Fifty paces to his right, workers were unloading large canvas-draped cargo from a boxcar onto rolling sleds, which they hauled to a smaller train on a nearby track. A tall, fat man in a feathered hat strutted around, puffed up and busy as a rooster, pointing this way and that, squawking in a loud, empty voice, but the workers weren't even listening to him.
A steamer trunk tumbled off one of the sleds and opened on impact, spilling out its contents: packed layers of men's and women's clothes, heavy brocaded cloaks, clusters of shoes. The man in the feathered hat stood up on his toes and hectored the worker unmercifully; the worker ignored him and casually heaped the garments back into the trunk. The man in the hat pulled them back out and threw them on the ground again, demanding the worker fold the clothes properly before repacking them.
"Hey."
Kanazuchi wheeled to his left; a man had walked in behind him, standing six feet away. He wore a blue uniform and hat and a badge on the breast of his tunic. They stared at one another for a long moment—then Kanazuchi saw a look of fear cross the man's coarse features; before he could react, the man raised a whistle to his lips and blew one shrill, piercing note. He was reaching with his other hand for a gun holstered at his waist when Kanazuchi broke his neck and dragged the body down behind the bales.
Maybe no one has seen this, he thought.
No: Two men wearing the same blue uniform had heard the whistle and were moving out of the station; passengers on the platform pointing in the direction of the bales. Both men blew their own whistles, pulled their guns, and ran toward where Kanazuchi crouched over the dead guard.
A bullet smacked the cotton near his head with a dry splat; to the left Kanazuchi saw a third guard, pistol in hand, sprinting toward him down the tracks.
Throughout the night, between her own bouts of fitful dreaming, Eileen laid her head back and studied Jacob Stern while he slept, his eyes moving rapidly back and forth behind their papery lids, forehead furrowed, lips twitching, small sounds of distress occasionally accompanying his shallow exhales. She didn't wake him, but the incongruity of the sight disturbed her; he seemed much more troubled asleep than awake.
A slant of morning sun touched her face, and coming out of a dream, she realized the rocking of the car had ceased. She opened her eyes and was welcomed by Jacob's warm smile and twinkling eyes watching her benignly.
"Are we here?" she asked.
"Wherever we are, we seem to have arrived," he said.
"Rise and shine! Rise and shine, friends!" Bendigo Rymer strode down the car, rousing the weary Players to groaning protest. "Like the mystical phoenix, whose name graces this fair city, we must arise from the ashes of our deathlike slumber and re-create ourselves in the image of a new day!"
"Piss off," somebody muttered.
Bendigo pretended not to hear their insults but dropped the poetic approach in favor of a more direct line of reasoning. "We've another train to catch, lady and gents, and if you expect to collect your wages this morning, you will remove your rear ends from these seats in short order and carry them along with your luggage to the station!"
Perpetually vulnerable to economic arguments, the Players began to grumble and stir. Peering up from her position on the seat, Eileen saw two enormous pheasant feathers bouncing up and down the aisle: He's wearing that ridiculous Tyrolean cap again, she realized, the one that makes him look like Robin Hood gone to seed. God, what an annoying man!
"Will you be staying in Phoenix long, Jacob?" asked Eileen, as she stumbled out of the car, shielding her eyes against the bright desert sunrise. Her legs felt rusted from sleeping in her seat, and one glance in a hand mirror proved traumatizing; hair tangled as a bramble bush, makeup ruined; mornings were frightful enough ordeals for a woman to begin with and far worse while on the road. Why did he have to see her like this?
"To be perfectly honest, my dear, I haven't the slightest idea," said Jacob good-naturedly, breathing deeply. "This air is marvelous, isn't it? Dry but with a refreshing warmth to it and heavily scented with flowers."
"It's a little early for me, Jacob," she said, thinking he could make a trip to the dentist sound like a country picnic.
"But can't you smell it? It's almost sweet to the taste."
"Life on the road, love; for we jaded sophisticates, one stop is pretty much the same as another."
"What a pity; think how much you must miss."
"This from a man who hasn't left his library in fifteen years."
"And realizing the error of his ways, I assure you. But how fantastic to travel so much; you must have seen the entire country by now. Where are you off to next?"
"Our head thespian has booked us a week in some godforsaken whistlestop somewhere out west of here____"
"Where is that?"
"Don't know; some sort of religious settlement—what's it called again, Bendigo?" she asked Rymer as he hurled by them. "This oasis you're taking us to."
"The New City; capital T on the 'The,' " said Rymer, racing to oversee the transfer of sets and costumes to their connecting train. "A joy to meet you, Rabbi. May God always shield you from the storm."
"And you, sir."
"Lord, he makes my teeth hurt sometimes," said Eileen.
When they reached the planked platform of the terminal, Eileen set down her makeup case, looked at Jacob frankly, and smiled, a winsome blend of affection and regret. "I'm sorry to say we're moving on within the hour actually."
Jacob swallowed hard and looked down at his feet, shuffling them on the knotted wood. What's the matter with you, Jacob? She's a beautiful woman less than half your age that you've known for twelve hours whom you're never going to see again and you're behaving like a heartsick schoolboy. He groped through his thoughts, desperate for a conversation starter.
"What sort of religious settlement is this place you're going?"
"Like the Mormons, I guess. Bendigo's been as evasive as usual," she said, hearing the man's raised voice and turning to see him in the distance screaming bloody murder at some poor railroad hand transferring their sets between trains: Rymer had a gift for terrorizing menials.
"Like the Mormons in what way?"
"He didn't say. They probably all keep twenty-five wives apiece; a regular Sodom."
Jacob blushed and Eileen instantly regretted her off-color tone, unused to censoring herself and feeling unladylike, realizing how long it had been since she'd kept company with a man who made her feel any other way.
"Actually all he's told us is it's in the middle of the desert and they've built themselves an opera house and they're very keen to have some first-rate entertainment come through. So why they hired us is anyone's guess."
"I hope this place is not too dangerous."
"Compared to some of the dumps we've been, how bad could it be? Looking forward to it, actually; he said they're building a great big black castle out there that's really something to see."
Ice water would not have been more effective: Jacob snapped instantly to his senses. "What sort of castle?"
Before she could answer, a sharp whistle cut through the clatter of the station; her eye was drawn toward Rymer and the trains: fifty yards off, halfway between them, some kind of commotion behind a stack of cotton bales. She could see people moving toward the disturbance: a struggle?
Two guards rushed out of the station behind them; Eileen and some other passengers on the platform pointed them toward the cotton bales. The guards blew their own whistles and pulled their pistols as they ran.
Somewhere a shot was fired.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"I don't know," said Jacob.
"Which way to the roof?" asked Jack.