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."Do you remember her? Do you remember anything about this?" Kale asked."No," said Haste said before he even had time to think about it."Arden Voss did not discuss his appointments with me.""Bound in exile?" Fitch asked, squeezing his senfen."They tied her up in the woods?""Although why they didn't send her to the creature in the north…" Haste sipped his wine.Seeing Haste drink, Fitch took a drink of his own wine.Kale fought to keep himself from slapping the ass kisser out of Fitch."She's long dead," Kale said."Bound in exile? It means they chained her to a tree in the woods.Animals would have devoured her in a week.""Of course." Haste put on a look of self-satisfaction."But she's not the problem.The man in her prediction is.Soon enough, the Steel Jacks will be an asset, not a burden.Then we control everything.Increase opium pine production, increase exports.By the time I'm through, mothers will be feeding opium pine to their babies.Wealth and influence, men!"Kale knew exactly whose wealth and influence Haste was referring to — none other than Haste's.Fitch gazed down at his senfen."Most importantly, Stagwater must find faith.Under my spiritual guidance, this city will become a true city of God, the last sanctuary in these end times.""Even you don't believe that." Kale said."When you tell people the world is going to end, they tend to notice when it doesn't.""Thankfully," Haste said with a shushing gesture for both of them, "I'll be somewhere warm, managing the distribution of the opium pine.However you two run the day-to-day operations of Stagwater, I care little."Fitch put a hand on the book in front of Haste."What if Voss's seer council was right and the witch's predictions were all nonsense.What if this man doesn't actually bring destruction? Maybe we should take her words with a grain of salt.""I saw him myself when I traveled the Pheonal Path.Was I was tricked by the trance?" Haste folded his arms, and scowled at Fitch."Or are you calling me a fraud?" Haste's voice came out slightly louder that it needed to be.Fitch's face flushed."I'm not saying anything like that.Food for thought is all." He shrunk away."Our plans are near fruition now, but they're ever so fragile.This is a crucial time.We can't take chances.If the traveler returns, that's the end for him.""I'll post men on the road to the south." Kale ground out his cigar."That's what you saw in the vision, right?" Having men in the forest south of town for the next few nights meant delaying some plans of his own.He needed privacy to conduct his affairs in the woods.But sacrifices would have to be made.Kale chuckled at the double meaning.Haste nodded."First thing in the morning, then." Kale gave a stiff bow to show he was leaving, and that it wasn't up for debate.He hoped this damn five-horned drifter would come soon.Chapter 5Chuggie awoke the same way he always did — confused.A patchwork quilt of small animal furs covered him.He yanked it up over his head to block out the light.Doing so exposed his feet to the morning chill.His feet, he decided, shouldn't be quite so cold.They should be snug and warm inside their boots.He tried to remember where his boots might be.Nothing came to mind.Something dug into his back.Had he slept on a rock? He lifted himself and turned a bit.There they were; the boots that should have been on his feet.Rolling off the boots gave him such relief that he groaned like a sleepy walrus.Eyes burning and barely open, Chuggie peeked from under the blanket.Nearby Shola screamed.Everything came back to him then.He'd spent the night at Shola's Cliffside Resort.Yes, and he'd fed her plenty of wine the night before precisely so he could lie moaning in peace all morning.Perhaps she would know why he'd slept on his boots.He smelled smoke.Chuggie threw off the blanket and sprang to his feet.Flames roared as they engulfed Shola's storage shed.She swung a wet blanket at the blaze, but she was losing ground.Fighting the fire alongside her, two scarecrows tried to help her by batting at the flame.One succeeded only in setting its arms on fire.It kept trying to fight the blaze, even as the flames spread to its painted pumpkin head."Chuggie! Help!" Shola had screamed herself hoarse trying to wake him.Chuggie staggered barefoot to the shed with the fur quilt in tow.They swatted at the blaze with their blankets as scarecrows arrived with buckets of well water.Chuggie flung the water at the burning structure as quickly as the scarecrows could supply it.Smoke rose in a column.He hoped they weren't sending signals to the Stagwater sentinels.Chuggie and Shola finally managed to snuff out the fire by smothering it and throwing water on it.Chuggie examined the blackened husk of the shed.From the heap of burnt food, he pulled either a charred potato or a blackened turnip.He took a bite to see which, but he couldn't be sure.The scarecrow that had caught fire burned down to cinders.It was now little more than a smoldering stick figure stretched on the ground.A stick figure with a burnt, busted-open pumpkin head.Several other scarecrows gathered around their fallen comrade.Chuggie opened his mouth to comfort Shola when a burning scarecrow lumbered out of the forest.Its carved-pumpkin head sloughed off, broke apart on the ground, and smoldered with a smell like pie.The rest of it collapsed in the garden, a heap of crackling embers and burning flannel.A drumming of hooves thundered from behind the burning scarecrow.The sound grew like a tidal wave.A snort and then flame shot from the underbrush [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]