Eye of the Storm

1. AND THE EYE WILL SEE

WYLAH

     They say he lost sight in his left eye in a shootout with the highest warlock in all of Ravine. It must have been a few years back, long before I ever set my own sights on him, since I can’t find it in my memory to see his face any other way.

     It was a hazy white now, that left eye of his. Like a clouded marble set deep under the shadow of his heavy brow and his heavier hat. It was only on the day I came face to face with him that I ever really saw it for what it was—a blinded eye in a face I wasn’t supposed to like so much.

     The sun was low that morning. Low under the ruddy sky, but he kept his hat on just the same as always. I rarely made it in to Town myself, but I still knew exactly who he was when I slid off my steed to the ground beside the Runic Wonders shop. He pushed the door with a bit too much force on his way out and the older witch shouted at him from inside. He only grunted in response and kept on across the hollow porch, the brim of his black hat shielding that blind eye.

     I’d worn lace gloves that day. That much stood out in my mind in the moment I saw him. It was what other young witches in Town were wearing, though none with the depth of my complexion. My pahtwa had laughed when I’d pulled them on. Said I shouldn’t try to fit in with the winter witches. I could never understand what he meant by winter. What kind of winter had Ravine ever really seen? Still, I’d slipped each hand into its delicate black lace and buttoned my collar up high.

     “At least let your plaits down, Wylah Heloha,” he’d spoken in his soft voice with his head turned away. My pahtwa—my father—always the soft-spoken man even as our chieftain warlock. So I’d done that much for him, worn my hair in two loose plaits. It was no secret that we were not from Town, anyhow. Fitting in could only go so far.

     The crimson leather on my feet stopped me on that worn porch as the shop door crashed against the outer wall with a flurry of dust, his staggering frame making its way through. His height was a thing I’d never seen, just heard of. It was only one clue that gave him away, anyhow, before he turned his face. That and his pitiful mess of cornhusk hair.

     The angry voice inside the shop carried out to my ears, then the door closed more slowly. She’d brought it in herself with a whisper from afar. My body held itself to that porch while my eyes kept up their roaming.

     Gil Vicious stood there like a church steeple, all clad in black and dark leathers with a knotted bandana at his throat—a red even deeper than that of my favorite boots. He kept a keen look on the passing beasts, valhests and other steeds, and on those who rode them. He was an outlaw in Ravine, but some people in Town liked to turn a blind eye to his little visits, funny as that sounds. He did good business with those who’d let him. Gave ‘em his money… wherever he’d gotten it, and even a bit of protection. The whole of the Vicious outfit was less welcome, of course, unless they were set to cast away a rival band of warlocks.

     My gloved hand hovered on the railing, feet just as still as they had been, but my eyes searching for an easy path to the door behind him. I’d dressed the part of a redeemer and done my damndest to blend right in as usual, but that was all I had in me. Never wanted to draw attention to myself, that’s for certain. And in all my years of coming to buy things in Town, I’d only ever spoken to shop owners. Never a word uttered to another soul.

     Never a word… until that very day.

     “Must be some kind of porcelain hands you got under there.” My eyes darted up from the screen door in front of me to see him staring back. A tiny pop of surprise at his voice shook my heart. His brow was lower than before, an angle of concern like a thunderhawk making sense of its surroundings.

     I creased my eyes right back at him and set my shoulders. What was I to do anyhow, be afraid? I’d been keen on avoiding him, but I didn’t fear an outlaw any more than the spirits that roamed the night-woods behind the prairielands.

     “That eye must be acting up if you think I’ve got skin the likes of porcelain under this lace.” My chest puffed up beneath its satin covered cage as I set my hands on my hips.

And then he laughed. He leaned forward as a deep howl tore through his mouth and he shook his dirty yellow locks at me. I glanced between his blue eye and his cloudy one.

     “Well isn’t that just grand? Gil Vicious laughs. Or howls, I should say. Howls like a feral cur. Nashoba yut woha.”

     His lip ticked up on the side, laughter still in his throat. “A cur ain’t a wolf, but I’ll take the compliment.”

     The sun seemed to rear its head at that very moment and light its heat upon my cheeks enough that I turned on my heel and headed for the door.

     Gilliam Vicious knew the words of the prairie people, and I’d called him a damn wolf.

     The flimsy screen snapped shut behind me in my haste and two piercing malachite eyes gave me the kind of attention I would soon be altogether avoiding after the day’s discomfort.

     “Could use a sign to let the confounded thing shut lightly,” the owner hissed beneath her breath. She was the kind of witch who could’ve been fifty, but just as easily been twice that or more. She had those gentle, rolling hills to her cheeks real high up like a child, but wisdom and fire in her eyes to keep you on your toes.

     “I’m… do you have anything for the drought?” I did my best to keep myself fascinated with her shelves and not the irritation on her face.

     “Oh sure. Sure, we got all sorts a stones for the drought. And what luck that you’re the very first to come in and ask, so you’ll have your pick of ‘em.” A roiling unease in my belly had me shaking my head before I could think better of it. Of course the whole of Town and probably Ravine had already come. “Shaking those braided tails at me won’t get you nothing in my shop, little miss. Now you let that door shut kindly on your way out.”

     “Wait, I—I didn’t shake my head to offend you, ma’am. I just… I don’t much come to Town. Didn’t know how the drought was hitting over here. That’s all.”

     She set her purple lips in a line and gave me a good once over, then scoffed a bit before turning round the counter. “If you’re gonna tend to the drought in the prairielands, you’d do best to set a House of Water by the tallest hill. Let the rains take over from there. But I only got one or two stones left. Can’t make nothing new till the solstice.”

     The woman’s slender hand reached to unlock a velvet-lined case on a neighboring shelf and she drew out two stones. They were both House of Water stones, but the one was bigger and speckled with some kind of pock marks. It felt right, all warm and sure of itself in my hand. I nodded to it and she tied it up in a silken pouch.

     “Thirty-six for that larger one. Yield’ll be better.”

     My mouth about dropped, but I had time enough to keep it buttoned up as I rifled through my pockets. Thirty-six marks was nearly three times what it cost to do a runic spell when the last drought hit. Pahtwa would have to send me out farther next time.

I nodded after the exchange, then let the warped screen door shut in a whisper behind me.

     “Just gonna let yourself get robbed like that, then?” The rough voice I’d almost forgotten about shocked me from my left and I stumbled off kilter to my right. His narrowed, warring eyes slipped over me, head to boot.

     “How’d you—”

     “She about shook you down, never mind the sass she gave you.”

     “Not much else to do. She can set her prices.”

     “And rob you blind.” He tipped his hat down a little lower, but kept peering up at me from under it; tugged his lower lip into his teeth.

     “Two things you must have schooled her on—robbing and blindness.” I shot back at him with irritation in my gut. He was right, but for some unseen reason, I didn’t want him to be.

     His lips ticked up in a smirk. “You’re sure full of jokes for a girl tryin’ so hard to be a redeemer.”

     “Who said I’m trying to be anything at all? Just come to Town looking nice when I see fit… not that you deserve a breath of explanation.”

     “A breath of explanation.” He repeated me with a smile that showed his sharp-tipped teeth and turned his shoulders my way. The heat beneath my high collar took another leap and I quickly wished I’d worn anything but the heavy black day dress that was now smothering me.

     I’d kept my eyes so far from those of the nasty witch inside the Runic Wonders shop. Far and set on anything else so I could keep her from burning holes through me. But standing on that sunlit porch in the center of Town with Gil Vicious had me struggling to hold my face down.

     I finally succumbed and took a sure glance at his eyes. Both of ‘em—sea holly blue and milky white—just fixed on my face as before. A touch of concern, a bit of wonder. What was he looking for?

     He hadn’t much more time to look, though. With a sharpness that bounced its way across the dusty road, a single crack-shot rang out clear from down the way.

     My body crumpled itself back against the shop window just as Gil hurled himself forward and peered over the porch rail. His head swung right, then left, while his hands worked in seconds to grab up his weapons.

     I didn’t know much of what an outlaw carried, just kept to my own hammered blade and the sharpeye bow my mahtwa had made me—both far across the prairie and outta my lace-covered hands. Another shot cracked itself through the dry air and a ripple of orange smoke followed.

     A fireshot.

     “They’re gonna be burning something… or someone,” Gil said real low under his breath. His right hand was now wrapped tightly round the stock of a hooked oak stave, his left on his sidepiece—a blade unfamiliar to my eyes. He’d crouched low beneath the rail, but kept on pushing up to peer over it.

     “They? Who’s they?” My voice came out a little too squeaky, his head whipping my way to see my fear. I’d have been a little better off with something to protect me, but even still, I’d never seen fireshot up close. A single singe could light up the whole of Runic Wonders behind us; engulf the porch in a melting blaze. Even worse to use it during a drought.

     “You… you okay?” The blue of his right eye was cast in shadow, but he set it on me and I went straight to looking at it. Even under his brow, I could make out the little lines of color that kept it looking like the pond I liked to fish on summer mornings. That pond had dried right up in the last few years. Hadn’t seen a color like it since.

     “I’m—I just didn’t bring a stave or blade in with me. Thought I’d only be here for—” Just then another shot split the air, closer than the others. Gil’s eyes widened then narrowed. He waited for what seemed like three perfect beats in my chest, then leapt up and fired his own few shots down the way.

     The sounds that sailed beyond the porch from his brass casted oak stave were deeper than the first shots. They didn’t snap like flames so much as thud and rumble—the heaviness of thundershot.

     I’d hunched back on my elbows in the moment that he’d leapt up and taken aim, my view from below giving me a little thrill I didn’t much understand. The ashy pieces in his hair shook at the clean cut angles of his jaw while his eyes cast low down the road. He’d seen his mark some way out, I was sure. Two clicks beneath his thumb engaged his stave and a single pewter orb shone blue and angry as it slid right down where it belonged. He set his sights, his brow coming down over his crystal-blue eye, and then his lone, long finger tugged on the lock and those shots went hurtling in a jet of deep blue smoke from his stave.

     A resonant thud of each shot seemed to shake in my chest just as voices rang back our way. Gil huddled down in front of me, saying something to me I couldn’t quite hear. I’d all but let myself freeze up as I’d watched his hands working his weapons; let my ears be filled with nothing but hollers and return fire.

     “Wh-what?” I finally asked after he’d clamped down hard on my shoulders. Smoke had woven through us from his shots and my eyes watered up as I found his.

     “Said we’re gonna run. Fireshot could singe up this old wood in seconds. Now they know I let loose from this point, so we’re gonna have to get off this porch. …ya hear me?” His face—the face of an outlaw I shouldn’t have been conversing with—was just a hair from mine as he stared into my eyes and hoped I’d heard him. And I had heard him, but I was locked in with the look he was giving me, the worry that I wasn’t quite there, and all I could think was how in the hell had I gotten trapped in a shootout next to Gilliam Vicious.

     “Alright then,” I finally let out on my struggling breath, gnawing into my lip at the thought of running in my stupid, useless dress. He lifted a thick brow at me, shook his chin and snatched up my gloved fingers.

     Off the porch and to the side of Runic Wonders, Gil tugged at my hand, keeping me close behind him and out of sight. The whole of Town had filled with smoke from the shots, the colors twisting in the wind, masking our dark red sky, though I took to looking through it all for flames.

     “Naw, you keep your head low. Stay close now.” His words were less scolding than to tell me I wasn’t paying attention enough, and he was right. The smoke, the shots that continued to echo through Town, the large hand tightly wrapped around mine… everything was clouding my brain right up.

     My skirts dusted the ruddy ground as we wove down the narrow side road. We’d made way around a cart and three stalls with braying mules just as another voice cut around the corner. “He gotta be taking cover down here. Get to the back of the shop!”

     “Come on.” Gil tilted his face for just a second to look at me and the opal of his left eye glimmered in the ripe sun. His lips, the pale ones that had laughed at me earlier, now turned down at the corners. “You… y’have to keep up with me now. You never been near a fight?”

     “Been near plenty of fights. Just.. not like this.”

     He half-sighed and shot his eyes to the main road as he led me off to another alleyway. “Not like this..” he repeated my words again. “I.. you only fight with blades? Take this.” He thrust his sidepiece into my hand, and without hesitation, I tore my stupid lacy gloves right off and dropped them in the dirt.

     “We fight with plenty more than blades,” I grumbled and hooked my fingers tight to the hilt of the angled dagger in my palm. “I told you I have a stave at home.”

     He set his back against the building in the narrow alley and looked up enough that I could see the stubble on his chin, then turned back my way. “Why in Ravine would you leave it at home?” His deep voice was beginning to irritate me, that and his questions.

     “Because I don’t ever find myself in shootouts, that’s why,” I quickly struck back. “In case you didn’t notice, I’m not a criminal.”

     “Yeah, with your porcelain hands and your high collar, I think I did notice. Not that that’s who you are. Right, prairie girl?”

     In a matter of minutes I’d gone from flushed with fear to grating under my skin at this man. “And just what does it matter who I am anyhow?” My voice ticked up a bit and I turned my shoulders his way. “B’cause I know who you are, and I think that’s about the only thing that matters in this conversation. I may have come in dressed up to keep from getting stares, but I know the heads turn for you no matter what. And now there’s shots ringing out clear across Town and I’m standing here with your hand on my arm and a blade in my hand when I should be riding back home with this stone!”

     Gil’s fingers slowly slid from where they’d been on my forearm. I knew he could see the fire in my eyes as I looked up at him. His hat had fallen off somewhere in the road, his ash-yellow hair now a rumpled, waving mess that he’d shoved behind his ears. His blind eye tried to see me, or so I thought as it moved up and down my face, my shoulders, right on down to my toes.

     “This town ain’t very big… but I like it,” he finally said. His voice was lower than mine had been, steady and calm. “It’s.. where I want to be. And it’s not where I do the kind of business you think I do. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll have you know these shots have nothin’ to do with me.”

     “And yet I see blue smoke still streaming through the road from your thundershot.”

     “What would you have done, then? Let these bastards light the whole of Town up? Can’t always mind your own when people need help, ya know that?”

     Now it was me chuckling. “So you ain’t a redeemer, but you’re still a savior?” I pushed both my plaits back behind my shoulders and shook my chin at him.

     “Whatever you want to call me, I don’t care. I been called worse.” I watched his eyes float down to his hands where he loaded another glowing stone into his oak stave. He spoke a few words under his breath as he slipped it into the chamber and it pulsed with the incantation before settling in its waiting spot. “Now move aside so I can keep that neck of yours intact.”

     He smoothed his fingers through his hair, missing his hat and looking annoyed all around, then sidestepped me and peered out the tiny alley entrance.

     “There’s two warlocks at the back of Runic Wonders, two more in the street by the inn. My guess is it’s an outfit of six or seven come in to rob us for stones.”

     “For stones?”

     “Don’t you think the drought is hurtin’ people everywhere?” He kept his eyes on the road while he spoke to me.

     “Stealing stones just hurts everyone worse.”

     “That’s how you see it.”

     “And how do you see it? These men are doing what they need to do to survive, so coming in to rob us all is okay? If it helps you and yours, pillaging is justified?”

     “Never said that.” He scoffed at me now, pulling suddenly back from where he’d been and turning my way. My shoulders were pressed against the wood of the wall, my feet steeped in dirt, but he came stomping right on up to where I couldn’t move, then tipped his chin low and looked me dead in my eyes. “You think I’m just some hard-hearted criminal out rifling through pockets and roughing people up in my spare time, but you know nothin’ about me. You don’t know the half of what I’ve done or where I’ve come from… and sure as shit don’t know why. All you have is a name and a blind eye to go on, and stories that get told so twisted up, you’d think I’d spent a night or two with the devil himself. Maybe you ought not to listen to stories… and go on what you see with your own pretty eyes instead.”

     The rush of blood to my face hushed me in that moment. Gil’s words bounced around in my head, but more than that, the look in his eyes kept me planted. There was something in them—a hurt I’d somehow caused. He could say he didn’t care what people called him, but setting things straight seemed to matter quite a lot. His eyes betrayed as much. The blue in his right sharpened while the misty cloud in his left seemed to grow darker. I’d touched a nerve.

     We stood in silence for just another few uncomfortable seconds before three whip-crack shots cut down the road. A deputy ran past our hiding spot as his own blasts resounded over his shoulder. Gil set his back flat against the wall beside me, then turned his head my way.

     “They’re shooting spells at deputies. Means they’re not afraid of the gallows.”

I swallowed and opened my mouth, but it had no words inside. Something about judging him had left my throat dry. Maybe the nerve I hit struck back at me a bit.

Gil’s face was shadowed in that alleyway, but I kept on looking at it—at his dueling eyes and his strong brow; at the set of his lips, which were a little parted and letting out long, rough breaths; at the sharpness of his exposed teeth, the teeth of something other, not just another Townie warlock.

     My mute brain held me there as it had on the porch. I was stuck and staring, and now another mystery hit me square in my chest—what was this fluttering making me all sick inside… guilt?

     I kept my eyes on his for a second longer, then took a deep breath and tore them away.

     “And here he is himself!” Came a booming voice from the mouth of the alley. We hadn’t been watching the ruckus well enough, but both of us straightened up and turned. “Gil Vicious hole up with a prairie maid and I hear she got that other house a’ water from the stonemaker.” The man that approached us was rugged, face to toe. His hat sat back on the peak of his head and he hooked a crooked grin beneath his mustache as Gil squared off his shoulders. “Hand it here, then.”

     The outlaw reached his dirty hand into the alley, beckoning me with his fingers. My own hand began to shake while it worked its way into my pocket for the stone. Gil’s towering body was close to the outlaw—both of us armed, but the other man who now stood before us with angry divots in his cheeks brandished a thick-barreled stave filled with glowing embers.

     “No, I don’t think she will,” Gil suddenly spoke. My heart began to thud as the two men stared each other down. “Your people are no more important than hers.” As he spoke, one of his hands came out slowly behind him where it landed on my arm. He was working through something, I could tell. He moved me so slowly, I knew the other man hadn’t seen. Slow and sure, he made to place me directly behind him—a shield for me as the anger on the other man’s face seemed to double.

     “You gonna get yourself in a world of trouble, Vicious. Don’t matter to me what your body count is. Gon’ rain fire down on you and the lady if she don’t give me that stone.”

The tension in that dusty back alley was heavier than the heat on my black dress. I’d tucked my hand into my pocket to keep it firm on the stone in its pouch while my other held tight to the blade Gil had given me.

     “Now that’s just not gonna work for me—certainly not with you threatening the woman behind me. I’m gonna let you take a step back and rethink your words or we can have us a few more out in the road.”

     Gil’s hand still hovered on my arm, but now it had tightened. He knew something was coming before it even happened.

     “Naw, I’ll just be takin’ the stone,” the man bellowed, then started lifting his barrel up just as Gil lunged at him.

     The two men fell into the road, tussling around in the grit and dirt while I jumped at the chance to run. My eyes swung left and right before I made to step into the road, but then a shot—deeper and louder than a cannon—broke through the air. Gil shoved from the ground, his vest opened and a spill of red seeping down his undershirt. A gasp slipped from my mouth as my eyes hurriedly jumped around on Gil’s chest, looking for a wound, but then the bandit rolled over to sit up, sputtering a slick of blood down his chin and dropping back as he started to shake.

     I wondered what Gil would do. Wondered as I stood there and thought of running off still. The man’s shaking went on from the rumble of thundershot, blue smoke seeping through the air while he searched for breath that was leaving him. He coughed a wet, terrible cough and strained his eyes at us. Gil just stood there, backing my way, then checking around for other gangmen.

     But I couldn’t stand to hear the gurgling no more. No matter the person, it made me sick, so I did the only thing I’d been taught to do when life is leaving a body. I took in a breath, sidled up to Gil Vicious, slid my hand around his to free his stave, took two steps as I whispered the solemn words my pahtwa had told me to send a body to rest, then pulled the lock.

2. HER NAME

GIL

     “Nan aiyυchi.” Be at peace.

     She’d whispered the words of her people, then shot the guy straight through his skull in a crack of sharp lightning. His shaking had stopped, but a final burst of blood came from the corner of his mouth before his eyes turned up to the sky.

     She had made a point of ending his suffering while I just went on looking for more people to kill. Such was my life. Shoot to kill, kill to win, win to survive. Something like that.

     I watched her delicate little hand drop the stave by my feet just as another voice rang out from the main road. Scrambling to reload wasn’t of much use, though. He came barreling at us and I made to push her behind me—the inclination to keep her safe still riding high through my veins—but he reached for her outstretched arm just as I saw the resemblance in his face.

     “Where’ve you been?!” He shouted while a whip of dust spread around his raven hair. It was just like hers, pressed and even and shining in the red sun. “Pahtwa sent me looking when we saw the smoke from across the fields. You should’ve come straight back. Sheriff cleared out the gang.”

     It was then that he even deigned to look my way. He tore his eyes from hers and they landed right on mine. And he knew. Right in the moment that the old blind thing in my head faced him, he knew who he was lookin’ at.

     His blackened brows turned down. “Shots in Town and you’re with a red-handed stave-slinger?” His voice was pure disgust, teeth all clenched so he had to spit his words out at her. What a surprise.

     “Thiago, he kept me safe.” Her voice was somewhere between worried and defensive. It was like she thought we’d get in a tussle. She even circled round to stand between us, a peculiar move. Never had a woman other than my sister put herself in front of me like that.

     I dipped to grab my hat from the street and cover my wind-tossed hair. Everything about me was suddenly stoking a fire in the man who stood and stared me down.

     “Let’s go,” he told her, snatching her hand. Her bare hand. I looked over to the alleyway and spotted her gloves in the dirty sand, then back again to see her ambling behind her kin.

     “Wait!” The word came rattling out of my mouth like something that wouldn’t be contained. She turned then. Looked right at me with heavy eyes. Worn or maybe sullen. What did they mean? Was that her first kill… and I’d gone and made her feel she had to do it? “I… well.. what’s your name?” I called out. All that time and I hadn’t even thought of her as anything other than “she” or “prairie girl.” Trash-ass piece of shit.

     “Wylah… it’s Wylah.” She caught my eyes with hers for just a glance, then turned away, following who I took to be her brother as they wove down the road. Another gust of wind swallowed them up at the corner and they were gone.

     Her name was Wylah.

     I looked down at the body by my feet. Just another body of a warlock like me. A man who probably didn’t deserve another day of life. Don’t know why I’d even argued with her about the kind of man I was. Her… Wylah.

     My boots took me to that alley once more before I slipped out the back of Town. I rounded the border wall of the Rusty Sickle Saloon to find my valhest just where I’d left him. He pulled his snout up at me as I swung my leg over his back, a look like I’d offended him for leaving so long. I was no one’s friend today.

     Two clicks of my tongue had us sailing out of town on a stream of black smoke under the weight of sky that had darkened since we’d come in. Drought skies were always like that in Ravine. Like a woolen blanket smothering you from above. Couldn’t much breathe under it, but you made due.

     Some, that is.

     We hooked around the edge of Town and cut over the hill, past the iron gate of the growing grave lot. There had to be a thousand unsettled souls in there now. Town had stood on its spot nigh on a hundred years, but the droughts had come on worse and worse in the last decade or so. Everyone from redeemers to the untold was shoveled into the strangled dirt within that plot. Even my steed knew exactly what lie in unrest there. He could smell it, maybe hear it… the bodies and their soft cries below.

     Twisted trees made a pathway out of Town and toward the old shack. They’d been lit up with violet leaves just last year, but after the wilt, the branches had gnarled themselves right up like the fingers of the elders. Like the fingers of the dead.

     Wasn’t past midday yet, but the sky had grown dark as always. Dark and red and littered with dust. It was at the grave lot that I always pulled up the tattered swatch round my neck. Made me look like a damn bandit, like a caricature of myself, but kept the grit from my nose while I rode across the fields.

     The rickety house I’d hardly call a home creaked in the gritty wind. It wasn’t but a country league from Town, but it sat in the nook of a hedged valley like its own shitty fortress. Some people knew we were there, others didn’t. Or maybe they just liked to pretend we were nowhere close to their pristine little lives.

     Sterling lazed with lidded eyes out on the porch with a sawed-off in his open paw. His feet were kicked up, shirt half open under his suspenders. I kicked at his boot as I passed, miffed that he’d be so casual-like on a day where shots rang out from beyond the fields.

     “That how you keep watch of things?”

     He startled at my kick and pushed his glasses up. “Just a snooze for a minute, Gil. Nobody been over here in months.”

     “A minute, eh? Shots in Town must’a put you right to sleep.”

     “Shots?!” He tried to stand, but I shoved him back into his rocker. The whole lot of ‘em were useless at home. On the move, on a job… nothing could stop the Vicious outfit. But they had nothing much to do but drink and be stupid at home.

     The door smacked behind me and Ginger whipped her head my way from the kitchen table. She had a head of fire to go along with her name that was too on-the-nose for words. Our daddy had named her Ginger when she arrived because he was just that much of an asshole. Even laughed about it as she grew. Made her into the spitfire she was in some ways, though.

     “Where the hell were you today?” I tried to temper my growl as my good eye shifted its focus to her. Of everyone in that house, my sister was my most reliable—my second. Not comin’ in when I was on a run and shots had been fired wasn’t like her.

     “Where was I? I wake up to you gone and you’re askin’ ‘bout me? Where were you?!” Her lilac eyes hardened up at me.

     “I was at Runic Wonders doing what Caius was too got damn fidgety to do yesterday! What’d you sleep through the plan? Told you I’d be heading in to check on the stonemaker and get the name a her kin.”

     “And you needed me to hold your hand or what?” Her red brows tipped down. She was pissed… I was pissed.

     “Or hold a fucking stave when I’m bein’ shot at, Ginger! Damn.”

     Her face paled a bit then. “Didn’t hear shots. Who was it? They after you?”

     “Just another outfit come in to rob Runic Wonders. Guess I gotta be glad it wasn’t Caius out there.”

     I slipped my hat off and set it on the table while she started to pour two stilled elixirs. The youngest of us three Vicious siblings was Caius. Nineteen and full of fire—but sometimes burning too hot to think right. I’d send him on jobs, but he was only good for quick and easy shit. He’d have tried to be a hero in Town with that outfit. Tried to lay ‘em all out with the romantic idea of being cheered on by the townsfolk. He was just too young for most of what we had going on.

     “So what’d you get?” She leaned back as she threw the bubbling liquid down her hatch.

     “Not enough.” My fist settled on the chipped jar in front of me while I eyed it. “Like I said, shots rang out an I got caught up in it all.” It wasn’t exactly how it happened, but she didn’t need all the rest of it.

     “They get cleared out then?”

     “Cleared and killed.”

     Now her head cocked at me and those freckles on her cheeks flared a bit like she was feeling the meaning in my words. “If you done the killing, we outta be packing up about now.”

     I let out a grumble at her and downed my drink. “I took a shot or two, but nobody died by my hand.” At least that much was true.

     “But what of the Grey woman? She see you inside?”

     It was only then that it even hit me. I’d been in Runic Wonders speaking to Violet Grey a few turns of the clock shy of the shootout. I’d have left right before they come in to threaten her. If she had any sense, she’d have drawn some lines between my inquest and the stave-hands that burst through her rickety door right after. Damn it.

     “Well shit.”

     “And now you gon’ have an eye on your back and getting anything from her on her stonemaker kin won’t come easy.”

     Ginger rocked back on the hind legs of her chair and blew a breath up at the ceiling. “Guess that’ll be me then. Maybe take Jas with me.”

     Sterling’s brother, Jasper, was just a bit more reliable than Caius as far as I was concerned. Jas was just as young, and a real scrapper. If ever a word was uttered that rubbed him the wrong way, he’d be throwing fists and getting the whole of us tossed in an iron cage.

     “I’ll go back in with Ira,” I told her and waited for her flaming anger to kick up.

     “Instead a me?” There it was. A little twinge from the severed nerves in my eye ticked up.

     “Not instead.” I bit out. “Said I was gonna handle this one, so why worry about it being you?”

     “Y’know sometimes being your second doesn’t sit right. You wanna do it all yourself, ain’t no need for a whole outfit.” The red in her hair glinted a touch by the light behind her as she spoke. Made me wonder if I’d see the real flame in her today. “We’d be better off running staves up through the mountain than siphoning stonemaker magic from this shack.”

     My teeth began to work at my lip when she mentioned the mountain. She knew better than anyone in this outfit that the mountain was not where we belonged. Not anymore. “Go on then. Run your staves. You’re a free witch.”

     She shook her locks at me as the little blaze of light seemed to spark around her irises. She wouldn’t call my bluff. It wasn’t in her. But she’d sure go on getting angry at me. “ Never mind no fucking mountain. Why in hell would you put yourself back in Town after today when you have enough of us to get it done right?!”

     “Done right?” My paws pushed me away from the table and I narrowed both my good and bad eyes at her. “I wasn’t asking for crossfire today, and how do you propose getting your ass in there with that head of fire like these people don’t know you’re my GOD DAMNED SISTER?!”

     There was a small retreat in her eyes before a door behind me swung open on a collision course with the kitchen wall.

     “What in the fuck is all this shouting about?” Ira rubbed at his eyes. He was almost always on night watch—mostly because of his sharp sights and the fact that he loved to be up at all hours in the pitch of darkness. He’d sit by a burning torch and read till the sun started rising, then head on in for his shift of sleep. It was part of the life we lived. Part of the life of any outlaw.

     “S’nothing. Go on back to bed.” I kept my grumble even, but went on staring holes through my sister.

     “Isn’t nothin when you’re making moves to get yourself caught up in shit outside our own, Gil!”

     “What’s this now?” Ira pulled out a chair and yawned as he faced us both with inquiring, sleepy eyes.

     “Another outfit robbed the Grey woman today just after Gil went in there. Then he got his ass caught up in their firestorm, and he thinks he should go back in with you to close out that part of the job. Can’t seem to think why that ain’t the best idea.”

Ira tipped his head of long, unwashed hair back and set his folded hands on his chest. He was almost more studious than Sterling. More the warlock philosopher than the mathematician, and I knew he’d soon have something to say.

     “What exactly did go down in Town today?” He eyed me then—all heavy lashes and rings of green like the jade we used to mine for a lifetime ago. There was a knowing glint in those eyes. He’d known me too long; just as long as my own sister had.

I swallowed something fierce and tried to pry out the memory of my morning. Shots… stones… dust… blood… plaits of onyx hair… angry, wild eyes… a high, satin collar over skin of honeyed sand… more blood…

     “Just another gang come in to get stones. I shot at a few, saw another die in the road. Like I told Ginger, ain’t a soul left its body on my account.”

     He squinted at me now, tongued the tipped of one sharp tooth, made to see through me as he rubbed his chin. “… And you wanna head back in just like that? Violet Grey would have nailed your description to her shop door by now, Gil. One blue eye, one white. Or maybe just a name… ‘cause everybody knows your name now.”

     As it was, being an outlaw didn’t much make for notoriety across Ravine. There were plenty of outlaws, people running from the sheriffs of different towns, hiding from higher warlocks who ran the whole of things. But drawing staves with the High Warlock of Ravine did make for notoriety—especially when you lost an eye doing it.

     “People can know my name and my face all they want. I do good trade in Town. Violet Grey knows that too. S’why we’re here and not in Quincy or Bethel or Laurium.”

     “Violet Grey won’t care what kind a business you do if she thinks you’re after her lot of stones with some other outfit. Don’t make sense for you to go in, and I think you know it.” His fingers tugged through the ashy ends of his hair when he held my gaze. “Which begs again… what happened in Town today, Gil?” Of everyone, Ira was never shying away from a challenge with me. The Vicious gang was my outfit, that much we both knew, but he never lowered himself to me. Not really.

     And maybe that was why I respected him so much, and why his words gnawed at me more than Ginger’s.

     “Why in the fuck you think anything happened more than I said?!” I shoved at my chair, knowing well and good that my ire far outweighed the question. Ginger eyed me as I left the table, passing into the room Ira and I shared and letting out a harsh whisper behind me. The door sealed itself in a rattling slam and I set my back against it as my hand plundered in my pocket for the feel of delicate lace.