Clear despite everything they'd clearly been through. Not frightened, not empty, burning, debt settled, Creed said. He turned his horse. The other two fell in behind him without a word, and they rode back the way they came, and the red dust swallowed them, and they were gone. Jack stood there.
The woman stayed on her hands and knees in the dirt, breathing, waiting to see what happened next, not asking, not pleading, just watching him the way a hawk watched something from a high place. Assessing, deciding, he walked to the cabin, came back with his knife crouched down in front of her. Her chin came up immediately, a reflex like bracing. "I'm cutting the rope," he said. She didn't answer, but she held her wrists out barely, just enough.
He cut through the raw hide in two passes. The binding fell away. She pulled her hands back and pressed them together against her chest, not rubbing the skin, just holding them like things she was reclaiming. The bruising underneath was deep purple going to black. Multiple days, maybe more.
He stood back up, gave her room. She got to her feet on her own, slow but steady. She was lean in the way people were lean when they moved a lot and rested rarely. 22 maybe the age that looked young until you saw the eyes and then didn't anymore. There was a cut along her temple already scabbing a bruise along her jaw.
Her clothes were a patchy and they were good quality. Jack noticed not worn, not patched. The stitching was careful, deliberate, the kind of thing a woman wore who had people who cared what she wore. She looked at the cabin, looked at the valley, looked at him. "I'm not staying," she said.
Her English was clear, accented, but clear. "You'll die if you walk out that direction," Jack said. "Not a threat, just the truth. Heats 40 m before you hit water. " She looked at the horizon like she was calculating it. "North Trail," he added.
"You'd run straight into whoever those men work for. " She looked at him again. The burning thing in her eyes didn't go out. If anything, it got sharper. What makes you think you're better than them? It wasn't a question.
Nothing, he said. And for some reason, that was the right answer. She didn't agree to stay. She didn't say anything at all. She just turned and walked toward the cabin door and went inside.
Like, she decided on her own terms, in her own time, and didn't require his permission for it. Jack picked up the bucket again, went back to the well. What little water was left wasn't going to help two people much, but it would get them through the day. And after that, he'd figure out the next thing. That was all a man could do out here.
Figure out the next thing. Her name was Sia. She told him that night when the fire was low and the coyotes had started up somewhere out on the flats, she'd woken up from a few hours of sleep on his brother's old cot. Sat up, looked around the room like she was confirming she was still alive and then said it without preamble. Seiya, he was sitting by the hearth.
He'd been sitting there a while, not quite sleeping, not quite thinking, just existing in the space between the two. Jack," he said. She looked at him for a moment, then looked at the fire, then looked at the cup he'd left on the stool beside the cot. She picked it up and drank. The fire light caught the line of her jaw.
The careful set of her shoulders, the way she held the cup, with both hands still, both wrists still tender, drinking slowly because her lips were cracked and each swallow cost something. He'd boiled the water, added a little dried herb his brother had kept in a cloth pouch in the old kit. Something Dany had learned from a medicine woman outside Tucson. Something for fever, something for the body resetting itself after hard things. Jack didn't know if it worked.
He'd made it anyway. You were a soldier, Seiya said. He went still was the marks. She glanced at his hands, the calluses. The particular way he sat.
Spine straight even in rest, weight on both feet even when seated. The rifle propped exactly within reach but not pointed. The habits a man couldn't entirely unlearn. And you knew those men wrote a contract with Creed once. That's not the same as knowing someone.
No, he agreed. It's not. She set the cup down, looked at him directly. Why did you cut the ropes? Seemed like the thing to do.
Most men wouldn't. He didn't argue with that because she was right and arguing with things that were right was something he'd given up. The fire popped outside. The wind moved. That hot, dry nighttime wind of the desert that wasn't really cool so much as just slightly less hot.
The canvas over the window shifted, stars visible through the gap, white and hard and very far away. Where were they taking you? Jack asked. Her jaw tightened just slightly. Somewhere I wasn't going to walk away from.
Do you know who sent them? She looked at the fire for a long moment. Then not yet, which meant she had guesses, which meant she was already working on it. Which meant, and he filed this away without making anything of it, that her mind was moving fast even when her body was still. He didn't push.
It wasn't his business. Or it hadn't been until about 6 hours ago. Anyway, sleep more if you can, he said. He stood up, moved his bed roll to the floor near the door, out of her way. Not a statement, just practical.
Well sort out the rest in the morning. She watched him settle, watched him pull the wool blanket up, then looked back at the fire. He was almost asleep when she spoke again, quiet, almost to herself. You're not what I expected. He didn't open his eyes.
What did you expect? A pause, something worse. He thought about that for a while. Then he slept. She was a fast healer.
That was the first thing. The second was that she didn't wait to be given things. She found them. The clay jug he kept water in. She found it and filled it without being asked.
The needle and thread in Danyy's old kit. She used it without a word to patch the torn seam of her sleeve sitting cross-legged on the cot with the kind of small exact movements of someone who'd learned to do things properly from the time they were very young. The third was that she watched everything not in a suspicious way. Or not only that, more like someone who was used to read to reading the world because the world didn't always speak plainly. She watched the way the light moved through the window in the morning.