Three in the morning was the busiest hour for the solitary saloon in Barepeaks. The bar was nestled in the shadows of the two mountains that gave the small town its name; and it was quite obviously the main attraction of the whole Eastern Skiff Plain. However, this was not a place for tourists; it was a land of hard-worked cattle drivers, justice-chasers, and occasionally, those escaping the law. In other words, the town reeked with shecoonery.
No place exuded this chaotic energy more so than the Valley Point Saloon. Drinks were served until the sun rose, and upbeat music rang through the rafters to keep the nightlife alive. Around tables full of whiskey and discarded pistols, townsfolk chattered away, trading tales of the Skiff Plains, of distant worlds, and of the hot gossip floating around the local planet clusters. The owner of the bar traveled around each table, handing out more drinks and, for an extra price, secrets.
In the corner near the door, Ashley “Bog-Trotter” Gaines pattered away at his latest ragtime jam on the piano. He was in the Valley Point every other night to make a bit of oof, in hopes of affording another gun to wear on his hip. His cousin was the owner of the bar, so he had full access to the couple of instruments in the room. It was all thanks to his cousin that he had this chance to be himself.
Lord knows he needed it.
The capital planet, Lutose, was certainly a charming place, full of beautiful people and beautiful concepts – hell, Ashley had even lived just down the street from Prince Nodus-Tollens himself! – but the buildings reached high into the sky, and a smog that was supposed to be eco-friendly smothered the streets. He had felt trapped, and nothing could free him but the endless miles of barren dirt and dry grasses of the Skiff Plains.
Ashley finished a heart-racing riff and took a breath as he sat back on his old stool. The tables of cowboys closest to the piano lifted their glasses and cheered his name. He never thought he’d enjoy hearing men call out that word, but out here he could be himself. Those drunk bastards didn’t care who he was, as long as he gave them a song and a bar fight once in a while.
His cousin made his way over to his corner and smiled.
Quinn “Songbird” Hardy loomed over the bar patrons, looking like an odd, half-human half-geode hybrid, what with his opal-colored skin. His limbs were awkward and gangly, his black hair hung in his dark eyes, but he had this cheerful smile full of sharp teeth that pulled folks in, and he really was just a big hopeless romantic under all the intimidating stature. Most of the time, folks could forget that he was half Wyrd, which gave him a tap into living creature’s minds. He had unparalleled influence in Barepeaks thanks to the dirty mysteries that everyone in town held; but even so, Quinn took over the bar and wasn’t too malicious with his knowledge of the townsfolk, so the frontier eventually accepted him as one of their own. Quinn’s influence had given Ashley the chance to make the change he needed to live his best life.
“Yer getting dangerously good with that thing, Ashley,” Quinn drawled. He puffed his cigarillo and leaned against the top of the piano. “One’a these days yer gonna make my customers dance till they drop, and where will my business be then?”
Ashley laughed, took his hat off, and ran a hand through his long brown hair. “You know just what to say to make a man blush, don’t ya, Quinn?”
“Oh, ya know I’m just practicing on ya. Wouldn’t wan’ta make a fool ah myself when the Prince finally decides ter pay ol’ Barepeaks a visit.”
“Yer still on that chap callin’?” Ashley took his pink metallic shades off to hook them in his leather shirt, “I can’t see ya gettin’ on that anglomaniac before ya cash in on life. Ya know he ain’t gonna come ‘round these parts. We may be desolate, but we be doubling as the nicest neighborhood in the cluster. He’s more concerned with dispelling the war between Rannygazoo and The Louche. You an’ I both know those clowns ain’t stoppin’ a battle on their own.”
Quinn huffed. The thick smoke from his cigarillo clouded around his face and dispersed into the rafters. Behind him, some drunk cowboys hollered at each other over a game of Faro. Guns were playfully drawn, but nothing came of their casual threats.
“No need ter be close-fisted about it.” Quinn sighed and leaned more heavily on the piano. It squeaked under his weight but held sturdy like the many times before. The smoke was down to its butt, so he let it sizzle out on the piano lid, right next to all the other char marks from nights before. “A man can dream about settling down with the handsome prince-ambassador of the seven-planet super cluster, can’t he? I could build a little shack up on the hill outside o’ town, we could have a half dozen chickabiddies…. Tellin’ ya, Ashley, that’s the dream.”
“Sure, then ya’d live alone cause he’d be working all the time. It’s a nice thought, Quinn, but yer boy is a Wyrd who yer never gonna touch.”
Quinn’s opal skin flushed blue with embarrassment, but any debate he had planned was cut short when the doors to the Valley Point swung in sharply, and a bedraggled man stumbled in, only wearing half of his night clothes properly. He looked as if a dust devil had whacked him up a bit and left him in a gully of barbed wire. Quinn rolled his eyes, argument quickly forgotten, and leaned down to mutter in Ashley’s ear.
“Damn, the skeezick’s decided ter show his ugly mug.”
“Old Man Boone ain’t that bad,” Ashley whispered back as they eyed the man looking wildly around the saloon in every direction but theirs.
Quinn wrinkled his nose in response. “He calls ya a Gal-boy, Ashley. I ain’t gonna just sit around and let ‘im do that ter ya. Ya came ‘ere to get away from folks like him.”
“Yeah, but the old pod never notices that I overcharge him for my favors. I don’t think he knows what a favor is, considerin’ he pays to get ‘em.” He raised his hand and shouted over the din of the bodega to get the old scraggly man’s attention. “Howdy, Boone, what’s got yer game leg in a twist?”
The man turned to them and hobbled over in a panic. He brought with him a light smell from the outside. It was a little damp, surely a sign of rain to come.
“Bog-Trotter, thank the lord! Those gadabout security bots started fizzin’ out thanks ter the wet in the air tonight, and the whole fence grid lost its shock, so my cattle are all just millin’ on their own where they shouldn’t be! Yer the only one who’ll help me out!”
Ashley laughed. “That’s cause yer the only one here who fed into those gammon robot cowboys. We all think yer dumb as a dead snake fer getting some hunks ‘a metal to watch yer herd fer ya.”
“Are ya gonna help me er not, ya gump g’hal?”
Ashley stood, affixed his pink John B. hat back on his head, and straightened his tan goat fur chaps. “It’s awful late, so ya betta be payin’ me extra, ya old pod. And again, I ain’t no gal.” He flashed Quinn a smile and wink as he followed Old Boone outside. Quinn shook his head with a breathy laugh.
—
The only good thing about Old Man Boone’s cattle getting out was that there were only three left since he had installed the chucklehead’s robotic bobtail-guards. They were a finnicky bunch of mechanical bots that kept the cattle in but weren’t much good at keeping killers out. Only three heifers had managed to fight off the hungry coyotes and live to tell the tale, so by all means, getting them back into the correct field shouldn’t have been an issue.
What caused a fuss, though, was that those three ladies were some of the most coddled cattle in the Eastern Skiff Plains. Boone was too old to wrangle them anymore – that’s what he paid Ashley for – and instead, he spent his days giving those girls anything they could ever want. So, if they wanted to be free of the pen to chow down on some of the farther desert grasses, then if given the chance, by golly, they would be in those hills and they would not be moving.
That’s why it took Ashley till just before dawn to get all three back safe. Old Boone had gotten the weather proofing on the bots working about an hour in, so the electro-fence was back online, and Ashley got to walk away with an extra three hundred Constras in his pocket.
He headed back to Valley Point to help Quinn with any clean up at the saloon. They usually walked to their shacks together when Ashley played, just so cleanup went quicker, and they’d get a little extra rest before they had to get up and start their day jobs on the frontier. If the storm bank that had been rolling in from the southwest for the last few hours was any sign, they’d be needing to bring in grazing cattle and dig some new stable-trenches to keep flooding to a minimum. It’d be a bustling day, and any amount of sleep they could get would be a small blessing.
“Well, Quinn, I’ve got a bit extra chink now, Boone really don’t know how much work costs around here. That man’s all beer and skittles, and no brains. I allot upon I could treat ya to stocking some a’ the top boss whiskey fer….” Ashley lost his gusto as he ambled into the now empty saloon. Even the local Calamity Jane was absent. Usually, it took an extra hour of prodding her out the door to get her away from the saloon. Quinn was sitting at the bar counter, his rusty radio before him, blowing out muffled words and static. His cousin was cutting a figure of a man savage as a meat axe—his hands curled into fists on the counter, gaze firmly down at the buzzing radio like it had killed his best horse.
Anyone on the East side of the planet cluster knew not to scorn a Wyrd. Their psychic bonds with any and all sentient creatures could cause lasting brain damage if treated without a care that most Wyrds had. Quinn had less power than a full-blood, but if he got angry, andleft unchecked, he could still hurt the people near him. The tension in his back as he curled into himself told Ashley that some sort of dam was readying to break.
“Quinn, what’s gone on?”
Quinn, with his head hung low and breath unsteady, opened one of his fists to gesture at the radio. Ashley joined him at the bar. The spurs on his boots clinked and echoed with each step, drowning out the fuzzy words from the radio. It wasn’t until he sat beside Quinn, that he heard what it was that had gotten his cousin so skeersome.
The voice of the local broadcaster came through to him, giving a special report from the night before.
“-just tuning in, this is Kenny Kennebecker with an emergency announcement. Prince Nodus-Tollens’ body has been found in orbit around the hotel-moon Antepone. Officials are putting blame on the singer-slash-banjo-player of the band Cumber Usward, Wrox Xyloid Wormwood. Said suspect has fled the scene and his two bandmates have no knowledge of where he may have gone. If anyone has information on where the accused is, please come to the capital building on Lutose to help with the investigation.”
Ashley stared at a bottle of Wainscot Whiskey behind the counter. He found himself biting his knuckles out of stress and shock. He slowly pulled away from his hand and took a deep breath. “That Wryd was the only thing keepin’ the peace between The Louche and Rannygazoo.” he said after a bit of thought. “Ya think Wormwood was workin’ for one’a them?”
Quinn sucked in a sharp bought of air, then let it out slow and ragged. It sounded a bit like he had something in his throat keeping him from breathing all the way. “If he was he’s damn stupid. Everyone knows they still love the Prince, despite their fighting. There ain’t a person in the cluster who’d want the Prince dead.” He finally managed. Ashley nodded minutely.
Ashley’s life on Lutose had been muffled, hot, and crowded, but was also full of so many other people. Compared to the plains, where people between settlements were few and far between, he knew just how many people lived on The Capital. It was a massive planet, with a town hall the size of a metropolitan city, and six smaller planet-moons—including the Skiff Plains—that orbited it. Even tinier, less inhabited asteroid-moons were scattered about atween. The number of people who relied on a singular Prince-ambassador was enormous, but Nodus-Tollens had taken care of them all.
And now, some slum-guzzling musician had murdered him off and thrown him into orbit around one of the highest rated resort-moons in the cluster.
Quinn made a short, muffled squeaking sound at the back of his throat and buried his face in his hands. His shoulders were still tense, but Ashley wasn’t much concerned with any psychic disturbances. His cousin was distraught, yes, but it wasn’t quite anger. Not anymore at least. The man just looked defeated in the worst way possible.
Ashley could only rub Quinn’s back reassuringly and hope that things would turn out alright.
They sat there a long time – far longer than they should’ve, considering all the work that still needed to be done. The tapping of rain on the tin roof was what finally shook Ashley out of his state of numbness.
“Quinn,” he whispered. “Ya up fer working? It might get yer mind offa things.”
“I don’t want my mind offa things.” Quinn hissed, “I want… I want….”
Several gunshots resounded outside. The two of them looked to the door in surprise. The only sound was the soft twinkling of water on the roof, then Quinn gave a dangerous, low growl and prowled towards the door. Whatever he had heard with his alien senses was enough to get his mind off the assassination.
Ashley followed his cousin out of the bar only to find himself in the middle of a standoff between Quinn, Old Man Boone, and an awfully familiar, famous, man in nothing but a vest and lime green pleather pants.
“Ya gotta be the unluckiest man ter tilt on us on this here day, Wormwood,” Quinn said lowly.
The new man smiled and jutted his hip to one side. “You know me? Fans?”
Old Boone raised his laser pistol and shifted in his bow-legged stance. “I done saw you on the report from Lutose this mornin’! Yer the uppish guy who bed the prince down! How dare ya try ter hide among the willows under our roofs!”
Wrox Xyloid Wormwood shifted. His pants squeaked in the rain. Ashley unlatched the clasp on his holster carefully and quietly.
“This is a weird greeting…. Are you guys not fans of the electric banjo?” Wrox asked, his accent didn’t sound like any of the dialects of the cluster.
Ashley bristled at how unconcerned he seemed to be. He glanced at Quinn warily, only to find he was gritting his teeth so hard that he could almost hear the grinding of his cousin’s jaw.
“Yer not welcome here, Wormwood!” Quinn bit out. “Not ‘til ya do the clean thing and turn yerself in, or better yet, go cash in an’ lay yerself down in the boot yard!”
Ashley stepped forward, gun drawn at the unarmed Wrox. He tried to reign in his anger for Quinn’s sake. “Now boys,” he drawled, “ya’ll know this burg ain’t some bucket of blood kind of place. We don’t want some chucklehead’s gore tainting our streets, so Wrox,” The musician turned to Ashley at the sound of his name, his eyes were empty and dumb – not unlike those of a cat that had never felt the need to catch a mouse. “Wrox,” he said again as the man’s attention wavered quickly, “you oughta come along and answer fer what ya done.”
Wrox’s face twisted, not in refusal, or even distrust, but in confusion. He scratched at his shaved head and frowned. His shades were coated with a fine sheen of raindrops that he never tried to wipe away, or even acknowledge. “What’d I do?”
Ashley felt a hot tingling in his brain that warned of Quinn’s anger. He jumped to speak before his cousin could get a word in. “Like Ol’ Boone said, ya left our Prince cold as a wagon tire, floatin’ in orbit. That ain’t somethin’ ya can jus’ walk away from. Ya gotta go cool yer heels in the ol’ crowbar hotel.”
Wrox looked down at his feet, donned with bulky white platform shoes, now browning from muddy splash back, then back at Ashley with a pained expression. “I’ve heard a lot of words, and I’ve probably said a lot of words too, and usually I think I can figure out what they mean! I’m pretty proud of that, you know, but I’m very bad at making your words happen in my head right now. Are my heels hot? Why do I gotta cool them? What’s a crowbar?”
Quinn and Old Boone looked at Ashley with something ‘atween confusion and concern. He wasn’t sure what to make of this man who was supposedly a music god, but who didn’t know what a crowbar was. Crowbars were everywhere. In fact, the rascals of the Louche even used ‘em as weapons sometimes.
“Are ya right in the head, or are ya just a straight on goney?” Old Boone asked, and lowered his gun.
“Oh!” Wrox turned to Old Boone with a bright grin. “I have a head!”
Quinn’s face twisted, and the tingling in Ashley’s head went from a slight sting, to standing over hot, popping oil in a pan. If Ashley didn’t do something to cool him down soon, the whole town’d be in some deep brain-related trouble.
“Wrox, this is simple.”
“Ashley….” Quinn muttered.
He ignored his cousin. “Just hang up yer fiddle an’ turn yerself in. Otherwise, things’ll have to get hashed out in a much more violent kind of way, and that just ain’t worth a hill of beans.”
“Ashley.” Quinn said with more force. Ashley turned to him and lowered his gun to gesture a baffled “what?” with his hands. However, he took pause when he saw the balled-up look that twisted Quinn’s face. The stinging in Ashley’s head had vanished when the concern settled in Quinn. “Ashley, there ain’t nothing goin’ on in that barrel boarder’s head. I’m tryin’ ter- that is, ter see what he’s gone and done, but there’s just fuzz.”
Ashley looked back at the man, who was smiling at Old Boone as if he thought the man was a fan of his music, instead of pointing a gun at his head. Old Man Boone was making a fuss about politics and care for others, and Wrox was offering to do some autographs, though he used air quotes around the word as if he didn’t know what he was talking about, exactly.
“This man’s got no idea ‘bout what he’s done, cause he’s the stupidest dang man ter ever live.” Quinn said, distressed. “I can hold onto his thoughts fer only a few bed-posts before he’s already forgotten them.”
Ashley lifted his gun to Wrox again and moved closer. “Wrox, listen to me, will ya?”
Wrox turned to him with a smile. “Yeah, you funky little space cowboy?”
“Do ya understand the wrong ya have done here?”
Wrox opened his mouth, paused, frowned, then lifted a finger and started to talk. Ashley still could not place his accent, like he was from somewhere outside of the cluster, but outside visitors were very rare. “You know? I have been to like, okay, I don’t know how to count. But, like, some sort of number of planets, all night, and everyone has been kinda rude? Like, calling me a murderer? I feel like that might be an insult? I don’t know what that is. Is it a dialect? Also, ever since I threw the guy I slept with out of a window, people have been chasing me, and it’s all been very weird, and very scary.”
Ashley’s eyes widened, and he looked back at Quinn. His cousin was holding his head like he was in pain, which probably wasn’t a good sign. “Quinn?” he called out. “What’s happened?”
Quinn only groaned in response as Wrox barreled on.
“And Ayesha and Olumide won’t talk to me, apparently I’m kicked out of the band cause I killed someone? When did I have to time to do that? I had the concert at the big planet, then the rainbow-colored guy invited me up to his hotel room, and we fucked, and then some people were looking for him and I panicked, and chucked him out of the window! I didn’t have any time to kill someone!”
“Yer just a bilk hopin’ to bite the ground, ain’t ya?” Old Boone called out. “Or is yer head really just buzzard food?”
Wrox turned to him, looking pained. “I just told you, dude, I don’t know what you’re saying!”
“So yer really that dumb?” Old Boone asked, and Wrox shrugged.
Ashley returned to Quinn’s side and helped him sit down. He put his gun aside so he could hold his shoulders firmly. Wrox was too busy talking to be a threat, and Boone could deal with him for a bit while Ashley tried to help his cousin.
“Quinn, ya gotta tell me how to help, I’m at a loss, considerin’ your mind meld don’t really go both ways.”
Quinn groaned, wiped at his eyes, and sniffed. “Goddamn, Ashley, it’s bad enough he’s a damn coot, but Nodus-Tollens even took a cotton to him first. Why would he sleep around with him?” He scratched at his neck, an anxious tick, and suddenly turned to Ashley with a fire in his eyes. There was no burning in Ashley’s head, and that small fact had him quaking in his boots. Controlled anger was far scarier than any feral passion. “Give me yer gun, Bog-trotter.”
Ashley flinched back at the nickname saved for meeting strangers. Quinn hardly ever called him that, only when he failed to help at the bar when asked, and even then, it was said with exasperation, not malice. Quinn didn’t wait for him to get over his shock though. He reached for the pistol Ashley had abandoned in the mud, and Ashley had to leap at him to keep him from unlatching the safety.
“Quinn, we ain’t that kinda town! I know, I know that it’s downright infuriating, but he’s gotta answer fer his crimes at Lutose, not some Podunk desert village!” he reached around Quinn to try to get the gun back, and in their struggle, they fell to the ground in a sprawl of limbs, and in Quinn’s case, sharp teeth. Ashley’s leathers were bitten clean through, and his shoulder was most certainly bleeding, but he wasn’t about to let his cousin go and have a man for breakfast in one of the few bloodless towns in the Skiff Plains.
Quinn growled like beast and Ashley was stricken with how inhuman it was, out of everything that Quinn was. “Bog-trotter I’m gonna kill him! He’s got ter go, it’ll be waste of a bullet not ter!”
“Ya ain’t that kinda man, Quinn, I know ya!” Ashley cried when he managed to pin Quinn down and hold the arm with the gun away from them both. “I know ya, and yer anything but a killer. I’m sorry, Quinn, but I can’t let ya do this!”
Quinn was crying—pink streams of tears traced his cheekbones, painting his already colorful skin with a rosy damp—and his body went limp with defeat. “He deserves it, Ashley.” He whimpered. “He shouldn’t get ter be above snakes. Not even the worst criminal we’ve had here has done somethin’ like this.”
Ashley stroked Quinn’s hair and nodded. “I know, I know, but what he’s done effects everyone in the Cluster, not just us. This is capital business, not jus’ ours. Ya gotta look at the whole picture, Quinn.”
“I don’t wanna.” He sobbed. “I hate you, I want him dead.”
“Are you guys, like, having a moment or something? Cause that looks… really weird from this angle.” Wrox chimed in. He seemed to have confused Old Boone until he stopped paying him any attention and was now goading them to be noticed.
Quinn shifted under Ashley, a safety latch clicked, and with a bang, Wrox Wormwood crumpled. Ashley had lessened his grip just enough for Quinn to get a shot in, and though it wasn’t a killing blow, the wound in his thigh seemed to leave him immobile. He grabbed at his leg in his rumpled state and stared at them in shock and abject terror.
“Ow?” he said, as if he were more offended than in pain. “That was rude? What did I do?” Indeed, he was more offended than anything. “Whatever happened to like, cowboy hospitality? That’s a thing, right? Geez, this whole dimension is so mean. Frankly, I’m sick of it. This is just like that ditch I woke up in three years ago. Hot, painful, and full of things that want to kill me for no reason! Except, now I’m wet too, cause water is falling from the sky and it’s gross. You are all gross.”
Wrox grabbed hold of something unknown above him. His fingers vanished in the air, then he pulled down and an awful tearing sounded through the street, more bone-rattling than any thunder.
Instead of empty space around Wrox, was now a gaping hole of strange light that pulsed and quivered in a way that space never should. Wrox was enveloped in the strange light, then it snapped shut and Wrox was gone with it.
Ashley could only gape at the space the man had once sat. Old Man Boone dropped his gun in the mud, and Quinn had gone tense beneath him.
“What in tarnation….” Old Boone muttered. He turned to Ashley as if he’d have any answers. “Gal-boy, ya wanna let on what just happened?”
“He’s… he’s not a gal….” Quinn murmured. He was lookin’ out of fix, and a little sick. “Ashley, where’d that old scratch of a man go?”
“Quinn, I… I ain’t never seen anything like that. But I’m reckonin’ that that there rip of a man ain’t from anywhere around here.”
Quinn shook, but there was no anger in the air. No, this was harsh grief all over again. Ashley eased off of him and tried to hold out a comforting hand, but Quinn slapped him away.
“He got away, and it’s all yer fault, Ashley!” he pointed a greenish finger at him like a mother scolding a child. “Yer still so wrapped up in that damn Lutose hospitality bullshit, The Skiff Plains ain’t an apple pie order kinda place, we don’t bother with those surly laws of the capital, that’s why we all moved out here in the first place!”
“We don’t kill folks here, Quinn, that ain’t what we do!” Ashley bit back.
“Not recently, but if we decide we don’t like the cut of a man’s jib, we are free ter do what we please with him. Maybe yer too much of a yankee ter live out here.”
Ashley’s heart plummeted. If the hurt he felt was clear on his face, Quinn acted like he didn’t see it, or didn’t care. He just turned and headed for Old Man Boone, and spoke quietly with him, towering body tilted harshly down to reach Boone’s ear. Ashley’s body wouldn’t respond for a long while. It wasn’t until Quinn headed back towards the bar, that he was able to turn and call out to him.
“I’ll make this right, Quinn.” Quinn paused, but did not turn to look at him. He still held Ashley’s gun in his hand, loosely, like he’d given up on life. “I’ll go up to Lutose. Tell them what happened, what he said, and I won’t come back till I’ve helped them get him back and behind bars. I mean, I’ve tracked lost cattle across the frontier, how… how different could this be?”
Quinn’s shoulders tensed, and he quickly turned and walked up to him, using his height to intimidate. The anger in his eyes but not in his head made Ashley feel very, very small. He shoved the gun to Ashley’s chest hard and growled.
“Ya kill him, Ashley. Ya saw what he did, a jail ain’t gonna hold him. Ya find him, ya kill him, then you bring his corpse back fer Lutose’s laws and bullshit. If ya can’t do that, then don’t bother returnin’. Ya may be the biggest toad in the puddle when it comes to bronc bustin’ and wrangling, but if ya don’t have the heart, yer not gonna survive out here, and I ain’t gonna protect ya no more.”
With a huff and another wipe at his teary eyes, Quinn stalked back to his bar and slammed the door shut. Old Boone had gone off down the road to the stables, and so Ashley was left standing in the street alone. He clutched his pistol to his chest like a lifeline, and squeezed his eyes shut to try to quell the wobbling of his lip. Far above him, past the morning drizzle and grey cloud cover, past thousands of miles of space, loomed the capital planet Lutose, and his only foreseeable future.
Ashley hadn’t stepped foot on Lutose in years. The city was tall and bustling, and there were simply too many trees. He had forgotten how thick the foliage was within the crystal dome that protected the city from the magma sea covering most of the planet. The air was heavy with the scent of the juicy, pink fruit that hung from the trees, and people nodded to him as he passed them on the street.+
It was completely different from the arid Skiff Planes, and Ashley was out of fix. The quaint shops lining the street leading towards city hall were almost sickeningly homely, with their scorpion baubles and wind chimes made of volcanic glass. It was hard to believe that he once called this place home. It all felt fake now, after living somewhere so rugged.
He was met with a familiar face when he stepped into the city hall.
“Ashley? Heavens to Betsy, what in Sam hill are ya doing here? Didn’t ya move to one’a the moons?”
Pansy Peaks was a coworker of his years ago, before he moved to the Skiff Plains. Like anyone who grew up in the city, she was a kind, exuberant soul, and she considered everyone’s business her own.
“I did, I’m here about the whole…” he gestured awkwardly, and Pansy nodded.
“The Wrox fiasco? Of course, of course, oh darlin’ it’s been dreadful! But I’m glad you’re here, come with me.”
“oh, uh, okay.” Ashley muttered, and slunk after her as she led him through winding hallways to a room labeled “meeting room 4”. She turned to him with a smile and waved at the door.
“You go on ahead and wait in there with the others. You need a snack? I know the Skiff Planes are a bit far from here. We got biscuits, we got some sweet tea, what do you need?”
“I’ll have some water, I guess?”
She clicked her tongue at him and shook her head. “Poor thing, must be so hot out there. can’t imagine livin’ out there with no water, must’ve been so hard.”
“I liked it…”
Pasty just chuckled. “I’m sure you did, baby girl.”
Ashley’s breath caught, and he quickly turned to open the door. His hands shook, and really only wanted to get away from this beacon of his past. He was in such a panic to escape, he hardly noticed the residents of the room until he was safe on the other side, with Patsy gone off to fetch his water, and his heart finally slowing down.
The room was bright, and several other people sat on benches facing each other. From a quick glance, it was obvious that everyone present were all from different moons. A clown from Rannygazoo sat nearest to him and greeted him with a wide, uncanny smile. Sat far away from the clown, on the bench across from it, sat a man obviously of the Louche, dressing in a fine black suit and with dark round glasses perched on his crow-like nose. The only person making conversation in the tense atmosphere was the clown, talking at a sharp-toothed girl who looked about ready to tear all their heads off.
As he stepped forward, none of the people looked at him. The clown might have, but this particular one was all mouth, party hat, and no eyes. It was hard to tell where it was looking at all.
Hesitantly, he came to the only open seat: a wide space between the clown and the girl. She did not look at him, her gaze was firmly on a kid in a hoodie across from them. The clown honked like a trumpet.
“’scuse me, can I take a load off here?”
“of course, friend!” the clown cheered, smile full of sharp teeth and nothing else. Ashley’s shoulder ached. He looked to the girl and she glowered as she gave him a once over.
“I guess. Do what you want.”
Ashley sat down with his body wound tense. He glanced across the bench, at the other three people, noting that the Louche man looked about as uncomfortable as he did. The glowering kid next to the man sunk deeper into their hoodie, and the pirate on the end of the bench seemed to be falling asleep.
“Alrighty folks!” Pansy said as she hip-bumped the door open, a tray of various drinks in hand. “Thanks for waiting, sweeties, I know its been a hard day for all of us in the cluster, us here at Lutose town hall have been scurryin’ around all night try’na get things back into sorts. We’re all in a tizzy, but we’re hoping y’all can help us out.”
“What do ye want? Information?” the pirate asked, though they did not move, and their eyes did not open. “What is there to say? He killed our prince, then popped up on my dock and asked if we wanted autographs.”
“Well, he crashet our party and curb-thtompt my betht frient!” the kid next to the pirate said. Their words were a bit garbled, thanks to the mouth full of ragged and crooked teeth they were sporting. “He thaid “oopthie” afterwart, like it was an acthident! How the fuck do you acthidentally curb-thtomp thomeone?”
Ashley scooted forward on the bench. “my cousin is half Wyrd and-”
“Now, now,” Pansy tutted, cutting him off. “I appreciate y’all bein’ so forward with your information, but you gotta wait just a moment more, I need to get the stenographer in here to take statements before we do anything else. He was taking a brunch break, see, he’ll be back soon. In the meantime, please enjoy your drinks!”
With as much gusto as she had when she entered the room, Pansy put the tray of drinks on the table between the benches and hightailed it back into the hall.
The girl next to Ashley mumbled something about “Lousy Lutose regulations,” and he had to agree. Although, it was more of an incompetent worker issue than the rules themselves.
When he tore his gaze away from the door, he realized the pirate and teen were watching him closely. He jolted in surprise of the attention, then gave a big smile to them both.
“Howdy?”
“You said your cousin is half Wryd?” the Pirate asked. “What’d they say about this?”
“Well, he said this Wrox guy’s head was just fuzz. Y’all know how the Wyrd can know other’s thoughts and feelings, and this guy had nothin’,” Ashley explained. The others exchanged some tense glances.
“So he can block his thoughts? No one has that tech yet.” Said the Louche man. The girl next to Ashley nodded in agreement.
“Ain’t that,” Ashley shook his head. “he said that he could grab some thoughts, but they were swept away as soon as they were conjured. Wryds can tell when someone’s idea has been forgotten, ya know, and this guy couldn’t hold a concept to save his life.”
“Ye want us to believe that we be workin’ with a certified idiot?” the pirate asked, offended. “No one that stupid could pull somethin’ like this off.”
Ashley shrugged. “I’m jus’ tellin’ what I know. Believe what ya want.”
The group fell back into silence after that. The girl beside Ashley sent a few inquisitive glances his way until he couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Ya got a problem?”
“You come from the Skiff Plains, don’t you?”
He hesitated, then nodded.
“Is that cousin of yours Quinn?”
“Ya know my cousin?”
She shrugged. “We dated before either of us came out, and I moved to Cosmacaties. He was a bit of a dick.”
“Yer from the Skiff Plains?”
She sunk lower in her seat and scowled. “I’m from a lotta places.”
“Well, it’s nice getting to know someone who knows Quinn.” He smiled, and the girl gave him a long, slow look that left him feeling put on the spot.
Luckily, he didn’t have to deal with such feelings for too long, as the door slammed open and a new woman came in with Pansy and a mousey man with a tablet following her closely. The leader adjusted her floral head scarf as if she hadn’t had time to put it on properly before being dragged over. She looked at each person in the room with a sharp glare pointed down her hooked nose, then broke into a wide grin and clapped her hands together once.
“Alrighty folks, I am so happy to see y’all here today! It’s a real shame what’s happened, but we can’t let it bring us down! We are a strong solar system, and we won’t take these hard times sitting down. It looks like we have representation from every moon, as well as me, so we can get things properly started!”
The pirate sat up and glowered. “Now, who do ye think ye are? And get what started?”
She just laughed. “Well, I’m one’a five set to hold our nations together should somethin’ dreadful happen to the prince! If you paid any attention to Lutose politics, you’d know that. But you are from Ethopain, and I know y’all out there don’t care much for our words and procedures.” She gave another sweet smile and Ashley sunk into his seat.
On one hand he wanted to point out that he didn’t know who she was either, but on the other, he didn’t want to call attention to the fact that he was considered a recent deserter of the capital. The others surely wouldn’t mind, but these Lutose folk certainly would.
“And for what we are doing, again, if you gave two flicks of interest in our dear capital’s procedures, you’d know that in a state of emergency, the Lutose council can form a militia as long as each moon is represented. Everybody knows the whole cluster doesn’t have armies. Even you Rannygazoo and Louche don’t fight with troops but with organized civil leaders and occasional riots.”
For the first time since he’d entered the room, the clown beside Ashley frowned.
“I think you’re oversimplifying things.” They said and turned to the Louche man. “Isn’t she? The rivalry between our people is way more than riots!”
The man adjusted his tie and shrugged. “Yeah, I guess…”
The clown huffed and silently pouted, and the woman paid them no mind.
“Anyways, since the cluster has no military, it is up to Lutose to organize a militia in times when it is needed. Since y’all have taken the time to come here today, it shows y’all got the drive to hunt down and bring back the man who’s caused all this trouble, so y’all are the newest capital-militia of Lustose and fellow moons!” she and the other two Lutose folk gave a round of applause. The man quickly returned to taking notes on his tablet, even though no one was speaking.
“We didn’t agree to be your army.” The Louche man said.
“Don’t think of it as an army! Obviously, you will be compensated very nicely once you return with the criminal!”
“There’th no way,” the teenager muttered with a scowl. “I don’t work for politicianth.”
“Oh, well Mark, could you show our resident Kentspelk just how much they could be making if they bring Wrox in?”
The man with the tablet tapped it a few times then turned it to face them all. The numbers across the screen were hard to ignore.
“This is the base pay for all of your time. To whoever is the one to bring in Wrox, we have much more.”
“Why do ye have that much money lyin’ around? Why not use it to help those in need?” the pirate asked.
The woman just smiled. “If we did that, then we wouldn’t be able to pay our militia in case of emergency.”
There were better thing to do with that much money than save it for “just in case” but if Ashley got it, then he could just go and do what should be done. He could upgrade Quinn’s bar, maybe get them a proper ice chest, even. He’d get so much money even if he wasn’t the one to bring Wrox in, as long as the guy got what was coming to him, he could go home, and he’d have plenty of money to get Quinn anything he wanted.
He stood up and held out his hand to the woman. “I’m in. I’ve tracked cattle ‘cross the Skiff Plains, I can track a motherfucker in lime green spandex. How’re we doing this?”
He looked to the others and saw them deliberating with themselves. The Louche man was giving Ashley a very complicated expression that he decided to ignore. Quinn’s ex and the clown quickly stood to announce their agreement with Ashley, and not long after, the others gave in. All of them had to be in agreement, and they all wanted to know how that much money would feel like.
The woman smiled brightly. “Well folks,” she pushed a button on the wall and a screen dropped from the ceiling. It showed a picture of some very advanced technology that Ashley could barely comprehend. “Glad y’all are in agreement, cause this is gunna be a doozey of a mission!”
As she went into the specifics of the mission, talking about space time, hyperspace travel, and a whole slew of other things that went over Ashley’s head, he hoped dearly that this wouldn’t take too long.
He missed Quinn.
He missed home.
Wheeler Graye 