Insert standard disclaimer here + sincerity = don't sue.
Knives. . . Oh, yeah. He'll show up again, someday. I think. ^_~
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It took Geoff almost a half an hour to get John out of the closet he had hidden himself in. Despite the fact that the shooting had stopped, and that using himself for bait had been his idea in the first place, now that the day had come his cowardice was showing. He had been fine until the arrival of the strange woman had given him a perfect chance to run away, and then his courage obviously had fled. No amount of coaxing or explaining served to expedite his exit from between boots and coats; Geoff finally had to drag him out by the collar.
As soon as he was pulled from the closet and was wrenched to his feet, John pulled himself together. He brushed off the sheriff's hands and straightened his coat. You could see color come back into his face, the flushed red of embarrassment replacing the pale white of fear. The blush passed, but his color remained high as he gruffly said, "Let's go see what mess she's made of my inn."
Somewhat surprised, but mostly relieved that he no longer had to deal with the sniveling pile of flesh that had inhabited the closet, Geoff followed. They didn't speak while going down the stairs; Geoff had already told him all that had happened in his absence, and John seemed preoccupied.
As John opened the door to the main room he stopped. Geoff cringed, remembering what he had seen: the bloodstains on the floor and walls, the upended tables and chairs, the bullet holes in the walls. He craned his neck to see what the room looked like now.
He hadn't expected much. The tables and chairs he expected to see righted, but not in their correct places. He certainly hadn't expected to see the holes in the walls almost repaired already. One of John's boys was finishing up patching a cluster near the door, but those were the last. Both the floor and the walls had been scrubbed clean. You could only tell where the blood had been because it was actually cleaner there then elsewhere. Kiley was directing the men who had stayed behind. They watched her as the last touches were finished up, the last pieces of a broken chair swept up, and the last words of encouragement and direction were given.
She was gifted, that was certain. These men who knew nothing of her, and weren't even talking to her a few moments ago, yet now were following her every command. Except she didn't seem to command, or ask, or even cajole the work out of them. She just saw that something needed to be done, and either whispered it in the ear of a man who had just finished some other task, or did it herself. And the mess that he thought would have taken days to get picked up was already gone. Already the room had lost the smell of death and blood.
They listened to her thank the men for what they had done, and watched the men tip their hats in acknowledgement before they filed out into the street. Dirty rags went into a bucket, and she walked back in their direction.
"So, John. Did I earn my keep for the night, or do you still want me to run the bar?" she asked, pausing in her journey to replace the bucket in the kitchen.
"Ah, eh, um. . ." sputtered John. Then, "Yes."
She nodded. "Good. I have a couple things I need to take care of, but I should be back before it gets too late tonight." She walked past them, then paused and turned to ask, "Is there anyplace I can put my stuff?"
John nodded, then added, "Let me get you a key."
She nodded in acknowledgement, then finished her task of cleaning out the dirty bucket and tossing the rags. By the time she returned to the main room to collect her things John was waiting with the key.
"Thank you," he said upon seeing her. "I suppose I should have said that earlier, but I'm afraid you didn't catch me at my best today. Thank you, for saving my life, and for what you did to the room. It looks wonderful."
She half-smiled at him, an expression that reached her lips but not her eyes. "Most people aren't at their best after being involved in violence. You're welcome, and I'm glad I was here to help." It almost sounded like she meant it, but there was an undertone of bitterness that she couldn't quite mask.
She did mean it; she was glad she could help these poor fools out. She just wished she could somehow have avoided the situation altogether, or maybe just have never had it happen. She was tired of violence, tired of seeing it, tired of being a part of it, and tired of always having to save poor innocent fools from it.
John tried to make small talk as he showed her to her room, but she was too depressed to join in. He gave up as he reached the door to her room, and gave her the key with a smile and another outburst of thanks. She just smiled, a real one this time that even touched her eyes, nodded, and took the key from him. He left, and she entered the room.
It was a pretty room, with yellow gingham curtains that fluttered in the breeze and matched the bedspread. The rug on the floor was white and yellow, flecked with a blue that matched the sky outside the window perfectly. There was water in a basin by the door, clear and still cold. She set her bag down on the rug by the bed, and filled the canteen from the bowl.
She sat down on the bed and pulled the gun from the waist of her jeans. She looked at it, peered down the front sight, and opened the chamber. She dumped out the bullets onto her lap and sorted the spent casings from the live shells. She reloaded the gun, spun the chamber, and looked down the sight again. Sighing, she got up and walked out to the back of the inn.
For all that the inn was on the main square, it backed almost right up against one of the bluffs that surrounded the town. She found a few empty bottles from the trash and set them up by the foot of the bluff. She paced off about ten yards, took aim, and fired. Four shots rang out so quickly that the retort sounded like one shot. Four bottles shattered, shards of glass glinting in the sun. Satisfied, she lowered the gun and ejected the spent cartridges.
John came running out the door, panic writ large on his face. When he saw what she had done, he stopped, rolled his eyes, and went back in without saying a word. She glanced at his retreating back guiltily. She should have known that would startle him. Shrugging of the sensation, she clicked on the safety and walked around the building and into the square.
Now which way was the jail? She shaded her eyes with her left hand, not because the sun was in them, but because it was something to do while she tried to remember which way the deputies had turned when they were taking the outlaw away. Left, or right, which was it? It. . . was. . . left. Yes, left.
The gun was now cool enough to put in her back pocket without accidentally burning herself, and she didn't want to walk around town with a gun in her hands. She stowed it, then walked to the left. She hoped that there was some sign outside the jail, or she could be searching for a while. As she walked down the street, she saw shops and homes. None of them seemed to be very prosperous. There weren't many people in the shops or on the street. Granted, she didn't know the area's normal traffic patterns, but the town seemed eerily deserted for it's size.
She only had to wander ten blocks before she found the jail. There wasn't a sign, but the bars on the windows was a firm clue that she was close. She crossed the street and walked up the few steps to front door. Not sure of the correct entrance etiquette, she knocked on the door and waited for a response. She didn't have to wait long before one of the men she had saved earlier opened the door for her. It wasn't the hurt one or the one who had bought the beer; it obviously wasn't one who had many manners.
"I'm here to see the prisoner," she said as the door opened. The man merely grunted, but she took it as both acknowledgement and admission. She pushed past him and he made no move to stop her, but also didn't do anything to help. His behavior unsettled her. She didn't know what impulse had driven her to the jail in the first place. Her involvement in this whole fiasco could be over now, but here she was, prolonging the agony.
Unsure, she did what she always did when she was unsure. She pushed ahead, and hoped that she wasn't getting herself into trouble. She walked past the cluttered desks and the listing rows of file cabinets. A open door beckoned her. She could hear curses and muttered imprecations flying through the air, and she knew who was incarcerated behind that door.
She paused as she stepped past the door. There in a cell was the man she had taken down, the man she had stopped from killing a whole bunch of people, the man who had provided her with this lovely gun. And she pulled the lovely gun from her back pocket and aimed it at his head.
The cursing stopped as the man looked at her.
"Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you," she asked.
His stream of invective started again, detailing her ancestry and purported sexual habits.
She clicked off the safety. The small noise seemed to echo in the enclosed space, growing louder as it silenced the oddly dressed man before her.
"No one is going to give a damn if I kill you. They would actually prefer you dead. Now give me one reason why I should not fire." Her eyes chilled to a degree that ice would find warm, and the man before her knew fear, knew death in a way he had forgotten years ago. He knew fear, and she knew that he did, and was satisfied.
She put the gun up and put the safety on again. "Thanks for the gun," she said, as she turned and walked out of the holding pen.
She leaned up against a wall in the front office and closed her eyes. Drama, bah. She should be over that. She shouldn't need to see fear in the eyes of the helpless to make herself feel better. But she did feel a bit more in control, of herself and her situation, and she hated that it took seeing someone else fearing her to help her center herself.
Love and peace. Guess they were just dreams, she thought to herself. She opened her eyes and saw Geoff.
"Nice bit of acting, there," he said.
"It wasn't acting," she said. "I'd have blown a hole in his head if he'd not shut up."
He seemed taken aback by the matter of fact way she said it. She herself didn't really like the part of her that could kill so easily, but denying it was a fruitless exercise. She waited there, as it seemed like there was something more Geoff wanted to say.
He seemed to be waiting for her to say something as well, but finally started. "I suppose you're here about the bounty."
She kept her surprise from her face. Bounty? He had said something about a bounty, but was she supposed to get it? She supposed that she was the one who had taken him down, but what was she going to do with a bounty?
"It will take us a few days to get it from December. John said you're welcome to stay at his inn, free of charge, while we wait for it to get here," he continued as she stayed silent.
"That won't do," she said finally.
If she stayed here that long, Knives were certainly find her, if he wasn't on her trail already.
"I'm sorry," he said, and he did sound apologetic. "But we just don't have that sort of money here."
"I'll take what you have, and you can keep the balance," she said.
He was taken aback by that. "But we couldn't get you more then $$6,000! That's no where near--"
She cut him off. "That's enough. I'm leaving tomorrow; I'll need the money by then." She could see him calculating what he would do with the difference, but she cut him off. "Split the remainder between John and his boys, and your man who got shot. That's fair. I didn't come here to steal a bounty from this town, and I don't need it. You have some men who are hurt, and some men who need the money, and while they won't end up with as much as they planned, well, it should still help some."
Geoff just looked at her incredulously, his mouth hanging open. No one walked away from $$44,000. But this Kiley seemed ready to.
She started to leave, but turned before she reached the door. "Is there any way I could get some of it before tomorrow? I need to purchase some supplies, and it's best if I get an early start tomorrow morning."
"S-sure," he stammered. He pulled out his wallet and fanned the bills, making a quick count. "Will $$300 help?"
She stepped back the take the money from his hand and nodded. "It should; I don't need much," she said, and then she left.
Right there Geoff changed his mind. That crazy lady could leave whenever she wanted if she was leaving $$44,000.
On her way back to the inn Kiley bought a leather holster for the gun and a few boxes of ammunition. It was not cheap, but she still had over $$200 when she left. She fingered the cash, then walked into another store. This one she left with only $$90, but she had better boots and a shirt that didn't stand out as much. It was a nice dusty-tan, just about the shade of the sand blowing outside. The sleeves were full, but fell short of getting in the way of her hands. The bodice was tight enough that she would be in trouble if she started to put on too much weight, but she didn't anticipate that happening. It was long enough to flare over the waist of her jeans, and the neck came up almost to her chin. A long zipper split the back, making it easy to get into. She also bought more underwear and socks, useful items that she hadn't had time to look for on Knives' ship. A last impulse had her grabbing a brightly colored blanket. It looked warm, and the pattern of blues and greens was calming. Plus, she liked it and had the money. Impulse buying is like that.
She had wanted another pair of pants but was dissatisfied with what the store had. She was tired of shopping and she liked her jeans. She just hoped she wasn't going to get too dirty before she could find another pair of pants that she actually liked.
The suns were beginning to set as she wandered into the main room of the inn. There were quite a few people in there, most of them looking at the clean spots on the floor and walls, or running their fingers over the patched bullet holes. John was telling his version of the story, which made no mention of the fact he was in a closet. But when he saw her, he gestured grandly and announced that, "Here is the woman who saved my life!"
Everyone turned to stare, and Kiley stopped, startled by the sudden attention. She blushed, and tried to make her way to the stairs. People blocked her path, clamoring for details, for the story of how the Grey Man was finally taken down. She pushed then aside, muttering excuses, saying she was tired, saying anything to try to get them to let her pass.
Finally she made it to the stairs and she was unable to keep herself from running up them. Reaching her room she tore the door open and ducked inside, even though no one had followed her.
So much for slipping through town unnoticed. No good deed goes unpunished; she knew that well. She drew a glass through the now tepid water and drank it down in one quick gulp. Then she moistened a hand towel and washed off her face. Then she wiped down her hands and wrists, and then her neck. The water felt good on her skin; it helped center her, remind her of where her body ended. She sighed, then took off her shirt and washed, dipping the towel in the water, wringing it out, then wiping it over her body, cleaning off the sweat of two very hard days and a long run through the desert. That done, she dressed in new clothes and old pants, slipped into the holster, and set the gun on the table. The rest of her belongings she packed in her stolen knapsack, a task of not even a minute.
My new life, she thought, looking at the bag. Then she looked at the gun. Meet my old life, she thought as she picked up the gun and slipped it in the holster. She ran her fingers through her hair, then left the privacy of her room to brave the chaos below for her promised dinner. She walked into the hall and locked the door behind her, then made her way to the stairs.
The first person to see her as she walked down into the main room started to clap. Before her foot had even reached the floor the entire room was giving her a standing ovation. Embarrassed, and not at all sure how to react, she gave a shy little half wave before taking a place at an empty table.
It didn't remain empty for long. Somehow Geoff appeared before she had even sat down; he held her chair for her then claimed the one at her right hand. His best friend, the man whose life she had saved sat next to him, and the man who had bought the beer from her sat on her left. He winked at her as he sat down, and all she could do was stare blankly at him.
She wasn't stupid enough to believe that all of this was because she had saved John's life. But the amount of joy that she was leaving the lion's share of the bounty in the town surprised her. Everyone here was excited and happy and ready to party. She had a feeling she wouldn't stay the focal point of the celebration for much longer; a few more drinks and some of these folks would forget just why they were so happy.
John brought out a huge platter of food and set it in front of them all. "To my heroes," he proclaimed, setting out a plate in front of each of them. The men waited for her to serve herself first, which she did, a little self-consciously.
"We thought we would save you from your throng of admirers and gossip-seekers," started Geoff, slipping her a wad of bills. She stuffed it in her pocket without counting, and Geoff mouthed, "It's all there." She nodded and started to pick at the food on her plate.
"Thank you," Kiley said before stuffing a bite of something green and tangy into her mouth.
"Think nothing of it; you saved us earlier today," said Geoff's best friend. "My name's Kyle, by the way."
"And I'm Josh," chimed in the man to her left.
"Well, Kyle, Josh," she said, "I'm happy to have been able to help." She was surprised to find no bitterness in her voice as she said it; perhaps the food was helping her temper.
She ate a few more bites and listened to the men as they traded small talk. They didn't exclude her, but she was comfortable not being a part of the conversation. After working the edge off her hunger she sat back and waited for a time to change the course of the conversation. She didn't have long to wait.
"Guys, I need to tell you something," she said into a pause. "Geoff, this relates to that trouble I was telling you about earlier." She had their full attention now.
"There will be a man following me. I don't know how long it will be before he finds me; it may be minutes, or it may be days. He will be coming to this town, and he will be looking for me.
"He may ask you if you've seen me, if you know me, if you know what I did when I was here, if you know where I went. You need to tell him the truth. Under no circumstances are you to lie, at all, in any way, not a little lie, not a big lie, none. Be nice, be polite, and tell him everything he wants to know."
They looked a little confused. Her mouth twisted in a wry smile as she continued. "That man is the most lethal man on this planet, and I happened to piss him off. There is nothing he's not going to do to find me and make me pay."
"Is it--Vash the Stampede?" whispered Josh.
Kiley snorted. "This man makes Vash the Stampede look like a big, harmless goofball. No, this is not a man you piss off. Don't do it, not for me, not because you want to prove you aren't scared of him, not to see if you can, whatever reason you might think of for lying to him: don't. I'm not worth your life, it's not worth your life, lying to him will be the last thing you do in this life. Just be polite and send him after me."
"What are you going to do when he catches you?" asked Kyle.
"Well, that's one of those points I'm not too sure on, but I'm sure I'll figure out something," she said. The men just stared at her. "What? I'll figure something out, I'm sure of it. You just do what I say, and he probably won't hurt you."
"Probably?" asked Geoff, his face twisted with the question.
"Almost certainly," she clarified. "Just be good." With that she pushed back from the table and left for her room, leaving the party behind. With any luck the boys would heed her warning. Without luck. . . well, they were old enough to make their own mistakes.
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Knives had woken up that morning certain that the recapture of that annoying female was imminent. The morning had dawned bright, the suns rising slowly into a cloudless sky, but Knives paid no heed. For one thing, he was in the ship, well away from anything that might give him visuals clues to the world outside. For another, all the mornings he had ever seen dawned bright and cloudless; the world had no oceans, no large bodies of water to evaporate and form clouds. So what someone unused to the world might call beautiful, Knives would merely have shrugged off as usual. That is, if he had seen it at all.
But he hadn't. Instead, he awoke to the normal comforts of his room, meager as they might be. He didn't wish to clutter his living area with the paraphernalia of humans, so there was no art on the walls or knick-knacks on a table. He would have placed some art of his own on the walls, if that didn't smack of hubris. Nothing he had ever done had struck him as worthy of any sort of display. So his room was left sterile, devoid of what humans might call character or personality, but it was the way he preferred it. Clean; clean and uninfested.
The linens on the bed were a plain cream. The sheets were high-quality, as anything less would chafe most uncomfortably on the super sensitive skin of a plant, but he picked them as much for their lack of pattern or adornment as he did for comfort. It irked him that he had to rely on items made by vermin for comfort, and he wished to have as little around to remind him of them as possible. Colors seemed to him to be synonymous with the chaos that surrounded and defined the lives of the parasites, so he divested himself and everything around him of color. The walls of his room were adorned in shades of metallic grays and light reflective patches of white.
He immersed himself in neutral tones of earth browns and creams, and dressed solely in blacks and grays in an effort to set himself visibly apart from the masses of vermin that were beginning to overrun this planet. He had hoped, when the ships were crashing to the ground, that the plague of humanity would end. When a few scattered survivors crawled forth from the ruins of the ships, he hoped that they would be the last gasp of a dying breed. When they started to build towns in the bones of their ruined hopes, their starry dreams come crashing down to dust, he had wished that the hulks above them would rob them of spirit and they would die, would fade away into the nothingness that beckoned them.
When they started another generation, and then another, he began to worry that the humans weren't going to die. When it grew harder and harder to roam the surface of the planet without running into an explorer of some sort or another, he began to despair. And in his despair, he started to take care of the problem, one vermin at a time. He had hoped that his brother, of all people, being the only other real person, that his brother would join him in his crusade to rid the universe of these awful parasites. But in the end his brother had betrayed him, wishing instead for some unreachable dream of peace for all, of conquering death with love. A foolish dream for a fool.
Knives shook his head, chasing away these maudlin thoughts of his brother. His brother had no place in today's agenda. He was merely chasing down an intruder, an interesting vermin. He needed to know how she managed to avoid his mental attacks; no one had, not even Vash. If the humans had somehow developed a way to circumvent the powers of the plants then Vash's and his lives were imperiled. They could not be allowed to take away the only advantage he and his brother had for the coming war.
And his brother was foolish if he believed that the humans wouldn't try to kill them. Some day, they would be found as different, as something odd and terrible, and the humans would destroy them, as they had destroyed so much in the years of their existence. Any thing that threatened them was either killed or tamed. He knew he would never be tamed to the needs of mere humans; the very thought made him ill. So it was death, either theirs or his. He knew which was better; it was only Vash who persisted in believing that there could ever be peace if the humans lived. Humans didn't even know what peace was, with their striving for things they could never have.
But that day, that war, was still in the future. Today he needed to find that woman, that strange, maddening woman. He dressed without haste, without worry, but he did take his black gun. Slipping it into his holster, its familiar weight was a comfort that brought a smile to his lips, but not his eyes. His eyes stayed cold, focused on that face he ached to see in front of him again. Those humans, that woman, they had no chance against him. Whatever she had done to him yesterday, it was not going to happen again.
He was going to win.
Finished with his preparations, he walked calmly through the corridors of the ship, strolling the familiar passageways with the assurance of someone who has lived in the same place for a hundred years. The same, featureless, unchanging place. Which was just the way he liked it. Stability was important, more important then the short-lived humans realized in their striving and fighting amongst themselves for crumbs.
He didn't worry about taking food or water, instead walking out the door of the ship at the same pace that had taken him through his halls. He knew how long it would take him to get to the closest town and back, even with an unconscious female slung over one shoulder. If the whole process took him even five hours, he would be most surprised.
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Granny Annie was sitting on the porch when the strange young man walked into town. Not that there was anything strange about finding Granny Annie on the porch; it seemed to the folks in town that she lived there. Any time, day or night, if you looked outside you could see her on the porch, sitting, knitting, and watching the world go by. Her house was only a humble backdrop, a prop that served only to hold up the porch. She lived on that porch, lived watching the lives of her neighbors, watching them do things her body had denied her for years. But no one wanted to talk to her about her aches and pains, no not that old woman. No one wanted to hear what it was like to get old, to know that the body is truly weak no matter how strong the mind still is.
And Granny Annie was still a very sharp old lady. The soft smile on her face could not hide the razor sharp intelligence that lurked in the depths of her eyes. That, as much as her tendency to dwell over-long on the infirmities of old age, kept her from being a favorite of her neighbors. She saw much, and the parts she didn't see she didn't even need to guess at. She just knew, the annoying old biddy.
When the strange young man walked into town, she was the first to see him. Instantly curious, she watched him walk past, his stride confident and measured. There was a look in his eyes of sublime confidence, of assured conquest. She looked at him curiously, wondering what he was looking for in this little town. Why, the last thing of any consequence that had happened was when Jake's little girl had wandered off into the desert and been lost for six and a half hours. And that, that had been a good six weeks ago. Or was it six weeks and a few days now? Time wasn't as clear as it used to be to the old gal, but she managed to keep the important things straight.
So why was he here? While he was out of sight she pondered why he might be here, but for all her intelligence she could not come up with one reason why someone like him would want to visit the town. If he had a pack, he might have been a peddler, or if he had a herd of beasties, why he might have been a drover moving the meat into the city.
She snorted. And if he had the stars in his hand, he might have been a god, she thought to herself sardonically. While playing the game of what if might be fun, it got her no farther in her quest to puzzle out the meaning of his arrival.
She didn't think he was a vagabond. For one thing, he was too well dressed and clean to be one of those drifters from the sands. His clothes had not seen enough wear for him to be one of their breed. For another, his steps as he walked past her were too purposeful for a wanderer. No, he had a reason to be here, a reason to be walking these streets.
A reason. . . He must be looking for something. She examined the idea as it formed in her mind, looking at it from many angles, studied the facets and deemed it good. Yes, he must be looking for something, but by the name of all that's holy, what? What could there be in this town that anyone would look for?
The second time he walked by his stride was longer, his face was cloudier, and his determination even more evident. Whatever he was looking for, he wasn't finding it. But what might he want here?
There was nothing in this town. A history of hard luck had driven off or killed most of the people who had originally settled here, and those who had remained had not thrived. It was a hard land, bordered by a land of misfortune to the south, a land that no one went to after no one came back. Those who were left spent most of their time digging a living, digging life out of the sands. The rest of the time was spent with family and friends, small pleasures and small home crafts to brighten dusty lives. There was nothing in the town to set it apart from a hundred others like it, nothing at all.
Unless. . . he was looking for something that wasn't originally in the town. Maybe something had been stolen, something he was hunting. But even so, there was nothing new in the town, nothing that hadn't been there for years. If there was any object with a value great enough to send someone searching for it, whoever owned it had hidden its existence from her. She snorted at the thought. Hidden? From her? Impossible.
So, if he was searching, and not for an item, then he must be looking for a person. Well, she knew that there had been no travelers through the area for months, and no one had stayed longer then overnight for years. He was looking in the wrong place, she decided. Whoever he was looking for had either gotten themselves very lost (and she spared a moment to hope that if they had, they hadn't gotten lost to the south) or had managed to escape from this man.
And when he walked by again, everything clicked. The expression on his face was so incredibly frustrated she knew it had to do with a woman. She could not keep herself from calling out in glee, "She's not here!"
Instantly, he was by her side, looming over her, exuding menace. The gun she had not seen as he walked by before suddenly took on a presence that was greater then its physical size could account for. Her throat gone unaccountably dry, she tried to swallow under that implacable gaze but had little success.
"Where is she?" he asked, each word dragged out of his throat like sticks through gravel.
"I, I don't know," she stammered.
"Which way did she go?" he asked, almost patiently.
"I don't know," she repeated.
"When did she leave?" he asked with no patience at all.
"I, she never was here," she said.
Two hands slammed to each side of her shoulders, sliding her and her chair until it hit the back of the porch, and the grating noise of the dragged legs seemed to come from very far away.
"Then how did you know I was looking for a woman?" he asked, his icy voice reflecting the color of his eyes as they bored into hers.
"I guessed, I just guessed," she sobbed, losing all pretense at being unafraid. "There's no one here, there's been no one here for months. I just guessed, that's all, I just guessed, I just guessed." Her words dissolved into sobs, still trying to protest that she didn't know what was going on.
He pushed himself back, leaving the woman sobbing on the porch.
Knives stomped back onto the poor excuse for a what passed for a street in the misbegotten town. As he walked back the way he had come, he ran an angry hand through his hair. That sniveling old lady hadn't been lying to him. She had seen that woman. Nor had any of the other people he had asked.
She had tricked him.
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Knives wasn't in a happy mood when he finally returned to the ship. He wasn't as mad when he arrived as he was when he had left the town; the walk had done much to clear his head. He was mostly mad at himself for allowing her to trick him. She seemed to know exactly how to make him think what she wanted him to think, and that angered him. He was allowing himself to be manipulated by a simple human.
Or maybe that was his problem. He was so used to thinking of the humans as a simple waste of space that he was unused to thinking of them as crafty beings. He had underestimated her, and it was his own fault. He had surrounded himself with people who were, for all intents and purposes, simple minded. Or perhaps single-minded was a better definition for their patterns of thought. Old Chapel wasn't a stupid man, but his notions of honor made him easy to predict and manipulate.
He hadn't been thinking, and that was how she had managed to trick him. He had been responding, to her appearance and to her disappearance, but he hadn't taken the time to figure out the nature of her simple-mindedness. If he could figure that out, there was no way she could escape. As soon as he could figure out how she thought, he could find her. And when he did, then, she would answer for what she had done.
The first step was finding her trail, though. And to do that, he had two options. He could strike out blindly, moving from town to town until he found where she had been. Or he could study her, the recording of her in the ship and predict where she would go after she left. While either method would work both would take precious time, and the thought of her getting farther and farther away thinking that she had bested him made his teeth hurt. No vermin should be allowed to get away with such an affront. The way his luck was going, she was probably bragging about it right now. His mind helpfully provided him with a detailed mental picture. In it she was being toasted by a throng of admirers, their beady eyes gleaming as they listened with avarice to her story of bearding the evil Knives in his den and escaping unscathed. He could see the smirk on her face as she told every detail of kneeing him in the balls and locking him in the cage he had prepared for her.
He shook his head to dissolve the image and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. No. That wasn't what she was doing. He couldn't see that, not of her. She was too. . . contained for that; she wouldn't be the type of person to boast. Boasters needed someone else's opinion to bolster their sense of self-worth, and he didn't get the feeling that she was a person who valued the opinion of just anyone. There was a calmness, a sturdiness to her that didn't need to brag.
He reached the monitor room and entered, turning on the lights and taking off his gun belt. He slung it on the back of the chair near his favorite monitor. He looked at the smudge on the screen, the smudge he had not cleaned off in his smug assumption that it was her downfall. He had wanted to see it, to have its presence reaffirm her stupidity in the face of his brilliance. Now, it mocked him. He rubbed it away with his cuff and sighed. His pride was his biggest downfall, he knew that. And still it tripped him up.
He propped his elbows on the monitor and cradled his head in his hands. Another image popped into his head, just as detailed as the first and much harder to dispel. In this one, she was again telling her story of besting him, but this time it was to a crowd, a crowd that stretched to the limits of his imagination, a crowd aching to destroy him.
"Yes, you just have to knee me in the balls," he said to the empty room in answer to what he imagined she was saying. "I'll fold. The tough part is going to be getting that close." This one he could see. She had the feeling of someone who was used to reporting to a higher authority. His fears of a shadow conspiracy grew as he dwelled on the image. Getting rid of the vermin would be a problem if they knew they were fighting a war, and it would be even harder if they had some clue how to fight.
And who to fight. None of these fools were going to touch his brother. He would make sure of that. The shadow conspiracy grew in his mind, taking root. Somewhere out there, someone or a some group was planning how to kill him and his brother. Humans and their petty fears, their inability to understand anything that was different from them, always willing to see threats in everything.
He would be their threat, if they wanted one. If they had wanted to eradicate the plants they shouldn't have tipped their hand; they shouldn't have let him know they were out there. He wasn't going to underestimate them again. He wasn't going to underestimate her again. He would find her, capture her, and wring the answers out of her. There wouldn't be anything left of her after that, but who cared about the fate of one vermin? It was much more important that he and Vash live, that their superior race survive then the fools that sprawled across the planet. Their lives were more important.
He opened his eyes and accessed the woman's records. He studied them intently, gauging every flicker of her eyes, every fidget, every flinch. He saw where he was surprised and where she wasn't, and he contrasted that with what he knew of the humans. And then he got frustrated.
Whoever had trained this woman had trained her well. She gave nothing away, nothing she didn't wish him to know. Every time she might have come close to spilling a secret her face grew blank and still. She withdrew into a place inside herself that screened her thoughts, never allowing one to reach the surface of her body. He saw it at the time she first saw him, when she writhed on the floor while he crushed her shoulder and a short time later while she collected herself in the hall after he passed out. He saw it while she was in the monitor room. She knew her every action was being recorded and her acted accordingly. And strangely enough, he saw it again when she paused at the door to the ship before passing outside.
What linked these moments? Surprise, pain, recovery, deception, and exit? What made her draw down inside herself to find that well of stillness? Was she just the sort of person who would not let themselves show any sort of emotion? That didn't seem to be the case. He had seen her despair as she pounded the wall at the end of the corridor.
Abruptly he got up and walked to where he had captured her. What was so special about this place? He held his hands up, feeling the air currents, drawing upon an inner stillness of his own that he might better evaluate the outside. There was nothing out of place here. He would have been able to sense it. Opening his eyes he began running his fingers over the walls, paying special attention to the area she had dented in her poundings. There was nothing, no secret door leading to a passageway or anything else that might explain how she had arrived. This place held her secret tightly and would not give it away.
Shaking his head he turned and went back to the monitor room. He watched the tapes of her again but could gather no more clues. There was something there, he knew it, but he could not make the connection. What was it that made her draw back into herself? What linked these situations?
Then a thought began to form in the back of his mind. Heedless of the impatience his frustration tried to impose on him, he waited, letting it mature in its own time. All of these times were linked by feelings, yes, but above all they were linked by a feeling of--uncertainty? He tested the idea and found it worthy. She hadn't expected to see him, didn't know how to stop him, wasn't sure she had captured him, didn't know--how to escape, maybe?--and didn't know. . .
Didn't know what? Why did she pause before entering the desert? What could she not have known? She had looked at a map. On his walk back from the town she had sent him to, he had wondered at his stupidity in thinking that she had actually needed a map, but now he revisited that thought.
He pulled up the video of her looking at the map. He had originally discarded that footage as worthless, due to its being only a diversion, but he looked at it again. He watched her eyes, watched them look over the entire map, saw how the only place they lingered on was the closest town, but she looked over the entire map, her eyes flicking from point to point. If it had only been a diversion, why would she have needed to look at the whole map?
He laughed, a quick sound that echoed in the mostly empty room. Why did anyone look at a map? To find themselves, of course. But how could she not know where she was? She paused at the door because she was uncertain about what lay on the other side.
Knives knew that this was the truth, knew it in his bones. But it raised the question: how did she get in his ship without knowing where she was?
An interesting conundrum, he mused. Then he picked up his gun and went off to his room to pack. If she didn't know where she was going, he wasn't going to find anymore clues here. It looked like he was going to have to find her the hard way.