Previous Chapter

Trenton Ferry was a small town on a small tributary near the southern border of Columbian territory that existed almost entirely because sulfurite prospectors moving west needed a place to cross the river. The Hearthfire there was typical of buildings raised in tribute to the Lady in Burning Stone. There was a large, domed central chamber with a great stone hearth at the center where a fire was kept lit at all times. Smaller chambers dedicated to various other purposes surrounded the central fire. Most people never set foot in them.

The central chamber was what really mattered and that was where Roy went first when he got back. He left Brandon at the doorway in the care of his sister and a matronly Hearth Keeper. He’d come back from the battle with the gold drinkers lame in one leg and they hoped there was a healer among the Keepers who could help him recover. He’d most likely become one of those handful who saw a side chamber of a Hearthfire.

Cassandra left with another Keeper. The two women were going to look in on the ranch’s sole survivor, who would need looking after until he came of age. He was still at least five years from fifteen and adulthood. Cassie had sung him to sleep for most of the trip back and he was sleeping in the hotel for the moment. Most Hearth Fires had attached orphanages and those that didn’t knew of one only a train ride away.

Roy went straight into the main chamber. A dozen stone benches ringed the massive flame, far enough back that even normal people would be comfortable. He ignored them and walked straight up to the hearth. Heat rolled over him in waves, full of the power and potential of fire but without the constant whispers he usually heard from flames. For some reason he never heard them when among the Hearth Keepers.

“Can I help you, my son?”

Roy turned from the fire to find a middle aged Hearth Keeper watching him from just inside the ring of benches. The red scarf around her neck marked her as the Hearth Mother, the highest ranking Keeper and, just as importantly, a married woman. She was beautiful, with wavy brown hair and a motherly figure. But lines of age were beginning to crease her face and gray hair was showing around her temples.

Roy let down the bag he carried over his shoulder, nodding to the woman in greeting. “You can, mother. My name is Roy Harper and I’ve brought you an offering of gold tainted by vice and greed.”

The Hearth Mother took a deep breath, the pained expression that flitted across her face suggesting this was a common occurrence for her. “Of course, my son.” She gestured towards the fire. “Let the fire cleanse it of inequity and we will share it with those in need.”

Roy nodded and dug the small sack of coins out of his bag. The gold drinkers he’d brought down had been wealthier than many of the outlaws and strange creatures he’d hunted across the West. However the fact that he’d had to borrow a silver sword from Hezekiah Oldfathers and strain that wealth out of their blood had put him off the idea of keeping their gold for himself. It wasn’t like he needed the money. After more than a decade of wading through the worst sides of humanity Roy had made his peace with throwing away money for his own peace of mind. The Hearth Keepers never asked where tainted gold came from. When a man and wealth were parted by fire all crimes done in the name of greed were forgotten. If not forgiven.

So he watched the cloth bag burn away, leaving the misshapen lumps of gold slowly melting on the hearth, then he turned back to the Hearth Mother. “I trust you’ll put it to better use.”

“I hope we will.”

She watched him leave in silence, a contrast to most of the Hearth Mothers he’d met. In the years after he’d left the army he’d often gone to the Hearthfires, if only to blot out the voices of less sacred flames. Almost every Hearth Mother he’d met there had tried to, well, mother him. He’d been asked what troubled him or if he was traveling safely by Hearth Mothers more time than he could count. Perhaps that wasn’t surprising, this far to the West.

Most who came that way were in search of wealth and grew increasingly desperate if they couldn’t find it. And desperate men will do anything. Roy wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Hearth Keepers received more tainted gold here in the West than anywhere else in Columbia. He’d stopped wondering about the source of criminal’s wealth after catching his first bounty. He suspected things were much the same for the Hearth Mother.

If healer’s examinations were the same from Hearth Keepers as army medics Roy figured Brandon would be tied up for at least the next hour so he went on to his next stop on his own. Besides, the Watch Post was almost a mile’s walk outside of town. Like most places this far south, the land around Trenton’s Ferry was dry as grave dirt. There was some greenery around the river but it disappeared from sight once Roy crossed the first rise, leaving him in a world of dull brown dirt and tan colored stone.

The general slope of the land was upwards and after a few ups and downs he came across a footpath leading up a hill that stood a good twenty feet above its surroundings. A narrow path snaked between scrub brush and stone outcroppings. Roy counted four switchbacks around looming rock spurs before he reached the summit and a part of him was glad he didn’t have to try and take the point by force. A dozen men could hold off an army for a few days here, longer depending on how much magic each side had.

At the top of the hill was a tower. Not wood, as was the usual custom, but stone. The base was large enough for a couple of bed chambers, a kitchen and a common room and the watch tower itself rose to a height of thirty feet overhead, commanding an excellent view of everything around. A man in blue denim pants and robes stood guard at the door, leaning on his spear as he watched Roy approach.

“Hello there,” he called, hitching his thumbs into his belt. “What brings you here? Fair weather or foul?”

“Both,” Roy said. He hefted an oilskin bundle that he’d pulled from his bag during the walk up. “I’ve come to claim the price on these heads.”

The man by the door – more of a kid, Roy saw as he drew closer – wavered when he saw the bundle, turning green around the edges. He nodded and opened the door behind him. “I’ll go up the tower and let the Stormfather know you’re here.”

Roy nodded and walked into the common room. The Watch Post was a spartan environment, furnished with simple wooden furniture and a wooden board with a slew of wanted posters nailed to it. By force of habit Roy looked them over to see if any unfamiliar faces had shown up. He was still perusing the posters when the Stormfather came back with the other Watcher. The head of the Watch Post looked about forty, with a tan and wrinkled face that naturally settled into a half smile when he wasn’t grinning and shaking hands, which was the first thing he did when he saw Roy.

“Mr. Harper,” the Stormfather said, “welcome back. No new prices on heads, I’m afraid, although no new criminals showing up is good for the rest of us you’ll probably find the lack of work troublesome.”

“Unfortunately I’ve never had any trouble finding work,” Roy replied. Then he pointed to one part of the board that was suddenly empty. “Did someone really catch Stove Pipe Nick? The Packards have been trying to get him for years.”

“Sheriff up in Winchester County jailed him a couple of weeks ago. He escaped but the Sheriff found his body in the scrub just recently.” The Stormfather shrugged. “Desert’s a harsh mistress and even great skytrain robbers can run afoul of her.”

“True enough.” Roy set the oilcloth bundle on the table. “I’m afraid these four called for more aggressive measures than leaving them for the desert to claim.”

The Stormfather carefully untied the bundle and opened it. The heads of the four gold drinkers lolled out, their eyes staring into nothing. The younger Watchman stifled a gasp. “Is that a child?”

“Not for weeks, at least,” Roy said gently. “Once the Change takes hold there’s nothing left but the monster.”

The Stormfather gave him a skeptical look. “I thought you said your tome told of a way for them to return from their depravity.”

“No, there’s a way for them to undo the Change and remove their need for blood to survive.” Roy drummed his fingers absently on the Journal in his jacket pocket. “I read more after our meeting, as we were scouring the countryside. It seems that converting their bodies back doesn’t undo the change to their minds. If they wish to come back from their depravity they have to actively choose to do that and rebuild their humanity brick by brick, just like any other monster man can choose to be.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” the young man said. He pointed at the small girl’s head. “You can’t tell me a seven year old girl chose to undergo the Change.”

“Not everyone in a war chooses to fight it,” Roy replied. “War still makes monsters of them, at times, and we judge them the same, don’t we?”

“Enough.” The Stormfather closed up the bundle and gently moved it to one side. “The time for judgment is long past. Any chances there were to avoid this outcome passed long ago and likely were not ours to take. This is a time for mourning. Go down to the homestead and tell your brother to let Ma know we’ll be down in the graveyard after we’re relieved.”

The young man nodded and hurried out of the room. Roy watched him running down the hill with the energy of a young man who had received a shock and didn’t know what to do with himself. Then he replayed his memories and compared the younger man to his father. “Adopted?”

“He takes more after his mother.” The Stormfather got up, his back suddenly bent as if he’d aged twenty years in the last five minutes. “I’ll get your payment. Two hundred marks for the lot, as agreed. I wasn’t expecting four of them, and I’d offer you more if we had it, but we don’t keep that much money on hand.”

“Two hundred is fine.”

The watchman paused in the process of unlocking a chest in the corner of the room. “Oh? Given your reputation I thought you’d take more issue with it.”

Roy tilted his head, curious. “I’m afraid I don’t pay that much attention to my reputation, so long as it isn’t likely to get me run out of town.”

The chest thumped behind the Stormfather as he crossed back to the table. “They say you’ve never once worked for free.”

“Ah. That.” Roy nodded his understanding. “The first honest to goodness firespinner I met when I came out West told me something I’ve never forgotten: Everyone in the world needs your help. There’s only one of you. If they’re not willing to give up something to get that help they don’t need it as badly as someone who will.”

The other man snorted as he thumped a bag of coin down between them. “Not everyone has something to trade.”

“As we’ve just established, the price is mine to choose.” Roy picked up the bag and tossed it once before slipping it into his pocket. “And people have more than just money to offer. The man who told me that took his payments in time, after all.”

The Stormfather studied him for a moment, then glanced at the oilcloth. “You make it sound as if firespinners are no different than gold drinkers.”

“We’re quite similar,” Roy said with a faint smile. “As similar as you are to them. I can’t speak for these gold drinkers in particular but I’ve seen my share of people descent into monsters. The change comes when they stop thinking about others and seek nothing but their own goals. They drink blood because they don’t care about what others value. I ask for a trade because I do. It’s a small difference but it makes all the difference in the world.”

The Stormfather sighed and gathered up the bundle of heads. “I hope you’re right. Thank you for your help, Mr. Harper.”

Roy nodded and walked out of the Watch Post, silently hoping he was right as well.

Previous Chapter

Danica surged upwards, trying to scream but unable to find the breath for it. The spear gave the barest twitch but didn’t come free. Iron and gold collected around the intruding bronze point, trying to heal the wound but unable to do anything as long as the foreign mass remained impaled in her. Her deadened senses were not enough to protect her from the pain. She had to escape.

Forcing her weight of metal away from the spear point Danica built up mass in her right arm. Taking a moment to steel herself, she yanked her right arm, like a child on its belly trying to roll over. The wooden floorboards underneath her creaked. Then, with a snapping motion she felt in her sternum, the spear came free. Her elbow nudged the langets of the spear, partially dislodging it from her body, while the momentum of her yank rolled her over and finished the process. The weapon clattered on the floor and rolled off somewhere. Danica lay on her back and gasped for breath, loosing all track of time as her metal reserves knitted her tortured body back together.

She was dragged back to the moment by an ugly, wet chopping noise. The young gold drinker squinted, her vision swimming. She was staring at a blurry mass of brown and black which quickly resolved itself into a drifting cloud of smoke drifting through the rafters of a wooden roof. Right. She’d reached for a coin on the floor and the spear hit her in the back. That was a bad thing.

Something rolling across the floor bumped into her arm. With a groan Danica sat up and looked to see what it was.

Hernando’s face stared back at her.

His bloodless head had picked up smudges of ash and his mouth gaped open in a wordless scream. Danica couldn’t tell if he was furious or terrified. He was definitely dead.

Dazed, she pushed the head away with one hand and looked around, trying to make sense of what was around her. The floor was dirt and ashes. Hernando’s body lay on the floor about ten feet away; a strange man in blue knelt by it.

The man had spread a kerchief out under the stump of Hernando’s neck and now he held the flat of a sword there. As Danica stared at it a gold coin dripped from the point of the blade and fell onto the kerchief. The man ignored it as he rummaged through Hernando’s pockets. A surge of anger flooded through Danica, whether it was because he’d killed Hernando or because he was ignoring the gold she couldn’t tell. She scrambled to her feet and grabbed the spear just below its head.

Some noise she made while getting up attracted the stranger’s attention because he quickly spun about, remaining in his crouch but turning to look directly at her, the point of his curved sword aimed squarely between her eyes. The stranger scowled. “Pellinore didn’t think children could go through the Change. Sorry to see he was wrong.”

Danica took one step forward and swayed, leaning on the spear haft to keep herself upright. “I’m not a child. I’m a gold drinker.”

The stranger’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you’re a little of both, young lady. You sayin’ you won’t renounce your gold, then?”

“I won’t what?”

“You didn’t hear?”

She tilted her head to one side, thinking back, but she was pretty sure she’d never heard the stranger’s clipped, nasally voice before. “No.”

“Pellinore was wrong about the hearing, too,” he muttered under his breath. She resisted the urge to laugh at something she obviously wasn’t meant to hear. He continued, “You can pass back through the Change if you renounce your gold.”

Her eyes narrowed. On the one hand he seemed to know things Hernando had never told her on the other he clearly had it second hand and didn’t know how trustworthy it was. “How would I do that?”

“Its a complicated process but I have exhaustive instructions for how to go about it.” His off hand gathered up the kerchief and the gold coins in it then carefully stood. Behind him, Hernando’s body lay pale and bloodless.

Danica turned her attention from the body to the stranger’s sword point. His weapon was unsettling but she saw small ripples, probably invisible to the human eye, along the flat of its blade. “I suppose you got those instructions from the same place you got your fancy sword?”

He snapped the point in a tight circle that warned her he was very familiar with the weapon. “This? A loaner from an acquaintance familiar with the book I found them in. Now. Will you renounce your gold or not?”

Danica scowled. She’d never have survived her life until that point if she hadn’t had the resilience of gold in her veins. On the other hand, he had killed Hernando and two of his Converts. Danica herself was the smallest and weakest of the de la Feugoes. She needed to be clever. “Wh-what would I have to do?”

“Well, let’s have a look the specifics.” The point of the man’s sword lowered as he reached into his jacket with his other hand. The coins in the kerchief he was holding clanked, focusing all of Danica’s attention on for a second before she could shake herself free. Her grip tightened on the spear. The stranger snorted and shook his head, stopping his off hand halfway, changing the movement to shove the kerchief and gold into his outside pocket. He poked the cloth and metal into place securely with two fingers. He had something else curled into his hand, which he started to put in his pocket on top of the kerchief. Danica squinted, wondering what it was.

When his fingers uncurled to bring it forward she realized it was Hernando’s money bag.

The stranger shoved the bag away. The moment his wrist reached the hem of his pocket Danica hefted the spear and threw it at him with her full weight behind it. The weapon was excellent as it practically flew itself out of her hand. The timing of her attack was as good as she could make it but it wasn’t enough to overcome the man’s reflexes.

He got out of the way but the projecting langets on the spear’s head caught the man’s sword and pulled it out of line. She lept forward, covering the ten feet between them in two flying steps. The stranger tried to ward her off with his free hand but it got tangled in his coat pocket. She slapped his sword arm with the full weight of metal behind the hit. The stranger dropped his weapon.

It slid across the floor a short distance. One step took her over to it and another crashed her heel down on the rippling imperfection on the sword blade. It snapped in half, the point spinning away in one direction, the hilt in the other. The hilt came to a stop by the stranger’s boots. He scooped it up with a casual movement and pointed it her as if the blade was still intact. The brilliant yellow gleam of gold in the center of the jagged, snapped end of the blade drew Danica’s eyes until she forced them away.

“What are you planning to do with that?” She asked.

He grimaced. “I suppose I’ll have to kill you and drain the iron and gold from your blood until there’s nothing but water left.”

“With six inches of sword left?”

He pulled his off hand from his pocket, still holding Hernando’s bag. He slit the side of it open with what remained of his sword then gave it a slight shake, letting the contents spill out onto the ground. To her horror, Danica found it impossible to draw her gaze away from the shining silver coins as the tumbled onto the floor. A strange compulsion overcame her. She dropped onto her hands and knees, trying to find and count how many of them there were. Five- no six- no ten- no –

She reached fifteen when her feet were kicked out from under her, dropping her onto her face once more. This time, instead of a spear, a heavy weight settled on her back and a hand gripped her hair and held her head down. Even in that position she found her eyes still drawn to the coins she could see in the corner of her eyes. “This is your last chance,” the stranger said. “Renounce your gold.”

Terror gripped Danica. Deep within she knew that she was still alive only because the stranger had offered her one last chance to undo the Change. But as frightened as she was of death she was even more terrified of the idea of living in a world where monsters like Hernando de la Feugo existed without the power of gold in her veins. “I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll live without taking blood. I can be your friend, your daughter, even grow into your lover if you want. But don’t ask me to give up the gold. I can’t. I can’t live like that again.”

The stranger sighed. His weight shifted slightly and the broken tip of his sword came into view. Danica tensed but to her surprise the sword just touched one of the coins lying in her field of vision. Then, to her greater shock, the silver in the coin began to flow up into the sword blade, adding it’s own small weight of metal to that of the stranger’s weapon. He repeated this process over and over as he spoke. “Your sire must not have told you much after he Changed you. In fact, you’re so young I imagine you can’t have been a drinker long.”

“What do you mean?”

“Gold drinkers must spend blood to rebuild their body. The stories say most believe they only spend it to heal themselves quickly but the truth is more complicated.” For the cost of only ten silver marks the stranger had rebuilt his sword to its previous size. The weapon moved out of sight. “In truth, the body dies a little every day, and must heal itself to repair the damage for we are mortal. Not even Gold drinkers are immune to this. But one thing you lose in the Change is the ability to heal without a cost of gold and iron. If you forsake blood you will die in a matter of days. It’s more merciful to end it quickly. Your sire didn’t tell you this?”

“No.” Danica whispered.

“And your gold?”

She gritted her teeth. “It is mine. My key to life, to freedom to veng-”

But Danica de la Feugo’s claims to all three ended at the edge of a silvered sword.

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

Hernando stormed into the ranch house, his temper barely in check. “Janice. Janice, what are you doing? Where is that boy? We should already have the ritual under way!”

An eerie silence answered him. The furious energy animating Hernando drained away as he walked cautiously into the great room, eyes scanning the room and nearby kitchen for any signs of Janice or the rancher’s son. The building smelled faintly of smoke. An uncomfortable feeling settled in his stomach and his hand absently went to the sack of coins he’d taken from the pay box and stuck in his coat’s inner pocket. There was barely any gold left there, which he’d put aside for the ritual. Most of it was silver coins and offered him little extra power if things turned against him.

“Janice?” He called once more. Softer. He wasn’t expecting a response and he didn’t get one.

Careful, cautious steps took him through the dining room and into the kitchen. The bucket from earlier was no longer by the sink and he saw the edge of a puddle of water spilling out from around the kitchen table. Edging over to the kitchen wall, Hernando peered past the table. Sure enough, Janice’s body lay on the floor there, her skin unnaturally pale.

No enemy was crouched there, waiting, so Hernando allowed himself to relax. Just a bit. When he knelt down by Janice he discovered that, although her head was still attached to her body, her throat had been cut open. It hadn’t been immediately apparent, since there was no scent of blood or gold anywhere on her body. The inner flesh was almost the same color as her skin. There was a vaguely familiar whiff of metal in the air but it mixed with the smoke and he couldn’t pick it out.

He saw the bucket, lying discarded under the kitchen table. An odd place for it to wind up but it rested on its side, so it may have gotten kicked or just rolled there. Another odd detail he couldn’t figure out.

There were differences from Larry’s killing, too. Janice had been impaled through the chest, leaving a wound almost as wide as two fingers together. There were also slashes at bother her wrists. The entire body was damp, suggesting the puddle nearby had started when water was poured over it. Danica had mentioned Larry being wet, although he’d dried out by the time they investigated. Hernando poked two fingers into the puddle and smelled them. There was a vague smell of blood iron in the water but not a strong one. Curious.

Digging his fingers under the body, he lifted it just a bit and looked underneath. There was a deep gouge in the floor, roughly under the hole in her chest. He lowered Janice back into place and studied her again. The body looked like it lay where it had fallen, arms akimbo, although there were signs her legs, at least, had thrashed about, leaving scuffs and splinters on the wooden floor. He checked her hands for injuries but found none. Finally Hernando stood up and studied the kitchen and dining room again with a critical eye.

No matter how he looked at it, there hadn’t been a fight. No furniture was moved or broken, no scorching marked the walls, there was no smoke or blood or any indication of violence beyond what had killed Janice. That suggested she was taken by surprise or met someone she knew, and he knew he hadn’t killed her and Danica wasn’t capable of it.

Not because she didn’t want to, but because Janice was heavier in weight of metal and her elder in order of Changing. Either one of those would give her significant power over Danica, both together was impossible for such a young gold drinker to resist.

But Janice’s body hadn’t been posed like Larry’s was. Was it some kind of ritual? Had his coming just interrupted the last part of it? Or was the change in the posing of the body a part of some grand design he simply couldn’t see? Whatever it was, Hernando decided, it didn’t matter as much as finding Danica and getting out of there as fast as they possibly could. He had few advantages left to spend against this mysterious foe and he didn’t want to loose any of what remained today. It was time to cut losses and leave.

There would be time to rebuild their reserves of blood and gold. Foolishly staying to try and exact revenge or recover what was lost when he knew so little about the situation as a whole was just going to get him killed.

With that decision firmly made, he turned back towards the ranch house door to go out and look for Danica. He only got as far as the dining room before a deep rumbling swept through the room, like an earthquake but somehow less intense. Hernando swayed on his feet but managed to keep them but he heard a clattering noise from the loft.

Hernando froze, hand on his sword hilt.

The rumbling passed quickly, lasting little more than five seconds, but Hernando didn’t move for nearly a minute. He stood motionless, weight on the balls of his feet, straining his enhanced hearing to its utmost. Was someone in the loft? Or had something fallen over up there during the shaking? It wasn’t impossible but nothing on the ground floor had. He strained his memory to try and remember what Janice had told him she’d seen when she looked around up there.

He couldn’t remember any of it. There was no way to know whether there was anything up there to fall and clatter without going up there himself and that was something he wasn’t anxious to do. So, after no noise came from the loft for a full sixty count, he decided to just leave the house. And perhaps chain the front door shut. The slaughterhouse had plenty of chain to work with.

He was five feet from the door when Danica flew in and nearly bowled him over, her short arms wrapping around his waist as she screamed and yelled in fear. Or perhaps frustration. Either way, trying to stay quiet or pretend he’d left looking for Janice long ago wasn’t a viable strategy anymore. “Calm down, Danica,” he snapped, trying to pry her arms off so he could move freely. “What is the matter with you?”

She finally let go of him, took a deep breath and said, “I just met two people who had the rancher’s son with them. I tried to get him back but one of them turned into a tree and the other sang. They collapsed the canyon and nearly buried me alive. I came to find Janice and see what happened to her. We need to find those two and pay them back.”

“No, Danica,” Hernando said, his tone harsher than he intended. “We’re leaving.”

“Hernando!” Danica seemed horrified. “We can’t leave, you said we’d be Changing the rancher’s children and adding to-”

“Janice is dead, same as Larry,” he snapped. “All her gold is gone and there isn’t a drop of blood in her veins. We can’t afford to spare the resources now.”

Danica froze. “What?”

“You’ve been changed for two weeks, so you haven’t learned this yet but we’re ‘gold drinkers’ because we have to drink a little gold with blood iron in order to keep it under our control. The ritual starts you with a fair amount in reserve so you haven’t needed it yet.” He pointed to her wrist, which she was absently rubbing as the late afternoon sunlight glinted off of it. “And sometimes we have to spend it on things like that. That gold is going to flake away with the blood you healed yourself with. All it’s power is gone. I try to keep a stockpile in my veins but changing you and Larry ate up most of the coin I’ve found so that stockpile is running low. We don’t have much to replace it with. Now Larry and Janice are gone and I can’t reclaim their gold so we’re not changing anyone else until we can get more one way or another.”

“So… so we’re just going to leave when those two killed Larry and Janice?” She demanded, folding her arms over her chest. “You said gold was the king of metals, greater than even iron’s power to kill magic! It should let us kill two people! Gold is the ultimate power!”

“It is,” Hernando said between gritted teeth. “But we can only use that power if we have gold. And right now we don’t.”

Danica’s face screwed up in a way that told him a tantrum was coming.

He opened his mouth to head off whatever she was about to say. It didn’t matter. Before either of them could get a word out a clear, brilliant tone rang out through the great room. Both of their heads swiveled around to latch onto the sight of a single golden coin, bouncing once, twice, then a third time before rolling along the wooden floor. For a brief moment Hernando felt the siren call of the metal. He fought it down and shook his head to clear it, only to find that in the brief moment it took Danica had started towards the rolling coin, her eyes wide.

“Danica! That’s bait!” He took a single step towards her but then his feet turned towards the coin, forcing him to stop himself before he fell into the same trap she had.

She reached down to scoop up the shining piece of gold. A loud, whistling roar filled the room and a winged spear flew down from the loft, the jet of fire from the sulfurite embedded in the head wavering in odd ways, until it struck her square in the back and drove her to the ground. The coin bounced free from her hands and rolled away. With a direct threat to focus on Hernando found it easy to tear his attention away from it and look up to the loft.

The fire jet from the spear arced up and stopped at the hand of a figure there. The glare from the flames made it impossible to see him clearly. But it was a man, in a short brimmed hat and a suit, with one hand outstretched as if to grab the fire out of the air. In less time than it took to describe the propulsive blast from the spear went out. Danica tried to push up from the floor but failed. The point must have driven into the wood below her. It couldn’t have been some power of the spear itself. The sulfurite in it was dull and dark. Instead, an angry bead of red-orange light hovered a few inches away from the man’s palm.

With a single motion Hernando drew his own sword, a cup hilted saber, and ignited its own sulfurite crystal. The weapon’s fuller filled with fire. The man in the loft ignored Hernando, leaping down to land on Danica’s legs with an ugly snapping noise that interrupted her attempts to push herself up and pull the spear point free of the floor. With a single stomp on the winged langets of the spear he drove the head deeper into her back. Hernando was in the process of lifting his arm to launch an arc of flame from his weapon when he remembered what the man had done to the blast from his spear.

Cursing his own stupidity, he hooked his thumb around the vent lever of his sword and pulled, expelling the sulfur power of his weapon harmlessly and shaking it to make sure it was extinguished. The man turned his back on Danica and faced Hernando with a wry smile. “Not a bad decision,” he said. His voice had a strange tension to it. The man himself was on the short side, dressed in a tailored but worn blue suit with a sword of some kind at his waist. The bead of fire still hovered over his left hand as he took a step towards Hernando. “Now I’ve accepted a commission to bring the lot of you in but how I do that is up to you. If you – either one of you – choose to renounce your gold, pass back through the Change and turn yourself in as humans I can assure you fair consideration will be given to your circumstances. You probably didn’t choose to Change. But otherwise… well, you sound like you’ve already seen the other two of your group.”

Hernando laughed, bitter and flat. “And who are you to make such demands?

The other man reached up with his free hand to push back his hat a couple of degrees, so as to better make eye contact. “Just the best firespinner for hire in ten counties. My name’s Roy Harper.”

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

The ranch house was quickly becoming Hernando’s least favorite part of the homestead. Janice was spending most of her time there. Something about the ramshackle pile of sticks created a powerful attraction that kept her there. He found her standing naked in the kitchen when he returned. A bucket of well water sat on the counter beside her as she carefully adjusted the coils of hair on top of her head. Soft whimpers came from the master bedroom. Hernando scowled.

“What are you doing?” He demanded, striding through the great room to the tall cabinet by the root cellar door.

She hesitated, a long pin closer to a weapon than an ornament half impaled into her hair. “You said to clean up after-”

“Why haven’t you eaten yet?” Hernando demanded, irritation lacing his voice. “You’re as bad as Larry. It will take time for the gold to bond to new blood and give you command of it yet here you are playing with your food instead of eating it.”

Janice turned to face him, arms folded under her breasts. “Hernando, what’s got you so wound up? It ain’t like you to rush through things so much, you ought to be lookin’ at your diary and plannin’ out our next trip but instead you’re all fired up to move on tomorrow.”

“Today, if possible,” he snapped. “The people of Columbia take their holy orders so abominably seriously that we can’t hope they won’t look into the loss of a Watchpost. I thought a day here would let us lay in some iron and gold for emergencies. We’re hours past that and we’ve barely started on the process.”

“They had ranch hands up on the ridge,” Janice said with a helpless shrug. “Did you really want more people escapin’ to rat us out?”

“No,” Hernando snapped. “It’s not anyone’s fault that things didn’t work out perfectly. It is your fault that you won’t do as you’re told. Now go and finish your meal so we can put him with his sister and go about turning them.”

Janice perked up. “So you will give him the change?”

“Only if you have him ready for it before sunset.” With a disgusted shake of his head Hernando rummaged through the cabinet until he found the box he’d spotted there on his initial pass through the building the day before. He took it out and moved it over to the dining table in the great room and emptied the contents there.

“What is that?” Janice asked, still ignoring his instructions to gawk at the pile of paper and tools that spilled out.

“Maps,” Hernando said. “We’re on the edge of territory I know well, I’ll need to look over the counties north of here before I can decide where to go next.”

“Why not go west to Winchester county?” She asked. “There’s a bunch of skytrain stations there. We could fly anywhere in Columbia in four days time.”

“Because the Storm’s Watch is likely to bring in a team of their own to investigate what we did to their Post. Any team they send is far more likely to know a gold drinker than regular men are. And the Storm’s Watch can move their team a lot faster by sky train than by foot or wagon, so we’re going to stay as far from them as we can for the next few weeks.”

Janice sighed. “When you put it that way, I guess we’re gonna have to avoid the skies. To bad. I never been flyin’ before.”

Hernando didn’t mention the other problem with flying – as gold drinkers collected blood iron under the sway of the gold in their veins they quickly got heavy enough to fall right through the floor of most skytrains. To say nothing of what that weight did to throw them off balance. Although he’d taken most of the blood iron Janice drank she was still far heavier than she looked, and probably wouldn’t ever be able to fly without giving her nature away.

Not that her weight was a topic he was eager to broach.

This same difficulty made horses or stage coaches impractical, so they were going to have to walk wherever they wanted to go. “We need some place that is sparsely settled but close enough we can reach it in two or three days. Any ideas?”

“Honey, we been farther north than I’ve ever been since you changed me. But I know ranches, and they’ll have a map with their routes for cattle drivin’ somewhere. There’s usually some kind of way station along them routes we could lay low in for a few days. No one’d miss ’em for weeks.”

Hernando grunted, unhappy with her familiar language but willing to let it pass. Her plan was sound, if he could find those maps. “These don’t look right.”

“Nope. Those’re claims and deeds. The route maps are proably in the boardin’ -”

“Hernando!” Danica charged into the house, eyes wild. “Hernando, they got Larry!”

He set aside the paper and sighed. “Do you mean Larry is missing? Has a group shown up and captured him?”

“He’s dead.” She skidded to a stop and pointed frantically towards the barn. “They cut his head off and all his blood is gone!”

Hernando pursed his lips, stymied. “His blood is gone? How is that possible?”

“I don’t know,” Danica said, “but I couldn’t smell any in his head or his body. He’s pale, Hernando. So pale…”

He didn’t understand how it was possible to exert control over a gold drinker’s blood. The tome he’d discovered that laid out the gold drinker ritual was long on process but very short on details of how that magic worked. It basically laid out the need to feed and how acquiring blood iron would allow them to concentrate their power. It was possible to restore a badly injured, or even decapitated gold drinker, with enough time and blood iron.

However if Larry had lost his blood somehow Hernando was certain he couldn’t restore him with the resources he had on hand. He glanced at Danica. “Did you collect his excess blood before he died?”

“No,” she whispered.

“It can’t be helped.” He loosened his sword in its scabbard. “Did you see any signs of who killed him?”

“No…” Danica seemed to be coming back to herself now. “But I did notice something smelled charred. The barn was smokey.”

Hernando grunted. “I’m surprised we didn’t hear anything. Most sulfurite weapons are on the loud side. Perhaps a spear? Some of those are on the quiet side.”

“Does it matter?” Janice asked.

“I’m wondering how many men are out there. If they were a large group I don’t think they’d be so sneaky about this, they’d already be beating down the door.” He gave Janice a look. “Get dressed, Janice. We’re going hunting.”

Once she was given sufficient motivation Janice could move very quickly. She got dressed and retrieved her machete. It was more tool than weapon, without even a mounting spot for a sulfurite crystal, but it was deadly enough at close range. Hernando had tried to train her in the use of a sulfurite blade but so far she was more a danger to herself and her allies than their enemies. So for now the machete would have to do.

They found Larry right where Danica left him. Hernando glanced at her. “Has anything changed?”

“No, he was like this when I found him. I – I just got scared and ran to find you so I didn’t look at him that closely but he looked like this as near as I remember.” She knelt down and studied the floor. “I think he was in a puddle before but it may have drained away or dried out?”

Hernando squinted his eyes and looked around the barn. “Where are the horses?”

“I don’t know. They weren’t here when I found him.”

Janice walked to the back and looked through the rear door. “They’re not in the fields, either. Do you think it was horse thieves?”

“Simple horse thieves wouldn’t know how to do this. I’m not even sure how this was accomplished.” Hernando knelt down and studied the stump of Larry’s neck. The cut was not particularly clean. In fact it looked more like the last bit had been torn off more than cut through, suggesting the blade that made the cut was on the dull side. Larry didn’t have enough blood iron to be unusually durable, so decapitating him wouldn’t have been any harder than cutting the head of a normal man. But that was still a difficult task.

Hernando picked up Larry’s head and set it aside to reveal a second wound in the stomach, not a cut but a deep stabbing wound. “That would be the spear,” he murmured. “They moved the body for some reason.”

“Maybe as part of how they removed his blood?” Danica said. “And they used the water to wash away the evidence.”

“I don’t understand why they would be so secretive,” Hernando said. “It’s a lot of time wasted for negligible return. Still the kill itself was quite masterful.”

He studied the two women with him skeptically. For all his erratic nature he was a dependable fighter when the need arose, where as the womenfolk were very early in their training. He definitely didn’t have the resources to revive Larry so he was going to have to be left behind. “I don’t think this is a fight we want to have. Janice?”

She turned away from the doorway. “Yes?”

“Go collect the boy, eat your damn meal and take him to his sister. Danica, look for the horses. If you can’t find them in a quarter hour, meet me at the slaughterhouse and we’ll perform the change on our new members.”

“Where will you be?” Janice asked.

“I’m going to find those maps.” Hernando grimaced. “It’s time to move on.”

“We’re runnin’?”

“Yes. I’m not tangling with the unknown when we’re this far in the red. One day there will be a reckoning for this, but it’s not today.”

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