Brown eyes set deep. A habit of smiling that didn't involve the eyes at all. He looked up when they came in. His gaze went to Sia first. One of those quick assessments practiced cataloging.
And then to Jack, and the smile appeared. Too wide, too easy. Jack Marorrow. He spread his hands on the counter like a preacher welcoming. "It's been a while.
Need cartridges," Jack said. "40 caliber and salt 5 lbs, of course. " Of course, Voss didn't move right away. He was still looking at Sia, not learing, more clinical. The way a man looked at something he was trying to value. "And who your companion getting cartridges and salt," Jack said.
Voss looked at him for a beat, then smiled again. The smile recalibrating slightly, becoming something warmer and more performative. Right, of course, he turned to pull the cartridges. Seiya moved along the shelves, looking at things, taking inventory. Jack watched Voss's hands while they worked and watched the room in his peripheral.
Habit, the kind that didn't turn off. He paid, took the wrapped parcels, didn't make conversation. They were almost to the door when it happened. Jack caught it from the corner of his eye. A movement in the shadows at the far end of the counter.
A figure stepping back, stepping away from Voss, like they'd been leaning in close together and had heard the door and moved apart. He turned his head slowly. The figure was already half into the back room, but he'd seen enough. That build, that particular way of carrying the shoulders hunched forward like a man always braced for weather or trouble. That dirty straw beard creed gone in a second into the back.
Door closing quietly. Jack looked at Voss. Voss was watching him. And the smile this time was different. Thinner, more careful.
The smile of a man who'd noticed being noticed and was deciding what to do about it. "You come back anytime," Voss said smoothly, easily, like nothing had happened. "Always good to have your business. " Jack said nothing. And picked up the parcels, walked out the door. On the street, Seiya fell into step beside him.
She'd seen it. He could tell from the way she was walking, slightly faster, slightly more alert, energy coiled. Don't say it yet, he said quietly. I wasn't going to say anything. You were.
She said nothing for a few steps. Then lower. Who was in the back Creed? She absorbed this one beat. Two Voss is connected to the men who brought me.
Looks like, which means you weren't chosen for a debt. He kept walking. No, they reached the horse. Jack untied the res, stood there a moment with his hand on the saddle, looking at the street, at the town at the end of this ordinary day that had turned into something else. You were chosen because of who you are, Sia said, not asking.
Working it out. Because having me at your place gave someone a reason to come. Jack put his boot in the stirrup. That's what it looks like. She mounted up behind him without a word.
And they rode out of redstone into the white afternoon sun. And neither of them spoke for a long time. The valley opened ahead, red and enormous and indifferent. The kind of place that didn't care what you just realized. That kept being itself regardless.
Jack thought about what Creed had said. Depth settled. Except it wasn't, was it? It was something else entirely. Something Voss had arranged, something Creed had delivered on.
Some larger shape that Jack couldn't see the full edges of yet. He thought about Seiya behind him on the horse, her hands not quite touching his sides, her weight separate and contained, giving him no more of herself than she had to. He thought about her name, about her father's name, a hoot. He'd seen it on those maps. He was certain now.
He'd been turning it over for a week, matching it against memory, and it locked into place. Apache territory, southern Shurikawa band, a leader the army had marked in red, which meant a void, which meant significant, which meant the kind of man who had enough weight behind him. That even the cavalry measured twice before moving, which meant Sia wasn't just a woman Creed had grabbed. She was someone. She was more than someone.
And he hadn't known that when he cut those ropes, he'd done it for simpler reasons than that. For reasons that had nothing to do with strategy or politics. But he knew it now. And the shape of the trap they'd built around him began to clarify. Not just a reason to come for her.
A reason to come for him, too. Jack Marorrow, the man who knew too much. The man who'd been in the wrong canyon at the wrong moment 3 years ago, who'd seen something he wasn't supposed to see, who'd done something he hadn't been supposed to do, and had then disappeared into the valley to be quiet about it. He'd thought disappearing was enough. He was starting to think he'd been wrong about that.
That night, he waited until she was asleep. Seiya went out fast. The body doing what it did when it finally felt safe enough, giving itself over to recovery without asking permission. She lay on the cot with one arm across her chest and breathed evenly and was deep under within minutes. Jack sat by the cold hearth with the fire unlit.
He had a habit, one he'd never told anyone about, of laying out what he knew like physical objects, seeing them in space, mapping them. Creed owed him a debt. Real or claimed, it didn't matter. That was the story they'd used to make this seem like an ordinary transaction. Voss was in Redstone, connected to Creed, watching, calculating.
Saiia was the daughter of a hoti, which meant she was leverage, a bargaining piece against her father, presumably against a man who had been marked on military maps as significant, a man who, if pushed hard enough, had the kind of weight to move. And Jack was what the location, the cover story, the man with enough removed history to make no one look too hard if something happened on his land. Or the witness, the man who'd been in Coyote Valley in 76 and had seen what he'd seen and hadn't reported it exactly the way they'd wanted it. It reported and had then disappeared, but hadn't disappeared enough. Either way, he was part of something he hadn't agreed to.
He got up, moved to the window. The desert outside was silver and black in the moonlight, enormous, still the ridge empty. The valley going back to its own business, as if men and their arrangements were a minor interruption. He stood there, that old habit, 5 minutes, maybe 10, not looking at anything somewhere else. He was back in a canyon he hadn't wanted to go into.
He was 29 years old and he had a contract and an order and a map and a brother riding three positions back who trusted him to read the ground right. He was looking at a set of tracks in those ochre dust and knowing knowing the way you knew things in your bones before your brain caught up. That something was wrong with this picture. That these weren't the tracks of fighters. That the width of the stride was wrong.