Way Out West (The Markhat Files Book 10) Read online

  Way Out West

  Frank Tuttle

  Frank Tuttle

  Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  About the Author

  Also by Frank Tuttle

  Way Out West

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Copyright 2016 Frank Tuttle

  Cover Art by ADsmith Marketing & Advertising

  Edited by Holly Atkinson, Evil Eye Editing

  This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any existing means without written permission from the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The characters are products of the author's imagination and used fictitiously.

  Acknowledgments

  This book brought to you by the letters A through Z, the space bar, and the various components of punctuation. Except the semicolon, because it is evil and the source of all misery. Also, the color mauve wasn't much help.

  To Fletcher, who has walked the Rainbow Bridge into the mystery.

  Chapter One

  One midsummer night, Darla and I ran away from home.

  The heat drove us to it. The summer was born brutal and got meaner with every dawn. Each new sun blazed out of a cloudless sky, burning brighter and hotter than any before it day after day, week after week.

  The air soon fell as still as the Regent’s dark heart. Church folks gave up praying for rain, hoping instead to beg just a faint cooling breeze from the heavens.

  Priests prayed and sinners paid, but the sun beat down, heedless to both supplication and coin. Rannit baked in the inferno, until one stifling midnight, Darla sat straight up in our bed and mopped sweat-soaked black hair from her eyes and said, “Let’s go.”

  So, go we went. I roused Slim, our runt Troll deckhand, and we set about preparing Dasher for a midnight cruise south.

  One of the advantages of living on a houseboat is running away from home without having to pack. I sent Slim out for a cord of dried pine to feed Dasher’s boiler. I sent Mama a note explaining that I was taking Darla south to wet her toes in the Sea. An hour later, Dasher was chugging toward Bel Loit, her blunt prow leaving a sluggish wake on the muddy face of the moonlit Brown River.

  Cornbread, our hairy mutt of a first mate, bade Rannit farewell by hiking his leg and pissing on one of the Brown River Bridge’s pilings as we passed. Ever the gentlemen, I simply waved goodbye when the last of Rannit’s lights vanished behind us.

  We stayed in Bel Loit until the sun spent its fury and the skies grudgingly let fall the summer rains. We ate gumbo at Granny Mambo’s and we danced to the blues at Tall Thin Louie’s, and to this day, I’m convinced Darla bought a house somewhere along Whiskey Lane. There was a day, maybe two, when we were both convinced we’d run away from home, from Rannit, for good.

  But here’s the thing about home.

  It calls to you, no matter how far or how hard you run. We’d be dancing cheek-to-cheek at Tall Thin Louie’s, and Darla’s eyes would meet mine, and without saying a word, we knew what the other was thinking—is tomorrow the day we head back north? The day after?

  So one night we danced until Louie closed the place, and we shook his bony hand, and we said goodbye.

  The next dawn, we turned Dasher north, and the day after the day after that, the air took on the familiar stink of the crematoriums. By noon the Brown started showing trash and we rounded the last bend and the rusted iron girders of the Brown River Bridge rose up, not saying hello.

  Darla took my hand. “We’ll have to run away again very soon,” she said, standing close. “Think Mama will be angry?”

  “Furious,” I replied, keeping one hand on Dasher’s wheel while the other engaged in more husbandly pursuits. “Why don’t we just keep steaming north?”

  “Because I have a business to run,” said Darla, grinning. “You do too, if I recall.”

  Slim boomed out a warning to a napping fisherman whose boat was drifting toward us. The drowsy fisherman leaped to his feet cussing, though he shut up with admirable quickness when Slim puffed up his neck fur and took a step toward the rail.

  “We have no need to sully our hands with manual labor,” I said, pushing my captain’s hat into a jaunty tilt. “Surely you have another enormous stack of coin hidden away somewhere. Enough to sustain us well into our golden years, I suspect.”

  Darla laughed and swatted my hand away. “We won’t survive to see our golden years if you don’t pay attention to the helm,” she said.

  I gave Dasher’s wheel a cautious turn. A pair of much larger fishing boats churned toward us, and there was a brief exchange of colorful sea shanties and pithy nautical wit as I steered expertly between them.

  “Welcome to Rannit,” quoth I, as the sound of cursing faded with the passing of the boats. “Home sweet home.”

  Slim began booming out some ear-splitting Troll homecoming song, and Darla and I didn’t speak again until Dasher was settled and quiet, moored in her slip as if she’d never steamed all the way to Bel Loit and back.

  Our mailbox was stuffed so full mail was sticking out. Mama Hog’s letter, which she simply nailed to the post, read only BOY COME SEE ME RIGHT DAMN NOW.

  “We need groceries,” called Darla from the wheelhouse. “And I should check the shop.”

  I pulled envelopes and scrolls out of the mailbox until it was empty and my arms were full. I put Mama’s note on top.

  “I’ll see to the victuals,” I shouted up. “Got to go get a good cussing from Mama, too. Should be back in a few hours.”

  Darla blew me a kiss and shut the wheelhouse window. I stomped back aboard Dasher to put away the mail and find my good walking boots.

  As I sat on the deck and pulled on my boots, a corpse floated past, face down, arms outstretched, the oak-handled knife responsible for its corpsehood standing straight up out of his back like the stub of a mast. The Brown bore the body lazily away, turning him in slow circles, arranging his wet hair in a ragged halo around his bobbing head.

  I cussed. Worse than the sight of the body was the sudden telltale creep of magic tip-toeing up and down my spine. I hadn’t felt that peculiar tingle since Bel Loit and I’d begun to think I was free of it.

  I dropped my boot. I pinched my right ear lobe so hard I drew blood.

  The dead man twirled slowly, lolling bonelessly in the lazy brown water. He’d been a tall man. We used the same tailor. He favored my brand of boots.

  Slim’s lank shadow fell over me. He shuffled to the rail, a long boat hook in his Troll paw. He cast a glance at the body, Troll eyes questioning.

  I couldn’t pinch away the itch of magic this time. For a single awful moment, I was sure the body was about to roll over in the water and turn its bloated face toward me.

  I was also sure it was a face I didn’t want to see.

  “Let him be,” I said to Slim. I pinched harder.

  Slim grunted and dropped his hook. When I looked back at the water, the body was gone—not a ripple or a swirl left behind.

  Slim barked out a string of Troll words I’m sure were an imprecation against dark sorceries.

  I pulled
on my remaining boot, put a handkerchief to my bleeding ear.

  “Welcome home,” I said. “Let’s go find trouble.”

  Chapter Two

  I was sneaky.

  I sent Slim to knock at Mama’s door.

  I don’t believe for a minute that Mama Hog is the hundred and twenty-odd years she claims. I don’t believe her bewildering collection of dried birds or her worn pasteboard cards or her perpetually boiling cauldron holds any genuine backwoods sorcery.

  I understand why she keeps the trappings of witchery about her. The clients at her card-and-potion shop expect no less. Most never look beyond the unblinking owls and their painted glass eyes to see the razor-sharp wit hiding in Mama’s beady gaze.

  But I’ve seen enough to know Mama’s real talent is the scheming brain hiding beneath that tangle of witch-woman hair. That, and maybe, just maybe, a hint of wild magic, now and then.

  “I sees you out there, boy,” barked Mama before Slim’s furry fist fell a third time. “And you too, Mr. Slim. Come on in, the both of ye. We’s got business to conduct.”

  I grinned and took off my hat. Mama lives to deliver good cussings to wayward finders who have the gall to leave town without seeking her permission, but she holds Trolls in the same regard some reserve for Angels.

  “Good morning to you, Mrs. Hog,” growled Slim in Kingdom. He ducked to get under her door. I followed, hat in hand, assaulted by the stink from Mama’s cauldron.

  “Good morning to you, Walking Stone,” Mama replied. She pushed a chair aside for Slim and beckoned him to sit.

  I got a good hard glare and a grudging glance at her card-reading table.

  “Will you have a slice of ham, Walking Stone?” asked Mama.

  Slim nodded a yes. He’s learning our ways quickly.

  “I’ll have coffee and a couple of biscuits,” I offered. “It is not the way of my people to do business on an empty stomach.”

  Mama snorted. “From the looks of you, boy, that there stomach don’t spend any time being empty. But fine. I reckon you took a liking to Bel Loit.”

  Mama poured coffee.

  “Never heard of the place. I like milk in mine. Sugar, too.”

  “You’ll drink it black or pour it out, don’t make no difference to me.” Mama thumped down my cup and vanished into her tiny kitchen, shouting back at us. “Now, boy, I aims to hire you. And don’t think about charging a poor old widow woman full rate, neither, not while you got a mouth full of her biscuits, you hear?”

  I sipped at the coffee. Strong and black, but it lasts all day. “Why hire me, Mama? Couldn’t you browbeat Gertriss into doing the job for free?”

  Gertriss is my junior partner. She’s also Mama’s niece. Mama brought her to Rannit to teach her the card-and-potion trade, and to hear Mama tell it, I snatched the poor girl away from the family business and into the sordid, tawdry life of a professional finder.

  Mama came trundling out of the kitchen with a plate of ham and biscuits.

  “Gertriss ain’t to know this, boy. Ain’t to know none of it. Reckon I can trust you that far? Ain’t you got rules about telling and not telling a paying client’s affairs?”

  I grabbed a biscuit. Slim speared the entire chunk of ham on a Troll talon and popped the whole works in his mouth.

  “You know me better that that, Mama. Anything you tell me is privileged.” I bit and chewed and swallowed. “So what is it you need?”

  Mama dropped heavily into her chair and wiped a tangle of wild gray hair out of her face.

  “I’m leavin’, boy. Retiring, they calls it. Poor old Mama ain’t got many years left, and she don’t aim to spend them slaving away in a kitchen for them what don’t appreciate her no-ways.”

  I’d have groaned, but my mouth was full. “Retiring,” I said when I could. “You. Mama Hog.”

  She shook her shaggy head. “And taking my leave of this here city,” she added. “Which is something you ought to consider, boy. I’m telling you plain, right now. I done seen things. Dire things. Dark things. There’s portents, boy. Signs. There’s evil swimming up the river, and evil floating down.”

  I remembered the body I’d not seen floating face down by Dasher and damn near choked.

  Mama nodded, her eyes bright with quiet triumph. “You seen things, too. I knowed you did. You’re as filthy with sorcery as any of them wand-wavers, boy. Ain’t no escaping that now.”

  Slim growled, whether in assent or merely in appreciation of Mama’s ham, I didn’t know.

  “You’re laying it on awful thick,” I said to Mama. “But keep talking. The coffee is good.”

  “I reckon you think I’m heading back to Pot Lockney,” Mama replied. She raised her finger and shook it in my face. “Well, I ain’t. It come to me years ago I’d seen all of that place I wanted. So I took steps, boy. That’s where you comes in.” She reached into her ever-present burlap bag and produced a sack.

  “There’s forty pieces of Old Kingdom gold in here,” she said. I knew that was true from the heavy thud the sack made when Mama threw it on the table. “That’s for you, if’n you takes the job. I ain’t got no truck with this here paper money.”

  I raised an eyebrow but left the sack where it was. “You know how this works, Mama. I’m not going to hire myself out for any price without knowing what you want done.”

  She nodded and took in a breath. “I’m retiring out West,” she said. “Boy, you know they’re givin’ away land for the asking? You know how far just a little coin goes, way out West?”

  “I do.” And I did. The West was the hardest hit during the War. The Trolls didn’t leave anything standing. Or anyone. People claim the ghosts still wail and walk, whole mobs of them at once, and while I don’t believe in ghosts, I do sometimes. “Might be good reasons the Regent can’t even give the place away,” I said. “Ever think about that, Mama?”

  Mama spat out a word that shocked even me. “Foolishness,” she added. “Ain’t nothing out there no worse than what walks these streets after Curfew, boy. You of all people ought to know that. Anyways. I done bought myself a town, finder. A whole damn town, bank and store and law and all, and I’m sending you out there to pay for it, file the claim, and see that Mrs. Hog’s Home for Orphans and Widows is started up right and proper.”

  I may have dropped a few crumbs on Mama’s table from my carelessly gaping jaw.

  “Mrs. Hog’s Home for Orphans and Widows,” I managed. “You’re joking.”

  “I ain’t.” Mama puffed up. “You knows what happens to these street young ’uns, most of them. Widow women, too. You knows it. And you don’t like it no better than me.”

  I closed my mouth. Gangs or brothels await most street kids. The crematoriums take the rest.

  “So you’re going to what—take them all in, put them to work in somebody’s turnip field?”

  She slapped her table, the crack of her hand so loud it sent Slim’s Troll ears straight up in alarm.

  “I ain’t stupid,” Mama said. “I ain’t sending no child away from the gang or the whorehouse just to be a slave somewheres. No. I’m building a school too. Teach them reading and writing. Trades. Skills, boy. So when they come of age they’s got something to offer them what has coin. Now, are ye in my employ, or ain’t ye?”

  “You haven’t told me how I fit into all this, Mama.”

  She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Ain’t it obvious, boy? You takes my money to the town. You sees the bill of sale signed and sealed all proper and legal. You makes sure them what is running my orphanage and schoolhouses ain’t abusing the young ’uns or stealing me blind.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “For your fee, I reckon,” Mama replied, thumping the sack for emphasis.

  “What I meant, Mama, was why won’t you be the one doing the paying and the signing? It’s your town.”

  “I ain’t aiming to be there.”

  “You just told me you were retiring. Leaving Rannit for good.”

  “I am, a
nd I is,” she shot back. “But I’ve got affairs to close out here first.”

  Even Slim, a relative stranger to both Mama and the intricacies of human interactions, snorted in what sounded like derision.

  I wiped my hands together to rid them of crumbs. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re really up to, Mama?”

  She yanked my coffee cup away, and not to refill it. “One thing I reckon I won’t miss is smart-mouthed city folk,” she muttered, waddling toward her kitchen. “If ye ain’t willing, I’ll find somebody what appreciates plain old gold.”

  I lifted my hands in defeat. “All right. You’ve hired yourself a sales agent. A bank inspector. A schoolmarm.”

  Mama paused at her kitchen door. “I expects you to be in Hogstown on the last day of the month,” she said. “Reckon you can do that?”

  “I can. This Hogstown. How far West are we talking, Mama?”

  She banged her kitchen door open and barged inside before replying. “Out Stoke way,” she yelled.

  I banged my knees on her table by standing too fast. “Stoke? The Stoke?”

  Her reply was unintelligible.

  I sat back down. I’d done it, saying yes.

  Slim looked at me with curious Troll eyes.

  “Stoke was the crown jewel of the Old Kingdom,” I said. “First to fall during the War. It’s a three thousand mile ride. Three thousand miles of blasted, haunted wasteland with a burnt ruin at the end of the journey.”

  Mama reappeared. “Oh, hush your whining, boy. It ain’t like you gots to walk the whole way. That new railroad runs all the way to Stoke now, and then some. I’m paying ye more than enough to buy a ticket.”

  Slim laughed, the sound of it like a fat man stomping through deep mud.

  “See?” I said. “Even Slim has heard the stories. This railroad of yours, Mama. The Caffin-Ealy Express? You know what everyone calls it?”

  She feigned perfect innocence, but she did slide me a fresh cup of coffee.