showing mismatched teeth, some black, some grey, some fresh and pearly. He spread his hands. "You don't want to listen to those savages up there. Superstitious nonsense is all you'll get from their kind. Henry Walker's the name. Pleased to meet you, mister . . . ?"
"Mikeos Jones."
"And your questions?" Again the grin, the pale face stretching against dark stitching around Walker's temples and hairline. "And do come out where I can see you, Sir Domen. No need to hide behind your young friend. And did I glimpse a lady of the cloth outside my door? Come in, come in, come one, come all."
"Doesn't this place hurt you, corpser? Don't the ruins make you want to run? I heard the dead don't do so well in places like this." Mikeos didn't like the dead thing. He doubted he would have liked the man who died and left it. Each time Walker smiled Mikeos felt Elver Samms' cold fingers at the back of his neck. He'd spent three hours hacking Samms into pieces small enough to throw out across the Dry, but still he could feel the corpser's fingers, the sick-touch of them that night Samms caught up with him in the Bullet and Rye and killed the taur, Grum. The night Lilliana chose to save Mikeos and send Samms running.
Walker shrugged, bones creaked. "It's not so bad down here. Up top I'll admit it's none too pleasant, but then what part of my ... condition is pleasant?" He held up a grey hand, skin stitched around each finger bone and turned it this way then that, inspecting. "Still, we mustn't moan now must we? Down here where the dark wurms burrow it seems the Old Ones' influence is weaker." He lowered his hand to the desk. "And the Three really don't dislike us corpsers as much as you might think, Mikeos Jones." Again that grin, softer and more dangerous this time.
Mikeos heard Jenna's entrance, the swish of robes announcing her. Hemar moved out to the side, claws clicking on stone. "What are you doing here, Walker? What's all this to you?"
"Dollars and cents." Walker tapped a finger on his ledger. "The bottom line, Mister Jones. Corpsers are often interested in commerce. After all we have peculiar needs and it turns out that you can buy literally anything. Did you know that, Mikey? I've bought far more children than I ever stole. Know what a baby costs? Less than ten dollars."
Mikeos's finger tightened on the trigger, a hair from firing. He forced his hand to relax. Jenna spoke behind him. "You didn't buy help from the sect, creature-that-was Henry Walker. The sect don't trade. So whatever is going on here is about more than money."
"Very astute, Jenna Crossard, but then you always were a clever little girl, weren't you? Don't look surprised – I know all about you, girl, where you've been and where you're bound. Bad places both. Sykes Bannon should have snuffed you out in that alley, just another little alley rat for the gutter. But Sykes was always a loose cannon. He was older than any of us. Did you know that? Older than the rails so they say, but I find that hard to credit. Mikey here did us a favour when he put that one down. Did you know that, Mikey? Did you know you helped my star ascend among the dead fraternity?"
"The only help I'm like to give you is a bullet, corpser," Mikeos kept his revolver pointed at Walker's head. Even so a sense of unease crept over him. "Close the door, Hemar. Bolt it."
The dogman made no move.
"Hemar?" Mikeos risked a glance.
Hemar stood frozen, eyes fixed on the corpser. "You're him. Henry Walker." Words spoken through bared teeth.
"I don't recall denying it." Walker seemed oblivious to the stare of Mikeos' gun.
"He's one of them. The three that came for Eben Lostchild in Sweet Water. One died. Properly. Walker and Purbright, the one that stabbed me, they ran in the end."
"Purbright? James Purbright?" Mikeos reached the desk in two quick strides and set the barrel of his gun against Walker's forehead. "Jim Bright? The outlaw?"
Walker looked up at Mikeos with dead and glassy eyes. "Outlaw? There are so many laws. Who's to say who is in and who is out? Your girlfriend here wants to be an outlaw. Don't you, Jenna? Wants to break the biggest law of them all." He turned his head to look at her, careless of the gun scraping his stolen skin. "Me too. I've been busy at it awhile now. Turns out all that 'one strike and you're out' stuff was a lie. The world's a big ol' place – I been around, bushwhacked a gunslinger or two in most unlawful ways. Got myself killed doing it the first time. Anyhow, the whole thing didn't come crashing down round our ears. Turns out the gunlaw just gets weakened, just starts a-leaking, letting sect slip in through the cracks. Any power you hex-whores have is cos of cracks me and my kind have put in the gunlaw for you. It's give and take see? Opportunities for all, sect and men both. Corpsers too."
Mikeos hit Walker square in the mouth with the butt of his revolver. Teeth and parts of teeth sprayed across the desk. "Where is he?" He'd told himself so often that revenge had led him down the 'slinger's path, so often that he almost believed it. Either way Jim Bright would die for shooting his father, and Mikeos would be the one to do the killing. The need for it trembled in his hand. "Where's Bright?"
Walker rolled his neck, picked up an unbroken tooth between finger and thumb, and looked up at Mikeos. "Thought you cared about these miners?" he said through torn lips. "Where do you think I'm going to get new biters from then, eh? Some little kiddie upstairs is going to get sore gums because of you, Mikey."
Mikeos shot him through the left eye. "Jim Bright. Where is he?"
"Riding up the First Track, I expect. Heading for that terminus where doggy here stashed the crip. He always likes to tie up loose ends does Jimmy, keeps his promises." Walker shrugged and turned his good eye back to Jenna. "Gunlaw's a lot of things. It's like a dam. You can chip at it forever and not get far, but a few cracks in the right places and it starts to give. You hexers think these ruins are dead places, but creatures like me know death can be deceptive. There's still juice in the engines down here. Look at the miners. There ain't many without burns on their hands. The wires they pull out spark and hiss and sizzle. We're breaking things – things even the dark wurms won't touch. Every little helps." He smiled yet again, a slime tear oozing from his ruined eye. "So why don't you run off to save your cripple and leave me to do exactly what it is you're trying to do, only better?"
Jenna came to the desk, her face serious, intent, the hex on her forehead just an intersection of dark red cuts. "I'm working to free mankind from the Old Ones' bonds, not to let the sect into our cage to devour us."
"It's the same thing." Walker kept his one eye on her.
"And I'm not walking over the corpses of children to get there. You tortured people to death at Small Stones, and for what?"
"Not me, lady." Walker spread his hands. "If I had the time of course ... but these days I've got to delegate so much. In the old days I'd be riding to Eben Lostchild myself. Little fuck's left us hanging all these years. He's not going to die easy, but again it will be someone else has the fun of it. My thanks though, lady, for allowing us to know where he's at. That's the Old Ones for you though. Always balance, always rules, even with the Stranger. But that's all by the by. And I'm not only walking over the corpses of children – I'm wearing them. What do you think's going to happen when we crack open this world? You think nobody's going to die?"
"Walker?" Mikeos called him.
"You think the sect won't pour in and eat the faces off children? Chew every green thing to the root? I know what it is I want, what I've been promised. What's your excuse hex—"
"Walker!" Mikeos barked it this time.
Walker jerked his head around, snarling past broken teeth. "What?"
Mikeos shot him through the other eye. The corpser's head jerked back, pieces of skull trailing the bullet's path from the back of his head.
"Oh just great." Walker slapped both hands on the desk making the teeth there dance. "Is that the gunslinger's answer to everything?" He stood up, the chair clattering to the ground behind him. "Shoot it in the head? And if it still won't die then shoot its eyes out?" He walked toward the wall, arms out. Mikeos shot him through the knee.
"I heard how you did for Sykes Bannon." Walker lisped it through his broken mouth. "He deserved it of course." The corpser limped on, dragging his leg. "Same for Elver Samms, though Samms did have a certain style. Never wasted a body part." Mikeos shot the other knee and Walker pitched forward, flailing. His arms caught the scarlet drapery, ripping it from the wall, exposing row on row of shelves behind. On each shelf stood a dozen or more glass jars, all of them filled with clear liquid, and in most of them eyeballs floated. Mikeos felt their disembodied gaze upon him.
"Ah, there you are," Walker said as if given new sight. He lay slumped against the base of the wall, the curtain all around him in a crimson sea. With a twist he started rolling toward the rear of the room. At the same time the door handle rattled, hard, and a voice called through, "Mister Walker? You alright in there, Mister Walker?"
Mikeos and Jenna glanced at the door. Hemar threw himself against it, to help hold it closed.
"Get away from there!" Mikeos shouted above the cries from outside. Jenna moved to pull Hemar clear before the first shot punched through the wood. Mikeos returned his attention to the corpser now rolling for the back wall. He fired twice more, hitting him in the neck and hip. Walker laughed uproariously and flailed his arms, spinning into and through the curtain at the rear.
A heavy blow made the door shudder. "Deal with it," Mikeos shouted at Jenna, and rushed on through the curtain where it divided. The space beyond dwarfed the room he'd come from and lay so dim that for long seconds he saw nothing. The stink of death hung thick as an abattoir, and wet sounds came from the darkness. Mikeos reached back, hauled on the curtain, and ripped it down. Light washed over him revealing a rough-hewn cave, dirt-floored and uneven, dipping in the middle to a pool of tar. Walker splashed in the pool, laughing as the light found him. A moment later he rose from the liquid, arms dripping. What Mikeos had taken for black tar was deepest crimson, shading to scarlet where it lay thin across the corpser's skin.
"Come on in," Walker called. "Have a good old fashioned bloodbath with me, Jones."
Mikeos half-lifted his gun. Behind him the pounding intensified, picks and hammers striking the door.
"You'll be needing to load that!" Walker said, a few white teeth standing in his broken grin amid the runnels of dead men's blood. And without warning he charged from the pool, his broken knees somehow whole again, his speed frightening as if invigorated by his baptism. Mikeos moved fast and grabbed Walker's wrists but the corpser's strength overwhelmed him. Walker fastened both hands around Mikeos's neck, driving him back over the heap of curtains, past the chair, to press him to the desk. The paper-spike drove into the small of his back, to the left, somewhere around his kidney.
Unable to draw breath or to prise the smallest gap in Walker's grip Mikeos managed to draw his second revolver and put it to Walker's eyeless face. He sent six bullets through the corpser's head in quick succession but the grip around his throat tightened with each one until the bones in his neck grated beneath dead fingers.
Black dots swam before Mikeos eyes, old and rotting blood dripped onto his face, and his heart thundered, trying to keep him alive. The beat of his pulse filled both ears, and behind that the sounds of wood splintering and glass smashing. He fumbled for his knife but the cleverness had left his fingers and somehow he spilled it to the ground. The knife wouldn't have helped him much in any event ... what he needed to break this grip was ...
...the black dots joined into one blackness. Sound faded.
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