by Spencer Sekulin

Download the first three chapters as an e-book, or read below.

 

 

Chapter One

A muffled howl pierced the saloon’s languid shadows as a steam engine departed the nearby Frontier supply depot of Anchorshaw. The sound made Lugh Ahearn wish for simpler times, times before karma had left him chasing legends in a wasteland that was doing its best to leave him dead in a ditch.

But he had burned those bridges long ago.

The floorboards rattled with the departing train. Motes of dust fell from the rafters and danced in the silvery beams of light stabbing from old bullet holes in the thin wooden walls.

Play the hand you're dealt. Play, or lose it all.

Lugh touched his chest and the outline of Grandfather’s heirloom—a semilunar crystal, hidden in a secret pocket between the layers of his tweed jacket. Grandfather had called it a Godstone. Lugh stifled a scoff. Pagan goddesses with the power to heal, a paradise lost through bloodshed and hate, and somehow this “Godstone” was the key to it all. This journey had wits’ end written all over it. He hated chasing the Uluru tribe’s lost folklore, hated that it was the only hope he had left.

The only hope for his little sister, too.

And as usual, it required money he didn’t have.

Lugh blinked a drop of sweat. It pattered on the hexagonal card table’s green leather surface. What was with the Frontier and keeping their saloons like ovens? It even smelled like one: sour from kerosene lamps, cigars, and overflowing ashtrays. The rumble of passing trains added a fitting sense of doom.

Perhaps it’s just practice for Hell. Most folks here are well on their way.

He winced. Sounded like something Mother would say about him. Nineteen years old and already in deep like his old man, always on the run, always in the wrong company. He swallowed hard and glanced at the circular skylight above, its lance of light, and the blue sky beyond. He wondered if Mother was watching from that peaceful blue and hoped that she understood. Then he focused on the smoothness of the cards he shifted in his hands. He’d go straight when this was over. When Sabia was better. Enough chips were on the table to cover Sabia’s medicine for months. He could get one of those fancy misting machines to help her breathe at night, maybe even—

“Oi, kid.” The ham-fisted man opposite Lugh kneed the table, toppling careful stacks of blue chips. His snarl was made less intimidating by his crisp white tux and little red bowtie, like a heavyweight boxer turned posh salesclerk. “Last move. Make it before I make you make your move.”

Mighty proud of that line, aren’t you, Jack? Lugh opted for the startled look of a daft teenager who had no idea how to play Stacks, then added a tremor to his hand as he rearranged his cards. He knew what Jack saw: a reed of a youth in ill-fitting tweed, pale face spattered with freckles, and hazel eyes tellingly wide. Easy prey. Jack loved it, sneering as he puffed on his cigar like the devil’s dealmaker.

“You can still back out,” Jack said. “Better men have made it this far and done the same.”

Lugh flinched, then pulled his woven cap tighter over his mop of sandy blond hair to shield his eyes. He’d been seeding the entire game with nervous tells, but he was only half faking it now. The other four players had already thrown and had joined the rest of the onlookers in the hazy gloom. Their cards lay discarded on the table, and their chips belonged to Jack—or as he was known in this Frontier shithole, Jack the Breaker, because losing Stacks against him meant losing more than money.

Good thing Lugh intended to win.

“I’m still in.”

“That’s a good lad.” Jack jetted smoke through his nostrils. “Now play.”

Another train shrieked to a halt outside. Lugh glanced at his cards: two seers, two dukes, one emperor, one peasant. One more emperor and he’d clear Jack out, bowtie and all. It took Lugh a saintly effort to keep his lip from curling. He’d arranged his hand so that the peasant and emperor were side by side, ready for his deception.

“No stalling,” Jack growled.

“I . . .” Lugh faltered, sweat trickling along his jaw. He nervously pushed all of his chips in and cleared his throat. “C-Call.”

“Bull’s balls, you’re shit at bluffing, you know that?” Jack splayed his cards. Two seers, two dukes, one emperor, and one viscount. He poked his tongue through his gap-toothed smile. “Best start thinking about how to pay. Maybe that lonely little blondie in your hotel room.”

Sabia. Lugh grated his teeth. “That’s my sister.”

“Really? Always wanted one. Raise her myself, teach her a few things.”

Lugh’s stomach twisted. He ought to take the threat like the greenhorn he pretended to be, but he found himself growling instead. “You leave her out of this, asshole.”

“Has sand gotten into your dunce brain already? You have to wager something to meet my bet if you lose, and we both know you came with empty pockets. So be a good sport and put some meat in the game.” Jack’s grin grew two molars wider. Two molars crueler. “That, or I kill you.”

One of the ex-players, who’d taken refuge at the bar, chipped in with a nervous smile. “Like you used to kill those Uluru savages eh?”

Jack shot the man a withering glare. “Are you still in the game?”

“N-No, sir.” The man focused on his mug.

“Then keep your craven mouth shut.” Jack’s sulfuric gaze slid back to Lugh. “Man’s right though. Used to be a prospector. Was mighty good at it, too, but those clay-faced savages didn’t take well to it. And I didn’t take well to them killing my people. Back when I had people worth killing for . . .” He trailed off and glared at the tabletop for a few seconds. “Those days are dead, but the thing about the Frontier is it keeps part of you for a souvenir, and it kept a whole lot of me. I’ve lacked patience ever since I returned. So don’t try anything sly, kid. I never bluff.”

Lugh took a deep breath and focused his awareness on the peasant card. Out here he was just another young idiot, but back in Auklenn, his homeland, he was Lugh the Liar—and one of the few gifted with a sorcerous knack.

Sorcery was a fickle mistress who loved desperate suitors.

It started as a click at the back of his mind. Tingles crept along his scalp, down his arm, at last pooling hot at his fingertips. When Jack puffed his cigar, Lugh faked a coughing fit and let the tingling warmth rush into the peasant while he simultaneously envisioned his intention. A subtle white flash lit his hand, and the useless card became a perfect copy of his emperor. He called it Doppeling. With it he could create a fake of whatever he was physically touching. Shame it only lasted a few minutes, otherwise he’d be rich. And it came at a cost. Sorcery, like any exertion, cost metabolic energy. Or so the tabloids said. But it was worth it as long as he didn’t take it too far and risk the other cost of his power.

Lugh coughed harder and leaned forward, just in case Jack’s porous brain had registered the sorcerous flash. Nothing distracted this prick like suffering.

“Oi.” Jack caught his arm, blurring fast for a man his size. “Careful. Don’t want to drop your hand and mix it with what’s on the table. Think you can get off that easily?”

Idiot. Lugh shook his head. Shouts echoed outside over a steam engine’s grumbling, along with the thud of many boots. Jack pulled Lugh closer.

“Smoke getting to you, boy?”

“P-Please stop that . . .”

“What? This?” Jack blew smoke into Lugh’s face, then laughed and shoved him back into his seat. “Show me your hand or I’ll fit your lips around a chimney, see how much you cough then.”

Laughter crept through the saloon’s denizens. Jackals in men’s clothing. Just like Lugh’s late father, who’d only ever deigned to smile when Lugh had done his dirty work.

I’ll show you. Lugh began a dramatic reveal.

The front door squealed open with a blaze of midday sun, and a rancid, sulfuric odor flooded the room. Lugh froze. Jack’s rosy face went gray.

A tall man in a black duster sauntered in with the rhythmic song of spurred boots, hat tipped over his eyes, right hand drumming on the grip of his holstered revolver. The saloon’s patrons crowded towards the walls like bats shying away from a bonfire. The closer the newcomer got, the more Jack hunched, his piggish eyes wide and glazed. Others entered, harsh men and women of dust and leather and lead. Desperados. Their expressions bore the grim coldness Lugh had often seen in Auklenn’s most violent slums. The air grew hotter, drier, every breath scratching Lugh’s throat. But worst of all was that rotten-egg stench.

Only one kind of sorcerer brought such an aura.

“By all the saints and bloody martyrs,” Jack rasped, trembling.

Jig’s up. Lugh brushed off his tweed jacket and stood. “Well, it’s been fun, but the toilet’s calling my name.” And so was the window he’d slip out of.

“Please, have a seat,” the tall desperado said. “Now.”

Lugh swore under his breath and sank back into his chair.

“Jack, is it?” The desperado laid a gloved hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Thanks for keeping the seat warm, friend. Now step against that wall.”

“Y-Yes, Mister Fawkes.” Jack stumbled aside like a timid schoolboy.

Eirlys Fawkes? Damnation. Lugh had heard stories of a gang of Frontier desperados led by such a man. They called themselves vigilantes, but that depended on who was on the receiving end of their steel, which allegedly changed as often as the wind. But why here? Why now? Lugh slowly dipped his head to hide behind his cards, but Eirlys’s brown eyes arrested him as surely as cast-iron shackles. Cold, like a scalpel’s edge, though not nearly as cold as his stubbled, pockmarked face. A killer’s face.

Eirlys ignored Jack’s empty chair. His voice grated like two colliding mountains. “You Lugh Ahearn?”

Lugh’s tongue felt ten sizes too large. “You a lawman?”

“Of sorts.” A sardonic quirk tugged at the corner of Eirlys’s mouth. He bit a cigar between his teeth and snapped his fingers. Fire burst to life on his fingertip.

A Flameshot.

Don’t piss off the human candle. Lugh slowly turned over his cards, revealing his winning hand. “Well, would you look at that.” He forced a grin and winked. “How about we split the spoils, have a pint, and happily ride our separate ways? Fifty-fifty?”

Eirlys gave an amused grunt.

“Sixty-forty?”

Eirlys drew his revolver and rested it on the table.

Lugh’s smile wilted. “You drive a hard bargain. You can have all of it.”

“Do I look like the kind of man who needs permission to take what he wants?”

“Absolutely not, sir. You look like the kind of man people trip over each other to give whatever he wants. So . . .” Lugh showed his empty hands. “What can I do for you?”

Eirlys’s mouth twitched into a sneer. “You can start by apologizing for presuming to buy me off. I take mighty offense at being told my price.”

“That will be enough, Eirlys,” said a female voice as precise and deadly as a stiletto. “I deputized you for your local expertise, not your theatrics.”

Lugh’s gut twisted. Every career criminal in Auklenn knew that voice, and those who hadn’t learned to fear it had been quickly introduced to the gallows.

Puffing his cigar, Eirlys clapped Lugh on the shoulder and stepped aside. A middle-aged woman approached from the doorway. Willowy, resolute, she walked as if she not only owned the saloon, but every wretched soul in it. Her gray uniform had fewer wrinkles than a fresh sheet of paper. A fine basket-hilted officer’s sword and revolver rattled on her belt as she took a seat and stabbed Lugh with her sapphire eyes. Besides a few strands of silver, her short obsidian hair made the shadows look bright, and her rusty-tanned skin bore none of the warmth of the southern borderlands it hailed from. Her hawkish face wrinkled with what was either mild disgust or bemusement. Probably both.

“You’re a long way from Auklenn, Lugh.”

Lugh resisted an urge to bolt and cracked a smile instead. “Fancy that. So are you, Major.”

“It’s colonel now.”

Lovely. “Congratulations.” Lugh crept his free hand towards his belt. “Colonel Lyza Vyzeryn has a lovely ring to—”

“Leave that rusty derringer in its leather. I’m not here to see you hang.”

Lugh glanced at Eirlys. “Sure looks like it.”

“You think much too highly of yourself if you think I’d come here solely on your account.”

Lugh’s neck didn’t feel any safer. “I don’t see why else you’d be out here.”

“Hmm.” Vyzeryn casually inspected her fingernails. “I see eight months behind bars did nothing to correct your attitude. How does ten years in Sablethorne sound?” When Lugh practically choked on his own tongue, she nodded and folded her hands on the table. “A lot has happened since you fled the coast. Eliminating the remnants of your father’s enterprise was just the prologue. The parliament recognized my efficiency and thought it wasted in domestic affairs. I’ve moved on to more important matters of state.” Vyzeryn eyed Jack’s cards, thin lips curling. “And so have you. Gambling your way across the continent to the Frontier? You’re not fooling anyone. You may be called Lugh the Liar, but this is a terribly bad ploy.”

Lugh’s heart raced. He glanced at the door, now blocked by Auklenn soldiers. There had to be a way out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then let’s encourage your memory. Kal, bring her.”

The soldiers parted, and in strode another of Eirlys’s subordinates: Kal, a brown-haired woman with burn scars on her face and four revolvers on her belt. She had a large tangle of wool blankets in her arms. Blonde hair poked out between the folds. Lugh shot to his feet.

“Sabia!”

The bundle shifted, and his sister’s pale, freckled face peered out. Nine years old, yet smaller than six, a consequence of the rusted lung.

Her wheezing breaths caught with worry. “Lugh? What are they . . . ?”

“Shh.” Eirlys took Sabia from Kal and bobbed her like a baby. “We’re friends of your brother’s.”

Lugh lunged forward, and Eirlys readied his fingers, his sneer daring. Lugh’s knees wobbled. He swallowed hard. Hating them. Hating himself. “Yes,” he said to Sabia. “They’re . . . just friends.”

Sabia blinked slowly, already half asleep. In her frailty, she slept often.

Vyzeryn motioned to the chair. Lugh sank down, dizzy and chilled to the bone.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I want you to redeem yourself,” Vyzeryn said.

“Now who’s the liar?”

“I deal in facts, something you can’t seem to stomach. Despite every opportunity the system provided, you turned out a criminal like your father. He with his opium dens and trafficking. You with your petty thievery and fraud.” Vyzeryn’s mouth quirked. “Your mother died ashamed of you, I hear. Now your sister is dying too. And here you are, gambling. Desperate for second chances? Or just whetting your old appetites?”

Lugh clenched his fists. “If I’m such a stain, why bother coming to find me at all?”

“Because we have the same objective.”

“I don’t think you’re—”

Steel sang, and in a blink, Vyzeryn’s sword jabbed into Lugh’s coat and clinked against the stone. “The Godstone. Show me.”

Gods dammit, how does she know? Lugh hesitated until Eirlys sparked a flame on his middle fingertip. Lugh reached into the hidden pocket, hands shaking. The Godstone, about half the size of a poker chip, warmed his fingertips and sent tingles up his arm. His last desperate hope.

If only he could do something. If only he could fight! Not for the first time, Lugh wished his sorcery was different, that it wasn’t so limited.

“Well?” Vyzeryn said. “Don’t make me carve it out of that secondhand tweed.”

Lugh bit his lip, hand still in the hidden pocket. Maybe if he Doppeled a fake . . .

“And spare me your anemic excuse for magic.” Vyzeryn’s lips curled into a sneer as Lugh balked. “Don’t act so surprised. Your father sang like a bird when I dangled the prospect of clemency. Not that it abated his well-earned appointment with the hangman.” She dragged her blade upwards, its fine point tickling Lugh’s throat. “Poor Lugh Ahearn. Born with a knack that’s only good for falsities. And with aversion sickness, no less.”

Cold spread through Lugh’s chest. “I never told him about that.”

“I pulled your mother’s medical records, and we both know aversion is hereditary.” Vyzeryn’s sneer deflated into a grim frown. “A tragic case, hers. Aversion is cruel. She was a healer, a much more useful sorcerer than you. It’s a terrible shame to die from overusing a power so good, but I suppose we have your father to thank for that. Meanwhile, you stood by. And. Did. Nothing.”

The words pierced deeper than any blade could. Lugh clenched his teeth, shutting out memories he wished he’d forget yet he knew he deserved.

“So . . .” Vyzeryn tapped Lugh’s cheek with the flat of her blade. “Was all that sufficient to remind you of the folly of delaying the inevitable? Or would you like me to recite the coroner’s report verbatim?”

Lugh gripped the Godstone tight. The mention of Mother’s death was enough to drain the fight right out of him, like blood from a sliced jugular. Even if he tried something, Vyzeryn’s blade would be in his heart before he could move, and Eirlys had Sabia as collateral to boot. This wasn’t a game he could win. Sick to his stomach, he placed the semilunar stone beside his cards. Translucent, like crystal, but veined with fractured patterns of sapphire and gold. It glowed with a life of its own, an inharmonious crimson. The longer one stared at the pattern, the more it seemed to move in a clockwise dance.

“There it is.” Vyzeryn rested her sword across her lap. Her eyes narrowed, the Godstone’s light dancing in her blue irises like blood on water. “To think your grandfather left this to you of all people. Perhaps he wasn’t thinking so clearly in the end. Even a brilliant mind can lose perspective as the curtain draws.”

Lugh set his jaw but kept his vitriol to himself.

“Goes to show how it only takes a generation to soil a family name.” Vyzeryn frowned. “Amon was a respected archeologist, before his reason gave out. He had many . . . intriguing theories.”

Of those theories Lugh knew only fragments. Grandfather had fallen ill shortly after returning from a yearslong expedition that financially ruined him, and on his deathbed had given Lugh a tin, warning him not to let Father have it. Inside, the stone and illegible, moisture-stained notes. Grandfather’s fevered mumblings had gone on about a power in the west, beyond the Frontier. A power guarded by the Uluru tribes, capable of healing land and body, and some nonsense about saving the world. His last words had been nigh as confusing.

“Unite them. Return them. Open the eyes that bloodshed closed. Prove . . .”

Grandfather had died before he could finish. Years ago. Before Mother’s death. Before prison. Before . . . so much. What the hell had he meant?

“Look at me,” Vyzeryn said.

Lugh realized he was staring at the fake emperor card, which had morphed back into a peasant. His throat scratched, dry as desert bones. “I just want to save my sister. She’s all I have left. Please.”

“Help me and you will,” Vyzeryn said. “Your crimes will be forgiven. You can start anew, live a life your mother would be proud of. That’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? A second chance.”

Lugh scoffed. “You think I’ll fall for that?”

“The alternative, then.” Vyzeryn gave Eirlys a nod. The Flameshot pointed at Jack, who still cowered against the wall. A palm-shaped light flared on Jack’s shoulder—right where Eirlys had clapped him earlier—and burst into flame, engulfing the big man and bursting him into a shower of cindery bones. Lugh yelped and fell out of his chair, grasping at his own shoulder, feeling the tingle of latent magic where Eirlys had touched him moments ago.

“So . . .” Vyzeryn brushed ashes from her uniform. “Do we understand each other?”

The smell of charred flesh crawled to the back of Lugh’s nose. He retched, nodding vigorously between heaves, hoping Sabia was still asleep, praying she hadn’t seen a man die. This was the last place she deserved to be, yet he’d brought her right to it. Damnation, would his past never stop coming back to haunt him? Two of Vyzeryn’s soldiers pulled him to his knees. He didn’t fight it. Vyzeryn stood and sheathed her blade.

“Sabia will stay under my wing. She’ll be well cared for, provided you follow orders.”

“What kind of orders?”

“Nothing you haven’t done before. I want you to deceive someone. You see . . .” Vyzeryn touched his chin, tilting his gaze into her eyes. She smiled gently. “There’s a second half to the Godstone, otherwise it’s useless. An Uluru outlaw has the other. A blood sorceress, and a female. So very few of that combination anymore. She was last seen near Capstone, at the train line’s end. So, Lugh the Liar, do what you do best and bring me the other half, and the outlaw. Alive. Otherwise, your ashes will feed the crops, and little Sabia will suffocate in her sleep.”

“Can’t you just do it yourself?” Lugh asked, grasping at straws. “You have an army. Take the stone and let Sabia—”

Vyzeryn pinched Lugh’s chin. “You don’t think I’ve tried? All I have to show for it are dead bodies. This isn’t going to happen with force. Lucky for you, subtlety and trickery are your specialties. Are you questioning me?”

“N-No . . .”

“Good.” Vyzeryn looked to the saloon’s pudgy keeper, who huddled behind the grimy bar. “Give the lad his winnings. He won the Stacks, after all.” When Lugh balked at the wad of bills the keeper put on the table, Vyzeryn smirked. “A lesson for you. It doesn’t matter how much you cheat, as long as you win.” She leaned close, smelling of tea and lilac perfume. “Victory is everything.”

A rumbling shook the saloon, and through the skylight, Lugh glimpsed armored airships descending from the blue. Auklenn’s iron might.

“The world is changing, as it always does.” Vyzeryn pushed the Godstone towards Lugh. “Do the smart thing and be on the winning side.”

Lugh blinked at the Godstone. “You’re . . . letting me keep it?”

“Of course. Your grandfather made his choice, and a gift is a gift. Besides, you will do everything I want you to do.” Vyzeryn stood up and gently caressed Sabia’s hair, eyes like chips of ice. “You can’t afford not to.”

Trapped. Lugh realized he’d never truly understood the meaning of that word until now. All he could do was nod. It made him sick—and made Vyzeryn smile.

“You’re finally learning to stomach the truth.” Vyzeryn strode for the door as the landing warships rattled the shutters. “There’s a train bound for the line’s end. It leaves in ten minutes. Be on it.”

Lugh wiped his burning eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

“It’s simple,” Vyzeryn said. “To kill a god.”

 

Chapter Two 

Lugh boarded the train with a crushing urge to steal something.

So he did.

A dusty, long-haired man stooped out of the latrine in the train car’s narrow foyer. And we have ourselves a volunteer. Lugh squeezed past him, getting so intimate with the man’s weathered jacket he sneezed from the sour dust it gave off.

“Bless you, lad,” the man said through a scraggly beard, breath rank with alcohol.

“Thank you kindly.” Lugh didn’t meet the man’s gaze. Him? Blessed? Yeah, and rats could fly. He walked on, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets. The train car was empty, the rows of rough wooden benches reminding him of the vacant churches back in Auklenn. Lugh chose the bench that looked least likely to leave a splinter in his backside, slumped down, and took out the man’s leather coin purse. Battered to hell. Heavy, too.

Turned out a pocket full of gambling money couldn’t change a man. Spend a lifetime getting a thrill out of theft, and you built a vicious cycle. He tried to smile at the purse anyway, but the nervous urge in his chest only worsened, eating at him like a thousand nibbling lice. He muttered several curses that would have made even Eirlys blush.

Committing petty theft in hopes of feeling a semblance of control? Stupid. The last thing he had was control. Vyzeryn held all the cards, and the game was rigged.

Still, old habits die hard.

Lugh opened the purse and tipped it over onto his lap. Sand poured out, topped with a rotten molar with a silver filling. King’s ransom. He’d really hit the big leagues. Lugh rolled his eyes and tossed the empty purse out the window. The train jolted into motion. So did the dreary to-do list in Lugh’s head.

Get to the Frontier proper. Find the outlaw. Get the stone. Save Sabia.

Thirteen words that pounded between his ears like a thousand.

An hour later, they still pounded.

Lugh thumbed the molar. Disgusting, but silver was silver. Click. Warm tingles rushed to his palm, and the molar winked into a copy of his wrinkled train ticket. The squeal of wheels on rusted tracks needled him endlessly, and the patter of sand on the windows mocked him for getting sick of his own reflection. He’d fooled many people with that youthful face. He could never fool himself.

He reversed the Doppeling, then did it again, back and forth, each time feeling angrier. Of all the knacks he could have been born with, why this one? Only good for cheating. It couldn’t heal Sabia. It couldn’t make Mother proud.

Perhaps I was just born this way, and the magic mirrors what I’ve always been.

Lugh magicked the molar into a ticket again. His throat still itched where Vyzeryn’s blade had touched, but her words dug at him harder, lurking in the back of his mind. That holier-than-thou lunatic was right. Mother’s power had been far better than his, and he knew he could say the same about her heart . . . yet they both shared the same weakness. Aversion. While most sorcerers didn’t suffer ill effects unless they used their powers to extremes, those with aversion had a lower threshold, some so low that even tapping into their powers stopped their hearts with fatal dysrhythmias. A phenotypical variance—academia’s fancy word for inferior. While Lugh could use his power, he could only Doppel small objects. Only once had he tried to use his knack in a fight to Doppel a rival’s shotgun into a penny. He’d woken up hours later, in a ditch, covered in his own piss and vomit. The aversion had hit him so hard his enemies had assumed he’d died—a silver lining that did nothing to diminish the terrifying lesson he’d learned that day.

One careless overstep could kill him.

Some gift. Lugh clicked his tongue as he Doppeled the molar a few more times. The repeated effort only brought a twinge to his chest. Nothing like the palpitations that came when he overdid it. Gods, he’d pulled the short straw, and his gut told him he deserved it. But you didn’t, Mother. You didn’t.

As a healer, Mother had never been one to withhold her gifts. As careful as she’d been, she’d danced on the edge far too often, taking her past the tipping point into aversion sickness. Unlike regular aversion, full-on sickness was irreversible and set the body against itself—an incurable ailment that slowly ate away all the nerves in her body.

Not that Father had cared.

Not that Lugh had done much to prevent it.

If he could do it all over again . . .

The train shifted and rattled as it took another bend in the track, making the rough wooden bench more torturous with every passing second. His backside felt like it would fall off. Lugh gritted his teeth and glanced out the window, ignoring his reflection as best he could. Fields of dust and dead crops. Roads sprinkled with wagonloads of settlers returning to Auklenn. Abandoned farmsteads. Dried rivers. Hopelessness. Loss. Ruin. Why had these people tried to settle this land in the first place?

“Land of death,” slurred a leathery voice. “First time?”

An eye-watering stink of alcohol assaulted Lugh as the dusty, bearded drunk he’d just stolen from plopped onto the bench opposite him. Dressed in a faded cavalry jacket with army insignias rusted to oblivion, he looked like a relic dug up after a century—and smelled like it, too, redolent of fifteen shades of shit.

“I’m not giving you money,” Lugh muttered.

“Not looking for any. Just company. Ah . . .” The man kicked his muddy boots up on the bench and fished his hand into his pocket. “Now where is it . . . come here you little . . .”

Lugh winced. They were the only two people in the car, and even a drunk could do the math. He silently thanked Lady Luck when the man fished out a tin flask instead.

“Why’s a young lad like you going to the end of the world?”

“Business,” Lugh replied.

“If your business is dying.” The man took a swig. “You ever heard of the Clysm?”

Lugh rolled his eyes. He would be rich if he had a silver coin for every time people whispered about that stupid storm. The Clysm was supposedly a vast sand cyclone deep in the Frontier, what had once been the heart of the Uluru people’s domain. Probably an exaggeration, like most tales these days. Nonetheless, it reminded him of Grandfather’s ominous ramblings. Wouldn’t be the first coincidence.

“Well?” the Drunk asked.

“Yeah, everyone from you to the rats in Auklenn knows about it. Bad weather.”

“Wrath of a goddess, that’s what it is.” He knocked on the wooden bench. “Did you know it’s expanding? This desert, too.”

“News to me.”

“You’re criminally uninformed, lad.”

Lugh glanced out the window at the passing settlers. Is that why they were packing up in droves? “Don’t you think everyone in Auklenn would have heard about that if it was true?”

“Ah, see that’s the thing about most people. They like to ignore the subjects that terrify them. Ignorance is armor, they think, rather than the soggy paper it is.” The Drunk winked and knocked on the bench again. “Last two centuries the storm and the desert’s been growing, ever since the Uluru tribes and their blood sorcerers were massacred by us intrusive colonials. Angered their goddess, Ehekahl, and rightfully so. I’d be fuming too if my worshipers were snuffed out. Who doesn’t like a little worship?”

Lugh cursed under his breath, wishing the man would pass out already.

“Another unbeliever. Oh well. Those poor settlers certainly believe it. As do the bigwigs back in Auklenn, although it’s their modus operandi to hide such things from the excitable masses, eh? Panic is bad for the markets.” The Drunk leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “Used to be pretty in this land. Full of lakes and meadows and flowers. A true paradise.”

Lugh wrinkled his nose. His grandfather used to say something similar, long ago. He recalled the man’s deathbed. The smell of urine and feces. The rattle of his breaths. The brittleness of his voice as he spoke his final words in a fevered delirium.

“Unite them. Return them. Open the eyes that bloodshed closed. Prove . . .”

Unite the halves of the Godstone? Return them where? To whom? And whose eyes had to be opened? What had to be proved? It could all be nonsense, a hallucination of a dying man. Lugh had certainly thought so for the last three years, though he’d kept the stone hidden nonetheless, buried on the city outskirts. He’d only dug it up a few months ago out of sheer desperation, on the one-year anniversary of Mother’s death and after a year of barely keeping himself and Sabia alive. Why did things always have to get worse?

Lugh stared at the molar, still conjuring it back and forth. The Drunk either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Maybe the Drunk’s information was more lucrative than his purse.

“What do you know about the Uluru?” Lugh asked.

“Curious now, eh?” The man grinned like a piano missing half its keys. “The tribes have been rallying, nettling the garrisons at the diamond mines. I hear there’s a new colonel come to bring them to heel. A dapper lady from the coast.”

Dapper wouldn’t be the word I’d use for Vyzeryn, Lugh thought.

The Drunk belched and took another swig from his flask. “Colonel Vyzershit or something like that. People say she’s brought a miraculous contraption. An armored train that lays its own tracks. Airships won’t work out here, not with the Clysm’s wind eating them alive. But this colonel found a way. She’s on a warpath, just like the Uluru.”

“War over what?”

The man’s smile faded. He gazed out the window, eyes suddenly clear. His voice became somber. “Legends, mostly. From an age when gods walked the earth. Some say lost in all that dust is the home of Ehekahl. The heartland of all creation.” He made a bitter sound at the back of his throat. “Power. Turns men mad.”

You’re using the drink to forget. Lugh leaned forward. “Who are you? A soldier?”

The man’s eyes flashed, then lost their focus. His gap-toothed smile returned. “Just a drunk.”

“Well, just a drunk, I’m looking for someone. An outlaw.”

“Everyone’s an outlaw out here.”

“An Uluru outlaw. She’s a blood sorceress.”

The Drunk’s eyes narrowed. “Did you leave your wits back in the city, lad?”

“What?” Lugh asked. “You know this outlaw?”

The Drunk tottered from the bench as if Lugh had the pox. “Word of advice. Some things aren’t worth it no matter how much they glitter.”

“But—”

“No matter how much they glitter. That is, unless you like flirting with death.” The man wiggled out one of his rotting teeth, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a coin purse. With a wink, he plopped the tooth inside, and then stumbled away, muttering to himself and knocking on every wooden bench he passed, as if he could stack luck like chips.

Lugh glared after him, trying to wrap his head around what he’d just seen. Probably had two purses. Yet when he looked down, the molar was gone. Only wisps of sand remained. Must be all the sleepless nights. That’s it. That’s all this is.

He set his jaw against a flutter of anxiety at the Drunk’s ominous words. It didn’t matter how dangerous this was. He gripped his shoulder where Eirlys’s curse tingled, thinking of Sabia, remembering her smile, her staccato laugh, and the brightness of her eyes whenever he brought her toffee. He’d do anything for her. He’d done everything for her. Protecting her from Father’s drunk rages, taking up that bastard’s demands to work in the gangs instead of fleeing home so Sabia wouldn’t be left behind. Saving what he could to pay for her tuition at a good school in a safe community.

Her illness had ruined that plan.

Mother’s death had driven a final nail into it.

What he wouldn’t give to see her run and play again.

Hold on, Sabia. You deserve a better brother, but please, give me one last chance.

That last chance began where the tracks ended.

As the final stop on the Frontier railroad, Capstone had a glowing reputation. Lugh disembarked at a station riddled with bullet holes and sandblasted wanted posters. The town looked no better: a ramshackle orgy of wooden houses and barns, with a rusty weathervane shrieking in the wind. Lugh shielded his eyes from the sandy gusts and squinted over the rooftops—and felt as if Vyzeryn’s blade was poking against his chest yet again.

A towering wall of reddish sand dominated the shimmering horizon. Its cyclonic whirls engulfed the sun, leaving the sky a rusty, septic brown. Sickly veins of green lightning flickered and danced over its churning chaos, and the longer Lugh stared, the more he heard it over the breeze, a deep rumbling that gnawed at his nerves. A sound befitting divine rage.

The Clysm.

Gods, it’s everything the rumors said it was. Lugh took a step back. Part of him wanted to get right back on that train and never see the horrific storm again, yet a surprising thrill fluttered in his chest, and he stepped forward again. If he was wrong about the Clysm, what else was he wrong about? Had Grandfather’s fevered mumblings been true? The Drunk’s prattling bubbled at the back of his mind. So did Vyzeryn’s ominous words. To kill a god, she’d said. And the Clysm was growing. Was she aiming to stop it? And if someone like Vyzeryn was taking a pagan goddess seriously, then that added even more credence to the legends.

He’d started this journey in search of a power that could save Sabia’s life.

Maybe this wasn’t a fool’s errand after all.

I suppose I’ll find out. One step at a time, Lugh. Play your hand, however rotten it may be. Lugh tore his gaze from the storm and focused on the town. He felt eyes on him, saw pale faces in the windows, even smelled their fear over the stench of horse dung and oil. He touched his jacket, rubbing the Godstone’s outline. Sand already chafed in his underwear.

Welcoming place. Now, where to find an outlaw?

May as well start where everyone got drunk.

Chapter Three

 

Lugh sidled up to the train station’s tiny office kiosk with all the casual disinterest he could manage, but the man behind the dusty window made him work hard at it. He reminded Lugh of a bulldog—bald with massive jowls, and so thick it looked like the booth had been built around him rather than have him squeeze through its tiny doorway. Lugh tapped on the glass. The man ignored him. He tapped again. Still ignored.

World-class customer service. Lugh raised his hand to tap again.

The window slid open with a shriek, assaulting Lugh with a shower of dust that tasted like coal smoke. The man at the counter didn’t even look up, scowl directed downward at an old chessboard crammed between stacks of crumbling papers and unused tickets.

Lugh cleared his throat.

“What you want?” the man asked in a slow, bored tone.

Lugh eyed the man’s weathered placard. Most of the letters had worn away, but the remnants spelled Dolt. He smiled. “I’d like to ask for directions, in particular the—”

“Train’s leaving in ten minutes,” Dolt said.

“Excuse me?”

“Train. Ten minutes. Leaving.”

Lugh blinked, then laughed it off. “I’m not going back. I’m here on business.”

“And I’m here doing you a favor.”

“I don’t need that kind of favor, sir. I need directions to your saloon.”

Dolt moved a pawn, grunted, and then looked up, narrowed eyes flicking over Lugh as if he were a piece of secondhand furniture. His scowl doubled. “You won’t last twenty seconds in this town.”

And you look like the reason the town’s starving. Lugh swallowed the remark and ghosted a pebble into his right hand, eyeing the cheap watch sitting beside the chessboard. “Oh . . . I see. That’s a fair cop. May I ask the time?”

“Check it yourself.” Dolt tossed him the watch.

Gladly. Lugh counted out a full minute. Aloud. Dolt flushed red, and the kiosk’s plank walls groaned as if the man were puffing up like a southland swamp toad. Lugh finished with a whistle. “Well, would you look at that. Already lasted sixty seconds.” He handed a Doppeled watch back while pocketing the real one. “Ever heard the saying, don’t judge a fruit by its peel? Or has that bit of wisdom not yet made its way into this sandy armpit of the world?”

Dolt muttered something and resumed his staring match with the chessboard, oblivious to the trick. Most non-sorcerers couldn’t sense magical auras, and even among sorcerers it depended on one’s intuition and the magnitude of the sorcery. Clearly Dolt had as much sorcery-sense as a doorknob. After interrogating the chessboard with a constipated expression, Dolt moved a rook on his side, nodded to himself, then waited. A few seconds later, he moved an opposing knight, then squinted as if the move had been a surprise.

“Who’s your opponent?” Lugh asked, craning his neck to see the pieces.

“Garin,” Dolt said. “Now piss off.”

“I’ll gladly piss off to the nearest saloon. Thirstier than a man trying to eat his way out of a salt mine. If only someone could point me in the right direction.”

Dolt moved his rook to counter the knight, then jabbed a meaty finger to the left.

“Thank you kindly, your largeness.” Lugh reached into the booth and moved the knight. “Checkmate. Garin wins.”

Lugh was strolling down the wagon-rutted street by the time Dolt shouted a curse after him. He smirked and slid on the new watch, only to find it didn’t even fit his skinny wrist. A child’s watch. No wonder Dolt hadn’t worn it. Maybe Sabia would like it . . . He stopped, boots grinding to a halt on the bone-dry earthen street. Dust skittered past, along with dead grass and scattered bits of outdated tabloids.

A stolen watch. Can’t you do better for her than that?

Lugh clenched his hand, watch digging into his palm. He had to do better. Starting here, in this dump of a town. He had to get through this. For her. And that meant he had to stop letting his ego get him into trouble. Gods knew he’d made enough enemies back in Auklenn. If he wanted this time to be different, he had to be different.

Easier said than done.

The main street looked like any Frontier town. Slapdash plank houses with facades and painted signs, cracked shutters, and sand-weathered glass. The Clysm loomed beyond the street’s end, its whirling chaos blotting the sky, ever rippling with that sickly green lightning. A smaller storm spilled out from its edges, tumbling over miles of barren land. Another came shortly after that, and though smaller, it looked plenty big enough to flatten any Frontier town. It reminded Lugh of water spattering from a boiling pot. No wonder everyone was fleeing the Frontier. Capstone was a ghost town in the making. A faded banner hung between the post office and a boarded-up hotel that likely hadn’t seen a guest in years: Welcome to Capstone, gateway to paradise.

Lugh snorted and kept walking down the street. Someone ducked into an alleyway. A woman on a porch, beating a depressing rag of a rug, saw Lugh and went inside, and he didn’t miss the muffled thump of a crossbar dropping in place. The same sound followed him down the whole street. Shutters closing. Muffled voices. A baby wailing somewhere. A dog bark followed by its owner hushing it.

And a man whistling a discordant excuse for a tune.

Lugh stopped and shielded his eyes against the dusty wind. A well sat at the street’s end, made of cobblestone and cracked planks. A spindly young man in threadbare trousers and boots sat on its edge, shirtless and whistling as he worked its crank. A tingle down Lugh’s spine told him to turn around, and a glance left and right showed no saloon, just battered houses and derelict shops. Had Dolt pointed him in the wrong direction? Maybe Lugh shouldn’t have spoiled his game. That was probably the first real loss the man had suffered in eons.

Oh well, on to the next local weirdo. Lugh approached the well, hand in one pocket near his derringer, the other snapping a casual wave.

“Good afternoon. Need any help with that?”

The young man stopped whistling and leaned against the crank’s frame, panting. His skin was sunburnt red. “Rare thing, the kindness of strangers, but a man’s gotta finish what he started.” Whistler pulled the bucket out and turned it over, adding rusty sand to a growing pile at his feet. Then he flashed a yellow smile at Lugh. “Just got off that train, did you?”

Lugh took one step back and nodded. “Looking for a place to get a drink. The gentleman at the station pointed me this way, but I don’t see a saloon.”

“Oh, that’s a crying shame.”

Footsteps crunched behind Lugh, and before he could turn, someone tackled him from behind. He stumbled towards the well, and Whistler dodged to the side, unspooling a length of thick rope. Everything happened at once: hand on his back, rope hissing around his right leg, the well’s hard edge, wind in his ears, world turning upside down then snapping to a painful halt. Lugh blinked sand and sweat, then yelped when he found himself staring at the bottom of a dried-up well from some fifty feet up, suspended by his right ankle. Pain shot up his leg. He didn’t think it had dislocated, but it still hurt like a prison guard’s gentle discipline. Lugh’s cap lay at the bottom, far out of reach. He quickly patted his chest, making sure the Godstone hadn’t fallen out, too. Dry laughs mocked him from above. Suddenly Dolt’s shoddy directions made perfect sense.

Oh. Great. I’ve been played like a fopdoodle.

Perhaps someone else might have wondered if counting to sixty had been an affront to Dolt’s arithmetic capacities, but Lugh knew a well-oiled racket when he fell into one. Literally. These sand rats probably did this to any clueless newcomer. Nonetheless, Dolt had tried to give him one chance to leave town. Was he such a sorry sight that even criminals pitied him?

“How you doing down there, city slicker?” called Whistler.

Dust showered down. Lugh sneezed, then took in the fatal drop below. His heart pounded, thoughts of Sabia rushing through his head like hailstorms. Done in by two goons and a well? That was low, even for him. He took a few deep breaths and hoped he didn’t sound as terrified as he felt. “Oh, you know, hanging around. Nice clay walls you have down here.”

“Very funny.”

“My compliments by the way. How’d you get so swift at hanging poor blokes?”

Whistler rasped a chuckle. “Trial and error. You’re lucky.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“Shut up!” The bucket lowered into view. “Now empty your pockets into the bucket, like church tithes, you know? Tourist tax, since you didn’t take Grom’s offer to feck off. Else we’ll cut the rope and see if you break that chicken neck of yours.”

Chicken neck? Lugh huffed and fished through his trousers. The money he’d won in Anchorshaw lurked in a dozen hidden pockets, but he always carried mugger money, just in case. He dropped a wad of counterfeit bills into the bucket, along with a few foil candy wrappers for good measure. The bucket disappeared. Whistler spat into the well.

“That all you got?”

“I have more. I just can’t reach it.”

“That so? We can drop you and fish it out later.”

Sob act it is. Lugh sniffled. “Really! I won’t try anything! Please!”

Whistler conferred with his partner in hushed tones, and true to Lugh’s gamble, they weren’t coldblooded killers. Few thieves ever were—after all, he was one of them. They hoisted him up and manhandled him until he was sitting on the well’s edge. Whistler’s partner was a brunette woman twice his age, desolate gown cut up to the knees, black eyeliner smeared down her face. She held one of the bills to the sky and shook her head.

“These are fakes.”

Lugh’s stomach dropped. Smarter than they looked.

“Huh.” Whistler pushed Lugh back, holding him over the well by his collar. “So you’re a con man, too. A stupid one, coming out here. Not much to go around. We don’t need the competition, see?”

Lugh dug out the watch and pasted on a servile smile. “How about partners?”

The woman grabbed the watch and squinted. “That’s Grom’s piece.”

Whistler snorted a laugh and pulled him back. “Not bad.”

“Tell you what . . .” Lugh slowly reached into his tweed jacket, unfastened a hidden pocket, and pulled out a small portion of his winnings. “Genuine article this time. You get your money, I go get drunk, everyone wins.”

Whistler snatched the bills, held one of the sky, then licked his lips. “That sounds good and all, but getting drunk implies you still have money on you.”

Lugh huffed a sigh and fished out another stash. “There. Happy?”

“Not until you show me why your collar looks like a snake trying to swallow a rat.”

“Damnation . . .” Lugh adjusted his collar, then fished another roll of bills. This time he snarled. “Want all the lint in my pockets next?”

“That you can keep.” Whistler ran his thumb through the stack of bills and sneered. “Think of it as our generosity. Welcome to Capstone.”

The woman laughed and took out a cigarette.

“So . . .” Lugh positioned himself on the edge, feet over the pile of sand. “Where’s the saloon at? Really.”

“Why does your broke ass even care?” the woman asked.

“I’m looking for somebody.”

Whistler blinked, then shoved the bills into his pocket. A sheen of sweat broke out on his forehead. “You . . . meeting someone there?”

What’s got you scared? Lugh nodded. “I’m here on personal business.”

The woman choked on her cigarette. “Shit, you think he’s with—?”

“Shh!” Whistler glanced over Lugh’s shoulder. His anxious expression doubled. “It’s on the other side of town, kid. Sorry for this . . . uh . . . misunderstanding.”

Lugh stepped off the ledge. “Does that mean I can have my money—?” He slipped on the loose sand and fell into Whistler’s sweaty chest. The man cursed and pushed him away as if he had the pox, and Lugh pretended to fall hard, groaning. By the time he got up, both thieves were fast-walking into an alleyway, arguing under their breaths and stealing glances to the horizon. They’d even dropped the watch in their hurry.

A cloud of dust marred the distance. Riders on approach. Was that what spooked them? Or was there something dodgy about the saloon? Lugh brushed himself off and glanced at the dust cloud. Whatever was going on, he’d best make fast like the locals. He had an outlaw to find . . . and something still felt wrong. Nonetheless, Lugh took a moment to count the bills he’d ghosted up his sleeves. Whistler hadn’t even felt the snatch. Sun-toasted amateur. Compared to Vyzeryn and Eirlys, these local crooks were clowns.

Grom was still in his booth, hunched over a fresh chessboard. Lugh made sure to drop his watch back on the counter and snap in passing, “Like I said. Fruit and peel.”

Grom eyed the watch, then shrugged. “Don’t say you weren’t given an out. What happens next, that’s all on you.”

Story of my life. Lugh turned the proper direction and stuffed his hands into his pockets. Every step tweaked his ankle something fierce. Now he really needed a drink.

This is the end of the free sample. Get the book here!