Wardtown (Teer & Kard Book 1) Page 6

  “And I guess I have to trust you on that,” Teer said. “I don’t get much of a choice now.”

  “I warned you it was a Spehari’s bargain, Teer,” the El-Spehari told him. “That there were things I couldn’t tell you. That was the biggest of them, a secret you’ll need to take to your grave.”

  Teer could sense enough of the power of the bond to know that wasn’t going to be a problem. He suspected he had more resistance to it than he was supposed to, but he knew he wasn’t going to be able to betray Kard’s secrets.

  “Which brings us to my biggest curiosity, I suppose,” Kard admitted. “If we’re going to travel with each other, we need to learn the powers of your sight. You see things even Spehari should be blind to.

  “I figure that can only be helpful!”

  9

  The stew interrupted the conversation for a few minutes after that, bubbling from the pot requiring their attention to make sure they didn’t wreck their dinner. Teer took over managing the stew from Kard to buy himself some time to think. Plus, he knew his mother’s dried stew mixes better than anyone else.

  Once the meal was ready, he poured it into two bowls and added some water and soap to the pot, putting it aside to soak to make the dishes easier later. He might not be used to long-distance rides, but he’d spent more than one night out on the prairie with a cattle herd.

  More than a hundred nights, really. Hardin’s herds were only partly free-range, but they could still wander pretty far before it became a problem.

  And Alana’s stew mixes were a quiet legend among the ranch hands by now. Teer grinned to himself in a complete lack of surprise as Kard took his first bite, the El-Spehari’s eyes opening wide.

  “This has no business coming out of a bag of dried meat,” Kard observed before taking another heaping spoonful. He didn’t let it cool enough and, the next moment, was making incoherent noises as he swallowed too-hot food.

  “Ma says it’s all in the spices,” Teer told his new boss. “Everyone else just says she’s magic.” He shrugged as that brought him back to the conversation he’d been dodging with the food.

  “Might be more to that thought that I’d have guessed,” he admitted.

  “Are all of them this good?” Kard asked, glancing at the stacked saddlebags. Teer had counted almost forty of the bagged stews.

  “Yes, but they’re also all the same,” Teer warned. “It’s beef or it’s chicken. Same veggies, same spices. They last half a turning in a cold cellar. Not sure how they’ll last in a saddlebag.”

  “My supplies are cans, jerky and trail bread,” the older bounty hunter pointed out. “We won’t be worrying about how long the stew mix holds up. I can see why Hardin asked your ma to come cook for him.”

  Teer grinned as he finished his own bowl. Dropping it in the main kettle, he added a bit more water from the bucket Kard had filled earlier and starting scrubbing. He’d always been one to take care of his own dishes and such, and, well, he was pretty sure the servant part of his new job title was relevant.

  Kard stepped over and slid his own utensils into the pot. There wasn’t enough space for them both to clean the dishes, so he stepped back to give Teer room to work.

  “Thanks. I’ll grab the dishes tomorrow,” Kard told him. “It’s jerky and trail bread on the road outside dinner. We need to make it to Odar soon.”

  “We’re not shuffling a hundred head with us,” Teer replied. “We’re flying.”

  “Yeah, but Boulder isn’t herding cattle either,” the older man reminded him. “He doesn’t know we’re coming, but a man like that knows he draws eyes. He’ll be figuring someone’s coming. I’m figuring he’ll be gone when we find his camp, but it’ll give us a place to start.”

  Teer nodded slowly, extracting dishes from the pot and putting them on a rack to dry. He gave the pot itself a solid scrubbing to finish it off before laying it aside to dry as well.

  “Take a seat, Teer,” Kard told him. He offered a flask. “Whiskey?”

  “I’m better without,” Teer said grimly. “One mad, drunken moment in a life is too many.”

  “Fair,” the El-Spehari agreed. He gestured at the fire, the same red sparks as before flickering across the campsite and sparking it up.

  “I can see that,” Teer admitted. “I think I’ve seen every time you’ve done magic.”

  “I’ve known two men ever who could see another Spehari’s magic,” Kard told him. “Both El-Spehari, now I think about it. It’s a rare gift among the Spehari. We can all see our own magic but not other people’s.”

  He studied Teer for a long moment.

  “Here, try and catch this.”

  A ball of pale orange light appeared in Kard’s hand for a moment before he sent it gently floating across the campfire. Teer didn’t know what it was supposed to be, but he tried to catch it as instructed.

  His hands went right through it, the magic continuing into the darkness and vanishing.

  “Huh.”

  He looked up to see Kard watching him.

  “So, you can’t touch magic,” the El-Spehari noted. “But you can see it.”

  Kard shifted. Something changed and he was suddenly blurry. Teer blinked a few times to try and stave off the discomfort.

  “I can still see you,” he told Kard. “You’re blurry, it hurts my head, but I can see you.”

  “Which I knew, but you still shouldn’t,” Kard replied. “Anyone else, even a Spehari, would see a Merik man right now. I keep my own features unless I think I’m in real danger, but I darken my skin and hide my ears.

  “I am not Spehari and I have no desire to draw the attention they do,” he said quietly. “Were someone to figure what I truly am, the Inquisition would follow within tendays.”

  The campfire was silent. Teer wasn’t sure what to say to that. He appeared to be able to see right through Spehari tricks and to see their magic working. He wasn’t sure how useful that was going to be—unless Spehari came after his new master.

  “Can you see this?” Kard asked. He gestured toward a spot by the fire. Sparks of white light flashed across the air, taking a vague shape in the air roughly a yard high.

  “I can see that there is a thing there,” Teer said slowly. “Four legs, a yard high. A big dog, maybe? But all I see is a shape in white sparks.”

  The shape bounded over to Kard in a way that made the dog guess more solid. The El-Spehari touched the illusion, his face softer in the mixed light from the fire and the one moon that was up.

  “Berk was my dog growing up,” he murmured. “Gift from my father. I thought he was the best companion a boy could ask for—my father thought he was fantastic security for his investment.”

  The white shape vanished.

  “You resist mind trickery and you ignore illusions,” Kard observed. “I figure you’d still burn if I threw fire at you, but that’s not a thing we’re going to test. You see what others don’t. I figure it stretches more than we can tell right now, but that’s enough for tonight.

  “It’s been a long day and tomorrow will be longer. Can Star take it?”

  “She’s in good health and well fed; she’s just used to herding cattle,” Teer replied. “I think she can do it. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  “If she needs to stop, we stop,” Kard promised. “We don’t have spare horses, which means Star and Clack are worth more to us than catching Boulder before he moves on. We can catch up to the brigand so long as our horses are with us.

  “Lose the horses and we’re heartbroken and stuck.”

  10

  Odar was too small to be a full wardtown. There was no wardstone to guard the town against inclement weather. No defensive shield that could turn aside arrows and gunfire at the command of a Wardkeeper.

  It was a tiny village, barely bigger than the compound at Hardin’s Ranch.

  “I don’t see any farms around here and this isn’t even good ranching country,” Teer said as they rode toward the settlement. “I see…a tavern and a d
ozen boardinghouses. What do these people do?”

  “You’re looking at the hills with the wrong eye,” Kard told him, his blurry illusion back in place. “The scrub and such around here is crap for cattle but perfect for sheep. This is shepherd country, Teer. Odar does some business as a supply point for them, but they’ll take their sheep up to Carlon to sell. That’s a proper wardtown with a proper stockyard.”

  “So, it’s a just a supply point?”

  “No. Odar’s a mining town,” the bounty hunter replied. “The rivers in these hills run with gold and redcrystal. Every few turnings, one of them strikes it rich. The rest of the time, the diggers and panners find enough gold and redcrystal to keep themselves in liquor.”

  He snorted cynically.

  “And to make the exchange who buys their finds and the saloon that sells their liquor rich,” he concluded. “Come on. Doka works out of the saloon. She’s supposed to be waiting for me, but… Ahh, you’ll see.”

  That wasn’t reassuring—but what about Teer’s new life was?

  He urged Star up to speed after Kard and Clack as the gelding trotted down Odar’s sad excuse for a main street. He saw the exchange at the end of the road now. It had been hidden behind one of the ramshackle three-story log boarding houses.

  It was a low-slung stone-and-brick building, as solidly built as the Wardkeeper’s jail in Alvid. He figured it had vaults instead of cells, but it also had something Komo’s jail generally hadn’t had: obvious armed guards.

  Two men with repeaters flanked the door, and a third guard was on the roof.

  “Unless it’s changed, the exchange is run by a Rolin named Iko,” Kard told him. “Unless someone has killed them in the last tenday, this is their town. Nobody fucks with Iko or their people. That includes us.”

  There was shouting from the saloon as they drew closer, and Kard sighed.

  “It might, however, not include Doka,” he noted. “It’s just that no one who knows her actually takes it seriously.”

  A figure went flying through the saloon doors a moment later. A second figure followed a moment later—and then a third, much smaller person walked through the doors behind the flying debris.

  “Doka tol’ you and Doka tol’ you,” she barked at the men on the ground. “Doka like to say yes, but if Doka say no, you fucking listen.”

  The woman was blue. That caught Teer’s attention more than anything else. Doka’s face was a pale blue color and her braided hair was a deep black that shone purple in the afternoon sun.

  Teer was rapidly aware that the blue color continued down onto the stranger’s chest as well, as she wore what appeared to be a fitted corset under a fringed leather jacket. The garment was sufficiently designed to present certain body parts that Teer found himself flushing at as he glanced away.

  He still saw one of the two people she’d thrown out in the street get back up and lunge toward the blue woman. The attacker was a big Merik man with several inches on Teer and far broader across the shoulders than the gawky youth.

  Teer had enough time to wonder how in Winter the big man had been thrown before the blue woman grabbed the Merik’s incoming hand, bent it back at the wrist, and forced the larger man to his knees in the mud, whimpering in pain.

  “Doka told you,” she repeated. “Now whatchu say to Doka?”

  Kard was slowing up on the edge of the scene and Teer pulled up beside him, their horses putting them physically above the whole affair. The other man Doka had thrown out of the bar was slowly and gingerly getting up—and clearly trying to avoid drawing her eye again.

  “I say you got pretty tits and a stick up yer ass,” the Merik man growled, grabbing her arm with his other hand and clearly trying to overpower her.

  Even from six feet away, Teer heard the crack of the man’s wrist snapping as Doka pushed a bit further. She used the big man’s hand on her wrist as an anchor to deliver a heavy boot to her attacker’s upper thigh with another ugly-sounding crack.

  Suddenly, her attacker was entirely on the ground. Whimpering.

  “What that?” Doka demanded. “Whatchu say to Doka?”

  “Sorry,” the likely crippled man ground out. “The boss gonna hear about this.”

  “And you think Iko going side witchu?” Doka asked. “What use you to them with broke leg?”

  “Stop digging, son,” Kard advised, swinging down off his horse. “You’re still more use to Iko broken than dead; trust me.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” the big man snarled, levering himself up onto his intact knee.

  “The man watching you get your ass beat,” the El-Spehari told him. “And the only one here big enough to help you get somewhere you can splint that leg. Now. You going to keep digging, or you going to let me help you?”

  “You take fun out everything, Kard,” Doka complained. “Ziger can help him. If he done.”

  “I done, I done,” the Merik man finally conceded.

  “Who this, then?” Doka asked as they took a seat at the table. She looked Teer up and down frankly in a way that made him suddenly empathize with the cattle he used to sell. “Young, muscles, Merik. Not your type. May Doka?”

  Teer wasn’t even entirely sure what she meant, but Kard burst out laughing.

  “Doka of Tribe Hansvelt, meet Teer, my new junior partner,” he told her. “Took him on as a favor; he’s been useful so far. As for may you.” Kard shrugged, laughing again. “Take that up with him—but we won’t be in town for long.”

  “Nah, you hunting,” Doka agreed. She took one last long look at Teer and winked at him before turning her attention back to Kard.

  “Boulder,” Kard confirmed. “Should have six or more men with him. He was seen near here two tendays ago.”

  “Could be long gone. Doka would be,” she said. “But. Man like Boulder might’ve found something worth staying for.”

  She pulled a map from inside the leather jacket and spread it over the table. That movement gave Teer a view that sent a warm flush to his cheeks.

  He wasn’t exactly innocent, but Doka was something outside his experience. And he got the clear feeling that the more he reacted to her, the more she was going to tease him.

  “Where he seen?” Doka asked, gesturing across the map.

  Focusing on the task at hand, Teer studied the map. It was more detailed than any he’d seen of anything except Hardin’s Ranch. It covered the region of hills they were in, centered on Odar and barely stretching as far as Carlon, a hundred miles to the north.

  “Twenty-three days ago, he shot up a bar in Carlon,” Kard told her, tapping the wardtown. “Left three Wardwatches and a dozen innocents dead. Every hunter with a writ for him inside three hundred miles is headed to Carlon to pick up his trail.”

  “An’ you want to get ahead, as always,” Doka guessed. “That all you got?”

  “No,” Kard replied. “I was in Alvid four days ago.”

  He pulled two white-glass chip coins out of his pocket and laid them on the map.

  “A hunter I know thought he’d spotted Boulder over by Otrutch, here.” Kard put down a coin.

  “Shepherd village,” Doka told Teer. “Nothing and nobody there of value.”

  “Probably why Boulder didn’t rob it blind,” the El-Spehari agreed. “My friend is staying there for reasons of his own. Reasons that don’t line up with him going after Boulder himself, even if he thought he could handle seven guns alone.”

  “Which you do,” Doka said. It wasn’t a question.

  “With Teer? Yeah, I do,” Kard confirmed. He laid a second coin on the map. “Other bit of news I wasn’t expecting dropped in my ear while I was in Alvid. One of the coaches out of Odar thought they were being watched around here.” He tapped the coin.

  “Another coach was overdue when I left,” he continued. “Might be as much as a hundred stone worth of gold and raw redcrystal. He was spotted by Otrutch seventeen days ago. Coach that went missing should have arrived five days ago; previous one saw watchers eleven days a
go.

  “You know this area better than anyone else alive. What do you see, Doka?”

  “Doka see Doka not being paid yet,” the blue-skinned woman told him. She was eyeing the map with an odd gaze. Something about her…Teer realized that, strange as she was, he could read her feelings surprisingly well.

  So long as they weren’t directed at him, anyway.

  “That’s not how this works, Doka,” Kard replied. “I need something solid.”

  “She knows, boss,” Teer said bluntly. “She knows exactly where he is.”

  “How you…” Doka trailed off, studying Teer. “You scary, boy. Doka like you.”

  Kard shook his head.

  “I trust Teer, but I need more,” he told Doka.

  “He robbed coach,” the woman told him. “He saw hundred stone in coach. He knows exchange here. Figures exchange has more. Won’t send all on one coach; Iko too crazy. He scouting town, so…maybe three places could be hiding.

  “Can show you all three. Three stone and a candlemark with boy.”

  Teer’s ears were burning now.

  “Two stone,” Kard countered. “You ride with us, not just show us on the map. You and Teer is up to you and Teer.”

  “Doka not mercenary,” she reminded him. “Doka no good in a fight.”

  “We saw you outside,” Teer countered. “Didn’t look like you were no good in a fight to me.”

  She sighed.

  “Fists, not guns,” she told him. “Knives too. Guns?” She stuck her tongue out. “Doka good shot, given time. Good hunter. Poor gun hand.”

  “I don’t need your gun hand,” Kard replied. “I need your eyes and your skills. Boulder might be planning to rob the exchange, but he also might be on his way. I need a tracker. You’re the best.”

  “Then Doka work for three stone,” she said firmly.

  “Half now, half when we find the camp,” Kard said. “I trust you, but I don’t trust anyone that much.”