Revenge and the Wild by Michelle Modesto
Dedication
To my children, Donkey and Butters, for always being there . . . even when I’m trying to write
One
Westie had left the valley at dawn to head home. The sun had risen soon after and followed her throughout the day. By four it just felt spiteful. Though her skin was burned and blistered, she preferred the sun over darkness during her travels. The road between the valley and Rogue City was a long, perilous one with dense woods on either side.
She tried to push away any thoughts of danger. They’d taken up too much space in her head on her journey. All she wanted to think about was home. Only a mile now stood between her and a hot meal that didn’t consist of canned beans—she’d be home in plenty of time for supper.
Twigs snapped behind her like breaking bones, and Westie twisted in her saddle. There were plenty of harmless things that lived in the forest, but there were plenty of other things too. For the last hour she’d heard cracks and creaks, too uniform to be commonplace. Ahead of her the road was barely wide enough to fit a stagecoach. The idea of trying to run her horse over its deep wagon ruts to escape made her nerves hum.
Another branch cracked, this time on her right. She gripped her reins tighter as she gazed out into the forest, searching for unlikely shapes or movement, too absorbed in finding the thing that stalked her to notice the dark figure on her left until it was right beside her.
Her muscles stiffened and she held her breath. Slowly turning, she saw the familiar hunched figure sitting atop a painted horse, looking at her with a smudge of a grin.
“Dammit, Bena, you scared the shit out of me,” Westie said, her entire body sighing.
She slid from her saddle and reached for her horse’s reins with the copper clockwork machine that had replaced her missing right arm. A labyrinth of brass gears and cogs moved when she flexed her metal fingers around the leather.
Bena Water-Dancer, named for the way she glided through the water while fishing, was a hunter in the Wintu tribe and moved like a shadow. She’d tried teaching Westie the technique once, but as birds scattered from trees and rabbits darted back into their holes, it became obvious Westie was more battering ram than cougar.
“If I’d been a creature, you’d be dead by now,” Bena said, her accent dull in comparison to the beautifully fluid tongue of her native Wintu language. She too jumped down from her horse. Her long black hair was pulled away from her broad face into a braid as thick as her wrist. Though Bena was thirty, she still moved like a girl half her age and looked no older than when Westie had met her seven years ago.
Westie shrugged. “Creatures don’t bother me none.” It was common for creatures to attack travelers, but Westie had never run into any problems. She assumed it had something to do with the strangeness of her metal arm, or the creatures’ fear of what she could do with it.
Bena scanned Westie’s unwashed hair and her filthy clothes. Disapproval seemed the final judgment.
“It’s no wonder. I could smell you from across the cow pastures. Let’s get you home and in the bath before someone uses you as a weapon.” Bena’s eyes were crushed between her low forehead and high cheekbones when she smiled.
Westie grinned back and climbed onto her horse, cringing from saddle burn.
Ten minutes later they reached Rogue City. The tension that had been building up over the last two months melted from Westie’s shoulders. She pulled at Henry’s reins to stop him before crossing the shimmering dome of magic that surrounded the city. Like a soap bubble, it glistened with color and was near invisible if one wasn’t looking for it. Westie was watching the last of the sunlight glitter across its surface when the dome suddenly vanished.
She gasped. “Did you see that?”
Bena looked around. “See what?”
“The dome—it disappeared.”
It was only gone for a moment before it flickered back into place. Had she blinked, she would’ve missed it. She stared in stunned disbelief, wanting to make sure it didn’t happen again.
Bena squinted up at the sky even though Westie knew the woman’s eyesight was better than any creature’s. “It’s still there. You have been on the road too long. Perhaps you are seeing things.”
“Perhaps,” Westie said, becoming suspicious when Bena didn’t make eye contact. It wasn’t like Bena to dismiss anything when it came to the protection of her people.
They passed through the watery-looking membrane. When Westie had first crossed paths with the dome on her way to live with Nigel as a child, she’d thought her clothes would get wet with the way it sparkled like water, or that she’d feel somehow changed when entering a place of magic, but it was the same as being on the other side.
The road cut between the parallel storefronts of Rogue City, each painted a different shade of ordinary. Ahead of them on the right was the Tight Ship saloon, a squalid hole in the wall with piano music and cigar smoke rolling out of the open windows. Westie’s horse reared up as an elf and a young man crashed through the swinging doors into the street, a twisting ball of fists and foul language. Westie grabbed the horn of her saddle before she could be dumped off and glared down at the pair.
An ogre and a dwarf (or what Westie thought was a dwarf; she was always getting them confused with the bakhtak—stocky little creatures blamed for causing nightmares) stepped out of the saloon behind them to watch the fisticuffs. As soon as the dwarf saw Westie and Bena, he crossed his arms protectively in front of himself and went back inside.