In that conversation with Cherise, I learn that they didn’t just happen to come across us yesterday. They’d been keeping an eye out, and hearing us yesterday, they’d abandoned the hunt in favor of more profitable prey.
They had something to show us, and it wouldn’t keep forever. They knew better than to stop by Rockton, though. We’ve set the town off-limits, with the warning that Owen was still wanted for crimes there. A good excuse for not letting them in, where they might be able to woo residents with the promise of goods we tightly regulate—booze, cigarettes, and, of course, sex.
Cherise leads us to a mountainside. We hike up it about a hundred feet, and then she motions to Owen, who drops his pack and rolls back a rock over a small cave entrance. It reminds me of going to Easter services with a friend in elementary school, when I’d been transfixed by a painting of disciples rolling back the rock that sealed a crypt. When the smell of decomposition hits, I think it’s triggered by that memory. Then Dalton scrunches his nose and turns to Cherise.
“What’ve you got in there?” he says.
“A gift.”
“Well, we’re not going in after it.”
“Didn’t say you had to. That service is included in the price.”
Another wave at Owen. No “please.” No imperious wave either. She isn’t haughtily commanding him to do her bidding. She just expects it … and he obeys with neither grumbling hesitation nor groveling obsequence. Maybe this was what the old marriage vows meant: your husband expected obedience, and you delivered without resentment. I can’t imagine being either party in that arrangement.
Owen has to drop to all fours to enter, and even then, his grunts tell me how tight the passage must be. A moment later, he backs out, boots first, pulling a long, wrapped cylinder after him, and that Sunday-school image flashes again.
Before I can comment, Owen crawls back inside.
Two more bodies follow. Three crudely wrapped corpses, the stink of decomposition still seeping out. The wrappings are partly cured skins. Rejects, from the looks of them—too damaged to make proper trade goods.
I bend to one knee beside a corpse. Gently, I peel back the wrap. The skin sticks a little, and I stop as soon as I can see the face. Male. Heavily bearded. A scar on one cheek, poorly healed, but it’s not ritual scarring. The hair is roughly cut, longer than usual and not exactly clean, but showing no sign of matting.
“Too early in the year for miners and trappers,” I murmur. “Settlers, then?”
I glance at the other two bodies. One is definitely female, the other taller but slighter, like an adolescent.
I wince. “A family of settlers.”
“If by settlers, you mean people formerly from Rockton or descended from them, then no,” Cherise says. “They came as trappers a couple of years back. Man, woman, boy.” She glances at Owen, who supplies, “Teenager,” and she nods.
“Teenager. They came as trappers and stayed. Built a cabin maybe…” Another glance at Owen.
“Ten miles,” he says.
“Ten miles that way.” She points west. “They didn’t usually come this far, but the weather’s been good.”
“Cabin fever, probably,” Owen says. “Long winter, early spring.”
“We saw them last week and traded. They had skins. Not those ones.” Cherise pauses. “Well, yes, they had those, but they were trash. We only took the good ones. Still ended up with those.” She rolls her eyes. “Missy.”
“Your youngest sister.” I nod. “She’s a good seamstress. She must have figured she could do something with them.”
“No, she just wanted a romp with the boy but knows we don’t give that for free.” Another eye roll.
Missy had taken the damaged skins as “payment” so she could have some fun with a boy her age … a boy who now lies at my feet, wrapped in those same skins as a death shroud.
“Was there … a problem with that?” I say carefully. “An argument over it?”
Cherise’s brows knit. Then she looks at the bodies and back at me and laughs. “You think we killed them because my little sister wanted sex? We aren’t savages. I told Missy if he goes around telling other people how cheaply he got her, I’ll tan her backside, but otherwise…”
She shrugs. “Missy wants a man. This boy would grow into one soon enough, and he’d be a good choice. In the meantime, I wouldn’t begrudge her some fun. That took place last week. We found them like this three days ago. Owen said you’d want the bodies, and you’d want them in the best condition possible. So we wrapped them and put them in here, and then we were keeping an eye out for you.”
I turn to Owen. “Why did you think we’d want them?” Even as I ask, I know the answer. I just hope I’m wrong.
“I said you’d want them because of how they died. They were attacked.”
“By wild men,” Cherise says. “Attacked in their camp, just like those tourists.”