Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe (24 page)

I felt a brief surge of annoyance. To me, Rey had just proven himself to be a bounder: Not only did he bring a well- born female companion to a place like this, he permitted her to hold the door for him rather than hold it for her like a gentleman. But I ignored my own feeling.

I glanced at Tubb for confirmation and found him already staring at me, nodding: This was indeed Rey.

Rey and his lady evaluated the few tables still unoccupied. My eye was then drawn to a curious detail: Mustard the hound lay in his accustomed place, and at this moment he offered brisk wags of his tail rather than his usual growl.

Before Rey could make a choice, I rose and approached him. I gave him a little bow. “Señor Rey? Allow me to beg the pleasure of your company, and that of your companion. My friends and I are newly arrived and would be delighted to spend time in the company of someone as extravagantly original as yourself.”

He paused, considering my offer, and then gave me a little nod.

I led them back to our table. Vasquez in the meantime had secured an additional chair so that all five of us might sit. While we seated ourselves, I noted that Rey did not hold his lady’s chair for her, and I made introductions.

Rey’s reply, in a voice so faint that the three of us were obliged to lean forward to catch his words, was minimal in its detail: “Ma demoiselle Sophie Garand.” With a gesture, he indicated his companion, though he had not hitherto acknowledged her.

I had a polite line of enquiry in mind, one that would steer our conversation to the matter of Thaddeus Hobart. My intent was foiled by the Kid’s forthrightness and indignation. He had begun to flush red even as Rey was taking his chair, and now, point-blank, he asked, “Are you the son of a bitch who killed Thaddeus Hobart?”

I endeavored not to wince. I discerned the volume of conversation at the tables nearest ours began to diminish, though it appeared that not everyone in the room had heard the Kid’s words.

For a moment, it seemed that Rey himself was among those who had not heard them. But presently he did turn his head to acknowledge the Kid. Unruffled, no emotion marring the manly beauty of his features, he offered a second nod. “The man Hobart is no more, and it was at my doing.” Again he spoke so quietly that we had to strain to hear him. Now, at last, a touch of an accent was evident in his speech, yet it was French rather than Spanish.

The Kid looked confounded that Rey would admit so readily to the deed. “And you shot him in the back?”

Rey offered an eloquent shrug of his shoulders. He whispered, “By that means I did not have to look on his abhorrent features. I am left to wonder about his family, whether he was the handsomest of his line, the others being obliged to remain within mud pens and eat slop.”

The Kid’s brows lowered during that statement, and his response was more decisive than I expected. He whipped up his right-hand revolver, aimed it point-blank at Rey’s chest, and let loose with a blast.

Caught off guard, I jumped nearly out of my skin, then grabbed in awkward haste for the derringer in my pocket. Rey would be dead, of course, but he might have friends in the crowd, and a display of guns, including even one such as mine, might be the only way now for the three of us to leave this establishment alive.

An instant later, Vasquez drew and fired. Shouts of alarm filled the air, all but drowned out by the reports of the revolvers. The stink of gunpowder burned at my nostrils.

And still Rey did not fall. In the moment after my companions’ weapons discharged, he merely continued staring at the Kid, impassive.

Then he reached for his hip.

The Kid and Vasquez fired again, and this time my shot joined theirs, the derringer kicking in my hand. I had a bead on his face— specifically, on the center point between the man’s eyes. At this range my shot could not miss its target.

Yet no mark appeared on Rey’s face. No discoloration spread on his waistcoat or the blouse beneath it. I became dimly cognizant of the fact that, in the direction my companions and I had fired, one of the establishment’s windows had shattered a moment earlier.

Rey produced his revolver. Yet he did not aim it at any of us. He shrugged, spun the weapon around on his finger, and holstered it once more.

A silence, and I do not exaggerate to call it a shocked silence, fell across the establishment. Many of the patrons were on the floor, having thrown themselves there to avoid stray gunfire. Now the braver of them began to rise. But all eyes were on the five of us.

I caught a glimpse of Ma de moiselle Sophie’s face. It wore an expression of sadness, but there was not the slightest hint of shock to it. She had known events would transpire just this way.

A thought, a terrible thought, emerged from the fog that had suddenly gathered in my mind. No man could withstand five pointblank gunshots . . . none but one specific breed. My heart sank.

Now Rey spoke in his whisper. “Thaddeus Hobart was a thief, a liar, and a wastrel. A man without cause or principle. He deserved far worse than I gave him.”

Vasquez, shock evident on his face, the first strong emotion I had seen him demonstrate, slowly lowered his gun and, with what seemed like great reluctance, holstered it. That reminded me of the bizarre tableau we all presented. I put my derringer away.

The Kid seemed to be in a greater state of shock than we were. “You—you—”

Stray thoughts flitted through my memory: a military camp I’d seen during the Kaiser’s futile war against the French, abandoned except by corpses; the curious death, a century ago, of Benjamin Franklin; tales by the score from the implacable expansion of the French Empire. I addressed the man I had just shot. “Your name is not Rey and you are not Spanish.”

He turned his attention to me. “Correct.”

“You’re French and your name is Renault.”

“Oui.”

Finally there were other voices to be heard in the room—indistinct murmurs, with “Renault” and “paladin” the only comprehensible words. Two of the cattlemen at the bar bolted, making it outside and into the dark before the hound had time to growl at them.

Renault spoke again. All attention was now on him and everyone heard his whisper. “I say you are men of no worth. No honor. Pigs like your friend Hobart. But I give you a choice. Three days from now, at noon, I will return here. In the street outside, if you dare face me, I will shoot you each in the heart. If before then you wish to demonstrate your true natures and flee, do so. Since you have no honor left, running away can do it no harm.” So saying, he rose, the economy of his motion such that he did not move his chair in the least.

Ma de moiselle Sophie rose as well, and preceded Renault from the saloon. Then they were gone, and low conversations sprang up around the room.

The Kid finally remembered to holster his weapon.

Mr. Tubb appeared beside our table, his face pale and his expression grave. “I think you gents are done drinking here for the night,” he assured us.

The three of us walked in a sort of daze back to the Station Hotel. Before we ascended the stairs, Vasquez demanded of the night clerk a bottle of liquor, any sort. With it and three mismatched cups, we entered my chamber. His face pale, Vasquez poured for us, filling the room with the odor of strong tequila.

I gulped at mine, surviving a stronger than normal liquor burn.

The Kid urged Vasquez to fill his cup to the lip. He received his drink and turned to me for more explanation. “Am I crazy? Or was that a damned paladin?”

I sat on my bed, which under my weight creaked a complaint of its years. “Yes, Kid. Renault is one of the Twelve Peers, the agents of God or Satan who have guaranteed the ascendency of the French Empire across the last century.” Finally the significance of the date that Renault had proposed for our duel revealed itself to me. “And I fear we have become the victims of a cruel deception.”

The Kid crossed himself, as though the gesture would do him any good under these circumstances, and took the chair by the window. “Why is he here?”

“I think I’ve just grasped the reason, Kid. It relates to the centennial celebration of the end of the French Civil War. In fact, I’m certain of it.” At the Kid’s blank look, I continued. “When Charles the Tenth deposed Louis the Sixteenth and assumed the throne of France, he did so with the help of the paladins. Then they exterminated the leadership of the revolutionaries who had plagued the noble class for the previous two years and set about securing France’s fortunes as the most powerful nation on the earth. Unstoppable killers who could strike down the leadership of any army, any nation . . . and the revolutionaries were put down, to the day, one hundred years before the date of our appointment with Renault.”

Vasquez, who had remained standing, finally spoke. “Renault staged this. He drew us in and will kill us, men well known in Texas. A message to all the Republic. ‘Stop pushing at the borders. Stop protesting our tariffs. Be good boys.’ ”

The Kid shook his head. “But the Frenchies don’t much care what goes on in this part of the world.”

I tipped my cup to him in mock salute. “That’s exactly it, Kid. This action signals a change in that policy. With their European borders secure, they must now be turning their attention to strengthening their colonies in the New World. Perhaps in Africa and Asia as well.” I considered that. “It may be that at this exact moment, eleven other traps have been sprung all over the world, one paladin at the center of each. A few days from now, news dispatches from Indo-China, the Congo, the South Seas, and other places will join the poor account of our deaths.”

Vasquez looked at me. “Why will ours be a poor account?”

I smiled. “Because I will not be writing it. It will be some lesser chronicler.”

Vasquez tossed back some of his villainous tequila and frowned, which seemed to cause his mustachios to droop even more. “If the French do quiet down the borders, what comes next?”

“In the New World, expansion into New Spain, I suspect.”

“That don’t matter.” The Kid waved away my political speculation. “How do we kill Renault?”

I shrugged. The tequila was beginning to settle my nerves. “There is a horrible consistency to the stories about the paladins. No physical violence harms them, or even leaves a mark, as we ourselves saw. It is said that bullets and blades seeking them find other targets instead. Thank heavens our bullets did no harm to others at Bust. The paladins never eat nor drink in public—it is said that they fear poisoning. They are all named after the champions of Charlemagne, a French king out of both history and legend, and it is sometimes said that they are those original paladins, brought back from the dead.”

Vasquez smoothed his mustache as he pondered. “And they are all more than a century old, yes?”

“Yes, the only men to be so blessed.”

“So we have a choice.” Vasquez’s voice sounded very matter of fact. “Stay and die, or run and be dishonored.”

We were silent for at least a full minute after that pronouncement, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

Finally the Kid spoke. “Well, I got me no wife or children depending on me. And Renault still killed my uncle. Hell, maybe I’ll get in a lucky shot. One that doesn’t find another target.”

Vasquez nodded and drew his hat a little lower over his brow, giving him a rakish look. “I don’t think much of being called a coward.” He and the Kid turned their eyes to me.

“I have no wife or dependents either. More the fool I.” I shrugged. “I will admit that I am not comfortable in the role of a maker of news. My job is to chronicle the actions of others. But I think I’ll stay. I’ll send my friend Morris accounts of the next few days, providing minute detail. Perhaps he, in studying my accounts, can find some fact that will help others confront the paladins in the time to come. And I’ll have the opportunity to write myself a first-class obituary.”

Vasquez, for the first time, laughed.

The two of them returned to their own rooms, and I set about penning this account for you. But now the hour grows late and I must rest for the trials I am yet to endure.

As ever, I remain your friend,

Chester

June 2, 1891

From Chester Lamb, Salt Creek, Republic of Texas 

To Morris Levitt, Chicago, Illinois, United States

[Omitted.]

It was clear that everyone in town had heard what had transpired at Bust. Townsmen and cowboys, it seemed, shared a similar superstition about associating with men under a death sentence, so the three of us were largely left alone, barely receiving a word from anyone we addressed.

After noon, we elected to ride out to the Simmons farm and pay our respects to Thad’s grave. A hardscrabble farm it was indeed, its farmhouse the sort of low, sturdy shelter built to withstand Indian raids. Ill- tended fields suggested that one old man and his daughter were insufficient to wring a full bounty from the soil.

Mr. Simmons was not to be seen working his fields as we rode in. He emerged from the house to greet us and led us past the chicken coop and barn to a low hill whence a single grave marker, a neatly whitewashed wooden cross, protruded. Painted upon it were words of bereavement:

IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE

ABIGAIL SIMMONS

BORN 1850

TAKEN FROM US JANUARY 3RD, 1886

Beyond that grave, a few steps down the far side of the hill and thus not visible from the road, was another grave, an unmarked mound of recently turned but hard-packed earth. There we said our good- byes, each in his own way.

Vasquez stared skyward and remained mute for a minute. I looked at the grave and told the departed, “I’m too late to help you, but I will try to oblige people to remember your good with your bad.”

The Kid crossed himself and said, “Yeah, it was me who stole your straight razor, I hope you’re not still mad about that.”

Whereupon we all, Simmons included, restored our hats to our heads and turned back toward the farmhouse.

During the walk, the Kid caught Simmons’s attention. “Been meaning to ask you. Me being Uncle Thad’s sole heir, and Chet here in need of something more formidable than his little sissy gun for when we all get killed, I’d like to have Thad’s Colt to lend to him.”