The Bone Corral

Previously: Bat’s job is to surreptitiously deliver an item to a cowboy playing a card game on a ship. OK terrific. But then her inside man Daniel immediately—and I mean with zero hesitation!—rats her out to the captain-slash-CEO of the ship: Nia Muto. I’m as disappointed in him as you are.

— 58 —

Batya Hull is no stranger to jobs going south real quick, but this one might’ve just set a new land speed record.

“What’s your name, stowaway?” Captain Nia Muto says.

Bat doesn’t see any point in subterfuge at this point, what with her being absolutely locked down by Poppy’s hirsute grip, and anyway she’s awful at coming up with fake names, that’s Mina’s department. “Batya,” she croaks.

“Batya,” Nia says, trying it on for size.

Bat nods, smiles, pleasant, harmless, accommodating. She glances around, tries to identify the exits. She’s in some kind of stateroom. Dark and smoky. An ornate wooden table in the middle where the card players are sitting, with a peanut gallery of crew members looming on all sides, just one grimy scrote after another. The air is thick and chewy and sour, smelling like they’ve all been cooped up in here way too long. There’s a bar along the starboard side, backed by shelves filled with Snakehair bottles. A row of large, arched windows toward the bow. A polar bearskin rug on the floor. A wall with a brass plaque that says Employee of the Month atop a few rows of photographs of various brutal faces, each one X’d out in what looks like old blood. The ceiling is low and crisscrossed with heavy beams, yet they’ve managed to cram an entire crystal chandelier in there. And in the far corner is a redwood soaking tub, where one of the sailors is unwinding while polishing a rifle scope.

(Both the chandelier and the tub were pillaged just last month in a raid on the Khamsin, the same hotel in which the Baroness Sadiya was giving birth a couple days ago.) (She finally had the baby, by the way, mother and son are doing fine.)

“She’s a two-bit courier,” Daniel is saying. He’s now within Bat’s eyeshot and she’s pleased to see he looks petrified and somehow even more hungover than before. “She came to me to, to abet with the—the malfeasance. I did my best to convince her to take her business elsewhere but she was insistent.”

“And who are you?” Nia says, still not breaking eye contact with Bat.

The kid sounds wounded. “Why, it’s me, Daniel, cap’n. Daniel Suwannakintho. Son of the late Rudy Suwannakintho, use to work the galley?”

“Charmed,” Nia says, finally giving the kid a once-over. “And why did this two-bit courier come to you of all people?”

“Because,” Bat says, trying to kick at him, “this weasel owes my organization his life.”

Daniel stumbles out of kick range. “You truly believe I’d help some outsider commit transgressions ‘gainst my beloved captain?”

“Your loyalty is very appreciated,” Nia says. “Now, let’s untangle this. You owe your life to…” She looks back at Bat. “Which organization is it?”

Bat’s getting that sick-excited feeling when things start to spiral out of control. “Never Mind Incorporated,” she mutters.

Nia smiles, turns her attention back to the kid. “You owe this one a favor, and you agreed to help her. And then you...betrayed her?”

Daniel sputters. “I, I, I—”

“You-you-you what, junior.”

“All due respect, betrayed ain’t the word I’d select. Was just trying to do right by you, hence I turned her in at my earliest convenience.”

“You broke a promise to her today, what’s to stop you from breaking a promise to me tomorrow?”

“Terror, ma’am!” he cries. “Anyways, this cunning ploy is a vow of my fidelity to you.”

Nia raises her voice to address the room. “A vow of fidelity, he says. And what value does such a vow have when it comes from the mouth of a double-crosser?”

One of the sailors perched by the bar says, “Oh I know! Is it—”

“That’s right,” Nia says, kicking Daniel’s feet out from under him. He hits the floor face-first, knocking out a couple teeth. There are a few sympathetic groans from the crowd.

“No value whatsoever,” she says.

OK, Bat thinks. Time to go. She is suddenly very eager to be on dry land, and to lose the interest of this little captain, an utterly unknown quantity aside from all the tittle-tattle about corporate disembowelments and baby flaying. Her fight-or-flight instinct is kicking in and, as usual, her preference is both fight and flight, in that order. She bites Poppy’s arm and elbows him in the kidney and it’s enough to break free but then, infuriatingly, she trips over Daniel’s stupid moaning body and falls down. Then Poppy kicks her and steps on her neck.

Nia lifts her skirt an inch and crouches down next to her. “Temper,” she says. “Tell me, who’s your delivery for?”

“Fella named…” And it now occurs to Bat that she can’t exactly recall the fella’s name. Again, that is typically her sister’s responsibility. “Desserty?”

“Dezzetti,” Nia says, getting up. She flits her fingers at her goon and he takes his boot off Bat’s neck. “That was my guess, seeing as I can smell his shat pants from here.”

Bat slowly rises to her feet and gets a better look at the quartet seated at the table. Sure enough, there’s this hombre who is more or less as Estra Maxie described him: tall, cowboy-shaped, blond braids. Also: wearing a bandolier (loaded with pretty purple asters instead of bullets) and more necklaces than necessary. He leans back in his chair and drawls, “Ain’t never sullied no dungarees, cap’n.”

“Never too late to start,” one of the other players chimes in, and Bat realizes she recognizes him: Roger Bagwell aka The Harbormaster of Fort Hook. She worked as a bodyguard at his wedding, knocked down that spooky courier Voletta as she served up the divorce papers.

Next to him sits an older gentleman, and I’m sure I’ve mentioned a few times how bad Bat is at guessing people’s ages, but this one truly baffles her. One thousand, she thinks. One thousand years old. Skin leathery and windburnt, jagged white beard and buzzcut, fishing vest festooned with hand-tied flies. Bat can almost taste the death on him, but his eyes—which are currently locked onto Dezzetti—are sharp and clear.

And the fourth player is a woman wearing white gloves and a white robe with nacre spiders embroidered around the neck and shoulders, interwoven with what look like telephone cables trailing down beneath the table. Her face is half-obscured by a veil of fine silver chains hanging to her chest. Bat has trouble focusing on her, like her eyes tear up or twitch whenever she peers in that direction.

Nia snaps her fingers to get Bat’s attention. “Kindly give me the message, dear heart.”

Takes Bat a moment to find the minuscule envelope in her vest pocket. For a second she thought it got lost during the horrid crate journey, but no.

Nia takes it, holds in between her sharp golden nails. “Curious,” she says, sidling over toward the cowpoke, her Victorian boots clip-clopping against the wooden floor. “This is precisely the size of a carrick card. Shall we open it and see?”

“Do as you please,” Dezzetti says. “I dint hire no messenger gal.”

“And yet here she is,” Nia says, standing over him now. “With a gift for you. A gift that is so very against the rules. Are you telling me you are not a sickening reprobate cheater?”

Dezzetti’s chair slams back down. “Thing is, cap’n, I ain’t got no interest in cheating. Because I dint come here to win.” He winks and then there’s a six-shooter in his hand. “I came here to take this boat as my own, and plant you in the bone corral.”

And then there’s a boom—not nearly as booming as the one from Blue Eye’s musket yesterday, but plenty loud in Bat’s opinion—and then there’s a hole in Dezzetti’s cheek and a fine pink mist floating about his blond braids.

Bat hears a spent cartridge being ejected and then a little splash. She follows the sound over to the girl in the hot tub, who is now reloading her rifle. Then she looks back to the cowboy, who gently lays his head down on the table and dies.

+++

This has been Chapter 58 of Chokeville, a novel by Josh Fireland. Chapter 59 will ship out soonish.