Song of Oestend (26 page)

Deacon dismounted. Nobody in the courtyard said anything as his eyes made their way

around the circle, looking for one man in particular.

“Where’s Simon?” he finally asked.

“In the north pasture,” Frances told him.

Deacon nodded. He motioned Frances forwards and handed him the reins. He said

something to him, too low for Aren to hear. Frances nodded and led the horses towards the barn. “Somebody go find Jeremiah,” Deacon said. “Tell him it’s important.”

“What happened?” one of the men finally asked.

“You’ll find out,” Deacon said, “but there’s other men have the right to hear it before you.”

He headed towards the back of the house, where Aren stood, and Aren ducked inside

the doorway of the kitchen, so they’d be out of sight of the other men when they greeted each other. Only Olsa was in the kitchen. Her back was to Aren as she stirred whatever was over the fire. She hummed idly, as if she had no clue what was going on.

It was all he could do not to throw himself into Deacon’s arms when he walked into the room. He was trembling, and he would have given anything to feel Deacon hold him, to hear Deacon reassure him. But he knew instinctively this wasn’t the time. There was a brittleness about Deacon that spoke of being wound too tight. Whatever had happened in the wild had shaken him, and still his job wasn’t done. Aren would not make his burden greater by asking for his strength now, when he obviously had so little left to give.

Deacon’s eyes landed on him the moment he walked through the door, and he crossed

over to Aren, grabbing Aren’s shoulders in his big hands. Deacon didn’t hug him, but he pulled him close, his fingers digging painfully into Aren’s upper arms. He put his face down into Aren’s hair, and Aren held very still, trying to determine what Deacon needed from him.

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Deacon took a deep breath, and it actually seemed he was drawing strength just from

the simple fact that Aren was close. He squared his shoulders again. He stood up straight, suddenly letting Aren go.

And that was it.

He turned to Olsa, who was putting down bowls of stew, and kissed her on the cheek.

“Eat now,” she said, “before those boys. Jeremiah’s on his way.”

Deacon sighed heavily as he sat down, and Aren sat next to him as he always did. Olsa gave Aren a bowl, too, although he didn’t feel like eating. He stirred the thick stew around and around his bowl while Deacon ate. He wanted to ask questions. He wanted to ask about Garrett. Instead, he waited.

Jeremiah came in a few minutes later. He’d obviously come in a hurry from wherever

he’d been, because he was breathing hard.

“Well?” he asked Deacon.

Deacon pushed his half-empty bowl away and, watching him, Aren could tell how hard

it was for him to answer. “They’re all dead,” he finally said, his voice low in the silent room.

“Every one of them.”

Jeremiah fell heavily into a chair and put his face in his hands. “How?”

“Generator ran dry,” Deacon said. “Hadn’t been kept up. Gears were all clogged.

Windmill wouldn’t turn at all. They were running it on coal, but it must’ve been burning twice the fuel to keep cranking. Engine burnt out.”

“Oh, Saints,” Jeremiah moaned, putting his head down between his knees. “How

many?”

“Zed Austin and his wife. The daughter. Five maids.” He hesitated, watching Jeremiah.

“Brighton, Shay and their boys.”

The silence in the room was heavy with grief. Nobody moved. Nobody made a sound

except for Jeremiah, who was crying quietly into his hands. But he wasn’t giving himself up to grief. Not yet, anyway. Aren suspected he would save that for the privacy of his own room. “Go on,” he said to Deacon.

“Farm’s a mess. Cattle in the field had chewed it to the dirt. Animals locked in corrals had starved. Horses kicked their way out, but one broke its leg in the process. Had to put her down. Opened the gate for the cattle. Couldn’t take the time to herd them to pasture like they SONG OF OESTEND

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needed. Just have to hope they don’t go no further than the next patch of grass. Figured it was better than letting them starve. I brought back the BarChi horses that was there, plus a couple of theirs. The rest should be fine in the pasture for a bit.” He stopped again, obviously working up the courage to say the rest. “Didn’t have time to bury the people,” he said. “I know you would have wanted that. But we had to try to fix the generator before dark.

Digging the graves would have burnt daylight—”

“I understand,” Jeremiah said. “Are they still there?”

Deacon shook his head. “It wasn’t pretty. They’d been gone a while. We put them all in the far shed. Used lantern fuel and burnt it down.”

Jeremiah nodded, wiping his eyes with the heels of his hands. “That was good

thinking.” He dropped his hands from his face, but he didn’t look up. “And Garrett?” he asked.

Deacon winced, but he answered. “Dead.”

Jeremiah nodded again. “Anybody else know?”

“No. Thought you should hear it first.”

Jeremiah stood. He walked slowly across the room to where Deacon sat. He put his

hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes. “I’m sorry you had to see all that, son. I know a thing like that can’t ever be forgot.”

Deacon shrugged, although the gesture didn’t seem as casual as normal. It was stiff and awkward and seemed to be more a matter of him having no idea how else to respond.

“I’m grateful you made it home safe,” Jeremiah said. Deacon ducked his head as he

always did when confronted by anything so personal. “You’re family, too, whether you

admit it or not. I love you like I love my own sons. I’m glad to have you home.”

Deacon didn’t speak. The slightest nod of his head was the only indication he’d heard at all, but Jeremiah seemed to take it in stride. He clapped Deacon on the shoulder once. “I have to go tell Dante and Jay.”

The silence in the kitchen felt strained and tense. Deacon still stared at the floor. Olsa was watching him closely with her spooky white eyes.

“Tell me what happened, boy,” she said suddenly. “I see the confusion. You want to ask but you’re afraid of the answers.”

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“We got there just before supper time,” Deacon told her. “Debated how much we could

do for the animals. Whether or not we could bury the bodies. There wasn’t much time.” He shook his head. “Spent the last of the daylight trying to get the generator running. Never could, though. Gears were locked up tight. Jammed in the hub too, I think.” He stopped again, taking a deep breath and looking up at Olsa. “We ran out of light.”

She leaned across the table, her long wooden spoon in her hand. Her sightless eyes

seemed to burn into Deacon. “What happened?” Her manner was strange. It wasn’t concern for Deacon or idle curiosity. There was an urgency to her question, a feverish excitement that seemed out of place.

“The wraiths came,” Deacon said. “Couldn’t see nothing different to know they was

there. But it got cold, real fast. Garrett was shivering, then all of a sudden he started gasping.

Like he could breathe, but only barely. Turning blue.” His voice started to shake and he looked down at the table. “I didn’t know what to do. I held him and I talked to him. But it was like his lungs quit holding air.” He fell silent. Still Olsa’s piercing stare was on him.

Aren had to force himself to breathe. “Why?” he asked Deacon, speaking for the first

time since Deacon’s homecoming. Deacon looked over at him, his eyes wary. “Why did the wraiths take him but not you?”

“I don’t know,” Deacon said.

“Liar!” Olsa snapped. Her spoon came down hard on the back of Deacon’s hand. “You

know why!”

“No, Olsa,” he started to say, but she wasn’t listening.

She darted around the counter with surprising speed. “Liar!” She smacked him hard

across the shoulders with her spoon. “What does it take?” she asked, as she hit him again.

“When will you admit it?”

“Olsa, stop!” he said, trying to block her blows, but she was quick and her spoon

landed on his other shoulder.

“It’s in your blood!” she said. “I’ve been telling you your whole life, and you refuse to believe.”

“There’s no way of knowing that Ezriel wasn’t my father.”

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“Bull dung!” She stopped smacking him with the spoon and pointed it at him instead.

“I knew the day your momma birthed you that there weren’t a drop of Pane blood in you!

The mark on her arm would have stopped his seed!”

“Folk tales!”

She smacked him again. “Isn’t the fact the wraiths left you proof enough?”

Aren sat watching in stunned silence. Pane blood? Who was Ezriel?

But it seemed there would be no more answers tonight. Deacon stood up from the table.

“It don’t matter,” he said. He walked out of the door and into the courtyard without a backwards glance.

Still Aren sat, staring at Olsa in shock. He wondered if she’d explain. He was about to ask, but she sighed and turned away. “Better get going,” she said to him over her shoulder.

“He needs you right now more than you need your answers.”

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Aren found Deacon sitting on his porch steps, his hat off and his head in his hands.

“Please don’t ask me right now,” Deacon said when Aren stopped next to him. “You

can have Olsa tell you. I don’t care if you know. But I can’t tell you right now.”

Aren put his hand on Deacon’s head, tracing his fingers over his black hair. “All right,”

he said, and Deacon sighed with relief. Aren was curious, but he’d known even before

Deacon spoke that this wasn’t the night for him to ask. Deacon had plenty of other things to worry about without also having his lover make demands of him.

Deacon reached up and took Aren’s hand. He looked up at him. “You’re the only one,

Aren.”

“What do you mean?”

“The only one not asking me for something every blessed hour of the day.”

Aren didn’t think that was true. He was sure he relied on Deacon as much as everybody else at the BarChi—maybe more—but just as it wasn’t the time for asking questions, it wasn’t the time for arguing, either.

“Come inside,” he said.

Deacon nodded, releasing Aren’s hand. He picked up his hat and stood up. “I told

Frances to bring Simon here.”

Aren couldn’t help but be disappointed that it wasn’t his turn yet, but he understood.

Simon and Garrett had been riding together for years. He had a right to hear firsthand what had happened. Simon and Frances arrived a few minutes later. Frances hung back, standing against the wall as if he felt out of place. Simon took the drink Aren offered him and sat down in the wooden chair to face Deacon.

“He’s dead?” he asked, without preamble.

Deacon nodded. “Yup.”

Simon sighed, rubbing his forehead with his hand. “What happened?”

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And so, for the second time in an hour, Deacon told his tale of the Austin ranch—of the starving cattle and the corpse-filled house and the generator that had run dry. His voice was worn and gravelly, and Aren could tell just listening to him that he was exhausted.

“I tried to help him,” he finished. “But there was nothing I could do.”

Simon nodded. “Anybody else, I might doubt, but I know you’d not let a man die if

there was a way to stop it.” He swallowed his whisky and sat staring down into the empty glass. He didn’t seem to be in shock. He was…resigned. Oestend was a hard place. That was what he’d told Frances, and Aren suspected Simon had known it was only a matter of time before something happened to one of them.

He stood up. “Thanks for telling me before the others,” he said.

Deacon only nodded.

Simon put his empty glass down on the table on his way out of the room. Frances,

whose glass was still full, left his behind as well. Aren followed them to the door, closing it behind them. He watched through the cloudy glass next to the door as they stopped on the porch. Frances said something to Simon, and Simon nodded. He ducked his head, covering his eyes with his hand, and Frances waited.

They’d been growing closer since Miron’s death. Aren had noticed many times the way

Frances’ eyes seemed to always follow Simon. He wondered if they were lovers. But even as he wondered, he saw Frances reach out to touch Simon. He saw the boy’s hesitancy, and the way he stopped short, pulling his hand back before he made contact.

Not lovers. Not yet, at least.

Aren found Deacon pouring more whisky into his glass, studiously not looking at him.

“Are you all right?” Aren asked him.

“I’m alive.”

“It must have been awful,” Aren said. “All that death.”

Deacon was silent for a moment. He kept his back to Aren. He seemed to be studying

the wood grain of the table in front of him. “I’ve seen a lot of death before,” he said. “Had men die in my arms before, too. But nothing like Garrett. Knowing it was a wraith—it wasn’t that he was injured and bleeding—but a thing. And yet, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t touch it.

Definitely couldn’t fight it.” He shook his head. “Seems like there should have been

something I could do, besides sit there and watch him die.”

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“Nobody blames you.”

“They should blame me. I blame me.”

“There was nothing you could do.”

“That ain’t the point!” Deacon snapped. “I’m in charge of the men. And I got one killed.

Get men killed all the time. It’s part of the job, but I’m the one who chooses which men go and which men stay. Lost track of the number of men I’ve seen die and every one of them was following my orders when he did it.” He downed his glass of whisky in one gulp and slammed his empty glass down. “Having everybody tell me it ain’t my fault don’t make me feel any better.”