"The most promising acolyte left us, not out of the lesser folly of sentiment, but the greater folly of anger. Her heart was clouded, and her balance was lost, but her abilities were unmatched. Even then, we knew to watch her most carefully." –Inquisitor Amital, The Holy Roman Catholic Church
Chapter 1: the death of Ashland and the entrance of Joss
I.
A pregnant chunk of cerebellum fell from the lackadaisically spinning blades of the fan overhead and landed in a half-empty tumbler of scotch, millions of brain cells dying in the ethanol. Blood and other bodily fluids navigated the drain trough of the bar before forming a waterfall of viscera at the far end and splattering into the drain set in the tile floor below. A woman and her lover sat in the corner booth locked in a tender embrace, the gaping wound in the back of her head having scattered her blonde hair and punched through and down to exit her boyfriends throat, the offending bullet finally having lodged itself in the wooden back of the booth bench. Blood and brains pooled in the plates set before the two of them and spackled the hard-used table. Shards of bone sailed in the pools of gore.
The piano player ran for the door as I stepped inside, gun barrels preceding me. I winked at him before tenderly squeezing the dual triggers. My pistols went off like a compressed thunderclap, dust and petals of ash jarring loose from the ceiling above and sprinkling down like black rain as the player's ribcage smashed open. Stepping over him, I walked further into the bar.
The serving wench tried to hide behind an overturned table in the far corner of the room, her tray of ale dumped on the floor in her haste to get away. She didn't. A single large caliber slug ripped through the burnished wood and iron of the table like a Mack truck with an inferiority complex. She was flung forward and into the wall, her right arm gone at the shoulder, a scream tearing from her throat as her stump waved frantically, circumscribing a burgundy flag of blood through the air. I finished her with my knife, standing over her and spearing through her chest and into the heart, letting the beating muscle slash itself to ribbons on the steel.
Throughout it all the barkeeper watched, aghast. He was still polishing the same glass that he had been when I entered, the mottled rag in his hand not so much cleaning as making sure the dirt was evenly spread. The chalice shattered as he seized violently in his death throes, a tunnel having appeared in the center of his body. The rest of the people in the saloon followed shortly after, killed with my guns, my knife and the last two with my bare hands. When it was over, I stood in the center of the bar, pistols at my sides breathing smoke and contentment with equal measure.
Gideon allowed a smile to sketch itself onto his lips as he poured another three fingers of whiskey. Around him death in all its multi-sensual glory lay across everything like a smothering blanket; to him it felt more like a womb, a place where he was always comfortable. They, the folk of this town, had all deserved the medicine he had given them; they had had the nerve to question his intentions for visiting their ass-end-of-nowhere town. Even before his exile he had never done well with questions, and the answers he gave always seemed to be what people never wanted to hear.
I was met at the outskirts of the town by what passed for the law in these parts. He was a tall man, fit and lean, his blonde hair cropped short and with a face lined from years of squinting into the sun. He wore beat-up jeans, long since faded to a bleached not-blue, with trail worn boots and a friendly smile that seemed to be sandblasted into his face. A silver star was displayed proudly on his white dress shirt. I decided that I didn't like him. We exchanged pleasantries and salutations, he with words and I shortly thereafter with 180-grains of copper-jacketed lead and a healthy dislike for authority. The crack of the gunshots rolled away from me and down the hill into town, announcing my arrival. I slid my pistols back into their holsters, and walked down the hill towards the town , whistling merrily.
The folk of the village rushed at me when I reached the main thoroughfare, the street itself being home to shops, homes and even streetlights; I idly wondered if they worked still or if that technology had been lost to these folk. They had all been armed with makeshift weapons: farm tools, pieces of wood, even rocks. Their attack abruptly changed direction as I placed bullet after bullet into their numbers, each squeeze of the trigger adding a period at the end of someone's life story. My fingers moved of their own accord, flicking open the expended chambers of my revolvers and walking fresh cartridges from my belt into the six-shot breech before spinning the cylinders closed and continuing the gunplay. Expended casings loitered around my feet.
They screamed and hollered as they ran to get away, their voices rising and falling in a chorus of the damned, the sounds of their terror and pain growing thinner as angry hornets of copper and lead claimed half again their number. I looked around, temporarily put out by the lack of things to kill. Starting at a hand's breadth from my toes and extending back seventy paces had been a drunken scrawl of bodies, arrayed end to end like a perverse parody of a conga line. The dirt in the street had been muddy with blood.
Those who escaped the slaughter watched through the squinting shutters of stores and homes to either side of me. I stooped to picked up the used bullet cases lying in the dirt at my feet and tucked them neatly into a small leather drawstring bag hanging from my belt. Looking around, I started to whistle again, low and tuneless, as I began to go from house to house and store to store, showing the folk of Ashland they should've remembered why hospitality and good manners are so important in days such as these.
Gideon scratched the inside of his thigh, plucking free the tie of his chaps that had become caught on a hook in the material of his jeans. They had been a gift, once, the chaps; bright and clean, they're now creased and worn, dirt blasted into every pore of the material. He smiled as he reflected on how his clothes reflected the changes in his own fortune over the intervening years. He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a pack of cigarettes, tapping it on the counter. A match appeared in between his fingers, a sleight of hand trick for no audience. He looked at the phosphorous head a moment before he raked it across the sandpaper strip nailed to the back of the bar, enjoying the sound of it popping into flames. Hanging the cigarette over the lit match head, he watched until the end of the cigarette transmuted to embers and then stuck it between his lips. Gideon leaned back in the stool and inhaled deeply, allowing himself to enjoy the taste as it flooded into his lungs. He wasn't concerned; he knew that when his time does come, his death wouldn't be from cancer.
He exhaled slowly and shot gunned the last of his whiskey. The last vestiges of sunlight beyond the single-pane window cavorted through the half-melted ice in his glass and cast a fractured rainbow on the far wall.
The last people left alive in Ashland were a mother and her daughter who sought shelter in the corner of the general store off the main street. The sign hanging above the door declared that GUNS, AMMO AND PROVISIONS could be had for REASONABLE PRICES! I saw the mother as soon as I entered; a tuft of dirty blonde hair visible above the barrels of flour and wheat hastily pulled in front of them. I walked up to them and watched the emotions dance across their faces, my shadow draping over them as the beginnings of a smile jumped from the corners of my mouth. The daughter hid her face in her mother's blouse, tiny fists pulling the material like taffy as her mother clutched her with fierce desperation. Looking at me, the mother tried to talk, but her voice hitched in her throat. Finally, she had mouthed the word "Why?"
I thought about it for a second as I examined a knothole slightly above her head. Outside, a dog barked forlornly. I lowered my pistols after a moment, and motioned for them both to leave. The mother didn't moved at first, eyeing me warily through narrowed eyes. I motioned again, letting impatience paint my face. The mother scrambled out of their hiding place, one hand shifting to hold her daughter's butt so she could smooth down the back of her dress, and ran for the yawning wooden door. She was crossing through the doorframe when I unloaded all twelve chambers of my pistols into their backs.
Moving behind the glass counter, I pulled out a box of shells, a swooping eagle printed on the side of the stamped cardboard. The rectangular box was dog-eared and yellowed with age, but the bullets were still good. Sliding the smooth brass shells into the empty divots in the belt slung on my waist, I walked out of the store and back towards the bar, already drinking the new-found silence of the town around me.
II.
A throat cleared itself behind him. Gideon pivoted in the barstool, hands' dipping for his pistols. The revolvers were already clear and questing for a target when he saw her, and drew up short. Leaning against the wall across from him, on the far side of the saloon from the counter, was a girl. Cloaked in the onyx gaze of the encroaching night, she was a shadow in a shadow. A few of the rusted streetlights beyond the saloon window, sounding like dying insects, buzzed and hummed suddenly, driving the darkness surrounding her back into the wall and stripping her of her anonymity.
She was young, not more than twenty-one, but well developed. Her dark blue chaps accentuated her long, muscular legs, drawing his eye towards the flaring hips just visible above her pant line and the to the tight waist beyond. A hint of her stomach was visible, exposing cut abs softened by a thin layer of fat. A gun belt hung from the wings of her hips, an ornately wrought pearl handle of an exotic-looking pistol poked out of a leather holster. The rest of her was swaddled in a shallow-necked black shirt, the sleeves of which stopped just past her elbows. Her arms were well-built, but not overly, with a fine tattooing of sinew and muscle tracing delicate patterns beneath her mocha-colored skin. A shock of white hair laid in waves about her shoulders and framed her face. She reached up as Gideon watched and tucked one of the rogue bands of hair behind her ear with long, graceful fingers. Turing away, she sidled over to the bar and sat down, poking the dead bartender with a child-like curiosity.
As the shadows of the early evening leapt and stretched across her face, Gideon noticed her eyes for the first time. The left one was augmentic, a man-made replacement for the real thing, all lenses, steel and pale-green glow. A border of bright metal followed the orbit of her eye, marking where the natural melded with the synthetic. The dual lenses of the eye cycled slowly, one inside of the other as she stared at him, her face an inscrutable blank. Augmentics were increasingly rare, created now by only master artificers or found in stockpiles of lost Technoarcana. It was rumored that they hadn't been unusual, back Before the Fall, and the fact that this young girl had such an artifact spoke more about her resources and influence than anything else could have. It was also one of the sole reasons he restrained himself from adding her to Ashland's burgeoning obituary. The other eye was wholly unremarkable, being a rich sea green color.
Gideon circled cautiously away from the girl, holstering one of his pistols and cocking the hammer back on the other, aiming it surreptitiously at her forehead. She had stopped playing with the deceased bartender and was now leaned down low over the bar, casually drawing runes into its cruor-covered surface with a finger. Her hand ducked and weaved as her finger carved canyons and valleys into the half-dried blood and gore, the artificial landscapes resolving themselves into symbols and syllabary with a graceful, practiced ease. To Gideon's eyes, the symbols almost looked like High Speak, but it had been years since he'd seen it used; it was impossible. He dismissed the idea. With her attention so diverted, Gideon could feel some of his bravado returning to him.
With a thumb hooked into an eyelet of his jeans, Gideon walked closer to the girl and leaned down to look her in the eyes. The butt of the cocked pistol rested on the counter, his finger wrapped around the trigger as he let the barrel tap a gentle rhythm against her forehead. Through the fringe of her hair, she watched him. Satisfied that he had her undivided attention and control of the situation, Gideon poured a dollop of humor into his face. "It's not often someone walks up to me unannounced, girl, or at least not without a dozen armed men and a lascannon."
He sneered, hazel eyes glittering in the hard-used fluorescent light pouring in from outside. The girl continued to observe him from behind her curtain of hair, augmentic lenses tracing the lines of his face with studious curiosity, but no fear. The oblivion of her other eye remained hidden. As the seconds dragged on and the night settled in to stay, Gideon grew impatient. He grabbed her chin, the rough calluses on the tips of his fingers, still singed with the circles of shell casings from the slaughter earlier that afternoon, brushed along the polished marble of her face. He was intent on forcing an answer out of her, or maybe just wanted to hurt her a little; not even he knew for sure which it was. She drew her face back and brushed aside his hand, standing back from the bar while throwing her mane of hair back behind her head. In the back glow of the streetlights she appeared ethereal and haunting, a specter of times long past and things better left forgotten.
"Patience doesn't appear a virtue for you; that is fine. I am Joss. You are Gideon Tomas Sanchez, born on November 21, 2149 and wanted for the suspected murder of numerous innocents, as well as the depopulation of nine towns throughout the Greater Eastern Ward." Her voice, quiet and soft but brusque and formal, trickled past his ears like pillow-talk as she continued to stare at him with polite inscrutability, "Additionally, you now have a…rather incredible bounty on your head, announced last week by Viceroy Michaels."
"And you're here to try and collect, girl? Better men than you have tried." He spat the words between the Chiclets of his teeth, hoping to drive her off with contempt. She didn't flinch.
"No, I'm here because of you, Gideon, not for you," she flashed him an indulgent smile as she sat down and straddled one of the barstools, resting her chin on the backrest, "A Praetorian of the fallen House of Lucre, brought low enough to now be one of the most hunted men in all of the Greater Eastern Ward." She paused, one arm stretching across the gulf between them to let her dexterous fingers trace the cross-hatched scar on the side of his neck.
"There has never been one quite like you. You have done great things, Gideon, great but terrible, and to this end I have sought you out. I am no stranger to violence; I have had blood on my hands since I was five, but such dealings have always been handled by an intermediary, always done by my word but never my own hand. If I am to fulfill my purpose and place then I should, mayhap, learn the ways of such things in person." As she finished speaking she spread her arms out to her sides, palms facing upwards. For a moment, the only sound in the saloon was the wind gusting beyond the solitary window.
Gideon stared at her as his mind chewed over the cud of her purpose. The spasmodic streetlights caused the halo of her white hair to flicker randomly. "So you are a Noble, then. I suspected as much; no peasant has access to augmentics. Tell me why I shouldn't just sell you to the slavers? Noble-flesh would make me unseemly rich." He slipped his revolver back into its holster as his voice rasped out in a half-challenge. She looked up at him, a crooked half-smile hanging from her lips.
"There's little point in denying it: I am a Noble. As for why you shouldn't sell me off? The reasons are legion. Should I be in your company, opportunities that may be currently barred from you would be open; be they respectable jobs, killing, whatever you desire." She pushed herself off the barstool and started to pace back and forth on the rough-shod floor. The spurs on her boots rattled like loose change. "Additionally, Gideon Sanchez, should you choose to suffer my company, I can guarantee you a measure of immunity against prosecution from the law. Lastly, you need me."
These last words caused him to step back from the bar, one hand re-drawing his pistol while the other hung down and loose near the sweat-polished nickel grip of his other weapon, "And just how do you figure that, miss?" The threat in the words didn't even bother to try and hide itself.
"The way your fingers shake as you reload your pistols. The way you draw at an inward stroke to hide the infirmity growing in your hands. The Progenitors called it 'arthritis,' Gideon. It happens." She shrugged, muscled shoulders rolling under the tight material of her shirt.
"Oh, you are clever. And you think that because I may have begun to slow down I won't end you? Clever, but foolish. Mayhap I should do the thing just because you know this about me…?" The revolver nodded its agreement in his hand.
"Unwise. While I hate to resort to such contrite arguments for my life such as 'if you kill me, my family will…,' in this case it's particularly apt. The sole reason you haven't been run down by Regulators or been the recipient of an Assassin's bullet is because I wished to make this offer to you. Should you reject it," the cocksure grin still played over her lips, "then my protection is withdrawn and you'll be dead, most likely never having seen your killer, within a fortnight. I may be dead, but you'll be joining me before too long."
Gideon re-holstered his revolver and pursed his lips. Intellectually, he knew she was right. With what he had been doing lately, one of the Great Houses should have moved on him by now. Crushing a murderer like him was a good way to garner favor from the Church, after all, and favor with the Church was a currency accepted everywhere. He glanced at her. Even with her life in the balance she wasn't concerned; instead, she was intent on draining the last of the whiskey from the abandoned bottle he had left on the counter.
Gideon laughed, a harsh guttural sound not unlike the cough of a consumptive bull. Joss's shoulders relaxed slightly. "Alright, girl, you can tag along with me. I'm headed to Eastwood, on the far side of the Malibu Desert. I was going there for provisions; this shithole doesn't have what I need, aside from ammo." Gideon lowered his face to hers, their foreheads touching as he stared into her eyes, both of them. "However, you are to keep quiet unless I speak to you, and for the love of the man-Jesus, cover that augmentic. You'll attract attention like a whore attracts disease, and attention is one thing I do not wish to have."
III.
As they rode out of the town limits of Ashland on the horses Joss had found in a stable behind the general store, Gideon glanced at her sidelong.
"The real reason I took you wasn't because of your arguments, girl. It was because you have some real backbone. Not many rise to meet a challenge, or will confront danger; they instead to choose to hide and save their own skins. But you didn't. That's impressive…for a Noble."
Undetectable next to him save for the clomping hoof beats of her mount, Joss's smile split the night.