“You surely can’t be thinking of dispensing with our services?”
Toms shrugged, but still couldn’t bring himself to look at them. “Well, these things have to happen, see, and—”
“Have to happen bullshit,” Ryan exploded. “What the fuck are you playing at? Paying us off out here? What do you plan to do, just take off without us?”
Even as he spoke, he could see from Toms’s face that he was right. But why? It made no sense.
“Boss, we’re going to a new ville that we know jack-shit about, and you want to get rid of extra sec?” Lou frowned.
“That’s just plain stupe. Only a complete fuckwad would do something like that,” K.T. added in a more forthright manner.
“He’s right,” Ryan added, fighting to keep his temper. “And you know he is.”
The one-eyed man’s first instinct was to action—but of what kind? They weren’t being threatened—if anything, the sec lieutenants did not want them to go—and yet they were about to be cast adrift outside of a ville, on a deserted road, for no reason that he could see.
“But what have we done?” Doc continued in the tone he had earlier adopted. He cast a quick glance toward where Ryan and the others were grouped, hoping that they would let him run with this. He felt that he had an affinity with the trader, or at least an affinity that the trader perceived. Perhaps he could get an answer where they would fail.
Toms shrugged. “It’s not about what you’ve done. Shit, you’ve been really good the short time you’ve been with us. But that’s kinda what this is about, I guess. How good you are at what you do.”
Mildred sighed. “Man, you are making no sense at all. And you know that what you’re doing is just gonna piss us off. So if you don’t want things to turn nasty, then you’d sure as hell better start explaining. And make sense, this time.”
Toms sighed. “Okay, okay—I will, but let’s just get things settled, first.” He spoke into the handset. “Stewie, for fuck’s sake—”
“Just coming,” a voice crackled back. J.B. looked back as he heard a wag door, loud in the now oppressive silence of the road. A fat man—not as tall as Lou, but rounder, and without the impression of underlying muscle—jumped out and huffed his way toward them. He carried a bag that jumped and jangled in his hand. It obviously contained local currency, and a fair amount. It was heavy enough to swing out of time with the blubber on the fat man’s body as he ran toward them. Red-faced and sweating, short of breath, he reached them and handed the bag to the trader.
Toms took it without acknowledgment, then spoke once more into the handset. “Okay, this is for all sec. Our newbies are leaving us, as of now. I’m paying them off, and we leave them here. They show any resistance, chop ’em down. We look after our own first. That’s an order.”
Even as he spoke the words, Ryan and his people couldn’t believe what they were hearing. There had been no provocation on their part, and they still had little or no idea why they were being left.
It was obvious, too, that Lou and K.T. felt the same way.
“Boss, what’s this about?” Lou asked, restraining K.T. as the fiery sec lieutenant was about to speak.
Toms sighed, rubbed the back of his hand—the one in which he still grasped the crackling handset—across his forehead.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he began, speaking to no one in particular, “it’s like this. You don’t get anything for free in this world. There’s always a trade-off. Even if it’s one that you might not like that much. Take Jackson Spire, for example. You think they got trade and jack all of a sudden for no reason? Course they haven’t. They got it because Arcadian thinks it’d be a good idea for the villes ’round Arcady to start to grow and develop. Something to do with this idea he has about rebuilding a new society. And they got to abide by a few things he says to get that jack. In order that he’ll send trade their way, by putting us onto them.”
“So the asswipe gets to feel like he’s got a big cock by waving at them,” K.T. fumed. “What’s that got to do with us? He sends us there to make them feel good, but he don’t own us.”
“Are you sure about that?” Krysty murmured, eyeing the trader.
Toms screwed his face up in an expression of self-disgust. “It’s like I say, you don’t get anything without a trade-off. They get a trader coming through, and we get first pickings…as long as I do something for Arcadian in return.”
“And that something is to pay us off and leave us here?” Ryan asked, incredulous. “What does that profit him?”
Toms sucked in his breath. “You know,” he said at length, “I really don’t know. Not for sure. Far as I can see, you didn’t do anything to piss him off while you were in Arcady. And you ain’t been nothing but good for us. Fact is, I was telling him that. Mebbe he wants you to work for him.”
“Bastard strange way of going about it,” J.B. mused. “Why not just ask us?”
“Because we could say no,” Mildred stated. “This way…”
“We have nowhere to go other than back,” Doc finished.
“You don’t have to do what Arcadian says,” Krysty directed at Toms. “You could just drive on to Jackson Spire, then go beyond.”
Toms grinned. “I could. But then I don’t know if he has sec there that’ll report back. Mebbe he could make it hot, start a firefight. I could certainly never come back this way again, and Arcady is good trade. It’s not like I gotta have you chilled, is it?”
Jak spoke for the first time. His words were, perhaps, surprising.
“We take and go. Toms play fair—give us jack. Supplies?” The last was a question, directed at the trader, who nodded. “Not forcing us do anything. Mebbe we go back, mebbe we move on.”
Ryan shrugged. He figured that Jak was right. Toms was making it easy for them, despite the threat of retaliation if they started a firefight.
“Okay, if that’s how it’s got to be.”
Toms’s relief was palpable. “I’m pleased you see it that way. Last thing I want is to have to fight.”
Because you’d be the first to get chilled, Ryan thought. But he said nothing. This wasn’t the time, and Toms wasn’t the enemy.
Ryan and his people stood back from the convoy while Lou and K.T. directed that their supplies be brought out and left with them. Then, as Toms ordered his sec force back into their wags, the two sec lieutenants left their former comrades. Little was said, but their unease with the resolution was plain.
The convoy started up and began to rumble down the flattop. The companions stood back and watched it disappear around a bend in the road until the last wag, and its exhaust, had cleared their view. Even the sound of the engines had become a distant rumble, fading beneath the rustling of the groves at their backs.
“Well,” Doc said brightly, “do we press on for pastures new? Or do we find out what this crazed baron really wants?”
“You calling someone crazy,” Mildred snorted. “Now that really isn’t a good sign.”
Chapter Three
If they had wondered why Toms had taken them about fifty miles out of the ville before stopping, then they had their answer soon after they opted to return. In many ways, it was a simple decision to make. Ahead, they knew, lay only Jackson Spires, over 150 miles away, on a road that was surrounded by territory that was certainly far from friendly.
Go that way, and they had no idea what lay between themselves and the next ville. And at the end of the road would be a ville that was a satellite of Arcady, along with a convoy full of wag crews who would know from their leader the possible