A Stillness of the Sun (Crowmakers: Book 1): A Science Fiction Western Adventure Read online

  Widow Howland did turn, then, a single brusque sweep of motion that ended with gnarled hands on bony hips and icy eyes fixed on Vincent's face.

  "T'would rather sleep on the street? Or perhaps move thyselves beneath some other roof?"

  Vincent stared back at Widow Howland. He set his jaw and drew breath.

  The widow's glance flickered to Kellen before returning to Vincent. She spoke no words, and the hard line of her mouth never unfroze.

  Vincent hesitated. His shoulders dropped. He deflated like a sail abandoned by a taunting breeze.

  Uneasiness trailed across the back of Kellen's neck.

  Vincent would fix this. He'd make it right.

  "No ma'am." Vincent's gaze clung to the Widow's face. "Five cents?"

  Kellen's breath caught. Vincent was surrendering—without anything resembling a real fight. She tried to think of words of her own to speak, but nothing came.

  "Five." The Widow shrank a little, let out a sigh and took her hands from her hips. "Count thyself fortunate I'm not hard-pressed enough to require more. Dost thou think I know not how difficult life is? Do I appear to be living richly?"

  Without waiting for an answer—like either of them would've dared to give one—the Widow turned back to stirring her stew. The firelight illuminated her face, casting shadows under her eyes and throwing every weary line around her mouth into hard relief.

  The bread in Kellen's hand was definitely no longer warm. When she bit into it, it tasted faintly of sawdust.

  Supper passed in silence. Kellen ate every bite, shoveling spoon from bowl to mouth and back again, but she remembered chewing none of what little there was to chew. When she and Vincent left the table, her stomach was almost as full as she'd hoped, but her chest was empty. They climbed down the back stairs into the dank gloom of the cellar.

  Enough light remained to see Vincent cross to the far wall and pry loose a brick near the floor. Kellen watched his crouched form and hunched shoulders.

  "Will it be enough?" Kellen asked.

  "I don't know." Vincent straightened. In his hands he clutched a ragged burlap bundle. "If it doesn't freeze again, maybe."

  Ice meant no ships made it upriver from the ocean to the harbor—and no ships meant no work.

  Vincent unfolded the scrap of cloth. Only a few coins whispered against each other as they settled in his palm. Kellen couldn't count, but she knew not enough when she saw it.

  "Why?" she asked.

  Vincent lifted his head and stared blankly at her.

  "Why didn't you tell her no?" Kellen held her breath.

  Vincent's face creased into a frown. He didn't answer right away.

  "What choice did I have?" he finally said. "We need to be here."

  Kellen frowned back at him. "You didn't even try to argue with her. You could've—"

  Vincent crumpled the burlap, coins and all, into his fist.

  "You need to be here." He stepped forward and pressed his face close to Kellen's. "You need to be here and not out in the streets, not in the filth of Hell Town. You think it's easy? If I only had to worry about me, maybe, but not trying to take care of both of us."

  The fury in Vincent's voice drew tears into Kellen's eyes. Every ounce of fight bled out of her.

  Vincent looked into her eyes, and the lines of his face softened. He stepped closer yet, butted his forehead against Kellen's, and cupped his free hand behind her neck.

  "We'll figure something out."

  That only made her eyes tear up even more. Kellen pressed her lips together and didn't say anything more.

  In the heavy, cold quiet of the cellar, Vincent counted out coins for Widow Howland and set them aside for morning. He didn't show Kellen how many coins remained when he returned the ragged little bundle to its hiding place. Then, because there was nothing else to be done in the cold and the dark and the emptiness, they stripped down to the long shirts they slept in and went to bed.

  It was too cold at first to do more than huddle together on the flimsy, straw-stuffed mattress, with a second, equally-thin mattress hauled over top them as their only cover against the winter air. Then Vincent's mouth breathed hot against Kellen's neck, and he fumbled their shirts out of the way.

  Kellen wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him.

  Chapter 3

  Standing on the wharf at dawn, Vincent breathed the taunting, earthy smell of spring. That bare promise wasn't enough to drive away the despairing sensation of being always chilled, never quite warm. He was starting to believe he'd never catch a break.

  Ahead of Vincent, piers jutted like stumpy fingers into the Delaware River, of differing lengths and allowing varying amounts of water between them. The original river's edge followed, more or less, the line of Water Street, but it had vanished years ago as waterfront owners created wharves by building box-like casements and filling them with soil and stone. Over time, old wharves became solid ground on which new structures were built, and new docks and piers and ferry landings continually grew out into the water. The spot where Vincent stood had once been part of the river he faced.

  Rising over that river, the sun glowed around silhouettes of a forested island midstream and Camden on the far shore. A brisk breeze whistled in tune with the screech and cry of gulls and the creak of moored ships, spreading cold along Philadelphia's waterfront with merry abandon.

  That same wind cut through the worn fabric of Vincent's coat and nipped at his exposed wrists. The only break from the cold came from the proximity of the other wharfmen pressed together, and that break came with the stink of barely-washed bodies and hopelessness. A vague longing to be somewhere—anywhere—else crawled restlessly across the back of Vincent's neck.

  This wasn't enough. It would never be enough, but damned if he knew what he could do differently. If he and Kellen both got enough day work, if they kept scraping together their coins and not spending them, then—

  Then what? That's what they'd been doing for nearly half their lives. It hadn't gotten them anything except a few years older. Maybe that was all he ever should have hoped for—survival. Who was he to think there could be anything more? Vincent glanced up at the gulls wheeling in the freezing sky and hated them because they could fly.

  Vincent shaped up at the lower wharf most days, along with more or less the same gathering of hopeful workers. Anglicans and Lutherans and Catholics, Blacks and Dutchmen and Lithuanian—they all huddled on the same patch of packed gravel, they all stood straighter when the foremen came to hire their day workers, and they all hoped to end that evening with a coin more than they'd had in the morning.

  Vincent didn't call any of those other men friend. As a rule, he just plain didn't like other people very much, and looking at those other hapless, hopeless men was too much like looking into a mirror. Being accepted as one of them was too much like giving up hope that he'd ever be anything else. And maybe it was time to give up that stupid hope, but the thought didn't make him feel any more like smiling or talking to anyone else. He pulled his coat sleeves down to cover his freezing fingertips and took his place with the rest of the dock men.

  Someone jostled Vincent from behind.

  Vincent tensed. As the someone moved past, Vincent saw that while the man was as tall and nearly as broad as Ripley, his hair was a darker shade of blonde. Vincent relaxed. Jan Bosch wasn't the friendliest of men, but he was no Burke Ripley.

  Ripley would be here somewhere—he nearly always shaped up down here, too. Vincent resisted the urge to look around, because appearing nervous was a sure way to draw unwanted attention to yourself. But he knew that somewhere nearby, Ripley would be standing with his massive arms crossed over his chest, eyes half open and heavily lidded like those of a sleeping beast waiting only for the opportunity to wake and lash out.

  Bosch, by comparison, was apparently not content to even pretend patience. He pushed forward through the clump of men a few more steps, using his size to make other men move. Then he ran up against William Jen
nett. Jennett, whose hair was almost as pale as Ripley's, looked back as Bosch shoved up behind him. He did not smile.

  Vincent edged a little to his right. No point in being too close if fists started flying.

  Jennett stood a head shorter than Bosch and was more wiry than broad. Just as his hair was more blonde than Bosch's, his eyes were also more blue. He turned those eyes toward Bosch, and Bosch froze under Jennett's icy stare as abruptly as if he'd come up against a larger man.

  "You can wait." Jennett snapped the words out like physical blows. "Just like the rest of us."

  Bosch stared at Jennett a moment and then pulled himself up to his full height and leaned forward, looming very effectively over Jennett.

  "Stop," a quieter voice said.

  Both Bosch and Jennett turned their heads slightly, although they kept their eyes on each other. Vincent followed the voice's source to Viktor Kalvis, a middle-aged Lithuanian with scraggly blonde hair and hard lines etched around his blue eyes.

  "You want to behave as children?" Kalvis eyed the two younger men with a long-suffering expression. "Go home and play under your mama's watch. The rest of us, we need this work. Don't bring your trouble here."

  To Vincent's right, someone laughed, a gritty and gleeful sound. Vincent glanced that way, just one quick look, and then fixed his gaze straight ahead again.

  Alvie Fox stood only a few paces to Vincent's side, with just three men crammed into the space between them. Fox, as lanky and squint-eyed as his namesake animal, generally rode in Ripley's wake and hoped for a fight. Vincent didn't glance around to see if Ripley was also close, not quickly, not at all, not even the slightest turn of the head to suggest he might be looking. No borrowing trouble.

  In the city at Vincent's back, the church bells started in, tolling the hour with deep chimes that nearly out-rang the clank of ship bells.

  Not too many ship bells today, Vincent noticed, as the foremen stomped to a halt in front of their would-be crews. That meant not all, and possibly not even many, of the waiting men would find work. Vincent hoped fervently to be one of those called.

  "Listen up," one of the foremen called out. The other foremen, four of them altogether, stepped up. All the waiting dock men stood straighter and puffed out their chests, angling to get themselves directly in sight.

  All four of the foremen started in at once. Not a one did more than barely raise his voice, but everyone fell silent and listened as they called crews for the day.

  When the foremen walked away again with the chosen dockers trailing behind them, Vincent stayed where he was, along with the others who hadn't been called.

  No pay for today, then. Along with most of the rest, Vincent would come back at midday in case a foreman needed more men. He didn't hold much hope for that, but "not much" was still better than "none at all." The lack of work wasn't any foreman's fault—they couldn't help the number of ships that made it to port on any given day. And the Widow's need to charge more room and board wasn't really her fault, either, although Vincent could let himself hate her a little—whatever hardships she faced, they didn't include the possibility of letting someone you loved be turned out into the streets to be raped or murdered.

  Sometimes Vincent understood Burke Ripley's inclination to simply bloody whatever stood in front of him.

  Maybe Kellen had gotten hired, at least. Vincent hated hoping for that almost as much as he'd have hated her not getting hired. She was his to take care of, not the other way around. She should've been able to count on him. Vincent clenched his numb fingers into fists.

  The men left behind along with Vincent shuffled feet and muttered and began to disperse. Time to go home and pray tomorrow would be different. As he passed Vincent, Viktor Kalvis coughed into hands that were bare and reddened from the cold. Kalvis didn't complain—he never did—but his nose and ears were as ruddy as his hands.

  Kalvis stopped suddenly, looked up and to his left. Other men, in the act of leaving, stopped and looked, too. A gradual wave of shifting attention and murmurs of notice rippled through the men.

  Vincent turned and looked, too.

  The cause of the disturbance turned out to be a well-dressed man standing alone at the foot of the street, holding the reins of his horse. The man wore a cropped riding coat and dark breeches tucked into boots. Gloves, too—Vincent's fingers twinged in envy. The man's hair swept away from his face in arrogant waves. He held his hat tucked under one arm. Everything around him—the hazy shades of gray sky, the weathered storefronts and warehouses, the worn clothing of the sorry lot of men facing him—seemed drab and faded, as though this one man was a real man and all the others were ghosts.

  "Gentlemen. Good morning."

  The man's words ran rich and strong as brandy through the cold. Given the tall, straight way he stood and the way his voice rang clear through the rumbles of the day workers before him, Vincent thought the man was used to being listened to.

  "I have work to offer you."

  The murmurs surrounding Vincent fell and rose again. The man lifted one hand, palm out, and the gathered workers gradually quieted.

  "I am Tucker Ellis," the man said. "And I have work for you—those of you willing to undertake it."

  It wasn't like Vincent had anyplace else to be. He edged forward with other men doing the same. His shoulders bumped against a solid bulk and rebounded. Bosch, Vincent assumed.

  Then he saw Bosch's broad shoulders and dark blonde hair a few steps ahead. A low snarl like a disturbed beast followed, and Vincent recalled Alvie Fox standing nearby—Alvie Fox, who never traveled far from Burke Ripley.

  Time to be on the far side of the pack of men moving forward toward Ellis. Vincent didn't even pause to look behind him and confirm his suspicion. He pressed past Kalvis and up alongside Bosch and Jennett.

  "Watch yourself." William Jennett turned icy pale eyes on Vincent. Then he glanced past Vincent, scowled, and faced forward without another word.

  "If you prove to be the kind of men I'm looking for," Ellis was saying, "then I can promise you jobs. Real jobs, not day work. Real pay. Meals and board. A career, perhaps."

  A bony, fair-haired youth beyond Jennett prodded a mountainous, dark-skinned man beside him and grinned. "A career. Maybe he's gonna make us lawyers. I bet that's it."

  Vincent had been thinking of less glamorous labor. Philadelphia was a free city with no slave trade, so men like Ellis would have to hire men for any variety of backbreaking lifting or digging. But career? That was an interesting choice of words.

  "Anything's gotta be better than fucking standing around on these fucking docks every fucking morning," Jennett muttered as Vincent eased around him. Bosch grunted what sounded like agreement.

  Vincent had gotten more room between himself and Ripley—and more importantly, he'd gotten Jennett and Bosch between him and Ripley—but he ran up against a thicker knot of men standing closer to the front. Vincent edged around them, too, moving slowly, losing himself in the crowd in hopes Ripley would forget who had enraged him, or that someone else would enrage him more. The smarter move would be to slip away altogether, up the steps between Water and Front streets and into the alleys before Ripley could catch up to him.

  But he wanted to hear what this Mr. Ellis had to say.

  Ellis's gaze swept the crowd before him.

  "Soldiers. I require solid, reliable men for my militia."

  Excitement and disappointment simultaneously rose and fell in Vincent's gut. It wasn't that soldiering didn't hold its appeal—Vincent sometimes watched Macpherson's Blues when they mustered to display arms. He'd only been a boy when they'd gone west to put a stop to the Whiskey Insurrection, but when they'd marched for Northampton, he'd been sorely tempted to join up. The idea of putting on a uniform and walking out of Philadelphia, on to distant places and adventures, held some appeal.

  It held a lot of appeal. But he couldn't leave Kellen any more now than he could have then.

  "Militia for what?" someone behind Vincent c
alled out.

  Ellis smiled as though the man had asked exactly what Ellis had wished him to ask.

  "Take your pick," someone in the crowd said. "Ain't like the states got any shortage of enemies."

  A rumble of agreement rolled through the gathering. Ellis spoke again without raising his voice, and they just as quickly hushed again, listening.

  "Our exact assignment will vary, depending on the need of our country."

  Vincent was distracted from the rest of Ellis's reply by the sound of shuffling feet and the grunts of men being shoved. Without moving his head, Vincent glanced to the side.

  A head taller than anyone else and broader than most, Ripley was impossible to miss. Shaggy white-blonde hair hung loose around his square face. Menace gleamed in his pale eyes.

  Those eyes were fixed on Vincent. Scrawny Alvie Fox bobbed along behind Ripley, wearing a yellowed grin.

  Vincent took one deep breath and reminded himself to move slowly—never make it look like you were running, that was the rule. Never let them sense your fear.

  Vincent's slighter frame worked to his advantage as he edged through the crowd—slowly. Patiently. Gaze fixed on Ellis and nothing else, as though Ripley's approach meant nothing and Vincent only wanted to move closer, hear better.

  "Our barracks are located just outside the city."

  Ellis's gaze swept the crowd again. Did it linger a moment on Ripley and the trouble boiling in his wake? If so, he never missed a beat in his speech.

  "You would be required to reside at the barracks. Leave might be available, but it is not guaranteed."

  And that was that. This career Ellis talked about, it wasn't for Vincent. Vincent had lingered too long, and for nothing. And now Vincent could measure Ripley's approach not only by the grunts and shuffle of people being shoved aside, but by a cold sense of doom drilling into the back of his neck.

  Vincent had worked his way very nearly to the front of the crowd. A single row of men stood between Vincent and Tucker Ellis, with his pretty clothes and fancy speech-making. Vincent stopped and stood perfectly still, staring at Ellis and listening carefully to the sounds of Ripley bullying his way through the crowd.