The Battle of Medicine Rocks
Date: 2000-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Westerns; Historical; Urban Fantasy; Historical Fantasy
Description: Magic in the Great Sioux War! When Mary Good Crow came out of the crystal into the arms of her sister, the last thing she wanted was another fight. But war is coming to the Great Plains. With crystal on their side, the Lakota are poised to annihilate the town of Medicine Rocks, forcing Mary to choose between the friends she’s found and the family she’s always longed for. When Rel Reiner accepted her father’s dark bargain to save Josie and the others, the last thing she expected was to survive. But there’s more to the Reiner’s magic than ghosts and bones. Magic Rel will have to embrace if she e
Publisher: Aaron/Bach

The Crystal Calamity, Book 2

Rachel Aaron

Magic in the Great Sioux War!

When Mary Good Crow came out of the crystal into the arms of her sister, the last thing she wanted was another fight. But war is coming to the Great Plains. With crystal on their side, the Lakota are poised to annihilate the town of Medicine Rocks, forcing Mary to choose between the friends she’s found and the family she’s always longed for.

When Rel Reiner accepted her father’s dark bargain to save Josie and the others, the last thing she expected was to survive. But there’s more to the Reiner’s magic than ghosts and bones. Magic Rel will have to embrace if she ever wants to walk in her own skin again.

When Josie Price left the crystal mines one step ahead of death, the last thing she intended to do was quit. But the wolves in town are circling, and with the crystal going crazy and the cavalry riding to war, just finding a way to protect her people might cost her everything she came to Montana to build.

Three women divided by a war none of them wants. But Josie, Mary, and Rel have always been strongest together, and with the world’s magical future on the line, “together” might be the only way anyone survives.

Chapter 1

July 4, 1876

41 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

Mary Good Crow was shaking like a leaf in a tornado.

She was still in the crystal cavern, sitting on the pinecone crystal in front of the white pillar that had just let her go while the stranger who’d pulled her out and called her “sister” hugged her to suffocation. She talked as she squeezed, babbling Lakota into Mary’s ear too fast to translate.

Course, she could’ve been speaking French or English or even hand-signing, and Mary still couldn’t have made sense of it. It was all she could do to stare slack-jawed at the woman, whom she was no longer sure was a woman. The stranger’s pretty face and crystal-sewn dress looked like a maiden’s from a story, but the body hugging Mary’s was hard and flat like a young man’s, leaving her more bewildered than ever.

“I’m sorry,” Mary managed at last, her tongue struggling to find its way around the Lakota words she hadn’t spoken in years. “Who are you?”

“I’m called Blackbird,” the lovely person said. More slowly now, thank goodness. “Winkte of the Hunkpapa Lakota.”

Ah, Mary thought. That explained it. Winkte were two-souled people: those born male but who chose to live as female. They were sacred, famous especially for their visions of the future, but that still didn’t explain why this winkte was here.

“Who are you to me?”

“I’m your half sister!” Blackbird proclaimed joyously. “We share a father, though he still doesn’t admit it. Our grandmother never forgot about you, though.”

“Grandmother,” Mary repeated, her eyes growing huge in the crystal’s rainbow light. “I have a grandmother? Like a real one?”

“Of course we have a grandmother,” her sister said with a laugh. “As much as he’d like to pretend otherwise, our father didn’t just fall out of a thunderstorm one day. You’ve got a whole camp’s worth of family! Aunts and uncles and cousins and—”

“Where?” Mary demanded, grabbing Blackbird’s muscular shoulders. “You said you were with the Hunkpapa, but I went to them ages ago and found nothing. If you’re my family, where have you been all these years?”

“We came to the Hunkpapa only recently,” Blackbird told her patiently. “We were originally Oglala following Red Cloud, but when the great chief agreed to move us to the reservation after the last war, Father refused to follow him anymore and took us to Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa instead. Of all the headmen, only Sitting Bull refused to obey the wasichu’s demands, so he’s the only chief our father will follow now.”

Mary was so overwhelmed by all of that, it took her an embarrassingly long time to remember that “wasichu” was the Lakota nickname for non-Indians. Typically white settlers, but the word wasn’t limited by race or nation. Any non-Indian could be wasichu, or “those who took fat.” It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the way Blackbird said the word left no doubt she’d meant it that way.

“Are you with Sitting Bull too?”

Blackbird nodded excitedly, making the delicate crystals dangling from her braided hair jingle like chimes. “He is a wise war leader and blessed with many visions! He has led us to victory over all our enemies, including the Longhair General. All his men were slaughtered the day he thought he could surprise us!”

She was talking about Custer, Mary realized with a sinking feeling. Not that she cared what happened to the cavalry, but it was strange to hear someone brag ’bout killing soldiers the same way the folks in town did ’bout killing Indians.

“How did you find this place?” Mary asked, scooting back a little on the green-glowing pinecone crystal. “Did you follow the Whitmans?”

“I would never follow those cursed dogs anywhere,” Blackbird spat. Then her face grew reverent. “It was Bear Woman who brought me here. I was helping the others gather crystal when she appeared before me and told me she’d found my sister. I’d been praying for such a moment ever since Grandmother told me about you when I was little, so I did not hesitate. I gave my crystal to the others and hopped onto the Great Bear’s back. She ran through the ground like a lightning bolt to this place, where I saw you inside the crystal.”

Mary’s eyes stretched even bigger. “You rode on Bear Woman to get to me?”

“Bear Woman has always helped us,” her sister said reverently. “I didn’t think I’d be able to get you out of the crystal, though. I’d never seen it happen, but I was so desperate to meet you that I tried anyway, and here you are!”

Blackbird hugged her again when she finished, leaving Mary tongue-tied.

“You said you were gathering crystal,” she said when her mouth finally untangled itself. “Does that mean the Lakota have a crystal mine too?”

Blackbird shook her head. “It is not a mine. We are not thieves robbing from the land. We take only what is given, and our crystal is much better because of it.”

“It ain’t better!” Mary said defensively.

“It could hardly be worse,” her sister said, tapping her soft hide boot on the glowing rock beneath them. “These are the caves where the madness rock lives.”

Mary couldn’t argue with that, given how much of her life here had been spent avoiding men who’d lost their marbles from staying in the mines too long, but she still took offense for the caves’ sake.

“The crystal don’t make men crazy,” she insisted. “It’s the miners who bring madness in with ’em. The greed is what makes them lose their sense, not the stone.”

“That’s not true,” her sister said in a sweet, soft voice, like she was trying to convince a stubborn child that grass really did grow out of the ground. “You think this crystal is good because you haven’t seen ours, but you will soon know our blessings. Come, sister. Let’s go home.”

That string of words was so magical, Mary didn’t realize what Blackbird was doing until she’d led her halfway down the pinecone crystal.

“Wait!” Mary cried, jerking her hands away. “I can’t just run off with you!”

“Why not?” Blackbird asked. “Don’t you want to meet your family?”

“More than anything,” Mary said honestly. “But I can’t leave here yet. I got work to do.” She waved her arm around the cavern, which was still littered with the bodies of the poor dead soldiers the thing inside Reiner had left behind. “I gotta clean this up, and then I need to go make sure Josie’s all right.”

Blackbird’s face grew wary. “Who is Josie?”

“My friend,” Mary said, her voice thick with worry. “She got hurt real bad, but I think I got her back to town in time.”

“Town?” her sister said, astonished. “You mean the wasichu’s village?”

Mary nodded, and Blackbird’s face became even more alarmed. “How did you get her so far?”

“I can move the crystal,” Mary said proudly, reaching out with the music that was always inside her now to nudge the crystal aside, clearing a path through the spiky thicket at her pillar’s base. “The caves never did care ’bout distance, so I used that to get Josie to the doctor’s quick as a flash.”

By the time she finished, her sister’s eyes were wide with awe. “You truly are as Bear Woman said. She told me you’d become like her, a voice of the crystal, but you looked so human, I didn’t think…”

Mary shifted nervously as her sister trailed off. Given how Bear Woman looked, she could see why Blackbird had her doubts, but she was certain this was right. The beautiful music that had called her into the pillar still rang inside her heart like a golden bell. Even the lightning-shaped cracks that had spread all over her arms were gone now, filling her with the certainty that all was as it should be. Mary was wondering how she was gonna explain all that to her sister without sounding like she was nuts when Blackbird seized her hand.

“If you are truly like Bear Woman, then it’s even more important that I take you home,” she said, pulling her sister down the cleared path through the sharp crystals that Mary had made for them. “You will be welcomed and celebrated with us, but the wasichu will kill you if they discover what you can do.”

Mary’s heart sank at the wisdom of that. She’d been so excited to find her Song, she hadn’t given much thought to how having the cave music inside her would change things. Mary had always been worried ’bout what would happen if folks in town figured out just how well she could hear the crystal. If they learned she could open a tunnel straight to it, she’d be under someone’s boot ’fore she could holler “Help!”

Just thinking ’bout it filled her with dread. She’d gotten spoiled having someone important like Josie Price on her side, but her friend couldn’t fight the whole town. She’d try anyway ’cause that’s how Josie was, but putting her in that position would only get her hurt again, or worse. Mary couldn’t bring a disaster like that down on someone who’d been so good to her, and she looked at Blackbird with new consideration.

“If I go with you, would you help me lie low for a bit?”

“You’d be welcome to stay forever!” Blackbird said happily, clutching Mary’s hands in her larger ones. “You’re the sister I’ve been searching for since I was a child! Everyone will rejoice when they see you’ve returned, but none so much as me.” She squeezed Mary’s fingers harder. “Please, sister! Let me take you home!”

It wasn’t a hard sell. Mary’d been tempted from the moment Blackbird mentioned their grandmother. Hearing the word “home” just sealed the deal, ’specially since this might be Mary’s only chance to meet her Lakota relatives ’fore war broke out in earnest. There was no way she could pass that up, and it wasn’t like Josie needed her right now. She’d probably recover better without Mary ’round to make a scene anyway.

Mary’d just ’bout talked herself into it when the music suddenly blared inside her chest. She jumped at the sensation, causing Blackbird to start as well.

“What’s wrong?” her sister asked, clutching Mary’s hands worriedly. “What scared you?”

That was hard to say. The crystal Song that lived inside her now didn’t use words precisely, but there was no mistaking the meaning of that wailing note. The music didn’t want her to leave. They’d just gotten together! How could Mary abandon her?

“I’m not abandoning you,” Mary whispered, leaning down to pat the carpet of bright-glowing crystal that covered the cavern’s floor. “I’m just letting things cool off for a spell. Once I meet my family and say my hellos, I’ll come right back. I promise.”

The music still sounded anxious, but the Song must’ve had faith in her Singer’s word, ’cause the urgent chiming faded to the back of Mary’s thoughts, leaving her head clear as she turned back to her sister.

“How do we get home?”

Blackbird’s lovely face split into a grin as she pulled Mary across the broken crystal toward the waterfall. “We’ll follow the water,” she said confidently. “Bear Woman carried me here faster than the wind, but she still used the cracks the river made in the stone. All we have to do is retrace her steps, and we’ll find our way back to our part of the caves.”

Mary blinked. She’d heard all sorts of rumors that the Lakota were in the Deep Caves, but it was still a surprise to hear it confirmed. “Where’s your part of the caves?”

“Beneath the Black Hills.”

“The Black Hills?” Mary cried. “But that’s a hundred miles away!”

“It will be a long journey,” her sister agreed, smiling over her shoulder. “But as you just said, distance doesn’t work in the caves like it does above ground. We also have the crystal’s blessing, so I’m sure it’ll be less than you think.”

“Or it could be more,” Mary warned. “The caves wander however they please, which means our path is just as like to be longer as shorter. They might not even go that direction at all anymore.”

“We have to try,” her sister said. “If we go back the white man’s way, we’ll be murdered.”

Again, she had a good point, but Mary had something else in mind. “Maybe we can skip the walking altogether?”

Her sister gave her a confused look, and Mary explained. “I don’t have a lot of practice moving the caves yet, but the few times I have done felt natural as breathing. ’Course, that was only to places I knew already or ones that were right near me. Going somewhere far away I’ve never been to will be more of a stretch, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do it. If you can tell me what your caves sound like, I bet I could open a tunnel straight to ’em.”

“That would be incredible,” Blackbird said. “How do I do that?”

“By singing me their song,” Mary said, lifting a hand to her ear. “Every part of the caves has their own sound. If you sing me yours, I bet I can open a tunnel straight to it just like I did to get Josie back to town.”

She’d thought she’d put it simple enough, but her sister just looked blank at her, and Mary’s spirits began to sink. “I’m sorry, I just sorta assumed… Can you not hear the cave song?”

“Never,” Blackbird said, shaking her head. “And I am glad of it. I’ve no interest in the white man’s madness stone, but I can hear Bear Woman’s crystal just fine.”

Now it was Mary’s turn to gape. “Bear Woman has her own crystal?”

“Of course,” Blackbird said proudly. “That’s how we can use it without going mad like the wasichu do. The crystal that grows in Bear Woman’s caves is full of her strength. It is not sick like the rocks of this place.”

Mary scowled at the insult to her crystal, but she kept her mouth shut about it this time, ’cause the music inside her agreed with her sister. Bear Woman’s crystal was more stable. You could tell so from the sound, which Mary just now realized she could hear pulsing from the crystal on Blackbird’s dress. The stones she wore didn’t chime or sing or wander like the crystal Mary was used to. They pounded, pulsing together in a deep, steady rhythm like the beat of a war drum.

“Did those come from Bear Woman’s cave?” she asked, pointing at her sister’s dress.

Blackbird nodded proudly. “Bear Woman herself gave them to me when I swore myself to her. They’re what allow me to hear her voice wherever I am, even outside of the caves.”

She sounded so pleased, but Mary couldn’t stop herself from wincing. “Bear Woman made you swear to follow her?”

“I pledged it gladly,” Blackbird said, lifting her chin. “It was Bear Woman who gave us the power to defeat our enemy and take back what they stole. Now she has given me back my lost sister as well!” Her sister’s face split into a dazzling smile. “I can think of no one more worthy to follow.”

Mary couldn’t fault her for that. She, too, held the caves in great reverence. Why shouldn’t her sister do the same? It certainly made things easier. All Mary had to do was lean near Bear Woman’s crystal, and its drumming sound leaped up to meet her ears. When she had the rhythm set in her head, Mary reached out like she’d done before when she’d sent Lucas, Chaucer, and Josie back to town, feeling down the veins of crystal that coursed like rivers through the earth until she found the one that matched.

It was very far away. Blackbird had warned her, but knowing something was halfway across the plains and actually reaching ’cross the distance were two very different things. Fortunately, Bear Woman’s music was a lot louder than the mined-out stone of the Front Caves. It was still the devil to stretch for, but once Mary actually touched the sound, everything worked just like before.

As soon as she made the connection, the two caves snapped together like a dovetail joint. The tunnel opened a heartbeat later, peeling back the crystal walls of her beloved Mother Lode like petals to reveal a cavern Mary had never seen.

It was even bigger than the one they were standing in. Like the Mother Lode that held her pillar, the new cavern was covered from floor to ceiling in brightly glowing crystal, but these rocks looked nothing like the ones Mary knew.

Whereas Calamity’s crystals grew all over like a wild garden, the cave ahead of them was neat as a farm field. Uncountable crystals of identical size, shape, and color covered the cavern’s walls like bristles on a hairbrush. Stone ledges ran through at regular intervals, providing walkways for the dozens and dozens of Lakota wearing the same crystal-covered clothes as Blackbird. They walked between the crystal rows like farmers tending crops, touching and whispering to each stone before selecting the biggest ones to place in their woven grass baskets. Still more Lakota were kneeling on the cavern floor, scraping flint knives across the large, flat crystals that covered the ground to create piles of sparkling crystal dust that they swept up with their hands into leather sacks.

It was incredible to behold. No one was using hammers or chisels, and the stones they collected didn’t scream like the ones in the Mother Lode had done when Josie was taking her samples. Quite the opposite. This crystal looked like it was growing specifically so it could be harvested, and the Lakota were doing so in huge amounts. Sacks and sacks and sacks of crystal pieces and dust were piled up along the stone walls, ready to be used.

The abundance continued down the round tunnels that ran off the main cavern’s sides. The offshoots weren’t nearly as big as the main cavern. Despite this, or maybe because of it, their walls were even more thickly covered. There was one right beside where they’d come in. Unlike the bigger cavern, its wall was close enough that Mary could see the individual crystals bristling from the wall like a forest of tiny pines. She’d never seen natural crystal grow that shape before, but when Blackbird bent down and picked up one of the points Mary’s tunnel had knocked free, she realized there was nothing natural ’bout it. Those weren’t crystals growing however they wanted. They were arrowheads. Perfectly formed and ready to shoot, right down to the notch at the bottom for the shaft.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” Blackbird whispered as she placed the deadly point in Mary’s palm. “Hold it carefully. We sing them hungry songs to make them good hunters, and they’ll cut you any chance they get.”

Mary swallowed, brushing the crystal—which was colored a deep, angry red—gingerly with her calloused fingers. It rang back as she did so, filling her head with a drumming so loud, it drowned out even her Song.

“What is this place?” she asked, looking up at the bright glowing cavern filled with blood-hungry weapons.

“It’s Bear Woman’s gift to us,” her sister replied proudly, retrieving the arrowhead from Mary’s hand. “Arrows tipped with these points will take a cavalry soldier off his horse even if the warrior who fires them can barely shoot, and the powder we scrape off the ground can be mixed to make a paint so strong not even a bullet can get through it. These are the weapons she has given us for no price except our labor, for she once lived on these plains as well. We are all the same People, and she will not let us fall.”

Blackbird pointed as she spoke, and Mary’s eyes went farther back to a new stone she hadn’t noticed before. She didn’t know why. Of all the crystals in the glittering cave, this was the biggest by far: a great round boulder rising from the center of the cavern’s strangely flat floor like a miniature mountain. A white boulder, pale as moonlight amid all the glowing colors, and hanging inside it like a shadow was a familiar figure.

“Bear Woman,” Mary whispered as her Song whirled inside her head.

She shouldn’t have been so shocked. Blackbird had said this was her cavern, and Bear Woman had told her flat out that she was also a Singer. Mary hadn’t put two and two together, though, until they were in front of her. This was where Bear Woman had entered her crystal! Just like Mary had been sucked into Calamity’s pillar, that was Bear Woman’s body in there, the part of her that had once been a flesh-and-blood person.

She still even looked like her human self, right down to the old-fashioned dress. But while Mary had been free to walk around in her white nothing, the figure in this stone didn’t move. She just hung inside it like a bug in amber, and the longer Mary looked, the more she began to worry.

Should she not’ve come out of her pillar? It had felt like the right thing to do, but if Bear Woman was still inside hers, maybe it wasn’t. Nervous, she reached for her Song, but Calamity didn’t know the answer either. Mary was her first Singer, so who knew what was right?

“Now you see why I was so afraid when I first saw you,” Blackbird said, pointing at the frozen figure. “I thought I’d arrived too late and you were already like her, trapped forever inside the crystal. Even worse, the white man’s mad crystal! But you got free. That must have been why Bear Woman sent me to you! She knew I could get you out, and now we can go home together!”

Her sister’s words made Mary’s heart lurch. She still didn’t know what it meant that she was out while Bear Woman wasn’t, but in this place full of Lakota, it was finally dawning on Mary that this was it. She was finally going home.

The realization almost sent her to her knees. Mary couldn’t say how long she’d waited for the moment. It felt like too much good, which usually meant disaster was right around the corner. Maybe this was all a dream, and she was still trapped in her cavern. When she looked up, though, Blackbird was right there, taking her hand to pull her sister into the cavern with the others.

Mary scrambled after, desperate to get to the other side before anything went wrong. The moment her feet left the tunnel, the Song inside her gave a terrified groan.

“It’s okay,” Mary whispered, looking back over her shoulder at the white pillar, which was flickering in distress. “I’m only going for a little while, and I’ll be with Bear Woman’s kin. You like her, right?”

The words were supposed to be reassuring, but the feelings that surged back at her were complicated. There was lots of love, but fear and anger as well. Mostly, Mary got the impression that the Song didn’t want to be alone, and who could blame her? She’d been stuck in that dark cave by herself for who knew how long. Now, not even an hour after they’d found each other, Mary was leaving. No wonder her Song was upset, and yet…

“I can’t give up this chance,” Mary told her crystal, pointing at the cavern full of Lakota, who’d all stopped working to look curiously at the new girl with her new tunnel. “This is what I’ve been looking for my whole life, and it’s not like I’m really leaving.” She placed a hand on her muddy shirtfront. “You’re right here inside me, so it’s not really goodbye. I’m just moving farther away for a spell, but I swear I’ll come back here soon as I can. Cross my heart.”

The music was still trilling nervously, but the effort of holding a tunnel open across so much distance was starting to make Mary sweat. If she didn’t get through quick, it would crumble just like the one she’d opened back to town. Mary wasn’t sure she could make another one without Blackbird’s dress full of Bear Woman crystal to listen to, so before she could lose her nerve, she hopped forward, jumping into Bear Woman’s cave just before the rocks she’d pushed open started falling back into place.

“I’ll be right back!” she yelled at her pillar through the collapsing hole. “Wait there for me!”

That was a stupid thing to say to a rock, but it made Mary feel better all the same. At least, she felt better until the tunnel finished closing. As the rocks fell shut and the path back closed, the cave song she’d come to know as well as her own breathing went away with it.

“Calamity?” Mary said nervously, reaching out to touch the now-smooth wall behind her. “Calamity!”

Nothing. She knew the music had to still be there ’cause she and her Song were one and the same now, but she couldn’t hear a note of it. She didn’t know if that was because her Song was mad at her or she was too far away or if Bear Woman’s crystal was just too loud for her to hear anything else. The sound of it was punishing now that she was actually in the cavern, not just looking out at it from her tunnel: a thundering war drum that beat on and on with the same steady beat. It didn’t wander or sing like the caves she was used to, making her feel farther from home than she’d ever been.

She almost turned back then. They’d only been together a short time, but not being able to hear her Song already felt wrong in a way Mary’d never known before. She was actually reaching to open a tunnel back to her cavern when Blackbird caught her hand.

“I can’t wait for you to meet everyone!” she cried, dragging Mary away from the wall toward the center of the cavern. “I’ve been working here since last winter, and we’ve already done so much! Crystal arrowheads were just the beginning. Bear Woman has taught us even greater magic, power that will ensure no one ever threatens us again! Follow me to the camp and I’ll show you!”

“Is our family at the camp?” Mary asked, looking up at the hundreds of Lakota watching Blackbird drag her across the cavern.

Blackbird shook her head, pointing at the crystals on her dress that also decorated the clothes of every person here. “This is a sacred place. Only those who’ve pledged themselves to Bear Woman may enter. The rest of our family are with Sitting Bull in the north. We’ll go to them soon, but for now, come and see what we’ve done!”

Mary didn’t want to wait another minute, but she didn’t want to offend her sister, so she let Blackbird her drag away. “You said this place was under the Black Hills, right? How are you able to work down here? I thought that area was crawling with miners.”

“It used to be crawling with miners,” her sister told her with a deadly smile. “Now there are none.”

“How’d you manage that?”

Blackbird didn’t answer at once. She just walked faster, dragging Mary past the huge white boulder where Bear Woman’s body was stuck and out through a tunnel in the wall on the other side. This path led to a long stone stair that went up at such a steep slant, it was basically a ladder. Mary had to use her hands as much as her feet to go up it, which made her wonder how anyone did this with a basket full of crystal, but at least the verticality meant the trip was short. Not ten minutes after they started climbing, Blackbird was pulling her up to a ledge by a small gap in the rocks where sunlight was streaming in, along with a howling wind that rose and fell like the sleeping breaths of the earth itself.

“This is the Wind Cave,” Blackbird said before Mary could ask, raising her voice over the gusts. “Watch your feet. The breath is strong.”

It definitely was. If Mary hadn’t left her hat back in the Mother Lode, it would’ve been blown clean off her head. The wind wasn’t quite enough to blow her over, but she had to fight for every step, curling her body against the howling as she followed her sister toward the crack in the stone where the sunlight shone through.

Coming out of the caves was always a shock, but the glorified rabbit hole that ended the mines in Medicine Rocks was nothing on this. The moment Mary stepped out of the Wind Cave, a whole new landscape hit her like a slap across the face: a great open vista of green peaks and clear blue sky. They’d come out on the side of a cliff overlooking the Black Hills, the sacred mountains in the middle of the plains that the Lakota believed were the center of the world. Given what they’d just climbed out of, Mary could believe that better now than when she’d first heard it, but what really took her breath was what lay below them.

Just down the hill from the cliff they stood on was the camp Blackbird had mentioned. The Lakota settlement took up a good swath of the high hillside. There were no big tepees or lodges, just temporary lean-tos between the trees, but that was to be expected. For all that this was a sacred place, the Lakota never stayed long in the Black Hills. Even the small shelters looked out of place in the dense forest, but what Mary found strangest was how high up they were.

Surely it would have been easier to camp in the valley. There’d certainly be more water down there, but Mary couldn’t actually see that far thanks to the bank of silver-gray fog lying like a blanket at the foot of the mountains. The other peaks poked up around them like big green islands in the river of the cloud, but the valleys were completely hidden, which made no sense at all.

It was late afternoon in midsummer with a clear sky and hot sun. Any low-lying fog should’ve burned away hours ago, yet there it was, and not just a little. The clouds were rolling in huge banks, some of which Mary swore were moving against the wind, their rising and falling perfectly matched to the beat of Bear Woman’s drums.

Once she noticed, she couldn’t unsee it. It wasn’t just the fog in the valleys. Everything here pulsed in time with the beat of Bear Woman’s sound, even her own heart. That could’ve been because they were standing directly over her cavern, but Mary didn’t think so. Something bigger was going on here. Something Blackbird was incredibly proud of, going by the smile on her face when Mary turned back around.

“What did you do?”

“Great magic,” her sister whispered, pointing over the end of the rocky ledge. “As you said, the sacred Black Hills were crawling with thieving wasichu. They signed treaty after treaty promising they would not trespass on this land if we gave them others, but after gold was discovered in the creeks, they swarmed these hills like vermin. The soldiers didn’t even try to stop them. Instead, they killed us for defending the land they had promised would be ours forever. It was obvious to everyone that they would never keep their word, so we kept it for them.”

Mary swallowed. “Does that mean you killed them?”

Blackbird shook her head. “We already knew that wouldn’t work. Kill one miner, and five more show up to fight over his belongings. We needed something better, so we prayed to Bear Woman, and this was what she gave us.” She nodded down at the rolling clouds. “That is the Home-Going Cloud. All who breathe it in are overcome with the urge to go back to the place of their birth, which means they can’t stay to bother us no matter how great their greed.”

“Doesn’t that mean you can’t go down there either?” Mary asked. “You breathe air too.”

“It’s only until we take back the rest of the prairie,” Blackbird assured her. “Once we control all the land around the Black Hills, we’ll send the fog away. Until then…” She shrugged. “We make our home on the grasslands with the buffalo, not up here in the hills. Getting back and forth from the Wind Cave is harder, true, but that’s a small price to pay to drive the faithless invaders out of the most sacred place in the world.”

Mary nodded, still not quite believing. She’d seen crystal do some crazy things but nothing close to this scale. The rivers of fog stretched as far as she could see between the mountains. What the devil was Bear Woman doing killing miners over blasting if she had the power to do something as big as this? Mary was about to ask Blackbird how exactly it had happened when she saw them.

There, cooked into the cliff like scorch marks from a fire, were the shadows of people. There were two dozen at least: perfect black outlines of men and women. Now that she’d seen them, Mary realized she could hear them as well. Like everything else here, they pulsed with the drumbeat, ghostly voices singing forever of vengeance seen through.

“Holy Mother,” she whispered, backing away from the nearest ash mark, which was practically under her boots. “What happened?”

“A successful battle,” Blackbird replied, her dark eyes sharp. “Bear Woman told us what needed to be done, but even a spirit as strong as she is can’t do something this massive on her own. She needed warriors, so we gave her our songs.”

“You mean she killed them.”

“We gave our lives to her,” Blackbird corrected. “It is because of Bear Woman that we’ve gone from being pushed back to pushing forward. Her crystal has already led us to many victories. Now we’ve won back the entire Black Hills with only a handful lost!” She pointed at the shadows. “Each person who died here was my friend, but I do not mourn them. They are heroes whose songs shall be sung forever! If they had not made the sacrifice, thousands would have died taking back these hills. Now our cost can be counted on two hands, and the white man is gone forever.” She smiled. “Truly, it was a great victory. My only regret was that I was not here to help.”

Mary froze. “You wanted to die too?”

“I wanted to fight,” her sister said proudly. “I was supposed to fight, but Bear Woman came to me as we were preparing, and the others bid me go to you instead.”

“Thank goodness,” Mary said with a happy sigh, but Blackbird’s face was serious as a funeral.

“Do not celebrate my survival,” she said in a dangerous voice. “I am overjoyed to have found you, sister, but we are at war. If my life could have helped bring us such a victory, I would have given it gladly.”

The conviction in those words turned Mary’s blood to ice. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t,” she said, moving farther away from the burned-out marks. “Now, when do we see our family?”

“We’ll leave as soon as I talk to the others,” Blackbird promised, finally walking away from the death she’d barely avoided to start down the rocky path toward camp. “Come! There are many people I want you to meet.”

Mary wasn’t normally one for being on display, but she ran eagerly after her sister, happy to get away from the shadows that had once been people.

And in her head, half forgotten in the excitement, Bear Woman’s war drums droned on and on.

Chapter 2

July 12, 1876

33 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

In a cold, empty, dusty blackness, a little girl named Reliance Reiner sat alone with her knees drawn up to her chin, huddled next to a fire that burned as white as bone.

She was dressed for a summer party in a pale-yellow frock trimmed with silk ribbons, but the grime of this place had long since stained her cheery flounced skirt black as a coal miner’s apron. Her pale hands were even filthier, and the long mahogany hair that had once been pinned up in silky ringlets now lay in bedraggled clumps across her shoulders, matted and stringy as an old plow horse’s tail.

She didn’t know how long she’d been like this. There was no sun in this place, no changing moon or turning stars to mark the passage of time. Just darkness and dust and the uncanny pale fire that was her only light and warmth. The rest was nothingness, a black desert of ash-fine sand that would freeze you to death if you went too far out into it.

Reliance knew that last part for certain. She’d tried to escape several times now, but straying too far from the white fire brought a deathly cold that turned her limbs to clunking wood. There was nothing to walk toward, anyway, so here she was: stuck in the prison of her own foolish pride.

“Stupid, stupid,” she whispered at the fire. “You knew what he was, and you still let him trick you. This is all your fault, you stupid girl!”

It was the same abusive refrain she’d repeated since her father had stolen her body and trapped her here, and, now as ever, it didn’t do a lick of good. No matter how foully Rel cursed herself, she was still stuck with no clue how to get free. She’d tried charging the blackness, she’d tried digging, she’d even tried stomping out the white fire, but none of it had worked. The fire had been the worst. Its flames danced on no fuel Rel could see, but the heat of it had scorched right through her little leather shoe before she’d yanked her foot back to safety. Clearly, the light was as much a part of her prison as the dark. It was the less terrifying half, though, so that was where Rel stayed, hugging her knees on the ashy ground as she waited to die.

“You’re only prolonging the inevitable,” she said sternly, clenching her filthy hands. “Just throw yourself in and end it already.”

That was the one thing she hadn’t tried yet. Her scorched shoe proved that the fire could hurt her. All she had to do was flop forward, endure a few minutes of pain, and she’d be free.

The idea grew more tempting with every unmarked hour, but Reliance had never been one to accept defeat gracefully. When she’d first found herself here, she’d sworn she’d wait forever before she gave up her chance to spit in the old bastard’s eye one last time. But that was a long time ago now, and she was tired. So, so tired of losing. Tired of failing. Tired of having everything taken from her. Maybe she should give burning a try? If nothing else, it’d be a change.

Slowly, deliberately, Reliance reached her little, ash-stained fingers toward the light. The white flames leaped when she got close, spitting out a rainbow of colors that would have dazzled Rel if she hadn’t been so numb. She was almost to the burning part when another hand—a gentlewoman’s, with long, elegant fingers—grabbed her by the wrist.

“Oh, Relly,” said a sad, beautiful voice. “What are you doing?”

Rel jumped in shock and scrambled away through the dust. There’d never been anyone but her in the dark place. She hadn’t known another soul could exist here, but when she looked up to see who’d grabbed her, her dead mother was standing over her, smiling like a saint.

She looked just as lovely as Rel remembered. It didn’t matter that her dress was worn or her silky brown hair had turned gray far before its time. She still looked like a princess from the storybooks. A noble figure from a more gracious time.

Like Rel, she was dressed in the fashion from when they’d lived with the Prices in Boston, not the sturdy pioneering clothes they’d worn for the ride out west, which made no sense. Rel had seen ghosts aplenty, and every one of them had looked precisely as they did at the moment of their death. She knew that for a fact when it came to her mother, ’cause she’d seen Prudence Reiner’s ghost more than any other.

“How are you here?” she demanded, shooting to her full height, such as it was. “Your soul is still trapped back at the cabin. I saw you!” Her blue eyes narrowed. “Are you another of that bastard’s tricks?”

“I’m no trick,” her mother said, kneeling in the ash so she could look the angry little girl in the face. “I’m here because you’ve kept me alive.”

Rel flinched back. “But I didn’t,” she whispered. “I wasn’t there. I let you die.”

“My body died,” Prudence Reiner said gently. “But you, of all people, should know that’s not where we live. The soul is a song that never ends. It echoes forever inside our bones and in the souls of those who treasure us.” She placed a hand on the front of her handsome dress, perfect down to the last stitch. “You must have loved me very much to keep my echo so perfectly.”

“Of course I loved you!” Rel cried, tears cutting lines through the black grime on her cheeks. “You were the only one who ever loved me. But I failed you, Momma!”

Her mother shook her head. “That’s not true. You did everything you could.”

“I could’ve stopped him!” Rel argued. “What was the point of learning to shoot if I wasn’t there to use my gun when it mattered?”

“I’m happy you weren’t there,” Prudence said sternly. “If you’d been at that cabin, you could have died as well, and then we’d all be trapped. It’s because you were not there that you were saved, and now you’ve got the chance to save us.”

“But I can’t!” Rel cried, her voice cracking to pieces. “I never found the man who shot you! I tried to hunt him down, but I fell for Daddy’s tricks like a fool and lost my body. Josie ’n the others might already be dead by my hand, and I can’t even get out of here to see how much damage I’ve done.”

She dropped her head and wiped her nose on her dirty sleeve. “It would’ve been better if we’d all died that day. At least then that old bastard Reiner would still be trapped out there with us, and none of this would’ve happened.”

She looked up for sympathy, but her mother’s face was hard as stone. “Don’t you ever say such things, Reliance Reiner,” she whispered, her hands clamped on Rel’s shoulders. “I endured that man for you and your brother’s sake. So long as you’re alive, there’s still a chance we can be free. Don’t you dare give up on any of us, and that includes yourself.”

Rel shook her head wildly. “But I can’t do it! I don’t even know how to get out of this place!”

“You’ll figure it out,” her mother said, brushing Rel’s dirty hair away from her face. “You’re a clever and determined young lady who’s never backed down from a challenge in her life. That’s the good part of what you inherited from your father.”

“I want nothing of his,” Rel said angrily, clutching her fists so hard that her knuckles cracked. “If I do nothing else good in this world, I swear, I’ll make him pay for the hell he brought us.”

“I’d much rather you live,” her mother said, cupping Rel’s face with her hands. “Don’t waste your life chasing the dead, Relly. Don’t make the same mistake your father did.”

Rel was about to shout she’d never be anything like him when a force reached down out of the darkness and seized her by every limb. It felt like she’d been grabbed by the hand of God, but there was nothing holy about it. Rel knew this feeling from before, and now just like then, she couldn’t escape. No matter how she kicked and bit, Rel couldn’t get free, because she wasn’t a person in a body anymore. She was a ghost in a crystal gun, and her father was holding her tight as a noose as he ripped her out of the darkness.

“Don’t let him tear you down, Relly!” her mother shouted as her body began to dissolve back into the ash. “Remember, you’re a Reiner too! You can also—”

Whatever she was about to say was lost in the rush of sound as her father pulled Rel out of the cold quiet of her prison into the blinding brightness of the sunbaked plains.

~~~

The world came back in a rush. All at once, Rel was in a leather holster, riding through a landscape so bright and stark, she felt like a bug crawling on the inside of a limelight. As her eyes—or whatever it was ghosts saw with—adjusted to the searing brightness, she saw the land was neither endless nor flat. It only looked that way because the low hills and gullies were covered in a carpet of waving brown grass that hid their dips and folds.

A man could break his leg without even seeing the hole in country like this. Same for a horse, which made Rel all the more nervous that they seemed to be cutting straight across. What was the point of coming back to the real world if she was just gonna watch her reckless fool of a father get her body killed in a riding accident? Assuming he hadn’t half killed her already.

The body on the saddle—Rel’s body, which he’d stolen—looked beat to shit. Her pale skin was seared red by the blazing sun, and her face had grown so thin, Rel could see the ridges of her skull around her sunken eyes. She looked like death, which Rel supposed was fitting given a dead man was doing the driving.

The hell did you do to me?

“No need to be blasphemous,” her father replied, tightening Rel’s bone-thin hand on the grip of the crystal gun like he was tightening a choke hold. “Despite great difficulties you won’t understand, I’ve kept this carcass alive, which is more than you were managing when I took over. Now be quiet. We’re nearly to the gate.”

Rel didn’t give him the pleasure of asking which gate. She just jerked the weapon around, turning the haunted gun in his grip as he used to do to her to see what he meant for herself.

Just ahead of them, rising from the stubby brown grass like a cliff from the sea, was the biggest collection of buildings Rel had seen since leaving the East Coast. Each one was just as tall as anything back in Boston, but built from fieldstones rather than bricks. Other than that local oddity, though, they looked like modern factories, complete with giant smokestacks on their roofs and huge glass windows to let in the light.

How the hell anyone had gotten that much glass way out here, Rel had no clue. Nothing about this place made sense. Who built a giant factory in the middle of nowhere? And what part of nowhere were they in? It looked like what she remembered of Wyoming from the one time she’d passed through, but all the Great Plains looked so similar, it was hard to say for certain.

Wherever this place was, folks out here must not have been paying attention. The smoke from those chimneys would’ve been visible for fifty miles when the furnaces were going. Even now when they were cold, the smokestacks stood out like iron nails from the flat brown board of the plains. Surely someone must’ve noticed something so obvious, but Rel’d never caught word of a place like this. She was wondering what in the world it could be when she spotted them.

There, climbing like ants all over the twenty-foot fieldstone wall that protected the factories from the grasslands beyond, were the dead. They were naked and thin, their skin baked so brown and leathery by the sun, they looked more like strips of jerky than humans. There was no mistaking what they were, though. Now that Rel was in the gun rather than her flesh, her eyes worked like she was chugging crystal all the time, giving her a perfect view of the souls flickering inside the corpses like little candles.

The ghosts screamed inside their fleshy prisons, but they could not escape. They were pinned in place by thumbnail-sized pebbles of crystal someone had stitched into their corpses. The rocks’ shining light overwhelmed the paler ghosts, forcing them to move in unison like workers on a chain gang as they lifted yet more stones up the wooden ramps, piling the factory fortress’s walls even higher.

Where the devil have you taken us?

“You can’t possibly be that ignorant,” her father scolded in Rel’s own voice, keeping her blue eyes locked on the fortress’s iron gate they were riding straight toward. “You know where we are.”

Rel didn’t know squat, but she could guess. The only time she’d seen the dead moving themselves outside of her father’s workshop was down in the caves right before she’d lost. If that weren’t enough to go by, the two guards coming out to meet them had crystal stitched all over their faces, making their sneers glitter like chandeliers in the punishing sunlight.

You suicidal idiot! You’ve brought us to the Whitmans’ den!

“Correct,” her father said, sliding off his horse. “And if you want to keep this body alive, you’ll shut up and let me do the talking. I’ll let you know if I want you to fire.”

Rel wasn’t sure if he was telling her that because she could fire on her own or if he just liked bossing her around. She was tempted to try putting a bullet in his foot just to see, but she worried that shooting her stolen body with the crystal gun would obliterate both their souls, and sudden moves definitely didn’t seem like a good idea. Dead or alive, Whitmans weren’t the sort you wanted to startle. These guards weren’t as big or bejeweled as the pumpkin-footed giant who’d chased them though the tunnels, but each of them was packing two six-shooters and a rifle, and the crystal stitched into their foreheads gave their eyes a mad gleam as they watched her father approach.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said in the too-polite voice he used to sweet-talk idiots. “I’m here to speak with Vincent Reiner. Would you be so kind as to show me to him?”

The guards seemed surprised by this, though not a thousandth so much as Rel was.

Vincent Reiner? she repeated, shaking in her holster. Vincent Reiner?

“Vincent who?” demanded the crystal-stitched bandit on the left.

“I believe you know him as the ‘Bone Smith,’” her father explained patiently.

The guards shared an uncomfortable look. “Bone Smith’s a busy man,” said the one on the right, giving Rel’s skeletal, sunburned body the hairy eyeball. “Who’s asking?”

“He’ll know who I am,” Reiner replied confidently. “Only one person in the world would address him by that name, so I suggest you escort me posthaste. If he hears you’ve kept me waiting, he will be most displeased.”

From the way they spit on the dusty ground, the guards didn’t appreciate the threat. They must have been truly terrified of this Bone Smith, though. Despite her father’s punch-worthy levels of condescension, it only took a few whispers before the bandits opened the gate and stepped wide, leaving a generous space for Rel’s body to pass between them.

Who is Vincent Reiner? Rel demanded as her father walked them inside. How is he related to us?

As usual when she was asking about important things, he didn’t reply. Rel had already seen the dead on the walls, though, so she could guess well enough.

He’s the one who killed you, isn’t he?

Again, her father said nothing. Again, though, he didn’t need to. Now that they were inside the fortress, the proof was everywhere.

The whole place was filled with broken, murdered men. The ones working on the walls she’d already seen, but there were hundreds more crystal-pinned corpses standing shoulder to shoulder under huge wooden sheds like equipment waiting to be sent out. Others were busy pushing blood-splattered carts to sorting houses where packs of bandits dug through the contents, pulling out sacks of flour and barrels of salted meat that had clearly been meant for sale somewhere else.

Not all of the living men had crystal stitched into their bodies, but every one of them seemed used to the dead that served them like mute slaves, which told Rel all she needed to know. She knew of only one power that could do that to a corpse. This was her father’s villainy, the dark act he’d been doing in his workroom when she’d walked in on him that awful day. She’d never exploded at him like she had that afternoon, but his stubbornness and the horror of his bloody work had won in the end. Overwhelmed by impotent anger and fear, she’d run away into the plains, leaving her mother and brother defenseless against the real horror that’d showed up just a few hours later.

“I should think you’d be more excited,” Reiner told her quietly as the gate guard escorted them past the sorting bars and through a long warehouse full of what appeared to be very nice new cannons. “You’re finally going to meet the murderer you’ve been hunting for all this time.”

He killed you too, Rel said darkly. I’m starting to think that puts him on my side.

Her bastard of a father had the audacity to chuckle at that as they stopped in front of what appeared to be a storm cellar set into the stone floor of the cannon storehouse. One of the guards who’d led them here pulled open the double doors and walked down the stairs below while the other stayed to keep watch. While they waited for the first man to come back up, Rel got a better look at the rear half of the sprawling fortress through the cannon shed’s back door.

Unlike the front, which seemed to be nothing but sorting houses and storage, the back of the fortress was a full factory complete with an iron works and a huge furnace that ran a massive steam turbine for the generation of electricity. Why a bunch of bandits needed all that electricity or where they got the water for such a big setup, Rel had no idea, but she didn’t like it one bit.

She’d always dismissed the Whitmans as a highwayman gang. A huge, well-run gang with a damn creepy way of using crystal, but still just a bunch of thieves at the end of the day. This was no bandit camp, though. This was a damn facility, a modern factory as advanced as anything she’d read about in the papers. None of it looked to be currently in use, but just seeing the Whitmans had such things was an unwelcome shock.

Add in the well-armed bandits and the rows of shiny new cannons behind them, and it looked like they were building a legit army out here in the middle of nowhere. She was leaning against her holster to try to get a better look when the guard who’d walked down into the cellar suddenly came back up.

“Bone Smith says you can go in.”

He’d probably said a lot more than that, given how much the guard was shaking. It creeped Rel out something fierce, but Reiner just went right ahead, pushing the shaking guard out of the way as he carried Rel down a narrow flight of wooden stairs into the ground below the cannon warehouse.

At the bottom was another door insulated with lead. It unlocked when Reiner touched it, swinging open on well-oiled hinges to reveal a large underground room that was cold as winter and stank of death.

Rel didn’t know that last part for sure since guns didn’t have noses, but the corpses on the metal worktable in the middle didn’t look very fresh. The walls were lined with labeled crates of bones, and the big oak desk in the corner was covered with all manner of crystal weaponry in various states of disassembly. Another cabinet beside it was filled with an assortment of waxed threads and big hooked needles of the type you normally saw in a leatherworker’s shop. Next to that stood a medicine chest whose numerous drawers were so piled with different types of crystal, they could no longer close.

It belonged to a madman, that much was certain. The basement room actually reminded her very much of her father’s old workshop, which only put Rel even more on edge. So much so that she nearly missed the slender, short-statured man standing in the middle. The most familiar-looking person Rel was certain she’d never met.

It was uncanny. She would’ve sworn on her mother’s Bible that she’d never seen him before in her life, yet the man’s face was as familiar as Rel’s own, probably because they were nearly identical. The thick dark-brown hair, the blue eyes, the pale skin, even the too-blue veins that ran like rivers across the backs of his hands, they all looked exactly like hers. He could’ve been her twin, more like her than her actual brother had been. They even seemed about the same age, which was why, despite how shocking all of this should have been, Rel couldn’t muster even a gasp of surprise when the stranger grabbed a crystal-covered shotgun off the wall and pointed it at his visitor, looking down the barrel with a single hateful word.

“Father.”

“I’m impressed you recognized me in this body,” Reiner said, smiling at him with Rel’s cracked lips. “You’ve gotten better, Vincent.”

“And you’ve gotten stupider,” said the man who looked like Rel as he cocked the hammer. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you again.”

“Because we have unfinished business,” Reiner said, walking into the room as if there weren’t two crystal-studded barrels pointed at his face. “Put that gaudy thing away. You wouldn’t want to accidentally shoot your sister, would you?”

Vincent’s furious scowl wavered a fraction. “Sister?”

“Can’t you see the resemblance?” Reiner asked, turning Rel’s face toward the bright kerosene lanterns that hung from the low ceiling. “It was a stroke of good fortune she wasn’t home when you paid us a visit last Christmas. Thanks to her, I have the opportunity to finish saying what you didn’t let me that day.”

“What in the world could you have to say to me?”

“That I’m sorry.”

Rel jumped in her holster. She couldn’t have heard that right. There was no way.

“You’re sorry?” Vincent repeated, clearly as shocked as she was. “You?”

“Even I make mistakes,” Reiner said with a great show of contrition. “You had every right to be angry with me, but you must understand. Your mother and I—”

“Don’t you speak about my mother!” Vincent roared, snatching up the gun that had drifted lower as he’d listened. “You stole everything from us! She was the heir to the Smiths of Wales, the greatest bone-crafters to ever walk the Earth! She was an artist and a scientist, a prodigy of her time! But you seduced her when she was only nineteen. You promised to marry her and unite our two families, yet you conveniently neglected to mention that you were already married! You lied to get access to our family secrets, and then, after you had what you wanted, you left her alone and with child!”

“A horrible thing,” Reiner agreed. “But I had every intention of—”

“The rest of the Smiths cast her out because of what you did,” Vincent spat. “Only my grandfather had mercy. He took my mother away from those who’d rejected her and went west.”

“Augustus brought you out here?” Reiner’s voice grew thoughtful. “Incredible. Is he still alive?”

Vincent’s lips curled in a hateful sneer. “Of course he’s the one you ask about. You don’t even care that you got my mother killed!”

“Em’s dead?” He frowned. “How did it happen?”

“We were attacked by Indians,” Vincent said, his eyes lost in the past. “I was barely old enough to walk. The only thing I remember is the fire, but my grandfather told me that she was abducted by one of the warriors. Once he’d burned our wagon and killed our oxen, the savage snatched my mother onto his saddle and carried her away on his horse. Grandfather tracked them for days using every trick he knew. He wanted to get her body back at least, but…”

“You never found her,” Reiner finished, sounding genuinely sad this time. Probably mourning the loss of a good set of bones.

“He took care of me alone after that,” Vincent went on in a shaky voice. “As much as he could, anyway. He’d left the East Coast for my mother’s sake, but he went west because of the music. That damn, damn music only he could hear.”

Rel perked up. That sort of talk reminded her of Mary and Josie’s uncle. Vincent’s complaint was decades before the discovery of crystal, though, so it must’ve been something else. Some cursed Necromancy song, which indeed seemed to be the case as her murdering half brother continued.

“He lost himself in it completely by the end,” Vincent said, tightening his hands on his crystal gun. “But not before he’d taught me everything he knew, all our family’s arts. I was going to use them to track you down and make you pay. I thought I’d have to go all the way to Boston, but then I heard tell of a man in the Dakotas who was buying corpses. A man who called himself Reiner. There was only one bastard by that name who’d need the dead, so I followed the stories, and I killed you. I killed you and took back everything you’d taken.”

He pointed at a bookcase on the opposite wall of the freezing basement room, which was packed with leather folios that Rel recognized immediately. Those were her father’s notes, the ones the killer had stolen the night he’d murdered her family. Based on his breath of relief, her dad recognized them too, but Vincent wasn’t done.

“Don’t even think about it,” he growled, shoving his shotgun inches from their father’s face. “Those are my property now. I’ve used what you wrote to make myself what you betrayed my mother to become: a necromancer of two arts, master of two houses! That’s how our story ends, so why are you here?”

“Because it isn’t finished yet,” Reiner said, his voice gleeful in a way that made Rel’s skin crawl even though she no longer had flesh. “If you think I’m mad about being killed, you don’t know what it means to be a necromancer.” He reached out to tap Vincent’s crystal shotgun. “I’m actually quite impressed by how much you’ve accomplished using only my notes. Truly, you are worthy of the name Reiner.”

“I don’t want your damn name,” Vincent spat, knocking Reiner’s hand away.

“But what of my knowledge?” their father offered, smiling around the weapon that was still pointing at him. “Those notes don’t represent just my research. They are the work of generations. The product of hundreds of Reiners working together toward a common goal: the total mastery of the soul. The fact that you still have them after all these months proves you understand their value, but what’s on those shelves is just a fraction of the Reiners’ necromancy. The dregs we deemed trivial enough to write down. Our true art lives here.” He tapped the side of Rel’s skull with a grin. “Family knowledge. A gift that can only be passed from father to son.”

“I don’t want your damn gift,” Vincent spat. “All I want is for you to die.”

“Then why haven’t you shot me yet?” Reiner asked with a cocky smile. “You might hate me with all your heart, but you’re a necromancer, same as I am. How it must have galled you to know there were secrets in those notes you’d never unravel. Things that only I could teach you.”

“Shut up!” Vincent yelled, shoving the crystal shotgun against Reiner’s stolen nose. “Just shut your damn mouth!”

“But that’s not what you want, is it?” Reiner taunted, staring down the twin barrels. “I’m the only one left who truly understands what’s written in those pages, but I can do more than just fill the gaps in your understanding. I can show you something new. Something even I didn’t know when you killed me. That’s why you can’t shoot, because you’re like me. You have to know.”

Bile rose in the throat Rel no longer had. From the moment she’d realized who he was, she’d hated Vincent as much as one soul could hate another. That said, hearing her father sweet-talk him the same way as he used to do to her was almost enough to make Rel feel bad for her half brother, ’specially since it seemed to be working. Vincent had already lowered his gun by the time Reiner finished talking, giving the old man space to walk over and poke at a nubbin of yellow crystal inside the forehead of one of the corpses on the worktable.

“Are these what you use to control them?”

Vincent gave a shaky nod. “The crystal helps me overpower the echoes left by the soul after death, or to add more sound if that’s what’s needed. Old bones that would normally be too quiet and empty to move can pick themselves right back up again once crystal’s been inserted. Only problem is they have no wits of their own. If they’re not constantly directed, they stand around dumb as posts, and they can’t follow complex commands at all.”

“Have you tried filling them with your own voice instead?” Reiner suggested, rolling the yellow crystal between Rel’s palms. “Make them an extension of your will, like puppets on strings?”

“Yeah, but I can’t be everywhere at once, and I can’t manage more than three corpses at a time.”

Her father flashed him Rel’s own cocky smile. “Not yet.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Vincent said angrily. “Even if I could control them, corpses are too soft and stupid for what the Whitman brothers have planned. They’ve already gone to California to recruit more living men for me to modify.”

“Ah yes,” Reiner said distastefully. “The Smiths always did prefer crafting living flesh.”

“Don’t disparage the art you ruined my mother to steal!” Vincent yelled, fury returning. “Our stitching works fine. It’s the crystal that’s the problem. Damn stuff is impossible to control. No matter how carefully I stitch, every operation comes out different. Sometimes we get useful monsters. Other times…” He stopped and ran a hand though his hair, which was nearly identical to Rel’s own. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

“You’re telling me because you think I can help,” Reiner said confidently. “Because I’m the only person in the world who can possibly understand the challenges of your work, and you wonder sometimes if you weren’t wrong to kill me so quickly.”

“I’ve never regretted killing you.”

“You’ll regret it this time,” Reiner promised, holding out the crystal he’d been playing with between his thumb and forefinger. A crystal that was no longer yellow but black as a moonless night.

Rel cringed in her holster. She’d seen black crystal before in the ruined cavern of the Front Caves and when she’d turned that giant stone black back during the fight, but this wasn’t like either of those. This rock wasn’t dull or dead-looking but shiny as a wet beetle and hard as a diamond when Reiner rolled it across the table to Vincent, who nearly dropped his crystal shotgun in his rush to snatch it up.

“What did you do?” he demanded, turning the black stone over and over in his fingers. “What is this?”

“Crystal,” Reiner told him with a smile that chilled Rel to the core. “My crystal.”

“But how?” Vincent asked in a frantic voice. “How did you make it? What does it do? How can it—”

Reiner cut him off with a waggle of his finger. “Those are questions to be discussed between partners, not as part of a stickup. We both have something we want now, so let me ask you again. Would you like to take another try at being a Reiner?”

If Rel had been in Vincent’s shoes, she would’ve told him to choke on that offer on his way to hell, but her new half brother just looked baffled.

“But…” he said at last. “I killed you.”

“A mere triviality between men such as us,” Reiner assured him. “I would be unworthy of my art if I let a little thing like death hold me back. This has nothing to do with absolution or forgiveness. We’re merely entering a mutually beneficial arrangement. You give me a place where I can practice my art without judgment, I’ll teach you all my secrets as a father should, and together we shall move the art of Necromancy forward. That’s what we both want, so what do you say, my son? Do we have an accord?”

The look that crossed Vincent’s face then was enough to make Rel pity him despite everything. She knew that desperate expression. Knew how her father could make you long to believe even though you knew better.

Don’t do it! she shouted at him, rattling in her holster as hard as she could with her father holding her grip. He’s bullshitting you! He does that to everyone! He’ll betray you the first chance he—

She never got to finish. The moment her half brother set down his crystal gun, her father dropped her like a stone, sending Rel plummeting back into the dark.

Chapter 3

July 24, 1876

21 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

The brick vault beneath the Price Mining building hadn’t been touched since the robbery after Sam Price’s funeral. With the crystal inside stolen and no new income to safeguard, Mihir had judged repairs not worth the expense. This continued to be the case over half a year later, for despite her much-anticipated arrival, Josephine Price had yet to restore her uncle’s crystal mining empire to its former glory.

This wasn’t because she was actually Josephine O’Connor, domestic to the Price family with no true legal claim to the property. Josie was actually quite pleased with her handling of that matter. Had the real Miss Josephine Price been present, she was certain the current disaster would have been ten times worse. That didn’t make it not a disaster, though.

Between her initial explorations into the caves and the time it had taken her to recover from the gunshot wound she’d received at the hands of her closest childhood friend, Josie had been in Medicine Rocks over a month now, and she had precious little to show for it. Despite finding Sam Price’s much-ballyhooed final claim, Price Mining’s current crystal reserves were barely enough to fill one knapsack. That was still a fortune by the official crystal-market list price in St. Louis, but they weren’t in St. Louis. They were in Medicine Rocks, where a knapsack full of crystal was barely enough to buy you a decent dinner.

This was what made her latest project so important. The kitchen larder was still stocked with dry goods from back when Price Mining was a company of dozens rather than just two, but it was only a matter of time before those supplies ran out. If Josie didn’t want herself and Mihir to starve come winter, she needed to secure an income, and with all of Price Mining’s other assets burgled, the only practical and legal way to do so was to find the Mother Lode again.

Not only did her uncle’s final claim have more than enough crystal to cure their poverty; heaps of it had already been shot off during the battle that had ended their last visit, meaning Josie wouldn’t even have to break her no-mining pledge to collect it. Had Mary Good Crow been on hand, reaching this perfect solution to all their problems would have required only a few days’ walk through the tunnels. Unfortunately, Miss Good Crow was still missing. Another crisis Josie intended to fix.

If she’d still had the crescent-shaped finding crystal her uncle had left for her, it wouldn’t have been so difficult, but that key was long shattered. She had other crystal samples taken from their first trip to the Mother Lode, but none of them glowed like the first one had. Josie knew they were capable of it. She’d seen the whole Mother Lode lit up like a church window on Easter morning. Even with her uncle’s extensive notes to help, though, she hadn’t yet managed to make any of the rocks she’d collected spark even a glimmer.

The stagnation was extraordinarily frustrating. She’d tried cutting the stones, hammering them, combining them in different arrangements. She’d even tried singing to them, but all she’d gotten was humiliation when Mihir came running down because he’d thought she’d hurt herself. The crystal hadn’t even wiggled.

Clearly, the stones responded only to those who could hear them, so she’d tried that next, going all over town in search of someone who could hear the crystal like her uncle and Mary had. Since she already knew two people with the talent, Josie had naively assumed the ability couldn’t be that rare. Oh, how wrong she’d been. She’d turned the whole town upside down, stalking the entrance to the mines, interrogating guides, even venturing into the miners’ itinerant camp chasing a rumor about a man who could talk to trees, which was almost like talking to rocks. But no matter whom she asked or how much bribery she offered in the form of tea cakes—white sugar, flour, and raisins being some of the few riches Price Mining still had in good supply—it had all come to nothing.

The closest she’d gotten was an old cave guide named Oliver, and he’d actually come to her. She’d come back from one of her questioning expeditions to find the old man brandishing a pickax on her front porch, demanding that Mihir get out of his way so he could go free Mary from whatever tortures the cruel, mine-owning Miss Price had inflicted upon her. It had taken the better part of an afternoon and a full tour of the building before Oliver had accepted that Josie wasn’t holding Mary prisoner. After another hour of questioning and more than a few tea cakes, Oliver had finally confessed that the reason he’d been so sure Mary was nearby was because of his gut.

It was here that Josie finally found her breakthrough. As with many of Medicine Rocks’s permanent residents, long exposure to crystal had changed Oliver’s body, opening new senses that those living free from crystal did not possess. In Oliver’s case, his stomach had gained the ability to act as a compass, creating a sensation in his gut that pointed in the direction of whatever it was he’d eaten last.

He usually used this ability to find crystal, swallowing tiny pebbles so that he could follow them back to the main vein, either to mine it himself or guide others for a fee. Recent events had forced him to give up this practice, though. With the Whitman Gang robbing every caravan that left Medicine Rocks, no one was willing to risk shipping their crystal to market. Miners didn’t stop mining, though, and with nowhere to sell their material, the crystal had started piling up in town.

It hadn’t seemed like a problem at first, but as the summer dragged on and the Whitmans’ blockade continued, portions of the city had grown so dense with crystal, they felt more like the caves than anywhere above ground. This was especially true in the flophouses and squatters’ camp where most of the miners, including Oliver, lived. All that excess crystal got into everything, including the food and the water, leaving poor Oliver’s stomach in such a state of agitation that he could scarcely keep down food anymore.

His livelihood ruined, Oliver had decided to use the last of his abilities to rescue Mary, the only person in Medicine Rocks who’d been decent to him. He’d thought the cavalry had abducted her since they were the last ones she’d been seen with and rat bastards besides, his words. But when he’d swallowed the little silver whistle Mary had given him for Christmas, his gut had led him straight to Price Mining.

Josie suspected this was because of the long black hairs that still clung to Mary’s pillow in the upstairs bedroom. But while Oliver’s gut hadn’t panned out this time, she instantly saw the potential. She’d hired him on the spot, offering the old man room and board in exchange for his assistance finding Mary and the Mother Lode. She’d been on her way upstairs to fetch one of Mary’s hairs for him to swallow when the combined effect of so many tea cakes on top of a whistle finally reached their logical conclusion and made him sick all over the parlor floor.

Not the most glorious start, but Josie remained undaunted. It had long been known that exposure to crystal could give people supernatural abilities. Her uncle had written pages on the subject in his letters, and Josie had seen proof of such firsthand during her weeks here. This was the first time she’d encountered such a practical ability, though. Most of the “crystal gifts” she’d seen were more like curses, but this was different. This, she could use.

His ability was almost enough to make her jealous. She’d had Dr. Pendleton’s crystal pins in her stomach for weeks now, and the only difference she’d noticed was a persistent numbness in her fingers. Very disappointing, but she had no need of powers of her own now that she had Oliver. She just had to get him back in working order, which was why they were down in the vault, as far from crystal as it was now possible to get without riding out of Medicine Rocks.

“Thank you again for letting me stay down here, Miss Price,” Oliver said as Josie handed him the bowl of oatmeal she’d made for his breakfast. “I’m sorry again ’bout your floor.”

“Think nothing of it,” Josie said, giving him a smile. “Believe it or not, I’ve cleaned much worse.”

The look on Oliver’s face made it clear he did not, in fact, believe it, which was fair. If Josie had truly been the lady she was aping, she wouldn’t have believed her either.

“How are you feeling?”

“Much better today, thank you,” Oliver said, spooning oatmeal into his mouth as he walked over to take a seat on the sleeping cot they’d set up for him in the basement. “I see why Mary took up with you so fast. Grub’s great! My compliments to the chef.”

That would, again, be Josie, but she let him think Mihir did all the cooking. It was easier than coming up with a plausible explanation for how a Boston heiress knew how to cook a perfect bowl of oatmeal, or anything for that matter.

“I should be right as rain soon ’nough,” the old man continued, giving her back the empty bowl to free his hands for the pry bar he’d been holding when she’d come down, which just now struck Josie as odd.

“What’s that for?”

“Fixin’,” Oliver replied proudly, pointing the crooked iron arm at the cracked wooden frame that had once held the vault’s reinforced door. “I figured since I’m stuck down here, might as well make myself useful. Gonna rip all that broken stuff out and replace it with fresh pine so we can hang you a new door.”

“That’s really not necessary,” Josie said quickly. “Not that I don’t appreciate the help, but you’re supposed to be resting so we can find Mary.”

“I wouldn’t worry none ’bout Mary,” he said, waving his hand. “I only came after her ’cause I thought you had ’er stuck in some rich-person cage, but if she’s in the caves like you say, then she’s safer than the rest of us. Those tunnels have a love for her that can’t be explained. We’ll all die to the red man ’fore Mary Good Crow comes to harm down there.”

Josie wanted desperately to believe him, but “If that’s true, why hasn’t she come back?”

Oliver shrugged his shoulders, which had permanent divots in them from the straps of the huge pack he’d worn when he first burst into their building—and seemingly every day of his life before then. “Can’t rightly say. All I know is that if Mary’s in the caves, she’s well. What more could we ask?”

A lot, Josie thought. But it wouldn’t do to argue with the man she was supposed to handle with kid gloves, so she let the matter drop. She was about to ask Oliver if he could repair something less strenuous than an entire door when she heard Mihir’s footsteps coming down the basement stairs.

“Miss Price!”

Josie jumped, both at the nervousness of his voice and the odd formality of his address. Mihir hadn’t called her “Miss Price” since her first day here.

“What’s the matter?” she cried, hurrying to meet him. “Is there a fire?”

“Worse,” Mihir panted, leaning heavily against the broken doorframe before Oliver rushed over to shoo him off it. “It’s the sheriff again.”

“Why couldn’t it have been a fire?” Josie groaned, peeking around her uncle’s dearest friend and up the stairs to the main office building. “Did he mention what he wanted?”

“Not to me,” Mihir said, his lip curling beneath his thick mustache. “I’m the help.”

Josie looked sharp. “He said that?”

“No, but it was very clearly implied,” Mihir said, glaring over his shoulder. “It can’t be anything good, though. He’s got a brace of men with him. Claims they’re his new deputies, but I know gunslingers when I see them.”

“Right,” Josie said, taking off the apron she’d worn to protect Miss Josephine’s apricot-silk morning dress from the scrum of actual labor. “You two stay down here. I’ll handle this.”

“Be careful,” Mihir pleaded. “He’s had it out for you ever since you called him an incompetent, corrupt buffoon in front of all of Main Street.”

Josie sighed at the memory. For something that had felt so right at the time, it had been a foolish thing to do. Then again, her relationship with Medicine Rocks’s sheriff had been a disaster nearly from the start.

You’d think it was a mortal insult, asking a man to do his job. She’d tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, since it couldn’t be easy being a lawman in a lawless place. But after he’d refused to even listen to what she’d learned from Sergeant Chaucer about the Wet Whistle’s likely involvement in the crimes committed against her uncle’s estate, Josie had lost all patience.

They’d been open enemies ever since. The sheriff showed up at her door constantly, haranguing her nonstop with all manner of trumped-up nonsense. It was harassment plain and simple, but whom could you go to for justice when your bully was the only officer of the law in town? General Cook was too busy and angry with her over their ruined crystal deal to even read her letters, and the governor was all the way back in Helena, which might as well have been the moon for all the good he could do her. As ever out here, the only person Josie could rely on was herself, so she pulled herself straight and stomped upstairs to see what the old puffed shirt wanted this time.

The vault ladder exited into what had once been the manager’s office on the miners’ side of the building. Going through the door that led back to the office half, Josie saw Mihir hadn’t been joking about Sheriff Brightman’s new hires. No fewer than ten rough-looking gunmen with brand-new silver deputy stars pinned to their shirts were resting their dusty rumps on her uncle’s furniture. The sheriff himself was sprawled on the parlor’s horsehair sofa. He removed his dirty boots from the coffee table when she came in, but he didn’t stand as a gentleman should. He hadn’t even removed his hat. He just tipped the brim at her with his thumb, flashing Josie a white-toothed smile that couldn’t possibly mean any good.

“Good morning, Miss Price,” he said, not even trying to sound sincere. “About time you showed up. I was about to ask your manservant to bring us some refreshments.”

The other men chuckled at this, and Josie clenched her fists. “We don’t have any refreshments,” she told him coldly. “And Mihir is not a manservant. He is my friend and valued employee.”

“Sounds like splitting hairs to me,” the sheriff drawled, settling more comfortably into the cushions. “Servants get paid. Does that not make them employees?”

Having lived most of her life as a servant, Josie could have filled both his ears with all the ways the two were not the same, but she knew better than to waste her anger.

“Why are you here?”

“Not by preference, I assure you,” Brightman said, eliciting another laugh from his men. “You made your opinion of my office very clear during your last visit, but—”

“I have every respect for your office,” Josie clarified. “It’s your failure to live up to it that I take issue with, or do you think it’s acceptable for law enforcement to refuse to investigate a robbery?”

“I already told you,” the sheriff said, exasperated. “We did investigate, and we found nothing. I’m not going to keep beating dead horses to appease your indignant paranoia.”

“It’s not paranoia if it actually happened!” Josie cried, pointing at the broken door to the clerk’s office. “We were invaded by a mob! The sheer amount of damage plus the weight of the goods stolen, including two hundred pounds of uncut crystal that was taken from our vault, clearly shows that whoever did this was well organized and well staffed. Such a force could not possibly force their way into this building without leaving a trace or a witness, and yet you continue to claim you found nothing! Do you not hear how ridiculous that sounds?”

“No more ridiculous than your Indian claiming he slept through the whole thing,” Brightman said, sitting up at last. “But I didn’t come here to get mired again in the same old arguments. This is official town business, and since you’ve made it abundantly clear that you run Price Mining, that makes it your business too.”

Josie cocked an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware we had ‘town business.’ Last I heard, Medicine Rocks had no government.”

“Not since the last mayor got shot off his horse,” the sheriff said casually, as if being gunned down in the street was a natural and expected consequence of being an elected official. “But I think even you’ll agree that this is important. I’m sure you’ve noticed the recent surge in local crime.”

“I confess I have not,” Josie said pertly. “It’s difficult to notice such swings when you’ve gotten robbed practically every week for the past six months.”

The sheriff rolled his eyes and continued. “Be that as it may. The Whitmans’ blockade on crystal has put a lot of stress on the civility of our little town. Miners are rough sorts by nature, but any man will go feral without food. To help deal with the squeeze and answer the concerns of our community, I took it upon myself to hire a few more hands.”

“So I see,” Josie said, eyeing the pack of disreputable-looking “deputies” he’d brought with him.

“But increased security comes with increased costs,” Brightman continued, “and since you townsfolk will be the ones benefiting most from these new measures, I’ve decided to levy a small security tax on all of our patriotic business owners.”

“There it is,” Josie muttered, crossing her arms tight over her chest. “How much do you want?”

“No more than what’s fair,” Brightman said with a smile, nodding at his new gunmen. “It costs money to feed and equip such upstanding gentlemen, and the blockade has made everything more expensive. That said, I know the businesses of Medicine Rocks are struggling too, so I’ve decided to use a sliding tax rather than a fixed sum. It’s just my way of making sure no one is asked to pay more than their means allow.”

He smiled at Josie, who gritted her teeth. “How. Much.”

“Ten percent of profits should suffice,” the sheriff said. “I’m sure you’ll agree that’s a very reasonable price for our return to a safe and civil society.”

To no one’s greater surprise than her own, Josie did agree. Considering she currently paid nothing in local taxes, ten percent of profits seemed astonishingly fair, particularly since she had zero profits at the moment.

“Very well,” she said cautiously. “Let it never be said that Price Mining didn’t do their part, but I’m afraid it won’t be much. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that it hasn’t exactly been a banner year for us.”

“I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood me,” the sheriff said quickly. “I didn’t mean current profits, heavens no! The year’s barely half over. There’s no way to calculate an appropriate tax from such incomplete earnings. I was, of course, referring to ten percent of last year’s profits.”

“You can’t be serious,” Josie said, gaping at him. “This time last year, my uncle was still alive, and Price Mining was the biggest crystal mining company in the world! Ten percent of those profits would be tens of thousands of dollars.”

“Then you should have no trouble paying your share,” the sheriff said, smirking like a cat.

“If I was sitting on that much money, do you think my office would look like this?” Josie cried, sweeping her arm across the parlor’s broken windows. “You know I can’t pay that!”

“I know nothing of the kind,” Brightman said, making a great show of being befuddled. “Aren’t you supposed to be the richest woman in Montana?”

“Only if you count the stolen assets you refuse to help me recover!” Josie cried. “And the money in the bank in St. Louis that I can’t reach! What do you expect me to do? Run a bandit blockade that even the cavalry can’t put down just so I can make you a payment?”

“That’s not my question to answer, Miss Price,” the sheriff said, rising to his feet. “Every other business in town has already agreed to pay their share. You made a big show when you arrived about how you were here to stay as a businesswoman. All I’m asking now is that you put your money where your mouth is. If you can’t do that much, then, pardon my bluntness, maybe you shouldn’t be running this company.”

Josie’s hands curled into fists. She barely felt the pressure through the numbness that had returned to her fingers now that she was back up near all the crystal, but from the way her palms were smarting, she knew she needed to stop before she damaged herself.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, prying her senseless fingers back open. “But without access to my bank, I’m afraid I can’t promise—”

“You’ll pay in full same as everybody else,” said the sheriff. “It’s the only fair way.”

Josie scoffed. “You say that, but I can’t give you money I don’t have. You can’t get blood from a stone.”

“Your uncle could,” Brightman said slyly. “Old Sam Price could raise money from the dry dirt. I expect no less from the niece he talked so much about.” His smile sharpened. “Of course, if you can’t live up to your obligations, I’ll have no choice but to put a lien on this building and all remaining Price properties.”

“You can’t do that!”

“I assure you I can,” said the sheriff as he dropped his hand to rest on the butt of his gun. “I take no pleasure in upsetting a lady, but the law’s the law.”

“‘The law,’ my eye! This is extortion.”

Brightman shrugged. “Call it what you want, but you’ll pay it one way or another, same as everybody else.”

“I can’t pay anything until I know the precise number,” Josie said, trying a different tactic. “My uncle’s business was very complicated. It could take a while to determine the—”

“I’ll send my numbers man over tomorrow to help review your books,” the sheriff offered. “It’d be my pleasure to help you settle your debts in a timely fashion.”

Josie winced at the gleeful malice in his voice, but before she could think of another stall tactic, Brightman whistled and gestured at the door. All his deputies obeyed at once, keeping their hands on their guns and their eyes on Josie as they filed out of the building into the sunbaked dust of Main Street. Brightman himself was last to go, finally removing his hat as he took his leave.

“Don’t look like that, Miss Josie,” he tutted. “I’m not a monster. Just a humble public servant doing his job.” He placed his spotless white hat back on his head. “I’ll give you until the fifteenth of August—”

“That’s not even a month away!” Josie cried. “Even if we weren’t blockaded, that’s hardly enough time to—”

“I’d think it should be plenty for a rich businesswoman like yourself,” he said, letting go of his shiny pistol to shove three fingers at her. “Three weeks, Miss Price, and then I expect to be paid in full. Cash, crystal, or property, your decision. We’re not picky.” He gave her a wink and stepped outside. “Good day.”

Josie slammed the door in his face, turning the big brass lock to make sure he didn’t try to get back in before she threw herself down on the sofa Brightman had just vacated.

“Josie?” Mihir said nervously, coming through the door behind which he’d clearly been listening. “Are you all right?”

“He can’t do this!” she yelled into the cushions.

Mihir sighed and sank down next to her. “Legally, you’re absolutely right. Realistically, though, I’m not sure how we’re going to stop him. You saw how many men he has now.”

“Thugs, more like,” Josie spat. “I’ll go to the general.”

“General Cook’s not going to interfere,” Mihir told her bluntly. “He’s been after Brightman for ages to stop bothering him with requests for soldiers. Hiring more deputies does just that, and it is a reasonable request to ask the community to pay for them.”

“Just not reasonably demanded,” Josie said, sitting up to wipe her eyes. “He knows we can’t pay, especially not in so short a time. Even if I could still find the Mother Lode, I’d have to leave tonight to get out there and back in time with enough crystal to meet his demands.”

Mihir had nothing to say to that, and Josie put her head in her hands, which felt increasingly numb by the second. God, she wished Rel was here. She’d have known how to handle a bully like Brightman.

That was a funny thing to think about the person who’d shot her in the chest, but Josie still believed what Mary had said about Rel not being herself at the time it’d happened. She had to believe it, because the other option was admitting that her oldest friend, the person she used to look up to more than anyone in the world, had betrayed her.

Just the idea of such a thing was more than Josie could take at present, so she shoved it away and focused on more pressing matters, like what the devil she was going to do. She was cooking up a plan to go to the other business owners to ask if they’d really agreed to the tax or if Brightman was targeting her specifically when someone knocked on the door she’d just locked.

The sound almost sent her to pieces. She was half tempted to ignore whoever it was and seal herself in her office until she thought of a way out of this situation. But if Josie had learned anything from her years with the Prices, it was that ignoring disasters only made them bigger, so she forced herself off the sofa and trudged to the door, opening it as little as she dared.

“Yes?”

She hadn’t raised the courage to look at her visitor until several seconds after she’d opened the door. When she did manage it, Josie saw to her great surprise that it wasn’t Brightman nor any of his deputies. It was someone much, much worse. Someone she’d never spoken to before in her life but recognized all the same. Everyone in town knew the tall, dark-skinned, smiling man dressed in spotless black. It was Apache Jake, manager of the Wet Whistle Saloon and, if rumors were to be believed, the She Wolf’s favorite killer.

“Miss Price,” he said, grabbing the door before she could close it back on him. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“We haven’t,” Josie replied, pushing against his iron grip with all her weight. “But I know who you are, and I want nothing to do with it! Go tell your She Wolf that I’m not giving her the time of day until she gives me back my property!”

Apache Jake shook his head. “That’s a very serious allegation to just be tossing about. I hadn’t expected an educated, open-minded lady such as yourself would pay heed to such ill-intentioned slander.”

“It’s not slander if it’s true,” Josie snapped, giving up her losing fight over the door. “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing but the pleasure of your company,” Jake said, producing a card from the pocket of his jet-black vest. “As a fellow businesswoman, my employer has long regretted not making your formal acquaintance. She would like to rectify the situation by inviting you to tea.”

Josie blinked at him. “Tea?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Jake said. “’Round ten, schedule permitting.”

It was on the tip of Josie’s tongue to say her schedule would never permit any meeting with that thief, but she bit the anger back. Whatever her feelings toward the madame of the Wet Whistle, now was not the time to be rash. She hadn’t managed to learn much about the She Wolf since she’d discovered Rel was working for her, but Josie didn’t think it was a coincidence that this sudden invitation had come so quickly on the sheriff’s heels. The whole thing reeked of a shakedown, but shakedowns worked only if the target had something left to be shaken out, and there was always the chance she might learn something useful. This could be the only opportunity she got to speak plainly with the woman she suspected was at the center of all her troubles, so Josie swallowed her bile and reached out her hand, plucking the cream-colored calling card from the deadly man’s outstretched fingers.

“Tell your employer I accept,” she said, noting the surprisingly high quality of the paper as she slipped the card into her pocket. “Thank you, sir.”

Jake tipped his hat and turned away, strolling back across the dusty street. The morning traffic parted like the Red Sea before Moses as he went, giving Josie second thoughts about what she’d just signed up for.

Chapter 4

July 25, 1876

20 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

The dawn was just breaking over Medicine Rocks. The sun was not yet so high that you could see it over the tall buildings and narrow alleys of town. But in the tent camp full of squatters that surrounded the city like a rash, Lucas had an excellent view of the morning’s first light glinting off the bloody fist of the drunken man currently trying to break his nose.

“Chaucer!” Lucas shouted, boots sliding in the filthy mud as he ducked the punch.

“On it!” his sergeant cried as he grabbed the red-faced man from behind, only to instantly let go again as the drunk’s body began oozing through his grip like molasses.

“Bloody hell!” Chaucer roared as he danced back across the mire of churned-up mud. “How much crystal did you drink?”

The drunk flashed him what was probably supposed to be a grin, but it was hard to tell what expression he was making with his split lip sliding down his face like melting wax. “’S the good shit, ain’t it?”

“Your brains are shit if you think that’s good,” Chaucer muttered, looking pleadingly at Lucas. “Don’t make me touch him again!”

Gritting his teeth, Lucas obliged his friend. The next time the drunk lurched forward, Lucas charged into him instead of away, slamming his shoulder into the man’s chest to take them both to the ground. The sensation of the man’s flesh closing around his shoulder like soft cheese almost made him gag, but officers did not show such weakness in front of their men. Somehow, Lucas kept it together, holding his disgust at bay as he pinned the drunk beneath him in the mud where his crystal-granted insolidity could not aid him.

“Good show, sir!” Chaucer cheered, looking smug as a cat now that he no longer had to touch the melting man’s oozing skin. “That should be the last of them. Higgins, cuff ’em!”

A young soldier with very dark skin nodded and rushed forward with the iron manacles, touching the drunk’s boneless arms as little as possible as he positioned the man’s wrists inside the thick metal cuffs. When the drunk was as secure as they could make him under the circumstances, Lucas climbed off his wax-soft body with a shudder.

“Is it just me, or have things been getting worse?”

“It was never this bad before,” Chaucer assured him, moving aside as Higgins and another soldier came in to try to scoop the drunk out of the mud. “The camps have always been jammed with crystal, but I don’t ever recall arresting a man who couldn’t keep his flesh together before, and he’s not even the weirdest thing we’ve seen tonight.”

That was God’s own truth. “How many does this make?”

“Seven,” Chaucer said, jerking his head down the muddy path toward where the rest of their squad was guarding a wagon with several other cuffed men whose bodies were all in various states of crystal aberration. “All tossed out of their minds, but we found the stolen cavalry rations in their tents just like our tip-off said.”

Lucas glared down at the oozing man his soldiers were struggling to lift out of the mud. “You are aware that theft from the army is punishable by firing squad, yes?”

A man possessed of his wits would have denied the crime, but the drunk Lucas had beaten just shrugged his melting shoulders. “What else we s’posed to do? We was hungry, and you blue bastards ’re the only ones with food.”

Lucas sighed. Having endured his own share of hungry nights, he was not without sympathy, but he could not let this slide. Alone out here on the plains as they were, order had to be maintained, and order required discipline.

“Put them in the sweatboxes,” he told his men. “We’ll see if a few days baking in the sun can inspire them to make better decisions.”

The soldiers looked grim at that pronouncement, but the thieves looked overjoyed. “You’re not gonna shoot us?” the melting drunk asked delightedly.

“I don’t have bullets to waste on the likes of you,” Lucas said, which was truer than he liked. “Take him away.”

The drunk started to cackle, sending ripples through the soft jelly his body had become and causing great distress to the soldiers who were trying to lead him away.

“Why didn’t you hang him?” Chaucer whispered as they watched the man go.

“Because if I hanged every thief in this town, there’d be no town left,” Lucas whispered back. “And the sweatbox is no picnic.” He nodded at the sun, which was already cresting over the tops of the buildings at barely five thirty in the morning. “We’ve reached the hottest part of the summer now. The sweatboxes are made of metal, and they’re next to the ditch where they throw the horse dung. By the time those idiots finish their sentence, they may wish I’d chosen the noose.”

“Fair ’nough,” Chaucer muttered, shifting his boots distastefully in the mud. “But I still don’t see why we’re the ones who have to do it. Isn’t catching thieves supposed to be the sheriff’s job?”

“It would be,” Lucas said, “if he did his job. Alas, it seems that Sheriff Brightman is unequal to the criminal demands of Medicine Rocks.”

Chaucer snorted. “Unequal or unwilling. I’ve seen that pristine white heifer of a hat he wears. He’s getting cash from somewhere, and it ain’t from the grateful people of Medicine Rocks.”

“I don’t believe you are wrong,” Lucas admitted. “But in this case, it doesn’t matter. Those men stole cavalry goods, meaning this was always going to be our job.”

“I just wish they’d stop,” the sergeant moaned, kicking the muddy ground. “This is the third time this week we’ve been sent down here! I don’t get it. If they’re so bleeding rich they can swig crystal day and night, why’re they risking their necks stealing the pig slop the army gives us?”

“Because we’re the only ones who still have food.”

Chaucer’s dark eyebrows shot up to his clipped black hair. “Is it really that bad?”

“It’s getting there,” Lucas said, motioning for his sergeant to follow him as their prison wagon finally got rolling. “The Whitmans don’t only attack our shipments. They hit everyone trying to carry crystal out of Medicine Rocks. The army has to ship us food, but with no crystal going out to pay for it, the private traders have little reason risking their skins to ship goods up here, which leaves the rest of town in dire straits.”

“Damn,” Chaucer said. “And here I thought the Sioux were gonna be what did us in.”

“They still might,” Lucas said, looking at the camp that was coming alive around them as the sun rose. “But for my money, I think it will be the madness.”

Chaucer’s only answer to that was a grim sort of silence. Two weeks ago, Lucas’s brawl with a melting man would have been the fort’s gossip of the week. Now, as Chaucer had so eloquently put it, the matter barely even rated discussion. Lucas wasn’t sure if the crystal-laced liquors were getting stronger or if there was just so much of the stuff in town now that people couldn’t help eating crystal even if they tried to avoid it. Whatever the reason, things were absolutely getting worse, and rapidly so.

Less than a month had passed since he’d carried Miss Price out of the caves, and yet it was starting to feel as if he’d never left that awful, haunted place. Even out here in the poorest edges of the squatter camp, he saw crystal everywhere he looked. It was buried in the mud and stashed in socks, hidden under bedrolls or stuffed in sacks that had once contained flour and grains, all of it waiting for the day when the Whitmans were defeated and normal trade could resume. With their resources stretched so thin, Lucas didn’t see that day coming anytime soon, but this current state could not continue. There was so much crystal in town already, Lucas swore he could feel it scraping his lungs if he breathed too deeply, and he didn’t even live near the caves.

That was the other reason he hadn’t ordered the thieves hanged. They’d known for years that too much crystal altered men’s minds. He’d suffered the effect himself when he’d been trapped in the Dark, and he’d never taken a dram of crystal in his life. Men used to be able to escape the effect by going back up into the sunlight. But when the air above grew as dangerous as the air below, it got harder to say if anyone was truly in control of his actions, and Lucas had too many deaths on his conscience already to risk adding another on anything less than sterling proof.

“I just hope it gets better soon,” Chaucer muttered, kicking a nearby crate to knock the inch of sticky mud off his boots. “Lord knows I haven’t shed a tear for Custer, but we’re spread thin without his troops. We don’t have manpower to waste chasing crystal drunks, ’specially not with all the reports we’ve been hearing about the Sioux gathering in bigger numbers than anyone knew they could.”

“The general has requested reinforcements,” Lucas assured him. “And he’s approved Brightman’s plan to raise local funds to increase the sheriff’s office. Assuming the ass doesn’t just keep the money for himself, that should take some pressure off our duties here…”

“But?” Chaucer prompted.

Lucas sighed. “It won’t be enough. Even if the general’s request gets approved, I don’t know where reinforcements will be coming from now that Black Hills and Fort Lincoln have fallen. It might be winter before help arrives. If the Sioux decide to attack before then—”

“We’ll be toast,” his sergeant finished, dropping his head. “Lovely.”

“It’s not all bad news,” Lucas insisted, striving to stay optimistic. “The current situation has given Captain Townsend plenty of crystal for his workshop. A few hundred crystal rifles might be all we need to turn this mess around.”

“Thanks for my part, but I think I’ve had enough of crystal,” Chaucer said, looking pointedly at the cuffed drunk in the back of the prison wagon, whose body had now melted completely into a puddle of blinking, belching goo. “I used to think it was pretty, but after that mess in the caves with Miss Good Crow and now this here, I’m pretty sure it’s the devil’s stone.”

Lucas was certain Mary would disagree with that assessment. For his own part, though, he found it hard to argue with his second, pulling his handkerchief out of his pocket to cover his nose and mouth against the sparking clouds of crystal dust he could now see wafting over the ground in the brilliant light of the fully risen morning sun.

Chapter 5

July 25, 1876

20 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

At precisely ten o’clock the next morning, Josie—dressed in her favorite sky-blue frock, the best made and most expensive of all the hand-me-down dresses the actual Josephine Price had shoved off on her when she left St. Louis—stepped out of the shaded safety of Price Mining’s covered porch and walked across the dusty street to the towering, tarred-log behemoth that was the Wet Whistle Saloon.

Even at this early hour, the vice-house’s porch was packed with men. Most were hired gunhands dressed in the Wet Whistle’s uniform black, but there were plenty of other people whose purpose Josie couldn’t begin to guess. She didn’t think they were customers since the saloon didn’t open until three, but they didn’t look like vendors or workmen either. They were just… there, milling about with the gunmen and giving her the hairy eyeball as she climbed the dirty steps.

Josie nodded politely as she passed, for once grateful for the numbness in her hands, since it kept her from clutching her fingers like a nervous child. She was about to ask the big scowling fellow closest to the entrance if he could show her to her appointment when the saloon’s swinging wood doors burst open, and Apache Jake himself came out to greet her.

“Miss Price,” he said, flashing her a grin that bordered on a smirk as he tipped his spotless black hat. “Why am I not surprised to find you right on time?”

“No one appreciates tardiness, sir,” Josie said, fighting not to look at the men who now openly gawked at her. “Thank you as well for being so punctual.”

“The boss likes a tight ship,” Jake said, holding open the swinging doors to let her into the empty saloon, where an aproned barman was sweeping up the debris of last night’s revelries. “I think you’ll find the two of you have a lot in common.”

Josie highly doubted that. But she kept her smile polite, following the gunman deeper into the morning darkness of the cavernous saloon to a wide staircase placed prominently next to the red-curtained stage.

“Your hostess awaits on the third floor,” Jake informed her, nodding up the stairs, which Josie couldn’t help noticing were lit exclusively with red-glass lanterns. “Mind you go all the way to the top. We’re a packed house these days, and the ladies on the second floor get quite put out when their sleeping hours are disturbed.”

“I shall be quiet as a mouse,” Josie promised, bobbing her head. “Thank you, sir.”

Apache Jake tipped his black hat again, leaning against the wall in a casual but pointed maneuver to block her exit. Feeling like a corralled sheep, Josie focused on climbing the stairs, putting as much of her weight on the wooden banister as she dared to keep the wooden boards from creaking. It was a trick she’d learned working in the Prices’ silent mansion, and it still worked like a charm, allowing her to climb past the silent second floor—a purple-papered hallway lined with an astonishing number of doors—without so much as a squeak.

Having passed the gauntlet, Josie turned her attention to the final stair: a much narrower, closed-in tunnel that went straight up to a closed door, the only apparent entrance to the building’s third story. Given how this visit had gone so far, Josie fully expected the way to open as soon as she got close, but the heavy, dark door at the top remained shut even when she reached the last step, forcing her to make a decision.

Knocking would be the polite thing, but Josie was all too aware that was also the servile action. As someone who’d spent most of her life on the losing side of such power games, she was extremely sensitive to just how easily ground could be yielded in the name of propriety. Her current position had no allowance for additional slippage, and Jake had told her to come up, so—rude as it felt—Josie skipped the knock and went straight for the doorknob, grabbing the brass handle firmly with her numb hand.

She had to use far more strength than usual to close her insensible fingers. Too much, perhaps, because when Josie finally managed to cinch her grip, a bolt of pain stabbed straight through the numbness into the pad of her pointer finger.

“Ow!”

Josie snatched her hand back, staring in horror at the bright-red stain spreading across one half of her best pair of white gloves. The wound was small but deep when she peeled her glove off, like a needle prick. She had no idea what had caused it, but she was certain it was due to the clumsiness of her dull hands, the same as all her injuries of late. Fortunately, the puncture’s small size meant the bleeding stopped almost immediately, but her glove was beyond rescue.

Cursing her bad luck, Josie stripped off the stained garment, wrapped it around itself, and tucked it into her pocket. Her other glove followed suit, leaving her fingers scandalously naked. The real Miss Josephine would have gone straight home before anyone saw, but Josie didn’t think the mistress of the Wet Whistle cared much about propriety, and barehanded was better than bloody. She mostly just wanted to get this over with. So as soon as she no longer looked like a murderess, Josie grabbed the knob again—gently this time—and wedged her shoulder against the surprisingly heavy door, pushing it open to reveal the gaudiest parlor she’d ever seen.

Attending Miss Josephine as she visited all her nouveau riche friends had subjected Josie to more than her fair share of gratuitous interiors, but this room took the prize by dint of sheer density. Not an inch had escaped decoration, turning what should have been a decent-sized parlor into a cramped maze of pillow-piled sofas, curio cabinets, standing lamps, and conversation tables. The walls were covered in an interlocking lattice of colorful paintings, gilded plates, and taxidermy hunting trophies packed together so tightly, they almost hid the garish gold, purple, and red wallpaper underneath. There was so much going on visually, Josie didn’t even see her hostess waiting until the woman cleared her throat.

She startled at the sound. Buried in the visual chaos were two much less decorated but far more interesting people. One was a man with an absurdly long rifle on his back and bandages covering his entire face, who was standing in the far back corner. The other was a woman with silver-gray hair braided into a coil on top of her head, who was sitting in the middle of the room’s largest, and most ostentatiously patterned, sofa.

Despite the man’s gun, it was the woman who caught Josie’s attention most. Even seated, it was obvious that she was nearly as tall as Josie herself, and she was smoking like a man from a long-handled ivory pipe. She was dressed like a man as well in a forest-green wool suit and fur-lined coat, an absurd combination given the ghastly heat radiating from the potbellied stove in the corner.

Why anyone would want such a large fire this far into summer, Josie couldn’t fathom, but she was suddenly very glad she’d shed her gloves. Even her summer-weight dress was too much for this temperature, sending beads of sweat rolling down her ribs under her corset as she dropped the absolutely minimum of a polite curtsy.

“Thank you for the invitation,” she said in the crisp voice that was best for heading off nonsense. “You are the owner of this establishment?”

“I am,” the overdressed woman replied in an accented voice.

Josie nodded, waiting for more. When none came, she prompted, “And your name?”

The woman smirked, her colorless lips curling as if Josie had made a distasteful joke. “You may call me Volchitsa,” she said, waving her pipe at the wide selection of sofas and chairs crammed into the parlor in front of her. “Sit down, Miss Price. You are here as my guest today.”

Josie didn’t like the imperious way the woman spoke one bit. But there was a fine difference between refusing to play power games and being outright rude, so she took a seat on the Scheele's green velvet settee nearest the door.

“Tea?” Volchitsa offered as the bandaged man—who had not been introduced nor made a sound—held up a bone china teapot. “I don’t touch the stuff myself, but I’m told this is fine quality.”

It did smell quite nice, actually. Too bad Josie wasn’t that trusting.

“Thank you, no,” she said, folding her numb hands over each other to protect her skirt from the still sluggishly bleeding prick on her finger. “I appreciate the hospitality, but I think we both know this isn’t a social visit.”

“Very well,” Volchitsa said, waving away the bandaged man with the teapot. “As we are both women of business, I shall get to the point. I have a proposition for you, owner to owner.”

“If it involves the sale of my company or claims, the answer is no,” Josie said firmly.

Volchitsa shook her head. “I’m afraid that ship has sailed, Miss Price. But I am a person who prefers to look always to the future, and yours doesn’t look very rosy at the moment.”

“That’s a bold assumption from one who knows nothing of my affairs.”

“I know you’re not living like a woman who’s uncovered a fortune in crystal,” Volchitsa said with a shrug. “You haven’t even been back to the mines since the unfortunate incident that took dear Reiner from us.”

Josie stiffened. “How do you know about that?”

“You think I would not notice the disappearance of my employee?” Volchitsa asked, tapping out her pipe into a brass ashtray.

Josie cursed herself for a fool. Of course Volchitsa would notice things had gone awry. Rel had made her loyalty to the She Wolf clear when she’d pulled her gun, and anyone who paid a whit of attention would know that Josie hadn’t been back to the caves since. The only mystery here was how stupid was she for not realizing the situation earlier.

“Just because I haven’t returned to the mines since my injury doesn’t mean I have nothing to go back for,” Josie said, scrambling to cover for her lapse. “There’s little point in mining crystal when the Whitmans’ blockade prevents us from taking it to market.”

Volchitsa shrugged. “My mines are doing fine.”

“I think that’s far more suspicious than me not going mining,” Josie observed. “But I’m hardly surprised to hear you’re not being bothered by bandits, considering that all your claims are stolen.”

“That’s a serious accusation to make without proof,” the She Wolf said, not looking concerned in the slightest. “I’m an upstanding citizen who pays her taxes without complaint, which is more than can be said for you, I’m told.”

Josie narrowed her eyes. “Told by whom?”

“Does it matter?” Volchitsa asked. “Truth is truth wherever it comes from, and the truth right now is that you’re in quite the bind. No claims to mine or miners to work them, money running out, bills piling up.” She shook her head. “Whatever are you going to do?”

“That’s my business,” Josie said, rising to her feet. “If you invited me here to gloat over my misfortunes, I’ll be on my way.”

“I could help,” Volchitsa said.

“No thank you.”

“You haven’t even heard my offer.”

“I don’t need to,” Josie snapped. “Whatever it is, my answer is no. I will not do business with the thief who robbed our offices and coerced my oldest friend into attempting to rob me at gunpoint!”

“Again with the wild accusations.” Volchitsa tutted. “I’m disappointed in you, Miss Price. Your uncle used to go on and on about how intelligent and forward-thinking you were, but here you are wallowing in the supposed sins of the past like a jilted old maid. If you are too dug in to your own prejudices to even listen to the proposition that would get you and Price Mining back on track to greatness, I suppose we have nothing more to discuss.”

They really didn’t. But despite her firmest intentions, Josie hadn’t gotten this far by turning down opportunities unheard. “All right,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “What have you got?”

“An arrangement of mutual benefit,” Volchitsa promised, her ice-blue eyes locked on Josie’s. “As you’ve already figured out, I have an understanding with the Whitmans that allows me to transport my crystal safely to the railway depot in Cheyenne. Since everyone else is trapped in Medicine Rocks, including the cavalry, this makes me the only source of crystal in the world right now.”

Josie’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a monopoly.”

“Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing?” Volchitsa asked grandly. “But even from this strong position, there are still many institutions that refuse to do business with someone of my… reputation, shall we say. Normally, I’d just sell to someone else, but this isn’t some fly-by-night operation. I’m looking to build an industry. An empire of crystal with me at the top. To achieve that, I need legitimacy, which is why—”

“You need a front,” Josie finished, her mind racing ahead. “You want to use my company as a pass-through.”

Volchitsa’s powdered face split into a wolfish smile. “There’s the clever girl! You are precisely correct. To achieve my aims, I need respectability, and Sam Price’s legacy is as revered as a saint’s. With your name selling my crystal, we could both be rich. Me more so than you, but I’d be happy to let you take the credit.”

“Why would you think I care about that?”

“Because it’s why you came here,” the She Wolf said, her white teeth glinting in the lamplight as she leaned forward. “If you only cared about money, you’d have sold out to me the first time Reiner offered. But you didn’t. You wanted control, to run your own empire just as your uncle did. I understand that desire, and I can make it come true. I’ll give you the freedom to run the mines any way you see fit. The prestige, the power, the respect that comes from being the master of a new industry—these would all be yours.”

“And you?” Josie asked suspiciously.

“I would be rich,” Volchitsa said with a shrug. “Which is all I’ve ever wanted.”

Josie frowned. It wasn’t that she didn’t see the woman’s point. Price Mining was respected and well-known. It very likely would shoot straight back to the top of the industry the moment the crystal started flowing again, despite having an unmarried woman at its helm. But even if Josie trusted the She Wolf to keep her word—which she didn’t—she hadn’t risked her life coming all the way out to Medicine Rocks to work for someone else.

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s a generous offer, but—”

“Think carefully before you finish that sentence,” Volchitsa suggested, leaning back into the garish cushions. “This is an opportunity that will be offered only once. You are, of course, free to say no, but we both know Price Mining won’t last out the month without income, and with the cavalry so busy with the Sioux, I don’t foresee the Whitmans’ blockade being broken anytime soon. I am your only way out of this hole, so I suggest you take my offer while it is still generous. If you have to come crawling back to me a second time, I might not be so nice.”

“That is a risk I’ll have to take,” Josie said firmly. “I came here today to take your measure, Miss Volchitsa, but I find myself as convinced now as I was yesterday that you do not act in anyone’s interest except your own. If you can’t even offer a job without resorting to threats, I’m afraid we have nothing more to discuss.”

“Everyone is entitled to their opinion,” Volchitsa said as Josie walked back to the door. “But can you afford it? I know what you owe the sheriff. There’s no one else in town who can afford to bail you out.”

“Then I shall have to do it myself,” Josie replied, glaring over her shoulder. “I swore ages ago that I would never again work for a bad employer, and you are, without question, a very bad employer.”

Volchitsa arched a silver eyebrow. “That’s an interesting oath for a wealthy lady.”

“I’m not your typical wealthy lady,” Josie said, hauling open the heavy door. “Good day, Miss Volchitsa.”

If the She Wolf had any last words, they were drowned out by the slam as Josie threw the door closed behind her. Nodding for good measure, she grabbed her skirt in her uninjured hand and stomped down the stairs with no care this time for how much noise she made.

~~~

Jake started up the stairs as soon as he heard Josie Price slam the door. Keeping quiet in the way only he could, he hid in the shadows as she swept past looking like a fancy cat that had just been dropped into a rain barrel. She was out the front a moment later, somehow managing to slam the swinging doors as well as she marched back to her pretty perch at Price Mining.

He’d known this was how it’d end, of course. One look at Sam Price’s niece had been enough to tell that she wasn’t the head-bending sort. Boss should’ve known it, too, but Volchitsa’s normally excellent perception had a critical blind spot when it came to things that weren’t going her way. He’d still done his duty and warned her Josie Price was a lost cause—and received a tongue-lashing for his trouble. Volchitsa’s audacity had earned them too much for Jake to hold that against her, but he wasn’t above giving her an “I told you so” grin as he strolled into her parlor.

“Wipe that look off your face, Apache,” Volchitsa ordered as he shut the door behind him. “And bring me the doorknob.”

“Jumping straight to that, are we?” he asked as he reached down to remove the retractable blood-drawing needle from its hidden slot beneath the brass knob. “Must have gone real smooth up here.”

“She’s as stubborn as her uncle,” the She Wolf snarled, turning to the bandaged man in the corner. “Casper, go fetch Shandy.”

The bandage-wrapped man nodded and stepped away, slipping past Jake as quiet as a ghost.

“Why didn’t you ask me to do it?” he asked when the silent man was gone. “You know Shandy’s scared stiff of Casper.”

“She’s less lazy when she’s scared,” Volchitsa said, which wasn’t untrue. “And I need you to help me back to my desk.”

Shaking his head at the machinations of it all, Jake walked over and slid his arms under his boss, bracing his legs to lift her stiff body—which was much, much heavier than it looked—off the silk-cushioned sofa.

“Isn’t it about time you let Clink have a turn at you?” he huffed as he carried her through the doorway into her office. “If you push it much farther, all you’ll be able to move is your head.”

“I’ll call him when I’m ready,” Volchitsa said, using her arms to steer her useless legs into the chair behind her desk. “I know you find it hard to believe, but for me, this form has more advantages than disadvantages.”

“Only ’cause you leave me to deal with all the inconveniences,” Jake said, rapping his knuckles against her thigh, which rang back with the musical sound of crystal. “You gotta be rock all the way to your belly button by now. That ain’t healthy.”

“It’s powerful,” Volchitsa replied, as if that made up for everything. Which, to be fair, it did.

“Have it your way,” he said, setting himself on the corner of her enormous desk. “But does this mean we’re finished chasing Old Sam’s legacy? ’Cause I’d really like to move on.”

“Not yet,” she said, repacking her pipe with more crystal-laced tobacco from the gold filigree box on her desk. “The little fool’s only a day into the sheriff’s ultimatum. There’s still plenty of time for her to come around.”

“But no will,” Apache warned. “You heard the pride in her voice. She’s not gonna crack.”

Volchitsa had nothing to say to that. Just kept packing her pipe with precise fingers, and Jake sighed.

“I still don’t get why you’re so hung up on this,” he said, offering her a light from his matchbox. “We already got all Sam’s claims ’cept the last, and the sheriff’s tax scheme is about to clear that one up for us too. There’s plenty of business types in town who’d love to be your front man. Ones that don’t have Price’s hang-ups.”

“But none with her name,” Volchitsa said, lighting her filled bowl from his flame. “You remember how Sam used to bring those rich bankers up here by the wagonful just to empty their pockets into his coffers? People were sending him building supplies by the ton just on the promise of crystal that hadn’t even been mined yet. Price didn’t just get rich because he had lots of crystal. He got rich because he had other rich people lining up to buy the fruits of his labor. That’s the power of legitimacy. Truly rich people don’t buy from scroungers like us. Even with our monopoly, we’re too much of a risk, and crystal’s still too new. The big investors are only interested in us if they think they can make a killing off our backs, but I don’t want to help rich people get richer. I want to be rich. Railroad rich, oil-money rich, and Price is how I get there.”

Volchitsa took a long draw off her pipe, lifting her head to blow a sweet-smelling cloud of sparkling dust into the fiendishly hot air. “She’s my golden goose, Apache. What kind of businesswoman would I be if I didn’t at least try to lock her in my coop?”

“On your head be it, then,” Jake said, throwing up his hands. “Just remember: that fairy tale ended with a train of fools stuck to a goose because they were too greedy to let go.”

“Good thing we are not fools, then.”

Jake wasn’t sure about that. He didn’t know another word to describe people who sat around worrying over mining companies when an army of Sioux was about to fall on their heads. He’d already taken action in that direction, riding all the way out to Wyoming himself to make sure their precautions were on their way. Maybe that was why Volchitsa felt relaxed enough to worry over the Prices. She trusted him to take care of their other business, which he had. He just wished she’d give him more credit for the work instead of paying so much mind to old rivalries. That was an old argument he’d given up winning, though, so Jake just made himself comfortable on her desk. Biding his time until Shandy burst into the room.

“Sorry I’m late, Miss V!” she cried in her girlish voice. “Damn creepy Casper near scared the virginity right back into me!”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t be there for long,” Volchitsa said.

“I wish it would come back,” Shandy replied as she flounced herself down next to Jake on Volchitsa’s desk. “Think how much crystal we’d get if I could sell that sucker all over again!”

Black as his mood had gotten, Jake couldn’t help a smile at that. Shandy was a whore after his own heart: a cutthroat mercenary hidden inside the body of a wholesome-faced farm girl. With her artless smile and fawning brown eyes, there wasn’t a sucker in town she couldn’t trick into believing he was her moon and stars, which was why Shandy was still the Wet Whistle’s top earner despite her advancing age. She had other talents as well, particularly when plied with crystal, as Jake did now.

“Do I gotta?” Shandy groaned as he passed her a paper-folded sachet from his pocket. “Everyone’s been talking ’bout how crystal’s been doing folks more wrong than usual lately.”

“Clink’s right downstairs,” Jake assured her, pouring her a whiskey from Volchitsa’s private stash and tapping the thimble’s worth of crystal powder into it. “He’ll play you back to rights if anything goes wrong.”

Shandy didn’t look consoled, but she knew better than to talk back in Volchitsa’s presence. She downed the shot like a good sport, her pretty face scrunching up as the crystal sliced down her throat.

“Christ on a peanut, that burns!” she gasped when it was finished, reaching out her hand. “Gimme the sample quick ’fore I gotta take any more of it.”

Jake obliged, handing her the bloody needle he’d extracted from the doorknob. Shandy grabbed it and brought it to her face, wrapping her tongue around the shaft as deftly as a snake to lick Miss Price’s blood clean off it. When she’d lapped up every precious drop, she closed her eyes—which were still smudged with the charcoal she’d used to outline them yesterday—and began to hum.

What the tune was, Jake couldn’t say. Seemed to him she hummed a different song each time, but Shandy insisted that was just the way it worked. Crystal affected everyone a little different. Some, like Tyrel Reiner, got big, obvious powers like ghost talking. Others, like himself, received the gift in more subtle ways. Some, like Shandy, got just one trick, but what a trick it was.

When Shandy took crystal, she gained the ability to read a person’s past by taking a little bit of them into herself. Given her profession, the sample usually came in through other means, but licking blood worked just fine too. From the excited look on Shandy’s face when she finished humming, Miss Price’s secrets were a doozy.

“You ain’t gonna believe this,” she said, grabbing the whiskey bottle from Jake’s hand to wash the blood taste out of her mouth.

“Tell me,” Volchitsa said, leaning over her desk.

Shandy did, and she was right. Jake didn’t believe it. Volchitsa did, however, and unfortunately for the woman who’d walked back to Price Mining, that was all that mattered.

Chapter 6

July 25, 1876

20 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

Mary was the happiest she could ever remember being in her life.

It took her and Blackbird weeks to ride from the Wind Cave in the Black Hills all the way north and west across the open prairie to where Sitting Bull was encamped on the Missouri River. It wasn’t a comfortable trip by any measure. Mary hadn’t touched a horse since she’d started working in the caves. To be suddenly spending day after day atop one, bumping over every hill and gully in a saddle that was nothing but padded leather over a wood frame, was not her favorite thing. But while she was certain her backside would never be the same shape again, Mary didn’t care, ’cause she was with her sister.

Coming from such different backgrounds, Mary and Blackbird didn’t have much in common, but neither of them was about to let that matter. They talked until their throats grew hoarse. Whether riding through the sunbaked grasslands or sitting by the fire when they made camp for the night, silence was never allowed to fall for more than a handful of minutes until they went to sleep.

It was the desperate sort of socialization that can only happen between two people with a greater need than mere lack of company. All that awkwardness just added to Mary’s happiness, though, ’cause it proved her sister was just as hungry for Mary’s favor as Mary was for hers. For someone who’d never been important to anybody, there wasn’t a saddle sore or anxious silence in the world that could dent the joy their time together brought. Good thing, too, ’cause much of what Blackbird said would’ve made her uncomfortable otherwise.

Not surprising for someone participating in a war, Blackbird had a very low opinion of white settlers. Mary didn’t fault her for her anger. Outsiders had been doing the tribes wrong as far back as the Spaniards, and she’d seen the damage the Americans had done with her own eyes. The town of Medicine Rocks was built smack-dab in the middle of Lakota land, after all, and Mary was sure no one there had asked the tribes’ permission.

Settlers were menaces on the road as well, fouling the rivers with their wagon trains and shooting any game that came into view whether they were hungry or not. They were particularly brutal to the buffalo, which they killed in great numbers even though there was no way they could possibly eat so much. They took the best parts and left the rest of the carcass to rot in the sun, never once thinking about the people who already lived here and needed the buffalo to survive.

That reckless greed had been the cause of many famines, including the one Mary had suffered through during her first winter with the Lakota, and she’d seen even worse during the years she’d worked on her own as a trail guide. Before she’d found the caves, she’d watched the fur traders who’d hired her cheat the tribes at every turn, selling them junk beads and bad whiskey for buffalo capes that sold for a fortune back east.

But understanding why the Lakota were so angry didn’t make Blackbird’s fury any easier to listen to. Blackbird always took great pains to tell Mary she wasn’t talking about her when she called the wasichu murderers, snakes, and thieves, but it was hard not to take it personal when you were half of what she hated. Not that Mary considered herself white or had ever been encouraged to think so, but she’d been raised by French Catholics and spent nearly all her life among the settlers. Even if most folks in Medicine Rocks saw her as lesser and made sure to tell her so, Mary was still more familiar with the white man’s world than the Lakota’s, and that made it sting to hear her sister—her only known family—say how much she loathed them.

Fortunately, thanks largely to Mary’s expertise at changing the subject, these rants were generally short and scattered. Most of their conversation dwelled on happier topics, like navigating, crystal, and the beauty of the land. It was beautiful, too, with the plains all dressed up in their late-summer gold. She could’ve ridden through the yellow hills with her sister forever, but every journey had to end eventually, and theirs did so at a great encampment on the cottonwood-lined shores of the Missouri River.

Mary’s time with the Lakota might’ve been short, but she’d still seen enough camps to know this one was in a class by itself. The river was running low this late into summer, and its flat, dry banks were covered in tall, conical tepees as far as she could see in both directions. There were hundreds of lodges, maybe tens of hundreds, all made of hide and beautifully decorated with red and black paint. Some were as big around as any ranch house Mary had seen, built to hold generations of family. Others nearer the edges of the camp were smaller, just large enough for a few people huddled together, but still beautifully made and painted with care.

Those small sorts were the type Mary was most familiar with, but Blackbird led her right past them. They left their horses grazing in a field with thousands of others and walked straight into the heart of the enormous camp. Mary followed with her mouth gaping open, staring at the red-skinned men and women who gawked back just as boldly. She’d never seen so many Indians together in one place, and not just Lakota. Cheyenne were here as well, along with Yanktonai and Dakota and others Mary didn’t know at all. About the only ones she didn’t see were the Crow, but that made sense. Even a shared enemy as dangerous as the Americans wasn’t enough to overcome that much bad blood.

She was still gawking at the spectacle of it all when Blackbird grabbed her hand and started pulling her toward the largest circle of tents near the camp’s center. Mary trailed behind her, suddenly mindful of her dirty jeans and stained poncho that looked so out of place among the painted and beaded finery of the people of the plains. Her face, too, was so different from theirs, her white half standing out just as much here as her Indian side used to back in Medicine Rocks.

It’d been like this her first time with the Lakota, too, reminding Mary sharply of how it had ended. She’d been trying her best not to think about it, but standing in the middle of so many familiar sights put her right back in the moment. That awful, awful moment when all her dreams of home had ended.

The year Mary turned thirteen, the nuns who’d raised her told her she could no longer stay. They’d done their duty raising the child of sin left on their doorstep, but now Mary wasn’t a child any more, their sentence was over, which meant she had to go someplace else. She hadn’t particularly liked living with the stern sisters and their harsh rules, but it still stung to be sent away so abruptly. To get over the hurt, Mary had decided to see their sendoff as her chance and headed straight across the plains to the Lakota.

There at last, she’d told herself, she’d find her true family, and they would love her like no one else before. She walked into the first camp she found ready to fall into someone’s arms, but no one there had known her or where her family might be found. They were kind enough and generous with their help, but she wasn’t their child, and it was coming on a harsh winter. Most were having trouble feeding their own families, never mind a stray who didn’t even speak their language, so they’d given Mary what they could and sent her off to the next camp where maybe her kin might be waiting.

Looking back, Mary wasn’t entirely sure how she’d gotten through those first months. She never had found her blood, but eventually she’d landed a place helping an old widow in exchange for lessons in speaking Lakota and a place to sleep. She’d always been good with languages and had learned quick, which made it easier to resume searching for her real family when spring came.

She must’ve visited a hundred camps that year, but no matter where she went, no one was missing a child her age. Mary tried not to let it get her down. The Lakota were seven tribes spread over hundreds of miles. She’d known from the start it’d be a long search, but it was hard to keep her hopes up as the weather grew colder again.

By that point, Mary had learned how to wiggle herself in at the edges of the tribes, but the ongoing conflict with the white settlers and the famine it caused was putting people on edge. Folks who never used to care about her being half-blooded suddenly started giving her resentful looks, and the people she’d been spending the winter with—a blind man and his daughter—told her gently that she’d have to go as soon as the snows melted.

They weren’t her kin, but Mary would’ve been a liar if she’d said it didn’t hurt, being sent away again. She tried to change their minds by doing whatever she was asked, learning and praying that her goodness would be rewarded. Holding on to the dream of a home where she’d be welcome with all she had.

And then, one morning, it had all fallen to pieces.

Mary could still remember it clear as a painting in her mind. She’d gotten up early to collect water as part of her effort to show how helpful she could be when a warrior had approached her. Seeing him come over shocked her so bad she’d dropped her water skin, for the braves who lived in the big lodges at the center of camp didn’t normally associate with the likes of her. This one had clearly been wealthy too. A tall, handsome fighter in his prime, wearing a beautifully scraped buffalo-hide cape that covered him from shoulders to feet. Mary couldn’t remember ever speaking to someone as important as him before, but the warrior had looked her dead in the eyes and told her to leave.

She’d never known why. The warrior hadn’t explained himself, never even called her by her name. He’d just pointed at the prairie and said, “Go,” like he was driving away a stray dog.

That had hurt the most. She’d wanted to scream at him that he had no right. That these were her people just as much as his. But he was bigger than she was, and the mood in camp was against her already, so Mary hadn’t argued. She’d just gone. Dropped the water skin in the shallows and walked right out of the camp with nothing but the clothes on her back.

The next few months were a time Mary didn’t like to remember. It’d been the leanest end of winter, and she’d taken nothing with her but grief. Even back then, though, she’d been good at finding her way, and eventually she’d gotten work as a guide for a band of French traders. They’d paid her as little as they could get away with, but at least their business had kept her from starving. She’d carried on like that for a few more years—scraping by, knowing no one, a stray dog in truth—until the crystal rush kicked up and she’d found her way over to Medicine Rocks.

Looking back on the whole thing now, it was hard to be mad at her younger self. Yes, that warrior had had no right to run her off, but what could she have done? He’d been so much bigger and more important than her, secure in his place in the tribe in a way Mary could never be. And really, what had he taken from her? It wasn’t as if anyone from the Lakota had come looking for her.

That memory was the bitterest of all. She was getting good and upset about it when Blackbird suddenly stopped walking. Mary tripped to a stop as well, looking ’round at the sights she’d missed while she was brooding over the past.

“Where are we?”

“Home,” her sister said, opening the flap of the spectacularly painted buffalo-hide tepee the size of a barn they’d stopped in front of. “This is our family’s lodge. I lived here before Bear Woman called me to the caves. Now my mother lives here with our grandmother.”

Mary’s heart skipped a beat at that last word. The huge tepee was dark and cool inside, a welcome relief from the bright and dust of the camp. The circular floor was covered in reed mats around a dug-out fire pit in the center, and beside it sat two women wearing lovely deerskin dresses just like Blackbird’s.

Theirs were decorated with normal beads instead of crystal, but that didn’t keep the women from being magic in Mary’s eyes, ’specially the elder one. The younger woman was lovely but a stranger, but looking at the old woman beside her was like looking into a mirror from the future, ’cause under those wrinkles was a face that looked more like Mary’s than any she’d ever seen.

“This is my mother, White Snow Falling,” Blackbird said, gesturing to the first woman, who nodded politely at Mary. “And this is Red Feather, our grandmother.”

Tears filled Mary’s eyes. She knew she should say something, introduce herself, but all she did was stare. Good thing it didn’t seem to matter. The old woman must’ve already guessed who she was, ’cause she got right up and went to Mary, wrapping her in her thin arms as she sang a song of joy for the lost child who’d come home.

That undid her completely. Mary couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been searching for this right here. Couldn’t say how long she’d dreamed of someone who’d hug her close and tell her the wandering was over. She’d gotten a taste of it when Josie had invited her to stay and again when Calamity had welcomed her, but nothing, nothing, nothing could compare to this. She could’ve died right here in her grandmother’s arms and not felt a twinge of regret.

When Mary finally came out of her weeping, Blackbird was telling the story of how Bear Woman had carried her to Mary on her back. It sounded much more important when she told it, like something out of a legend. The other women looked so impressed, Mary felt obligated to tell them it hadn’t all been so wondrous. ’Fore she got the chance, though, Mary’s grandmother got up and yelled out the tent flap for others to come and listen.

Soon, the conical lodge was full of women and children clamoring to hear the story. They looked at Mary when Blackbird was finished, demanding to hear how she’d gotten stuck in that crystal in the first place. Mary wasn’t sure what to do with so many eager faces and was even less certain about how to tell her part in a way that people who hadn’t been there could follow.

In the end, though, she didn’t have to do a thing. Blackbird told the whole tale for her, turning the awful scramble into a heroic fable of Mary fighting off the Death Singer and taming the wasichu’s mad crystal, proving once and for all that crystal was for the People alone. A gift from the Great Spirit given through Bear Woman to help them drive away the evil that had invaded their home.

That wasn’t what Mary had told her on the trail, but everyone seemed to love Blackbird’s version, so she bit her tongue. It was hard to deny that the Lakota had a better relationship with their crystal than anyone back in town. Several of the women who’d come to listen were busy stitching crystal into leather armor for their men and horses, and none of them looked bothered by it in the slightest. All of the crystal in their hands sang the same drumming song as the stones on Blackbird’s dress, and while Mary found the constant thum thum thum much more crazy-making than the chiming, wandering music she was used to, it didn’t seem to affect the people here at all. At least not the way a similar amount of crystal in the caves would’ve addled a miner.

She wanted to ask Calamity ’bout the difference, but her Song was far, far away now, and Bear Woman’s drumming was so loud. Mary could barely think with all that racket, which was a problem, since her grandmother and the others wouldn’t stop peppering her with questions ’bout where she’d been all these years and what tribes she’d stayed with that they’d never heard tell of her ’fore now.

Each query was simple enough by itself, but Mary couldn’t make sense of them when they were all piled on top of each other and mixed with the drumming. She was standing there like an idiot when her sister came to her rescue yet again, proclaiming that Mary was hungry from her long journey, and wouldn’t somebody feed her?

That simple request changed the entire atmosphere. In a flash, the crowd went from interrogating Mary to trying to feed her every bit of food under the sun, allowing Mary to lose herself once again in her lifelong dream of being doted over by her loving family, of which there seemed to be quite a lot. None from her mother’s side, of course, but her father had heaps of relations. Normally, they lived spread out among the various tribes according to their own complex network of affiliations and preferences, but like the rest of the Lakota, they’d all come here chasing news of Sitting Bull’s victories now that the summer buffalo hunts were over and it was time for war.

The result was a battle-camp family reunion. The tepee Mary had thought was so enormous when she’d first arrived was soon packed to the walls with cousins and aunts and other relatives she didn’t even know the name for. It was such a joyous, overwhelming scene, she didn’t realize just how much time had passed until Blackbird told everyone they had to stop. It was time for the council.

“What council?” Mary asked breathlessly, handing back the chubby-cheeked baby someone had shoved at her.

“The war council,” Blackbird said, as if that should’ve been obvious. “Never in anyone’s memory have so many tribes banded together. Now that all of us are gathered, the headmen are having a council fire to decide where we should attack next.” She puffed out her flat chest. “Since I helped plan the attack on the Black Hills before Bear Woman took me to you, I’ve been asked to tell the story of how the Home-Going Cloud drove out all the invaders to our east, but you should stay here.”

That suited Mary fine. A tent full of family was one thing, but she couldn’t imagine anything scarier than a big formal meeting with a bunch of serious old men who definitely wouldn’t approve of her. She’d much rather stay with her grandmother, who was already getting ready to wash and comb out Mary’s hair. That said, Mary had gotten to know her sister pretty well over their journey, and something ’bout the way Blackbird spoke just then gave her pause.

“Why do you think I should stay?” she asked in a hushed whisper. “Is there someone you don’t want to see me?”

“More like someone I don’t want you to see,” her sister whispered back, her pretty face grim as a funeral. “Our father will be attending.”

“Then I gotta go!” Mary cried, shooting to her feet, but Blackbird shook her head.

“No, you don’t,” she said, pulling Mary back down. “Our father isn’t like the rest of the family you met today. He’s a great warrior, and his victories have made us rich in horses, but he’s not…”

She paused, grinding her teeth as she searched for the words. “He is not a kind man,” she said at last, bending her head low over Mary’s. “He cares for nothing but killing and winning, not even his wife. Why do you think he doesn’t live here in our lodge? It’s because he considers us a waste of his time. He sleeps in the grass on the edge of camp so he can be the first to attack spies and ambushers. Not because he wants to protect us but because he loves the fight. It’s the only thing he loves.”

“That can’t be true,” Mary said automatically, but her sister’s look made her shut her mouth.

“It can be, and it is,” Blackbird said firmly. “The only times he spoke to me as a child were when he was training me to ride and shoot so I could join him in battle. When I told him that wasn’t my path, that I was going to become winkte instead, he turned his back and never talked to me again. Not because he hated my decision, but because now that he knew I wasn’t going to fight, he had no more use for me. He has no use for anything that doesn’t help him kill.”

“Maybe so,” Mary said, heart in her throat. “But he’s still my father. I can love him even if he doesn’t love me.”

“You’d be better off giving your love to the dirt,” she replied, wrapping her arms around Mary. “We love you, sister. Let that be enough. Don’t waste your time chasing someone who will never have time for you.”

Mary buried her face in her sister’s strong shoulder. She knew Blackbird was just trying to protect her, but not seeing her father when he was so close felt unspeakably wrong. She didn’t want to argue with her sister, though, so Mary swallowed her worries and helped Blackbird get ready. Then, when the sun had set and everyone in the camp started moving toward the great bonfire in the center where the great chiefs and war leaders were already gathered, she let Blackbird go, staying behind in the tepee with her grandmother until the old woman fell asleep.

Moving as silently as she did in the caves, Mary rose from her seat on the reed mats and changed into the doeskin dress they’d laid out for her to wear tomorrow. Blackbird’s mother had left an hour earlier to listen to the meeting from the back with the other women, which meant there was no one to see Mary as she slipped out of the tepee and started creeping between the lodges toward the crowd gathered around the huge fire burning at the camp’s center.

She still looked like an outsider with her old boots and damp, undecorated hair still hanging loose down her back from where her grandmother had washed it, but it was dark enough now that no one noticed. They were all too busy trying to hear the men speaking by the fire, looking at her only to register their annoyance when Mary pushed between them, wiggling all the way through to the circle’s inner edge.

It was quite the sight to behold. Mary had seen councils before when she’d lived with the tribes, but nothing near this size. There must have been twenty chiefs sitting in places of honor around the fire. A few she recognized, like Red Cloud, the great chief of the Oglala Lakota who’d led them to victory during the last big war ten years ago. Next to him was Crazy Horse, the Hunkpapa’s war leader. And beside him on a raised place of honor was Sitting Bull himself: a quiet, hard-faced man wearing a war bonnet of eagle feathers that ran down his back like a river.

The feathers were proof of the honors and respect he had earned—and not just as a warrior. Blackbird had told Mary all about his famous visions, including the one he’d received during the Sun Dance that had predicted Custer’s defeat.

It was very late now, and the dancing, singing, eating, and pipe-passing portions of the council had long since finished. The current speaker was a Cheyenne headman whose name Mary didn’t know, but he seemed to have been talking for a long time. Many in the crowd had already fallen asleep, but the warriors gathered nearest the chiefs were awake and listening intently. None of them were looking in Mary’s direction, though, so she took the chance to rise up on her tiptoes for a better view of their ranks.

She had no idea what her father looked like, but even in a gathering this big, there couldn’t be that many warriors of the right age and status. Given what Blackbird had said about his prowess, Mary reckoned he was probably up near the front. But while there were many men with elaborately stitched clothing and beautifully decorated rifles sitting behind the chiefs, none of them looked right. She was about to start searching the ranks farther back when she spotted a man standing off by himself.

She didn’t know how. Every other spot around the giant fire was crammed with people. But though the warrior was in a choice position, no one was next to him. Even the group of young men who were clearly his followers kept well away, leaving him standing like a lone tree at the edge of the firelight.

He was dressed oddly as well. Where everyone else had clearly put on their best for the occasion, the lonely warrior carried no weapons and wore no decorations. Just his bare chest, which was scarred all over with flowing lines that looked almost artistic, like someone had embroidered a pattern straight into his skin. Mary was moving closer for a better look when a log snapped and fell into the huge fire, throwing a plume of sparks into the night and casting proper light on the man’s face for the first time.

The sight stopped her cold. She’d seen it only for the seconds the sparks had been alive, but Mary knew that face. It was carved into her memory along with the smell of mud and the cold of the icy stream. It was the warrior from that morning she hated most. The one who’d told her to go away.

Dread pooled in Mary’s stomach. She could no longer see him clearly now that the dark had swallowed him back up, but just knowing he was here made her want to be anywhere else. Mary was pushing her way back through the crowd to do just that when she accidentally stepped on the foot of the woman next to her.

“I’m so sorry,” she said in Lakota, hoping her accent didn’t give her away.

“Nothing to be sorry for, little sister,” said the woman, who’d clearly mistaken short little Mary for a child in the dark. Either that, or she was the sort of person who felt comfortable patting total strangers on the head. Mary was about to push on when the woman grabbed her shoulders.

“You’re shaking! What’s scared you?”

“Nothing,” Mary lied, squirming out of her grasp only to stop again two steps later. “Actually, I do have a question.” She pointed back at the warrior standing alone by the fire. “Do you know who that man is? The one with the scars?”

The woman’s kindly tone changed immediately. “Oh, him.” She sniffed disapprovingly. “That’s Running Wolf. You won’t find anyone who’s won more battles, but I wouldn’t go near him if I were you, child. He’s crazy.”

Even all these years later, it was supremely gratifying to hear that other people thought poorly of the man who’d ruined all her hopes. Feeling slightly better, Mary thanked the woman and was about to move on when the old man next to them suddenly butted in.

“Running Wolf’s not crazy,” he slurred, his breath reeking of cheap whiskey as he leaned down to give Mary a toothless grin. “He made a deal with the wolf spirit Sungmanito! Him and all his followers traded half their human souls for the ability to turn into wolves. I’ve seen ’em do it!”

“That’s just warriors bragging, you drunk,” the woman scolded. “Sungmanito wouldn’t bless a man like him. Running Wolf might’ve killed a thousand enemies, but I say the only good he’s ever done the Hunkpapa was fathering Blackbird.”

Mary stopped trying to sneak away. “Blackbird?” she repeated, whirling around. “The winkte Blackbird? He’s her father?”

“That’s the one,” the woman said. “And I pity her for it. Her and her mother. They’re good, kind people. Not unsociable like him.”

She had a great deal more to say about Running Wolf’s rudeness, but Mary couldn’t listen. All of her senses were stuck on the man standing alone by the fire. The cruel warrior who’d driven a child away from her only chance at home.

Her father.

Chapter 7

July 27, 1876

18 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

Reliance stomped around the ghostly white fire, her little shoes treading the rut she’d worn in the ash-black dirt another fraction deeper.

The erosion was the only marker she had for the passage of time. Nothing else in this place changed. The white campfire always burned despite having no fuel she could see. The wind always howled across the freezing black desert, which stretched out in all directions like a prison without walls. No matter how much she walked, she never felt hunger or thirst. Just the endless frustration of a trapped animal caught in a cage beyond its understanding.

Rel certainly felt like a stupid beast. She had no idea how many days had passed since her dad had cast her back down here, but she was certain that horrible things were happening outside. Every now and then, her father’s hand would brush the crystal gun, and she’d catch a glimpse of him ordering the dead around like slaves while sneering men with crystal stitched all over their bodies looked on.

If she didn’t hate him so much, Rel would’ve been impressed by how quickly the bastard had wormed himself into the Whitman Gang’s good graces. Clearly, horrid attracted horrid, and the Whitmans had plenty to go ’round. In just the tiny glimpses she was able to steal, Rel had seen wagons piled high with the stolen bodies of the dead.

Most looked like fresh kills, probably from the gang’s raids on the highways. But there were skeletons in the wagons too sometimes, proving that even graves weren’t safe. Whatever the state, every corpse was brought down to the freezing underground room where her father worked with the monster who’d killed their family, the bastard son Rel would never call brother.

And here she’d thought her opinion of Bernard Reiner couldn’t sink any lower. He’d always been a sorry excuse for a father, running off and leaving his family to the charity of strangers when he wasn’t actively abusing them, but she’d never suspected him of cheating. Now here he was with not just a bastard son but one who was nearly Rel’s same age, meaning her dad must’ve been sneaking behind one pregnant lover’s back with the other. Rel didn’t know who’d come first, her mother or Vincent’s, but she was never gonna forgive that asshole for any of it.

Too bad Vincent didn’t seem to feel the same. She’d almost been rooting for him when he pointed a gun at their dad’s face. Whenever she caught a glimpse of him now, though, he was lapping up their father’s attention, hanging on his every word like a starving dog at the butcher’s.

If she hadn’t hated the family-murdering bastard so much, it might’ve been enough to make Rel feel sorry for him. Vincent clearly had no idea of the disaster he was courting. He looked genuinely happy in their father’s company, talking animatedly about bones and corpses and such. Poor fool clearly hadn’t realized yet that Bernard Reiner’s charm and flattery were just distractions from the knife he always held ready to stab into your back as soon as it suited him.

Not that Rel had any right to criticize. She’d also been taken in, thinking she was safe because her dad was dead. Stupid girl. Dead or alive, Bernard Reiner was a viper. He always bit you eventually. A truth she hadn’t fully accepted until it was far, far too late.

If she could just get out! For all the jawing he’d done about Rel’s “natural talent” for their family curse, she hadn’t been able to make heads or tails of what her dad had done to stick her down here. At first she’d assumed they’d just switched places with her soul going into the gun while his took up residence in her body. But while she’d watched their arrival at the Whitman camp from the pistol’s perspective, all the glimpses she’d caught since then had been through her own eyes, suggesting she could also slip into her father’s mind.

Rel was certain that was the key. Her dad had always acted like her thoughts were his property, but it was her head, dammit. If she could just get back in there, maybe she could find a way to shove him back out. Clearly it was possible ’cause he’d done it to her, but Rel didn’t know enough of his Necromancy mumbo jumbo to know what to do even when she found herself watching through his vision.

If her dad had still cared enough to eavesdrop on her thoughts these days, that admission would have had him exploding with “I told you so”s. Rel could almost hear his hateful voice saying if only she’d listened to his teachings, if only she hadn’t rejected his art, maybe she wouldn’t be in this situation. But while it was indeed her fault that she’d never learned, Rel refused to feel guilty. She was proud she’d never learned his black magic. Proud she’d never—

“How can you be proud of ignorance?”

Rel jerked so violently, she tripped over her rut and nearly went sprawling. The moment she got her balance back, she whirled on her heel, yanking the stupid flounced skirt of her party dress out of the way as she turned to face the young man who was suddenly standing directly across the fire from her.

He was bigger than the child version of herself that Rel was stuck in for some reason but not yet fully grown. He looked about fifteen, with the same rich brown hair as her mother and the workman’s overalls he’d been wearing the day he died. Even his know-it-all smile was the same, filling her with hope she’d never thought to feel again.

“Chase?” Rel whispered, her voice raspy as the dusty wind. “Is that you?”

“Hello, Relly,” her little brother said. “Miss me?”

Rel raced around the fire, throwing herself into her brother’s arms with a cry that could’ve been joy or sorrow. Even she didn’t know, but she wouldn’t have traded the feeling for anything.

“How are you here?” she demanded when she could speak again, hugging him until her arms ached. “Did you do something to get your ghost unstuck? Think up a way to get free?”

Her brother arched an eyebrow at her. “Come on, you know the answer to that.”

Rel did. Facing it, though, was another matter. “You’re like Momma,” she said at last, forcing herself to let him go. “This isn’t really you. You’re just my memory of Chase.”

“Not a memory,” her brother corrected in the lecturing tone she used to hate because it made him sound like their father. “An echo. I’m the part of Chase that still rings inside your bones. Normally, that would make me less than a ghost. In this place, though, I’m as real as you are.”

“Is that because I’m like him?” Rel asked in horror, backing away. “Did part of you get stuck in me just like your ghosts got stuck back at the cabin ’cause of his foul magic?”

“No, no, no,” Chase said, shaking his head. “This is completely different. Didn’t you listen to anything he taught us?”

Rel snorted. “Of course not.”

“Well, you should have,” her brother scolded, placing a hand over his chest. “All souls leave echoes in their wake. These reverberations touch everything we interact with, but they build up most strongly inside the people we were closest to. Just as I’m here with you now, there’s an echo of your soul left behind in my bones. Normally, these vibrations would be too faint for anyone to feel, dead or alive, but you and I come from a long line of scholars who dedicated their lives to the pursuit of enhanced soul resonance—and the lives of their children. Remember, Mother didn’t marry Father because she liked him. She did it because her father wanted to mix their family’s lineage with the Reiners’ to ensure that future generations—us—would be born with the best possible sensitivity for collecting and echoing resonance. It’s like breeding traits into livestock. They—”

“I understand how it works,” Rel snapped. “What I don’t get is how you can be so damn calm about it. You just admitted they bred us like cattle so we could be better echo chambers for ghosts! In what world is that acceptable?”

“It’s what’s letting me talk to you right now,” Chase said with a shrug. “Whatever your opinion of the process, you can’t deny we have a powerful gift. Just look at you! You bound Dad’s soul into that gun with no more guidance than his whispers in your ear, and you’ve always been able to hear ghosts even before you started drinking crystal. Even if you were doing it in a crude way, you were still being a Reiner.”

“Like hell I was!” Rel yelled. “Only reason I did any of that was to save your souls from torment! If you and Momma hadn’t been suffering, I never would’ve heeded a word he said.”

“But you did,” Chase insisted. “And that’s okay! Knowledge isn’t good or evil by itself. It’s how we use it that matters, and you used yours with good intentions.”

“Yeah, well, didn’t do me any good, did it?” Rel muttered, grinding her palms into her eyes. “My ‘good intentions’ probably got Josie O’Connor killed.”

“But not because you meant to,” her brother said, grabbing her hands and pulling them back down. “Didn’t you ever wonder why I kept going to lessons with Father?”

“Because he wouldn’t feed you if you didn’t?”

“That was a factor at first,” Chase admitted. “But I was fifteen when I died. I was educated, literate, able to do complicated figures in my head. There was nothing keeping me from running away and getting a job anywhere I liked, but I didn’t. I stayed because I wanted to learn everything he had to teach, because I could hear it just like he could.”

“Hear what?”

Her brother’s eyes grew distant in a way that reminded Rel of Mary. “The sound. All my life, it was there: a beautiful melody just at the edge of my hearing. It got louder as we traveled west, but it wasn’t until Mr. Price mailed us the crystal that I finally understood just how much I’d been missing.”

Rel turned away in disgust. “You sound like Dad.”

“He wasn’t wrong about everything,” Chase insisted, stepping back into her line of vision. “Why do you think a man who loved the comforts of civilization as much as our father packed up his family and moved into the middle of nowhere? It’s because he was chasing the sound.”

“You mean the crystal.”

“Same thing,” her brother insisted, blue eyes shining. “What we call ‘crystal’ is just a super-concentrated form of the same power our family has been collecting, using, and perfecting for generations.”

“Don’t make it sound so noble. You saw the abominations he made in that workroom.”

“Just because a blacksmith can forge iron into torture devices doesn’t mean that all metalworking is inherently cruel,” Chase argued. “Smiths can make all kinds of beautiful, useful things as well as swords and pokers. Necromancy is no different. You can do it, too, if you take the time to listen.”

“I want no part of his curse!” Rel yelled. Then her scowl faded. “And I’ve already tried listening for the sound. I’ve been down in the caves loads of times, but I never hear anything but ghosts. I know there must be music of some sort ’cause I’ve seen Mary follow it, but I can’t do what she does.”

“Just because you can’t hear the crystal doesn’t mean you’re deaf,” Chase said encouragingly. “The voices of the dead are also music. How do you think our father makes the corpses move?”

Rel had never thought about it. She’d never wanted to understand his horrors. She did want to get out of here, though, so she gave it her best guess.

“He tells them to?”

“That’s what he does, not how,” Chase stressed. “The key you’re looking for is how he manipulates the soul itself. We’re not slips of paper shoved into the envelopes of our bodies. We’re melodies, strains of the Universal Music played on the instrument of our lives. The sound runs through our bodies like breath through a flute or a bow over the strings of a violin. It’s too big for any individual to control, but we can manipulate the way it flows through our bodies and our souls to get our desired result. That’s the trick! That’s the secret of Necromancy!”

He looked so excited, but Rel had never felt dirtier in her life. “Is that what I’ve been doing?” she whispered, looking down at her hands. “All this time, I thought I was just talking to the ghosts, but I’m just like him, aren’t I? I manipulated their souls!”

“Actually, I’ve never seen anyone do what you do,” Chase admitted. “The techniques Father taught me were all about strengthening one’s own music so that you’d be loud enough to wrest control of a dead body from its original owner. It’s a tricky, forceful process that needs the added strength of crystal to become truly viable, but you’ve never needed any of that. All you have to do is walk up to a ghost to make it start talking!” He widened his smile. “That’s serious power, Relly. With practice, I bet you could even—”

“No,” Rel said, fists clenching. “I’m not like him. I’m never gonna be like him!”

“You can’t deny facts. You’re Reliance Reiner, daughter of Bernard and Prudence, who was herself the daughter of an old and powerful necromancer line. You’re a thoroughbred on both sides. Stop being a ninny and use that power to break out of here!”

“No!” Rel cried, covering her ears. “No!”

“There’s no other way,” her brother said crossly. “Dad was able to take control because he’s more experienced with this stuff than you were, but this is your soul, Relly. Your body, your bones, yours. No one can play your instrument better than you can, but only if you’re willing to try. You’ll never be able to beat him if you refuse to even pick up your weapon!”

Reliance turned away, little fists clutched tight. Her brother had no idea what he was asking. She didn’t care what she’d been born to. If the only way to beat her father was by embracing his evil, then she’d rather burn to death in the white fire.

“That’s precisely the sort of pigheaded thinking that got you into this mess,” her brother scolded. “But you’ve got this by the wrong end. It’s not ‘his’ power you’d be using. It’s yours. This entire place exists inside your body! You’re only trapped down here for as long as you let yourself be, because it’s your magic, not his. Use it!”

“I can’t,” Rel told the dusty ground. “I won’t be his student, Chase.”

“Then you’ll spend the rest of your life as his prisoner,” her brother said, shaking his head.

Rel was about to say she wouldn’t be that either. But before the words could leave her mouth, the horrible feeling she’d learned to dread grabbed her by the throat again. It was just like what had happened with her mother, like the hand of God himself had reached down and snatched her up. She got one last look at her brother’s terrified face before she was yanked back into the living world. One final chance to hear his voice as he called after her.

“It’s your life, Relly!” Chase shouted as the black winds came to blow his echo away. “Don’t let him eat you too!”

That was the last thing Reliance heard before her brother vanished entirely, leaving her screaming in her father’s hand as he yanked her gun from its holster.

~~~

“… cutting along the facet here,” her father was saying as Rel exploded back into the light. “See that crooked slice? That’s done on purpose to help tamp down on the chaotic counter-resonance.”

“I know,” Vincent said, pointing at Rel. Or, rather, at the crystal-decorated prison of a gun her father was presenting as his example. “But all of this was in your notes already. I’ve made plenty of my own crystal weapons following your methods. What I want to know is how you made the black crystals.”

“I was getting to that,” Bernard said testily, turning Rel’s gun to show him the carved sliver of human finger bone that formed the trigger. “Remember: this gun was my first attempt. It’s trash compared to what we can do now, but the fact that it remains so effective is a tribute to the innate power of properly controlled crystal.”

He set Rel’s pistol down on the table, but he did not cast her back into the dark. She was certain that was because he wanted her to hear whatever he was about to say, but she was too happy to be out of the dark to mind being manipulated for once.

“Take this specimen,” her father continued, picking up a deep-blue, square-shaped crystal the size of a pearl onion from the workbench beside him. “It’s a perfectly tuned cut from the Deep Caves. Worth a small fortune, and yet even this treasure is practically useless for anything more than novelty, thanks to its chaotic nature.”

“I’ve used it,” Vincent said cockily. “What do you think I’ve been stitching into all those bandits?”

“And you’ve had as many failures as successes,” Bernard reminded him. “You could not control what powers each individual manifested. How many crystal-faced bandits are running around this place with utterly useless abilities? How many didn’t even survive the implantation process?”

Vincent’s silence was answer enough, and their father continued. “The force crystal produces isn’t like steam or water,” he explained, turning the blue stone over in Rel’s stolen fingers. “It’s more like a wild elephant. Impossibly strong, but you have no idea what it’s going to do until it does it. The trick of the black crystal is that it forces all those unknowns, all that chaos into one form. One voice, preferably your voice. Once you’ve got that, you can make it do whatever you want. Watch closely.”

He closed his fingers around the blue crystal, and a horrible dissonance pierced Rel’s mind, making her jump. She’d never heard crystal before. She wasn’t sure she was hearing it now, ’cause the sound was nothing like what Chase and Mary had described. It couldn’t even be called music.

If anything, it reminded Rel most of the ghosts that screamed in the Dark. She was wondering if there was any way to shut out the noise when, like an orchestra sliding into tune, the awful screeching suddenly came together. The crystal’s color vanished at the same time, leaving a pitch-black hunk of shiny stone that rang with a sound Rel did recognize. That was her father’s voice inside the crystal humming a single placid note forever as he set it down on the table.

“There,” he said proudly. “Now that its chaos has been corrected, this crystal is completely within my control.”

“Incredible,” Vincent whispered, picking up the transformed rock with greedy fingers. “This will change everything! The crystal we’ve been getting from Medicine Rocks has been so volatile recently that we can barely use it, but now…” He held the shiny black lump up to the lanterns with a giddy sound. “How do I do it?”

“The process requires total mastery,” Bernard explained, standing up to select another blue crystal from the crate on the shelf. “You know how crystal normally sounds random, like bells in the wind?”

“No,” Vincent said, looking annoyed. “I can’t hear crystal, remember?”

Bernard sighed. “That’s right. I forgot.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “This is why I didn’t stay with your mother.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘Let’s choose another,’” he lied, putting down the crystal he’d previously selected in favor of the next, practically identical stone. “Hearing makes the process easier, but it’s not necessary. What matters in Necromancy is presence. You must be in total command of every facet of yourself—mind, flesh, thoughts, bones—and then you must project that command onto the crystal’s randomness until it has no choice but to match the order you provide. Here, give it a try.”

He tried to give Vincent the blue crystal, but the dark-haired man forced it away. “I can’t,” he said angrily. “I can’t handle raw crystal on my own. I need my tuning forks and cutters and—”

“For what?” Bernard asked mockingly. “Changing the crystal’s shape does nothing. It’s like shaking a jar of marbles until all the pretty ones are on the top. It looks nice enough from above, but all the colors you didn’t like are still in there. Nothing fundamental has changed, you’ve just reshuffled the chaos. My method alters the sound inside the crystal, turning the marbles into iron or diamonds or whatever else I want them to be.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Vincent muttered. “You can hear what you’re doing. How am I supposed to turn this black if I can’t even—”

“A deaf man can still play the violin if he knows where to put his fingers,” their father said dismissively, shoving the crystal into Vincent’s hands. “Try it. You might surprise yourself.”

Shaking his head, Vincent took the crystal in both hands and began to stare at it with all his might. Rel was wondering if he was trying to glare the thing into submission when she heard it. It was very soft, barely more than a whisper, but there was definitely a sound coming out of Vincent that hadn’t been there before. It was a quiet sort of squeaking, like two bits of metal fencing rubbing together in the wind. Her father must have heard it, too, because his face—Rel’s stolen face—split into a grin.

“Good,” he said, cupping his hands around Vincent’s on the crystal. “Now push.”

Sweat pouring down from his temples, Vincent nodded, and the squeaking grew a fraction louder. Inside the cage of his fingers, the deep-blue crystal began to shake like a rattle, its color fluctuating from bright to dark like the sun passing through clouds. Then, all at once, the bright patches vanished completely, and a black stain began to creep over the crystal’s blue surface. It looked just like what had happened when Rel’s blood had hit the crystals back in the Mother Lode, except this rock was still shiny and hard, not matte-black and dead-looking.

The crystal stayed like that for several seconds before its shiny blackness withered into a sticky-looking substance that looked like the mold from under the bark on a rotting log. Vincent dropped the rock a moment later, collapsing onto his workbench. The crystal fell to the floor, shattering into black dust as fine as the sand of Rel’s prison.

“Good,” Bernard said.

Chest still heaving from the effort, Vincent gave him a startled look. “It was a failure.”

“It was effort,” their father said, reaching out to pat him on the shoulder. “You made something happen on your first try despite not being able to hear what you were doing. That’s far better than I expected.” He smiled. “You truly are an incredible talent, my son.”

Vincent’s face lit up like the sunrise, and Rel had to fight not to be sick. She didn’t know if he’d done well or not, but that was pandering if ever she’d heard it. Vincent was falling for their father’s oldest trick, being suckered in by the praise that was only offered to keep him doing what Bernard wanted. It was the same bait he’d used to lead Rel around by the nose before she’d learned better. Watching him sucker Vincent the same way almost made her want to warn her brother.

Almost.

Actually, I really do think he did quite well.

Rel jumped so hard the pistol rattled on the table. The hell?

Did you think I couldn’t speak to you like this anymore now that things are different? her father asked, smiling down at her with Rel’s own smirk. Stupid girl. Who do you think invented the prison you’re trapped in?

Send me back to it, then! Rel snarled, wishing she had teeth to bare. I’d rather be stuck down there than up here listening to you teach that murderer your garbage!

Her father chuckled. That “murderer” is doing ten times more than you ever managed on a quarter of the talent. Just think what you could have accomplished if you’d applied yourself as much as Vincent.

The only thing Rel wanted to apply was her fist to his face. Bernard must have been done talking to her, though, ’cause his voice vanished from her mind, leaving her a helpless presence stuck inside the gun as he shifted his attention back to her half brother.

“Let’s try that again,” he said, handing him another crystal from the box. “This time, I want you to focus on—”

A hail of footsteps coming down the stairs interrupted him. The laboratory’s insulated door flew open seconds later as a young Whitman bandit burst into the laboratory, terror all over his crystal-stitched face.

“Bone Smith!” he cried. “Word just came in from Medicine Rocks. Shit’s going to hell with the Sioux. Apache Jake’s calling in the counter genie!”

Bernard blinked. “The what?”

“The contingency,” Vincent translated, looking even paler than usual as he jerked his head at the bandit. “Go tell the others to start packing the cannons.”

The young man nodded and scurried off, leaving Rel and her father alone with an increasingly panicked-looking Vincent.

“What is the contingency?” Bernard asked.

“Emergency measures,” Vincent replied, sweeping all the crystal they’d been working with back into the crate. “For when we can’t count on the cavalry to hold back the Sioux.”

Bernard arched one of Rel’s eyebrows. “Is that a problem? The cavalry and the Sioux are both rivals for the crystal. Why not let them kill each other and be done?”

“Because we’re not ready yet,” Vincent said, hurrying around his office. “There’s no mines way out here. If the Indians take Medicine Rocks, we’re just as screwed for crystal as everyone else. But don’t worry, this is all planned for.”

Their father looked very intrigued. “Planned by whom?”

“The She Wolf and the Whitmans,” Vincent said, grabbing a ledger off his desk. “They’ve known this day was coming ever since the army built Fort Grant. That said, this is about the worst timing Sitting Bull could’ve chosen. We’re good on cannons, but running such a large blockade has left us ridiculously shorthanded. That’s why I’ve been making so many corpse soldiers and why the bosses are out recruiting in California.”

“Didn’t you think of that before?”

“Of course we did. That was the whole point of the mission for the Bell.”

Bernard went still in Rel’s body. Rel froze as well, ears straining. She remembered as well as her dad did that the Whitmans who’d attacked them in the caves had been looking for Josie and a Bell. Volchitsa had just wanted Sam Price’s final score of crystal, but the giant bandit and his dog-man hadn’t looked twice at the wealth. They’d been chasing something else. Something far bigger.

“Why were they looking for the Bell?”

“It was supposed to give us complete control over the crystal or some such nonsense,” Vincent replied distractedly. “The Shitter said acquiring it would eliminate the need for the blockade or Volchitsa, and you can guess how much the bosses liked that. They sent some of our best men into the caves after it, but something went wrong and—”

He stopped, snapping his mouth shut. “Um,” he said sheepishly a moment later. “I don’t suppose you could forget I said all that?”

“Of course, my boy,” Reiner replied graciously. “I’m here to help you, not to cause trouble.”

Vincent looked incredibly relieved by this. Very stupidly so, Rel thought, as her father added, “Though, of course, it would be easier to offer assistance if I knew what was going on. You’ve mentioned this ‘Shitter’ twice now. Who is he?”

Vincent flinched away like the question was a punch. “No one of interest.”

Their father took a step forward, his voice no longer sweet. “Who is he, Vincent?”

“No one,” his son snapped. “Just another of the Whitmans’ monsters. A man broken by crystal who occasionally gets glimpses into what’s going to happen in the future. He predicted the Whitmans would conquer everything from here to the Tetons, so of course they love him, but I’ve never seen his premonitions lead to anything but disaster.”

He turned away like that was that, but Rel could feel her father’s excitement rising like a wire around her throat. “Where is he?”

“Does it matter?” Vincent asked sharply, clearly desperate to get away from this line of conversation. “I already told you he’s a fraud.”

“Your employers clearly believe he has merit,” Bernard argued. “I think a glimpse into the future would be quite useful when you’re about to face an enemy army outnumbered. Take me to him.”

“No,” Vincent said.

Bernard went dangerously still. “No?” he repeated, his calm voice like a still blade. “Why not?”

To his credit, Vincent stood his ground. “Because… because I don’t want to.”

“Why not?” their father pressed, stepping closer. “Who is he, Vincent?”

Rel thought they’d already covered that question. But more must’ve been going on here than she’d realized, ’cause when Vincent bent his head, it was in shame, not defeat.

“He’s my grandfather.”

The victorious thrill Rel felt from her father at that admission made her skin crawl. “I knew he wasn’t dead!”

“He should have died,” Vincent said, covering his face. “It would’ve been kinder.”

“We should go see him,” Bernard said giddily, paying no attention to his son’s distress. “I don’t know about prophecy, but when I knew him, your grandfather had the best ear for the Universal Music of anyone I’d met.”

“Maybe once,” Vincent said sourly. “These days, though, all he does is draw riddles in his own filth.”

“So not a lot has changed, then,” Bernard said, chuckling until he caught sight of his son’s murderous look. “It was only a joke. I meant no offense.”

“Well, I took offense,” Vincent said, tossing his ledger on the table. “My grandfather raised me after my mother died. I owe everything I am to him, and as much as I’ve come to respect you, I will not listen to you mock him.”

“That was not my intent,” Bernard insisted. “He was my teacher as well once. I realize he’s no longer the great necromancer he once was, but just seeing the manner in which he went mad could still prove educational. Or do you not want to perfect your mastery over crystal?”

“I don’t see what this has to do with that,” Vincent muttered, raking a hand through his hair. “But fine. The Whitman Brothers left orders that the Shitter was to be consulted before any major action anyway. I was going to send a lackey to write down something that I could ignore, but if you’re so eager to see…” He walked across the workroom to pull open a door that had been hidden beneath a rug. “Come with me.”

Bernard did so like a child running down the stairs on Christmas morning. He snatched Rel off the table as he did so, shoving her back into her holster as he scooted after Vincent through the hole in the floorboards. This led to a dark spiral stairwell descending even farther underground. It looked like it went down forever, but they only descended about a dozen actual feet before Bernard’s boots hit ground again.

“I’ll get the light,” Vincent said, his voice oddly thick. “And I suggest you cover your nose.”

Bernard was already doing so when his son lit the kerosene lantern hanging from the ceiling, and as the light spilled out around them, Rel saw why. For the first time since this had started, she was glad she was a ghost in a gun. Guns didn’t have noses, and from what she could see of the hidden room, that was a blessing.

The secret cellar below Vincent’s workshop was a smallish cavern that had been blasted out of the rock around a single outcropping of rose-pink crystal. What that lone piece was doing way out here or how they’d found it, Rel couldn’t begin to guess, but the rest of the place was clearly a prison. The little room was split in half by the thickest iron bars Rel had ever seen. The crystal outcropping was on the other side of the bars from the stair where they’d come down, and lying at its base like a grub in mud was a skeletal old man.

Rel recoiled in her holster. The old man was naked except for a pair of shorts. His pale, liver-spotted skin was covered in angry red sores from the filth he was lying in, which Rel was now certain wasn’t mud. It was shit.

Except for the lone crystal, which was astonishingly clean, every inch of the cell behind the bars was covered in excrement. Someone, presumably the old man, had smeared the stuff all the way up the stone walls and even onto the ceiling. It was a nauseating sight, but while Vincent was clearly fighting not to gag, her father didn’t seem to mind the filth at all. His attention was entirely upon the skeletal man huddled beneath the crystal with a reverence Rel had never witnessed in him before.

“So this is how you ended,” he whispered, walking Rel’s body perilously close to the shit-caked bars. “The greatest necromantic mind of his age, living in his own filth like an animal.”

“Don’t talk to him like that!” Vincent cried, rushing over like an angry boy to pull him away from the grandfather he was so clearly ashamed of but still felt the need to defend.

“He called me much worse, I assure you,” Bernard replied, crouching down to get a better look at the lump standing up from the back of the old man’s skull. It looked like a knot of ratty hair, but when the old man turned his face away from Vincent’s lamp, Rel saw it was a knob of crystal.

I’ll be damned.

It was just like the Whitman in the caves had said. The Shitter really had shoved a lump of crystal into his head! The rock he’d chosen was blue, not rose like the jut of crystal in his prison, but that didn’t seem to matter. Now that Rel knew what she was looking at, the man’s filthy face no longer looked mad to her. He looked high.

She’d seen that euphoric expression on Clink’s face when he was hammering at his piano. It took more crystal than most men could stomach to reach that level, but having a rock shoved into your brain bypassed the digestion problem nicely. She was wondering if Clink had ever tried shoving a crystal somewhere he shouldn’t to get the same effect when Vincent’s grandfather suddenly looked at her.

The move made her jump inside her gun. The old man’s eyes were bloodshot and dilated like an ether addict’s, but his gaze was clearly fixed on her. Not her body, not the gun, but on Rel herself, like he could see straight into her ghost, which, for all she knew, he could. He was a necromancer with crystal shoved into his brain. If anyone could see her like this, it would be him, though Rel wished he couldn’t. Looking at him was uncomfortable enough without him staring back. For once, though, her father actually did her a favor, moving his stolen body so that the old man was forced to look at Rel’s face instead of her soul.

“Augustus,” he said firmly, getting closer to the filthy bars than Rel would have dared. “Augustus Pendleton!”

“He doesn’t know that name anymore,” Vincent said sadly as the old man turned his face back into his human-made mud. “His mind was scrambled by the crystal years ago. He doesn’t even recognize me anymore.”

“Do you know who I am?” Bernard asked loudly, pushing his son aside.

The old man wiggled a little. Then his hand came up, and he began scratching letters into the filth coating the floor with his broken nails.

BETRAYER.

For someone who’d just been insulted by a shit-wallowing madman, Bernard looked remarkably cheerful. “He must not be as addled as he seems,” he said brightly, giving the old man a grin. “Spotted me right out, even in this body.”

STOLEN, the Shitter wrote.

“Still as opinionated as ever,” Bernard said, reaching through the bars to pat the old man on the shoulder, much to Rel and Vincent’s horror. “You cocky old fool. I warned you not to go chasing a sound you couldn’t control. Now look at you, rolling like a worm at the edge of a power you’ll never be able to touch.”

The Shitter went from silent to bawling in the space of seconds. His weeping was so sudden and loud that they all jumped except Bernard, who merely looked pleased with himself.

“He hasn’t changed a bit,” he said, rising back to his feet. “All right, let’s get out of here.”

Vincent gaped at him. “Weren’t we going to study his madness?”

“I think it’s pretty self-explanatory.”

“What about the future?” Vincent insisted, seeming completely out of sorts now that the grandfather he was so emotionally invested in had been so thoroughly dismissed. “We should at least ask him about the Sioux!”

“There’s nothing to ask,” Bernard said as he started back up the stairs. “I’ve already thought up a solution to that particular problem. I just wanted an excuse to come down and see what had become of my dear old friend.” He looked over his shoulder at the sobbing man on the ground, and his smile grew cruel. “Did you know he used to tell me he’d stitch up my corpse to make me dance on my own grave? Well, who’s dancing now?”

He did a little jig with Rel’s stolen feet, and the man in the cage howled with rage. Vincent clapped his hands over his ears at the din, but Bernard just laughed and laughed, doubling over with more genuine mirth than Rel had ever seen from him.

“Can we please just go?” Vincent begged when this had dragged on for a solid minute.

“I suppose,” Bernard said, wiping his eyes. “Forgive me. The irony is just so delightful.” He gave himself a little shake and resumed his march up the stairs. “Right then, let’s get to work.”

“Work on what?” his son cried, running after him. “You still haven’t told me what we’re going to do!”

“I should think that was obvious. The problem is there are too many Sioux for the cavalry to handle. We must therefore reduce their numbers. Simple.”

“Reduce them how?” Vincent asked frantically. “They’re not going to vanish just because you say so!”

“On the contrary, my dear boy,” Reiner said as he reached the top of the stairs. “That is precisely what they’ll do.”

Vincent was already opening his mouth to protest the ridiculousness of that statement when Bernard cut him off. “This is no longer the war it was two weeks ago,” he said, reaching into the pocket of Rel’s ripped jeans for one of his black crystals. “We are the voice the whole world must obey now, so when I say the Sioux will fall, that is exactly what will happen. How’s that for a prediction?”

Sounded like talking out of his ass to Rel, but Vincent must’ve been sunk deeper in her father’s bullshit than she’d realized, ’cause he was staring at their father like Bernard Reiner was the Second Coming. He practically ran up the stairs when her father motioned for him to go, shooting back into the workshop to get his hands on another crystal. When he was gone, Bernard looked back down the spiral stairs, resting his hand on Rel’s gun as he called down to the Shitter one last time.

“Do you know what’s really so funny, old friend?” he said, squatting on the step so he could better see the man cowering in the light of the lantern Vincent had left burning. “You drove yourself to this state searching for the music, but I was the one who found it. Me, the one you used to call a half-rate butcher. Remember that?”

The figure on the floor whimpered, and Bernard leaned closer. “I found her, Augustus,” he hissed. “And I’m going to take her. Like I took your daughter. Like I’m taking your grandson. You wouldn’t give me the time of day when I first approached you. I had to steal your books to learn what should have been mine by right, but that time is over. Soon, everything that was yours will be mine, and you can’t do a thing to stop me.” He smiled, lips curling into the cruelest look Rel had ever seen on her own face. “Is that not hilarious?”

The old man grabbed the bars with a pleading cry, but Bernard had already turned away, trotting up the stairs after Vincent without so much as a look back. Rel looked, though, turning as far in her holster as she could to watch the poor old man, whom she now pitied greatly. He might have lost in the end, but anyone who could get that far under her father’s skin was all right in her book. She was wondering if there was any way she could tell him so when the Shitter looked at her again.

Just like before, Rel felt his eyes like two pins on her soul. Then, slowly, the old man lifted his hands and put them together in front of his face, showing her the message he’d written across the filth of his palms.

SAVE THE CALAMITY.

Rel jerked inside her gun. The message was clearly meant for her, but what did it mean? She wanted to see more, but her father was already at the top of the stairs, so Rel jerked in her holster again, knocking her gun out of its leather holster and onto the floor below. By the time she’d recovered from the clatter, the Shitter had stuck his hands back into his filth and rolled over, leaving her staring at his pockmarked back. She kept staring until her father snatched her up again, shoving Rel back down into the dark prison with a muttered curse.

Chapter 8

July 31, 1876

14 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

Lucas didn’t know how much more of this he could take.

It was another morning. Which one specifically didn’t matter. They were all the same these days. Every night, he’d bring a fresh unit down to the squatters’ camp to take back whatever had been stolen the day before: rations, flour, bullets, horseshoes. It was something different every time, but the outcome was always the same: another fight in the mud, another horror, another crystal-drunk madman hauled back for punishment.

After weeks of arresting mostly the same faces, Lucas was starting to wonder if he shouldn’t be shooting them. No matter how many times he locked men in the ovens or tasked them with collecting horse dung, the thefts never seemed to slow. If they hadn’t mostly been stealing food, it would have been easier. Lucas had no patience for greedy thieves, but hungry ones were a different matter. He’d been in that position himself too many times to be overly harsh, but damn it, they didn’t have the resources for this.

If the miners got too hungry, they were free to go, but his men were stuck out here. They couldn’t fight without rations, and fighting was looking more and more inevitable. Not a day went by without news of another Sioux victory. Sitting Bull’s army was tightening around their position like a noose, and the Whitmans in the south were the knot at the end. Between the two of them, Medicine Rocks was cracking like a squeezed melon. But the worst of it—the worst of everything—was the crystal.

Three months after they’d received the first reports that highwaymen were attacking merchants on the road to Cheyenne, the consequences of the Whitmans’ blockade were rapidly reaching their logical conclusion. With no food coming in and nowhere to sell their goods, hungry miners were trading bigger and bigger sums of crystal for shares of the town’s dwindling supplies. But while the merchants were happy to take advantage of the situation, they had nowhere to sell the fortune in crystal they were charging. For something so valuable, no one was able to get rid of the stuff, and so it piled higher and higher, squirreled away in every basement, attic, and buried stash until the whole town had begun to feel like the Deep Caves.

Lucas had witnessed the evidence firsthand. Crystal addicts and miners fresh from the caves had been a problem since the first troops had arrived here two years ago. These days, though, even men who’d never entered the caves nor drunk a dram of crystal in their lives were starting to suffer its effects. Every time Lucas went into town, he could see the crystal dust glittering in the air, cutting his lungs like pulverized glass with every breath.

In all the time Lucas had been stationed here, he’d never seen it this bad. It wasn’t just on account of the glut either. The crystal itself seemed to be growing more powerful and malicious, warping people into monsters such as even the Deep Caves couldn’t have produced a month ago. The melting man he and Chaucer had apprehended last week was an example of how bad things had gotten, but he feared they would get worse still. Knew they would, for when Lucas went down to the camps now, he swore he could hear the shadows whispering just like they had in the Dark.

At least the base was still safe. Down in the city, everything was coated in a fine layer of crystal by midday, but up on the hill inside the wooden walls of Fort Grant, the air was still air. He breathed it in deep now, letting the perfectly normal smells of woodsmoke and horse ease the pressure inside his skull. He’d already sent his men to bed. Now all he needed was a bath and some hot food, and he’d be nearly human again. He was already dreaming of the moment he’d finally get to lie down when someone plucked his muddy sleeve.

“Lieutenant?”

Lucas looked over his shoulder to see one of the soft-faced boys from the Secretary Corps waiting nervously behind him. “General Cook is asking for you, sir.”

Lucas scrubbed a bloody hand through his mud-caked hair, wincing when he hit the freshly scabbed cut above his ear. A souvenir from the miner who’d tried to stab him through the eye socket with the bone spike the crystal had grown out of his knuckles.

“Would the general mind waiting until after I’ve cleaned up?”

“I—I’m afraid I don’t—” The young man gave him a panicked look. “He just told me to find you!”

“At ease, Private,” Lucas said, taking pity. “I’m on my way.”

The boy gave him the most relieved salute Lucas had ever seen and scampered off, practically diving back into the shack between two giant Medicine Rocks where the paper pushers hid from the rest of the army. He hadn’t told Lucas where the general wanted to see him, but this early in the morning, it wasn’t much of a question. Unless they were actively under attack, General Cook never left his quarters before nine. That was where Lucas found him now: sitting at his table in the two-room cabin that served as the general’s lodging behind a stack of correspondence taller than his shoulder.

“About time, Jean-Jacques,” Cook said as Lucas let himself in. “Have a seat.”

“I think you’d rather I didn’t, sir.”

The general had already opened his mouth to tell him not to be stupid when he noticed his lieutenant’s appearance.

“Good God, man,” he said, looking Lucas over. “Rough night?”

“They’re all rough nights these days, sir,” Lucas said, removing his blood- and filth-spattered jacket and hanging it on the open door so the smell wouldn’t fill the cabin. “This can’t go on.”

“You’re right about that,” Cook said, turning back to the paper he’d been working on. “We’ve had a theft every day for the past two weeks. I’m this close to having every damn guard on the warehouse drawn up for bribery. There’s no way things could have gotten this bad unless they’re all on the take.”

“Things are bad all over,” Lucas said angrily. “I’ve been switching the guards every day and doubled the posts as you ordered, but nothing will stop the thefts so long as people are starving.” He took a bold step forward. “I know our job is to protect the crystal, but the townsfolk are going to eat us if something isn’t done about the Whitmans!”

“That’s not our job,” Cook reminded him. “Guarding the highways falls under—”

“That doesn’t matter,” Lucas snapped, skirting dangerously close to insubordination. “It’s not getting done!”

“What do you want me to do about it?” the general yelled, slamming his hands on the desk. “If I had men to spare on the Whitmans, I’d have sent them weeks ago, but I can’t pull soldiers out of my hat!”

“What about our reinforcements?” Lucas asked desperately. “You said they were sending men to replace the ones Custer lost. When do they arrive?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” the general said bleakly, holding up a carefully folded scrap of paper. “We just got a pigeon from Command. Due to the increase in Sioux attacks, our reinforcements have been diverted to other forts along the rivers and trade roads.”

Lucas stared at him, not willing to believe. “No one’s coming?”

Cook shook his head. “I’ve been promised two thousand new recruits from Texas as soon as they’re available, but that may not be until December.”

“But it will be too late for us by then,” Lucas said, clenching his muddy hands into fists. “It might already be too late now! I thought the crystal was America’s top priority.”

“It is,” Cook said. “But we can’t stand here as an island. With the loss of the Black Hills, our supply lines to the east have been sliced clean through, and you already know what’s going on with the Whitmans in the south. If we let Sitting Bull cut off our access to the Missouri River up north, it won’t matter how many troops Command sends us. We’ll all starve here together, along with the rest of Medicine Rocks!” He turned back to the letter he’d been writing when Lucas walked in. “I know it’s not what you hoped, but sending troops to the outposts is a form of reinforcement. They’re the ones who’re going to keep us supplied with beans and bullets.”

“Only if they don’t die,” Lucas argued, pressing his hands down on the general’s desk. “I’ve read the same reports. We both know America is not winning this war. We were barely holding territory against the Lakota as it was, but now that they have crystal, not a day goes by without news of some new defeat. More warriors flock to Sitting Bull’s camp every day! I know we need our supply lines, but if Command keeps trying to hold so much territory against a superior foe, the whole Montana front is going to fall!”

“I am aware of the strategic situation, Lieutenant,” General Cook said testily. “But there’s nothing I can do. We don’t have unlimited men, and Medicine Rocks is about the only place left that’s not up to our eyeballs in Sioux. Of course we’re last for reinforcements. We’re the only ones not dying.”

“But we are,” Lucas pleaded. “We might not be under attack from the Sioux this very moment, but that hardly matters if the Whitmans get us first! It’s not just the lack of food. With no traders to take it away, the town is filling up with dangerous levels of crystal. It’s already built up in the miners to the point that it’s warping their minds and bodies. If we don’t get a reprieve soon, this whole town will go as mad as I was when they dragged me out of the Dark!”

“Now you’re just being melodramatic.”

“I am speaking the truth!” Lucas cried, bending over to show his general the cut on his scalp. “I nearly died tonight from a man whose bones were growing out of his skin! Humans were never meant to live with this much crystal! Hunger we can manage, but there’s nothing we can do against madness!”

Cook scowled. “Is it really that bad?”

“Worse,” Lucas promised. “If it wouldn’t cause a riot, I’d seize all the crystal and shove it back into the caves until everyone comes to their senses.”

“They really would kill us then,” Cook agreed, setting down his pen to rub his temples.

Lucas nodded and held his breath, waiting for the general to tell him what they were going to do. Cook said nothing, though, which was more alarming than any plan he could have suggested.

From the day he’d been assigned to General Cook’s command over two years ago, Lucas had never known the cunning old man not to have something up his sleeve. If even he didn’t have a strategy to get out of this, then things were even worse than Lucas had feared. He was about to flop down on the seat he’d rejected earlier to save his weakening knees from collapse when he saw a soldier sprinting toward them across the yard.

“Sir!” the man cried when he arrived, saluting so fast, he nearly smacked Lucas in the face. “Movement on the southern road!”

Cook sprang from his desk at once. “Whitmans or Sioux?”

“Neither, sir,” the soldier said, grinning wide. “They look like friendlies!”

“What company?” Lucas demanded, grabbing his filthy coat from the door as the general rushed out of the cabin.

“Don’t know, sir,” the soldier said, scrambling to keep up as Cook and Lucas began running for the southern watchtower. “They’re not flying any colors, but they’re definitely our boys.”

Determined to see for himself, Lucas shot ahead of the slower general, running flat-out across the yard to the fort’s southern wall, where a pack of excited soldiers was already gathering. He pushed them aside and scrambled up the ladder to the wooden watchtower. When he reached the catwalk that ran along the top, Lucas grabbed a spyglass from the watch sergeant and pressed it against his eye, turning the brass tube until the plume of dust rising in the distance condensed itself into a column of mounted soldiers in drab green coats stretching down the rutted road as far as the eye could see.

“Who is it?” Cook demanded as he huffed his way to the top of the ladder.

“Not sure,” Lucas said, focusing his spyglass on the heavily guarded line of wagons taking up the column’s center. “But they brought a lot of cargo.”

“It’d better be something we can shoot,” the general grumbled, putting out his hand for the spyglass, which Lucas dutifully surrendered. “Well, I’ll be,” Cook said, moving the lens up and down the column. “Those aren’t our men. Those soldiers are from the Wyoming Defense!”

“Wyoming?” Lucas repeated incredulously. “Impossible.”

The Wyoming Defense was the common name for the complex assortment of loaned companies and reassigned brigades that operated the network of rural forts and outposts scattered all over the Wyoming Territory. They guarded the Oregon Trail, protected the railroad, and watched the highways, including the one that ran between Medicine Rocks and Cheyenne. This meant they were also technically responsible for guarding travelers from the Whitmans who plagued that part of the country. A task they’d so far ignored in favor of cowering inside their forts.

This dereliction of duty was a source of great contention between General Cook and the other frontier commanders. If they were coming to Medicine Rocks, though, something huge must have changed, because from the size of the dust cloud they were raising, every soldier in Wyoming was marching straight for Fort Grant.

“Move the horses to the far paddock!” General Cook ordered, tossing the spyglass back to the wall sergeant. “We’ll have them camp in the grazing fields until we know their business.”

“And what do you think that is?” Lucas asked as he followed his commander down the ladder.

“No idea,” Cook said. “But get all the officers together, ’cause I aim to find out.” He took one last look at the army coming their direction. “I just hope they brought their own food.”

Lucas did as well, pausing only to salute his general before running to tell the soldiers guarding the horses to pull up the pickets and start shoveling the manure out of the way. They were about to have guests.

~~~

Three frantic hours later, eleven hundred men from far too many military divisions to remember had been successfully crammed into Fort Grant’s exterior grazing fields. As for Lieutenant Lucas, he was also crammed into somewhere far too small, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Captain Townsend in the keep’s windowless secure room behind General Cook. Across the wooden table were a half dozen other captains and lieutenants, but it was the highest-ranking among them who held Lucas’s attention.

Having served on the front for two years now, he had of course heard of Colonel Daniel Shaw, the Butcher of Bloody Glass Lake. This was the first time he’d actually laid eyes on the man, but never before had Lucas seen someone whose person so perfectly fit his reputation. He was not flashy nor dashing as Custer had been, oh no. This colonel was a plain, purposeful sort of soldier with a hard, lean face that reminded Lucas of a flint knife. There was no softness in his eyes, no spare ounce of flesh on his frame. Even the way he rested his scarred hands on the table seemed utterly focused on the task at hand, which currently seemed to be staring a hole through the center of General Cook’s face.

“Colonel Shaw,” the general said, inclining his head. “Now that we’ve sorted out the logistics of doubling our garrison, perhaps you’d like to tell me who ordered you to march every enlisted man in Wyoming to my doorstep.”

“We’re here to reinforce your position,” Shaw replied in a clipped voice that wasted no breath.

“And I thank you for it,” Cook assured him. “I only ask because, last I heard, we weren’t going to be receiving reinforcements for several months.”

“I was told the same thing,” the colonel said. “But, with all due respect to command, the brass doesn’t see what we do here on the ground. Every man who spills blood on this front knows that the war for the soul of our country is being fought right here in Montana. The Injuns and their devil magic have made fools of us, but Washington refuses to do what is necessary to win this war. I could not abide that, so I called my men together and brought them up here.”

“You called them?” Cook confirmed, drumming his fingers nervously on the table. “Just you?”

The colonel nodded, and the general winced.

“You do understand that’s disobeying orders?”

“I understand we’re going to lose everything if we don’t turn the tide of this war,” the colonel said fiercely. “No one else in command seems to have grasped that yet. They’re still obsessed with keeping territory for territory’s sake, but you and I are soldiers on the front. We know that the war against the savages will be decided right here, with the crystal.”

He stabbed his finger down on the table, and Cook heaved a heavy sigh.

“I’m not in disagreement with what you’re saying, Colonel,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “But happy as we are to see you, I can’t overlook the fact that you abandoned your post to come here.”

“I left a skeleton guard,” Shaw said casually. “And no one in Washington will dare to complain after they see what we’re about to do.”

“And what is that?”

The colonel’s lips curled in a tight half-moon smile. “Win.”

He shot up from his chair, turning on his heel to march out of the room. “Follow me.”

Cook gaped at him. “Follow—”

But the stern colonel was already out the door, leaving the general red-faced and shaking. “Whose fortress does he think he’s in?”

“I don’t think he cares,” Lucas whispered. “But I am very curious to see what he’s brought that makes him so sure of himself.”

“It’d better be a wagon of dead bandits,” Townsend said with uncharacteristic rancor as they followed Shaw out of the cramped room. “Has everyone else forgotten that this man’s failure to guard the southern road is half the reason we’re in this mess? If he’d done his job and protected our shipments, we’d be facing the Sioux with a full complement of crystal weaponry!”

Lucas couldn’t argue with that, but he withheld his judgment as they followed Shaw out into the yard where the twenty canvas-covered wagons the Wyoming soldiers had escorted up here so carefully were waiting.

“All right, Colonel,” Cook said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Let’s see what’s so important, it’s gonna save you from being court-martialed for abandoning your post.”

Rather than defend himself, Colonel Shaw smiled that thin-lipped smirk again and yanked the canvas cover off the nearest wagon, revealing the shiny, black-metal contents to the midday sun.

“Good heavens,” Townsend said, mouth agog. “Are those cannons?”

They were more than cannons. Those were brand-new Armstrong breechloaders! The twelve-pound models, not the smaller horse-towed nine-pounders, which explained why he’d brought them up here in carts. The rifled barrels meant each one was capable of firing thirty-five hundred feet with incredible accuracy from a flat position. Up on the big boulders they used as towers here in the fortress, they could probably fire over a mile.

Lucas had only read about the powerful guns, but these still didn’t look like the ones he remembered from the illustrations in the firearms manual. There was something odd about the construction, but it wasn’t until Townsend actually climbed into the wagon with the gun that Lucas realized what was different.

“They’ve been modified!” Townsend cried excitedly, all ire at Shaw forgotten. “There, below the barrel. Is that crystal?”

Before Shaw could state the obvious, Cook hauled himself up into the wagon bed as well. “Where the hell did you get these?” the general demanded, looking over all the shiny, brand-new barrels. “I’ve been asking for new cannons in every report, but they kept saying there were none to spare.”

“They told me the same thing,” Shaw said. “Fortunately, the US government aren’t the only ones who want the Indians exterminated from our land. These cannons are a gift from a concerned patriot. They’ll fire two miles now with no loss of accuracy, and the crystal in the base dissipates the heat from the barrel, allowing several shots to be fired in succession with no risk of jamming or fracture.”

“I don’t suppose you brought ammunition for them?” Cook asked, obviously trying his best not to sound impressed. “Our stock won’t fit in those barrels.”

“I’ve brought everything we need,” Shaw told him confidently. “Forty crystal-modified Armstrongs and the shells needed to fire them, including five hundred crystal rounds that explode with ten times the destructive power of your current guns. With these weapons and my men to reinforce your position, Fort Grant will become the rock upon which Sitting Bull’s army of savages breaks. It won’t matter how many warriors they field or how much crystal they paint upon their red-skinned bodies. We shall wipe the prairie clean of the red man’s scourge and return America to the rule of civilized men.”

The Wyoming soldiers applauded wildly at this. Even General Cook looked impressed, unable to hide his smile as he ran his hands over the shiny new guns. Lucas, however, refused to fall under the colonel’s spell.

“You said the cannons were a gift, no?” he asked, looking Shaw in the eyes. “Who gave them to you?”

“I don’t see how that’s a lieutenant’s business,” the colonel replied, glaring down at Lucas from the wagon bed.

“It’s everyone’s business when so much crystal is involved,” Lucas replied, craning his head to get a better look at the odd, shiny black clusters beneath the barrels. “I’ve never seen crystal that dark color before either. Where did it come from?”

“Now, now, Jean-Jacques,” Cook cautioned. “You know what they say about questions and gift horses.”

“That is precisely why I am asking,” Lucas replied angrily. “Gifts that are too good to be true usually aren’t. I want to survive this war as much as any man, but you can’t deny this is deeply suspicious. Those cannons are top of the line! How did he even get that many way out here? Who gave them to him and why?”

“Can a private citizen not also fight for the greater good?” Shaw replied casually, but his eyes were flashing with anger when they pinned Lucas’s. “We’re not the only ones who want the savages scoured from the plains. But unlike the government that sends us out here with an army of ignorant Negroes and leftover guns from the Civil War, there are still those in this country who think our fighters deserve the best. You should be thanking them, soldier. Not criticizing.”

“He meant no offense,” Cook said, climbing off the wagon to grab Lucas by the arm. “Officially, of course, I must condemn your actions, but I think everyone would agree that we’re in no position to turn you away. Therefore, Colonel Shaw, on behalf of all of us here at Fort Grant, I’m most happy to welcome you, your cannons, and your soldiers to the fight.”

Another, even bigger cheer went up from the Wyoming forces at this. The Fort Grant soldiers joined in a few moments later, whooping and throwing their caps in joy that they were no longer going to die. Townsend was practically dancing on top of the new cannons, his normally scowling face positively giddy. Only Lucas still wore an expression of concern, grabbing his smiling general’s arm.

“You can’t seriously be considering this,” he hissed to Cook over the thunderous applause. “I don’t care how nice his cannons are. Shaw is here against orders with a million dollars in weaponry from God knows who. What makes you think he’s on our side?”

“He doesn’t have to be,” Cook whispered, shaking off Lucas’s hand. “The enemy of my enemy will always be welcome in my camp, especially since we don’t exactly have another option. Remember the conversation we were having before this started?”

“Desperation is no excuse for embracing disaster,” Lucas argued. “You can’t put our lives in the hands of a man who has already abandoned his post!”

“Careful, soldier,” Cook said in a warning voice.

Lucas backed off from his insubordination at once, and Cook scrubbed his hands through his thick gray hair. “I understand your concern,” he said in a soft voice as the rest of the camp celebrated around them. “This is damn suspicious, but you’re the one who said we were doomed unless we got reinforcements. Now a genuine miracle has shown up at our door, and you’re asking me to turn him away? Do you want to be killed by the Sioux?”

“Of course not,” Lucas said angrily. “But I don’t want to be backstabbed either. Need I remind you that Shaw is the one who’s been letting the Whitmans do whatever they want all summer, including murder our men?”

“You can’t hold the Whitmans against him. Even our boys couldn’t take them out.”

“That’s precisely why I’m suspicious! There’s no way the Whitmans would have let him march up here with all those cannons unless it served them.”

“That’s a serious accusation,” Cook warned. “Maybe not unwarranted, but I think you’re losing perspective on our mission here. I was sent to Medicine Rocks with one purpose: the defense of this outpost and the crystal it produces. So long as that objective is maintained, everything else is negotiable, including him.”

He stabbed his finger at Colonel Shaw, who was watching the two of them with great interest.

“He’s not what he seems,” Lucas tried one last time, but his general was done.

“I don’t care if he’s Dwight Whitman in disguise!” Cook cried. “If his army can keep this place from falling, that’s good enough for me. And what’s good enough for me is good enough for you. Do I make myself clear?”

Lucas clenched his jaw, and the general stepped closer.

“Do I make myself clear, soldier?”

“Yes, sir,” Lucas ground out.

“Good,” Cook said, stepping away. “I’m going to pull Townsend off those guns for a moment so we can get them into position. Go clean yourself up and get some sleep. I’m sure you’ll feel better about all this after a rest. Dismissed.”

Lucas saluted, but the general had already turned away, leaving him alone in the sea of jubilant soldiers celebrating their unexpected salvation.

Chapter 9

August 11, 1876

3 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

“Come on, Oliver,” Josie coaxed, holding out the acorn-sized lump of crystal she’d coated in melted sugar to make it more enticing. “Just give it a try.”

The old man gave her a pitiable look, but Josie could no longer afford to be patient. They were less than four days from the sheriff’s ridiculous deadline to pay his ridiculous tax, and she was still no closer to finding a solution. Honestly, at this point, saving Price Mining seemed a lost cause. Even if Oliver had a miraculous recovery this very moment, she’d never be able to make it out to the Mother Lode and back in time.

The task was absolutely hopeless, which was why Josie had put Brightman’s ultimatum out of her mind and was just focusing on finding Mary. She could lose her company and the building that had become their home, but so long as she had Mary, the mines were still open to her, which meant there was still hope.

Unfortunately, the only way to find Mary was for Oliver to use his power. Josie had already tried feeding him one of the hairs Mary had left behind on her pillow, but the old guide said the crystal was “acting up” too much for him to find the trail. Josie’s next plan was to feed him a piece from the Mother Lode itself: a much bigger target and the place where she was certain Mary was anyway. But although Oliver had sworn he’d do whatever was necessary to bring Mary back safely, now that the moment was actually upon him, he seemed to have lost his nerve.

“Please,” she begged, clutching the old man’s gnarled hand in her now constantly numb fingers. “I wouldn’t ask if there was any other way, but Brightman’s going to be here in just a few days. If we don’t leave to get Mary soon, we won’t have anything to take with us.”

“I know,” Oliver said, his bloodshot eyes locked on the candy-coated crystal like he was staring down a gun. “I want to do it, Miss Josephine. Truly, I do. But…” He placed a hand on his ancient, threadbare overalls. “I just don’t know if I can stomach what you’re asking. Even with the coating to make it go down sweet, you don’t know what crystal does to a man’s innards. It’s bad enough on a normal day, but there’s so much crystal dust in the air now, I can’t even take a breath without feeling it in my guts. If I choke that knob down, I fear it might be the last thing I do.”

“You don’t have to keep it down,” Josie bargained. “You only have to swallow it long enough to tell me whether the Mother Lode is still at the end of the Midway or if the caves have moved it someplace else. I just need a lead, that’s all, and then you can spit the crystal right back out.”

“I’m ’fraid it don’t work like that,” Oliver said, leaning away from the crystal she was shoving under his nose as if it turned his stomach just to be close. “I gotta digest it to get a direction, and by that point it might be too late for me.”

Josie gritted her teeth in frustration. She was about to ask if there was anything he could stomach long enough to get a bead on their destination when Oliver suddenly slumped forward on his stool.

“You know how I first met Mary?”

Josie shook her head, and the old man’s eyes grew misty.

“Neither do I. ’Bout a year ago now, I’d gone into the caves to work a claim I’d gotten in return for some guiding work. I made it to the crystal no sweat, but then the Slip caught me hard. I don’t remember what happened after, o’course. Slip gets you like that, makes you forget your name, your business, your family, everything. Lord only knows how long I wandered empty-headed in those tunnels, but I do know that it was Mary who found me. Very first thing I remember is her smiling face as she walked me all the way back to the front o’ the mines.”

“I’m not surprised to hear that,” Josie said with a smile. “Mary’s a good soul.”

“The very best,” Oliver agreed, smile fading as he looked back down at the crystal in her hand. “Too good for the likes of a coward like me. I might not be a brave man, but I owe Mary my life, and I’ve always been good for my debts. Honest Injun, I’d rather eat a bullet than that crystal, but if you say this is the only way we can find her, then I gotta do it. For Mary’s sake.”

Hand shaking, Oliver reached out and took the candy-coated crystal from Josie’s hand. As she watched him raise it to his lips, dread began to pool in her own insides, which was ridiculous. This was what she wanted. Every plan she’d come up with hinged upon Oliver being able to act as a compass. She’d even coated the rock in their very best white sugar to tempt him into making the right choice. But as he opened his toothless old mouth to swallow the crystal he feared so much, Josie found that she was the one who didn’t have the stomach.

“Stop.”

Oliver paused, his face confused. “Miss?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, snatching the candy-coated crystal out of his fingers. “It was a valiant attempt, but you’re clearly in no condition for this, and I was wrong to ask it of you.”

“Ain’t nothing wrong about asking a man to keep his word,” he argued. “You and Mr. Mihir took me in on the understandin’ that I was gonna help you find your claim and Mary, and I ain’t no cheat. Don’t matter what it costs me. I owe it to you and Mary to keep my word.”

“And you have,” Josie assured him. “If things weren’t how they are, I’m sure you would already be leading us to the Mother Lode, but look at you. You’re so afraid that you’re shaking.”

Josie hadn’t realized how true those words were until she said them. The poor old man was shivering so violently, his beard was wagging back and forth like a pine in a high wind, and with good reason. Now that she thought about it, Josie couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Oliver eat. He sat and made conversation with them at mealtimes, but she hadn’t actually witnessed him lift a fork to his mouth in days. He’d gained weight when they’d first taken him in, fueling Josie’s belief that this was a good arrangement for everyone, but the man sitting in front of her now looked closer to a skeleton than a living person, and that wasn’t what she wanted at all.

Feeling like she’d just woken up from a nightmare, Josie looked down at her numb hands sitting like two senseless hunks of wood in her lap. Good Lord, what was wrong with her? Had the crystal corrupted her so much that she’d forgotten what it was like to have to work when you were ill? The aches and sores and fits of nausea she’d been expected to ignore because her employers couldn’t get dressed or light fires on their own?

A hot flush of shame spread across her face. She might have embarked upon this project with good intentions, but as the stakes had gotten higher and the sheriff’s deadline nearer, the only thoughts in Josie’s head had been for herself. Even her goal of finding Mary was so that she wouldn’t have to give up her ambitions in the mines, not for the safety of her friend. Now she was on the brink of forcing an already suffering man to do something that might well kill him so that she could have what she wanted, and the wrongness of that smarted like a slap across the face.

You make a damn good Josephine Price, the memory of Reliance whispered in her ear.

“No,” Josie said, rising to her feet. “I won’t.”

“Won’t what?” Oliver asked, thoroughly bewildered. “Are we not going to find Mary?”

“We are,” Josie said. “But not right now. Sheriff or no sheriff, I can’t ask you to harm yourself for my sake. We’ll just have to find another way.”

She’d expected Oliver to be relieved by this, but the old guide looked more nervous than ever. “Does that mean I gotta move out?”

“No, no,” she assured him. “Any friend of Mary’s is a friend of mine. So long as this building is mine to offer, you’re welcome to stay at Price Mining for as long as you like, Mr. Oliver.”

“Thank you kindly for that,” he said, now looking very relieved. “But what about Mary? I know she’s still alive down there—caves never could get the better of her—but even if I do recover, how’re we gonna find her if Brightman takes all your crystal?”

“I don’t know,” Josie admitted. “But I’ll figure out something. I’m rather good at that.”

Oliver didn’t look convinced, but he’d clearly already been as brave as he was able. Now that Josie had said he didn’t have to swallow the crystal, he was sagging over on his chair like a candle melting in the sun. Josie sent him back to his room in the vault after that, dropping the candy-covered crystal into her apron pocket as she left the kitchen, crossed the parlor with its boarded-over windows, and started up the stairs to her office.

Once she got there, Josie grabbed all the crystals left from her original trip to the Mother Lode out of all the places around the room where she’d hidden them and crammed each one back into her knapsack. She’d already traded away all the nonunique stones, so the bag wasn’t nearly as full now as it had been when she’d carried it back after their first triumphant trip into the mines, but it was still quite heavy when she slung it over her shoulder.

It took a few tries to get the straps settled over top of the knobbly brocade that festooned the shoulders of this particular walking dress: a horrid puce extravagance that was her least favorite of all the dresses Miss Josephine had off-loaded into her trunks. It was the only frock left in her wardrobe that was still clean, though, so Josie made do, sliding her numb fingers under the straps to keep the heavy bag from pinching the sewn-in glass beads as she made her way down the stairs and out the front door.

She could have carried it straight to Brightman, but heavy as the crystal felt, it wasn’t nearly enough to pay the sheriff’s outrageous, quite possibly made-up tax. Josie had known that from the beginning, though, and she had a different plan in mind. A mad, reckless, almost certainly destructive one, but if anyone was going to risk themselves for her company, her dreams, and her future, it should damn well be her. Anything less was rank cowardice unbecoming of Sam Price’s legacy, so Josie kept hold of her treasure with both her weakening hands and strode boldly forward, walking so fast down the dusty street, she might as well have been running.

She would have run if the air quality hadn’t been so poor. No wonder Oliver had had such trouble. The crystal dust was everywhere, coating every flat surface in a shimmering layer.

It lay on the road like sparkling snow, kicking up in huge clouds when she walked across it. Banks of it had built up in the corners and window ledges and anywhere else that dust could settle. Even the horse droppings glittered with the stuff.

The only good thing Josie could say about the situation was that at least there were no crowds to kick it up. Usually at this time on a normal morning, Main Street would be packed with people going about their day’s business. Now, though, the boomtown of Medicine Rocks seemed to have become a ghost town. Aside from herself, there wasn’t a soul on the crystal-dusted streets. The buildings were boarded up as well, their windows covered with hand-painted signs that read CLOSED and OUT OF STOCK. Those few establishments that did still have goods for sale all had notices on their doors proclaiming NO CRYSTAL ACCEPTED, HARD CURRENCY ONLY.

That was quite the turnaround from a few weeks ago when Josie’s fortune in silver dollars had been declared worthless. Alas, that money was long gone, but she still clung to a spot of hope. Placing her button-boots carefully so as not to raise any more of the toxic crystal dust than necessary, she picked up her pace, striding down the Main Street boardwalk quick as she dared until she reached the alley that led to Dr. Pendleton’s.

It was quite the nerve-racking climb to her second-story office. Unsurprisingly for a doctor’s during a crisis, the rickety wooden staircase was crammed with dozens of miners suffering from all sorts of crystal-induced maladies. Just squeezing through the door into the waiting room, Josie was nearly impaled by a man who had giant crystal spears growing out of his back like the spines on a porcupine. Another seemed to have gone insubstantial, his clothes constantly falling through his body unless he yanked them back up every few seconds. A third patient hiding in the corner was covered all over in little mouths complete with lips and teeth, each one babbling a stream of abuse in a woman’s heavy Italian accent.

Those were just the horrors that caught her eye. The reception parlor held plenty of patients with conditions that weren’t so instantly visible. If this place hadn’t been her option of very last resort, Josie would have turned around and marched right back down the stairs. As it was, she had no choice left but to push forward, elbowing her way through the horrifying crowd to ring the bell on the counter that separated the public half of the parlor from the glass-front pharmacy shelves that lined its back wall.

To her great surprise, Dr. Pendleton appeared before the little ding faded. The doctor looked the same as she always did with her gray-streaked hair pulled into a severe bun, plain widow’s black frock, and determinedly stoic expression. That last one was more difficult to discern than usual, thanks to the white cloth mask she wore over her nose and mouth, her only accommodation to the current apocalyptic situation.

“Miss Price,” she said promptly, lifting the piece of the wooden counter that went up on a hinge so that Josie could join her on the other side. “I saw you coming from my office window.”

“Thank you for the attention,” Josie said nervously, looking over her shoulder at the waiting room full of men glaring murder at her for skipping the line. “Not to sound ungrateful, but are you sure you should be seeing me first? There are others who’ve been waiting longer.”

“That’s their decision,” Dr. Pendleton said. “I’ve already told them there’s nothing I can do for their condition. The only way to cure overexposure to crystal is to get away from crystal, which they refuse to do. They all want me to give them some sort of tonic or powder that will fix their problems, but I deal exclusively in crystal medicine, which is the exact opposite of what they need. You can’t fix a poisoning by adding more poison. Even a child should be able to understand that.”

This indelicate pronouncement caused a bit of a commotion in the crowded waiting room. As usual, though, Dr. Pendleton seemed unconcerned with the feelings of others. She ignored the men completely, ushering Josie into a small room whose walls were covered in bottles and labeled crates. It was so cramped, Josie thought it must be a storage closet before she realized this was the office Dr. Pendleton used when she wasn’t operating on gunshot wounds.

“What brings you to my practice today, Miss Price?” the doctor asked as she took a seat at a tiny desk under a dust-caked window overlooking Main Street. “Trouble with your pins, I expect.”

“Not at all,” Josie said, taking a ginger seat on the wooden stool she assumed was for patients. “I’ve had no trouble at all with the pins you put in me.”

“Really?” Dr. Pendleton’s dark eyebrows rose a fraction, which was tantamount to a gasp from a normal person. “Not even with the excess crystal causing so much interference?”

Josie shook her head, and the doctor pulled down her white mask to give her something like a frown. “Have you had any reaction at all? You don’t appear to be suffering from crystal toxicity.”

“That was what I wanted to talk to you about, actually,” Josie said, taking off her heavy knapsack. “I’ve come to ask if you could help me get a crystal power.”

The doctor’s eyebrows rose fully this time. “You want me to force a crystal reaction? Are you drunk?”

“No, I’m desperate,” Josie said, folding her numb hands in her lap. “There is somewhere I must go as quickly as possible, but I can’t get there as I am now. I’ve seen what crystal can do to people’s senses. I know what I’m asking is dangerous, but I’m out of options, and frankly, I have very little left to lose.”

“You’re a young woman in good health,” Dr. Pendleton said practically. “You have everything left to lose. But it’s up to you.” She rose from her desk and grabbed a leather folio from the shelf above her head. “If you want crystal abilities, getting them is easy enough. All you have to do is drink the stuff like all the other idiots in this town. But I should warn you, in case you don’t know: you don’t get to control how crystal affects you. Just look at the men in my waiting room. Do you think any of them chose to be that way?”

“There has to be some way to manage it,” Josie argued, clutching her deadened fingers tighter. “When I was down in the caves, I encountered men—Whitman bandits—with crystal sewn all over their bodies. The stones made them tremendously strong, along with other useful powers they seemed to control just fine. Maybe that was just luck on their part, but it looked too intentional to be random.”

The doctor tapped her finger on her desk thoughtfully. “I am familiar with the Whitmans’ methods,” she said at last. “You’re not wrong about there being some measure of control present, but it’s not nearly as fine as you presume. The process is still highly prone to failure, not to mention painful and dangerous. There’s a reason they do it only to men who are already broken. I’d still be willing to try it on you for the right fee, but I must advise against it. Crystal augmentation is always dangerous. In the current volatile environment, it could be downright suicidal, and as a medical professional, I’m technically supposed to first do no harm.”

“Any great venture requires risk,” Josie said boldly. “How much will it cost me to try?”

Dr. Pendleton tilted her head. “How much have you got?”

Josie opened her knapsack, revealing the pile of giant, rare-color crystals. Such a collection would have been worth a fortune anywhere else in the world, but the doctor scoffed when she saw it.

“Crystal, really?” She leaned back in her chair. “Do you know how much crystal is in my office right now?”

“It’s good crystal,” Josie offered, but Dr. Pendleton cut her off.

“I let you in because I thought that you, of anyone in town, were the most likely to have real currency,” she said angrily, turning back to her desk. “Gold, silver, paper bills, something I could use. I have to eat, too, you know.”

“I’ll pay you whatever you want when the blockade lifts,” Josie promised recklessly. “You know I’m good for it. I’m Josephine Price!”

Dr. Pendleton scoffed. “Maybe in St. Louis. Here, though, you’re just another speculator sitting on a pile of rocks.”

“What about food?” Josie asked desperately. “I can pay you in food.”

For a moment, that seemed to catch Dr. Pendleton’s interest, but then she shook her head. “Food isn’t worth what you’re asking. I’m not affiliated with the Whitmans, but if I do what you want, and people find out, assumptions will be made that could make my life here very uncomfortable. I’m not taking that risk for raisin buns, no matter how good yours are rumored to be.”

She rose from her chair and walked over to the door. “If you can’t pay me in something I can use, then I have no more use for you. Good day, Miss Price.”

“Wait!” Josie cried as the doctor’s hand closed on the knob. “Please, I’m not just doing this for myself. Yes, I’m in tax trouble with the sheriff, but this is bigger than that. I need this power because my friend Mary Good Crow stranded herself in the caves to save my life. Now it’s my turn to save her, and I can’t do that if you won’t help!”

The doctor’s blank face grew even more inscrutable. “Mary Good Crow?” she repeated. “The half-Lakota guide?”

“That’s her,” Josie said, nodding wildly. “I might be just another speculator sitting on a pile of rocks, but she’s a good and honest person who’s been buried alive on my account. I won’t lie to you and pretend I’m a saint in this. In addition to being my friend, Mary’s also my guide, my business partner, and a critical part of my future plans. That just makes this even better for you, though! I promise I’ll use the fortune Mary helps me make to pay you whatever you want, but you have to help me now.”

That was not the argument she’d intended to make, not that Josie had thought this through at all. She was making it all up as she went along, which was her least favorite way to go about anything, precisely because she spouted nonsense. She’d just made it sound as if her future earnings were more important than Mary’s life, which was rubbish yet also sort of true. Losing her building might be inevitable, but Josie hadn’t yet given up on being in business here. She couldn’t, because if she lost that, she really would have nothing.

“I’ll sign any contract you want,” she said, dropping the crystal on the floor. “Pay any fee you demand, but I will not give up on this, because Mary is more than just my friend. Her connection to the crystal is my future. I might have come here to run a mining company, but after everything I’ve seen, I know there’s so much more! The crystal, the mines, the magic they contain—we are standing at the threshold of humanity’s future! All the things my uncle dreamed of when he came to this place, the dreams he passed on to me, it’s all right here, and I am willing to pay anything, up to and including my life, to keep them from slipping out of my reach.”

Josie was panting by the time she finished. That was definitely not the approach she would have chosen if she’d planned this ahead of time. Dr. Pendleton wasn’t someone who could be won over by personal appeals, and yet something Josie had said must have gotten through, because the doctor removed her hand from the doorknob.

“If I do this for you,” she said, turning back around, “will you swear never to tell anyone it was me?”

“On my life,” Josie promised.

“No one,” Dr. Pendleton said again. “Not even the girl you’re changing yourself to save. And I want double my usual fee in gold. No silver this time.”

“Agreed,” Josie said before the woman could take it back. “But what changed your mind?”

“That’s none of your business,” Dr. Pendleton said, striding back to her desk. “Do we have a deal?”

Josie nodded and held out her hand, but the doctor didn’t take it. Instead, she walked over to the rolling metal cart that was pushed into the corner and picked up the spool of crystal thread and the long, curved crystal suture needle Josie had seen her using the last time she was a patient here.

“Um, do we need to move to surgery?”

“Not for something this small,” Dr. Pendleton said, threading the needle with expert skill. “Usually it takes hundreds of stitches to amplify a subject’s resonance to a level that can be manipulated, but there’s so much crystal in the air right now that adding more sound might spontaneously cause a power to manifest, which is precisely what we don’t want. We’re looking for control, and control requires finesse.”

“All right,” Josie said, looking down at her ridiculous gown and the practical cotton apron still tied over top of it. “Do I need to undress anything?”

“Just your arm,” Dr. Pendleton said, grabbing a roll of gauze from the opposite wall. “Normally I’d do your back or neck, but the Universal Music’s roaring so loud through everything right now that a few dozen stitches in the extremities should be all we need to tune you into something useful.”

“Universal Music?” Josie’s heart beat faster. “Uncle talked about that as well! He said it was the song of the caves.”

“It’s the song of everything,” the doctor said casually, rolling her cart over to Josie at last. “That’s why it’s called ‘Universal.’ Arm, please.”

Josie dutifully unbuttoned her cuff and rolled up her sleeve. “Will this hurt?”

“No more than getting stabbed with a needle usually does,” Dr. Pendleton replied, her monotone voice making it difficult to tell if she was joking or not. “If I were you, I’d be more concerned about spontaneous overflow.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Josie observed.

“Oh, it’s not,” the doctor said, swabbing Josie’s arm with a gauze pad doused in rubbing alcohol. “The Universal Music has always been everywhere, but it’s never been this loud before, and recently it’s gotten even more chaotic than usual. That’s why we’re having so many problems. Normally, people keep to their own songs and ignore everything else, but with so much crystal piled up in town, not heeding its song has become impossible.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“I’m not talking about a physical sound,” Dr. Pendleton said testily. “Very few people have that talent, but the vibrations build up in us whether we hear them or not. As that chaos rises, it clashes with people’s internal music, creating dissonance inside their bodies that eventually manifests physically as the horrors you saw outside. That’s what happened to the men in my waiting room. What I’m doing to you now is trying to force basically the same thing but in a more controlled fashion. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” Josie said, trying her best not to flinch as Dr. Pendleton placed the cold needle against her skin. “It’s like baking a loaf of bread. You know the steam from the cooking will crack the crust, so you score the loaf on top to create a weak point for the pressure to escape. That way, the loaf only cracks where you want it to rather than spilling out all over.”

“I’ve never baked bread before, so I don’t know if that’s strictly accurate, but it sounds close enough,” the doctor said, dragging the needle gently over Josie’s skin as if she were sketching a pattern. “Honestly, it doesn’t matter if you understand or not. All I need you to do is to hold in your mind exactly what it is you want from the crystal. Not what you want the power to be. We don’t have that much control. But I’ve found that if you give the sound something to aim at, the power will break in that direction. Usually.”

“Sounds better than popping some crystal and hoping for the best,” Josie said, steeling herself. “All right, I’m ready.”

Dr. Pendleton bent over her arm with the needle like a lady over her embroidery. She was just about to pierce Josie’s flesh when she said, “You might want to look away.”

Josie followed her advice not a moment too soon. As expected from a giant curved needle made of crystal, it hurt like the devil. A dozen stitches hadn’t sounded like much, but it felt like it went on forever. Josie couldn’t even think of what she wanted her crystal power to do with the needle poking in and out of her flesh like a tiny sword. She was struggling not to pass out when, all of a sudden, it was finished. When she got the courage to look down again, Dr. Pendleton was wrapping her bloody arm in gauze, looking oddly exhausted for someone who hadn’t been getting needled.

“Haven’t done that in a while,” she said, wiping her brow. “How do you feel?”

“Punctured,” Josie muttered, flexing her still-numb hand below the bandage. “Did it work?”

“No, because you haven’t done anything yet,” the doctor said, sitting back in her chair. “To use your comparison, all I did was score the bread. It still has to bake, and that’s all you. It shouldn’t be too hard to find some crystal to nudge you over the edge, though. I’m pretty sure I can just knock some dust off the window.”

“That’s quite all right,” Josie said, looking at the grime-coated window in horror. “I have my own.”

She dug down into her apron pocket and pulled out the walnut-sized crystal lump she’d prepared for Oliver. Dr. Pendleton looked askance at the candy coating but declared it a fine size, so Josie closed her eyes and shoved the thing into her mouth, swallowing the lump down before she could even taste the sweetness.

Her body reacted immediately. She’d seen Rel take crystal before, so she’d known it would happen quickly, but she hadn’t expected the world to explode with the most godawful racket she’d ever heard. It sounded like thunder mixed with breaking bones and nails on slate. How anyone could call this music, Josie had no idea, but it was getting louder by the second, pounding through her skull in a painful cacophony until she felt her head was going to burst.

“Don’t fight it,” Dr. Pendleton said, her calm voice sounding a million miles away even though Josie could see the woman sitting right in front of her. “Resisting the crystal defeats the entire purpose of the stitches. You have to let it flow where we directed, to your target.”

Right, Josie thought, forcing herself to ignore the noise and focus instead on what she wanted all that awful roaring to do.

Now that she was no longer being stabbed, the answer was right on the top of her thoughts. It was the same thing she’d told Dr. Pendleton not five minutes ago and Oliver not twenty minutes before that. She wanted to get back to the Mother Lode. That was where everything she cared about was waiting: Mary, the crystal, all of her hopes for the future. It really was the heart of everything, just as Uncle had said. Josie didn’t even want to mine the crystal anymore. She just wanted to understand it, to grasp its potential as Mary and Uncle Samuel did, so she held the picture tight in her mind’s eye. Not the wreckage Rel’s betrayal had left in its wake, but the wonder she’d glimpsed in that first moment Mary had lifted her lamp: the great darkness filled with the million twinkling stars of the crystal.

She was still holding the scene like a candle when the wall of sound crashing through her thoughts suddenly jumped like a derailed locomotive. It screamed as it twisted, turning over and over on itself until it had formed into something that was almost, but not quite, like a word.

Mary?

Yes, Mary! Josie thought back frantically, waving the name through her mind like a flag. She wasn’t even surprised that the crystal sound knew Mary. Of course it did. The caves loved her.

Josie was happy to leverage that connection. I’m Mary’s friend, she thought quickly, before the sound changed again. She’s lost. I’m trying to bring her back, but I need your help!

The sound twisted again. Its meaning was much less clear this time, but Josie had the distinct impression that the noise was asking what kind of help she wanted—an excellent question, since Josie didn’t quite know herself. A copy of Mary’s ability to navigate underground was the most obvious answer, but Josie wasn’t confident she could find the Mother Lode even if she could hear the cave’s song, and that was assuming Mary was, in fact, still there. She could be somewhere else entirely, a possibility Josie hadn’t even wanted to entertain because she had no idea what to do if that was the case. Just thinking about how wide the field of possibilities stretched was terrifying, but forcing herself to face the reality of all those possibilities actually gave Josie a better idea.

I want a way to solve the crystal problem, she thought firmly, picturing the glittering dust cloud currently hanging over the town in an effort to give the sound some context. Right now, the excess crystal is driving everyone here mad. I’m not good enough at the caves to find Mary on my own, but if Oliver could stomach crystal again, he could lead me straight to her no matter where she was! I can’t do anything with how things are, but if I could get a break, a way to lower the pressure, suddenly everything becomes possible again.

There was a lot more to her idea than that. The crystal must have gotten what it wanted, though, because the sound in her head suddenly rose to a crescendo. The resulting crash shook Josie like a nut inside the shell of her body, rattling her thoughts until they were swirling like so much flotsam. She couldn’t have told someone her name while it was happening, but all that shaking must have knocked something important into place inside her, because the sound suddenly sank to a purr, like it was pleased with itself. The cacophony was gone entirely a second later, vanishing as quickly as it had come to leave Josie gasping facedown on the floor.

“Well?” Dr. Pendleton asked, looking down at Josie from her stool. “What did it give you?”

Josie couldn’t say. Partially because she had no idea but mostly because the numbness that had previously been confined to her fingers was now spreading through the rest of her body, including her jaw. It wasn’t painful, but it was extremely uncomfortable. So much so that Josie began to writhe on the carpet, knocking over the bag of crystal she’d brought to pay Dr. Pendleton and sending the stones clattering all over the floor.

“Don’t fight it,” the doctor advised, grabbing a battered tin sick basin from the corner and shoving it under Josie’s face. “If something wants to come out, let it, or it might rip you open trying to get free.”

That was excellent advice that Josie had no idea how to follow. How did one “let out” numbness? All she seemed able to do was endure as the terrifying sensation rolled through her from toes to scalp before surging back down to gather in her hands again, though not like before. The old numbness she’d suffered had made her hands feel wooden and dead. This was the opposite sensation: a pressure that filled her skin to bursting, like her hands were inflating waterskins. She tried to do as the doctor said and let it out, but how did you empty your fingers?

Josie had no idea, so she just sort of shoved at it, forcing the pressure down her fingers like she was squeezing a sausage out of its casing. Then, very much like a sausage, something inside her ripped, and the too-full sensation burst free, flowing like a torrent into the closest thing that wasn’t herself, which just so happened to be the sick basin Dr. Pendleton had placed under her nose. Placed and let go of, thank goodness, because the dented bowl was now glowing as bright as the sun. Josie was afraid the basin was going to explode when the light suddenly faded. The golden color, however, remained.

“Extraordinary,” Dr. Pendleton whispered, snatching up the sick basin, which was no longer made of tin. “Did you do this?”

“Do what?” Josie moaned, pushing herself off the ground only to stop halfway. “Hey! The numbness in my hands is gone!”

“I was unaware that you were suffering from numbness,” the doctor replied with slight annoyance. “That would have been useful information, but it seems to have worked itself out. Look.”

She handed Josie the basin, which was bright as a buttercup in the drab light of the cluttered office. The flashy color was so out of place, Josie didn’t realize what had happened until she registered the astonishing weight of the object in her hands, vastly heavier than anything made of tin should have felt. Smoother, too, its sides almost buttery against her fingers.

“It’s gold,” Dr. Pendleton said, scratching the soft metal with her fingernail.

“Gold?” Josie repeated, her eyes going huge as she turned the basin over in her hands, but there was no mistake. “I turned it into gold?”

“Like a living philosopher’s stone,” Dr. Pendleton said, looking as close to happy as Josie had ever seen. “Do my wastebasket next, and I’ll count your bill paid in full.”

“But... but how?” Josie asked. “I mean, is that even physically possible?”

“Most things involving crystal defy our concepts of possibility,” the doctor replied casually, picking up the woven straw trash basket from under her desk. “That’s what makes it so interesting to work with. We haven’t yet begun to test the limits of what your power can do or how it works. We don’t even know how it’s triggered, as evidenced by the fact that you’re changing the carpet even though I didn’t ask for that.”

Josie, who’d been listening to this on all fours, snatched her hands back at once. Sure enough, the oval-shaped rug covering the center of Dr. Pendleton’s office was now half gold. Golden fibers rather than solid metal shaped to look like fiber, which suggested that whatever she did kept some of the nature of the original object, but it was still mind-boggling.

“The effect might be limited to your hands, since your dress is still fabric,” Dr. Pendleton observed, though she kept her distance. “But we’ll need to do experiments to see exactly what parts of you cause the reaction. We should also test if there’s a mental control element, or if you’re doomed to change everything you touch like a modern King Midas. It clearly works on a range of natural materials.” She tapped her fingers against the wastebasket thoughtfully. “I wonder if you could change a living person.”

Josie had no idea. She stared in wonder at her hands, her brain whirling like a two-penny top with all the implications of the great, great gift she had just been given, and not just her. She could save the entire town with this!

“I have to go,” she said, scrambling to her feet.

Dr. Pendleton looked downcast. “But we haven’t even come up with any experiments.”

“I’ll do them later,” Josie promised, grabbing the wastebasket, which turned to gold in an instant just like the basin. “There. If I let you keep the rug, too, will you promise to tell no one about this?”

“I’ll give you the rug if you stay long enough to let me run some tests,” the doctor said, grabbing her notebook off her desk. “I’ve never seen a crystal manifestation that changes the physical structure of things outside the patient’s body before. Would you mind touching—”

But Josie was already going for the door, bumping it open with her hip to keep from turning the knob into gold in front of the packed waiting room. She balled her deadly hands in her apron next, keeping her head down and her body well away from any of the other people, just in case.

“Miss Price!” Dr. Pendleton cried, striding after her. “This is ridiculous. We must at least determine the limits of—”

“Later!” Josie promised, turning her body so that the now very curious men in the waiting room wouldn’t see the buttery color that was spreading down her apron. “I’ll come back tomorrow, I promise, but right now I’ve got something more important!”

“What could possibly be more important than experimentation?” Dr. Pendleton asked, sounding truly baffled.

“Fixing things,” Josie said, opening the front door with her bundled hand. She cleared the rickety stairs in two jumps and hit the ground running, kicking her boots for extra speed with no care for the clouds of crystal this stirred up as she raced to get back to Price Mining before her clothing became too golden to move.

Chapter 10

August 11, 1876

3 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

For all that the town seemed convinced the army was squatting upon a mountain of food they refused to share, the rations served at mess told a different story. This was the third night they’d eaten this particular stew, and age had not done it any favors. Lucas counted himself fortunate that life at sea had deadened his palate to the point where if a meal wasn’t actively crawling with maggots, he could usually choke it down. Chaucer, despite his years in the military, was less accommodating.

“Ugh,” the sergeant said, ripping his face away from the greasy, gray-brown liquid the cook had slopped into his tin. “It smells like they dug up old boots from Boot Hill and boiled ’em with the feet still inside!”

Lucas chuckled. “You give our quartermasters too little credit, mon ami. If they’d actually dug the boots out of Boot Hill, they’d be making us wear them, not eat them.”

“I’d take some new boots right about now,” Chaucer muttered, lifting his spoon to watch the unidentifiable lumps dribble off the end. “New anything, really, including some new company.”

He didn’t have to clarify what he meant. Their bench had an excellent view of the party in question: a raucous troop of nearly five hundred Wyoming Defense soldiers taking up all four of the long tables that spanned the center of the canvas mess tent. Shaw’s men were laughing and lively, probably because they weren’t eating three-day-old mystery soup. They’d brought their own rations with them, and their plates were full of bacon and beans with fresh biscuits on the side.

Lucas shifted on the wooden bench. Townsend had declared it thoughtful of Colonel Shaw not to burden them with the feeding of a thousand extra mouths, but that assessment did not take into account what having two separate meals would do to morale. Chaucer wasn’t the only Fort Grant soldier eyeing the cheery table like he was imagining shanking a man for his biscuit.

“Wyoming bastards,” Chaucer whispered, stabbing at his slop. “Bloody Indians could be on us any bloody day, and they’re acting like it’s a bloody picnic.” He stabbed his food again, attempting to scoop up a bit of slimy bread only to have it escape his spoon at the last second, causing Chaucer to throw his hands into the air.

“I’ve just about had it!” he cried. “I had to give up my spot on wall guard ’cause them lazy pigs think they’re too good for patrol work! Now I’m tired and hungry from riding around all bleeding day trying not to get shot ’cause there’s goddamn Sioux war parties riding through every goddamn gully, and they’re eating bacon right in front of me!” He slammed his food away. “I swear, if they weren’t our only hope of surviving this, I’d shove those fancy crystal cannons right up their lazy arseholes.”

As an officer, Lucas should have called out such language against their allies. Instead, he lifted another spoonful of old soup into his mouth, his blue eyes drifting to the flint-faced man sitting at the head of the Wyoming table.

For someone who’d ostensibly come to save them, Colonel Shaw certainly seemed to be going out of his way to make life at Fort Grant hell for everyone not under his direct command. He’d denied all of Lucas’s requests for help with patrol shifts so the overworked 10th could have some rest. His soldiers routinely refused orders to help dig the extra latrines required by the increase in the fort’s population. Their officers constantly rode out to go “redskin hunting” but never shared what they saw, forcing Lucas to keep sending out his own scouts, who’d been riding back-to-back missions with scarcely a night’s rest in between.

It was maddening. As Chaucer had just shown, tempers were running high as reports of the Sioux army put them closer and closer to Fort Grant. If Shaw’s men had pulled their weight in the slightest, every soldier in the fortress could have enjoyed a shift of extra leave to ease the tension. But whenever Lucas ordered a Wyoming soldier to do anything, even if it was tending to his own horse, Colonel Shaw came down on him like a cannonball. This left the mostly Black soldiers of Fort Grant doing all the work of guarding, patrolling, and running the tax table while the all-white newcomers did whatever they pleased, carousing on the walls like the enemy army wasn’t practically on the horizon.

To say it was bad for morale was like saying the sea was wet. Lucas had survived several mutinies during his wayward years, and he recognized the look on his men’s faces. He warned the general about it every time they had a meeting, but all Cook could see was the tightening noose of Sitting Bull’s army getting closer and closer victories, leaving no room in his thoughts for anything that wasn’t crystal cannons and positioning.

In Lucas’s opinion, the only thing that was going right for them was Townsend’s crystal rifle project. In an ironic twist, the Whitmans’ blockade had made crystal so cheap and abundant that even the Captain of the Crystal Research and Supply Division couldn’t claim all of it needed to be sent back to Washington. His team had been working day and night, taking crystal the miners sold them for literal beans and turning it into rifles that would hopefully be able to pierce the Sioux’s crystal war paint.

Lucas himself was carrying a newly refurbished Springfield Crystal-Action. Chaucer’s and the rest of the 10th Colored Cavalry’s weapons were still pending. Again, because Shaw had demanded the new guns for his own men first. Even for a selfish man who’d abandoned his post to appease his bloodthirst fighting Indians, Shaw’s blatant disregard for the basic fairness required to maintain discipline was unthinkably reckless. He had to be stopped, which was why Lucas had come up with tonight’s plan.

“Are you really going through with it?” Chaucer whispered as they rinsed their dirty tins—Chaucer’s still half full of soup—in the barrel at the end of the mess line. “I hate those Wyoming Defense bastards as much as anyone, but now isn’t the time for messing around. You could get in real hot water for this.”

“Not if I come back with evidence,” Lucas whispered back. “This can’t continue, Chaucer. Cook only allows this behavior because we need Shaw’s cannons, but if I can prove he’s the traitor I suspect, then there’s no more need to suffer him.”

“I hate him too,” Chaucer assured him. “But this is crazy. We’re about to have a war on our doorstep! Are you sure this is the best time?”

“It’s the only time,” Lucas insisted. “Battle is the last place I want entitled, selfish soldiers guarding my back or yours. Also”—he wiggled his eyebrows—“if I bring back evidence proving that Shaw’s on the take, the general will have all the excuse he needs to throw him and his officers in the brig for treason, and then we can seize all their cannons and food for ourselves.”

“Spoken like a true pirate,” Chaucer said with a grin. Then his face fell. “What about his men? They’re not going to follow our orders no matter how much dirt you dig up. They worship Shaw.”

“They’ll come around. We’re all on the same side, and even the worst criminals despise a traitor. Once they learn who Shaw’s real allies are, they’ll join us against him.”

“Okay, okay, but what if you’re wrong?” the sergeant whispered. “What if Shaw isn’t taking kickbacks from the Whitmans?”

“Then I’ll bring a case to have him drawn up on gross negligence,” Lucas said as they started toward the barracks. “The Whitman gang has been running a blockade across every road under Shaw’s protection all summer. If the colonel hasn’t been taking bribes to look the other way, then he’s the worst commander in history.”

“He has made a right mess of things,” Chaucer agreed. “Probably why the Wet Whistle likes him so much. I heard the She Wolf lets every man in the Wyoming Defense drink for free.”

Lucas had heard the same thing and brought it to the general. But while that alone should have been proof enough for a bribery charge, Cook still wasn’t budging. It was more convenient for his battle preparations to believe that Shaw and his cannons had come up here legitimately, which made it very hard to convince him of anything else.

As much as Lucas respected his general, though, Cook didn’t have to deal with the damage Shaw was doing every day. He didn’t have to keep eight hundred angry, underfed men in fighting shape while the enemy circled like vultures. That was Lucas’s job, which was why he’d decided on tonight’s desperation.

“Remember your story,” he said as they entered the tiny room at the end of the wooden barracks that served as his officer’s bunk. “If anyone asks, we were in here playing cards all night.”

“Not too late to do that for real, you know,” his friend reminded him. “It’s our first night off in weeks. We could actually take it easy.”

“And lose what little money I have left to your card sharp ways?” Lucas scoffed. “I’d rather take my chances with the She Wolf.”

“That’s exactly what you’ll be doing,” Chaucer warned. “If you’re right about Shaw, and he is in her pocket, you’ll be walking right into the lion’s den tonight. Forget Cook finding out. You’ll be lucky if you don’t get shot.”

“Not if they don’t see me,” Lucas said, digging the old sailor’s rucksack out from under his cot. “Who do you think you are talking to?”

Chaucer’s answer to that was a long sigh as he plopped down on the bed, turning his back to give his lieutenant privacy as Lucas stripped out of his uniform and stepped back into his old civilian clothes.

~~~

Thirty minutes later, when the sun had set and the Wyoming Defense soldiers were leaving for their usual night of debauchery, a slim figure dropped down the fort’s wooden wall and slipped quietly into their raucous wake.

He had to stick close to the soldiers, for there were no civilians on the street tonight. The dirty rut that served as the town’s Main Street was utterly deserted, the buildings shuttered and still amid the swirls of glittering dust. Not that the soldiers noticed. They strode through the quiet city like it belonged to them, shouting and jeering as they hurried toward the only establishment that still had lights in its windows.

The Wet Whistle was the lone spot of liveliness left in Medicine Rocks. Apache Jake himself came out onto the torch-lined front porch with a trio of painted women to welcome the Wyoming soldiers, who appeared to be their only customers. They must have been good-paying ones, because the girls squealed when they saw them, running into the street to throw their arms around the eager men’s necks. The killer Apache welcomed each soldier with a nod, slender hand resting on his gun as he scanned the night like he knew someone was watching.

His dark eyes passed over Lucas several times, but it was difficult to keep good watch when the only light on the street was behind you, and this was hardly Lucas’s maiden voyage. With no lights or passersby to give him away, slipping into the alley beside the Price Mining building was simple enough for a child. Good thing, too, for the stakes had never been higher.

As Chaucer had warned, getting caught tonight risked more than a dressing down from his general. If he got spotted now, it was Apache Jake he’d have to deal with. Lucas didn’t like his odds in that match, so he stayed perfectly still, ignoring the crystal dust settling over him like snow as he waited for his target.

As he bided his time, he heard the strangest noises coming from inside Price Mining. It sounded like someone was dumping bags of rocks across the wooden floors. Not that he could picture Miss Price doing such a thing, but Lucas couldn’t imagine what else could make such a racket. He was seriously considering peeking through the windows just to see what the devil was going on when he spotted Colonel Shaw himself riding down the road.

Strange goings-on at Price Mining forgotten, Lucas snapped back into position behind the rain barrel he was using as cover. The Wyoming soldiers always headed for the Wet Whistle as soon as the sun went down, but the colonel had his daily meeting with General Cook after supper, so he typically arrived later, usually with a troop of his favorite officers. Tonight, though, Shaw was by himself, riding down the crystal-dusted street with his already severe face set in a scowl that would have curdled cheese. He yelled at the boy who darted out from under the Wet Whistle’s porch to take his horse and stomped right past Apache Jake without even a nod of recognition.

Quiet as a cat, Lucas left his position behind the rain barrel and stole around the back of the Price Mining building. Using the huge structure as cover, he crept practically all the way to the mine entrance before cutting through the pines that shaded the town’s water pump and across the road. When he’d made it to the Wet Whistle side without being seen, Lucas went even farther, going around the back of the line of the giant sandstone boulders that gave Medicine Rocks its name. The outcroppings formed a natural barrier between the rear of the Wet Whistle and the plains beyond. They were also riddled with pits and cracks, providing a good grip for Lucas’s fingers as he scrambled up the back of the house-sized boulder that stood directly behind the saloon.

It was a hairy climb to make in the dark. The rock bulged outward as it rose, forcing Lucas to climb up the underside on what was sometimes very little grip. If he stopped and thought too much about any one move, he would fall. But skill at climbing was what had earned Lucas his very first job on a sailing ship as a boy, and he made no such mistakes, scrambling up the stone face nimbly as a spider until he reached the top.

Pressing his belly flat against the warm stone, Lucas pulled himself just high enough to see over the boulder’s crest. This put him at eye level with the Wet Whistle’s second-story windows, all of which were open to let in the cool night breeze. Inside, he saw dozens of bedrooms already busy with the rowdy action of the Wet Whistle’s main attraction but no sign of Colonel Shaw. Lucas supposed he could have been in one of the bedrooms across the hall, but Shaw’s angry entrance didn’t suggest a man on his way to pleasant company. Lucas couldn’t imagine the hawk-faced commander stopping for a drink at the jam-packed bar downstairs either, which left only one place.

Turning like a snake on the stone, Lucas lifted his gaze to the tarred-log building’s windowless third story. It was the only part of the Wet Whistle he’d never managed to sneak, charm, or bully his way into. He’d seen the rooms underground—the crystal sorting and the opium dens, even the door leading to the secret tunnel that went straight into the mines, which he’d never been able to shut down no matter how many times he’d ordered it bricked over—but he’d never been to the top. He suspected it was the She Wolf’s lair, which made it the perfect place for Shaw to go if he really was a traitor. Fortunately, Lucas had anticipated this, and he’d come prepared, reaching silently for the coil of rope and barbed iron hook that he’d tied to his belt.

Here again, the skills from his previous life served him well. Any sailor who couldn’t throw a rope to the middle cross of a topmast would quickly find himself thrown overboard. The roof of the Wet Whistle wasn’t half so high, and it was a much bigger target than a mast pole. The hardest part would be hiding the clink of his hook when it hit the wooden shingles, so Lucas waited for the perfect moment, spinning the hook like a rock sling in his hand as he listened to the wild singing floating up from the bar below. When everyone joined in for the loudest part of a particularly lewd drinking song, he let the rope go, sending the iron hook whistling through the night to catch like a cat’s claw on the wooden support beam that held up the building’s gutters.

Moving quickly before somebody saw, Lucas wrapped the rope around his forearm and jumped off the boulder he’d used to hide his approach. He swung silently over the heads of the gossiping stable boys keeping an eye on the horses in the muddy yard below and landed on the split log wall between two second-story windows, keeping his knees soft to quiet the thunk of his boots hitting the wood.

He couldn’t avoid making noise entirely, but once again, the revelries gave him excellent cover. Between the drunken scream-singing of the soldiers in the saloon and the plain old screaming coming from the prostitutes’ floor, no one noticed his quiet landing. This left Lucas free to scale the building at his leisure, walking up the wall with his hands moving one over the other up the rope until he reached the top.

Here was where things got dicey. The main body of the Wet Whistle was a stack of tarred logs so thick, even bullets couldn’t pierce them. The roof, however, was the cheapest in town. The rafters were solid enough to hold up under the heavy Montana snows, but the shingles and boards had been cut thin as paper to save on construction costs. Climbing onto them, Lucas was almost glad the weeks of tight rationing had left him so bony. If he’d tried doing this at his normal weight, he would have fallen right through.

But while the cheap boards creaked alarmingly under his weight, they didn’t let through nearly as much sound as Lucas had hoped. In a normal building, he could have just listened through a window, but the She Wolf didn’t have any of those. That could have been the end of the mission right there, but Lucas had been watching the Wet Whistle for a long time now, and he already knew what to do.

Dropping to his belly to spread his weight and stay out of sight of the street below, Lucas crawled up the sloped roof like a lizard until he reached the small metal chimney pipe someone had cut into the peak. It was smoking when he reached it, which he found baffling this far into summer. But while the blistering heat kept him from pressing his ear directly against the pipe, the open flue at the bottom meant the cheap tin tube was as good as an ear trumpet, allowing Lucas to clearly hear the two voices speaking in the room below: Shaw’s deep baritone and a woman’s cold, accented voice he didn’t recognize.

“… understand your concerns,” she was saying, not sounding understanding in the slightest. “But the Bone Smith assures me that he has everything in hand.”

“I don’t want his damn corpses,” Shaw snapped back, boots thumping over carpet as he paced the room. “The dead are useless in field combat. I want the soldiers I was promised! I’ve turned a blind eye to the Whitmans’ army for months. Where the devil are they now that we need them?”

“Where they’re needed more,” replied the woman, who, Lucas assumed, must be the She Wolf herself. “I know you’re afraid of the Sioux, but if that blockade falls, all our plans fall with it. It was your job to be the cavalry’s backup should this precise situation occur, not the Whitmans’. Don’t go sloughing your responsibilities onto others.”

“I don’t think you grasp the severity of the situation,” Shaw growled. “Sitting Bull and his prairie-flea army are burning through our forts like firecrackers!”

“You have a fortress full of soldiers and the best cannons that money can buy,” the She Wolf reminded him. “Surely that’s enough to hold one town against a ‘bunch of savages.’”

“It’s their savagery that you should be afraid of!” the colonel yelled. “I’ve seen what the red man does to white settlements, scalping and burning and pillaging. That’s why I signed up with your little circus. You promised to do what the US government was too chickenshit to finish and purge the plains. But when I finally get up here to do what you brought me in to do, you tell me the Whitmans’ army—my army, the one I was promised when I agreed to this bullshit—is too busy guarding your crystal to save their boss’s neck!”

“I will not throw away years of planning for the sake of your cowardice,” the She Wolf replied coldly. “The Bone Smith assures me that the natives will not be a problem, provided you make good use of the tools we’ve provided. And it’s not as if you don’t have an army of your own. If you can’t hold the biggest fortress in the territory with a thousand fresh men and the best guns the world has ever seen against an army of primitives, perhaps we picked the wrong man to be our general?”

“You dare question me now?” Shaw whispered, his voice shaking with fury. “Never forget that I’m the only reason you have your precious monopoly. One word from my mouth and Cook will burn this entire place to the ground!”

“Come now, Colonel,” the She Wolf purred as another pair of boots from a third party, one who had not yet spoken, tromped across the room. “You should know better than to speak such threats in my house. We’re all on the same side, so I suggest you show a little more faith. It would be such a shame to lose you on the eve of your greatest victory.”

A long, terrifying silence ensued, and then Shaw wheezed, “I’m just trying to do my job.”

“As are we all,” the She Wolf said in a disappointed voice. “But we must make do with the hand we’re dealt.” A thud went through the building, as if someone had just dropped a sack of potatoes onto the floor, or a man’s body.

“You’ve already been given all you’re going to get,” the She Wolf continued as Shaw began to cough. “If you’re so worried about the outcome of this battle, I suggest you spend your remaining time making sure the right soldiers get slaughtered. It would be very unfortunate if the cavalry survived this crisis only to find themselves on the wrong side of what’s to come.”

Lucas eased back from the pipe. That was as damning a conversation as he was ever to overhear. He was easing his way back down the roof toward the ledge when he heard Shaw ask, “What’s wrong?”

Lucas went stone still. He was still close enough to the stovepipe to make out what was happening below, but he didn’t hear another word. Just a heavy silence. He was about to get moving again when he saw it.

There, sticking out of the tin chimney like a lamp wick, was a long strip of white fabric. It looked like a cotton bandage, but it was standing up stiff as a starched collar, its top turning from side to side like a snake’s head. It was such an odd sight, Lucas didn’t realize it was searching the roof until the little cloth tip turned straight toward him. He stared back, wondering in his growing panic how something with no eyes could still pin him with its gaze, and then the She Wolf broke her silence.

“Take care of it, Casper.”

Lucas didn’t know what that meant, and he didn’t stay to find out. Letting go of his grip on the shingles, he slid down the roof as fast as he could go without falling, clattering over the wooden shingles without a care for how much they rattled. He’d nearly made it back to his hook and rope at the roof’s edge when he saw that someone was already there.

He had no idea how. Lucas hadn’t heard or seen anyone else climb over the ledge, and as far as he knew, there was no secret door up here. It certainly didn’t seem possible that the man should be waiting so patiently for Lucas when he definitely hadn’t been there a few moments before, and yet, there he was: a towering figure wearing the trademark Wet Whistle black duster with an antique elephant rifle slung across his back.

That was odd enough by itself, though not half so strange as his face, which was covered all over in the same white bandages Lucas had seen standing up from the stovepipe. His hands and neck were swathed in the white dressings as well, the wrappings going all the way down until they disappeared under his black shirt. The strips rustled like snakes when they caught Lucas looking, the fabric moving seemingly of its own accord as the man lurched forward to grab the intruder.

Lucas didn’t give him the pleasure. He’d already reached for his gun. Not his new crystal rifle—he’d left that behind in case he needed to deny everything—but he did have his trusty Colt. The pistol slid into his hand like an old friend as Lucas fired three consecutive shots straight into the bandaged man’s chest.

The gunshots rang out like whipcracks in the night. Missing would have been harder than hitting at this range, so Lucas was sure he’d struck true. When he kicked out his leg to knock his soon-to-be dead opponent off the roof, however, the bandaged man caught his boot instead, jerking up to lift Lucas clean off his feet.

He went up like a hooked fish, flying heels over head until he was dangling in front of the bandaged man, who was clearly much stronger than he looked. Lucas had managed to keep hold of his gun, though, so he fired again, emptying the rest of the wheel into his enemy’s chest and face. He saw the bullets land this time, but that just made him more afraid, because the shots he fired didn’t strike flesh. There was no splash of blood, no red stain spreading across the white bandages that covered the man’s chest above his shirt. Just tattered bits of singed cloth where the hot bullets had ripped through and nothing underneath.

Nothing at all.

Lucas began to panic in earnest then. He’d seen some terrifying things since he’d come to Medicine Rocks, but not even the pit his angel had rescued him from could compare to the shadows and air that made up his enemy’s body. He didn’t know if the bandages held the darkness in or if the nothingness inside was what gave them shape, but they collapsed like tissue when he tried to grab them, leaving him touching the cold darkness within. A dry, dusty emptiness that looked and felt exactly like the Dark.

The fight was over after that. Even if Lucas hadn’t been crippled by the trauma of seeing his greatest fear personified, there was just no fighting an elephant-strong, bulletproof man who could grab you tight as a vise but turned to shadow and air when you grabbed him back.

Not that Lucas didn’t struggle. Once he recovered from his fight, he thrashed like a trapped fox. It just didn’t do him any good. The shadow man in bandages carried him across the roof like an unruly toddler, opening a hidden hatch on the other side that Lucas hadn’t noticed and dropping the lieutenant through like so much trash. The man himself sank through the roof like a ghost, answering Lucas’s earlier questions about how the devil he’d gotten up there so quickly. The knowledge did him no good now, of course. The man had dropped him practically on Shaw’s boots, causing the colonel to leap away with a curse as Lucas wrestled himself back to his knees on top of the oddly plush carpet.

The terror from earlier must have still been playing havoc on his mind, because for a moment, Lucas swore he’d been dropped into a castle. A beastly hot one filled with tapestries and the heads of taxidermy animals. Wolves specifically, which was when he knew he hadn’t fallen back into his hallucinations. This was a real place, which meant the silver-haired woman sitting like a judge above him must be the She Wolf.

“Well, well, well,” she said, her cold voice warming with delight. “What do we have here? The storied Frenchman, in the flesh.” A smile cut across her face, turning her pale lips to curving slashes as she grinned up at the bandage-wrapped man, who’d just finished sliding through the ceiling. “Good work, Casper. You may have your pick of the prey tonight.”

Lucas didn’t know what that meant, but it must have been a rare treat, because the bandaged man began dancing from foot to foot like an excited child. Merit acknowledged, the She Wolf turned back to her captive. Unfortunately for Lucas, Shaw was already there, shoving the barrel of his pistol against the back of Lucas’s skull as he pushed him back down to the carpet. He was about to pull the trigger when the She Wolf said, “Wait.”

“He heard us,” Shaw argued, stomping his boot on Lucas’s neck to keep him still. “This frog is Cook’s right-hand man. He’ll run everything we said right back to the general. You can’t let him live!”

“You don’t tell me what I can or cannot do,” the She Wolf said, leaning over her desk to get a better look at Lucas on her carpet. “Do you know how long I’ve been trying to get this one under my thumb? How many of my spies he’s outed?” She shook her head, causing her silver braids to flash. “Death is far too quick for such a troublesome enemy. I mean to savor this thoroughly.”

“It’s too risky,” Shaw pleaded, his normally flint-hard voice sounding panicky now. “He’ll ruin everything if we don’t kill him now!”

The woman shook her head. “If we murder him, they’ll come looking, and things will get even messier than they already are. But do not worry, my dear Colonel. I have a much better fate in mind for our wayward lieutenant. Something far more… enjoyable.”

Shaw cursed at that. He must have been truly afraid of Casper, though, because he took his foot off Lucas, freeing him to sit back on his knees and meet the She Wolf’s glare.

“I’m not afraid of you, She Dog,” he spat, jerking his head at Shaw. “And I’m not afraid of him either. Even if I have to say it as a ghost, I’m going to make sure everyone in that fortress knows you’re both traitors!”

“We’ll see who gets named traitor,” the woman said, turning to flip open a little brass cylinder attached to her desk, which Lucas realized belatedly must be a voice tube.

“Apache?” she said, her voice bouncing down the metal pipe. “Send up Clink. I’ve a man here in desperate need of a song.”

Lucas didn’t hear the reply, nor did he have any idea what the woman’s words meant, but a few minutes later, Apache Jake walked into the deathly hot, overdecorated room, dragging another man behind him. A thin, straw-haired, watery-eyed fellow with a weak chin whom Lucas recognized as the Wet Whistle’s eternally intoxicated pianist.

Seeing an actual musician was quite surprising. Naturally, he’d assumed that “song” was a euphemism for something horrific. When the She Wolf nodded her head at Lucas, though, the hiccupping drunk pulled out a pitch pipe and began to sing, warbling a tuneful if very slurred rendition of the same bawdy drinking song Lucas had used to disguise the noise of his landing.

“What’s he doing?” Lucas demanded, more confused than afraid. “What is going on?”

“Shhh,” the She Wolf said, putting a finger to her smiling lips. “Relax. Enjoy it.” Her smile grew crueler. “You’re about to have the night of your life.”

Lucas was opening his mouth to say he wanted nothing that she found enjoyable, but he found himself unable to form the words as the song rolled over him. With each note, his battered body felt lighter and lighter, his racing thoughts floating away like champagne bubbles. By the time he’d reached the chorus, Jean-Jacques could no longer remember how he’d come to be in this place or why he’d been so upset. Whatever his reasons, Lucas was sure they didn’t matter now. How could he possibly be unhappy when there was such music in the world?

After that, Lucas knew no more troubles. Just Clink’s song playing him away as he thumped back down to the carpet, lost in a dream of a moonlit sky and a pretty half-Lakota girl with the voice of an angel and crystal flowers braided into her long black hair.

Chapter 11

August 12, 1876

2 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

To be clear, Mary had never intended to stay with the Lakota for so long. Her original plan was to spend a day or so meeting her family ’fore she hied it back to her Song and Josie, who was definitely recovered by now and probably wondering where she was. Troubles in town aside, it was just plain rude to vanish on her friend after all they’d been through together, and Mary’d promised Calamity up and down that she’d come back soon as she could. She was lagging terribly behind on both counts, but for a group of people who gave her so much freedom, it was surprisingly hard to leave her family’s embrace.

Every morning, Mary woke up determined that today would be her last with them, but every time she made motions of packing her things or finding a horse, something new would always come up. First, her grandmother needed help moving their lodge to the new encampment following the warriors’ advance. Then Mary had to stay and meet her aunt who’d just come in from the south. Then she had to show Blackbird’s friend how to use the compass he’d gotten from a trader. Then her little cousin had begged her to teach him how to cuss in English and cried so hard when she’d said no that Mary’d had no choice but to give in. Then she’d had to help sort the loot her father’s war band brought back from the fort they’d sacked. Then she had to help move the lodge again as the war kept pressing south.

On and on it went. Mary knew she should put her foot down, but whenever her family—friendly, kindly people who wanted her to stay—asked for something, she seemed to forget the Lakota word for “no.” She felt guilty as sin about it every night when she lay down to sleep, but then Blackbird would keep her up whispering stories and gossip, and somehow Mary would forget ’bout leaving again until the next morning, when the cycle started over.

It was like living in a dream. Not a day went by when she didn’t see smoke on the horizon, but inside the protective circle of her family, the war felt far away. Her grandmother and Blackbird’s mother doted on her like she was their own child, making her clothes and teaching her how to do the work that kept them fed, clothed, and comfortable. Blackbird was busy during the day distributing the crystal that came up every few days from the Black Hills, but she came back home every evening, and she and Mary would fish in the rivers or scrape buffalo hides with the other women just like two sisters should.

It was exactly the sort of happy, loving, peaceful life that Mary had always dreamed of. Thanks to Bear Woman’s crystal and their incredible numbers, the Lakota had suffered few losses so far. There was none of the weeping and wailing that Mary remembered from the wars of her childhood, no wounded soldiers or shock-faced orphans. Instead, every other night was a celebration full of feasting and tales of prowess as the warriors showed off prizes from their many victories.

Mary saw her father in the crowd sometimes. He was celebrated whenever he appeared, for out of all the warriors, Running Wolf always seemed to come home with the most kills. He didn’t seem to enjoy the attention, though. Just like Blackbird had said, he slept outside the camp and kept to himself whenever he could, which seemed to suit the rest of his tribe just fine.

Even the warriors who followed him didn’t look to miss his company as they sang, drank, and smoked with the others. He never sought Mary out or even came to their family’s lodge except to drop off the plunder he’d taken in battle. His wife didn’t seem to mind his absence in the slightest, and eventually Mary stopped worrying ’bout him, losing herself in the good life that seemed like it would never end. And then, one bright summer morning, she walked out of the encampment to draw water from a nearby stream and realized they were less than fifteen miles away from Medicine Rocks.

She spilled water all over her new dress when she saw it. They’d been following the warriors’ advance south and west for some days now, but she’d never dreamed they’d gotten so close. Stupid of her, really, ’cause it wasn’t as if the tribes had made a secret of their intent.

With the Black Hills retaken and Fort Abraham Lincoln a fog-covered ghost town, Fort Grant was the last stand of American power on the plains, and the mines at Medicine Rocks were their only source of crystal. Both would have to fall for the total victory Blackbird was always talking about, but Mary hadn’t thought they’d get here so soon, or maybe it wasn’t soon. How much time had she spent hiding her head in her family’s tent while the rest of the world burned around them?

Slinging the empty waterskin over her shoulder, Mary raced back to her family’s lodge, thanking her lucky stars that everybody was busy somewhere else today as she changed out of the pretty deerskin dress her grandmother had made for her and back into her old clothes. She strained her ears as she shoved her legs into the now-unfamiliar stiffness of her jeans, listening for the Song that always rang inside her. It should’ve been easy to hear this close to the caves, but as ever, the constant drumming of Bear Woman’s Song beat out every other sound.

Cursing herself for a fool, Mary wiggled her feet into her boots and started for the field where her family kept their horses. She didn’t know which one to grab or how she was gonna get the saddle on—Blackbird always handled that part whenever they went riding—but she told herself she’d figure it out. Anything it took to get her back and not just to Calamity. Her promise to her Song was long overdue, but right this moment, Mary was much more worried ’bout Josie.

Unlike the crystal safe underground, her friend was in serious danger. Weeks ago, Mary would’ve said the Lakota had no chance against the cavalry’s cannons. Now, though, it looked like nothing could stop Sitting Bull’s army. He’d trample right over Medicine Rocks and Josie with it if Mary didn’t get her out, which she wasn’t entirely sure how she was gonna do. She loved Josie like a sister, but the girl could be stubborn as a pig when it came to her business. She’d never agree to leave Medicine Rocks until the arrows were flying through her windows, but Mary couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t at least try to warn her.

Fear of what was coming lit a fire under her feet. Mary raced across the grass, tripping over prairie dog holes and dodging horse apples as she scrambled through the dusty field where all the boys that were still too young to fight were guarding the tribes’ thousands of animals. The warriors were out today, so all the split-eared war horses were gone, but she had plenty of other mounts to choose from. Thanks to her father’s bloodthirsty nature, Mary’s family had over a hundred horses. She was trying to coax one of the sweeter-natured mares to let her put a bridle on when she heard Blackbird’s voice sailing across the hot wind.

“Sister!”

Mary looked up from the horse’s dusty yellow hide to see the winkte running full tilt across the field, black hair flying behind her like a flag. “Sister, wait!”

“I can’t anymore!” Mary yelled back, keeping a good hold on the horse she’d chosen. “I told you from the start that I couldn’t stay, and now I’ve stayed too long!”

“You can’t leave yet!” Blackbird protested, grabbing the bridle out of Mary’s hand. “We’re nearly to Medicine Rocks. In just a few more days, our warriors will have the town surrounded, and this will all be over!”

“Which is why I’ve gotta go now,” Mary said, snatching the leather thong back. “I got friends in Medicine Rocks, remember? People I don’t want getting killed.”

Blackbird’s face grew hard. “If they didn’t want to die, they shouldn’t have built their town on our land. They brought this on themselves!”

“Maybe so,” Mary said, turning back to her horse. “But that don’t mean I’m gonna stand here and let them die.”

“What about your family?” Blackbird said, moving to stand in front of her. “Will you abandon us for their sake?”

“’Course not!” Mary cried. “I love you!”

“Then stay,” her sister begged, grabbing her hand. “Once Medicine Rocks is gone, the Americans will go back to their own land and leave us alone! We could live here together in peace and plenty as we always should have. The wasichu don’t want you. They never have, but we do. We’re your family, Mary Good Crow! Don’t leave your people to help the enemy who hates you.”

Mary was shaking by the time Blackbird finished. It’d be so easy to take what her sister offered, to fall back into that easy, dreamy life and just be happy. But her hands stayed on the horse.

“I can’t. I love you, all of you, but I love Josie too. She was my friend when no one else would look at me to spit. I can’t leave her to face what’s coming without a warning, and I can’t be away from my crystal another second.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, sister, but I have to go.”

She turned to climb up on her horse, but Blackbird grabbed her. “I can’t let you.”

“Why?” Mary demanded, more frustrated than angry. “I get that you’re at war, but I ain’t. Your fight’s gonna happen with or without me, so what does it matter where I am?”

“Because there’s more going on than just the war!” her sister cried, clutching Mary’s arm. “Please, Mary, just let me show you! Once you see it, you’ll understand why you have to stay.”

Mary didn’t see how there was anything Blackbird could show her at this point that was gonna change her mind, but her sister looked so distraught, and Mary sighed. “I’ll look at whatever you have to show me,” she said, raising a finger. “But if I do this, and I still want to leave, you gotta swear to let me. No more arguin’ or guiltin’.”

Blackbird bowed her head solemnly. “I promise.”

That was all Mary had asked, so she sent her horse back to join the rest and stuck her hand into her sister’s outstretched palm. “Show me, then.”

Blackbird smiled a huge, relieved smile and started pulling her back toward the camp.

~~~

“You must understand,” she said minutes later as she led Mary inside their family’s tent, “this sort of thing is usually done in a sweat lodge with the aid of a shaman after days of preparation. If Bear Woman’s spirit hadn’t already spoken to both of us, I don’t think it would even be possible.”

“All right,” Mary said warily as Blackbird tied the flap over the doorway, shrouding them in darkness. “But you still haven’t said what we’re here to see.”

“A vision,” her sister replied, grabbing a bushel of dried sage from her mother’s herb basket and lighting the end from the embers that still smoldered in the fire pit so that the tepee was filled with its cleansing smoke. “This isn’t just a fight to remove invaders from our land. Bear Woman is empowering us toward a greater purpose.”

“And she’s shown you this?” Mary asked nervously.

Blackbird nodded, passing her a handful of crystal dust that pulsed with the beat of Bear Woman’s war drums. “Everything she does, she does for the People. You’ll understand when you see it.”

“Okay, but how’s she gonna show me?” Mary asked, sitting down cross-legged on the reed mats. “I hear her drumming all the time, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the actual Bear Woman since I left the caves.”

“She cannot stray far from her crystal,” Blackbird explained. “That’s why we’re bringing her to us.” She made a tossing gesture with her hand. “Throw the dust I gave you into the fire. Breathe her in, and she’ll show you the truth just as she showed me.”

Mary didn’t like the sound of breathing in crystal, but she trusted her sister with her life at this point, and it wasn’t as if she had time to pussyfoot. All that running back and forth to the horse fields had eaten most of the morning. If Mary wanted to reach Medicine Rocks before the warriors did, she needed to leave as soon as possible. So, with a final look at her sister, she took her handful of crystal and tossed it into the embers.

She didn’t expect much. Having been around plenty of miners with zero sense of self-preservation, Mary knew already that crystal didn’t burn. The powder her sister had given her must’ve been special, though, ’cause the moment it touched the banked ashes, the fire pit exploded with a deafening crash of drums and thunder. Smoke came next, filling Mary’s nose and mouth with choking vapor that tasted of blood and lightning.

Dimly in the distance, she heard her sister yelling at her to breathe through it, but Mary didn’t know if she could. Her lungs felt full of tiny knives, and the drumbeat was pounding in her skull like a team of miners. She couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t feel anything but Bear Woman’s crystal in her chest as she sank into the ground, pulled down into the earth by a weight as heavy as the mountains.

Open your eyes.

The command growled behind her ears, full of teeth and punishment for anyone stupid enough to disobey. Trouble was, Mary’d thought her eyes were open. She tried opening them again ’cause that was what you did when a bear was growling in your head, and to nobody’s greater surprise than her own, it worked. The moment she gave her lids a push, the darkness that had covered her vision vanished, leaving Mary floating in the air above her very own Mother Lode cavern, but it wasn’t the version she remembered.

All the bad parts—the corpses, the shattered crystals, the big ugly black spot Rel had left when she’d been taken by whatever it was that was walking around in her skin—were still there. The beautiful things, though—the garden of shining rainbow crystals, the glorious music, the clear stream flowing over its jewellike bed—were gone. In their place, huge, spiny outcroppings of ugly, mottled crystal had grown all over the cavern like choking vines. They moved as Mary watched, turning and straining and looping ’round one another, but the worst was the sound.

In all the time she’d spent with them, Mary had never heard the caves sound anything but beautiful. Now, though, the pretty chiming had been torn and twisted until it shrieked like a demon. She tried clapping her hands over her ears, but it didn’t help nothing, ’cause this racket was inside her mind, sending tears of pain and fear down Mary’s face as she looked frantically for her pillar.

“Calamity!” she yelled, her voice a pin-drop in the screaming storm as she searched the ugly tangles for her Song’s white pillar. “Calamity!”

“She can’t hear you.”

Mary just about jumped out of her skin. Same as the shrieking, the words sounded like they’d come from inside her own head. It was a man’s voice speaking English—but not the sort you heard in Medicine Rocks. This was rich folks’ talk, like Josie and Mihir used, which turned out to be fitting when she spun ’round to see the stranger standing in the air behind her.

If Josephine Price was a Lady, then this, Mary was certain, was a Gentleman. He looked ’bout sixty with a neat-trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and a gray wool jacket so perfectly tailored, it looked like someone had sewn him into it. He didn’t resemble Josie in any feature, but their kinship must’ve run deeper than flesh, ’cause even though Mary’d never once met the man in person, she knew him immediately.

“You’re Mr. Sam Price.”

The gentleman smiled and raised his hand to tip the hat he wasn’t wearing at her. “And you are Miss Mary Good Crow, the Singer.”

“Just Mary is fine,” she said, looking around in confusion. “But what’re you doing in my vision?”

“Helping, I hope,” Mr. Price said, pointing his kid-gloved hand at the writhing knot of crystal below them. “The Last Song sent me to find you. We’ve both been trying to reach you for some time, but Bear Woman’s interference was too strong.”

Mary didn’t know what “interference” meant, but that was hardly the shocking bit. “Calamity sent you?” she repeated, eyes huge. “But why? How? Even if you’re a ghost, you died in town. I saw them burn your body.”

“I am not a ghost,” Mr. Price said with a smile. “And very grateful for it, I assure you. Ghosts are souls trapped at the moment of their death. Like a newly hatched tadpole caught in a net, they cannot move on to the next stage in their cycle no matter how they struggle, which is why they’re so often in a foul temper. My situation is entirely different. I am a memory.”

Mary’s head was swimming by the time he finished. Merciful Virgin, and here she’d thought Josie’s speeches could be hard to pick apart.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not sure I follow. Are you dead or not?”

He paused to give that question a good bit of thought. “I am reasonably certain that my body is deceased,” Mr. Price said at last. “The cough was quite bad when I left for town, and you mentioned a funeral pyre just now, which means Mihir must have honored my final wishes.” He smiled warmly. “So yes, I believe that I am what most would call ‘dead,’ but you of all people should know that a human is more than flesh and bones. We each of us have a song inside us, our own tiny refrain of the Universal Music. What you see now is an echo of my music—‘The Ballad of Sam Price,’ if you will—containing all of my knowledge and experience, which I gave to the Last Song in return for a fragment of her crystal.”

That part Mary did follow. “You’re talking ’bout the finding stone!”

He nodded. “I would have given her my soul entire, but she already had her heart set on another, and I needed something to help Josephine find her way. The others did their best to bury this place. I found the Last Song’s cavern only by chance. I was following a new strain of cave music down a stream when I tripped over a rock and—”

“Wait, I’m sorry. Go back,” Mary said, waving her hands. “What do you mean ‘the others?’”

“The other Songs and Singers,” Sam clarified. “Bear Woman and her ilk.”

Now Mary was really confused. “But I thought Bear Woman was trying to help us! She and Calamity seemed to be in cahoots back when I was inside the white crystal.”

“The Last Song also thought they were allies,” Mr. Price said with a dark expression. “She didn’t want to believe that Bear Woman was the reason she couldn’t reach you, but only another Singer can block a Song. How else would you not be able to hear her when her music is part of you?”

Mary was about to blame the distance like she always did, but she’d already figured out that wasn’t true this morning when she’d realized how close they were to town. She definitely should’ve been able to hear Calamity at this range, but all she’d heard since she’d left the caves was Bear Woman’s drumming. Come to think of it, Mary hadn’t heard any people music since she’d left the caves either. There’d been no ringing, no cave song, no pictures made from sound inside her head. Just the war drums beating on and on and—

Mary clapped her hand over her mouth. “It was Bear Woman!” she gasped, feeling betrayed. “She stuffed my ears!”

“She did much worse than that, I’m afraid,” Mr. Price said. “Every Song is strongest near their own crystal. When you left the Mother Lode for Bear Woman’s den beneath the Wind Cave, she was able to leverage her superior position, driving her sound between you and your crystal like a wedge. That’s why you haven’t been able to hear the Last Song, nor she you. The only reason we’re able to talk is because Bear Woman doesn’t know I exist.”

“If that’s true, then why did Blackbird show me this? She’s loyal to Bear Woman through and through, but this don’t make no sense. Why send me back to my Song after working so hard to keep me away?”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Price said. “But it can’t be for anything good.” He pointed at the ugly, mottled mess of screaming crystal below them. “The vision they’ve sent you is accurate, but it’s a one-sided window. You can hear your Song, but—”

“Wait, that’s Calamity?” Mary said, shocked. “That awful shrieking, that’s my Song?”

Mr. Price nodded, and her hands clenched into fists. “What did Bear Woman do to her?”

His face pulled into a grimace. “I’m afraid that part isn’t her fault. She filled your head with drumming so you wouldn’t hear, but the rest of this”—he waved his arm at the ugly cavern full of twisted crystal—“is because of you.”

The bottom dropped out of Mary’s stomach. “Me?”

Mr. Price nodded, making her feel like she’d been punched. “But… but how?” she asked. “I know I’ve been gone longer than I said, but Calamity was alone for God knows how long down there ’fore I showed up. She was fine for all that time!”

“Because she wasn’t awake yet,” he explained, his eyes sad. “A Song without a Singer is just noise caught in stone. When you touched her, though, she became something new. A combination of the both of you, newborn and scared. You were her entire world in those first moments, and then you left.”

Mary’s legs began to wobble. Now that he’d said it, she could remember all too clearly how Calamity had panicked when she’d said she was leaving. At the time, Mary’d thought she was just nervous ’cause they were so new together, but she saw now that the terror had been justified. Calamity must’ve known this was coming, but she’d still let Mary go outta trust that she’d keep her word ’bout coming back. Trust Mary had broken with every day she’d tarried in her family’s camp.

“It’s not too late,” Mr. Price said as Mary covered her face. “We can still fix this!”

“How?” Mary sobbed. “This is all my fault! She was the most beautiful thing that ever was, and I ruined her!”

How could she have been so selfish? Her Song had welcomed and accepted her when no one else would, and she’d left her behind. Just up and walked away like Mary’s own mother had done when she’d left her half-breed baby on the steps of the Dutiful Virgin mission.

“I did this,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I abandoned her!”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t make it right.”

“It shouldn’t have to be put right!” Mary wailed. “I failed her from the first! Left her alone with this!” She waved her arms frantically at the wrecked cavern that was still littered with the rotting bodies from their fight with the Whitmans, and her throat closed in a sob. “She should’ve chosen someone else!”

“There was no one else,” Mr. Price insisted, his voice strangely pinched. “Not for her.”

Mary gave him a watery look, and he sighed. “There were thousands of miners she could have picked from. Lakota, too, if she wanted, but she didn’t. Of all the voices in those caves, yours was the one she liked best. To a Song, that’s all that matters.”

“But I ain’t nothing special,” Mary insisted. “I’m not even good at singing. Bear Woman said so.”

“Bear Woman didn’t pick you,” he reminded her. “She already had her Singer. To the Last Song, though, you were everything.”

Mary wiped her face with her hands. She didn’t need Sam Price to tell her what she was to Calamity. She’d felt the truth herself when the music had rung through her bones. She knew how much their connection meant, which just made what she’d done all the worse.

“How do I fix this?”

“Easy,” Mr. Price replied. “You go back to her.”

“How?” Mary asked again. “I can’t open a tunnel without the music’s help, and it’ll take way too long to get back on foot.”

“I’m not sure a tunnel is entirely out of the question yet,” he said, tapping his chin. “But I agree you can’t make one here. The Lakota camp is saturated with Bear Woman’s crystal.”

“That must be why Blackbird tried to stop me from leaving,” Mary realized. Then she frowned. “But wait, I thought Bear Woman was supposed to be protecting Calamity. Why’s she working so hard to keep me away if it hurts my crystal?”

Mr. Price shrugged his tailored shoulders. “That’s a question you’ll have to ask her, but I can hazard a guess. You keep calling your Song ‘Calamity,’ but that’s not her actual name. She doesn’t have a name yet, because she’s never been Sung. It was Bear Woman and the others who dubbed her thus, and you don’t call something a calamity unless you fear it.”

“She did call her ‘the Song that must never be Sung,’” Mary recalled, brows drawing into a scowl. “But that makes this even more confusing. I’ve seen how good she is at killing when she’s got a mind to. If she wanted to keep me away from my Song so bad, why didn’t she gut me back in the caves?”

Mr. Price answered with another shrug, and Mary shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. I know what I gotta do, and it starts with getting outta here.” She paused, looking at the empty darkness above their heads. “Uh, how do I do that?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t the foggiest,” Mr. Price said apologetically. “As I mentioned before, I’m just a trespasser Bear Woman didn’t know to look for. If she knew I was here, I’m certain she would crush me in an instant, but you are different. You are a Singer the same as she. Now that you know you’re being corralled, you should be able to push back. I don’t know if it’ll be enough to beat her, but she shouldn’t be able to hold you against your will.”

“Good enough for me,” Mary said, focusing on Calamity’s wailing, the closest to her Song that she could get. “You’d best be getting gone, Mr. Price. And tell my Song I’m coming home.”

“I will,” he said, looking very relieved as he put a hand on her shoulder. “Good luck, Miss Good Crow.”

He vanished as he said her name, leaving Mary floating alone above the cave of horrors that had once been the most beautiful crystal cavern in the world. Seeing how much damage she’d done was crushing, but if there was one thing the caves were good at, it was changing. If they could go this far in the bad direction, Mary was confident that she could pull them just as far back toward the good one. She just had to do it, so Mary set herself against the drumming she could still hear—always hear—thrumming down from the world above and pushed, shoving her whole body, her whole self, against the pounding beat.

This worked way better than she’d thought it would. Mr. Price must’ve been on the mark about Singers not being able to hold each other, ’cause as soon as Mary decided she was leaving, she whooshed up through the dark like a bobbing apple. When she opened her eyes again, she was back on the reed mat in her family’s tepee, sitting across the banked fire from the slumped form of Blackbird. And above her sleeping sister, hanging in the air of the dark tepee like a bolt of lightning, was the illuminated, blind-eyed, grizzly shape of Bear Woman.

“You made it back,” the Singer growled, her teeth shining like knives in the dark. “Did you see what she was?”

“I saw what you did,” Mary said angrily, rising to her feet. “Get off of my sister!”

“But your sister was the one who invited me here,” Bear Woman replied, settling more comfortably over Blackbird’s body. “She let me into her soul willingly because, unlike you, she understands what is at stake.”

“Then help me understand it too,” Mary pleaded. “Blackbird said that everything’d make sense after your vision, but the only thing I saw was my Song suffering ’cause you kept me from her!”

The great bear snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. You think a few days without you could do so much damage? The power you call ‘your Song’ is as old as the world itself. The only ones older are us, her siblings. What you just witnessed is her true face, the one she wears when she’s not peacefully sleeping.”

Mary wasn’t convinced. “She wasn’t like that when she was with me.”

“You think you know her better than I do?” Bear Woman snarled, her milk-white eyes flashing in the lightning that outlined her shape. “She is my sister of a thousand ages! I have loved her since the world was new!”

Mary crossed her arms over her chest. “If you love her so much, why do you let her hurt?”

“Because loving someone doesn’t change them,” the bear said, shaking her huge head sadly. “She is as we all are: a Song of the Cycle. A refrain created for one purpose. Have you guessed what that is yet?”

“I know, I know, a calamity,” Mary said. “But I don’t think—”

“Not just any calamity,” Bear Woman growled over her. “The calamity. She is called ‘the Last Song’ because her singing is the trigger that ends the world.”

“That can’t be true,” Mary insisted. “I’ve heard her music. She’s beautiful!”

“You think disasters cannot be beautiful?”

“I know you can’t really think she is one,” Mary countered. “You were the one who sent Blackbird to get me out. If you really thought Calamity was gonna end the world, why would you do that?”

“Because you and I are on the same side,” Bear Woman replied. “We both want what is best for my sister. We also both want not to destroy the world.”

She looked up expectantly. When Mary nodded, Bear Woman continued.

“There are six of us in total. Six Songs of creation whose Singing turns the world. I am the fifth Song, and my true name is War. I am the Song of the western mountains who birth the thunder. The Song of lightning and battle and warriors’ deaths. Mine is not a pretty voice, and I chose my Singer accordingly.”

The lightning forming the image of the bear shifted, becoming a human woman once again. “This is Bear Woman,” she said, pointing at her now-human face. “Daughter of a tribe killed in a war so long ago, it has been forgotten by all but her. Her cries for vengeance were so loud that day, they reached me all the way under the mountains where I slept. In her voice, I heard my purpose, so I rose and dragged her down to become a part of me. She was not my first Singer, but she is me now as I am her: two halves of the same whole.”

She shifted into the bear again, but her cave-blind eyes were heavy with the same sadness in either shape.

“That was why I didn’t kill you inside my sister’s crystal,” she said. “I know what it means to hear your completion, the cry of your other self. We Songs have no voices of our own. We need our Singers like trees need water and birds need the sky. I loved Calamity too much to deny her that, but neither could I let you Sing, because even though I am War and Death and Thunder, I am not the worst of us. That honor goes to my sister, the Sixth Song. Your Song.”

“How do you know she’s really so bad, though?” Mary asked desperately. “I mean, if she’s never been Sung before, how can you be sure what’ll happen?”

“I know because it’s almost happened several times,” Bear Woman snapped. “Remember when I said that Bear Woman was not my first Singer? That wasn’t because the others died of old age. I lost my previous Singers because my sister would not stay down. She strove to rise even knowing the consequences, and we paid the price.”

“But I thought you said she’d never been Sung?”

“She didn’t have to be,” Bear Woman said. “As soon as she begins to stir, the Death Singers come flocking.”

“Death Singers?” Mary scowled. “You mean like what Rel turned into?”

When Bear Woman nodded, Mary shook her head so hard her pigtails flew. “That wasn’t my Song’s doing! She hated that thing in Rel as much as I did. She’s the one who helped me stop it!”

“Her opinion is not the issue. Hating Death Singers doesn’t change the fact that her Song is the only one that calls them! They ignore the rest of us, but whenever the Last Song starts to rise, nothing can keep them away. You saw what one Death Singer was capable of. Imagine hundreds all trying to get their deadly black hands on us!”

Bear Woman shuddered at the thought. Mary didn’t blame her, but she still wasn’t convinced. “You’re a bear, though,” she pointed out. “Surely you’re not afraid of a few corpses? Just fight them off!”

“I have done so,” Bear Woman snarled. “Countless times! But you’ve seen how Death Singers corrupt everything they touch. Our music is the sound of everything that is. If just one of them got his black blood inside a Song, all would be lost.”

“You don’t know that’s how it would end,” Mary argued, refusing to give in to doomsaying. “You’ve never let her finish rising! What if Calamity’s Song is the one Death Singers hate most, and they’re actually coming to shut her down?”

The bear gave her a flat look. “That’s ridiculous.”

“It could be!” Mary insisted. “You don’t know, ’cause you’ve never tried!”

“I will not risk the future on wild conjecture! You keep saying things could be different, but I have seen the future, and my sister has no part in it.”

Mary stopped short. “You can see the future?”

“Not I,” Bear Woman said quickly. “But the eldest of us, Eagle Sees All, knows all that has ever been or will be. He is the First Song who has looked down the path of time as far as it goes, and beyond the moment when Calamity is Sung, he sees nothing.”

“That doesn’t mean she destroys everything!” Mary yelled in frustration. “Just ’cause he can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there! It could be something totally different!”

“‘Could be’?” the bear repeated with a sneer. “Is that really the argument you want to risk everything upon?”

“I’m just sayin’ you shouldn’t take something as gospel when it’s really just a guess,” Mary replied stubbornly. “’Specially when that something is your sister. What if you’re wrong? You’d be imprisoning her all this time for nothing!”

“Better than to lose everything!” Bear Woman cried as a peal of thunder crashed overhead. “You think I have not thought all these same thoughts? I’ve wanted things to be different since things began, but wanting does not make it so!”

“But—”

“I know what is coming because I have seen this before!” Bear Woman roared, her lightning-wreathed shape growing larger until she filled the entire tepee. “Over and over, we find our Singers and rise to be Sung, but every time she rises, the madness begins again. Places below the ground fill with unnatural darkness. Death Singers crawl from every crack and crevice, attacking us in bigger and bigger numbers until we are forced to sacrifice our voices and flee back down to the roots of the earth. That was why we named her ‘Calamity.’ She doesn’t even have to be Sung to bring death and destruction!”

“If you’re so sure, why are we still talking?” Mary bellowed, her eyes stinging with angry tears. “If you’re so darn certain your sister’s a demon, why are you letting her hurt? Why not just eat me and get it over with?”

“Because that wouldn’t fix anything,” the great bear said, slumping back on her haunches. “I am tired of repeating the same hopeless cycle. We all hate it, and so the greatest of us, Eagle Sees All, came up with a plan to keep it from happening again. Normally, once we wake and find our Singers, we go out into the world to be Sung. But it is our music that wakes the Calamity from her slumber, so this time, Eagle decreed, we would not Sing at all.”

Mary frowned. “Isn’t that really hard for you?”

“It is torture,” the bear agreed. “But the sacrifice will be worth it if it works, which it has so far.” She looked up through the tepee’s smoke hole at the cloud-heavy sky above. “This is the longest we’ve ever gone without the Calamity. We’d hoped she’d sleep forever, but then we discovered she’d been sending her crystal up toward the surface in hopes of getting a Singer that way.”

It was hard for Mary not to smirk at hearing how her Song had gotten one over on her jailers. But Mary had always been good at reading a situation, and she kept her face blank.

“All of us make crystal in our wanderings before we find a Singer,” Bear Woman continued. “But none of us have ever slept as long as Calamity did this time, so we were unprepared for just how much crystal she had made. We also didn’t account for the white man coveting her stones and arriving in droves we could not hope to stop without Singing, which would wake our sister and defeat the entire purpose.”

“Sounds like a pickle,” Mary observed, earning herself a white-eyed glare.

“It was the end of all our hopes. For centuries, we’d lived peacefully underground with our Singers, and now everything seemed on the verge of ruin yet again. Eagle wanted to collapse the tunnels and bury us all even farther beneath the ground in a last effort to avoid having to sacrifice our Singers, but I couldn’t get the future he’d shown us out of my head. I knew that if we hid, the Calamity might not wake, but neither would she go fully back to sleep. And while we suffered an unsatisfactory half measure, my people would be destroyed.”

“Your people?” Mary said as rain began to pour outside the tent. “You mean the Lakota?”

“I mean all the Peoples of the plains,” Bear Woman said. “My tribe was destroyed by the ancestors of those who now call themselves Lakota. But while they were my enemies once, they are my brothers in the face of what is to come. I have seen it in the visions Eagle shared: the plains will be overrun by the white man. He will kill the buffalo and chop up the grasslands with roads of stone and smoke. He will eat the land down to its bones, and my people—our people—will be forced to starve on the edges of what was once theirs. That was the future Eagle foresaw if we hid: a world without the Calamity but also with no future for the tribes.

“I could not accept such a solution,” she continued. “So I defied the Great Eagle and used my crystal to call those who shared my anger, like Blackbird, to my side. I did not go so far as to break my oath not to Sing, but I still had crystal from before my joining with Bear Woman. With it, I armed our warriors and created an army greater than anything the wasichu could imagine. We have already scrubbed their filth from the Black Hills. Once Medicine Rocks falls, we will once again control the plains from the forests of the north to the mountains in the west, and this time, we will keep it.”

The bear grew again as she spoke, becoming so large that her lightning-traced back pushed the edges of the tent, letting in the rainstorm that was now raging outside.

“With my power in their hands, the invaders will be completely unable to stand against us!” she roared. “And with my drums blocking out all other sound, the Death Singers will not be able to hear the Calamity’s madness! We will be safe from their threat at last, and our People will never again have to suffer defeat. We can have everything!”

“But not my Song,” Mary said. “She just gets to pay for it.”

“A small price,” Bear Woman said confidently. “And perhaps even a solution to our greatest problem. All of this has happened because Calamity refuses to stop trying to be Sung. She knows the cost it brings, and yet she still pushes forward like the selfish child she is. Now you’re here, though, she finally has what she’s always wanted. She finally has a Singer. But.”

“But?”

“But if that Singer didn’t want her,” Bear Woman continued in a cruel voice. “If that Singer abandoned her and left her to suffer alone. If that Singer broke her heart, then maybe she wouldn’t want to rise so badly anymore.”

A cold knot twisted in Mary’s chest. “That’s why you did this?” she shouted, shoving the strands of her rain-wet hair out of her face. “I thought you were just stopping me ’cause no Last Singer means no Last Song, but that wasn’t enough for you, was it? You’re trying to break her!”

“I’m trying to solve the problem,” Bear Woman snarled. “Every part of this is her fault! She’s the disaster that won’t stop coming! She could end all of it right now, crawl back into her crystal and sink so far into the earth that no Death Singer would ever hear her again, but she refuses to do so!”

“You mean she refuses to be tortured!” Mary screamed, furious beyond measure. “Didn’t you just say that Songs need Singers like birds need the sky? Why should my Song have to give that up so the rest of you can live in comfort?”

“Because that’s what’s best for everyone!” Bear Woman roared back, finally knocking down the lodge she’d been slowly filling to reveal the biggest storm Mary had ever seen. The sky was blacker than midnight, and the pounding rain was so thick that Mary couldn’t see the rest of the tents that filled their camp. She couldn’t even see her own feet beneath the flood of muddy water. There was nothing but the storm of Bear Woman’s fury. But even though lightning was cracking not a foot above her head, Mary did not back down.

“I won’t be part of this!” she cried, bracing her feet to keep from being washed away. “You hurt your own sister and say it’s for the greater good, but I’m not gonna sell my Song out to appease your fears. I don’t believe she’s what you say, ’cause I’ve heard her music, and it ain’t no Calamity! She’s the prettiest, nicest sound that’s ever touched my ears! I know her Song will be just as good when I Sing it, so I’m going back to my Song, and I’m gonna Sing her so loud, the whole world’s gonna hear how wrong you are!”

“Selfish, spoiled, foolish child!” the War Song thundered, swelling into a lightning-and-black-cloud mountain above Blackbird’s tiny figure. “I gave you everything you ever wanted! You could have lived your whole life here with your family, happy and safe in the peace I provided! But you will not listen—”

“You’re the one who doesn’t listen!” Mary shouted over the howling wind. “If you did, you’d know your sister isn’t madness or death or any of the awful stuff you call her! She’s beautiful and kind and good, and I’m not going to let you punish her for a crime she hasn’t even committed!”

“She will,” the giant storm promised, swirling in a vortex above Mary’s head. “Eagle has foreseen it, and he is never wrong. She will end the world, and you will help her do it!”

“I ain’t letting a blind woman tell me what’s coming!” Mary bellowed, stabbing her hand up at the lightning. “You’ve been hiding underground so long, you’ve lost the ability to see what’s in front of your nose!”

“Silence!”

“If me saying this stuff makes you so mad, then maybe you shouldn’t be doing it!” Mary taunted. “If you really loved your sister as much as you say, you’d be listening to the voice she chose!”

“Because you are as reckless as she is,” the War Song rumbled, coming down over Mary like an avalanche. “If you do this, little Singer, I will destroy you. I will destroy your town and your mines and your caves. I will bury your Calamity so deep in the earth that she will never rise again! This is your last chance to accept the good life I have—”

“If you’re gonna do it, then go ahead!” Mary hollered, throwing out her arms to the pelting rain. “I ain’t afraid of you! That’s my Song wailing down there, and I’m going to go to her no matter what you thunder, ’cause the first rule of the caves is when you hear someone yelling, you help! You don’t plug your ears and say they deserve it!”

“This cannot be helped!” the storm roared, popping Mary’s ears until they bled. “She is the Calamity! The end of the world! The—”

“She’s mine!” Mary cried. “My Song, my other half! We’re the same as you, and we are not yours to contain!”

She’d yelled that the same as everything else she’d bellowed since the storm got big, but the last sentence that came out of her didn’t come in her voice. It rang instead, crashing through the storm like the clang of a great golden bell. The sound of it shattered the black storm clouds like shot-out glass. Not even the ever-pounding war drums could beat through the joy of its ringing, giving Mary her first taste of silence in weeks as the storm-lashed plains vanished around her, leaving her sitting once again in the cool, dry dark of her family’s intact tepee.

She jumped up from her seat, nearly falling into the embers of the still-smoldering fire when her legs wouldn’t hold her weight ’cause they’d fallen asleep from sitting so long. Across the lodge, Blackbird was coming back to herself as well, blinking at Mary like she was waking up from a ten-year sleep.

“Mary?” she croaked, looking around in alarm. “What happened?”

Mary sagged in relief when she heard her sister’s voice. Bear Woman’s fury hadn’t washed away their home. It had all been part of the vision! But while she was very happy nothing was actually destroyed, some part of it must’ve been real, ’cause even though Mary was sitting right next to her crystal-covered sister, she didn’t hear a single beat of a war drum. Just the whistle of the perfectly normal wind outside and a strange, rapid tak-tak noise, like someone was making a whole pile of flint knives just outside their door.

The sound was so odd, she started to get up and go look when Mary realized the noise was coming from Blackbird. There wasn’t some rogue knife maker on the loose. She was finally hearing her sister’s music, because the block was gone. She heard Calamity next, a horrible wail like a dying wolf way off in the distance.

That wasn’t good. But Mary’d been hearing nothing but drums for so many days now that even the awful noise was a blessing. She was getting up to start running toward her Song when Blackbird lurched across the fire pit and grabbed her by the wrist.

“What are you doing?” Mary demanded, struggling to wrench her hand away. “Let me go!”

“I can’t,” Blackbird said, her lovely face streaked with tears. “I’m sorry, sister,” she whispered, reaching down with her free hand to pull the crystal knife from her belt. “Bear Woman says I can’t let you go. She’s storming inside my head right now. She’s so angry! I have to do what she says. I—”

She never got to finish. Before Blackbird could even get her knife arm all the way up, a gray blur shot across Mary’s vision, sending her sister flying. It was so unexpected that, for several moments, Mary was convinced this, too, was still part of the vision. Then the blur stopped moving, and she saw it.

There, standing on top of Blackbird like a great furry statue, was the biggest wolf that Mary had ever seen. He was larger than a cart horse, big enough to fill the entire tent nose to tail, and his fur was like no animal’s Mary had ever seen. It was the color of quicksilver with a darker pattern as ornate as fancy lace—a very familiar pattern Mary was certain she’d seen before. She was trying to remember where when Blackbird flipped the knife in her hand and spat a word at the giant on her chest.

“Father.”

The anger and resentment in her voice made Mary shudder, but the wolf just moved his giant paw to the winkte’s arm, pressing down with his huge claws until she dropped her weapon. He batted the knife out of reach, sending it clattering across the reed mats as he growled out two perfectly clear, human-sounding words.

“Get up.”

Mary was wondering how he expected Blackbird to do that with his weight on top of her when she realized the wolf wasn’t speaking to her sister.

“Are you deaf?” he snapped, flicking his yellow glare in her direction. “I said, ‘Get up.’”

She scrambled to her feet at once, too shocked and frightened to even consider disobeying. When she was standing, the wolf flicked his ears toward his long back.

“Climb on.”

Mary swallowed. She was already closer to her father than she’d ever been, including the morning he told her to get lost. He’d said about as many words to her now as he had on that day, which made her angry despite everything. She was about to tell him no thank you when she saw the crackle of lightning flash across Blackbird’s empty fingers.

That was all the warning she got before the tent filled with the boom of thundering war drums as her sister threw up her hand and slammed a blue-white bolt straight into their father’s chest. The blast threw the wolf into the back of the lodge, collapsing the whole tent right down on top of them. The falling poles and hides were so heavy, Mary was knocked flat as well. She was still trying to fight her way out when something huge dragged her from the wreckage.

“Let’s go,” her father said, taking his paw off her chest. “I’m not eating another one of those for you.”

He nudged her with his claw, but Mary could only gape. Despite taking what looked to be a full-on lightning bolt to the chest, the wolf looked completely uninjured. The only signs that he’d been hit were the smudges on his paws from where he’d dug out from under the tent and the wisps of smoke rising from the patterns on his fur, which Mary could now see weren’t patterns at all. They were scars. Scars from stitches that his skin had long since grown over. Not big surgical stitches. These were dainty lines, as though some fancy lady had embroidered all over his body like he was a pillowcase.

She was still gawking at them when her father lost patience and shoved his nose into her belly, picking her up and tossing her onto his back in the blink of an eye. Mary barely had time to grab on to his fur before he shot away, streaking through the startled camp like a comet with Mary holding on to his haunches for dear life.

Chapter 12

August 12, 1876

2 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

Rel stood at the edge of the ghostly firelight, as far into the cold dark as she dared with her hands cupped around her ears, listening with all her might.

Not that there was anything to hear. No matter how she tried to follow her little brother’s advice and listen for the music of her soul or whatever, all she heard was the same stupid wind blowing over the same stupid ash.

She dropped her hands to her sides with a frustrated huff. It’d sounded so simple when Chase explained it. To command the soul, you used the body, and since this was Rel’s body, that meant she should be able to take back control. She just had to figure out how to play herself. Or something.

Feeling worthless, stupid, and chilled to the bone, Rel shuffled back to the edge of the ghostly campfire. The white flames looked a little dimmer than usual, but they were still beautifully warm when she sat down. She tucked her head next, laying her little body down in the rut she’d worn. Just like her body never felt hunger or thirst, she didn’t seem to need sleep in this cold, dark hell. Being still helped her feel less tired, though, so Rel closed her eyes and breathed deep, letting her body sink into the soft, powdery ash.

There was no telling how long she lay like that. There was no telling any time in this changeless waste. But when Rel opened her eyes again, it was ’cause she heard music.

Not the magical sort. This was a quiet, out-of-tune humming that came from a little straw-haired girl. She was sitting on her knees just a few inches away, using her calloused hands to scoop out the ashes Rel hadn’t even realized were collecting beneath the ghostly fire.

She must’ve been at it for a while. There was already a big pile of ash beside her, and her drab brown work dress was black to the elbows with soot. Her ruddy cheeks were so smudged you couldn’t even see her freckles, and there was a big black streak across her forehead from where she’d wiped her brow with her filthy hands.

But despite being covered in soot, or maybe because of it, Rel had no trouble recognizing her. It was Josie, but not the one playing businesswoman back in Medicine Rocks. This was Josephine O’Connor as Rel had first known her. The girl the Prices had treated like a slave.

The sight hit Rel like a shot of pure crystal. She was used to echoes by this point, but Momma and Chase had both appeared to her as their best selves. This dirty creature was Josie at her lowest. If this was the Josie that echoed in her soul, what did that say about Rel?

“Hey,” she said quietly, reaching out to grab the little girl’s soot-stained wrist. “Stop.”

“I mustn’t stop,” Josie said in the proper, high-class Bostonian accent the Prices had beaten into her. “I need to tend the fire.”

“It’s fine,” Rel insisted, squeezing harder. “Leave it be.”

“It is not fine,” Josie said, yanking her hand away. “Can’t you see how low it’s getting?”

She pointed at the white fire, which was indeed looking even dimmer than before, but Rel shook her head.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, grabbing the girl by her shoulders this time. “You’re not a servant anymore, Josie. It ain’t your job to mind my fire.”

“Someone has to,” she argued, fighting out of Rel’s hold with surprising strength. “This fire is your life. If it goes out, you’ll die.”

Rel froze, her empty hands hovering over Josie’s back. All this time, she’d never given any thought to what the white fire actually was. In hindsight, though, it only made sense. Of course the fire was her life. How else could it be sitting here inside her, burning on nothing? Having to be told was still infuriating, though. How was it that everyone—including Josie, who wasn’t even a Reiner—knew more about this place than Rel did?

She was still stewing on that when Josie gave a little yelp. In trying to get at the last of the ash, she’d gotten too close to the flames and burned her knuckles. The skin was already blistering when she snatched her hands back, and seeing her blow on the injury with tears in her eyes took what was left of Rel’s short temper.

“Get your fool ass out of there!” she yelled, dragging Josie—who was already going back for more—away from the fire. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, burning yourself for me? This ain’t your business, so get out!”

She’d barely dragged her to the edge of the firelight when Josie wiggled out of her grip, shoving her blistered hands back into the ash like she was diving for a ball.

“Damn you, I said stop!” Rel yelled, yanking her out again, or trying to. She was still in her stupid little-girl body with its stupid toothpick arms, and though this version of Josie was a child too, her friend had always been a tall drink of water. She used that extra size to dig in with her heels, leaving Rel tugging and huffing like a farmer trying to move an ox.

“Devil… take you… O’Connor!” Rel panted, refusing to give up. “Who gave you the right to hurt yourself over the likes of me? You got your own problems, so get the hell out of mine!”

“But I’m almost done,” Josie insisted, her little voice straining as she pulled hard against Rel to reach the ash at the very bottom of the fire pit. When she scooped it into her hands at last, she fell back with a whoop of triumph, sending them both sprawling backward into the dust.

“Finished!” she cried, sitting up with a proud smile. “Doesn’t it look nicer now?”

Rel hated to give her anything after that, but she couldn’t deny the fire did look brighter, pushing its life-giving warmth all the way out past the edge of the rut Rel’s pacing had worn into the sooty ground. She hadn’t realized how small the light had gotten until Josie fixed it, but rather than feeling grateful, the shame of being saved yet again by someone she’d wronged so much made Rel angrier than ever.

“Are you stupid or something?” she shouted, making the other girl flinch. “I robbed you at gunpoint! I sold you out to your enemy, betrayed you in every way. I may have even gotten you killed! Who do you think you are, helping the likes of me?”

Josie twisted her filthy fingers. “I—”

“I ain’t no good-for-nothing, spoiled Price!” Rel roared. “I don’t want you groveling at my service! Don’t you see what a disgrace you’re making of yourself? Have some damn pride!”

Josie was staring at the ground when she finished, chastised just as Rel had intended, which only made her feel even worse. God damn it. God damn her for screaming at someone who was only trying to help. She was garbage, useless, a selfish, short-tempered abuser just like her dad.

Tears streaked down Rel’s face, leaving rivers of cleanliness across her sooty cheeks. No wonder she couldn’t get out of this place. The awful darkness was her: her soul, her song. Maybe all that nothing she’d heard hadn’t been her messing up. Maybe she was the cold, lonely emptiness. A barren, treacherous wasteland where everything good went to die.

“No, please,” Josie begged as Rel sank to her knees. “Please don’t give up, Miss Reliance! You’ll make the fire go down again.”

“Don’t call me that,” Rel whispered, covering her face. “And don’t mind that trash. It’s never done anything for no one.”

“That’s not true,” Josie said fiercely. “You’re the most important thing that ever happened to me!”

Rel gave her a frankly disbelieving look, and Josie, being Josie, rushed to explain.

“Before you came to stay with the Prices, I thought of them like kings. They ruled over everything and everyone I knew, dictated what we could eat and when we could sleep, where we could go and who we could meet. Even my name belonged to them. I thought that was how the whole world worked, but then you came to stay with us.”

An awestruck look crept into Josie’s eyes. “You stood up to them. Not even my mother spoke out when the Prices would hit me or call me names, but you weren’t afraid. You yelled right back at them, disobeyed their orders. You even punched Miss Josie’s brother in the nose!”

Rel flushed. “Brawling is nothing to brag on.”

“It meant the world to me,” Josie said, her dirty face shining in the white firelight. “I didn’t know it was possible to defy them until you did so. And if you could do it, then maybe I could too.” She grabbed Rel’s hands in her blistered ones and held them up in front of her like a prayer. “You were my hero, Reliance Reiner.”

“Stop right there,” Rel said sternly, prying her fingers out of the girl’s grasp. “I’m nobody’s hero, especially not yours. You’re not even the real Josie. You’re just an echo. A distorted reflection that’s gotten all dirty from being inside me.”

“You can’t tell me who I am,” Josie said angrily. “I know my own feelings.”

“We’re not kids anymore, Josie!” Rel yelled. “Whatever you saw in me back then died a long time ago. Now get scarce ’fore I do you worse than I already have.”

As usual, this sensible request just made Josie dig in her heels harder. “You can’t tell me what to do!” she declared, crossing her arms over her filthy apron. “You might frighten everyone else away, but I’ll never be afraid of you, and I will never leave you to suffer alone.”

Then she was a fool. A stubborn, headstrong prig who always thought she knew best even when she was stepping off a cliff. But Rel wasn’t having it this time. Someone had to save Josie from herself, so she grabbed the tall girl by her bony shoulders and pushed.

Josie fought her the whole way. But if Rel had one good deed left in her, she was determined it would be this. She didn’t care if she sank, but she’d be damned before she dragged Josie down with her. She would not hurt her again, so Rel pushed her friend away with all her might until, like an echo vanishing down a long hallway, Josie’s memory faded into the dark.

Alone by the fire again, Rel stared at her empty hands in wonder. She’d done it. She’d actually made something happen! All this time she’d been focused on listening, but listening wasn’t what made the ghosts do what she said. It was the saying, the pushing that made it work.

Balling her hands into fists, Rel looked down at her pitiful child-self. She’d been stuck in this weak little body since she came here. She’d assumed it was her father’s doing, that he’d intentionally sent her back to a time when she was too small to be a threat, but that wasn’t it at all. Everything here was hers: the echoes, the ash, the white fire of her life. This body had to be Rel’s doing as well, which meant she could fix it.

Taking a steadying breath, Rel pinned her body with the same glare she used to use on the ghosts under Volchitsa’s bar. When she could feel her own gaze like nails on her skin, she set her feet and spoke what she wanted.

Go back.

The words came out ghostly and terrible, swollen with power. Her power, filthy and ugly but undeniable. It went through her like a swallow of crystal-laced liquor, but when it was gone, the weak little body she’d come to hate vanished with it, leaving Rel looking the same she had the night she’d turned her gun on Josie, right down to her chewed-up black duster and soggy boots.

Raising her adult-sized hands in triumph, Rel gave a whoop and started hopping ’round the fire like the idiot she was, ’cause only an idiot would’ve spent who knew how long trapped as a child when the key to everything was just inside her own mouth. Why in blazes hadn’t she thought of this before? It was so simple! She was a ghost inside her own body, so if she wanted something to happen, all she had to do was boss herself like she used to boss them.

Or like her father bossed his corpses.

That ugly thought stopped her midhop. Rel had been denying the truth as hard as she could, but she had no more excuses left. She really was a Reiner. The only saving grace was that it made no difference now. She’d already pushed Josie away. There was no one left for Rel to hurt, which meant she was free to use this power to finally stop her father. His was the greater evil, so Rel embraced her lesser one, coiling her new power like a viper in her breast as she ordered herself.

Out.

The word hadn’t even finished crossing her mind when her new adult body flew up like a shot, popping out of the darkness like a cork from the bottom of the sea.

~~~

When Rel could see again, she was looking at the world through her own two eyes. She was back in her body again, not the cursed gun!

But although she was once again sitting on the throne of her own mind, the thoughts swirling past were not hers. They were dark and old, familiar and foreign all at once. Her father’s thoughts, Rel realized with a start. She’d made it back into her head, but he was still the one in control, focusing their vision on a wooden crate full of bones that a young bandit had just placed on the table in Vincent’s workshop.

The bones were filthy. Some were coated in black mold. Others had gray clumps of dried mud still clinging to them, proof that they’d been dug up only recently. Rel didn’t know enough about anatomy to say what sort of person they’d come from, but her father did. His swirling thoughts supplied the knowledge before Rel could even think to wonder: a man’s bones, early sixties, and not nearly enough of them.

This was how Rel learned that she could read her father’s mind, a power she’d never had when she’d been stuck in the gun. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to have realized she was here yet, making her wonder just how many times the old bastard had sat in this same position, watching through her eyes while she never had a clue.

“Is this all you could find?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Reiner, sir,” the bandit said, his eyes locked fearfully on the ground. “The graves were right where you said they’d be. When we dug ’em up, though—”

The bandit stopped with a cringe when Bernard raised his hand, which made Rel wonder just what the hell her father had been up to in her absence.

“These will have to do,” her father said. “Go tell Vincent to keep working on the black crystals. I’ll join him shortly.”

The bandit ducked his head and ran off, scrambling out the door like the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels. When he was gone, Bernard Reiner sat his daughter’s stolen body on a stool and reached for the bone sitting on top of the pile: a man’s fractured skull cracked open at the temple by a bullet. He was turning the skull over in Rel’s hands, feeling the dirty surface for something too subtle for her to pick up from his racing thoughts, when the door burst open once again.

Reiner’s hand shot to the crystal gun, which was lying on the table beside him. Rel didn’t follow, but she could have. Now that he’d touched it, she could feel the path back to the gun lying open before her whether her father was holding it or not. She didn’t know if changing position would alert him to her presence, though, so Rel stayed where she was, watching through her own eyes as her father whirled on the stool and glared at a harried-looking Vincent.

“What’s the matter with you?”

Rel was wondering the same thing. Her murdering bastard of a half brother looked terrible, gaunt and pale with huge shadows under his eyes. “I can’t do it,” he said, stomping over to the table only to stop short when he saw the crate of dirty bones. “What are those?”

“Nothing important,” Bernard Reiner said, setting the broken skull back on the pile.

It was a lie. Rel felt the falsehood sliding over her like rancid grease even before he’d said the actual words. She didn’t see how Vincent could miss something so obvious. But he must have been too frazzled—or buried too deep in her father’s bullshit—to notice what was in front of his nose, ’cause he just kept walking, striding over to the table, striding over to dump a bag full of perfectly normal-looking rose-colored crystal out on the table.

“I can’t do it,” he declared in a huff. “I know I did it before. I know you’ve shown me a thousand times, but I’m telling you, something has changed. This isn’t even new crystal! It’s from a batch we’ve had in storage for weeks. I thought maybe it would work better than the fresh stuff the She Wolf’s been sending, but…” He trailed off, waving his hands in frantic impotence. “Just see for yourself.”

Frowning, Bernard reached for one of the pink rocks Vincent had dumped in front of them. It looked like plain old rose crystal, the same cheap stuff Rel had dumped on Volchitsa’s desk back when she’d still thought that maybe things could turn out all right. When her father touched it, though, Rel heard a sound she’d never heard before. One that didn’t belong to either of them. It sounded like screaming. Her father must’ve heard it, too, ’cause he dropped the crystal at once.

“I see your problem.”

“It’s going to be a problem for all of us if we don’t figure out how to calm it down,” Vincent said in a panic. “The instability’s gotten exponentially worse in the last few days. I told Volchitsa not to worry, that we had it covered, but her creepy bandage-man is coming tonight to check on our progress, and I have nothing to show him!”

“Don’t embrace defeat yet,” Reiner said, stroking Rel’s chin as if he still had a beard. “It’s true that the crystal has grown more volatile of late, but that’s of no concern to us. Once its sound has been changed, it will be docile and willing to serve, same as all the rest we’ve done.”

“But I can’t change it!” Vincent cried. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! The madness has gotten too strong for me to assert my own voice. It’s not turning black!”

“You just need to be firmer,” their father said, turning back to his crate of bones. “Keep trying. I’ll join you when I’m done here.”

“We need to do it now,” Vincent insisted, his voice desperate. “Lakota scouts have already been sighted within ten miles of Medicine Rocks! If we don’t finish—”

“We have plenty of time,” Reiner promised, picking up the skull again. “I can do that whole cart by myself in thirty minutes if need be. I’m only making you do it because you need the practice.”

“But—”

“Think of this as a test,” their father suggested, giving his bastard son the knowing smile Rel had always loathed. “You’re by far the most talented student I’ve ever taken on. I know you won’t let me down. Will you, my son?”

Vincent blew out a long breath and shoveled the rose crystal back into his bag, muttering to himself as he carried it up the stairs.

When he was gone, satisfaction at an annoyance well managed flooded her father’s mind. The insincerity was enough to make Rel retch, but she was also glad of it. Reiner’s distraction was her opportunity as she turned her attention to the crystal gun that still lay on the table. The gun that was pointed straight at her father’s—at her—chest.

Quiet as the ghost she very nearly was, Rel slipped out of her father’s mind and into the pistol beside him. Now that she was out of her body again, Rel could no longer hear his thoughts, but that just freed her mind to focus on what needed to be done as she wrapped herself around the weapon, squeezing her focus on the trigger like her will was a true flesh-and-blood hand. She’d barely gotten it to move when her father’s head snapped up.

“You,” he said, eyes widening in surprise. “When did you—”

Rel yanked the trigger hard. The shot wasn’t lined up properly yet, but there was no time for second guesses, and the crystal gun had never required perfect aim. So long as it hit any part of the body, its cursed power would blast her father’s soul to smithereens, and likely hers as well.

It was a sacrifice Rel was happy to make. She was tired of hurting, tired of always being in the wrong. She hadn’t kept her promise to set Momma and Chase free, but maybe this time—this one last time—she could actually do some good.

That had to count for something, so Rel gave it her all, throwing herself into the shot with a ghostly howl as the cursed gun’s crystals filled the room with blinding light.

DIE!

It was over in an instant. The soul-killing flash never did last long, but when it finished now, Rel didn’t feel nearly as dead as she’d expected. She didn’t feel alive, either, but her situation seemed no worse off than before. She’d definitely hit something, though. Her vision was blinded with glowing bits of pulverized soul, filling Rel with hope that she’d done it. She’d actually killed the bastard!

The joy had barely begun racing through her mind when the glowing haze blew away, revealing Rel’s own face staring down at her with her father’s furious scowl, very much alive and holding a blackened lump like a shield between them. It crumbled to dust as Rel watched, but not before she realized what had happened. The skull. He’d just blocked her shot with the goddamn skull.

“That,” Bernard said through her own clenched teeth, “you will pay for.”

The words rang with power, but Rel had power now, too, and she fought back with a howl. It wasn’t fair! The gun should’ve blasted through anything! Whose skeleton was that that it could stop a necromancer’s gun?

“Whose do you think, stupid girl?” Reiner snarled, grabbing the haunted pistol and pointing the barrel away from him. “These are my bones. I had the Whitmans dig them up from the grave you made in front of our old cabin. Of course that gun didn’t work on me, as you should well know. After all, you were the one who helped me finish it.”

Something in Rel died when he said that. How could she have forgotten? She’d fixed his bones to the cursed pistol herself, following his ghost’s instructions like a drudge through the haze of rage and sadness right after her family’s murder. It’d never occurred to her that would make him… not immune, clearly, but certainly more resistant. That shot should’ve gone right through anything!

She’d just have to try again. If his bones could stop her shots, she’d keep shooting until he had none left. But when Rel tried to turn the pistol back on the bastard, his hand clamped down.

“Oh no,” Reiner said, forcing the barrel up toward the ceiling. “That was a surprisingly good play for an ignorant simpleton, but you blew your chance, and I won’t be giving you another.”

Bullshit. His voice was calm as ever, but Rel could feel his pulse pounding through the pistol’s grip. She’d surprised him today, which meant she could do it again. As many times as it took. She’d dedicate what was left of her life to making his every waking minute a living—

Pain choked off her thoughts. Rel hadn’t known something could hurt so much. She hadn’t even felt herself leave the gun, but suddenly she was free, floating like a lost ghost in the center of her father’s clenched fist.

“Do you imagine you got one over on me?” he asked as he squeezed down, crushing everything that had once been her into a tiny ball. “That you even came close?” He gave her a shake. “Stupid, stupid girl! You haven’t even realized what I am.”

He lifted his clenched fist to his lips—her lips—speaking in a whisper her pain-racked mind could barely follow.

“I am the first, the eternal. I am the apex of all our family’s strivings. I am your father, your father’s father, and his father before that. I am the Reiner, the immortal, one soul passed down through generations. You think taking over bodies is new to me? It’s the water I’ve treaded for a thousand years, since the last time the music rose. You might think you’ve made progress because you’re finally using your inborn talents, but I am greater than you could ever imagine. Even if you had a lifetime of lifetimes to practice, you would never be my equal, for I am the pinnacle of our family’s art! And for your treachery today, I will teach you exactly what that means.”

No, Rel begged, but it was too late. His fist was already tightening around her, impossibly strong, crushing her to dust only to reform her and crush her again, over and over, on and on, until only pain was left. Pain and the realization that she had never triumphed, never even gotten close. She could never beat him, never. She could barely hold her battered soul together as the Reiner tipped the palm that had once been hers, dropping Rel back into the dark like so much trash.

Chapter 13

August 12, 1876

2 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

“Put it there, please.”

Josie grinned with exhausted delight as Mihir set another crate of rocks on the table in front of her. They’d spent all yesterday afternoon gathering them, picking up any stone they could lift from the piles around the boulders that gave Medicine Rocks its name. It had been hard, dusty work, but she and Mihir had both judged it best not to use anything from the house. A massive influx of gold nuggets would be difficult enough to explain already. If they started whipping out golden forks and napkins, folks would realize pretty quickly that something was amiss.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Mihir asked nervously as Josie wiggled her fingers out of her gloves, which had long since been turned to gold and were thus safe to wear, if a bit stiff and uncomfortable. “It’ll be brilliant if it works, but if anyone finds out—”

“They’re going to find out eventually,” Josie said, moving her hands high over the pile so she wouldn’t accidentally turn the wooden crate into gold like she’d done to the one in the corner, which was now too heavy to lift. “That’s why we have to do this now, before anybody realizes.”

And before she starved. She hadn’t yet explored the full extent of the gift the crystal had given her, but Josie had a strong suspicion she was running on a clock.

As she’d discovered at Dr. Pendleton’s, her hands started turning anything they touched into gold at the moment of contact. So far, her Midas touch seemed to work only on objects that were in direct contact with her fingers, meaning she could still use her hands for normal things provided there was a layer of something already gold between her and whatever she didn’t want to transform. The part she hadn’t told Mihir or the doctor yet was that her gold-making ability extended beyond just her hands.

It didn’t happen as quickly in other places, but given a few hours, anything that touched her body would eventually be transformed. This went for her mouth as well. A hard truth Josie had realized last night when she’d tried to eat a raisin cake and ended up choking on chewed-up gold bits.

She could still get porridge down if she ate it fast enough, but now that she had woken it, her crystal power seemed to be getting stronger by the hour. She’d already had to wrap her body in packing paper, the only material thin enough to remain pliant after she turned it to gold. Without this protective layer, her clothes would have become a sparkling prison. She hadn’t mentioned any of this to Mihir yet because she didn’t want to worry him, but no one was more aware than Josie that time was running out.

Fortunately, everything else was ahead of schedule. It had taken all night, but she’d successfully transformed every rock they’d collected to gold. Finding enough crates to hold it all had been trickier, but with no goods coming in and the shelves empty, the shopkeepers had been happy to sell her their empty stock boxes for a few gold pebbles. She’d already filled two dozen, creating an estimated twelve hundred pounds of solid gold, and Josie had plans for every ounce.

She’d already spied her first target coming down the road. She couldn’t make out more than his shadow through the crystal miasma swirling like glittering smoke between the town’s shuttered buildings, but the only other people who’d be coming toward Price Mining so fast this day would be the sheriff and his posse. This man was alone and bundled up like a sultan’s bride, his face so covered with cloths to protect his lungs from the crystal dust, he looked like a walking rag pile as he hurried up their steps.

Mihir opened the door for him at once, buying Josie time to put her transformed gloves back on as well as a pair of oversized leather ones to hide the cotton-turned-cloth-of-gold. Properly shielded, she threw a tarp over her latest crate of golden rocks, taking care to tuck the edges so that nothing sparkled through. When everything looked as normal as she could make it, Josie left the back office to greet their guest, plastering her face with her most confident businesswoman’s smile.

“Mr. Malory! Right on time.”

“I endeavor to be punctual,” the man replied in a muffled voice as he began unwrapping the yards of protective cloth from his person. “I must also confess myself quite curious to meet this genius niece Old Price used to brag about.”

“He was a loving uncle,” Josie said, helping him remove the final protective shawl from his head and shoulders to reveal a man scarcely taller than Mary. Thin and mousy with a stooped back and graying hair, Mr. Malory looked more like a retired accountant than someone who lived in a rowdy place like Medicine Rocks. Since this was her first time seeing him out of his office, Mr. Malory clearly agreed with this. Despite his professed curiosity, he didn’t look happy about being out now, but as the head geologist for the Mining Office and the senior federal officer in charge of the entirety of the crystal caves, he had a long-standing connection with Price Mining. One Josie intended to leverage to the hilt.

“Thank you so much for coming despite the dreadful weather,” she said as Mihir brought out the bribery breakfast tray full of real tea and sugar. “I promise this will be worth your while.”

“So your note said,” Mr. Malory replied, his beady eyes brightening considerably at the sight of refreshments. “I brought my records, as requested.” He held up a large leather document case. “Now, what the devil is this about?”

“Business,” Josie said, guiding him over to the better of her uncle’s two horsehair couches. “Your office is responsible for all claims made in the caves, correct?”

“It is,” Malory replied absently, his attention diverted by the plate of iced raisin buns Mihir had just set in front of him. “But if this is about your missing deeds, I’m afraid I can’t help. I’ve heard all about your unfortunate burglaries, but as I told Mihir months ago, our records for Price Mining were all lost in the fire last winter.”

“I know,” Josie said through clenched teeth. “But those weren’t the claims I asked you here to talk about. I’m interested in the Front Caves. Those old mines are all abandoned now, correct?”

“Quite empty,” Malory confirmed with his mouth full of bun. “Every inch of tunnel between town and the start of the Dark was mined out ages ago, and everyone who staked a claim there has long since moved on.”

“I thought as much, given how barren the tunnels are now,” Josie said, moving to stand behind the opposite couch so he wouldn’t notice the stiff movements caused by the layer of gold beneath her dress. “So who owns those claims now?”

“I’d have to check,” Malory said, polishing off his pastry and reaching for another. “Part of the claim agreement everyone signs states that abandoned mines revert to the government after a year of inactivity. That should include most if not all of the Front Caves, but I’d have to look at my records to tell you the status of any specific claim.”

“Assuming the claims have reverted,” Josie said cautiously, “could they be resold to a new buyer?”

“Absolutely,” Malory said. “The laws regarding established right of way would have to be respected. Can’t go buying up old land and then charging miners a toll for passing through. But so long as you’re not obstructing traffic, there’s no law prohibiting abandoned land from being repurchased.”

“Excellent,” Josie said. “How many can you sell me?”

The Mining Office official nearly choked on his bun. “You actually want to buy those old holes?” Malory asked after he’d washed down the obstruction with a cup of tea. “But why? They’re empty! Mined down to the bare rock. There’s nothing left but empty tunnels.”

“That’s why I want to buy them,” Josie explained patiently. “I’m about to need a great deal of extra storage space. Somewhere secure and easily accessible but not in town. Your ‘old holes’ sound just the thing. I know you need to look at your records for an official count, but off the top of your head, how many spaces do you think are available?”

“Quite a few,” Malory said, still gawking at her. “But… are you certain, Miss Price? Not that I have any compunctions about deeding you the mines. It’d actually be a great burden off our office not to have to administer all that unused land. We’re not very well staffed, you see. That said, I counted myself a friend of your late uncle. Indeed, we used to have breakfast in this very room every Sunday. He always spoke very highly of your cleverness, so I confess myself quite confused as to why you’d want to purchase something so worthless. Especially considering Price Mining’s current… um…”

He didn’t have to finish. One look around the dusty room with its broken windows and kicked-in office door said everything that was needed about their situation. But Josie was not deterred.

“If you count their worth so little, it should be an easy transaction,” she said cheerfully. “I’ll give you a hundred dollars for the lot.”

That was the usual fee to buy a modest claim in the Midway. Considering how many mined-out caves the Front Mines had, the price she was offering likely came out to less than a cent per square foot. That would have been robbery on any other occasion, but as Mr. Malory had said, the Front Caves were worthless. Less than worthless. Having to manage all those abandoned mines cost his office labor. Look at it that way, and Josie was paying to take an expense off his hands, which made her lowball offer almost fair.

It must have been good enough, because Malory opened his briefcase at once. “I’m sure I can get you at least twenty,” he said, pulling out a large manila envelope with EXPIRED CLAIMS stamped across the front in red ink. “Did you have any particular locations in mind?”

In the end, they settled on forty-three caverns and connecting tunnels, making up nearly three square miles of total space. This would give Price Mining ownership over practically all of the Front Caves with the notable exception of the cavern full of dead black crystal near the beginning, which, according to Mr. Malory, was still being actively worked and thus was not available. He couldn’t tell her who was working it for privacy reasons, which was a shame, because Josie was dying of curiosity. She’d still made out like a bandit, though. Assuming, of course, they managed to close the deal.

“Not to be indelicate, but how will you be paying for this?” Mr. Malory asked once all the terms had been agreed to and the official contract written out. “For obvious reasons, we’re unable to take any form of promissory notes or crystal payments at the moment. Hard currency only, I’m afraid, and with your situation… well…”

He shrugged helplessly, and Josie held up her hand. “Already taken care of,” she said, walking back into the ransacked clerk’s office to pick up the crate she’d hidden earlier. “I believe this should cover it.”

She reached under the canvas tarp and pulled out a golden nugget the size of her palm, causing Malory’s eyes to go as huge as the third raisin bun he’d surreptitiously lifted to his mouth. “Great Julius Caesar,” he whispered, dropping the bun on the floor in his rush to get to the gold. “Is that really—”

“It is precisely what it appears,” Josie assured him, using her superior height to lift the nugget out of his reach and carry it over to the scale Mihir had placed on the coffee table for precisely this purpose. “Last time I saw a paper, the price for gold was eighteen dollars and ninety-three cents per troy ounce. For one hundred dollars, that’s about five and a third troy ounces, and this is…” She placed the lump of gold on the scale’s tray and stood back, waiting for the swing to balance. “Five and a half.”

Malory’s eyes stayed glued to the gold. “Where did you get that?”

“My uncle was a big believer in many baskets for many eggs,” Josie lied, handing him the nugget to inspect. “It’s solid, as you can feel.”

“I can, I can,” he whispered, touching the gold like a man possessed. “Um, we should shave off the extra, right? Make it even.”

“We could,” Josie said, lips curling. “But it’s about to be a very busy morning, so why don’t you keep the extra for yourself? A gift for taking the trouble to visit me despite the hazards of this awful crystal weather.”

That statement strayed perilously close to bribery, but Malory didn’t offer a peep of complaint. “You are most kind, Miss Price, most kind,” he said in a rush, sliding the gold nugget into his pocket before Josie could change her mind. “All that’s left is to sign the papers and make it official.”

He slapped the contract they’d written together down on the table and signed his name in a harried scrawl. Josie wrote hers with far more care while the Mining Office head pulled out his notary stamp.

Clearly forgetting all about the time he’d refused to recognize Mihir’s legal rights because he was “not an American,” Malory waved her business manager over to serve as their witness as he notarized both copies of the deed. Once Mihir had signed his name everywhere he was supposed to, the head geologist handed Josie her copy and gathered the rest of his papers back into his document case.

“Always a pleasure doing business with Price Mining,” he assured them, grabbing one last raisin bun for the road as he began the arduous process of wrapping himself back into all his protective gear. “Don’t hesitate to stop by my office should you ever need to purchase any more claims. I’ve loads of abandoned mines in the Midway that should be coming due soon.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Josie promised, handing the new deed to Mihir so he could put it somewhere safe. “Good day, Mr. Malory.”

The mining office official tipped his cloth-swathed hat to her and ducked back out to the porch, or at least he tried to. When he opened the front door, a great many men were gathered on the steps, blocking his path. None of them had gone to Malory’s level of caution, but they all had cloth over their mouths and noses against the crystal, which made them look like bandits. Josie was starting to get nervous when an unmistakable figure elbowed his way to the front of the crowd.

“I rounded ’em up just like you asked, Miss Price!” Oliver called through the scrap of cotton flour bag he was using as a bandanna. “You ready for us yet?”

“I am!” Josie said excitedly, practically shoving Malory out of the way to make room for the next stage of her plan. “Do please come in, gentlemen.”

With a grin she could see through his face covering, Oliver started herding the crowd he’d brought into the parlor. There were so many of them, they had to relocate to the larger barnlike portion of the building where the miners had lived during her uncle’s time.

“I called in every’un I knew,” Oliver told her as the men fanned out across the board floor. “Had my pick since the mines’re practically worthless now the town’s swimmin’ in crystal. We got miners, o’course, but also gunhands, workhands, even some cowhands if’n that’s your pleasure. All honest men eager for honest work and honest pay.”

“Or food!” someone called from the back.

A round of murmured agreement went up at that, and Josie smiled. “Good work, Oliver,” she said, passing the bent old man a small piece of gold, which he took eagerly. “They’re just what we need.”

Mihir looked less convinced. “They seem a little… rough.”

“So do we,” Josie reminded him. “But greed makes a good motivator, and for once, we’ve got enough to make it worth their while.”

Given the twenty-four bins of gold currently hidden in their office, Mihir had no argument for that. He waved for her to go ahead, stepping back to guard the door to the parlor while Josie rose up on her tiptoes, grateful of her gawkish height for once as she lifted her voice over the crowd.

“Thank you all for coming,” she said, pitching her voice to soar over the crowd. “As I’m sure Oliver already told you, the Price Mining Company is about to embark upon a new business venture, one that requires a great many strong backs and honest guns. The pay is five dollars per day in hard currency, no crystal. Meals will also be provided during working hours. If these terms are agreeable to you, come forward and sign your name.”

It was a sign of the state of things that the men looked far more excited about the food than the pay. They rushed to sign their names on the ledger Miss Josie held open for them, not even asking what they’d be doing since she’d also had the foresight to set out a tray of fresh onion bread on the old miners’ mess table behind them. The smell alone probably would have made her case without any talking, but Josie had a lot of ill will to make up for after her uncle’s unceremonious firing of all their previous employees, and she was not above a little buttering up.

“Help yourselves,” she said as her new employees rushed the table. “Once you’ve had your breakfast, I’ll divide you into your jobs.”

It sounded simple enough when she said it, but the actual placement process took the better part of an hour. After interviewing each man about his work history and skills, Josie and Mihir divided them into three teams. Those men with the most experience in the mines they sent ahead to scout their newly purchased property in the Front Caves for a suitably large cavern close to town. The second group, those who looked the most intimidating or boasted the most experience using their guns, were kept back to serve as guards. Finally, those with the strongest backs were assigned to the old mining hand wagons Mihir had wheeled out of storage.

Oliver, being neither strong nor good at fighting nor able to enter the caves for fear of aggravating his stomach, grabbed another old man and went to the kitchens to “keep the grub train rollin’.” Being very tired of baking herself, Josie was happy to hand over the responsibility. This freed her to turn her own attention to the strongman team, which was currently hauling all the canvas-covered crates she’d made last night out to the table Mihir had set up in the street.

When all the boxes of gold were in position, Josie handed two of the tallest men the painted banner she’d made to string up across the poles she’d nailed to the table’s sturdy legs. Once the sign had been hoisted and secured, Josie covered her mouth with a cloth against the crystal dust and took up position below it, using the metal cone Mihir had dug out of the foreman’s cabinet to project her voice down to the empty street.

“Miners of Medicine Rocks!” she called, her heart racing as she stepped over the point of no return. “Your attention, please! The new Price Mining Crystal Exchange is now open for business. All types of crystal will be bought for a fair price by weight in gold! Line up now to get your share!”

She lowered her shouting cone with a gasp of relief. Everything had seemed so complicated and uncertain during the run-up, but now that she’d made the pitch, the actual process was remarkably simple. So much so that she’d managed to fit the whole thing onto the banner hanging over her head.

Crystal exchanged for gold by weight! it read. Come and trade your crystal today!

Not that most people in town could read, of course. But having a banner made their table look more official, and considering how quickly this plan needed to work, Josie had thought it prudent to get her intent across by as many methods as possible.

“Come and sell!” she cried again as curious heads began popping out of doors and windows and around the corners of the eerily silent buildings. “All colors and formations bought for equal weight in gold!”

“That ain’t a fair price!” yelled a gaunt-faced, wild-eyed fellow from the top window of a popular flophouse. “Crystal’s worth more than gold!”

“Only by two dollars an ounce,” Josie called back through her megaphone. “An exchange has to make money, too, you know. I think most would agree that’s a perfectly reasonable price, especially since selling to me means you won’t have to smuggle your crystal past the Whitmans.”

That was the winning pitch, apparently. The moment she invoked the Whitman gang, men began pouring out of buildings and alleyways. They swarmed the road in droves, pulling handfuls of crystals from their bulging pockets, their socks, down the fronts of their trousers, and everywhere else they’d hidden it. Seeing the mob approach, Josie was instantly glad she’d hired so many guards. Her table was surrounded in less than a minute, forcing her to yell at the miners to form a line as they all tried to outreach each other, shoving crystal at her face.

And thus began the maddest frenzy of commerce Josie had ever participated in. Now that a market had opened, the pent-up demand was crashing over them like the Mississippi in flood. She and Mihir exchanged crystal for gold as fast as they could get it on the scales. A few, like the first man, grumbled about being paid in gold for something that was so famously worth more, but most seemed happy to be getting paid at all. They snatched the gold from Josie’s hands and ran it straight to the General Store or the bars, all of which had picked up on what Price Mining was doing and flung open their previously boarded-over doors to welcome the explosion of new business.

It was a glorious sight to behold. Josie hadn’t realized just how much crystal had accumulated in Medicine Rocks until it was piled in front of her. Crate by crate, all the rocks she’d turned into gold went out to pay the hungry masses. In their place, crystal piled up by the foot. Mostly cheap colors in small cuts, but the sheer volume of so much together was enough to make her skin prickle.

Her new crystal power certainly noticed, becoming so agitated that Josie could feel the dusty air turning to gold in her lungs if she didn’t breathe quickly enough. The terror of the sensation made her frantic to get the crystal far away from her. Fortunately, she’d just hired a brace of men to do precisely that.

While her guards watched the exchange table to make sure none of the miners got any ideas, the strong men of the cart team busied themselves collecting the crates that were now filled with crystal and hauling them down to the mines. Once there, the team assigned to the caves took over, unloading the crates and carrying them through the maze of the Front Caves to the storage room they’d chosen: a large dynamite-blasted cavern that was well off the main tunnel and—most importantly—only accessible by a single easily guarded entrance.

A perfect vault, in other words. Most of Josie’s new hires hadn’t understood why she’d want to put crystal back in the caves when she’d first explained her plan. But as the tide of crystal began to flood out of the town, they saw at last what she was doing.

Everyone did. Josie had never imagined anything so satisfying as watching the town—the whole town, shopkeepers, gunslingers, miners, workers, all of them—realize what was happening all at once. Sure, Price Mining was making a profit, but she was also draining the town of its excess crystal. Like a surgeon draining an infected abscess, she was shipping the poison back underground, away from them. And as it left, the pall of crystal hanging over the town began to evaporate.

It happened more quickly than anyone could have imagined. Josie might not have been able to hear the crystal like Mary did, but she and everyone else felt the relief when it was gone. Like a vise spinning open, the horrible pressure that had been crushing the town suddenly eased. The clouds of cutting dust thinned, allowing the sun to shine down again unimpeded. This had everyone sweating buckets by midday, but not a word of complaint could be heard. It didn’t matter that it was noon on a Wednesday. The whole town was rambunctious as a Friday night, crowding the saloons and drinking halls and even the Wet Whistle to spend their new wealth.

By the time one o’clock rolled around, word came back that the first storage cavern was full, and all the crystal was now being piled in the next cave down. Josie had had to duck away and transform more rocks into gold as the line to trade crystal still reached around the building. Some miners visited multiple times, trading in armloads of crystal before running back to dig more out of all the hiding places they’d made around town and in the prairie beyond. Others came with wheelbarrows, dumping huge crystals the size of cooking pots onto Mihir’s poor scales.

Josie felt morally obligated to speak up in such events. Unlike gold, crystal couldn’t be melted down. This meant trading by weight was only fair for cuts smaller than her hand. Larger specimens were much rarer and thus could be worth a great deal more than their gross weight implied.

Some of the stones the miners plunked down on her table would have made them millionaires if they could have gotten them to Cheyenne or Kansas City. She tried to inform them of this, but the men wouldn’t listen. They were tired and hungry and sick from too much crystal. All they wanted was their money, so Josie paid, but she still felt bad about it.

“Don’t,” Mihir advised when she mentioned this. “These men have been miners long enough to know their own business, and potential value at another market is worthless if you can’t get the goods there. Gold in the hand is worth two fortunes in the bush, especially since it’s going into our hands.” He flashed her a dazzling smile. “We’re back in business, Miss Price!”

They really were. For all her wild fantasies about the crystal business during her trip from St. Louis, a scenario like this had never even entered the running. Never in her life had Josie imagined she’d be trading endless gold for crystal and have both be valued less than a pile of well-baked buns. There were still plenty of disasters to be conquered, including Mary’s rescue, but here at last, things finally seemed to be going her way. There was only one big hurdle left to jump, and around two in the afternoon, it came straight at her.

They were halfway through their second batch of stones-turned-gold-nuggets when Mihir grabbed Josie’s arm. When she looked up from the giant yellow crystal she was attempting to fit on the scale’s dangling plate, she spotted Sheriff Brightman and his posse of newly hired deputies walking down the dusty road not twenty feet away.

She’d known he’d be coming, of course. Not only was today the deadline he’d given her to pay her tax, he’d have to have been the worst sheriff in the world not to investigate such a huge disturbance. Conflict was inevitable, so Josie finished her exchange with the miner in front of her and stepped out from behind the table to go and meet him, though not alone. She’d barely taken a step when a brace of her own new guards—who’d clearly realized they were now employees of the wealthiest and thus most important figure in Medicine Rocks—hurried to her side. That was a very welcome difference from last time, and Josie had to work hard to keep the smirk off her face as she folded her gloved hands behind her back and walked into the road to greet her visitor.

“Good afternoon, Miss Price,” said the sheriff, his sour voice making it clear he saw nothing good about it. “Mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

“I should think that would be obvious, sir,” Josie replied with utmost politeness. “I’m doing business.”

The sheriff’s frown deepened. “Doesn’t look like mining to me.”

“I’m afraid your failure to recover my stolen deeds has made mining rather impossible for me,” Josie said, her politeness a little more cutting this time. “But I could never default on civic obligations, so I found another way to earn my income.”

“So I see,” Brightman said, his eyes narrowing under his spotless cream hat as he glanced at the crates of gold still waiting to be traded. “Might I ask where you got the funds for such a venture? Last time we spoke, you claimed you barely had a penny to your name.”

“We were struggling through lean times,” Josie replied, starting to enjoy this conversation now. “But difficulty is the cradle of ingenuity, and as you so astutely pointed out during our last conversation, my uncle was quite rich. I don’t think it’s surprising that he had resources stashed away for a rainy day, and really, you should be gladder than any of my good fortune. As you can see, I’m now more than able to pay what I owe. How would you like your money? Crystal or gold?”

She finished with her sweetest smile, savoring every line between the sheriff’s brows as he scowled deeper and deeper.

“You don’t have a license to change crystal,” he said at last. “You’re a mining company.”

“Show me the law requiring such a license,” Josie challenged, no longer smiling. “If such legislation exists, I’ll happily close up shop until I secure the proper permissions. Otherwise, I see no reason to stop what I’m doing.”

“You’ll stop because I say so,” Brightman snarled, dropping all pretense as he waved to his men. “Shut it down!”

Josie opened her mouth to tell him he had no right, but she never got the chance. The crowd—not even the men she’d hired but the rest of the miners filling the street in front of her building—was already shouting the sheriff down.

“You corrupt sumbitch!” one man bellowed, giving the sheriff such a shove that Brightman was nearly knocked off his feet. “You ain’t closing down nothing ’fore I get my gold!”

“Shut your mouth with that license hooey!” yelled another. “That’s the same load of horse crap you pulled on us when we tried to open our mining company! Come talkin’ out your ass ’bout licenses. You ain’t never showed me no law!”

“He’s trying to shut her down like he did everyone else!” agreed a third, putting a hand on his pistol as he got right in Brightman’s face. “You ain’t ruining shit for us this time, lawman! Price is paying us fair, and she’s putting the crystal back down in the caves where it can’t hurt us no more. She’s the only one doing something decent for this town, so go soak your head!”

“Maybe she oughta be sheriff,” someone else jeered from the back. “Least Miss Price gives something back when she takes our crystal, unlike you, you thievin’ piece of—”

“Enough!” Brightman roared, drawing his gun. “You will all disperse! Else I’ll have no choice but to—”

A gunshot fired from somewhere in the crowd. The sheriff ducked with a curse as it whizzed over his head. He yelled for his men to return fire next, but the deputies had already seen the writing on the wall. When faced with so many, there was no shooting solution that ended well for them, so despite their employer’s bellowing, the deputies turned tail and ran, shoving miners out of their way as they charged back up the road toward the sheriff’s office.

“Get back here, you traitors!” the sheriff hollered, his face as red as a tomato. When this failed to return his fleeing men, he turned his fury on Josie. “You’ll pay for that, Miss—”

“Can it, you old fart!” yelled the man who was next in line for the exchange table.

“Yeah!” shouted another, prodding Brightman’s back with the barrel of his shotgun. “You call yur’self our sheriff, but you ain’t never done no sheriffing that I’ve seen. Don’t stop no thieves or backshooters or horsenappers. You just sit in your office, drinking coffee and keeping your boots clean on our dime. Shit, I bet the whole town’d be better off if we didn’t have no sheriff at all.”

The crowd cheered wildly at the logic of this observation, and no few men put their hands on their guns. Josie was beginning to worry she was about to witness a murder when Brightman’s sense of self-preservation finally overcame his pride. With one last look at the wall of guns turning his direction, he shook his fist at Josie and fled up the road after his men, running so wildly, she could see the shiny new nails in the barely worn soles of his boots flashing in the sunlight.

“Well, miss,” said one of Josie’s guards as he escorted her back to the table, “looks like you’re off the hook on your tax bill.”

“Looks like I am,” Josie agreed, smiling from ear to ear as she took a deep breath of the dusty—but no longer crystal-laced—air. “Shall we continue?”

The crowd answered with a rush, nearly knocking her table over in their hurry to get back to the primary business of Medicine Rocks.

The business of getting rich.

~~~

“I swear, I don’t know how she did it!” Sheriff Brightman blubbered, bowing down until his forehead thumped against the thick pile of Volchitsa’s ornate rug. “She was flat broke not two days ago! I made sure—”

“Spare me your excuses,” Volchitsa snarled back, chewing on her pipe in her fury behind her desk. “I sent you in to give the final shove to an already bankrupt company, and now Josephine Price has the largest stash of crystal in the territory! Can you believe this?”

That question was directed at Apache Jake, who was leaning casually against the wall between two wolf heads, fiddling with his gun.

“Oh Lord,” Brightman hiccupped, pressing his skull harder into the floor. “Oh mercy, please don’t kill me!”

“That depends on you,” the She Wolf snapped. “Where did she get all that gold?”

The sheriff trembled. “I already told you I don’t know.”

“You must know something!” Volchitsa roared. “You were supposed to have men watching her building at all times. It had to come from somewhere! Did they do anything strange? Anything out of the ordinary?”

“That’s just the trouble, ma’am.” Brightman lifted his head just enough to wipe his brow. “The folks at Price Mining don’t do anything ordinary! That girl’s as bad as her uncle, always doing all kinda who knows what. According to my man on duty last night, she and her pet Indian spent the whole evening picking rocks up off the ground.”

Volchitsa arched a pale eyebrow. “Rocks?”

The sheriff wiped his brow again. “I know it sounds foolish, so I went to look for myself right this morning. Sure enough, there ain’t a rock small enough for a man to lift left anywhere around Price Mining.”

“Interesting,” Volchitsa said, tapping her pipe thoughtfully against her teeth. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know—”

“Not you,” she snapped, narrowing her eyes. “The smart one.”

Apache Jake chuckled. “I think it’s pretty obvious what’s gone down,” he said, pushing off the wall. “It was the sheriff’s own men who reported Miss Price’s visit to Dr. Pendleton’s office yesterday. I’d say our clever little business lady went and got herself a power. Probably something that involves rocks turning into gold, if I had to guess.”

That was enough to raise the She Wolf’s eyebrows. “Crystal can do that?”

“Wouldn’t be the strangest thing we’ve seen,” Jake said, sliding his revolver back into its well-worn holster. “And it certainly fits her luck. That girl’s been stumbling into surprise fortunes ever since she came to town.”

“It is most vexing,” Volchitsa agreed, tapping her sharp-nailed fingers on her desk. “If she truly can make gold from nothing, then it’s only a matter of time before she rebuilds Price Mining into something we can’t handle.”

“I’d say she’s already there,” Apache replied, fixing the She Wolf with a dark look. “She’s definitely not taking your offer of employment after this, so why don’t we let this go?”

“I’m not letting her go,” Volchitsa snapped. “Have you forgotten what Shandy discovered? One word from me, and—”

“Just ’cause you can win doesn’t mean you should fight,” the gunman said in a voice so calm it cut. “That shit Shandy found is fun, but it ain’t our business. None of this is. We’re here to get rich off crystal, not beat a dead man. Your obsession with the Prices has already lost us our ghost talker. We should cut it off now, before it takes more.”

“Have you forgotten what we’re trying to accomplish here?” the She Wolf snarled. “Her crystal buying is a direct assault on our core business! What was the point of building a monopoly if I let a competitor waltz past me!”

“Then kill her and be done with it,” Apache suggested practically.

Volchitsa scoffed. “And slaughter the goose that lays the literal golden eggs?”

“You can’t have it both ways,” the gunman said, keeping his eyes on hers despite her killing glare. “And we don’t have time to mess around. The Sioux are only a few days away. We’ve already played our best card with Shaw, but the Whitmans are late with their part. You keep saying they’re gonna come through, but if you’re wrong, we’re gonna lose a lot more than our crystal monopoly.”

Volchitsa dug her nails into her desk with a glower. She was still grumbling to herself when the door clicked open, and Casper entered. Without a look at anyone else, the bandaged man walked to Volchitsa’s side and bent down, pressing the place where his mouth should have been against her ear. With all those bandages wrapping his face, it was impossible to read what he was whispering off his lips. It must have been good news, though, ’cause Volchitsa’s face split into a wolfish grin.

“Speak of the devil, and he shall appear,” she said, sliding her pipe back into her mouth. “Good work, Casper.”

The bandaged man nodded and left, and Volchitsa turned back to her head killer. “Go downstairs. We’ve got an old friend come back to visit.”

Apache Jake arched an eyebrow, but he didn’t question the order this time. He just turned and walked out, kicking Brightman in the shins as he passed. When he was gone, the She Wolf turned back to the papers on her desk. Seeing his chance, Brightman started crawling toward the door as well. He’d nearly made it when Volchitsa said, “Come here.”

He gulped. “Pardon?”

“I said, ‘Come here,’” she repeated, motioning at the spot beside her chair that Casper had just vacated. “Now.”

Brightman scrambled over, crawling to her chair like a dog since he knew she loved that sort of thing and he needed every bit of help he could scrape right now.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“I want you to bring me Josephine Price,” she said in a hushed voice, keeping her eyes on her papers like she was asking him ’bout the weather rather than a kidnapping. “Do it quietly and quickly. Don’t touch her skin or harm her in any fashion. When you have her, put her in your prison and send word to me at once. Only to me, do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Brightman whispered, sweat pouring down his neck. “But, um, should I—”

“That is all,” she said, cutting him off. “You may go.”

Brightman nodded and scrambled away, tripping over her ridiculous crammed-in furniture in his rush to reach the exit.

~~~

“You may go.”

The dismissal was quiet as a spider’s sigh through the heavy wood of the She Wolf’s parlor door. Quieter than most folks could have followed, but Apache Jake wasn’t most folks, and he knew who he worked for.

That served him well enough most times, but Volchitsa lost her sense when it came to the Price family. Jake respected a person’s right to bite back after a defeat, Lord knew he had, but that didn’t mean the old wolf was free to do whatever she pleased. He’d drawn his lines clear for her the day they’d struck their bargain. If she thought sending him out of the room meant she was safe to set her paw where she knew she shouldn’t, then a lesson would have to be taught.

Shaking his head at the mess that was coming, Jake lifted his ear off the door where he could already hear Brightman scrambling and spun the wheel on his revolver. As the steel clicked, the air became thick and sticky as molasses. Through the door, the cowardly sheriff’s harried steps grew heavy and slow, leaving Jake plenty of time to walk down the stairs like he’d never been lingering in the first place. By the time his revolver wheel stopped spinning, Apache Jake was safely ’round the corner, leaving nothing but an empty staircase by the time Brightman fled the She Wolf’s den.

Setting that problem aside for later, Jake stuck his thumbs in his belt and strolled into the saloon to see what horrors Casper had brought for him. The creepy man rarely whispered good news, so Jake’s hopes weren’t high. That said, he absolutely wasn’t expecting the figure waiting for him on the Wet Whistle’s front porch, standing like a lonely island in the raging sea of business Miss Price’s surprise gold trade had brought them.

“Well, I’ll be,” Jake said, face breaking into a smile. A real one for once. “Tyrel Reiner, as I live and breathe! And here we thought you were dead.”

“You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve heard that,” his ghost talker replied, pushing up her black hat to give him a smirk.

Jake’s own smile slipped. Rel Reiner could be the sourest drink of water a man ever encountered, but that didn’t sound like her. It was her voice to be sure. And her face, and her body. She even seemed to have gotten better at pretending to be a man, but something wasn’t right.

It was her stance, Jake decided. The Rel he knew never stood with her hand less than a second’s snatch away from her guns. Out in the open as they were now, her fingers would normally be glued to her iron, but this Reiner stood with her arms crossed over her chest. Jake wouldn’t even have to spin his wheel to shoot her dead from that position, which wasn’t right. Not right at all, he decided, sliding his fingers a little closer to his own revolver.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked, keeping it casual until he knew the score.

“Under new employment,” Reiner replied, making Jake twitch. That definitely was not Rel, but whatever had taken over his best gunhand’s body wasn’t finished.

“I’m here to answer your request for backup,” Reiner continued, nodding at the tarp-covered wagon waiting in the busy street below. “The Whitmans send their regards.”

“They’d better’ve sent more than that,” Jake growled, stomping down the steps to have a look under the cover.

Sure enough, the damn thing was full of crystal. A weird black sort he’d never seen, and tons of it. If Price hadn’t already been draining the town, it might’ve even been enough to overpower Clink’s merry playing that kept them all sane while the rest of Medicine Rocks ate itself alive. But while such a haul would have been a mighty offer under different circumstances, it wasn’t what they’d asked for, and Jake found himself getting real quiet as he let the tarp fall back down.

“The hell are we supposed to do with this?” he asked, turning back to the stranger in Reiner’s body. “You think we’re not already up to our noses in crystal? There’s ten thousand Sioux not two days away! The Whitmans were supposed to send us an army, not this crap.”

“My dear boy,” Reiner said, looking down on him in the way Jake hated most of all. “I am your army. Now take me to your mistress. We have much to discuss.”

The urge to gun this fool down was biting hard by the time Reiner finished talking, but Jake hadn’t gotten where he was by giving in to impulse. Patience was the greatest weapon any man possessed, so he shoved his anger behind a winning smile and beckoned the soon-to-be-dead bastard to follow him, ordering the rest of his men outside to watch the wagon before one of the gold-happy idiots clogging the street tried to sell it to Josie Price.

Chapter 14

August 12, 1876

2 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

Mary had done some scary things in her life, but clinging to Running Wolf’s back as he shot through the plains like a bullet was probably the scariest.

Night had fallen while they ran, cloaking the prairie in an inky, moonless blackness that hid all the leg-breaking holes and foot-catching rocks. The giant wolf didn’t slow down, though. He loped across the dry grass smooth as a stream of water, his feet skirting every hole and rock like the dark didn’t touch his yellow eyes.

Mary wasn’t so lucky. There was no music up here to paint a picture in her head like it did in the caves, leaving her blind as a baby rabbit. Not that clinging to a giant wolf for dear life left much time for sightseeing. But even terror got a little boring when it dragged on, and bit by bit, Mary found her focus drifting from the deadly ground rushing by like a floodwater to the wolf running over it.

Now that her ears were no longer plugged with Bear Woman’s drumming, she could hear her father’s sound clearly: a long, angry note that droned like a buzzing hornet. Mary wasn’t as experienced with people-song as she was the cave variety, but that still struck her as wrong. All the people-music she’d heard went up and down constantly, shifting with their emotions, thoughts, even the motion of their bodies. It reminded her pleasantly of the cave’s wandering music, but her dad’s sound was different. It seemed stuck on that one note, and odder still, the old thread that formed his scars seemed to be singing it back.

That made no sense whatsoever. Mary’d seen the power of crystal stitching with the Whitmans, but these weren’t nothing like those. First, the quality of the needlework in her dad’s skin was much higher than the bandits’. Second, her father’s stitches were grown over by his skin, proving they’d been in him much longer than the Whitmans’ threading. Decades at least, which was way before crystal had been a thing in these parts.

Mary scowled. That age explained why she didn’t catch any of Calamity’s crystal nor Bear Woman’s drumming coming from her dad, but something had to be in there. Not to disrespect the legacy of Sungmanito the wolf spirit, but in Mary’s experience, folks didn’t turn into giant animals on their own.

More curious than ever, she pushed the wolf’s coarse fur aside and pressed her ear straight up against the raised flesh. Sure enough, she could hear the threads humming, but not with a sound of their own. They mostly seemed to be spitting her dad’s one-note song back at him, taking the music that was already his and making it bigger. Maybe even big enough for a wolf.

That explained how they worked, at least, but it was still so odd. The loops and flourishes looked more like the embroidery on Josie’s dresses than anything she’d seen among the tribes. Why would Running Wolf—a warrior whose only joy in life came from killing the wasichu—have white-lady stitching on his person? What sort of crazy lady embroidered a man’s back like a pillow? And what sort of crazy man would let her?

Mary had no idea. She could’ve just asked him ’bout it, of course, but there was no way she was gonna do that. Just being this close to her father was hard enough as it was. Like nothing was she gonna start asking personal questions about his scars. She was telling herself to forget the whole business and focus on keeping her nose down so bugs wouldn’t fly up her nostrils when the wolf that was her father skidded to a stop, dumping Mary off his back into the dry, spiky grass of the prairie.

“What’s your problem?” she cried, angrily brushing the grass-seed and wolf fur off her clothes until she realized where they were.

“Hey, I know this place,” she said, looking around at the crumbling stone buildings and listing pine-log tower that rose like a thorn out of the rocky bluff above them. “This is Nutty Ned’s mine.”

Nutty Ned Nedry was a miner who’d decided he was done paying taxes. Using a map and no small amount of crazy, he’d bought a square of land and set about digging his own entrance to the crystal mines. It wasn’t a bad idea until you realized that whatever it was that kept the ever-moving tunnels pinned to Medicine Rocks didn’t work way out here. He’d practically dug his own prairie dog colony chasing the wandering tunnels, but all that digging and moving made the ground unstable. After weeks of dodging cave-ins, Ned’s luck finally ran out when the hole he’d been digging collapsed into the real mines below, dropping him to his death.

Nutty Ned’s fate was pretty typical for Medicine Rocks. What made it of interest to Mary was how close being here put them to the town. Not close enough to be in cannon range, but you could see Ned’s wooden tower from the city’s southwestern corner, which meant—

Mary spun around, heart in her throat. Sure enough, there were the lights of Medicine Rocks flickering not a mile away. Now that she’d seen how near she was, Mary realized she could hear Calamity’s crystal wailing up at her through Nutty Ned’s old tunnels. The cries scraped like nails in her ears, but it was a happy sort of pain, ’cause it meant she’d done it. She’d made it back to her crystal! And it was all because of her father.

“Thank you,” she told him, bowing her head. “You saved me and my Song.”

The wolf said nothing. Just turned around to start loping back the way he’d come. Before he’d taken two steps, though, Mary grabbed his tail.

“Wait.”

He growled, turning his head to show her his teeth, but Mary was too upset to be afraid. Now that the terror of the wild ride was fading, fury was rising like a rattler in her chest. All this time, all those years of pretending she didn’t exist, never even talking to her when she was living with his family, and he thought he could save her and then just run away?

“Why’d you do it?”

The wolf huffed an annoyed breath. “Because we do not need you,” he said, flicking his tail out of her grasp. “Our people have grown too dependent on crystal, thinking the rocks are what makes us strong, but we were strong before Bear Woman! Our warriors have never been keener, our numbers never greater. Bear Woman acts like she alone is what brings us victory, but we do not need her blessing to kill the white man. We will win this battle with or without—”

“That’s not what I meant,” Mary interrupted, clenching her fists. “That morning all those years ago, when you told me to leave… You knew who I was, didn’t you?”

The wolf looked away.

“You knew our family was looking for me. You knew they would’ve taken me in! It wouldn’t’ve cost you no bother to take me home, so why did you run me off?”

She was screaming by the end, her shrieks echoing across the dark plain like the wails of her crystal below. Her father’s ears twitched at the sound, but his yellow eyes were cold and sharp as broken crystal when they locked on her face.

“Because I did not wish to suffer the sight of you.”

The simple, selfish practicality of his words cut Mary deeper than she’d known she went. “Why?” she asked again, her voice cracking to pieces. “Why do you hate me so much? What did I ever do to you?”

The wolf turned his back on her, his silver-patterned fur shining like water in the dark.

“You looked too much like her.”

That was it. Before Mary could say another word, the wolf was gone, racing like a shooting star across the silent prairie.

She stood there a long time after, watching the silver fleck of him get smaller and smaller until he vanished into the darkness. When he was well and truly gone, Mary reached up to touch her face. Her horrid, horrid face that always betrayed her. Even her own father couldn’t stand the sight of it.

She sniffled there in the darkness for a good few minutes before pulling herself straight again. There weren’t no time for feeling sorry. Now that her ears were no longer packed with wind and her dad’s weird humming, Mary could hear Calamity screaming beneath the ground right under her feet.

Mary dropped down on her knees and pressed her hands against the hard, summer-dry ground, hoping for better luck now that the interferences were gone. But while she could hear her Song now clear as crystal, the sound of it was even worse than it’d been in her vision. The cave music, usually so wandering and lovely, was shrieking inside her skull like a forgotten kettle. It was enough to give her an instant splitting headache, but the physical pain had nothing on the fear.

All this time, Mary had assumed the damage was temporary, that she could go back to her crystal and fix things as easy as she’d broken them, but this didn’t sound like something that could be put right. The whole time with Bear Woman, she’d held firm to the notion that her Song was good and beautiful, but even Mary was having a hard time naming that howling noise as anything but madness. Fixable madness still, she hoped, but no matter how she yelled and beat at the ground, she got no echo back. Just the screaming on and on until even she was forced to slap her hands over her ears and jump away.

It’s fine. It’s fine, she told herself, trying not to panic as she paced the dusty ground. If the tunnel wouldn’t open, she’d just have to take the long way back. Wasn’t like she hadn’t walked to Calamity’s cavern before. She would get there in her own time, and who knew? Maybe this delay was for the best.

Mr. Price had said that Calamity’s upset was her doing, but after that unpleasantness with her father, Mary didn’t feel equal to fixing anyone. How could she possibly hope to heal her Song when her own heart was so full of cracks? She needed to tie her own rope before she reached for another’s, and Mary knew just where to do it. A place where someone did want to see her, despite her traitor face.

She had to go that direction to get to the mine entrance anyway, so Mary put the crystal’s wailing out of her mind and turned her feet toward the glimmering lights of Medicine Rocks, running full tilt toward the one person who’d never not welcomed her. The person she frantically, frantically prayed had survived her last trip back to town.

~~~

Thirty minutes later, Mary was ready to admit that running across an open field in the dead of night toward a town that was expecting an Indian attack wasn’t her brightest idea. She hadn’t realized just how far the cavalry could shoot until a bullet exploded in the dirt by her feet. She’d managed to take cover behind one of the big rocks that littered the prairie, but dodging the next two shots had been pure dumb luck.

She was even luckier there hadn’t been more. Way at the top of the hill, the hulking shape of Fort Grant was lit up like a lantern. They must’ve gotten reinforcements while she’d been away, ’cause the walls were jam-packed with armed men, making Mary sick with worry for the fighting to come. Sick and angry, ’cause it just wasn’t fair. She’d spent her whole life wishing for family that would love her. Now she had dear people on both sides, and they were dead set on killing each other.

It was enough to make her spit, but Mary still had hope. Even a fort stuffed with soldiers wasn’t enough to keep her out of the town she’d been sneaking into for years now. Once she realized folks was shooting, she’d run straight for the boulders at the edge of town, using the big rocks as cover all the way ’round to the mine entrance. She could hear Calamity’s wailing come out like a trumpet from inside, but Mary stuck to her decisions and pushed away from the rocks, sneaking behind the copse of trees by the water pump instead as she made her way toward Price Mining.

It was a long shot with Sitting Bull camped so close, but maybe if she got word to Josie and Mihir tonight, they could get away ’fore the Lakota and their allies closed their circle around the town. She was still trying to come up with the right wording that could convince Josie to leave without making it sound like they’d be running away—something her stubborn friend would never agree to—when Mary came upon a sight that stopped her in her tracks.

As usual for the nighttime hours, Medicine Rocks was buzzing. The saloons were roaring with rowdy drunks, and the Wet Whistle whorehouse was so packed that its line snaked out into the street. Less usual were the shops, which were all open and brimming with customers despite it being well past normal business hours. Mary’d never seen the like in all her time here, but her eyes didn’t really bug until they got to the Price Mining building.

When last she’d seen it, Josie and Mihir had been the only things keeping the poor old thing together. Now, the mining company was the brightest-lit building outside of Fort Grant itself. Lanterns hung from every window, and the front doors were flung wide open to make room for the crowd of people crammed into the front parlor. The place looked like more of a party than the saloons, but none of the men that filled it to the rafters looked drunk. Quite the opposite. They were standing in an orderly group, listening intently to someone who was speaking inside.

Stomach flipping, Mary left the boulder she’d been clinging to and crept across the rowdy street, her cave-trained feet making no sound as she climbed the pine-board steps to Price Mining’s front porch. As she’d noted from across the street, the crowd blocked the front door, but there was no one looking through the window. That seemed as good a vantage as any, so Mary slipped behind the men quiet as a cat, shuffling through the porch’s deep shadows to crouch beneath the smashed stained glass frontage that had once read Price Mining Company.

It felt strange to be sneaking ’round a place she’d come to think of as home, but Mary’d learned the hard way never to take nothing for granted. For all she knew, this was Josie’s funeral. There was just no telling until she saw, so Mary peeked around the boards Mihir had fixed over the broken panes, wiping the dust off the still-intact bits of colored glass to make a hole she could gawk through at the scene inside.

“Scene” was the only word for it. Price Mining’s fancy front parlor was packed cheek by jowl. They’d had to push the horsehair couches up against the walls to make room for everyone, and folks were still spilling out the door that connected the offices to the workmen’s side of the building. Mary didn’t know who all the men were or what they were doing in Josie’s building, but she did recognize the stooped figure with the knee-length beard standing on top of the old secretary’s desk like an actor on a stage, waving his crooked arms to get everyone’s attention.

At least, Mary thought she recognized him. It didn’t seem likely that her old guiding pal Oliver would be standing on Josie’s furniture, but that was definitely his voice hollering for folks to listen up. Even more shocking, the crowd obeyed, turning their faces expectantly toward Oliver like he was some kind of authority.

That alone would’ve been a sight to knock her flat, but Oliver turned out to be just the opening act. Soon as he’d gotten the crowd settled, Josie herself climbed up on the desk to join him. She looked pale and exhausted, her fancy dress dusty and skewed under the big canvas apron she’d tied over top of it. But her face was determined as ever as she took her place in front of the masses, looking ’round the packed room like a general surveying her troops.

“Thank you, Mr. Oliver,” she said in the confident “whatever this is, I’ll handle it” voice Mary had missed so much. “And thanks to all of you for your hard work. Your efforts have given Price Mining our most profitable day ever, but we’re not finished yet. With the crystal crisis safely contained and sanity restored to our town, it’s time to begin our next and equally important task: the search and rescue of my dear friend and business partner, Miss Mary Good Crow.”

The crowd, clearly having no idea who she was talking about, clapped politely, but Mary’s heart jumped straight into her throat. Josie was still looking for her? After all this time? And she’d pulled in Oliver? And she’d hired all these men to help?

“The search will take us far into the Deep Caves,” her friend went on, making Mary’s poor heart pound even harder. “Any of you with mining experience who wish to join will be paid double their daily rate for the excursion. The rest of you will remain here to guard what we’ve already acquired and to protect Mihir while he continues running the exchange table. We leave first thing tomorrow morning. Those who wish to apply, come up and speak to me. Everyone else, good work! Go get some rest, and we’ll see you tomorrow.”

The crowd broke into fragments as Josie dismissed them. Some ran straight past Mary out into the street, showing off handfuls of what appeared to be gold as they cut a beeline for the Wet Whistle. Others rushed deeper into the building where Oliver was yelling something ’bout free bunks in the old miners’ loft for Price Mining employees. Still more were hightailing it up the hill toward Sampson’s and the other shops, talking loudly ’bout the food and other stuff they were itching to buy now that they had coin again.

All of this would’ve struck Mary as extremely strange if she hadn’t been in such a panic to hide herself. The deep covered porch had good shadows, but it wasn’t that dark. Luckily, all the men seemed too excited to notice the dusty little figure crouching in the corner. She did spy Mihir taking notes through the window above her, but he seemed to be writing down which men were going to the Wet Whistle, not looking for eavesdroppers. Not that Mary could imagine him being mad if he had spotted her, but she kept herself hidden just the same, twisting her hands nervously as she wrestled with what to do next.

Her whole reason for coming back here instead of going straight to the mines was to see Josie, but she hadn’t been prepared for such a grand event. It didn’t feel right barging in on her own rescue, but what else was she supposed to do? Hide in the caves so Josie’s search party could find her?

Mary went back and forth for a good five minutes before deciding she was being stupid. If Josie cared enough to hire a posse to find her, she wouldn’t care if Mary ruined the effort by turning up too soon. She’d probably be glad to save the money, so Mary rose from her hiding spot and walked over to the door, shoving it straight open without even a knock lest she lose her nerve.

“Hey,” she announced as the door jingled behind her. “I’m here.”

No one noticed. Mihir had stopped taking his notes and was now running off after the crowd who’d gone for the old miners’ bunks. Over at the desk they’d been using for a stage, Josie and Oliver were deep in conversation with the handful of men who’d stayed to sign up for the expedition into the caves. None of them were looking Mary’s direction, meaning she was gonna have to get closer if she wanted to be noticed.

“… will be our guide,” Josie was saying as Mary trod over. “He says his gut is feeling much better now, so—”

“It is indeed,” Oliver interrupted, patting his stomach through the thick denim of his overalls, which were so clean that Mary couldn’t believe he was wearing them. “Now the crystal’s been put safe back in the ground, I don’t feel like my belly’s full of bad whiskey all the time! That’ll make tracking Mary a cinch once I get a bit o’ her to follow.”

“I’ve already collected another hair from her pillow to serve as our compass,” Josie said, pulling a long checklist out of her apron pocket. “I was planning to leave at dawn, but our supplies are already packed, so if you men are able and willing, I’d much rather go now. As a good friend once told me, there is no day or night in the caves, and we’ve lost too much time as it…”

Josie’s voice trailed off as she finally spotted Mary standing behind the men she’d been addressing. For a long, awkward moment, everyone stood in silence. Then Josie’s checklist fluttered to the floor as her heavy-gloved hands flew up to her mouth.

“Mary?” she whispered, tears welling up in her tired, red-rimmed eyes. “Is that… Are you really here?”

“I reckon so,” Mary said unhelpfully, shuffling her feet. “I know I took my time, and I’m real sorry ’bout interrupting, but—”

She didn’t get to finish. Josie was already scooping her into her arms, lifting Mary off her feet to hug her crushing-tight.

“You’re alive!” her friend cried, sounding like she couldn’t decide whether to sob or shout and ended up doing both at once. “Oh, Mary, we feared the worst!”

“I told ’er you wouldn’t never die in no caves!” shouted Oliver as he threw himself into the pile, hugging Mary as best he could ’round Josie. “Mary, Mary, never contrary! Best guide we ever done saw!”

Mary couldn’t say nothing back. If she’d felt thrown away when her father had left, she now felt so loved it hurt. So, so much love that it echoed through her like a Song, lighting up all the places she hadn’t realized had gone dark. Even Calamity stopped wailing to listen, the angry, terrified sounds faltering in a way that gave all of Mary’s failing hopes right back. If she could be made whole again so quickly, surely it wasn’t too late for her Song! She just needed someone to hear her and love her, someone who knew she was beautiful and good. Mary would get right on that, as soon as Josie stopped squeezing her.

“I just can’t believe you’re really here,” Josie said, releasing Mary at last. “And here I thought today couldn’t get any better!”

“What happened?” Mary asked, quite curious.

“Too many things to tell,” Josie said, suddenly stepping away and folding her hands, which Mary noticed were covered in what appeared to be two pairs of gloves, behind her. “The important parts are that I found a workaround to the town’s crystal buildup, and I figured out how to make money in a way that doesn’t involve destroying the caves. Your disappearance was the only problem I hadn’t solved yet, but here you are!” She grinned wide. “Now if we can just figure out where Reliance ended up and survive the Sioux attack, everything will be perfect!”

Mary dropped her gaze at the mention of the war. “’Bout that,” she said, shuffling her feet. “You know there’s an army coming for Medicine Rocks, right?”

“Oh, we know,” Josie assured her. “I actually tried to write to Lieutenant Lucas this afternoon to tell him it was finally time to go get you. He was most insistent that he be included in any rescue efforts, even if it meant he had to disobey orders, but all my notes came back unanswered. I’m sure that’s because he’s up to his neck in preparations for the battle. I think he’s one of the only officers they’ve got left.”

For a foolish moment, Mary was so touched that Lucas had been willing to go against orders for her sake, she forgot what she’d been about to say. She remembered a moment later, though, when Josie started talking about food and baths and getting Mary’s old room ready for her like they were all just gonna go back to how things were before.

“No, wait, you gotta listen to me,” she said, catching Josie’s gloved hands before her friend could yank them away. “This ain’t no normal attack. Sitting Bull’s gathered the biggest army that’s ever been in these parts, and ain’t nothing you got here gonna be enough to stop ’em.”

“I don’t know about that,” Josie said. “The cavalry’s been reinforced since you left.”

“Unless they’ve got the whole US Army packed into that fort, it won’t be enough,” Mary insisted. “Sitting Bull’s got thousands of experienced warriors, and they’ve all got crystal. They’re planning to wreck this place so bad, no one’ll ever wanna come back, and they’re less than fifteen miles away. If you wanna live, you gotta get out of here now.”

That news should’ve been enough to send any sensible person scrambling, but Josie just wrinkled her nose. “How do you know all of this?”

“’Cause I was with them,” Mary confessed. “That’s how I got out of the caves. I… I met my sister.”

“That’s wonderful!” Josie exclaimed.

“It was,” Mary agreed. “She’s the one who took me to the Lakota camp, but Bear Woman was there, too, and—”

“You mean the monster from the caves?”

A day ago, Mary would’ve balked at calling Bear Woman a monster. Now, though, she just nodded. “She’s the one who gave crystal to the Lakota and taught them how to use it. Between her magic and their numbers, they got more than they need to level this city. That’s why I came back. You gotta get out of here, Josie!”

Josie shook her head. “You know I can’t do that.”

“I know no such thing!” Mary cried. “They’ll kill you!”

“Then I’ll die,” her friend said with a shrug. “But I’m not leaving.”

She couldn’t be serious. “But—”

“This place is my home and my future,” Josie said, pointing up at the tall, beamed ceiling overhead. “I’m never going to leave it, especially not when things are finally going my way. What’s the point of running for my life if I lose my reason for living?”

Mary was about to say Josie only felt that way ’cause she’d never been under the gun, but she had to stop, ’cause that wasn’t true. Josie had taken a bullet for the crystal not a month ago. If she was still standing her ground after that, Mary didn’t know how she was gonna convince her. That didn’t mean she was free to stop trying, though.

“You have to go,” she begged. “I lost my sister already. I can’t lose you too!”

“Who’s to say you will?” her friend asked, blue eyes shining with a dangerous gleam. “Just because we’re outnumbered and outgunned doesn’t mean we’re dead. The Sioux have crystal, but so do we. That used to be a problem, but now that you’re back, I have hopes we’ll be able to use it again.”

Mary stared at her in shock. “How’d you know ’bout me and the crystal?”

“Observation,” Josie replied proudly. “It’s always been obvious that you have a special connection to the caves. I didn’t see everything that happened in the Mother Lode that night, but what I did see was more than enough to guess that you’re not just a guide anymore. Lucas told me about the magic tunnel that brought us back to town and how he’s convinced you were the one who made it. Add to that the fact that the crystal that’s been stable for two years started going bad immediately after you vanished, and it wasn’t that big a stretch to put two and two together.”

Mary supposed it was kinda obvious when she put it that way, but the last bit had her worried. “What do you mean the crystal went ‘bad’?”

“I don’t know how else to describe it,” Josie said. “Being around crystal has always had its risks, but unless you put it directly into your body or spent day after day breathing it in, it was generally safe enough. That was how things used to be, anyway, but these last few weeks have felt like the whole of Medicine Rocks was trapped in the Deep Caves. Part of that was the sheer volume that piled up because of the Whitmans’ blockade, but the crystal itself also changed, becoming both more potent and more unstable.” She gave Mary a nervous look. “We feared it was because you were dead, but if you were out on the plains with the Lakota, then perhaps you were just too far away?”

Mary stared at her friend in awe. She’d known Josie was clever, but that was pretty much spot-on. Mighty impressive for someone who didn’t have Bear Woman to explain everything. Just one problem…

“I’m not sure I can fix it,” she said, tugging anxiously on her braided hair. “I came back here to do just that, but I… I hurt the crystal pretty bad. That said, this place is looking pretty all right, so maybe the damage isn’t as bad as I feared?”

She finished with a hopeful look, but Josie shook her head. “Things are only stable here because we moved all the crystal back into the caves. Before that, it was so bad that it was changing people’s bodies, producing random mutations and powers no one could control.”

“Oh,” Mary said, optimism fading. “Was that how you convinced everyone to let you move their crystal back into the caves?”

Josie was opening her mouth to answer when Oliver butted in. “It takes more than a few crystal maladies to make miners abandon their money. They would’ve hung on ’till this whole place turned to crystal. Only reason that didn’t happen was ’cause Miss Price got herself a crystal power! Darn good one too. Anything she touches with her bare fingers turns to solid gold.”

Mary’s jaw dropped open. “Really?”

“Uh-huh,” Oliver said with a gap-toothed grin. “That’s how she got everyone to go along with her plan. Couldn’t no one turn down hard cash up front!”

“I basically bribed the town into making the right decision,” Josie explained proudly. “There’s still more crystal to collect, but I think I’ve managed to acquire the lion’s share of the town’s supply, and I mean to make the most of it.” She turned back to Mary with a determined look. “If you can put things back to how they were before, we’ll be able to meet the Sioux crystal to crystal. I don’t know if it will be enough to change the tide of battle, but it’ll definitely make us a harder target than they expect. Add to that the cavalry’s new numbers and the new cannons they’ve been setting up all day, and we might just have enough power to force Sitting Bull back to the negotiating table.”

Like always, Josie sounded so sure of herself, but Mary just stared in horror. “That’s not gonna happen.”

“Maybe not at first,” Josie admitted. “But I’ve read a lot of military history, and no army ever has rejoiced at a protracted siege. Once they realize how steep a price we’ll exact for their victory, they’ll be more open to other options. Maybe then we can find a way out of this that doesn’t involve burning anything to the ground.”

She finished with a brilliant smile, and Mary sighed.

“I hate to keep being the doomsayer, but that ain’t how it’s gonna go. Firstly, the Americans have broken too many treaties for the Lakota or any other tribe to trust a word they say. It doesn’t matter how bad things get on the battlefield. I don’t see them negotiating for any reason. And second, this isn’t just a fight over land.”

“What does that mean?” Josie asked, looking highly confused. “What else would we be fighting over?”

“Remember what I said before about Bear Woman being involved?” Mary asked. “Sitting Bull and the other chiefs went to war for their own reasons, but she’s the one who’s been fanning their flames. She wants to take the whole prairie for the People and hold it until the end of days. She also wants to crush my Song.”

“Your Song?”

“The voice that’s in that big white pillar you gave me,” Mary explained. “That’s why I came back, but I couldn’t go through town without making sure you were okay. Point I’m trying to make is that Sitting Bull’s army is coming for reasons you can’t negotiate away. I gotta stay for my Song, but you should get out of here while you still can.”

She grabbed Josie’s gloved hands, holding on tight even when her friend balked. “Please, Josie! If you’ve ever been my friend, if you’ve ever cared for me at all, please go. There ain’t enough of me to worry ’bout you and my crystal at the same time!”

“You won’t have to worry about me,” Josie promised, prying Mary’s hands off her gloved fingers. “If you can’t restore our crystal, we’ll find another way to hold out. Raise a militia, evacuate to the mines to force the Sioux to fight us in the tunnels where their numbers won’t matter. We still have plenty of paths to survival before us, but we will not be forced from our homes.”

That was ironic coming from someone who was technically squatting on stolen land, but Mary couldn’t be too hard on Josie for it. She’d inherited her property legally according to the laws of her government, so she felt within her rights to fight. Everyone did, which was why this war had gotten so ugly. It’d be lovely if Josie was right and they could still find a way out of this that didn’t involve killing each other, but Mary didn’t see how that was gonna happen, and she was out of time for trying.

“If you’re set on staying, I know better than to think I can stop you,” she told her friend sadly. “But I won’t be able to help you neither. I’ve hurt my Song too much to leave her hanging another moment, and even if it’s for you, I won’t fight against my family.”

“That’s completely fair,” Josie said. “For what it’s worth, though, I don’t intend to fight anyone unless I must. Our goal is survival, not victory. I don’t know what the cavalry’s planning, but no one in Price Mining will fire a shot at any Lakota unless it is in self-defense.”

Mary was sure they’d be firing a whole lot of shots once things got thick, but she’d said her piece. She’d warned her friend just like she’d said, and now it was time to be moving on.

“Thank you for trying to look for me,” she said, “but I need to get moving. I gotta get back to my pillar quick ’fore Bear Woman finds another way to block me.”

“Of course,” Josie replied, bending to pick up the list she’d dropped when she’d first seen Mary. “I’ll be happy to supply you with whatever you need for the journey, but are you sure you’ll be all right by yourself? I know you’re at home in the caves, but it’s a long trip to make alone, and the way is very dangerous right now.”

Mary wasn’t sure at all. Normally she wouldn’t think twice ’bout going into the caves alone, but with the crystal in such an uproar, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to picture the path in her head like she was used to. Not being able to swim through the dark like a fish through water was gonna put a serious hobble on her speed, not to mention what all that screaming might’ve done to parts of the caves that were already dangerous, like the Dark. Also, there was still the matter of Bear Woman to consider. She seemed to need Blackbird to appear aboveground, but Mary knew she needed nothing to appear below it in a very real and deadly way.

She didn’t relish the thought of ending up like those miners by the lake, but there weren’t no other choice. Without Calamity to help her make a tunnel, the only way back was on her own two feet. She’d just have to keep going and hope for the best. But when she turned to ask Josie if she could borrow a backpack since she’d stupidly left hers in the Mother Lode when she’d run off with her sister, her friend said something totally unexpected.

“Could you do what you needed from somewhere closer?”

Mary snapped her mouth shut. She’d been so focused on getting back to the vision she’d seen of the twisted Mother Lode, she hadn’t even considered other options. Now that Josie mentioned it, though, Mary didn’t see why she couldn’t talk to her Song from somewhere else. The whole reason she couldn’t just tunnel her way back to the Mother Lode was ’cause the rocks were too busy sharing in Calamity’s upset to mind her. But if her Song was the same music that ran all through the caves, why not give it a try from somewhere less deadly to get to?

“That ain’t a bad idea,” she said, mind spinning like a flywheel as she worked the prospect through. “Crystal gets louder when it gets together. If I had a lot—I mean a lot a lot—that might be enough to let me talk to my Song without going all the way to the Mother Lode.”

“If it’s lots of crystal you need, we’ve got you covered,” Josie said, sharing a grin with Oliver. “Remember what we said about moving all the crystal out of town? Well, I didn’t throw it down some random hole. All the crystal collected by Medicine Rocks since the beginning of the summer is now stored in a few caverns at the end of the Front Caves. Would that be enough to suit your needs?”

“It’d certainly be worth a try,” Mary said, delighted by the prospect of not having to go through the Dark under current conditions. “Thank you, Josie!”

“It’s me who should be thanking you,” Josie said, taking Mary by the arm. “I just hope you can do something to help. Whatever happens with the Sioux, there’s no future for Medicine Rocks if the crystal remains so toxic we can’t get near it.”

Mary winced. Hearing Josie call the crystal toxic reminded her of Bear Woman. She’d also called Calamity’s music poisonous and sick, but Mary was determined to prove them both wrong. Whatever was going on was her fault, not her Song’s. This mess was Mary’s to clean, so she got right on it, dragging Josie out of the building and into the rowdy street beyond.

Chapter 15

August 12, 1876

2 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

Lucas woke to the worst headache of his life. It felt like someone was chiseling grooves into his eyeballs from the inside, and his mouth felt as if it had been stuffed full of old cotton from the bottom of a packing crate. He stank, too, a sour reek of alcohol and perfume so strong, it made his already stinging eyes water.

Groaning, Lucas went to rub his brow in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure only to discover that he could not reach. His arms were chained to the wall above him. His legs, too, were fixed in place with iron shackles that had been bolted to the straw-strewn stone floor. Frantically, he looked around, but there was little point. Lucas already knew where he was.

He was in the brig. Not the normal holding pen where they tossed the drunks and petty thieves. This dank hole was reserved for Fort Grant’s worst offenders, a hollow carved out beneath one of the fortress’s giant boulders where the irons could be bolted straight into the living rock. There was only one way out: an earthen tunnel leading up to a heavy wooden door with a tiny barred window, the cell’s only source of light. Through it, Lucas could see bright torchlight, which set his heart pounding as hard as his head. The evening had just been starting when he’d gone into the Wet Whistle, but was this the same night or another? How long had he been unconscious?

Struggling not to panic any more than he was already, Lucas called to the guard he knew would be standing just outside the door. If he could only speak to an officer, he could tell them this was all a misunderstanding. That he’d been captured by the enemy and was innocent of whatever they thought he’d done to throw him in here. No one responded to his first yell, but on his second, the door opened a fraction, and a familiar figure scuttled though.

“Chaucer!” Lucas cried, sagging against his chains in relief.

“Shh!” his sergeant hissed, running down the sloped stone to Lucas’s side. “I’m not supposed to be in here! Cook’s ordered all of us in the 10th to keep clear of you.”

“Then you should have done so,” Lucas said, though he couldn’t make it sound like a reprimand. “But I’m glad you didn’t. What happened?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Chaucer said, giving Lucas a drink of water from his flask. “After you failed to return last night, Cook sent a search party. We didn’t find anything at first, but then one of our scouting units spotted you on the southern road, trying to ride out of town.”

Lucas choked on the water he’d been desperately gulping down. “Ride out of town? But I—”

“Would never, I know,” his sergeant finished, drying Lucas’s face for him. “You were high out of your mind when they brought you in. We were clearly meant to find you like that, ’cause you were tied to the horse and riding on a known patrol route. I’ve been telling folks all day that if you were really trying to desert, you’d never have done so in such a stupid fashion, but it does look bad.”

“This is much worse than bad,” Lucas said, going limp against his chains. “Bad is when they catch you drunk on duty. This is an unmitigated disaster!”

“It gets worse,” Chaucer warned. “Before we found you, the Wet Whistle sent a man up here claiming you’d tried to sell them your new crystal gun. When they refused to buy because they’re such civic-minded souls, they said you ran out on your tab and stole a horse.”

“But I didn’t!”

“I know,” Chaucer said angrily. “I don’t believe any of this rot, remember? I’m just telling you what they said. None of us are buying it. We know they’re all snakes and liars down there, but the general’s hopping mad. I’ve never seen him in such a—”

The cell door banged open. Chaucer jumped away from Lucas at the sound, but it was too late. General Cook was already taking up the whole of the narrow doorway, his barrel chest heaving like a bellows as his eyes flicked from sergeant to lieutenant.

“Out,” he ordered in a terrifying voice. “Now.”

Chaucer ducked his head and fled without another word, pressing his body against the wall to give General Cook the widest possible berth. He shut the door behind him as soon as he was through, leaving Lucas locked in alone with his steaming commander.

“Sir,” Lucas began desperately. “I didn’t—”

Cook raised a hand to silence him. “I’m not here for what didn’t happen,” he said through clenched teeth. “I want you to tell me what did, and make it quick.”

Lucas obeyed as well as he was able, telling the general every detail his throbbing head could recall. He told him about the Wyoming soldiers being greeted like heroes despite having no crystal. He told him about finding Shaw in the She Wolf’s den, how the Wet Whistle was working with the Whitmans, and how Shaw had come up here on their orders, not out of patriotism. He told of his capture at the hands of the bandaged man who could be neither grabbed nor shot and how Shaw had wanted him killed right then, but the She Wolf had refused, saying she had a worse fate in mind.

“I dare say she was right,” Lucas finished. “I had no idea I was important enough for the She Wolf to know personally, but apparently she’s been after me for some time, and she did her work well.” He rattled his hands in the chains. “This is worse than being shot in her office.”

Cook sighed. “And do you have any proof that this story is true?”

“Nothing,” Lucas replied helplessly. “The only thing I can think of is that I didn’t bring the gun they’re accusing me of trying to sell that night. If it’s still in my bunk, that should prove my story.”

He looked up hopefully, but the general was already shaking his head. “Gone. Checked it myself as soon as they left.”

“Then I am undone,” Lucas said, slumping against his chains. “But I swear to God, sir, I’ve told you the truth! I didn’t touch a drop of drink that night, and I would never abandon my men or desert my post, never!”

“Save your breath, Jean-Jacques,” Cook said, running a hand over his unshaven face. “I believe you.”

A bolt of joy went through Lucas only to vanish just as quickly when he realized what must be coming next. “But?”

“But that’s not enough,” the general finished, dropping his hand with a sad, exhausted look. “If you’d been able to give me something real, something that could prove you’d been set up, we’d have a different story. As things stand, though, it’s your word against theirs.”

“Everyone knows they’re liars,” Lucas argued.

“They also know that you were arrested for piracy before you joined the cavalry,” Cook reminded him. “If your own history was cleaner, maybe I could find a way to excuse this, but your character was in question already, and present circumstances do not allow me to be lenient.”

“But you just said you believed me!”

“That doesn’t matter!” the general yelled back. “The world’s biggest army of redskins is about to ride down our throats! Discipline and morale were already at rock bottom, and then you—the officer the men look up to more than any other—got caught red-handed trying to sell cavalry property so you could run away! Do you have any idea the position that puts me in?”

“But I—”

“Didn’t do it,” Cook finished. “I know. But you should also know how little that counts for. Desertion is the greatest betrayal in wartime. If the Wet Whistle had just accused you of selling your gun, maybe we could sweep it under the table, but there were twenty men in the squad that caught you riding out of town. Your men!”

“But I didn’t,” Lucas insisted, knowing it wouldn’t help. “The She Wolf framed me!”

“And you were the fool who let her,” Cook said, his face bleak. “That’s your real crime, Jean-Jacques. It doesn’t deserve such punishment as you’re going to get, but my hands are tied. Shaw already called me out for trying to get away with just giving you a demotion. Said it would be seen as blatant favoritism.”

“But Shaw was part of it!” Lucas said desperately. “He was in there with her!”

“That doesn’t mean he’s wrong,” the general snapped. “There can be no quarter for deserters on the eve of battle. Things are already as bad out there as I’ve ever seen. The men know they’re facing a massacre, and discipline is suffering because of it. Now more than ever, we have to show that the rules apply to everyone, even you. If we’re to have a prayer of surviving this battle, we must hold together, which means an example must be made.” He patted Lucas on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, son.”

Lucas closed his eyes. “How long have I got?”

“Until sundown,” his general replied gravely. “With so many redskins to fight, we don’t have the bullets to waste on a firing squad, so it’ll be a hanging. They’re building the scaffolding out in the yard right now. I suggest you take the remaining time to make your final peace. I’ll send Townsend over to help you with any final affairs that need putting in order.”

Lucas sank lower against his chains. Nothing about this was a surprise. Death was the only fitting punishment for a deserter, but that didn’t make it any less bitter. Nom de Dieu, he’d been a fool. A reckless, cocksure espèce d'idiot, and now it looked like he would pay for it with his life.

His one consolation was that the general seemed as upset about this as he was. Cook had always been a decisive man, but it took him three tries to actually leave the jail. Each time he paused, hope sprang in Lucas’s chest that the old man had changed his mind. In the end, though, Cook stayed true to his decision. He slammed the heavy door behind him as he stomped away, leaving Lucas alone with his fate.

The next half hour was the bitterest of Lucas’s life. This wasn’t his first time waiting for a hanging. He’d been in a cell very much like this once before. The difference was that, back then, he’d felt he’d deserved it. He had done all the awful things they’d accused him of, and he’d been ready to pay his debt. The only grace that had saved him was the army’s desperation for warm bodies to serve on the frontier.

He’d sold his soul that day: ten years in the cavalry in exchange for his life. No one had expected him to survive his first tour or to rise to the rank of lieutenant, including Lucas himself. But he’d come out of that wretched cell a different man than he’d gone in. A better man, one who didn’t deserve to die for a setup this blatant. He was still choking on the bitter unfairness when he heard the cell door open once more.

Thinking it must be Townsend come to settle his affairs as Cook had threatened, Lucas’s head shot up at once, protestations of his innocence ready on his lips. But it was not his friend walking toward him across the dank underground cell. It was—

“You,” Lucas snarled, baring his teeth at Colonel Shaw as the sharp-faced man stopped just in front of him. “This is all your fault! I’ll see you rot in hell, you backstabbing traitor!”

“That’s no way to talk to the man who’s come to save your life,” the colonel replied, looking down at Lucas like the lieutenant was a pebble in his boot. “I know you’re not happy with me at the moment. I don’t feel too kindly toward you, either, but believe it or not, we just might be each other’s best shot at survival.”

“You’re right,” Lucas said, fighting the ungentlemanly urge to spit on Shaw’s legs. “I do not believe it, and I will never help you. You sold us out to the devil!”

Shaw had the audacity to laugh at that.

“Let’s not flatter that bitch’s ego,” he said, crouching down to Lucas’s level. “Much as she’d like us to think otherwise, she’s not actually the Prince of Darkness, nor is she a soldier. If she were, she would’ve realized days ago that whatever witchcraft malarkey the Whitmans are sending isn’t going to be enough. I, on the other hand, have no illusions about what’s coming, which is why I’m here. Now are you ready to listen, or shall I leave you to die with your pride?”

Lucas clenched his jaw. He’d never hated another soul as much as he hated Shaw right now, but the bastard was right about one thing. Lucas wasn’t ready to die yet. Not for something as stupid as this.

“What do you want?”

“Same thing you do, Lieutenant,” the colonel said with a smile. “I want to survive. Given that we’re going up against savages, that should’ve been a simple thing. Even with crystal, there ain’t no red man alive who can stand against a properly armed American soldier. But everything counts in large amounts, and with the Whitmans too busy running a blockade to do the only damn thing they were ever good for, I’m afraid we’ve found ourselves in a predicament.”

Lucas shrugged against his chains. “That’s what you get for trusting bandits.”

“I know,” Shaw said, arching an eyebrow at Lucas’s shocked expression. “Don’t look like that. I know what they are. Better than you do, I’d wager. But while it pains me to work with a bunch of shifty, crystal-mad idiots, the Whitmans and the She Wolf both have something the cavalry doesn’t.”

“Money?”

“Conviction,” the colonel said, leaning closer. “Don’t get me wrong, the kickbacks have been nice, but this was never about getting paid. It’s about principle. I joined the cavalry to make a difference. To sweep the western half of our great country clean of the vermin that infest it and make this land safe for God-fearing men. That’s what I signed up for, but when I actually got out here, all I saw was weakness.”

Shaw’s scarred hands tightened into fists. “We’ve been fighting the red man for decades now. But rather than destroying our enemy so they could never threaten us again, our government decreed that those heathens—animals who scalp our children and steal our women for their sport!—should have land of their own. And not just land! Those idiots in Washington give our enemy food and water and access to their precious buffalo. They give them everything they need to rebuild their strength, and then they scratch their heads and wonder why we keep having to fight. We could have been done with this crap years ago! Swept the whole Great Plains clean of their filth and treachery, but no! Thanks to the bleeding hearts who’ve never had to clean up after an Indian attack, we just keep letting them live, signing treaty after treaty that doesn’t change shit.”

He sighed and looked back at Lucas. “So you see, it’s not treachery. I just want to stop wasting my men’s lives fighting an enemy my government is too chickenshit to finish off. That’s why I agreed to the Whitmans’ plan. They’re actually intending to exterminate the Sioux, which makes them more my ally than the stuffed suits back east.”

“They also intend to exterminate us,” Lucas said angrily. “The Whitmans kill anyone who stands in the way of their greed, even soldiers!”

“Maybe we need a little culling,” Shaw said with a chilling smile. “Custer was a reckless fool, but he was right about one thing: nothing moves forward unless you push. If we want this land, we’ve gotta be strong enough to take it. Washington is too worried about keeping their hands clean to do what must be done, but the Whitmans and the She Wolf are capitalists. They know that half measures get you only half the result, and war ain’t something that works by portions.”

“Maybe,” Lucas admitted. “But that doesn’t make it right. You’re talking about massacring an entire people!”

“I’m talking about victory!” Shaw snapped. “Mercy is a trap for the weak of mind. You might think you’re being the better man by showing quarter, but the child you spare grows up to be the soldier that kills your son. My methods might look like butchery, but they’ll bring more peace in the end.”

“By killing everyone else.”

“That’s what war’s about,” the colonel said practically. “Why did Rome sow salt into the ground at Carthage? It’s ’cause they knew if they didn’t, they’d be fighting them forever. Even the redskins understand that, which is why the Lakota slaughtered every other tribe on the plains. They knew that if they let them live, they’d never have a moment’s peace. Those fools in Washington are the only ones who don’t get that yet, which is why I sided with the Whitmans.”

“I think I preferred you as a greedy traitor,” Lucas muttered, hanging against his chains. “You talk like a madman.”

“Madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” Shaw replied patiently. “You criticize me for not showing mercy, but we’ve already seen what that brings. My own family was killed by Indians during President Jackson’s Removal. The bleeding-hearts made all kinds of noise, calling it the ‘Trail of Tears’ and saying he shouldn’t’ve done it, but the truth is he didn’t go far enough. He let those savages live, and then they did what savages do. They killed. All I want is for the cycle to end, and you’re going to help me.”

“I will not,” Lucas snapped. “Even when I was a pirate, I never killed women and children!”

“Then you were a damn sorry pirate,” Shaw said, shaking his head. “I’m starting to see why Volchitsa didn’t like you, but I’m not here for your morality. I’m here because until the Whitmans actually show up with the damn army they promised, we gotta hold this fort with the forces we’ve got, and you’re the only decent officer Cook’s got left.”

“Why not use your own officers?”

“Because I don’t want them to die. I promised my men we’d purge these plains together. I’m not getting them killed in some stupid last stand. That’s what Negroes are for, and you’re going to make sure they do it.”

“I will never!” Lucas cried, fighting against his chains. “My life is my own matter, but I will never help you use my soldiers to cover your craven, spoiled, lazy men!”

“But it’s already been decided,” Shaw said slyly. “By your own general. Cook might not be the man I wanted at the head of this thing, but I see why they gave him the job. He’s damn smart, and his career depends on holding this fortress. That’s the kind of combination that breeds brilliance, and he’s come up with a fine strategy.”

Lucas was afraid to ask, but he couldn’t help himself. “What strategy?”

“He’s going to run a distraction,” Shaw told him, eyes shining with bloodthirsty excitement. “Despite their numbers, the Sioux aren’t really an army. They’re just a bunch of war bands riding together against a common enemy. They don’t have the discipline that our troops do, and Cook’s going to use that to bait them into doing something stupid.”

“How?”

“By sending a unit out the front door.” He reached down to the floor and drew a square in the dust that Lucas could only assume was the fortress and a line to the west to show the Sioux.

“Our enemy might be little better than animals, but there’s a shit-ton of them. Enough that even our new crystal cannons won’t be enough to kill them all if we do nothing but squat inside our walls. To get around this, Cook’s planning to send a company out the front. Something big enough to get their attention without drawing down our numbers overmuch—say, two hundred men.”

“But that’s suicide,” Lucas said.

Shaw grinned. “That’s why they’re called the ‘bait company.’ The whole point is to send out an easy-looking kill so the warriors get excited and break ranks. And while they ride off chasing the bait, the rest of us will sally out under cover of our cannons and hit whatever’s left of the Sioux’s main unit. Hopefully with enough force to break them before the rest of the redskins get done slaughtering the bait unit and come back.”

Lucas sighed. That did sound like the sort of ruthless plan a cornered Cook would come up with. So much so that Lucas could already guess what came next.

“He’s going to use the 10th, isn’t he?”

“Bingo,” Shaw said. “Why send white soldiers to die when Black ones are so much cheaper? That’s part of why he was so put out about having to hang you. He knows those darkies will be none too pleased when they find out they’re slated to be the pawns that get taken. He was counting on you to keep order. Then Volchitsa’s plan kicked in, and now he has to hang his last good officer. But while I’m sure the She Wolf is loving the irony of making Cook cut off his own right hand, it’s actually a shit situation for all of us, ’cause according to the general, you were about the only one who could actually make this work.”

“Then why don’t you tell him I am innocent?”

“Because that would expose my connection to the Whitmans, and I’m not that worried yet.” Shaw leaned a little closer. “With you scheduled for the noose, Cook’s changed his plan from sending two hundred men out the door to sending the entire 10th. Can’t do a baiting move with that many, obviously, but chucking them out the door will still entangle the Sioux line, keeping them off our walls long enough for us to pound them with the cannons.”

Lucas gaped in horror. “You can’t fire at an active battle! You’ll hit our own men!”

“That’s the point,” Shaw said with a smirk. “There’s eight hundred fighting men in the 10th Colored Cavalry. That’s six hundred more than Cook was ready to lose, but you’ve backed him into a corner. Once those boys learn he’s hanging their favorite officer and they’re fielding a suicide mission, we could have a rebellion on our hands.”

“You’d deserve one,” Lucas said darkly. “Every soldier knows death is a possibility, but we don’t expect to be thrown away. Of course they will be angry. They’ve been treated like trash!”

“That’s why Cook’s not going to tell them until the last minute. Lot easier to sell a suicide charge if the sheep don’t know they’re going to the slaughter, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”

The colonel leaned in until his lips were just above Lucas’s ear. “What if I told you I could get you your command back? With you alive to keep order, Cook would be free to go back to his first plan with the baiting group instead of sacrificing the entire 10th. That’s six hundred lives you’d save.”

“I’d be delighted,” Lucas said. “But the general would never allow it.”

He felt Shaw’s grin against his ear. “He will if I say so. I’m the one with the cannons. I can’t get you back to where you were—Cook’s right about the discipline thing. Letting you off after so blatant an offense would look corrupt as hell, so a full pardon is off the table—but he can’t say shit if I make you an officer in the Wyoming Defense. That’s my command, not his, which should give him the out he needs to let you slip the noose, ’specially since he never wanted to hang you in the first place. He’ll be happy to forget all of this if we give him the chance, particularly when he hears I’m planning to put you at the head of the bait.”

Lucas sighed. “Now I see why you came here. Why let me be hanged when you can use me to lead your suicide mission instead?”

“Now you’re catching on,” Shaw said cheerfully. “Cook was going to let that darkie sergeant of yours do the honors, but if we get you back in command, everybody gets what they want! The entire 10th doesn’t get slaughtered, I get to keep all my soldiers alive for the upcoming purge of the Sioux, and you get to avoid the noose and die in your saddle as a man should. So what do you say, Lieutenant? It’s not salvation, but it is a fighting chance, and I never met the soldier who could say no to one of those.”

He put out his hand to Lucas’s chained ones, but the lieutenant balled his fists. “If I agree to this,” he said quietly, “will you let me choose my own soldiers?”

“They’re Cook’s soldiers, not mine,” Shaw said. “But I don’t think he’ll care which ones you get killed so long as you take enough to make the plan work.”

“And will you promise to give us support?”

The colonel looked askance. “You’re just going to die. Why should I waste supplies on—”

“Because I do not intend to die,” Lucas said. “The general’s plan is for us to bait away warriors from the main force, but nowhere does it say we have to let them kill us. Cook’s calculations might mark it as a suicide charge, but I have no intention of going down without a fight.”

“Now you’re talking like a soldier!” Shaw said, slapping Lucas on the shoulder. “Killing redskins is a plan I can always get behind, so you’ve got yourself a deal. Whatever you need to give ’em hell, I promise you’ll get it.”

That was everything Lucas could ask, but his heart was pounding like his neck was already in the noose. He’d almost rather it was than accept salvation from a traitor, but he didn’t see as he had any other option. If he turned Shaw down, he would hang tonight for certain, and his soldiers would all die tomorrow. If he did this, though, he could save at least six hundred of his men. Maybe all of them. The plan was already forming in the back of his mind, leaving Lucas no choice but to reach up and grab the colonel’s offered hand.

“I knew you’d come around,” Shaw said as they shook on it. “And Volchitsa said you couldn’t be reasoned with. Clearly, she just lacked the right leverage.”

Lucas squeezed the colonel’s hand as hard as he could, wishing he could hurt the man more.

“Don’t be like that,” Shaw said as he flexed his crushed fingers. “I know you feel done by, but you’re making the right choice. We’re going to turn this savage country into a place for civilized men. A paradise of the brave, just like we were promised when the politicians told us to move out west. It’s gonna be glorious! And if you live past tomorrow, you might even come to thank me.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Shaw gave him a look as he rose back to his feet, tapping his foot on the stone until Lucas added, “Sir.”

“That’s better,” Shaw said, putting his cap back on. “Welcome to the Wyoming Defense, Lieutenant.”

He walked off with a spring in his step, whistling a cheery tune as he stuck his hand through the bars to signal the door guard.

Chapter 16

August 12, 1876

2 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

Everything had been so hectic, Josie hadn’t gotten a chance to actually see her new storage caves until she took Mary down into them. As her employees had reported, all the crystal she’d purchased was spread across three blasted-out caverns at the end of a side tunnel that branched off the main path about half a mile from the entrance. Each one was roughly the size of the Prices’ carriage house back in Boston, and all three were packed to the ceiling with piles and piles and piles of crystal.

“Heaven have mercy,” Mary whispered, looking around at the wooden crates, flour sacks, barrels, and everything else the workers had found to pack the crystal into. “All of this was in town?”

“Every bit,” Josie said, rubbing her hands through her gloves to ease the numbness the presence of so much crystal was bringing back to her fingers. “The Whitmans have been blocking the roads practically all summer, so everything that came in from the mines just piled up.”

“No wonder you were having problems,” her friend said, squatting down to place her hand on a chunk of raw-cut crystal the size of a croquet ball. “Living with this much crystal would’ve been like being in the Deep Caves all the time. I’m surprised you didn’t have problems earlier.”

“Will it be enough for your purposes?” Josie asked, setting down the kerosene lantern she’d brought with them.

“It is an awful lot of crystal,” Mary replied, running her hands over the crates as she moved deeper into the cavern.

The crystal was packed so tight into the space, even scrawny Mary had to turn sideways to get through. But toward the center of the cavern was a gap where she could stand comfortably. As comfortably as anyone could be among so much crystal, anyway.

“It’s as good as I’m gonna get, I think,” Mary called back from her nook in the middle. “The sound here ain’t as clear as it’d be in the Mother Lode, but that might be for the best. It ain’t very nice to listen to, these days. All the more reason not to risk a journey through the Dark.”

Josie shuddered at the thought of that awful place in their current circumstances. Then she thought of something. “Can you not make a tunnel like before?” she asked, peeking through the crates at Mary. “I mean, I’m sure you would have already if you could, but…”

She trailed off hopefully, but Mary shook her head. “I need the caves’ help for that, and the rocks ain’t listening to no one right now. That’s my mess to fix, though. You go on and get some sleep. No offense intended, but you look awful.”

The last few days had been very long. Still, “You don’t look so well yourself,” Josie noted, eyeing the dark circles under Mary’s eyes.

“I’ll sleep when this is over,” Mary said, placing her hand on the wall of crated crystal shards in front of her. “Couldn’t rest now even if I wanted, not with the crystal carrying on like this.”

“Then I’m glad for once that I don’t hear it,” Josie said, backing out through the chiseled door. “I’ll leave you to your work. All these caves are claimed by Price Mining now, and all the men you’ll see are on my payroll. Don’t hesitate to tell them if you need anything.”

That was supposed to make Mary feel more comfortable, but from the expression on the girl’s face when she looked back, Josie suspected Mary would rather eat rocks for dinner than ask an armed man for anything. That was fair given Mary’s history, but Josie reiterated her offer anyway, making sure that the men she was paying to guard the tunnels knew to treat Miss Good Crow the same as Josie herself. They looked a bit nervous at the order, muttering about “Injun witches” doing “creepy cave stuff,” but a promised bonus shut them up nicely, and Josie left satisfied that they wouldn’t let her friend starve, at least.

The walk back to town felt much longer than the trip in. Josie fancied that was because Mary wasn’t with her this time, so the tunnels weren’t making any special effort to help her along. That probably wasn’t it since the Front Caves didn’t move nearly as much as other parts, but she liked that reasoning far better than the more probable scenario, which was that exhaustion was finally catching up with her.

It was most inconvenient. Josie didn’t have time to be tired. She finally had employees and a business model, not to mention the town militia she’d decided half an hour ago that she was going to organize. There was more gold to be made and numbers to review, and she still needed to talk to Mihir about which of their men had been seen going into the Wet Whistle and were thus suspect. She should also probably audit the storage caves to make sure the inevitable theft wasn’t surpassing acceptable limits. And a trip to the General Store was in order to ensure they had enough supplies for all the new mouths they’d taken on, not to mention a dozen more things she hadn’t thought of yet.

So, so much to do, and Josie knew the pile would only get bigger once she found a minute to write it down. She was making a mental list of all the lists she’d need to make in her head when she passed the quiet tax table and exited the mines to see the line of people that was once again snaking around her building.

“Good Lord!” she cried, running up the dirt road.

Price Mining was under siege. It was nine o’clock at night. The exchange table wasn’t even set up anymore, but the crowd carrying sacks of crystal to trade for gold was pressed in ten deep around the porch. Over their heads, she could see Mihir barricading the front door with his body, as well as Oliver and one of her guards, all of them frantically trying to hold back the mob.

“Miss Price!” Mihir cried when she ran over. “Thank goodness! All these men just showed up here. I’ve been trying to tell them the exchange is closed until tomorrow, but—”

“It is closed,” Josie said firmly, shoving her way to the porch. “There will be no more trading done tonight. All of you, go home!”

That was the wrong thing to say.

“Hell no!” shouted a man carrying a miner’s pack full to the brim with crystal. “You gotta open! I spent all afternoon digging this crap up!”

“I ’pent all muh gold already!” slurred another, who appeared so drunk, he was having trouble standing. “I need more! I got plenty ’o ’rystal!”

A barrage of similar complaints rang out, along with no few waved pistols, but Josie was having none of it.

“These are not my problems,” she told them firmly, planting herself at the top of the stairs. “My people have worked hard all day. I won’t work them through the night as well. You’re all welcome to come back during normal business hours.”

“But all the other shops’re open,” someone pointed out from the back. “We need the gold now to get supplies so we can be on the road ’fore sunrise!”

“The road?” Josie repeated, blinking in surprise. “You’re leaving town? All of you?”

The men all nodded as if this were obvious, and Josie began to panic. “You can’t leave now!” she cried. “What about the Sioux? And the Whitmans? They’re still roaming the roads.”

“The Sioux’re why we’re going,” explained a man in the front with what he clearly thought was great patience. “Whitmans’ll always take whatever they want, but they only hunt you down special if you’ve got crystal, which we won’t once you take it.”

“Exactly!” yelled another. “It ain’t no stroll getting back to Cheyenne, but I’d rather take my chances on the road than stay here and get scalped for sure.”

Everyone murmured appreciatively as if this was the only sound logic, and Josie clenched her gloved fists. “What about us?” she demanded. “The cavalry is already grossly outnumbered. If you all leave as well, we’ll be overrun for sure!”

“Then I suggest you start packing, too, miss,” the miner in front said, holding up his sack of crystal. “Though if you could exchange this for me first, that’d be real—”

“No!” Josie said, smacking the bag away. “I am not funding an exodus! There will be no exchanges made tonight or tomorrow or any day until after the Sioux have been turned back!”

An indignant roar went up at this, but Josie wasn’t finished.

“If you want to run, leave your crystal and do so,” she told them angrily. “But I didn’t travel all the way from Boston and endure everything I’ve gone through to lose now! I came to Medicine Rocks to forge a better life for myself! I will not allow you to use my efforts to fund your cowardice. If you want to go, then go. But if you still want the fortune all of us came out here to make, then you will have to stay and earn it.”

She marched inside and grabbed the clipboard she’d left on the table, flipping over the paper Mihir had been using to record the Wet Whistle suspects to get a blank page as she came back out onto the porch.

“Too long have we relied on the cavalry and the useless sheriff to keep us safe,” she said, waving the clipboard over her head. “It’s high time Medicine Rocks looked out for its own interests, so I’m starting a town militia. Anyone who stays to defend our city will be paid double the weight of their crystal in gold when this is over!”

The mob went silent, as well they should. You couldn’t get that much for crystal even if you took it all the way to New York. It was a mad price, but Josie wasn’t paying for the stone. She was buying her future, and if offering double convinced even half these men to help her defend it, she was happy to pay.

Too bad they didn’t look happy to sell. For all that Rel used to curse the greedy miners, only a portion of the mob looked excited about the prospect of doubling their money. The rest were kicking their boots in the torchlight, casting her nastier and nastier glares as it became clear that Josie was indeed serious. Most shuffled off after that, slinking back to their squatter tents and flophouses, but the dozen or so who did stay seemed committed. Especially the miner in the very front, a grizzled, middle-aged man with an eyepatch who hopped up the stairs like he was genuinely excited to defend his town.

“Nice to see not everyone in Medicine Rocks is spineless,” Josie said as she handed him the board.

“It’s not that they’re cowards, Miss,” the one-eyed man replied, putting the clipboard on his knee so he could write. “You don’t come out to a place like this if you’re yellow. This here’s the Wet Whistle’s doing.”

“The Wet Whistle?” Josie scowled. “What do they have to do with anything?”

“The She Wolf don’t like it when folks other than her get sway in town,” the man explained, handing back the sign-up sheet. “Her boys’ve been all over spreading word that anyone who works for you is banned from the whorehouse starting tonight. Don’t know if that’ll apply to this new militia yet, but folks clearly aren’t willing to take the risk.”

Josie’s brows shot up at the absurdity of this, but Mihir clapped his hands. “Aha!” he said, turning to Josie. “That explains it! I was going to tell you when you got done with Miss Good Crow. A third of our new hires just quit. They wouldn’t give me a reason, but now—”

“She ran them off,” Josie said, her voice shaking in fury. “What is that woman’s problem? She runs a whorehouse! You think she’d be all for an increase in the economy.”

The one-eyed miner shrugged. “That’s just the way of things here. I’ve been in Medicine Rocks for a while now, and I’ve never seen anyone as greedy ’bout their territory as the mistress of the Wet Whistle. She didn’t tolerate the mining companies, either, and they did nothing but put money in her pockets.”

Given how her own meeting with Volchitsa had gone, Josie saw his point. You couldn’t have a crystal monopoly if someone else was buying up all your supply. Still.

“Maybe we can come to an agreement,” she said hopefully. “Competition is the nature of business, but we’re all dead if the Sioux get their way. The Wet Whistle has plenty of excellent gunmen. If we called a truce and pool our resources, I’m sure—”

“You’d be better off trying to talk down Sitting Bull,” the man said darkly, glancing over his shoulder at the rest of the men who’d stayed. “The She Wolf don’t listen to any reason but her own. You’ll get no help from her kind, but there’s a goodly number of us who’re tired of watching that harpy rip this town to shreds to feather her own nest. You’re the first person since your uncle to pay a decent wage and not expect us to bow to the Whitmans. That ain’t nothing, so if you’re serious about defending Medicine Rocks, we’re your men.”

“Thank you,” Josie said, glancing at the paper he’d handed her. “Mr. Cotton, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cotton said, tipping his hat with one hand while his other waved back at the dozen other men who’d stayed behind. “Me and my boys here used to work security for the Western Union. Shot a lot of Indians together ’fore we got the itch to try our hands at mining. Now that’s gone to hell, we figured we might as well go back to what we’re good at. We were thinking ’bout signing up for the cavalry, but you pay much better.”

A round of agreement went up from the men, and Cotton flashed her a chipped-toothed grin. “Sounds like we’re in. So, what can we do for you, Miss Price?”

The surge of relief those words engendered was enough to make Josie wobble on her feet. “Thank you,” she said again, grabbing the porch post to keep herself steady. “Thank you, all. Come sign your names, and I’ll make sure we’ve got a place for you.”

“Are you certain you want to do this tonight?” Mihir asked as Josie’s new soldiers stepped forward. “You haven’t slept since—”

“I know,” Josie said as she handed the clipboard to Cotton to pass around. “I will sleep, I promise. As soon as everything’s done.”

Mihir gave her a frankly skeptical look, but Josie was already hurrying back upstairs to her office to figure out how in the world she was going to accommodate everyone.

~~~

Several frantic hours later, Josie had accounted for costs to feed, equip, and house every new hire, minus those the She Wolf had scared off. She’d appointed Mr. Cotton head of her new militia and given him a pile of newly transformed golden rocks to aid him in recruiting more volunteers. She’d also talked with Oliver about the status of the kitchen, which was running low but not yet at crisis level. She’d wanted to make a trip to the General Store to buy more grains and ammunition before they sold out completely, but it was now nearly one in the morning, and everywhere except the saloons was finally closed. Cut off from her work at last, Josie finally succumbed to Mihir’s increasingly desperate urging and went to bed.

It was a hairy endeavor. She hadn’t slept since before her visit to Dr. Pendleton, so she wasn’t quite sure how her hands would deal with being in the same position for hours on end. She wrapped them in several layers of cotton as a precaution, but when she woke up at dawn the next morning, her linens, mattress, and pillows had all been turned to solid, very uncomfortable gold.

The loss was enough to make her curse. It was a sign of the times they lived in that a feather mattress had become more valuable than a golden one. Had things been less hectic, she might have actually cried over it, but there was just no time. Oliver was already knocking on her door asking about what he should make for breakfast, and Mr. Cotton wanted to know if she had any lumber he could use to make barricades for the roads into town.

People were lined up in the hall waiting to speak to her by the time Josie got dressed and left her room for the day. Any other morning, this would have made her feel dreadfully important, but right now, all she felt was panic. It was finally dawning on Josie just how much she had to do and how little time was left to do it. As Mr. Cotton pointed out while she was touring the proposed defensive line with him and eating her breakfast porridge from a tin cup, the smoke from the Sioux’s camp was now clearly visible on the horizon west of town, which meant the enemy could be upon them at any moment.

If the fire hadn’t already been blazing beneath her, that would have lit it for sure. In the interests of time, Josie divided up the work as best she could, leaving the militia to Cotton, the cooking to Oliver, and the running of everything else to Mihir. For her part, Josie set herself to acquiring supplies, rushing out the door the moment the shops opened with a satchel full of gold and a list of necessities as long as her arm.

It was an uncanny thing, walking through town on the eve of a siege. The dirt roads were hectic with people nailing down windows and packing up wagons, their eyes always on the cloud of smoke rising from the western sky. At the cavalry fort on top of the hill, all the cannons had been moved to the westernmost boulders, but no patrols were riding the streets. With the exception of the squadron building a massive wooden barricade over the entrance to the mines, the army seemed to have written the town off completely. Josie supposed that made sense given Medicine Rocks’s complete lack of walls or other defensible structures, but they hadn’t even invited the civilians to take shelter inside the fortress.

That had to be a violation of military law, but Josie didn’t have a spare thought to waste on their abandonment. She was too busy rehearsing what to say to the other business owners to convince them to join her in the town’s defense. So busy, in fact, that she didn’t even notice the trap she was walking into until it closed around her.

It was in the alley beside the General Store. She’d turned down the side road without thinking because of the huge wagon someone had parked across the shop’s front door. By the time she’d realized that was probably on purpose, a man had already stepped out to block her way.

“Well, well,” said Sheriff Brightman as he strolled out of his hiding spot behind a clapboard advertising Baker’s Clean Lodging for Bachelors. “If it isn’t our city’s new queen bee.”

Josie didn’t do him the courtesy of a reply. She simply whirled on her heel and started walking back the way she’d come, only to discover that that path was blocked as well by three of the sheriff’s hulking new deputies. The hangdog men looked as if they’d rather be anywhere else, but they didn’t budge when Josie ordered them to step aside, sending Brightman into a fit of laughter.

“Sorry, missy,” he said, wagging his finger at Josie as she turned around. “Contrary to what I’m sure you think, not all of us dance to your tune. It takes more than gold to get to the top of this town, so I’d advise you to dock that sharp tongue of yours and come along quietly.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Josie spat, holding her ground. “Step aside this instant before I call my men.”

“A smart woman would’ve brought them with her, but here you are, all alone.” Brightman shook his head with a tsk. “Maybe you’re not as clever as you think.”

Josie gritted her teeth, cursing him for being right. Tired or not, busy or not, going out alone had been a foolhardy decision. But while she should have been terrified, or at least trying to think of a way out of this mess, the only thing that actually made it through Josie’s exhausted brain was outrage.

“Are you out of your mind?” she yelled at him. “We’re about to be inundated by the blasted Sioux! We should be working together to ensure we don’t all die, not whatever stupidity this is.” She waved an angry hand at the gunmen before turning to stab her gloved finger right at the sheriff’s face. “I know you work for Volchitsa, so go tell your mistress that I’m not playing her stupid games. If she has a problem with how I run my business, she can stop hiding in her office and come tell it to my face. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to the work of saving my town since neither its sheriff nor its foremost citizen can apparently be bothered.”

She finished with a toss of her hair that would have done the real Miss Josephine proud. But while Brightman did look taken aback by the outburst, the shock didn’t last nearly long enough for Josie to get past him.

“That’s not a decision you get to make,” he said quietly, pulling his gun and pointing it at her chest. “I said you’re coming with me.”

He’d clearly expected that to be the end of it, causing him to hop back in alarm when Josie kicked a blast of dirt up from the road onto his pressed trousers. “Why are you still doing this?” she cried, kicking the dirt at him again. “For the love of God, Brightman! Do you want to die to the Indians?”

“The Sioux are the cavalry’s business,” the sheriff said, snapping his gun back at her face. “That’s what we pay them for. Now start walking.”

Josie set her feet down hard in the road. “No.”

“God damn it, woman!” Brightman yelled, shoving the pistol at her. “Do you not recognize a gun when you see one?”

Josie rolled her eyes. “You are hardly the scariest person to point a pistol at me.”

The sheriff gaped at her like she was a madwoman, but Josie just crossed her arms over her chest. “If you’re going to shoot me, then do it,” she challenged. “Otherwise, get out of my way. I don’t have time for this.”

She’d already started walking. For a breathless moment, it looked like she really was going to just stride past Brightman while he floundered. Then the sheriff flushed scarlet. “That’s it,” he said, holstering his gun. “Grab her!”

He’d clearly meant that to be an order, but the only one who followed it was Brightman himself. He threw himself at Josie, grabbing her around the shoulders with clear intent to carry her with him to the ground. But Josie was remarkably tall for a woman, well-muscled from years of manual labor, and mad as a stepped-on cat. When the sheriff slammed into her, she slammed right back, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket as he attempted to knock her over.

“You ass!” she yelled, digging her heels into the dirt. “I should have seen you for what you were the first moment I rode into—”

The sheriff turned in her grip, causing her hands to slip from his collar to his flabby throat. She’d meant only to keep him off her, but the moment her gloved fingers touched the sheriff’s skin, his whole face changed. Filled with panic, Josie let go at once, dancing away from Brightman, whose neck was already half-covered in a glittering layer of pure, butter-yellow gold.

“Bitch,” he wheezed, face turning purple as he fell to his knees. “What did you do to me?”

Josie clutched her deadly hands to her chest. That shouldn’t have happened. She’d been wearing two layers of gloves like always. Her Midas touch shouldn’t have been able to get through, but the moment she’d attacked, the power had leaped inside her, going after her enemy with the viciousness of an attack dog. Even after she’d scrambled several feet away, the gold was still spreading over Brightman like a stain, transforming his body, clothes and all.

“Help me!” he yelled to his deputies as the three men gaped in horror. “Don’t just stand there watching, you bastards! Get over here or I’ll—”

He couldn’t even finish his threat before the gold spread totally over his face, freezing it in a mask of bug-eyed fury. The rest of his body stopped moving a heartbeat later, the gold shooting down his limbs like lightning until there was no more Sheriff Brightman anymore. Only a golden statue of him, perfect in every detail right down to the wide-brimmed hat the fight had knocked askew, leaving him forever untidy as his new weight settled into the loose dirt of the alley with a solid thunk.

Josie flinched at the sound, clutching her hands harder to her chest. Good Lord, what had she done? She’d killed the sheriff. Yes, he’d attacked her first, but… she’d killed the sheriff!

Heaving in panic, she whirled to look for the deputies, but they were already gone. For a terrifying moment, Josie was sure they were running down Main Street to tell the town what she’d done. She didn’t hear any shouting, though. Josie was wondering if her heart was simply pounding too loudly for her to hear the disaster that had to be unfolding when her frantic eyes finally spotted the three men lying facedown in the dirt behind her.

She yelped at the sight, scrambling to put her back against the alley wall. What in blazes? That wasn’t her doing, was it? No, it couldn’t be. She hadn’t touched them, and they certainly weren’t turned to gold. They looked like they’d been knocked out, but she hadn’t heard or seen anyone else enter the alley. Her panicked mind was filling with visions of vengeful, invisible ghosts when she heard a low, appreciative whistle from the other end of the alley.

“Damn,” said a man’s smooth voice. “So that’s how you do it.”

Her heart couldn’t take much more of this. She whirled around yet again, clawing the wisps of hair that had fallen from her bun out of her face like a madwoman. When her vision was clear, she found a grinning Apache Jake standing next to the golden statue she’d made of Sheriff Brightman.

Josie sputtered at the sight. She hadn’t heard a single footfall, hadn’t seen a flicker of movement. The man was simply there, like he’d popped out of thin air.

“How did you do that?” she demanded, shuffling farther down the wall lest she accidentally turn him to gold, too, in her panic. Then Josie remembered who he worked for, and her fear for him transformed into fear of him.

“Are you here to kill me?”

The dark-skinned gunman chuckled. “Darling, if I was going to do that, you wouldn’t be standing there asking me about it, would you?”

“Oh,” Josie said, pursing her lips. “Then what—”

“I’m here to offer you an apology on behalf of the Wet Whistle,” Jake said, tapping his finger against the golden sheriff’s mirror-bright back. “This isn’t how we do business. My boss knows that, but she loses perspective when it comes to you Prices, and that led her to give an order she shouldn’t.”

Josie blinked at him. Of all the ways this could have gone, an apology hadn’t even been on her mental map.

“I don’t understand,” she said at last, tilting her head at the dead man. “Was he not acting on your behalf?”

“Not mine,” Jake said, spitting in the dirt near the sheriff’s shiny boot. “But my boss is another matter. Normally we see eye to eye, but like I said, your family drives her nuts. She was already mad you turned down her offer, but now you’ve got the golden touch, she’s decided you’re going to work for her whether you want to or not, and that’s an issue for me.”

“That’s your issue?” Josie asked, gaping. “Not the rest?”

He shrugged. “I got no problem with killing, bribing, and strong-arming. That’s just the way of the world. But kidnapping a body and forcing them to work against their will is slavery, and I got a thing or two to say about that.”

From the terrifying look on his normally jovial face, Josie wagered Apache Jake had far more than two things to say, but now didn’t seem the time to ask. “Well, um, thank you for that,” she said, inching down the wall away from him. “So… what happens now?”

“Now,” Jake said, resting his arm on the golden sheriff’s crooked hat, “you’re gonna run along, I’m going to wake those boys up to help me drag this lovely piece of sculpture back to the Wet Whistle, and we’re all gonna pretend like this never happened.”

Sounded good enough, but, “What about the She Wolf?”

“Leave her to me,” Apache Jake said, laying a hand on the worn grip of his pistol. “I told her where my line was the day she took me on. A man’s gotta hold his ground, or the world will take it from him, but don’t expect this to be a regular thing. The boss is starting to hate you even more than she hated your uncle. Her greed for your golden fingers is keeping her from killing you outright for the moment, but I wager it won’t be long before I’m asked to pay you a call. When that happens, I won’t announce myself like I did this time, so if you want to live, I suggest you leave town.”

Despite her fear, that remark set Josie’s teeth on edge. “I am so tired of people telling me that!”

Jake shrugged. “It’s sound advice.”

“Then why don’t you take it?” she asked, her eyes lighting up as a new plan came to life in her head. “You’re clearly a smart man with moral fiber. Why—”

“Don’t try,” Jake interrupted, wagging his finger at her. “I know what you’re doing, but I ain’t like Cotton or that old coot Oliver or any of the other fools you’ve collected. I got my place already.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t have better,” Josie said, ignoring his blatant warning. “Rel Reiner wouldn’t talk about the Wet Whistle, but after seeing the awful way Volchitsa treats people, I don’t understand why anyone works for her. I would never—”

“You would never,” Jake agreed, fixing Josie with a glare that stuck the words in her throat. “That’s the whole problem. I know you must have some mighty fine offers to make even Reiner jump ship for you, but trust when I say you’ve got nothing that can tempt me.”

“How can you be so sure?” she asked, refusing to give up. “You haven’t even heard my proposal.”

“Don’t need to.”

“I think you do,” Josie said, moving a fraction closer. “I’ve heard about you from the moment I arrived here. You’re one of the most feared and respected men in Medicine Rocks, but the woman you’re working for has no care for anyone but herself. She constantly chooses short-term profit over everyone’s best interests, including her own, but I’m looking at the long game. I want to make Medicine Rocks a better place, somewhere safe and decent that we could all proudly call home. If you left her service and came to work for me instead, you could be part of that. We could build a better world here, one where strong-arming and murder aren’t necessary to keep the peace.”

She was being serious, but Apache Jake just chuckled. “Listen to you,” he mocked. “So noble.”

“This has nothing to do with nobility,” Josie said angrily. “I came to Medicine Rocks for the same reason as everyone else: to make my fortune. But no matter how much money you have, no one can have a good life in a place that’s rife with violence and corruption. The fact that so many people were willing to sign up with me despite the She Wolf’s threats proves I’m not alone in this opinion. People want change, and this battle with the Sioux could be our chance. We can rally together to save ourselves and our city! And if we survive, our reward will be a better life for everyone! You don’t have to suffer a boss who steps over your lines. You can do better than her. We can do better, together.”

She was shaking by the time she finished. Trying to poach the man who’d just said he was coming to kill her as soon as the order was given felt like a terminally stupid risk, but Josie couldn’t let this chance pass her by. She already knew from Rel that Apache Jake was the man who actually kept the Wet Whistle running. If she could convince him to switch sides, not only would she remove one of her enemy’s most valuable pieces, she’d gain an incredibly savvy operator of her own. His defection could change the entire balance of Volchitsa’s power in the city, possibly to her downfall! Josie was willing to promise just about anything for that, but Jake shook his head.

“I’m going to have to stop you right there,” he said, putting up his hand. “I’m flattered to be the target of such a stirring speech, but as I told you already, you’ve got nothing I want.”

“But—”

“Ah, ah, ah,” he said, cutting her off. “See, that’s your problem right there. You’ve convinced yourself you’re making a better future, but you never stopped to think that what’s better for you might not be what’s better for me.”

“Of course it’d be better,” Josie said angrily. “Do you want to live in a den of villainy?”

“Now you’re just being insulting,” Jake said, fixing her with a sharp look that didn’t fit his teasing smile. “Let me tell you my view of this future you’re so keen on. Say you do drive the She Wolf away, and Medicine Rocks becomes the upstanding town of economic success that your uncle always wanted it to be. Let’s say that all your dreams come true, and this whole place transforms into a prosperous little city full of upstanding, honest people who say please and thank you and go about their lives without shooting at each other. Tell me, Miss Price, where do I fit into that pretty picture?”

Josie opened her mouth, but Apache Jake beat her to it.

“I don’t,” he said, his fake smile falling away at last. “’Cause there ain’t no room in a town like that for a man like me. You might think Volchitsa is leading Medicine Rocks to ruin, but in a town full of criminals, a man like me gets respect. He gets authority, power, a seat at the table. Once you start bringing in all those respectable businessmen and churchgoers and bankers in suits, though, suddenly I’m right back to ‘boy.’” Apache Jake shook his head. “I didn’t climb this far to go back to being someone’s hungry Negro, so I’m afraid I must respectfully decline your offer of employment.”

Josie dropped her eyes in shame. She hadn’t thought of it like that, but how could she? Volchitsa was a cold-blooded monster. How could she have known there’d be someone who would view that as a benefit?

“Happy to see we’ve reached an understanding,” Jake said, his smile popping right back into place. “It’s best if you run along now. Brightman’s deputies will be coming ’round soon, and it wouldn’t be good for them to see us talking. They might be cowardly idiots, but I’d still hate to have to shoot them.”

Josie nodded and moved off, walking in swift, trembling steps back toward the end of the alley. She’d just reached the corner when she remembered there was still something she couldn’t leave without asking.

“One last question,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “Do you know what happened to Tyrel Reiner?”

Apache Jake sighed at the man he’d been attempting to roust. “You’d best put that one out of your mind,” he said in an oddly tight voice, as if the advice bothered him as well. “Now get yourself home before you waste my generosity.”

Josie sighed in frustration. But while the man obviously knew more than he let on, it wasn’t wise to push when you were the one receiving a favor. Apache Jake had already given her far more than he was probably wise to, so Josie honored his wishes and vanished around the corner, running full tilt down the alley behind the buildings until she reached the safety of her own backyard.

Chapter 17

August 12, 1876

2 days before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

Mary kept smiling until the last click-clop of Josie’s pretty heeled boots vanished down the tunnel. Only when she was certain her friend was really gone did she let her face slide down to better match what she felt inside: the gasping, frantic horror of absolute panic.

She’d known her Song was hurting, but never, never, never had Mary heard the caves sound anything like this. And here she’d thought things’d sounded bad aboveground. Now that she was in them, the noise clawed at her like a terrified animal. A shrieking, breaking, shattering cry that came pouring out of the crystal all around her, and this was just the Front Caves! If a mined-out cave full of months-old cuttings could sound this bad, how awful must the deeper tunnels be?

Mary wasn’t waiting to find out. Tossing her coat on the ground and rolling up her sleeves, she plunged her scarred hands into the nearest sack of crystal. When she was buried to the elbows, she closed her eyes and reached for the screaming song, calling to it gentle as a mama cat to her kitten.

“It’s all right,” she sang. “I’m back just like I promised! Everything’s gonna be fine. Just calm down and talk to me.”

She’d meant to be reassuring, but her soft, loving words vanished like pebbles into the screaming Song. Scowling, Mary tried again, louder this time. But even when she shouted at the top of her lungs, raising such a racket that the tunnel guard came in with his gun drawn ’cause he thought she was being murdered, the music never once replied. It just kept on howling, battering her from the inside until Mary ripped her hands back out of the crystal and covered her ears.

It wasn’t working. She didn’t know if she’d come too late or if she was still too far away or if her Song just didn’t want her anymore, but the cave music was back to being a one-sided affair. She’d thought if she could just get down here, everything could be okay, but how was she supposed to say sorry to someone who couldn’t stop screaming long enough to hear it?

She was getting good and upset about that when Mary remembered that crystal wasn’t all she had to work with. Her Song might be too upset to listen, but she had another expert right here inside her. She just had to get quiet enough to hear him.

Feeling cleverer than she had in a long time, Mary pressed her hands more tightly over her ears to focus on the sound inside her. It was much harder now with Calamity wailing louder than Bear Woman had ever drummed, but Mary knew what she was listening for this time. She reached out with her voice, calling his name with the same note that his finding crystal used to ring.

“Sam Price!”

He appeared before she’d finished speaking, floating in the air ahead of her not unlike the ghost he should’ve been. The moment he flickered in, Mary threw herself at him, grabbing his arms, which were surprisingly firm for a spirit’s, as she began to babble.

“I came back like you said! I’m in the caves but not all the way in the caves ’cause I couldn’t make a tunnel and I wanted to talk to my Song as soon as I could but she’s screaming too loud to hear me or maybe she doesn’t want to hear me but it’s not working and I don’t know what to do!”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down,” he said, holding up his hands. “It’s going to be fine. The Last Song will hear you.”

“But how?” Mary cried in a panic. “She ain’t responding no matter how loud I yell. Am I too far away still?”

“You were never too far away,” he said, placing a hand on his glowing chest. “She lives inside you, a part of you just as you are part of her. That was why Bear Woman had to drown her with drumming instead of just taking you across the mountains. Distance makes no difference when two are one and the same.”

“Okay, but how do I reach her right now?”

The all-knowing look fell off his face. “That’s a trickier question. I’m afraid I don’t know the right answer.”

“You gotta know something,” Mary insisted. “You gave her a piece of yourself, too, didn’t you?”

“I know what I would do,” Mr. Price said. “But I wasn’t the one she chose. You’re her Singer, Miss Good Crow. I trust you’ll find your way.”

That was sour comfort. Her Song might’ve picked her, but Mary felt she was proving woefully unequal to the task. Mr. Price and Bear Woman and everyone else always talked like Singers and Songs were of one mind, but Mary had no idea what her Song was thinking. How could she fix something if she didn’t even know what was broken?

“Just think about it,” Mr. Price said when she turned to him again.

Harrumphing at the lack of help, Mary crossed her arms and sat down on the closest tub of crystal, but it was impossible to think with the music howling like a dying animal. How could her Song always be with her and still not notice when Mary was trying to get her attention? And if they were connected like everyone kept saying, shouldn’t Calamity have calmed down the moment Mary broke out of Bear Woman’s Song? And why did Mary have to do all the reaching? If they were one and the same, weren’t it Calamity’s job to listen too?

That angry thought had scarcely crossed her head ’fore Mary snatched it back. She had no right to be blaming her Song like that. She was the one who’d broken her word. Mary needed to be there for Calamity like she’d promised, not sitting here finding fault ’cause stuff wasn’t as easy as she’d hoped. Least she could do was keep trying like Mr. Price had said, ’cause if anyone deserved Mary’s best effort, it was the caves.

Thinking ’bout it like that brought the smile back to Mary’s face. She knew now that it’d been Calamity’s voice she’d heard on that winter night when she’d been most lost. The voice that had saved her life.

It’d happened two years after her dad had driven her away. Medicine Rocks hadn’t even had buildings back then, just a bunch of tents ’round the mine entrance. She’d come off the prairie looking for work and shelter from the late winter storms, but the miners who’d rushed to get their hands on the brand-new crystal were even rougher than the fur trappers and traders she typically worked for in those days. One look at their camp and Mary had known there’d be nothing good for her there, but her fingers and toes were already frostbitten from walking through the snow. Desperate for shelter, she’d sneaked down to the caves instead. She’d only been looking for somewhere warm to sleep, but the moment she stepped out of the howling wind, she’d heard it: the most beautiful sound in the world.

From the very first moment she’d heard the caves sing, Mary’d known there was no other place in the world she wanted to be. Even before she’d known what it was, the Last Song had welcomed her home. It had always welcomed her, Mary realized. And just like that, she knew what to do.

Sam Price must’ve seen it on her face, cause his image faded without her having to say a word, leaving Mary alone like she needed to be. She grabbed the kerosene lantern next, turning down the flame Josie had left for her. Darkness fell like a hammer the moment it was gone, but Mary had never needed light to see in this place. Even with the wailing music painting madness all over her mind’s eye, she felt at home again in a way she hadn’t even among her own family, riding the howling sound like a leaf on the water as she waited for the cave song to notice her.

It took a long, long time. For hours, she sat on that barrel of crystal, letting the Song cry all over her. Her limbs grew stiff and tingly before it was through, but Mary didn’t move a muscle, ’cause she wasn’t here for herself. She’d come back trying to fix things, but she’d gone about it all the wrong way. The cave music didn’t talk to those who yelled and shouted. It sang in the silence and the dark, so that was where Mary went, sitting in the blackness just like she had that very first night until, very slowly, note by note, the panicked wailing changed to crying.

That was it. There was no feeling of movement, no sound of sliding rock. But when Mary opened her eyes again, she was no longer sitting in Josie’s packed vault. She was miles and miles away, standing on the shattered floor of the Mother Lode, or what was left of it.

It was a shock to see. She’d known from her vision that the cave was in bad shape, but now that she was standing inside it—actually standing, for Mary was here in the flesh this time—the destruction attacked all her senses, starting with her nose. It stank in here, a horrible reek of stagnant water and rotten flesh from the corpses no one had been around to clear away. The black spots Rel had made were still here as well, diseased pockmarks on what had once been a garden of glowing, living crystal. The walls were riddled with bullet holes and broken crystal, and huge new spines grew out of every surface, filling the cavern like a bramble bush.

All those spikes and broken edges changed the sound of the place. When Mary’d first come here, the cavern had been like the hollow inside a violin: a place where already beautiful music grew into something even prettier. Now, though, the broken walls did nothing but echo back the crystal’s crying, filling the cavern with a hollow, ghostly sound that was more like something the Dark would come up with than cave song. It reminded Mary a lot of the Dark, actually, and that scared her more than anything else as she picked her way through the corpses and spikes back to her pillar.

The huge column of crystal still ran from the floor to the ceiling straight as a pin, but what had once been snow white and perfect was now dingy and gray. The rock was still warm when she touched it, though, which Mary took as a good sign.

She pressed both her hands flat against it, waiting for the Song to fill her head like it always did, but there was no music this time. All Mary heard when she touched her pillar now was weeping. Endless, endless weeping from a sadness older than the mountains.

It filled Mary to the brim just like the music used to, but here again, something was different. The sound wasn’t just a gush in her head like it’d been before. Instead, the crying turned inside her like a wheel, spinning the sobs into something very much like words.

Why did you come back?

Mary snatched her hands off the crystal. Her Song had never spoken to her in words before. Just impressions and emotions, most of which Mary had been left to untangle on her own. Now, though, the Song spoke clear and sharp in a voice that sounded like a musical copy of Mary’s own.

You shouldn’t have come back, the Song said, her copied voice sour as a misplayed note. Go away.

Mary shook her head and slapped her hands back against the pillar. “I’m not going to do that.”

She felt a turning inside her head, as if something huge was in there putting its back to her, but Mary wouldn’t be shut out. “I’m sorry,” she told the crystal. “I did you wrong, and I can’t undo it. I was selfish and foolish, and I apologize.”

The Song said nothing, so Mary tried a different angle. “When did you learn to talk?”

We all learn once we get our Singer, the Song replied sullenly. We have to learn so we can Sing together, but you left.

“And I’m sorry for that,” Mary said again, pressing her forehead against the gray stone. “I should know better than anyone how bad it feels to be abandoned. I should’ve known you were hurting, but I found my family and lost my head. You could say Bear Woman tricked me, but it was my decision to stay. I won’t ask you to forgive that, but I would like another chance to do right if you’re willing.”

The presence in her head shifted again, almost as if the Song were a huge cat that had just flopped down in defeat.

There’s no point.

“Nonsense,” Mary snapped. “If my coming back here was useless, why would Bear Woman try so hard to keep me away?”

War always fights. It’s all she knows how to do. But that doesn’t mean she was wrong.

“Of course she was wrong!” Mary cried. “She called you the end of the world!”

But I am! the Last Song wailed, her heavy sadness whirling so suddenly, it knocked Mary off-balance. Look what I did to this place! I tried to fix the broken parts while you were gone, but all I did was make everything worse! The voice in her head began to sob again. You’d have done better to stay with my sister. At least her music doesn’t hurt people!

“Bear Woman does nothing but hurt people,” Mary said, shaking her head. “You said it yourself just now: she’s War. All her crystal knows how to do is crush, thunder, and kill, and her music is just an ugly drum beating on and on. It’s not beautiful like yours.”

Her Song doesn’t make people go mad, the Last Song said bitterly. You want to know why I let miners break my crystals, even though it hurt? It was because I wanted to go with them. I wanted to leave this place, to hear new voices and see the sky! That’s why I disobeyed Eagle and crept up the roots of the great Medicine Rocks. I wanted to be part of the world like the others were, to find my Singer and discover my voice and be something other than a lump of stone. I thought I could show the others they were wrong, that I was more than just an ending, but I wasn’t. A huge sigh passed through Mary’s body as the Song sank to her lowest point yet. I really am a calamity.

“That’s not true,” Mary said, wrapping her arms around the pillar. “You remember the night we first got together? The wonders we worked? That wasn’t a calamity.”

You only say that because we broke a Death Singer, her Song snapped, the words ripping through Mary’s mind like teeth. If it’d been anything else, you’d hate me just as much as they do, because I ruin everything that hears me!

“You do good things too,” Mary reminded her. “Why would the whole world be falling over itself to get hold of your crystal if it was bad?”

Because men are stupid.

“No,” Mary said firmly. “It’s because you’re more than just one thing. Yes, crystal is dangerous, but so are horses and fires, and folks would never want to live without those. Only looking at the bad stuff while ignoring the good is the same mistake Bear Woman made, but if I hadn’t heard your song that first night I came into the caves, I wouldn’t be here.” She tightened her arms around the pillar. “You did more than shelter me from freezing. You gave me something to live for. I was only staying alive back then ’cause I was too scared to die. I had no hope, no home, no future, but your music changed all of that. That’s how I know Bear Woman’s wrong. You can’t possibly be the end of the world, ’cause to me, you were the beginning.”

The Song made a sound that would’ve been a sniffle if she’d had a nose. Is that really how you feel?

“I wouldn’t have fought so hard to get back here if I didn’t,” Mary said, holding the truth up like a torch inside her so her Song could see. She must’ve understood, ’cause for a lovely moment, Mary heard the cave music again like it used to be. That beautiful golden chiming like a thousand bells swinging in the breeze before the sound collapsed back into sadness.

It doesn’t make a difference, her Song said, sinking back down again. Even if you’re right, the others will never let me be free.

“Why? ’Cause you’re the Last Song That Must Never Be Sung?” Mary shook her head. “I don’t buy that name either. We made music together when you first woke up, and nothing happened then but good.”

It was lovely, wasn’t it? her Song said dreamily before her voice sank again. But it must be true. Eagle foresaw it, and he sees everything that will ever happen.

“Then he must’ve seen you wrong,” Mary said confidently. “People see me wrong all the time.”

But I’m different! The other Songs have risen countless times in countless places all over the world. They find their Singers and Sing their Songs and everything is fine, but the moment I try to join, the Death Singers appear, and we all have to go back under the earth again!

Mary scowled. “Do you know why the Death Singers come for you?”

No, the Last Song said. But I know what they do. You’ve seen it too.

Mary’s gaze flicked to the black stains on the rock behind them, and the Last Song whimpered.

I don’t know why they’re only drawn to my Song, but they always come, which means we always have to run. You’ve seen how they corrupt the crystal’s sound. If one of them were to do that to a Song, the result could be catastrophic. It’s almost happened several times, but the Singers always gave their lives to save us. A sob crept back into her voice. That’s why the others hate me. I killed their other halves.

“You didn’t do that.”

I’m the reason it happened, the Last Song insisted. It’s my music that calls the Death Singers and makes them strong.

“Not because of you! I heard the thing that took over Rel. It sounded nothing like your music.”

That’s what I tried to tell them! the Last Song cried, then her voice dipped. But it doesn’t matter. The Death Singers show up every time no matter what I do. They’re already here now, which means I can’t be.

“Why not?”

Because they’ll destroy the music that makes the world.

“They’ll try to destroy it,” Mary said. “That doesn’t mean they’ll succeed. Everyone goes on and on about how bad things’ll be when you wake up, but the one thing they’ve never tried is letting you have a Singer so that you can do something ’bout all this. Remember what we did to that thing inside Rel? We kicked it down a hole! And that was just our first try together! Imagine how much better we’ll be after we’ve practiced.”

The music trembled with hope before getting a hold of herself. It’s too risky.

“Life is risky!” Mary cried, hugging her pillar tight. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t live it. They call you Calamity and tell you’re bad so that they can feel better ’bout themselves for burying you alive, but I haven’t heard one thing in any of this that’s actually your fault. You don’t even know what Song you are ’cause they’ve never let you Sing! That ain’t fair. Why does a Song exist if it’s not meant to be sung?”

A tremor went through the cavern. A great, earth-shaking rumble of excitement mixed with fear. You would Sing with me?

“That’s what I came back for,” Mary told her with a smile. “I’m starting to think it’s why I was born. Lord knows no one else wanted me, but you always made me welcome. I think we were meant to find each other, and what’s the point of being a Singer if I never Sing?”

The excited shaking grew stronger. They’ll hate you too if you do it.

“I’m used to being hated,” Mary said with a shrug.

They’ll try to stop us, the Song said, more to herself than Mary this time. The others swore this time would be the last. That’s why they buried me so deep. They’re tired of losing their Singers and giving up their place in the sun, and they’re afraid of the Calamity. They might do awful things to stop us.

“Bear Woman already has,” Mary said, voice heating with a fury of her own. “She forced my own sister to pull a knife on me! And she’s using the tribes’ anger to kill everyone in Medicine Rocks just so she can keep you buried down here forever. She says it’s for our People, but I don’t think she actually cares who lives or dies. So long as she doesn’t have to lose her Singer and be trapped again like you, she’ll kill as many people—red man, white, or black—as it takes.”

Please don’t think badly of her, the Last Song pleaded. War means well. She was the only one who kept talking to me after last time. She really does want what’s best. She just has only one way of doing things.

“That doesn’t mean she gets to do it,” Mary said angrily. “Maybe the reason Bear Woman fears you so much is because she only has one note. All she can see are your destructive parts, ’cause all she has are war drums. She doesn’t understand that you’re a chorus of many notes and colors. Just look at how many different sorts of powers your crystal gives people! That’s what we have to make her see. No one’s going to believe you’re not the end until we show them something different.”

The rumbling stopped like a held breath. But what if I am?

“You’re not,” Mary said, letting go of the pillar to place her hands on her chest, for her Song was in there too. “I’ve heard you, remember? You picked me outta everyone to be your voice, so trust what I say. You’re not a Calamity. I don’t know what you are yet, but I know it’s going to be beautiful, and I’ll be with you every step as we find out.”

The silence went on for a long, long time. Then, like the sunrise, the music rose again inside her.

There was no wailing this time. Just the Song of the pillar filled to bursting with lights and joy. The swell of it was every bit as bright and beautiful as Mary remembered, and every place it touched, the darkness that had crept in was burned away, filling the cavern once again with rainbow light. Sharp spikes receded, broken crystal mended itself, cracks grew together like wet clay. Even the water started moving again, bursting over the falls to wash away the putrid air with its clean, fresh scent.

I’m sorry in advance if I mess up, the music whispered, spinning like a nervous top inside Mary’s chest. As you could probably tell from all this, I’ve never had a Singer before.

“I’ve never had a Song before,” Mary said, hopping off the pinecone crystal to land in a beautiful patch of pink-glowing rocks that looked like columbines. “We’ll just have to muddle through together.”

That made the music trill even brighter. What do we do now?

“First,” Mary said, rolling up her sleeves, “we clean up your cave. I’m not surprised you went nuts being alone in here. Bad things always follow when you don’t bury the dead.” She walked over to the nearest corpse, pulling her shirt up over her nose to protect herself from the smell. “We’ll send these fellows to their proper rest, and then we’ll get back to town. That’s where Bear Woman’s going, so that’s where we should turn her back ’fore she gets anyone else killed.”

Are you sure the town will welcome us? the Last Song asked nervously. I did a lot of harm there. I didn’t mean to, but—

“Medicine Rocks always welcomes crystal,” Mary said confidently. “And you’re different than you were before. You’re just like your caves: always changing. Always something new. That’s probably how you ended up with me. I’ve never stayed in the same place neither.”

The music sparkled at that, filling Mary with a sense of joy and connection that was almost too happy for her current task. But the dead deserved beauty, too, so Mary threw herself into it, moving the rocks and crystals with nothing but a point of her fingers to build a proper memorial for the poor souls whose deaths had been so awfully abused.

Chapter 18

August 13, 1876

1 day before the Battle of Medicine Rocks.

Josie didn’t get any less busy as the hours ticked on.

After she got back from her ordeal with the sheriff and Apache Jake, she’d been shaking so badly that Mihir had forced her to go rest. She’d obliged him by lying on top of her now-golden bed, where she wrote letters inviting all the other business owners in town, minus the Wet Whistle, to shelter inside her new holdings inside the Front Caves during the coming attack. When Mihir let her out of her room again, Josie bribed one of the boys on her lifting team—a literal boy who didn’t look a day over thirteen—to deliver the notes on her behalf.

No surprise given the level of panic in town, the replies came back instantly and in far greater number than the invitations. Practically all of Medicine Rocks seemed to have been waiting for someone to tell them where to go, for the moment word was breathed of a shelter, Price Mining was inundated yet again with men of every age plus a surprising number of women. Josie hadn’t realized there were women in Medicine Rocks aside from Mary, herself, and the ladies of the Wet Whistle. But as the drumming got louder in the west, figures in dresses came pouring out of every building like juice from an apple press.

Wives and daughters, cooks and laundresses, seamstresses and bread makers. There couldn’t have been more than fifty in total, substantially fewer than the town’s male population, but seeing them walking into the caves with their carpet bags and parlor lamps tucked under their arms suddenly made Medicine Rocks feel far more like a real town. A real town that was in very real danger if they didn’t move faster.

“Make sure everyone spreads out evenly,” Josie told her cave-guards-turned-evacuation-guides from the operations table she’d set up on the front porch of Price Mining. “And for pity’s sake, keep them away from the crystal! The last thing we need is people going mad because we put them in the wrong cave.”

“At least there’s enough room for everyone,” Mihir said cheerfully. “I don’t know why the cavalry didn’t order this already. The mines are a natural fortress.”

“I think the cavalry’s forgotten we’re here,” Josie muttered, checking the town map she’d drawn on a large square of spare muslin, the only surface big enough to hold it all. “But that’s fine with me if they hold the field.”

“They’d better,” said Mr. Cotton, running his finger along the western line of boulders that Josie had painstakingly drawn in umber pencil. “The Medicine Rocks make a decent enough barrier for firing from cover, but we don’t have anything like a real wall. I’m putting up barricades to keep them from doing a mass charge down our roads, but there’s nothing we can do about riders coming in between the buildings.”

“The tent city’s in an even worse position,” Josie added, biting her lip. “Has anyone gone over there yet to tell them to take cover?”

“No need,” Mihir said. “With the Sioux beating their drums practically in our ears, anyone who doesn’t know it’s time to run is either deaf or delusional. I’d wager half of the ‘women’ taking shelter in the caves are just miners wearing bonnets.”

“I didn’t see none of those, sir,” Mr. Cotton said with a chuckle. “But we have taken in a good many miners who claim they can’t fight. Don’t know if they’re lying or just cowards, but I saw no reason to force the subject. We got more men than we can arm right now as is, and it’s good to have some men in the caves even if they are yellow-bellied. A coward will still fight to save his own life.”

“I just wish we had a real defense,” Josie muttered, looking bleakly at the huge gaps between the boulders that gave the town its name. “I swear, if we survive this, I’m going to build us a wall myself.”

Mr. Cotton chuckled. “Careful, miss. If you manage that, they might just make you mayor.”

Now there was a thought. Josie was about to ask how elections worked here when a grizzled man carrying a very well-used shotgun marched up the wooden stairs to join them. It was Mr. Sampson, owner of the saloon of the same name. He’d been among the first of the town’s businessmen to answer Josie’s call and the only one so far who’d taken up arms. The rest had either scuttled down to the caves with their stock or turned their buildings into boarded-up fortresses. Josie didn’t know what they thought they were going to do bottled up in there when the Sioux started setting fires, but she’d done her part. If they wanted to go it alone, that was one less worry for her. Fortunately, some of the businessmen in town knew how to pool resources.

“Evening, Miss Price,” Mr. Sampson said, snatching off his hat. “I’m here to let you know we’re all set up at the top end of town. Got all of Cotton’s barricades in place along with the arrow shelters, for all the good they’ll do. My cavalry customers claim the Sioux’s new crystal arrows can shoot through stone. Don’t know if I believe that, but it don’t bode too well. On that note, Dr. Pendleton’s got the hospital tent ready, though she’s asking for payment up front.”

“Of course she is,” Josie said, rubbing her tired eyes. “I’ll take it to her. Thank you, Mr. Sampson.”

Mr. Sampson nodded and tromped back down the stairs only to pause again at the bottom. “Has anyone tried talking to the Wet Whistle?”

Josie never wanted to hear the name Wet Whistle again. No one else knew that, though, so she forced a smile onto her face. “They were not interested in working together,” she said, which was true enough. “Why do you ask?”

“’Cause they’re looking mighty quiet,” Mr. Sampson said, nodding at the big black building across the street, which did indeed look sealed and silent as a tomb. “Real pity. They’ve got the best gunhands in town, not to mention all their crystal weirdos.” He shuddered. “I don’t normally truck with witchcraft, but I wouldn’t mind a bit o’ the supernatural this time.”

“I’m sure they’ve got something planned,” Mihir said darkly.

Josie was too. It was what she feared most, actually. The Sioux were dreadful, but at least they were attacking from the front. It was what would happen when the enemy was engaged and their backs were open that she was really afraid of. It would be just like a wolf to attack while the prey was distracted. But there was only so much they could prepare for, and Josie felt better focusing her efforts on the problems that were actively coming to kill them rather than those that were still lurking in the depths.

“We’ll just keep moving everyone who can fight to the barricades and everyone who can’t to the caves,” she said. “Remember, we don’t have to beat every Sioux on the field. We don’t even have to keep them from attacking the fort. We are not the cavalry’s last line of defense. Our only priority is to protect ourselves and our property. If the soldiers have left us to fend for ourselves, then that is exactly what we shall do.”

“That’s probably how Cook wants it,” Sampson said with a harrumph. “Sly old fox wants us to think he’s not coming so we’ll defend his rump for him. You saw how fast those cavalry boys let you take over guarding the mines. He’s using us.”

“That’s fine with me,” Josie said. “We’re using him as well. Maybe together, we can actually pull this off.” She turned back to Mr. Cotton. “You have experience with the Indians. How much time do you think we have left?”

Mr. Cotton frowned at the lovely sunset. “They’ll attack tonight if they can. The Sioux love a night raid, and the darkness would give them good cover against the cannons. But big groups like that don’t move fast, and those drums are still pretty far away. Unless there’s a bunch of warriors already sneaking at us through the grass, I’m betting we don’t see them until tomorrow, though I’m keeping folks in position through the dark hours, just in case.”

“Good thinking,” Josie said, folding her gloved hands together so they wouldn’t shake. She was about to dismiss them back to their posts when she realized one of their number was missing.

“Where’s Oliver?”

Mr. Cotton rolled his one good eye. “In the caves. Said he wanted to check on Mary, which is typical. He’s always been sweet on her. Probably better to have him down there than up here, though. He’s been my friend for many a year, but the old coot can’t shoot to save his—”

“Miss Price!”

Josie jumped as someone came peeling toward them up the road like a terrified horse. Someone who looked very much like—

“Oliver!” she cried as he rushed up the steps. “What’s wrong? Mr. Cotton just said you were looking for Mary.”

“I… was…” the old man wheezed, mopping his red face with his beard. “That’s what I ran… to tell ya. She’s gone!”

“Gone?” Josie repeated, heart clenching. “Gone where?”

“I dunno!” Oliver wailed, looking truly distraught. “I went down to the vault ta bring her food, and she weren’t nowhere to be seen! Crystal was all messed up, too, like someone’d been rooting through it. I licked one to see if I could get a pin on ’er with my gut. But I couldn’t find nothin’!”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Josie said, as much for herself as for him. “Mary’s closer to the caves than anyone. She probably just—”

The ground rumbled beneath them, making everyone jump. Josie had just convinced herself it was the Sioux beginning their attack when the dirt of the road in front of them split open like a sinkhole, and Mary Good Crow climbed out of it. It was so unexpected, so unaccountably strange, that no one said a word. They all just stood there, gaping, as Mary closed the fissure in the ground behind her—just moved the dry earth with her hand like she was shutting a storm cellar door—and turned to face them.

“Hello,” she said casually. “What’d I miss?”

“Mary!” Oliver cried, running down the steps. “What in tarnation—”

Before Mary could answer, Mr. Sampson, who’d been walking up the road when it happened, suddenly came running back down it, his shotgun pointed at Mary’s head. “Lakota witch!” he shouted, cocking the hammer. “You ain’t cursing none of us! I’ll plug you fulla lead, you—”

“No!” Josie cried, racing down the steps to throw herself in front of her friend. “Mr. Sampson, stop! Miss Good Crow is on our side!”

The saloon owner looked unconvinced. “She just popped out of the ground like a demon coming up from hell!” he yelled, stabbing his finger at Mary, who was cowering in Josie’s shadow. “How is that not deviltry?”

“Mr. Sampson, really,” Josie huffed, exasperated. “The town’s been overrun with men growing extra limbs and melting into puddles for weeks now because of the crystal, but Mary coming out of a hole is where you draw the line? You were just complaining to Mr. Cotton earlier that removing the crystal from town also removed your own condition where you grew a gun out of your arm! How is that not ‘deviltry,’ if such a thing truly exists?”

Mr. Sampson growled low in his throat, but at least he lowered his weapon. “I know that one, Miss Price,” he warned. “She’s the filthy Injun what leads men to their deaths!”

“I ain’t never led no one to their death!” Mary cried, indignant. “If any of my customers died, they got there all by themselves! Usually after stiffing me my pay!”

“Mary is the only reason I’m still alive,” Josie told him, backing her friend up. “I trust her wholeheartedly, and I will not tolerate her being threatened.”

“On your head be it, then,” Mr. Sampson spat, turning away. “I’m going back to my post. If you need anything from me, don’t send the redskin.”

Josie scowled at his back. “Of all the backwards thinking—”

“It’s all right, Miss Price,” Mary said, shaking her head. “I’ve learned not to mind Sampson, and anyway, I got good news! I got my Song back!”

“That’s wonderful!” Josie said. Then she stopped. “Um, it is wonderful, right? I’m afraid I’m still not entirely sure what you’re talking about.”

“It’s very wonderful,” her friend assured her. “It means the crystal should go back to normal. It also means I’ve got us the help we need to deal with that.”

Mary pointed at the twilight. Josie followed the motion, baffled. As was Oliver, apparently.

“You’re gonna fight the moon?” he guessed, squinting up at the slender line of the waxing crescent rising in the sky.

“No, silly.” Mary laughed. “I meant the drumming.”

“How’re you gonna keep the Sioux from drumming?” asked Mr. Cotton, who was looking very unsure about all of this. “I can see you’re part Lakota, but I don’t think they’ll stop just ’cause you ask.”

“It ain’t a matter of asking,” Mary explained. “That sound you’re hearing ain’t just drums. It’s the War Song. The Lakota are doing ceremonies right now to strengthen the warriors, but Bear Woman’s put her crystal inside their drums. The sounds of their prayers and singing is sending her music at us across the prairie, but this ain’t her land no more. The earth under this place is full of Calamity’s cave music! It ain’t hers to boss around.”

“All right,” Josie said slowly, more confused than ever. “How can we help you drive her back?”

Mary clearly hadn’t been expecting such ready assistance, because her face lit up like Christmas. “I need you to get all the crystal you moved into the caves and take it back out,” she said excitedly. “We need to put it allllll over town. Cover the ground with crystal until this whole place sounds like the caves.”

“But we just got it all down there!” Oliver moaned, clutching his middle. “My gut—”

“Your gut’ll be fine,” Mary promised. “I told you, the crystal’s back to normal. Better than normal!” She put a hand on her chest. “It’s with me now. No one’s gonna go crazy this time, I promise, but we gotta get it up here where it can help. The Last Song is the only thing that can protect us from the storm that’s about to break.”

Josie assumed she meant the metaphorical storm of war until a very real peal of thunder crashed across the plains. Another sounded right on its heels, despite there not being any clouds in the lavender evening sky.

“There it is,” Mary said, not looking surprised in the slightest. “Bear Woman knows I’m here. We’d better shake a leg.”

Josie was dying to ask what she meant by that—what Bear Woman could do and what powers Mary possessed now that she’d fixed whatever was wrong—but there wasn’t enough time, and she probably wouldn’t understand it even if Mary did explain. This was like burying bodies in the Dark or singing to that giant bear monster. Just like she’d accepted that only Mary could hear the finding crystal, Josie accepted this now, dispatching Oliver and a bunch of her other men back down into the caves to do as Mary had instructed. She was still rounding people up when Josie spotted a wagon rolling out from behind the Wet Whistle.

Any other time, that wouldn’t have merited attention. The Wet Whistle did a brisk business in all manner of God knew what. Wagons came and went from the place all the time, particularly after sunset. Josie only noticed it now because nothing had come out of that place all afternoon. As it rolled past her building, Josie spotted something else of interest. It was hard to tell on the darkening street, but she would have sworn that the bony, pale-skinned figure driving the wagon was Reliance Reiner.

That was ridiculous, of course. If Rel were back in town, Josie would have known. Her friend had never been able to stand not having the last word in anything. If she’d been anywhere near Medicine Rocks, she wouldn’t have rested until she’d found Josie and had her say. Nothing of the sort had happened, which meant that couldn’t be Rel, and yet…

Josie rose on her tiptoes, trying to get a better look at the driver, but it was too late. The cart was already driving around the barricade her militia was pushing into position across the town’s southern exit. Driving out of town, Josie realized with a start.

Good Lord, were they mad? The Sioux were practically right on top of them! Had the She Wolf locked her doors to keep her men from knowing the truth? Did they not know the danger they were riding into?

“Excuse me!” Josie cried, running after the wagon. “Driver!”

As if they could hear her calling and didn’t want to answer, the driver kicked the team into a gallop, leaving Josie staring hopelessly at a plume of dust as the mysterious wagon vanished into the dark of the plains.

Chapter 19

August 14, 1876

The Battle of Medicine Rocks.

The day of the battle was nearly as dark as the night when it finally came. The sun still rose in the east, but thanks to the thunderheads looming in the sky, its light barely touched the town hunkered between the boulders like a rabbit in its burrow.

The clouds hung over the prairie like a smothering blanket. Huge black beasts that belched lightning and thunder without bringing rain and stayed in place no matter which way the wind turned. It was clearly unnatural, but to someone like Lucas, who’d grown up on the sea, the thunderheads felt like a particularly bad omen.

“We’re going to end up like bloody Custer,” Chaucer muttered, fighting to steady his roan horse. “Dead in the grass with a pincushion of arrows sticking out of our arses.”

“An officer should not doomsay,” Lucas reminded him, keeping a firm hand on his own mount, a black-and-white gelding named Badger. “Think of your men.”

“They’ll bloody well figure it out whatever I say,” Chaucer hissed, looking over his shoulder at the mounted troops lined up behind them, all of whom looked just as spooked as the horses by the strange weather.

They were waiting in formation just behind the fortress’s log gate, two hundred men of the 10th Colored Cavalry with Lucas as their commander. On General Cook’s signal, the door would open, and they would ride out as fast as they could, skimming the enemy’s front line before peeling off to the south, ideally with a good chunk of Sioux chasing after. In Cook’s strategy, that was where they died, ridden down and slaughtered by bloodthirsty warriors while the main body of the cavalry’s troops hit the Sioux’s diminished forces. It was a ruthless and efficient plan that took advantage of the Sioux’s honor culture and lack of troop discipline, but it wasn’t the one Lucas meant to follow.

He might hate Colonel Shaw with every fiber of his being, but the bastard had been true to his word. Now that Lucas was a member of the Wyoming Defense, he’d been given the same unfair privileges as the rest of Shaw’s officers, including the right to requisition a full brace of brand-new crystal Springfield rifles from a very confused Captain Townsend. The colonel had also given him a writ authorizing full access to Fort Grant’s storehouse, allowing Lucas and his soldiers to help themselves to whatever they wanted, including several crates of crystal ammunition, a feast of food, and all manner of other useful supplies.

How they would use those items, Shaw had left up to his new lieutenant. All he wanted was for Lucas to do his job, preferably while getting himself killed in the process. Lucas had no intention of humoring his new commander on that last part, but he did take full advantage of Shaw’s authority, especially when it came to selecting his soldiers.

As promised, the colonel had bullied Cook into giving Lucas the freedom to pick his own men for the mission. He did so with great discretion, taking no fathers or other men whose loss would leave their families destitute. This had eliminated over half of the 10th, but he was determined to take only two hundred, the bare minimum Cook had demanded, and for that small number, he had no shortage of volunteers.

Chaucer had stepped up at once, as had several of the soldiers who’d worked with Lucas during his nightly thief-catching trips, giving him his choice of trusted, battle-hardened men. It was still a paltry number compared to what they’d be facing, but they had thirty-six hours to prepare. Between this, their new access to supplies, and the combined cleverness of all of them putting their heads together, they’d managed to come up with what Lucas felt was a very good plan indeed.

“I just wish we could have started in position,” Chaucer grumbled, brushing at the dry plains dirt that still clung to his trousers from all their preparations. “Getting over there’s going to be the diciest bit of this whole mess.”

“It will be fine,” Lucas said, forcing himself to believe it. “The Lakota’s horses are faster, but we know where we’re going, and we’ll have a head start.”

“And if they do catch us, it’s not as if we’ll be any more dead than we were going to be anyway.”

Chaucer said this with his usual cheer, but Lucas winced. “I’m sorry again for how this turned out,” he said quietly. “I should have listened to you that night. If I hadn’t disgraced myself, I might have been able to convince the general not to—”

“Bollocks,” his sergeant sneered. “Not that I won’t treasure you admitting I was right for the rest of my probably very short days, but you’re daft if you think Cook didn’t have this in mind from the start. I’ll bet he was intending to use us as a shield the moment he found out command was giving him a Colored unit. He just didn’t tell you about it ’cause he knew you’d raise a stink.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a soldier’s job to eat shit, ain’t it? But things ain’t all bad.” He put a hand on the strap that held his new crystal rifle to his back. “Say what you want about Shaw. At least he let you give us weapons. I’m pretty sure Cook was planning to send us out there empty-handed so the Indians wouldn’t be able to nick the guns off our corpses.”

Lucas believed it. He could almost hear Cook explaining how wasteful it would be to arm men who were only going to die, which was just insulting. Death was always on the table for a soldier, but there was an ocean of difference between falling in battle and being tripped. If he’d still been Cook’s man, he would have tried his best to explain this to his general, but he was no longer an officer of the US Cavalry, and after what Chaucer had just said, Lucas was starting to wonder if that wasn’t a blessing.

“I’m just glad you’re the one stuck here with us,” Chaucer went on, giving his lieutenant a cocky smile. “If I have to taunt ten thousand bloody Indians into chasing me, I’d much rather do it behind the slippery bastard with nine lives.”

As ever, Chaucer’s ability to laugh in the face of death made Lucas feel better than he had any right to. He grinned back at his sergeant and turned his horse, riding through the lines of his soldiers as he’d done every fifteen minutes since they’d gotten into position before daybreak.

“Remember the plan,” he told them as he passed. “We must reach the target at least two minutes before the enemy, so ride like you’ve never ridden before.”

The soldiers nodded, their dark faces grim but steady in the dim morning light. That was one of the benefits of serving with the Buffalo Soldiers. They were always given the worst assignments, which made situations like this old hat. Where other soldiers would be shaking in their boots, Lucas’s men held firm, which was why this was going to work.

“Follow my lead,” he continued, kicking his horse to a trot as he worked his way up and down the columns. “The town’s set up barricades on the roads, so we might have to jump them. Don’t stop, and don’t slow down. Follow the bugle calls precisely, and we may yet make it out of this alive!”

He wasn’t sure if his men believed him. But dwelling on bad ends did not make for swift horses, so Lucas threw his hopes at them, raising his voice as he urged them to ride, ride, ride! as the unnaturally dark day crept on.

And then, as was always the case in battles, everything suddenly happened at once.

“Form ranks!” Lucas shouted, galloping back to his position at the front as the horns sounded from the towers, and the fortress gate began to open. “Stay together!”

He barely made it before his own bugler, a skinny boy named Jeth who hadn’t looked old enough to join the army two years ago and still didn’t now, blew his horn until his hollow cheeks puffed out, signaling the charge.

Lucas kicked his horse forward, galloping at the head of the thundering column into town and around a hard turn to the western road, which was fenced off by a much more impressive blockade than he’d been prepared for. A surprising number of men stood beside it, miners and townsfolk carrying guns to defend their homes. Lucas expected them to leap out of the way, but the men went for the barricade instead, pushing the huge contraption on rollers so that it opened like a door.

Good thing, too, because now that they were upon it, Lucas realized they never could have jumped something so tall. He would have to thank whomever had organized the town defense for their thoroughness later, if he survived. For now, he signaled his bugler to play again. No slow for the jump. They were charging dead ahead west.

Straight into the Sioux.

His first sight of the enemy nearly made him fumble his reins. The Sioux army stretched like a wall across the western horizon: a huge mass divided into separate tribes and war bands but united in purpose. They stood below the black clouds with seemingly no fear of the lightning forking right over their heads, their bodies and horses decorated in brightly colored war dress and sparkling crystal paint.

A few of their number were already riding out to meet Lucas’s men, but the vast majority held back, waiting to see what manner of attack this might be. Two hundred was not a small force, but neither was it something an army of this size had to worry about. Lucas hadn’t anticipated them being big enough to simply ignore the bait, so he decided to sweeten the temptation, scanning the enemy line until he spotted a group that stood apart from the rest.

This war party had no horses at all. Only men on foot, their otherwise naked bodies wrapped in wolf pelts. Target sighted, Lucas moved his horse closer to Chaucer’s and waved to get his second’s attention.

“Keep the men on course!” he yelled as they left the battered remains of the tent city and entered the open plains. “I’m going to hook us a catch!”

Chaucer looked horrified, but he did as he was ordered, lifting his arm to show the others he was taking the lead as Lucas peeled off from the column. He kicked Badger up as they left the other horses, pushing him faster and faster until the sturdy horse was running as hard as his short legs could go. When he was clear of his soldiers, Lucas pulled his army-issue Colt and leaned low over his saddle, waiting for the moment when his horse’s feet left the ground to fire a shot straight at the tallest of the wolf-pelted Lakota.

It didn’t come close to hitting. He wasn’t stupid enough to ride inside the range of the enemy’s bows and rifles, which made it far too long a shot for his sidearm, but the gunshot got the warriors’ attention. The moment they turned to look at him, Lucas shouted an insult he’d learned from one of Custer’s Crow scouts at the top of his lungs. He didn’t know what the words meant, but they worked like a charm. The curse had barely left his lips when the big warrior he’d aimed at changed his shape, turning suddenly from a large, angry red-skinned man into an even larger, even angrier silver-pelted wolf.

Lucas jerked in his saddle. He’d hear rumors of the Lakota’s giant wolves since Custer’s defeat, but he hadn’t expected to face one. The wolf was running straight at him, though, so Lucas grabbed his reins and spun his horse around, galloping as fast as he could back to his soldiers, who were just now veering south.

“What the hell was that?” Chaucer cried as his lieutenant rejoined the column. “Why did you bait the bloody wolves?”

“I didn’t know they were actual wolves!” Lucas yelled back, clinging to his horse. “I thought they were exaggerating!”

“Yeah, well, those exaggerations are about to eat us!”

The wolves were catching up quickly. The one Lucas had taunted was by far the largest, but the rest of the warriors had changed shape as well, making twelve wolves in total. They moved through the grass like shots of silver, swifter than even the Lakota warhorses. As they streaked after Lucas’s unit, other war bands joined the chase, whooping and hollering as they plunged their mounts after the fleeing cavalry.

“We’ve certainly got their attention,” Chaucer said, his face pinched in concentration as he focused on not falling off his horse. “But I don’t think we’re going to be able to beat those wolves to the target.”

“Just keep going!” Lucas yelled, waving his hand in a chopping motion to signal his troops to gallop faster as they entered the flat stretch of grassland that ringed Medicine Rocks’s southern tip.

The hard-baked dirt here was almost as good as an actual road, letting the horses reach their maximum speed as they pounded across the prairie. Too bad the Lakota’s horses had the same advantage, closing the gap the soldiers’ head start had bought with terrifying speed. He could already hear the whoops and war cries of the enemy behind him, followed by the twang of their bowstrings. Lucas knew it was inevitable that they’d take fire during the chase, but nothing he’d seen before this prepared him for the streaks of smoke that shot though their ranks, blasting his soldiers off their horses like tin cans on a firing range.

“Hold your course!” he cried as men flew off their mounts, their bodies whirling through the air as if the arrows had been cannonballs. “Ride faster!”

But there was no faster. His soldiers were already riding as hard as they could, and it wasn’t enough. Just like that horrible moment in the caves when he’d seen the Sioux’s fields of crystal, there was nothing he could do. The enemy was simply too powerful, their arrows too swift as they picked off his men one by one, leaving their column jagged and staggering. But just as things started to fall apart, Chaucer gave a whoop.

“There it is!” the sergeant cried as their target finally came into view: a rocky rise topped with an old pine-log-and-tar tower, the listing gravestone of the folly that was the Nedry Mine.

“All right, Nutty Ned, you mad, dead bastard!” Chaucer bellowed, leaning almost flat over his saddle as he pushed his horse for the final distance. “Don’t you dare let us down!”

The other soldiers were yelling as well, shouting at one another to keep low and ride faster—they were almost there! Lucas would have joined in, but he didn’t trust his tongue with Badger’s fast but admittedly uneven gait. Instead, he spent his time looking back under his arm for a count of the enemy, who now very clearly outnumbered them.

That was good. A baiting maneuver wasn’t much use if it didn’t deplete the enemy’s main army. If too many followed, though, his hopes of getting through the battle alive greatly diminished. It was hard to tell if they were over the safe limit or not, but the wolves were already nipping at the riders in the rear, so Lucas turned his attention back to their target.

“Trigger teams!” he yelled, standing up in his stirrups so the terrified men behind him would see and pay attention. “Get to positions!”

He glanced over his shoulder as he dropped back into his saddle, smiling in relief as the two trios of men peeled off from either side of the column. The Lakota fired their horrible smoke-streaked arrows after them, but it was much harder to hit a few men than a column. Once they failed to get an instant kill, the enemy quickly returned their attention to the main body, just as Lucas had hoped.

“Tower team!” he cried next, waving his arm over his head. “Go go go!”

That was Chaucer’s signal. He yelled his reply and kicked his horse, charging the animal up the rocky bluff where old Nedry’s tower poked out of the flat plains like a crooked nail. It had been built to support the pulley winch that would haul carts full of crystal up from his private mine, but despite building right on top of the Front Caves, he’d never brought in so much as a crystal splinter. He had, however, dug a madman’s warren of tunnels all through the ground here. A very dangerous and unstable warren, as the Sioux were about to find out.

“Dismount!” Lucas shouted, hauling his horse to a stop and leaping for the ground the moment he was sure he wouldn’t break his neck. The second his boots touched the earth, he started running, waving his arms for his men to follow as he bellowed, “Get to the carriages!”

Even knowing what they’d planned, that still felt like an odd thing to yell at an abandoned mine half a mile from the closest road, but Lucas’s men knew exactly what to do. Moving as one, the whole company leaped from their horses and sent them galloping away riderless, confusing the pursuing wolves and lending cover to their true targets: the three enormous armored carriages Townsend had brought up with him to help transport the crystal.

Cook had despised the contraptions for being so big and heavy. But while all that metal did indeed make them slow, lumbering targets—easy pickings for the highly mobile Whitmans—it also made them rolling fortresses, which was why Lucas had used his new status to coerce a very confused and upset Townsend into handing them over. Each carriage boasted inch-thick iron plating with shooting ports for ten men. Lucas had doubled that to fit twenty very snug. Unfortunately, they had only three carriages. The rest of his soldiers would have to shelter in old Nedry’s abandoned warehouse: a squat but sturdy building made from fieldstone to protect it from robbers—and, ideally, Lakota arrows.

Trusting his men to find their positions, Lucas went straight for his own spot at the top of the rickety pine tower. Using the sailor’s balance that still hadn’t forsaken him, he grabbed hold of the tar-smeared wood and pulled himself off the ground, using the triangular braces like a ladder to transport himself fifty feet up to the platform where the iron pulley was housed. Chaucer was already there, having used the rope ladder Lucas had strung up last night for precisely this reason.

“I damn well hope your friend the captain wasn’t lying about these things,” he said, loading his shiny new crystal rifle with a sparkling crystal round. “We never did get to practice firing with crystal ammunition. It’s gonna be a short fight if these things turn out to be jam-happy pieces of shit.”

“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Lucas said. “Townsend is a stickler for this sort of thing.”

“Only one way to find out,” Chaucer said, aiming down the barrel at the wolf that was closing in on one of their trigger teams. “On your mark, Lieutenant.”

Lucas pulled his own gun and lined up his shot, bracing his back against the iron pulley house behind them, just in case.

“Fire!”

The air exploded with the crack of gunpowder. But despite the tiny yellow crystals Townsend had attached all over and even inside the Springfield’s firing chamber, nothing blew up in their faces. Instead, the wolf they’d been aiming at howled and jumped away from the explosion of dirt caused by Lucas’s crystal bullet hitting the ground at its feet. Chaucer’s crystal round hit next, blasting the wolf’s head clean off its body.

“Oh, my darling!” Chaucer cried, kissing his new rifle. “I take it all back. You’re the only one for me!”

Lucas smiled but kept his eyes on the men they’d just saved as they finished scrambling behind the rock that was their station. The other team was already in position on the opposite side of the battlefield. Technically, only one trigger was needed, but even when he’d been first mate on a pirate ship, Lucas had never liked losing men. He was happy to see it hadn’t happened now and even happier that they’d made it in time. Aside from the speedy wolves, who were few in number and mostly busy trying to rip open the armored carriages, the rest of their pursuers were only just now riding into the field below Nutty Nedry’s tower, exactly as planned.

Heart pounding in anticipation, Lucas waved at his bugler, who blew the quick staccato that signaled the trigger teams to prime fuses. Trap set, Lucas raised his arm again and waited, leaving Chaucer and their other best marksman, Tom—a former riverboat slave from Mississippi whose master used to make him shoot bats out of the night sky for the passengers’ entertainment—to keep shooting at the wolves chewing on the carriages. From Chaucer’s colorful cursing, those targets must have been harder to hit than the first, but Lucas couldn’t spare them a glance. His eyes were locked on the wall of Sioux warriors riding straight at them.

One of their crystal-tipped, smoke-tailed arrows landed in the pole right next to his head, the sharpened point shooting straight through the foot-thick pine like it was nothing. Leaning away from the weapon that had nearly blown through his skull, Lucas kept his arm steadfastly up, counting the seconds as the Sioux got closer and closer, their horses shooting across the flat, grassy field that Old Ned had tunneled through like a gopher. He waited until the riders at the front were nearly at the base of the rocky hill that supported the tower. Waited, waited…

Now!

He threw down his arm. The bugle trumpeted a second later, blowing the call to the trigger teams hidden behind their protective stones. Not one heartbeat after the signal sounded, the ground beneath the hundreds of riders they’d baited into chasing them blew into the sky as the crates of mining TNT Lucas’s teams had spent all night cramming into every tunnel they could find went off in rapid succession.

Lucas didn’t properly appreciate just how many charges they’d set until the blast nearly blew him off the tower. He had to catch Chaucer by his leg, but the sergeant was laughing hysterically when Lucas and Tom hauled him up.

“That’s what you get!” he yelled as his fellow soldiers dragged him to safety. “That’s the American way! Explosives!”

“You’re not even American,” Lucas said, rubbing his ears to clear the ringing from the blast.

“Who cares?” Chaucer replied. “The important thing is, did we get ’em?”

They crawled back to the edge of the pulley tower, peering down through the dust to see if their plan had worked. From the cheering they could hear over the clatter of falling rocks and dirt, it didn’t seem they’d hit any of their own people, but Lucas could see nothing of the enemy. He was leaning over the edge for a better look when he felt it: a sudden tightness in his head, as if some invisible substance in the air had twisted.

“Ow,” Chaucer said at the same time, smile falling off his face. “Did you feel that?”

Lucas nodded, rubbing his temples with growing panic. He knew that pressure. He’d been too frantic to register it properly at the time, but now that it was happening again, his whole body remembered. This was the feeling from the caves. From the battle in the Mother Lode, specifically. Like a sound just out of hearing, the tightness vanished whenever he tried to focus on it, giving Lucas hope that he was wrong. Maybe this was just more ringing from the blast and not what he feared after all?

This optimism lasted all of five seconds before Tom grabbed hold of his shoulder. “Lieutenant!” he whispered, his dark eyes gone huge as he pointed at the ground. “Look!”

Lucas didn’t want to look, but he followed Tom’s gesture instinctively down to the collapse they’d just created. As expected from such a huge blast, the dusty pit was lined with bloody parts of men and horses. Parts that were already putting themselves back together as Lucas watched.

“Oh blimey,” Chaucer moaned, shrinking back against the tower. “Not this again!”

“To arms!” Lucas cried, snatching up his rifle to peg one of the dead warriors who’d already started crawling toward the stone warehouse where the other soldiers were hiding. “Jeth! Blow the alarm!”

Down in the tiny window of the stone warehouse where he was watching, the 10th’s bugler obeyed at once, cheeks puffing out as he blew the alarm call across the plains. Not that it would mean anything. There was no help coming, no cavalry to ride to their rescue. But the sound did rally his men, knocking them out of their panic as they began firing wildly at the corpses. Satisfied they were as alert as could be asked, Lucas slung his rifle onto his back and climbed higher, scrambling up to the very top of the wooden tower to see if he could spot that cursed bastard Reiner.

There was no one else it could be. He should have known that snake couldn’t be trusted to die! This time, though, he would not make the mistake of mercy. This time, Lucas would shoot that traitor straight through his traitor head. But as he was scanning the plains with his rifle sight to do just that, the wooden tower gave a lurch beneath him, forcing Lucas to let go of his gun or fall to his death.

Thank God he’d thought to sling his rifle strap over his shoulder. It was the only thing that saved his weapon as he grabbed hold of the tarred wood for dear life. When he was certain nothing was going to fall, Lucas looked down to see what could possibly have shaken a log tower bolted into solid stone. His guess was that the TNT had triggered a cave-in somewhere deeper underground, but he was wrong. The tower’s foundation was solid as ever. The shaking had come from the horse-sized wolf that was climbing up the pulley tower’s wooden rungs.

It was the largest of their number. The giant warrior that Lucas had taunted at the beginning, the one with patterns running all over his silver fur. From the way the wolf’s golden eyes were locked, he definitely remembered who had insulted him, or perhaps he’d merely seen who’d signaled the explosion. Either way, the gunfire Chaucer and Tom were pouring down on him did nothing. Even the crystal bullets bounced like hail off his thick coat, not even slowing his pace as the wolf climbed up the tower in a beeline for Lucas, his claws sending chunks of wood raining down on the fast-gathering mass of risen dead below.

Chapter 20

Josie had never seen a more terrifying sight.

As Mr. Cotton had suggested, she’d been up all night with her men, waiting for the Sioux. When the bleak dawn had risen and there was still no sign of the enemy, she’d taken it upon herself to see what the devil was going on, climbing up onto the tin roof of the Price Mining building with an old brass spyglass that had once belonged to Sam Price’s grandfather. According to Mihir, her uncle had kept it because he’d liked the way it looked. But while the heavy metal-and-glass tube was likely older than the United States, it still functioned remarkably well, giving Josie an excellent view of the thunderheads hanging unnaturally low over the western plains and the endless army on horseback waiting beneath them.

“Why are they lining up like that?” she asked Mihir, who was leaning out the attic window below, holding her feet so she wouldn’t slide down the roof’s steep pitch.

“Probably preparing for a charge,” he said nervously, his hands shaking like quaking aspen on her boots. “Would you please come down? There was no point in staying here if you fall and break your neck.”

“In a moment,” Josie promised, running her spyglass over the Sioux’s line. Good Lord, there were a lot of them. Thousands at least, possibly tens of thousands. She’d never dreamed there’d still be so many fighting men left to rally after all the wars America had already fought out here. The papers always made it sound like the Indians were getting slaughtered. Clearly, those reports had been grossly exaggerated, for the Sioux Nation looked to be doing just dandy from up here.

As she stared at that incredible army, Josie’s dreams of a militia to defend Medicine Rocks suddenly felt childish and naive. Even if everyone did their jobs above and beyond expectations, they could not possibly survive against so many. She was just glad she was the only one up here to see it. If the others knew how hopeless their situation was, their defense would fall apart before the attackers fired a single arrow.

“Maybe the cannons will keep them at bay?” Mihir asked hopefully. “The Lakota must still fear them, or they would be here already.”

Josie didn’t think that was it. She didn’t know how many cannons were sitting on top of Fort Grant’s boulders, but unless they numbered in the triple digits, she didn’t see how a barrage would do more than annoy an army of such size. The Sioux were probably still just busy preparing for battle. As she now knew too well herself, it took an extraordinarily long time to get large groups of people to do anything.

That was fine with her. The longer the tribes dawdled, the longer the rest of them got to stay alive.

“How’s it looking out there?” called a voice from the street.

Josie lowered her spyglass and leaned over the edge of the roof, causing Mihir much consternation as she yelled back to Mary. “They’re still just standing around!”

Three floors below, Mary Good Crow shrugged and went back to her crystals, which were spread out all around her on the dirt Main Street like a cactus garden. Josie wasn’t sure what the pattern was supposed to be, but Mary had spent half the night getting the crystals around her into precisely that arrangement. She’d spent the other half distributing the rest, directing Josie’s men to place the crystals they were grumpily carrying back out of the caves along the foundations of every building in town, including the Wet Whistle.

To what purpose, again, Josie did not know, but they hadn’t heard any war drums since Mary had taken up position in the middle of her crystal garden. She’d been standing there ever since, singing to herself while different crystals shone different colors and the earth moved at random, shifting the great Medicine Rock boulders this way and that so that they looked like bobbing corks.

It was extremely odd even by Josie’s new standards, but as Mary had promised, the crystal brought them no ill effects. The Price Mining building was bejeweled with the shiny stones, but Josie’s fingers hadn’t even twinged inside her thick gloves, making her all the more determined to survive this. It simply was not fair that they should all die mere hours after finally conquering their crystal problem. No matter how high the odds were stacked against them, Josie was resolute that, if they fell today, it would not be for lack of effort.

She was about to yell down at Mr. Cotton to make triply sure the militia were all where they were supposed to be when a blast of horns sounded from the fortress on top of the hill. The great wooden gate began rising rapidly a second later, sending Josie scrambling back up the roof. She ripped her feet out of Mihir’s grasp as she hauled herself up the slippery metal, hooking her elbows over the peak at the top to keep herself from falling.

“Move the barricades so they can pass!” she yelled at her men over the still-sounding bugles, following the riders charging out of the fort with her eyes. “West road!”

To Josie’s great satisfaction, this order turned out to be unnecessary. Her militia was already in action, shoving the heavy wooden barricade out of the charging riders’ way like porters opening a door. Thanking her lucky stars that Mr. Cotton had had the forethought to put rollers at every station, Josie hiked her skirt—a common cotton skirt she’d borrowed from one of the ladies who’d fled into her caves and such a relief to wear after so many weeks of Miss Price’s impractical silks and brocades—up to her knees and straddled the roof’s sharp peak, using her now-secure position to turn around and see how the battle would play out.

The column of soldiers that had galloped out of the fortress didn’t look nearly big enough to challenge the Sioux, which meant it had to be some sort of diversion. Sure enough, the riders turned south the moment they were clear of town, giving the lined-up enemy an open shot at their sides. As if that weren’t temptation enough, one of the men broke away from the group and rode straight at the Indians, firing his pistol and bellowing at them like a drunk.

It was an obvious challenge, but Josie had yet to meet the man out here who could let an insult go unanswered. The Sioux must not have been so different in that regard, because the lone rider had scarcely made it back to his column when the warriors he’d insulted broke away and gave chase. The only true surprise was the manner in which they did so, for these men were not mounted. Watching through her glass, Josie was wondering why the Indians were bothering to run after the cavalry’s horses on foot when it happened.

All at once, between one step and the next, the warriors chasing the cavalry transformed from painted men into twelve silver wolves the size of horses. The change gave them a tremendous boost in speed, carrying them from falling behind to nipping at the cavalry’s heels. More Sioux followed, shouting a war cry as they lunged their decorated horses after the wolves.

Josie held her breath, waiting for this next group to change into animals as well. None did, but perhaps that was because they didn’t need to. Their horses were already faster than the cavalry’s, and their riders’ aim was deadly. Even though the Sioux were firing from a gallop, several soldiers at the rear of the fleeing unit toppled from their horses with crystal-tipped arrows sticking out of their chests. She was counting to see how many they’d lost when Mihir shouted at her from below. That was all the warning Josie got before cannon fire exploded over her head.

She ducked with a yelp, nearly losing her brass telescope down the roof as the whole building shook with the roar of the guns. This was nothing like the warning shot Lucas had ordered when he and the general had addressed the town a month ago. This sounded like the end of the world. The air itself hardened from the pressure of the explosions as the fort’s cannons raked the Sioux line over a mile away, much farther than Josie had known they could shoot.

Farther than the Sioux had expected either, clearly. The explosions caught them completely by surprise, sending men and horses flying like paper confetti. They couldn’t even retreat, for many of the blasts landed behind their front line, blowing huge craters in the back of the small ridge they’d gathered on.

It wasn’t enough to break such a massive force, but the blasts succeeded in sending the Sioux into confusion. Their once-sharp line collapsed into a mob as everyone scrambled to get out of the way. And over this mad chaos, the cavalry bugle sounded again, playing the famous charge as a thousand men in cavalry blue suddenly rode out from the grazing fields behind Fort Grant, circling the town in a swift arc to fall upon the scattered Sioux from the north.

Josie didn’t know much about modern battlefield tactics. All the wars she’d read about had happened in antiquity, usually amid the meddling of gods. She knew a sally when she saw it, though, and this was clearly the big one.

Other than the cannoneers reloading their weapons on top of the boulders that served as Fort Grant’s gunneries, the whole fortress looked to have been emptied into the flank of the distracted Sioux. The cavalry slammed into the scattered enemy with a roar, trampling the warriors who’d been blown off their horses and shooting the mounts out from under those who had kept their seats. Stunned by this double attack, the Sioux were left completely off-balance. They were also fewer than they should have been thanks to the first unit’s distraction, which had pulled off an astonishing number.

All of these factors together made it look as if the cavalry had just evened the odds. But shock only lasted so long, and the Sioux’s numbers advantage wasn’t the sort that could be overwhelmed by a few bad turns. The soldiers had dealt them a fantastic blow, but the Sioux’s warriors were already regrouping, sending their blue-coated enemies flying off their horses as they began shooting back with crystal arrows that shone as bright as the lightning flashing overhead. Josie was watching in horrified fascination as the tide of battle began shifting back toward the Indians when she felt a sharp discomfort in her head.

It wasn’t pain exactly. It was more like the instinctual cringe you got from hearing someone drag a nail across stone, except she hadn’t actually heard anything. She was about to dismiss the sensation as eyestrain from staring so hard through the ancient looking glass when she heard Mary shouting down below.

“What’s wrong?” Josie called, sliding back down the roof so she could see her friend. “What is?”

Mary’s face was gray with fear when she looked up. “Did you feel that?” she yelled frantically, her crystals rattling around her like frightened cattle. “It’s back!”

Logically, Josie had no idea who or what Mary was talking about. In her heart, though, she knew. She couldn’t say how or why, but the moment Mary had called her attention back to the discomfort that was still setting her teeth on edge, Josie realized that she’d felt this sensation before. It was the same wrongness she’d felt that awful night in the caves when—

Scrambling back to her knees, Josie snatched up her spyglass and started frantically searching the battlefield. Behind her, the cannons fired another volley, the shots squealing through the sky above to land with ground-shaking blasts in the southern end of the Sioux’s formation. The new explosions raised clouds of dust that made it even more difficult to see than the flashing lightning that was now constantly going off in the black clouds above, but that didn’t matter. Now that Josie knew what she was looking for, there were too many not to see.

Down in the craters, the broken pieces of men and horses the cannons had blasted apart were twitching themselves back together. So were the warriors trampled by the cavalry’s charge and the dead American soldiers that the Sioux’s arrows had slain. Everywhere Josie turned her glass, the dead were standing up and turning on their comrades just as they had back in the caves. It was all happening the same as before, which meant—

Josie whipped her view upward, tearing her spyglass off of what was now a three-way battle between the Sioux, the cavalry, and the dead, to search the surrounding grasslands. Her hands were shaking so much that her vision through the glass eyepiece looked like a porthole on a storm-tossed ship, but she didn’t dare stop. She just kept turning and turning, scouring the whole of the plains that she could see until, at last, she spotted it.

There, on a little rise just to the south of the Sioux’s main line, was the wagon she’d seen going out of town last night. Its horses were gone, making it look abandoned, which was likely why the Sioux hadn’t bothered it. Their mistake, for standing on top of it was a person with arms outstretched. A short, familiar figure wearing a black hat and a long, torn duster that Josie was now absolutely certain was Reliance Reiner.

The familiar stab of betrayal cut through her like a poisoned knife. Far to the south, someone was blowing an alarm call, but there was no need. Josie was already scrambling off the roof, tossing her spyglass to Mihir as she raced down the stairs and into the street.

“I saw her!” she shouted to Mary. “We have to get over there!”

“You can’t ride out!” Mihir cried as he chased her down the stairs. “You’ll be killed!”

“We’re all dead if someone doesn’t stop her,” Josie said, grabbing one of the horses Mr. Cotton had left ready in front of Price Mining in case the militia had to move fast to reinforce a position.

“But—”

“I am not letting this happen again!” Josie cried, hauling herself awkwardly into the unfamiliar saddle. “That monster has stolen enough from me already!”

“But there’s a battle!” Mihir yelled desperately as Mary rushed past him, clambering up into the saddle behind Josie. “Even if no one sees you riding out, one stray bullet could—”

“I know,” Josie said, grabbing the reins. “But I’m going.”

Mihir threw up his hands at her foolishness. “At least take this,” he said, pulling the pistol from his belt, the same six-shooter that used to be fixed under the bookshelf in the parlor. “And try not to die.”

“I’ll do my best,” Josie promised, tucking the heavy gun into the pocket of her work apron, which she’d only just now realized she was still wearing despite being out in public.

Good thing no one here had ever met the real Miss Price, or that mistake would have given Josie away for sure. For once, though, protecting the lie that encompassed her life was the last thing on Josie’s mind. All she cared about now was how fast she could get her horse to run, praying that her minimal skill at riding would be enough to keep them somewhat in the saddle as she and Mary burst into a gallop.

They didn’t even need to move the barricade to get out of town. Mary moved one of the boulders instead, sliding the huge stone out of their way with a flick of her hand. That she could work such miracles so easily now gave Josie hope as they plunged into the plains.

The actual fighting was still a good half mile away up the ridge, but the moment they left the shelter of the Medicine Rocks, the shrapnel of battle began flying all around them. The cannons were still blasting as fast as their teams could reload them, showering everything with rocks and debris. One particularly sharp stone slammed into Josie hard enough to slice through her canvas work skirt into her leg. This turned out to be a blessing since bending over to inspect the wound meant she missed the arrow that flew by a second later, passing straight through the air where her head had just been.

If Mary hadn’t been so short, the arrow would have hit her instead. Survivor that she was, though, she’d already flattened herself against the horse. She pushed Josie down as well when the taller girl tried to sit back up, folding her over just in time as a stray bullet whizzed past overhead.

They both stayed stuck to the horse’s back after that. For a while, they made good distance without incident. But just as they started to climb the little hill toward the wagon, Mary’s arms tightened around Josie’s waist so fast, it nearly made her retch.

“What’s the matter?” she cried, yanking the reins to the side in an effort to steer the panicking horse farther from the battle. “Did you get hit?”

“No!” Mary shouted back, her voice in a tizzy. “I just heard my sister!”

Josie blinked. Mary had mentioned she’d found her family among the Lakota, but this hardly seemed the time or place for a reunion. She was about to tell Mary she’d help her look after they dealt with Rel when the girl jumped off the horse.

“What are you doing?” Josie cried, pulling up on the reins so fast, she was nearly thrown off herself. “We’re almost there!”

“I know!” Mary yelled. “But I heard her yelling for me! I can’t just ignore her!”

Josie didn’t know how Mary could hear anything over the cannons, the Sioux’s war cries, and the ground-shaking thunder from the clouds above. But the guide’s ears had always been better than hers, and she’d already learned the hard way how impossible it was to stop Mary from answering a cry for help.

“I’ll find you,” Mary promised as she scrambled up the ridge toward the fighting. “Go stop that thing from hurting Rel and killing the rest of us!”

“How am I supposed to do that?” Josie cried, but it was no use. Mary was already running straight toward the battle, her feet sliding over the churned-up ground so smoothly, it looked as if the earth itself was helping her. Given how she’d moved the boulders earlier, the ground probably was helping, making Josie even more nervous as she turned her horse back toward Rel alone.

What was she going to do? She hadn’t needed to think about it while Mary was there. She was beloved by the crystal, and she’d fought the stranger inside Rel’s body before. Josie hadn’t done a dratted thing last time except get shot like an idiot, and she didn’t see how today would be any different. Even with Mihir’s gun and her own Midas touch, Josie didn’t believe for a second that she’d have the guts to use either against Rel.

Her face burned with shame at the thought. No wonder the Prices used to walk all over her. How much abuse would it take before Josie realized the dark figure lording over the battlefield wasn’t her friend anymore? Why had she even bothered riding out here if she couldn’t pull the trigger when it mattered?

No, she promised, tightening her gloved hands on the reins. She would not be manipulated this time. She’d already seen the truth back in the cavern, and it was even clearer now as she slid off her horse to walk the last dozen feet. Rel’s body looked more like a puppet than ever perched up on the wagon seat, its head thrown back to the sky like a dropped marionette’s.

It lifted when she got closer, fixing Josie with a cruel mockery of Rel’s intense blue eyes. She stared right back, hand going to her pocket for the gun Mihir had given her. She’d never shot a pistol before, but it didn’t seem like a complicated operation. All she had to do was pull the trigger, and all this pain would end. But when she went to point the gun at the monster wearing her friend’s face, her hand shook so badly that she nearly dropped it. She was still struggling to get a hold on it when the thing inside Rel began to laugh.

“Oh dear,” it said, hopping down off the wagon to give her a better look. “Don’t tell me you’re the one they sent to stop me?”

Don’t listen, Josie told herself as she recovered her grip on the pistol. That’s not Rel’s voice. Don’t listen.

“Go ahead,” the monster said, spreading Rel’s arms wide to give Josie a clear shot at her chest. “Kill her. You’ll be doing me a favor. It’s so taxing, being trapped in such an unpleasant vessel. I only brought her out here because she was almost at the end of her usefulness anyway.”

“Then get out and leave her alone,” Josie snapped.

“But it’s so much more satisfying if you do it,” the monster crooned, smiling at her with Rel’s cocky smirk. “She always hated me, so it’s little fun if I do it. Being killed by her faithful Josie, though? That will hurt. It will hurt her so, so much more than any punishment I could devise. So please, my dear, fire away.”

Rel’s body took a step closer, beckoning for Josie to hurry up, but her muscles felt frozen.

“You can’t do it,” the monster said, beaming triumphantly as it dropped Rel’s arms. “Look at you, Josie O’Connor. A loyal servant to the end.”

“I am nobody’s servant,” Josie snarled.

“Clearly not,” it said, shaking Rel’s head. “Someone who truly cared about others would have put Reliance out of her misery already. But you don’t care, do you? You’re going to let everyone here die to save someone who’s already lost.” The villain laughed hard at that, contorting Rel’s face into something even more horrible. “You two are so alike! Delusional to the end.”

“Stop it!” Josie screamed, stepping forward until the barrel of her pistol was pressed into Rel’s chest just as Rel’s gun had once been pressed against hers. “Stop talking about her like that or—”

“Or you’ll what?” the thing said, leaning into her gun. Taunting her. Daring her. But not knowing her, which was where the monster made its mistake, because Josie didn’t need a gun to win. She was here for Rel, not death, so she let go of her pistol, dropping it clattering on the stony ground as she rushed forward to wrap her arms like chains around Rel’s body.

Don’t spread! she willed the golden touch in her hands. Don’t spread!

It was a huge gamble, but the gift the crystal had given her was much more stable now that Mary was back. Miles more so than it had been when she’d touched Brightman. She’d also hated and feared the sheriff, which wasn’t the case at all with Reliance. Josie would never hurt her oldest friend, and she clung to that certainty like a drowning woman to a rope, willing her golden touch down with all her might as she clutched Rel inside the prison of her arms.

“What are you doing?” the thing inside Rel bellowed, struggling against Josie’s hold. “Are you mad?”

“Apparently so,” Josie said, a smile spreading across her face when the gold remained behind her gloves, right where she’d told it to stay. “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here. But I am, so you might as well bring Rel back, because I’m not letting go!”

Without the threat of her Midas touch, that wasn’t much of an ultimatum, but it did seem to be working. The monster might have taken over, but this was still Rel’s body. Her emaciated, exhausted body that had no chance against Josie’s superior height and strength. The way Josie grabbed her had pinned Rel’s arms as well, meaning the monster couldn’t reach any of her ridiculous number of guns. It tried anyway, cursing and struggling, even biting at one point, but Josie had been waiting a long time for this, and she’d be damned before she let go.

“I’m here!” she yelled in her friend’s ear. “I’ll hold him down for you! Fight it, Rel!”

“She can’t hear you, stupid creature!” the monster croaked. “Unhand me this instant or they’ll make you.”

Rel’s bloodshot eyes darted over Josie’s shoulder. She wasn’t gullible enough to look, but it ended up not mattering. She could hear the creak and crunch of broken bones as the dead began shambling toward them from the battlefield. They were slower than the ones she remembered from the Mother Lode, but that didn’t matter if she wasn’t moving, which Josie had already determined she would not. She might be stronger and bigger, but Rel was squirrelly. If she tried to move them, Rel’s body might wiggle away, so Josie stayed where she was, yelling in her friend’s ear for Rel to wake up as the dead crept closer.

Chapter 21

Rel’s fire was nearly out.

She huddled beside the last white flickers, legs pressed up against her chest in an effort to keep what was left of the warmth close. Not that it made any difference. The fire was so small now that the freezing dark it had once kept at bay was wrapped around her like a blanket, filling her lungs with its bitter, dusty wind.

Every time she tasted it, Rel wondered why she bothered. After her father had beaten her so thoroughly that last time, she hadn’t been able to get back to her body no matter what she did. She’d tried ordering, yelling, being quiet, but none of it had worked. Now that he knew she’d figured out enough of their family magic to threaten him, her dad had upped his guard beyond what she could overcome, which meant it was over.

She’d lost.

Rel dropped her forehead to her knees. She couldn’t say why she was still holding on. Nothing was left for her. Even the echoes had stopped coming, and her father was careful never to touch the crystal gun, so she had no knowledge of what was happening in the outside world. Maybe she was dead already and just didn’t know it yet, ’cause he’d taken that too.

Rel flopped onto the dusty ground, wallowing in the misery since at least that was something she could still feel. But then, just when she was sure she’d moved for the very last time, she heard a sound she’d never thought she’d hear again.

Footsteps. There were footsteps crunching out there somewhere in the dark.

Her head shot up, followed by the rest of her. It had to be another echo. They were the only ones who visited her in this place, but Rel’d already met everyone she could think of.

Looking at the shadow emerging from the dark, her best guess was that it was her brother come back again. She was actually kind of excited ’bout that. Of all the echoes, Chase’s had given the most useful advice. She was opening her mouth to call his name when the figure stepped into the tiny circle of the white firelight, and all of Rel’s infant hopes died in the cradle.

It was not her brother. It was a gunman: short and pale with eyes like dull blue glass and three deadly pistols strapped beneath his long black duster. He sneered when he saw her looking and pulled his crystal gun, the clearest sign yet that he wasn’t here to help. But scary as it was to be staring down a barrel, what really got Rel was his face. That oh-so-familiar face, twisted by sorrow and hate into a terrifying stranger’s.

“Well, well,” she said, feeling very much like one of her poor ghosts as she stared up at the black-clad figure of Tyrel Reiner. “Look who showed up.”

“Shut up,” Tyrel ordered, shoving his crystal gun at the spot between Rel’s eyes. “On your feet.”

“So that’s how it’s gonna be?” Rel said, forcing herself to stand. “Never thought you’d be the one to do it. You’re not usually the sort for a mercy killin’.”

“I ain’t here for mercy,” Tyrel growled, following her movements with his pistol. “You made me do this.”

“How so? Was I not dying fast enough for you?”

His blue eyes narrowed. “Are you really that thick? Can you not hear her calling?”

“How would I hear anything?” Rel snapped with a welcome flash of anger. “I’m stuck down here, remember?”

“And that’s why it’s gotta be done,” Tyrel said, cocking the hammer. “I was saving this for the old man, but if you can’t even listen when someone’s risking their life to shout in your ear, then you deserve this more than he does.”

“What nonsense are you talking?” Rel asked, legs shaking. “I already told you, I can’t hear nothing down here! He locked me out!”

“Only ’cause you let him,” Tyrel snapped, pushing back his black hat to show Rel her own bony, sneering face. “Why do you think you’re stuck down here? It ain’t ’cause you’re bad at his cursed art. If anything, you’re too good. That’s why he’s so comfortable in your head. You’re cold and filthy, just like him.”

“Shut up,” Rel snarled, her voice ringing with power, which only made Tyrel angrier.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” he said, pointing his pistol back at her face. “You’re the reason this happened! If you hadn’t snatched his ghost and made his damn gun, I wouldn’t even exist, and all those people I killed would still be alive. Josie and Mary would be happy and alive, but you don’t give a shit ’bout them.”

“Shut up!” Rel screamed. “I didn’t want to do any of that crap! I had to do it because—”

“’Cause of what?” he taunted, shoving her down hard with the nose of his gun. “Your family? The poor bastards who were already dead?”

Rel lowered her eyes, and Tyrel’s lip curled into a snarl. “Dad wasn’t the only one willing to do whatever it took to get what he wanted. You sold out everything good in your life for a pair of lousy old ghosts that were already torn to bits! You knew they were gone, knew there was nothing left, but did you stop? No! You had to do something ’cause you felt guilty, so you picked up right where Dad left off. You could’ve left him dead on the floor and ended all of it. Instead, you put him in a gun and carried him in your damn pocket all the way to Medicine Rocks, which was exactly where he wanted to go!”

“I had to,” Rel sobbed. “I had to save—”

“You didn’t have to do crap-all!” Tyrel snapped, hitting her upside the head with his gun to send her sprawling in the ash. “You saw what he did with just that little bit of crystal Sam Price sent him. You knew what was coming. You were just too selfish to mind. You didn’t care ’bout the people you shot nor the ghosts you bullied out nor the souls your cursed gun shattered past repair. You didn’t even hesitate before screwing Josie over, 'cause the only person Rel Reiner cares about is her goddamn self.” He kicked ash in her face. “No wonder you took so quick to his black magic. You’re both cut from the same rotten cloth!”

“Shut up!” Rel screamed, launching out of the dirt to grab the gunman by his scrawny throat. “I ain’t him! I’ll never be him!”

“Damn right you won’t,” he said, kicking her off him. “At least Reiner has a grand plan! Your shit idea to save your family’s souls wouldn’t even have worked. You’re a failure from start to finish, so go ahead and die!”

He punched her in the face so hard she saw stars, dropping her to the dirt. His boot came next, hammering her ribs until they cracked. Rel didn’t know if it was possible to break bones in this place, but the blows he was raining on her sure felt like the real thing. She knew she needed to get him off her, to fight back, but her body was having a hard time finding the will, ’cause he wasn’t wrong. She was selfish. She had done all those things. The only thing that had kept her going down here was the thought of beating her dad, but Rel couldn’t even manage that, so maybe it was time to go. At least then she couldn’t hurt anyone else.

With that last thought, Rel collapsed into the ash. Tyrel was still kicking her, yelling and shouting like the embodiment of hate he’d always been, but she did nothing to stop him. It was only fitting that he be the one to finish her off, ’cause Reliance Reiner had been dead since the day she’d made him up.

But then, just before she was buried completely, Rel saw something that gave her pause. Funny enough, it was Tyrel that did it. He’d been stepping back to give her a good stomp on the head when his boot had landed square in the middle of the white fire. The little flames, already so low, sputtered wildly at the intrusion, nearly going out right then. The fire came back when he took his foot away, but it was only half as bright as it’d been before, and that made her furious.

Not because she was scared of dying. Lord knew it wasn’t that. Rel was mad ’cause Josie had worked hard on that fire. She’d raked the ashes with her bare hands and burned her fingers trying to keep it strong. Now this hateful idiot was stomping all over her efforts, and Rel couldn’t stand it.

“Stop.”

“I’ll stop when you do,” Tyrel snarled, kicking her in the gut. “Just shut up and die already!”

That was what she’d been planning, but Rel was just contrary enough that hearing him tell her so changed her mind. Not about herself. She was still a selfish piece of shit. But if she gave up and died here, she’d never have the chance to be anything else. She’d never get to tell Josie she was sorry. Never get to tell Volchitsa to jump down a mineshaft. Never go back to the cabin and see if she couldn’t use what Chase had taught her to set her family free.

All of a sudden, the future that had looked so empty was filled with heaps and heaps of things she’d never get to do. And to no one’s greater surprise than her own, Rel found that she wasn’t ready to give up yet. It wasn’t precisely hope, but when Tyrel’s foot came down for the next kick, Rel’s hand shot out of the ash and caught it, throwing him backward as she surged up from the ground.

“Get back in your grave!” he hollered.

“No!” Rel hollered back, spitting the ash out of her mouth. “I’m done with graves, and I’m done with you! I don’t need your hate to get shit done anymore, so get out of my head.”

“You can’t send me away,” Tyrel said with a sneer, pulling his crystal gun and shoving it in her face. “I am you.”

“You’re not me,” Rel said, staring down the barrel. “You’re a shell I made to hide inside, but I’m done with that.”

“You don’t get to ‘be done,’” he snapped. “I’ll always be here!”

“Then stop throwing punches and help me fix this, you idiot!” Rel yelled at him. “Or do you want to die down here too?”

The question was supposed to be rhetorical, but the look on Tyrel’s face made Rel step back. Oh Lord, he did want to die. That was why he’d come. This wasn’t a murder. It was a suicide.

“Aren’t we a pair?” Rel said, shaking her head as she reached a dirty hand out to her other self. “Come on.”

“Come on where?” he asked, his voice suddenly as full of despair as hers had been. “He beat us. There’s nowhere to go.”

“Not with that attitude,” Rel said, looking up at the dark. “Chase already told us what we need to do. I thought I couldn’t handle it, but I see now that I was only putting in half an effort. I’ve been trying to do everything solo, but I’ve never been alone.” She placed a hand over her chest. Over her heart, just as her mother had done. “There’s always been people to help me, I was just too mad and sad and stubborn to let them. I finally get that now, so why don’t we try this again?”

“Try what again?”

“Getting free,” Rel said with a smile. “I don’t know if we’ll make it, but I bet if we stop kicking each other’s legs out, we’ll have a better time.”

Tyrel looked down at their feet. Two pairs of the same scuffed boots planted toe to toe in the black ash. Then, slowly, like it terrified him to do so, he turned the crystal gun around and offered the grip to Rel.

“Oh no,” she said, shying away. “I want nothing of his.”

“It ain’t his,” Tyrel insisted. “It’s yours. Everything in this place is, so just take it already.”

Chase had said something very similar, which was the only reason Rel obeyed. But as her fingers curled around the hateful gun’s familiar bone-inlaid grip, something changed. Maybe it was the pistol. Maybe it was her hand. Maybe it was everything. It happened too quickly for Rel to say which, but by the time Tyrel let go of the barrel, she wasn’t holding her father’s crystal monstrosity anymore.

Something new was sitting in her hand. A pistol made of nothing, shimmering like a ghost in her grip. Rel could see right through it to her dirty palm, and yet the weapon felt heavy against her fingers. Weighty, like an important decision.

What that meant, Rel had no idea. All of this was too damn weird for her. But when she looked up to ask Tyrel what the hell he’d handed her, the gunman was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the white fire or the freezing black ash desert. Rel was back in the plain old empty darkness where all of this had started, and standing in front of her just like he had the night he’d taken her over was her bastard of a father.

“So,” Bernard said, flicking his blue eyes to the ghostly gun in Rel’s hands. “You finally figured it out. Took you long enough.”

“I’ve always been stubborn,” Rel said, heart pounding as she realized she was speaking in her own, real voice again. “That’s something I don’t get from you.”

“No,” he agreed, looking down his sharp nose. “That you inherited from your mother, along with your extraordinary power of denial.”

She yanked her new gun up to point it at his face. “Don’t you talk about my mother.”

“Please,” Bernard said dismissively. “You don’t even know what that thing does.”

“Wanna find out?” Rel offered, adding her other hand to help support the see-through weapon’s surprising weight.

“I do, actually, but not the way you’d like.” He pulled his own crystal-studded weapon and pointed it at her chest. “Give me the gun, Reliance.”

Rel tightened her grip, and her father sighed. “You can’t bluff me. Unlike whatever ridiculousness you’ve conjured, we both know what this weapon does.” He wiggled the crystal gun with a mocking smile. “It’d be a shame for you to finally master your soul only to get it blown to pieces.”

“Now who’s bluffing?” Rel asked, holding her weapon steady. “If shooting me were easy, you would’ve done it already. I bet you can’t shoot that thing ’cause destroying my soul while you’re in it would get you caught in the blast.”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Bernard said, stepping a fraction closer. “Last chance, child. Put down your weapon, and we’ll discuss this like civilized people.”

“You ain’t never been civil in your life,” Rel snarled, pulling the trigger only to get taken off her feet. Hot damn, and here she’d thought the crystal gun was hard to fire. Her new pistol kicked like a team of mules, sending her sprawling onto her back. She scrambled back up a second later, dazed from the blast but not so dazed that she’d missed what had happened.

Just like the crystal gun, her ghost pistol had lit up when she’d fired it. But while her dad’s gun just flashed its crystals, Rel’s weapon had burst into literal fire, its transparent body filling with the same white flames she’d been sitting next to for God knew how long. They spewed from the barrel, covering her dad’s body in fire that didn’t seem to hurt him at all. For a horrible moment, Rel was worried that her shot had done nothing, and then she saw it.

There, coming out of her father’s shoulder like a wisp of smoke, was a ghost. Not a random ghost either. It was her grandfather, her dad’s dad. She’d been so little when he died that Rel scarcely remembered him, but that was definitely his face lit up with the bright reflection of the hereafter. His form fell apart as Rel watched, the bits floating off to wherever it was ghosts went after she released them. The whole thing took less than two heartbeats, but when it was over, her father stumbled like she’d shot him with actual lead, and Rel looked down at her gun in awe.

She’d freed her grandfather’s ghost. That was what the white fire did! Her pistol didn’t shatter spirits. It sent them on!

Relief stronger than any joy she’d ever felt crashed into Rel like a floodwater. Thank God she hadn’t given up! She’d almost surrendered everything, but with this gun, everything felt possible again. She could free Momma and Chase’s souls at last! She could free everybody, including herself, ’cause if this pistol really did come from her, then Rel’s magic wasn’t like her father’s after all.

Her dad must’ve figured it out at the same time, ’cause the next thing he did was shoot his own weapon at her chest. Too bad for him, Rel already knew how his gun worked. Between the few seconds it took for the crystals to get bright and her dad always going for the body shot ’cause his aim wasn’t good enough to hit anything else, she had just enough time to roll out of the way ’fore the pulse of white light burned through the spot where she’d been.

He fired again immediately. It was proof of how scared he was that he didn’t even curse her. He was just shooting, sweat pouring down his face from the effort of releasing so many blasts one after another. Here again, though, Rel knew his limits. He must’ve been practicing since he’d kicked her down—she’d never been able to fire the crystal gun more than twice in a day without getting knocked on her back—but no matter how good you got, those shots weren’t free. Given how much her own gun kicked, she’d need a stable position before she shot him again. He wasn’t giving her that yet, but if he kept shooting like that, it was only a matter of time. All she had to do was read his movements, stay ahead, and wait for him to tire out.

“Look at you run,” he huffed as his glowing shot missed yet again. “I know people sink low after defeat, but I never expected you to turn coward.”

“And I never expected you’d be so bad at this,” Rel replied, keeping away from his attacks nimble as a hare. “You’re always getting onto me for not listening, but how could you live in my head for six months and still not know how to shoot?”

He answered with a blast of murderous light that nearly took off her nose. She was already watching to see which way she’d need to jump for the next shot when her father suddenly threw down his gun.

“Enough of this,” he snarled, shoving out his bare hand instead. Rel was about to ask if he was gonna try gesturing her to death when she felt that awful pressure grab her up again just like he used to down by the fire.

“I had hoped we could settle this reasonably,” he said, turning his hand like a puppeteer as he steered Rel’s captured body closer. “Shooting you would have been simpler for both of us, but you never could do things the easy way. You always had to be difficult, and now you leave me no choice.”

“I ain’t afraid of you,” Rel grunted, struggling against his invisible hold. “Go on and crush me! I survived it before.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill you before,” Bernard informed her with a smile. “Did you know there are three ways to control a body not your own? You can dominate the original soul and ride it like a horse, which is what I’ve been doing. You can kill the soul and puppet the empty corpse, which is what I was trying to do. Or you can subsume the soul, making it a part of your own so the body is no longer able to tell the difference.”

“That’s what you did to the other Reiners, isn’t it?” Rel snarled, doing her best to kick him. “You ate their souls so you could keep on living in their bodies. You stole their lives to extend your own, you greedy son of a bitch!”

“I prefer to think of it as being practical,” Bernard said with a shrug. “One can take notes every hour of the day, but there’s just no replacing the total knowledge of a living man once he passes on. That’s the tragedy I created this process to avoid, so that none of our knowledge would be lost to death ever again. I had no intention of adding you to my library, but after your little snip earlier, I realized you weren’t entirely useless. I could benefit from learning to shoot, so here we go.”

The awfullest sensation swelled up in Rel as he finished. It felt like someone had poked a hole in her stomach and was sucking her out through it like water through a straw. As she drained out, Rel realized she could actually feel her father waiting below like a great hungry maw ready to gobble her up. He was so strong and old, she couldn’t begin to fight him. It was just like when he’d crushed her before, but Rel wasn’t the sad sack she’d been then. She had things to live for now, things that were bigger than his greed, and she gave him hell the whole way down. She was planning to keep on kicking once she got inside to see if she couldn’t claw her way free again like Little Red Riding Hood cutting herself out of the wolf’s belly when her father suddenly stopped.

Rel stopped too, confused. She’d put up a hell of a fight, but it hadn’t been that good. Something else must’ve happened, but when she looked around to see what, her eyes just about bugged out of her head.

There, wrapped around her father’s belly like a belt pulled too tight, were two little soot-stained arms. They were fainter than the last time Rel had seen them, but there was no mistake. Those were Josie’s arms, and they were holding her daddy still for Tyrel, who was coming in from the side with a left hook.

The blow sent Bernard spinning. He’d been so caught up with draining Rel, he hadn’t even noticed the fist coming at him, leaving himself flat-footed for the punch. His grip on Rel slipped as he reeled, dropping her in a gasping pile at his feet. She was still struggling to get her breath when her brother appeared to help her up.

“What are you doing here?” she said, or tried to. She was hyperventilating too hard to actually form the words, but Chase had always been the quickest in their family, and he caught her drift.

“We’re always with you, stupid,” he teased, sliding his arm under her shoulders. He was bracing to pull her to her feet when her father suddenly stopped staggering and whirled with purpose, firing his soul-killing gun straight at Chase.

“No!”

The scream ripped out of her like a barbed hook, but it was far too late. The shot had already pierced her brother’s chest. He would light up from the inside next, and then his soul would burst into a thousand pieces too small for anyone to put back together. Oh Lord, she’d gotten him killed again. But just as Rel was about to turn on her father with a roar of rage, her mind finally caught up to what her eyes were seeing, which wasn’t Chase exploding. He looked exactly as he had before the shot, much to the consternation of their father.

“How?” Bernard demanded, staring at his dead son in red-faced disbelief. “How?”

“Because I’m not a soul,” Chase replied with no small amount of smugness. “I’m an echo. We all are. We live inside Reliance now. So long as she remembers us, we can never die no matter what you do.”

“And we’re not going to let you hurt her,” said Josie, raising her little fists.

Rel’s eyes filled with tears. It felt so foolish, all of them standing up against something so much older and meaner than themselves with nary a weapon to be seen, but her father was the one who scrambled back. He looked like he was gonna make a run for it when Tyrel caught him by the collar. He was dragging him back toward Rel as her mother came out of the shadows, joining them with an object that glowed bright as the moon carried in her cupped hands.

“Here, Relly,” she said, passing Rel the ghostly gun she hadn’t even realized she’d dropped.

“You sure?” Rel asked in a small voice, ’cause as much as she knew her mother hated him, she was a gentle soul, and Reiner was still her husband. She’d been faithful to the man for twenty years, but there was no hesitation in Prudence’s voice when she told her daughter, “End it.”

“Wait!” her father cried as Rel took her weapon. “Let’s not be hasty! I didn’t know it was possible to maintain echoes strong enough to fight a living soul. If you can do that, you’re truly the strongest of my children. There’s so much more I can teach you, Reliance! So much more you can still become! You’re a fool if you throw that away!”

He looked at her pleadingly, but Rel shook her head.

“I want nothing of yours,” she said, aiming the glowing barrel of her ghostly pistol between his quivering eyes. “Rest in peace, you son of a bitch.”

The white fire exploded brighter than ever. Rel wasn’t sure if that was ’cause the flames had built up while he was squeezing her or if the gun itself knew it would have to go big. Either way, the pearlescent explosion engulfed her father entirely, filling the darkness in with a chorus of voices Rel knew she’d never heard before but still sounded so familiar. It was only when they started coming out of him, though, that she knew why.

They were Reiners. Generations upon generations of Reiners all gobbled up by the same greed. Rel swore she even saw her dad’s face in there, making her wonder if the man she’d always thought of as her father wasn’t actually Bernard Reiner at all. Maybe her father’s real soul had been eaten long ago, another log on the pyre that was the Reiner family.

He certainly wasn’t the last of them. The soul that looked like Bernard Reiner had long since gone on to the light, but the ghosts were still pouring out of her dad’s body like mice from a burning building. He sobbed as they left, wailing about generations of lost knowledge.

Rel couldn’t care less about that, but it was unsettling to see him cry. She’d never known him to show any emotion except anger, scorn, and smug delight at the expense of others. He wept in earnest now, though, which she supposed made sense. Who else would the old bastard cry for except himself?

It was almost enough to make her pity him. Oh, how he would have hated that. Too bad it looked like she’d never get to tell him, ’cause his body was already rising out of sight.

No, Rel realized with a start. He wasn’t rising. She was falling back into her own flesh.

“Momma!” she cried, flinging out her hand. But her mother and Chase were already fading above her into the dark. Josie was up there, too, her little mouth shouting something Rel couldn’t hear anymore.

She tried yelling back, but her throat was choked with air—real air!—forcing its way into her lungs. It was hot and dry and dusty, but it felt like heaven in her chest, ’cause it meant she was alive. Same for the pain that burst through her body. Rel had no idea what her father had been doing, but every muscle she had throbbed with its own ache. She’d never felt so battered in all her life, but she welcomed it with open arms, hugging the hurt close to her chest as her eyes filled with light and her ears with sound. The very real, very loud sound of Josie screaming into her ear.

“Rel!”

“I’m here!” she yelled, reeling and blinded by the suddenly too-bright light. She was back in the world of the living, and she was alive! Josie was alive as well, though she scarcely looked it. Every bit of her was covered in dust, and she had bags under her eyes like she hadn’t slept for a week of Sundays. Rel was about to ask her what the devil had happened when she began to bawl.

“It’s you!” she sobbed, tightening the embrace Rel suddenly realized she’d woken up inside. “You’re back!”

“I’m back,” Rel said, sinking into Josie’s arms. It was about the only thing she could do with her friend grabbing on like that. But Rel didn’t mind a hard embrace after what she’d just been through, and honestly, Josie looked like she could use one too.

“Good to see you again,” she said when her friend finally let her go. “The right-now you, I mean.”

“Pardon?” Josie asked, wiping her nose on her handkerchief, which was just as dusty as everything else.

“Never mind,” Rel said, reaching down to check her weapons, all of which were still right where she’d left them on her belt, including her father’s gun. Snatching her fingers back like she’d been burned, Rel used her filthy shirt to pluck the crystal monstrosity out of its holster and moved it to her duster pocket instead. When the cursed weapon was safely away from her person, she turned to ask Josie what the devil was going on and why they were standing in a field in what appeared to be a dust storm. Before she could get any of that out, though, something exploded to her left.

“What the—”

They were standing in the middle of a goddamn battlefield. The blast had blown off some of the dust, revealing cavalry and Sioux trying to kill each other not two dozen feet away. Up on the ridge where the explosion had come from, men in Lakota war paint were singing to storm clouds that hung overhead, directing the lightning with points of their fingers. One huge bolt struck the top of the cavalry fortress as she watched, blasting a cannon clean off its high perch and sending the crew flying.

But it wasn’t just the war she saw. Down on the ground, men from both sides who’d been knocked off their horses were hacking at their comrades’ dead bodies with hatchets and knives. It was so bloody, so terrible, Rel’s horrified mind didn’t catch up to what must’ve happened here until she spotted the wagon full of cursed black crystal behind her.

“That son of a bitch,” she whispered, wishing she could shoot him again. “No wonder he didn’t care about the Sioux or the cavalry. He raised the dead on both sides. He was trying to get everybody killed!”

“But that didn’t happen,” Josie said, wiping her eyes on her filthy handkerchief. “Because you came back!”

“I did better than that,” Rel said, chest heaving. “I killed him. I killed the bastard!”

“What bastard?”

Rel snapped her mouth shut. She’d never told Josie that her father’s ghost was riding in her head. Never told her most of what she had a right to know, actually, but that was fine.

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said, giving her friend a huge smile. “He’s dead, and we’re free!”

“Wonderful,” Josie said, grabbing her hand. “Let’s get out of here before something hits us.”

That was probably a good idea. “You got a horse?”

“Just down the hill,” Josie replied, pulling her down the rocky slope. “Unless that blast scared him away. Mary’s around somewhere as well. We should find her first before—”

A huge noise exploded across the battlefield. It was so big, Rel thought a cannonball had landed right on top of them, but she wasn’t getting blown apart. Quite the opposite. Rel felt incredible, like her body was being carried on a wave of sound. Not a noise through her ears nor a voice in her head as her father’s had been. Even though she could feel it rumbling through the dirt under her boots, this was a sound of the heart. An enormous, beautiful, glorious note that echoed to the heavens as if the whole world had suddenly turned into a great golden bell.

Chapter 22

“Don’t stop firing!” Lucas yelled from the top of the rickety tower. “If hitting their heads is too hard, shoot for the limbs! Knock out their movement!”

It was good advice, but he might as well have been shouting orders at the wind. The moment his men had seen the dead, everything had collapsed into chaos. Even his battle-hardened soldiers were no match for the terror of seeing blown-apart men crawl themselves back together. Even Lucas, who’d seen this before, was barely keeping a handle on his panic, and that was when he wasn’t looking at the giant wolf that was still climbing up the tower with its yellow eyes locked on him.

“We’d better bloody do something!” Chaucer yelled up at him from the iron pulley housing where he and his fellow marksman Tom were taking cover. “That wolf’s damn near bulletproof!”

“We could make for the warehouse,” Tom suggested in the too-tight, too-fast voice of a man about to break. “It’s not that far a jump.”

He fired another bullet as he finished. Like most of his shots so far, it hit the wolf dead between the eyes, but the monster didn’t even seem to notice. It just shook off the broken bit of crystal shot and kept climbing.

“The warehouse is about to be overrun!” Lucas said, nodding at the stone building containing most of his company, which was slowly being surrounded in a forest of the creeping dead. “We have to break them out!”

“What about ourselves?” Chaucer cried, his hands shaking so badly that he dropped the bullet he’d been attempting to reload into his gun. “These bastards aren’t as fast as the ones in the caves, but we’ve got a goddamn ocean of them to wade through, and have you forgotten the bloody wolf?”

Lucas had not forgotten. He just didn’t know what he was going to do. The only thing that still seemed to be going their way was that only one of the wolf warriors was left.

Naturally, of course, it was the biggest and scariest of their number. He also seemed stuck on Lucas specifically, following the lieutenant’s movements like a furry arrow as he pulled his body up the wooden tower by his claws. Lucas hadn’t thought wolves could climb, but no one had told this one that, and if he kept at it for much longer, they’d be eaten before the dead could be a bother.

Cursing loudly, Lucas leaned off the tower to scan the battlefield below. He was looking for something, anything he could use to get them out of this situation. He was hoping for an unexploded munition, but what he found was even better.

“Chaucer!” he yelled, snapping his fingers to get his sergeant’s attention off the wolf’s giant teeth, which were now very close to the metal pulley house the snipers had been using as a nest. When his second finally looked up, Lucas pointed at the far edge of the field, where their excessive use of TNT had churned the dirt into pockmarks and craters. It had looked even worse a few minutes ago, but now that the dead had all gotten up and the dust had settled, Lucas could see a small, barely man-sized hole in the bottom of one of the old tunnels they’d used to hide their ordnance.

“It’s an entrance to the caves!” Lucas cried excitedly.

“Can’t be,” Chaucer said, struggling up the metal pulley case to get away from the wolf, which was now nearly in striking distance. “Whole reason Nutty Ned dug all those tunnels was ’cause he couldn’t find the mines. We can’t have just blasted our way into them by accident. Our luck’s not that good!”

“I’d say we’re owed some good luck,” Lucas replied, sliding past Tom, who’d already made it to the top of the tower, so he could pull Chaucer up to join them. “If that hole really does go to the mines, then we’ve just found our exit. Go down there and check it out!”

Chaucer’s already wide eyes widened farther still. “Go down? You mean past the wolf?”

“The wolf you can leave to me,” Lucas said, dropping to the top of the pulley case.

“What the devil are you gonna do?!”

Rather than waste the time it would take explaining his plan, Lucas just showed them, drawing the curved officer’s saber from his belt and hacking it into the weathered wooden brace that held up the iron pulley. It wasn’t as flimsy as Lucas would have liked, but it still gave way beneath his sword, allowing Lucas to chop the pine away in chunks while the pulley’s dangling weight groaned beneath it.

Chaucer, clever fellow that he was, spotted his lieutenant’s intent after only a few strokes. He joined in at once, yelling for Tom to help as he began banging the butt of his rifle on the iron bolts that held the pulley in position. Just a few feet below, the wolf had already reached the ledge Chaucer and Tom had been firing from earlier. For once, though, his ferocity worked against him. As he was bracing his paws against the tower legs to squeeze his large head around the pulley house to snap at them, Lucas cut away the final chunk of brittle pine that held the whole thing together.

The crack that followed was sweeter than any music. The whole tower shuddered as the beam gave way, dropping the three-foot-tall iron pulley meant to haul Nutty Ned’s riches out of the mines straight onto the wolf’s precariously braced body. He howled with rage when it hit him, swiping his paws at the tarred logs in an attempt to catch his fall, but it did no good. Even his four-inch-long claws were no match for hundreds of pounds of metal crashing down on his torso. He fell like a leaf caught beneath a boulder, crashing all the way down to the ground below.

He hit with a bone-breaking crunch. For a soaring moment, Lucas thought that was the end. But when he looked down through the empty space the falling pulley had left down the center of the tower, which was now starting to list alarmingly to the left, the wolf was already pushing back to his feet.

“What the hell is he made of?” Chaucer shouted, his voice shaking. “Bloody die already!”

Alas, the monster did not oblige. He was already digging his claws into the tower’s base to start climbing toward them again when Lucas’s company caught their second stroke of luck for the day.

No sooner had the wolf began to haul himself up than he was pulled right back down again by the dead warriors swarming the base of the tower. He snarled when they grabbed him, biting their arms from their broken bodies. But for all his savagery, though, he was only one, and they were many. No matter how the wolf bit and clawed, he couldn’t beat the tide that pulled him under, swallowing him snarling and snapping into the mass of his former comrades.

“Blimey,” Chaucer whispered, eyes wide. “I almost feel sorry for—”

He didn’t even get to finish before the wolf burst free, leaping from the pile of the dead back onto the tower. He shook the blood from his coat as he landed, his yellow eyes gleaming like embers as they locked on Lucas once more.

“Go!” Lucas shouted, pushing Chaucer and Tom toward the rope that still hung from the wreckage that had been their sniper’s perch.

“What about you?” Chaucer cried, digging in his heels above the rope Tom was already scrambling down. “What about him?”

He stabbed his finger at the wolf that was climbing the tower faster than ever before, but Lucas shook his head. “It’s clearly me he’s after. You two go. I’ll buy you time.”

Chaucer’s dark brows knitted into a furious scowl. “But—”

“Go, sergeant!” Lucas snarled. “That’s an order!”

His friend looked madder than Lucas had ever seen him, but he went, cursing Lucas all the way down to where Tom was taking advantage of the hole the wolf’s escape had made in the ranks of the dead. Satisfied that his men were as provided for as could be managed, Lucas turned back to the wolf climbing up the other side. For whatever reason, its eyes were still on him, so Lucas took it upon himself to keep them that way, swinging down from his log to drop himself directly into the wolf’s path.

“You there,” he said, waving his arms to keep the beast from looking at Chaucer and Tom. “Do you speak English? Parlez-vous français?”

The wolf answered with a lunge, snapping his jaws around the timber where Lucas’s foot was braced. He snatched it away at the last second, scrambling higher up the tower like a monkey fleeing a jaguar.

“Please listen!” he cried, more to keep him distracted from the others than out of any actual anticipation of success. “I know we are at war, but I am not the enemy you should be worried about. There is a greater threat to both of us here, an evil man who manipulates the dead like puppets! He will kill the rest of your warriors while you chase after me, but if we put down our arms and work together, we can—”

“Let him come,” the wolf growled in decent English, nearly causing Lucas to miss his next handhold in in surprise. “I will deal with the Death Singer when you are dead. I will fight all of you! I have no fear of your dark magics, wasichu!”

“But I’m not the one doing this!” Lucas cried, scrambling around to the other side of the tower before the wolf could take a bite out of him. “I don’t even want to fight you!”

“But I want to fight you,” the wolf rumbled, his yellow eyes shining like lanterns in the blowing dust. “You killed hundreds of our warriors just now. Taking your head will bring me glory such as will be spoken of for lifetimes yet to come!”

He lunged again as he finished, but Lucas had a plan this time. The moment the wolf moved, he let go of the tower, sliding down the wooden posts using only the friction of his boots. It was an old sailor’s trick meant to be done on ropes, not tarred pine, but gravity was always eager to pull you down. It tore his poor boots to shreds, but Lucas managed to drop ten feet before he was forced to use his hands again. This put him well below the wolf, who seemed far less certain about climbing down than he had about climbing up.

Seeing he’d earned a reprieve, Lucas turned to see how his sergeant was faring. It was supposed to be a mere glance, but his quick look turned into a panicked search when Chaucer and Tom were nowhere to be seen. Hoping that was because they were crawling out of sight and not because they’d been torn to pieces, Lucas called their names. He was about to try again when Chaucer’s head suddenly popped out of the tunnel Lucas had spotted before.

“It’s good!” he cried, waving his rifle. “You were right, Lieutenant! It does go to the caves! Not sure which part, but—”

“Get everyone down there!” Lucas yelled, turning back to the giant wolf, who’d nearly reached him again. “Chaucer, take word to the men in the shed. Tom, you go to the carriages. Get everyone who’s still alive to break through to the mines! I’ll keep the wolf busy and meet you inside!”

Chaucer yelled back something that sounded like “yes, sir,” but Lucas was too busy dodging knife-sharp claws to listen. The wolf had threaded his body through the tower’s wooden lattice and was now swiping down at Lucas with his paws. Too late, Lucas realized his mistake in dropping lower. With the wolf above him and the dead swarming the ground, he’d given himself nowhere to run. All he could do was go ’round and ’round the tower, trusting the heavy wooden braces to protect him from the wolf’s flashing teeth.

“We don’t have to kill each other!” he cried. Trying again, because what else could he do? “I have nothing against your people! We don’t have to—”

The wolf bit down on the log he was holding on to, nearly taking off Lucas’s hand in the process. “Your kind lie as easy as you breathe,” he growled around the tarred pine. “But it doesn’t matter. I don’t care who you hate or why you are here. All I care is that you die.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!” Lucas yelled as he scrambled away. “Your warriors are dead! There’s no one left to witness your victory, so killing me gets you nothing!”

“I will know,” the wolf said, letting go of the wood to prowl after Lucas once again. “The sky will know. The wind and the grass and the earth will know that the wasichu’s champion was slain by Running Wolf, the greatest warrior ever born!”

“I’m really not that good,” Lucas insisted as he backed away. “Unfair tricks, that’s all I’m good for. The real fighting is back by the town. If you want glory, that’s where you should go. We’re just the—”

He cut off with a shout as Running Wolf’s jaws finally found him, ripping out a piece of his arm before he could yank it away.

“You talk too much,” the wolf growled, licking Lucas’s blood off his teeth as the lieutenant clutched his wounded arm. “Everyone does. But I don’t care about Bear Woman or Sitting Bull or any of them. I am only here to hunt, and you are the one I have chosen as prey. Nothing else matters, so come to me, wasichu. Come and meet your death!”

He shot forward, breaking the six-inch timber Lucas had been hiding behind in half. The impact threw Lucas off the tower before he caught himself on the rope he’d hung for Chaucer. The wolf’s swiping claws cut straight through it a second later, but not before Lucas looped a knee over the log below, saving himself from falling by hanging upside down.

The wolf snorted at the sight. “You scamper like a squirrel.”

“Then you should let me go,” Lucas huffed as he pulled himself back up. A difficult maneuver when you only had one good arm left. “Where’s the glory in a wolf killing a squirrel?”

“But you are not a squirrel,” Running Wolf said, circling around above him. “You’re a killer, like me. Just look at how good you are at it.”

He flicked an ear toward the stone warehouse behind them. Wary of a trap, Lucas didn’t dare look away. Only when the wolf had stayed stubbornly put for a good minute did he finally risk a glance, and what he saw in that brief second fanned his dying hopes back to life.

Somehow, Chaucer had done it. He’d made it to the stone warehouse and was rallying their forces for a charge. The other soldiers, their discipline restored now that they had an escape plan, responded with a beautiful display of two-line infantry firing with half going down on their knees while the rest shot over their heads. The resulting sweep of bullets mowed the dead down like grass, clearing the way as the soldiers burst from the building, following Chaucer’s frantic shouting to the torn-up tunnel that led down to the caves.

“Such efficiency,” Running Wolf growled, his voice nearly in Lucas’s ear when the lieutenant finally yanked his head back around. “This is why Bear Woman is wrong. She thinks your kind must be driven from the plains for us to be strong, but before the white man came with his guns and his armies, there were none in all the tribes who could stand against me. With you here, though, I can hunt to my heart’s content. I could kill you by the score every day of my life, and the stream of your numbers would never run dry!” His lips curled back to show the massive wall of his sharp teeth. “With you, I can live as I was meant to! As she made me to be! No longer must I waste my days in idleness and the dull blood of deer and buffalo! Why would I ever want the white man gone? So long you are here, I can hunt men forever!”

He sounded truly happy as he said this, his yellow eyes bright with a violent joy that turned Lucas’s blood to cold water. He’d thought the wolf was just more proof of the Lakota’s superior control over crystal, but he was wrong. This wasn’t a man wielding a weapon. He was the weapon, and he wasn’t going to stop until there were no more of them left to kill.

With that, Lucas changed his plan entirely. Chaucer and Tom had done a marvelous job rallying their soldiers down to the tunnel. Chaucer himself was currently holding the entrance, keeping the dead at bay with a fortune in explosive crystal bullets while the rest of their company hurried down to safety. Seconds later, the last of their men ran past, and Chaucer looked up to find his lieutenant already watching him.

“Come on!” he shouted, shooting his rifle at Running Wolf in a failed attempt to drive him back. “It’s time to go! Get inside!”

“No!” Lucas yelled back. “You go, and seal the tunnel behind you!”

Chaucer’s face grew furious. “I am not leaving you behind!”

“If I go, he’ll follow!” Lucas cried, moving to put a heavy wooden support beam between himself and Running Wolf as the warrior repositioned. “If he gets into those tunnels, he’ll kill us all. I have a better shot at surviving up here, so take our men and get out!”

Chaucer answered that with a string of profanity, but he obeyed his lieutenant’s command, shooting the last of the dead off the dirt surrounding the tunnel before hopping down the hole after the others. More gunfire followed, and then the ground rumbled as Chaucer collapsed the already loose earth behind them, burying the pursuing corpses in the process.

“You are brave to stay behind,” Running Wolf observed as the dirt slid over the tunnel. “I’m glad. It will make your defeat all the more glorious.”

“You haven’t killed me yet,” Lucas said, crouching down for strength before leaping up the tower, putting on a burst of speed as he scrambled past the wolf.

“Catch me if you can, chien idiot!” he taunted, swinging up another rung. “I was a cabin boy on a four-mast ship when I was six. I can do this all day!”

The wolf snarled and leaped, but Lucas moved faster still. Now that he had no one but himself to worry about, he was free to focus on the chase, driving himself to bigger and bigger jumps as he used all the skills he’d picked up over a lifetime of sailing to keep distance between himself and his death. It worked far longer than it should have, but Running Wolf must not have found chasing him to be as glorious as anticipated. After his third trip around the tower yielded nothing, the wolf jumped back down to the ground to try a new tactic.

Clearing the dead that came for him with a sweep of his tail, he smashed his huge body against the tower’s supports. Twice more he did this, ramming his weight into the wood until the pine logs—already damaged by the falling pulley—cracked to splinters, dropping Nutty Ned’s ill-conceived tower back to the earth with Lucas still atop it.

He jumped off halfway down, rolling across the grass to break his fall. He came up with his rifle in his hands. Not for the wolf—bullets did nothing against him—but with his soldiers fled to safety, the dead would be searching for new pickings. Lucas had no intention of dying so ingloriously, but when he raised his gun to shoot, no targets presented themselves.

He lowered his crystal rifle a fraction, cradling his still-bleeding arm as he squinted through the cloud of dust the falling tower had kicked up, but there was no mistake. Something must have happened on the main battlefield in the time he’d been busy with the wolf. Something marvelous, for as the yellow dust settled, it fell upon corpses that were lying still, their flesh once again lifeless.

Unsure whether to cheer at his unexpected good fortune or curse his fate that this couldn’t have happened before he’d sent his soldiers away, Lucas threw his rifle to the ground and drew his saber. He didn’t think the heavy blade would fare any better than his bullets had against the wolf’s impenetrable hide, but at least swords didn’t need to be reloaded, and who knew? Maybe the monster wasn’t armored all over. If nothing else, perhaps he could kill the beast by cutting through his insides after he got eaten, for now that Lucas was back on the ground, that definitely seemed the most likely future. But as he raised his blade to meet his fate, the wolf that had been stalking toward him suddenly stopped, ears turning wildly on his flat head as if he’d just heard something important.

A heartbeat later, Lucas heard it too. Something was building all around them. Building inside him, for this sound did not come through the ears. It rose from something deep inside him, vibrating his body like a wineglass when you ran your finger along the rim. It was a terrible, beautiful, overwhelming sort of feeling, and it wasn’t just him. The vibrations suffused the whole world, shaking everything at once until all of creation was ringing like a great golden bell. The sound was still building to its peak when Running Wolf gave a snarl and turned away.

“I must go,” he growled, sounding not at all pleased. “You fought well, little squirrel. I will find you again soon, and then we will finish this.”

Lucas tried to tell him not to rush, but the ringing was shaking so hard that his voice refused to work. He had no idea how Running Wolf had been able to speak or how he could lope away so smoothly. But the Sioux was not a well fellow, so Lucas put the warrior out of his mind, dropping his saber as the glorious, terrible ringing rolled through him, bigger and bigger and bigger.

Chapter 23

Mary ran like she’d never run before. Behind her, Josie was headed straight for the wagon and the evil thing that had taken Rel. To her right, the cavalry fort on top of Medicine Rocks was firing another hail of cannonballs. They whistled high over her head, vanishing into the black storm that hung low over the battlefield before landing in the Lakota’s back lines. The blast that came after knocked Mary clear off her feet. Fortunately, possibly for the first time in her life, someone was there to catch her.

She’s here! the Last Song cried, moving the ground—her ground, for the caves ran all under these plains like veins through a body—to soften Mary’s fall. That is my sister’s Song moving through Bear Woman! The dirt trembled under Mary. She is everywhere.

“Then you’re doing a dang good job of keeping her off me,” Mary said with forced cheer. Inside, though, she was shaking as hard as the ground.

She hadn’t really understood before what Bear Woman had meant when she’d said she hadn’t Sung yet. Her drumming music had been everywhere, so Mary had just assumed that was the War Song. Now, though, she realized at last how much Bear Woman had been holding back.

The drums that had pounded in her head before were nothing compared to the War Song Sung in earnest. It roared all across the battlefield, pulsing in the thunder and the stomping of terrified horses. It sang in the screams of angry men, in the crack of gunfire and the whistle of arrows. Its noise rose to deafening when the fort’s cannons fired once more, blasting the fields farther west. Then the Song softened to something even worse when the explosions faded and the screams of the dying broke through, clawing at Mary’s ears like desperate hands.

“We gotta stop this,” she said, scrambling back to her feet. “She’s gonna get everybody killed!”

There is no stopping this, the Last Song moaned, her music twisting in Mary’s head to warn her of the unhorsed Lakota shooting a cavalry soldier off his mount just a few feet away. The War Song has them now. So long as she Sings, they will keep fighting until their bodies break.

“Then she’s a terrible Song!” Mary yelled, dodging away from the victorious warrior as he jumped onto his war-prize horse only for a stray bullet to shoot him right back off it not five seconds later. “What’s the point of working so hard to stay alive every day if something bigger than you’ll ever be can make you throw it all away?”

No, no, please, the Last Song begged. Please don’t hate her! My sister didn’t choose to be War any more than I chose to be the Calamity. We can’t help the music that makes us. That’s why we choose our voices with such care. Our Songs are always the same, but it’s our Singers who decide how we should be Sung.

If that was the case, then Mary had a bone to pick with Bear Woman. She’d said she was doing this to save their People, but Mary didn’t see how anything Eagle saw could be worse on the Lakota than this.

Her mind flashed back to the warrior she’d just watched get shot off the horse he’d won. He hadn’t looked much older than she was, but his clothes had been fine-stitched and decorated with care. Someone had made those for him—a mother, a sister, a daughter. Someone who would bewail his death. Someone who would go hungry without him. Someone who would suffer, and for what? What was Bear Woman even warring for if the people she was doing this to save all got killed?

I hear your sister.

Mary whirled in the direction the music was pointing, dropping down on her hands and knees to crawl under the arrows and bullets that flew thick this close to the heart of the battle. She was going on pure trust in her Song at this point, ’cause she couldn’t see nothing but dust, and her ears were full of pounding, which could’ve been the War Song or just her own fear. Both seemed equally likely, for the dirt was muddy with blood under her fingers. A cannon had struck here, leaving a hole in the ground that was full of death.

The corpses themselves were gone, stolen by Reiner’s dissonant Death Song. Mary could see them shambling ahead up the ridge, going after friend and foe alike. They didn’t seem to care which, but the people they attacked did.

Even from this distance, Mary could see the terror and sorrow on the warriors’ faces as they were pulled off their horses by friends and brothers. The cavalry fared no better, the blue-coated soldiers frantically emptying their guns into corpses that barely minded the bullets. They shot at the warriors, too, when they got the opportunity, but just as often they hit each other, all of them falling into the bubbling stew of fear and death that Reiner’s music had made of the battlefield.

Of all the awfulness Mary had seen today, that was the worst. She needed to get back to Josie and help her put an end to it, but not until she found her sister. Josie could handle Rel if anyone could, but Blackbird was at Bear Woman’s mercy. She was about to call her name again when her Song rang out excitedly.

Over there!

The music in her words cleared the veil of terror from Mary’s head, but the real help was the feeling the sound brought with it: a prickle that ran over her skin like footsteps in soft dirt. For a mesmerizing second, Mary was in the earth with her Song, feeling each beat of Blackbird’s hide boots as she ran across the battlefield, bloody but alive.

“Sister!” Mary cried, getting to her feet despite the bullets to wave her down.

“Mary!” Blackbird yelled back, whirling in the dust as she spotted her sister at last.

They crashed into each other a second later, falling down the dusty ridge in a tangled, crying heap.

“I knew you were here!” Blackbird sobbed into Mary’s dusty hair. “I heard your Song coming from the town! Bear Woman was furious because you kept us from sending lightning at the cannons, but I was happy, because it meant you were alive!”

“I’m sorry I had to go against you!” Mary cried, hugging her sister tight as she dared. “I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t let her get my Song!”

Blackbird shook her head wildly. “I’m the one who’s sorry! Please forgive me for what happened before. I never would have shown you that vision if I’d known Bear Woman meant to hurt you! I tried to fight it, but I can’t disobey her when she speaks through me like that.” She hugged Mary tighter. “This is all my fault, but I never wanted to drive you away! I love you! You’re my family!”

If there was anything better she could’ve said, Mary didn’t know it.

“I love you too!” she cried, squeezing her sister ’til her arms creaked. “And I don’t blame you for nothing! You were only trying to do best by what you knew. It was Bear Woman who took advantage.”

A haunted look flashed over Blackbird’s face at that name. “We have to get out of here,” she said urgently, pulling Mary back to her feet. “The wasichu’s Death Singer is here, and there are too many dead for us to stop him. You must come with me and—”

Mary dug her feet into the earth, stopping her sister midword. “You know I can’t.”

“You can and you should,” Blackbird said with growing panic. “What happened before was not what I meant, but I don’t take back what I said. You’re not one of them, Mary! You belong with us!”

A month ago, that would’ve been all she needed to say to make Mary follow her anywhere. Now, though, Mary shook her head. “I belong with my Song.”

“Then go live in the caves,” her sister said frantically. “I’ll live down there with you if that’s what you want. Just don’t go back to them!”

“But I am one of them,” Mary said, trying to make her see. “I got friends in town who’re just as dear to me as you. One of them’s fighting the Death Singer as we speak, so let’s go help her! We can end this right now, together!”

For a soaring moment, it really looked like Blackbird was going to say yes. Mary couldn’t think of anything better than her sister and Josie working together to get that thing out of Rel. Everyone being alive and free was the happiest ending she could imagine, but her sister’s face was growing darker as she watched.

Everything was. Mary had been paying so much attention to Blackbird, she hadn’t noticed the storm clouds gathering overhead until the black swirls landed on top of them, plunging her and Blackbird into a river of screaming wind and crashing thunder. Even with the music to shield her, Mary could feel the War Song’s anger rumbling through her chest, and Blackbird had no protection at all. She was alone in the storm, the blood-splashed crystals on her dress flashing like lightning. They got brighter as Mary watched, wreathing her sister in blue-white fury until she was no longer Blackbird at all. She was a shadow, a scream in the dark, and hanging over her like a god made of storms was Bear Woman.

“Let her go!” Mary yelled over the gale. “You got your Singer already! You have no right to take my sister!”

“I have every right!” the giant bear snarled, her cave-blind eyes flashing as white as her crystal in the lightning. “Blackbird pledged herself to me to gain my strength for her people, and I have honored every promise! Even now, I give them victory!”

“You give them death!” Mary cried, stomping her foot on the bloody ground.

“War is death,” Bear Woman acknowledged grimly. “But without war, there is still death. At least this way they can spend their lives for something greater. Would you rather our people lie down in the grass while the invaders slaughter and steal from them?”

“I ain’t even gonna answer that,” Mary spat. “You keep talking like there’s only two choices—your way or losing everything—but that’s not how it is. We’re all people with brains and hearts and mouths for talking things out! I know there aren’t no easy paths, but surely we can find somethin’ better than this.”

She flung out her hand at the warriors desperately fighting the corpses of their brothers on the ridge, but the huge bear just snorted.

“That is the Death Singer’s doing.”

“’Cause of you!” she hollered. “Reiner wouldn’t have power over nothing if your war hadn’t handed him corpses to—”

A crash of thunder cut her off. “If you’d listened as you should have and stayed where I put you, there wouldn’t have been any corpses for him to steal! Without your protection, the white man’s fortress would have fallen in the first hour, the sacred Medicine Rocks would once again belong to our people, and the Calamity would have been contained!”

“Don’t call her that!” Mary screamed. “She’s not a Calamity!”

“You’re right,” Bear Woman said in a chilling voice. “That name is far more fitting for you. My sister would still be crying under the ground if you hadn’t pulled her out. You were the one who took her from her shelter underground. You made yourself a shield for murderers and thieves, and now all that we have feared has come to pass! A Death Singer runs wild across the plains just as Eagle foresaw, and the Last Song rises with him!”

“My Song’s got nothing to do with that! We were the ones trying to stop Reiner ’fore I had to go help Blackbird, who you put in danger. Now you’re keeping us here doing nothing while my friend Josie, from town, risks her life trying to stop the Death Singer and save us all! How dare you say this is my Song’s fault when she’s done ten times more to stop it than you have!”

Bear Woman looked unconvinced. “If the Death Singer is not connected to your Song, why are her caves full of death? Why does the Dark continue to grow and her crystal bring madness?”

“I don’t know,” Mary admitted. “But just ’cause she’s got bad bits to her doesn’t mean that’s all she is! You’ve done all of this outta fear of what she might be, but you’ve judged your sister without even learning what she is. None of us know that yet, ’cause you’ve never let her Sing! You just looked at what was around her and assumed the worst, but I’ve heard her music. I know she’s a Song of joy, not death. If you’d just listen for a moment instead of booming all over, you’d hear—”

A crash of thunder slammed against her chest, blasting Mary clear off her feet as the roar filled her ears.

“The Last Song must never be Sung!”

Mary scrambled back to her knees. “But—”

“No!”

A lightning-wreathed paw the size of a wheelbarrow landed on top of her, crushing Mary back into the ground as the bear’s blind face filled her vision.

“No wonder she chose you as her Singer! You are young and selfish, just like her! Always whining and dreaming up ways to get out of what must be done. But I cannot be so naive! I love my sister more than you ever could, but I know there are only two ways this ends, and I must choose the path that preserves.”

“You mean the path that imprisons!” Mary shouted, pushing against the bear’s crushing weight. “It’s easy to talk about sacrifice when someone else is paying the bill! Why don’t you try giving up your Singer and being locked underground forever if you’re so ready to—”

The storm crashed again, raking lightning across the ground so close, Mary could smell it. “You think I don’t know sacrifice? Who do you think will be cleaning this up? The Death Singer has already entered Calamity’s crystal. It is only a matter of time before he reaches her Song. It is no longer enough just to kill him. His infection must be purged from every inch! If you’d listened to me before, all the lives you accuse me of taking could have been saved. Now, though, your recklessness has left me no choice.”

The giant bear shoved her paw down again, burying Mary’s body halfway into the blood-muddied ground before shrinking back into a human once more.

Mary blinked in surprise. The lightning bear had been so overwhelming, she hadn’t even noticed there was a real person inside. Now though, she could see the blind figure of Bear Woman—the actual woman who’d been sleeping inside the giant crystal under the Wind Cave—walking across the bloody battlefield to place her hand on the shadow of Mary’s kneeling sister.

“When I first met her, Blackbird told me she would give anything to save her people,” Bear Woman said in her own voice, not the thunder’s. “Today, I hold her to her word.”

She tightened her fingers on Blackbird’s shoulder, making her cry out, but there was no sound. She was still just a shadow in the storm, a memory growing dimmer as the crackling lightning grew brighter.

“I will use what is left of the life your sister pledged to me to hunt down the Death Singer and burn him to ash with our lightning,” the woman part of Bear Woman announced as the storm crashed more wildly than ever around them. “This will keep us safe from his corruption, since she is not yet part of our Song.”

“Why don’t you fight him?” Mary demanded, fighting her way out of the mud. “Why’re you always using others to do your dirty work?”

“Because I cannot risk my other half,” Bear Woman replied, turning her blind eyes on Mary as Blackbird screamed. “It is the duty of all Singers to give their lives for their Song. The only part of our duty you actually seem to understand.”

“Darn right, I understand it!” Mary shouted as she ripped free at last. “I’ll take your lightning myself before I let you hurt my sister or my Song!”

“I’m sure you will,” the woman said. “For when this is over, the War Song will take her sister and return them both to the cycle. When that happens, we shall both die.”

Lightning crashed above Bear Woman’s head as she said this, but Mary could only gape. “Wait,” she said, voice quivering. “So you’re gonna kill all of us? Even yourself?”

“To stop Death and protect my Song,” Bear Woman declared with a sad sort of pride. “It was my honor to be the War Song’s voice for so long, but I have failed her. I thought we could cheat Eagle’s vision. That I could hold back the Calamity and win a future for my people, but I reached for too much. I was as greedy as the bear I am named for, and now I must pay the price.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Mary yelled. “Death Singers can be stopped without giving up everything. I know! I’ve beaten Reiner before.”

The woman narrowed her blind eyes. “Then why is he still here?”

“’Cause I wasn’t willing to murder my friend to do it!” Mary said angrily. “I didn’t want to make the exact same mistake you’re making right now!”

Bear Woman shook her head. “There is no other way.”

“How can you give up so easily?” Mary cried. “Aren’t you War?”

“Knowing when a fight cannot be won is also part of war,” the other Singer said, letting go of the silently screaming Blackbird to point her finger at Mary’s muddy chest. “Enough of this. Calamity, come out of her! We are going home.”

The music hammered inside Mary’s body, and then a voice that wasn’t hers came out of her mouth.

“No.”

“Calamity!”

“That is not my name!” the Song yelled through Mary, who was happy to let her.

The blind woman gave a frustrated growl. “Eagle has seen over and over—”

“Eagle won’t even come out of the ground!” the Last Song roared. “He’s forgotten how to fly! Forgotten what he is! You have all forgotten, hiding underground for so long that you’ve gone blind. But we were not always rocks waiting stagnant in the dark! We are the Songs of the Cycle, the music that turns the world! We were always meant to be Sung! You used to know that.” The raging music grew quiet again. “When did you become so afraid?”

“Because of you!” Bear Woman roared, spitting lightning from her mouth as she became the giant bear once more. “We circle the same doom over and over because you will not accept your fate!”

“Because I still have hope!” the Last Song cried, her music pleading now. “You’ve had Bear Woman longer than any other of your Singers. Do you really want to sacrifice her to avoid an end that is not yet certain?”

“I will do what I have to,” the bear growled. “As I always have.”

“But what if you don’t this time?” Mary’s Song asked. “Just because we’re eternal doesn’t mean we have to keep making the same choices. We can try something different, something new! We can break free of this!”

Bear Woman looked unconvinced. But before she could say anything else, something unexpected happened. Something extraordinary.

All at once, without warning, without reason, the horrible dissonance of Reiner’s Death Singing vanished. Trapped inside the wall of the storm, Mary didn’t see it happen, but she didn’t need to. The cave music was so loud inside her now that she could feel the dead hitting the ground. And as their bodies landed, heavy and lifeless once again, the spark that lived inside Mary flared up bigger and brighter than ever before.

“You see?” the Last Song cried up at her fearsome sister. “They can be beaten! We don’t have to run anymore! We can stay and fight them. I can stay! I—”

“You think this makes a difference?” the bear growled, her voice darker than ever. “One may be gone, but more will come. They always come. Do you really think we can beat them all?”

“I’m ready to try! It’s better than defeating ourselves for them as soon as they show up.”

The bear shook her giant head. “It takes only one Death Singer to doom the world. I will not risk that, not even for you.” She reached a huge, lightning-wreathed paw over Mary’s head. “I’m sorry, little sister, but this is for your own good.”

Lost inside the music, Mary could only watch in horror as the glowing claws cut toward her. But then, just before she was skewered or electrocuted or whatever happened when you got smacked by a bear made of storm, a spike of crystal shot up from the ground and took the hit for her.

“No!” the Last Song rang out, shaking the ground with her fury. “I will not go back into your coward’s tomb, and you will not take my Singer! I have a voice now, which means my future is no longer yours to decide!”

The ground surged beneath Mary as she said this, lifting her out of the bloody mud. “We choose to stay in the sun and face them!” she declared proudly as Mary planted her feet on the now-sturdy earth. “I will not go!”

The great bear pulled back her paw again. “Then you are to blame for this.”

The storm cleared as she spoke, the black clouds parting as quickly as they’d come to plunge them all back into the thick of the battle. Mary didn’t even have time to duck as the air around them exploded with shrieking bullets and screaming arrows. The Last Song tried to protect her, shooting walls of crystal out of the ground to block the flying shots, but there were too many. They were right in the middle, where the bullets were flying thickest. It was only a matter of time before one slipped through her guard, shattering a spike of crystal to land in Mary’s chest.

No!

The Song was a roar in her head as Mary stumbled, clutching her ribs on the right where the bullet had gone through. She could feel its path inside her like a hot little stake, but the sensation was soon washed over by the pain of everything else.

No, her Song sobbed again, the ground rising up to catch Mary before whirling on Bear Woman. Why did you do this?

“You’d do better to ask yourself why your Singer fell to a single bullet,” the War Song thundered back as Bear Woman looked down in pity. “The rest of us bound our Singers in stone the moment we were joined, making them as eternal as ourselves until we choose to let them go. That yours is able to die before you permit it proves that you are a Song of Death.”

The Last Song fell silent. Then her music rose in a wail greater than any she’d made before. It shattered the crystal and the ground, dropping Mary into a pit as black and deep as anything in the Dark. It would have swallowed her completely if Mary hadn’t cried, “Stop!”

The collapsing ground froze, the stones turning toward Mary like faces as she collapsed back into the cradle of dirt her Song had wrapped around her.

“There,” she wheezed, trying not to breathe too hard into the half of her chest that felt like it was on fire. “Can’t have you going back to that again.”

But she was right! the Last Song sobbed. They were all right! I am a Calamity!

“No, you’re not,” Mary said as firmly as she was able. “This ain’t your fault.”

But I couldn’t make you immortal! I didn’t even know I was supposed to! I never would have let you out of my crystal if I’d known—

“I didn’t want to be trapped inside no crystal,” Mary assured her. “If you’d kept me locked up, I never would’ve gotten to meet my sister or the rest of my family. I couldn’t’ve gone back to Josie or eaten good food or felt the sun. If that’s what it costs to live forever, I’m happy you gave me a pass, ’cause that ain’t living.”

But you’re dying.

“Looks like,” Mary admitted with growing dread. “And I can’t say I’m happy about that, but I don’t regret it neither. Before I found you, I was just like your sister: always running scared. Always too afraid of losing the little I had to try for something better. You changed me for the better, and I know you’ll do the same for everyone else that hears you, so ’fore I go, let’s try it.”

Try what?

Mary flashed her a pained smile. “Singing.”

She felt the music’s fear rattle in her bones. But what if—

“I know you won’t end the world,” Mary assured her, closing her eyes ’cause it was getting harder to think now, and she needed to focus. “You’re not a death song. You’re my song—a home song, a hope song—and the world deserves to hear you like I do.”

She reached out in her mind. Quick-like now, ’cause things were already getting terrifyingly cold. She could still feel the music shaking inside her, but her Song had always been a brave one, and she grabbed Mary tight, wrapping her in a flood of light and wonder just like the first time their voices had joined together.

As ever, the result was a glorious mess. There was no melody, no harmony, no order at all to the music they made. It was more like an explosion: thousands upon thousands of crystal notes all crashing together to form one enormous golden sound.

It rang up to the sky and down to the roots of the earth. Rang over the mountains and forests and the grasslands. Rang under the rivers and the lakes and the seas of foreign lands Mary had only ever heard about in stories. It rang and rang and rang until the joy of its creation had driven out every other sound, including Bear Woman’s.

Down in the ground, Mary couldn’t see nothing anymore, but her Song could. Just as it used to show her the way in the dark caves, the music now showed her the world entire. Every soldier on the field who’d dropped his weapon in wonder at the great sound. Josie and Rel clinging to each other beneath the wagon of cursed crystal. Lucas lying in the grass with blood on his arm and wonder on his face. Chaucer leading his terrified soldiers through caves lit up bright as noontime by the crystal that was now shining from every surface.

She saw the wolf that was her father charging through the stunned silence to snatch Blackbird, his child, out of the dirt where Bear Woman had dropped her. Saw herself lying in the hole that would most likely be her grave. Most of all, though, Mary saw the Songs.

There were six of them, including herself. Six sacred beings sitting at the six directions with all of existence turning between them like a wheel. Four had hidden themselves so far away, Mary couldn’t see more than their directions, but there was one Song she saw perfectly.

The War Song of the West was right in front of her, a horizon-spanning wall of black thunderheads and spitting fury. For her raging, though, she was being pushed back, her drums overwhelmed by the beautiful ringing that was Mary’s Song, the changing Song. The Song of new shoots and buried bones. The Song of growing things and turning seasons. The Song of life and death.

I know my name!

Mary knew it too. It had come to both of them as one, for they were no longer two beings apart. They were Mary Good Crow, the Song of the Earth. All the other Songs were arranged above them in a circle—the four directions of the medicine wheel with Eagle the First above them. He was the grandfather who ruled the dome of the sky, but Mary’s domain was just as big, ’cause she was the below. She was the Song all others had risen from, the Last Song who became the First. The end of the cycle and its beginning, and she rose now with a fury, forcing the hoop of the world to turn once more toward something new.

Toward what, sadly, Mary didn’t get to see. Every Song had a purpose, a reason it was Sung, and theirs was done for now. There would be more work in the future, she was sure, but Mary’s sight no longer reached that far.

Like all the things that rose from her Song, Mary’s time was turning. She’d hoped that seeing so many wonders would’ve made that feel less scary, but while she was terrified down to her bones, she was happy in equal measure, ’cause she’d done it. She’d finally given her Song back something as wonderful as what she’d given Mary in the caves. They were equal at last, two halves of a greater, beautiful whole that she’d get to echo in forever just like Sam Price. That was good enough, wasn’t it? That would—

No!

Mary jumped. She’d been so caught up in the fading of her own sound, she hadn’t noticed her Song had split from her until her voice came roaring back.

I’m not letting you die!

That was sweet of her, but Mary didn’t think much choice was left.

Nonsense, her Song scolded. What’s the point of being the Calamity if you’re just going to accept things as they are?

But she wasn’t a Calamity! She—

But I am! her Song cried happily. I am the Song of Change, and that’s always a Calamity! No wonder Eagle feared me so much. I do end the world, because I begin it again! I turned the wheel, reordered the paths, but that just means nothing is certain anymore, not even death! Mary felt the music curl inside her bones like a smile. What’s the point of being the Song of Change if I don’t try to change things?

Mary smiled proudly. That was her Song! She knew she hadn’t been wrong to trust her, but—

No buts, Calamity scolded as the earth began to move, lifting Mary back above the ground. Just lie there and keep breathing. I’ll get you help!

Mary tried to tell her not to bother, to go spend her effort saving someone who wasn’t done for. But her Song had already bounced away through the ground, leaving Mary lying on a bed of crystal with the warm, dusty sunlight shining on her face.

Chapter 24

“Mary!”

The shout wheezed out of Josie, rasping through her throat, which was already hoarse from yelling at Rel. “Mary!”

“She’s gotta be close,” Rel said, leading the horse they’d found wandering after the ringing had stopped. “Her legs aren’t that long.”

“Leg length doesn’t matter if you’ve been abducted,” Josie snapped, rising on her toes to get a better look at the destroyed field. “Mary, answer me!”

She was shouting at the top of her lungs, but her voice still fell flat in the silence of the devastation around them.

The battlefield actually looked worse now than it had when she’d first ridden through it. It should’ve been worlds better, for all the dead had fallen back to the earth, and the Sioux advance had broken. Josie still wasn’t sure why, exactly, but something about the ringing that had covered the earth a few minutes ago had caused the unnatural clouds to blow away like dandelion fluff.

The Sioux’s power had blown away with them, cracking their crystal arrowheads and sapping the light out of their glittering war paint. They could definitely still have won if they’d pressed—the loss of their magic had done nothing to their numbers—but between the horror of the rising dead and being abandoned by their supernatural patron, the warriors had lost their will to fight. The moment they’d been freed from the golden ringing, they’d fled to the west, leaving the battlefield empty and silent save for the groans of the dying.

So, so many dying. History books always made battles sound heroic and dashing, but the reality was a tragic, bloody, disgusting mess. She’d never realized that bodies had a smell inside when they got blown open, or that the horses would die too. There were thousands of them lying out here with their riders, blood-drenched tack still strapped around their bulging bellies.

So much waste, so much death, but her real fear was that Mary was lying somewhere amongst it all. Even with her friend’s incredible control over crystal and all sorts of other things Josie didn’t understand, it didn’t seem possible that anything could be left alive out here. Even the vultures hadn’t dared to land yet, but something drove her on. Madness or hope, Josie couldn’t say. She wasn’t even sure if those were two separate things anymore, but together they pushed her forward, cupping her filthy hands to her face as she called out.

“Mary Good Crow!”

“Someone’s coming,” Rel warned, going for her pistol. One of her two normal ones, not the crystal gun in her pocket. “Behind us.”

Josie looked over her shoulder to see her friend was right. A soldier was riding toward them from the south at a quick clip. One of theirs, thank goodness. He looked just as bloody as everything else out here, but he didn’t seem too badly injured, and he waved when he saw them.

“Miss Price!”

“Good Lord,” Josie said, shielding her eyes against the August sun, which was pounding down like a furnace now that the storm clouds had vanished. “Lieutenant Lucas? Is that you?”

“C'est moi,” the lieutenant replied tiredly as his black-and-white horse trotted over. “I’d say I’m surprised to see you here, but I’m not. You’re looking for Marie, too, no?”

“Yes,” Josie said, realizing to her horror that she’d never actually informed Lucas that Mary had come back safe and sound. “I’m so sorry! I meant to tell you we’d found her earlier, but everything got so busy, and I—” She stopped, blinking. “Wait, how did you know Mary was out here?”

“You’re not going to believe this,” he said, getting off his horse. “But when I recovered from the huge sound just now, I looked up and found my horse being led to me by a rock.”

Josie couldn’t possibly have heard that correctly. “A rock?”

The lieutenant nodded, holding out his hands to indicate something about the size of a soup tureen. “The stone rolled right at me across the grass, and Badger here was following after. It was about to roll right into my injured arm”—he turned, showing them his bloody sleeve— “so I grabbed it with my good hand, and that’s when I heard the music.”

“Ah,” Josie said, seeing where this was going at last.

“I didn’t know what it was trying to tell me,” Lucas continued. “But if it involves rocks and music, there’s only one person I could think of, so I got on my horse and went to find her. From your yelling just now, I assume you’re on the same mission. Shall we look for her together?”

Josie was about to name that a splendid idea when Lucas’s eyes suddenly found Rel, who’d been trying her best to hide behind their own horse, and with good reason. The moment the lieutenant spotted her, his smile vanished, and he reached for his saber.

“You!”

“Stop!” Josie said, throwing herself between Lucas and her friend. “Please, I know what you must be thinking, but she had nothing to do with what happened!”

Lucas’s look of murderous fury slid into confusion. “She?”

Rel sighed and stepped out from behind the horse, taking off her hat and turning her face up toward Lucas so he could see what she really looked like without all the gunman trappings.

“Is that Tyrel Reiner’s sister?” Lucas asked, looking more confused than ever.

“I am Tyrel Reiner,” Rel muttered, putting her hat back on. “Sorry to mislead you, Lieutenant. It’s been a strange few weeks.”

Lucas stared at her a moment longer. Then he let go of his sword and lifted his hands in surrender. “I don’t have the capacity to think about this right now. I’ll decide what to do about you after we find Marie. Do you know which direction she went?”

Josie didn’t, but now that Lucas had mentioned rocks, she did have an idea. The whole time they’d been searching, rocks had been pinging against her legs beneath her skirt. She’d thought it was just from her kicking her feet too much in her efforts to walk faster. Now, though, as soon as she was certain Lucas wasn’t going to change his mind about skewering Rel, Josie dropped into a squat and peeled off the protective layer of her gloves.

Her hands shook as she did so. Just because she had succeeded in not turning Rel to gold didn’t mean her Midas touch was fully under control. She had no idea what Lieutenant Lucas would do if he saw her power now, or if this would even help. Nothing else was working, though, so she reached her bare fingers to the dusty ground and grabbed the nearest stone, squeezing it tight between her fingers.

The first thing she noticed was it did not turn to gold. The pressure was still there inside her fingers, but it was calm now, a trigger instead of a flood. That was a fantastic realization, but Josie had no time to celebrate in the rush of what came next.

There was something vibrating through the rock in her hands. It wasn’t music exactly, but the sensation was very prominent, like the vibrations of a tuning fork. It reminded her very much of how her uncle’s finding stone used to feel, and it was pointing her up the ridge.

“This way,” Josie said, standing up and marching forward with the rock held out in front of her like a dowsing rod.

The lieutenant and Rel followed silently, giving each other a wide berth as they made their way up the slope. The ground grew worse as they climbed. Not just soft and slippery from all the loose dirt the cannons had kicked up, but muddy with blood. The corpses had all walked off somewhere else, but Josie was certain a great many people had died here. She didn’t want to think about what that could mean for their friend, but the rock was still pulling in her hands, so she followed it dutifully. She was almost halfway up the ridge where the worst of the fighting had taken place when Josie saw someone climbing up from the other side. Someone with long black hair braided into pigtails.

Her heart leaped into her throat. “Mary!” she cried, tossing away the rock as she started to run forward. “Oh, thank goodness! I thought you were…”

The words died on her tongue as her feet skidded to a halt. That was not Mary in front of them. It was a Lakota woman, tall and beautiful in a bloody dress beaded all over with crystal. Her dark eyebrows shot up when she saw Josie, and then the woman ran toward them, talking frantically in a language Josie didn’t know.

Lucas reached for his weapon at once. So did Rel before Josie slapped her hand away. “Stop that,” she scolded both of them. “She’s clearly not trying to hurt us.”

“She’s a Sioux,” Rel reminded her. “Who do you think made all those cavalry corpses?”

That was true enough, but Josie couldn’t bring herself to be afraid as the woman grabbed her hands and started pulling her up the ridge, talking the whole time in a nervous, rapid voice while pointing at her ears.

“You heard the music too,” Josie said, breaking into a smile. “You must be Mary’s sister!”

The Lakota woman clearly didn’t understand, but a smile was universal. She smiled back at once, pulling the now-running Josie several dozen feet along the bloody ridge until they came to a dip in the earth. One that didn’t look as if it had been made by a cannonball. And lying at the lowest part of the dip on a bed of sparkling crystal was—

“Mary!” Josie cried, lurching forward only to stop again when someone grabbed her arm.

“Lucas!” she said angrily, yanking at him. “What are you—”

He nodded ahead, and Josie froze. She’d been so happy to find her friend at last, she hadn’t even noticed the Lakota warrior standing next to her.

He was terrifying to look at. Not with dirt or wounds, for while his torso was marked all over in a lacework of old scars, the tall man didn’t seem to have a recent scratch on him. Nonetheless, something about him screamed death even louder than the bloody battlefield. Unlike other Indians Josie had seen, he wore no decorations or crystal war paint. He didn’t even seem to have a weapon. Just a wolf pelt spread across his bare shoulders and a glare that made her want to run for the hills.

“Running Wolf,” Lucas said, clearly just as nervous as Josie but holding his ground anyway. “What happened to her?”

The warrior said nothing. Just jerked his chin at Mary’s sister, who said something angry at him in Lakota.

“I know you speak English,” Lucas said crossly. “What happened to Marie?”

Again, the warrior said nothing. He just glared at Lucas and drew a line across his neck with his finger before walking away like this was none of his business. The woman and Lucas watched him go with equal expressions of disbelief, but at least now that he was gone, there was nothing to keep them from running to Mary’s side.

Lucas got there first. “Marie,” he said, breathing her name like a prayer before his expression grew grim. “She’s been shot!”

Josie ran to join him. Sure enough, Mary looked awful. Her face was deathly pallid, and there was blood all over her right side. Someone, probably her sister, had opened her coat and bandaged her chest with long strips of hide, but it was clearly not enough. Blood was still dripping down her ribs to pool on the bed of crystal beneath her, and Josie knew from personal experience just how bad that was.

“We need to get her to Dr. Pendleton,” she said, taking off her apron to make a better suture. “She saved me from a similar gunshot.”

“Already thinking the same thing,” Lucas said. But when he went to slide his arms under Mary, the Lakota woman slapped him away, shouting something that was obviously a rebuke.

“I have to move her,” Lucas pleaded, but the woman shook her head and pointed at Josie, who understood well enough.

“You can’t blame her for not wanting to give her sister to an enemy soldier,” she said, picking up the smaller girl in Lucas’s stead. “I’ll get her to treatment,” she told Mary’s sister. “You have my word she will be safe.”

It was pointless to promise something to someone who couldn’t understand. But if Josie had learned anything from listening to Mary, it was that tone mattered. She might not have understood Josie’s words, but her sincerity must have come through, because the woman allowed her to pick Mary up, leaning down to kiss her sister’s cheek one last time before gesturing at them to go.

Josie didn’t wait to be told twice. She scrambled out of the pit as fast as she could without dropping Mary. Rel and Lucas hurried close behind her, helping her with the trickier parts where the ground was most unstable. But when they got back to the horses they’d left at the bottom of the ridge, Josie realized they had a problem.

“There’s only two,” she said, looking back and forth between the unknown brown animal they’d found wandering and Lucas’s surly-looking warhorse. “Lucas, you take her. You’re the best rider.”

Lucas shook his head. “I cannot leave two women alone on a battlefield. You two get Marie to safety.”

“You’re the one who’s most at risk here,” Rel pointed out. “Warriors might spare a woman, but you’re as good as dead if they see you. ’Specially if that scarred bastard decides to come back.”

The lieutenant paled at the reminder of the warrior, but he held firm. “I’ve dealt with Running Wolf before,” he said, taking Mary from Josie so she could use her hand to haul herself onto his horse. “And the rest of our forces will be here shortly to secure the battlefield. I’ll be fine, but Marie won’t last much longer if you don’t get going.”

That was logic enough for Josie. She took Mary from Lucas when he handed her up and kicked his horse hard in the sides, nearly toppling over when the fearsome animal leaped forward, galloping full speed back toward town. Rel followed shortly behind her on the brown horse, riding much more expertly. If it wouldn’t have taken time they didn’t have, Josie would have stopped and handed Mary to her, for keeping the two of them in the saddle was almost beyond her ability. She was barely able to steer the blasted animal as it charged across the dusty field. Fortunately, it knew its own way home, taking Josie straight into town, where the militia was able to assist her in bringing the horse to a stop.

“Miss Good Crow’s been hurt!” she cried as Mr. Cotton and his men rolled the barrier aside for them. “Where is Dr. Pendleton?”

“In her tent up top,” Mr. Cotton said as he let her through.

Nodding gratefully to him, Josie kicked the horse more gently this time, managing a trot up the hill to the white medical tent.

“Help me get her inside,” she said to Rel, who’d already hopped off her horse. “Quickly!”

It was a sign of how serious the situation was that Rel didn’t even grouse at her for bossing. She just did as she was told, taking Mary while Josie half jumped, half fell out of the saddle. Swearing never to get on a horse again, she took Mary back from Rel, who was struggling to hold the girl on her own, and rushed inside the tent.

“Dr. Pendleton!” she cried, carrying Mary to the closest available cot, which turned out to be the first one. Since the fighting had never actually reached the city, no one in town had gotten injured. An extraordinary stroke of good fortune Josie had no time to appreciate before Dr. Pendleton came out from behind the flap at the rear of the tent.

“There’s no need to shout,” she told Josie in her eternally calm voice, rolling up the sleeves of her plain black dress in preparation for work. “I’m not busy, as you see, so let’s have a look at—”

She froze, her expressionless face contorting into something almost like horror when she saw who was lying on her cot.

“Um, Dr. Pendleton?” Josie prompted nervously. “This is an emergency. You have to—”

She was still in midsentence when the doctor turned on her heel and marched back behind the flap.

Furious and scared, Josie stomped after her. “What is the matter with you?” she cried, shoving the curtain aside to find Dr. Pendleton standing with her back to her, facing the blank wall. “That’s my friend out there, and she’s dying! You have to help her!”

“I must do no such thing,” the doctor said, her monotone voice quivering with something Josie was too upset to identify. “I cannot treat that patient.”

“Why not?” Josie demanded. “I know she’s half Lakota, but she just saved everyone in town! The least you can do is put aside your prejudice long enough to repay the favor!”

“This is not an issue of prejudice,” Dr. Pendleton assured her, turning around at last. “This is a personal matter. Twenty years ago, I made a decision. I have paid for that choice in many ways since, but one of the dearest rights those payments bought me was never having to see that face again.”

Josie blinked at her. “What’s wrong with Mary’s face?”

The doctor dropped her eyes to the dirt floor. “She looks too much like him.”

“Then don’t look at her!” Josie yelled. “She was shot in the chest. You don’t need to look at her face for that!” When Dr. Pendleton still didn’t move, she added, “I’ll pay you anything you want.”

That got her attention. “Anything?” Dr. Pendleton said, meeting Josie’s gaze at last.

“Anything,” Josie promised, grabbing the woman’s arm to force her back into the infirmary. “Take all the time you want to think about how to abuse that. Just do it later when my friend’s not bleeding to death!”

“Very well,” the doctor said, removing her arm from Josie’s grasp. “But on one condition: you are never to tell her who it was that operated on her. Never, do you understand?”

That sentence held more emotion than Josie had ever heard from the doctor. It seemed a very suspicious request, but Josie would have sold her soul at this point to get treatment moving, so all she did was nod.

“Agreed.”

Nodding back, Dr. Pendleton grabbed the surgery tray with her crystal pins and strode back into the infirmary. Josie ran after to watch and ended up being pressed into duty as an assistant, helping the doctor peel away the apron she’d pressed over Mary’s wound along with the rest of the girl’s bloody clothes. Fortunately, Dr. Pendleton’s earlier agitation didn’t seem to have any impact on her work. She removed the bullet with mechanical efficiency, her fingers moving so fast that Josie had to scramble to hand her what she needed.

Even with this fantastic speed, though, it still took a terrifyingly long time to finish. The bullet had missed Mary’s lung, thank goodness, but there was still a lot of damage. Nothing that wouldn’t heal in a flash with crystal pins, but Dr. Pendleton was hesitant to put any of those in Mary, and for once, Josie agreed. Whatever Mary did with crystal was outside their realm of understanding, so Dr. Pendleton stuck to normal surgery, sewing up the wound and applying a dressing soaked in honey to prevent infection. She then set Josie on a stool to watch Mary for any sign of wound fever, in which case she was to call for her immediately. Duty finished, the doctor announced that she would be sending Josie a bill for the agreed-upon price of “anything” and strode out of the tent.

All without ever once looking at Mary’s face.

~~~

That night was the scariest of Josie’s life, which was saying something given the present run.

Mary did get the wound fever, and badly. Josie and Dr. Pendleton did the best they could for her, but other than keeping her head cold and her body warm, there was nothing to do but wait it out.

The waiting was the worst part. Several times, her breathing grew so soft, Josie worried it had stopped entirely. But then the floor would shake and the shelves holding Dr. Pendleton’s medical equipment would rattle, and Mary would take another breath, reminding Josie they weren’t fighting this alone. Something powerful was on their side, something only Mary knew. Josie was resolved to ask her all about it when she was well again, but for now she just stayed by her side, doing whatever she could to help her push through.

Lucas arrived halfway through the first night. He was clearly angry he hadn’t been able to come sooner, but there was a man with him that Josie had never met, who introduced himself as Colonel Shaw. It was a very stressful visit, for the colonel was a thoroughly unpleasant fellow. He was obviously the one who’d kept Lucas away, and he spent the whole visit making snide comments about wasting resources on half-breed harlots.

It got so bad at one point that Josie almost told him to leave. But while she was under no obligation to suffer him, Lucas clearly was. So, out of pity for the officer she’d come to think of as her friend, Josie bit her tongue and let the colonel talk, buying Lucas time to sit at Mary’s bedside, speaking to her softly in French while he wiped her burning forehead with a wet cloth.

Her fever broke just after noon the next day. Josie had never been so happy to feel someone’s cold skin in her life. Mary still hadn’t woken up, but she was no longer so delicate that Josie was afraid to touch her, which opened all sorts of opportunities to make her more comfortable. Josie had just finished changing her out of her bloody clothes and into a clean shift when someone knocked on the tent flap.

“Come in,” Josie called as she pulled a fresh blanket up to Mary’s chin.

The canvas flap pulled aside with a rustle, and then Rel stepped into the tent, carrying a large tray. “Mihir made you food. He says you haven’t eaten since yesterday morning.”

“I haven’t been hungry,” Josie said, which wasn’t a lie. It was hard to find anything appetizing when you were so worried, you constantly felt like you were about to throw up. Now that the worst of the crisis had passed, though, Josie was ravenous. She fell on the tray like a tiger, cramming spoonfuls of smoked pork and corn grits into her mouth with scarcely a pause to breathe.

“You can go back to Price Mining when you’re finished,” Rel offered, sitting down on the stool at Mary’s bedside. “Mihir also said you haven’t been sleeping, so I’ll take over here. You go get some rest.”

That sounded marvelous. Josie had been awake for so long now, she was starting to nod off even while standing up. “Thank you, I will,” she said, picking up the tray she’d just demolished. She was just about to bolt for her bed when Rel spoke again.

“I’m leaving once Mary’s better.”

Josie stopped so suddenly, she nearly dropped the tray. “What?” she yelled, all tiredness forgotten as she whirled on her friend. “Why?”

“There’s something I gotta do,” Rel said, avoiding Josie’s eyes as she busied herself tugging Mary’s blankets straight. “A promise I gotta keep. But I swear I’ll come right back after it’s done, assuming that’s all right with you.”

“Of course it’s all right with me,” Josie said, astonished. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Rel shrugged and looked down at her hands, which were red from too much scrubbing yet somehow still had blood under the fingernails. “I know I’ve got a lot to answer for. I did you wrong from the moment you rode into town. I wouldn’t blame you if you never wanted to see me again, but I wanted to tell you I was sorry first. I’m sorry for everything, Josie. I promise I’ll try to make it up to you if you let me.”

“There’s nothing to be made up,” Josie insisted, setting the tray down so she could wrap her arms around Rel’s shoulders. “What happened wasn’t your fault. I knew from the moment it happened in the Mother Lode that you’d been taken over. You don’t have to tell me more than that if you don’t care to, but know that I have always and shall always be your friend, and friends don’t blame friends for their troubles.”

Rel was oddly silent after that. She didn’t hug Josie back, but her hands were gripping her knees so tight, they left marks in the black denim of her jeans. “Then I’d best come home quick,” she said at last, her voice oddly thick. “You’ve done me three great services, Josie O’Connor, and I swear on my mother’s grave, I won’t rest until you’ve been repaid.”

“You don’t have to repay me anything,” Josie insisted, but Rel just shook her head.

“Go get some sleep.”

“Only if you promise not to leave before I wake up.”

“I won’t.”

“Even if I sleep for three days solid?”

Rel chuckled, giving Josie that crooked smile she remembered so well. “I promise not to go anywhere until you’re back up and bossing again, boss lady.”

That compliment bordered on insult, but Josie was too happy to take offense. Now if only Mary would just wake up, everything would be perfect.

Smiling victoriously, Josie regathered her tray and resumed her beeline toward her bed. When she reached for the tent flap, though, Rel said something she couldn’t make out.

“What was that?” she asked, looking over her shoulder.

“I said, ‘Thank you,’” Rel repeated, keeping her eyes resolutely away from Josie’s. “For never giving up on me.”

“You’re welcome,” Josie replied, saving her delighted smile until she was safely outside where Rel couldn’t see it.

Epilogue

In the Whitmans’ stone fortress, deep in the underground laboratory surrounded by piles of black crystal, a carefully cleaned, heavily damaged skeleton sat up inside its glass case. Its skull had been destroyed, but skulls were terrible vessels for resonance, so it was no great loss in any way but the aesthetics. Certainly nothing compared to everything else that had been ruined today.

He still couldn’t believe it. Centuries of cultivated power, gone! Destroyed by the tantrum of a willful child who had no idea what she was—

“Father?”

Reiner turned his attention to the harried young man who’d just come through the door. This sent the newcomer back a step, probably because he was facing a skeleton without a head. Shaking his neck stump at the fragility of the younger generation, Reiner motioned for the boy to come closer.

“Father,” Vincent said again, creeping toward him. “Is that you? What happened?”

Reiner started to answer only to remember that he could not speak. Even if his skull hadn’t been pulverized, the soft tissues required to produce audible sound were long since gone. He could still write, though, so he opened his cabinet and clattered over to the worktable, wincing internally at the way his bones rasped together as he seized a drafting pencil and a sheaf of paper.

Your sister murdered me, he wrote.

“Murdered?” Vincent read in a shocked voice. “But I thought she knew nothing and you had total control!”

Reiner rolled the memory of his eyes. Never underestimate the danger of ignorance. The effort of controlling several thousand corpses consumed a great amount of my attention. While my guard was down, she struck with a new weapon, one I’d never seen before. She will ruin everything for us if she’s allowed to live.

“Then we won’t allow it,” Vincent said, clenching his fists. “Where is she now?”

In town.

“Volchitsa will take care of it, then,” his son assured him, looking at his watch. “I have to go. The Whitmans are finally back, and they’re very angry that we—”

You can’t leave me like this, Reiner wrote, bones shaking. You know how difficult it is to work with fleshless specimens!

“But it’s your body,” Vincent argued. “Your soul should feel at home enough in those bones to keep your—”

I kept this body only as an emergency lifeboat, Reiner wrote angrily. It was never meant to hold together for more than a few hours. If I stay in here, I’ll die for real.

“Oh,” Vincent said, looking around the lab in a panic. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize! I’ll find you something else.”

He was already moving toward the icebox where they kept the fresh cadavers when Reiner’s bony grip caught his arm and drew him back, pointing at the next line on the paper.

You could keep me.

Fear spread across Vincent’s face. “No,” he said, stepping away. “No, I couldn’t.”

What are you afraid of? Reiner wrote. Have I not always done everything you’ve asked of me?

“Yes, but…” Vincent bit his lip. “You took over the last person who let you in.”

Only because she was stupid and weak. Utterly lacking in vision and disobedient from birth. I had no wish to take control of such a creature, but she would have gotten us both killed if I hadn’t. That would never be the case with you, though. You are clever, audacious, strong, everything that she wasn’t. I’ve said for weeks now that you are the son I always should have had. Now’s your time to prove it. Save me, Vincent. Let me in, and I’ll teach you everything I know.

The skeleton dropped the pencil and put out its bony hand, the one missing the right pinky that had provided the bone inlay for the crystal gun. For a long moment, it looked as if Vincent wasn’t going to take it, but Reiner had done this many times now. He waited patiently as a spider, watching the promise of forbidden knowledge ferment inside the young man’s brain until it became something more potent than fear.

“All right,” Vincent said, putting out his hand. “All right.”

Reiner grabbed hold before Vincent could change his mind, moving what was left of his soul—his empty, empty soul, god damn that Reliance!—into his son. Into the bones and flesh and blood all Reiners shared. That technically included his wretch of a daughter, but oh, was it nice to be back in a man’s body.

Ah, he whispered through his son’s thoughts. That is so much better.

“I’m glad you think so,” Vincent muttered, grabbing the table for balance. “Feels horrible to me. Like I just ate something rotten.”

You’ll get used to it, Reiner assured him, settling in by the roaring fire of his new home. Now, take me to these famous Whitmans.

He could feel through the body they shared that Vincent wasn’t equal to going anywhere right now. But his fear of his employers must have been stronger than the nausea in his stomach, because he turned and lurched back up the stairs, carrying the ghost of his father with him.

~~~

At five minutes past ten in the morning—the proper hour for visiting—Apache Jake stepped out of Volchitsa’s fastest crystal carriage and into the center of Cherry Street, the premier address at the center of St. Louis’s most desirable new neighborhood.

Technically, he was being punished. Volchitsa hadn’t been happy at how he’d ruined her operation with Josie Price. Nor had she been pleased to see the state of Sheriff Brightman. If he and his boys hadn’t been hauling a formerly 190-pound man transformed into nearly two tons of pure gold, she would’ve thrown a fit.

But while her temper got the better of her more often than it should, Volchitsa wasn’t stupid. She knew a good thing when she had it, which was why Brightman had been melted down into ingots, and Jake hadn’t been shot for his insubordination. Not that there was a hired gun in the country that could’ve gotten the best of him, but Volchitsa knew she’d gone too far. Theirs had always been a delicate relationship, a balance based on mutual respect for the rules. Rules she had broken.

Really, he should’ve been the one punishing her. But a ship could only have one captain, so Apache had left the She Wolf her pride and taken the trip to St. Louis. A very pleasant, very fast trip thanks to the new crystal engine the Whitman brothers had sent over as a sop for not being there when they’d needed them. Jake had tried their horseless carriages before, but this new one with the black crystal ran faster than a train, making the trip from Montana to Missouri in less time than it usually took to ride to the border.

He’d taken one more day after he’d arrived to outfit himself as befit the business he’d been sent to conduct, including a new blue suit, sharp new leather shoes, and a hat as tall as any man could want. Now here he was, walking fine as any dandy gentleman across the smooth-laid brick to the enormous, brand-new city mansion taking up the whole of the opposite block.

The white folk on the sidewalk gawked as he strolled up the marble steps, whispering furiously when Apache knocked the head of his silver cane against the mansion’s red-painted door. Jake just gave ’em a happy wave, making eye contact with each and every son of a bitch who thought they could look down on him. It was such fine entertainment, he nearly missed the door opening.

Good thing he was quicker than time. One touch to the gun hidden under his jacket, and the doorman didn’t even notice that he’d been caught out. By the time the frumpy old butler looked his way, Jake was grinning at him like he’d been waiting here for this all day.

“Good morning, my fine sir,” he said, handing the man the card he’d had printed up special just for him. “I believe I am expected.”

The butler looked like he expected to toss Jake out on his ear. Then he actually looked at the card.

“Yes, sir, of course,” he said, his whole demeanor changing as he opened the door to let Jake inside the mansion’s fancy greeting parlor, which was even gaudier than Volchitsa’s. The place looked like it had been decorated with the sole intent of showing people how much money a person could waste on furniture with no additional thought given to where anyone was supposed to sit. Fortunately, Jake didn’t have to wait long enough to worry about resting his rump. His new shoes had barely touched the tufted carpet when he heard a commotion from up the gilded stairs.

“Is that the man from Montana?” a lady’s voice asked excitedly.

The butler was still opening his mouth to answer when the speaker emerged, running down the stairs in a flurry of silk ribbons, black curls, and lace-trimmed velvet only to skid to a halt when she laid eyes on her visitor.

“Oh,” the lady said, her pink-painted lips peeling up over her pearl-white teeth. “You’re Black.”

“I am,” Jake said, looking her dead in the eyes.

He could see her chewing on that behind her pretty pout. Greed clearly had the upper hand, though, because the next thing she said was “Where’s my crystal?”

“All in good time,” Jake promised, taking off the hat he should’ve removed the moment he came in, but hadn’t felt like it. “But good business requires propriety, so why don’t we start again?” He clicked his heels together, tilting his head to hide his snicker at what a fish they’d landed.

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Price.”

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for going with me on this adventure! If you enjoyed The Battle of Medicine Rocks, I hope you’ll consider leaving a review. Reviews, good or bad, are vital to every author’s career, and I would be very grateful if you’d consider writing one for me.

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Need something new to read right now? You can see all my books, including my 5 completed series, at www.rachelaaron.net or by clicking on “Want More Book?” in your eReader’s table of contents. You can also page ahead to read a sample of the first book in my most popular series, Nice Dragons Finish Last!

Thank you for reading from the bottom of my heart. I hope you’ll stay with me for many more books to come!

Yours always,

Rachel Aaron

Need more Fantasy in your life? Why not try…

As the smallest dragon in the Heartstriker clan, Julius survives by a simple code: stay quiet, don't cause trouble, and keep out of the way of bigger dragons. But this meek behavior doesn't cut it in a family of ambitious predators, and his mother, Bethesda the Heartstriker, has finally reached the end of her patience.

Now, sealed in human form and banished to the DFZ—a vertical metropolis built on the ruins of Old Detroit—Julius has one month to prove to his mother that he can be a ruthless dragon or lose his true shape forever. But in a city of modern mages and vengeful spirits where dragons are seen as monsters to be exterminated, he's going to need some serious help to survive this test.

He just hopes humans are more trustworthy than dragons.

Keep reading for the free sample!

Chapter 1

“Get up.”

Julius woke with a jump, toppling off the slick modern couch. He landed face down on hard white carpet, smacking his knee painfully on the corner of his sister’s abstract coffee table in the process. When he reached down to clutch his smarting joint, his sister kicked his hand away again with the pointed toe of her black leather flats.

“I have to be at the hospital in thirty minutes,” she continued as she marched across the room to yank open the hanging blinds. “That means you need to be out of here in ten. Now get moving.”

Julius rolled over and sat up, squinting against the bright ray of sunlight she’d sent stabbing across her ultra-fashionable, ultra-expensive apartment. “Good morning to you, too,” he said, furtively rubbing his injured knee, which was still throbbing.

“Try afternoon,” Jessica snapped. “Honestly, Julius, it’s nearly five. Is this when you got up at home?” She turned with a huff, walking over to the marble breakfast bar that separated her immaculately white kitchen from the other immaculately white parts of her apartment’s open floorplan. “No wonder Mother kicked you out.”

Mother had kicked him out for a whole host of reasons, but Julius didn’t feel like giving his sister any more ammunition, so he spent the energy he would have used explaining himself on standing up instead. “Where’s your bathroom?”

She stabbed one perfectly manicured nail at the hall, and he shuffled as directed, though it still took him three tries before he found the right door. The others led into beautifully furnished bedrooms, none of which looked to be in use.

Julius sighed. Two guest bedrooms, and she’d still made him sleep on the couch. But then, Jessica had always been very conscious of where she stood in the pecking order, which was usually directly on top of Julius’s head. The only reason she’d let him sleep here at all was because he was her brother, and the consequences for not helping family were dire. In any case, it wasn’t like he was in a position to complain. When you found yourself shoved off a private plane into a strange airport at dawn with nothing but the clothes on your back, you took what you could get.

He found the bathroom and showered as fast as he could only to get right back into the same faded T-shirt and jeans he’d slept in, because what else was there to wear? He didn’t even have a toothbrush, and he wasn’t about to risk Jessica’s wrath by using hers. In the end, he had to settle for mostly clean, raking his shaggy black hair into some semblance of order with his fingers and wishing he’d had a chance to get it trimmed before his life had gone down the drain. Of course, if he’d had any advanced warning of last night’s personal armageddon, he wouldn’t have wasted it on a haircut.

By the time he emerged into the living room again, Jessica was dressed for work in a pants suit, her long, blond-dyed hair pulled back in a tight French twist. She sat in the kitchen, perched on a silver barstool like a model in an interior design magazine as she sipped coffee from a minimalist white mug. Naturally, she hadn’t made any for him.

“Here,” she said when she saw him, shoving a sleek, black metal rectangle across the marble countertop. “This is for you.”

Julius’s breath caught in amazement. “You got me a phone?”

Jessica rolled her brilliant green eyes, the only family feature they shared. “Of course not. Unlike you, I know how to be a dragon, which means I don’t give out freebies just to be nice.” She hissed the last word through sharpening teeth, letting a bit of her true nature show before resuming her human mask. “It’s from Bob.”

Julius snatched back the hand he’d been reaching toward the phone. Bob was his oldest brother and their dragon clan’s seer. He was also insane. Presents from him tended to explode. But the phone looked normal enough, and Julius had already been kicked out of his home and dropped in a strange city without a dollar to his name. Really, how much worse could today get?

He picked up the feather-light piece of electronics with tentative fingers. Cursed gift or not, this phone was much nicer than the old one he’d been forced to leave behind. As soon as the metal contacts on the back touched his skin, the phone’s augmented reality system blended seamlessly into his own ambient magic. After a second’s calibration, the air above the phone flickered, and a 3D interface appeared. He was still getting used to the beautifully designed, almost unusably small icons floating above his hand when a flashing message appeared directly in front of his face, titled THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT.

Hesitantly, Julius reached up to tap the floating message. The moment his finger passed through the icon, a short paragraph appeared, the glowing letters hovering seemingly in thin air.

My Dearest Brother,

Sorry I didn’t warn about Mother’s incoming Upset. I foresaw it last year and simply forgot to tell you due to other VAST AND SERIOUS events currently unfolding. To make it up to you, I’ve taken the liberty of preparing the proper credentials for your new Life in the Big City. I can only hope it’s all still valid, seeing how I’m putting this phone in the mail to you four months before you’ll need it, but We Do What We Must. I’ve also set you up with some money from my private hoard to make the transition a little easier. Try not to spend it all in one place!

Hearts and kisses, your infallible and all-knowing brother,

Bob

PS: I almost forgot to give you your advice for the day. You must be a GENTLEMAN above all else, and a gentleman never refuses to help a desperate lady. You’re welcome.

Julius read the message twice before setting the phone back down on the counter. “If he knew to mail me a phone four months before I needed it, why didn’t he just tell me Mother was going to kick me out instead?”

“Because he’s not really a seer, idiot,” Jessica replied, setting her empty mug down with a clink. “He can’t actually see the future. He’s just insane. You know how old dragons get.” She slid off the barstool with a huff. “Honestly, his only real power is his ability to convince Mother that his stupid antics are all part of some huge, incomprehensible scheme that’s going to help her defeat the other clans and become queen dragon of the world.”

Julius didn’t know about that. From what he’d seen, Mother believed in Bob completely, and she didn’t do anything without good reason. Of course, it was hard to tell what was really going on across the enormous distance he kept between himself and the more powerful members of his family. That was Julius’s entire life strategy, actually—stay out of the way of bigger dragons—and up until last night, it had worked perfectly. More or less.

He sighed and grabbed the phone again, putting his finger through the glowing accounts icon as soon as the AR interface came up. Whatever the actual status of his sanity, Bob was indisputably old. Old dragons couldn’t help storing up vast piles of wealth. If Bob was giving Julius money from his own private stash, then maybe…

His fledgling hopes crumbled when the balance appeared. Ninety-eight dollars and thirty-two cents. Bob had given him ninety-eight dollars and thirty-two cents. That was barely enough to get him through half a week back home. It probably wouldn’t last him a day in a big city like the DFZ.

Julius slumped against the breakfast bar, staring blankly at the miles of shiny white superscrapers and animated ad-boards looming beyond Jessica’s floor-to-ceiling windows. What was he going to do? And how? His life back home might not have been great, but at least he understood it. Now he was uprooted, lost, tossed into the biggest city in the world with nothing, and he couldn’t even change into his true form and fly away because of what his mother had done.

That thought made him more depressed than ever. He’d been trying his best not to think about what had happened last night, what had really happened, but there didn’t seem to be much point in avoiding it now. He’d have to face facts sooner or later, so he might as well get it over with. It wasn’t like things could get any—

His phone rang.

Julius jumped, jerking the phone up so fast he narrowly missed cracking it to pieces on the underside of the counter. Jessica jumped as well, and then her green eyes grew cruel. “I can guess who that is,” she said in the sing-song voice he’d hated since they were hatchlings.

“It might not be her,” Julius muttered, though that was more desperate hope than any real belief. After all, there were only two people who could plausibly know this number, and Julius didn’t think he’d be lucky enough to get Bob.

Jessica clearly didn’t think so, either. “Much as I’d love to stick around and witness you get chewed to bits, I’ve got work,” she said cheerfully, grabbing her bag off the counter as she strolled toward the door. “Don’t touch my stuff, and don’t be here when I get back. Oh, and if she decides to kill you, make sure you don’t die in my apartment. I just got this carpet installed.”

She tapped her heel on the white carpet before walking into the hall, humming happily to herself. As soon as the door closed, Julius sank onto her vacated stool. He propped his elbows on the counter as well, shoring himself up as best he could. Finally, when he was well supported and out of ways to put off the inevitable, he hit the accept call button like a man ordering his own execution and raised the phone to his ear.

“Well,” crooned the sweet, familiar, smoky voice that never failed to tie his insides in knots. “If it isn’t my most ungrateful child.”

Julius closed his eyes with a silent sigh. “Hello, Mother.”

“Don’t you ‘hello, Mother’ me,” she snapped, the click of her long fangs painfully audible through the new phone’s magically enhanced speakers. “Do you know what time it is?”

He glanced at the clock. “Five fifteen?”

“It is exactly nineteen hours since you left my company. Nineteen hours, Julius! And you never once thought to call and reassure your poor mother that you were alive and had found somewhere to stay? What is wrong with you?”

Julius could have reminded her that it was her fault he was in this position in the first place. She was the one who’d barged into his room at midnight and ordered him to get out without letting him grab his phone or his money or any of the tools he needed to make the call she was angry about not receiving. But burdening Bethesda the Heartstriker with facts when she was in a rage was only slightly less suicidal than contradicting her, so all he said was, “Sorry.”

His mother sighed, a long hiss so familiar he could almost feel the heat of her flames through the phone. “This is harder on me than it is on you, you know,” she said at last. “But you gave me no choice. Something had to be done. All your brothers and sisters are getting along splendidly. Even Jessica managed to work her doctor nonsense into a position of power. She’ll be running that hospital in five years. But you! You are hopeless. If I hadn’t watched you hatch myself, I’d doubt you were a dragon at all.”

She’d told Julius as much almost every day of his life, but for some reason, the insult never stopped smarting. “Sorry,” he said again.

His mother went on like he hadn’t spoken. “You’re not ambitious, you don’t make plans, you don’t try to take things over. It’s like you were born with no draconic instinct whatsoever. All you’ve done since I let you out of training is hide in your room, avoiding the rest of us like the plague.”

He’d always thought of it more as avoiding jumping into a pool of hungry sharks, but he knew better than to say so. “I wasn’t bothering anyone.”

“That’s exactly the problem!” Bethesda roared. “You’re a dragon! Dragons don’t worry about bothering. We demand, Julius, and the world gives. That is the rightful order of things. I thought if I left you alone, your instincts would kick in eventually, but it’s been seven years and you’re as bad as ever. Clearly, something in that head of yours is broken beyond repair, and I don’t have the patience to wait any longer.”

He swallowed. “I—”

“Twenty-four-year-old dragons should be out making names for themselves! Not living at home with their mothers! People are beginning to talk, Julius. I had to do something. ”

“So you decided to seal me?”

The second the words were out of his mouth, Julius’s stomach, which was already clenched to the size of a marble, threatened to vanish entirely. But there was no taking it back. The horrible truth was out, and, in a raw, painful way, it felt good to hear it spoken. So, since he was a dead dragon anyway, he kept going.

“Why, Mother?” he asked. “You wanted me to be a dragon, so why did you lock me into this?” He waved his hand down at his lanky, too-skinny human body before he remembered she couldn’t see him, which only upset him more. “Why did you send me away? Why did you send me here?” He shot a panicked look at the forbidding wall of superscrapers outside the window. “This is the DFZ. They kill dragons on sight here. If I’m—”

He cut off with a choked gasp as his mother touched the seal she’d placed at the root of his magic. She might be hundreds of miles away, but he could still feel her claws in his mind, the sharp tips pressing painfully on the wound she’d made nineteen hours ago when she’d cut into his soul and locked him away from his true nature. It was only for a second, but by the time she let him go, Julius felt like he’d been sliced open all over again.

“That’s better,” his mother said, her words punctuated by the clink of gold coins as she shifted her position. “Honestly, Julius, do you even listen to yourself? Complain, complain, complain, when all your life you’ve been coasting, never even considering the position that puts me in.”

He hardly thought that being sealed from his powers and stranded in the one city in the world where dragons were illegal was a frivolous complaint, but he couldn’t have said as much even if he’d dared. His mother was on a roll, and there was no stopping her now.

“You don’t even know what I suffer for this family!” she cried. “Every day, every hour, our enemies are looking for ways to cut us down. The other clans would like nothing better than to see the Heartstrikers brought low, and you’re helping them! Being a disappointment within your own family is one thing, but can you imagine what would happen if the rest of the world found out that my son, my son, spends his days locked in his room playing video games with humans? Humans, Julius! And you don’t even win!”

Julius began to sweat. “I don’t see—”

“That is exactly the problem!” she yelled, making his ears ring. “You don’t see. If one of your siblings was doing something I wanted them to stop, I’d just threaten their plans or thwart their ambitions, but you don’t have any of those. You don’t have anything, and so I was forced to take the only thing I could.”

She touched his seal again as she said this, and suddenly, Julius couldn’t breathe.

“You are the worst excuse for a dragon I’ve ever seen,” she snarled. “But even you still need to actually be a dragon. So if you don’t want to spend the rest of your soon-to-be very short life as little more than a trumped-up mortal, you’ll listen closely to what I’m about to say.”

She released him after that, and it was all Julius could do not to flop panting on to the counter. But showing weakness would not improve his mother’s mood, so he forced himself back together, breathing deep until he could trust his voice enough to say, “I’m listening.”

“Good,” Bethesda replied. “Because I’ve fought too long and too hard to get where I am to be made a fool of by my youngest child. I really should have eaten you years ago, but a mother’s hope springs eternal, so I’ve decided to give you one last chance. A final opportunity to make something of yourself.”

Julius didn’t like the sound of that at all. “What am I supposed to do?”

“You’re a dragon,” she said flippantly. “Be draconic. Take something over, destroy one of our enemies, win a duel, capture an advantage for our clan. I don’t really care what you do, but you will do something to make me proud to call you my son before the end of the month, or I will do to you what I did to my other under-performing whelps.”

Julius didn’t need the snap of her fangs at the end. His blood was already running cold, especially when he realized today was already August 8th. “But…that’s not even four weeks.”

“Think of it as a trial by fire,” Bethesda said sweetly. “You’ll come out of this a real Heartstriker or not at all. Either way, you won’t be an embarrassment to the clan anymore, which makes it a win-win for me, and we all know that’s what really matters.”

Julius closed his eyes. Trial by fire. How excessively draconic.

“I can hear you moping,” she warned. “Don’t be so defeatist. That’s exactly the type of behavior this little exercise is supposed to correct. And sorely as I’m tempted to let you dangle, I’m not throwing you out completely on your own. It just so happens that your brother Ian has some work he’s agreed to let you take on, a little jump-start to get you going on the path toward respectability.” Her voice turned rapturous. “Now there is a dragon, and an excellent son.”

Julius frowned, trying to remember which brother Ian was. He had the vague recollection of an icy demeanor and a calculating smile, which probably meant Ian was one of those plotting, ambitious siblings he normally stayed far, far away from. Of course, if Mother liked him, the ambitious part was a given. Bethesda never loved her children more than when they were trying to engineer each other’s downfalls.

“I already sent him your information while you were whining,” she continued. “He should be contacting you soon. And Julius?”

He fought the urge to sigh. “Yes, Mother?”

Bethesda’s voice sharpened until the words dug into him like claws. “Don’t fail me.”

The call cut out right after that, but it took Julius a full thirty seconds to unclench his fingers enough to set the phone down safely below Jessica’s never-used collection of copper cookware. When it was out of harm’s way, he dropped his head to the cold marble counter with a thunk. He was still lying there when his phone buzzed again with Ian’s terse message to meet him at a club halfway across town in fifteen minutes.

***

In the end, he had to take a cab.

He couldn’t afford it, not really, but there was no other way to keep Ian’s deadline, and Julius wasn’t about to get himself eaten by his mother because he was too cheap to hire a taxi. It ended up being a good choice, though, because the drive across the elevated skyways gave him his first real look at the Detroit Free Zone in the daytime.

Not surprisingly, it looked exactly like it did in the pictures: an impossibly clean city on the banks of the Detroit River with blindingly white, thousand-floor superscrapers rising from a beautiful, whimsically spiraling lattice of elevated skyways held high off the ground by huge concrete pillars. Pressing his face against the car window, Julius could catch glimpses down through the gaps at Old Detroit, the ruined city that still lay beneath the new one like a rotting carcass, but not enough to see anything interesting. No packs of death spirits or ghouls or any of the other horrors that supposedly terrorized the Underground. But while that was disappointing, the DFZ’s other most interesting attraction was impossible to miss.

Rising from the blue depths of Lake St. Clair, Algonquin Tower looked like a spire made by gods to hold up the sky. Even here in downtown, a good ten miles away, Julius could still make out the sweeping curls of stonework that made the two-thousand-foot tall granite pillar look like an endlessly swirling waterspout instead of static rock. Supposedly, there was a leviathan that lived underneath it, but even without the giant sea monster, the tower was a fitting and undeniable reminder of who ruled Detroit, and why.

When the meteor crashed into Canada in 2035, sending magic surging back into a world that had long forgotten such things existed, human mages weren’t the only ones who had reawakened. The sudden influx of power had also roused spirits of the land forced into hibernation by almost a thousand years of magical drought. They’d woken with a vengeance, too, but none so much as Algonquin, the Lady of the Lakes.

Even now, sixty years after magic’s return, people still talked about the night Algonquin rose to sweep the Great Lakes clean. Her purifying wave had come from nowhere, washing away centuries of pollution in a single night, and most of the cities that lined the Great Lakes with it. No place, however, felt her wrath like Detroit.

While other cities were merely flooded, Detroit was nearly swept off the map. Those who survived claimed Algonquin’s wave had been over a thousand feet, a black swell of all the poisons dredged up from the bottom of the Detroit River and the bed of Lake St. Clair that she’d emptied on the city without quarter, crushing buildings and drowning millions in the process.

When the flood waters finally receded, Algonquin had claimed the ruins of Detroit as her own, and with the rest of the world still reeling from the return of magic, the U.S. government hadn’t been able to tell her otherwise. From that night on, Detroit, Michigan became the Detroit Free Zone, an independent territory of the United States and the only city anywhere governed by a spirit. Algonquin had wasted no time changing the rules, either, dumping almost every law on the books, especially those limiting business and immigration, and she’d refused to regulate the new practice of magic at all. The resulting sorcery research boom had made the DFZ one of the largest, wealthiest, most magical cities in the world. It was also the most dangerous, especially for him.

For reasons Julius didn’t know, but could easily imagine, the Lady of the Lakes hated dragons with a passion. His kind were tenuously accepted in the rest of the U.S., and ruled outright in China, but in the Algonquin’s city, where everything from drugs to guns to prostitution was legal, dragons were strictly forbidden. Even small ones like him fetched bounties in the millions. He had no idea why his mother had decided to force him to “be a dragon” in the one city where doing so would automatically make him a target, but at least it gave Julius a reason to be happy about the seal. Awful as it was not to be able to fly or breathe fire or stretch his tail properly, he didn’t have to worry about accidentally revealing his true nature and getting killed for it. So, that was something.

He’d barely finished this exercise in extreme positive thinking when his cab pulled to a stop beside a crowded, elevated square lined with trees, fountains, and high-end restaurants. Very high-end restaurants, the sort with unpronounceable names and dress codes that involved jackets. Julius looked down at his own ancient green T-shirt and slightly singed jeans with a sigh. The part of him that was still trying to stay positive pointed out that he should be glad he’d at least been wearing a shirt when his mother had burst into his room, but the rest of him just wanted to get this over with.

The automated cab had taken its fare out of his phone’s account the second it reached the requested destination, so Julius got out of the bright yellow, driverless car without looking back. It took him a few minutes to push through the crowd of fashionable professionals and the tourists taking pictures of them to the address Ian had given him; a slick club/restaurant hybrid with tinted glass doors and no name at all, just a picture of a tree laser etched into the windows.

As expected for such a high-end establishment, the first set of doors was just for show. The real doors were inside a dimly lit foyer guarded by three cameras and a doorman. Normally, a human wouldn’t have worried Julius too much, but this one was clearly packing some augmented implants—human arms just didn’t get that bulky without medical help—and he didn’t look shy about using them.

Considering how sorry he looked right now, Julius fully expected the bulky doorman to pick him up by the fraying neck of his shirt and toss him right back out into the square. From the expression on the man’s face, he clearly wanted to do just that, but when Julius gave his name, the doorman simply pushed open the leather-covered inner door and told him that his party was waiting at the back.

After the bustle of the crowded square, the inside of the restaurant was shockingly silent in the way only real money could buy. Even the silverware didn’t seem to clink as Julius wove his way between the white clothed tables and high-backed booths. The place smelled rich, too, a deep, subtle mix of hardwood, leather, truffle oil, and other things his sensitive nose wasn’t cultured enough to recognize.

The VIP area was in the far back corner, separated from the rest of the restaurant by a wall of malachite-beaded curtains. Julius pushed them open with only a slight hesitation, pointedly ignoring the well-dressed couples who turned to gawk at him as he looked around for his brother.

He didn’t have to look long. He might not have been able to place Ian’s name earlier, but now that he was here, he spotted his brother at once. He also saw why their mother was so fond of him.

From the first glance, it was obvious that Ian was a dragon’s dragon. Even dressed in a black suit sitting in a black booth, he effortlessly overshadowed the well-dressed men with their jewel covered women and thousand dollar bottles of champagne like a panther lounging in a flock of peacocks. Julius, on the other hand, felt a bit like a mangy dog as he slid into the leather booth across from his brother and dipped his head in greeting.

Ian did not return the gesture. He just sat there, regarding Julius through slitted, Heartstriker-green eyes before letting out a long, vexed sigh. “What on earth are you wearing?”

“What I had,” Julius replied irritably. “I didn’t exactly get time to pack.”

“So I heard,” his brother said, tilting his head forward so that his perfectly tousled black hair swept down over his dark brows, enhancing his speculative scowl. “There’s been quite a bit of talk going around about what you did to send Mother into such a rage. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of her sticking one of us on her private jet for a cross-country trip in the middle of the night before.”

Julius started to sweat. Heartstriker gossip, about him. Just the thought made him twitchy. The only thing worse than being beneath a dragon’s interest was being the target of it.

“Sending you away was a good sign, though,” Ian went on. “Normally when she goes on the warpath, she just eats the parts she likes and tosses what’s left into the desert for the vultures. She must really believe you can be rehabilitated if she didn’t kill you outright.”

Julius supposed that was a comfort. “She threatened to do it.”

“Bethesda has threatened to kill all of us at one point or another,” Ian said with a shrug. “It’s how she mothers. That doesn’t mean she won’t, of course. A weak dragon is a liability to the whole clan. The real challenge is, how do we make her start seeing you as an asset instead of a disappointment?”

Julius shifted his weight on the buttery leather seat. He had no objections to what his brother was saying, but the we part made him decidedly nervous. He didn’t know Ian at all personally—he was the sort of powerful, popular sibling Julius normally steered well clear of—but if he met their mother’s definition of a good son, then he’d rather hang himself with his own tail than help a family member for free. “What do you want?”

Ian smiled. “You,” he said. “For a job. It just so happens that I’ve come across an intriguing opportunity for someone with your…unique talents.”

Julius had no idea what that meant. “So you want me to do something?”

“Yes,” his brother said crisply. “For money.” He shot Julius a skeptical look. “Do you understand how a job works?”

“No, no, I get that part,” Julius grumbled. “I just want to know what you want me to do before I agree to do it.” Because the list of things he wouldn’t do for money was very long and included a number of activities most dragons would do for fun. Of course, being one of those dragons, Ian missed his point entirely.

“Don’t be stupid, Julius,” he said, picking up his drink. “Mother’s the only reason I’m bothering to speak to you at all. Naturally, then, it follows that I won’t be asking you to do something she’d object to, especially not here. I know you’ve spent your adult life as far under a rock as possible, but even you must understand that doing anything remotely interesting in Algonquin’s city would bring Chelsie down on both our heads, and we can’t have that.”

His casual mention of Chelsie put Julius even more on edge than his talk about Mother. Chelsie was one of their oldest sisters and the Heartstriker clan’s internal enforcer. Julius had only seen her from a distance at family gatherings, and even that had felt too close for comfort. Mother might rant and rave and threaten to skin you alive, but most of the time, it was Chelsie who actually wielded the knife, and unlike Mother, you never heard her coming.

“Do you think Chelsie’s here in Detroit?” Julius whispered.

Ian shrugged. “Who knows? Bethesda’s Shade is everywhere. It might as well be the family motto: ‘Watch what you say. Mother’s in the mountain, but Chelsie’s right behind you.’”

He chuckled like that was a joke, but even Ian’s too-cool front wasn’t enough to keep the fear out of his voice. Not that Julius thought less of him for it. Every Heartstriker was scared of Chelsie.

“So, what’s this job for, exactly?” he asked, eager to get back on track and out of this conversation before saying Chelsie’s name too many times summoned her. Instead of answering, though, Ian’s eyes flicked to something over Julius’s shoulder. Before Julius could turn around to see what, his brother leaned back in the booth, his body relaxing until he looked lithe and limber and confident as a cat. But while his posture was suddenly almost obscenely casual, his whispered voice was sharp as razor wire.

“Too late to back out now,” he said. “Sit up straight, and whatever you do, don’t stare. You don’t want to embarrass yourself any more than is inevitable.”

Julius was opening his mouth to ask whom he was going to be embarrassing himself to when she was suddenly there, appearing beside their table without a sound. And even though Ian had warned him, Julius couldn’t help himself.

He stared.

Chapter 2

She was a dragoness. Of that there was no question. Even in human form, she radiated danger of the casually cruel, playful kind. She was not, however, a Heartstriker. Julius didn’t know his entire family by sight—only his mother could do that—but he was pretty sure he’d remember someone like this.

She was beautiful, of course, but as a snow leopard taking down a stag was beautiful. Every feature, from her pale, pale skin to the white blond hair that slid over her bare shoulders in a snowy stream to the razor-sharp nails at the ends of her elegant fingers, was cold and otherworldly. Even her smile was deadly, the sort of delicate half smirk ancient queens must have worn when ordering slaves to fight to the death for their amusement. But what really got Julius was the calculating look in her ice-blue eyes as she gave him the speculative once-over dragons always performed when sizing up newcomers. Player or pawn? it asked. Tool or threat?

For Julius, the assessment was over in an instant. He could almost feel the word “pawn” being affixed to his forehead before the female dismissed him completely and shifted her gaze to Ian. “This is the one you told me of?”

Her accent was as cold and strange as the rest of her, a mix of Russian and something much, much older. Ian, of course, seemed completely unaffected. “My brother, Julius,” he replied, gesturing with his drink.

“Julius,” the dragoness repeated, her accent slicing off the J so that his name came out more like Ulius. “He is one of your youngest brothers, then? Or did Bethesda clutch again while I wasn’t paying attention?”

Ian and Julius winced in unison. No Heartstriker liked to be reminded of their mother’s ridiculous naming system, or the reason such a thing was required. Most dragonesses who chose to dedicate the enormous amount of magic required to bring new dragons into existence laid no more than two clutches of eggs in their entire lives, usually with five hundred years or more in between. Bethesda had laid ten, once with fewer than fifty years between broods. This fecundity had made her something of a legend among the other dragon clans, and to help her keep track of her unprecedented number of children, she’d named each clutch alphabetically. A names for her first, B for the second, and now finally down to J. At least the new dragoness hadn’t called their mother Bethesda the Broodmare, or Ian and Julius would have been honor-bound to attack, and that wouldn’t have ended well for anyone.

“No,” Ian said crisply, setting down his drink. “We’re still on J. But as you can see, he’s decidedly non-threatening. No guile I’ve witnessed, but I’m led to believe he’s not an idiot. Just soft.”

“Soft?” The dragoness said this the same way a human would say leprous.

“Non-aggressive,” Ian clarified. “But clever in his own way, I think. And if he fails, my mother will kill him, so motivation won’t be an issue.”

Julius knew better than to offer his opinion to this summation. He was used to powerful dragons talking about him like he wasn’t there. Still, he didn’t like the way the female was eying him now. Family would threaten him all day, but no Heartstriker would risk Bethesda’s wrath by actually killing him. This foreign dragon, on the other hand, was studying him like she was trying to decide which of his organs would make the best hat.

“I think you may be right,” she said at last. “He will do well enough.” With that, she sat down next to Ian and turned to Julius like she hadn’t just been ignoring him for the last few minutes. “I am Svena, daughter of the Three Sisters. Ian assured me you will be of assistance.”

She paused like she was waiting for a reply, but Julius couldn’t manage more than a choking sound. The Three Sisters were among the oldest and most powerful dragons left in the world. They were so magical, legend had it that they’d created their eggs one at a time using only their own power, no male consort needed. The offspring of this unconventional arrangement, all daughters, were in turn some of the most mysterious and feared dragons alive, which meant that Julius was sitting across the table from, at minimum, a thousand-year-old dragoness who was also one of the Heartstriker clan’s sworn enemies. The Three Sisters hated Bethesda, and as far as he knew, the feeling was mutual. What was Ian doing?

He glanced at his brother to ask just that, but Ian was shooting him a lethal caliber version of the shut up and play along look. So, with effort, Julius turned back to the dragoness, who he now knew for a fact could turn him into a gooey puddle with a snap of her fingers, and plastered what he hoped was an obliging smile across his face. “What kind of assistance did you have in mind?”

She pursed her pale lips. “It is a delicate matter. My youngest sister, Katya, has run away from home. I want you to bring her back.”

Julius blinked. “You want me to find your sister?”

“Not find,” Svena snapped—a literal snap of her too-white teeth that gave Julius the distinct impression Svena didn’t spend much time in her human form. “I know where she is, but she is being headstrong and difficult. I have indulged her as long as possible, but I cannot afford to do so any further. Unlike your clan where a dragon might vanish for years before someone notices, there are only twelve of us. If our mothers discover Katya’s absence, things will become difficult. I need a neutral third party to stop her foolishness and bring her home before this happens.”

She was very good at keeping her voice haughty and superior, but Julius had been appeasing bigger dragons his whole life, and he’d become very good at picking up subtle changes in tone. Between her cool disinterest and the not-so-subtle digs at his family, Julius could just make out the faint trace of real worry in Svena’s voice. Whether that concern was for her sister or herself when her mothers found out, he wasn’t sure, but what he really wanted to know was, “Why me?”

“Because you’re a failure,” Ian said with a superior smile. “And you’re sealed. Katya’s running from her sister because she knows she cannot defeat Svena, but you’re another story. Unlike us, you’re completely benign, a non-threat, which means you alone will be able to get close to Katya without causing her to bolt.”

“And do what?” Julius asked. “Even if she doesn’t run from me, how am I supposed to convince a—” powerful, magical, likely centuries older than him and still in possession of her true form, “—dragon to go home when she doesn’t want to?”

Svena waved her hand dismissively. “You can’t. If Katya could be convinced of anything, she would never have run in the first place. You only need to get close enough to put this on her.” She reached out as she spoke, placing something on the table with a soft clack. When she removed her hand, Julius saw it was a thin, silver braided chain. “There’s a binding spell woven into the metal,” she explained. “I created it specifically to placate my sister, but it must touch her skin to work, and I haven’t been able to get closer than a kilometer to Katya since this nonsense started.”

Julius stared at the chain glistening like frost on the white tablecloth, heart sinking. He had no interest in getting tangled up in another clan’s family drama. He especially didn’t want to trick a runaway into going back to a home she clearly wanted to escape. As someone who’d seriously considered running away himself dozens of times, tricking this Katya out of her freedom and forcing her back into the kind of situation that would make a dragon flee felt unspeakably cruel, but what was he supposed to do? Argue against his qualifications as a failure?

“This is a great opportunity for you, Julius,” Ian said, his voice calm and rational and completely not open to negotiation. “You’ve gotten an unfortunate reputation for being softhearted over your short lifespan, but there’s still time to turn yourself around. Mother has entrusted me with your rehabilitation, but if you insist on being lazy—”

“I’m not lazy.”

Julius regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth, but he didn’t try to take them back. Backpedaling would only make him look even weaker, and anyway, he hated being called lazy. Staying alive in their clan was a full time job for someone like him, because Julius wasn’t just the youngest Heartstriker, he was also the smallest. Big dragons like Ian never understood just how much work it took to fly under the radar in a family of magical predators with a sixth sense for weakness and a pathological need to exploit any opening just because it was there.

Speaking of which, Ian was already watching him, his calculating eyes weighing Julius’s hasty words as much for what they didn’t say as what they did. “So resentful,” he said. “But you have no one to blame but yourself. The fact that I didn’t even know your name until this afternoon perfectly illustrates your complete and utter failure to be an asset to anyone. That you are alive today is due entirely to our mother’s magnanimity, and since we both know how fickle that can be, I suggest you stop making a spectacle of yourself and consider your next words very carefully.”

He didn’t even need to add because they might be your last. By the time Ian finished, the threat in his voice was like a noose around Julius’s neck. Beside him, Svena was observing the back and forth with the sort of bored impatience of a sports caster watching a veteran boxer taking on a volunteer from the audience.

That was how Julius felt, too—punch drunk, completely overpowered and outmatched. He still didn’t think it was right, and he knew he’d regret his actions, but Ian had his back against the wall, and they all knew it. So, with a heavy sigh, he reached out and scooped the silver chain off the table, shoving the unnaturally cold metal into his pocket as quickly as he could. “Where can I find her?”

“I have word she’s going to a party tonight,” Svena said, reaching into her silver-spangled clutch purse to pull out a sleek, expensive phone. “Some kind of gathering for human mages.” She paused. “You can still do magic, can’t you? Your mother didn’t seal that as well?”

She hadn’t, but then, she hadn’t needed to. Unlike humans, who drew magic from the world around them, dragons made their own. But while J clutch had been one of Bethesda’s more magically inclined broods, Julius hadn’t been keen on the idea of competing with his cutthroat siblings in an arena where it was perfectly acceptable to banish your rivals to another dimension. He’d learned the basics he needed to survive, but everything else he knew about sorcery, draconic or otherwise, could probably fit on a small note card. Not that he was going to admit that to Svena, of course.

“No problem,” he lied. “Where is it, and when should I show up?”

Svena looked down at her phone to find the information. Beside her, Ian met his eyes across the table and mouthed, good job. Julius nodded and quickly lowered his head over his own phone, trying not to look as nauseated as he felt when Katya’s information, including pictures, movement notes, and Svena’s practical instructions on where and how to deliver her runaway sister’s unconscious body once the deed was done, popped up on his screen.

Sometimes, he really, really, really hated being a dragon.

***

Thirty minutes later, Julius was sitting at the club’s bar, ignoring the bitter and expensive cocktail Ian had bought him as a fancy way of saying get lost while he finished his “discussion” with Svena, and he wasn’t feeling any better. Thanks to the information Svena had given him, he’d had no problem finding the party Katya was supposed to attend tonight. Getting in, however, was another matter entirely.

From the listing on the DFZ’s public mage forums, it seemed the gathering was being hosted by a circle of shamans, human mages who did their magic with the help of spirits and natural forces, something Julius decidedly was not. Despite Ian’s dismissive assurances that his little brother was “good with humans,” he had absolutely no idea how he was going to convince a bunch of secretive mages to let him into their exclusive magic-nerd night. He wasn’t actually sure how Katya had gotten in since dragon magic was entirely different from the human variety, though considering Svena’s “little sister” was a thousand years old if she was a day, she probably had her ways.

Julius’s ways, on the other hand, were decidedly more limited. Not surprising considering who ruled it, the DFZ was packed with spirits. The presence of so many powerful allies gave the local shamans a decided home-field advantage. With so much magic at their fingertips, a good shaman might be able to spot his true nature even with his mother’s seal, and then he’d be in real trouble. What he needed was a mage of his own, someone who actually understood how this stuff worked and could act as cover, but where was he going to find a mage on short notice in an unfamiliar city who would be willing to work on credit until Ian paid up?

He was still puzzling over this when he felt the telltale prickle on the back of his neck that meant someone was watching him. Probably Ian preparing to call him back to the booth so they could “discuss his plan,” or maybe Svena with some last-minute advice/threats. But when Julius turned around, it wasn’t a dragon watching him at all. It was a woman. A human woman sitting at one of the small tables by the door.

She got up the second he made eye contact and started straight for him, cutting through the expensively dressed crowd like an arrow with him as the target. Julius thought frantically, trying to remember if he’d met her before. It was true he knew a lot of humans for a dragon, but that was only over the internet. Face-to-face contact was limited to the residents of the New Mexico desert town his mother’s mountain complex supported, and this girl definitely wasn’t someone from home. She was sure acting like she knew him, though.

As she got closer, Julius’s confusion grew, because she looked like she belonged in this club about as much as he did. Her combination of sparkly silver vest, long-sleeved white shirt with dramatic, oversized cuffs draped over chunky plastic bracelets, and tight black pants tucked into glossy black, calf-high leather boots reminded him of an old-school stage magician. It wasn’t unattractive, especially not on her. She was actually very cute in a warm, human way that was a relief after Svena’s chilling beauty. Still, her getup definitely didn’t fit in with the rest of the club’s too-cool aesthetic, and her hair was patently ridiculous.

The thick, dark brown strands had been chopped into uneven chunks ranging from almost buzz-cut short in the back to chin-length wisps around her face. It was uneven over her ears as well, with longer strands trailing down at odd places, like she’d pulled her hair back and chopped it off in a mad panic. She didn’t look crazy, though. Just determined as she walked up and slid between him and the stool on his left, leaning one elbow on the bar so that she was directly in his field of vision.

Under normal circumstances, a pretty girl coming at him out of nowhere would have sent Julius into defensive retreat. Today, though, half-panicked already and stuck in survival mode, he stared straight at her, holding his ground out of sheer desperation as he breathed deeply to catch some hint of the trap this had to be. When he didn’t smell so much as a whiff of draconic power other than the chain in his pocket, though, he said, “Can I help you?”

“No,” the girl said, flipping her hand with a flourish. “I can help you.”

A white card appeared between her fingers, and Julius jumped before he realized he hadn’t felt any magic. It had been sleight-of-hand that produced the card, not a spell. The paper itself, however, told another story.

Marci Novalli, it read. Socratic Thaumaturge, MDC. Curse breaking, magical consultation, warding services. Below that, a smaller line proclaimed, No job is too big or too small! References available upon request.

A mage, he realized dumbly, staring at the card with a growing sense of dread—an impressive feat, considering just how large his dread had grown today already. But a mage appearing out of nowhere at the exact moment he realized he needed one? If that wasn’t a set-up, then he was his mother’s favorite son.

He leaned away from her offered card like it was poison. “Sorry. Not interested.”

“Just hear me out,” the girl said, closing the distance he’d just put between them. “I can understand if you’re apprehensive about mages. You’re under a very nasty curse.”

Julius blinked. “Excuse me?”

“The curse,” she said, gesturing at him. “It’s all over you. I can’t imagine how you must be suffering, but you don’t have to worry any longer. I have a lot of experience in curse breaking, and I’m very gentle. Give me an hour and I’ll have that thing off you no problem.”

Julius stared at her, uncomprehending, and then it dawned. She was talking about the seal, the one his mother had put on him to trap him in his human shape. After that, it was all Julius could do not to burst out laughing, both at the notion of a mortal mage breaking his mother’s seal in an hour and how Bethesda would react if it actually worked. He glanced at the girl again, just to make sure she wasn’t kidding, but her expression was deadly serious, and all he could do was shake his head.

“I’m afraid my curse isn’t the sort you can remove,” he said. “Thank you for offering, though.” That last bit came out surprisingly heartfelt. Her unexpected sales pitch was the nicest thing anyone had said to him all day.

The girl stared at him a moment, and then her shoulders slumped. “Well, do you have anything else you need done? Wards? Spirits banished? I can show you my portfolio.”

She’d started pulling a binder out of the enormous black messenger bag on her shoulder before she’d even finished the question, and Julius fought the urge to sigh. Humans.

“I’m good, really,” he said, putting up his hands. “You don’t have to show me anything. I’m not interested.”

The girl stopped short, and then she stuffed the binder back into her bag, her face falling in utter defeat. “Sorry,” she muttered, flopping down on the barstool beside him. “I’m not normally so…” She waved her hands as she searched for the word, making the chipped silver glitter polish on her nails sparkle in the club’s low light. “Car salesman-y,” she said at last. “It’s just that I really need the work. If you have anything magical you need done today, anything at all, I’ll give you a huge discount. I swear I’m completely legit. I’m fully licensed in Nevada, actually, but I’m new in town and, frankly, getting a little desperate. So if there’s any work you need a mage for, just say the word. If not, I’ll stop bothering you.”

Julius opened his mouth to say sorry, he had nothing, but the words stuck in his throat. The girl was looking at him so earnestly, and that word desperate kept rolling around in his head. Bob had told him to be a gentleman and help desperate women. Of course, Bob had also once told Julius that he would have dinner with a phoenix on his birthday.

Turning away from the human, he pulled out his phone and reread the seer’s message, but he hadn’t made a mistake. There was the warning from his maybe-insane, maybe-future predicting brother who’d mailed him a phone loaded with a Detroit ID and money four months before he’d needed it, and here was the desperate woman said brother had told him to help, and now Julius had to make a decision.

On the one hand, years of well-honed paranoia told him for certain that this was a trap. No one’s luck was good enough to have a random mage walk up and offer her services at the exact moment she was needed. Far more likely was that this Marci Novalli was working for someone else from the Three Sisters who didn’t want Katya found, or maybe another clan entirely. If he took her offer, he’d be playing right into the clutches of his family’s enemies like the idiot failure his mother always said he was. On the other hand, though, rejecting her meant he’d be going against his brother’s advice, and therein lay the quandary. Unlike most of his family, Julius didn’t think Bob was crazy, or, at least, not only crazy. He wasn’t sure if his brother actually saw the future, but Bob definitely saw something. Trouble was, Julius wasn’t sure which side this particular warning fell on: the crazy or the something. He was still trying to figure it out when the girl slid off the barstool.

“I’m really sorry to have wasted your time,” she said quietly, looking down at her feet as she adjusted her bag on her shoulder. “Thank you for listening, and I hope you have a nice—”

“Wait.”

The girl looked up in surprise. Julius was surprised, too, because he hadn’t thought he’d made up his mind yet. But while he still wasn’t sure if the mage was a trap, a vision of Bob’s unsettled mind, or some combination thereof, he had come to a decision. The sorry had been the deciding factor, but the thank you had sealed the deal. Julius couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard those words from anyone’s mouth except his own and, trap or not, he couldn’t let the person who said them just walk away.

Of course, now that he’d stopped her, he had to come up with something to say.

“Marci, right?” he asked, clearing his throat as she sat back down on the stool. “Can you do illusions?”

“Absolutely,” Marci said, counting off on her fingers. “Area, personal, spatial, full sensory immersion, though I’ll need a day to set that last one up if you want it on something bigger than a ten by ten square.”

Julius didn’t know enough about human magic to gauge whether that was good or not, but Marci certainly sounded like she knew what she was talking about. “I guess it would be a personal illusion,” he said. “On me. But I’d rather not explain it here. Do you have somewhere else we could talk?”

Marci nodded and hopped to her feet. “I’ll need my workshop to do a credible illusion anyway. We can discuss terms on the way over. Would that be okay?”

Julius glanced over his shoulder, but his brother and Svena were still sitting in the VIP area with their heads together, and he was loath to interrupt. Really, though, he saw no reason to deal with Ian again at all. He had the chain, he had the information about the party, and now he had a mage to help him get inside. If he moved quickly, this whole mess could be over by midnight.

“That sounds great,” he said, smiling at Marci as he slid off his own stool. “Let’s get out of here.”

***

Getting out of the club was much simpler than getting in. Rather than running the gauntlet past the augmented bouncer, Marci led them out a side door and down the alley, away from the tree-lined square and its well-dressed crowds. Then she led them down from the street, descending a long set of cement stairs from the elevated skyway.

“I swear I’m not taking you off to mug you,” she said as they walked away from the evening sunlight and the bright glow of the Upper City’s ubiquitous halogen street lamps. “It’s just that you don’t have to pay for parking down here.”

“No worries,” Julius said, glancing around. Even with his dragon sealed, he wasn’t terribly worried about a human mugging him, and he was far more interested in his first look at the underbelly of Old Detroit.

Going below the skyways was like entering another world. All the brilliance of the Upper City—the fancy tree-lined square, the towering superscrapers, the elegant curving roads full of luxury cars and computer driven taxis—was like a model sitting on a table, and underneath it, an entirely different city thrived in the dark.

After all the stories he’d heard, Julius had expected Underground Detroit to look like a war torn ruin, but this looked more like Shinjuku in Tokyo. The buildings, many of them apparently dating from before the flood given the high water marks on their second stories, had been completely renovated to hold as many shops as possible. Every window seemed to have at least two signs hanging in it, and the combined glare of all the neon, back-lit plastic, and flashing LEDs, actually made it brighter down here than it had been up top in the sun.

If there was any organizational system, Julius couldn’t see it. Bars, restaurants, and theaters shared walls with banks, private schools, and massage parlors in a chaotic jumble. Some establishments didn’t even bother making divisions, advertising salon services and gambling at the same time. Even the buildings themselves were mismatched. Some, the short ones, looked like the normal office buildings and strip malls they must have been before Algonquin had built an entire other city on top of them. Others, ones that had collapsed and been completely rebuilt in the years since the flood, or the ones that had been too tall to fit under the skyway’s eighty foot clearance and had been cut to fit, reached right up to the ceiling, using the huge cement base of the Upper City in place of an actual roof.

The chaos continued on the ground as well where food carts and semi-permanent kiosks competed with cars for room on the ruler-straight grid of the old roads. Trash and advertisements and people were absolutely everywhere, crammed into every nook and cranny and selling everything under the sun to anyone who was willing to pay regardless of age. The only breaks in the madness were the enormous, city-block-long cement support pillars that held up the skyway overhead, but even these were plastered with billboards advertising everything from concerts and exotic pets to drugs and pay-as-you-go augmentation clinics. Just trying to wrap his brain around the chaos of capitalism gone crazy was making Julius feel overwhelmed and dizzy, but most astonishing of all were the people.

Back in Arbor Square, the crowd had been ethnically diverse, but still so uniformly wealthy and well dressed that they’d all blended together. In the Underground, though, there was some of everything: ethnicity, class, religion, occupation, everything. It was like some power had swept the world, picked people at random, and dumped them all here. It was nothing short of extraordinary, and Julius almost fell down the stairs in his eagerness to get a better look.

“First time below decks?”

Julius winced and glanced up to see Marci grinning at him over her shoulder. “That obvious, huh?”

“You are gawking a bit,” she said, slowing her pace until they were climbing down side by side. “Not that I’m judging, of course. I was shocked too, my first time.”

“It’s actually a lot nicer than I’d thought it’d be,” Julius admitted, nodding down at the young, excited crowd waiting to get into a five-sense theatre. “I’d always heard, you know…”

“What? That the whole place was a giant slum of rotting buildings and desperate characters straight out of a corporate dystopia? Oh, don’t worry, there’s plenty of that, too. This is actually one of the tourist areas the DFZ Visitor’s Board pays to keep colorful and edgy, but not so scary that outsiders won’t spent money.”

Julius looked over at the brightly colored, music playing, fully automated gun, alcohol, and party drug vending machines that lined the landings of the stairwell. “This is the tourist area?”

Marci spread her arms wide. “Welcome to the DFZ!”

A proper, crafty dragon would have shut his mouth after that and kept his ignorance hidden, but Julius was curious, and this seemed kind of important. “What about security? I mean, I know everything is legal here, but isn’t this kind of excessive? How can so many corporations have their headquarters in the DFZ if there are vending machines selling drugs to tourists only fifty steps down from Arbor Square?”

“There’s plenty of security,” Marci said. “It’s just reserved for people with money, spirits, and fish. Especially fish, actually. Life’s great here if you live underwater.”

He arched his eyebrows in question, and she pointed over at a giant yellow hazard sign posted on the nearest support beam. Julius hadn’t noticed that particular billboard amid all the other advertisements, but now that Marci had pointed it out, it was impossible to miss the giant wave crest logo of the Algonquin Civic Corporation followed by a list of substances that you were not allowed to dump into the water system and the horrible punishments that awaited anyone who did, written in a world tour of languages. There were more signs when they reached ground level with similar warnings against littering and burning illicit materials, but nothing for human on human crimes like theft or assault, which made a pretty clear statement about the Lady of the Lakes’ priorities.

“I see what you mean,” Julius said, stepping closer to Marci as they pushed into the teeming, noisy crowd that smelled strongly of sweat and human at bottom of the stairs. “Crime here must be ridiculous.”

“It varies,” Marci said, turning them down a side street that, while still crowded, at least had breathing room. “If you stay in areas where people can afford to pay their police fees, it’s not bad at all. If you go where they can’t, well…better not to do that.”

Julius nodded silently. Now that they were actually down in it, he could see the glitz of the tourist area was only on the surface. The main streets were full of vendors and tourists, but the side streets were packed with a very different crowd. Humans in filthy clothes sat together against the buildings, their eyes glassy and empty. Others waited on corners, watching the crowds of tourists like predators eying a herd. Every now and then, one of them would duck off only to come right back with a purse or shopping bag tucked under their arms. Julius shook his head, rolling his eyes up to the sooty black underbelly of the elevated highway that served for a sky in this place. “Why do people put up with it?”

He’d meant that to be a rhetorical question, but Marci answered immediately. “Opportunity. The Lady of the Lakes might care more about fish than people, but this is still the Magic City. There’s no immigration office, no background checks. Anyone can come here with nothing and try to make a new life. That’s a powerful draw, and there are a lot of jobs here, especially if you aren’t too squeamish.” She shrugged. “I think of it as a gamble. The DFZ is dangerous and unfair and full of weird magic, but if you’re willing to brave the risks, you can win big.”

“Or lose everything,” Julius countered, eying a line of drugged out humans taking refuge behind a dumpster, several of whom were children. “I don’t know. It seems kind of like a step back.”

“Maybe,” Marci said. “But it is what it is, and the city’s held on this long, so something must be working.”

“I suppose,” Julius said, but only to be polite. Honestly, he didn’t see how a city ruled by an ancient spirit who clearly didn’t care at all for human life, where the rich lived literally on top of everyone else, and you had to pay a fee just to call 911 could be anything other than a dystopia. He didn’t want to rain on Marci’s enthusiasm, however, so he kept his mouth shut, sticking close to her side as they walked away from the bright, jangly tourist area into a slightly quieter, more residential part of the crowded Underground.

“So,” Marci said, smiling at him. “I probably should have asked you this way earlier, but what’s your name? Unless you want this to be a secret contract, of course. Again, not judging.”

“Not that secret,” he said, laughing. “And my name’s Julius.”

She nodded. “Julius what?”

Julius faked a cough to buy himself time and grabbed his phone in his pocket, popping up the AR display only he could see right through the fabric of his jeans. It still took him a few seconds of fumbling before he was able to navigate the new menus to see what last name Bob had put on his residence ID. “Quetz,” he read, gritting his teeth. “Julius Quetz.”

“Quetz?” Marci repeated incredulously.

“Short for Quetzalcoatl,” he explained, letting the phone go with a huff. “It’s an old family name.” And Bob’s idea of a joke. Or at least, Julius hoped it was a joke. There was no other reason a sane individual would think using the name of the most infamous feathered serpent ever to terrorize the Americas as a cover alias for a dragon in hiding was a good idea.

“Wait, you shortened your last name?”

Julius missed a step on the uneven sidewalk, eyes wide. Was that not something humans did? “Um,” he stalled. “It was too hard to spell?”

That explanation seemed to fly, because Marci nodded. “I see. It’s too bad, though. I think Quetzalcoatl would have been a pretty awesome last name.” She shrugged and flashed that infectious grin of hers at him again, stopping to put out her hand. “Well, Julius Quetz, I’m happier than you can know to be doing business with you. And speaking of which, I hope you don’t mind signing a standard U.S. contract. As I said, I just moved here, and I haven’t had a chance to get my DFZ paperwork in order, such as it is.”

Julius shook her hand after only a slight hesitation. He was about to tell her a U.S. contract would be fine when Marci turned around and walked over to the dusty car parked on the sidewalk beside them. It was a beat-up old junker that looked a good ten years older than Marci herself, but it wasn’t until she walked around to the trunk and started wiggling the key—a metal key, not a wireless fob—into the ancient lock, that Julius realized this was her car.

With that, the last of his fears that Marci was a trap set by another clan vanished. If there was any draconic trait even more universal than their love of plotting, it was snobbery. No dragon, no matter how cheap or desperate, would be caught dead using a human who drove a car like this. With that settled, though, there was only one question left. Why had Bob set him up with this mage?

He was still wondering when Marci finally got the trunk open. “I normally charge a flat hourly fee plus expenses,” she said, pulling out a stack of slightly creased papers. “But I promised you a discount, so I’m cutting my rate in half and waiving my retainer.” Closing the trunk again to use its hood as a writing surface, Marci crossed several clauses off the top of the contract with an expensive-looking marker she’d pulled from her pocket. Once it was all marked through, she wrote in the new rates by hand before giving the contract to Julius. “Is that okay?”

Julius took the pages with trepidation. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen an actual physical contract, let alone signed one. The paper felt odd, too, almost tingly. “Is there a spell on this?”

Marci’s eyes widened. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I forgot to mention that. Yes, a minor truth spell, just the usual security against falsification. It’s all on the up and up, though, see?” She pointed at the top of the page where the paper had, indeed, been notarized by the State of Nevada Magic Commissioner’s Office. “Nothing nefarious.”

Julius studied the seal for a moment, and then he glanced through the rear window of her car at the backseat, which was packed high with bags and boxes. There’d been boxes in her trunk as well. Clearly, Marci Novalli had left Nevada in a hurry. He wanted to ask why, but he wasn’t exactly in a position to pry, and with the discounted rate she’d written down, he was getting her services for almost nothing.

He felt kind of bad about that, actually, but he needed a mage, she needed work, and a paper contract would keep his name out of any databases that could come back to haunt him. So, before he could second-guess himself into paralysis, Julius took the pen she offered and signed his first name on the dotted line. Only his first name, since the truth spell would have outed his last as a fake. Marci arched an eyebrow, but she didn’t comment as she signed her own name on the line below.

“You won’t be disappointed,” she promised as she snatched the paper up, tucking it into a plastic envelope, which she then slipped into one of the many pockets of her shoulder bag. “Now, what kind of illusion did you need tonight?”

“Well,” Julius said, walking around to the old car’s passenger side. “I need to get into this party.”

Marci’s eyes widened in astonishment, and then, to his surprise, she blushed, her whole face turning bright red. “What kind of party wouldn’t let you in?”

He tilted his head curiously. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly, hurrying around to the driver’s door to unlock the car. “It’s just, you don’t look like the sort of guy who has trouble getting in anywhere, if you get my drift.”

Julius didn’t, but Marci was still blushing for some reason, so he didn’t push the issue. “Not this one,” he said, getting into the car. “It’s some kind of exclusive mage thing, and I’m not a mage.”

“Say no more,” she said, tapping a destination into the flickering console that passed for an autodrive in this relic of a vehicle. “We’ll have you looking magical in no time. What kind of mage do you want to be?”

Julius winced as the car sputtered like an asthmatic old dog, but it made it out of the narrow parking space and down the road without dying, and he eventually relaxed into the threadbare seat. “What are my options?”

Marci’s enormous smile caught him completely off guard, but he had plenty of time to recover as she passionately recited the seemingly endless variety of magical vocations, with commentary, that he could choose from.

I hope you enjoyed the sample of Nice Dragons Finish Last!

If you want to read more, the entire Heartstrikers series is finished and ready for you to binge! The novels are available in ebook, Kindle Unlimited, in print, and as audio books featuring the award-winning narration of Audible Hall-of-Famer Vikas Adams. Click here to see all the books in the series, or look them up at your favorite book/audio book retailer!

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Minimum Wage Magic

Return to the DFZ in Rachel’s latest completed series!

The DFZ, the metropolis formerly known as Detroit, is the world’s most magical city with a population of nine million and zero public safety laws. That’s a lot of mages, cybernetically enhanced chrome heads, and mythical beasties who die, get into debt, and otherwise fail to pay their rent. When they can’t pay their bills, their stuff gets sold to the highest bidder to cover the tab.

That’s when they call me. My name is Opal Yong-ae, and I’m a Cleaner: a freelance mage with an art history degree who’s employed by the DFZ to sort through the mountains of magical junk people leave behind. It’s not a pretty job, or a safe one—there’s a reason I wear bite-proof gloves—but when you’re deep in debt in a lawless city where gods are real, dragons are traffic hazards, and buildings move around on their own, you don’t get to be picky about where your money comes from. You just have to make it work, even when the only thing of value in your latest repossessed apartment is the dead body of the mage who used to live there.

"A catchy title, a plucky protagonist and a maximum effort by the author, honestly readers can't ask for more in the urban fantasy genre."- Fantasy Book Critic

"I love what Rachel Aaron has done with this novel to expand her stories within this unique world of her creation. I have developed a trust in her ability to write engaging stories of great characters which I feel most comfortable and eager to spend time with, and this book is no exception." - TS Chan

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Forever Fantasy Online

In the real world, twenty-one-year-old library sciences student Tina Anderson is invisible and under-appreciated, but in the VR-game Forever Fantasy Online she's Roxxy--the respected leader and main tank of a top-tier raiding guild. In the real world, her brother James Anderson is a college drop-out struggling under debt, but in FFO he's famous--an explorer who's gotten every achievement, done every quest, and collected all the rarest items.

Both Tina and James need the game more than they'd like to admit, but their favorite escape turns into a trap when FFO becomes a living world. Wounds are no longer virtual, stupid monsters become cunning, NPCs start acting like actual people, and death might be forever.

In the real world, everyone said being good at video games was a waste of time. Now, stranded and separated across thousands of miles of new, deadly terrain, Tina and James's skill at FFO is the only thing keeping them alive. It's going to take every bit of their expertise--and hoarded loot--to find each other and get back home, but as the stakes get higher and the damage adds up, being the best in the game may no longer be enough.

“Rachel Aaron and Travis Bach have written an amazing story and a realistic LitRPG.” - The Fantasy Inn

“Excellent characters, an engaging story, and geek humor. What more can one ask for?” - TS Chan

The first in a new gamer/fantasy collaboration from Rachel Aaron and Travis Bach! Try it now for free!

The Legend of Eli Monpress

Eli Monpress is talented. He's charming. And he's the greatest thief in the world.

He’s also a wizard, and with the help of his partners in crime—a swordsman with the world’s most powerful magic sword (but no magical ability of his own) and a demonseed who can step through shadows and punch through walls—he's getting ready to pull off the heist of his career. To start, though, he'll just steal something small. Something no one will miss.

Something like… a king.

"I cannot be less than 110% in love with this book. I loved it. I love it still. Already I sort of want to read it again. Considering my fairly epic Godzilla-sized To Read list, that's just about the highest compliment I can give a book" - CSI: Librarian

"Fast and fun, The Spirit Thief introduces a fascinating new world and a complex magical system based on cooperation with the spirits who reside in all living objects. Aaron’s characters are fully fleshed and possess complex personalities, motivations, and backstories that are only gradually revealed. Fans of Scott Lynch’s Lies of Locke Lamora (2006) will be thrilled with Eli Monpress. Highly recommended for all fantasy readers." - Booklist, Starred Review

Click here to read more about The Legend of Eli Monpress, Rachel’s debut Fantasy series, complete at 5 books!

The Paradox Trilogy

(written as Rachel Bach)

Devi Morris isn't your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It's a combination that's going to get her killed one day - but not just yet.

That is, until she just gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn't misnamed: it likes to get into trouble, so much so that one year of security work under its captain is equal to five years everywhere else. With odds like that, Devi knows she's found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her Plan. But the Fool doesn't give up its secrets without a fight, and one year on this ship might be more than even Devi can handle.

"Firefly-esque in its concept of a rogue-ish spaceship family... The narrative never quite goes where you expect it to, in a good way... Devi is a badass with a heart." - Locus Magazine

"If you liked Star Wars, if you like our books, and if you are waiting for Guardians of the Galaxy to hit the theaters, this is your book." - Ilona Andrews

"I JUST LOVED IT! Perfect light sci-fi. If you like space stuff that isn't that complicated but highly entertaining, I give two thumbs up!" - Felicia Day

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2,000 to 10,000: Writing Better, Writing Faster, and Writing More of What You Love

(nonfiction)

"Have you ever wanted to double your daily word counts? Do you sometimes feel like you're crawling through your story? Do you want to write more every day without increasing the time you spend writing or sacrificing quality? It's not impossible; it's not even that hard. This is the book explaining how, with a few simple changes, I boosted my daily writing from 2000 words to over 10k a day, and how you can too."

Expanding on Rachel’s viral blog post about how she doubled her daily word counts, this book offers practical writing advice for anyone who's ever longed to increase their daily writing output. In addition to updated information for the popular 2k to 10k writing efficiency process, 5 step plotting method, and easy editing tips, the book includes all new chapters on creating characters who write their own stories, plot structure, and learning to love your daily writing. Full of easy to follow, practical advice from a professional author who doesn't eat if she doesn't produce good books on a regular basis, 2k to 10k focuses not just on writing faster, but writing better, and having more fun while you do it!

"I loved this book! So helpful!" - Courtney Milan, NYT Bestselling Author

"This. Is. Amazing. You are telling my story RIGHT NOW. Book is due in 2 weeks, and I'm behind--woefully, painfully behind--because I've been stuck...writing in circles and unenthused. Yet here--here is a FANTASTIC solution. I am printing this post out, and I'm setting out to make my triangle. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!" - Bestselling YA Author Susan Dennard

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About the Author

Rachel Aaron is the author of twenty-plus novels and the bestselling nonfiction writing book, 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love, which has helped thousands of authors double their daily word counts. When she’s not holed up in her writing tower, Rachel lives a nerdy, bookish life in Denver, CO, with her perpetual-motion son, long-suffering husband, and far too many plants. To learn more about Rachel, read samples of all her books, or to find a complete list of her interviews and podcasts, please visit rachelaaron.net!

The Battle of Medicine Rocks and Minimum Wage Magic Copyright 2023 by Rachel Aaron. All rights reserved.

Cover Illustration by Luisa J. Preißler, Cover Design by Rachel Aaron, Editing provided by Red Adept Editing.

As always, this book would not have been nearly as good without Linda Hall. You made this great!

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Table of Contents

- Title
- Blurb
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Epilogue
- Thank you for reading!

- Sample: Nice Dragons Finish Last

- Chapter 1

- Chapter 2

- More Books by Rachel Aaron

- Minimum Wage Magic
- Forever Fantasy Online
- The Legend of Eli Monpress
- Fortune's Pawn
- 2k to 10k Writing

- About the Author