The Far West (16 page)

“I understand,” Roger said heavily. He stopped walking so he could look straight at me. “Your answer would be the same even if you weren’t coming along, wouldn’t it?”

“I —” I took a deep breath. “I’m really sorry, Roger. I just —”

“Don’t try to explain,” Roger interrupted. “It’ll just make it harder.”

We walked in silence the rest of the way. “Thank you for your honesty, Miss Rothmer,” he said finally, just as we reached the house. “I think I won’t come in this evening. Please give your mother my regards.”

He reached up and very gently brushed a bit of my hair back from my face. Then he bowed and walked away. I stood there as the dark deepened and the cold soaked through my boots, feeling miserable and wondering whether I’d done the right thing.

I cried myself to sleep that night. Next day, I broke the news to my family that I would be joining Lan on the Joint Cathayan-Columbian Discovery and Mapping Expedition.

All my guesses about how people would react were dead on. Robbie’s eyes got as big as teacups, and then he whooped right there at the dinner table. Rennie went white and Allie went red, and both of them yelled at me until Mama and Papa made them stop. Lan grinned in a way that made me wonder if he’d known more than I did. Brant went still and quiet, and waited for the ruckus to die down before he congratulated me.

Just as I’d expected, Allie was the most difficult. It took me nearly two days to make her understand that I wasn’t still making up my mind and that she didn’t have any chance to talk me out of it because I’d already told Professor Torgeson yes. When I finally got her convinced, she burst into tears. She spent the next two weeks giving me reproachful looks whenever we crossed paths. I was surprised that all I got were looks, until I found out that Mama had sat her down for a talking-to.

Somewhere in that first week, I made the time to write and tell William my news. I didn’t tell him about Roger, though. He wrote back that he was glad we’d both be on the expedition, and he’d be looking forward to seeing me when he and Professor Ochiba got to Mill City for the send-off.

The day after I made my announcement, Brant took an afternoon off work and went down to the Settlement Office. That evening, he told us that he’d decided not to join the expedition.

Papa raised an eyebrow, but all he did was nod. Robbie frowned and said, “You’re certain?”

“I’m certain that I’m not going,” Brant said. “Mr. Parsons and I had a long talk, and decided that” — he paused, like he couldn’t quite bring himself to say “it would be best.” After a second, he finished — “that it’s what I’m going to do. I signed the refusal. It’s done and settled, and that’s all there is to it.”

Rennie burst into tears. Allie stuck her chin in the air and gave me a triumphant look.

“But I thought you really wanted to go,” Robbie persisted.

“I did. I do. But I don’t want to leave my family for two or three years.” Brant put his shoulders back. “And there’s no need for more talk on the subject. There’s been enough talk and then some, and like I said, the decision is made.”

Lan had opened his mouth to say something, but at that he closed it again. Allie gave him the same look she’d given me, but Lan ignored her. “We’ll think of you, then,” he said to Brant after a minute. Brant nodded, and that was the last they spoke of the expedition before it left.

Brant’s decision made things harder and easier for me, both at the same time. On the one hand, Rennie and Allie were happy that he was staying, which meant they weren’t so snappish all the time. On the other hand, they both seemed to think that it was their arguments that had persuaded him,
which meant they went at Lan and me harder than ever. I took to working late when I could, and avoiding them as much as I could when I had to be at home.

Working late wasn’t hard to arrange. For the next two months, I was almost too busy to think. A lot of it was on account of the newspapers and broadsheets. They made even more fuss over the Joint Cathayan-Columbian Discovery and Mapping Expedition than I recalled them making when the McNeil Expedition left, and they were particularly taken with Lan and me. Evidently they thought people were more interested in hearing about a pair of twins, one of them a double-seventh son, than in finding out what the expedition was supposed to accomplish.

The rest of my busy-ness had to do with the expedition itself. There was a lot of planning to do, and a lot of things to get together, and somehow Lan seemed to think that because I was going, I’d do his share of both of them as well as my own. I got that straightened out pretty quick, though.

In addition to my regular work, I had to make up a list for the Settlement Office of all the official supplies Professor Torgeson and I would need, and estimate how much space they would take up. I had to spend a couple of hours every week practicing with my rifle, and another couple of hours practicing travel protection spells.

The expedition was setting out from Mill City, which meant that all the supplies for it were being accumulated in Mr. Corcoran’s warehouse down by the river. The Settlement Office was supposed to make sure everything was there, but
Professor Torgeson and I stopped in every few days to double-check, and twice she made them replace things that she didn’t think were good enough quality.

The biggest problem, though, came from the Frontier Management Department itself. They had an enormous list of things that they thought we should take. “It looks to me as if they’ve taken the equipment lists from every party that’s headed west in the past fifty years and added them all together,” Professor Torgeson said when she saw it. “Idiots.”

“It’s even worse than you think,” Professor Jeffries said. “I just came from the warehouse. They went and shipped us a railroad car’s worth of supplies without bothering to mention it, and stacked them any which way because they were in a hurry to unload. Someone will have to go through them all, or you’re likely to find yourselves halfway to the mountains with nothing but oatmeal to eat.”

“At least we don’t have to do all the work ourselves,” I said. “Lan says the army is sending someone to take care of their part.”

Professor Jeffries nodded. “Mr. Parsons mentioned that. I believe Quartermaster Solomon is expected next week.”

“I hope he has more sense than this lot,” Professor Torgeson said, waving at the stack of paper the Frontier Management Office had sent.

It took me several days to go over the list and sort out the parts that might actually be of some use. Then I had to add in the things that weren’t on it, and check everything off that was already in the warehouse. It didn’t take long to discover that some of the things we did need weren’t in very good shape.

I was in the middle of going through a crate of sample
boxes and taking out all the ones whose preservation spells had stopped working, when I heard someone cough behind me. I turned and found a small, businesslike woman studying me with cool gray eyes. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, not so very much older than me. She had light brown hair cropped to just below her ears and pinned back to stay out of her face. She wore a plain gray skirt and jacket and a neat pair of high-button black-and-white boots.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for Professor Aldis Torgeson and Miss Francine Rothmer. The office said they’d likely be here.”

“Professor Torgeson just left,” I told her. “I’m Eff Rothmer.”

“Sergeant Amy Solomon,” the woman said. “Army quartermaster for the Joint Cathayan-Columbian Discovery and Mapping Expedition. I go by Sergeant Amy when it’s not official business. I understand you’ve been having some trouble with the supplies.”

I blinked in surprise. “You’re the quartermaster? We weren’t expecting you for another two days.”

“I had a feeling this would be more of a mess than they were telling me, so I got the major to finish up the paperwork on my transfer a little early.” She studied the stacks of crates and boxes and barrels, and shook her head. “I can see it was a good call. There isn’t going to be room for even half of this, you know.”

“It wasn’t our idea,” I said. “Half of what’s here is useless, and a fair few of the things that we really do want are broken or have spells that don’t work.”

“Salvage goods and cheap suppliers,” Sergeant Amy said, nodding. “Typical. The first thing is to get rid of the junk. We can probably sell or trade some of the things that are in good shape. That’ll give us funds to replace the things that aren’t.”

“I’ve been sorting for the last three days,” I said, and showed her what I’d done. Then we went back to the Settlement Office to go over the equipment lists.

I liked Amy Solomon from the start. In between looking over the supplies and lists, she told me that she’d grown up in a settlement in the South Plains Territory, near one of the forts the army had built to hunt the terror birds and gildenslinks that the settlement protection spells couldn’t handle. She’d begun working for the army as soon as they’d let her, helping out in the office the same way I’d started helping at the college when I was in upper school.

A few years later, she’d joined up. She said that the army had been letting women sign up since the middle of the Secession War, when they needed magicians so badly. After the war ended, they’d never changed the rules, though there weren’t a whole lot of women who took them up on it these days. Most army women were, like Sergeant Solomon, from the settlement territories, where people cared less about what you were than about what you could do.

Amy Solomon looked over my lists, spent a day in Mr. Corcoran’s warehouse, and then fired off a bunch of telegrams. Two days later, three soldiers arrived on the train from New Orleans. They disappeared into the warehouse, and by the end of the week there was a lot more room and a lot more order.

At the beginning of the next week, Sergeant Amy showed up at Professor Torgeson’s office, carrying all the lists and frowning. “Professor Torgeson, I have some questions,” she said. “Particularly about this.” She set a page on the desk and pointed.

I recognized it right off; it was the list I’d written of all the things we didn’t need or couldn’t get. Professor Torgeson glanced at where her finger was pointing and raised her eyebrows. “And?”

“Why are lizard-skin jackets on this list?”

“Because we can’t get them,” Professor Torgeson said.

“Why not? If it’s a matter of cost —”

“It’s not the cost,” Professor Torgeson interrupted. “There simply aren’t any around to buy. You have to understand, the medusa lizards only appeared two years ago. They are fortunately still uncommon near the settlements. There haven’t been enough of them killed yet for medusa-lizard-skin jackets to be available in Mill City.”

“Even a few —”

“The only one I actually know of is in the possession of one of the men who went out hunting medusa lizards last year,” Professor Torgeson said sharply. “He killed the lizard and made the jacket himself. I don’t doubt that the other hunters have been doing the same thing, even though we don’t really know whether the lizard skin will repel the petrification effect. No doubt they feel that some chance of blocking the lizards’ magic is better than no chance at all, and the hunters are the most likely to be exposed to it, after all.”

Sergeant Amy made a face. “Reasonable. But in that case, what are the jackets doing on the equipment list at all?”

“I expect someone actually read the reports we’ve been sending,” Professor Torgeson said. “As I said, we haven’t been able to test the skins against the actual lizards, though I’m hopeful that we’ll have field observations soon from this winter’s hunt, but we did establish that the magic-resistance property outlasts the lizard’s death and is not affected by the tanning process.”

“And naturally no one considered anything else. Like availability.” Sergeant Amy pursed her lips. “I don’t suppose any of those hunters would be willing to sell if we put out word that we’ll be buying on our way through.”

Professor Torgeson shrugged. “Possibly, if someone has managed to kill enough of the lizards. I doubt that anyone would sell his only jacket. Money isn’t worth anything to a statue.”

“True, and from what you say, we’re not likely to be able to outfit more than a fraction of the expedition members.”

“I’d guess one or two of them, at most. Though I know that at least two of the guides have been hunting lizards; they may already have lizard-skin jackets of their own.”

“Two is better than none, I suppose,” the sergeant said. “But that brings up another problem. I haven’t seen the reports myself, but what’s the probability that we’re going to run into these creatures ourselves?”

“High,” Professor Torgeson said. “We think they’re native to the Far West. Why they’re moving east is anyone’s guess,
but it’s only logical that the farther west we get, the more of them we’re likely to find.”

“West and north,” the sergeant said absently, frowning. “We haven’t seen any of the things in the south plains, thank goodness. Right, then. We’ll just have to make our own lizard-skin jackets as we shoot the things.”

Professor Torgeson seemed a little taken aback, but she didn’t say anything outright. She had me give Sergeant Amy a copy of the summary report we’d made, then went back to her own preparations. I thought the sergeant had the right of it. We already knew we were likely to run into medusa lizards; if we ran into them, we’d have to kill them, because we didn’t have a protection spell yet that worked. If we killed them, we’d have skins and we might as well make use of them if we could.

As March wore on, more and more expedition members began to arrive in Mill City. The next arrivals were Settlement Office and support people — Mr. MacPhee, the minerals expert, arrived first, then Mr. Zarbeliev, who’d been a circuit magician in the middle plains for three years. Miss Elizabet Dzozkic and Miss Bronwyn Hoel came in on the same train. They were actually a team, though Miss Dzozkic was a surveyor and officially one of the Settlement Office group and Miss Hoel was a dowser who’d been included with the support people for some reason.

Mr. Corvales, who would be heading up the expedition, arrived with Adept Alikaket two weeks before we were to set out. He was a short, round, cheerful man with a bald spot just starting in the back of his dark hair, and he made it a point to
meet up with everyone who was going on the expedition, first thing, even though the territory governor and the mayor both wanted to talk to him.

Dr. Martin Lefevre and his assistant arrived right after Mr. Corvales, and the first thing he did was ask Professor Torgeson and Professor Jeffries if they could see the preserved medusa lizard parts. When he found out we had actual live lizards out at the study center, he insisted on going out to examine them right away. Even a three-inch snowfall the day he got to Mill City didn’t discourage him.

“By tomorrow, it will have melted,” he said confidently.

I almost pointed out that Mill City was a lot farther north than Philadelphia and he couldn’t count on the snow melting that fast. In the end, I was glad I hadn’t, because he was mostly right; the snow wasn’t gone the next day, but it had melted enough to be muddy slush that didn’t get so much in the way of riding.