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  “Well, she doesn’t exactly run Amity Springs,” he said. “And then again, she doesn’t exactly not.”

  “Great,” Mildred said. “Just our luck. The first person we meet is the village idiot.”

  “Can it, Mildred,” Ryan growled. “This Dark Lady’s the person we need to see. How do we get to the Library Lounge?”

  Coffin turned and flung out an arm. “It’s right before you, the grandest structure in all Amity Springs!”

  Ryan frowned. It was grander than most, he acknowledged: three broad stories with what looked like an attic beneath a pitched metal roof. A one-story annex winged off from one side. The front was painted white, well weathered, with lamps hanging from ornate black iron holders to either side of a large door with a lot of colored-glass inserts. A pair of life-size lions, probably concrete casts, incongruously flanked the entryway.

  It was impressive, in its way. It just didn’t look a lot less sorry-ass than the rest of the place.

  “Right,” he said to Coffin. “We’ll take it from here. Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he said. “I reckon you’ll be good for business.”

  Beside the door was a placard reading Welcome to the Library Lounge, Amity Springs’ Finest Entertainment Establishment. Beneath it was a smaller sign, neatly hand-lettered, that read Please Ring Bell for Admittance. Since that was five words more than most people in the Deathlands could read, fifteen if you counted both, Ryan reckoned that at least folks in the ville had more education than was common. Or at least liked to pretend as much.

  The bell in question was small, brass, and dangled from a bracket right over the sign. Ryan gave it a good ring.

  The door opened fast. An angry two-headed giant filled the doorway, holding a normal-looking man in the air with one hand.

  * * *

  “LEMME GO!” the captive yelled. He kicked his cracked and dusty cowboy boots frantically. The heels swung a good six inches off the bottom of the doorframe. The giant held him out at the length of one inhumanly long arm—holding him by a bunch of the back of his shirt, Krysty saw—so that he couldn’t kick the monster, by accident or design.

  Ricky Morales’s round olive face went ashy-pale, and he swung up his DeLisle carbine with the barrel fattened by its built-in noise suppressor.

  “Blaster down,” Ryan ordered sternly.

  Ricky turned wide black eyes to him. “But—”

  “You heard me.”

  J.B. stepped up beside the kid and gently pressed the barrel down with two fingers. Ricky didn’t resist. Perceiving in the crew’s newest member a fellow born tinkerer, with a shared love of weapons and fiendish booby traps, J.B. had taken the youth under his wing as more or less his protégé.

  For his part Ricky idolized the Armorer. Almost as much as he did Ryan.

  “I said let me go, you rad-blasted mutie!” the man screamed, spittle flying from his fury-reddened face. He looked young, not much older than Ricky—a year or two older than Jak, say.

  The mutie shook him up and down furiously. “I’m not a mutie, you diseased buffalo sphincter!” roared the right-hand head in a voice of thunder. It was the better-looking of the two, if such a term was applicable. It had a broad jaw and a shock of black hair.

  “He displays a highly unusual combination of erudition and vulgarity,” Doc said. “Admirable, in its way.”

  “We’re conjoined twins,” the other head said calmly. “It’s a common error. Don’t blame my brother Michael too much. He has a sensitive soul, especially on that subject.”

  That head was much the less presentable, with a balding pate that seemed to come to a point, a furrowed brow and snaggled teeth. Yet its voice was soft.

  “I don’t give a shit, you freak! You got no right to lay your nuking hands on me!”

  The giant carried his uselessly struggling burden into the street. Krysty saw he had apparently done so to give way to a second figure, considerably smaller but possessed of undeniable presence.

  “You violated the rules of my establishment, Chad,” a woman said with a languid wave of her long slim cigarette holder, which Krysty observed held a long, thin black cigarillo. “Actions have consequences. You need to learn that.”

  “What? That gaudy slut had it coming! She talked back to me!”

  The woman’s face, its pallor already marked and accentuated by the chin-length black hair that framed it, went as white as Jak’s.

  “You do not call my people that!” she said.

  Chad had some comeback to that, but it got lost in the general sputtering and gobbling as the giant shook him up and down again, much harder.

  “Nor do you lay hands on them if they tell you not to,” the woman said. She was dressed all in black, from the bow in her hair, down to her pinafore-like dress, elbow-length fingerless lace gauntlets, knee-high stockings and shoes. “That is what you’re being ejected for. The abusive term merely compounds your offense.”

  Chad’s eyes bugged out and he flailed his arms in a hopeless attempt to get at the hand that was shaking him. Finally he managed to choke out, “P-please, sto-oo-oo-p!”

  “Do you promise to behave yourself?” the woman said.

  “Y-y-yes-ss, mumm-umm-am!”

  The balding head had turned to keep one eye on the gaudy owner. The other, Krysty noted, was still positioned to keep watch on the band of newcomers. The better-looking head continued to admire the giant’s handiwork in shaking Chad.

  “You may stop, Mikey-Bob,” the woman said.

  “Mikey-Bob?” Mildred repeated incredulously but quietly.

  Chad hung from the giant’s fist like an unconscious puppy. His jaw hung slack, his tongue lolled out and his eyes had rolled up in his head.

  The woman in black put her hands on her hips. “Well, young man? I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”

  Chad raised his head. He managed to twist his mouth into a leering smile.

  “Why don’t you suck my dick, you bi— Uh! Uh!”

  Mikey-Bob had started shaking him again. This time the giant’s efforts made his earlier exertions seem like playful fooling around. Krysty actually wondered if the unruly customer’s neck might snap.

  “Is it time to smack him, D.L.?” asked the sparse-haired, homelier head.

  “I believe that it is, Bob,” she said.

  With surprising coordination for a guy with two heads, Mikey-Bob let Chad’s shirt go with his right hand while fetching a straight-armed slap to the side of his head with the other. Chad sailed fifteen feet into the middle of the street and landed hard, in a crumple. He had his ass in the air and his face pressed to the hard-packed yellowish dirt, as if he were trying to imitate a plow.

  With an air of immense satisfaction, Mikey-Bob dusted equally immense hands together. “Good riddance,” Mikey said.

  “—to bad rubbish,” Bob finished.

  “Regular stand-up comedian, these two,” Mildred muttered.

  The woman turned her attention to Ryan.

  “You look interesting,” she said, leaning a hip against the door and kind of slouching into it. “Who might you be?”

  “Ryan Cawdor,” he replied.

  He quickly introduced the others, finishing with Jak, who stood a little apart from the others, in part watching out for the approach of possible danger, in part watching the shenanigans with obvious amusement.

  As he did, Krysty became aware of a muted bubble of conversation coming out the open door past the woman, and the sound of a piano being played. It wasn’t the usual off-key clinking you heard from a gaudy. It was smooth and well-modulated. Classical music, she thought in surprise.

  “And you’re the one they call the Dark Lady?” Ryan asked.

  “Indeed they do,” she said.

  “We heard tell you might be looking
to hire a crew of blasters,” Ryan said.

  She smiled. She had high cheekbones, a thin nose, and big black eyes outlined in kohl. Her right eye was accentuated even more by looking out of a painted-on black Eye of Horus. She was quite a strikingly lovely young woman, Krysty saw. Though she seemed to be careful to smile with her black-painted lips pressed firmly together.

  “I am,” she said.

  “Come into my parlor.”

  Chapter Three

  “So,” Dark Lady said. She sat back in her gilded-armed chair with its velvet cushions and crossed one slim leg over the other. “What exactly is it that you and your friends do, Mr. Cawdor?”

  “Lot of things,” J.B. said. “But mostly they come down to trouble.”

  The office was small enough to feel crowded with Ryan and his companions inside, even with the giant bulk of Mikey-Bob looming in the hall outside the open door.

  The room’s most remarkable feature was the floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books, mostly hardbacks with age-cracked backs, as well as vases holding sprays of fresh lilac that crowded the room additionally with their fragrance. But they came as no surprise to Ryan at this point, given that the main barroom of the gaudy likewise featured cases filled with hundreds of volumes. That had surprised him, as well as Doc, who had earned a genuine smile from the Dark Lady upon his exclamation of pleasure at seeing all the books.

  As they had made their way to the office, the companions had seen perhaps a dozen customers sitting around talking or flirting with the gaudy sluts. These were of both sexes, though predominantly female; they were on the whole younger, fitter, and brisker somehow than the type Ryan was acquainted with. It was almost as if they wanted to be here doing this. Or at least were okay with it, whether ace or not.

  They had made their way through the main saloon. The bartender, a long, narrow-faced man with long lank light-brown hair, had glanced up from polishing a mug with an amazingly clean-looking rag.

  “Think I see what’s going on here,” J.B. had said softly at Ryan’s back. “The whole shabby look of everything outside’s mostly a front. Folks here don’t want outlanders knowing just how well they’re doing.”

  “They seem to draw in a power of trade from somewhere, though,” Ryan muttered back.

  * * *

  DARK LADY RETURNED to the business at hand, leaning back in her gold-armed chair, dragging in smoke.

  “So,” she said, letting blue smoke slide out and up in front of her pale face. “Do you mean, get into trouble, Mr. Dix? Or do you mean, make trouble for other people?”

  J.B. shrugged. For an answer, he took off his glasses and began to polish them with a handkerchief.

  “Both,” Ryan said, taking up the slack for his friend. “Emphasis on the latter. At least, given our preference.”

  Dark Lady smiled. Again, she seemed to take care to keep her black-painted lips covering her teeth.

  “I quite understand,” she said. “You do seem to show a degree of erudition unlooked for in—let’s say, a man of your appearance, Mr. Cawdor, in all candor.”

  Ryan grinned even broader. Their hostess’s already-pale face seemed to turn a shade paler. He realized he was probably giving her what Krysty called his wolf smile.

  “We’d rather take other people by surprise than the opposite, ma’am,” he said.

  He felt strong hands grip him by the shoulders from behind. Recognizing Krysty’s touch at first contact, he relaxed slightly and sat back in his own chair. She was letting him know that his tact was slipping, in her own very tactful way.

  “Do I take it that you have trouble of your own you’d like help resolving, Dark Lady?” Krysty said.

  “I see no reason to be coy about it,” the woman said. “Yes. A situation has come up, and you look to be just the people to help me solve it.”

  Krysty laughed. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Ryan tried to keep his expression stone-like, but he couldn’t help noticing that the Dark Lady had let her cool reserve slip slightly out of place. Perhaps she wasn’t as in control of the situation as she liked to pretend. Or mebbe not so much in control of herself.

  “I must tell you I don’t much like violence,” Dark Lady said.

  “We don’t, either,” Mildred replied. “But we’re very, very good at it.”

  Dark Lady looked at her as she inhaled on her cigarette holder. The motion made her already rather hollow cheeks look positively gaunt.

  She nodded. Just a touch abruptly, as if she had come to whatever decision she had visibly just made against her own better judgment.

  “I have recently suffered a theft,” she said. “I would like to hire you to recover the...item.”

  “What exactly is this item?” J.B. asked.

  “It’s a metal box, perhaps fourteen inches wide by ten inches deep and six inches high.” As she spoke, she gestured with her hands to frame the dimensions.

  “And the contents of the box, Madam?” Doc asked.

  “Let’s say you have no need to know that,” she said.

  Then she smiled. It was a surprisingly engaging, open-mouthed smile. But she still was double-careful to keep her teeth covered.

  “And don’t call me madam,” she added.

  Ryan emitted a soft grunt. So she actually had a sense of humor.

  “Are you sure you can’t tell us anything about the contents of this box?” Ryan asked. “Seems like it could be important.”

  “Needless to say, it’s an item of some value,” Dark Lady said, waving her cigarette holder a little too carelessly to be credible.

  “But it could be important for us to have at least some idea what the box contains, Dark Lady,” Krysty said. “We want to be sure we bring back the right thing.”

  “Oh, you’ll know,” Dark Lady said. “And if you do perchance bring back the wrong item, I will pay an added fee for you to try again. Within reason, of course.”

  “Yeah,” Mikey grunted. “Nothing like trusting a bunch of random coldhearts from the outlands.”

  “For once I am compelled to agree with my brother,” Bob said. “I hate that feeling. It’s not a double-smart call, Dark Lady.”

  “About that fee,” Ryan said.

  They dickered. For all the little-girl-lost Ryan had thought to glimpse when her cool façade slipped, the gaudy proprietor proved hard as a blaster barrel when it came time to bargain. Then again, so was Ryan Cawdor. They were down to their last supplies and needed the jack from the Dark Lady. So the companions’ services didn’t come cheap. And in the end, Dark Lady was rather generous.

  “There is one stipulation,” she said, leaning back in her chair blowing smoke out her fine and narrow nose. “There must be no chilling. Indeed, I insist that violence be kept to the absolute minimum.”

  “We may find our opposition forces our hand,” Doc said.

  “Yeah,” Ryan said. “You aren’t paying us enough to wind up staring at the stars.”

  “I think what our new employer is saying,” Krysty said sweetly, “is that the people she suspects of stealing her...property are not of a violent character.”

  Dark Lady nodded. “That’s right, Ms. Wroth. They cannot afford to be, in their situation. Moreover, their lack of violent disposition is precisely the reason they have sought the employee they have.”

  “Ace on the line,” Ryan grumbled. “All right. We’ll do our best not to chill anybody.”

  Dark Lady thought about that a moment. “I will pay a slight bonus if you return my property without hurting anybody,” she said, with an emphasis on “slight.” “But do not try to deceive me. I assure you, I will know.”

  Ryan held up his open right hand. “All right, I believe you.”

  He leaned forward again. “No
w tell us what you can about these robbers you want us to rob from.”

  Chapter Four

  “A mutie traveling circus,” J.B. said dryly, shaking his head. “The last one nearly killed us.”

  A couple hundred yards away the wags of Madame Zaroza’s traveling circus showed a few yellow gleams of lights. They were mostly panel trucks, pulled up in a rough laager a bit over half a mile outside the ville of Amity Springs. Ricky, who had been expecting tents and lights, even if not currently on, was disappointed.

  “Dark night!” Ricky heard J.B. exclaim—softly, because the Armorer was always in control. “Don’t pop out of nowhere like that, Jak. Almost blasted you.”

  Ricky glanced around to see his friend, crouching on his haunches and grinning in the starlight like a white coyote.

  “No sentry,” Jak reported in that weird abbreviated way of his. By now Ricky understood him as well as the rest of the group did. “Quiet. Mebbe thirty inside.”

  “You find where this Madame Zaroza’s likely to be?” J.B. asked.

  Jak nodded. “Center wag,” he said. “Got lights.”

  “So the others are circled around it?” Ryan asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Sotto voce, Ryan asked Jak a few more questions. Jak answered in monosyllables volubly.

  “Right,” Ryan said with decision a few moments later. “Here’s how we play it...”

  He led his companions in a wide circle around the camp, counterclockwise to the northwest. Ricky realized he meant to avoid taking the obvious approach from the ville.

  For a few moments they hunkered down in the crackling-dry grass. Ricky used the opportunity to catch his breath and try to still his heart. He was in good enough shape after a few months of tramping the Deathlands with his new family. But he still tended to tense up at the nearness of action. It wore him right straight down.

  “You fit to fight, son?” J.B. asked him.

  The Armorer was not what anybody would call a sensitive man, but he had a surprisingly perceptive way to him. Especially for somebody who mostly acted as if he was more comfortable working with machines and gadgets than people.