Dead Man’s Hand (51 page)

* * *

YUN

When Yun came back, she saw a little charred crater where the fallen trees had been.

She jumped off Mustard, who sniffed the ground, whinnied, and then kept her head low.
Yun knelt next to the crater and bowed her head to the ground three times.

“Today, I have seen a true
hsiake
,” she whispered.

The wind carried a few pieces of paper, their edges burnt, to her feet. She picked
one up:

They are alive and well somewhere
,

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death.

* * *

Author’s Note: The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace (1850–64), or Taiping Tianguo,
did indeed modify the way the character
tien
is written in its name; however, the particular modification presented in this story
was used only on coins minted in a particular province for a brief period.

In general, Wade-Giles is used instead of pinyin to romanize Chinese names in this
story for historical reasons.]

The horse was an old one, and piebald to boot, warning he’d go lame sooner rather
than not, but Jack would be damned if he’d give up and walk.

The fact that his stubbornness came too late for his soul didn’t make him any more
willing to relent.

“Whoa now, hoss,” he said, reining back gently with his left hand, shifting his weight
to ease the ache in his buttocks, and squinting at the horizon. The smudge in the
distance might be an outcropping of stone… or it might be yet another hallucination
brought on by exhaustion and hope.

Only way to find out was to ride on.

The sun had shifted to the western half of the sky, casting his shadow odd-angled
in front of them, a beast with four legs and two heads and a sway to its movement
that looked more like a shambles-beast than anything living.

There were days Jack wondered himself if they’d already died and been too stubborn
to fall.

But if he’d have died, the devil would have called his name for sure.

“We’re still here, hoss,” he told the piebald. “For all the good it does us.”

The horse had no opinion. It lifted one foot in front of the other with weary determination,
moving forward across the broken plain because going back was not an option, and they
neither of them were fool enough to stop.

* * *

Hooves hitting stone woke Jack from his riding doze, the change from the softer clodding
of dirt and dust jarring his senses into full alertness as much as the singing of
an arrow or the smell of black powder.

He’d been right: rock, an entire massive ridge cresting out of the hill, solid and
deep. Deep enough down to touch the core of the world. Deep enough down to be protection,
for a little while. Jack let out a sigh and the piebald’s sides heaved in echo, its
head drooping down to its knees.

“Yeah, you’re a good hoss,” he said, patting the withers with almost-affection. “Time
for a rest.”

Jack swung out of the saddle before he could talk himself out of it. His thighs protested
the move, and his feet ached with the weight of his body, but the press of his boot-soles
against rock was a sweet pain.

He paused, almost unwilling to breathe, but the rock remained steady underfoot, and
his thoughts stayed his own.

Deep enough, for a while.

Unhooking the canteen from his saddle, Jack took a long swig, wiped his mouth with
the back of his hand, and considered pouring the rest over his head to wash the dust
and grime from his skin.

“No, hoss. Can’t do that,” he said. “No telling how long we might be here.”

Not that long, never that long; soon enough he would have to move on, driven to another
town, or farmstead, or fugitive’s trail.

He looped the rawhide reins loosely around the horn so they wouldn’t drag, and then
stepped forward, trusting the piebald to follow behind.

The ridge was lumped like the bare bones of a skeleton, dusty-dry and rust red. Not
even moss grew on them, here under the blazing sun.

Hard rock was good. Hard rock was safe.

For now
, experience told him.
Don’t you dare relax.

There were strips of jerky in his saddlebag, and another canteen of water, half-full
and stale, but drinkable. The piebald could graze and drink when they came to pastures,
but Jack had not sat to a meal without worry since longer than he could easily remember.

“No,” he said, thinking back. “Two weeks past? The riverboat, coming up past Louistown.”

Water was safe, too. Water and stone.

Stone was better, though. The devil couldn’t reach through that much stone.

* * *

“You played. You lost.”

The gambler had had a jovial look that Jack had distrusted at once. But only a fool
trusted the man who held the deck, and Jack prided himself on being no fool. Young,
yes, and green, he owned to that, but never foolish. He sat warily and played carefully
and never bet more than he could afford to lose. That was how you got to be old, in
the Devil’s West.

“I played and I lost and you’ve taken your winnings,” Jack said. “And now I’ll be
stepping away from the table, like a sober man.”

More sober now than he’d been an hour before: the dealer had a run of luck that could
only be cursed, and every card that turned called out for mortals to beware, until
the river turned and drowned him, once and for all.

And the other men at the table had breathed a sigh of relief that it had been Jack,
and not them.

“Leaving, broke and sober. ’Tis often the fate of mortal man,” the dealer agreed,
and his jovial expression was only kind. Jack’s left hand flexed, feeling for the
gun that did not hang by his side.

You removed your weapons before you sat at the table.
The saloon girl with the saucy eye held them for him, his gun and his hat, and no
way to reach either before he was dead. The fact that every soul in the saloon was
in the same boat did not warm Jack, not with the way the dealer watched his face,
and not his hands. This dealer feared no powder and shot, nor an arrow from ambush,
nor a knife in the dark.

Jack had known who he played with, when he slid his coin across the felt. That had
been the point. That was why men came here, to test their luck. He swallowed, the
sick feeling he had at the loss—everything he had, from cash to horse—eclipsed by
a worse sensation in his gut. Not two years on his own, and he had failed, utterly.
The devil cherished the prideful, his mentor had warned him, the better to break them
of it.

“One more hand, to win it all,” the dealer said, and his hands moved over the cards,
shuffling them without sound. “One more hand to win it all, and more.”

It was a devil’s bargain, in the heart of the Devil’s West, and only a green-sapped
fool would have taken it.

But Jack-as-was had not been as wise as he thought.

* * *

The rock eased his pain, and Jack slept soundly within its hard embrace, no darkly
sounding whisper searching for him, poisoning his rest. That knowledge had been hard-won
and cherished, that through the solid rock and shifting water, the bones and blood
of the Earth, the devil could not call.

Before the sun rose, he woke, curled under a rough blanket, still fully dressed save
his boots, those tied to the piebald’s saddle to keep scorpions or worse from making
them a home.

He had played that final hand and lost. The fruit of his bargain, the payment of his
debt: seven years and seven and seven again, he was bound. The devil’s dog, the devil’s
boy. But there was a loophole: if he did not hear the call, he could not be summoned.
If he could not be summoned, he could not do the devil’s work.

It must amuse his master to play this game, to let Jack play at it, the days and weeks
he could avoid the call, only for the devil to yank him back the moment he came within
reach. Seven years and seven and seven again to pay, and nearly sixteen of them gone
now, along with even the memory of the things he had hoped to regain. Sixteen was
eight twice: numbers of protection for normal men, but there was no protection for
Jack, save water and stone, the blood and bones of the earth, and that lasted only
so long. If he died while bound, he was the devil’s forevermore.

Jack had long ago lost the taste for living, but he had no intention of dying any
time soon. He rose and stretched, saluting the morning sun rising clear across the
face of the outcrop, the sky still clouded and dim behind him.

“Human.”

Jack turned and spun, reaching not for the pistol that once pressed against his thigh
but the packet of herbs he now carried in the holster, the dried bits catching in
the wind as he scattered them, a free-moving arc of glittering brown-green.

“That’s hardly polite,” another voice said, this time behind him, and it sounded both
amused and hurt. Two? More? Or one demon, inhumanly fast?

Magicians roamed these lands, and demons, and the devil. Jack feared none of them,
anymore, but lack of fear did not mean lack of caution.

“You came to us and slept in our home. We came merely to say good morn, and you react…
thus?”

Two… no, four, or five, from the shadows that crept around him. Slender and dark-skinned
like savages, bare in their skins, dark hair long and wild, braided with feathers
of impossibly bright colors, like a fancy-girl’s beads. Like humans, until you saw
them move, joints turning too smoothly, eyes glittering too bright. Until you saw
the shimmer like heatstroke under their skin.

The herbs had pushed them back, but they had not fled. The horse, dumb beast that
it was, shifted its weight from leg to leg, but did not otherwise react. It had seen
far worse, in its time under Jack’s leg.

“We don’t scare you?”

“Only a damned man isn’t cautious around demons,” Jack replied. He couldn’t tell which
one spoke, they moved so restlessly, and he didn’t want to watch their mouths, not
so close to those glittering eyes. “Never heard of your kind taking to hard rock,
before.” It wasn’t a question—even a damned man did not ask a demon questions it might
answer.

“You know many demon, then, human? To carry bane, and not a pistol, to wear the sigil
instead of a cross?”

He’d never worn a cross, not even back then. The sigil on a thong around his neck
wasn’t much more use—but it showed a certain amount of respect. Demons and magicians
knew the Hanging Man, who had been here long before the bleeding god.

“I’m the devil’s Jack,” he said, having no desire to play their game. “You may have
heard of me.”

They hissed, but did not back away. The devil had no claim on them, as soulless as
the piebald. But they would—most like—not interfere with his dog, either.

“We grant you the use of our rock,” one of them said. “You may remain as long as you
like.” Mocking: they knew he could not remain, dared not stay too long.

“I may leave freely, then.” Again, not a question, but merely to confirm: to make
them agree, and not slide a card out from their sleeve.

“Yes. Yes, blasted human, you may.”

They could not. Their words, the tone of their words, gave them away. They had been
bound to this hard ridge—some magician exercising his power, for some reason only
magicians understood.

A wise man—and a damned man both—avoided thinking too much why a magician did anything.

“You could stay, and amuse us,” another one said. “We are so terribly bored.”

That was why they had come to him, then. Something new, on this barren ridge, to distract
them. He felt no pity: they were demon. And yet, to be trapped on this ridge, for
however long, was not a fate he would wish on any creature.

He had spoken truth, earlier: demon did not take to hard stone. They lingered on river
banks and in shadowed caves, not here under the hot dry sun. “No doubt some terrible
act angered the magician, that he bound you here, with no release.”

“Not so terrible. Not so anger-making. He was far more terrible than we, and woe to
the human who bore him. His magic would have ripped him from her womb and burnt her
to ashes from the hot malice in his bones.”

Magicians were made, not born. But there was something in the demon’s tone that made
the story ring true.

Not that Jack would ever know, one way or another. Yet, demon had no reason to lie
for sheer meanness; they were no more evil than a tornado, merely set on having their
way no matter what a human might wish or do.

Much like humans, he knew. It was a rare soul who came at you with unselfish good.
It simply wasn’t the way the world had been made.

This ridge offered safety, but a lack of evil did not mean a lack of harm, from tornado
or demon, and a wise man got out of their way.

“I’ll water and feed my hoss, and be gone,” he said. “No need to fret yourselves on
my account.”

They stared at him, like wolves in winter stare at elk, and he lowered his head and
set his shoulders, same as the elk might do.
Do not mess with me
, his posture warned.
You might win, but you would not like the cost
.

They stared, and then scattered, gone as swift as they’d come, and the piebald and
he were alone on the rocky ridge.

* * *

The ridge ran some distance toward the north, and Jack walked it through the morning,
not pausing when the sun reached devil’s peak and bore down on him, rivulets of grimy
sweat sticking his shirt and pants’ legs to his skin. The piebald’s girth was loose,
its step slow and steady, and every now and again it reached over to nip at Jack’s
hair in a gesture of what he thought might well be affection. Or hunger.

“Grazing for you, soon enough,” he promised it. “Just a bit longer.” The ability to
stretch his legs without worry was sweeter than fresh water. He would have to leave
this haven before long and be on his way, but not just yet.