12/14/2021
“I’m going to clean my pistol,” he said. “You can watch and tell me if I’m doing it right.” He sat in the lower barn on a stool at a doorway commanding a view of the ranch entrance. He organized the pistol parts across a crate in front of him.
“I need to tell you something.” Psyche stood over him, watching him work. “The griefers are coming back. They told me they’re coming back to see if I’m still alive.” She unconsciously hefted her weapon, moving her right hand over its surface to make certain it was sound.
“No kidding,” Sul agreed impassively. “It’s the Cracked Skulls. They always come back. But I figure the earliest they get here from Hulk Hollow is three days from now.”
“Three days?”
“Don’t panic yet. More likely they’ll be selling your weapons and carousing with the money for days before they circle back.”
“When are we leaving?” Psyche looked out the door, agitated.
He stopped working to look at her. “We can’t leave because we don’t have diesel. We can’t ride the horse out because he can’t carry enough food and water for him and us. Can’t pull my bike, either. Steam won’t get us far enough.”
She blanched. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to take diesel away from the Cracked Skulls when they come back. And then, when you can ride the bike for eleven hours without bleeding out, we’ll go. I’ve decided not to leave you.”
Her face stretched back and her lips parted as she looked at him. Her eyes were round. She didn’t express gratitude, as he half expected. She turned her back to him and walked gingerly around the room once.
But she came back. “You’re good at caring for your weapon. No mistreatment to make the gunmaker regret selling it.” Her eyes were wet, but she ignored it.
“It’s part of my job.”
“I’ve been afraid to ask what you do.” She was being less polite now.
For answer, Sul pulled up his shirt and showed her the stoneheart.
She put her hand to her mouth. “A Stoneheart Bountyhunter? I’ve never met one before.”
He did not answer. Accustomed to all sorts of reactions to his condition, Sul pulled down his shirt and went back to work.
“Your stoneheart - was that the warm rock?”
“It was. The Song came out of it. Don’t ask me how or why. That’s not supposed to be part of the magic.”
A pair of swallows, the first sign of spring, swooped into the barn and swooped out again scolding.
“At first it smelled like iron and blood, but then it smelled like pine trees,” Psyche mused, watching the swallows.
Sul looked up sharply.
“Oh, I can smell curses and blessings,” Psyche explained. “A strange talent, granted, with no apparent use. Where is your original heart?”
“Stoneheart Headquarters.”
“Oh. Do you get it back when you retire?”
Sul hesitated. He depended upon the stillness in his chest. No heart, no emotion, no doubts. No unbearable memories of the war. But when he first signed up for the Stonehearts, he had harbored other intentions.
“That was the plan,” Sul admitted, oiling the barrel of his pistol. “Earn enough money to redeem my heart from Headquarters. Get a runemaster to heal the… some damage. Then retire. But lately I’ve been thinking about just living out my life like this.”
“Why?” Psyche’s eyes searched Sul’s straight, fine, dirty-blond hair as he bent over his work.
“I like the quiet,” he murmured.
Psyche crouched, digging a corn kernel out of a hole in the concrete with a rusty length of wire. “I thought your sort had no feelings.”
“We don’t.”
“Hmm. Then why did you save me?”
He knuckled the stoneheart through the fabric of his shirt, as if it itched. “I suppose the Song wanted me to, so I found a reason.”
Psyche raised her head. “Do you always talk about The Song like it’s sentient?” She half expected Sul to say, ‘Do you always ask so many questions?’ She had heard it before.
Instead, as if he had never learned impatience, Sul answered the question evenly while he wiped the parts down. “My mother used to talk that way.”
“I have a hard time with that concept. The Song’s supposed to be some kind of fate. But if it’s aware of what it’s doing then…” A shadow crossed her heart, and Psyche hugged her knees, resting her forehead on them. “How could fate be a song? How could it be that Song? It was so beautiful.” Her skirts muffled her voice.
“Was it?” he asked with a touch of curiosity. “I couldn’t tell.”
“It was lovely. It was restitution. Or the promise of it, or something. It was… a gift.”
“My mother said The King in the Mountain sings The Song. She said it’s how he provides for us.”
Psyche raised her head slowly, searching his face. Did Sul understood the significance of what he had just said? His expression was still as ever while his hands reassembled his weapon.
Finished, he handed her the pistol. “Keep this with you. It’s lighter than what you’re lugging. You know how to use this?”
“Indeed I do.” Psyche set aside the heavy, pieced-together semi-automatic, and accepted the weapon as if it were a bouquet from a beau. “Oh, that’s so much better. Crow .45, military issue.”
“It’s more powerful than you’re used to. You’ll want to…”
Psyche sighted and fired, exploding a broken pot left in the yard, and startling the swallows. The gun kicked back. She realigned and fired again. The bullet pinged off a smaller shard. The loud shot echoed around the burnt-out buildings.
Sul raised an eyebrow. “What about a sniper rifle?”
Smiling faintly, Psyche turned to him. “What about one?”
“Can you make it?”
Her smile faded and she stared into his calm eyes. “I probably can, if you assist. Are you thinking for when they come back?”
“I am. What about a silencer? Can you build one for the sniper rifle?”
“A suppressor,” Psyche automatically corrected. “So they don’t know where the shot is coming from?”
“And in case one of the griefers is also a sniper.”
“Let me ask you this: what effective accuracy range do you need?”
“Good question.” They went outside, and Sul glanced around, triangulating several unmarked points on the ground. “No more than two football fields.”
“Then there’s no need for an actual supersonic sniper rifle,” Psyche said.
Sul thumbed his jaw quizzically.
“In the chief’s office, there’s a pattern for a subsonic carbine with a built-in suppressor. The DeLeon Carbine!” Enthused with her subject, her slightly husky voice became louder. “And if we’re lucky, we may find a sight ready-made, among the fine stock in the safe.” Psyche mimed the weapon and spread her hands. “This carbine is so quiet that the bolt action is actually louder than the shot. It’s fairly accurate, and I have an idea to improve the accuracy. So, not a sniper rifle, but it will be quiet. It uses an eight round clip - yes, a clip, not a magazine. Anyhow, where will you be shooting from?”
Sul pointed to the top of the barn where the cupola stood, octagonal, with ventilation slats.
“Oh, that’s good. It looks much smaller from the ground than it really is. If you build in some benches to kneel on, you’ll do fine up there.” Psyche squinted at the layout. “It really commands the whole compound, doesn’t it? But that’s probably the first thing you noticed when you walked in.”
“It is.”
“Well, what do you think? Will you be comfortable with the carbine?”
He turned to her, thumbs in his belt loops, boots sweeping the dust. “It’s not for me, lady. I’ll be busy down here, making sure things go to plan. How are you with heights?”
“Oh,” she said quietly, pulling her hands in to her chest and her feet close together. “Oh. Fine, I guess.” She glanced up at the cupola. A cloud moved over them, throwing a shadow on her face.
“It’ll be the safest place, with all the griefers on the ground,” he said. “Especially if you really can build that quiet a gun.”
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