Beneath Ceaseless Skies #27 Read Online Free Page A

backhand. The lead slug in its brass casing whirled end over end, passing straight through a shadowy figure. The rider popped like a soap bubble. Its companions fled.
            Agnieska crawled out from under the mulga, reaching back to get her pack. The Moons were low to the west, dawn a couple of hours away. The songdogs were still a distance off as well—too far, yet, for their cries to have any substantial effect. She realized it was too late to be concerning herself about drawing their attention, as their song had changed from repetitive warbling to fluting wails and whistles.
            Damn.
            She duck-walked the couple of paces over to Carrick. Dark eyes blinked up at her in confusion. She wondered how much he recollected of the previous twelve hours.
            “King’s Sheriff,” she said. “Got you at the hotel, while you were napping.” She’d caught up with his rebel gang on the road to a wildcat mining town, had watched and waited, mingled with them in town at the hotel bar, just another feral digger. She tapped the tongue clamp. “You need water and food. I’ll take this off, but you have to promise no spellcasting.”
            His eyes flitted from one of hers to the other. He nodded.
            “Your oath.”
            He nodded again and grunted an affirmative. She helped him to sit and undid the buckles at the back of his head. “Try anything and I’ll burn you where you sit.”
            Agnieska held the weight of the mask while she loosened the jaws of the clamp itself. His tongue came free and he gasped. She waited while he worked his cramped jaw, then helped him drink. There were tears in his eyes.
            “I’ll get you some food,” she said.
            She turned her back on him to reach for her pack, shielding her hands with her body so he wouldn’t see her fingers sketching the words of the attack spell that she mouthed under her breath. She licked her fingertips, holding the spell on the tip of her tongue, and turned round to face him while she dug in the pack for food. She was conscious of his gaze on her as she brought out two cans of beans and a pair of forks and opened one up with expert twists of her belt knife.
            He opened his mouth. “Could...” was as far as he got.
            Agnieska put everything she had behind the spell, which was enough to scorch all his nerves and knock him flat again, but not much more. She had to put a hand out to steady herself against a wave of dizziness.
            Carrick groaned. One knee bent up, then flopped back again. He shifted the weight of the mittens from his belly to the ground beside him.
            “You should be more concerned about LeMay than me,” he said, after a while. “I’m not nearly the spellsmith the stories would have you believe.”
            Agnieska took a slow breath, trying to still her racing pulse. His witch girlfriend, he meant. Agnieska was worried about her. She’d heard enough about LeMay to think that the woman was a genuine headkicker, that little of her reputation was inflated.
            “Here.” She sat him up again, wedged the open can of beans between his knees and jammed the fork into the hinge of one of his mittens.
            “I was going to ask if you could loosen my boots,” Carrick said. “They’re cutting off the blood to my feet.”
            She arched an eyebrow at him, and grunted a laugh at her and him, both, before she nodded.
            “How’s that?” she asked, when she was done.
            “Better.”
            For a time he was silent, his concentration focused on getting food from the can into his mouth. Agnieska opened the other can and had a few forkfuls herself, watching him spill beans over his lap, before she relented.
            “Here,” she said again. She took the can and fork and shoveled a load into his