The Keep of Fire (5 page)

How he had immolated himself was another mystery. The fire had been so hot, there had been no need for cremation. Yet the man had not set the Mine Shaft ablaze with him. The only damage was a black mark
on the floor and the smell of smoke. And Max Bayfield’s hand.

Max had said that he touched the man before the fire started, but Jace was sure that was a mistake. Max understood how numbers worked, but the workings of the world were sometimes beyond him. That was fine—that was Jace’s job. And she knew people didn’t catch fire or get their hands burned for no reason. Probably the man had doused himself with some caustic chemical and had ignited himself where a large crowd would see.

But why? Jace didn’t know. The only thing she did know was that you could never truly know the heart of another.

He had to know she would be the one to find him, Maude. I know it’s awful to say, but I’m your sister, and it’s the truth. She always puts her bike in the garage when she comes home from school. Never leaves it out for the rain. Such a good girl, that Jacine. He had to know. Bless the poor little thing.…

A gust of wind kicked up a cloud of sun-baked dust. Jace tucked a stray lock of her short brown hair behind an ear and scanned the cemetery. Where was the undertaker? Dale Stocker, who had managed Castle Heights for the last twenty years, had passed away that spring. But there had been a replacement, hadn’t there?

“Hello?”

The wind snatched her voice away. Jace pushed through the iron gate. There was a rise in the middle of the cemetery. He might be on the other side, where he wouldn’t have heard the van approaching.

The deputy made her way past forgotten graves. Many of the headstones were too wind-worn to read. But there were some she could still make out, their shallow carvings made sharp again by the shadows of morning. She passed by the graves of failed prospectors, Depression-era mothers, and young men sent
back in boxes from Normandy. Then she saw a grave that made her pause. She crouched and parted a tuft of weeds to reveal the words scrawled on the cracked sandstone marker:

Jace frowned at the stone, her mission forgotten. What did it matter if God forgave him? What about the people he had left behind? Had they forgiven him? If he was really such a good man, a good father, how had he gotten himself killed at the age of twenty-nine? A good man would have been careful, would have stayed around to watch his children grow up. He wouldn’t have been stuck here in the ground. Jace started to stand, hesitated, then reached out to touch the sun-warmed sandstone.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” a raspy voice said behind her.

Jace pulled her hand back, stood, and turned around all in one smooth motion. It took conscious effort to keep from moving her hand to the butt of the revolver at her hip.

The man before her was tall—far taller than the deputy, who had reached her full five feet two at the age of twelve. Despite the heat he was dressed in a long, shabby suit of black wool that looked as if it had been salvaged from a coffin. His shirt had yellowed like ivory, along with his teeth.

“Well, now,” the gravedigger said, a grin splitting his gaunt face, his voice at once slick and rusty, “I see you are a woman of the law.” He leaned on the shovel whose handle he gripped in large, bony hands.

Jace opened her mouth to answer but could only manage a nod. There was something strange about
the man. Usually she could size up another inside of five seconds, but the figure before her defied easy definition.

The man pushed up the brim of his black hat, swiped with a dingy handkerchief at his knobby brow, then settled the hat back down as he nodded toward the grave marker behind her. “Did you know him, then?”

Jace found her voice. “Sir, that man’s been dead for well over a century.”

The gravedigger shrugged, as if this fact were not important.

Furrows dug themselves into Jace’s forehead. She had never seen the gravedigger around town before. When had he arrived in Castle City? Then again, even Dale had liked to keep to himself. Undertakers were a lonely lot—or maybe they just preferred the company of the dead.

Jace held out the box. “Sir, I have a burden here I need to discharge.”

The gravedigger gripped his shovel and laughed: a deep, terrible sound. “Well, now, you’ve just said a mouthful, Deputy.”

“I’m sorry?”

“No, don’t be sorry.” Dust swirled off the shoulders of his suit, and he gazed at the horizon. “We all have our burdens to discharge.” His dark gaze turned toward her. “Don’t we, Deputy?”

Jace bit her lip, uncertain what to say. She didn’t like this man. There was no order to his words, no reason. She held out the box of ashes. He planted the shovel in the ground and took the box from her, enfolding it in long fingers. Sadness touched his craggy face.

“He has traveled long, this one,” the man whispered. “Rest is welcome now. But even a welcome end is not without sorrow.”

Jace itched to leave. Sweat trickled down her sides.
But she had to be sure she had done all she needed to do. “You’ve got it under control, then?”

The gravedigger looked up from the box, as if surprised she was still there, then gave a slow nod. “Do not fear. I’ll watch over him now, daughter.”

Jace went rigid. Words echoed in her mind, and the cemetery faded to white around her.

God will watch over him now, Jacine
.

Why wasn’t He watching over him before, Reverend Henley? Why didn’t He protect him?

That isn’t the way it works, Jacine. Sometimes bad things happen, even to those who are good
.

That’s not fair. It doesn’t make any sense
.

His ways don’t always make sense to us
.

But it’s not right
.

Jacine, you cannot question His—

The words were drowned out by a clattering sound. The whiteness vanished, replaced by dull browns and hard blue: earth and sky. The cemetery snapped back into focus.

Jace looked around, but the man was gone. Except how could that be? She had been distracted only for a moment. She looked down, and she saw the source of the noise that had jarred her back to the present: The shovel had fallen to the ground. Next to the shovel was a square of freshly turned earth, clear of weeds, the iron-rich soil red as blood. Planted beside the patch of earth was a small granite marker, its surface incised with a single, sharp word she could not comprehend:

Jace sucked in a breath. This was impossible. The sun hadn’t moved in the sky; only a moment had passed. Yet she had no doubt that, were she to pick up the shovel and dig through the soil, she would find
the black box of ashes. Sickness rose in her throat, as it did when she dreamed of the roiling sea.

The deputy cast one more look at the fresh grave, then hurried back to the van, shivering despite the heat.

Everything had changed again.

There had been no bells this time, but there had been a man in black, just like before, and once again nothing in Travis’s life would ever be the same.

“Travis?”

He looked up at the sound of the quiet voice. Deirdre stood on the other side of the bar, her expression concerned. Travis felt something damp against his hand. He glanced down and saw that he clutched a wet rag. He must have been wiping down the bar, only somewhere in the course of the task he had stopped. How long had he been standing there, just staring?

Beware—it will consume you
.

He tried to force the rasping words out of his head, but he couldn’t. What did they mean? The words were a warning of some kind, but a warning about what? And why had the burnt man given it to Travis?

You are the one. It is you who drew me to this place
.

He clenched his right hand around the cloth, afraid he knew the answer, and water oozed onto the bar.

Deirdre reached out and brushed the back of his hand. He shuddered and let go of the rag.

“We’re almost ready to open, Travis. We just need to get a little more air moving in here. Is there an extra fan we could use? I thought we could put it in the north window.”

Travis nodded, although he wasn’t sure there was a point to opening the saloon. He doubted any of his customers would come back. No matter how hard he scrubbed, no matter how much air he blew through the place, he would never get rid of the black splotch on the floor or the acrid stench—not completely. Then there were the pits melted into the asphalt surface of Elk Street, leading up to the saloon: pits shaped just like footprints. They would always be there, reminders of the burnt man. Once you were marked, Travis knew, you could never forget.

However, he didn’t tell Deirdre what he thought. She had been an amazing help these last three days, an unexpected source of light in the midst of this darkness.

“There’s a fan up in the rafters in the storeroom,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

He came back with the fan a few minutes later, a bit grimier for the effort, and found Deirdre arranging chairs and wiping down tables. The saloon’s door stood open, but no customers had come through, only hot air and dust. Travis put the fan in the window and turned it on, but it only seemed to blow the grit around.

“Don’t you have to be at the Medieval Festival?” he said as he helped Deirdre pull a table away from the wall.

She grabbed a chair in each hand and swung them into place. “Just on the weekends.”

“Are you sure? It’s not like I paid you enough to do all this. I don’t want you to miss out on making some money.”

She dusted off her hands. “With this heat, there isn’t much at the festival to miss. People with sunstroke aren’t the best tippers.” Her voice grew quiet. “Besides, it’s not me you need to worry about.”

Deirdre glanced at a corner, and Travis followed her gaze. So someone had come to the saloon after all.
Travis sighed, then approached the small table in the corner.

“Max, you should be home. What are you doing here?”

Max grinned his hound-dog grin. “I wasn’t sure you could handle the place on your own, Travis. So I thought I’d come down and make sure everything was all right.” His expression tightened into a grimace, and he gripped his right wrist. The hand was mummified in white bandages.

“Max …”

“It’s all right, Travis. Really.” Max unclenched his fingers from his wrist. “I just … I just didn’t want to be home by myself.”

Travis drew in a breath, then nodded. It was when Travis was alone that he heard the burnt man’s words most clearly. But the pain written across his partner’s usually cheerful face troubled him. Somehow, Max’s hand had been badly burned when he touched the man in black. By the time they got him to the Castle County clinic his entire palm had blistered. Now sweat sheened Max’s face, but despite the heat he was shivering. He was feverish—he needed to rest.

Or was there something else that might help Max? An idea came to Travis, along with a memory. He saw Melia, huddled in a blanket outside the heap of rubble that had been the White Tower of the Runebinders. Falken had made a brew for Melia, and Travis remembered how it had eased her shivering.

He glanced at Deirdre. “I’ll be back in a minute. I have … I have to get something.”

Deirdre met his gaze, then nodded. Max only stared into space.

Travis headed for the back room, then bounded up a steep staircase to his apartment above the saloon. The long, narrow room was stuffy; heat radiated from the pressed-tin ceiling. Travis moved to a scuffed bureau, leaned against it, and shoved it away from the
wall. He stuck a finger into a knothole in one of the wall’s rough-cut pine boards, then with a tug pulled free a section of the board. Beyond was a dark space.

Travis reached into the cubbyhole and pulled out a tightly wrapped bundle. He rose, set the bundle on the tarnished brass bed, and unrolled it. Inside were a pair of mud-stained breeches, a green tunic patched in half a dozen places, a silvery cloak, and a stiletto with a single crimson gem set into its hilt. Travis brushed his fingers across the road-worn garments. It seemed a lifetime ago he had worn them, although it was only months.

He reached into the pocket of his tunic and drew out a handful of leaves. They were dry and brittle now, and a darker green than the day he had plucked them in the cool shadows of a Tarrasian Way Circle, but even as they broke, a sweet, sharp fragrance rose from the leaves. On the road to Calavere he had picked these for makeshift toothbrushes. He had another use in mind for them now.

Travis kept two of the leaves, slipped the others back into the pocket of his tunic, rolled up the bundle, and returned it to its hiding place. Then he headed downstairs.

Deirdre sat on a stool, strumming a quiet song on her mandolin. Max still slumped at a nearby table, his eyes half-closed, although whether it was music or pain that was causing him to drift wasn’t clear. Travis headed for the bar, crumbled the leaves into a coffee mug, and filled it with hot water.

Deirdre looked up as she played. “Isn’t it a little warm out for tea?”

“It’s not tea. Not exactly, anyway.”

He let the leaves steep for a minute, then carried the mug to his partner.

“Hey, Max. I’ve got something for you to drink.”

Max blinked, then his eyes focused on Travis. He grinned, but it was a weak expression.

“Dr. Sullivan said I’m not supposed to have alcohol. But I suppose I could make an exception for a single malt.”

“It’s not Lagavulin, Max. Now go on—drink it.”

With slow movements, Max accepted the mug and brought it to his lips. He took a tentative sip, glanced up with an expression of surprise, then drank the rest. He set down the cup. As he did, a trace of color crept into his cheeks, and his shivering eased.

Max wiped his mustache with his unbandaged hand. “Thanks, Travis. I feel … better.”

Travis nodded and picked up the mug, some of the tightness gone from his stomach. Max was still hurt, but at least his eyes had lost their too-bright glaze.