Haven's Blight (21 page)

Indeed, his entire career depended on not taking things for granted.

Bouvier shook his head. “You don’t understand. He was a raging beast! There’s no controlling him.”

“Now, somehow I find it in myself to doubt that, Mr. Bouvier. Ryan Cawdor strikes me as a man entirely in control of himself.”

“Well, mebbe it was just the, the animal
feel
of the man. He would have snapped my neck like a twig if he could.”

“
That
I believe.”

He uttered a short sigh. “It appears we have ourselves a problem.”

“I’ll say! He’s got to be gotten rid of. He’s dangerous, I tell you! He’ll be the ruin of us all.”

“Put your mind at rest, Mr. Bouvier. I will attend to the matter. Cleaning up other people’s messes is my specialty.”

Bouvier worked his mouth in and out several times, making his jowls wobble. Finally he decided the best course was neither bluster nor blithering gratitude.

“Right,” he contented himself with saying. He turned and bustled off toward his own holdings on the ville’s far side.

Tall and slim and elegant as a riding crop, the other man stood on the lawn watching the broad figure recede into the night. The crickets and the tree frogs sang counterpoint in the ever-present woods.

He heard a soft step on the damp grass behind him.

“So another of your clever schemes amounts to nothing, St. Vincent.”

He turned to where the slim woman stood. “Amélie. How convenient of you to arrive at this juncture.”

“I listened,” she said. “You knew I was in the house, looking in on Elizabeth.” She spoke the last word with quiet, venomous intent.

“Oh, indeed. And the outlander woman.”

“Her, too.”

St. Vincent felt the lines of his face deepen as he looked back to where the night had at last swallowed Bouvier’s bulk.

“These continuing tensions are aging me prematurely,” he complained. “I know it. Still, this man Cawdor would make a far better horse to ride to unlimited power and wealth than that milksop Tobias. He’s a man of decision as well as action. I know it!”

“Tobias’s ambitions are all for building up Haven,” Mercier said, a note of defensiveness creeping into her quiet voice.

“And I lust to be the power behind a greater throne than Haven can ever encompass.” He shook his head, jutting his lean chin with its narrow beard. “Every man has his price. I just have to ascertain what Ryan’s is. And I will.”

“I fear these newcomers.”

St. Vincent laughed. “Don’t, my dear. That which you fear in them is the very thing what will bring us what we want.”

He turned to her. “And now, I believe there’s a certain little task that you should be about performing.”

The shoulders rose and fell in a petulant, theatric sigh. “If I must.”

He allowed a hint of asperity into his voice. “You agreed to the plan. Now is no time to hang back.”

“Tobias must not be hurt,” Mercier said. “You promised.”

“And so I did.” He made fussy shooing gestures with the backs of his fine hands. “Quick, now! Off you go, child.”

“S
TUPES
,” B
OUVIER
muttered as he made his way through deep, dark woods.

The flame of the lantern he was carrying was turned up all the way. But it barely made an impression on the bottomless shadows under the trees, or the black branches that seemed to stretch down toward his face like tentacles. It was fortunate that he knew his own way home so well the lantern itself was but a convenience. A luxury almost.

“Fools. Ungrateful bastards.”

He was surrounded by mental and moral midgets. He had thought Ryan Cawdor to be of altogether different stuff. Different stature. A man to bestride history’s stage and own it.

But a man of action, withal. Not of contemplation or pondering high strategy. That was where a man of Bouvier’s unique talents could best serve a vibrant, powerful ville and baron.

Yet somehow he had misjudged his man.

“I made a mistake,” he muttered. “Yes, admit it—a mistake! I have to face fact and move on. Now Cawdor will be dealt with. And I’ll just have to keep looking for the right man.”

He shook his head, feeling regret. Actual regret. A waste, he thought, such a terrible waste.

A soft rustle came from the woods to his left.

He stopped. Inside hot skin, his blood was ice.

He knew every sound that came from these woods, in every season and weather condition. Just as he knew the path that brought him home most directly through the woods surrounding the ville, instead of taking the corduroyed road the long way around. What he had heard didn’t belong.

Something was moving softly to his left.

“Who’s there?” he demanded, reaching for the butt of the pistol he’d stuck through his waistband when he’d stopped by his office in the Heights to pick up the lantern. “Come out! Show yourself!”

Another rustle came from the brush. Something pale flashed through the edges of his vision, crossing his backtrail, now on his right.

He turned that way. The sound continued, rhythmic, like quiet steps.

Coming toward him.

His hand fell away from the butt of his pistol. All bravado was forgotten. Here was a horror he couldn’t fight.

He turned and ran. His legs were short and his weight was large, but he made good time along the winding path, leaping over roots that humped across the path as though to trip him, slipping on fallen and decomposing leaves.

But he couldn’t outrun doom.

He had gone no more than thirty yards when he heard it rushing on him. Squealing in terror, he turned.

It was smaller than he expected. A pale creature of wide eyes, fangs and claws, with a wild dark mane of coarse hair.

But when the jaws closed on his face, he felt his own bones crunch like crisp pastry crusts. Claws tore through his shirt, through the fat of his belly, the muscle and the tough membrane of his body wall like a crow’s talons through a writhing grub.

The agony as the monster began to dig his living guts right out of him almost made him forget the pain in his bitten face.

Almost.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Ryan.”

He stirred on his cot and tried to burrow deeper into his pillow. Normally he snapped awake as if spring-loaded. Not this time. News of the brutal murder and evisceration of the merchant Bouvier, quite unmistakably by the Beast, had roused the house in the early hours. Ryan had tramped out with the baron, his men, and J.B. and Jak on a fruitless search for the monster. He had only slunk back to bed as false dawn stained the eastern sky above the trees like spilled spoiled milk.

It was the final anvil piled atop days of fatigue amassed through worry, stress, healing, and of course, mortal combat.

“Ryan, get up.” It was Mildred’s voice. “We have a visitor.”

Grumbling, he sat up. He rubbed both hands over his face, reflexively careful not to dislodge the patch that covered his left eye. Running hands back through his long, dense, slightly curly black hair, he blinked his good eye wearily at the intruder.

“Mildred, is that any way to wake a man?”

“You think I’m nuts? I don’t want you to come awake and start choking me because you think I’m a stickie or a mutie bear. Be glad I don’t do what I normally would, and stand back even farther and chuck pebbles at you.”

Her words finally percolated into his befuddled mind. “What do you mean, we have a visitor?”

“Come see for yourself.”

“M
UTIE
!” J
AK
Lauren stressed between his teeth.

“Is not,” Mildred said, biting into a chunk of reasonably fresh papaya. Despite the on-again off-again blockade by Black Gang pirates, the barony had obtained a lot of fruit grown in the Caribbean and Central America through its sea trade. “Just a dwarf.”

“What that?” the albino teen asked.

Ryan stood on the porch with Mildred, Jak, J.B. and Doc. The porch roof offered shade from the early-morning sun, already inclined to stick to the skin and burn like boiling sugar. The smell of flowers in the beds along the house front, the ones that had escaped trampling in the other night’s battle, was strong and sweet in Ryan’s nostrils. Blackwood, his sister, his aide Barton and his sec boss, Guerrero, stood out on the lawn near the gazebo talking to a man dressed in a long linen smock and dungarees.

Or mebbe half-man, Ryan thought. The visitor was a black man, an oldie from his short wiry white hair and beard and the wrinkled face it framed. But he was trim and held himself upright, and his movements were those of somebody in pretty good shape.

He stood about a yard tall.

“A dwarf,” Mildred repeated.

“That’s a person, but your half-size model.”

“Right,” Jak said.

Whatever he was, he was speaking in a high-pitched voice, though Ryan couldn’t make out the words. Blackwood was nodding gravely. Then he turned to beckon the group on the porch.

“Ryan, friends,” he said, “please join us. This gentleman has brought news for you.”

“For us?” Mildred echoed. Ryan shrugged and walked forward. The rest trailed after.

As he reached the small group standing out in the Gulf Coast sun, he saw Amélie Mercier walking up the crushed-shell path from the ville with a servant who’d apparently been sent to fetch her. Like Elizabeth Blackwood, she sensibly carried a parasol.

“Ryan Cawdor,” the baron said, indicating the little dude, “this is Achille.”

He introduced the rest of Ryan’s party. Achille nodded gravely in turn to each.

“Pleased to meet ya!” he said, pumping Ryan’s hand enthusiastically. As did at least half the people they’d run into in the ville, he spoke with a Cajun French accent.

“I come bringing important word to Monsieur Cawdor.” He dragged the first syllable of Ryan’s name out long.

“That’s me,” Ryan said. “Shoot.”

The man blinked at him for a moment. He had large pale amber eyes. Despite some yellowing around the edges, they were as sharp as a bird’s.

“My mistress the healer, wise woman, and incomparable seeress has words for your ears,
monsieur.
Others may come, as you will. But she will speak her truths only to you in person.”

“Who’s your mistress,” Ryan asked wryly, “shy of all the excess wordage.”

“She is known as Sweet Julie Blind Eyes,” Mercier said crisply as she joined the group. “She is a folk healer, held in great esteem by the people of the ville. She lives miles back in the bayous. Hundreds of people make the pilgrimage to visit her each year.”

“What’s with the ‘seeress’ part of that really impressive résumé?” Mildred asked.

“She has the sight,” Achille announced proudly. “Both far and second.”

Mildred cocked a brow at Mercier. “And what do you think of this, Amélie?”

“What there is of science in the Deathlands has recognized for years that certain mutations convey limited powers of telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition,” the healer said. “Precognition meaning, glimpsing visions of possible futures, since it is demonstrated that acting with foreknowledge can prevent foreseen events from coming true.”

Mildred blinked at her. “Girlfriend, we have
got
to talk.”

“Later,” Ryan rasped. “Why should I hike way back in the swamp to talk to this blind woman of yours?”

“Because Mistress Sweet Julie, whose eyes see nothing of this world, but see most clearly in the One Behind It, she and she alone can tell you what you must do if you wish your woman Krysty Wroth back.”

Ryan drew his head back, stunned by the words. It’s no big thing he knows her name, he reminded himself. Given the bayou grapevine, the whole ville and beyond probably knows about Krysty by now.

He looked to the Blackwood siblings. “Is there anything to this woman? Any chance she’s likely to know something useful?”

“She is legitimately wise,” Elizabeth said, “as well as honest. And her knowledge of herbs and traditional remedies is encyclopedic.”

“Our family has consulted her on occasion,” her brother said. With visible reluctance he added, “For generations.”

“You’re the consummate rationalist, Amélie,” Mildred said. “What’s your take? Might this witch-woman have the goods?”

Mercier shrugged. Like Elizabeth she looked fatigued. There were dark circles beneath both women’s eyes. Ryan supposed she’d been working late in her lab.

“
C’est possible,
” she said. “That is one of the things that drew my father here, along with the late baron’s offer of employment and full assistance, of course. This environment contains a wealth of plants whose possible pharmacological properties have never been adequately cataloged. Some, undoubtedly, have arisen since the skydark. They form a major portion of my own inquiries.”

“So this self-proclaimed seeress—” Doc began.

“May well possess insight that could prove of value to the treatment of Miss Wroth’s condition, yes. At least, I believe such a chance exists.”

Mercier looked at Ryan. “I must warn you that there is no certainty that she will know a cure, no matter how strongly she believes.”

“Only thing I know is certain,” Ryan said, his voice sounding to his own ears as if he’d been gargling battery acid, “is one day we’ll all find dirt hitting us in the eyes. A chance is good enough for me. Baron?”

“Of course,” Blackwood said, rubbing his hands together. “You’ll have everything you need, of course. We’ll take a small flotilla of flatboats. We’ll need a small security contingent accompanying us. Sweet Julie dwells near the regions claimed by the swampies. Although they hold her in superstitious fear, and would not harm her, such forbearance doesn’t extend to us.”

“Wait,” Ryan said. “Us?”

The baron smiled. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” he said.

A
S
B
LACKWOOD
SAID
, Sweet Julie Blind Eyes lived in the backwaters beyond the ville. Ryan and company endured four hours of poling and paddling through molasses-thick humid heat and clouds of crunchy, biting insects. At least the companions didn’t have to share any of the propulsion duties, which mostly left them with hands and energy free to slap the mosquitoes.

Sweet Julie Blind Eyes sat awaiting them as they trudged up the slope from the little uneven pier on the shore of her tiny island. No larger in any direction than Ryan could heave a rock the size of his head, it had grown up out of the confluence of several channels, so that it had at least fifty feet of water on all sides, around the roots of an ancient cypress. Or rather, several trees with boles grown together.

Like a vertical mouth, a crack eight feet high yawned in the compound trunk of the still-living trees, at least twelve feet across. The doomie sat in the opening like a housewife on her stoop, her long skirts of dark brown broadcloth flowing to conceal her legs and whatever she sat on. Her hair, silver-gray rather than white, flowed in vast crinkly waves over the shoulders of a blouse made of patches of many colors, including what had to be predark prints on scavvied fabric. Years seemed to have concentrated her so that she was as skinny yet dense as one of the gnarled roots of her mighty tree home. Although not so twisty. She sat erect, and though the joints were prominent on the hands that methodically crushed herbs in a small mortar and pestle she held on a thick board in her lap, that seemed because she had shrunk around the bones, not because of arthritic deposits.

“You have
got
to be shitting me,” Mildred said emphatically but mostly to herself. “Talk about a blatant female-genitalia symbol! If it was a flower, it’d have Georgia O’Keeffe’s signature right next to it.”

That made no sense Ryan could even imagine. It didn’t sound like anything that he needed to know. Or maybe wanted to. He let it slide.

The woman turned blind eyes toward them. Her face was long and as spare as her hands, with knobs for cheekbones and the skin drawn hollow beneath. But her features showed little sign of wrinkling. She had been a looker once, Ryan reckoned. Her eyes were as white as pearls.

“Welcome, Tobias!” she called in a voice that was strong and clear though cracked by the weight of years. “You’ve grown strong and confident in step since last you visited my isle.”

She turned her parchment-hued face toward Ryan. “And you must be Ryan Cawdor.”

“Mutie!” Jak said for the second time today.

The woman’s brow wrinkled. “Yes, yes. Weren’t you told that part? But I don’t need mutie powers to tell me those things, young man. I just use the senses I was given. By sound I recognize young Tobias, his step and breathing. By common sense I know he’s brought retainers. By smell I recognize that some of his party have spent their lives elsewhere, eating foods not found in our hospitable swamps, or brought only as luxury imports.”

“But how’d you know Ryan, ma’am?” J.B. asked. He sounded a touch uncertain himself.

She laughed, more a pleasant bubbling flow, with perhaps a touch of static, than a crone’s cackle. “Lots of people across the Deathlands mention your deeds, youngster. You’d be J. B. Dix. And Mildred Wyeth, a healer and Dr. Theophilus Tanner. Which would make the young man so worried by muties Jak Lauren, once known as the White Wolf along this very coast a ways.”

Blackwood raised a brow. “With all respect to my honored guests,
I
never heard of them before they washed up on the fringes of Haven.”

“Sweet Julie spreads her nets wide,” she said. “News comes to me from everywhere. Through the wind, the water, the very earth beneath us.”

“Just heard ’bout us from ville people!” Jak accused.

She laughed again. “Guilty as charged. But I do not lie. I
have
heard of your exploits. Allow an old lady the pleasure of mystifying for its own sake.”

“If you don’t mind,” Ryan said, “why don’t we get right to the matter at hand. How can I bring Krysty back?”

“What would you give to have Krysty Wroth, the redheaded beauty, at your side and hale once more?”

“Anything.”

“Anything and everything?”

“I wouldn’t sacrifice my friends to buy her back,” he said. “Short of that, yeah. Anything and everything.”

She nodded. “You may have to pay that. What about your own life? Would you swap that, die so Krysty might live?”

“If it comes to that,” he said, “yes.”

She nodded. “That, too, it might cost you.”

“Tell me,” he said. After a moment he moistened lips that had gone dry despite air you could practically grab and from which squeeze droplets of water. “Please.”

“I do not possess the cure,” she said.

Ignoring Mildred’s muttered, “Oh for fuck’s sake,” she went on. “But I know the one who does—Papa Dough, vodoun king of the swampies in this region. He holds the key to Krysty’s cure. You must go to him in the darkest depths of the swamp to get the cure.”

“But this is madness!” Blackwood exclaimed. “All my men and myself wouldn’t be enough to carve our way to the heart of Papa Dough’s stronghold and force him to disgorge this knowledge. If we could, we’d have taken his head long ago, and put an end to the evil that afflicts our people!”

“No, Tobias,” she said, “not you and the Black Gang together could conquer Papa Dough’s kingdom. The cost of trying would be the destruction of all you have worked for. You’re wise enough not to follow that path to ruin. Are you sure, though, that your heroic ability with those swords you wear strapped across your fine strong back hasn’t clouded your judgment otherwise? It takes two to wage a war, Tobias. Mebbe talking more and cutting less would spare you and your people much treasure and pain.”