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The sun beats down as a swollen flame on the cracked and shuddery ground of Enbarr, and Edelgard intends to beef a man if Liddil of the Seventh Chance Saloon doesn’t shut his yapper.
“Don’t see why you’re chafin’ to be sheriff, Hresvelg,” he says, barely minding the poor sweating bastards who set up their challenge. It’s a shit way to determine who runs the law here, but then, most things are shit when they’re run by men, or so she’s always thought. “Seein’ as you ain’t been ‘round all that long. Not sure you know the way things work ‘round here yet.”
Twenty yards away, Hubert cracks his neck, the sound audible even as she tries to tune out all the blathering. She wonders at his restraint; he’s not much for gentility, her right hand, and she knows he rides with advantage. It wouldn’t take all that much to finish the job and give Liddil an extra breathing hole. In another life, he might not have held himself back.
In this one, though, he’s her man through thick and thin, and he cools his heels even as his eyes shine keener than any vulture’s.
“Don’t see why you’re chafing to have me back down before the shooting starts,” she fires back, cool as you please. “Let our canisters do the talking, unless you’re afraid of the licking I’ll give you.”
And Liddil may be a gull and a bunko artist, but he knows when a conversation is going nowhere fast. He turns back to the struggling figures of the men who are tying down their shooting targets for fear of the prairie winds, and Edelgard is alone once more with her thoughts.
The wind blows hot through the chambray of her shirt, and though it reaches greedy fingers toward the bandaged skin of her side, she betrays not a wince when it gets to her stitches. A crowd begins to gather, eager to see the aspiring bulls lock horns, but despite this, her mind is miles away, stuck on a new moon and a big haul, a spirited g’hal and a deadshot-soaked wound.
Last night, she had gotten a knife under the latch of a bigshot’s window and twisted it until the frame broke. Hubert had boosted her through before following her lead, and for all that the two of them cut imposing figures in the light, they knew how to keep quiet when the situation called for it. They’d staked the place out and they’d known what they’d wanted, never mind the two-bit con man their prize belonged to.
Edelgard von Hresvelg may be aiming for the badge in the present, but she’d never had any qualms about doing what needed to be done for the sake of her and hers.
They’d annexed the bastard’s fine jewelry and emptied his safe with haste, and as she’d slid back out the window, silent as the grave, Hubert had snatched the revolver off the bedside table as a parting farewell.
She’d thought they’d rooked him well and good, then; it had been all but a job well done as she’d packed the last of their findings into the saddlebags of Hubert’s black mare. Then the first shot had fired from the front stoop, and Old Scratch had smiled at her as though begging her to come home.
“Off with you,” she’d said, drawing her rod as she’d squinted into the black. “We’re on a damn tight schedule.”
Hubert had wanted to argue, she’d known - he never could resist a fight, especially when her life was on the line - but she could never fault him for insubordination, and he’d galloped off, headed two towns west and back before sunrise, should the rest go according to plan. Her damned eyes had still been as fickle as the wind, but she’d fired back.
Then the bullet had hooked the breath from her lungs.
It’d been a near miss from anything vital, as far as she’d been able to tell through her skittering thoughts, but she hadn’t been ready to celebrate yet, not until she could figure out how to maneuver herself out of the damn fine situation she’d gotten herself into.
Mr. Bigshot had started muttering then, something about giving the lathering of a lifetime, and she’d gotten the sense he was three sheets to the wind. Still, there hadn’t been a whole lot of running left in her, and as she’d backed away, she’d let drive another bullet, hoping to high heaven that it would be enough to dissuade him from following.
But that hellish nag had come back for her, Hubert’s good eye flashing in the brief light of his pistol fire. He’d pulled her up in front of him, gentle as he could even as she muffled her agonized cry with the heel of her hand, and with nothing more than a grumbled curse, he’d got gaited faster than lightning. One of his had landed home, or close enough, punching through wood, and their opponent had retreated into the safety of his home, a few thousand poorer but with all of his skin.
She’d called that even and slumped back against Hubert’s thin but solid frame.
“Why aren’t you gone?” she’d asked.
“Figured now was the time to utilize one of Dorothea’s more… discreet friends,” he’d replied. “You needed me. I came. It’s as simple as that.”
“Poor sods. Half in love with her, and she wouldn’t notice ‘em if they lit themselves on fire.”
Where they’d been pressed together by the jostling of the horse, she’d felt his laughter rumble through her, twice as good as any painkiller. “Ain’t you the same?”
“I love her fully, and her smile looks a little dumb when she laughs at my jokes. Ain’t that a little different?”
“Careful, Edelgard.” For all that he’d sounded sinister as a snake, there’d been real laughter in his voice. “You’re sounding mashed.”
They’d arrived at their destination, though, so any reply had been stifled by the careful press of his hands as he’d tried to avoid aggravating her wound, slick and red in the faint light of the stars.
“Ferdinand?” she’d asked, but though Hubert had given no answer, there was no one else he’d turn to.
They’d gone around the back to avoid prying eyes, and when Hubert had banged on the door, Edelgard had wondered why Ferdinand would even bother opening it. Hell knew he bore no love for her.
When the door had creaked open, Ferdinand’s sleep-creased face on the other side, it’d been Hubert’s health he’d assessed before her own, and she’d understood all too well.
In the time it took to stitch her up, he’d said not a word to her, and she’d been grateful for it; in another life, she could have been just the same as him, puffed up and a snob, and she preferred not to think on that. Still, he had a good heart, or so Hubert seemed to think, and given that he’d always been eager to slat any man who looked at her oddly, she’d trusted him in this, too.
But the neck oil he’d used to treat her wound had ended up half in her, and, soaked beyond belief, she’d found the courage to ask him what she’d always meant to.
“Why… Why do you bother?” she’d asked, gesturing to the neat stitches at her hip. “Considering you hold no fondness for me.”
“Because you pay me.”
But he’d scorned her dirty money at least half as much as he’d taken it, and she’d known he had no need of it. “Liar.”
And had this been any other occasion, he’d have blathered on about morals and duty and oaths, but perhaps something about her drunken openness and Hubert cutting a swell in the corner had undone him.
“You’re the closest we have to an honest badge,” he’d said, his face shadowed, and she’d remembered that he’d lived in Enbarr all his life, den of iniquity though it’d always been. “So you can’t go dying on me.”
In the present, though, the men have finished tying their targets down, and it’s Dorothea who checks them to ensure their sturdiness. Liddil claims impartiality on her part, but Dorothea had been an abandon before he’d made her a singer, and Edelgard knows he thinks he has her under lock and key.
Dorothea sends her a sly wink as she sidles past, though, and Liddil couldn’t be more wrong.
Edelgard had ridden to Enbarr with good intentions; she’d never been a thief, though she’d had no qualms about keeping company with cross-grained folk. Still, she’d hunkered down in Liddil’s on arrival, and when she’d come down to purchase supper, there she’d been.
They’d talked a while that night, Edelgard blathering about her aspirations while Dorothea confessed her wish to get shed of this place. Still, Liddil had her in debt that spanned the Myrddin with a job that paid pennies, and there was like to be no respite in this lifetime.
So Edelgard had done what she did best, and got to crafting a solution. Thievery had never been her inclination, but if it brought a little pain to some handfisted bastards and joy to the woman she might one day call hers, then it would be more than worth it.
This phantom outlaw had yet to be properly caught, after all; if she could just get her badge, the lay would be good enough that her alter ego could ride on to some other poor town.
Timberlake, the former head honcho, presides over the competition, old as dirt but his mind still clear, and when Dorothea clears the targets and steps aside, he raises his hand.
“On my signal, now,” he says, and both Edelgard and Liddil’s cannons are at the ready, glinting in the relentless sun.
He lowers his hand, and Edelgard sets about putting Liddil’s dreams six below.
Five steady breaths, five solid squeezes, and her gun is the first one back in its holster, hands free and clear before Liddil has even gotten his situated. It is indisputable, the rightness of her win; she’s grinning something fierce, she knows, and when she looks at her two in the crowd, the expressions on their faces match. Ferdinand von Aegir stands beside her second, and even he is something close to smiling, though he shifts back into the rest of the crowd when he catches her looking.
It matters little. She has won, and there ain’t nothing Liddil or his cronies can say to take it away from her.
“And there you are,” Timberlake says, voice rough with pride in knowing his job will pass on to good hands. “Miss Hresvelg, I find myself honored-”
The lead tears through his chest like a fist through wet parchment; Timberlake has cashed in before his body has even hit the ground.
“And there you ain’t,” Liddil says, lead pusher smoking.
Edelgard goes for her canister before her mind can even process the backstabbing bushwhack, but Liddil has her around the throat with one arm pressed against her aching wound before she can so much as blink. Hubert has gone much the same, a townsperson having clouted him until he’d dropped his gun, knees in the dirt. Even Dorothea is bound up, though she’d gotten a good smack in, her handprint blooming like a wild rose on her captor’s cheek.
That’s my girl, Edelgard thinks even through the dizzying rage.
All around them, over half the spectators, almost ten in total, reveal themselves as on Liddil’s payroll, and if he weren’t such a cheating lowlife, she might almost be impressed. “All this for me?”
He squeezes again, and she gasps, stars blooming like white fire in her vision. “That’s about enough lip out of you, don’t you think?”
It’s an execution he means to have, right here in the middle of this damned desert. He knows about her nighttime exploits; it’s clear by the way he relishes her grunts of pain when he digs his fingers into her side. With the badge, he’ll be justified, not that any of his goons seem to give a damn beyond their lay.
Across this makeshift circle they’ve formed, Edelgard locks eyes with Hubert, then Dorothea, one proud, the other fuming. Like as not, either of them could get out alive: Dorothea is a damned treasure even when fury boils in her veins and turns her cruel, and Hubert’s cross-grained heritage makes everyone think he’d be happy to turn on her for a price.
Neither will, because they are loyal to a fault, and for a moment, she wishes they weren’t quite so good.
When she looks around, every man who hadn’t been a part of Liddil’s scheme has run, save one.
Ferdinand.
“Well, Doc,” Liddil starts, his voice too easy a drawl to ignite anything but hatred in her veins. “Good to see you ain’t scared by a little bloodshed.”
“I would be a poor medic if I were.” His gaze is empty, his breathing level. If he did not expect this from their competition, then he is taking it in stride, and Edelgard wonders how she could have fundamentally misjudged a man so badly. “Are you wounded, sheriff?”
“I ain’t taken more than a paltry blow, Doc.” Liddil’s arms tighten, and Edelgard begs her body not to give out. “Was worried how you’d take it, you know, considering your big city morals, but it’s good to know you ain’t like these interlopers any more than I do.”
Ferdinand steps closer. “I’ve made no secret of my distaste for Miss Hresvelg.” Another. “But sheriff, you do look awfully pale.”
Liddil snorts. “And what’s my diagnosis, Doc?”
There are many things that Edelgard had hoped would happen in this moment, only half of them leading to her escape, but when Ferdinand pulls a rod from his back pocket and puts a bullet through Liddil’s leg, it tops all of them by miles. “Lead poisoning.”
A riot of motion ensues: Dorothea slams the back of her head into her captor’s nose, Ferdinand weaves around a half-drunk punch, and Edelgard kicks Liddil where it hurts. Nothing, however, tops the precision with which Hubert lays out his own jailer, sighs, and drives lead through Liddil’s skull.
For a moment, there is nothing but eerie quiet. As the goons awaken from their stupor, he does it twice more until they quiet, and then, between Edelgard’s insistence and Ferdinand’s steel-tipped gentility, they go home.
“Thought you weren’t allowed to kill, doctor,” she says when it’s just the four of them, hackles all raised from the fight.
“I’m not,” he says. “I didn’t.”
She’ll let him have this one. He’s earned it, after all.
“Well,” Dorothea says, her voice all sun-sweet cheer despite the bruises forming at her wrists. “Who wants to get jingled on some of Liddil’s neck oil?”
The sun sets on the cracked and shuddery ground of Enbarr, and Edelgard gives a resounding yes.