The Native Star (18 page)

Emily felt self-loathing soak through her.

“Dag … I have to tell you something. Remember when Besim did his Cassandra, and said that I was doing bad magic? You thought it was bunk, but it wasn’t. I
was
doing bad magic. The baddest magic I’ve ever done.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I hexed you,” Emily said miserably. “Put a love spell on you.”

Dag stared at her for a moment. Behind his eyes, contemplation chased understanding.

“Did you do it … because you were in love with me?”

No, I just thought you’d make a good husband
.

Emily couldn’t bring herself to say the words, even though they were the truth.

“It was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done,” she whispered. “The most selfish and thoughtless and …” She paused, taking a deep breath, trying to make the words come out right. “When I saw how bad it hit you, I was going to undo it right away. Honest. But the stone … I can’t do magic with it in my hand, you see. So I went to San Francisco. I wanted to get the stone out so I could come back and take the spell off you.”

Dag smiled sadly as he brushed a tear from her face.

“Probably wouldn’t do any good,” he said. “I’ve loved you for an awful long time, Emily. I can’t remember when I didn’t. You didn’t need any love spell.”

Emily stared at him. Was he telling the truth, or was it just his memory tainted by the spell? To her dismay, she saw that he was telling the truth. She saw it in the deepest part of his eyes. She’d cast a love spell on someone who was already in love. So that was why it had gone so wrong. She hadn’t made one bad mistake, she’d made two.

“Dag, why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Every time I got up the courage, there was something else to do, something else to build. I wanted to be more, to be worth more.” He shook his head. “I knew that if you loved me, we could have nothing and it would be enough. But I knew that if you didn’t … well, I’d have to offer you the whole world. I guess I wasted too much time trying to cover both bets.”

They sat in silence for a while.

“Could you …” Dag paused. “Could you be in love with me?”

Emily let out a long breath.

“I wouldn’t have put the spell on you if I didn’t think I could.”

“I love you, Emily Edwards. I want you for my wife. Marry me and let me help you. I’ll make everything better for you. I’ll take care of everything. I promise.”

Emily remembered the robin sitting on the windowsill. The omen of true love. Perhaps this was what it had meant all along. Right now, she felt very much as if she could love Dag Hansen. He was strong and safe and solid, and his promises of salvation were sweet as fresh honey. She could vanish into his arms and let him protect her from the world that was so much meaner and more complicated than she had ever imagined it. The thought of finding a place to hide from Witch burners and blood thieves, Warlocks and dead holy women suddenly had great appeal. Dag had plenty of money. He could pay for first-class tickets to New York and back. Besides, what kind of future did she have to look forward to without him? Even if she and Stanton did find a way to New York, and even if Professor Mirabilis was able to get the stone out of her hand, then what? Could she ever return to Lost Pine? And if not Lost Pine, where could she go?

But even as she thought these things, she knew the answer she had to give. Marrying Dag because she was afraid was as selfish as marrying him for his money. It was cowardly and unfair and cruel. She did not love him. Not the way he wanted her to, not the way he deserved to be loved. And even though she wished that Stanton hadn’t said it, she knew that he was right. Dag could not protect her against Caul. Worse, she’d be plunging him into terrible danger right along with them. She bit her lip. She’d made two bad mistakes already. She would not make a third.

“I’m sorry, Dag.”

“Why should you go into danger and not me?” Dag blazed. “Why should you risk your life alone?”

“I’m not alone.”

“That’s right, you have Stanton to help you. You’ll let him help you, but not me?”

“It’s Warlocks we face,” Emily said. “He’s a Warlock.”

Dag was silent for a long, long time. His eyes scanned every inch of her face.

“Yeah, he’s a Warlock. A great and powerful Warlock.” Dag spat the words with disgust. “I’ll take your kind of magic over the magic of Warlocks any day. Nice, homey magic. Fixing scraped knees and stuffing charm pouches and painting hexes. It was … nice. People didn’t get hurt by it.”

No one except you
, Emily thought.
And now Besim, and maybe Pap … and all of Lost Pine
…

And in that instant, Emily realized that no matter what she did to mitigate her mistake, she could never repair all the damage it had caused. Perhaps she could return to Lost Pine someday … but she could never return to the place that she’d left.

“I’m sorry, Dag,” she said. “I’m so sorry. For everything.”

“Yeah,” Dag said. “Me, too.” He drew in a breath, let it out. Then he squared his shoulders, made a decisive gesture.

“Well then,” he said. “You have to get to New York. So I’m going to get you to New York, even if it means I have to put you on a train with
that.”
He gestured in the direction Stanton had gone. “I’ll buy his horses. That’ll give you the money you need for the train tickets.”

Emily blinked at him.

“You’d do that?”

“It’s just money,” Dag said.

“Honor bright?”

“Honor bright.” He smiled at the old words; when they were children, those were the words they had used to indicate absolute unquestionable truth. Then he took her in his arms and held her close, his nose buried in her hair. She clung to him tightly, closing her eyes. Just the feeling of being held by another human being was reassuring. She hadn’t realized how much she craved it. After a long time like this, he let her go.

“I’ll run the team back to Lost Pine and get cash-money out of the office safe. You and Stanton get up to Cutter’s Rise. I’ll meet you before the train gets there at half past ten.”

He looked as if he was going to say something else, but he closed his mouth.

“Go on, now,” he said. “There isn’t much time.”

*   *   *

Emily heard Stanton before she saw him. He was whistling something that managed to sound spry and despondent at the same time. She found him sitting on a rocky outcropping overlooking a deep valley that was colored golden with the rays of the sinking sun. He had his legs drawn up to his chest, his arms resting straight out over them. His long fingers were tearing apart a pine cone in a way that seemed to indicate a personal grudge against conifers.

Emily didn’t go to him immediately. Instead she wandered around, gathering a handful of new green herbs. Popping the leaves into her mouth, she chewed them. Then she sat down next to Stanton, took one of his hands, and looked at the ugly rope burns on his wrist. Spitting the masticated herbs into her palm, she smeared them onto the raw scrapes.

“Ugh!” Stanton tried to jerk his hand away, but she held his wrist tight. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t move,” Emily said. She fished around in her pocket until she found Ruthless Mike’s handkerchief. She tore it down the middle, then bandaged each of Stanton’s wrists with the herbs and linen.

“You’re the one who got shot.” He looked at her bloodsoaked sleeve.

Emily shrugged, unwrapping the dirty, badly tied bandage from around her arm. She looked critically at the wound. The bullet had raked the flesh deep, but it had long since stopped bleeding.

“It’ll leave a right pretty scar,” she said.

“Scars aren’t pretty,” he said.

Emily plastered the last of the chewed herbs onto the wound. She pressed clean dry moss over it and bound it all up with the last of the linen from the handkerchief. So much for Ruthless Mike.

“They could have killed you,” Stanton said.

“But they didn’t.” Emily paused, stretching her legs in front of her. “Dag is gone.”

Stanton’s eyes flashed.

“You let him go?” he said. A silence. “I don’t think that was a good idea.”

“He’s going to ride to Lost Pine. He’s going to get money. He’s going to buy the Morgans.”

“Then shoot them for spite, I suppose.”

“No,” Emily said. “I explained everything to him. He understands that I have to go to New York. He’s going to help.”

Stanton looked at her. Emily wondered if this was one of the looks Dag had been referring to; if so, it didn’t seem much different from the look one would give to an unimaginably simple child.

“You have a good heart, Miss Edwards,” Stanton said softly. “He’s not going back to get money to buy my horses. He’s going back to find Captain Caul.”

Emily shook her head violently. “He won’t! I know he won’t!”

“He loves you. He won’t let you go. He doesn’t understand what Caul is. He thinks he can bargain with him.” Stanton was silent for a moment. “I’ve known men like that. They believe they can do anything.”

“Dag’s not like that,” Emily said hotly. “He gave me his word, honor bright.”

“That doesn’t matter. You’re not a man. You’ve never been in love. You don’t understand.”

“And you do?” Emily snapped.

Stanton said nothing, only gazed out over the rapidly darkening valley below. When he finally spoke, the words were bitten short.

“We need to do something that Caul doesn’t expect. We’ll ride south, to Stockton. I can get a good price for the horses there …”

“Dag will give us the money,” Emily said. “Mr. Stanton, I’ve known Dag all my life. He’s a good, honest man, Witched or not. If he makes a promise, he’ll live by it. He will live by it if it kills him.”

“If he does, it just might,” Stanton muttered. His fingers resumed their methodical torment of the pine-cone. “I should have known about New Bethel. The fact that I didn’t …” he trailed off, shaking his head.

“Why couldn’t you fight them?”

Stanton sighed.

“Too many of them, and not enough of me.”

“You told me credomancy was the magic of faith,” Emily said. “You never mentioned being in league with Satan.”

“I am not currently in league with Satan, Baal, or any dark power in particular,” Stanton said. “But the men in New Bethel believed that I was. They believed that I was damned, and that belief was focused and channeled through Brother Furness. I couldn’t fight it. I’m not enough of a credomancer.”

“So because Brother Furness believed you were damned, because he believed that you could not walk into a church, because he believed that the Bible would cripple you …”

“The power of his belief overcame my power to answer.” Stanton tossed away the pine-cone’s now-denuded core. He flexed his fingers as if he longed for something else to take apart.

“What would have happened if you’d gone into his church?”

“If I had gone into his church, with those men despising me as a Warlock, I would have suffered the agonies of the damned they believed I should suffer. There are several gory descriptions of divine retribution in the Bible.”

Emily shook her head. “So … really, even though they despise Warlocks, they’re just like credomancers themselves, aren’t they? Of a sort?”

Stanton looked at her and nodded with appreciation. “Precisely,” he said.

“But what about Caul? Furness said he went into the church—”

“They didn’t know what Caul was, and he was smart enough to make sure they didn’t.” Stanton was bitter. “But it is a great irony, isn’t it? If the Scharfians are going to burn anyone, sangrimancers would be an excellent place to start. I wouldn’t mind piling some tinder around Caul’s feet myself.” He snapped his fingers, muttered the familiar word, stared into the heart of the tiny flame that danced over his thumb.

Emily reached out, wrapped her hand around his, smothering the tiny flame.

“Never mind,” she said firmly. “All’s well that ends well.”

He looked at her hand over his. Then his green eyes went to hers and held them. She flushed. So
this
was the look Dag had been talking about. Stanton put his other hand over hers, drew her toward him.

“Miss Edwards,” he began softly. But then he fell silent. He took a deep breath. He gave her hand a very brotherly pat. “You have the makings of an excellent credomancer.”

Climbing quickly to his feet, he brushed pine needles from his trousers. “Now, I take it you insist on this suicidal exercise with your lumberman?”

Emily felt slightly dizzy, and strangely cross. “He’s not my lumberman,” she snapped. “But if you’re asking if I trust him—yes. I know he won’t double-cross us. I’m certain of it.”

“Let’s just hope that’s enough,” Stanton said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Hemacolludinatious

A few hours later, Emily was sitting high up in a fir tree, trying to keep quiet, and wondering for the hundredth time what Stanton was doing.

Cutter’s Rise was little more than a wide flat spot where the dense pines had been hewn down, leaving thin churned earth salted with granite dust and covered with slick needles. It was not a passenger stop, but rather what the train men called a “jerkwater,” where the engine could take on water from the tall tower before tackling the big climb just up the tracks.

The sun had set and heavy blue darkness had descended over the mountains, bringing with it the cold sounds of night. Train tracks stretched out in both directions, disappearing between the enfolding pines. Above them, the high passes of the Sierra loomed; from far below came the distant sound of a train whistle, thin and piercing.

It must be down in Gold Run right now
. Emily listened hard to the lonely sound.
About a half hour out
.

She hoped Dag would hurry.

She looked back down at Stanton, who was making all sorts of strange and arcane preparations against what he believed was the eventuality of Dag’s betrayal. In the middle of the clearing, in the light of a half dozen magically glowing brands, he was laying out tree branches in a large triangle.

“I thought you were a credomancer,” she called down to him. “What are you doing pushing branches around?”

“I’m engineering a Trine,” he said. “And you’re supposed to be hiding. Be quiet, and keep listening for Komé. She warned us before.”

Emily fished the acorn out of her pouch and closed her fist around it, listening hard for the Maien’s chanting. She didn’t hear anything. In fact, the only thing that popped into her mind was the word “hemacolludinatious,” a word that she didn’t recognize but that seemed strangely familiar. She amused herself with trying to figure out what it might mean while she watched Stanton.

When he finished laying out branches in a triangle, he went to each side, speaking words over them in low rhythmic Latin. Then he sat in the center of the triangle, crossing his long legs and closing his eyes. He did not move, but sat still and silent, waiting. He looked as if he could sit there for a very long time. Emily wiggled, tried to get more comfortable.

“Mr. Stanton, can’t it be argued that you’re making it more likely that Dag will turn us over to Caul by
believing
he will?”

In the flickering light of one of the pine brands, she saw Stanton open one eye and look up at her.

“Now you’re just splitting hairs.” He closed his eyes again with a definitiveness that bespoke a resolve not to speak further. Apparently, however, holding his pedantic nature in check was too great a strain. He opened both eyes and looked up in her direction. “Credomancy is the conscious manipulation of the dynamic unfolding of reality through targeted and focused belief. It is a metaphysical system of great power. But it is not to be confused with trying to make unpleasant facts go away by believing them to be untrue. That’s simply a childish denial of reality.”

“And you think reality demands that Dag try to hand us over to Caul?” Emily bristled. “I don’t think that’s reality talking. I think that’s you thinking you know something about someone who you really don’t know anything about at all!”

“I hope you’re right,” Stanton said. He closed his eyes again, assumed an air of grave composure. “Now be quiet, Miss Edwards.”

Emily leaned back against the tree trunk. The more Stanton told her about credomancy the more questions she itched to ask. How exactly could a credomancer use belief to manipulate reality when reality itself was so subjective? When everyone saw the same things so differently? When Dag looked at her, he saw a hometown Witch, an old friend—and recently, a bewildering heartbreaker. When Stanton looked at her he saw … well, perhaps it was better not to imagine what Stanton saw. So which was the truth? Which was reality? Which belief would prevail?

Give me good old-fashioned magic anytime
, she thought.
I just have to know what plants to pick
.

The sound of a train whistle came again, closer this time. Emily was starting to really worry that Dag wasn’t going to make it in time when the big man rode hell-for-leather into the clearing. He was atop one of the roans that had been hitched to the buckboard, and the poor animal shone from its extended effort.

Dag slid down from the saddle and looked at Stanton, still sitting in the middle of the triangle of pine branches. Dag looked around the clearing, breathing hard.

“Where’s Emily?”

“She’s safe.” Stanton rose to his feet. Dag approached the triangle and tried to step across the border of branches. He was rebuffed by a force that glittered faintly as he struck it. Confusion swept over his face. He tried again, sticking a hand toward the barrier, hitting it with his fist; he pulled his hand back, rubbing the knuckles.

“What the hell is this, Warlock? Where’s Emily?”

“I told you, she’s safe,” Stanton said. “Are you alone?”

“Of course I’m alone,” Dag said. “I gave Emily my word, honor bright.”

Stanton nodded. “All right.” He took a step back. “You may enter.”

Dag reached a tentative hand out toward the barrier, and this time there was no impediment. He stepped into the triangle, looking around.

“Did you bring the money?” Stanton asked curtly.

Dag pulled a purse of coins from his pocket. Stanton weighed it in his hand before tucking it away. Then he gestured toward the Morgans, which stood hitched under a tree a few feet away.

“You may take the horses and go,” Stanton said.

“Just like that?” Dag’s voice was high with outrage. “I wanted … goddamn it, I want to see Emily!”

“I’ve already made one mistake today,” Stanton said. “And as you pointed out, one is all I get.”

“She’s in no danger from me, or from Caul, for that matter,” Dag growled. “Caul’s gone.”

“What?”

“When I got back to Lost Pine, I found Caul and his men. Told them that there’d been trouble in New Bethel, that you were both still down there. They all tore off after you, Caul included. There’s no way he can get back here before the train comes. Emily’s safe.”

Stanton looked at him and said nothing. Fury kindled on Dag’s face.

“Damn you, Stanton … I want to see her!”

“I’m here, Dag,” Emily called down to him. She had heard the honesty in Dag’s voice. She knew in her bones that he was telling the truth, and maybe the force of her belief would overcome the force of Stanton’s distrust.

She clambered down from the tree and ran to the edge of the clearing, just in range of the light from the pine branches. She didn’t want the stone in her hand to disturb Stanton’s carefully constructed Trine.

Stanton made a noise of protest, but Dag rushed over to Emily. He took her hands, looked at her face.

“You sure this is what you want?”

“It’s not what I want,” Emily said, “but it’s what I have to do.”

The sound of a train whistle coming closer made them both look down the tracks.

“Thank you, Dag,” Emily said. “Thank you for watching Pap, and not telling Caul—”

“Maybe you don’t want to thank him just yet.”

The voice came from behind them, from down the tracks, beyond the perimeter of light cast by Stanton’s glowing brands. Then there was the sound of horse’s hooves crunching on the gravel beside the tracks. As the rider came into the circle of light, Emily’s heart thudded behind her ribs, twice. Hard.

It was Caul.

He sat straight-backed on a horse that seemed too small for his bulk. He wore a long canvas riding coat, dark with wear, and a battered felt hat with frayed tassels and tarnished sabers. His white-streaked muttonchop whiskers gleamed in the werelight cast by Stanton’s torches.

Dag stared at Caul. Confusion lined his brow. He took one step back. “No,” he said. “You were supposed to go to New Bethel. That’s what I told you.” Dag looked at Emily, his eyes wild with anguish. “Em, I swear to you … I swear I didn’t—”

“Sure you didn’t,” Stanton growled, not taking his eyes off Caul’s hulking form.

“He didn’t have to.” Caul’s voice was as strange as Emily remembered it: flat and uninflected. The big man slid down from the saddle, his weight threatening to drag the animal down sideways. He stood before Stanton briefly, regarding him with contempt. He flicked a fingernail against the magical barrier and was answered by a light recursive ringing, like the chime of a thousand small bells.

“A Trine. Delusion made physically manifest.” He stared at Stanton with fish-dead eyes, gesturing vaguely at the tinkling echo as it faded into the night air. “What a waste. To throw away the rest of your life pulling rabbits out of a charlatan’s hat. When you could have been and done so much more.”

“Don’t speak of my life as if you know anything about it.” Stanton’s voice was even and calm, as measured and emotionless as Caul’s.

“I know more about it than you imagine,” Caul said. “I know you could have served your country well, Stanton—if you hadn’t squandered every opportunity that was presented to you.”

“I have squandered nothing,” Stanton said. “And I have seized every opportunity my conscience allowed.”

“Conscience.” Caul’s mouth curved without humor. “Not the word I’d use, though it does begin with the same letter.” Then he turned his eyes toward Dag and Emily. Quickly, Dag pushed Emily behind himself, putting his body between her and Caul.

“I’ve had better men than you try to throw me, Hansen,” Caul said. He walked toward them slowly, his feet crunching in the gravel. “I heard what happened in New Bethel long before you told me. I heard that you helped these two escape. And I knew about the love charm Miss Edwards put on you—Besim gave me an extended and detailed accounting before he died. You wouldn’t have come to tell me about New Bethel unless you were trying to send me off in the wrong direction.”

Dag looked desolate. His broad shoulders slumped with guilt. Emily longed to reassure him, but she knew enough about guilt to know that it wasn’t that easy to dispel. She glared at Caul. She had never hated anyone before, but suddenly she felt its bitter blackness like a fist clenched around her heart.

“The stone in your hand is required for the public good.” Caul stared into her eyes as he walked toward her, seeming to savor her hatred. “Surrender it now, Miss Edwards.”

“And exactly how am I supposed to do that?” Emily flared, lifting her hand challengingly and wiggling her fingers.

Caul pulled a long silver knife from his belt as he walked toward her. It gleamed in the flickering light.

“During the war, I served General Grant as a battlefield surgeon. Sometimes he would visit the hospital tent. He would try to comfort weak men with the idea that it would hurt less if they didn’t struggle.” Caul continued to walk toward her slowly, step by step. “As a good soldier, I let him believe it. You can believe it, too, if you like.”

“Stop.”

Stanton’s voice echoed through the forest, ringing off the high slopes above. The booming, resonant force of it made Caul freeze, his heavy booted foot halting in midair.

“Miss Edwards is not going to have her hand cut off,” Stanton said.

Caul cocked his head, looking around himself. He struggled to move his leg, as if trying to pull his foot from deep within sticky mud.

“Is this your best, Stanton?” he said. “I suppose I could hardly expect more, after New Bethel—”

“New Bethel was a miscalculation,” Stanton said.

“A classically trained credomancer, a graduate of the prestigious Mirabilis Institute, without sufficient power to prevail over a handful of backwater Bible thumpers?” Caul shook his head. “That’s not a miscalculation, that’s a rout. The faith Mirabilis has invested in you must be pretty small indeed.”

“Sophos Mirabilis,” Stanton said, emphasizing each word, “is a fine man. His power is great, and I am his strong right arm.”

Caul’s lips pursed with distaste. “Such nauseating language you have to use. How can you live this way? How can you be satisfied with such mean scraps of power, so grudgingly bestowed from such unworthy men?” Caul jerked his foot hard, took another step forward. “Men who have no faith in you. Men who have no wish to see you succeed. Men, indeed, who wish to see you
fail.”

“Nonsense,” Stanton said.

“Your placement in Lost Pine was a calculated humiliation. You can’t deny that. Why does Mirabilis want to undercut your power, Stanton? Why does he want to make you a failure?”

“I know exactly who’s trying to undercut me, sangrimancer,” Stanton said with a contemptuous half-smile. “You’ll hardly send me crying with a squink or two.”