6
Pettie the Trotter still stood on her stool, but she no longer felt drunk and singing was the last thing on her mind. She could hardly believe what she was seeing: Jonas had the drop on a boy who had the drop on Reynolds who had the drop on another boy (this last one wearing a bird's skull around his neck on a chain) who had the drop on Roy Depape. Who had, in fact, drawn some of Roy Depape's blood. And when Jonas had told the big boy to put down the knife he was holding to Reynolds's throat, the big boy had refused.
You can blow my lights out and send me to the clearing at the end of the path, thought Pettie, for now I've seen it all, so I have. She supposed she should get off the stool - there was apt to be shooting any second now, and likely a great lot of it - but sometimes you just had to take your chances.
Because some things were just too good to miss.
7
"We're in this town on Affiliation business," Alain said. He had one hand buried deep in Reynolds's sweaty hair; the other maintained a steady pressure on the knife at Reynolds's throat. Not quite enough to break the skin. "If you harm us, the Affiliation will take note. So will our fathers. You'll be hunted like dogs and hung upside down, like as not, when you're caught."
"Sonny, there's not an Affiliation patrol within two hundred wheels of here, probably three hundred," Jonas said, "and I wouldn't care a fart in a windstorm if there was one just over yon hill. Nor do your fathers mean a squitter to me. Put that knife down or I'll blow your f**king brains out."
"No."
"Future developments in this matter should be quite wonderful," Cuthbert said cheerily . . . although there was now a beat of nerves under his prattle. Not fear, perhaps not even nervous-ness, just nerves. The good kind, more likely than not, Jonas thought sourly. He had underestimated these boys at meat; if nothing else was clear, that was. "You shoot Richard, and Richard cuts Mr. Cloak's throat just as Mr. Cloak shoots me; my poor dying fingers release my sling's elastic and put a steel ball in what passes for Mr. Spectacles's brain. You'll walk away, at least, and I suppose that will be a great comfort to your dead friends."
"Call it a draw," Alain said to the man with the gun at his temple.
"We all stand back and walk away."
"No, sonny," Jonas said. His voice was patient, and he didn't think his anger showed, but it was rising. Gods, to be outfaced like this, even temporarily! "No one does like that to the Big Coffin Hunters. This is your last chance to - "
Something hard and cold and very much to the point pressed against the back of Jonas's shirt, dead center between the shoulderblades. He knew what it was and who held it at once, understood the game was lost, but couldn't understand how such a ludicrous, maddening turn of events could have happened.
"Holster the gun," the voice behind the sharp tip of metal said. It was empty, somehow - not just calm, but emotionless. "Do it now, or this goes in your heart. No more talk. Talking's done. Do it or die."
Jonas heard two things in that voice: youth and truth. He bolstered his gun.
"You with the black hair. Take your gun out of my friend's ear and put it back in your holster. Now."
Clay Reynolds didn't have to be invited twice, and he uttered a long, shaky sigh when Alain took the blade off his throat and stood back. Cuthbert did not look around, only stood with the elastic of his slingshot pulled and his elbow cocked.
"You at the bar," Roland said. "Holster up."
Depape did so, grimacing with pain as he bumped his hurt finger against his gunbelt. Only when this gun was put away did Cuthbert relax his hold on his sling and drop the ball from the cup into the palm of his hand.
The cause of all this had been forgotten as the effects played themselves out. Now Sheemie got to his feet and pelted across the room. His cheeks were wet with tears. He grasped one of Cuthbert's hands, kissed it several times (loud smacking noises that would have been comic under other circumstances), and held the hand to his cheek for a moment. Then he dodged past Reynolds, pushed open the righthand batwing, and flew right into the arms of a sleepy-eyed and still half-drunk Sheriff. Avery had been fetched by Sheb from the jailhouse, where the Sheriff o' Barony had been sleeping off the Mayor's ceremonial dinner in one of his own cells.
8
"This is a nice mess, isn't it?"
Avery speaking. No one answering. He hadn't expected they would, not if they knew what was good for them.