her beaded plaits to swinging.
“But, well—”
“He can’t do everything at once,” Krysty admitted. “And even he’d admit, Jak’s a better scout than he is. Just as J.B.’s handier with blaster-smithing. Though I wouldn’t try to pin down Ryan on the whole Jak thing just this particular instant—”
“Look out!” Ricky screeched from the rear of the procession. Belatedly he added the useful part. “Ryan, down!”
“And the only possible sentence is death!” Marley Toogood finished, making his voice ring.
Though the day was dreary, with more low, gray clouds spewing a miserable drizzle, his heart soared. Something about being able to proclaim those words, loud and proud, to the assembled citizens of Second Chance and Judge Santee’s nascent empire, and hear the moans of despair and the increasingly desperate pleas for mercy from the four condemned men and women standing with nooses around their necks, just made a man’s heart naturally soar.
He heard the creak and grind as the hangman threw the lever. Four traps snapped open under four sets of feet.
“Oh, please, no, not my baby, too—”
The sound of necks snapping was like the ripple of blasterfire from a firing squad, which was also a satisfactory way to send off evildoers, Toogood thought. But it cost more money, even for black-powder blasters. And also the Judge was a traditional sort of man, with a strong fondness for the gallows as a symbolic statement of community principles.
And, of course, a way of making sure that anybody who disagreed with him too strongly on pretty much any subject at all sooner or later found himself swinging from one.
The crowd issued a joint sigh of sorts. Toogood looked around sharply. The sec men on duty monitoring the area didn’t seem to notice any particular offenders.
The louts get slack when Cutter Dan is out of the ville, he thought. Ah, well. We can hardly recruit men of higher caliber to do what is, after all, a menial chore.
Santee pushed himself out of his chair, stood to his full skeletal height and shambled inside. He moved with a purpose. Knowing a little about the state of his internal affairs from the Judge’s house servants, whom Toogood was careful to bribe just the right amount, the mayor suspected Santee’s bowels had been struck with the sudden urge to make one of their infrequent and irregular movements. It wouldn’t do for a man of Santee’s dignity to soil his trousers in front of the whole ville, after all.
“So, how long will it be before the chief marshal catches those coldheart scumbags and gets back to his real job, Marley?” asked one of his fellow town fathers. They had risen from their seats on the dais and stood beneath umbrellas.
“You’re asking the wrong man, Gein,” he said. He pulled out his handkerchief to wipe sweat and rain from his broad expanse of forehead—broad, signifying a powerful, thinking brain behind it, of course.
“You know everything that goes on in the courthouse,” the fussy and diminutive man said.
Toogood laughed. “You give me far too much credit, my friend.”
“I’m worried,” said the sturdy Myers, frowning beneath bushy red eyebrows at the crowd, sullen as the ville folk ambled away to get back to their daily duties under the watchful eyes of a dozen sec men. “We’re spread too thin. If only we had let the coldhearts and the filthy mutie they stole from justice get away scot free, instead of weakening our sec force! Just look at these shiftless scoundrels. They’re just waiting for the opportunity to pull us down like wolves and tear us apart.”
“Why else do you think I just sent off a foursome at once, gentlemen?” cawed a familiar voice from behind them.
They snapped their heads around to see Judge Santee sheltering inside the open door of the courthouse and silently laughing at them.
“What better way to remind them who’s in charge, eh?” the Judge said. “Make an impression! Justice is not to be denied!”
He smiled unpleasantly. It occurred to Toogood to wonder if he’d ever seen the man smile any other way.
“Perhaps you gentlemen would be wise to take such lessons to heart, before you walk quite so perilously close to sedition. Wouldn’t you agree?”
And cackling openly he turned and vanished into the darks depths of his lair.
Myers’s bearded jowls shook as he vented a shuddering breath. “Brrr. The man’s unnerving sometimes.”
“We, of course, appreciate fully how fortunate we are to find ourselves in Judge Santee’s strong and capable hands,” Toogood said loudly. “Of course, none of us harbor any thoughts but those of complete loyalty to our Judge and his vision!”
He winked one eye furiously at his fellow grandees.
“Of course!” Gein piped up. He nudged Myers in the well-padded ribs with his elbow.
“Oh, very well,” the stockier man said. Then more loudly, he added, “Of course I know that the Judge’s decisions are wise!”
“Better, gentlemen,” Toogood said, nodding and beaming vigorously.
“The real shame is that this snipe hunt is slowing up our schedule for restoring the rule of law to nearby villes,” Gein said, in far more subdued tones. “Once we start consolidating our grip—that is, consolidating the rule of law and of the United States—we’ll have no trouble bringing in enough recruits to keep the rabble in their proper places.”
“For now, we must agree to disagree, Donnell,” Myers said.
He turned to Toogood. “What’s the next ville due for reintegration into our United States, Marley?”
Toogood frowned as he thought about the question. “I’m not privy to strategy,” he said, and officially that was true. “That’s for the Judge and Cutter Dan to decide. But I believe it’s the ville of Esperance, to the southwest.”
“Ugh,” Myers said. “A real nest of vipers and freethinkers. I know we rely on trade with them. All the more reason to bring them to heel. I can’t say I’ll be sorry to be able to free my employees from their pernicious influence and example.”
“See, Munktun?” Gein proclaimed. “We’ll make a believer of you yet!”
“Perish the thought,” Myers said.
* * *
THEFACTTHATRyan only had one eye severely restricted his peripheral vision. But, as he marched in the lead of his companions, he kept his head constantly turning, like a one-eyed tomcat in a ville back alley. Even before Ricky shouted his warning, he’d spotted the missile arcing toward him from the dense mutie growth atop the high wall to the left.
His mind registered that it was a spear. Then it passed through the place where he would have been walking and embedded itself in the red clay bank to his right.
He threw himself forward into the stream. He had been carrying
